December 2005 - cypherpunks-legacy

[Clips] MIT Real ID Conference a Success: Participate in New Virtual Civic Conversation
by R. A. Hettinga 10 Dec '05

10 Dec '05

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 17:48:40 -0500 To: "Philodox Clips List" <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] MIT Real ID Conference a Success: Participate in New Virtual Civic Conversation Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com --- begin forwarded text Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 13:01:20 -0800 (PST) From: "Daniel J. Greenwood" <dang(a)media.mit.edu> Reply-To: dang(a)media.mit.edu Subject: MIT Real ID Conference a Success: Participate in New Virtual Civic Conversation To: dang(a)media.mit.edu This note is to inform you that the MIT Public Forum on the Real ID Act of 2005 was held on Monday, December 5th and we will be streaming video of the entire day from the MIT Media Lab web site within the next few days. To those of you who participated, thank you for making this event a true success. We plan a series of activities for the future, including publication of proceedings, further activity on the MIT Real ID Public Forum Blog, additional events and of course continued work with the Department of Homeland Security and other federal and state governmental agencies to provide a neutral forum within which to meet, hear from the public and interest groups and to consider opportunities for cross boundary cooperation. We intend to use publication of the final report of the proceedings of the day to highlight the many valuable perspectives and ideas that came forward throughout the event. Again, we encourage each of you to share any thoughts you may have regarding this important new federal statute. After the Department of Homeland Security published their draft regulations under the law, we anticipate another round of activity to support discussion and meaningful response. Finally, the MIT E-Commerce Architecture Program, hosted at the MIT Media Lab Smart Cities group, is now working with partners to make available a new more efficient mode of public dialog on important affairs of the day. Currently called Virtual Civic Conversations, this simple approach uses existing blog technology (including RSS feeds and track-back features), to set up shared meta-search terms for specific issues, allowing participants to post a topic on their blog and for it to appear as a new post on a large-scale multi-party communications blog. In this way, the many interest groups, governmental agencies, individuals and others who are all speaking to the same topic (next steps on the Real ID Act, in this case), can use a blog (such as the MIT Real ID Public Forum Blog) to compile all posts on all blogs related to that topic. In addition, it is possible for participants to respond to the posts across threads, blogs and topics, thereby creating a bounded but very open knowledge zone on that issue. We are setting up a Virtual Civic Conversation for the Real ID Act this weekend and early next week. Stay tuned for more information on exactly how to participate and to encourage others with relevant blogs to participate. MIT is pleased to use new technology and our capacity to convene to serve the civic interest. Thank you for your interest. Regards, - Dan Greenwood ==================================================== Daniel J. Greenwood, Esq. Lecturer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Media Lab, Program of Media Arts and Science Principal, CIVICS.com The InfoSociety Consultancy http://ecitizen.mit.edu & http://civics.com 1770 Mass. Ave, #205, Cambridge, MA 02140 USA M: 857-498-0962 E: dang(a)media.mit.edu ==================================================== --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

1 0

New Software Site checkbook
by Andre Grady 10 Dec '05

10 Dec '05

hi mate: get the latest software at cheap price now http://theoemall.com clerk

1 0

[dave@farber.net: [IP] How planespotters turned into the scourge of the CIA]
by Eugen Leitl 10 Dec '05

10 Dec '05

----- Forwarded message from David Farber <dave(a)farber.net> -----

1 0

[Clips] Live Tracking of Mobile Phones Prompts Court Fights on Privacy
by R. A. Hettinga 10 Dec '05

10 Dec '05

Wherein the NYT discovers physics and is shocked, shocked, to find that radios can be triangulated. Especially when the government mandates that GPS transponders be installed in them. Sheesh. Cheers, RAH ------- --- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 10:30:39 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] Live Tracking of Mobile Phones Prompts Court Fights on Privacy Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/technology/10phone.html?ei=5065&en=a2a07f…> The New York Times December 10, 2005 Live Tracking of Mobile Phones Prompts Court Fights on Privacy By MATT RICHTEL Most Americans carry cellphones, but many may not know that government agencies can track their movements through the signals emanating from the handset. In recent years, law enforcement officials have turned to cellular technology as a tool for easily and secretly monitoring the movements of suspects as they occur. But this kind of surveillance - which investigators have been able to conduct with easily obtained court orders - has now come under tougher legal scrutiny. In the last four months, three federal judges have denied prosecutors the right to get cellphone tracking information from wireless companies without first showing "probable cause" to believe that a crime has been or is being committed. That is the same standard applied to requests for search warrants. The rulings, issued by magistrate judges in New York, Texas and Maryland, underscore the growing debate over privacy rights and government surveillance in the digital age. With mobile phones becoming as prevalent as conventional phones (there are 195 million cellular subscribers in this country), wireless companies are starting to exploit the phones' tracking abilities. For example, companies are marketing services that turn phones into even more precise global positioning devices for driving or allowing parents to track the whereabouts of their children through the handsets. Not surprisingly, law enforcement agencies want to exploit this technology, too - which means more courts are bound to wrestle with what legal standard applies when government agents ask to conduct such surveillance. Cellular operators like Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless know, within about 300 yards, the location of their subscribers whenever a phone is turned on. Even if the phone is not in use it is communicating with cellphone tower sites, and the wireless provider keeps track of the phone's position as it travels. The operators have said that they turn over location information when presented with a court order to do so. The recent rulings by the magistrates, who are appointed by a majority of the federal district judges in a given court, do not bind other courts. But they could significantly curtail access to cell location data if other jurisdictions adopt the same reasoning. (The government's requests in the three cases, with their details, were sealed because they involve investigations still under way.) "It can have a major negative impact," said Clifford S. Fishman, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney's office and a professor at the Catholic University of America's law school in Washington. "If I'm on an investigation and I need to know where somebody is located who might be committing a crime, or, worse, might have a hostage, real-time knowledge of where this person is could be a matter of life or death." Prosecutors argue that having such information is crucial to finding suspects, corroborating their whereabouts with witness accounts, or helping build a case for a wiretap on the phone - especially now that technology gives criminals greater tools for evading law enforcement. The government has routinely used records of cellphone calls and caller locations to show where a suspect was at a particular time, with access to those records obtainable under a lower legal standard. (Wireless operators keep cellphone location records for varying lengths of time, from several months to years.) But it is unclear how often prosecutors have asked courts for the right to obtain cell-tracking data as a suspect is moving. And the government is not required to report publicly when it makes such requests. Legal experts say that such live tracking has tended to happen in drug-trafficking cases. In a 2003 Ohio case, for example, federal drug agents used cell tracking data to arrest and convict two men on drug charges. Mr. Fishman said he believed that the number of requests had become more prevalent in the last two years - and the requests have often been granted with a stroke of a magistrate's pen. Prosecutors, while acknowledging that they have to get a court order before obtaining real-time cell-site data, argue that the relevant standard is found in a 1994 amendment to the 1986 Stored Communications Act, a law that governs some aspects of cellphone surveillance. The standard calls for the government to show "specific and articulable facts" that demonstrate that the records sought are "relevant and material to an ongoing investigation" - a standard lower than the probable-cause hurdle. The magistrate judges, however, ruled that surveillance by cellphone - because it acts like an electronic tracking device that can follow people into homes and other personal spaces - must meet the same high legal standard required to obtain a search warrant to enter private places. "Permitting surreptitious conversion of a cellphone into a tracking device without probable cause raises serious Fourth Amendment concerns, especially when the phone is monitored in the home or other places where privacy is reasonably expected," wrote Stephen W. Smith, a magistrate in Federal District Court in the Southern District of Texas, in his ruling. "The distinction between cell site data and information gathered by a tracking device has practically vanished," wrote Judge Smith. He added that when a phone is monitored, the process is usually "unknown to the phone users, who may not even be on the phone." Prosecutors in the recent cases also unsuccessfully argued that the expanded police powers under the USA Patriot Act could be read as allowing cellphone tracking under a standard lower than probable cause. As Judge Smith noted in his 31-page opinion, the debate goes beyond a question of legal standard. In fact, the nature of digital communications makes it difficult to distinguish between content that is clearly private and information that is public. When information is communicated on paper, for instance, it is relatively clear that information written on an envelope deserves a different kind of protection than the contents of the letter inside. But in a digital era, the stream of data that carries a telephone conversation or an e-mail message contains a great deal of information - like when and where the communications originated. In the digital era, what's on the envelope and what's inside of it, "have absolutely blurred," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy advocacy group. And that makes it harder for courts to determine whether a certain digital surveillance method invokes Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches. In the cellular-tracking cases, some legal experts say that the Store Communications Act refers only to records of where a person has been, i.e. historical location data, but does not address live tracking. Kevin Bankston, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group that has filed briefs in the case in the Eastern District of New York, said the law did not speak to that use. James Orenstein, the magistrate in the New York case, reached the same conclusion, as did Judge Smith in Houston and James Bredar, a magistrate judge in the Federal District Court in Maryland. Orin S. Kerr, a professor at the George Washington School of Law and a former trial attorney in the Justice Department specializing in computer law, said the major problem for prosecutors was Congress did not appear to have directly addressed the question of what standard prosecutors must meet to obtain cell-site information as it occurs. "There's no easy answer," Mr. Kerr said. "The law is pretty uncertain here." Absent a Congressional directive, he said, it is reasonable for magistrates to require prosecutors to meet the probable-cause standard. Mr. Fishman of Catholic University said that such a requirement could hamper law enforcement's ability to act quickly because of the paperwork required to show probable cause. But Mr. Fishman said he also believed that the current law was unclear on the issue. Judge Smith "has written a very, very persuasive opinion," Mr. Fishman said. "The government's argument has been based on some tenuous premises." He added that he sympathized with prosecutors' fears. "Something that they've been able to use quite successfully and usefully is being taken away from them or made harder to get," Mr. Fishman said. "I'd be very, very frustrated." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

1 0

[Clips] Does Zarqawi Take Shorthand? (was Re: OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today - December 9, 2005)
by R. A. Hettinga 09 Dec '05

09 Dec '05

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 19:39:39 -0500 To: "Philodox Clips List" <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] Does Zarqawi Take Shorthand? (was Re: OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today - December 9, 2005) Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com At 2:09 PM -0500 12/9/05, OpinionJournal wrote: >Does Zarqawi Take Shorthand? http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10382716/ > >Here's an amusing goof from the Associated Press: "Terrorists also have >made only infrequent use of stenography, the practice of hiding a text >message in another kind of file, typically a picture." > >Actually, stenography, also known as shorthand, is a method of taking >notes. The AP meant steganography >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography . -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

1 0

[mnl@well.com: [Geowanking] MS local.live.com & privacy (lack of)]
by Eugen Leitl 09 Dec '05

09 Dec '05

----- Forwarded message from Mike Liebhold <mnl(a)well.com> -----

1 0

a little bird told me
by Eugen Leitl 09 Dec '05

09 Dec '05

That israeli intelligence apparently considers Tor broken. While Tor definitely has not been designed with that threat model in mind, this still strikes me as somewhat dubious. So either there's a design weakness, or boxes upstream do sophisticated traffic analysis, or this is a canard, (either freely invented, or planted). Speculations (preferrably, more informed than mine) welcome. -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

3 4

chipping the leaders
by Major Variola (ret) 08 Dec '05

08 Dec '05

At 11:14 AM 12/7/05 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: >Hey...I'd definitely vote for requiring that all congresscritters and >senators undergo a chipping and that their location should be publically >available on the internet (say, via Google maps or whatever). Absolutely. Reverse pan-opticonning. Easily done via blogging. In my district, the republic-whore Christina Shea got busted (and disqualified from being mayor of Irvine) for griping at the local PD when her live-in daughter got busted for methamphetamine. (She is skinny and talkative herself, draw your own conclusions). Cryptome regularly publishes the information about the Privledged which they know about us. Any well-linked blogger (ie, NYT-class (snicker) author, ie any random yahoo) can do the same. Some dude in Wash state has shown that its perfectly legal to expose the state-sponsored scum in the same way (SSnos = beast indices, etc) that they have access to us. Some MIT folks have created the same social-network meshing software for the priveledged, which they use on us plebes. Don't know if that is kept current. Digicams being so cheap, one should regularly surveil the ruling class, its part of democracy, albeit that is two foxes and a sheep deciding dinner. "What do they have to hide"? H2O2 30% + acetone, perhaps, with a little sulphuric acid, but only Feinstein knows for sure. Remember the ball bearings. Moses was a WMD terrorist, and it worked. Have a nice day.

2 1

[zooko@zooko.com: [p2p-hackers] f2f for purposes other than privacy]
by Eugen Leitl 08 Dec '05

08 Dec '05

----- Forwarded message from zooko(a)zooko.com -----

1 0

[zooko@zooko.com: Re: [p2p-hackers] darknet ~= (blacknet, f2f net)]
by Eugen Leitl 08 Dec '05

08 Dec '05

----- Forwarded message from zooko(a)zooko.com -----

1 0