- cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Droning and Surveillance are Unnatural and Debilitating
by grarpamp 17 Jun '15

17 Jun '15

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/us/as-stress-drives-off-drone-operators-a… http://www.salon.com/2015/03/06/a_chilling_new_post_traumatic_stress_disord…

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Re: cypherpunks Digest, Vol 24, Issue 33
by Softy 17 Jun '15

17 Jun '15

> Surely, you understand why they did this? There is a perfectly good > rationale for running these kind of operations. It's just that you're > miffed about the fact that you're not able to do anything about it. > > So if you're part of some impotent government that does not know how to, > or wants to project power, instantly you're at the mercy of institutions > of governments that can. No amount of tree-hugging or moral high ground > is going to save you from extinction. > > And it's not all that bad. It's mostly power-play and politics really. > > > > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_cocaine_trafficking > > > > "Once you set up a covert operation to supply arms and money, it's > > very difficult to separate it from the kind of people who are involved > Do you claim to understand why the Reagan administration "did this" operation which eventually came to be known as Iran-Contra? If so, then you can explain how "blocking the fall of [soviet] dominoes" directly correlates to the distribution of drugs in specific Black-American communities. You can in hindsight claim to agree with the end goal of "blocking Communism" however, in hindsight, you would be lambasted as failing to see through the Administration's propaganda. Still claiming to support the means to that end, squarely puts you in the realm of the Abusers of Power. Abuse because the voting population never had any chance to understand what was being done in their name. This is the cycle of Power Abuse which has many in the world turned against the US (and increasingly its people not just government). As long as the (secret) three-letter agencies conduct (secret) operations using (secret) means and continue to be governed with (secret) mandates driven by an administration's (secret) beliefs without Transparent and Democratic oversight this trend will continue until its logical conclusion. Sadly.

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Re: Russia and China crack Snowden Cache
by JS733NknRj6J 17 Jun '15

17 Jun '15

Sent from [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.ch), encrypted email based in Switzerland. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Russia and China crack Snowden Cache Time (GMT): Jun 17 2015 12:53:55 From: tim(a)diffalt.com To: cypherpunks(a)cpunks.org To summarize the problem: the CIA is has about 20.000 employees. Which is substantially bigger then in the 1950s where they had maybe about 4-5.000. They are an intelligence office. They started out gathering intelligence, gained intelligence gathering capabilities and now have capabilities to operate independently to some extent for some years. It's a somewhat minor point that I believe only supports your main argument, but this is not speaking strictly correct. From its inception in 1947, CIA has had at least two official missions: 1, the collection of intelligence (under what was first called "Office of Special Operations"); 2, "action" (under what was first called "Office of Policy Coordination," & has changed and mutated several times since), the definition and limits of which have always been a huge problem. Essentially, or at least arguably, #2 allows for military action outside the military chain of command, though not inside the territorial US. This in itself is a holdover from the OSS and other earlier orgs, all of whom had similar mandates, and even from the personnel who were part of those earlier orgs and wanted to continue their fun & games. In many ways it is #2 that is the real problem, though one could argue that the need for intelligence collection outside the military chain of command is itself debatable (MI6, the "british equivalent" of CIA in most brief descriptions, is part of the British military). At any rate, their official mandate has always been much larger than intelligence gathering. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Central_Intelligence_Agency

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Free Advice for FBI/OPM/NSA/DOE: full-disclosure hardware
by Troy Benjegerdes 17 Jun '15

17 Jun '15

Okay, so apparently the CIA pulled a fast one on you, and now everyone with a security clearance is (probably) getting doxed[1]. "Outsiders must be deputized to audit the systems, brutally assess their failings, and put together an aggressive plan to both find existing breaches (who knows what’s still lurking in OPM’s systems right now?) and prevent further ones. Every government agency should be subject to an outside cybersecurity audit, and I include the NSA in that" So since I'm a nice guy (or maybe just a guy with an open-source hardware business plan) the first thing I want to audit is the PCB layout of the server(s) that got hacked. I'll even do it for free if you publish the schematic and board layout under a license compatible with the Debian Free Software guidelines. Now, on the other hand, if your hardware vendor is going to whine like a child who got caught with their hand in the candy jar about 'IP' and such, I will be happy to start reviewing how broken Intel/AMD/etc chips and motherboards are with a confidentiality agreement if you agree to pay my retainer. (which is approximately the amount I need to buy some farmland and wind turbines.) [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/06/opm_hack_it_s… So if anyone is actually serious about security, then I'll know because there will be more than just me talking about why we need full-disclosure hardware that you can X-ray and compare to an image signed and hosted by multiple independent and competing nation-state or multinational-corporate level security agencies. If your Intel motherboard matches the image signed by IBM, China Telcom, and Iran, than it's probably safe for Democrats to use, and good for Republicans if Saudi Arabia signs it. Any politician using an image signed only by an agency they supervise should be immediately impeached.

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Pirate Party’s youth wing Activists wiretap high-level political surveillance hawks at Sweden’s top security conference
by Zenaan Harkness 17 Jun '15

17 Jun '15

https://falkvinge.net/2015/01/14/hilarious-activists-turn-tables-on-politic… "They set up an open wi-fi access point at the conference and labeled it “Open Guest”, and then just logged the traffic of about a hundred high-ranking surveillance hawks who argue for more wiretapping, and who connected through the activists’ unencrypted access point. " "...generally everybody present who would argue in public that surveillance of other people than themselves is the best idea since sliced bread." ... "In closing, we are happy to report that we have found no traces whatsoever of preparations of terrorism in our surveillance. However, we do note that people need to get much better at using the net in a secure manner."

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ECHR Censors Comments, Pushes Liability, Likes Monitoring
by grarpamp 17 Jun '15

17 Jun '15

http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx?i=001-155105 https://www.accessnow.org/blog/2015/06/16/delfi-as-v.-estonia-a-blow-to-fre… http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/06/shock-european-court-decision-… In a surprise decision, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg has ruled that the Estonian news site Delfi may be held responsible for anonymous and allegedly defamatory comments from its readers. One of the worrying aspects of the ECHR decision is that it may encourage the idea that intermediaries are liable for "manifestly unlawful" content, without specifying what "manifestly unlawful" actually means. Also troubling is that the judgment upholds a finding that "proactive monitoring" of Internet users can be required.

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Joystream Bitcoin Enabled Torrenting
by grarpamp 16 Jun '15

16 Jun '15

http://www.joystream.co/ Interesting, yet such a tool / market in forbidden bandwidth still hasn't proposed or integrated the required anonymity and common IPv6 transport that todays multitude of would be JoyBEP compliant BT apps and users would need in order to protect and scale their activities in some sort of point and click cutover of the masses. [Though a few common clients do now work with I2P. No client seems to have the interface / code handle massive (100s, 1000s) torrent libraries very well, such that those wanting to run a profitable business might wish to manage (divide and conquer model excepted).] http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/39xgln/joystream_torrent_client_wi… http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3a0pff/joystream_pay_or_get_paid_f… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_P2P https://code.google.com/p/phantom/ http://maidsafe.net/ http://storj.io/ http://filecoin.io/ http://www.reddit.com/r/i2p/comments/35lksd/is_there_really_a_reason_to_use… http://dev.vuze.com/

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Possible SigInt Metadata Dump Files Circulating
by Wilfred Guerin 16 Jun '15

16 Jun '15

Some huge *meaning close to exobyte size* data sets are circulating in storage clouds this last week, appear to be snapshots of signals intelligence metadata including vector tracking of signals targets (possibly cell phones based on movement vectors) and cross-associated metadata for their communications. Indications are that these are recon signal dumps of the american sigint system loaded by a major organized crime syndicate and cover most of last year. There is also a set of organic tracking signals, assumably covert agent communications, and another set that appears to be all American and European cash money transactions(???).

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More Bitcoin Battles for Control and Process ... Blocksize
by grarpamp 15 Jun '15

15 Jun '15

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/39wlpj/adam_back_questions_mike_he… All the ongoing talk over blocksize, BIP's, control and process... fine and much needed. This one will pass. But don't be fooled, this one is nothing... the real battles among very large and global entities are yet to come. If they wish Bitcoin to succeed as philosophically conceived, today's devs, users and miners should prepare for war.

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LastPass Network Breached
by Gutem 15 Jun '15

15 Jun '15

https://threatpost.com/lastpass-network-breached-calls-for-master-password-… - Gutem ----------- “Live Long and Prosper" Registered Linux User: 562142 PGP: 0xE1A697BF / 2522 ECFA DCD2 FF52 3AAB D2A1 154E 14CD E1A6 97BF https://keybase.io/gutem/key.asc

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