Look out Silicon Valley, here comes Brit bruiser Amber Rudd to lay down the (cyber) law Executives at Facebook, Google and other terrorist-enabling online services are said to be quaking in their boots as UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd swoops into Silicon Valley this week to read them the riot act. Rudd has been a frequent critic of social media giants, particularly after the murders in London and Manchester, and …
To justify these measures we need an episode of The One Show, showing Amber Rudd and Theresa May being shown how to use their own special 'free' online financial manager software, where they can both enter their personal details/password/financial information in plain unencrypted text (to satisfy Security Services).
Bankcruptcy is still a reason you can't stand as an MP, whatever the reason.
I live in hope.
"Ooh! Hasn't he given up his USA citizenship or does he pay the annual Federal taxes on what he earns here and else where?
The people need to know!"
Yes on both counts, the first earlier this year, and the latter prior to that. He didn't enjoy contributing to the US Treasury coffers, that much is clear.
Yes he does. There was an article were he was bitching about having to pay US income tax after selling a house in the UK
"Boris Johnson is American already, having been born in New York. So that doesn't count."
I was hoping no one would of noticed that :), But I think he did give up his citizenship after having to pay a hefty US income tax bill.
"I was hoping no one would of noticed that :), But I think he did give up his citizenship after having to pay a hefty US income tax bill."
I wonder how that plays out when Boris "Foreign Secretary" Johnson visits the USA as a person who renounced US citizenship? I can imagine there being some in the US who can't imagine any legitimate reason to give up citizenship of "The Greatest Democracy The World Has Ever Known" so he must be some sort of pinko commie terrorist looney!
Seeking foreign elected office loses you your American citizenship.
It became a bit of a scam for billionaire ex-pat Americans trying to skip tax, they would stand for mayor of some Caribbean island. In the same way that MPs apply to be 'royal nutpicker of the new forest" as a way to resign
"(I veer between "he must be relatively intelligent" and "he's really not very bright".. I guess is the old saying about intelligence does not imply wisdom..)"
I believe he is very intelligent but likes to come across as a buffoon. In politics, that's dangerous for us.
Germany have sort of done this. No backdoor and no breaking of encryption, but with a warrant, they can install a trojan on a device and monitor it in real time.
Not ideal, but at least there are some balances and cotnrols, and they need physical access (currently) to install the malware and they have accepted that encryption for the Joe Public is essental in the modern age.
Wouldn't work for MY systems! I'm ALL custom!
I have a completely Complete custom CPU/GPU chips!
Custom Northbridge/Southbridge/Comms chips, custom
TEMPEST-rated motherboards! Custom NON-unix based
encrypting OS, Custom encrypted BIOS, Own TCP/IP/Ethernet
hardware and Wifi/Wimax/4G baseband hardware and software
stack, custom Java interpreters and HTML/web browser implementation.
Custom SQL interpreter and database engine. Custom programming
language Ada/Pascal based with auto-garbage collection. Custom
Compiler and Assembler for custom NON-SPARC and NON-X86
instruction set. All in a Rad-hardened, Faraday-caged system
we designed ourselves!
NOTHING out there will work on ANYTHING in here!
We even use our own custom build, Word Processors, Spreadsheets,
Drawing/Paint/ Video Editing/VFX/Animation applications and INTERNAL
anti-virus sniffers and protocol stack analyzers. NOTHING gets by us!
We are 1000 TIMES MORE SECURE than the NSA, DIA, CIA, GCHQ, MI5/MI6, CSE/CSIS,
GRU/FSB, MOSSAD/SHINBET and almost every OTHER special service! We also have
500 multi-spectral cameras running SOBEL edge detection (Base and Inverted) at
Acoustic/IR/UV/Optical/MM/RF/XRAY/GAMMA frequencies and with gait, biometric,
weight, olifcatory, humidity and multi-gas and liquid sensors.
We are WAAAAAAY BEYOND S4/Area 51/Autec/Majestic security levels and protocols!
WE are the ones that take security BEYOND THE NEXT LEVEL!
You have NOTHING compared to us!
"Every phone and computer to have a little locked door on it with a key combination which only the Gubmint knows. When they open the door, out pops a little micro-SD with all your suspicious stuff on it.
Simple!"
Except hers obviously.
"We Must think of the tax-haven offshore bank account holders, in dealing with this issue sensitively"
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Amber Rudd and others are conflating two very different uses of the internet by the "bad guys":
1. External communications: Propaganda, recruitment etc. - YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter. Has to be widely visible, can't be encrypted, easily taken down, and sources blocked, though the individuals behind it may be harder to find.
2. Internal communications: Planning attacks, logistics, etc. - Burner phones, WhatsApp for encryption, all of the above for innocuous coded messages - all using burner accounts.
Internet companies are cooperating on any "offensive" material, which covers the first type. For the second type, breaking encryption wouldn't gather anything meaningful - What does "The grey goose flys at dawn" mean, unless you have the codebook?
@shadmeister
No, no, no. Situations 2, 3 and 4 are what they want. It will all funnel down to a few sources, which then can be preserved and analysed. That way they can catch them as their playing field has been limited. It allows them to focus in on the 'bad actors' and those who communicate with them.
<sarcasm>Of course the impact it has on the 'good actors' who require some privacy cannot be important, can it? After all, we don't need freedom and democracy anymore, do we? Look at where it all has lead?</sarcasm>
"The above is obvious first glance, may contain errors, and is not extensive."
Yes, its "obvious" but incorrect. Terrorists like everyone else will go down the path of least resistence. If you make it harder for them to use standard tools it forces them to use niche tools which they may not understand properly or be able to use very well.
Youtube - terrorists don't generally use youtube to send secret messages to each other. They use it for propaganda purposes to indoctrinate susceptable individuals in the general population. If they have to use a "secret" server then that rather defeats the purpose.
I know the above goes against the popular anti-government groupthink on here and I apologise for not joining the self satisfied bleeting with the rest of the herd plus I'm sure to be modded down by the usual vocal know-nothings, but just thought it needed to be said.
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"I thought the terrorists had manuals on how to do things - so any issues will be resolved and documented."
What what I've read a lot of the ISIS terrorists would need a manual to wipe their own backsides without making a mess of it. There are obviously some smart ones at the top but don't assume the indoctrinated individuals are particularly smart.
"For Youtube, this is not the only way terrorists are recruited"
Of course not, but its a quick simple way to mass market their ideology to as many people as possible.
"As others have stated, politicians are technoplebs,"
Yes most of them are, but luckily there are people at GCHQ and MI* behind the scenes who advise them who are anything but. Of course if the politician doesn't want to listen...
" but don't assume the indoctrinated individuals are particularly smart."
In fact, fairly obviously they are extremely gullible and probably very stupid. But someone has to get blown up or shot.
As Max Hastings has observed, in mass armies such as were still around in WW2 the job of the majority of soldiers was to be easy targets so the competent soldiers were less likely to be shot. (Hence "cannon fodder"). Some of the true stories in which one or two soldiers made a huge difference to part of a battle are only explicable on the assumption that the enemy were too busy shooting the slow movers to notice them.
You do realise that terrorism is just another word for asymmetrical warfare, right?
Its purpose is to have an effect completely disproportionate to the amount of damage caused, and I think that breaking the security of all internet communications in the vain hope of catching more of these people prior to an attack does indeed count as wildly disproportionate. As many people have written very eloquently, and maths and experience of human frailty has shown, we just know that any kind of backdoor for the authorities will be secure for about as long as it takes to read this article.
Well done terrorists + UK government. Your job is complete.
If you are merely interested in preventing deaths, then you are approximately 300 times more likely to die on the roads than in a terror attack. How about we stop cutting traffic police numbers and just enforce the road laws a bit better? That might save a few more lives, but probably won't generate exciting headlines for your average minister.
"If you are merely interested in preventing deaths, then you are approximately 300 times more likely to die on the roads than in a terror attack."
Sure, but take away any police or security service action to stop terror attacks before they occur and that number might drop rather precipitously. Most police work to stop terror attacks we never hear about.
"approximately 300 times more likely to die on the roads than in a terror attack." - yes, yes all very sensible but you seem to be advocating terrorists start targeting traffic lights and blocking roundabouts with crashed Uber cabs to avoid adding to the terrorist casualties statistic.
Poor old Amber will be furious when she gets hold of your account.
@boltar
"Terrorists like everyone else will go down the path of least resistance"
No, sorry, but the people like the ones that carried out the recent UK attacks *may* use WhatsApp for personal communications, but I'll bet you a pound to a penny that the "organisation" uses private systems for the official terrorist communications and organising attacks. These will be well hidden and secured and only accessible via VPN/Tor and their ilk. It's even possible that dead drops and face to face meetings are more usual that WhatsApp messaging for the "orders" stage of an attack.
Couple that with the fact that the perpetrators of the recent UK attacks were already "known to the security services" and were not being monitored due to "resources", what is the point of having thousands of more "targets" to watch?
The recent attacks were by a couple of lone nutters who thought that the UK and USA governments hated them, their people and their religion.
The attacks in Manchester and London weren't planned in a secret underground war room in Afghanistan with secret battle plans sent by secret encrypted communication.
Every time this comes up I like to boil the argument down to be more simple than it was the last time it came up.
Basically where I'm at now is "if it's that easy where's GCHQs paper on how it can be done easily and securely so we can peer review it". Nope, that's what I thought.
Despite President Trump's recent claim that a US‑UK trade deal was imminent and would be "beautiful," the reality is that a UK government minister – even the Home Secretary – carries little weight in California.
"Beautiful" has to be qualified by the much trumpeted (play on words not entirely accidental) "America First" policy. I suspect that any UK - USA Trade Deal will be greatly weighted in the USA's favour, and that the UK might be better off without one. "Greatly weighted in the USA's favour" should be read as the UK getting royally shafted.
And I say that as a "leave" voter, although I am not seeking to reopen the Brexit debate.
@Commswonk
<quote>Trade Deal will be greatly weighted in the USA's favour, and that the UK might be better off without one. "Greatly weighted in the USA's favour" should be read as the UK getting royally shafted.
And I say that as a "leave" voter, although I am not seeking to reopen the Brexit debate.</quote>
I don't know why you wouldn't reopen it. It looked like a bad decision (to me) at the time and has got worse every day. Europe has common problems and would be best worked on together. They are hardly likely to be resolved independently.
"The main one being they let too many people into the club for political reasons and now they are in a financial shit-hole as a result."
Is that why the rest of the EU is out-performing the UK?
UK economy falls to bottom of EU growth league
Thanks Brexiters.
"Is that why the rest of the EU is out-performing the UK?"
Which has been put down to inflation as a result of the weaker pound rather than any underlying systemic growth issues. FX rates vary based on confidence, and Brexit knocked confidence in the pound. Ongoing uncertainty relating to the eventual agreement will continue for a couple of years yet I'd think - no-one suggested it was going to be an easy ride. However, it certainly hasn't been the doom & gloom disaster that was predicted has it?
Once we start showing a bit more spine and a little less 'whine' then perhaps confidence will come back, the pound will rally and we will be in a much stronger position. Time will tell. It doesn't do anyone any good to cry over spilt milk - let's just get on with the job and make the best of it eh?
"However, it certainly hasn't been the doom & gloom disaster that was predicted has it?"
You do know that Brexit hasn't happened yet, don't you? This is just the warm up period and already the pound is in freefall, the economy has stalled and strategic businesses are leaving or have left or at the very least are planning their exit. Farmers have just realised that they are most unlikely to continue getting their FREE! MONEY!! from the EU which means either rampant food price inflation in the UK or more likely that we will be forced to eat substandard US and Brazillian imports while our own farms revert to scrubland.
Meanwhile, who is that is whining and crying over spilt milk? Oh yes, it's the Brexit snowflakes like "Sir" James "Hypocrite" Dyson. And remember, Brexit hasn't even started yet.
James Dyson whines on and on and on about not getting that lovely free money.
Here's a clue, Jimmy D, you want all that lovely EU subsidy? There's an obvious answer that involves not leaving the EU, you muppet.
How about "no weight at all"?
Remember, this is "the out of control State", California :-)
We're not laughing with you, Amber. We're laughing at your appalling ignorance.
Ignorant about the tech world, but maybe not so stupid overall ... a vacation in The Golden State at the beginning of August, at Her Majesty's expense ... Whats the weather in Blighty looking like this coming week? In Silly Con Valley, it's projected to be hovering around 85F (30C), low humidity and no clouds for the week (early morning fog near the coast, our natural air conditioning).
War on Terror sounds so, so.. patriotic, etc.
>snerk< Patriots in a country that would do well to look at history.
After all, wasn't the 'Good ol' USA founded by 'terrorists' acting against God, Crown, and Country toward the end of the Eighteenth Century or so?
And look how successful GC&C were against those 'terrorists'!
How about the deaths from Sugar? Salt? Fat? Tobacco? Alcohol? Traffic? Food poisoning? The weather? Hell, how about the deaths from water?
So-called "terrorists" are pikers in comparison.
I'm far more afraid of my government than I ever will be of supposed "terrorists".
"Increasing taxes hasn't worked yet ... what make you think it'll ever work?"
Define "work". If taxes stopped everything being taxed "because it's not good for you" governments would run out of money. So "not being good for you" is an excuse to raise taxes which does exactly what it's intended to do: shift money into the government's coffers.
"There are 1.4 deaths from terrorism per year "
You have to be very, very selective with your dates to get that figure. We're at 37 in 2017 alone.
This decade so far is 39.
2000 to 2010 was 57
1990 to 2000 was 21
If you go back to the 80s and 70s then the numbers were much, much higher (Lockerbie, The Troubles).
You can argue about what is terrorism and whether to count suicide bombers in the casualty list but it's hard to get 1.4 deaths per year.
But agreed that it's trivial compared to, for example, motorbikes.
"But agreed that it's trivial compared to, for example, motorbikes."
Really? What is the number of deaths caused by a motorbike (other than to the rider that is - after all, we're talking about non-optional deaths here from terrorism we should be talking about non-optional deaths in areas of comparison too. Anyone who rides a bike understands the risks but does it anyway, that doesn't make them a victim).
I think you'll find that it's nationalism which needs an enemy to perpetuate, whether internal or external. Got to hold back the barbarian hordes, got to cleanse the bloodstock, got to maintain purity of thought to achieve the nation's glorious destiny.
You can think of examples from history, I'm sure.
Nationalism is a simple idea for the control of simple people, but it's only one fear based tool for social control, among many.
The dominant narrative is that terrorism is just a bunch of random events that can be countered by our superior culture of individualism expressed though consumerism. In reality there's a causal relation between terrorism and capitalism.
Liberal democracy (read: capitalist democracy) is the sacred cow that is beyond criticism, but everywhere you look you see only symptoms of an underlying disease.
So I reiterate, liberal democracy is no democracy at all. It is just another spectacle in our spectacular society to obscure the real seat of power in this world; an international dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
Can we expect more false flag attacks by the insecurity services teams then?
Their last attempt was targetting children at a concert
Our insecurity services have questionable relationships with islamic moderate-rebels, you can call them the mujahideen, al-qaeda, ISIS, but moderate rebels is what the media called them. Basically they are mercs. The insecurity services threw money and weapons at these guys during the CIA-backed "Arab Spring"
We always hear the same thing after a "terror attack"
"They were known to the security services"
No fucking shit shirlock, they were known to the security services in more ways than you have the balls or brains to realise.
Ask yourself this simple question, if you were a terrorist, and you had viable nailbomb in a backpack, and you hated the UK government for bombing your family from 10,000 feet, what would be your target?
A bus full of innocent civilians
A concert full of teenage girls
An underground tube train full of plebs
A military base
Government officials
The establishment aren't scared of "terrorists", they're scared of you and I and everyone else.
They're scared of the revolution they never see coming and losing all their wealth and status.
Don't make the mistake of thinking everyone has the same values as you or I. There are some who are beyond help sociopaths
Obviously not her.
I mean the nest of vermin cabal of senior civil servants who've been whispering in the ears of Ms Rudd and a long line of her equally clueless predecessors since at least the days of Tony Blair.
If the intention of TPTB is to bring the hammer down on populations and use their control of communications as a means to suppress revolt, then they have overlooked one major factor.
In an information war, the next revolution will come from the technically literate, and since politicians don't understand one iota of what that really means, they will *always* be blindsided.
For an example, DRM is politicians' thinking. How quickly does that get broken? How much did it cost to implement vs. how much it costs to break?
The only reason this situation hasn't already happened is because TPTB have not yet pulled the pin - they are still frog boiling. What they don't seem to understand is that this particular frog has a secondary phase of growth where it turns into a salamandar and bites their heads off.
I amuses me how we think the world should listen to us, the UK I mean.
We're not a world power any more, haven't been for decades, and whilst up until recently we did probably have more influence than we should've our increasingly insular world view has put an end to that.
I'm sure it must be nice for Ms Rudd to get to meet the powerful people in the world, but I suspect /they/ don't really care.
We really should learn and leave all this running the world to the youth and get on tending our rose garden in our old age.
We are still a world power. Still a large economy, still have a few semi functional weapons systems and occasionally can manage to find a squadie who has a long enough memory to remember the last time the accountants and managers at the mod found enough money to pay for a bullet for him to practice with....
... says that this comes hard on the heels of revelations that Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook blow massive amounts lobbying Trump administration
"Can we have some of that dosh for our Party coffers, please?"
/cynic
Terrorist are happy now, civilians of the world are being disarmed, freedoms removed, private conversations denied. Now they just whip out their encrypted bootable memory chip, connect to their own VPN service, and use encrypted custom chat apps.
No burden on them, none at all.
As their population expands to the point of majority (20 years) and they are the elected government people, all the controls are in place to round up non-muslims and,, yeah I don't want to think about it.
And our politicians made it all happen for them.
Apparently the author has very little knowledge of the USA's constitution, businesses or people.
I can come up with a huge list of technology from the 16th century to today criminals and terrorists use to circumvent, hide and conduct in-depth research of targets to make it easier for them and more difficult for law enforcement, intel agencies, etc.
No business in the USA has responsibility to the government when it comes to information security. Her rampaging ideas aren't new or earth-shattering in any way; in fact, they've been debated over and over again in Congress. Each time, the Constitution of the USA falls on the side of businesses.
Businesses only have the responsibility to it's customers and to their own self-interests. The USA calls it the free market. The government can't make a business use weak encryption, provide logs, share information or spend money.
There have been criminals and people who wish to do harm to people and the government in the USA since Plymouth Rock. Only the times and technology has changed.
Imagine how different things would be if President Clinton decided not to release GPS frequencies. People were worried then, how China and the Russian's could use this. What if the USA's government decided to go after companies who started to provide low earth orbit detailed satellite imagery? Again, Chicken Little was screaming about the sky falling.
So, you really think anyone in the USA is scared of a any official from another country? PAH.
.
"Rudd may not get the opportunity to meet with Cook while in California, however – the Home Office has only said she is meeting with representatives from YouTube and Alphabet. (Presumably that means two different groups of representatives, but since Google owns YouTube, we can't be 100 per cent certain. Rudd is not exactly tech savvy.)"
Actually it's possible that you may not be business-savvy - Alphabet (not Google) owns YouTube, but this is totally irrelevant, because YouTube is an entity of its own (not a department within Alphabet). It is possible that she's meeting with YouTube and Alphabet.
They already have carefully thought-through, legally covered arrangements.
Those are the bits within your freeware that proclaim with some pride, "no liability accepted!"
Sorry we forgot to tell you POSIX thread's are viral in nature for about every 2,500 lines of code, so yeah your screwed. Hungaria has had enough, Russia has had enough, indeed a lot of your own constituants have had more than enough, flying off halfway around the world trying to impress upon everybody that you should be allowed to access "Switched Access Services" so you can launder money faster is not winning you any voters.
Deal with the Criminal "Bankers" first, before you make it your parties manifesto about laying down the law to everybody else.
Not reading.. FIngers in ears and "Lalalalalala!"
Bad enough you've got a load of National Security Guys - Yes, disgraced M. Flynn taking advantage of off-shore tax havens, then there Mrs Rudd who was also a “corporate advisor” at a biodegradable plastics firm during a failed “major expansion” that was later criticised as being “too swift”. That firm went into liquidation owing £4.8million.
Does Ms Rudd know what the Wiretap Law is within the United States or what it stipulates? If not then she is in no possition to comment and should keep her mouth shut!
All these calls for greater powers are laughable. 71 Bankers most with ties to Citibank and Russia are dead "shot" not one was chalked up to being an accident. The government says it's got the right's to wiretap everybody, fantastic we the internet consortium agree whole heartedly, the sooner we wiretap all the politicial classes with our ghost in the wire "Communist" wiretap, used by citibank and Kushner and Co. to launder billions in Bonds and evade tax, the sooner we'll all be so safer.
Yes, he did hard time for it back when it was Windows 95 and if you read his daddy's indictment, it clearly stipulates "wire-fraud" and now we have his step daddy with all his debts endorsing what he does!
So the security services where caught tampering with the "wiretap" which under the law is illegal by weakening encryption and being able to read information flowing down the wire, which is no longer possible after a load of scientists and boffins fixed it.
So to be clear you climbed into Putin's bed when it suited you, now that he and the computer community expose you and your corruption, you all want to play holier than thou.
I know what I would say to Ms Rudd, if I where Tim Cook, it would be a short two worded reply!
Starting with "F" and ending in "F"
Bell-Labs created the Worlds first Computerised Telephone "Wire-Tap" in 1965 almost every computer user is aware of this, if there not - then they're are sadly retarded and need to go re-read the telephone tapping wikipedia - it is not "Semper Occultis" - always secret!
Everybody is aware that it is used by some of the largest banking conglomerates, mostly within the US to transfer money, securely. What is not widely advertised ,is that it is very much still in use, a testimony of engineering to the guy's who created it. I do believe they won the turing award. Dennis Macallister Ritchie and Ken Thompson.
If your not sure what it is, go ask a bunch of hackers, they'll show it to you, whilst explaining that it was the perfect system, hetrogenous, distributed & even clustering. Putting all work by subsequent others into the shade. Whilst also providing a system that was considered to be too open, allowing any other user to log in as a guest under the user account "none" which nobody wanted because they all felt they had something to hide - so Berkley (in)-Secure Demon was born!
The Wiretap Act, codified by 18 U.S. Code § 2511, is a federal law aimed at protecting privacy in communications with other persons. Typically, when you think of a "wiretap," the first thing that comes to mind is someone listening to your telephone calls. But the Act protects more than that.
Under the Act, it is illegal to:
Intentionally or purposefully intercept, disclose, or use the contents of any wire, oral, or electronic communication through the use of a "device" and that is for obvious logical as well as legal reason's.
The Act provides criminal and civil penalties for violations, although it creates various exceptions to when interceptions and disclosures are illegal. Such as breaking all the cryptography used to protect information in transit and running off laundering billions in Bonds.
Diamonds are Forever
From Russia with Love
Holy-C stand's for Holy "Communism" for the computer community by the computer community, wire-tap your friends, wire-tap your naighbours, anything for an advertsing fast-buck an to hell with the rest of society, whilst the government just doesnt get it and pisses even more good money after bad.
Yes it's available for everybody to download for free and that is something that really cheese's the government off, because unfortunately it was made by a load of hackers for use by a load of hackers.
C-Tone for Wire-taps, Mmmm.
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