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Peter Warren
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Written by George Ridley
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That Gordon Brown lacks a sense of inony is now plain to see.
He's elevated Alan Sugar, a man whose catch-phrase is 'you're fired', to a peerage and to a position in his Government around the time he's about as sure of his post as any of the luckless souls that face Alan Sugar's TV tirade on the BBC's Apprentice.
That Gordon Brown is one with the gibbering contestants on a reality TV show is fairly obvious.
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Security agencies
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Written by Peter Warren
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Hackers are being targeted for attack by US and UK security authorities eager to launch a cyber counteroffensive to kick them off the net Pete Warren reports
Appeared in the The Guardian, Thursday 4 June 2009
Hackers who attack defence or commercial computers in the US and UK in future may be in for a surprise: a counterattack, authorised and carried out by the police and defence agencies that aims to disrupt and even knock them off the net.
The secret plans, prompted by the explosion in the number of computer-crime incidents from east Asia targeting commercially or politically sensitive information, are known as "strikeback", and are intended to target hackers' computers and disrupt them, in some cases involving denial of service attacks.
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Military technology
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Written by Peter Warren
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For the fourth year running a project conceived by Future Intelligence, Sims Recycling and Glamorgan University finds embarrasing data on discarded hard drives.
Appeared in Guardian 7/5/2009 under headline 'Anti-missile defence details found on secondhand computer'
Computer containing confidential data about Lockheed Martin staff was bought online
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Information on the launch codes and staff working on the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD), a critical part of the US defense shield against nuclear attack, has been found during a survey of the data thrown out on discarded computer hard drives.
Among other information found in the survey, which analysed over 300 drives bought from online auction sites and garage sales from France, Germany, the UK and the US, were details of financial transactions involving billions of dollars to finance high interest rate deals to Nigeria, Venezuela and Tunisia. Data that included correspondence with a member of the Federal Reserve Board and also indicated that there were banking investigations into some of the deals, one of which involved $50bn.
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Thaad missile test launch
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Innovation
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Written by George Ridley
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Researchers working for 3M have announced that they have perfected the technology to produce a 3D mobile phone
 The system, which uses autostereoscopic display technology, will be the first time that 3D technology has made it to a mobile for commercial use, and is capable of full resolution, according to Bill Bryan, technical manager of 3M’s St Paul, Minnesota-based Display and Graphics lab.
‘We expect to see a consumer electronic device by autumn in Asia, and you will see more products in the next 9-18 months,’ said Bryan, adding that 3M expected the development to drive a new market in 3D content to mobile devices.
‘This is going to be a new area for film-makers and other content providers. Disney is now shooting all of its new films in 3D. We are already seeing 3D in the living room and the gaming room: the next differentiator in the handset market will be 3D.’
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Society
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Written by Peter Warren
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Forget Street View, there is a far more subtle - and pervasive - invasion of your private life being carried out - this time through your mobile phone
By Pete Warren
Appeared in Guardian - Thursday 2 April 2009
Each time you use your phone, data on your habits is stored and could be sold to advertisers. Photograph: Fancy/Veer/Corbis
When the furore about Google Street View washed across the UK last month, Google must have been pleased. For a much more sinister invasion of privacy had gone unnoticed. A week before, Google had, without any fanfare, released 11 software applications for mobile phones that spell a fundamental change in our lives.
Among the applications were functions such as text messaging, web browsing, a diary, Orkut - the company's social networking offering - and a program for Google Maps. Innocent enough, perhaps. But combined they would allow Google to know what you are doing all of the time. A truly Orwellian development that has been described by privacy campaigners as "a catastrophic corruption of consent".
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Innovation
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Written by George Ridley
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| 3D image of a non-existent virtual home - image courtesy of United Lane (www.unitedlane.com) |
Virtual technology is being hailed by experts as one of the possible answers to the credit crunch, as web designers look for that extra wow factor that can give their sites the edge in the economic downturn.
Having already been the victim of one false dawn eight years ago, 3D technology is beginning to emerge from the technology shadows as one of the most exciting developments on the internet.
"The trend is very clear," said Ramani Karthik, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the US' Purdue University and an authority on 3D technology.
"The real world is 3D and as humans we want things to behave in the way that they do in the real world, so going to 3D is very natural it is the next evolution of the web."
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Society
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Written by Peter Warren
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Millions of mobiles are lost and discarded every year, yet their owners give little thought to the sensitive data they contain
Pete Warren
The Guardian, Thursday September 25 2008
Three years ago, Graham Clements – the European managing director of the UK subsidiary of the Japanese packaging multinational Ishida – decided to get rid of his BlackBerry and passed it on to his IT department for recycling. At the start of this month, that BlackBerry was one of the top items on the agenda at the first board meeting that Clements had called since his return from holiday - because it, and the data on it, had come back to haunt him.
Instead of being recycled, the BlackBerry, like millions of other mobile devices every year, had been passed on to a company to be sold. On Clements's device were business plans, details of customer relationships, information on the structure of the company, details of his bank accounts and details about his children.
And Clements isn't alone.
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Society
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Written by Peter Warren
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Pete Warren explains how a forensic specialist can retrieve data from your hard drive - even if you think you've deleted everything - that reveals a great deal about you
Pete Warren
The Guardian, Thursday August 14 2008
(appeared under the headline - 'Computer security: Snapshots of our secret lives')
The first time that I really became aware of computer forensics was around eight years ago when I arranged for some hard drives I had bought from a boot fair to be examined by Professor Neil Barrett, an expert in the field. The results were memorable. When Barrett rang me to say that he had found account details for a Paul McCartney - on a hard drive discarded by a merchant bank - I was prepared for the inevitable teasing.
"Sure, Neil, I suppose there must be quite a few Paul McCartneys." "Yes, I suppose there are," he replied. "Not too many called 'Sir', though."
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