In Germany, data retention is already in place for communication channels such phone calls, Internet access and e-mails. A recent survey (German document) demonstrated that German citizens are aware about the way there private data are logged and changed their behavior in this way. Read comments about this survey here.
Category: Belgium
To Respect the Online Privacy
The Belgian law does not allow personal data (names, pictures, addresses, …) to be published online without the formal acceptance of the owner (Private life protection law). A few weeks ago, my youngest daughter visited a farm with her school and teachers took pictures. They would like to publish a
KUL + SANS = Safe Programmers?
The KUL is the first European university to set up a partnership with the SANS Institute. The goal is to train the students to be more focussed on security during the development of new applications. Programmers are very good in writing applications but, unfortunately, are not aware of security issues.
Belgian NSA?
According to Datanews, A federal project in Belgium to fight online criminality will start soon. Something like a “National Security Agency“? This project exists since… 2005! The article is here. BTW, nsa.be is already registered by a ex-colleague/friend! He has maybe a good opportunity to get some €€€ 😉
“Surfons Tranquille” Information Campaign
The Belgian Authorities will soon start an information campaign about “safe surf on the Internet” [1]. Prevention messages will be broadcasted on well known websites and radios. It is a nice initiative. Helas, security professionals know that the weakest element will always remain the end user. User education is important
Belgian Police Website Defaced (again)
For the 4th time, a Belgian police website has been defaced last weekend (news in French). That leads me to several questions… In Belgium, there are several (196!) Police zones and Federal police services. I can totally understand that those services does not have the same needs in terms of
Common Belgian Platform Against Financial Security Threads
Good initiative from the Belgian banks: A campaign will start soon to warn the end-users about risks of financial fraud on the Internet (in association with Febelfin (Fédération belge du secteur financier), the FCCU (Federal Computer Crime Unit) and the CBFA (Commission bancaire, financière et des assurances). The banks will
New Belgian Story
I just read an article in DataNews about a project of the “Union Wallonne des Villes et Communes” which would like to bill Belgacom, our national tel co operator, for every meter of sidewalks opened to place new cables! Working for a Flemish company and living on the French part
wget.exe
Today, I had to mirror a big part of a website to a local disk. For such operation, my favorite tool is wget. Unfortunately in this case, I had no way to use a UNIX host. Not a problem, let’s ask Google if there exists some port to the Windows
Is my bank down today?
Today, I went to the local cash-dispenser to retrieve some money… “Card rejected“. I check with my wife’s card… “Card rejected” WTF!? Suddenly I was able to read a brief message on the terminal… “Due to a maintenance, it won’t be possible to retrieve money this Saturday from … to