Author: Brian

Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, Systems Engineer, Papa, and eccentric individual.

I am constantly conflicted with building my LinkedIn and online persona, and my desire for privacy and anonymity.

Just can’t stand Lenovo any longer

Another personal hit against Lenovo has shown up. I recently needed to replace the WLAN card in one of my laptops. I grabbed an older Intel-2230 off the shelf and put it in.

I did it while the PC was hibernating (I know… testing in production and all that.) The OS recognized it immediately upon coming back up.

Later on however when I went to restart the thing, I received a cold warning from Lenovo. The apparently well-known 1802 Error.

In short the 1802 error means only a very specific set of add-ons such as WLAN, WWAN, and HDDs are whitelisted. You are not allowed to use something that Lenovo doesn’t want you to.

If I wanted to be restricted and cave and operate only according to a manufacturer’s demands, I would use Apple.

Between this, the Superfish incident, and the pre-installed malware that came on TWO Lenovo Yogas, I am again ruling out Lenovo from ever being part of my deployments again.

Night@EFF

I told myself going into the eff event but I walk out with someone new engaging and interesting to follow on social media. I also hope that I will walk out with the possibility of making a new friend in the area who cares about the same things I care about but wasn’t necessarily somebody I knew from work.
Perhaps the most interesting thing I walked away from the event was an awareness that I was the only person I spoke to there it was on Twitter, Facebook, and used a standard email system.
Everyone there like signal but agrees that the UI isn’t this great as WhatsApp. Have a lot of concerned citizens with an awareness the senior Administration it’s going to result in political change that is currently unpredictable in it’s consequences and effect on net neutrality, the internet,and in society at Large.

I got one email address. No pgp key

From NPR News

Judges Have More Power In Granting Warrants To Hack Digital Devices http://n.pr/2gmxzfw

This doesn’t actually concern me as much as most of my associates probably think it should.

It is true that the Government can now hack your devices Router, PC, Phone, and evn your kid’s tablet.
I expect part of the reason why I’m not bothered by this as it finally confirmed that this is occurring.

You’re not paranoid if they’re actually out to get you.

There’s power and knowing that at any significant or insignificant moment of one’s life they are subject to the eye of the law. The panoptikon is here.
So what do we need to do about that?
The same things we should have been doing for the last several years because we knew this was coming whether or not it would ever have been actually confirmed.

  • License plate readers
  • HD Security cameras everywhere
  • Driver’s license photo being used in an FBI and Nationwide database that is completely searchable by a computer
  • Stingrays
  • Public Wi-Fi hotspots it have been compromised
  • Pegasus for iOS
  • Canaries on websites suddenly disappearing

So really are you being paranoid if they’re actually out to get you? I am alarmed but I am not surprised. This means it’s time to Double Down on my efforts to get my friends and family to use strong encryption. Our data needs to be secured at rest, in transit, and in use.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter if any of us has done anything wrong comma if a warrant asks for permission to penetrate an entire subnet, and the judge they asked has no idea what that means, then it’s over. And your device is subject to the whims of the federal government.
Damn I should be more worried about this.
But the whole reason I’m not, is because this is the same set of tools yummilicious actors and anyone who doesn’t care for the rule of law is already using anyway. They don’t need a paper trail.
This newly granted power could be used for good as well as for evil. Did you ever read the story about theĀ hacker or hackers is that short up the security 10,000 home routers? What if that’s what the FBI wants to use this power for? Why is that so hard of a stretch to think that there’s going to be a complementary team inside the doj for that. If the NSA isn’t going to defend our privacy and security online, then who will? This seems like a great opportunity to create a task force inside the doj for just this purpose.
Unfortunately we won’t really find out Anytime soon because the pending hiring freeze.

The biggest issue with the FBI doing us a service and Shoring up the holes that were used to hack other computer is, is the opacity of the process. But I think that could be pretty easily solved but having a public service announcement website simply to promote after the fact responses. We trust the police in our own communities to keep us safe in our homes Kama We Trust the US military to keep us physically safe from our enemies abroad. And when either of those two threats appear in the appropriate government agency respond we will probably have heard about it after it’s been responded to. Could we extend trust the same way to the government to keep us as secure as they possibly can in a limited fashion online?