Michael Gracie

The Justice Department asked a federal magistrate if it could check up on unsuspecting (and not necessarily suspect) email users, but instead of looking at contents, they wanted email header info instead. The magistrate balked, so Justice brought a friendly judge in to seal the deal.

Why would they do such a thing? Let me guess.

I just sent myself an encrypted email message, using everyday old (but extremely strong) PGP software, and turned off the decryption engine a moment later. Whoops, it just arrived back, message garbled for all eternity. But wait…lookee there! Plenty of header information for a paranoid prosecutor to flash in front of a court (smoke and mirrors close at hand, of course), in order to get a deeper surveillance warrant.

Nice. And useless.
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Interesting that security firms are always telling people how to avoid phishing attacks, while understanding there is little they can do about it. The bottom line is it is very difficult to filter an email that contains imbedded jpegs linking to obscure websites.

Yes, you can block pictures from downloading, but redirecting folks to specialized websites is a pretty common technique for gathering personal information. And from the looks of things, those security firms have certainly figured out how to do that.

Stupid is as stupid does.