February 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: The Statism Meme
by Harmon Seaver 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

Yeah right -- the eyeties just joined the "new european order" supporting an immediate invasion of Iraq. At least, according to Powell they did. On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 04:47:02PM -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: > >Don't count on EU, we're just as fucked, albeit with a slight delay. > > What about Italy? The Italians seem to be remarkably good at ignoring both > the vatican as well as their government (which changes every few years and > no wonder...do ANY Italians actually pay taxes?). And yet, Northern Italy > has as high a standard of living as I've ever seen. > > > _________________________________________________________________ > Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. > http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com

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RE: The Statism Meme
by Duncan Frissell 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

On Tue, 4 Feb 2003, Blanc wrote: > Years ago I asked a group of Libertarians at a meeting what they would do if > a particular politican, who was then running for President, won and turned > everything into a bona-fide, outright statist state like Russia was at the > time. They couldn't adequately answer my question; they couldn't come up > with any ideas of how to deal with it, what they would do if they suddenly > were faced with having to live with it. Maybe they were just being You mean no one said, "I'd grab the .30-06 and head for the hills"? We're not quite there yet. Since no one did it during WWII when the oppression was greater -- 200,000 internees, rationing, travel controls, bans on posession of radio equipment, conscription, etc. -- we have some time to think. DCF

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RE: The Statism Meme
by Blanc 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

Eugen Leitl replies: >Don't count on EU, we're just as fucked, albeit with a slight delay. .................. Thanks, Eugen. This makes me feel better. On emigration choices, I guess one could just take a pick of whether they wish to be more, or less, f****d. .. Blanc

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body parts of astronauts
by Igor Chudov 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

I can understand the argument that the parts of the shuttle are government property, so their "conversion" to private property may be criminal. But astronauts are not government property. So if, let's say, a charred head falls into my backyard, then it would be legal for me to put it into a jar with denaturate alcohol, as a souvenir, right? igor

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Re: \"Touching shuttle debris may cause bad spirits
by jayh＠1st.net 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

Not necessarily. It is a well documented phenomenon that people show up at hospitals with even some seemingly real conditions whenever there is a particular panic in the media, even in cases where it is simply not possible that they were made sick by the incident. (Assuming of course that even the reports of treatment are themselves accurate, which is doubtable under the circumstances.) Jay <----- Original Text -----> The press was reporting that some dozens of people went to hospitals after encountering shuttle parts, and about 8 were actually treated for something, between lung or skin problems (presumably chemical burns of some sort.) So it's not totally harmless.

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RE: The Statism Meme
by Eugen Leitl 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

On Tue, 4 Feb 2003, Blanc wrote: > A sad, disturbing prospect to contemplate. Someone on another list > remarked that it might become necessary for those in Europe to do some > internet-type rescuing of the American people. Hmmmm. If things get utterly intolerable, and fighting makes no sense since you're in a minority you can always emigrate. My parents did it more than twenty years ago when leaving Evil Empire; some of my best friends are expats unwilling to go back to Merkinland for political reasons. Don't count on EU, we're just as fucked, albeit with a slight delay.

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Putting the "NSA Data Overwrite Standard" Legend to Death... (fwd)
by Thomas Shaddack 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2003 10:57:09 -0600 Subject: Putting the "NSA Data Overwrite Standard" Legend to Death... From: Jonathan G. Lampe <jonathan(a)stdnet.com> To: bugtraq(a)securityfocus.net OK, I'm sure this one will start a flame war, but...I work for a vendor whose products overwrite files when "deleting" them as a way of protecting old data. Lately several customers have been asking for "NSA" or "DoD" standard overwrites, usually with a value of 3, 7 or 9. (Our response to the feature was to more or less let the owner of the product pick the number of overwrites; the obvious tradeoff is morewrites=slowerdisk.) Anyway, while researching how we wanted to document recommended values for the overwrite feature, I looked into the "DoD" and "NSA" standards. I was not surprised to see that a "DoD standard" DOES exist: Government name: DoD 5220.22-M A nice summary: http://www.zdelete.com/dod.htm (not my product) Some original documents: http://www.dss.mil/isec/nispom.htm Long story short: 1 overwrite = CLEAR, 3 overwrites = SANITIZED (non-removable rigid disk) I was surprised, however, to learn that a "NSA standard" DOES NOT exist. I did the usual Google searches and came up with nothing but various sites and postings claiming the standard was anything from 5 to 20 overwrites. Then I called the NSA (1-800-688-6115 - http://www.nsa.gov/isso) The first person I chatted with passed on the question, but the second answered the question in no uncertain terms - NSA is aware of DoD 5220.22-M and DOES NOT have a separate recommendation. So...could this finally be the end of IT employees casually tossing around the "NSA overwrite standard" - or is there something I'm missing? Second, where did the number 7 really come from? (It seems to be the leading recommendation out there right now for number of overwrites and is frequently attributed to the NSA.) - Jonathan Lampe, GCIA, GSNA - jonathan.lampe(a)stdnet.com

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RE: Tiny whiskers make huge memory storage
by Trei, Peter 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

> Sunder[SMTP:sunder@sunder.net] writes [..] > Yeah, yeah, yeah, lots of hype about storing terabytes and so on, not > worried about that at all. The real question now is this: how effective > are these nickel whiskers are recovering erased data off existing > platters, or more precisely how many times do we need to overwrite a disk > now to wipe the data? [...] Each time a more sensitive detector is discoverd, it's used by disk manufacturers to increase storage density. The tracks get finer, the bits and the magnetic forces they generate smaller. I expect this at least partially cancels out the advantage that a more sensitive detector gives the spy. Of course, some sensitive techniques (SQUIDs, etal) are not economic for casual use. Peter

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Re: Encrypted hard drive enclosure for $139
by Michael Shields 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

In article <5.1.1.6.2.20030201181300.02629df0(a)idiom.com>, Bill Stewart <bill.stewart(a)POBOX.COM> wrote: > Now, 712 Mbit/sec is about 90 MByte/sec, which means if it > were doing 3DES, it'd probably be about 30 MByte/sec, > which is no longer fast enough to be entertaining. Yes, it is. Despite the disk manufacturers' intentionally misleading spec sheets, most hard disks are not very much faster than 30 MB/s. For example, the new Barracuda V transfers between 23 and 44 MB/s, depending on where on the disk you read from. http://www.storagereview.com/benchimages/ST3120023A_str.png Even if the disk were infinitely fast, the Firewire interface is limited to 50 MB/s. I think this product would be extremely useful, if it is trustable. -- Shields.

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Tiny whiskers make huge memory storage
by Sunder 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

http://www.upi.com/print.cfm?StoryID=20030131-020248-9059r Tiny whiskers make huge memory storage UPI Science News >From the Science & Technology Desk Published 1/31/2003 4:07 PM BUFFALO, N.Y., Jan. 31 (UPI) -- New, tiny magnetic sensors could help break a technical barrier to ushering in the next generation of computer disk storage capacity, researchers reported Friday. The sensors, filaments of nickel thinner than a wavelength of visible light, are capable of detecting extremely weak magnetic fields. <SNIP> Yeah, yeah, yeah, lots of hype about storing terabytes and so on, not worried about that at all. The real question now is this: how effective are these nickel whiskers are recovering erased data off existing platters, or more precisely how many times do we need to overwrite a disk now to wipe the data? The Guttman technique is what, overwrite something 37x with various patterns and random numbers, so how does this discovery change this number? Yes, yes, we've all discussed to death that the best way to wipe a hard disk is to melt it down in a furnace, scatter the ashes in the ocean, etc... but what if you want to reuse it? (The 2nd obvious parallel is to encrypt everything ahead of time too... also discussed to death, see the archives, yadda, yadda) My question is what's a reasonable order of magnitude of overwriting data now, assuming you're not trying to hide data from, say the NSA. ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :NSA got $20Bil/year |Passwords are like underwear. You don't /|\ \|/ :and didn't stop 9-11|share them, you don't hang them on your/\|/\ <--*-->:Instead of rewarding|monitor, or under your keyboard, you \/|\/ /|\ :their failures, we |don't email them, or put them on a web \|/ + v + :should get refunds! |site, and you must change them very often. --------_sunder_(a)_sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

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