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Reaching the Sheeple, Building a Cpunk Symbiot Army
by grarpamp 24 Nov '15

24 Nov '15

On Sat, Nov 14, 2015 at 4:53 AM, rysiek <rysiek(a)hackerspace.pl> wrote: > Dnia poniedziałek, 9 listopada 2015 22:41:16 Tomas Overdrive Petru pisze: >> Really? So what is purpose of this thread if I can ask? To complain that >> ordinary people are sheep? > > I am slowly starting to think that this is the purpose of this whole *list*. Cpunk care about the sheeple, and their gripe is a legit frustration... sheeple seem to be biologically unreachable regarding the risks they face in this area. Can anyone point out a successful strategy that has been used for the cpunk to reach and enlighten them such that they make some sort of change for themselves, or act to change their world? Now look at a certain subset of sheeple... the NRA. These folks are built of the same sort as the average sheeple, but it is discovered one thing that motivates and resonates them... guns, and the surrounding rhetoric and issues. And it so happens that they also have a strong interest in privacy and dislike of government nature. They mention against the NSA and spying and databases in their convention speeches, you can find them on youtube. And their political action call tree and fundraising is one to be reckoned with. If cpunks would just reach out, these guys would be a close symbiot army. For example, if you show them your encrypted chat app it's not long before lightbulb and they ask you "Wait, so you mean I can talk shit with my buds about how many rounds of ammo I got in the basement, moonshine, and that damn president we got... all without the gubmint hearing me?" "Yep," you say, at which point you've become instant friends. Yet where is the cpunk set up with a booth at NRA conventions and gun shows giving demos and handing out pamphlets??? The sheeple may be mostly hopeless cause, but there are various groups that could be allied with in order to multiply cpunk numbers to the level necessary to effect change. Which ones and why? The religious... Doctor Patient... Attorney Client... ??? Where is Cpunk focusing its efforts and getting results? Wasting on Johnny who might not ever get it, or on cultivating a symbiot army that will cause change and thus bring something new to Johnny by default.

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Russia actually kind of cracked (?) Tor
by Anton Nesterov 24 Nov '15

24 Nov '15

On 11 July 2014 Russia's Interior Ministry posted a contract seeking a group "to study the possibility of obtaining technical information on users and users' equipment of Tor anonymous network" for $59,000. When media reports appeared, mentioning of Tor was deleted. Then company who won this contract (The Central Research Institute of Economics, Informatics, and Control Systems, subsidiary of Rostec) then posted a contract to hire a law firm tasked with negotiating a way out of the deal http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-22/russia-s-plan-to-crack-to… Now source of Kommersant close to the one of two parties of the deal says that project was nearly finished, but CRI EICS didn't meet the deadline, so that why there is court involved. Results was passed to the Interior Ministry where it's already in use. Representative of hired law firm told Kommersant that Interior Ministry wants to just knock down the price or force CRI EICS to pay the forfeit. Kommersant piece also mention a case when one user was deanonymized when he used Tor Browser to post trip reports and prosecuted for propaganda of illegal substances (I don't believe that was result of "cracking Tor", he probably failed somehow (maybe used real name), also it would be strange to perform probably costly attack for fine less than $100). http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2861002 Kommersant report (in Russian) -- 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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Rare Intelligent Yahoo article: Not so rare stupid opinions by Hillary Clinton. This time on encryption.
by jim bell 24 Nov '15

24 Nov '15

http://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-showed-government-still-213151251.html Hillary Clinton Showed How the Government Still Doesn't Understand the Encryption Debate Every time there is a major terror attack that shocks the international consciousness, there are renewed calls for surveillance and increased policing. And even though we're slowly learning that encryption techniques had nothing to do with the attacks on Paris, politicians are still revitalizing a debate as old as the Internet — whether or not the government should be able to break encryption. Encryption is the process of taking a message, or any block of text or information, and scrambling it so that it can only be read by the intended recipient. It's baked into many message and email systems automatically, preventing law enforcement from catching the messages in transit and unpacking their contents. On Thursday, Hillary Clinton called on tech companies to avoid seeing the government as an "adversary" and to "develop solutions that will both keep us safe and protect our privacy" before another attack like Paris occurs. "Encryption of mobile communications presents a particularly tough problem," Clinton said during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations last week. "We should take the concerns of law enforcement and counterterrorism professionals seriously. They have warned that impenetrable encryption may prevent them from accessing terrorist communications and preventing a future attack." Silicon Valley has been vowing in droves to not bend to the political pressure to change their encryption standards. But it's not because they're stubborn, naive or capitalistic. It's because "weakening" encryption is nearly impossible. [end of portion quoted]

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Russian heart propaganda
by Zenaan Harkness 24 Nov '15

24 Nov '15

For anyone who needs some "positive bits" to enlighten a sheep. Yes there are negative bits here and there. I would hope we focus on the uplifting and the heart. http://www.pravdareport.com/world/europe/24-11-2015/132679-russian_altruism…

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Goldbug = RetroShare?
by grarpamp 23 Nov '15

23 Nov '15

Is RetroShare legit? Not had time to analyze and have felts some similarities / degrees of ties between each at times. Thus asking.

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FCC comes to CCC? "No GSM test network at 32C3"
by coderman 23 Nov '15

23 Nov '15

http://laforge.gnumonks.org/blog/20151115-no_gsm_at_32c3/ No GSM test network at 32C3 Harald Welte 2015-11-15 I currently don't assume that there will be a GSM network at the 32C3. Ever since OpenBSC was created in 2008, the annual CCC congress was a great opportunity to test OpenBSC and related software with thousands of willing participants. In order to do so, we obtained a test licence from the German regulatory authority. This was never any problem, as there was a chunk of spectrum in the 1800 MHz GSM band that was not allocated to any commercial operator, the so-called DECT guard band. It's called that way as it was kept free in order to ensure there is no interference between 1800 MHz GSM and the neighboring DECT cordless telephones. Over the decades, it was determined on a EU level that this guard band might not be necessary, or at least not if certain considerations are taken for BTSs deployed in that band. When the German regulatory authority re-auctioned the GSM spectrum earlier this year, they decided to also auction the frequencies of the former DECT guard band. The DECT guard band was awarded to Vodafone. This is a pity, as this means that people involved with cellular research or development of cellular technology now have it significantly harder to actually test their systems. In some other EU member states it is easier, like in the Netherlands or the UK, where the DECT guard band was not treated like any other chunk of the GSM bands, but put under special rules. Not so in Germany. To make a long story short: Without the explicit permission of any of the commercial mobile operators, it is not possible to run a test/experimental network like we used to ran at the annual CCC congress. Given that the event is held in the city center (where frequencies are typically used and re-used quite densely), and an operator has nothing to gain from permitting us to test our open source GSM/GPRS implementations, I think there is little chance that this will become a reality. If anyone has really good contacts to the radio network planning team of a German mobile operator and wants to prove me wrong: Feel free to contact me by e-mail. Thanks to everyone involved with the GSM team at the CCC events, particularly Holger Freyther, Daniel Willmann, Stefan Schmidt, Jan Luebbe, Peter Stuge, Sylvain Munaut, Kevin Redon, Andreas Eversberg, Ulli (and everyone else whom I may have forgot, my apologies). It's been a pleasure! Thanks also to our friends at the POC (Phone Operation Center) who have provided interfacing to the DECT, ISDN, analog and VoIP network at the events. Thanks to roh for helping with our special patch requests. Thanks also to those entities and people who borrowed equipment (like BTSs) in the pre-sysmocom years. So long, and thanks for all the fish!

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US Congress Vows To Criminalize First Amendment in re Paris
by grarpamp 23 Nov '15

23 Nov '15

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2015/11/17/senators-want-t… Senate Intelligence Committee leaders are vowing to explore ways to grant more government access to secure communications. Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr, R-N.C., and his counterpart, ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., say that encrypted communications should be more easily accessible by the government. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/congressman-to-stop-isis-lets-sh… US Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) has a plan to stop terrorists: shut down websites, including social media networks. Barton today asked Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler if the commission can shut down websites... Barton didn't name any specific sites but said that "we need to do something" because of the terrorist attack in Paris. While criminalizing harmless Crypto and Speech, don't forget yourselves... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_Suite_A_Cryptography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America Keep on rollin out that crypto fellas, more, better, faster... and educate your critters before it's too late.

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Re: [Cryptography] Burner phone == One Time (i)Pad
by grarpamp 23 Nov '15

23 Nov '15

On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 5:46 AM, Peter Gutmann <pgut001(a)cs.auckland.ac.nz> wrote: > that burner phones aren't only used by terrorists. A friend of mine works for > a women's shelter and they're a large consumer of burner phones, means of This supposed legitimization stories is fine and all, but it trashes your most basic of rights... to use things because you fucking felt like it, no explanation needed, and anyone else can go jump off a cliff.

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Bitcoin addresses NH Government
by grarpamp 23 Nov '15

23 Nov '15

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQI6dMnIw6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S2u85Cib6I

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Re: [Cryptography] WSJ: WH wants to meet Techies in DC re encryption
by grarpamp 23 Nov '15

23 Nov '15

On Sat, Nov 21, 2015 at 12:52 PM, Jerry Leichter <leichter(a)lrw.com> wrote: > the point of the attacks on cryptography have nothing to do with *their* accuracy. Truth and effectiveness in political debate have all too little to do with each other. > > Remember when Microsoft used to attack Linux for being anti-capitalist? Someone - I forget who - proposed using Microsoft marketing techniques against them: Every time anyone who wanted to help the campaign mentioned "the Windows operating system", they should *always* say "the deeply flawed Windows operating system". Repeat a phrase often enough and it becomes part of common knowledge. This is how marketing works; this is how politics works (not that it's easy to draw a line between them any more). > > The fact is, LE *is* trying to get the government to dictate how to build the products sold to you and me and all the liberals and all the civil libertarians and all the NRA members and all the Trump followers and everyone else out there. And they are trying to dictate that they be built in ways that *hurt us as individuals*, in the name of what *they claim* is some greater good. Stopping that isn't going to happen by cryptographers talking to other cryptographers about what a dumb idea "golden keys" are. The most effective way of stopping would be convincing those who are the natural audience for the "help LE stop the bad guys" pitch to instead see the issue the same way they see gun control (also pushed as a way to "help the LE stop the bad guys"). > > This is politics now, hence not really appropriate for this list - though these political decisions will have profound impacts on how we will be allowed to deploy crypto, so *some* discussion is unavoidable. > -- Jerry It's entirely appropriate and relavant because the crypto people and tech / code world in general are too head down at the keyboard and haven't yet figured out how stand up and win (forever), nor how to go AFK for a minute and and partner with various potential armies. There's only so much you can do with a keyboard, the rest awaits in the real world. Subject: Reaching the Sheeple, Building a Cpunk Symbiot Army https://cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/2015-November/010895.html

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