That's been happening since... well before the Romans. Why should it change now?
All ancient societies used to do it, sure. In modern society it is a new thing. You only need to see the number of gated high security communities, schools, malls etc in the US 50s Vs now to confirm that trend. Or Brazil, or San Salvador, or... the list is endless. Trend is up, business for those who build gated communities in certain corruptly run countries is good, a growth industry and a nice stock play.
Throughout the world where we see many gated communities = Fear and threat of violence from your own population = Highly corrupt governance. More corrupt the state, the more gated communities your rich children can grow up inside of. Hardly living IMO vs living in a decent low corruption country, with decent social security and so no roving armed gangs. Perhaps if you grow up in that environment you dont realize there is an alternative... but each to their own I guess.
Well it is always easier to access through the front door with some legitimacy for the increased network traffic you may or may not notice, vs clandestine back doors. You might firewall off your system but you certainly would have to always let skydrive through or you wont be using it. Whatever the case, after what Microsoft has just been shown to have pulled: promote that user privacy is their priority, get caught out by the first leaks, lie about their role and extent "we only respond to court orders", then get caught out lying yet again as the news above demonstrates. Credibility, -1.
i have a skydrive account provided by my school i am at a loss though as to how microsoft would image my hd it being linux and skydrive only being aceesed via web page on vm
Well smeg, you would first have to install the Skydrive client on a computer - a windows computer. It will then proceed to default as a remote access point for your whole computer. Your talking about using the web interface only from Linux, which is not how most use SkyDrive under Microsoft windows.
These are probably the same researchers that have been crying "no security is better than a false sense of security" for years now in a devious (and successful) attempt to keep our communications channels completely unencrypted, by default. Lucky OTR (Off the Record) didnt to listen to such mal-aligned researcher advice so now we have a widely deployed chat encryption method...
The government knows that it regularly obtains Americans’ protected communications. The Washington Post reported that Prism is designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s “foreignness” — as John Oliver of “The Daily Show” put it, “a coin flip plus 1 percent.” By turning a blind eye to the fact that 49-plus percent of the communications might be purely among Americans, the N.S.A. has intentionally acquired information it is not allowed to have, even under the terrifyingly broad auspices of the FISA Amendments Act.
"Tap them", indeed, and then some. This latest round of revelations by the whistlblower Snowden details how Microsofts cloud service SkyDrive pipes directly into Prism. Skydrive has a nasty little feature, turned on by default (and turned on again on any upgrade if you decided to turn it off) that allows remote access to all the contents of all hard drives connected to your computer. Yes, thats right, everything *outside* your Skydrive folder. If your a non US citizen then your hard drive is now potentially imaged by prism, if your a US citizen living in the US you have a coin toss +1% chance of the same. Even if it is turned off how can you know they cant remotely image your computer - you cant, because Microsoft (and google, and yahoo...) just a few weeks ago all assured us they only reluctantly respond to court orders. Snowden has blown the whistle on them there lies, at least in Micrisifts case. Interesting to see if Google did backflips like MS has to give all the three letter agencies direct access to our private data.
OTR comes with most major chat applications and if not can be a one click install, zero configuration setup in some cases. After that the user changes zero habits to begin using it - if the party your writing a message to has it, it just starts automatically. SMIME certs and P/GPG without the key server are defiantly not equivalent to that, not even close. Many more hoops to jump through both in installation, setup and when it comes to actually send or reply to emails. That is why these products have completely failed to make any inroads despite decades on the market (in the case of PGP). For the record, I used to use PGP and GPG religiously back when email was young - the eudora days. Unfortunately I was an army of one.
I can guarantee that the majority of non technical people send emails everyday with the false sense of security that their email message is somehow private.
You are correct about the extra check to avoid MITM attacks, however your definition of "just working" is too narrow IMO and leads to a much bigger security headache/problem. Having it just work zero configuration with possibility of MITM as OTR does is a small price to pay to have encryption on by default and even more importantly, the ability to use it correctly without MITM for little extra hassle. OTR is already out there ready to go on a wide range of clients so users do not have to jump through hoops to get people they want to communicate with securely to install it. See this thread above, specifically the "false sense of security" replies for more. Reproduced:
Anybody who cares about a high level of security will bother following the simple procedure to check that they do indeed have a secure, non MITM compromised connection [check the fingerprint]. If they chose not to care, then so be it (but their connection is still encrypted, raising security bar vs the solution your logic proposes.
Unfortunately this little extra step to make sure there is no MITM is held up and championed as the basis for the "false sense of security" argument, which leads to default of no encryption at all available to anyone using email. Worse and the real problem with this argument that compounds the bad state of email encryption security software, there is no ready to go defacto standard software in the majority of email and web clients even closely equivalent to what OTR enjoys because non of it "just works" out of the box like OTR does. Even if you want to encrypt properly you have to go through lengthy process to get second and third parties to install and setup correctly... which in reality just does not happen at all. Compared to OTR, email encryption just does not work in reality and the biggest culprit is all those so called security experts that cry "false sense of security is wore than no security". What a load of **ap - they really need to get a reality check Viz. the Snowden revelations.
Lets turn that logic around and throw it right back at you: Anybody who cares about a high level of security will bother following the simple procedure to check that they do indeed have a secure, non MITM compromised connection. If they chose not to care, then so be it (but their connection is still encrypted, raising security bar vs the solution your logic proposes.
If we followed the logic you presented then OTR would not exist, dismissed as giving users a false sense of security.
Exactly. OTR is excellent. If only email encryption was as easy and straight forward for non technical, "security... meh", people to use. Zero configuration it just works.
Predicted this. First of many products that will try to offer security in lieu of ads after the Snowden leaks.
True. I am looking forward to more focus on security plugins and extensions to existing products. Been waiting years for mozilla Thunderbrid chat to get OTR up and running. Also, if any semi decent email encryption method that wants to be even moderately adopted really needs to be next to zero configuration for up-front use or it just wont catch on *at all* (like OTR is a good example, and Enigmail/GPG are defiantly not good examples). Let the ones that really care be able to dive into the configs, check fingerprints, confirm there is no MITM etc... I mean, it cant get any worse than what we have now - 99.999% plain text email traffic, now can it.
It must be the work of teh terrorists.... Quick. Lock everything down.
and in their next breath, "See! We (as in the UK and Sweden) were right to veto democratic investigation and talk about the facts surrounding our illegal spy regimes.". How the hell can they veto such a thing and keep a straight face? It is as if all pretense of democratic freedom has been lost....
We have Snowden to thank for this change in attitude. Public sentiment is everything. And yet, the second part of his interview which addresses pretty much every criticism laid on him (before it was made) never made/. news for nerds, (it got modded down to oblivion on the firehose AFAIK), despite Snowdens story being highly relevant news for nerds...
Well, I know that my children won't suffer in the crash. And I don't really care about anyone else's.
Sooner or later, rich people in corruptly run counties have to live in gated communities, behind armed guards and/or security cameras, multiple deadlocks. A life lived in fear. No thanks.
Or to say it another way: The instruments that are a necessity for a fascist state to maintain power are already in place and solidifying their hold. How long before absolute power corrupts absolutely all our remaining institutions. Id hazard a guess: Not long from a historical perspective. Empires used to be measured in centuries, millennial even.
Big gaping hole in your thesis: This information will^H^H^H is already being sifted and sorted to isolate any political dissent, anyone complaining, oppressed or disadvantaged enough by the status quo will no longer be able to effect political change. You know, protesting little things like economies run for the benefit of the financial industry rather than for the people. If you look like your a ringleader youll be^H^H^H^H^H^H are picked up/targeted/dirt files fabricated around your life story even before your rally messages even hits anyone inbox.
I agree with you, our rights are not very respected if it all, most of our politicians do not act in the communities interest, big companies are gaming international trade and other laws to help peddle their wares, keep the world addicted to resource-guzzling gluttony and block any moves to more sustainable (i.e. less short term profitable) ways of life and laws. And sure there are plenty of counties full of real primitive violent jack-booted thugs that also ignore their own laws (if they have any), and also act to suppress basic human rights etc (hell the US is best friends and buddies forever with one of the worst of them, Saudi Arabia). I have even lived in some of these types of countries. One thing is normal to all the world, all cultures that I have had the privilege to visit or live amongst: Normal people just want to live in peace with a modest sustainable lifestyle, where their children grown up in a world that is as good or better than their own. It is easy to forget that living in countries with 24/7 consumerism advertising, but take that away and that is what you seem to get, the world over regardless of race, religion...
No need for us to shit ourselves up about it though, I also agree. But unlike you I think It is enough to stand up and call out then bullshit, name and point out any corrupt, arrogant thugs acting illegally in petty self interest when we see them sprouting up in our own back yards like weeds. And just perhaps, each in our own little way, we can do our little part to help unroot them...
We know we are in a tiny sinking life raft with an insane incompetent captain on a hostile ocean filled with sharks.
Bad time to be a small furry creature then, eh, a chinchilla perhaps... but I digress. Interesting post what you say is right in some respects, however just because, as you say you dont have any fight left in you, just because things are SNAFU, does not mean you and people like you cannot be passively supportive, which in its own way does help young are more motivated people change the system for the better wherever possible in a peer support kind of way. Of course I am not telling you anything you dont already know - I just thought it worth a minute to prattle on with you out loud because after reading your post, a weak mind might decide that it is all useless and just why bother. Well it is worth the bother, we (some of us) can do our little bit to change our world for the better, roll back injustices, expose powerful corrupt petty self interested people, even in the face off crafty devious "news" like this that is taking questionable methods to arrive and questionable conclusions all in order to tell use what we should be thinking with some semblance of credibility (again, that a weaker mind might buy into). As mentioned elsewhere in this thread - this is here as news right here and now because "they" are afraid, afraid that the curtain has been lifted even for a moment. Afraid that right now an unknown number of young motivated people are doing their little bit to change the status quo. For example all the geeks I can hear right now, frantically coding encryption solutions, plugins and gizmos that give the middle finger to the man, blind him even slightly to other peoples business, and in so doing reduce his absolute power just a tiny fraction (I accept might be overstating the case - maybe not afraid, just a little pissed off).
Think back through time, England was nothing more than a bunch of lords who owned all the land, all the people on it, everything they ever did, said, married or ate was their business, no privacy from the tax collector. Nothing changed for centuries. Your post is like the old guy sipping (swilling?) on the mead he illegally brewed, the last remnant of his earlier activist self, trying to tell the young uns that yes it sucks the lord can fuck any of their daughters/wives up in the castle whenever he likes, kick the them off the land they work to die next winter because they did not produce enough last year, send them all off uneducated untrained to a die in pointless war that only reinforce the lords holdings, cut off their hands or their tong if they complain about anything... that this is how the world is just accept it dont complain there is no point. There will always be a lord and they are all just dreamers if they think different or that anything can change to better "your lot in life". Look where we are today by comparison only a few short centuries later. Lucky for us all that not everyone took that old guys words as absolute truth.
the answer your looking for is 42. It is just that the time frame your looking at it is too short so it does not look like the right answer...
Sounds like clutching at straws to me RockDoctor. Basic human rights are basic human rights - black and white clear as crystal. If a legal company sells me a legal a service that happens to reinforce our own basic legal human rights, then in no way shape or form is it legal to interfere with that transaction. What we have here is arrogant thugs acting in petty self interest, illegally, unafraid of any consequences for their actions only because the majority of voters willingly or unwillingly have given them the power to enforce the law unto themselves... or not. So I will be so cheeky, although I mean no disrespect, to throw your original question right back at you: you care to cite a source for that? Viz : country name, and legal code reference to this asserted ability to interfere with companies that sell self empowering tools that help us maintain our basic human rights and so by extension basic international law?
Further, I should ask you rhetorically, because it is ultimately of more your interest to you than me.... are you apologizing for those that act illegally and piss on our basic rights, defending them or just trying to point out that our rights are no longer respected and thats all ok to you? Or perhaps your not ok with it and are just playing the devils advocate? Whatever your answer to those questions is, the mindset you have demonstrated so in your posts above is a curious one...
Britain and Sweden demonstrating, yet again, what good poodles they are for the Military Industrial Complex, specifically the NSA division and associated partners Booz Allen et all...
The talks, due to begin in Washington on Monday, will now be restricted to issues of data privacy and the NSA's Prism programme following a tense 24 hours of negotiations in Brussels between national EU ambassadors. Britain, supported only by Sweden, vetoed plans to launch two "working groups" on the espionage debacle with the Americans.
This duopoly. EU banks are always grumbling about how they want to start a new network to break the Visa/MC duopoly... too bad no one managed to do it other than tiny hardly accepted anywhere (in the EU) cards like Amex, otherwise you would be correct and we could not longer call it a duopoly. Just because there was Linux in the 90s, did not mean that Microsoft was not the undisputed monopoly at that time...
Slashdot Mirror
That's been happening since ... well before the Romans. Why should it change now?
All ancient societies used to do it, sure. In modern society it is a new thing. You only need to see the number of gated high security communities, schools, malls etc in the US 50s Vs now to confirm that trend. Or Brazil, or San Salvador, or... the list is endless. Trend is up, business for those who build gated communities in certain corruptly run countries is good, a growth industry and a nice stock play.
Throughout the world where we see many gated communities = Fear and threat of violence from your own population = Highly corrupt governance. More corrupt the state, the more gated communities your rich children can grow up inside of. Hardly living IMO vs living in a decent low corruption country, with decent social security and so no roving armed gangs. Perhaps if you grow up in that environment you dont realize there is an alternative... but each to their own I guess.
Well it is always easier to access through the front door with some legitimacy for the increased network traffic you may or may not notice, vs clandestine back doors. You might firewall off your system but you certainly would have to always let skydrive through or you wont be using it. Whatever the case, after what Microsoft has just been shown to have pulled: promote that user privacy is their priority, get caught out by the first leaks, lie about their role and extent "we only respond to court orders", then get caught out lying yet again as the news above demonstrates. Credibility, -1.
i have a skydrive account provided by my school i am at a loss though as to how microsoft would image my hd it being linux and skydrive only being aceesed via web page on vm
Well smeg, you would first have to install the Skydrive client on a computer - a windows computer. It will then proceed to default as a remote access point for your whole computer. Your talking about using the web interface only from Linux, which is not how most use SkyDrive under Microsoft windows.
These are probably the same researchers that have been crying "no security is better than a false sense of security" for years now in a devious (and successful) attempt to keep our communications channels completely unencrypted, by default. Lucky OTR (Off the Record) didnt to listen to such mal-aligned researcher advice so now we have a widely deployed chat encryption method...
The government knows that it regularly obtains Americans’ protected communications. The Washington Post reported that Prism is designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s “foreignness” — as John Oliver of “The Daily Show” put it, “a coin flip plus 1 percent.” By turning a blind eye to the fact that 49-plus percent of the communications might be purely among Americans, the N.S.A. has intentionally acquired information it is not allowed to have, even under the terrifyingly broad auspices of the FISA Amendments Act.
"Tap them", indeed, and then some. This latest round of revelations by the whistlblower Snowden details how Microsofts cloud service SkyDrive pipes directly into Prism. Skydrive has a nasty little feature, turned on by default (and turned on again on any upgrade if you decided to turn it off) that allows remote access to all the contents of all hard drives connected to your computer. Yes, thats right, everything *outside* your Skydrive folder. If your a non US citizen then your hard drive is now potentially imaged by prism, if your a US citizen living in the US you have a coin toss +1% chance of the same. Even if it is turned off how can you know they cant remotely image your computer - you cant, because Microsoft (and google, and yahoo...) just a few weeks ago all assured us they only reluctantly respond to court orders. Snowden has blown the whistle on them there lies, at least in Micrisifts case. Interesting to see if Google did backflips like MS has to give all the three letter agencies direct access to our private data.
Pretending that they care about the community is a little hard for me to do.
Fixed that for you.
I can guarantee that the majority of non technical people send emails everyday with the false sense of security that their email message is somehow private.
Anybody who cares about a high level of security will bother following the simple procedure to check that they do indeed have a secure, non MITM compromised connection [check the fingerprint]. If they chose not to care, then so be it (but their connection is still encrypted, raising security bar vs the solution your logic proposes.
Unfortunately this little extra step to make sure there is no MITM is held up and championed as the basis for the "false sense of security" argument, which leads to default of no encryption at all available to anyone using email. Worse and the real problem with this argument that compounds the bad state of email encryption security software, there is no ready to go defacto standard software in the majority of email and web clients even closely equivalent to what OTR enjoys because non of it "just works" out of the box like OTR does. Even if you want to encrypt properly you have to go through lengthy process to get second and third parties to install and setup correctly... which in reality just does not happen at all. Compared to OTR, email encryption just does not work in reality and the biggest culprit is all those so called security experts that cry "false sense of security is wore than no security". What a load of **ap - they really need to get a reality check Viz. the Snowden revelations.
If we followed the logic you presented then OTR would not exist, dismissed as giving users a false sense of security.
Exactly. OTR is excellent. If only email encryption was as easy and straight forward for non technical, "security... meh", people to use. Zero configuration it just works.
That takes more effort, targeting you more specifically. Very different from always on dragnet slurping up everyones communication all the time.
Predicted this. First of many products that will try to offer security in lieu of ads after the Snowden leaks.
True. I am looking forward to more focus on security plugins and extensions to existing products. Been waiting years for mozilla Thunderbrid chat to get OTR up and running. Also, if any semi decent email encryption method that wants to be even moderately adopted really needs to be next to zero configuration for up-front use or it just wont catch on *at all* (like OTR is a good example, and Enigmail/GPG are defiantly not good examples). Let the ones that really care be able to dive into the configs, check fingerprints, confirm there is no MITM etc... I mean, it cant get any worse than what we have now - 99.999% plain text email traffic, now can it.
Are they the ones that go through the three day "full take", every packet stored data store?
It must be the work of teh terrorists.... Quick. Lock everything down.
and in their next breath, "See! We (as in the UK and Sweden) were right to veto democratic investigation and talk about the facts surrounding our illegal spy regimes.". How the hell can they veto such a thing and keep a straight face? It is as if all pretense of democratic freedom has been lost....
We have Snowden to thank for this change in attitude. Public sentiment is everything. And yet, the second part of his interview which addresses pretty much every criticism laid on him (before it was made) never made /. news for nerds, (it got modded down to oblivion on the firehose AFAIK), despite Snowdens story being highly relevant news for nerds...
Well, I know that my children won't suffer in the crash. And I don't really care about anyone else's.
Sooner or later, rich people in corruptly run counties have to live in gated communities, behind armed guards and/or security cameras, multiple deadlocks. A life lived in fear. No thanks.
Or to say it another way: The instruments that are a necessity for a fascist state to maintain power are already in place and solidifying their hold. How long before absolute power corrupts absolutely all our remaining institutions. Id hazard a guess: Not long from a historical perspective. Empires used to be measured in centuries, millennial even.
if a visible hierarchy isn't allowed, an invisible one will form and bite you in the ass.
...and it will form around the worst, most manipulative personality types... which also happen to be the worst leaders.
Big gaping hole in your thesis: This information will^H^H^H is already being sifted and sorted to isolate any political dissent, anyone complaining, oppressed or disadvantaged enough by the status quo will no longer be able to effect political change. You know, protesting little things like economies run for the benefit of the financial industry rather than for the people. If you look like your a ringleader youll be^H^H^H^H^H^H are picked up/targeted/dirt files fabricated around your life story even before your rally messages even hits anyone inbox.
I agree with you, our rights are not very respected if it all, most of our politicians do not act in the communities interest, big companies are gaming international trade and other laws to help peddle their wares, keep the world addicted to resource-guzzling gluttony and block any moves to more sustainable (i.e. less short term profitable) ways of life and laws. And sure there are plenty of counties full of real primitive violent jack-booted thugs that also ignore their own laws (if they have any), and also act to suppress basic human rights etc (hell the US is best friends and buddies forever with one of the worst of them, Saudi Arabia). I have even lived in some of these types of countries. One thing is normal to all the world, all cultures that I have had the privilege to visit or live amongst: Normal people just want to live in peace with a modest sustainable lifestyle, where their children grown up in a world that is as good or better than their own. It is easy to forget that living in countries with 24/7 consumerism advertising, but take that away and that is what you seem to get, the world over regardless of race, religion...
No need for us to shit ourselves up about it though, I also agree. But unlike you I think It is enough to stand up and call out then bullshit, name and point out any corrupt, arrogant thugs acting illegally in petty self interest when we see them sprouting up in our own back yards like weeds. And just perhaps, each in our own little way, we can do our little part to help unroot them...
We know we are in a tiny sinking life raft with an insane incompetent captain on a hostile ocean filled with sharks.
Bad time to be a small furry creature then, eh, a chinchilla perhaps... but I digress. Interesting post what you say is right in some respects, however just because, as you say you dont have any fight left in you, just because things are SNAFU, does not mean you and people like you cannot be passively supportive, which in its own way does help young are more motivated people change the system for the better wherever possible in a peer support kind of way. Of course I am not telling you anything you dont already know - I just thought it worth a minute to prattle on with you out loud because after reading your post, a weak mind might decide that it is all useless and just why bother. Well it is worth the bother, we (some of us) can do our little bit to change our world for the better, roll back injustices, expose powerful corrupt petty self interested people, even in the face off crafty devious "news" like this that is taking questionable methods to arrive and questionable conclusions all in order to tell use what we should be thinking with some semblance of credibility (again, that a weaker mind might buy into). As mentioned elsewhere in this thread - this is here as news right here and now because "they" are afraid, afraid that the curtain has been lifted even for a moment. Afraid that right now an unknown number of young motivated people are doing their little bit to change the status quo. For example all the geeks I can hear right now, frantically coding encryption solutions, plugins and gizmos that give the middle finger to the man, blind him even slightly to other peoples business, and in so doing reduce his absolute power just a tiny fraction (I accept might be overstating the case - maybe not afraid, just a little pissed off).
Think back through time, England was nothing more than a bunch of lords who owned all the land, all the people on it, everything they ever did, said, married or ate was their business, no privacy from the tax collector. Nothing changed for centuries. Your post is like the old guy sipping (swilling?) on the mead he illegally brewed, the last remnant of his earlier activist self, trying to tell the young uns that yes it sucks the lord can fuck any of their daughters/wives up in the castle whenever he likes, kick the them off the land they work to die next winter because they did not produce enough last year, send them all off uneducated untrained to a die in pointless war that only reinforce the lords holdings, cut off their hands or their tong if they complain about anything... that this is how the world is just accept it dont complain there is no point. There will always be a lord and they are all just dreamers if they think different or that anything can change to better "your lot in life". Look where we are today by comparison only a few short centuries later. Lucky for us all that not everyone took that old guys words as absolute truth.
the answer your looking for is 42. It is just that the time frame your looking at it is too short so it does not look like the right answer...
Sounds like clutching at straws to me RockDoctor. Basic human rights are basic human rights - black and white clear as crystal. If a legal company sells me a legal a service that happens to reinforce our own basic legal human rights, then in no way shape or form is it legal to interfere with that transaction. What we have here is arrogant thugs acting in petty self interest, illegally, unafraid of any consequences for their actions only because the majority of voters willingly or unwillingly have given them the power to enforce the law unto themselves... or not. So I will be so cheeky, although I mean no disrespect, to throw your original question right back at you: you care to cite a source for that? Viz : country name, and legal code reference to this asserted ability to interfere with companies that sell self empowering tools that help us maintain our basic human rights and so by extension basic international law?
Further, I should ask you rhetorically, because it is ultimately of more your interest to you than me.... are you apologizing for those that act illegally and piss on our basic rights, defending them or just trying to point out that our rights are no longer respected and thats all ok to you? Or perhaps your not ok with it and are just playing the devils advocate? Whatever your answer to those questions is, the mindset you have demonstrated so in your posts above is a curious one...
The talks, due to begin in Washington on Monday, will now be restricted to issues of data privacy and the NSA's Prism programme following a tense 24 hours of negotiations in Brussels between national EU ambassadors. Britain, supported only by Sweden, vetoed plans to launch two "working groups" on the espionage debacle with the Americans.
P.S. As you requested, here is a list of country names that have signed up to this legal code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_declaration#Adoption
This duopoly. EU banks are always grumbling about how they want to start a new network to break the Visa/MC duopoly... too bad no one managed to do it other than tiny hardly accepted anywhere (in the EU) cards like Amex, otherwise you would be correct and we could not longer call it a duopoly. Just because there was Linux in the 90s, did not mean that Microsoft was not the undisputed monopoly at that time...