I mean, back in the 90s, they were clamoring to have encryption regulated as a munition and now you see them talking about requiring it...
You know the really mind blowing thing, it was Gore who was basically leading the charge in this regard (with the clipper initiative and all) and who was one of the leading voices in favor of encryption and privacy against government snooping? John Fucking Askcroft. Seriously, look it up.
Write your own apps. Well, you better write your own OS too. Come to think of it, the compiler could easily have been compromised, better write your own one of those too. From scratch.
Well hang on, why are we trusting the hardware here? Better build your own storage media, who knows what off the shelf HDs store without you knowing. Put together your own cpu (we will trust off the shelf ram.....for now), probably be easier to start with opensparc and move on from there. Ok, so we have a somewhat secure computer, but what can we do with it. I cannot trust my isp, or any protocols out there designed to protect privacy. Come to think of it, even off the network I do not know what capacities "they" have regarding van eck phreaking.
Maybe the truly paranoid should just stay away from electronics.
To address your first point, leaving a notebook of equations (or even a document in latin or some other obscure language) is a bad analogy, there will be at least one other person able to derive meaning from it
Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it is not up to the suspect to explain it. Maybe the equation contains evidence of a crime. Maybe it is clear evidence of a crime in a weird encrypted format. Maybe it is the result of drunken doodling. The point is the suspect does not have to assist the police in figuring it out. They legally got access to the evidence, interpreting it is their responsibility. A suspect is also not required to help the police dust for fingerprints if they are incapable of doing that too.
If there is evidence to suggest that the encrypted file is evidence *and* there is evidence that you have the key, then I don't think there is a problem.
There is currently no such thing as evidence that you posses the key in your brain. I also cannot fathom what evidence would exist that would indicate what exists in an encrypted file short of actually decrypting it. Suspicion is not evidence.
however a judge should as a last resort be able to make a decision one way or another (they do every day with regard to other similar matters after all).
It would be a scary day indeed that a judge could jail you because the police cannot prove you are guilty or anything and they claim you are lying about forgetting something that they believe might help them prove it.
failing to provide an encryption key when it has been determined that you have it would make you guilty of a crime
Again, that determination is currently impossible. Also this judgment just proved the opposite (it does not make you guilty of a crime, at least in the US).
The only way it is possible to prove someone has the key is to find it (for example written on a postit note under their keyboard). We don't have the technology to probe someone's brain and if we did, the question of what they had hidden in an encrypted file would be moot.
I see no problem in jailing someone who is covering up a crime by hiding a key if it is determined that they have it
Neither do I, the catch 22 is that you do not know if they are covering up a crime until you get into the file, so you can never really jail someone for this until you decrypt the file yourself. Perhaps the file contains something embarrassing or private enough that they do not want the police knowing about it.
The problem with this is that the warrant gives the police the power to search your house/computer, but does not mean you have to explain everything to them. If they find a notebook full of math equations in your house they are not smart enough to figure out, you cannot be charged with refusing to educate them. If they find a bunch of bits on a hard drive they do not understand, you should not have to explain them.
Part of the problem also comes from this sentence "Of course if a warrant is issued by a judge (so there is some other evidence to suggest that the encrypted data is evidence of a crime) and there is *certainty* that you have the key (or a decrypted copy, after all you need to provide one *or* the other) then I am not too worried by the idea of being forced to hand over keys / decrypts."
Certainty that you have the key? Ever forget a password in your life? Would you like to be charged with a crime because you forgot one at an inopportune moment? Innocent until proven guilty means the state cannot assume you guilty then charge you with a crime because they are not smart enough to prove it and you are refusing to help them prove their assumption.
Therefore it should be held under the same rules as getting access to a safe or a house.
And it is. You get all the bits on the PC but you cannot force someone to explain all of them if you are not capable of figuring them out yourself. Just like you can search a house but you cannot force someone to tell you where anything might be hidden or the significance of anything you may find. Find a notebook with a bunch of math equations? You are free to examine it as legally acquired evidence but the owner is not forced to educate you as to what they mean.
Innocent until proven guilty means that you cannot presume someone guilty and punish them for not providing you with evidence, you actually have to do some work and find it yourself. I agree this leads to the guilty sometimes going free but it also prevents the innocent from being punished because the state believes them to be guilty but is not capable of proving it.
Also, hidden partitions in truecrypt (and other software) already render your job effectively impossible for all but the dumbest "cyber criminals". Fortunately many seem to be pretty dumb.
Most home users I know have either specifically requested XP when they bought a machine or (if they did not know any better at the time) had me or someone else "downgrade" to XP after spending some quality time with vista.
It is not making any friends in the "techie" or "non-techie" arenas from what I can tell.
I'd buy it, but for the life of me the only real use I can think for the Wii controller would be for when Stringfellow Hawke plays the cello in his secluded mountain cabin.
Public investment in telecommunications in the U.S. has - historically - been negligible.
True when taken literally, however Verizon and others have received millions in tax breaks (if not outright investment) for fiber over the last decade.
Uhm, you state your support for Ron Paul in your signature. He is a libertarian, and he is the last person on Earth who will have the government interfere with the "free market."
They won't because they offer competing services at higher prices with fewer features. They want to sell the services they already offer at the price they decided. To do that they need to stop the company offering a better service for less.
Traditional economics would dictate that they should lower their prices to increase demand in their service, but why do that when they can just use the patent system to harass Vonage until it goes out of business or has to raise its prices to the level they want to charge?
"Thank you for your interest in our Optimum products. A Cablevision system was not located in your ZIP code. Our services are available only in areas where Cablevision Systems Corp. is your cable provider."
If that was available in my area I'd be signed up in a second.
Yup, I have comcast business internet right now with 6 static IPs. More expensive, but the service is better and the annoying no-server restrictions are gone.
Funny enough, I've just moved our office (we run a LAN center in a small town) back to Comcast from Verizon FIOS.
Why is that? Is there a problem with the FIOS service? The only issue I know if is on their dynamic IP address setup they set the DHCP timeout to something like 2 hours which ends up killing VPN sessions. I am going with Static IP so that should not be an issue.
I'm not sure if this is related or not, but my Comcast workplace business connection has been having severe problems with Lotus Notes (cannot send emails with attachments) and my VPN sessions drop or severely degrade if I try to transfer a large (several meg) amount of data over it. Vonage has gone downhill as well, but that is always bad with Comcast.
I do know this is related, I'm terminating my account next month and moving to FIOS business. Roughly the same price, over twice the speed (up and down). The only thing that sucks is a pack of 5 static ip addresses costs $20/month vs $10/month. Well, that and that it is Verizon.
Not quite accurate. You are not the *AA's customers, you are their product. The artists are their customers. Granted they don't treat them so well either.
It may be the corporate IT staff who are "dealing" with it, but the user still has to wait until their computer is fixed before they can get any work done.
Or it may be the corporate IT staff that has to deal with it because the CIO is golfing buddies with an MS Exec.
I'll throw this out there as well. I have a Comcast workplace account at home (business internet, 6 static ips) which I would have thought would be exempt from this silliness. I generally VPN into my company's VPN server and any clients I am working with at the time. I have noticed this morning I am pretty much unable to transfer large files or even send emails with a few megs of attachments over VPN. No problem without the VPN. I'm also running into the same problem with Lotus Notes which seems to be widespread as well.
Interesting. I called my account rep and this is the first he had heard anything about this.
So anyway, I'm calling Verizon about FIOS today. Sure they are evil, but at least the at competent/evil compared to Comcast.
You have to get on the internet before you can route around anything. The last mile is a chokepoint the telcos want to ensure only they control. At that level, any censorship they want to impose is impossible to route around.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, back in the 90s, they were clamoring to have encryption regulated as a munition and now you see them talking about requiring it...
You know the really mind blowing thing, it was Gore who was basically leading the charge in this regard (with the clipper initiative and all) and who was one of the leading voices in favor of encryption and privacy against government snooping? John Fucking Askcroft. Seriously, look it up.
What should truly paranoid user do?
Write your own apps. Well, you better write your own OS too. Come to think of it, the compiler could easily have been compromised, better write your own one of those too. From scratch.
Well hang on, why are we trusting the hardware here? Better build your own storage media, who knows what off the shelf HDs store without you knowing. Put together your own cpu (we will trust off the shelf ram.....for now), probably be easier to start with opensparc and move on from there. Ok, so we have a somewhat secure computer, but what can we do with it. I cannot trust my isp, or any protocols out there designed to protect privacy. Come to think of it, even off the network I do not know what capacities "they" have regarding van eck phreaking.
Maybe the truly paranoid should just stay away from electronics.
Finkployd
Meet the soda you will not drink in 2015
To address your first point, leaving a notebook of equations (or even a document in latin or some other obscure language) is a bad analogy, there will be at least one other person able to derive meaning from it
Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it is not up to the suspect to explain it. Maybe the equation contains evidence of a crime. Maybe it is clear evidence of a crime in a weird encrypted format. Maybe it is the result of drunken doodling. The point is the suspect does not have to assist the police in figuring it out. They legally got access to the evidence, interpreting it is their responsibility. A suspect is also not required to help the police dust for fingerprints if they are incapable of doing that too.
If there is evidence to suggest that the encrypted file is evidence *and* there is evidence that you have the key, then I don't think there is a problem.
There is currently no such thing as evidence that you posses the key in your brain. I also cannot fathom what evidence would exist that would indicate what exists in an encrypted file short of actually decrypting it. Suspicion is not evidence.
however a judge should as a last resort be able to make a decision one way or another (they do every day with regard to other similar matters after all).
It would be a scary day indeed that a judge could jail you because the police cannot prove you are guilty or anything and they claim you are lying about forgetting something that they believe might help them prove it.
failing to provide an encryption key when it has been determined that you have it would make you guilty of a crime
Again, that determination is currently impossible. Also this judgment just proved the opposite (it does not make you guilty of a crime, at least in the US).
The only way it is possible to prove someone has the key is to find it (for example written on a postit note under their keyboard). We don't have the technology to probe someone's brain and if we did, the question of what they had hidden in an encrypted file would be moot.
I see no problem in jailing someone who is covering up a crime by hiding a key if it is determined that they have it
Neither do I, the catch 22 is that you do not know if they are covering up a crime until you get into the file, so you can never really jail someone for this until you decrypt the file yourself. Perhaps the file contains something embarrassing or private enough that they do not want the police knowing about it.
The problem with this is that the warrant gives the police the power to search your house/computer, but does not mean you have to explain everything to them. If they find a notebook full of math equations in your house they are not smart enough to figure out, you cannot be charged with refusing to educate them. If they find a bunch of bits on a hard drive they do not understand, you should not have to explain them.
Part of the problem also comes from this sentence "Of course if a warrant is issued by a judge (so there is some other evidence to suggest that the encrypted data is evidence of a crime) and there is *certainty* that you have the key (or a decrypted copy, after all you need to provide one *or* the other) then I am not too worried by the idea of being forced to hand over keys / decrypts."
Certainty that you have the key? Ever forget a password in your life? Would you like to be charged with a crime because you forgot one at an inopportune moment? Innocent until proven guilty means the state cannot assume you guilty then charge you with a crime because they are not smart enough to prove it and you are refusing to help them prove their assumption.
Truecrypt has done this for a long time. Furthermore, it is impossible to prove that the "hidden" partition exists inside the outer partition.
Therefore it should be held under the same rules as getting access to a safe or a house.
And it is. You get all the bits on the PC but you cannot force someone to explain all of them if you are not capable of figuring them out yourself. Just like you can search a house but you cannot force someone to tell you where anything might be hidden or the significance of anything you may find. Find a notebook with a bunch of math equations? You are free to examine it as legally acquired evidence but the owner is not forced to educate you as to what they mean.
Innocent until proven guilty means that you cannot presume someone guilty and punish them for not providing you with evidence, you actually have to do some work and find it yourself. I agree this leads to the guilty sometimes going free but it also prevents the innocent from being punished because the state believes them to be guilty but is not capable of proving it.
Also, hidden partitions in truecrypt (and other software) already render your job effectively impossible for all but the dumbest "cyber criminals". Fortunately many seem to be pretty dumb.
Finkployd
you can violate an open source license too
Only if you are re-distributing code you modified. I doubt Ernie Ball is doing that.
Finkployd
The more people switch to Macs, the more they will be targetted by malware authors and that illusion of security will fade.
Wow, been hearing that one for years. Maybe 2008 will finally be the "year of the Mac malware epidemic"
Most home users I know have either specifically requested XP when they bought a machine or (if they did not know any better at the time) had me or someone else "downgrade" to XP after spending some quality time with vista.
It is not making any friends in the "techie" or "non-techie" arenas from what I can tell.
Finkployd
I'd buy it, but for the life of me the only real use I can think for the Wii controller would be for when Stringfellow Hawke plays the cello in his secluded mountain cabin.
Finkployd
btw I know that in some areas carriers have a total
monopoly over internet access, but still...
Effectively a government granted monopoly, which is where market forces really get no say.
Public investment in telecommunications in the U.S. has - historically - been negligible.
True when taken literally, however Verizon and others have received millions in tax breaks (if not outright investment) for fiber over the last decade.
Uhm, you state your support for Ron Paul in your signature. He is a libertarian, and he is the last person on Earth who will have the government interfere with the "free market."
What do you think patents are?
Maybe AT&T/Sprint/Verizon should just buy Vonage.
They won't because they offer competing services at higher prices with fewer features. They want to sell the services they already offer at the price they decided. To do that they need to stop the company offering a better service for less.
Traditional economics would dictate that they should lower their prices to increase demand in their service, but why do that when they can just use the patent system to harass Vonage until it goes out of business or has to raise its prices to the level they want to charge?
Showoff :(
"Thank you for your interest in our Optimum products. A Cablevision system was not located in your ZIP code. Our services are available only in areas where Cablevision Systems Corp. is your cable provider."
If that was available in my area I'd be signed up in a second.
Yup, I have comcast business internet right now with 6 static IPs. More expensive, but the service is better and the annoying no-server restrictions are gone.
That is where this comes in: http://www22.verizon.com/content/businessfios/
Only way to get staticIPs and not be hassled for running servers.
Finkployd
Funny enough, I've just moved our office (we run a LAN center in a small town) back to Comcast from Verizon FIOS.
Why is that? Is there a problem with the FIOS service? The only issue I know if is on their dynamic IP address setup they set the DHCP timeout to something like 2 hours which ends up killing VPN sessions. I am going with Static IP so that should not be an issue.
Is there anything else I should know about?
I'm not sure if this is related or not, but my Comcast workplace business connection has been having severe problems with Lotus Notes (cannot send emails with attachments) and my VPN sessions drop or severely degrade if I try to transfer a large (several meg) amount of data over it. Vonage has gone downhill as well, but that is always bad with Comcast.
I do know this is related, I'm terminating my account next month and moving to FIOS business. Roughly the same price, over twice the speed (up and down). The only thing that sucks is a pack of 5 static ip addresses costs $20/month vs $10/month. Well, that and that it is Verizon.
Finkployd
Not quite accurate. You are not the *AA's customers, you are their product. The artists are their customers. Granted they don't treat them so well either.
Finkployd
With Windows, however, it's there waiting to abuse you some more like some bad Bill Murray movie.
You mean any Bill Murray movie? Zing!
Rushmore was ok I guess.
It may be the corporate IT staff who are "dealing" with it, but the user still has to wait until their computer is fixed before they can get any work done.
Or it may be the corporate IT staff that has to deal with it because the CIO is golfing buddies with an MS Exec.
I'll throw this out there as well. I have a Comcast workplace account at home (business internet, 6 static ips) which I would have thought would be exempt from this silliness. I generally VPN into my company's VPN server and any clients I am working with at the time. I have noticed this morning I am pretty much unable to transfer large files or even send emails with a few megs of attachments over VPN. No problem without the VPN. I'm also running into the same problem with Lotus Notes which seems to be widespread as well.
Interesting. I called my account rep and this is the first he had heard anything about this.
So anyway, I'm calling Verizon about FIOS today. Sure they are evil, but at least the at competent/evil compared to Comcast.
You have to get on the internet before you can route around anything. The last mile is a chokepoint the telcos want to ensure only they control. At that level, any censorship they want to impose is impossible to route around.