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Maybe now I can stop referring to myself as "paranoid" and just use the term "Security Professional" instead. In a Wired.com essay, Bruce Schneier writes how security professionals just think differently. While engineers try to figure out how to make things work, Security Professionals think about how to break them.

For example:

SmartWater is a liquid with a unique identifier linked to a particular owner. "The idea is for me to paint this stuff on my valuables as proof of ownership," I wrote when I first learned about the idea. "I think a better idea would be for me to paint it on your valuables, and then call the police."

And it's simply thinking in this way that would prevent a lot of bad products (like smart water) from ever being developed in the first place.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

If you've heard of Rev. Wright (Barack Obama's pastor) and the things he's reportedly said, you should probably know that there's a video of the sermons where you'll find he didn't actually say what was reported.

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Josh discovered a mysterious $13 fee on his parents' phone bill, and as he tracked down the source of the bogus charge, he learned a lot about cramming. The FCC describes it as "the practice of placing unauthorized, misleading, or deceptive charges on your telephone bill" by third party companies, who bank on you being too confused/distracted/annoyed by your hard-to-read bill to notice.

Read his story here.

My main reason for digging this besides warning (or reminding) you about this practice was the first comment after the article:

Just another example of the disparity between corporations and people. Corporations freely get away doing things that people would go to jail for.

Though the Virgina legislature examined payday lending, they only solution they brought forth was to limit them as far as interest rates and repayment periods. However, at least one small town has kicked out payday lenders via zoning laws. While this may not rate "big news" it is good news and caught my attention for this alone:

The sole proponent of amending the zoning was Randy Phelps, manager of the Advance America lending store in a nearby town. His company, whose Web site says it operates 2,800 stores nationwide, was seeking to open a cash advance store in a new strip shopping center, part of the town's new Wal-Mart complex. "We're not evil people," Phelps protested to the council. "We provide a needed service."

"We're not evil people"…. Doesn't that give you chills? If pretending to hold a hand out in friendship while stabbing someone in the back with the other hand isn't evil I don't know what is.

Currently they're planning to add children to the DNA database:

Home Office officials said plans to include primary school children on the DNA record would be kept 'under review'. The DNA database includes 4.5 million samples of genetic material, many taken from people who have been arrested but never charged with a crime. By next year, it is expected that 1.5 million of the samples will be from youngsters aged between ten and 18.

Bloody hell.

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Another breach. Who'd have guessed?

The company is aware of about 1,800 cases of fraud reported so far relating to the breach.

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An excellent summary of some laws and rules relating to taking photos in public and other places. Near the bottom of the page, they have some links to other helpful resources as well. If you have ever been harassed about taking photos (or you expect to), this is a good article for you.

Don't worry, it's not real

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MIT is working on software that analyzes the surfaces in photos to see if the light patterns all match in order to detect fakes.

Many fraudulent images are created by combining parts of two or more photographs into a single image. When the parts are combined, the combination can sometimes be spotted by variations in the lighting conditions within the image. An observant person might notice such variations, Johnson says; however, "people are pretty insensitive to lighting."

Another technique is to check the grain of the photo for irregularities. When an object is placed within a photo, the new object will have differing grain from the original (though there are ways to reduce and eliminate this).

If you're wondering why this matters, check out these examples of how fake photos can be drastically harmful:

(Image is in the Public Domain)

A British company has developed a camera that can see through clothes, but unlike Backscatter, it doesn't provide pornographic photos of the target.

Depending on the material, the signature of the wave is different, so that explosives can be distinguished from a block of clay and cocaine is different from a bag of flour.

It shoots some rays at the target and reads the response. It's more like a sonar device than a camera and it if works, this will be not only more effective at detecting threats, but also much better for personal privacy.