Geek Week: China cheats on ages, spy controversy rages
dan tynan on Aug 22 2008 at 11:24 am | Filed under: Cringley, Da Web, Infoworld, National insecurity, Spy v spy
(This post originally appeared on Infoworld’s Notes From the Field.)
But officer, she told me she was 16. Among the many technological marvels on display at the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese have added yet another: the magical age extender. It can instantly make anyone several years older; the catch is that it only works on members of the Chinese Olympic gymnastics team. Per The Register:
Search engine hacker Stryde Hax has unearthed copies of official registration documents by Chinese sporting authorities (the General Administration of Sport) that show the age of a Chinese double gold medal winning gymnast to be 14 – two years younger than the age that appears on her government-issued passport. The Excel files, purged by censors from the official site and from Google’s document cache, were found in the document translation cache of Chinese search engine Baidu.
Note that a) the Chinese women’s team won a gold medal thanks to its ultra-limber adolescents, and b) no, high schoolers can’t use this technique to get a fake ID so they can buy beer.
The funniest part is that the Chinese remembered to purge Google’s cache but forgot about their own home-grown search engine. To quote the ancient Tao philosopher Ho Ma Simpshuan: "Doh!"
If it’s Tuesday, you must be a terrorist. Planning to travel out of the country soon? If you’re lucky the Feds won’t seize your laptop or smart phone at the border, but they may log your comings and goings in a new federal database, if the DoJ has its way. According to a report in the New York Times, US Senators briefed on the plan
…said the new guidelines would allow the F.B.I. to open an investigation of an American, conduct surveillance, pry into private records and take other investigative steps “without any basis for suspicion.”
The guidelines, which don’t require Congressional approval, would exempt the database from the 1974 Privacy Act, which was created to keep Uncle Sam from maintaining a database on ordinary law-abiding Americans. That Act was passed after it was revealed that the FBI and CIA had been spying on ordinary Americans for more than two decades.
The Feds plan to maintain the records for 15 years if you’re a citizen, and 75 years if you’re not. (Because there’s nothing more dangerous than a geriatric terrorist.)
I understand the Feds also plan to introduce new airport security procedures. As you pass through security you’ll be asked to remove your laptop from your briefcase, take off your shoes and belt and place them on the conveyor belt, drop your pants, bend over, and kiss your privacy good bye.
