Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • May 12, 2022 4:51 PM

@ ALL,

Re : evidence or not?

From the article a quote,

“So when we see any police department identify AVs as a new source of evidence, that’s very concerning.”

What do people think the “evidence” that can be gathered and used is?

It might come as a surprise to many, but a Law Officer who “views a tape” and then signs the paperwork for proceedings and appears in court and teatifies to the details from the tape is in many parts of the US is not presenting “evidence” but is technicaly committing perjury.

Yet hundreds of US Drivers get convicted each month this way.

It’s a point that people need to consider more closely.

The point of “evidence” is that it passes certain requirments.

A video recording on a tape from a VCR or an equivalent file on a hard drive does not meet those requirements. Nor does the output of most electronic instruments, such bio-bands and similar, nor does data in chips in even embedded medical electronics.

As most here will realise they don’t pass being “tamper proof” or any “chain of custody” requirments, nor more importantly can they pass any authentication tests.

Oh and if you don’t immediatly see why –and you might not if you have not thought about it before– have a think about why “Code Signing” fails. Also why supposed “One Way Functions”(OWFs) will always fail to the equivalent of “Dictionary attacks”.

As I’ve indicated in the past the judiciary have no actual concept of evidence. All they see or hear is,

“Sworn statments”

They will accept any lie deliberate or accidental that appears on a piece of paper with a signed declaration. Similarly any oral submission after an oath.

They fight very hard to stop that cozy little daydream that protects them from responsability and the consequent liability being disturbed. It is by the way the reason for a “jury of your peers” they are the ones that decide on what is “presented” which is a cosy excuse as the Judge very much controls what the jury gets to see.

So this “Autonomous Vehicle”(AV) camera footage, will not meet the standards laid down for evidence to be presented in court, nor can it be.

However that will not stop three things happening with such recordings,

1, Being used as a lead in investigation.
2, Prosecuters trying it on with courts claiming it meets evedentury requirments when it does not.
3, Judges turning a blind eye to what they know can not be “evidence” for their own reasons.

As has been noted by others in the US you have two cohorts of judges, those that get “elected” and those that do not. Thus studies can be carried out on what judges will or will not accept… On balance it does not look very good for either cohort, but there is clear indicators that being elected has a noticable difference on the judicial myopia.

Clive Robinson • May 13, 2022 5:59 PM

@ ForestRanger,

Re : seeing the Forest from the Trees ain’t easy

Your first statment of,

personal “Privacy” versus personal “Security” is the root issue here.

Is wrong, I think what you are actually thinking is,

‘”Personal-Privacy” versus “Societal-Security” is the fundemental issue”‘.

Otherwise what you go on to say about the “Societal-Guard-Labour” which most call the “Police” makes no sense.

Which brings us to,

which is a tradeoff with personal privacy and liberty.

I’m realy not sure you and I are using the same dictionary when it comes to the word “liberty”.

Clive Robinson • May 16, 2022 5:00 PM

@ James Monroe, ALL,

People are in the public, so they have no expectation of privacy.

I do not know who brain washed you but you are wrong, very wrong.

Of course people have an expectation of,

1, Privacy
2, Ephemerality

In public places as you do as well, and it’s easy to demonstrate.

The restroom urinals are in a public space and in most places they are no enclosed in individual cubicles or stalls.

If you use one you do not expect someone to “look you over” nor do you expect them to use the equivalent of a concealed camera to record you and put it in a database along with other facts and figures about you to be sold or put out for public titilation at some point in the future.

I do not know why Americans have this stupidly naive notion that

“In Public = No Privacy”

It certainly did not originate with the founding fathers, who used to regard walking into a field as a place to achive privacy from eavesdropping and been over seen by others.

I just wish Americans would get it into their skull, that,

Loss of privacy in public places will destroy society as you currently know it.

In fact America is a “glowing example” akin to that of “nuclear fallout” of what happens as privacy in public is taken away. Yet most Americans trot along like “lambs to the slaughter” almost sleepwalking into the slaughter house.

Unless Americans “wake up” and start asserting their right to privacy then they will loose what they will find to late is the most important thing in their life, which is the freedom to be alone in one’s thoughts, writings, deeds, and interactions with others.

A lot of Americans in living memory fought for the right of “free association” the right to learn the right to be treated as equals…

Yet we get this mealy mouthed nonsense about “no expectation of privacy” pushed by those who seek to strip you of every right. They do this to make money, gain status, and worst of all gain control over others. They are selling and using technology that Stalin could only dream about and as it’s used bit by bit the society it is used upon will be destroyed.

For some reason I can not fathom too many Americans want to live in a 24×365.25 surveillance society. There is absolutly no evidence it will bring them safety or security or stop them being harmed. In fact the evidence is very much the opposit.

Well pardon the rest of the world being a little more alert and less naive to this nonsense, and insisting that we do have expectation of privacy in our activities in public. From simply walking from place to place, associating with others without fear to spend our money without knowledge of it being passed to others and having privacy in our medical and other personal records.

Many European and other Nations learned the hardway during what led upto and became World War Two and for decades aftarwards the danger of “recorded information” that alowed death, torture and worse to be used against people for “political reasons”. Yet North America appears to positively desire the prelued and one presumes the actual acts that follow…

Clive Robinson • May 17, 2022 6:52 AM

@ JonKnowsNothing,

I’m not trying to appear snarki or anything like that, but at a very early age I got the impression US law and law enforcment was based on “Cowboy and indian” movies.

So in effect the “OK Corral” incident was the founding moment of US Style policing in US “cultural memory”. Confused in with “Lone Ranger” and similar as the “White Night” that rides in from fairytales.

It must be nearly fourty years ago I was first involved with US business via the petro-chem industry. One person I worked with who was nearing retirment back then and had worked in the US and with US businesses from the early 1940’s. He kind of acted as a mentor and he pointed out a few salient points to me. The most important was that America had no deep history, and that it was still a young and growing nation.

He would say that you would be hard pressed to find anything like a building three centuries old in America, something that is a common sight in most of Briton where in some places three or more millennia was not exactly uncommon. He pointed out that much of South London had hundreds if not thousands of houses and buildings still very much in use from the 1780’s onwards[1], that is earlier than most of the US. He sumed it up by saying that to most young kids in the US the oldest person they could name was probably “Billy the Kid” who had the equivalent folk law status as King Harold[2] or Robin Hood.

He pointed out that it was the reason the US criminal law was based broadly on English law, but US civil and business law was wildly different.

He also knew the truth behind what went on in Boston and why it was not what it was oft taught to be. He also had quite a bit of fun with the events of the US invasion of Canada in 1812, something that back then had been left out of both US and UK history teaching.

[1] I’d actually gone to a school that for a while had de-camped to older school buildings in Cheam on the edge of Nonsuch Park[3] in Surrey. The newest building in use was a “Civil Defence” mini bunker, the next oldest was a large WWII air raid shelter, and the oldest bits of building going back to before 1530. When young I thought Nonsuch House / Mansion was built by Henry VIII as part of Nonsuch Palace, it was not. The reason for my mistake is that it has the date 1543 inscribed foundation and some other stones and brick work taken from the remains of King Henry’s palace and was built in the same style. It was however built in the 1730’s and even though rebuilt in part in the early 1800’s. Later in life I had a girlfriend that lived in the old coach house in Hampton Court, that likewise was older than the most of the US.

[2] Harold Godwinson, Anglo-Saxon English King who alledgedly got an arrow in the eye at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

[3] Nonsuch Park was originally a very large place, and had many farms and villages in it. It’s history is very long and things “disappeared” in it some by design like Cuddington village and church that Henry VIII leveled, and some by nolonger being used getting grown over for two or three centuries and just forgotton.

My mother being a historian took quite a bit of interest in it and in the 1960’s and 1970’s she and I investigated some of the dark woods to find lost historical places including the gun powder mills at Ewell and the historic lime pits. In the case of one of the mills I literally tripped over the doorstep that was buried under decades of leafmould and such like, and clearing it away with grubby little fingers showed it to be a laid stone, rather than just a lump of rock. Back then fixing a location was actually quite hard especially if you could not see in a straight line for more than five to ten meters it ment taking the likes of “sun sights” over several periods of days.

Clive Robinson • May 18, 2022 5:31 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

Re : But I am laughing.

Remember, I’ve been likened in the past to looking like an overly large Klingon with a Karl Marx beard and hair do, and a bullish temprament to suit. Not helped by photos of me running down a rugby pitch with people hanging off of me.

It’s rumored, that as long as I’m smiling a little… You might be safe 😉

But yeh the joys of the english language you can hide more in a single sentence than in a “dead dogs pelt” all waiting to jump out and bite you =(

You’ve heard about the “why of the six foot pole” caution, lets just say english needs an 18ft barge pole and then some.