- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

[IP] Strangling the Internet with ID
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Begin forwarded message:

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Re: Comcast throws down gauntlet to residential accounts
by Barton F Bruce 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

*This message was transferred with a trial version of CommuniGate(r) Pro* Last fall I sat through the whole day public FCC hearing on Comcast's outrageous behavior to P2P traffic (and presumably other traffic, too, but that was the biggie) held at Harvard Law School. Things started LATE because Comcast had stacked the room with their dummies that had no idea what was happening and were just trying to stay awake. The FCC Chairman, in commenting on the late start while we all waited for the 146 or so overflow attendees to be accomodated in another room via a video and audio feed, also made it quite clear the FCC was well aware that a lot of attendees in the main hall were only there because Comcast had arranged for them to be filling seats. Congressman Markey was there, too, to say his opening remarks since his committee has oversight over the FCC. One or two minutes of listening to the Comcast chief counsel and I was convinced the FCC wasn't going to get anything out of him, but at least they could turn the flames up as they stirred the pot periodically. I doubt any additional oil or grease was needed to prevent sticking to the pan, though maybe I missed when they had to ladel some off lest what was probably oozing out and collecting spill over. It just went downhill all day for Comcast. After the official ceremony was over, there was a beer/wine/cheese/cracker type reception in another campus building, and I heard the FCC's Chair's private comments to those of us walking with him. If you thought he was pissed at them from his public comments, you got very sure from his more private ones. They were just out of control! That the entire FCC made a whole day hearing on the East Coast, and then on the West Coast, meant that the FCC was getting a LOT of complaints. The fix as far as I can tell is DOCSIS 3 modems and more bandwidth, but that is still over what would have been revenue bearing video channels Comcast misses and Comcasts engineering approach is just to cover light weight normal browsing, and the "fix" is nothing but temporary!!! We all need to let the FCC know how terrible Comcast still is. There was one VENDOR allowed in and who had a display table and screen right up front where everyone could see! The product however was FREE nad the vendor was MIRO (or still is Democracy Player for those yet gagging on the new name). They POINTED TO MIRO and said here is a great new technology to empower anyone to distribure their videos to the masses virtually for free. This is the kind of goodness and change the internet can make and this is exactly what Comcast's SandVine deep packet inspection boxes were stalking to kill. TOR may not be quite as warm and fuzzy as MIRO, but both are important when we live in a world of lies and spin doctors and corporate "media" that can't tell the truth (if they even know it) lest they be fired. We need to find the exact sore points and buttons that will excite the FCC and panic Comcast. Mumbling "I may call the FCC" isn't the same as "I'm one of the authors of document X over 10,000 of which have been sent to the FCC - please continue to give us more material for the updated version being sent later this month. I understand you must have already heard of the first version by now...". Can TOR folks TORture Comcast? Don't know, but can't hurt to try. FWIW, Comcast did not appear at the reception, but VZ's two very sharp representatives were there. One was I suspect a Lobbyist, and the other was very technical and holds several of the patents VZ used against Vonage. Both very clean cut and well spoken and in stark contrast to Comcast's well deserved "image" at the hearing. FIOS is using CWDM (Coarse Wave Division Multiplexing) with 3 seperate lambdas. Even in just what has been already deployed, there is a vast amount of idle bandwidth they can sell. They can trivially add more colors and then only need to equip the CO end of any 32 subscriber fiber and as needed selected PON end points to be able to add some random other new high bandwidth offerings that do not share the wave/lambda/color of the base three. There is nothing to preclude packing a *LOT* more in as DWDM (Dense....) simply by using the more expensive components but only as necessary. In other words, Comcast is still very limited, and FIOS can crank out as much bandwidth as needed trivially with what is already being deployed. VZ has always to me seemed to be a do less charge more sort of company, but as long as they don't sleeze past the local town cable folks by buying whomever else they need at state or Washington level, and are supporting the PEG video channels, I'm delighted they are making the RCNs and Comcasts of the world work hard for our money. I'm paying $65 per month for 20 meg UP and DOWN FIOS with one dynamic IP. Some early on home folks got grandfathered in at about that price with several fixed IPs. It is always the last mile where the choke point is. Long haul and transit is dirt cheap these days. I get any fixed IPs I need over a work provided T1 (yes I can and may yet just tunnel them over the FIOS link), but my big problem is I can't figure out how to have some things in a windows machine run with one set of IP addresses and others use others without messing with virtual machines or having the electric bill rocket with too many physical machines. Ideally, individual applications should be able to handle multiple IPs, too. Torrents or even TOR should be able to deal with a multihomed machine, and keep selected things running in appropriate IP space. Something like Communigate PRO does let me use specific IP addresses for selected email domains as needed. Many folks have housemates with different internet access, and then there is that 25 DB parabolic getting idle WiFi bandwidth off hours from the library/coffieeshop/laundromat in sight a block or few away. Applications and OSes need to make using multiple addresses trivial even just in IPV4 space. Creamed spinach dip was excellent, too. A shame Comcast didn't come over to socialize. I bet a lot of rude remarks were poised and ready to fly. ----- 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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[FoRK] Are you a potential terrorist?
by Contempt for Meatheads 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

>From the everything-evil-in-America-comes-from-Texas-Florida-or-DC dept.: http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,63535,00.html Are You a Potential Terrorist? Associated Press Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,63535,00.html 10:20 AM May. 20, 2004 PT Before helping to launch the criminal information project known as Matrix, a database contractor gave U.S. and Florida authorities the names of 120,000 people who showed a statistical likelihood of being terrorists ? sparking some investigations and arrests. The "high terrorism factor" scoring system also became a key selling point for the involvement of the database company, Seisint Inc., in the Matrix project. Public records obtained by The Associated Press from several states show that Justice Department officials cited the scoring technology in appointing Seisint sole contractor on the federally funded, $12 million project. Seisint and the law enforcement officials who oversee Matrix insist that the terrorism scoring system ultimately was kept out of the project, largely because of privacy concerns. However, new details about Seisint's development of the "terrorism quotient," including the revelation that authorities apparently acted on the list of 120,000, are renewing privacy activists' suspicions about Matrix's potential power. "Assuming they have in fact abandoned the terrorist quotient, there's nothing that stops them from bringing it back," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union, which learned about the list of 120,000 through its own records request in Utah. Matrix ? short for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange ? combines state records and data culled by Seisint to give investigators quick access to information on crime and terrorism suspects. It was launched in 2002. Because the system includes information on people with no criminal record as well as known criminals, Matrix has drawn objections from both liberal and conservative privacy groups. Utah and at least eight other states have pulled out, leaving Florida, Connecticut, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The AP has received thousands of pages of Matrix documents in records requests this year, including meeting minutes and presentation materials that discuss the project in detail. Not one indicates that Matrix planners decided against using the statistical method of determining an individual's propensity for terrorism. When the AP specifically requested documents indicating the scoring system was scrapped, the general counsel's office for Florida state police said it could not uncover any. Even so, people involved with Matrix pledge that the statistical method was removed from the final product. "I'll put my 26 years of law enforcement experience on the line. It is not in there," said Mark Zadra, chief investigator for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. He said Matrix, which has 4 billion records, merely speeds access to material that police have always been able to get from disparate sources, and does not automatically or proactively finger suspects. Bill Shrewsbury, a Seisint executive and former federal drug agent, said the terrorism scoring algorithm that produced the list of 120,000 names was "put on the shelf" after it was demonstrated immediately following Sept. 11, 2001. He said the scoring system requires intelligence data that was fed into the software for the initial demonstration but is not commonly available. "Nor are we interested in pursuing that," he said. The Utah documents included a Seisint presentation saying the scoring system was developed by the company and law enforcement officials by reverse engineering an unnamed "terrorist handbook" that reveals how terrorists "penetrate and in live our society." The scoring incorporated such factors as age, gender, ethnicity, credit history, "investigational data," information about pilot and driver licenses, and connections to "dirty" addresses known to have been used by other suspects. According to Seisint's presentation, dated January 2003 and marked confidential, the 120,000 names with the highest scores were given to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, FBI, Secret Service and Florida state police. (Later, those agencies would help craft the software that queries Matrix.) Of the people with the 80 highest scores, five were among the Sept. 11 hijackers, Seisint's presentation said. Forty-five were identified as being or possibly being under existing investigations, while 30 others "were unknown to FBI." "Investigations were triggered and arrests were made by INS and other agencies," the presentation added. Two bullet points stated: "Several arrests within one week" and "Scores of other arrests." It does not provide details of when and where the investigations and arrests took place. Phil Ramer, who heads Florida state police's intelligence division, said his agency found the list a useful starting point for some investigations, though he said he could not recall how many. He stressed that the list was not used as the sole evidence to make arrests. "What we did with the list is we went back and found out how they got on the list," Ramer said. Dean Boyd, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a descendant of INS in the Department of Homeland Security, said he could not confirm that INS used or was given the list. Although Seisint says it shelved the scoring system ? known as high terrorist factor, or HTF ? after the original demonstrations in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, the algorithm was touted well into 2003. A records request by the AP in Florida turned up "briefing points," dated January 2003, for a presentation on Matrix to Vice President Dick Cheney and other top federal officials delivered jointly by Seisint, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida's top police official. One of the items on Seisint's agenda: "Demonstrate HTF with mapping." Matrix meeting minutes from February 2003 say Cheney was briefed along with Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and FBI Director Robert Mueller. In May 2003, the Justice Department approved Seisint as sole data contractor on the project, citing the company's "technical qualifications," including software "applying the 'terrorism quotient' in all cases." "The quotient identifies a set of criteria which accurately singled out characteristics related to the perpetrators of the 9-11 attacks and other terrorist events," said a memo from an Office of Justice Programs policy adviser, Bruce Edwards. "This process produced a scoring mechanism (that), when applied to the general criminal population, yields other people that may have similar motives." A spokeswoman for the Office of Justice Programs declined to comment. Ramer, the Florida agent, said the scoring system was scrapped because it was "really specific to 9/11," and not applicable for everyday use. Also, he said, "we didn't want anybody abusing it." Seisint is a Boca Raton, Fla., company founded by a millionaire, Hank Asher, who stepped down from its board of directors last year after revelations of past ties to drug smugglers. End of story _______________________________________________ FoRK mailing list http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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Re: Comcast throws down gauntlet to residential accounts
by Barton F Bruce 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

*This message was transferred with a trial version of CommuniGate(r) Pro* Last fall I sat through the whole day public FCC hearing on Comcast's outrageous behavior to P2P traffic (and presumably other traffic, too, but that was the biggie) held at Harvard Law School. Things started LATE because Comcast had stacked the room with their dummies that had no idea what was happening and were just trying to stay awake. The FCC Chairman, in commenting on the late start while we all waited for the 146 or so overflow attendees to be accomodated in another room via a video and audio feed, also made it quite clear the FCC was well aware that a lot of attendees in the main hall were only there because Comcast had arranged for them to be filling seats. Congressman Markey was there, too, to say his opening remarks since his committee has oversight over the FCC. One or two minutes of listening to the Comcast chief counsel and I was convinced the FCC wasn't going to get anything out of him, but at least they could turn the flames up as they stirred the pot periodically. I doubt any additional oil or grease was needed to prevent sticking to the pan, though maybe I missed when they had to ladel some off lest what was probably oozing out and collecting spill over. It just went downhill all day for Comcast. After the official ceremony was over, there was a beer/wine/cheese/cracker type reception in another campus building, and I heard the FCC's Chair's private comments to those of us walking with him. If you thought he was pissed at them from his public comments, you got very sure from his more private ones. They were just out of control! That the entire FCC made a whole day hearing on the East Coast, and then on the West Coast, meant that the FCC was getting a LOT of complaints. The fix as far as I can tell is DOCSIS 3 modems and more bandwidth, but that is still over what would have been revenue bearing video channels Comcast misses and Comcasts engineering approach is just to cover light weight normal browsing, and the "fix" is nothing but temporary!!! We all need to let the FCC know how terrible Comcast still is. There was one VENDOR allowed in and who had a display table and screen right up front where everyone could see! The product however was FREE nad the vendor was MIRO (or still is Democracy Player for those yet gagging on the new name). They POINTED TO MIRO and said here is a great new technology to empower anyone to distribure their videos to the masses virtually for free. This is the kind of goodness and change the internet can make and this is exactly what Comcast's SandVine deep packet inspection boxes were stalking to kill. TOR may not be quite as warm and fuzzy as MIRO, but both are important when we live in a world of lies and spin doctors and corporate "media" that can't tell the truth (if they even know it) lest they be fired. We need to find the exact sore points and buttons that will excite the FCC and panic Comcast. Mumbling "I may call the FCC" isn't the same as "I'm one of the authors of document X over 10,000 of which have been sent to the FCC - please continue to give us more material for the updated version being sent later this month. I understand you must have already heard of the first version by now...". Can TOR folks TORture Comcast? Don't know, but can't hurt to try. FWIW, Comcast did not appear at the reception, but VZ's two very sharp representatives were there. One was I suspect a Lobbyist, and the other was very technical and holds several of the patents VZ used against Vonage. Both very clean cut and well spoken and in stark contrast to Comcast's well deserved "image" at the hearing. FIOS is using CWDM (Coarse Wave Division Multiplexing) with 3 seperate lambdas. Even in just what has been already deployed, there is a vast amount of idle bandwidth they can sell. They can trivially add more colors and then only need to equip the CO end of any 32 subscriber fiber and as needed selected PON end points to be able to add some random other new high bandwidth offerings that do not share the wave/lambda/color of the base three. There is nothing to preclude packing a *LOT* more in as DWDM (Dense....) simply by using the more expensive components but only as necessary. In other words, Comcast is still very limited, and FIOS can crank out as much bandwidth as needed trivially with what is already being deployed. VZ has always to me seemed to be a do less charge more sort of company, but as long as they don't sleeze past the local town cable folks by buying whomever else they need at state or Washington level, and are supporting the PEG video channels, I'm delighted they are making the RCNs and Comcasts of the world work hard for our money. I'm paying $65 per month for 20 meg UP and DOWN FIOS with one dynamic IP. Some early on home folks got grandfathered in at about that price with several fixed IPs. It is always the last mile where the choke point is. Long haul and transit is dirt cheap these days. I get any fixed IPs I need over a work provided T1 (yes I can and may yet just tunnel them over the FIOS link), but my big problem is I can't figure out how to have some things in a windows machine run with one set of IP addresses and others use others without messing with virtual machines or having the electric bill rocket with too many physical machines. Ideally, individual applications should be able to handle multiple IPs, too. Torrents or even TOR should be able to deal with a multihomed machine, and keep selected things running in appropriate IP space. Something like Communigate PRO does let me use specific IP addresses for selected email domains as needed. Many folks have housemates with different internet access, and then there is that 25 DB parabolic getting idle WiFi bandwidth off hours from the library/coffieeshop/laundromat in sight a block or few away. Applications and OSes need to make using multiple addresses trivial even just in IPV4 space. Creamed spinach dip was excellent, too. A shame Comcast didn't come over to socialize. I bet a lot of rude remarks were poised and ready to fly. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: [ZS] Bitcoin Seeks New Life In Africa
by Gary Mulder 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On 21 March 2012 15:56, Dirk Bruere <dirk.bruere(a)gmail.com> wrote: Are there any bitcoin exchanges that take PayPal or credit/debit cards? > I don't do online banking with my accounts. > One key feature of Bitcoin is that a transaction is non-revocable. Once you send Bitcoins to a Bitcoin wallet address, the Bitcoins are irrevocably sent. PayPal supports charge backs, so someone who buys Bitcoins could then file a charge back request with PayPal and get PayPal to refund his payment. Therefore nobody accepts PayPal for Bitcoin purchases. Credit cards also have identical issues. Also, get the destination Bitcoin address wrong and the Bitcoins sent can never be recovered by anyone. If you want to confirm GBP into Bitcoins you need to use a Bitcoin exchange. The guys at http://www.intersango.com accept SEPA and bank transfers to their Lloyds TSB account. The funds usually show up in your exchange account around 1 business day later. I know the guys running Intersango, and they are legit. and are based in London and Poland. Having said that they've had to change from HSBC to Lloyds as HSBC was giving them a lot of problems, so don't make any large deposits. http://www.mtgox.comis the other large exchange which is based in France and Japan. The major weakness in Bitcoin are the exchanges, as they're they interface between normal currencies and the Bitcoin ecosystem, and so suffer all the problems and risks of both systems, i.e. regulation, security, and technical issues. Caveat emptor - this is the Wild Wild West of currency. Regards, Gary -- Zero State mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/DoctrineZero ----- 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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[FoRK] Are you a potential terrorist?
by Contempt for Meatheads 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

>From the everything-evil-in-America-comes-from-Texas-Florida-or-DC dept.: http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,63535,00.html Are You a Potential Terrorist? Associated Press Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,63535,00.html 10:20 AM May. 20, 2004 PT Before helping to launch the criminal information project known as Matrix, a database contractor gave U.S. and Florida authorities the names of 120,000 people who showed a statistical likelihood of being terrorists ? sparking some investigations and arrests. The "high terrorism factor" scoring system also became a key selling point for the involvement of the database company, Seisint Inc., in the Matrix project. Public records obtained by The Associated Press from several states show that Justice Department officials cited the scoring technology in appointing Seisint sole contractor on the federally funded, $12 million project. Seisint and the law enforcement officials who oversee Matrix insist that the terrorism scoring system ultimately was kept out of the project, largely because of privacy concerns. However, new details about Seisint's development of the "terrorism quotient," including the revelation that authorities apparently acted on the list of 120,000, are renewing privacy activists' suspicions about Matrix's potential power. "Assuming they have in fact abandoned the terrorist quotient, there's nothing that stops them from bringing it back," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union, which learned about the list of 120,000 through its own records request in Utah. Matrix ? short for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange ? combines state records and data culled by Seisint to give investigators quick access to information on crime and terrorism suspects. It was launched in 2002. Because the system includes information on people with no criminal record as well as known criminals, Matrix has drawn objections from both liberal and conservative privacy groups. Utah and at least eight other states have pulled out, leaving Florida, Connecticut, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The AP has received thousands of pages of Matrix documents in records requests this year, including meeting minutes and presentation materials that discuss the project in detail. Not one indicates that Matrix planners decided against using the statistical method of determining an individual's propensity for terrorism. When the AP specifically requested documents indicating the scoring system was scrapped, the general counsel's office for Florida state police said it could not uncover any. Even so, people involved with Matrix pledge that the statistical method was removed from the final product. "I'll put my 26 years of law enforcement experience on the line. It is not in there," said Mark Zadra, chief investigator for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. He said Matrix, which has 4 billion records, merely speeds access to material that police have always been able to get from disparate sources, and does not automatically or proactively finger suspects. Bill Shrewsbury, a Seisint executive and former federal drug agent, said the terrorism scoring algorithm that produced the list of 120,000 names was "put on the shelf" after it was demonstrated immediately following Sept. 11, 2001. He said the scoring system requires intelligence data that was fed into the software for the initial demonstration but is not commonly available. "Nor are we interested in pursuing that," he said. The Utah documents included a Seisint presentation saying the scoring system was developed by the company and law enforcement officials by reverse engineering an unnamed "terrorist handbook" that reveals how terrorists "penetrate and in live our society." The scoring incorporated such factors as age, gender, ethnicity, credit history, "investigational data," information about pilot and driver licenses, and connections to "dirty" addresses known to have been used by other suspects. According to Seisint's presentation, dated January 2003 and marked confidential, the 120,000 names with the highest scores were given to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, FBI, Secret Service and Florida state police. (Later, those agencies would help craft the software that queries Matrix.) Of the people with the 80 highest scores, five were among the Sept. 11 hijackers, Seisint's presentation said. Forty-five were identified as being or possibly being under existing investigations, while 30 others "were unknown to FBI." "Investigations were triggered and arrests were made by INS and other agencies," the presentation added. Two bullet points stated: "Several arrests within one week" and "Scores of other arrests." It does not provide details of when and where the investigations and arrests took place. Phil Ramer, who heads Florida state police's intelligence division, said his agency found the list a useful starting point for some investigations, though he said he could not recall how many. He stressed that the list was not used as the sole evidence to make arrests. "What we did with the list is we went back and found out how they got on the list," Ramer said. Dean Boyd, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a descendant of INS in the Department of Homeland Security, said he could not confirm that INS used or was given the list. Although Seisint says it shelved the scoring system ? known as high terrorist factor, or HTF ? after the original demonstrations in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, the algorithm was touted well into 2003. A records request by the AP in Florida turned up "briefing points," dated January 2003, for a presentation on Matrix to Vice President Dick Cheney and other top federal officials delivered jointly by Seisint, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida's top police official. One of the items on Seisint's agenda: "Demonstrate HTF with mapping." Matrix meeting minutes from February 2003 say Cheney was briefed along with Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and FBI Director Robert Mueller. In May 2003, the Justice Department approved Seisint as sole data contractor on the project, citing the company's "technical qualifications," including software "applying the 'terrorism quotient' in all cases." "The quotient identifies a set of criteria which accurately singled out characteristics related to the perpetrators of the 9-11 attacks and other terrorist events," said a memo from an Office of Justice Programs policy adviser, Bruce Edwards. "This process produced a scoring mechanism (that), when applied to the general criminal population, yields other people that may have similar motives." A spokeswoman for the Office of Justice Programs declined to comment. Ramer, the Florida agent, said the scoring system was scrapped because it was "really specific to 9/11," and not applicable for everyday use. Also, he said, "we didn't want anybody abusing it." Seisint is a Boca Raton, Fla., company founded by a millionaire, Hank Asher, who stepped down from its board of directors last year after revelations of past ties to drug smugglers. End of story _______________________________________________ FoRK mailing list http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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Re: [ZS] Bitcoin Seeks New Life In Africa
by Gary Mulder 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On 21 March 2012 15:56, Dirk Bruere <dirk.bruere(a)gmail.com> wrote: Are there any bitcoin exchanges that take PayPal or credit/debit cards? > I don't do online banking with my accounts. > One key feature of Bitcoin is that a transaction is non-revocable. Once you send Bitcoins to a Bitcoin wallet address, the Bitcoins are irrevocably sent. PayPal supports charge backs, so someone who buys Bitcoins could then file a charge back request with PayPal and get PayPal to refund his payment. Therefore nobody accepts PayPal for Bitcoin purchases. Credit cards also have identical issues. Also, get the destination Bitcoin address wrong and the Bitcoins sent can never be recovered by anyone. If you want to confirm GBP into Bitcoins you need to use a Bitcoin exchange. The guys at http://www.intersango.com accept SEPA and bank transfers to their Lloyds TSB account. The funds usually show up in your exchange account around 1 business day later. I know the guys running Intersango, and they are legit. and are based in London and Poland. Having said that they've had to change from HSBC to Lloyds as HSBC was giving them a lot of problems, so don't make any large deposits. http://www.mtgox.comis the other large exchange which is based in France and Japan. The major weakness in Bitcoin are the exchanges, as they're they interface between normal currencies and the Bitcoin ecosystem, and so suffer all the problems and risks of both systems, i.e. regulation, security, and technical issues. Caveat emptor - this is the Wild Wild West of currency. Regards, Gary -- Zero State mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/DoctrineZero ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: [liberationtech] Travel with notebook habit
by Bryce Lynch 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Sun, Dec 30, 2012 at 11:02 AM, Eugen Leitl <eugen(a)leitl.org> wrote: > ----- Forwarded message from Julian Oliver <julian(a)julianoliver.com> > -----This is why I personally think it's wise to carry just a skeleton > system over > the border on a bootable USB stick, with full disk encryption. Once on > the > other side of the border, securely download the data required (as I said > in last > post). > This is what I do when I go OCONUS. I have an older 'burner' laptop that I only take on travel with me that has a 250GB hard drive. Before every trip I DBAN the drive and reinstall my usual desktop and applications (reinstallling Arch Linux is pretty fast once you're used to it, and I use Backpac ( https://github.com/altercation/backpac) to automate much of the construction process). I also make sure to copy some files into my home directory just so anyone poking around in there will have something to find - photographs from vacations, RPG books from Drive Thru, and whitepapers that I never seem to have the time to read at work. I try to shoot for looking like a harmless nerd. Before I left I built a file on a separate system that goes into a directory of videos on my website which is actually a TrueCrypt volume containing a KeePass database, a copy of the Tor Browser Bundle, Torchat, a set of SSH keys that are only used while on travel to log into certain IP addresses, a set of OpenVPN certificates to set up a VPN connection to a machine I trust back home, and a text file of URLs and IP addresses for things. Anything sensitive that I pick up while on the trip (like notes taken or documents) get copied into the TrueCrypt volume. The TrueCrypt volume is only opened when I need it, otherwise it just sits on the hard drive pretending to be a video. Bandwidth permitting, I download that file to my laptop for the duration of the trip, and (also bandwidth permitting) it's SCP'd up to the same web server it was downloaded from so there is always an offsite copy (which also gets backed up once a day along with the websites on that server). Just before heading home, one last copy is uploaded to the web server and then it's securely deleted from the drive. I don't use journaling file systems on my travel laptop, so it seems to have a better chance of irretrivability. I've also experimented with overwriting the file with ISO images (like the Arch Linux installation ISO) and other videos (concert footage is nice) prior to shredding the file. I haven't done a forensic analysis to test whether or not an actual overwrite takes place, so take that with a dose of sodium chloride. It makes me feel better, though. Sticks are easier to throw away/hide and if your laptop is stolen/seized > within > the country your data doesn't have to go with it - the stick's in your > pocket or > in your sock when walking around. Before you cross the border again the > stick > should be physically destroyed. This is better than trusting data deletion. > I would recommend microSD cards for this - much smaller, can be fitted into a USB key-like adapter for access, they're relatively cheap (so you can carry a lot of them with you, and if one goes missing it's hard to tell (*cough*)), and they can be destroyed with a pair of nail clippers or a flush if absolutely necessary. > It can be smart to have a stock standard Windows install on the physical > hard-disk that wakes from sleep on lid-open with a picture of you and a dog > laughing in the sunny grass. Invite them to browse around and find nothing. > Never use that Windows install, of course. Boot Debian GNU/Linux or > BackTrack > Linux on the stick. > That's a pretty good idea. Not the way I roll, but it works. > I've been extensively questioned at the border on a few occassions over the > years /because/ my laptops don't have a Desktop as such, no icons either. > Both > my arms were grabbed at the Australian border as I reached to type > 'firefox' in > a terminal, to start the browser in an attempt to show them a normal > looking > environment. > That was a concern of mine, but I've not heard of it happening before. Good to know it's a risk worth planning for (I do - Firefox, LibreOffice, Clementine, a couple of other familiar-seeming apps on the desktop). > Terminals at the border are not a good idea. > No, they're not. White text in black windows sets people off. Too many movies with thrilling scenes of people typing, I think. > To avoid the machine being tampered with, invest in a solid state netbook > and > super-glue the shell together. It's not a crime. > I put stickers on the seams on my notebooks in places where they would have to be damaged to gain access to the internals - on the sides, on the bottom over a screw or two, places like that. I use different stickers for every trip - sometimes Snoopy, sometimes My Little Pony, sometimes whatever is cheap in the kid's section at the drugstore. I switch them up to make it less likely that the sticker pack used can be guessed (maybe it's a bit overboard, but it's also minimal effort on my part). If the stickers have been creased, cut, or moved it would mean that someone had been poking around in the guts of my laptop. -- The Doctor [412/724/301/703] [ZS|Media] https://drwho.virtadpt.net/ "I am everywhere." -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ZS-P2P" group. To post to this group, send email to zs-p2p(a)googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to zs-p2p+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: Six Strike Rule (Was: William was raided...)
by Barry Shein 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On December 4, 2012 at 11:10 jason(a)thebaughers.com (Jason Baugher) wrote: > We don't do content inspection. We don't really want to know what our > customers are doing, and even if we did, there's not enough time in the day > to spend paying attention. When we get complaints from the various > copyright agencies, we warn the customer to stop. When we hit a certain > number of complaints, its bye-bye customer. This is why there's a need for some sort of reasonable, organized response outlined in writing. In my experience law enforcement (and others) will try to shift whatever investigative tasks are convenient to them to anyone in the loop. Why not, it costs them nothing to have you running around all day and night doing investigative work for them. They will generally cite the seriousness of the underlying crime as (bottomless) justification for your contribution. The rational response is to sit down as a group within some framework and come to some agreement* with them as to what is a reasonable and sufficient response in these cases. Otherwise you're just the complaint desk at Macy's taking all comers and subject to whatever they can dream up to try to get you to solve their problems. * Agreement with LEOs is best, a unilateral document would at least open discussion one would hope and move towards that end. -- -Barry Shein The World | bzs(a)TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD | Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada Software Tool & Die | Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo* ----- 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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PurpleOnion: HS Address Generator (+ Managed Router Impl?)
by Marcus Griep 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Hello all, I wanted to let the Tor community know about a little side project of mine, a .onion address generator. Basically, all that it does is generate RSA key-pairs, determine the associated onion address (as for a hidden service) and attempts to match it to a provided regular expression. If there is a match, the program exports the key to a directory in a ready-made format for use as a hidden service directory. If there is not a match, the entropy doesn't have to be wasted; the generated keys can be logged to a file (933 bytes per onion). This file can then be read back in by the program to test against other regular expressions. The program is also setup to take advantage of multi-core machines for the creation of RSA keys, though a there is a synchronous bottleneck that I'm looking at removing in the near future to get a much better speedup. Also, as I'll note later, this implementation is on top of Mono. Thus, implementations with managed crypto stacks are slower than those with native crypto stacks (.NET on Windows). There are no shortcuts taken here in the address generation; if there were any, then the security of hidden services in general would be suspect. Only pure brute-force is used. Hence its utility is limited, but if you wanted a hidden service that had, say "wiki" in the onion address, this would help you get there (eventually). It does have another application; if your entropy sink is just too darn random, the onion generator will help you burn that excess digital entropy into heat energy. The onion generator is one part (and currently the only part) of a greater project I'm calling PurpleOnion, short for Purple Onion Router, mainly as I'm partial to the color. I started off by writing the onion generator and found that I'd written a couple of reusable components that, with some work, could be used in a greater exercise to write another implementation of the Tor Onion Router. PurpleOnion is written on the Mono framework in C# using MonoDevelop, requires Mono 2.0 to compile, and is licensed under the MIT/X11 license. I've also tested the compiled binary copied into a Windows environment (with Mono.Security available). The program runs great on Windows, and I added some exception handling to allow the compiled binary to JIT properly even without OS Posix support. The project is being hosted on github at: http://github.com/neoeinstein/purpleonion The repository is still a little bit dirty as I work on figuring out namespacing, so the Makefile is out of service. You can compile using MonoDevelop, but if you have gmcs, the following command in the repository root should get you a properly built generator: # gmcs -t:exe -o:build/Por.OnionGenerator.exe \ -r:System -r:System.Core -r:Mono.Security \ -r:Mono.Posix src/Por.OnionGenerator/*.cs # mono Por.OnionGenerator.exe --help I'd love to hear comments, both on the .onion address generator in specific and the possibility of a compliant onion router on a managed runtime, -- Marcus Griep bb NN:N1N:N9N1 WW*.ON?B4, 3B0 (Excuse the double post if it occurred; I first sent this from an un-subscribed address) ----- 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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