Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • July 27, 2017 12:09 PM

@ Anura,

Only a gun safe that is too heavy for a thief to easily carry is an effective deterrent against theft.

You forgot to mention, that it should also not be openable by a three year old rattling the door lock…

Somebody I know indirectly purchased an old High Street Bank to convert into a house. With it came a “walk in safe”. They also shoot competitively and have both shot guns and rifles (you are nolonger allowed hand guns in the UK). So they thought the safe would be an ideal place to keep them and installed some gun cases.

Anyway the UK fire arms regs require you to have a police officer come around and inspect where not just the guns but the amunition will be stored. The police officer who inspected the premises for his private firearms ticket decided that the gun cases were not secure enough to be used, and did not accept that the fact they were in a walk in safe was sufficient security.

However another police officer who visited the property because he had decided to become a gun dealer, decided that the walk in safe was fine.

So OK to store a large number of guns to sell but not OK for a small number of guns for private use…

As the saying has it “Go figure”.

Clive Robinson • July 28, 2017 5:10 AM

@ Doug Coulter,

Long time no hear, I hope you are well and still knocking out neutrons by the bucket full 😉

With regards,

I was raised at a time when not only were there not phones and pads, there wasn’t TV to babysit, and my parents had to, you know, actually raise me.

Yup I remember the first time I heard the phone ring. It was one of those black bakalite phones with a rotary dial and that odd looking scoop/funnel on the microphone end of the hand set. It also had wires that were rubber coated with an outer layer of fine cloth. My parents had had the phone installed in the bay window of the “dining room” where my fathers “home working” desk was. He was an accountant by trade, and fairly well paid but still did the books for a number of local businesses as well from home. My mother was a much valued teacher, which is why I got put into school a year and a half earlier than was normal (I guess it was the “workplace nursery” of it’s time). She also did historical research on a proffessional level, and occasionaly made cloths for people as her mother had been a “Court Dressmaker” and had taught mum the trade from before she went to school.

Which to a certain extent ment “I draged myself up” and spent a lot of time entertaining myself. I don’t remember when we got a TV but I do remember when we got our first colour TV. To my parents supprise I was not interested in “childrens TV” however back then the BBC started transmitting lectures for the Open University, and I would sit and watch fascinated by the science and engineering programs. To me it was a window into a different world where even the lecturers dressed differently. I remember my mother saying I couldn’t possibly understand it and my father pointing out that I talked a lot about them, and the only time I was quiet in the house was when I was watching them or asleep. Consequently I spent a lot of time outdoors doing things that would make me sound like an Enid Blyton charecter. Some of it constructive like helping dad with the garden, siving out stones to add to the “stone heap” to use when making concreat paths in the summer and alsorts of other things.

The thing was though as children we did grow up faster, I was preping vegtables from around five, and cooking my own breakfast at weekends by the time I was eight,I knew how to safely make a fire outside to cook on as well, and could make bread that people would happily eat around the same time, pies and puds, jams and other preserves soon followed. And if I wanted a toy, my dad would show me how to make it out of wood, and was thus required to use my new skills around the house for decorating and general repairs, including how to cut glass and glaze it in for the occasional windows I broke.

It’s these sorts of activities modern kids don’t get to do or don’t want to do. My son for instance does not cook, even though I’ve tried to teach him when he’s interested. The real reason I guess is he finds it dull compared to his phone, tablet or computer, and I’m daft enough to let him get away with it because he’s learnt the art of not cleaning up properly in the kitchen knowing that I’ll get annoyed and do it myself…

The thought occurs that it’s the hectic pace of life that is in effect responsible for our kids not realy learning things at home and families being a lot poorer than they used to be. I cook because I want to, not because of the money I save by doing so. I can cook a better dinner for four for less money than one E-Num filled frozen microwave meal. Yes I do have “ready meals” in the freezer for times when I get in late etc but only a few are “shop bought”. I estimate my food bills are around one sixth that of what I would have to pay for “microwave meals”. Likewise I was shocked when a friend twenty years younger than me told me what they had had to pay to replace a mixer tap unit on their sink and have their central heating pump replaced, when I asked them why they had not done it themselves the answer came down to they did not know how… Thus they had been caught in the “Im going to make you pay through the eyes because you don’t know” trap. But worse, a few years ago due to an unforseen falt in the property, I had to claim on the insurance, and elected to let them use their own builders and decorators, huge mistake I will not remake. I actually had to show one supposedly skilled tradesman how to measure up and cut some wooden beading… Needless to say unbenown to me one of their workmen had not put in a sill correctly and it showed up a few months later with cracking. It all had to be torn out and redone. This time by a friend who is a tradesman who’s work I trust as I used to do a bit of work for him now and again when he had large electrical work at a customers, or he was short handed at weekends or over night, and I’d seen how he went about things.

My friend pointed out a salint point about Brexit, because so few people in the UK now have the skills to do basic maintenance and building or decorating there is a chronic lack of tradesmen. This ment their was room for the likes of East European workmen, many of whom were not skilled. Thus their lower prices and bodge work had given East European workmen a bad reputation not just from their low quality of work but for “stealing jobs”. Which influanced a lot of Brexit votes.

Thus this lack of learning of basic life skills is in fact a very real security risk because it makes a dependancy culture that becomes a downward spiral. In effect people fall into a trap and develop a relationship much like that of a junkie and their dealer. The price starts of cheap but when you are dependent the price goes up and up and as a result your own ignorance and failings pushes you into serious poverty that often leads to risky / dangerous choices then crime etc.