8/11/2006; 2:34:33 AM

When cameras are everywhere ...
This is an amazing article, with a link to a web site that shows just how advanced criminals are becoming ... and how they are leveraging technology.

The concept is simple as described below ... what is wild is that they are using some fairly simple technologies to accomplish this. Just the other night I saw an episode of Law & Order where a high school student took pictures of other students in the gym locker room ... with her cell phone ... and then sent them to other people. I hadn't even thought about the portability of these "wireless cameras". This all makes me think about where we are heading when miniature cameras can be carried and left just about anywhere. And people are thinking that we can protect privacy?

ATM Skimmers with Wireless Cameras, Pickups. Automated Teller Machine customers now robbed wirelessly without knowledge: The University of Texas at Austin police have a compelling page that shows how a skimmer (which scans ATM cards before they're inserted into the ATM) and a wireless camera in an innocuous position nearby can steal a card and the PIN. The skimmer reads the magnetic stripe; the camera can see the PIN being entered. The thieves park nearby and retrieve the information wirelessly. This is reminiscent of last month's story of a wireless Israeli post office money heist. It may be just me, but after years of being warned about shoulder surfers in the 1980s and 1990s, I often cover my hand when entering a PIN on a phone or ATM. I guess my paranoia pays off. Also, I only go to one bank's ATM machines, which are uniform. I think I'd notice a weird add-on.... [Wi-Fi Networking News]

8/11/2006; 2:34:22 AM

More hope for less spam ... soon ...
This appears to be some good momentum in the anti-spam area, as a good first effort to combat the problem. There are no doubt other proposals and standards that will emerge.

This specific solution will force companies to define their mail servers in DNS in a way that allows them to be held accountable for spam. This will provide a way to deny e-mail from being received, if the source of that mail can not be tracked down. It's a very good start.

eWEEK: New Anti-spam Initiative Gaining Traction. A grass-roots movement to improve the SMTP protocol that governs e-mail traffic is gaining acceptance, and its lead developer hopes to get fast-track approval by the Internet Engineering Task Force to make the emerging framework a standard. [Tomalak's Realm]

8/11/2006; 2:34:18 AM

Digital Communities, their Laws and Hierarchy
I would have liked to hear this presentation. This is covering an area that I am very interested in ... digital identity and digital communities.

The hierarchy within a digital community is extremely important to maintain order, and to prevent chaos from spreading. If there is no hierarchy and "law" then the community will collapse. This looks like it was a fun presentation!

ETCon 2004: Robert Kaye on Social Networking-Based File Sharing Networks. Robert Kaye (slides) is describing social network file sharing systems. The primary purpose of the social group is to share, discover, and protect network. He proposes a hierarchy or tribes, chiefdoms, and states with leaders at each level and "tribal elders" who set the policies about who gets in. This sets the trust network. [Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]