May 2016 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

How long before compulsory microchipping of cattle, I mean, 'citizens'?
by juan 05 Jun '16

05 Jun '16

I'll hazard : 20 years. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35972480

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A promising method to thwart global surveillence
by Ryan Carboni 02 Jun '16

02 Jun '16

The Russian Illegals spy ring in New York used steganography. The Caliphate cell in Brussels used truecrypt files uploaded to cyberlockers in Turkey. But the grugq notes that truecrypt files would probably have a fixed size (and even with a random length, it would still round to kilobyte sizes), so it wouldn't be so simple. Obviously if state-level actors use these methods against the NSA, steganography does have a good role to play. Problem is that machine learning has advanced substantially. In a worst case scenario, it will be obvious that you have steganographic files, that is if photodna hashes are similar for many files, but fuzzy hashes aren't as similar. The best that could be done would be to make automated scans more probabilistic and less reliable (I have tens of thousands of files on my computer), by embedding encrypted data steganographically in images in the PDF file. The text and images of the PDF file could be procedurally generated. But I'm not an expert. I'm just pointing out what makes sense to me.

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All your disk image are (forever) belong to us, says appeals court
by Александр 02 Jun '16

02 Jun '16

*All your disk image are belong to us, says appeals courtCourt says your files are ripe for seizure—Fourth Amendment doesn't apply.* *by David Kravets - May 31, 2016* http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/feds-can-keep-your-hard-drives-i… The government can prosecute and imprison people for crimes based on evidence obtained from their computers—even evidence retained for years that was outside the scope of an original probable-cause search warrant, a US federal appeals court has said in a 100-page opinion paired with a blistering dissent. The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled <http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/d1aa55fc-fb04-4abd-a9c6-f19…> that there was no constitutional violation because the authorities acted in good faith when they initially obtained a search warrant, held on to the files for years, and built a case unrelated to the original search. The case posed a vexing question—how long may the authorities keep somebody's computer files that were obtained during a search but were not germane to that search? The convicted accountant said that only the computer files pertaining to his client—who was being investigated as part of an Army overbilling scandal—should have been retained by the government during a 2003 search. All of his personal files, which eventually led to his own tax-evasion conviction, should have been purged, he argued. But the appeals court said the authorities' behavior was acceptable and didn't reach the constitutional question of whether the Fourth Amendment rights were breached for accountant Stavros Ganias, who was sentenced to two years in prison. That's because three years after the original search of the accountant's files in connection to the Army scandal, Connecticut authorities got another search warrant for Ganias' own tax files that were already in the government's possession, the appeals court ruled in a 12-1 decision Friday written by Judges Debra Ann Livingston and Gerard Lynch. Ganias had subsequently deleted those files from his hard drives after the government had imaged them, according to court records: Defendant-Appellant Stavros Ganias appeals from a judgment of the United > States District Court for the District of Connecticut (Thompson, J.) > convicting him, after a jury trial, of two counts of tax evasion in > violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7201. He challenges his conviction on the ground > that the Government violated his Fourth Amendment rights when, after > lawfully copying three of his hard drives for off-site review pursuant to a > 2003 search warrant, it retained these full forensic copies (or “mirrors”), > which included data both responsive and non-responsive to the 2003 warrant, > while its investigation continued, and ultimately searched the > non-responsive data pursuant to a second warrant in 2006. Ganias contends > that the Government had successfully sorted the data on the mirrors > responsive to the 2003 warrant from the non-responsive data by January > 2005, and that the retention of the mirrors thereafter (and, by extension, > the 2006 search, which would not have been possible but for that retention) > violated the Fourth Amendment. He argues that evidence obtained in > executing the 2006 search warrant should therefore have been suppressed. > > We conclude that the Government relied in good faith on the 2006 warrant, > and that this reliance was objectively reasonable. Accordingly, we need not > decide whether retention of the forensic mirrors violated the Fourth > Amendment, and we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court. > *The case is clearly nuanced, but it has huge ramifications for the public because many people keep all of their papers and effects co-mingled on their hard drives.* In his 40-page dissent, Judge Denny Chin blasted the majority opinion and said the authorities wrongly seized files from Ganias that were unrelated to the Army overbilling investigation. "The government did precisely what the Fourth Amendment forbids: it entered Ganias' premises with a warrant to seize certain papers and indiscriminately seized—and retained—all papers instead," Chin wrote. This is not the first time the appeals court entertained the case. Last year, the court sided <http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCOURTS-ca2-12-00240/pdf/USCOURTS-ca2-12-0024…> (PDF) with Ganias in a 2-1 ruling. But the government asked for the full appeals court to rehear the case en banc, and the court agreed to do so with all 13 judges. The court's original ruling for Ganias said investigators had a right to image Ganias' three hard drives at the center of the Army overbilling dispute. But the majority concluded that the law did not allow "officials executing a warrant for the seizure of particular data on a computer to seize and indefinitely retain every file on a computer for use in future criminal proceedings." Ganias' lawyer, Stanley Twardy, urged the government to set aside his client's conviction. *"The seizure and two-and-a-half year retention of every file on Ganias' computers violated the Fourth Amendment,"* Twardy wrote <http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/twardy.pdf>. (PDF) He told the New York-based appeals court that "at a minimum the Fourth Amendment requires prompt completion of an off-site review and return of files outside the warrant's scope." The government countered, "Consistent with the Fourth Amendment, the government may obtain a search warrant for nearly any person, place, or thing if the government establishes probable cause for the search and did not engage in an illegal seizure of the item to be searched," Assistant US Attorney Sandra Glover wrote in the government's filing <http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/fedsganiasbrief.pdf>

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There's no point in being a victim
by Zenaan Harkness 31 May '16

31 May '16

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/miss-judgement/index.php/heraldsun/comme… There's no point in being a victim Rita Panahi 2016-05-30 HeraldSun.com.au Where do you rank in the Oppression Olympics? Are you floundering at the bottom of the table among the privileged white, Christian, heteronormative cisgender males with no moral authority to speak on any issue? Or are you going for gold as a transgendered pansexual Muslim woman of colour? There was a time when a person’s status was determined by their birth; those fortunate enough to belong to the aristocracy were judged to be our moral and intellectual superiors. Now there’s a new and even more toxic pecking order that determines one’s acceptability and authority to speak on a range of issues. The new aristocracy is determined by one’s victimhood status; the more grievance points you accumulate, the greater your mandate to preach. Of course, if you don’t identify as a victim then your oppression ranking plummets to Anglo-male depths, but if you play the game right, you can use your grievance status to score plum roles as well as dodge all responsibility if you happen to fail miserably. One popular tactic among the victimhood brigade is the refusal to accept any criticism that comes from those who are of a different race, religion, gender, sexuality or whatever else differentiates you. Men should not speak about feminism, whites should butt out of black or ethnic debates, and non-Muslims should never pass judgment on Islam. Last week soon-to-be-retired Senator Nova Peris rejected the opinions of those who don’t share her oppression ranking. “Until you are an Aboriginal person, don’t criticise me,” she said. Really? Can I play that card the next time I receive unhinged abuse from the always bitter and outraged feminist frightbats who are invariably middle-class white women? From now on my standard response to any and all criticism will be: “Unless you are an American-born Persian Australian, don’t judge me.” Let's remember that Peris isn't some disempowered victim; indeed she's been treated better than most in her short political career. Allegations that Peris used taxpayer money to carry out an extramarital affair would have ended most political careers but she survived and earned a few extra grievance points by painting herself as the victim. While working for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Peris was involved in a decision to bring her lover, Olympian Ato Boldon, to Australia for a 10-day tryst interrupted by a few athletic workshops. However when the scandal was revealed, and again last week, there was no shortage of media pundits eager to characterise any criticism of Peris as racially motivated. We see the same simplistic arguments put forward claiming only indigenous people are entitled to an opinion on Australia Day, or Invasion Day, or whenever matters concerning the indigenous community are debated. How absurd to think that all people of a particular race or religion share the same values and viewpoints and will have their “side” adequately covered by an ethnically-appropriate representative. Those who demand that every member of a particular minority group think and vote the same way are guilty of the sort of closeminded prejudice that the Left used to rail against. It's not just a local phenomenon - Egyptian feminist Mona Hathaway, a favourite of the Q&A set, recently demanded that only Muslim women speak about the religion's many problems, particularly with veiling. “If you're white/ not a Muslim woman: shut up and listen to us, Muslim women,” she tweeted. Victimhood does not equal moral superiority, particularly when in your eagerness to establish your victimhood status you ignore real victims. Western feminists who turn their back on oppressed women while getting worked up about non-issues such as gendered toys and “sexist air conditioners” are not noble warriors, merely trolls. Ordinarily I'd be the type of minority the average Leftie would be delighted to embrace given my many oppression points: woman of colour, Middle Eastern refugee, atheist, single mother - if I was also a lesbian with a disability I'd have hit the diversity jackpot. And that's part of the problem. Many progressives consider diversity a disability to be overcome. The victimhood they seek signifies for them a struggle that is often entirely in their own minds. My failure to see my ethnic origin as some sort of handicap is deemed unacceptable. The fact that I don't view Australia as an inherently racist country ruled by monstrous patriarchy riles them even more. Unlike most Western feminists who have abandoned their sisters in the Muslim world, I won't stay silent about the systematic subjugation of women in the name of Islam. That I won't frame my opinions in a manner that pushes daft social justice agendas that are short on justice and high on propagating falsehoods is the final deal breaker. All of that combines to negate any oppresion points I've accumulated and casts me as an enemy of your average Leftist, or progressive as they prefer to be called. Those people believe that if you don't subscribe to their dippy worldview you're suffering from internal misogyny and racism. That's intellectually vacuous and it's at the heart of the social justice activism that's taken hold of much of academia. Is it any surprise universities are increasingly banning free speech and creating “safe spaces” to spare their delicate student populations from the only diversity they hate - the diversity of opinion? Identity politics that portrays victimhood as something to be lauded is counter-productive and divisive. Only a bigot would dismiss someone's opinion based on their race, religion, gender or sexuality. rita DOT panahi AT news.com.au

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How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
by grarpamp 30 May '16

30 May '16

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "ECOTERRA Intl." <office(a)ecoterra-international.org> Date: Sun, 29 May 2016 16:03:05 +0300 Subject: [NATURAL_DEFENCE] How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds To: MAILHUB <mailhub(a)ecoterra.net> How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds — from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist <https://medium.com/@tristanharris/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from…> By Tristan Harris <https://medium.com/@tristanharris>(*) - May 2016- /Estimated reading time: 12 minutes, but read it for your own peace of mind. / I’m an expert on how technology hijacks our psychological vulnerabilities. That’s why I spent the last three years as Google’s Design Ethicist caring about how to design things in a way that defends a billion people’s minds from getting hijacked. When using technology, we often focus /optimistically/ on all the things it does for us. But I want you to show you where it might do the opposite. */Where does technology exploit our minds’ weaknesses/**?* I learned to think this way when I was a magician. Magicians start by looking for /blind spots, edges, vulnerabilities and/ /limits/ of people’s perception, so they can influence what people do without them even realizing it. Once you know how to push people’s buttons, you can play them like a piano. That’s me performing sleight of hand magic at my mother’s birthday party <https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*IG2MfhS05JjHryBHnXLXwA.png> And this is exactly what product designers do to your mind. They play your psychological vulnerabilities (consciously and unconsciously) against you in the race to grab your attention. I want to show you how they do it. Hijack #1: If You Control the Menu, You Control the Choices Western Culture is built around ideals of individual choice and freedom. Millions of us fiercely defend our right to make “free” choices, while we ignore how we’re manipulated upstream by limited menus we didn’t choose. This is exactly what magicians do. They give people the illusion of free choice while architecting the menu so that they win, no matter what you choose. I can’t emphasize how deep this insight is. When people are given a menu of choices, they rarely ask: * “what’s not on the menu?” * “why am I being given /these options/ and not others?” * “do I know the menu provider’s goals?” * “is this menu /empowering/ for my original need, or are the choices actually a distraction?” (e.g. an overwhelmingly array of toothpastes) How /empowering is this menu/ of choices for the need, “I ran out of toothpaste”? <https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*-h0aCLf8EH5OxCIdMXERgA.jpeg> For example, imagine you’re out with friends on a Tuesday night and want to keep the conversation going. You open Yelp to find nearby recommendations and see a list of bars. The group turns into a huddle of faces staring down at their phones /comparing bars. /They scrutinize the photos of each, comparing cocktail drinks. Is this menu still relevant to the original desire of the group? It’s not that bars aren’t a good choice, it’s that Yelp substituted the group’s original question (“where can we go to keep talking?”) with a different question (“what’s a bar with good photos of cocktails?”) all by shaping the menu. Moreover, the group falls for the illusion that Yelp’s menu represents a /complete set of choices/ for where to go. While looking down at their phones, they don’t see the park across the street with a band playing live music. They miss the pop-up gallery on the other side of the street serving crepes and coffee. Neither of those show up on Yelp’s menu. Yelp subtly reframes the group’s need “where can we go to keep talking?” in terms of photos of cocktails served. <https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*Ih_bIVQ12Ibu076252-bKA.png> The more choices technology gives us in nearly every domain of our lives (information, events, places to go, friends, dating, jobs) — /the more we assume that our phone is always the most empowering and useful menu to pick from/. Is it? */The “most empowering” menu is different than the menu that has the most choices/*/. /But when we blindly surrender to the menus we’re given, it’s easy to lose track of the difference: * “Who’s free tonight to hang out?” becomes a menu of /most recent people who texted us /(who we could ping). * “What’s happening in the world?” becomes a menu of news feed stories. * “Who’s single to go on a date?” becomes a menu//of faces to swipe on Tinder (instead of local events with friends, or urban adventures nearby). * “I have to respond to this email.” becomes a menu of /keys to type a response/ (instead of empowering ways to communicate with a person). All user interfaces are menus. What if your email client gave you /empowering choices of ways to respond, instead of “what message do you want to type back?” (Design by Tristan Harris)/ <https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*LsgYHAM-xhnkYGSkocOmew.png> When we wake up in the morning and turn our phone over to see a list of notifications — it frames the experience of “waking up in the morning” around a menu of “all the things I’ve missed since yesterday.” A list of notifications when we wake up in the morning — how /empowering is this menu of choices when we wake up? Does it reflect what we care about? (credit to Joe Edelman)/ <https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*iDMEQ0vQrx2ep_Z4G-mY1w.png> By shaping the menus we pick from, technology hijacks the way we perceive our choices and replaces them new ones. But the closer we pay attention to the options we’re given, the more we’ll notice when they don’t actually align with our true needs. *Hijack #2: Put a Slot Machine In a Billion Pockets* If you’re an app, how do you keep people hooked? Turn yourself into a slot machine. The average person checks their phone 150 times a day. Why do we do this? Are we making /150/ /conscious/ /choices/? How often do you check your email per day? <https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*BNOfmUQ2nTRVPVe0CHx7ew.png> One major reason why is the #1 psychological ingredient in slot machines: *intermittent variable rewards* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Intermittent_reinforcement.3B_s…>. If you want to maximize addictiveness, all tech designers need to do is link a user’s action (like pulling a lever) with a /variable reward/. You pull a lever and immediately receive either an enticing reward (a match, a prize!) or nothing. Addictiveness is maximized when the rate of reward is most variable. Does this effect really work on people? Yes. *Slot machines make more money in the United States than baseball, movies, and theme parks **combined* <http://www.cbsnews.com/news/slot-machines-the-big-gamble-07-01-2011/>*/./* Relative to other kinds of gambling, people get ‘problematically involved’ with slot machines *3–4x faster* <http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-78-no-armed-bandit/>//according to NYU professor Natasha Dow Shull, author of /Addiction by Design./ *But here’s the unfortunate truth — several billion people have a slot machine their pocket:* * When we pull our phone out of our pocket, we’re /playing a slot machine/ to see what notifications we got. * When we pull to refresh our email, we’re /playing a slot machine /to see what new email we got. * When we swipe down our finger to scroll the Instagram feed, we’re /playing a slot machine/ to see what photo comes next. * When we swipe faces left/right on dating apps like Tinder, we’re /playing a slot machine/ to see if we got a match. * When we tap the # of red notifications, we’re /playing a slot machine /to what’s underneath. Apps and websites sprinkle intermittent variable rewards all over their products because it’s good for business. But in other cases, slot machines emerge by accident. For example, there is no malicious corporation behind /all of email/ who consciously chose to make it a slot machine. No one profits when millions check their email and nothing’s there. Neither did Apple and Google’s designers /want/ phones to work like slot machines. It emerged by accident. But now companies like Apple and Google have a responsibility to reduce these effects by /converting intermittent variable rewards into less addictive, more predictable ones/ with better design. For example, they could empower people to set predictable times during the day or week for when they want to check “slot machine” apps, and correspondingly adjust when new messages are delivered to align with those times. Hijack #3: Fear of Missing Something Important (FOMSI) Another way apps and websites hijack people’s minds is by inducing a “1% chance you could be missing something important.” If I convince you that I’m a channel for important information, messages, friendships, or potential sexual opportunities — it will be hard for you to turn me off, unsubscribe, or remove your account — because (aha, I win) you might miss something important: * This keeps us subscribed to newsletters even after they haven’t delivered recent benefits (“what if I miss a future announcement?”) * This keeps us “friended” to people with whom we haven’t spoke in ages (“what if I miss something important from them?”) * This keeps us swiping faces on dating apps, even when we haven’t even met up with anyone in a while (“what if I miss that /one hot match/ who likes me?”) * This keeps us using social media (“what if I miss that important news story or fall behind what my friends are talking about?”) But if we zoom into that fear, we’ll discover that it’s unbounded/: we’ll always miss something important /at any point when we stop using something. * There are magic moments on Facebook we’ll miss by not using it for the 6th hour (e.g. an old friend who’s visiting town /right now/). * There are magic moments we’ll miss on Tinder (e.g. our dream romantic partner) by not swiping our 700th match. * There are emergency phone calls we’ll miss if we’re not connected 24/7/./ /But living moment to moment with the fear of missing something isn’t how we’re built to live./ And it’s amazing how quickly, once we let go of that fear, we wake up from the illusion. When we unplug for more than a day, unsubscribe from those notifications, or go to Camp Grounded <http://campgrounded.org> — the concerns we thought we’d have don’t actually happen. /We don’t miss what we don’t see./ The thought, “what if I miss something important?” is generated /in advance of unplugging, unsubscribing, or turning off /— not after. Imagine if tech companies recognized that, and helped us proactively tune our relationships with friends and businesses in terms of what we define as “time well spent <http://timewellspent.io>” for our lives, instead of in terms of what we might miss. Hijack #4: Social Approval Easily one of the most persuasive things a human being can receive. <https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*qnyJGSiHouwhM_rhhvy_rA.png> We’re all vulnerable to *social approval*. The need to belong, to be approved or appreciated by our peers is among the highest human motivations. But now our social approval is in the hands of tech companies. When I get tagged by my friend Marc, I imagine him making a /conscious choice /to tag me. But I don’t see how a company like Facebook orchestrated his doing that in the first place. Facebook, Instagram or SnapChat can manipulate how often people get tagged in photos by automatically suggesting all the faces people should tag (e.g. by showing a box with a 1-click confirmation, “Tag Tristan in this photo?”). So when Marc tags me, /he’s actually/ /responding to Facebook’s suggestion,/ not making an independent choice. But through design choices like this, /Facebook controls the multiplier for/ /how often millions of people experience their social approval on the line/. Facebook uses automatic suggestions like this to get people to tag more people, creating more social externalities and interruptions. <https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*YkxjEeZ_CO0a2Gp9Awf_bQ.png> The same happens when we change our main profile photo — Facebook knows that’s a moment when we’re /vulnerable to social approval/: /“what do my friends think of my new pic?” /Facebook can rank this higher in the news feed, so it sticks around for longer and more friends will like or comment on it. Each time they like or comment on it, we’ll get pulled right back. Everyone innately responds to social approval, but some demographics (teenagers) are more vulnerable to it than others. That’s why it’s so important to recognize how powerful designers are when they exploit this vulnerability. Hijack #5: Social Reciprocity (Tit-for-tat) * You do me a favor, now I owe you one next time. * You say, “thank you”— I have to say “you’re welcome.” * You send me an email— it’s rude not to get back to you. * You follow me — it’s rude not to follow you back. (especially for teenagers) We are /vulnerable/ /to needing to reciprocate others’ gestures/. But as with Social Approval, tech companies now manipulate how often we experience it. In some cases, it’s by accident./Email, texting and messaging apps are social reciprocity factories/. But in other cases, companies exploit this vulnerability on purpose. LinkedIn is the most obvious offender. LinkedIn wants as many people creating social obligations for each other as possible, because each time they reciprocate (by accepting a connection, responding to a message, or endorsing someone back for a skill) they have to come back to linkedin.com where they can get people to spend more time. Like Facebook, LinkedIn exploits an asymmetry in perception. When you receive an invitation from someone to connect, you imagine that person making a /conscious choice/ to invite you, when in reality, they likely unconsciously responded to LinkedIn’s list of suggested contacts. In other words, LinkedIn turns your/unconscious impulses/ (to “add” a person) into new social obligations that millions of people feel obligated to repay. All while they profit from the time people spend doing it. Imagine millions of people getting interrupted like this throughout their day, running around like chickens with their heads cut off, reciprocating each other — all designed by companies who profit from it. Welcome to social media. After accepting an endorsement, LinkedIn takes advantage of your bias to reciprocate by offering *four* additional people for you to endorse in return. <https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*GcrioynC_fnLRB4Vmu-X_g.png> Imagine if technology companies had a responsibility to minimize social reciprocity. Or if there was an “FDA for Tech” that monitored when technology companies abused these biases? *Hijack #6: Bottomless bowls, Infinite Feeds, and Autoplay* YouTube autoplays the next video after a countdown <https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*d_4O5k_1k9LLadu3HMmtXg.png> Another way to hijack people is to keep them consuming things, even when they aren’t hungry anymore. How? Easy. /Take an experience that was bounded and finite, and turn it into a bottomless flow/ /that keeps going/. Cornell professor Brian Wansink demonstrated this in his study showing you can trick people into keep eating soup by giving them a bottomless bowl <http://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/discoveries/bottomless-bowls> that automatically refills as they eat. With bottomless bowls, people eat 73% more calories than those with normal bowls and underestimate how many calories they ate by 140 calories. Tech companies exploit the same principle. News feeds are purposely designed to auto-refill with reasons to keep you scrolling, and purposely eliminate any reason for you to pause, reconsider or leave. It’s also why video and social media sites like Netflix, YouTube or Facebook /autoplay/ the next video after a countdown instead of waiting for you to make a conscious choice (in case you won’t). A huge portion of traffic on these websites is driven by autoplaying the next thing. Facebook autoplays the next video after a countdown <https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*l1rcapgZdtApL4rph3Sj3A.jpeg> Tech companies often claim that “we’re just making it easier for users to see the video /they want/ to watch” when they are actually serving their business interests. And you can’t blame them, because increasing “time spent” is the currency they compete for. Instead, imagine if technology companies empowered you to /consciously bound your experience /to align with what would be “time well spent <http://timewellspent.io>” for you. Not just bounding the /quantity /of time you spend, but the /qualities/ of what would be “time well spent.” Hijack #7: Instant Interruption vs. “Respectful” Delivery Companies know that messages /that interrupt people immediately are more persuasive at getting people to respond /than messages delivered asynchronously (like email or any deferred inbox). Given the choice, Facebook Messenger (or WhatsApp, WeChat or SnapChat for that matter) would /prefer to design their messaging system to/ /interrupt recipients immediately (and show a chat box) /instead of helping users respect each other’s attention. In other words, *interruption is good for business*. It’s also in their interest to heighten the feeling of urgency and social reciprocity. For example, Facebook automatically /tells the sender when you “saw” their message, instead of letting you avoid disclosing whether you read it/ (“now that you know I’ve seen the message, I feel even more obligated to respond.”) By contrast, Apple more respectfully lets users toggle “Read Receipts” on or off. The problem is, maximizing interruptions in the name of business creates a tragedy of the commons, ruining global attention spans and causing billions of unnecessary interruptions each day. This is a huge problem we need to fix with shared design standards (potentially, as part of Time Well Spent <http://timewellspent.io>). Hijack #8: Bundling Your Reasons with Their Reasons Another way apps hijack you is by taking /your reasons/ for visiting the app (to perform a task) and /make them inseparable from the app’s business reasons/ (maximizing how much we consume once we’re there). For example, in the physical world of grocery stories, the #1 and #2 most popular reasons to visit are pharmacy refills and buying milk. But grocery stores want to maximize how much people buy, so they put the pharmacy and the milk at the back of the store. /In other words, they make the thing customers want (milk, pharmacy) inseparable from what the business wants./ If stores were /truly organized to support people/, they would put the most popular items in the front <http://www.economist.com/node/12792420>. Tech companies design their websites the same way. For example, when you you want to look up a Facebook event happening tonight (your reason) the Facebook app doesn’t allow you to access it without first landing on the news feed (their reasons), and that’s on purpose. /Facebook wants to convert every reason you have for using Facebook, into their reason which is to maximize the time you spend consuming things/. In an ideal world, apps would always give you a /direct way/ to get what you want /separately/ from what they want. Imagine a digital “bill of rights” outlining design standards that forced the products used by billions of people to support empowering ways for them to navigate toward their goals. *Hijack #9: Inconvenient Choices* We’re told that it’s enough for businesses to “make choices available.” * “If you don’t like it you can always use a different product.” * “If you don’t like it, you can always unsubscribe.” * “If you’re addicted to our app, you can always uninstall it from your phone.” Businesses naturally /want to make the choices they want you to make easier, and the choices they don’t want you to make harder./ Magicians do the same thing. You make it easier for a spectator to pick the thing you want them to pick, and harder to pick the thing you don’t. For example, NYTimes.com lets you “make a free choice” to cancel your digital subscription. But instead of just doing it when you hit “Cancel Subscription,” they /send you an email with information on how to cancel your account by calling a phone number/ that’s only open at certain times. NYTimes claims it’s giving a free choice to cancel your account <https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*kSGi-JcMMGgwigs6VgFY2A.png> Instead of viewing the world in terms of /availability of choices/, we should view the world in terms of /friction required to enact choices/. Imagine a world where choices were labeled with how difficult they were to fulfill (like coefficients of friction) and there was an FDA for Tech that labeled these difficulties and set standards for how easy navigation should be. Hijack #10: Forecasting Errors, “Foot in the Door” strategies Facebook promises an easy choice to “See Photo.” Would we still click if it gave the true price tag? <https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*vQ7yG7niPETreL7zjBuFkA.png> Lastly, apps can exploit people’s inability to forecast consequences of a click. People don’t intuitively forecast the /true cost/ /of a click /when it’s presented to them. Sales people use “foot in the door” techniques by asking for a small innocuous request to begin with (“just one click to see which tweet got retweeted”) and escalate from there (“why don’t you stay awhile?”). Virtually all engagement websites use this trick. Imagine if web browsers and smartphones, the gateways through which people make these choices, were truly watching out for people and helped them forecast the consequences of clicks (based on real data about what it actually costs most people?). That’s why I add “Estimated reading time” to the top of my posts. When you put the “true cost” of a choice in front of people, you’re treating your users or audience with dignity and respect. In a Time Well Spent <http://timewellspent.io> internet, choices could be framed in terms of projected cost and benefit, so people were empowered to make informed choices by default, not by doing extra work. TripAdvisor uses a “foot in the door” technique by asking for a single click review (“How many stars?”) while hiding the three page survey of questions behind the click. <https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*Xvo46OL3h2wDdb7S7AA1uQ.png> Summary And How We Can Fix This Are you upset that technology hijacks your agency? I am too. I’ve listed a few techniques but there are literally thousands. Imagine whole bookshelves, seminars, workshops and trainings that teach aspiring tech entrepreneurs techniques like this. They exist. The ultimate freedom is a free mind, and we need technology that’s on our team to help us live, feel, think and act freely. We need our smartphones, notifications screens and web browsers to be exoskeletons for our minds and interpersonal relationships that put our values, not our impulses, first. People’s time is valuable <http://timewellspent.io>. And we should protect it with the same rigor as privacy and other digital rights. (*) Tristan Harris <https://medium.com/@tristanharris>/- Ex-Design Ethicist & Product Philosopher @ Google, former CEO of Apture (acquired by Google), dabbler in Behavioural Economics, Design and Persuasion.//Tristan Harris was Product Philosopher at Google until 2016 where he studied how technology affects a billion people’s attention, well-being and behaviour. For more resources on Time Well Spent, see //// <http://timewellspent.io>/http://timewellspent.io///. / / --------------------- / *N.B.: ** **Robert Redford <http://news.newsdirectory2.com/robert-redford-does-not-want-a-smartphone/> (79, “The Horse Whisperer”) does not have a smart-phone nor does he have a computer - for good reasons. The USAmerican actor and film-director was already declared once dead on social media at the onset of this year, but is very well, alive, an activist and kicking. *// /======== * * *Pro-active work to protect nature and human rights requires YOU to work with us* *Even if you have no possibility to be at the front-lines with us, please know we need independent funding.** * *PLEASE consider to contribute to ECOTERRA's work and trust fund. * ------------------- *ECOTERRA Intl.* /***SURVIVAL & FREEDOM for PEOPLE & NATURE*/ ----------------- Our full footer, being an essential, legal part of this dissemination, can be found at http://www.ecoterra.net/footer.htm - please read it at least once a month to see important security updates. ---------------------- ***ECOTERRA Intl. nodes:* Canaries - Cairns - Cairo - Calgary - Cape Town - Cassel - Cebu - Cork - Curitiba - London - Los Angeles - Nairobi - Roma - Paris - Reykjavik - Stuttgart - Wien - Vanuatu ECOTERRA - FIRST PEOPLES & NATURE FIRST! http://www.ecoterra-international.org 24 h EMERGENCY RESPONSE PHONE LINE: +254-714-747-090 Become a pro-ative-member of *fPcN-interCultural* (//write to //Friends of Peoples close to Nature via collective(a)fpcn-global.org) / /or of our Marine Group: http://www.ecop.info/

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Re: [Cryptography] Hacking spread spectrum clocking of HW ?
by grarpamp 29 May '16

29 May '16

Various government subjects wrote: > eg: Laws in US forbid use of encrypted radio Traditional spread spectrum seem rather off the shelf and wouldn't really consider encrypted as such. What I mentioned *is* encrypted, both at the RF layer itself, and at the data layer riding on top. It's also really hard to locate random background noise (power). Even if, since random noise can't be proven to be crypto, it can't be shut down due to any crypto reason, insufficient cause. Nor do guerrilla radios care about such laws. > In the US hams can encrypt under exactly one specified circumstance: > Control of a space station, meaning a radio station on a satellite. That > is presumably to keep "outsiders" from taking over control. The history of any such takeovers, classified or otherwise, would be interesting read.

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David Miranda interview (Snowden files)
by Zenaan Harkness 28 May '16

28 May '16

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/344201-snowden-leak-david-miranda/ Life changing choices and moments in time. I am grateful to hear parts of this story. Possibility of a full cache dump soonish, it is said.

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Random Number Generator article
by jim bell 28 May '16

28 May '16

Seems somewhat over-hyped, and not especially new either. Jim Bell http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3607142/Cybersecurity-breakt… "It could mean completely secure encryption of data, be it emails or voting - and even help beat climate change. Researchers have revealed a groundbreaking new technique to create truly random numbers for the first time. The new method creates truly random numbers with less computational effort than other methods, which could facilitate significantly higher levels of security for everything from consumer credit card transactions to military communications. The new method takes two weakly random sequences of numbers, such as air temperatures and stock market prices sampled over time, and turns them into one sequence of truly random numbers. 'This is a problem I've come back to over and over again for more than 20 years,' said David Zuckerman, who led the study.Described by one cryptography expert as a 'masterpiece,' the University of Texas at Austin research could have wide ranging implications. 'I'm thrilled to have solved it.'Computer science professor Zuckerman and graduate student Eshan Chattopadhyay will present research about their method in June at the annual Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC), the Association for Computing Machinery's premier theoretical computer science conference. They publicly released a draft paper describing their method for making random numbers in an online forum last year. Oded Goldreich, a professor of computer science at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, commented that even if it had only been a moderate improvement over existing methods, it would have justified a 'night-long party. 'When I heard about it, I couldn't sleep,' says Yael Kalai, a senior researcher working in cryptography at Microsoft Research New England who has also worked on randomness extraction. 'I was so excited. I couldn't believe it. I ran to the (online) archive to look at the paper. It's really a masterpiece.' The new method takes two weakly random sequences of numbers and turns them into one sequence of truly random numbers. Weakly random sequences, such as air temperatures and stock market prices sampled over time, harbor predictable patterns. Truly random sequences have nothing predictable about them, like a coin toss. The new method takes two weakly random sequences of numbers and turns them into one sequence of truly random numbers. Previous versions of randomness extractors were less practical because they either required that one of the two source sequences be truly random (which presents a chicken or the egg problem) or that both source sequences be close to truly random. This new method sidesteps both of those restrictions and allows the use of two sequences that are only weakly random. An important application for random numbers is in generating keys for data encryption that are hard for hackers to crack. Data encryption is critical for making secure credit card purchases and bank transactions, keeping personal medical data private and shielding military communications from enemies, among many practical applications. Zuckerman says that although there are already methods for producing high-quality random numbers, they are very computationally demanding. His method produces higher quality randomness with less effort. 'One common way that encryption is misused is by not using high-quality randomness,' says Zuckerman. 'So in that sense, by making it easier to get high-quality randomness, our methods could improve security.' Their paper shows how to generate only one truly random number – akin to one coin toss – but Zuckerman's former student Xin Li has already demonstrated how to expand it to create sequences of many more random numbers. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3607142/Cybersecurity-breakt…

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New digital activism mailing list
by Anthony Papillion 26 May '16

26 May '16

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 A friend and I have set up a discussion mailing list for activists interested in discussing digital freedom, legislation effecting digital rights, government and corporate surveillance, etc. Just thought this group might be interested. If you want to learn more or to subscribe visit https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/digital-rights-activism or send an email to digital-rights-activism-subscribe(a)lists.riseup.net Anthony - -- OpenPGP Key: 4096R/028ADF7453B04B15 Other Key Info: http://www.cajuntechie.org/p/my-pgp-key.html XMPP?Jabber: cypher(a)chat.cpunk.us -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIcBAEBCgAGBQJXRhyrAAoJEAKK33RTsEsVa/IP/2gnBfQo2KR/pFz26gWmXlAw jpzavAix6oyStFqZsw1eT6UA3BO05pnaM/ehvf/VSO4SDUIu4rA9S2twInnTTxYS EzcpBz4Hrec/U+Sci9Gc/pSmFdy7xjqmx5PAQi6UgWN/Cdlx9Wjmnq3KafvEZCG/ gVuLSHyE3GhrhihfcgloaFBU5RfgNY2J35Ze/eCup7ZKVC7cDAbwBvrxJHZHxdFr tkDC/DBjYIpj/xdrnJDT86rS9Z6rGCbgRTtXs/RYO9R+A3npPmJj5Pu9Oz0e8NIg mlQsVr3Up5K8ewoq5dWUAV8ApB0ah6jYZ4UA4lxsj9p9Q8DIl15YYzO9+cycXyY7 RzvFLPM0rlVsTzqJQIKFL86oTV7BJ8RGm2tjGNVipsS8M0GIdoKKVsO7T9JoiAIS pGo1LD3d5cZped8l42omqr9HnCBK6gMBjA8UeUW4AupbjJq5ZdhxnUGN33W8pxzg kLdv/o3JKPzdWRQsFvqNKMkbsPNbyA73wuRBPV1alrgdRNARqbObzC8RroWS7Ebt GK5YPm5GvqJu4Wd9TrnNZCrFDY+43SIDBlef2NUpR4t7jkL/29E+J445zTPiuOuf WaFTXMrin1H8VRCaPoaHdVki8a54DUI5TVT6oasf3TWYUnTACM1as039U+dp1gVs tv0mVBLQt2c8rb7MgMxg =ipq9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Proxy / VPN before Tor in Qubes: Tor bootstrap stops at 80%
by grarpamp 26 May '16

26 May '16

On 5/25/16, katerimmel(a)sigaint.org <katerimmel(a)sigaint.org> wrote: >> Try turning up debugging. > Debugging shows me that results are all OK until Tor socksport reachability > I'm using JonDo ip changer > What do you means about pointing tor at tor? Tor provides a SOCKS5 interface on the front that is presumably written correctly and not third party, to eliminate jondo and at least test tor at/over tor. ./tor --socks5proxy (-->) ./tor --socksport (-->) internet You may also like to please consider supporting this feature... # Provide a socks5 server port for user apps to use https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/ticket/577 ... which would then make this an interesting narrow portal to route specific apps through (and things like p2p where you cannot predict / program the far end host to route to) without gratuitously grabbing the entire 0.0.0.0/0 routing table of the host... ./openvpn --config c.ovpn --verb 4 --socks-proxy 127.0.0.1 9050 --route-noexec --route-up /usr/bin/env --script-security 2 This may also be of related use to some users... # MAPADDRESS for IP ranges (CIDR, etc) https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/3982 Gmail breaks thread to add VPN subject, sorry.

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