WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
Welcome to another edition of Winding Down. This week finds me in the very unusual, and alarming, position of defending the CIA! Yep, it’s true, it’s in the analysis piece. After that Winding Down covers a strike against nuisance calls here in the UK, Samsung bribes, DST and Snopes, the Voynich Manuscript, a belated 2017 prediction, and some tunnel boring heavy engineering pictures. The Scanner section is longer than usual as I try to catch up with stuff from the period where I was out of touch. Anyway, there are URLs pointing to material on SETI, machine learning on the Raspberry Pi, the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition, IBM storing 1 bit on 1 atom, all the music from Martin Scorsese’s movies, Windows on your Raspberry Pi, the Open Data 500 project, protecting Zuckerberg, and a stash of stuff on 3D printing.
Finally there’s a ‘Coda’ section detailing the troubles and tribulations of moving house and where I am in getting back to some game programming!
So, let’s get started...
Analysis: High tech, espionage, and politics
Oh dear, WikiLeaks have just dumped out a pile of documents showing that the CIA is actively developing hacking tools as well as collecting those already available on the dark web. Already I can hear the start of the howls of shock and horror from the direction of the faces and the twits. Do I think they are misplaced then? Yep, definitely. Actually, I’d go further. If the CIA were NOT developing hacking tools, they wouldn’t be doing their job!
Look – the CIA are spies. It’s their job to spy on the USA’s enemies, potential enemies, and, not least, its friends. Yes, spying on your friends is an important part of the work of spies. Given that job, it’s obvious that they need to develop high grade hacking tools. After all, the opposition counter intelligence agencies are undoubtedly developing high grade security tools.
At the end of the day tools for hacking computers and communications are conceptually no different to the devices built in World War II by the UK to hack the German ‘Enigma’ code, and the USA to hack the Japanese ‘Purple’ code. They are just more sophisticated, because things have moved on.
It has been suggested that there is a difference because these tools can be used against ordinary people.
That’s very true – but there is nothing new in that – ordinary people’s mail was also clandestinely targeted in World War II. There are various ways of doing it without leaving traces. I remember trying one out as a kid. I smeared cow gum onto one of my mum’s knitting needles and allowed it to dry so the surface was very slightly sticky. Pushing the needle into the top of the envelope and twirling it round wrapped the letter around the needle and I was able to extract the letter. The reverse put the letter back undisturbed. Unfortunately, I forgot to strip off the cow gum afterwards, and my mother issued dire threats about future use after inadvertently trying to use the needle. Thus ended my career as a budding spy...
Nowadays we intercept and decrypt (if necessary) electronic mail using hacking tools, but again that’s conceptually the same as my knitting needle. A little more sophisticated, maybe, but essentially the same. And, of course, it’s even easier if you can hack into your opponent’s computer and gather intelligence directly from it. That’s why spies need to develop technology.
Of course, anything spies do and use is double edged – the technology is neutral, its use is not. That’s why spy organisations in democracies have legal limits on what they can do. And that’s where the problems and the politics come in. Spies don’t broadcast publicly what they are doing, so you have to set up mechanisms to make sure they are not overstepping the limits – i.e. politics. If you think the spies are stepping out of line, then you need to take the issue up with your political representatives.
And one other thing you might like to ponder, while we are on this topic, is that in a conventional war the enemy is very clear and intelligence resources are focused on a clear target. But what happens when you declare war on ‘terrorism’? Terrorists come in all shapes, sizes and colours. Suddenly, and dangerously, -anyone- could be a terrorist, and the stage is set for the spread of spying to a county’s own citizens.
‘War on Terror’. The sound bite is brilliant. The semantics are deadly.
https://consumerist.com/2017/03/07/4-things-consumers-should-know-about-wikileaks-dump-of-cia-vault-7-documents/
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/08/politics/wikileaks-cia-investigation/index.html
http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/entire-hacking-capacity-of-cia-dumped-on-wikileaks-site-claims/d/d-id/1328339
Shorts:
Over here in the UK our information regulator (OFCOM) is starting to take a really hard line with nuisance calls. They’ve just fined a company called Road Accident Consult UK£270,000 (about US$330,000) for making a total of 22 million nuisance calls. OFCOM have really been using their powers on nuisance calls recently. Let’s hope this continues and extends to things digital in the future!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/09/road_accident_nuisance_callers_fined_
270000_for_being_absolute_bags/
I see that the (now former) South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, has been impeached – and the impeachment has been upheld by the Constitutional Court – for involvement in taking bribes from well-known tech giant Samsung. Samsung, it seems, has a history of bribing presidents, and various high ups are already being indicted or investigated over this affair. I seem to remember that the original stories mentioned a gift of an extremely expensive race horse from Samsung, but that seems to have vanished from the current stories. I guess the racehorse must have caught fire...
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/09/asia/south-korea-park-guen-hye-impeachment-upheld/index.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/06/south_korea_prosecutors_president_
colluded_to_take_samsung_bribes/
Homework:
I try to only bring you accurate stories in Winding Down, but it’s getting more difficult as more and more fake news proliferates. In the meantime, I’d like to draw your attention to one of the best sites for debunking fake news – Snopes.com. This is a fantastic site which not only tells you if something in the ‘news’ is a fake, but also where it comes from. Snopes produces an e-mail newsletter called ‘The Daily Debunker” (sign up for it on the Snopes web site) which covers some of the better known current stories, indicating whether they are fakes or not.
Incidentally, you may not realise it, but most (though not all) fake stories are generated not for political reasons, but as a scam to pull in advertising income. Who knows, perhaps it will become the successor to the Nigerian 419 scam.
In the meantime , since in the US today is the day Daylight Saving Time comes in, I’d like to mention that Snopes also has a good piece on the history of DST. I have to say that it’s a lot more chequered than I expected!
http://www.snopes.com/
http://www.snopes.com/science/daylight.asp
Geek Stuff:
Those of you with an interest in exotica may well have heard of the Voynich Manuscript. For those of you haven’t, it’s (probably) a 16th Century Manuscript often linked with Elizabethan court magician John Dee and the polymath Athanasius Kircher. It seems to be in code, or possibly an unknown language, but no cryptographer or linguist – amateur or professional – has ever managed to crack it. You never know, it might be just a hoax.
More important, for budding cryptographers, Yale University Press have now published a book – yes, a physical book – the same size as the original, including the fold out pages, so you can see what the original looked like. There is also a digital version which originally went online in 2004, and was updated with new high resolution pictures in 2014.
Just think though, if you had the paper version, you could shelve it with your copy of the Necronomicon!
http://hyperallergic.com/335505/voynich-manuscript-facsimile-published-yale-university/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necronomicon
Here is a quote from the lead article on 2017 predictions in LWN.net newsletter at the start of the year. I missed it at the time, so I’m belatedly drawing it to your attention now:
“The security mess will only get worse, as it becomes clear that vast numbers of severely insecure systems have been deployed, many in important infrastructural roles. Those who have been paying attention have understood the scope of this problem for some time; the rest of the world will catch up quickly. By the end of the year, expect to see attempts at legislative solutions in various countries, many of which will be less than helpful at addressing the real problems.”
The rest of the article, if you are interested, is at the URL.
https://lwn.net/Articles/709996/
Pictures:
To my mind few pieces of engineering technology are more impressive that modern tunnel boring machines. So, with that in mind let me introduce you to some pictures of Helen and Amy, two machines destined to cut a new two mile tunnel for the London tube (subway to my American readers).
After you have been suitably impressed by the scale of the modern behemoths, you might like to take a look at its Victorian equivalent!
http://londonist.com/london/transport/giant-tunnel-boring-machines-lowered-for-northern-line-extension
http://www.constructionenquirer.com/2013/01/09/see-how-the-tube-was-built-150-years-ago/ [especially the second picture]
Scanner:
Citizen SETI
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=36802
Three cool machine learning projects using TensorFlow and the Raspberry Pi
https://opensource.com/article/17/2/machine-learning-projects-tensorflow-raspberry-pi
Stranger than friction: Inside the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition
http://newatlas.com/spacex-hyperloop-pod-competition-vichyper/48252/
The future of storage is ATOMIC: IBM boffins stash 1 bit on 1 atom
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/09/ibm_stores_1_bit_on_one_atom/
All of the music from Martin Scorsese’s movies: Listen to a 326-track, 20-hour playlist
http://www.openculture.com/2017/03/hear-all-the-music-from-martin-scorseses-movies.html
How to fire up Windows 3.1, 95, 98 and XP on your Raspberry Pi
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/classic-windows-on-a-35-computer-how-to-fire-up-windows-3-1-95-98-and-xp-on-your-raspberry-pi/
The Open Data 500 project
http://www.opendata500.com/us/about/
Why does it cost 20 times as much to protect Mark Zuckerberg as Tim Cook?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/06/why_does_it_cost_20_times_as_much_to_
protect_mark_zuckerberg_as_tim_cook/
3D printing
http://www.33rdsquare.com/2017/03/fabricating-future-6-fascinating.html
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/01/4d-printed-structure-changes-shape-when-placed-in-water/
http://www.33rdsquare.com/2017/02/5-fascinating-advancements-in-3d.html
Coda: The story so far
I’m sure regular readers will remember that last week I explained we had just moved house. Things have improved somewhat in the intervening week. We still have stuff packed in boxes – none of Barbara’s homemade Seville orange marmalade has made an appearance yet, for instance. Just as important (some would say, ‘more important’, but I value my life) is the fact that the box that contained, among other things, two large bottles of Sapphire gin (our entire stock) has not yet surfaced...
However, I have now got my stereo and the Linux development machine working, so, with any luck I should be able to do some work on the game later in the coming week.
In the meantime a mystery is deepening around our newly ordered curtain rods. Full details next week!
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb and Fi for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Thunderbird spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
12 March 2017
Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist, the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/index.html.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
