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Russian punk rocker freed on appeal; two others remain in prison

by InterNetics eMagazine on October 10th, 2012

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Pussy Riot member Yekaterina Samutsevich leaves the Moscow City Court on Oct 10, 2012. The court replaced Yekaterina Samutsevich’s jail term for a suspended sentence.

By Will Englund, Wednesday, October 10, 9:07 AM

MOSCOW — One of the members of a feminist punk group convicted of hooliganism, for storming into a cathedral and singing a protest song, unexpectedly won her freedom on appeal Wednesday.

Two other members of the band, called Pussy Riot, had their sentences upheld, and must serve two years in a prison camp.
Their case has won worldwide notoriety, with calls for their release from rock stars and political figures. Their target was President Vladimir Putin, who said last week that he thought their sentences were just. They continued to criticize him in court at Wednesday’s hearing.

The members of the band went to the altar of Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral on Feb. 21, wearing balaclava ski masks, and sang a song against Putin. At their trial last summer, they were accused of inciting religious hatred.

The case has been portrayed as evidence of a crackdown by Putin on the more spirited members of the opposition that began taking to the streets in open protest in December 2011. Other activists also face a variety of criminal charges that could carry severe penalties.

At the same time, parliament has passed bills that significantly increase the prison terms for organizing illegal protests and that have made it much more difficult for civil society organizations to operate here. New bills would greatly expand the definition of treason and make it easier to imprison people on charges of inciting religious hatred.

The released woman, Yekaterina Samutsevich, had replaced her lawyers before a previously scheduled hearing. Her supporters were quick to point out Wednesday that the attorneys who originally represented her — Violetta Volkova, Nikolai Polozov and Mark Feigin — are particularly disliked by Putin. Samutsevich’s father suggested that she was being rewarded for making the change; other allies saw an effort by the Kremlin to drive a wedge among members of the group and among other activists as well.

Band members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, both of whom have small children, kept the original defense team and now must serve their sentences.

The court decision releasing Samutsevich pointed out that she had not had time to join the others at the altar before security guards hustled them all out of the cathedral, and she therefore deserved less blame.

At Wednesday’s hearing, all three women argued that their protest was strictly political and not motivated by religious hatred.

“It is as clear as noon that our performance at the Christ the Savior Cathedral was political rather than anti-religious. I have no religious hatred, and none of us had it in our performance,” Tolokonnikova said. She said she felt repentance but not remorse.

“Repentance as a personal act is acceptable to us, but remorse is not, because this would mean that we acknowledge our guilt. It is impossible to feel remorse for something you did not do,” she said.

She apologized for hurting believers’ feelings.

“If we unintentionally offended any believers with our actions, we express our apologies,” said Samutsevich.

The women were careful to mention the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church as one of their political targets, as opposed to those who worship within the church.

The church is closely aligned with the Kremlin, and it pushed hard for the prosecution of the punk rockers. More broadly, it has been arguing that it is a victim of strident secular hostility. In the wake of the Pussy Riot convictions, some activists have been sawing down wooden crosses in cities throughout Russia.

Amnesty International said Wednesday that all three members should be released. “The persecution of Pussy Riot has become a global symbol of President Putin’s shameless intolerance for criticism and determined crackdown on freedom of expression and association,” Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in a statement released by her office.

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"Magic" Marker Unlocks Electronic Card Hotel Doors

'Magic' Marker Unlocks Hotel Doors

by Ben Weitzenkorn, Staff Writer, Security, TechNewsDaily

CREDIT: Sixninepixels/Shutterstock.com  View full size image

In a turn of innovation fit for a spy novel, a hack that unlocks some 4 million hotel-room doors has gone undercover, hiding inside a dry-erase marker.

Ethical hackers at security firm Trustwave's penetration testing arm, SpiderLabs, said they'd improved on the proof-of-concept that Cody Brocious demonstrated this summer, whereby a cheap homemade device can trip certain Onity keycard lockssimply by being inserted into a data port on the bottom of the casing and turned on.

On the SpiderLabs blog, Matthew Jakubowski laid out a parts list, diagram and photos to show readers how he was able to fit Brocious' design into the inconspicuous, everyday marker. He had originally hoped to get it into a smaller chassis, like a ballpoint pen, but limited resources meant he would have to upsize.

"We wanted to show that this sort of attack can happen with a very small, concealable device," Jakubowski told Forbes, who hopes the pen trick will be a wake-up call to hotels and their guests alike.

The 24-year old Brocious originally demonstrated the trick at the Black Hat hacker's conference in Las Vegasthat the lock manufacturer originally rolled its eyes at, calling the hack "unreliable and complex to implement."

Since then, though, Onity, whose locks are the last defense for millions of hotel guests around the world, has acknowledged the seriousness of the problem and made an updated chip that Onity customers can purchase and install in the affected locks. This approach, however, has come under fire from those who think Onity should eat the cost of its mistake instead of shifting any burden onto the hotels that use their locks.

"If such a case were to happen to a car," Brocious wrote on his blog, "customers would likely expect a complete recall at the expense of the manufacturer."

Brocious' original proof, which inspired many copycats, was a clunky, conspicuous device that would have drawn the suspicions of anyone wandering down a hotel hall. But now that it can be fit into something as benign as a marker, the quick hack could be performed  with discreet ease.

 SpiderLabs' researchers demonstrated how their magic door-unlocking marker works in the video below.

Stacey Dash Takes Heat on Romney endorsement

By Anthony Castellano

Oct 9, 2012 3:11am

‘Clueless’ Star Stacey Dash Takes Heat on Twitter for Endorsing Mitt Romney

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Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

“Clueless” star Stacey Dash has come under attack on Twitter after publicly endorsing Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

“Vote for Romney. The only choice for your future,” Dash tweeted on Sunday accompanied by a picture of her in a patriotic bathing suit.

“You’re an unemployed black woman endorsing @MittRomney. You’re voting against yourself thrice. You poor beautiful idiot,” one user tweeted.

After the negative backlash, Dash stood by her comment, tweeting, “My humble opinion… EVERYONE is entitled to one.”

Women’s rights activists Sandra Fluke, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention, tweeted her support for Dash on Monday.

“So disappointed to see people attacking @REALStaceyDash for voicing her opinion. Disagree politically, but #racist attacks are unacceptable.”

Earlier this week, “Good Morning America” caught up with Dash and the rest of the “Clueless” cast while they were reuniting for a photo shoot forEntertainment Weekly magazine’s Reunions Issue.