In a very controversial move, long time ISP AOL; have released the search details of 657,427 of its users for “research purposes”. Realising what a bollocks up they’ve made, AOL have now pulled the data, although it is still available via The Pirate Bay.

“AOL has released very private data about its users without their permission. While the AOL username has been changed to a random ID number, the ability to analyse all searches by a single user will often lead people to easily determine who the user is, and what they are up to. The data includes personal names, addresses, social security numbers and everything else someone might type into a search box.”

Notes Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.

News giant, Reuters are currently on the run after a story on a blog, little green footballs, outted the media monolith for faking and digitally enhancing some of the photos that they distribute. Now under heavy investigation, Reuter’s photographer Adnan Hajj, has been found to stage photographs as well as digitally edit them to appeal to western society.

To make matters worse, other pictures from Reuters are now under scrutiny, as it would appear that Adnan Hajj isn’t the only person to touch up his pictures. Numerous web sites are covering the story, though I somehow doubt that it will make mainstream news - a case of the media censoring the media’s censoring, so to speak.

More information and analysis can be found at:
http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/weblog.php
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/014929.php
http://drinkingfromhome.blogspot.com/2006/08/extreme-makeover-beirut-edition.html
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/184206.php

Owners of the .cm Top Level Domain, Cameroon, have stumbled across a controversial new business model. Noticing that their TLD is only one letter short of .com, the Cameroons have now added a wildcard entry to their DNS records pointing all unresolved queries to an ad-based search engine. Unfortunately, ICANN has little control over what a country can do with its own TLD, unlike the earlier attempt by Verisign on the actual .com TLD

espo812 of slashdot reports “A story from Washingtonpost.com says, ‘The Senate has ratified a treaty under which the United States will join more than 40 other countries, mainly from Europe, in fighting crimes committed via the Internet.’ Ars Technica says it’s the ‘World’s Worst Internet Law.’”

From the Ars story: “According to the EFF, ‘The treaty requires that the U.S. government help enforce other countries’ ‘cybercrime’ laws–even if the act being prosecuted is not illegal in the United States. That means that countries that have laws limiting free speech on the Net could oblige the F.B.I. to uncover the identities of anonymous U.S. critics, or monitor their communications on behalf of foreign governments. American ISPs would be obliged to obey other jurisdictions’ requests to log their users’ behaviour without due process, or compensation.”

Source : Slashdot - U.S. Senate Ratifies Cybercrime Treaty

The Register is running a two-page article on the cloning of the new biometric passports that are becoming widely implemented. Lukas Grunwald, from Germany’s DN-Systems consultants, demonstrated, at Black Hat, the ease to which a biometric passport can be fraudulently cloned. What may be even more surprising, is that the, widely available, ICAO documentation actually outlines the technical processes in quite a lot of detail.

To read more, please follow this link to The Register

The Register is reporting that the UK governments use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras could be in breech of human rights law, further, they write that the police are also busily building a national 24×7 vehicle movement database intended to record all passing number plates, everywhere, at the rate of 50 million a day with records to be retained for two years or more.

Source: The Register - Police number plate cameras may breach RIPA - Commissioner

Slashdot reports:
“According to a the BBC, ‘the UK recording industry is urging the foreign secretary to raise the issue of Russian bargain music download website allofmp3.com at the G8 summit’. British Phonographic Industry (BPI) chairman Peter Jamieson wants Margaret Beckett to ‘urge the Russian government to take action against the operators of the site by insisting that it is removed from the internet’. Allofmp3 has insisted in the past that it is operating in compliance with Russian copyright laws.”

Source: Slashdot - UK Recording Industry Wants Allofmp3 An Issue at G8

“School administrators in Framingham MA have implemented a policy allowing them to not only confiscate cell phones, but also to search through students’ cell phone data as part of their anti drug/violence efforts. Students claim that the policy is an invasion of their privacy.”

Source: Slashdot - School Admins Demand Access to Students’ Cellphones

The extradition of “Pentagon hacker” Gary McKinnon has been approved by Home Sectretary John Reid.

He is accused of causing more than $700,000 of damage to federal computer systems used by the Department of Defense. McKinnon now has 14 days from July 4 to appeal appeal the decision, which was a rubber stamping of a district judge ruling in May.

A Home Office spokesman told the BBC: “Mr McKinnon had exercised his right to submit representations against return but the secretary of state did not consider the issues raised availed Mr McKinnon.”

He was arrested by the UK’s National Hi-Tech Crime Unit in 2002.

Glasgow-born McKinnon has said he broke into the networks to look for evidence of a cover-up of extraterrestrial technology. His lawyers have claimed the US could imprison McKinnon at Guantanamo Bay for terrorism.

Source: TheRegister

BT’s Bluebell Hill exchange in Chatham, Kent, caught fire on Wednesday, putting 20,000 lines in jeopardy.

The blaze began at around 11am and caused extensive damage to the power room, though the actual telecoms gear escaped relatively unscathed. When the mains was lost, back-up generators quickly cut-in, but were themselves consumed by the flames.

Battery power waned through the afternoon, and phone and broadband punters using the exchange gradually lost service. Engineers were able to assess the damage once fire chiefs declared the building safe several hours later. A mobile diesel generator was shipped in and lines were juiced back up early on Thursday.

Techies continue to monitor Bluebell Hill for “wrinkles” in the network. BT is still counting the cost of the fire, and cannot say when a permanent power supply will be restored.

Investigations by BT, its electricity supplier EDF and the fire brigade are ongoing. A spokesman for BT told The Reg there is no indication of suspicious circumstances at this stage.

Chatham is, of course, famed as the mothership for the so-called “chav phenomenon”, whereby everyone has a good laugh at poor people for swearing, pushing prams, wearing hoodies and driving souped-up Vauxhall Novae.

Source : TheRegister