Jobless!!

That’s right! I have joined the ranks of the great unwashed! But to be honest it happened several months ago and despite my best efforts I haven’t been able to find alternate employment. Do I put this down to my anti-religious rantings? Perhaps my scintillating dinner conversation? Maybe I just haven’t proffered enough fine golden paper wrapped chocolates at various social affairs….

A lack of reply.

No unfortunately its none of the above. Of the jobs I have applied for (some 50 at this point) I have had one response informing me that the job is filled. And it’s not just me, in the same swift resistance free axe swoop at the office I used to work at, a number of my friends and former colleagues became ex-employee’s.

Alternative Therapy Careers

Those few people I still have contact with have informed me that they are now seeking alternative employment in different careers and industry’s at this point because the IT sector in Australia has pretty much evaporated in a puff of outsourcing and external support contracts. Of course my only problem with this is that it implies there was an IT industry here in the first place.

I figure that my best bet is to take a page out of Ron Hubbard’s book and set up my own religion involving a fanatical desire to baste chickens  for no good reason and a propensity to spout unequivocal nonsense as a definitive certainty, but that market is looking rather crowded these days.

So what next?

Well I’m not exactly wealthy, but I own my house, I have no debts, quite a fair bit saved and a small supplementary income that will see me through any difficulties. So, to be quite frank I’m going to become a bum.

That’s right, like 0.3% of the rest of the Australian job seeking market I’ve given up and packed my figurative bags to go on a holiday from society! Stay tuned over the next few months to find out what happens on my crazy adventures made possible by the virtue of un-employment.

Will I drunkenly make an embarrassing post here? Will I parade around the streets with a pair of underpants on my head whistling the theme tune of Star Wars? Probably not I’m a bit too sensible for such contrivance’s but I have to admit its tempting especially considering I’ve been out of work for 5 months already (and in that space of time I have been getting re-acquainted with KillZone 2 on my PS3).

No what I have been doing is getting very fit and actually learning to have a bit of flippant fun! It surprises me how toxic working office environments are and I truly believe they need to come with a health warning something like ‘Warning this career will lead to Obesity, shortness of temper and a desire to strangle people who apparently deserve it.’

Hopefully this means I will be posting a fair but more too. What will happen next on my adventure? Probably not much but I will ride my bike a bit more frequently!

Today I’m Listening to:

Good Times, Bad Times by Led Zeppelin

Surprise, surprise…..

Once again I’ve been extraordinarily lazy (big shock I know). But I couldn’t resist making a quick post regarding a story I saw on slashdot.org. The story details the fact that despite the huge number of surveillance camera’s in London (at this point close to 1 million) the camera’s fail to assist in the capture of suspects in the vast majority of cases. If security camera’s made people safe then the UK should be the safest place on the planet, but huge increases in violent crime would suggest otherwise.

Check out the story here. But its not like reality will stop the government in its hell-bent pursuit of surveilling every moment. Recently they proposed installing CCTV camera’s in 20,000 homes to keep an eye on troublemakers, too bad they’ll only work if the people are actually at home.

It looks to me like Orwell merely got the year wrong in his masterpiece ‘1984′

 

Tonight Big Brother is listening to:

"Road to Nowhere" by "Talking Heads"

A letter to the minister. Senator Stephen Conroy.

Australia is proposing a nationwide Internet censorship system. This is what I sent to the party in response.

 

Dear Minister Chairman,

 

May I firstly congratulate you on your proposed waste of public Australian funds on a nationwide filtering system that will reduce internetworking performance internationally for all Australians and conversely non-Australians conducting internetworking transactions with Australian business, and secondly for your attitude that the internet should be cleansed so that it is suitable for 5 yr olds.

 

I would like to point out that business transactions (which are the principal reason for Australia’s investment in the National Broadband Network) on the internet are conducted by people who are older than 5. Introducing a censorship scheme that is this vast in nature introduces immense responsibility that government cannot be trusted with. When presented with an easy opportunity to limit information that is potentially damaging to you what would you chose to do? I wish to offer my own expansionist thoughts for the proposal, and suggest that you should consider changing Australia’s name to Kruddgrad.

 

When you propose the cleansing of the internet so that only material fit for 5 year olds is allowed through (and I do realise that yes news sites will be available as long as you haven’t banned them although the news is pretty shocking these days, what with murders and car smashes and whatnot, you might want to sort that out too), you risk seriously damaging the intellectual capability of those of us who are tucked behind your proposed firewall. You will block 10’s of thousands of legitimate web sites that will be erroneously labelled as illicit by your proposal. Even then there will be ways around your proposed system, I won’t detail them because after-all you are the minister supporting this project, you can’t be trusted with that kind of information. While the world chastises China for its restrictive controls on net freedom  and dissenting opinion, why are you implementing elements of a communist state in Australia?

 

I propose that instead of re-affirming my opinion of Australia (and thereby yourself) as the ‘Global Village Idiot’ the better option is that you re-enforce the message that parents should be watching their children’s internet usage, that won’t cost $125Mil, and it might actually encourage parenting skills, which this legislation will not address. The rest of us grown up’s are old enough to make our own decisions without your interference and your thinly veiled attempt to curtail the freedom of information in this country in a digital age using the most ineffective methods available.

 

I wish to offer my warmest disregards,

K0rs0

Surveilance Society

“They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.” – Pastor Martin Niemoeller 1892-1984

 

“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” – The British Government.

 

“If we sit in silence now in its infancy, then it will be too late to cry wolf when it matures.” – K0rs0

 

In Secret

The UK Government secretly adopted an EU directive enabling the UK Governments Justice instruments to remotely hack, analyse, and install remote key-logging software, on any citizens’ computer in the United Kingdom. They are allowed to get and retain copies of e-mail, and any file they find that may be incriminating to the individual who owns the machine. They can do this without warrant or even suspicion.

What can be deemed an incriminating piece of evidence? Well how about those MP3’s stored on your computer? How about that downloaded episode of a TV show you missed last week. How about something the police planted on your home computer to incriminate you, but because there is no warrant you can’t prove either way that you didn’t own it in the first place. This may come as a surprise to some people but the Police twist and plant evidence on occasion. Especially to save face in a scenario with fatal consequences like the assassination of a Brazilian national in public on the London Underground.

The UK is the most heavily surveiled society on earth, and according to the government we’re all safer because of it. But crime is going up in the UK in particular violent crime. You have to ask the question, why is crime increasing despite the freedoms surrendered in secret by the government allegedly to address crime.

Dystopia

“The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed–would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper–the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.”
- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 1

Using a computer at home in the UK right now, is like asking ones-self, when will the police come rushing through my door to arrest me? Because ultimately that is the implication of this legislation, this kind of legislation is always brought in under the thin edge of the wedge; ‘We need it to combat child porn; we need it to combat terrorism; we need it to combat crime.’ Nonsense, there is nothing there that can not currently be obtained without a warrant.

The only thing this legislation eliminates is the necessity of suspicion. With thanks to this legislation, you don’t need to have done something wrong or illegal to have your computer searched and your computer’s contents secretly stored for criminal analysis. There are no legal safeguards or protections available to the public if something goes wrong or if a file is placed by police on your computer.
The world of George Orwell’s 1984 was one were everyone was under surveillance to ensure total loyalty to the party.

Tourist Attraction.

Welcome to the United Kingdom of 2009, a country where it is illegal to possess tools such as NMAP or to own or produce the source code of ‘hacker tools’; A country where there are more surveillance cameras per capita than anywhere else in the world; A country where you will receive a jail sentence if you don’t hand over a decryption key for an encrypted file on your computer whether you own the file or not; A country where it’s illegal to tell someone if you have been requested to hand over your encryption keys. A country where your every transaction on-line is now subject to investigation at will without warrant; A country that will shortly require every ‘citizen’ (I should say party member) to carry an ID card so that all and every transaction with government can be tracked; A country where mobile phone owners details are required by law to be registered so that the movements of the phone owners can be tracked by Cell site/location; A country where the microphone of your phone can be turned on without your knowledge so that your conversations with anyone can be recorded.
Enjoy your stay.

What can I do?

• Be vocal, talk to your member of parliament registering your thoughts.

• Protect yourself on-line, install up-to-date anti-virus and a good firewall on your PC that will identify out-going connections.

• Ensure that your router has a firewall that is enabled, and wherever possible disable UPnP (this may prevent some applications from working).

• Use a strong Whole disk encryption application like PGP so that if your house is broken into they can’t install key-loggers on your computer (which is a right granted under the new powers).

• Change your computers BIOS settings so that it will only boot from its hard disk and not any other device.

• Encrypt your e-mails and request that your friends/colleagues and family do the same.

• Encrypt your files so that even if they get beyond your disk encryption they still can’t use your data.

• Strengthen your Wireless Network’s protection by switching to WPA/WPA2 and use TKIPS.

• Use The Onion Router to help anonymise your connections and prevent traceability.

 

Today I’m Listening to

The Beginning of the End by Nine Inch Nails

Copyright for wrongs.

This is my first piece on Copyright; this is more of an introduction to what my take is on the history of it. The subject itself is too deep to simply present all the facts and all the information, but ultimately I hope to present a reasoned opinion on it as I write more on the subject.

First and foremost I wish to make it clear that these are my own simple thoughts on the issues of copyright theft. I do not condone piracy nor do I condone a lifetime of servitude to all who are slaves to a contract between an owner of copyright and a provider of works to the copyright owner.

In the beginning.

Music was something you had to go to. It couldn’t be bought, it couldn’t be switched on or off, you had to go to the hall when the orchestra visited and pay the price for admission. Some hung outside quietly catching snippets of the performance.

Recorded music changed all. With the invention of the gramophone it became possible to place a recording of the music on a storage medium, that storage medium being a humble Wax disc not too dissimilar from a vinyl LP. Few possessed the technology to do this and those few started a business of recording performances pressing them to wax discs and selling them to the public so that they too could enjoy a musical experience even if they could not afford the price of a ticket to the concert.

An Idea refined.

In order to create an incentive to musicians a slice of the sales of music was offered, it was not much but that was negotiable to an extent (though that extent was still around %2-4). The greater the sale of the music, the more likely that artist was to produce more work. The extra funds earned from the sale of music by the recorded sound companies was re-invested in technology and finding new talent in order to increase sales and deliver more of what people wanted to hear.

The business model wasn’t the only thing that was refined, technology was refined too. Recording quality had improved dramatically, professional quality Mic’s and magnetic tape brought multi-track recording to the play. The early benefits can be heard on great music from artists like Ray Charles (Night and Day). The concept of home tape recording brought with it the ability for the home listener to compile his/her own recordings or make a mix tape that they could pass to a friend. The humble audio cassette became the first anti-piracy target of the music industry.

But with thanks to bands like Metallica, bootleg recordings of concerts were encouraged in order to help the band’s sound permeate the masses.

The industry progressed from wax to harder wearing Vinyl and the quality of the sound improved dramatically as a result.

When Harry met Sally….

Digital technology finally reached a point where it was possible to represent real music as binary code, etched into a fine sliver of metals coated in plastic, the compact disc revolutionized the distribution, and storage of music and came with a subsequent price hike. There is a debate as to whether CD’s are a ‘rip-off’ that’s a separate issue. An almost unholy marriage of the analogue (sound) to a digital medium

This marriage of digital technology and sound recordings is ultimately what has lead to an enormous decline in the profitability of the music industry. Initially it was thought that CD copying technology would be too expensive for anyone to own but those of us in technology knew that the potential data storage capability of the CD would be exploited cheaply soon enough it was only a matter of time.

The birth of CD piracy.

At first the CD writing machines were industrial machines that cost a huge sum of money to purchase and run. But the humble PC changed that. With increasing improvements in computer technology it became possible to mimic a lot of that process in software, resulting in the production of small compact CD writers that you could slot into your computer at home.

People now had the power to copy CD’s at will and many early adopters exploited that. Once it became possible to copy CD’s it was only a matter of time before the data itself could be lifted and stored.

Imaging – Separating the intangible from the physical.

Copying software became more advanced, and it became possible to store the draw data of a CD as a file on a computer that you could simply burn to another CD at will. It wasn’t long before it was realised that the next step was to lift the data of the disc verbatim and store it as an uncompressed Wave file on a computer’s hard disc. This took quite a large amount of storage (650mb-700mb) for a full 74-80 minutes of music.

MPEG Encoding Technology.

A number of new devices started to appear on the market promising a digital revolution that ended up not going anywhere. The Commodore CDTV was born and it had a capability to playback movies that were stored on CD. The race to develop a system of compression that could enable this to happen resulted in the production of the MPEG Codec. The first stab at taking a movie and its associated data and compressing it so that it could fit on a couple of CD’s.

Different levels of compression were used to deliver the finished product but the one that the music industry is interested in the most is a codec known as MPEG Layer 3 or more commonly MP3. Using this technology it became possible to turn a 60mb wave file into a compact 3-4mb with a little discernible quality loss. MP3 created a digital revolution for content distribution that culminated with the founding of Napster.

Napster

Regarded as the first and greatest music file sharing service; Napster would scan your computer for MP3’s and make them freely available for download to anyone else who used Napster. Napster re-defined the role of technology and media distribution. It challenged the old way of doing business by eliminating business from the equation.

The greatest issue created by Napster was simply one of money. Napster could deliver all the content available anywhere on anyone’s computer to anyone’s computer, with (in its hey-day) over 2 petabytes of data available on the network. The real problem this presented to business is simply that no money was changing hands so technically was it piracy?

The availability of music on this kind of scale was unheard of, you could get that old song by Pink Floyd faster than you could find it in a store and not even pay for it. Just type in the name and there it was.

The Music industry did whatever it could to bring Napster down without really understanding the technology behind it. In the process it ostracised many fans and instigated a swathe of lawsuits in an attempt to protect its property.

Interestingly enough Metallica lead the charge against Napster and instead of suing the individual who was distributing their music, they sued the organisation that the files were sourced from.

A dying era.

They say ‘No one missed the door to door ice sales guy when the fridge was invented.’ That may be the case, but that guys family probably missed the income.

Today I’m Listening to:

Play Dead by Bjork & David Arnold

Phorms PR blitz, more like a fart in a bathtub.

Phorm, the company that sells ISP’s a targeted ad spying system, have been very havily embroiled in a PR offensive that quite frankly doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

All Phorm no substance.

Phorm’s PR companies are trying to present the system being offered in terms of service and value; the issue that they are facing is that they are fighting against technology people who actually understand how the system is put together and see beyond the simple oh it’ll just give you ‘more relevant ads.’

But the New York times sums the Phorm ’service’ up very nicely

New York Times, 20th March 2008

“As you browse, we’re able to categorize all of your Internet actions,” said Virasb Vahidi, the chief operating officer of Phorm. “We actually can see the entire Internet.”

Ironic

Ever get the feeling that the PR machine isn’t working quite as smoothly as it perhaps should? 

I find it amusing that the biggest issue Phorm faces is controlling its public image in light of what is out there on the wider internet. It’s ironic that a firm built on the principal of profiling Internet communications is having an Internet communications crisis of its own.

Phorm’s share price has tanked, the FIPR believe that it’s methodology may be illegal, and now ISP’s who were once going to be partners are facing lawsuit’s as a result of their complicity. There is only one office in the UK that has the power to stop Phorm or let them have their way with our Internet connections. the office of Richard Thomas the Information Commissioner. But its not quite that simple.

His office is in the process of piecing together a reprot that will address the legality of Phorm’s proposed system, the results of which are expected in a couple of weeks.

Relationships

But the damage is done, the public’s relationship with their ISP has been damaged by this, the reputations of those ISP’s are also damaged. Phorm’s involvement will cost millions in lost customers, millions in future sales, and that is just the beginning. The PR blitz Phorm is engaged in will not help those ISP’s who are already losing customers as a result.

Final Opinion

Phorm is a double edged sword, a poison apple almost. The companies and organisations that use it will be viewed as de-valuing their customer base and also as miss-treating the privacy and security of their customers. Those same customers will leave those ISP’s as they already are doing so, and are doing so before the service is even live. Phorm went down this path without having the full legality of their proposal supported by the ICO. Their investors are deserting the company as I would envisage rats from a sinking ship.  BT is under threat of legal action as it initiated a trial secretly during the Summer of 2007 without informing customers what they were doing or why.

If the ICO’s opinion does not rule in Phorm’s favour then there will be a public reckoning. If it does then public opinion will be damaged along with the reputation of the ICO and the companies that use the technology.

In the meantime the message is clear if you are an ISP anywhere in the world.

PHORM = BAD NEWS FOR YOUR BUSINESS.

 

Today Phorm is staring down:

Barrel of a Gun by Depeche Mode

The Gospel of K0rs0 part 3

 Not content with creating the universe and basic physi…. Uhm sucky forces god has turned his attention to the creation of planets but he doesn’t call them that yet cos he hasn’t finished inventing them (and the patent office wont be around for at least a few billio… Uhm thousand years)

So I’ve got this gas here and this dust, I’ll smash it all together and see what happens, but since this is a project, it needs a project name. The name can’t be too descriptive because I cant file with the patent office yet, I know! I’ll call it Codename Bum, no one who will exist would guess that.

How long should I spend, well the concept of a day is a bit pointless in interstellar space, given that I haven’t even started making other things yet including days, but despite that fact I’ll take six days. And just as there was no point for the concept of a day there was also no point for the project bum Gant chart……..

Project Bum Day 1

I need some tools to move all this crap to one spot. So what I’ll do is spend today inventing some tools that I can use to move stuff around. I need something that can scoop stuff up and deposit it somewhere else in a sort of shoving motion. Shoving…. Shov… a Shovel! Great a slightly smaller version for tricky corners could be handy sort of cut-down shovel. A dowel… no. Trowel!

Gas is a bit tricky but I’ve discovered that if you squeeze it enough it can become a sort of liquid, hmm, how do I move that liquid…. Perhaps something that’s hollow on the inside but with no ends, I can suck the liquid up and blow it out where I need it. But I cant call it the sucky thing I’ve already got that and don’t need confusion. Its not exactly a container and is cylindrical a tub… TUBE!

I’ve used my shovel, trowel and tube to get the gas and dust into one spot but its sort of just sitting there. I might leave it and come back tomorrow for a second look.

Project Bum Day 2

Not much different today, damn this is taking a while. Well that’s it the time for action is at hand. God then squashed the gas and dust together in his hands and then rolled it out flat. Nice thought god. I’ll leave it to dry and come back tomorrow.

Project Bum Day 3

What The….. Its turned into a sphere, honestly you sweat and slave and turn your back for 5 minutes and suddenly it’s a bloody sphere. Well we’ll see about that.. What I need is something big and heavy with handles. Like my tube on its side only where the ends are I’ll put the handles in. It will roll the thing flat. A Rolling Pin! God took the rolling pin and rolled Bum flat once more. That’ll show it.

Project Bum Day 4

….. …….. F…… F…… S…….. It’s a bloody sphere again. This time I’ll roll it flat and I’ll bloody watch it.

Project Bum Day 4 (and a little bit)

“Oh!” Proclaimed god as he watched Bum tear apart at the edges and collapse in on itself. It’s the same shape as those star thingies I made earlier I guess they are circular for a reason… Aahhh yes the sucky force that’s relative to the mass of everything. If there was no time it would stay flat, dammit.

I guess I’d better leave it and come back tomorrow when all this has settled down.

Project Bum Day 5

Well it’s a sphere again. But it looks a bit barren, sort of rocky with no atmosphere. I wonder thought god. What if I were, uhm you know. Well let’s find out, god turned around pulled up his robes and defecated in the general direction of Bum. The gas cloud settled around the planet forming an atmosphere, but god squeezed a little too hard and lo the appropriately named ‘Moon’ was created as well.

God looked at Bum and Moon and thought to himself ‘damn I really gotta go………

Stay tuned for Part 4 when god finishes project bum on day 6 and then changes the name for the launch party on day 7; and also realises that living things need food to generate energy in order to live but forgot that consumed food has to be ‘deposited’ to relieve the internal pressure.

Today God is listening to:

Epic by Faith No More

The Gospel of K0rs0 Part 2

Well its been a long time coming, but the universe wasn’t made in 6 da…. Shut up.

Last time he created the universe, this time God turns his attention to basic physics, because everything was created by god (cos I’ve just said it was) so he had to do the hard shit too. This bible is totally infallible because I’ve just typed into it that it is.

Damn I’m bored, thought the spirit of God.

These bright shiny things, I think I’ll call em stars, they look pretty but they just sort of float around. What I need is a sucky force that sort of keeps things sort of loosely stuck together but also apart if you catch my drift. I’ll relate it to the size of the object so the bigger something is the stronger the sucky force; unless its really big and collapses into something really small and that has even more suck than seems reasonable it’ll suck so much that nothing can escape. And lo the spirit of God proclaimed ‘Let there be a sort of sucky force related to how big something is, unless its really small in which case it may have possibly even more suckyness unless it doesn’t’. And suddenly Gravity was invented, but it didn’t really work very well.

Afterwards God thought to himself I reckon Size is the wrong thing to use for this, because I am god and therefore male (because all gods are male and white with long white beards) I have a size pre-occupation. But, something can be really big, or small and still have the same sort of heaviness. I need a word for this, something that sounds suitably religiony…. MASS! God proclaimed “The other shit I said about Size forget about it, instead make it so that its related to mass!”. Damn, I’ve got to sort out some kind of infallibility…..

I would never have thought that everything depends on everything else. Pfft, before too long you’d think this place evolved, erm I mean… Shut up.  Now I need something for suckyness to happen in, it’s like there’s this force but it can’t really work because there’s like no space for it to work in. God proclaimed thus “Let there be a passage of something that will make the sucky force work, which is also proportionally relative to the MASS of everything else”. Suddenly the universe arranged itself into galaxies because god just created time for gravity to happen in.

But I’ve got to come up with something that will alleviate the boredom factor a bit, there’s a pile of dust over there, and some gas here, I’m sure I can have a rummage around for some other stuff too…

Stay tuned for part 3 where god realises he cant have gravity and a world that’s flat.

A parade of dumbasses. (Golden Compass)

Stupid 

You know, sometimes the stupidity of some people really surprises me, and believe me I work in IT we deal with a lot of stupid. Once more I was happily reading the news, when an overall theme became apparent. The lines of reality and fiction have become blurred! They must have done because some people seriously can’t tell the difference! That’s right just like the bible, Golden Compass is first and foremost a work of fiction.Golden Compass is the first of a series of novels written by Pillip Pullman.

Hates God (apparently)

Mr. Pullman may not exactly be an atheist (unlike me) and far be it for me to point out differences, but much like reality and fiction, hate and a lack of belief are incontrovertibly different. Hate denotes belief and atheists do not believe.

It’s rather difficult to hate something that quite simply doesn’t exist.  Therefore Mr. Pullman is something else.

Fiction

But I digress as it’s very hard to have a debate with religious people; a  group of people who accepted a book (most of which was written up to 100 years after the alleged events) as a concrete fact. I guess religious types understand the power of a fiction having followed one for many, many years, and there-in lies the problem.

When presented with facts and scientific data it takes quite a nerve to on the one hand sit in front of and use a computer (delivered via the scientific and technological revolution) ; whilst on the other hand using it to decry scientific discovery as something that merely tests faith.

You will fictionalise fact, and instead treat a fiction as fact. No wonder religion has a tough time determining what is real and what isn’t.  But as always I’m a solutions man I’ll give you all my top 10 reality and unreality list.

Real	Unreal
Iraq war	The evidence that lead to the Iraq war
No God	The Bible
Grand Theft Auto	Grand Theft Auto 1, 2, 3, and coming soon 4!
WMD’s	Iraq’s WMD’s
Quantum Theory	String Theory
Evolution	(th)Intelligent Design
Earth Is Round	The Catholic Church’s conviction that it wasn’t.
Global Warming	Everything is A O.k.
Fact	Fiction
Science	Religion

Today I’m Listening To:

Imagine by:John Lennon

The Death of Privacy (well in the UK).

You RIPA!

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act is a piece of legislation that has been enacted in the UK for a few years.  Despite this, one component part of RIPA remained un-activated until October 1st 2007. UK Citizens are being told that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. Nothing to fear except their government perhaps.

The component of the legislation that was ‘activated’ deals with criminalising anyone who:-

1. Fails to present a decryption key for encrypted data upon demand from the authorities.
2. Tells anyone else that the  key has been requested except for their lawyer.

What if you genuinely cant remember your passphrase or password or can’t produce a decrypted form of the encrypted data? Simple if you fail to prove your innocence you will go to jail for 5 years. I don’t know about you, but I remember all my passwords from the past 15 years….

An abuse of your rights.

Lets say I don’t like you, and I decide to send to you a CD that contains an encrypted data file, lets say I tip-off the police anonymously that that person is part of a plot to kill the prime minister and that the plans were kept in an encrypted form.

How the hell would you be able to prove that you don’t have the passphrase? How could you prove that the CD is not yours if your finger prints got on it when you opened the envelope?

Ways around this stupidity.

For those who need it, there are methods that can be used to get around this issue. Using Truecrypt its possible to encrypt files and hide others completely so that they do not appear to exist. You can not decrypt what does not exist.

Re-house your data abroad, but not within the United States. I would suggest other nations such as Australia, Canada and European nations.

If you need to encrypt small quantities of sensitive data, Steganography (embeds encrypted data in an image) is a prospective solution.

Ensure your decryption and public keys expire so that if they are requested by the authorities they will become unusable at a certain time. Also changing a key and passphrase regularly can greatly improve your personal security.

In a situation where a draconian measure like this has been forced onto the general populace, the best form of defence is plausible deniability.