Film at 11
Controlling everything centrally via inept civil serpentry for "social benefits fraud", "tax avoidance", "illegal immigration" and "terrororoorism" will lead to Brazil situations.
Indeed.
It's incredibly easy to bump someone off online, and here's how to do it – infosec bod
Most of us have had occasional fantasies about killing someone. Now, as governments demand more personal information from citizens online, it has apparently become surprisingly easy to turn that fantasy into a reality, at least on paper – courtesy of some glaring loopholes. Or so says infosec bod Chris Rock, who presented his …
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Saturday 8th August 2015 14:24 GMT Andy Non
Happens often enough here in France
The bungling bureaucrats here are always finding ways to foul up. On the TV news recently was a pensioner who's pension payments had been stopped because he was dead. Then ensued a nightmare farce of him trying to convince the authorities that he was alive and well; but too late, all the computer systems had been updated with his untimely demise and he couldn't be brought back to life again nor reclaim his pension.
Even the tax authorities here try to get you after you are dead. Another item that made the news was a letter addressed to a dead man at his grave in the cemetery! So not only did they know he was dead but they also found out where he was buried. Apparently he owed tax and being dead wasn't an excuse to avoid payment. The farce reached the news because the bemused postman took the letter to the local mairie (councillor) instead of leaving it on the man's grave.
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Saturday 8th August 2015 17:40 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Happens often enough here in France
"Then ensued a nightmare farce of him trying to convince the authorities that he was alive and well; but too late, all the computer systems had been updated with his untimely demise and he couldn't be brought back to life again nor reclaim his pension."
Presumably such a false statement, especially one resulting in serious financial disadvantage, would be libellous. Try suing the responsible authorities for libel & see just how quickly it would be corrected.
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Saturday 8th August 2015 18:16 GMT Andy Non
Re: Happens often enough here in France
According to the news article it came about because the pensioner was in the hospital at the time and the hospital admins / doctor mixed up his name with another patient who had died; resulting in a death certificate being issued in his name and the ensuing automatic notifications of his "demise" to other French authorities. Knowing how bad France is for red tape and how incompetent and useless many of the bureaucrats are, it was no surprise to hear of his monumental problems trying to be declared "undead". I won't relate the adventures I've had dealing with French bureaucracy other than to say you have to live here to appreciate how much red tape there is to do anything... and anything out of the ordinary can take several years to sort out, if ever!
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Saturday 8th August 2015 15:03 GMT Vincent Ballard
Clarifications requested
In order to register someone as dead a form detailing the cause of mortality needs to be filled out by a doctor within 24 hours of that person's final breath.
This definitely isn't true in the UK - it can take much longer than that to get an autopsy - but it's not clear from context whether it's talking about Australia or the US.in California you need an arts degree.
Please tell me this is a joke. Why shouldn't someone with a degree in, say, biochemistry be considered capable of handling a body?-
Saturday 8th August 2015 16:32 GMT WolfFan
Re: Clarifications requested
in California you need an arts degree.
Please tell me this is a joke. Why shouldn't someone with a degree in, say, biochemistry be considered capable of handling a body?
The state legislature had to do something about all the people with BA degrees roaming the state unemployed (there are only so many jobs at fast-food places, after all) and no doubt supposed that even an English major would have difficulty doing anything too far wrong with a dead body. Someone with a biochem degree is likely to be able to find a job elsewhere.
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Saturday 8th August 2015 17:21 GMT Mark 85
Re: Clarifications requested
in California you need an arts degree.
Please tell me this is a joke. Why shouldn't someone with a degree in, say, biochemistry be considered capable of handling a body?
I'm actually not surprised. It is California where much is about appearances. I would have thought though that minor in cosmetology would be needed.. Having a great looking corpse, you know.
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Sunday 9th August 2015 16:38 GMT Hollerith 1
Re: Clarifications requested
Someone with a BA degree has fille dout a lot of forms, and successfully, because they have a degree. That suggests they can read a form, understand it, fill it out, and submit it.
It doesn't prove they can, but the degree is strongly supportive of the thought that they can.
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Sunday 9th August 2015 22:08 GMT diodesign
Re: Clarifications requested
> > In order to register someone as dead a form detailing the cause of mortality needs to be filled out by a doctor within 24 hours of that person's final breath.
> This definitely isn't true in the UK - it can take much longer than that to get an autopsy - but it's not clear from context whether it's talking about Australia or the US.
I've tweaked the sentence. I think the gist was supposed to be that a report of the death must be filed within 24 hours of its discovery (not the cause) at least in the U.S.
Don't forget - if you spot something odd in a story, email corrections@theregister.co.uk so it can be looked at immediately.
C.
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Monday 10th August 2015 02:56 GMT Orv
Re: Clarifications requested
Re needing an arts degree: Probably worth noting that in the U.S. a BA covers a great many occupations that you wouldn't normally think of as artistic. For example, if someone is a professional linguist, they probably have a BA, because Linguistics is under the 'arts' side of the house and not the 'sciences' side. It's all a bit arbitrary.
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Monday 10th August 2015 12:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Clarifications requested
> Probably worth noting that in the U.S. a BA covers a great many occupations that you wouldn't normally think of as artistic.
Not just the US.
I have an "arts" degree in Engineering Science. People find it amusing if they ask what my MA is for :-) That's from one of the oldest UK universities.
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Saturday 8th August 2015 21:03 GMT ecofeco
Chris Rock?
When did Chris Rock become an infosec guru? I guess you need that kind of sense of humor to deal with all the fucking stupidity.
Oh, not that Chris Rock? Oops.
Anyway, welcome to William Gibson's world from 30 years ago. (although I do believe it's almost right on time)
Now about that cloud thingy and the IofT...
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Saturday 8th August 2015 22:10 GMT Graham Marsden
"you're still deceased as far as the law is concerned"
Which, surely, has benefits too...
"I arrest you for the crime of..."
"... you can't arrest me, I'm dead!"
"Ok, then we'll bury you."
"Nope, you can't do that either because a Doctor can't declare Life Extinct as there's no medical cause of death."
"Err..."
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Sunday 9th August 2015 12:54 GMT Pascal Monett
Re: "you're still deceased as far as the law is concerned"
There's a good idea in there though.
The administration cannot declare you alive again ? Fine, commit a small crime and find out just how fast they find a way to legally recognize your existence again.
If that doesn't work, break in to the judges house. I'll bet that'll do the trick.
Of course, then there will be the issue of a trial. With a pissed-off judge. Bet hey, you'll be legally alive again !
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Monday 10th August 2015 11:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "you're still deceased as far as the law is concerned"
"If that doesn't work, break in to the judges house. I'll bet that'll do the trick."
It depends on the trick you had in mind. Back in the day a few of the older N Irish judges had had a military background including the formation of the SAS. One RUC man I spoke to had been given the job of guarding a judge who told him that his main job in case of an attack was simply to alert him (the judge). He asked why & the judge simply opened the door of the long case clock in the hall & showed him the rifle inside.
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Wednesday 12th August 2015 02:09 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: "you're still deceased as far as the law is concerned"
The administration cannot declare you alive again ? Fine, commit a small crime and find out just how fast they find a way to legally recognize your existence again.
In Miller's case, the state of Ohio and the Federal government have demonstrated that they're perfectly happy to render legal judgements against him, regardless of his de jure fjord-pining. There's an extensive (and amusing, though probably not to him) discussion of the case in Kevin Underhill's excellent blog Under the Bar.
The problem isn't that they don't "legally recognize" him; it's that they legally recognize him, all right, just with a certain amount of existential skew.
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Sunday 9th August 2015 09:03 GMT Rolf Howarth
Interesting, but...
An interesting article, but as the article itself points out, such behaviour is illegal.
Lots of things are possible but illegal. If I can commit insurance fraud by falsely filling in a few paper forms and faking a signature and popping them in the post, or by falsing filling in an online form and using a fake email address and pressing the submit button, well, I don't really see there's a big difference.
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Wednesday 12th August 2015 02:12 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: Interesting, but...
Lots of things are possible but illegal
Lots of things are possible but illegal, but done anyway. It's often useful to know about them.
If I can commit insurance fraud by falsely filling in a few paper forms and faking a signature and popping them in the post, or by falsing filling in an online form and using a fake email address and pressing the submit button, well, I don't really see there's a big difference.
Clearly you're not a security researcher. Those attacks have very different cost profiles (both risk and labor for the attacker), which is a big difference indeed. Security is always, always, always a matter of asymmetric cost to attacker and defender.
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Sunday 9th August 2015 19:05 GMT Crazy Operations Guy
Back-date a birth certificate?
I wonder if it'd be possible to back-date a birth certificate... Fake your own death and take the identity of someone that just happened to have also been born around the same time as you. Of course fooling biometrics would be a bit of an issue, but then you'd just create a new ID in another country that doesn't share data with the country you were born in. But then there is also the issue that you'd no longer have a degree, or a diploma for that matter; although there are plenty of schools that have shit for security...
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Monday 10th August 2015 08:24 GMT Mark 85
Re: Back-date a birth certificate?
Once upon a time, that was the way to create a new identity. You'd dig into some newspapers looking for an obit for a child that died shortly after birth. Take the name, the parents names, and few other tidbits and go to the local office for Vital Statistics (at least here in the States) and apply for a copy of the birth certificate. Once you had that, you were gold.
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Monday 10th August 2015 07:36 GMT Anonymous Coward
20 years ago, I wrote a short story
In which a man created a fictional wife, to take advantage of a tax break for married couples.
The imaginary wife got picked up by official "systems" who started sending junk mail for credit cards etc. Poor sap who started it all carried on applying for credit cards, fleshing out the fiction.
Was finally discovered when the police wanted to talk to her about an unpaid parking ticket (because it turned out someone *else* had the same idea, and was running this fake ID too).
Could't get it published, as a "publicly accessible worldwide interconnected computer system" was a bit too far fetched, for story set in the year 2001.
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Monday 10th August 2015 07:48 GMT lukewarmdog
Not just illegal scams..
There's a whole bunch of people in America who don't want to be found, don't care about lack of genuine passport details and don't need no credit cards to pick up extra guns for their government-hating compounds. If they were also dead, they'd be completely off the radar. That would be worrying, I'd imagine, for the people paid to keep an eye on them.
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Monday 10th August 2015 09:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
ID cards
I have no information about the state of development of other countries related to their IDs with a chip (the UK aside, for what I've read here, it's a mess). But here where I live, we went ahead with it, and despite some concerns about the security of the chip itself, things worked pretty well. Now, you can buy a card reader, you have digital certificates assigned to you and issued passwords.
The fraudulent actions described in the article, will not be possible here (among other things) because of our new ID cards. But the card readers can be a security problem if they come with spyware and keyloggers on board:)
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Monday 10th August 2015 10:41 GMT Dr Patrick J R Harkin
To be a funeral director...
"in Colorado anyone can be a funeral director, in Nevada you need to pay $345 and take an exam, and in California you need an arts degree."
I feel faintly insulted that my science degree in genetics doesn't allow me to dispose of bodies in California. Neither does my medical degree, though it does let me generate them.
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Monday 10th August 2015 15:00 GMT Simon B
I can't have robbed the bank, i'm legally dead!
"...but you're still deceased as far as the law is concerned." How much fin could you have!! i.e
1. ROB A BANK!
2. police catch you and you go to court.
3. "Sorry your honor, this man is legally dead, he tried to undead himself and the state declaed him still dead. Therefore it is impossible for my client to have all the money he was accused of robbing a bank for, because, he is dead, and was found dead on 2 seperate ocassions. The dead can't rob banks."
Where's the argument?
As they insist he is still legally dead and therefore still legally non existant and can't get pasports/driving licences etc, then it stands to reason he can't legally go to prison, becasue he is dead and doesn't exist!, They can't gave it both ways!! pmsl.
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Monday 10th August 2015 15:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
no dignity in dying
If power of attorney can be hacked by greedy relatives and a too-busy, bribed or blackmailed doctor (and I'm aware of controversy here), hacking consent for an assisted suicide enables them to get their hands on the money that much sooner, and it's not as if safeguards on the latter would be more stringent than those on the former. The claimed ethical case for this presumes such systems can't be hacked and judges and other officials are always honest.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
