nobody is able to clone your card and the PIN is useless without the card
Assuming the bank knows how to use cryptography correctly.
There's still issues like a bank employee attaching extra cards to your account. Which turned out to be behind so called "phantom withdrawls". Thus you need a mechanism to make this difficult easily detectable.
I've been saying for years, since I first saw one in the 1990s here in NYC, that giving my PIN to some random ATM in some random "convenience" store to get quick cash is an unacceptable security risk. Especially some random ATM that I use at 2AM after running out of cash drinking in a bar, lost among all the ATMs in the neighborhood in my hazy hangover recollection, to be searched for months or years later when they, or someone else along the line, replay my PIN.
The 3 digit cardholder verification number has the same issue. Any transaction can give the entity you transact with all the information they need to make other transactions against your card. If they store this information in an insecure way (e.g. Best Western, TK/J Maxx, etc) then things get worst. There really isn't any good reason to be storing this information at all. Arguments that this is for "customer convenience" just don't add up, even for frequent customers.
Every login to my account from an insecure location (which might exclude my home and office PC, if they've got certificates installed) should consume a one-time password that cannot be replayed for some later, unauthorized transaction.
It makes more sense for such a system to be used for every transaction. Assuming that a communication is secure when it is not is a big risk. But assuming that it is insecure when it actually is secure isn't really a problem.
In fact each OTP should be attached to a specific dollar amount and recipient, with an expiration on the transaction after which even that transaction cannot claim money, or get any access at all.
You'd need this one time authority to be compatable with existing systems. Also if you want the history of usage stored there may be issues with how how many unique ID's the card issuer can generate.
Quite a few things don't make much sense. Like needing sensitive scales to detect a "small bug" weighing 4oz (possibly they actually ment 4 grammes). There's also the issue of the wireless communications. Are there really this many unsecured wireless access points near supermarkets? As well as these communications can't exactly be described as "untraceable" when it's possible to track the destinations down to one city. Two obvious law enforcement approaches spring to mind. The first is to block (or at least monitor) communications to the destination IPs. i.e. instead of random/comprehensive monitoring of Joe Public use the appropriate tools against machines used by criminals. Or are ISP's only interested in doing this sort of thing for big entertainment companies, rather than the likes of Scotland Yard. The other thing to do is to use criminals' own system to put some card details into the system which will be flagged if anyone attempts to use them. Maybe without any warning to the person using them except that instead of a courier delivering their stuff from Amazon they find they have instead won a "free ride in a real police car" or that they enjoy a nice flight (or at least as nice as flying can be these days) but find that when they arrive at their destination there's an interrogation room waiting for them. Credit card companies also have their own fraud detection systems, which have been known to give holiday makers who have not told their card company where they are going problems. As well as checking if the delivery address for a "cardholder not present" transaction is an address the cardholder has told the issuer about. Since the transactions being bugged are "cardholder" present where are the crooks going to get this information from?
A number of renewable energy sources don't require any sort of fuel distribution network. A solar panel just needs sunlight (even cloudy skys would generate some power) and a windfarm needs wind.
You are still likely to need a power grid, because the best place for generating power may not be where you want to use that power.
The energy source needs to be compact and well-protected. Whether it is renewable is (or ought to be) irrelevant -- the system is not supposed to work forever -- only for a short time after the disaster.
I have some ideas, but Rudolf Diesel appears to have had them first:)
The losses incurred because of inductive / capacitive losses burying the power lines under ground would be tremendous. It is not a viable option in the near future. Now maybe if they can do cheap superconducting underground lines we may have a chance.
It also costs a lot more to install underground cables. Even if you had superconducting cable it comes down to the difference between digging a trench vs posts or concrete foundations every so often.
There's nothing quite like doing research in the hopes of spending billions to defend oneself against the absurdly unlikely. A nuke detonated in LOE?!? A natural phenomenon the likes of which has been recorded exactly ONCE in the last 150 years?!
Especially when there are far more sensible things to research as well as a power grid which could do with some major maintainence.
I don't mean to troll, but you don't need a nuclear bomb to take out the power grid [1,3].
There arn't too many people who have both 1MT nuclear weapons and the ability to get them to 250 miles above Kansas either. Also AFAIK none of those with such an ability are likely to only use one weapon. This is something which is unlikely to happen, but should it happen the US is likely to have bigger problems than a non functional power grid.
Instead, the money should be invested in renewing the outdated grid in the USA [2,3].
That actually makes sense. Especially if at the same time you also add generating capacity where it has not previously been. Regardless of if this is of a new form, e.g. wind/solar/etc. or coal/methane/nuclear/etc.
Note that GCHQ is never the company that loses data.
Probably because part of their job is to find leaking data from other parts of the world. It also helps that they are about the only part of the British Government who understand how to use encryption properly. Wonder if GCHQ has anything to do with EDS, most likely if they do they keep a proper eye on them.
"The portable drive contains the names, addresses, passport numbers, dates of birth and driving licence details of around 100,000 serving personnel across the Army, Royal Navy and RAF, plus their next-of-kin details. " Data like this needs to be treated as if it were nuclear waste or a volatile explosive mixture. It would be just about OK to have a list of 100,000 driving licence numbers if these were kept physically separate from, say, names and addresses (eg keying them on a one-time ID), but when certain classes of data are kept TOGETHER like this, it should be every right-thinking person's reaction to scream the house down in panic.
There is a more fundermental problem here in that just because it is possible to combine information together does not mean that doing so is sensible. e.g. the Army, Navy and Air Force are separate services. So it makes little sense to combine them into one? Do the driving licence and passport details even need to be there in the first place?
It does make a huge difference, because it doesn't matter if you loose encrypted hard drives (assuming you have a strong key).
Also assuming that the device was simply lost, rather than stolen by someone with the ability to also find out the key.
It also matters if the encryption is symetric or asymetric key. With symetric key encryption you have the whole problem of key management (and ensuring that the cyphertext and key are not together). A CD/DVD with the key used to decrypt it written on it (as could easily happen with a symetric key method) may as well not be encrypted at all. Whereas using an asymetric method (see RFC 2440) means that whoever encrypted the data never needs to know the key used to encrypt it. So long as the recipient keeps their private key secure only they can read the media.
the contract has propably been around since before we knew EDS was incompetent, the gov contractors have a habit of signing long contracts with "and we still get all the money if you cancel early" clauses.
These are enforcable exactly how? A contract with anyone which said "we get all the money even if we break the contract" would not be enforcable against anyone. There is no way in which EDS could sue the MoD, if they even tried two words would stop them. Those words being "Crown Immunity". Governments in general cannot be sued unless they consent to be sued. Also the MoD has this thing called an "Army" avilable.
...of why we shouldn't be outsourcing critical/sensitive data handling.
Especially if you then add to the problem by outsourcing it to foreigners.
Also, I worry about the outsourcing of anything relating to our Country's security.
It appears that these people don't understand "national security". IMHO this includes restricting certain things to people who are citizens of only the relevent country. Excluding duel citizens or people who could claim citizenship of another country (this includes the situation of another country making a standing offer of citizenship which cannot be revoked).
No member of -- or person directly employed by -- the UK Government lost this data. EDS, a long-established, privately owned subsidiary of Hewlett Packard, lost this data.
If anything this is worst than someone employed by the British Government losing the data. Security was breached when they let a foreign owned company have access to it. That that company lost the media is just the icing on the cake. This is like the driving theory test data, lost from somewhere it should never have been in the first place. There are only 11 locations in the US that the British Government has any business at all sending this kind of data.
EDS lost a hard-drive, belonging to the MoD. Had to get that in before the "Government is intrinsically incompetent" posse got here.
Maybe instead of paying 12 billion quid to spy on the British public it should instead be used to spy on EDS...
EDS, a privately owned and run subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard, subcontracting to the MoD, were responsible for the security of this drive, and they, not anyone at the MoD did the losing here.
WTF was the MoD doing letting this data near any foreign company? At the very least whoever agreed to this should be prosecuted under the official secrets act.
Meanwhile, OUR wonderful governments here can not secure the voting rights against the scammers...
Dead people voting? No computers raising alarms...
So long as they only vote Democrat/Republican (US) or Labor/Tory (UK) those in authority probably don't care. If the fraud involved votes for something like "The Round up all the incumbents and execute them (on live TV) party" then you'd see some action.
I bet if you polled the average person and asked them if they wanted 200 pounds or to have the government spy on all their neighbors, they'd take the 200 pounds.
Wonder what they'd do if they were offered a million pounds or for the banks to be bailed out:)
This was an economic / banking problem, and should have been foreseen. If they only had anti terrorism laws to use in this instance, than that is a failure of government.
Along the lines of "Why didn't they have laws to freeze the assets of any bankrupt company with UK creditors?" (Or even "Why havn't such laws existed for several centuries...")
"Terrorism", when looked at number of deaths per year, is basically a total non-issue. How many people have been killed by terrorism in the UK in the last 50 years? Would anyone support a program where you spend _millions_ per prevented death,
That's even if it actually did what its advocates claim.
knowing that far more deaths could have been prevented by spending the same money to prevent something with far higher mortality rates - say, by improving traffic safety, or by reducing the number of smokers?
Improving traffic safety would involve more traffic police, road engineers, phychologists studying driver behaviour, frequent retesting of drivers, etc. Not as "sexy" as the "war on terra" and some of these things would not be welcomed by motorists.
Terrorism is such political bullshit.
A lot of politics is.
Sure, some people get killed (and I grief for them), and we do need to be careful - but we should not, under any circumstance, change our entire way of life, the entire structure of our civilisation, just because a bearded monkey in a cave in Afghanistan got a little upset with us.
Especially not if the consequences of these changes endanger more people. Be it from making flying such an ordeal that people choose to travel in private cars instead or through innocent people being gunned down by police...
There is no al queada (oh sure, there are some people taking that name,
It might soon reach the point that you have "The ALF branch of Al Quada". Since if they just called themselves "The ALF" it would seriously harm their street cred. (Though if we ever get "The Zionist branch of Al Quada" we can be quite certain that things have really gone too far.)
but there is no Dr. Blofeld-style, centrally led organisation hell-bent on destroying western civilisation.
That much is just conspiracy theory. Not even a very good one, yet lots of people appear convinced.
And bin Laden, if he is still alive at all, is a sick, dirty old man living under extremely poor conditions in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan,
Or he's changed his name to "Emmanuel Goldstein":)
and only a threat to himself.
As are most of these so called "Islamic terrorists". We are talking the kind of idiots who attempt to "ram raid" an airport terminal in a vehicle which can't fit through the door carrying a bomb which can't explode. Or someone who takes a bomb into a restaurant toilet and can't even manage to kill himself. If these were in a movie it would be "Spy Hard 2"
I have thought over it many times and, regarding myself, I have concluded: I would prefer to live freely and unobserved and someday die in a terrorist attack,
In terms of actual risk a "terrorist attack" falls into the "freak". You undoubtedly do far more risky things just by getting out of bed in the morning (possibly including the getting out of bed). IIRC on September 11th 2001 more than 3,000 people died due to road traffic "accidents" and heart attacks.
than live in a "security" hell for all my life with cameras and RFIDs up my ass. Put aside the fact that surveillance almost never stops a attack - only it helps find the burned-out guys.
Does it ever? Actual terrorist attacks are rare, even when they are part of an actual war.
And some semantics: How many of you walk in the street and feels ''terrorized''? On the other hand, how many of you feel terrorized by the fact that your every moment is on tape, and your personal data wanders in places you don't know?
And into the hands of people who might seek to do you harm. Because of your political beliefs, because of your appearance or just because they like hurting others... How many criminals, "nut cases" even actual terrorists are there within the police and "Intelligence Services"?
The UK had its own domestic terrorists for decades: the IRA. Yet the government did not feel that such pervasive monitoring was necessary.
They did try internment of IRA suspects, but soon found out that it helped IRA recruitment. Yet the current bunch of idiots dosn't appear to understand this, constantly trying to bring back the same idea by increments. (Whilst sending out the message that the police are competent to investigate any crime except "terrorism".)
Now, largely because of something that happened 3000 miles away, the UK feels that such pervasive monitoring is necessary.
It also happened over 7 years ago...
I say BS:
It's probably enough that if you collected the methane from its decomposition the UK would have enough "natural gas" for at least the comming winter:)
every agency is wetting themselves hoping to get their hands on this data so that they can pursue their own petty agendas in the same way as RIPA powers have been used for trivial reasons.
IMHO once this happens the RIPA abuses are no longer likely to look so trivial.
Everyone has something to hide. Not necessarily illegal, but enough to coerce behavior.
These technologies of mass surveillance and ubiquitous tracking, which have slid into existence in many states (excluding some of the more enlightened European countries, such as Germany) were designed and built during economic good times.
The advantage Germany has is that a sizable portion of its population have experience of such mass surveillance (both as watcher and watched) to be able to state exactly how useless such a system can be.
If, as seems very likely, we have mass unemployment, some interesting societal effects can be expected - ranging from conspiracy theorists (it's the jews! no, the illuminati! no, it's the CIA!),
Nation states are perfectly happy to push conspiracy theories of their own. By they those of Nazi Germany or the "Al Quada / Emanual Bin Laden / Osama Bin Goldstien" one we have going right now.
plus the inevitable search for a scapegoat amongst the dimmer / less educated members of society (those currently saying things like "Why are we paying billions to bankers when small businesses don't get bailed out?") will mean a lot of social churning.
Government backed conspiracy theories are a popular method here...
The lessons of history have not been learned by enough people. Looks like the world is seeking to repeat the mistakes of the past. Freedom and democracy are constantly undermined by a minority of people in power for their own gain.
Or at least what they percieve as their own gain. Inculding continuing to be part of a patrician social class. In many cases electoral systems are actually part of the problem here.
The world will never change until everyone worldwide realises that people who constantly seek power over others have a recognisable cluster B personality disorder. All cluster B personality disorders are ultimately driven by fear. And the ones with the disorder constantly seek to control that fear and control everyone around them based on their fear. (There are multiple fears, two examples are lack of attention and the other is fear of lack of power. The attention seekers want more attention (they were deprived of parental attention as children. The ones who want power seek to prevent anyone ever having power over them again, the way they were treated unfairly as children)... The very nature of seeking power over others, means that person seeks to push others lower than them. If this is left unchecked for too long, then they will push things ever more unfairly out of balance. This is why freedom and democracy are constantly undermined by a minority of people in power for their own gain.
Where such people are also charismatic and able to make impossible promises they tend to have an advantage in an election. Indeed where candidates are to some extent self selected you are likely to see such personalities disproportionaly represented amongst electoral candidates. Even with a completly open and fair electoral system. In order to have an effective democratic system you somehow need to miminise a political class (and career politicans). One way of doing this is by term limits or barring people holding political office from standing for another one. Unlike the recent election for a London mayor or both current (big party)US presidential (and VP) candidates. The other way is to look to the Athenean method of using random selection. Where someone could find themselves subject to a law they agreed with the very next day. But possibly more important proposed laws were likely to have the input of regular citizens, including those who's personality would never lead them to seek public election. Most likely discussion would be more along the lines of "How would this help me run my business?", "What effect would this have on my being any empoloyee?", "Will this make it easier or harder to buy things"?, etc.
I totally agree with you. I don't want the Government to read the email I sent to my mum, or listen in on my phone call to work. I *sure* as hell don't want them to read the TXT MSGS I send to my mates.
Such systems are at best useless for law enforcement. Most likely they are worst than useless because they use money which could otherwise be used to employ good uniformed police officers, e.g. those following the "Peelian Principles". Together with detective who can investigate criminals and even infiltrate criminal gangs. Note that both of these types of law enforcement can be highly dangerous. Thus require men and women who are brave, but also of good character. Since it is important to try and keep criminals out of any police force together with people who can easily be persuaded into becoming criminals...
They don't want to prevent another King's Cross, or 9/11-type attack through this latest move to enhanced ability to conduct surveillance.
When people say "King's Cross" the first thing which I think of a major fire over 20 years ago... Also it's hard to see how this kind of thing would have prevented the Metropolitan Police gunning down an innocent man in Stockwell Police station.
I mean, there haven't been any big terrorist attacks lately, and it's not like the people who work for the government and make decisions like this have any sort of knowledge that I don't.
No doubt the government would like to think that they have such information. Assuming they don't leave it laying around on commuter trains:) The lack of terrorist attacks either means that current "anti-terrorist" methods are working find (so why the need to change things) or that there just arn't that many terrorists. Personally I wonder what all the fuss is about, considering that the highly competent Irish terrorist are history and the "Islamic extremists" arn't even in the same league. Even calling these people "terrorists" is stretching the truth, "Darwin Award wannabe's" is IMHO a better description.
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nobody is able to clone your card and the PIN is useless without the card
Assuming the bank knows how to use cryptography correctly.
There's still issues like a bank employee attaching extra cards to your account. Which turned out to be behind so called "phantom withdrawls". Thus you need a mechanism to make this difficult easily detectable.
I've been saying for years, since I first saw one in the 1990s here in NYC, that giving my PIN to some random ATM in some random "convenience" store to get quick cash is an unacceptable security risk. Especially some random ATM that I use at 2AM after running out of cash drinking in a bar, lost among all the ATMs in the neighborhood in my hazy hangover recollection, to be searched for months or years later when they, or someone else along the line, replay my PIN.
The 3 digit cardholder verification number has the same issue. Any transaction can give the entity you transact with all the information they need to make other transactions against your card. If they store this information in an insecure way (e.g. Best Western, TK/J Maxx, etc) then things get worst. There really isn't any good reason to be storing this information at all. Arguments that this is for "customer convenience" just don't add up, even for frequent customers.
Every login to my account from an insecure location (which might exclude my home and office PC, if they've got certificates installed) should consume a one-time password that cannot be replayed for some later, unauthorized transaction.
It makes more sense for such a system to be used for every transaction. Assuming that a communication is secure when it is not is a big risk. But assuming that it is insecure when it actually is secure isn't really a problem.
In fact each OTP should be attached to a specific dollar amount and recipient, with an expiration on the transaction after which even that transaction cannot claim money, or get any access at all.
You'd need this one time authority to be compatable with existing systems. Also if you want the history of usage stored there may be issues with how how many unique ID's the card issuer can generate.
Quite a few things don't make much sense.
Like needing sensitive scales to detect a "small bug" weighing 4oz (possibly they actually ment 4 grammes).
There's also the issue of the wireless communications. Are there really this many unsecured wireless access points near supermarkets?
As well as these communications can't exactly be described as "untraceable" when it's possible to track the destinations down to one city.
Two obvious law enforcement approaches spring to mind.
The first is to block (or at least monitor) communications to the destination IPs. i.e. instead of random/comprehensive monitoring of Joe Public use the appropriate tools against machines used by criminals. Or are ISP's only interested in doing this sort of thing for big entertainment companies, rather than the likes of Scotland Yard.
The other thing to do is to use criminals' own system to put some card details into the system which will be flagged if anyone attempts to use them. Maybe without any warning to the person using them except that instead of a courier delivering their stuff from Amazon they find they have instead won a "free ride in a real police car" or that they enjoy a nice flight (or at least as nice as flying can be these days) but find that when they arrive at their destination there's an interrogation room waiting for them.
Credit card companies also have their own fraud detection systems, which have been known to give holiday makers who have not told their card company where they are going problems. As well as checking if the delivery address for a "cardholder not present" transaction is an address the cardholder has told the issuer about. Since the transactions being bugged are "cardholder" present where are the crooks going to get this information from?
I would be interested in knowing what D is. Is there someone with a good article about M or D if that's what it is?
:)
Presumably with "M" you get asked in you'd like fries as well
A number of renewable energy sources don't require any sort of fuel distribution network. A solar panel just needs sunlight (even cloudy skys would generate some power) and a windfarm needs wind.
You are still likely to need a power grid, because the best place for generating power may not be where you want to use that power.
The energy source needs to be compact and well-protected. Whether it is renewable is (or ought to be) irrelevant -- the system is not supposed to work forever -- only for a short time after the disaster.
:)
I have some ideas, but Rudolf Diesel appears to have had them first
The losses incurred because of inductive / capacitive losses burying the power lines under ground would be tremendous. It is not a viable option in the near future. Now maybe if they can do cheap superconducting underground lines we may have a chance.
It also costs a lot more to install underground cables. Even if you had superconducting cable it comes down to the difference between digging a trench vs posts or concrete foundations every so often.
There's nothing quite like doing research in the hopes of spending billions to defend oneself against the absurdly unlikely. A nuke detonated in LOE?!? A natural phenomenon the likes of which has been recorded exactly ONCE in the last 150 years?!
Especially when there are far more sensible things to research as well as a power grid which could do with some major maintainence.
I don't mean to troll, but you don't need a nuclear bomb to take out the power grid [1,3].
There arn't too many people who have both 1MT nuclear weapons and the ability to get them to 250 miles above Kansas either. Also AFAIK none of those with such an ability are likely to only use one weapon. This is something which is unlikely to happen, but should it happen the US is likely to have bigger problems than a non functional power grid.
Instead, the money should be invested in renewing the outdated grid in the USA [2,3].
That actually makes sense. Especially if at the same time you also add generating capacity where it has not previously been. Regardless of if this is of a new form, e.g. wind/solar/etc. or coal/methane/nuclear/etc.
Note that GCHQ is never the company that loses data.
Probably because part of their job is to find leaking data from other parts of the world. It also helps that they are about the only part of the British Government who understand how to use encryption properly.
Wonder if GCHQ has anything to do with EDS, most likely if they do they keep a proper eye on them.
"The portable drive contains the names, addresses, passport numbers, dates of birth and driving licence details of around 100,000 serving personnel across the Army, Royal Navy and RAF, plus their next-of-kin details. "
Data like this needs to be treated as if it were nuclear waste or a volatile explosive mixture. It would be just about OK to have a list of 100,000 driving licence numbers if these were kept physically separate from, say, names and addresses (eg keying them on a one-time ID), but when certain classes of data are kept TOGETHER like this, it should be every right-thinking person's reaction to scream the house down in panic.
There is a more fundermental problem here in that just because it is possible to combine information together does not mean that doing so is sensible.
e.g. the Army, Navy and Air Force are separate services. So it makes little sense to combine them into one? Do the driving licence and passport details even need to be there in the first place?
It does make a huge difference, because it doesn't matter if you loose encrypted hard drives (assuming you have a strong key).
Also assuming that the device was simply lost, rather than stolen by someone with the ability to also find out the key.
It also matters if the encryption is symetric or asymetric key. With symetric key encryption you have the whole problem of key management (and ensuring that the cyphertext and key are not together). A CD/DVD with the key used to decrypt it written on it (as could easily happen with a symetric key method) may as well not be encrypted at all. Whereas using an asymetric method (see RFC 2440) means that whoever encrypted the data never needs to know the key used to encrypt it. So long as the recipient keeps their private key secure only they can read the media.
the contract has propably been around since before we knew EDS was incompetent, the gov contractors have a habit of signing long contracts with "and we still get all the money if you cancel early" clauses.
These are enforcable exactly how? A contract with anyone which said "we get all the money even if we break the contract" would not be enforcable against anyone. There is no way in which EDS could sue the MoD, if they even tried two words would stop them. Those words being "Crown Immunity". Governments in general cannot be sued unless they consent to be sued.
Also the MoD has this thing called an "Army" avilable.
...of why we shouldn't be outsourcing critical/sensitive data handling.
Especially if you then add to the problem by outsourcing it to foreigners.
Also, I worry about the outsourcing of anything relating to our Country's security.
It appears that these people don't understand "national security". IMHO this includes restricting certain things to people who are citizens of only the relevent country. Excluding duel citizens or people who could claim citizenship of another country (this includes the situation of another country making a standing offer of citizenship which cannot be revoked).
No member of -- or person directly employed by -- the UK Government lost this data. EDS, a long-established, privately owned subsidiary of Hewlett Packard, lost this data.
If anything this is worst than someone employed by the British Government losing the data. Security was breached when they let a foreign owned company have access to it. That that company lost the media is just the icing on the cake.
This is like the driving theory test data, lost from somewhere it should never have been in the first place.
There are only 11 locations in the US that the British Government has any business at all sending this kind of data.
EDS lost a hard-drive, belonging to the MoD. Had to get that in before the "Government is intrinsically incompetent" posse got here.
Maybe instead of paying 12 billion quid to spy on the British public it should instead be used to spy on EDS...
EDS, a privately owned and run subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard, subcontracting to the MoD, were responsible for the security of this drive, and they, not anyone at the MoD did the losing here.
WTF was the MoD doing letting this data near any foreign company? At the very least whoever agreed to this should be prosecuted under the official secrets act.
Meanwhile, OUR wonderful governments here can not secure the voting rights against the scammers...
Dead people voting? No computers raising alarms...
So long as they only vote Democrat/Republican (US) or Labor/Tory (UK) those in authority probably don't care. If the fraud involved votes for something like "The Round up all the incumbents and execute them (on live TV) party" then you'd see some action.
I bet if you polled the average person and asked them if they wanted 200 pounds or to have the government spy on all their neighbors, they'd take the 200 pounds.
:)
Wonder what they'd do if they were offered a million pounds or for the banks to be bailed out
This was an economic / banking problem, and should have been foreseen. If they only had anti terrorism laws to use in this instance, than that is a failure of government.
Along the lines of "Why didn't they have laws to freeze the assets of any bankrupt company with UK creditors?" (Or even "Why havn't such laws existed for several centuries...")
"Terrorism", when looked at number of deaths per year, is basically a total non-issue. How many people have been killed by terrorism in the UK in the last 50 years? Would anyone support a program where you spend _millions_ per prevented death,
:)
That's even if it actually did what its advocates claim.
knowing that far more deaths could have been prevented by spending the same money to prevent something with far higher mortality rates - say, by improving traffic safety, or by reducing the number of smokers?
Improving traffic safety would involve more traffic police, road engineers, phychologists studying driver behaviour, frequent retesting of drivers, etc. Not as "sexy" as the "war on terra" and some of these things would not be welcomed by motorists.
Terrorism is such political bullshit.
A lot of politics is.
Sure, some people get killed (and I grief for them), and we do need to be careful - but we should not, under any circumstance, change our entire way of life, the entire structure of our civilisation, just because a bearded monkey in a cave in Afghanistan got a little upset with us.
Especially not if the consequences of these changes endanger more people. Be it from making flying such an ordeal that people choose to travel in private cars instead or through innocent people being gunned down by police...
There is no al queada (oh sure, there are some people taking that name,
It might soon reach the point that you have "The ALF branch of Al Quada". Since if they just called themselves "The ALF" it would seriously harm their street cred. (Though if we ever get "The Zionist branch of Al Quada" we can be quite certain that things have really gone too far.)
but there is no Dr. Blofeld-style, centrally led organisation hell-bent on destroying western civilisation.
That much is just conspiracy theory. Not even a very good one, yet lots of people appear convinced.
And bin Laden, if he is still alive at all, is a sick, dirty old man living under extremely poor conditions in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan,
Or he's changed his name to "Emmanuel Goldstein"
and only a threat to himself.
As are most of these so called "Islamic terrorists". We are talking the kind of idiots who attempt to "ram raid" an airport terminal in a vehicle which can't fit through the door carrying a bomb which can't explode. Or someone who takes a bomb into a restaurant toilet and can't even manage to kill himself. If these were in a movie it would be "Spy Hard 2"
I have thought over it many times and, regarding myself, I have concluded: I would prefer to live freely and unobserved and someday die in a terrorist attack,
In terms of actual risk a "terrorist attack" falls into the "freak". You undoubtedly do far more risky things just by getting out of bed in the morning (possibly including the getting out of bed). IIRC on September 11th 2001 more than 3,000 people died due to road traffic "accidents" and heart attacks.
than live in a "security" hell for all my life with cameras and RFIDs up my ass.
Put aside the fact that surveillance almost never stops a attack - only it helps find the burned-out guys.
Does it ever? Actual terrorist attacks are rare, even when they are part of an actual war.
And some semantics: How many of you walk in the street and feels ''terrorized''? On the other hand, how many of you feel terrorized by the fact that your every moment is on tape, and your personal data wanders in places you don't know?
And into the hands of people who might seek to do you harm. Because of your political beliefs, because of your appearance or just because they like hurting others...
How many criminals, "nut cases" even actual terrorists are there within the police and "Intelligence Services"?
The UK had its own domestic terrorists for decades: the IRA. Yet the government did not feel that such pervasive monitoring was necessary.
:)
They did try internment of IRA suspects, but soon found out that it helped IRA recruitment. Yet the current bunch of idiots dosn't appear to understand this, constantly trying to bring back the same idea by increments. (Whilst sending out the message that the police are competent to investigate any crime except "terrorism".)
Now, largely because of something that happened 3000 miles away, the UK feels that such pervasive monitoring is necessary.
It also happened over 7 years ago...
I say BS:
It's probably enough that if you collected the methane from its decomposition the UK would have enough "natural gas" for at least the comming winter
every agency is wetting themselves hoping to get their hands on this data so that they can pursue their own petty agendas in the same way as RIPA powers have been used for trivial reasons.
IMHO once this happens the RIPA abuses are no longer likely to look so trivial.
Everyone has something to hide. Not necessarily illegal, but enough to coerce behavior.
Or that they wish hidden from criminals.
These technologies of mass surveillance and ubiquitous tracking, which have slid into existence in many states (excluding some of the more enlightened European countries, such as Germany) were designed and built during economic good times.
The advantage Germany has is that a sizable portion of its population have experience of such mass surveillance (both as watcher and watched) to be able to state exactly how useless such a system can be.
If, as seems very likely, we have mass unemployment, some interesting societal effects can be expected - ranging from conspiracy theorists (it's the jews! no, the illuminati! no, it's the CIA!),
Nation states are perfectly happy to push conspiracy theories of their own. By they those of Nazi Germany or the "Al Quada / Emanual Bin Laden / Osama Bin Goldstien" one we have going right now.
plus the inevitable search for a scapegoat amongst the dimmer / less educated members of society (those currently saying things like "Why are we paying billions to bankers when small businesses don't get bailed out?") will mean a lot of social churning.
Government backed conspiracy theories are a popular method here...
The lessons of history have not been learned by enough people. Looks like the world is seeking to repeat the mistakes of the past. Freedom and democracy are constantly undermined by a minority of people in power for their own gain.
Or at least what they percieve as their own gain. Inculding continuing to be part of a patrician social class. In many cases electoral systems are actually part of the problem here.
The world will never change until everyone worldwide realises that people who constantly seek power over others have a recognisable cluster B personality disorder. All cluster B personality disorders are ultimately driven by fear. And the ones with the disorder constantly seek to control that fear and control everyone around them based on their fear. (There are multiple fears, two examples are lack of attention and the other is fear of lack of power. The attention seekers want more attention (they were deprived of parental attention as children. The ones who want power seek to prevent anyone ever having power over them again, the way they were treated unfairly as children)... The very nature of seeking power over others, means that person seeks to push others lower than them. If this is left unchecked for too long, then they will push things ever more unfairly out of balance. This is why freedom and democracy are constantly undermined by a minority of people in power for their own gain.
Where such people are also charismatic and able to make impossible promises they tend to have an advantage in an election. Indeed where candidates are to some extent self selected you are likely to see such personalities disproportionaly represented amongst electoral candidates. Even with a completly open and fair electoral system.
In order to have an effective democratic system you somehow need to miminise a political class (and career politicans). One way of doing this is by term limits or barring people holding political office from standing for another one. Unlike the recent election for a London mayor or both current (big party)US presidential (and VP) candidates.
The other way is to look to the Athenean method of using random selection. Where someone could find themselves subject to a law they agreed with the very next day. But possibly more important proposed laws were likely to have the input of regular citizens, including those who's personality would never lead them to seek public election. Most likely discussion would be more along the lines of "How would this help me run my business?", "What effect would this have on my being any empoloyee?", "Will this make it easier or harder to buy things"?, etc.
I totally agree with you. I don't want the Government to read the email I sent to my mum, or listen in on my phone call to work. I *sure* as hell don't want them to read the TXT MSGS I send to my mates.
:)
Such systems are at best useless for law enforcement. Most likely they are worst than useless because they use money which could otherwise be used to employ good uniformed police officers, e.g. those following the "Peelian Principles". Together with detective who can investigate criminals and even infiltrate criminal gangs. Note that both of these types of law enforcement can be highly dangerous. Thus require men and women who are brave, but also of good character. Since it is important to try and keep criminals out of any police force together with people who can easily be persuaded into becoming criminals...
They don't want to prevent another King's Cross, or 9/11-type attack through this latest move to enhanced ability to conduct surveillance.
When people say "King's Cross" the first thing which I think of a major fire over 20 years ago... Also it's hard to see how this kind of thing would have prevented the Metropolitan Police gunning down an innocent man in Stockwell Police station.
I mean, there haven't been any big terrorist attacks lately, and it's not like the people who work for the government and make decisions like this have any sort of knowledge that I don't.
No doubt the government would like to think that they have such information. Assuming they don't leave it laying around on commuter trains
The lack of terrorist attacks either means that current "anti-terrorist" methods are working find (so why the need to change things) or that there just arn't that many terrorists. Personally I wonder what all the fuss is about, considering that the highly competent Irish terrorist are history and the "Islamic extremists" arn't even in the same league. Even calling these people "terrorists" is stretching the truth, "Darwin Award wannabe's" is IMHO a better description.