The government are the real cyber-terrorists
16 March 2008
The end of Britannia
For the ascension of George I, a song was commissioned, one that celebrated both the act of union and the hard fought for independence from Europe, the chorus went:
> Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves! Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!
Today, all the warships in the Royal Navy won't help when us Britons have become slaves inside our own country, tracked and counted like a flock of cattle.
I just read yet another article on this topic, this time on the Guardian website.
The 17 million people who use the tube, buses and overland train within London use a swipe card called an 'Oyster card'. You don't have to worry about carrying coins or queuing for tickets, you just swipe your card and jump on the train.
Now the government is using this data to track everyone's private movements around London. Combined with the fact that the government records all cars that enter and leave London, there is no privacy of movement at all.
The flimsy reasons given in the article are the "war on terror" and to track 'cyber-terrorists', yeah right, I believe that as much as I believe in the Easter Bunny.
What Cyber-war?
The article goes on with this paragraph:
> "The cyber-assault on Estonia confirmed that the West now faces a relatively cheap, low-risk means of warfare that can be conducted from anywhere in the world, with the power to plunge developed nations temporarily into the stone age, disabling everything from payroll systems that ensure millions of employees get paid to the sewage treatment processes that make our water safe to drink or the air traffic control systems keeping planes stacked safely above Heathrow."
What a load of nonsense and scare mongering. The 'cyber-assault' on a few Estonian websites were just denial of service attacks that any script-kiddie can do from his bedroom. The cracker just made enough traffic with the servers that other people could not get a look in. This does not confirm anything.
The denial of service was originally blamed by the media on the former KGB or other Russian groups, it turned out to be a 19-year old teenager. If your system cannot handle a 19 year-old, then it is not a conspiracy, it is simply a crap system - sack your IT people and spend more on the new ones.
Estonian Citizens could not read some dry Estonian government websites for a few hours. It did not put Estonia temporarily into the stone age, or do any other of the things mentioned above. Humanity was never at risk.
Why would payroll systems ever be connected to the websites? What has sewage treatment or air traffic control got to do with the websites? The answer is nothing of course. There is no way to get into a properly designed sewage system or payroll from the Internet, the only way it would be compromised would be an inside job.
The fact that there are idiot crackers out there has nothing to do with the so-called "war-on-terror". On September 11th 2001, Al Qaeda did not use denial of service of a government website for a few hours. They used pilot training, pocket knives and psychology to crash burning planes into skyscapers and kill 3000 people. Let's have some perspective here.
The fact that a poorly designed website in Estonia can be taken offline does not justify the government tracking our private movements.
All the Estonian government needs is a bit of caching and IP-blocking, and perhaps a competent sys-admin on a pager. If the web server was just set to block the IP-address for an hour of anyone that downloaded more than say 1 MB/s, then the problem is solved. The cracker will run out of IP addressess pretty fast. You could even have a tripwire, so after 10 of these blocks have been given, access to non-Estonian IP addresses can be blocked for a few hours. I could set this up on Linux quite easily within an hour.
Defending us from 'Cyberwar' or 'Terror' are just excuses, the government just wants to control us and remove all of our rights to privacy.
The biggest threat to us is not some cracker in their bedroom, it is the increasingly fascist tendencies of the government itself.
1 Sole says...
Wow, the Guardian article can't be more inexact. It's specially interesting how they refer to "the East" and "the West", such as if we were still in Cold War times. It's all Europe!
Let me say your answer is so good too. A pity that people get so scared when they heard about computers, otherwise this would be a good reasoning to show to anybody which supports this data abuse. They truly believe that an evil "hacker" can get into your bank account simply by plugging a laptop in a phone cabin (oh maybe too many bad movies about "hackers" are the reason!).
Posted at 11:15 a.m. on March 17, 2008
2 Dirk Gently says...
Well... governments do have to stay ahead of terrorists in terms of technology. With the new age of technology cameras can be built that are too small for the human eye to see. For governments to be able to use these tactics to defend its people is necessary. That said oppressive governments that use this technology are too be feared. I remember the line from "V is for Vendeta" the movie "People should not be afraid of the government, the government should be afraid of the people." Unfortunately with todays technology some governments don't have to worry about that.
Posted at 3:15 p.m. on March 20, 2008
3 AJS says...
Who remembers the miners' strike of the 1980s, the poll tax riots of the late 80s / early 90s, or the Criminal Justice Bill protests of 1993-94? The fuel price protests a few years ago?
Just what was it that happened to us all in the last 15 years, that has eroded our spirit so? Why are we now, as a nation, prepared to bend over and accept anything the government try to thrust at us?
Why can nobody seem to see the obvious -- that this lot are worse than Thatcher ?!
I remember seeing on TV, some years ago, a snippet from some benefit event or other (Miners' strike? Poll tax? One of the Hysteria shows?) with Ben Elton singing "It's not a long way to a police state" to the tune of "It's a long way to Tipperary". No sign of it on YouTube or anywhere similar. Which is a real shame; because if anything, I think it's more relevant today than ever. I don't necessarily think any censorship is going on here; home video recorders were much less widespread in those days.
Posted at 2:51 p.m. on March 24, 2008
4 Sean says...
Great post! I have an interest in this area and wanted to add a quick thought on it. I am curious how my experience might contrast with the way things are done in the UK, as I am unfamiliar with the inner workings of municipal government in the UK.
It is increasingly likely that various government services related to infrastructure--here in America, at least--will indeed be accessible from the Net. I have done some work for a smaller city government here in the USA whose new wastewater treatment plant will be. I raised my own concerns, but what can I say--they have spent a lot of money on consultants and so forth who are going to set up their VPN for remote monitoring.
I honestly can't say what privileges that will grant a remote water department operator and it is wastewater, not intake water for a treatment plant that feeds the water supply. Since remote monitoring is supposed to allow on the fly adjustments of the chemical levels, it seems to me the potential for mischief is certainly there. Eco-terrorism is something I would worry about if I were implementing this solution. Sure, you can't mess up the upstream water supply in this particular case, but affecting the environment downstream and in the lake where the city to the south draws its own supply might be impacted.
Again, small case and not a particular large threat in the grand scheme of things--but the trend is on the increase. More infrastructure critical services are indeed being networked at levels they probably ought not be.
It isn't all just crackpot conspiracy theorists and over-paid lobbyists for the US Department of Defense or similar agencies in other governments suggesting there are issues for concern. There are very real vulnerabilities in the economic and services infrastructure sectors in America at least and they are growing each year. Sure, those of us with a bit of common sense realize--as you suggest so well--that we ought not be creating such vulnerabilities. But this is government we're talking about.
You know...the one's who contract our critical infrastructure out to the lowest bidder? The ones who award grants to municipal governments for improvement projects and then make them spend three years filling out forms and paperwork and getting approvals from agencies so that when they get the funds at last inflation and rising costs of goods means that the cost of the project is now inflated by 25%...meaning the project has to be refigured with shortcuts, lower quality, smaller scale or abandoned altogether in some cases.
Another example...same city. I rebuilt their police department's network which connected to the Net. They have mandatory web-delivered classes and training requirements they must have officers fulfill. I rebuilt the network because it was hacked. I'm not a systems engineer or networking guru (ebusiness/marketing was my major) but have a background as a PC tech and web designer to go with my networking skills...no cyber forensics background here. A small community won't have the budget or resources to track down every such instance, and neither are Federal agencies likely to have the manpower to spare to do so.
But consider that compromising even a small police department's network is serious, as it can provide the information needed to access state and Federal agency sites.
Sure, it would be great if every government entity at the state, county and city level could afford to hire gurus of whatever sort is needed, but here in the USA at least, it isn't going to happen anytime soon. And yet, they must all cope with the same technology and security issues as even the large cities. I've seen the vulnerabilities first hand and dealt with them. They're all too real.
As I said, great post. I believe the government in America is becoming increasingly detrimental to liberties and freedoms. Currently, states are fighting against the Real ID Act of 2005 that is set to go into effect at the end of this month. We have a government that wants to saddle us with $4-$11 billion taxpayer cost (depends on whose figures you use and believe) to create new ID's in order to fight terrorism. Yet, we have survived all these years without them just fine. Instead of improving security at our borders, and putting the onus on foreign governments to provide better identification and vetting of foreigners who come to visit, they expect us to foot the bill and subject ourselves to greater scrutiny.
There's a lot of unrest in America you don't hear about in mainstream media, but it's there. There are small fringe groups talking about secession (some have rather lovely websites), and if things stay the course, I imagine it won't be confined to fringe groups before long. I think what we're seeing in both Europe and North America is a convergence of many issues that have dried out the social landscape and turned both regions into a tender box.
What the source for the spark will be that sets it ablaze, is anyone's guess. Myself, I suggest it will be increasing loss of liberties and government failures.
Posted at 1:53 a.m. on March 25, 2008
5 Beverly Hills Real Estate says...
You're right on this matter. The western governments ARE merrily leading us down a primrose path to socialism and one world government (yes, that would be a totalitarian government). Truth is, If people don't have the guts to stand up to their leaders, and refuse to surrender their freedom, then they don't deserve to be free. The problem America has right now is that people don't recognize that when people speak of a new world order, Their message is brought to you by the same people who brought you World War Two. Dave
Posted at 3:48 a.m. on April 4, 2008