Category Archives: The Morgue

You’ve Been Hacked!

Posted on by
government spying, cell phone, mobile phone, law enforcement surveillance

(photo: upload.wikimedia.org)

So how do cops and spooks steal data from your mobile phone, anyway? Research teams at the Kaspersky Lab in Russia and Toronto’s Citizen Lab independently analyzed a digital surveillance tool created by the Italian Company, Hacking Team (do watch this marketing video if you want something to think about), which more than 60 government worldwide use to snatch and record mobile phone data. The tool’s components have been designed to target Android, iOS, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry users—one of whom is probably you.

According to a lengthy Wired article by Kim Zetter, here’s what the Hacking Team’s tool can do: collect your emails, text messages, call history, and address books; log keystrokes, reveal where you’ve searched, and take screenshots; record audio of calls and the ambient sounds in the room where the phone is; and use the phone’s camera to take pictures of the surroundings. No surprise, the tool can use the phone’s GPS system to locate it (and probably, you, too). In other words, the tool can do with the phone pretty much everything you can.

What’s new about these revelations is that this is the first time these techniques have been reverse-engineered to reveal how they really work, including how they protect themselves from detection. Here’s a blog post about these discoveries from Russian researcher Sergey Golovanov.

film noir, spies

(photo: c1.staticflickr.com)

Spies following each other through the wetly reflecting nighttime alleys of Eastern Europe will be relegated to film noir, since the above functions let a tracker follow you to that screening of 1984 and home again from some remote center. Most countries using this technology have one or two command-and-control centers to monitor multiple targets and conduct surveillance. The nation with by far the most such centers? The United States, with 64.

The genie is out of the bottle, however, and “This type of exceptionally invasive toolkit, once a costly boutique capability deployed by intelligence communities and militaries, is now being marketed for targeting everyday criminality and ‘security threats,’” say Citizen Lab researchers. Inevitably, people who shouldn’t have it, will.

Related articles

Amen.

Posted on by

amen, Costa-Gavras, Vatican, NaziCosta-Gavras’s 2002 movie about the role of The Vatican in World War II (you can watch it here) was certain to be controversial, as opinions are strongly felt, relevant information is still secreted in Vatican archives, and the movie is based on a controversial play, The Deputy, by an erratic German playwright, Rolf Hochhuth. (The movie promotion, like this poster, offended many, as well.)

Most interesting is the portrayal of an SS officer hired to help “control vermin” at military bases—typhus was a big problem—using deadly Zyklon B gas. At a concentration camp, he witnesses the gas being used against people and is so horrified, he makes many efforts to bring religious leaders’ attention to the carnage, believing that if they would only speak out, the horror will stop. He befriends a (fictional) young Jesuit who joins his crusade and takes these concerns all the way to Pope Pius XII.

In real life, and improbably, such an SS officer did exist. Kurt Gerstein was thrown out of the Nazi party in the 1930s, yet allowed to join the SS in 1941 and, because of his engineering and medical education, soon became head of the Technical Disinfection Services. In custody after the war, he wrote lengthy testimony about the death camps that became prominent evidence in subsequent war crimes trials, including at Nuremberg. Gerstein died in French custody in 1945, reportedly by suicide. His story is included in Europe Central, a National Book Award-winning novel by William T. Vollman.

Throughout the period, the Pope’s pronouncements were consistently anti-war, but vague. In the movie, he doesn’t speak out about the Jews, specifically, for a number of reasons (explored in an interesting article by Jewish historians here): The Vatican’s neutrality (the Allies and the Nazis both criticized it for favoring the other side); fear that Church properties in Germany would be seized, or The Vatican itself invaded; and concern that opposition to Germany would give support to the atheistic Soviets, with communism deemed the greater long-term threat to the Church. When this issue came up during a visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau, an American Catholic defended the Church, saying rather heatedly that the Pope couldn’t speak out, or “the nuns and priests would be next.”

People's Palace, Bucharest, Palace of the Parliament, Romania

Parliament, Bucharest (photo: 1.bp.blogspot.com)

Despite all this, many individual clergy and religious moved to protect threatened individuals, and the Pope himself quietly urged Catholic churches, convents, and other facilities to take in Jews, and the movie includes this. Amen. makes for interesting viewing, and perhaps we will never know the full story.

As a side-note, I learned about this movie when visiting Romania last year. Because filming inside The Vatican was not allowed, the movie Vatican was the enormous, surreally empty “People’s Palace” in Bucharest.

Such Stuff as Dreams: The Tempest vs. Ida

Posted on by
Shakespeare, The Tempest

Sherman Howard (Prospero) and Erin Partin (Ariel) in The Tempest, Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey (photo: imgick.nj.com)

Quite a contrast recently between the nonstop cannonade of literary touchstones in The Tempest—in an exuberant and colorful production at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, alas, only through June 22—and the oppressive restraint of the near-silent black-and-white movie from Poland, Ida, viewed the same day (trailer).

In the live—and lively—play, the portrayals by Sherman Howard (Prospero), Lindsey Kyler (Miranda), John Barker (Caliban), and especially Erin Partin (Ariel) were remarkable.

Shakespeare touches button after button with his iconic quotes: “Hell is empty and all the devils are here” (wait, that sounds like John Boehner’s voice!), “Now I will believe that there are unicorns,” “We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” “What’s past is prologue,” , “O, brave new world, that has such people in’t,” “my library was dukedom large enough,” or “he receives comfort like cold porridge,” Ida has hardly any dialog.

David Denby in The New Yorker puts a positive spin on this, saying, “I can’t recall a movie that makes such expressive use of silence and portraiture.” In Ida, instead of being carried along by a current of words, we float in a bleak, misty, ambiguous atmosphere, albeit rendered with beautiful cinematography, “every shot as definitive as an icon,” Denby says, quite truly.

But after all Shakespeare’s verbal passion, Ida felt like cold porridge indeed. Perhaps the filmmakers had some great story in mind and just forgot to tell it, because they give the barest of bones and leave viewers (me, anyway) with more questions than answers—not so much about the past, which the movie explores in sufficient glimpses—but about what is going on right now in the minds of the characters on the screen.

Agata Kulesza, does a fine job playing the aunt of the main character, a sheltered, opaque novitiate raised in a convent (Ida), played less well by Agata Trzebuchowska. The pair uncover a terrible but not uncommon World War II tragedy, and the question of whether exposure to her aunt’s earthiness will persuade somnambulant Ida to abandon the convent seems none too debatable. Bear in mind the Rotten Tomatoes critics gave it 93%, so don’t take my word for it.

Related articles

Getting There Is Half the Fun

Posted on by

If travel is in your summer plans—whether by plane, boat, foot, auto, imagination, or whatever—NPR has worked up a booklist for you (and your kids)! Only a rather diabolical sense of humor would team up Anna Karenina and The Little Engine that Could. But NPR has faith you’ll get it. Hmmm. Sorry to say I forgot to check that particular list for Murder on the Orient Express. But you get the idea. As NPR says, “This summer, we’re focusing on the journey.”

On our recent trip to Ottawa, I could stay up as late as I wanted and read four books, even had an excuse to go to the bookstore to pick another. It was heaven! I’ve written about the joys of destination reading before, and NPR’s mode-of-transport approach provides an entertaining new wrinkle—“a surprising, serendipitous book discovery experience for the summer months.” Already listeners and NPR online followers are enriching the network’s dozen lists with their own suggestions, and you’re invited to do the same at the NPR website (link above) or to tweet them with the hashtag #bookyourtrip.

Enjoy!

Hollywood Vice

Posted on by
Los Angeles, Hollywood

(photo source: farm9.staticflickr.com)

Vice—the international cultural and political magazine of the Vice media empire—devotes its fiction issue this year to Hollywood and the movies. Careful with that link, the magazine cover is NSFW, depending on where you work. Literary bright lights and Hollywood insiders like David Mamet, James Franco (a story about Lindsey Lohan), and Alec Sokolow are among the authors. Blake Bailey does a run-down of some of Vladimir Nabokov’s unpublished notes for the Lolita screenplay, about which Nabokov said after a screening of the finished film, “only ragged odds and ends of my script had been used,” though he received the picture’s only scriptwriting credit.

Vice was launched in Montreal in 1994, and the company is currently valued at more than $2 billion. In the last few days, it launched a sports channel to add to its publishing, online, and video stable. Since Vice is distributed free, with distribution points in major cities, you can read the content online or download it with an iTunes app, if you are at least 17 years old.

Related articles

At Least Someone’s Paying Attention

Posted on by
texting while driving

(photo: activerain.trulia.com)

Video about texting and driving grabs teens’ attention (link below). In the last weeks I’ve been driving the Interstates and major highways in three northeastern states and one Canadian province. From this limited cruise, only New York State showed evidence it is tackling the dangerous practice of texting while driving. We’re all familiar with the roadside “rest stops”; now NYS has added “text stops,” announced with frequent signs like “It can wait: Text stop 5 miles.” These areas are pretty close together, too, at least on Interstate 81. In some places, they’ve added “text stop” signage above existing rest stop signs, but in others, they’ve created a quarter-mile lane for cars or trucks to pull off the highway, send that vital text message, and pull back on. For what can happen when you don’t, see this absolutely brilliant video.

Truthfully, I didn’t see very many people pulled over to text, but planting the seed that there’s a time and place for texting is a worthy effort that may have a long-term impact. Better that than the kind of impact pictured above.

Not My Type

Posted on by
comic sans, gravestone

Comic Sans used on a gravestone (photo: upload.wikimedia.org)

Perhaps you’ve missed the graphic design world’s kerfluffle over Comic Sans. I had. It’s just a simple, unembellished, jaunty little typeface, I thought, but perhaps its very unassertiveness, its cheery friendliness make it ripe for assault by the typographical bullies, confident Times New Roman and sleek (but dull) Ariel? Oh, sure, sensitive people wouldn’t use Comic Sans for an eviction notice or a letter to the IRS, but are we to abandon it entirely? Apparently so, according to this infographic from Comic Sans Criminal, which displays some of those questionable uses.

When Pope Benedict XVI retired, the Vatican published a photo album of his papacy, along with his resignation letter—all in Comic Sans. The designers behind the website “Ban Comic Sans” responded, “As all seasoned graphic designers know, this is a desecration of the cardinal rule of design – NEVER use Comic Sans.” Then they asked, “Among all the apocalyptic speculation is this simply further proof that the end is near?” And a NSFW defense.

Related articles

Automotive Report: LeMans Update

Posted on by
car

(photo: author)

UPDATE: There’s a link to pix of last weekend’s 24-hour LeMans race, below, but New Jersey cars, not to be outdone, show real personality! The most recent parking lot find: the eyelash car. Remember the cars whose headlights would rotate closed when not in use? One of them wouldn’t be working right and would close only partway, making the car look half-asleep, when in New Jersey, that privilege is reserved for the driver.

carI’m intrigued by what the person with the do-it-yourself woodie is trying to accomplish.

Is he creating a lumber exoskeleton to give his vehicle some extra protection from his fellow drivers? Pointing out the inadequacy of materials or imagination in Toyota’s design? Making an artistic statement? And, is the upside-down Toyota emblem an international symbol of automotive distress?

 

Related articles

Plastic Guns

Posted on by
meteor

(photo: c1.staticflickr.com)

In the hands of a good mystery/thriller writer, the presence of undetectable plastic guns can change the dramatic equation. But in case the real-life possibility of seriously lethal 3-D printed guns existing outside the weakly regulated firearms marketplace has been a problem barely on the edge of your consciousness, a threat like a massive meteor strike—remote, but awful—it’s time to give it further thought. A Wired article by Andy Greenberg, full of anonymous sources and YouTube videos of test-firings, shows how far this technology has come. Predictably, the cost of manufacture has plummeted as lethality has risen.

A combination of libertarians, gunsmiths, and technology enthusiasts has been improving on printable handgun and rifle designs, step-by-step, moving “3-D printed firearms from the realm of science fiction to practical weapons.” And, Greenberg says, leaving “legislators and regulators in the dust,” despite the Undetectable Firearms Act. Another reason this situation is like a meteor strike is, given what we know—in this case about human behavior—these developments seem unstoppable.

The RFID article below suggests how a different technology can contribute to gun safety, too, for conventional handguns.

Related articles

Indie-Author Book Promotion Spending Lags

Posted on by
books

(photo: wikimedia.org)

A recent survey of a mix of self-published authors, reported by Dana Beth Weinberg, suggests the extent to which individual authors are outsourcing some of the tasks that in the good ol’ days, were done by their publisher. There’s a range of those tasks, and some authors do a few of them on their own, and some authors engage several people to accomplish the whole shebang. Recently, some formal book-publishing “teams” have been developed, and they can be expensive and low-performing (see the recent update on the class action lawsuit against Penguin-Random House’s company, “Author Solutions, Inc.,” a costly team service many authors complain under-performs.)

The 2014 survey was conducted by Digital Book World and Writer’s Digest and received information from almost 2,200 self-published and hybrid (both self- and traditionally-published) authors about their most recent self-publishing experience. Just under half of these authors obtained outside help. Apparently believing you can judge a book by its cover, most often they hired a cover artist (35% percent); and 20-25% obtained help with formatting, print on demand, and copy editing. Amazingly, since book sales is the biggest problem for self-published authors, only 11% got help with marketing and promotion!

Only 112 of the 1,900 authors who reported their earnings (net or gross? article doesn’t say) made $10,000 or more from this recent book, and there is a definite trend line between spending more on services and higher earnings. However, most of the authors had a median expense of $0, and earned less than $1,000 on their book. Even among the highest-earning group, only 20 percent of authors spent on marketing and promotion. Something wrong here. And it may be in part that authors feel competent to look at a book cover and say whether they think it’s good or not, but not to assess a marketing campaign that isn’t working.

Related articles