Looks like the poor guys over at The Pirate Bay can’t seem to catch a break. While I honestly can see why they didn’t win the case, I am a little surprised that they ruled the judge wasn’t unbiased.

The judge in the Pirate Bay case, Tomas Norström, was not biased. That’s the decision of the Swedish High Court of Justice, which investigated accusations made by the four defendants in the high-profile file-sharing case.

The accusations were based on Norström’s membership in organizations such as the Swedish Copyright Association, which counts among its members lawyers who represented the plaintiffs during The Pirate Bay trial.

The court ascertained that such memberships do demonstrate a commitment to intellectual property issues, which could be considered by some to be in the interest of the plaintiffs. But it also pointed out that rights-holders’ rights are protected by the Constitution, and so cannot be considered a conflict of interest if a judge endorses the principles behind copyright laws.

The court did say it would have been appropriate for the judge to disclose these memberships, which could have led to an investigation of potential conflicts of interest at an earlier stage in the process.

But as a whole, none of these circumstances are enough for sending the case back to the district court, according to the High Court, which now will look at the main appeal of the verdict.

On April 17, the four defendants were found guilty of having made 33 copyright-protected files accessible for illegal file-sharing via the Piratebay.org Web site and were sentenced to one year in jail.

They were also ordered to pay a total of 30 million Swedish kronor ($3.8 million) in damages to copyright holders, among them a number of American media giants.

(Via CNET)

The FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service were forced to shut down parts of their computer networks after a mystery virus struck the law-enforcement agencies Thursday, according to an Associated Press report.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service confirmed that it had disconnected from Justice Department computers as a precaution after being hit with the virus, while an FBI spokesperson would only say that it was experiencing similar issues, according to the report.

“We too are evaluating a network issue on our external, unclassified network that’s affecting several government agencies,” FBI spokesman Mike Kortan told the AP.

The virus’ type and origin are unknown, but spokespeople for both agencies said agencies’ access to the Internet and e-mail was shut down while the issue was evaluated.

Government regulations require agencies to report any security issues to US-Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), but a call to CERT late Thursday for comment was not immediately returned.

Like I have said, it only takes one outward facing machine to get in. I am sure their are tons of viruses and botnets out there going undetected. You just have to play the waiting game, update them, and make the traffic blend in…

(Via CNET)

Much has been made out of the start up of Wolfram|Alpha. I have not paid much attention, even though it has been carried by Gizmodo, Slashdot, CNET, and everyone else. They even had a live video of the launch, in which it crashed I might add.

So today I ran a couple of searches. My number one result:

Which just proves that i have no clue WTF I am doing. So the only other thing I could think to search for is ‘the answer to life’. And that my friends is how I got the results in the very first picture. Now that I know they put in that tidbit of information I am pretty sure this search engine will take off and rule the world!

When I was younger ‘The Rocketeer’ was one of my favorite movie. A little film noir mixed with flying, and getting the girl, so perfect. While I have to admit the Jetpack idea seems fun, the BOOM that is often associated with it kind of scares me off. This video is from the people at Jetpack International, setting the new speed record.

They manage to get to 68MPH using hydrogen peroxide, and ‘precious metals.’ I am not sure what those are, but you sure as hell can bet I am going to try to find some when I get home . . .

(Via CNET)

Microsoft today released a patch for the hole found in PowerPoint. Sadly the patch doesn’t cover Mac or the older Works Suite. CNET has some more:

Without the patch, the vulnerability can be exploited by getting a person to open a PowerPoint file rigged for the attack, Microsoft has said. When the file is opened, PowerPoint will access an invalid object in memory. That then allows an attacker to remotely execute code on the system.

The fix was released as part of the company’s regularly scheduled monthly Patch Tuesday.

Microsoft said that the vulnerability is not rated critical for PowerPoint 2002 and later versions because they prompt a user before opening a document, meaning that the vulnerability “requires more than a single user action to complete the exploit.”

Yeah ok, this guy obviously works in an environment of smart users. Let me tell you about the general work force, a prompt asking if they are sure if they want to open the file means nothing. A chance to see cute cats doing something dumb is just too hard for most to pass up.

(Via CNET)

This picture by alt1040 pretty much sums up what I posted last week about Google. Of course the victory even looks to be shorter lived now that Judge Nordstrom had some serious conflict of interests. Chris Matyszczyk over at CNET has a story with some pretty good quotes from our favorite judge.

Judge Nordstrom declared: “Every time I take a case, I evaluate if I consider myself having a conflict of interest. In this case I didn’t find to have one.”

I know there must be some of you out there who are asking the question: “How hard did you look?” I find myself asking the question: “How hard is your head?”
Judge Norstrom must have known that this would be a fairly notable case. His name would waft through the newspapers. His views would be scrutinized for their fairness.

So isn’t it a little odd for him to say, as it perhaps seems to some: “You know, I thought really hard about whether my membership of the Swedish Copyright Association and the Swedish Association for Industrial Legal Protection might influence my impeccable judgment. But then I had a whiskey and thought to myself ‘hey, this is a juicy case’”?

But if Judge Norstrom was truly an impartial, brilliant, expert judge, might he have not offered the following quote: “This is a sensitive case. So before I agreed to hear it, I asked some of my fellow judges whether they considered that I would be in a position of conflicting interests. Two judges said absolutely not. While a third said he wasn’t quite so sure. I went with the majority.”

Something tells me this case is going to last forever. Lets see if the MPAA/RIAA and all those guys are stupid enough to try to bring Google into the mix.

(Via CNET, and Gizmodo)

CNET brings to light on an application that I actually had not heard of.

Glide OS is a horizontal platforms that offer users the ability to e-mail, create and edit documents and pictures, and collaborate across all three major desktop computing platforms as well as almost every major smartphone platform. Glide 3.0 has just updated, introducing changes aimed at parental control and creating a kid-friendly environment.

The new e-mail filter allows parents to intercept all messages sent to a child’s inbox. Parents can then approve or deny the e-mails so kids can only see pre-approved messages, filtering out pornographic spam, phishing attempts, and other junk. Parents need to create a secondary e-mail account in Glide that they can control access rights to, similar to how Glide allows rights controls for attachments if you’re familiar with that system.

Both children and adult can take advantage of the new drawing and coloring tool. It works a bit like MS Paint, except with Glide’s collaborative tools built in, and a much more interesting interface. Colors appear as crayons in a box, and users can choose from preselected backgrounds, a blank canvas, or images in their own libraries to drawn on. Standard drawing tools are included, such as a freehand pen, line tools, typographic text, and shapes. Glide Draw also offers zooming and undo/redo. The tools can be accessed from the Draw text link at the bottom of Glide’s main interface.

As the father of a 4 year old, it is exciting to see products that I can let my son use and not have to worry about every little aspect of what he does. Not to mention having it run on Linux, Windows, and OS X means that he can use it on any machine in the house.

(Glide via CNET)

CNET has an article over what appears to be a power struggle on the role of cybersecurity efforts for the US. First created in 2002, and incorporated into the Department of Homeland Security, government auditors have decided that the DHS is not living up to its “responsibilities.”

The announcement of the review led to speculation that the White House’s National Security Council or the National Security Agency would be handed more cybersecurity responsibilities, along with a larger budget to carry them out. Although the 2002 law creating DHS centralized cybersecurity responsibilities, it has been repeatedly criticized by government auditors who concluded that DHS failed to live up to its responsibilities and may be “unprepared” for emergencies.

On Tuesday, NSA Director Keith Alexander downplayed reports of a power grab by his agency, saying, “We do not want to run cybersecurity for the U.S. government.” The NSA has cybersecurity responsibilities for the U.S. military.

Alexander’s remarks appeared to be a response to Rod Beckstrom, former director of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity Center, whose resignation letter last month blasted what he described as an NSA power grab that could threaten “our democratic processes.” That led some members of Congress–including the Democratic chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee–to object to NSA control, which Clinton-era FBI director Louis Freeh echoed a day later.

Power struggle? Lets look at a couple of recent articles:

Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jet Project (WSJ)

Blueprints of Obama’s Marine One helicopter leaked on P2P (SC Magazine)

Hackers Target U.S. Power Grid (Washington Post)

Now if you were the head of any US department, would you want the mess of trying to clean up the cyber threats for the entire country? We all know hacks are going to happen, and pretty much the only secure computer sits in a room, locked up, and unplugged. Being over the “cybersecurity” role of the US right now is just asking to be blamed for everything. NSA is having a congressional panel peeking over their should while they are trying to pee right now, I believe the last thing they want to deal with is the questions of “how did you allow the hackers to do that?!?”

Everyone is pilling on the wiretap debacle in a way that makes it look like the government was killing puppies. There are plenty of examples by NYTimes, The Washington Post, CNN, CNET News. I get it, people don’t like to have someone listening while they talk to their mom. But what strikes me as very hypocritical is the positive press the FBI received for spreading malware to spy on people.

CIPAV (CIPAV stands for Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier) lets the FBI trick a suspect’s computer into identifying itself to police, much as an exploding dye packet might identify a bank robber.

One document from March 2007 indicates that the FBI originally used a simple technique known as a “Web bug.” Written by the Justice Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, it says “some investigators have begun to use an investigative technique referred to as an ‘Internet Protocol Address Verifier’ (IPAV), a/k/a a ‘Web bug.’”

Then the bureau appears to have shifted to actual software, once known as Magic Lantern (possibly a Trojan Horse) and then CIPAV.

One example of CIPAV’s use came in a March 2006 request to the FBI’s Cryptologic and Electronic Analysis Unit. It said a victim’s Hotmail account is controlled by a suspect who “is extorting the victim because the account had personal info in it. Subject wants victim to set up an e-gold.com account and transfer $10,000 there and then email the userid/pwd to the subject.”

Another was an August 2005 request saying a hacker deleted a company’s database and “is extorting the victim company for payment to restore it.” CNET

So are we now saying that monitoring over the standard phone lines is a horrible no-no, but we can start spreading malware to suspects as we see fit? There is nothing in the article that discuses warrants, and going back to a 2007 article by Wired, a warrant was said to be obtained in that particular case but this was also noted:

Under a ruling this month by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, such surveillance — which does not capture the content of the communications — can be conducted without a wiretap warrant, because internet users have no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the data when using the internet.

I see the free speech issues with everything, but what honestly scares me is how far does this malware dig? And how easy would it be for someone to take control over it? What are your thoughts on the issue?