Whitehall officials strongly defend the security of the large centralised database that is being built as part of the Care Records Service of the National Programme for IT [NPfIT]. NHS Connecting for Health, which runs a major part of the NPfIT, points out that nobody can access it without leaving a trace in the audit trail. But who is going to police the audit trail in a busy NHS. And what if nobody polices it even if they’re supposed to?

This is what we have been saying all along.

Perhaps disciplinary action can be taken against misuses of the database, but by then it may be too late to protect the confidentiality of personal data. If the security at a local GP practice is breached, it will not affect huge numbers of files. But a national database will contain millions of records.

Precisely. And everyone who works on building this system knows this. You need to remove your data from your GPs computer as a matter of urgency. Lets say (for sake of argument) that the spine upload will be made from the latest backup set; if you delete now, long before the update, you will be left out of the upload.

This is one of the lessons of the lapse of security at the Department of Veterans Affairs. It is one of the few healthcare organisations in the world that has very large centralised and regional databases of medical records. So an apparent minor lapse of security can have major implications.

The disappearance of one external hard drive – the sort one can buy in PC World for about £100 – contained 1.3 million sensitive medical records.

In England a loss on this scale could not happen with a breach of security at a GP practice. But the NPfIT’s Care Records Service is due to store 50 million patient records.

Just like ‘Frances Stonor Saunders’ said, “These databases, which can easily fit on a storage device the size of your hand…”. All it takes is for one leak to happen for the whole system to be compromised. Now imagine trying to cobble together a database of all the NHS patients in the UK by compromising each GPs office one at a time. It would be hugely expensive, take years, and you would probably get caught. Thankfully the government is making it easy for criminals to get the job done; they are putting it all in one place for you!

The Department of Veterans Affairs had a general policy of ecrypting patient data so that if it were to go missing it could not easily be read. But the controls were not applied properly.

Even if they were encrypted, all that means is that a disc removed without taking the decrypting keys would be useless. A clever person would take the drive and make sure she had the decrypting keys too. It also doesn’t stop people copying entries on a ‘to order’ basis, something particularly sinister when you think about what ContactPoint holds: DATA ON CHILDREN.

Could the same happen in England?

Could? Lapses, leaks, abuse and thefts have have already happened in the UK. Use the Google!

a) In the NHS, password sharing is endemic and doctors do not always have the time to log on and off computers to protect the integrity of the system.

And there you have it password sharing is ‘ENDEMIC‘ : “characteristic of or prevalent in a particular field, area, or environment”. That means that it is in the nature of the NHS environment to share passwords. WHen they get a hold of ContactPoint access, they will not suddenly change their behavior.

b) If national systems are made too secure doctors and nurses will not use them.

Makes sense; in order for something to be useful, you have to be able to use it without having to think about it.

c) It’s unclear whether the Department of Health will provide enough funds to ensure that money and staff are available to police rigorously the audit trails of the Care Records Service, if a such a national system works.

Exactly. There are not enough people to watch the 330,000 people who will be making millions of accesses per week on ContactPoiint. Trying to find instances of abuse will be like looking for a needle in a haystack, and when we talk of ‘instances of abuse’ we mean paedophiles getting a hold of a child in the worst case scenario.

Perhaps these matters should have discussed openly and honestly before the NPfIT was announced in early 2002

Perhaps the whole idea should be scrapped? And by whole idea I mean the NIR, ContactPoint and the NHS Spine.

Computer Weekly

Happy Birthday, Hysterics! The Roswell Incident Turns 60
By Seth Shostak Senior Astronomer, SETI

Seth Schlockstak is not an Astronomer. Astronomers are scientists who are interested in the facts, whatever they are and wherever they may lead, the ultimate destination sought after being the truth. Shlckostak is not interested in the truth; he is only interested in protecting his position and income as a Senior timewaster at SETI. If he were a serious person, interested in the truth no matter what it is, and a true scientist, he would not write the utter drivel that I take pleasure in demolishing here.

You may not have noticed (but only if you’ve been living in a hermetically sealed shipping container). This month is the sixtieth anniversary of what’s politely termed the Roswell incident.

That incident unfolded like this. In July, 1947, New Mexico sheep rancher William Brazel showed up at the Roswell Army Air Field with some unusual debris in the bed of his pickup weird leavings that he’d found in a pasture near the tiny town of Corona. This initiated a series of events that eventually became a drawn-out pot boiler about a crashed, alien spaceship. The plot line is simple: extraterrestrials came to visit, and accidentally destroyed their craft. The remains were efficiently collected and perfectly hidden by a government paranoid about security. According to the die-hard believers, the feds, even now, aren’t willing to fess up to the fact that aliens were on our front porch.

Note how Shlckostak’s english is full of rib poking, “aliens were on our front porch”, “a drawn-out pot boiler”, “what’s politely termed”. These are not the words of a serious person trying to explain why it is impossible that an alien spacecraft crashed in Roswell New Mexico. In fact Schlockstak gives no reason why such a crash could not have occurred.

Now Roswell isn’t the only story about aliens come to Earth, although it’s certainly garnered more press than most. Admittedly, there’s some indication that its popularity, even among the UFO in-crowd, may be oxidizing somewhat. In a recent query to ten experts made by the Fortean Times web site, Roswell was mentioned only once as a “most interesting UFO case.” And that single mention was offered by Stanton Friedman, who, as the greatest proponent of the Roswell story, certainly has a dog in the fight.

All of this is entirely irrelevant. If it happened it happened, no matter if the facts about it are being retold or not.

Well, I don’t think aliens had anything to do with what took place at Roswell.

Why not?

There’s good and compelling evidence that what was in play in 1947 was a secret government research program to develop technology for detecting Soviet nuclear tests. So I won’t delve here, and yet again, into the sticky thicket of claims and counterclaims regarding what happened. That path has been beaten down to a trench.

There is no such evidence, and if there is, you should provide a link to it so that we can read it Schlockstak. The fact of the matter is that the US Airforce has changed its story about what happened there three times. If this is a lie, then its up to Schlockstak to provide proof that it is a lie.

In addition, adding my voice to the Roswell roar doesn’t seem to help: I am perversely proud to note that, according to a poll recently conducted by one Canadian web site, I am less reliable on this subject than the Easter Bunny. I didn’t lose this vote by a hare either =96 the vote was five to one against me. (I note, however, that Mr. Bunny’s list of published opinion on Roswell is thin.) In addition, having written about this before, I’ve learned that doing so is like riding a bronco in your shorts =96 it’s just a guaranteed way to set yourself up for pain. Frankly, every time I voice some skepticism about claims of alien visitation, I am promptly, and inevitably, rewarded with a flood of abusive e-mail.

More nonsense from Schlockstak. No facts, no links, nothing but childish nonsense about bunnies. If this is the quality of ‘scientist’ working at SETI, then for sure, it is a waste of time on the basis that the people who work there cannot think.

Nonetheless, the incident remains iconic. So let me point out something that, frankly, I find strangely comforting.

Schlockstak likes to be comforted. And having to accept that he has wasted years of his life and professional career on SETI when aliens have been visiting earth right in front of his nose would be very uncomfortable indeed.

Roswell was, supposedly, a situation in which an alien craft came who-knows-how-many light-years to visit Earth before the pilot punched the wrong button and caused a fatal explosion above the New Mexico desert (this is akin to making a cross-country road trip, and totaling your car on the garage door as you pull into the driveway).

Actually, its more like forgetting that when you calculate a re-entry angle, you have to make sure that all the numbers are in either metric or imperial, but not a mixture of both. This is why the recent British probe to Mars the Beagle 2 burned up, at the very end of its journey. The Beagle two made it all the way to Mars and then crashed literally at the last stage. A spacecraft failing at the last part of its journey is not so hard to believe, and Schlockstak knows this.

Did you know that one of the experiments on the Huygens probe did not get done because the scientists on the ground failed to remember to turn it on when it got to Titan and started its decent? A person adopting the jackass posture of Schlockstak could intone, “Do you mean to tell me that we sent a billion dollar probe 1,321,416,800 kilometers to Saturn, and you FORGOT to turn on the experiment? That’s rather hard to believe”. And yet, this is precisely what did happen! Did you know that the same thing happened on a Voyager mission almost thirty years previously? There have been other failures at the last hurdle, Surveryor 2 in 1966 failed a soft lunar landing attempt, after a nearly perfect lunar intercept trajectory because an engine failed to ignite, for example.

This not only demonstrates that even the greatest scientists can make mistakes, but it proves that they can make the same mistake TWICE. There is no reason whatsoever to suppose that aliens, using whatever technology they have to get here, will not be subject to accidents, mistakes and miscalculations just like we are. There is no reason to come to the conclusion that UFOs cannot crash. That should be obvious.

Debris was recovered, as were alien bodies. And yet, strangely, even after 60 years, the consequences of this short-circuited social call by a culture able to bridge interstellar distances are… zilch.

Well, not entirely zilch. The incident has been a boon to its articulate proponents, to television, and to the Roswell economy (indeed, for that small and friendly, but otherwise unremarkable city, the saucer smashup 70 miles outside of town has become a “crash cow”).

That was actually funny. Schlockstak is a natural born comedian, and not only for his absurd SETI ideas! Astonishing!

But really, what significant effect has it had? An historical analogy might serve to give scale.

If there is one thing that Schlockstak doesn’t have a handle on its scale.

As all readers and everyone else know, Columbus landed in the Caribbean in 1492. But 60 years later, were the inhabitants of the area still unclear about whether Spaniards had happened upon their world? Was that still controversial? A contemporary, Bartolome de Las Casas, wrote in A Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies about what changed on the archipelago of islands that, at the time of Columbus’ arrival, “were densely populated with native peoples… [with Hispaniola] perhaps the most densely populated place in the world.” By 1542, a half-century later, de Las Casas wrote that “We can estimate very surely and truthfully that in the… years that have passed, with the infernal actions of the Christians, there have been unjustly slain more than twelve million men, women, and children. In truth, I believe without trying to deceive myself that the number of the slain is more like fifteen million.”

This analogy fails because the Spanish, last time I checked, are not aliens. Americans like Schlockstak might think that people who speak Spanish are a little less than human, but that is another matter entirely.

The Spanish came to the ‘new world’ as humans coming to another continent on their own planet in order to conquer it, and its human peoples not as scientific researchers visiting another planet to do pure science. Once some of the Spanish came, more and more of them arrived to colonize the land with their money, technology, politics, religion, language and raw power. The aliens that are coming here are here (apparently) only to do research in the same way that Darwin did in the Beagle; they visit planets in the same way that he visited the Galapagos islands; collecting samples and then going away, leaving no trace that they were ever there. To this day many of the Galapagos islands are uninhabited; does that mean that the Beagle never went there and that specimens were never collected? Of course it does not.

It appears that aliens have no interest in colonization (here), no interest in cultural exchange with us and are here only to collect specimens. Schlockstak’s analogy falls flat, and demonstrates his lack of imagination, and also a lack of understanding of the history of science.

The effect of the encounter was not subtle, and sixty years after Columbus, the Indians weren’t arguing on late-night radio about whether they’d been visited. And that’s not just because they didn’t have radio.

Well, in the more-than-half-century since Roswell, we still seem to be here with our lives and economy intact. If there’s been any effect from an alien face-to-face, it’s too subtle for me.

Given that Schlockstak is one of the most hard headed, blinkered, stupid, ostrich posturing morons ever to look into a telescope, it comes as no surprise at all that its too subtle for him. Just because these aliens are not destructive beasts like we are doesn’t mean that they do not exist and have not been here in great numbers over many years.

Once again, if aliens come here and then leave without disturbing anything, we would have no effects like the destruction of the Incas to point to. We of course could say that the population of the earth has had its culture changed since the era of photography and aviation; the tens of thousands of UFO sightings by credible witnesses, some with visual and radar confirmation and the wide dissemination of these reports has changed our culture subtly, as there are now billions of people who are aware that there is such a thing as a UFO, and that some of them are alien spacecraft. Schlockstak is not one of that number of course.

As rebuttal, some people claim that I’m wrong; that there really is a noteworthy aftermath to Roswell. Namely, that the military has reverse-engineered the debris, producing all sorts of strategically important technology breakthroughs. That, at least, would be significant. However, the idea, to begin with, is about as plausible as talking dogs. Could the Roman legions, a pretty successful military in their own right, reverse- engineer your laptop? They were, after all, only two thousand years behind us, and were humans to boot.

And there are others, that are even better than that, and you are aware of but never mention them, because they destroy you and your argument. I notice that whenever you go up against Stanton Friedman who you deride above, you are far more careful in what you say and how you say it, because you know that you will be made to look like the fool that you are. Listen to Schlockstak in these two shows: part one, part two to see him pussyfoot around Stanton Friedman and the facts.

What a pity that space.com takes the word of an ass like you as gospel…but its not surprising, because you are indeed, one of the hight priests of pseudoscience and have the dogma down pat.

But plausible or otherwise, what’s the evidence that we’ve in any way benefited from extrasolar imports? As an exercise, I recently graphed the speed of America’s top military aircraft over the past century, assuming that if we’d really figured out the grays’ engineering secrets, that fact would be reflected in this important category of hardware. Well, it won’t surprise you to hear that our military planes are faster now then they once were, and between 1935 and 1970, the top speed went up by about a factor of ten. But the improvement was gradual, except for a bit of a jump as soon as the Nazis developed jet planes. Of course, that was before Roswell.

This is a brilliant paragraph, explaining why the irrefutable UFO cases (and I note that you do not list or link to the other nine most important UFO cases above; are you, Schlockstak, scared that someone might actually read them?) cannot be the experimental craft of the US Air Force. These best case UFO reports describe, in great detail, delivered by completely reliable witnesses, with photo and radar evidence, aircraft that outperform any known human made craft with propulsion units that are silent. That means that these craft cannot have been made by human beings, and since human beings are the only sentient creatures on this planet that are making aircraft, we can infer that the makers of these flying triangles, rectangles and discs are from other planets.

What is so amusing about Schlockstak and his merry band of psychopaths is that they will say that objects like The Wallonia Triangle (a completely silent equilateral triangle UFO photographed over Wallonia in Belgium, seen on radar, chased by the Belgian Air Force who were outrun by it) is an experimental US Airforce craft! You cannot have it both ways Schlockstak; either man has the ability to make aircrat that completely match the performance of UFOs or he cannot. If he cannot, then the next best fit is a non human intelligence as the manufacturer.

Of course, to say that objects like The Wallonia Triangle and the other very weird objects are military craft means that the USAF is testing super secret technology in the skies of…Belgium. And when I say ‘super secret’ I mean paradigm shifting, world changing technology, like anti-gravity or whatever these things use to stay aloft in absolute silence without any downdraft, intakes, or exhaust.

The fact that human aircraft are so limited in performance compared to UFOs adds weight to the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis. Thanks Schlockstak!

What about some new astronomy or physics?

How about some new astronomy from you Schlockstak? Everyone now knows that societies on other planets are going to be using their own internets for communications within 100 years of inventing radio; that means that every civilization will only shine in the radio range for around one hundred years; you and your SETI cultist are going to have to be VERY LUCKY to catch anything, as the sky is most probably dark since all the societies have either abandoned radio (if they have ever gone through that stage) or are inside that window, in which case we may have to wait centuries for their signals to get here if they are say, two hundred light years away. Radio SETI is nonsense. It is doubly nonsensical in the light of all the UFO evidence that we have to hand.

Have we learned anything there? Is there some striking discontinuity in knowledge following 1947 that you can point to?

You are the head of the discontinuists Schlockstak.

I think Roswell is important, really I do. But more because it points to our gullibility, not to any alien guests who, intent on visiting the Land of Enchantment, proved that they should never have been given a driver’s license.

Indeed. You do not think that Roswell is important because you are a delusional salary addict who will tell any lie he can to keep his SETI job intact. As for aliens who should not be given a drivers license, we can point to the legion of scientists who do not know that imperial and metric measures are different; they are the ones who should not be put in charge of driving a space craft; your erstwhile colleagues.

While we are at it, SETI should be shut down as a total waste of electricity and money. We need more imaginative science and better qualified people to run it than people like you.

OK, let the abuse begin.

Good enough Schlockstak?

http://www.space.com/searchforlife/070712_seti_roswell.html

ContactPoint access, according to the Draft Contact Point Guidance – Version 1 (65 pages – PDF 388kb), is going to be granted to authorized users by ‘secure token’, username and password.

They define it as:

Security token – an item or device which provides one of the elements of information required for authentication. Examples include a frequently changing numerical code generator or a single-use numerical sent to your phone.

I have seen one of these random number tokens in use by a director of Chase as he accessed his work account over a dialup telephone line while using his laptop.

They work by using time to synchronize a random pin number on this token, to an authentication server on the system where your account sits. You have to use your user name, password and the random number displayed on your token to gain access. This part of the authentication keeps out people who write scripts to try and brute force accounts.

This is the most expensive version. Obviously if you are going to roll this out to 330,000 people, HMG will be loathe to order all of those tokens at, say $69.50 per user. And since they expire every three years they will all have to be replaced regularly.

See below for what this means. Meanwhile, lets look at the ‘Security Principles’ part of the document:

1.10 Security

Keeping the information on ContactPoint safe and secure and ensuring that it is only accessed by people who have a right to access it is of paramount importance, this too is a requirement of the Data Protection Act. Everyone who uses, administers and manages ContactPoint must act in ways that preserve the security of ContactPoint.

What this actually means is that the 330,000 people who will be given access to ContactPoint will be given the responsibility of keeping the data safe and secure. Since all of these people will be able to access all of the ContactPoint data, it effectively means they all have superuser status to look at everyone’s accounts no matter who they are or where they live. On a UNIX system, only the superuser can look into everyone’s files; individual users can only look at their own files, and in the case of a Local Authority (for example) they should really only be able to look at the details of people who live in their catchment area, if we were to agree to the principle of ContactPoint in the first place. It is insane that all 330,000 users can see every record.

2.1 Security Principles

Security of ContactPoint and the information held on it is of critical importance. Everyone who uses ContactPoint must take all practicable steps to ensure that their actions do not compromise security in any way.

This is crazy. Imagine if your bank allowed its all of its users to access bank details from any computer at any time over the internets. That would be a recipe for disaster, just like ContactPoint is. Banks that take security seriously, only allow access to their network from terminals inside branches, which are private networks. Of course, even if the architects of contact point specified that terminals must be inside secure buildings, that would not make ContactPoint OK because it is a compulsory system that violates your rights.

Some might say that being on this database is no different to being on the database of people who own passports. The difference is that having a passport allows you to travel, entitles you to consular services when you are abroad, and the database is used only to administer the issuing of passwords, etc etc; in other words, you get something out of it. Everyone on ContactPoint gets nothing out of it, in fact, you LOSE your privacy in return for absolutely nothing.

2.2 To ensure that only legitimate users access ContactPoint, a password and a physical security token (see Glossary), are both required to authenticate identity. This is known as 2 factor authentication.

This is better than a username and password, but it does not eliminate the problems associate with databases and the nature of data. The ‘things you must not do with ContactPoint’ bears this out:

2.3 A number of key principles should be observed, as a minimum, by everyone with access to ContactPoint. These are:
• Adhere to any local organisation policy/guidance on IT security;

What does this mean exactly? If you can access it from anywhere, it doesn’t matter WHAT guidelines are given; you are free to break them whenever you like.

• Never share user accounts, passwords or security tokens with others;

This is going to happen. We KNOW it is going to happen. ContactPoint tokens are going to have a monetary value, multiplied by the number of searches you want to do. There cannot be a single person who does not believe that ContactPoint will not be abused from the first day that it goes online…if it goes online.

• Do not write down your password and take care when entering it to ensure your keyboard is not overlooked;

We all know that shoulder surfing is done all the time. If someone is accessing ContactPoint from their laptop, their home computer or anywhere where there are people around, shoulder surfing will happen. As for writing down passwords, if they are going to use secure tokens, writing down a password will not be useful, since the token number changes every minute. Do they really understand what all of this means?

• Keep security token with you or securely locked up;

People are going to keep their ContactPoint security tokens on the keychain that they use for their house. Many of them are sold with metal rings to facilitate this. No one is going to keep their token in a safe or some other such place. Secondly, they have to deliver 330,000 of these tokens to the users. If even one of them goes astray in this distribution process then copies of the entries can be made. It is well known that identity theft and credit card fraud happens because post is stolen in transit.

• Never leave ContactPoint logged in when you leave your desk;

So, if someone has accessed 100 ContactPoint records on their laptop, and it is stolen, and these records are kept in the browsers cache, then those 100 children are compromised. This will happen.

• Ensure any reports or information you print from ContactPoint are stored securely and destroyed when no longer required;

On the first day that ContactPoint goes online, and all the 330,000 tokens have been distributed, a minimum of 330,000 children will have their records accessed. If these are printed out, they have escaped the database and are in the wild. Unless they are going to supply 330,000 secure shredders to all the ContactPoint users, you can guarantee that these printouts will be lost, sold and misused.

• Do not let others read ContactPoint information from your computer screen, particularly if working within a public environment; and

This will happen. Also, machines that are compromised will be turned into copying stations where ContactPoint information leaks into the hands of bad guys. By the way, every time I use the phrase ‘ContactPoint information’, or ‘ContactPoint entries’ or any other such phrase, remember we are talking about the private and sensitive information of children.

• Do not use public terminals (e.g. internet cafes, public reception areas) to access ContactPoint.

This will happen. For sure. And there is no way for ContactPoint admin to know when this has taken place.

2.4 Users It is your responsibility to prevent others from gaining access to, or making use of, your account. You must not share your password or security token with others. If you intentionally facilitate unauthorised access to ContactPoint, it is likely you are committing an offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 (see A10). You are likely to be committing an offence under this act if you make unauthorised or inappropriate use of ContactPoint yourself.

None of this will stop abuse of ContactPoint. No sanction will put the data back in the database, or repair the harm done to a child after the fact.

You must keep your password secret and look after your security token. Failure to do so may result in suspension or closure of your ContactPoint account. You may also be subject to your organisation’s disciplinary procedures. If you forget your password or cannot gain access to the system, contact your user account administrator – they will reset your password if appropriate.

If the token is the password, then this is not correct. Is this three factor authentication (username, password and token) or two factor authentication? see the comment below for the precise reason why this paragraph is here, and how it makes ContactPoint and this method of authentication even more insane.

If you think your password may be known to others, or you have lost your security token then you must inform your user account administrator immediately to enable them to take appropriate action. Any access using your password or security token, will register in the audit trail as activity carried out by you.

So all you have to say is that your stuff was stolen for 48 hours as your account is used to trawl through thousands of records. This is unacceptable by any standards, and of course, once the data is out there, it is out there for good. Or evil, as in this case.

2.5 Staff Managers You should ensure that all users you manage are aware of the importance of security, understand good security practice and act in a way which will not compromise ContactPoint. If you suspect a staff member is breaching security, you should contact the ContactPoint Management Team to discuss necessary steps, which may include disciplinary action.

Horse. Stable door. Bolted. Get me?

2.6 ContactPoint Management Team LA and partner organisation user account administrators – You are responsible for administering user accounts and the security arrangement related to user accounts. User accounts and security tokens must only be issued to individuals who meet ContactPoint access requirements (See 2.7).

so the distribution of the tokens is not going to be centralized, but farmed out to LAs and ‘partner organisations’ whatever that means. This gets worse by the line.

Where a user reports the loss of their security token or the possibility that their password may be known by others, you must suspend the user account immediately to prevent any unauthorised access. You can only reactivate a user account after the user has been provided with a new, secure password and/or token as required.

And the data returned to the database.

2.9 The requirement to have an enhanced CRB disclosure which is renewed every three years is specific to ContactPoint and does not replace existing organisational policies for non-ContactPoint users. Individuals who do not have an enhanced CRB disclosure or have one which is more than 3 years old will have to apply for a new disclosure to become ContactPoint user. Applications for enhanced CRB disclosures should be made in sufficient time to receive it before access is needed (or a previous disclosure reaches 3 years). If evidence of a renewal is not received before the 3 year period the user account may be suspended.

MAY be suspended?

3.9 Misuse of ContactPoint

Using ContactPoint for other purposes than to support practitioners in fulfilling specific duties (see 1.6) or in a manner contrary to this guidance is likely to be misuse (see flowchart at B13). For instance, it would not be appropriate for ContactPoint to be used to assess applications for school places, or to pinpoint an adult suspected of tax-evasion. Nor is it appropriate for ContactPoint users to access records of their own children, or those of their colleagues, friends and neighbours, unless they have a legitimate professional relationship as a provider of services to that child.

There is no way for ContactPoint admin to know why a record on a child is being accessed. They are basically trusting that the 330,000 who will have access will not disobey the guidelines. This database is going to be used for everything and you can guarantee that there will be a special class of account that has no audit trail, for use of the ‘security services’ and the police. If anyone thinks that ContactPoint users will not access the records of their own children, they are COMPLETELY INSANE; that is the first thing that every new user will do. They will check to see that their children’s records are not incorrect, then they will check on all of their relatives and friends. This is a perfectly natural reflex reaction to being in front of a system like this, and there is no way that any admin will be able to sift through the tens of millions of log entries to find these ‘abuses’. This system, because it is accessible by 330,000 people will rack up audit trails into the tens of millions within the first two weeks of it being online. It will be impossible to police, and even if they do catch someone looking at the records for their own children, then what? are they going to gaol them for doing so? kick them off of the system? suspend them? fire them? I don’t think so, and of course, once the violation has happened, it cannot be undone.

These are some of the things that will go wrong are wrong with ContactPoint:

Stolen token access
People will have their tokens and usernames and passwords stolen. All it will take is a few minutes to compromise the system and put children in danger.

Reproduced printouts
No matter what arrangements you have to secure access, if the data is on a screen it can be copied and printed. This means that ContactPoint can never be secure, and any child in it is in danger.

Insider breaches
Insiders will leak information from ContactPoint. This has happened in every other government database, and ContactPoint will be no different.

Rich still able to opt out
This proves that ContactPoint is not and cannot ever be secure, and that its users are not trustworthy and can never be trusted. The rich and famous will be able to opt out of ContactPoint. If ContactPoint were secure, there would be no need for this opt out option for the rich.

One insider mega breach is all it takes
All it takes is for one person to leak the database and then it will be out there forever. No matter how secure the access arrangements are, this will always be true.

Tokens for sale: the new money
As I said above, the tokens to access ContactPoint will become a sort of currency. People will sell and rent them to gain access.

Tokens shared over phone in the one minute window
Depending on how it is set up, people will be able to share the random number on the token over the phone. When the session expires, the person selling access can sell a new random number to the scumbag who wants to get access to the data. In this way, the ContactPoint user can keep her token, limit access to her black market data clients and still remain in the system on a long term basis.

Finally, all of this is VERY expensive (expiring tokens needing to be replaced etc), and will not solve the any of the problems associated with child protection; it will in fact cause more problems, and the worst thing about it is, once they decide that ContactPoint is a bad idea, it will be too late; the data will be out there circulating on the black market forever. It will be impossible to shut down or erase. This is the main problem with this idea; it cannot ever be taken back.

Philosophically ContactPoint is indefensible. It usurps the role of the parent, and replaces the parent with the state. No parent should be denied the right to opt out of this system, especially since children of rich will be out of it.

You have every right to remove yourself from this Database, and you should do everything in your power to make sure that you are not put into it.

Note the new category; ‘Post Tipping Point’. This is shorthand for, “we are not going to link back to BLOGDIAL articles on this subject inside this post that you should already have read or should be able to find with the google”.

Here we go….

Watchdog seeks an end to ‘horror’ of personal data security leaks

Business leaders oppose stronger powers to investigate breaches

Phillip Inman
Wednesday July 11, 2007
The Guardian

Phillip Inman; you fail it.

Britain’s data watchdog sparked a row with business leaders yesterday when he called for more powers to confront companies that fail to protect personal information held on computers. He wants a new rule that would allow investigators to look at files without the permission of company directors.

His plans ran into immediate opposition from business leaders who said his request for increased powers were a heavy-handed response to the problem.

The information commissioner, Richard Thomas, said that a “horrifying” succession of data security breaches in recent years at high-profile companies – including mobile phone operator Orange, building society Nationwide and mail order retailer Littlewoods – had shown that many companies failed to understand the risks to their customers and to their own reputations of keeping vast databases without adequate security.

The fact of the matter is that Richard Thomas is a busybody beurocrat twiddling his thumbs in his office while the government puts together ContactPoint, which will be a database delivered over the internets, via browsers (read Internet Exploder) and available to 300,000+ people who will be authenticated by a username and password.

THIS should be his main concern. THIS is where he should be putting his ‘expertise’ to good use; to stop the greatest child protection disaster ever from being rolled out.

Instead, this anti-business Neu Labour aparachick loser wants to punish business, that people engage with voluntarily, for lapses in their security.

How pathetic.

Mr Thomas said giving him the power to conduct an inspection and audit to ensure compliance with data protection laws would allow him “to force the pace” and encourage more companies to change their behaviour. Now, he must gain the consent of an organisation before starting an investigation. He also questioned whether companies should be obliged to report data security breaches in the same way the banks are forced to report suspicious money laundering.

How about government agencies who hold data on citizens involuntarily being forced to submit to independent audits? How about obliging every government agency using a database being obliged to report data security breaches? This is far more important because the databases that the British public are forced into are just that, by force, they make it impossible or very very hard to get yourself removed from the most simple databases.

Did you know that your personal and private medical records are the property of the department of health and that if you want to get your records deleted from any of their systems, you have to have the written permission of the secretary of health to do so?

In the commercial world, where all your stuff is voluntary, you can reduce your data shadow considerably, by following some simple rules. For example, use an alternate name everywhere and anywhere you can. Use a pay as you go mobile phone. All of these things can be done, and you would be surprised at how friendly these companies are when you ask them about deleting your account. Businesses are more responsive to the needs of their customers than the government is, and frankly, Richard Thomas needs to get off of his ass and implement citizen friendly data practices throughout government, like an end to biometric passports, cancellation of ContactPoint, and of course, the complete cancellation of the NIR and ID cards.

“Over the last year we have seen far too many careless and inexcusable breaches of people’s personal information. The roll call of banks, retailers, government departments, public bodies and other organisations which have admitted serious security lapses is frankly horrifying.

Whatever you scumbag. What is FAR MORE HORRIFYING are the numerous breaches of GOVERNMENT DATABASES (the ones that we know about) where insiders have leaked information, violated privacy, and just been plain incompetent; we have documented and dissected some of these on BOOGDIAL of course.

Wrong hands

“How can laptops holding details of customer accounts be used away from the office without strong encryption? How can millions of store cards fall into the wrong hands? How can online recruitment allow applicants to see each others’ forms? How can any bank chief executive face customers and shareholders and admit that loan rejections, health insurance applications, credit cards and bank statements can be found, unsecured in non-confidential waste bags?”

Mr Thomas, who was speaking before the publication of the commission’s annual report today, signed a deal with the banks last year that effectively gives him access to inspect and audit their systems without permission. He extracted the concession after a series of high-profile breaches at prominent high street banks and building societies.

This is utterly outrageous. This man has no business going into a private company and auditing their security (which means of course, looking at all the accounts, finding out where the back doors are, so that even ‘security through obscurity‘ will not work). Anyone who knows about the systems used by banks understands that they are hugely complex, written in a variety of old and new languages; unless this Richard Thomas has expertise in these languages, and is given access to the source, he cannot possibly be able to audit the systems. Even if he did get access to the source, it would take years to audit it all, and the government does not have this expertise; that is a FACT.

That the banks have signed this agreement is also very very weird. I would like to read it….but I digress. Obviously they signed it to try and stop some new legislation coming into force. This is a bad, bullying bastard government.

In one instance, Halifax allowed details of 13,000 mortgage customers to go astray after the briefcase holding the documents was stolen froma member of staff’s car.

That has nothing to do with computers. No audit would catch this sort of insider blunder.

The incident came after Nationwide’s lax security procedures put thousands of customers at risk from fraud. A laptop was stolen from a long-standing Nationwide employee in a domestic burglary. The employee reported its loss and then went on holiday, but it took three weeks for the building society to realise that the laptop contained confidential customer information.

All this sort of event requires is the writing of guidelines, i.e., you do not put customer data on laptops. Ever.

Mr Thomas said a similar agreement allowing his inspectors access to companies in all sectors would prove to be more effective than spending the next few years painstakingly negotiating with each area of industry and commerce.

Richard Thomas is a moron. What this means is that anyone running a database (presumably over a certain number of rows in size) would be liable to one of these audits. Any company with even half a brain cell would immediately leave the UK for more sensible shores. There would be nothing that Richard Thomas and his army of ‘experts’ could do about it, and in fact, this is already happening. Banks, telephone companies (BT) have moved their data processing to India. When you get a call from an Indian call centre, they have your name, account number, date of birth, address and everything else they need to serve you.

There is nothing that Richard Thomas can do about it, and frankly that is a good thing. If Britain wants to become a business unfriendly zone, all modern businesses from LastFM to Orange will simply go elsewhere. Its all transparent to the user and the company, so why not? Why put up with these zealots and idiots and control freak morons who do not know the difference between what is public and what is private?

He said he also needed a more effective sanction where there are “flagrant, far-reaching breaches of the law”.

The ultimate sanction is a lawsuit, and customers leaving you. That is what you should facilitate. After you have cleaned up your own house.

Debt collectors linked to a financial services subsidiary of General Motors and private equity firm Cabot Square Capital were named in a court case this year over the illicit market in private information stolen from government databases.

And there you have it.

What I have been saying all along about copies of databases, illegal trading of data etc etc. and yet, this brain dead journalist cannot connect the dots and pull Richard Thomas up on the shenanigans that he is a part of, and the danger he is putting the 11 million children of Britain in.

Its is sickening, like watching an avalanche bearing down on you in slow motion as jabbering idiots throw snowballs at each other.

The commissioner brought a prosecution against a private investigator who was used by companies chasing vehicle hire purchase and bank debtors. The private investigator posed as another member of staff in telephone conversations in a practice known as “blagging” to gain access to personal information. The companies say they told the private investigator at the time not to break the law.

It is not called ‘Blagging’ you cretin, it is called ‘Social Engineering‘, and Kevin Mitnick wrote a very good book about it (which I have read) that everyone like Richard Thomas and Phillip Inmann should read. If they have read it, then double shame on them for not taking it seriously.

Mr Thomas said he was concerned that a market in stolen data was growing despite recent adverse publicity. “During a recent investigation we turned up at the offices of a private investigation agency and while we were there the fax machine leapt into life. It was a request from another firm asking them to find out if a woman had cancer. It also asked the agency to check a list of clinics to see if another woman had had an abortion.

This is astonishing. Does Richard Thomas really think that the underground market in stolen data is going to stop growing because of adverse publicity? And does he truly believe that if ContactPoint, the NIR and ID Cards are rolled out that this market will shrink?

Is he that delusional?

“In this instance we are not talking about a small misdemeanour. This is the illegal soliciting of personal information and the kind of thing that we need to investigate thoroughly.”

Bastardy mixed with ignorance. What needs to be done is to stop the compulsory aggregation of personal data into monolithic systems that are widely accessible by civil servants. That means no ContactPoint, no ID Cards and no NIR. Period.

But the CBI said enhanced powers to investigate alleged breaches of the data protection rules would have wider implications. “The nature of business is changing dramatically, so the way companies handle customer data is increasingly important,” said the employers’ body spokesman Jeremy Beale. “Some firms need to improve their data policies but there are no easy answers or silver bullets and the CBI wants a national debate to help identify where the responsibility for different aspects of data protection lies. By calling for the ability to inspect firms’ files without consent, the information commissioner is in danger of leading businesses into the very surveillance society he is heeding against.”

Exactly. And looking at files has nothing to do with laptops escaping offices or garbage being thrown out un shredded.

Mr Thomas said this year he was concerned that the vast amount of data being collected on individuals meant we were sleep-walking into a surveillance society. He said he lacked greater powers only because when the government translated the EU data protection directive into law it left out crucial elements. “The EU wants the government to give us the powers. Our experience tells us we need the powers,” he said.

Our experience, which is greater than yours simply through reading, is that:

• You people don’t know what you are doing
• You say one thing (protect data) and then do another (collect children’s details in an open system)
• You do not admit to data breaches, and take no responsibility for them
• You have no expertise in this area at all
• You have nothing of substance to offer
• You use this and every possible excuse to get into people’s private affairs

The Ministry of Justice is responsible for overseeing the Information Commissioner’s office. Yesterday it said: “We believe that the Information Commissioner already has adequate powers.”

Amen. What this dunderhead needs is TRAINING and EXPERIENCE in the systems he is trying to get to grips with, so that he can read and write best practice documents and then implement them INSIDE HER MAJESTY’S GOVERNMENT.

Don’t bank on banks to keep your secrets

For consumers who have been studiously shredding their old credit card statements and other sensitive data, the information commissioner’s move cannot come soon enough.

Despite repeatedly warning their customers to be careful about what they put in the recycling bin, several banks and other institutions have shown a disregard for their customer’s important financial data.

Two years ago the Guardian exposed how the Grand hotel in Brighton – bombed during the 1984 Conservative party conference – had thrown thousands of its customers’ credit card details, home addresses, and phone numbers in a skip outside its back door. Passers-by were helping themselves. We were able to ring up some of the former guests and read out their credit card numbers – to their initial bemusement, and ultimate anger. In some cases we even had their passport numbers. And the Grand was by no means alone.

The Grand Hotel in Brighton is not a bank, last time I chequed.

Since then, banks have been caught leaving bin liners full of customers’ details out in the street. Others have allowed staff to take unprotected laptops containing sensitive data home, which have subsequently been stolen.

In the usa there are now services that lock down your stuff and make it harder for thieves to use your accounts, should they get hold of your SSN. The market responds to these challenges and people are willing to pay for them. Like I predicted, ‘Dorian Grey’ services will begin to emerge onto the markets, where your identity will be shielded for a fee. You can do all your shopping and everything else you need to do whilst using an alternative managed and disposable identity. This will be the only way to keep yourself out of the legal and illegal databases, making you freer and more flexible.

A further concern was the case last year of Abbey’s call centre staff who were selling its customers’ bank details in an underpass near Bradford. In fact, this happens far more often than is realised because the banks always hush up breaches of security.

And what about the NIR, Identity Cards and ContactPoint you simple minded numbskull pinheaded journalist loser? Did it not occur to you, with that vivid image of people sneaking around in an underpass that this is the way perverts are going to trade ContactPoint data?

Honestly!

Sri Lankan staff in petrol stations recently perpetrated a £30m chip and pin fraud after they recorded details and then cloned several customers’ bank and credit cards.

Did that happen in Sri Lanka or the UK? Why mention the country that the bad guys were from? Nasty!

The government is another culprit. In one instance, temporary staff at the Child Support Agency were allowed access to one of the country’s three main credit reference agencies. The staff could ask for credit checks on individuals and get other personal financial information. To make matters worse, they were able to continue accessing the Equifax database for several months after their contracts ended.

That was a breach of Equifax, not a breach of a government database. Anyone can pay to get access to Equifax, so this example is totally bogus and garbage.

Next week HM Revenue & Customs is expected to announce that its tax credit system suffered fraud and error worth £1bn in 2005/2006. In its first three years the level of fraud and error will reach almost £3bn.

Irrelevant. Obviously Phillip Inmann has run out of examples because he actually doesn’t know anything about this subject, and also, cannot even use the google to find relevant examples. What a complete jackass!

So you are far more likely to be the victim of identity fraud because of something an institution holding your details has done – or not done – than you are from not shredding your documents at home.

The brain dead, computer illiterate, irresponsible, useless Guardian

[…]

What a pathetic conclusion. The majority of people do not suffer identity theft. That is a fact. It is also a fact that people in the UK are less vulnerable because there is no single identifying number attached to everyone’s name as there is in the USA, with their despicable Social Security Number. Britain is better off than the USA in this respect, and idiots like you keep failing to connect the dots and point this out whenever you get the chance. Don’t worry; there are many people who are doing your job for you, who actually know what they are talking about, and in fact, they have had a bigger audience an influence than any of your lackluster articles have had.

Another post tipping point post:

[…]
Before writing me off as a privacy kook, consider this testimony from 1992 by the group Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) before the Special Joint Subcommittee Studying State and Commercial Use of Social Security Numbers for Transactional Identification. According to testimony, “[until] 1972, each card issued was emblazoned with the phrase ‘Not to be used for ID purposes.'” It cited a report by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare that recommended, in unqualified terms, that the SSN not be used as an identifier (bold text in the original document):

We recommend against the adoption of any nationwide, standard, personal identification format, with or without the SSN, that would enhance the likelihood of arbitrary or uncontrolled linkage of records about people, particularly between government or government-supported automated personal data systems.

This advice was not followed, and by 1992 the CPSR reported the dismal facts: “Unfortunately, [the Federal Privacy Act of 1974] has not been effective due to bureaucratic resistance from inside the government, lack of an effective oversight mechanism, and the uncontrolled use of the SSN in the private sector.” When states like California, New York, Virginia and others passed legislation in the mid-1990s requiring the collection of an applicant’s SSN to issue a driver’s license, they effectively flattened 60 years of privacy protection, and they effectively exposed every citizen to a degree of identity risk that was, and remains, unconscionable.

And so what has been the legacy of the government ignoring its own advice and the advice of leading computer experts? Precisely what the CPSR predicted: identity theft is now the most prevalent complaint received by the FTC, and it’s America’s fastest-growing crime. Unlike a video game that just eats your quarter and says “GAME OVER,” a stolen identity can ruin your credit score, drain your bank account, endow you with a lengthy criminal record, or grant you an entry on the no-fly list. More troubling, identity theft can be a one-way ticket to a world in which the bits on some agent’s computer screen matter more than your own testimony, a world in which the term habeas corpus is a lexical artifact rather than a constitutional guarantee, a world in which your physical self can be suborned based on what is believed about your virtual self.

On December 18, 2006, Tom Zeller reported “An Ominous Milestone: 100 Million Data Leaks” in the Technology section of The New York Times. The number of confirmed victims is at least 15 million. The cost is estimated at more than $50 billion a year. In health care terms, we have more than 100 million “exposed,” 15 million “affected,” and a cost of, well, more than $50 billion. How did we get here? And what are we going to do about this virtual epidemic?

[…]

The people of this fair isle do not have this problem, because there is no unique identifying number that is issued by the state to every citizen line the american Social Security Number (SSN).

If the NIR is rolled out as planned, then everyone in the UK will be given a unique number which will be printed on their ID card. That number will then be the same as the SSNs that plague the americans, and then the shit will hit the fan for the British.

That ID cards are still being considered is as unsurprising as it is appalling. Gordon Brown and his merry band of murderers do not care a whit about the British people, or how much danger they put them in as a result of their insane policies.

Once again, for the nth time, if you allow yourself to get put into this system, then what is happening to the americans will happen to you You would have to be TOTALLY INSANE to volunteer for this madness.

But you know this…

and finally:

[…]
And it gets worse. Individuals who can be victimized by their own data can also become collective victims of those with whom they are associated. As Bruce Schneier wrote for Wired magazine:

Contrary to decades of denials, the U.S. Census Bureau used individual records to round up Japanese-Americans during World War II.

The Census Bureau normally is prohibited by law from revealing data that could be linked to specific individuals; the law exists to encourage people to answer census questions accurately and without fear. And while the Second War Powers Act of 1942 temporarily suspended that protection in order to locate Japanese-Americans, the Census Bureau had maintained that it only provided general information about neighborhoods.

New research proves they were lying.

The whole incident serves as a poignant illustration of one of the thorniest problems of the information age: data collected for one purpose and then used for another, or “data reuse.”

It is bad enough that the government might collect data for one (lawful) purpose and then use it for another (nefarious) purpose, but what happens when all data is keyed by a single key, such as a Social Security number (SSN), which itself was never designed for the purpose of personal identification? And what happens when that number is leaked (100 million instances and counting) or stolen (15 million instances and counting)? The opportunities for abuse, both within and outside the system become virtually limitless. (And legislation passed in 2005 has only served to accelerate both the breadth and depth of these opportunities.)

Which is why the iPhone activation mechanism is so troubling, because it compels people in the heat of the moment to do something they should never do if given a moment’s thought. Now, I’m sure that it’s possible to get a phone activated without giving up one’s SSN. I did it with my carrier several years ago by walking the issue up to a VP’s desk and posting a $1,000 bond for two years. So it can be done. But should it be so hard? And how are we going to teach our children the importance of protecting personal information when the laws of the state and mainstream corporate behavior make it virtually impossible to do so?

The only solution I can see is that our family will have to dramatically expand the lesson of “you are responsible for you” beyond the basics of verbal and physical conduct. If you have any good references on how to teach your third-grader the ins and outs of identity management and information security, I’d be happy to receive them now. In the meantime, we’ll let you know whether we find a way to activate Amy’s new iPhone without handing over sensitive personal information to a company that has demonstrated no respect for personal privacy or identifying data.

[…]

News.com

What is so magical about this great country is that none of this applies here and we still have time to stop it from happening. Britain is still great. It is not to late to pull her back from the brink of the abyss.

Vladimir Bukovksy, the 63-year old former Soviet dissident, fears that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. In a speech he delivered in Brussels last week Mr Bukovsky called the EU a “monster” that must be destroyed, the sooner the better, before it develops into a fullfledged totalitarian state.

[…]

In his speech Mr Bukovsky referred to confidential documents from secret Soviet files which he was allowed to read in 1992. These documents confirm the existence of a “conspiracy” to turn the European Union into a socialist organization.

[…]

Vladimir Bukovsky: I am referrring to structures, to certain ideologies being instilled, to the plans, the direction, the inevitable expansion, the obliteration of nations, which was the purpose of the Soviet Union. Most people do not understand this. They do not know it, but we do because we were raised in the Soviet Union where we had to study the Soviet ideology in school and at university. The ultimate purpose of the Soviet Union was to create a new historic entity, the Soviet people, all around the globe. The same is true in the EU today. They are trying to create a new people. They call this people “Europeans”, whatever that means.

According to Communist doctrine as well as to many forms of Socialist thinking, the state, the national state, is supposed to wither away. In Russia, however, the opposite happened. Instead of withering away the Soviet state became a very powerful state, but the nationalities were obliterated. But when the time of the Soviet collapse came these suppressed feelings of national identity came bouncing back and they nearly destroyed the country. It was so frightening.

[…]

Propaganda Matrix

Who can say that this is a lie?

The people of the independent states of Europe are against it becoming a super state, and where an election was held, the populations voted ‘no’. In spite of this, they are brining in all the elements of that evil and discredited document into force via a treaty, directly disobeying the electorate. That is PRECISELY the sort of thing that was the norm in the Soviet Union. Bukovsky is right. The EU should be dismantled, leaving only its currency intact. SHENGEN, Maastricht, everything needs to be thrown out, because the people who run the EU cannot be trusted and the EU’s very existence is a deadly poison to liberty.

And as for calling Bukovsky a Terrorist, read about it yourself.

The offences admitted to would be subject to various penalties
More than six out of 10 people regularly commit crimes against the government, their employers or businesses, research suggests.

Keele University researchers said it showed petty crime was rife among the middle classes and exposed the “law-abiding majority” to be a myth.

Their poll of 1,807 people in England and Wales found 61% had committed one of a series of offences.

They included paying “cash in hand” to avoid VAT and stealing items from work.

The study found that around one-third of those questioned (34%) paid “cash in hand” to avoid taxation and about one in five (18%) had taken something, such as stationery, from work.

Other findings included:

• One in 11 had wrongly used identification for their own gain
• 7% of those questioned had padded out an insurance claim to get more money
• One in 10 (11%) avoided paying their television licence
• A total of 8% did not disclose faulty goods in second-hand sales
• And 6% asked a friend in a bureaucratic job to bend the rules

Of those who admitted to an offence, nearly two-thirds (62%) had broken the law on up to three occasions and 10% admitted to nine or more offences.

The study’s author, Professor Suzanna Karstedt, said: “Contempt for the law is as widespread in the centre of society as it is assumed to be rampant at the margins and among specific marginal groups.

“Anti-social behaviour by the few is mirrored by anti-civil behaviour by the many.

“Neither greed nor need can explain why respectable citizens cheat on insurance claims or in second-hand sales, and do not hesitate to discuss their exploits with friends in pubs.”

The study, of people aged 25 to 65, was published by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College, London.

[…]

So says BBQ

The truth of the matter is that people in the UK understand that they are being screwed. If everything was fair, no one would bother paying cash just to save VAT, but they do so, wherever and whenever they can because they feel in the marrow of their bones that they are being cheated at every turn.

Those that can, escape. Those that cannot, take every opportunity to get back at the system that treats them like property.

And if you think it’s bad now, just you wait.

The straightjacket that is the Quantized Human Pleb Grid will so incense and outrage the souls of the British that the stored rage pent up for decades will eventually explode into rioting and mass destruction, of a type never before seen in this fair land.

The British are not stupid. They know what is being done to them. They also know that patience is a virtue, and that they ultimately have the power to change everything should they see fit to do so.

This report explicitly states what everyone has known privately for ages; the law is totally discredited, and it is ignored where and when the public sees fit to ignore it, and the majority of people only obey the laws that they think are reasonable. Everything else is simply shrugged off or actively broken, like the hunters, who have carried on doing what they have done for generations.

The question is, will this country reach a tipping point, where everything bad is ignored. Will everyone simply stop responding to traffic camera bills for example? What could anyone possibly do if everyone just stopped paying attention to that grossly unfair money making scam of a system? The answer is that the only thing they could do is dismantle it. This would not be a reaction caused by any submission to the will of the electorate (as they would no doubt spin it) but it would be instead, an act of staving off, of preventing a rapid spread of general disorder.

I had a chat with a seventy seven year old Englishman, who during our talk rattled off every single righteous complaint about Bliar and Murder inc., incandescent with rage as he spelled it out perfectly. This man was not in any way radicalized, or ‘up on his internets’ or in any way one of the usual suspects. He is pensioner, and a gentle soul, and he represents the sort of mild mannered, tolerant, reasonable Englishman who has had enough. When he spontaneously started to lay into Bliar and the Murder Cabal, and I felt is seething rage, I immediately had the impression that it was possible for everything to change.

This conversation was triggered by the EU Constitution and its shoehorning by the venal anti-democratic and brazen leaders, who, not having gained the consent of the population, are simply going to do it anyway, via a treaty.

That they believe they can get away with this, and that they have done this at all shows that they are not fit people, and that they and their experiment really has no legitimacy. The Italians have much to teach us about how to live in a stifling bureaucracy, and it seems the British are moving into that framework. It is much better however to live without having to lie and hate all the time. It degrades your spirit, and makes people less human.

This is the first ‘post tipping point’ post. It is about the absurd ‘Department of Homeland Security’, USVISIT and their true purposes; to control the united states population, and to intercept ‘criminals‘.

Like the Germans that they are emulating, uncle sham’s obsessive record keeping will come back to haunt them, and in twentieth century style, this haunting comes back in near real time.

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) has a detailed analyses of precisely what ‘DHS’ has been doing, and as we and everyone else has been saying, it has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘terrorism’, and the numbers prove it.

Lets think about this.

If a huge amount of money was spent fighting a phantom menace, and then those people found (by doing the same statistical analysis that TRAC has done) that, actually, there is no terrorist threat at all then they would find themselves in a great dilemma. Firstly, none of them would have jobs if the DHS was found to be an unneeded knee jerk response to the mythical ‘911’. Secondly, it would be a huge embarrassment to the people who demanded that it be created. The second is less important than the first.

Now that this juggernaut has been created, it will be very difficult to shut it down. It has no real need to exist, other than to feed its employees and guarantee their pensions, to pay monies to contractors; to be a part of the ‘security ecosystem’ in which the citizen is the plankton and DHS, USVISIT etc are the baleen sporting monster whales.

In any other field of human activity, if something was not working correctly for the task it was designed to fulfill, it would be dismantled immediately lest it waste MORE money. But this is not about efficiency, common sense or anything else decent. It is about implementing the infrastructure of fascism in the united states.

And they are doing a very good job at it.

Robert Verkaik, another computer illiterate drone for a dead tree merchant, a ‘law editor’, writes about Google. Quite why these people never get their screeds vetted by someone who understands the internets is beyond me….here we go:

Google, the world’s biggest search engine, is setting out to create the most comprehensive database of personal information ever assembled, one with the ability to tell people how to run their lives.

This is exaggeration. Being able to ASK FOR ADVICE is very different to being ‘told how to run your life’. That’s what HMG does.

In a mission statement that raises the spectre of an internet Big Brother to rival Orwellian visions of the state, Google has revealed details of how it intends to organise and control the world’s information.

Nonsense. Big Brother refers directly to TOTALITARIAN GOVERNMENT, of the kind being cooked up in the USUK. You DO NOT HAVE A CHOICE with Totalitarian Government, you DO have a choice not to use Google, or any of their related services, and you can still have complete use of the internets. Google can never ‘control the world’s information’ this is just an ignorant lie.

The company’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said during a visit to Britain this week: “The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’.”

Sounds interesting; that is what this article should have been about, not a bunch of fear-mongering computer illiterate trash.

Speaking at a conference organised by Google, he said : “We are very early in the total information we have within Google. The algorithms [software] will get better and we will get better at personalisation.”

Google’s declaration of intent was publicised at the same time it emerged that the company had also invested £2m in a human genetics firm called 23andMe. The combination of genetic and internet profiling could prove a powerful tool in the battle for the greater understanding of the behaviour of an online service user.

Really? That sounds like a pretty wild proclamation! Instead of just taking your word for it, JACKASS, lets find out what its REALLY all about:

23andMe is a privately held company developing new ways to help you make sense of your own genetic information.

Even though your body contains trillions of copies of your genome, you’ve likely never read any of it. Our goal is to connect you to the 23 paired volumes of your own genetic blueprint (plus your mitochondrial DNA), bringing you personal insight into ancestry, genealogy, and inherited traits. By connecting you to others, we can also help put your genome into the larger context of human commonality and diversity.

Toward this goal, we are building on recent advances in DNA analysis technologies to enable broad, secure, and private access to trustworthy and accurate individual genetic information. Combined with educational and scientific resources with which to interpret and understand it, your genome will soon become personal in a whole new way.

Hmmm sounds very vague, and not at all threatening. What is FAR MORE CLEAR and ABSOLUTELY THREATENING, and HERE NOW, is the DNA database operated by the UK government, the biggest in the world, which violates millions of people who have done nothing wrong. How can you call Google sinister when they have nothing up and running, and FAIL to mention that the UK already runs an Orwellian and human rights violating Police State DNA database of its own RIGHT NOW?

If you are a brain dead, computer illiterate, dim-witted journalist, well, then its easy, and while you attack Google for something that they are only talking about, your own government is committing violations, in your name and with your money, that you fail to mention in this appropriate context.

You are pathetic.

Earlier this year Google’s competitor Yahoo unveiled its own search technology, known as Project Panama, which monitors internet visitors to its site to build a profile of their interests.

I wonder if the Independent uses Web Analytics to see what people are clicking on at their piss poor website?

Lets have a look shall we?

On the very page where this screed sits, there are four ads.

One of then was served by DOUBLECLICK, which is about to be bought by Google.

They also have a devices by OVERTURE (Yahoo Search Marketing).

ROTFL you can’t make this stuff up!

Clearly The Independent takes advantage of Web Analytics just like anyone else who has a website does; does this make The Independent evil? Of course it does not. What DOES make The Independent evil is that it spreads lies, FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) in order to sell newspapers.

THAT is what we call evil.

Privacy protection campaigners are concerned that the trend towards sophisticated internet tracking and the collating of a giant database represents a real threat, by stealth, to civil liberties.

I am sick and tired of these ‘Privacy protection campaigners’ who never offer any solutions and who do not write any software. We have never EVER been in such a powerful position when it comes to protecting our privacy, and if some of these people spent less time whining and more time contributing to projects that everyone can use to not only protect their privacy, but have more privacy than anyone who lived in the 20th century during the era of the telephone, we would all be in a less dangerous situation. That means educating people about the tools you can use to protect your privacy, contributing to these software and hardware projects, and less complaining and alarm bell ringing without action. Oh yes, they might even try using these tools themselvs. Liberty, for example, does not publish a PGP key. It makes you wonder doesn’t it?

That concern has been reinforced by Google’s $3.1bn bid for DoubleClick, a company that helps build a detailed picture of someone’s behaviour by combining its records of web searches with the information from DoubleClick’s “cookies”, the software it places on users’ machines to track which sites they visit.

HA HA HA!! ‘cookies’ in DOUBLE QUOTES.

The Independent has set SIX cookies on my machine, one of them from Hitbox, who do real time Web Analytics. You FAIL IT. Not only does The Independent use Web Analytics, they are so stupid, that they PAY for the service instead of using Google Analytics!

Advice to ALL newspapers in the UK; always call a geek to fact check these articles BEFORE you publish them. That way you will not look like TOTAL IDIOTS.

The Independent has now learnt that the body representing Europe’s data protection watchdogs has written to Google requesting more information about its information retention policy.

The multibillion-pound search engine has already said it plans to impose a limit on the period it keeps personal information.

Once again, the EU is bringing in or has brought in data retention legislation which is far more important and which should be noted in this section, because it is done COMPULSORILY whereas Google is VOLUNTARY and no one is compelled to use Google.

A spokesman for the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK agency responsible for monitoring data legislation confirmed it had been part of the group of organisations, known as the Article 29 Working Group, which had written to Google.

It is understood the letter asked for more detail about Google’s policy on the retention of data. Google says it will respond to the Article 29 request next month when it publishes a full response on its website.

The Information Commissioner’s spokeswoman added: “I can’t say what was in it only that it was written in response to Google’s announcement that will hold information for no more than two years.”

YOU CANT MAKE THIS STUFF UP!!!!!

So, they wrote a letter, ostensibly on behalf of the citizens they represent, and CANNOT REVEAL THE CONTENTS OF THE LETTER.

I know who I trust more… GOOGLE. They do not hide what they are doing, unlike these people from ‘the Article 29 Working Group’ (who publish their docs in PDF format for the most part), one previous head of the group being Göran Persson no experience in computers whatsoever. The current head, Peter Schaar is at least qualified; what a pity he does not subscribe to openness! At least there is someone in there who knows what they are talking about. Sadly my german (and my time) are limited, otherwise, I would hunt down the rest of this committee.

Ross Anderson, professor of Security Engineering at Cambridge University and chairman of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, said there was a real issue with “lock in” where Google customers find it hard to extricate themselves from the search engine because of the interdependent linkage with other Google services, such as iGoogle, Gmail and YouTube. He also said internet users could no longer effectively protect their anonymity as the data left a key signature.

I subscribe to FIPR, and paid for that subscription.

Ross is wrong about this. Cambridge University should have a huge software development programme, where they release useful tools under the GPL, and contribute to existing tools to help protect people’s privacy.

It is absolutely useless to complain about iGoogle. Anyone can create tools for the Web. Writely was bought by google. It was written by some coders because they had a cool idea. If you think that Google being in charge of everyone’s docs is a bad thing, then you should organize your own tools that has strict privacy policies in place that protect the user, release it for free under the auspices of the University, and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

It has never been easier to create these tools, and it has never been easier to deploy them. There is no excuse anymore. We can have privacy if we want it, and companies having plans that we object to doesn’t mean that we have to put up with them. We can make our own tools, release them and supplant Google. YouTube did this; they utterly demolished Google Video, and there were only a few of them that put it together. Google itself destroyed InfoSeek and the other first generation search engines. Recent history makes this perfectly clear; we do not have to put up with any objectionable services, and there is no company so big that it cannot be beaten by a few geeks with some free software.

“A lot of people are upset by some of this. Why should an angst-ridden teenager who subscribes to MySpace have their information dragged up 30 years later when they go for a job as say editor of the Financial Times?

I have written about this before; in the future, everyone will agree that what happened in the past is the past. This is the only way that we will be able to live in a world where people leave (either willingly or unwillingly) details of their past thoughts and actions available for all to see. Everyone will understand that, “what I say NOW is what matters, nothing else”.

But there are serious privacy issues as well. Under data protection laws, you can’t take information, that may have been given incidentally, and use it for another purpose. The precise type and size of this problem is yet to be determined and will change as Google’s business changes.”

Once again, the UK is trying to dismantle these laws; THAT is far more important and horrifying than an unexecuted PLAN from Google, and if the UK dismantles its data protection laws, does that mean that Google will be excluded from taking advantage of the changes? In any case, all Google have to do is change their terms of service to allow them to use your data in the ways that they need to; you can then decline if you so choose. Compare and contrast this with the policiy of the UK, where you have NO CHOICE TO REFUSE. Take for example your NHS medical records; they are the property of the Secretary of State, and before you can get them removed from your doctors computer, you have to have permission from The Secretary of State. With Google, if you want to delete your account and all the private, personal, sensitive and confidential data you have put there, all you have to do is close your account, and its all deleted permanently.

Which one is sinister to you?

A spokeswoman for the Information Commissioner said that because of the voluntary nature of the information being targeted, the Information Commission had no plans to take any action against the databases.

At last, some common sense.

Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy Ccunsel, said the company intended only doing what its customers wanted it to do.

Unlike the murdering government of Bliar, that ignores the wishes of the electorate every single time.

He said Mr Schmidt was talking about products such as iGoogle, where users volunteer to let Google use their web histories. “This is about personalised searches, where our goal is to use information to provide the best possible search for the user. If the user doesn’t want information held by us, then that’s fine. We are not trying to build a giant library of personalised information. All we are doing is trying to make the best computer guess of what it is you are searching for.”

Simple. Too simple for the fear-mongers and jackasses of this world.

Privacy protection experts have argued that law enforcement agents – in certain circumstances – can compel search engines and internet service providers to surrender information. One said: “The danger here is that it doesn’t matter what search engines say their policy is because it can be overridden by national laws.”

[…]

The Independent (a VERY STUPID newspaper)

Then by all means, write a big article about that, which is a clear abuse, and don’t shoot the people who are merely trying to give you a useful service FOR FREE!

You ungrateful SWINE!

I recently built a new box to serve all my music and movies. It running Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, with all the ‘Silent Bells and Whistles^®™‘: 1.2TB of disk space (western digital, 400, 400, 300), Intel Pentium E6300 1.86ghz core 2 duo, new style patented Zalman CNPS9700 LED figure of 8 copper CPU fan with blue led, ABit IB9 motherboard, 1gig OCZ DDR2 high speed memory, DVDR, CDR, Zalman Fatal1ty Champ1on case, Asus EN7600GS Silent Nvidia display card, Antex Truepower power supply.

I have dumped Fedora permanently…its just not worth the hassle. I have transfered all of the data from my legacy drives that were on NTFS and FAT, so we are now 100% Microsoft free.

Which brings us to the recent M$ FUD about Linux infringing 200+ M$ owned patents.

It is, of course, utter bullshit.

We all remember Darl McBride and the baseless attacks on the license under which you are free to use Linux. For months SCO refused to show the sections of the source that it claimed were infringed.

Now Microsoft is claiming that patents it owns are being infringed by Linux, but like SCO, it will not list which patents are being infringed. Microsoft is so terrified of distributions like Ubuntu that they are resorting to these infantile and pathetic tactics to try and scare people off of dumping their bloated garbage for Stuff That Actually Works®. Dell is now shipping Ubuntu. This means that it wont be long before they stop selling computers with Vista; why should they ship Vista when they can deliver a superior product that costs them nothing, and which enhances their hardware offerings far more than Vista does?

Eventually they will build a team that customizes Ubuntu with their own branding. It is a perfect solution for them. Microsoft are in a blind panic over this, which is why they have put out this nonsense media attack instead of going straight to court with the facts.

It has to be pointed out also that even if they did go to court and demonstrate that indeed, Linux distributions infringe, say, their patent on notifying when the other person is typing in an instant message session, these insane and bogus patents only have force in the USA. The EU doesn’t recognize software patents; that means that every linux distro can distribute a fully working OS that doesn’t infringe on the 235 M$ patents but which has an installer that retrieves the missing parts of the OS from servers in the free world. Ubuntu already does this in a seamless and effort free way for codecs that are illegal to distribute in a Linux OS in the USA.

There is now nothing that Microsoft can do about the explosive spread of Desktop Linux. They should have done what they always used to do; ‘embrace and extend‘. If they had rolled their own distribution they would now control the perception of Linux. All desktops in the world would run MS Linux (or Redmond Linux) and they would then be able to sell Office and other proprietary binaries to the punters on their own brand of Linux. Now, they cannot do this. It is too late for them to dump Vista and change tactics…or is it? They could easily offer their own badged versions of Ubuntu and Open office, and then sell them just like they sell their junk OS Vista. What is for certain, is that the tactics they are using now will not stop the march of the penguins. It will only make things worse for them.

Bill Gates is often called a generous philanthropist. This is actually not the case. When you give away something that you have in abundance, in this case, money, it has no real meaning in terms of generosity. Money for Gates has no value. He is giving away literally nothing, since his money has no value to him.

If he were a true philanthropist, if he were truly generous, and was making a true sacrifice, he would give away his dominance of the desktop for the good of humanity, since every M$ OS since Winblows 3.1 has been a menace to society. By adopting Linux, The Cathedral and the Bazaar Open Source and the Gnu Public License he would be actually performing an act of sacrifice, and helping the world by giving away something that means everything to him – power.

This does not mean that Microsoft would stop making money; indeed there is no reason to suppose that they would not be able to maintain their profitability; they can still sell Office and all their other gunk, only it would all run on a stable platform instead of bloated garbage. Its a no brainer. They would also be able to steer the way the Linux world works by contributing code. The fact of the matter is, corporate types are as thick as shit, and they would rather buy Linux from M$ than take Ubuntu for free. M$ would be able to maintain their position, neutralize the linux threat, take advantage of ‘owning’ a better OS…its pretty obvious.

But I digress.

Gates is no generous Philanthropist, that is for sure, and it doesn’t matter how much money he gives away or what it is worth to other people. His actions in this pathetic patent infringement threat show what his true nature is; venal, evil and against humanity, and no amount of good works will balance this out.

If you run Linux, or get your email from a server that runs Linux, you should sign up to be sued by Microsoft:

Why I am offering to be sued

I believe that Microsoft is hurting competition on the desktop, which affects me directly as a consumer of desktop software. I believe it is for the good of society for Microsoft’s patent claims to be tested in a court of law. If Microsoft wins, then so be it. If Microsoft loses, then the rest of us can get on with creating innovative business models for desktop software. I am not challenging Microsoft this way because I hate Microsoft. I don’t admire their software, nor do I admire their business models, but I am not challenging them because I want to sink their ship or damage their business or harm their reputation. I am really only interested in seeing whether their claims have any merit, which I think is probably not the case.

The other reason that I am offering to be sued and encouraging others to offer to be sued is that we will have the chance to show the world how many people really use Free Open Source Software directly on the desktop. Of course, all of us use Free Open Source Software when we use Google or YouTube or Wikipedia or Yahoo or the Internet Archive, because all of these companies use Free Open Source Software as an important part of delivering their services. And if Microsoft’s threat just hangs like a dark cloud over all that innovation, we will all be the worse off for it. But I am talking about us uniting on one list to show the world how many institutions and individuals use Free Open Source Software.

Maybe this list will never go anywhere. On the other hand, it will be fun to try!

So c’mon, Microsoft. If I infringed your patents, show me. After all, I am one of the members of a distributed team of film makers who is trying to document the real world digital tipping point that is probably pushing you to rattle the litigation saber anyway, and I am attempting to use all Free Open Source Software tools to do so. If you can shut me up, all the better for you!

And that is why.

Sir Patrick Moore has identified an alien species that threatens to destroy intelligent life – the women who have taken over the BBC.

The veteran astronomer celebrated the 50th anniversary of The Sky at Night with a withering attack on the female executives he believes have dumbed down the corporation.

Sir Patrick’s outburst echoes criticisms raised by Alasdair Milne, a former Director-General, who provoked a furious response when he accused a female-dominated BBC of producing “terrible” programmes.

Sir Patrick, 84, was asked by the Radio Times if television had got better or worse during a career spanning the medium’s life. The answer was worse – “much worse”. He said: “The trouble is that the BBC now is run by women and it shows: soap operas, cooking, quizzes, kitchen-sink plays. You wouldn’t have had that in the golden days.”

They have even destroyed sci-fi, Sir Patrick’s personal passion. He said: “I used to watch Doctor Who and Star Trek, but they went PC – making women commanders, that kind of thing. I stopped watching.”

And don’t sit Sir Patrick in front of a Sophie Raworth bulletin. He said: “These jokey women are not for me. Oh, for the good old days.”

He recalled: “There was one day (in 2005) when BBC News went on strike. Then we had the headlines read by a man, talking the Queen’s English, reading the news impeccably.”

Fortunately, Sir Patrick has a solution. Institute a gender divide and create BBC Bloke.

He said: “I would like to see two independent wavelengths – one controlled by women, and one for us, controlled by men. I think it may eventually happen.”

Soaps could then safely be produced and watched by women. Sir Patrick said: “I was in hospital once and I watched a whole episode of EastEnders. I suppose it’s true to life. But so is diarrhoea – and I don’t want to see that on television.”

Sir Patrick has an ally in Mr Milne, who ran the BBC between 1982 and 1987. He said the domination of television by women was the reason it had so many “dumb” lifestyle and makeover programmes.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1760061.ece

In other countries, they have separate busses for men and women….there might be something to this ‘Sharia’ after all!!!

Mr. Nimmho as an article about the Climate Change Hoax that has everyone without ‘O’ Level physics whipped into a frenzy.

Emissions need to be cut to zero, if only to save us and every other mammal from having to inhale them, and to stop everyone being enslaved to the gas pumps and their owners. That alone is a reason to do something right now, but what is emerging from this Climate Change environmentalism hysteria is a framework within which everything is rationed and I mean EVERYTHING. People will accept it as necessary because they will have swallowed the lie about Climate Change, and will be hysterical with fear, just as they were made to be afraid of OBL. The OBL hoax is now over, and now they have an even better bogey man; one that cannot be so easily put out of mind.

Think about it. If everyone is convinced that every act of consumption has to be rationed, we will all have to be issued with ration books, or their modern equivalent, ID cards linked to centralized databases, where everything you consume is recorded so that you do not exceed your ‘carbon footprint’, ‘plastic footprint’ etc etc.

They are going to substitute the cause of ‘security’ for the environment as the reason why you should give up all of your rights. Street cameras will be there to monitor criminal flytippers of garbage and not terrorists.

David Milibland has brazenly let the cat out of the bag on this one, laying out the plans well in advance, presumably so that they can claim that they have been ‘open’ about this all along.

This brings me to the reason why I am posting this. If you are old enough, you will remember ‘The Energy Crisis’ of the 1970s when hysteria was whipped up about oil. It seems that we are in the middle of a dusting off and replaying of this ‘Energy Crisis’ scenario, revamped for a new generation; one that is not old enough to remember the first, and one which is significantly intellectually and morally inferior to the one that fought off the first attempt.

Read about it yourself.

A good piece is here. Infowars has an old article about this that perhaps even they have forgotten about.

The fact of the matter is this.

Wether or not Climate Change is happening, the answer is not to control people, but to control the very small number of huge businesses that cause all the pollution. For example, the outlawing of the combustion engine as it is now, will begin the process of getting the fumes out of our air, but of course, that means radically altering one of the worlds biggest and most powerful businesses and lobbying groups, and they won’t stand for it.

You never (until very recently) hear calls for the banning of energy sapping technologies, and it is only now, way late in the game that the incandescent light bulb has been put on the chopping block; that extremely beautiful but wasteful thing that every schoolboy knows is a farcically wasteful technology.

Billions are being spent on war, when that money should be spent on refurbishing and replacing the electricity distribution system so that it is more efficient. I could go on, but really its just too obvious. This is really about a pretext for exerting control on the individual down to the level of garbage. Of course, no one says that the companies that package food like this should be forbidden from doing so, thus in a single motion reducing the amount of garbage out there. And how about the utterly loathsome plastic ‘carrier bags’ that plague Britain? Those symbols of poverty should be outlawed immediately. Americans have used paper shopping bags for generations recyclable, don’t suffocate anyone…I mean, really its so obvious.

Like many people, I am not buying into any of this bullshit. I already hate cars and the oil business and all the people associated with it. I hate the fumes, the noise and the brutish culture that surrounds cars, especially in the UK.

I don’t trust any of the people who are delivering this message. They are far too keen to control the population and not the polluters. Their motives are suspect. These are the same narrow minded, imagination-less dorks who claimed that meteors do not come from space, and that man would never land on the moon. And those are the ‘scientists’. I wont even go there on the thick as shit pop-stars and celebrities that are riding along on this roller-coaster of lies. I wonder how many of these morons would go for forced sterilization to protect the environment from overpopulation?

Mr Nimmo ends his post thusly:

No doubt most of us here in America will “take climate change seriously” after we are crowded into Malthusian “sustainable” ghettoes resembling something out the dystopian science fiction film Soylent Green.

Have you seen ‘Soylent Green’? You really should look at it. If you have ever been to an overpopulated city in a ‘Third World’ country, you will recognize some of the scenes. It’s not pretty.

What was so great about America was that it produced work like Soylent Green, but also inspired everyone with dreams of escaping earth entirely. It was seen as absolutely inevitable that we would colonize space; we all expected it, and were ready to line up for it.

All these dreams, all the imagination is missing from the words of the people screaming about Climate Change. And that, to me is the saddest thing of all.

Two illegal aliens, Ralphel Resindez 23 and Enrico Garza 26, probably believed they would easily overpower a home alone 11 year old Patricia Harrington after her father had left their two story home.

It seems the two crooks never learned two things, they were in Montana and Patricia had been a clay shooting champion since she was nine. Patricia was in her upstairs room when the two men broke through the front door of the house. She quickly ran to her father’s room and grabbed his 12 gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun.

Resindez was the first to get up to the second floor only to be the first to catch a near point blank blast of buck shot from the 11 year olds knee crouch aim. He suffered fatal wounds to his abdomen and genitals. When Garza ran to the foot of the stairs, he took a blast to the left shoulder and staggered out into the street where he bled to death before medical help could arrive.

It was found out later that Resindez was armed with a stolen 45 caliber handgun he took from another home invasion robbery. The victim, 50 year old David Burien, was not so lucky as he died from stab wounds to the chest.

[…]

LibertyPost

Amazing!

8 results for: sedition

se·di·tion      /s??d???n/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[si-dish–uhn] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation –noun < ="luna-Ent"> =”dn” 1. incitement of discontent or rebellion against a government.

2. any action, esp. in speech or writing, promoting such discontent or rebellion.

3. Archaic. rebellious disorder.

[Origin: 1325–75; < L séditi?n– (s. of séditi?), equiv. to séd- se- + -iti?n- a going (it(us), ptp. of ?re to go + -i?n- -ion); r. ME sedicioun < AF < L, as above] —Synonyms 1. insurrection, mutiny. See treason.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Dictionary.com

Guns are deeply rooted within Swiss culture – but the gun crime rate is so low that statistics are not even kept.

The country has a population of six million, but there are estimated to be at least two million publicly-owned firearms, including about 600,000 automatic rifles and 500,000 pistols.

This is in a very large part due to Switzerland’s unique system of national defence, developed over the centuries.

Instead of a standing, full-time army, the country requires every man to undergo some form of military training for a few days or weeks a year throughout most of their lives.

Between the ages of 21 and 32 men serve as frontline troops. They are given an M-57 assault rifle and 24 rounds of ammunition which they are required to keep at home.

Once discharged, men serve in the Swiss equivalent of the US National Guard, but still have to train occasionally and are given bolt rifles. Women do not have to own firearms, but are encouraged to.

Few restrictions

In addition to the government-provided arms, there are few restrictions on buying weapons. Some cantons restrict the carrying of firearms – others do not.

The government even sells off surplus weaponry to the general public when new equipment is introduced.

Guns and shooting are popular national pastimes. More than 200,000 Swiss attend national annual marksmanship competitions.

But despite the wide ownership and availability of guns, violent crime is extremely rare. There are only minimal controls at public buildings and politicians rarely have police protection.

Mark Eisenecker, a sociologist from the University of Zurich told BBC News Online that guns are “anchored” in Swiss society and that gun control is simply not an issue.

Some pro-gun groups argue that Switzerland proves their contention that there is not necessarily a link between the availability of guns and violent crime in society.

Low crime

But other commentators suggest that the reality is more complicated.

Switzerland is one of the world’s richest countries, but has remained relatively isolated.

It has none of the social problems associated with gun crime seen in other industrialised countries like drugs or urban deprivation.

Despite the lack of rigid gun laws, firearms are strictly connected to a sense of collective responsibility.

From an early age Swiss men and women associate weaponry with being called to defend their country.

[…]

BBQ

The cuckoo clock and the gun.

And Lindt.

I Like it™.

Penn & teller tell it like it is, in their usual style.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”””God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … And what country can preserve its liberties, if it’s rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

Thomas Jefferson.

A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.
        — Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1785. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors.

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.
         — Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1796. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors.

We established however some, although not all its [self-government] important principles . The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed;
        —Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. Memorial Edition 16:45, Lipscomb and Bergh, editors.

No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
         —Thomas Jefferson: Draft Virginia Constitution, 1776.

The thoughtful reader may wonder, why wasn’t Jefferson’s proposal of “No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms” adopted by the Virginia legislature? Click here to learn why.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

         —Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.

To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.
         —Alexander Hamilton

Quotes from the Founders During the Ratification Period of the Constitution

[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation…(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

         —James Madison,The Federalist Papers, No. 46.

To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.
         —John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States 475 (1787-1788)

John Adams recognizes the fundamental right of citizens, as individuals, to defend themselves with arms, however he states militias must be controlled by government and the rule of law. To have otherwise is to invite anarchy.

The material and commentary that follows is excerpted from Halbrook, Stephen P. “The Right of the People or the Power of the State Bearing Arms, Arming Militias, and the Second Amendment”. Originally published as 26 Val. U. L.Rev. 131-207, 1991.

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.

         —Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution (Philadelphia 1787).

Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man gainst his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American…[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.
         —Tenche Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.

During the Massachusetts ratifying convention William Symmes warned that the new government at some point “shall be too firmly fixed in the saddle to be overthrown by anything but a general insurrection.” Yet fears of standing armies were groundless, affirmed Theodore Sedwick, who queried, “if raised, whether they could subdue a nation of freemen, who know how to prize liberty, and who have arms in their hands?”

[W]hereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it.

         —Richard Henry Lee, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.

The Virginia ratifying convention met from June 2 through June 26, 1788. Edmund Pendleton, opponent of a bill of rights, weakly argued that abuse of power could be remedied by recalling the delegated powers in a convention. Patrick Henry shot back that the power to resist oppression rests upon the right to possess arms:

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.

Henry sneered,

O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone…Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation…inflicted by those who had no power at all?

More quotes from the Virginia convention:

[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually…I ask, who are the militia? They consist of now of the whole people, except a few public officers. But I cannot say who will be the militia of the future day. If that paper on the table gets no alteration, the militia of the future day may not consist of all classes, high and low, and rich and poor…

         —George Mason

Zacharia Johnson argued that the new Constitution could never result in religious persecution or other oppression because:

[T]he people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them.

The Virginia delegation’s recommended bill of rights included the following:

That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

The following quote is from Halbrook, Stephen P., That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right, University of New Mexico Press, 1984.

The whole of that Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals…[I]t establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.

         —Albert Gallatin to Alexander Addison, Oct 7, 1789, MS. in N.Y. Hist. Soc.-A.G. Papers, 2.

Gallatin’s use of the words “some rights,” doesn’t mean some of the rights in the Bill of Rights, rather there are many rights not enumerated by the Bill of Rights, those rights that are listed are being established as unalienable.

Roger Sherman, during House consideration of a militia bill (1790):

[C]onceived it to be the privilege of every citizen, and one of his most essential rights, to bear arms, and to resist every attack upon his liberty or property, by whomsoever made. The particular states, like private citizens, have a right to be armed, and to defend, by force of arms, their rights, when invaded.
         14 Debates in the House of Representatives, ed. Linda Grand De Pauw. (Balt., Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1972), 92-3.

For post-ratification quotes, see GunCite’s: Quotes from constitutional commentators.