security – Prog Gold

Tiny Todgers Go Boing Boing

Published on May 9, 2010

Naked scanner reveals airport screener’s tiny penis, sparks steel baton fight with fellow officers

Me, 12 May 2006:

Wait Till They Realise Women Will See Their Tiny Penises
…..What these men pushing this horribly invasive bit of kit donâ€™t realise is that the machine can also see the shape, location and worst of all the dimensions of their willies. â€¦

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So much for the reassurances of the Transport Safety Administration.

But the TSA said the X-rays will be set up so that the image can be viewed only by a security officer in a remote location. Other passengers, and even the agent at the checkpoint, will not have access to the picture.

In addition, the system will be configured so that the X-ray will be deleted as soon as the individual steps away from the machine. It will not be stored or available for printing or transmitting, agency spokesman Nico Melendez said.

Hey You, Get Off Of My Cloud

Published on May 6, 2010

Why I don’t do Facebook, reason No. umpty-three…

When it comes to personal data security I’ve always been paranoid, and with good reason. From Techcrunch:

Youâ€™ve got to hand it to Facebook. They certainly know how to do security â€” not.

Today I was tipped off that there is a major security flaw in the social networking site that, with just a few mouse clicks, enables any user to view the live chats of their â€˜friendsâ€™. Using what sounds like a simple trick, a user can also access their friendsâ€™ latest pending friend-requests and which friends they share in common. Thatâ€™s a lot of potentially sensitive information.

Unbelievable I thought, until I just tested the exploit for myself.

And guess what? It works.

The irony is that the exploit is enabled by they way that Facebook lets you preview your own privacy settings. In other words, a privacy feature contains a flaw that lets others view private information if they are aware of the exploit.

I know Facebook wants us to share more information and open up, but Iâ€™m not sure that this is quite what they had in mind.

Video…

Oooh, I dunno, I wouldn’t put it past them, especially with the current requirements placed ISP’s and social networking companies to provide information to security organisations – how better to datamine friends and associates of someone under suspicion, no warrant required?

, “…in future finding out other people’s secrets is going to involve breaking everyday moral rules”.
Sir David Omand, former Whitehall intelligence and security co-ordinator February 2009

I was having this very conversation with my son yesterday, apropos of Charlie Stross’ article on cloud computing and Steve Jobs’ long term strategy for the development of Apple as a data handler.

My son and his iPhone-toting friends may consider me an old fart for being firmly in the open-source using, roll your own cloud tendency, but being what might be considered a political dissident in a vicious neoliberal society I’ve got good reason to be paranoid. And this from someone who read Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson as a teenager and loved it. Now he’s happy just to hand over his data to any old Tomasina, Dick or Harret. Feh, where did I go wrong as a parent?

This latest piece of Facebookery just goes to prove me right and him wrong. Let some corporation have control over my personal details? Not a hope in hell.

Losing Nanotubes On The Tube

Published on June 9, 2009

Everlasting data storage is the holy grail of government and the police, so I expect Lawrence Livermore will shortly be receiving an advance order from authoritarian in chief Jack Straw. From Computerworld via Digg:

Researchers have demonstrated a form of archive memory using carbon nanotubes that can theoretically store a trillion bits of data per square inch for a billion years.

The technology could easily be incorporated into today’s silicon processing systems and it could be available in the next two years, a lead researcher said.

The scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California said the new technology can potentially pack thousands of times more data into one square inch of space than today’s chips

That’s pretty damned clever, but think of just one of the many implications: not least, what do you actually do with that unlimited stored data? We know what public employees are like with discs and memory sticks and the like and any nanotube storage device would likely be portable – and ideal for a civil servant to drop on a train or lose in the post or even accidentally flush down the loo, perhaps:

The government today offered a Â£20,000 reward for the safe return of two missing CDs containing personal details of half the British population.

The Metropolitan police, which has been heading the search for the data, has asked thousands of government workers to check their desks and homes “in case the package or discs have turned up”.

Last month, the government admitted that details of all child benefit claimants, including dates of birth and home addresses, had been lost in the post when sent from a HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) office in the north-east to the National Audit Office. The information on the discs was not encrypted.

In a statement, the Met said its primary search had been concluded without recovering the discs, which hold the details of more than 25 million people..

Perfect for the DNA Database, then.

A Good Day To Bury A DNA Database

Published on May 24, 2009

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The expenses scandal rolls on and on, and while it may be a disaster for the public’s faith in constitutional government, for New Labour it’s business as usual and every new day of scandal is just another good day for burying bad news.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith in particular must be chuffed to bits that the politerati’s bogged down in the mire of the expenses scandal; it all not only takes the heat off her personal travails, it lets her get on with dismantling democracy by the back door in decent peace and quiet:

Opposition parties and civil liberty groups united to condemn plans that are being steered through parliament while MPs are distracted by the expenses row.

The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats claim the government is seeking to make controversial changes to the national DNA database via a “statutory instrument” because it fears losing a vote that would be required if they were introduced by the more conventional method of primary legislation.

A statutory instrument has to be discussed only by a specialist committee which meets for 90 minutes and is usually made up of 16 MPs and a chairman. Critics say the Labour MPs who will dominate the committee will be handpicked by government whips and therefore back the Home Office proposals

How to do things with rules, in a nutshell.

Wounded and weak though he is, Gordon Brown is still PM and intends to stay PM for the foreseeable future; he still wants to get his way and as we already know, bullying is one of his favoured methods of doing so. I’ll bet those MPs will be handpicked – handpicked to be lying awake nights fretting they’ll be found out about something.

I can only hope that because of the unauthorised publication of the unredacted reciepts (with more yet to come) that the whips have lost most of their coercive power over MPs. I can only hope too that enough MPs are roused by this blatant use misuse of procedure to ensure the DNA database isn’t bulldozed through via statutory instrument while there’s no Speaker and Parliament’s in turmoil.

Those are very faint hopes, though. What they’re fretting about nights may not even be expenses at all: milking allowances may be the least of some MPs’ sins. While the latest revelations are certainly juicy and indicative of the unscrupulousness greed of some MPs, not least the whips themselves, not all scandals are financial and the whips probably have plenty of even juicier stuff left to make members sweat with nervousness and suddenly decide to retire ‘because of health problems’.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that publication of the reciepts has enabled whips to join the dots on some very questionable personal behaviour by some MPs. I think MPs will do what they’re told.

The Audacity Of Hypocrisy

Published on April 22, 2009

Peterr at Firedoglake:

Never Again? Thatâ€™ll be Quite a Speech, Mr. President
By: Peterr Tuesday April 21, 2009 4:20 pm

How does Obama speak at the national Holocaust remembrance commemoration on the topic “Never Again: What You Do Matters” one week after releasing memos outlining torture as an official US policy, and after declaring that those who employed it will not be prosecuted? We’ll find out on Thursday.

Oh, he’ll manage it; he knows all about the uses of rhetoric.