May 2015 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Keeping your car keys in the refrigerator (to keep them fresh?)
by jim bell 11 May '15

11 May '15

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/05/07/technology-car-break-in… Brief explanation: Sophisticated thieves are amplifying signals emitted from cars that are received by their corresponding car keys; the amplified signal travels potentially over hundreds of feet; the key's returned signals are (I would suspect; the article doesn't say) also amplified. Thus, a car lock can be opened even if the car's key is 'safely' in an owner's house or apartment. The article suggests keeping the keys in a refrigerator or microwave oven to shield it from those signals. One possible re-design solution, I think, would be for the key fob to retransmit a portion of the car-emitted signal instantly; the car would detect the timing of its emitted signal compared to the key-returned signal. Thus, the car would know how far away the key is from the car, foiling this system, by setting a maximum distance between the car and the key. This actually isn't a new idea: Supermarkets have microwave-detection door openers, and I suspect that their active range is determined by rapidly sweeping the frequency of the transmitter, and then mixing (non-linear mixing; not to be confused with linear mixing, done to audio) the returned signal. The further the target is, away from the transmitter, the higher the detected frequency. This makes the trigger point precisely dependent on the distance, not simply the amplitude of the returned signal. Jim Bell

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Re: FOIPA adventures
by Softy 11 May '15

11 May '15

"- Sell our culture" "- autonomy" haha, that's a good one. Only a job recruiter could smile while spouting nonsense like that. -daniel That already exists (clearancejobs.com and others). There are actually > tons of ads all over DC for these services, most notably the "Life of a > Secret Squirrel" series. Really: > https://www.flickr.com/photos/clearancejobs/8634488049/in/photostream/ > > DC is a weird place sometimes. > >

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Re: Appeals Court Rules NSA Phone Program Not Authorized by Patriot Act - wsj
by dans＠openmailbox.org 08 May '15

08 May '15

Good news I guess, a small victory. However I think that is just a simbolic victory, useful only to make more people to become aware about surveillance. With the new technologies and with all the infrastucture already done record and collect the metadata of the phones is too easy, too cheap, too tempting to don't do it. And NSA will continuous doing it. In the other hand I can understand that the civil libertys groups of US take care of US citizens, but can any american take care of the people of other countrys? We can't legally apeal to any court of US, and we are under US goverment's surveillance too.

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Re: Appeals Court Rules NSA Phone Program Not Authorized by Patriot Act - WSJ
by John Young 07 May '15

07 May '15

Correction: The decision and three opinions Decision: http://cryptome.org/2015/05/aclu-v-clapper-170.pdf Judge Sack: http://cryptome.org/2015/05/aclu-v-clapper-169.pdf Judges Lynch and Broderick: http://cryptome.org/2015/05/aclu-v-clapper-168.pdf Sack opines it's not about Snowden.

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Appeals Court Rules NSA Phone Program Not Authorized by Patriot Act - WSJ
by Robert Hettinga 07 May '15

07 May '15

> http://www.wsj.com/articles/appeals-court-rules-nsa-phone-program-not-autho… <http://www.wsj.com/articles/appeals-court-rules-nsa-phone-program-not-autho…> > > Appeals Court Rules NSA Phone Program Not Authorized by Patriot Act > > ENLARGE > A sign stands outside the National Security Agency campus in Fort Meade, Md. Photo: PATRICK SEMANSKY/ASSOCIATED PRESS > > By > Devlin Barrett > May 7, 2015 9:31 a.m. ET > A federal appeals court ruled Thursday the National Security Agency’s controversial collection of millions of Americans’ phone records isn't authorized by the Patriot Act <http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/04/22/mitch-mcconnell-readies-bill-to-re…>, as the Bush and Obama administrations have long maintained. > > The ruling by the three-judge panel in New York comes at a delicate point in the national debate over government surveillance, as Section 215 of the Patriot Act is due to expire next month and lawmakers are haggling about whether to renew it, modify it, or let it die. > > The court’s ruling came in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union arguing the data collection should be stopped because it violates Americans’ privacy rights. A lower court judge ruled the program was constitutional, and the civil liberties group appealed, leading to Thursday’s decision. > > “The text of (Section 215) cannot bear the weight the government asks us to assign to it, and...does not authorize the telephone metadata program,’’ the court wrote. > > The court declined to address the issue of whether the program violates Americans’ rights, because, they found, it was never properly authorized by existing law. > > The judges didn't order the collection to stop, noting that the legislative debate and the looming expiration of Section 215 will force action on the issue one way or another. > > The judges also note that if Congress decides to approve some version of the phone data collection program in coming days, then the privacy issue could be revisited in court. > > The panel sent the case back to the lower court judge for further review based on the appeals court findings. > > Write to Devlin Barrett at devlin.barrett(a)wsj.com <mailto:devlin.barrett@wsj.com>

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Re: we are fucked [was: Jim Bell vindicated]
by John Young 07 May '15

07 May '15

US armed forces (like other nations) have copious religions represented in uniform to bless crusades, vendettas, suppressions, mass murders, technical savagery, genocide by strategic bombing of civilians (Saudi Arabia relishing that in Yemen), exculpation of policy setters and enforcers and salve those who die, are savaged and family-death-benefited serving nations of holiers than thou. The current US giant pie of all-religions demon-fighters memoralized on patriotic headstones and dog-tags: http://prhome.defense.gov/RFM/MPP/AFCB/Endorsements.aspx If your cybersecurity faith is not listed, engage a faith-based lobbyist like EFF, ACLU, The Intercept, WikiLeaks. Not hard to believe all wars are narrow-minded religious wars, the more pea-brained, vicious and deadly the greater the faith in terrifying people into submission or by Your God or Godless teaching the resisters and atheists to RTFM and believe it. Manual burners, body immolators, head loppers, come on, those are the long-time recruiters. Nice thing about the AP manual is how ancient and modern it is, in law banking weapons strategy temples games. Not hard to believe the Internet is an EM, electricity wasting manual for AP adherents, following Gutenberg's WMD of pulp and carbon.

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How are the Baltimore riots going?
by Georgi Guninski 06 May '15

06 May '15

How are the Baltimore riots going? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Baltimore_riots > Mandatory curfew effective April 28 – May 5 from 10pm-5am

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Euros trending all PATRIOTic after a few dead bodies
by grarpamp 06 May '15

06 May '15

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/06/world/europe/french-legislators-approve-s… Mr. Valls promised that the law would be “targeted” and insisted that its main focus was to protect French citizens from terrorism. “The means of surveillance for anticipating, detecting and prevention of attacks will be strictly limited,” he promised. “It is a state lie,” said Pierre-Olivier Sur, the head of the Paris bar association. “This project was presented to us as a way to protect France against terrorism, and if that were the case, I would back it.” “But it is being done to put in place a sort of Patriot Act concerning the activities of each and everyone,” he said, “I think that opportunistic laws are always bad laws,” the editor in chief, Gérard Biard, said “The requirement that the Internet companies use the black boxes is a requirement that Russia has as well,”

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Re: [tor-talk] German University signs up 24 tor relays
by grarpamp 06 May '15

06 May '15

On Tue, May 5, 2015 at 6:47 PM, W. Greenhouse <wgreenhouse(a)riseup.net> wrote: > grarpamp <grarpamp(a)gmail.com> writes: > >> Tor is not some private kingdom. It's an open application >> used and operated by whoever for whatever. It is absolutely >> the business of interested users to report, bring attention, >> interrogate and make lists of relays to use, promote or badexit as >> desired. And the business of relays to contactinfo, family, or >> ignore them as they wish. And of people to sniff passwords, inject >> malware, study traffic, researchers to research and others to have >> interest, bandwidth to be donated, disruption and exploit to be attempted, >> fileshare, illegal/legal use, promote best practices, etc. That's the nature, >> strength and weakness of open apps. A free for all where people use >> it as they wish, that's their purview, no police. You expect that, else you >> didn't read the label. Nothing you can do about it. Deal with it or >> create / fork >> your own kingdom. Tor's certainly not the last / best iteration of an anonymity >> network that there will ever be. > > Ack. I wouldn't want Tor to be anything but an open protocol/network. > That said, the lack of network security researchers treating their research > as human subjects research when human subjects can be put at risk by it is > troubling. Most researchers ultimately work for or at pleasure of "The Man" through R&E funding, grants, taxes, etc, so what do you expect? It's the same reason Tor Project gets endless amounts of shit piled on them for choosing to accept government funds. It's a fine line. At the same time you can't deny the benefits the research, usually attacking your network of choice... someone will do it anyways, or patching your net more resistant. So you have to take it as the free for all it is. It doesn't help that politic and media representing such systems as inhabited nearly entirely by FHOTI (and where good uses remain unseen by nature), and whatever bits of morality regarding human subjects may get used as cannon fodder. Very few work truly independantly for the fame of building resistant / resistance systems, let alone anonymously, sustainably, and at a level that results in a usable product that is used at scale. Just another reason anon-capable virtual currencies are feared by governments. They can support such models. Though as a user, due diligence is still required. In a connected digital world, that has and is developing faster than evolution's capacity to deal with it, everything is human subjects, and that's something everyone involved must consider... the outcome when your work is inevitably turned towards you or someone or something you care about... is that the work you want to be doing?

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Re: Meeting Snowden in Princeton
by Juan 05 May '15

05 May '15

On Sat, 02 May 2015 21:14:35 -0600 Mirimir <mirimir(a)riseup.net> wrote: > I won't quote much, but I can't resist sharing this: "And it’s a > matter of record that Ed [Snowden] trusted his life to Tor, because > he saw from the other side that it worked." > Huh? 'trusted his life', how? It's a matter of record that you are quoting a guy making a baseless assertion in some random blog. > I wonder what the haters say to that. Actually, I know: "He's a double > agent, and it's all a con." Amirite? Snowden keeps sounding like an american nationalist. That's a big red flag.

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