November 2015 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Paris Attacks Blamed on Strong Cryptography and Edward Snowden
by Александр 17 Nov '15

17 Nov '15

1. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/11/paris_attacks_b.html 2. https://theintercept.com/2015/11/15/exploiting-emotions-about-paris-to-blam… <<As Paris reels from terrorist attacks that have claimed at least 128 lives, fierce blame for the carnage is being directed toward American whistleblower Edward Snowden and the spread of strong encryption catalyzed by his actions. Now the Paris attacks are being used an excuse to demand back doors>> <<how can “officials” and their media stenographers persist in trying to convince people of such a blatant, easily disproven falsehood: namely, that Terrorists learned to hide their communications from Snowden’s revelations? They do it because of how many benefits there are from swindling people to believe this. To begin with, U.S officials are eager here to demonize far more than just Snowden They want to demonize encryption generally as well as any companies that offer it. Indeed, as these media accounts show, they’ve been trying for two decades to equate the use of encryption — anything that keeps them out of people’s private online communications — with aiding and abetting The Terrorists>> <<Above all, there’s the desperation to prevent people from asking how and why ISIS was able to spring up seemingly out of nowhere and be so powerful, able to blow up a Russian passenger plane, a market in Beirut, and the streets of Paris in a single week. That’s the one question Western officials are most desperate not to be asked, so directing people’s ire to Edward Snowden and strong encryption is beneficial in the extreme>> <<There’s the related question of how ISIS has become so well-armed and powerful. There are many causes, but a leading one is the role played by the U.S. and its “allies in the region” (i.e., Gulf tyrannies) in arming them>>

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Re: UK To Ban Crypto In Devices, Email And More
by John Young 17 Nov '15

17 Nov '15

Excellent development if the bill is enacted. Should shatter the complacency of crypto advocates and foster other means and methods now getting short shrift due to the faith in crypto hyping and marketing -- and tons of excuses why crypto has not been as effective as foreordained, blame users, blame implementation, blame standards committees, blame spies, blame legislators, blame certificate authorities, blame hardware, blame insiders and outsiders, blame amateurs, blame backdoors, blame venal marketers who sold out to authorities, blame duat hatters working both sides of the porous divide, blame open and closed source, the pile of excuses grows exponentially as money is heaped onto the fire for burning through faster and faster. NSA has at least 191 colleges on the take for information assurance studies, with more joining daily to get while the getting is good, sending graduates to corporations, institutes, NGOs, hack world, leak world, defy authority world as evidenced here in this sacred site of tipped gravestones to cipher heroics. At 12:27 PM 11/3/2015, you wrote: >http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11970391/Interne… > >Internet firms to be banned from offering unbreakable encryption >under new laws > >3:16PM GMT 02 Nov 2015 > >Internet and social media companies will be banned from putting >customer communications beyond their own reach under new laws to be >unveiled on Wednesday. >Companies such as Apple, Google and others will no longer be able to >offer encryption so advanced that even they cannot decipher it when >asked to, the Daily Telegraph can disclose. >Measures in the Investigatory Powers Bill will place in law a >requirement on tech firms and service providers to be able to provide >unencrypted communications to the police or spy agencies if requested >through a warrant.

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Leaked Documents Confirm Polygraph Operators Can't Detect Countermeasures
by grarpamp 17 Nov '15

17 Nov '15

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/11/16/1616226/leaked-documents-confirm-po… George Maschke writes: AntiPolygraph.org has published a document (14 MB PDF) on polygraph countermeasures that is allegedly derived from classified information. The document suggests techniques that polygraph operators might use in an attempt to detect efforts to beat the polygraph, but fails to offer any coherent strategy for detecting sophisticated countermeasures such as those outlined in AntiPolygraph.org's The Lie Behind the Lie Detector (1 MB PDF) or Doug Williams' How to Sting the Polygraph. Ominously, the leaked document avers that an examinee's stated lack of belief in polygraphy is a marker of deception. AntiPolygraph.org has also published an older U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations polygraph countermeasure handbook (3.2 MB PDF) that similarly offers no methodology for detecting sophisticated countermeasures (such as any actual spy, saboteur, or terrorist might be expected to use).

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Al-Hayat Media Group (Daesh/ISIL) on the DarkWebs
by grarpamp 17 Nov '15

17 Nov '15

http://isdratetp4donyfy.onion/ While not the first time darknets have been used for such things, expect an inrush of media queries over this one, and an influx of new sites. On the crypto side... an IM often purported to be used by them: https://telegram.org/ With battles between systems taking place entirely within the darknet, mixed with clearnet, and supposedly real world ops... for social cause, profit, and lols... https://twitter.com/opparisofficial https://twitter.com/hashtag/OpParis https://twitter.com/hashtag/OpISIS https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=OpParis https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=OpISIS http://reportonlineterrorism.com/ http://ghostsecuritygroup.com/ https://twitter.com/GhostSecGroup https://twitter.com/CtrlSec https://twitter.com/KatNarv Funding models for everyone... http://www.dw.com/en/bitcoin-islamic-states-online-currency-venture/a-18724…

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Re: FOIA MuckRock API
by coderman 16 Nov '15

16 Nov '15

On 11/10/15, Michael Morisy <m(a)morisy.com> wrote: > I'm using 2.7.8. Mitch apparently made some improvements to the API, > so not sure if that made a difference, haven't had time to try it > lately. the best Mike: have you tried this again recently? i was able to sorta-repro if network was spotty and a large document failed during transfer, but otherwise this works solid for me. still catching up, including pending improvements to script behavior. more soon... best regards,

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Re: [Cryptography] Satoshi's PGP key.
by grarpamp 16 Nov '15

16 Nov '15

Is not the mark of Satoshi the crypto [private] key of the genesis block, to which all other supposed GPG keys are functionally subservient?

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Open Fabs
by grarpamp 16 Nov '15

16 Nov '15

Open Fabs might choose to [modify and] incorporate various familiar auditing methods, including those which are rejected by closed fabs due to their openness... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statement_on_Auditing_Standards_No._70:_Servi… https://www.iana.org/dnssec/ceremonies/22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computer_System_Evaluation_Criteria

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pervasive opportunistic encryption of voice and text communication
by Zenaan Harkness 16 Nov '15

16 Nov '15

I think RedPhone / Open Whisper Systems is a start to what we might achieve as a "base" level of privacy for "most people" in modern digital communications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Whisper_Systems https://whispersystems.org/ "Open Whisper Systems is a nonprofit software group[3] that develops collaborative open source projects with a mission to "make private communication simple"." So, for those so inspired, these might be the guys to work with. (Figured a new thread on actual projects / potential new ideas (rather than just complaints) is in order.)

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Pride and Legacy Thinking is a Tired Old Bitch
by grarpamp 16 Nov '15

16 Nov '15

On Sat, Nov 14, 2015 at 5:17 AM, oshwm <oshwm(a)openmailbox.org> wrote: > Ok, how about this then... > > Your idea on your blog is pretty cool but I think there is an even > simpler way to handle this. > > When you sign up for a new mail account, the mail provider... ... is still the weakest link. Anyone can design a scheme where users can turn the net black with encrypted email bodies. However these days, and really since day one, it has been known that email bodies are only half the problem in the full threat model. The other half is metadata. And now with them pushing code to you, it's become even worse. So please stop talking about what you're going to bolt on to fix traditional centralised email services. They cannot be fixed, ever. And start talking about what you're going to build to replace them. Or testing and contributing to development of proposed replacements. Pride of owning yet another commercial central service is a tired old bitch. Pride of dropping a true anonymous encrypted p2p protocol that scales and reaches adoption... now that's priceless. Regarding some of the elements in the latter, Bram's Bittorrent made it, Satoshi's Bitcoin is doing quite well, as are things like I2P, many to list. You could be next with more...

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FOIPA adventures
by grarpamp 16 Nov '15

16 Nov '15

Don't know what you're looking for, but every query is one step closer. The mark of a true cpunk. Thanks.

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