April 2012
23 posts
8 tags
The Nature of UK Rendition Processes →
The Guardian has an excellent bit of coverage on UK-led rendition practices. These practices entailed collaborating with Libya and China to turn over members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an anti-Gaddafi organization. Ian Cobain, the journalist, precisely notes the kinds of experiences that UK and American agents subjected members of the organization to during their capture and transit to...
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Guide to Hardening iOS 5 →
The Australian Department of Defence, Intelligence and Security division, has produced a particularly good walkthrough for hardening the iOS environment (.pdf). I’d recommend it to the curious and for system administrators who are interested in evaluating/contrasting their own iOS deployments.
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Valve's Handbook for New Employees →
Valve’s Handbook for New Employees has made its way to the Internet. While such handbooks are normally incredibly dull - I mean, really, who hasn’t almost fallen asleep or committed suicide to escape reading one? - Valve’s is excellent.
It lays out corporate culture, modes of engaging with other employees, identifying tasks worth doing, and how the company actually functions. It...
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Fixing Some of Gmail's Design Problems →
I’ve used Google Apps for years and absolutely despise the new UI changes. Jason Crawford has some suggestions about undoing some of the horror. If you use Gmail, and hate the changes as I do, his walkthrough will likely be of interest.
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“It is important to note that the SDC approach did not attempt to solve its...”
– Nathan Ensmenger, The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise
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“In one inquiry it was found that a successful team of computer specialists...”
– Hans Albert Rhee, Office Automation in a Social Perspective, 1968
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The Problems of Domestic Labelling →
While not related strictly to technology, Forbes has a good breakdown of why Kobe beef that is sold outside of Japan is (effectively) never the famed Kobe beef that myths are written about. It’s a good, direct, blunt piece. The kind of journalism I think we can, and want to, all support.
It (re)raises important questions that implicate technology. Wireless technologies are sometimes called...
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WatchBrian Snow, the (now) ex Technical Director of the NSA’s Information Assurance Directorate, speaking on Cybersecurity. Actual talk begins at 2:10
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An Interesting USB-Drive Encryption System →
A group of my colleagues and I are always on the hunt for affordable, easy-to-use, secure drive encryption tools that can be deployed to non-technically savvy individuals. The most recent piece of software we’ve come across is LaCie’s Public-Private encryption which, as far as I can tell, is a pretty front-end for TrueCrypt.
I’ve reached out to the company in the hopes of...
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US Government's Harassment Made Visible →
When your government behaves in such a way that innocent citizens are forced to act as a spies to keep safe, then it’s evident that something has gone terribly awry. Laura Poitras, an American citizen and journalist, now lives like a spy: under the constant pressure of potential government harassment and surveillance of herself, her sources, and anyone that is particularly close to her.
Her...
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Highly recommend Jesse Brown’s latest piece...
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Less Than Impressed With 1Password →
First, the good news: 1Password has released a new version of their product on iOS. The company outlines a whole pile of reasons for supposedly delaying security upgrades - some of which include the updates will slow the speed at which users can access their encrypted data - but fail to identify what I suspect is a key motive behind the upgrade. If you recall, I wrote a while ago about key...
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“… there is never a single, ideal type towards which any given technology...”
– Nathan Ensmenger; The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise
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“Something like missionary reductionism has happened to the internet with the...”
– Jaron Lanier, You Are Not A Gadget
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Incumbent Beats Competitor. Again. →
A major challenge facing Canada’s “new” mobile companies is this: how can they extend network coverage across Canada to increase the utility of their product offerings? One way they address the challenge involves entering roaming agreements with incumbent carriers. As Wind Mobile is finding out, Rogers Communications is willing to both do the least possible to enable roaming and...
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Major Critical Infrastructure Vulnerabilities... →
For years, researchers have warned that the systems that run critical infrastructure have systemic and serious code-based vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, governments have tended to use such warnings as a platform to raise ‘cyber-warfare’ arguments. Many such arguments are thinly-disguised efforts to assert more substantive government surveillance and control over citizens’ rights...
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“It is not for innocent people to justify why the state should not spy on them.”
– BigBrotherWatch.org.uk (via flyingtophat)
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US Looking to Expand CALEA? →
From the New York Time we find that American officials are campaigning for updates to CALEA, a surveillance bill that was passed in 1994. The officials claim updates are needed because
some telecommunications companies in recent years have begun new services and made system upgrades that caused technical problems for surveillance.
…
Albert Gidari Jr., a lawyer who represents...
