Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • July 3, 2025 8:51 AM

@ Bruce, ALL,

The possibility of,

“A hacker working for the Sinaloa drug cartel was able to obtain an FBI official’s phone records and use Mexico City’s surveillance cameras to help track”

Has very recently become a “political hot potato” with ICE “thugs” getting tagged by an application that runs anonymously on Apple Mobile Phones.

Called ICEBlock it’s become the number one app in the past couple of days,

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/ice-tracking-app-surges-in-popularity-following-maga-meltdown/ar-AA1HQwhl

It’s been “freely advertised” by more than one of the “Orange Man’s” bimbos and brain-deads mouthing off to the press that the users of the app are “terrorists” (they are not unlike the ICE thugs who are by dictionary definition traditional terrorist and in some case murderers).

So I can see there being significant issues in the very near future or some other “face preserving” numpty nonsense from the “OOOK”[1]

[1] The “OOOK” is a somewhat appropriate insult standing for

Orange Oval Office Koochie (grabber).

(Don’t ask what Koochie means it will get me time in the “sin bin” especially as it’s easy enough to look up.

Clive Robinson • July 3, 2025 4:10 PM

@ Jay Ashworth, ALL,

With regards,

“If you build a data collection system, and you do not engineer protections against this sort of thing right into the lowest levels, you will get the worst possible outcome.”

Sorry no.

If you build a surveilling or data collecting system, there is no protection system you can engineer to stop the “worst possible outcome” becoming the most desirable to those who can “work the system”.

A few years back we talked of “Parallel Construction” now nobody bothers because it’s become the “default reality”.

Clive Robinson • July 4, 2025 4:27 AM

@ Not really anonymous,

‘My excuse is going to be that I listened to “I want a new duck”…’

Hmm Weird Al” Yankovic “taking the mick” out of Huey Lewis and the News and their “I Want a New Drug” (with Huey’s assistance)…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KvgQIBcdRk

Yes I’ve been hearing stories that the song is becoming popular again this year in some circles of a certain “hue”. Because the song appeared in a “Disney special” in the mid 1980’s called,

Down and Out with Donald Duck, that was used as part of a montage of “The Donald’s fall” from popularity / stardom as part of the closing credits…

That gets rather more than a +1

But for something of more worldly appeal there are so many others…

How about,

1, “It’s a roll of Chinese fake duct tape.”

2, “It’s a noname brand that passes the duck test.”

3, “It’s got so expensive you’d have to be Quackers to buy it.”

It is “just made for plays on words”.

Clive Robinson • July 4, 2025 1:28 PM

@ Who?

With regards,

“Seriously, what happened with UTS deployment in this case was predictable, and can only get worse over time. By definition, something that is ubiquitous cannot be locked out against someone trying hard enough to break-in.”

Firstly to be honest “Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance”(UTS) sometimes also called “Universal” because of the aggregation backends the likes of Palantir are involved in, scare me beyond what many can understand without sufficient in-depth knowledge.

The big problem with Pakantir is that they are using what many would think of as AI systems,

“To remove human detectives/analysts from the loop.”

They also “package up” from several databases including peoples confidential health and other records Law Enforcment and other entities are not supposed to have any kind of access to. The output of which after a little white washing gets sold on to other Agencies and Corporates.

This unfortunately can and does get used as input by other agencies with the result guesses become nonsense that after a few rounds become “verified facts” and even though complete nonsense get passed out in a “confidential way” to those who can pay.

It’s believed but not fully verified that this information is getting into the hands of financial institutions, insurance companies, and others who provide employers with potential employee screening etc.

The fact is much of the information is wrong, and oft deliberately so. Thus people are getting “serially harmed” and they have no real evidence they are being treated differently because of false information being not just generated but sold to who ever under some kind of “don’t let the victim know” “non disclosure agreement”.

As you mentioned the current US president, do you remember “The Christopher Steele Dossier”?

That 35 pages of mostly junk information much of which was at best “gossip” mixed in with fake-news. But nether the less got people fired up.

Well it’s been indicated that Palantir have automated that process. So type in just about any bodies name, hit enter then click the print button… And out pops twenty to fifty pages of similar nonsense on the person…

This is the “new normal” people are starting to have to live in…

Look into the history of “The Number 10 Nudge Unit” contrary to the way it’s painted it did not start with UK Prime Minister David Cameron. It originated as part of an idea by civil servants under Tony Blair and got squashed when he left office.

You will find refrence to the idea as,

“The basic idea is that humans make consistent errors in judgement when faced with choices. We do not make the decisions that are best for us, nor the ones that we would make ourselves if we reflected on them rationally and summoned up enough willpower.”

https://moneyweek.com/economy/nudge-theory-years-later

Whilst some people are impulsive especially “in the little things in life” the real idea of the “nudge” is State or Corporate control of entire populations, not for the benefit of the citizens –that’s the cover story– but the politicians and their pay masters.

The problem… It turns out that nudge units are a failure, yet they still persist.

A sensible question would be “Why?”

Well it turns out the idea is “oh so seductive” and the “belief is it should work”

So “Why did it not work?”

Might make the next logical question.

Well if you think about it as a “generic nudge” it’s just more noise in an economy of noise. So the argument from proponents of the idea is it was “too generic and lacked individual focus”…

Remember these reports that are in effect,

“Automated slander”

Well slander they may be, but pushed the right way they make good blackmail material.

So Plan B is not “Nudge them” but “Hit them” with “tailored blackmail”.

And that is what Palantir and others sucking in UTS feeds are doing with their AI systems… Making “blackmail” files to get compliance out of any unfortunate citizen who’s number has come up.

Few will believe this if you tell them but it was also part of the package Cambridge Analytica was selling to second and third world politicians based on unlawful access to “social media gossip”. And that was funded by the man who was trying to “Own the GOP” and the entirety of US politics… And although he’s supposedly retired from trying to be a King Maker, his daughter Rebekah Mercer is in it way beyond her eyebrows,

https://newstracs.com/update-on-cambridge-analytica-funder-rebekah-mercer/2024/07/08/

I think it’s fair to say that most around here are aware of Project 2025, and how Trump is blackmailing the tech industry for billions…

As they say “join the dots”, so “keep your head below the parapet”, and “with luck and fair winds following you will weather the storm”.