The Electronic Police State

I came across this item on slashdot, pointing at a review of state surveillance rankings. The press release ranked the countries like this:

Here are the 52 states and their rankings:
1. China
2. North Korea
3. Belarus
4. Russia
5. United Kingdom: England & Wales
6. United States of America

But the slashdoters downloaded the raw data and analysed it like this:

1. China, with a score of 3.47
2. UK Englad/Wales, with a score of 3.18
3. US and Singapore tied for 3rd place, with a score of 3.12
5. France and Germany tied for 5th place, with a score of 3.06

And as for Israel and Russia — they are tied for 11th place, with a score of 2.82

But this is really just about what information is stored about citizens. What is really important is the oversight and control of who gets access to this.

A lesson on takeing my own advise

When others have problems installing software, or are getting a strange error message, I always tell them to put the exact text of the error message into Google and they are assured of finding the answer to their problems. Well I should take my own advise.

I was rebuilding my MythTV server. I originally built it with gentoo, but I hadn’t been keeping it up to date, but it had been running very reliably. So I decided to rebuild it with mythbuntu.

The install went very smoothly, then it crashed with some enormous traceback in the boot sequence. It looked like some sort of disk problem. I first suspected the lvm setup I had. There are 3 drives, the first had partitions for /boot swap, and the root partition / the rest of this drive was part of a lvm extent along with the next 2 drives to make enough space for the /media partition where all the recordings would go.

I spent a day installing various things and reinstalling, verifying the CD’s I had burned. Before I finally put the likely looking error message into google which pointed me to this post. Then rebuilt the system back to mythbuntu, fired up my trusty system rescue CD added the blacklist modules. All went perfectly after that.

The following week I was up in Yorkshire helping Jen’s Mum prepare for her move, and thought I would upgrade my nc10 to the beta of Ubuntu 9.04. There are a couple of relevant fixes I wanted to get, and ok it is beta, but this machine is not that critical to me yet. The live mode seemed to work and I couldn’t find any major issues, so I set the install running.

When it came to getting updates, I plugged into her router, but no connection. I then spent most of a day, swapping cables, ports, rebooting with the live CD, all to no avail. I thought I had blown the ethernet port, or messed up the routers dhcp settings. I couldn’t even get the interface up with a fixed IP address.

I had ignored the strange error from ipconfig when I tried to allocate a fixed IP address.

:~$ ipconfig eth0 192.168.0.16
SIOCSIFADDR: No buffer space available

But when I finally put this error into google, I cam up with this. A very specific break with some specific ethernet connections, and a very specific range of kernel revisions.

So the moral is…

Software Patents

The ugly specter of software patents in Europe seems to be rising again. I urge you all to write to your MEP and sign the petition.

Mobiles never on the tube

Well it doesn’t look like we will have mobile coverage on the london underground for a long time.

Nearly all the underground rail systems in most of the world’s big cities now permit commuters to talk and send texts while riding the tunnels. But there are black boxes inside the London Tube which perform historic tasks, the details of which are known only to the station managers who maintain them, said our source.

“There’s a lot of office politics underground,” he said. “There are managers who fear that they may be replaced, and who have built some of these old electrical switches into a legend, and they literally refuse to say what they do, or how they are kept going – but claim that wireless interference might cause malfunctions.”

But the main problem is that too many people in the mobile industry think they can turn the Underground into a gold mine.

via newswireless.net .:. News .:. Mobiles everywhere – but “never on the ….

Oversight of Survaillance

Yes lots of systems record that we have used an oyster card, made a phone call, taken cash out of a hole in the wall. And the police should have access to the records of these transactions in the pursue of serious crime. To argue that this information should not be accessed or not be available to the police is plainly stupid.

But there is the very real need for there to be appropriate controls on the access to and use of this information. So what we are relay arguing about in not the surveillance of citizens by the state it is the oversight and control of that information.

The law is based largely on the retrospective punishment for actions. You can only be accused of the things you have done, or attempted to do. Thinking about robbing a bank is not illegal, researching how to rob a bank is not illegal, the banks security staff do this all the time.

And the same should be true of a police investigation, it should be on the evidence of of acts that have been performed, associated with a reported crime.

Would you seriously say that the police could not have access to the Oyster records in order to see who had got on a train when someone was assaulted, to fine witnesses or the culprit. Or to the records of a mobile phone of an abducted person in order to locate them.

But what we do need to stop is the frivolous use of this sensitive data, and that requires appropriate oversight and control.

Exactly how to do this is what we should be talking about, not reducing the debate down to a big brother is watching you, remove all surveillance from society, type of slanging match.

Mobile bording cards

One of the things the mobile industry has been working on for ages has been the use of a mobile phone as a security token or trusted device. Replacing things like the RSA keys, and physical paper documents we use to do things like get on an aeroplane. I was impressed recently on coming back from Düsseldorf that I could get a boarding card on my mobile for my flight.

Boarding Pass

This was accepted at the security gate along with my physical passport, and at the boarding gate I just put my phone on the scanner to read the barcode and was through onto the plane.
I got the mobile boarding after checking in using the Lufthansa mobile site, which then sent me a text with a link to the boarding card web page.

Surveillance needs better control, warn Lords | OUT-LAW.COM

“The huge rise in surveillance and data collection by the state and other organisations risks undermining the long standing traditions of privacy and individual freedom which are vital for democracy,” said Lord Goodlad, the Committee’s chairman. “If the public are to trust that information about them is not being improperly used there should be much more openness about what data is collected, by whom and how it is used.”

via Surveillance needs better control, warn Lords | OUT-LAW.COM.

This is encourageing.

Solar Power

We installed a solar powered hot water system just over a year ago now. I was tracking and getting alarmed at the increase in our spending on gas and electricity. So after a year we have seen some quite dramatic change in the bills.

Yearly Gas and Electricity bills

Some of the reduction we be because of changes in the household. Jen has been working this year so there is normally nobody at home during workdays.
But we have seen dramatic increases in gas prices, though these have come down recently.

Arrivals crash at Gatwick airport

Airport displays run windows, and crash like windows

Coming through Gatwick airport north terminal on Monday night I saw this wonderful demonstration of reliability. Why choose Windows for a task like this.

Boycott Novell » Former Microsoft Shill Openly Confesses, Alleges Microsoft Still Does This

All I can say is why has it taken so long to come out.

This is worth keeping in mind — especially amongst victims of Microsoft’s ill practices — in case a lawsuit is filed against the company in the future. People should not just avoid the company for behaving in this way; entire countries should sue Microsoft or impose an embargo already.

This is not competition. It’s unhealthy market distortion, it’s corruption. Real people are hurt and Microsoft’s competitors who cater for their families lose their jobs so that Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates can hoard billions and funnel these into governments so that they will blindly procure Microsoft. It’s the kickbacks routine, which perverted procurement is a part of. It has mischief and manipulation written all over it and there are heaps of hard evidence.

via Boycott Novell » Former Microsoft Shill Openly Confesses, Alleges Microsoft Still Does This.