Schneier on Security

1&1~=Umm • March 2, 2019 3:06 PM

@Sherman Jerrold:

“The U.S. post office is older than the u.s. gov’t. It has provided excellent service to the nation.”

History shows us that whilst not older than the UK Gov, the UK Post Office is the oldest in the world to have “uniform rate” by what we now call “Postage Stamps”. And at one point was held in very high esteem by nearly every one who used it[1].

Which brings us around to,

“However, congress has tried to destroy and privatize it for a decade.”

A look at more recent history of the Post Office. Under ‘Mad Maggie’ Thatcher, the government of the time having sold off other parts of what was the old ‘General Post Office’ tried prepering to sell of The Royal Mail or postal side. For various reasons it did not happen, but it was already clear by then, that ‘Fax Machines’ were cheaper and faster[2] than the Mail Service, especially as various Governments via ‘The Post Master General’ had caused much harm to the Royal Mail. Most often for purely political rhetoric come policy reasons that the politicians frequently and mostly incorrectly blaimed the work force for.

Well the UK Political party thay want’s to ‘Sell the farm’ for very short term gain is back in power and they have after further damaging the Post Office have finally sold it off at well below the market value.

For various reasons mostly political it is in effect a ‘Lame Duck’ that has been quite deliberately legislated against such that other commercial entities can ‘Cherry Pick’ the profitable parts out of the Postal System, leaving the non lucerative ‘last mile’ delivery to the Post Office.

However as with similar cherry picking in the UK National Health Service the whole thing is yurning into a disaster area, with the typical ‘race for the bottom’ disaster spirals / tail spins happening.

I feel confident bassed on what has happened to US Health Care in recent times to predict the US Postal Service will come to a similar fate as that of the UK Post Office.

But getting back to,

“You can sign up to receive notices of the mail that will be delivered to you a few days before you get it.”

On the innocent face of this it is at best a gimmick of no useful utility. Actually less usefull than ‘Parcel Tracking’.

So as all Governments are at best like Janus and have two faces it’s fairly easy to see why you might look on the opposit to innocent face and come up with,

“EVERY piece of mail is photographed and is available to a number of gov’t agencies so they can spy on you.”

You would be correct. If you look a little more broadly some FirstvWorld Governments of which the US are but one have decided to not just ‘collect it all’ but ‘track it all’ as well. It’s why one of the more famous bank note printers is looking at how to make bank notes trackable, not just at tills and bank counters but actually as you ‘walk through the door’ or similar portal. The US already has laws where LEOs can take cash off of people without reason or recompense, so such technology would make traditional paper currancy highly tracable, as much if not more so than credit card information.

It’s one of the failings of ‘block chain’ ledger technology that few want to talk about. That is every transaction of a digital crypto currency the likes of such Governments will alow is going to have a fully auditable transaction chain thus fully traceable.

You could say ‘It’s just the way society is heading’, the problem is that society as we knew it and prefered last century has already gone and been replaced by a more totalitarian surveillance society. Thus society as we remember and prefer is gone, and is going to be further destroyed untill it is either fully gone or some counterbalancing effect happens. At which point the view point on the refreshing of the tree of liberty by tyrants and patriots alike, appears increasingly a more valid predictor of the future. As does the litriture a couple of centuries later by George Orwell.

I think many if they have taken a little time to think about it would agree that society is regressing. Specifically under the power of insecure technology and the greed to which some are putting it to, which some Governments believe they have the right to ‘free load off’. Which is kind of covered by your final comment of,

“The sneaky, creepy cousin to Big Brother.”

[1] It was hardly surprising five delivery times in one day alowed you to send a letter in the morning and have a reply by lunchtime or mid afternoon enabling you to reply to the reply the same day. The only thing faster was the “semaphore” telegraph from the Admiralty Building in London to the fleet HQ in Porstmouth, not far off the speed of sending an SMS these days. So the Post Office as The Royal Mail was not to far off of what most people do with EMail today. It’s an important point most forget about Victorian Communications both prior to and subsequent to the taming of electricity for the purpose.

[2] The thing about Fax machines is that just at the point ~1990 the technology had brought the price down to where you might have one in your mom-n-pop size small business or home, their death knell had been sounded. The use of computers and modems in the 1980s was providing faster less costly and more reliable and secure sending of documents, that printed out as well remotely as they did from the originators printer. Thus fax machines had maybe five to fifteen years of popular success. Now we find that even the early style use of computers and dial up modems is gone, even the Internet on dial up is gone, even mobile phone SMSing is effectively on the decline as services like WhatsApp are seen as being both better quality and more secure. Leaving the obvious question of ‘What and Where and Why?’ will replace secure messaging apps. The big scare for Governments is unbreakable encryption and any kind of communication, with some seriously thinking about the fairly nascent ‘Mind control over technology’ which might well be taught to babies and very small children in the near future.

1&1~=Umm • March 4, 2019 4:06 PM

@vas pup:

“I guess Confidential Informant and Lawyer are mutually exclusive roles.”

It’s actually not legal in many jurisdictions, lawyers like priests and supposadly journalists have a legaly protected status. Whilst a “duty of confidentiality” can be put in contracts, they can usually be overturned by a court via “contempt” or other legal measures. The aformentioned group have a right of “Absolute” duty of confidentiality, which means not only are they protected from “contempt” they can actually be prosecuted quite harshly if they do break the duty of confidentiality.

Which brings us to,

“Lawyer has a duty to report to authorities if and only if…”

No they have at most no more duty than an ordinary person would have which is usually fairly limited. Actually the reality is they have less a lot lot less because of their duty of confidentiality is normally considered to be broader than just their client, but also those known to their client because it can lead to messes like this one because of the conflict that naturally arises.

What CI-3838 had cooked up with the police was highly questionable at best and probably criminal. Put simply it relied on putting a very narrow scope on the duty of care to only her direct clients and what they said. She quite deliberatly socialized with her clients to hear what everybody said and watch what they did. Thus if she heard an associate tell her client something she reported it to her handlers unless and only unless her direct client told her…

Needless to say many in the legal profession are decidedly unhappy with her, especially when she had been warned off for her behaviour by her senior colleagues on a number of occasions as it endangered the lives of others in the proffession.

The fact she is now trying to get compensation for her chosen[1] behaviour from the authorities, is rather more than quite a number of her past colleagues in the profession can stomach. Which is why they are agitating for changes to the way things work so it can never happen again.

[1] She has been very unclear as to why she became a CI, apparently she was charged with involvment of 1.4kg of drugs in the dwelling she shared with others, they got charged and prosecuted she did not. Which has led to others thinking she was in effect blackmailed, however she has had a number of opportunities to either confirm or deny this without the fear of retribution. But she has repeatedly avoided availing herself of such opportunities and has yet to provide any real explanation. She does however alude occasionally to the fact that she wanted rid of the drugs cartels but in a way that implies those she had as clients only. Many of whom may now walk out of jail because of her behaviour, that she should have known would have this result if her CI status ever became public. Something anyone with half a brain and knowledge of security would know eas more likely than not (drugs cartels have their own intelligence services that tend to be way more efficient than those of the authorities).

1&1~=Umm • March 6, 2019 3:37 PM

@bttb:

From the end of the Motherboard article, is a couple of quotes from an iOS security researcher called Viktor Oreshkin

“To be honest everyone benefits from Apple’s lousy supply chain management”, “Except Apple, obviously.”

It kind of says it all as supply chain security on verious Apple products has been a problem for Apple for decades now…

In fact if I was the Chinese or other Government looking to ‘bug’ US military personnel, the iPhone would be up quite high in my list of targets, after those ‘Personal IoT Bling’ that others have already used.

1&1~=Umm • March 7, 2019 6:10 PM

@Marc:

Oh I forgot to mention that a year later they had changed their minds and said it was Russia,

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9k74az/triton-malware-russian-government-saudi-arabia-petrol-plant

Which caused various comments on this blog,

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/10/was_the_triton_.html

So maybe it will be North Korea or China next week, or even Australia / France / Germany / Holand / Israel / UK / USA / Zimbabwe pick your favourite that will promote you best in the press.

The two important things to remember are,

1, Remain sceptical.
2, Duck as it goes kinetic.