April 2017 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

What is the value of the State?
by \0xDynamite 04 May '17

04 May '17

This seems like a lame question, but What is the value of the State? Do activists require a State (defined as a codifed system of governance)? Without a State, would we have electronics? Radio? Computers? Mass Transit? Bikes? And if we need a State, what form should it take? Marxos

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Re: This Carboni person is not on the up and up
by Ryan Carboni 01 May '17

01 May '17

Well, I guess upon further examination Poitras claimed that everything was an exaggerated response to a wire transfer to a Saudi and that she was never interviewed. But apparently she did know. I guess this is not some kind of inversion of some other well known elephant in the room situation. I for one can claim I have never been interviewed by the police in relation to a crime, and am thus far more trustworthy. I can even sign an affidavit stating such, perhaps an affidavit stating I never committed a felony as well. Well, The Intercept is currently an arm of the NSA, declassifying NSA newsletters about great NSA accomplishments. So Glenn Greenwald's word does carry some weight in some circles, not sure which though. Anyway, the ACLU should be aware that the NSA has a habit of incidentally collecting everything. They do seem upset about a warrant for everyone who Google searched a name. Well. All they seem to be doing is sex gone sour. All this marching and hootin' and hollerin', yeah. But they aren't merely doing lawyering, which is based upon public knowledge of law, but also their best ability to understand how the government understands the law. Which according to the Pike Committee report, is completely foreign. But that interpretation of law is something the ACLU is well aware. Jamal Jaffar is a traitor to the cause of freedom. He claims that NSA programs in testimony to Congress are legal. In so many words. He is either a total incompetent or an Deep State shill! See attached files. The whole network of "freedom" non-profits spend at least fifty million dollars per year. The ACLU spends on lobbying as much as ISPs, and yet the ISPs have passed an anti-consumer law. They are all crooks. Anyone with half a billion dollars in ten years, who can't accomplish a damn thing, is totally and utterly incompetent beyond any reasonable means of comprehension to anyone who was not dropped on the head as a baby. Anyone who disagrees with me... so forcefully, when I am merely a troll... what are you afraid of? I have no contributed one iota to any discussion in the past three years. But I make good points. So "I do good work". [image: Inline image 1][image: Inline image 2]

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Qubes - more shit from the american pentagon nazis
by juan 01 May '17

01 May '17

qubes garbage is bankrolled by "Open Technology Fund (OTF) - a United States government-funded program of Radio Free Asia," https://www.qubes-os.org/partners/

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Mesh Networks: Recent Commentary
by grarpamp 30 Apr '17

30 Apr '17

https://ask.slashdot.org/story/17/04/29/2134234/ask-slashdot-could-we-build… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13102698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6274455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7247600

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Adding [Cypherpunks] at the beginning of a subject by default
by Avinash Sonawane 30 Apr '17

30 Apr '17

Hello! I am subscribed to handful of mailing lists and I'm sure many of you are too. It gets pretty overwhelming when I check my mailbox at the end of day or after couple of days. I would like to request the admins/owners to add [Cypherpunks] at the beginning of a subject by default to easily spot the mails from Cypherpunks list. This can be easily done by tweaking the appropriate Mailman settings and I can see that we are using Mailman to manage this list. What do you guys think? Regards, Avinash Sonawane (rootKea) PICT, Pune https://rootkea.wordpress.com

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This Poitras person is not on the up and up
by Ryan Carboni 30 Apr '17

30 Apr '17

This Laura Poitras is apparently famous for being repeatedly searched at airports. Maybe it is as what she says, that she didn't pull a Jane Fonda, but instead she just hung out with a bad crowd in the wrong neighborhood in a warzone. I guess she's right, the government is untrustworthy, unconditionally so. Unless she said otherwise???

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JustSecurity: "Today we learned that those 2011 (Sec 702) safeguards did not work"
by Razer 30 Apr '17

30 Apr '17

Author's "Wows" aside, there's no mention of the FBI's DIT unit's grabbing all US citizen's metadataz gleaned while rummaging for targeted 'suspects' and turning it over to the NSA, unless it's buried in the fine print somewhere (in a basement without lighting in another galaxy perhaps) Today’s ODNI and Section 702 News By Jennifer Granick Friday, April 28, 2017 at 7:16 PM Today, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) announced that it would stop some of the surveillance it conducts on the telecommunications backbone under authority granted by section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. That announcement came in the form of a press release, a statement, and was reported in a New York Times article by reporter Charlie Savage. Wow. Here’s some background, and some questions Congress and the courts are going to need to answer going forward. (For more information, check out my book, American Spies, or this series of blog posts (one, two, three) by Jadzia Butler and I on section 702. When conducting surveillance of communications as they travel over fiber optic cables (the “Upstream” program), the NSA has been collecting not just communications to and from foreign intelligence targets, but also about those targets. If the stream of internet packets contains a selector associated with a foreign intelligence target, the NSA has been acquiring the entire “internet transaction” containing that selector. This “about” collection means collection takes place even when the relationship between the communicants and the intended target is attenuated—no one is talking to the target. Further, about communications can pull unrelated messages into the NSA’s coffers. Using this surveillance technique, the government “tasks” a given selector (such as an email address or phone number) in the stream of internet data flowing through particular network gateways (known as the “internet backbone”). If the stream of internet packets contains the selector, the Upstream program will acquire the entire “internet transaction” containing that selector. Some transactions only include one communication (Single Communications Transactions – SCT’s), while others contain multiple discreet communications (Multiple Communications Transactions – MCT’s). Because of the way the NSA conducts Upstream collection, if any communication within an SCT or MCT is “to,” “from,” or even “about” a tasked selector, the entire transaction is collected. The collection of MCT’s further removes the nexus between the communicants and the intended target because any communication that is embedded within a transaction that happens to include a communication that so much as mentions the targeted selector can get swept up. Despite the fact that this type of surveillance has been taking place since 2001, and that it was supposed to be regulated and overseen by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) since 2008, it was only in 2011 that the NSA acknowledged “about” collection and the MCT problem to the FISC. (The public learned about it after revelations based on documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden.) The FISC judge, John Bates, allowed the collection to go forward despite his initial finding that the collection violated the Fourth Amendment. Judge Bates accepted NSA proposed post-collection usage rules, called minimization procedures. The NSA adopted rules for Upstream surveillance that require it to treat MCTs as a special category. The NSA was supposed to put special procedures in place designed to identify when a communication within an MCT is between American citizens. MCTs were to be screened for irrelevant information, which must be deleted. No agency but the NSA is supposed to have access to MCTs, not the CIA or the FBI. Judge Bates likely accepted this band aid despite the constitutional problems because the NSA claimed it was not capable of breaking MCTs down into individual messages, not capable of stopping “about” collection, and insisted that this surveillance capability was protecting the nation from terrorists. ODNI reports that NSA will no longer collect certain internet communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence target. The NSA will delete the vast majority of its upstream internet data to further protect the privacy of U.S. person communications. Further, the changes in policy followed an in-house review of Section 702 activities in which NSA discovered “several inadvertent compliance lapses.” The public is now waiting for a declassified FISC opinion explaining these issues in more detail. In other words, today we learned that those 2011 safeguards did not work, the NSA can stop about collection, and that our counterterrorism efforts can live without this massive invasion of privacy. In other words…Wow. Here are some questions that the courts and Congress will need to answer, especially since section 702 is due to expire at the end of this year, and Americans must decide whether to renew the program, and if so, with what safeguards in place. The ODNI press release is unclear about whether or not NSA is ceasing all “about” collection, or just that where one of the communicants is an American. The press release says “the Agency will stop the practice to reduce the chance that it would acquire communications of U.S. persons or others who are not in direct contact with a foreign intelligence target.” So, you could read that as both one end foreign and international communication. Or, it could mean stopping collection of only one end foreign, and the word “others” refers to those non-citizens communicating with USPs but not with other foreigners. The statement says “surveillance will now be limited to only those communications that are directly “to” or “from” a foreign intelligence target.” That sounds more comprehensive. However, if ODNI is using “surveillance” to mean electronic surveillance as defined in the FISA then they may still be doing “about” collection on foreign to foreign communications. Word games can make it very hard to understand exactly what official statements mean. It appears that the NSA now has and maybe has always had a way to filter out Americans’ international communications from Upstream, despite multiple statements to the contrary. If they can filter statements out, that suggests ODNI can count how many communications in the take are to or from Americans. You should read “several inadvertent compliance lapses” as “systematic violations of the Fourth Amendment”. Remember that these minimization procedures were required by Judge Bates to ameliorate constitutional violations. Failure to follow those rules is a failure to comply with the Fourth Amendment. Given the problems that came to light in 2011 and then again now, has section 702 ever been used lawfully? ODNI admits today that they are using section 702 for “cybersecurity”. That is a topic that the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board did not study. We do not know anything about how selectors are chosen for cybersecurity, or what the resulting database of information looks like. While figuring out this problem, the FISC did not let section 702 collection lapse, but extended existing certifications beyond the year expiration period. Under what authority could a FISC judge do this? NSA is deleting the about collection data they have. That means that they cannot find a way to use it in accordance with the 2011 Bates opinion. I think this statement marks a change for the better in the way that the ODNI talks about counterterrorism: NSA previously reported that, because of the limits of its current technology, it is unable to completely eliminate “about” communications from its upstream 702 collection without also excluding some of the relevant communications directly “to or from” its foreign intelligence targets. That limitation remains even today. Nonetheless, NSA has determined that in light of the factors noted, this change is a responsible and careful approach at this time. Today, the NSA agrees that blindly Collecting It All is not necessarily the right thing to do. Responsible surveillance takes into account civil liberties as well. That is big news indeed. Tags: FISA, FISC, Foreign Surveillance, Section 702 With links: https://www.justsecurity.org/40391/todays-odni-section-702-news/

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Adding [Cypherpunks] at the beginning of a subject by default
by Avinash Sonawane 30 Apr '17

30 Apr '17

On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 1:53 PM, Vasily Kolobkov <polezaivsani(a)openmailbox.org> wrote: > Hey Avinash! No offence, but Hello Vasily! Thanks for the reply. BTW I don't see a single reason why would someone get offended. :) > why don't you tweak your/choose another mail client that can sort messages for you? As I said may lists follow the practice of prefixing the list name to subject. It helps in quickly identifying the message without even clicking on it. Now about tweaking the client, which one do you use which gives the ability to quickly spot the messages just by having a single look at your mailbox? Even if we filter messages we still need to click on the folder which contains those messages. I don't see a valid reason for not saving a user click and user's time. That being said, if there are not enough people who get affected by this issue and we decide to continue the current practice I am thinking about using Gmail "Labels". :) -- Avinash Sonawane (rootKea) PICT, Pune https://rootkea.wordpress.com

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Gratuitous Cloud Shared Spycams with Mic's in Your Bedroom: Now A Reality
by grarpamp 30 Apr '17

30 Apr '17

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/amazon-echo-look-bedroom-camera The newly announced Echo Look is a virtual assistant with a microphone and a camera that's designed to go somewhere in your bedroom, bathroom, or wherever the hell you get dressed. Amazon is pitching it as an easy way to snap pictures of your outfits to send to your friends when you're not sure if your outfit is cute, but it's also got a built-in app called StyleCheck that is worth some further dissection. [...] "All photos and video captured with your Echo Look are securely stored in the AWS cloud and locally in the Echo Look app until a customer deletes them," a spokesperson for the company said. "You can delete the photos or videos associated with your account anytime in the Echo Look App." Motherboard also asked if Echo Look photos, videos, and the data gleaned from them would be sold to third parties; the company did not address that question.

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[Social Engineering] Trololol! New "NeoNazi Handsign" (image: 268kb)
by Razer 30 Apr '17

30 Apr '17

Really! People WILL believe almost ANYTHING! https://twitter.com/Independent/status/858372638275756034 See: https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/858370907110289408 Rr

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