Analysis of security, technology, and attempts to filter random noise
Following the Queen's Speech today which promised to press on with ID Cards, here's an interesting comment piece in the Guardian which is talking a lot of sense:"The temptation to become irrational in the fight against home-grown terrorism in Britain is equally dangerous.
James Hall, the new CEO of the UK Identity and Passport service, has just said in a web chat that the National Identity Register will be part of the national critical infrastructure and be "securely accredited"."Our intention is that the National Identity Register will form part of the critical national infrastructure of the UK and will therefore be security accredited to the highest standard, in common with existing highly secure databases.
In a great article on an EU body's report on biometric ID Cards, "Biometric ID cards an insecure menace, says EU ID outfit", Reg veteran John Lettice concludes:"Could we all be going to wake up in ten years time and conclude biometric ID was a really dumb idea? It's a thought.
Following on from an APACS report into a massive increase in the number of phishing attacks in the UK, RSA has released some interesting stats regarding this type of fraud.This month 11 percent of fake banking websites attempted to spoof UK banking brands, while 75 percent of false banking sites targeted customers of US banks.
The conference details, fittingly, aren't splashed about all over the net, but there are some very interesting speakers in London today. Professor Nigel Gilbert, Chair of the Royal Academy of Engineering Group on Privacy and Surveillance, will talk about the future of surveillance.
McAfee anti-spam researchers have been tracking a trend they've nicknamed "spam island-hopping."According to McAfee, Island-hopping spammers use the domain names of small islands as Web site links in spam campaigns.
It seems US spooks are harnessing 'Web 2.0' ideas.
Bruce Schneier in his 'Surveillance as performance art' blog post says this story of perpetual scrutiny is the future of government monitoring of citizens. At the moment Hasan Elahi is monitoring himself after being detained by the FBI, but Schneier predicts this high level of monitoring by governments and corporations as eventually being the norm.
The Natwest planned outage on Saturday night/Sunday morning took revellers by surprise. Outraged punters were seen gesticulating wildly and punching ATM machines in a futile attempt to get at their cash, only to be greeted with a ghostly green "Out of Service" display.