Slashdot Mirror
Fighting Terrorists Through Software, Anonymously?
Silwenae writes "MSNBC has a story online from this week's Newsweek about Jeff Jonas, founder of System Research and Development. SRD's software attempts to verify a person is who he says he is, and then tries to determine who that person may be connected with. Originally used in casinos, the CIA has invested in SRD for use in the war against terrorism. Apparently, Jonas has developed a system that can anonymize the data being analyzed through hashing, so the government can share this information with the private sector to look for hits, without the private sector seeing the specific data."
Finally a potentially good system for fighting terrorism.
I hope this software has the desired effect.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
then tries to determine who that person may be connected with.
Does this software detect siamese twins?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I.e. so the state can put people it doesn't like on the list of people to be tracked with less risk that that person, or the rest of us, can know who is on the list.
Yeah, that's really reassuring.
Big brother may be watching you, but you have no way of knowing...
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
His response was to invent ANNA ("NORA's little sister," he explains), a system that "anonymizes" data by an encryption technique called hashing. Because the data are scrambled, private records can be shared with the government and secret watch lists can be distributed to private entities, all without fear--because they can't be read
Although this is a step in the right direction, hashing algorithms can be brute forced right ?
I mean, this information may be valid for years, a thing you did when you where 18 may still be there when you are 50. I don't think this data should be distributed much at all, even though it's encrypted.
Great. While there are definite positive privacy things they _could_ accomplish with this, it's also open to lots of possible problems like "The computer said you matched a terrorist's name, no we don't know why, or where the list came from, we just have to cancel your account and call the police on you" which are as hard to defend against as being on the "No-Fly List" of Americans whose rights to travel are arbitrarily and unconstitutionally limited, or the "Strip-Search-Before-Flying" list, or the "Hollywood Suspected Commies Blacklist".
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
As much as I am against terrorism, these technologies are going to be used on us, not terrorists! What are we going to do when our government overlords decide to enslave us? The patriot act, operations tips, now this. The war on terrorism can be faught without completely giving up our privacy and freedom. What if we don't want to be in some big government database? What if we don't want to be watched all the time, or put on some list? But you know, when you agree to give your government the power to spy on you, you also agree to give your government even more power over you and for so called conservatives this big government stuff is hypocritical. At least the democrats want to make government big with social programs, this is becoming a facist police state. Thank you Mr. Bush
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
If you want to end terrorism then end linux.
/sbin/shutdown -h now
#
Thanks for the tip, I'm sure glad I could do my part to fight terr
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
no, of course not. This is something which will be used against us. Its not just an issue of false negatives, its an issue of, if the government wants to they can spy on and harrass anyone for any reason, label anyone a terrorist since they define the term, and tap anyones phone or internet anywhere on anyone for any reason.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Still don't like it.
:)
:)
Just because they are searching for hash matches instead of plaintext doesn't mean profiling en-mass is right. It just means nosey companys who are being 'asked' won't know WHAT they are being 'asked' about.
Gee, bob the builder knowns mahek alzis. Mahek is a suspected link betwene so and so, and then he works for this manager, and then these people. Hmm, we better start asking alot of questions..see who else matches our '(personal network) search criteria'
What, you think i'm kidding?
(And yes, some of you are going to explode that this sort of search-and-peck is not profiling, when it really is. Look it up. Searching through personal *profiles* and *information* to find any people who match enough of the criteria = profiling.)
This sort of thing is bull, It really is. Instead of doing real investigative work, they can just whip up a list of 'possible hits',snatch them all up, and then queston and otherwise probably scare the shit out of all of them - hoping their deeper searches find a hit in the crowd.
Welcome to the nightmare, please don't choke on the red pill while the door is hitting you in the ass.
[/tinfoil-hat]
My new top secret key -> C>N|KB
There is really nothing new to this technology. It does not do what it claims. Hashing has been around for while, and so have techniques to defeat the attempted security of this type of system. Interestingly, I have seen around five stories from various forums reporting on SRD in the past week or so. It seems like some marketing department is working pretty hard.
I understand fighting terrorism, but fighting terrorism has nothing to do with this. This is just outright invasion of privacy to the nth degree. Whats the point of living in America if we are going to throw the constitution into the trash and become a police state like Saddams Iraq once was? This country is supposed to be the most free, now we let some terrorists rob us of our greatest strength? What are people dying for in Iraq?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
The credit card companies, for example, have access to a LOT of data. People seem to be content with that.
And it is ridiculous how much information about your activities are already out there, though not publicly accessible, accessible to certain organisations.
I think the scariest bit about this article is that casinos have access to your, YES YOUR, data. And if casinos can do that, so can the mafia.
The government having access to all this information is only a part of the problem. The real problem is, how much of it is available to bad guys, like telemarketeers and the Russian Mafia.
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
Can anybody help me and define the limits of the problem "the war against terrorism"?
It strikes much of the issue is defining the problem, hey we're geeks right, give us a spec to build to, yup? This seems to be the chief concern of slashdot posters so far, that the problem has not been bounded and there are varying interpretations being made on what the problem is. How can we define the problem? Or are we accepting that the term is a worthless media and political construct to sell newspapers and justify military/ intelligence spending? Can we frame this fuzzy problem in a more meaningful way?
Obligatory quote:
"Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security deserve neither security nor liberty." - Benjamin Franklin
My personal opinion on the matter is that you can't fight a war against terrorism without looking at what the root causes of that terrorism are. The fact is, that at the moment the west is seemingly willing to just overlook what the causes of terrorism are, and are trying to just blow the terrorists to smithereens.
When will people learn that labelling people "terrorists" and killing them just creates new "terrorists" at an exponential rate? As far as these "terrorists" are concerned, America and the UK are "terrorists" too.
Clever tracking software or not, "terrorists" are not going to go away until we start looking at why they are "terrorists" in the first place.
Just because a government chooses to carry out military activities, doesn't make them any less terroristic or any more legitimate.
Perhaps those doubting the terrorism carried out by the US and allies in Iraq should check this page for help in visualising the numbers.
Organic free-range music... yum!
You act like the Mafia has no competition, this isnt 1931, this is 2004. You have gangs, you have the irish, russian, jewish, spanish mafias, you have the yakuza, the triads, you have business men in the corporate world who are also in the criminal world, and you have gangs which are rich and powerful enough to get this information, the hells angels, the bloods, crips, latin kings, maybe some prison gangs. Basically anyone with money or influence can get this information. The casinos are run by the mafia, native americans, gang members, etc. Any of the people running these operations would likely sell your information to any other other organized crime group who has the cash. I'm not too concerned with the criminals having our information, generally they are out to profit and would sell guns to terrorists and drugs to our kids to profit before selling your credit history.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
So they claim using a hash "anonymises" huh?
Bullshit.
A half-baked solution that doesn't hold up to the simplest attack.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
I thought the whole point of hash encryption was that it's not able to ever be unencrypted, even by the legitimate users?
In order to check if there is a matching telephone number, you would first have to run the encryption algorithm on the number and then match this against every encrypted number you have in your data store. So if the two encrypted strings are equal, you have a match. But there is no way to know what the encrypted number is unless you have something to test for in the first place.
But I'm not sure how much use that is. Wouldn't you then need to be able to see who's number that is, i.e. decrypt the person's personal data?
Also, it would be interesting to see what the reaction to this software would be in the EU what with its Data Protection directive. Storing personal details about someone is prohibited except for certain circumstances... long term storage of someone's personal data for distribution to companies is not one of them. Whether the encryption of the data would make this acceptable or not would make for an interesting argument.
Patriotism - the last resort of scoundrels.
everyone will be connected with Bush andBin Laden....
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
I never said put all Arabs, I said put all people coming from those countries within the last 10 or so years. Theres a difference. Racist would be putting all Arabs including the ones born in this country, or who have been here for generations on that list. By the way, I don't think we should just put Arabs on the list, we should put ANYONE coming from those countries, white, black, asian, I don't care what race, anyone coming from the wrong countries within the last 10 years should go on that list. We SHOULD watch those people because they come from the countries we are at war with, DUH. If you are arab and you've been here for your whole life, you shouldnt go on the list. Racist? no, Nationalist? maybe. If you want to be fair, fine, anyone who is not a US citizen should be put on the watch list.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
And then there's the problem of extra data hidden in the hashes - some of the signature algorithms, for instance, can carry a bunch of hidden "subliminal" bits, like the one that says you're a Jew or black or Dues-Paying Republican or a Federal Agent or a Known Troublemaker.
Spelling is a real problem. I have enough trouble because my ancestors or their relatives were either illiterate or at least using names like "Stewart" "Stuart" "Steward" and "Steuart" before English spelling became relatively standardized. But Americans munging the names of people who use other alphabets, like Arabs, or who don't use alphabets at all, like Chinese, can't just use simple hashes, because any misspelling can either let somebody whose name is the same as a Real Suspect not get flagged, or let some non-suspect whose name is close to a Real Suspect get flagged, and any terrorist smarter than the Shoe-Bomber knows to use an alternative spelling of his name or get some fake ID. You probably know Chinese people who use different names in English and Chinese, either as immigrants or kids of immigrants; I knew a Hakka Chinese family from Vietnam who also had Vietnamese names, and in at least one of their languages, they had an alternate set of names for use within the family (approximately "Number One Son" etc.) And then there's the problem of exactly which name parts to use if you've got more than three, and nicknames, etc.
And then there's the problem of people whose names are the same as Real Suspects' names, and people who ever had their wallet stolen. Just spend a day in traffic court listening to DMV-screwed-up-and-I-got-arrested-by-mistake cases some time if you weren't already worried, or read any news article about identity theft.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Zero problems, but how many innocent people wrongly flagged as being unsavory?
How does this SRD system measure the accuracy of its conclusions?
The peoples of democratic countries need to wake up to the fact that terrorism represents less of a threat than their own governments' response to it. Even 9/11, the worst terrorist attack in history, did not do much to increase the annual rate of homicides in the US. It remains much more dangerous to cross the street, drive to the supermarket, walk in the hills, or go for a drink on a weekend night (let alone smoking or eating burgers). We need to accept, and insist our governments accept, that there are risks involved in the world, of which terrorism is by no means the greatest, and that these cannot be eliminated while maintining a reasonable quality of life.
So google just setup orkut so they can see who you know. Sensible really.
...does this work? I mean, the theory goes that we're all connected by 6 degrees of seperation. How do they define a connection? Depending on these factors, anyone could be condemned as connected somehow with undesirables.
Hashing != encryption.
Encryption is intended to be unencrypted.
Hashing is one way because it involves information loss. It is not encryption: there is nothing secret. For example simple hashing algorithm might be "take the ascii value for each character in string and add them all up, rolling over each time you reach 10,000". The result will be a hash. Which is dependent on the data you put in- is impossible to *directly* extract the original data (you could use a lookup table to do it). As I said though, this is NOT encryption.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Pure and simple.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
If you search deep enough, you'll find something which will link me to a terrorist group. Just broaden your definition of terrorism wide enough, make the links deep enough and oh my...
It will be cheaper to put a fence around the whole country I'm living in than to build prisons for all of us.
bash$
In other news, CIA decided to change /etc/shadow permissions to 644.
We asked about this move
Jeff Jonas, founder of System Research and Development, who introduced this novel idea to CIA.
His response was to use MD5 ("MD4's successor,"
he explains), a system that "anonymizes" data by an encryption technique called hashing. Because the data are scrambled, our passwords can be shared with terrorists and script kiddies, all without fear--because they can't be read.
"Who's Alec Muffet? Brute-what? I have no more comments," he added after hearing some questions from the audience.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
It is not sensible to publish this data - even in "anonymous form." Use of hashing will only prevent a party with access to the hash from directly reverse engineering the hashed data to arrive at a list of suspect names - however this completely misses the mark.
If I were a terrorist organisation planning something like 9/11 and I knew many of my lemming-recruits would be identified by airport security as risks, I would process my terrorist volunteers myself and only send those who would not raise any eyebrows. This information (anonymous though it is) would be of great value as it would eliminate another uncertainty from the evil plan.
If I were a private individual with interest in knowing the identities of all suspects then I would be able to mount a dictionary attack using, say, the electoral role or census data - with only a few billion people worldwide, a modest cluster of PCs would be able to exhaustively search for matches in reasonable time.
Finally - if this anonymous data were to be available only to authorities to whom the raw information would otherwise have been available then this approach is still a disadvantage. Without access to the reason for someone matching, it will make it much harder for authorities to make appropriate judgement calls based upon a match. The mere possibility that a match might be due to a hashing collision or data- entry errors prior to hashing could result in the wrong decisions being taken. There is certainly a risk that without information on why someone is a suspected risk that related vital clues may be missed - possibly resulting in an otherwise preventable disaster.
This is just an opinion but it seems like the war on terrorism isn't a problem, it's a solution. How so? Politicians use it to much their agenda in the name of the "solution". Re-elect Bush Jr for the war on terrorism! This software is part of the "solution". In truth, the war on terrorism is about effective as the war on drugs. Look at a country with real terrorist problems like Israel -- responding with force just leads to more bloodshed on both sides. Americans write Osama off as being a wacky insane loon but his version of truth isn't so different than ours. Until America wakes up and realizes why people hate us and DOES something about it we're going to lose the war on terrorism. We can't become allies to people one second, train and arm them, and then turn our backs on them when we get what we want. Maybe we need peace with terrorists instead of war against them.
...so the government can share this information with the private sector to look for hits, without the private sector seeing the specific data.
I was under the impression it would require a strong level of DRM to enforce such a thing. And in fact the DRM would be the only thing special about this. Aside form DRM, how is this not just another database!?
The US governments reactions to terrorist threats are exactly what the terrorists wanted.
They now have thousands of US servicemen they can take pot shots at any time they feel like a laugh.
There is now a second destabilised regime in the middle east within which they can work. Who wants to put money on Iraq not collapsing into civil war within 5 years of the allies pulling out?
The US government is now monitoring it's citizens movements, associations and actions closely. Security being the word of the day, not freedom.
As far as I can see, the US is going down the terrorist's list of 101 fun things to do and basically just going along with them.
Deleted
You say: "terrorist"
You mean: "enemy of corporate america's interests"
you say what many think.
OK, lets think of what it takes to look up one person.
First of all the database has to be searched for that one person. Should not take much time. Then load all data, and follow all potential leads. This makes it necesary to repeat these steps for all the clues returned.
In a database such as this, there will be a shitload of Gbs that has to be checked, and if every airport is going to do this, it will be a heck of a load average on the server that has this database. Or, if the database is distributed, there will be alot of bandwidth needed, since all these databases has to be updated with the latest info. And most of all: the CPU-usage would be outrageous. This leads to another question:
Is it possible to start a system like SETI@Home?
this is probably the most boring sig in the world
how many innocent people wrongly flagged as being unsavory?
... that way, I'm less likely to be eaten alive ... although, yes, they may chew me up and spit me out.
I prefer being an "unsavory character"
-kgj
-kgj
About a year ago I came up with this song.
Now I'm going to sing it.
Puff the Nuclear Weapon
Puff the Nuclear Weapon was pointed at Iraq,
and waited in his submarine for the signal to attack.
Little George Bush Junior, he loved that rascal puff,
and all those days, he nightly prayed for the UN to get tough.
oh
Puff the Nuclear Weapon lived in the sea,
protecting all our freedoms to
a brand new SUV.
Puff the Nuclear Weapon lived in the sea,
protecting all our freedoms to
a brand new SUV.
Now Puff he liked to travel, so he wore travelling clothes
While Bush was home and on the phone, from locations undisclosed.
Presidents and Princes, they bowed when'ere he came,
and Nation States lowered their flags when Puff roared out his name.
oh
Puff the Nuclear Weapon defender of the peace,
securing the world's oil supply
and the occasional golden fleece.
Puff the Nuclear Weapon defender of the peace,
securing the world's oil supply
and hte occasional golden fleece.
Plutonium lasts for ever, but not so little boys.
ICBMs and M-16s give way to... other toys.
And one grey day it happened: The traders broke the Dow.
So Puff the Nuclear Weapon's on the open market now.
His warhead packed in plastic, green crates that bore his name.
Poor Puff would not intimidate for the Stars and Stripes again.
Without his life long friend, poor puff could not be brave,
so al-Qaida hid that that weapon in a deep, dark, man-made cave.
oh
Puff the Nuclear Weapon lived in the sea,
but now he's in a backpack
some where close to you and me.
Puff the Nuclear Weapon defender of the free,
and you can blame it all upon
Bush fiscal policy.
Sorry if I've just raised your subversion quotient for having read this. but hey, we're slashdotters so that means we're all pretty much under suspicion of being a little odd anyway.
They don't beleive that Linux users are terrorist or supporting terrorism.
They do beleive that if theyu can convince the rest of the public that Linux = terrorism (+communism, +etc), then they can cause the end of open source and they will prevent Linux from diminishing their ecconomic control.
"Until America wakes up"? Tell that to the Spanish. They just got bombed for repelling the moors in the last crusade, their participation in Afghanistan and Iraq was just icing on the cake. Yes, that's right, Afghanistan. The war with UN approval. I guess nobody told the terrorists that the UN said it was okay.
"Peace with terrorists"? That's the biggest chimera of them all. They want you dead, they do not care if you are liberal, neocon, or centrist. If you want peace with them you have to put your woman in a headscarf and chuck out all your technology. America needs to wake up? No, sir, you need to wake up.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. --Edmund Burke
Authority without accountability is a recipe for abuse which has been illustrated many times each year. In the U.S. the corporate boards even lack representation from the employees, labor market or relevant union. Laugh at the problems democracy is having now, but how many corporate officers or board members did you have the chance to elect or have the job of representing you or your interests?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
While real, the issue of terrorism is just the latest scheme to get people to succumb to increased government control and surveillance. I wonder what the effect on the global terrorist threat would be if the US simply withdrew its troops from the 135 countries they are now stationed it (70% of the countries in the world or some such)?
They can't even find Osama Bin Laden (if he really even exists), and they know his name. What good is all this profiling going to do? It smacks of all the same horrible things that all Americans have been taught to rail against since, oh, probably 1945 or so. The world has been through this so many times. Do we need another Dark Ages (TM) to learn what history has already taught us? The victims of past totalitarian regimes are all screaming from their graves--"don't let this happen to you!"
a pdf describing "clueless agents" that can search through a dataset (or do other things) without the agent's code itself revealing what they are looking for/about to do.
Before anyone starts getting into a debate about whether or not we should fight [dubspeak]The Terrorists[/dubspeak], maybe we should just define a few terms, first ...
Americans have been gipped. Fact is, You All Lost The War On Terror, Already.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
The US governments reactions to terrorist threats are exactly what the terrorists wanted.
How so?
Has anyone in government thought about, if the terrorists stated aims really *are* to "destroy freedom and democracy", if we give up "essential liberties" for a little "temporary safety" or state heading down the path of a police state, or Fortress America, that the terrorists will in fact, have won.
The book Translucent Databases describes much of the same ideas. The website is here .
Indeed, and remember that in order for the program to do any good, it must be super sensitive in order to keep the random terrorist from slipping through the system. But false positives and sensitivity are related. So the more sensitive we make the test, the more innocent lives we are either invading or watching from a distance.
Also, think about the effort and/or money that would be spent on the wild goose chases that the false positives create.
Your statement above crystallizes two major problems in law-enforcement and counterterrorism efforts, namely determining
Most effort is expended on the latter of these two, that being the easier problem.
Indeed most people are innately lazy: they will use easy-to-find information (here, a computer search) in preference to seeking out alternative information sources. Also most people treat written (or computer-recorded) information as more authoritative than information from other (or new) sources. Indeed for all practical purposes, law-enforcement personnel treat text information as the only authoritative source of information other than their direct experience.
These are hard problems which lie at the core of the scientific method. They are of utmost concern to the scientific community as well as the political.
New math number candidates:
That is less serious than the following:
a detective can start with a person and the look for crimes committed in circumstances where that innocent person may have been simultaneously. By making a long list of circumstantial evidence, e.g., "Tom was
- At the mall when a robbery occurred,
- On Main Street when the 7-11 was robbed,
- unaccounted for when Joe Smith was shot,
..."
a strong circumstantial case can be made against Tom. Unfortunately this is often enough to convict.About DNA evidence: It is becoming common knowledge that a criminal could mislead investigators by "seeding" a crime scene with DNA from other people. Imagine being arrested because someone had seeded a crime scene with your hair or fingernails taken from the Dempster Dumpster of a salon, or a kleenex from the trash you throw out each day. This is a new form of identity theft.
Perhaps some terrorists wanted those things,
what about the other terrorists that wanted the USA to have a taste of what they inflict on other countries? Do you feel "FREE" lately?
No, you never, ever "just gotta kill".
If "the terrorists" hate non-Islamic people already, then why give them yet more ammunition for their cause? Why legitimise their reasons to hate us?
Attempting to kill them by starting wars in their part of the world only increases their credibility and furthers the objective of "the terrorists", because we become (in the eyes of many Muslims) the things they have already said we are. (Evil murdering imperialists, who want to destroy their way of life.)
The only path is to show them that we aren't evil imperialists bent on destroying their world, and the way to do that is NOT to exchange blows for blows. If we do what the terrorists have told their people we will do (invade their countries and kill their people), then we just play into their hands.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, and this policy of trying to crush "terrorists" is an insane and fucking dangerous one.
At the end of the day, Islamic nations just want the same thing as everyone else in the world does - to be able to live their lives as they wish, without having someone else's ideals imposed on them.
"Terrorists" only hate non-Islamic people because "we" (as in, our governments) have given them cause to. It is our duty to dissent against the way our governments are behaving, because it is they who are directly responsible for causing this terrorism by their sheer ignorance and blatant interference in the way other people live their lives. Until that changes, there will never be an end to the "terrorists".
Organic free-range music... yum!
Great...
Eat at Joe's.
The See Eye Aye has been investing in them for years. NORA is used in almost all the major casinos. By the time you finish checking in a casino hotel, they know if you are related/friends/have some realtionship with anybody in the casino (as well as if you've been blacklisted). The next thing to do is add geo spatial relationships (are you a neighbor of any employee? maybe not next door, but on the other side of the fence/road/etc.)
See how this has potential in other communities
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
maybe some people haven't been paying attention either, or they limit their knowledge to the mass media (ie. cbs, rush bimbo, etc).
;)
the u.s. may not be out of the middle east YET, but like the poor hatians (who are showing the rest of the world what democracy can do when 'The People' have had enough of corrupt and abusive governements), the iraq's are giving the u.s.a. a run for their money (thank God!!).
Bush's weak attempts at 'rattle sabering' when he tells terrorists to "bring it on", while bombing either empty caves or killing innocent lives by the thousands, do more to increase the attacks and victories against the usa and it's allies by the real men and heroes of our time.
The only terrorist nation, or people I'v ever known was the usa. Period!
The old saying is true,
'The enemy of my enemy, is my friend'..
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
Perhaps it's more freindly than Big Brother, but there's still that gods-awful-huge uncheckably-and-doubtfully-accurate master database somewhere.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
You are incorrectly assuming there is a seperation between megacorps and govt. Who do you think runs the govt? They only give you the illusion that you have a say in it. Let's have a MS lawyer be in charge of all the anti-trust stuff. Yea, that makes perfect sense. Let's have the wolf make sure the hen house is safe too.
If, as you say, there are 'protections' from the govt doing something to you or with your data; all they do is 'outsource' it to a company to do the dirty work for them. Then the finger pointing starts if you ever catch wind of it, then it's all about making the country safer, and it's for your own good, and nothing changes. You lose in the end. BIG TIME.
This probably will never happen, but if people would quit feeding the corps, buying in to their "you have to wear this, drink this, act this way, gotta own this, need to BUY software to have a lower TCO..." type of propaganda then their power (money) would eventually start to dwindle. Unfortunately we are too groomed with greed that most people are not willing to give up the products/services that fund the cycle.
and other root passwords to the US constitution.
Racist, why do you have to say 'gypped'? What have the Gypsies personally done to you? What next, you'll "Jew down" a street merchant to a cheaper price? Racist. How can you even think about commenting on Americans when you have it against the Gypsie peoples.
A point that seems to have been overlooked is that it is often possible to extract individuals` personal information even when no unique personal identifiers are disclosed in the original database. Marketing companies have in many cases managed to extract household level data from agregate (zip code level) census data simply by cross referencing with other publically available databases.
How many bits of `anonymous` details about you (recent purchases, travel history, magazine subscription, etc.) do you think it would take to identify you with a more than 98% probability? Surprisingly few. And yet the financial encentives to carry out this kind of analysis in the private sector are overwhelming.
Really, this is all such bullshit.
Nasa with mind reading shit, BB reading my email and watching the websites I visit. WTF?
You don't trust me? Fuck you.
This is NOT the America that I was born into.
America has turned into a third world police state. We are all treated as suspects and potential enemies of the state. You trample my rights? Fuck you too.
Kiss the Bill of Rights goodbye, they've wiped their asses with it and flushed it down the toilet. Anyone in the 40+ age range knows what I'm talking about, you've watched it happen, America is gone, they've already destroyed it.
I'm leaving, I'm moving to an island in the middle of nowhere and live without any modern crap. No computers, no phones, no TV, no electricity, NO BIG BROTHER....
Bye bye Amerika....
(and I have to post AC so I don't get a visit from the AMERSTASI goons)
I wonder if that "software" will ever pass it.
There you are, staring at me again.
Your right to swing your fist ends in my face.
Your right to hack off your daughter's clit ended in downtown Manhattan.
We didn't start this war, but we are going to finish it.
I'd rather we wipe you out with memetic warfare - Democracy, Whisky, Sexy. People free to speak, drink, and fuck are also free to invent when they're bored of drinking and fucking. It's not only more fun to sell you cool toys, it's more profitable, too!
Do not confuse our preference for ending this war in the more profitable and fun way with our capability of ending this war in a more direct manner.
If you have a collision free hash, then there is a possibility that someone could back the data out of the system. (and as systems become more powerful, it becomes more and more likely).
If you intentionally use a system that is not collision free, so that you can ensure that the data can't be reliably gotten from the input, you're just making it so that there are multiple sets that could produce the hash. But most likely, very few are going to make 'sense' given the context of the data. [out of 'asd!@#$VS', 'JSfgsdE sdf' and 'John Smith', which one is a name?] However, you now have the possibility of a false positive.
So, you either have to make it so that there are multiple pieces of legitimate data that would create the same hash value, and thereby run the risk of false positives, or you have to use a collision free hash, and run the possibility that as processing power improves, someone could get a definite value out.
And so, all this really does is come down to basic concepts of information security -- every methoid of obscuring data is only useful for a limited time. This is why SSL doesn't use a constant key through the life of a session. This is why DES and 3DES have been replaced with AES. You have to balance the cost of the processes (both time and dollars), with the cost of the data being compromised. Unfortunately, different people base costs on different items, and a risk assessment is only valid if you know and agree with the assumptions being made, and even then, it's a point in time analysis, and may be invalid before it hits circulation.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Your right to swing your fist ends in my face.
Your right to hack off your daughter's clit ended in downtown Manhattan.
Your right to impose your values on someone else's culture ends at your country's border, whether you like it or not. I can't say I agree with the fundamentalist Islamist way of life, but I respect their right to live that way if that's what they want. We don't need to make enemies of them by giving them more reasons to hate us.
Then you go on to quote some rather irrelevant lines from a film, ending in:
Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.
Remind me what is already going on with the US - people are dying because of this ridiculous war, and your freedoms are being taken away on an almost daily basis. Your ignorant attitude and blatant denial of the problem is the cause of this, so you can expect more death and less freedom until you stop being fooled and do something about it.
The only thing I've confused your preference for is the preference for believing whatever propaganda you are spoon fed, instead of the preference for actually thinking about things for yourself.
Organic free-range music... yum!
" "Terrorists" only hate non-Islamic people because "we" (as in, our governments) have given them cause to. " Oh ye who believe! Murder those of the disbelievers and let them find harshness in you. (Repentance: 123) that was said along time before the USA was even created. they don't need a reason to hate us. the religion mandates it.
too right; a very UK slant on a very US problem...
GrimRC
you could end up incriminating yourself!
oh wait...
People are accepting terrorism as the problem, rather than a symptom of the problem. They are forgetting that terrorism is not an end, but a means.
We have yet recieved an explanation of Al Quaida's intentions, except for "they hate freedom" or "they're fundamentalists" (like that explains anything at all). Al Quaida must have clearly stated their responsibility, and just as importantly *their demands*, but we haven't been told it. Maybe it was about something classified, like CIA doing something naughty in the middle east and nobody is supposed to know about it.
They need to call it "Fiendster".
I predict the next technology that will be used to find terrorists will be dowsing rods.
Oh wait...
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
This is a huge threat to civil liberties. Typical citizens will still be safe for a while. This won't have a major impact on citizens until the technology is passed from the spy agencies (eg. CIA) to the police agencies (eg. FBI). Not really sure when this will happen but at the rate the "war" on terrorism is going, it may be tomorrow...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
All they have to do is figure out their position on this 'watch list', which is easy enough to do with the ability to query the list in private hands. Then pick the least suspected one of them to carry the bomb. If they want to be really clever, send a half dozen really suspicious people in in front of the guy with the bomb, so security is busy and they won't get hit with a random search.
Flagging suspicious people in ways they can find out they have been flagged is so mind-bogglingly stupid anyone suggesting it should be utterly shunned by the security community. Hello, terrorists normally operating in groups! In any group, there's going to be a few people we've never suspected, and we must never let the terrorists know which ones those are!
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
The false-positive rate should be emphasized far more than it has been. What does it mean? It means that whatever system they have in place, if it's based on statistical indicators rather than someone's hunch, will inevitably identify several innocent people for every terrorist that they find. Depending on the sensitivity of the detection algoritm, the value of "several" could be anywhere from dozens to thousands.
Not only that - false positives can CREATE additional new terrorists and otherwise drive large numbers of people toward opposition political positions.
Persons flagged are subjected to additional scrutiny. Body searches, luggage searches, X-ray rather than magnetometer scanning, and so on. This results in added delays, inconvenience, and potential health risks (to both the subject and future offspring, from both stress and X-ray exposure). And since the system flags them because of their on-record characteristics, they will be subjected to this scruitny repeatedly. Effectively it creates an underclass of people who will be constantly hassled during air travel - just as Jim Crow laws once made southern blacks ride in the back of the bus.
This treatment can be expected to "radicalize" those subjected to it - making them more prone to opposition activity and recruitment by terrorists. (Claims, for instance, that the US government is satanic and attempting to destroy Islam are far more believable if the US government IS systematically dumping on Muslims' civil rights.)
This isn't just academic. I watched a similar thing occur during the Viet Nam conflict.
Nice Jewish kid. Offspring of a famous doctor/medical researcher/research organization head/discoverer of a neurotransmitter/etc. In high-school in top-tier suburb of major city. Duly propagandized with how awful the NAZIs were in WW II and "never [let it happen] again".
Friend got a pair of the just-out hi-tek transorized CB walkie-talkie toys. James Bond movies and their takeoffs (Man from Uncle etc.) were all the rage. Two of 'em were using walkie-talkies to play a game of spy/counterspy through the back streets and parks of the suburb.
Unbeknownst to them, the President was passing through the next morning, on his way to give a commencement address at a large university maybe 50 miles away. (Not something that made the news in the area, since the airport was BETWEEN the two cities.)
Secret service hears the CB chatter, swoops down, and grabs the two kids off the street. Separates them and holds them overnight and through much of the next day, incommunicado and in solitary confinement, while the president makes his trip and return. Totally terrorizes the "nice jewish kid" (who isn't even told what's happening until release).
Kid went on to become a campus radical, drop out of college, and dedicate self to left-wing, anarchist, and radical labor union activity - for decades. Finally burned out and found a bed-board-and-pocket-change position as a quadraplegic's aide. Disowned by family for decades (only reconciled at all in the last couple years).
Multiply such an experience by the number of people flagged by the CAPS system and see where it might get us.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
His response was [...] a system that "anonymizes" data by an encryption technique called hashing. Because the data are scrambled, [...] secret watch lists can be distributed to private entities, all without fear--because they can't be read
Although this is a step in the right direction [...]
Actually it does NOTHING to prevent misuse of the lists as blacklists - or even vigilante hit lists.
As a blacklist: Put in the name/identifying information, turn the crank, out comes a yes/no. Dump on the subject if it's yes. You've just extracted the entries for everybody you interact with who's on the list, just in time to dump on 'em.
As a hit list: Put in the names/info of everybody in town (or everybody who appears in ANY public database). Turn the crank. Out comes a list list yes/nos. Discard the names that generated "no"s and you have your hit list. If you use an extensive enough database of people you end up extracting ALL from the "encrypted" list (plus any false-positives generated by the hash function).
So the hashing function does NOTHING to secure the list (except maybe pollute it with extra false-positives.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
our government is at war with all countries in the middle east involved in 911, including countries which werent involved but have large islamic populations. To sum it all up,
Its a war on islamic nations.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
American Terrorists are not enemy combatants, we have our rights. The KKK and DC sniper, the Mafia, etc were American terrorists. We already have systems in place to deal with these types of terrorists, the FBA, the CIA, the Swat team, the police.
There is a huge difference between a domestic terrorist, and an international terrorist. Bin Laden's people werent trained here, they don't have family here, they don't work here, etc.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
We will see increased terrorist attacks you mean. Don't you get it, thats why the government wants to spy on each and everyone one of us. A Revolution will be called terrorism, people will spy on each other, the weapons designed to catch Al-Qaeda will be used to catch so called revolotionarys. There will be no revolution.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
The difference between soldiers and terrorists is that the former don't go out of their way to increase civilian casualties.
Close. There is a very specific definition of terrorist -- it is someone that seeks to impose terror on a civilian population.
An assassin bent on killing a single political figure is not a terrorist.
A bunch of people that threaten to carbomb anyone supporting a political bill, but don't actually end up carbombing anyone, *are* terrorists.
A bunch of people crashing airplanes into skyscrapers are terrorists, if they do so with the intent of scaring the civilians that live and work in and around those skyscrapers.
A harsh dictator that seeks to keep his people in fear is a terrorist. Note that our current occupational government in Iraq, existing only through constant threat of military force, is probably a terrorist organization (not that the Hussein regime wasn't).
Of course, the United States has funded and supported terrorist groups themselves many times before -- in the case of Afghanistan, we've backed some of the exact same terrorist groups that we are now fighting. (It was okay before, because the Soviets were the ones that had to fight the terrorists.) Any time you hear the word "freedom fighter", you're quite possibly hearing about a terrorist -- one backed by your own government.
The problem is that Bush has managed to convince most people in the United States to go along with him on an impossible, and ill-defined quest -- blowing people up as long as they're "terrorists", which gives him a stunningly powerful blank check. Surprise -- he's chosen to use these powers in a way to benefit political friends and allies.
May we never see th
One solution would be for the U.S. to adopt a freedom of information policy more in line with the Nordic countries where public records are open by default, rather than the default of indefinite secrecy of UK and France. A lot of bad things vanish when exposed to sunlight.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I can at least say you understand the situation better than most people in government. The problem is, compassion regardless does not win wars. You cannot kill the enemy while having compassion.
I'm saying, the winner of almost every war has been the side with less compassion. The Native Americans got their ass kicked by the more brutal and cruel european forces. The Japanese got destroyed by the cruel Americans and their bomb, we Americans got destroyed by the cruel and calculated vietnamese.
In war, being cruel is a psychological advantage. Vlad the Impaler, Hitler, and others used this to win their wars moreso than actual strategy. IF the jews or people in ancient europe just killed these guys from the beginning before fear could take effect, there would have been no millions of jews dead, or millions of romanians.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Where did this war start anyway? Only the most ignorant of people would argue that America never did anything to inflame the situation that has been developing since the end of the second world war.
Surely your quote from Starship Troopers could be very easily taken as a justification for terrorism - if force is the best way to 'settle things' then the bomb is an attractive option...
I think you are underestimating the difficulty of winning a 'war on terror' You can't fight a successful war against an abstract noun.
A war against al-queida might be winnable, but the actions involved in hunting down and killing every last member will simply result in the formation of new networks.
The only way to defeat terrorism is to defeat its organisers (who are psychopaths who do not care about the people they claim to fight for) in the minds of those who might support them. Once the support is removed, the terrorists become lone nutters - dangerous on a small scale but no real threat to society.
In order to win the arguments and pull people away from the terrorists, we have to have the moral highground - not just in our own minds but in the eyes of the world. That means that we have to stop bending the rules of justice for all, we have to stop turning a blind eye to certain atrocities while condemning others, we have to stop the blatant profiteering that is going on in Iraq right now, we have to be absolutely assiduous in ensuring that our actions are transparently for the good of the world rather than to fill our own pockets.
Unfortunatley, I can see why the many good things that American/European culture has done for the world are lost amongst the bad things that some members of our culture do to benefit themselves.
Dan.
"Terrorists" only hate non-Islamic people because "we" (as in, our governments) have given them cause to.
Have you ever looked at a world history book? I'm specifically referring to the history of North Africa, India, and the Middle East because Islamic terrorists have hated non-Islamic people for about fifteen centuries. Now, compare this with the fact that "we" (as in, our governments) haven't existed that long.
It's quite frightening to me how people continuously prove correct the little poster on the wall of my highschool history class, "Those who don't pay attention to history are doomed to repeat it."
What, you mean back during the Crusades while we were pillaging their countries in the name of "delivering the holy places from Mohammedan tyranny"? (OK, I guess that's only 900 years or so...)
Now it's the government, back then it was the church - the bullshit was still the same.
It's quite frightning to those of us who don't have our heads up our asses how people like you can so completely ignore the problem, so let me spell it out for you: the problem is that they want us to stop fucking around with their countries and telling them how to live their lives. Doesn't seem like too much to ask, does it - or do you have a better suggestion?
Organic free-range music... yum!
The Crusades were horrible, and the bullshit applied then by the Catholic church was abominable. That said, I said fifteen centuries, not nine centuries. I'm referring to the rise of Islam from its inception to conquer the area. Why do you think India and Pakistan hate each other so much? Could it possibly be the Islamic invasion of India to convert the Hindu barbarians? You act like the evil Americans and Europeans are the only ones in the history of the world who have ever practiced imperialism, and I merely point out that Islam was founded on the practice and that, quite frankly, they've hated and killed non-Muslims for fifteen hundred years, and I don't really think it's going to change any time soon. Sure, it's already changing on a small scale. Lots of Muslims are rational people who just want to be treated as the good human beings that they are, but in the aggregate, their culture isn't that way.
they want us to stop fucking around with their countries and telling them how to live their lives. Doesn't seem like too much to ask, does it - or do you have a better suggestion?
That sounds like a wonderful idea, but I also think it's idiotic to let a bully beat the shit out of you repeatedly with no provocation when you're quite capable of breaking every bone in his body. I don't want "us" to tell them how to live their lives or to "fuck around" with their countries, but that's just my principled belief of how "we" should behave. On the other hand, I also don't think it will stop terrorism, and I do think that sometimes we have to get involved to protect ourselves. I'm a bit of an isolationist though. I want other countries to leave us alone, and I want us to leave them alone. We can take care of ourselves. (Note: We are fully capable of it; we choose not to out of laziness.)
Yeah, I guess I'm an isolationist too. Nothing wrong with doing business and being friendly with other countries, but telling them how to run their own affairs is most definitely bullshit and always seems to end in tears.
The trouble with trying to beat the shit out of terrorists is that they're hard to find and very dispersed throughout the general population of a country, whereas their targets (us) are not only easy to find, but far less specific. As in, if they carry out an attack, it doesn't matter quite where it is or who it's on - it's the attack that is the aim.
If we're trying to stamp out the terrorists, we have to target specific individuals without accidentally killing other people in the process. Much harder work for us.
Gah... religion!
Organic free-range music... yum!
I'd much prefer to let the CIA get back into wet work to take out a lot of these guys instead of using military force, but we're not allowed to do that anymore. Anyway, that's a rant for another time. In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with our helping Kuwait and Israel when they ask for our help because I don't see it as an intrusion when you're invited, but we have enough crap going wrong in our country to deal with that I see no reason to impose ourselves on random foreign countries. As a side note, I also think we should've assassinated Saddam and both of his kids back when the Hussein family tried to knock off former President Bush, but I definitely believe that war on terrorism means war on countries that support it, and I more importantly believe that war on terrorism means all terrorism, and not just the group who pissed us off most recently.