It’s not news that RFID cards are a security risk, of course. But this Wired article makes chillingly clear just how easy RFID hacking is:
“I just need to bump into James and get my hand within a few inches of him,” Westhues says. We’re shivering in the early spring air outside the offices of Sandstorm, the Internet security company Van Bokkelen runs north of Boston. As Van Bokkelen approaches from the parking lot, Westhues brushes past him. A coil of copper wire flashes briefly in Westhues’ palm, then disappears.
…
The coil in Westhues’ hand is the antenna for the wallet-sized device he calls a cloner, which is currently shoved up his sleeve. The cloner can elicit, record, and mimic signals from smartcard RFID chips.
There are two main categories of attack: spoofing (by capturing and replaying, as in the example above), and tampering (e.g. changing the price of an item at a store, not much different from swapping bar codes).
The mitigations are also well known: to prevent spoofing, use encryption and/or a challenge-response protocol; to prevent tampering, use write-once chips. The real issue is spreading awareness of the need for security measures. Hopefully, articles like this one will help.
Myers exercises his fine writing muscles once again:
And then there was my cat. I’d been working on a cat in comparative anatomy, and we’d mainly focused on musculoskeletal stuff. I want to do more nervous system work, which was outside the curriculum, so when we were disposing of the carcasses I snipped a few muscles and made a quick snick behind the third cervical vertebra, and took the head home in my pocket. It was a pretty white cat, and the head was a little smaller than my fist.
So of course I named her Snowball.
William Saletan writes an article in Slate that captures almost exactly how I feel:
Shrinks call this “cognitive dissonance.” You munch a strip of bacon then pet your dog. You wince at the sight of a crippled horse but continue chewing your burger. Three weeks ago, I took my kids to a sheep and wool festival. They petted lambs; I nibbled a lamb sausage. That’s the thing about humans: We’re half-evolved beasts. We love animals, but we love meat, too. We don’t want to have to choose. And maybe we don’t have to. Maybe, thanks to biotechnology, we can now grow meat instead of butchering it.
With all the problems facing humanity—war, terrorism, poverty, tyranny—you probably don’t worry much about whether it’s right or wrong to eat meat. That’s understandable. Every society lives with two kinds of moral problems: the ones it’s ready to face, and the ones that will become clear or compelling only in retrospect. Human sacrifice, slavery, the subjugation of women—every tradition seems normal and indispensable until we’re ready, morally and economically, to move beyond it.
If you live in Seattle, and are looking for French food, you would probably not think of heading to Ballard. You would be wrong.
As a former Jehovah’s Witness, I have a great deal of respect for Barbara Anderson, the Watchtower researcher who blew the whistle on the church’s cover-up of child molestation. She recently wrote the story of her time at Watchtower Society Headquarters, and while it’s not brief (24 single-spaced pages), it’s definitely a worthwhile read for anyone with an interest in JW history.
This essay by Sam Rosenfeld and Matt Yglesias was written six months ago, but I just encountered it now in Matt’s TPM post today. It is a must-read:
Humanitarian intervention has both uses and limits. Recognizing these limits in no way entails an embrace of an amoral foreign-policy realism. This false dichotomy is perhaps the most pernicious idea to emerge from the Iraq War. Liberalism has always been an idealistic doctrine, and should continue to be. But if high ideals become detached from basic questions of feasibility, they serve nothing but their exponents’ self-regard.
…
We agree with Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, that coercive humanitarian intervention, while useful and important, “can be justified only in the face of ongoing or imminent genocide, or comparable mass slaughter or loss of life.”
…
Acknowledging the limits of armed intervention does, however, entail a recognition that injustice exists in the world that is beyond America’s capacity to remedy.
Initially, reading that “25 percent of those who had read [The Da Vinci Code] said it helped them achieve personal growth or understanding” did not give me a very positive feeling about our nation’s culture.
But maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way:
“Few people said that reading the book had actually changed any of their beliefs,” he said. “That was only 5 percent. Most people said that it essentially reinforced what they believed coming into the book.”
What they believe is what Mr. Barna calls “pick and choose theology.” It’s a trend that Christian conservatives find scary and maddening, but that liberals tend to embrace as “big tent” inclusiveness.
“Americans by and large consider themselves to be Christian, but when you try to drill down to figure out what they believe, you find that among those who call themselves Christian, 59 percent don’t believe in Satan, 42 percent believe Jesus sinned during his time on Earth, and only 11 percent believe the Bible is the source of absolute moral truth,” said Mr. Barna, a conservative evangelical who regards these as troubling indicators.
In other words, the success of The Da Vinci Code is a symptom of the decline of fundamentalism and the rejection of religious authority.
So maybe all the conservative Christians protesting the book and the movie actually do have a point. Their protests, however, are just a futile attempt at suppressing the evidence of a loss of power that they are helpless to reverse.
There’s absolutely nothing new in PZ Myers’ fisking of a Rabbi’s essay on atheists and morality, at least not to anyone who’s been through the ever-repeated debate at least once before.
The post is very much worth reading, however, purely for its entertainment value. I won’t post quotes, because you really need the context to appreciate them, but just go ahead and click on the link and read it. It will brighten your day.
Muslim family law can get interesting:
In 2003, Nazma Biwi’s husband Sher Mohammed, while drunk, divorced her by pronouncing triple talaq. He later changed his mind and decided to live with his wife and three children. Even though the couple originally received a religious ruling that the divorce was ineffective because it was carried out under intoxication, local clerics at Bhadrak in Orissa issued a Fatwa holding that the couple was divorced and could not live together unless Nazma performed ‘Nikah Halala’ (marrying another man, consummating the marriage, then getting a divorce and remarrying her first husband).
This post by Billmon about Hobbes’ Leviathan got me thinking: what economic and technological conditions could actually make anarchy sustainable?
The best answer I can come up with would be some technology that can be owned by an individual (or a family or other small group) that provides absolute (or at least extremely strong) defensive capabilities, without equivalent offensive capability.
Individuals would no longer depend on governments for personal protection, and governments would no longer be able to enforce law or collect taxes without the ultimate recourse of coercive force.
The big question would be whether trade could be sustained. The only enforcement mechanism for contracts would be reputation. But there’d be no libel or fraud laws to protect against the spreading of false information, so reputation would be dependent on information brokers, who would in turn be dependent on reputation. Is there any way out of this infinite loop?
Anyway, sounds like an interesting premise for a sci-fi book, if nothing else. I imagine that like most ideas, it’s probably been done before; anyone know of a book like that?
Ilya Somin makes an interesting point:
Should another hijacking occur, I think many passengers are likely to resist the terrorists regardless of what government bureaucrats might say. Flight 93 has entered the popular consciousness in a much more powerful way than any government-issued instructions could.
Might 9/11 have actually destroyed the usefulness of hijacking as a tool for any future attacks? (At least attacks other than suicide destruction of a plane.) After all, hijacking relies on the assumption that people will cooperate in the hope of saving their lives (usually a reasonable assumption in the pre-9/11 world). Crowd-control by threats doesn’t work if the crowd believe they have nothing to lose by resisting.
Drug WarRant excerpts an article in a New Hampshire local newspaper apparently intended to scare parents:
One in three Souhegan High School students say they have smoked marijuana or had sex, and two in three say they have used alcohol.
Let’s rephrase this: assuming accurate self-reporting, two thirds of students at this high school–teenagers between 14 and 18 years old–have never had sex or tried pot! And one third have never even drunk any alcohol! The newspaper shouldn’t be trying to scare parents, it should be congratulating them on having the best-behaved teenagers in the nation. (Well, maybe outside Utah.)
Few people outside of Arkansas had heard of Bill Clinton before he ran for President. Jimmy Carter was dismissed as ‘the Governor of where?’ and a ‘peanut farmer’. Aside from the fact that Governors seem to make better Presidential candidates than Senators, Mark Kleiman (discussing the fact that the most well-known potential Democratic candidates currently have unfavorable ratings in the 40’s) suggests another factor at work:
It’s true virtually every year that the voters prefer the generic Democrat to the generic Republican. If we got to run “Democrat to be Named Later,” that imaginary candidate would win in a walk. The problem is that we have to run some actual human being, and the Republicans can be counted on to do an excellent job of dirtying him (or her) up.
Seems that the best strategy is running a national unknown. They also have the advantage of being able to run as an ‘outside-the-Beltway candidate’ who will ‘clean up the mess in Washington’. It’s all a silly charade, of course, but it seems to work pretty frequently.
In real life, fires do not usually destroy all evidence of embezzlement:
However, the jury heard evidence that, after the fire, Seifert pleaded guilty to stealing approximately $2,500 to $5,000 from the company over a five-year period. The government maintained that Seifert started the fire to cover up her theft. Shortly before the fire, the company discovered a $54,605.89 balance in the company’s cash-clearing account, representing revenue not deposited in the bank.
I suppose I should make allowances for ignorance, but I can’t help feeling that anyone who takes out an Adjustable Rate Mortgage during a period of record-low interest rates deserves what they get.
Brunswick County (North Carolina) backed off on a plan to include religious literature in the school library when they realized they couldn’t restrict it to religions they agreed with:
During the discussion, board Vice Chairwoman Shirley Babson held up two books on pagan religions that a group had requested to distribute in schools.
“There would be a disclaimer on the tables stating that the board of education does not support this,” Babson said. “But if students saw this, they might think, ‘Mrs. Babson supports this.’ Mrs. Babson does not support this.”
Milligan said recently that the board has already received inquiries from Unitarian Universalists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Buddhists asking how they could distribute literature in the schools.
I think that a lot of people are in favor of religion in the schools, until you start trying to define which religion.
In honor of Ten Amendments Day, Sick Transit is pleased to present: The Ten Commendments! (Or should that be The Ten Amandments?)
1. I am Reason thy God, who brought thee out of bondage to the British. Thou shalt have no Established Religion before me, nor shalt thou abridge the freedoms of religion or the press.
2. Thout shalt not make unto thee any abridgment of the right to keep and bear arms, or to store them in the home, neither in the closet above, nor under the bed beneath.
3. Thou shalt not take the houses of thy citizenry in vain, to quarter soldiers in.
4. Remember the right of the people in their persons and possessions, to keep them secure. Upon oath or affirmation a warrant shall issue; but without probable cause thou shalt not search, neither thee, nor thy officer, nor thy intelligence agent that is hidden within thy Pentagon.
5. Honor thy Grand Jury and thy due process of law, that no one be compelled to testify against himself.
6. Thou shalt not try without a jury, and cross-examination.
7. Thout shalt not commit second-guessing of a jury verdict.
8. Thou shalt not torture.
9. Thou shalt not deny or disparage unenumerated rights.
10. Thou shalt not covet the powers reserved to the States, nor to the people, nor anything that is not delegated to the United States by the Constitution.
Let’s post those in all the court-houses.
A disturbing local story here in the Seattle area:
In the court documents, Fuchs said she suffered a diabetic episode because of a low blood sugar level and rear-ended the car in front of her.
Police arrived and found a non-responsive Fuchs inside her locked vehicle. The officers assumed Fuchs was drunk because she would not obey their commands to open the door.
Officers responded by shattering her passenger side window and shooting her with a Taser when she did not exit the vehicle on her own.
The Taser probes lodged in Fuchs’ arm and stomach, not far from her transplanted kidney, according to the court documents.
Fuchs screamed but was otherwise unable to respond. The officer who fired the Taser then reached over and unlocked the driver’s side door.
Another officer dragged Fuchs from the car, put her on the ground and handcuffed her. The lawsuit contends that the officers then had to drag Fuchs to a patrol car, where they placed her in the back seat.
When Redmond firefighters arrived, they immediately recognized that Fuchs was diabetic and that she was suffering from a low blood sugar level. A portable breath test administered by police confirmed that Fuchs had not been drinking.
Not only is this case outrageous because the police failed to consider that Fuchs might be ill or injured, but even if she had been drunk–what justification was there for tasering her? I thought that tasers were for use against individuals who were posing a threat to others or who were uncontrollable, not as a form of lashing people into obedience. Even if Fuchs had been entirely at fault, there was nothing preventing the police from simply opening the door and dragging her out.
I hope the officer involved never carries a badge again. There’s a serious vein of sadism in this incident.
[powered by WordPress; 6 queries. 0.163 seconds ]
This is not the site of journalist and author Daniel Glick. His website is at danielglick.net
Sick Transit: A directionless train of thought. Sic transit cogitationes Danis.