Category Archives: Technology and Culture
Future Employers: My Facebook Password Is ‘None0fYourDamnedBusiness’
In a recent article on The Telegraph’s website “Companies asking for Facebook passwords for future employees”, they tell the real life story of a New York statistician in a job interview:
Justin Bassett, a New York City statistician, had just finished answering a few character questions for a consultancy job at a lobbying firm, when the interviewer turned to her computer to search for his Facebook page. But she could not see his private profile. She turned back and asked him to hand over his login information.
Mr Bassett refused and withdrew his application, saying he did not want to work for a company that would seek such personal information. But as the job market steadily improves, other job candidates are confronting the same question from prospective employers, and some of them cannot afford to say no.
I dispute the “cannot afford to say no”, as it is no different than asking you for your password to your bank account online, your house keys. After all, they want to make sure you aren’t money laundering and live according to their standards, right? That is not just an invasion of privacy, which is illegal in the first place. It is a security risk, and it is immoral. There is a reason you have a password, and many security experts even advise keeping those passwords even from family members. How much more are you going to trust some corporate mafia goon? It is also not ethical because they are asking you to break the Terms of Service (TOS) in most cases, and esp. in the case of Facebook.
Watch Out, UK Drivers, Big Brother Is Watching
I believe George Orwell knew far too well the tendency of human governments to devolve into despotism. In his novel 1984, he showed us that dictators will not stop at using technology to control the people.
Thanks to a mate on Facebook, I was alerted to the C-Net report “Need gas in the UK? Make sure your car insurance is paid up”. In Britain, it isn’t much different than the States in that there are cameras everywhere. However, now the government wants to use automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology to scan plates to see whether or not they have paid their auto insurance. No insurance, no petrol.
This might sound innocuous at first, but the intrusion into privacy should be a concern to all. And, don’t think that just because it is the UK that some yoyo politician here in the US isn’t going to get the same idea.
Worse, who is responsible if it malfunctions and/or causes harm because the person could not get to, say, a doctor’s appointment?
The concerns shouldn’t just stop there, though. Technology can be used to catch those that play fast and loose with the law. However, if it can be used to control evil, then it can also be used to cause evil by controlling the good. Even if you trust the government you have now to use its power for good, there is no guarantee that the next one or the one after that will be trustworthy. After all, power grabbers don’t ask for your permission before seizing control.
50th Anniversary of John Glenn’s Spaceflight, and He’s Not Happy
Today, The Telegraph reported “John Glenn’s fury over death of Nasa space programme”, in which he “has launched an attack on the administration of George W Bush after Nasa was forced to retire the space shuttles”. He was the first to orbit the earth. While speaking at the Kennedy Space Center, he points out how much money the US has spent in putting up a space station but now have no way to get there without hitching a ride from other nations.
"If there’s one thing we have learned through the history of our country, it’s that money spent on basic research has a way of paying back in the future beyond anything we ever see at the outset," he said.
Not So Anonymous Now
[Note: This was supposed to publish earlier this month, but for some reason did not.]
When I first saw the MSNBC.com headline “Hacker group draws increased scrutiny from feds”, I was pretty much thinking what the very first line read: “Anonymous is not so anonymous anymore.” It seems that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security now views the group as a potential threat to national security.
The increase in illegal activity of the group has gained it a notoriety that now places it on law enforcement’s radar. However, there appears to be no centralized operational leadership unlike some other well-known groups, and that makes it difficult to shut down their operations.
It should be noted that the article implies most of the defendants seem to be the less skilled “script kiddies” according to DHS, and so it may be that they are not really hitting the core hacker group even with these arrests.
Finally, a Troll Gets What He Deserves
Ever wish an Internet troll got what’s coming to him? Today’s The Telegraph included an article about an “Internet ‘troll’ jailed for mocking dead teenagers on Facebook”. Sean Duffy wasn’t your ordinary troll, though. He went way beyond the pale.
Duffy also created a Facebook page entitled “RIP Lauren Drew” after the
14 year-old died from an epilepsy attack at her home in Gloucester in January.
Duffy then posted images captioned “Lauren’s epifit” and “Lauren’s rotting body” and created a YouTube video with a picture of a coffin saying “Happy Mothers Day”. He signed off the video by writing: “I don’t know why you’re all crying down there, it’s soaking here in hell.”
That’s just one sample of the things he posted, but perhaps it is the most disgusting. In addition, in the case of Lauren above, one of her friends was falsely accused of making the hate postings and overdosed on drugs.
He didn’t even know any of his targets, which makes this all the more puzzling. Supposedly, Duffy suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, but that hardly excuses his behavior in my book.
Should Twitter and Blackberry Messenger Services Be Suspended Due to UK Riots?
MP David Lammy of the UK Labour Party has called for Blackberry Messenger (BBM) service to be suspended. BBM and Twitter have been used to organize the recent rioting activities in the UK.
Emma Barnett of The Telegraph argues “Twitter is right: keep the tweets flowing” and gives several good reasons to not shut them down. I would like to offer some of my own observations:
More on LED Lights
I’ve been wanting to use up these CFL bulbs for some time now so I could try some LED bulbs which don’t contain the dangerous mercury found in fluorescent lights. Now that I’m to that point, it seems that the company which I previously pointed to for LED light bulbs is now no longer in the light bulb business. However, it turns out that Amazon.com sells LED bulbs as well, so I order some from them to try them out.
One reason to read the reviews is to check for blue tint in the lighting, if it bothers you. Some LED lights give off a bluish tint, such as the Brightest PAR38 42 White SMD LED Flood Light Bulb, 1314WH-CV. It doesn’t exactly bother me, as it is a floodlight, but the cat still isn’t sure what to make of it.
I also ordered a 7W LED Incandescent Replacement Light
One commenter mentioned that some bulbs can be bought cheaper at Lowe’s. I think I’ll try that next time, as at least I’ll be able to see the bulb and determine if it is adequate as a general replacement or not.
Good Hackers?
Perhaps you have heard that the difference between a “hacker” and a “cracker” is that a hacker is a more general label that can apply to good types of activities (such as sizing up security for a client) while a cracker is always doing it for nefarious reasons.
What about someone who hacks into a network, though, and does so without permission of the network owners in order to disrupt the activities of the owners of that network? Can that be “good”?
Apparently, some think so, at least judging by the comments on MSNBC.com’s “NBC News: Hacker attack cripples al-Qaida Web communications”. While not confirmed, it seems that this attack “once again appears to bear the telltale fingerprints of government-sponsored hackers” similar to those by the UK government that took place last year.
I have no illusions that the western world isn’t at war with terrorists of various stripes, but it does make one wonder where to draw the line ethically. On a more practical note, this opens the door to cyberwarfare even wider and may invite retaliation from sympathetic quarters.
Hopefully, western governments have taken that into consideration and have prepared appropriately.
FBI Given Unprecedented Authority to Delete Coreflood Malware Bot From Computers
The H Security has been posting articles about the Coreflood botnet, one of the longest running malware bots going. According to their 14 April article, “Friendly takeover: FBI controls bot PCs”, Coreflood has been around for ten years. It goes after financial information, such as logins for online banking.
What’s new is that now a court has authorized “US authorities to delete Coreflood bot from computers”. Up until recently, they had simply been sending a kill command that disabled the bot until a computer was restarted. Now, however, they will actually be uninstalling it.
While the procedure has been tested, there still is the danger that unintended changes could occur to infected computers. This seems to be the largest practical risk of doing it this way. Removing malware is always a tricky situation, and uninstalls have a tendency to go wrong.
Of course, there are always the privacy concerns. Should the government be getting involved in malware, even if it is for the benefit of everyone including the owner of the system? Does this set a precedent that can be abused in the future? There certainly are those that think it does.
