First of all, you need to check the web site. It says (in their 'more info' PDF file) they are using RC4 encryption with 64 bit keys. This is pretty secure, not great, but not bad. Further, spread spectrum is quite hard to tap into with a general receiver. And even if you manage to get one of their receivers, you have to know the spreading code. If you don't use the same sequence, you can't listen in.
The people you describe as having never used a phone (underclasses of india, china, etc) most certainly do not receive physical mail regularly.
Perhaps not, but I didn't say anything about 'regular'. The paper mail mechanism is there, for them to use if they have the need. If you convert to all e-mail then you have to give them at least the same access to computers, reliable networks, and reliable electricty. Good luck.
Most of these probably don't have birth certificates or pay income taxes either.
Yet another U.S.-centric view. Is having a birth certificate a world-wide requirement?
I don't think so, at least not for a long time. This is because in order for it to be effective you'd have to have pretty much everybody who uses mail switched over, and there are billions of people in the world who have not ever used a telephone, let alone a computer. But, those billions still get paper mail.
This questioner sounds very U.S.-centric. You've got to think in a wider view.
That's what folks who don't want us to worry keep saying - that the feds don't have the time or inclination to spy on the citizenry. You say it yourself, when you said True you take the risk that the law may be abused at some time... However, we already have documented cases of the government abusing the law and the rights of citizens. In the case that lead to Watergate, the people in power used the FBI and other government agencies to spy on people excercising legitimate political activities (look up "White House Enemies List"). And, in the 1950s, during the 'Red Scare', J. Edgar Hoover was hip deep in spying on U.S. citizens.
Now, the Congress has passed a law that gives the FBI the right to spy on its citizens, in the name of crime prevention, by pressing a button in the comfort of their offices. And, we have discovered that the U.S. government has teamed up with other governments (Echelon Project) to spy on their citizens, and those other governments get to spy on U.S. Citizens, bypassing those pesky laws with a wink and a nod.
There already is a law: in 1996 the FBI got Congress to pass a law requiring the phone companies to build in silent tapping ability on all phone systems. The FBI was afraid that they wouldn't be able to tap digital phone calls with their old analog skills. This Iridium mess is an offshoot of this law.
Yes, and your statement is essentially correct. There is a band in the 1.6GHz range that is very popular for radio astronomy use, and the Iridium phones are transmitting right next to it. This adjacent signal can overwhelm the extremely sensitive receivers used in radio astronomy. They can't really filter Iridium out because the filter circuits reduce the sensitivity in the band they are interested in.
There have been some agreements between astronomers and satellite telephone providers; take a look here.
I know for a fact that Lockheed Martin uses Exchange for it's LM-Xpress email program that handles 175,000+ users. How's that for capable? The two important characteristics that they were looking at when selecting an email system were security and reliability (i.e. no lost emails), and Exchange has been a real success.
Hope you don't mind some questions. How many servers? How much maintenance staff for those servers? How stable is the system? Can you provide more details? We've received lots of details about Exchange systems that have failed, how about providing some more info on a successful system?
On a related note, anyone who says, "Don't use Exchange because Micro$soft sucks," really needs to be a little more open-minded.
Agreed. How do you respond to those that say 'Don't use exchange because it crashes all the time, and here's another example'?
Groupwise? If your company is looking to have the stability of a 'name' behind it, then Groupwise might fit. It works nicely, scales well, is pretty stable, and a whole lot less expensive than Exchange / NT client licenses. ($55 per seat for Exchange solution, less than $20 per seat for Groupwise.) And, you can run it on free server software - Novell run time servers work great for this, since you don't use a Novell file server connection connection for mail. NDS for security and user management, and pretty decent performance on mid-range Intel software, too.
The senate uses it for, what, maybe 1000 users (Senators and support)... When they were flooded with email last year, the servers locked up totaly. Many messages for days on end were lost.
Remember, however, that the version of Exchange the Senate was running was at least two major revisions out of date, running on (I think) NT 3.51.
Lotus, now the owner of the original Visicalc, has released the first version of Visicalc for PC-DOS. You can get it from the Lotus web site. It weighs in at a grand 27K for a fully-functional spreadsheet. Hell, the PDF of the quick-reference card is bigger than that.
It's likely you are wasting your time. The only provably unbreakable system is the one-time pad. Anything else can be broken, given sufficient time, attention and interest. Any 'simulation' of a one-time pad is not a one time pad (i.e. use of a pseudo-random number generator for a one-time pad can be attacked through the generator).
Also, you'd get a better review of it if you posted it to sci.crypt. Be prepared to provide source code.
The summary of this article says "the National Security Agency" is reviewing this proposal. Now, I will admit that I don't know what input NSA might have, but that's not what the NYT article says. Instead, it's the National Security Council, which is a completely different animal. The NSC is a bunch of advisors, not a spy agency.
I work for a place that has a filter. In fact, I'm the person who put up the proxy and maintains the filter, at the insistence of the H/R department. We're an older manufacturing company, and there's a lot of machines out on the factory floor. I can say from experience that (a) you don't know what it's like to live in constant fear of a major sexual harrassment suit the way most big companies do these days, and (b) Not everybody is as high-minded as you'd like.
Yes, we have people who would surf for pr0n all day if they could. Yes, we have a pr0n filter. Yes, I have to live in the real world. I fought like hell to keep the network connection as open as possible, and I think I succeeded.
Those kits are barely a jumping-off point. They use relatively cheap components, which means they have a fair amount of frequency instability (they drift). Sound quality is tolerable. You'd need to do a fair bit of upgrading to make it really usable.
On the other hand, if you don't mind spending in the hundreds, Ramsey also has a higher-powered transmitter that works really well.
In all likelyhood, the parts about "not disclosing that somebody is being monitored" would extend to Echelon as well, which would make it illegal to publish info on Echelon or similar efforts.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, you need to check the web site. It says (in their 'more info' PDF file) they are using RC4 encryption with 64 bit keys. This is pretty secure, not great, but not bad. Further, spread spectrum is quite hard to tap into with a general receiver. And even if you manage to get one of their receivers, you have to know the spreading code. If you don't use the same sequence, you can't listen in.
...phil
you are probably actually *encrypting* with des or something equally feeble like pgp
First time I heard IDEA referred to as 'feeble'.
Go away, troll.
...phil
Uh, how about microelectronics? Weather and communications and other ground observation satellites?
...phil
The people you describe as having never used a phone (underclasses of india, china, etc) most certainly do not receive physical mail regularly.
Perhaps not, but I didn't say anything about 'regular'. The paper mail mechanism is there, for them to use if they have the need. If you convert to all e-mail then you have to give them at least the same access to computers, reliable networks, and reliable electricty. Good luck.
Most of these probably don't have birth certificates or pay income taxes either.
Yet another U.S.-centric view. Is having a birth certificate a world-wide requirement?
...phil
I don't think so, at least not for a long time. This is because in order for it to be effective you'd have to have pretty much everybody who uses mail switched over, and there are billions of people in the world who have not ever used a telephone, let alone a computer. But, those billions still get paper mail.
This questioner sounds very U.S.-centric. You've got to think in a wider view.
...phil
Don't have many friends calling, huh?
...phil
Of course, you're assuming that the majority of customers will figure out what's going on.
...phil
Gads. If that's the one I think it is, I am the person who provided that trick to the author of Stupid Mac Tricks. I'll have to go dig out my copy.
...phil
You can register, then filter Katz out yourself. If you don't do that, if you'd rather sit there and bitch, you deserve to be ignored.
...phil
Actually, that sounds a lot better. At least you know the government isn't automatically spying on you. And, you have a chance to fight it in court.
...phil
That's what folks who don't want us to worry keep saying - that the feds don't have the time or inclination to spy on the citizenry. You say it yourself, when you said True you take the risk that the law may be abused at some time... However, we already have documented cases of the government abusing the law and the rights of citizens. In the case that lead to Watergate, the people in power used the FBI and other government agencies to spy on people excercising legitimate political activities (look up "White House Enemies List"). And, in the 1950s, during the 'Red Scare', J. Edgar Hoover was hip deep in spying on U.S. citizens.
Now, the Congress has passed a law that gives the FBI the right to spy on its citizens, in the name of crime prevention, by pressing a button in the comfort of their offices. And, we have discovered that the U.S. government has teamed up with other governments (Echelon Project) to spy on their citizens, and those other governments get to spy on U.S. Citizens, bypassing those pesky laws with a wink and a nod.
And you wonder why we're paranoid?
...phil
There already is a law: in 1996 the FBI got Congress to pass a law requiring the phone companies to build in silent tapping ability on all phone systems. The FBI was afraid that they wouldn't be able to tap digital phone calls with their old analog skills. This Iridium mess is an offshoot of this law.
...phil
Yes, and your statement is essentially correct. There is a band in the 1.6GHz range that is very popular for radio astronomy use, and the Iridium phones are transmitting right next to it. This adjacent signal can overwhelm the extremely sensitive receivers used in radio astronomy. They can't really filter Iridium out because the filter circuits reduce the sensitivity in the band they are interested in.
There have been some agreements between astronomers and satellite telephone providers; take a look here.
...phil
More like "The 100 Worst Ideas of the Latter Half of the 1900s, with a Concentration on American Culture." What a waste of electrons.
...phil
I know for a fact that Lockheed Martin uses Exchange for it's LM-Xpress email program that handles 175,000+ users. How's that for capable? The two important characteristics that they were looking at when selecting an email system were security and reliability (i.e. no lost emails), and Exchange has been a real success.
Hope you don't mind some questions. How many servers? How much maintenance staff for those servers? How stable is the system? Can you provide more details? We've received lots of details about Exchange systems that have failed, how about providing some more info on a successful system?
On a related note, anyone who says, "Don't use Exchange because Micro$soft sucks," really needs to be a little more open-minded.
Agreed. How do you respond to those that say 'Don't use exchange because it crashes all the time, and here's another example'?
...phil
Your comments are a little weak, considering the sizes involved. Where's your background on large systems?
Typical Microsoft tactic - can't stand to have the issues it uses on others applied to its own world.
...phil
Groupwise? If your company is looking to have the stability of a 'name' behind it, then Groupwise might fit. It works nicely, scales well, is pretty stable, and a whole lot less expensive than Exchange / NT client licenses. ($55 per seat for Exchange solution, less than $20 per seat for Groupwise.) And, you can run it on free server software - Novell run time servers work great for this, since you don't use a Novell file server connection connection for mail. NDS for security and user management, and pretty decent performance on mid-range Intel software, too.
...phil
The senate uses it for, what, maybe 1000 users (Senators and support)... When they were flooded with email last year, the servers locked up totaly. Many messages for days on end were lost.
Remember, however, that the version of Exchange the Senate was running was at least two major revisions out of date, running on (I think) NT 3.51.
...phil
Lotus, now the owner of the original Visicalc, has released the first version of Visicalc for PC-DOS. You can get it from the Lotus web site. It weighs in at a grand 27K for a fully-functional spreadsheet. Hell, the PDF of the quick-reference card is bigger than that.
...phil
It's likely you are wasting your time. The only provably unbreakable system is the one-time pad. Anything else can be broken, given sufficient time, attention and interest. Any 'simulation' of a one-time pad is not a one time pad (i.e. use of a pseudo-random number generator for a one-time pad can be attacked through the generator).
Also, you'd get a better review of it if you posted it to sci.crypt. Be prepared to provide source code.
...phil
So use the login "cypherpunks" password "cypherpunks". That's about as anonymous as you can get.
...phil
The summary of this article says "the National Security Agency" is reviewing this proposal. Now, I will admit that I don't know what input NSA might have, but that's not what the NYT article says. Instead, it's the National Security Council, which is a completely different animal. The NSC is a bunch of advisors, not a spy agency.
...phil
I work for a place that has a filter. In fact, I'm the person who put up the proxy and maintains the filter, at the insistence of the H/R department. We're an older manufacturing company, and there's a lot of machines out on the factory floor. I can say from experience that (a) you don't know what it's like to live in constant fear of a major sexual harrassment suit the way most big companies do these days, and (b) Not everybody is as high-minded as you'd like.
Yes, we have people who would surf for pr0n all day if they could. Yes, we have a pr0n filter. Yes, I have to live in the real world. I fought like hell to keep the network connection as open as possible, and I think I succeeded.
...phil
Those kits are barely a jumping-off point. They use relatively cheap components, which means they have a fair amount of frequency instability (they drift). Sound quality is tolerable. You'd need to do a fair bit of upgrading to make it really usable.
On the other hand, if you don't mind spending in the hundreds, Ramsey also has a higher-powered transmitter that works really well.
...phil
In all likelyhood, the parts about "not disclosing that somebody is being monitored" would extend to Echelon as well, which would make it illegal to publish info on Echelon or similar efforts.
...phil