Posts by sictransit

File Explorer gets facelift in latest Windows 11 build

It looks like you're finding a file. Can I help?

Share and Enjoy™

Sueball over breach of more than 5 million payment cards at Dixons Carphone hit for six

Big costs implications

Significant because “misuse of private information” and “breach of confidence” claims can be covered by after-the-event insurance for legal costs, but a pure data protection claim is not similarly insurable, exposing claimants to defendants’ potentially huge costs (as well as their own) if they lose. https://panopticonblog.com/2021/07/30/important-new-high-court-judgment-on-data-breach-litigation/ So narrowing the scope like this strongly deters speculative claims.

Windows 11 still doesn't understand our complex lives – and it hurts

Re: Browser sessions don't work as you've described

Chrome will let you log in with different Google accounts simultaneously in different tabs.

What does London's number 65 bus have to hide? OS caught on camera setting fire to '22,000 illegal file(s)!!'

Re: Encrypted video files

"It is important to understand that the X200 file system is a subset of the PC FAT32 file system..."

Micros~1? ClippyZilla? BSOD Bob? There can be only one winner. Or maybe two

Bing bong

Bingzilla

The BadaBing

Experts: No need to worry about Europe's navigation sats going dark for days. Also: What the hell is going on with those satellites?!

Update 17 July

Update today: https://www.gsc-europa.eu/news/galileo-initial-service-recovery-actions-underway “The progress is being closely monitored; it is too early to confirm an exact service recovery date.” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Cop films chap on body-worn cam because he 'complains about cops a lot'. Chap complains

Re: How covert was it?

In fact the tribunal haven’t yet decided whether it was covert or not. They’ve only determined the preliminary issue that use of the bodycam in someone’s home amounted to “surveillance”. (The IPT doesn’t make this explicit at the beginning or end of its judgment, but makes it clearer in paragraph 25.) Hence no findings so far about flashing LEDs or the visibility of any written warnings.

Link to judgment

Thanks for the link to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal’s main judgments page. But the IPT seems to have broken its own link from there to the judgment itself.

The PDF can be found at https://www.ipt-uk.com/docs/IPT%20Judgment%20-%20AB%20v%20Hants%20Constabulary.pdf

New UK drone laws are on the way – but actual Drones Bill still in limbo

> What is a "drone" when it comes to this legislation? How is one defined?

A drone is defined in the amending order as a “small unmanned aircraft” (SUA), which in turn is defined in the main Air Navigation Order as

“any unmanned aircraft, other than a balloon or a kite, having a mass of not more than 20kg without its fuel but including any articles or equipment installed in or attached to the aircraft at the commencement of its flight”.

But note that the amending order exempts drones weighing less than 250g from the new operator registration and pilot certification requirements.

The amending order also give the Secretary of State freedom to make regulations in future imposing a minimum age limit on drone operators, on or after the new operator registration and pilot certification rules come into force on 30 November 2019. There seems to be no power to refuse to certify drone pilots on account of their age.

Incidentally, the article is not strictly right to say that the new legislation “will come into force (if passed)”. The amending order needs no parliamentary endorsement, having been approved by the Privy Council on 23 May. The order is now law and will come into force without any debate or vote in parliament, unless MPs or Lords put down an annulment motion for which a majority of the Commons or Lords then votes within 40 days of today (excluding parliamentary breaks).

Cambridge Analytica dismantled for good? Nope: It just changed its name to Emerdata

Re: The title is no longer required.

In a hole…

High Court gives UK.gov six months to make the Snooper's Charter lawful

Re: I bet they wanted to delay till next year ....

The government has said it will be using powers under the European Communities Act 1972 to make the regulations bringing the Investigatory Powers Act into line with EU law. Those powers give the government freedom to either sign the regulations directly without any parliamentary debate or vote (“negative procedure”, in which case MPs or Lords can subsequently take no action if they don’t mind, or choose to put the regulations to a vote to annul them within 40 days), or else obtain the prior approval of the Lords and Commons, by having each House vote on a final draft before the minister signs the regulations (“affirmative procedure”, which is what the Government has said it intends to do here).

It’s purely down to political judgement/courtesy/urgency whether the government opts for the procedure that requires a prior vote.

But as you point out, it’s vanishingly rare for the Lords or Commons to actually block regulations, though sometimes the government sees which way the wind is blowing and changes tack before controversial regulations are formally published.

In the current case, the hands of parliament and the government are effectively tied by the EU and the ruling of its Court of Justice, unless parliament wanted to give the UK a reputation for flouting its treaty obligations. So the parliamentary vote is something of a charade with no legal effect but adding an air of political legitimacy to doing what is required to be done.

NHS Digital execs showed 'little regard' for patient ethics by signing data deal

Link to the report

Committee statement and report (or report PDF)

Revealed: UK.gov's 'third direction' to keep tabs on spies' potentially criminal activities

Document now online

The Direction is now available* on IPCO's javascript-riddled website. (*cunningly encrypted as a poor-quality scan of a faded photocopy of a low-res fax)

Transcription:

Investigatory Powers Act 2016

Investigatory Powers Commissioner (Additional Directed Oversight Functions) (Security Service agent participation in criminality) Direction 2017

The Prime Minister, in exercise of the power conferred by section 230 of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (“the Act)[sic], directs the Investigatory Powers Commissioner as follows:

Citation and Commencement

1. This direction may be cited as the Investigatory Powers Commissioner (Additional Directed Oversight Functions) (Security Service agent participation in criminality) Direction 2017.

2. This Direction comes into force on 1ˢᵗ September 2017.

Additional Review Functions

3. The Investigatory Powers Commissioner shall keep under review the application of the Security Service guidelines on the use of agents who participate in criminality and the authorisations issued in accordance with them.

Signed: Theresa May

Date: 22/8/17

Why, why, Mr American Pai? FCC boss under increasing pressure in corporate favoritism row

Re: What a Guy

"The case has also taken on a political dimension thanks to Sinclair's promotion of Republican issues including the controversial use of pre-recorded 'must run' news segments that its subsidiaries are ordered to play on local TV stations and which often feature a strongly partisan tone." https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/15/fcc_chairman_investigation/ #family

£60m, five years late... Tag criminal tagging as a 'catastrophic waste' of taxpayers' cash

Re: Radical Suggestion...

“Holding an offender in prison costs around £90 per day, compared to offender tags which cost around £12−13 per day.” https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmpubacc/458/45806.htm#footnote-019-backlink

Facebook has open-sourced encrypted group chat

See also: Group Messaging in WhatsApp and Signal

"due to flaws in both Signal and WhatsApp...it’s theoretically possible for strangers to add themselves to an encrypted group chat"

from Matthew Green's blog: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/01/10/attack-of-the-week-group-messaging-in-whatsapp-and-signal/

Give a boffin a Xeon and a big GPU, get a new big prime number

The power of 2

Generalised Fermat Number = a^(2^n) + 1

or, more generally, a^(2^n) + b^(2^n)

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GeneralizedFermatNumber.html

919444^1048576 + 1 = 919444^(2^20) + 1 = (53×4337×2^2)^(2^20) + 1

Q: How many drones are we bombing ISIS with? A: That's secret, mmkay

Link to judgment

Link to the open judgment and background papers: https://dronewars.net/2017/08/17/information-tribunal-dismisses-drone-wars-appeal-over-british-drone-secrecy/

Windows XP crashed too much to spread WannaCrypt

“it was assumed – including by El Reg – that unpatched Windows XP systems were part of the problem”

Too modest.

“Many assumed Wannacry could infect any pre-Windows 10 systems, however it mostly infected Windows 7 computers that hadn't pick up Microsoft's March security patch for the SMB bug. That's because the malware's implementation of EternalBlue is ineffective on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003: it simply wouldn't work reliably.”

– ElReg, 20 May 2017 https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/20/wannacry_windows_xp/