July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

New Radar Sees Through Walls
by brian-slashdotnews＠hyperreal.org 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/02/158257 Posted by: CowboyNeal, on 2004-07-02 16:46:00 Topic: privacy, 278 comments from the watching-me-watching-you dept. [1]artemis67 writes "A [2]small Israeli company has [3]developed a radar system that uses ultra-wideband technology to produce three-dimensional pictures of the space behind a wall from a distance of up to 20 meters. The pictures, which reportedly resemble those produced by ultrasound, are relatively high-resolution and are produced in real time. Wow, it sounds like the potential benefits of this device are huge, saving lives of soldiers, firemen, or police; the potential for privacy invasion, however, is similarly large." References 1. http://slashdot.org/~artemis67/journal/ 2. http://www.radarvision.com/ 3. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39246 ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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[IP] Justice Dept e-mail on wiretapping program released through FOIA
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Justice Dept e-mail on wiretapping program released through FOIA Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2006 12:22:27 -0800 From: Jim Warren <jwarren(a)well.com> To: Dave Farber <dave(a)farber.net> From: The National Security Archive [mailto:NSARCHIVE@hermes.gwu.edu] On Behalf Of National Security Archive Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2006 1:12 PM National Security Archive Update, March 9, 2006 Justice Department e-mail on wiretapping program released through FOIA Former official describes legal defenses as "weak" and "slightly after-the-fact," Guesses they reflected "VP's philosophy... best defense is a good offense." For more information: Thomas Blanton or Kristin Adair - 202/994-7000 http://www.nsarchive.org Washington, D.C., 9 March 2006 - The Justice Department official who oversaw national security matters from 2000 to 2003 e-mailed his former colleagues after revelation of the controversial warrantless wiretapping program in December 2005 that the Department's justifications for the program were "weak" and had a "slightly after-the-fact quality" to them, and surmised that this reflected "the VP's philosophy that the best defense is a good offense," according to documents released through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and joined by the ACLU and the National Security Archive. David Kris, the former associate deputy attorney general who now serves as chief ethics and compliance officer at Time Warner, e-mailed Justice Department official Courtney Elwood on 20 December 2005 his own analysis of the controversy, writing that "claims that FISA [the wiretapping statute] simply requires too much paperwork or the bothersome marshaling of arguments seem relatively weak justifications for resorting to Article II power in violation of the statute." The subject line of the e-mail was "If you can't show me yours." On 22 December, after reading the Department's talking points as forwarded by Elwood, Kris commented that the Department's approach "maybe... reflects the VP's [Vice President Cheney] philosophy that the best defense is a good offense (I don't expect you to comment on that :-))." On 19 January 2006, Kris wrote Elwood that the Department's white paper was "professional and thorough and well written" but that "I kind of doubt it's going to bring me around on the statutory arguments." The Kris e-mails were the only substantive new documents released by the Justice Department yesterday in response to the March 8 deadline ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Henry Kennedy in the FOIA lawsuit brought by EPIC together with the ACLU and the Archive, seeking the internal legal justifications used by the government to carry out the wiretapping program. In three separate letters to the plaintiffs, Justice claimed it had fully searched the records of the Office of the Attorney General and had made a "full grant" of the FOIA requests, yet most of the released material consisted of the previously released white paper and transcripts of public appearances by the Attorney General. Justice produced not a single record relating to any of the 30-odd reauthorizations of the wiretapping program that President Bush has publicly stated took place in 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005. Justice's Office of Legal Counsel admitted in its response that in the two-and-a-half months since the FOIA requests were filed, OLC had only completed its search of its unclassified files. "The unclassified files are exactly the place where the wiretapping memos are least likely to exist," commented Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive. "This is a case of looking for your car keys under the street lamp even if that's a block away from where you lost them." http://www.nsarchive.org ________________________________________________________ THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals. _________________________________________________________ PRIVACY NOTICE The National Security Archive does not and will never share the names or e-mail addresses of its subscribers with any other organization. Once a year, we will write you and ask for your financial support. We may also ask you for your ideas for Freedom of Information requests, documentation projects, or other issues that the Archive should take on. We would welcome your input, and any information you care to share with us about your special interests. But we do not sell or rent any information about subscribers to any other party. ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen(a)leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- 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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Re: [cryptography] Digital cash in the news...
by John Levine 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

>We can therefore see that someone has to make that "worth" mean >something, so for this we need an "issuer" sometimes known as Ivan. >It's beyond the scope of a crypto list to discuss this in depth, but >typically Ivan would deposit $1 for every issued electronic dollar in >some bank account somewhere. You're right, for a crypto currency to be credible in the long term, it needs to be convertible into Real Money(tm), i.e., something you can use to pay your taxes. (That's the actual working definition of money, by the way.) But that really has nothing to do with the crypto part. You can have crypto out the wazoo, and it's worth nothing unless there's an issuer in meatspace who will accept your crypto coins, cancel them, and hand you the agreed amount of money. Or think about the ETF model I suggested a few years ago, which provides a close approximation to convertibility without requiring that the issuer be able to redeem every individual coin on demand. Regards, John Levine, johnl(a)iecc.com, First Unitarian Society of Ithaca NY Between 200 and 500 members, depending on who's counting PS: For anyone who wants a crypto currency backed by gold, that's functionally equivalent to a gold ETF, of which there are several, such as ticker symbols IAU, GLD, GTU, SGOL, and AGOL. They do what they do perfectly adequately, but they are in no sense currency. Bubble sceptics can trade put options on them. Too bad there's no options on bitcoins. _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- 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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[Freedombox-discuss] Fwd: [ PRIVACY Forum ] Why Governments Are Terrified of Social Media
by Marshall Clow 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

A great (if unintentional) statement of the reasons behind the FreedomBox. -- Marshall Begin forwarded message: > From: privacy(a)vortex.com > Date: August 25, 2011 1:27:42 AM PDT > To: privacy-list(a)vortex.com > Subject: [ PRIVACY Forum ] Why Governments Are Terrified of Social Media > Reply-To: PRIVACY Forum mailing list <privacy(a)vortex.com> > > > > Why Governments Are Terrified of Social Media > > http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000891.html > > > In Missouri, teachers and others are up in arms over a law that would > ban most contacts between teachers and students through social media, not > only via systems like Facebook, but even apparently mechanisms such as > Google Docs ( http://j.mp/pSqX11 [ABC News] ). > > In the UK, Prime Minister David Cameron has proposed censoring or > cutting off BlackBerry and other social media systems based on the > misguided and false assumption that this would prevent planning and > communications by potential rioters or other "undesirable" persons. > > And back here in the U.S., BART shut down parts of the cell phone > network, in an attempt to block communications in advance of a legal > protest that never took place, though we know full well from history > that protests -- even of enormous scope -- do not require high > technology to be organized and deployed ( http://j.mp/rq7SO9 [Lauren's Blog] ). > > Around the world, including here in the U.S., governments are > demanding unencrypted access to supposedly "secure" communications > systems. > > The common thread is very clear. Governments are increasingly > terrified of the communications abilities that Internet and other > technologies have provided their citizenry and other residents. > > While usually careful to express their concerns in the context of > seemingly laudable motives like fighting crime or terrorism, in > reality these governments have revealed the distrust and contempt with > which they view their populations at large. > > This is by no means a new phenomenon. > > Throughout human history, governments and many leaders have cast a > jaundiced eye on virtually every new technological development that > enabled communications, particularly if that technology made it easier > for direct person-to-person messages to be exchanged outside the view > of government services and minders. > > These government efforts to suppress and control communications have > virtually all failed in the end, though a great deal of damage has > been done to individuals and groups in the process. > > At one time, even the ability to read and write was considered too > dangerous a skill set for the commoners. The invention of the > printing press threw government and churches alike into convulsions of > apprehension. > > And now "social media" is the new scapegoat, the whipping boy, the > technological designated evil that short-sighted politicians of both > major parties, and their various administrative minions and > supporters, are demanding be monitored, leashed, and controlled. > > In reality of course, it's not the technology that these persons wish > to leash -- it's ordinary people. It's you and me and the vastness of > other law-abiding persons who have become the targets of the 21st > century law enforcement mantra: "Screw the Bill of Rights -- treat > everybody like a suspect, all the time." > > The broad implications of this "guilty until proven innocent" mindset > are all around us now. They're at the heart of the newly revealed > alliance between CIA and the New York Police Department to monitor the > activities of innocent citizens, using surveillance techniques that > would have seemed comfortably familiar to the old East German Stasi > secret police. > > They're seen in the massive government-mandated Internet data > retention demanded by "The Protecting Children from Internet > Pornographers Act of 2011" -- now moving rapidly through Congress, and > disingenuously titled to suggest it only applies to child abuse, when > in reality its true reach would broadly encompass all manner of > Internet access activities ( http://j.mp/o13jMO [Atlantic] ). > > Governments seem to increasingly no longer feel that it's necessary or > desirable to have "probable cause" or court orders before spying on > individuals, tracking their movements via hidden GPS units, building > dossiers, or even disrupting communications. Constitutional > guarantees are more and more viewed by our leaders as quaint artifacts > of the past, to be ignored today merely as annoying inconveniences. > > The innocent are now being treated largely as potential "future > criminals" -- and so subject to many of the same sorts of surveillance > and other law enforcement techniques that in the past were generally > limited to specific suspects of specific crimes. > > To the extent that these activities for now appear to be mostly aimed > at persons with skin colors or religions different from us, it becomes > easier to "go with the flow" of this new law enforcement mentality, to > not make waves, to be quiet, to be sheep. > > But the same techniques used today against one group can be easily > repurposed for others. Government ordered records of users' Internet > activities will affect us all, and the infrastructures created to > support these surveillance-related systems may be be extremely > long-lived. > > When governments no longer trust the people, when officials make the > mental and physical leaps to targeting vast numbers of innocent > persons in the manner of criminal suspects of yesteryear, we have > embarked on a road that leads to a very dark place indeed. > > Today, social media is the crosshairs. Governments certainly are > enthusiastic about using social media for their own investigatory and > enforcement purposes, but they appear to be desperately seeking ways > to control and limit the ability of ordinary persons to communicate > privately and securely on these systems, or to use them at all in some > cases. > > This is hypocrisy of the highest order. It is a serious risk to > innocent individuals being targeted by its adherents today. > > Unchallenged, tomorrow it will be a serious risk to us all. > > --Lauren-- > Lauren Weinstein (lauren(a)vortex.com) http://www.vortex.com/lauren > Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org > Founder: > - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org > - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org > - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com > Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy > Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com > Google+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren > Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein > Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > privacy mailing list > http://lists.vortex.com/mailman/listinfo/privacy -- Marshall Marshall Clow Idio Software <mailto:mclow.lists@gmail.com> A.D. 1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the church door and is promptly moderated down to (-1, Flamebait). -- Yu Suzuki _______________________________________________ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss(a)lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss ----- 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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New Radar Sees Through Walls
by brian-slashdotnews＠hyperreal.org 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/02/158257 Posted by: CowboyNeal, on 2004-07-02 16:46:00 Topic: privacy, 278 comments from the watching-me-watching-you dept. [1]artemis67 writes "A [2]small Israeli company has [3]developed a radar system that uses ultra-wideband technology to produce three-dimensional pictures of the space behind a wall from a distance of up to 20 meters. The pictures, which reportedly resemble those produced by ultrasound, are relatively high-resolution and are produced in real time. Wow, it sounds like the potential benefits of this device are huge, saving lives of soldiers, firemen, or police; the potential for privacy invasion, however, is similarly large." References 1. http://slashdot.org/~artemis67/journal/ 2. http://www.radarvision.com/ 3. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39246 ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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[IP] Justice Dept e-mail on wiretapping program released through FOIA
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Justice Dept e-mail on wiretapping program released through FOIA Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2006 12:22:27 -0800 From: Jim Warren <jwarren(a)well.com> To: Dave Farber <dave(a)farber.net> From: The National Security Archive [mailto:NSARCHIVE@hermes.gwu.edu] On Behalf Of National Security Archive Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2006 1:12 PM National Security Archive Update, March 9, 2006 Justice Department e-mail on wiretapping program released through FOIA Former official describes legal defenses as "weak" and "slightly after-the-fact," Guesses they reflected "VP's philosophy... best defense is a good offense." For more information: Thomas Blanton or Kristin Adair - 202/994-7000 http://www.nsarchive.org Washington, D.C., 9 March 2006 - The Justice Department official who oversaw national security matters from 2000 to 2003 e-mailed his former colleagues after revelation of the controversial warrantless wiretapping program in December 2005 that the Department's justifications for the program were "weak" and had a "slightly after-the-fact quality" to them, and surmised that this reflected "the VP's philosophy that the best defense is a good offense," according to documents released through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and joined by the ACLU and the National Security Archive. David Kris, the former associate deputy attorney general who now serves as chief ethics and compliance officer at Time Warner, e-mailed Justice Department official Courtney Elwood on 20 December 2005 his own analysis of the controversy, writing that "claims that FISA [the wiretapping statute] simply requires too much paperwork or the bothersome marshaling of arguments seem relatively weak justifications for resorting to Article II power in violation of the statute." The subject line of the e-mail was "If you can't show me yours." On 22 December, after reading the Department's talking points as forwarded by Elwood, Kris commented that the Department's approach "maybe... reflects the VP's [Vice President Cheney] philosophy that the best defense is a good offense (I don't expect you to comment on that :-))." On 19 January 2006, Kris wrote Elwood that the Department's white paper was "professional and thorough and well written" but that "I kind of doubt it's going to bring me around on the statutory arguments." The Kris e-mails were the only substantive new documents released by the Justice Department yesterday in response to the March 8 deadline ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Henry Kennedy in the FOIA lawsuit brought by EPIC together with the ACLU and the Archive, seeking the internal legal justifications used by the government to carry out the wiretapping program. In three separate letters to the plaintiffs, Justice claimed it had fully searched the records of the Office of the Attorney General and had made a "full grant" of the FOIA requests, yet most of the released material consisted of the previously released white paper and transcripts of public appearances by the Attorney General. Justice produced not a single record relating to any of the 30-odd reauthorizations of the wiretapping program that President Bush has publicly stated took place in 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005. Justice's Office of Legal Counsel admitted in its response that in the two-and-a-half months since the FOIA requests were filed, OLC had only completed its search of its unclassified files. "The unclassified files are exactly the place where the wiretapping memos are least likely to exist," commented Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive. "This is a case of looking for your car keys under the street lamp even if that's a block away from where you lost them." http://www.nsarchive.org ________________________________________________________ THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals. _________________________________________________________ PRIVACY NOTICE The National Security Archive does not and will never share the names or e-mail addresses of its subscribers with any other organization. Once a year, we will write you and ask for your financial support. We may also ask you for your ideas for Freedom of Information requests, documentation projects, or other issues that the Archive should take on. We would welcome your input, and any information you care to share with us about your special interests. But we do not sell or rent any information about subscribers to any other party. ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen(a)leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- 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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Re: [cryptography] Digital cash in the news...
by John Levine 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

>We can therefore see that someone has to make that "worth" mean >something, so for this we need an "issuer" sometimes known as Ivan. >It's beyond the scope of a crypto list to discuss this in depth, but >typically Ivan would deposit $1 for every issued electronic dollar in >some bank account somewhere. You're right, for a crypto currency to be credible in the long term, it needs to be convertible into Real Money(tm), i.e., something you can use to pay your taxes. (That's the actual working definition of money, by the way.) But that really has nothing to do with the crypto part. You can have crypto out the wazoo, and it's worth nothing unless there's an issuer in meatspace who will accept your crypto coins, cancel them, and hand you the agreed amount of money. Or think about the ETF model I suggested a few years ago, which provides a close approximation to convertibility without requiring that the issuer be able to redeem every individual coin on demand. Regards, John Levine, johnl(a)iecc.com, First Unitarian Society of Ithaca NY Between 200 and 500 members, depending on who's counting PS: For anyone who wants a crypto currency backed by gold, that's functionally equivalent to a gold ETF, of which there are several, such as ticker symbols IAU, GLD, GTU, SGOL, and AGOL. They do what they do perfectly adequately, but they are in no sense currency. Bubble sceptics can trade put options on them. Too bad there's no options on bitcoins. _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- 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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[Freedombox-discuss] Fwd: [ PRIVACY Forum ] Why Governments Are Terrified of Social Media
by Marshall Clow 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

A great (if unintentional) statement of the reasons behind the FreedomBox. -- Marshall Begin forwarded message: > From: privacy(a)vortex.com > Date: August 25, 2011 1:27:42 AM PDT > To: privacy-list(a)vortex.com > Subject: [ PRIVACY Forum ] Why Governments Are Terrified of Social Media > Reply-To: PRIVACY Forum mailing list <privacy(a)vortex.com> > > > > Why Governments Are Terrified of Social Media > > http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000891.html > > > In Missouri, teachers and others are up in arms over a law that would > ban most contacts between teachers and students through social media, not > only via systems like Facebook, but even apparently mechanisms such as > Google Docs ( http://j.mp/pSqX11 [ABC News] ). > > In the UK, Prime Minister David Cameron has proposed censoring or > cutting off BlackBerry and other social media systems based on the > misguided and false assumption that this would prevent planning and > communications by potential rioters or other "undesirable" persons. > > And back here in the U.S., BART shut down parts of the cell phone > network, in an attempt to block communications in advance of a legal > protest that never took place, though we know full well from history > that protests -- even of enormous scope -- do not require high > technology to be organized and deployed ( http://j.mp/rq7SO9 [Lauren's Blog] ). > > Around the world, including here in the U.S., governments are > demanding unencrypted access to supposedly "secure" communications > systems. > > The common thread is very clear. Governments are increasingly > terrified of the communications abilities that Internet and other > technologies have provided their citizenry and other residents. > > While usually careful to express their concerns in the context of > seemingly laudable motives like fighting crime or terrorism, in > reality these governments have revealed the distrust and contempt with > which they view their populations at large. > > This is by no means a new phenomenon. > > Throughout human history, governments and many leaders have cast a > jaundiced eye on virtually every new technological development that > enabled communications, particularly if that technology made it easier > for direct person-to-person messages to be exchanged outside the view > of government services and minders. > > These government efforts to suppress and control communications have > virtually all failed in the end, though a great deal of damage has > been done to individuals and groups in the process. > > At one time, even the ability to read and write was considered too > dangerous a skill set for the commoners. The invention of the > printing press threw government and churches alike into convulsions of > apprehension. > > And now "social media" is the new scapegoat, the whipping boy, the > technological designated evil that short-sighted politicians of both > major parties, and their various administrative minions and > supporters, are demanding be monitored, leashed, and controlled. > > In reality of course, it's not the technology that these persons wish > to leash -- it's ordinary people. It's you and me and the vastness of > other law-abiding persons who have become the targets of the 21st > century law enforcement mantra: "Screw the Bill of Rights -- treat > everybody like a suspect, all the time." > > The broad implications of this "guilty until proven innocent" mindset > are all around us now. They're at the heart of the newly revealed > alliance between CIA and the New York Police Department to monitor the > activities of innocent citizens, using surveillance techniques that > would have seemed comfortably familiar to the old East German Stasi > secret police. > > They're seen in the massive government-mandated Internet data > retention demanded by "The Protecting Children from Internet > Pornographers Act of 2011" -- now moving rapidly through Congress, and > disingenuously titled to suggest it only applies to child abuse, when > in reality its true reach would broadly encompass all manner of > Internet access activities ( http://j.mp/o13jMO [Atlantic] ). > > Governments seem to increasingly no longer feel that it's necessary or > desirable to have "probable cause" or court orders before spying on > individuals, tracking their movements via hidden GPS units, building > dossiers, or even disrupting communications. Constitutional > guarantees are more and more viewed by our leaders as quaint artifacts > of the past, to be ignored today merely as annoying inconveniences. > > The innocent are now being treated largely as potential "future > criminals" -- and so subject to many of the same sorts of surveillance > and other law enforcement techniques that in the past were generally > limited to specific suspects of specific crimes. > > To the extent that these activities for now appear to be mostly aimed > at persons with skin colors or religions different from us, it becomes > easier to "go with the flow" of this new law enforcement mentality, to > not make waves, to be quiet, to be sheep. > > But the same techniques used today against one group can be easily > repurposed for others. Government ordered records of users' Internet > activities will affect us all, and the infrastructures created to > support these surveillance-related systems may be be extremely > long-lived. > > When governments no longer trust the people, when officials make the > mental and physical leaps to targeting vast numbers of innocent > persons in the manner of criminal suspects of yesteryear, we have > embarked on a road that leads to a very dark place indeed. > > Today, social media is the crosshairs. Governments certainly are > enthusiastic about using social media for their own investigatory and > enforcement purposes, but they appear to be desperately seeking ways > to control and limit the ability of ordinary persons to communicate > privately and securely on these systems, or to use them at all in some > cases. > > This is hypocrisy of the highest order. It is a serious risk to > innocent individuals being targeted by its adherents today. > > Unchallenged, tomorrow it will be a serious risk to us all. > > --Lauren-- > Lauren Weinstein (lauren(a)vortex.com) http://www.vortex.com/lauren > Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org > Founder: > - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org > - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org > - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com > Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy > Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com > Google+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren > Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein > Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > privacy mailing list > http://lists.vortex.com/mailman/listinfo/privacy -- Marshall Marshall Clow Idio Software <mailto:mclow.lists@gmail.com> A.D. 1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the church door and is promptly moderated down to (-1, Flamebait). -- Yu Suzuki _______________________________________________ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss(a)lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss ----- 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] Silent Circle to publish source code?
by Nathan 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Here's my prediction: Silent Circle will not fundamentally change anything. It will have no where near the impact that Phil's work on open cryptography standards has. It may be a great niche product for businesses, professional journalist groups and large NGOs looking for a turnkey solution. It will not be relevant for the majority people on the ground in high risk places with state based surveillance. It will not satisfy the most privacy concerned users in "free" countries either. Ultimately it is a *commercial product* aiming to package up complex capabilities into a promise of a tidy easy to use solutions. It is a worthy endeavor but there are many, many people out there trying to go the business route and I don't believe there is actually enough of a market for this to satisfy a venture capitalist or organic revenue to sustain itself. Cryptophone, WaveSecure, Cryptcell, IronKey, ZeroBank, Hushmail are just a few attempted similar efforts. All worthy efforts... but niche and ultimately not having the large impact we all might hope, and perhaps some even doing damage by promoting forked, out of date solutions. I fundamentally believe you can't design a product both for CEOs and revolutionaries. The threat models are entirely different. You can't be all things to all people especially if you are charging 20 USD per user per month, on top of a users existing 3g data plan. +n8fr8 Nadim Kobeissi <nadim(a)nadim.cc> wrote: >It would have been much nicer to create this thread based on real source >code, instead of a tweet based on word of mouth. We'll see. > >NK > >On 10/11/2012 3:27 PM, Yosem Companys wrote: >> Dan Gillmor @dangillmor: @kaepora Phil Zimmerman told me yesterday >> that Silent Circle (contrary to what you say in your post) will >> publish source code. >> -- >> Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech >> >-- >Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/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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Re: [liberationtech] Looking for collaborators for free-range voting project at Knight News Challenge:
by Ruben Bloemgarten 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Irrespective of zombies et al. Voting requires the following basic elements : 1. verifiability when casting the vote, i.e. the voter can see that the vote that is cast will be the vote that is counted. This is not possible without a paper trail which is also a valid vote. 2. Counting control. Each step of the electoral process has to be transparent for it to be valid. This means that *anyone* is allowed to observe the counting of the votes, *and* is able to understand that counting process. A printout of a result is not sufficient. Don4t forget that casting the vote is the least important of the process, counting the votes is. 3. Anonimity. There can not be any moment that a vote can be backtracked to the person voting. Again, this can not be based on "trusting a system". In many voting laws this anonymity has to be guaranteed, a guarantee that even with paper ballots is problematic, but is practically impossible in the case of electronic voting. When we are discussing voting in its function of the backbone of a democratic system, i.e. the moment when we temporarily delegate our individual power to a representative, deciding who will wield the monopoly on violence, there can be no aspect of this process that is based on trust. If ever there was a system which has distrust at its core, it is voting. The only way to have any form of electronic voting be reliable is when it is seconded by a re-countable paper copy, which means the choice is between one big central printer distributing paper ballots or lots of little little ones printing the ballot on the fly. This excludes online voting completely and makes the entire concept a little silly really. Apart from a child-like enthusiasm for anything with buttons and shiny lights, can anyone here explain to me what the intended benefits of electronic voting over paper voting would be ? Please note that all of the above only applies to political elections, electronic voting is perfectly fine when voting for the X-factor. - Ruben On 02/26/2013 01:35 PM, Rich Kulawiec wrote: > > It won't work. Until the bot/zombie is solved, online voting is > a non-starter, since any election worthy of being stolen can be. > It doesn't matter what you do on the server side: you can construct as > elaborate and clever and secure an infrastructure as you wish...because > on the client side, there is no way to ensure that what the user sees > is what's actually happening. (After all: it's not *their* computer > any more. Its new owners can, if they wish, cause a vote for candidate > A to be sent as a vote for candidate B, and they can prevent the user > from knowing that's happened.) > > And given that (a) we're now about a decade into the zombie problem > (b) no significant effort against them has ever been attempted, > let alone completed [1] and (c) the problem is already epidemic and > continues to get worse [2] [3], there is no reason whatsoever to think > it will be mitigated, let alone solved, in the forseeable future. > > This doesn't just apply to your proposal: it applies to *all* of > them. Unless you can propose and execute a viable plan for solving > the zombie problem, then whatever you design/build can be undercut > whenever someone chooses to make the effort. (And provided they're > not foolishly heavy-handed about it, it's unlikely you would be able > to detect this. [4]) > > ---rsk > > [1] Botnet "takedowns" are unimportant and irrelevant; their only > purpose is to provide a forum for the spokesliars at Microsoft et.al. > to trumpet their prowess while a gullible press and public overlook > that they *created* this problem. Merely removing C&C networks does > nothing to remediate the individual members of the botnets, which are > still compromised, still vulnerable, and likely to be conscripted into > other botnets before the day is out. > > [2] We're now seeing portable devices zombie'd: phones, tablets, etc. > > [3] Estimates of zombie population vary, of course, but clearly, any > estimate under 100M should be laughed out of the room. Vint Cerf gave > an estimate of 150M just about six years ago, and based on my own work > as well as that of others in the anti-spam/abuse area, I thought that > was on the high side at the time...but it's most certainly not now. > I think the number's probably in the 200-300M range at this point. > See: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070125-8707.html for > Cerf's comments. > > [4] See Schneier's insightful and chilling piece on this here: > > https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0404.html#4 > > That piece should be absolutely mandatory reading for anyone even > considering voting systems. It not only provides a method for > estimating attacker budgets, but it correctly points out that attackers > quite often could tip the balance of an election by manipulating a > rather small number of votes -- with a corresponding reduction in the > probability that the manipulation will be detected. > > Note that Schneier wrote that in 2004. If you repeat his analysis > with numbers from the 2012 election cycle you'll end up with *much* > large attacker budgets. For example, Schneier says that in 2002, > Congressional candidates raised over 500M. But > > https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012/10/2012-election-spending-will-reach-… > > says that in 2012, they spent about $1.82B. > > -- > Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys(a)stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech > -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys(a)stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/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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