* Posts by Reginald Onway

34 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Jun 2018

You there. Person, corp, state. Doesn't matter. You better not shoot down or hack a drone. That's our job – US govt

Reginald Onway
Happy

If it looks like a Duck...

The US government has been really pushing drones for police,corporations and governments while feverishly working to suppress use by mere citizens. I figure drones are key players in future plans for more intimate mass surveillance. And so, all the more reason to wave law books in front of users. And, potential abusers.

But, officer, I was minding my own business hunting ducks and this one came along so....

Oh what a feeling: New Toyotas will upload data to AWS to help create custom insurance premiums based on driver behaviour

Reginald Onway

Re: That's settled, then.

Right.

For any of the trackers considerable trial and error engineering will be needed to disable it, while manufacturers will work at hardening the devices.

THEY want to know what we are up to 24/7. It's for our own good. And, of course, to turn a nice profit on selling the loot to data brokers. No doubt juicy .gov contracts are involved also, paid for with our tax dollars.

Reginald Onway
Big Brother

Re: That's settled, then.

OnStar can (could?) be disabled by literally taking apart the box, if you could find it, and removing some key part, (possibly, the antenna).

Strictly DIY because no dealer would touch it or even private mechanics. That was awhile ago. Possibly the device has be hardened now to ensure ubiquitous police state mass surveillance. Crudely cutting wires or pulling connectors would absolutely disable ABS and other functions to the point of making the car un-drivable.

I suppose locating the antenna and caging it might work. I suspect that's much easier said than done.

I do wonder who pays for all the bandwidth.

It's been five years since Windows 10 hit: So... how's that working out for you all?

Reginald Onway

How bad is it?

Yes, it's bad but it's the only game in town for the overwhelming majority of businesses and government agencies now.

AND, that's where the EASY BIG BUCKS (EBB) are at for licenses and support contracts.

As for individual users...well...it's free so you get what you pay for. Or less.

'I think the police are here...' Feds reveal Skype, text chats of Canadian trio charged with $8m crypto-coin fraud

Reginald Onway
Big Brother

Skype sniping

I am glad the evil doers were caught. However, this case demonstrates why MS bought Skype: To make sure there was a back door for police and whomsoever.

Details of Beijing's new Hong Kong security law signal end to more than two decades of autonomy

Reginald Onway
Unhappy

The Sounds of Silence

Pretty much tell how this is going to go over there. Too bad.

Philippines considers app to trace coronavirus carriers

Reginald Onway
Alert

Police state mass surveillance

There's always another good...excuse.

Borky shark: A deserted airport and a Raspberry Pi feeling poorly at baggage claim. Welcome to 2020

Reginald Onway

Diagnosis...

Update supplied by Microsoft?

Google burns down more than 500 private-data-stealing, ad-defrauding Chrome extensions installed by 1.7m netizens

Reginald Onway
Headmaster

Bah!

"malicious extensions appear to have been designed to operate unobtrusively and generate ad revenue by redirecting the victim's browser to a series of host sites – almost all hosted on AWS..."

Based on my experience, AWS is a favorite hiding place of all manner of evil doers these days. Maybe it's a little too easy to get an account and Amazon is way too lax in policing their users.

Or, maybe that's just the way it is...we are all corporate sheep waiting our turn to be fleeced.

Terrifying bug in WhatsApp allows hackers to steal files. So get patching all nine of you using it on the desktop

Reginald Onway
Windows

Optional option:

D E L E T E !

If IS FB you know.

ICANN't approve the sale of .org to private equity – because California's Attorney General has... concerns

Reginald Onway
Alert

DNS 2.0: Who are you? I won't tell 'ya!

Sounds like some secret data mining op. Maybe black bag government money involved. In other words, the usual.

LastPass stores passwords so securely, not even its users can access them

Reginald Onway

Paaper? What's that?

Write your passwords down on a piece of paper then don't show it to anyone. Old tech works.

To catch a thief, go to Google with a geofence warrant – and it will give you all the details

Reginald Onway

Fee or Free?

"Google reportedly has a database called Sensorvault in which it stores location data for millions of devices going back almost a decade."

Which I presume is accessible for a fee. Or, do they just give it away?

Apple calls BS on FBI, AG: We're totally not dragging our feet in murder probe iPhone decryption. PS: No backdoors

Reginald Onway

Re: Am I Stupid or Tired

My understanding is there is a way to access iphone storage and the security chip by literally dissecting the phone bit by bit then kind of reassembling it, and using very high means and a lot ot time to read or manipulate the security features and storage. The point being, cracking it by some teenage thief aint' gonna' happen. Meanwhile an adversary with literally unlimited resources is going to find the cost/reward ratio punitive. (I would guess Apple engineers could modify the security and storage chips tamper proof making it more difficult if not impossible to crack.)

Reginald Onway
Big Brother

Which one is the bad apple?

Strong arming by the FBI to crack Apple is partisan, unethical. shameful and an abuse of authority. It's very difficult to trust the agency or it's highest leaders when they act like this. It comes down to FBI being the bad apple.

Five years in the clink for super-crook who scammed Google, Facebook out of $120m with fake tech invoices

Reginald Onway

So then,

Crime does pay!

(No doubt has a few $Millions$ stashed under the bed or someplace.)

Two can play that game: China orders ban on US computers and software

Reginald Onway

Gee! What about 5G?

Huawei owns many 5G patents. This 5G thing is not going well at all. Why do we need 5G again?

As for balkanization of devices, as long as mine works OK I don't care.

Homeland Security backs off on scanning US citizens, Amazon ups AI ante, and more

Reginald Onway
Big Brother

Facial ID withdrawn....

More than likely ...temporarily... withdrawn until the right scary moment arrives to ram it through in the dead of night.

No wonder cops are so keen on Ring – they can slurp your doorbell footage with few limits, US senators complain

Reginald Onway

Re: Expectation of Privacy: That's a Consituional Right in the USA

These "no expectation of privacy" rants and manifestos are all over the internet in regards RING. I assume it's organized. Many sound like the same PR hack writing them.

Here's the truth: In America, the citizenry DOES have a Constitutional right to Privacy as confirmed by the Supreme Court at various times in various ways. Note there are even several federal privacy laws and even a fourth amendment regarding search and seizure.

In short, you DO have the right to be let alone from GOVERNMENT intrusion.No one can take that away from you. It cannot be waived by someone else checking a box. Even, a Ring cam.

YES, YOU DO have a right to privacy!

Reginald Onway

Trust? Ha! Ha!

First mistake:

"Ring users place their trust in us..."

Second mistake:

Giving "them" money.

Third mistake:

Born stupid.

The Feds are building an America-wide face surveillance system – and we're going to court to prove it, says ACLU

Reginald Onway

Re: The USA can't let China take the lead

Clearly, FBI is following the lead of the PRC and we can be assured it will be used, abused, spindled, folded and mutilated as all other police data bases.

Essentially, every adult in the USA is being forced to submit to booking and monitoring like a common criminal. It's not right, but it is what it is.

I want my face back!

Time to check who left their database open and leaked 7.5m customer records: Hi there, Adobe Creative Cloud!

Reginald Onway

Re: What price Photoshop?

I have an ancient stand alone copy of Photoshop that does what I need to do without selling my soul to rentier capitalists. I found a hack that keeps it from phoning home all the time.

Did Adobe really lose the account data, or sell it on the sly? With Adobe nobody knows. They are about as trustworthy as Mr. Z and FB.

Breaking, literally: Microsoft's fix for CPU-hogging Windows bug wrecks desktop search

Reginald Onway

More beta testing on live users?

I uninstalled build 18362 because on the desktop it became impossible to RDP into it. Simply, nothing happened. Meanwhile, on the laptop I had to sign in TWICE in a row to login (once for me, once for them?). Now this.

Very sloppy.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson moves to shut Parliament

Reginald Onway

POPCORN!

Get it!

And, stay close to the telly from now on...it's going to get better, I mean worse....well something is going to happen.

Investor fires shot at 'sinking ship' Google in battle over privacy-menacing Google+ bug

Reginald Onway
Facepalm

Maybe a stupid question...

Bug or feature?

If G+ had caught afire and the backdoor access simply laid dormant and silent waiting like a spider I could see how it might be of value to certain entities.

Stupid me, right?

My MacBook Woe: I got up close and personal with city's snatch'n'dash crooks (aka some bastard stole my laptop)

Reginald Onway

Surprise! Surprise!

Very difficult to prevent or defend a carefully planned, organized and executed surprise attack like that.

Apprehension seems quite unlikely.

Are you sure you weren't targeted? Do you go there often?

Official: IBM to gobble Red Hat for $34bn – yes, the enterprise Linux biz

Reginald Onway

Re: Go, Ginni, go!

She does seem to manage IBM for financial appearance rather than substantive product. Then one day she may simply say, 'I quit', and walk off stage with a few hundred million bucks. Nice work if you can get it. The best part is no accountability for failure. That's America these days.

Reginald Onway
Stop

Sudo this, sudo that...

I've tried to make Linux my everyday OS a few times but it always becomes a dead end deal, with the vague fix seeming to be...reinstall everything. Hmmmmm.

Anyway, I understand Red Hat creates FREE software, but charges money to make it work for you. A service. Devious if you think about it. And from my experience likely to generate quite a bit of profit.

I hope it works out for everyone concerned.

I think that will depend on how Linux works.

Florida man won't be compelled to reveal iPhone passcode, yet

Reginald Onway
Big Brother

Bill of NO Rights

The former Bill of Rights has been mostly negated in the last two hundred years. Government has grown in power leaving much less for us.

I would say the spirit of the Fifth Amendment protects revelation of passwords, but the onslaught of caustic court decisions and new laws go against protection of individual rights.

Police aren't going to stop the assault on individual rights until the US goes full UK and makes it flat illegal to conceal a password from the police.

Only then we will be secure from unwarranted intrusions altogether, because the right against self-incrimination, and all the rest, will be gone.

They will because they can and there is nothing and no one to stop them.

Microsoft reveals train of mistakes that killed Azure in the South Central US 'incident'

Reginald Onway
Facepalm

Yet, there is no consequence for failure....

People pay real money to have their stuff in the cloud supposedly immune from earthly disaster.

But, no matter how much money they pay, there are still disasters but no consequence for those providing the failed service. True, corporate protocol demands somebody in PR take five minutes to prepare an apology text (vetted by the lawyers, example below). That's it.

Major disaster response:

"We are SO sorry. We are SO sorry. We are SO sorry."

(note to self: keep a local backup no matter what they say)

IPv6: It's only NAT-ural that network nerds are dragging their feet...

Reginald Onway
FAIL

If it works don't fix it...

My ISP doesn't support IPV6. Instead IPV6 connections are routed through some kind of DNS conversion tables which SLOWS DOWN connections hugely.

It's only been the last few years that any website in the world could do a simple IPV6 lookup. Try it sometime.

And, I admit, the naming system is quite confusing to me.

Firewalling IPV6 is hard and apps few and far between. It's exceptionally hard to filter OUTBOUND Ipv6. (To it's credit, the MS windows firewall does a pretty job at it.)

However, in general IPV6 spam and crooks can blast right through today's router and firewall apps.

Frankly my cyber life is better off without IPV6. Seems it's flawed solution for a non-problem, for most people and even tech coprs.

In huge privacy win, US Supreme Court rules warrant needed to slurp folks' location data

Reginald Onway

Re: "near perfect surveillance"

I think negotiations for the people should start with all electronic data is tangible property, as if it was inside a file cabinet in your home, and thus subject to all Constitutional protections.

The fact of the matter is various laws like the Patriot Act and court decisions, like this one, too, have whittled down the Bill of Rights to a hollow and weak shell of it's former self.

This ruling is not a victory in the sense it now appears cell records of less than six days are NOT subject to the 4th amendment at all according to this ruling. Plenty of room for the boys in blue to game. And, they may still get all historical data, because it still exists, so long as it's not used as evidence in a trial.

I haven't read one response from the police industry complaining about this decision. That's a very bad sign too. It suggests they have work arounds already in place.

Reginald Onway

Not so fast Buster....

I read a couple reviews that suggesting the ruling ***ONLY*** applies to ***seven days or more*** of cell data thus leaving all else wide open and now approved by the Supreme Court because....that's what they ruled. For example:

https://www.lawfareblog.com/understanding-supreme-courts-carpenter-decision

Also,

"...law-enforcement officials might sometimes still be able to obtain cell-site location records without a warrant – for example, to deal with emergencies such as “bomb threats, active shootings, and child abductions.” .... also left open the possibility that law-enforcement officials might not need a warrant to obtain cell-site location records for a shorter period of time than the seven days at issue in Carpenter’s case – which might allow them to get information about where someone was on the day of a crime, for example."

My reading is: Cell records are wide open and now court approved for anything less than a seven day time span.

Unbreakable smart lock devastated to discover screwdrivers exist

Reginald Onway

Oh my!

And it only costs $100.

I must say this was the most devastating take down of any IoT device I have ever read. Maybe most damaging report on any device.

Well done!