Anonymous Internet Access – Is it Possible?

September 21, 2008 — 585

Anonymous Internet access hardly exists anymore. Google track your searching habits, the ISPs record your IP address, BT/Phorm track and monitor your Internet browsing, and police can intercept your email, and the government can access all of it legally or illegally, with the likes of Echelon

With that in mind is it possible to have anonymous access to the Internet anymore and should anybody want it?

When the USA PATRIOT Act came into power there was uproar about libraries handing over information about who reads what. But this information pales into insignificance with the amount of information available from accessing Internet logs. Anyone who buys from Amazon will know that you get “suggested reading lists” automatically sent to you. That means that Amazon not only track what your reading, but also “understand” it and target you accordingly (it is, in general, fairly accurate). Amazon has the ability to store all the searches you have made, and books you have looked at, not just bought – surely this is more concerning than the records of taking out a few books from the local library?

Access to Internet records means more than just working out which web sites you have visited, it can show who you talk to, who your friends talk to, how you are linked across the world, what you buy, what you like to eat, what your political interests are, what debates and discussions you have, what your sexual interests are, or are not, you bank details, your personal emails, you work emails.

In fact your entire personal and private life is available from a detailed analysis of your Internet habits.  Companies make a leaving from trading in personal data, from Nectar cards to Double Click, and other targeted ads, they all want to know more about you. Even this site (depending on where you are reading it) has Google Ads, which  are automatically target at the audience; in fact adverts will be different on what you are reading, when you are reading it, and where you are reading it.

YouTube, also owned by Google, will give individuals information about who views their “Channel”, including age and sex.

Over the next few weeks this site will be looking at some of the technology that is supposed to be able to help provide the user with anonymous Internet activity.

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How Long Does it Take to Post an Anonymous Blog using Tor?

September 21, 2008 — 585

Over the coming weeks this site will be looking at how to be Anonymous in the Internet, if this is at all possible.

This post was published, as a test using well known anonymizing tool – Tor, available for download here. Tor is well known for being slow but secure (see discussions here).

The aim was to see how long it takes to publish an “anonymous” article using Tor.

The test was conducted by publishing this article (the times were filled in afterwords) to there Where is Your Data? site which uses the Wordpress blog.

First Attempt – to post the article using “BlogJet” – a blog posting tool: Failed. Total Time  – 1 minutes

Second Attempt to Log in via the website site:  Failed, Firefox 3 could not log onto Tor. Therefore needed to reboot the machine and establish Tor (about 5 minutes)

Third Attempt: Success

Connected to the webstie, http://whereisyourdata.co.uk/whereismydata. This took about 1 min to load

Logged in – about 2.8 min to load

Clicked Write - 3.2 min to load

Copied and pasted text into article window  – about 0.5 min

Clicked “Save” – about 1.2 min

Clicked Publish- about 0.5 min

Total Time for the Third Attempt – 9.2 min

Summary:

Can you produce an anonymous blog article with Tor? Yes, technically its easy, but its painfully slow.

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Photography Is it a Crime…Follow Up

September 19, 2008 — 585

Photography Is it a Crime?

On July 1st 2008 the British Journal of Photography published a letter from the Home Secretary to the to the National Union of Journalists.

The letter gives, in a roundabout way, police the authority to stop press taking photographs.

Decisions may be made locally to restrict or monitor photography in reasonable circumstances. That is an operational decision for the officers involved based on the individual circumstances of each situation

It is for the local Chief Constable…. to decide how his or her Officers and employees should best balance the rights to freedom of the press, freedom of expression and the need for public protection

This means that while there are no laws stopping photography, the Police could use their common law powers, e.g breach of a peace, to stop/arrest the press/photographers, and the Home Secretary has given a nod to allow this to continue.

Freedom of Information requests at certain police forces have revealed the following

  • Sussex Police stated that they have no records of public photography being a crime
  • Avon and Somerset also implied that they did perceive photography to be a crime, but would intervene in serious matters, e.g press trying to photograph the body of a murder victim still at the scene.

As more information becomes available it will be published on this site.

 

 

 

 

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Internet Censorship – Suicide

September 18, 2008 — 585

The government has stated it will change the law to make it illegal to promote suicide on web sites.

The Suicide Act 1961 makes it  illegal  “aid, abet, counsel, or procure” in a suicide attempt, i.e it is illegal to help somebody to commit suicide. 

Section 2 of the Act states that:

“A person who aids, abets, counsels or procures the suicide of another, or an attempt by another to commit suicide, shall be liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.”

It is no longer  illegal  to actually commit suicide (contrary to popular myth), and Section 1 of the 1961 Act makes that very clear  – “The rule of law whereby it is a crime for a person to commit suicide is hereby abrogated.”

One of the people calling for the change in the law is MP John Robertson, the Labour MP for Glasgow North West.John Robertson 

Mr Robertson, pictured inset, has an interesting voting record – voting against an investigation into the Iraq War, against against a transparent parliament, but voting very strongly for ID cards and the controversial anti-terror laws (he also had £147,000 worth of expenses last year, on top of his salary).

Previously it has not been illegal to merely provide information to somebody wanting to commit suicide, i.e courts did not see that as a breach of Section 2 of the 1961 Suicide Act.  If the law is changed then this will override the 40 years of case law; it is often argued, that the longer case law stands the more valid it is, but not to the UK government.

Part of this call for censorship is due to the knee jerk reaction to the suicides in Bridgend. Which, in-spite all of the clamor and hype, stopped just as randomly as they started.

In fact despite all the media coverage about the subject, and the increased Internet debates discussing the issue, the rate of suicides did not continue to increase, but stopped completely. i.e there was far more information about suicides after the 17th death than before the 1st, yet the suicides did not continue into a snowball effect.

Therefore those drawing a direct link between the suicides and Internet activity have a major statistical hurdle to cross.

No doubt in 5 years time a study will be conducted and it will show that the 17 deaths were just a statistical anomaly, and there was a drop in suicides in the year before or after (its not very interesting for newspapers to report “SEVENTEEN LESS SUICIDES THIS YEAR!”)

While it may appear innocent and acceptable, like so many other laws, to ban the promotion of suicide, the law will actually go much further.

The new law, if it is ever passed, will seek to stop Internet debates/forums on the subject and will also cover assisted suicide/euthanasia – which is legal in other countries – and a reasonable subject to debate.

If this law does get passed, it could easily be amended to prevent debates and web sites on other related subjects, such as alternative pain relief (often using cannabis).

Is it more censorship that is required, or more responsibility and education?

 

 

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Hackers infiltrate Palin's e-mail

September 18, 2008 — 585

Hackers have broken in to the e-mail of the US Republican vice-presidential candidate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

The hackers, who targeted a personal Yahoo account, posted several messages and family photos from her inbox.

The campaign of running mate John McCain condemned their action as “a shocking invasion of the governor’s privacy and a violation of the law”.

The hacking comes amid questions about whether Mrs Palin used personal e-mail to conduct state business.

According to law, all e-mails relating to the official business of government must be archived and not destroyed. However, personal e-mails can be deleted.

Mrs Palin is currently under investigation in Alaska for alleged abuse of power while governor.

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Hackers infiltrate Palin’s e-mail.

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Prum Convention Agrements

September 18, 2008 — 585

In June 2008 the Council of the European Union published the Presidency Conclusion of the Brussels European Council.

The council made several conclusions, including:

“the European Council stresses that efforts to fight terrorism must
be stepped up”

sadly, this ties into the EU plan to censor the Internet, and to push forward with the Prum Convention, which the UK House of Lords has raised numerous issues about.

In fact the report also states that:

“Agreement has been reached on the integration of the provisions on exchange of information in the Prüm Treaty into the Union’s legal framework, but further initiatives to enhance the exchange of information should be examined, taking due account of the protection of personal data.”

Despite this push to prevent terrorism, to have more data on more people, and the constant reminder that terrorism is a very real threat the EU has actually reduced internal border controls, and highlights this in the same report:

“In March 2008, the enlargement of the Schengen area by 9 Member States was finalised with the abolition of controls at internal air borders.”

Joined up thinking?

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Encase 6.10

September 18, 2008 — 585

Recovering Deleted Files

 

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Its all there to protect us…honest

September 17, 2008 — 585

The surveillance industry, the CCTV, the UAVs, the ANPR network, the DNA databases, et al, is, apparently, all here for our benefit, to protect us from the menace of terrorism.

If we follow this line of argument we must believe that the threat to the country from terrorism is both massive and likely; there could be no other justification.

Why else would the UK government spend so much on the security services and invading other countries? It is all about defending and protecting us in the long term. Isn’t it?

But, what if there was another completely different risk far more deadly than terrorism, and equally likely, surely the government would target that with equal determination?

According to the cabinet office’s own National Risk Register (Page 5) the greatest threat to the UK is the flu, or to be more precise, an Influenza Pandemic.

This is a fair assessment, as the 1918 pandemic killed over 50 million people – or to give it a sense of scale about 25,000 time more than in the 9/11 attacks.

If the solution to the threat from the crazy (if not slightly inept) terrorist is: CCTV, ANPR (clever CCTV), Facial recognition (really clever CCTV), behavior pattern matching CCTV (amazingly clever CCTV), and lots of databases, then what would be the best prevention against pandemic?

Perhaps building hospitals, lots of doctor training, building more hospitals, having lots of ambulances, and high level of clinical research. The plus side of all this medical infrastructure is that it benefits the country as a whole, even if the pandemic never comes.

Clearly the government do none of this. How many people are even  aware of the 1918 Spanish Flu? Compare that number with how many know about 9/11, Osma Bin Laden, or the chemical weapons of Saddam Hussein.

Strange how the governments mass information and education system is so effective and selective at the same time.

So if the government is not combating the threat of the flu, “War on Colds” , why all the surveillance?

 

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Internet Censorship?

September 17, 2008 — 585

On 18th April 2008 the EU decided to start the censorship of the Internet; with similar laws to our liberal cousins in Saudi Arabia.

The EU stated in the press release of the time:

“Today the Council reached a common approach on the amendment of the Framework Decision on combating terrorism proposed by the Commission on 6 November [2007]. The amendment up-dates the Framework Decision making public provocation to commit a terrorist offence, recruitment and training for terrorism punishable behavior, also when committed through the Internet”

While this all sounds very laudable, stopping terrorism and the exchange of biological weapons on the Internet, there are a few concerns about this:

Firstly, who decides what “training for terrorism” is? Would a stag weekend in eastern Europe, involving firing machine guns count? What about kids fastening fireworks together? Or what about students reading the Jolly Rodger Cook Book?

Secondly, what if this definition shifts slightly? The UK have “shifted” laws over time, initially only the fingerprints of the guilty could be taken, then it was anyone arrested, now the government is issuing guidelines that allows children as young as 4 to have their fingerprints taken at school (2 million taken so far).  What if, once the powers have been created, the governments decide to tweak the laws slightly and change the phrasing to “terrorist related training”? That would hardly make the news but it could mean that paint-balling could count as training, or what about web sites that have information about how easy it is to avoid CCTV , ANPR, or  fingerprint scanners? Would they be shut down?

Thirdly, the UK has lived with the IRA for 300 years, the Spanish have ETA, the French have the Algerians, and Germany had “Munich”, yet despite all of this nobody suggested censorship on this scale – its worth pointing out that the IRA killed more than the 9/11 attacks.  So why the the sudden fear of the bogey man? What’s the driving force?

Finally, who are the biggest arms dealers in the world, who are the ones who buy and sell weapons to dubious regimes around the world? The 5 biggest dealers are – USA, China, Russian, UK and France.

Companies like BAe, Lockheed Martin and others clearly sell weapons, often to places that conduct torture and, by many legal definitions, terrorism. But, despite this they will almost certainly be allowed to  have a web site.

So who is the censorship aimed at?

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Police Lose Data

September 17, 2008 — 585

Sigh…………..

A police force has undertaken an urgent hunt for a computer memory stick after admitting it has been lost by an officer on duty.
West Midlands Police would not confirm or deny reports that the data stick contained information on terrorism.

BBC NEWS | England | West Midlands | Police admit to lost data blunder.

 

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