Anyone have details on whether Lavabit was vulnerable? Because that'd beg the question; why ask nicely? On 10/04/14 12:44, Lodewijk andré de la porte wrote:

Of course they'd keep it hidden! It'd leak vital information about how they know about every bug before others do.

It's also what they've been doing since forever. This was probably a real gem among their stones.

-- T: @onetruecathal, @IndieBBDNA P: +353876363185 W: http://indiebiotech.com

On Thu, 2014-04-10 at 13:42 +0100, Cathal Garvey wrote:

Anyone have details on whether Lavabit was vulnerable? Because that'd beg the question; why ask nicely?

Even if the FBI knew about Heartbleed, they'd presumably want to use the evidence they gathered from Lavabit to prosecute a case in an open court. They couldn't use illegally gathered evidence in a criminal trial. The NSA and CIA, on the other hand, are military rather than civilian. They don't have to have trials. They have Guantanamo instead. -- Sent from Ubuntu

I haven't been able to satisfy any clear conditions for being good or bad guys. Not even for being patriots or not. Ultimately it doesn't matter. Their jobs are inherently evil. Spying always has been, but this is different because it involves everyone (even without being suspect) and costs for additional invasion of privacy\surveillance is negligible. Meaning a single person that doesn't do his/her job can ruin the world (in *many* scenario's). Looking at Snowden there is not the kind of security procedures to prevent it, either. So. Are the NSA guys good guys? Well. They're the enemy of the people, as they invade their privacy and therewith their safety. If you can be blackmailed, studied, influenced, etc. you are weak and vulnerable. Preaching to the choir, I guess. So I cannot call them good guys by a very long shot. Are the NSA guys bad guys? Well, they do anything to protect their nation from whatever attack could happen (bad for non-US; me). They steal secrets for their government (bad for non-US; me). They assist foreign secret agencies in subverting or avoiding legal restrictions put in place to protect citizens as (real/wise/elected) politicians see fit. (very bad for non-US; me) Uh. Yeah. I guess they're the bad guys. I usually feel like they are soldiers on a certain mission, and so no blame comes to them. But I feel more strongly that the organization is build to produce law-breaking, privacy-destroying, unethical, unfriendly, aggressive, anticompetative, distracting and confusing and ultimately just *mean* practices. So yes: the NSA is *EVIL* to the maximum realistic extend. The NSA's people enjoy a margin of appreciation. They're doing a job. They have their reasons. But I do believe most of them are keenly aware of the extremely large quantity of thoroughly unethical things their organization is doing, and must be considered at least partially responsible.

Dnia niedziela, 13 kwietnia 2014 20:32:18 Linux User pisze:

On Sun, 13 Apr 2014 01:28:14 +0200

Lodewijk andré de la porte wrote:

...

So. Are the NSA guys good guys? Well. They're the enemy of the people, as they invade their privacy and therewith their safety. If you can be blackmailed, studied, influenced, etc. you are weak and vulnerable. Preaching to the choir, I guess.

Well, I get the impression that some of the voices of this choir still need some preaching directed at them =P

I noticed something interesting in digital 'security' circles. People who deal with 'security' are, at first sight, technical people and are concerned with issues such as factoring integers, permutations, routing protocols, etc. etc. etc.

However, all their technical expertise exists to achieve some political goals. And when you look at the political beliefs of these people, you see that they suck big time. As engineers they may be competent, but there's a step above engineering, and there, they fail.

This is so true. The "I'm not into politics, I just write code" stance needs to change. It *does* matter for whom you write your code and how you future-proof it from being use to abuse people. Simple example: dear sysadmins (of whom I am one), do you *really* need all those logs? They are a treasure-trove for LEAs. Unless you are required by law, just keep the last week or so, that's usually enough to debug problems as they arise. -- Pozdr rysiek

Dnia poniedziałek, 14 kwietnia 2014 22:08:29 tpb-crypto@laposte.net pisze:

...

Message du 14/04/14 02:01 De : "Linux User"

...

So. Are the NSA guys good guys? Well. They're the enemy of the people, as they invade their privacy and therewith their safety. If you can be blackmailed, studied, influenced, etc. you are weak and vulnerable. Preaching to the choir, I guess.

Well, I get the impression that some of the voices of this choir still need some preaching directed at them =P

I noticed something interesting in digital 'security' circles. People who deal with 'security' are, at first sight, technical people and are concerned with issues such as factoring integers, permutations, routing protocols, etc. etc. etc.

However, all their technical expertise exists to achieve some political goals. And when you look at the political beliefs of these people, you see that they suck big time. As engineers they may be competent, but there's a step above engineering, and there, they fail.

Since when politics is a "step above" anything? Politicians are the lowest of the low thugs and thus so is their art of thievery.

There are two main meanings of the term "politics". The one you are referring to is the "pardon-less, dirty fight for power", and is the reason many describe themselves as "apolitical". The other is the classical "of, for, or relating to citizens": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics This is the one I and the parent spoke about. It is not about the temporary/current power struggle, but about the general *policies* regarding... well, anything, really. For example, the fact that Deric Lostutter faces more jailtime than rapists he exposed: http://politicalblindspot.com/he-exposed-steubenville-now-what/ ...is a direct effect of hackers not engaging in politics (in the second sense). And a great exemplification of the good old "regardless of whether or not you are interested in politics, politics *will* get interested in you, eventually" rule. I despise the first version of "politics"; I firmly stand on the position we have to start engaging in the second version, though. -- Pozdr rysiek

I noticed something interesting in digital 'security' circles. People who deal with 'security' are, at first sight, technical people and are concerned with issues such as factoring integers, permutations, routing protocols, etc. etc. etc.

However, all their technical expertise exists to achieve some political goals. And when you look at the political beliefs of these people, you see that they suck big time. As engineers they may be competent, but there's a step above engineering, and there, they fail.

A statement like this is trollbait. It might not be intentional, you might even have a valid point, but presenting it like this will not help. If you're talking about a step above pure technical you're usually talking about a software's purpose. Then that purpose can be influenced by a political believe as vague as anarchy, democracy, communism, capitalism, liberty, etc. which are words that should be used sparingly and in a way that acknowledges how terribly vague they are. I think it's not right to say their technical expertise exists to serve certain goals, many are doing it just for the hell of it. For the puzzles, the challenges. And then we have angry Juan

And what I'm getting at is that there are people in the 'security' industry who either consider politicians and the state to be a 'necessary evil', or worse, think that politicians and the political system they serve, are A Good Thing.

Inpersonal, unclear, unmotivated. Where do you live Juan? America? Or somewhere lawless like Nigeria? There's an evolutionary system to governments, where the system rises or falls based on its fitness. Why doesn't your ideal system exist yet, and if it's stable but hard to reach, how will you create it? There's constructive ways to deal with this.

In a nearby mailing list, there are a bunch of people who are funded by the american military(psycho killers) to create a so called 'anomity network'. Regardless of how good they are at writing code, their political beliefs are sick garbage. They operate on the laughable premise that they are the 'good guys'

Calling a person psycho is very relative, they have a model of reality. IMHO it holds well enough for them not to be "psycho". They're definitely killers, but that's what the military is supposed to be. So afaics everything is okay. The (US) government on one angle performing mass surveillance and on the other hand preventing surveillance makes perfect sense to me. They're different agencies, different people, different incentives, so the conclusions (doing/preventing mass surveillance) are the correct ones in both cases. The government working against itself is extremely common, sometimes intentional, and a symbol of what's wrong with it. Sadly it's also a symbol of what's wrong with capitalism. And anarchy (as you usually advocate) implies capitalism, although it might not be about capital. Just the struggle for ownership and control and an evolutionary process of "consumer selection" to find the optimal situation or product. Sounds idealistic? Now look upon anarchy again. Same people who, when called out on the source of their funding have one

argument : "you're a tinfoil conspiracy theorist!" (Wait, of course, that's not an argument, just puerile name-calling)

I still think tinfoil hats are underrated. Van Eck phreaking of neural network interference patterns is fiction now, but the radiation is there. More on topic, you sound like you are indeed a conspiracy theorist. You throw around little to no evidence in an emotional manner, and jump to conclusions. Do the Tor guys get US GOV funding? Yes. Does that mean they're biased? It could, but it doesn't guarantee it. Does it imply they're biased? Kinda, yeah. Does that mean you can't trust them? Well, I honestly don't know. In some cases it does. Does that mean Tor is backdoored? It probably is, and would've been without USGOV funding. If it wasn't backdoored it's almost certainly (at some level) exploited, Heartbleed is here to prove that. Which makes me wonder, why didn't Snowden disclose Heartbleed? I'll make a thread about that.

Message du 15/04/14 20:34 De : "The Doctor"

...

One could argue that laws which punish hacking as a higher offense than rape is a byproduct of stupid politicians scared by technology which they don't have any understanding of.

Perhaps it is due to their thinking that technology poses a serious threat to their power bases.

Well, that fear was shared by religious authorities of all stripes a few centuries ago, regarding science. And religious authorities were right about their fears, their power is gone. Considering that politicians are not so stupid, the fight will be harder this time.

Message du 16/04/14 01:25 De : dan@geer.org A : cypherpunks@cpunks.org Copie à : Objet : Re: NSA good guys

All the whining about NSA is just that, whining, by comparison to where COTS is going. The COTS folks are surpassing national labs in the reach of their traffic analysis, they just don't yet have the command structure. (They'll get one when they're deputized by the national labs of whatever country matters.)

Consider AAPL's iBeacon.

--- consumer market prepositioning drives tracking rollout --- http://www.pfhub.com/apple-inc-s-aapl-ios-leaps-ahead-of-googles-android-in-... -new-world-of-beacons-542

...

The iBeacon is spreading rapidly in a number of spheres, including retail, sports arenas, museums, and possibly even the home. An even more crucial factor, however, is how many devices running a given operating system are beacon-ready. iOS devices are 82% beacon ready, according to a report today from Patently Apple, while Android devices are only 2.5% beacon ready.

Being successful in the world of beacon technology draws the business of huge retailers with deep advertising budgets, with a potential windfall of cash when these companies pay for access to both beacons and the server space that backs them up.

--- turning it off is a useful illusion --- http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5594

...

You must enable Location Services on your device and give your http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5594 permission to each app or website before it can use your location data. In iOS 7, if you turn off Location Services and use Find My iPhone Lost Mode, Location Services will be re-enabled on the device as long as the device is in Lost Mode. Once Lost Mode is disabled, Location Services will return to its previous state.

Note: For safety purposes, your iPhones location information will be used for emergency calls to aid response efforts regardless of whether you enable Location Services.

--- everybody's ass is covered in layers of boilerplate --- http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6048

...

Note: If you allow third-party apps or websites to use your current location, you agree to their terms, privacy policies, and practices. You should review the terms, privacy policies, and practices of the apps and websites to understand how they use your location and other information. Information Apple collects will be treated in accordance with Apple's Privacy Policy.

--- standards, schmandards --- http://www.mobilemarketinguniverse.com/bluetooth-beacons-vs-wifi-vs-nfc-2

...

After Apple choose BLE as standard rather than NFC/RFID, we believe that the two winning technologies in North America will be Wifi and BLE whereas NFC still has a good chance in the rest of the world.

--dan

Companies cannot seize your property, put you in jail and queue you to the death row.

On Wed, 16 Apr 2014 01:42:55 -0500 Gregory Foster wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512

On 4/15/14, 11:40 PM, tpb-crypto@laposte.net wrote:

...

Companies cannot seize your property, put you in jail and queue you to the death row.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi

...

The company received widespread publicity in 2007 when a group of its employees shot at Iraqi civilians killing 17 and injuring 20 in Nisour Square, Baghdad. ... Blackwater was also hired during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina by the United States Department of Homeland Security, as well as by private clients, including communications, petrochemical and insurance companies.

gf

Well, 1) blackwater is a creation of 'ex' murderers from the american military 2) blackwater operates with a 'licence'(to kill) from the american government

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2014-04-16 12:16 GMT+02:00 :

...

Message du 16/04/14 10:16 De : "Gregory Foster" On 4/15/14, 11:40 PM, tpb-crypto@laposte.net wrote:

...

Companies cannot seize your property, put you in jail and queue you to the death row.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi

...

The company received widespread publicity in 2007 when a group of its employees shot at Iraqi civilians killing 17 and injuring 20 in Nisour Square, Baghdad. ... Blackwater was also hired during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina by the United States Department of Homeland Security, as well as by private clients, including communications, petrochemical and insurance companies.

Ok, the exception that confirms the rule, that was a company hired by the government to do its dirty job, ie, mercenaries.

Until google, facebook, comcast, DHL, GM, Boeing, ... don't hire such services or do it themselves, they continue to be a lesser threat to the people than government is. Legally, none of them can do what you quoted above.

And neither can persons! Government having a violence monopoly is EXACTLY the idea! And one I wholeheartedly wish would be 100% effective and fair! Actually if the government would just TAKE all the violence and write it to /dev/null that's be PERFECT for me. Then we can start struggling with less demons such as abuse of power and wealth. Doesn't it just disgust you to think that anyone could be used sexually in whatever means, provided sufficient money compensates someone for it? What kind of violence is it that someone can provide something so compelling that he/she would do anything to get it? Think of how that used person convinces him/herself to do something completely unnatural, so disgusting it makes one retch, sheerly for an imaginary compensation. I wonder how well that situation is actually the situation for many prostitutes in present day. Is this even related? Oh yes, the NSA. Well. Seems this has become a thread about unnatural and utterly disgusting things.

--On Wednesday, April 16, 2014 3:01 PM +0200 Lodewijk andré de la porte wrote:

2014-04-16 12:16 GMT+02:00 :

...

...

Message du 16/04/14 10:16 De : "Gregory Foster" On 4/15/14, 11:40 PM, tpb-crypto@laposte.net wrote:

...

Companies cannot seize your property, put you in jail and queue you to the death row.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi

...

The company received widespread publicity in 2007 when a group of its employees shot at Iraqi civilians killing 17 and injuring 20 in Nisour Square, Baghdad. ... Blackwater was also hired during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina by the United States Department of Homeland Security, as well as by private clients, including communications, petrochemical and insurance companies.

Ok, the exception that confirms the rule, that was a company hired by the government to do its dirty job, ie, mercenaries.

Until google, facebook, comcast, DHL, GM, Boeing, ... don't hire such services or do it themselves, they continue to be a lesser threat to the people than government is.

Well, boeing is the biggest military contractor on the planet? GM stands for government motors, no? google, facebook, nsa front ends, etc. Materially, they are a lesser threat than the government since their business is not to kill people (well boeing just makes the weapons...), but, they are the main criminal partners of the government anyway. Looks like Dan Geer wants to divert attention from the 'legal' masters of corporatism to the corporatists themselves....

...

Legally, none of them can do what you quoted above.

On Wed, 16 Apr 2014 19:57:17 -0400 dan@geer.org wrote:

...

Looks like Dan Geer wants to divert attention from the 'legal' masters of corporatism to the corporatists themselves....

It depends on whether you believe that a promise of procedurally satisfactory data handling can be relied upon.

If you mean promises from the government, or from their corporatist partners, no, of course, I don't. Regarding your quote below, It may be possible, in the not-so-distant-future, to record people in ultra high definition from a mile away, but the 'technology' can be rendered rather useless with somthing like...this http://ramitia.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/japan-face-masks.jpg Of course, at that point, google and general dynamics are going to knock on the pentagon's door and ask them to ban masks. Quoting (as I'm on

the record) from "Tradeoffs in Cyber Security," given last October at the Univ. of North Carolina, Charlotte.

http://geer.tinho.net/geer.uncc.9x13.txt

<snippet>

Today I observe a couple fornicating on a roof top in circumstances where I can never know who the couple are. Do they have privacy? The answer is "no" if your definition of privacy is the absence of observability. The answer is "yes" if your definition of privacy is the absence of identifiability.

Technical progress in image acquisition guarantees observability pretty much everywhere now. Standoff biometrics are delivering multi-factor identifiability at ever greater distances. We will soon live in a society where identity is not an assertion like "My name is Dan," but rather an observable like "Sensors confirm that is Dan." With enough sensors, concentration camps don't need to tatoo their inmates. How many sensors are we installing in normal life?

If routine data acquisition kills both privacy as impossible-to-observe and privacy as impossible-to-identify, then what might be an alternative? If you are an optimist or an apparatchik, then your answer will tend toward rules of procedure administered by a government you trust or control. If you are a pessimist or a hacker/maker, then your answer will tend towards the operational, and your definition of a state of privacy will be mine: the effective capacity to misrepresent yourself.

</snippet>

--dan ===== the above and other material on file under geer.tinho.net/pubs

The eye of god is upon the earth, sin not heathens. unavoidable sin is required to justify god business. No insecurity, no god security blanket app. Prayer is more effective than encryption. Kickstart a religion, call it Darksec. Give away free, with 3D funny hats and walks and masks. Beguile officials into raiding your printer buried under Hettinga's compost of coconut shell Bitcoins. At 10:09 PM 4/17/2014, dan@geer.org wrote:

| | It may be possible, in the not-so-distant-future, to record | people in ultra high definition from a mile away, but the | 'technology' can be rendered rather useless with somthing | like...this | | http://ramitia.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/japan-face-masks.jpg |

At this time, it is possible to do facial recognition at 500 meters, iris recognition at 50 meters, and heartbeat recognition at 5 meters. A newspaper open on a table can be read from orbit. DNA samples can be matched in under half a hour. Your smartphone can identify your gait, your face in that selfie, the idiosyncracies of your typing, your fingerprint and/or anything else you wish to lay on the screen. Light fixtures in public venues provide light but also house a camera, sensors for CO/CO2/pollutant emissions, seismic activity, humidity & UV radiation, a microphone, wifi and/or cellular interfaces, an extensible API, an IPv4 or v6 address per LED, a capacity for disconnected "decision making on the pole," and cloud-based remote management. Every cow you eat is tracked cradle to grave with RFID tagging under the National Animal Identification System, the infrastructure for which handles 100 million cattle and works for any mammal, of which you are one. Any newish car is broadcasting several Bluetooth beacons as is your newish iPhone. Forensics can now match photo to camera as crisply as matching bullet to barrel. The Smart Meter soon to be imposed on your electric tap will know everything you own, and report. More and more people you meet will be part of the system -- that wearables like Google Glass are so readily detectible is just a brief moment in time. Cars are soon to be mandated to implement wireless vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communications using extensible protocols intended to include route-based payment now that too many people are driving green cars. Your various insurers will buy your data for a pittance of discount but will also know when, say, blood pressure for everyone in the house or the neighborhood rises together. A wife may not be impelled to testify against a husband, but cannot her digital exhaust be subpoenaed to the same effect?

But you know all that, paper hospital masks notwithstanding.

--dan

On Thu, 17 Apr 2014 22:09:36 -0400 dan@geer.org wrote:

| | It may be possible, in the not-so-distant-future, to record | people in ultra high definition from a mile away, but the | 'technology' can be rendered rather useless with somthing | like...this | | http://ramitia.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/japan-face-masks.jpg |

At this time, it is possible to do facial recognition at 500 meters, iris recognition at 50 meters, and heartbeat recognition at 5 meters. A newspaper open on a table can be read from orbit. DNA samples can be matched in under half a hour. Your smartphone can identify your gait, your face in that selfie, the idiosyncracies of your typing, your fingerprint and/or anything else you wish to lay on the screen. Light fixtures in public venues provide light but also house a camera, sensors for CO/CO2/pollutant emissions, seismic activity, humidity & UV radiation, a microphone, wifi and/or cellular interfaces, an extensible API, an IPv4 or v6 address per LED, a capacity for disconnected "decision making on the pole," and cloud-based remote management. Every cow you eat is tracked cradle to grave with RFID tagging under the National Animal Identification System, the infrastructure for which handles 100 million cattle and works for any mammal, of which you are one. Any newish car is broadcasting several Bluetooth beacons as is your newish iPhone. Forensics can now match photo to camera as crisply as matching bullet to barrel. The Smart Meter soon to be imposed on your electric tap will know everything you own, and report. More and more people you meet will be part of the system -- that wearables like Google Glass are so readily detectible is just a brief moment in time. Cars are soon to be mandated to implement wireless vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communications using extensible protocols intended to include route-based payment now that too many people are driving green cars. Your various insurers will buy your data for a pittance of discount but will also know when, say, blood pressure for everyone in the house or the neighborhood rises together. A wife may not be impelled to testify against a husband, but cannot her digital exhaust be subpoenaed to the same effect?

But you know all that, paper hospital masks notwithstanding.

Well, the scenario you paint is scary and looks a bit like science fiction. On one hand I do get your point. On the other hand I can't help but mention again that your iris-recognition-from-orbit can be defeated with $5 contact lenses. Other 'technologies' can certainly be more intrusive. >The Smart Meter soon to be imposed >Cars are soon to be mandated to implement Mandated by?...by jesus...or by the american government, which amounts to the same thing. Anyway, all this is of course a political problem and so it requires a political solution. A solution that government, which is the driving force behind the problem, isn't going to provide.

--dan

On Fri, 18 Apr 2014 15:34:38 -0700 Manning-ISI wrote:

...

. Other 'technologies' can certainly be more intrusive.

you mean like these guys? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contact_Lens

Yes...That isn't...encouraging.

...

...

The Smart Meter soon to be imposed

by SoCalEd & PGE in California...

...

...

Cars are soon to be mandated to implement

Japan is clearly headed in that direction...

...

Mandated by?...by jesus...or by the american government, which amounts to the same thing.

Anyway, all this is of course a political problem and so it requires a political solution.

Actually, its an economics problem...

Care to elaborate?

...

...

--dan

[I didn't get a bounce off of CP the first time] From: "dan@geer.org" |     It may be possible, in the not-so-distant-future, to record |     people in ultra high definition from a mile away, but the |     'technology'  can be rendered rather useless with somthing |     like...this | |     http://ramitia.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/japan-face-masks.jpg |

At this time, it is possible to do facial recognition at 500 meters, iris recognition at 50 meters, and heartbeat recognition at 5 meters. A newspaper open on a table can be read from orbit. 

I strongly doubt the part about reading the newspaper from orbit.  I don't doubt that the pattern of text and pictures on the  front page could be identified from orbit. ('Identifying the difference between Pravda and Izvestia'.)   An approximation I once heard is that a lens or mirror of about 4.5 inch in diameter can resolve an angle of one arc-second.  A mirror of the size of the Hubble Space Telescope (which I assume approximates that of the typical spy satellite today) is about 20x larger, so the resolution should be 20x better, or 1/20 arc-second.  That's 1/(57 degrees per radian)(3600arcseconds per degree)(20) = 1/4,100,000 radian.  From an altitude of 500 kilometers, that's about 1/8 of a meter, or 120 millimeter.  Maybe that's a pixel-pair, but it's far too large to resolve the text on a newspaper.   The best prospect to improve on this resolution would be to use a 'multiple-mirror-telescope' technology.  Light-gathering capability isn't important in this application; high resolution is.  Making a spy-telescope out of a few different mirrors, held precisely many meters apart, could conceivable achieve resolutions substantially greater than this.         Jim Bell

From: Troy Benjegerdes To: jim bell  

[I didn't get a bounce off of CP the first time] Izvestia'.)   An approximation I once heard is that a lens or mirror of about 4.5 inch in diameter can resolve an >>angle of one arc-second.  A mirror of the size of the Hubble Space Telescope (which I assume approximates >>that of the typical spy satellite today) is about 20x larger, so the resolution should be 20x better, or 1/20 arc->>second.  That's 1/(57 degrees per radian)(3600arcseconds per degree)(20) = 1/4,100,000 radian.  From an >>altitude of 500 kilometers, that's about 1/8 of a meter, or 120 millimeter.  Maybe that's a pixel-pair, but it's far >>too large to resolve the text on a newspaper.  

...

...

The best prospect to improve on this resolution would be to use a 'multiple-mirror-telescope' technology. > >Light-gathering capability isn't important in this application; high resolution is.  Making a spy-telescope out of a >>few different mirrors, held precisely many meters apart, could conceivable achieve resolutions substantially >>greater than this.    Jim Bell Such a mirror array would at some point reflect enough light at odd angles to be visible with the naked eye. I find it more likely that multiple-mirror-telescope tech would be implemented with a swarm of small satellites and extremely precise location tracking and a lot of signal processing later on.

I sure find that difficult to imagine!  Particularly because the assemblage would presumably be flying at about 500 kilometers altitude, and would therefore be buffeted by extremely-small-but-significant orbital winds.  In addition, the amount of information that would have to be interchanged (phase and amplitude, in TWO dimensions!) of an entire field of view would be phenomenal.   What I suspect the US military would really like to see is a spy satellite at geosync altitude (22,000 miles) with an apparent aperture of perhaps 150 meters, so that it has roughly the same resolution on the ground as existing fast-orbital spy satellites.  (orbital period circa 90 minutes or so).               Jim Bell

Balloons, that's what the military uses for high resolution imagery. And they are so good to stay aloft that not even with a .50 machine gun you would be able to down it. The only way to do that is to fly a drone nearby carrying some pounds of dynamite and fire it off.

Blimps sure... restricted dynamite?, just sit on top and dump burning petrol, drill, cut, etc. Unless you get balloons that way on launch (high climb rate is hard to target), high altitude (weather/spy) balloons are not reachable by anything less than missiles. Small holes in anything will prohibit reaching station and/or limit hold time. Drones are just as good for most things, that's why everyone has them now, even you.

Such a mirror array would at some point reflect enough light at odd angles to be visible with the naked eye.

Moot, the minute you drop some sat into orbit everyone knows it's there even if they don't yet know what it does. Some speculate at least the US uses angled optical/radar shields to hide the bulk of some crafts from ground/orbital view. Sounds like a lot of game for that, especially when aerospace industry spies could provide the same general infos.

I find it more likely that multiple-mirror-telescope tech would be implemented with a swarm of small satellites and extremely precise location tracking and a lot of signal processing later on.

Seems really difficult to fly and calibrate. ie: would certainly need better than gps timing onboard each. Maybe 1km pyramid of four could range each other well enough, no idea. As Jim referenced, membranes and cheap ridgid multi mirror systems may be better. Remember Hubble was scrap when launched, but given a reference image (or in its case, a grind pattern) corrected/adaptive optics fixed it into gold.

| To the best of my knowledge (which is about six months out of date), | satellite swarms that would act in a similar fashion to what is | described above are still in their infancy. I do not believe any have | been launched yet (if I did, I probably wouldn't be able to posts to | mailing lists like this...) Get thee to the stream at http://www.cubesat.org/ --dan

On Sat, Apr 19, 2014, at 10:44 AM, jim bell wrote:

[I didn't get a bounce off of CP the first time]

Jim, it did post to the list the first time. This has happened to me before, as well: I've received an off-list reply from someone to a message (sent only to the list) long before I saw it post on the list. There is often a delay and I'm not sure why; I'll look at the path in headers the next time it happens. (Also, on-topic: you make some good points here!)

From: "" <>

|     It may be possible, in the not-so-distant-future, to record |     people in ultra high definition from a mile away, but the |     'technology'  can be rendered rather useless with somthing |     like...this | |     |

...

At this time, it is possible to do facial recognition at 500 meters, iris recognition at 50 meters, and heartbeat recognition at 5 meters. A newspaper open on a table can be read from orbit. 

I strongly doubt the part about reading the newspaper from orbit.  I don't doubt that the pattern of text and pictures on the  front page could be identified from orbit. ('Identifying the difference between Pravda and Izvestia'.)   An approximation I once heard is that a lens or mirror of about 4.5 inch in diameter can resolve an angle of one arc-second.  A mirror of the size of the Hubble Space Telescope (which I assume approximates that of the typical spy satellite today) is about 20x larger, so the resolution should be 20x better, or 1/20 arc-second. That's 1/(57 degrees per radian)(3600arcseconds per degree)(20) = 1/4,100,000 radian.  From an altitude of 500 kilometers, that's about 1/8 of a meter, or 120 millimeter.  Maybe that's a pixel-pair, but it's far too large to resolve the text on a newspaper.  

The best prospect to improve on this resolution would be to use a 'multiple-mirror-telescope' technology.  Light-gathering capability isn't important in this application; high resolution is.  Making a spy-telescope out of a few different mirrors, held precisely many meters apart, could conceivable achieve resolutions substantially greater than this.         Jim Bell

On Sun, Apr 20, 2014 at 9:44 PM, wrote:

... perhaps you would prefer this

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27067012

i wear my 'eggar[0] suit in public. or did, until it became made known unto me that such disguises are socially inappropriate. perhaps a better idea is to go in public as a celebrity, thereby confounding the automated identification systems while improving the odds of better service from others. ;) best regards, 0. donning the skin of an earth human as camouflage - "Wearing an Edgar suit" http://filmschoolrejects.com/features/meet-edgar-in-this-scene-we-love-from-...

"Google has a fairly broad commitment to freedom of expression. There are actually people whose entire job here is to advocate for and work on freedom of expression. I know because I had a lot of meetings with them about anonymizing proxy abuse :) Perhaps because Sergey escaped the Soviet Union as a child, or maybe because it makes sense regardless. " https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-January/027040.html So children, you can soundly sleep at night now. Your god-given rights are safe thanks to ex-rusky victims of communism who morphed into fascist, I mean, free-market heroes.

At 02:42 AM 4/16/2014, Gregory Foster wrote:

On 4/15/14, 11:40 PM, tpb-crypto@laposte.net wrote:

...

Companies cannot seize your property, put you in jail and queue you to the death row.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi

...

The company received widespread publicity in 2007 when a group of its employees shot at Iraqi civilians killing 17 and injuring 20 in Nisour Square, Baghdad. ... Blackwater was also hired during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina by the United States Department of Homeland Security, as well as by private clients, including communications, petrochemical and insurance companies.

Do you have any evidence that any of those victims were targeted for any reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time? You seem to be conflating war with companies exercising a variant of eminent domain.

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 9:40 PM, wrote:

... Companies cannot seize your property, put you in jail and queue you to the death row.

it takes a "strategic partner" to do that ;) we should be deeply concerned about both government and private industry privacy invasion, as they're both faces of unrestrained incentives working against our interests; both especially effective at eroding our privacy toward different ends via shared means. "The Intercept" has still not published leaks relevant to PayPal's involvement in PRISM(like) collection...

On Mon, 14 Apr 2014 22:08:29 +0200 tpb-crypto@laposte.net wrote:

...

However, all their technical expertise exists to achieve some political goals. And when you look at the political beliefs of these people, you see that they suck big time. As engineers they may be competent, but there's a step above engineering, and there, they fail.

Since when politics is a "step above" anything? Politicians are the lowest of the low thugs and thus so is their art of thievery.

Indeed. And what I'm getting at is that there are people in the 'security' industry who either consider politicians and the state to be a 'necessary evil', or worse, think that politicians and the political system they serve, are A Good Thing. In a nearby mailing list, there are a bunch of people who are funded by the american military(psycho killers) to create a so called 'anomity network'. Regardless of how good they are at writing code, their political beliefs are sick garbage. They operate on the laughable premise that they are the 'good guys' Same people who, when called out on the source of their funding have one argument : "you're a tinfoil conspiracy theorist!" (Wait, of course, that's not an argument, just puerile name-calling) So, I didn't mean that politicians are above engineers. I mean that political beliefs and understanding of political theory are more important than crypto knowledge. When a guy comes along quoting thomas jefferson and the like, rest assured he's part of the problem.