Earlier yesterday, a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) laptop containing the unencrypted identity information of some estimated 33,000 Clear passengers was stolen from a locked office at San Francisco International Airport. The Clear program, operated by Verified Identity Pass, allows registered travelers to bypass airport security lines by showing their Clear cards at the cost of $100 per year. The 33,000 affected victims were mostly those who had registered online but had not yet completed the in-person enrollment. The laptop contained private information including drivers license numbers, addresses, birth dates, and passport numbers but no Social Security or credit card numbers. Whether or not the registrants had finalized registration is no excuse for not encrypting the data.

“We don’t believe the security or privacy of these would-be members will be compromised in any way,” Verified Identity Pass CEO Steven Brill said in a statement. “There is no reason to believe this is anything other than the simple burglary of a laptop, which the local police are investigating.”

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has announced the launch of a new software that they say will allows users to keep tabs on their ISPs and whether they are having their P2P transfers “throttled.”

The new “Switzerland Tool” will probe at the user’s network connection to check if the ISP has put any restrictions on P2P traffic.

“Until now, there hasn’t been a reliable way to tell if somebody, a hacker, an ISP, corporate firewall, or the Great Firewall of China, is modifying your Internet traffic en route,” explained Peter Eckersley, the EFF Staff Technologist who designed the tool.

“Switzerland is designed to make general-purpose ISP testing faster and easier.”

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According to a picture first submitted to VGC, the Xbox 360 should be getting a real price cut across the board in the US beginning on September 7th, one that should pressure the PlayStation 3 and possibly even the Wii into similar price drops.

If proven to be accurate, the Arcade model will drop to $199.99 USD, the Pro model will drop to $299.99 and the 120GB Elite model will drop to $399.99, the same price as the 40GB (and now 80GB) PlayStation 3 models that do not include backwards compatibility.

For years Microsoft has said that $200 is the “sweet spot” for console sales and price cuts on their console have proven to boost sales every time. After dropping their price to 199 euro in Europe in February sales doubled year-on-year for the six months following the drop.

The new price drop would make the cheapest 360 console $50 cheaper than the Nintendo Wii which has long had the lowest price point of the new generation of consoles. The move would also push the PS3 back to being the most expensive console relatively, despite its extra features, most notably Blu-ray playback right out of the box.

Also interesting to note is that the price drop should coincide with the launch of the “Jasper” chipset which is said to reduce manufacturing costs greatly for Microsoft. Large price cut and still be profitable? It could be possible.

According to new border search policies disclosed by the Department of Homeland Security, federal agents may take your laptop or other media devices for an “unspecified” period of time even without any suspicion of wrongdoing, in an effort to “prevent terrorism.”

Additionally, the officials may share any content of the laptop or device with other agencies or private companies for “language translation, data decryption or other reasons.”

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff wrote last month in USA Today that “the most dangerous contraband is often contained in laptop computers or other electronic devices.” He recalled times where searches have uncovered “violent jihadist materials” and hard drives full of child pornography.

Full Policy here

http://www.cbp.gov/linkhandler/cgov/travel/admissability/search_authority.ctt/search_authority.pdf

Garmin’s Stock prices took a major dump today off news of them not hitting their 2nd quarter earning targets and of the delay of the much anticipated new Nuvifone product.

"While we had hoped to have carrier launches in the fourth quarter, we have found that meeting some of the carrier specific requirements will take longer than anticipated," Garmin said. "We remain pleased with carrier interest in the device and are working toward making necessary design changes to meet their requirements. We anticipate launching the product during the first half of 2009."

Looks like we wont be seeing a Nuvifone until the first half of 2009…whenever that is…

An unknown animal has allegedly washes ashore on the eastern tip of Long Island, in a town called Montauk. My best guess is that this is just a hoax to drum up support for a future movie about a book called “Montauk Project”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montauk_Project_(book)

Hoax or not, that picture looks pretty wicked.

This is an actual monster, some sort of rodent-like creature with a dinosaur beak. A tipster says that there is "a government animal testing facility very close by in Long Island," but unless the government is trying to design horrible Montauk monsters that will eat IEDs and fart fire at bad Iraqis, we're not sure why they would create such an unthinkable beast. Our guess is that it's viral marketing for something.

Found at http://gawker.com/5030531/dead-monster-washes-ashore-in-montauk

“Nintendo takes a global approach to piracy and has pursued the illegal game copying devices in 11 countries this past year,” said the company.

“Nintendo has worked with enforcement officials in Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Korea, Netherlands, Spain, UK, and the US, seizing close to 30,000 infringing game copying products, as well as taking actions against those distributors and manufacturers.”

One day after they announced a lawsuit against manufacturers and distributors of the R4 Revolution device, Nintendo has reported that they have already seized over 30,000 piracy devices which they believe infringe company copyrights.

The lawsuit, a joint venture with 54 other publishers hopes to get injunctions on the R4 and other devices that promote piracy on the Nintendo DS.

Warner Brothers executives are claiming a huge win in the war against piracy was instrumental in ‘The Dark Knight’ becoming a huge hit. According to company representatives they spent months ensuring that no copies of the film would disappear, and no one was recording it in Australian theaters in the two days it ran there before its US opening.

“One of the reasons why it’s so important to try to protect the first weekend is that it prevents the pirate supply chain from starting,” said Darcy Antonellis, president of Warner’s distribution and technical operations. “A day or two becomes really, really significant. You’ve delayed disc manufacturing that then delays distribution, which then delays those discs from ending up on street corners for sale.”

The problem with this reasoning is obvious. Tickets for opening day showings across the country were sold out far ahead of time. The record box office results were being predicted weeks in advance. Oh yeah, and people like the movie. It’s entirely possible that might have some sort of impact.

Eric Garland, chief executive of BigChampagne Online Media Measurement, was quoted in the LA Times saying “If the movie’s a stiff, and word gets out too early that it’s a stiff, it’s devastating to the business model.”

Maybe Hollywood should concentrate on the part of that equation where the movies don’t suck, rather than the part where people find out how bad they are.

Nintendo, along with 54 other companies, have launched an extensive new lawsuit against the makers and distributors of the R4 Revolution device that allows for playback of ROMS on the Nintendo DS.

The popular R4 device is a flash cart and MicroSD adapter that allows user to install the custom Moonshell software on their DS and then load ROMS onto the MicroSD card and play them back on the handheld. The R4 bypasses all Nintendo firmwares and loads the Moonshell allowing the game playback as well as music, movies and even classic system emulators.

Although the R4 can run all sorts of homebrew, most use it exclusively to play pirated games, and Nintendo has noticed. The new lawsuit hopes to stop the manufacturing and distribution of the R4 and among the companies supporting Nintendo are SNK, Capcom, Square Enix, Tecmo and The Pokemon Company.

Nintendo says the R4 is “causing severe damage to our company and software makers, and this is something that we cannot possibly overlook.”

The suit was filed in the Tokyo District Court and is using the Unfair Competition Prevention Law as its legal basis.

Looking for a iPhone 3g? Use this tool to check for the latest updates. Refreshed nightly at 9pm. Note that when the store opens, the information is removed.

http://www.apple.com/retail/iphone/availability.php