It was my first flight to the USA since before 9/11 (unless you count looking across at the American Falls from the Canadian side of Niagara). It was a much edgier experience than I remembered. The restrictions had tightened again in the year since my last foreign jaunt in 2006. At check-in, my somewhat over-sized (listen who’s talking!) camera had to go into my suitcase, since I could only take one item of hand luggage, and I’d rather my camera was mislaid than my laptop. I had to tell the airline where I was staying, too. That was fortunate, as it happened. Opening the suitcase to put the camera away, I realized that I’d left my customary folder of travel information in my suitcase, and I was going to need it at the other end, for the immigration form.

Check-in was behind me, but the obstacle race wasn’t over. The long, long queue to go through security at Gatwick snaked through the entire terminal. I found myself in conversation with another middle-aged Limey who was, he told me, in New York on that very day in 2001 when the Twin Towers fell. It turns out he was also in Paris when Princess Diana was killed and geographically close to several other history-defining tragedies of the past 20 years, so I was secretly slightly relieved (pleasant chap though he was) that he was going to Las Vegas, since I was bound for New York. 

Still, the queue gave me plenty of time to transfer everything that might upset the metal detector to my fleece pocket or laptop bag. Possibly for the first time ever, nothing sounded an alarm, and I reassembled my worldly goods: pens, coins, belt, shoes, cell phone, keys, all present and correct. Even my camphor stick passed without comment. However, my laptop was randomly selected to have its DNA tested. The swab revealed no toxic or explosive substances, and I passed on to Departures, fully metalled once more.

But did I feel safer for it all?

Cryptographer and security guru Bruce Schneier coined (as far as I know) the phrase “security theater” (well, he is American), and many people apply the phrase to airport security. I think he means security measures that don’t actually add significant security (and may even reduce it), but make us feel safer. To put it crudely, we may feel that since airport security restrictions are so inconvenient to us, they must be inconveniencing terrorists and criminals too. I suppose they may reduce the risk from shoe bombs, but even I can think of ways to smuggle a significant threat onto a plane in less than 100 ml of liquid, and I’m fairly sure it’s possible to turn a laptop into a weapon without leaving traces that can be picked up by a cotton bud. Here’s a classic example from 2001: just after the attack on the Twin Towers, the UK government forbade aircraft to fly directly over London. Obviously, air controllers and pilots did as they were told. However, would a modern-day Guy Fawkes have been deterred from making a kamikaze attack on the Houses of Parliament or the City of London? Of course he would. Just as surely as sheep are deterred from grazing by “Keep off the grass” signs.

David Harley CITP FBCS CISSP
Small Blue-Green World/AVIEN/Mac Virus
ESET Senior Research Fellow

24/7 I get, even if it enrages me when it turns out to mean “24/7 except on public holidays” or “we keep normal hours but we never turn off the website and you can email us any time you like (but there are no response time SLAs)”. Though even then it’s the misuse of the concept  that  vexes me, not the concept of limited working hours.

24/7/52: all day, every day of every week? Works for me, as long as I’m not on the helpdesk roster.

But every hour of every day of the week of every day of the year? That has all the comprehensibility and grace of a multiple negative wrapped around a split infinitive and 543 grammes of grocer’s apostrophes. And what happened to leap years? Or do you give your  staff the day off once every four years?

Exit, humming “for tomorrow may rain so I’ll follow the sun…”

David Harley CITP FBCS CISSP
Senior Research Curmudgeon

I exist in a vacuum tube labelled “you have mail”,
a tiny, tinny voice in your handset.

From my lighthouse, I answer distress calls;
from my signal box I route messages and clear blockages;
from my ivory tower I dispense wisdom and prescribe conduct.
On my island within an island, beyond my Chinese seawall,
I search the shore for bottled messages.

I am the genie of the laptop.
What is your command?

©David Harley/Small Blue-Green World 2006

This is one of those writing snippets that is vaguely connected to what I do for a living  (or did: I was running the NHS Threat Assessment Centre at the time it was written) but is definitely not a security blog. What it is I’m not sure: it doesn’t exactly feel like verse, but it looked really ugly typed out as unformatted prose. :-)

That should result in some reviving of the content here. I now have some good digitized versions of most of my 1980s recordings, so the better examples will be up here in due course. And I’ve also (at long last) started sorting out my miscellaneous writing in areas other than security. Well, one or two are security-related in some sense, but certainly not a formal/technical sense. :)

Watch this space. No, not the one between “space.” and “No”. The one just above this post.

David Harley

However, song stuff will (when I get back to thinking about it) continue to be posted here.

Musical events is for – well, musical events. It isn’t likely to became the world’s biggest, most comprehensive resource – in fact, it’s a bit cobwebby right now - and maintenance will be on a strictly “best endeavours” basis, but it will include the occasional event I’d like to bring to your attention, whether or not I’m personally involved. Obviously, it will tend to feature events that my musical friends are involved with.  And that, of course, is what the musical friends page is for: so that if you’re so inclined, you can find out more about Wychwood, Mark Buck, Vic Cracknell et al.

We now return you to your normal programming.

I’m snoring in my chair
I think I’ve had too much to eat
And even if I tried
I couldn’t leave my seat.

I’m getting very tight:
I didn’t need those last two beers
And now that last mince pie
Has dribbled down my tie.

     Somebody offered me another cup of tea
     Turkey sandwich, more plum pudding, woe is me…

I’ve turned off the TV
The Queen’s speech was keeping me awake
And one more Singing Nun
Is more than I can take

I’m sprawling on the stairs
I haven’t got the strength to rise
And dear old Auntie Jill
Is in the bathroom still.

     Uncle Dick is feeling sick, he’s running for the loo
     Heaving like a mighty monster from the zoo

I’m surfing in my lair
Looking for some online deals
To spend next Christmas Day
On a cruise ship far away…

Heartfelt apologies to Howard Blake (and, indeed to Raymond Briggs). But this parody has been begging to be written for years, and I finally got around to putting fingers to keyboard…

All Rights Reserved

There’s a heatwave in the city and the day drags on forever

The tarmac burns through patent leather

Clear through to the sole

Ice tumbles through glass as the temperature soars

And the dayshift leaves the nightshift to take over for a while

The city sings at midnight to the well-fed and the civilized

While waiters mop their faces in the kitchen, out of sight

Small change pours in torrents over counters in the bistros

And the moon hangs red and sullen in the dustbowl of the sky

The city is on heat, bare-legged girls in summer dresses

Dodge the lechery of workmen laying cable through the day

But the night turns on the body to sweet pornography

Passions feed on darkness and the body mutes the mind

The city squeals at midnight in its pain and ecstasy

The life-force surges through the veins and soaks the sheets

The couples claw and couple and feed upon each other

And still the hunger rages through the streets

I saw a refugee from Galway with a faceful of stubble

Singing sentimental songs in the underground today

He’s going back to Mother Ireland and the Mountains of Mourne

And he only needs a bob or two to help him on his way

The city whimpers at midnight in its apathy and squalor

From a bench on the Embankment, from a derry in Barnes

From a squat in Deptford, from the winos and the junkies

From the homeless and the helpless, the hopeless and the lost

A refugee from Calvary is preaching anarchy and anger

Through his 40 Megawatt PA

And when the concert’s over he packs his guitars and prophecies

And goes back to his hotel to drink the night into the day

But out there in the streets the word is out all over

The heat are out for action in New Cross and Ladbroke Grove

The temperature is dropping but the tempers are at flashpoint

And no-one lingers on street corners if they’re walking home alone

The city screams at midnight in the agony of anger

The rocksteady revolution pays its homage to its dead

Where dreadlocks meet deadlock the shock tears up the flagstones

And on their righteous anger the riot squads are fed

The Klan charts fiery crosses cloistered in an upstairs room

The architects of reaction spin their bitter webs

Entangling and exploiting the kids with skinhead hairstyles

And no-one dares explain the chaos in their heads

A Pakistani youth lies bleeding in the gutter

A Jamaican girl is raped behind a dockyard wall

Black and white scrawl their frustrations in blood across the charge-sheets

A copper clutches at his stomach where a flick-knife said it all

The city burns at midnight and the blood runs down the sewers

In the ghettoes and the side-streets where the patriots have been

Squad cars and an ambulance cut through the aftermath

And tomorrow’s front pages unfurl to set the scene

From the never-released “Diverse Brew” album, which would also have featured Bob Theil, Don McLeod, Bob Cairns, and Pat Orchard. Not the way I’d have written (or recorded) it now, but I still kind of like it.

MP3 and more info at http://www.smallblue-greenworld.co.uk/mp3s.htm 

You don’t have to talk, you know it’s really not a case

Of finding words for filling in our time and space

I’ll still be here tomorrow, if that’s what you want too

Who else could take me where we’ve been?

No-one else but you

The day was a river of darkness

Till you brightened up the night

And that’s the best of good reasons

To come close and turn down the light

There’s a lot to say, a lot I guess we should discuss

But surely later would be soon enough

I’ll still be here tomorrow, if that’s what you want too

Who else could take me where we’ve been?

No-one else but you

It’s not the time for true confessions

Lying here still aglow

With all your warmth and softness

God knows there’s nowhere else I’d want to go

We could talk of time and changes, good trips and bad

And just for once time is on our side

But now’s the time for loving and resting so close

And yesterday is dreams and nursery rhymes

I’ll still be here tomorrow, if that’s what you want too

Who else could take me where we’ve been?

No-one else but you

Who else could take me where we’ve been?

No-one else but you

Another track from the never-released Diverse Brew album. MP3 and more info at http://www.smallblue-greenworld.co.uk/mp3s.htm 

All Rights Reserved

He never wanted her love, just a piece of her time

A loving night now and then, and no loving lies

Just a tender glance from distant eyes

But he learned too late to recognize

That he was far, far away – he’d missed the alarm

Drowning far, far away in other arms

He hadn’t noticed her changing till daylight broke him the news

Far, far away, one step away from the blues

He never wanted to stray far away from himself

He never thought he’d rely on anyone else

For a light in the window, a knock on the door

Somewhere to keep warm when the nights turned cold

But she was far, far away when the blizzard set in

The door stood silent and locked, and he was soaked to the skin

He hadn’t noticed her changing till she left him with nothing to lose

Far, far away, one step away from the blues

He only wanted to give a small part of himself

But she took his heart then found someone else

She never thought he’d give her more than a thought or two

When she packed a few bags and cut herself loose

And went far, far away in search of herself

Never thinking to leave her new address

Neither of them knew he was changing

Till he woke up with nothing to lose

Far, far away

Far, far away

Far, far away

One step away from the blues

From the unreleased “Diverse Brew” album. MP3 and more info at http://www.smallblue-greenworld.co.uk/mp3s.htm 

The blinds are down, the locks are changed,
His cases packed and sent:
Some boxes for collection gather dust.
They’re shaking hands like strangers – that’s all that either dares:
It’s just the death of a marriage and there’s no room left for trust.

The bedroom they shared is advertised to let,
And she’s moved in with the kids.
He’s found himself a bedsit, it’s handy for his job,
But it’s the death of a marriage that was too long on the skids.

He spends a lot of time alone, because the maintenance is crippling
And he hasn’t got the bread to do the town:
He’s restless and confused, and not too certain what he wants,
Feeling guilty, ‘cause he knows he’s let her down.

She’s anxious and she’s angry, and the kids are a pain:
They miss their dad, and mum gets upset easily.
She rings from time to time, and they talk about her problems:
She says he has it easy, and of course he disagrees.

Sometimes they meet for a lunchtime drink:
He babysits, and sometimes takes the kids out for the day.
They both see other people, but they’re scared to get involved:
They’ve both been hurt too much already, and there isn’t much to say.

Sometimes, almost by chance, they spend the night together,
And wonder how they managed on their own,
But sooner or later the arguments take over:
It’s just a dying marriage that refuses to lie down.

They live day-to-day with their crises and neuroses:
Making some sort of adjustment, as best they can they cope,
Huddled round the embers of the love that passed between them,
They see each other growing older, and they’re learning not to hope.

The blinds are down, the locks are changed,
His cases packed and sent:
Some boxes for collection gather dust.
They’re shaking hands like strangers – that’s all that either dares:
It’s just the death of a marriage and there’s no room left for trust.

MP3 and more info at http://www.smallblue-greenworld.co.uk/mp3s.htm