Richard's Kingdom

The UK National Identity Card can be cloned and altered by IT security experts.
Colour me unsurprised.
The consultants who carried out this work are from the same community of experts who have been warning [pdf] that the cards would be cracked since the Home Office first disclosed the mechanics of the scheme.
The alterations can be detected [...]

Last year I wrote about the ineffectiveness of mass CCTV surveillance and suggested that we should fix the broken way in which CCTV is used in the UK. Now a report funded by the Home Office has reached the same conclusion. It turns out that CCTV has almost no impact on crime. Except in car [...]

Yesterday I travelled to London to hear Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross talk about resisting the all-seeing eye of the state, private business, and nosy individuals. The event promised to discuss practical measures to protect privacy:
With the rise of the database state and firms profiting from user-profiling, it’s vital to resist surveillance and ensure the [...]

The Power of Information Task Force, championed by Tom Watson MP, has announced a fantastic new Open Government initiative: a public-data mashup competition!
It’s great that the Government is soliciting new ideas for re-using public information, but what’s even better is that this competition is accompanied by a whole raft of new public APIs, and the [...]

Various reports are circulating that Microsoft is using Digital Restrictions Management to prevent users of Windows Media Centre from recording certain programmes. The company confirmed Tuesday that its software had disabled recording of the US TV show “American Gladiators” at the request of the broadcaster NBC. Microsoft claim this so-called “broadcast flag” mechanism was installed [...]