It seems that somebody has finally met the criteria necessary to win the notMac challenge, which was meant to create a free and open source replacement for Apple’s .mac service. According to the SourceForge page the server is OS neutral, but I’ve yet to find instructions on how to set it up on anything but OS X. More details once The notmacchallenge site is back up (apparently it got pounded into oblivion).
Ars Technica reports that a new law going into effect today make it a criminal offense to refuse an order to decrypt your own data.
Individuals who are believed to have the cryptographic keys necessary for such decryption will face up to 5 years in prison for failing to comply with police or military orders to hand over either the cryptographic keys, or the data in a decrypted form.
Part 3, Section 49 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) includes provisions for the decryption requirements, which are applied differently based on the kind of investigation underway. As we reported last year, the five-year imprisonment penalty is reserved for cases involving anti-terrorism efforts. All other failures to comply can be met with a maximum two-year sentence.
The article itself points out that part of the idiocy is that this gives criminals an easy way out.
Yet the law, in a strange way, almost gives criminals an “out,” in that those caught potentially committing serious crimes may opt to refuse to decrypt incriminating data. A pedophile with a 2GB collection of encrypted kiddie porn may find it easier to do two years in the slammer than expose what he’s been up to.
Wrong country to live in if you care about your privacy.
Technocrat carries two informative articles on the current savage military lockdown in Burma.
The Risk of Journalism discusses Courage against the Junta, an article I found painful to read.
We disguised his identity before putting the interview to air. Later, I learned he had been arrested by secret police. For telling the world about Burmese political prisoners, he was jailed for seven years. I was shocked someone had been jailed for something I had done. It made me acutely aware of how many thousands of Burmese must feel when their relatives are arrested or killed by the regime. It’s the sense of powerlessness against injustice that is most dehumanising.
It did give me a bit of hope for this age:
The use of mobile phones to capture images of the protests are showing the world what is happening. They are fed back via the internet and opposition television stations run from as far afield as Oslo.
The inaccurately named Profits Trumps Freedom links to several articles regarding how foreign businesses are feeding Burma’s dictatorship, but misses the fact that the central problem are not the corporations that keep doing business with them, but the customers that don’t care and keep giving money to those specific companies. Corporations are not hulking behemoths hell-bent on Evil – they’re hell-bent on profits. Show them that certain business partners have a negative effect on their bottom line, and they’ll change their tune in a blink.
Then again, if you make a decision that 5% savings make it worth your while to deal with someone you consider evil, don’t point any fingers when the company in question does the same.