Missed the HOPE convention? Listen to the audio recordings

From July 18th till 20th 2008 the seventh Hackers of Planet Earth conference was held in New York City. These conferences are sponsored by 2600 The hacker Quarterly. For those who missed the conference, or couldn’t attend it, the audiorecordings of the talks are online, all in MP3 format, both in 16 kpbs and 64 kbps.

Now, maybe you are not a hacker and have no plans of becoming one. Why would you be interested in this material? For one, it is simply interesting to listen to guys like Kevin Mitnick or Adam Savage (Mythbusters). Mostly these talks open your eyes for security and privacy issues relating technology or your lifestyle. Are you worried about RFID, the search of your laptop by the US Customs or the consequences of the Freedom of Information Act? Do you want to know more about the (ab)use of VoIP? Well, it’s there in one of the 100 talks that are available.

Have fun listening!

EU sells out civil rights to USA?

Apparently the war on terror is all the excuse a government needs to put the civil rights of it’s citizens out with the trash. The Guardian reports about a secret EU security draft that contains:

• the sharing of vast amounts of intelligence and informations on EU citizens with the USA
• pool intelligence on terrorism, develop joint video-surveillance and unmanned drone aircraft
• start networks of anti-terrorism centres
• boost the role and powers of an intelligence-coordinating body in Brussels
• to create an expeditionary corps of armed gendarmerie for paramilitary intervention overseas

The report is drafted -according to the article- by interior and justice ministers from six EU member states: Germany, France, Sweden, Portugal, Slovenia and the Czech Republic. It says Europe should make up it’s mind:

The EU should make up its mind with regard to the political objective of achieving a Euro-Atlantic area of cooperation with the United States in the field of freedom, security and justice

One ‘problem’ is the current differences in privacy law and data protection regimes, but no doubt that will prove to be a minor hurdle to satisfy the information blood lust. The Guardian is less than optimistic:

The US is already demanding that EU countries sign up for a battery of security measures on transatlantic flights and the supply of personal information on passengers if they are to enjoy visa-free travel to the US. Under one such accord struck in March between Washington and Berlin, the Germans are to make DNA and biometric information on travellers available.

The European Commission and the US homeland security department are also trying to iron out discrepancies in privacy laws to allow the wholesale exchange of data. The aim is to reach a binding international agreement this year or next.

Last month the American Civil Liberties Union wrote to MEPs pressing Brussels to reject US pressure because the US is “a country that, in privacy terms, is all but lawless … US privacy laws are weak. They offer little protection to citizens and virtually none to non-citizens.”

Well, one other reason to make some haste with my research on digital security and privacy.

"Knowledge is power. Hide it well"

One of my favorite games is Warhammer 40.000. I prefer it over Command & Conquer since Warhammer forces you to think about the units you build up and puts a cap on the amount of units you can build. And a gung-ho attack usually doesn’t work. Anyway, the saying: “Knowledge is power. Hide it well” is often repeated by one of the commanders and it seemed a fitting opening for a new series on security awareness.

The decision to move this weblog into a new direction has been liberating for me. I have some ideas on how to proceed from here. The first order of business is to read up on issues like security, digital rights, the technology that threatens both and the technology that is available to counter the threats. It gives me a good excuse to return back to an older interest, hack radio. The blogroll now contains links to Hacker Public Radio and Hackermedia. I’ve been looking into anonymous e-mail services, into anonymous proxy services like TOR and JAP, the pros and cons of these security measures. Encryption and steganography are on the list.

In the coming time I want to write articles for the less tech-savvy users on how to implement these measures and others like them, using open source tools and public information source to put limits on your ‘information leaks’. Apart from this I am gathering newsfeeds from various newssources dealing with security, digital rights, freedom on the internet etcetera. It’s an interesting world out there and it provides new insights and ideas.