Posts by John H Woods

Re: Will it work?

"The reliable, high quality of the beans these people secure" -- Some Starbucks employee

Well, if only you guys would turn the damn roasters off a bit sooner, we might be able to tell if that's true.

Re: TAILS

"If the NSA / GCHQ really want to waste their time keeping tabs on anything I've ever said or done then they must have money to burn" --- LucreLout.

They do. But it's ours.

Re: This is why the....

" This is why the whole certificate concept is flawed" -- AC

There are some problems with certificates, but expiry isn't really one of them. It's nothing like DRM orphans; certificate expiry is virtually a cryptographic necessity.

There's a lot of dates companies need to remember: tax returns, profit filings, public holidays, audit points, backup schedules, etc. etc. --- it's really not too onerous to track certificate expiry dates.

Re: Why are the ISPs making such a fuss?

If all that was needed was Timestamp (you forgot that) and another 8 bytes to store two IP4 addresses, you might indeed get to no more than a dozen bytes per record. But there's a hell of a lot more going on than one connection per site, just have a look at your own connection log. (And remember all that DNS activity, as well as DHCP, as well as all the other various network activity your computer is doing even when you are not browsing.)

But the thing is, 2 IP4s and a Timestamp would be worthless for the purposes of the IPB. It's a lose-lose --- either the data collection is indeed this small or it includes quite a lot more information. In the former case, the legislation is of much less utility than claimed, and in the latter it is of much greater intrusiveness than claimed.

"Worse this puts a pressure on the criminals to improve what they are doing" -- AC

But it does relieve pressure on the poor terrorists; after all, the security services were already too busy to prevent people on their watch lists from committing terrorist acts, so once there are very many more leads the terrorists can shelter in a very much lower signal-to-noise environment.

A 99.99% effective terrorist spotting algorithm is going to give you at least 10,000 UK suspects. It's going to require about 90,000 field agents and at least 10,000 support staff to watch them 24x7; the salary costs alone would be around five billion pounds sterling per year.

Re: Colour blind risk

"that particular colour blindness is male chromosome linked" -- AC

Doesn't mean it doesn't affect females, just that the proportion of affected females in the population is the (smaller) square of the proportion of the affected males: e.g. if 10% of males are X-linked R/G colourblind, 1% of females are (because 0.1 * 0.1 = 0.01).

Re: @croc

@Graham I think his handle actually refers to his footwear...

"Except that councils will also have access, And other bodies too" -- Vimes

Yep: the Department for Work and Pensions; the Department for Transport;the Health and Safety Executive; NHS Trusts; the Department of Health; the Gambling Commission ... etc.

Now, if it's to stop terrorism, only a small list is required: secret services; home office; etc. If it's to stop crime, only the police forces need to be added. Why the hell are all these other bodies on the list? If they have a need for the information to resolve crimes, why can't they go through the police?

Re: Straw poll...

I'm not sure I really know what I'm talking about here but how about "almost WORM" storage systems, where there is firm/hardware based version control and old versions can only be deleted when a hardware switch is engaged?

Re: Set Top Box - new acronym

And the space in the TV stand where it slots in is obviously the BUTT hole.

Re: Condescending git

"In most countries we live with typically a 10 to 100 times greater risk of being killed on the roads than by a murder" -- Paul Crawford

Well in the UK, road deaths have run at a rough average of 3k/yr since 2000 (although have dropped to just over half that in the last few years). In the same period terrorism has run at 5 per year (including the London 7/7 bombings). So you're talking more like 3-500 times greater risk for a road fatality. For heart disease and cancer we're talking about 150k each (forming about 60% of the annual death toll) --- these are 50,000 times more likely to get you than UK terrorism, which is right down there with the death toll from stinging insects.

Re: I have said it once, I will say it AGAIN

@LucreLout the article is much longer than any instructions to sleeper agents would need to be. The problem with one time pad is, as with idiot code, the issue of key distribution. The thing about idiot code though, is that it doesn't even look like cipher text: a message saying that your friend is expecting triplets, but is still hoping for a home birth instead of going to a major hospital such as Reading and that the due date is April 23 may mean that you should attend a given meeting site / drop box at 16:23 on Tuesday and pick up some explosives.

I've had to blur barcodes

in pictures posted by friends for concert tickets and the like ... of course they thought I was paranoid!

Re: Gated reverb is luvverly (especially with a bit of reverse)

"A decade best forgotten" -- Rich 11

I concur. Worst of all the 'eighties revival' has lasted longer than the bloody decade did originally!

Why?

" Landis pleaded guilty to felony counts of computer trespass, tampering with public records, and unlawful use of a computer.

Why?"

I'd hazard a guess at Plea Bargaining" -- they probably threatened to charge him with Terrorism and lock him up for 8,000 years unless he pleaded guilty to offences he didn't commit. I suspect the motivation for the prosecution would be that 'intent' is harder to prove.

Re: Euphemism award

@Bleu, sorry for blowing a fuse, having some issues at the moment and suffering a severe sense of humour failure which I hope would be considered out of character. Apologies anyway.

Re: bullying ...

Sorry, Dan but it IS bullying (I can use CAPS too).

If I were in charge of an operation to exploit the journo's interviews to track jihadis, there is NO WAY I would have seized the laptop in a highly public way. It would be no problem to subvert it, with no-one being any the wiser. That could likely, as more jihadis trust the journo, lead me to even more targets.

You got it right (accidentally) when you sad "bad people ... need to find out the consequences" -- in other words that the confiscation of the laptop is effectively some form of summary extra-judicial punishment of which you approve. This is the truth of the matter, they are sending a message.

If you really believe that (a) they need the contents of the laptop and (b) that the only way they can get it is a highly public seizure, you are an even greater fool than your ridiculous posts suggest.

Re: If saving lives is the aim....

If you go back to 2000 (so including the 2005 July 7 bombings) you're looking about 5 UK deaths per year, around the same number due to stinging insects. Death to bees and wasps now!

Re: Judge refused to view drone video or drone telemetry

"the judge refused to see the drone video or view the telemetry data both proving that the drone was above 200 feet" -- guyelec

If a shooter on the ground hit it with a shotgun round, it was almost certainly below 200 feet. Telemetry data and video, on the other hand, has no provenance - it could easily be from an earlier, higher altitude flypast or even a different drone.

[Edit: the original case report quotes the judge as saying that at least two witnesses report the drone flying below the tree line]

Re: Agility

"Don't want people to see something? Simple: make the text colour the same as the background colour."

OMG I thought you were serious until I got there! Very nearly a whoosh moment -- looks like Poe's works with technical posts too!

Re: Say what you like about Hollywood Hackers

"I particularly love the ones who can stare at a screen of hex and infer something important for the plot from it (beyond 'oh look, a bunch of hex')"

Do you remember that "Are you smart enough to be at GCHQ?" test some time back -- that had giveaway hex 0xDEAD 0xBEEF if I remember correctly that hinted that you should run it through a VM?

Re: It is time for a PSA

"In which case dial 1471 or a friend's no. first to make sure the line has disconnected." -- Captain Badmouth

Not sure it's beyond the ability of a clever crim to fake the voice-synthesized response to 1471 -- I'd stick to calling a person whose voice (or whose response, e.g. "4As Taxis") you will recognise. Better still, use a mobile which cannot still be connected to the previous call.

I'm not sure why the calling party must hang up to disconnect the call on a landline, can this be fixed?

Can we start a campaign to make it illegal for outbound calling agents to ask security questions, and restrict them to giving names and/or reference numbers and a request to call back?

"Tonight I'm the designated decoy"

LOL, but; in the UK at least I think you could be prosecuted for drunk driving on the basis of that statement. IANALBIPOOTI and I think that Accessories and Abettors Act (1861) still has a relevant provision in force (much of the Act has been superseded by the Criminal Law Act 1967) that states:

"Whosoever shall aid, abet, counsel, or procure the commission of any indictable offence, whether the same be an offence at common law or by virtue of any Act passed or to be passed, shall be liable to be tried, indicted, and punished as a principal offender."

@Ceiling Cat

Hi, thanks for the clarification - brain not working well at the moment. I guess I'd accept 23GB/mo as a mobile limit for everything except 'landline replacement' use where wired broadband is not available. I'm a pretty heavy mobile data user, but I've not been over about 12GB/mo since a fiber deployment took our local speed from under 2Mb/s to about 30. Nevertheless, I agree it should not be called 'unlimited'