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Fwd: [qubes-devel] Purism Librem 13 and Qubes
by coderman 27 Sep '15

27 Sep '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Radoslaw Szkodzinski <astralstorm(a)gmail.com> Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2015 02:01:58 +0200 Subject: Re: [qubes-devel] Purism Librem 13 and Qubes On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 7:32 PM, Jeremias E. <j.eppler(a)openmailbox.org> wrote: > > > Am Freitag, 25. September 2015 16:33:39 UTC+2 schrieb Radosław Szkodziński: >> >> On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 10:48 PM, Fredrik Strömberg >> <stro...(a)mullvad.net> wrote: >> > I love the Purism initiative. I really hope they succeed. >> >> They cannot truly succeed until Intel opens Management Engine code, >> SINIT blob, microcode, memory initialization code and more... >> Coreboot on its own is not enough. >> http://www.coreboot.org/Binary_situation > > > They can succeed starting a movement, which has an economical impact. > If Intel sees their is a marked they want to be part of it, because they > want to > make money. Actually, this is not the first laptop based on open firmware and software. Glugglug/Minifree did that quite a bit of time ago with their Libreboot, even FSF certified. Nobody cares, sadly. Librem likely will fail too for the same reasons - ideology is not enough, and they are even worse at it technically-wise. On the other hand, having a more secure laptop is a tangible benefit. Without backdoors, with fewer bugs, audited firmware, perhaps even partially audited hardware. Maybe even make it easier on the designers, produce a server platform matching those requirements - there's more of a market. Google might even get in, as they are known to use a lot of customized firmware and even hardware. I think they used to support Coreboot itself. They might have stopped caring about this though. > A good example for such a movement is the Fairphone. > The first Fairphone was for enthusiasts, but not a real competitor on the > mobile phone marked. > The Fairphone 2 is a real competitor to other mobile phones. Having competitive hardware or design is not the same as being a competitor. Try this argument again when it's actually a competitor to, say, any iPhone. At least in top 10. By the way, Fairphone 2 is a nice story for uninformed people, about on par with Librem. I approve of their other efforts, but it's nowhere near enough or close to what's necessary. The critical component, Qualcomm 801 chipset, will be running a proprietary microkernel with proprietary RF firmware, proprietary DSP code and more. Good luck getting Qualcomm to open that - they are quite hostile to any of those efforts. Again, poor choice of an architecture and a very tough nut to crack. (For instance, Marvell is way more open and much less hostile.) >> That would probably open a whole can of worms related to security >> which then would have to be patched, of course. >> >> For now, the best solution would be to try to get Librem to make an >> AMD-based laptop and test Qubes on it. > > > Is a nice technical and economical idea, because AMD will maybe help to > build such a platform. I wouldn't quite count on it, though they seem to be expanding their open source drivers effort which bodes somewhat well. That said, their GPUs still require a few fat, complex firmware blobs - fortunately Qubes is pretty good at scraping GUI and enforcing separation thereof. P.S. If we're talking about pie in the sky designs: Probably the best design for an OS like Qubes would be to have separate small CPUs instead of many cores, with separate RAM and memory controller. Maybe even an integrated GPU each to run OpenGL. Multiple USB controllers and hubs to simplify hardware redirection. Multiple small flash drives or even chips. Expensive, power intensive, hard to cool and large though. Think a tiny cluster of mostly separate PCs, connected via an extremely fast bus, such as HyperTransport. NUMA considerations would be less important here as the CPUs with their associated memory would be dedicated to a VM and the support exists in both Xen and Linux anyway. -- Radosław Szkodziński

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KARMA POLICE: GCHQ spooks spied on every web user ever
by Georgi Guninski 26 Sep '15

26 Sep '15

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/25/gchq_tracked_web_browsing_habits_ka… KARMA POLICE: GCHQ spooks spied on every web user ever Leaked docs show how out-of-control spy agency went full Stasi on innocent surfers New documents revealing GCHQ's mass-surveillance activities have detailed an operation codenamed KARMA POLICE, which slurped up the details of "every visible user on the Internet". http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/25/trillions_in_surveillance_gchq/ Blighty's GCHQ stashes away 50+ billion records a day on people. Just let that sink in When the slide on BLACK HOLE was composed in March 2009, the flat data store held more than 1.1 trillion things which GCHQ had collected since August 2007. The store weighed in at 217TB when uncompressed, the largest share of which was HTTP data (41 per cent), which alongside web search (19 per cent) and SMTP data (12 per cent) accounted for almost three quarters of all that it held.

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Re: State of the art in directing human made ball lightning?
by wirelesswarrior＠Safe-mail.net 25 Sep '15

25 Sep '15

See: http://scholar.google.com.secure.sci-hub.org/scholar?q=triggered+lightening… Not directly answering your question controlled discharge of normal leader lightning using lasers or small rockets has been an area of intense research for some time. For example, see: http://scholar.google.com.secure.sci-hub.org/scholar?q=triggered+lightening… and http://scholar.google.com.secure.sci-hub.org/scholar?q=triggered+lightening… For Google search articles not showing article links suggest you try http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/index.php -------- Original Message -------- From: Georgi Guninski <guninski(a)guninski.com> Apparently from: cypherpunks-bounces(a)cpunks.org To: cypherpunks(a)cpunks.org Subject: State of the art in directing human made ball lightning? Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2015 11:49:06 +0300 > Probably offtopic, but would like to know what is > the state of art in directing human made ball lightning > (or something close to it).

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Fwd: Re: [bestbits] Indian Encryption Policy
by rysiek 25 Sep '15

25 Sep '15

Well, that's going to be fun. ---------- Treść przekazywanej wiadomości ---------- Temat: Re: [bestbits] Indian Encryption Policy Data: poniedziałek, 21 września 2015, 15:42:05 Od: Mishi Choudhary Hi Carol, Thanks for highlighting this. Its a draft National Encryption Policy and public comments are invited by October 16, 2015. Comments are to be emailed to Mr A,S.A. Krishnan, akrishnan(a)deity.gov.in The key highlights of the policy are : 1. A stipulation that businesses and citizens are to maintain plain text (unencrypted) copies of encrypted content for a period of 90 days, to be made available to Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) when so directed under law. 2. Vendors of encryption products are required to register their products with the Government as a pre-condition to conducting business in India. They are also expected to re-register their products with every update. This requirement is not limited to vendors of dedicated encryption products, and seemingly includes even products that use encryption in the course of providing a larger service such as messaging or e-commerce. (Service Providers located within and outside India, using Encryption technology for providing any type of services in India must enter into an agreement with the Government for providing such services in India). 3. Encryption algorithms and key sizes shall be prescribed by the Government through Notifications from time to time. ----------------------------------------- -- Pozdrawiam, Michał "rysiek" Woźniak Zmieniam klucz GPG :: http://rys.io/pl/147 GPG Key Transition :: http://rys.io/en/147

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State of the art in directing human made ball lightning?
by Georgi Guninski 25 Sep '15

25 Sep '15

Probably offtopic, but would like to know what is the state of art in directing human made ball lightning (or something close to it). According to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning#Laboratory_experiments humans made stuff close to it (was surprised one way involves home microwave oven). By "directing" I mean controlling its way.

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William F. Friedman documents now on Internet Archive
by Michael Best 24 Sep '15

24 Sep '15

I uploaded the 7,000+ Friedman NSA docs to the Internet Archive and used the metadata to rename the titles into something a little easier for humans to read and sort. https://archive.org/details/nsa-friedman The complete set of Friedman docs are also included in the NSA FOIA vault at https://archive.org/details/NSA-FOIA-Vault ( https://archive.org/compress/NSA-FOIA-Vault to get the entire vault in a single zip). To grab just the Friedman docs and not the rest of the NSA FOIA vault, go to https://archive.org/download/NSA-FOIA-Vault/Friedman%20Documents.7z -- I should point out that the collected version includes the metadata file, but file names are unchanged and unassociated with human readable titles. These are the same copies released through the NSA's website, just a bit easier to sort and read. Enjoy.

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Fwd: [bestbits] Update: Indian Encryption Policy
by rysiek 24 Sep '15

24 Sep '15

Aaand it's gone. For now. ---------- Treść przekazywanej wiadomości ---------- Temat: [bestbits] Update: Indian Encryption Policy Data: wtorek, 22 września 2015, 11:03:21 Od: Mishi Choudhary Post a public outcry, DEITY has withdrawn this policy. ----------------------------------------- -- Pozdrawiam, Michał "rysiek" Woźniak Zmieniam klucz GPG :: http://rys.io/pl/147 GPG Key Transition :: http://rys.io/en/147

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FCC NPRM seeks to end open SDR
by wirelesswarrior＠Safe-mail.net 24 Sep '15

24 Sep '15

Since the early days of open SDR these devices have been sold as test equipment which does not require onerous type approvals or certifications by the manufacturer or importer. The FCC now seeks to change this https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/08/06/2015-18402/equipment-au… and require product features which block software changes after manufacture. This, of course, is the very heart of SDR and its prohibition would be nothing short of effectively banning SDR and any open source experimentation with RF signal processing beyond the theoretic. WW

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Activists leak Russian government’s plans to create a ‘national Internet’
by Anton Nesterov 24 Sep '15

24 Sep '15

The data-leaking blog Anonymous International, also known as Shaltai-Boltai (Humpty Dumpty), has published the Russian government’s project proposal for creating a "national information platform," which would serve as an alternative Russian Internet. According to Anonymous International, the project was drawn up by Russia’s Foreign Trade Bank cluster analysis and spatial development director Sergey Ganzya, the IT director of the hydroelectricity company RusHydro, Garald Bandurin, and several other people. The leaked content includes email correspondence and a document about the project. In the leaked emails, the authors of the project discuss the creation of “an entirely custom IT platform that can expand globally.” The development of such a platform can serve as “import substitution in the IT sphere” and “create a secure national digital environment with lower risks than in the global www-field.” The document published by Anonymous International mentions Russia’s direct dependence on “the goodwill and decency of global providers of IT solutions.” The authors of the document believe that “there are no objective guarantees that, in the event of a conflict, Western security agencies won’t paralyze—or, worse, seize—direct control over elements of the infrastructure.” The leaked emails between the project’s authors refer to the “general officers” of Russia’s “Oplot Rossii” party, which was tasked with delivering the project proposal to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The correspondence dates to June 2015. https://meduza.io/en/news/2015/09/23/activists-leak-russian-government-s-pl… -- https://nesterov.pw GPG key: 0CE8 65F1 9043 2B11 25A5 74A7 1187 6869 67AA 56E4 https://keybase.io/komachi/key.asc

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Re: How Putin Controls the Internet and Popular Opinion in Russia
by John Young 23 Sep '15

23 Sep '15

This from the journalists who check with USG before publishing Snowden documents as Snowden allegedly requires "to avoid harm to the US." Fingerpointing at Putin is obligatory for those working the Broadcasting Board of Governors propaganda beat. The Internet as an unprecedented global spying and propaganda machine has been long noted and carefully exploited by all varieties of spies and media -- used by all governments, but by US first and foremost. For a few years the Information Highway was perceived as a marvelous invention for public education and discourse, even a whiz-bang tool for shaping politics and government, empowering the citizenry. Was long before it was understood to be a gov-com-edu-org hegemon siphoning user data indiscriminately, some openly, some secretly. Encryption has been advocated to maintain citizen privacy and security. That too has been exposed as illusory, but die-hard security promoters will not sacrifice reputation and profits for perpetuating the notion that reliable infosec and comsec are "the best we can do, don't expect absolute security." Meanwhile continuting to rig standards and products to fit USG contracting requirements. Keeping up with these requirements is a top requirement for benefiting from official secrets. Still unrevealed by Snowden is what he did as CIA IT employee for many years before a few months deep undercover NOC as an NSA contractor. At 12:25 AM 9/9/2015, you wrote: >https://theintercept.com/2015/09/08/how-putin-controls-the-russian-internet/ >The key paragraph in Andrei Soldatov and Irina Boroganâs new book, The >Red Web, comes surprisingly late, after the authors have described the >long and ambitious construction of a wide-ranging, all-penetrating >Internet surveillance and censorship system in Russia. >... >Just as the Soviet system discovered that it did not need to exert >total pressure in order to control its population, so the Kremlin has >now demonstrated that it does not need to block every byte in order to >exert utter dominance over information.

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