Re: U.S. Wants to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet
Lucky Green, ex-PGP official, said recently at a history of cpunks panel that the principal disappointment of PGP.com was that too few individuals used encryption, and that most of its use was by corporations complying with customer privacy regulations not for comsec. With this in mind, individuals and corporations apparently do not see the need for comsec, so in that sense Eric Schmidt, Google apologist, is correct that privacy is not a big deal for those with nothing to hide. Phil Zimmermann, also on the panel, said nothing about PGP, said he has moved on to a secure phone development. The consensus was that Internet security was dead in the water, only snake oil was successful at convincing customers their privacy was "taken very seriously." If you read privacy policies, and most of us don't as they evolve to be more slippery, they are virtually identical in what they promise and admit to customer betrayal for "lawful interception compliance." There are a few law firms which specialize in these misleading policies and write them to fit "acceptable industry standards." Think of the ex-NIST and ex-NSA experts now advising industry and government to issue regular scare stories about cyberthreats. The privacy watchdogs and verification services fit right in with this flimflam -- all agree that officials have the right to violate privacy, "it's the law," and that ISPs and Internet operators must cooperate. You want privacy, do not use digital technology, but don't tell the gaga Internet user that. So, if the cpunk greying beards are right, the encryption battle of the 1990s was lost, not won. Pretending to have won is exactly what was agreed to develop the market for "unbreakable" crypto. One of the cpunks on the panel said the encryption battle was not only lost, but now some of the proponents of public comsec are now happily making money by keeping the snake oil protection racket alive and well. Wikileaks was cited as an example but far from alone, financial data protection leads the pack of misrepresentation. My private report explains all this in detail and what to do to get in on the windfall for a mere $250,000 per issue. Money back guarantee.
The issue was that the threat model was not successfully sold to the general public. This was/is a political/sociological obstacle. Think the smoking issue: it was hard to shed light on the causality where cause and effect are 10-20 years apart, despite the fact that almost all major players (except the tobacco industry) cooperated. With encryption, none of the major players cooperates, and the distance between the cause and effect is more likely 20-30 years (data harvesters getting ahead of and hamstringing the general public.)
So, if the cpunk greying beards are right, the encryption battle of the 1990s was lost, not won. Pretending to have won is exactly what was agreed to develop the market for "unbreakable" crypto.
Dunno. I think this assessment is overly pessimistic and, indeed, this very miguided attempt by FBI to pass unenforceable legislation may indicate why. I think there may be large and possibly enormous volumes of traffic now flowing across private-ish P2P networks, many or all of which will be reasonably darknettish. Of course, the crypto isn't perfect but I don't get the sense that NSA shares a lot with FBI, but the sheer volume may be enough to worry the latter....who knows what's mixed in that traffic? Who knows which of the files are actually real or which are fake to cover covert transactions and whatnot. Come to think of it, this may actually be a good scenario: Large volumes of computationally difficult (but not intractable) encrypted traffic presenting standard law enforcement with more than they can handle while meanwhile the NSAs of the world with the resources jealously guarding their capabilities and secrets, only sharing them in the most extrme of circumstances. Seems to me a lot could be done inside those P2P networks. In fact, anything needing very significant security could be hard-encrypted and then injected and subsequently encrypted again with less secure methods with the rest of the P2P traffic...this has the advantage of hiding the strength of encryption and avoiding special notice from the outset. In other words, "we" may not have won but the filesharers were driven there by their own inevitable logic. Or am I overly optimisitc here? -TD PS: Variola has been representin' on the issue on the BoingBoing boards.
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:05:04 -0400 To: cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net From: jya@pipeline.com Subject: Re: U.S. Wants to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet
Lucky Green, ex-PGP official, said recently at a history of cpunks panel that the principal disappointment of PGP.com was that too few individuals used encryption, and that most of its use was by corporations complying with customer privacy regulations not for comsec.
With this in mind, individuals and corporations apparently do not see the need for comsec, so in that sense Eric Schmidt, Google apologist, is correct that privacy is not a big deal for those with nothing to hide.
Phil Zimmermann, also on the panel, said nothing about PGP, said he has moved on to a secure phone development.
The consensus was that Internet security was dead in the water, only snake oil was successful at convincing customers their privacy was "taken very seriously." If you read privacy policies, and most of us don't as they evolve to be more slippery, they are virtually identical in what they promise and admit to customer betrayal for "lawful interception compliance."
There are a few law firms which specialize in these misleading policies and write them to fit "acceptable industry standards." Think of the ex-NIST and ex-NSA experts now advising industry and government to issue regular scare stories about cyberthreats.
The privacy watchdogs and verification services fit right in with this flimflam -- all agree that officials have the right to violate privacy, "it's the law," and that ISPs and Internet operators must cooperate. You want privacy, do not use digital technology, but don't tell the gaga Internet user that.
So, if the cpunk greying beards are right, the encryption battle of the 1990s was lost, not won. Pretending to have won is exactly what was agreed to develop the market for "unbreakable" crypto.
One of the cpunks on the panel said the encryption battle was not only lost, but now some of the proponents of public comsec are now happily making money by keeping the snake oil protection racket alive and well. Wikileaks was cited as an example but far from alone, financial data protection leads the pack of misrepresentation.
My private report explains all this in detail and what to do to get in on the windfall for a mere $250,000 per issue. Money back guarantee.
On Tue, 28 Sep 2010, Tyler Durden wrote:
Seems to me a lot could be done inside those P2P networks. In fact, anything needing very significant security could be hard-encrypted and then injected and subsequently encrypted again with less secure methods with the rest of the P2P traffic...this has the advantage of hiding the strength of encryption and avoiding special notice from the outset.
In other words, "we" may not have won but the filesharers were driven there by their own inevitable logic.
Or am I overly optimisitc here?
Well, the cats out of the bag as far as the math goes. If you want to communicate "securely" you can. The problem is you have to go all the way over to full black ops mode to do it if key escrow (or whatever) is finally (re)instated. No more of this "well my shell connection is over SSL and I access my dev wiki with HTTPS blah blah ..." - it's all or nothing now. And further, there's the whole "structuring" issue. To be honest, the "structuring" movement in the prosecutorial world is scarier than key escrow ... the idea that your "transactions" can incriminate you not based on their actual content, but on your thoughts or motives at the time (highly subjective, of course) is very troublesome. So don't worry about the math - we all know you can securely send it - it's the structuring (or equivalent) charge after the fact that should be worrisome.
PS: Variola has been representin' on the issue on the BoingBoing boards.
URL to these threads on the BB boards ? Thanks.
Came across this interview of an ATM machine in Antartica http://www.needcoffee.com/2010/01/12/antarctica-atm-interview/ Here is a snippet of the Q&A session from the interview: " DP: You know, that is a very good question, and you're right it is challenging--certainly makes for a long commute for our servicers. I'm kidding thereb&tongue-in-cheekb& No, actually, what we do--first of all, the cash on the ice is recycled. So McMurdo Station (which is the scientists' station there on Antarctica)... any sort of venue, the cash is all recycled, and so there's no cash vendor that has to go down all the time to a regular ATM to replenish the cash volume. W: Rightb&there's only so many places one can run with cash down there, I assume. " That brings us to the obvious question, why not use something like a debit card hooked to a central network? Why does hard currency have to flow? Will not the time and effort be far lesser, in case of the former? Thanks, Sarad.
On Mon, 18 Oct 2010, Sarad AV wrote:
That brings us to the obvious question, why not use something like a debit card hooked to a central network? Why does hard currency have to flow?
Trust for one. As little as I trust the Dollar, I trust a plastic card accessing a network representation of that Dollar even less.
Will not the time and effort be far lesser, in case of the former?
Certainly, but is the value there?
Thanks, Sarad.
//Alif -- "Never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty." Joseph Pulitzer, 1907 Speech
At 06:46 AM 10/18/2010 -0700, Sarad AV wrote:
That brings us to the obvious question, why not use something like a debit card hooked to a central network? Why does hard currency have to flow?>
What part of untraceable bearer instruments don't you understand? Don't you think they have a growhouse? Stop trolling. ---------------- David Honig (714) 544 9727 36 Laurelwood Dr. Irvine, CA 92620
Antartica can function without external cash flow only if it's zero-sum inside, ie. no value created, which is true for any collection of, ehm, scientists. Growing, however, creates real value that would need to be balanced with external cash inflow (a very useful indicator of how much is being grown, BTW.)
What part of untraceable bearer instruments don't you understand?
Don't you think they have a growhouse?
On 20/10/2010 04:36, Morlock Elloi wrote:
Antartica can function without external cash flow only if it's zero-sum inside, ie. no value created, which is true for any collection of, ehm, scientists.
Growing, however, creates real value that would need to be balanced with external cash inflow (a very useful indicator of how much is being grown, BTW.)
I disagree. While the total value of the system compared to the external world can indeed grow (and be balanced by an outflow of some saleable resource, either physical or not) the amount of needed in-circulation cash is going to be pretty close to constant, if you can disregard inflation. you still need a bank - people will need to exchange the non-physical value of their wages for physical tokens (cash) and will spend those at retail for food, clothing etc. a certain amount will remain in the bank (as savings) or be transferred electronically for mail order goods) however, all money spent at retail will be in the cash registers of the retailers who will invariably then take at least some of it to the bank, to be credited to their account. This account will then be used to pay wages (for their own workers) and buy in fresh supplies of resources (electronically). Some will no doubt skip this step, and issue wages from receipts and buy some materiel in cash (so freshly caught raw meat, etc) but that doesn't cause the cash to leave the system - its new owners will either spend it at retail or bank it, thus recycling the tokens they have. no matter how you look at it, the amount in people's wallets won't vary that much, and once spent, will either be placed in other people's wallets, or in the bank (where it can be re-issued to the people who spent it in the first place). The only reasons you can need new physical tokens in the system are inflation (items are costing more, so the amount of in-wallet cash you need to carry is larger), physical tokens are leaving the system - so, raw materiel bought in cash from outside the system, people leaving Antarctica and taking cash with them - or if the number of people in the system is increasing, which of course is possible.
I think that the term "growing" was misunderstood - it refers to a certain floral activity, and I'll bet that there's not export, it's all consumed internally.
Growing, however, creates real value that would need to be balanced with external cash inflow (a very useful indicator of how much is being grown, BTW.)
I disagree. While the total value of the system compared to the external world can indeed grow (and be balanced by an outflow of some saleable resource, either physical or not) the amount of needed in-circulation cash is going to be pretty close to constant, if you can disregard inflation.
Interestingly, I have a friend who did a year at antarctica (at a station roughly 300 miles from McMurdo). Cash moeny isn't even available :-( Pity. As for "growth", or "increase in value", these are concepts not totally out of place in the vaccum of what amounts to self-imposed isolation for your *own* research goals. The closest thing to money down there is time, which is traded much as we trade the tokens of bills and coin. And time is fixed in quantity: everyone has the same fraction of the total to start with, the total cannot grow or shrink, but it can (and does) rise in value as the distance from the start of the "shift" gets longer. //Alif On Sun, 24 Oct 2010, Morlock Elloi wrote:
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2010 21:27:55 -0700 (PDT) From: Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@yahoo.com> To: cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net Subject: Re: Money in a closed ecosystem
I think that the term "growing" was misunderstood - it refers to a certain floral activity, and I'll bet that there's not export, it's all consumed internally.
Growing, however, creates real value that would need to be balanced with external cash inflow (a very useful indicator of how much is being grown, BTW.)
I disagree. While the total value of the system compared to the external world can indeed grow (and be balanced by an outflow of some saleable resource, either physical or not) the amount of needed in-circulation cash is going to be pretty close to constant, if you can disregard inflation.
//Alif -- "Never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty." Joseph Pulitzer, 1907 Speech
participants (8)
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Dave Howe -
David Honig -
J.A. Terranson -
John Case -
John Young -
Morlock Elloi -
Sarad AV -
Tyler Durden