Philosophically Secure

Apparently, a random airport customs search actually found something useful. According to Random Search Stops $600 Million In Trade Secrets Bound For China:

Jin was traveling on a one-way ticket to Beijing at the time. She declared that she had $10,000 in U.S. currency in her carry-on luggage. Customs and Border Protection officers found about $30,000 in cash.

They found several technical documents labeled “[Company A] Confidential Property,” Chinese documents, a European company’s product catalog of military technology written in English, a personal laptop computer, a thumb drive, four external hard drives, 29 recordable compact discs, and one videotape.

A search of the thumb drive and hard drives, conducted with Jin’s consent, revealed numerous documents marked “[Company A] Confidential Property.”

I’d say flying on a one-way ticket to China and carrying that much media, including four external hard drives, is an obvious red flag. Of course, they need to realize that not everyone traveling with a laptop is a Chinese spy. I just hope this doesn’t lead to more invasive airport searches, but rather more appropriately focused ones.

Most people don’t realize how limited their rights are when they are crossing the U.S. border. This is especially true when it comes to portable electronics, such as your laptop. Of course border guards can search your luggage to look for contraband, such as drugs, illegal food items, or even animals. But did you know that they can also search within your personal laptop? They don’t need just cause or any suspicion of illegal activity. It doesn’t matter if it’s your personal laptop, or one owned by your company. Not only can they ask you to turn it on, but they can also request that you login and allow them to examine the contents of your system.

My advice: leave the laptop at home, unless you absolutely need it on your trip. At the very least, don’t bring any sensitive data with you, especially in an obvious and unencrypted state. Ideally, if you travel often, you may want to have a basic laptop without any real data just for this purpose.

Let’s just hope these laws never apply to crossing state borders, as well…

If only more people could understand this logical point of view:

No matter that a deadly sharp can be fashioned from virtually anything found on a plane, be it a broken wine bottle or a snapped-off length of plastic, we are content wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and untold hours of labor in a delusional attempt to thwart an attack that has already happened, asked to queue for absurd lengths of time, subject to embarrassing pat-downs and loss of our belongings.

source: The Airport Security Follies

Imagine having a SWAT team under your command, willing to go just about anywhere you ask them to. Now also imagine that you’re a 15 year old kid with nothing better to do than play pranks on your friends. Carnage ensues.

This article, titled SWAT team goes to wrong home in 911 scam, from Salinas, CA, discusses a situation where the above presumptions were actually true. Apparently, a kid from Chicago was chatting online with another kid in Salinas, and decided to prank him. Using a yet to be determined method of spoofing his caller ID, he made his phone number appear to be the one of his “friend” in California. He then called 911 and told them he was being attacked by men with assault rifles. The police department obviously takes an emergency call like this seriously, so they dispatched a SWAT team to the unsuspecting boy’s house. Meanwhile, the guy back in Chicago is probably giggling like a school girl, knowing what is about to happen.

I haven’t heard the term “swatting” before, but that is what the media is calling this type of prank, which is actually a serious crime. The hard part in prosecuting something like this is attribution, just like any crime committed over the Internet. The swatter could literally be across the world in China. He could also be working with a group of people, simultaneously causing chaos at police departments across the country, or targeting a particular area. This type of attack makes me think of denial of service or intrusion detection system flooding. If you do it enough, eventually your targets become preoccupied with all the false alarms, and are not able to respond to a true emergency that might be happening at the same time.

Now, using caller ID to quickly and accurately determine someone’s location in a 911 call is generally very effective and helpful. A lot of times people calling 911 are too frazzled to even remember their address. But how can we ensure that these swatting pranks don’t get out of hand? As far as I can tell, the only real solution is something like the Truth in Caller ID Act, which was proposed by the Senate. That’s unfortunate, since I’m usually not a proponent of new, restrictive legislation, but some people will always abuse the system and ruin it for the rest of us.

I try to avoid discussing political issues, but this one hit close to home.

It looks like the Maryland sales tax is going up to 6%, and will now include computer services. This will not end well for our economy, considering how much of it is dependent on technology. I have a feeling even more companies will be moving to Virginia or Delaware thanks to this new law.

The measure increases sales tax by 1% and adds computer support services, data center support, custom programming, consulting, and disaster recovery services to the list. Legislators approved the change as part of a tax package they passed early Monday morning.

The Computing Technology Industry Association said the move “will bring cascading harm” to the state’s IT industry, small local businesses, workers, and consumers.

This should be hitting the news today since it was just signed by the Governor this morning.

Update: House kills ‘tech tax’:  replaces bill with cuts, surcharges on millionaires