Someone claims to have reverse-engineered Skype's proprietary encryption protocols, and has published pieces of it. If the crypto is good, this is less of a big deal than you might think. Good cryptography is designed to be made public; it's only for business reasons that it remains secret....

In what creepy back room do they come up with these names? The federal government is launching an expansive program dubbed "Perfect Citizen" to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants, according to people familiar with the program. The surveillance by the National Security Agency, the government's...

I don't think this is a good idea....

Not that we need more ways to get random numbers, but the research is interesting....

This is interesting: Some of the scenarios where we have installed video analytics for our clients include: to detect someone walking in an area of their yard (veering off of the main path) that they are not supposed to be; to send an alarm if someone is standing too close to the front of a store window/front door after hours;...

It's easy to access someone else's voicemail by spoofing the caller ID. This isn't new; what is new is that many people now have easy access to caller ID spoofing. The spoofing only works for voicemail accounts that don't have a password set up, but AT&T has no password as the default....

From 1955, intended as humor: In the future when I should ever call on the telephone to make a request or issue an order I will identify myself as follows: This is Hemingway, Ernest M. Hemingway speaking and my serial number is 0-363. That is an easy number to remember and is not the correct one which a con man...

The Chaocipher is a mechanical encryption algorithm invented in 1918. No one was able to reverse-engineer the algorithm, given sets of plaintexts and ciphertexts -- at least, nobody publicly. On the other hand, I don't know how many people tried, or even knew about the algorithm. I'd never heard of it before now. Anyway, for the first time, the algorithm...

Try to keep up: Leslie Van Houten, a one-time member of Charles Manson's infamous 'family' is up for parole for the 17th time today.... "These are serial killers," she said. "These would be domestic terrorists if it was today. So these are very dangerous people."...

Last month, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., introduced a bill (text here) that might -- we're not really sure -- give the president the authority to shut down all or portions of the Internet in the event of an emergency. It's not a new idea. Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, proposed the same thing last year, and some...

Riddles of squid sex: All cephalopods are hindered by their body shape, which comprises a closed hood-type structure called a mantle, which forms most of what appear to be a cephalopod's body and head. The animals use this mantle to move via jet propulsion, they must ventilate it to breathe, and they must also hide their excretory and sexual organs...

I wonder if my blog counts. EDITED TO ADD (7/13): The TSA reversed itself. Or, at least, they now claim that isn't what they meant....

The measures used to prevent cheating during tests remind me of casino security measures: No gum is allowed during an exam: chewing could disguise a student’s speaking into a hands-free cellphone to an accomplice outside. The 228 computers that students use are recessed into desk tops so that anyone trying to photograph the screen—using, say, a pen with a hidden...

Long and interesting article from The Toronto Star on the Toronto 18, a terrorist cell arrested in 2006. Lots of stuff in this article I had not read before....

"Does Surveillance Make Us Morally Better?": Conclusion The upshot of these reflections is that the relation between surveillance and moral edification is complicated. In some contexts, surveillance helps keep us on track and thereby reinforces good habits that become second nature. In other contexts, it can hinder moral development by steering us away from or obscuring the saintly ideal of...

There's a power struggle going on in the U.S. government right now. It's about who is in charge of cyber security, and how much control the government will exert over civilian networks. And by beating the drums of war, the military is coming out on top. "The United States is fighting a cyberwar today, and we are losing," said former...

This sign is from a gas station in the U.K. My first reaction was to laugh, but then I started thinking about it. We know that signs like "No Shoplifting" reduce shoplifting in the area around the sign, but those are warnings against a specific crime. Could a sign this general be effective? Clearly some comparative studies are needed. EDITED...

From the National Academies in 2009: Technology, Policy, Law, and Ethics Regarding U.S. Acquisition and Use of Cyberattack Capabilities. It's 390 pages....

Interesting: ...water molecules differ slightly in their isotope ratios depending on the minerals at their source. ...researchers found that water samples from 33 cities across the United State could be reliably traced back to their origin based on their isotope ratios. And because the human body breaks down water's constituent atoms of hydrogen and oxygen to construct the proteins that...

Two of them; one was blogged about last year....