“Gun control” is not about guns but all about control….

The development and use of weapons and more specifically firearms runs parallel to the development of mankind and human society. In prehistoric times mankind had to forage & hunt for sustenance. When hunting small & big animals some sort of weapon greatly improved their chances of feeding themselves and their families hence improving the chance of survival. Weapons also aided in the defence of their territory and their food stores (if they had any). Weapons such as rocks, spears, axes etc. served as a force multiplier and one can argue that these weapons were one of the attributes which gave early humans an edge over other species and put them on an early path to the top of the food-chain. As mankind developed and evolved growing from hunter/gatherer groups to farming and eventually industrial society weapons developed at an ever increasing rate.  We went from rocks and spears to arrows and the first firearm, the fire-lance, making its appearance in the mid 10th century. Since development has taken us all the way to ICBM’s and beyond. However all these weapons were in essence only a tool, or a means, of delivering a projectile. Said projectile was launched either to defend ones territory or to kill prey for hunting/feeding purposes. A firearm has never been, was never designed to and has never been able to autonomously kill people. There was always human thought behind the use, aiming and firing of said weapon.

Throughout the centuries as we developed into more cohesive and civilised society certain duties were abdicated from the individual to the collective (community or state). Instead of every person or family gathering or hunting their own food we had butchers, bakers and greengrocers. To defend our communities we had volunteer watchmen, militias and eventually a state run police force and military. With this the actual “need” for every person to own a firearm decreased to the stage where, at least in Western society, the number of firearms owners on a whole is a minority. However what has evolved out of this is that governments now do not want individuals to own firearms for the simple reason that a armed citizenry potentially has more power to rise up against a corrupt government than a society which has been effectively disarmed. History is full of examples where despots made it their priority to disarm the citizens they oppressed. This disarmament has been achieved not only by very strict laws on private firearms ownership but also by using the media to portray people who do own or want to own firearms as deranged and crazy individuals. It has come to the point where in certain company you would be scorned less for defecating on the dining table than admitting that you own a firearm.

The discussion about a persons “right to bear arms” has been an extremely hot topic in the USA recently with Obama constantly throwing petrol on the flames by ignoring the US constitution and issuing unconstitutional (and undemocratic) executive orders. But let’s not just focus on the US as the 2nd amendment of their constitution (which makes the right to bear arm a constitutional one) puts them in an unique position. However over on this side of the Atlantic the debate has now flared up in Ireland where the Irish politician Michael Healy-Rea last week made a statement that people living in rural areas should be allowed to own a firearms for self defence purposes. This following the recent drastic rise in crime especially in rural areas. This rise is following severe cuts in the Irish police force’s budget. This raises the question that if the government fails in its commitment to protect its citizens should those citizens then be allowed to reclaim their natural right to self-protection? Because that is the real crux; the government does not have the right to decide whether it’s citizens have the right to own firearms. That right is naturally the citizens right and has only been temporarily been given up in exchange for protection by the state. However as with any contract if one party defaults then the whole of the agreement becomes void. The right to bear arms is one that the government has no right to bestow. As with all natural rights its something that the government might manage but the only “right” a government has is to ensure that firearms are not owned or carried by people who are not fit to do so. So rather than police who is allowed to own firearms the reverse should be true, the state only has the right to police who *is unfit* to own firearms. The practicalities of this need to be clearly defined but I don’t think it would be unreasonable to expect that someone who wants to own a firearm posseses a certain proficiency with said firearm especially when it comes to the safe handling and storage of firearms. I know that a lot of my US based friends will disagree with me on this as it would require the registration of firearm owners but I would consider making a bi-annual firearms proficiency test mandatory a good idea. Passing such a test would allow one to own any type of firearms under a certain caliber (I think that a separate licensing for anything over 20mm is not unreasonable).

The above all centers around the logical reasoning that a firearm is only a tool and that without human utilisation a tool is an inanimate object incapable of doing any harm. Restricting responsible adults who have proven to be compos mentis to own a firearm infringes on their natural rights and hence is an undemocratic and in-tolerable act. It’s a governments duty to protects its citizens not to restrict or nanny them.

A day in the life of the internet…..

“Hack proofing” your WordPress blog…

Sometime last year several of my blogs were hacked and defaced. What basically happened is that someone was able to get admin access to the (hosted) WordPress installations and changed the homepage to one containing a lot of nonsense. These generally contain a lot of words ending on the letter “Z” as well as the words “owned” and “hackorz”. I suspect that access was gained using a “Brute Force Attack” which means that a piece of software tries every password combination under the sun to gain access. It’s automated and dumb requiring very little intelligence, skill or finesse. The fact that I had my user name still set as “admin” didn’t help but the less said about that the better. The next step was that the “hacker” changed the admin username & password effectively locking me out of my account.

So how did I regain access to my blogs and how have a secured my WordPress installs since? Well seeing that my security has withstood numerous attacks daily since then I thought it might be helpful to share this.

Regaining access: I host all my sites & blogs on a server using CPanel. This has a very easy to use visual interface which include good & easy database management. Part if this interface is the PHPMyadmin tool. This is a visual tool for managing the nuts & bolts of your database. It lets you view & edit every cell in a database. Seeing that WordPress stores all it’s information in a database you can look up the cells containing the admin username, password and email. Once you select the correct database you’re presented with a list of tables. Find the right one (it will have “user” in the name) and select the right cell. Then change the username, password and if needed the email and save. Open a tab in your browser and try to login to your blog. Sometimes the change doesn’t “take” the first time and you might have to do it again. Another trick is to only change the email address, then go to the blog login screen and use the password reminder option to have a password modification link email sent to you.

Once you have regained access to your blog and have undone all the changes it’s time to secure your blog. The first step is to choose a better username & password combination. However if you’re like me and don’t want to have to memorize a whole new bunch of logins you can secure it using the following methods also.

1. Firewall: Matthew Pavkov has built an excellent & free WordPress firewall plugin (see above image). You can find it here. The firewall will stop all sorts of malicious attempts to gain access to your blogs admin interface be it through URL-modification of injecting script etc. Install it and play around with the settings. Don’t just switch everything on as it might block some of your other plugins. One of the excellent features is also that you can set it to email you an alert every time it blocks an attack. You will be surprised at the number of times this happens.
2. Limit Login Attempts: The above doesn’t protect you against brute force attacks. However “jonahee” has produced a WordPress plugin which allows you to limit the number of concurrent login attempts per IP address. This extremely handy plugin lets you set the maximum number of consecutive login attempts allowed from a single IP address before this IP address is blocked (locked out) from trying to login to your WordPress admin account. It also allows you to set how long they will be locked out. Additionally it keeps a log-file of all lockouts. Mine is at 2244 lock-outs since I installed it with multiple lock-outs per IP address. Lastly it will email you a notification every time it locks-out an IP address.

 

In my experience these two plugins alone will protect your WordPress install from the most (but not all) hacking attempts. There is no such thing as 100% “hack-proofing” something but I host 14 blogs protected by the above mentioned plugins and there have been no more successful hacking attempts since i installed them. Considering the number of attacks I think that says a lot.

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 27,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 6 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

The Irish Children’s Rights Referendum…

On November 10th Ireland will hold another referendum. Referendums are getting nearly as popular as tribunals with the 2 Nice Treaty referenda, the Lisbon Treaty referenda,  the  ”ESM treaty” referendum and now a Children’s rights referendum. I had hoped to avoid blogging about the latter but the matter is too serious and the spin from the “yes” side to thick to ignore it any longer.

You see the proposed constitutional amendment (to articles 42.A.4.1 & 42A.4.2) is being proposed as means to better protect the rights of the children in cases of neglect, abuse, or a combination of these. This is to be achieved by giving the state more power to (forcibly) remove children from their parents custody. Even if this is against the wishes of both the parents AND the child. The state will be able to come and take children out of their homes and forcibly put them up for adoption. If they deem that there is enough reason to do so.

Article 42A.2.1: In exceptional cases, where the parents, regardless of their marital status, fail in their duty towards their children to such extent that the safety or welfare of any of their children is likely to be prejudicially affected, the state as the guardian of the common good shall, by proportionate means as provided by law, endeavour to supply the place of the parents, but always with the due regard for the natural and imprescriptible rights of the child.

Now who can find something wrong with that? Surely its all to the betterment of the rights of the child right? Wrong!

Let’s take a closer look at the parts I’ve highlighted; First of all there is the reference to “the state as the guardian of the common good”. Call me a cynic but I have so far seen very few states where this “common good” was an unequivocal and unilaterally accepted principle. Au contraire, “common good” is an as ambiguous principle as possible. So if we enshrine in the constitution that the state is  the guardian of this ambivalent condition than we basically give carte blanche to future governments to interpret that at will. Secondly there is the suggestion that the state “supply the place of the parents”. That is not only wrong but also biologically impossible. The definition of parents (according to Dictionary.com) is “a father or a mother”. The state is not only genderless, it is also an abstract entity. While the state can assume guardianship over children they can never be “parents”. Including that term in the proposed amendment is equal measures wrong and insulting. It is impossible for the state with even the best intentions to provide the quality of care for a child that a parent will provide. Lastly there is “”proportionate means as provided by law”. This is a change from the “appropriate means” term in the current constitution. What it means is that the state will not stop at this change in the constitution, the use of the term “proportionate” means they will have to enshrine these constitutional powers in law. This gives them increased powers to enforce these amendments on you.

What also offends me that there is clear mention of the increased powers of the state, the amendment makes no mention of the right of parents. Instead it actually erodes the rights of parents to raise their children in a responsible manner as they see fit. Instead it puts parents in a position where they are accountable to the state for how they raise their children. This is only an intellectual hop and a skip from the state deciding how many children parents are allowed to have or what religions are “preferential”. Lets just note that the Irish state’s record in this area is far from examplary. The reprehensible levels of child abuse that took place in Irish institutions in the previous decades took place after the state put the children in these institutions. Even now the country’s health care system, the HSE, let nearly 200 children die while they were in its care. And the Irish people are now supposed to give this same state more CONSTITUTIONAL powers on a promise that the system will be changed?! Sounds like a cart before the horse approach to me.

Several years ago I had a “experience” with the HSE’s department of child protection that did little to instill confidence in their abilities. At the time someone who lived locally and who I was pursuing for a substantial amount of money owed decided to get back to me by hurting it where it hurts most; my children. What happened is that they made an anonymous phone-call to the local childrens protection office accusing my wife and myself of neglecting our children. As it emerged later the extent of this “neglect” was laughable. Apparently our children sometimes attended school without the sufficient amount of pens, pencils, copybooks or not wearing a complete uniform. Hardly abuse but it was enough to put the HSE machine in motion. The first thing that we learned of it is when we received a letter making us aware of the anonymous complaint and notifying us that a child care worker would visit us for an inspection in two weeks time. Now if we had been abusive parent those two weeks would have given plenty of time to hide any and all signs of abuse and/or neglect. In our case we had done nothing wrong (anyone who knows us is aware that we ALWAYS put our children’s welfare first). and the letter caused so much upset that we were not willing to wait two weeks for any further clarification. What we did instead is contact the HSE and demand they send an inspector to our house ASAP! And preferably without any notice.

Next we contacted the primary school which our children attended to discuss this with the schools principal.Her relief when we spoke to her was immense. Apparently the HSE had contacted her when the complaint was initially made to verify the accusations. She had vehemently denied these and made clear to the HSE person that we actually took very good care of our children and that they were smart, and pleasant children. However this was not enough for the HSE, in spite of the fact that the allegations had now been refuted by a reputable 3rd party. She was instructed *not* to discuss the matter with us and that the HSE would investigate the matter further.

The inspectors visit was rather uneventful as it was obvious that the complaints was without both without any basis and made maliciously. However rather than dismiss the case we received a notifications several weeks later that the investigation was closed “due to lack of supporting evidence”.  As you can imagine this whole affair was a far from pleasant experience and we are far from happy with the way it was handled.

However considering all that I am of the opinion that if the HSE had, at the time, the powers that the proposed constitutional amendment would give them it would have gone far different. It would make it likely and legal for the HSE to remove children from parental custody while a case is investigated. And to do so without informing the parents of the exact details of the case. This is already common practice in the UK where even the family court cases are being held in “secret”.

There is also the case of “common good”. Take the example of recent large scale vaccination programs. Take the case of the H5N1 (avian flu) outbreak. In a panic measure a vaccine which had only had limited trials was pushed on the general public. Everyone was strongly “advised” to vaccinate not only themselves but more urgently their children. Based on our own research we decided that the risk of being injected with a largely untested vaccine was greater than the risk of contracting Avian flu. Looking back we were correct as several side effects have manifested while the number of actual infections with the virus have been minimal. Then there is the case of the mass vaccination of pre-teen girls with the human papillomavirus vaccine to prevent cervical cancer. Vaccination programs were organised through schools rather than voluntary through doctors practices and as nobody wants their children to develop cancer we allowed our two eldest daughters to receive the vaccine. As it now expires it not only can cause premature ovarian failure, it also only protects against 2 out of 5 possible strains of the cancer.

Anyway, my point is that increased power to the state would put them in a position to say that vaccinations are in the name of the common good (in fact they have already said so) and to force parents to either have their children vaccinated or to take the children into custody.  If you think that’s crazy thinking then I advise you to check Minister of Social Protection statement recently where she hinted that vaccinations could be tied to child benefit payments and or school admittance. Where I come from that’s called a “worrying development”…

Related articles

• What you should know about the Children’s Referendum
• Groups launch No campaign to Children’s Rights Referendum
• 10 Reasons to vote No in the Children’s Rights Referendum

A history of mobile devices…

We recently moved house and as is normal for any geek with hoarding tendencies the process of moving house unearths a treasure trove of gadgets many of which one has forgotten about. This time was no different. At the bottom of a box, wrapped in a sturdy plastic bag I discovered two Compaq/ HP iPaq devices and a range of accessoires. For those not familiar with it; Compaq released the first iPaq devices in April 2000. After HP took over Compaq they extended and continued the product-line. The latest iPaq model is the “Glisten” released in December 2009. There is an excellent Wikipedia page listing all models released.

What made the iPaq special (apart from being one of the first real smart mobile devices) is the expandability. You could buy a range of so-called “sleeves” in which you could slide the iPaq. These sleeves offered all kinds of expandability ranging from extra battery to CF card slots, PCMCIA slots, Sat-nav and more. In addition to Compaq?HP there were a whole range of 3rd party sleeves available.

Anyway, as someone who got into mobile quite early on I have purchased numerous of these devices and accessoires and this bag only contained a few of them. I am torn between putting them in a display case or offering them for sale. So until I make up my mind, I am open to offers by any interested parties. Below is a listing of what I have, this also gives a bit of an indication of the versatility of the platform:

 

 

• iPaq 3630 circa 2001 vintage  with desk cradle/charger (working but needs new battery)
• iPaq 2210 circa 2004 vintage with desk cradle/charger (working)
• Navman 3400 GPS/SatNav sleeve with car mount
• Compaq PE2036F dual slot PCMCIA Expansion sleeve with battery (ideal for wifi cards).
• Compaq PE2026C single slot PCMCIA expansion sleeve with battery.
• Compaq PE2036B Expansion sleeve with CF-card slot
• Car chargers for both iPaq 3630 & 2210

Safer surfing: or “how not to look like a fool online”….

It’s been only 48 hours since I wrote my blogpost on how to track a “troll” online. The blogpost itself was inspired by Leo Traynors story how online trolling and harrasment crossed over into real life and how he managed to find his tormentor. Since then I’ve had several thousand hits on that particular blog-post and have received phonecalls and emails from different media-outlets with questions on this topic. It’s obviously a hot issue…

My blogpost was not meant to serve as a manual on how to track someone online but was more as an insight that, yes indeed, you can legally track someone online and find out their identity and/or location. It was however also meant to serve as a warning of sorts on how much private information people put online using various social networks. This second issue needs elaborating on in my opinion as it’s an often ignored issue or at least one that elicits a lot of ignorant commenting.

First rule of online privacy: DON’T PUT ANYTHING ONLINE THAT YOU WOULDN’T SAY TO A COMPLETE STRANGER!

The above is the simplest but most effective rule; don’t make any comments about someone online that you wouldn’t say to their face and don’t put any images online which you want to keep private.  Adhering to that rule will save you a lot of trouble. Also remember that anything online, once it is indexed by Google, will stay accessible online forever. That’s right, Google caches every website that it indexes. That means that there will be a publicly accessible copy of that content on a Google server. Google will in certain instances remove content from its servers but rarely because the content is offensive or untrue and this is even less likely if you are not the owner of the website. So getting content which you put on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook and have since removed to be also removed from Googles cache is as good as impossible. The point is to *not* put said content online in the first place.

Second rule of online privacy: USE YOUR PRIVACY SETTINGS!

Most social networks have privacy settings. USE THEM. Even Twitter let’s you protect your tweets by setting your account as private or just straightforward block people. Note: Not a lot of people realize that if they block someone on Twitter that the blocked person can still read their tweets when they run a search for them. The only way to really prevent someone from seeing your tweets is to protect them.

On Facebook you have a lot more flexibility in regards to your privacy settings. You can have one setting for who can see your details, another for who can see the images you upload and so on. It gives you multiple levels of control. USE THEM!  There is no reason why something that you put on Facebook should be seen by someone who you do not want to see it.

Third rule of online privacy: WHAT HAPPENS ON THE INTERNET STAYS ON THE INTERNET!

Yes that’s right; anything that is put up on the internet (websites, blogs, social media and *everything else*) stays on the Internet. Forever. The reason for this is Google. In order to be able to serve you with these fantastic search results Google uses software (so-called spiders) to index everything on the internet. Once they have indexed the content of a page Google stores a copy on their own servers. This process is called caching. So if you have put something online, once it’s indexed by Google (and this is done very quickly) it is there for all eternity. You can remove the content, delete the page and even format the server that it was one but it will still show up in Googles search results and these search results will link to a copy of the content in Googles “cache”.  Of course you can attempt to get Google to remove the content from its cache but this will eventually result in the need for legal action with a limit success rate. Not a lot of people have the energy or more likely the funds to go down this route.

So, should you put nothing at all online? While this is obviously the most foolproof route to protect yourself from embarrassment it is not necessary. You can still be a prolific social media user without exposing everything about yourself. Take my own case, I blog, have 200,000 tweets to my name, check in on Foursquare regularly and much, much more. However not *everything* I do finds its way online. If I go somewhere, or do something that is private I just refrain from tweeting about it and certainly don’t check-in while doing so.  By being such a prolific social media whore while leaving private matters out it also creates a case where one can’t see the forest for the trees.

Related articles

• Tips to protect your privacy online
• Everything You Need to Know About Online Privacy
• How Europe Is Taking Online Privacy Far More Seriously Than The U.S.
• FTC Continues the Good Fight for Online Privacy

Tracking a troll…..

Like many people I have read Leo Traynors latest blogpost in which he tells about how online trolling lead to actual death threats made against him and his family IRL (In Real Life) as well as shocking and insulting artefacts being left on his doorstep. It makes for frightening reading and first right in to the ongoing debate about trolling. The story has gone viral and is picked up by the international media. What’s more it has generated a spin-off debate on the method used by Leo to locate the troll in question. He did this be having a friend use the IP addresses associated with offensive comments on his blog and tracing these IP addresses. A lot of ignorant comments are being made how this would not be possible without access to ISP records which can only be accessed with a warrant.

This is far from true.

An IP address, for those unfamiliar with it, is a numerical label assigned to each device (e.g., computer, printer) participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing. This means that every device contacted to the Internet, and hence used to troll people, has an assigned IP address. It used to be that almost all IP address assigned by IPS’s were done so on a dynamic basis. This meant that a user was assigned a new IP address every time they connected to the Internet. This was done because an IPS’s network assets could not handle all users at the same time so they had to rotate IP addressed between users. However ISP’s have increased their assets and most people have been assigned semi-permanent IP addressed by their provider. This means that in the majority of cases an IP address will point to an individual or a specific location. This information is used in lots of ways by popular web services. Take for instance Foursquare, this geo-location service will determine your location even if you use it on a  device without built-in GPS. It does simply by using your IP address and related information. Some websites also use your IP address to provide you with location specific information. Just think of the various online shops such as Amazon who determine your location solely by your IP address. But your IP address can be used to find out a lot more detailed information about you.

Let me explain by using an example; It is very easy to retrieve IP addresses. Every comment left on a blog is tagged with the originating IP address. This can only be seen by the blog administrator. See the below image for an example.

The above image shows you a number of comments on my blog, there is a range of information but for now we’re only going to take the IP address. Once you have this you can go to one of the many online IP tracker services such as “IPTrackerOnline.com”, type in the IP address in question and hit ENTER. Within seconds you will have a wealth of information. It will show you the users Internet Provider, a fairly exact location, the map coordinates and a satellite view of their location. Plug the location into Google Streetview and it will give you the actual address. You can then put the address into Google to find out more details. (NOTE: this does not work in all cases but even a general location is a piece in the puzzle when tracking a troll).

The above method will give you a specific address or a “general area” of the person harassing you. Of course it is not foolproof and can be circumvented but as Leo Traynors example showed not everyone is devious enough to do so. In fact the majority of Internet trolls are either too stupid or arrogant to completely hide their identity or location. Another method is looking for IP addresses connected with discussion forum postings. A lot of forums will include the posters IP address in their message so with a bit of luck you will be able to find out more about the trolls online habits. In the past I have come across people posting trolling/harassment spam from the same IP address that they used when engaging in professional discussions online.

Every bit if information gathered using the above method can then be cross-referenced with other databases leading to a wealth of information and quite often a very detailed profile of someone including personal & professional information as well as relevant locations.

So by taking this simple set of numbers which follows people online like a trail of breadcrumbs you can not only find out their location but you can also trace their name as well as find a lot of personal details. Enough to give you some tools to work with when trying to shut a troll up. And all of this is public information that can be legally obtained and which does *not* require any warrants.

Note: I am not an IT security professional, blackhat hacker or anything like that. I do however have about 17 years of IT/networking experience and have on quite a few occasions helped people track down someone who was harassing them or someone close to them online.  The above method is not 100% watertight but it works in most cases and is perfectly legal.

UPDATE: In response to numerous request received I have put up a guide to “Safer Surfing”.

Related articles

• The Story Of An Internet Troll With A Surprising Twist
• When Porn Copyright Trolls Attack And Judges Fight Back
• Leo Traynor: The day I confronted Twitter troll who stalked me for 3 years

Financial support schemes for Irish business.

The Irish government recently launched their new jobs plan. Part of this plan are a number of existing & new financial support schemes for new & growing businesses. Below is a link to the full document.

Financial-Support-for-Irish-Business

 

 

How mobile phones empower the poor….

I know how I have made scathing comments in the past about infographics, however there are some really good ones coming out recently that condense a lot of valid information is an easy to understand manner. I guess that’s what infographics are for… (dooh).

The following one illustrates how mobile phone ownership & usage can enable people on lower incomes.

Related articles

• Infographic: How People Really Use Their Phones (mobilemarketingwatch.com)
• Mobile phone use in the U.S. [Infographic] (intomobile.com)
• Forget infographics. 1 simple rule for effective mobile email. (thebln.com)