Wireless security in a paint can
OUT-LAW Radio, 12/04/2007
We investigate a computer security system you paint on your
walls and catch up on big news from punter-papparazi company
Scoopt.
A text transcription follows.
This transcript is for anyone with a hearing impairment or who
for any other reason cannot listen to the MP3 audio file.
The following is the text spoken by OUT-LAW journalist Matthew
Magee.
Hello and welcome to OUT-LAW Radio, the
weekly podcast that keeps you up-to-date on the all the twists and
turns in the world of technology law. Every week we bring you the
latest news and in depth features that help you to make sense of
the ever changing laws that govern technology today.
My name is Matthew Magee and coming up on this
week’s show we investigate wireless data security that you can
paint on your walls, and we catch up on some big news from punter
paparazzi company Scoopt.
But first, the news.
- Government DNA database could cover the
entire population;
- Google and Agence France-Presse agree
licensing deal; and
- half the EU member states call for adoption
of police sharing of DNA data.
The Government’s DNA retention policy combined
with increasingly sophisticated statistical techniques mean that
eventually most citizens in the UK will be linked to data stored on
the police’s DNA databases, according to privacy law expert. Under
last year’s Police and Justice Act, the police are allowed to
retain DNA data on those arrested even if they are not convicted or
even charged with any crime. Data derived from these samples are
then added to the National DNA database. The emergence of
statistical techniques which match DNA on the database to
relatives, using the fact that an individual’s DNA sample is
related to those of close family members mean that the database
could in future cover 80 to 100% of the population according to
Chris Pounder, a privacy law specialist at Pinsent Masons, the law
firm behind OUT-LAW.
News agency Agence France-Presse
(AFP) has agreed a deal with Google to end a two year legal
battle of its Google News service. The deal settles a case which
was worth up to $17.5 million to AFP though the commercial details
of the deal have not been released. AFP launched its suit in 2005
alleging that Google infringed its copyright when it re-published
its headlines, stories and photographs. The case has been dropped
after the two companies agreed a licensing deal for AFP’s content.
It comes in the aftermath of a bruising legal battle in Europe in
which Google lost to Copiepresse, an association of Belgian
newspapers which claimed copyright infringement by Google News. The
deal also follows an agreement made last year between Google and
news agency Associated Press which involved the licensing of AP’s
material by Google.
Fifteen EU countries have proposed that a
treaty governing DNA data sharing signed outside of the structure
of the European Union should be adopted as EU policy. The EU’s own
planned framework on data sharing has not yet been put in place.
Seven countries not including the UK have already agreed the Prüm
Treaty, which is an agreement to share DNA, fingerprint and vehicle
registration data that was signed in the aftermath of bomb attacks
in Madrid in 2004. It is not official EU policy and involves only
the seven countries which have joined the scheme. Another eight
countries are now calling for the treaty to be adopted across
Europe. EU privacy watchdog the European Data Protection Supervisor
has backed the plan, but says some additional data protection
measures are needed.
That was this week’s OUT-LAW news.
There is a perennial tussle in the world of IT
between convenience and security, between the need to have quick
easy access to information and the need to stop the bad guys
getting their grubby paws on it. Nowhere is this more true than in
the world of Wifi. Cheap standardised wireless data networks are a
God-send for home users and IT departments alike. No more cabling,
no more trailing wires and connectors, just an always-on, hassle
free network. Except as countless companies have found, a wireless
network is a security nightmare. Driving around searching for
exposed intranets used to be a favourite pastime of a certain kind
of enthusiast and they met with success from companies way too big
not to have known any better. But if it is super-secure double
locked belt and braces wireless networks you are after, Wayne
Legrande thinks he has an answer and an unusual one at that.
Legrande sells anti-wifi paint. He is the President and chief
technology officer of Emsec Technologies, a company which developed
a paint which uses electromagnetic shielding to block radio
signals. Legrande explains.
Legrande: The
material is probably some of the most advanced technology for
protecting information from going out through the walls and if
there was somebody trying to bug your offices, your corporate
boardrooms, that type of thing, it protects from things coming in,
trying to harm your information systems whether somebody is trying
to blast a lot of radiation through there, as far as RF radiation,
so it does a combination of different things.
Emsec started off designing coatings for the
inside of computer boxes but soon moved on to develop its
technology to block data leaks from technology that we mere
innocents think of as pretty secure: cables. Blocking the tiny
leakages from wires came in very handy once everyone suddenly
switched to wireless internet use.
Legrande: We actually started
with it as applications for what you would consider standard
wiring. We started it with computer systems that have standard
cables and wiring and even with it being what you would call
hardwired it is a large concern that if somebody is able to watch
or get the emissions off a screen or when you touch a
touchtone button it emits a signal that that is button number one,
number two, number eight, number b, number c, and all of
those emissions go flying out through your walls and windows. Now
everybody wants to go wireless and broadcast everything out and it
makes it easier because the bad guys don’t even have to be
close.
The technology blocks almost all radio
signals, and that includes your mobile phone and your Blackberry as
well as the data that you don’t want leaked to the world. So we are
unlikely to see corporations painting entire office blocks in the
stuff, especially at $6 a square foot. But what it does do is make
it possible to secure data rooms or offices within offices where
particularly sensitive work goes on. It can make the office so
secure that anyone trying to leech that information more or less
has to break into the building. Just remember, says Legrande, to
paint the floors and the ceilings as well as the walls.
Legrande: The wall shielding
material along with if you have windows that gets a film put on the
window then you have the ability to make whoever is trying to
acquire your information have to come up very very very very close
to your facility.
How close?
Legrande: You’re talking
sometimes within the building. What people don’t understand is
that if you’re in a multi-storey building,
your computer systems are on the second floor and you’ve got
somebody over you that wants to get your information, they set up
an antenna, a laptop computer and they basically can get it right
through the floors and they don’t even have to be inside. Our
material allows you to get up to drop the ceiling in an area and
put a coat of paint up in there and a decorator that is
properly trained could do the installations.
The technology was developed and tested for
military applications, and has been accredited by organisations so
secret, that Legrande can’t even tell us about them.
Legrande: We have had all of
that validated and checked by some pretty high-powered information
security people. Most of the locations we can’t disclose.
A couple of months ago we brought you news of
Scoopt, the photo agency that claimed to be the first citizen media
company in the world, and which distributed exclusive pictures of
events ranging from the crashing of a plane into a New York
towerblock to the drunken lesbian clinches of one of the stars of
endless TV drama Lost.
Well, OUT-LAW Radio can now reveal that
founders Kyle and Jill MacRae have sold the company, and to none
other than legendary worldwide picture agency Getty Images. Kyle
MacRae explains.
MacRae: Scoopt, the
business, was acquired by Getty Images at the beginning of March
this year. For us this makes a world of difference. It gives Scoopt
instantly global sales reach which was always one of the big
challenges with a start-up media business. It’s relatively
straightforward to acquire members, not so easy to sell their
pictures into these global markets. That, of course, is what Getty
Images does day in day out. There was no way that we could compete
with that or rival that kind of scale so it made absolute sense for
us as a business to become part of Getty Images and to tap into
that sales network.
Okay. The big question is how much did they
buy you for?
MacRae: That’s one I’m
not allowed to answer.
You’re not?
MacRae: I’m not able to
discuss at all.
He might be staying tight lipped about the
purchase price, but MacRae has high hopes for the fortunes of his
company and brand within the Getty empire. Getty is a giant in the
media world, but because it doesn’t sell directly to the public it
has little recognition as a brand among consumers. One possible
strategy that MacRae is pushing for is for Scoopt to become the
consumer, user-generated content brand for Getty across the
world.
MacRae: Scoopt is a consumer
facing brand. Okay it’s a small brand but we have fairly high brand
awareness and it’s a key difference in the brands and Getty Images
is a business to business operation. Scoopt is very much dealing
with consumers, dealing with members of the public and then feeding
into the media. So it makes sense all round to have a very clear,
distinct brand separation.
MacRae, who will be staying with the company
as part of Getty, says that much has changed since he and his wife
formed the company, and that in an enlarged market for citizen
snaps, the worldwide Getty sales force is exactly what Scoopt
needs.
MacRae: What’s different now,
what’s changed in the last couple of years and partly thanks to
what Scoopt has done is we’ve created an active dynamic commercial
market for user-generator content particularly pictures. Getty
Images simply appreciate the scope and the potential for this and
they see it is a valid addition to their core editorial news
gathering resource. People are taking these pictures every day so
why not feed them through the world’s largest agency and get them
into every publication in the world.
Kyle MacRae there.
That’s all we have time for this week, thanks
for listening.
Why not get in touch with OUT-LAW Radio? Do
you know of a technology law story? We’d love to hear from you on
radio@Out-Law.com.
Make sure you tune in next week; for now,
goodbye.
OUT-LAW Radio was produced and
presented by Matthew Magee for international law firm Pinsent
Masons.
