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Zimmermann, Encrypted VoIP, and Uncle Sam
An anonymous reader noted that Phillip Zimmermann and his VoIP encryption software are the subject of a NY Times article today. The article touches on the FCC, privacy, and related issues. Given all the suspicious behavior of the Bush Administration relating to wiretaps and phone records, this sort of thing is all the more important to be very aware of.
It's also available from Cryptome:
http://cryptome.org/zfone-agree.htm
To think I was going to dump her for fear of being wiretapped,
encryption to the rescue!
oh wait, maybe this is a good excuse to stop calling her...
...please tell me this was sarcasm...
why would people with nothing to hide want to have their personal conversations listened to? And why would we want to spend our tax money to spy on people who have nothing to hide? Shouldn't we be after the terrorists instead?
Ummn to stop political blackmail?
Really, I mean why do people wear clothes for that matter? I mean we are all made of meat covered in skin. We all know what human bodies look like. Everyone should just go naked from now on. Who needs privacy when you have nothing to hide?
From another NYTimes article, Bush Aide Defends Eavesdropping on Phone Calls(emphasis mine):
So why exactly is the government getting their knickers in a twist over Zfone? After all, the program is just intended to compile a database of call information, not actually listen to the content of the conversations. Doing that, as the administration has repeatedly told us, would require a court order.
So if you have a person you suspect from the numbers he's connected with, and you do obtain that court order, and it turns out he's using Zfone, there are other ways of getting the content of that conversation (hint: it has to be unencrypted at some point, so the 'terrorists' can understand each other). Arduous, sure, but since this will be done on only a select few, it's not that much of a hardship.
No, the reason the government doesn't like Zfone is because they want perform blanket surveillance on all American citizens; to listen to all our calls, all the time. By utilizing speech-recognition software and an ever growing list of suspect words and phrases, they will be able to keep tabs on the unruly U.S. population, weeding out terrorists, political dissidents, environmentalists, Democrats, and other 'undesirables'.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
More importently, why would any one want to listen unless they were up to no good?
How do you even know what you need to hide anymore?
The meaning of the word terrorist could change at any moment and the deffinition of enemy combatant is equaly fluid.
Your logic is flawed anyway... criminals are not the only group who like privacy.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
Why would you ever want to whisper?
Only the terrorists would want their privacy. The terrorists(usually gov sponsored) envy us because of our privacy and liberty so we must give up both our privacy and liberty for gov/corporate security.
the same reason why honest people with nothing to hide wouldn't want cameras in their house, people reading over their shoulder, people going through their trash, people looking in their windows, or people videotaping them when their outside walking with their kids.
It's an invasion of privacy.
(btw too lazy to create account)
Everyone should just go naked from now on
AMEN to that!
Nyhetsankaret.com -- det bÃsta av Sveriges Nyhetssido
Very true. But whenever technology gets involved in a discussion, people's eyes sort of glaze over. No one knows what's going on, they just hear Internet phone calls, terrorism, and encryption. While you and I know that anyone intercepting a packet (encrypted or not) can tell where it came from and where it's going, America doesn't. They probably think it's an effort at parity between VOIP and normal phone calls (if they know what VOIP is).
... but since it touts that it doesn't use 3rd party servers for key storage... ... seems like it'd be suseptible to Ye Olde Man-In-The-Middle.
:D
3 Zimm though.
There *is* a program I enjoy using on windows... It's called FDISK.
For the same reason I keep the curtains drawn in my bedroom windows at night, esp. when the s/o gets frisky.
Just because me and my s/o's bedroom activities are perfectly legal doesn't mean I want everyone else (let alone the government) monitoring it.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Really, I mean why do people wear clothes for that matter? I mean we are all made of meat covered in skin. We all know what human bodies look like. Everyone should just go naked from now on. Who needs privacy when you have nothing to hide?
I tried that. They sent a bunch of burly guys to force me into a striped one-piece jumpsuit.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
and all that relates to national security. CALEA, the thing that allows wiretaps under warrant, is in place for all previous communications methods, including paging. What government wants is CALEA type access to new communications types. HOWEVER: Neither the constitution, any ammendment, any subsequent law, or even terms of use, specify that your communications have to be made in an open unenctrypted manner. In fact, in the US, if there is no evidence, there is no crime, and no way to know the criminal. Its all part of that innocent until proven guilty mindset.
... at least not yet.
If all your telephone calls, emails, etc. are encrypted by you and the other intended party or parties involved, there simply is nothing the government can do about it. With probable cause, they can 'try' to compel you to divulge the encryption key, but then you don't have to testify against yourself in the U.S.
Neither can the government, church, or any other person(s) compel you to divulge your thoughts, or secrets.
Its time for the encryption phones to start appearing on the market.
This little problem will quickly spiral out of control until those that want to snoop on others have more work to do than they ever imagined. The basic problem here is that the people they say they want to spy on are not using the communication systems the same way as everyone else, and their communications are encrypted, or hidden in ways the government cannot prevent, nor detect with the laws and practices that they wish to install.
Wiretapping on the scales being talked about recently are stupid, prohibitively stupid, and will be nearly 100% ineffectual.
They can't find Bin Laden with all the military might, but somehow they are going to catch him making a phone call? uh, yeah right.... of course, its the little people that lead to the big ones, but they have been spying on the little ones all along... still haven't caught him.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Be careful what you wish for.
I'm at work at the moment so I can't do a proper search for images but think about it: would you want to see Margaret Thatcher walking around naked?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Am I the only one who when he saw Zimmermann and encryption in the headline thought immidiately of the other Zimmermann?
Phil took an open source VOIP client and added encryption to it. By his own admission, he doesn't know much about how to make VOIP work well, codecs and all that. But his encryption is very clever. It uses Diffie-Helman to generate a per-session key, which is stored in a completely volitile way. i.e. it is destroyed after the call terminates and cannot be retrieved (stored in memory which is then overwritten). So, even if a man (or government) in the middle records the RTP stream and then gets a search warrant to get the key to decrypt the call, it won't be there.
Look for his techniques for peer to peer key setup, which again is very clever and well thought out, to be used in a variety of new ways. I expect you will see a bit-t client soon that can also generate this one time session key between peers. It will be much more computationally intense than what you see bit-t clients like Azureus do to the CPU now, but no more than using S/FTP. Well, maybe more, because of the number of keys being setup and destroyed and the memory allocation needed in a swarm situation. But for peer to peer calls, it's strong and I expect that Phil, who was nearly bankrupted by Uncle Sam, trying to defend himself, will again be the NSA crosshairs. The guy is just a warrior, what can you say? Guys like him and Klein who blew the whistle on AT&T are the ones fighting for privacy and against a police state. And they will not be treated kindly by this administration.
Well, let's see, why do people wear clothes? Shrinkage. Brown and yellow stains on furniture. Getting pubic hair stuck. Seeing the US senate naked. I think those are excellent reasons. Yours may differ. If the US starts going all naked, I'm moving.
That explains all the denied 'Freedom of information' requests. Republicans are Terrorists.
Anyone spare a time's link w/o login?
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Just don't leave the country again Zimmerman...or you may end up locked inside that customs office where they 'want to leave lawyers out of this' again. :)
PGP Story:
MPG 1.1G
WMV 378M
RE:"If the US starts going all naked, I'm moving."
lol! hell yeah, some people are too damn ugly with clothes on it would be enough to cause blindness if they went nude...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
But what if you work hard for a well-connected company, say, like Halliburton, and you find that some other upstart company is bidding against you for big juicy contracts to relocate the old Berlin Wall to southern Texas. Wouldn't you want your friends in the NSA to let you in on what your pesky competitors are talking about? I would - a lot of money could be at stake.
Um, no. I would not want to see ANY of my neighbors naked. Eeww.
So, I'm the evil-agency-du-jour and today I'm auditing IP traffic. If you are a person of interest, they know:
1. You are sending packets to and from specific IP addresses.
2. Grabbing copies of those packets.
3. Putting super-computers to work on them.
4. Discover you are ordering pizza over SIP. (whatever, it's funny)
The concept of "Privacy" was dead a long time ago. I *still* don't understand the outrage when most of your activity is available through many data brokers. What's not there, is available with little procedural check or balance.
Where it is very valuable is company to company communication. Where your competitors may not have the expertise to get the info.
But, then there's the encryption problem anyone has that uses it. It's stupifyingly easy to build a case on suspicion. Trying someone in the court of public opinion is easy and swift. "He uses encryption so he must be hiding something.." is all it takes to end a career, destroy your social status.
Cryptographer==criminal. Film at 11.
If one can codify it's everyday use, I think it's a big step forward.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
This is an excellent article that rebuts your argument that is both concise and eloquent: http://wired.com/news/columns/0,70886-0.html?tw=wn _index_23
Funny, a local radio station let me know today is the anniversary of some guy named Bob's bar mitzvah. That was the leap I made.
And, sorry, less interested in a hyper-linkie-thing then in using an account here.
Terrorists are already using encryption to protect their privacy. Don't you think you should as well?
To strip politics out of the argument:
So that it's harder for identity theives to gather personal information.
Cellphones and landlines aren't secure. Encrypted voice adds a layer of security so that when your bank asks for your SSN, you are a little safer giving it over the phone.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Obviously. When did Al Gore, Howard Dean and John Kerry start posting articles? Hey Al, I'm with ya man!! Global warming needs to be stopped at the source of the problem. Put out the sun, I'm tellin' ya - it will solve global warming for good!!!
Just make it illegal to use any form of encryption that the government doesnt have keys for.
Then breaking out content wont matter.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Brown and yellow stains on furniture. "
WTF are you doing with your furniture?
Before you launch into yet another tirade against the president, bear in mind that our divided Congress consistently allows things like this. This isn't a Bush thing or a Republican thing. This is a beaurocratic, ivory tower, professional politician thing. This happens because we elect the very wealthy from both parties, so that the majority of our elective government has very little connection with their constituents. We create political dynasties, voting for celebrities rather than leaders. Our current political situation isn't due to one man or one party, but rather one entire nation ignoring its own wellbeing in favor of the candidate with the best sound-bites and the stiffest hair. We might as well be getting our political news from E!: who cares how they voted, let's find out which congressman is cheating on his wife this week and what Hillary wore to session today.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
If they have sufficient evidence to meet a reasonable probable cause standard, why not just let them into the house to bug the device itself? There are devices out there for keyboards which have a few hundred KB of memory and that sit between the keyboard and the port on the back of the PC.
They don't need to block encryption, except to keep tabs on people that wouldn't meet the legal requirements. If they can't meet the legal requirements for a warrant to break into the suspect's house and bug them, then chances are the person hasn't committed a crime.
Why should it be about having something to hide? What if I just don't want the government to have absolute power? If encrypting conversations will make enforcing tyranny just a little more difficult, encrypt away...
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
Sorry, sir, but you are completely wrong. ANY VoIP-capable computer can encrypt a 12kbps stream with a 1024-bit key. And -- unless the whole academia is wrong and all the current off-the-shelf crypto algorithms have crypto flaws, no, not every supercomputer in the face of the earth could break the encryption. One would have to get the keys in another fashion to listen to the talks.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
It occurs to me that these codecs are probably a serious weakness to the encryption, in that they would generte very predictable patterns. Headers, synchronization and timing, dead space.. especially if the NSA has a voice print recognition algorithim to match the target. Depending on the length of the conversation, it would seem very probable that even with the key destruction, there should be enough sampling data to accurate generate a decryption key with very little effort, given the right tools and talent. Thoughts?
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
From "The Eternal Value of Privacy" by Bruce Schneier in Wired (http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70886-0.html
"... accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect."
Free minds. The greatest chilling effect of universal surveillance doesn't come from men in black vans. It comes from being unveiled as a Commie, or an Islamic Sympathizer, or even A Guy Who Googled for "Fatties" in front of your friends/employers/relatives/whatever. The greatest force against freedom in our society is us.
Not one of Sen. McCarthy's victims was actually thrown in a gulag. Think about that. They weren't fired by the government. They were fired by PHBs who acted in blind sympathy with loudmouthed bureaucrats. There would have been no McCarthyism if the public had not been willing to punish itself for unpopular thought and/or speech.
We need a society in which there's no difference between what's illegal and what harms others, and holds all other things not only legal, but acceptable. Once we have that society, people who have done nothing to harm others really will have little to fear. But there's one more thing: If we're going to use public safety as an excuse for universal surveillance, we have to give the power of surveillance to everyone, not just government.
Privacy advocates might cringe at that last statment, but consider this: People are getting more wired, surveillance is getting easier and cheaper, and that trend may never reverse. There may be nothing we can do to stop privacy from dying. Maybe we should start thinking about what we're going to do when it does.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
Whew!
The problem is, far Far FAR FAR more often it is not.
But it is ALWAYS subject to abuse.
Being Free means that we accept the risk that the "bad guys" will abuse that Freedom to hurt/kill some of our citizens.
But they will never defeat us. Only we can do that by surrendering our Freedom for the illusion of "safety".
I hate to say it, but I was thinking of Lewis Zimmerman!
Dude, that's because most of them have *a lot* to hide!
The supreme court recently struck down sodomy laws between consenting adults, but we still have laws on the books.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Where's the Zfone (or interoperable) SIP module for Asterisk? And which softphones & ATAs already include one?
--
make install -not war
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
> By utilizing speech-recognition software and an ever growing list of suspect words and phrases,
> they will be able to keep tabs on the unruly U.S. population, weeding out terrorists,
> political dissidents, environmentalists, Democrats, and other 'undesirables'.
Those evil Republicans! Except, wait... wasn't it the Clinton Administration that launched a 3-year criminal investigation of Phil Zimmerman in 1993?
And wasn't that the same President who championed the Clipper chip, so the government would have the keys it needed to decrypt your phone calls?Agreed. The bigger wiretap issue isn't really about people's privacy at all, it's about an Administration viewing itself as above the law and acting with disregard to the law. Regardless of intention, anything that effects wiretapping without court order is illegal. Period.
First and foremost, I'm a long time fan of PRZ... he's a hero among heros and should be credited as such.
Secondly, am I missing the hardware solutions for things like this? I've been a Vonage customer for some time, and while Vonage seems to take a blind eye to security (just ask them they'll tell you they are happy to work with the local and federal law enforcement agencies). When will I be able to use a handheld, encrypted VOIP device, and be sure that its secure?
think before you write, it'll save me moderator points.
I keep hearing about all these movie-plot scenarios that require immediate decryption - in the movies. I have yet to hear one actual scenario in which a few hours decrypting threatened even a single life. Until I do, with a healthy faith in science and a long memory of selfserving government lies covering up crime with "national security" claims, why should I pay any attention to these demands for urgency?
--
make install -not war
I contend that they can find Bin Laden, but don't really want to. The minute he's captured, any (remaining) support for continuing the "War On Terror" goes right out the window. As long as he's out there, the administration can yell "9/11" to justify anything they want and the sheeple will buy it.
Flame me if you want, but the Bush Administration is EVIL. I'm not saying that Bush himself is evil (he's not that smart), but his policies and cronies - you know it baby.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Just as an addition, the "Off-the-Record (OTR) Messaging" plugin for Gaim offers a similar setup for instant messaging. (You can use it with other IM clients as well; it works with stock AIM as an HTTP proxy and is built in to Adium for Mac.)
In my opinion, it's a much better system than some of the other IM encryption setups, which give you authentication but not any forward secrecy or deniability. Basically it forces you to authenticate the other party via a side-channel, rather than using a trust framework a la PGP, but in return the authentication can't be turned around and used against you after the fact.
It does this via an unauthenticated Diffie-Hellman key exchange, and then creating and exchanging a per-session symmetric key within that channel, which is destroyed at the end of the conversation. More technical information is available here.
In short it provides more authentication than Trillian's setup, more deniability than gaim-encryption, and doesn't require any of the infrastructure required by SILC. The only difficulty in using it is getting other people to use a supported client program and to install the plugin / generate a key.
I think there's room for both types of encrypted communications: ones that provide a trust framework and robust authentication, and ones that provide for more deniability (and allow the computerized century equivalents of a face-to-face meeting, where if both people desire it, they can deny the contents of the communication later).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
What part of that is your worst case scenario? Is the government enforcing a law that terrifying to you?
I'm scared as well -- but I'm scared that the president, elected by the people, can now, in effect, by vetoed by any bureaucrat who decides they dislike his policies.
I vote for the president of the US. I don't get to vote for journalists or bureaucrats. Unless you do, I'm not sure why you think that their imaginary rights should trump our real ones.
Suspicious behaviour of the Bush administration?! Do you mean the database of phone records? *yawn* Commander Taco, your short-sighted political view is showing.
I don't know much about encryption, so I ask what's the practical difference between this and, say, Skype over SSL?
Sorry but the idea that we all have to give up our freedom to be safe and free is just beyond stupid.
Thanks to eating disorders most chicks are reasonably good looking these days.
And why would we want to spend our tax money to spy on people who have nothing to hide? Shouldn't we be after the terrorists instead?
Um, that's what's happening.
Imagine, a Republican administration using laws created by Bill Clinton's Democrat administration to monitor international phone calls of known terrorists.
Incredibly suspicious.
why would people with nothing to hide want to encrypt their conversations.
Because the dudes at NSA can google for porn if they need some instead of listening in on me and my girl.
Everyone has something to hide. For 99.999% of us it isn't bomb plans or drug deals, but what you did to your secretary yesterday or even just that embarassing personal secret from your teenager days.
One of the very core principles of privacy is that I get to decide what I consider private, not you or the government. Your interest in dressing in women's underwear isn't a state secret, but it might well be that to you it is absolutely important that nobody knows about it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Cut to my room, opening the front door.
"Yes officer?"
"You had a conversation with unlicensed encryption keys."
"I did not, I sent my keys to the government as ordered."
"They don't fit."
"Gee, beats me, I never really figure out those tech thingies, must've done something when I wasn't looking, I'm sooooo sorry."
Hey, why should claiming stupidity only work when you're spreading malware?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nice article reference. I've been looking for a decent explanation.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Gurrrk.
Put some more thought into this one. There are any number of things that are "unacceptable" that aren't bad enough to merit applying the might and majesty of the State's criminal justice system. By denying all social sanctions short of criminal prosecution, you create a society with the worst of both worlds: a plague of officers (lawyers) worse than what we have now, along with a degree of rudeness that would make the French recoil in horror.
Time was when being rude enough in public would get you tossed into the street by half of the men in the place. We solved that (and I'm not sure it was the wrong thing to do) by criminalizing the eviction as assault -- but now we have people carrying on loud cellphone conversations during movies.
Shunning and scorn aren't on the order of a punch in the nose -- don't deny us those as well.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I'm not concerned about what I'm doing to my furniture, I'm concerned about what you'd be doing to it if you sat down on it naked.
Forget congress. Has anyone been in a Wal-Mart (or any other major store) recently!? I swear, I feel like a parody of the sixth sense.
..."
"I see fat people
Dude, I told you not to tell anyone, and now you go posting it on /.! Thanks a lot ASSHOLE!!! Now the NSA knows 100% about me.
Politico: A political person.
Politaco: Mr. Malda when he mixes personal politics with news.
why would people with nothing to hide want to encrypt their conversations.
Because it's none of your fucking business that's why
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Brown and yellow stains on furniture.
Ok I know you want to save paper, spare the trees, and all that. But you are allowed to wipe more than once, you know!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
So, you don't use envelopes for mail either, do you?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
In a world with any respect for innocence until proven guilty.
How do they prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you remember your key if you say you forgot it.
Of course with current policies, yes, they can lock you up forever.
Unfortunately you're confusing freedom with privacy.
I'm honestly not trying to take sides either way here, though I'm sure some of the posters here will immediately label me a Christian in some strange stereotype mixing politics and religions, but here it is.
You have a right to say hateful and racist things as long as you're not slandering someone or assaulting them.
You have no such right that you'll remain anonymous as the speaker of those words.
Of course you can make assumptions on, well I'm speaking in my home I'm granted an innate amount of privacy. Or the sounds of my marital sex won't be posted to the internet in some form. But as words and ideas blend into one concept of data, which can be transmitted via numerous different ways to numerous different people, the rules of where to assume privacy have to change.
Very broad example: As recent as what, 10-15 years ago, you could have sex ontop of a car with a realistic expectation of privacy. At worst maybe a few passersby see you.
Nowadays with security cameras on the corners of lots of buildings and cities themselves installing them, can you make that same assumption? And at the same time, you're not losing and freedom; you can still have sex there.
Ehh, as i said it was a rough example, but take what you can. My whole point is that its not simply an open and shut case, times have changed, expectations will have to as well.
And your point of the woman's underwear, in terms of my own privacy (and this may be a personal thing), i make a comparison to a tree falling in the woods. If some Johnny in Madison Wisconsin finds out a guy named Gray Calx wears women's underwear... does it matter? Not to justify, not at all, but to me, who cares, i have bigger things to worry about.
"Given all the suspicious behavior of the Bush Administration relating to wiretaps and phone records, this sort of thing is all the more important to be very aware of."
Looks like someone needs to be more aware of grammar.
"... accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect."
I'm going to have to disagree with Bruce there. Say I'm a witness/participant in a robbery. It goes too far, I feel bad and call the police to let them know where they can find the injured person. Do i have the right to anonymity in that situation? I don't think so. We've come too far in terms of data and knowledge; networks and communication to make these assumptions anymore.
Back in the day, when humans wrote notes by candlelight, you could pretty much assume privacy except for anyone who came into contact (and read) that note. Nowadays your voice is zipping over countless companies' networks, over state and national borders... times have changed.
At the same time I'm not saying the government has the right to tape everything you say... I just disagree with the statement that privacy is a right nowadays.
You're right - my post was an oversimplification. Talking loudly in a movie theater steps on the toes of other moviegoers, and you should be able to snark at those people without having them arrested. I guess my point was that "your freedom ends where my nose begins," is a system that works better when people are less nose-y.
Gay marriage is a perfect example. When this subject comes up, people turn out in droves to vote against other people's freedom. And then they complain when the majority votes to outlaw their rifle collection, or to make their smoking habit ruinously expensive, not realizing that by voting to manage someone else's behavior, they've just legitimized society's power to manage theirs.
And that gets back into the power of law, but the same principles apply to what people accept or don't accept in each other. If I establish that it's okay for me to fire someone purely for being gay/Commie/whatever, then I've also established that it's okay for you to fire me for being ugly/Democrat/whatever.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
How's that? :-)
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
>Its time for the encryption phones to start appearing on the market.
/specific stream/ of data, no doubt the NSA or someone can crack it. But this wholesale sifting of anything and everything needs to stop.
I agree. And moreover, like I've been saying, it's time to just start encrypting everything. Email. Web surfing. P2P. The whole damn kit and kaboodle needs to be encrypted, so that it becomes a waste of time to try and pick out the "good stuff" whizzing by on the internet.
If you have probable cause to go after a
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
How do you go about that? Suppose I were to set up a small business reselling GPG or something similar. Does the government simply hand me a copy of the watch list and let me do the checking myself? Or must I pass along the names of all my customers to them for authorisation to sell it on?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
It's pretty clear that the War of Independance would have never begun if Britain had had the technology and power currently available to the US Government.
The various colonies in North America had meetings that were critical to organising a force and also for turning public opinion.
The US government currently is able to, and obviously does spy on American citizens without the kind of oversight which would allow us to even decide whether it is done for just cause.
Reread that part. We have no way of determining whether they have any just cause.
There are two questions:
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I'm not worried about myself, I'm worried about you! :-)
The crime's been done before, so it's acceptable? Idiotic.
...)
The current administration is doing it, so their political party is the only bad one? Mistaken.
Spying on citizens is just wrong. Whoever is doing it is doing wrong.
Don't rally to defend Bush despite the administration's flaws. That's stupidity. That same stupidity is at the root of jingoism and mob mentality. Censure any misbehavior, whoever may perform it.
(BTW, don't just think for yourself because everyone else is doing it
Don't leap to castigate all republicans because of the current administration's crimes. That's stimulus overgeneralization. It's also a flavor of the aforementioned Us v. Them mob mentality.
Freedom is Slavery!
Yeah they pretty much hand you the lists
/ delimit/index.shtml
http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/sdn
Of course some of the entries are obviously from gathered inteliigence. I recall having to block anyone called "The Chess Player" from signing up. Unfortunately most websites don't gather date of birth, and when you do name only matching you catch a lot of innocent people - who are usually mightily pissed off about having to call EVERY SINGLE SITE that they try to sign up for.
The other big caveat is what you're supposed to do when you find a match - it's virtually impossible to stop them just changing their details and signing up again.
How about posting your mother's maiden name, favorite pet, favorite color, Bank Name, and account number?
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
And the benefit of encrypting BitTorrent connections is what? All the *AA have to do is ask the tracker who's downloading what, and it will tell them.
and that's one of the problems I see forthcoming: spying between politicians.
;-) Ever heard of Watergate? Google for 'Nixon' when you have time...
How old are you, exactly?!
No, not a troll, just a good-spirited shock at how naive people can be to assume that politicians do not spy on each other! (And they better do that than spy on the rest of us!)
Paul B.
would you want to see Margaret Thatcher walking around naked?
Eh, I'd at least give her a shot...
This sig rocks the casbah.
Read the article: But at a conference last week in Cyprus, German officials said they had technology for intercepting and decrypting Skype phone calls, according to Anthony M. Rutkowski, vice president for regulatory affairs and standards for VeriSign, a company that offers security for Internet and phone operations. That's not surprising: proprietary software by people whose main field is not cryptography usually sucks. Governments won't have any trouble decrypting your Skype calls. This is nothing new; the NSA managed to insert back doors into Crypto AG's encryption hardware, and that's how they listened in on Libya's traffic and found out about the Libyan connection to the Lockerbie plane bombing.
Yes, I know that we are spending tax money to spy on people who have nothing to hide rather than on fighting terrorism.
We are currently being ruled with the declarations in the "emergency war powers act", and numerous other presidential "findings" and other executive orders. This is why they do what they do and "get away with it" and exactly why you aren't seeing any "legal" actions taken against the executive branch. The posturing and protests you see on TV are political melodrama to keep the peons faked out that they live in a republic and that there's some sort of "law" system that resembles constitutional law.
The other big part of it is because of THE most flawed part of the checks and balances system-the executive branch controls 99.99% of the guns and gun toters, who all "swear an oath" to "obey their commander" in chief and so on down the line, their "superior" beings. And they do so, almost unflinchingly. They may grumble, but push comes to shove they will obey ANY order given to them. Now think on that one hard and see if modern political reality makes more sense.
The judicial branch has a very few guns, not enough to matter, and the legislative branch has ZERO,with the phrase then being "it is a paper tiger".
You could theoretically "impeach" a president, declare that he is "removed" from office, but because he gives the orders-nothing would happen unless he chose to go willingly. He could just as easily say FU and go about his business and there's not a damn thing congress or the courts could do about it, and judging by their past actions with the kennedy assassination, the illegal nam war, the current illegal iraq war, based on total lies and misrepresentations (all quite seriously "impeachable" offenses), rest assurred the executive branch is where the true political power resides in this nation, everything else is only a facade for amusement purposes elsewhere.
The US was taken over a long time ago in a coup d'etat, some powerful factions-primarily but not exclusively inside the executive branch and some factions inside the military - combined with even more powerful outside industrialists and central bankers, now completely control the nation. That's reality, although most people are just too afraid to admit to it, rather staying content that somehow coups only happen on the television over there someplace in furriner land with people with funny names and strange uniforms and hats.
The clinton crime cartel was involved in a lot more than a mere bj or two. Try massive drugs smuggling, sale of infected prisoners blood, cronyism for government jobs, transfer of high stakes technology to foreign nations from bribes (china) and most likely blackmail (israel, japan), ties with international money laundering and some huge property/real estate loan scams, insider trading in stocks and commodites, some rather embarassing and improbable "suicides" of high level members, and so on. They, the joke senate they, picked the BJ episode to have the impeachment because it was so laughable, not because it was the only potential crime to impeach on. The fix is in, there's NO DIFFERENCE with the high level controllers, and those politicians you see are PUPPETS.
>Mr. Zimmermann, the registration page that is being refered to only asks for you email >address, thus your argument is invalid in this case. So why do you require registration? I told you why already. The wording of your posting implies you don't believe me. If you need more convincing, go to my Zfone FAQ page (http://philzimmermann.com/EN/zfone/index-faq.html ) where I address this particular question in great detail. If you still don't believe me after reading that, you are welcome to not use the product, and apply for a full refund. --prz
http://www.bristol-no2id.org.uk/blog/?page_id=5
Businesses and individuals may soon have to release their encryption keys to the police or face imprisonment, when Part 3 of the RIP Act comes into effect
(UK)
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
You're confusing privacy and vanity.
You'll find that most conservatives are ripe with victorian ideals, including shamefulness of the human body.
When it's illegal to be without clothes, is it illegal to be human?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Don't worry, we'll all get back to bashing Democrats, as soon as they get into office and start acting like Republicans acting like Democrats. One enemy at a time, please.
The Scarfo case. An accused mobster was using PGP, the FBI got a warrant, and tapped his computer with what sounds like a hardware keylogger.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/5004 778.stm
There are several points you might be making and I'm not sure which one you're advocating.
1. "Selective criticism"
This argument is that people are being unfair by criticizing one party (the one in power) but not the other.
You're probably not making this argument since it would require ignoring the mountains of criticism aimed at the Clipper Chip and at Clinton's other abuses.
2. "Criticism barred by previous silence"
This closely related argument is that if one person gets a free pass then we're forever barred from objecting to the same thing in someone else.
You're probably not making this argument since it would require ignoring the mountains of criticism aimed at the Clipper Chip and at Clinton's other abuses.
3. "One thing at a time!"
This argument is that we still have unfinished business with Clinton and should handle it before dealing with the current emergency.
You're probably not making this argument, because after all we impeached Clinton.
4. "Everybody does it"
You're probably not making this argument because it doesn't even rise to the level of a logical fallacy. It's not like one criminal justifies another.
5. "It must be all right because Clinton did it"
This argument is that since Clinton's actions were legal and moral, it's absurd to object to those same legal and moral actions when Republicans do them.
This argument makes the most sense, since the relevant laws were the same in the Clinton administration as they are now. I am however bemused by your choice of President Clinton as your moral compass.
I'll try to save myself from being offtopic by asking whether zFone might be equally vulnerable (probably not, the few leaks about Skype's crypto haven't sounded encouraging).
We pissed them away while watching American Idol and not voting.
It was once said religion was the opiate of the masses---
(Marx? Lenin? Stalin??? One of them got something right anyway...)
Now we have TV, which is closer to the crack cocaine of the masses.
TV on, brain turns off.
Oooo...I have to fire up MythTV and watch Alias, bye...
...inherently distrust government no matter who is in power. Libertarians always view the government as untrustworthy, expansive, over-reaching, and inefficient by it's very nature. Thus the idea is to limit the government to its most basic and fundamental operations as set forth in the Constitution by our founding fathers.
The lines between the Dems and the Reps here in the US have blurred to the point that distinction is negligible.
Libertas in infinitum
Unfortunately you're confusing freedom with privacy.
I don't think I do.
Freedom is my ability to do what I want to do (within the limits of bla bla, you get the drift)
Privacy is my ability to control information about myself.
If I want to have a nice evening with my secretary, the ability to do so is freedom. The ability to keep it between the two of us is privacy. Your camera example also drives that home.
There is, however, a relation between freedom and privacy that you overlook. Privacy is often a requirement for freedom. It isn't for no reason that when a government goes about hunting the freedom birds, that it goes after privacy very early in the game.
In pure theory, you could have freedom, but no privacy. If everything were taped, but nothing bad ever happens because of that. In the real world, there are leaks, and there are misunderstandinds and there are sadistic assholes in the police and government.
But you can't have privacy and no freedom. Any government that eliminates freedom (i.e. a totalitarian police state) can not let you have privacy. You could plot to overthrow it, or just break some law, and they can't have you do that.
That's why defending privacy is defending freedom. Privacy is one of the first casualties when freedom is attacked. Look at any totalitarian state. How many of them have solid privacy laws (and not just on paper) ?
If some Johnny in Madison Wisconsin finds out a guy named Gray Calx wears women's underwear... does it matter?
To Gray it probably does. A lot. And that's the difference between freedom and privacy - freedom must be defined by a community because my freedom and your freedom might collide, and then we need to have rules as to which is more important. Privacy is no such beast. My privacy and your privacy don't collide, ever. Each of us can define for himself which things he wants to keep private and confidential.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I suppose I got it. And I'm just a college student.
You guaranteed no one would get it. I want my money back, then.
In soviet russia, You ask not what country do for you, but what you do for country!
Oh wait...
Yeah, the relevant documents pretty much account for the shades of gray. Thus the language "unreasonable searches and seizures" and the dependence on Judicial opinion to determine when a breach of privacy is legal.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
No, in fact, if government actually gave me the choice of how much money to "donate" to each government program, I'd give exactly zero to either. Of course, government was never meant to represent free choice -- if it did, the power elite wouldn't have much to capitalize on.
the law making bodies must realise that there is a thin line between protecting the people from harm, and jailing up the people to protect them from a perceived harm. what good is a security measure if it leads to a loss of a fundamental right? in a way, the "bad guys" have won; if the common folks have to undergo so much of surveillance. without even doing anything, they have succeeded in curbing human liberty and made the government spend billions in surveillance!
The parent isn't redundant if (s)he's in the first dozen posts, and nobody has posted this info thus far. WAKE UP!
I completely disagree with you.
Ask a celebrity about their rights to privacy, then get back to me on how free they are.
"Why should anyone pay attention to a trolling imbecile like you "
You spelled "me" wrong, Anonymous trolling imbecile Coward.
--
make install -not war
The vast majority, eh? Is that your way of saying, "I have no rational argument for holding my views so I point instead to consensus beliefs as a way of validation"?
Nice job. The vast majority of people are also Christians. --Or do you subscribe to broken religions which demand no question-asking and lots of subservience?
Privacy might be an illusion, but there are many other freedoms which are being systematically removed. --Like being able to have free and democratic elections. --And the freedom to wear a tee-shirt which says, "Impeach Bush" at public events without being harassed by cops. And the freedom to fair trials before an impartial jury, because right now, if you are suspected of being an 'enemy combatant' you can be put in a secret prison forever without being charged or your family knowing where you are. These are not theoretical possibilities. They are events which have happened and will happen with increasing regularity if the Neo-Cons are not removed from office.
This is what the poster was complaining about, and you should be as well.
-FL
And as long as I'm quoting Nazis, I would be remiss in leaving out Hitler's views on the mechanics of why telling big lies to the public works so effectively. You may have read this before, but read it again with full attention. . .
So, what you're saying, is that the only way to practice sedation and starting an effective revolution, is to keep stuff secret from the government?
I suppose that's trolling, but it's also an interesting question. After all, the 2nd amendment is supposed to give you a way to fight an oppressive government, isn't it?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
You think that?
Every celebrity has the freedom to, say, fuck their gardener. What they don't have is privacy - it'll be in the newspapers the next day.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Our legal department insisted that we remove embargoed countries from the dropdown on the sign-up form. So you couldn't possibly choose Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan (at the time) etc...
As a result, when Osama signs up for an account, he'd have to lie about the country he was in which would make it even harder to find him.
Zfone, like Off-the-Record Messaging, doesn't use a pre-shared key to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks. Rather, it uses a code (conceptually similar to a key fingerprint) which each person reads for the key they have from the other person, to the other person. By ensuring this code matches what is expected, and observing that the voice is not being artificially replaced between the two people.
h tmlt ml (not the same, but very similar)e cya nn-avt-zrtp-01.txt
As long as those codes are correct, the call is secure.
The second part is that a bit of information is kept from each call, and used in an authentication process in the next call. Because both systems will know this information (if they are the same systems), authentication can occur without either person needing to deal with it directly. If the systems for the second coll are not the same as for the first, the code-reading process must occur again.
There is more to it than that, but that's the quick dirty summary.
For more details, try:
http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/zfone/index-faq.
http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/Protocol-v2-3.0.0.h
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_forward_secr
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-zimmerm
Flamebait :DDD I rest my case ;)
im scared of vopi being so new that my calls are not private, being sent over the net to be intercepted.I live in america and freedom and privacy are very valueable and yet taken for granted by many.How unfortunate and sad. LongDistance-T1.com