$11 microprocessor-in-middle attack is 'significant'
Computer scientists have demonstrated a hack that uses off-the-shelf hardware to tamper with electronic voting machines that millions of Americans will use to cast ballots in the 2012 presidential elections.
The attack on the Diebold AccuVote TS electronic voting machine, which is now marketed by Election Systems & Software, relies on a small circuit board that an attacker inserts between the components connecting the touch screen of the device to its microprocessor. The $10.50 card then controls the information flowing into the machine's internal processor, allowing attackers to change votes with almost no visible sign of what's taking place.
In a video demonstration, researchers from the Vulnerability Assessment Team at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois showed how the card could be used to briefly kill the power to the voting machine's touch screen to temporarily black out what's displayed so voters can't see their choices being modified. Using optional hardware costing about $15, they showed how attackers can remotely tamper with machines from distances as far away as half a mile.
Puppet Masters
Ten Years Later: Surveillance in the "Homeland" is a collaborative project with Truthout and ACLU Massachusetts.
"In addition to massive surveillance, assassinations and dirty tricks "by any means necessary" included the creation of National Security Agency (NSA) "watch lists" of Americans ranging "from members of radical political groups, to celebrities, to ordinary citizens involved in protests against their government," with names submitted by the FBI, Secret Service, military, CIA, and Defense Intelligence Agency.
"In addition to massive surveillance, assassinations and dirty tricks "by any means necessary" included the creation of National Security Agency (NSA) "watch lists" of Americans ranging "from members of radical political groups, to celebrities, to ordinary citizens involved in protests against their government," with names submitted by the FBI, Secret Service, military, CIA, and Defense Intelligence Agency.
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73 per cent of shares on the New York Stock Exchange are traded by computer
73 per cent of shares on the New York Stock Exchange are traded by computer
The task facing our politicians is somehow to defuse this bomb without inadvertently triggering the sequence of defaults and bankruptcies that would set it off. No wonder they walk around the problem scratching their heads, prodding it gingerly here and there. The horrible truth is dawning that the problem may well not be technically solvable.
For the first time in my life - I am 54 - I get the sense of what it must have been like to have lived in my grandparents' or great-grandparents' generation: in 1913, say, or 1937. One feels a great smash coming ever closer, almost in slow-motion, and yet there seems to be nothing that can be done to avoid it.
How have we got ourselves into this mess? After all, we were supposed to be living in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity.
© Reuters/Panagiotis Tzamaros
Greece's Prime Minister George Papandreou arrives for a cabinet meeting inside the parliament in Athens October 2, 2011.
Greece's Prime Minister George Papandreou arrives for a cabinet meeting inside the parliament in Athens October 2, 2011.
Greece will miss a deficit target set just months ago in a massive bailout package, according to government draft budget figures released on Sunday, showing that drastic steps taken to avert bankruptcy may not be enough.
The dire forecasts came while inspectors from the International Monetary Fund, EU and European Central Bank, known as the troika, were in Athens scouring the country's books to decide whether to approve a loan tranche. Without that installment, Greece would run out of cash as soon as this month.
The 2012 draft budget approved by cabinet on Sunday predicts a deficit of 8.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) for 2011, well short of the 7.6 percent target.
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Defence Minister Peter MacKay
Defence Minister Peter MacKay
The Savage War, by Canadian Press defence writer and Afghanistan correspondent Murray Brewster, paints a portrait of a PMO keen to preserve its tenuous grip on minority power and desperate to control the message amid dwindling public support for the war.
MacKay, who took over Defence from Gordon O'Connor in August 2007, was blindsided by the Harper government's decision later that year to set up a blue-ribbon panel to review the mission headed by former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley, Brewster writes.
"It wasn't discussed with the broader cabinet, no," the minister says in the interview. "I didn't know all of the specifics."
Jack Layton knew even less. In interviews before his death earlier this year, the late NDP leader confides to Brewster that Harper never once tried to engage him in an in-depth discussion about Canada's deepening involvement in a deadly counterinsurgency effort.
© Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images Europe
Theresa May
Theresa May
"I'd personally like to see the Human Rights Act go because I think we have had some problems with it," she told the Sunday Telegraph.
The Human Rights Act is the piece of regulation that integrates the European Convention on Human Rights into British law; May claims that it prevents the Ministry from easily dealing with what she called foreign criminals and suspects of terrorism.
May's remarks risk dividing the coalition as Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg pledged during the Liberal Democrat party conference last month that they will not allow any major changes in the Act.
"Let me say something really clear about the Human Rights Act. In fact I'll do it in words of one syllable: It is here to stay," he said.
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Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The Iranian president made the remarks at the closing ceremony of the 5th International Conference on the Palestinian Intifada in Tehran on Sunday.
Describing the creation of Israel as the most heinous historical crime, Ahmadinejad said that occupation of Palestine was an international issue and a crime against all humanity.
The Iranian president criticized the West for not tolerating any argument which involves the existence of Israel.
He added that Israel has been so sanctified in the West that any criticism of the Zionist regime is tantamount to being a terrorist.
© Reuters/www.khamenei.ir/Handout
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attends a meeting with high-ranking officials in Tehran August 31, 2011.
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attends a meeting with high-ranking officials in Tehran August 31, 2011.
As leader of a country under a long-standing threat of military action from Israel and the United States, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned the Jewish state and its allies to expect "paralyzing blows" that a NATO missile shield could not prevent.
"Any plan that seeks to divide Palestine is totally rejected," Khamenei told a conference on the Palestinian issue.
"The two-state scheme, which has been clad in the self-righteousness of the acceptance of the Palestinian government and membership at the United Nations, is nothing but a capitulation to the demands of the Zionists or the recognition of the Zionist regime on Palestinian land," he declared.
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Anwar al-Awlaki in 2008; the radical Islamic cleric has reportedly been killed in Yemen by a US drone strike.
Anwar al-Awlaki in 2008; the radical Islamic cleric has reportedly been killed in Yemen by a US drone strike.
Is this the world we want? Where the president of the United States can place an American citizen, or anyone else for that matter, living outside a war zone on a targeted assassination list, and then have him murdered by drone strike.
This was the very result we at the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU feared when we brought a case in US federal court on behalf of Anwar al-Awlaki's father, hoping to prevent this targeted killing. We lost the case on procedural grounds, but the judge considered the implications of the practice as raising "serious questions", asking:
"Can the executive order the assassination of a US citizen without first affording him any form of judicial process whatsoever, based on the mere assertion that he is a dangerous member of a terrorist organisation?"
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Part I - Mistaking the Particular for the General
Michael Quigley, a Democratic Congressman from Chicago, made the New York Times on 24 September 2011. He made it by promoting the virtues of tolerance and diversity and lamenting the suffering that occurs when tolerance fails. Out and about in his Chicago district, he stopped in at a meeting of the American Islamic Conference. He made a short speech to the 100 or so conferees during which he said "discrimination comes in many forms, many shapes and many guises. You have my pledge to work with you to fight them, and I think it is appropriate for me to apologize on behalf of this country for the discrimination you face." Mr. Quigley was correct about the growing levels of Islamophobia that confront Muslim Americans. Islamophobia is a delusional mind-set which mistakes the general for the particular, which condemns an entire group (which happens to have a billion plus members) for the particular actions of a very few. There is no logic to such an overreaching generalization. It is irrational.
