blog/archive/2015/05/05.rss

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   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from May 2015</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from May 2015</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
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   9         <item>
  10                 <title>Norwegian citizens now required by law to give their fingerprint to the police</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_citizens_now_required_by_law_to_give_their_fingerprint_to_the_police.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_citizens_now_required_by_law_to_give_their_fingerprint_to_the_police.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Sun, 10 May 2015 16:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;5 days ago, the Norwegian Parliament decided, unanimously, that all
  15 citizens of Norway, no matter if they are suspected of something
  16 criminal or not, are
  17 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.holderdeord.no/votes/1430838871e&quot;&gt;required to
  18 give fingerprints to the police&lt;/a&gt; (vote details from Holder de
  19 ord).  The law make it sound like it will be optional, but in a few
  20 years there will be no option any more.  The ID will be required to
  21 vote, to get a bank account, a bank card, to change address on the
  22 post office, to receive an electronic ID or to get a drivers license
  23 and many other tasks required to function in Norway.  The banks plan
  24 to stop providing their own ID on the bank cards when this new
  25 national ID is introduced, and the national road authorities plan to
  26 change the drivers license to no longer be usable as identity cards.
  27 In effect, to function as a citizen in Norway a national ID card will
  28 be required, and to get it one need to provide the fingerprints to
  29 the police.&lt;/p&gt;
  30
  31 &lt;p&gt;In addition to handing the fingerprint to the police (which
  32 promised to not make a copy of the fingerprint image at that point in
  33 time, but say nothing about doing it later), a picture of the
  34 fingerprint will be stored on the RFID chip, along with a picture of
  35 the face and other information about the person.  Some of the
  36 information will be encrypted, but the encryption will be the same
  37 system as currently used in the passports.  The codes to decrypt will
  38 be available to a lot of government offices and their suppliers around
  39 the globe, but for those that do now know anyone in those circles it
  40 is good to know that
  41
  42 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs&quot;&gt;the
  43 encryption is already broken&lt;/a&gt;.  And they
  44 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.networkworld.com/article/2215057/wireless/bad-guys-could-read-rfid-passports-at-217-feet--maybe-a-lot-more.html&quot;&gt;can
  45 be read from 70 meters away&lt;/a&gt;.  This can be mitigated a bit by
  46 keeping it in a Faraday cage (metal box or metal wire container), but
  47 one will be required to take it out of there often enough to expose
  48 ones private and personal information to a lot of people that have no
  49 business getting access to that information.&lt;/p&gt;
  50
  51 &lt;p&gt;The new Norwegian national IDs are a vehicle for identity theft,
  52 and I feel sorry for us all having politicians accepting such invasion
  53 of privacy without any objections.  So are the Norwegian passports,
  54 but it has been possible to function in Norway without those so far.
  55 That option is going away with the passing of the new law.  In this, I
  56 envy the Germans, because for them it is optional how much biometric
  57 information is stored in their national ID.&lt;/p&gt;
  58
  59 &lt;p&gt;And if forced collection of fingerprints was not bad enough, the
  60 information collected in the national ID card register can be handed
  61 over to foreign intelligence services and police authorities, &quot;when
  62 extradition is not considered disproportionate&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
  63 </description>
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  67                 <title>What would it cost to store all phone calls in Norway?</title>
  68                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html</link>
  69                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html</guid>
  70                 <pubDate>Fri, 1 May 2015 19:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
  71                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, a friend of mine calculated how much it would cost
  72 to store the sound of all phone calls in Norway, and came up with the
  73 cost of around 20 million NOK (2.4 mill EUR) for all the calls in a
  74 year.  I got curious and wondered what the same calculation would look
  75 like today.  To do so one need an idea of how much data storage is
  76 needed for each minute of sound, how many minutes all the calls in
  77 Norway sums up to, and the cost of data storage.&lt;/p&gt;
  78
  79 &lt;p&gt;The 2005 numbers are from
  80 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digi.no/analyser/2005/10/04/vi-prater-stadig-mindre-i-roret&quot;&gt;digi.no&lt;/a&gt;,
  81 the 2012 numbers are from
  82 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/nyheter/fortsatt-vekst-i-det-norske-ekommarkedet&quot;&gt;a
  83 NKOM report&lt;/a&gt;, and I got the 2013 numbers after asking NKOM via
  84 email.  I was told the numbers for 2014 will be presented May 20th,
  85 and decided not to wait for those, as I doubt they will be very
  86 different from the numbers from 2013.&lt;/p&gt;
  87
  88 &lt;p&gt;The amount of data storage per minute sound depend on the wanted
  89 quality, and for phone calls it is generally believed that 8 Kbit/s is
  90 enough.  See for example a
  91 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html#topic1&quot;&gt;summary
  92 on voice quality from Cisco&lt;/a&gt; for some alternatives.  8 Kbit/s is 60
  93 Kbytes/min, and this can be multiplied with the number of call minutes
  94 to get the storage requirements.&lt;/p&gt;
  95
  96 &lt;p&gt;Storage prices varies a lot, depending on speed, backup strategies,
  97 availability requirements etc.  But a simple way to calculate can be
  98 to use the price of a TiB-disk (around 1000 NOK / 120 EUR) and double
  99 it to take space, power and redundancy into account.  It could be much
 100 higher with high speed and good redundancy requirements.&lt;/p&gt;
 101
 102 &lt;p&gt;But back to the question, What would it cost to store all phone
 103 calls in Norway?  Not much.  Here is a small table showing the
 104 estimated cost, which is within the budget constraint of most medium
 105 and large organisations:&lt;/p&gt;
 106
 107 &lt;table border=&quot;1&quot;&gt;
 108 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Year&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Call minutes&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Size&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Price in NOK / EUR&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 109 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2005&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;24 000 000 000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;1.3 PiB&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;3 mill / 358 000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 110 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2012&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;18 000 000 000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;1.0 PiB&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;2.2 mill / 262 000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 111 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2013&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;17 000 000 000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;950 TiB&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;2.1 mill / 250 000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 112 &lt;/table&gt;
 113
 114 &lt;p&gt;This is the cost of buying the storage.  Maintenance need to be
 115 taken into account too, but calculating that is left as an exercise
 116 for the reader.  But it is obvious to me from those numbers that
 117 recording the sound of all phone calls in Norway is not going to be
 118 stopped because it is too expensive.  I wonder if someone already is
 119 collecting the data?&lt;/p&gt;
 120 </description>
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