Terrorism Bollocks
Posted: Thu 5 July, 2007 Filed under: Charm School, Cynicism, Security, Thoughts 3 Comments »On the way home last night, I got ‘stop and search’ed in the entrance hall of Cambridge station under the auspices of the Terrorism Act 2000. It wasn’t for any reason, just part of the random shite during ‘heightened’ alerts.
Now, in general I don’t really have a problem with the stop-and-search stuff. I got used to it a long time ago, when I was in the throes of heavy insomnia, and would regularly get stopped and searched at 4am when I was out for a walk. I understand the principles of it, and the Bentham-esque supposed panopticism, where the theory goes that if you are under constant scrutiny, you never know when They really are watching you. It’s the same motive that underlies all the CCTV crap, and many other bits of our current legal surveillance framework.
What I do object to is that when I get stop-and-searched, the search is so cursory as to be utterly fucking pointless. Yesterday’s one was a case in point.
All they did was look in my backpack. That was it. I didn’t have to turn on the laptop that was in there, to ‘prove’ that it wasn’t an explosive device cunningly disguised. I didn’t have to open the bottle of water there, to prove it was water, and not some colourless liquid explosive. They didn’t even open the pockets on the bag – at least one of which was heavy with portable hard-drive, USB stick, headphone cables, metal pen, and some other stuff that had all the hallmarks of a small explosive device. (electronics, wires, small compact box, blah blah)
They didn’t check me at all. I could’ve had weapons on me, small gas canisters (those little gas capsules for CO2, for example) or been wired to chuff and back – hell, my entire belly area could’ve been padding and C4. But none of it was checked.
And let’s be honest, if I were some numpty bent on self-immolation with a C4 waistcoat or whatever, would a stop-and-search have any effect? Would it bollocks. If I were that dedicated/committed to blowing myself to kingdom come, and taking as many people as possible with me, (which I must emphasise to the hard-of-thinking I am most certainly not) then fuck it, the rail station entrance hall is as good a place as any. And ooh look, the chance to take out three or four policemen as well. Bonus.
Would stop-and-search have been of any use in the current wave of so-called ‘attacks’. Would it bollocks. Well, unless they’ve a method for using stop-and-search against oncoming burning vehicles, or ones being driven at speed towards the station.
And when all’s said and done, that’s what I object to – the fact that the entire thing is just staged shit to make people ‘feel’ more secure. It’s got no practical use whatsoever. Maybe iit would’ve had some use f I’d started sweating, or praying, or some other massive giveaway. I doubt it though.
Handwritten – an Update
Posted: Thu 1 February, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Security, Technology 1 Comment »About a week ago, I wrote about the cashpoint (ATM) machine with the handwritten notice on it – which (to my surprise) garnered no comments at all.
Anyway, walking past the same pair of machines today, I noticed that this time the same one was out of order, but had up the machine’s default “Out of service – please use another machine” message on the display. No handwritten sign was in evidence at all.
I wonder if anyone’s noticed yet that they lost money last week?
Visiting the US?
Posted: Tue 2 January, 2007 Filed under: Security, Thoughts, Travel 1 Comment »In the Telegraph, there’s a very interesting story about what the USA does when you book a flight to visit them. The short answer? It’s probably better to pay cash
By using a credit card to book a flight, passengers face having other transactions on the card inspected by the American authorities. Providing an email address to an airline could also lead to scrutiny of other messages sent or received on that account.
Quite honestly, with attitudes like that, what on earth makes the US expect that people would still want to visit them?
Web Numpties
Posted: Tue 10 October, 2006 Filed under: Geeky, News, Security, Thinking About..., Weirdness 6 Comments »On the subject of numb-brained persons, and their inability to deal with common knowledge, is it really a shock to know that a large number of people are still total twunts when it comes to computers? No, not really.
Fair enough, this entire story is about “honeypot” PCs and seeing how long it takes them to be attacked – but by definition these honeypots are unprotected – no firewall, no anti-virus, and (most importantly) a complete numpty at the keyboard.
The survey found 17% of people had no anti-virus software and 22% had no firewall. A further 23% said they had opened an e-mail attachment that came from an unknown source.
I’m sorry, but if people can’t be bothered to use an anti-virus tool, and to activate either Windows’ own software firewall, or get one of their own, then they bloody well deserve to be taken for a ride. As for opening up email from unknown sources, I kind of wrote about this over the weekend, but still, nearly a quarter of people have opened random emails with (one assumes) a subject line that makes them think it’s OK to open? I despair. Mind you, again, people who do that just deserve to be ripped off – it’s like an idiot tax.
At home our broadband connection comes through a box with a built-in firewall and router. There’s also at least a software firewall on all the machines in the house. And all of them use AVG’s anti-virus as a matter of course.
After all, it’s not like it’s difficult to get a decent free bit of anti-virus software like AVG. And OK, while my favourite software firewall has now disappeared (thanks to Symantec, who always were a bunch of scum-sucking weasels anyway) it’s still not difficult to find and install the likes of Zone Alarm, or even to use the entire anti-virus/firewall combinations released by companies like Norton, McAfee, et al.. It’s just that the “Oh, it’ll never happen to me” attitude still prevails, and it’s likely to continue to do so for the forseeable future, and for one prime reason. People are numpties. Simple as that.
Personally I think that all broadband connections – be it ADSL, Cable, ISDN, whatever – should use boxes with at least a basic built-in firewall. I know Windows XP SP2 activated the software firewall by default, and I think that’s a good thing too. I would like to see new PCs come with a decent (and free) anti-virus scanner – although of course Dell et al probably get a huge dollop of cash for pre-installing shit like McAfee on the computers they provide – so that everyone has access to the basic protection, from Day One, without having to shell out extra money.
If PC makers, Broadband providers and so on simply work on the assumption that people won’t bother, and just provide these simple things as a built-in, then a whole load of these problems would go away. Most standard PC users don’t bother uninstalling what comes with the PC, they want to just plug-and-go. So give them the security straight away. Don’t assume that either a) people will know they need this stuff or b) that they’ll go and download and install it as the first thing they do. They won’t. They’ll leave it ’til the PC is a heaving festering lump of viral content, pop-ups, and email shite, and then complain…
The computer’s gone wrong! I didn’t do anything! It’s the computer’s fault!
Asking For It
Posted: Tue 21 March, 2006 Filed under: Cynicism, Security, Thinking About..., Weirdness 1 Comment »In today’s “local” news on the BBC, it appears that police are warning drivers not to leave sat-nav units in their cars when unattended. To me, this really isn’t rocket science. Apparently to a lot of people it is.
When I walk anywhere, I tend to notice what’s in cars. I don’t know why – I guess I’m just nosy, really – but I do pay attention. And it’s quite amazing the number of people who do leave expensive stuff out on view when they’ve parked up. Now yes, maybe it is “only for a couple of minutes” – although a lot are at least overnight – but still, you’ve got to be pretty bloody dumb to leave the sat-nav in it’s cradle, with only a window to “protect” it. Same applies for the people who strong leave their phones in their cars, and even their wallets.
All in all, the “don’t leave valuables in the car” message has now been circulating for at least a decade, if not two. As we carry more and more valuable stuff around with us, it would seem sensible to be more aware, but instead people seem to still make use of the “It’ll never happen to me” mentality that drives me utterly bananas.
So far as I’m concerned, if you leave valuable stuff like sat-nav, mobiles, money, cameras etc. visible in the car – and a lot of people do – then you should be prepared to lose it. And of course if you’ve been a numpty and left it there visible, the insurance won’t pay out for it either – in fact, it’s like a tax for idiots. Works for me…
Biobouncer.
Posted: Wed 15 March, 2006 Filed under: Geeky, Security, Thinking About..., Thoughts Leave a comment »Now here’s a scary development – BioBouncer (although it’s a bloody horrible name) Basically, it’s a facial recognition system for bars – it scans each customer’s face as they come in, and then can check it against a list of “undesirable” customers.
Using advanced facial recognition biometric technology, BioBouncer™ quickly and accurately identifies these potentially dangerous people as they walk in the door – so they don’t even have a chance to ruin someone else’s experience. Powered by a combination of patent pending performance enhancing software intricacies, BioBouncer™ captures facial images of all club patrons as they enter. These images are then matched against a database of individuals who have broken club policy in the past and who are not welcome anymore. Maybe they are known to carry a weapon, have been removed for violence, or violate the club’s illicit drug policy.
Should a match occur, an alert is sent to your security personnel via wireless network and informs them of the alert location, accompanied by a photograph of the individual. Depending on club protocol, your staff can react quickly and effectively to either remove the person or at least be aware of his location. And speed? BioBouncerâ„¢ matches against 1,000,000 faces in less than one-second.
And if you’re just an innocent punter, out for a night? Supposedly those images that aren’t needed or referenced are deleted at the end of the night.
As Bruce Schneier says in his Crypto-Gram email (which is where I got this from),
Anyone want to guess how long that “automatically flushed at the end of each night” will last? This data has enormous value. Insurance companies will want to know if someone was in a bar before a car accident. Employers will want to know if their employees were drinking before work — think airplane pilots. Private investigators will want to know who walked into a bar with whom. The police will want to know all sorts of things. Lots of people will want this data — and they’ll all be willing to pay for it.
And the data will be owned by the bars that collect it. They can choose to erase it, or they can choose to sell it.
It’s rarely the initial application that’s the problem. It’s the follow-on applications. It’s the function creep. Before you know it,
everyone will know that they are identified the moment they walk into a commercial building.