Re:quote of the day
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Carl_Ellison@vos.stratus.com writes:
Only those means of security are good, are certain, are lasting, that depend on yourself and your own vigor. - Machiavelli
That reminds me of my first reaction to CypherPunks: why would the government spend thousands of $$$ of supercomputer time & mathematician brains to see your miserable piece of information, when all they have to do is lock you up at the back of a countryside garage, beat the shit out of you, inject various chemicals into your blood until you spit out your secret key ? That was a bit harsh, but, going back to the essentials, a crypto system is as weak as its weakest link, isn'it ? Now that we've got them pgp, RSA and IDEA and whatnot, fine, we've built a 20 inches thick steel chain around our little secrets. Except that this marvelous piece of technology is held together with a hair strand: your brain. Where you key is kept, and where everybody assumes it's safe. Isn't time we take a look at another kind of cryptographic attack, the ancestor of which bore the delicate name of penthotal ? Nobody ever speaks of them chemicals that make you talk. But they exist, and as well as cryptography techniques developed fast recently, trust the government, those chemicals must have made a few advances. Like, for example making you tell what you don't want to and then make you forget about anybody asking. Or maybe I watch too many serials. Does anybody have informations about state of the art tell-us-you-story-pills ? - -zap -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCUAgUBLUX4+Sk+9PttYUp1AQEnsAP1GzsaUC6iMSM9g1HJPh15ygqYgwdHVce5 L90Z9k6VB5+WBseUMKMEE2RJkGTa1aXZPZR5JEcQeLoHV4yu4wb3u43GmJIib1w1 05GN4Y+2E+S33XY58LNaQksJjliOKI+6t9UksW8xkDdyKr2u62Lw/3Oh2YhZblJL GkVqQidrRg== =r75G -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help@anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin@anon.penet.fi.
That reminds me of my first reaction to CypherPunks: why would the government spend thousands of $$$ of supercomputer time & mathematician brains to see your miserable piece of information, when all they have to do is lock you up at the back of a countryside garage, beat the shit out of you, inject various chemicals into your blood until you spit out your secret key ?
Because of economics and political stability. You can build computers and monitoring devices in secret, deploy them in secret, and listen to _everything_. To listen to everything with bludgeons and pharmaceuticals would not only cost more in labor and equipment, but also engender a radicalizing backlash to an actual police state. Of course, if one is paranoid, these considerations of the whole do not hold, since for only one person the cost balance is reversed. There is safety in numbers. Eric
Eric, the squid, writes -
There is safety in numbers.
Large prime numbers. _______________________________________________________________________________ Paul Ferguson Sprint Managed Router Network Engineering tel: 703.904.2437 Herndon, Virginia USA internet: paul@hawk.sprintmrn.com
That reminds me of my first reaction to CypherPunks: why would the government spend thousands of $$$ of supercomputer time & mathematician brains to see your miserable piece of information, when all they have to do is lock you up at the back of a countryside garage, beat the shit out of you, inject various chemicals into your blood until you spit out your secret key ?
Because it's not their money. -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- - DrZaphod #Don't Come Any Closer Or I'll Encrypt! - - [AC/DC] / [DnA][HP] #Xcitement thru Technology and Creativity - - [drzaphod@brewmeister.xstablu.com] [MindPolice Censored This Bit] - - 50 19 1C F3 5F 34 53 B7 B9 BB 7A 40 37 67 09 5B - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
On Wed, 26 Jan 1994, zaaaaaaaap! wrote:
Nobody ever speaks of them chemicals that make you talk. But they exist, and as well as cryptography techniques developed fast recently, trust the government, those chemicals must have made a few advances. Like, for example making you tell what you don't want to and then make you forget about anybody asking.
The effects of the classic truth drug thiopentale (Pentotale) are widely known by anesthesiologists and their nurses, although other drugs with faster elimination (meaning you can drive your car home after some ours) are replacing it as drug of choice for anesthetic initiation. If you inject a sub-anesthetic dose of Pentotale the subject will become loose in his associations and frequently offer his deeper feelings about the situation to the audience (in the operating theatre) without being asked to do so. Pentotale and other barbiturates have also been used in special psychiatric treatment programs to induce loquaciousness and emotional openness (at the moment very out of fashion). Most of these effects are not very different from those of alcohol, we all know the overfriendly wino, and can certainly be withheld by a determined non-talker. The same goes for benzodiazepines (like Valium). But you usually do forget a lot about it afterwards. Amphetamines can also make the subject very, very friendly but not against his will and you don't forget about it. Opiates obviously are bad choices making the subjects carefree but uncooperative. Anti-depressives and anti-psychotic drugs also have no theoretical advantages. Some hallucinogens might be better choices though, at least as weapons of torture making you talk just to be spared the next shot. Publically known hallucinogens like LSD are well known to produce states of ultimate terror if given to uncooperative subjects at the 'wrong' time. True hallucinogens like (high dose) atropine might be even more effective. Many synthetic psychodelic drugs started their career in anesthesiology but were quickly abandoned because of psychic side effects. One of the weirdest is still used sometimes (being extremely friendly to weak hearts and lungs): ketamine. Basically the patient on ketamine can be awake during the operation but in a state of utter confusion through selective disruptions of associative brain channels. My educated guess is that if serious work is going on trying to find a truth drug, ketamine-related substances are studied intensely. Anyway, there is no perfect drug that just make you say the truth and then forget about it. And there never will be. And the polygraph is quackery. Mats Bergstrom
Mats Bergstrom <matsb@sos.sll.se> writes:
intensely. Anyway, there is no perfect drug that just make you say the truth and then forget about it. And there never will be. And the polygraph is quackery.
Well, there _are_ plenty of drugs that neatly cause short-term memory loss. Xanex, I think, is one. (And there are some other really scary drugs used in medecine, that could be used for some awfully terrifying trips. Pavulon, for instance, which causes total paralysis, but does not interfere with sensory nerve function.) So the "...then forget about it" part is pretty simple. Lyle Transarc 707 Grant Street 412 338 4474 The Gulf Tower Pittsburgh 15219
Lyle_Seaman@transarc.com writes:
Well, there _are_ plenty of drugs that neatly cause short-term memory loss. Xanex, I think, is one. (And there are some other really scary
Ah, oops. I was thinking of Halcyon, actually. And there are other drugs, like Versed and Fentanyl, which have similar effects to Sodium Pent or severe inebriation, in that they cause loquacity and memory loss. The effect is that people talk about whatever "is on their mind", which might or might not be true. Someone might try very hard to convince you of their innocence of a particular crime. If they were, in fact, guilty, their ability to lie convincingly under the influence would be rather impaired. However, their ability to speak clearly is often pretty seriously impaired as well. Bit of a tangent, eh? Lyle Transarc 707 Grant Street 412 338 4474 The Gulf Tower Pittsburgh 15219
Actually N2O @ 6LPM + O2 @ 3LPM works pretty good too, with less side effects and easier to get legally.
participants (9)
-
an56238@anon.penet.fi -
Chris Knight -
drzaphod@brewmeister.xstablu.com -
hughes@ah.com -
jdwilson@gold.chem.hawaii.edu -
Lyle_Seaman@transarc.com -
Mats Bergstrom -
paul@hawksbill.sprintmrn.com -
Sameer