July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

[bitcoin-list] Bitcoin-Qt and bitcoind version 0.5 released
by Gavin Andresen 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Bitcoin version 0.5.0 is now available for download at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.5.0/ The major change for this release is a completely new graphicalinterface that uses the Qt user interface toolkit. This release include German, Spanish, Spanish-Castilian, Norwegianand Dutch translations. More translations are welcome; join theproject at Transifex if you can help: https://www.transifex.net/projects/p/bitcoin/ Please report bugs using the issue tracker at github: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues If you cannot or do not want to run Bitcoin-Qt, a bug-fix-only Bitcoin version 0.4.1 is also available at sourceforge. MAJOR BUG FIX (CVE-2011-4447)------------------------------ The wallet encryption feature introduced in Bitcoin version 0.4.0did not sufficiently secure the private keys. An attacker whomanaged to get a copy of your encrypted wallet.dat file might beable to recover some or all of the unencrypted keys and steal theassociated coins. If you have a previously encrypted wallet.dat, the first time yourun bitcoin-qt or bitcoind the wallet will be rewritten, Bitcoin willshut down, and you will be prompted to restart it to run with the new,properly encrypted file. If you had a previously encrypted wallet.dat that might have beencopied or stolen (for example, you backed it up to a publiclocation) you should send all of your bitcoins to yourselfusing a new bitcoin address and stop using any previouslygenerated addresses. Wallets encrypted with this version of Bitcoin are written properly. Technical note: the encrypted wallet's 'keypool' will be regenerated thefirst time you request a new bitcoin address; to be certain that thenew private keys are properly backed up you should: 1. Run Bitcoin and let it rewrite the wallet.dat file 2. Run it again, then ask it for a new bitcoin address. Bitcoin-Qt: Address Book, then New Address... bitcoind: run the 'walletpassphrase' RPC command to unlock the wallet, then run the 'getnewaddress' RPC command. 3. If your encrypted wallet.dat may have been copied or stolen, send all of your bitcoins to the new bitcoin address. 4. Shut down Bitcoin, then backup the wallet.dat file. IMPORTANT: be sure to request a new bitcoin address before backing up, so that the 'keypool' is regenerated and backed up. "Security in depth" is always a good idea, so choosing a securelocation for the backup and/or encrypting the backup beforeuploading it is recommended. And as in previous releases, if yourmachine is infected by malware there are several ways anattacker might steal your bitcoins. Thanks to Alan Reiner (aka etotheipi) for finding and reportingthis bug. MAJOR GUI CHANGES----------------- "Splash" graphics at startup that show address/wallet/blockchain loadingprogress. "Synchronizing with network" progress bar to show block-chain downloadprogress. Icons at the bottom of the window that show how well connected you areto the network, with tooltips to display details. Drag and drop support for bitcoin: URIs on web pages. Export transactions as a .csv file. Many other GUI improvements, large and small. RPC CHANGES----------- getmemorypool : new RPC command, provides everything needed to constructa block with a custom generation transaction and submit a solution listsinceblock : new RPC command, list transactions since given block signmessage/verifymessage : new RPC commands to sign a message withone of your private keys or verify that a message signed by the privatekey associated with a bitcoin address. GENERAL CHANGES--------------- Faster initial block download. =============================== Thanks to everybody who contributed code or helped test this release: Alan ReinerAlex BAlex WatersAng Iong ChunCelilChris HowieChris MooreDavid Joel SchwartzDavid PerryForrest VoightGavin AndresenJanne PulkkinenJeff GarzikJoelKatzKhalahanLuke DashjrMatt CoralloMisbakh-Soloviev Vadim ANils SchneiderPieter WuilleVictor LeschukWladimir J. van der Laancelil-kjcjdelisleflowerglobalcitizenkwaaakmarkp2k -- -- Gavin Andresen ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-novd2d _______________________________________________ bitcoin-list mailing list bitcoin-list(a)lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-list ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: [liberationtech] Ethiopia criminalizes Skype?
by Alex Comninos 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Seeing as Addis is the seat of the African Union, there are two scenarios here: 1. Business as usual at The African Union will be severely impaired. 2. This will be unevenly implemented, with expatriates and AU officials informally exempt. On 15 Jun 2012 20:18, "David Johnson" <david(a)bostonreview.net> wrote: > http://www.techcentral.co.za/ethiopia-criminalises-skype/32723/ > > Ethiopiabs state-owned Internet service provider, the Ethiopian > Telecommunication Corporation (Ethio-Telcom), has begun performing > deep-packet inspection of all Internet traffic in the country. The > countrybs government recently ushered in new legislation that criminalises > the use of services such as Skype, Google Talk and other forms of Internet > phone calling. ... > > -- > > David V. Johnson > Web Editor > Boston Review > Website: http://www.bostonreview.net > > Twitter: http://twitter.com/BostonReview > Tumblr: http://bostonreview.tumblr.com > > Mailing Address: > San Francisco Writers' Grotto > 490 2nd Street, 2nd Fl. > San Francisco, CA 94107 > > Cell: (917)903-3706 > > > > _______________________________________________ > liberationtech mailing list > liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu > > Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: > > https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech > > If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click > above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily > digest?" > > You will need the user name and password you receive from the list > moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here: > https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech > > Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. > > Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech > _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[silk] Delocalizer
by Udhay Shankar N 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,69942-0.html Hackers Rebel Against Spy Cams By Ann Harrison BERLIN -- When the Austrian government passed a law this year allowing police to install closed-circuit surveillance cameras in public spaces without a court order, the Austrian civil liberties group Quintessenz vowed to watch the watchers. Members of the organization worked out a way to intercept the camera images with an inexpensive, 1-GHz satellite receiver. The signal could then be descrambled using hardware designed to enhance copy-protected video as it's transferred from DVD to VHS tape. The Quintessenz activists then began figuring out how to blind the cameras with balloons, lasers and infrared devices. And, just for fun, the group created an anonymous surveillance system that uses face-recognition software to place a black stripe over the eyes of people whose images are recorded. Quintessenz members Adrian Dabrowski and Martin Slunksy presented their video-surveillance research at the 22nd annual Chaos Communication Congress here this week. Five hundred hackers jammed into a meeting room for a presentation that fit nicely into CCC's 2005 theme of "private investigations." Slunksy pointed out that searching for special strings in Google, such as axis-cgi/, will return links that access internet-connected cameras around the world. Quintessenz developers entered these Google results into a database, analyzed the IP addresses and set up a website that gives users the ability to search by country or topic -- and then rate the cameras. "You can use this to see if you are being watched in your daily life," said Dabrowski. The conference, hosted by Germany's Chaos Computer Club, featured many discussions on data interception and pushing back the unprecedented onslaught of surveillance technologies. Even the Dutch, once known as hacker-friendly, politically progressive Europeans, are now fearful and demanding more cameras on their streets, said Rop Gonggrijp, founder of Dutch ISP Xs4All. Gonggrijp says the Dutch chief of police has announced the intention to store large amounts of surveillance data and mine it to determine who to pressure and question. "People are screaming for more control," said Gonggrijp. Dutch journalist Brenno de Winter warned that the European Parliament's support for data retention doesn't ensure security, and makes citizens vulnerable to automated traffic analysis of who communicates with whom through phone calls and internet connections. "What we have seen is a system that fails because we miss out on too much information, and even if we have all that information, it doesn't give us the right information and it is easy to circumvent," said de Winter. CCC member and security researcher Frank Rieger said hackers should provide secure communications for political and social movements and encourage the widespread use of anonymity technologies. He said people on the other side of the camera need to be laughed at and shamed. "It must not be cool anymore to have access to this data," said Rieger, who argued that Western societies are becoming democratically legitimized police states ruled by an unaccountable elite. "We have enough technical knowledge to turn this around; let's expose them in public, publish everything we know about them and let them know how it feels to be under surveillance." The four-day Chaos Computer Congress is meeting near Alexanderplatz in the former East Berlin, where more than a half-million people rallied for political reform five days before the fall of the Berlin Wall. In his keynote address, Joichi Ito, general manager of international operations for Technorati, warned that the internet could itself become a walled-in network controlled by the International Telecommunication Union, Microsoft and telecommunications companies. Ito said these restrictions would stifle free speech and the ability to question authority without retribution. "An open network is more important for democracy than the right to bear arms and the right to vote," said Ito. "Voice is more important than votes." ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 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]

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[Dewayne-Net] Is the NSA spying on U.S. Internet traffic?
by Dewayne Hendricks 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Is the NSA spying on U.S. Internet traffic? Salon exclusive: Two former AT&T employees say the telecom giant has maintained a secret, highly secure room in St. Louis since 2002. Intelligence experts say it bears the earmarks of a National Security Agency operation. By Kim Zetter <http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/21/att_nsa/index.html? source=salon.rss> June 21, 2006 | In a pivotal network operations center in metropolitan St. Louis, AT&T has maintained a secret, highly secured room since 2002 where government work is being conducted, according to two former AT&T workers once employed at the center. In interviews with Salon, the former AT&T workers said that only government officials or AT&T employees with top-secret security clearance are admitted to the room, located inside AT&T's facility in Bridgeton. The room's tight security includes a biometric "mantrap" or highly sophisticated double door, secured with retinal and fingerprint scanners. The former workers say company supervisors told them that employees working inside the room were "monitoring network traffic" and that the room was being used by "a government agency." The details provided by the two former workers about the Bridgeton room bear the distinctive earmarks of an operation run by the National Security Agency, according to two intelligence experts with extensive knowledge of the NSA and its operations. In addition to the room's high-tech security, those intelligence experts told Salon, the exhaustive vetting process AT&T workers were put through before being granted top-secret security clearance points to the NSA, an agency known as much for its intense secrecy as its technological sophistication. "It was very hush-hush," said one of the former AT&T workers. "We were told there was going to be some government personnel working in that room. We were told, 'Do not try to speak to them. Do not hamper their work. Do not impede anything that they're doing.'" [snip] Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com> ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 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]

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<nettime> Help us launch the Yes Lab! Support our Kickstarter campaign
by The Yes Men 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Please support the Yes Lab! Dear Friends, The Yes Men need your help. For years, webve been tossing our little buckets of water on the blazes of social injustice. Last year, we decided to form a bucket brigade: a system (webre calling it the Yes Lab) to help others do the kind of funny, headline-grabbing actions webre known for. It worked. In its embryonic first year, the Yes Lab helped launch nearly a dozen activist media campaigns (see below), garnering a total of 4.5 metric tons of media hype. It even attracted threatening legal letters (frames not included) from five coal companies, one oil transport company, one utility, France, and GE! (Seriously, GE, no one meant to knock $3.5 billion off your share price. But no onebs sorry, either.) Given this proof of concept, the Yes Lab is now (almost) ready for prime time. Itbs got a brand-new home at New York University, complete with plenty of space, a big supportive crew, lots of eager collaborators, and a structure that will let it tackle five or so projects at once. (If youbre in New York, come to our launch Sept. 14 and see how you can get involved!) Itbs also got a lovely new website that will soon have a number of fancy tools to help hundreds more carry out or join up with Yes Lab projects. Therebs only one hitch. Webve got the venue, the participants, and (soon) the tools. But webre short on cash for the projects themselvesbwhich, of course, are the entire point of the Yes Lab. Thatbs why today, webre asking for $10,000 on Kickstarter, to hire project managers and cover expenses for projects that donbt have other funding. It's all the Yes Lab needs to become a fully-functioning mischief machine. OK, you got the point of this email: the Yes Lab needs money. So here, without further ado, is a summary of last year's mischief, accomplished by just a few dozen folks. Imagine what hundreds will be able to do! General Electric Short-Circuited Activists US Uncut, with a little help from the Yes Lab, sent out a press release announcing that General Electric would repay the $3.2 billion tax credit they received last year despite massive profits. The announcement was momentarily picked up as true by the AP, and the market, unable to leave a good deed unpunished, responded by knocking $3.5 billion off GEbs share price. The result was massive, enlightening coverage of GEbs tax-cheating ways on everything from local TV to CNN. What the heck is an Asthmaze? A small group of activists wondered how a big coal company might address the fact that coal causes childhood asthma. The result: b Coal Cares,b a faux greenwashing campaign in which Peabody Coal tried to b make asthma coolb with free themed inhalers to kids living within 200 miles of a coal plant. The site, taken as real by many, quickly went massively viral, which didnbt amuse Peabody one bit but did help publicize coal as a major public health issue. And as it happened, in the week following the launch of Coal Cares, a real-life attempt by the coal industry to mislead children was defeated by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. Hooray! Beat Up On Chevron? We Agree. Chevron decided to launch a $90 million greenwashing campaign with a street-art aesthetic, and was stupid enough to approach street artists for help. One of them, Cesar Maxit, promptly leaked Chevronbs plans to Amazon Watch. The Yes Lab helped Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action Network (RAN) release a much more honest version of Chevronbs campaign just hours ahead of the b realb McCoy, generating a deluge of media coverage. Hundreds of user submissions and some amazing videos from FunnyOrDie further derailed Chevronbs $90 million lie, infuriating Chevron even morebthough not quite as much as the $18 billion judgment against them in Ecuador, which Chevron has vowed never to pay. The fight goes on. Coal Burns Wealthy Neighborhood. Neighbors Nonplussed. Students from Columbia College in Chicago came together with Greenpeace and the Yes Lab to create the illusion that a new coal plant was planned in their citybbut that instead of going in a poor neighborhood (like the two coal plants that already exist in Chicago), this one would be built in a rich one. The plans got a rise out of residents and the media, and helped focus attention on Chicagobs much-needed Clean Power Ordinance. Canada was the victim of two Yes-Lab-assisted actions, both targeting the Alberta Tar Sands, the England-sized mess that has made Canada the worst per-capita carbon emitter on earth. Hair Clogs Pipeline In the first Canadian action, a group of activists had Enbridgebwho are aiming to build a massive pipeline from the Alberta Tar Sands through pristine wilderness to the British Columbia coastbannounce b My Hair Cares,b a crackpot plan to sop up inevitable spills along the pipeline route with the hair of volunteers. The resulting press publicized Enbridgebs botched spill cleanup in Michigan, and let Canadians know how stupid it can be to let oil flow through your watershed. More and More Mordor In the second Canada-centered action, a group of students, working with Greenpeace, launched a surreal campaign, complete with infomercials, cell phone videos, a tweeting campaign, a Facebook page, etc. to make folks in Canada think that the new Hobbit film was saving money on Mordor scenes by shooting them in the Tar Sands. The b newsb went quickly viral and helped to cement the Canadian Governmentbs reputation as top-shelf planet-killing bastards. Canadian War Room Defeated Another Canadian action on the same subject took place way back in December 2009, before the Yes Lab really existedbbut it happened according to the same model, so the Yes Lab is claiming it. Read about it here! France Remains Offensive An ad-hoc group called CRIME (Committee for the Reimbursement of Indemnity Money Extorted from Haiti) announced, on Francebs behalf, the repayment of b,17 billion to Haiti in relief aidba payment equal to that which France extorted from Haiti in 1804 as a condition for their independence. Because of Francebs ham-fisted reaction, the story received global attention, alerting many to the deep colonial roots of Haitibs problems. The media attention was also used to launch a campaign that further built pressure on France to do the right thing. People Bite Apple Itbs a bummer that our shiny tech toys are made using the blood of peoplebor, more precisely, the b conflict mineralsb that play a big role in the violence and instability of Central Africa. So a group of students, together with Friends of the Congo, produced a fake Apple ad campaign touting a b Conflict-Free iPhone,b and calling for the citizenbs arrest of John Paulson, whose company finances some of the worst extraction practices. The project received hundreds of media hits worldwide. Unnatural Gas Students and local activists launched a campaign to cover Manhattan with stickers warning residents that if a ban on hydraulic fracturing is not extended in New York State, theybll soon need to test for their waterbs safety by trying to light it on fire. The project communicated viscerally just whatbs at stake if gas companies are allowed to drill in New Yorkbs aquifer, as the companies are demanding. Shell Game Uncovers Oil Slick In the Hague, activists impersonated oil giant Shell and publicly apologized for devastating the Niger Delta each year with oil spills larger than that of the Exxon Valdez. The action generated hundreds of storiesball highlighting Shellbs atrocious record. Phew. Not bad for something that still hasnbt launched! Meanwhile, as long as we're writing a long breezy email, we have other news too: Tim DeChristopher Tim DeChristopherbs amazing story continues to inspire a movement. Hebs currently living in a federal prison, in a tiny room he was offered in exchange for single-handedly saving hundreds of thousands of acres of gorgeous Utah wilderness from destruction at the hands of Big Oil and Gas. Listen to Tim speak about why he did what he did, and what hebs asking of youband then make up your mind. CointelCOC Speaking of small rooms, we are still, almost two years later, waiting for the judge to rule whether to throw out the US Chamber of Commercebs lawsuit against us. Meanwhile, the Chamberbs lawyersbthe same ones who are apparently suing usbrecently made big news for dirty tricks not seen since the days of CointelPro. We almost hope we have a chance to address these creeps in court. Meanwhile, webll have to be content trying to express our anger in other ways. Yes Men Revolting Our latest film, The Yes Men Fix the World, didnbt. It won the Berlin Audience Award and the UKbs most prestigious prize in documentary film, was released theatrically in the U.S. and 40 other countries, and was shown on HBO and all kinds of other TV. But it simply did not fix the worldbwhich is why our new film will be called The Yes Men Are Revolting. Itbll feature many of the Yes-Lab-assisted actions above, as well as conversations with funny people who have overthrown tyrannies worldwide. Itbll be funny and watchable, and will use the word b revolutionb quite a bit. Isnbt it time? The rich (except for Warren Buffett) are not getting nicer, and our leaders seem less and less able to think about us. So letbs say it: b re-vo-lu-tion.b Goooood. Finally, huge, huge thanks to all of you who helped make the long list of Yes Lab-supported hijinks happen. We believe humor can have a role in shaking off tyranny, whether of one crazy dictator or of a whole bad idea. Please keep active in whatever way you can, and if you can, please pledge to our campaign. THANKS!! Gratefully yours, The Yes Men # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime(a)kein.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[silk] Delocalizer
by Udhay Shankar N 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,69942-0.html Hackers Rebel Against Spy Cams By Ann Harrison BERLIN -- When the Austrian government passed a law this year allowing police to install closed-circuit surveillance cameras in public spaces without a court order, the Austrian civil liberties group Quintessenz vowed to watch the watchers. Members of the organization worked out a way to intercept the camera images with an inexpensive, 1-GHz satellite receiver. The signal could then be descrambled using hardware designed to enhance copy-protected video as it's transferred from DVD to VHS tape. The Quintessenz activists then began figuring out how to blind the cameras with balloons, lasers and infrared devices. And, just for fun, the group created an anonymous surveillance system that uses face-recognition software to place a black stripe over the eyes of people whose images are recorded. Quintessenz members Adrian Dabrowski and Martin Slunksy presented their video-surveillance research at the 22nd annual Chaos Communication Congress here this week. Five hundred hackers jammed into a meeting room for a presentation that fit nicely into CCC's 2005 theme of "private investigations." Slunksy pointed out that searching for special strings in Google, such as axis-cgi/, will return links that access internet-connected cameras around the world. Quintessenz developers entered these Google results into a database, analyzed the IP addresses and set up a website that gives users the ability to search by country or topic -- and then rate the cameras. "You can use this to see if you are being watched in your daily life," said Dabrowski. The conference, hosted by Germany's Chaos Computer Club, featured many discussions on data interception and pushing back the unprecedented onslaught of surveillance technologies. Even the Dutch, once known as hacker-friendly, politically progressive Europeans, are now fearful and demanding more cameras on their streets, said Rop Gonggrijp, founder of Dutch ISP Xs4All. Gonggrijp says the Dutch chief of police has announced the intention to store large amounts of surveillance data and mine it to determine who to pressure and question. "People are screaming for more control," said Gonggrijp. Dutch journalist Brenno de Winter warned that the European Parliament's support for data retention doesn't ensure security, and makes citizens vulnerable to automated traffic analysis of who communicates with whom through phone calls and internet connections. "What we have seen is a system that fails because we miss out on too much information, and even if we have all that information, it doesn't give us the right information and it is easy to circumvent," said de Winter. CCC member and security researcher Frank Rieger said hackers should provide secure communications for political and social movements and encourage the widespread use of anonymity technologies. He said people on the other side of the camera need to be laughed at and shamed. "It must not be cool anymore to have access to this data," said Rieger, who argued that Western societies are becoming democratically legitimized police states ruled by an unaccountable elite. "We have enough technical knowledge to turn this around; let's expose them in public, publish everything we know about them and let them know how it feels to be under surveillance." The four-day Chaos Computer Congress is meeting near Alexanderplatz in the former East Berlin, where more than a half-million people rallied for political reform five days before the fall of the Berlin Wall. In his keynote address, Joichi Ito, general manager of international operations for Technorati, warned that the internet could itself become a walled-in network controlled by the International Telecommunication Union, Microsoft and telecommunications companies. Ito said these restrictions would stifle free speech and the ability to question authority without retribution. "An open network is more important for democracy than the right to bear arms and the right to vote," said Ito. "Voice is more important than votes." ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 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]

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[Dewayne-Net] Is the NSA spying on U.S. Internet traffic?
by Dewayne Hendricks 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Is the NSA spying on U.S. Internet traffic? Salon exclusive: Two former AT&T employees say the telecom giant has maintained a secret, highly secure room in St. Louis since 2002. Intelligence experts say it bears the earmarks of a National Security Agency operation. By Kim Zetter <http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/21/att_nsa/index.html? source=salon.rss> June 21, 2006 | In a pivotal network operations center in metropolitan St. Louis, AT&T has maintained a secret, highly secured room since 2002 where government work is being conducted, according to two former AT&T workers once employed at the center. In interviews with Salon, the former AT&T workers said that only government officials or AT&T employees with top-secret security clearance are admitted to the room, located inside AT&T's facility in Bridgeton. The room's tight security includes a biometric "mantrap" or highly sophisticated double door, secured with retinal and fingerprint scanners. The former workers say company supervisors told them that employees working inside the room were "monitoring network traffic" and that the room was being used by "a government agency." The details provided by the two former workers about the Bridgeton room bear the distinctive earmarks of an operation run by the National Security Agency, according to two intelligence experts with extensive knowledge of the NSA and its operations. In addition to the room's high-tech security, those intelligence experts told Salon, the exhaustive vetting process AT&T workers were put through before being granted top-secret security clearance points to the NSA, an agency known as much for its intense secrecy as its technological sophistication. "It was very hush-hush," said one of the former AT&T workers. "We were told there was going to be some government personnel working in that room. We were told, 'Do not try to speak to them. Do not hamper their work. Do not impede anything that they're doing.'" [snip] Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com> ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 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]

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<nettime> Help us launch the Yes Lab! Support our Kickstarter campaign
by The Yes Men 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Please support the Yes Lab! Dear Friends, The Yes Men need your help. For years, webve been tossing our little buckets of water on the blazes of social injustice. Last year, we decided to form a bucket brigade: a system (webre calling it the Yes Lab) to help others do the kind of funny, headline-grabbing actions webre known for. It worked. In its embryonic first year, the Yes Lab helped launch nearly a dozen activist media campaigns (see below), garnering a total of 4.5 metric tons of media hype. It even attracted threatening legal letters (frames not included) from five coal companies, one oil transport company, one utility, France, and GE! (Seriously, GE, no one meant to knock $3.5 billion off your share price. But no onebs sorry, either.) Given this proof of concept, the Yes Lab is now (almost) ready for prime time. Itbs got a brand-new home at New York University, complete with plenty of space, a big supportive crew, lots of eager collaborators, and a structure that will let it tackle five or so projects at once. (If youbre in New York, come to our launch Sept. 14 and see how you can get involved!) Itbs also got a lovely new website that will soon have a number of fancy tools to help hundreds more carry out or join up with Yes Lab projects. Therebs only one hitch. Webve got the venue, the participants, and (soon) the tools. But webre short on cash for the projects themselvesbwhich, of course, are the entire point of the Yes Lab. Thatbs why today, webre asking for $10,000 on Kickstarter, to hire project managers and cover expenses for projects that donbt have other funding. It's all the Yes Lab needs to become a fully-functioning mischief machine. OK, you got the point of this email: the Yes Lab needs money. So here, without further ado, is a summary of last year's mischief, accomplished by just a few dozen folks. Imagine what hundreds will be able to do! General Electric Short-Circuited Activists US Uncut, with a little help from the Yes Lab, sent out a press release announcing that General Electric would repay the $3.2 billion tax credit they received last year despite massive profits. The announcement was momentarily picked up as true by the AP, and the market, unable to leave a good deed unpunished, responded by knocking $3.5 billion off GEbs share price. The result was massive, enlightening coverage of GEbs tax-cheating ways on everything from local TV to CNN. What the heck is an Asthmaze? A small group of activists wondered how a big coal company might address the fact that coal causes childhood asthma. The result: b Coal Cares,b a faux greenwashing campaign in which Peabody Coal tried to b make asthma coolb with free themed inhalers to kids living within 200 miles of a coal plant. The site, taken as real by many, quickly went massively viral, which didnbt amuse Peabody one bit but did help publicize coal as a major public health issue. And as it happened, in the week following the launch of Coal Cares, a real-life attempt by the coal industry to mislead children was defeated by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. Hooray! Beat Up On Chevron? We Agree. Chevron decided to launch a $90 million greenwashing campaign with a street-art aesthetic, and was stupid enough to approach street artists for help. One of them, Cesar Maxit, promptly leaked Chevronbs plans to Amazon Watch. The Yes Lab helped Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action Network (RAN) release a much more honest version of Chevronbs campaign just hours ahead of the b realb McCoy, generating a deluge of media coverage. Hundreds of user submissions and some amazing videos from FunnyOrDie further derailed Chevronbs $90 million lie, infuriating Chevron even morebthough not quite as much as the $18 billion judgment against them in Ecuador, which Chevron has vowed never to pay. The fight goes on. Coal Burns Wealthy Neighborhood. Neighbors Nonplussed. Students from Columbia College in Chicago came together with Greenpeace and the Yes Lab to create the illusion that a new coal plant was planned in their citybbut that instead of going in a poor neighborhood (like the two coal plants that already exist in Chicago), this one would be built in a rich one. The plans got a rise out of residents and the media, and helped focus attention on Chicagobs much-needed Clean Power Ordinance. Canada was the victim of two Yes-Lab-assisted actions, both targeting the Alberta Tar Sands, the England-sized mess that has made Canada the worst per-capita carbon emitter on earth. Hair Clogs Pipeline In the first Canadian action, a group of activists had Enbridgebwho are aiming to build a massive pipeline from the Alberta Tar Sands through pristine wilderness to the British Columbia coastbannounce b My Hair Cares,b a crackpot plan to sop up inevitable spills along the pipeline route with the hair of volunteers. The resulting press publicized Enbridgebs botched spill cleanup in Michigan, and let Canadians know how stupid it can be to let oil flow through your watershed. More and More Mordor In the second Canada-centered action, a group of students, working with Greenpeace, launched a surreal campaign, complete with infomercials, cell phone videos, a tweeting campaign, a Facebook page, etc. to make folks in Canada think that the new Hobbit film was saving money on Mordor scenes by shooting them in the Tar Sands. The b newsb went quickly viral and helped to cement the Canadian Governmentbs reputation as top-shelf planet-killing bastards. Canadian War Room Defeated Another Canadian action on the same subject took place way back in December 2009, before the Yes Lab really existedbbut it happened according to the same model, so the Yes Lab is claiming it. Read about it here! France Remains Offensive An ad-hoc group called CRIME (Committee for the Reimbursement of Indemnity Money Extorted from Haiti) announced, on Francebs behalf, the repayment of b,17 billion to Haiti in relief aidba payment equal to that which France extorted from Haiti in 1804 as a condition for their independence. Because of Francebs ham-fisted reaction, the story received global attention, alerting many to the deep colonial roots of Haitibs problems. The media attention was also used to launch a campaign that further built pressure on France to do the right thing. People Bite Apple Itbs a bummer that our shiny tech toys are made using the blood of peoplebor, more precisely, the b conflict mineralsb that play a big role in the violence and instability of Central Africa. So a group of students, together with Friends of the Congo, produced a fake Apple ad campaign touting a b Conflict-Free iPhone,b and calling for the citizenbs arrest of John Paulson, whose company finances some of the worst extraction practices. The project received hundreds of media hits worldwide. Unnatural Gas Students and local activists launched a campaign to cover Manhattan with stickers warning residents that if a ban on hydraulic fracturing is not extended in New York State, theybll soon need to test for their waterbs safety by trying to light it on fire. The project communicated viscerally just whatbs at stake if gas companies are allowed to drill in New Yorkbs aquifer, as the companies are demanding. Shell Game Uncovers Oil Slick In the Hague, activists impersonated oil giant Shell and publicly apologized for devastating the Niger Delta each year with oil spills larger than that of the Exxon Valdez. The action generated hundreds of storiesball highlighting Shellbs atrocious record. Phew. Not bad for something that still hasnbt launched! Meanwhile, as long as we're writing a long breezy email, we have other news too: Tim DeChristopher Tim DeChristopherbs amazing story continues to inspire a movement. Hebs currently living in a federal prison, in a tiny room he was offered in exchange for single-handedly saving hundreds of thousands of acres of gorgeous Utah wilderness from destruction at the hands of Big Oil and Gas. Listen to Tim speak about why he did what he did, and what hebs asking of youband then make up your mind. CointelCOC Speaking of small rooms, we are still, almost two years later, waiting for the judge to rule whether to throw out the US Chamber of Commercebs lawsuit against us. Meanwhile, the Chamberbs lawyersbthe same ones who are apparently suing usbrecently made big news for dirty tricks not seen since the days of CointelPro. We almost hope we have a chance to address these creeps in court. Meanwhile, webll have to be content trying to express our anger in other ways. Yes Men Revolting Our latest film, The Yes Men Fix the World, didnbt. It won the Berlin Audience Award and the UKbs most prestigious prize in documentary film, was released theatrically in the U.S. and 40 other countries, and was shown on HBO and all kinds of other TV. But it simply did not fix the worldbwhich is why our new film will be called The Yes Men Are Revolting. Itbll feature many of the Yes-Lab-assisted actions above, as well as conversations with funny people who have overthrown tyrannies worldwide. Itbll be funny and watchable, and will use the word b revolutionb quite a bit. Isnbt it time? The rich (except for Warren Buffett) are not getting nicer, and our leaders seem less and less able to think about us. So letbs say it: b re-vo-lu-tion.b Goooood. Finally, huge, huge thanks to all of you who helped make the long list of Yes Lab-supported hijinks happen. We believe humor can have a role in shaking off tyranny, whether of one crazy dictator or of a whole bad idea. Please keep active in whatever way you can, and if you can, please pledge to our campaign. THANKS!! Gratefully yours, The Yes Men # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime(a)kein.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[silk] Power and the Internet
by Udhay Shankar N 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Bruce Schneier on what worries him about the state of the net today. Money quote: "The Internet is what we make it, and is constantly being recreated by organizations, companies, and countries with specific interests and agendas. Either we fight for a seat at the table, or the future of the Internet becomes something that is done to us." https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/01/power_and_the_i.html January 31, 2013 Power and the Internet All disruptive technologies upset traditional power balances, and the Internet is no exception. The standard story is that it empowers the powerless, but that's only half the story. The Internet empowers everyone. Powerful institutions might be slow to make use of that new power, but since they are powerful, they can use it more effectively. Governments and corporations have woken up to the fact that not only can they use the Internet, they can control it for their interests. Unless we start deliberately debating the future we want to live in, and information technology in enabling that world, we will end up with an Internet that benefits existing power structures and not society in general. We've all lived through the Internet's disruptive history. Entire industries, like travel agencies and video rental stores, disappeared. Traditional publishing -- books, newspapers, encyclopedias, music -- lost power, while Amazon and others gained. Advertising-based companies like Google and Facebook gained a lot of power. Microsoft lost power (as hard as that is to believe). The Internet changed political power as well. Some governments lost power as citizens organized online. Political movements became easier, helping to topple governments. The Obama campaign made revolutionary use of the Internet, both in 2008 and 2012. And the Internet changed social power, as we collected hundreds of "friends" on Facebook, tweeted our way to fame, and found communities for the most obscure hobbies and interests. And some crimes became easier: impersonation fraud became identity theft, copyright violation became file sharing, and accessing censored materials -- political, sexual, cultural -- became trivially easy. Now powerful interests are looking to deliberately steer this influence to their advantage. Some corporations are creating Internet environments that maximize their profitability: Facebook and Google, among many others. Some industries are lobbying for laws that make their particular business models more profitable: telecom carriers want to be able to discriminate between different types of Internet traffic, entertainment companies want to crack down on file sharing, advertisers want unfettered access to data about our habits and preferences. On the government side, more countries censor the Internet -- and do so more effectively -- than ever before. Police forces around the world are using Internet data for surveillance, with less judicial oversight and sometimes in advance of any crime. Militaries are fomenting a cyberwar arms race. Internet surveillance -- both governmental and commercial -- is on the rise, not just in totalitarian states but in Western democracies as well. Both companies and governments rely more on propaganda to create false impressions of public opinion. In 1996, cyber-libertarian John Perry Barlow issued his "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace." He told governments: "You have no moral right to rule us, nor do you possess any methods of enforcement that we have true reason to fear." It was a utopian ideal, and many of us believed him. We believed that the Internet generation, those quick to embrace the social changes this new technology brought, would swiftly outmaneuver the more ponderous institutions of the previous era. Reality turned out to be much more complicated. What we forgot is that technology magnifies power in both directions. When the powerless found the Internet, suddenly they had power. But while the unorganized and nimble were the first to make use of the new technologies, eventually the powerful behemoths woke up to the potential -- and they have more power to magnify. And not only does the Internet change power balances, but the powerful can also change the Internet. Does anyone else remember how incompetent the FBI was at investigating Internet crimes in the early 1990s? Or how Internet users ran rings around China's censors and Middle Eastern secret police? Or how digital cash was going to make government currencies obsolete, and Internet organizing was going to make political parties obsolete? Now all that feels like ancient history. It's not all one-sided. The masses can occasionally organize around a specific issue -- SOPA/PIPA, the Arab Spring, and so on -- and can block some actions by the powerful. But it doesn't last. The unorganized go back to being unorganized, and powerful interests take back the reins. Debates over the future of the Internet are morally and politically complex. How do we balance personal privacy against what law enforcement needs to prevent copyright violations? Or child pornography? Is it acceptable to be judged by invisible computer algorithms when being served search results? When being served news articles? When being selected for additional scrutiny by airport security? Do we have a right to correct data about us? To delete it? Do we want computer systems that forget things after some number of years? These are complicated issues that require meaningful debate, international cooperation, and iterative solutions. Does anyone believe we're up to the task? We're not, and that's the worry. Because if we're not trying to understand how to shape the Internet so that its good effects outweigh the bad, powerful interests will do all the shaping. The Internet's design isn't fixed by natural laws. Its history is a fortuitous accident: an initial lack of commercial interests, governmental benign neglect, military requirements for survivability and resilience, and the natural inclination of computer engineers to build open systems that work simply and easily. This mix of forces that created yesterday's Internet will not be trusted to create tomorrow's. Battles over the future of the Internet are going on right now: in legislatures around the world, in international organizations like the International Telecommunications Union and the World Trade Organization, and in Internet standards bodies. The Internet is what we make it, and is constantly being recreated by organizations, companies, and countries with specific interests and agendas. Either we fight for a seat at the table, or the future of the Internet becomes something that is done to us. This essay appeared as a response to Edge's annual question, "What *Should* We Be Worried About?" -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com)) ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Tor 0.1.2.8-beta is out
by Roger Dingledine 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

This is the eighth development snapshot for the 0.1.2.x series. You'll notice that it's a beta -- more mature than an alpha but not yet a release candidate. It fixes a few crash bugs, and generally continues to clean things up. We're getting close! The bundles also come with Vidalia 0.0.11. http://tor.eff.org/download.html Changes in version 0.1.2.8-beta - 2007-02-26 o Major bugfixes (crashes): - Stop crashing when the controller asks us to resetconf more than one config option at once. (Vidalia 0.0.11 does this.) - Fix a crash that happened on Win98 when we're given command-line arguments: don't try to load NT service functions from advapi32.dll except when we need them. (Bug introduced in 0.1.2.7-alpha; resolves bug 389.) - Fix a longstanding obscure crash bug that could occur when we run out of DNS worker processes. (Resolves bug 390.) o Major bugfixes (hidden services): - Correctly detect whether hidden service descriptor downloads are in-progress. (Suggested by Karsten Loesing; fixes bug 399.) o Major bugfixes (accounting): - When we start during an accounting interval before it's time to wake up, remember to wake up at the correct time. (May fix bug 342.) o Minor bugfixes (controller): - Give the controller END_STREAM_REASON_DESTROY events _before_ we clear the corresponding on_circuit variable, and remember later that we don't need to send a redundant CLOSED event. (Resolves part 3 of bug 367.) - Report events where a resolve succeeded or where we got a socks protocol error correctly, rather than calling both of them "INTERNAL". - Change reported stream target addresses to IP consistently when we finally get the IP from an exit node. - Send log messages to the controller even if they happen to be very long. o Minor bugfixes (other): - Display correct results when reporting which versions are recommended, and how recommended they are. (Resolves bug 383.) - Improve our estimates for directory bandwidth to be less random: guess that an unrecognized directory will have the average bandwidth from all known directories, not that it will have the average bandwidth from those directories earlier than it on the list. - If we start a server with ClientOnly 1, then set ClientOnly to 0 and hup, stop triggering an assert based on an empty onion_key. - On platforms with no working mmap() equivalent, don't warn the user when cached-routers doesn't exist. - Warn the user when mmap() [or its equivalent] fails for some reason other than file-not-found. - Don't warn the user when cached-routers.new doesn't exist: that's perfectly fine when starting up for the first time. - When EntryNodes are configured, rebuild the guard list to contain, in order: the EntryNodes that were guards before; the rest of the EntryNodes; the nodes that were guards before. - Mask out all signals in sub-threads; only the libevent signal handler should be processing them. This should prevent some crashes on some machines using pthreads. (Patch from coderman.) - Fix switched arguments on memset in the implementation of tor_munmap() for systems with no mmap() call. - When Tor receives a router descriptor that it asked for, but no longer wants (because it has received fresh networkstatuses in the meantime), do not warn the user. Cache the descriptor if we're a cache; drop it if we aren't. - Make earlier entry guards _really_ get retried when the network comes back online. - On a malformed DNS reply, always give an error to the corresponding DNS request. - Build with recent libevents on platforms that do not define the nonstandard types "u_int8_t" and friends. o Minor features (controller): - Warn the user when an application uses the obsolete binary v0 control protocol. We're planning to remove support for it during the next development series, so it's good to give people some advance warning. - Add STREAM_BW events to report per-entry-stream bandwidth use. (Patch from Robert Hogan.) - Rate-limit SIGNEWNYM signals in response to controllers that impolitely generate them for every single stream. (Patch from mwenge; closes bug 394.) - Make REMAP stream events have a SOURCE (cache or exit), and make them generated in every case where we get a successful connected or resolved cell. o Minor bugfixes (performance): - Call router_have_min_dir_info half as often. (This is showing up in some profiles, but not others.) - When using GCC, make log_debug never get called at all, and its arguments never get evaluated, when no debug logs are configured. (This is showing up in some profiles, but not others.) o Minor features: - Remove some never-implemented options. Mark PathlenCoinWeight as obsolete. - Implement proposal 106: Stop requiring clients to have well-formed certificates; stop checking nicknames in certificates. (Clients have certificates so that they can look like Tor servers, but in the future we might want to allow them to look like regular TLS clients instead. Nicknames in certificates serve no purpose other than making our protocol easier to recognize on the wire.) - Revise messages on handshake failure again to be even more clear about which are incoming connections and which are outgoing. - Discard any v1 directory info that's over 1 month old (for directories) or over 1 week old (for running-routers lists). - Do not warn when individual nodes in the configuration's EntryNodes, ExitNodes, etc are down: warn only when all possible nodes are down. (Fixes bug 348.) - Always remove expired routers and networkstatus docs before checking whether we have enough information to build circuits. (Fixes bug 373.) - Put a lower-bound on MaxAdvertisedBandwidth. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 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]

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