Category: Internet

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Terms and Conditions

So… Imagine someone is trying to make a business model from invading others peoiples privacy. Lets say they sell access to some of the gaziollion CCTV cameras ditributed all over Britain threse days, cause you know, if you have nothing to hide… And obviously people are interested in watching their neigbours and catch them while… well, whatever people do that might be worth catching them at.  And lets even go further and suggest that that might be a viable business model, charging people for watching surveillance cams in the hope of winning a jackpot of a whopping 1.000 Pounds.

Then, of course, you would want to protect at least the companys privacy – or that of its stakeholders, from all this Stasi mob you’ve just unleashed on your fellow countrymen, right? So you’d probably add somephrase like the following to your website:

You must not print, save, copy, modify, transmit or otherwise disclose or share any image or other information you view on our website with any other person, including a family member. In the unlikely event that you recognise a business customer of ours, or a person you know on camera, you agree not to communicate with that person or any other person at those premises.

Now that should make sure the company gets to decide which crimes actually end up at the police, right?

And of course, since we are already facilitating general nosiness around neigbours and public spaces, we can also abandon users privacy on the website, as well, right?

6. The personal information we disclose may include your Viewer ID and Viewer ID history, name, address, telephone number, alerts or anything else that we in our sole discretion deem relevant.

But of course that snippet we better put in some “Privacy Policy” Statement, thats even more difficult to find.

Of couse, all this has nothing to do with http://interneteyes.co.uk/terms-conditions.html

Oups, I forgot:

You may not link any other site to our website.

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A real military first

„From this place, and from this day forth begins a new era in the history of the world, and you can all say that you were present at its birth.“ — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We haven’t been there, we didnt see it, and we don’t know the place.

But as far as we can tell, one of the first days of July 2009 saw the first successful attack against a military target by a computer virus, or rather, a worm.  And I am not talking about defacing a couple of websites with a DDos attack by a couple of disaffectes script-kiddies like the “cyber attack” on Estonia in 2007.  The attack in the Summer of 2009 was different in several aspects, if we interpret the available information correctly:

  • It was conducted by an goverment agecy or an entity capable of mustering similar intelligence ressources
  • It was conducted by someone not caring about polital or economical fallout, if the source of the attack became public – which points to a government agency rather to a company
  • It targeted a specific installation instead of randomly attacking publicly accessible website
  • It required “boots on the ground” in order to plant the first code into the targeted network
  • Its outcome remained a secret for more than a year

I am talking, of course, of the Stuxnet worm, whose existence was publicly acknowledged only a couple of weeks ago, and which seems to have been targeted at the Iranian nuclear program.  The action at the intersection of computer security and intelligence means few reliable informations can be found, but a few deductions can be made from the available news.

It looks like Iran was the target. Going for the enrichment facilities with its several thousand identical machines seems to make indefinitly more sense than targeting a reactor which completion hinges on the consent of its russian builders. Having several thousand targets makes it more likely to be able to reach a significant number of them with a virus or a worm. And from what Wikileaks and other bits and pieces on the tubes tell us, someone indeed succeeded in hampering the Iranian efforts to enrich Uranium, even if they were unable to stop the program completely.

Obviously the attack was leaked after its successful conclusion, though of course in a way that did not really enable anyone to effectively lay blame on the attackers or identify the precise angle of attack. Most likely, the attack wasn’t a singular effort but bar of a concerted strategy to hinder the iranian efforts. Which, considering the fact that its president has repeatedly sworn to wipe Israel of the map,  publicly denies the Holocaust and generally speaks of the West in a langauge usually reserved for barroom brawls, is the most decent thing to do, as long as most countries seem to be weary to sacrifice their trade relationships “just” because another madman might get some nukes.

Whatever the final outcome, July 2009 sets a patern we will most likely see repeated in the future, of attacks on infrastructure and research and government facilities, conducted by intelligence agencies on behalf of governments with the capabilities to physical access to said infrastructures. Lets hope that most of those fights will end as unbloody as Valmy for a long time.

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A farewell gift

For decades the Naftziger collection was the most renowned reference point for wargamers like me if it came to solid information about orders of battle. Its wealth and depth were a constant source of envy and admiration at the same time. In numerous occasions a fading print-out, arriving in a brown envelope from across the Atlantic, settled a long-lasting feud between gamers in Essen and Wuppertal over the presence of a particular regiment of grenadiers or voltigeurs at this or that napoleonic battle.

So I am sad to read George Naftziger has gone into retirement, sad cause with him we loose one of the most dedicated researchers of statistical data for military history. My English skills are not good enough to really describe the gap he will leave.

On his way out, however, Mr. Naftziger donated the whole corpus of his collection to the public, so that it can be accessed at the CARL library of Ft. Leavenworth from now on. And the only thing I can do is to encourage everyone to make the best use of this information, and of course say: Thank you, Mr. Nafziger. May you live long and prosper.

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Why Web 2.0 failed

But can it utilize revolutionary interfaces to productize cross-media e-services to mesh extensible niches which helps to incubate end-to-end communities and to drive sticky functionalities while scaling collaborative systems in an effort to monetize open-source convergence?

Found at Slashdot, of course, proving that not every Idle-Posting is useless. In other news: No-one wants to know. And yes, I do realize this is a blog. Thanks.