Then perhaps we should look behind the couch cushions. You'd be amazed at the kind of things you can find there.

Look closely at the "tin foil" which the government allows you to buy in stores.

There is _no_tin_ in it. Anywhere.

What are they afraid of?

Do you understand how that is relevant to this conversation? If so, please share it with the rest of us.

Thanks for clearing that up for us.

And Management lost potentially incriminating records which contradicted what Management had stated publicly. Management destroyed evidence of unlawful behaviour carried out by Management, and it can no longer be used against Management. And the worst that will happen as a result of this is there will be a mildly embarrassing story in the BBC followed by an increase in the IT budget, ostensibly to prevent further "mistakes".

Management succeeded . Brilliantly.

Yes, but that was long before chips were ever fielded, in the eighties and nineties. And the setting wasn't credit card fraud but debit card ATM "ghost" or "phantom" withdrawals.

Now, in the US the government said to the banks, "it's your problem, you fix it". In the UK the banks managed to say to the government "It's the customer's defrauding us, we'll nail them". Yes, it was a hard time being a customer in the UK, actually being convicted of attempted fraud for reporting a phantom withdrawal, but it didn't have anything to do with PINs. You used pins at your ATMs as well, and you still do. Using a PIN for a normal transaction would't change your liability laws one iota. You'd still be in the clear (as we by and large are in Europe today as well).

P.S. Cambridge security researcher Ross Anderson has written quite a bit on this subject, he got the policeman that was convicted cleared of the charges on appeal.

Call me when he re-writes Dwarf Fortress, which doesn't just build the dungeon but also the countryside around it along with a few more continents and oceans as well as a thousand years of history for each of the major civilizations living there.

OTOH, what these networks have actually learned can be eye opening.

Are you sure? I know it's not controlled here in Sweden at least. You can just order it. And if you buy a can of "motor starting gas" (or whatever it's called in English) that's at least 50% diethylether. Cheap too.

No, they fund things that have a military application, some of which are interesting. But it's not like the good old days, when they'd fund things that were interesting, regardless of military value.

Try this. Your uncle writes a book that has significant value. He forms a corporation which owns the rights to that book, has the corporation enter into a number of contracts and then names you as CEO. At that point it doesn't matter if he lives, dies, or is abducted by aliens and carried off to Betelgeuse VI. The corporation, not the individual, is responsible.