I'm actually all for privacy. I just don't believe that privacy is possible in a wired world. If you're on the internet, you are capable of being monitored. How paranoid do you want to be? How do we know that Verisign (or any other certificate authority - i'm not slaming Verisign - they're just who popped into mind) doesn't use a very limited keyspace when assigning keys? Each site could have a different key, that's each 128 bits long, but if theirs only 100 million keys to check, it no longer matters how long the key is.
As a nation, to err on the safe side is to allow foreign countries access to our encyption systems especially access to the *commented* source code. If only binary downloads from monitored sources are permitted, then you've just increased national security at the expense of personal privacy.
To quote Spock - the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Funny how when the few being refered to includes a few/.er's it gets warped
Is it a crime in China to use government resources to preserve the government. It'd be really shady if they had used computers with different IP addresses rather than their own. Instead, by using their own, they're saying quite loudly that they don't appreciate the attempts at spreading propoganda via the internet.
Ummm NATO didn't bomb that embassy... WE (the US) did. Per instructions of the CIA. It was the only target they specified during our campaign in Yugoslavia. Search for something like CIA Yugoslavia on news.com and you'll see... I'd say they have the right to be a little miffed... That's not playing at all fair.
Uhhh... China has more english speakers than North America. What's wrong with China having a backbone and trying to preserve their way of life, rather than rushing head over heels to become westernized and english speaking.
If we're so eager to get into their markets, the least bit we could do is learn their language. Or would that be too much effort>?
You're wrong. The reason we don't treat China like any other country is because they have over a billion people to our 280 million. If we get them angry, they can just turn around and stomp us into the ground. Or at least give us a horrible scare.
Nuclear espionage... I laughed at that... As far as I've been led to believe the only reason that we (the US) knew that the espionage had taken place was through one of our spies in Biejing (sp?). Turned out that he was a double agent, so there's no reason to believe that we would have found out if the chinese didn't want us to know. The point being - they spy on us. We spy on them. We still spy on russia, germany, etc... Why not yell at our government for conducting such activities? Because it's necessary. Information is power.
Well then all they need to do is prosecute people who use encryption. That makes their job much easier. And since their job is that much easier, they don't need so many people to it. Which means TAX CUTS!
The private sector will benefit from this as well, especially Bailbondsmen, lawyer, court clerks, even building contractors (to build more prisons)!
Remember those people that got sent to jail? Well, prior to sending them off to never-never land, we first confiscate every tangible item they own and auction it off (a la the war on drugs). This produces a profit for the government, which could in turn be turned around into more TAX CUTS.
Then, we can put all those prisoners to work. Prisoners will probably work for even less than minimum wage... Think of the increase in corporate profits. Which get taxed. Which means that the government can lower our federal taxes even MORE!
With this influx of spending money, more Americans can buy houses, and acquire other tangible assets... which in turn get taxed, eventually further lowering our federal taxes, to the point where you get paid just to be an American!
See, they're only trying to take care of us!
(The preceding is a joke! Even I do not take seriously!!!)
You can typically pad only 1/10th of a graphic file with textual data, before it becomes obvious. How much are you planning to send? Let's say an average email is 2.5 kb. You need 25kb graphics to send this data in. You also need a way to communicate this that is not over the interceptible, otherwise it's not problem to extract the data if you're looking for it.
The pictures should also have meaning in some sense. Don't go buy a clipart CD, because after a few messages, it'll become apparent that that's what you're doing.
First, you'd have to establish a way to to tell eachother securely that you want to use stenography. After a face to face meeting where you passed the software on, they best idea would be that you and your correspondent exchange series' of family photos with encoded messages embedded within. Carry on a normal discussion about family matters in the main body of your email. Keep your crypto and steno programs on floppy's.
You also don't want to keep your Stenography software on your computer, for fear that if it's confiscated and the software is discovered, they now know that you've been using it and only need to decode graphics on your and your correspondents hard drive.... Um. Who are they, anyways? If "they" are monitoring you, then they probably know that you're interested in your privacy. Perhaps that they've already logged you visiting sites where they know stenography software can be downloaded. In which case we're back to square 1, i think...
The National Security Agency is, suprise-suprise, in charge of National Securiy. That's what they do. Their purpose is to prevent events from occuring that could damage the US as a nation. That definetly takes precedence over commercial interests.
Ummm... How do you know that the products are of such fine quality? Are you a coder? Mathematician? Or do you just believe that because you heard from someone else? I'm just curious.
Compressed data lacks redundancy in that a file is packed together as tightly as possible. An encrypted file lacks redundancy in that aspect, as well as an added amount of "randomness" that supposedly (ideally), only the intended recipient can decode (in public-key implentations).
Also, just about every file you'll ever transmit or recieve has recognizable headers. So do PGP'ed files... You could go and remove the headers, but then your file could be flagged as not having recognized headers and therefore should be inspected.
I guess it's just a matter of how paranoid you care to be.
I'm not an expert either, I've just taken to reading as much as I can so as to amass knowledge.
#1, I don't believe that Al Capone is the best of figures to use in this arguement.
#2, It's not like people just walk around the UN blabbing about top secret material. You'd need clearance, and you'd need to be located in a secure location.
#3, If all it takes to learn about area 51 is to join the airforce, I bet a lot of X-files fans would have already joined.
Plus, every country keeps secrets from it's citizens. It'd be inherently unsafe for all the goings ons to be public knowledge. Imagine if every country in the world could build those "stealth" fighters... We'd be in for another arms race, with every country pitted against every other one...
Somehow, in terms of privacy, I'd rather have a goofy blow-job recieving guy being my president, than the former head of the secret police, thank you very much!
Amendment I - Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
What does the first amendment have to do with this? You are completely free to say whatever it is you want to say.
I would think, that in light of the arguments the government provides, that this is more of a 2nd amendment issue, and we should argue for strong crypto on that basis.
Amendment II - A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
So you could can petition the gov't for grievances as stated in Amendment 1 in terms of them disallowing you to distribute the arms you obtained from Amendment 2 outside of the country?
Sadly, I'm for the government on this one. Just because strong crypto exists and is out there doesn't necesarily make it okay to continue the trend. So long as it doesn't spill backwards into our national policy as well. I think what the FBI's proposing is a completely different issue than this, though.
Heroin is illegal in the US - I buy it within a 1/2 hour drive of my work - PLUS it's legal in the UK (supposing you're an addict and a naturally born citizen). Should that change it's legality in the US? (there's my food for thought for you)
The NSA and everybody else love the idea of using crypto techologies to generate signatures. They just don't want you to be able to use that technology to actually scramble the data.
Re:Yeah, but $8000 for an entry-level box???
on
SGI's Linux Server
·
· Score: 1
And you'll get one hell of an intel system for $14,000 from SGI, I reckon. Their pricing seems to be about inline with the other server vendors - Dell, IBM, Compaq - - - There is a premium involved, but as everyone points out, that premium equates to added bandwidth
Notice the lack of the cobalt chipset, for starters... it is possible for a company to ship two systems based on the same CPU and have radically different machines in the end.
It's not slowly eroding. It's gone. Sorry to break the news.
Even if you do encrypt all your communications, the headers on your email say where the mail came from and where it's going. This is almost as useful as knowing what is actually said, when combined with other information, say, banking transactions.
Credit reports are only a SSN away. SSN's are only $50 away
Everything about you is available to anyone willing to spend a little (very little - say $500) money...
RSA hasn't contributed to PGP... they just developed an algorith that PGP can use, if you pay for your version.
Especially when it comes to encryption software, I'd much prefer to pay for it than use a package that is "half as good"...
If you look at the list of companies that license RSA, it's rather impressive. If those company's turn around and say they'll use GNUGP as their standard for encrypted commmunications, I'll consider a switch.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm actually all for privacy. I just don't believe that privacy is possible in a wired world. If you're on the internet, you are capable of being monitored. How paranoid do you want to be? How do we know that Verisign (or any other certificate authority - i'm not slaming Verisign - they're just who popped into mind) doesn't use a very limited keyspace when assigning keys? Each site could have a different key, that's each 128 bits long, but if theirs only 100 million keys to check, it no longer matters how long the key is.
/.er's it gets warped
As a nation, to err on the safe side is to allow foreign countries access to our encyption systems especially access to the *commented* source code. If only binary downloads from monitored sources are permitted, then you've just increased national security at the expense of personal privacy.
To quote Spock - the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Funny how when the few being refered to includes a few
Is it a crime in China to use government resources to preserve the government. It'd be really shady if they had used computers with different IP addresses rather than their own. Instead, by using their own, they're saying quite loudly that they don't appreciate the attempts at spreading propoganda via the internet.
Mmmmm - egg foo yough... chicken fingers... hot & sour soup... shrimp fried rice... need I say more? I'm hungry
Ummm NATO didn't bomb that embassy... WE (the US) did. Per instructions of the CIA. It was the only target they specified during our campaign in Yugoslavia. Search for something like CIA Yugoslavia on news.com and you'll see... I'd say they have the right to be a little miffed... That's not playing at all fair.
Uhhh... China has more english speakers than North America. What's wrong with China having a backbone and trying to preserve their way of life, rather than rushing head over heels to become westernized and english speaking.
If we're so eager to get into their markets, the least bit we could do is learn their language. Or would that be too much effort>?
You're wrong. The reason we don't treat China like any other country is because they have over a billion people to our 280 million. If we get them angry, they can just turn around and stomp us into the ground. Or at least give us a horrible scare.
Nuclear espionage... I laughed at that... As far as I've been led to believe the only reason that we (the US) knew that the espionage had taken place was through one of our spies in Biejing (sp?). Turned out that he was a double agent, so there's no reason to believe that we would have found out if the chinese didn't want us to know. The point being - they spy on us. We spy on them. We still spy on russia, germany, etc... Why not yell at our government for conducting such activities? Because it's necessary. Information is power.
Well then all they need to do is prosecute people who use encryption. That makes their job much easier. And since their job is that much easier, they don't need so many people to it. Which means TAX CUTS!
The private sector will benefit from this as well, especially Bailbondsmen, lawyer, court clerks, even building contractors (to build more prisons)!
Remember those people that got sent to jail? Well, prior to sending them off to never-never land, we first confiscate every tangible item they own and auction it off (a la the war on drugs). This produces a profit for the government, which could in turn be turned around into more TAX CUTS.
Then, we can put all those prisoners to work. Prisoners will probably work for even less than minimum wage... Think of the increase in corporate profits. Which get taxed. Which means that the government can lower our federal taxes even MORE!
With this influx of spending money, more Americans can buy houses, and acquire other tangible assets... which in turn get taxed, eventually further lowering our federal taxes, to the point where you get paid just to be an American!
See, they're only trying to take care of us!
(The preceding is a joke! Even I do not take seriously!!!)
You can typically pad only 1/10th of a graphic file with textual data, before it becomes obvious. How much are you planning to send? Let's say an average email is 2.5 kb. You need 25kb graphics to send this data in. You also need a way to communicate this that is not over the interceptible, otherwise it's not problem to extract the data if you're looking for it.
The pictures should also have meaning in some sense. Don't go buy a clipart CD, because after a few messages, it'll become apparent that that's what you're doing.
First, you'd have to establish a way to to tell eachother securely that you want to use stenography. After a face to face meeting where you passed the software on, they best idea would be that you and your correspondent exchange series' of family photos with encoded messages embedded within. Carry on a normal discussion about family matters in the main body of your email. Keep your crypto and steno programs on floppy's.
You also don't want to keep your Stenography software on your computer, for fear that if it's confiscated and the software is discovered, they now know that you've been using it and only need to decode graphics on your and your correspondents hard drive.... Um. Who are they, anyways? If "they" are monitoring you, then they probably know that you're interested in your privacy. Perhaps that they've already logged you visiting sites where they know stenography software can be downloaded. In which case we're back to square 1, i think...
The National Security Agency is, suprise-suprise, in charge of National Securiy. That's what they do. Their purpose is to prevent events from occuring that could damage the US as a nation. That definetly takes precedence over commercial interests.
Ummm... How do you know that the products are of such fine quality? Are you a coder? Mathematician? Or do you just believe that because you heard from someone else? I'm just curious.
Wasn't it the japanese, in world war 2, that turned around and slaughtered themselves for fear of being captured by the allies?
Kind of a Death before Dishonor kind of thing...
Compressed data lacks redundancy in that a file is packed together as tightly as possible. An encrypted file lacks redundancy in that aspect, as well as an added amount of "randomness" that supposedly (ideally), only the intended recipient can decode (in public-key implentations).
Also, just about every file you'll ever transmit or recieve has recognizable headers. So do PGP'ed files... You could go and remove the headers, but then your file could be flagged as not having recognized headers and therefore should be inspected.
I guess it's just a matter of how paranoid you care to be.
I'm not an expert either, I've just taken to reading as much as I can so as to amass knowledge.
I somehow would be much more scared had bush become president
OOOPS!!! I meant to say I CAN buy it, not that I do buy it!
Encrypted data is recognizable as such beacause of its randomness... its the only data that's as random as it is
Wow...
#1, I don't believe that Al Capone is the best of figures to use in this arguement.
#2, It's not like people just walk around the UN blabbing about top secret material. You'd need clearance, and you'd need to be located in a secure location.
#3, If all it takes to learn about area 51 is to join the airforce, I bet a lot of X-files fans would have already joined.
Plus, every country keeps secrets from it's citizens. It'd be inherently unsafe for all the goings ons to be public knowledge. Imagine if every country in the world could build those "stealth" fighters... We'd be in for another arms race, with every country pitted against every other one...
Somehow, in terms of privacy, I'd rather have a goofy blow-job recieving guy being my president, than the former head of the secret police, thank you very much!
Amendment I - Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
What does the first amendment have to do with this? You are completely free to say whatever it is you want to say.
I would think, that in light of the arguments the government provides, that this is more of a 2nd amendment issue, and we should argue for strong crypto on that basis.
Amendment II - A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
So you could can petition the gov't for grievances as stated in Amendment 1 in terms of them disallowing you to distribute the arms you obtained from Amendment 2 outside of the country?
Sadly, I'm for the government on this one. Just because strong crypto exists and is out there doesn't necesarily make it okay to continue the trend. So long as it doesn't spill backwards into our national policy as well. I think what the FBI's proposing is a completely different issue than this, though.
Heroin is illegal in the US - I buy it within a 1/2 hour drive of my work - PLUS it's legal in the UK (supposing you're an addict and a naturally born citizen). Should that change it's legality in the US? (there's my food for thought for you)
How is that a protest?
The NSA and everybody else love the idea of using crypto techologies to generate signatures. They just don't want you to be able to use that technology to actually scramble the data.
And you'll get one hell of an intel system for $14,000 from SGI, I reckon. Their pricing seems to be about inline with the other server vendors - Dell, IBM, Compaq - - - There is a premium involved, but as everyone points out, that premium equates to added bandwidth
Different computer.
Notice the lack of the cobalt chipset, for starters... it is possible for a company to ship two systems based on the same CPU and have radically different machines in the end.
too bad oracle hasn't released oracle for linux on alpha!
I stand ready to put my foot in my mouth if this has changed, however!
It's not slowly eroding. It's gone. Sorry to break the news.
Even if you do encrypt all your communications, the headers on your email say where the mail came from and where it's going. This is almost as useful as knowing what is actually said, when combined with other information, say, banking transactions.
Credit reports are only a SSN away.
SSN's are only $50 away
Everything about you is available to anyone willing to spend a little (very little - say $500) money...
RSA hasn't contributed to PGP... they just developed an algorith that PGP can use, if you pay for your version.
Especially when it comes to encryption software, I'd much prefer to pay for it than use a package that is "half as good"...
If you look at the list of companies that license RSA, it's rather impressive. If those company's turn around and say they'll use GNUGP as their standard for encrypted commmunications, I'll consider a switch.