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Monday, November 11, 2002 |
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A group of brazen Long Island high-school students ran a cyber-fraud operation by using computers at JPMorgan Chase where they were interns to manipulate credit-card accounts and buy $36,000 worth of sporting goods and high-tech gadgets, cops said yesterday.
Mueller said the student interns used the bank's computers to make phony change-of-addresses on existing credit-card accounts - using one of two vacant homes in Westbury as the new addresses.
They then used their home computers to order goods over the Internet. The students then watched the vacant homes and picked up the packages of clothing, sneakers and electronics when they arrived by mail.
But the students failed as criminals when they added additional credit cards to existing accounts - using one of the mail "drops" as a second address - and the customers got billed for goods they did not buy. The customers alerted bank officials, who alerted cops.
Gally said the bank contacted police after tracing the interns' computer trail.
Postal Inspector John McCree, who intercepted several shipments, said he suspects the student scam artists may have been reselling their ill-gotten loot on the Internet for cash.
"I would think that's a real good possibility," said McCree. "You can only wear so many shirts or so many sneakers at a time." [NYPOST]
10:56
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John Markoff reports on US efforts to consolidate domestic intelligence data in a single computer network, supplied by the Pentagon and operated by the FBI. The plan would require removing legislative restrictions that prohibit US intelligence agencies from spying on citizens .
As the director of the effort, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, has described the system in Pentagon documents and in speeches, it will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access... [zem]
10:50
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Electronic Frontiers Australia has submitted a review to the DCITA on the national internet censorship regime, which has been in operation since January 2000. EFA accuses the scheme of failing to achieve its goals, and covering up those failures using misleading statistics and by fighting FOI requests.
In a highly critical submission to the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, released on Friday, the EFA said "Ministerial statements trumpeting the success of the scheme have been, by the Minister's own admission, based on erroneous statistics".
[zem]
10:47
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The South Australian state government has passed an internet censorship bill that prohibits the publication of material unsuitable for children, even if minors are prevented from accessing it.
Thus, even if content which could be rated R is put up on a password-protected region of a site, and the password is provided only to adults, one could still be prosecuted under criminal law. The maximum penalty is $10,000.
The bill covers content placed on the Web (including archived mailing... [zem]
10:43
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Each year, some 10 million hopefuls enter the American Dream drawing [~] the annual Green Card lottery. Only 50,000 Green Cards are awarded, but the scant 200-to-1 odds don[base ']t deter many. Today was the last day to submit applications for the 2004 lottery, leading to a flurry of last-minute research by would-be American workers. Lottery tickets, and access to the American dream, are supposed to be free. But applicants who searched the Web for Green Card lottery information this time around often found themselves at a gallery of for-profit sites posing as U.S. government Web sites, charging $50 or more for applications that are supposed to be free.
1:36
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Silly-ass lawsuits, part 2
Father files suit after son fails to win MVP award - A New Brunswick father is suing the provincial amateur hockey association after his 16-year-old son failed to win the league's most-valuable-player award.
Michael Croteau is seeking $300,000 in psychological and punitive damages from the association. He is also demanding that the MVP trophy be taken from the boy who won it and given to his son, Steven, as well as the league's playmaker award, which was awarded to a different boy. Croteau also wants Steven to be guaranteed a spot on the New Brunswick Canada Winter Games roster.
In an interview yesterday from his home on Lameque Island, N.B., Croteau said Steven was so crushed after losing the New Brunswick Bantam AAA MVP award at a banquet in March that he lost his love for playing hockey. That, his father argues, resulted in Steven failing to pursue the Canada Games tryouts in which he had been excelling. (Globe and Mail) [The LitiGator]
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Bennett Haselton from Peacefire, the anti-censorware site, has compiled a list of possible weaknesses in systems that circumvent Internet censorship. The list, boiled down to its essentials, is:The censorware designers can always make the last move; The "human shield" fallacy ("We built an anti-censorship system that hides secret traffic in ICQ messages. The Chinese won't dare to block ICQ -- it's a valuable tool that increases international understanding and friendship among nations, and besides, blocking it would violate RFC 9,234,436."); Assuming that censors lack the resources to monitor all traffic effectively; Traffic-flow analysis; Using steganography to hide data inside "noise"
[The Happiest Geek On Earth]
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Maximillian Dornseif, 2002.
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