INDEX
Friday March 16, 2018
Locking hackers out may be a crime
What do you have to do to be really secure online? Change your passwords every week? Use a really secure firewall like Shorewall? Buy access to a Virtual Personal Network? Turns out all these things are a complete waste of time. If you want to be really secure you have to switch off all access to the internet, prevent your phone from making or receiving calls and only send text messages through a dedicated server in a secure haven. Oh and it's going to cost you thousands of dollars every few months to have this crippled phone. At least that's what people who really need privacy believe as witnessed by the business model of a Canadian company known as Phantom Secure. Right now the people behind this company are being hunted down and one executive is facing a life sentence, see Blackberry modified to 'help drug cartels', BBC News 16 March 2018. Damn right, I'm sure many will say. Any company dedicated to supporting some of the world's worst drug cartels, should be dealt with in the most severe manner possible. But should your phone be bugged? Should someone be reading your emails over your shoulder? Should your social media be public property? Should your movements be tracked? If the drug cartels with their enormous resources are not allowed to have privacy, then how do you expect to have it? Worst of all, the security services appear to be incompetent (Wikileaks would soon be out of business if the spooks could do their jobs properly). As a consequence the worm holes they ensure are available to them in software and hardware are also accessible by a motley crew of internet vigilanties, criminals, tin pot dictators and people with curious business models. Many get extremely annoyed about having their photo taken illicitly, or having data stored about them. Yet these invasions of privacy are as nothing compared to the common currency of the licensed hackers who can steal your thoughts. Think about that and then wonder what spooks are analysing those thoughts. Welcome to the inter-connected world 1984 style!
	Posted by Jonathan Brind.
INDEX
Friday March 16, 2018