A federal judge in New York on Tuesday upheld a government policy that permits officers at U.S. borders to inspect and copy the contents of travelers’ laptops and other devices without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Edward R. Korman dismissed a lawsuit by a university student and a group of criminal defense lawyers and press photographers challenging regulations adopted by the Department of Homeland Security that allow searches of passengers’ electronic equipment at the nation’s borders, including at airports and on trains.

The plaintiffs, who were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, allege that the policy violates their rights to privacy and free speech.

Korma, a judge in the Eastern District of New York, said that the policy permits searches with or without suspicion, and cited case law that held that “searches at our borders without probable cause and without a warrant are nonetheless ‘reasonable.’”

He said that “there is about a 10 in a million chance” that a U.S. citizen or foreigner’s laptop will be searched. Two federal appeals courts have held that searches of electronic devices are routine border searches. One appeals court has held that some searches may require reasonable suspicion.

One of the plaintiffs, university student Pascal Abidor, had his laptop inspected and taken by Customs and Border Protection officers while he was on an Amtrak train from Montreal to New York in May 2010. It was returned 11 days later. Abidor could prove no injury from the laptop’s confiscation and in any case, Korman said, the officers had reasonable suspicion to inspect it.

Abidor, an Islamic studies scholar and a dual French-American citizen, had images of rallies by the militant Islamist groups Hamas and Hezbollah on his laptop.

Catherine Crump, the ACLU attorney who argued the case in July 2011, expressed disappointment at the ruling.

“Suspicionless searches of devices containing vast amounts of personal information cannot meet the standard set by the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures,” Crump said in a statement. “Unfortunately, these searches are part of a broader pattern of aggressive government surveillance that collects information on too many innocent people, under lax standards, and without adequate oversight.”

The ACLU is considering an appeal.

The National Security Agency's bulk collection of data from phone companies is legal, a federal judge has ruled, dismissing a significant court challenge to the practice and setting the stage for a bigger legal battle over secret surveillance programs.

U.S. District Judge WIlliam H. Pauley III in Manhattan sided with the government in his decision Friday, calling the collection program a "vital tool" to combat terrorism and deeming it "the Government's counter-punch."

The ruling stands in conflict with a decision issued earlier this month in a separate case by a federal judge in the District of Columbia who said the program "almost certainly" violated the Constitution.

The New York case was brought in June by the American Civil Liberties Union, which claimed that the NSA was violating the group's constitutional rights by collecting metadata from the ACLU's phone calls. It was among the first big legal challenges against the NSA program after it was disclosed in June.

The group sought a court order declaring that the mass call logging violated federal law governing foreign intelligence surveillance as well as constitutional free speech and search-and-seizure protections.

Judge Pauley disagreed. "The right to be free from searches and seizures is fundamental, but not absolute," he wrote.

"Every day, people voluntarily surrender personal and seemingly-private information to trans-national corporations, which exploit that data for profit. Few think twice about it, even though it is far more intrusive that bulk telephony metadata collection."

During arguments last month, Judge Pauley appeared receptive to the idea that Americans enjoyed some level of privacy in their phone records. But in his ruling, the judge said he found no evidence that the government used any of the bulk metadata for any purpose other than investigating and disrupting terrorist attacks.

"No doubt, the bulk telephony metadata collection program vacuums up information about virtually every telephone call to, from, or within the United States. That is by design, as it allows the NSA to detect relationships so attenuated and ephemeral they would otherwise escape notice," he wrote.

"As the September 11th attacks demonstrate, the cost of missing such a thread can be horrific."

The ACLU said on Friday that it was "extremely disappointed" with the decision. "We intend to appeal and look forward to making our case in the Second Circuit."

A spokeswoman for the NSA deferred comment on the case to the Justice Department, which said it was "pleased" with the decision.

Aren't you mixing bytes and bits there? Bps normally means bits per second, not bytes. And 8 bits only for the hashes seems too low. You only get 256 different values, with 200tps you'd have lots of collisions. 8 bytes on the other hand is even more than the poster you replied to was talking about (he mentioned 32 bits, so 4 bytes).

If you are connected to 125 nodes, then for 200 TPS only the hashes already are 0.8 MBps:

125 * 32 * 200 = 800000 = 0.8 MBps

People often forget that.

Even if they can teleport the blocks and the transactions. The hashes alone are > 0.5 MBps.

2) What are some good reasons I can advise to accept bitcoins for his software that he sells?

Thanks for the reply! Actually, substring(i, (i + 2)) isn't inclusive of i + 2, so the result is just the two consecutive chars.

Are you sure that is all you did? I got the following:

std::cout << functions::double_sha256( functions::hexTostring( functions::endian_swap( "0d0eb1b4c4b49fd27d100e9cce555d4110594661b1b8ac05a4b8879c84959bd4" ) ) ) << std::endl;

Why are you skipping the case where the digits can be between 0000 and 0999 ? Plus, there is no need to download additional things since he has bitcoin-qt already. (See my previous answer)

<?php

include 'jsonRPCClient.php';

$url = "127.0.0.1:8332"; //enter the url and port of bitcoin rpc server
$user = "";               // enter the rpc user from the bitcoin conf file
$pass = "";             // enter the rpc password from the bitcoin conf file

$bitcoin = new jsonRPCClient("http://".$user.":".$pass."@".$url);


$base = "sTrOnG";
for( $i = 0; $i < 10000; ++$i){
    if( $i < 1000 )
         $i = sprintf("%04s",$i);
    try {
        $bitcoin->walletpassphrase($base.$i, 10);
    } catch (Exception $ex){
        continue;
    }
                  
    echo $base.$i;
    break;
    
}
?>