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.
- Latest legal and media publicity developments in the Gary McKinnon "Pentagon Hacker" extradition case - see the FreeGary.org.uk support blog.
- Welcome to the teenage visitor from Newcastle, and to "Emmanuel Goldstein" the editor of 2600 Magazine from New York, in Europe on his way to HAR next week.
- Travel plans for attending Hacking At Random, Vierhouten, Netherlands - Thursday 13th to Sunday 16th August 2009 - it is all sold out and we do not have any spare tickets !
- At the Trocadero, on the way to the pub, we passed by some sort of robotic cyborg with glaring blue LED eyes and a synthesized voice, which was entertaining the crowds of tourists, who were very well equipped with digital cameras and camera phones etc.
- Some (non) progress on the Freedom of Information Act request to the Home Office suggested at a previous London 2600 meeting, to try to elicit which major "Communications Service Providers" i.e. which Telcos and ISPs have been served with "a notice in writing" by the Home Secretary, under The Data Retention Regulations 2009 which came into force in 6th April 2009.
The Home Office email system has sent Read Receipts, but the Home Office has simply not replied at all, let alone sent back a substantive reply within the statutory 20 working days, so they are now, yet again, illegally in breach of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 section 10 time for compliance with a request. The Information Commissioner's Office has written to them "informally" on Friday 7th August, to remind them of their statutory duty. Unfortunately there is no legal power to criminally prosecute the Home Office for this illegal inaction of theirs.
- i.e. by Friday 21st August
Any public authority in receipt of such a request is under a duty to respond within 20 working days of receipt. As it is the case that you have not responded but acknowledged receipt of the request, we would ask that you now respond within 10 working days of receipt of this letter
There is also a Home Office Internal Review of this illegal stupidity:
I regret to inform you that the Internal Review (Time Complaint) has not yet been completed. This is due to a number of issues surrounding this case. I offer my sincerest apologies and now aim to complete the review no later than the 14th August 2009.
- Keep a look out for this new type of digital camera on the streets of London - presumably it is a speed trap camera, but does it also do Automatic Number Plate recognition (ANPR), and since it is sited to take photos of the front of oncoming vehicles, does it also attempt to photograph the driver and front seat passengers ?
Note the private IP Address label on the back: IP: 10.54.229.102 - Mention was made of the Sentinels of London blog for some other images of roadside and public transport snooping / surveillance systems.
- Firefox 3.52 private browsing - pros and cons, memory usage
- Psion Series 5mx (now obsolete) PDA.
- Secure hard disk deletion (see Spy Blog's Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers - File Deletions ) and the risks of using USB flash memory for storing cryptographic keys or other very sensitive data.
- The Hackers Voice Digest number 3 - printed edition. Problems for the Chinese printers with the genuine GCHQ recruitment advert for "31337" hackers.
- Implications of the large number of potential denial of service and remote access buffer overflows etc. discovered through the "fuzzing" of critical core XML libraries, across multiple platforms and vendors - see the Codenomicon press release.
- Home Office Regulation of Investigatory Powers and DNA Database "public consultations".
- Book Review: Anna Minton's Ground Control -