in brief: news items that bother me
- I didn’t watch the opening ceremonies of this
year’s Olympic Games, so I missed this one: a sequence of
“stunning fireworks” shown to television viewers
included cut-aways to pre-recorded, and in some cases,
computer-generated fireworks footage. Apparently the fakery
was deemed acceptable because smog-limited visibility and
restricted airspace made the real thing less attractive than
intended. There are unexplored ethical issues here.
- I passed an unusual sight tonight: a taxicab had apparently
launched itself over a hundred feet from an intersection, over a
tall curb and through a wall of landscaping to wedge itself against
the front door of the Elephant Walk restaurant on Beacon Street. I
have no idea how this scene transpired, but physics tells me it
must have involved very high speeds. Let me offer this thought:
from my experience, an alarming number of cab drivers in this
neighborhood are reckless and belligerent. It’s a shame we
consider that acceptable when cabbies in
London pride themselves on qualities like “placid
temperament.”
- Before drawing comparisons to World War II, John McCain
declared today that “Russia has used violence against Georgia
to send a signal to any country that chooses to associate with the
West and aspire to our shared political and economic values.”
Woah there! I agree that Russia’s war with Georgia is wrong,
and I agree that as a country we need to do something about it. But
in this era of Vladimir Putin’s increasingly sketchy
political ascendancy, the situation demands kid-glove treatment,
not big talk. Let’s not forget that today’s Russia,
looking more and more like the USSR of old, is perfectly capable of
blowing us all to smithereens.
- Some kids from my old dorm at MIT were forced to cancel a talk
last weekend after a judge imposed a restraining
order barring them from disclosing technical details of how to
hack the MBTA CharlieCard system. While the prompt and public
disclosure of security holes by white hats puts a
burden on those who have to actually fix the problems, it saves
untold costs by pre-empting attacks by actual bad guys. On top of
that, the restraining order is an obvious conflict with the basic
principle of free speech. I think that when the details emerge, the
MBTA is going to be embarassed—their vendor probably misled
them into thinking they were using real encryption. One of the few
fare card systems that uses public-key cryptography (as recommended
by the MIT group) is Hong Kong’s Octopus Card, and it has
never been successfully hacked.
- From yesterday’s Boston Globe: “The Bush
administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves
whether highways, dams, mines, and other construction projects
might harm endangered animals and plants.” Interior Secretary
Dirk Kempthorne believes that eliminating environmental impact
studies (currently required by the Endangered Species Act) is
necessary to prevent scientists from trying to use them as “a
‘back door’ to regulate the gases blamed for global
warming.” He also believes that after two decades of doing
such reviews, federal agencies should know enough to do the right
thing on their own. You may recall that earlier this year, with
congressional approval, the Department of Homeland Security
announced plans to bypass all federal and state environmental laws
to expedite construction on the Great
Wall of Mexico. So once again, I’m left wondering: where
are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?
The slides of the Defcon presentation are actually available online via The Tech: http://www-tech.mit.edu/V128/N30/subway/Defcon_Presentation.pdf
Looks like the paper stored value cards are where the real vulnerability is; they found the value is stored on the card without encryption.
Nice slides! Thanks for that link.