Posts by Woodnag

Google Chrome calculates your autoplay settings so you don't have to - others disagree

Actually, just need to prevent detection of autoplay disable

If website can't detect autoplay disable, it can't do a workaround.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49939436/how-to-detect-if-chrome-safari-firefox-prevented-autoplay-for-video

Tech ambitions said to lie at heart of Britain’s bonkers crash-and-burn Brexit plan

ARM?

UK allowed Softbank (Japanese holding company) to buy ARM, so I'll take any statements about protection and generation of Great British Technology as propaganda pretending that Something is Being Done...

The Honor MagicBook Pro looks nice, runs like a dream, and isn't too expensive either. What more could you want?

The Honor MagicBook Pro is the 'spensive US version. The Honour MagicBook Pro will be the one with UK keyboard.

Highways England primes market for £2bn tech spend as part of massive investment in crumbling roads network

Re: Highways England == WTF?

Better off nipping down to the Hop Blossom in Farnham for the Fullers.

What legacy is IBM really shooting for? Cheating its own salespeople out of millions? Here we go again, allegedly

Never having worked in Sales?

You've not worked much with good sales people either, I suspect. For every commercial (maximum profit oriented) outfit, it's the key to success. Good sales people win business for mediocre products by relationship. Good marketing/business people work with sales to ensure that the market leading products aren't under-priced.

Ex-Uber chief security officer charged, accused of covering up theft of personal info from databases by hackers

So his crime was actually lying to Fed

If he'd said nothing, he'd be ok. Like Martha Stewart.

UK govt reboots A Level exam results after computer-driven fiasco: Now teacher-predicted grades will be used after all

I have come across three business cards from Principle Engineers in my career..

Whoops, our bad, we may have 'accidentally' let Google Home devices record your every word, sound – oops

Re: Or more likely ...

It's worse than that. It analysed the scream, worked out who's dead and who's alive, and ordered the shovel of the appropriate size. Or a powered hole digger if it knows that the survivor is incapable of the diggin' work.

UK data watchdog having a hard time making GDPR fines stick: Marriott scores another extension, BA prepares to pay 11% of £183m penalty threat

Details please...

...at least the general basis of the case

Dell trims workforce, says it's taking 'proactive steps to prepare for uncertainties' mid-pandemic

Proactive step?

No, a proactive step would have been to institute mild pay cuts, in the 5% to 10% range (rising cut with rising salary/level) 5 months ago to avoid laying off 6% of the workforce now, and severely damaging workforce morale.

Layoffs are reactive by their very nature.

Brit unis hit in Blackbaud hack inform students that their data was nicked, which has gone as well as you might expect

Of course, the storage was actually illegal

EU data cannot be stored in US servers. It's called GDPR.

https://noyb.eu/en/next-steps-users-faqs

UK surveillance laws tightened up as most spying demands to be subject to warrants

Re: "all was well in state surveillance land"

The surveillance IS about the paedos. As soon as Ghislaine is detected to be about to talk about Prince Andrew, she'll commit suicide in her cell too!

Re: Step in the right direction

Ah, but can you use GDPR to pre-emptively refuse permission for telcos and delivery services to pass on your info without a judicial paper?

An axe age, a sword age, Privacy Shield is riven, but what might that mean for European businesses?

Re: Emis GP medical records?

Amazon (AWS) falls under 702 FISA, which means US government has access to the data, so AWS storage is not allowed for EU citizen's data under GDPR.

https://noyb.eu/en/next-steps-eu-companies-faqs

Since UK has been playing fast and loose with UK patient records to make money, this will be interesting.

Reality

Ashley Gorski (ACLU)

@ashgorski

Some reporting is suggesting that the SCCs will remain viable mechanisms for any EU-US transfer. Based on the court's analysis of US law, that's simply not the case. DPCs will be required to halt data flows.

https://twitter.com/ashgorski/status/1283756155152596994

Privacy Shield binned after EU court rules transatlantic data protection arrangements 'inadequate'

Re: More legal misdirection -- good try, but COMPLETELY BESIDE THE POINT!

Unfortunately surveillance isn't just about catching bad guys (oh, think of the children!), partly because the most successful criminals are protected by the status quo because they are an untouchable part of the fabric. It's about keeping tabs on those challenging the status quo (think whistleblowers), and those protesting the status quo.

Re: Haters gonna hate, spies gonna spy...

This isn't about preventing spying. It's about who gets your private data, legally, as a matter of course.

Re: More legal misdirection -- good try, but COMPLETELY BESIDE THE POINT!

This doesn't stop spies spying.

This stops businesses passing private data to others (including governments).

If data is used in a court case, it may matter how the evidence was obtained, partly in the legal admissability sense, partly because the method used to obtain may have to be disclosed... spying orgs don't like that.

Re: Standard contractual clauses

Brexit doesn't mean exiting GDPR.

But your MP is right... the 5-eyes share data on each others' citizens to work around "thou shall not spy on thy own" type laws.

Re: Standard contractual clauses

There's a separate case that the Irish DPC is avoiding ruling by being incredibly slow.

https://noyb.eu/en/judicial-review-against-dpc-over-slow-procedure-granted

Re: Standard contractual clauses

Yes. Useful summary here: http://eulawanalysis.blogspot.com/2020/07/you-were-only-supposed-to-blow-bloody.html

"Schrems reformulated his complaint to the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) about data transfers arguing that the United States does not provide adequate protection as United States law requires Facebook Inc. to make the personal data transferred to it available to certain United States authorities, such as the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the data is used in a manner incompatible with the right to private life, and that therefore future transfers by Facebook should be suspended."

Re: Standard contractual clauses

See https://noyb.eu/en/CJEU-Media-Page

Vera Jourová didn't tell the truth. SCCs are not valid where US gov by US law gets to see the traffic. So not Facebook etc. For bank transactions, fine.

See https://www.twitter.com/maxschrems

"It seems that @VeraJourova is simply ignoring the #CJEU a second time here. The Judgement is clear that you can't just use the SCCs again and there is no "toolbox" to be used when a US company falls under #FISA and alike... "

Google: OK, OK, we pinky promise not to suck Fitbit health data into the borg. Now will you approve the sale?

"Fitbit health and wellness data will not be used for Google ads"

Thanks. That's just one tiny opportunity in the sea of ways to monetise the data.

TomTom bill bomb: Why am I being charged for infotainment? I sold my car last year, rages Reg reader

Re: As I read that

He started the TT contract from the car. I'd expect that I'd be able to stop it from the car too.

Hey NYPD, when you're done tear-gassing and running over protesters, can you tell us about your spy gear?

Re: Republicans, Trump is finished

You are sure he leave the White House? If he contests the election result, he'll stay. And he will contest if he loses.

Google isn't even trying to not be creepy: 'Continuous Match Mode' in Assistant will listen to everything until it's disabled

GDPR

So if I go to somebody's house and Continuous Match Mode is enabled, who has to get my consent? Bearing in mind the voice surveillance isn't necessary for my visit, so by GDPR law I have to be proactively offered an opt-in or -out...

Ah lovely, here's something you can do with those Raspberry Pis, NUC PCs in the bottom of the drawer: Run Ubuntu Appliances on them

Daily updates?

If I build something web-facing, it would be locked down from web-sourced changes. There are going to be pwned stories about this.

Couple wrongly arrested over Gatwick Airport drone debacle score £200k payout from cops

Not an admission of a problem though

"We recognise that things could have been done differently and, as a result, Sussex Police have agreed to pay you compensation and legal costs."

should, not could, and a mention of procedural changes to avoid recurrence?

Whatsapp blamed own users for failure to keep phone number repo off Google searches

FB and GDPR

See https://noyb.eu/en/open-letter to understand that FB just ignores GDPR, with help from Ireland.

California bigwigs rule Uber, Lyft dial-a-ride drivers are employees, not contractors

Re: I know many people who work so-called "gig economy" jobs here in California.

Why?

Legal complaint lodged with UK data watchdog over claims coronavirus Test and Trace programme flouts GDPR

legislation to prevent abuse of the data or access for any other purpose

Legislation prevents nothing. It's a vehicle to punish transgression, at most.

Privacy activists prep legal challenge against UK plan to keep coronavirus contact-tracing data for two decades

Optional?

It's increasingly clear that the the test-and-trace system will be mandated pretty soon.

So you really didn't touch the settings at all, huh? Well, this print-out from my secret backup says otherwise

Re: Be liberal in what you accept

What is spindled anyway?

Re: Ah, customers.

The way to leave a paper trail without being quite so confrontational is the send an email documenting the instructions to the boss, asking for clarification of a single point. If the confirmation is verbal, re-send the email with that.

Re: Paper trails...

Two years ago I was at an automatic gearbox rebuild specialist (two guys and a large floorspace) looking under a Mini bonnet. The new small BMW one, which is crammed in there. I forget what the hours were to pull out and put in, but a lot. They said that the car was left there by a warranty company who wanted these guys not to rebuild the existing automatic gearbox, but instead to swap out the automatic gearbox for a supplied reconditioned unit. They refused, because the "reconditioned unit" was likely shite, and they'd be lumped with labour costs of swapping it out again.

Apple-Google COVID-19 virus contact-tracing API to bar location-tracking access

Wording

Are they "banning location-tracking" or "preventing location-tracking"? What if the app comprises two processes, which communicate, and the while BLE process is "not ... able to access or even seek permission to access location data", the companion process can and does?

We could have pwned Microsoft Teams with a GIF, claims Israeli infosec outfit

BS?

Do you mean the weekly all-hands bullshit meeting that pretends to be an "Is everyone well and happy?" check, but is really an "Is everyone working hard and getting stuff done?" sniff test.

Attention, lockdown DIY fans: UK hardware flinger Robert Dyas had credit card data and more skimmed from website

Hmm

"We became aware on 30 March 2020 that malicious software (malware) had been uploaded on to our ecommerce website by an external third party, which was immediately blocked by our IT Security team"

malware... uploaded... immediately blocked. Sounds good, until you read more carefully.

Apple: We respect your privacy so much we've revealed a little about what we can track when you use Maps

The problem is...

...that if Apple collects the data, they can be subpoeana'd for it (1), given a National Security Letter to demand real-time access to it (2), similary court-ordered forced to de-anonomise it (3) under COVID emergency pretense.

ZX Spectrum prototype ROM is now available for download courtesy of boffins at the UK's Centre for Computing History

Nostalgia

What makes me sad is how bloated modern design teams are, with cookbook assembled software using libraries, when in the days of Acorn Atom, Beeb, ZX8x, Speccy the teams were 2 engineers and the cat, and they did everything hard and soft. The cat just supervised, of course.

Google: You know we said that Chrome tracker contained no personally identifiable info? Yeah, about that...

social media accounts

So refusing access to social media accounts is taken as denial of having social media accounts?

Linkedin is now a social media account unfortunately... which is why I cut my profile down to a minimum.

Google to appeal against €7m fine from Swedish watchdog for failing to remove search results under GDPR

legal basis

"Google does not have a legal basis for informing site-owners when search result listings are removed."

I suspect that the law doesn't say that Google can't inform site-owners when search result listings are removed...

Auf wiedersehen, pet: UK Deutsche Bank contractors plan to leave rather than take 25% pay cut for IR35 – report

Not quite

Those waiting lists would be smaller if NHS would budget and pay for 100% of the consultants time.

Oracle staff say Larry Ellison's fundraiser for Trump is against 'company ethics' – Oracle, ethics... what dimension have we fallen into?

Nope

You have it in reverse for USA. Only the people on the top floor will have contracts, which spell out every term of employment, separation etc. It binds both ways.

The minions don't have contracts, and can resign or be terminated without notice. That's what 'at will' means.

In UK, full time employees expect a contract by right, and if a company doesn't issue it then the terms are normally the best an employee can wish for under challenge.

Gin and gone-ic: Rometty out as IBM CEO, cloud supremo Arvind Krishna takes over, Red Hat boss is president

Some interesting analysis from The Cringe:

https://www.cringely.com/2020/01/31/predictions-for-2020-ibm-and-trump/

EU've been naughty: GDPR has netted bloc €114m in fines since 2018

I expect the BA fine to be quietly brushed under that tired old rug, 'forgotton about', and not collected...

Unlocking news: We decrypt those cryptic headlines about Scottish cops bypassing smartphone encryption

Re: Fail to see what the fuss is

I think you miss the point.

Right now, there are some controls on when a phone can be slurped. But the law can change.

Before RIPA, passwords were private.

Before even then, silence was a right and could not be used against the defendent.

Why is a 22GB database containing 56 million US folks' personal details sitting on the open internet using a Chinese IP address? Seriously, why?

Re: be sued into oblivion? No

...provision of the CCPA allows businesses the opportunity to avoid a consumer suit under the private right of action provision by “curing” the violation of “its duty to implement and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices” that resulted in “unauthorized access and exfiltration, theft, or disclosure” of the consumer’s personal information. To pursue statutory damages under the CCPA, would-be plaintiffs must first provide the would-be defendant business with 30 days’ written notice that the data security provision of the CCPA has been violated. Id. § 1798.150(b). The business then has 30 days to “cure” the violations and provide the plaintiffs with “an express written statement that the violations have been cured and that no further violations shall occur.” Id. If the business does so, then the plaintiff may not request statutory damages in a subsequent suit.

https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/a-closer-look-at-the-ccpa-s-private-28984/

be sued into oblivion? No

California's new privacy law doesn't have a right of private action.

If at first you don't succeed, pry, pry again: Feds once again demand Apple unlock encrypted iPhones in yet another terrorism case

Re: Yeah, sure

It's not a question of trusting the citizen. It's a question of maintaining the status quo by detecting potential threats to the military-business complexes and defusing them before they materialise. Not bomb threats, political threats like effective leaders in civil disobedience, or rising popular and effective polititians like AOC getting into office.