Category Archives: Society

Banking, Consumer Affairs, Society, Technology

Changes to security codes on bank cards…

CONSUMER AFFAIRS

A CREDIT CARD with a constantly changing security code is being launched in an attempt to prevent fraudulent transactions.

The three numbers on the back of the card will be replaced by a digital display randomly generating a new combination every hour.

Oberthur Technologies, a digital security company, is in talks with UK banks about introducing the technology and has said the cards will be used by French customers by the end of the year.

The security code on the back of most credit and debit cards is required to make payments online.

Fraud in the UK involving cards, remote banking and cheques totalled £755million in 2015, with more than 20,000 victims.

The mini-screen on the new cards is powered by a small battery designed to last three years.

A cyber-security expert within the industry, said: ‘It’s surprising it has taken so long for this to appear. The technology has existed for some time so now it will be a case of persuading card processors that it is worth doing.’

The insider added: ‘It may be costly for card operators as some extra infrastructure will be required to ensure our cards stay synchronised with the operator, but it happens already for many banks with the dongles they use for login [to online banking].’

One drawback of the card is that customers will no longer be able to memorise their security code and will need to check every time they want to make an online purchase.

The French banks Societe Generale and Groupe BPCE are preparing to issue the cards to customers after a successful pilot scheme last year. They are also being tested in Mexico and Poland.

In another development in digital security, MasterCard has announced that it has developed technology that could allow online shoppers to send a ‘selfie’ of themselves to prove their identity when they make a purchase.

It would do away with the need for passwords used as an additional level of security to the three-digit code. But passwords can be difficult to remember, stolen or intercepted.

Master Card customers currently use a system called SecureCode to verify their identity while shopping online. The process can result in shoppers abandoning their purchase or having the transaction declined if they enter the password incorrectly.

The ‘selfie’ password system involves customers downloading an app to their mobile phone and registering by taking a photo of themselves so their face is stored in the system.

To authorise a payment, they look into the camera and must blink to verify they are not just holding up a photo of someone else. Customers will be able to use a scan of their fingerprint instead of a selfie if they prefer.

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Europe, France, Government, Islamic State, Society, Terrorism

Europe and Islamist attacks

TERRORISM IN EUROPE

Intro: President François Hollande of France may think that declaring war on the extremists will shore up his own fragile political position

THE INSTINCTIVE RESPONSE on horrors such as those that have taken place in France and Germany in recent days is to look for a pattern, a narrative that might go some way to explain the inexplicable.

The brutal and bloody murder of an 86-year-old priest in Normandy invites such thinking, since it follows years of attacks on Christians in the Middle East: first by al-Qaeda and then by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Is radical Islam seeking a war with Christianity?

The very suggestion or notion of such a conflict between faiths would delight followers of ISIL, but it is hard to reconcile with that group’s dreadful persecution of fellow Muslims. ISIL has killed many more Muslims than it has Christians or Jews.

Or are the Islamists targeting Western liberal values more broadly, seeking to reinstate the Islamic Caliphate that once existed across the Middle East and parts of Southern Europe?

If so, that end has been poorly served by the enormity and mayhem in Normandy and Bavaria, lands that were never home to Muslims in the middle ages and which have only come to have Muslim residents as a result of those liberal Western values.

Seeking some kind of explanation for the evil that has been perpetrated is perfectly natural, but we should not impute too much calculation or design to those individuals who carry out such heinous crimes.

Whilst we may look for explanations the truth is there is no rationale or logic, nor any coherent argument in explaining away why Europe is suffering such appalling atrocities on its streets. These are the acts of inadequate and disturbed individuals with a nihilistic desire to destroy anything that challenges them and their ill-formed and warped idea of the world.

We must harden our defences against such acts, but we should be wary of the idea that those acts represent a clash of cultures – for that suggests some sort of parity between irrational extremist ideology on the one hand and a civilisation of shared traditions developed over thousands of years on the other.

President François Hollande of France may think that declaring war on the extremists will shore up his own fragile political position. Such a response, however, also risks validating the arguments of Marine Le Pen’s National Front (i.e. that the French establishment has failed to face up to the existential threat of terrorism).

Security and intelligence operations should be reviewed in the face of these latest attacks, particularly as the numerous intelligence agencies that operate in France are highly dysfunctional and disjointed. Great care must be taken not to dignify the attackers or their pathetic dreams of grandeur. They are murderers only deserving of contempt.

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France, Government, Intelligence, National Security, Society, Terrorism, United States

Intelligence services in France gain new laws to eavesdrop…

FRANCE

The National Assembly in France has passed a new law allowing intelligence services to more freely eavesdrop.

The National Assembly in France has passed a new law allowing intelligence services to more freely eavesdrop.

The French parliament has passed a law which will provide state intelligence services with more freedom to eavesdrop. The controversial decree aims to target suspected terrorists.

The law, which was voted on by a simple show of hands from deputies in France’s National Assembly waivers the need for judicial warrants to use an array of spying devices including cameras, phone taps and hidden microphones.

Under the new legislation, French security officials will be able to place clandestine devices in suspects’ homes and beacons on their cars without prior authorisation from a judge.

Communication and Internet firms will also be forced to allow intelligence services to install electronic boxes to record metadata from all Internet users in France. The controversial law has been met with protests from privacy advocates and concern about US-style massive data sweeps. The United States passed a similar law in the form of the US Patriot Act following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.

France’s ruling socialist government rushed through the bill earlier this year, shortly after the Islamist militant attacks in Paris, in which 17 people were killed over three days.

Despite the vote in France, the law won’t take effect, however, until a court rules on whether it abides by France’s constitution.

The news of the decree came as France reacted with outrage to revelations from transparency lobby group WikiLeaks that the US National Security Agency had eavesdropped on France’s three most recent presidents – Francois Hollande, Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac.

Speaking on French television channel TF1, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange urged France’s leading politicians to launch a ‘parliamentary inquiry’ into the foreign surveillance activity. The anti-secrecy campaigner also said that other important revelations were in the pipeline: ‘I think from a policy perspective, what is to come is much more significant than what we have published so far,’ Assange said.

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