Liberty Alone

The BBC is reporting the release of a new privacy report by the Royal Academy of Engineering.

The line Tony Blair and other technocrats should take on board is:

No technology is 100% perfect, and no engineer will tell you that any technology is 100% perfect

Another interesting idea is that the biometric data in new passports could be used to trigger targeted attacks. Since these passports use RFID for contactless reading, they are vulnerable to being read at a distance as has been demonstrated many times now.
This could be used to detonated a bomb when particular people are near it, or when people from a particular country are nearby.
The more data held on passports, or ID cards makes this sort of targeting easier, it also makes tracking of people far easier. Either by government services or by criminals or even private detectives (although such methods may be illegal, that will not stop people).

Privacy and identity have taken on a new importance recently. It used to be understood that the state and others would not pry into your private life, but today the state is seeking more control over our identities (and therefore our lives) and to reduce our privacy. We leave much more information about ourselves and our actions behind, although it is currently difficult to link all this together, new technology is being deployed to make the task of linking up our data and discovering habits and movements much much easier.

This may be of benefit to the state and its organs, but the benefit to individuals is at best hazy, at worst there is a large negative impact.

Liberalism needs to start taking these threats seriously and developing a response to such power grabs by the state. We need to articulate a vision of individual rights and responsibilities only regulated by the state to prevent harm to others to combat the vision of the ‘beneficial state’ which attempts to solve all our problems through technocratic measures and decreased individual freedom.

Slashdot has an interesting post about visitors to Hate My Tory.

The sites owner notes that when linked to by Guido, the number of visists from Linux users rose and when linked to by Harry’s Place, the number of Mac usesrs rose.

So, does the right use more free software?

Given Guido is not a typical Tory (if he can even be called a Tory) and his readers are a variable bunch I wouldn’t put too much stock in this annecdote, but given Guido’s libertarian leanings and that of some of his readers I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a higher level of linux usage.
Microsoft likes to attack Free Software as ‘communism’, but I see it as far more libertarian. The whole movement is based upon voluntary cooperation and freedom of contract.

Personally, I use Linux at work (our servers are all linux, its far easier to develop on than Windows (the other choice)). I use a combination of Mac and Windows at home with a Linux mail and database sever. Next computer will probably be a high-spec PC with Windows and Linux though (Macs are pretty, but not that special in my opinion).

My philosophy is to prefer free software, but to use the software which is best for the job. Sometimes that is a Microsoft product. Sometimes its open source. Let competition flourish :)

Light Blue Touchpaper has details of another attackon the supposedly secure Chip & Pin system.

This one is a relay attack which uses a dummy terminal to collect your card details and pin and then relay them to someone in another shop who uses these details to pretend their modified card is your card.

The transaction looks normal to the bank and you think your payment has gone through okay. The shop at the other end thinks everything is okay too. Its only later when you check your bank balance that you notice that something is wrong.

Tonight’s Watchdog will feature this attack, and more details are available from here.

Reid has suggested that sex offenders could be made to surrender their email address and usernames for chat rooms so they can be monitored to identify grooming.

This strikes me as futile at least, or harmful in the worst case. This is simply because emails and usernames are so easy to get. An offender could give their usual details but create new ones for grooming. Initially that makes the measures appear futile, however, given the fact that some data now exists, resources are likely to be concentrated on that information making it even less likely that those using undisclosed information will be caught.

The police will always be a step behind, but it would help if the law makers actually understood what they were talking about…

Bruce Schneier has written an excellent essay on the problem of insecure software.

The problem is that it is actually in a company’s best interest to write insecure software because it is easier and therefore cheaper and they do not suffer the costs of security failure. In fact, the market rewards insecure software as people like timely releases and lots of features, both of which decrease the time spent on making software secure.

The only way to counter this is to make it profitable for all companies to produce secure software. This could be done simply by passing on some of the costs of security failure to the software vendor by making them liable.

This also applies to other areas of security, notably bank and identity fraud. Its not in the bank’s interest to protect you much from such actions as the costs fall upon you. The banks are even making more of the liability fall upon the customer through initiatives like Chip ‘n’ Pin (if you have a fraudulent Chip ‘n’ Pin transaction it is taken to be your fault because the PIN is meant to be a secret and you cannot easily prove it wasn’t you as you can with a signature).

The Register has an article about the way technology advance has decreased energy usage by data centres.

The most instructive part of the article is that the technology wasn’t developed to be environmentally friendly but to save costs. Blade servers do this in two ways, firstly by saving space - you use less space in a data centre you spend less on rental. Secondly reducing energy requirements. If you have lower energy appliances they cost less to run, and in data centres this saving in added to with the cooler temperatures of low energy use leading to less cooling being needed.

This really does illustrate the point about environmental taxation. Money is easy to think in and we all like to save it. If we can get the costs of pollution in this form then we can reason about it much more and choose to spend our limited money in the best ways for us, which will very often end up reducing those polluting activities that we have to pay for.

This will work much much better than any exhortations from the great and the good, or being castigated for daring to want to attend a child’s wedding in another country.