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Re: Threat Model: Parents
by Softy 02 Jun '15

02 Jun '15

Several responses have stated, and questioned, the children's rights accessing the Internet. Yes, with supervision. What all the responses have missed is the lack of distinction between communication and email. Claiming a child has a right to private extra-familial communications is as divided as the general access to the Internet. With supervision, without any more or less privacy than the child has in non-virtual communications. And, what hasn't been connected to deciding on the level of supervision, the developmental state of the child is highly relevant. Claiming a child merits access - with or without supervision - can only be made by the primary custodians of the child. We wish to ignore this subtlety because we wish to ignore Society's overbearing on all of us. The result in this specific scenario is, regardless of the child, the custodians require and merit a higher degree of technical faculty. To presume it is less than the childs is a mistake. Along with this ability comes the burden of communication: to provide an appropriate example. As with many non-virtual counterparts: many failure. such sad. Why should this medium of bits be different?

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Black Helicopters, and Theatre Tricks
by grarpamp 02 Jun '15

02 Jun '15

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2015/0602/Who-s-behind-mysterious-flig… https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2090186-fbi-surveillance-plane-docu… The AP traced at least 50 aircraft back to the FBI, and identified more than 100 flights since late April orbiting both major cities and rural areas. http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/06/02/0215236/us-airport-screeners-missed…

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Re: Threat Model: Parents
by Gadit Bielman 02 Jun '15

02 Jun '15

The friend I'm trying to help was just someone, nearby-in-the-social-graph on Tumblr, who asked for help with securing communication and stuff. Their specific situation is that they're about 15, autistic and bipolar, and have both a very active and emotionally important online life, and very invasive parents who wouldn't think much before cutting that off if they thought it might help make them "easier to deal with"-like. I don't really know -- I just offered to help. This question was trying as much for specific for them, as general strategies that minors can use -- I'm also thinking of one person from a while ago, whom I knew better and who is thankfully in a much better situation right now, who was using their abusive dad's laptop when available and terrified of the possible and likely consequences if their dad found the thread that they were getting sympathy, advice, and support in. I'm pretty sure I've run into other kids who were concerned about stuff like that. One friend is working at this problem, partially to use, partially just to get a sense of infosec, partially just in case. After I posted the original post here, another friend specifically asked me to summarize what I learned from this thread, 'cause they expect to run into people who need advice. Mostly I'd like to be able to work out something that, if I run into someone in a similar situation, I could say "Here, try this, this, and this. Look for these things -- you can do that like this -- and if you find this then you have to take this other precaution. And if you can, try reading this and this and see if that's applicable to your situation." At least as a start. And I'd like be able to share that like I can share "well here's how you make it harder for Google/The Government/An Identity Thief to get your info...".

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$330 3.3 GHz Spectrum Analyzer
by jim bell 02 Jun '15

02 Jun '15

USB RF Spectrum Analyzer 3.3GHZ | | | | | | | | | | | USB RF Spectrum Analyzer 3.3GHZUS $330.00 New in Business & Industrial, Electrical & Test Equipment, Test Equipment | | | | View on www.ebay.com | Preview by Yahoo | | | | |

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EFF: Cybersecurity and the Tylenol Murders
by grarpamp 02 Jun '15

02 Jun '15

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/cybersecurity-and-tylenol-murders When a criminal started lacing Tylenol capsules with cyanide in 1982, Johnson & Johnson quickly sprang into action to ensure consumer safety. ... Looking at the Congressional debate, it's as if the answer for Americans after the Tylenol incident was not to put on tamper-evident seals, or increase the security of the supply chain, but only to require Tylenol to “share” its customer lists with the government and with the folks over at Bayer aspirin. We wouldn’t have stood for such a wrongheaded response in 1982, and we shouldn’t do so now. "Patriot" Act, cockpit doors, Clippled crypto backdoors, surveillance, etc

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Threat Model: Parents
by Gadit Bielman 01 Jun '15

01 Jun '15

Hi. I'm trying to help (probably badly, but..) a friend deal with parents that they expect are spying on them. I know that in general, it's impossible to secure a computer that you can't trust and don't necessarily have administrator privileges to. But their parents are not exactly the NSA -- any spying that's happening is almost definitely some sort of product, plus basic things like maybe looking through their history. (I don't know much about they're situation -- maybe they know more, so well-if-you-know-they-do-this-then-you-could-do-this type advice would still be helpful.) Would antivirus be able to detect spy-on-your-kids products? Would they be able to scan their computer with like Immunet or something, even if they didn't have administrator privileges? Tor would probably help -- unless the monitoring was looking at the RAM or something for website names, which would be way overkill on a commercial product, no? Or (more likely) if it was taking screenshots at regular intervals, which would also break running a VM or something. (Is there any way to detect taking screenshots?) I know probably the best thing would be running TAILS as a LiveCD -- the problem with that is that it's REALLY obvious over-the-shoulder. Um, thoughts about any of those? Any other things about parents as a threat model in general? I know this is pretty far from what is usually discussed on here, but I'm really interested in what you think/it would potentially help a lot of people.

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Re: Re: Threat Model: Parents
by Softy 01 Jun '15

01 Jun '15

> That's just a slippery slope to accepting the paternalism of the state, > man. This thread continues to deliver. > > trollollolollo ... one can never tell via plain text. I suppose I should have elaborated on the distinction between Child and State. Evidently, confusion exists on limits the former should govern with and how the latter needs governing (and yes, at times by the former). Now we're going to get the CPS nuts about their kids being carried away in black vans; but that's not where I'm going. I'm laying the claim that 'developing children' need to have a certain amount of 'oversight and governance' in their lives. I'm happy knowing various governmental and non- are monitoring the milk my son drinks so it doesn't contain large doses of melamine (for instance).

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U.N. Leaning Towards Crypto
by grarpamp 01 Jun '15

01 Jun '15

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/28/united-nations-encryption-ano… https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/28/u-n-report-asserts-encryption…

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Fwd: [messaging] Benchmarking client side cryptography
by grarpamp 31 May '15

31 May '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- https://diafygi.github.io/webcrypto-examples/ > On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 2:48 PM, franta polach wrote: > > Some might be interested in benchmarks I did for javascript, java, > > objective-C on different platforms. > > Here is a brief writeup https://frrp.github.io/ and here are the data > > https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RVK9ixIf2bUeUTxVxqMTpE4iC4gsr6ssfAV… ----------

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Re: Threat model: Parents
by Barton Gellman 31 May '15

31 May '15

Honestly, people, some of these suggestions are like a parody of geek advice to civilians ;-) The kid will soon hit upon the same practical solution that his or her peers all use: the smartphone (preferably with a VPN like Freedome), plus browsing at a friend's house. Wiping, Linuxing and LUKSing a family PC will escalate the real-life threat, and the kid's defenses will fall quickly to the parental equivalent of that XKCD password cartoon. If the kid has a need for full size keyboard and screen, and has a few more technical chops than most, there are some alternatives: * Boot up Tails in Windows camouflage mode. Choose More Options at boot. Shoulder surfing will probably bust him/her anyway, sooner or later. * Make one of those WinPE Windows USB drives, if real Windows is required. Last time I looked this wasn't that easy. * Get a small, fast external drive and install the OS of choice. If the host is a Mac, use Carbon Copy Cloner (or dd) to copy an existing machine to the external drive, or do a fresh installation there. For Linux, choose your flavor. * Get a Raspberry Pi and hook it to the keyboard and screen, at times when you don't expect interruption. * A virtual machine may be possible on the monitored host, if the required drivers are already present. Probably not. See http://www.vbox.me/. If anyone knows a VM that works without admin rights, speak up. Bart Barton Gellman @bartongellman bartongellman.con On May 31, 2015, at 12:00 PM, cypherpunks-request(a)cpunks.org wrote: >>> On 31 May 2015 03:24:45 GMT+01:00, Gadit Bielman <thetransintransgenic(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>> Hi. >>> >>> I'm trying to help (probably badly, but..) a friend deal with parents >>> that >>> they expect are spying on them.

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