First, Greater Manchester Police have been embarrassed by an unencrypted USB stick that was “found lying in the street” which the public spirited citizen who “found” it passed on to the responsible authorities (aka The Daily Star on Sunday).  Apparently, the USB stick contained “2,000 pages of highly-sensitive and confidential information” including material “on countering the threat of terrorism on British streets include strategies for acid and petrol bomb attacks, blast control training and the use of batons and shields.”  

Of course, it is entirely natural that, if you find something outside a police station, emblazoned with the logo of Greater Manchester Police, the first thing you do is take it home and plug it into your laptop.  And then when you realise how sensitive it is you decide not to return it to the Police but give it to a tabloid newspaper.  This public-spirited citizen was so confident of the correctness of his actions that he “asked the Daily Star Sunday to withhold his identity ­because he feared reprisals”.

Meanwhile in India, the Times of India reports:

“Even as Chinese and Pakistani online espionage agents continue their attempts to hack into Indian computer systems, hostile intelligence agencies are also trying to steal defence secrets through use of computer storage media (CSM) devices like pen drives, removable hard disks, CDs, VCDs and the like.

The Intelligence Bureau has sounded a red alert about “intelligence officers of a hostile country” encouraging their “assets” working in Indian defence establishments to use CSM devices to pilfer classified information from computer networks.”

It looks as though the Chinese and Pakistani intelligence agencies are wasting a lot of effort – all they need is to get a few Mancunian businessmen and the Daily Star onside and they will have all the information they need …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouof1OzhL8k&NR=1

For those who can’t be bothered to click on the link, here is an extract:

“Japanese toilets have long and famously dominated the world of bathroom hygiene with their array of functions, from posterior shower jets to perfume bursts and noise-masking audio effects for the easily-embarrassed.

The latest “intelligent” model, manufactured by market leader Toto, goes a step further and isn’t for the faint-hearted: it offers its users an instant health check-up every time they answer the call of nature.

Designed for the housing company Daiwa House with Japan’s growing army of elderly in mind, it provides urine analysis, takes the user’s blood pressure and body temperature, and measures their weight with an inbuilt floor scale.

“Our chairman had the idea when he was at a hospital and saw people waiting for health checks. He thought it would be better if they could do the health tests at home,” says Akiho Suzuki, an architect at Daiwa House.

Toto’s engineers developed a receptacle inside the basin to collect the urine for sugar content and temperature checks, and an armband to monitor blood pressure. The readout is displayed on a wall-mounted computer screen.

“With the current model, your data is sent automatically to your personal computer, and then you can email it to your doctor,” said Suzuki.

“In the next generation model, the data will be sent automatically to family members or doctors via the Internet,” she told AFP.

The electronic marvel, called the “Intelligence Toilet”, is capable of storing the data of up to five different people and retails for 350,000 to 500,000 yen (about 4,100 to 5,850 dollars) in Japan, she said.

“For now our customers are essentially middle-aged and senior people. But we hope the young generation will also become more health-conscious.”

The model is the latest advance in a string of sophisticated toilets, known as “washlets” in Japan, which have become ubiquitous in recent decades.

The first models were imported from the United States, where they had been used mainly in hospitals, and quickly became standard in Japan in the booming 1980s, finding their way into at least 70 percent of Japanese homes now.

Pioneering Toto designed its first models by asking hundreds of its employees to test a toilet and mark, using a string stretched across the bowl and a piece of paper, their preferred location for the water jet target area.

“For the problem of nozzle angle and water temperature, there was a particular development team dedicated to these tests,” Kuno recalled.

First-time foreign visitors to Japan are often baffled by the complexity of Japanese high-tech toilets, which feature computerised control panels, usually with Japanese language instructions as well as small pictograms.

Standard functions include heated seats, water jets with pressure and temperature controls, hot-air bottom dryers and ambient background music.

A function called “otohime” (literally “princess of sound”) produces a flushing sound to cover bodily noises. A portable gadget is available for customers who want to use it on the go, in restrooms far away from home.

In most recent toilet models, the lid automatically lifts when a user enters the restroom. Men can then push a button to also flip up the seat.

As soon as the user leaves the room, both the seat and lid automatically glide back into horizontal position, a clever feature that can preempt potential conflict between male and female members of the same household.”

However, his suggestion does have some real credibility.  Consider the following:

1. Vince Cable is clearly hating his current role in the Cabinet.  His body language oozes unhappiness.  He is visibly miserable about some aspects of Coalition policy and displays none of the relish shown by Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne and the others for ditching major cherished pillars of LibDem orthodoxy.
2. Boris Johnson is desperately seeking a way out of contesting the Mayorality again in 2012.  It has turned out to be much harder work than he expected and it interferes with his extra-mural activities.  What is more, he is terrified of losing and he really, really, really wants to back in the House of Commons making his pitch to be the next Leader of the Conservative Party.  Interestingly, he has still failed to state clearly that he wants to run again.
3. David Cameron would dearly love to remove Boris Johnson’s platform (of course, he’d probably like to remove other things of his as well) which is used to grandstand on issues that undermine the Coalition while strengthening the standing that Boris has in the wider Conservative Party.
4. David Cameron does not want to see a Conservative candidate lose the most high-profile directly-elected position in the country.
5. Both David Cameron and Nick Clegg would like to bolster the Coalition and keep open the possibility of a non-aggression pact for their two Parties in the next General Election.  A coalition candidate for Mayor might just win and would be a big boost to Coalition candidates being fielded in 2015 (or whenever the General Election takes place).
6. The best alternative candidate the LibDems can come up with is Lembit Opik.
7. The best alternative candidate the Conservatives can come up with is Kit Malthouse.
8. Successfully imposing the notion of fielding a Coalition candidate would put Simon “no election pacts” Hughes firmly back into his box.

It all begins to look scarily plausible ….

Two items, in particular, caught my eye.

The first was that India is now developing its own army of software professionals to hack computer systems of hostile nations.

The second was about the vulnerability of major companies to “spoofing” – plausible sounding cold callers seeking information over the telephone AND being provided with enough material to assist hackers to penetrate information systems.  Apparently, at the recent DefCon conference in Las Vegas there was a “social engineering” contest challenging hackers to call workers at 10 companies including Google, Apple, Cisco, and Microsoft and get them to reveal too much information to strangers.  According to an article in The Age,  one employee was conned into opening programs on a company computer to read off specifications regarding types of software being used, details that would let a hacker tailor viruses to launch at the system.

The article continued:

‘”You often have to crack through firewalls and burn the perimeter in order to get into the internal organisation,” said Mati Aharoni of Offensive Security, a company that tests company computer defences.

“It is much easier to use social engineering techniques to get to the same place.”

Other companies targeted were Pepsi, Coca Cola, Shell, BP, Ford, and Proctor & Gamble.

The contest, which continued Saturday at DefCon and promises the winner an Apple iPad tablet computer, is intended to show that hardened computer networks remain vulnerable if people using them are soft touches.

“We didn’t want anyone fired or feeling bad at the end of the day,” Aharoni said. “We wanted to show that social engineering is a legitimate attack vector.”

A saying that long ago made it onto t-shirts at the annual DefCon event is “There is no patch for human stupidity.”

“Companies don’t think their people will fall for something as simple as someone calling and just asking a few questions,” Hadnagy said.

“It doesn’t require a very technical level of attacker,” Aharoni added. “It requires someone with an ability to schmooze well.”

One worker nearly foiled a hacker by insisting he send his questions in an email that would be reviewed and answered if appropriate.

The hacker convinced the worker to change his mind by claiming to be under pressure to finish a report for a boss by that evening.

“As humans, we naturally want to help other people,” Hadgagy said. “I’m not advocating not helping people. Just think about what you say before you say it.”

I suspect most organisations and businesses in the UK would be vulnerable to this sort  of approach …..

We do a regular shop from Sainsbury’s using the home delivery service selecting items on-line.  Those who do likewise will know that if the item you want is not available Sainsbury’s will carefully select for you an equivalent purchase – unless you have ticked the “No substitution” box.

This morning’s groceries arrived with only one substitution.  We had ordered four 125gm bars of Wrights Coal Tar Soap (you will be pleased to note that the Harris household washes).

However, instead of this:

Sainsbury’s sent:

four three-packs of Wrigleys Orbit Complete Strawberry flavour chewing gum.

I am still trying to work out the thought processes of those who made the substitution.

However, just in case you really really want to cast your vote for this blog in the Total Politics annual beauty parade, this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

However, just in case you really really want to cast your vote for this blog in the Total Politics annual beauty parade, this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

Sir Paul’s lecture, entitled “Fighting Organised Crime in an Era of Financial Austerity”, was insightful and thought-provoking.

And the thought it provoked in me was how does tackling serious crime fit into the Coalition Government’s agenda?

The answer, if you listen to Sir Paul (although he was much too polite to say it so explicitly), was that it doesn’t.

The lecture spelt out the impact that serious organised crime has directly and indirectly on communities and its financial and economic cost to the country.  And Sir Paul then pointed out that, despite the significant improvements in recent years:

“The specialist resources devoted by the police service to addressing the threat from organised crime remains uncoordinated.  ….  the  service has no organised crime strategy, no established national tasking process and no meaningful performance measures.”

He didn’t say – although he could have done – that the Coalition’s Programme for Government doesn’t mention serious organised crime in the chapter on “Crime and Policing” and the closest it gets to a mention anywhere in the document is in the chapter on “Immigration” which promises to:

“create a dedicated Border Police Force, as part of a refocused Serious Organised Crime Agency, to enhance national security, improve immigration controls and crack down on the trafficking of people, weapons and drugs. We will work with police forces to strengthen arrangements to deal with serious crime and other cross-boundary policing challenges, and extend collaboration between forces to deliver better value for money.”

Refocussing SOCA on immigration hardly solves the problem Sir Paul was describing.

He did, however, reveal that the Government is now drafting a paper on organised crime – so I suppose that must be progress.  However, before we get our expectations too high, he warns that this:

“must not be a collection of fine words and generic statements.”

…. perhaps he’s seen the draft.

And he concluded with a stark warning:

“I wonder how many Chief Constables across the country are going to be able and willing to balance the very proper desire and requirement for local community policing, with the challenge of maintaining at least existing capability to deal with the high end but often less obvious demands of serious organised crime.  And is the situation about to get even more complex?  Will the new accountability and governance model for police forces, incorporating directly elected local individuals, lead to the unintended consequence of further eroding existing limited organised crime capability?”

And, if the Coalition omits tackling serious organised crime from its programme for crime and policing, what will happen with directly elected police chiefs?

I hope we don’t have to wait for a Sicilian-style breakdown of civic authority before tackling organised crime reappears on the Coalition’s priority list.