Cody Taylor

jd writes “In startling revelations, convicted terrorist Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri admitted that Al Qaeda used public telephones, pre-paid calling cards, search engines and Hotmail. al-Marri ‘used a “10-code” to protect the [phone] numbers — subtracting the actual digits in the phone numbers from 10 to arrive at a coded number.’ The real story behind all this is that the terrorists weren’t using sophisticated methods to avoid detection or monitoring — which tells us just how crappy SIGINT really is right now. If the NSA needs to wiretap the whole of the US because they can’t break into a Hotmail account, you know they’ve got problems. FindLaw has a copy of al-Marri’s plea agreement (the tech-related information begins on page 12), and the LATimes has further details on his case.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has finished the worldwide roll out of POP3 support for Windows Live Hotmail.

nk497 writes “The UK justice secretary Jack Straw has been criticised for using Hotmail as his official government email account after he apparently fell foul of a Nigerian spammer in a phishing attack. A security researcher said using such an account not only left the government in security trouble, but meant any emails sent could not be necessarily accessed via the Freedom of Information Act.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.