Leaving aside the immediately obvious flaws in the plan, perhaps the disturbing thing could be that the App is 100% accurate and that the nearest "help" is indeed hundreds of miles away. A sad reflection on our society and the governments if that is true.
Posts by Velv
2756 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jan 2010
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App for homeless says walking on water is the way to reach services
State Department finds 22 classified emails in Hillary’s server, denies wrongdoing
UK Home Sec's defence of bulk spying: We 'found' a paedo (we already knew about)
Saturday 30th January 2016 12:41 GMT 
"Carefully directed searches of large volumes of data also allow the security and intelligence agencies to identify patterns of activity that significantly narrows down the areas for investigation and allows them to prioritise intelligence leads."
This may be true.
That does not necessarily make it right.
"All citizens must wear a GPS Tag 24/7 so we can track who dumped that body we found". Somehow I don't see there being the same public support, despite that being the effective result of the proposed legislation.
Pay up, Lincolnshire, or your data gets it. Systems still down after ransomware hits
Police Scotland will have direct access to disabled parking badge database
Tuesday 26th January 2016 11:36 GMT
Re: Also Parent and Child bays
My Mother has difficulty walking, and would probably be considered for a blue badge if she applied. She hasn't, as she doesn't consider herself disabled.
Perhaps however when I take her to the shops I'd be eligible to use the Parent and Child slot, as she does need help and supervision?
Thought you were safe from the Fortinet SSH backdoor? Think again
Microsoft legal eagle explains why the Irish Warrant Fight covers your back
Thursday 21st January 2016 19:57 GMT
In the good old days of downloading to a local store and removing from the central store this might have been measurable and enforceable.
Where we continue to store online as well as local, we might have a problem.
Does the clock stop permanently after the first access to each item?
Do we need to actively access the online version at least once every 180 days?
Thursday 21st January 2016 19:56 GMT
Re: We need end to end encryption, and fast
Define "end to end encryption". Because I guarantee if you ask 100 experts you'll get 100 varied answers.
There are existing applications provide a form of end to end encryption to varying degrees. There are even some standards for those individual communications. But today, they are not integrated, and are not pervasive and unified across platforms and applications. And call me cynical, they won't be quickly.
So sadly, for now, we need the likes of Microsoft to take this type of stand. It may only delay legislation but it does buy us the time to get the right types of secured unified communications in place properly.
Women account for just one fifth of the EU’s 8m IT jobs
Thursday 21st January 2016 19:54 GMT
Re: none issue
While I agree to a large extent, part of the article is about the "nature v nurture" debate - just how much do we influence the choices in later life by the directions we set in earlier life?
There are many great parents who allow their children freedom. But even in the liberal UK there remain local cultures and communities (and I mean old fashioned British) that view males and females differently. How do we make them equal everywhere from birth?
Thousands fled TalkTalk after gigantic hack, confirm researchers
UK can finally 'legalise home taping' without bringing in daft new tax
Tuesday 19th January 2016 23:25 GMT
Re: The government gave a specific reason when they created the exemption
@AC "Meanwhile, the thruppence ha'penny royalties that are the financial crumbs from the table make a big "difference" to the musicians' bank account."
Perhaps then the record label or retailer should absorb the cost of these crumbs and pay the author and artist double or triple the current amount. For those not aware, it's 2%-4%.
The music industry want to have its cake and eat it. They expect you to pay for multiple media copies, but you can't leave your digital music to your children (see Bruce Willis iTunes).
I do have sympathy for struggling artists who are being exploited by the industry. But that doesn't mean we should fix it by penalising the listener. Fix the labels and retailers.
Group rattles tin in bid to snatch TfL licence from Uber's paw
Monday 18th January 2016 20:22 GMT
Re: world moves on
On my
Sat trip to London, 2 out of 3 minicabs refused to go anywhere without the postcode of the destination, not even prepared to type a road name. GPS is only as good as the operator.
Hackney's need to rethink their operating model, but the regulation and operation of minicabs is woefully inadequate, bordering on dangerous.
TalkTalk outage: Dial M for Major cockup
Sigh ... c'est la vie: France mulls mandatory encryption backdoors
Hacks rebel after bosses secretly install motion sensors under desks
Mozilla warns Firefox fans its SHA-1 ban could bork their security
Thursday 7th January 2016 10:12 GMT 
The description doesn't makes sense or the third party scanning is flawed.
The scanning device Is taking a valid certificate (albeit potentially week), and replacing it with a third party certificate, and end users are expected to trust it? Having spent years trying to stop the users from trusting just anything and only trusting the proved original?
I guess I'm missing something...
HPE's London boozer dubbed the 'Hewlett You Inn?'
Rumor mill in overdrive as Dell pumps up Perot price, Atos offers $4.3bn
Day 2: Millions of HSBC customers still locked out of online banking
Tuesday 5th January 2016 14:22 GMT
Re: Hmmm....
Can't speak for HSBC, but the three other Banks I've worked for have a change freeze from early December usually through to the first working week in January due to the anticipated volume of transactions and the size of the impact if something goes wrong.
In theory only critical fixes to resolve or prevent issues take place, so anything planned like "upgrades" is a no-no.
Doesn't mean it isn't the cause here...
China wants encryption cracked on demand because ... er, terrorism
Monday 4th January 2016 19:27 GMT
Re: Easy for manufacturers to comply
Michael Habel: "I think you might have missed the bit where this Law would apply equally to App Manufacturers as well as the OEMs. Nice try though, sadly no dice for you!"
And how do you define the "manufacturer" and their home location for Open Source? Even if the "law" did apply (who's law?), who are you going to arrest and where are you going to charge them? Genie is out of the bottle, can I have my dice back now please?
Tuesday 29th December 2015 11:38 GMT
Easy for manufacturers to comply
Ultimately the manufacturers can easily meet the regulations and sell all the kit without threat from any government - simply agree to remove all encryption.
Users then install whatever third party or open source apps they feel might be useful. Encrypt the device - no problem. End to end secure communications - no problem. Private keys nobody has access to but the user - no problem. Manufacturer liable? Nope!
Unless governments are also planning on banning the install of third party software of any kind...
UK ISP Sky to make smut an opt-in service from 2016
Tuesday 22nd December 2015 10:01 GMT
Re: Ambivalent
"But I am grown up; I can make my own decisions"
Which is all Sky is asking you to do - decide to open up a certain class of content, or decide to leave it blocked.
And yes, there are some rubbish parents out there who don't provide appropriate guidance for their offspring. But that's not "their problem", its societies problem. We all have a responsibility to provide guidance otherwise who is going to break the cycle of unguided kids becoming bad parents. Guidance is different from being told what to say and think - we've got religion indoctrinating our kids into that cycle.
Researcher claims Facebook tried to gag him over critical flaw
Sunday 20th December 2015 14:39 GMT
Ogres have layers, onions have layers
Just goes to show why security must be implemented in layers. What may be one trivial external "hole" has permitted access to everything, and Facebook clearly failed to properly risk assess the situation after it was reported.
Had the "Crown Jewels" been properly secured there wouldn't have been an issue with him poking around in the underwear drawer. But hiding your diamonds in your knickers isn't going to protect them if someone nefarious walks in the open door.
There is a grey area on how far researchers should go. Companies however have a duty to quickly and accurately respond so that external researchers don't need to do the "research"
Brazil gets a WTF WhatsApp moment
Friday 18th December 2015 12:04 GMT
Re: My concern is...
"Presumably in the UK this is less of a worry since the courts could lock you up if you refused to provide the relevant keys for encrypted messages."
Which raises an interesting question.
Do you know the key encrypting your messages? By using the app you encrypted the messages, so you must be able to provide the key to decrypt them. And are you going to be convicted for failing to be able to provide the key that you have no access to?
'Powerful blast' at Glasgow City Council data centre prompts IT meltdown
Hapless Virgin Media customers face ongoing email block woes
Wednesday 16th December 2015 16:49 GMT
Which is fine if you're a techie who understands all of that.
There are hundreds of thousands of Virgin Media customers who just want it to work. They're already paying for a service (email is included in the price), so why should they need to go and set up a, oh whatsitcalled, domain, and host something.
Wednesday 16th December 2015 16:45 GMT
Re: Virgin's "spam" filters
You can turn them off, or the filter to deliver spam to a spam folder. It's in the settings.
It doesn't work.
Some days I'll check and there will be spam in the folder, the next day's there's none, and I haven't cleared it, it appears again days later (when I do clear it, they stay gone). Some days the spam folder doesn't even show up in the list of folders.
Cyber security buck stops with me, says Dido Harding
Wednesday 16th December 2015 16:35 GMT
Yes, Minister
Bernard Woolley: What if the Prime Minister insists we help them?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Then we follow the four-stage strategy.
Bernard Woolley: What's that?
Sir Richard Wharton: Standard Foreign Office response in a time of crisis.
Sir Richard Wharton: In stage one we say nothing is going to happen.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
Sir Richard Wharton: In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we *can* do.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now.
Help! What does 'personal conduct unrelated to operations or financials' mean?
NZ unfurls proposed new flag
Friday 11th December 2015 13:17 GMT
Re: Research
Yes, research indeed.
While the full etymology of term "Union Jack" remains unknown, one possibility is from the small "jack" flag flown from the bowsprit of a ship, jack being an old term for "small".
A full size Union flag flown elsewhere on the ship would still be called a Union Flag, and there's nothing stopping a small flag (or Jack) being flown on land.
Rupert Murdoch wants Google and chums to be g-men's backdoor men
Friday 11th December 2015 11:00 GMT
Here's an idea. Let's take a cruise ship, and put an escape hatch in the bottom just in case it turns over.
Send all the "backdoor" advocates for a holiday cruise. Caribbean perhaps, or the Far East.
Without turning the boat over, offer a million dollars to someone to "just pop the escape hatch". I'll bet some hacker can find a way to do it remotely.
It'll be fine, no danger, nothing to worry about. It's not like there's a big fuxking hole in the bottom of the boat. Oh, shit, wait. We did put a big hole in the bottom of the boat.
HPE's private London drinking club: Name that boozer
Competition watchdog dismisses plans by TfL to uber-regulate Uber
Investigatory Powers Tribunal scraps its first annual report
MPs and peers have just weeks to eyeball UK gov's super-snoop bid
Thin-lipped chancellor tight-lipped on contractor-nudge-onto-payroll plan
Second Dell backdoor root cert found
Uber wants UK gov intervention over TfL’s '5-minute wait' rule
Wednesday 25th November 2015 10:19 GMT
"How would it be legally determined..."
Oh FFS, Uber's big claim is they are a tech company, not a taxi company. You put a <wait 300> in the booking routine so that the driver isn't despatched for the pickup for five minutes. If a tech company can't implement a solution to confirm their legal compliance with the rules then what chance has anyone got.
Who's right on crypto: An American prosecutor or a Lebanese coder?
Tuesday 24th November 2015 12:51 GMT
Collateral Dammage
It is not a choice of should we/shouldn't we over encryption, it's a choice of how much collateral damage we are prepared to accept.
1,000 of innocent people die annually due to the internal combustion engine, and while working to reduce the numbers, we accept this collateral damage as a consequence of the greater good.
Guns are designed to launch an object very fast at a target, and if that target is a living being, there's a good chance it won't be living much longer. Most countries have therefore placed severe controls on guns as the likelihood of collateral damage is high. None have banned them completely as they do still serve a valid purpose in the greater good.
Encryption has its place in the greater good, we just need to determine the balance point - the acceptable level of collateral damage for the benefit gained. And I can guarantee we won't all agree on the same level.
World needs 252,288,000 seconds to decide fate of leap seconds
France's 3-month state of emergency lets govt censor the web
Friday 20th November 2015 11:35 GMT
Re: It's just like a bad French remake of the US 2001 bullshit
Perhaps there is a genuine public demand for "something to be done" or perhaps it's just media spin.
Either way politicians everywhere are under the impression the public needs "more protection". I don't know what the answer is to this, but if we value "liberte" we need to make sure that voice is heard.
Tech firms fight anti-encryption demands after Paris murders
Thursday 19th November 2015 16:37 GMT
Re: WRONG
Encryption of messages is available so all the terrorists must be using it therefore we don't need to watch the unencrypted channels because no idiot would ever use an unencrypted channel for terrorist communications. <#SookLogic>
The spooks forgot that anyone who would kill themselves for a deity is basically an idiot.
Thursday 19th November 2015 11:08 GMT
The gene is out of the bottle. End to end encryption with the user holding the keys is available open source.
Even if big tech did, or was forced, to capitulate and provide "access" to their products, there will always be alternatives they do not control.
And if we give up our freedoms to the government, or any other organisation, the terrorists have won.
BT could lawyer up after Sky’s sport channels obligation removed
FCA paves way for cloud computing in UK financial services
Tuesday 17th November 2015 15:05 GMT
Re: That will need some more discussion
Some of the larger providers have already put in place contracts with several Financial Services companies that meet these FCA guidelines.
It's partly through working out the issues that the FCA has got to the point where it can put forward these proposed guidelines as they know the cloud providers can deliver the access.
IT contractors raise alarm over HMRC mulling 'one-month' nudge onto payrolls
Thursday 12th November 2015 14:23 GMT
Re: I Don't Understand The Logic ....
"If you are billing VAT registered companies, the VAT you "collect" is simply claimed back by the company paying your invoice, so the net gain to HMG is nothing."
WRONG - it depends on the business sector and the VAT rules relating to the products sold. Financial Services are VAT exempt, so businesses engaged in selling Financial Services cannot reclaim the VAT they are charged on goods and services supplied to them, so that is a massive gain by HMRC
Biting the hand that feeds IT
