Tackling the film piracy problem

Tackling the film piracy problem (BBC News, Tuesday, 28 July 2009)

"They'll clamp the camera to a seat or use a tripod obscured by a coat. They'll often use microphones, placing them three of them four seats either side to get a stereo effect."

The movie industry is trying to shove the cursed Blu-ray format down our throats, with the justification that the public is demanding higher quality video and audio. That same industry also claims that 90% of "pirated" films are obtained by crummy recording devices hidden in coats of cinema-goers.

As always, BBC News is willing to help industry spread such propaganda, unhindered by any form of critical thinking. The objective is political correctness, not accuracy.

Two more recent cases of BBC News twisting the facts, presumably with ideological intentions:

Windfarm Britain means (very) expensive electricity (Register, 22nd July 2009)

BBC erroneously reports first charges under Extreme Porn Act (Melonfarmers, 25th July 2009)

Facebook criticised by Archbishop

Facebook criticised by Archbishop (BBC News, Sunday, 2 August 2009)

There are many bad things one can say about Facebook. The many bugs and browser-specific features reveal it was built by incompetent dimwits. The privacy policies, or their absence, one should be extremely wary of as well.

Nevertheless, after taking precautions, I signed up and I now find Facebook useful to keep informed about social events, where I meet people face-to-face. I concede however that other people may interact with their friend online in place of face-to-face meetings.

So does Facebook on the average lead to more face-to-face meetings, or to fewer? Well, there is this revolutionary new idea to find out things about the world. It is called scientific inquiry. One study on Facebook is for example:

Are Facebook Friends Like Face-to-Face Friends: Investigating Relations Between the Use of Social Networking Websites and Social Capital (Annual meeting of the International Communication Association, 2008)

One major disadvantage of science is that it requires effort. It is much easier to become the leader of some fruity club that worships pink unicorns, celestial teapots or whatever other garbled hogwash. And then you can say whatever you want, without obligation to offer any empirical support whatsoever. Your words will be jotted down by open-mouthed BBC News churnalists desperate to reach their quotas, and published on the front page of their website.

Energy saving madness

Sainsbury's brings green power to the checkout with 'kinetic plates' (Guardian, Monday 15 June 2009)

The system, pioneered for Sainsbury's by Peter Hughes of Highway Energy Systems, does not affect the car or fuel efficiency,

In other words, it creates energy out of nowhere. Right.

"Hey you guys, let's drive our Hummer 30 miles to Sainsbury's and pass over the kinetic road plates! To save energy!"

Microsoft doublespeak

Microsoft bounty for worm creator (BBC News, Friday, 13 February 2009)

The software giant is offering the cash reward because it views the Conficker worm as a criminal attack.

A similar fallacious reasoning underlies the claim "Guns don't kill people, people do", as often used by the NRA.

"People who write this malware have to be held accountable," said George Stathakopulos, of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Group.

Who holds Microsoft accountable for their crappy software? If some dunce decides to use Vista in his company and productivity suffers because of one of Microsoft's bugs, can he claim damages? (Needless to say: of course not!)

He told BBC News the company was "not prepared to sit back and let this kind of activity go unchecked".

Then make sure there are no more blatant security leaks in your software, you morons!

"Our message is very clear - whoever wrote this caused significant pain to our customers and we are sending a message that we will do everything we can to help with your arrest," said Mr Stathakopulos.

Microsoft causes significant pain to its customers.

The Conficker worm is a self-replicating program that takes advantage of networks or computers that have not kept up to date with Windows security patches.

The Conficker worm is a self-replicating program that takes advantage of Windows.

In 2003 Microsoft created its reward programme with $5m (£3.4m) in funding to help law enforcement agencies bring computer virus and worm authors to justice.

Is there any money left for quality assurance? Does Microsoft do quality assurance?

"We have not seen this type of worm or one of its class since 2004," said Mr Stathakopulos.

Computer worms were unknown to science before 2004, and had never attacked a Microsoft OS before, so they couldn't have foreseen any of this and couldn't have taken precautions earlier. Right. Pull the other one.

Bunch of incompetent wankers!

deniable encryption

In a faraway land inhabited by elves, an evil emperor who hated butterflies decided to make it illegal for anyone to possess images of butterflies. It didn't make any difference whether the depicted butterflies were real or imaginary. Members of the anti-butterfly squad would track down butterfly lovers, and seize and investigate their computers hoping to find offending material. This post describes how elves in that faraway land armed themselves against this, so that they might continue to indulge in their predilection for butterflies, without bothering anyone nor being bothered by the evil emperor's thugs.

Traditionally, electronic data is protected from prying eyes by encryption. Encryption turns useful data (plaintext) into a form that is useless and looks like gobbledygook (ciphertext). The gobbledygook can only be turned back into the original data with the same key that was used to encrypt the data in the first place (symmetric encryption).

In the old days, butterfly lovers used to encrypt their images to keep them secret. However, the evil emperor's thugs then started to throw people in dungeons for the mere offence of not revealing their keys. The elves therefore turned to an ingenious invention called deniable encryption, which allowed them to argue plausibly that there was no key, or more precisely with regard to what will follow, to argue that there was only one key, when in reality there were two. The first key encrypted and decrypted allowed images of, say, ladybugs and the second key was used for forbidden images of butterflies. Of course the elves would deny the existence of that second key when asked.

Now let's see how this works in more detail. The technique is most effective where it is applied on an entire device, let's say an external harddrive of 500 GB. A tool is used to turn the complete storage space into gobbledygook. (Warning: all existing information on it is thereby irretrievably erased!) Then either one or two keys are fixed. With the first key one can store encrypted images of ladybugs at the beginning of the harddrive, say in the first 1 GB. Optionally, with a second key one can store encrypted images of butterflies in the remaining 499 GB. The entire contents of the harddrive now looks like gobbledygook if one doesn't know either key, and if one knows one of the keys one can only access the corresponding part of the storage space, and one cannot tell whether the other key exists at all.

Whenever the anti-butterfly squad would stop by, an elf would first claim that his harddrive was broken: "Look, the damn thing doesn't even mount!" He would usually be believed by the underpayed, understaffed, undermotivated and virtually illiterate goons, but when they were in a particularly tenacious mood and kept putting pressure on him, the elf felt he didn't have any other choice but to reveal the first key (and only the first key) to them, and that was the end of it: "Okay, so far I've only stored 1 GB of images yet on my 500 GB harddrive, so what? And I encrypted the ladybug images because I was embarrassed about liking ladybugs, and didn't want my friends to find out. Butterflies?! I don't know nothing of no butterflies!"

The most popular tool realising deniable encryption is TrueCrypt, which is an industrial-strength application available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Each of the two keys allows access to a volume, which behaves just like any other filesystem, consisting of directories and files. The two volumes are, for obvious reasons, called the outer volume and the hidden volume, respectively. Depending on the operating system, one should follow the relevant instructions on the TrueCrypt website, to install the tool and to turn an arbitrary harddrive (which can also be a thumbdrive) into an encrypted device.

Important is that the outer volume should only be modified in a protected mode, which requires both passwords to be entered. The reason is that otherwise the hidden volume might become damaged by being overwritten. For normal usage this is not a problem, as the contents of the outer volume merely serves as decoy, and will normally be fixed once and for all, while one may regularly want to add material to the hidden volume. Conversely, there is no risk of the hidden volume overwriting the outer volume, because the hidden volume 'knows' how much storage space is available to it, which is fixed when the volumes are created, while the outer volume for obvious reasons 'knows' nothing of the inner volume.

Further remarks:

• Elves knew that suitable keys had to be long and not consist of words from any dictionary, because such keys would be too easy for the anti-butterfly squad to guess.
• The butterfly images were best directly copied from the source (e.g. a fellow elf's harddrive) onto the encrypted volume. This is because any material temporarily stored on an unencrypted harddrive might leave residual traces. Similarly, viewing of the images was best done without copying them to unencrypted memory.
• With all of the above precautions, the anti-butterfly squad might still find evidence in the logs of a computer that an elf had played a file called extreme-butterfly5.avi. This might cause some embarrassment, even if the filename didn't constitute proof that the video had in fact been about butterflies. (In mentioned evil empire, the mere accusation of a butterfly-related crime was enough to wreck an elf's career, marriage and reputation, not to mention the risk of being lynched by vigilantes, encouraged by the emperor's vile propaganda.) The best solution was to erase log files regularly. This may be rather difficult for Microsoft operating systems, which are utterly hopeless pieces of crap when it comes to security and privacy (see e.g.: "Defeating Encrypted and Deniable File Systems: TrueCrypt v5.1a and the Case of the Tattling OS and Applications"). For Linux however, it is easy to write a script to remove all log files upon logout. To determine which files and directories to remove, the home directory should be scrutinised, especially the filenames starting with a period. Another issue is the /tmp/ directory, which can often be cleared automatically upon logout by choosing appropriate personal settings.
• Further, privacy settings of browsers can be made to erase browsing history, cache, cookies, etc., upon exit.
• Also elves who were not into butterflies preferred to use deniable encryption for all their data, because the paranoid emperor ended up seeing butterflies in the most harmless grocery lists.
• Full-disk encryption with plausible deniability solves the problem of securely storing information, but not of how to confidentially exchange data with others. This requires more care, and in particular public-key encryption via e.g. PGP (GPG on Linux). One can even stay anonymous by using the TOR network and related tools (see the links at Citizen Lab).

virtual reality

Gordon Brown saved the world and a fake Simpsons cartoon is child abuse. Reality has ceased to be a relevant concept. More examples:

Stone jailed for Stormont attack (BBC News, Monday, 8 December 2008)

Stone had denied the charges, claiming the incident was performance art.

Spending time in prison is also performance art. It now appears the judge is an art lover.

How do avatars have sex? (BBC News, Friday, 14 November 2008)

So how do computerised characters have sex?

"First you need to buy genitals,"

Call me old-fashioned...

As usual, last month's prize for the most warped view on reality goes to the Labour government:

£1,000 fine for wrong ID details (BBC News, Friday, 21 November 2008)

the government plans to fine innocent people for inaccuracies on the government's own database

Open verdict at Menezes inquest (BBC News, Friday, 12 December 2008)

A gagged jury returns the only reasonable verdict that remains and the response by wacky Jacqui is:

What we have learnt from the accounts of the tragic events that day reminds us all of the extremely demanding circumstances under which the police work to protect us from further terrorist attack,

So if police shoot an innocent and unarmed civilian, then feel sorry for the police. Because the police are the police, and civilians are just civilians.

The Labour government is making it rather hard to still think of policeman as an honourable profession, a feeling that I may share with many thousands of others who have been the victim of random stop and search under Section 44(2) of the Terrorism Act, such as Terence Eden.

Arrogance, megalomania and sheer stupidity among the British police force are not restricted to the Menezes killing. The following is nowhere as serious, but it is symptomatic that anyone with the slightest understanding of computer security falls on the floor laughing when they read comments from a computer 'expert' of the police force:

UK police: 'We need crime breathalysers for PCs' (Silicon.com, 11 December 2008)

Councils are using 'lie detectors' about as reliable as the ancient Roman practice of inspecting the entrails of sacrificed animals (but less bloody):

Lie detectors for benefit claims (BBC News, Thursday, 4 December 2008)

When it comes to distinguishing make-believe from reality, there is a glimmer of hope. For the first time in years, the word 'piracy' is used for what it means, rather than as a catch-all for anything that makes the music, movie and game industries lose revenues from the sale of overpriced rubbish:

US asks UN to allow pirate hunters into Somalia (Guardian, Friday 12 December 2008)

censored Wikipedia image

Wikipedia child image censored (BBC News, Monday, 8 December 2008)

Wikipedia page censored in the UK for 'child pornography' (Guardian blog, 8 December 2008)

I don't exactly enjoy living in a country where people are put in jail every day by narrow-minded and self-righteous judges and magistrates, for an ever increasing number of victimless crimes, thought up by a maniacal government intent on obliterating every last shred of our civil liberties. But it is an outright affront to freedom and democracy that government-funded bodies operating outside the control of the judicial system decide what is good for us to see, hear and read.

Forms of censorship that are not answerable to anyone are at the basis of every dictatorship, and countries that are democratic, at least in name, have become a lot less so because of such censorship. Those who dare speak out are often themselves censored, as in the case of Lapsiporno:

Finnish government blacklists 'free speech' site (CNET news, February 18, 2008)

In Britain, internet censorship is implemented by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which was initially only concerned with identifying child abuse websites. Through the function-creep that is inevitable with such organisations, they then started to widen their scope to material that they deemed objectionable for a variety of reasons, from obscenity to incitement to racist violence (BBC News, Friday, 24 October 2008), and all major ISPs now adopt their blacklists blindly. No one except the government and ISPs have access to the blacklist, which makes the IWF unaccountable. The censored material will of course also cover (and likely now already covers) "extreme porn", in the light of new legislation:

Porn, abuse, depravity - and how they plan to stop it (The Register, 9th October 2008)

Government finally names the day for porn ban (The Register, 26th November 2008)

backlash-uk.org.uk

The case at hand involves an album cover from 1976, which is of historical interest, notwithstanding its bad taste, and unless the decision to blacklist the image is withdrawn soon, Britain will become the laughingstock of the (supposedly) free world even more than it already is.

If you cannot access the Wikipedia page, then it is advisable to change your provider to a decent one that doesn't play ball with the nanny state, or use a proxy situated in the free world, or to be more exact, anywhere except Britain, Australia and North Korea. (Check out Relakks and Anonymouse.org.) Alternatively, you can see the controversial album cover here or here or here or here or here of here. That is, if you're curious what the fuss is about, and are not shocked by a naked body!

If you haven't had enough yet, check out Le Sommeil de l'Enfant Jésus by Benvenuto Tisi. Every day, hordes of paedophiles go on a pilgrimage to the Louvre to see it.

And what to think of The Three Graces, either the painting by Raphael or the sculpture by Antonio Canova. Those girls look rather underage don't they?

You want bondage thrown in as well? No problem. See The White Captive by Erastus Dow Palmer.

But hush! Don't tell the IWF, or a large portion of classical and neo-classical sculpture will be ostracised, only to be appreciated by a handful of scholars, authorised after thorough psychological testing that qualifies them to see such depraved and depraving material.

By the way, our friends down under are in an even worse predicament than we are. But it won't be long till we catch up:

Fake Simpsons cartoon 'is porn' (BBC News, Monday, 8 December 2008)

In Conroy’s muddy waters you'll never know what’s being filtered (Computerworld, 28/10/2008)

www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com

Addendum:

For an update and thorough analysis, recommended reading is:

Scorpions tale leaves IWF exposed (The Register, 9th December 2008)

Addendum 2:

IWF backs down on Wiki censorship (BBC News, Tuesday, 9 December 2008)

"IWF's overriding objective is to minimise the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect. We regret the unintended consequences for Wikipedia and its users."

So they couldn't foresee that blocking a Wikipedia page (and other collateral damage) would upset people? One cannot but wonder what incompetent fools are behind that organisation. It is very plausible that more harmless, or at least legal, images and textual material have ended up on the blacklist that we don't know about.

One of these days, some hacker will get hold of the blacklist, and distribute it on the web, thereby giving paedophiles the most concentrated list of filth in existence, and as we all know, the offending websites are and will always remain accessible with a minimum of technical know-how, by means of proxies, the TOR network, etc. How's that for "unintended consequences"?

The IWF is a serious threat to free speech, while having no effect whatsoever on the availability of child abuse material to those intent on finding it. Close the IWF down, now!

Addendum 3:

There are in fact now leaked blacklists for Denmark (Melonfarmers, Dec 24, 2008), Thailand (CircleID, Dec 2, 2008), and Finland as mentioned above.

Where are they when you need them?

Ecstasy downgrade is considered (BBC News, Friday, 26 September 2008)

As part of the discussions, panel members will consider the submission from the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), stating that transferring ecstasy to class B would send out an "unfortunate message".

Instead of giving unhelpful advice contradicting scientific evidence, would the police perhaps care to go after the bad guys? Apparently not, not if the bad guys have money and power:

Police close file on BT's trials (BBC News, Thursday, 25 September 2008)

former monopolies

I am getting annoying phone calls from British Gas again, from this dreaded number: 08450700827. It turns out that anyone who dares to move to another supplier from British Gas will be harassed even more, with silent calls as punishment for desertion. So never ever get involved with British Gas in the first place, or you might regret it for years to come. Their service is crap anyway.

Then there is:

UK government responds on Phorm (BBC News, Tuesday, 16 September 2008)

"After conducting its enquiries with Phorm the UK authorities consider that Phorm's products are capable of being operated in a lawful, appropriate and transparent fashion," said a Berr statement.

The scumbags at BT who concocted the Phorm trials, thereby violating the privacy of about 18,000 customers, should be in jail. But the government thinks everything is hunky-dory. What's wrong with spying on people? We do it all the time ourselves!

If you can't leave this cursed country, then at least stay away from BT as far as you can. Also avoid Virgin Media and TalkTalk. You want an ISP that has the interests of its customers at heart rather than any shady deals with advertisers. See also:

Phorm: Our business is fine, honest (The Register, 4th September 2008)

Update (2008-09-22):

Since last time, I've received several more calls from British Gas, some of which were silent. I'm trying to find the magical formula to keep them at bay. So far I've tried "Thank you very much but please do not call me anymore", "sod off", "drop dead", and "drop dead after suffering from a horrible disease". No success so far.

GM crops

Trying to catch up with the news from the past few weeks:

Charles in GM 'disaster' warning (BBC News, Wednesday, 13 August 2008)

Prince 'must prove anti-GM claim' (BBC News, Sunday, 17 August 2008)

The world is facing an increasing number of famines, and GM crops may provide some relief, potentially saving millions of lives. But concerns over the safety have been raised, and if the worries are justified, again millions of lives could be at stake.

As I'm not a biologist, I will have to rely on the judgement of experts. If reputable scientists say that GM food crops pose a considerable risk, then perhaps we should ban GM crops. If Prince Homoeoquack says that GM food crops pose a considerable risk, then perhaps we should abolish the monarchy.

BBC churnalists fall for another marketing stunt

Spam experiment overloads inboxes (BBC News, Tuesday, 1 July 2008)

The hidden message is: buy McAfee's software or you're screwed.

Surfing the web unprotected will leave the average web user with 70 spam messages each day, according to an experiment by security firm McAfee.

Surfing the web, in the usual sense of visiting web pages, cannot attract spam by itself. If you visit a dodgy web site operated by spammers, they can see your IP address, but they can't find out your email address, unless you tell them. After tracking down more reports on this meaningless experiment, I found that participants were encouraged to do just this.

surf without spam filters

Huh? The person who wrote this may know the meaning of the word "without". Well, one word out of four is not so bad, not for the brilliant, well-informed boys and girls from the technology section of BBC News.

By "websites were installing malware" they may be referring to drive-by downloads, due to the Windows Metafile vulnerability. What is conveniently ignored is that Mac OS and Linux are unaffected by this. Also unaffected are most browsers running on Windows that are slightly less crappy than that pinnacle of crappiness, Internet Explorer. The article does not mention what platform and browser were used in the experiment, perhaps because this would not serve the business interests of McAfee. But one can guess.

Internet meltdown

Victim of its own success (BBC Today, Tuesday, 17 June 2008)

But one of the world's leading academics on the impact of the net warns we could be facing its destruction.

Remember The Onion had it first: Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash (ONN, July 2007)

Then: Over Logging (South Park, Season 12, Episode 6)

One expert claims the internet is facing meltdown? I know ten experts who claim the BBC News site is filled with alarmist bollocks.

See also: Moore confessions: Internet meltdown (The Guardian, April 15, 2008)

habeas corpus suspended

Brown wins crunch vote on 42 days (BBC News, Wednesday, 11 June 2008)

It is now official: Britain has become a third-rate banana republic. Apart from the 42 day detention limit itself, the process that led to it, which included horsetrading, bribery, extortion, and plain old lying, should take away any illusion that Britain is still a democracy.

Key points: Terror detention vote (BBC News, Wednesday, 11 June 2008)

1244: Opening the debate Home Secretary Jacqui Smith says it is possible to safeguard civil liberties and rights and to protect people. She tells MPs the threat is more complex and international than ever before as terrorists use technology to cover their tracks.

Do the police now have to solve Rubik's Cube before they are able to tell whether someone has done something bad?

With strong passwords and state-of-the-art cryptosystems with 256-bit keys, all the energy in the universe is insufficient for cryptanalysis. Whether the police is given 42 days or 42 millennia is inconsequential. If code breaking is the argument, why allow any limit on pre-charge detention at all?

The choice of 42 days rather than 41 or 43 is truly bizarre. Did Jacqui Smith derive her sense of reality from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? I would not be surprised. See also: Their answer is 42. What, exactly, is the question? (The Herald, June 04 2008)

1257: Ms Smith says she and her minister Tony McNulty have been working on proposals for the best part of a year - and denies proposing a permanent, automatic or immediate detention beyond 28 days. She says the bill contains a reserve power only to be used in exceptional circumstances - with strong safeguards and for a temporary period.

If there are no permanent exceptional circumstances, then what is the justification for all the draconian legislation introduced in the last few years by these NuLab gits?

travel advice

Taking your laptop into the US? Be sure to hide all your data first (Guardian, Thursday May 15 2008)

In fact, why only do this when travelling?

Many search warrants in the UK are granted by magistrates. As a rule, magistrates are incompetent twats, who receive an impressive six days of training before being allowed to throw people in jail and order the violation of the sanctity of someone's home. Consequently, any turd in a suit, for example a TV licence inspector, can convince a magistrate to issue a search warrant, on the basis of the fuzzy concept 'reasonable grounds'. During the search, computer equipment may be confiscated and subjected to computer forensics.

(By the way, Britain is really the odd one out in Europe. For example, no search warrant would ever be issued in Germany for the trifling matter of TV licences.)

For a minority of us, our PCs and laptops contain some data that might be incriminating in a legal sense. Very often, this data is present without us realising it. Examples are browsing histories and cached data, which may reveal we have a predilection for a certain type of images. For a minute portion of computer users, there may be an actual intent to break the law by storing certain data. For most of us however, it is simply a huge embarrassment to find our most private data, such as diaries and nude images of lovers, in the hands of a spotty lab technician, even if this data is not unlawful.

There are a few things however that computer users can do to arm themselves against this form of oppression. First, never use any Microsoft crap. Use of Vista and related inferior products will in the end make you lose your sanity. More important in this context is that they offer the user little control over what happens behind the scenes, and it is difficult to ascertain that data one thinks has been deleted is really gone irretrievably.

Secondly, one should make an inventory of log files and 'tmp' directories where data is silently being collected while one views and manipulates other files. Notorious culprits are multimedia players, which create logs of viewed files, and file browsers, which keep 'deleted' files until the relevant 'trash cans' are explicitly emptied. All such log files and temporary directories should be erased regularly. Computer savvy users may want to write scripts to do that automatically upon logout. This will of course only be effective if one logs out regularly, which is recommended in any case.

It may also be advisable to run tools that temporarily swallow up all unused memory and erase any residual information contained therein.

Lastly, one should keep confidential data separate from other data, on an encrypted hard disk, with an outer and hidden volume, accessible with two different passwords. From here, Bruce Schneier's instructions in above-mentioned article should be followed.

Addendum (2008-06-08):

It seems many computer users in the past have been screwed thanks to their browsers. Apart from aforementioned browsing history, there is the cache, which stores copies of visited web pages, including images therein. Furthermore, many sites leave cookies, which represent evidence of browsing habits. Some browsers (e.g. Firefox) can be configured to clear some or all private data upon closing. Make use of this!

Lastly, beware of compromised software or hardware. After someone who cannot be trusted has had access to one's computer equipment, it is no longer safe to enter a password, as spyware might have been installed that monitors the keyboard.

Addendum (2008-06-17):

As we already knew, Microsoft sucks:

Vista encryption 'no threat' to computer forensics (The Register, Friday 2nd February 2007)

In contrast, full disk encryption is entirely secure, given a few precautions. In particular, the machine must be switched off well before the adversary gets hold of it. And of course, a strong password is essential.

Cf. The impact of full disk encryption on digital forensics

Someone's watching you

Someone's watching you (BBC News, Friday, 14 March 2008)

This article makes a number of valid points, easily lost in the anything but coherent presentation, which mixes up marginally related issues and which sports a lot of opinion and not so much understanding.

A few thoughts of my own about:

The British press, even its tabloid basement, could be worse. On the whole it leaves the children alone. But one way or another it will print anything it can get about an adult.

I would dispute that the British press leaves children alone, and I can think of some counter-examples from BBC News articles in the past few weeks. Apart from this, it is regrettable the author does not speak on behalf of BBC News, which is one of the foremost offenders where it concerns the gratuitous publication of personal details about virtually anyone, including photographs, all for the sake of a juicy story. Whether the people involved are guilty, innocent, or not even tried yet, that seems to make little difference.

I have mentioned some examples in previous posts. A recent article is:

Worker dropped trousers on plane (BBC News, Thursday, 20 March 2008)

One of the most objectionable articles I can remember is:

Bride fined after wedding fight (BBC News, Tuesday, 10 July 2007)

(URLs to these articles were omitted for obvious reasons.)

This last article was about a couple fighting on their wedding day and breaking some stuff in a hotel. It is hard to imagine what public interest could be served by reporting this embarrassing event, including a photograph of the couple. Nobody deserves that such intimate details be archived for all eternity for the enjoyment of a demented readership that confuses BBC News with serious journalism.

Then about:

Pinching private phone calls and e-mails ought to be a crime, but somehow it isn't.

Britain has reached a stage of maniacal government prying that calls for private initiative to protect basic human rights. In the case of the internet and computer privacy, we have the technology. The draconian Government Access to Keys laws in the form of RIP Act Part III clearly violate human rights from any perspective. Fortunately such laws are easily defeated by steganography ('hidden writing'), as implemented for example by TrueCrypt.

The shameless surveillance of our email traffic by the British government, and of all European email traffic by the Americans aided by the British government (Echelon), can be thwarted through the use of PGP. Anonymity networks, such as Tor, still suffer from a number of weaknesses, but once these are fixed, such networks have the potential to greatly enhance internet privacy.

The biggest obstacle at the moment is defeatism among computer users, and moronic operating systems like all of the Microsoft crap, which have security leaks whereever one looks. Many Linux distributions are slightly better in this respect, but they still create log files without warning, and preserve data that an uninformed user thinks has been deleted.

If NuLabour gets its way, every street and alley in Britain will be covered by surveillance cameras and every move of every citizen outside their home will be recorded with the help of biometric data stored in central databases that would have made the Stasi envious. When this happens, and that may be rather soon, computers and the internet may, paradoxically, become the last bastion of privacy. However, this will require that computer users put pressure on software developers to heed privacy concerns and to make antiforensics the norm.

Microsoft cutting price of Vista

Microsoft cutting price of Vista (BBC News, Friday, 29 February 2008)

Unless Microsoft is actually paying people to use that crap, how do they find any customers at all, beyond those who are utterly gullible or masochistic?

Net firms reject monitoring role

Net firms reject monitoring role (BBC News, Friday, 15 February 2008)

Who will rid us of these dilettantes at BBC News?

The first two paragraphs are clear and say everything there is to say. The government wants ISPs to check the contents of Internet traffic for infringement of copyright, and the ISPs correctly say that they can't, because the law does not allow them to look at contents.

The remainder of the unnecessarily long article goes on and on and on until the very end about an entirely different issue, namely management of the volume of Internet traffic.

Moreover, the text is sexed up with an irrelevant image of the launch of a space shuttle.

This is even worse than the usual mediocrity that we associate with the BBC.

Aboriginal archive offers new DRM

Aboriginal archive offers new DRM (BBC News, Tuesday, 29 January 2008)

In the past I have observed that the BBC is reluctant to mention DRM and its consequences in news articles. I've conjectured that this is because they don't want to make people scared of the technology. In particular, they want viewers to adopt iPlayer, in which the BBC has invested (i.e. wasted) an outrageous amount of money, and iPlayer incorporates DRM.

I've sometimes wondered whether I wasn't overly paranoid. The above-mentioned article takes away my doubts. There is something fishy going on. What the article talks about is not DRM at all. It is a form of personalisation, but this is obscured by multiculti technobabble.

DRM was invented to make consumers suffer. The only way one can say something positive about it is by giving the name to something else, and then talking about that. We see this cheap trick demonstrated here.

Data lost again

Court case data CDs lost in post (BBC News, Wednesday, 23 January 2008)

People never learn.

Should I ask whether the data on the lost CDs was encrypted this time? I can guess the answer.

What's wrong with SSL and PGP anyway? Ah, of course, how stupid of me: the Internet is a security risk, and Royal Mail isn't.

Suggested further reading: Royal Mail 'loses 14.4m letters' (BBC News, Tuesday, 4 May, 2004), Royal Mail fined for missing post (BBC News, Friday, 10 February 2006), Staff suspended over missing post (BBC News, Thursday, 30 March 2006), Mail deliveries 'still delayed' (BBC News, Friday, 9 November 2007).

Abuse images 'hidden on sat-navs'

Abuse images 'hidden on sat-navs' (BBC News, Tuesday, 22 January 2008)

Det Insp Snell is quoted: "The bottom line is that people in possession of these images of abuse will be caught and we will find the evidence."

The guy is only doing his job, and that job includes discouraging crime, with strong language and threats, whether accurate or complete boloney. One should respect that.

In contrast, the job of serious journalists (whom the BBC hasn't hired for ages) is to question such propaganda, rather than to act as the mouthpiece of law enforcement agencies. The real bottom-line is that the facilities available to the police are no match for modern cryptographic tools available to any computer user, and the battle was decided a long time ago.

On a technical level, the state of the art of mathematics restricts the possibilities of cryptanalysis (or 'code breaking') in a very concrete way. In the article, the poor policeman can boast about a '£200,000 computer server' but this is rather transparent bluff. Not even all the computers of the NSA together could crack ciphertext in AES-128 if the key is well chosen.

I tend to put all my financial data and Internet passwords on an encrypted hard drive. In this way, were it ever to be stolen, I can rest assured the thieves cannot, for example, commit fraud with my credit card information. As the tool I use (viz. TrueCrypt) also allows steganography ('information hiding'), I could quite easily hide data that I don't want to be found.

Should I believe that technology that is just fine for an honest, law-abiding, tax-paying, technophobic dunce like me is too complicated for a hardened criminal? Do criminals think that it is easier to put whatever criminal data they have on satellite navigation systems and games consoles than to hide the data with off-the-shelf, industrial-strength steganographic software? If I believe this, I might as well believe all the far-fetched drivel that the BBC has on offer.