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Comment: Yes? (Score 4, Interesting) 225

by bickerdyke (#48651745) Attached to: GCHQ Warns It Is Losing Track of Serious Criminals

a) They shouldn't have overdone the surveillance to an extent that made it neccessary to have a Snowden to restore protection of those who the three letter agencies are supposed to protect and

b) this is based on the fallacy that before Snowden, criminals did not know about the surveillance protocols. Well, obviously, SOME didn't know. But those criminals who managed to bribe or blackmail a someone on a Snowden-like position into sharing their Snowden-like knowledge wre never monitored by the GHCQ.

Comment: In other news: (Score 4, Insightful) 91

by bickerdyke (#48650997) Attached to: Major Security Vulnerabilities Uncovered At Frankfurt Airport

OK, so according to that so called "newspaper" (I read TFA there yesterday) 50% of dangerous items were not recognized during security screening. But even with this terrible performance, no related incidents have been reported. In other words: This shows that there isn't a real danger that this security theater is protecting us from.

Comment: Re:This is not the problem (Score 1) 679

by bickerdyke (#48616501) Attached to: Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates

Let's start a war!

Winifred Ames: Why Albania?

Conrad 'Connie' Brean: Why not?

Winifred Ames: What have they done to us?


Winifred Ames: Nothing.


Comment: Re:Depends... (Score 2) 170

by bickerdyke (#48615293) Attached to: Verizon "End-to-End" Encrypted Calling Includes Law Enforcement Backdoor

Telecom providers are required to make sure that any voice service they sell is compliant with CALEA

In that case, CALEA would effectively render end-to-end encryption illegal. So, IMHO, they should be hunted down by lawyers for either not complying with CELEA or for not offering what they advertise.

And remember that CALEA is not about mass wireless surveillance a la NSA but is actually about targeted recordings of specific individuals where there is probable cause enough to get a judge to sign off on the wiretap order. Very different things.

Indeed. But there's nothing that keeps the NSA from using the same interface, too. either by serving wiretap orders themselfs (decorated with a nice gag order) or by targetting the CELEA equipment.

Comment: Scoring? (Score 0) 156

by bickerdyke (#48601095) Attached to: Small Bank In Kansas Creates the Bank Account of the Future

What the heck would you need to impelemt scoring and risk assesment for a simple money transfer? That is what you have the trusted 3rd party for.

If I (Alice) want to transfer money to Bob, I instruct my bank to remove the sum from my account. (That's the step that needs to be authenticated, but not assessed by any credit score). Then my bank transfers that to the target bank. (I doubt credit score would help to safeguard that step and it should NOT be over public networks - if you can do an IP check at this step, something went wrong from the design phase)

And as a last step, they give the money to Bob (or his account) and I don't think either that for that it is neccessary or even helping, to check Bobs credit score or IP address. He is going to RECEIVE money.

Yes, things get a bit more complicated if you need Bob's small shop to trigger the money transaction from his customer Alice, but then again we don't need any checks of his credit history or his current dynamic IP address, but rather we need to check Alice's authentication.

Comment: Re:Under US Jurisdiction? (Score 5, Insightful) 281

Thus far, the most popular way for companies to circumvent this pressure is to try and design encryption systems where they (the corporation) do not hold the ability to decrypt user data.

At that point, law enforcement can ask all they want, legally or otherwise.

The grey bearded nerds here may still remember the legend of yore about a company called lavabit and how they tried exactly that....

Comment: Re:Under US Jurisdiction? (Score 2) 281

Well, at least according to the summary, he never spoke of "safe". He said "safest" Big difference.

And I'd even go further and say that he might be right. Unless I'd go completly offline, I can't afford half the brainpower and expertise that Google buys for their datacenter to keep my desktop machine clean and safe. (to be honest. I couldn't afford hiring a single person from their security department)


by bickerdyke (#48547625) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Can a Felon Work In IT?

There is no easy and there is no hard, there is only the competition for the position.

He usually will be competing not agains a person, but against the possible employer company whining that they need more H1-B Visas because they can't fill the position with domestic employees.

Proving skills is pretty easy in IT, do free stuff for FOSS (free open source software) because if you efforts are good enough you can quite readily gain public recognition by the people you most want to impress. So demonstrate skill by picking the most appropriate FOSS project and then start doing the hard grind to demonstrate your skills, not only will you practise you skills amongst peers who will help and instruct you but you will get to know the right people who will help you get a job or even employ you.

Uhm yes. Hans Reiser showed that first you do FOSS development, and THEN commit a felony... OK, bad jokes aside, his problem will be to find time between the three burger flipping jobs he has to to, to actually do something meaningful for any FOSS project.

Comment: Re:Great (Score 1) 602

by bickerdyke (#48515097) Attached to: UK Announces 'Google Tax'

I agree with the problem that Lawrence_bird noticed: a state deciding to NOT take all of your money is not exactly giving a "tax break"

But there is another problem: You don't need countries to actually GIVE a tax break: Unfair tax advantages might be created by simple differences between tax systems that are fair and balanced within themselves.

Comment: Re:Great (Score 1) 602

by bickerdyke (#48515063) Attached to: UK Announces 'Google Tax'

That held true for maybe the car companies of yore but does not help the economy if a) the relation between jobs created and revenue gets out of hands (just stick with the google example: we here have rather few engineers responsible for the ernings of one of the worlds biggest companies) and b) the jobs created aren't in the same country where the revenue is created.

Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.