Joe's Random Ramblings

The EFF has send out a press release regarding three MIT students who were ordered by a federal judge to cancel their presentation about vulnerabilities they discovered in Boston's public transportation system.

This is of course just another attempt by an inept public entity to keep their stupidity under wraps. When will these guys learn that "security through obscurity" doesn't work?
And of course, they now got themselves the "Streisand effect"...
Their actions pushed the presentation out of its relative obscurity, and it will now get a much much wider distribution. In other words, instead of suppressing it, they ended up advertising it to the world... Cluelessness at work...

The slides for the presentation are at the time of this writing online at MIT.
Just in case they vanish, I also put them up locally (thanks to rmmst49 for providing a link in his comment to the LWN article discussing this.)

Update: CNet reports that the judge has lifted the gag order.

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I've had DSL from AT&T (the only choice where I live) for quite a while now.
Recently, it had been rather slow, and two days ago, it completely broke.
So, I called out to the dreaded AT&T Tech Support.
After being on hold for 20 minutes or so (due to the "large call volume"), the person I got on the line was performing some tests, and noted that the "line is weak."
No sh*t . Why else would I call them?
The guy said that I would get a call within an hour to have a technician scheduled, and advised me that it is free if it is a problem with the line, but if it is in my house, it would cost me. Fine. Whatever. I know my setup, there is no problem with my Linux box.
Anyway, I get a call within an hour, but it is some automated crap, which hangs up in the middle of the call for no reason. Since it was getting late, I decided to call back the next day.
The next day, another tech support guy, told me that the automated system hangs up often... So they know it is crap. Why are they using it, then??? At least he scheduled the technician while I was on the phone with him.
Of course, they always schedule a 4-hour window, in this case noon to 4pm. Luckily, and unlike my experience with, e.g., the cable company, the technician was already working on it when I showed up at noon. Less than 1/2 hour later the problem was fixed. It was a cabling issue in their outside box.
Good work from the technician, she knew what she was doing and was professional and competent, but AT&T needs to fix their phone tech support.

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