Recently, Bruce Schneier posted about "Firefighters to Fight Terrorism While Doing their Day Jobs". He was commenting on programs in various US cities to train firefighters to spot behaviour that could indicate terrorist activity or planning.Schneier deems it "yet another front in the war on the unexpected, more amateurs are joining the fight against terrorism".

Yes, this can lead to a variety of problems, such as many false positives and the erosion of the public's trust.

The Homeland Security Affairs Journal has an informative article about "The Use of EMS Personnel as Intelligence Sensors: Critical Issues and Recommended Practices" that provides good insights. The HSAJ article examines the advantagesof using emergnecy personnel to spot indications of potential terrorist activity. It also examines the problems that can arise with violation of societal expectations for medical personnel and with medical privacy &confidentiality laws. Then, the HSAJ article provides recommendations for reducing problems.

J.D. Abolins

November 30th is Computer Security Day. Its goal is "to remind people to protect their computers and information". Although "Educating Users" is one of "The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security" list by Marcus Ranum (later I should post more on the thought provoking list), education and reminders can still be helpful.

The Day's organisers have posted suggested activities, including:

• Change your password. Cambie su contrasena. Modifier votre mot de passe.
  (By the way, look at this item on Bruce Schneier's blog.)
  
• Back-up your data. (after being certain that it is virus-free.)
  
• Verify that passwords are not "Posted" and all other keys are secured.
• Hold a discussion of ethics with computer users.
  
• Install all security-related updates to your computer's operating system.
• Consider the privacy aspect of the data on your computer and protect it.

Some of the suggestions, such as "Change the FORMAT command in DOS to avoid accidentally FORMATing of disks" and "Write-protect all diskettes that are not to be written to" seem out of date. (But there are people still using DOS and diskettes.)

The suggestions mention commercial and shareware software -- mainly about registering & paying for them--, but are silent about free and open source software. Also, there's no mention of cryptography options. With the growing number of data breaches, including the HMRC breach in the UK, cryptography is an important data protection tool.

Fortunately, one of the Computer Security Day suggested activities is to send the organisers an item to add to the list.

J.D. Abolins