The government plans to use ePassports at Immigration and Border Control. The information is electronically read from the Passport and displayed to a Border Control Officer or used by an automated setup. THC (The Hacker's Choice) has discovered weaknesses in the system to (by)pass the security checks. The detection of fake passport chips does not work. Test setups do not raise alerts when a modified chip is used. This enables an attacker to create a Passport with an altered Picture, Name, DoB, Nationality and other credentials. The manipulated information is displayed without any alarms going off. The exploitation of this loophole is trivial and can be verified using thc-epassport. Regardless how good the intention of the government might have been, the facts are that tested implementations of the ePassports Inspection System are not secure. ePassports give us a false sense of security: We are made to believe that they make usemore secure. I'm afraid that's not true: current ePassport implementations don't add security at all.
Archive for September, 2008
ePassports at Immigration
Security at MITTS
The intrusion of hackers into the network of MITTS is very worrying. All efforts have to be brought up to restore security and condidence into the government network. Proper email security, network and password policies have to be in place at MITTS and all employees should be accordingly trained by the security officers thus avoiding future losses of confidentiality and trust. Often hackers find open doors due to inadvertence of people using their computers. These doors can be closed with the help of correct eductaion.
Contactless electricity
I recently discovered a company, Powermat, providing an innovative way to transfer electricity through induction. Powermat technology brings safe, simple, and efficient wireless electricity to surfaces including walls, tables, floors and desktops with the invention and perfection of surface connect technology. An innovative solution that provides a perfectly safe, and environmentally beneficial wireless method for transmitting electricity at a wide range of power levels.
It is designed to replace the need to access multiple electrical sockets with the flexibility and freedom of wireless power for real-time powering and charging of electronic devices of almost any kind in almost any environment.
The technology utilizes principles of magnetic induction to transmit electrical power via an ultra thin mat embedded in, or overlaid on, any surface or wall, to electronic devices placed randomly upon it.
Further information can be found at http://www.powermatdigital.com
Digital Rights are also Human Rights
Digital Rights are nothing other than our usual and common rights, but expressed and translated into the domain of the Internet.
The right to share, the right to protect one’s privacy, freedom of speech, the right to learn, the right to access knowledge or consumer rights are amongst the common rights that apply in a digital world, hence they are Digital Rights.
Several of these rights gather new power because of the digital environment where they are placed. The right to access knowledge is strengthened as the possibilities of accessing it are enhanced due to technological advances. This fact confers a new importance to these rights.
Although these are rights that we Westerners may have taken for granted, the fact is that the digital world is a new environment, and these rights have to be fought for again.
In the last years we have experienced a series of attacks on Digital Rights:
- The Digital Guillotine, aimed at banning from the Internet users infringing copyright
- Collecting Societies criminalize users for downloading songs, even if this is not considered to be an illegal action
- Governments spend public money to pay for advertisements where Internet users are compared with thieves.
- Public Organisations systematically neglect the existence of GNU/Linux or other open source software in their Calls for Tenders.
- Users are forced to buy certain products in order to have a normal experience on the Internet.
- Consumers are forced to pay intellectual propriety levies on CDs/DVDs even if they are used to store their own content.
- The European Union is continuously trying to grant software patents. One directive was rejected by the European Parliament, but they insisted with EPLA and now through ACTA.
- Privacy is put at risk and subdued under more government and police control.
- Free speech is under attack from several governments.
One key idea behind all these attacks is that some companies, in connivance with governments, want to make profits at the expense of no matter what (read “our rights”). Government control by authoritarian regimes is also a threat, and it also has no respect for digital rights.
* We need open knowledge: The right to access knowledge
- The internet made it possible for knowledge to become accessible to a huge number of people in a relatively cheap way. The expansion of the internet has to be defended in order to make knowledge accessible to everyone in the world
- Knowledge must be free. Knowledge helps people’s development and, as it has been developed based on previous knowledge, can be considered as a common good. Therefore it is absurd to allow knowledge monopolies. It is not ethical to make profit at the expense of other people’s access to knowledge.
- Free software has to be supported, as it is free knowledge. It is also the proof that a new economic model can be set up based on free access to knowledge, rather than on restricting it
- Creators need to find a new way of making profit. They must be helped to achieve a sustainable business model that does not entail reducing our digital rights.
* Technological neutrality is a consumer right
- People can’t be forced to use a certain technology. Just as it would be nonsense to force users to drive a certain brand of car to enter a national road, so is it nonsense to force internet users to “drive” on certain operating systems to access websites, especially if the websites have been built with public money.
- To respect that technological neutrality, public organisations have to respect Open Standards and ensure interoperability.
- Consumers shouldn’t be forced to buy technology they don’t want, in particular in the case of computers, where hardware and software are usually sold together. We support unbundling, so users can buy both the computer and the operating system of their choice.
* The right to privacy and to protect personal data
- Anonymity on the Internet should be supported.
- Cryptography is a technology used to secure communications and protect against unauthorized access to our communications. It should be used there should be no restriction on its use imposed by any Government.
* Supporting P2P means protecting our right to share
- Sharing is not a crime, and it shouldn’t be illegal. Copying is not stealing, and digital propriety is not comparable with physical propriety, especially when producing legislation.
- In Europe, the European Commission is worried about “unauthorized” downloads. There is no authorization needed to make use of our right to share.
- Network Neutrality means that all information sent on the Internet should be treated the same way. In particular, Internet Providers can’t reduce the speed of P2P communications.
* Free Speech in a Free Internet
- Free speech is under attack in several countries, and censorship is being enforced. This should not be tolerated, even if abiding by authoritarian rules helps western companies make more profit.
- Internet has a special status, as no political and economical control must influence it, as should be the case for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which manages important technical aspects of the operation of the Internet.
What’s Next for the German Photovoltaic Industry?
Germany’s solar industry has been given a boost after the government said it would scale back the feed-in tariff for solar electricity by only 9-10 percent each year until 2011 much less than the 30 percent scale-back that some industry experts had predicted.
Solar power in Germany is set to generate 4.134 gigawatt-hours (GWh) or 0.83 percent of the country’s total electricity consumption in 2008; wind power generates 41.143 GWh or 8.26 percent of the country’s electricity.
Employing around 60,000 people, mainly in eastern Germany, the country’s solar industry is set to have a turnover of around €7 billion [US $9.9 billion] in 2008.
Though PV electricity will continue to cost between €0.40 to 0.50 per KW/h [US $0.56 to 0.70 per kWh] even after the feed-in tariffs are lowered, experts from the German solar industry association, Bundesverband Solarwirtschaft (BSW), predict that the cost will fall to grid parity sometime in the next decade.
The BSW says the industry is taking advantage of economies of scale to push down the costs of manufacturing solar panels.
Installed solar electricity costs €2,900 per KW [US $4,100], but this is expected to fall to as little as €2,100 [US $2,970] by 2010, according to one study. As a result, the cost of solar electricity could fall by as much as 40 percent to €0.15 per KW/h [US $0.21 per kWh] in sunnier southern Germany in the next few years.
The push to lower manufacturing costs of rooftop PV panels — which make up 95 percent of Germany’s installed PV capacity — should also be helped by an expansion in the number of producers of silicon.
A shortage of silicon has been driving up the price of solar panels, industry experts say.
Thin-film PV
Today, 13 percent of the solar cells manufactured by Germany are thin-film solar cells: these use only 1/100th of the amount of silicon as the silicon wafer-based solar cells that make up the remaining 87 percent of the solar cells manufactured in Germany.
In spite of the spectacular growth of the Germany’s solar industry and the impressive investment in production facilities, some experts argue that the high tariffs for solar electricity have failed to produce an efficient and competitive solar industry with a strong innovative technology base to sustain future exports.
According to the German solar magazine Photon, solar power could end up costing Germans €77 billion [US $209 billion] in higher tariffs by 2010 assuming that solar electricity generates 2 percent of the country’s total electricity by then, and some critics have said the costs are not in relation to the performance.
The higher solar electricity tariffs are financed by all electricity consumers under the Renewable Energy Law (EEG).
In 1999, the extra costs to consumers were €19 million; in 2005, €506 million; and in 2008, the cost is expected to €1 billion [US $26.8 million, $715.3 million, and $1.41 billion, respectively]. The costs could grow even higher in the coming decade because households with solar panels are guaranteed a fixed income for 20 years for surplus electricity sold to the national grid.
According to the Rheinisch Westfälischen Instituts für Wirtschaftsforschung (RWI), every job created in the solar industry costs €128,900 [US $182,200] in subsidies and every ton less of carbon emissions costs €900 [US $1,272], indicating that solar electricity might be the least efficient and most expensive way of tackling climate change.
In 2006, the feed-in tariff for a kWh of solar electricity was €0.518.
“That makes the tariffs for solar electricity about ten times higher than that paid for the generation of conventional electricity and five times higher than that for wind energy, which had tariffs of 8.7 cents in 2006,” according to a Handelsblatt report on an RWI study.
Experts warn that Germany needs to invest more into research to develop the next wave of solar technology if the industry is going to be able to compete with thin-film companies such as US-based First Solar and Nanosolar.
Knut Kübler von Matterhorn, a government energy research expert, notes that government spending on energy research — currently €538 million [US $760 million] — is less in real terms than in 1969.
The German solar industry will invest €175 million [US $247 million] in solar cell research in 2008; a number that will rise to about €225 million [US $318 million] in 2010, according to the BSW August 2008 statistical figures of the German solar PV branch.
Experts fear that with so little investment in new solar technology, Germany’s solar industry could find itself overtaken by more nimble competitors, who are forging ahead with developing innovative cheap and efficient solar technology that could soon capture a larger share of the market.
Although Germany is still the third largest producer of solar cells in the world after China and Japan, with a 20 percent market share, recent studies predict that Germany’s share of the world’s newly installed capacity will fall to 28 percent in 2010, from 58 percent in 2006.
Ref.: Jane Burgermeister from RenewableEnergyWorld.com
Government eco-grant should be also given to products bought from other E.U. countries
Ordinance 135 published in the Gazzetta tal-Gvern ta’ Malta of the 9th February 2006 states that the "Once-Only Grant on the Purchase of Photovoltaic Systems for Domestic Use and on the Purchase of Thermal Roof Insulation Materials for Roofs of Domestic Residences" is only applicable for installations purchased from Malta. This is not acceptable as it is against the freedom of movements of goods and it creates a disadvantage to European companies who wishes to retail their energy saving systems on the Maltese market. Any systems purchased in one of the countries of the E.U. should be qualified for a grant. Any effort should be made to encourage the population to invest in alternative energy in order to contribute on a personal level to the reduction of the global warming.
Eco tax incentives in France
Despite being a conservative, Sarkozy is introducing very interesting loan and tax incentives for the protection of the environment. Basically he is going to launch another scheme of a 0% interest loan for the energetic upgrade of properties (double glazing, new heating systems,…) up to an amount of eur 30.000 per household. The so called local “eco loans” of the banks do not make commercially sense as one would not really recover the interests paid to the bank through the upgrading of the properties.
Sarkozy is also introducing “bonus/malus” on certain products (cars, televisions, white items,…) following the principle “the more it pollutes, the more it is taxed”. I personally find these measures very effective and I think we should also push them forward in Malta.
