Month: March 2017

(credit: William H. Merideth)

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought against William Merideth, the Kentucky man who shot down a drone that Merideth believed was flying over his own property in 2015. During the weeks that followed the incident, Merideth dubbed himself a "drone slayer." Later, he sold orange t-shirts with that phrase printed on them.

The ruling now means the lingering question as to whether American federal law recognizes the concept of aerial trespass will have to wait for another day.

Last year, drone pilot David Boggs sued Merideth in federal court in Louisville, asking the court to make a legal determination as to whether Boggs’ drone’s July 2015 flight constituted trespassing.

Enlarge (credit: Nyttend)

In a severe rebuke of one of the biggest suppliers of HTTPS credentials, Google Chrome developers announced plans to drastically restrict transport layer security certificates sold by Symantec-owned issuers following the discovery they have allegedly mis-issued more than 30,000 certificates.

Effective immediately, Chrome plans to stop recognizing the extended validation status of all certificates issued by Symantec-owned certificate authorities, Ryan Sleevi, a software engineer on the Google Chrome team, said Thursday in an online forum. Extended validation certificates are supposed to provide enhanced assurances of a site's authenticity by showing the name of the validated domain name holder in the address bar. Under the move announced by Sleevi, Chrome will immediately stop displaying that information for a period of at least a year. In effect, the certificates will be downgraded to less-secure domain-validated certificates.

More gradually, Google plans to update Chrome to effectively nullify all currently valid certificates issued by Symantec-owned CAs. With Symantec certificates representing more than 30 percent of the Internet's valid certificates by volume in 2015, the move has the potential to prevent millions of Chrome users from being able to access large numbers of sites. What's more, Sleevi cited Firefox data that showed Symantec-issued certificates are responsible for 42 percent of all certificate validations. To minimize the chances of disruption, Chrome will stagger the mass nullification in a way that requires they be replaced over time. To do this, Chrome will gradually decrease the "maximum age" of Symantec-issued certificates over a series of releases. Chrome 59 will limit the expiration to no more than 33 months after they were issued. By Chrome 64, validity would be limited to nine months.

Enlarge (credit: Lewis Mulatero/Getty Images)

Brian Dutcher

Brian Dutcher, 56, posted on his Facebook page in June that he would attend an Obama speech in La Crosse, Wisconsin. "(sic) hopefully I will get clear shot at the pretend president. (sic) killing him is our CONSTITUTIONAL DUTY!" He also posted, "pray for me to succeed in my mission." The next day, he took the 45-mile drive from his Tomah residence to La Crosse. Once there, he told an acquaintance, "I'm here to kill the President, the usurper, tomorrow at his speech." The acquaintance called police, and the Secret Service shortly thereafter questioned Dutcher for two hours.

The court later described what happened next: