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Thursday, January 17, 2013
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Anti-hacking law questioned after activist's death
5 hrs.
Lie about your?identity on Facebook or delete files from your work laptop before you quit and you could run afoul of a 29-year-old U.S. computer security law that some experts say has been changed so often it no longer makes sense.
The U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act has come under renewed criticism after last week's death of Internet activist Aaron Swartz, who could have faced prison time for alleged hacking to download millions of academic articles from a private database through a network at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.?
The 26-year-old's family blamed his suicide on "intimidation" from what they described as an overzealous U.S. prosecutor, who threatened Swartz with prison and up to $1 million in fines.
Swartz had "problems with depression for many years," his friend, science fiction author Cory Doctorow, wrote in an online eulogy on Saturday.
The U.S. attorney's case was based on the 1984 CFAA law, which some legal experts contend has been amended so many times that some portions of it no longer make sense. Penalties for minor offenses can exceed those for more serious crimes and key terms of the law, written before the arrival of the Internet as a cultural phenomenon, remain undefined.
"So much has changed and gotten more complicated and the law has kept Frankenstein-ing," said Eric Goldman, a professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law. "You step back and see that it's become a horrible, hideous monster."
Other legal experts said the prosecution, led by U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz in Boston, followed the law closely in bringing charges against Swartz, who argued that research created with public funds should be freely shared on the Internet.
Authorities charge that, when MIT tried to shut off the downloads, Swartz hid and altered his computer's network identity and eventually sneaked into a closet at the university's Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus to gain access to the 4 million articles.
"The prosecutors weren't stretching the law to fit the facts," said Orin Kerr, a professor at George Washington University law School and a former federal prosecutor. "The law is broad and seems to cover this kind of act."?
Courts split over definition of unauthorized access
The act penalizes a person who accesses computers "without authorization, or exceeds authorized access" to obtain something of value worth at least $5,000. But courts across the United States have split about just what constitutes unauthorized access.
In one case, a court upheld a lawsuit against an employee who deleted files from his work laptop before quitting to form a competing business. Once the defendant decided to quit, he no longer was authorized to access his laptop, the court said.
In a better known case, a judge overturned hacking charges against a woman from Missouri after she created a false profile on social networking site MySpace to fool a teenage girl who later committed suicide. Prosecutors alleged the woman did not have authorization to access MySpace servers because she violated the site's terms of service.
The confusion has not slowed prosecutors, who have brought 297 federal criminal cases under the CFAA and related computer fraud laws from 2010 through 2012, about the same as in the prior three years, according to court filings reviewed in Westlaw, a legal data division of Thomson Reuters.
Over the same period, nearly 300 civil lawsuits were brought in private disputes citing the CFAA and related laws, up from 243 in the prior three years, the filings show.
Prosecutors have taken advantage of the vague terms to add huge penalties to lesser cases, said Marcia Hofmann, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil liberties organization.
"They make an aggressive reading of what unauthorized access means to try to throw the book at somebody," she said. "Usually, their real beef isn't with the hacking, but with something else the person did that the prosecutor didn't like."
Hofmann and many of Swartz's supporters believe that might be what happened to the popular online activist, one of the inventors of a key Internet standard called RSS, which is used by media companies and bloggers to distribute articles. As of Tuesday afternoon ET, more than 30,000 people have signed an online petition calling on the administration of President Barack Obama to remove U.S. Attorney Ortiz from Swartz's case, a move that would have little practical effect after his death.
Ortiz's office declined to comment.
Previous investigation, no charges
Swartz had been investigated before after downloading almost 20 million pages of text from a government-run database of court records called PACER in 2008. No charges were filed.
But he got into more serious trouble in 2011 after the MIT incident, which led to his prosecution in a trial that had been due to start in a few months.
Following Swartz's death, MIT President Rafael Reif launched a review of the elite school's handling of the case.
Swartz's possible desire to make the articles public did not exempt him from prosecution, said Kerr, who represented the woman accused of hacking for using a fake MySpace profile.
"There's no 'good guy' exception to the criminal laws."
The outcry in the wake of Swartz's suicide may provide a rare opportunity for lawmakers to revisit the hacking statute, which has been repeatedly expanded over the past two decades.
"Usually, Congress wants to expand these laws," Kerr said. "This may be an unusual time when the public reaction is that the law gives government too much power."?
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters.
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Eugene Patterson, newspaperman worth admiring and civil rights voice, dies at 89
Pulitzer Prize-wining editor and columnist, Eugene Patterson, famous for his moving argument for civil rights in the column, 'A Flower for the Graves,' passed away Saturday. Patterson was editor of the Atlanta Constitution, as well as managing editor of the Washington Post, and editor of the St. Petersburg Times.?
Eugene Patterson, former chairman and chief executive of the Times Publishing Company and its affiliates, checks his email from his bed in St. Petersburg, Fla., in August. Patterson, a newspaper editor and columnist who helped fellow Southern whites understand the civil rights movement, died, Saturday. He was 89.
Cherie Diez/The Tampa Bay Times/AP
EnlargeEugene?Patterson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and columnist whose impassioned words helped draw national attention to the civil rights movement as it unfolded across the South, has died at 89.
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Patterson, who helped fellow whites to understand the problems of racial discrimination, died Saturday evening in Florida after complications from prostate cancer, according to B.J. Phillips, a family spokeswoman.
Patterson?was editor of the Atlanta Constitution from 1960 to 1968, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1967 for editorial writing. His famous column of Sept, 16, 1963, about the Birmingham, Ala., church bombing that killed four girls ? "A Flower for the Graves" ? was considered so moving that he was asked by Walter Cronkite to read it nationally on the "CBS Evening News."
"A Negro mother wept in the street Sunday morning in front of a Baptist Church in Birmingham,"?Patterson?began his column. "In her hand she held a shoe, one shoe, from the foot of her dead child. We hold that shoe with her.
"Every one of us in the white South holds that small shoe in his hand. ... We who go on electing politicians who heat the kettles of hate. ... (The bomber) feels right now that he has been a hero. He is only guilty of murder. He thinks he has pleased us. We of the white South who know better are the ones who must take a harsher judgment."
"It was the high point of my life,"?Patterson?later said in a June 2006 interview from his home in St. Petersburg. "It was the only time I was absolutely sure I was right. They were not telling the truth to people and we tried to change that."
Patterson?also spoke of what he called his good fortune to work for the Atlanta newspaper and an "enlightened" leadership that encouraged his work.
"We were rather rare editors in the South at that time,"?Patterson?said of himself and Constitution Publisher Ralph McGill.?Patterson?worked under McGill, himself a Pulitzer winner in 1959, and then succeeded him at the helm of the Constitution four years later.
Editor Kevin G. Riley at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called?Patterson's?contributions to the newspaper, Atlanta and the field of journalism "enormous."
"We benefit still from his work and legacy," Riley told The Associated Press via email.
In 1968,?Patterson?joined The Washington Post and served for three years as its managing editor, playing a central role in the publication of the Pentagon Papers. After leaving the Post he spent a year teaching at Duke University.
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Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Lhota: ?I would not have left the MTA . . . if I wasn?t going to run for mayor?
It's all systems go for Joe.
Former MTA chairman Joe Lhota made it clear to construction executives yesterday that he's running for mayor, emphasizing that his strong management skills at the transit agency were easily transferable to City Hall.
"I am not going to talk all that much about my future," he told the annual meeting of the New York Building Congress at the Mandarin Oriental. "But I will tell you this -- I would not have left the MTA, a job and a position that I loved, if I wasn't going to run for mayor of New York."
That was how he began a 15-minute speech.
He ended on the same note.
"If you agree that the MTA is in a better position today than it was a year ago, then imagine what I can do in my future with a much more complex organization," Lhota teased, eliciting loud applause from a group obviously friendly to his candidacy.
Richard Anderson, the organization's president, joked at the end of the speech: "Okay, who's got a question for Mayor Lhota?"
But Lhota -- who hasn't officially declared -- faces a potentially bruising primary fight before he can become the Republican Party nominee.
Supermarket mogul John Catsimatides told The Post that he's putting up $1 million of his own money to launch a mayoral bid on the GOP line. And Doe Fund founder George McDonald, who isn't in the same billionaire league, nevertheless reported taking in $277,378. Former Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion is also trying to get into the GOP race, which also includes publisher Tom Allon.
One construction industry executive said Lhota would have to raise about $30 million to have a reasonable chance of becoming mayor in this overwhelmingly Democratic city. And that's without expending large sums in a GOP showdown.
While he wouldn't discuss mayoral politics before becoming a full-fledged candidate, Lhota offered glimpses of his possible campaign platform and governing style.
"It wasn't magic," he said in explaining how the MTA restored the subways just 36 hours after super-storm Sandy. "It was first-rate planning, excellent preparation and absolutely great implementation."
Lhota pointed out that it took New Jersey Transit until yesterday to restore full service. And he took a jab at Con Ed for not moving faster to re-power the subways.
When that drew murmurs from the audience, Lhota responded characteristically with candor.
"I'm going to hit them up for contributions, so I'll apologize later," he said.
Lhota credited not only his management team for the MTA's quick recovery after the storm, but also the union workers who "did a heroic job."
City Councilman Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan), a progressive Democrat who attended the event, left sounding impressed.
"I thought he spoke very well as far as the leadership of the MTA," said Jackson. "He spoke about teamwork, working together, preparations and he gave a big shout-out to the TWU and the unions."
Usually, it's Democrats who extoll the virtues of union workers, not Republicans.
But Lhota didn't forget where his votes are.
He questioned the new $15 cash toll on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to Staten Island, the city's most Republican borough, even though it was the MTA that imposed it.
"When does it stop?" he asked. "When do we say enough is enough?"
Additional reporting by Carl Campanile
david.seifman@nypost.com
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Video: Top 5 Golden Globes Twitter moments
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Source: http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/50456278/
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Monday, January 14, 2013
Author Of - Vancouver Real Estate Anecdote Archive
?This columnist jumped into the property market three years ago with a two-bedroom apartment in Mount Pleasant. The mortgage payments at the time were on a par with where rent was heading, so the move made sense. Despite increases in strata fees and property taxes since, the move continues to make sense ? perhaps more sense than ever.
Tallying mortgage interest, property taxes, strata fees and assessments, as well as home insurance paid in each of the past four years versus rent and home insurance paid in 2008 (the last full year in which rent was paid) shows that home ownership has steadily cut household expenses. Preliminary figures for 2012 indicate savings on housing costs of more than 20% versus 2008.
Poor affordability tends to give first-time buyers in Vancouver fewer options than those in other cities, but the pay-off ? for those who can manage it ? is significant.
So long as mortgage costs remain in check, the payoff seems set to continue, but low interest rates and increases in rental costs have so far put accounts in this buyer?s favour.
(The exit strategy and ultimate return on investment is a significant risk factor, of course, but we?ll leave that matter for another column.)?
- from ?Rental market tight despite rise in Vancouver vacancies; apartment sales projected to hit record-breaking pace?, Peter Mitham, Business In Vancouver, 8 Jan 2013 (?Peter Mitham has written about British Columbia real estate since 1998 for Business in Vancouver and many regional, national and international publications. He is co-author of ?Real Estate Investing for Canadians for Dummies?)
[hat-tip Sarbaz]
Priceless stuff. And that?s a major problem ? no ?price? ? no numbers, no math.
We?d love to see the details. The claim seems to be a stretch.
Just for a start, is this a comparable 2BR to the prior rental?
?
Also, interesting to note that an author of a RE investment text:
1. ?jumped into? the property market, and
2. talks of the ?return on investment? ? for his home!
- vreaa
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Can't Stop The Rock
The air in Miami is burning, the heat close and oppressive. Fireworks light up the hazy Florida sky. The response from the crowd is white-hot and electric, seemingly powering the lights of Sun Life Stadium all on its own. A lone figure stands upon the ramp, feet firmly planted, fists clenched, head turned back to peer at the teeming sea of humanity calling out his name. Then, almost imperceptibly at first, an eyebrow begins to rise, the lip following suit, curling into a smile that exudes total confidence. The Rock has done it again.
The Return Of The Great One
The Rock?s epic defeat of John Cena at WrestleMania XXVIII was huge, to be sure, but it?s only with the benefit of a year?s hindsight that we can step back and fully appreciate just how huge it was. It elevated his already lofty WWE status into the rarified air of icons, proving irrefutably that his return wasn?t a one-and-done flash in the pan. It was proof positive that, even after seven years out of the game, The Great One hasn?t lost a step. The only question now is, what?s next? The idea of topping something so momentous is daunting. But The Rock remains unfazed. ?It would be incredibly daunting, if I put that type of pressure on myself in terms of achieving success,? he says. ?So I try not to. I work hard and hopefully make movies and create entertainment that people enjoy. And if we can inspire some people around the world along the way to achieve their own greatness ? then that?s a cool and beautiful thing, too.?
The Year of the Rock
It?s been 16 years since a streamer-draped Superstar named Rocky Maivia first bounded into the ring at Survivor Series. To look at pictures from that night is to gaze into a different time, a different era ? and see a remarkably different man. The Rock broke out from the shackles of that persona to become a Superstar who defined a time in WWE that may never be experienced again.
Reinvention is the key to longevity, however, which is why the Superstar the WWE Universe now sees isn?t a facsimile from those ?90s glory days, hobbling out to the ring to cock an eyebrow and remind us to know our roles and shut our mouths. Now, almost two decades into a career that reshaped the WWE landscape time and again, The Rock seems more focused than ever before. He contested a WrestleMania match that obliterated all expectations, and his movie career has landed in that sweet spot between bankability and respectability.
As proof, this year alone, we have four Rock films to look forward to. First up is ?G.I. Joe: Retaliation,? which pairs The Great One with PEOPLE?s Sexiest Man Alive, Channing Tatum. The flick, a sequel to 2009?s ?G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra,? was originally due for release this past summer, but recently it went in for a 3-D conversion. After battling Cobra baddies, The Great One returns to the world of go-for-broke street racing and daredevil heists in ?Fast Six,? the follow-up to 2011?s wildly successful ?Fast Five.? In April, he stars in ?Pain and Gain,? a crime thriller from blockbuster director Michael Bay, in which he portrays a bodybuilder who becomes involved in a kidnapping scheme that goes every which way but right. Starring alongside The People?s Champ are Mark Wahlberg and Ed Harris, a pair of Academy Award?nominated actors.
The proof is right there: The Rock can easily hold his own with anyone in the ring or on the silver screen.
It seems he has his pick of projects from that point on. There have been rumblings about comic-book adaptations, a possible Hercules movie, a third ?Journey to the Center of the Earth? film. The People?s Champion has come a long way from his 2001 cinematic debut in ?The Mummy Returns,? a summer blockbuster that saw him spend the final act with his head attached to a CG scorpion.
But for The Rock, it?s all gone just the way he wanted. ?Honestly,? he says, ?if I could start my Hollywood career over again, I wouldn?t change a thing. Every success and failure, every love and heartbreak, it?s all led me down the path I?m on. This will be my 13th year of acting on the big screen, and I?m lucky to be enjoying the Hollywood career I have these days ? but I also wake up every morning with the mindset that there is no substitute for hard work, and there?s no amount of sweat I won?t drop to achieve my goals.?
No one can doubt that The Rock will be dominating the multiplexes for years to come, but before he can shoot another foot of celluloid, before all the accolades, acclaim and autographs, he has one major goal to accomplish.
The Road to Greatness
The Rock has enjoyed unparalleled success, but it seems that this year, the pieces are falling into place more perfectly than ever before, and whatever The People?s Champ wants may well be his for the taking. ? ?What?s the key to success?? is something I?m asked every single day,? The Rock says. ?I don?t believe there?s only one ?key to success.? But what I do believe in is hard work, and daily, focused commitment and sacrifice. I believe in being gracious with your successes, and humbled by your failures. I trust my gut and always keep my family close. I live in optimism and faith. When I grab opportunity and success by the throat, I don?t let go.?
It all begins now, at the Royal Rumble. Just as in days of old, The Rock?s palm is open ? only this time, he?s just waiting for the world to be dropped into it.
To read more from this exclusive Rock interview, pick up the February issue ? featuring The Great One himself ? or?SUBSCRIBE HERE and save 70 percent off the newsstand sales price.
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View CommentsSource: http://www.wwe.com/magazine/can't-stop-the-rock
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