kerkko.fi

Most people's understanding of what can actually be done with the data provided by our mobile phones is theoretical; there were few real-world examples. That is why Malte Spitz from the German Green party decided to publish his own data collected from August 2009 to February 2010. However, to even access the information, he had to file a suit against telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom.

The data were contained in a massive Excel document. Each of the 35,831 rows of the spreadsheet represents an instance when Spitz's mobile phone transferred information over a half-year period. Seen individually, the pieces of data are mostly inconsequential. But taken together, they provide what investigators call a profile -– a clear picture of a person's habits and preferences, and of his or her life.

The profile reveals when Spitz walked down the street, when he took a train, when he was in an airplane. It shows when he worked and when he slept, when he could be reached by phone and when was unavailable. It shows when he preferred to talk on his phone and when he preferred to send a text message. It shows which beer gardens he liked to visit in his free time. All in all, it reveals an entire life.

Why is there so little looting in Japan? The explanation is a robust system of laws that reinforce honesty, a strong police presence, and, ironically, active crime organizations. The Japanese legal structure rewards honesty more than most. The high rates of recovery have less to do with altruism than with the system of carrots and sticks that incentivizes people to return property they find rather than keep it. If you find an umbrella and turn it in to the cops, you get a finder's fee of 5-20% of its value if the owner picks it up.

If they do not pick it up within six months, the finder gets to keep the umbrella. Japanese learn about this system from a young age, and a child's first trip to the nearest police station after finding a small coin, say, is a rite of passage that both children and police officers take seriously. At the same time, police enforce small crimes like petty theft, which contributes to an overall sense of security and order. Failure to return a found wallet can result in hours of interrogation at best, and up to 10 years in prison at worst.

Japan has an active and visible police force of nearly 300,000 officers across the country. Cops walk their beats and chat up local residents and shopkeepers. Police are posted at ubiquitous kobans, police boxes manned by one or two officers, and in cities there is almost always a koban within walking distance of another koban. A survey in 1992 found that 95% of residents knew where the nearest koban was. Police are good at their jobs: The clearance rate for murder in 2010 was an unbelievable 98.2%.

At the same time, members of the Yakuza are also enforcing order. All three major crime groups -- Yamaguchi-gumi, Sumiyoshi-kai, and Inagawa-kai -- patrol the streets to make sure looting and robbery does not occur. The Sumiyoshi-kai claims to have shipped over 40 tons of humanitarian aid supplies nationwide and that is probably a conservative estimate. One group has even opened its Tokyo offices to displaced Japanese and foreigners who were stranded after the first tremors disabled public transportation.

Thousands of protesters stormed the headquarters of Egypt's State Security forces headquarters in Alexandria, Cairo, and a nearby town, shutting down its operations across the country, and seizing control of the vast archive of records. Egyptian ex-patriots are calling the day Egypt's Bastille Day. Revelations are pouring out onto the Twitter hashtag #AmnDawla and the Facebook profile, Amn Dawla Leaks. Documents found at the State Security HQ reveal that it uses a product acquired from a German company called Gamma Group to hack into email and Skype accounts.

Gamma Group, in cooperation with Elaman GmbH, offers a wide variety of products, services, and customized solutions from several locations worldwide. Due to our combined international experience and technical knowhow, we also offer consulting and training services that meet the requirements of our customers. The Gamma-Elaman partnership, with a combined worldwide workforce of 50 employees, has successfully been involved over the past five years in multi-million Euro projects. Gamma and Elaman operate out of offices located in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Far East.

In the field of telecommunications, data retention generally refers to the storage of call related information (numbers, date, time, position, etc.) of telephony and internet traffic. The stored data are usually telephone calls made and received, emails sent and received, websites visited, and location data. The primary objective in data retention is traffic analysis and mass surveillance. By analyzing the retained data governments can identify an individual's location, their associates, and members of a group, such as political opponents.

Active GSM monitoring systems simulate a GSM base station to attract GSM phones away from the normal GSM network and log into the system's "faked" virtual base station. As soon as the phone is logged onto the active system, its identity is extracted (IMSI and IMEI). By logging the phone onto the virtual base station the phone can be forced to transmit on a given channel, frequency and time-slot (establishing a "silent call"). This transmission can be picked up by a direction finding system (vehicle based or handheld) which then gives the exact position of the target phone.

Phones can be completely taken off the real network ("intelligent jamming"), fake calls and SMS can be sent to the target phone, and private networking can be realized and the battery of the target phone can be drained. The active system also allows operating within UMTS networks. Collecting the identity of the target phone (IMSI, IMEI) can be done without bringing the phone down to GSM/GPRS, therefore, no jamming of the overall UMTS signal is needed. For all other operations, such as locating the phone, the target UMTS phone will be pushed back into GSM mode.

A passive IP interception system receives all "raw" IP traffic which needs to get filtered, stored, decoded, and viewed. The problem here is that no encrypted IP-traffic can be restored or decrypted (e.g. VPN, HTTPS, Skype, PGP, etc.). This problem can be solved if the intercepted IP data can be grabbed directly from the target PC because encryption takes place "behind" the target PC. This can be achieved using IT-Intrusion Software. Of course, such an approach is only target-based, i.e. the target must be known, and if a Trojan is embedded on the PC all IP traffic can be intercepted.

http://wlcentral.org/node/1429

On Christmas Day, Facebook's Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan first noticed strange things going on in Tunisia. Reports started to trickle in that political-protest pages were being hacked. "We were getting reports that user accounts had been deleted," Sullivan said. For Tunisians, it was another run-in with Ammar, the nickname they have given to the authorities that censor the country's internet. They had come to expect it. Now Ammar was in the process of stealing an entire country's worth of passwords.

An unauthorised computer, running encrypted software, was found hidden inside an unoccupied office in the Icelandic Parliament, connected to the internal network. Serial numbers had been removed and no fingerprints were found. The office had been used by substitute MPs from the Independence Party and The Movement, the Parliamentary group of Birgitta Jonsdottir, whose Twiiter account was recently subpoenaed by US authorities.

He approached me soundlessly, from behind, and spoke in a low, reassuring voice close to my ear. "Just relax."

Without warning, he reached down and I felt his strong, calloused hands start at my ankles, gently probing, and moving upward along my calves slowly but steadily. My breath caught in my throat. I knew I should be afraid, but somehow I didn't care. His touch was so experienced, so sure.

When his hands moved up onto my thighs, I gave a slight shudder, and partly closed my eyes. My pulse was pounding. I felt his knowing fingers caress my abdomen, my ribcage. And then, as he cupped my firm, full breasts in his hands, I inhaled sharply.

Probing, searching, knowing what he wanted, he brought his hands to my shoulders, slid them down my tingling spine and into my panties. Although I knew nothing about this man, I felt oddly trusting and expectant. This is a man, I thought. A man used to taking charge. A man not used to taking `no' for an answer. A man who would tell me what he wanted. A man who would look into my soul and say ...

"Okay, ma'am, all done."

My eyes snapped open and he was standing in front of me, smiling, holding out my purse.

"You can board your flight now."

http://mybirdie.ca/files/a97da13bf437668a0151b78c370340bd-13180.php

On Sunday, I was allowed to enter the US through an airport security checkpoint without being x-rayed, touched by a TSA officer, or metal detected. In the end, it took two and a half hours, but I proved that it is possible. I am looking forward to my next flight on Wednesday.

Want airport full-body scanners to go away? Get your hands on an image of a politician and post it online. You can make friends who work in airport security, apply for work at airport security, or get into a database. Whatever it takes. The first politician's dick that makes it online will make these machines go away. Guaranteed.

Olivier Jankovec, director general of Airports Council International Europe, said that the current approach [to airport security] appeared to be reactive and the system was unsustainable. It had cast a "huge shadow" over the passenger experience, he added. While the cost in the US was borne by the government, in Europe it was the airports that had to shoulder the burden, he said, at times passing it on to the airlines or passengers. While security represented 5 to 8 per cent of airport operating costs in 2001, that figure had jumped to 35 per cent. "Now 41 per cent of airport staff are security related. Airports are almost turning into security companies," he said.