The US Senate just unanimously approved a bill “(H.R. 5938) entitled `An Act to amend title 18, United States Code, to provide secret service protection to former Vice Presidents,… (Engrossed Amendment as Agreed to by Senate)[H.R.5938.EAS]”

Pay special attention to the “Engrossed Amendment” part, since there is an exciting twist to this bill.

One of the major problems with fighting CyberCrime has been that prosecutors will not follow-up anything under $5K. I’d actually peg the number higher, from personal experience on cases, but that’s the official number given. So 10,000 $1000 incidents would never be reported/investigated under the current system when investigators are unable/unwilling to tie events together or show some kind of aggregate harm data.

The new legislation makes it a felony to install malicious software on 10 or more computers regardless of damage amount. This could open the door to individuals claiming harm on every actual computer itself, including impact to their data, in addition to use of the computer as a proxy for other attacks — under the new rules a victim can claim damages/restitution for time and money spent restoring identity/credit. The changes from existing law also includes anti-cyber extortion provisions and it would allow the feds to prosecute regardless of whether communication crossed state borders.

Since this modifies an existing house resolution it needs to be reconsidered and the changes reconciled by the house.

Aha!

Probably not what you would expect from the bill that is expected to cost every American family $0.05 to pay for the personal protection of Vice President Cheney. The Budget Report gives a quick summary:

H.R. 5938 would provide permanent authority for the Secret Service to protect former Vice Presidents, their spouses, and their children under the age of 16 for a period of not more than six months after the Vice President leaves office. The Secret Service has protected former Vice Presidents and their families, but authority to do so was provided by temporary legislation or by executive order. The bill’s provisions would apply to Vice Presidents holding office on or after the date of enactment.

Based on information provided by the Secret Service, CBO estimates that implementing H.R. 5938 would cost about $4 million in fiscal year 2009, subject to the availability of appropriated funds.

Something tells me that the Secret Service might be subcontracting the deal in the usual no-bid fashion of recent years to a subsidiary of Halliburton, which actually would make this a kind of $4 million/yr parachute for the Cheney family…but I digress.

The changes to the CyberCrime laws in the US are significant and will mean the data recorded on harm and presence should probably skyrocket.

The Associated Press reports this story as a “river ambush”.

Was this an act of terror?

A dragnet ended Friday with the arrest of a man accused of emerging from woods in camouflage and opening fire with an assault rifle on a group of young swimmers who had gathered at a river. Three were killed and another wounded.

Scott J. Johnson, 38, was in camouflage as he walked out of some woods near the scene of the shooting and dropped his weapon as officers approached, said Jerry Sauve, chief’s sheriff’s deputy in Marinette County.

Seems to have been a terror motive but perhaps it is too early to tell.

Brings to mind the recent shooting in Tennessee, where the attacker killed two people in a church for being too liberal

[Police Chief] Owen said at a Monday news conference that police had recovered a four-page letter in which accused gunman Jim Adkisson, 58, expresses his hatred of liberals and indicated he would keep shooting until police killed him.

Another US veteran who turns to terrorism at home? Joe Lauria seems to say yes. Given that the killer’s house was filled with material associated with well-known anti-liberal groups, the question should become 1) how culpable a group becomes when and if they advocate action against another group and 2) how all the new domestic surveillance will come into play. Humor and commentary of speech obviously plays a confusing role here, as does the privacy of one’s reading choices. If we can ever get beyond those quagmire issues, the shotgun was purchased only a month before the attack. Tragedy, yes. Terrorism?

Our Enterprise Key Management Infrastructure (EKMI) Technical Committee (TC) has finally been approved by OASIS to release our specification to the public.

Symmetric Key Services Markup Language (SKSML) Version 1.0 public review started July 24 2008 and will end 23 September 2008.

Comments may be submitted to our TC by anyone on the OASIS TC comment system .

Submitted comments (for this work as well as other works of that TC) are
publicly archived. Please note that comments submitted to OASIS are subject to the OASIS Feedback License, which ensures that the feedback you provide carries the same obligations at least as the obligations of the TC members.

The specification document and related files are available here:

Editable Source (Authoritative):
http://docs.oasis-open.org/ekmi/sksml/v1.0/pr01/SKSML-1.0-Specification.odt

PDF:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/ekmi/sksml/v1.0/pr01/SKSML-1.0-Specification.pdf

HTML:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/ekmi/sksml/v1.0/pr01/SKSML-1.0-Specification.html

Schema:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/ekmi/sksml/v1.0/pr01/schema/

Abstract:
This normative specification defines the first (1.0) version of the Symmetric Key Services Markup Language (SKSML), an XML-based messaging protocol, by which applications executing on computing devices may request and receive symmetric key-management services from centralized key-management servers, securely, over networks. Applications using SKSML are expected to either implement the SKSML protocol, or use a software library – called the Symmetric Key Client Library (SKCL) – that implements this protocol. SKSML messages are transported within a SOAP layer, protected by a Web Services Security (WSS) header and can be used over standard HTTP securely.