The security specialists at Microsoft, not satisfied with just how insecure their operating systems have turned out, have unveiled a USB dongle that plugs into a computer, bypasses any Windows passwords or encryption, and quickly downloads sensitive data such as your Web browsing history. This is just some of the latest cybercrime-fighting technology being discussed at a company summit in Redmond for law enforcement officials from around the world. Code-named COFEE, 2,000 of the devices have already been distributed to police officers, and are intended to help collect data from suspects in criminal investigations quickly. Microsoft has been quietly giving back-door key since June. As Slashdot points out, "Just one more reason not to run Windows on your computer."

New details have emerged in the landlord-tenant dispute featuring Palo Alto couple Kip Macy, a software engineer who's worked on FreeBSD, and wife Nicole Macy, a local realtor. Emails were purpotedly fabricated in the name of tenant Scott Morrow, even though he told prosecutors that he has no email account:

After two and a half days of deliberation, an Oakland jury has voted to convict Linux developer Hans Reiser of murder in the first degree in a case involving the disappearance of his ex-wife Nina Reiser, pictured here. The conviction came in the absence of a corpse — with Reiser arguing that his ex-wife had stolen a large sum of money and disappeared back to Russia. Judge Larry Goodman is now responsible for handing down a sentence. Video of Reiser's reaction to the jury's verdict after the jump.

America's very very close friends in the Saudi government arrested and detained a young blogger named Fouad Farhan, shut down his site, detained him for four months without charges, and finally released him on Saturday. Thankfully, they have a very very good explanation for all that: "'We have ... what we call electronic crimes—any kind of violation related to computer and technology and so on,' Interior Ministry spokesman Gen. Mansour Al Turki told the Monitor when asked why Fouad Farhan had been jailed. [...]'And I believe his main case was like violating personal rights.... Like when I go for example on the Internet or I go on any electronic media and I use your name and your personality and I criticize ... or offend you without being able to introduce evidence of what I'm saying.'" So. He was arrested for electronic crimes. Farhan could still be prosecuted for his "electronic crimes" despite the release. Farhan's worst electronic crime against the government?

Head honcho of the federales, Robert Mueller, let his fantasies run wild in hearings held by the House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee on Wednesday:

How I Met Your Mother nice guy Josh Radnor: "Her head was thrown back, the arms were raised above the body as if in the last moments of her life the girl was desperately defending herself. A deep gash four inches long was in her right cheek. Her neck was cut from the lobe of the left ear to the center of the throat and there was another gaping wound in the right side of the neck."

The three New York City police detectives charged with manslaughter in the 2006 shooting death of Sean Bell, 23, on his wedding day as he was leaving his bachelor party with two friends were acquitted of all charges this morning. The officers fired fifty shots at Bell and his friends, who were all unarmed, outside of a Queens strip club.

Kip Macy, a software developer well-known in FreeBSD circles, purchased 744-746 Clementina in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood with his wife Nicole for $995,000 in 2005. The couple then moved to evict the tenants to replace them with renters who would pay more, which would be a violation of San Francisco rent-control laws and California's Ellis Act. Now they've been arrested after allegedly terrorizing residents who protested:

The Justice Department has begun an antitrust investigation into Yahoo's test of Google's search advertising technology according to an anonymous source cited by Reuters:

Drug-and-celebrity-laden downtown nightspot The Box can add to its ongoing problems the fact that an unknown disgruntled person is posting angry fliers around town alleging that the club's doorman is a "DRUG PEDDLER who RAPED TWO WOMEN" last year. The Daily News reported today that the anonymous flier guy has been arrested. But today the "BOX-KILLER" weighed in on the comments section of a blog post to declare that he was NOT arrested because posting such fliers is free speech, and furthermore, he still thinks the doorman is an "animal" and a "criminal!" Anonymous fliers and anonymously sourced gossip items and anonymous blog posts: all the makings of a solid story. [Animal]

For reasons utterly unknown to your non-fashion mag-reading day editor, Elle has a lengthy feature this month about "Anna," the FBI agent provocateur (in the COINTELPRO sense, not the lingerie sense) who brow-beat some lazy, unemployed pot-smoking self-proclaimed "anarchists" into planning a mild act of terrorism they didn't actually have the resources or intelligence to pull off. The story is a largely sympathetic interview with "Anna" ("The car stank of body odor and sweat, thanks to the extremists rejection of regular bathing and hygeine products.... Vicks VapoRub, which Anna routinely dabbed inside her nose, made it barely tolerable."), who rented the would-be bombers a cabin and bought them bomb-making supplies and provided them with bomb-making plans and demanded they stick to the fucking plan the night they all decided they'd rather smoke pot and make pasta. If it sounds like we're condoning either terrorism or lack of personal hygiene, well, entrapment makes us queasier than hippie stink. Now the ringleader of the The Collective That Couldn't Shoot Straight faces 20 years in prison. So let's all make like anarchists and insert these little culture-jammy 'retractions' into copies of Elle! That'll help, right? Sigh.

Click to viewRichard Quest, the Brit-accented CNN correspondent arrested in Central Park last week with meth in his pocket, a dildo stuffed in his boot, and rope tied around his genitals, apparently has a good deal of training in rope tricks. Click to watch this clip, in which he shares his terror while performing "the Professor's Nightmare Rope Trick"—he just can't get the rope where he wants it to go! "We count to three, and we blow hard. We blow hard!" Impeccable foreshadowing in almost every line.

CNN reporter Richard Quest, who was busted in Central Park with methamphetamine in his pocket, a rope tied around his genitals and a dildo in his boot, wasn't the only TV news personality arrested and embarrassed for alleged sexual kinks this weekend. Eric Watson (pictured) of NBC17 in Raleigh, North Carolina was taken into custody on charges he spied on a woman who was showering at home. The reporter belongs to the same gym as the woman, and it sounds like he drove the TV station's van to her house. A witness said he worked hard to peep, according to the News & Observer:

"Hillary looks like a bull dyke in a pantsuit, but at least she seems serious. McCain looks like Mr. Magoo. Obama looks like a fucking lemur, a little rodent-like creature, a marsupial or something, I don't know. Jesus, I have no idea of what's going on in the world anymore. Where's Ronald Reagan, now that I really need him?" [Nj.com]

Using the trash can drug meth makes a person mighty paranoid. So it was probably fear of having his genitals stolen that moved CNN talker Brian Quest (who is British) to attach them to his neck with a rope sometime before he was busted for possession in Central Park Friday night. But that still doesn't explain the dildo he had stuffed in his boot like a Derringer.

Richard Quest, the most unpleasant "funny" on-air CNN correspondent EVER, was arrested this morning (like last night "this morning") outside Central Park for violating park curfew. As they arrested him he said to the cops, presumably with his trademark "hilariously" over-emphasized British accent, "I have meth in my pocket." Not the best line maybe? Quest, host of CNN Business Traveler, is openly gay, btw, which is maybe why he was hanging around the park at 3:40 a.m. with meth in his pocket. CNN had no comment. (After the jump, a truly odd clip of Quest interviewing Ritchie Blackmore.) [NYT]

Maxim publisher Felix Dennis, who grimly admitted to a murder during an interview, keeps trying new and various ways to backtrack. He was drunk! He only kills magazines, ha ha! His latest claim, at a Columbia Journalism event last night: it was all a big prank to sell books! Dennis said it was an April fool's joke. "What [the press] didn't notice was the date," he said. Of course, that disregards the fact that the story actually ran on April 2, and that the interview the story was based on took place months earlier. Quite a bit of forward planning for a raving drunk and possibly murderous lad mag mogul. [BW]. Here's the original passage that started it all:

A frequent punishment for those caught committing computer-related crimes is a ban on computer use. Putting aside the legality of these bans, which may cover anything from home computers to iPhones to ATMs, we wondered whom we would restrict computer use if we had the opportunity. Scoble? Calacanis? Owen Thomas? Put your vote in the comments.

When eccentric billionaire and Maxim publisher Felix Dennis confessed to killing a man in an interview last week, he quickly realized, once the hangover wore off, that he'd need some expert public relations help with this mess. So he turned to the trusty Drew Kerr, the former Radar publicist who managed to hang on to his Maxim account even as his firm, Four Corners, dwindled to little more than Drew himself and a bag of baby carrots. (Drew was very proud of that baby carrots-sent-to-Gawker stunt). So how does Kerr help the menacing Dennis back out of his murder confession? With an ill-timed joke about how he's only a killer of magazines.

Controversial private investigator Steven Rombom told WBAI New York's radio show "Off the Hook" that a "major social networking site" has been "going around the country committing felonies." Rombom plans to reveal which site later this summer. Any guesses? By the traffic, Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo are the culprits being fingered.