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information imbalance - The Rise of Plitical Doxing [ bonus points for contrast with AP! :]
by coderman 03 Nov '15

03 Nov '15

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-rise-of-political-doxing Last week, CIA director John O. Brennan became the latest victim of what's become a popular way to embarrass and harass people on the internet. A hacker allegedly broke into his AOL account and published emails and documents found inside, many of them personal and sensitive. It's called doxing—sometimes doxxing—from the word "documents." It emerged in the 1990s as a hacker revenge tactic, and has since been as a tool to harass and intimidate people on the internet. Someone would threaten a woman with physical harm, or try to incite others to harm her, and publish her personal information as a way of saying "I know a lot about you—like where you live and work." Victims of doxing talk about the fear that this tactic instills. It's very effective, by which I mean that it's horrible. Brennan's doxing was slightly different. Here, the attacker had a more political motive. He wasn't out to intimidate Brennan; he simply wanted to embarrass him. His personal papers were dumped indiscriminately, fodder for an eager press. This doxing was a political act, and we're seeing this kind of thing more and more. Lots of people will have to face the publication of personal correspondence, documents, and information they would rather be private Last year, the government of North Korea allegedly did this to Sony. Hackers the FBI believes were working for North Korea broke into the company's networks, stole a huge amount of corporate data, and published it. This included unreleased movies, financial information, company plans, and personal emails. The reputational damage to the company was enormous; the company estimated the cost at $41 million. In July, hackers stole and published sensitive documents from the cyberweapons arms manufacturer Hacking Team. That same month, different hackers did the same thing to the infidelity website Ashley Madison. In 2014, hackers broke into the iCloud accounts of over 100 celebrities and published personal photographs, most containing some nudity. In 2013, Edward Snowden doxed the NSA. These aren't the first instances of politically motivated doxing, but there's a clear trend. As people realize what an effective attack this can be, and how an individual can use the tactic to do considerable damage to powerful people and institutions, we're going to see a lot more of it. On the internet, attack is easier than defense. We're living in a world where a sufficiently skilled and motivated attacker will circumvent network security. Even worse, most internet security assumes it needs to defend against an opportunistic attacker who will attack the weakest network in order to get—for example—a pile of credit card numbers. The notion of a targeted attacker, who wants Sony or Ashley Madison or John Brennan because of what they stand for, is still new. And it's even harder to defend against. What this means is that we're going to see more political doxing in the future, against both people and institutions. It's going to be a factor in elections. It's going to be a factor in anti-corporate activism. More people will find their personal information exposed to the world: politicians, corporate executives, celebrities, divisive and outspoken individuals. Of course they won't all be doxed, but some of them will. Some of them will be doxed directly, like Brennan. Some of them will be inadvertent victims of a doxing attack aimed at a company where their information is stored, like those celebrities with iPhone accounts and every customer of Ashley Madison. Regardless of the method, lots of people will have to face the publication of personal correspondence, documents, and information they would rather be private. In the end, doxing is a tactic that the powerless can effectively use against the powerful. It can be used for whistleblowing. It can be used as a vehicle for social change. And it can be used to embarrass, harass, and intimidate. Its popularity will rise and fall on this effectiveness, especially in a world where prosecuting the doxers is so difficult. There's no good solution for this right now. We all have the right to privacy, and we should be free from doxing. But we're not, and those of us who are in the public eye have no choice but to rethink our online data shadows.

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Re: Meet the U.S. Defense Firm Supplying Iran’s Internet
by Razer 03 Nov '15

03 Nov '15

On 11/02/2015 09:25 AM, Georgi Guninski wrote: > On Mon, Nov 02, 2015 at 08:08:19AM -0800, Razer wrote: >> <html> >> <head> >> >> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> >> </head> >> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> > Add 1000 troll points for html only. Yeah well, I use Tbird and I cleaned up the copy/paste as well as I could... You should have seen the formfield/social button mess. RR Ps. I checked for <script tags. There weren't any.

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Shiny stuff and designer societies
by Lodewijk andré de la porte 03 Nov '15

03 Nov '15

New threat, this is offtopic. So I think people took my meaning wrong. I meant to say "don't hate people for behaving as the system rewards them to do", and then to ask "what kind of system would make people behave as you like?". 2015-10-27 21:47 GMT+01:00 Shelley <shelley(a)misanthropia.org>: > > Suggestions, in no particular order: I feel like you are ignoring the cost of time, underestimating people's expenses, and arbitrarily hate cars and meat. > - Don't buy the newest iCrap (or car or tv) every time they shit one out: > you *don't * need it, I assure you. > For most "the latest iCrap" is not a significant expense. 200 euro's a month or so (phone + laptop) is quite doable, especially given how much time one spends with iCrap devices. Resale value is nonzero, too, so really, quite doable. > - Learn how to fix and repurpose things. Take good care of your things so > they last longer. > I know how to fix/repurpose most things. Actually fixing things often doesn't compare favorably with just buying a new one - time spent at 10 euro's per hour makes most repairs very borderline effective. > - Freecycle, trade with others > Trade what? I do secondhand shopping and selling when appropriate, that should be good too. > - Shop at second hand and thrift stores for most things. > Do, for the things it makes sense for. It takes more effort as you frequently will not find what you were looking for. (protip: great for amplifiers and speakers) > - Think before you buy. Try to support true fair trade/fair wages and buy > locally whenever possible. Hint: it's usually possible. > Fair trade/wages are determined by the capitalist market, not by me. I'm simply not that arrogant. If you don't believe in markts you have more work cut out for you than just buying fair trade branded products. (Protip: fairtrade is just another way for things to be shiny) Buying local is even more meaningless. If transport costs do not outweigh production costs, go ferry it in from Australia, China, Chile, etc. You're making the efficient choice by doing so. - Use a bike or public transit whenever possible. Get rid of your car and > use things like Zip Car for the few occasions when you need to use a > personal vehicle. Share a car with friends if you truly need it for > kids/work/whatever. > Public transport or Zip Carring add to stress, cost more time, are not reliable and are not portable storage. I'd like an electric car, but the initial purchase is so high it skews things like tax and insurance. Idk why you hate cars so much. They're pretty damn useful, give you lots of freedom and independence, and just help you get around so much better than public transport. Their prices also compare with other forms of transport. (bikes are slow and only really work in villages or compatible cities) > - Prepare your own damn food. Go vegan. > Preparing my own food is a waste of time, other people are cheaper, mass production is cheaper, I'm very mediocre at cooking. Going vegan is an interesting choice, all evidence points to it being much much much better for the environment, etc. but meat is still quite affordable and quite complimentary to meals. If it truly were 100x easier on the environment I'd expect to see that in the price, and I hardly do. I assume there's some sort of sponsoring going on, and until it stops I'll keep on eating delicious and healthy meat. (Hey, you asked for suggestions: these are mine.) Thanks for playing :) Razer mentioned a TV, I don't own one. I have a sizeable monitor. Much prettier than most TVs. I might get a projector someday, it's fun to watch movies together like that. Razer also fuzzes about collectivism vs individualism. They used to have collectivism in many nations. They all lost. I think a society design that involves individual incentives (the best of capitalism; advanced finance, legal persons, markets, competition), global optimization (the best of communism; managed competition, fine tuned production, >designed markets<), and collective ambition (the best of government/academia; being able to strife together and make deep, long term investments) would be ideal.

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62 people pleaded guilty to refusing to divulge encryption passwords
by Michael Best 03 Nov '15

03 Nov '15

Convictions of suspects who refuse to hand over their encrypted passwords have risen sixfold in four years, potentially blocking police from examining their electronic devices. The sharp increase has led to fears that criminals are opting to plead guilty to encryption offences rather than allow detectives to go through their computers and phones, which could lead to more serious charges and longer sentences. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article4603026.ece Gareth Corfield, editor for The Register, added "On that RIPA stats story, it's been fed to The Times as part of the Snooper's Charter PR push from stats not previously made public."

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slow strangulation of the state, instead of violent phase transition out of state
by coderman 03 Nov '15

03 Nov '15

On 11/1/15, intelemetry <intelemetry(a)openmailbox.org> wrote: > ... > I would suggest you consider the countereconomics work of SEK (e.g. > agorism) and Vaclav Benda. Benda is an interesting case because he did > his work on parallel structures while under the Soviet Union. > > The conclusion was that -- in the presence of an oppressive state -- a > robust solution was an overlay of private and hidden societies as > opposed to direct overt warfare with the state. supplant the state with multiplicity of better mechanisms, and through this usurp the power and authority of the state, until nothing left but hollow fictions of formality (of former state).

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Such a democratic American
by Zenaan Harkness 02 Nov '15

02 Nov '15

"Ukrainian Wikileaks: McCain and Saakashvili are plotting to shoot down American plane in Syria to blame Russia [transcript]" http://fortruss.blogspot.ru/2015/10/ukrainian-wikileaks-mccain-and.html Can someone who reads Russian please let us know the dates on this conversation - the article has a date, and I can see a date on the Ukrainian wikileaks page but I cannot tell when this conversation happened. I would like to know if it was before MH-17 or in recent times. Thanks, Zenaan

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Anarchist roads and free travel
by Zenaan Harkness 02 Nov '15

02 Nov '15

Beginner anarchist alert. Wanting to get a better understanding of possible outcomes. On 11/1/15, intelemetry <intelemetry(a)openmailbox.org> wrote: > Democracy is the tyranny of the majority, and assassination politics > is dangerous in that regard when they are coupled. Private arbitration > agreements with private security forces wherein mobility has > reciprocal agreements (similar to current travel) seems more reasonable. How would we handle road-building rent-seekers (i.e. those who would collect tax/ rent for travel) - i.e. at the moment in Australia banks give loans to private companies to build roads, which by illegal (unconstitutional) contracts, massive rents/ taxes over many decades, are collected from the population? How would the idea of "all have a right to travel anonymously and absolutely freely (free from tax, free from arbitrary punishment)" be manifested in a political anarchy country? How do we manifest a community wide idea of free travel (implying a majority interest in infrastructure built and provided at cost) with the freedom of "rent seekers" and "land owners/ infrastructure builders" to "freely engage in construction and contract with travelers upon the roads"? Is this a prisoner's dilemma? Although all our roads in Australia were free from "all evil tolls" for much of a century, the rent seekers corrupted our politicians with much greese, and now road tolls pop up all over the country. How would political anarchism not "degrade" to the power of financial corruption in a similar way as our demoncratic governments? --- In Australia, our "democratic powers/ goverment" have facilitated illegal contracts and multi decade rent seekers to tax the population on roads already paid for by the government. Notwithstanding that the jetsons era may make the question of roads per se less relevant over time, this question in my mind arises regarding political anarchism and what is termed 'natural monopolies', in this specific thread, roads. The Great Charter, or Magna Carta/ Charter, proscribes that there shall "be no evil tolls" - which means no travel checkpoints requiring fee payment, i.e. tax collection at point of passing, commonly today called "road tolls" (at least in Australia). This was to protect merchants against the taxing intention, and it is a given that this also includes those not engaging in commerce but still traveling. Here in Australia not only do we have the present day continuation of the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights (and many other Imperial Statutes) active within the jurisdictions of our states (although most people are not aware of this, the courts and legislation are aware of it) we also have Section 92 of our federal constitution which states "trade commerce and intercourse [travel] amongst the states, shall be absolutely free", which interpretation is open to some debate in political circles despite how it reads to the common man. In Australia the Imperial Statutes are firmly entrenched thanks to: - The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act (our federal constitution) which invokes the Crown; - The Imperial Acts Application Act (respectively, in each state, such as New South Wales, Victoria, etc); - The Australia High Court (our highest court) rulings of Mabo and in particular Mabo 2 (I think 1999). Despite what ought be protection, our demoncratic parliaments have sold our roads to the highest bidder, which in our case is nearly always Macquarie Bank. Zenaan

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How a group of neighbors created their own Internet service
by Zenaan Harkness 02 Nov '15

02 Nov '15

A recent example. Such projects are evidently affordable with volunteer(s) doing the work. Same goes for any off-grid network. Perhaps this story will inspire someone to kick off their own little corner of the locally-controlled internet. Zenaan http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/15/11/01/2241241/how-a-group-of-rural-wash… " > [rich people blah blah] In any case, this isn't a poor farming > community - they can afford this sort of large expenditure. Honestly it doesn't seem the expenses were that great, it seems the primary investment is one man who did a whole lot of legwork to rent a microwave link, find relay points, install equipment, do network supervision and maintenance and so on for free. The numbers are pretty much all there, initial investment was $25k that they need to pay back in 36 months. Break-even was 25 users, subtract 25 @ $150 = $3750 in sign-up fee = $21250 / 36 = ~$600 month in down payment. Running income = 25 @ $75/mo = $1875 - $900 in microwave rental - $600 in down payments = $375/mo for running the wireless grid and misc. other expenses = ~$0 in wages. And now they're paying it down faster so they can lower prices, with 50 users / $900/mo + a slightly bigger grid it might drop to $40/mo after the investment cost is paid off in less than two years. That's not expensive, it's super cheap for rural broadband. For comparison, we're paying ~$500 extra per household on top of of the ordinary ~$300 sign-up fee and ~$100 monthly fee for the privilege of getting a fiber rollout with Internet/TV at our cabin here in Norway. On the bright side, after the first twelve months we don't have to use it more than 4 months a year, but it's still ~$2000 for year one and ~$400/year just for the summer. And they're not planning to lower prices, they're planning to recoup the rest of the roll-out costs, pay wages and turn a nice profit over the next 20-30 years. But it's not like in the city where you can connect 100 people in an apartment building at the time, distances are huge and customers few so cost per subscriber will be far, far more expensive so I doubt that we're a cash cow. Anyway to get back on topic, what this community has that others lack is one very skilled volunteer working for free, on a commercial basis it would be way different. " Original: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/11/how-a-group-of-neighb…

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Re: The BlackList
by Ryan Carboni 02 Nov '15

02 Nov '15

> On 11/01/2015 01:52 PM, Juan wrote: > > On Sun, 1 Nov 2015 01:16:15 -0700 > > coderman <coderman(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > >> On 11/1/15, Juan <juan.g71(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >>> ... > >>> It seems (kinda obvious) to me that to get rid of 'high > >>> ranking' targets you need a 'professional' service, agree? > >> > >> no, this is movie plot thinking. > > > > Ha. That's a funny remark because I was just thinking that AP > > does sound like literary fiction so far. > > Well, the idea has been kicked around for 20 years, and little has come > of it. Maybe that's because it's still unworkable. How are people going > to bid anonymously? Is Tor good enough for that? A viable AP market > would draw TLAs to Tor like dogs to shit. And they would cooperate. > > Also, how would bidders pay anonymously when targets were killed? There > is no inherently anonymous payment system that's widely available. Maybe > anonymized Bitcoin, after a few mixes through Tor, would make the nut. > Or maybe creative carding. Maybe y'all reading this could manage it. But > what about the clueless masses who might be motivated to bid? > > I don't know whether AP would take down governments. Hell, I'm not even > sure whether that would be prudent. But I am certain that many bidders > would go down, through cluelessness or system compromise. The theory, I thought, was a simple prediction market. Based on actuarial statistics by Social Security, people usually have less than a 1% chance of dying per year (Fidel Castro seems to have a 0% chance), so guessing the right death year is pretty "lucky". The person who guesses correctly would receive the pot of money. The real problem is that the prediction market will be regulated out of existence. You have any idea how regulated the resale of life insurance contracts are? That and, how do you trust the prediction market? It has to be a company with a mailing address, otherwise one could just run away with the money. Personally, I believe a good prediction market would be one limited to predicting deaths and the overthrow of governments.

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Meet the U.S. Defense Firm Supplying Iran’s Internet
by Razer 02 Nov '15

02 Nov '15

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