Wow. The bullshit detector has been way up the dial this week. So, when I read this article today I was floored. Apparently California lawmakers racked up over $2 million in travel over a two and a half years. That’s not the big problem. The fact that they claimed that the travel was protected for security reasons…um, I says pardon?
From San Francisco Chronicle:
The AP requested lawmakers’ air travel itineraries and the associated cost to taxpayers as part of an ongoing examination of legislative spending and disclosure requirements. The Legislature said it would not provide original documentation of lawmakers’ air travel, meaning there is no way to independently determine where they flew or for what purpose.
When pressed for records that would give lawmakers’ destinations and prove that all flights were for business related to state government, the Legislature refused to provide them.
So, the people’s representation eh? Well, that certainly goes a long way to explaining some things…like the debt.
(Image used under CC bredgur)
It appears that there is a move afoot by the French government to get their share of Google and Yahoo’s internet cake.
From V3:
In a move that may have repercussions worldwide, French president Nicolas Sarkozy has put forward plans to tax major internet advertising companies like Google and Yahoo in order to raise money to support creative industries.
Sarkozy made the speech (video in French) to French culture officials at the Cité de la Musique in Paris yesterday.
Sacre merde!
I’m usually one of the first ones to jump in in favour of supporting the arts but, things like this rarely see the money distributed where is was intended.
(Image used under CC from djof Flickr feed)
Hello there!
My name is Lee Herloth (with a “Hard T”) and I work in critical infrastructure protection, specifically for an electric utility. I’ve been invited by the good folks here at Liquidmatrix.org to write a blog from time to time and I thank them for the opportunity.
I was ready to fire off a post about how utterly unprofessional, dangerous, and borderline criminal it is to see so many vendors testifying in front of the United States Congress in support of new legislation (no less then five active bills right now) designed, in title, to increase the security of varying critical infrastructures. However, I have thought better of that as it would not be fitting of a southern gentleman.
Instead, I will refrain from calling said vendors on the carpet for using their influence to back legislation that directs the government to use their auditing guidelines, risk assessment tools, or to anoint a singular person as the czar of all things critical infrastructure protection. Therefore, this post will be SANS any ranting lest the internal struggle of having done so Impact my Core values, for that surely would not be Weiss.
On any given day, there are tens of thousands of United States residents alone who are without power due to mundane reliability failures stemming from equipment failure, human error, weather, and physics – oh, and the occasional possum or two. However, “Oops! My bad”, isn’t a sexy headline. Instead, much like the current fuss around “swine flu”, that which has a catchy name will win the attention of the reactive politicians and people at large and the larger, more meaningful issues go unaddressed.
Yes, we are plugging in our critical infrastructure to your internet. We have no choice. You want cheap, clean, reliable power so off to the races we go. As with any new activity, there will be learning opportunities and missteps along the way, and we have much work to do.
I believe I have a rather unique insight into the industry and I’m passionate about protecting the infrastructure I’m charged to protect against all comers. Make no mistake about it – if we leave the future direction of critical infrastructure protection in the wrong hands, you will start to see a decrease in the reliability and affordability of your power. The cure, when offered by a snake-oil salesman, will be most definitely worse than the disease.
And with that, I bid you good day.
From the WTF files.
From Wired:
President Barack Obama came into office in January promising a new era of openness.
But now, like Bush before him, Obama is playing the national security card to hide details of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement being negotiated across the globe.
The White House this week declared (.pdf) the text of the proposed treaty a “properly classified” national security secret, in rejecting a Freedom of Information Act request by Knowledge Ecology International.
“Please be advised the documents you seek are being withheld in full,” wrote Carmen Suro-Bredie, chief FOIA officer in the White House’s Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
How is a proposed treaty, that would make it criminal for P2P sharing and allow iPod searches at the border, be a national security secret? Oh right. Someone might sue them. Or even worse people might rally to pressure governments (incl. Canada) to shelve this IP treaty document.
If anyone has more information on this trade agreement that would like to share it anonymously you can send it to “tips SHIFT 2 liquidmatrix.org”
(thx to John for the link)
The offices of President Obama’s appointee for CIO had his offices raided today. It is unclear as to what exactly the FBI are after.
Associated Press:
Katherine Schweit, spokeswoman for the FBI’s Washington field office, said a search is being conducted that is part of an ongoing investigation.
Schweit declined to say what the subject of the investigation is, or comment further on the case.
Here is some more background from the site Politico.com:
She said two men, Yusuf Acar and Sushil Bansal, had been arrested.
Acar is an information security officer who was also, according to online requests for proposals, responsible for contracting. Bansal is listed on the city’s procurement website as the CEO of the Advanced Integrated Technologies Corporation, which was awarded two technology contracts last year worth a total of $350,000.
The Washington Post and WTOP Radio report that the men are being held on bribery charges.
It’ll be interesting to see how this one plays out.
One of our personal favs here at the Digest, Diebold, is back in the news.
From slashdot:
“Premier Election Solutions’ (formerly Diebold) GEMS 1.18.19 election software audit logs don’t record the deletion of ballots, don’t always record correct dates, and can be deleted by the operator, either accidentally or intentionally. The California Secretary of State’s office has just released a report about the situation (PDF) in the November 2008 election in Humboldt County, California
Wow.
And this gem,
Key audit trail logs in GEMS version 1.18.19 do not record important operator interventions such as deletion of decks of ballots, assign inaccurate date and time stamps to events that are recorded, and can be deleted by the operator.
Why…
Read on.
It appears that prior to Obama’s visit to Canada that the Russians decided to see whose was bigger.
From CNN:
“At no time did Russian planes enter Canadian air space, but within 24 hours of the president’s visit here … we did scramble F-18 fighter planes from NORAD in Canada command,” Peter MacKay said in a news conference in Ottawa.
The Russian planes were in international waters, about 118 miles (190 kilometers) northeast of Tuktoyuktuk, in Canada’s Northwest Territories.
“It was a routine flight over international airspace,” Yevgeniy Khorishko, a spokesman at the Russian Embassy in Washington, told CBC news.
That’s right Putin. Try that again and we’ll send the Sunnyvale crew. Mind you they might get, um, lost shall we say, along the way. Maybe we best stick to our own respective yards. Capiche?
On a more serious note this is a typical routine that the Russians and Americans used in the cold war. The Russians know that the Cold War ended, right?
Today is a moment in history. I am cautiously optimistic for the future of both our American cousins and the world as a whole.
It’s been a long time but, I believe that’s called, hope.
Congrats to you, President Barack Obama, from all of us here at Liquidmatrix.
Obama continues to make choices that pleasantly surprise.
From CBC:
Genachowski is considered a supporter of net neutrality — the principle that the internet should be kept open and free from interference or restrictions from service providers such as throttling of download speeds or shaping traffic so some applications work faster than others.
He has also been an opponent of media consolidation and an advocate of affordable broadband.
Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press, a media advocacy group promoting universal access to communications, and diverse and independent media ownership, praised the potential selection.
This will be a great thing for Canada as well. Why? With changes such as this it will lend more ammunition to stay Stephen Harper’s (soon defeated?) government’s own path on net neutrality.
Read on.
Australia’s government continues to emphasize that they have managed to take leave of their senses. The massive internet filtering project that they have underway to place a stranglehold on the web surfing habits of their populace will now include bit torrent. A big F U to their own citizens.
From News.com.au:
“Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial,” Senator Conroy said.
Peer-to-peer file-sharing technology is the most common way for computer users to share video, picture and music files over the internet.
It was previously thought the Government’s filtering plan would be restricted to traffic on the “world wide web” – the channel through which users view websites like news.com.au.
Senator Conroy revealed the plan to trial peer-to-peer filtering technology in a reply to critical comments made on the Digital Economy Future Directions blog launched earlier this month.
This has the sickly scent of an steaming pile of…
Also, as a tangent to this story it appears that they filter list for Thailand has been leaked. It turns out that we here at Liquidmatrix Security Digest are not offensive to the Thai powers that be. Unlike the Chinese government.
