We've all seen it: on cops over license plates, on other TV shows over credit card and check numbers, and all over the web over many sensitive areas of documents. Blurring has been a long accepted way of eliminating information. This however, has all changed. A recent dheera.net project proved that these numbers can easily be brute forced by simply clearing out the original blurr, typing a new random number, blurring the new number, then comparing that image to the original.

For more information see: http://dheera.net/projects/blur.php

According to PDF document found on MIT's web server and backed by Bruce Schneier, credible evidence has been presented that the hash algorithm called SHA-1 has been broken. A collision search attack found by a trio of Chinese researchers makes breaking the algorithm much easier. Previously a brute force attack would take about 2**80 operations to complete while with this new attack only 2**69 operations are required. This doesn't necessarily the algorithm is completely unusable because it would still take a normal PC (Intel, AMD, ect..) system many months to successfully pull of this attack on only a single hash. But this does mean that governments and organizations with incredibly resources and deep pockets can have supercomputers break hashes at a much quicker rate.

See Schneier on Security for more information.

Seems the feds want to kill their prime intrusion tool "Carnivore". This was THE tool the feds said they must have to keep track of terrorists and such. They made ISP's bend to their whim at their expense - and look - now they killed the program.

Didn't last long, did it? Seems they are going to use commercially available software to do the same job - guess I'm a sceptic here.

There is an article at CNN.

I must admit, I was rather shocked at how well this article was on the Christian Science Monitor site. I follow RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) as a privacy advocate and as an amateur radio operator. Hams have been quite negative regarding RFID.

There are major privacy concernes with this technology that I do not favor. There is an example of Texas wanting to track schoolkids in one community - I'd be damned if they would "chip" my kid.

Some examples sited in the article are:

• ID tags for Texas school children that allow local law-enforcement offices to monitor their movements.
• A proposal to examine the possible use of EZ-pass type trackers in California autos to enforce a statewide mileage tax.
• Medicine containers electronically fitted nationwide to alert to fraud, counterfeiting, and even mistakes by hospital staff.

Not to mention, that these tags all but completely give up privacy. Can you imagine just walking from a pharmacy to your car - and anyone that doesn't particularly like you can tell what meds you are taking?

The dangers of this technology have only started to touch the surface. With WalMart making RFID mandatory on their top 100 suppliers, this is only to be the beginning.

OK, I found this interesting. Homeland Security is apparently testing a pilot program to track financial information. This program is supposed to track some possible 250,000 individuals that may have links to terrorism, drug trafficing, money laundering, etc.

Well, for face value, it seems quite interesting and a good project, but, sceptic in me just takes over.

I doubt that the quarter of a millin individuals were just typed into a database and searched by some admin at Homeland Security, so, what are the priorities that put someone on this list? How is the data mined?

I'm growing more concerned by such measures every day. Especially since none of these measures would have prevented what happened on 9/11.

Big Brother is watching.....
The link to this article from the New York Times with more info can be found on the New york times website