sigalrm 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Cheap DNA Testing Is Giving Some Insurers Even More Ways To Deny Coverage [UPDATED]

    sigalrm ( profile ), 07 Jun, 2017 @ 05:25pm

    Re:

    And the lesson is...lie when providing your name for such tests.
    If the test is being performed by a company like 23andMe or Ancestry, don't lie. Just don't submit a sample. Because the life/lives you could accidently ruin might not be yours. https://www.vox.com/2014/9/9/5975653/with-genetic-testing-i-gave-my-parents-the-gift-of-divorce-23andme

  • On the post: Cheap DNA Testing Is Giving Some Insurers Even More Ways To Deny Coverage [UPDATED]

    sigalrm ( profile ), 07 Jun, 2017 @ 04:36pm

    Re:

    Open source home DNA testing when?
    Oxford Nanopore's MinION system is available today, and can handle the wet-lab aspects of sample prep and sequencing, within its limitations. According to http://www.nanoporetech.com an entry level system with one set of consumables will set you back about $1000. I don't recall having heard anything about it being used for clinical use (at this point), but it would likely be sufficient for a research or home environment. Additional bioinformatics pieces not handled by the MinION system can be done on AWS or Azure at this point, if you've got a credit card with a high enough limit and enough programming chops to build/assemble a custom pipeline. The most difficult part is validating and then interpreting the output. That said, if you make "informed" decisions about your future based off of unverified, unvetted DIY genomic testing results you came up with yourself on a home-based genomic sequencer, you're setting yourself up to have a bad time.

  • On the post: DHS, TSA To Make Boarding A Plane Even More Of A Pain In The Ass

    sigalrm ( profile ), 30 May, 2017 @ 02:24pm

    Re: Just checking

    FWIW, No. You're not.

  • On the post: DHS, TSA To Make Boarding A Plane Even More Of A Pain In The Ass

    sigalrm ( profile ), 30 May, 2017 @ 01:19pm

    Re:

    So just how do YOU propose to make flying more secure?
    You don't. It's plenty secure already. You can tell by how planes aren't falling out of the sky on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. At most, maintain the status quo, but ideally ratchet it back some. Because frankly, the TSA has already gone to plaid.
    "negligible effect on travel safety" yea, your probably right. I mean, 1 or 2 planes blown up in the air is indeed pretty insignificant compared to the 10,000,000 flights in the US each year.
    An argument could be made that 1 or 2 planes blown up in the air works against the terrorists evil goals. Bad things happen, and you can't stop them all. If a plane "blows up" in mid air, the odds that the cause will ever be 100% identified are slim. Could be terrorists. Could be the defective lithium ion battery stashed in the Note 7 in the cargo hold. For the most part, people would be left wondering. Malaysia Flight 370 is an excellent - if tragic - example here. It's disappearance might have been terrorism related. Or mechanical failure. Or a deranged pilot. Or none of the above. Now, compare & contrast MH370's disappearance and net impact on aviation to Richard Reid, the Shoe Bomber, who was was both inept and expendable, with a bomb that he couldn't manage to set off. The headlines screamed "Failed Terrorist Attack" for months, and to this day we still have to take our shoes off in airport security. So ask yourself: if you were a terrorist, which of the two scenarios above would bring you closer to your end goals?

  • On the post: RNC, Chamber Of Commerce Want Robocallers To Be Able To Spam Your Voicemail Without Your Phone Ringing

    sigalrm ( profile ), 24 May, 2017 @ 12:22pm

    Re: Nobody vote for a single Republican (or Democtrat) candidate next election.

    You can also vote for the non-incumbent, assuming one is available.

    I've been doing that for years now. "Politician A is already in office? then vote for the other guy".

  • On the post: Yet Another Bad Idea: Dropping Facial Recognition Software Into Police Body Cameras

    sigalrm ( profile ), 22 May, 2017 @ 05:06pm

    Re: Re: How accurate?

    I just realized, the figure above is for American football, and Digital Barriers is a UK Company so let's try this:

    According to Wikipedia, Emirates Stadium, Home of the Arsenal FC in London, England has a capacity (according to Wikipedia) of "over 60,000".

    Assuming a 15% false positive rate, grade-school math says ~9000 people per Arsenal game would be misidentified.

  • On the post: Yet Another Bad Idea: Dropping Facial Recognition Software Into Police Body Cameras

    sigalrm ( profile ), 22 May, 2017 @ 04:57pm

    Re: How accurate?

    "I'm curious how accurate this particular implementation of the technology is..."
    The article above states a false positive rate of 15%. To put that in perspective, Centurylink Field in Seattle has a listed max-capacity of 67,000 people, which means that over the course of a Seahawks game, as many as 10,050 people would be misidentified.
    "Seems like it would be just a matter of time until the incorrect person is identified, runs because they're scared and gets killed."
    Not a problem - qualified immunity covers that scenario. Besides, "only guilty people run". /s

  • On the post: Trump Fires FBI Director Comey

    sigalrm ( profile ), 10 May, 2017 @ 08:00am

    Re: Re: Damaged goods

    "Many others" are free to disagree and/or not be convinced. It's the internet, after all.

    And, it's certainly possible - and maybe even probable - that I'm wrong. There's obviously no way to prove the statement one way or the other.

  • On the post: Trump Fires FBI Director Comey

    sigalrm ( profile ), 09 May, 2017 @ 04:13pm

    Damaged goods

    Comey got himself fired the second he broke with "tradition" and inserted himself into the election process with the Clinton emails.

    He'd have been fired no matter who won the election. It just took a little while for the sitting president to get around to signing the termination letter.

  • On the post: Personal Security Takes A Hit With Public Release Of NSA's Hacking Toolkit

    sigalrm ( profile ), 03 May, 2017 @ 01:13pm

    Re: Re: Distraction, Distortion, & Ignorance

    Unless you're capable (technically and financially) of designing and building your own computing environment without the use of any COTS parts, using closed source code isn't so much a mistake as a necessary evil.

  • On the post: Personal Security Takes A Hit With Public Release Of NSA's Hacking Toolkit

    sigalrm ( profile ), 03 May, 2017 @ 01:04pm

    Re: public hacking tools making us more vulnerable

    "When will Windows have features like the ability to dismount our hard drives while on the Internet and making ram directories noexec, nosuid, nodev?"

    Um, never?

    If that's what you want, find a Live OS DVD distro of your choosing. KNOPPIX and TAILS come to mind, but most any of the Linux install DVD's would fit the bill. Most can be installed on thumb drives with minimal effort.

    And I'm sure someone will point out a Windows based Live DVD image somewhere.

  • On the post: Louisiana DA's Office Used Fake Subpoenas For Decades To Trick People Into Talking To Prosecutors

    sigalrm ( profile ), 01 May, 2017 @ 12:46pm

    Re:

    Sound advice for individuals who can afford to pay a lawyer out of pocket.

    It would be interesting to see a demographic breakdown of the individuals receiving these "Subpoenas"/"Notice to Appear" docs.

    I'd be willing to bet that the majority of them go to individuals who lack the financial resources to pay for an attorney, the education to know they should consult an attorney, or both.

  • On the post: Bad Take: Rep. Sensenbrenner's Response Over Internet Privacy Concerns: 'Nobody's Got To Use The Internet'

    sigalrm ( profile ), 18 Apr, 2017 @ 01:59pm

    Re:

    This already happened back in 2012:

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did

    Will begin to happen more.

    But think of the possibilities - suddenly, advertisements for divorce lawyers start to show up. Ditto STD testing. Or counseling/drug treatment, etc services.

    There's lots of things people search for that they really don't want/need to be known even inside the household.

  • On the post: Connecticut Lawmakers Vote To Give Police Drones With Guns

    sigalrm ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2017 @ 09:00am

    Re: Re: above the law

    Also, assuming an otherwise unmarked drone, local data storage could be configured to automatically be wiped if the drone were to be shutdown/disabled in an uncontrolled manner, eliminating any onboard proof as to which agency was operating the device.

  • On the post: Connecticut Lawmakers Vote To Give Police Drones With Guns

    sigalrm ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2017 @ 08:54am

    Re: Re:

    Don't forget the "plain sight" and "public spaces" arguments, too.

    "Your honor, during a routine urban flight training operation, the drugs were clearly visible from a publicly accessible space outside the 10th floor window."

  • On the post: How A Little Metadata Made It Possible To Find FBI Director James Comey's Secret Twitter Account

    sigalrm ( profile ), 31 Mar, 2017 @ 10:37am

    Re: Re:

    That's because 6700 pages is way to long.

    If you can't describe it with a sound bite, a tweet, or a meme, you've just exceeded the maximum attention span of anyone in a position to make a difference.

    The attention span can be increased in select cases, but it requires large volumes of off-books compensation.

  • On the post: James Comey's New Idea: An International Encryption Backdoor Partnership

    sigalrm ( profile ), 31 Mar, 2017 @ 08:29am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: What if the encryption key is spread across several legal jurisdictions?

    I was addressing the specific question (above) of needing to rekey every device on the planet every time the master key was used, using an example based on a system I use on a regular basis.

    It wasn't a dissertation on how to design a system for Comey.

    And to address your point "the key being passed around": from a purely technically perspective, that could be addressed, too. It increases cost, and makes the system more burdensome to use, but at the end of the day you'd only reduce exposure in some areas and increase it in others.

    Any individual technical question could likely be addressed with technology we have today, at least at small scale.

    But when you combine the necessary technologies and scale to global proportions, the loss expectancies, risk, and threat profiles get really ugly, really fast.

  • On the post: James Comey's New Idea: An International Encryption Backdoor Partnership

    sigalrm ( profile ), 30 Mar, 2017 @ 04:39pm

    Re: Re: What if the encryption key is spread across several legal jurisdictions?

    "Am I wrong?"

    Sort of. Crypto systems have been designed (and are in use) that allow for key splitting to occur (Require X of Y key holders to input a unique key to perform an operation), but while the concept is elegant, the implementations I've personally seen and used are somewhat clunky (although admittedly quite secure, within human limits)

    If you coupled that type of system above with a along with a hypothetical compliant, cryptographically perfect public key infrastructure, you could theoretically get to a point where every device had a PKI-Based Additional Decryption Key (ADK) burned into it at manufacture, with private keying material stored behind an X of Y key-split system.

    But from a practical perspective, you might as well start from the premise of a perfectly spherical, purple cow, because even if you could make the math flawless, the entire system has to be implemented flawlessly, including the legal and human elements, or it's ultimately going to become worthless.

  • On the post: Consumer Broadband Privacy Protections Are Dead

    sigalrm ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2017 @ 04:05pm

    Re: That didn't take long...

    Hey, at least they warned you.

    Verizon is almost certainly just going to flip the switch.

  • On the post: Consumer Broadband Privacy Protections Are Dead

    sigalrm ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2017 @ 04:03pm

    Maybe there's an upside here:

    It's not going to be a problem if (when) someone sets up a kickstarter campaign to purchase the "internet histories" for members of Congress and the Senate, right? Might have to set up a shell company to do it, I guess.

    After all, it shouldn't be a big deal for that information to get published, given that all of our elected political heroes are fine, upstanding citizens with nothing untoward in their browsing history.

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