Ex-NSA Agents' Start-Up Locks in $8m in Funding

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More money keeps going into cybersecurity start-ups. The start-up Area 1 Security, which was founded by three ex-NSA employees, received an $8 million round of funding on Wednesday. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers led the Series A funding round for the company. The Menlo Park, California, based start-up, which was started last year, aims to stop cyberthreats caused by phishing campaigns. The firm's founders are Oren Falkowitz, Blake Darche and Phil Syme. As data breaches and cyberattacks continue to rise, there's been an uptick in money pouring into the space. During the past five years $5.2 billion has been invested in cybersecurity companies across 807 deals, according to data published in September from CB Insights, a firm that tracks venture and private equity investments. Corporate ventures have taken a particular interest and have increasingly invested in security start-ups. Funding for cybersecurity companies that included corporate participation has increased 29 percent this year over last year, according to CB Insights. Two of the biggest corporate ventures investing in the space are Intel and Google.

--- Cadie Thompson, CNBC

First published December 11 2014, 11:21 AM

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Ex-NSA Agents' Start-Up Locks in $8m in Funding

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Volokh Conspiracy: Cell phones exempt from the automobile search exception, Ninth Circuit rules

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With law school exam season finishing up, heres a new Fourth Amendment decision with facts that seem straight from a law school exam: United States v. Camou, authored by Judge Pregerson. In the new decision, the Ninth Circuit suppressed evidence from a 2009 search of a cell phone taken from a car incident to arrest at the border. The new ruling might not be the final word in the case. But the court does decide an important question along the way: The Ninth Circuit rules that if the police have probable cause to search a car under the automobile exception, they cant search cell phones found in the car.

I. The Facts

In 2009, officers arrested Camou at a border inspection checkpoint for hiding an undocumented immigrant in his truck. Minutes after the arrest, Camous phone rang several times from a number known to be from one of Camous co-conspirators. When Camou invoked his right to remain silent, officers decided to search the phone for evidence without a warrant. The phone search occurred 80 minutes after Camous arrest. The officer who searched the phone first searched through the call logs, then turned to the videos and photos. The officer scrolled through about 170 photos and saw that about 30 to 40 were child pornography. The officer stopped looking through the phone at that point and alerted authorities about the child pornography. Four days later, a warrant was obtained to search the cell phone for images of child pornography, leading to child porn charges against Camou.

The issue before the court is whether to suppress the fruits of the initial warrantless phone search as a violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Ninth Circuit rules that the cell phone search violated the Fourth Amendment and that the evidence must be suppressed.

II. The Ruling

Judge Pregersons analysis has five steps.

First, the search cannot be justified as a search incident to arrest because it occurred too late after the arrest and after too many intervening events had occurred. Eighty minutes had elapsed, and Camou and his co-defendants had been arrested, processed, and brought to interview rooms. According to Pregerson, that made the search too far removed from the initial arrest for the search-incident-to-arrest exception to apply.

Second, the exigent circumstances doctrine cannot apply because Riley v. California establishes that exigent circumstances generally wont justify a cell phone search and in any event, the scope of the search went beyond the exigency.

Third, the automobile exception cannot apply because the automobile exception does not apply to cell phones. This is an important legal ruling. Here, the Ninth Circuit extends the cell phones are different rationale of Riley to the context of automobile searches. This is an interesting and unsettled question I blogged about before, so its worth pausing to give a taste of Pregersons reasoning:

Given the Courts extensive analysis of cell phones as containers and cell phone searches in the vehicle context, we find no reason not to extend the reasoning in Riley from the search incident to arrest exception to the vehicle exception. Just as [c]ell phones differ in both a quantitative and a qualitative sense from other objects that might be kept on an arrestees person, so too do cell phones differ from any other object officers might find in a vehicle. Id. at 2489. Todays cell phones are unlike any of the container examples the Supreme Court has provided in the vehicle context. Whereas luggage, boxes, bags, clothing, lunch buckets, orange crates, wrapped packages, glove compartments, and locked trunks are capable of physically holding another object, see Belton, 453 U.S. at 460 n.4, [m]odern cell phones, as a category, implicate privacy concerns far beyond those implicated by the search of a cigarette pack, a wallet, or a purse, Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 248889. In fact, a cell phone search would typically expose to the government far more than the most exhaustive search of a house. Id. at 2491 (emphasis in original).

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Volokh Conspiracy: Cell phones exempt from the automobile search exception, Ninth Circuit rules

Court dismisses city's appeal in Meidinger suit

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The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has dismissed a Rapid City police officer's appeal, clearing the way for a trial on a former landfill employee's claim that the officer violated his Fourth Amendment rights four years ago.

City Attorney Joel Landeen said Wednesday that the city supports Lt. Peter Ragnone 100 percent and is prepared to go to trial. Ragnone was the detective assigned in 2009 to investigate allegations of fraud at the Rapid City landfill.

As a result of Ragnone's grand jury testimony, scale house attendant Randall Meidinger was indicted on 2010 for forgery and grand theft. The city fired Meidinger in 2009 after Ragnone reported that Meidinger had confessed to cutting a garbage hauler breaks on landfill fees.

A jury acquitted Meidinger of all charges in 2011. A civil suit brought by the city against Meidinger was later dismissed.

Ragnone is the only defendant left in a federal lawsuit filed in 2012 by Meidinger.

In September, U.S. ChiefDistrict Judge Jeffrey Viken dismissed Meidinger's claims against Mayor Sam Kooiker, former Police Chief Steve Allender and former landfill supervisor John Leahy.

Viken also rejected Meidinger's claim that Ragnone violated the 14th Amendment by conducting a reckless investigation and falsified evidence against him,but the judge said a jury should decide if Ragnone's testimony was credible when he told the grand jury that Meidinger had confessed and described a waste material as being only sawdust.

"At this point, we don't believe Peter Ragnone did anything wrong," Landeen said.

Ragnone's appeal of Viken's decision delayed the progress of the District Court case until this week.

Meidinger's legal team welcomed the appellate court's decision.

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Court dismisses city's appeal in Meidinger suit

Clothed in controversy: Statue sparks First Amendment debate

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A piece of art displayed for less than four hours on the University of Iowa campus has sparked national attention. A seven-foot-tall, sculpted set of Klu Klux Klan robes composed of articles depicting the history of racial tensions in America was on display at the university's free speech zone, the Pentacrest on Dec. 5, inciting outrage across the campus.

Serhat Tanyolacar, a visiting assistant professor at the University of Iowa and artist of the work, said the meaning of the piece was misunderstood.

"The intent was to raise awareness on contemporary issues on racism and create open discussion on those issues," Tanyolacar said.

University of Iowa officials were able to remove the display because Tanyolacar did not acquire the correct permits to display the piece. The university went on to say in a memo that it "considers all forms of racism abhorrent and is deeply committed to the principles of inclusion and acceptance."

"It's hard to start dialogue about something upsetting without showing something upsetting," said Frank LoMonte, executive director of University of Iowa's Student Press Law Center.

LoMonte said the University of Iowa was not in the wrong by removing the artwork due to Tanyolacar's inability to obtain a permit for the work.

"The government does have the ability to enforce reasonable permit conditions, so long as they are not selectively enforcing," LoMonte said.

LoMonte also said it is hard to start a conversation on something considered disturbing without showing something that is itself disturbing. The university was within its rights in removing the statue so long as the permit qualifications were the only reason they removed the piece.

"Picking and choosing who is okay to hate is a violation of First Amendment rights," LoMonte said.

The First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech, does not address hate speech, nor protect citizens against encountering it.

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Clothed in controversy: Statue sparks First Amendment debate

Not an April Fools joke: Hull launches its own cryptocurrency: "Hullcoin"

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Hull City Council have launched a new Bitcoin-style cryptocurrency in the city and yes, surprisingly, this isnt an April Fools joke. After making enquiries, the council have confirmed to me that yes, it is definitely real.

Stories started appearing yesterday which is usually a sign of greater credibility when youre writing something on the internet on April 1st. According to CoinDesk, the intention is to use the currency to tackle poverty.

Apparently the way it will work is by paying local people in Hullcoins for certain activities such as volunteering, and also accepting Hullcoins at local food banks (though Hullcoin allocation will not be dependent on volunteering it will be allocated based on poverty/need).

Whilst it may sound bizarre it just might work. The virtual coins wont have any impact on benefits received in real money because the currency is currently unrecognised by the UK government. Theres also the precedent of other local currencies like the Brixton Pound. Whilst the Brixton Pound is not a cryptocurrency (it is made of a quaint material known as paper), the idea with it is that it is issued and spent locally in Brixton to support the local economy. Hullcoin could end up playing a similar role.

On a technical level, the computer used to generated Hullcoins (the mining rig) has apparently been donated by an anonymous benefactor, and the currency is apparently based on two different mining scripts: Feathercoin and and Ven the use of a mixture being designed to create greater stability in the currency.

So itll be an interesting experiment and itll be interesting to see if the first government-backed cryptocurrency will turn out to be a success.

By James O'Malley | April 1st, 2014

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Not an April Fools joke: Hull launches its own cryptocurrency: "Hullcoin"

SF Bitcoin Devs Seminar: Presenting BitcoindJS with JJ (Bitpay) – Video

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SF Bitcoin Devs Seminar: Presenting BitcoindJS with JJ (Bitpay)
Get BitcoindJS: Github repo: https://github.com/bitpay/bitcoind.js JJ is a senior developer at Bitpay. He #39;s working on bringing bitcoind functions to nodejs. He #39;ll present on bitcoind.js...

By: Taariq Lewis

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SF Bitcoin Devs Seminar: Presenting BitcoindJS with JJ (Bitpay) - Video

Coinsecure: Introducing Trade Engine ~ Indias Coolest Mock Bitcoin Exchange – Video

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Coinsecure: Introducing Trade Engine ~ Indias Coolest Mock Bitcoin Exchange
Launching India #39;s Coolest Mock Bitcoin Exchange Over the past few months, we have delivered on several initiatives to increase the visibility of Bitcoin in India and we are almost ready...

By: Coinsecure

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Coinsecure: Introducing Trade Engine ~ Indias Coolest Mock Bitcoin Exchange - Video