Ordo Ab Chao

I was in hospital this morning so I spent the period of the day, when I wasn’t sleeping, trawling some blogs and catching up on the minutae of other people’s lives. I managed to find this. A fascinating documentary on the first form of internetworked geek communion, BBS. I was a big fan of these in the day and used to connect using my gee whizz Acorn Archimedes. That singled me out as a power user by the way. At a heady 4800 baud, I really smoked the joint out. Anyway, geeks who’ve been there and done that, like me, can check out this wonderful documentary and relive BBS in all their monochrome glory. There’s even a nice little interview with Internet co-inventor and Google VP, Vinton Cerf.

Ever been snapped by one of those pesky gatso cameras driving a little on the high side (above) of the limit. I spotted this article on the web and decided to do a little bit of research into the worldwide attitudes to speed cameras & whether such a defence would be acceptable here. The answer seems to be that in many of the countries where speed cameras are deployed to discourage speeding they are not admissible as court evidence. The reason being that the cameras are operated by semi-state or private organisations without the direct involvement of the police where private individuals and organisations are financially rewarded based on the number of infringements. In California, for example, the practice is deemed “unreliable” by the state superior court on this basis. The situation is the same in Colorado. In the US there is also the issue of correct identification of the driver. In California the cameras are required to produce a recognisable picture of the driver’s face for identification purposes. As far as I know, this is the case in Ireland where vehicle owners are asked to provide the name and address of the vehicle’s driver at the time the picture was taken.
As leading Internet security expert Bruce Schneier points out it’s true that MD5 is broken but very likely that the motorist in the australian case was guilty. However, theoretical security is important when the legal system assumes innocence before guilt and also places a burden of proof upon the prosecution.
So I guess the question you’re all wondering is whether the Irish garda use MD5 in a similiar way for non-repudiation purposes or whether the cameras are operated by a semi-state or private organisation on cash-per-infringement basis. Well AFAIK the cameras are installed and operated by Serco and Pulse uses MD5 checksums in places. I’m going to do some digging here but it does have fascinating and wide-ranging implications.
Anyone interested in reading more about the MD5 vulnerability have a look here
I’m neither advocating speeding nor castigating cameras but the following statistics are telling. In the UK cameras deployed in accident hotspots tend to reduce the number of accidents and fatalities by 30-40%. However, cameras tend to increase the ratio of fatalities to injuries wherever they’re deployed. Many of these fatalities are due to pile-ups caused by offending motorists quickly slowing down before cameras. There are a number of theories explaining these statistics.

• Some believe that cameras are distracting causing drivers to pay more attention to the speedometer rather than the road. Many studies have backed this up.
• Many serially irresponsible drivers slow down just before the cameras and immediately speed up again once past them, increasingly the likelihood of an accident during braking & while they try to make up lost time.