Spycatcher's Relevance in 2014

by @edent | , | 1 comment | Read ~660 times.

In 1987 MI5's former Assistant Director, Peter Wright, released his autobiography. Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer. It was immediately banned by the British Government. Although the Internet wasn't around to facilitate its distribution, it was trivial to obtain copies imported from Australia. As a boy, I remember seeing the publicity about…

Cryptography and the Coventry Problem

by @edent | , , , , , , | 2 comments | Read ~815 times.

There's an ethical conundrum which is often posed to military strategists and philosophers alike. In 1940, the Nazi's communications encryption had been broken by the British. Military Intelligence were able to decrypt a signal which indicated that the city of Coventry was to be bombed. The military chiefs took this information to the Prime Minister,…

Is Samsung Spying on your Printer?

by @edent | , , , | 3 comments | Read ~905 times.

Compare and contrast... [The] Xerox 914 copy machine [...] was used in soviet embassies all over the world. The machine was so complex that the CIA used a tiny camera designed by Zoppoth to capture documents copied on the machine by the soviets and retrieved them using a "Xerox repairman" right under the eyes of…