Politics

In an article published yesterday, The Guardian describes how Microsoft is actively cooperating with the USA’s NSA. According to the article, Microsoft is providing the NSA with broad access to the communications of anyone using the company’s services, as follows:

• Microsoft gives the NSA access to encrypted mails on Hotmail, Live.com and Outlook.com, as well as web chat messages;
• Microsoft provides the NSA with easy access to its SkyDrive storage service, which currently has 250 million users worldwide;
• Microsoft makes it possible for the NSA to monitor audio and video calls on the Skype service which it acquired in 2011.

“This makes it clear that trusting Microsoft with your critical company data is downright negligent,” says Karsten Gerloff, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). “In both the public and the private sector, those responsible for security and data protection urgently need to take action to protect their organisations, customers and clients.”

While it is difficult or impossible to entirely escape surveillance, there are ways to minimise the risk that sensitive data, such as confidential product data or patient records, is intercepted by a third party. Free Software solutions for groupware, office products and operating systems are fully auditable and often data security a priority. End-to-end encryption with free software such as
GnuPG and off-the-record messaging (OTR) protects data in transit. Products providing secure audio, video and chat communications, such as Jitsi, go a long way towards replacing Skype.

“We advise companies and all other organisations that wish to protect their data to use free software solutions, to store data in-house wherever possible and to cooperate only with providers whom they trust to protect their customers’ data,” says Gerloff. “Such providers will often use strong encryption, and minimise the amount of data they store. Using smaller providers instead of global IT companies makes it somewhat less likely that customers’ data will be caught in the NSA’s dragnet.”

Originally posted on Bristol Wireless yesterday.

Following recent revelations about massive extent of telecommunications and internet traffic surveillance carried on by the USA’s NSA and the UK’s GCHQ (news passim), revelations have now emerged in Le Monde, one of France’s leading national newspapers.

In a post today entitled “Revelations about the French Big Brother”, Le Monde reveals that France has a large scale snooping apparatus. The DGSE, the French secret service, is systematically collecting the electromagnetic signals emitted by computers or telephones in France, as well as the traffic between the French and abroad: all of the French population’s communications are spied upon. French politicians are aware of this, but secrecy is the rule: this French Big Brother is clandestine and evades all control.

What the intelligence service is looking is the metadata; their aim is to know who is talking to whom, allegedly to piece together the links between targets and thus to identify “cells”. The DGSE is thus collecting data on millions of telephone subscribers, plus emails, text messages, faxes, etc., plus all internet traffic sent to the likes of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, etc. The apparatus is alleged to be invaluable for fighting terrorism, but also enables snooping on anybody.

The DGSE is therefore collecting billions of items of data which are compressed and stored in Paris on three floors in the basement of its headquarters on the boulevard Mortier. The intelligence service has a supercomputer capable of handling tens of millions of gigabytes, according to Le Monde.

Other French intelligence services have fully discretionary access to this enormous database; this is termed the “pooling infrastructure”. Certain information can even be used by the police under the cover of “anonymous information”.

French law has made no provision for the bulk storage of technical data by the secret services. “For years we’ve had virtual authorisation,” one old intelligence services boss confides, “and each agency is happy with it.” A French parliamentarian confirms “that a large part of the electronic communications network in France is actually intercepted and [the data] stored by the DGSE”.

However, officials deny that the “pooling infrastructure” actually exists.

Reposted from Bristol Wireless.

The Bank of England recently announced that social and prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, who currently graces the English five pound note, is to be replaced by Sir Winston Churchill, leaving Elizabeth Windsor as the only woman shown on an English bank note – and that’s merely due to an accident of birth.

Since the announcement, there have been calls from various quarters for another woman on English bank notes, in response to which the Bank of England (also known as “the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street“. Ed.) has hinted that 18th century novelist Jane Austen may be next to grace the back of the ten pound note.

Naturally, this safe, predictable choice by the Bank of England hasn’t met with universal approval. Why stick with a female representative from the arts when there are plenty available from the sciences?

We’ve written before about Ada Lovelace (news passim), who was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage‘s early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. Her notes on Babbage’s engine include what is recognised as the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine; thanks to this, she is sometimes considered the world’s first computer programmer.

A petition has now appeared on the government’s e-petitions site calling for Ada Lovelace’s achievements to be recognised by putting her on a bank note. The petition’s text reads as follows:

Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, has announced Winston Churchill will replace social reformer Elizabeth Fry as the face of £5 notes. This means that, other than the Queen, there will be no women featuring on our English bank notes.

A campaign is already underway to support women on English bank notes:

http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/bank-of-england-keep-a-woman-on-english-banknotes

We would like to propose Ada Lovelace – Founder of Scientific Computing – as the new face for the £10 note. A true champion of women in science and technology.

The petition could do with your support. As this post goers to press, it has under 300 signatures (you might like to support the other petition to keep women on English bank notes too. Ed.)

While we’re talking women on bank notes, how about these women from the sciences and engineering?

• Biophysicist Rosalind Franklin, who assisted Crick and Watson in discovering the structure of DNA;
• Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the UK’s first woman doctor; and
• Beatrice ‘Tilly’ Shilling, racing motorcyclist and aeronautical engineer who solved a fatal flaw in the Rolls Royce Merlin aero engine and so stopped it stalling in combat.

Can you think of any more worthy candidates? Add them in the comments below.