The telemetry spyware which lead to Windows 10 users being banned from a number of torrent trackers has now arrived for Windows 7 and 8 in Microsoft's latest batch of "updates" (archived). Attempting to stop the reporting of data to Microsoft on infected machines requires a firewall between the machine and the wider internet, though euthanasia is likely the only effective remedy in the long run for machines subjected to this infection. Any operator of serious internet ventures ought to be giving serious consideration to following in the footsteps of the torrent trackers and deal with Windows users through shunning and the quarantine of their machines. It would also likely be prudent to consider any cryptographic key material living on a machine running Windows to be in the possession of Microsoft or soon to be in the possession of Microsoft.
Category Archives: The Law
British and North Carolina Teens Prosecuted as Child Pornographers in Separate Cases
Two cases on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean have garnered attention this week with the common link that both cases involve criminal sanctions being imposed on teenagers under the age of legal majority for having nude images of themselves. In North Carolina two romantically involved 17 year olds faced charges when a search of one's phone lead police to discover their mutual exchange of nude photographs. One of the 17 year olds plead down to a lesser charge while the other still faces multiple charges of child exploitation almost all of them relating to his own self portraits (archived) making him legally the victim and perpetrator of his own exploitation. Meanwhile in Britain Continue reading
Guilty Plea After Package Tracking Breaks Opsec in Darkmarket Drug Case
Harold Bates of Massachusetts plead guilty to drug charges relating to the importation of a half kilogram of methylone from China. Bates was implicated in the case when his residential IP address was discovered to have checked the tracking number on the USPS web portal of a package seized by postal inspectors containing the prohibited drug product. The package was intercepted in Hollywood, Florida. Bates faces three methylone related charges carrying a potential 20 years of prison each along with a separate charge for possessing a prohibited item as an inmate of a prison which carries an additional potential for 10 further years in prison. The three methylone related charges are conspiracy to import, importation, and possession with intent to distribute. Overseeing the case is Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts Patti B. Saris who is also the Commissioner and Chair of the United States Sentencing Commission. Bates is scheduled to be sentenced on December 10th in Boston.
Peoria Pays $125,000 in Satire Settlement
According to the Journal Star the city of Peoria, Illinois has agreed to pay an eighth of a million United States Dollars (archived) to Jon Daniel in order to settle a civil suit arising from the city's persecution of Daniel for daring to run a twitter account parodying Mayor Jim Ardis. Daniel's home was raided on April 15th, 2014 as a part of a police operation to identify and suppress the operator of a satire twitter feed for mocking Mayor Ardis. Daniel and his representatives provided by the ACLU alleged Daniel's 1st and 4th amendment rights were violated, that he was falsely imprisoned, and that his personal privacy was violated as a part of the manhunt and police raid directed at his parodic writing activities.
Silicon Valley City Contemplates Surveillance Equipment on Garbage Trucks
The San Jose Mercury News reports that the government of San Jose is contemplating the use of garbage trucks as a platform for mounting license plate readers (archived). The plan involves piping data collected from garbage truck mounted surveillance equipment directly to the San Jose police department. Four police cars operated by the San Jose police department already are fitted with license plate readers, but expanding their deployment to the city's sanitation livery would allow for complete coverage of all of the city's streets every week. San Jose is currently currently struggling with ways to leverage technology to counteract the personnel losses in its police department which has roughly 950 officers this year, a number which is expected to contract to 800 officers sometime next year. San Jose has in the past been referred to as an unofficial "Capital" of Silicon Valley. Technology firms with a substantial presence in San Jose include Adobe, Xilinx, Cisco, and the North American headquarters for Korean firm Samsung.
Drone Update
Previously Qntra has brought you stories of how drones have revolutionized cross border drug shipments, a successful case of property defense against a drone, press photos of police arming ground based drones, and the failure of the United States military to retain trained drone pilots. Today Qntra brings two stories from the drone front. Continue reading
BIP-101 Syndicate Shares Fiat Ties, Opposition to Actual Bitcoin
Upon a Crunchbase investigation of the companies attached to the open letter (text) published on Blockchain.info's blog supporting BIP-101, a correlation arose that indicates these companies have most likely been compromised for some time. All of these companies who have been known to employ heavy KYC terms, are heavily funded by fiat institutions that want to pervert Bitcoin. Continue reading
Teenager Receives Eleven Years Prison, Lifetime Supervision In Exchange For Guilty Plea
Former Coin Brief author Ali Shukri Amin, who pleaded guilty to a charge of "conspiring to provide material support to terrorists" in June of this year has been sentenced by U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton to a period of 11 years in prison. In addition to his prison sentence, the 17 year old will face a lifetime of supervised release with added redundancy in the form of monitoring any of his future internet activity.
Speaking to Amin's sentence, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Dana J. Boente remarked: Continue reading
Surviving a Transaction Flood
As populist noisemakers continue to push for blocksize inflation and services set to benefit from forcing users off of full nodes announce "stress tests" composed of transaction floods, the issue of making sure your transactions propagate with timely confirmations and your node stays online come to the forefront. Thankfully there are measures that can be taken now to which can provide benefits during a transaction flood and as fuller blocks becomes a more normal state for the Bitcoin network. Continue reading
British 'Cultural' Capital Controls Interfere With Commerce
CNN reports that government of the United Kingdom is forbidding a buyer who paid 146,500 pounds formerly known as sterling for a watercolor painting from taking it to his home (archived) outside of Britain. According to the Kingdom's government it hopes that the ban will encourage the buyer, who purchased the piece as the highest bidder at Christie's auction house would make the decision to sell the painting on to a buyer intending to keep the watercolor in the United Kingdom. This is in spite of the fact that no such buyer for the artwork was interested in outbidding the actual purchaser in an auction. The export ban was put into place by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey. Continue reading