Well, it looks like the military has tried to adjust to the mental capacity of the press. Hence the evolution of the tall guy in the pressed uniform chanting simplistic phrases. I was very depressed to read a transcript of the briefing given by a senior defense official regarding the antimissile tests.
As you know, some reporter misunderstood the briefing and wrote that the test was invalid because it used GPS. In the transcript, it's clear that the official is trying to explain a relatively complex test plan to the reporters, and they're pretty much failing to get it. And of course the military ended up with undeserved egg on their face.
I'm sure every experience like that leads to the further dumbing down of the military's media interface.
While the spectrum is still military, it has a chance of being fairly reallocated. In the current corporate-friendly environment, the frequencies would just go to abusive, customer-hating monopolies. And then it would be very hard to ever pry those frequencies back from them.
The internet has made us more sophisticated about the potential division between content and transmission. I believe that the radio spectrum should only be licensed to common carriers who offer to carry raw data in a non-discriminatory manner, without bundling any other services.
What we need is high-speed wireless internet. Given that, services like voice telephony can be provided in a highly competitive environment. So can many other innovative services we haven't thought of yet.
Ever notice how hated most telecom providers are? Notice how they keep customers at arms length via "call centers" and IVR? They are near-monopolies, using government granted resources like spectrum to achieve a closed market in which they can harm the purchaser. Let's put an end to this junk by giving the spectrum to common-carrier ISP's. If we did this across the whole spectrum, it would cause a massive shift in power away from huge corporations and towards small businesses and citizens.
Modern, practical cryptosystems like PGP/GPG use a block cipher with a different random key per message. They use public-key cryptography to encrypt the message key so only the intended recipient can decrypt it. The most obvious way to add a backdoor is to have the software encrypt the message key twice, with two different public keys: one for the recipient, and one for the government. Then the software would include both encrypted copies of the key in the transmission. This would not make the software inherently insecure. However it would focus a lot of energy on factoring (cracking) the government key because the payoff would be so high.
Therefore a more practical implementation might have thousands of government keys, and each program chooses one randomly to encrypt the message key. Thus the incentive to crack one government key is reduced.
In all these scenarios, it's possible for the government key(s) to be accidentally leaked, resulting in a catastrophic loss of security.
If the NSA designs the backdoor, it will not be vulnerable to third parties. I see a lot of ignorant speculation on this subject. Modern cryptography provides the building blocks for a secure, backdoored system. A system in which the existence of the backdoor does not provide any advantage to an attacker who lacks the government's key.
I think it's a bad proposal, but please discard the worthless argument that it would increase vulnerability to non-government hackers.
A good cryptosystem adds a lot of attack-resistance for relatively little computational cost to the authorized encryptor/decryptor. Your proposal would probably not be good by this criterion. You would use a relatively large amount of computing resources while adding a relatively small amount of security. In addition, you blur key and algorithm. A successful cryptosystem must sharply separate the key from the algorithm so that the algorithm can be widely shared, studied, attacked and proven while the key for a particular session remains secret.
In the proposed scheme, the sequence of operations constitutes the key.
Anyhow, just encrypt the communication once with a proven system, optionally use steganography to disguise the message as non-crypto, then encrypt under the backdoored scheme.
I agree with you that it's unlikely encryption played a major role in this attack. However I don't think the opponents of privacy are motivated by fear and ignorance. Rather, they want to preserve the ability to listen in on lots of communications.
They are in a stronger position now simply because the attack occurred, whether or not they can drag encryption into it somehow. All this talk of an "intelligence failure" translates to budget increases. In weighing the tradeoff of freedom versus security, the general public is likely to put little weight on encryption because they don't use it.
why does everyone think that the government has been itching to do this all along and is using this as an opportunity to screw everyone over?
To take just one aspect, backdoors in encryption: The government previously tried to promote a key-escrow system via the famed Clipper chip. They backed down after a massive backlash. The people who favored key escrow claimed that terrorists would use encryption. They are now in a stronger position to ask for key escrow again.
Previously, to "tap" an email, the prosecutors had to present the case for the warrant to every judge whose jurisdiction in which the the email passes.... It is still very difficult to get a wiretap warrant.
Not in a terrorism investigation. Such authorizations are granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Part of the sleight-of-hand executed by the intelligence/law enforcement world has been portraying warrants as difficult to get, while quietly operating a court that rubber stamps warrants.
Don't buy these dedicated boxes. Use Linux or BSD on an old PC. Others have addressed the technical tradeoffs - I want to address something else. By buying the packaged router, you:
Allow perfectly good computers to go into landfills while you buy the same thing in a different form factor.
Use closed-source software for a security-oriented application, with all that this implies.
Cut off your ability to fine-tune, modify, and learn from your firewall.
I use Freesco. See other posts for why it's great.
Notice that none of the countries cited as beneficiaries of US help (Germany, Japan, Italy, Britain, France, India) are sending suicidal terrorists against us.
I think you are a bit naive. When a nation experiences a huge disaster, heads of other nations are expected to voice their condolences. This is strictly pro forma and has nothing to with the real agendas of those other nations.
It would be great if you could watch the "Yes, Prime Minister" episode dealing with the predecessor's funeral.
PM: I shall take my place among the world's leaders. Sir Humphrey: Bearing your grief with dignity and fortitude. (from memory). Condolences are free. Anyway, "the world" which may hate the US is the third world, not so much Britain and Canada.
It's been pretty good. Initially there was a lot of "nuke them" sentiment. In general I'm disappointed that a generally skeptical and intelligent community was partially overcome with blind hatred and anger.
Re:What can be done? Nothing.
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Even if by some miracle you killed only those involved in the attacks, you'd still leave behind brothers, sons and friends who are now pushed closer to the terrorist thinking.
Yup. And let's put it out in the Nevada desert. And make fake cars in the parking lot (painted concrete cars.) And animated sillhouettes of people counting huge bags of money in the windows. So when they blast it nobody is actually hurt. Except maybe the guy who changes the lightbulbs.
Yes! So when a plane crashes into the pyramid (illustration:/\- ) it will be harmlessly deflected upwards! The cap of the pyramid will be a ten-foot iron pyramid that is not attached. That way, a bomb detonating inside the pyramid will blow the cap off, preventing a pressure buildup inside. The outsides of the pyramid will be smooth material coated in grease. That way, people can evacuate by sliding down the sides, which meets your criterion for rapid evacuation.
Only one problem - after all these precautions, how do we know the terrorists will hit the pyramids? Were they attracted by the WTC's form or function? Maybe if we paint a huge eye on the side of the pyramid the terrorists will associate it with the dollar bill and see it as the oligarchic conspiracy that controls America.
There is one practical concern, though; a rebuilt WTC would be a target for new attacks.
Give it an agile foundation, and put a kid with a joystick up on the observation deck. When he sees a plane coming, he just sways the building to avoid it.
That was probably the best post I've seen on the topic. One complaint though:
blowing graphite dust into every major electrical substation in the NYC area in the dead of winter.
NY is mostly heated with steam heat. Some of it comes from oil-fired burners in building basements, and a lot of it comes from Con Ed - it's waste steam from power plants. Killing the power would have massive effects, but it wouldn't cause a lot of people to freeze to death, if that's what you were thinking. Anyway:
The real question is, "why aren't Japanese people trying to kill us? Why aren't German people trying to kill us? What did we do differently?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it looks like the military has tried to adjust to the mental capacity of the press. Hence the evolution of the tall guy in the pressed uniform chanting simplistic phrases. I was very depressed to read a transcript of the briefing given by a senior defense official regarding the antimissile tests.
As you know, some reporter misunderstood the briefing and wrote that the test was invalid because it used GPS. In the transcript, it's clear that the official is trying to explain a relatively complex test plan to the reporters, and they're pretty much failing to get it. And of course the military ended up with undeserved egg on their face.
I'm sure every experience like that leads to the further dumbing down of the military's media interface.
While the spectrum is still military, it has a chance of being fairly reallocated. In the current corporate-friendly environment, the frequencies would just go to abusive, customer-hating monopolies. And then it would be very hard to ever pry those frequencies back from them.
The internet has made us more sophisticated about the potential division between content and transmission. I believe that the radio spectrum should only be licensed to common carriers who offer to carry raw data in a non-discriminatory manner, without bundling any other services.
What we need is high-speed wireless internet. Given that, services like voice telephony can be provided in a highly competitive environment. So can many other innovative services we haven't thought of yet.
Ever notice how hated most telecom providers are? Notice how they keep customers at arms length via "call centers" and IVR? They are near-monopolies, using government granted resources like spectrum to achieve a closed market in which they can harm the purchaser. Let's put an end to this junk by giving the spectrum to common-carrier ISP's. If we did this across the whole spectrum, it would cause a massive shift in power away from huge corporations and towards small businesses and citizens.
I'd like to see a web page listing some of those predictions. Is there one? Can you make one?
These "analysts" really deserve to be immortalized.
I think you missed the point. The work factor reduction is only available to someone with the secret system key. Not Osama.
I tried to answer this here. Additional text inserted to foil the compression filter.
Modern, practical cryptosystems like PGP/GPG use a block cipher with a different random key per message. They use public-key cryptography to encrypt the message key so only the intended recipient can decrypt it. The most obvious way to add a backdoor is to have the software encrypt the message key twice, with two different public keys: one for the recipient, and one for the government. Then the software would include both encrypted copies of the key in the transmission. This would not make the software inherently insecure. However it would focus a lot of energy on factoring (cracking) the government key because the payoff would be so high.
Therefore a more practical implementation might have thousands of government keys, and each program chooses one randomly to encrypt the message key. Thus the incentive to crack one government key is reduced.
In all these scenarios, it's possible for the government key(s) to be accidentally leaked, resulting in a catastrophic loss of security.
If the NSA designs the backdoor, it will not be vulnerable to third parties. I see a lot of ignorant speculation on this subject. Modern cryptography provides the building blocks for a secure, backdoored system. A system in which the existence of the backdoor does not provide any advantage to an attacker who lacks the government's key.
I think it's a bad proposal, but please discard the worthless argument that it would increase vulnerability to non-government hackers.
A good cryptosystem adds a lot of attack-resistance for relatively little computational cost to the authorized encryptor/decryptor. Your proposal would probably not be good by this criterion. You would use a relatively large amount of computing resources while adding a relatively small amount of security. In addition, you blur key and algorithm. A successful cryptosystem must sharply separate the key from the algorithm so that the algorithm can be widely shared, studied, attacked and proven while the key for a particular session remains secret.
In the proposed scheme, the sequence of operations constitutes the key.
Anyhow, just encrypt the communication once with a proven system, optionally use steganography to disguise the message as non-crypto, then encrypt under the backdoored scheme.
I agree with you that it's unlikely encryption played a major role in this attack. However I don't think the opponents of privacy are motivated by fear and ignorance. Rather, they want to preserve the ability to listen in on lots of communications.
They are in a stronger position now simply because the attack occurred, whether or not they can drag encryption into it somehow. All this talk of an "intelligence failure" translates to budget increases. In weighing the tradeoff of freedom versus security, the general public is likely to put little weight on encryption because they don't use it.
To take just one aspect, backdoors in encryption: The government previously tried to promote a key-escrow system via the famed Clipper chip. They backed down after a massive backlash. The people who favored key escrow claimed that terrorists would use encryption. They are now in a stronger position to ask for key escrow again.
Not in a terrorism investigation. Such authorizations are granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Part of the sleight-of-hand executed by the intelligence/law enforcement world has been portraying warrants as difficult to get, while quietly operating a court that rubber stamps warrants.
I find slashdot highly usable in Lynx. What is your specific complaint?
I use Freesco. See other posts for why it's great.
Just open the PS and cut the fan wire. Or immobilize the fan with a cable tie. The fan is not needed when there is no hard disk.
Notice that none of the countries cited as beneficiaries of US help (Germany, Japan, Italy, Britain, France, India) are sending suicidal terrorists against us.
I think you are a bit naive. When a nation experiences a huge disaster, heads of other nations are expected to voice their condolences. This is strictly pro forma and has nothing to with the real agendas of those other nations.
It would be great if you could watch the "Yes, Prime Minister" episode dealing with the predecessor's funeral.
PM: I shall take my place among the world's leaders.
Sir Humphrey: Bearing your grief with dignity and fortitude.
(from memory). Condolences are free. Anyway, "the world" which may hate the US is the third world, not so much Britain and Canada.
It's been pretty good. Initially there was a lot of "nuke them" sentiment. In general I'm disappointed that a generally skeptical and intelligent community was partially overcome with blind hatred and anger.
Even if by some miracle you killed only those involved in the attacks, you'd still leave behind brothers, sons and friends who are now pushed closer to the terrorist thinking.
Yup. And let's put it out in the Nevada desert. And make fake cars in the parking lot (painted concrete cars.) And animated sillhouettes of people counting huge bags of money in the windows. So when they blast it nobody is actually hurt. Except maybe the guy who changes the lightbulbs.
Yes! So when a plane crashes into the pyramid (illustration: /\- ) it will be harmlessly deflected upwards! The cap of the pyramid will be a ten-foot iron pyramid that is not attached. That way, a bomb detonating inside the pyramid will blow the cap off, preventing a pressure buildup inside. The outsides of the pyramid will be smooth material coated in grease. That way, people can evacuate by sliding down the sides, which meets your criterion for rapid evacuation.
Only one problem - after all these precautions, how do we know the terrorists will hit the pyramids? Were they attracted by the WTC's form or function? Maybe if we paint a huge eye on the side of the pyramid the terrorists will associate it with the dollar bill and see it as the oligarchic conspiracy that controls America.
Give it an agile foundation, and put a kid with a joystick up on the observation deck. When he sees a plane coming, he just sways the building to avoid it.
NY is mostly heated with steam heat. Some of it comes from oil-fired burners in building basements, and a lot of it comes from Con Ed - it's waste steam from power plants. Killing the power would have massive effects, but it wouldn't cause a lot of people to freeze to death, if that's what you were thinking.
Anyway:
The real question is, "why aren't Japanese people trying to kill us? Why aren't German people trying to kill us? What did we do differently?
You mean like this? And what good did that do exactly?
You mean like this?
Not really. The US provides weapons and aid to Israel. If the US simply withdrew from the Middle East, Israel would be gone very soon.
SQUEAK.
You're not fooling anyone.
SQUEAK.
Get out of my browser this minute!
SQUEAK.
And what did you do with my mouse movement data?
"It's shoved it in a table in Oracle," said a voice from the shelves on the other side of the room.