Al-Qaeda Plotting to Bring Down the Internet in the UK
This sounds so implausible.
If you find any follow-up stories, please post them in comments.
Entries Tagged "UK"
Page 13 of 19
Corsham Bunker
Fascinating article on the Corsham bunker, the secret underground UK site the government was to retreat to in the event of a nuclear war.
Until two years ago, the existence of this complex, variously codenamed Burlington, Stockwell, Turnstile or 3-Site, was classified. It was a huge yet very secret complex, where the government and 6,000 apparatchiks would have taken refuge for 90 days during all-out thermonuclear war. Solid yet cavernous, surrounded by 100ft-deep reinforced concrete walls within a subterranean 240-acre limestone quarry just outside Corsham, it drives one to imagine the ghosts of people who, thank God, never took refuge here.
Cameras Protecting Other Cameras
There is a proposal in Scotland to protect automatic speed-trap cameras from vandals by monitoring them with other cameras.
Then, I suppose we need still other cameras to protect the camera-watching cameras.
I am reminded of a certain building corner in York. Centuries ago it was getting banged up by carts and whatnot, so the owners stuck a post in the ground a couple of feet away from the corner to protect it. Time passed, and the post itself became historically significant. So now there is another post a couple of feet away from the first one to protect it.
When will it end?
SAS Troops Stationed in London
British special forces are now stationed in London:
An SAS unit is now for the first time permanently based in London on 24-hour standby for counter-terrorist operations, The Times has learnt.
The basing of a unit from the elite special forces regiment “in the metropolitan area” is intended to provide the police with a combat-proven ability to deal with armed terrorists in the capital.
The small unit also includes surveillance specialists and bomb-disposal experts.
Although the Metropolitan Police has its own substantial firearms capability, the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician who was mistakenly identified as a terrorist bomber on the run, has underlined the need to have military expertise on tap.
While I agree that the British police completely screwed up the Menezes shooting, I’m not at all convinced the SAS can do better. The police are trained to work within a lawful society; military units are primarily trained for military combat operations. Which group do you think will be more restrained?
This kind of thing is a result of the “war on terror” rhetoric. We don’t need military operations, we need police protection.
I think people have been watching too many seasons of 24.
MI5 Terror Alerts by E-mail
Sounds like security theater to me:
But he added that one of the difficult questions was what people should do about the information when they receive it: “There’s not necessarily that much information on the website about how you should act and how you should respond other than being vigilant and calling a hotline if you see anything suspicious.”
The first, called Threat Level Only, will inform the recipient if the nationwide terror threat level changes. The condition is currently listed as severe.
The second more inclusive service is called What’s New, and will be a digest of the latest information from MI5, including speeches made by the director general and links to relevant websites.
I’ve written about terror threat alerts in the UK before.
EDITED TO ADD (1/15): System is in shambles and being overhauled:
Digital detective work by campaigners revealed that the alerting system did little to protect the identities of anyone signing up.
They found that data gathered was being stored in the US leading to questions about who would have access to the list of names and e-mail addresses.
Buying Fake European Passports
Interesting story of a British journalist buying 20 different fake EU passports. She bought a genuine Czech passport with a fake name and her real picture, a fake Latvian passport, and a stolen Estonian passport.
Despite information on stolen passports being registered to a central Interpol database, her Estonian passport goes undetected.
Note that harder-to-forge RFID passports would only help in one instance; it’s certainly not the most important problem to solve.
Also, I am somewhat suspicious of this story. I don’t know about the UK laws, but in the US this would be a major crime—and I don’t think being a reporter would be an adequate defense.
Erasable Ink Scam
Someone goes door-to-door, soliciting contributions to a charity. He prefers a check—it’s safer for you, after all. But he offers his pen for you to sign your check, and the pen is filled with erasable ink. Later, he changes both the payee and the amount, and cashes the check.
This surely isn’t a new scam, but it’s happening in the UK right now. I’ve already written about attackers using different solvents to wash ink off checks, but this one is even more basic—the attacker gives the victim a bad pen to start with.
I thought checks were printed with ink that also erased, voiding the check. Why does this sort of attack still work?
UK RFID Passport Cracked
EDITED TO ADD (11/17): Commentary by Bruce Sterling.
UK Car Rentals to Require Fingerprints
Welcome to a surveillance society:
If you want to hire a car at Stansted Airport, you now need to give a fingerprint.
The scheme being tested by Essex police and car hire firms, is not voluntary. Every car rental customer must take part.
No fingerprint, no car hire at Stansted airport.
These are stored by the hire firms—and will be handed over to the police if the car is stolen or used for another crime.
This is the most amusing bit:
“It’s not intrusive really. It’s different—and people need to adjust to it. It’s not Big Brother, it’s about protecting people’s identities. The police will never see these thumbprints unless a crime is committed.”
What are the odds that no crime will ever be committed?
Fingerprints are becoming more common in the UK:
But regardless of any ideological arguments, the use of biometric technology—where someone is identified by a physical characteristic—is already entering the mainstream.
Biometric UK passports were introduced this year, using facial mapping information stored on a microchip, and more than a million have already been issued.
A shop in the Bluewater centre in Kent has used a fingerprint checking scheme to tackle credit card fraud. And in Yeovil, Somerset, fingerprinting has been used to cut town-centre violence, with scanners helping pick out troublemakers.
It’s not just about crime. Biometric recognition is also being pitched as more convenient for shoppers.
Pay By Touch allows customers to settle their supermarket bill with a fingerprint rather than a credit card. With three million customers in the United States, this payment system is now being tested in the UK, in three Co-op supermarkets in Oxfordshire.
Germans Spying on British Trash
You can’t make this stuff up:
Electronic spy ‘bugs’ have been secretly planted in hundreds of thousands of household wheelie bins.
The gadgets – mostly installed by companies based in Germany – transmit information about the contents of the bins to a central database which then keeps records on the waste disposal habits of each individual address.
Already some 500,000 bins in council districts across England have been fitted with the bugs – with nearly all areas expected to follow suit within the next couple of years.
Until now, the majority of bins have been altered without the knowledge of their owners. In many cases, councils which ordered the installation of the devices did not even debate the proposals publicly.
The official reason for the bugs is to ‘improve efficiency’ and settle disputes between neighbours over wheelie-bin ownership. But experts say the technology is actually intended to enable councils to impose fines on householders who exceed limits on the amount of non-recyclable waste they put out. New powers for councils to do this are expected to be introduced by the Government shortly.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.