Archive for April, 2012
Top Secret USB stick uses wax seal for verification
Written by Sal Cangeloso
Monday, 30 April 2012 21:24
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Top secret USB

Way back when, before email, RSA keys, and 128-bit AES encryption, people had a pretty clever way of making sure that their mail was delivered unread. As you’ve seen in hundreds of movies, wax was poured onto a piece of parchment (or vellum, or whatever people were writing on) and while still hot the wax was imprinted with a symbol. That symbol was unique and complex, so that it could not be easily be forged. The meant that if you received a letter with the seal intact you could be reasonably sure that it hadn’t been read, tampered with, or forged. This wax-based authentication technology has finally made its way to USB keys.

Nowadays, if someone hands you a USB key there is no way of knowing if it had been accessed beforehand. Unless it’s encrypted and you’re given the key, it’s totally possible that someone could hop on, drop in a keylogger or some other malicious software, and be reading your email the next day. The Top Secret is a porcelain USB key that is designed to accept a wax seal, so you just need to seal it after you’ve dropped on your data. Once it makes its way to your business associate/significant other/spymaster, they’ll know it’s safe if that seal unbroken. If the seal is cracked or missing then they’ll know the stick has been accessed, and it’s possible that the USB stick is not safe to use or that the data has been copied.

Of course, you’ll need your signet — possibly in ring form — if you don’t have one already. (Talk about high class problems…) There are a few initial options on offer, but it seems easy enough to put together something on your own, it’s just a wax impression after all.

A 2GB Top Secret USB still will cost about $46, and 8GB model is $59.

Get one at Top Secret, via notcot

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Sikh group launches phone app to report unfair airport screeners, first complaints made
Written by FOXNews.com
Monday, 30 April 2012 20:34
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WASHINGTON –  A Sikh advocacy group launched a free mobile application Monday that allows travelers to complain immediately to the government if they feel they've been treated unfairly by airport screeners.

Launched at midnight by The Sikh Coalition, the FlyRights app had fielded two complaints by 10 a.m. EDT Monday.

The first complaint came from a woman who said she felt mistreated after she disclosed to a screener that she was carrying breast milk. A man who is Sikh filed the second complaint, saying he was subjected to extra security even though he had not set off any alarms. The woman's complaint was based on gender and the man's, religion, said coalition program director Amardeep Singh.

Singh said the Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration were notified of the app before its launch. The agencies agreed to allow the app to use the agencies' system for submitting the complaints.

TSA said in a statement that it does not profile passengers on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion and is continually working with communities, including The Sikh Coalition, "to help us understand unique passenger concerns." The agency said it supports "efforts to gather passenger feedback about the screening process."

The app, available for iPhone and Android phones, was conceived in response to complaints from Sikhs in the U.S, who since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are routinely subjected to additional inspection, Singh said. Some are made to remove their turbans, which Sikhs wear for religious reasons, Singh said.

The app is intended for everyone who feels they are racially profiled or subjected to other unfair treatment. It is also intended to provide better data on how often such incidents occur.

In light of the shooting of Trayvon Martin, immigration laws in Alabama and Arizona, and the anniversary of the Rodney King trial "it has never been more readily apparent how the practice of racial profiling impacts all Americans," said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. The conference helped launch the app.

After completing screening, a person can go to the app and click on the "report" button. The app will automatically fill in the person's name, phone number and email address. The app asks questions such as race and name of airport, as well as the basis of the complaint, such as religion or gender. It has "submit" and "share" buttons to post on social media that a complaint was filed. The app also contains information on rights of passengers and TSA procedures.

The Sikh Coalition gets hundreds of complaints of unfair treatment and profiling, Singh said. By contrast, he said, the Department of Homeland Security said in its last report to Congress on civil rights and civil liberties that 11 people in the U.S. submitted complaints in the first six month of 2011.

"My hope is that this app will exponentially increase the number of complaints filed with the TSA, flood the system so they get that this is a problem. For too long the Transportation Security Administration has been able to tell Congress this is not an issue, nobody's complaining," Singh said.

Passengers can ask to speak to supervisors or customer support managers at an airport, contact the TSA Contact Center, submit feedback through "Talk-to-TSA" online or file a civil rights complaint through its website, the agency said.

Prabhjit Singh, a motivational speaker, said he has been profiled 30 times, starting in Feb. 2007 when he was taking an early morning flight from Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport to Alabama. In that incident, he was told he had to go through a mandatory pat-down of his turban, even though he had not set off the detector. But after asking for information on the TSA policy, a supervisor told him he could not fly, he said.

"Out of those 30 incidents, I have not yet been able to take myself and write down all the information I needed to and been able to convey that to the Sikh Coalition. This app will allow me to do that," said Prabhjit Singh, who is not related to Amardeep Singh.

"When I sat down on that airplane, after that experience, I looked around at everybody else ... and I thought, they did not have to go through what I had to go through to get on this airplane," he said.

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FlyRights app: http://www.fly-rights.org

Transportation Security Administration complaint site: http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/civilrights/filing_a_complaint.shtm

The Sikh Coalition: http://www.sikhcoalition.org

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Suzanne Gamboa can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/APsgamboa

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Java vet says Google ‘slimed’ Sun as Oracle trial phase ends
Written by Electronista | Gadgets for Geeks
Monday, 30 April 2012 19:05
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Java vet docks Google for tactics with Java


Java pioneer James Gosling has criticized Google for the tactics it used in going without a Java license for Android. He argued that, despite former Sun chief Jonathan Schwartz saying Sun couldn't sue Google, the decision to skip a license still hurt the company. Google "totally slimed" Sun, and even Schwartz was tolerating the action rather than endorsing it.

"He just decided to put on a happy face and tried to turn lemons into lemonade, which annoyed a lot of folks at Sun," Gosling said of the executive.

Gosling had at one point worked with Google but left the company after just months.

The statements came just days before closing arguments in the first phase of Oracle's lawsuit trial, which will rule on whether or not Google violated copyrights. Oracle directly touched on Gosling's points and told the jury during arguments from lawyer Mike Jacobs that Google "knows better" than to think a blog post from the CEO constituted company policy. Sun co-founder Scott McNealy had stressed that Sun's blog was personal opinion.

Google's defending attorney, Robert Van Nest, objected and called attention to Schwartz specifically saying Sun didn't have legal grounds to sue in the days before it was bought by Oracle. The e-mail talking about having to possibly take a license wasn't related to the case and was used out of context, the lawyer said.

Either side tried to inflate their view of the possible copyright violation. Oracle insisted that Google had worked in a "dirty room" copying code, in many cases from workers like Tim Lindholm who had been at Sun. Google insisted that it had created a "clean room" to code without violating others' technology. Only nine lines of code had been used, and they were no longer in Android as of 4.0, Van Nest said.

Jury deliberations begin this week and could be more vital than the rest of the case for Google. If jurors find Google having violated copyright, it will face damages and the possibility of a ban regardless of whether or not the rest of the case finds it innocent. Damages could be relatively minor at the tens of millions of dollars, but Google may have to agree to an unfavorable royalty to keep using its OS until the Sun/Oracle patents expire. [via Dan Levine as well as Ginny LaRoe and CNET]


By Electronista Staff

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