The Senate Judiciary Committee and the House both have made moves to restrain wiretapping legislation and possibly as important to remove provisions that would forgive telecom companies that enabled the US Government to tap phone conversations for all Americans.

Its a class action lawyer’s dream case.  The federal government legislature preventing the exclusion of some of the largest corporations in the country from prosecution for illegally aiding in the wire tapping of every person in the country.  The corporations have deep pockets and the legislature wants to make a point about the abuse of power by the Executive Branch without actually having to fight directly against the Executive Branch. 

So instead by default they can allow trial lawyers to gather up a grass roots group of all Americans and file against all the major phone companies (excluding Qwest, the only phone company that apparently did not cooperate after they did a legal review of the request.)

Panel Drops Immunity From Eavesdropping Bill - New York Times

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About 66 years ago the United States had to learn a serious lesson about foreign currency exchange. The United States had just been attacked by Japan and had to take drastic actions rapidly as they entered World War II.

One of those actions was to freeze all of the accounts of the country of Japan and seize all the money in those accounts.

At the time computers didn’t really exist, and it wasn’t terribly easy to stop the flow of money or seize funds from a foreign country. Someone had to invent this capability. President Roosevelt gave this responsibility to Walter Diamond and his wife Dorothy Diamond.

I had the pleasure of meeting the Diamonds back in 2001. When I was going to law school for my masters and laws, they named the LL M. program that I attended after the Diamonds.

The Diamonds didn’t have the technical capabilities that we have today. They didn’t have the computing infrastructure and they didn’t have online tools or networks to access information or even get a good idea about how to do something.

I was reviewing a new social networking site for Forex traders at FXground.com. My encounter with the Diamonds in 2001 in their story stuck in my mind as I was doing the review on this social networking site dedicated to foreign exchange traders.

I kept thinking of all of the different people and things they must’ve had to do to seize the funds from the country of Japan. Today if we were to do something like that, we would turn into a computer.

This particular site for foreign exchange traders is a good example of how to apply a social networking tool to an industry. It enables foreign exchange traders to come and share information about best and worst practices in their industry. Other traders can then review their submissions and rate them up or down and give their insights into why they think they are a good thing or a bad thing or they can identify when the right time to employ a tool might be as opposed to the wrong time.

That’s a convoluted way of saying that all technology has a purpose and it’s up to the user to make the purpose work to best advantage and not screw up!

Later I was working on a video tutorial and I utilized the mind map above to highlight several different capabilities, but the mind map shows a good breakdown of the functionality available at FXground.com.

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 Several men around the country are waiting to be sentenced for selling expensive factory management software for pennies on the dollar through eBay.  In multiple different instances from Rockwell Automation was sold for pennies on the dollar.  As an example Robert Koster of Jonesboro Arkansas sold over $5 million for the software for less than $25,000.

This raises a red flag for tires of software on eBay.  If the deal looks like it might be too good to be true, odds are it probably is.  EBay does a number of things to protect buyers and sellers of its goods but it can do everything in at the end of the day you are purchasing a product from another person, if they’re selling $1 million software for a few thousand dollars odds are something is a little fishy.

Link to eBay pirates plead guilty to selling $6m software for pennies | Channel Register

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A little story that has slipped under the radar involves American Express.  According to the July issue of Forbes, American Express has disclosed that they have set aside $60 million to fight off money laundering and was cooperating with the Justice Department.  The DEA has separately disclosed that it is their investigation that involves American Express and that it involves Black Market Exchange Accounts.

This involves a complex web of Colombian drug dealers for example providing American Cash to Colombian importers purchasing something that can readily be sold again any where in the world.  Like cigarettes.

They purchase the cigarettes from a US wholesaler and arrange through a middle man to pay in US currency.  They pay a middle man in pesos, the middle man swaps out the pesos for dollars and pays the US wholesaler in dollars.  The wholesaler makes a trip across the border to collect payment, comes back and deposits the funds in a US bank.

The middle man gives the pesos to the drug dealer.

Money Laundered

It has not yet been described how much American Express is involved in this investigation nor how they are cooperating.

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It almost sent a substitute teacher to prison for forty years, when it triggered an endless number of pop ups that were displayed in front of a classroom of seventh graders.

Prosecutors initially relied on faulty evidence from an investigator to convice Julie Amero a 40 year old substitute teacher on four counts of risk of injury to a minor.

It was only after her conviction in January after a 4 year legal battle that security experts and bloggers came to her rescue forcing the disclosure of evidence that her computer was infected with spyware that caused pop-ups.

She was granted a new trial and the prosecutors have indicated that they will not move forward with that new trial. 

The problem is that she has lost four years of her life fighting this problem, four years of legal bills. four years of slander against her reputation.  All of this due to Pop Up Porn from spyware.

Something like this could easily happen to almost anyone that works with minors, but it could also create serious problems for anyone whether they are at work in an office or even in the privacy of their own home, where their own children happen to witness a bombardment of pop up porn hell bombs.

Please do scan and clean your computer, but remember at the end of the day, anyone is still susceptible.  To me this means that prosecutors and the public at large has to become a little more tolerant of the fact that we are all victims of this software.

Link to Teacher’s porn conviction overturned - Security - MSNBC.com

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