July 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: DNA of relative indicts man, cuckolding ignored
by Major Variola (ret) 07 Jul '03

07 Jul '03

At 08:25 AM 7/7/03 -0400, Stormwalker wrote: >The issue of knowing about other people based on one subject's DNA >has been known for for several years. For example, if a a woman >has the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene (breast cancer), then so does her mother, >sister(s) and daughter(s) because the gene is hereditary. Insurance >companies can/have refused insurance coverage to the subject's relatives >and the relatives have no idea why. Interesting, thanks. Even a brother's daughter could be refused. >Ethical issues have surfaced around the desire of the subject's >relatives not wanting to know if they have a harmful, shared gene. If >the subject tells her relatives abour her gene, then her relatives know >that they have the gene. It's not like I told some them I broke my arm >which only tells them a fact about me. Perhaps this is the basis for the social stigma of mentally ill relatives --it says something (probabilistic) about the speaker. Still, you'll find out when they end up in the hospital. Its useful knowledge to know your genes ---I know adopted people who regret not having any clue. I know that my prostate will explode when I get older. I'd like to know more. Sticking your head in the sand is rarely helpful. >In my opinion, very few people understand the impact of human >understanding of how life is constructed. The science is well understood, >the engineering has just begun. We are taking conscious control of >evolution, far past selective breeding and way past clones. Most descendants of germ-cell-fixed diabetes (etc) will probably not regret the tinkering of their ancestors, unless there are unintended side effects :-) But yeah, interesting times we live in. I've never heard anyone curse their ancestors for the genetic diseases they've inherited, probably because they wouldn't exist except for the ancestors. ("Damn, grandpa, couldn't you have married someone in better health?") Also little good cursing would do. Insurance companies are private entities, so IMHO its moral for them to gather intel (eg, checking blood for nicotine metabolites), or give discounts for folks who've had certain inherited diseases fixed in the future. Or eat better, drive safer, exchange fluids less promiscuously, whatever. I'm more worried about the State, which coerces with violence.

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Secret nanotech spy agency meeting
by Declan McCullagh 07 Jul '03

07 Jul '03

today... TECHNOLOGY National Academies Meeting of the Committee on Nanotechnology for the Intelligence Community. Closed session summary posted after the meeting Location: Keck Center of the National Academies, 500 5th St., NW, Washington, D.C.. Contact: James Killian, 202-334-1758; http://www.national-academies.org

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Re: Idea: The ultimate CD/DVD auditing tool
by Major Variola (ret) 07 Jul '03

07 Jul '03

At 02:33 AM 7/7/03 +0300, Sampo Syreeni wrote: >On 2003-07-06, Major Variola (ret) uttered to cypherpunks(a)lne.com: > >>There's a good reason why, viz: it would cost the drive developer to >>allow or export this flexibility. > >I'd guess either because of a) terminal stupidity or b) benefits to scale >in making it sure people go with compatibility. As there probably have to >be some limits to how stupid engineers capable of making things like >writable CD's can be, I'd have to go with the second alternative. Frankly its obvious you haven't worked (or thought about the constraints) on a commercial product with a deadline / resource constraints or worked on something extremely cost sensitive like commodity drives/chipsets. Here, ponder this: why are there no oxygen sensor or manifold temperature or ignition-phase (etc) displays in ordinary cars? (Although there probably are in custom race cars) You know (much like the analog CD signal) they're being measured and used by the ECU. So, why not? Chew on that one for a while, grasshopper. Economics is applied physics.

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Re: DNA of relative indicts man, cuckolding ignored
by Major Variola (ret) 07 Jul '03

07 Jul '03

At 11:58 AM 7/7/03 +0100, Ben Laurie wrote: >Major Variola (ret.) wrote: >> So the possibility of indicting a cuckolded man on the basis >> of nominal (only) relatives is quite real. > >Only he was convicted because he confessed. Yes, of course, in this *particular* case. Which is irrelevent. The point is that there are undiscussed evidentiary problems using relatives' DNA, hinging on the assumption that "blood relatives actually share blood", in layspeak.

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Austin Cypherpunks Physical Meet, Tue. July 8, 2003
by Jim Choate 07 Jul '03

07 Jul '03

Time: July 8, 2003 Second Tuesday of each month 7:00 - 9:00 pm (or later) Location: Central Market HEB Cafe 38th and N. Lamar Weather permitting we meet in the un-covered tables. If it's inclimate but not overly cold we meet in the outside covered section. Otherwise look for us inside the building proper. Identification: Look for the group with the "Applied Cryptography" book. It will have a red cover and is about 2 in. thick. Contact Info: http://einstein.ssz.com/cdr/index.html#austincpunks -- ____________________________________________________________________ We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" ravage(a)ssz.com jchoate(a)open-forge.org www.ssz.com www.open-forge.org --------------------------------------------------------------------

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DNA of relative indicts man, cuckolding ignored
by Major Variola (ret.) 07 Jul '03

07 Jul '03

Slashdot pointed to this story of a man indicted via his *relative's* DNA sample: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/3044282.stm But an interesting, unmentioned issue is this: in population DNA surveys you find that a lot of purported fathers *aren't*. So the possibility of indicting a cuckolded man on the basis of nominal (only) relatives is quite real. [list rel: tech DBs, errors, law, biosurveillance]

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Cypherpunks List Info
by cpunk＠lne.com 06 Jul '03

06 Jul '03

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Re: Idea: The ultimate CD/DVD auditing tool
by Major Variola (ret) 06 Jul '03

06 Jul '03

At 03:08 PM 7/6/03 +0300, Sampo Syreeni wrote: >. A writing drive capable of working at such a low level >could be used to experiment with new encodings beyond what standard CD's >can do -- say, substituting CIRC with RSBC and gaining some extra room on >the disc, getting rid of the subchannels, a more intelligent coding of >disc addresses... Breaking compatibility wouldn't be too useful, but it >sure would be fun. And think of the ulcers you would cause the TLAs! Assuming they got your disks and not your custom drive... >Now you simply can't do it. There's a good reason why, viz: it would cost the drive developer to allow or export this flexibility. Since very few customers are sick enough :-) to want to invent their own incompatible formats it simply isn't worth their development-engineering time or end-product resources (eg gates) in such a commodity product.

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Idea: The ultimate CD/DVD auditing tool
by Thomas Shaddack 06 Jul '03

06 Jul '03

Pondering. Vast majority of the CD/DVD "protection" methods is based on various deviations from the standards, or more accurately, how such deviations are (or aren't) handled by the drive firmware. However, we can sidestep the firmware. The drive contains the moving part with the head assembly. There is an important output signal there: the raw analog signal bounced from the disk and amplified. We can tap it and connect it to a highspeed digital oscilloscope card. And sample obscene amount of data from it. In comparison with fast-enough ADCs, disk space is cheap. The problem can be in bandwidth, but for the drive speed set up to possible minimum (or for "normal" players) the contemporary machines should be sufficient. Real-time operating system (maybe RTOS-Linux) may be necessary. We get the record of the signal captured from the drive's head - raw, with everything - dirt, drop-outs, sector headers, ECC bits. The low-level format is fairly well documented; now we have to postprocess the signal. Conversion from analog to digital data and then from the CD representation to 8-bit-per-byte should be fairly straightforward (at least for someone skilled with digital signal processing). Now we can identify the individual sectors on the disc and extract them to a disc image file that we can handle later by normal means. We can push the idea a step further, making a stripped-down CD/DVD drive that would be able basically just to follow the spiral track with its head in constant linear velocity (easier to analyze than CAV) mode, with the ability to control the speed in accordance with how fast (and expensive) ADC, bus, and disks we have, and the possibility to interrupt/resume scanning anytimes in accordance with how much disk space we have (or to scan just a small area of the disc). As a welcomed side effect, not only we'd get a device for circumvention of just about any contemporary (and possibly a good deal of the future ones) optical media "protections", but we would also get a powerful tool for retrieving data from even very grossly damaged discs, for audit of behavior of CD/DVD writers and CD vendors (eg, if they don't attempt to sneak in something like a hidden serial number of the writer), and for access to all areas of the discs - including the eventual ones unreachable through the drive's own firmware. If we'd fill this idea with water, would it leak? Where? Why?

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Re: Idea: The ultimate CD/DVD auditing tool
by Major Variola (ret) 06 Jul '03

06 Jul '03

At 04:13 AM 7/6/03 +0200, Thomas Shaddack wrote: >Pondering. Vast majority of the CD/DVD "protection" methods is based on >various deviations from the standards, or more accurately, how such >deviations are (or aren't) handled by the drive firmware. > >However, we can sidestep the firmware. > >The drive contains the moving part with the head assembly. There is an >important output signal there: the raw analog signal bounced from the >disk and amplified. > >We can tap it and connect it to a highspeed digital oscilloscope card. This is a valid idea. You do have to get in there with delicate probes to read the amplified analog signal, its not available past the drive. The people who already do this are called test engineers for CD drive companies. Or the data-recovery techs for the NSA et al. I doubt that hardcore pirates bother, they may as well just do a single high quality ADC. That, as has been mentioned here before, is always the fatal flaw, even if you put the DAC in your DRM chip (and solve the resulting noise issues..) ---- "Yes, we know they have logic analyzers in Hong Kong" --a Sony engineer when confronted with weaknesses in the design of a DRM box

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