Child benefit data loss correspondence

The NAO have released some of the correspondence related to the loss of child benefit data containing the personal details of 25 million people.

It seems pretty clear from what's here that it was not the isolated error of a 23 year old junior official who, the BBC reported, has resigned.

Jon Snow and Peter Sommer on 25M Benefit details scandal

Jon Snow's interview with Peter Sommer at the end of (about 4 minutes in) this piece on the government's scandalous loss of copies of the personal details of 25 million people is absolutely compulsive viewing. (Click on the "Watch the report" link).

I've seen Peter Sommer give a variety of talks over the years on computer security and forensics and related issues and he has always been the calm rational voice of reason, even in the face of hostile questioning. I don't think I've ever seen him quite so animated as he is in this short interview with Jon Snow, getting right to the heart of the serious structural and cultural problems government has with computer systems.

Ross Anderson was also on the BBC last night being equally forceful and articulate on the government's shambolic approach to computer systems and transformational government whereby the government have been putting more and more personal data into larger and larger aggregated databases to which more and more people need routine access in order to do their jobs. Such a situation is absolutely impossible to secure.

Hopefully someone will stick these interviews on YouTube for posterity.

Family doctors to shun national database of patients' records

John Carvel, social affairs editor at The Guardian says:

"Nearly two-thirds of family doctors are poised to boycott the government's scheme to put the medical records of 50 million NHS patients on a national electronic database, a Guardian poll reveals today.

With suspicion rife across the profession that sensitive personal data could be stolen by hackers and blackmailers, the poll found 59% of GPs in England are unwilling to upload any record without the patient's specific consent."

Good for GPs.

HM&C lose disc with details of 25 million child benefit recipients

Things just get worse with personal data security by government.

"Alistair Darling has blamed mistakes by junior officials at HM Revenue and Customs after details of 25 million child benefit recipients were lost.

The Chancellor said information, including bank details of 7m families, had been sent on discs to the National Audit office by unrecorded delivery.

The discs had never arrived at their destination, Mr Darling told MPs.

He apologised for what he said was "an extremely serious failure" but insisted people were not at risk from ID fraud."

Oh look there's a flying pig! At least Richard Thomas is still talking sense, though the chances of Nu Labour paying any serious attention to his repeated calm and rational analysis of data protection issues in government is virtually negligible.

"Information Commissioner Richard Thomas said: "This is an extremely serious and disturbing security breach. This is not the first time that we have been made aware of breaches at the HM Revenue and Customs - we are already investigating two other breaches.

"Incidents like these illustrate that any system is only as good as its weakest link. The alarm bells must now ring in every organisation about the risks of not protecting people's personal information properly.

"As I highlighted earlier this year, it is imperative that organisations earn public trust and confidence by addressing security and other data protection safeguards with the utmost vigour."

Mr Thomas welcomed the Chancellor's announcement of an independent review of the incident by Kieran Poynter of PricewaterhouseCoopers and said he would decide on further action once he has received the report. "

The Perils of IP seminar

I gave a talk in the OU Computing Department's seminar series last week, entitled "The Perils of Intellectual Property in a Digital Age". The slides are below.

| View | Upload your own

Thanks to my colleagues for the invitation. It was a fun session and I enjoyed the Q&A.

Virtual London removed from Second Life - at Ordnance Survey request

The UCL Virtual London folks have been asked by the Ordinance Survey folks to remove their model from Second Life. Dr Andrew Hudson-Smith, the team leader of the Virtual London group at UCL writes:

"Our Virtual London model in Second Life has been removed from the collaborative environment at the request of the Ordnance Survey.

The research is currently 'pending license clearance' as the Ordnance Survey are 'uncomfortable' with the use of the data.

Details on the work currently unavailable are in the post below, we are reserving comment at request on this one, but i guess you know our views...

Three Dimensional Collaborative Geographic Information Systems (3DC/GIS) are in their infancy, Google Earth opened up the concept of three dimensions to the mainstream but issues with data copyright, the inability to effectively tag data to buildings and the asynchronous nature of the platform have limited developments.

Second Life however provides a synchronous platform with the ability to tie information, actions and rules to objects opening the possibility of a true multi-user geographical information system. It has been notoriously difficult to import 3D data into the Second Life but at CASA we have managed to import our Virtual London model of 3 million plus buildings into a scrolling map. The map is built from prims that 'res' our of a central point to build accurate models based on Ordnance Survey MasterMap with height data supplied by InfoTerra."

Oz Broadcasters want to disable ad skipping PVRs

From The Age:

"The free-to-air television industry has declared war on ad-skipping personal video recorders as it prepares to release a free electronic program guide for the first time.

Despite releasing the guide, the industry is pressuring PVR makers to limit the advertisement-skipping functions of their products before they are authorised to access it."

Remember when Jamie Kellner of Turner Broadcasting said, five years ago, that viewers have a contract to "watch the spots", that anyone skipping ads was "actually stealing the programming" but there could be a "certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom."?

Update: See also No EPG for you! at iTWire.

Identity fragmentation

Francis Shanahan has been thinking about his digital identity.

"A few weeks ago I joined Facebook (after much resistence). Facebook sucks you in, making it so easy to give up bits of information about yourself, many times without even realizing it. It occurred to me that I'm leaving pieces of my identity everywhere.

Last night I took a stab at listing out the various entities that know me, regardless of how they know me. The list is overwhelming. It quickly became apparent that to develop a comprehensive list was not feasible. What I ended up with was a good all around representation. I then generalized it to include things not solely pertaining to me as an individual (e.g. I'm an immigrant, I can never have govt clearance).

With all the talk of identity and claims federation, this was a good way to step back and at least understand the problem space a little better. I'm sure there are other such diagrams out there but the benefit for me was to go through the process of drawing it rather than take one off the shelf.



[...]

In theory these entities could share Identity Providers. I believe we'll start to see this quite soon in the social networking space most likely through OpenSocial.

Ultimately, Identity Providers themselves will begin to exchange claims although it's questionable if this is an appropriate model.

This is by no means a complete model. I worry that I'll never be able to effectively manage all the pieces of me that I'm absent-mindedly handing out."

His diagram demonstrates, more clearly than I have seen anywhere else, the fragmented nature of online identity, the amount of personal information we thoughtlessly release to a variety of entities, and the potential power of aggregation when others (e.g. Google and DoubleClick) start linking this all together. For the skeptics on the privacy front, before you say "so what", factor fingerprints, iris scans and other poorly secured biometric data into the mix and think about the potential implications.

Japan follow US lead on fingerprinting visitors

Japan's plan to follow the US lead in photographing and fingerprinting foreigners entering the country begins today. They're scared of terrorists too.

French comedian wins copyright case v MySpace

According to Nicolas Jondet, a French comedian has won his copyright infringement suit against MySpace

"The court considered that MySpace, acting as a publisher, was liable for copyright infringement as unauthorized copies of the comedian’s work had been posted on the web page of a MySpace member."

He's been awarded €60,000 in damages.

Guardian profile Usmanov

As an Arsenal fan I've been watching stories related to Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbek billionaire with a 23% stake in the club. This morning, the Guardian have a couple of articles and an email exchange in which he challenges the allegations that have been made against him by Craig Murray and others.

UK and US at odds over defamation laws

From Dan Tench in the Guardian: Britain and the US are not shoulder to shoulder over defamation

"English libel law itself could face scrutiny in a US court, in a case brought by a US author in New York.

Rachel Ehrenfeld's Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed - and How to Stop It was published in 2003, and alleged that Saudi businessman Sheikh Kalid bin Mahfouz, among others, financed terrorism, a serious defamatory allegation. The book was published in the US, but 23 copies were made available for sale in the UK.

In 2004, Mahfouz won a default defamation claim against Ehrenfeld in the high court from the libel judge Mr Justice Eady. Ehrenfeld is seeking to resist the enforcement in New York of that English libel judgment...

If Ehrenfeld's action is successful, it will not only insulate her from the effects of the English libel award, but it might also constitute an effective retort to the implicit criticism of her from the English judgment and undermine the vindication Mahfouz obtained from it."

NO2ID calling in the pledge

Now that the government are pressing ahead with the ID infrastructure, the NO2ID campaign are calling in the pledge, made by more than 10,000 people in 2005, to refuse to register for an ID card and donate £10 to a legal defence fund.

Hello, you have received this message because you signed my pledge, "I will refuse to register for an ID card and will donate £10 to a legal defence fund but only if 10,000 other people will also make this same pledge" back in 2005. In fact 11360 other people also did. Thank you all.

You may have seen that recently high-profile figures have begun to follow you, by committing themselves to non-compliance too.

The Identity Cards Act 2006 is now law, and - despite growing opposition, significant delays and rising costs - the new Prime Minister shows no sign of calling a halt to the National Identity Scheme. In 2008, the government intends to pilot fingerprinting and to issue the first 'biometric residence visas' to non-EU foreign nationals as a precursor to registering British Citizens.

The legal powers to do these all these things will shortly begin to be applied. Now is the time to call in the legal defence fund part of the pledge.

Please send your donation, by cheque made payable to 'NO2ID' to:

NO2ID (Legal Defence Fund)
Box 412
19-21 Crawford Street
London W1H 1PJ

If you also send in your contact details (we have no way to identify you otherwise - this message is forwarded by PledgeBank) we will keep you informed about the NO2ID campaign and how we can, working together, stop the disastrous National Identity Scheme. We will not pass your details to anyone else.

Phil Booth
National Coordinator, NO2ID

My £10 is on the way.

Happy Birthday ORG

The Open Rights Group is two years old today. Becky Hogge writes:

" Today I’m proud to be able to publish a review of the Open Rights Group’s first two years of activity, including our first year’s accounts. I hope that ORG supporters will enjoy reading how their contributions - financial, mental and physical - have collectively created an organisation that has had a demonstrable effect on UK digital rights issues. I also hope that ORG’s story so far will encourage more people to join the swelling ranks of ORG supporters.

As ORG chair Louise Ferguson writes in her foreword to the Review:

“ORG benefits from all manner of support from the many people involved in this grassroots organisation. From the individuals who support us financially or in kind, to the scores of people who keep our lively email list buzzing and those who generously volunteer their time and expertise, there are hundreds of people who contribute to ORG’s success. Our supporters and volunteers, who come from right across the political spectrum, drive our organisation, informing debates on a wide range of issues and providing amazing energy for projects and campaigns”

But today is not all about back-slapping. Now, more than ever, ORG needs your support. 2008 holds new challenges. Content industries, not satisfied with controlling your devices, are seeking to control your internet connection too. And next year will be a decisive one in the fight against the surveillance state, as political energy mounts around securing individual citizens’ rights to privacy. ORG needs to be there, speaking up for your digital rights.

So if you’re not yet supporting ORG, please start today.

If you’re not sure whether you are supporting ORG, please email me or Michael (becky AT; or michael AT openrightsgroup DOT org) and we’ll let you know. And if you are supporting ORG, please use today to spread the word about ORG to your friends and colleagues, and let them know why they should be too.

Finally, huge thanks to everyone who has made ORG’s first two years such a success - we’ve tried to namecheck as many of you as possible, but I’m sure we’ve left some people out. Here’s to building on our success, and to a bright future for our digital rights!"

Facebook's Privacy Default

David Weinberger has been looking at Facebook's privacy defaults and, though he is appreciative of the company not letting advertisers know the identity of the folk they are advertising to, generally he is none too impressed.

"Facebook makes an astounding array of information available to its advertisers so that they can precisely "target" likely suspects. This is great for advertisers, and — given that the ad space is going to be filled up one way or another — it's arguably better for users to see ads that are relevant than are irrelevant. (The counter-argument is that targeting makes ads more successfully manipulative, not just more relevant.) Facebook is scrupulous, however, about not letting advertisers know the identity of those to whom it's advertising. So, Blockbuster might buy ads for all men aged 18-24 who have joined the Pauly Shore fan club, but Blockbuster doesn't know who those people are.

When Facebook talks about preserving user privacy, that's what they have in mind: They do not let advertisers tie the information about you in a profile (your age, interests, etc.) to the information that identifies you in your profile (your name, email address, etc.). That is the informational view of privacy, and Facebook is likely to continue to get that right, if only because so many governmental agencies are watching them. I also think that the Facebook folks understand and support the value of maintaining privacy in this sense.

Yet, I find myself creeped out by this system because Facebook gets the defaults wrong in two very significant areas.

When Blockbuster gives you the popup asking if you want to let your Facebook friends know about your rental, if you do not respond in fifteen seconds, the popup goes away ... and a "yes" is sent to Facebook. Wow, is that not what should happen! Not responding far more likely indicates confusion or dismissal-through-inaction than someone thinking "I'll save myself the click."

Further, we are not allowed to opt out of the system. At your Facebook profile, you can review a list of all the sites you've been to that have presented you with the Facebook spam-your-friends option, and you can opt out of the sites one at a time. But you cannot press a big red button that will take you out of the system entirely. So, if you've deselected Blockbuster and the Manly Sexual Inadequacy Clinic from the list, if you go to a new site that's done the deal with Facebook, you'll get the popup again there. We should be allowed to Just Say No, once and for all.

Why? Because privacy is not just about information. It's all about the defaults.

If a couple is walking down the street, engaged in deep and quiet conversation, it certainly would violate their privacy to focus listening devices on them, record their conversation, and post it on the Internet. The couple wold feel violated not only because their "information" — their conversation — was published but because they had the expectation that even though their sound waves were physically available to anyone walking on the street who cared to listen, norms prevent us from doing so. These norms are social defaults, and they are carefully calibrated to our social circumstances: The default for sidewalks is that you are not allowed to intercede in private conversations except in special circumstances...

Facebook is getting privacy right where privacy is taken as a matter of information transfer. But it is getting privacy wrong as a norm."

Kindergarten Kopyright

From Forbes:

"The scene: a classroom of students busily completing an assignment testing their understanding of copyright law. The setting: not a law school, but a class of pint-size kindergartners. A program by the Entertainment Software Association, a computer and videogame trade group, aims to have kids as young as 5 learn about the evils of copyright infringement."

No comment.

Daft patent no. 4,022,227

In May 1977, the US Patent Office granted a patent on a Method of concealing partial baldness to Frank and Donald Smith. The patent abstract reads:

"A method of styling hair to cover partial baldness using only the hair on a person's head. The hair styling requires dividing a person's hair into three sections and carefully folding one section over another."

DHS delay Real ID implementation; EU get into the PNR business

Also via EPIC:

"The Department of Homeland Security has announced major changes to the
planned REAL ID national identification system. The original deadline
for implementation was 2008, but has been pushed back to 2013. Now, DHS
may delay implementation until 2018 and may significantly reduce the
requirements set out in draft regulations released in March of 2007.
EPIC and others have repeatedly detailed security and privacy problems
with the system that creates a national ID database and imposes federal
responsibilities upon state agencies that have neither the trained
employees nor the resources to fulfill these responsibilities. The final
regulations, originally to be released in September of 2007, have yet to
be published. Congress is debating legislation to repeal the national
identification scheme."

And

"The European Commission has unveiled a proposal to establish a passenger
name records (PNR) system similar to that of the US. The European PNR
system would require PNR data for all flights entering or departing the
European Union. The data will be processed for the purpose of carrying
out a risk assessment of passengers' "threat levels," in order to assist
in terrorism and organized crime investigations. Air carriers already
have an obligation to communicate Advance Passenger Information to
Member States for the purpose of fighting illegal immigration. The new
scheme increased the amount of data required, and the purposes for which
it will be used.

EU PNR Proposal Press Release:

http://www.epic.org/redirect/eu_release.html

EPIC's page on EU-US Passenger Data Disclosure:

http://www.epic.org/privacy/intl/passenger_data.html"

US Government Releases Information Sharing Privacy Principles

Via EPIC: US Government Releases Information Sharing Privacy Principles

The US government has released its "National Strategy for Information
Sharing."  The strategy describes information sharing between state and
local governments, the private sector and foreign governments, and
includes the administration's "core privacy principles" for protecting
privacy. Privacy guidelines, developed by the Attorney General and
Director of National Intelligence, are built on these core principles.

Privacy is described as a "core facet" of information sharing efforts.
The privacy principles limit information sharing to the broad and
undefined "terrorism, homeland security or law enforcement information
related to terrorism."  Participation in information sharing is not
conditioned on successful implementation of the principles.  For
implementation, the President directed the creation of the Privacy
Guidelines Committee, consisting of the Attorney General, Director of
National Intelligence and agency privacy officers. No citizen advocates
sit on the committee.

The National strategy summarizes some of the completed information
sharing tasks. The strategy touts the creation of an "Information
Sharing Environment"; significant grant funding to stated and local
"information fusion centers"; the consolidation of watchlists in a
"terrorist screening center"; and the creation of the "Homeland Security
Information Network" for two-way information sharing between federal and
stated and local officials.

Per the strategy, information needs of state and local entities grow as
they incorporate homeland security into their day-to-day crime fighting
activities.  Fusion centers are the are the "primary focal points" for
sharing of terrorism related information. Private sector information
sharing focuses on sharing with operators and owners of "critical
infrastructure." In receiving foreign information the "guiding
objective" is to ensure that the US can disseminate the information "as
broadly as possible." The impact on US persons' privacy of sharing their
information with foreign governments is to be "considered."

National Strategy for Information Sharing:

    http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/infosharing/index.html

EPIC's page on Fusion Centers:

    http://www.epic.org/privacy/fusion/"

Shamir says public key cryptography vunerable

Adi Shamir (the "S" in RSA) says increasing complexity of modern microprocessor chips is almost certain to lead to undetected errors, which make RSA based cryptographic security programs on these microprocessors vunerable to attack. From Shamir's note:

"With the increasing word size and sophisticated optimizations of multiplication units in modern

microprocessors, it becomes increasingly likely that they contain some undetected bugs.

This was demonstrated by the accidental discovery of the obscure Pentium division bug

in the mid 1990's, and by the recent discovery of a multiplication bug in the Microsoft

Excel program. In this note we show that if some intelligence organization discovers (or

secretly plants) even one pair of integers a and b whose product is computed incorrectly

(even in a single low order bit) by a popular microprocessor, then ANY key in ANY

RSA-based security program running on ANY one of the millions of PC's that contain this

microprocessor can be trivially broken with a single chosen message. A similar attack can be

applied to any security scheme based on discrete logs modulo a prime, and to any security

scheme based on elliptic curves (in which we can also exploit division bugs), and thus almost

all the presently deployed public key schemes will become vulnerable to such an attack. "