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.
- Paranoia about cordless phone handset conversations being picked up on FM radio, or other handsets, by family and neighbours - seems unlikely with digital 1.9 GHz DECT phones.
- The BBC TV news and current affairs documentary team who were due to film and interview a few people at the December meeting had to cancel this at the last moment due to staff illness. Some of the other filming, with London 2600 people away from the meeting is still set to go ahead.
- Cory Doctorow's book Little Brother - essential reading and a good Christmas present for teenagers or uoung adults (or politicians and the media), even though the text is available for free under a Creative Commons license.
- 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) back in 2001 / 2002. There is to be Judicial Review oral hearing in chambers, on 20th January 2009, the day that the new US President officially takes over their Government and bureaucracy.
- Home Office and GCHQ's Interception Modernisation Programme - no Communications Data Bill in the Queen's speech, but there is meant to be an alleged public consultation in January 2009.
- 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:
- Ideas and discussion to examine the new "open source" mobile phones e.g. Google Android or fully jail broken Apple iPhone, to see if it is possible fuzz ot down grade the accuracy of a Cell ID location fix, whilst still making cor recieving calls i.e. gaining sime user control over exactly which Cell Base station the handset establishes a handshake with, ideally not the nearest ones.
- Implications of the European Court of Humn Rights jugment in the Marper case, regarding the indefinate retention of the DNA human tissue samples, DNA profiles and fingerprints by the Police, even if you are innocent or never charged wit
with a criminal offence: Full text of the judgment: S. AND MARPER v. THE UNITED KINGDOM - 30562/04 [2008] ECHR 1581 (4 December 2008) - Programming with Microsoft's Crypto API. - Kerckhoffs' principle
- Scanning for apparently legal internet addresses in the experimental allocation e.g. 255.255.255.0
- Re-flashing a cheap USN BlueTooth dongle to accept some expensive commercial wireless security / hacking software.
<;i>Ultraviolet dyed liquid coolant and plumbing for over clocked customised games PCs.
- London 2600 Christmas Party - Friday 19th December 2008