An administrative note: I’ve overhauled the general structure of my web space. I’m starting to use wordpress as a semi-content management system, and I’m actually pretty pleased with what I’m seeing now. If you find that something is broken, or just want to comment on if you love/hate the look, let me know.
Year: 2008
Abandoning Your Privacy, One Radio Wave, One Smile, at a Time
In a recent piece, “Tracking Your Every Move: ‘Enhancing’ Driver’s Licenses at the Cost of Privacy,” I noted that the proposed Ontario enhanced drivers license changes threaten to seriously diminish people’s privacy. These proposed licenses will include a small RFID chip that emits a unique identifier when brought into proximity of a reader – this number is not associated with any personally identifiable information that the provincial government holds, but does (per the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada) constitute personally identifiable information in its own right. The Commissioner’s office, in their whitepaper entitled “Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in the Workplace: Recommendations for Good Practices”:
An RFID tag containing a unique identifier has the potential to become a “proxy” for an individual when it becomes associated with that individual. In such circumstances, it will become personal information. This would be the case with an RFID-enabled identification badge or uniform. Location data gathered by scanning tags associated with individuals is also personal information (Source). Continue reading
Bell Mobility and Solo Mobile make mobile Internet access safer
This is going to be relatively brief, just given a lack of time on my part (who knew that take 4 grad courses in a term, plus doing personal research, would be so time intensive *grin*). After reading a post by Mark Goldberg over at Telecom Trends I found out that Bell is planning to provide parents with a feature that would let them limit web content that their kids could view online. Given Bell’s history of using Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) devices to shape bandwidth use, I wanted to see what the technology they were using to prevent children from accessing particular websites.
The Technology
Bell is investing in Unipier Ltd.’s Intelligent Policy Manager (IPM). From the whitepaper (links to .pdf) on this particular piece of technology, we find that:
The Intelligent Policy Manager communicates with traffic and content interception and enforcement systems such as: IP level deep packet inspection systems, HTTP and SIP proxies, messaging gateways and 3rd party access gateways. Using these systems to
forward events to the IPM, allows it to apply policies on these events. In addition, the IPM integrates with various networks, BSS and content enablers in order to carry out specific actions such as: charging, sending messages or reformatting a piece of content.
Unipier’s IPM also integrates with back-end subscriber, partner and device repositories in order to fetch relevant context information.
Fixing Apple Mail
I had a permissions error with my Apple Mail last night. Specifically, I was receiving the following below error: “Mail can’t open because you don’t have the necessary permissions to change the folder where it saves information.”
I’ll detail what I tried to do to fix this problem, and what actually worked.
Repairing Permissions, Part One
First, I opened the Disk Utility, clicked on my Macintosh HD, and Repair Disk Permissions. While this successfully fixed a previously unknown CUPS permission issue, it didn’t do anything to fix my Apple Mail woes.
Three Strikes and Goodbye World
In this post I’m going to briefly note just how bad an idea it is, for citizens, that ISPs and content providers are working together to resolve ‘copyright infringement’ without having a substantial degree of government involvement.
Rules of the game
Perhaps you’re familiar with baseball (or California penal rules). In either case, you’ll have heard of the ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule. In baseball, this would mean that a batter returns to the dugout, and another person attempts to swat a ball and race towards first base. In the penal system, it indicates that you’ve committed enough criminal offenses that you’re going to have the book thrown at you . . . the next person behind you in court can then try to argue why they’re innocent, and go free (first base?).
Viva la France! Continue reading
Do RFID Security Worries Still Need a Reality Check?
A few years ago Computer World ran a particularly good piece on Radio-frequency identification )RFID entitled ‘Opinion: RFID security worries need a reality check‘. I’d highly recommend taking a look at it, for a pair of reasons:
- It identifies that hackers will only look at RFID tags once the data they transmit is easy to send along electronic mediums, with the data being transmitted itself valuable (i.e. not simply the location of valuable goods, but the information must be a valuable good in itself);
- It blindingly misses the point that RFID opens a new avenue of attack that could seriously contribute to an e-warfare application.
RFI-What?
You might have heard about RFID in the news over the past few years. In case you need a quick primer/update, here’s the basics on RFID:
- It’s not new – RFID has been in use since WWII to organize valuable assets and more effectively track them;
- RFID can either actively broadcast information, or have the chip activated when placed within ‘hot’ zones – an RFID device does not necessarily always broadcast information;
- There are different ISO standards for various RFID types – some support encryption, some do not, some support active transmission of data (i.e. they are always broadcasting information), and some do not (these are termed passive RFID devices);
- RFID Tag are often confused with Contactless SmartCars (CSCs) on the basis that they mutually use radio transceivers to broadcast information. Different ISO standards are used for these two types of devices, with CSCs having been developed with encryption and privacy issues in mind;
- On the topic of read ranges – RFID tags can be read up to 10 meters or so away, whereas CSCs are usually read from a maximum of about 5cm away from a reader;
- RFID Tags are to be placed in many of the Enhanced Drivers Licenses (EDLs) in Canada, whereas CSCs are being insert into the e-passports that are being deployed in Britain and the US.
Technology, Thoughts & Trinkets 