Belated link to a good post by Richard giving various perspectives on ID Theft. Richard is (among other things) the author of a blog called POSIWID - a superb acronym which stands for "Purpose Of System Is What It Does".
Fittingly, one of the topics he mentions is the use of Social Security Numbers as an index to national identity schemes - something which is apparently being considered in the UK. As he points out - SSNs are not secret values. In fact, they are not even credentials; they are at best an unsecured attribute which is, essentially, in the public domain. The problem is that, as usage in the US amply illustrates, service providers become accustomed, over time, to treating this non-secret value as a reliable substitute for credentials. Hence POSIWID... the Purpose of the System becomes What It Does, which may well not be What Was Originally Intended.
Posted by racingsnake
@ 11:25 AM GMT+00:00
This one's for Max...
I got a very gracious response to my uncouth 'tagging' in the previous blog, but I'm not going to push my luck. Masood Mortazavi says he was about to tag me, but saw he'd been beaten to the punch. So in the spirit of compromise, here are five more priceless nuggets, but I'm not going to tag another five people.
1 - the MI6 defector Kim Philby absconded from Lebanon while we were living there;
2 - in Egypt, I to a primary school run by nuns (all schooling was conducted in French);
3 - in Aden, my playmates and I used to get around the curfew by putting ladders up against the adjoining walls and sneaking over to play in each other's gardens;
4 - in Yugoslavia a favourite place for a bit of fresh air was the hill (about 20km from Belgrade) with the Avala telecommunications tower on it. This installation was hit by airstrikes on Serbia, and its bombed-out wreckage is visible today on Google maps;
5 - in Kuwait, a favourite place for a bit of fresh air was Matla Ridge - later to become the site of the notorious 'turkey shoot' against the fleeing Iraqi army. Somehow I doubt it is a very healthy place to walk around these days.
Is it just me, or do I seem to have left a trail of war and desolation in the wake of my childhood?
Posted by racingsnake
@ 12:29 AM GMT+00:00
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