Slashback: AMD/ATI, Tokamak Fusion, Laptop Privacy

Slashback tonight brings some clarifications and updates to previous Slashdot stories including: An inside look at the AMD/ATI merger, school admins backing down on cell phone invasion policies, a new launch date for Scotty's ashes, a second test for China's Tokamak fusion device, Forbe's missed the mark on IBM destruction of evidence, Skype for Mac 1.5 released, and the courts rule that customs can still rifle through your laptop - Read on for details.

An inside look at the AMD/ATI merger. Spinnerbait writes "HotHardware spent some sit-down time with a few folks close to the AMD and ATI merger, asked some probing questions and received a few insightful answers in return. They dug in deep with AMD Execs, learned all there is to know currently and even got a hint of what the future might hold for the dynamic duo (no pun intended), now joined as one. A tighter coupling of the CPU and GPU is in our future perhaps?"

School admins back down on cell phone invasion policy. Reverberant writes "In a follow up to earlier coverage about school admins wanting access to students' cellphones, Framingham officials have decided to hold off on the policy for now because they need school committee approval. The head of the school policy committee has 'no interest in bringing it up.'"

New launch date for Scotty's ashes. wolfdvh writes "The BBC reports that Star Trek actor James Doohan, who played the engineer Scotty in the original TV series, will now have his remains blasted into space in October. The actor's ashes were supposed to be sent into orbit last year, but the flight was delayed as tests were carried out on the rocket."

Second test for China's Tokamak fusion device. Haxx writes "The first plasma discharge from China's experimental advanced superconducting research center dubbed 'artificial sun' is set to occur next month. The discharge, expected about Aug. 15, will be conducted at Science Island in Hefei, in east China's Anhui Province. The experiment will test the world's first Tokamak fusion device of this kind. The new device will be an upgrade of China`s first superconducting Tokamak device. The plasma discharge will draw international attention since some scientists are concerned with risks involved in such a process"

Forbe's missed the mark on IBM destruction of evidence. An anonymous reader writes "It turns out that Forbes.com was wrong and, based on analysis of Pacer no motion has been filed against IBM for destruction of evidence. Shortly following from a major collapse in SCO's share price, a recent article Slashdot reported Forbes.com's claim that a motion had been filed against IBM for destruction of evidence. In fact, Groklaw, the main site covering the SCO vs. IBM lawsuit, now reports that SCO has filed no motions of this type whatsoever in March."

Skype for Mac 1.5 released. Billy C writes "A few weeks after warez versions made the rounds on the Internet, the official Skype for Mac with video is here." While still only a preview version, brave users can now give it a shot.

Courts rule customs can rifle through your laptop. monstermagnet writes "On Monday, a unanimous three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the files of a person's laptop may be searched at U.S. borders [PDF] without probable cause or even reasonable suspicion."

Comments

Thank heavens for crypto.

[saintlupus]

On Monday, a unanimous three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the files of a person's laptop may be searched at U.S. borders [PDF] without probable cause or even reasonable suspicion."

TrueCrypt for Windows or Linux. Check it out.

--saint

Courts rule customs can rifle through your laptop

[jigjigga]

Way to go! USA! USA! USA! Our freedoms are the envy of the world!

Probable Cause

[CraigoFL]

the files of a person's laptop may be searched at U.S. borders without probable cause or even reasonable suspicion.

Elliotte Rusty Harold recently had a good blog post about probable cause. His point is that probable cause isn't just to protect the innocent from abuse; it's also to keep the police effective by forcing them to focus on people who have a high probability of actual wrongdoing. Without that constraint, they're free to go after anyone, and end up wasting their time & effort on wild goose chases.

I assume that there's no legal obligation for you to give US Customs your password. I also assume that they're under no obligation to let you into the country. If you're clearing customs while you're in the US, there's probably no obligation for them to return your laptop to you either.

Re:Probable Cause

[CraigoFL]

But in the end you're going to do yourself in with your attempts to protect yourself. If they can't get at your files to see that you're free of child porn, they're going to get upset, and they're going to make things difficult for you. They could prevent you from crossing, impound your laptop, and possibly even detain you.

Meanwhile, someone who is *actually* smuggling in illicit data simply has to:
1) Encrypt/obfuscate the data, so it's not obvious what that data is.
2) Make it look mundane... hide it in the windows swap file maybe?
3) Gladly offer up full access to the laptop when asked. Customs will probably not bother with a deep search, since it's "obvious" that the smuggler has nothing to hide. They're too busy trying to get figure what to do with the other guy who won't give up the BIOS password to his laptop anyway.

Re:Probable Cause

[couchslug]

Meanwhile, someone who is *actually* smuggling in illicit data simply has to:
Drop it into a throwaway webmail account from overseas, then retrieve it from that account after returning to the US. A bit of warwalking to unsecured APs keeps the process untraceable.
If I carried the laptop I used for the purpose with me, its drive would have been wiped and it would have a nice clean install, with l3m0nparty wallpaper for Customs enjoyment. :)

Re:Probable Cause

[asuffield]

They'll just strip your car down to the frame, then reject your entry to the country and leave you standing there with a pile of mechanical parts. Customs is fucked up and has no proper appeals process or oversight of these things.

Romm's lawyer dropped the ball

[rdwald]

A quick reading of the brief in the "searching laptops at the border" case suggests that the reason they're considering a laptop search as part of the "routine search" they're already allowed to do at borders is because the defendant's lawyer didn't raise the question of whether this search differed from a routine search during the first phase of the trial, and therefore the appellate court can't look at the issue now. Seems more like a dodge to duck the issue rather than an actual ruling. Here, I'll even give you the specific wording:

Finally, and for the first time in his reply brief, Romm argues the search of his laptop was too intrusive on his First Amendment interests to qualify as a "routine" border search. See generally Okafor, 285 F.3d at 846 (noting the difference between routine and non-routine searches). We decline to consider this issue here because "arguments not raised by a party in its opening brief are deemed waived." See Smith v. Marsh, 194 F.3d 1045, 1052 (9th Cir. 1999). Therefore, evaluating the border search of Romm's laptop solely as a routine search, we hold the district court correctly denied Romm's motion to suppress.

Fusion power

[Adrian Lopez]

I'm surprised by the stupid comments found on the page concerning China's Tokamak device. I'm eager for the day when scientists finally manage to create a working fusion reactor. Here's what asimov had to say back in 1975.

Obligatory Crypto Post

[psyclone]

I wonder how difficult it might be to get a stack of CDs containing truecrypt, GPG, [insert favorite crypto software here], etc. at one of those airport bookstores? You would include the source and binaries for as many operating systems and languages as possible. Proceeds from the CDs could go to the project authors.

Just a thought.

Doh!

[Jherek Carnelian]

It turns out that Forbes.com was wrong...

Forbes defaming linux? In an article written by Daniel Lyons? Who would have thunk it?

The guy has a well established reputation for being wrong that you can pretty trust anything he writes about linux to be exactly 180-degrees out of sync with reality.

Ordinarily I would want some of whatever he's been smoking, but it sure seems to make you mean and spiteful as a side-effect.

Who the hell is Forbe?

[Speare]

It's not Forbe's, it's Forbes.

Paedo-hysteria

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are wondering why the court decided to ignore the constitution, it's probably because they were Thinking of the Children. I quote:

Based on 40 images deleted from his internet cache and two images deleted from another part of his hard drive,2 Romm was convicted of knowingly receiving and knowingly possessing child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2252A(a)(2), (a)(5)(B). Romm appeals both of these convictions, as well as his concurrent mandatory minimum sentences of ten and fifteen years.

Apart from the absurdity of valuing locking away a single paedophile over the basic rights granted to everybody by the constitution, what the hell is going on with the sentence? Fifteen years for looking at forty-odd photos that he deleted afterwards? Some of them were just thumbnails too! What the hell?

I'm not condoning paedophilia (and I think it's fucking stupid that I have to add disclaimers like this), but something is seriously fucked up if looking at a few pictures means you are such a threat to society that you need to be locked up for the best part of two decades. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that over-the-top punishment like this is a worse crime than looking at the pictures in the first place. The kids aren't even going to be aware that he committed this crime, and yet the state is forcibly taking away a huge chunk of his life. The harm of the punishment is clearly out of all proportion to the harm caused by the crime.

Apparently, the excuse they used was a precedent set by an older case:

Instead, " 'searches made at the border . . . are reasonable simply by virtue of the fact that they occur at the border.' " United States v. Flores-Montano, 541 U.S. 149, 152-53 (2004) (quoting United States v. Ramsey, 431 U.S. 606, 616 (1977)).

Er, what? A border search is reasonable because it's a border search? Last time I checked, the constitution didn't say:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Oh, except when it's at the border.

Re:Paedo-hysteria

[Quila]

A border search is reasonable because it's a border search?

Yep, it's part of the ability of a sovereign nation to defend its borders. This is a very narrow exception though, as warrantless searches just within the border, past the fixed entry point, are not allowed.

In case you are wondering whether this is some modern Republico-fascist policy, these searches were authorized by the first Congress. The precedent over this includes the authority of Customs to inspect incoming container ships.

Re:Courts rule customs can rifle through your lapt

[chill]

Dude, this has been the norm in the UK and much of Europe for several years. They really don't like you bringing porn into their countries. Of course, there are ample supplies of domestic porn already there, so I'm not sure why you'd want to import it.

I've actually had a customs agent at Gatwick Airport (London, UK) ask me if I had any porn on my laptop. I told him no, if I wanted any I'd just get some local stuff as it seemed plentiful. Fortunately the British pride themselves on having a sense of humor. He offered suggestions on where to get it...

  -Charles

Customs

[TopSpin]

"Customs" can rifle through your anus without probable cause or even reasonable suspicion. Why anyone would suspect that laptops are somehow sacred and take it up with the courts mystifies me.

Feel The Burn Baby

[DumbSwede]

Here is a better link from a Chinese news source Super-heated fusion experiment to reach 100 million degrees

Evidently this isn't just aiming to achieve "break-even" but an actual "fusion burn" lasting 1000 seconds or approximately 16 minutes. I can't help but wonder that if they reach this goal whether it will massively accelerate the arrival of commercial fusion energy. The difference between break-even and burn is that break-even merely releases more energy than input, whereas burn requires self sustained reaction without additional input of energy.

Many people think controlled fusion is "undoable" so such a demonstration would go a long way towards getting rid of the "30 years away and always will be" assumption.
We only have to wait until Mid-August to find out.

Re:Feel The Burn Baby

[kidtexas]

Actually, to my knowledge they are not shooting for an actual "fusion burn". You can have a 1000 second discharge in a tokamak without it being a burning plasma. I don't even think they are shooting for break even. That could be in their road map though. They'd have to use tritium though and many large fusion devices don't want to do too many DT (deuterium tritium) experiments because then you have a neutron activated device that you have to work with.

To see a burning plasma, I think most of us are going to have to wait for ITER.

Not to steal EAST's thunder - it's a pretty amazing machine, and from what I hear, it only cost a couple tens of millions (like 40-50). If we tried to build something like that in the US it would have cost over 1 billion. yay for cheap labor.

Re:Feel The Burn Baby

[kidtexas]

I didn't read the article. I am a plasma physicist though. Just because a plasma gives off energy doesn't mean its burning. Heck it doesn't even mean it has any fusion reactions going on. No doubt EAST will have fusion events though. I really didn't think EAST was shooting for break even; I thought they were focussing on high plasma current almost steady state discharges which is quite significant in and of itself. It's a very cool machine - superconducting field coils, discharges up to 1000s, 1 MA of current. I wish it was in the US.

But I don't think they are going for break even. They'd have to put tritium in it, and if that does happen, it won't happen for a bunch of years. You might read about them claiming break even based on a DD shot they did and extrapolating what the fusion output would have been if was a DT reaction... But its not quite the same.

Why Scotty's ashes are being sent up late...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently the engineers testing the rocket didn't take this sage advice:

LaForge: "Yeah, well I told the captain I'd have this analysis done in an hour."
Scott: "How long would it really take?"
LaForge: "An hour!"
Scott: "Oh, you didn't tell him how long it would *really* take, did you?"
LaForge: "Well of course I did."
Scott: "Oh, laddie, you've got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker!"

Re:Ah yes

[ezratrumpet]

That's one of the realities of private institutions. Whoever is in charge, is in charge.

If you agree to go to a private school, you effectively sign away the Bill of Rights as a condition of admission. The school doesn't *have* to let you do anything - all of your rights are actually courtesies.

Most administrators know the difference between reasonable and unreasonable, but it's a fine distinction that too easily lends itself to broad rules and sweeping determinations.

Re:Courts rule customs can rifle through your lapt

[munpfazy]

I've actually had a customs agent at Gatwick Airport (London, UK) ask me if I had any porn on my laptop. I told him no, if I wanted any I'd just get some local stuff as it seemed plentiful. Fortunately the British pride themselves on having a sense of humor. He offered suggestions on where to get it...

Now, there *are* situations where the most efficient way to transmit data is by shipping physical media around - but they all involve huge amounts of data or places with little infrastructure. It's hard to come up with a scenario where it makes sense to illegally transfer data from one city with an international airport to another by putting it on a hard drive in a consumer laptop and flying people around with it.

A professional pornographer isn't going to bother carrying the product around with them. They'll set up shop somewhere, pay for a decent network connection and a bunch of dvd blanks, and bring it in electronically and then manufacture it on site. Or they'll bring in ten thousand pressed dvd's in a cargo crate labeled "bananas."

Likewise, someone carrying *really* bad stuff isn't going to just leave it lying around in an unencrypted folder on a laptop. Hell, I wouldn't think of leaving my perfectly legal vanilla porn unencrypted on a laptop in my house, much less one I'd take across international borders.

In countries where anyone can ssh to anywhere in the world and pull in whatever they want, this is just silly. You might occasionally catch really stupid consumers of illegal material, but that's all.

On a tangent, if I were going to try to get some really bad data across the border into a place with no network, I'd probably stick it on encrypted flash drives, disassemble them as much as possible to remove cases and excess hardware, and then screw or cement the boards into place in the bodies of consumer electronics gear. Add an equal number of identical but unmodified drives loaded with holiday photos to use for reassembly parts, and buy the screwdrivers and soldering station at a shop when you arrive. The illegal material in my laptop, if I had any, would be on the pc board hot-glued to the underside of the mainboar - not on the hard drive. (If you really want to do it right, you design pc boards that fit into the cases perfectly and come with standoff and mounting hardware designed to fit the flash drive boards, so that it would pass even a casual inspection by a knowledgeable person. Hide any identifying bits under globs of black epoxy, or place them upside down. Extra points if you manage to route the connectors on the flash board to accessible headers and connect to the drives without even reassembling them.)

Yeah, TrueCrypt !!

[HangingChad]

If they were smart enough to find the encrypted partition and demand the pass phrase, you give up the normal partition phrase and they never even know about the hidden partition. It can also run off a USB device. As usual this will snare hundreds of stupid people.

Not that I don't think it's totally retarded you have to go to those lengths to keep the government from spying on your laptop. Ah, what do you expect from Republicans?

Re: Hiding Flash

[chill]

What I've done in the past is:

1. Purchase a 1 Gb flash drive. Stick a label on it so the size isn't advertised.
2. Partition it 512 Mb FAT-32 / 512 Mb Ext-2
3. Put innocuous stuff all on the FAT partition -- anything hidden gets encrypted and put on the Ext-2

Any one that sticks the flash drive into a Windows box will automount the first partitions. Nothing to see there -- move along. The Ext-2 won't show up unless they look at it with a partitioning tool.

I've never had anyone look twice. Of course, I've never been under close scrutiny, but it certainly passed casual inspection.

The 1 Gb PQI Intellistick is so small it easily fits between credit cards in my wallet without being seen. It doesn't trigger metal detectors, so I leave my wallet in my pocket when going thru those in airports. I don't let it get x-rayed and it just never shows up. The card costs like $45.