The customs are a bunch of idiots who cannot recognize an op-amp from an ADC if they'd've stepped on a DIP one pins-up, barefoot. If they weren't, they wouldn't be working as low-level drones. Just get an offshore friend to take the thing apart and ship it declared as spare parts (send the plastic housing shell as a separate shipment, so the recognizable parts won't attract undue attention to the important parts), or get somebody to carry it in a luggage as a personal possession when traveling in. Works virtually every time.
It's illegal only if you get caught. Which, if you don't cause significant billing or technical anomalies, is rather infinitesimally low chance. I'd say well-worth the risk.
Everything is a potential weapon. Even a newspaper; look up the "Millwall brick". Or a bottle. Or a chair leg. Or even a half-brick in a sock. According to your logic, sales of EVERYTHING would have to be restricted, including New York Times, bricks, and socks.
Yes, a laser beam bounces. So do bullets. Ever heard about ricocheting? Also, a bullet fired into the air has to fall down somewhere. Which can be onto (and often through) somebody's head.
There are devices harvesting power from ambient sources - vibrations, low-level light, small temperature differences, or, when implanted in an organism, using micropower glucose fuel cells. All these offer very very low power. Designing chips capable of operation with power requirements sufficiently low to be fed from such sources is DEFINITELY not a waste of effort.
Universities are also where labs full of fun toys are, and where friends working on fun problems congregate. Not every department is a "humanities" one.
Yes, the signal is degraded. Enough to matter?
Software is a problem. However, we at least have the audio and video virtually guaranteed.
Re equipment, just run some cover business. You can't legally run a chem lab or product plant without a ton of paperwork; hardware development can be done much easier. If you have the skills on this level, you are likely making some money out of them anyway.
And the world isn't uniform. There will be countries with less enforcement. Black market can thrive from there; and once this crap is mandated everywhere, there *will* be demand. Unlike drugs, "bad" electronics does not smell different than "good" electronics; to a customs drone, a chip is a chip is a chip - besides, a blank multipurpose generic chip can be flashed with code downloaded online. There's just one person in one place in the world needed to put it together.
If human senses can perceive it, a machine can record it. You don't need TPM and keys to record an analog audio; you need a decent ADC.
Besides, amazing lab things can be bought off eBay, with some patience. And a lot can be improvised. The adversary can not control everything that is dual-use.
What about cracking the "secured" networks? The cheap-ass ones tend to be holey like a sieve. Bruteforcing a key through a cloud can be even reasonably fast.
Do we need satellites? Wouldn't disposable high-altitude balloons do the job? Or perhaps bouncing microwaves off the Moon? Or sacrificing bandwidth and bouncing lower-frequency signal off ionosphere, like in old times?
Just make your own. The difference between software and hardware decoding is just some power consumption, embedded ARM (and other) processors are a dime a dozen, and even cellphone processors are becoming fast enough to handle audio decoding with ease.
If they don't want you to buy a player, buy a compatible cellphone or an embedded board and make your own.
Screw them. Screw their will and their petty treaties. As long as we have soldering irons, we have freedom.
To implement difficult your proposal is, as Yoda would say.
Everything is dual-use. A DVD writer can be turned into a laser dazzler. A RC toy or a cellphone can become a remotely activated switch.
Regarding EMP, the most difficult part of the design is getting enough energy in short enough time. Luckily, technological development marches on. Supercapacitors are being investigated as possible replacement for batteries; they are able to charge much faster and provide extremely high currents on discharge; a 1500 farad capacitor available just now on eBay for $50 can provide you with peak power of over 5 kilowatts. And the available power will go up, and the price will go down. In few years, such capacitor banks will be in most cordless power tools, and in many electric cars. It's difficult to stop technology based on car spare parts, don't you think?
The knowledge is out there. Even for explosion pumped flux compression generators there is a detailed book on Amazon that describes the construction and the necessary calculations. Many other related weapons are lower-tech than that, and are within the development capabilities of even a moderately smart electronics geek. Sometimes even a lower power is enough; jamming enemy's communication takes just a few watts at the right frequency, causes great tactical discomfort, and in combination with other measures may tip the balance of power.
The cops are not supposed to abuse their advantage. If they become doing so, they aren't cops anymore, just above-the-law thugs in uniforms. And then (and only then) they should be dealt with accordingly.
Armor piercing bullets? A commercially available bulldozer can be armored with a homemade composite armor from alternating steel sheets and concrete layers, and become virtually impervious against everything below an antitank rocket. (With all the disadvantages of a heavy, slow, poorly maneuverable vehicle.)
People should know how to arm themselves. The Man should then behave so they will not have reasons to actually do so. It's not that difficult; just be fair and restrained in wielding the power, and actually punish its abuse. The Man is here FOR the people, not AGAINST them.
You need a DVD recorder. Players have too weak lasers. CD recorder also operates in infrared, which may damage eyes but as a dazzler is fairly useless, and also is difficult to aim, at least without either a scope or a pilot beam of a visible laser. If you want infrared, fairly powerful lasers are also in laser printers.
Goggles will help you, if they are designed for the wavelength you use. Standard protective laser goggles will do a perfect job.
Also, while driving the laser is fairly easy, driving it in an optimal way that gives you decent, stable power without lowering the lifetime of the laser too much is a little (though not THAT much) more difficult.
When it comes to brute force power, you're right. However, brute force is not everything. Even an underpowered adversary may win, with sufficient brains and other factors. Weapons are a force multiplier; nothing more, nothing less. Brains, decentralization, and sheer numbers, are just a few of many other factors We The People have at our disposal. Don't give up in advance.
Simple low-profile solution:
Get a couple friends together.
Pool some money.
Rent a cheap server in a foreign colocation. Run squid there.
VPN in.
Voila, freedom.
More drastic solution:
Write a worm.
Unleash it.
Let it set up a proxying botnet for you.
Maybe better example is that satellite TV company that lawsuit-extorted people who bought a cheap smartcard reader from a vendor who was suspected from selling to sat pirates. Not everything risky must be illegal per se. When your purchases are tied to your identity, unexpected bad things may happen. When the purchase is anonymous, you don't have to worry about such references as they don't exist. What's your argument now?
Nice example, though less unambiguously bad example (weed paraphernalia, alcohol, etc.) would be more common. Or I can (and do) just feel seriously uncomfortable knowing that I will be marketed to, and that my records will be datamined by who knows who for who knows what reason, and that the credit company may use a tire retreading shop record to reduce my credit rating.
In the age of cash, purchases were mostly anonymous. It was good that way. That you don't value your privacy does not mean nobody should.
...And because of people like you, the credit card corporations can get away with their discriminatory rules and the resulting gravy train.
Thanks but no thanks. Newer technology is not always better technology.
Yes, I prefer cash. More gets to the merchant, less to the parasitic bullies. And then there's the privacy issue of leaving name-tied transaction records...
Better: add a reed contact and operate it with a small magnet. Or any other kind of a concealed switch. Or if it is an open-source phone and you have a GPIO pin on the board you can use, control it by a transistor; even a click sound enforced in hardware outside of the kernel control can be disabled that way.
Too difficult to get the vendors to agree. Corporations can not be given choice in this matter; they have to be dragged into this way of life against their will, kicking and screaming.
More likely way to success is to add 3D scanners to the mix and set up some public community where for free, barter, or a micropayment people can ask other people for a scan of the needed part. (Could also apply to black market for service manuals, schematics, firmwares, etc.)
Also, scans of broken parts can be digitally edited to yield a part before breaking.
Use two hard drives. One concealed in the luggage, or sent by Fedex/UPS/mail, fully encrypted. Backed up for case it'd be intercepted. Another one with a fresh install or known-good image in the laptop itself, so the laptop boots. That way, there's nothing to find during eventual search. You can either make the laptop some "history", so the OS looks used, or claim that it is a business machine and a fresh image is the company policy for overseas travels; many companies actually do so now, so it is a plausible legend. Also, look unimportant, a small grey corporate drone on a trip.
To replace an established technology, the newcomer has to be both suitable and mature. That point did not come for any competing technology you named yet. It will, when the time comes, but, like with a Greyhound bus, you will not make it arrive faster by ranting on slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
The customs are a bunch of idiots who cannot recognize an op-amp from an ADC if they'd've stepped on a DIP one pins-up, barefoot. If they weren't, they wouldn't be working as low-level drones. Just get an offshore friend to take the thing apart and ship it declared as spare parts (send the plastic housing shell as a separate shipment, so the recognizable parts won't attract undue attention to the important parts), or get somebody to carry it in a luggage as a personal possession when traveling in. Works virtually every time.
It's illegal only if you get caught. Which, if you don't cause significant billing or technical anomalies, is rather infinitesimally low chance. I'd say well-worth the risk.
Why emigrate yourself when your phone (or other device) can become an immigrant, even if illegal? I think it is called a mail order.
Yes, a laser beam bounces. So do bullets. Ever heard about ricocheting? Also, a bullet fired into the air has to fall down somewhere. Which can be onto (and often through) somebody's head.
Please broaden your perspectives.
Can they sidestep the issue and handle the code as a black box, and just examine its outputs?
Universities are also where labs full of fun toys are, and where friends working on fun problems congregate. Not every department is a "humanities" one.
All of them!
Yes, the signal is degraded. Enough to matter? Software is a problem. However, we at least have the audio and video virtually guaranteed. Re equipment, just run some cover business. You can't legally run a chem lab or product plant without a ton of paperwork; hardware development can be done much easier. If you have the skills on this level, you are likely making some money out of them anyway. And the world isn't uniform. There will be countries with less enforcement. Black market can thrive from there; and once this crap is mandated everywhere, there *will* be demand. Unlike drugs, "bad" electronics does not smell different than "good" electronics; to a customs drone, a chip is a chip is a chip - besides, a blank multipurpose generic chip can be flashed with code downloaded online. There's just one person in one place in the world needed to put it together.
If human senses can perceive it, a machine can record it. You don't need TPM and keys to record an analog audio; you need a decent ADC.
Besides, amazing lab things can be bought off eBay, with some patience. And a lot can be improvised. The adversary can not control everything that is dual-use.
What about cracking the "secured" networks? The cheap-ass ones tend to be holey like a sieve. Bruteforcing a key through a cloud can be even reasonably fast. Do we need satellites? Wouldn't disposable high-altitude balloons do the job? Or perhaps bouncing microwaves off the Moon? Or sacrificing bandwidth and bouncing lower-frequency signal off ionosphere, like in old times?
Just make your own. The difference between software and hardware decoding is just some power consumption, embedded ARM (and other) processors are a dime a dozen, and even cellphone processors are becoming fast enough to handle audio decoding with ease.
If they don't want you to buy a player, buy a compatible cellphone or an embedded board and make your own.
Screw them. Screw their will and their petty treaties. As long as we have soldering irons, we have freedom.
To implement difficult your proposal is, as Yoda would say. Everything is dual-use. A DVD writer can be turned into a laser dazzler. A RC toy or a cellphone can become a remotely activated switch. Regarding EMP, the most difficult part of the design is getting enough energy in short enough time. Luckily, technological development marches on. Supercapacitors are being investigated as possible replacement for batteries; they are able to charge much faster and provide extremely high currents on discharge; a 1500 farad capacitor available just now on eBay for $50 can provide you with peak power of over 5 kilowatts. And the available power will go up, and the price will go down. In few years, such capacitor banks will be in most cordless power tools, and in many electric cars. It's difficult to stop technology based on car spare parts, don't you think? The knowledge is out there. Even for explosion pumped flux compression generators there is a detailed book on Amazon that describes the construction and the necessary calculations. Many other related weapons are lower-tech than that, and are within the development capabilities of even a moderately smart electronics geek. Sometimes even a lower power is enough; jamming enemy's communication takes just a few watts at the right frequency, causes great tactical discomfort, and in combination with other measures may tip the balance of power. The cops are not supposed to abuse their advantage. If they become doing so, they aren't cops anymore, just above-the-law thugs in uniforms. And then (and only then) they should be dealt with accordingly. Armor piercing bullets? A commercially available bulldozer can be armored with a homemade composite armor from alternating steel sheets and concrete layers, and become virtually impervious against everything below an antitank rocket. (With all the disadvantages of a heavy, slow, poorly maneuverable vehicle.) People should know how to arm themselves. The Man should then behave so they will not have reasons to actually do so. It's not that difficult; just be fair and restrained in wielding the power, and actually punish its abuse. The Man is here FOR the people, not AGAINST them.
You need a DVD recorder. Players have too weak lasers. CD recorder also operates in infrared, which may damage eyes but as a dazzler is fairly useless, and also is difficult to aim, at least without either a scope or a pilot beam of a visible laser. If you want infrared, fairly powerful lasers are also in laser printers. Goggles will help you, if they are designed for the wavelength you use. Standard protective laser goggles will do a perfect job. Also, while driving the laser is fairly easy, driving it in an optimal way that gives you decent, stable power without lowering the lifetime of the laser too much is a little (though not THAT much) more difficult.
When it comes to brute force power, you're right. However, brute force is not everything. Even an underpowered adversary may win, with sufficient brains and other factors. Weapons are a force multiplier; nothing more, nothing less. Brains, decentralization, and sheer numbers, are just a few of many other factors We The People have at our disposal.
Don't give up in advance.
Molecular models.
Simple low-profile solution: Get a couple friends together. Pool some money. Rent a cheap server in a foreign colocation. Run squid there. VPN in. Voila, freedom. More drastic solution: Write a worm. Unleash it. Let it set up a proxying botnet for you.
Maybe better example is that satellite TV company that lawsuit-extorted people who bought a cheap smartcard reader from a vendor who was suspected from selling to sat pirates. Not everything risky must be illegal per se. When your purchases are tied to your identity, unexpected bad things may happen. When the purchase is anonymous, you don't have to worry about such references as they don't exist. What's your argument now?
Nice example, though less unambiguously bad example (weed paraphernalia, alcohol, etc.) would be more common. Or I can (and do) just feel seriously uncomfortable knowing that I will be marketed to, and that my records will be datamined by who knows who for who knows what reason, and that the credit company may use a tire retreading shop record to reduce my credit rating. In the age of cash, purchases were mostly anonymous. It was good that way. That you don't value your privacy does not mean nobody should.
...And because of people like you, the credit card corporations can get away with their discriminatory rules and the resulting gravy train. Thanks but no thanks. Newer technology is not always better technology. Yes, I prefer cash. More gets to the merchant, less to the parasitic bullies. And then there's the privacy issue of leaving name-tied transaction records...
Was there a German law that would make it illegal for you to use a proxy in the US to download said 128-bit SSL browser?
Better: add a reed contact and operate it with a small magnet. Or any other kind of a concealed switch. Or if it is an open-source phone and you have a GPIO pin on the board you can use, control it by a transistor; even a click sound enforced in hardware outside of the kernel control can be disabled that way.
Too difficult to get the vendors to agree. Corporations can not be given choice in this matter; they have to be dragged into this way of life against their will, kicking and screaming. More likely way to success is to add 3D scanners to the mix and set up some public community where for free, barter, or a micropayment people can ask other people for a scan of the needed part. (Could also apply to black market for service manuals, schematics, firmwares, etc.) Also, scans of broken parts can be digitally edited to yield a part before breaking.
Use two hard drives. One concealed in the luggage, or sent by Fedex/UPS/mail, fully encrypted. Backed up for case it'd be intercepted. Another one with a fresh install or known-good image in the laptop itself, so the laptop boots. That way, there's nothing to find during eventual search. You can either make the laptop some "history", so the OS looks used, or claim that it is a business machine and a fresh image is the company policy for overseas travels; many companies actually do so now, so it is a plausible legend. Also, look unimportant, a small grey corporate drone on a trip.
To replace an established technology, the newcomer has to be both suitable and mature. That point did not come for any competing technology you named yet. It will, when the time comes, but, like with a Greyhound bus, you will not make it arrive faster by ranting on slashdot.