Regular readers (you both know who you are) will be aware that I have from time to time been somewhat flippant about Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse AM, Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority (aka the Dog-Catcher-in -Chief). 

However, I am with him – and on occasions ahead of him – in the belief that more needs to be done about the growing problem of dangerous  bred/trained-for-attack dogs in London.  I therefore support the initiative that he is taking today petitioning the Government to take action to resolve the problem.

The GLA is calling for:

• an increase in the penalty for owning a banned breed, to bring it more inline with carrying an offensive weapon
• the extension of the law to include private land, particularly to protect people who have to visit other peoples homes as part of the work
• changes to the part of the law that allows well behaved banned breeds to remain with their owners, so that the process is much quicker, making it better for the dog and saving the police money.

Last time I asked there was little sign that the Coalition Government was planning to move on any of these points.  However, Kit Malthouse has (or at least he would like us to believe that he has) the ear of the Coalition Government.  No doubt, therefore, this initiative will  produce speedy action.  We’ll be waiting……

I’ve commented before on the market that has developed for hackers and malware writers to sell on their “products” to other criminals – even promoting their activities via Twitter.

This concern has now been repeated by the Canadian Criminal Intelligence Service in its 25th Annual Report on Organised Crime.  According to the Montreal Gazette:

“The report, released Friday, focuses on securities fraud, and states the size and complexity of schemes help conceal criminal activity, generate ample profits and facilitate tax evasion.

It said social-networking websites are allowing criminals to efficiently and anonymously issue fake news releases and promotional material to potential victims.

Aside from the use of Facebook and Twitter, criminal organizations are taking advantage of the hacker-for-hire black market, it said.

The report offered few further details. However, it did say that because of the availability of these services, fraudsters don’t need to acquire the necessary technical expertise to hijack computer accounts on their own.”

I have been hearing increasingly lurid stories about the incompetence and insensitivity of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority in the way in which they “administer” MPs’ expenses.

However, I have now heard from two sources a story so outlandish that I felt I should investigate further.

IPSA Bulletin No6 explains helpfully:

“We have received a number of queries about maternity pay and other similar costs, therefore we wish to make it clear that IPSA will pay any necessary expenditure on maternity, paternity or adoptive leave for MPs’ staff. We will also pay for the cost of cover to replace the staff member on leave, provided the cover meets the normal Scheme rules. This is paid from the contingency fund – not because we are exercising discretion on whether to make these payments, but so that these payments do not impact on your capped staffing budget.”

The issue is what constitutes “necessary” expenditure.

This is “helpfully” clarified in the Expenses Rules, specifically rule 12.14 on contingency payments.  This requires that IPSA will only provide such payments for luxuries like maternity cover if they (IPSA) are satisfied that the MP could not:

“reasonably have been expected to take any action to avoid the circumstances which gave rise to the expenditure or liability”.

MPs are being faced with a form which in essence asks them to clarify what steps they took to prevent a staff member’s pregnancy.

Will relationship counselling be sufficient?  Or should the counselling extend to contraceptive advice?  Or even the provision of condoms for the MPs’ staff?

No wonder that so many staff who work for MPs are enraged and affronted.

The BBC reports today on the loading of the first nuclear fuel at the Bushehr reactor in Iran tell us that the international community can be reassured on the basis that (1) the nuclear fuel rods are all being supplied by Russia and (2) the spent rods and waste will go back to Russia.

At the risk of sounding like an unreconstructed cold warrior, I have to confess to not finding this at all reassuring.

Why does Russia want to do this and what do they expect to get out of it?

And as for the waste, the work I have been doing in recent months on the safeguards (or lack of them) at reprocessing plants hardly makes any of this sound any better.

Please somebody persuade me that this is good news ….

There is a very powerful post by PC Bloggs under the title “The Real Police Woman” on the death of PC Sharon Beshenivsky.  I hope it is widely read.

I suppose nothing should surprise me about the LibDems, but I was taken aback by their reported reaction to a mid-year cutback in local health services.

My local newspaper, the Hornsey and Crouch End Journal, reports today that there is “Fury as GP walk-in services scrapped“.

The story relates to a decision by the local PCT to abandon a service providing drop-in health services for people who cannot get an appointment to see a GP at the new Hornsey Central Neighbourhood Health Centre, opened only a year ago, having been built at a cost of £12 million.

And who is quoted as being “extremely concerned” about the decision but local LibDem MP and junior Coalition Government Minister, Lynne Featherstone, alongside local LibDem councillor, David Winskill.

Apparently, neither of these local LibDem luminaries have made the connection between the mid-year cuts ordered by the Coalition Government’s emergency budget and the mid-year cuts announced by the local (soon to be abolished) PCT.

And who supports the Coalition Government locally?

Why the self-same local LibDem MP and junior Coalition Government Minister, Lynne Featherstone, and, of course, local LibDem councillors like David Winskill.

They just don’t get it, do they?

Or maybe they do and they are just two-faced hypocrites.

A couple of days ago Michael Crick floated the story that Vince Cable is being touted round as a candidate for London Mayor in 2012 (and not just as the LibDem candidate but as the COALITION candidate, but then soft-pedalled vigorously the following day.

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 ….

Thanks to my good friends at Team Cymru, I have been keeping up-to-date on current developments on cyber security while I have been away.

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 …..

From 24th November 2009:

I spent a big chunk of yesterday visiting Broadmoor Special Hospital, in my capacity as Chair of the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody.  The visit was fascinating, staff were very generous with their time and I learned a lot.

I also enjoyed the security arrangements, which are rather more rigorous than most that I have encountered.  You need a photo-ID, you provide two fingerprints for matching on entering and leaving the hospital, most electronic items have to be left in lockers outside the hospital, and you need to go through a metal detector as well as being searched.  When all that is completed you are issued with a visitors’ identity badge, which carries your photograph, your name and job title or designation.

Presumably, when it came to a job title, only a certain number of characters could be entered on the badge and “Chair of the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody (Ministry of Justice)” obviously didn’t fit.  I found myself bearing the label: “Lord Toby Harris, Minister of Death”.

Fortunately, the font size was quite small, so I think (hope?) that none of the patients could read it ….

From 19th November 2009:

Lord Kamlesh Patel has revealed the secret of what the civil service consider to be a “good” answer to a Parliamentary Question.  In his speech seconding the Motion for an Humble Address (the formal Parliamentary response to the Queen’s Speech always proposed and seconded by back-benchers from the Government side), he recounted his experiences on becoming a Whip (he has since resigned) and his desire for training, in particular on the arcane art of answering Parliamentary Questions.

This is what he said:

“I had to learn a great deal as a Minister in the Whips’ Office. …. The first is that you have to answer a lot of parliamentary Questions, often on subjects about which you know little. I take this opportunity to thank noble Lords for their forbearance and patience with me during the times when this was abundantly clear to them.

I can assure noble Lords that, despite their doubts, I sought guidance and advice about answering parliamentary Questions. Surely, I thought, there must be some sort of guidance—a course, an induction programme, perhaps, that I could go on. Early on, I sought advice. “No, you do not need a training course on this”, I was told, “you just need to learn a few golden rules”. I was told a story that perfectly illustrated what the golden rules were. Let me share this with noble Lords.

A Minister and a senior civil servant are being driven to some remote government establishment. The car begins to travel deep into the countryside, it is getting late, and the fog closes in. The car gets slower and slower and finally the driver, dimly seeing a passer-by, rolls down the window and shouts, “Where are we?”. Back comes the answer, “You are in a car in the fog”. The civil servant immediately jumps up and says, “Do you realise, Minister, that that is the perfect answer to a parliamentary Question? It is short, it is absolutely true and it tells you nothing that you did not already know”.”

So now we all know ….