Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: DCS 1000, Dmitry, Lizardry
Please let the shock penetrate the numbness. sethbc writes: "Well, it looks like the House has passed the DOJ Appropriations bill, giving the DOJ authority to use Carnivore for surveillance. The Tech Law Journal outlines the provisions for using Carnivore. I'm just glad I still have public key encryption."
Doesn't "DCS 1000" have sort of a nice homey ring to it? Maybe it reminds you of your Brother. Remember, encrypt your public key encryption software, and keep a copy with the other munitions.
That bandwidth rate is a little ... unusual. David's McOwen's case has raised quote a stir. If you missed word of this the first time, McOwen is being sued, and threatened with jail time, for installing the distributed.net client.
polymorf points to this article at Van's Hardware Journal, which features links to an online petition at petitiononline containing the comments of over 1800 people, and to relevant sites at tacube and freemcowen.
Cleverly disguise your hidden attraction to the DMCA. fenix down writes: "Lawrence Lessig has written an excellent op-ed piece in the NY Times (yeah, yeah, gotta register) on Dmitri Sklyarov and the DMCA. It nicely summarizes the problems with the DMCA as well as the Sklyarov and Felten cases. The dead-tree version gives me hope that this will be read. Big, eye-catching cartoon, center page, right under an article by Ehud Barak."
And since (despite? because of) all the attention he's gotten, Dmitry's wife's husband is still in jail, zlern writes: "Pictures from the protest to Free Dmitry in San Francisco today are available at sf.freesklyarov.org. Looks like about 150 people. Have you sent letters to your congresscritters yet?"
Stubborn contributor Chris DiBona contributes a link to an interesting DMCA resource, his DMCA Declaration, noting that it already has nearly 10,000 signatures, and that if people haven't signed up yet, they should as it becomes more useful the more people sign on.
Burning, Green -- fyuze or reptile? In response to the recent discussion of the Reptile content syndication system, ikarus-fallen writes:
"I was particularly intrigued by the post on the Reptile project today, because I run and develop a similar project, fyuze. The idea behind fyuze is similar to the idea behind Reptile: automate the process of retrieving, organizing and sifting through data. This eliminates the need to hop from site to site to collect information, and provides a certain level of convenience. Add in features that make it possible to have the system automatically scan for content that matches a particular criteria, along with the ability to search arbitrarily, and you've got a great way to collect all the news you want, and quickly find all the latest reviews for, say, 'Planet of the Apes.'fyuze differs from Reptile significantly in that it is a web-based system, not a client P2P application, meaning there is no software to install, simply log on, create an account, and then re-logon from anywhere else. This means that (in the future) it will be possible to use fyuze via a cell phone, or PDA, or any other web enabled device, like the flat-screen mounted to your fridge.
To simply list a couple of features, fyuze allows users to add content/feeds to the system, it supports RDF/RSS as well as plain old HTML, it has a skinnable interface via CSS, it allows for real-time content collection and related intelligent caching mechanisms, and has an advanced (content can span multiple rows and columns) layout system.
The real-time collection mechanism allows for fyuze to retrieve user specific information from a site. This means that a weblog could provide a user with not only the latest posts, but also information on recent replies to that user's comments, status of pending posts, karma, etc.
fyuze is only about a month old, so you may find it's selection of content a little small, but many popular sites are available. Besides, users can add content, so if you run a site, add it!
For more info, it might be helpful to read the following k5 article: Quest for the Ultimate Homepage"
The thing about congressional petitions is, they work if you pick the district of an important-enough congressman to target, especially if his seat isn't contested one and he has more leeway than others to take on new initiatives.
The nature of federal districting is that, while states with small populations have few seats in the House, the ratio of citizens/congressman in those states is larger than in others. But while the populations may be small, the political clout wielded by that congressman may be disproportionately large. Daschle is a bad example since he's a Senator, but it's not an anomoly that a politician from South Dakota can end up running the show.
All it takes is one congressman championing your cause, and you have your foot in the door. The nature of partisan horsetrading is that a single politician can get his hobbyhorse enacted in order to win his vote on other issues. Exon's Communications Decency Act didn't have broad political support, but it got inserted into the Telecommuinications Act of 1996 all the same, as part of such a deal. It's all the easier when the cause is one that has vocal public support and few proponents except among enforcement agencies. They listen to enforcement agencies, but they're elected by the people, so when push comes to shove, politicians will surprisingly side with the latter more than you'd think.
Just an interesting thought about making criminal the activity of reverse engineering.
I heard a saying once, "Locks are made to keep honest people out". The point here is that if I INSIST on getting in, the lock won't stop me.
The encryption algorithm used is the lock. The law "protects" me against a criminal by making it a crime to break and enter. I can put a $200000 quaduple deadbolt with solid steel reinforement, 20 armed guards, and an alarm system in place if I want to keep people out, or I can buy the cheap $20 padlock that can easily be cut by a bolt cutter. The crime to break in is the same. However, one of these methods is likely to stop that person from breaking in.
A weak encryption scheme is the same as using a cereal box lock as your sole form of protection. Granted, I'll have to break it to get in, and yes, I'll still be as criminally responsible if I do, but you made it extremely easy for me. The point is, you don't HAVE to protect yourself from honest people. Honest people aren't going to steal from you.
Those that WILL steal from you won't be stopped by something as trivial as a plastic lock. You're going to have to put something strong and solid there. You're going to have to PREVENT them from breaking in. And no law is going to do that, only something that is solid and unbreakable will.
If I decide to go around taking apart locks to see which ones I'll be able to break into, I should have that right, because a lock is only SECURE if I'm able to take it apart and still not know how to break it. Encryption is the same.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
So I propose that the US and Russia have a good, old fashioned, prisoner exchange. Current coverage is also available from the NY Times.
Simply put, the EFF needs money ... if it is to give large enough bribes to the Plutocrats who inhabit your public offices.
*THIS* is what all the anit-capialists in Seattle, Washington, Prague, Quebec, Genova and the rest are talking about - make no mistake, this is simply another 'aspect' of the problems people are protesting. Protesters themselves, those without the proper technical information, are in-line with the ideals behind the Free Softare Movement, and Source as Free Speech.
Next time (www.protest.net) a Capitalist-Summit of some type comes to *your* region - GO AND CARRY A SIGN!
The more relevant postscript is that he is being criminally prosecuted and faces more jail time than a typical rapist or murderer, for something that merited sacking at most.
He violated what is often perceived as a nuisance-level TOS provision in network administration, did exceed his authority in doing so, and got fired. (Even that may have been excessive, considering the tameness of the offense, but in these days of viruses and worms and such I can understand the knee-jerk overreaction.)
Now the State is going to crush him like a bug. Even if he prevails in trial he will be wiped out financially, his name dragged through the newspapers, and suffer years of uncertainty about his future. There is nothing whatsoever fair or just about this.
The sad thing is that there is little we can do about District Attorneys who violate all standards of reasonableness and humanity in this way. Near here a few years ago our DA launched an aggressive prosecution against a woman whose baby died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Even her pediatrician testified for her, but she was poor and ill-spoken and the white middle-class jurists of the more affluent community next door convicted her of negligent homicide.
It's either a wonderful sign of how stable the US is, or a tragic sign of what sheep we've become, that none of these evil pieces of shit ever get assassinated.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]