July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

[silk] "Unshredding" documents
by Udhay Shankar N 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Very cool, and very thought-provoking. Shades of both Brin's Transparent Society, and the librarian from _Snow Crash_ in here. Just like digital data is only considered safely erased when the substrate (e.g, a hard disk) is irrecoverably destroyed, so too, here. Anybody recall the last line from _The Dead Past_? ;-) Udhay http://www.thestar.com/News/article/295655 Reassembling a puzzle with 600 million pieces Husband spying on wife among secrets revealed by `unshredder' chewing through East German secret-police files Jan 20, 2008 04:30 AM Brett Popplewell Staff Reporter Nineteen years ago, as the Berlin Wall crumbled and democracy swept through communist East Germany, STASI agents members of the secret police worked feverishly to destroy millions of top-secret documents in an effort to keep them from Western eyes. Attempting to shred some 45 million items as quickly as possible, the agents fed page after page into shredding machines. The equipment quickly jammed, leaving the agents to tear up the materials by hand and throw them into garbage bags meant to be incinerated. But with East Germany quickly falling into the hands of the west, the agents were stopped before they could burn the shreds. Some 600 million pieces in 16,000 bags became the property of the current German government. They have remained, for the most part, in that state. Then, in May 2007, the German government revealed the world's most sophisticated pattern-recognition machine, the $8.5 million dollar (U.S.) E-Puzzler, which can digitally put back together even the most finely shredded papers. Developed in Berlin by the Fraunhofer Institute of Production Facilities and Construction Technology, the E-puzzler is a computerized conveyor belt that runs shards of shredded and torn paper through a digital scanner. Scanning up to 10,000 shreds at once, the machine links them together by their colour, typeface, outline, shape and texture not unlike how the average human might try to piece together a puzzle. The machine then displays a digital image of the original document on a computer screen. "The task to automatically reconstruct 16,250 bags full of torn documents using a technical system . . . presents an enormous technological challenge," says Bertram Nickolay, the lead inventor of the machine. During the Cold War, East Germany's Ministry for State Security STASI was regarded as one of the most formidable secret police forces of its day. Using a vast network of civilian informants, the STASI kept files on up to 6 million of East Germany's 16 million citizens through an estimated 400,000 informants from all walks of life. For decades, neighbours spied on neighbours, priests spied on their flocks, husbands spied on their wives and even children spied on their parents. They reported their discoveries to the 90,000 STASI agents keeping tabs on the population. Prior to the creation of the E-puzzler, a team of 15 Germans had laboriously been putting the pieces together by hand. But they managed to rebuild only 10,000 documents from 300 bags during 12 years. The German government estimated it would take a further 600 to 800 years to finish the job. But having uncovered heartbreaking stories of espionage like that of Vera Lengsfeld, a 54-year old German politician who was shocked to learn she had been spied on by her husband for 11 years the German public demanded the files be put together more quickly. An estimated 3.4 million Germans have officially requested to see the information the STASI gathered on them. With the E-puzzler, Nickolay says the government will be able to un-shred the remaining documents by 2013. Nickolay acknowledges his machine's importance in helping millions of Germans to piece together their former lives. But says his machine is even more significant to the rest of the world. In addition to piecing together shreds of paper, the machine has been used by Chinese archaeologists to reconstruct smashed Terracotta warriors found in the tomb of Emperor Qin. And the equipment has deciphered barely-legible lists of Nazi concentration camp victims. There is only one E-puzzler in operation, but Nickolay's team has received interest from other former Eastern Bloc countries looking for a way to get at their own state secrets of the past. "It's no longer safe to shred a document," Nickolay says. "The only safe way to destroy something is by burning it." -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com)) ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0

[drone-list] Smart phones fly mini drones
by BeatTheChip 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

By Tom Koehler<http://active.boeing.com/contactus.cfm?directed_to=feature_215> Boeing engineer George Windsor sat in a small room at a Boeing building in Seattle and picked up an iPhone. After a short series of finger movements and taps, a miniature unmanned aircraft that's about as big as a pizza box started to hover, turn and fly. In some cases, Windsor tapped on locations on a map on the iPhone, and the UAV went to that spot; in other instances, Windsor moved the phone up, down, left and right, and the vehicle moved accordingly. What made this flight demonstration even more fascinating is that the UAV was hovering over a baseball field on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in Cambridge, Mass. b some 3,000 miles away. http://www.boeing.com/Features/2011/08/corp_drone_08_29_11.html -- BeatTheChip.org 511Campaign.org ____________________ Twitter: BeatTheChip **I am a United States citizen. My phone and electronic communications may be monitored by the NSA, the FBI, DHS and private contractors who will be held unaccountable for crimes against privacy according to illegal and unenforceable laws, FISA & The Patriot Act. Due to the invasive and unconstitutional nature of these laws, I do not recognize the authority of the surveillants and will prosecute on stalking, habitual harassment if there is no legal grounds for reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing in my private conversations. Get a warrant.* _______________________________________________ drone-list mailing list drone-list(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/drone-list If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0

[drone-list] Smart phones fly mini drones
by BeatTheChip 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

By Tom Koehler<http://active.boeing.com/contactus.cfm?directed_to=feature_215> Boeing engineer George Windsor sat in a small room at a Boeing building in Seattle and picked up an iPhone. After a short series of finger movements and taps, a miniature unmanned aircraft that's about as big as a pizza box started to hover, turn and fly. In some cases, Windsor tapped on locations on a map on the iPhone, and the UAV went to that spot; in other instances, Windsor moved the phone up, down, left and right, and the vehicle moved accordingly. What made this flight demonstration even more fascinating is that the UAV was hovering over a baseball field on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in Cambridge, Mass. b some 3,000 miles away. http://www.boeing.com/Features/2011/08/corp_drone_08_29_11.html -- BeatTheChip.org 511Campaign.org ____________________ Twitter: BeatTheChip **I am a United States citizen. My phone and electronic communications may be monitored by the NSA, the FBI, DHS and private contractors who will be held unaccountable for crimes against privacy according to illegal and unenforceable laws, FISA & The Patriot Act. Due to the invasive and unconstitutional nature of these laws, I do not recognize the authority of the surveillants and will prosecute on stalking, habitual harassment if there is no legal grounds for reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing in my private conversations. Get a warrant.* _______________________________________________ drone-list mailing list drone-list(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/drone-list If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0

[cryptography] Iranian Cryptography Vendor (backdoor reference)
by J. Oquendo 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Crypto AG has been accused of rigging its machines in collusion with intelligence agencies such as the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) and the United States National Security Agency (NSA), enabling such organisations to read the encrypted traffic produced by the machines.[2] Suspicions of this collusion were aroused in 1986 following US president Ronald Reagan's announcement on national television that, through interception of diplomatic communications between Tripoli and the Libyan embassy in East Berlin, he had irrefutable evidence that Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya was behind the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing in which two US service personnel were killed and another fifty injured. President Reagan then ordered the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in retaliation. There is no conclusive evidence that there was an intercepted Libyan message.[citation needed] Further evidence suggesting that the Crypto AG machines were compromised was revealed after the assassination of former Iranian Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar in 1991. On August 7, 1991, one day before Bakhtiar's body was discovered, the Iranian Intelligence Service transmitted a coded message to Iranian embassies, inquiring "Is Bakhtiar dead?" Western governments were able to decipher this transmission, causing Iranian suspicion to fall upon their Crypto AG equipment.[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/nsa_backdoors_i.html -- =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ J. Oquendo SGFA, SGFE, C|EH, CNDA, CHFI, OSCP, CPT, RWSP, GREM "Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace" - Dalai Lama 42B0 5A53 6505 6638 44BB 3943 2BF7 D83F 210A 95AF http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x2BF7D83F210A95AF _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0

[p2p-hackers] A globally distributed peer-to-peer data archive
by James A. Donald 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Here is a proposal as to how Tahoe, or a fork thereof, might be made "get what you give" Each agent issues currency representing the right to store data on its servers, and transport data to and from its servers. Each agent attempts to exchange its currency with other's currencies, attempting, like a bittorrent agent, to get the best deal, though with much longer memory than a bittorrent agent. Bittorrent agents only care about what a given IP number has done for them lately. The Tahoe agent would need to remember what a given public key has done for them over time, in order to assess what a currency is actually worth, how reliably it can be converted into actual storage or actual bandwidth, and whether that actual storage is apt to go away. If an agent has a diverse collection of currencies, it can then store and access the data tahoe style. When someone reads a file, the bandwidth costs may be charged against the entity reading, the entity publishing, or some combination thereof, according to the settings on that file. So *some* files can be read by non contributors, by agents that have no currency. _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers(a)lists.zooko.com http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers ----- 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

1 0

[liberationtech] Kazakhstan
by Rebecca MacKinnon 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Some members of this list may have seen news of the government crackdown in Kazakhstan. http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/12/17/kazakhstan-investigate-violence-oil-rich… http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/17/us-kazakhstan-clashes-idUSTRE7BG0… Excerpt from the HRW report: "The government has apparently shut down access to at least some mobile, voice, and text services in Zhanaozen. By late afternoon, Human Rights Watch could no longer reach workers by mobile phone, and access to Twitter.com and other news sites reporting on the unrest had been blocked by the authorities. b Without a means to communicate with the outside world, people in Zhanaozen are extremely vulnerable,b Rittmann said." Is anybody aware of efforts to set up dial-up access, satellite internet access, ad hoc radio or wireless networks or anything for Kazakhstan? I'm hearing rumors (unconfirmed) that shutdown of Internet and some mobile services may extend beyond Zhanaozen. If anybody is aware of any efforts underway please let me know either on or off-list. I know some people who may be interested in supporting such efforts but they don't know who to approach. Cheers, Rebecca -- Rebecca MacKinnon Schwartz Senior Fellow, New America Foundation Cofounder: GlobalVoicesOnline.org Author: ConsentoftheNetworked.com Office: +1-202-596-3343 Twitter: @rmack _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0

[drone-list] Montgomery Cty drone crashes during test
by Gregory Foster 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

@sUASnews (Mar 5) - "Drone crashes into SWAT team tank during police test near Houston" [1]http://www.suasnews.com/2012/03/12711/drone-crashes-into-swat-team-t ank-during-police-test-near-houston/ gf -- Gregory Foster || [2]gfoster(a)entersection.org @gregoryfoster <> [3]http://entersection.com/ References 1. http://www.suasnews.com/2012/03/12711/drone-crashes-into-swat-team-tank-dur… 2. mailto:gfoster@entersection.org 3. http://entersection.com/ _______________________________________________ drone-list mailing list drone-list(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/drone-list If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0

Re: [tor-talk] Tor and HTTPS graphic
by The23rd Raccoon 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 12:20 AM, Seth David Schoen <schoen(a)eff.org> wrote: > andrew(a)torproject.is writes: > > I was concerned that the graphic should not make people think that > _no one_ can ever associate them with their browsing when they use > Tor. I've been taught to think of the GPA threat (and other traffic > correlation threats) as real, so I thought people should have some > indication of those threats. Now bear in mind that I'm just a Raccoon, but some time ago I scrawled a proof out that showed that the correlation accuracy of a "dragnet GPA" goes down in proportion to the square of the number of concurrent users using an anonymization service: http://archives.seul.org/or/dev/Sep-2008/msg00016.html The belief that you can test a correlation system independent of a population size is called the Base Rate Fallacy, and I believe much of the PETS timing attack literature suffers from it. In that post I demonstrated the effect the Fallacy has on dragnet correlation. I also gave some example calculations for how accuracy changes from different points of network surveillance with respect to population size and correlation accuracy. With end-to-end encryption and proper Tor cell size choice, the NSAs odds of watching everyone all the time (Example 1 in my post) and getting the correlation right are low and do clearly drop as more people use Tor. Therefore, I think the most accurate representation would be to put a question mark next to the data link between the two NSA dudes in your graphic, because they aren't exactly sharing perfectly; they are consulting each other, correlating observed traffic patterns with some error rate, and rolling the dice. A question mark captures this well. Putting "Capabilities Uncertain" underneath the question mark or as a footnote might be even better, if we already have newspaper articles citing the graphic as proof Tor is broken... P.S. To the list administrators, it looks like the new archives have truncated my proof at the new archive: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2008-September/002493.html _______________________________________________ tor-talk mailing list tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk ----- 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

1 0

[p2p-hackers] A globally distributed peer-to-peer data archive
by James A. Donald 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Here is a proposal as to how Tahoe, or a fork thereof, might be made "get what you give" Each agent issues currency representing the right to store data on its servers, and transport data to and from its servers. Each agent attempts to exchange its currency with other's currencies, attempting, like a bittorrent agent, to get the best deal, though with much longer memory than a bittorrent agent. Bittorrent agents only care about what a given IP number has done for them lately. The Tahoe agent would need to remember what a given public key has done for them over time, in order to assess what a currency is actually worth, how reliably it can be converted into actual storage or actual bandwidth, and whether that actual storage is apt to go away. If an agent has a diverse collection of currencies, it can then store and access the data tahoe style. When someone reads a file, the bandwidth costs may be charged against the entity reading, the entity publishing, or some combination thereof, according to the settings on that file. So *some* files can be read by non contributors, by agents that have no currency. _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers(a)lists.zooko.com http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers ----- 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

1 0

[liberationtech] Kazakhstan
by Rebecca MacKinnon 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Some members of this list may have seen news of the government crackdown in Kazakhstan. http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/12/17/kazakhstan-investigate-violence-oil-rich… http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/17/us-kazakhstan-clashes-idUSTRE7BG0… Excerpt from the HRW report: "The government has apparently shut down access to at least some mobile, voice, and text services in Zhanaozen. By late afternoon, Human Rights Watch could no longer reach workers by mobile phone, and access to Twitter.com and other news sites reporting on the unrest had been blocked by the authorities. b Without a means to communicate with the outside world, people in Zhanaozen are extremely vulnerable,b Rittmann said." Is anybody aware of efforts to set up dial-up access, satellite internet access, ad hoc radio or wireless networks or anything for Kazakhstan? I'm hearing rumors (unconfirmed) that shutdown of Internet and some mobile services may extend beyond Zhanaozen. If anybody is aware of any efforts underway please let me know either on or off-list. I know some people who may be interested in supporting such efforts but they don't know who to approach. Cheers, Rebecca -- Rebecca MacKinnon Schwartz Senior Fellow, New America Foundation Cofounder: GlobalVoicesOnline.org Author: ConsentoftheNetworked.com Office: +1-202-596-3343 Twitter: @rmack _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0