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Category Archives: law

Interesting article and debate on DNA identification probabilities

20/08/2010 – 16:19

Article and Slashdot discussion. Hopefully more people are now starting to wake up to the fallibility of DNA. Real life isn’t like CSI where they get a perfect sample and the computer flashes up a perfect match. In fact, CSI does that for fingerprints too… Shocking for a show supposedly based on science.

By mojo | Comments (0)

Animal cruelty

10/08/2010 – 18:36

Someone attacked my cat. The put some black stuff around his ear and cut the whiskers on one side of his face down to about 1cm. I reported it to the RSPCA. I just hope it was some kids who will get bored soon. The thought that an adult would intentionally do something like that [...]

By mojo | Also posted in idiots | Comments (0)

PayPal – no protection after 45 days!

25/06/2010 – 19:31

In the EU everything electrical comes with a two year warranty. I bought an MSF receiver module on eBay. It arrived from overseas and it took me a couple of weeks to get around to testing it when I realised it did not work. I opened a PayPal dispute and they closed it because it [...]

By mojo | Also posted in Internet | Comments (0)

Dating Recordings by Power Line Fluctuations

18/06/2010 – 18:14

An interesting article. Summary: Using power fluctuations in the national grid police claim to be able to date a recording precisely. The fluctuations affect any mains connected equipment, and allegedly even battery powered devices. The police seem to love this kind of highly dubious forensic evidence. Let’s look at their record. Fingerprints – not unique [...]

By mojo | Comments (0)

Bliss Box violating my copyright, GPL and more

13/05/2010 – 17:26

I just spotted this: http://spawnlinux.dyndns.org/Bliss-Box/technical.html It violates my copyright on some of the images such as the schematic and connector diagrams. It also violates the GPL by using V-USB and not publishing the relevant code. Chances are it probably uses some of my GPL’ed code, and the author admitted that it is based off some [...]

By mojo | Also posted in Internet, electronics | Comments (0)

On the (ab)use of DNA evidence

22/08/2009 – 19:20

An interesting thread started up on a /. article about how handwriting style “fingerprinting” is easily fooled. Since I made some of the posts, I’m mirroring it here: amimojo: This should not really come as a surprise to anyone. Like all evidence that has to be interpreted, the interpretation can be flawed. Shows like CSI [...]

By mojo | Tagged law | Comments (0)

Protecting yourself from UK surveillance

05/01/2009 – 21:11

Recent moves by the police to step up hacking people’s PCs (/. article, original Times Online article) and a recent forum thread got me thinking about ways to defend myself against the snooping that the UK seems to love so much. A quick overview of what we are up against. In the UK the following [...]

By mojo | Also posted in networking, privacy, security | Comments (0)

England is doomed

10/09/2008 – 21:14

I’ve been thinking about this blog post for a while, and today’s Jeremy Vine show finally prompted me to write it. A council in Shropshire is backtracking on orders to park wardens to stop and quiz adults not accompanied by children, and there was a phone in debate about it. That’s not what the post [...]

By mojo | Also posted in idiots, politics | Comments (0)

Uniqueness of DNA questioned

20/07/2008 – 10:13

The uniqueness of DNA evidence has been brought into question once again by a lab tech in Arizona: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dna20-2008jul20,0,1506170,full.story The tech discovered two criminals on the database with remarkably similar DNA, close enough in fact to satisfy a court of a match in most cases. One was white, the other black. She went on to [...]

By mojo | Comments (1)

Petition for PayPal credit card transactions to be properly regulated

09/06/2008 – 11:09

My petition on the 10 Downing Street Petitions web site has just been approved, so please sign it! http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/3partyccs/ Currently, you are not protected by your credit card company when paying for stuff with a credit card using PayPal, which basically means when buying anything with credit card on eBay too. The problem is that [...]

By mojo | Also posted in politics | Comments (0)

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