BBC? I like them because they're clever. | Monday, October 24, 2005 |
This one is back to Dan again. Think what you like about the BBC, but I like them. And in particular, I like Radio 4; In fact, you can take the rest of it and in general, stuff it up the controllers profit/loss account, but for me, the license fee was justified 10 times over by the qualiity of Radio 4 (and yes, the includes the whole dodgy debacle surrounding 45 mintutes to midnight (sorry chaps from Iron Maiden, that's a dreadful play of words of your classic 2 Minutes to Midnight)
So what's this got to do with Dan? Well, read on... (full, really worth reading article here)
...
Unfortunately all the good work done by the campaign could be undermined by a rather disturbing court case which concluded recently.
Conflicting advice?
Earlier this month Londoner Daniel Cuthbert was fined under the Computer Misuse Act for doing what almost every website advises, checking to see whether the company he was dealing with online really were who they claimed to be.
After he had made a donation to a website raising funds to help victims of the Asian tsunami, he noticed that he did not receive a confirmation message, and became concerned that he had fallen victim to a phishing scam and had revealed his credit card details.
Mr Cuthbert went a bit further than most because he is a security consultant, but he did not hack into anyone's servers or damage anyone's data. He probed the server using some fairly standard network security tools in order to check it out.
He was satisfied, and reckoned that the server had simply failed to operate properly because he was not using Windows and Internet Explorer.
Unfortunately the systems administrators noticed his probe and panicked, thinking they were being hacked into. As a result he was raided and arrested, and eventually convicted under the Computer Misuse Act.
The Act, which was passed in 1990, makes it an offence to alter a computer without permission, but it is so vague about what counts as a computer and what counts as altering that, it could be used to prosecute someone who set your video to record a programme without asking first.
In this case it seems to me that it has been used to make a criminal out of someone who seems to have been simply following the advice given on the government's trading standards website, where it tells you to "look for information about the protection the company has put in place".
If those who have the technical skill to take this advice seriously are going to end up being prosecuted this can only undermine the message coming from the new safety campaign. [my emphasis]
Perhaps the Hi-tech Crime Unit should be talking to the politicians about sorting out the law so that they can avoid this sort of foolishness in future.
So, there we are. More weight behind my belief that this was just fucking stupid. Gotta love those nice BBC types.
As for the UK Governments campaign? Well, I'm sure it will be just as effective as some of the other shite they peddle (don't get me wrong, I'm not a labour hater, but well, spin anyone?), but if you really want increased security on the internet, then try these instead.
OWASP (go Dan, Dinis and the rest)
Microsoft
Firefox
So what's this got to do with Dan? Well, read on... (full, really worth reading article here)
...
Unfortunately all the good work done by the campaign could be undermined by a rather disturbing court case which concluded recently.
Conflicting advice?
Earlier this month Londoner Daniel Cuthbert was fined under the Computer Misuse Act for doing what almost every website advises, checking to see whether the company he was dealing with online really were who they claimed to be.
After he had made a donation to a website raising funds to help victims of the Asian tsunami, he noticed that he did not receive a confirmation message, and became concerned that he had fallen victim to a phishing scam and had revealed his credit card details.
Mr Cuthbert went a bit further than most because he is a security consultant, but he did not hack into anyone's servers or damage anyone's data. He probed the server using some fairly standard network security tools in order to check it out.
He was satisfied, and reckoned that the server had simply failed to operate properly because he was not using Windows and Internet Explorer.
Unfortunately the systems administrators noticed his probe and panicked, thinking they were being hacked into. As a result he was raided and arrested, and eventually convicted under the Computer Misuse Act.
The Act, which was passed in 1990, makes it an offence to alter a computer without permission, but it is so vague about what counts as a computer and what counts as altering that, it could be used to prosecute someone who set your video to record a programme without asking first.
In this case it seems to me that it has been used to make a criminal out of someone who seems to have been simply following the advice given on the government's trading standards website, where it tells you to "look for information about the protection the company has put in place".
If those who have the technical skill to take this advice seriously are going to end up being prosecuted this can only undermine the message coming from the new safety campaign. [my emphasis]
Perhaps the Hi-tech Crime Unit should be talking to the politicians about sorting out the law so that they can avoid this sort of foolishness in future.
So, there we are. More weight behind my belief that this was just fucking stupid. Gotta love those nice BBC types.
As for the UK Governments campaign? Well, I'm sure it will be just as effective as some of the other shite they peddle (don't get me wrong, I'm not a labour hater, but well, spin anyone?), but if you really want increased security on the internet, then try these instead.
OWASP (go Dan, Dinis and the rest)
Microsoft
Firefox
