Here is a taste of some of the sort of things we chatted about this month - our version of the Chatham House Rule applies, so nobody is directly identified, in order to promote open communication, even on controversial, sensitive or potentially illegal topics.
This is not a substitute for coming along to the meetings in person: - remember that everyone is welcome, no matter your age or experience or skills (or lack of them), from both sides of the legal fence.
- Gary McKinnon - still in the UK waiting to be extradited to the USA for hacking into 97 US Military systems (no password, no internet firewall). There was a demonstration in front of the US Embassy and there is another one at 5pm on Friday 10th October at the Home Office in Marsham Street.
- The Computer Misuse Act 1990 amendments are now in force - up to 2 years in prison for Section 1 unauthorised access, which means that the offence is now serious enough for Extradition from foreign countries. The 6 month and 3 years limitation clauses ave been repealed, so prosecutions can now be retrospective. Up ro 10 years in prison for Denial of Service attacks. up to 6 months in prison for "dual use" tools which may be used in unauthorised access or denial of service attacks. There is a reverse burden of proof defence that you do not have criminal intent when writing, downloading, modifying, offering for sale or hire etc. such "dual use" tools like nmap or perl or a web browser etc. Applies in the UK and anywhere else in the world and the rest of the universe, whether you are a British citizen or not.
- New £3.5 million (plus a similar amount nicked from the Metroplitan Police Computer Crime Unit), over 3 years, Police Central e-crime Unit announced by the Home Office. Likely to be even less effective than the now defunct National High Tech Crime Unit launched with £25 million over 3 years in 2001.
- Complaints and Freedom of Information act request to Ofcom - CB radio equipment - is it legal under European regulations, but illegal under UK ones, or not ? Looks like a job for the WhatDoTheyKnow.com FOIA request submission and tracking website, developed by the MySociety.org people.,
- Why can't you move your your crappy Apple IPhone 3G data connection to another mobile device connected to your laptop computer with a better antenna, without breaking the law by re-programming the IMEI , risking up to 5 years in prison under the Mobile Telephones (Re-Programming) Act 2002 ? Why doesn't Apple / O2 allow this ? Possible complaint to Ofcom.
- Cube Attacks on Tweakable Black Box Polynomials (.pdf) academic cryptanalysis by Itai Dinur and Adi Shamir - looks like a powerful technique against some stream ciphers.
- The latest BT / Phorm deep packet inspection / illegal incerception and modification of web pages and cookies technical trial has begun
- Skype communications data log files discovered in China (Chinese Skype client secret logging)
- Home Office and GCHQ's Interception Modernisation Programme - still in the news for a second month.
- The pros and cons of tools to help frustrate Government snooping and Communications Traffic Data analysis, e.g. Tor Exit relay nodes. There are is still embarrassingly few active Tor Exit nodes in the UK compared with other countries.
Please consider setting up a Tor relay:
- Some UK ISPs still vulnerable to total remote access of all of their customers' data, through poor NFS shares and SAN security, apparently.
- Nokia N96 GPS "do everything" phone - "Your own personal cruise missile target homing device"
- Google Android mobile phone - even more of your life sucked up and sold by Google, or the chance to modify and customise some privacy enhancements ?
- The joys of monochrome green computer monitor screens.
- Retro computing and simulation of old Motorola 6502 microprocessor powered games.
- Useful Firefox plug-ins
- London 2600 Christmas Party - Friday 19th December 2008