Back in June 2015 I decided to force all connections to trivia over TLS rather than allow plain unencrypted connections. I decided to do this for the obvious reason that it was (and still is) a “good thing” (TM). In my view, all transactions over the ‘net should be encrypted, preferably using strong cyphers offering …
Category: privacy and anonymity
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2018/07/07/re-encrypting-trivia/
Oct 14 2017
multilingual chat
I use email fairly extensively for my public communication but I use XMPP (with suitable end-to-end encryption) for my private, personal communication. And I use my own XMPP server to facilitate this. But as I have mentioned in previous posts my family and many of my friends insist on using proprietary variants of this open …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2017/10/14/multilingual-chat/
Aug 02 2017
a letter to our dear home secretary
Dear Amber So,”real people” don’t care about privacy? All they really want is ease of use and a pretty GUI so that they can chat to all their friends on-line? Only “the enemy” (who is that exactly anyway?) needs encryption? Excuse me for asking, but what have you been smoking? Does the Home Office know …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2017/08/02/a-letter-to-our-dear-home-secretary/
May 12 2017
using a VPN to take back your privacy
With the passage into law of the iniquitous Investigatory Powers (IP) Bill in the UK at the end of November last year, it is way past time for all those who care about civil liberties in this country to exercise their right to privacy. The new IP Act permits HMG and its various agencies to …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2017/05/12/using-a-vpn-to-take-back-your-privacy/
Apr 27 2017
free Dmitry Bogatov
Dmitry Bogatov, aka KAction, is a Russian free software activist and mathematics teacher at Moscow’s Finance and Law University. He was arrested in Russia on 6 April of this year and charged with extremism. He is currently held in a pre-trial detention centre, and is apparently likely to remain there until early June at least, …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2017/04/27/free-dmitry-bogatov/
Mar 18 2017
pwned
I recently received a spam email to one of my email addresses. In itself this is annoying, but not particularly interesting or that unusual (despite my efforts to avoid such nuisances). What was unusual was the form of the address because it contained a username I have not used in a long time, and only …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2017/03/18/pwned/
Jul 13 2016
show me yours
As Theresa May moves from the Home Office to Number 10, it is perhaps timely to reflect on public attitudes to surveillance as evidenced in Liberty’s campaign film “Show me yours” in April of this year. In the film (shown below), comedian Olivia Lee pursues members of the public with the intention of taking details …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2016/07/13/show-me-yours/
Mar 30 2016
jibber jabber
For some time mow I have been increasingly fed up with the poor service offered by SMS on my mobile phone. I’m not a hugely prolific sender of text messages, and those I do send are primarily aimed at my wife and kids, but when I do send them, I expect them to get there, …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2016/03/30/jibber-jabber/
Jan 24 2016
guest network
Last month Troy Hunt posted an interesting comment on his blog about the problems around the etiquette of allowing guests onto your home wifi network. In his post, Hunt notes that guests can be deeply offended at being refused access. This is understandable. If they are guests in your home then they are probably close …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2016/01/24/guest-network/
Jan 11 2016
sign this now
I am a paying member of both Amnesty International and the Open Rights Group. Both those organisations, along with many other Civil Rights organisations, technology companies and concerned individuals are signatories to an open letter to Governments across the world demanding that we retain the right to strong encryption in order to protect our privacy. …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2016/01/11/sign-this-now/
Jan 07 2016
idiotic
Today’s Register has an article about the UK Internet Service Providers Association written evidence to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill. I don’t wish to comment on that evidence here, Adrian Kennard has already provided much useful comment on the failings of the Draft Bill. My purpose in this post to …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2016/01/07/idiotic/
Dec 08 2015
knees and other jerks
On sunday, the motherboard intially reported that, in the wake of the Paris atrocities of November 13th, the French Government was proposing to ban Tor and free WiFi. As it turns out, this is not strictly accurate. The report was later corrected – thus: Correction: The initial headline and copy of this article suggested that …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2015/12/08/knees-and-other-jerks/
Nov 10 2015
torflow
Yesterday, Kenneth Freeman posted a note to the tor-relays list drawing attention to a new resource called TorFlow. TorFlow is a beautiful visualisation of Tor network traffic around the world. It enables you to see where traffic is concentrated (Europe) and where there is almost none (Australasia). Having the data overlaid on a world map …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2015/11/10/torflow/
Aug 20 2015
update to domain privacy
At the end of last month I noted that I had been receiving multiple emails to each of the proxy addresses listed for my newly registered “private” domains. Intriguingly, whilst I was receiving at least three or four such emails a week before I wrote about it, I have had precisely zero since. Probably coincidence, …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2015/08/20/update-to-domain-privacy/
Aug 19 2015
why privacy matters
Last month my wife and I shared a holiday with a couple of old friends. We have known this couple since before we got married, indeed, they attended our wedding. We consider them close friends and enjoy their company. One evening in a pub in Yorkshire, we got to discussing privacy, the Snowden revelations, and …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2015/08/19/why-privacy-matters/
Jul 30 2015
get your porn here
Dear Dave is at it again. Sometimes I worry about our PM’s priorities. Not content with his earlier insistence that UK ISPs must introduce “family friendly (read “porn”) filters”, our man in No 10 now wants to “see age restrictions put into place or these (i.e. “porn”) websites will face being shut down”. El Reg …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2015/07/30/get-your-porn-here/
with thanks to Dr Fun
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