anonymity
Details of a little walk
It’s that time of year again when it seems like a terribly nice idea to go for a gentle stroll through the heart of the fair city of London, in the good company of a group of like minded people in the traditional walking gear of a mask and cloak.
Note that unlike the “procession” that will be taking place a few days prior, this is just a gentle stroll, not a protest, not a demo or anything as uncivilized as that. It is just a group of like minded people exercising their right to go for a walk in the attire of their choosing.
Full details can be found over at Old Holborns, and if you like that sort of thing I’ve created an un-official (though as this isn’t an organized event I’m not sure how you’d have an official event page) event over on Facebook
As OH says though, don’t bring a phone, don’t bring ID, just bring your outfit cash and a camera.
The Times and NightJack again
Off to a folk festival tomorrow and with luck I’ll not get stabbed again, though if I do the police in Leicester are wonderful as is the hospital ( Which should be more than enough for the voyeur and hacker Parick Foster to fearlessly expose another unimportant blogger). When I return I’ll update all of the Times links to use a URL shortener to break google linking. In the meantime a few things relating to the whole sorry NightJack affair that I’d hate to go unnoticed. In shock news Tom HarrisMP agrees with Guido that as the Times dislikes anonymous articles so they should cease thier anonymous leader columns, I’m not sure I’m entirely convinced and mr Finkelstein certianly isn’t utterly different a group effort he says. Which I think is possibly a point though I hope that means that the Times will cease to quote all anonymous “sources close to…”, and it’s also worth noting in case of any future legal need that he’d not object to everyone involved in any times leader being exposed.
“Should someone decide that there was a public interest in knowing the precise details of how an individual leader was drafted (similar to the very obvious public interest in knowing the identity of a police officer publishing case details on the web), then they might wish to launch a journalistic investigation into that leader
And should they then print what they found, I wouldn’t object at all.”
Presumably with photograph and all, and I do hope all those involved with such leaders are equally agreeable to such a deal.
Finally via Old Holborn it would seem that Inspector Leviathan Hobbes would quite like to meet those responsible for NightJacks exposure.
For the record if by any strange chance I ever happen to be in the same hostelry as NightJack Inspector Hobbes, Inspector Gadget, PC Bloggs, < ahref="http://coppersblog.blogspot.com/">PC Copperfield or any of our anonymous public service bloggers who let us glimpse inside the establishment, then I owe you a pint.
Patrick Foster quoting “sources”
As that odious hacker and voyeur Patrick Foster seems to no longer feel that anonymous sources aren’t a good thing. I’m sure that with some encouragement he’ll shortly be clarifying who the sources are in the following stories, purely due to public interest of course:
A source close to the show said…The Metropolitan Police said ….
Those close to the show insist…
Sources close to Goody’s family said…
Articles found from his entry in Journalisted and that’s just back till late march. I got bored after a while so I’m sure there are plenty more worth commenting on to ask him what his sources were.
NightJack update and round up
Following the Times notable victory over decency yesterday they’ve graciously allowed NightJack to respond in an article I can’t help but feel is very reminiscent of a communist show trial where the accused is allowed to publicly confess their sins and misdemeanors. The tactics he describes the Times using are also very reminiscent of those used to expose Girl with a one track mind, so they definitely have form on this one. speaking of having form it would seem that the Mendacious Patrick Foster, that fearless journalist so desperate to move on from the celebrity pages he’s prepared to sacrifice the career of a decent man to do so, also has form for hacking and covertly filming people having sex – which I think clearly tells us his views on peoples privacy. Whilst as many have pointed out no one has a right to privacy and on the internet probably not a lot of expectation of it either, that still doesn’t make the Times actions in any way justifiable. However there is one very slim upside from this as noted by Anna Raccoon there is now some precedent for investigating and publishing identifying material relating to a serving police office as prohibited by the counter terrorism act 2008.
Update
Daniel Finkelstein responds, and another Times journalist expresses mixed feelings.
Round up of other blogs
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NightJack exposed for the vanity of the Times
Until he stopped writing it I used to very much enjoy NightJacks view of the police, and his guide for decent people is invaluable. Now however thanks to The Times and that champion of free speech Justice Eady, the only way you’ll get to read his words is if you stumble across them in a cache somewhere. Despite having ceased blogging a while back, to go and write a novel, the Times felt that it would be a good thing to let everyone know who he was. This has already resulted in him getting written warning from his force and as his views were honest and not always full of praise for the higher echelons of the force, I suspect it won’t do his career and general work life much good.
Sadly I fear that Justice Eadys ruling was the correct one, though I’m not sure I agree with him that blogging is essentially a public business, and I definitely don’t agree that just because a blogger is a member of the police that automatically makes there real identity a matter of public interest. The story in the Times though seems to be without merit. I’ve no idea if this is part of a retaliation from the main stream media against those nasty upstart bloggers as some suggest. There’s nothing to be done to undo this situation, though if NightJack does ever publish a novel I’ll be buying it, in the meantime as Iain Dale asks will the Times cease to quote unnamed sources “close to…”, we can also as Hopi Sen suggests write to the Times to share our opinion of their actions. I am sadly sure, again as Iain Dale suggests, that this will have an impact on other bloggers and commentators involved in the justice systems and other organs of the state. I would though second the thought that it should also have an impact on who might want to talk to the Times, whilst I’m unlikely to ever have anything of interest to say I do know that in the unlikely event I do I won’t be saying it to the Times and who knows I may yet be at a demo and see something of note.
Oh and if anyone happens to know anything much at all about Patrick Foster of the Times Old Holborn feels it would be quite in the public interest for such things to be shared.
Update: The Independent knew but didn’t tell who NightJack is. (Tip of the tifter to Woman on Raft)
Chicken Little rules the roost
I’ve been reading a lot of posts regarding how ISPs will be logging every web site we visit and all of our e-mail based on an eu directive that came in to force today. I’ve also read the UK legislation and the EU directive and as far as I can make out it’s all bollox! No really it is.
The only source for the belief that ISPs will be logging web pages I can find is an article in the telegraph it isn’t in either bit of legislation. Well not unless it’s been very sneakily snuck in, in something that’s not yet online and that no one has referenced. In fact nothing that isn’t already logged will be logged, what has changed it how long the logs are kept for.
Your ISP already logs when you connect to them and what IP address they give you, if you use their mail servers they log who you send mail to and from. This is routine and is currently thrown away after a month normally never looked at unless there’s a problem. I used to look at it a lot when I worked on the abuse desk of a large well known UK ISP, and the bit they’re logging half of it’s easily forged in an way undetectable from those logs. I am quite prepared to accept this is the thin end of the wedge, but at the moment the blogosphere (gods I hate that phrase) is raging against phantoms of it’s own imagining.
There is a circumstance where ISPs might log the web sites you go to, if they force you through a proxy server, or if you choose to use a proxy server. This is however very easy to detect.
1) Go to http://find-my-ip-address.net/ make a note of what it says your IP address is.
2) Check what your IP address is on your computer if they don’t match you’re going through a proxy server. Or you have an ADSL router which is giving you a private ip address.
(Private IP addresses start 192.168., 172.16 or 10. )
If you’re running windows you can find out your IP address by opening a cmd prompt and typing ipconfig look for the lines saying
IP Address. . . .
So your web browsing habits are safe, and you can make your email safe by using an email provider in a more friendly location. Or run your own get together with some mates, bribe a geek with beer and pay 10 quid a month for a virtual server you have complete control over.
There is a lot you can do easily to reduce what they can see, but at present your web access isn’t an issue. I’d be more worried about the retention of cell phone data including call location especially in light of events at the G20 summit (“We know you called X who was outside the bank of England whilst you were at the climate camp at 11:30, now why was that?”).
For the thicker end of the wedge take a look at:
Obama’s Surveillance State Targets PCs, Laptops and Media Devices and Should Obama Control the Internet?
For the record apart from working for a few years at an ISP, I’ve also worked with most of the large UK celco’s and currently run mail for over 60 domains on my own servers, amongst a few other things.
Update Sorry the independent is also reporting that Personal web data to be stored for a year, but again only in headline and paragraph one not in the details.
Data retention starts today
For those of you that may not have been paying attention the EU directive on data retention comes into force today. This means that from today your ISP will be required by law (The Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations 2009) to retain data regarding your use of “internet access, internet e-mail or internet telephony” for a year and make it available to the government on request. Technically the regulations use the wonderfully imprecise phrase:
(a) in specific cases, and
(b) in circumstances in which disclosure of the data is permitted or required by law.
so I think on request is probably a fair interpretation.
Ignoring the much simpler aspects regarding telephone calls where all telephone companies must record, who you called, when and for how long as well as in the case of mobile providers your location at the time. From the internet side of things they’ll be recording:
- your IP address
- Access time and duration of access (This to my mind shows up pre-broadband thinking, the longer your connection is online the less useful this data).
- Who you’ve sent email to and when
- Who you called via internet telephony (skype etc.) and how (Unless they snoop all your traffic which isn’t required I suspect this one applies to the internet telephony provider rather than your ISP
Of course this only applies to “public communications provider” run your own servers in conjunction with some friends and then you won’t be logged, use email providers outside of the EU and you won’t be logged (well not under this law at least). If you have a broadband connection log of as little as possible to reduce the utility of the logs and don’t use your ISP for email, as at the very least you can make it harder for them to join the dots. Also of course it’s worth noting that the original directive states
“This Directive relates only to data generated or processed as a consequence of a communication or a communication service”
so if you use services configured not to generate logs then nothing has to be kept.
Before we blame the EU however it’s worth remembering that it was our Government that asked them to create this rule see this Telegraph article for more background. Though the directive doesn’t contrary to that article seem to actually require that they record the websites you visit. The good news is that the ISPs and Telco’s shouldn’t put up their prices because of this, the bad news is that’s because the government our using our taxes to pay them to spy on us.
Further note despite what Anna Raccoon says and the Various comments (Same article posted to two locations), there doesn’t seem to be any requirement for usage of websites to be logged, it does seem to be “only” VOIP, email and connection to the internet that is to be logged. However if you fancy some spook baiting even though it’s probably not needed or useful then the Landed underclass has some good tips. Some Tory Lords at least are concerned about how this came into effect and where it’s going.
Will update this with further commentary as I stumble upon it, and will correct my interpretation of what is to be logged if I find an explanation of why my interpretation is wrong.
Update Further commentary:
A rather poor interpretation and udnerstanding of the directive from Himmelgarten cafe (hat tip: Charlotte Gore
Update 2
In response to the article from Himmelgarten cafe linked to above it occurred to me that it might be of interest to show people what the logs being retained typically show:
2009-04-06 17:46:02 Message-id <= sendinguser@address H=sending-hostname P=esmtp S=3115
2009-04-06 17:46:02 Message-id => <receiving-user@address> R=userforward T=address_file
2009-04-06 17:46:02 Message-id Completed
The interesting bits are the time stamps and the bits in blue, the bit in red is very trivial to forge. Also when he states that “No help is being offered on paying for the additional storage space.” that would appear to be at odds with what is stated in the directive, but for small email providers it isn’t a huge burden if you only consider the disk space and not back up facilities as each message only takes in the region of 0.5 kb to log.
Ducking big brother online
This post is taking rather longer than I expected to write and is sort of a follow up to both “Internet freedom and you” and more specifically to “Anonymity through generosity“, following in the same general direction to those I doubt I’m going to say anything new. However with laws being proposed to let Councils snoop on phone calls and emails and more worryingly the EC data retention directive coming in to force on 6th April 2009, that revisiting what “normal” users can do to protect themselves might be worth while.
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Anonymity through generosity
Lots of people have written many articles on how to use the internet in more or less anonymous fashions. So I suspect that this isn’t going to add anything new but will perhaps add a new slant or at least group things in a different fashion that may make more sense for some people than other articles have.
The obvious first step as many people have said is to make sure that whatever operating system you’re running is kept up to date and that you have a firewall and it’s locked down as much as possible. All of which is well and good and stops people getting directly onto your machine, but if they’ve got that level of interest in you you’ve probably got bigger problems to worry about (or you’re reading this a few years after I wrote it). At the moment the powers that be are mainly concentrating on traffic analysis. That’s what monitoring what web sites you visit and who you email actually is, they’re looking for patterns in the traffic people generate to see who’s talking to who and if there’s more traffic just after or before specific events. So at this stage in the game disguising your traffic is a good thing to do, and that’s where it pays to be generous.
Internet freedom and you
Part 1 – A handful of beads
The internet has been and is still widely touted as a huge bastion of freedom, a virtual wild west, new and uncharted lands not to mention numerous other metaphors aimed to convince us that it can herald in a utopia of untold freedoms. Now of course none of that was ever true, the apparent freedoms all relied on expensive equipment paid for and managed by businesses and bits of government of varying sizes. The freedoms existed because what was going on was largely unnoticed and not understood by those that might want to stop it.
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UK terror threat status
- Severe 2010/01/25