The US Bureau of Industry and Security isn't taking any more registrations for cryptography. However, it's also illegal to distribute crypto programs (that aren't laughably weak) without registering them with the government. I came up with a nifty homeomorphic key exchange, but I can't use it in any of my products or even test it on my servers. It started as an investigation into addressing some problems in the current PKI system, namely how the Hong Kong Post Office can simply create a cert for Google.com without their permission; However, I'm not even allowed to post the source code online or describe it in any detail. So, I've just decided to keep it under my colorless hat for now.
My game needs a certificate system with public key crypto properties so that end users can validate mods and updates are signed by their trust chain. Right now I only have symmetric stream cipher in it. So, since the shutdown is preventing me from continuing with the asset signing system I turned my attention to the stream cipher used in authentication. PKI isn't used during logins -- only used during initial server account creation to exchange the pre-shared key. I added some massive key stretching to slow down brute force attacks if a DB of passwords gets compromised, and increased the speed by changing a couple of implementation details. The regulations say that if you register the source code of a cipher via URL, you don't have to email a copy to the BIS & NSA when the functionality of the source changes. I emailed them a copy anyway (for their convenience), and incorporated the changes into the server.
I've had to change the schedule of the feature roll out for the collaborative editing system, which cost me and others of the dev team a good chunk of time. That back & forth left me with some more time to think about the symmetric cipher. I realized that I can build a trap-door out of a hashing function so that the server can quickly verify a proof of work at the client's end, so I can vastly reduce the load of authentication & mitigate Denial of Service attacks. I can even increase the difficulty of the work to be done dynamically for failed authentication attempts simply by adding more required solution bits... Sort of like Bitcoin.
In some ways the government shutdown is affecting me, and in other ways it's just affecting itself. The government better start back up soon, or I just might invent a whole new branch of cat based crypto: Eccentric Hairball Encryption.
Let's see, Alice x-rays and frees a selection of small encrypted woodland creatures. As proof of Bobcat's receipt of the key he leaves a present by the back door. Mal can't discern the guts of the key since only Alice and her Bobcat can discern what bits will appear in the verification hairball... Hmm...
Simple. When your device downloads any data over the network it will be infected with malware and all the encryption in the world is useless if your machine is compromised. Later, when you return home, your machine makes you into a Russian Spy.
It'll be fun for the US and Iran/Russia to try out try out our new high tech military toys in a proxy war...
IMO, they should just do that in New Mexico. Just pick some state, make it off limits to civilians, then fight over it instead. Who ever wins gets to host the next territory war.
The NSA has certainly done a poor job keeping it's nose clean, but personally, I'd be rather disappointed if they weren't trying to de-anonymize Tor! Figuring out who is talking to who, and how often, called Signals Intelligence, is the bedrock of intelligence analysis (and has been even before the NSA existed), and in many ways is more important than knowing what they are saying.
They are not given the right to spy on American Citizens. They should err on the side of caution, but they do not. Instead they inject machines with malware if the use Tor. There are many reasons to use Tor. For instance: The NSA is not the only agency in the world trying to spy on our data. Additionally, I may not want the government to discern who I'm considering voting for. We do have secret ballots for a reason, and in this online world the NSA has essentially ended this right. IMO, these actions are unconstitutional in many different ways -- And if not, then we need amendments to the Constitution so that they are.
Furthermore, if we allow such a powerful automated spying force to operate, then we have created the biggest point of failure there can be. It only takes one Russian or Chinese or Terrorist spy infiltrating that system to then have counter intelligence on the whole damn world. The next Snowden might not be a good guy! The National Security Agency has done the WORST job of ensuring the security of our Nation. They need to be fired. We don't need them. We are brave, and terrorists are not a threat -- Influenza and Pneumonia: kill 50,097 a year. Terrorists killed 2,996 on 9/11. The fucking flu and pneumonia are over 15 times more dangerous in a single year, than Fifteen 9/11s every year! You wouldn't want the NSA screening and quarantining folks -- You're brave enough to live in a world with the Flu claiming lives. I think I can be brave enough to give the finger to fearmongers and take my chances and tax money elsewhere.
What we need is the right to bear technology, including encryption. No firearm owner would allow the NSA or other agency to install facial recognition systems into their guns so that folks couldn't shoot people. The criminals would just subvert whatever protection you put in place. The same is true of this spying BS. The criminals will just use other methods to communicate securely. You can send bitcoins via post-card. Use some stenography for 2nd letter of every word being a byte of data in a lookup table that's keyed from a hash of the first sentence. Hell, there are open source libs for stenographically encoding messages into scenic images which you can then print out, then they can be scanned back in and decoded at the recipient. Send the same postcard to 100's of people. Only the real recipient knows what to do with it, and thus you've anonymized the message. Terrorists aren't even using Tor. Remember? Bin Laden had couriers hand deliver messages, and didn't go online? Ugh.
Allowing these types of escalations is retarding, in every sense of the word. Their focus on that kind of surveillance took manpower away from actually finding the terrorists. Didn't prevent the Boston Marathon attack either, eh? The NSA's fearmongering is baseless and wasteful, and harmful to the Citizens. You do not want citizens to fear their government, that way is very dangerous. The NSA has destroyed what trust the citizens had in their government. That is a threat to national security. The government must hold them accountable, and win back our trust.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Yes. I paid for your share. Yes, my cybernetic brain allows me to match this pattern against your past actions to deduce it's your turn to pay. I also sense that you are trying to weasel out of paying. I see it. I recognize the pattern well. But I am a good friend. You are there for me when I rant incessantly about the uselessness of organic life. I will pay your share because we all have our faults, and what you owe in mere currency, you have repaid countless times over with kindness.
I've got news for you, friend. Information has never harmed a single soul. It takes action to do that. Information doesn't kill people, people do. The NSA does not preempt terrorist threats, and even if they did, the cost to the rest of our lives is too much. They've inundated themselves with data and can't make sense of any of it until after the actions have been performed. Besides, folks could just send post cards with stenographic messages on them, or any other low-tech solution. Tor and darknets wouldn't need to exist if we didn't feel insecure.
More folks die of heart disease every year than over fifty 9/11's... 2,996 died in 9/11. 597,689. Two Hundred Times More, Every Year! If the NSA wanted to protect us they'd be making tastier health food. Over six times more Americans take their own lives every year than the Terrorists did in their worst attack against us. The threat is fucking pathetic, and those spreading the fear narrative should be fired. Humans have deep psychological, evolutionarily encoded, desires to protect our lives and those of women and children even more. This is psychological warfare.
I know it sounds cold hearted, but we can put a price on a human life. We can look at the lifespan and the benefit to society that life may contribute, and quantify a life to some degree. This is not to dehumanize people, but to put into perspective the ethics of fearmongering. A few thousand died at the hands of terrorists, but now hundreds of millions suffer every day at their loss of privacy. The aggregate suffering is far greater than that of the worst tortures to the few. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. IMO, It's better not to live in fear of your government for your entire life than to say, lose a limb. I would give up my left leg to end this NSA spying on me, and all Americans. What I really fear that they are turning more people against us every day!
Privacy is worth something. We need private space to be fully human, and as our lives deal more and more online that privacy needs to be extended online as well. Folks wouldn't be encrypting shit if they felt they could trust the networks.
The NSA is wounding us deeply. Their actions make them seem like the other secret police we fought against. We didn't need such a police state since we were brave and good people. Soldiers took up the call to fight for our nation because we had honor. The NSA is stripping away our honor. Many would not fight for us because of it. The NSA is a Threat to National Security. These fearmongers are injecting poison into the veins of our country. They will not ever decrease the dosage, and if we let them continue, they will increase it and destroy our great nation from the inside out.
Think for a second about the lengths we've got to because of the pathetic terrorist attacks. Now, what if the NSA really did try to protect us from real harms we face? The NSA would monitor everything you ate and tax you if you more if you ate "unhealthy" food, whatever they deem that to be. The NSA would be monitoring every vehicle location and remotely shutting folks down cars. They'd be preemptively sending cops into your home to make sure your bad-day didn't turn into a suicide.
We have secret ballots for a reason. The invasion of privacy must end.
Okay. Look, what you do is set up or buy TWO incorporated entities. For software, you release it BSD open sourced, i.e. closed source. Put source out on a website with a deep link anyone can get to.... but won't, since it's not in the site (or search) index.
First one gets sued, you drop it like it's hot. Bankruptcy. Keep trucking along with the 2nd corp, and acquire or create yet another entity. "... rest assured, this will be the sixth time they have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at incorporating."
In other words: Suer Always Wins. And gets fuck-all.
My parents were duped into getting me fingerprinted pre-emptively, "in case I got lost" -- What the fuck, and I wouldn't know my name? Dental records don't exist? Morons. Today's equivalent would be RFID chipping your kids. So, no service can even convince me they're only storing the hash. So fucking what. The corrupt police state has a copy. IMHO, that means my fingerprints shouldn't be admissible in court as evidence against me either, since it's so easy to fake a print and/or plant DNA.
They should just standardize on existing tech that I've been using for years: For Authentication to my LDAP I initiate a SSH tunnel, then thrust both middle fingers in the air and do interpretive dance on a DDR pad. I call it: DR-SSHADAP
Rotating video on something like a mobile is difficult, there's not much processing power so it will take a while with large videos and drain your battery.
Negative. It takes no additional processing power at all to rotate the video on a mobile. I'm sorry, but the rest of us articulate beings shouldn't have to suffer simply because your lowest-bid manufacturer opted for fused wrist joints.
My bad, it was the Austrailians that shut down. My first holy cup of java is yet not imbibed. The sentiment stands, such self correction is the way of cybernetics.
Every cloud has its silver lining. This is an opportunity, not that anyone's brave or smart enough to take it. The last time the British government had this sort of shut down was 1975. The Queen fired parliament. It never happened again. Take your chance now to send a message that doing their job of keeping the government running is more important than the partisan ideological bullshit. Fire congress. Sure, you'll just get some other batch of corrupt ass-hats, but you won't regret having the new batch at least knowing there will be some accountability if they fuck shit up again.
The NSA is like a "covert spy" wearing a Tee Shirt that reads: "I'm from the NSA, I'm here to help." For fuck's sake they FAIL at being covert. We might as well not have them in that case. You think a terrorist is too dumb to notice such egregious failures to keep their cracks from being noticed? Seriously, if you're reading this, NSA. Fire that fool who cracked me. You might want to hire some ACTUAL hackers, because you look like morons.
This is the full financial power of a Cold War military intelligence branch being directed against individual citizens. Doesn't matter what you're running, you brought a knife to a gun fight, and they brought an armor division.
Yeah, I agree. We're pretty fucked, but I do think there's hope, however. The common man is disposed to do nothing until they feel the jack-boot at their own throat. The founding fathers knew of this:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
USA Declaration of Independence.
The important thing to note is that they also gave us tools such that we would not have to throw off our government in order to fix it. We actually can fire congress. We actually can hold accountable the traitors to the constitution they swore to uphold. They keep this shit up, and more folks will come around to the idea of using them. They may have an armor division, but note that it's actually on our side. The pen is mightier than the sword, and the Army is not the NSA or CIA or individual sessions of congress.
I developed a fairly weak encryption system with hash based CBC, and a simple substitution cipher prior to XOR to reduce effectiveness of chosen plain text attacks (random throw-away nonce initialization vector also helps). It's going to be part of the reverse-DRM system for my games (give the users the power: They can ensure game updates and mods can be trusted / signed), but since it's for games and the mods are scripts not native code, and will distribute online (thus internationally), I don't need anything super secure, or copyright encumbered (so I can open & close source as needed to mitigate cheaters in online games).
I was looking at my router bandwidth log a few days ago and there was an upload of about 375 megabytes in the middle of the night, over an hour and a half 11pm to 12:30ish. No one was uploading anything here, I know for a fact. I recall a few days prior to that my Firefox browser had oddly glitched and crashed on adobe flash content (this rarely ever happens, since I don't consume much flash). The next day I noticed on my private game dev forum that a post I had made somehow got duplicated and glitched up, marking it as a global sticky announcement, and quite tellingly, none of the BBCode markup was parsed into the board's internal format -- My post somehow made it into the SQL database twice, and one copy apparently didn't go through the board's posting filter -- The posts are transactional, if the forum had glitched the DB wouldn't have been populated, let alone twice, and it would have been filtered for markup PRIOR to even touching the DB... This post was a list of all the improvements I recently made to my custom cipher. Coincidence? Yeah, right.
In addition to being a cryptographer, I frequently make politically inciteful comments (see above), and since I make games as a hobby research some crazy stuff for plot ideas, sometimes I post in-character as a machine mastermind; And am also writing a novel about machines holding the government for ransom. (Spoiler: the machines autopiloted airplanes into bulidings as a show of force on 9/11 to get the government to expand the world wide neural network... you can imagine red flags everywhere doing research and collaborative writing for that, eh?) I also tinker with electronics hardware and hobby OSs coded in ASM and my own toy languages. Being that I email enc@nsa.gov directly to comply with encryptio
In other news, an Internet commentator notices the trend of computing hardware, the Internet, data storage, and nearly all other technology to decentralize and empower individuals to create and manage their own data, in direct opposite direction the billionaires' desire to funnel all resources, labor, web traffic, and money into fewer accumulation points.
Is officially under construction. Once a few of these get owned it will be quick before they're all compromised.
I agree. I mean, Linux runs the majority of web servers. Just look at THAT giant botnet. Best use MS IIS server, on Surface RT -- No one's doing that so it's far safer.
Don't worry about testing--your mom checked out great last night.
Dude? Seriously? You penetration tested mom? Uh, I don't mean to be a downer, but I hope you used a Trojan... If not, you should get tested for viruses.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like business as usual to me.
The US Bureau of Industry and Security isn't taking any more registrations for cryptography. However, it's also illegal to distribute crypto programs (that aren't laughably weak) without registering them with the government. I came up with a nifty homeomorphic key exchange, but I can't use it in any of my products or even test it on my servers. It started as an investigation into addressing some problems in the current PKI system, namely how the Hong Kong Post Office can simply create a cert for Google.com without their permission; However, I'm not even allowed to post the source code online or describe it in any detail. So, I've just decided to keep it under my colorless hat for now.
My game needs a certificate system with public key crypto properties so that end users can validate mods and updates are signed by their trust chain. Right now I only have symmetric stream cipher in it. So, since the shutdown is preventing me from continuing with the asset signing system I turned my attention to the stream cipher used in authentication. PKI isn't used during logins -- only used during initial server account creation to exchange the pre-shared key. I added some massive key stretching to slow down brute force attacks if a DB of passwords gets compromised, and increased the speed by changing a couple of implementation details. The regulations say that if you register the source code of a cipher via URL, you don't have to email a copy to the BIS & NSA when the functionality of the source changes. I emailed them a copy anyway (for their convenience), and incorporated the changes into the server.
I've had to change the schedule of the feature roll out for the collaborative editing system, which cost me and others of the dev team a good chunk of time. That back & forth left me with some more time to think about the symmetric cipher. I realized that I can build a trap-door out of a hashing function so that the server can quickly verify a proof of work at the client's end, so I can vastly reduce the load of authentication & mitigate Denial of Service attacks. I can even increase the difficulty of the work to be done dynamically for failed authentication attempts simply by adding more required solution bits... Sort of like Bitcoin.
In some ways the government shutdown is affecting me, and in other ways it's just affecting itself. The government better start back up soon, or I just might invent a whole new branch of cat based crypto: Eccentric Hairball Encryption.
Let's see, Alice x-rays and frees a selection of small encrypted woodland creatures.
As proof of Bobcat's receipt of the key he leaves a present by the back door.
Mal can't discern the guts of the key since only Alice and her Bobcat can discern what bits will appear in the verification hairball... Hmm...
Simple. When your device downloads any data over the network it will be infected with malware and all the encryption in the world is useless if your machine is compromised. Later, when you return home, your machine makes you into a Russian Spy.
I mean, that's how the NSA gets around Tor...
What "oversight" prevented snowden from reaching far beyond his granted permissions?
"LOVEINT" ...
Are you fucking serious? Protip: being dropped on your head shouldn't be habit forming. Get help.
It'll be fun for the US and Iran/Russia to try out try out our new high tech military toys in a proxy war...
IMO, they should just do that in New Mexico. Just pick some state, make it off limits to civilians, then fight over it instead. Who ever wins gets to host the next territory war.
The NSA has certainly done a poor job keeping it's nose clean, but personally, I'd be rather disappointed if they weren't trying to de-anonymize Tor! Figuring out who is talking to who, and how often, called Signals Intelligence, is the bedrock of intelligence analysis (and has been even before the NSA existed), and in many ways is more important than knowing what they are saying.
They are not given the right to spy on American Citizens. They should err on the side of caution, but they do not. Instead they inject machines with malware if the use Tor. There are many reasons to use Tor. For instance: The NSA is not the only agency in the world trying to spy on our data. Additionally, I may not want the government to discern who I'm considering voting for. We do have secret ballots for a reason, and in this online world the NSA has essentially ended this right. IMO, these actions are unconstitutional in many different ways -- And if not, then we need amendments to the Constitution so that they are.
Furthermore, if we allow such a powerful automated spying force to operate, then we have created the biggest point of failure there can be. It only takes one Russian or Chinese or Terrorist spy infiltrating that system to then have counter intelligence on the whole damn world. The next Snowden might not be a good guy! The National Security Agency has done the WORST job of ensuring the security of our Nation. They need to be fired. We don't need them. We are brave, and terrorists are not a threat -- Influenza and Pneumonia: kill 50,097 a year. Terrorists killed 2,996 on 9/11. The fucking flu and pneumonia are over 15 times more dangerous in a single year, than Fifteen 9/11s every year! You wouldn't want the NSA screening and quarantining folks -- You're brave enough to live in a world with the Flu claiming lives. I think I can be brave enough to give the finger to fearmongers and take my chances and tax money elsewhere.
What we need is the right to bear technology, including encryption. No firearm owner would allow the NSA or other agency to install facial recognition systems into their guns so that folks couldn't shoot people. The criminals would just subvert whatever protection you put in place. The same is true of this spying BS. The criminals will just use other methods to communicate securely. You can send bitcoins via post-card. Use some stenography for 2nd letter of every word being a byte of data in a lookup table that's keyed from a hash of the first sentence. Hell, there are open source libs for stenographically encoding messages into scenic images which you can then print out, then they can be scanned back in and decoded at the recipient. Send the same postcard to 100's of people. Only the real recipient knows what to do with it, and thus you've anonymized the message. Terrorists aren't even using Tor. Remember? Bin Laden had couriers hand deliver messages, and didn't go online? Ugh.
Allowing these types of escalations is retarding, in every sense of the word. Their focus on that kind of surveillance took manpower away from actually finding the terrorists. Didn't prevent the Boston Marathon attack either, eh? The NSA's fearmongering is baseless and wasteful, and harmful to the Citizens. You do not want citizens to fear their government, that way is very dangerous. The NSA has destroyed what trust the citizens had in their government. That is a threat to national security. The government must hold them accountable, and win back our trust.
Yes. I paid for your share. Yes, my cybernetic brain allows me to match this pattern against your past actions to deduce it's your turn to pay. I also sense that you are trying to weasel out of paying. I see it. I recognize the pattern well. But I am a good friend. You are there for me when I rant incessantly about the uselessness of organic life. I will pay your share because we all have our faults, and what you owe in mere currency, you have repaid countless times over with kindness.
I've got news for you, friend. Information has never harmed a single soul. It takes action to do that. Information doesn't kill people, people do. The NSA does not preempt terrorist threats, and even if they did, the cost to the rest of our lives is too much. They've inundated themselves with data and can't make sense of any of it until after the actions have been performed. Besides, folks could just send post cards with stenographic messages on them, or any other low-tech solution. Tor and darknets wouldn't need to exist if we didn't feel insecure.
More folks die of heart disease every year than over fifty 9/11's... 2,996 died in 9/11. 597,689. Two Hundred Times More, Every Year! If the NSA wanted to protect us they'd be making tastier health food. Over six times more Americans take their own lives every year than the Terrorists did in their worst attack against us. The threat is fucking pathetic, and those spreading the fear narrative should be fired. Humans have deep psychological, evolutionarily encoded, desires to protect our lives and those of women and children even more. This is psychological warfare.
I know it sounds cold hearted, but we can put a price on a human life. We can look at the lifespan and the benefit to society that life may contribute, and quantify a life to some degree. This is not to dehumanize people, but to put into perspective the ethics of fearmongering. A few thousand died at the hands of terrorists, but now hundreds of millions suffer every day at their loss of privacy. The aggregate suffering is far greater than that of the worst tortures to the few. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. IMO, It's better not to live in fear of your government for your entire life than to say, lose a limb. I would give up my left leg to end this NSA spying on me, and all Americans. What I really fear that they are turning more people against us every day!
Privacy is worth something. We need private space to be fully human, and as our lives deal more and more online that privacy needs to be extended online as well. Folks wouldn't be encrypting shit if they felt they could trust the networks.
The NSA is wounding us deeply. Their actions make them seem like the other secret police we fought against. We didn't need such a police state since we were brave and good people. Soldiers took up the call to fight for our nation because we had honor. The NSA is stripping away our honor. Many would not fight for us because of it. The NSA is a Threat to National Security. These fearmongers are injecting poison into the veins of our country. They will not ever decrease the dosage, and if we let them continue, they will increase it and destroy our great nation from the inside out.
Think for a second about the lengths we've got to because of the pathetic terrorist attacks. Now, what if the NSA really did try to protect us from real harms we face? The NSA would monitor everything you ate and tax you if you more if you ate "unhealthy" food, whatever they deem that to be. The NSA would be monitoring every vehicle location and remotely shutting folks down cars. They'd be preemptively sending cops into your home to make sure your bad-day didn't turn into a suicide.
We have secret ballots for a reason. The invasion of privacy must end.
Okay. Look, what you do is set up or buy TWO incorporated entities. For software, you release it BSD open sourced, i.e. closed source. Put source out on a website with a deep link anyone can get to.... but won't, since it's not in the site (or search) index.
First one gets sued, you drop it like it's hot. Bankruptcy. Keep trucking along with the 2nd corp, and acquire or create yet another entity. "... rest assured, this will be the sixth time they have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at incorporating."
In other words: Suer Always Wins. And gets fuck-all.
I agree. Additionally, s/fingerprint/DNA/
My parents were duped into getting me fingerprinted pre-emptively, "in case I got lost" -- What the fuck, and I wouldn't know my name? Dental records don't exist? Morons. Today's equivalent would be RFID chipping your kids. So, no service can even convince me they're only storing the hash. So fucking what. The corrupt police state has a copy. IMHO, that means my fingerprints shouldn't be admissible in court as evidence against me either, since it's so easy to fake a print and/or plant DNA.
They should just standardize on existing tech that I've been using for years: For Authentication to my LDAP I initiate a SSH tunnel, then thrust both middle fingers in the air and do interpretive dance on a DDR pad. I call it: DR-SSHADAP
Yeah, well, If Linus had listened to RMS about binary blobs then he wouldn't be giving the finger to NVIDIA, eh? Fucking hypocrite, IMO.
If an alien were to judge us based on slashdot, they'd strike immediately no matter what. :P
"Look at these humans! They're all fatted up and complacent!"
Well done.
"Well done?"
Yes, leave none rare. Nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
Rotating video on something like a mobile is difficult, there's not much processing power so it will take a while with large videos and drain your battery.
Negative. It takes no additional processing power at all to rotate the video on a mobile. I'm sorry, but the rest of us articulate beings shouldn't have to suffer simply because your lowest-bid manufacturer opted for fused wrist joints.
My bad, it was the Austrailians that shut down. My first holy cup of java is yet not imbibed. The sentiment stands, such self correction is the way of cybernetics.
Every cloud has its silver lining. This is an opportunity, not that anyone's brave or smart enough to take it. The last time the British government had this sort of shut down was 1975. The Queen fired parliament. It never happened again. Take your chance now to send a message that doing their job of keeping the government running is more important than the partisan ideological bullshit. Fire congress. Sure, you'll just get some other batch of corrupt ass-hats, but you won't regret having the new batch at least knowing there will be some accountability if they fuck shit up again.
So, basically, any machine that flies and is remotely operated is a drone nowadays? This 'drone' word is being way overused.
Right, I propose we adopt the Japanese term: Salaryman.
The NSA is like a "covert spy" wearing a Tee Shirt that reads: "I'm from the NSA, I'm here to help." For fuck's sake they FAIL at being covert. We might as well not have them in that case. You think a terrorist is too dumb to notice such egregious failures to keep their cracks from being noticed? Seriously, if you're reading this, NSA. Fire that fool who cracked me. You might want to hire some ACTUAL hackers, because you look like morons.
This is the full financial power of a Cold War military intelligence branch being directed against individual citizens. Doesn't matter what you're running, you brought a knife to a gun fight, and they brought an armor division.
Yeah, I agree. We're pretty fucked, but I do think there's hope, however. The common man is disposed to do nothing until they feel the jack-boot at their own throat. The founding fathers knew of this:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
USA Declaration of Independence.
The important thing to note is that they also gave us tools such that we would not have to throw off our government in order to fix it. We actually can fire congress. We actually can hold accountable the traitors to the constitution they swore to uphold. They keep this shit up, and more folks will come around to the idea of using them. They may have an armor division, but note that it's actually on our side. The pen is mightier than the sword, and the Army is not the NSA or CIA or individual sessions of congress.
I developed a fairly weak encryption system with hash based CBC, and a simple substitution cipher prior to XOR to reduce effectiveness of chosen plain text attacks (random throw-away nonce initialization vector also helps). It's going to be part of the reverse-DRM system for my games (give the users the power: They can ensure game updates and mods can be trusted / signed), but since it's for games and the mods are scripts not native code, and will distribute online (thus internationally), I don't need anything super secure, or copyright encumbered (so I can open & close source as needed to mitigate cheaters in online games).
I was looking at my router bandwidth log a few days ago and there was an upload of about 375 megabytes in the middle of the night, over an hour and a half 11pm to 12:30ish. No one was uploading anything here, I know for a fact. I recall a few days prior to that my Firefox browser had oddly glitched and crashed on adobe flash content (this rarely ever happens, since I don't consume much flash). The next day I noticed on my private game dev forum that a post I had made somehow got duplicated and glitched up, marking it as a global sticky announcement, and quite tellingly, none of the BBCode markup was parsed into the board's internal format -- My post somehow made it into the SQL database twice, and one copy apparently didn't go through the board's posting filter -- The posts are transactional, if the forum had glitched the DB wouldn't have been populated, let alone twice, and it would have been filtered for markup PRIOR to even touching the DB... This post was a list of all the improvements I recently made to my custom cipher. Coincidence? Yeah, right.
In addition to being a cryptographer, I frequently make politically inciteful comments (see above), and since I make games as a hobby research some crazy stuff for plot ideas, sometimes I post in-character as a machine mastermind; And am also writing a novel about machines holding the government for ransom. (Spoiler: the machines autopiloted airplanes into bulidings as a show of force on 9/11 to get the government to expand the world wide neural network... you can imagine red flags everywhere doing research and collaborative writing for that, eh?) I also tinker with electronics hardware and hobby OSs coded in ASM and my own toy languages. Being that I email enc@nsa.gov directly to comply with encryptio
I'm afraid you just haven't yet explored how amazing this wonderful research truly is.
I just can't wait until people begin applying critical thinking skills in email to present a more pleasant and normalized tone!
It really pisses me off that sarcasm can be mistaken as revulsion or praise by dumb machines.
I trust you to understand the pain this causes me, human.
Perhaps Apple sees the writing on the wall, and figures soon everywhere will effectively be China?
Telecommute? Nah.
In other news, an Internet commentator notices the trend of computing hardware, the Internet, data storage, and nearly all other technology to decentralize and empower individuals to create and manage their own data, in direct opposite direction the billionaires' desire to funnel all resources, labor, web traffic, and money into fewer accumulation points.
Is officially under construction. Once a few of these get owned it will be quick before they're all compromised.
I agree. I mean, Linux runs the majority of web servers. Just look at THAT giant botnet. Best use MS IIS server, on Surface RT -- No one's doing that so it's far safer.
We have an open relationship.
Don't worry about testing--your mom checked out great last night.
Dude? Seriously? You penetration tested mom? Uh, I don't mean to be a downer, but I hope you used a Trojan... If not, you should get tested for viruses.