UK Backs Off From Banning Reidentification Research (theguardian.com) 10
An anonymous reader writes: The United Kingdom has recently debated banning reidentification in its new data privacy law. This proposal has quickly been identified as dangerous and criticized, as it was argued this is not only ineffective but would also put at risk legitimate security and privacy researchers. Following public outcry, the UK government amended the bill to include safe-guards allowing researchers to study anonymization weaknesses. Researchers will also gain a new channel of disclosure via the Information Commissioner Office (ICO). According to The Guardian, "Researchers will have to notify the ICO within three days of successfully deanonymizing data, and demonstrate that they had acted in the public interest and without intention to cause damage or distress in re-identifying data."
What was the UK gov so protective of? (Score:3)
Create bespoke code for every mission that no AV or OS will ever know about?
Unique code only every seen in select locations in the UK and Ireland would stand out to any researcher.
Use international malware thats not been discovered in the wild but might be discovered at any time? It might collect all for hours, days, months, years?
Until the OS, AV tells the user about the infected OS, files.
What to do with all the research in the UK that will find UK sensitive security service code litter online, on devices, in the telco networks?
Code never seen outside the UK, Ireland that no OS, AV was aware of?
Another domestic Operation Socialist gets found? https://theintercept.com/2014/... [theintercept.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] How to accept such discoveries and tell the researcher that their work will result in an OS patch, AV update as needed?
Centralise legal malware reporting in the UK and keep the researchers productive and feeling like their efforts get better results than talking to the global AV community.
Re:What was the UK gov so protective of? (Score:4, Insightful)
Its monopoly. Their security agencies being able to do reverse ID lookups on snippets of data gives them power. When Google and everyone else start doing it nilly willy it tips off the bad guys, costs them power.
So hurray for governments greedy of power I guess ...
Re: (Score:3)
The fun part is all the early social media that got kept over the years. All that past data can uncover many cover stories used by the once protected clandestine services/police/mil.
Faith groups, criminals, other nations brands, embassies are running complex background investigations on anyone new getting to near them.
Who was in the mil, went to university to study law, law enforcement, engineering related topics but present as another occupation, unrelated skill set.
Not the pe
It is a new sport! (Score:2)
24 hour felonious programming (in England) contest. Prize: Free trip to London, all expenses paid.
This will be some good trolling.
Find the Queen. Find Chuck! Just don't do it in English jurisdiction. Good fun!
The people that run the UK (Score:2)
... think that intelligence led counter insurgency consists of beating information out of suspects.
Actually it consists of very clever SIGINT intelligence gathering cooperating with the every helpful folks at Fort Meade to identify the suspects followed by a tip off off to the intelligence services of whatever third world shithole they travel to to blow shit up. Then the local secret police beat the information out of them and we pass it back to Fort Meade.
Re: (Score:3)
That worked well until the GCHQ and SAS found the supplies the US was allowing to flow into Ireland.
The UK asked the US police to stop that flow. Nothing resulted in such direct law enforcement to law enforcement discussions.
So the UK intelligence services had to get active in the USA and the US secret police never worked how the direct flow of funds and hardware from the US to Ireland just stopped.
Skilled UK SIGINT intelligence ensured UK teams working deep in
RE? Identification (Score:2, Interesting)
Lets consider Google.
Google obtains the location (from its location services), name (as specified by you), email (gmail needed for android), ip address (lots of ways), browser profile (lots of ways), real name (credit card used on Google Play), real address (credit card), car driven (from Android Car sync), websites visited (google analytics, Google adverts, Google tag manager,Google content delivery network etc), telephone number (Android), friends and contacts telephone numbers (Android), Wifi passwords o