Why Even Techies aren't Immune from the Filter

Of late I have seen statements from technologically inclined individuals along the lines of:

I am not worried about the filter. Even if they put it in it will just slow things down a bit but we all know how to get around it.

At first glance this seems reasonable, after all it is true. It however ignores the fact the filter is not just a mechanism for stopping "naughty" content. The government can easily abused the filter and use it monitor attempts to access blocked content. In other words the government will be able to construct a list of "naughty" people.

You might ask

What's the problem with that? Surely having a list of people who attempted to access child porn can only be a good thing

If you are asking this question, then you have been victim to Conroy's propaganda. The filter doesn't block just child pornography, it blocks all refused classification (RC) content. At least it is suppose to. The list of websites to be blocked will not be available for scrutiny. In other words, if the filter were to block content on such controversial topics such as abortion or euthanasia you won't know until you have attempted to access such content. By then it would be too late - the government now knows you tried.

The number of ways such a list of "naughty" people can be abused is beyond counting. Suppose the police needs a few child pornography arrests to look good. They just need to go through the list looking for a few poor souls who stumbled on their internet travels. Bang! A list of people whose privacy will be thoroughly violated as the police fishes through their background looking for dirt. God help them if they have actually broke some trivial law in our complex legal system.

But wait, you say,

Isn't attempting to access refused classification material wrong?

The answer is no, unless it is child pornography. The national classification code allows adult to read, hear, and see what they want:

Classification decisions are to give effect, as far as possible, to the following principles:

(a) adults should be able to read, hear and see what they want;

RC material can not be shown, sold, and possession for the purpose of sale or display is illegal. But to consume it with in the privacy of your own home is no crime [1]. As an adult what you chose to read, hear and see is your own private business.

I am well aware this is a slippery slope argument, however I don't think it is outrageous or preposterous. Governments love to monitor what their citizens do [2], censor what they see, and control what they do. That is almost by definition. To imagine the government to pass up on abusing the filter mechanism is difficult to imagine. It would require integrity on their part, something that has been conspicuously absent thus far.

Hang on, I hear you say,

How does this affect me, who always uses an encrypted connection?

Because my dear Watson, the lack of clear text communication is in itself damning evidence to the government. It shows you are to hiding something. In next to no time they will bring out the old fallacy:

If you have done nothing wrong, what have you to hide?

Remember that Conroy is so incompetent he doesn't even know online banking is encrypted.

The bottom line is this: don't allow this invasion of our privacy the chance to snowball just because it doesn't inconvenience you (yet). Nib it in the bud.

At the next election, vote below the line and vote for the parties against the filter: the Greens [3], the Nationals [4], and if they make it in time, the Pirate Party Australia [5].

Cheers,
Steve

[1] They did try to make it a crime, but sanity prevailed. http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LA19970515003

[2] Just see how much the UK loves their surveillance, despite no evidence it actually lowers crime. 

[3] Greens might trade a rainforest or two for the filter though

[4] Nationals recently passed a motion to block any mandatory Internet filtering

[5] PPAU by definition has to block the filter.

Ben NanoNote First Impressions

Recently unboxed my Ben NanoNote, and I am impressed. The packaging was top-notch and classy as hell. I would not hesitate to put my name to it.

The NanoNote itself is tiny, and feels fairly solid despite the shiny-appearance which I have come to associate with cheapo devices. It's a nice little package, the only issue being the lack of cover of some sort for the micro-SD card slot, which is odd considering the USB port does.

For those wondering, the keyboard has good tactile feedback, though there is no way you are touch typing on this.

There is a microphone opening and a speaker grill, though I have no at this time exercised any of those functions.

If you are wondering what the Ben NanoNote is, here is a little background:

Ben NanoNote is a $99 device which runs OpenWRT. In and of itself this is nothing special. What is special is the copyleft hardware - you can download the schematics off qi-hardware. For hardware meddlers like myself, this is a boon: we can do many interesting things when we know exactly what is available to us and how.

The copyleft nature of the NanoNote hardware is that anyone else can build their own 100% compatible NanoNote variant. This allows immediately opens the platform to competition, and it also gives product developers peace-of-mind: you can always make your own Ben NanoNote, even if qi-hardware stops making them.

In many ways, the Ben NanoNote is like the arduino: here is some hardware and schematics along with a software platform/SDK with source. Now go wild.

Cheers,
Steve

Open Letter to Silicon Chip Australia

Dear Silicon Chip,

I recently cancelled my print subscription. You are no longer a magazine I wish to support.

Political commentary on topics like the insulation scheme and global warming has no place in an electronics magazine. The editor(s) are using the mailbag section to push their own agendas and opinions on the rest of us. I can no longer tolerate such non-sense, and have no interest in financially supporting a magazine that is so set on disinformation and irrational discourse.

Let me be clear: I am not cancelling my subscription because of the beliefs of the people at SC. I am cancelling because SC is being used as a platform to spread those beliefs. Whether or not SC believes in global warming, or that the government is at fault for the deaths from the insulation scheme, commentary of these issues are best left to newspapers. They have no place in a publication about electronics.

On other thing, the filler article reviewing consumer electronics (e.g. MacBook) is most annoying. It lowers the standard of the magazine. If you really have nothing to write about, go find some interesting arduino variants, like the jeeNode, and review one of those.

You have lost your way SC, and it is a sad thing to have to let you go. Maybe we can get back together again.

Steve

Script to make IPAs for ad-hoc distribution.

This script produces an IPA, then verifies to make sure the IPA is actually valid.

PRODUCT_NAME=""
IPA="${PRODUCT_NAME}.ipa"
APP="${PRODUCT_NAME}.app"

if [ -z "${PRODUCT_NAME}" ]; then
        echo "PRODUCT_NAME not set";
        exit 1;
fi

rm -rf ipa
mkdir -p ipa/Payload &&
cp -R build/Debug-iphoneos/${APP} ipa/Payload/ &&
pushd ipa &&
zip -q --symlinks -r ${IPA} Payload/ &&
mkdir test/ &&
cp ${IPA} test &&
cd test &&
unzip -q ${IPA} &&
cd Payload/ &&
codesign --verify --verbose ${APP} &&
popd
open ipa/

Designed to be ran from the command line, but it should be easily made into a build phase.

Cheers,
Steve

Discouraging File Sharers at LANs

A friend of mine likes to go to LANs and like to run LANs. He has been complaining for sometime that social gaming no longer occur at LANs and in its place is leeching. Lest you think LANs have somehow turned into 19th century medical clinics, we are talking about leeching of files, which given the kind of people who go to LANs, consists of porn, porn, porn, movie, and porn.

My friend laments that he hasn't found a nice way to deal with file sharers such gamers aren't impacted, since some file sharing is required for games installers, updaters, drivers, etc. Any kind of port blocking, packet inspection, real-life-what-are-you-doing inspection are right out for the reasons of impotency, latency, and privacy.

After some discussion, we came up on the following idea to discourage, not ban, file sharers: limit upload rate of all ports. This won't affect 99.99% of gamers since games use very little bandwidth, and it still lets you download at full speed. This however impacts significantly on file sharers: the theoretical maximum downstream a file sharer can achieve is n-1 * upload_rate, which assumes everyone else is giving him their upstream bandwidth. Make this theoretical maximum low enough, and file sharers are better off using sneaker net.

There is an elegance to this that appeals to me - it exploits the fact gaming prioritise latency over bandwidth, and file sharing bandwidth over latency. It is also resistant to circumvention -  because this can be implemented on the data link layer, it isn't something file sharers can get around by changing ports or using encryption.

If you know of any LANs that implement this policy, or run a LAN implementing this policy, I would love to know how well this idea performs in the real world.

Cheers,
Steve