The tinfoil is getting hot

So as a couple of Danes seems to have noted, my favorite topic has landed in the press again. NemID and the implications of it's usage in a profit driven sector.

Actually i just had my hard encounter with it. Not having ever accepted the Terms of Usage, provided by both NemID OCES 2, and E-Boks, I am not upheld by the laws to actually using the system. The funny construction is that even as I refuse to accept the conditions, the product is provided to me. By laws I have no ownership or responsibility of the system, and the users of the system don't have responsibility for anything posted for the E-Boks system as their responsibility ends with the act of posting. The fact no one according to laws have access to the information therein and no one have responsibility of the information within that system. It's a wonderful catch 44 construction.

What worries me though is the fact that the products have been created and can't, even though it's part of the conditions, be deleted. Anyway that isn't my point, as that's old news and nothing have changed in that construction, whether it's intentional or not.

What has changed is that recently the sales of the system to an investing group of United States.

Nothing in this is much of a surprise really, but the public reaction to it is a surprise.
Suddenly people are somewhat aware that when a US based corporation owns your login credentials, the information therein is no longer secret. Nor is it a secret anymore that there's quite financial gain to be had from gathering the Meta data of all people in DK.
Of course, it haven't reached that level yet, but it's slowly building that way.

At time of writing the idea and general optics are that with NemID ownership, US corporation will have unlimited access to any bids put out by a danish corporation, and will misuse that to their advantage in a negotiation where it would prove profitable.
Again this isn't new, with recent times of poking around what the NSA had access to, that's old news again. Yet to the public it's new and outrageous.

The default stance by the government is still that using that information is illegal and therefore misuse will not happen... One would wonder if they really are that naive and stupid.

Corruption would be an option, but somehow I don't think it. Frankly I'm starting to believe they really are that naive and stupid.

Bottom line is that this summer will see the legislative figth over this crap, how and when someone will be outed with hands too deep in the wrong pockets is still an open question. frankly it could take many years before that happens, I just hope it happens before I'm completely dragged through the system. I need the believe that my efforts are not futile.

When is it too much?

For the past week or so I've noticed my G+ feed acting a little strange compare to what I was used to. And I found out why.

Back when i started the stream was cronologic, meaning that a post made at 10 would preceded a post made at 11 O'clock. This has changed.

Back in January when i still spend a bit of time going through my facebook wall, I noticed the same behavior, and i used quite a while to consistently sort the stream from "most relevant" to "by time". In the beginning I accepted it a a new feature and the fact that the setting back to relevant was based on bugs and behaviour shaping. After all Facebook is a business and they hae interest in making me consider something relevant according to their sales rather then my personal preferences. Knowing this it was irritations and fueled further my detachment from facebook, and spawned yet another good arguments as why facebook was the evil of this world.
By the time I left I've grown completely detached to my stream and didn't bother sorting it anymore, knowingly scrolling down the list to find the post i had interest with or simply ignoring it.


For those not knowing where this idea comes from, it was made public knowledge a few years back when Mark Zuckenberg (the FB founder), proclaimed that in today's world it was often the case that a squirrel dying in your backyard was more important news to you, then the fact that the danish social security numbers database has been hacked and is now public knowledge. Even if your danish this statement holds true.
Eli Fennell did a very nice TED talk about it, he's on G+ look him up.


Now for those that won't bother with TED, here's the effect of what's going on: All content provided to you is filtered in some way. The main motif is of course first off attention, second off it's earnings. These are mechanisms we're familiar with, just look for bill boards, or other add in your surroundings.


So what's my problem?
My problem is that something is being filtered away from my perspective, and I need to make a concerted effort for finding it. In a rush i most likely won't see it and it'll disappear in the masses. Then again what would i be missing out on?
Well everything that I have special or geeky interest in. everything that isn't mainstream, so frankly everything I actually want to know.
on the other hand what I gain is that everything I have an interest in that is mainstream will be smeared my my face until I'm ready to puke.
My opinion of things will be shaped to conform.

I miss my G+ stream freedom. If anyone can tell me how to get it back I'd be very happy, but this philosophy of the dead squirrel will not go away soon, and I don't think the masses will reject it as only a select few understands what going on. It saddens me this is the way things are heading.

Insuing insanity

I was meaning to write in danish. I failed. Danish political fumblings in this awareness blog.

So the time finally came. My digital signature expired. I've known this would happen for 2 years now, and have had inklings as of it's effect. Ironically this happens on the days L160 enters it's last step to completion.

And for those of you not knowing L160, it's basically the law which dictates every danish person either accepts the NemID OCES terms of service\use or be a criminal. To cite one of my news medias.

For those that doesn't know what I'm talking about, let me line it up as simple as I can:

In Denmark the financial sector have created a company to handle digital identities. This started some 10 years ago with net banking not wanting to accept the official certificate solution which was a bit tricky to get running.

So they've created their own solution hand lobbied the Government into using the same scheme to enroll everyone into the digital age.

2 years ago they presented and launch then basically Single Sign On credentials under idea that it was a "digital Signature" meaning you and only you would have access to it. Oversimplifying it the rouse took good hold of the populace, piled onto it was the fact that all online banking required the use of the NemID.

In this day and age, few people can live without net banking a few have tried, and precious few resists. So of a populace of 5,5 million people was issues a NemID by the end of 2011.

Now for the funny part. the NemID credentials are owned, used and managed by this DanID firm, which is a private firm working for the Financial sector. Pretty much as a workers union, but for banks.

Yet with a simple check box, you agree by binding contract that NemID is as legally binding as well your passport, and can be used thusly in all danish government matters. It's infallible, so if anything is wrong, you are carring the risk and would be liable for the damages.

Thus far you can avoid the government part and use the ID for Banking purposes alone, thusly holding a barrier between the finacial sector and your government records, say insurrance companies will still have to ask permission to read your health records, and even inform you if they do. You do that by not aquiring both the NemID and activating the OCES certificate for it.

Currently the treasury minister is passing a law dictating that all goverment information is to be provided via digital means, and specificly via something called "E-Boks". This is rather convinient, if it was not for one simple fact. "E-Boks" is a privately owned company, and you have no claims on the information they store on your behalf. Also the only access to that system is via the NemID OCES or digital signatur OCES (the old PKI solution). Also mind you there's not the love option to withdraw your agreement with these firms....

Now to be fair within the law there's rules for exceptions. And these exceptions are claimed by showing up at the local municipality office and claim the rigth. Within the law there's indications as criteria you should fulfill to claim exception. Ohh, if you claim exception falsely you're guilty of fraud and can be sentenced to 4 years of jail... But the general understanding is that you can claim exception but you're are not suppose to and will be punished accordingly for it (when time permits).

So what the frag does all that have to do with me specifically.. Yea, as I mentioned from the start my original OCES certificate expired this Monday, thus I can't renew it and my only option to regain a such would be by accepting the terms of usage given by DanID. And I don't want to do that. So do I need one?

Well besides the inconvenience that I can not report taxes, sign my kids up for school or daycare. I can't interact much with governmental issues. But "E-Boks"....

In theory anything could be sent to be in that web mail and I'd be legally responsible for reading and acting upon it's constant. This is no matter if I have access or not. And for this I only have one option (get a NemID OCES).

As I keep telling people the coming years will be rather interesting times, things are actually going for the worse moving along a self destructive path. At some point the barriers of sanity will be broken and the times after that will be radically different then the day and age of today. Interesting indeed.