July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

so how do *you* manage your keys, then? part 3
by Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

So How Do You Manage Your Keys Then, part 3 of 5 In part one of this series [1] I described how Tahoe-LAFS combines decryption, integrity-checking, identification, and access into one bitstring, called an "immutable file read-cap" (short for "capability"). In part two [2] I described how users can build tree- like structures of files which contain caps pointing to other files, and how the cap pointing to the root of such a structure can reside on a different computer than the ciphertext. (Which is necessary if you want someone to store the ciphertext for you but you don't want to give them the ability to read the file contents.) In this installment, consider the question of whether you can give someone a cap (which acts as a file handle) and then change the contents of the file that the cap points to, while preserving their ability to read with the original cap. This would be impossible with the immutable file read-caps that we have been using so far, because each immutable file read cap uses a secure hash function to identify and integrity-check exactly one file's contents -- one unique byte pattern. Any change to the file contents will cause the immutable file read-cap to no longer match. This can be a desirable property if what you want is a permanent identifier of one specific, immutable file. With this property nobody -- not even the person who wrote the file in the first place -- is able to cause anyone else's read-caps to point to any file contents other than the original file contents. But sometimes you want a different property, namely that an authorized writer *can* change the file contents and readers will be able to read the new file contents without first having to acquire a new file handle. To accomplish this requires the use of public key cryptography, specifically digital signatures. Using digital signatures, Tahoe- LAFS implements a second kind of capability, in addition to the immutable-file capability, which is called a "mutable file capability". Whenever you create a new mutable file, you get *two* caps to it: a write-cap and a read-cap. (Actually you can always derive the read-cap from the write-cap, so for API simplicity you get just the write-cap to your newly created mutable file.) Possession of the read-cap to the mutable file gives you two things: it gives you the symmetric encryption key with which you decrypt the file contents, and it gives you the public key with which you check a digital signature in order to be sure that the file contents were written by an authorized writer. The decryption and signature verification both happen automatically whenever you read data from that file handle (it downloads the digital signature which is stored with the ciphertext). Possession of the write-cap gives two things: the symmetric key with which you can encrypt the ciphertext, and the private key with which you can sign the contents. Both are done automatically whenever you write data to that file handle. The important thing about this scheme is that what we crypto geeks call "key management" is almost completely invisible to the users. As far as the users can tell, there aren't any "keys" here! The only objects in sight are the file handles, which they already use all the time. All users need to know is that a write-cap grants write authority (only to that one file), and the read-cap grants read authority. They can conveniently delegate some of their read- or write- authority to another user, simply by giving that user a copy of that cap, without delegating their other authorities. They can bundle multiple caps (of any kind) together into a file and then use the capability to that file as a handle to that bundle of authorities. At least, this is the theory that the object-capability community taught me, and I'm pleased to see that -- so far -- it has worked out in practice. Programmers and end users appear to have no difficulty understanding the access control consequences of this scheme and then using the scheme appropriately to achieve their desired ends. Installment 4 of this series will be about Tahoe-LAFS directories (those are the most convenient way to bundle together multiple caps -- put them all into a directory and then use the cap which points to that directory). Installment 5 will be about future work and new crypto ideas. Regards, Zooko [1] http://allmydata.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2009-August/002637.html # installment 1: immutable file caps [2] http://allmydata.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2009-August/002656.html # installment 2: tree-like structure (like encrypted git) --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.com ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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so how do *you* manage your keys, then? part 3
by Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

So How Do You Manage Your Keys Then, part 3 of 5 In part one of this series [1] I described how Tahoe-LAFS combines decryption, integrity-checking, identification, and access into one bitstring, called an "immutable file read-cap" (short for "capability"). In part two [2] I described how users can build tree- like structures of files which contain caps pointing to other files, and how the cap pointing to the root of such a structure can reside on a different computer than the ciphertext. (Which is necessary if you want someone to store the ciphertext for you but you don't want to give them the ability to read the file contents.) In this installment, consider the question of whether you can give someone a cap (which acts as a file handle) and then change the contents of the file that the cap points to, while preserving their ability to read with the original cap. This would be impossible with the immutable file read-caps that we have been using so far, because each immutable file read cap uses a secure hash function to identify and integrity-check exactly one file's contents -- one unique byte pattern. Any change to the file contents will cause the immutable file read-cap to no longer match. This can be a desirable property if what you want is a permanent identifier of one specific, immutable file. With this property nobody -- not even the person who wrote the file in the first place -- is able to cause anyone else's read-caps to point to any file contents other than the original file contents. But sometimes you want a different property, namely that an authorized writer *can* change the file contents and readers will be able to read the new file contents without first having to acquire a new file handle. To accomplish this requires the use of public key cryptography, specifically digital signatures. Using digital signatures, Tahoe- LAFS implements a second kind of capability, in addition to the immutable-file capability, which is called a "mutable file capability". Whenever you create a new mutable file, you get *two* caps to it: a write-cap and a read-cap. (Actually you can always derive the read-cap from the write-cap, so for API simplicity you get just the write-cap to your newly created mutable file.) Possession of the read-cap to the mutable file gives you two things: it gives you the symmetric encryption key with which you decrypt the file contents, and it gives you the public key with which you check a digital signature in order to be sure that the file contents were written by an authorized writer. The decryption and signature verification both happen automatically whenever you read data from that file handle (it downloads the digital signature which is stored with the ciphertext). Possession of the write-cap gives two things: the symmetric key with which you can encrypt the ciphertext, and the private key with which you can sign the contents. Both are done automatically whenever you write data to that file handle. The important thing about this scheme is that what we crypto geeks call "key management" is almost completely invisible to the users. As far as the users can tell, there aren't any "keys" here! The only objects in sight are the file handles, which they already use all the time. All users need to know is that a write-cap grants write authority (only to that one file), and the read-cap grants read authority. They can conveniently delegate some of their read- or write- authority to another user, simply by giving that user a copy of that cap, without delegating their other authorities. They can bundle multiple caps (of any kind) together into a file and then use the capability to that file as a handle to that bundle of authorities. At least, this is the theory that the object-capability community taught me, and I'm pleased to see that -- so far -- it has worked out in practice. Programmers and end users appear to have no difficulty understanding the access control consequences of this scheme and then using the scheme appropriately to achieve their desired ends. Installment 4 of this series will be about Tahoe-LAFS directories (those are the most convenient way to bundle together multiple caps -- put them all into a directory and then use the cap which points to that directory). Installment 5 will be about future work and new crypto ideas. Regards, Zooko [1] http://allmydata.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2009-August/002637.html # installment 1: immutable file caps [2] http://allmydata.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2009-August/002656.html # installment 2: tree-like structure (like encrypted git) --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.com ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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<nettime> Internet Digital Black Friday: First Bitcoin "Depression" Hits
by nettime's avid reader 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

dailytech.com Jason Mick (Blog) - June 10, 2011 7:05 PM http://tinyurl.com/6b78e88 The day was October 28, 1929 and the sky was falling. That Monday the DOW Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) fell 12.82 percent. History books show that the next day the DJIA bled another 11.73 percent. Vast amounts of wealth were wiped out in an instant. Today modern exchanges automatically close to prevent such catastrophic sell offs. Or, they do in the real world, at least. But on June 10, a new kind of market -- Bitcoins suffered a massive decline, that may signal the start of the world's first digital depression. I. A 30 Percent Decline in One Day This Friday the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was hammered, losing 172.45 points (approximately a 1.4 percent dip) to close below 12,000 for the first time since March 18, 2011 -- nearly three months ago. Traders greeted signs of slowdowns in global markets with serious concern. But as bad a day as Friday was for NYSE traders, it was far worse for those who invested in an increasingly popular digital currency -- Bitcoins (BTC). At the opening bell at Mt. Gox, the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, a single BTC cost $28.919 USD. By mid-day that total had plunged to $20.01 USD -- a drop of 30.8 percent. Granted, in recent weeks the market for Bitcoins has soared upwards, nearly tripling, due to increased demand and built in technical issues. So perhaps this inflation was merely reactionary. Nonetheless, it took many by surprise, as inflation on this scale had never before been seen in the fledgling Bitcoin market. But, wait let's not get ahead of ourselves. Why should anyone care if Bthe itcoin market crashed? Well, today on Mt. Gox alone, approximately $2M USD in Bitcoins were bought and sold in 5,871 trades. That's unusual in and of itself -- only a total of $19M USD in trading volume occurred over the past six months. The bottom line is that several things are clear from today's trading. 1. The Bitcoin market endured its first digital equivalent of a "bank rush" with people rushing to exchange their BTC for U.S. Dollars. 2. People have a large amount of money -- millions of USD sunk into Bitcoins lost big in the flash crash. 3. Unlike modern markets, which automatically close to prevent massive inflation, the digital Bitcoin markets stayed open. 4. Something major is moving the Bitcoin market in a sharp inflationary direction, in contrast to the predict deflationary trend. So what are Bitcoins and why is this intriguing? Let's take a look. II. What is a Bitcoin? Bitcoins [wiki] are virtual currency similar to the Linden Dollars (L$) used by Second Life users. However, unlike L$, which are ultimately controlled by Linden Labs, a company (or "governing body" in some people's eyes), BTC have no central authority. The currency instead relies on a peer-to-peer system where everyone logs transactions and monetary events, prevent false transactions. Also, unlike the L$, the focus of BTC is to exchange the virtual currency for real world services, not virtual ones. People can obtain Bitcoins in two ways -- buying them or generating them. To generate them, you have to run a complex math hashing algorithm, which tries to find a new bitcoin "block". Parallel computing devices -- namely GPUs have shown themselves most capable for this task. In fact with modern AMD GPUs it is possible to "break even" on your hardware costs by generating Bitcoins. For more info about Bitcoin generation, refer to DailyTech founder Kristopher Kubicki's webpage bitminer.info. The other method of gaining Bitcoins is to purchase them at an exchange -- the largest of which is Mt. Gox. For a full list of exchanges, refer here. III. Are Bitcoins Anonymous? One of the biggest monkeys on the back of Bitcoins is public misconceptions about privacy. For example a Reuters report quotes a letter from Senators Charles Schumer (D,New York) and Joe Manchin (D, West Virginia) wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder and Drug Enforcement Administration head Michele Leonhart stating: The only method of payment for these illegal purchases is an untraceable peer-to-peer currency known as Bitcoins. After purchasing Bitcoins through an exchange, a user can create an account on Silk Road and start purchasing illegal drugs from individuals around the world and have them delivered to their homes within days. Now this is somewhat misleading in that Bitcoins themselves can be more or less traceable than how the user communicates with uses their IPs. Any time a transaction occurs, it's sent out from an initial IP to nodes on the Bitcoin network, which verify its authenticity. Take Silk Road, for example -- the topic of a recent Gawker piece. An IP accesses this site, which is known for selling narcotics illegal in the U.S. If this is a user's direct IP, anyone who can sniff the traffic of the site can trace that user back to their home address, assuming cooperation of the internet service provider. However, if you first route your IP through Tor -- an anonymizing service, you can make it extremely difficult for anyone to trace you. This is because BitCoin "accounts" are regularly generated and a single individual holds keys to multiple microaccounts rather than a single large account. To an outsider, this account is just a random-looking string -- nobody can tell who owns it. But using your personal key, you can sign transactions on the accounts you own. As long as the public/private key cryptography scheme is sound, and you anonymize your IP, even the government will have a relatively tough time tracking you. The same can be said about any activity that occurs online. That said, there's numerous ways your privacy could be compromised if your buying drugs or performing elicit activities. Some points of possible attack include: 1. Failure to anonymize IP due to using your direct ISP-provided IP address. 2. Failure to anonymize IP due to misconfiguration of Tor or other anonymizer (a surprisingly common occurrence). 3. Tracking of physical goods associated with purchases. Wait, you say, how could #3 occur? Well, let's say you order a kilo of powder cocaine, using your Bitcoin treasure trove. Well the kilo comes from a well known dealer who's being monitored by law enforcement for their real world activities. Law enforcement note the package arrives at your house. They wait for you to take it in and then begin using it. They obtain a warrant and raid your house. Remember, almost no "drug dealer" is going to be exclusively doing business via Bitcoins. So they're likely engaging in real world transactions that will make it likely for law enforcement to inspect anything they decide to mail. In other words Bitcoin does provide users with a bit of anonymity, but to claim it's generally "untraceable" in principle is pure paranoia on certain government officials' and journalists' part. Bitcoin-driven transactions are very traceable; it's just that so far nobody has been interested in investing the large amount of effort it would take to trace them, as they have with copyright infringement or child pornography. The DEA's response indeed seems to hint at this. Reuters quotes agency spokeswoman Dawn Dearden as stating, "The DEA is constantly evaluating and analyzing new technologies and schemes perpetrated by drug trafficking networks. While we won't confirm or deny the existence of specific investigations, DEA is well aware of these emerging threats and we will act accordingly." IV. A Big Problem -- Getting Money In Or Out While the threat of the U.S. government taking some sort of action over anonymity fears is certainly looming over the Bitcoin market, a far more serious problem is liquidity. In the traditional global currency markets, you can instantly exchange your currency for other foreign currencies on a number of exchanges. These exchanges can take bank wires or funds from digital accounts, such as Paypal. By contrast Bitcoin exchanges like Mt. Gox do not accept debit/credit transactions. Up until last week they did accept eBay, Inc. (EBAY) subsidiary PayPal. However, PayPal has blocked transactions to the site. This is because PayPal has a policy against virtual currencies. With an easy PayPal route gone, market liquidity was dramatically reduced. This may be a major cause for the market crash. Currently the most well published ways to convert Bitcoins to USD or vice versa is to use Dwolla or Liberty Reserve. These methods are relatively straightforward, but transactions through these online billing services often move at a glacial pace, hampering liquidity. API problems with Dwolla further exacerbated the liquidity issues in recent weeks at Mt. Gox. You can also mail a check to a certain individual known as "Bitcoin Morpheus" listed at the exchange, who will add funds to your Mt. Gox account. Granted this route might not be for the faint of heart as it seems rather "unorthodox" to say the least. Now there is another method that could work slightly faster than any of the above. For now you can use a variety of means to quickly buy L$ (Second Life currency) and then use the virwoxSLL exchange to exchange L$ to BTC. The purpose of L$ and BTC is quite different, so it's unclear how long this route will stay viable, and many people don't realize you can get Bitcoins in this fashion. At the end of the day Bitcoin has a very real liquidity problem. V. What's Next for Bitcoin? Unless Gawker and other media outlets can drum up enough unfounded paranoia about peer-to-peer currency to evoke some kind of draconian action by the U.S. federal government, it's unlikely that Bitcoins will go away. However, market volatility poses a very serious risk to BTC users -- be they miners, traders, or merchants who accept BTC as payment for goods or services. To that end, a major improvement would be for Bitcoin exchanges to implement mandatory market closures if the currency value dropped below a threshold. In theory this would be relatively easy to implement, and we expect that it will be done at some point to prevent one-day flash inflation/deflation. At the same time, a viable billing service must step up and offer people the ability to use credit or debit card billable transactions in USD to buy bitcoins quickly and directly on a major exchange (e.g. Mt. Gox). If this can be done, market liquidity can be restored and the currency will once more flourish. Last, but not least, concerns about deflation must be addressed as demand grows and production slows. As mentioned in the introduction, if deflation is not controlled, reactionary inflation spurts could be experienced. Indeed, a reactionary market movement could have been part of the cause for today's record-setting inflation. It is possible that additional bitcoins could be distributed or other mechanism employed to prevent deflation, much as they are with standard currencies. Bitcoins are certainly a novel idea in their implementation details and purpose. This article offers an introduction, but barely skims the surface of this phenomena and the true facts about it. Ask some and they'll say Bitcoins are a scam/pyramid scheme. Ask others and they'll say the Bitcoin market has the promise to offer sustained success. There's valid arguments on both sides, but at the end of the day Bitcoins will still be around for the forseeable future. In trading late Friday, Bitcoins recouped nearly half their losses, bouncing back to 24.34. That's still a massive crash -- around 15 percent in one day. But it shows that the market isn't dead. The U.S. economy survived Black Friday and today sustains a massive amount of wealth. Likewise, perhaps the Bitcoin movement can survive this tough time and find its way. After all -- people are still buying Bitcoins. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime(a)kein.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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None
by Ray Dillinger 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

> I've developed methods for solving vignere, general > transpositions, playfair, etc... just basically bringing > myself up to speed with the general background of the field. Would you mind writing a "tutorial for the beginner cryptanalist"? Mark

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The Pew research on willingness to give up liberty
by David M Brown 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Matt, Re the "newsbyte" item you recently distributed, assuring readers that the public still supports privacy rights at least for email and phone conversations... Following are passages from the survey write-up at the Pew Research Center site <http://www.people-press.org/terrorist01mor.htm>. The survey is about public attitudes in the wake of the terrorist attack. The quoted passages pertain to attitudes toward civil liberties. The newsbyte is somewhat misleading, because it mentions only those instances where most of the public is least comfortable with loss of liberty and greater surveillance of innocent people. It's a spin. I guess it _is_ lucky that "only" 29% of Americans support internment camps to round up LEGAL immigrants from hostile nations. And that 70% don't want their phone calls or email to be monitored. On the other hand, 70% would have no problem with a national ID card that would have to be presented on demand. 40% favor monitoring of their credit card purchases. I would be happy to learn that this survey is fundamentally flawed. If it isn't, we can only hope that second thoughts will prevail over time. If more than half think of us think it's hunky-dory to give up some freedom to combat terrorism, we're in trouble -- even if people are a little bit queasier about this particular measure or that particular measure. Especially when the public and the media and pols are all singing the same song about the "new balance" we need. Once the principle that people have certain inalienable rights is ceded, there is not much ground left to stand on when they find that they do not particularly like warrantless door-to-door searches or whatever. We all know that even "temporary" war-time violations of liberty are often retained after a war ends (as witness NYC rent controls). And this is a war that by all indications will be fought indefinitely. The liberty we lose now, we're not likely to get back any time soon. David M. Brown MOST SEE NEED TO SACRIFICE LIBERTIES Even more than was the case after the 1995 terrorist bombing in Oklahoma City, Americans think it will be necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to combat terrorism. A majority (55%) say the average person will have to give up some freedoms in order to prevent such attacks in the future. The only dissent comes from respondents under age 30, where just 40% think restricting civil liberties will be necessary, while 50% disagree. Sacrifice Civil Liberties to Curb Terrorism? April March April Sept 1995* 1996 1997 2001 % % % % Yes 49 30 29 55 No 43 65 62 35 DK/Ref. 8 5 9 10 100 100 100 100 *L.A. Times In the immediate aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, roughly half of Americans (49%) felt that sacrificing some civil liberties would be necessary, but this view lost support in the years that followed. By March 1996, only 30% said they thought curbing civil liberties was a necessary step to control terrorism, while nearly two-in-three (65%) said it was not. Though most see a loss of civil liberties as a necessary step, many have reservations about government action. Nearly as many worry that government action might excessively restrict the average persons civil liberties (34%) as express concern that the government will not go far enough in enacting strong new terrorism laws (39%). No Draconian Measures Despite the expectation that it will be necessary to sacrifice some liberties, the public does not give blanket approval to all possible government responses to the terrorist threat, especially when it involves personal privacy. Seven-in-ten favor a requirement that citizens carry a national identity card at all times to show to a police officer on request, a proposal that has particularly strong support from women (75%). But the public is more dubious when it comes to government monitoring of telephone calls, e-mails and credit card purchases. Measures to Curb Terrorism Favor Oppose DK/Ref % % % National ID cards 70 26 4=100 CIA assassinations 67 22 11=100 CIA criminal contacts 67 22 11=100 Monitor credit cards 40 55 5=100 Internment camps 29 57 14=100 Monitor phone/e-mail 26 70 4=100 A majority (55%) would not favor permitting the government to monitor their credit card purchases, and fully seven-in-ten oppose allowing the government to monitor personal telephone calls and e-mails. Perhaps most important, Americans clearly reject the establishment of internment camps to round up legal immigrants from hostile nations. By roughly two-to-one (57% to 29%), the public opposes that idea. On each of the measures related directly to civil liberties, college-educated Americans express more concern about restricting freedoms than those with a high-school degree or less. By contrast, the public is much more willing to remove some of the shackles from the CIA in order to combat terrorism. Fully two-thirds favor allowing the CIA to conduct assassinations overseas when pursuing suspected enemies of the U.S., and an equal proportion are willing to allow the CIA to contract with criminals in pursuing suspected terrorists. Americans under age 50 and men express the strongest support for such actions. #### ************************************************************************** Subscribe to Freematt's Alerts: Pro-Individual Rights Issues Send a blank message to: freematt(a)coil.com with the words subscribe FA on the subject line. List is private and moderated (7-30 messages per week) Matthew Gaylor, (614) 313-5722 ICQ: 106212065 Archived at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fa/ **************************************************************************

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<nettime> Internet Digital Black Friday: First Bitcoin "Depression" Hits
by nettime's avid reader 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

dailytech.com Jason Mick (Blog) - June 10, 2011 7:05 PM http://tinyurl.com/6b78e88 The day was October 28, 1929 and the sky was falling. That Monday the DOW Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) fell 12.82 percent. History books show that the next day the DJIA bled another 11.73 percent. Vast amounts of wealth were wiped out in an instant. Today modern exchanges automatically close to prevent such catastrophic sell offs. Or, they do in the real world, at least. But on June 10, a new kind of market -- Bitcoins suffered a massive decline, that may signal the start of the world's first digital depression. I. A 30 Percent Decline in One Day This Friday the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was hammered, losing 172.45 points (approximately a 1.4 percent dip) to close below 12,000 for the first time since March 18, 2011 -- nearly three months ago. Traders greeted signs of slowdowns in global markets with serious concern. But as bad a day as Friday was for NYSE traders, it was far worse for those who invested in an increasingly popular digital currency -- Bitcoins (BTC). At the opening bell at Mt. Gox, the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, a single BTC cost $28.919 USD. By mid-day that total had plunged to $20.01 USD -- a drop of 30.8 percent. Granted, in recent weeks the market for Bitcoins has soared upwards, nearly tripling, due to increased demand and built in technical issues. So perhaps this inflation was merely reactionary. Nonetheless, it took many by surprise, as inflation on this scale had never before been seen in the fledgling Bitcoin market. But, wait let's not get ahead of ourselves. Why should anyone care if Bthe itcoin market crashed? Well, today on Mt. Gox alone, approximately $2M USD in Bitcoins were bought and sold in 5,871 trades. That's unusual in and of itself -- only a total of $19M USD in trading volume occurred over the past six months. The bottom line is that several things are clear from today's trading. 1. The Bitcoin market endured its first digital equivalent of a "bank rush" with people rushing to exchange their BTC for U.S. Dollars. 2. People have a large amount of money -- millions of USD sunk into Bitcoins lost big in the flash crash. 3. Unlike modern markets, which automatically close to prevent massive inflation, the digital Bitcoin markets stayed open. 4. Something major is moving the Bitcoin market in a sharp inflationary direction, in contrast to the predict deflationary trend. So what are Bitcoins and why is this intriguing? Let's take a look. II. What is a Bitcoin? Bitcoins [wiki] are virtual currency similar to the Linden Dollars (L$) used by Second Life users. However, unlike L$, which are ultimately controlled by Linden Labs, a company (or "governing body" in some people's eyes), BTC have no central authority. The currency instead relies on a peer-to-peer system where everyone logs transactions and monetary events, prevent false transactions. Also, unlike the L$, the focus of BTC is to exchange the virtual currency for real world services, not virtual ones. People can obtain Bitcoins in two ways -- buying them or generating them. To generate them, you have to run a complex math hashing algorithm, which tries to find a new bitcoin "block". Parallel computing devices -- namely GPUs have shown themselves most capable for this task. In fact with modern AMD GPUs it is possible to "break even" on your hardware costs by generating Bitcoins. For more info about Bitcoin generation, refer to DailyTech founder Kristopher Kubicki's webpage bitminer.info. The other method of gaining Bitcoins is to purchase them at an exchange -- the largest of which is Mt. Gox. For a full list of exchanges, refer here. III. Are Bitcoins Anonymous? One of the biggest monkeys on the back of Bitcoins is public misconceptions about privacy. For example a Reuters report quotes a letter from Senators Charles Schumer (D,New York) and Joe Manchin (D, West Virginia) wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder and Drug Enforcement Administration head Michele Leonhart stating: The only method of payment for these illegal purchases is an untraceable peer-to-peer currency known as Bitcoins. After purchasing Bitcoins through an exchange, a user can create an account on Silk Road and start purchasing illegal drugs from individuals around the world and have them delivered to their homes within days. Now this is somewhat misleading in that Bitcoins themselves can be more or less traceable than how the user communicates with uses their IPs. Any time a transaction occurs, it's sent out from an initial IP to nodes on the Bitcoin network, which verify its authenticity. Take Silk Road, for example -- the topic of a recent Gawker piece. An IP accesses this site, which is known for selling narcotics illegal in the U.S. If this is a user's direct IP, anyone who can sniff the traffic of the site can trace that user back to their home address, assuming cooperation of the internet service provider. However, if you first route your IP through Tor -- an anonymizing service, you can make it extremely difficult for anyone to trace you. This is because BitCoin "accounts" are regularly generated and a single individual holds keys to multiple microaccounts rather than a single large account. To an outsider, this account is just a random-looking string -- nobody can tell who owns it. But using your personal key, you can sign transactions on the accounts you own. As long as the public/private key cryptography scheme is sound, and you anonymize your IP, even the government will have a relatively tough time tracking you. The same can be said about any activity that occurs online. That said, there's numerous ways your privacy could be compromised if your buying drugs or performing elicit activities. Some points of possible attack include: 1. Failure to anonymize IP due to using your direct ISP-provided IP address. 2. Failure to anonymize IP due to misconfiguration of Tor or other anonymizer (a surprisingly common occurrence). 3. Tracking of physical goods associated with purchases. Wait, you say, how could #3 occur? Well, let's say you order a kilo of powder cocaine, using your Bitcoin treasure trove. Well the kilo comes from a well known dealer who's being monitored by law enforcement for their real world activities. Law enforcement note the package arrives at your house. They wait for you to take it in and then begin using it. They obtain a warrant and raid your house. Remember, almost no "drug dealer" is going to be exclusively doing business via Bitcoins. So they're likely engaging in real world transactions that will make it likely for law enforcement to inspect anything they decide to mail. In other words Bitcoin does provide users with a bit of anonymity, but to claim it's generally "untraceable" in principle is pure paranoia on certain government officials' and journalists' part. Bitcoin-driven transactions are very traceable; it's just that so far nobody has been interested in investing the large amount of effort it would take to trace them, as they have with copyright infringement or child pornography. The DEA's response indeed seems to hint at this. Reuters quotes agency spokeswoman Dawn Dearden as stating, "The DEA is constantly evaluating and analyzing new technologies and schemes perpetrated by drug trafficking networks. While we won't confirm or deny the existence of specific investigations, DEA is well aware of these emerging threats and we will act accordingly." IV. A Big Problem -- Getting Money In Or Out While the threat of the U.S. government taking some sort of action over anonymity fears is certainly looming over the Bitcoin market, a far more serious problem is liquidity. In the traditional global currency markets, you can instantly exchange your currency for other foreign currencies on a number of exchanges. These exchanges can take bank wires or funds from digital accounts, such as Paypal. By contrast Bitcoin exchanges like Mt. Gox do not accept debit/credit transactions. Up until last week they did accept eBay, Inc. (EBAY) subsidiary PayPal. However, PayPal has blocked transactions to the site. This is because PayPal has a policy against virtual currencies. With an easy PayPal route gone, market liquidity was dramatically reduced. This may be a major cause for the market crash. Currently the most well published ways to convert Bitcoins to USD or vice versa is to use Dwolla or Liberty Reserve. These methods are relatively straightforward, but transactions through these online billing services often move at a glacial pace, hampering liquidity. API problems with Dwolla further exacerbated the liquidity issues in recent weeks at Mt. Gox. You can also mail a check to a certain individual known as "Bitcoin Morpheus" listed at the exchange, who will add funds to your Mt. Gox account. Granted this route might not be for the faint of heart as it seems rather "unorthodox" to say the least. Now there is another method that could work slightly faster than any of the above. For now you can use a variety of means to quickly buy L$ (Second Life currency) and then use the virwoxSLL exchange to exchange L$ to BTC. The purpose of L$ and BTC is quite different, so it's unclear how long this route will stay viable, and many people don't realize you can get Bitcoins in this fashion. At the end of the day Bitcoin has a very real liquidity problem. V. What's Next for Bitcoin? Unless Gawker and other media outlets can drum up enough unfounded paranoia about peer-to-peer currency to evoke some kind of draconian action by the U.S. federal government, it's unlikely that Bitcoins will go away. However, market volatility poses a very serious risk to BTC users -- be they miners, traders, or merchants who accept BTC as payment for goods or services. To that end, a major improvement would be for Bitcoin exchanges to implement mandatory market closures if the currency value dropped below a threshold. In theory this would be relatively easy to implement, and we expect that it will be done at some point to prevent one-day flash inflation/deflation. At the same time, a viable billing service must step up and offer people the ability to use credit or debit card billable transactions in USD to buy bitcoins quickly and directly on a major exchange (e.g. Mt. Gox). If this can be done, market liquidity can be restored and the currency will once more flourish. Last, but not least, concerns about deflation must be addressed as demand grows and production slows. As mentioned in the introduction, if deflation is not controlled, reactionary inflation spurts could be experienced. Indeed, a reactionary market movement could have been part of the cause for today's record-setting inflation. It is possible that additional bitcoins could be distributed or other mechanism employed to prevent deflation, much as they are with standard currencies. Bitcoins are certainly a novel idea in their implementation details and purpose. This article offers an introduction, but barely skims the surface of this phenomena and the true facts about it. Ask some and they'll say Bitcoins are a scam/pyramid scheme. Ask others and they'll say the Bitcoin market has the promise to offer sustained success. There's valid arguments on both sides, but at the end of the day Bitcoins will still be around for the forseeable future. In trading late Friday, Bitcoins recouped nearly half their losses, bouncing back to 24.34. That's still a massive crash -- around 15 percent in one day. But it shows that the market isn't dead. The U.S. economy survived Black Friday and today sustains a massive amount of wealth. Likewise, perhaps the Bitcoin movement can survive this tough time and find its way. After all -- people are still buying Bitcoins. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime(a)kein.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[Dewayne-Net] Crossing the Lines
by dewayne＠warpspeed.com 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Crossing the Lines How a top Pentagon official and a host of influential Republicans almost made sure that one American company gained a key stake in Iraq's lucrative wireless market. Michael Scherer September/October 2004 Issue <http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/09/09_801.html> The auctioning off of Iraq began in the summer of 2003 in a packed conference room at the Grand Hyatt in Amman, Jordan. More than 300 executives had gathered from around the world to vie for a piece of one natural resource Saddam Hussein never managed to exploitbthe nation's cellular phone frequencies. With less than 4 percent of Iraqis connected to a phone, the open spectrum could earn billions of dollars for the eager executives working the room. Conference organizers tried to keep everyone focused on the prize. "Iraq needs a mobile communications system and it needs it now," stressed Jim Davies, a British expert with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) who was leading the effort. "We want quick results." But back in Washington, D.C., the focus had already turned from the needs of Iraq to the bottom lines of a select few corporations. "The battle for Iraq is not over oil," said one Defense Department official involved in communications. "It's over bandwidth." And no one was fighting harder for a piece of the spectrum than the consortium led by American cellular giant Qualcomm with such business partners as Lucent Technologies and Samsung of South Korea. They wanted to follow U.S. troops into Iraq with Qualcomm's patented cellular technology, called CDMA, a system no nation in the Middle East had yet been willing to adopt. Even as the bombs fell over Baghdad, Rep. Darrell Issa (R- Calif.), whose district includes many Qualcomm employees, had tried to wrap his favored company in the flag. He denounced the cellular system used by Iraq's neighbors as "an outdated French standard," and proposed a law that would effectively mandate Qualcomm on Iraq. "Hundreds of thousands of American jobs depend on the success of U.S.- developed wireless technologies like CDMA," Issa wrote in a March 26, 2003, letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. A swarm of lobbyists rallied to the companies' cause, including William Walker, a former protC)gC) of Rumsfeld from the Ford White House, and Stacy Carlson, who ran President George W. Bush's California campaign in 2000. At the conference in Amman, CPA officials promised an apolitical selection process that would accept any workable technology. In the weeks that followed, Col. Anthony Bell, the chief military procurement officer in Iraq, personally oversaw the selection of three cellular companies, assigning a panel of Iraqi and Coalition experts to a locked room where they reviewed blind proposals. "No names, only a number," said Bell, who handled $1.9 billion in contracts during his nine months in Baghdad. On October 6, Iraq's new minister of communications, Haider al-Abadi, announced the winnersbtwo Kuwaiti firms and one Egyptian company. Not one of them used the Qualcomm standard. If any officials in Baghdad or Washington thought such a decision would be the end of Qualcomm's quest, the next six months would prove them wrong. Like dozens of American corporations looking to influence U.S. policybshaping everything from the banking and insurance markets to foreign-investment rulesbQualcomm, Lucent, Samsung, and their partners would only expand their efforts and broaden their reach into the CPA. With the guidance of a deputy undersecretary of Defense, John Shaw, this effort became one of the most brazen lobbying campaigns of the postwar reconstruction, one that has brought Shaw under investigation for potentially breaking federal ethics rules. According to documents provided to Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), the companies' supporters in Washington, D.C., attempted to sneak a new cellular license into an unrelated contract for Iraqi police and fire communications, tried to oust the CPA officials who resisted their efforts, and ultimately caused the delay of plans for a badly needed Iraqi 911 emergency system. "The American corporate leaders would not let a system be built that they couldn't make an obscene amount of money off of," said one former technical adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Communications, who has since returned to the United States. Senator Conrad Burns felt the sting of Qualcomm's defeat in October. As chairman of the Communications subcommittee, the Montana Republican had strong ties to the company: Qualcomm was Burns' 12th-largest campaign donor, and one of the company's founders, Klein Gilhousen, had recently given $5 million to Montana State University. Gilhousen also sits on the board of the Burns Telecom Center, an academic research program, of which the senator is chairman. During a trip to Iraq in October, Burns spoke with officials one-on-one about the process that had denied the Qualcomm consortium a license. "I think the bidding was open, transparent, and fair," he said upon his return on October 14. That same day, however, one of his chief aides began working behind the scenes to plan a new way to get Qualcomm into Iraq, a plan described in the aide's internal emails, which were obtained by Mother Jones. "As you know, Senator Burns is taking flak for defending the CPA on Iraqi telecommunications contracts which ignore CDMA," wrote Burns aide Myron Nordquist to one of the Pentagon's chief networking officials. "The Senator remains determined to support CDMA." And Burns had a powerful motivation. The stakes for Qualcomm, and by extension Burns, were far larger than just the Iraqi market of 25 million people. For nearly a decade, Qualcomm had been engaged in an international battle with the non-American companies pushing GSM, a rival technology that had been developed in Europe and now controlled 72 percent of the world market. A CDMA beachhead in Iraq would set the stage for an expansion throughout the region, with Lucent and Samsung well positioned to prosper as leading makers of the CDMA switches and phones. As Nordquist explained to the Pentagon last fall, Iraq could provide a "communications link between Turkey and the Gulf." Deputy Undersecretary Shaw, an old Republican hand who had served in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan White Houses, quickly became the point man for the initiative to bring CDMA to Iraq. Shaw and other officials in the Pentagon and Congress reasoned that establishing CDMA in the Middle East would be possible if they could find a way for Qualcomm and its partners to offer cellular service in Iraq under the rubric of the police and fire communications system that the CPA planned to purchase for the Iraqis. "The CDMA system could then morph into a commercial service with our having total control over it," Shaw wrote in a November email to a Coalition adviser in Baghdad. [snip] ------------------------------------------- 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 ----- 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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[IP] Crossing the Lines
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Begin forwarded message:

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EDRI-gram newsletter - Number 6.14, 16 July 2008
by EDRI-gram newsletter 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

============================================================ EDRI-gram biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe Number 6.14, 16 July 2008 ============================================================ Contents ============================================================ 1. Vote in the EP committees on the Telecom Package 2. Dutch University sued to stop publishing research on chip technology 3. Russian blogger sentenced for comments on the blog 4. Copiepresse attacks EC for copyright infringement, but gets dismissed 5. Complaint against the French govt to annul the biometric passport decree 6. Irish Human Rights Commission added to data retention challenge 7. Privacy complaints related to Google's Street View 8. New threats for UK file-sharers 9. Liberty groups win long court battle against UK wiretapping 10. ENDitorial: Massive mobilization against EDVIGE, the new French database 11. Recommended Reading 12. Agenda 13. About ============================================================ 1. Vote in the EP committees on the Telecom Package ============================================================ The IMCO (Internal Market Committee) and ITRE (Committee on Industry, Research and Energy) committees of the European Parliament (EP) adopted on the 7 July 2008 the Telecom package, including the amendments that were considered by some NGOs as endangering the principle of the neutrality of the Internet. One of the MEPs supervising the Telecom package, including the amendments to the five directives that should reform the EU legal framework on electronic communications has explained that the vote on these amendments had nothing to do with copyright enforcement: "There has been a great deal of dismay in the committee at the interpretation being put on these amendments.(...) The interpretation of them is alarmist and scare-mongering and deflects from the intention which was to improve consumers' rights." declared MEP Malcolm Harbou for BBC. But the NGOs supported their initial comments that the present adopted texts could open the way to the regulation of users via the Internet Service Providers under the control of national regulators. They also praised the civic response to their campaign that has reached some MEPs, who highlighted part of the problematic amendments in the Telecom Package during the EP committees debates. Other privacy issues related with the management of traffic data has created problems within the IMCO committee that should have included the opinion from the Civil Rights Committee (LIBE). But the Socialist and Green MEPs from the IMCO committee did not back up the suggestion of the LIBE committee to allow the processing of electronic traffic data by "any natural or legal person". Other discussions in the ITRE committee of the EP rejected the idea of a unique EU telecom authority and suggested instead a new group called Body of European Regulators in Telecoms (BERT), formed by the 27 national regulatory authorities. ITRE committe backed up the proposals to enhance the use of radio frequencies, but demanded several safeguards on media pluralism, public interest or emergency services. The final vote on the Telecom package was initially planned on 2 September, but since it is clear that there will be some debates on the above-mentioned topics, the vote was delayed for the session starting on 22 September. MEPs back contested telecoms plan (8.07.2008) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7495085.stm The "Telecoms Package": out of the shadows, into the light (10.07.2008) http://www.laquadrature.net/en/the-%E2%80%9Ctelecoms-package%E2%80%9D-out-s… MEPs discard plan for single EU telecoms watchdog (9.07.2008) http://www.euractiv.com/en/infosociety/meps-discard-plan-single-eu-telecoms… EU Parliament split over electronic data protection (10.07.2008) http://www.euractiv.com/en/infosociety/eu-parliament-split-electronic-data-… EDRi-gram: Control on Internet users pushed with the new telecom package (2.08.2008) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.13/telecom-package-internet ============================================================ 2. Dutch University sued to stop publishing research on chip technology ============================================================ Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors has sued the Dutch Computer Security Group of Radboud University in Nijmege in order to stop the publication of research results showing security flaws in NXP's Mifare Classic wireless smart cards used in transit and building entry systems around the world. The technology is used for the transit system in The Netherlands, in the subway systems in London, Hong Kong and Boston, as well as in cards for accessing buildings and facilities, covering 80 percent of the market. The security researchers of the Dutch university have checked the Mifare system used with Oyster cards for transport in London and recently succeeded in cracking the encryption on a card and clone it. They added credit to it and moved freely around London's Underground network. According to Dr. Bart Jacobs, professor of computer security at the university, by using a computer and an RFID reader, in just a few seconds, the Oyster card's encryption can be cracked. "We need to eavesdrop on the communication between a card and a card reader. From that communication we can deduce secret cryptographic keys that are used to protect the contents of the card. Once we have the keys we 'own' the card and can manipulate it as we like" said Jacobs. The University issued a statement in March this year saying: "Because some cards can be cloned, it is in principle possible to access buildings and facilities with a stolen identity. This has been demonstrated on an actual system." Jacobs demonstrated how the London transit system can be used for free. He obtained the key used by the London transit system then he passed by passengers carrying Oyster cards and was able to collect their card information on his laptop and make a clone of it. The scientist has given NXP the opportunity to fix the security problems waiting with the publication and presentation of the results for some time but as NXP did not solve the issue decided to go on with the university plans of publishing the research. The Dutch university's research builds upon Karsten Nohl's work, a graduate student of the University of Virginia, and expert on the security for NXP. "NXP has had half a year now to inform about the lack of security in their product, but instead they have used the best part of that to dismiss our research, dismiss the Dutch group's research, and to claim that everything is purely theoretical. So, if anything, NXP has invoked this type of public demonstration, since they have often claimed that 'yes in theory it may be insecure but in practice it isn't'. So had they not kept up the disinformation that (the Mifare could actually be secure) nobody would have paid attention to the Dutch group actually hacking the Oyster card" stated Nohl. The Computer Security Group publication comes during a long and heated public debate in the Dutch parliament and the media on the merits of large scale computer systems, their quality and security standards and the government's capacity to manage these kind of projects. The publication of the University research may be essential for this debate. The Dutch court decision is expected on 17 July 2008. Censoring Dutch Academia: Computer Security Scholars taken to Court (8.07.2008) http://www.jorisvanhoboken.nl/?p=173 Dutch chipmaker sues to silence security researchers (9.07.2008) http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9985886-7.html?hhTest=1 Has London's Oyster travelcard system been cracked? (26.06.2008) http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jun/26/hitechcrime.oystercards Cryptoanalysis of Crypto-1 http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~kn5f/pdf/Mifare.Cryptanalysis.pdf Security Flaw in Mifare Classic - press release Digital Security group, Radboud University Nijmegen (12.03.2008) http://www.ru.nl/english/general/radboud_university/vm/security_flaw_in/ London transit cards cracked and cloned (26.06.2008) http://news.cnet.com/8301-10789_3-9978486-57.html?hhTest=1 NXP sues academic research team - what are they afraid of? (10.07.2008) http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/200828/1463/ ============================================================ 3. Russian blogger sentenced for comments on the blog ============================================================ On 7 July 2008, a Russian blogger was sentenced to one year suspended jail after having been found guilty of "inciting hatred and enmity" for a comment left on a LiveJournal weblog. According to Kommersant newspaper, the young blogger Savva Terentiev was saying on the blog that "Those who become cops are scum," and calling for officers to be put on a bonfire. For his alleged offence, inciting hatred and denigrating the human dignity of a social group, the prosecutors were asking for a significant fine and two years behind bars, which seemed excessive. During the trial, Terentyev referred to his statements on the blog that corrupt cops should burned in Auschwitz-like ovens as "hyperbole and exaggeration," and apologized to concentration camp victims and the police officers he might have "involuntarily hurt with the contested commentary." The final court decision was to sentence the blogger to one suspended jail year. Free speech campaigners are concerned about the fact that the ruling might create a dangerous precedent for free speech on the Internet, especially in Russia where the mainstream traditional media is biased in favour of the authority. "This was an absolutely unjustified verdict. (...) Savva for sure wrote a rude comment ... but this verdict means it will be impossible to make rude comments about anybody" told Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the SOVA centre in Moscow, a non-governmental group that monitors extremism, to Reuters agency. Recently, the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has expressed his views on the freedom of speech saying Russia should use a light touch when policing the Internet."Thank God we live in a free society. (...) It's possible to go on to the Internet and get basically anything you want. In that regard, there are no problems of closed access to information in Russia today, there weren't any yesterday and there won't be any tomorrow," he said last month in an interview with Reuters. Russian blogger sentenced for "extremist" post (7.07.2008) http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080707/tot-uk-russia-blogger-566e283.html Russian Blogger Sentenced Over LiveJournal Comment (7.07.2008) http://www.theotherrussia.org/2008/07/07/russian-blogger-sentenced-over-liv… EDRi-gram: More control over the Internet wanted in Russia (7.05.2008) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.9/internet-control-russia ============================================================ 4. Copiepresse attacks EC for copyright infringement, but gets dismissed ============================================================ The Belgium newspaper Association Copiepresse has initiated a legal complaint against the European Commission (EC) arguing that it infringes its copyright through the NewsBrief and NewsExplorer aggregation services. Copiepresse became famous for its copyright suit against Google and other search engines claiming copyright infringement over the aggregation services done by the search engines. The association has initiated a new action in the Belgian Court of Seizures considering that the European Commission is counterfeiting its member's news articles by using small part of them in order to prepare a news collation marketed as NewsBrief and NewsExplorer. The Belgium Court rejected the Copiepresse claim, confirming the EC opinion that the competent courts on the matter are the European Courts. Copiepresse announced that they wouldn't appeal the decision, claiming "startegic reasons" and explaining that they just wanted to get the EC out in the open, since they didn't reply to any message on the topic. But at the same time the Association announced that they would continue the case in the Bruxelles civil court, where an action of cease&desist has already been introduced. The European Commission representatives claimed in court that its services are just press reviews, that fall under the exemptions from the copyright law protection. The judge initially ordered a judicial expertise in order to gather more technical information about how the site was built, but then he dismissed this evidence and took his decisions only on jurisdictional grounds. Copiepresse sues the European Commission to the civil court (only in French, 27.06.2008) http://www.actu24.be/article/regions/regionbruxelles/infosbxl/copiepresse_p… Belgian press beef with EU beaten in Belgian court (1.07.2008) http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/07/01/copiepresse-slapped-… Belgian agency to sue European Commission again over news aggregator (2.07.2008) http://www.out-law.com/page-9227 EDRi-gram: Belgium newspaper group continues its actions against search engines (25.10.2006) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.20/belgium ============================================================ 5. Complaint against the French govt to annul the biometric passport decree ============================================================ Two French associations, EDRi-member Imaginons un riseau internet solidaire (IRIS) and Ligue des droits de l'Homme (LDH), have filed a complaint against the French government before the highest administrative Court. They ask the French Conseil d'Itat to annul the decree issued on 30 April 2008 by the French government on biometric passports. The associations consider the decree had been issued under an irregular procedure by publishing the Opinion in the Official Journal 6 days after the decree had been published, instead of presenting them at the same time, as required by law. The provisions of the decree stipulate the collection of eight fingerprints for passport applicants starting with 6 years old children and the creation of a central biometric database for retaining and processing the collected data. IRIS and LDH argue that the nature, the quantity and the retaining period of these data in a central database are disproportionate with regards to the decree's objectives, which remain the same as in the previous passport decree of December 2005, where fingerprints were not required. Moreover, they believe that the decree is violating the national as well as international legislation regarding the protection of the personal data. It also violates international legislation related to children. The two associations link the requirements of this decree to the provisions of the draft law on biometric ID cards currently being prepared. They state that, if the decree is not annulled, the government would, under the pretext of more easily issuing identity cards and passports, influence the debate in the French Parliament on the biometric identity card project. . Biometric passport : IRIS and LDH ask the State Council to annul the decree (only in French, 4.07.2008) http://www.iris.sgdg.org/info-debat/comm-passeport0708.html Common Press Release - IRIS and LDH (only in French, 4.07.2008) http://www.iris.sgdg.org/info-debat/recours-passeport0708.pdf Text of the legal complaint (only in French 4.07.2008) http://www.iris.sgdg.org/info-debat/recours-passeport0708.pdf EDRIgram: The French Government goes against CNIL in biometric passports (21.05.2008) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.10/cnil-biometric-passports ============================================================ 6. Irish Human Rights Commission added to data retention challenge ============================================================ The High Court in Dublin has allowed the Irish Human Rights Commission to become a party to the data retention challenge being brought by Digital Rights Ireland. The Human Rights Commission, which is a state body, will be an amicus curiae (friend of the court) with the ability to make submissions about the fundamental rights implications of data retention. The Chief Executive of the Commission Iamonn Mac Aodha stated: "This case raises important issues about the extent to which laws and measures governing the monitoring of one's private life by the State in pursuit of tackling crime possess sufficient human rights safeguards". Mr MacAodha continued "one of the priorities of the IHRC is to address potential threats to human rights that may emerge with developments in communications technology such as in the present case where issues of individual security and privacy are raised." Irish Human Rights Commission given permission to appear in DRI action (4.07.2008) http://www.digitalrights.ie/2008/07/04/irish-human-rights-commission-given-… IHRC granted leave to appear in Data Protection Case in the High Court (1.07.2008) http://www.ihrc.ie/home/wnarticle.asp?NID=200&T=N&Print (Contribution by TJ McIntyre - EDRi-member Digital Rights Ireland) ============================================================ 7. Privacy complaints related to Google's Street View ============================================================ Privacy International has complained to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) against Google's Street View cars, which grab real photographs of streets and people, that get loaded into Google Maps. Street View distinctive cars have been recently spotted on London. The system allows Google's users to view 360 degree photographs of streetscapes in towns and cities that have been catalogued by Google cameras. Privacy International has expressed its reservations towards Google's practice in a letter sent to the company: "You may be aware that Privacy International has stated, both privately to Google legal staff and to the media, that we are concerned about a number of potential violations of national law that this technology may create," said the letter signed by director Simon Davies. Google had stated the company had implemented a technology that would blur faces and vehicle number plates allowing at the same time high quality images. Google's senior privacy counsel Jane Horvath had answered to Davies explaining that the face and number plate blurring technology had been in place since May. "As with all such systems operating at this scale our blurring technology is not perfect - we occasionally miss a face or license plate, for example if they are partially covered, or at a difficult angle. (...) However, we tested the technology thoroughly before launch and I am confident that it finds and blurs the vast majority of identifiable faces and license plates. For the few that we miss, the tools within the product make it easy for users to report a face or license plate for extra blurring. As always, users can still ask for their image to be removed from the product entirely" said Horvarth. In its letter, Privacy International was asking from Google to provide, within seven days, technical specifications of the blurring technology used, otherwise it would have to make a complaint to ICO. Having not received the required information, the privacy group placed the complaint which was confirmed by a spokeswoman for ICO: "Yes, we have received a complaint about this and we are looking into it. We are contacting Google to get more details of the scheme" said the spokeswoman to The Register. This comes at a time when ICO asks for changes to European data protection laws to keep up with changing technology. "European data protection law is increasingly seen as out of date, bureaucratic and excessively prescriptive. It is showing its age and is failing to meet new challenges to privacy, such as the transfer of personal details across international borders and the huge growth in personal information online. (...)"It is high time the law is reviewed and updated for the modern world." said Richard Thomas, UK ICO. The ICO has hired RAND Corporation to review European data protection laws for possible reforming. Some recent rulings of the Court of Appeal might be to Google's advantage. "If the photographs had been taken to show the scene in a street by a passer-by and later published as street scenes, that would be one thing, but they were not taken as street scenes but were taken deliberately, in secret and with a view to their subsequent publication," said Lord Hope in one of his ruling. On the other hand, while reluctant for some time, giving in to privacy advocates' pressure, Google has added a link to its privacy policy from its front page. Google home page contains now the word 'privacy' near the bottom, beside the copyright notice. The word is a link to a page containing all Google's privacy information. Google's spycar revs up UK privacy fears (7.07.2008) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/07/google_spycar_slammed/ Privacy group protests about Street View, but Google says blurring protects privacy (7.07.2008) http://www.out-law.com/page-9239 Google's controversial Street View hits the UK (3.07.2008) http://www.out-law.com/page-9233 Google bows to pressure, adds privacy link to home page (7.07.2008) http://www.out-law.com/page-9237 Google, privacy and Street View (4.07.2008) http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/07/google_privacy_and_street_vie… EDRIgram - Google StreetView might breach EU laws (21.05.2008) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.10/google-streetview-eu ============================================================ 8. New threats for UK file-sharers ============================================================ After the letters sent from Virgin Media to its customers on alleged file-sharing activities, British Telecom (BT), the UK's largest broadband provider, has started a similar activity. The Register has received information from one of the BT subscribers that has received such a letter from the Customer Security Team stating: ""I have received a complaint regarding one of our customers offering copyrighted material over the internet. On investigation, I have found that your account was used to make this offer." The letter contained evidence put forward by BPI, that was shared by BT with its customer and consisted, in this case, of the P2P programme Ares user agent, a time stamp, a file name and an IP address. The letter provided information on how to secure their WiFi connection, but also threaten with disconnection if similar activities continued: "Sorry, but we're obliged to point out that further similar problems may have to lead to the termination of your account, as such activity contravenes BT's Acceptable Use Policy." More aggressive threats have been reported being sent by Virgin Media to approx 800 subscribers with the following text on the envelope: "Important. If you don't read this, your broadband could be disconnected". Virgin Media spokeswoman claimed that the text was a mistake and explained that this was part of an education campaign: ""We are not accusing our customers of doing anything, we are alerting them to the fact that illegal file sharing has been tracked to their account. This could have been someone else in the house or an unsecured wireless network. This is an education campaign." In sending these letters, the ISPs do not share confidential information with BPI and do not monitor their users, but only receive from the BPI investigators the collected IP addresses of the customers having participated in alleged p2p copyrighted material sharing. The ISP identifies the exact individual and sends him (her) the template letter. Even though the BPI campaign has attracted two of the major British ISPs in this "education campaign", other ISPs have promptly rejected such collaboration. Carphone Warehouse make it clear that they just give access to Internet: "We are the conduit that gives users access to the internet. We do not control the internet, nor do we control what our users do on the internet. I cannot foresee any circumstances in which we would voluntarily disconnect a customer's account on the basis of a third party alleging a wrongdoing", said Charles Dunstone, the chief executive of Carphone Warehouse, to BBC. Virgin admits disconnection threat mistake (3.07.2008) http://www.out-law.com/page-9235 We won't cut off users, says Virgin (3.07.2008) http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jul/03/virgin.filesharers Virgin warns 800 punters for file-sharing (3.07.2008) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/03/virgin_letters_numbers/ BT starts threatening music downloaders with internet cut-off (26.06.2008) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/26/bt_bpi_letter/ EDRi-gram: British ISPs warn Internet downloaders on the risk of being prosecuted (18.06.2008) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.12/british-isp-virgin-letters ============================================================ 9. Liberty groups win long court battle against UK wiretapping ============================================================ After nine years of legal battle by civil rights groups in London and Dublin, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on 1 July 2008 that UK Government had violated Human Rights by tapping their communications between 1990 and 1997. Liberty groups, along with British Irish Rights Watch and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, have claimed their communications were subject to indiscriminate surveillance by MoD's Electronic Test Facility that had eavesdropped on their phone, fax, email and data communications between 1990 and 1997. After having first lodged complaints with the UK's Interception of Communications Tribunal, the DPP and the Investigatory Powers Tribunal without results because the local courts ruled "there was no contravention to the Interception of Powers Act 1985". Finally, the groups obtained the European Human Rights Court ruling that the UK had violated article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights providing the right to respect for private and family life and correspondence. The court found that the 1985 Act has given the UK government "virtually unlimited" discretion to intercept communications between the UK and an external receiver, as well as "wide discretion" to decide which communications were listened to or read. The government had guidelines to ensure a "safeguard against abuse of power", but the UK's 1985 interception law "had not indicated with sufficient clarity... the scope or manner of the exercise of the very wide discretion of the conferred on the State to intercept and examine external communications" so as to guard against abuse of power. For 10 years now, the 1985 Act has been replaced by RIPA which has the same objective to detect terrorism and serious crime but it is mostly applied by local councils for minor infringements. The court ruled that procedures regarding the use and storage of intercepted material should be established so as to make these procedures more transparent for the public. "While secret surveillance is a valuable tool, the mechanisms for intercepting our telephone calls and emails should be as open and accountable as possible, and should ensure proportionate use of very wide powers" said Alex Gask, Liberty's legal officer. The ruling will have strong implications for UK's present legislation on phonetapping and interception of communications, and as Mark Kelly, Director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties believes, clear implications for many other member states of the Council of Europe member states, such as Ireland: "Our lax data interception regime will require a thorough overhaul in order to ensure that it meets the standards required by the European Court of Human Rights under Article 8." Liberty called for an overhaul of RIPA. However, the Home Office stated on 2 July it did not think the ruling had any implications on RIPA and UK's current legislation covering covert investigations. Court rules 90s UK.gov wiretaps violated human rights (2.07.2008) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/02/echr_ripa_judgement/ Security: UK phonetap laws breach privacy (2.07.2008) http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jul/02/privacy.humanrights UK surveillance breaches human rights, rules ECHR (2.07.2008) http://www.out-law.com/page-9228 ============================================================ 10. ENDitorial: Massive mobilization against EDVIGE, the new French database ============================================================ Remember the movie 'Das Leben der Anderen' (The Lives of Others), where a Stasi agent was monitoring a playwriter's life? This doesn't translate anymore in French into 'La vie des autres', but rather into EDVIGE, the name of a newly created database to be used by French intelligence services and the administrative police. EDVIGE will file "individuals, groups, organisations and moral persons which, due to their individual or collective activity, are likely to attempt to public order". Not only these persons will be filed (without any offence committed), but also "those who undertake or have undertaken direct and non fortuitous relations with them." Filing starts at age 13. This, clearly, means filing everyone, in view of "informing the government and the representatives of the State" in any and all French town and region. In other words, EDVIGE, which has been created by a decree issued on 27 June 2008 in the framework of the merging of two French intelligence services (RG and DST), is the perfect instrument of a political police. EDVIGE will contains data on "civil status and occupation; physical addresses, phone numbers, email addresses; physical characteristics, photographs and behaviour; identity papers; car plate numbers; fiscal and patrimonial information; moves and legal history." As highlighted by lesbians and gays associations, this will include data on sexual orientation and health, in particular HIV seropositivity. This has been confirmed by a representative of the Interior ministry, who declared that "the mention of these data will only be authorised for incidental need in relation with an activity. In the intelligence field, this mainly means activism." Moreover, French EDRI member IRIS notes that the inclusion of "identity papers" in these data is particularly significant in the context of the newly created French biometric passport including 8 fingerprints and of the draft law in preparation on biometric ID cards. A large mobilization against EDVIGE immediately started, with a petition calling for the withdrawal of this file. This petition is hosted and maintained by RAS ('Riseau associatif et syndical'), an NGO acting as an ISP for its members, almost 200 activist NGOs and trade unions, among them EDRI member IRIS. The petition has already gathered since 10 July 2008 more than 16.000 individual signatures, and more than 170 signatures from associations, trade unions and political parties from the opposition. Signatories will organize into a global coordination against the EDVIGE file, and are preparing various actions starting from next September. In the mean time, some of these groups will file a complaint against the French government, requesting the annulment of the EDVIGE decree. But EDVIGE is not alone. Her twin sister, CRISTINA, has also been created on the same day. CRISTINA aims at "Centralising inland intelligence for homeland security and national interests." But that's all that we know about CRISTINA: using the article 26.III provision of the French Data Protection Act, the government decided not to publish the decree creating CRISTINA. As a consequence, the CNIL's opinion on CRISTINA has not been published either, except to attest that this opinion was "favourable, with reservations." Actually, the same secret has been observed for 6 other newly created files, related to inland and foreign intelligence, as well as military services. Not a good sign for these "Sarkozy's babies." Decree n0 2008-632 creating EDVIGE file (only in French, 27.06.2008) http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/WAspad/UnTexteDeJorf?numjo=IOCC0815681D CNIL's opinion on EDVIGE (only in French, 16.06.2008) http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/WAspad/UnTexteDeJorf?numjo=CNIX0816023X Tjtu: L'Intirieur reconnant qu'+Edvige; sera utilisi pour ficher les militants (only in French, 12.07.2008) http://www.tetu.com/rubrique/infos/infos_detail.php?id_news=13236 IRIS: Appel ` signatures : IRIS soutient l'appel pour l'abandon du fichier EDVIGE (only in French, 11.07.2008) http://www.iris.sgdg.org/info-debat/comm-edvige0708.html 'Non ` EDVIGE': Petition website, with press releases and press articles (only in French, since 10.07.2008) http://nonaedvige.ras.eu.org/ Decree n0 2007-914 of 15 May 2007, as modified by Decree n02008-631 of 27 June 2008 to create CRISTINA and other files (only in French, 01.07.2008 consolidated version) http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000000649189&… CNIL's opinion on CRISTINA (only in French, 16.06.2008) http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/WAspad/UnTexteDeJorf?numjo=CNIX0816024X (Contribution by Meryem Marzouki, EDRI-member IRIS- France) ============================================================ 11. Recommended Reading ============================================================ UK: Biometrics Assurance Group Annual Report 2007 A government expert group has warned of a 'large impact' on the National Identity Scheme from those who cannot use fingerprinting, such as many elderly people. http://www.ips.gov.uk/passport/downloads/FINAL-BAG-annual-report-2007-v1_0.… ============================================================ 12. Agenda ============================================================ 19-20 July 2008, Stockholm, Sweden International Association for Media and Communication Research pre-conference - Civil Rights in Mediatized Societies: Which data privacy against whom and how ? http://www.iamcr.org/content/view/301/1/ 23-25 July 2008, Leuven, Belgium The 8th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS 2008) http://petsymposium.org/2008/ 3-5 September 2008, Prague, Czech Republic The Third International Conference on Legal, Security and Privacy Issues in IT http://www.lspi.net/ 8-10 September 2008, Geneva, Switzerland The third annual Access to Knowledge Conference (A2K3) http://isp.law.yale.edu/ 22 September 2008, Istanbul, Turkey Workshop on Applications of Private and Anonymous Communications http://www.alpaca-workshop.org/ 24-28 September 2008, Athens, Greece World Summit on the Knowledge Society http://www.open-knowledge-society.org/summit.htm 11 October 2008: Europe-wide action day "Freedom not fear" Protests, demonstrations and activities against the surveillance mania http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Freedom_Not_Fear_2008 15-17 October 2008, Strasbourg, France 30th International Data Protection and Privacy Conference http://www.privacyconference2008.org/ 20.-21 October 2008, Strasbourg, France European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG) http://www.eurodig.org/ 3-6 December 2008, Hyderabad, India Third Internet Governance Forum http://www.intgovforum.org 10-11 December 2008: Tilburg, Netherlands Tilting perspectives on regulating technologies, Tilburg Institute for Law and Technology, and Society, Tilburg University http://www.tilburguniversity.nl/tilt/conference ============================================================ 13. About ============================================================ EDRI-gram is a biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe. Currently EDRI has 28 members based or with offices in 17 different countries in Europe. European Digital Rights takes an active interest in developments in the EU accession countries and wants to share knowledge and awareness through the EDRI-grams. All contributions, suggestions for content, corrections or agenda-tips are most welcome. Errors are corrected as soon as possible and visibly on the EDRI website. Except where otherwise noted, this newsletter is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License. See the full text at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Newsletter editor: Bogdan Manolea <edrigram(a)edri.org> Information about EDRI and its members: http://www.edri.org/ European Digital Rights needs your help in upholding digital rights in the EU. If you wish to help us promote digital rights, please consider making a private donation. http://www.edri.org/about/sponsoring - EDRI-gram subscription information subscribe by e-mail To: edri-news-request(a)edri.org Subject: subscribe You will receive an automated e-mail asking to confirm your request. unsubscribe by e-mail To: edri-news-request(a)edri.org Subject: unsubscribe - EDRI-gram in Macedonian EDRI-gram is also available partly in Macedonian, with delay. Translations are provided by Metamorphosis http://www.metamorphosis.org.mk/edrigram-mk.php - EDRI-gram in German EDRI-gram is also available in German, with delay. Translations are provided Andreas Krisch from the EDRI-member VIBE!AT - Austrian Association for Internet Users http://www.unwatched.org/ - Newsletter archive Back issues are available at: http://www.edri.org/edrigram - Help Please ask <edrigram(a)edri.org> if you have any problems with subscribing or unsubscribing ----- 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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[Open Manufacturing] Raw Story B; Despite FAA ban, US spy drone patrols northern border
by Paul D. Fernhout 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

From: http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/23/despite-faa-ban-us-spy-aircraft-patr… "Even though the Federal Aviation Administration has banned the use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), the Department of Homeland Security currently has a US spy aircraft patrolling the northern border of New York for the month of June. ... While unmanned aircraft systems can be armed, the one flying over upstate New York has no weapons, according to John Stanton, director of CPBbs Office of Air and Marine." OK, so killer robots are now being deployed in the state I live in (NY) but they are "unarmed". So, I should not mind? It's not like the military ever makes mistakes about this sort of stuff, right? "B-52 carried nuclear missiles over US by mistake: military" http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gmqA7P-MPnRJzQ5v9Xi6M5zdr9IA "The US military said on Wednesday it was investigating an alarming security lapse when a B-52 bomber flew the length of the country last week loaded with six nuclear-armed cruise missiles." Well, just be safe, I had better avoid funerals: "U.S. Drone Strike Said to Kill 60 in Pakistan (at funeral)" http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world/asia/24pstan.html "An airstrike believed to have been carried out by a United States drone killed at least 60 people at a funeral for a Taliban fighter in South Waziristan on Tuesday, residents of the area and local news reports said. Details of the attack, which occurred in Makeen, remained unclear, but the reported death toll was exceptionally high. If the reports are indeed accurate and if the attack was carried out by a drone, the strike could be the deadliest since the United States began using the aircraft to fire remotely guided missiles at members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The United States carried out 22 previous drone strikes this year, as the Obama administration has intensified a policy inherited from the Bush administration." At least there is no mention of children being killed that time in the supposedly just about half civilian casualties, so likely just some kids are left without parents, which presumably is better? Nothing there to breed a lifelong hatred of everyone in the USA, right? Of course, maybe breeding terrorists is what it is really all about? Every great country needs a great enemy to give meaning to its society, right? And if you can't find one, you need to make one right? Where would Castro have been without the USA to rail against? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Force_That_Gives_Us_Meaning "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning is a 2002 nonfiction book by Chris Hedges. In the book, Hedges draws on classical literature and his experiences as a war correspondent to argue that war seduces entire societies, creating fictions that the public believes and relies on to continue to support conflicts. He also describes how those who experience war may find it exhilarating and addicting. The book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year, as well as a national bestseller." Still, if there are strikes for the each of the supposed not-civilians' funerals, and then strikes at the funerals of those people, one can at least see the potential for an exponential growth of funerals. Until the US government runs out of suspected terrorists to blow up, of course. Some numbers on that, you can presumably subtract one from the other: http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html Just another example of post-scarcity technology being used by those obsessed with conflicts over scarcity -- but now deployed as a "test" in my state, within about a hundred miles of my home. Don't want those socialist Canadians sneaking over the border for some of our health care, right? "Inside HAARM: Late Night Brainstorming Session" http://haarm.org/ Or bringing all that Canadian weed with them? "How the war on drugs doesnbt work" http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2009/06/17/how-the-war-on-drugs-doesnt-work/ ""Webve spent a trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs," Norm Stamper, a former police chief of Seattle, told me. "What do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available, at lower prices and higher levels of potency. Itbs a dismal failure."" I feel much safer already, knowing that "unarmed" drones are keeping those evil socialist drug abusers in their place. And, hey, the military already uses a nearby large building as a landmark for low altitude maneuvers (or so we suppose from the regular flights in the past), so what's some automated stuff flying around in the state too? Just because it is unmanned, why should I be more worried? After all, there's presumably some teenager somewhere on the planet giving the thing orders. http://www.democracynow.org/2009/2/6/wired_for_war_the_robotics_revolution "He was actually a high school dropout who wanted to join the military to make his father proud. He wanted to be a helicopter mechanic. And they said, b Well, you failed your high school English course, so youbre not qualified to be a mechanic. But would you like to be a drone pilot?b And he said, b Sure.b And it turned out, because of playing on video games, he was already good at it. He was naturally trained up. And he turned out to be so good that they brought him back from Iraq and made him an instructor in the training academy, even though hebs an enlisted man and hebs stillbhe was nineteen." Sorry, just venting. I don't know what to do about this beyond what I am doing. There is already a border checkpoint not too far from my home which is 75 miles south of the border, where any car can be stopped and search, any laptop computer search or confiscated, and so on. And that one has already caused multiple deaths and is still there: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/23/nyregion/23crashes.html?oref=login&th "But on Interstate 87 north of here there have been two major crashes on the southbound approach to one of those checkpoints, including a pileup on Sept. 19, which killed four people as drivers failed to slow down for the lines of stopped cars." But they say it has been successful in catching some people with Canadian weed. So, we're all that much safer, right? "Remove Marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act" http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/3191-4049 Such an issue for so long... But it justifies anything... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse It is indeed a race towards Utopia or Oblivion, as Bucky Fuller said, depending on how these post-scarcity technologies are shaped. --Paul Fernhout --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Open Manufacturing" group. To post to this group, send email to openmanufacturing(a)googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to openmanufacturing+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing?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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