NOx is quite dangerous (NO and NO2) and one of the top concerns when reducing emissions, but there are other engine pollutants which are also dangerous. Note that one thing is something like CO2, focused on more long-term/theoretical aspects and which has become mostly relevant because of scientific/social/media pressure; and a different story are immediately harmful for health/environment pollutants (like NOx) which, as explained in other comments above, have been one of the most relevant concerns for engine makers since quite a few years ago.
So, just in case my point wasn't completely clear: when referring to the political component of emission targets, I wasn't implying that I disagree with these emissions being banned. I was merely referring to the usual motivations behind their systematically-decreasing values, what kind of explains all the cheating scandals. Bear also in mind that restricting the commercialisation of industrial equipment because of unhealthy outputs is quite common in all the worldwide regulations since quite a few years ago. The case of IC engines (mainly cars and trucks) gets a bit more attention and this might also be the reason for these politics-based decisions.
A solved problem?! No. At all. Gasoline engines generate very dangerous-for-health-and-environment emissions, exactly the same than Diesel engines. The most common emission types in each case are different, but similarly dangerous. Solved implies that it doesn't occur, but this is impossible: pollutants are intrinsically linked to internal combustion engines.
As said, the most relevant aspect when designing new engines is precisely minimising the generated emissions. Engine companies spend lots of money on reducing emissions, even on understanding/measuring emissions. If your engine cannot meet the given targets, you can plainly not sell that engine! There is no other aspect restricting what you can/cannot do as much as emissions. That's why this will always be a tremendous concern for companies and engineers working on this.
have been achieved.
Better: have had to be achieved. I am not working in the field since some years ago and, even when doing so, I was very far away from final decision-making processes; I don't like to talk generally or doubt on (the professionalism of) people either. But if something was proven with the emission-cheating scandals was that "achieving a target" and "looking like achieving a target" might be completely different things. In any case, the intention of my post was just to highlight the tremendous difficulty associated with meeting the expected goals, what converts this-aspect-can-already-be-considered-solved ideas in very inaccurate.
Related (kid-of-jokish) complaint: why is Slashdot locating the Preview and Submit buttons in exactly the same position? Some times, the site might respond a bit slower, you might want to just preview your first draft and, with a second click (because the first one didn't seem to go through), might submit it by accident!
You are certainly right. I was using the expression pretty informally, by meaning highly classified information.
The point I was trying to get across was that almost any database you can think of is likely to be big - several GB, certainly if it contains large numbers of images
The images might be a problem, but just the kind of referred information might be stored in a relatively small size. By bearing in mind that Sweden is a pretty small country, storing all the text for the "delicate bits" (e.g., witness protection programs, classified by police, classified by army, etc.) shouldn't required a big size and seems easily "emailable". In something like 1 million rows and 10 columns you might store a lot and this doesn't occupy too much.
Gasoline powered cars, for example, met the regulations easily.
This isn't true. Meeting the emission standards is one of the most problematic parts of designing any engine during the last quite a few years. It is everything, but easy. And the targets tend to be quite unrealistic as far as people setting them don't have the knowledge or the interest to be realistic. You also shouldn't assume that Diesel is intrinsically dirtier than gasoline, because it isn't (not since quite a few years ago): both are different and equivalently-dirty realities.
I am a leftist and will never validate any kind of generic nonsense on the lines of the parent poster one. I will also never justify any kind of cheating, much less the one coming from a multinational company and much less the one involving an environmental damage. But engine companies are actually not able to meet the emission targets, certainly not by keeping their clients happy (clients say in loud voice that they want lower emissions, but will never accept a notable power reduction in their cars). It is also true that most of emission targets are determined by political interests with low-to-no realistic technical knowledge.
I worked on this field some years ago and the fact that the upcoming targets, the ones being applied now and in the near future, were almost impossible to be met was a quite common belief in the industry. Also note that big companies only want benefits; they certainly don't care about the environment, but don't want to be fined and get bad press either.
As said above and by assuming that the provided information is accurate enough (what isn't too clear at this point), there is no excuse for seriously compromising the safety of very delicate information other than incompetence. When dealing with security and with virtually anything else, you have to bear in mind a trade-off (many of them, actually); converting security in your top priority (-> the case with classified information) is most likely associated with speed and usability restrictions, but you would have to accept that. If your work was securing certain information no matter what and you allowed a breach because of wanting to make the user experience slightly better, you would have failed completely.
The linked article (by assuming that it is accurate, because many people here are saying that it is very misleading) talks about various issues which are certainly top-secret like names/addresses of people in witness protection/considered by police as classified or detailed information about military vehicles.
how can you fit an entire database into an email?
Emailing a database sounds actually kind of weird and using an expression like mailing records of a database would have been better. In any case, mailing a whole database is quite straightforward (by assuming that the given email client can deal with that size): you can dump all the database contents to a file and add these contents directly to the email body or via attachment. You might even email all the files associated with the given database; although this would be a pretty dumb approach, as far as the whole point of having a database (management software) is to precisely ease certain actions like easily exporting/importing data.
that was never mentioned since it is of no importance how many different databases were leaked.
You mean different databases + in different locations + with different access levels, I presume. Many people here is complaining about the numerous problems in the information of the linked article, but nobody is providing a reliable enough alternative in English!
Thanks for the info. Quite a few people here seems to be complaining about the low quality of the information in the linked article, but nobody is proposing a reliable enough alternative in English. I and most of people in this site cannot understand Swedish.
It is entirely possible that the linked article unnecessarily blew everything out of proportion and relied on quite a few misinterpretation-prone expressions. I am not a Swede and cannot understand Swedish, that's why all my comments were written on the basic assumption that the provided information was right. What you are describing seems to provide a much more sensible context than what some parts of the article were implying.
They have no information on people on the witness protection program. But they have the drivers license database, and people in witness protection have drivers licenses
Even by assuming that there is no clear indication about the fact of the given person being in a witness protection program, it seems pretty delicate stuff. One of the basic actions associated with dealing with a subset of highly protected individuals/data sources is to remove them from the common data sources/classifications. In any case, the linked article might be intentionally increasing its clickbaitness by implying issues (e.g., express mention of the given person being in a witness protection program) which might not be true.
I am not sure about the usual policies of most of European countries (+ EU directives) about basic personal information (e.g., person xyz + photo). On the other hand, it seems evident that the public release of certain data (e.g., person xyz being in a protection program and living wherever) should be highly restricted in almost any country.
I cannot understand Swedish and online translators tend to do a quite bad job when dealing with somehow complex information. Are you able/willing to write a short summary?
Why seperate data bases and seperate data stores becaue
It doesn't seem that you are answering questions raised even implicitly by any of my comments; apparently, you are just answering the non-existent meanings which your evident unwillingness to adequately understand has misinterpreted from my words. So, you aren't exactly talking to me but to the meanings your make up (= to yourself). Sorry for interfering in your conversation, but I think that you both (you and you) need some clarifications.
All what I said was that, by assuming that you already have everything together (e.g., dump of all the databases or immediate access to all of them), the exact internal structure of your physical format wouldn't really matter. It should be evident to almost everyone (although well... I am systematically re-defining the evident-to-everyone concept) that having just one file (or one database) is clearly less secure than having many files (databases). But that difference becomes extremely irrelevant when you put everything together, because the time requirements/security associated with accessing 1 or 1000 files/databases don't matter much. I am not saying that creating more databases is a bad idea, but that the positive effect of such an action would pretty much disappear when putting everything in the same place (+ immediately accessible by the same person).
There's benefits to having everything in one place in terms of performance and data deduplication
This is evident. There are always trade-offs between security and speed or ease-of-use or similar; usually, you prefer to rely on an acceptably-secure option and mainly focus on high usability and speed. But we are talking about national top-secret information!!
My almost intuitive thoughts on the top-secret-info front have always been something on the lines of: just one authority managing the given source of delicate information with a single main database; this authority should take care of all the actions ensuring the security and reliable/quick access to said source of information; all the remaining authorities would have to go through the corresponding steps/clearance process to get access to that information; etc.
Fictitious example: agency for jails taking care of adequately securing, backuping, dividing, etc. all information of the information of this kind. It sets up a centralised database with all the main records (e.g., basic information for all the inmates as the one being leaked here) and enables different types of access to it on account of different factors. Any other agency wanting to get information about jails would have to connect to that database (+ request permission to that agency). No local copies should be allowed. All the accesses should be adequately tracked. That agency will be the sole responsible for anything happening to that data.
No, it wasn't sarcasm. It was you misunderstanding my point. I have written the not-as-evident-as-I-thought clarification explaining the difference between having all your data in the same location and in different locations/with different types of access in a comment above.
You are clearly misunderstanding my point. One thing is inter-relating databases stored in different locations and under different access conditions. A different story is having all databases in the same location. A database is basically a bunch of files; it doesn't really matter if you have 1 database (= 1 bunch of files) or 1000 databases (1000 bunches of files) if you are storing all of them in the same location (= zipped and sent to whoever).
The much more logical setup is having different databases in different locations under different credentials and privileges. One application/person can query all of them (= connecting remotely to different places by sending different credentials and passing through different validation processes), but no file/computer/person should be able to access (or send them by email!) all the information of all the databases at once.
I personally think that some of the released information like the one of people under witness relocation programs seems much more delicate than medical records.
Wow! An AC referring to ideas written in a different thread! I am becoming a-tiny-bit-more-than-nothing in Slashdot! Hooray! LOL (-> this is joking). The previous message was serious: having everything in one database would be really stupid, but not much more stupider than having everything in 1000 databases and zipping all of them together.
Some pretty descriptive quotes from the linked article:
Swedish Transport Agency uploaded IBM's entire database onto cloud servers
The transport agency then emailed the entire database in messages to marketers that subscribe to it.
were sent in clear text
error was discovered, the transport agency merely thought of sending a new list in another email, asking the subscribers to delete the old list
every conceivable top secret database: fighter pilots, SEAL team operators, police suspects, people under witness relocation.
One of the multiple questions coming to my mind after reading all this is: why are so different types of top-level secret information of a country being stored in the same database?!
The business of not easily assimilating social norms implicitly is a problem.
Why are you saying that? I will answer it for you: because you have been told to think that way, to think that you have an intrinsic limitation that you really haven't. As explained, this whole "problem" should only be relevant in the first stages of learning, when you are a kid not doing all what other kids do. Imagine that you weren't ever diagnosed (not too many years ago, nobody was being diagnosed for all this; what do you think that happened back then? People had also problems and happy lives) and that you gradually grew and learned. Perhaps by having some problems which other people didn't have and learning certain things slower, but nothing to worry about (big deals in the moment, seen as funny episodes some years later). You might even reach a point where you can choose what approach to have: you can be as social as you wish (you didn't learn that as quickly as others and as intuitively, but you eventually did) or have an attitude which makes you feel more comfortable (e.g., only dealing with the people you want without having the real need of having lots of friends). Doing all this is very difficult when being a kid or a teen (much more difficult with adults worrying about each even slightly different bit); it is very easy to do what you are being told, to believe what other people tell you, to rely on excuses and to be afraid of anything. But nothing of this is strictly required when you become an adult, unless you wish it (-> this is the key idea which I am trying to transmit: it is just a matter of wanting, of deciding, not of being).
As said and without wanting to be impolite, I am not interested in participating in certain kind of discussions, what-if scenarios and what certain people should (not) do. I had some bad experiences on this front in the past. All what I am telling you (just in case you find it useful, otherwise ignore it) is that: you should know yourself; you aren't a list of specific features/reactions/behaviours; you are not equal (not even similar) to other people having the same generic features than you; you can do whatever you want to do, what feels that is better for you, not what someone has told that you have to be/feel/become. It is very easy to talk from my position (and I know that) and that's why I cannot even dare to suggest you what to do on any front. I am just sharing some generic ideas in case you find them useful at some point. Use them or not, completely up to you, but let's better cut it here. Sorry, but I don't see the point of continuing this conversation. It was nice:)
Slashdot Mirror
NOx is quite dangerous (NO and NO2) and one of the top concerns when reducing emissions, but there are other engine pollutants which are also dangerous. Note that one thing is something like CO2, focused on more long-term/theoretical aspects and which has become mostly relevant because of scientific/social/media pressure; and a different story are immediately harmful for health/environment pollutants (like NOx) which, as explained in other comments above, have been one of the most relevant concerns for engine makers since quite a few years ago.
So, just in case my point wasn't completely clear: when referring to the political component of emission targets, I wasn't implying that I disagree with these emissions being banned. I was merely referring to the usual motivations behind their systematically-decreasing values, what kind of explains all the cheating scandals. Bear also in mind that restricting the commercialisation of industrial equipment because of unhealthy outputs is quite common in all the worldwide regulations since quite a few years ago. The case of IC engines (mainly cars and trucks) gets a bit more attention and this might also be the reason for these politics-based decisions.
using gasoline engines, is a solved problem
A solved problem?! No. At all. Gasoline engines generate very dangerous-for-health-and-environment emissions, exactly the same than Diesel engines. The most common emission types in each case are different, but similarly dangerous. Solved implies that it doesn't occur, but this is impossible: pollutants are intrinsically linked to internal combustion engines.
As said, the most relevant aspect when designing new engines is precisely minimising the generated emissions. Engine companies spend lots of money on reducing emissions, even on understanding/measuring emissions. If your engine cannot meet the given targets, you can plainly not sell that engine! There is no other aspect restricting what you can/cannot do as much as emissions. That's why this will always be a tremendous concern for companies and engineers working on this.
have been achieved.
Better: have had to be achieved. I am not working in the field since some years ago and, even when doing so, I was very far away from final decision-making processes; I don't like to talk generally or doubt on (the professionalism of) people either. But if something was proven with the emission-cheating scandals was that "achieving a target" and "looking like achieving a target" might be completely different things. In any case, the intention of my post was just to highlight the tremendous difficulty associated with meeting the expected goals, what converts this-aspect-can-already-be-considered-solved ideas in very inaccurate.
Related (kid-of-jokish) complaint: why is Slashdot locating the Preview and Submit buttons in exactly the same position? Some times, the site might respond a bit slower, you might want to just preview your first draft and, with a second click (because the first one didn't seem to go through), might submit it by accident!
top-secret is usually reserved for state secrets
You are certainly right. I was using the expression pretty informally, by meaning highly classified information.
The point I was trying to get across was that almost any database you can think of is likely to be big - several GB, certainly if it contains large numbers of images The images might be a problem, but just the kind of referred information might be stored in a relatively small size. By bearing in mind that Sweden is a pretty small country, storing all the text for the "delicate bits" (e.g., witness protection programs, classified by police, classified by army, etc.) shouldn't required a big size and seems easily "emailable". In something like 1 million rows and 10 columns you might store a lot and this doesn't occupy too much.
Gasoline powered cars, for example, met the regulations easily.
This isn't true. Meeting the emission standards is one of the most problematic parts of designing any engine during the last quite a few years. It is everything, but easy. And the targets tend to be quite unrealistic as far as people setting them don't have the knowledge or the interest to be realistic. You also shouldn't assume that Diesel is intrinsically dirtier than gasoline, because it isn't (not since quite a few years ago): both are different and equivalently-dirty realities.
I am a leftist and will never validate any kind of generic nonsense on the lines of the parent poster one. I will also never justify any kind of cheating, much less the one coming from a multinational company and much less the one involving an environmental damage. But engine companies are actually not able to meet the emission targets, certainly not by keeping their clients happy (clients say in loud voice that they want lower emissions, but will never accept a notable power reduction in their cars). It is also true that most of emission targets are determined by political interests with low-to-no realistic technical knowledge.
I worked on this field some years ago and the fact that the upcoming targets, the ones being applied now and in the near future, were almost impossible to be met was a quite common belief in the industry. Also note that big companies only want benefits; they certainly don't care about the environment, but don't want to be fined and get bad press either.
As said above and by assuming that the provided information is accurate enough (what isn't too clear at this point), there is no excuse for seriously compromising the safety of very delicate information other than incompetence. When dealing with security and with virtually anything else, you have to bear in mind a trade-off (many of them, actually); converting security in your top priority (-> the case with classified information) is most likely associated with speed and usability restrictions, but you would have to accept that. If your work was securing certain information no matter what and you allowed a breach because of wanting to make the user experience slightly better, you would have failed completely.
were not considered top-secret
The linked article (by assuming that it is accurate, because many people here are saying that it is very misleading) talks about various issues which are certainly top-secret like names/addresses of people in witness protection/considered by police as classified or detailed information about military vehicles.
how can you fit an entire database into an email?
Emailing a database sounds actually kind of weird and using an expression like mailing records of a database would have been better. In any case, mailing a whole database is quite straightforward (by assuming that the given email client can deal with that size): you can dump all the database contents to a file and add these contents directly to the email body or via attachment. You might even email all the files associated with the given database; although this would be a pretty dumb approach, as far as the whole point of having a database (management software) is to precisely ease certain actions like easily exporting/importing data.
that was never mentioned since it is of no importance how many different databases were leaked.
You mean different databases + in different locations + with different access levels, I presume. Many people here is complaining about the numerous problems in the information of the linked article, but nobody is providing a reliable enough alternative in English!
Thanks for the info. Quite a few people here seems to be complaining about the low quality of the information in the linked article, but nobody is proposing a reliable enough alternative in English. I and most of people in this site cannot understand Swedish.
It is entirely possible that the linked article unnecessarily blew everything out of proportion and relied on quite a few misinterpretation-prone expressions. I am not a Swede and cannot understand Swedish, that's why all my comments were written on the basic assumption that the provided information was right. What you are describing seems to provide a much more sensible context than what some parts of the article were implying.
They have no information on people on the witness protection program. But they have the drivers license database, and people in witness protection have drivers licenses
Even by assuming that there is no clear indication about the fact of the given person being in a witness protection program, it seems pretty delicate stuff. One of the basic actions associated with dealing with a subset of highly protected individuals/data sources is to remove them from the common data sources/classifications. In any case, the linked article might be intentionally increasing its clickbaitness by implying issues (e.g., express mention of the given person being in a witness protection program) which might not be true.
I am not sure about the usual policies of most of European countries (+ EU directives) about basic personal information (e.g., person xyz + photo). On the other hand, it seems evident that the public release of certain data (e.g., person xyz being in a protection program and living wherever) should be highly restricted in almost any country.
I cannot understand Swedish and online translators tend to do a quite bad job when dealing with somehow complex information. Are you able/willing to write a short summary?
Why seperate data bases and seperate data stores becaue
It doesn't seem that you are answering questions raised even implicitly by any of my comments; apparently, you are just answering the non-existent meanings which your evident unwillingness to adequately understand has misinterpreted from my words. So, you aren't exactly talking to me but to the meanings your make up (= to yourself). Sorry for interfering in your conversation, but I think that you both (you and you) need some clarifications.
All what I said was that, by assuming that you already have everything together (e.g., dump of all the databases or immediate access to all of them), the exact internal structure of your physical format wouldn't really matter. It should be evident to almost everyone (although well... I am systematically re-defining the evident-to-everyone concept) that having just one file (or one database) is clearly less secure than having many files (databases). But that difference becomes extremely irrelevant when you put everything together, because the time requirements/security associated with accessing 1 or 1000 files/databases don't matter much. I am not saying that creating more databases is a bad idea, but that the positive effect of such an action would pretty much disappear when putting everything in the same place (+ immediately accessible by the same person).
There's benefits to having everything in one place in terms of performance and data deduplication
This is evident. There are always trade-offs between security and speed or ease-of-use or similar; usually, you prefer to rely on an acceptably-secure option and mainly focus on high usability and speed. But we are talking about national top-secret information!!
My almost intuitive thoughts on the top-secret-info front have always been something on the lines of: just one authority managing the given source of delicate information with a single main database; this authority should take care of all the actions ensuring the security and reliable/quick access to said source of information; all the remaining authorities would have to go through the corresponding steps/clearance process to get access to that information; etc.
Fictitious example: agency for jails taking care of adequately securing, backuping, dividing, etc. all information of the information of this kind. It sets up a centralised database with all the main records (e.g., basic information for all the inmates as the one being leaked here) and enables different types of access to it on account of different factors. Any other agency wanting to get information about jails would have to connect to that database (+ request permission to that agency). No local copies should be allowed. All the accesses should be adequately tracked. That agency will be the sole responsible for anything happening to that data.
No, it wasn't sarcasm. It was you misunderstanding my point. I have written the not-as-evident-as-I-thought clarification explaining the difference between having all your data in the same location and in different locations/with different types of access in a comment above.
You are clearly misunderstanding my point. One thing is inter-relating databases stored in different locations and under different access conditions. A different story is having all databases in the same location. A database is basically a bunch of files; it doesn't really matter if you have 1 database (= 1 bunch of files) or 1000 databases (1000 bunches of files) if you are storing all of them in the same location (= zipped and sent to whoever).
The much more logical setup is having different databases in different locations under different credentials and privileges. One application/person can query all of them (= connecting remotely to different places by sending different credentials and passing through different validation processes), but no file/computer/person should be able to access (or send them by email!) all the information of all the databases at once.
SELLING THEIR DATA TO MARKETERS
Good one too. Just the word "marketers" makes the whole thing even weirder.
I personally think that some of the released information like the one of people under witness relocation programs seems much more delicate than medical records.
Wow! An AC referring to ideas written in a different thread! I am becoming a-tiny-bit-more-than-nothing in Slashdot! Hooray! LOL (-> this is joking). The previous message was serious: having everything in one database would be really stupid, but not much more stupider than having everything in 1000 databases and zipping all of them together.
Logically, with "being stored in the same database" I meant being managed together (1 database or 1000 doesn't matter).
Swedish Transport Agency uploaded IBM's entire database onto cloud servers
The transport agency then emailed the entire database in messages to marketers that subscribe to it.
were sent in clear text
error was discovered, the transport agency merely thought of sending a new list in another email, asking the subscribers to delete the old list
every conceivable top secret database: fighter pilots, SEAL team operators, police suspects, people under witness relocation.
One of the multiple questions coming to my mind after reading all this is: why are so different types of top-level secret information of a country being stored in the same database?!
Erlich Bachman left the show for good! A terrible lost! One of his funniest performances.
The business of not easily assimilating social norms implicitly is a problem.
Why are you saying that? I will answer it for you: because you have been told to think that way, to think that you have an intrinsic limitation that you really haven't. As explained, this whole "problem" should only be relevant in the first stages of learning, when you are a kid not doing all what other kids do. Imagine that you weren't ever diagnosed (not too many years ago, nobody was being diagnosed for all this; what do you think that happened back then? People had also problems and happy lives) and that you gradually grew and learned. Perhaps by having some problems which other people didn't have and learning certain things slower, but nothing to worry about (big deals in the moment, seen as funny episodes some years later). You might even reach a point where you can choose what approach to have: you can be as social as you wish (you didn't learn that as quickly as others and as intuitively, but you eventually did) or have an attitude which makes you feel more comfortable (e.g., only dealing with the people you want without having the real need of having lots of friends). Doing all this is very difficult when being a kid or a teen (much more difficult with adults worrying about each even slightly different bit); it is very easy to do what you are being told, to believe what other people tell you, to rely on excuses and to be afraid of anything. But nothing of this is strictly required when you become an adult, unless you wish it (-> this is the key idea which I am trying to transmit: it is just a matter of wanting, of deciding, not of being).
:)
As said and without wanting to be impolite, I am not interested in participating in certain kind of discussions, what-if scenarios and what certain people should (not) do. I had some bad experiences on this front in the past. All what I am telling you (just in case you find it useful, otherwise ignore it) is that: you should know yourself; you aren't a list of specific features/reactions/behaviours; you are not equal (not even similar) to other people having the same generic features than you; you can do whatever you want to do, what feels that is better for you, not what someone has told that you have to be/feel/become. It is very easy to talk from my position (and I know that) and that's why I cannot even dare to suggest you what to do on any front. I am just sharing some generic ideas in case you find them useful at some point. Use them or not, completely up to you, but let's better cut it here. Sorry, but I don't see the point of continuing this conversation. It was nice