Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • May 4, 2026 9:55 AM

@ Bruce, ALL,

With regards,

“for one, it facilitates assassination”

And very much else besides… and it can be fairly easily proved that it’s impossible to stop it being abused for such.

Claude Shannon demonstrated a number of fundamental properties of not just “information” but it’s “communication”. Two important aspects are,

1, There has to be a communications channel through which information can flow.
2, There has to be redundancy in the information carrying method, ie alphabet etc for it to be possible to convey information.

Gus Simmons later looked at those and concluded that,

3, Redundancy allowed a channel to be formed within a channel.
4, The channel within a channel to be not visible to an observer.
5, That private information could be covertly carried in a public communication.

This “proof” works against any system where information is,

A, Communicated,
B, Stored,
C, Processed.

And as we’ve not yet found anything else to do with information,

All information systems can be used to carry information covertly thus break any trust model we have so far thought of.

For some reason “though obvious” it’s only “rattling the bars” publicly since Current AI LLM and ML systems have become “a thing” with more than just researchers. Why the timing should be this way I’ve no real idea, but there you go that’s just the way it is.

Clive Robinson • May 4, 2026 2:31 PM

@ jamez, ALL,

With regards,

“people are horrible.”

Some but not all are.

In the UK about 1/1000th of the population are convicted criminals actually serving time in prison currently.

About twice to three times that number are convicted and under sentence but are not in prison (we just don’t have the space and can not afford the cost).

Some of these “crimes” are actually politically motivated “invented crimes”. Made by politicians without common sense, or a wanting of back-handers etc that want to appear to be “hard on crime”.

The purpose of creating such crimes is not for the improvement of society, but more likely to be two fold,

1, Target those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder who can not afford to be defended adequately.
2, Those who can not pay the fines that the politicians have actually made the “crimes” for.

That is most new UK crimes are really pointless “flag wavers” and ways to raise revenue by various idiotic means (as I’ve mentioned a few times before).

All fairly useless legislation and regulation, that turns the other eye away from the really nasty criminals plaguing society every which way they can as “corporations” etc. A list of WEF members and those that pop up at Davous in January should give you a short list to start checking out.

Many are those who are not criminals because they’ve payed off the politicians to stop laws being enacted and passed that would make them criminals…

A few years back it was shown that despite all the privalages and advantages politicians have, they have a 4 to 5 times greater rate of conviction than the average working / middle class person.

The sort of crime that most UK citizens want to see got rid of, is actually falling any way by a significant amount,

Most crime has fallen by 90% in 30 years – so why does the public think it’s increased?

Despite significant decreases in crime over the past 30 years, most people in England and Wales believe crime is rising; Associate Professor Toby Davies and Professor Graham Farrell of the University of Leeds argue that while there are various reasons for the perception gap – including political rhetoric and media coverage – governments should be taking decisions on crimes based on evidence, not public perception.

“As of 2024, violence, burglary and car crime have been declining for 30 years and by close to 90%, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) – our best indicator of true crime levels. Unlike police data, the CSEW is not subject to variations in reporting and recording.

The drop in violence includes domestic violence and other violence against women. Anti-social behaviour has similarly declined. While increased fraud and computer misuse now make up half of crime, this mainly reflects how far the rates of other crimes have fallen.

All high-income countries have experienced similar trends, and there is scientific consensus that the decline in crime is a real phenomenon.“

https://policinginsight.com/feature/analysis/most-crime-has-fallen-by-90-in-30-years-so-why-does-the-public-think-its-increased/

And the drop has absolutely nothing what so ever to do with “Being tough on crime” that dumb politicians think will get them re-elected. It’s also why the “Crime Survey for England and Wales”(CSEW) was used 4ather than the ones “politicians influence” so ineptly.

There are various reasons non financial/fraud crime is dropping but all the nonsense spouted by politicians and those with political agendas and mantras such as neo-cons and the like actually are usually fairly easily disproven and are worthless except for making neo-cons and the like wealthier…

Oddly some of the oddest sounding things can be shown to be better correlated, but nobody in their right mind would come up with experiments to prove things one way or the other. As they would at best be “unethical” but more importantly show politicians and their funders up for being the criminals they actually are…

For instance correlation indicates that TEL added to petrol at the significant pressure of the oil industry is an extremely dangerous neurotoxin. And where TEL has been cut back approximately two decades later street crime and violent crime drops.

Similar has been shown for many things “big corporates” have pushed for to have higher profits at the expense of society in general.

I could go on but you are probably getting the picture by now.

(Oh expect the rapid appearance of idiot mouth pieces, payed for shills, and sock puppets spreading FUD, now I’ve said the above).