In 2006, students at a school in Turin, Italy filmed and then uploaded a video to Google Video that showed them bullying an autistic schoolmate. Google took it down within hours of being notified by the Italian police, and also worked with the local police to help identify the person responsible for uploading i, who was subsequently sentenced to 10 months community service by a court in Turin. But then, a public prosecutor in Milan decided to indict four Google employees. None of them had anything to do with this video. They did not appear in it, film it, upload it or review it. None of them know the people involved or were even aware of the video's existence until after it was removed. Nevertheless, a judge in Milan today convicted 3 of the 4 defendants.

Andy Baio (Waxy) on the http://pleaserobme.com fear, and being careful doesn't mean getting blinded by paranoia.

"Nobody checks the signature. Credit card signatures are a useless mechanism designed to make you feel safe, like airport security checks. So my question was, how crazy would I have to make my signature before someone would actually notice?"

"The Torn-Up Credit Card Application – I get a heck of a lot of credit card applications in the mail. I almost always tear credit card applications in half and throw them away. Is that good enough? Could a determined and dexterous criminal gather all the bits, tape them together and apply for a credit card in my name?"

"The LOPPSI law, which could be voted on in March, will make filtering the French Internet a reality, "the Chinese way" (…) If nothing is done, within a year, not only might Big Brother-like spyware be mandatory on every French computer, but everything that goes through its pipes could be scanned."

The Rumpus: Do you save everything ever entered into Facebook at any time, whether or not it’s been deleted, untagged, and so forth?
Facebook Employee: That is essentially correct at this moment.
Rumpus: When you say “click on somebody’s profile,” you mean you save our viewing history?
Employee: That’s right.

Wikileaks is a global platform for Whistleblowers, in which internal documents can be published. The idea is that arcane knowledge becomes common knowledge and the world a better place. The project could play in the same league as success stories like Wikipedia or Indymedia. Interview of Julian Assange, the most prominent Wikileaks-character on how to finance such a website. The question seems to be pressing.

Over the past month, both HostedHere.net, his longtime webhost, and AT&T, his cellular provider since he was released from prison more than nine years ago, have told him they no longer want him as a customer. The reason: his status as a celebrity hacker makes his accounts too hard to defend against the legions of script kiddies who regularly attack them.

Photos from Google Street View by artist Jon Rafman

Security researchers found that poor shielding on some keyboard cables means useful data can be leaked about each character typed.

Using inexpensive off-the-shelf components, an information security expert has built a mobile platform that can clone large numbers of the unique electronic identifiers used in US passport cards and next generation drivers licenses. The $250 proof-of-concept device – which researcher Chris Paget built in his spare time – operates out of his vehicle and contains everything needed to sniff and then clone RFID, or radio frequency identification, tags. During a recent 20-minute drive in downtown San Francisco, it successfully copied the RFID tags of two passport cards without the knowledge of their owners.
Direct video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9isKnDiJNPk

KeePassX is an application for people with extremly high demands on secure personal data management. It has a light interface, is cross platform and published under the terms of the GNU General Public License. KeePassX saves many different information e.g. user names, passwords, urls, attachments and comments in one single database. For a better management user-defined titles and icons can be specified for each single entry. Furthermore the entries are sorted in groups, which are customizable as well. The integrated search function allows to search in a single group or the complete database.

A Free, Open Source System for Helping Track and Recover Lost and Stolen Laptops. Adeona is the first Open Source system for tracking the location of your lost or stolen laptop that does not rely on a proprietary, central service. This means that you can install Adeona on your laptop and go — there's no need to rely on a single third party. What's more, Adeona addresses a critical privacy goal different from existing commercial offerings. It is privacy-preserving. This means that no one besides the owner (or an agent of the owner's choosing) can use Adeona to track a laptop. Unlike other systems, users of Adeona can rest assured that no one can abuse the system in order to track where they use their laptop.

Send notes that will self-destruct after being read. Sorry Jul.

OperaTor is a software bundle that can be easily installed on a portable memory (pendrive, usb stick, hard drive) to allow anonymous surfing while at an internet cafe, library etc. It combines the power of Opera, The Onion Router and Privoxy to give the u