Weblver1 writes "A recent report by web security firm Finjan shows how easily data can be accessed on PCs by malware which circumvents existing defenses. With the use of obfuscated code, antivirus software and static Web filters could not identify the scrambled attack code as a threat. The report walks through a real-life scenario of the infection process step-by-step, and tracks what happens to the stolen data. This demonstrates how stealing sensitive data has become unbearably easy — especially, given the abundance of easy-to-use DIY crimeware toolkits. Finjan's report is available here (PDF, registration required). Shortly after this report, Security firm RSA has released their findings of a huge amount of stolen 'virtual wallets' in one of the largest discoveries of stolen data from computers compromised by the Sinowal trojan. While the trojan can be traced back to 2006, it managed to become more productive over time with frequent variants. Given the scale, ease of use, and hiding techniques making infections extremely difficult to find, no wonder today's crimeware achieves such 'impressive' results."

An anonymous reader writes "Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they cast early ballots last week. This is the second West Virginia county where voters have reported this problem. Last week, three voters in Jackson County told The Charleston Gazette their electronic vote for 'Barack Obama' kept flipping to 'John McCain.'"

After Joe Wurzelbacher of Ohio gained fame as "Joe the Plumber" in the course of the current presidential campaign, it seems that he's drawn more than idle curiosity from people with access to what should probably be confidential information. An anonymous reader writes with a story from The Columbus Dispatch that "government insiders accessed Joe the Plumber's records soon after the McCain-Obama debate. 'Public records requested by The Dispatch disclose that information on Wurzelbacher's driver's license or his sport-utility vehicle was pulled from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database three times shortly after the debate. Information on Wurzelbacher was accessed by accounts assigned to the office of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and the Toledo Police Department.' Welcome to 1984."

newtley writes "The New Democrats' Jack Layton has become the first leader of a major Canadian political party to acknowledge the importance of the Internet during a federal election. He's using YouTube to carry his message specifically to the online community, launching it on P2Pnet. 'We don't want to see hidden fees and gouging and service slow-downs all in the interests of promoting the objectives of certain large corporations,' Layton says." Other party members have also spoken out against increased internet regulation. We've been following the Canadian net neutrality debate for quite some time.

Zarf writes "I'd like to file a bug report on the US educational system. The New York Times reports on a recent study that shows the US fails to encourage academic talent as a culture.'"There is something about the culture in American society today which doesn't really seem to encourage men or women in mathematics," said Michael Sipser, the head of M.I.T.'s math department. "Sports achievement gets lots of coverage in the media. Academic achievement gets almost none."' While we've suspected that the US might be falling behind academically, this study shows that it is actually due to cultural factors that are devaluing the success of our students. I suspect there's a flaw in the US cultural system that prevents achievement on the academic front from being perceived as valuable. Could anyone suggest a patch for this bug or is this cause for a rewrite?"

doomsdaywire writes "A University of Tennessee student who is the son of a Memphis legislator has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of hacking Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail. [...] If convicted, [David C.] Kernell faces a maximum of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and a three-year term of supervised release. A trial date has not been set."

twigles writes with news of a new proposed bill that seeks to curtail DHS's power to search and seize laptops at the border without suspicion of wrongdoing. Here is Sen. Feingold's press release on the bill. The new bill has more privacy-protecting safeguards than the previous one, which we discussed last month. "The Travelers Privacy Protection Act, a bill written by US Senators Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., would allow border agents to search electronic devices only if they had reasonable suspicions of wrongdoing. In addition, the legislation would limit the length of time that a device could be out of its owner's possession to 24 hours, after which the search becomes a seizure, requiring probable cause."

Pittsburgh Public Schools officials have enacted a policy that sets 50 percent as the minimum score a student can receive for assignments, tests and other work. District spokeswoman Ebony Pugh said, the 50 percent minimum gives children a chance to catch up and a reason to keep trying. If a student gets a 20 percent in a class for the first marking period, he or she would need a 100 percent during the second marking period just to squeak through the semester. The district and teachers union issued a joint memo to ensure staff members' compliance with the policy, which was already on the books but enforced only at some schools. At this rate, it won't be long before schools institute double extra credit Mondays and Fridays to ensure students don't take three day weekends.

method9455 writes "Barack Obama has edited his official website on many issues, including a huge revision on the technology page. Strangely it seems net neutrality is no longer as important as it was a few months ago, and the swaths of detail have been removed and replaced with fairly vague rhetoric. Many technologists were alarmed with the choice of Joe Biden before, and now it appears their fears might have been well founded." Update: 09/22 18:07 GMT by T : Julian Sanchez of Ars Technica passed on a statement from an Obama campaign representative who points out that the changes in wording highlighted by Versionista aren't the whole story, and that more Obama tech-plan details are now available in a PDF, saying "there is absolutely no substantive change to our policy - folks who want more information can click to get our full plan."

mortonda writes to tell us that the person responsible for breaching Sarah Palin's private email account has been found. We discussed the breach last Wednesday, shortly before the hacker, a University of Tennessee-Knoxville student, posted a message detailing his methods. Wired has a story examining the potential legal consequences for the hacker.

brothke writes "In the TV show House, M.D., a premise that protagonist Dr. Greg House holds dear is that people are liars and stupid. Real life is often not far from House's observation. At the general public level, people are often misled by their lack of common sense, their deficiency in understanding statistics and basic science, and therefore fall victim to the lies of the myriad charlatans that claim to have something that fixes everything. A piece I wrote on that issue, New York News Radio — The voice of bad science, details that. While it is too broad to call the authors of Fuel efficiency of commercial aircraft: An overview of historical and future trends liars; their mediocre research created the scenario that far too many took their research as reality. Known as the Peeters report, after lead author P.M. Peeters, the authors of Plane Simple Truth refute the wide-spread belief that the fuel efficiency gains in the commercial aviation sector are erroneous, which is the principle theme of the Peeters report." Keep reading for the rest of Ben's review.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) has introduced a bill that would add accountability to the DHS searches conducted upon the laptops of those crossing the border. Specifically, it would require the issue of receipts to those who had their property confiscated so that it could later be returned, would limit how long the DHS can keep laptops, would require them to keep the laptop's information secure, and would create a way to complain about abuse. Finally, the DHS would be required to keep track of how many searches were done and report the details to Congress. Rep. Sanchez also has also issued a statement about the proposed bill."

Savuka writes "A policy that mandates public, open access to all National Institutes of Health research is in danger. The House of Representatives is considering legislation that would change the open access policy to make it more publisher-friendly, under the false pretense of protecting copyrights. The Ars author paints the new legislation as somewhat reflective of a turf battle in Congress: 'The Intellectual Property Subcommittee clearly felt that it had been ignored during the original passage of the bill that compelled the NIH's open access policy...' The article concludes: 'Currently, the disruptions wrought by the Internet and expectations of open access are too new for a viable alternative to traditional publishing to have emerged. But it doesn't appear that the NIH policy is making a significant contribution to that disruption, and the benefits of the policy appear likely to be significant. If Congress rolls back that policy in response to disagreements with other countries over film piracy, then it could really be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.'"

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved the EIPA (the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008), which would create copyright cops. And these cops would take over the RIAA's War on Sharing by filing civil lawsuits and using civil forfeiture laws to take any and all computers engaged in infringement. Worse, they would even seize computers (such as servers or database farms) that house the data of innocent people, and these people would not have any right to get their data back. At best the 'virtual bystanders' who happened to have data on a computer used for infringement could get a protective order saying that no one should go rummaging through their stuff. Perhaps the only good thing in the bill is that they've excluded DMCA circumvention from the list of grounds for seizure. So while the Senators believe this is needed to combat foreign copyright infringement cartels, it's entirely likely that innocent people will be harmed by this law."

theodp writes "The New York Times is offering a pretty cool new Interactive video and transcript feature. A window running video of speeches from the Democratic and Republican conventions appears next to a scrolling window containing transcripts of the speeches. Click on the paragraph you want, and the video jumps to the beginning of that paragraph. There's also an outline listing major subject areas in the speeches. Click on the section you want, and you'll be taken to that part of the transcript and video. Check it out, Obama and McCain fans!"

Scott Aaronson offers an intriguing call for ideas on how nerds can supercharge the political process this year. He's clearly an Obama admirer and phrases his challenge this way: "What non-obvious things can nerds who are so inclined do to help the Democrats win in November?" But the question itself is not inherently partisan. The analogy Aaronson gives is to the Nadertrading idea in 2000 (which we discussed at the time). What's the Nadertrading for 2008? "The sorts of ideas I'm looking for are ones that (1) exploit nerds' nerdiness, (2) go outside the normal channels of influence, (3) increase nerds' effective voting power by several orders of magnitude, (4) are legal, (5) target critical swing states, and (6) can be done as a hobby."

A couple of days ago we discussed a CNet article on the tech voting record of Joe Biden, Barack Obama's running mate. Philip Zimmermann, who was mentioned in that piece, sends the following note to set the record straight. "In his 23 August opinion piece in CNet, Declan McCullagh wrote on Joe Biden's suitability as the Democratic VP nominee, Declan quotes me, creating the impression I criticized Biden for some legislation that Biden introduced in 1991. Declan's quote from me is out of context because it does not make it clear that I never mentioned Biden in my original quote at all when I wrote about Senate Bill 266. Second, Declan's quote is drawn from remarks I wrote in 1999. Declan seems to be trying to draft me in his opposition to Biden, and, by extension, makes it seem as if I am against the Democratic ticket. I take issue with this." Read below for the rest of Phil's comments.

bucketoftruth writes "If you browse to the Democratic Convention website and attempt to check out any of their upcoming streams, you bump into the following limitation: 'We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following Compatible operating systems: Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5). Compatible browsers: Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.'"

On August 18 and 19, you submitted questions for NewsTrust founder Fabrice Florin about his (non-profit) site's ability to live up to its claim, "Your guide to good journalism." We sent selected questions to Fabrice on August 19. Here are his answers.

Aviran brings us an analysis of Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden's voting record on technology issues. CNet breaks down the issues by category and provides details on the tech-related legislation he's introduced in the past several years. Biden received a score of 37.5% on CNet's 2006 technology voter guide. We've discussed the technology stances of McCain and Obama in the past.