Security SNAFU Solidarity

I could have applied by mail for my first Canadian passport.  But I figured that it worth the heavily-detoured trip into Shediac to have Service Canada double-check my work.  Turns out, my paranoia was rewarded by the fact that the agent caught two errors.

One was just a brain-burp on my part.  The other, though, is on Service New Brunswick.

See, to prevent counterfeiting, our drivers' licenses are watermarked (for lack of a better term) with both grey and silvery-irridescent text/patterns.  Then "personalised" information (number, name, DoB, etc., etc.) is printed over that.  In my case, the watermarking seemed to affect the printing of one number so that it looked very much like another.  Especially given that that the numbers are printed in red instead of black.

Fortunately (and unsurprisingly), I had to supplement the application with photocopies of photo-ID.  In black and white, the number in question is far more legible.  Which is how the Service Canada agent caught the mistake.  (Whew!)

Needless to say, as a member of the I/T tribe, I found this more than a little ironic.  I kept a straight face, but I couldn't help but think (sarcastically), "Hmmmm...securing information by making it less usable and its users more error-prone:  Where-oh-where have I seen this before?  Oh, riiiiiiiiight..."

Scarier thing is, my British-born neighbour told me that the UK passports now require biometric data--e.g. retina scans.  I can only begin to imagine how securing digital-based data with meat-based data is going to complicate things in unintended ways.  (True, glaucoma and diabetes don't seem to affect retinal biometric reading too adversely.  But still, I'm totally thinking about that scene from The Avengers.  Of course I am.  Blech.) 

Don't egg me on

Our current neighbourhood is a little more communal than the previous one.  Maybe it's an Acadian thing.  But the borrowing and sharing (especially when the gardens are coming in) has an old-time small-town feel. Thus, I was seriously-and-for-realz not at all surprised to see a text from the across-the-back-lawn neighbour asking (out of the blue) whether Dennis would want to borrow his spare chicken-coop in lieu of Dennis having to scramble one together before the snow flies.

Because that's just what good neighbours do, right?

Dennis will probably build to his own design anyway, but it's good to know that it's there in case the weather makes the tarp-covered Quanset-hut run inadequate for the three remaining birds.  Because of the need for a heated waterer, we'll need to run electricity out to the coop.  Which opens up other possibilities for monitoring things like temperature, humidity, and overall air quality, etc.

The app. I have in mind is Bluetooth-enabled, allowing an Android app. to check in on the current status of those numbers and setting off an alarm if the numbers get out of whack.  And there's less than no sense in keeping that design/code to myself if someone else can get the benefit of it for the cost of a few electronics components.  So I texted our neighbour to see whether they have any Android devices in the house.

Because that's just what good neighbours do, right?

(Well, not one hundred percent:  A second set of feathered guinea-pigs for field-testing benefits me, too.  Let's not get too crazy with the altruism angle here...) 

Nope, texts the neighbour:  They're strictly an Apple household.  (Fooey.)  But then he asks how they would keep the stored data.

Hoo boy:  That's a whole 'nuther basket of eggs.  Because now we're talking back-end:  Databases, a web application, all that jazz.  Granted, that's basically my core competency as a developer.  But it's also scope-creep (on radioactive steroids!) at this proof-of-concept juncture. 

And yet.  It's also useful to know that someone's already thinking long-term.  Assuming that I ever wanted to jump through all the UL-type certification hoops to sell this kind of contraption to backyard chicken-herders.  Mind you, two data-points do not define a market, but the fact that a single text dragged the scope so far outside the pale tells me that I wasn't thinking "holistically" enough.  Even for this six-chicken neighbourhood.

But, then, that's just what good neighbours do, right?