I had a half-formed post in mind to work on this morning, but then I read Glenn Greewald’s latest and concluded that if you are going to devote ten minutes of your day, nothing I could write would be as profitable as your reading him.
I would only add the obvious fact that Blair had already done to New Labour precisely what Obama has done to the Democrats; and that western “democracy” has lost its meaning because the institutionally entrenched parties offer no actual policy choice to voters, but are all neo-conservative.
Jon, I use these certs for my home nginx reverse proxy set-up and I get a nice green https in the url bar in chrome.
These free certs are only the minimum in verifying the owner of the cert so you don’t get a coloured in green bar or anything, but as far as encrypting your traffic they are as good as the ones that cost hundreds of pounds.
thanks jon
Meanwhile, far away in the land of Ontopic:
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/10/25/gchq-intel-sharing-for-drone-strikes-may-be-accessory-to-murder-court-hears/
Much more on the TBI site. Including where £2Bn we haven’t got went =
{http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/09/27/wheres-all-the-money-gone-how-britain-spent-2bn-on-drones/}
Well, at least we’re not spending it on *feh* poor people –
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9632688/Iain-Duncan-Smith-suggests-two-child-limit-for-benefits.html
UN to investigate civilian deaths from US drone strikes
Special rapporteur on counter-terror operations condemns Barack Obama’s failure to establish effective monitoring process
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/25/un-inquiry-us-drone-strikes
“The unit will also look at “other forms of targeted killing conducted in counter-terrorism operations, in which it is alleged that civilian casualties have been inflicted, and to seek explanations from the states using this technology and the states on whose territory it is used. [It] will begin its work early next year and will be based in Geneva.”
“Security officials who took part in waterboarding interrogations or secret rendition removals should be made accountable for their actions and justice, Emmerson added.” …
“I should make it absolutely clear that my mandate does not see to eye to eye with the Obama administration on a range of issues – not least the lack of transparency over the drone programme. But on this issue the president has been clear since he took office that water-boarding is torture that it is contrary to American values and that it would stop.
“… But Governor Romney has said that he does not believe that waterboarding is torture. He has said that he would allow enhanced interrogation techniques that go beyond those now permitted by the army field manual, and his security advisers have recommended that he rescind the existing restrictions.”
I wonder 1) will it ever happen
and 2) will it amount to anything if it does.
So first we have PressTV kicked off the airwaves for some minor breech.
No we have all the channels from Iran booted off the Stallite network. Freedom of speech and a worthy Nobel prize…man its been a good month.
On Channel 4 news … they’re saying that police were approached 7 times during Savile’s lifetime about his abuses. But they didn’t have enough evidence to take any action.
[I could never stand the sleazy git. Nor understand how he became a “star”.]
And, I had temporarily forgotten that Romney favours torture. As much as I dislike Obama, we must hope that Romney doesn’t win.
Dreoilin,
Helluva choice isn’t it? Obama the “dispositional matrix” drone king or “let’s have MORE torture” Romney.
I despair.
Komodo, Jon, Dreoilin, Michael Stephenson,
One of the great delights here is that one can post here without any captcha or registration hooked up to email etc. It is important not to raise the barrier for entry for new posters on a topic, such as happened with those from Ecuador.
Personally I am uneasy with the state of ip-no. and browser info and cookie logging, and would take such a registration wall as a curtailment of my free speech. Should that occur, silencing me, how am I to even let you know my objection? 🙁
I have been continuing to post on-topic in some earlier threads and noticed how the dynamics seem to favour a mad scramble of attention to the most recent post with a free for all with little concern for being off topic, which makes it hard to sustain focus on a discussion. It also places a higher load on the readers and wears them out, and reduces the usefulness of the Archive.
So, rather than any major upheaval (especially in the present circumstances), I would recommend first consider adjustments to the front page, Recent Posts, Archives and Search layout and functionality, together with some posting guidelines etc.
This may be sufficient to encourage a more Forum-like usage.
Another technique employed on some blogs is to have a “free discussion” post made once a week, so anything off-topic is encouraged to go there, or moved there by the moderators.
On https support – what risk are you trying to protect against?
It’s dreadful, Jives.
And here’s the tail-end of the piece at the Guardian link I posted above:
“The Cambodian dictator Pol Pot [he pointed out] used the technique. “Anyone who is in doubt about whether waterboarding is torture should visit Tuol Sleng, the infamous S-21 detention facility operated by the Khymer Rouge in Phnom Penh.
“Over a period of four years 14,000 people were systematically tortured and killed there. It is now a genocide museum. And right there, in the middle of the central torturing room, is the apparatus used by Pol Pot’s security officials for waterboarding.”
And Republicans will argue with you that it’s not torture … I don’t know who they think they’re kidding.
But Romney is on board with the drones too, so I don’t see any option but to hope Obama wins.
Snap,
Thanks. “I don’t have a horse in this race” or a “dog in this fight”, as they say, so really, as far as the blog is concerned, I’ll just go along with whatever happens.
I think your recommendations about a link to ‘posting guidelines’ and a once a week “Open post” – for bits and bobs about anything – are good.
Dreoilin,
Yes,thanks for your post,i completely agree.
You’d think after the GOP’s poster boy Hitchens underwent waterboarding and,after lasting about 2 seconds,declared it most definitely torture.
The thing that i can’t understand is this: It’s so obvious to anyone with a modicum of intelligence that US foreign policy is clearly fomenting Islamist terrorism.
I can only then assume the US wants/needs this scenario.Perpetual nonsensical wars for profit.There can be no other common sense conclusion.
Snap the main risk in my opinion is the security of Craig’s password.
It’s a reasonable assumption that Craig signs into his blog using open wifi frequently as he is often travelling.
Without ssl there is no encryption of the traffic being sent from your web browser to the webserver being vulnerable to anyone who can inspect your packets on the way to the webserver.
On secured wifi at least the data being sent between your laptop and the wifi hotspot are encrypted.
But on open wifi all the data you send is readable by everyone around you. An attacker would use packet inspection and read your password in clear text.
One application for doing this is called wireshark.
Anyone who had a laptop and sat near craig while he was blogging or accessing the website could easily read his password.
They could then sign in as him and get everyone who comments here’s IP address, and whatever email address they provide.
His password could have been compromised years ago and all our IP’s could be recorded and personal identities could be completely exposed to the attacker.
Given Craig has made enemies in government it isn’t too much of a stretch to assume this has happened.
Securing the web traffic with an ssl certificate would plug this particular security hole.
Re my previous post>
..” declared it most definitely torture” should’ve continued with “theyd’ve wised up.”
Apols.
David Cameron’s retort to Tom Watson that he wasn’t entirely sure which former PM he was referring may have a hidden layer to it.
Is he saying “take down Heath, and we’ll take down Brown (and Mandelson)”?
The really big question relates to members of the royal family. Some of them were friendly with Savile not for years, but for decades.
Lord McAlpine was named as a paedophile abuser by many of those who were abused in children’s homes in Wales.
Ronald Waterhouse, chair of the North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal, suppressed all reporting of the mountain of evidence against McAlpine. He said that this would encourage paedophiles to come forward without fear of consequences. Which was mighty odd, because he had the power to compel witnesses to attend. McAlpine wasn’t even called.
If you want Thatcher advisers, look too at Derek Laud. He too was named as an abuser in North Wales cases.
And he wasn’t just a Thatcher adviser. He is a personal friend of both David Cameron and Samantha Cameron and her family.
He was also an ‘aide’ to John Major’s re-election campaign.
And…he’s a pal of Lord McAlpine as well as of Michael Portillo.
When he was in PR at Ludgate Communications, he was said to be supplying ‘boys for questions’.
There are so many others who could be mentioned too.
Snap:
I bow to your evidently greater knowledge of the pros and cons. Certainly addressing the issues mentioned within the present framework would offer a distinct improvement for the user. It would be especially useful to have an index of at least the last couple of months’ topics. A lot of the free-for-all you describe is due to the continuation of old discussions/arguments/fights where the posters have some hope that they are going to be read -typically within the last four or five blog entries at most. Older, and the spambots smell carrion and come to feed. In the absence of captcha, anyway.
As things stand, if you don’t have a mod’s email and the spamfilter locks you out, you also have no way of letting anyone know (ok, try a different IP: might work, and did in my recent case) There is no publicly available contact on this blog at present. If that can be remedied, great. “Contact”, btw, requires the contactor’s email address to be provided – why not site registration? I don’t see your point on registration, I confess. It’s trivially easy to start an email account if you don’t have one, and it doesn’t have to be in your real name or contain details of your economic status/address/whatever.
Still, as I say, it’s not my blog,
Wifi: sshell will put you securely through a wireless network to a secure server in Linux, BSD and maybe OSX. Believe a Windows version is available or under development.
Enough.
“The thing that i can’t understand is this: It’s so obvious to anyone with a modicum of intelligence that US foreign policy is clearly fomenting Islamist terrorism.” — Jives
Yep.
“I can only then assume the US wants/needs this scenario.Perpetual nonsensical wars for profit.There can be no other common sense conclusion.”
After the Cold War, they had no ‘perpetual enemy’ against whom they could wage perpetual war. They had to create one. [It’s why */** is such a suspicious event, IMO.]
The arms industry requires perpetual wars for its sustenance.
And the rich get richer, and the politicos grab more power … the American population is so busy fighting among themselves (Repub v Dems) they don’t notice half of what’s going on. They’re so steeped in that rubbish, I genuinely think that those of us outside the USA can see it all much clearer than they can.
IOW, Jives, I agree. War for profit, plus grabbing anyone else’s resources they can in the process. Wherever they happen to be.
BTW, Twitter can be funny.
#Romney “This nation is the hope of the earth.” Earth slowly raises gun to temple. #p2 #ows
Komodo, you expect Craig to use secure shell to post his blogs?
SSL is the answer and that link I gave Jon will provide him with a certificate that is accepted by web browsers.
Whatever, MS. Whatever works and is useable. Just trying to help….
Making the World a More Dangerous Place
By John Pilger
The day before Barack Obama arrived in Canberra last year to declare China the new enemy of the “free world”, Gillard announced the end of her party’s ban on uranium sales.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32846.htm
Sorry, but this also makes terrible reading:
Israel‘s Formula For A Starvation Diet
How 400 trucks to feed Gaza became just 67
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32848.htm
*/** Dreoilin? I think I know to which event you refer, and I wholeheartedly concur. I would also put */* in the same category, although more as an aide memoire than an actual casus belli.
Empires need enemies, and empires fall. ’twas ever thus.
Dreoilin, Michael Stephenson, Komodo,
thanks. I’m sure there are many pros and cons and more regarding spam fighting. I primarily wanted to get in a voice to counter the apparent unanimity and the presumption that everyone has the same take on security/privacy/email etc. I’m not pressing for changes now.
I mostly look at pages like the following and see if the counts change on refresh. Some blogs run a “recent posts” panel or page, etc. which is nice if the volume is low. Can one do a list of recent threads with new posts which would suit the volume here? I’m not certain googlebot finds all these either.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/10/
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/09/page/2/
Any experience with ‘mark as spam’ buttons?
Michael Stephenson,
ok so you see the risk as the exposure by access to the web server by a password of the IP addresses and email adresses of posters revealing our personal identities to an attacker namely “enemies in government”.
I agree with the concern. You seem to be assuming that the web server is secure, Craig’s laptop and the moderators and the administrators computers are secure, backups are secure, you block the statcounter and gravatar embeds, the spamfilter is not sending IP’s or emails in realtime to check against a blacklist, etc. If all that, then yes https would help a bit at a superficial level, until you start looking at the fact that the way certificates work is broken, especially against some state level attacker.
I also see other risks.
Perpetual war isn’t just a source of wealth. It’s also a source of power.
Snap: Well basically all your other concerns are that the attacker already has root access to the webserver, which unless you have a compliant host would need a warrant, or hacking to achieve.
Using ssl for logins is not something you add on for extra security, it’s basic security. It’s completely fundamental.
The other security issues you allude to are higher level than having ssl to encrypt transmitting a password.
Incidentally I am posting with my real name and real ip and real email address, so it doesn’t really concern my security. Most others are hiding their identity so this is their concern really, not mine.
Mike,
Yes, I was talking about 9/11 but I’m not supposed to mention it other than on a special thread here:
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/01/the_911_post/comment-page-10/#comments
“aide memoire” – hadn’t heard that description before for 7/7 and it’s a good one.
G’night all
Michael Stephenson,
would you kindly not talk in such a know it all, put down tone to me. I was trying to stimulate you or readers to think more clearly. I will not engage in such argument.
Was I not being polite? If it helps, do I correctly summarise above what you see as the risk?
Of course it is basic security against basic attackers, such as a random in a cafe over open wifi. It is also false-security against sophisticated attackers, such as “ennemies in government” who have no qualms about all manner of attack vectors.