Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • October 26, 2023 9:06 PM

@ Geoffrey Louis Nicoletti,

Re : Snowden going home.

“Is there a “statute of limitations” on Snowden and he could come back to the USA without any prosecution?”

The answer is No and No as the continued persecution of Julian Assange shows (who’s crime was to embarrass politicians over what appeared to be the targeted killing of journalists).

Even if there were a statute of limitations, they would find something else where there was not or they could invent something more recent to have Snowden thrown in jail for, then he would be lost in the system.

It might one day after all those in positions of power in 2013 are dead, that he might be able to leave Russia, but “institutions have memory” so coming home does not appear likely.

Right now Snowden has to assume that somebody somewhere is plotting against him, as this is unfortunately highly likely.

Look up the history of “Ronney Biggs” to see what went on in the past to those with public recognition and who embarrassed authority even though they were just not particularly successful criminals. Ronney was kidnapped in Brazil where he could not be extradited from by supposadly “Private Interest” british soldiers in what was later claimed as “a deniable action”. It went wrong near Barbados which was lucky for Ronny as the Barbadian authorities became involved and sent him back to Brazil.

But also consider what other Heads of State and Government agencies get upto.

For instance think about what Putin gets upto, with making most recently aircraft fall out of the sky, nerve agents being left on door handles, beta emitting radio isotopes being sprayed on food in restaurants and much else including Russians living abroad who conveniently had accidents or apparently committed suicide in some cases with the rest of their family etc… That the police look the other way over even abroad (there has been more than twenty in the UK for instance).

Likewise people including relatives of the North Korean leader being live targets on gun ranges or hit with nerve agents in an airport.

Then a Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who had a journalist butchered alive and others disapeared. And went on to try and destroy Jeff Bezos who had employed the journalist…

These are just a few of the things that happen when people of power or with connections to it get embarrassed or in some other way upset. Because there will always be people around them who consider such behaviour “to be of service”.

Clive Robinson • November 2, 2023 9:41 AM

@ Winter, ALL,

Something else of interest,

Craig Murry one of the few sources of information on what is happening to Julian Assange got pulled under UK Anti-Terror legislation on his return from Iceland,

https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/17/assange-craig-murray-detained-uk-terror/

The questions he was asked had absolutly nothing to do with terrorism or criminal or other illegal activity.

But importantly shows the need to not carry a phone or computer or other electronic device when entering the UK.

Clive Robinson • November 2, 2023 3:12 PM

@ JonKnowsNothing, ALL,

Re : login security when away.

“Even if you do not have a device you can be required to give your login credentials to your email, social media, internet accounts before any type of release is offered.”

I saw this comming last century, it’s why I don’t have “Social Media” or “Email” or similar of my own.

Business accounts I might or might not have access to[1] get locked whilst “I’m out” of office circulation and as such use “One Time” TAM / Tokens that don’t travel.

I assume from previous run-ins I’ve mentioned before at some point somebody is going to rattle my chain if I travel, so why give them a hand hold?

[1] You might have noticed that some business leaders have EMail addresses and similar, you might call “public” yet they don’t personally use them. That is they pay someone else to forward stuff to a private address that is not accessable from “outside the perimiter”.

It’s an increasingly sensible precaution since John Balton when part of the US Executive quite deliberately and with malice had a Chinese national falsely arrested by too compliant Canadian authorities on what were and still are effectively “phoney charges”, that in the fullness of time will get dropped.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/24/huawei-cfo-meng-wanzhou-to-be-released-after-agreement-with-us-in-fraud-case.html

Clive Robinson • November 2, 2023 6:05 PM

@ Winter,

“I believe that was the origine of the function of “secretary”…”

Close enough, though I don’t know which came first the function of being a scribe for a member of the aristocracy and teacher to their children or the administrative/legal handeling of private or confidential records and eventually codes and later ciphers to keep confidentiality in communications.

We also know the word journalist arises from effectively the same “record keeping” job from the latin for daily.

Oh and not to forget the accountant whose job was to keep another type of journal, the ledger where records of quantity were kept (from count and also accountable[1]).

Thus the secretary was “officially” an administrator of meetings and negotiations and similar confidentialities, with a duty of ensuring the confidentiality. Whilst a journalist was “officially” a keeper of records and decisions for the purposes of business and the like, where the function was to keep a record of actions taken and results etc, where confidentiality was not considered necessary. With the accountant keeping the record of the goods and money passing through the accounts and warehouses.

All these basic record keeping functions go back to atleast Roman times in the written forms but some we know go back way before that from excavated clay tablets where confidentiality was also achived by baking a tablet, then baking it inside to layers of clay that formed a secure envelop. But double entry book keeping is only credited to go back to the very end of the 13th Century in Florence, yet Plini the elder described it in a few brief words centuries before…

So in some senses it’s all a “Chicken or egg” situation.

[1] In later times there were two entirely independent accountants and the ledger entries were made by both in what we now call “double entry book keeping”. Basically two different methods were used and tallied up in different ways… but arived at the same figure unless there was error or fraud / theft by the employees. In modern times it is rare for there to be two independent entities making entries. Thus the question of what advantage there is to double entry book keeping in the modern age…