Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

EFF Names Advisory Board

Posted on November 23, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

I've joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation's first Advisory Board. There are some amazing people in the group—it's flattering to be in such good company. My only worry is that California is a long way away…I think I'll be doing a lot of phone conferences alas. Media coverage at The Register (blush). Full text of EFF's press release below.

Continue reading →

Posted in Personal | 3 Comments

Brand Democrat

Posted on November 23, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Brand Democrat has the sort of slogans that reflect the sort of thinking that wins elections.

OK, there's one on there I don't like, the one about WWII: even if the Republican isolationists fought entry to the war, they supported winning it, so I think it's wrong to paint it in partisan colors. I'd say the same about Vietnam, which was started by Democrats but escalated then lost by a Republican.

But otherwise, there's some great stuff there.

Posted in Politics: US | 1 Comment

Don’t Send the Ransom Note in Color

Posted on November 22, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Government Uses Color Laser Printer Technology to Track Documents. As the item notes, the fact that this is being done isn't news, but the stuff about how they do was new to me. Link to PC World story.

Update (10/23): Ed Felton has thoughtful thoughts on this.

Posted in Law: Privacy | 1 Comment

Today’s Tech Question: Partition Managment With RAID 1

Posted on November 22, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Following the near-debacle of the previous post (see the comments), Ed Bott makes the following very kind offer:

I promise to chat with Professor Froomkin before I write about complex legal issues here. In exchange, I offer my technical expertise on Windows and Windows security advisories to my favorite law professor the next time he thinks about writing another Windows-related post.

Alas, he didn't send along his email address. But I'm never one to pass up the chance of free advice from a real expert. So, Ed, here's a question that's bugging me:

My home computer runs Win XP, with RAID 1 provided via the ASUS motherboard [for the non-techies, RAID 1 is when your hard disk is mirrored by another identical hard disk]. The machine came from the suppliers with XP on one huge partition, and I'd like to repartition my hard drive(s) into several smaller partitions — not necessarily all for Windows — without losing any data.

I had thought to use partition magic to do the job, but apparently Partition Magic 8.x doesn't' support RAID 1 .

Can it be done? How about if I

1. Turn off RAID mirroring.
2. Use Partition Magic or something else like it.
3. Start RAID mirroring from scratch (will it catch all the partitions? will it faithfully copy all the changes to each one?).

I did a Google search, and all I know now is that I'm not the only one who wants the answer to this one…

Posted in Sufficiently Advanced Technology | 5 Comments

Fix a Microsoft Vulnerability

Posted on November 21, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Try this experiment: Click on the simple test created by greymagic.com. If a calculator pops up, you have a problem: your computer is configured to allow web sites to run programs on your machine … without using Active X, which is usually the culprit for such security holes.

If the calculator didn't pop up, you can congratulate yourself, you're probably running Unix, a Mac, using Firefox, or all at once. If you're just using Firefox on a windows machine, you might want to open up IE and try it again, just to be safe.

If you want to understand the problem a bit better there's a sort of explanation at DSO Exploit – Executing programs without Scripting or ActiveX.

If you are (justifiably) nervous about running a self-described exploit on your machine, and thus don't want to click the link above, you can download and run Spybot, which will tell you if you have the vulnerability (and check for many others as well).

How do you fix the problem? That's a little complicated as it may require you edit your registry settings (I'm unclear if Spybot actually fixes the problem or not). Instructions on doing this can be found at the link to DSO Exploit – Executing programs without Scripting or ActiveX.

Posted in Software | 12 Comments

Sleaze Party Wants Your Tax Returns

Posted on November 20, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

They almost got away with it: GOP embarrassed by tax returns measure

Congress passed legislation Saturday giving two committee chairman and their assistants access to income tax returns without regard to privacy protections, but not before red-faced Republicans said the measure was a mistake and would be swiftly repealed.

…

Some Democrats didn't accept the assertion that the provision was a mistake and demanded an investigation.

“We weren't born yesterday, we didn't come down with the first snow,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California. “This isn't poorly thought out, this was very deliberately thought out and it was done in the dead of night.”

Members of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee now have limited access to tax returns, but there are severe criminal and civil penalties if the information is disclosed or misused.

Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the measure will “bring us back to the doorstep to the days of President Nixon, President Truman and other dark days in our history when taxpayer information was used against political enemies.”

The dead-of-night amendment was inserted by Rep. Istook. I look forward to his explanation, which will probably be he was just a conduit, never read it, etc etc. It's usually better to look dumb than criminal. See, e.g., Bush. But see DeLay.

Posted in Politics: The Party of Sleaze | 4 Comments