A school, in the South of Wales, has recently began the implementation of a new scheme in which it aims to fingerprint the 1,400 attending pupils in a bid to automate class registrations.

Parents of the children that attend the school, in Porth County, were notified little more than a week before the scheme was put into practice. The headmaster of the school defends the decision, claiming that

“it wasn’t necessary for us to seek parental consent in this. It’s a system that has been approved by the DfES and it’s supported by Capita SIMS…..There are 1,400 students in the school and we had two phone calls…the parents were perfectly happy.”

The system, known as VeriCool, is developed by a sector of General Dynamics, and aims to provide biometric scanning for each classroom. General Dynamics is best known for specialising in producing systems for the military and intelligence services.

The move has met with much controversy, with parents and privacy advocates airing their concerns. David Clouter of leavethemkidsalone argued that taking the register was an important way for teachers to establish contact with each individual pupil at the start of a class and that its role would not substitute manual registers, for instance, in the case of a fire.

Your Response : The Register - Letters

Note: Interestingly, I was recently speaking to a driving instructor. I have been wondering, for some time now, why plastic ID card driving liscences have been introduced when drivers are still required to carry the paper counter-part. The instructor informed me that the common theory is that it is part of the initial phase of the governments biometric national ID card scheme. The idea being that we will put up less of a fight if we are already used to carry an ID card of sorts - a way of slowly introducing us to the idea of a full national ID scheme / database. Coupled with the reported incident of schools implementing fingerprint scanning systems, we clearly ARE slipping further towards that Orwellian society that we resent so much.

“Tzero Technologies and Analog Devices announced that they have created a wireless HDMI interface for HDTVs, next-gen DVD players, and set-top boxes. The backbone for the technology is ultrawideband, also used as a future replacement for wired USB. The Analog Device compresses data with the [lossy] JPEG2000 video codec, which is then packetized and encrypted, and transmitted via the Tzero MAC and PHY chip.”

Source : Slashdot - Wireless HDMI Prototype Announced

“The European Commission has opened a public consultation on the use of surveillance technology in civil society.

At the initiative’s heart is the desire to work with industry to create more and better surveillance systems that it can use to monitor the public in order to prevent terrorist attacks.

The EC Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security said in a statement it would publish a green paper*, inviting consultation on “what role the Union could play in order to foster detection technologies in the service of the security of its citizens”.

The green paper was drawn up from the results of a conference of “major European business” and the public sector last November, called the Public-Private Security Dialogue: Detection Technologies and Associated Technologies in the Fight against Terrorism……”

Read more at : The Register - Tell the EC about surveillance

A hacker who broke into the systems of T-Mobile USA and lifted the personal details of around 400 people, including a US Secret Service agent, has escaped imprisonment. Nicholas Lee Jacobsen, 23, was sentenced to one year of home detention and a fine of $10,000 in compensation to T-Mobile over the 2004 attack.

Even though Jacobsen was left able to access personal data held by Special Agent Peter Cavicchia on a sidekick mobile device, the Secret Service is ruling out the possibility that any investigations might have been compromised.

Source : The Register - T-Mobile hacker escapes imprisonment

Ever get annoyed when looking at photos and you just can’t remember where it was taken? Well soon that will be a thing of the past. It’s almost September, the second month of the year when Sony changes its product range. This September sees the release of the GPS-CS1, a 9cm GPS receiver. The idea behind the CS1 is to allow photographers to overlay their images onto the Google maps framework. It does this by synchronising the GPS log file with the timestamp found in your photo’s EXIF metadata.

Updating every 15 seconds, the CS1 records your position via GPS to a plain text log file. Using this data, the photograph’s timestamp and the bundled Picture Motion Browser web software, you can view the exact location where you took the picture, along with a thumbnail of the image itself. Example here: http://www.sony.jp/products/Consumer/Peripheral/GPS/GPS-CS1K/TryMapView/try.html (Internet Explorer Only)

Sony has guaranteed that the unit will work with all Sony cameras released after August, perhaps as the software will start to come in the box. However, providing your camera supports the EXIF 2.1 metadata standard, there is no reason that the software wouldn’t work with your camera.

Sony GPS-CS1 Specification

Of course there are certain privacy issues that come into play when dealing with GPS, and the CS1 is no exception. Get hold of one and you have a full history of where the owners been. Drop one in a bag and you have a relatively cheap surveillance device - perfect for stalking that desired girl or unfaithful partner. The software works with Google maps, meaning the data is being sent over the Internet and available for snoopers to get a hold of and if Google logs, then its trivial for the government to find out where you’ve been and at what time.

A new piece of software is set to launch in the UK, which will allow public mobile phone users the ability to encrypt all or some of their mobile comms. In partnership with German company: Safe-com, and the military, One Day Mobile is offering its encryption application, Babylon nG, to users in the public domain. Unfortunately, the software will send the encrypted traffic over the data channel via GPRS, rather than the voice channel. This could lead to breaks, lag and interruptions, as the GPRS system has no rigorous controls over transmission as GSM does.

Update: I have just been contacted by Danielle Newman of marketing & PR company Pazang Ltd, who has informed me that the mobile encryption software will only be available to businesses, the government and the military.

Earlier this week we reported on the re-application of the RIPA act with all of its glorious additions. Yet once again, as before, the proposal is coming under fire left right and center. For example, it is likely that people will start to disregard the security implications that encryption has to offer, after all, why encrypt data when you have to decrypt it for any moron who asks, and who wants to go to prison because they forgot their key to 2006_financial_report.pdf.enc

More Information: BBC - Police decryption powers ‘flawed’

With all the hype of the new 802.11n wireless spec floating around, it would appear that a number of manufacturers are starting to put out the required hardware. Unfortunately for the consumer, the 802.11n spec is still in the draft 1.0 phase, with a second draft not being planned until early next year.

802.11n, the upgrade from 802.11g, will give speeds of upto 600mbps, a vast improvement in wireless transmission speed. The current problems arise as the spec has not been fully resolved, meaning that many devices currently available will, likely, be incompatible with the final draft. Furthermore, initial testing has shown a very bad inter-manufacturer compatibilty.

On 30th August, the Home Office conclude their musing of, as yet, un-included portions of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000). Portions that will give police not only full access to peoples encrypted data, but full a history of a person’s communications records.

Further Information: Spyblog Conference Details & information

With the new regulations being introduced in the UK allowing mobile network operators to block access to phones by invalidating its IMEI, the BBC are reporting on the relative ease of which the IMEI can be manually changed by the average user using , soon to be outlawed but publically available software.

The International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) is a 15 digit number that contains information about the device and is only used on GSM networks. Currently O2 and Vodaphone, operating the older networks, are unable to block via IMEI, but that will change when the new laws are passed into effect.

Your phones IMEI number can often be found on the inside cover of you device or displayed on screen by keying *#06# into your phone.