Archive for July, 2006

Just a thought…

Monday, July 31st, 2006

Qana heats up ceasefire diplomacy

Since 12th July, excluding Qana, almost 400 people have been killed in Lebanon. That’s more than a 20-a-day habit.

Then Qana, 60 in one place.

Before Qana, Blair saw no need for an immediate ceasefire.

After Qana, and suddenly…

What’s the threshold? Why is 400 spread over a couple of weeks and a wide area OK, but 60 huddled together not OK?

I guesss Bliar et al have some special morality calculator that gives them the vital info: input deaths over time, subtract public opinion, divide by racial bias, factor for kiddies, add air miles, account for special relationship and BINGO!

2 Israeli captives: morality level HIMMLER

20 Lebanese deaths/day: morality level JUDY GARLAND

60 Lebanese deaths; 50% ‘kiddies’ + huddle factor: morality level: BERLUSCONI

the best car

Monday, July 31st, 2006

I watched a program about this car

It is pure beauty, sorry if any of you guys have heard about alreay….

vayron

Much too much, much too young

Monday, July 31st, 2006

From Statewatch

A report from the EU Council Presidency at the end of June (EU doc no: 9403/1/06) proposes that for EU passports:

1. The “scanning of the facial image” should be:

“0 to 12 years of age.. storage in the chip [to be] on the basis of national legislation [and] from 12 years of age: Compulsory“. (emphasis in original).

[…]

2. The taking of finger-prints is a wholly different issue. Here the EU Council Presidency proposes that:

“Scanning of fingerprints up to 12 years of age.. is permissible if provided for by national legislation”

“From 12 years of age: compulsory” (emphasis in original)

And if any member states wants to set a lower limit, eg: 10, 8, 6 or 4 years, or 1 day, old they can do so and from 12 years old the compulsory taking of fingerprints from children.

The EU has absolutely no business in demanding anyones information be databased never mind children. At the very very most it should ensure a common format for any information that individual nations see fit to register. The EU is not a state and thanks to the rejection of the constitution it is still quite literally a non-entity in legal terms.

This was also reported in the Observer which has a typical half hearted quote from Liberty’s ex- Home Office employee, Shami Chakrabarti:

‘Secure passports make a lot more sense than ID cards,’ said Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty. ‘But only as long as the information that is kept is no more than necessary and is not shared with other countries.’

NO. A secure passport system can be made operable without any centralised database whatsoever, no information about free individuals need be shared with anybody, even within ‘their own country’. For a secure system you need nothing more complicated than a passport containing a digital photograph encrypted with public/private key encryption so that the immigration control officer can verify you are the legitimate holder of your passport. Everything else is a waste of money, an imposition upon anonymity and an invitation to theft of personal information and individual rights.

The Avant Garde Project

Sunday, July 30th, 2006

The Avant Garde Project is a series of recordings of 20th-century classical-experimental-electroacoustic music digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today.

The analog rig used to extract the sound from the grooves is near state-of-the-art, producing almost none of the tracking distortion or surface noise normally associated with LPs.

New AGP installments are released as bittorrents each Friday night around midnight (GMT), and can be accessed through either The Pirate Bay or Mininova. New torrents are announced on the I Hate Music Forum.

The AGP archive is a repository for earlier installments, the files of which can be downloaded from this website.

NOTE: To the best of my knowledge, all of the recordings on this site are currently out of print. If you know otherwise, please let me know ASAP, as I do not wish to deprive any artists of their much-deserved royalties (however small). Please see the AGP copyright policy for further information.

http://www.avantgardeproject.org/index.htm 

mmm… thx-1138, I love you

Friday, July 28th, 2006

Voting for a large supermarket chain instead of a political party may at first seem a ridiculous idea.

But think about it some more.

Government occupies most of its time collecting, then spending, money and an increasing amount of that money is spent through private contractors rather than public servants. From refuse collection through to health care, more and more public services are being delivered by private companies. The reasoning behind this is that the discipline of market forces delivers the best return for tax payers’ money.

[…]

The problem is that even though companies are becoming more involved in the delivery of public services there is one sector that is closed to them – the overall management of those services. Not only are they held back by being managed by politicians whose only attribute is the ability to bullshit, the companies also have every incentive to steal as much as they can from the State whilst lobbying for and executing their contracts. Neither would be the case if a company were in overall charge.

That’s why we should be able to vote for Tescos.

[…]

!!!!!!!!!!!

Actually, this is what I stumbled upon:

[…]

Looking back on the Poll Tax it’s increasingly difficult to see what all the fuss was about. At the time, the Poll Tax was seen to be a tax on the poor. The reasoning being that more poor people would live in any given house than rich people. The Poll Tax was also seen as being a pernicious tax on your very existence, as if all the other taxes aren’t.

As it happens, most of these objections to the Poll Tax were bollocks. Of course it had its flaws but so what? Most taxes do, particularly indirect taxes. People on low incomes would have received a rebate to cover the Poll Tax and the system that it replaced, and the system that replaced it, were even less connected to an individual’s ability to pay. What the Poll Tax did represent was an excuse to demonstrate against a hated government and burn down a few McDonalds at the same time.

I mention it now because the thought of 200,000 people running amok around the West End over any particularly issue seems rather unlikely these days.

This is partly down to the fact that our current, supposedly progressive, government has locked down security pretty tightly; marches and demonstrations are now policed to a ridiculous level, but mostly because most people on the Left of politics are hypocritical and full shit.

And lots of it.

Why am I picking on Left-Wingers? Well, people with more Right wing views don’t pretend to give a stuff about anyone else; Self-Interest is King. Whereas people on the Left are always prattling on about the Human Rights and twaddle like that.

They don’t really mean it though do they?

Forget for a moment the fact that the current government has presided over unprecedented levels of corporatisation and globalisation of this country or that the tax burden on the rich has been held back at the expense of the less rich. How else can you explain the conspicuous lack of any real resistance to the Government’s assault on the right to trial by jury, restriction of the right to protest, imprisonment without trial, the imposition of ID cards and that stupid, frickin’ war…

That’s the sort of stuff that should bring people out on the street to light bonfires and build barricades, not a few quid either way on the rate of property tax.

What little effective resistance there has been to the rise of fascism in this country has come from the likes of the House of Lords and the Judiciary. Both unelected and both despised by the Left.

That past generation of Left Wing protestors and the generation that should have followed them have been well and truly neutered by The Machine. Sure, some of them talk the talk but barely a handful walk the walk. Wankers.

Hmm. Well you could just as easily call ‘Right Wingers’ wankers, as the government’s authoritarianism is increasingly stamping out the ability to live an individualistic life free from the state

———————-

(monday)

I was going to write a bit more earlier than this but I’ve been feeding the rats with copious amounts of mucus.

Taking the Tesco idea at face value – The most important aspect of democracy is/should be as a protection against tyranny. In our almost democracy we actually have, in effect, a 4-5 year monopolies on governance – this is already wrong, and it takes the best efforts of private interest and parliamentary standards committees to minimise level of corruption by politicians. Any representatives of a private firm would by default be compromised as Irdial outlines below – in their obligations to shareholders, etc.
I am less picky about private companies being involved in delivering certain public services as long as those services are not either essentially monoplistic (utilities, public transport) or handle private personal information (NHS, police forces) and that the private firms are not involved in management roles – the difference between garbage contracts and PFI.

If we ever achieve a proper localised democratic structure in this country I see no problem with individual communities allowing Tesco or whoever to tender for collecting garbage or to take care of the local park.

Left wing wankers. I chose the extract because it identified the docility of the generation you would expect to be most activist. As for ‘left wingers’ I have to admit that the ones I’ve met are more likely to cling to Party allegiances even so anyone who is not upset, outraged and willing to resist ID cards etc is worthy of being called a wanker. Right wingers and liberals too.

The Bromley Contingent

Thursday, July 27th, 2006

I guess like many individuals at that time I was shocked and revolted at the conduct of the UK Government in moving against its own people with the amendments to the Terrorism Act (2000) and the attendant legislation since and using the so-called ‘Specialist Operations 19’ officers to shoot them down in the tube.

I would have hoped that by 2006 the UK Government would have begun the process of recognising that what had happened wasn’t acceptable and would have begun to atone for what has to be seen as a crime against liberty. Unfortunately there is little evidence of this and in fact, towards the end of the time that I lived in England the State started to once again tighten it’s grip on expression and information. Many muslim dissidents have been harrassed and some are in prison or have gone into exile.

All libertarians truly worthy of the name hope that the 60 million people who live in mainland UK could begin to enjoy the liberties and democracy that their compatriots on the continent still enjoy. Europe has shown that it is not impossible within a society with a strong Social-Democrat tradition to enjoy political and economic freedom whilst maintaining a federalist structure (albeit one that is similar to the United States in being split pretty much down the middle).

I argue that individuals need to engage with each other and that we should not be afraid to uphold our values, some of which are surprisingly shared by a number of professional people in Government. However what we have to realise is that the Labour Party has not only been a brake on genuine freedoms and decentralisation, it has also gradually promoted the (sometime) ideologues of Marxist-Leninism in a not disimilar way to which Mao promoted obedient officials after the Cultural Revolution. Nowadays, the Labour Party uses the veneer of accounability “with Reformist characteristics” – whatever that really means – but in reality it is advocating authoritarianism (near totalitarianism) with a capitalistic nationalist face. It is this ideology, and the means by which it hopes to permeate the UK’s social thinking, which creates the greatest problem for the continuation of a liberal democracy in the UK.

Shortly, I will post my views on the potential political scenarios facing the UK and suggesting a potential approach by the Liberal Democrats to bilateral dealings with the Conservatives.

Mangled words from a Liberal Legend! (apparently). Anyway while Toby Philpott’s ideas about China are seem intelligent enough he should really be using his Lib Dem blog to talk more about issues closer to home – after all we don’t want opposition parties to feel they have to avoid raising controversy in order to be elected (like in the Peoples Republic of America) and he obviously cares as he has all the right links in his sidebar.

Those who remember will never surrender

Thursday, July 27th, 2006
*** BEATING THE POLL TAX ***

Anarchist Communist Editions (ACE) Pamphlet No. 4

Anarchist Communist Federation

(now Anarchist Federation www.afed.org.uk)

First published in March 1990 under the Tories

(following ‘The Poll Tax and How to Fight It’ October 1988)

Now published online March 2006 and dedicated to New Labour and the Left

“Our past experience should teach us to expect nothing else of them.”

‘As a socialist, I have no time for tax-dodgers’
Eric Milligan, head of Lothian region Labour council’s Finance Department (April 1989)

‘Such is the scale of the non-payment movement in our region that we may have to write-off large sums of outsanding poll tax’
Eric Milligan (December 1989)

CONTENTS

  • Beating the Poll Tax
  • How not to fight
  • What lies behind the Poll Tax
  • The ‘Left’ and the Poll Tax
  • Appendix: What is the Poll Tax?

Burning poll tax registration forms in London

http://www.libcom.org/hosted/af/ace/polltax.html

The game is up for cash

Wednesday, July 26th, 2006

Monopoly money could become obsolete after the makers of the 70-year old game introduced a new version where players fund property purchases using a debit card.

The Visa-branded card inserts into an electronic machine where the banker taps in cardholders’ earnings and payments.

The Telegraph gets in on the press release recycling scam. Naturally you will pay dearly for the card version!

Unfortunately if this takes off a wave of children will grow up associating cards with financial purchases rather than cash – a salami slice off the (sometimes) untraceable economy. Another step towards the fully audited life, perhaps the Home Office should come up with an immigration control game with a biometric scanner included – they could get BBQ to give them away on Blue Peter.

Whatever happened to a nice simple game of dominoes?

JP-8 Aviation jet fuel sale, “will not affect the basic military balance in the region”

Wednesday, July 26th, 2006

The image “http://cryptome.org/il-jp8.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

the ongoing 3 billion watch

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

Young men who father children outside marriage may be compelled to put their names on the birth certificate under Government plans unveiled yesterday to reform the chaotic system for child support.
Those who refuse to pay, or build up huge arrears, could be “named and shamed”, as well as having their passports taken away, fitted with a electronic “tag” and subjected to a night-time and weekend curfew.
[…]
Announcing the effective scrapping of the much-criticised Child Support Agency, Mr Hutton admitted that it had built up a backlog of 300,000 cases and debts of more than £3 billion, but thousands of lone parents would not receive the money because there were “limited prospects of recovery”.

An overreaction to the ‘problem’ on a Middle Eastern scale, but this sort of talk is intended to dull the public sensibility to the point at which such measures seem the only ones that will be effective, and thus the Authoritarian Left will get their desire of absolute state control.

But it will not work.

BP reported a record replacement cost net profit of $6.1 billion (3.3 billion pounds) for the second quarter of its financial year, as high oil prices and strong refining margins more than made up for a drop in output.

Reiding betwen the lies

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

The Register reports that the cost of passports will increase considerably yet again – this october – to £66(6) making it look increasingly likely that a stand alone pasport will be near the £93 mark by the ID card system is dumped upon the nation i.e. the government will crow that the ID card is in effect gratis. So where will the money go? Either to pump-prime the NIR system or for the closing down of UK borders that Reid seems hell bent on. You need a lot of money for watch towers and barbed wire around a whole island.

Either way it makes even more sense to renew your passport before NIR information auditing/stockpiling is a matter of course at the IPS.

I’ve just noticed the price rise is covered in the guardian too and they include a statement from NO2ID etc, hats off and may it continue.

Incidentally I have good word that travelling within the EU only UK immigration officials can actually be bothered to use machine readers, it would be nice to verify this.

Australia Flap

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

AussieUFOpod2.mp4

AussieUFOpod6.mov

AussieUFOpod5.mov

All snarfed from:
http://australianufowave.blogspot.com/

And while we are at it, check out the following documentary, which has some really truely astonishing footage in it:

http://www.mininova.org/tor/328395

Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs (2005)

Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs explores past and present sightings
from around the world with shocking real footage, much of it never before seen,
that will leave even the most skeptical viewers scratching their heads.

Along with the fascinating collection of stunning eyewitness videos,
Akroyd reveals his own vast knowledge of the strange and paranormal
as he explores in detail his views on conspiracy theories, military secrets,
and how UFO technology is currently part of our everyday lives!

Best Torrents on the WEB
http://conspiracycentral.net:6969
30000 Active users
Enjoy

AVI File Details
========================================
Name………: Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs 2005.avi
Filesize…..: 697 MB (or 714,524 KB or 731,672,576 bytes)
Runtime……: 01:24:07 (120,997 fr)
Video Codec..: XviD
Video Bitrate: 963 kb/s
Audio Codec..: ac3 (0x2000) Dolby Laboratories, Inc
Audio Bitrate: 192 kb/s (96/ch, stereo) CBR
Frame Size…: 560×336 (1.67:1) [=5:3]

Live the Dream

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

thxmoo summary

thxmoo is a virtual world based on the story of THX-1138 by George
Lucas. As in the story, characters in thxmoo are born and raised in
a post world war III subterranean shelter. Players can control their
emotional and psychological states by use of state prescribed pills,
sensual stimuli and deity worship. Players may make it their goal to
attempt to escape to the surface where mystery and the unknown dwell.
This requires achieving a chemical balance by experimenting with
various pill prescriptions and other activities. Other players may
choose to become integral parts of the subterranean world.

character role playing

Guests are generated when a player connects as ‘thxmoo’. Regular
players may run ‘thxmoo’ at the SDF shell to generate or load a
character. The MOO then uses sperm and egg from an existing couple to
generate a new player. The player name (AAA-NNNN), sex and race are
generated by the system. Players will start the game as a child, be
trained by mentors and live in the nursery. After a period of regular
game play, a player is then coupled at which sperm and egg will be
extracted to propogate the species. If you can find the REPRODUCTION
CENTER it is possible to deduce your biological parents, if you care.

character development and space

Character features and dwellings are up to players. This is really
the only liberty you have. However, if you deviate you risk arrest.
Matured characters dwellings are in the QUARTERS dormatory and can
be arranged to your taste. Food medication and stimulation are all
provided in your dwelling. The most interesting aspect of all
dwellings is the MEDICINE CHEST. When you open your chest, the system
will ask you ‘Whats wrong?’. You then describe how you are feeling and
the chest will dispense medication. Each player has a designated
chemical balance/inbalance which can be sustained or counter acted
by drug use, misuse and/or abstinence.

Just… WOW.

Have they FINALLY gone too far?

Monday, July 24th, 2006

msnbc_hb_buchanan_slams_neocons_060719b.jpg 

There’s a lot to dislike about Chris Matthews and especially Pat Buchanan, but they have never been for the Iraq war and the neocons.

Video-QT

MATTHEWS:

We’ve killed 50,000 Iraqis in a war that was supposed to be a two-day wonder. When are we going to notice that the neocons don’t know what they’re talking about? They’re not looking at this country’s long term interest. They’re bound up in regional and global ideology and they have had no experience, I’ll say it again, in even a schoolyard fight. They don’t know what physical fighting is all about. They went to school and were intellectuals but they want our government to be their big brother. I don’t get it. I don’t know why we keep falling for it. And the President, you say, is he free of these guys or not?

BUCHANAN: Well, the President, he fell for it after 9/11 when they put that little pre-cooked meal in front of him, after they knocked down Afghanistan. And so they said, “Let’s do Iraq now.” And Wolfowitz and all the rest of them. But let me say this, Chris. I think the president realizes now that we went into Iraq to pursue weapons that did not exist, a country that did not attack us, did not threaten us, and now we have created a great base camp for terrorism in the Anbar province that did not exist. In response to Mr Shrum, you attack Iran, Hezbollah will retaliate against the 25,000 Americans in Lebanon. You will have massive hostage taking and killings. Are these people nuts? You’ve got to ask yourself. I certainly hope the president is not listening to them because I really question whether they’ve got America’s national interest at heart. They’re calling for wars against people that never attacked us. I don’t care how bad they are. There are wicked people all over this world but you don’t go after people unless they come after you. […]

http://www.crooksandliars.com/posts/2006/07/22/neocon-saturday/

Spy Blog’s hints and tips for Home Office whistleblowers, UK political bloggers and the media

Sunday, July 23rd, 2006

If you are leaking to the press or broadcast media, they invariably want some documentary proof of what you are telling them, e.g. a document or memo or advance copy of a report, or an email. etc.

  1. Do not use your @homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk email address from work to pass on whistleblower material to politicians, journalists or bloggers.The Home Office, as your employer, is perfectly within its rights to analyse the log files of its own email systems. They do not need to wait for a “serious criminal investigation” which would require a warrant signed by, wait for it, the Home Secretary, or as recently delegated under the Terrorism Act 2006, any nameless offical that the Home Secretary delegates the renewal of long running intelligence agency or electronic interception warrants, which almost certainly include the “protection” of the Home Office IT systems themselves.
  2. If you are relatively IT literate, you may be able to master how to send an email through a Mixmaster Anonymous Remailer chain , but, we suspect that the number of people who are confident enough to do this currently working at the Home Office and who might become whistleblowers is very small.
  3. Similarly, a whistleblower could use Pretty Good Privacy public key encryption, but again, this requires some effort to install the PGP software, on your own PC (not on your Home Office workstation !).PGP encryption will protect the content of of your correspondence with whoever you are whistleblowing to, but not the fact that your are in communication with say, David Davis, or ther Sun newspaper or even a political blog.Unfortunately it is only Spy Blog and a few other technical security and privacy related blogs which publish a PGP Public Encryption Key, something which we encourage other bloggers, journalists and members of Parliament to do as well. – Spy Blog PGP public encryption key
  4. PGP also does Disk Volume Encryption, which may be of use to a whistleblower’s home PC.
  5. A good compromise for the non-technical civil servant who wants to be a whistleblower could be a Hushmail account.This has the advantage of being based in Canada, Ireland and the tax haven of Anguilla, and is a web based email system which uses the SSL/TLS encryption used to protect credit card and internet banking transactions from snoopers.You may have to install the Sun version of Java if you have a recent version of Windows XP which no longer supports Java by default.You can sign up for a free , anonymous Hushmail account, (with 2Mb of storage space) which needs to be accessed at least every 3 weeks to keep it active . You can pay $30 a year for a full account.Hushmail to Hushmail traffic is strongly encrypted, but using Hushmail to say, email your Member of Parliament will be plaintext like other emails.Hushmail do have a “pre-shared secret” challenge/response email system called Hushmail Express which can be useful for non-hushmail replies, but it is a bit less secure.
  6. Do not use your Home Office landline telephone or fax machine for the same reasons as above.
  7. Do not use your normal mobile phone to contact a journalist or blogger from your Home Office location, or from home.The Cell ID of your mobile phone will pinpoint your location in Marsham Street and the time and date of your call.This works identically for Short Message Service text messages as well as for Voice calls.Such Communications Traffic Data does not require that a warrant be signed by the Home Secretary, a much more junior official has the power to do this, e.g. the Home Office Departmental Security Unit headed by Jacqueline Sharland.
  8. Buy a cheap pre-paid mobile phone from a supermarket etc..Do not buy the phone or top up phone credit using a Credit Card or a make use of a Supermarket Loyalty Card.Do not switch on or activate the new mobile at home or at work, or when your normal mobile phone switched on (the first activation of a mobile phone has its physical location logged, and it is easy to see what other phones are active in the surrounding Cells at the same time..Do not Register it.Do not store any friends or familiy or other business phone numbers on this dispoable phone – only press or broadcast media or blogger contacts.Set a power on PIN and a Security PIN code on the phone.Physically destroy the phone and the SIM card once you have done your whistleblowing. Remeber that your DNA and fingerprints will be on this mobile phone handset.Do not be tempted to re-use the SIM in another phone or to put a fresh SIM in the old phone, unless you are confident about your ability to illegally re-program the International Mobile Equipment Electronic Identity (IMEI).Just in case you think this is excessive paranoia, it recently emerged that journalists in the USA and in Germany were having their phones monitored, by their national intelligence agencies, precisely to try to tracjk down their “anonymous sources”,Why would this not happen here in the UK ?

    See Computer Encryption and Mobile Phone evidence and the alleged justification for 90 days Detention Without Charge – Home Affairs Select Committee Oral Evidence 14th February 2006

  9. Choose your photcopier carefully. Some of the newer, high end photcopiers, especially colour ones, have built in anti-counterfeit US currency routines in the software.Some combined photocopiers and printers are capable of printing tiny yellow seral numbers (e.g. Canon) on each sheet or a special series of dots (e.g. Xerox DocuColor, which makes tracing which machine was used to help to “leak” a document , if the original printout or photocopy is seized, quite a bit easier.Many typewriters, computer printers and photocopiers do leave characteristic wear and tear imperfections on the documents they produce, which a forensics laboratory may be able to match to a machine a work or your personal machine at home, if it is ever seized as evidence in a “leak inquiry”.
  10. Redaction or censorship. Adobe .pdf documents have been published online, where some of the personal details e,g, email addresses have been “blacked out” using Adobe .pdf software , which has effectively simply put an extra layer on top of the supposedly censored words. Simply copying and pasting into say Windows Notepad or Wordpad or Word etc. has revealed the hidden data.Anybody publishing such stuff online needs to be aware of this, to protect their Home Office or other sources.
  11. Similarly Adobe .pdf documents or Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets etc. may well have Meta information (see the Document Properties) showing the author of the leaked document (which may in turn lead back to the “leak source”).
  12. Microsoft Word Documents, especially draft documents worked on by several people, often have the Version feature enabled. Sometimes examining the changes made to a document, and by whom gives extra clues about policies or coverups etc.The same feature on a whistleblowe’rs own computer, could, of course betray their identity. by adding their default name propertiesit to any document which they edit or view, before passing it on.
  13. Older versions of Microsft Word (and other Office products like Excel or Powerpoint) can also betray the MAC Address of the Ethernet card of the computer on which a document was created or edited on, as part of the Global Unique ID data, embedded in the document. Most people will not have changed the MAC addresses of their computers (often possible through software), and there are likely to be inventory records or network logfiles which will pin point which MAC address belongs to which computer either at work or at home.Microsoft do now make available some tools to remove such GUID and other hidden meta data, versios, comments etc. from final published Microsoft Office products. e.g. the Microsoft Office 2003/XP Remove Hidden Data Add-in
  14. Photo images. Your source or the “anonymous” publisher of a leaked document online may use a Scanner, but they may, nowadays use a Digital Camera.There is often camera make / model identifying Meta data embedded in the raw digital images taken by many types of Digital Camera. These may be used as “evidence” if your Digiital Camera is seized during a “leak inquiry” investigation.
  15. You wish to blank out or censor items in .jpg or .gif or .bmp graphics image.Again, there is a temptation by the uninitiated to use, say, a Photoshop pixellation or motion blur special effect filter. Remember, that these standard filters effects can often be reversed.Since Digital Camera images and Scans of documents are usually much too large for web pages, you might want to reduce the number of colours and probably the size of the images, before publishing them as thumbnails and even as larger images on a blog or website.Remember to apply your Photoshop pixellation etc. after reducing the image size and number of colors, i.e. after you have thrown away some of the identifying data, so as to reduce the chances of the filter effects being reversed.
  16. It is possible to literally cut and delete the words from an image or the identifying features of a face or address or car number plate etc. in a photo image.There have been successful guesses / recovery of “censored” words, which have been cut and and deleted from graphics image files, but, not very well, leaving tell tale spaces between words and not completely hiding the presence or absence of the tops and bottoms of individual letters.
  17. File deletions.Hiding incriminating evidence (either of your “leak” or of the actual malpractice, incompetence, corruption or other criminality which you are trying to draw public attention to) is not as simple as hitting the delete key on your computer keyboard.At a simple level, some people forget that file deletions can be recovered from the “wastebasket”, and with a hexeditor or recovery utilities, many files can be “undeleted”, simply by changing the first character of the deleted file name, provided that it has not yet been overwritten.”Secure” deletion utilities repeatedly write binary patterns over the deleted filespace several times, to try to frustrate even the more sophisticated magnetic disk surface reading equipment, which can pick up the “shadows” of previous patterns of zeros and ones. However this does take quite a long time to do thoroughly.
  18. Deleting corporate emails e.g. Microsoft Exchange is not a simple mayyer either. Very often deleted emails can be simply recovered from the “wastebasket” deleted folder. Anything that has remained on the system for more than a few hours, is likley to have been backed up to other backup storage media, and so may also be recoverable during a “leak inquiry” investigation.
  19. Make sure that you delete the Browser History and Temporary Files (Tools / Internet Options / Delete Files / Delete all offline content and Tools / Internet Options / Clear History in the Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser) – it is not just your internet browsing which is monitored, it is yourintranet web browsing, search engine queries and document downloads which are potentially monitored.
  20. USB keys and SmartMediaThese are useful to spies or to whistleblowers for smuggling out electronic copies of documents. Given the size of the memory capacity these days, which is often larger than hard disks of only a few years ago, a very large amount of data can be carried.They are small and easy to hide, and can also legitamtely be hidden in cameras or MP3 players etc.Some Government Departments e.g. the Ministry of Defence do tend to use modified operating systems software which controls access to floppy disk drives, CDROM, DVD or USB devices, either totally preventing their use, or logging all such uses to a central audit server.We suspect that not every desktop PC in the Home Office is protected in this way.However, if you are caught with a USB key or MP3 player or SmartMedia memory stick or card, which uses Flash Memory, they are nigh on impossible to securely erase, and there is a good chance that data on them , even if “deleted” can be foreniscally recovered
  21. If you decide to meet with an alleged “journalist” or blogger (who may not always be who they claim to be), or if a journalist or blogger decides to meet with an “anonymous source”, then you should switch off your mobile phones, since the proximity of two mobile phones in the same approximate area, at the same time, is something which can be data mined from the Call Data Records, even if no phone conversations have taken place. Typically a mobile phone will handshake with the strongest Cell Base Station transmitter every 6 to 10 minutes, and this all gets logged, all of the time.
  22. Similarly choosing a suitable location for a meeting needs some care. Nipping down to a local pub near to to the Marsham Street Home Office complex may be convenient, but your presence and that of the journalist etc. is likely to be noted by some of your work colleagues.

This is not quite a comprehensive list of hints and tips to help with sucessful whistleblowing – do any of our astute readers have any other suitable hints and tips ?

We have kept a few techniques back (email us, using if you want to know more).

None of these tips really matter for a whistleblower, unless it is Top Secret stuff which is being passed on to a politician, journalist or blogger, but they might make it less likely that a whistleblower, or the publisher of their revelations, will be harassed by the Home Office (or other Government Department).

[…]

http://www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/2006/05/home_office_whistleblowers_hin.html

Impressive. Here are some more:

  1. Become computer literate. That is the one sure way to almost eliminate the risk of getting caught; know what you are doing.
  2. Stop using Windows, and switch to Ubuntu. Windows is an insecure OS. If you use it, you leave yourself open to attacks both published and unpublished. It is widely held that the NSA has backdoor access to all copies of Windows. Ubuntu is free, secure, has higher performance than Windows and you can do everything (in fact far more) with it that you can do with Windows.
  3. Install Mozilla Firefox as your browser.
  4. Install TOR for Mozilla Firefox if you want to leave an anonymous comment on a website or access anonymous webmail. When you are using TOR, you can leave documents anonymously online for retrieval by journalists.
  5. Install Thunderbird as your email client. It is the best email client out there, and there are security plugins for it that are easy to install, like Enigmail, throug which you can manage GPG.
  6. Install the Enigmail plugin for Thunderbird. It is simple to do. You will then be able to send and recieve encrypted email seamlessly.
  7. Use dropload to send files anonymously. Use this from a disposable email address you connect through via TOR.
  8. Use GhostView to sanitize PDFs. You can use GhostView to sanitize PDFs, and even to remove the security from them so that they can be printed and converted into other formats.
  9. Create a whistleblower identity for yourself in a separate user account on your computer. Many operating systems set document author fields as the name of the person who is logged in. If you cannot sanitize a document manually, this false name will be used instead of your real name. This goes against No.1 of course. There is nothing like drama to promote your message. Adopting a whistleblower name will propel your story to the front pages.
  10. Create a GPG keypair that uses this whistleblower name. Then, when you need to send subsequent messages to the media, they can verify that it is indeed you sending the message, and not a Home Office damage limitation agent. This of course needs a computer literate journalist on the other end of the communication…heh good luck.

Wouldn’t it be great if a newspaper published its own GPG key so that people could communicate with it in private? Which paper do you think would be the last one to publish such a key?

And btw if any of this is wrong, please email me so that I can correct it.

updated January 7th 2009
updated September 15th 2013

Ernest Stavros Blofeld

Sunday, July 23rd, 2006

Huge Scale Model of Disputed Border Region of China Found in Google Earth

Huge Scale Model of Mountain area in China in Google EarthThis is one of the most interesting finds in Google Earth in quite some time. A few weeks ago a first time poster, called KenGrok, at the Google Earth Community (GEC) discovered a very exact scale model of some mountainous region located in the middle of a desolate area in north central China. Seen in Google Earth the huge scale model is .9 km tall by .7 km wide. It is adjacent to what looks like a military base with many camouflaged vehicles. Last week, the same poster found the location the scale model represents – a region occupied by China but claimed by India near north central India. If you turn on the “Borders” layer in GE you will see they are colored red to indicate the dispute. Another GEC member showed how exact the scale model is by taking a screen shot of the satellite photo of the scale model and overlaying it over the real terrain (turn the image overlay on and off to see how exact it is). This scale model was most likely created for military reasons. Someone posted a description of why a military terrain visualization is critical for military purposes.

In the same thread above, several other interesting locations were found close to the scale model:

http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/07/huge_scale_mode.html#more

The Secret Protectors of Britain Strike Again

Sunday, July 23rd, 2006

The Sunday Times July 23, 2006

Leak reveals ID card ‘risks’ David Leppard

FRESH evidence that Tony Blairs flagship identity cards scheme is in crisis is disclosed in a confidential Home Office report which has been leaked to The Sunday Times. The 32-page restricted document says that the security system protecting the card and the national database could be infiltrated by criminal gangs involved in identity theft and highlights shrinking public support for the scheme. It also says British firms have no current manufacturing capacity to produce the card.

The report, entitled Market Soundings, flatly contradicts recent public reassurances to MPs by Joan Ryan, the minister responsible for ID cards, that the scheme is not facing any problems […]

It cites one manufacturer saying: “In New Zealand the lifetime of the card and chip was reduced from 10 to five years, since holding information for 10 years on a card could be dangerous as criminal activities may be able to defeat chip security within these time scales.”

Ryan’s claim to MPs that the document revealed “widespread public support for the scheme” is also contradicted. Summarising the “main risks” given by the 15 surveyed firms as to why they might not bid to develop the cards and national identity database, the report says: “Recent indications show that the British public’s appetite for the ID card is declining. Association with the resulting programme may compromise a company’s public image.”

Clegg said: “This suggests that government ministers are increasingly living in a parallel universe on ID cards. They claim there’s public support when we know it’s dwindling.

“They claim it’s insulated from fraud when its own analysis suggests it’s much more susceptible to access by criminals. Ministers are displaying King Canute-like powers of self- delusion.” […]

One of the most damning remarks in the new report is the disclosure by some manufacturers that they are in no position to make ID cards. They also said it might not be possible to produce enough iris cameras that will match the user’s “eyeprint” to their digital record on the national database.

The companies asked by the Home Office to give their confidential views on the project included BT, IBM, Motorola, Royal Mail and Siemens. They were also asked if they intended to bid for contracts to develop the system. […]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-2281600,00.html

Some people somewhere have understood what the ID card scheme really means, and together, they are working from the inside to bring it down.

Firstly they are writing these damning documents, and then they are leaking them.

Hear the lion roar!

HEAR the companies shy away as they understand that THEY will also bear the brunt of the swelling HATE that will swirl around the ID Card / NIR.

This bad business is dying…now all we have to do is twist the serrated knife so that it ‘bleeds out’ swiftly.