October 2013 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

[liberationtech] Whonix Anonymous Operating System Version 7 Released!
by Eugen Leitl 12 Oct '13

12 Oct '13

----- Forwarded message from adrelanos <adrelanos(a)riseup.net> ----- Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2013 18:53:38 +0000 From: adrelanos <adrelanos(a)riseup.net> To: liberationtech <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> Subject: [liberationtech] Whonix Anonymous Operating System Version 7 Released! Message-ID: <52599AB2.5070305(a)riseup.net> Reply-To: liberationtech <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 Whonix is an operating system focused on anonymity, privacy and security. It's based on the Tor anonymity network, Debian GNU/Linux and the principle of security by isolation. DNS leaks are impossible, and not even malware with root privileges can find out the user's real IP. Whonix consists of two parts: One solely runs Tor and acts as a gateway, which we call Whonix-Gateway. The other, which we call Whonix-Workstation, is on a completely isolated network. Only connections through Tor are possible. Download: https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Download Users of Whonix 0.5.6 and below: There is no upgrade path from Whonix 0.5.6 to Whonix 7. You have to manually download new Whonix images. Call for Help: If you know shell scripting (/bin/bash) and linux sysadmin, please join us! There are plenty of ways to make Whonix safer. We are also looking for an https direct download mirror. Whonix 7 Changelog: * Updated Tor to 0.2.4. * Installed obfs3 by default. (for obfsproxy bridges) * New Identity button on Tor Browser is now functional thanks to the Control Port Filter Proxy (#3). * Tor Browser is now the system default browser (#86). In addition, when opening a link or an html file it will ask for confirmation to avoid accidental linking. (configurable) * Graphical Whonix-Gateway (#26). Optionally, if you reduce Whonix-Gateway RAM to below 500 MB, let's say to 128 MB, you automagically end up with the usual non-graphical Whonix-Gateway. (configurable) * Whonix now includes an updater. It can not be promised that you will never have to download a new image for next stable releases, but we are on that way. Interested testers may have to download images of testing releases from time to time. * Tor networking is disabled for the first start of Whonix-Gateway. The connection wizard (whonixsetup) will automatically start to help enabling Tor or setting up bridges. This is useful for people using bridges to connect to the Tor network to hide the fact that they are using Tor. * The current Tor Browser Bundle (TBB) Alpha, which will soon become the new TBB stable, will work out of the box in Whonix, even if you download and install it manually from torproject.org. This is useful for the case that the Whonix Tor Browser updater breaks due to changes on torproject.org. Tor over Tor situation will be automatically prevented on manual installs. * Boot Clock Randomization. * Time Sanity Check. * Higher console resolution: 1024x768 (without X). * Disabled the throw-keyids option on gpg.conf due to usability issues. Enable it manually if you need it. * Fixed uwt. To do certain tasks such as installing the Adobe Flash plugin or running update-command-not-found you no longer need to "chmod -x /usr/local/bin/curl". * Deactivated the kgpg tray icon by default (#10), not perfect, but less confusing, since it will now start in foreground by default and no longer as tray icon (which was automatically and confusingly hidden by default). * Downloading Tor Browser and signature from idnxcnkne4qt76tg.onion instead of torproject.org for better security when run inside Whonix. * Time Privacy wrapper (optional). * Enable "apparmor=1 security=apparmor" by default (didn't enable enforce mode or add any useful profiles yet). * Manpages for scripts which come with Whonix. * Flexible modular .d style configuration folders: /etc/whonix.d/, /etc/whonix_firewall.d/, /etc/controlportfilt.d/. * Moved blog to wordpress.com, better than sourceforge, because wordpress.com supports SSL, closed #23. * Lots of other improvements and bug fixes which can be found under the git log. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIcBAEBCgAGBQJSWZqwAAoJEJwTGtNxOq7vH9YP/jwBuyMyFZ4hP9AMgPHjMTHG uxYRy7mHzJIum9goghWrAgYTys3oGyHDSMTuhErcJ+bEV4jb2WAqifUa+iId8rs/ 6HeHfssctY7fHoxbaKbapMlCJ6JN0pU23RtsWsZcn5jXaldmtVHMlS4PWMuU56Mh oSuH2cw6KvsKo/QO3F7xVnYy4VNX28oEeF3dWf4keZN8Sr+Nezlci0nPYYuHCNv/ DUwv1kpSW5B5+Ki5xJW9CgiGeOtw7kwL2w4gbcI7yAywEWytCkVeDHCF/sHdqYf/ PcCpQ23FQmRBB3MKLNF1qr47uj1ninbM+EPLtZQV9vVx3Qpgcv9mnMEV2zu1/geu ydjXMZv+v3UmFvG//Uttciga7Dk4XXpY8HKglS0YkRY0E7KLOkdRvO2Y2G57EQMC Pp2UoSWv43gBtoeKNIJXwjrm7UDPvhB6UHavORIB7feeBI4ke0FN6vJ81jpwUvIm PV2yBXfBguByZvG2oRUbQbgKFcg/OfD+ydOG+SJwcqNops28VjJ7qcgsUFb4vk/m v83DzogQOB0Wz0iWBlZkBTH8OI7+HebX+ocrLuGQif9z2OHGQ2UzeKgFlg97gj6N l2rD0JWHbqPhXvLKJIzNZAWN9QAuIo0QCPPcpBWKvlaQTKalxnFsm7Gz4Pg5eSdZ cgSrquvrMEOLlNGRagZ9 =nyvS -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys(a)stanford.edu. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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who are the service operators here?
by Joseph Holsten 12 Oct '13

12 Oct '13

I'm currently working on both chef cookbooks and dockerfiles for a bunch of old services I used to run in the good old days (pre 2000) of cypherpunks. Boring stuff like qmail, tinydns, pgp keyserver. But I'm dying to know what fancy new services people are operating these days. Any distributed chat ops? Blob/file storage? Remailers? Bitcoin pools? In another vein, what ops do you think a self-sufficient punk ought to be running? I'm thinking I absolutely need: - Tor endpoint - vpn endpoint (openvpn?) - smtp/imap sever (what's modern?{ - file/blob server (tahoe-lafs, camlistore?) - jabber server (ejabberd?) (Yes, my homepage is showing a ruby script. No, I don't have time to fix it in situ. Thus setting up my own servers) -- ~j

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Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Which mesh system should be included in the Freedombox?
by Eugen Leitl 12 Oct '13

12 Oct '13

----- Forwarded message from Paul Gardner-Stephen <paul(a)servalproject.org> ----- Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2013 20:23:27 +1030 From: Paul Gardner-Stephen <paul(a)servalproject.org> To: Petter Reinholdtsen <pere(a)hungry.com> Cc: freedombox-discuss <freedombox-discuss(a)lists.alioth.debian.org> Subject: Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Which mesh system should be included in the Freedombox? Message-ID: <CA+_T8-C5m-2+1snwQZpz4GUdHinqy1z19ixnuk=we6px3ghEiQ(a)mail.gmail.com> Hello all, On Sat, Oct 12, 2013 at 6:06 PM, Petter Reinholdtsen <pere(a)hungry.com>wrote: > > [Sandy Harris] > > As I see it, security has to be the first consideration for any Box > > component, including a mesh system. Given the stated project goals we > > should not even consider anything unless we have good reason to > > consider it secure. > > Well, I believe that is putting the cart in front of the horse, given > the current amount of people involved. I believe we first need to get > something useful that can be located in the privacy of the users homes > to get that legal protection, and then we can continue improving that to > make it more and more "secure", which is a word that mean different > things to different people and thus hard to have as a fuzzy goal. > > This mean to me that we pick solutions already in common use and > integrate it into the Freedombox, and depend on the rest of the free > software community to audit it (with our help, if someone in the > Freedombox want to spend time on it). > > > If something looks desirable but has not had an audit for security, > > then auditing it and contributing fixes if needed is more important > > for the Box than things like getting it into Debian or making it run > > on a Dreamplug. > > I am happy to hear that you want to focus on that area, and suggest you > have a look at the batman-adv mesh routing system when you find time to > audit mesh systems. > > I've concluded I will focus on batman-adv for now, as it provide layer 2 > mesh networking (as in both IPv4 and IPv6 will work) and is used by the > Serval project that provide a peer-to-peer phone system that allow phone > calls and "SMS" messaging without central infrastucture. If the > freedombox provide mesh nodes compatible with the Serval project, we get > free software phone support for free. :) > So some clarification here: Serval used to use the original layer-3 batman, and can still coexist with batman, batman-adv, babel, olsrd etc. But Serval now includes its own mesh routing protocol, for many of the reasons that are stimulating discussion here. Some of those reasons include the difficulty of making a secure fully distributed network, especially a mesh network. Indeed, this was a major reason for us side-stepping IP, and creating our own mesh-oriented network layer. We started from the ground-up by using public cryptography keys as network addresses. This means that we promiscuously share and exchange public keys on the network as part of its inherent operation. It also means that end-to-end encryption is trivial, requires no key exchange, centralised authority or other complication. Indeed, encryption is so simple in the Serval network layer that we enable it by default: you need to set flags on a packet if you don't want it signed and encrypted. Careful choice of crypto system means that it is still fast, and doesn't need huge keys. We also added an address abbreviation scheme that means that we typically have smaller network headers than IPv4, let alone IPv6. That leaves only key verification to ensure private man-in-the-middle-free communications with any party on the network -- a problem that the open-source community has largely solved with web of trust. This security platform was recently recognised at the Global Security Challenge grand-final in London where we received an Honourable Mention, coming a close second in the entire competition -- against entrants from the USA, UK, Israel and other major players in the security space. We do not rest on our laurels, nor do we take the praise of men as meaning that we have a perfect or vulnerability-free system. But we do believe that we have created something that has great potential in the open-source world, and especially for projects like Freedom Box where private correspondence (text, voice and data) on a fully-distributed self-organising network is a major objective. As mentioned, because all Serval services operate in parallel to IP, this means you can mix and match Serval service with your favourite traditional mesh routing protocols should you wish to use them. It also means that we can use interesting radio platforms that are too slow to be useful on IP, e.g., ~100kbit/sec ISM band radios that have ranges 10x to 100x that of Wi-Fi. We already have a working example of this in our Serval Mesh Extender hardware device, which also shares many common objectives with the Freedom Box. We think that we have some interesting technologies that are of use to this community, and of course since we develop them as free and open-source software, we encourage this community to take whatever they find useful, and perhaps even open a conversation for us to work out what activities and efforts are in the intersection of our needs and objectives, and apply some combined energy that will accelerate our mutual progress towards our goals. Paul. > See my blog post from yesterday, > <URL: > http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_N… > >, > for more details of what I have found out so far. > > -- > Happy hacking > Petter Reinholdtsen > > _______________________________________________ > Freedombox-discuss mailing list > Freedombox-discuss(a)lists.alioth.debian.org > http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss > _______________________________________________ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss(a)lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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Re: [pfSense] naive suggestion: conform to US laws
by Eugen Leitl 12 Oct '13

12 Oct '13

----- Forwarded message from Jim Thompson <jim(a)netgate.com> ----- Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2013 11:59:33 -0500 From: Jim Thompson <jim(a)netgate.com> To: pfSense support and discussion <list(a)lists.pfsense.org> Subject: Re: [pfSense] naive suggestion: conform to US laws Message-Id: <9D8BFE6E-48A9-42E2-A494-99892FA27C90(a)netgate.com> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1812) Reply-To: pfSense support and discussion <list(a)lists.pfsense.org> On Oct 12, 2013, at 7:20 AM, Thinker Rix <thinkerix(a)rocketmail.com> wrote: > On 2013-10-11 22:33, Walter Parker wrote: >> Yes, you have been informed correctly. There are more than 2. According the World Atlas (http://www.worldatlas.com/nations.htm#.UlhOHVFDsnY) the number is someone between 189 and 196. > > No kidding! ;-) > >> But you did not answer the question asked: Name the country that you would move the project to and why you believe that country would do a better job? > > Why should *I* name it and why should I present ready solutions for an idea another community member brought up? Why should anybody be in a position to present ready solutions at this point? How about having a fruitful discussion and find solutions together? There is no reason to build a house on sand. There is no fruitful discussion to be had when the premise is patently false. >> Then because the USA can't be trusted, who is going to replace the Americans on the project? > > You are mixing things up here. Just because the USA invented their tyrannous "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act", for which they perversely coined the euphemistic term "Patriot Act" and there fore can not be trusted anymore for hosting anything there, why should the Americans be replaced?!?!? > >> The name and logo are owned by an American company. > > I guess, that is true, i.e. that ESF registered pfSense and it's log as a brand name. You seem upset at this. Why? Instead of some kooky conspiracy theory that ESF could be tortured or pressured to weaken pfSense, is this the *real* issue you have? >> I doubt they want to give them up to a foreign company owned by non-Americans > > Nobody suggested that. Try thinking a bit more outside the box! > For instance: A non-profit foundation could be founded in a country outside the USA, and the brand, hosting of the project, etc. be transferred to that company. A board would be elected for this foundation who just a few basic things annually to keep the foundation running. > ESF on the other side would be released of a great threat! They could continue offering their pfSense services to their customers as usual, but from now on nobody could come and force them to do things to pfSense since "they have nothing to do with it”. You seem upset that ESF controls the project. Why? >> just to make it harder for the American government to pressure the project. > > Incorporating pfSense and bringing it out of the reach of US-domestic jurisdiction would not "make it harder" but "impossible" to pressure the project. You have provided no explanation (other than “rubber hoses”) for what form that “pressure” would take. >> If the rest of world wants to fork the project because of concerns about the US government, fine, but I don't think you will get buy in from ESF [the American company that owns the rights to the name pfSense]. > > Why to fork the code base?! No one suggested that - and no one suggested to do things without - or even against - the key people of the ESF. Right the opposite. It would even protect the ESF! > >> Once again, name some names. Who do you consider more trustworthy? > > I am not Jesus to hand solutions to the community on a silver platter though point in fact, Jesus didn’t hand anyone a solution. > (but surely would be available for a *constructive* and *well-disposed*, *amicable* discussion to find solutions together!). I know of quite a lot of countries that seem interesting for a closer analysis for this cause and surely would propose one or another in such a constructive discussion. > > Generally, what Adrian proposed makes only sense, if the community - including ESF - understands the threat and decides to act proactively to fight this threat. “The community” doesn’t own the copyright on the code, nor the trademarks to the names used. Those belong to ESF. Further, you’ve hypothesized about a ‘threat’ without providing any factual basis for same. The term for this form of argument is “conspiracy theory”. Since pfSense is open source (specifically, the BSD license), “the community” (or rather “a community”) could take the decision to fork the code and create their own solution. It’s been attempted a couple times, but none of these have flourished. While I don’t encourage forks (it’s typically not good for either project), occasionally they work out (at least for a while), I don’t go out of my way to inhibit those who wish to fork. However, in any case, such a community would be prohibited from naming the result “pfSense”. > But since 33% of the ESF - namely Jim Thompson You greatly inflate my ownership interest here. > - prefers bullying, insulting, frightening and muzzling anybody who brings up the threat that we are facing, trying to strike dead any thought as soon as it comes up (strange, isn't it?), Not as strange as someone randomly showing up one day, hiding under a pseudonym, having never posted to a pfSense list before, making accusations. You started throwing accusations, and yes, I got hostile. Mostly I got hostile because your accusations are baseless, and despite my challenge, you refuse to drop it. Since your activities are not furthering the project (find bugs, or at least make proposals), you’re wasting everyone’s time. (I’d quote Spock here, but…) Goodness man, you don’t even understand what happened with Lavabit, or why the situation would be different if a three letter agency were to show up on the doorstep one morning and demand that we weaken the project. Despite my challenges (“name the law that they would use”), you refuse to respond, instead ducking for cover in your empty, baseless accusations that “it might happen”. Specifically, Lavabit ran afoul of the Stored Communications Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored_Communications_Act) "a law that addresses voluntary and compelled disclosure of "stored wire and electronic communications and transactional records" held by third-party internet service providers (ISPs)." ESF is not an ISP. The SCA does not apply. CALEA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_…) obliges telecommunications companies to make it possible for law enforcement agencies to tap any phone conversations carried out over its networks, as well as making call detail records available. Common carriers, facilities-based broadband Internet access providers, and providers of interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service – all three types of entities are defined to be “telecommunications carriers” and must meet the requirements of CALEA. Since ESF is not a “telecommunications carrier”, CALEA does not apply to your proposed “FBI/NSA on the doorstep” scenario. Even the various provisions of the PATRIOT act of 2001 (and it’s follow-ons) do not apply. The most abusive of these, the so called “NSLs” are really a demand letter issued to a particular entity or organization to turn over various records and data pertaining to individuals, and an accompanying "gag order". Since pfSense has no reason to store any records, there is nothing to hand over. You could *perhaps* make the case that the config backup service could be attacked this way, but it was specifically designed such that ESF (or before January, BSDP) doesn’t have access to the plaintext configuration. It is encrypted by the remote user, and we store the result. We don’t know the keys. Thus, my challenge stands. You have yet to offer ANY legal authority under which the NSA (or any other agency of the US government) could demand that ESF make changes to pfSense. Some here in the “community” seem upset that I’ve been so abrasive with you. If you had an actual argument that made sense, you and they would see a different side (“Oh, you’re right. We should find a way to close that loophole.”) Instead, you stood on your accusations, despite any factual basis. Your "Culture of fear” argument was roughly equivalent to the meme of a couple years ago: "Did Glenn Beck Rape And Murder A Young Girl In 1990?” This hoax began as a parody of public perception of Glenn Beck’s over-the-top interview antics on his self-titled television show Glenn Beck, wherein he frequently asks his guests to disprove highly speculative and often outrageous assertions. (Just like you did.) About.com published an article titled “Internet Hoax Says Glenn Beck Raped, Murdered Young Girl in 1990”, which called the hoax a textbook example of “…how to construct Internet smear campaigns…” (http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/2009/09/03/internet-hoax-says-glenn-beck-ra…) So yes, I went after you, because the correct response here is to not let the attempt at a smear campaign stand. People love to take silence as assent. Placating you would have been a mistake of the first order. In the past, I’ve stood up to AT&T. It took a decade, and was both expensive and exhausting. I won. Fnord. You and those in the community who are upset with my behavior (whilst I was defending ESF and pfSense from your smear tactics) can bet their last Euro/Dollar/Yen that I’ll be 10X more abrasive with the US Government if they attempted what you accuse. Were I to seek a country that was at least outwardly opposed to the behavior of the US security apparatus (and its related apparatus in other countries), I might consider Brazil. That time is not now. What you probably don’t appreciate is that the actual “we write code before breakfast” people employed by ESF to work on pfSense are already outside the US(*). One of them lives in Brazil, another in Albania. Perhaps of interest. Perhaps not. At the very least, they’re not subject to US law, so it would be difficult to get them to “go quiet” about any attempt to weaken the codebase of pfSense. Jim (*) Jim Pingle does some, but not as much as the others. He does, however, carry most of the support load. _______________________________________________ List mailing list List(a)lists.pfsense.org http://lists.pfsense.org/mailman/listinfo/list ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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Computer H14
by brian carroll 12 Oct '13

12 Oct '13

// absolutely wild Jim Henson AT&T technology parables, via digg... Tech Time Warp of the Week: Jim Henson’s Muppet Computer, 1963 By Daniela Hernandez http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/10/tech-time-warp-of-the-week-jim…

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re: NSA data centre power surges & unknowns...
by brian carroll 12 Oct '13

12 Oct '13

thanks to everyone for sharing their views regarding my forward-leaning speculation about the NSA facility... two additional observations: 1) if the NSA Utah data centre is not involved in quantum computing in any way, as per the larger society and its synchronization with existing tools and technologies manufactured and standardized likewise in the mainstream- it is curious to what extent non-quantum computing technologies could potentially exist in such a scenario, yet remain secret and off-limits. this is to consider the basic technology research and scientific advances that are oftentimes in the news on physics sites, such that university or corporate RD&D labs have achieved a latest milestone, and that a given improvement may make it to market in the next 10-20 years, and then from this frontier of development, a gap with the present in what appears to be an 80s computing paradigm largely seemingly unchanged, perhaps mostly in terms of the OS itself and how data is managed on these electronic filing cabinet devices that collectively become the worldwide junk drawer (aka Internet and WWW), the epitome of "bureaucracy" as networked furniture. for instance, what if the facade of a computing server has hidden or advanced technology within it, in such an installation, that may change the equations for how data is being processed. 'spintronics' is one such area, various approaches to memory are others, that could potentially have larger combined effects if built-out at scale, perhaps the equations would differ or the methodology or techniques employed to discern and sift thru data. and thus, it is still wondered if in the gap between where research is and is essentially "bounded" both within a secret government context and also outside of a public, commercial mainstream domain, what may actually be going on in the inner workings as it relates to what is going on within the surveillance society itself and its capacity to process vast amounts of data that seemingly would require more 'organizational capacity' than just brute force computing alone-- meaning: the capacity to compute "unknowns" in a running, looping equation... which to me appears to be what serial processors are not good at, and instead seemingly must arrive at an answer; and even parallelism within serial processing (non-quantum), from my truly naive and completely limited understanding and perhaps errored viewpoint, would only best be served by quantum nonlinear or multilinear processing across vast amounts of data sets that may not have known correlations to start and instead to build these up and test against models. can equations or algorithms do what the hardware cannot do, in its logic-based biased processing via digitalism, or might other transistors and other ways of balancing these computations more towards weighted analog looping means exist by which to 'naturally approach' this situation, from big picture to local instances, versus localized modeling outward, via rationalization. that is, in conceptual terms, what if the likelihood that coherence could be decided upon or determined by a software framework alone, versus having additional capacity both in advanced hardware components, to both assist and allow for such nonlinear massively dynamic (ecological) capacity for global computation across all interconnected sets-- perhaps such data sets could even would shrink the example of weather modeling for supercomputing to a minor issue by comparison, given a potentially wider range of knowns that are relationally unknown in their effects, given empirical evaluation, and the massive floating unknown that may never be computed for beyond a vague nebulous threat-condition, some threshold that suddenly grounds in the modeling and triggers alerts or forecasts based on statistics as this relates to recorded data, live surveillance, the entirety of this, in situ. i think what would be impossible about a traditional computing paradigm for this situation would be the incapacity of 'knowing' what to model given the vast amounts of data and their instability in terms of limits to what can be known and understood, versus what is probabilistic and reevaluated again and again and again, and perhaps tens of thousands of such equations that may exist in various computations, and then the 'meta-algorithm' that may govern over this situation-- is it a man's judgement for how this data is interpreted and thus the situation is managed as if an office computer that is queried- or may 'computational reasoning' exist in the form of AI that is running models, both theories and competing hypotheses - in parallel - and that these are built of past events and future statistical graphs, and potentially reveal *constellations* or patterns that begin to match what was a previous condition or sequence, and thus the computer is determining the direction of what is tapped based on its inferences and its deductive and inductive, ~intuitive reasoning. now, i totally believe it is technologically possible to do this-- just not with today's limited equipment and software paradigm-- not a chance. it is too heavily biased in both processing and computer architecture to allow for open-ended questioning. everything must be rationalized in advance, it is the way the logic-gates work on the PNP and NPN transistors. there is no 'unknown' state within the circuitry, and whatever may be achieved via software would be unnatural to the hardware and bounded in its capacity and functioning against the direction of current, as if an aberration. or thus is the foolish explanation i conjure from the abstract. that it is going against the grain of electrical current, essentially. it is like telling someone who is entirely vested in a binary mindset to consider a paradoxical situation, and how for its resolution it must be bounded within that worldview and made to fit within its sampling (1/0) else the model or worldview fails. the paradox would need to fit within the bit and not exist beyond or outside it else it would not exist or be real. so how can an entire paradoxical situation that is actively parsed exist in a running model of 'rationalization' in terms of computation, if the charge itself is biased to an on/off state for any given consideration when the majority likely remain gray-area computations and empirically unknown, except within a sliding scale analog-like weighting that shifts modeling. perhaps parallel software could "model" this, yet how effectively if such data can only be run one-way and must be restarted and recalculated versus allowing the data to live in ambiguity and continuously compute itself, in a realm that is too highly constrained by binary modeling, determined by it, and thus would bound any such computation to only what the technology allows in its bias, and thus limits how much can be questioned, asked, and allowed to be unknown, ambiguous, and computed this way. is it not possible that stuxnet-like influences could exist if making a continuous brute-force calculation upon a massively changing real-time model that it could essentially burn-out the serial processes linked in parallel via networking, such that they would be performing at peak rates and potentially overheat or have a limit to what kinds of data could be processed and in what fidelity-- and could such fidelity with the world of real-time surveillance and state threat modeling exist in its vastness and nth-degree unknowns and run that within the parameters of petaflops and not consider all the other issues that may limit such computations, such as how the processing itself disallows certain considerations that appear solved or actively processed -somehow- and to me that explanation is that there is a highly advanced system that is naturally capable, not by brute-force or by chess-computer linear one-point perspective, and instead by utilizing knowledge of nature and how quantum mechanics relates directly with paradox and in this context- it is probable a quantum computer could only do this level of computation that is integrative and a basis for threat analysis, albeit perhaps guided by a too-simple binary interface or outlook or way of managing a situation due to lack of previous experience for guidance. that is: it is likely impossible that existing technology could carry the computational and data load in terms of its organization and coherence as a computing model of N-dimensions or interrelated degrees. it likely does not involve a simple script or algorithm that rationalizes the entirety of what is going on, and instead it likely would emerge as a pattern from within the churning cauldron of data, well beyond meta-data, only an ingredient amongst vast many others that span any relevant archivable referenceable 'known' form that could establish a model, from any given perspective. and thus be evaluated in terms of computer reasoning versus human reasoning, and gauge insight upon what correlations may be beyond the human limit of considering as shared sets, versus what such computing power could compare and consider (and thus, perhaps the AI develops its own algorithms and has its own working hypotheses- yet this would inherent require grounding with the hardware, that allows this and does not involve translating or other lossy middle-management or mediation that skews or warps or limits the running iterative computation or nonlinear computational analysis). so while a step can be taken back from the assumption of a fielded quantum computer in a seemingly mundane gargantuan data centre/warehouse, what is occurring within the existing surveillance regime does not realistically appear to be grounded in such a facility, either. it does not add up, the capacity of storing records versus making judgments based on such data, yet not only that data, everything that is known and modeled in terms of the issues and the society and economic, social, political dimensions, locally and globally, as it fits into a whole model and local instances- where might that computation occur and it is my view that it is impossible for this to be occurring outside a quantum context, in terms of efficiency. lacking this capacity would involve constantly fighting the equipment and being limited in approaching 'questioning itself', though this is also the majority situation. it is an entirely different approach than the internet and desktop and workstations equipment of today. it is beyond the binary. there is nothing to bet on it either. either the government has a viable working model of the state in all of its dimensions or it does not have this capacity. and there is every indication it does have this today and yet meta-data is like a binary worldview of the existing situation, and too limited to get at what boundaries are involved in terms of citizens and law and representation and rules, including for those in government. if it does involve a realm of meta-computing and yet computing is the limit to what can be reasoned, then as with physics and metaphysics- it is in that gap that the reality is lost and another world exists outside the other and could even be beyond accountability as a result of plausible deniability. it is implausible a non-quantum computer could be modeling state data in its ubiquity in a running simulation given existing binary technology. 2) Google and Nasa just announced a video of their quantum computer that is actually an installation of a quantum processor whose 'number crunching' will apparently help optimize algorithms for the Google Glass blink apps. and a question encountered in this application of D-Wave quantum chip is what to do with this technology- effectively a new kind of calculator it seems, given the approach. A first look inside Google's futuristic quantum lab // video http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/10/4824026/a-first-look-inside-googles-secr… in other words, it is not a 'quantum computer' that is installed and thus there are no other quantum-specific devices connected to it, such that it seems the pins in the chip lead directly to software to run queries, and this sustained within a sealed supercold environment, to allow it to occur. so it is more like a micro-controller or integrated circuit than a multi-use processor in the sense it is outside of a motherboard context or larger connected circuitry, or so it appears by my naive account. and so there is this disjunction between what data processing today must be capable of, in terms of processing, and then this 'first steps' approach that is fielded in the commercial and scientific realm of Google and NASA. like the computation of the 'state mind' and the situation in the body of the state are mismatched and there is dissonance between what is said and what is being done- which begs for mistrust if not fear, deity state, etc. so the question asked in the video is what can a quantum processor do. what is it capable of. and i tend to imagine it is precisely this realm of the paradoxical and the N-dimensional that begins in the gray-area with very limited models and AI, and cosmic-soup-like, allows this data situation to computationally bubble bubble while on the lookout for toil and trouble. the random number generator (RNG) itself seems most closely aligned with the paradigm of quantum mechanics - as a field of superposition and of potentiality -- and this is where paradoxical unknowns would emerge from as contingent patterns in terms of their grounded interconnectivity within the ecologically and dynamically linked empirical models. even more the case, or so it is proposed, are random event generators in relation to spooky action at a distance. if these purposeful RNGs are somehow linked and-or _grounded, as if quantum-tuned sensor-boxes even, that extrasensory aspect of birds knowing navigation or animals knowing of earthquakes via uncanny abilities could also exist naturally within the computer hardware model at the physical level, if sensitive to various indicators and 'aware' or capable of making-sense of the chaotic input. humans on the internet who may gauge a larger situation via interactions without this being voiced, is similar to a distributed sensor network in its parallel computation, grounded locally, and its predictive capacity in that something may not feel right or a particular momentum may be sensed and thus serve as a meridian or guideline or boundary via lines of force like intuitive calculation. so too, computer processing whereby the logic is capable of assessing existing and potential N-dimensional connections and boundaries and considering the dynamics involved, hunches, intuitions. for instance, a software program could be written to look at bird call data as it relates to air quality as this relates to news reports and events. if you know what you are looking for, it could be rationalized-- find these criteria and in matching those patterns x=y. yet what if the computer was able to take any data, and consider any event from a largely unbounded context, and thus it could begin to process the migration of birds in realm time with pollution levels as it relates to, say, periods of heavy traffic due to sporting events in a given sector. and the algorithm would find such correlations, yet not stop at this, and keep looking and evaluating. and perhaps there are 'infinitely more variables than equations', and thus quadratic approaches are beyond the bounds of a limited viewpoint or rationalization, where kind of perspective that seeks to view a situation that is too small to accurately model it then becomes the sign of the thing it seeks to understand, where the model replaces the entity itself. (note: this as it relates to conservation issues, politics, saving one species to jeopardize another; else, technology and wildlife and ecosystems, wind turbines and bird and bat and eagle deaths, etc) in a binary approach, the 'good enough' model allows the extraneous data to be ignored or kept out of the analysis -- yet this does not work at scale, because the bias and warping and skew and distortion only increases with each further reliance upon inaccuracies in the false framework. you could not have accuracy at the level of the state via such an approach when in a context of ubiquitous information, there would be a total onesided madness. and it does not appear this is actually the case. again, beyond binarism. thus highly-dimensional modeling may begin as inaccurate models and require constant analysis and refinement that only a computer could be in the vast data relations required. for instance, taking all sensor data from street infrastructure regarding pollution and toxins, all weather, traffic, news, academic research, epistemological models, social, economic, anything of any import that can exist in an equation, -- essentially a noise field -- and then allow whatever potential interconnection exists to be modeled as a possibility, whether activated as a structural scaffold of a hypothesis or not, and that through educational, career, taxes, health records, and other indicators - across all known statistics viewed as an empirical framework for pattern matching past, present, and future events -- to then see what stands-out in a given moment or in a particular context or perspective, and that like the extrasensory 'knowing' or intuitive understanding, somehow the model could suddenly achieve a strange coherence in the data modeled, and this could occur from the ground-up from the particulate to the whole and entirely or mostly in a referenced-based AI computational approach, yet requiring a capacity of parallel linked quantum supercomputers to achieve. there is no time-sharing on a system like this, it would always be on and running and like the birth of a universe, would grow and grow and grow, and while accessed, ultimately it would be best at modeling these chaotic and unknown dynamics itself -- allowed to run and compute, reason autonomously so as to consider these dynamics, while humans could input models and help evaluate models and assumptions. yet ultimately its accuracy is not within the 1 and 0 of binary digits as representations of on/off switches, instead it would be this 1 and 0 mapping directly to truth, the basis for grounding the software model in the hardware physical world as it relates to matter, energy, and information. it would not inherently involve an extra layer or distancing from this, seemingly, an additional language and translation. if allowed, the paradoxical processing of gray-area conditions by a quantum computer installation could - in accordance with AI and 3-value and N-value logical reasoning - achieve this 'holistic' approach yet with attributes of analog characteristic of shifting parameters and sliding scale analyses. in this way the rigidity of binary 2-value computation that does not allow the truth to exist would instead not allow the assumption of truth within the modeling of representational signs (programming, models themselves, beliefs) to become the truth by default of this interaction (true belief) and instead, this truth would need to be earned by massive reasoning that is tied into facts and physics and human knowledge, from the beginning, and not some ideological bubble-universe that has control over the equipment. grounded sensing, in other words. if a linear supercomputer can take input from every weather station and model weather systems worldwide, given what is known about cloud system formation, wind and temperature and humidity, and various weather systems and events- what can it do beyond this same seemingly *fixed* boundary that could involve birds or wildlife or sounds or resonance or people who have broken bones that ache before a storm or who immediately know tornado weather minutes far ahead of warning sirens. if they are outside the model, that is not computed. yet what if that data somehow could be connected to, yet the software and hardware model do not allow it, because it is a deterministic approach, rationalized within a given set of parameters where it controls the knowns via leaving out the unknowns. what if the unknowns are where the discovery is for new knowledge. what if the gathered flight of seagulls indicates a thunderstorm two days out with a degree of certainty before computer models or at least could be correlated with such observations, tested as empirical evidence as part of a larger hypothesis of integrated systems. and what if this was only one aspect of one question of a given scenario in a given discipline of which there are trillions to consider. the boundaries kill off the ideas, certainties replace and stand-in for uncertainty, controlling what is interpreted and allowed to be considered within modeling that then limits and bounds knowledge to only what can be known from a given view, and that its inaccuracies become structural, beyond questioning, dogma. say, a non-electromagnetic view of the universe as this relates to weather and cloud systems as giant charge-based entities (electric weather). The Electric Universe / Electrical Weather http://www.holoscience.com/wp/synopsis/synopsis-9-electrical-weather/ what seems most likely in my naive estimation is that the quantum computer in its capacity for paradoxical computation and looping heuristic methods for meta-modeling across multiple interrelated scales simultaneously, is that this ecological condition of reality and this dimensional capacity of massive quantum installations linked together in parallel would allow for this evaluation by default of a natural affinity for the physics involved, and this goes beyond just the processor itself and into its grounding at the macro-level with material entanglement, whereby sensor networks that count microns of chemicals could potentially be remotely entangled in their data sets this way, so that a trigger upon one variable may effect others at a distance likewise, in terms of latent superposition potentialities. in this way, the grounded antenna or the ground wire, as with the sensor connected to a proposed LED signaling display influencing or becoming an RNG input, could have a autonomic nervous system alongside the brain-based computational reasoning, whereby ~sensing may remain ambiguous yet also be highly connected in other hidden or missing or gray area dimensionality that could like junk DNA recombine in a given instance as a pattern or allow other frameworks to exist and this seems inherent or unique to the quantum situation, in that the grounding of the computer also would be a grounding of the data model in terms of its realism, that the information modeled accurately maps into the world and is harmonized with it, and that this diagnostic evaluation occurs if not also in terms of error-correction or tabulation or computational processing. perhaps there is intelligence within the current itself, in terms of entanglement, and so perhaps the entangling of computers in a monitoring sense of environment or various "dimensions" would also be involved in how data is effectively processed. this versus having society serve a flawed computer model, subservient to it, versus the ability to question the model and test it against the truth of all combined data within the given hypotheses, and the issue of going against nature. the microns of chemicals cannot simply be ignored. the poison in the air, toxins everywhere, sick and inhuman approaches as this relates to ethics and morality. essentially-- the society is schizophrenic and allowed to be this way in the binary ideology and its computer model, required even, enforced, yet denied by those who benefit via onesideness, the inequality, exploitativeness, the epic swindle for fake immortal gain. thus it is proposed that the quantum computer as a device would have this RNG/REG aspect that relates to grounding data, and this could connect with sensors or various other inputs (as if peripherals perhaps). in this way, a quantum computer installation at massive scale could parse all traffic cams, all weather info, all news and knowledge and reference all books and texts in all languages, and build up models within these as frameworks for evaluating issues of concern as tools for state management and governance - or tyranny. and thus the short-circuit if this were amiss or something was off about it, sparking loose-ends that need to be pulled to find out there is binarism at the helm of such computational power and that its output is skewed towards the ideological, due to boundaries that are retained from a given mindset or too narrow belief system, etc. and that this could likely be expected as a result of not know the questions to ask when faced with the physics involved, in their metaphysical dimensions. forcing the data versus listening to it. forcing answers via biased views versus allowing questions to exist, coherence discerned logical reasoning. this as it relates to private mankind and public humanity, as referenced to the US Constitution or ignoring and replacing it via its substitution as a hollowed-out digital sign. the state as empty set. any tyranny is possible. ♬

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Re: <nettime> Pascal Zachary: Rules for the Digital Panopticon (IEEE)
by Eugen Leitl 11 Oct '13

11 Oct '13

----- Forwarded message from morlockelloi(a)yahoo.com ----- Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2013 10:27:50 -0700 From: morlockelloi(a)yahoo.com To: nettime-l(a)kein.org Subject: Re: <nettime> Pascal Zachary: Rules for the Digital Panopticon (IEEE) Reply-To: a moderated mailing list for net criticism <nettime-l(a)mail.kein.org> This realization per se is pretty much useless, as are endless ruminations regarding how free we were, once upon time. The old Marxist postulate that awareness will save the species is blatantly false - look around you. These technologies came to rule the world because their proponents made coherent efforts to make it so. The only way to do something about it is to actively develop other technologies which tilt the balance in the direction you like better. Countering technology with words, laws and general awareness will get you nowhere. See 'bronze age'. The corollary is that the future belongs to the few, not to the masses, because high tech is centralized by nature, as it requires understanding, and those capabilities are scarce. The rest are fucked ... I mean 'users'. There are only competing elites. > NSA at all. It is about the dawning realization that we all now live > inside a "virtual" system that compels us to *control* ourselves, > since all the details of our lives are being "remembered," in a way > that no *human* civilization has EVER even imagined it could do! # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime(a)kein.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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Re: [liberationtech] 10 reasons not to start using PGP
by Eugen Leitl 11 Oct '13

11 Oct '13

----- Forwarded message from elijah <elijah(a)riseup.net> ----- Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 14:17:01 -0700 From: elijah <elijah(a)riseup.net> To: liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu Subject: Re: [liberationtech] 10 reasons not to start using PGP Message-ID: <5257194D.1050202(a)riseup.net> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.0 Reply-To: liberationtech <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> On 10/10/2013 12:23 PM, carlo von lynX wrote: > 1. Downgrade Attack: The risk of using it wrong. Fixed in the new generation of clients (mailpile, LEAP, etc). > 2. The OpenPGP Format: You might aswell run around the city naked. Fixed by using StartTLS with DANE (supported in the new version of postfix). Admittedly, this makes sysadmin's job more challenging, but LEAP is working to automate the hard stuff (https://leap.se/platform) > 3. Transaction Data: He knows who you are talking to. Fixed in the short term by using StartTLS with DANE. Fixed in the long term by adopting one of these approaches: https://leap.se/en/routing > 4. No Forward Secrecy: It makes sense to collect it all. Imperfectly fixed in the short term using StartTLS with only PFS ciphers enabled. This could be fixed in the long term by using Trevor Perrin's scheme for triple EC Diffie-Hellman exchange. This has been implemented by moxie for SMS, and could be for SMTP (https://whispersystems.org/blog/simplifying-otr-deniability/) > 5. Cryptogeddon: Time to upgrade cryptography itself? New version of GPG supports ECC, but of course nothing in the snowden leaks suggest we need to abandon RSA of sufficient key length (just the ECC curves that have *always* been suspicious). > 6. Federation: Get off the inter-server super-highway. Federated transport with spool-then-forward time delay is likely a much more feasible way to thwart traffic analysis than attempting to lay down a high degree of cover traffic for direct peer to peer transport. This is, of course, an area of active academic research and it would be irresponsible to say that we definitively know how to prevent traffic analysis, either with p2p or federation. > 7. Statistical Analysis: Guessing on the size of messages. Easily fixed. > 8. Workflow: Group messaging with PGP is impractical. No one anywhere has solved the problem of asynchronous, forward-secret group cryptography. There are, however, working models of group cryptography using OpenPGP, such as SELS (http://sels.ncsa.illinois.edu/) This approach makes key management more difficult, but we need to automate key management anyway for OpenPGP to be usable enough for wider adoption. > 9. TL;DR: I don't care. I've got nothing to hide. This critique rests on the assumption that the problems with email are unfixable. > 10. The Bootstrap Fallacy: But my friends already have e-mail! Email remains one of the two killer apps of the internet, and is unlikely to vanish any time soon. Simple steps we can take to make it much better seem like a wise investment in energy. There are two approaches to addressing the problems with email: (1) assert that email is hopeless and must be killed off. (2) identify areas where we can fix email to bring it into the 21st century. I think that approach #1 is irresponsible: regardless of one's personal feelings about email, it is certainly not a lost cause, and asserting that it is will make it more difficult to build support for fixing it. Approach #2 is certainly an uphill battle, but there are a growing number of organizations working on it. LEAP's (free software) efforts are outlined here: https://leap.se/email. We have it working, we just need to get it mature enough for production use. -elijah -- Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys(a)stanford.edu. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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<nettime> Pascal Zachary: Rules for the Digital Panopticon (IEEE)
by Eugen Leitl 11 Oct '13

11 Oct '13

----- Forwarded message from Patrice Riemens <patrice(a)xs4all.nl> ----- Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 20:41:55 +0200 From: Patrice Riemens <patrice(a)xs4all.nl> To: nettime-l(a)kein.org Subject: <nettime> Pascal Zachary: Rules for the Digital Panopticon (IEEE) Message-ID: <0adf8f7abff38f778a06f8b776729759.squirrel(a)webmail.xs4all.nl> User-Agent: SquirrelMail/1.4.18 Reply-To: a moderated mailing list for net criticism <nettime-l(a)mail.kein.org> original to: http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/rules-for-the-digital-panopticon Rules for the Digital Panopticon The technologies of persistent surveillance can protect us only if certain boundaries are respected By G. Pascal Zachary (Posted 20 Sep 2013) For centuries, we humans have lacked the all-knowing, all-seeing mechanisms to credibly predict and prevent bad actions by others. Now these very powers of preemption are perhaps within our grasp, thanks to a confluence of technologies. In the foreseeable future, governments, and perhaps some for-profit corporations and civil-society groups, will design, construct, and deploy surveillance systems that aim to predict and prevent bad actionsand to identify, track, and neutralize people who commit them. And when contemplating these systems, lets broadly agree that we should prevent the slaughter of children at school and the abduction, rape, and imprisonment of women. And lets also agree that we should thwart lethal attacks against lawful government. Of late, the U. S. government gets most of the attention in this arena, and for good reason. The National Security Agency, through its vast capacity to track virtually every phone call, e-mail, and text message, promises new forms of preemption through a system security experts call persistent surveillance. The Boston Marathon bombing, in April, reinforced the impression that guaranteed prevention against unwanted harm is elusive, if not impossible. Yet the mere chance of stopping the next mass shooting or terror attack persuades many people of the benefits of creating a high-tech version of the omniscient surveillance construct that, in 1787, the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham conceived as a panopticon: a prison with a central viewing station for watching all the inmates at once. Some activists complain about the potential of such a system to violate basic freedoms, including the right to privacy. But others will be seduced by the lure of techno fixes. For example, how could anyone object to a digital net that protects a school from abusive predators? Ad hoc surveillance will inevitably proliferate. Dropcam and other cheap surveillance programs, already popular among the tech-savvy, will spread widely. DIY and vigilante panopticons will complicate matters. Imagine someone like George Zimmerman, the Florida neighborhood watchman, equipped not with a gun but with a digital surveillance net, allowing him to track pretty much anythingon his smartphone. With data multiplying exponentially and technology inexorably advancing, the question is not whether an all-encompassing surveillance systems will be deployed. The question is how, when, and how many. In the absence of settled laws and norms, the role of engineers looms large. They will shoulder much of the burden of designing systems in ways that limit the damage to innocents while maximizing the pressures brought to bear on bad guys. But where do the responsibilities of engineers begin and end? It is too early to answer conclusively, but engineers would do well to keep a few fundamental principles in mind: Keep humans in the loop, but insist they follow the rules of the road. Compiling and analyzing data can be done by machines. But it would be best to design these surveillance systems so that a human reviews and ponders the data before any irreversible actions are taken. If citizens want to spy on one another, as they inevitably will, impose binding rules on how they do so. Design self-correcting systems that eject tainted or wrong information fast and inexpensively. Create a professional ethos and explicit standards of behavior for engineers, code writers, and designers who contribute significantly to the creation of panopticon-like systems. Delete the old stuff routinely. Systems should mainly contain real-time data. They should not become archives tracing the lives of innocents. Engineers acting responsibly are no guarantee that panopticons will not come to control us. But they can be part of getting this brave new world right. About the Author G. Pascal Zachary is the author of Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century (Free Press, 1997). He teaches at Arizona State University. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime(a)kein.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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Re: [liberationtech] 10 reasons not to start using PGP
by Eugen Leitl 11 Oct '13

11 Oct '13

----- Forwarded message from carlo von lynX <lynX(a)time.to.get.psyced.org> ----- Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2013 02:14:29 +0200 From: carlo von lynX <lynX(a)time.to.get.psyced.org> To: liberationtech <liberationtech(a)mailman.stanford.edu> Subject: Re: [liberationtech] 10 reasons not to start using PGP Message-ID: <20131011001429.GI22105(a)lo.psyced.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14) Reply-To: liberationtech <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> Next collection of answers to replies. Expect yours to be somewhere in here. Thanks for all the feedback! I actually expected harsher religious replies! :) On 10/10/2013 10:55 PM, Enrique PiracÃ©s wrote: > I think this is a good topic for debate among those who can or are > currently developing security tools/protocols, and it is one way to > further discuss usability as a security feature in communities like > this one. That said, I think it is really bad advice and I encourage > you to refrain from providing this as a suggestion for users who may > put themselves or others at risk as a result of it. The opening sentence says "Pretty Good Privacy is better than no encryption at all ..." > Also, I think the title is misleading, as most of the article is about > why PGP is not an ideal solution for the future (a point where I think > you would find significant agreement). Again, suggesting not to use > PGP without providing a functional alternative is irresponsible. I am suggesting four alternatives and indicating to work harder to make them viable tools for everyone as we should no longer postpone replacing PGP and e-mail. Of course I would also appreciate attention regarding the fifth, secushare. On 10/10/2013 10:57 PM, Jonathan Wilkes wrote: > Bitmessage doesn't have forward secrecy, and AFAICT there's no > way to easily add it later on. If I understood the principle correctly it allows you to generate new "accounts" freely, so you can put your *next* account name into a message. If both sides do this, they can obfuscate their identities a bit. And you can automate it. You could also re-key at each message with PGP, but I presume it would make your implementation incompatible with everybody else's. On 10/10/2013 11:08 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote: > I'm surprised to see this list has missed the thing that bugs me most > about PGP: It conflates non-repudiation and authentication. > > I send Bob an encrypted message that we should meet to discuss the > suppression of free speech in our country. Bob obviously wants to be > sure that the message is coming from me, but maybe Bob is a spy ... > and with PGP the only way the message can easily be authenticated as > being from me is if I cryptographically sign the message, creating > persistent evidence of my words not just to Bob but to Everyone! I kind-of lumped it mentally together with forward secrecy, because for both problems the answer is Diffie-Hellman. But you are right, it is the eleventh reason. > My other big technical complaint about PGP is (3) in the post, that > every encrypted message discloses what key you're communicating with. > PGP easily _undoes_ the privacy that an anonymity network like tor can > provide. It's possible to use --hidden-recipient but almost no one > does. Guess what, none of the alternative messaging tools would dream of putting the recipient address close to the message. They just make sure that it somehow gets there. > Its also easy to produce a litany of non-technical complaints: PGP is > almost universally misused (even by people whos lives may depend on > its correct use), the WOT leaks tons of data, etc. Oh yes, I completely forgot to link that long article that recently came out criticizing the PGP web of trust. > In my view the use of PGP is more appropriately seen as a statement > about the kind of world we want to haveâ one where encryption is > lawful, widely used, and uncontroversialâ and less of a practical way > to achieve security against many threats that exist today. It is not enough for the purpose of protecting democracy, therefore it's one of those statements that backfire: The adversary doesn't care about you making that statement and can use it against you. On 10/11/2013 12:17 AM, Jillian C. York wrote: > Just replying to this bit of your reply to me; the rest made sense Grrreat. > On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 3:08 PM, carlo von lynX > <lynX(a)time.to.get.psyced.org <mailto:lynX@time.to.get.psyced.org>> wrote: > > > If this is still jargony to you, hmmm... you are unlikely to understand > > the risks you are exposed to by using the Internet from day to day. > > These are concepts that anyone in the circumvention business must > > be aware of. You can choose to not read the Guardian article and not > > try to understand what's going on, but then you should better just > > trust that the conclusion is not made up: > > No, see that's the thing: /I /get it, but I don't think I'm totally your > target audience (I've been using PGP for years, you're talking to people > who haven't started yet, right?) No, not really. It is for the multipliers and activists. The ones that carry the torch to the people. The Luciphers. You have been carrying PGP to the people and I am suggesting you should consider giving them other tools, and educating them to question those tools and look out for even newer tools. And help make these tools safe, reviewed and usable. Then again I wouldn't mind if normal people /get/ it, too, but I wouldn't want them to opt out the easy way by stopping to use cryptography. > You want criticism? There it is. Your writing does not work for the > general public. You write in a way that feels condescending and assumes > that the reader already has a full grasp of why those things are issues. I tried to hide the depth in the links so that it's still readable for someone who already knows all that stuff. > On the one hand, you're telling people that PGP is too hard/broken, > while with the other you're expecting them to already understand it/the > threat model. > > Also, I have no idea what is meant by the "bull run" comment in that > sentence. If you want your piece to have any reach beyond the English > language, consider tightening up your writing. It is mentioned in the article. It's the NSA program that enables them to hijack any TLS connection on the fly. It was mentioned in television news some weeks ago, too. The way I put it in that text is a hint saying "if you don't understand this, you should seriousy consider reading the linked articles..." ;-) On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 02:17:01PM -0700, elijah wrote: > On 10/10/2013 12:23 PM, carlo von lynX wrote: > > > 1. Downgrade Attack: The risk of using it wrong. > > Fixed in the new generation of clients (mailpile, LEAP, etc). Except for the fact that you are still using a mail address, thus it can ALWAYS be used without encryption -> FAIL. > > 2. The OpenPGP Format: You might aswell run around the city naked. > > Fixed by using StartTLS with DANE (supported in the new version of > postfix). Admittedly, this makes sysadmin's job more challenging, but > LEAP is working to automate the hard stuff (https://leap.se/platform) Are you alluding to https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-dane-smtp-with-dane/ ? > > 3. Transaction Data: He knows who you are talking to. > > Fixed in the short term by using StartTLS with DANE. Fixed in the long > term by adopting one of these approaches: https://leap.se/en/routing Hm, all of the approaches presume that there is something like a server that a dissident can trust. > > 4. No Forward Secrecy: It makes sense to collect it all. > > Imperfectly fixed in the short term using StartTLS with only PFS ciphers > enabled. This could be fixed in the long term by using Trevor Perrin's > scheme for triple EC Diffie-Hellman exchange. This has been implemented > by moxie for SMS, and could be for SMTP > (https://whispersystems.org/blog/simplifying-otr-deniability/) You are slowly turning the email network in some sort of a Tor. Hehe. > > 5. Cryptogeddon: Time to upgrade cryptography itself? > > New version of GPG supports ECC, but of course nothing in the snowden > leaks suggest we need to abandon RSA of sufficient key length (just the > ECC curves that have *always* been suspicious). Ok, how does it figure out the recipient can handle ECC? > > 6. Federation: Get off the inter-server super-highway. > > Federated transport with spool-then-forward time delay is likely a much > more feasible way to thwart traffic analysis than attempting to lay down > a high degree of cover traffic for direct peer to peer transport. This Feasible? Such tools already exist. File sharing happens. Tor, too. Whereas obfuscation over mail servers needs to be deployed first. > is, of course, an area of active academic research and it would be > irresponsible to say that we definitively know how to prevent traffic > analysis, either with p2p or federation. I think tools should do both spool-then-forward and play with cover traffic. If GNUnet as an academic project is working so much on the cover traffic bit, some academic results maybe exist. The terms P2P and federation are starting to get confusing. So-called P2P tools are sometimes actually employing dumb relay servers, which kind of defeats the original definition of P2P. And you are talking of federation servers that, although they are using plaintext email addresses, are actually not knowing where they are sending things to. That kind of goes beyond the traditional notion of federation. So in a way both are converging to a similar strategy. The difference that remains is that P2P uses DHT-resolution strategies like GNS to address any node, be it at home or in a server rack, while federation sticks to domain names and therefore cannot easily include user endpoints. Also, as you pointed out, it needs a whole lot of administration work. A DHT just works out of the box by using it. And then there are also social approaches to discovery... Still I have a feeling the DHT approach, especially with built-in lookup privacy like GNS/GADS has it, is superior. On the other hand, maintaining the domain name hell is backwards compatible to current e-mail. The question is if that is actually doing anyone any good. Maybe if you can convince spammers to use LEAP they will provide not only for nuisance but also for cover traffic. :) > > 7. Statistical Analysis: Guessing on the size of messages. > > Easily fixed. > > > 8. Workflow: Group messaging with PGP is impractical. > > No one anywhere has solved the problem of asynchronous, forward-secret I think you have to be a bit opportunistic about it. Briar does it somehow, if I understood correctly. > group cryptography. There are, however, working models of group > cryptography using OpenPGP, such as SELS > (http://sels.ncsa.illinois.edu/) This approach makes key management > more difficult, but we need to automate key management anyway for > OpenPGP to be usable enough for wider adoption. Yes. Key management is an API, not a user interface. Automatic import of embedded secret keys sounds like a major cultural revolution for good ole PGP. No surprise none of the list clients supports that yet. Interesting developments. Not enough to consider this path worth pursueing but in the category of better-than-nothing. > > 9. TL;DR: I don't care. I've got nothing to hide. > > This critique rests on the assumption that the problems with email are > unfixable. Yes. That even if all the effort is done you will still be receiving unencrypted mail because you have a mail address. You will still have a multitude of hosts that are still "unfixed." That you will still carry a dependency on DNS and X.509 around your neck just to be able to be backwards compatible to an e-mail system of which you hope you won't have to send or receive any messages since they will damage your privacy. So what is this terrific effort to stay backward compatible good for? I don't see it being a worthwhile goal. There is so much broken about it while a fresh start, where every participant is safe by definition, is so much more useful. Especially you don't have that usability challenge of having to explain to your users that some addresses are superduper safe while other addresses are lacking solid degree of privacy. And I still haven't understood where I get my trustworthy server from. I know I can rent one, but even if I have a root shell on it, it doesn't mean it is safe. So yes, I can't find a way to believe that those fixes actually can fix the entire architecture. > > 10. The Bootstrap Fallacy: But my friends already have e-mail! > > Email remains one of the two killer apps of the internet, and is > unlikely to vanish any time soon. Simple steps we can take to make it > much better seem like a wise investment in energy. I've read that claim before and I am sure Facebook has already proven us wrong. Wasn't it in the news a year ago that e-mail was losing users to Facebook messaging? And I don't see a use in maintaining e-mail if I have to rebuild my trust network, anyway. > There are two approaches to addressing the problems with email: > > (1) assert that email is hopeless and must be killed off. > (2) identify areas where we can fix email to bring it into the 21st century. > > I think that approach #1 is irresponsible: regardless of one's personal > feelings about email, it is certainly not a lost cause, and asserting > that it is will make it more difficult to build support for fixing it. I think I have laid out why it is indeed a lost cause. > Approach #2 is certainly an uphill battle, but there are a growing > number of organizations working on it. LEAP's (free software) efforts > are outlined here: https://leap.se/email. We have it working, we just > need to get it mature enough for production use. You didn't actually address the "bootstrap fallacy" that I pointed out. -- Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys(a)stanford.edu. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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