Month: May 2008
Security expert Bruce Schneier gave a talk last month at InfoSecurity Europe in London which was a follow-on to his work on the psychology of security.
The full talk can be viewed online here. (43 mins)
Great talk and very much worth watching if wish to understand the pros and cons of security theatre and how security threats are presented by the media.
Categories
Getting drunk to have sex.
BMC Public Health has published a study that reveals according to BBC News that Europeans get drunk ‘to have sex’
The UK has one of the worst reputations for binge drinking and underage sex but there are striking similarities between countries, a study found.
A third of 16 to 35-year-old men and 23% of women questioned said they drank to increase their chance of sex.
Seems like common sense to me and so is just a confirmation of what we all know, alcohol is a great disinhibitor.
Chinese firms bargain hunting in U.S.
With the collapse in the value of the US dollar and introduction of state’s subsidies for foreign investment the normal direction of Globalisation has pulled a reversal and the Chinese are starting to outsource to the US.
DONGGUAN, CHINA — Liu Keli couldn’t tell you much about South Carolina, not even where it is in the United States. It’s as obscure to him as his home region, Shanxi province, is to most Americans.
But Liu is investing $10 million in the Palmetto State, building a printing-plate factory that will open this fall and hire 120 workers. His main aim is to tap the large American market, but when his finance staff penciled out the costs, he was stunned to learn how they compared with those in China.
Liu spent about $500,000 for seven acres in Spartanburg — less than one-fourth what it would cost to buy the same amount of land in Dongguan, a city in southeast China where he runs three plants. U.S. electricity rates are about 75% lower, and in South Carolina, Liu doesn’t have to put up with frequent blackouts.
This is an interesting turn of events and is likely to be a continuing trend.
Ross Anderson, Professor of Security Engineering at the Computer Laboratory of The University of Cambridge has just published the second edition of his book Security Engineering, the preface and six chapters of which is available to download.
To quote Bruce Schneier “This is the best book on the topic there is, and I recommend it to everyone working in this field — and not just because I wrote the foreword.”
Professor Anderson has made the first edition of his fantastic book available to download for free as a 17MB pdf.
Fantastic documentary about the war in Iraq and the policy decisions that have led to the current situation. It has really clarified my thoughts on the whole Iraq question especially in light of the opinions and statements of the people who are now running for the next Presidency of the United States.
I was of the opinion that the US forces should remain in Iraq until they had cleaned up the mess that they had created and achieved some kind of stability. I believed that if the US military withdrew then Iraq would descend into an even more chaotic situation than it is currently in.
But in the past year my opinion started to shift as some stability was achieved, however it has not been due to The Surge but instead due to the ceasefire between the US and the Mahdi Army and an equilibrium between the rival armed factions who control different districts of Baghdad. The Iraqi government is a joke that has lost the respect of the people and the US has just become one of the many armed gangs that control Iraq now albeit with better weapons.
Considering the way the Bush administration botched the entire post-war period and occupation as is depicted in this movie I hold out no hope that they can produce any positive results in Iraq. Perhaps a new President could but none of the possible candidates inspire me with confidence that they have any real grasp on the situation.
The title of the movie is interesting, to what is there no end in sight? The obvious answer is the war. Will there be an end to the War in Iraq?
Two answers to this basically.
Either it ended on April 15th 2003 or it will end a long time from now depending on whether you believe that the events that occurred after the invasion and the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s government are part of that same conflict. What can be considered victory in Iraq? Was it defeating Saddam? If so Mission Accomplished. But if it was to do that and then build a stable democratic Republic of Iraq then it isn’t going to happen for many years.
Pulling US forces out of the region will not end the “war” it will just mean fewer dead American soldiers, because the war now is a conflict between many different armed factions it is an extremely complicated kind of civil war. The US just happens to be one of these armed groups albeit with better weapons.
Owen Bowcott reports in The Guardian that CCTV boom has failed to slash crime, say police.
A senior police officer confirms what I’ve suspected for a long while that the massive increase in the number of CCTV cameras has not seen a corresponding decrease in crime.
Use of CCTV images for court evidence has so far been very poor, according to Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville, the officer in charge of the Metropolitan police unit. “CCTV was originally seen as a preventative measure,” Neville told the Security Document World Conference in London. “Billions of pounds has been spent on kit, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court. It’s been an utter fiasco: only 3% of crimes were solved by CCTV. There’s no fear of CCTV. Why don’t people fear it? [They think] the cameras are not working.”
Presumably the criminals think the cameras do not work because they are able to get away with their crimes in full view of them. However the general public have a great deal of faith in the ability of CCTV to cut crime because they have been sold on the idea by the politicians and the police.
With the differing perception of the effect of CCTV the increase in number might have an effect to increase crime because people become more complacent in a heavily surveilled area believing they are safe from criminals.
According to the New York Times. Over the last six decades, the real incomes of middle-class families grew twice as fast under Democratic presidents as they did under Republican presidents. The real incomes of working-poor families grew six times as fast under Democratic presidents. [via]
The incomes of affluent families were relatively impervious to partisan politics, growing robustly under Democrats and Republicans alike.