A much talked about incident recently occurred in the states, whereby an Iranian-American student at the University of California was tasered up to five times after failing to produce his BruinCard during a random check at the campus library.

The incident serves to highlight once again the over the top tactics of the American authorities as well as providing a further insight into the perception of race related attacks and police brutality. Having watched the video, it would appear that the UCLA police acted extremely unethically and without any concern for the victims well being. It is clear that the techniques applied were unnecessary and unjust.

Please distribute this video so that we may make an effort to bring those responsible to justice and hope that they are severely reprimanded.

This video has also sparked an interesting debate on Slashdot as to the ubiquity of video phone technology and its roll in todays society. One mans claim has now given rise to a global backing in what could prove to be an important turn in justice issues.

More Information : Original YouTube Posting

T-Mobile is to bring the Sidekick 3 consumer-oriented mobile email gadget to the UK next month, the carrier confirmed today. The device will ship here just over a year after T-Mobile UK released the Sidekick II and six months after the third-generation Sidekick’s US debut.

The Sidekick 3 sports the same spin-open screen as its predecessor. The spring-loaded 240 x 160 65,536-colour display opens up to reveal an email, texting and IM friendly QWERTY keyboard. Navigation is enhanced with the inclusion of a new trackball control in place of the previous model’s dial. It’s a a tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE device, and it’s got Bluetooth 1.2 on board too.

The new model incorporates 64MB of Flash ROM and 64MB of RAM, and T-Mobile’s bundling the handset with a 64MB MiniSD card for extra storage - handy for the Sidekick 3’s 1.3 megapixel camera with flash, and its new MP3 player app.

The device is backed by a web-based service that not only provides access to your email and other data but also ensures the hardware is fully backed up in case its gets damaged, lost or the battery simply runs dry.

T-Mobile will offer the Sidekick 3 with a range of its Web’n'Walk mobile data tariffs. Pricing will depend on the airtime package selected.

More Information : www.sidekick.com

Original Post : The Register - T-Mobile UK to ship Sidekick 3 in December

700 Cyber Cops in Brazil, heres a few pics…

Sharon Lemon, Chief of the National Cyber Crime Unit in UK

John R. Large, Deputy SA in Charge, Miami Field Office of the US Secret Service

Norma Gomes, Hackers Hunter in Brasil National Cyber Crime Unit

China Cyber Crime National Unit Commanders

It has just come to my attention that, last week, a rather hilarious example of skiddie stupidty occured whereby a 13 year old game enthusiast attempted to gain the login details of a gamer from Tennessee.

The 13 year old, posing as a Valve worker, started up a chat session via MSN with br0kenrabbit of the Futuremark gaming forums. The 13 year old, known as “Greg”. Attempted to steal br0kenrabbits Steam account by asking for sensitive information.

Not being as naive as Greg, br0kenrabbit turned the tables on his would be assailant posing as an official Valve employee himself. Notifying Greg that a true Valve agent would NEVER converse with customers over MSN and NEVER ask for sensitive account information, br0kenrabbit informed Greg that his account would be suspended, going on to acquire all the personal information from the fraudster himself.

Coming clean after blocking access to Gregs account, Greg expressed his horror with a..

i was just making a joke but not cerious honest dude just give
my acount back pllllleeease i’m only 13 and save d up for like a year to buy it

The full MSN log can be found here on Futuremark Gaming Forum.

Kudos to DrDeath at Hackers Voice for pointing out this story.

The new U.S. intelligence czar is developing a computer system capable of data-mining huge amounts of information about everyday events to discern patterns that look like terrorist planning. The technology is reminiscent of the axed Total Information Awareness program. Civil liberties and privacy advocates criticized the effort, called Tangram, which is being developed by contractors working for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Read more about it here.

This year saw the beginning of British Telecom’s implimentation of their Next Generation Network - The 21st Century Network, or 21CN. To compliment our series of 21CN articles, mo0 from the Hacker Voice Radio IRC network informs me of the following site offering a lookup service to find when your exchange goes 21CN.

At the beginning of the second half of 2006, British Telecom began the migration of approximately 350,000 customers in the Cardiff, Bridgend and Pontypridd areas (UK) to an extraordinary new telecommunications network, a network that will radically transform the way in which we communicate. But what exactly is 21CN?

The initial release of our 21CN article series is now available at the following location.

http://www.2600uk.com/21st-century-network/

Be sure to check back as more articles and announcements are released and additional information becomes available.

Computer hackers have exploited weaknesses in the security technology of a Puerto Rican bank to siphon hundreds of thousands of US dollars (euros) out of two U.S. Virgin Islands government accounts, a finance official said Thursday.

Hackers accessed the U.S. Caribbean territory’s accounts with banking giant Banco Popular, making numerous small withdrawals for up to two months until government officers discovered the thefts totaling US$500,000 (euro399,010) in August, Finance Commissioner Bernice Turnbull said.

Read the full story here

Some nice-looking screenshots of Microsoft’s next version of Windows Mobile - codenamed ‘Crossbow’ - have popped up on the web to show the upcoming operating system’s swankier graphics.

The images come courtesy of MSMobileNews, which has a selection of shots on offer. Meanwhile, the similarly names MSMobiles has a smaller pic showing Windows Mobile 6.0/Windows Mobile 2007’s Vista-like folder icons.

The first report provides some Windows Mobile release information, though the data was first made public in April this year. Specifically, Crossbow is due to ship to OEMs in Q4 to allow them plenty of time to get devices ready for the OS’ introduction in late Q1/early Q2 2007. Crossbow is expected to give gadgets more a better telephony experience and to improve its messaging technology.

Come Q4 2007, and Microsoft will release ‘Photon’, the follow up to Crossbow, to developers. Photon is said to sport a new Windows CE foundation. It’s due to be launched to the public Q1/Q2 2008.

Source : The Register - Vista-inspired Windows Mobile 6 spied on web

From The Register’s John Leyden:

The Swiss government is “considering” the use of a spyware application called Superintendent Trojan to eavesdrop on IP telephony conversation, Heise Security reports.

Swiss firm ERA IT Solutions said it hopes to supply the Superintendent Trojan only to government agencies, a policy it hopes will leave it off malware blacklists compiled by anti-virus and anti-spyware developers.

Even if we accept ERA’s assertion that the use of the technology would be restricted to government agencies, anti-virus firms would be honour bound to blacklist the app if any of their customers complained about it.

As well as allowing VoIP calls to be monitored, the software is surreptitiously turning on the built-in microphones or webcams on target PCs. All this assumes, of course, that the software can be successfully planted in the first place - a tricky proposition without physical access to a PC, as HP leak gum-shoes might attest.

Altogether the plan seems fraught with difficulties, without even considering whether evidence obtained via such covert methods would be legally submittable.

Charles Gudet, the head of the Special Services Department at UVEK (the Swiss government department in charge of telecoms, among other things), told Sonntags Zeitung there’s no basis for using such Trojan techniques under federal wiretap laws (such as the Federal Post and Telecommunications Surveillance Act). However, local laws and federal police procedures permit the use of software wiretaps providing surveillance has being authorised by a court.

Source: The Register - Swiss gov ‘mulls’ spyware to tap VoIP calls