Blog
Go, Rust, Linux, cryptography and UK privacy law. One properly researched article a day.
Page 3 of 3. Working notes from a software engineer who spends the day in Go, Rust and Linux and the evening reading legislation. Each post takes one specific question and answers it properly: why a worker pool deadlocks, what fsync really promises, how to enrol a TPM into LUKS without locking yourself out, what a technical capability notice can actually compel. Step-by-step how-tos sit alongside the deep dives, everything is checked against source code or primary legislation, and nothing is padded to hit a word count.
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IPA Data Retention Notices: What ISPs Must Log, and for How Long
Section 87 retention notices under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016: what UK ISPs must log, the 12-month cap, entity versus events data, and why it is secret.
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fsync Lies: What Linux Actually Guarantees About a 'Durable' Write
fsync() returning zero feels like a promise the bytes are safe. Page cache, errseq_t, directory entries and disk caches make that promise weaker than it looks.
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How to Set Up TPM2-Backed LUKS Unlocking with systemd-cryptenroll
Enrolling a TPM2 chip into a LUKS2 volume with systemd-cryptenroll: PCR selection, PIN protection and the kernel-update trap that locks people out.
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The Online Safety Act vs Encryption: What Client-Side Scanning Needs
Ofcom's section 121 powers under the Online Safety Act, what client-side CSAM scanning would involve, and why 'technically feasible' may be a category error.
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What WebAuthn Actually Signs, and Why Phishing Can't Replay It
A byte-level look at what a WebAuthn assertion signs: the origin, the challenge and the RP ID hash, and why that binding defeats classic phishing proxies.
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LUKS2 Full-Disk Encryption with a Detached Header on a USB Key
How to set up LUKS2 disk encryption with the header on a separate USB key: the commands, the backup steps, and what it does and does not protect against.
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Cancellation Safety in Tokio: Why select! Can Silently Drop Your Work
tokio::select! drops the losing branch's future, and for some Tokio methods that means silently lost bytes and desynced protocols. How to spot and fix it.
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Argon2id in Go: Picking Parameters You Can Actually Defend
How to choose Argon2id memory, time and parallelism parameters in Go that you can actually defend, with a working hash-and-verify implementation.