Looks like the men in black have paid [Kyle McDonald] a little visit. The United States Secret Service is investigating him for fraud and related activity for his People Staring At Computers project. We just took a look at that one yesterday, and were thankful that all he was doing was taking people’s pictures and not stealing their information. Looks like [Uncle Sam] wasn’t being as lenient–or it could have been Apple that did the complaining since mums the word from the corporate giant. [Kyle's] also keeping his mouth shut after soliciting the advice of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Since details are scarce, it’s time to play armchair lawyer. Let us know in the comments what you think [Kyle] might be up against, and whether we’ll see this thing hit the courts or not. And remember not to take those comments as legal advice since none of us actually know what we’re talking about.

By the way, the gentleman seen above isn’t [Kyle], he’s one of the unsuspecting ‘victims’ with some wikimedia commons slapped in for effect.

[Thanks Craig, David, and others]

While waiting for his clothes to dry, our reader [xaio] decided to poke around and see how his building’s coin laundry system worked. It turned out to be ridiculously simple. All he needed to do was jumper the cable coming from each machine and they’d run without issue. We wonder why the relay box is so big. In any event, it could certainly benefit from a more secure installation.

A federal grand jury in Boston has charged eleven people with the theft of more than 41 million credit and debit card numbers from retail stores. What makes this case interesting is that, although the defendants stole the data from retail establishments, they did so without ever having to leave their cars; they stole the numbers while wardriving. While the report doesn’t make it clear whether the targeted networks used weak encryption or were simply unsecured, it’s obvious that the security of your data is still not a top priority for many companies.

[photo: Mujitra]

A new legal precedent may be set with the case of [Lori Drew], the St. Louis woman who posed as a teenage boy on MySpace and harassed 13-year-old [Megan Meier] until she committed suicide. Drew is being charged under the computer fraud and abuse act, on the grounds that she violated the terms of service agreement of MySpace. If she is convicted of these charges (she is also being charged with conspiracy), it may allow for the criminal prosecution of anyone who violates the terms of service agreement of a site under the same law.

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