* Posts by Danny 2

2212 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jul 2009

The Edward Snowden guide to practical privacy

Danny 2

Re: Snowden, The Anachronism

"Private citizens afflicted with garden-variety paranoia would be better served taking the NSA's advice on cybersec matters."

NSA advice = Adopt. The. Position.

I can't tell if you are being serious or joking.

Danny 2

Re: He missed one.

1. Epic fail, provably true or undeniably untrue, whichever.

Snowden was indeed hired and trusted with private data, OUR private data his employers had no right to have. He eventually realised that was morally and legally wrong so he told us about it at great risk to himself.

Your 'truth' is equivalent to "Don't keep records of the torture of your prisoners", when the actual truth is don't torture anyone, ever.

Danny 2

Re: So when

I post sensitive information here, as frankly I've lost any privacy long before now. There is a "chilling effect" even for lost boys like me though knowing everything I post here is inevitably on my 'permanent record'. For example, on the Spanish Granny Kinder Egg story I was about to joke about wanting to smuggle drugs into prison if I could buy any drugs on the outside except from my drug-dealer 'complainant', but I realised that comment would be an invitation for an anal probe. Aw fuck it, I'm long over due a prostrate exam anyway.

Anon Cow status via Tor on security stories here is my best advice unless you are cheer-leading for the state, it is awfully embarrassing that El Reg isn't yet HTTPSed up with it's own secure drop box.

Danny 2

"The same Micah Lee ...The question I have is"

You do realise that you'd better post that question on the original article, https://theintercept.com/2015/11/12/edward-snowden-explains-how-to-reclaim-your-privacy/?comments, or directly to micah.lee@theintercept.com

No offence to you, I was myself perturbed by Tails dropping TrueCrypt, just saying...

Danny 2

Re: Other tips....

I have tips to muck up your life.

1. Tolerating psychopathic lovers

2. Tolerating psychopathic politicians and public servants

3. The wrong type of psychoactive substances at the wrong time and place

4. Mocking the security services (they don't like it up 'em)

You got any tips yourself? I have some tips for you lot to improve my life. How about doing away with 'Contempt of Court'? I'm a freaking anarchist, contemptuous of nearly everyone, how is that not an in-built trap?

Danny 2

Re: Off point

Rector of Glasgow University. He recently slapped down the Scottish Government for a 'reform' to our ancient Scottish uni's even I couldn't get worked up about. He is diligent, you have to give him that.

Danny 2

I was taken down by a cheapo Canon printer last week. An elderly relative bought it against my advice, was disappointed that 'wireless' still meant a power-cord. I rushed at it because I've far more important things on my plate just now. The software didn't work with Win10, even the latest download, insisted on being logged on as admin to access the internet rather than just asking for an admin password, and even then it said I've have to change the household wifi encryption to it's lower standard - I refused and it crashed the PC losing hours of unsaved unrelated work. Totally my fault I know, a litany of errors, but still, sadistically poor programming. The shop didn't even question it's return, they could tell the mood I was in.

Shadow state? Scotland's IT independence creeps forth

Danny 2

Re: Scottish scientist faces Twitter trial over republican tweets!

ARRSE is great for exposing Walter Mitty's posing as SAS heroes, no question. It's not really an arbitrator of anything else though, and whoever there quoted Dr Pepe Le Pew as a source was probably Mrs Le Pew.

I'm not defending the original poster, just saying the person abusing him, Trent Whoever, has no credibility.

Danny 2

Re: Scottish scientist faces Twitter trial over republican tweets!

rationalwiki?

Who says it's rational beyond an Anon Cow?

Please, do me, do me! I guess I could contribute myself myself, it being a 'wiki' after all. Why ask you?

Registrant Contact Information:

Name: Trent Toulouse

Organization: RationalWiki

City: Hamilton

State: Ontario

Zip: L8S2E4

Country: CA

Phone: +1.5052502814

Post by Doctor Trent Toulouse.

"A few weeks will mark another milestone for the site, 6 years! I had just started my graduate school program up in Canada. I was drawn to Conservapedia ...."

Yeah, stopped reading there. Too Mad; Didn't Read. My dear 'doctor' (not a real doctor as far as I've found) didn't bother hiding his own Whois address from his smearing website. I blame his parents, I'd be mad too with a name like that, very reminiscent of the smelly cat-rapist Pepé Le Pew.

Danny 2

Re: We're already more than half way to a National ID Card anyway

"If the Government wants a National ID card scheme"...then "I don't want to be joined to another object by an inclined plane wrapped helically around an axis" (BBT)

Remember John Swinney was the uber-lawyer who justified rewarding the Scottish Census contract to the Abu Ghraib torturers, "We would never award any contract to *convicted* criminals", whilst simultaneously squashing a prosecution of CACI in the Scottish courts.

I did prisoner-support for a while, and I wrote to Angela Constance about a prisoner being abused by the SPSin her constituency, and her reply was curt and daft, "I support the victims of crime not the criminals". Aye, when the victims of crime are themselves victims of criminal abuse by your state then you prioritise the possible tabloid headlines over actual justice.

There are some good people left in the SNP, but very few in the Scottish Government, and a diminishing amount. 'Slightly Better than Cameron and Blair' is a sad, sad slogan. Bought and sold for English gold, US dollars, Chinese Yuan...

Danny 2

Re: Fairly standard for the SNP tbh

Not really. I think most people in the Shetlands would rather be ruled from Oslo rather from Edinburgh or London, but so would the rest of us. Oslo invested, they have an oil-fund. All we got was an Iraq war and Trident.

Danny 2

Re: CCTV

I was a bit shocked 20 years ago walking through Livingston police station, they had a wall of screens of live feeds from all over the town. You kind of expect that in a city-centre especially now, but I hadn't ever spotted a single camera in that small town.

The top cop there had a chat with me about them trying to bribe a student activist to spy on their student politics, the student of course exposed them in the media, and the cops attitude was telling, "If we can do it we will do it". No regard for morality or legality, just give them a tool and they'll use it to beat you with.

A very decent young man emerged from their training and complained to me bitterly about human rights legislation stopping him doing his job. And expected my sympathy.

Danny 2

Re: Last rant here, promise

I think they start off good but power corrupts them, like wealth turns people mean. Hardly a plot spoiler, I know, somebody just crucify me now. The rigged Monopoly game in the link is interesting, as my single-parent sister did the opposite. I caught my nephew and niece playing Monopoly and both were in debt, so I asked how they could both be losing. My sis hadn't taught them to take money at the start of the game "to make it more realistic". Bitter woman, now a DWP manager of course but her kids turned out okay.

Danny 2

Re: Welcome to Scotland

Plenty of dead and dying homeless in Edinburgh - 366 registered last time I put in a FoI request, a tiny subsection of the several thousand unregistered homeless. And even the registered ones can wait for over five years in a city full of empty houses.

And yet we get George effing Clooney waltzing in to support a homelessexploitation posh cafe, and all the darlings are out to fawn. As bad as the Sally Anne. We've yet to choose a national anthem, but 'The Preacher and the Slave' should be the only choice.

Danny 2

Last rant here, promise

I helped get some of the SNP elected and I'm regretting that now, they are just as bad as the scum they replaced. (Also I'm the guy who told them their ccTLD could and should be .Scot rather than their proposed .Sco, effin' muppets)

Police Scotland are psychopathic, even by my low standards. They were never nice overall though generally you could find a decent cop if you searched them out, but since the force merger they are all just box-ticking, corrupt, sadistic morons. So are our sheriffs and all our politicians. The local gangsters are more reasonable and sensible. Instead of just complaining, I have a positive suggestion:

We impose psychological testing on pilots, so why don't we do that with police, judiciary, civil servants and teachers? A crazy pilot can only kill you for a short time, relatively low risk compared to the damage our 'public servants' spread.

Aircraft laser strikes hit new record with 20 incidents in one night

Danny 2

Re: Meh

There was a Winchburgh man sent down for firing fireworks at aeroplanes landing at Edinburgh Airport. He wasn't a ned, he was a middle-aged home-owner pissed off by the flight path. Admittedly he was mad, but he was driven mad by the noise. Flight paths do tend to fly over poor populated areas rather than more sparsely populated rich areas, and the poor folk do get annoyed by that.

I am in no way defending the laser-pointers - I don't fly anymore but if I saw anyone doing that then I'd brick them. After all, if they did bring down a plane then it might land on me. Am I allowed to say I'd brick someone to a cop? Och, tonight you should be worrying about Daesh and right-wing retaliation, not silly buggers like me.

Sound waves could power the future's magnetic HDDs

Danny 2

Re: It's not the size of your guitar but what you do with it

Hendrix was smeared as electronica when he started. You'd have loved him at the time. My fave was 'Hey Joe', as he was always at his best riffing off other peoples lyrics.

'All Along the Watchtower' was great too, except it was misinterpreted in the US and led to the Jehovah's Witnesses cult.

You may also have heard of 'Purple Haze' by Prince, a song Hendrix covered years in advance, proving he'd met the 12th Doctor during his guitar and shades phase.

Danny 2

Re: It's not the size of your guitar but what you do with it

You missed a joke, but that's completely forgivable as it was a very wee joke, you'd have needed an electron microscope to spot it.

When transcribing data at low power or size then cross-talk noise becomes an increasing problem. I never said it was a good joke, just trying to keep it technical here. Your reply is actually a good example of cross-talk at a human level, but hell, at least you spotted the reference, thumbs up for that!

Danny 2

It's not the size of your guitar but what you do with it

I'm overly amused at data being clocked at 100mph....

90 miles an hour girl is the speed I drive

You tell me it's alright, you don't mind a little pain

You say you just want me to take you for a ride

You're just like cross-talk traffic

Prison telco recorded inmates' lawyer-client calls, hack reveals

Danny 2

I did a wee bit of prisoner support in the UK, until the police punished me by raiding my elderly parents house. It was perfectly obvious me and the prisoners were being spied on, although the prisoners themselves doubted that at the time.

I was hugely surprised to get a phone call from one of the prisoners, from a smuggled mobile phone, and I cautioned against that and asked the reasons why.

"It's cheaper than the prison phones"

Prison 'public' telephones have been outsourced to a private company that charges extortionate rates unaffordable to most prisoners earning pennies per hour for prison work, they are prefaced with overly-lengthy messages warning the person receiving the call that the call is from a prison, and of course they are monitored. So instead they smuggle phones.

Why would you care that prisoners are denied affordable telephone calls? You probably don't but you should. Not all prisoners are criminals, and even criminals should be able to contact their families to help stop those innocents following the same route. If nothing else, over-moderation and unfair punishment of monitored phones simply encourages counter-measures that the state has proven unable to clamp down on - of course some nasty prisoners will make malicious mobile calls.

FastMail falls over as web service extortionists widen attacks and up their prices

Danny 2

Re: ProtonMail paid and the attacks kept coming

Can I ask whoever gave this post a thumbs down why? I'm genuinely interested in your reason so I can improve my posts in future, and you can respond anonymously so you've nothing to lose by improving me. I'll give you a tick-list to make it simple:

Did you take a dislike to me IDing GCHQ without actual proof?

Did you take a dislike to my faux 'Internet Tough Guy' first post here?

Do you disagree with the information in my post?

Was it you who I told that I'd encrypted your Index.dat file?

Do you know I shagged your daughter once? Or thrice.

Your feedback would be appreciated to help me help improve your online experience.

Danny 2

Re: ProtonMail paid and the attacks kept coming

I suppose one way to cull the number of botnet computers would be for us to pwn them ourselves, update their security for them, and leave them a polite note how to do it for themselves in future.

A BBC TV programme, Click, did something similar that a few years ago, not patching just leaving a note to the zombies. BBC botnet "broke the law".

I am 95% certain the secondary ProtonMail attack was GCHQ so attacking them doesn't help, they will kill me or worse, so curing their zombie army is a good idea.

As for script-kiddies, I've been pwned before, and my first thought was this person must know more than me because they beat my defences. That was a false assumption, I'd just let down my defences through complacency I was twice able to scare them into backing off through in/credible threats. Incredibly satisfying.

Danny 2

Skillz

The English Armada was more pathetic than the Spanish Armada, yet the Swiss Armada are probably cowering under their mothers duvets tonight. Is this the start of the cyber-war because I'm getting pissed off. I'm about to go in prison and I've friends there, but I will fight back even inside.

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my email provider go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."

Twitter DM character limit liberation spells opportunity for botnets

Danny 2

When Communications Weren't The Best

Thanks El Reg and Jimmy Wales, or else I'd never have heard of this, my new reason to live. Especially intrigued by episode thirty seven, ""When Communications Weren't The Best" - Roobarb builds and launches the most amazing satellite."

Did Custard ever mean anything in comm's jargon, or was custard always just custard?

Old tech, new battles: Inside F-Secure’s formidable Faraday cage

Danny 2

The trouble with mesh Faraday cages is the holes are sized to stop a particular frequency, yet people assume they stop every frequency. Even the solid ones like my tin-foil hat only stop a certain level of power, but my thick lead hat is too heavy for my neck.

I worked in a place that tested microwave transmitters and one of the young lads noticed all the bubbles always ran up the side of his daily bottle of Irn-Bru that was facing a transmitter. He was genuinely worried by that, until I pointed out his daily bottle of Irn-Bru would kill him long before the microwaves did, and he'd never have children anyway because his was pocked-marked pugly due to his daily bottle of Irn-Bru.

Danny 2

Re: Colour blind risk

@MyffyW

At least it's not Rumblr...

My lovely dyslexic ten year old nephew was beating my nasty Scrabble-obsessed mum on their first game, and not only did I catch her cheating him while losing, she stuck a needle into his orange.

Women, can't be alive without them, can't live for long with them.

Danny 2

Re: Colour blind risk

I merely joked because I am seriously worried that my society, and in particular STEM, is more sexist than it was in my youth. I couldn't see any other reason for the posters Anon Cow status from their comment.

El Reg can be a particularly sausage-fest of a place due to all our sarcasm. That shouldn't be putting off any females from posting here openly imo, else our industry is doomed and we will all remain childless.

Danny 2

Re: Colour blind risk...smart-arse

I was failed from Ferranti solely for my Colorblind James experience. I was failed from the Civil Service after getting 97% on their EO exam simply for being a smart arse in the subsequent inteview - but look at how that place has declined since then! I'm enough of a smart arse to tell the difference, thanking you anyway.

Failed from BA after passing all their tests, including the psych, simply for being plebbier than the other three candidates. Got a lot of good jobs though in tech by people who had a similar sense of humour.

A cheeky attitude is essential to a good workplace, in my arrogant opinion. If you ever get promoted then you won't want to be surrounded by Yes Men, will you?

Danny 2

Re: Colour blind risk

My first application for an apprenticeship was at Ferranti. I walked the interviews and tests, being a smart arse, but they failed me because I couldn't tell the difference between orange and purple on their colour tests - all just grey to me. I still don't fully understand that, I know purple, I know orange, I could spot them in a police line-up. Yet my poor male chromosomes left me sexually disadvantaged.

At a company which mistook metric for imperial measurements - hence the initial Tornado nose being filled with concrete ballast rather than the Ferranti radar they had to stick behind the navigator seat.

PS Are you Anon Cow because you are female and just made a true remark about male inferiority? I hope this place isn't just all guys, rather than the free dating site I've been hoping it is.

Danny 2

Bought and sold

I used to respect F-Secure, paid for their software often and recommended it as the best anti-virus. Then their software got hit by a presumably targeted attack, flashing nonsense-texts pop-ups, and they mistook my paid-for version with a free-version. No customer support and poor front-end programming sabotaged what their Faraday caged boffins had come up with.

Look behind you Mikko Hypponen, that's your former paying customers wishing you'd spent a bit more time ensuring your products worked in the real world and a bit less time preening in the mirror before your TEDtalk.

Ah, Finland. I remember when it was all Nokia and cutting edge techies, now it's all just forests and fields.

Ex-GCHQ chief: Bulk access to internet comms not same as mass surveillance

Danny 2

Re: Panopticon innit

Nobody wants ANARCHY, it's a smear word just like democracy used to be. Replace it with 'Participative Democracy' and we'll probably be on common ground. I want a ground-sourced, science-based, grass-roots, joint-approach to stop me making the silly mistakes I keep on making. I don't want the current system of ticking a box for lesser-evils. The current system, not just the current state or one individual 'leader' is the problem. This system is irrational, and it's driving us all irrational to varying degrees.

I'm a Scot, a pro-independence Scot, and I appreciated the recent independence referendum. My cause lost, but at least we had a vote, that was good. I have other issues I'd like to vote on too, and I don't really see why we don't - surely any repeated democratic vote would be better than the current system where we elect incompetent, corrupt lawyers to 'represent' us. If you are too scared to run at the cops then at least stand up to your MP.

Danny 2

Re: Panopticon innit

The Panopticon has an inbuilt limit. It's a prison, innit? If a society becomes a Panopticon then there is no longer any disincentive for crime. UK prisons today are actually the 'safety net' that social security used to provide. I'll get fed on the inside for free, I'll get shelter, it'll be an increasingly popular option as the elastic-band of inequality reaches breaking point. And when an elastic band snaps, then the prison wardens flee.

Have you ever ran at a line of policemen? It's not better than sex, but it's better than than the scariest fairground ride. The look of terror and confusion in their eyes, they just aren't used to it, they normally run at you. I was pushing a girl in a wheelchair at them which must have freaked them more. I highly recommend it, if you get padding and better wheels than we had. You run at them and others will join in.

Yugguy, this is an order, do not back down and do not follow insane orders. Run at them. They are bluffing and you are serious. We outnumber them a hundred thousand to one.

Danny 2

From the moment that the French defenses...

"We shall spy on to the end, we shall spy on France, we shall hack the C compilers, we shall surveille with growing confidence and growing strength in the cloud, we shall defend our offshore tax haven islands, whatever the cost may be to the tax-payer, we shall DDOS the bitches, we shall imprison on any dubious grounds, we shall have CCTV in the fields and in the streets, we shall shite on the proles; we shall never surrender power, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were implicated and starving, then our James Bond franchise beyond the seas, armed and guarded by British tweets, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World Order, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old. "

Danny 2

StartPage is increasingly offline

Not just encrypted email providers, StartPage seems to be under attack, it's certainly failing more and more.

Either GCHQ are complicit / responsible, or at the very least they are failing to protect decent internet sites. Has the much hyped CyberWar started and our PryMinister didn't announce it on the wireless?

F-Secure makes SENSE of smart home IoT insecurities

Danny 2

Re: All your lightbulbs are belong to us!

That's my mum you are denigrating, and that's my job here. Last year she was protected by F-Secure until their software went tits-up on her. Just last week she said, "Look at this Danny, it says it let's me turn on the living room lights from my phone!"

So does the light switch mum, and you won't have to threaten to "get a man in" when all the neighbouring kiddies dim your lights just because they can. IoT = Internet of Threats.

Danny 2

Best. Comment. Ever. So. Far.

"So does an update to lightbulb firmware count as changing the lightbulb, and if so, how is that going to work with the jokes?"

You are funnier than alcohol, and have relieved more pain in me than cannabis ever did. That is high praise, allegedly.

Today's newspapers are fawning over a lost Lord Shelley poem recently rediscovered, and hopefully centuries from now some historian will stumble across your meta-joke buried here to similar praise.

Irish roll out obligatory drone register

Danny 2

3D printed Jet Drone

"The jet-powered UAV - designed by a team from Stratasys and Aurora Flight Sciences - weighs only 15kg, can travel at speeds of over 150 mph and is 80 per cent 3D printed, except for the engine and software components."

- Khaleej Times – Mon, Nov 9, 2015

Virgin Media hikes broadband, phone prices by five per cent

Danny 2

Re: Line rental....

I asked Virgin about that when I initially paid them. There was already a Virgin line in my flat, and I didn't want a phone line, so what was I paying that £16 per month for? Just to subvert Moore's Law.

Danny 2

Re: * sigh *

"where else do you go if you do decide to leave them"

I was kind of hoping some of the smart, decent people commenting here would fill that obvious gap. I guess we all were. *Deep, phlegmy, sigh*

Personally I'm going to prison, I know I'll get better, less surveilled internet access there and a slightly less insane governance too. I suspect now that Iceland would have been a smarter move for me a couple of years ago but unfortunately my TARDIS has materialised inside my nasal duct, audibly.

Danny 2

Shot my load

I just bad-mouthed Virgin on the Talk-talk thread, mainly the difficulty in even cancelling due to their cost-cutting overseas almost English speaking but certainly not Scottish speaking call centre staff. I'm in a bad mood this month, slagging everyone, but El Reg itself is on fire, never better.

GCHQ goes all Cool Dad and tags the streets of Shoreditch with job ads

Danny 2

Too much good TV on El Reg lately

Recently a TV exec complained there was too much good TV lately, his argument is nobody has time to watch them all.

It struck me as a bizarre, insider view at the time, but frankly lately there have been far too many excellent articles on The Register. I have too much time on my hands and even I struggle to read them all and make my silly comments. Won't somebody think of the workers? How is anyone with a job and a family expected to keep up with this quantity of quality articles? They can't, they won't, and the UK's IT and security sector will inevitably suffer as readers struggle to keep up with this extra burden.

Tone it down just a wee bit El Reg, or at least try to get some of these excellent articles into mainstream newspapers. Your recent excellence is blowing minds, surely a terrorist offence worthy of a government clampdown.

TalkTalk: Data was 'secure', erm, we beat rivals on price. Um, scratch that...

Danny 2

Cancelling Virgin

I've just spent this morning cancelling my Virgin account. Their internet was fine, but I'll never use them again since their Indian customer support just isn't compatible with my 'Endi-ee-barr' (Edinburgh) accent. I regret not recording that final 30 minute call for comedy purposes. I hate getting annoyed at poor call-centre staff but I honestly have no idea if the bag to return the router will be sent out in 30 days, when I'll already be gone, or ASAP as I asked. Either way I won't be paying for their cost-cutting ever again.

I'd rather be a hacked Talk Talk customer at this point, almost.

ProtonMail 'mitigates' DDoS attacks, says security not breached

Danny 2

Re: Sceptical

I will upvotes you just because you are honest rather than I agree with you.

Sony - definitely a pissed off sacked Sony sys admin, I've seen that before;

LavaBit - flawless, proof any individual can outsmart an APT, he gave us all hope;

RSA - do you mean the NSA corruption attempt or Adi Shamir 'post encryto speech'? - if the latter then that does worry me, he's way smarter than me and if he is suggesting relying on exfiltration instead of encryption, then I'm doomed, we're all doomed - if the former then we are reliant on the Ladar Levisons of this world ;

McAfee - this packet of peanuts may contain nuts;

Linux, accusations of Chinese State sponsored hacking, BitCoin - file under 'shit happens'. Take the punch and roll with it.

"Marketing ploy, I tells ya!"

You won't believe me then, or at best you'll believe me and not my beliefs. I'll say it anyway, if you doubt me then I have an unusual but traceable history. I trust them more than any other third-party provider. I have been fucked over repeatedly by my state, seen that repeatedly happen to others too. It sprang from CERN, and most brains there are pure science, and most ancillary engineers and support there are infected by that. They are bitchy to each other but they are not marketeers in the normal sense.

Everything eventually comes down to trust in a world where people are paid to lie. I've been betrayed obviously by someone who is a state employee as our private communications couldn't have been hacked, he and the courts kind of admitted it, at least to my satisfaction. If you are doubtful of anyone, anything, then test it through black box testing.

I have been wrong in the recent past. I assured someone a few years ago that they were being paranoid for things Snowden has since proven to be common-place. So don't take my word for it, test it. I am about to go in prison next week for a silly, non-security related reason. I'd have been in prison last year if PM was dodgy - trust me?! Nah, try it for yourself. Is OpenPGP marketing - is, well what ever you do trust? Some things just work. Some people are just decent.

Danny 2

Re: ramping up capacity

ProtonMail is good for non-techie users, you really should at least try it. Any PM 2 PM emails are uncrackable, as this DDoS indicates.

My mother can use it to encrypt emails to strangers who don't know what encryption is just by hitting a tick-box. Not by reading the OpenPGP manual, just by ticking a box. No offence to my mother, but honestly she thought her wireless printer she just bought wouldn't need a power cord - and she now has the same level of encrypted email that most of us do.

(Disclaimer: Other secure email providers are available. All the good ones are also being DDoSed just now)

Danny 2

Re: Sceptical

No down vote because scepticism and facts are in short supply, but from the time-line I read elsewhere I think the ransom was paid after the first attack, to the first attackers, because Proton Mail initially conflated the first attackers with the second attackers.

They initially refused to pay the script-kiddies small ransom, and then caved when they, and everyone close to them, got hit with the tsunami.

My guess on this - feel free to be sceptical again - is that GCHQ (or a similar APT trying to make GCHQ look bad) had been monitoring the Armada Collective, and was ordered by Theresa May (or a similarly ugly APT) to coat-tail on the initial DDoSing.

Forgive my paranoia and simplistic interpretation, personal experience informs me, but ProtonMail had just slagged the UK spy laws on Twitter hours before the attack.

Alternative theory if you prefer: Some immensely powerful yet sad piss-stained hacker got annoyed that ProtonMail were featured in 'Mr Robot'.

I hope the facts do come out because I am guessing and I'd like to know. I've just never been wrong before by blaming GCHQ, it's an increasingly good default setting lately. That bitch be mad.

UN privacy head slams 'worse than scary' UK surveillance bill

Danny 2

Re: HumInt and SigInt both require wisdom

Confirmation Bias is approaching data with a personal bias and so wrongly confirming that bias. What I meant is more innocent, more common, when we approach data with no expectations and yet still misunderstand it. Normal human error.

My point though was that increasingly the police and security services punish their own normal human errors in interpreting data, and so draw wrong conclusions. My evidence for that claim is the increasing number of private corporations used in what used to be the sole function of the state.

In World War Two, all the intelligence came from state agencies like GCHQ, SiS or whoever, and it was generally good intelligence. In Iraq, and in the UK recently, most intelligence came from private outsourced corporates, and it was mostly all bogus derived from torture, abuse, lies and bribes.

Danny 2

Re: "orchestrated campaign for mass surveillance that evidence shows won't prevent terrorism"

Ah, Edge of Darkness. The gorgeous Joanne Whalley - before she became Whalley-Kilmer, and the gorgeous Bob Peck. New Model Army blasting out from my stereo as the police kicked in my door to look for a shotgun I never had, me in my bath-towel, while my neighbours objected to that rather unhelpfully with "If anything he is too quiet normally". Yet at least I was in love, and naive and sexy and fucked, that counts for something in retrospect. Things have changed in more ways than that. We used to think back then that Thatcher was a one off aberration, not the trend she proved to be. Surveillance has changed, and our acceptance of it has changed even as it's become worse. And we ourselves have aged and hopefully grown wiser without sacrificing too many of our principles.

Joanne Walley's character died in Edge of Darkness, at too young an age. I believe in justice.

Danny 2

Smart blood?

Only Edward Snowden Can Save James Bond

A police state is also bad for the police.

Danny 2

HumInt and SigInt both require wisdom

HumInt (Human Intelligence) can be just as mucked up as SigInt (Signals Intelligence) when the surviellers are stupid. The awful abuse and unjust prosecutions relating to Mark Kennedy et al prove that. If the person evaluating good intelligence is just plain stupid, then your state acts stupidly.

Most of us will be able to admit to looking at a pile of data, isolating relevant facts, and then drawing the wrong conclusion. Many of us are able to admit those errors and have smart enough employers who reward admissions of errors of judgement, yet we know we can get punished by a daft employer for admitting such a clanger necessary to learn from.

Lately, since 911, there seems to be an over-emphasis on quantity of intelligence rather than quality of intelligence, a profit motive for outsourced intelligence roles to lie, and a disregard for errors being corrected. That's not just bad for the innocents suffering from bad intelligence, it's bad for the state relying on that diminished intelligence. It's exploitable and indefensible - it's not intelligent.