Study reveals security holes for evading wiretaps November 30, 2005
Xeni Jardin:
In the NYT, John Markoff and John Schwartz report:
The technology used for decades by law enforcement agents to wiretap telephones has a security flaw that allows the person being wiretapped to stop the recorder remotely, according to research by computer security experts who studied the system. It is also possible to falsify the numbers dialed, they said.
Someone being wiretapped can easily employ these “devastating countermeasures” with off-the-shelf equipment, said the lead researcher, Matt Blaze, an associate professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania.
“This has implications not only for the accuracy of the intelligence that can be obtained from these taps, but also for the acceptability and weight of legal evidence derived from it,” Mr. Blaze and his colleagues wrote in a paper that will be published today in Security & Privacy, a journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
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Slowing traffic by setting up living rooms in the street
Mark Frauenfelder:
Ted Dewan was tired of cars zooming down the residential street in front of his house, so he designed a series of “DIY traffic-calming happenings,” including living room furniture sets in the middle of the road.
These type of “DIY traffic-calming happenings” are described by their creator as “roadwitches” and have included an 11-feet high rabbit, a big bed (for a sleeping policeman), a Casualty-style fake crash scene for Halloween and the setting up of a living room in the middle of the road.“There”s an element of fun and mischief, but underneath is the ambition to encourage people to re-examine how roads are used,” says Mr Dewan.
“With the living room, it was the most direct way of saying “We live here. This is our living space.”"
And he says that residents really enjoyed the strangeness of being able to relax outside in their own street, rather than feel it was a place only belonging to the cars that race up and down it.
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Gallery of sketches by Spumco bigshot Vincent Waller
Mark Frauenfelder:
Stephen Worth, director of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, says: “You might be interested in the artwork we digitized today at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive… It”s a collection of drawings by Spumco “Bigshot,” Vincent Waller. Vincent directed the classic Ren & Stimpy episode, “Rubber Nipple Salesmen,” and boy can he draw!”
Link
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Asian Kung-Fu Generation - Loop & Loop
A kind of Weezerish video for Asian Kung-Fu Generation”s Loop & Loop single from the Sol-fa album. The clip is kind of blah, your usual mainstream alt-rock scenario, but the track is undeniably catchy.
Asian Kung-Fu Generation - Loop & Loop [You Tube]
Asian Kung-Fu Generation”s site
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Anti-teenager sound weapon
David Pescovitz:
Today”s New York Times profiles an invention that emits a high-frequency sound designed to annoy people younger than 20. Apparently, people older than 30 can”t hear it. Howard Stapleton of Barry, Wales invented the device, called the Mosquito, to drive away teenagers loitering around storefronts. From the NYT:
A trip to Spar here in Barry confirmed the strange truth of the phenomenon. The Mosquito is positioned just outside the door. Although this reporter could not hear anything, being too old, several young people attested to the fact that yes, there was a noise, and yes, it was extremely annoying.
“It”s loud and squeaky and it just goes through you,” said Jodie Evans, 15, who was shopping at the store even though she was supposed to be in school. “It gets inside you…”
Stapleton, a security consultant whose experience in installing store alarms and the like alerted him to the gravity of the loitering problem, studied other teenage-repellents as part of his research. Some shops, for example, use “zit lamps,” which drive teenagers away by casting a blue light onto their spotty skin, accentuating any whiteheads and other blemishes.
Using his children as guinea pigs, he tried a number of different noise and frequency levels, testing a single-toned unit before settling on a pulsating tone which, he said, is more unbearable, and which can be broadcast at 75 decibels, within government auditory-safety limits. “I didn”t want to make it hurt,” Stapleton said. “It just has to nag at them.”
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Nothing can escape The Circle
Here’s another round of petty great comics tweaking from Nidrian, who threatens that this may be it for a while from him.
Previously:
Watch Out For Snakes
Nidrian shrugged
Unrelated, but if you liked one you’ll probably like the other: Suicide bomber support website needs donation [Above Top Secret Conspiracy Community]
Thanks to Allen
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A is for Atom
All things Atomic are given a sound 1950s educational filmstriping in this 1950s educational filmstrip. We note the lack of giant ants and useless gonads as major oversights in this otherwise charming bit of atomic age fun.
A is for Atom [Internet Archive]
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Buddy Lee: Guidance Counselor
The jeans-slinging little doll or hard drinking albino pigmy or whatever he is offers up guidance to some seriously confused high school kids in these ad shorts.
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What Riles You Up, Harlem?
Wonder Showzen”s own Grover-after-a-fire muppet Clarence goes to Harlem to see if he can”t make white people look even more like assholes to that part of town by asking stupid questions to random people. Turns out we can”t all get along. And also The Jews has their own police. Bummer.
Wonder Showzen: Clarence in Harlem [Devilducky]
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Hielo
ViDRIO. It’s been long 