Richard's Kingdom

If you live in the UK you’ll be aware of the pervasiveness of Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) systems, which apparently film the average Brit hundreds of times per day (although there are no reliable figures). It turns out this is a pointless exercise. CCTV is rubbish at preventing crime, uneconomical at detecting it, useless at helping [...]

The BBC is reporting that the Northern Ireland Executive are shopping for new computers: Thousands of ‘ultra-secure’ computers costing £6m are to be bought by the NI executive following a series of embarrassing losses of personal data. About 4,000 high-security laptops and 10,000 new desktop computers are being bought. The BBC has also learned the [...]

Bruce Schneier, for “Bomb Squad Defuses Turnip” The news article is priceless too! Schneier is a security and cryptography luminary who regularly blogs about silly security-related goings on in order to highlight how ludicrous the actions of many authorities have become in recent years.

Have you ever been stopped by an in-store security guard because the tag on a product you bought elsewhere triggered the door alarm in their shop? It turns out there’s a brand of stock-control chip that has such a reputation for doing this, it actually causes a security vulnerability. The problem is especially interesting because [...]

Dear Alun Michael MP, This week we learnt that HM Revenue and Customs finally misplaced the 25 million database records they’ve been trying so hard to lose all year through negligence and gross misconduct. I am shocked, but not surprised, at the revelation that the Government has put millions of people at risk of fraud. [...]