Why doesn't Schneier analyze whether you can "hack the vote" in the House of Lords?
Because the Lords don't elect the Prime Minister?
Doesn't matter, as long as they vote on something.
The point is that this is a body of, what, about seven hundred people, most of whom know each other, and hence has similar dynamics to the voting of the College of Cardinals, unlike the United States electorate of about two hundred million people.
Can you "hack" a vote in the House of Lords? In what way would that be different from hacking the vote in the College of Cardinals?
As Mr. Schneier points out, this doesn't scale. There is no way you could do a US Presidential election this way.
This is not unique, not even very unusual. What we are seeing here is members of a parliament voting for a prime minister. That happens in a hundred places across the world. Why doesn't Schneier analyze whether you can "hack the vote" in the House of Lords?
If you do want to compare it to the US, this compares to a vote in the Senate, and is somewhat much smaller than a vote in the House of Representatives.
Yes, I'm puzzle at the sarcasm here. It's a war toy, somewhat more up to date than the war toys I played with as a kid, but cap-guns, soldier action figures, grenades, bazookas, model jet fighters, tanks, and battleships... I played with all of these. There's nothing new about this.
I have to say, the more they update and revise Office, the more broken it seems. Wouldn't it be nice if they fixed bugs and made it work better with each iteration, instead of worse?
But seriously, lawmakers talking of laws being too harsh? Judges releasing people convicted under three-strikes in California? For America with its chart-topping prison population numbers, that's revolutionary enough.
Indeed; I think that the problem isn't "the steady increase in penalties for even minor computer crimes," but the gradual increase in penalties for all crimes.
Rather than working on solving more crimes, the justice system seems to be trending toward making penalties harsher for the criminals that they do catch. This is a vicious circle; the harsher the penalties are, the more money we're spending on keeping people incarcerated.
I also find perturbing the technique used by prosecutors of charging people with a vast array of charges with huge possible penalties, so that they will have incentive to plea-bargain down to avoid the worst-case scenario that will be extremely harsh. This may indeed succeed for the prosecutors in getting guilty pleas, and succeed to some extent in saving the expense of trials-- but if some accused people actually are innocent (or even are guilty of minor crimes but not of everything in the book that they've been charged with), it is a failure of justice.
Yawn. Another open access "journal" that's going to make money by charging authors. Open access journals are the science equivalent of vanity publishers. I get about three solicitations a week for me to send papers to some open access journal that I've never heard of.
There's almost zero entry barrier to somebody setting up a website and calling an "open access scientific journal." What they're saying is, give them a hundred bucks and they'll put your text on the web! It costs almost nothing to them, they make a hundred bucks profit, and you can say "look see, I have a publication!"
Anybody can start a "journal." But, does it mean anything? Does anybody actually read it? Does anybody (other than the author) ever cite it?
This could be simple if you just get a few druggies to help you out. Have the checks put in the name of 5 - 10 druggies, using their real names. Make it seem like you have a bunch of freelancers renovating a house or something. Mail it to a neighborhood where the neighbors don't give a fuck.
Have the druggies cash the checks, at places away from their homes/areas they hang out in (i.e. where the bank tellers don't know them). They won't care if their ID and picture is seen in the bank, because they're getting drugs out of the deal.
So, let's see, the druggies cash the checks, and promptly snort the money up their noses ("see, like, we was planning on giving you a cut a the money and everything, uh, cause you was helping us out and all, you know, but my dealer was there and I already owed him ten grand, and plus I really really needed a fix..."), and you get nothing.
Then, when they get picked up (because they did use their own names...), all 5 - 10 of them finger you as part of the plea bargain.
So, your profit is zero, and you have five to ten witnesses testifying against you, so you go to jail for wire fraud, bank fraud, utterance, and conspiracy. Not such a great plan.
So the argument is someone steals my password, steals my money, gives it to a money mule... then I get my money back from the bank, and someone that doesn't cost me in the end?
No.
The argument is that convincing everybody in the U.S. to make their passwords harder to crack won't reduce the number of thefts from bank accounts using stolen passwords, because the rate at which passwords are stolen isn't the factor that controls how many accounts are stolen from.
if you got my bank password... you could use online billpay to mail a check and cash it... if it was under a thousand, my bank wouldn't blink. so scenario.. I get a good set of identity papers, even just a license together for a lady who works all day
Identity papers good enough to fool a bank cost money.
I have, 10 account passwords at different banks and use online billpay to mail out 10 checks for $900 + odd amount checks. I swipe them from the mailbox of the lady who works all day.... I cash them all on the same day- visiting 10 issuing banks... burn the ID
yes, I see where that could fall apart in a few spots
It sure does. For a profit of $9000 (minus the cost of forged identity papers), you have left your image and paper trail in the security camera of the bank you used to transfer the money, plus ten other banks; plus stealing from the U.S. mail probably over four or five days and hoping that the nosy neighbors weren't watching. You're hoping that none of the ten got their bank statement and noticed the check payment in the three days it takes the check to be mailed. And once the first person complains, the warning about your forged identity is going to go out to all the other banks, and so when you cash check number n, you're hoping that the account holders of checks 1 through n-1 haven't been complained yet. And banks in the US have a three-day hold on availability of funds from checks; so you are going to have to wait and hope not one of ten people noticed the withdrawal.
Suppose it is a 5% probability of getting caught on any one transaction. On the average, you'll make $18,000 before being caught. That is so not worth it.
Or you could just use online bill pay to transfer money to a prepaid credit card.
Except that banks do know that trick and protect against it. It's not hard to put $50 on a prepaid credit card without leaving tracks. Try putting $9000 on a credit card, and they start keeping records of who you are.
Huh? Just go to "transfer money", write the account number of the receiver and the amount, and off the money goes. At least that is how it works here in Denmark. Very handy, too. Is the US still using personal paper checks?
The article is talking about irreversible and untraceable money transfer. If the bank has been given "the account number of the receiver and the amount", it is neither irreversible nor untraceable. When the person defrauded complains to the bank, they reverse the transfer.
Thus, the thief needs a mule, a person with an account that can be used to accept the transferred money and turn it (somehow) into untraceable cash.
Some banks, like ING Direct, even allow you to transfer money between two phones if you have their app installed. Steal someone's phone, find they have their passwords saved, install the app on your phone and transfer away.
Transfer to whom? To steal money by such a transfer you need to make an irreversible transfer to an untraceable account. (If it's not irreversible, they just take the money back; if it's not untraceable, they come after you and put you in jail.) The whole point of the article is that this process, making a transfer that the bank can't reverse and sending the money to an account that the law can't trace, is much more difficult than the process of stealing passwords.
So, they broke internet access, but it's ok, because you can download the fix from the internet.
That reminds me of the failure of the Russian Phobos-1 mission, which occurred when they sent an (incorrect) command stating, roughly, "point the receiving antenna away from the Earth, and wait for further instructions."
Burglary requires the building to be a dwelling-house, i.e. and habitation. People need to live there.
That's the old common law definition, but it depends on the state.
from: http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/burglary-definition.html : Burglary is typically defined as the unlawful entry into almost any structure (not just a home or business) with the intent to commit any crime inside (not just theft/larceny). No physical breaking and entering is required; the offender...
In New York, for example, it's first or second degree burglary if the building entered is a dwelling, third-degree burglary if it's not. http://definitions.uslegal.com/b/burglary/
FFS, he was NOT a student. They had no purvue over him! The authorities were the only ones who did!!!
Okay, so strike that line and go with the "community service" option. It doesn't change much.
OK. Community service seems like a reasonable sentence for the judge to impose. For him to be given a sentence of community service, however, first he would have to be found guilty-- you can't sentence somebody to "community service" without charging them with a crime. But there aren't any crimes the description of which is "subject to a maximum sentence of community service"-- that's something that the judge might chose to impose at the sentencing hearing, but it's not what the newspaper puts in the headline after "possible penalties as high as."
Uh, the US has not gone after Assange (not yet, anyway). The US went after Bradley Manning, is that who you're thinking of? Sweden is going after Assange, who is wanted in Sweden for questioning on rape charges, and Assange says that he fears that if he goes to Sweden to answer the charges, they will extradite him to the US... but to date, there is no U.S. action against Assange.
...So now 26 Aaron had a choice. Fight for 3-4 yrs in the courts and then spend 15-20 yrs in the slammer or...
Newspapers always like to phrase indictments with words like "up to XX years in prison!" This makes the news story more exciting. However, there are such things as federal sentencing guidelines. Non-violent crime, first offense, no previous convictions, no aggravating factors-- I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up with a fine plus time served.
Furthermore, he almost certainly could get a plea bargain-- believe it or not, prosecutors don't want to go to court if they can possibly get a conviction without doing so. Unfortunately, a plea bargain would have required Swartz admitting that he did broke the law, and it looks like he was not the type of person who would do that.
I'm not surprised this guy looked at the options and chose the one he did, it was probably the most rational sane thing to do.
You know, that almost sounds like an endorsement for suicide which is probably one of the most disgusting and vehement posts I've read here so far.
Just as a reminder, Swartz was subject to bouts of extreme depression. Although it's a human tendency to want to find external causes and somebody to blame, it is most likely that depression has more to do with his suicide than any other factor.
...Peer review also does not mean that they are reviewed by the NAS before publishing but by outside sources that are intimately familiar with the subjects.
Correct: NAS reports are peer reviewed by outside experts who are not employed by the NAS and not involved in writing the report.
No, reports are authored by a committee of experts and subjected to peer review by another group of experts, which remains anonymous until the report is published. All are volunteers who work pro bono in service to the nation. Paid staff scientists and administrators facilitate the work of the committee. For more on the study process, visit our policies and proceedures page.
How are committees balanced, and how is conflict of interest evaluated?
For the National Research Council's policy on committee composition and conflicts of interest, see our conflict of interest page.
Are your reports peer reviewed?
Yes, all of the institution's reports - whether products of studies, summaries of workshop proceedings, or abbreviated documents - must undergo an independent review by anonymous experts who were not involved in the report's preparation. This process is overseen by the Report Review Committee, whose responsibilities are to ensure that the report addresses the approved study charge and does not go beyond it; the findings are supported by the evidence and arguments presented; and the exposition and organization are effective.
So, yes, the fact that it's a report published by the National Academies of Sciences does mean peer review.
, or a good study.
First, the statement I was taking issue with was the statement "appears to not be peer-reviewed," which is incorrect.
The question as to whether it's a "good" study is a much harder one. Obviously, the purpose of peer review is to try to make sure that it is a good study, but peer review is not perfect. However National Academy of Sciences reports are quite meticulous; for the most part they are good studies. There are sometimes people who disagree with NAS reports for political reasons, and hence people trying to make a case that the studies are not good because they have an interest in discrediting them. These people, for the most part, are wrong.
That is simply not true for two reasons: First, this is appears to not be peer-reviewed, and thus does not count as "medical research" by any means.
Sorry. no. This is the National Academies of Science. This is pretty much the gold standard of peer review; you really can't do much better than that. And, yes, NAS reports are very extensively peer reviewed.
You're right about this not being "medical research." This is a review. Reviews are not original research, they are summaries of research done by others-- in essence, a review is the peer review of an aggregate of studies.
Seriously. People skimming may think he included Zuckerberg because of, well, Zuckerberg is an ass himself... but actually it is because he didn't wear professional attire? Right guy, completely wrong reasons.
Sorry, but your should have put a period after " People skimming may think he included Zuckerberg."
The word you want is "chain of custody". But that isn't the case here, since it's not physical evidence.
In any case it's irrelevant, since the prosecutor already had the videos that Anonymous released. What Anonymous did was to make them public. Whether it's a good thing to put videos of a purported rape out onto the internet is another discussion.
....Some people present tweeted what was taking place, some took pictures and one shining example of the human race was recorded for a length of time bragging about how much she was fucked (worse than in the movie Pulp Fiction according to him)..
"One guy called asking why is (the person in the video) not arrested," said [Sheriff] Abdalla. "He wasn't even in the same place where the incident occurred. He made this video based on what people were telling him about (the alleged incident). This was no criminal act. I said it the other day: You can't arrest somebody for being stupid. It was disgusting and nauseating. But you can't arrest him for that."
I'm not sure that your advocacy of "the death penalty" is appropriate here.
That article has no information whatsoever on how a private individual would procure a launch. And the prices are dubious-- slightly after the part quoted, for example, the article says "recently it was announced that CubeSats can fly on Atlas V launch vehicles. The cost of a single secondary payload on board of an Atlas V has been quoted as $1 to $2 million per slot."
Maybe, if you're an educational institution with good networking and negotiating skills, you might be able to negotiate a launch for $40K.
There are plenty of sites on how to build cubesats, and where to procure parts. Finding that information isn't hard; use google. As for launching-- that's up to you. Just saying that somewhere out there there are companies that will sell you a launch "for a modest fee"-- well, I suggest that there's a lot of handwaving here. If you want not just build a cubesat, but get it into orbit, you might want to nail this down a few more particulars: what companies? How do you get on their manifest? What are their requirements? Are they only selling launches to educational institutions at a cost that barely covers the cost of integration, or do they sell to individuals or amateur groups, which is what you seem to be? And, for the start-up companies, have they ever launched their vehicle into orbit, and if not, when do they expect to demonstrate their first launch?
Slashdot Mirror
Why doesn't Schneier analyze whether you can "hack the vote" in the House of Lords?
Because the Lords don't elect the Prime Minister?
Doesn't matter, as long as they vote on something.
The point is that this is a body of, what, about seven hundred people, most of whom know each other, and hence has similar dynamics to the voting of the College of Cardinals, unlike the United States electorate of about two hundred million people.
Can you "hack" a vote in the House of Lords? In what way would that be different from hacking the vote in the College of Cardinals?
As Mr. Schneier points out, this doesn't scale. There is no way you could do a US Presidential election this way.
This is not unique, not even very unusual. What we are seeing here is members of a parliament voting for a prime minister. That happens in a hundred places across the world. Why doesn't Schneier analyze whether you can "hack the vote" in the House of Lords?
If you do want to compare it to the US, this compares to a vote in the Senate, and is somewhat much smaller than a vote in the House of Representatives.
Yes, I'm puzzle at the sarcasm here. It's a war toy, somewhat more up to date than the war toys I played with as a kid, but cap-guns, soldier action figures, grenades, bazookas, model jet fighters, tanks, and battleships... I played with all of these. There's nothing new about this.
I have to say, the more they update and revise Office, the more broken it seems.
Wouldn't it be nice if they fixed bugs and made it work better with each iteration, instead of worse?
But seriously, lawmakers talking of laws being too harsh? Judges releasing people convicted under three-strikes in California? For America with its chart-topping prison population numbers, that's revolutionary enough.
Indeed; I think that the problem isn't "the steady increase in penalties for even minor computer crimes," but the gradual increase in penalties for all crimes.
Rather than working on solving more crimes, the justice system seems to be trending toward making penalties harsher for the criminals that they do catch. This is a vicious circle; the harsher the penalties are, the more money we're spending on keeping people incarcerated.
I also find perturbing the technique used by prosecutors of charging people with a vast array of charges with huge possible penalties, so that they will have incentive to plea-bargain down to avoid the worst-case scenario that will be extremely harsh. This may indeed succeed for the prosecutors in getting guilty pleas, and succeed to some extent in saving the expense of trials-- but if some accused people actually are innocent (or even are guilty of minor crimes but not of everything in the book that they've been charged with), it is a failure of justice.
Yawn. Another open access "journal" that's going to make money by charging authors. Open access journals are the science equivalent of vanity publishers. I get about three solicitations a week for me to send papers to some open access journal that I've never heard of.
There's almost zero entry barrier to somebody setting up a website and calling an "open access scientific journal." What they're saying is, give them a hundred bucks and they'll put your text on the web! It costs almost nothing to them, they make a hundred bucks profit, and you can say "look see, I have a publication!"
Anybody can start a "journal." But, does it mean anything? Does anybody actually read it? Does anybody (other than the author) ever cite it?
This could be simple if you just get a few druggies to help you out.
Have the checks put in the name of 5 - 10 druggies, using their real names. Make it seem like you have a bunch of freelancers renovating a house or something. Mail it to a neighborhood where the neighbors don't give a fuck.
Have the druggies cash the checks, at places away from their homes/areas they hang out in (i.e. where the bank tellers don't know them). They won't care if their ID and picture is seen in the bank, because they're getting drugs out of the deal.
So, let's see, the druggies cash the checks, and promptly snort the money up their noses ("see, like, we was planning on giving you a cut a the money and everything, uh, cause you was helping us out and all, you know, but my dealer was there and I already owed him ten grand, and plus I really really needed a fix..."), and you get nothing.
Then, when they get picked up (because they did use their own names...), all 5 - 10 of them finger you as part of the plea bargain.
So, your profit is zero, and you have five to ten witnesses testifying against you, so you go to jail for wire fraud, bank fraud, utterance, and conspiracy. Not such a great plan.
So the argument is someone steals my password, steals my money, gives it to a money mule... then I get my money back from the bank, and someone that doesn't cost me in the end?
No.
The argument is that convincing everybody in the U.S. to make their passwords harder to crack won't reduce the number of thefts from bank accounts using stolen passwords, because the rate at which passwords are stolen isn't the factor that controls how many accounts are stolen from.
if you got my bank password... you could use online billpay to mail a check and cash it... if it was under a thousand, my bank wouldn't blink.
so scenario.. I get a good set of identity papers, even just a license together for a lady who works all day
Identity papers good enough to fool a bank cost money.
I have, 10 account passwords at different banks and use online billpay to mail out 10 checks for $900 + odd amount checks. I swipe them from the mailbox of the lady who works all day....
I cash them all on the same day- visiting 10 issuing banks...
burn the ID
yes, I see where that could fall apart in a few spots
It sure does. For a profit of $9000 (minus the cost of forged identity papers), you have left your image and paper trail in the security camera of the bank you used to transfer the money, plus ten other banks; plus stealing from the U.S. mail probably over four or five days and hoping that the nosy neighbors weren't watching. You're hoping that none of the ten got their bank statement and noticed the check payment in the three days it takes the check to be mailed. And once the first person complains, the warning about your forged identity is going to go out to all the other banks, and so when you cash check number n, you're hoping that the account holders of checks 1 through n-1 haven't been complained yet. And banks in the US have a three-day hold on availability of funds from checks; so you are going to have to wait and hope not one of ten people noticed the withdrawal.
Suppose it is a 5% probability of getting caught on any one transaction. On the average, you'll make $18,000 before being caught. That is so not worth it.
Or you could just use online bill pay to transfer money to a prepaid credit card.
Except that banks do know that trick and protect against it. It's not hard to put $50 on a prepaid credit card without leaving tracks. Try putting $9000 on a credit card, and they start keeping records of who you are.
Huh? Just go to "transfer money", write the account number of the receiver and the amount, and off the money goes.
At least that is how it works here in Denmark. Very handy, too. Is the US still using personal paper checks?
The article is talking about irreversible and untraceable money transfer. If the bank has been given "the account number of the receiver and the amount", it is neither irreversible nor untraceable. When the person defrauded complains to the bank, they reverse the transfer.
Thus, the thief needs a mule, a person with an account that can be used to accept the transferred money and turn it (somehow) into untraceable cash.
Some banks, like ING Direct, even allow you to transfer money between two phones if you have their app installed. Steal someone's phone, find they have their passwords saved, install the app on your phone and transfer away.
Transfer to whom? To steal money by such a transfer you need to make an irreversible transfer to an untraceable account. (If it's not irreversible, they just take the money back; if it's not untraceable, they come after you and put you in jail.) The whole point of the article is that this process, making a transfer that the bank can't reverse and sending the money to an account that the law can't trace, is much more difficult than the process of stealing passwords.
So, they broke internet access, but it's ok, because you can download the fix from the internet.
That reminds me of the failure of the Russian Phobos-1 mission, which occurred when they sent an (incorrect) command stating, roughly, "point the receiving antenna away from the Earth, and wait for further instructions."
* (greatly simplified)
Wow-- I just noticed this-- I got linked!
(at the pdf report linked at the words "...The acid's no fun, but it turns out the area right above the clouds is a great environment for an airplane" in the Venus section)
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20030003716_2002108457.pdf
Burglary requires the building to be a dwelling-house, i.e. and habitation. People need to live there.
That's the old common law definition, but it depends on the state.
from: http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/burglary-definition.html :
Burglary is typically defined as the unlawful entry into almost any structure (not just a home or business) with the intent to commit any crime inside (not just theft/larceny). No physical breaking and entering is required; the offender...
In New York, for example, it's first or second degree burglary if the building entered is a dwelling, third-degree burglary if it's not. http://definitions.uslegal.com/b/burglary/
FFS, he was NOT a student. They had no purvue over him! The authorities were the only ones who did!!!
Okay, so strike that line and go with the "community service" option. It doesn't change much.
OK. Community service seems like a reasonable sentence for the judge to impose. For him to be given a sentence of community service, however, first he would have to be found guilty-- you can't sentence somebody to "community service" without charging them with a crime. But there aren't any crimes the description of which is "subject to a maximum sentence of community service"-- that's something that the judge might chose to impose at the sentencing hearing, but it's not what the newspaper puts in the headline after "possible penalties as high as."
A few minor corrections.
After watching US going after Assange...
Uh, the US has not gone after Assange (not yet, anyway). The US went after Bradley Manning, is that who you're thinking of? Sweden is going after Assange, who is wanted in Sweden for questioning on rape charges, and Assange says that he fears that if he goes to Sweden to answer the charges, they will extradite him to the US... but to date, there is no U.S. action against Assange.
...So now 26 Aaron had a choice. Fight for 3-4 yrs in the courts and then spend 15-20 yrs in the slammer or...
Newspapers always like to phrase indictments with words like "up to XX years in prison!" This makes the news story more exciting. However, there are such things as federal sentencing guidelines. Non-violent crime, first offense, no previous convictions, no aggravating factors-- I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up with a fine plus time served.
Furthermore, he almost certainly could get a plea bargain-- believe it or not, prosecutors don't want to go to court if they can possibly get a conviction without doing so. Unfortunately, a plea bargain would have required Swartz admitting that he did broke the law, and it looks like he was not the type of person who would do that.
I'm not surprised this guy looked at the options and chose the one he did, it was probably the most rational sane thing to do.
You know, that almost sounds like an endorsement for suicide which is probably one of the most disgusting and vehement posts I've read here so far.
Just as a reminder, Swartz was subject to bouts of extreme depression. Although it's a human tendency to want to find external causes and somebody to blame, it is most likely that depression has more to do with his suicide than any other factor.
Unless I am missing something fundamental,
You are.
NAS reports are peer reviewed
...Peer review also does not mean that they are reviewed by the NAS before publishing but by outside sources that are intimately familiar with the subjects.
Correct: NAS reports are peer reviewed by outside experts who are not employed by the NAS and not involved in writing the report.
check http://www.nationalacademies.org/newsroom/faq/index.html
A peer reviewed report of 400some pages would be quite unusual
...except for the National Academy of Sciences.
And published in NAS does not necessarily mean peer review
Sorry, but you are wrong.
The NAS FAQ http://www.nationalacademies.org/newsroom/faq/index.html states:
So, yes, the fact that it's a report published by the National Academies of Sciences does mean peer review.
, or a good study.
First, the statement I was taking issue with was the statement "appears to not be peer-reviewed," which is incorrect.
The question as to whether it's a "good" study is a much harder one. Obviously, the purpose of peer review is to try to make sure that it is a good study, but peer review is not perfect. However National Academy of Sciences reports are quite meticulous; for the most part they are good studies. There are sometimes people who disagree with NAS reports for political reasons, and hence people trying to make a case that the studies are not good because they have an interest in discrediting them. These people, for the most part, are wrong.
That is simply not true for two reasons: First, this is appears to not be peer-reviewed, and thus does not count as "medical research" by any means.
Sorry. no. This is the National Academies of Science. This is pretty much the gold standard of peer review; you really can't do much better than that. And, yes, NAS reports are very extensively peer reviewed.
You're right about this not being "medical research." This is a review. Reviews are not original research, they are summaries of research done by others-- in essence, a review is the peer review of an aggregate of studies.
The report is here: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13497
Seriously. People skimming may think he included Zuckerberg because of, well, Zuckerberg is an ass himself... but actually it is because he didn't wear professional attire? Right guy, completely wrong reasons.
Sorry, but your should have put a period after " People skimming may think he included Zuckerberg."
He didn't. Zuckerberg did not make the list.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-leadership/the-five-worst-ceos-of-2012/2012/12/18/0f353f14-4940-11e2-ad54-580638ede391_story_1.html
Zuckerberg is apparently like Hitler-- any mention of him hijacks the thread, and all discussion of the actual content ceases.
The word you want is "chain of custody". But that isn't the case here, since it's not physical evidence.
In any case it's irrelevant, since the prosecutor already had the videos that Anonymous released. What Anonymous did was to make them public. Whether it's a good thing to put videos of a purported rape out onto the internet is another discussion.
....Some people present tweeted what was taking place, some took pictures and one shining example of the human race was recorded for a length of time bragging about how much she was fucked (worse than in the movie Pulp Fiction according to him). .
Apparently the high-school kid who "was recorded for a length of time bragging about how much she was fucked" wasn't there: :
http://www.wtov9.com/news/news/sheriff-anonymous-hacker-im-coming-after-you/nTnNX/
I'm not sure that your advocacy of "the death penalty" is appropriate here.
Wow, amazing how much useless advice there is here. You might reconsider that "best community of geeks" through.
Advice: google the term "cybersquatting."
So not hard per se, just expensive.
That article has no information whatsoever on how a private individual would procure a launch. And the prices are dubious-- slightly after the part quoted, for example, the article says "recently it was announced that CubeSats can fly on Atlas V launch vehicles. The cost of a single secondary payload on board of an Atlas V has been quoted as $1 to $2 million per slot."
Maybe, if you're an educational institution with good networking and negotiating skills, you might be able to negotiate a launch for $40K.
There are plenty of sites on how to build cubesats, and where to procure parts. Finding that information isn't hard; use google. As for launching-- that's up to you. Just saying that somewhere out there there are companies that will sell you a launch "for a modest fee"-- well, I suggest that there's a lot of handwaving here. If you want not just build a cubesat, but get it into orbit, you might want to nail this down a few more particulars: what companies? How do you get on their manifest? What are their requirements? Are they only selling launches to educational institutions at a cost that barely covers the cost of integration, or do they sell to individuals or amateur groups, which is what you seem to be? And, for the start-up companies, have they ever launched their vehicle into orbit, and if not, when do they expect to demonstrate their first launch?
Apparently that isn't the hard part, as the poster already identified a company that will do it.
Wikipedia?
I'd suggest that the poster take a harder look.