RIP: 4th amendment rights for email

"Eleventh Circuit Decision Largely Eliminates Fourth Amendment Protection in E-Mail

Last Thursday, the Eleventh Circuit handed down a Fourth Amendment case, Rehberg v. Paulk, that takes a very narrow view of how the Fourth Amendment applies to e-mail. The Eleventh Circuit held that constitutional protection in stored copies of e-mail held by third parties disappears as soon as any copy of the communication is delivered. Under this new decision, if the government wants get your e-mails, the Fourth Amendment lets the government go to your ISP, wait the seconds it normally takes for the e-mail to be delivered, and then run off copies of your messages." ...

http://volokh.com/2010/03/15/eleventh-circuit-decision-largely-eliminates-fourth-amendment-protection-in-e-mail/

[sarcasm] I'm sure such a decision would never be abused by our government. [/sarcasm]

Doonesbury Say What?

"They let a cowboy president try to act in an extra-constitutional way to violate a fundamental principle in the Constitution, all without having done their homework in advance."
-- Karl Rove, on how the Obama administration handled the coup in Honduras

Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.

We lost a long time ago

It's amazing how cost-effective asymmetrical warfare is for the cheap side.

Fake PIN pad units at Hancock Fabrics

The Register reports that earlier this month, the Hancock Fabrics chain store published an open letter to its customers, informing them that in some of their stores the payment card terminals were replaced with "visually identical, but fraudulent PIN pad units", making it possible for criminals behind this scheme to steal payment card data such as the name on the card, its number and expiration date and PIN number when entered.

http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=9033

I had not heard of this, and I know lots of people do crafty sort of things and probably go there on a regular basis.

Last week my debit card was compromised. I was compiling tax information and noticed a $94 charge with a vendor that I did not recognize. I queried the vendor info and it turned out to be a gas station in North Carolina. So now my debit card is gone, hopefully I'll have a new one before I go to Vegas next week for GTS.

The sad thing? My bank has branches in Vegas, I could have had my new card sent there. They'll only send the new card to my address on file, or to a branch. They only have one branch in Phoenix, way out in Tolleson.