July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

None
by None 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

(cpe-066-061-026-172.midsouth.rr.com [66.61.26.172]) by bullae.ibuc.com (Postfix) with SMTP id C8526827C8D for <rah(a)philodox.com>; Sun, 19 Sep 2004 21:29:52 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <20040931642.2795811652(a)shadowcrew.com> Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 01:33:55 +0000 From: <notify(a)attens.com> Subject: How one can become a terrorist? To: <rah(a)philodox.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Welcome to our web site www.shadowcrew.com/phpBB2/index.php Please use http://63.240.81.5 in case of our domain outage. You're invited to shop for large selection of bombs and different kinds of rockets such as surface-to-air, surface-to-surface and weaponry available at reduced price. With the following types of rockets you will be able to commit terrorist attacks, destroy buildings, electric power stations, bridges, factories and anything else that comes your mind. Most items are in stock and available for next day freight delivery in the USA. Worldwide delivery is available at additional cost. Prices are negotiable. Please feel free to inquire by ICQ # 176928755 or contacting us directly: +1-305-592-2222 +1-919-319-8249 +1-314-770-3395 Today special: ******* AIR BOMBS ******* OFAB-500U HE fragmentation air bomb Fuel-air explosive air bombs -Not in stock BETAB-500U concrete-piercing air bomb ZB-500RT incendiary tank 500-KG SIZE RBK-500U unified cluster bomb RBK-500U OAB-2.5PT loaded with fragmentation submunitions RBK-500U BETAB-M loaded with concrete-piercing submunitions-Not in stock RBK-500U OFAB-50UD loaded with HE fragmentation submunitions ******* UNGUIDED AIRCRAFT ROCKETS ******* Main-purpose unguided aircraft rockets S-8 unguided aircraft rockets S-8KOM S-8BM-Not in stock S-13 unguided aircraft rockets S-13, S-13T, S-13-OF, S-13D, S-13DF S-25-0 S-25-OFM S-24B -Not in stock RS-82 RS-132-Not in stock ******* ROCKET PODS ******* B-8M pod for S-8 rockets B-8V20-A pod for S-8 rockets B-13L pod for S-13 rockets Recently received *NEW* Hydra 70 2.75 inch Rockets Air-Launched 2.75-Inch Rockets FIM-92A Stinger Weapons System Stinger 101: Anti-Air Our clients are well known Al-Qaida, Hizballah, Al-Jihad, HAMAS, Abu Sayyaf Group and many other terrorist groups. We are well known supplier in the market and looking forward to expand our clientage with assistance of Internet. Do not hesitate to contact us via ICQ # 176928755 Impatiently awaiting for your orders, ShadowCrew --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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[Remops] Comparison between two practical mix designs (Mixmaster vs. Reliable)
by Peter Palfrader 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Hi, you may be interested in a paper by Claudia Diaz, Len Sassaman, and Evelyne Dewitte. Evelyne is a statistician and Claudia an anonymity researcher, both at the University of Leuven, Belgium. Abstract: We evaluate the anonymity provided by two popular email mix implementations, Mixmaster and Reliable, and compare their effectiveness through the use of simulations which model the algorithms used by these mixing applications. In order to draw accurate conclusions about the operation of these mixes, we use as our input to these simulations actual traffic data obtained from a public anonymous remailer (mix node). We determine that assumptions made in previous literature about the distribution of mix input traffic are incorrect, and our analysis of the input traffic shows that it follows no known distribution. We establish for the first time that a lower bound exists on the anonymity of Mixmaster, and discover that under certain circumstances the algorithm used by Reliable provides no anonymity. We find that the upper bound on anonymity provided by Mixmaster is slightly higher than that provided by Reliable. We identify flaws in the software code in Reliable that further compromise its ability to provide anonymity, and review key areas which are necessary for the security of a mix in addition to a sound algorithm. Our analysis can be used to evaluate under which circumstances the two mixing algorithms should be utilized to best achieve anonymity and satisfy their purpose. Our work can also be used as a framework for establishing a security review process for mix node deployments. The full paper can be found at http://www.abditum.com/~rabbi/mixvreliable.pdf Note that this is still a draft. -- Stats, Metastats, All Pingers' List, RemSaint, Keyrings: http://www.noreply.org/ Echolot - a pinger for Anonymous Remailers - http://www.palfrader.org/echolot/ _______________________________________________ Remops mailing list Remops(a)freedom.gmsociety.org http://freedom.gmsociety.org/mailman/listinfo/remops ----- 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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Re: anonymous IP terminology (Re: [anonsec] Re: potential new IETF
by Adam Back 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

WG on anonymous IPSec (fwd from hal(a)finney.org)) User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i Sender: owner-cryptography(a)metzdowd.com On Sat, Sep 11, 2004 at 11:38:00AM -0700, Joe Touch wrote: > >>Although anonymous access is not the primary goal, it is a feature > >>of the solution. > > > >The access is _not_ anonymous. The originator's IP, ISP call traces, > >phone access records will be all over it and associated audit logs. > > And you cannot determine whether that IP address came from the authentic > owner of that address or is spoofed. I'll try to be more careful - > you're right, in that it's not anonymous access. It IS anonymous > security, though. I think you are confusing a weak potential for a technical ambiguity of identity under attack conditions with anonymity. (The technical ambiguity would likely disappear in most practical settings). Anonymity implies positives steps to avoid linking with PII. With anonymity you want not just technical ambiguity, but genuinely pluasible deniability from an anonymity set -- preferably a large set of users who could equally plausibly have established a given connection, participated in an authentication protocol etc. We don't after all call TCP anonymous, and your system is cleary _less_ "anonymous" than TCP as there are security mechanisms involved with various keys and authentication protocols which will only reduce ambiguity. > >The distinguishing feature of anonymous is that not only is your name > >not associated with the connection but there is no PII (personally > >identifiable information) associated with it or obtainable from logs > >kept. > > If I know the IP address you used, I still know NOTHING, FWIW. This is > no more distinguishable than the port number is in identifying something > behind a NAT. Practically, knowing the IP address conveys a lot. Many ISPs have logs, some associated with DSL subscriber and phone records, for billing, bandwidth caps, abuse complaints, spam cleanup etc etc. The IP may be used for many different logged activities and some of those activites may involve directly identified authentication. People go to lengths to hide their IP precisely because it does typically convey all too much. > >And to be clear also anonymous means unlinkable anonymous across > >multiple connections (which SSH type of authentication would not be) > > That might be more specifically "per-connection anonymous", but the term > 'anonymous' is too general for that usage. However, there's still > nothing associated across connections in ANONSEC, IMO. > You cannot know whether two connections from 10.0.0.1 on two different > ports with two different cookies are from the same endpoint. The point > of ANONSEC is that you don't care. If one wants this to be true in practice it has to propogate up the stack. (Not the problem of ANONSEC, a problem for the higher level app). But even at the authentication protocol level one has to be quite careful. There are many gotchas if you really do want it to be unlinkable. (eg. pseudo random sequences occur in many settings at different protocol levels which are in fact quite linkable). I'll give you one high level example. At ZKS we had software to remail MIME mail to provide a pseudonymous email. But one gotcha is that mail clients include MIME boundary lines which are pseudo-random (purely to avoid string collision). If these random lines are generated with a non-cryptographic RNG it is quite likely that so called unlinkable mail would in fact be linkable because of this higher level protocol. (We cared about unlinkability even tho' I said pseudonymous because the user had multiple pseudonyms which were supposed to be unlinkable across). I would say if your interest in fixing such pseudo random sequeneces is not present you should not be calling this anonymous. But if it is part of your threat model, then you may in fact be using anonymous authentication and that would be interesting to me at least to participate. Adam --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.com --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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[Dewayne-Net] John Millen: Robert Heinlein at 100
by dewayne＠warpspeed.com 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

[Note: This item comes from friend John McMullen. DLH]

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John Millen: Robert Heinlein at 100
by John F. McMullen 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

From National Review -- <http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/? q=YjE5OGQwZDgzODc5OTYwODRkNTIzM2Y5ZWZhNDUwNTE=> In a Strange Land by JOHN J. MILLER When Robert A. Heinlein opened his Colorado Springs newspaper on April 5, 1958, he read a full-page ad demanding that the Eisenhower administration stop testing nuclear weapons. The science-fiction author was flabbergasted. He called for the formation of the Patrick Henry League and spent the next several weeks writing and publishing his own polemic that lambasted "Communist-line goals concealed in idealistic-sounding nonsense" and urged Americans not to become "soft- headed." Then Heinlein made an important professional decision. He quit writing the manuscript he had been working on - eventually it would become one of his best-known books, Stranger in a Strange Land - and started work on a new novel. Starship Troopers was published the next year, and it quickly became perhaps the most controversial sci-fi tale of all time. Critics labeled Heinlein everything from a Nazi to a racist. "The 'Patrick Henry' ad shocked 'em," he wrote many years later. "Starship Troopers outraged 'em." Almost half a century later, the book continues to outrage, shock - and awe. It still has critics, but also armies of admirers. As a coming-of-age story about duty, citizenship, and the role of the military in a free society, Starship Troopers certainly speaks to modern concerns. The U.S. armed services frequently put it on recommended-reading lists. ("For today's Sailor, this novel is extremely worthwhile," says a Navy website.) Director Paul Verhoeven turned it into an unfaithful movie in 1997, and a new edition, released last year, features a sand-and-choppers cover that looks curiously like a scene from Iraq. There's even a grassroots campaign to have a next-generation, Zumwalt-class destroyer named the USS Robert A. Heinlein. Heinlein's influence reaches far beyond a single book, of course. He was the first sci-fi author to make the bestseller lists, the winner of multiple awards, and the inspiration for a legion of proteges and imitators whose own volumes now weigh down bookstore shelves. He was not the most accomplished literary stylist in his genre, but he spun a good yarn, grappled with big ideas, and left an enduring imprint on a popular field. He was arguably the preeminent sci-fi author of the 20th century. One of the key differences between him and the two men who might also compete for this title - Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke - is that whereas they were political liberals, Heinlein was a man of the Right. Robert Anson Heinlein was born in Butler, Mo., on July 7, 1907. (His centenary is now upon us.) Growing up, he became an avid reader of everything from Mark Twain to Jack London. As biographer Bill Patterson has pointed out, sci-fi pioneer H. G. Wells made a big impression - and not just because he wrote about Martian tripods in The War of the Worlds. Young Heinlein picked up Wells's twin devotion to science and socialism. The boy followed his brother to the Naval Academy and graduated high in his class in 1929. Seasickness and other health problems plagued him, however, and five years later he left the Navy with a medical disability. He settled in Los Angeles and threw himself into left- wing politics, joining the campaign to elect the muckraking novelist Upton Sinclair to California's governorship in 1934. This effort failed, but Heinlein remained a leader among local Democrats. He ran for the state assembly from Hollywood in 1938 and lost the primary. There is some mystery in Heinlein's early biography, partly because Heinlein liked it that way. Virtually nothing is known about a short first marriage, and fairly little is known about a second one that lasted from 1932 to 1947. Only in recent years have researchers come to appreciate the full extent of his radical activism. What's clear is that shortly after his 1938 political defeat, he tried his hand at professional writing. A first novel, For Us, the Living, was not published until a posthumous edition came out in 2003, but he kept at it. Following World War II, his career blasted off. For a while, Heinlein concentrated on short stories for the pulps and short novels for teenage boys. As with all great science fiction, his constantly speculated about technology, social progress, good government, and so on. By the early 1950s, married for a third and final time, he was drifting away from his left-wing past and adopting a new brand of politics. In The Puppet Masters, a 1951 novel meant for an adult audience, slug-like alien parasites land in Iowa and take over the minds of Americans. It falls upon a secret agency within the U.S. government to fight back, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance. The Puppet Masters may be read as a classic invasion-of-the-body-snatchers story - and also as an anti-Communist metaphor during the era of Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs, and Joe McCarthy. The 1950s were probably Heinlein's most prolific period, and the decade culminated with the publication of Starship Troopers. The story focuses on Juan Rico as he graduates from high school, joins the space marines, and wages interplanetary war on a belligerent race of "bugs" whose ant-like collectivism makes them natural-born Communists. Most of the story focuses on Rico's boot camp - Starship Troopers is dedicated "to all sargeants [sic] anywhere who have labored to make men out of boys." The basic training is both physical and intellectual, with readers treated to a colorful denunciation of "the disheveled old mystic of Das Kapital, turgid, tortured, confused, and neurotic, unscientific, illogical, this pompous fraud Karl Marx." One of the main non-ideological complaints about Starship Troopers involves the plotting - too much talk and not enough shoot-'em-up scenes against those extraterrestrial creepy-crawlies. Yet the richness of the novel lies in these more thought-provoking sections, where Heinlein inserts miniature monologues that sound like outtakes from Zell Miller's GOP convention address. "My mother says that violence never settles anything," comments one character. A teacher who doubles as Heinlein's mouthpiece then pounces: "Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms." For those with delicate sensibilities - the type of people who would pay for newspaper ads that demand nuclear-test bans - this is sheer bombast. But Heinlein doesn't stop there. He goes on to describe a society in which citizens gain the right to vote through military service. His conjectures about "the decadence and collapse" of 20th- century democracies are also designed to raise liberal hackles: "Those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted . . . and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears." The notion that you can't get something for nothing would become a major theme for Heinlein. Detractors called Heinlein a fascist and a militarist - a strange charge, given that he was also an outspoken critic of conscription. "If a country can't save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say: Let the damned thing go down the drain," he once said. As for labels, around the time Starship Troopers came out, he called himself "a pragmatic libertarian." Heinlein certainly wasn't a conservative traditionalist. His most popular book, in terms of copies sold, was Stranger in a Strange Land - a paean to sexual liberation and an attack on organized religion. Published in 1961, it resonated with hippies and gave Heinlein a mass following. Yet the author, despite a lifelong interest in unusual family arrangements, remained aloof from the counterculture: In 1964, he and his wife Virginia were enthusiastically for Barry Goldwater. A few years later, according to Robert A. Heinlein: A Reader's Companion, he signed a magazine ad that supported U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. In his recent book Radicals for Capitalism, Brian Doherty observes that "a youthful love for Heinlein's tales of rugged individualists often lies in the past of dedicated libertarian activists" - a statement that's possible in large measure because of the 1966 novel that many regard as Heinlein's greatest: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. The story takes place mostly within a lunar colony, where the residents grow restless under a command-and-control economy imposed by the Lunar Authority, a government that operates for the benefit of earthlings. "Here in Luna we're rich. Three million hardworking, smart, skilled people, enough water, plenty of everything, endless power, endless cubic," says one of the moon- dwelling Loonies. "What we don't have is a free market. We must get rid of the Authority!" A few pages later: "It strikes me as the most basic human right, the right to bargain in a free marketplace." The Loonies rebel in ways that echo the American Revolution, such as declaring independence on July 4, 2076. There are battles, diplomatic missions, debates on hydroponic-food exports - plus lots of discussion about how societies ought to organize themselves. Heinlein makes his distaste for taxes abundantly clear. There's even some chatter about immigration policy: "Luna has room . . . the mind cannot imagine the day when Luna would refuse another shipload of weary homeless." For a catchy slogan, the Loonies use "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." Frequently expressed as the acronym "TANSTAAFL," the Milton Friedmanesque phrase is probably the most famous line in Heinlein's large oeuvre. Although idealistic, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress steers clear of libertarian fantasyland. Heinlein is well aware that revolutions don't lead to utopia, and the successful lunar revolt is no different. By the novel's end, the moon's new government has rejected the innovations that Heinlein apparently believes it should have embraced: "Seems to be a deep instinct in human beings for making everything compulsory that isn't forbidden," complains the narrator, who considers lighting out for the asteroids. There's certainly no point in fighting human nature: "I long ago quit being disappointed in men for what they are not and never can be," says another character, expressing a sentiment that is nothing if not conservative. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress was Heinlein's last great work. He continued to write until his death in 1988, overcoming health problems to do it and engaging in politics when it seemed appropriate. Heinlein was an early backer of the Strategic Defense Initiative and, according to his friend and fellow sci-fi author Jerry Pournelle, he helped develop some of the language President Reagan used in his speech introducing the concept. At the time, Reagan's domestic foes derided SDI as pure science fiction. To drive home the point, they even dubbed it "Star Wars." If Heinlein had lived to his 100th birthday - and witnessed recent advances in missile-defense technology - he might have smiled at their fulminations, and maybe even written a book about the subject. * * * Robert A. Heinlein wasn't the only author to write sci-fi novels that resonate with conservatives - the genre is full of books that lean rightward. Here's a list of recommended titles, drawn from my own experience as well as suggestions from readers of National Review Online. We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin: Soviet censors banned this landmark novel shortly after it was written in 1921 because they correctly interpreted its portrayal of the One State" as a hammering critique of their own emerging totalitarianism. Two better-known dystopian successors - Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984 - stand upon its broad shoulders. Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength, by C. S. Lewis: Before he wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis wrote this space trilogy, which blends interplanetary adventure with subtle theology. The books were started partly in response to Lewis's concern that (in his words) Ra 'scientific' hope of defeating death is a real rival to Christianity.S The Weapon Shops of Isher, by A. E. van Vogt: In this 1951 novel by a sci-fi pioneer, the only check on imperial power is a network of weapon shops whose motto is "the right to buy weapons is the right to be free." But beware of invisibility shields! Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury: Often hailed as a simple cautionary tale about book-burning censorship, this perennial favorite of librarians is really about much more, from the perils of a dumbed- down culture to the importance of preserving traditions. Russell Kirk called it "a passionate and tender and terrifying description of a democratic despotism." Aficionados of the book will appreciate Match to Flame, a brand-new volume edited by Donn Albright that collects precursors to Bradbury's 1953 masterpiece. A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller Jr.: Just as Irish monks are said to have "saved Western civilization," the Catholic Church keeps tradition alive in the barbaric years following a nuclear apocalypse. The final section of this three-part novel, written in the 1950s, makes a powerful moral argument against euthanasia. Ironically, the author committed suicide in 1996. "Harrison Bergeron," by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.: Although Vonnegut was a man of the Left, this tale is so conservative that NR reprinted it in 1965. The opener: "The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal . . . due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General." Coming in at just a little more than 2,000 words, this is a short-short story. "Harrison Bergeron" may be found in Welcome to the Monkey House, a collection of Vonnegut's work. Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke: A classic work of hard sci- fi - a subgenre that emphasizes technical accuracy and detail - this 1972 story focuses on the discovery of a derelict alien spacecraft. It turns out that modern science can't solve every enigma. Fans of tidy and conclusive endings will come away disappointed, others with much to ponder. The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle: It's hard to go wrong with Niven and Pournelle, whether they're writing separately or as a team. This 1974 novel of first contact carries lessons for conservative hawks and liberal doves. Heinlein called it "possibly the best science-fiction novel I have ever read." Other Niven-Pournelle collaborations worth checking out include Oath of Fealty, about urban conflict in the future, and Fallen Angels (with a third co-author, Michael Flynn), which is a forerunner to Michael Crichton's anti-global-warming thriller State of Fear. The Giver, by Lois Lowry: This powerful and disturbing book won the Newbery Medal for children's literature in 1994. Just beneath the surface of a seemingly utopian society lurks a menacing culture of death, built upon a foundation of euphemisms and lies. - JOHN J. MILLER ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com </x-flowed> --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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[IP] John Millen: Robert Heinlein at 100
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

<x-flowed> Begin forwarded message:

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[drone-list] A sampling of robots in popular culture
by Gregory Foster 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Today, Syfy announced it has wrapped production on the first season of "Robot Combat League," gladiator-style matches featuring 8-foot tethered robots controlled by human operators. Entertainment Weekly (Nov 20) - "Giant boxing robots reality show unveiled by Syfy -- EXCLUSIVE": http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/11/20/robot-combat-league/ The article mentions another "robot combat show" announced by Discovery Channel in April produced by James Cameron ("Avatar", "Titanic") and Mark Burnett ("Survivor") called "Robogeddon": http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/11/james-cameron-to-create-robogeddon/ Steven Spielberg has committed to filming an adaptation of Carnegie Mellon Robotics Ph.D Daniel H. Wilson's text _Robopocalypse_: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robopocalypse I'd like to suggest these are somewhat interesting sociocultural reflections of HRW's admirable though perhaps Quixotic call for the banning of killer robots. What is this desire people have to see robots smash each other? How does that comport with the desire people have to be frightened about robots annihilating the human species (as evidenced by the uncounted books and films that revisit that theme)? Finally, what is the nature of the gap or disconnect between the latter and the very real work to create Lethal Autonomous Robots? Might it have something to do with the former? ymmv, gf -- Gregory Foster || gfoster(a)entersection.org @gregoryfoster <> http://entersection.com/ _______________________________________________ drone-list mailing list drone-list(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/drone-list 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. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. ----- 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: [serval-project-dev] Implementing a different routing protocol
by Fraser Cadger 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Jeremy, Thanks again for your help. I appreciate that as you said, it can be difficult trying to help people understand your own software. I decided to send my initial message because I had tried reading through the code several times, picking up bits and pieces, but being unsure about exactly how things fitted together. I genuinely found your previous comments very illuminating and useful, and when I compared your comments with the code a great deal of it made sense and I then started thinking about ways of implementing my own routing. In fact, I produced a short report for my supervisor based on this and detailing the steps I intended to take to implement our routing protocol on Serval. I was about to dive in with this when I realised that I did not really know how the update process worked and that this was a very important factor! So I looked at the code again and tried to work my way through, making notes, those notes were then used in my last post. As you said in your comment it is better to work with people who are making independent progress, so that was why I tried to explain my understanding instead of jumping straight in with questions. Actually, I have been meaning to check back with the current version of the software in repository, as I noticed a few functions were in different locations and you mentioned that the self announce had been redesigned, so this is something I'll look at. Ok, so I'll now try to explain what I intend to do with routing. Our overall aim is to develop a protocol called Geographic QoS Predictive Routing (GQPR) which uses geographic/location/mobility information as well as other context to make QoS predictions for neighbours, these predictions are then used as the basis for forwarding decisions. GQPR is intended to act as the routing element in a framework called Geographic QoS Peer-to-peer Streaming (GQP2PS) which will run on WiFi devices (at the moment a testbed of six Android phones + my own Android tablet) and facilitate the streaming of both live (i.e. video call) and on-demand (i.e. recorded video) between the devices. The intended use case is for disaster recovery scenarios, for instance someone with basic medical/first aid training comes across an injured person but is not exactly sure what course of action to take, so they can initiate a video call with a doctor located at base station (or anywhere else covered by the network) who is able to view the patient and perform a diagnosis and if necessary supervise the treatment. This is just on scenario, it could also be used for repairing infrastructure where an engineer supervises and guides the repair process. Indeed, the technology could be used for many purposes unrelated to disaster recovery, but we are focussing on this to give us a specific aim, although the ideas for the technology actually came before the idea for application. What we have at present is the building blocks of GQPR which we have called GPR - Geographic Predictive Routing - GPR contains some of the main elements of what will become GQPR but not all of the functionality. At present GPR uses location predictions (provided by an Artificial Neural Network) as well as some other factors (congestion level, radio range, a metric we'd developed called neighbour range (this relates to the positions of a neighbour's neighbours), amongst others to make forwarding decisions. I think explaining GPR would make the most sense if I first explained how basic geographic routing worked and then discussed our modifications to it. As the name implies, geographic routing makes forwarding decisions based on node's geographic locations instead of logical addresses. The most basic form of geographic routing is greedy geographic routing. Greedy geographic routing works as follows: - A packet is received, the node inspects the packet and records the location of the destination - The node then calculates the physical distance between itself and the destination - All of the node's neighbours are then compared against this distance - The one with the shortest distance to the destination is selected as the next hop Greedy geographic routing does not create end-to-end routes (which is why some people prefer the term forwarding, although the terms are used interchangeably in literature), instead nodes are forwarded on a per-hop basis using the greedy criterion. This does seem a bit similar to BATMAN, where packets are also forwarded on a per-hop basis, however the big difference is that in greedy geographic routing nodes only have knowledge about their directly connected neighbours (i.e. those within their radio range) and they do not know about destinations. So while BATMAN nodes know of the destination node's existence (but only know the next hop to reach it and not a full route), greedy geographic routing nodes know nothing about the destination (aside from its address and location) and simply make the forwarding decision based on which neighbour is closest to that destination. The idea being that by shortening the geographic distance at each hop we are finding the quickest way to reach a destination. Obviously this does not always hold true in practice, and their is a problem known as the local maximum where nodes are forced to drop packets if they cannot find a neighbour closer to the destination than themselves (to prevent loops, the packet cannot travel physically backwards). However, greedy geographic routing is relatively lightweight, and highly localised as nodes are only required to know their directly connected neighbours and so are not affected by topology changes at the other side of the network (although this does mean nodes will sometimes forward packets to unreachable destinations). There have been quite a few modifications and variants to standard greedy geographic routing, some of which are more similar to conventional routing protocols by establishing end-to-end routes (but using geographic information to do so), while others focus on particular problems (QoS, energy consumption, security, etc.) I spent a large period of my first year surveying different geographic routing protocols and published this as a paper if you're interested in finding more about geographic routing (shameless plug for my own paper!!!); http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6238283&tag=1 . Getting back to basic greedy routing, obviously nodes need a way of discovering their immediate neighbours as well as finding the locations of other nodes who they are not directly connected to. The first is achieved through the sending of beacon messages at set periods of time, beacons are just your bog standard hello-type messages except they contain the coordinates of the sending node. Neighbours are stored in a dedicated neighbour table along with their coordinates, this neighbour table is the only table nodes store. The second is more difficult, but typically involves the use of something called a location service which usually involves certain nodes being designated as location servers. Regular nodes periodically send location updates to these servers and when a node needs to send a packet to a destination it is not connected to it will query the relevant location server for that node's destination. Exactly how the location service works depends on the particular scheme being used. So now to talk about GPR. Structurally GPR is very similar to classical greedy geographic routing, it was originally implemented on top of the code developed by Karp and Kung for their protocol known as GPSR (Geographic Perimeter Stateless Routing). What we did was first implement a neural network algorithm which predicts the future location of a device based on two previous coordinates, and the times they were recorded at. Tests found that the location prediction algorithm was able to accurately predict the future locations of neighbouring devices with an error of less than 1m in most instances. At present the use of the location prediction algorithm is relatively simple, all we are doing is looking at our neighbours two previous locations (and timestamps) and using these to determine what position the neighbour will be in when we send the packet. This allows us to use greedy geographic routing, but with the ability to cope with changes in location. In order to avoid sending packets to nodes that are too far away, we always check their predicted location against our transmission range to ensure they are within it. So in addition to using the location predictions we developed a modified congestion control algorithm which weighs the neighbour's congestion level against the distance between the neighbour and other factors such as the reliability of the node's information. The calculation is stored as a value t, and then we evaluate the neighbour's neighbour range (i.e. the physical range covered by its own neighbours), and if that neighbour is the best it becomes the candidate node and the other node's values for t are compare against it, and so until we finish the loop and end up with the best neighbour (or none in which case we'll drop the packet). Another factor is that because we are using location predictions we do not need node updates as frequently as geographic routing normally dictates. So while ordinary geographic routing protocols usually send these messages over 0.5s we send them every 13.6s which reduces the amount of control traffic. This is a number based on ns-2 experimentation and it is likely that in real wireless network it will need to be more frequent, but we still expect it to be a lot less frequent than the conventional 0.5s. It might not seem like a huge modification, but it performs a lot better than unmodified greedy geographic routing in simulations of video calling and streaming traffic, and compares well with AODV, DSR, and DSDV. If you look at the bulletin points I typed above to describe greedy geographic routing, it is very similar except our means of calculating the best next hop is slightly different. As I said earlier, I had thought about and discussed with my supervisor how we could go about implementing GPR in Serval. We both decided that it was best to implement basic greedy geographic routing first and then work from there. There is a possibility that the NN algorithm we used in simulations will be too resource-intensive for the phones we are using and will either need to be modified or replaced with a different approach (we have some backups), so our plan is to implement basic geographic routing first, conduct separate experiments of the NN algorithm on the phones, and if everything goes well combine them, build GPR, and then continue working on the phones and simulations to create GQPR. In terms of implementing basic greedy geographic routing, I think making the forwarding decisions could be quite simple. When we are in overlay_stuff_packet(), instead of looking at the destination's next_hop field we would call a function which would loop through our list of neighbours and find the neighbour closest to the destination and select that as the next hop for the packet (or drop it if we can't find a suitable next hop). So that part seems quite simple. However, what seems a bit more complicated is implementing the beaconing messages. I can see two ways of doing this; keep the current Serval system of self announcements, self announcement acks, and node announcements and simply add locations to these messages. The other would be to get rid of node announcements, and just use self announcement and self announcement acks to transmit location information between directly connected nodes. This actually brings me to a question I forgot to ask; if self announce messages are regularly sent why do we need to ack these? If we are sending our own acks and receiving acks from other neighbours do we need an explicit reply? I.e. if we just send self announce messages, but after a period of time we don't get any self announce messages from neighour x, we remove them from our list of neighbours. Slight digression. Both of the two approaches I described have their advantages; the first is ostensibly simpler as we don't need to stop anything being sent, while the second means that we are getting something closer to the 'traditional' beacon approach used in geographic routing as well as avoiding the transmission of node announcements and the recording of indirect nodes which we will just ignore. On the other hand, if we keep node announcements this could actually act as a 'surrogate' for the location service if we include their locations. So if for instance we have three nodes; a, b, and with b being connected to a and c, a only being connected to b, and c only being connected to c. If b advertises c to a and a to c, then a is able to know the location of c (and vice versa) despite not being connected and without the need for a location service (obviously this is a trivial example as in this instance a can only reach c via b, so b is not really compared against anyone else). I realise that Serval's implementation of BATMAN is intended to limit the number of nodes a particular device knows about to avoid bandwidth going out of control, but as we only have a testbed of six this shouldn't be a problem for our experiments. Although we would obviously need to rethink for future uses which involve larger networks. So I imagine this would really be a temporary way of avoiding a location service, and in the long run we would still try to implement an explicit location service (possibly based on Serval Maps which Paul pointed me in the direction of). However, I did discuss the idea of retaining some BATMAN elements in our implementation (where we have some knowledge of nodes we are not directly connected to), instead of going for a pure greedy geographic routing approach (where we only know about our one-hop neighbours) as we are by no means obliged to use a particular approach and our ultimate aim is performance. Therefore it is possible that this will lead to us developing a hybrid approach between GPR/GQPR and BATMAN. However, I think for now the best approach might be for us to try both messages of messaging and see how they perform. I'm meeting my supervisor tomorrow, and I'm going to discuss this with him. I've read through your comments fully, so I think I should be able to start planning how I will modify Serval announcement/advertisement messages and then try to get something running next week. Unfortunately I am going back home for the Christmas holidays, and I will only have access to an Android tablet and a Windows laptop (which belongs to someone else!), so I'm not sure how much work I'll get done until January, but if I can get Android NDK up and running on the laptop I might be able to get some routing work done. Hopefully, the explanation of my work makes sense (or enough sense), and as I indicated before I am happy to share any code I develop myself (I have spoken about this with Paul). So in addition to developing my routing protocol I intend to work on video calling, and Paul stated this was something the Serval team wanted to include, so if I get that working I am more than happy to put the code in the repo. Regards, Fraser On 13 December 2012 07:12, Jeremy Lakeman <jeremy(a)servalproject.org> wrote: > > I'd much rather help someone who can demonstrate that they've tried to > > understand the problem on their own. > > I suppose I should clarify, just in case you take that sentence the > wrong way. It's very encouraging that you are showing an interest in > understanding our software for yourself. It can be very frustrating > working with people who fail to demonstrate any independent progress. > > Feel free to shoot off an email with any difficult unanswered > questions you have at the end of each day. With timezone differences > it's likely we can answer them before you start in the morning. I > don't mind taking half an hour here or there to solve a problem that > might take you a couple of days to solve otherwise. > > Also note that our software has been undergoing quite rapid changes > lately. Some of the research and understanding you have gained may > already be obsolete. > > If you can let me know some more details about your previous routing > experiments, I'll probably be able to refactor the interfaces to our > existing routing layer to make it easier for you to make the changes > you need. I'm intending to replace the routing layer eventually > anyway, so this will certainly be a productive use of my time. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Serval Project Developers" group. > To post to this group, send email to > serval-project-developers(a)googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > serval-project-developers+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/serval-project-developers?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Serval Project Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to serval-project-developers(a)googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to serval-project-developers+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/serval-project-developers?hl=en. ----- 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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[Politech] White House supports forcible DNA extraction from Americans by cops [priv]
by Declan McCullagh 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

We discussed this here weeks ago: http://www.politechbot.com/2005/09/13/more-on-dna/ http://www.politechbot.com/2005/09/10/federal-dna-database/ --- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/23/AR200509230… 65.html Bill Would Permit DNA Collection From All Those Arrested By Jonathan Krim Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, September 24, 2005; Page A03 Suspects arrested or detained by federal authorities could be forced to provide samples of their DNA that would be recorded in a central database under a provision of a Senate bill to expand government collection of personal data. The controversial measure was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee last week and is supported by the White House, but has not gone to the floor for a vote. It goes beyond current law, which allows federal authorities to collect and record samples of DNA only from those convicted of crimes. The data are stored in an FBI-maintained national registry that law enforcement officials use to aid investigations, by comparing DNA from criminals with evidence found at crime scenes. [...remainder snipped...] _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/) ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

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[IP] New US intelligence center to exploit publicly available information]
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [EPIC_IDOF] New US intelligence center to exploit publicly available information Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 08:15:06 -0500 From: Richard M. Smith <rms(a)computerbytesman.com> To: EPIC_IDOF(a)mailman.epic.org http://www.politicalgateway.com/news/read.html?id=5315 New US intelligence center to exploit publicly available information WASHINGTON, Nov 8 (PG) - US intelligence chief John Negroponte announced Tuesday the creation of a new CIA-managed center to exploit publicly available information for intelligence purposes. The so-called Open Source Center will gather and analyze information from a host of sources from the Internet and commercial databases to newspapers, radio, video, maps, publications and conference reports. Douglas Naquin, the center's director, said it will build on the work of the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which once monitored and translated foreign radio brodcasts but has since expanded its reach to other media. He said a key difference will be that the center aims to spread its findings and expertise across the US intelligence community, which consists of 15 agencies. "Generally what we go against is what's going to have the biggest intelligence impact where open sources can play an important role that either may or may not be covered by more clandestine intelligence activity or will augment it in some way," he told AFP. The FBIS' strength has been in tracking media trends that show, for instance, how foreign publics are responding to particular US policies. But in recent years a group at the FBIS also has been applying data mining techniques to analyze massive volumes of informaiton on the Internet or commercial databases, Naquin said. He said they are "trying to use what we call the volume problem against itself in some type of judo fashion -- you know, the more volume the better -- so we can kind of get some sense of where the trends are and what the buzz is on certain topics, or who's connected to whom." _______________________________________________ EPIC_IDOF mailing list EPIC_IDOF(a)mailman.epic.org https://mailman.epic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/epic_idof ------------------------------------- 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> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

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