Author: Mike

Further to my previous posts [1], [2], [3] on this subject, I was searching for some related info when I came across this on the BBC‘s Breakfast web site.

In a series of online reports BBC reporter Susannah Streeter looks at various aspects of the UK Surveillance Society. Some very interesting points raised here.

Add to this a news item yesterday(16th) related to the recent Tesco bomb story where some more letters turned up late due to the recent UK postal strike, some at UK radio stations.

The TV report showed that the police were taking DNA swabs of the UK radio staff for ‘elimination’ from their enquiries! I wonder how many of those swabbed realise that their DNA will be kept on the police DNA national database for at least the next 10 years even though they have done nothing wrong!

Excellent news for people on organ replacement waiting lists today as the UK Chief Medical Officer calls for a change to the UK donor scheme where everyone is a donor unless they specifically opt out.

I know that not everyone agrees with this potential change and yes there are some religious groups that do not agree, but surely its better to have a surplus of organs available for transplant than a shortage.

I’ve been a Donor Card holder all of my life – well at least from 16 when I joined the Navy and can see no better way of using what ever is ‘working’ from my body when I’m gone. I can’t use it can I?

I’ve just realised after my last post that it’s been nearly a month since I last posted! What was I doing in that time? I must get back into the habit.

Keep reading, this will amaze you!!!

A strange thing happened today, my wife calls to me from her PC, “Have you bought anything from Amazon?”

“Not recently” I replied, “Why?” “I’ve got an email her saying thank you for your order and another saying its been shipped”

I have a look at the emails and sure enough there they are using her correct email address. But I do not recognise the goods that are in the emails. I click on the link to look at the tracking details and try to log in, but my wife’s normal password does not get recognised – no surprise as she does not have an account!

So, then confused I click on ‘reset password’ and duly receive an email which I use to reset the password. Once that is done I then go to My Account and low and behold I am presented with the complete details of another persons Amazon account!!! Full name, which is exactly the same as my wife’s, but with different address, telephone number, last five figures of their credit card, credit card expiry date etc!

I check the other persons email address and find that it is the same as my wife’s, so now I am completely confused!!

So, what to do now? Being an honest person, I ring the other person and of course much to her surprise tell her what’s happened, understandably she is not too pleased at hearing this. She also now understands why she has not not received any emails about her purchase from Amazon as they have all gone to my wife!

After some discussion, the reason becomes apparent, it turns out that when she got her broadband from her ISP, they allocated her an email address based on her name and as we had the original name, they added a 1 to her name (which of course is the same as my wife), for example, name1@isp.com.

After more discussion, I find out that when she opened her Amazon account (this was her first order), her daughter who was doing the typing slipped up or forgot to add the 1 to end of the email name! Hence my wife became the recipient of the emails and through the ‘Forgotten Password’  link was able to reset the password and gain access to someone else account!

What about my wife’s Amazon account? Well as I said she before has never had one, we’ve always used mine, bit I have sent gift packages to her and given her email address as a contact, I initially though that this may have got confused with my account.

After finally calming the other person, I’ve forwarded the emails to her, suggested that she log in to her Amazon account to change her password immediately.

What about Amazon? I had a long conversation with their phone support, needlessly to say they were not too pleased to hear that this could and has happened – so am I from a point of view of protecting my own Amazon account!

I’ve never been a fan of numbers at the end of names in emails, if you use this type of email address (john.smith253@isp.com) as a logon to another system for email records and then later you accidentally type john.smith235@isp.com, then someone else is going to get your emails from that organisation and from our recent experience, plenty can go wrong.

Luckily, for the other person I didn’t order hundreds of pounds worth of goods from Amazon, but maybe one day someone else with a number in their email address won’t be so lucky!

I’d be interested to hear comments from others that have had similar experiences.

Looks like we’re all going to pay more for having nice gardens!

As the time for the forthcoming Council Tax revaluation gets closer, Gordon Brown in his current guise of Chancellor has ensured that the Valuation Office Agency has signed a legal agreement with the Land Registry that will give it access to Britain’s biggest land database.

From October, the size of every garden, patio and outbuilding will be electronically submitted to the Valuation Office Agency every time a house is sold.

Looks like this good old Labour Government has found yet another way of squeezing yet more juice of out of us lemons!

Just finished reading a great book that was on my reading shelf for over 9 months!

Tulia is a story of Race, Cocaine and Corruption in a Small Texas Town as the title states. It’s a fascinating read and hard to believe that the events described could have happened as recently 1999!

I won’t go into any of the story, just go to Amazon and buy it, you won’t be disappointed.

Looking back over some clippings that I took from my Time Magazines last year, I found some graphics that had been used to describe research derived from the 2004 US census.

There are really worth while having a look at, click on the Links in the post to go to the high-res images.

• Where the USA lives.
• Faces in the crowd.
• Religion

“There’s one thing that’s certain, I’m not going to quit“

John Reid on being asked if he intends to stay at the Home Office to see through all the changes that he insists are needed.

“Now I’ve done nine jobs in 10 years and I think from my point of view I think it’s a good thing to be able to go out to listen, to learn, to discuss, to get back to the grass roots.”

John Reid on suddenly deciding that he has to take some time off!!!

Another hypocrite bites the dust!

It’s official; Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, says that more and more personal data is being collected and stored on all of us, both by the the UK Government and UK businesses.

Britain now has more CCTV cameras (both public and private) per head of population than any other country in the world – some five million at the last count, that’s about one for every 12 people!

And now in the latest twist to this modern surveillance society, many police forces have asked that all CCTV cameras be upgraded so that they can take advantage of new technologies that can automatically identify people and analyze their behavior!

To use a borrow a quote from Richard Thomas, the UK is “sleepwalking into a surveillance society“.

I agree with the argument that we need to able to track down criminals and terrorists when the need arises, but surely this ‘total’ coverage is going too far.

What I wonder will be the next step, the recording of sound with the video and perhaps having them talk back to you!!! Oh! I forgot, that’s already happened!

Couple all this up with the UK National DNA database, the UK ID card project, the UK Children’s Database it seems that we are truly sinking under the weight of surveillance.

Where will it end? Will we all have to get a barcode tattooed on our skin so that we can be scanned? Maybe I’m being too paranoid, we will have to see!

I had the opportunity to visit Bletchley Park a few weeks ago for an XMLUK members  conference and while there had a chance to look over the Colossus Mark II computer that is being restored there. On the day that I visited it was actually up and running, which was an extra bonus.

Sounds all very geekish, but as someone who work on his first computer in 1967, it certainly was very interesting to see some of the foundations of what should have been the start of a dominant British Computer Industry. Sadly with the burning of the Colossus blueprints and the destruction of the all of the machines after WWII, and the gifts of various computer technology to the USA, that was not to be.

However, thanks must go to the team of enthusiasts including Tony Sale, Cliff Horrocks, David Stanley and many other who have struggled and in the end very successfully managed to rebuild one of these machines and get it running again. The full story of that rebuild can be found here.

Some reference sites that talk about the history and background to the Colossus project.

Wikipedia Article

Picotech Article

Codes And Ciphers Heritage Trust

The Rutherford Journal