I just got a refurbished Apple Mac mini, with the 1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. It is mainly intended for use compiling my open source programs such as Nonpareil for Mac OS X. I am extremely surprised at the user experience of booting Mac OS X Leopard for the first time, [...]

Yesterday I received a mailed notice from Monster.com, stating that their database had been compromised, including my contact information. Fortunately I had not provided them with any information that I consider sensitive.
Given how many such cases of personal data theft or loss are reported, I wonder how many are covered up, and how many [...]

Thinking about starting a lucrative career in identity theft? Don’t rely on stolen backup tapes! Buy our new database containing nearly one billion Social Security Numbers, many of which are actually valid. The list includes the Social Security Numbers of:

The US President, Vice President, and cabinet members
[...]

AT&T now claims that they will deploy some kind of filtering to keep copyrighted content off their network, effectively spying for the MPAA and RIAA. No one has developed a reliable way to even identify copyrighted content, but even if that existed, how would they distinguish legitimate transfers of copyrighted content from unauthorized transfers?
It [...]

In Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), Justice Douglas gives a concurring opinion in which he expresses serious concern over warrantless wiretaps:
While I join the opinion of the Court, I feel compelled to reply to the separate concurring opinion of my Brother WHITE, which I view as a wholly unwarranted green light [...]

The HP “pretexting” scandal was publicized in such a way as to make people think it was a new problem, and required new legislation.  Apparently it didn’t occur to anyone that the very term “pretexting” is a euphemism to disguise the nature of the act, which is actually “fraud.”  Fraud is defined by Wiktionary as [...]

At the security checkpoint, they usually tell you to remove your laptop from a bag and put it in a bin to be xrayed separately from the bag. And to take your shoes off, etc.
Yesterday they didn’t tell me to do that, and I’d forgotten about it, so I just sent my entire backback [...]

From the Congressional testimony of Patricia Dunn, former Chairman of the Board of Hewlett Packard, regarding the company’s use of fraudulent means to obtain the telephone records of reporters and fellow board members:
Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas):  “If I called you up, Ms. Dunn, and said ‘I’d like your phone records,’ would you give them [...]

Associated with their article about HP chairwoman Patricia Dunn spying on board members and reporters, MSNBC has a reader poll asking “Do you believe using pretexting to obtain someone’s records should be made illegal?” Pretexting is the practice of lying in order to obtain access to someone else’s record.
It’s already illegal; it’s called “fraud”. [...]

U.S. District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor has issued a ruling in the case American Civil Liberties Union et al. v. National Security Agency/Central et al. (2006), regarding the NSA’s warrantless wiretap program (TSP). The Bush administration and Congress have publicly acknowledged the existence of the program, yet the government tried to argue that [...]