Net Censorship.
Uzbekistan: Online dissidents silenced. Web sites that published articles alleging corruption among high state officials in Uzbekistan and forecasting President Islam Karimov's resignation have been cut off from Uzbek web users. Free expression is strictly controlled in Uzbekistan, which enjoys the support as the key US ally in the region. The sites are still viewable from outside the country and are reportedly based out of Russia and Kazakhstan. Since then, numerous other sites have also popped up accusing Karimov of failing health. Uzbekistan at hub of regional tension. RFE commentary. Human Rights in Tashkent, Eurasia.net commentary. AP report via CNet. Exploiting the war on terrorism to cover up human rights abuses, IWPR. http://www.indexonline.org/indexindex/20030127_uzbekistan.shtml
Net Censorship au style.
Indymedia is under repression,its happened twice before.The first shut down Seattle and the Ohio server is no longer with us.See the main board at FBI/legal updates.lower left. On sept 11 the police are charging a mentally disabled man with threats to kill them.One was a comment to a post made here on May 8 and another on june 1 of 01. The Ohio legal situation arose after some local LEO's decided to set up grand juries and issue subpoena's before actually writing to the address provided on the offending post. Vic.Police followed precedent by not seeking to write the address provided.They did use a ph no on one of the posts to 'sting' the MD man by pretending to be from his ISP and offering a 'special deal.' The 'deal' turned into an ordeal for Matt Taylor of Kyneton. He was rousted for two hours,had things stolen and was later threatened at the police station.Taylor was charged with some petty public order offence's committed at M1 last year.The good behavior bond issued for those expire in Oct. Apart from that there is no criminal history.The police kept a computer seized from Taylor and finally examined it. The computer policeman who examined it,(actually a 'ghost' copy of the hard drive.)said he found 21 items of interest on the computer. Two have been put forward as supposed evedence of the crime of 'threats to kill.'1 is a copy of an e-mail sent sometime after the May 8 post.It's datestamped and it differs from the posts timestamp. The second item is a copy of a post that went up on June 1. It is not timestamped apart from the time on the Indy site that it was made. The Police are seriously putting forth the proposition that a few Kbs of data out of Gigabytes that someone stored and/or sent from the laptop prove beyond reasonable doubt that Taylor is their man. That no one else had the means motive and opportunity? Give us a fucking break. When Ashley Gardiner of the Hun wrote to Declan Mc Cullogh he wrote,we got your man! Note the 'we'. The Hun provided the police with a small mountain of their surveillance tapes and photo's of M1. 25,000$ reward was offered for Taylor's arrest in mid May by the La Raza Nazi organization.Many Threats were directed at Taylor by various different sounding anonymous cowards.The nom de Guerre allegedly used by Taylor appears to have been used by other(s) and in a way as to discredit him. 250$ was regularly offered to punch Taylor in the face hard enough to knock him down.All this on IMC's If you search yourself you will find many posts under the name 'proffr' and 'profrv.'Do they all appear to be from the same man? We have all put up with the long standing Hatfield-McCoy fued of Mayne and Hoser.Thats not the only disputed ID war on Indymedia. The police themselves say in court,this(indy)site is one where anyone can download. Therefore ANYONE online at the time those threats, were made could have made them by the Police's own admission. So why delay a trial,bring frivolous charges and harass the defendant and even try and nobble him? FOI has already exposed much about this,no doubt much more will come out. Like who was the mysterious 'observer' at Taylors arrest? Who was in charge,State or Feds? or the (ASIO?) 'Observer.'? Why was a US SS agent overseeing the arrest? Does the US want to extradite Taylor as has been alleged by Taylors case worker,Julian Jamieson of Kyneton? What will happen to Indymedia when someone alleged to be a regular contributor is found guilty of offences carrying a 20 year penalty? If anyone can be found guilty of such an 'offence' in this way then is anyone contributing here safe? Is the ultimate aim of this prosecution to chill Indy comment? Where else is this occurring? This is from EFA.and FBI/legal link... http://www.sjgames.com/SS/ August 31. -- Closure of the outspoken Internet forum Baiyun Huanghe after students posted messages about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. DFN and other NGOs reported about the closure on September 6. The Baiyun Huanghe bulletin board service (BBS - formerly hosted at http://bbs.whnet.edu.cn) belonged to the Huazhong University of Science and Technology (Wuhan, Hubei province). University officials announced that they were temporarily shutting down the BBS, which had 30,000 registered users, due to technical problems. A school official told Reuters that the university's party committee would manage the BBS after the shutdown. Users would be required to register with their real names and identification numbers. DFN said online discussion of the closure continues on other sites. For example, an Internet forum for Huazhong University alumni (http://www.neurophys.wisc.edu/~cai/hust/) has been active since Baiyun Huanghe was shut down. The alumni forum is run by a nonprofit alumni organization based in the U.S. Last March, DFN added, the Sina.com Web site erased hundreds of messages from its chat rooms which expressed outrage about an explosion that destroyed an
Re: CNN.com - Hackers help counter Net censorship - July 15, 2002 (fwd)
Previous message got lost in the ether (I think). Does anyone know what happened to this site? After all the buildup it seem unaccessiblej j On 15 Jul 2002 at 16:36, Jim Choate wrote: http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/07/15/censorship.reut/index.html -- When I die, I would like to be born again as me. Hugh Hefner [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.open-forge.org
Re: CNN.com - Hackers help counter Net censorship - July 15, 2002 (fwd)
Previous message got lost in the ether (I think). Does anyone know what happened to this site? After all the buildup it seem unaccessiblej j On 15 Jul 2002 at 16:36, Jim Choate wrote: http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/07/15/censorship.reut/index.html -- When I die, I would like to be born again as me. Hugh Hefner [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.open-forge.org
Re: CNN.com - Hackers help counter Net censorship - July 15, 2002 (fwd)
Does any one know what happened the the hactivisimo website? It was cited even on CNN, now it seems unavailable. j On 15 Jul 2002 at 16:36, Jim Choate wrote: http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/07/15/censorship.reut/index.html -- When I die, I would like to be born again as me. Hugh Hefner [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.open-forge.org
Re: CNN.com - Hackers help counter Net censorship - July 15, 2002 (fwd)
Does any one know what happened the the hactivisimo website? It was cited even on CNN, now it seems unavailable. j On 15 Jul 2002 at 16:36, Jim Choate wrote: http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/07/15/censorship.reut/index.html -- When I die, I would like to be born again as me. Hugh Hefner [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.open-forge.org
CNN.com - Hackers help counter Net censorship - July 15, 2002 (fwd)
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/07/15/censorship.reut/index.html -- When I die, I would like to be born again as me. Hugh Hefner [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.open-forge.org
NSW net censorship It is just not going to work.
Public eyes censorship plans Karen Dearne MARCH 13, 2002 NSW plans to censor the internet have been under scrutiny during two days of public hearings in Sydney. The Standing Committee on Social Issues is inquiring into whether the Classification Enforcement Amendment Bill provides an effective and enforceable way to regulate online material. But a number of industry and consumer groups warned that the proposed legislation discriminates against material published online and was unworkable. Australian Computer Society vice-president Phillip Argy said the NSW legislation went much further than the federal model legislation. This criminally prohibits the making available of matter that would be classified as objectionable or unsuitable for minors, basically without exception, Mr Argy said. It's like saying, you cannot make this material available to adults in NSW in case children get to see it. Electronic Frontiers Australia executive director Irene Graham said the Bill tried to force internet content into a regime designed for the commercial sale and distribution of movies, videos and games. The internet is not a movie, it is not a computer game and it is nothing like television, she said. It is just not going to work. The legislation treated people using the internet quite differently, less fairly and less justly under criminal law than that applicable to speech and distribution of information offline. There is a vast amount of material that this Bill can catch, she said. This is going to cover actual discussions in chatrooms and on email lists. We are especially concerned about what is, in effect, a complete ban on information that would be classified as 'R' rating. Office of Film and Literature Classification director Des Clark said he was unaware of any censorship board anywhere having regulated the internet. He agreed that such legislation would be ground-breaking. Computer games were not widely regulated worldwide, he said, but they are in Australia. Arts Law Centre of Australia legal officer Elizabeth Beal was concerned that an authorised officer could deem content offensive and issue a penalty notice, given the complexity and subjective nature of censorship matters. Although a defendant issued with one of these notices can elect to go to court, that involves considerable inconvenience and cost to obtain advice, not to mention fear and humiliation, she said. Internet Industry Association chief executive Peter Coroneos said the IIA was totally committed to helping families manage internet content so that children were not exposed to inappropriate material. But in the case of pornography, where so much of the material is created and posted by people outside Australia, passing legislation will do nothing more than show the community you are concerned about the issue, he said. The hearings took place last week. The committee is due to report to the NSW Parliament by June 7. FROM http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,3942637%5E15319%5E%5Enbv%5E15306,00.html Kill them all and let satan sort them out.
Re: News: 'U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship'
Greg wrote: At 05:31 PM 8/31/2001 -0400, Faustine wrote: Sure. But to what extent can you collaborate without a)approaching full- blown collusion or b) getting taken for a ride in spite of your best efforts? When you talk about collaborating and ZKS selling beta software to the NSA, are you saying you've got information that ZKS gave the NSA access to more information than the general public got, and/or that the NSA got their access or information meaningfully earlier than the general public? If that's the case, that's interesting, but that's too serious a claim to let pass by as an unstated implication. Actually, it would be far more more informative to get them to explain exactly what happened instead of relying on third-party empty hearsay and hot air from me, since honestly that's all I've got. But I'm sure there are a lot of reasons--some of them contractural--you'll never hear the whole story. Especially given that you'll never get anything more than loose talk from the other side. My personal opinion is that collusion or not, they got taken for a ride. And if it's not worth much, so be it. ~Faustine.
Re: News: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
On Friday, August 31, 2001, at 01:27 PM, Faustine wrote: On Friday, August 31, 2001, at 11:43 AM, Faustine wrote: Tim wrote: But, as with Kirchoff's point, the attacker is going to get the design eventually. If getting the design eventually were good enough, why the keen interest in putting in a large order for the beta? There's a reason. Perhaps the NSA wanted to use the product without making illegal copies? Your earlier point (that they wished to reverse-engineer the product) is in fact undermined by this fact that they bought N copies. Unless you believe reverse engineering is only useful for making pirated copies, there's no reason to assume any sort of contradiction at all. As if the NSA would use anything from the private sector they didn't know inside out. Consistent with your misconception about big computers being useful for brute-force cryptanalyis, I never said that and you know it. Nice troll, though. it appears you also believe the myth about the mighty NSA knowing more than the private sector. You _really_ need to get an education on these matters. Are you actually claiming NSA implements COTS technology completely straight off-the-shelf? And what do any of these you poopy head whippersnapper comments have to do with the fact that you found a contradiction where there was none? Boss Tom Turkey in full strut. ~Faustine.
Re: News: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
Tim Wrote: On Friday, August 31, 2001, at 11:43 AM, Faustine wrote: Consistent with your misconception about big computers being useful for brute-force cryptanalyis, I never said that and you know it. Nice troll, though. You did indeed. Several times you alluded to what big and powerful computers the NSA must have, the better to blow our house down. When it was pointed out to you the nature of brute-forcing a big key, and how useless computers are, you seemed not to get the point. Oh, well that might have a little something to do with the fact that I never made the point that brute-forcing keys was the way big and powerful NSA computers are going to blow our house down, mightn't it. The fact that brute-forcing keys was the only thing you could think of when you saw my phrase interesting possibilities for cryptographic applications and then chose to fixate on proving what a damn poopy head whippersnapper I am instead of deigning to bother over what methods I meant to refer to is indicative of your own limitations, not mine. ~Faustine.
Re: News: 'U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship'
At 03:19 PM 9/1/2001 -0400, Faustine wrote: When you talk about collaborating and ZKS selling beta software to the NSA, are you saying you've got information that ZKS gave the NSA access to more information than the general public got, and/or that the NSA got their access or information meaningfully earlier than the general public? Actually, it would be far more more informative to get them to explain exactly what happened instead of relying on third-party empty hearsay and hot air from me, since honestly that's all I've got. But I'm sure there are a lot of reasons--some of them contractural--you'll never hear the whole story. Especially given that you'll never get anything more than loose talk from the other side. Well, if all you've got is hearsay and hot air, then I think it's unfair to tag them with words like collaborator or suggest that they're not trustworthy - those are pretty serious allegations to make. I'm aware of examples of cryptosystems and companies which were compromised by intelligence agencies - and also aware of baseless FUD and conspiracy theories spun against uncompromised software unfairly. -- Greg Broiles [EMAIL PROTECTED] We have found and closed the thing you watch us with. -- New Delhi street kids
Re: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
On Thursday, August 30, 2001, at 02:11 PM, Faustine wrote: True, of course they do. Technology is morally neutral, sure, whatever. Yay capitalism. I still think handing over your security product beta on a silver platter in exchange for a nice fat government contract is a stupid, stupid idea. And since software is infinitely replicable, all the NSA would have to do if ZKS refused to sell to them is to get a copy anywhere else: from an employee who orders it sent to his home address, from a contractor, off the shelf at Fry's or Circuit City (someday, maybe not today), and so on. Much more importantly, modern crypto relies to avoiding security through obscurity. As outlined by Kirchoff in the 19th century, the security of a cipher ultimately depends only on the _key_, not the algorithm used to process the key. (Phrased in more modern terms, figuring out the algorithm is an easy problem, presumably solvable in polynomial time, while discovering the key is either provably impossible (except by guessing) or in the case of RSA is believed to be hard (not yet proven, and textbooks will tell you all kinds of stuff about what hard means). Now Freedom is not a cipher, but a system. And no doubt supplying an attacker with the program would help him to design an attack. Supplying him with the source code and detailed specs would help him even more. But, as with Kirchoff's point, the attacker is going to get the design eventually. But not the keys. In any case, NSA probably had it from their buddies in Canada, who either got it by arrangement with ZKS or snarfed it in one of several ways. The security of Freedom should not depend on even having access to the source code, else ZKS would be lying when they claim that even they cannot trace a message back to the sender. (Something which some may doubt...) Either way, the prospects for dissident-grade untraceability are fairly bleak. You pontificate as if you know something about our field, when you clearly know very little. Get some education if you plan to pontificate like this. A mixnet of the N extant remailers offers pretty damned good untraceability. Needs some work on getting remailers more robust, but the underlying nested encryption looks to be a formidable challenge for Shin Bet to crack. --Tim May
RE: News: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
Adam writes: As far as your opinions of our business, well, I'm really uninterested in getting into a pissing match with you. The reality is that customers and investors give us money tp produce privacy tools, and they, not you, are the ones I need to keep happy. The reality is that people like may and lists like this one that may help your customers and investors understand what they are and aren't getting. For example, your investors probably don't realize that you can't use zks tools for more than x% (I'm guessing 45%) of the us consumer market right off the bat because of self-imposed operating restrictions of your products (if you're not fully compatible with aol mail and web browsing, you're missing much of your usa market...btw 85% of aol users use the internal aol browser not an external browser so I doubt they will figure out how to download let alone launch an external browser and follow your arcane load/unload/re-load aol usage instructions.) plus investors probably aren't aware that limiting outlook support to 'internet only' mode cuts your outlook customer base quite a bit (I haven't seen the latest figures, but I believe a large group of outlook users configure their software for corporate/workgroup mode.) and investors probably don't realize how complex (in my opinion) the software is to set up and operate -- I'm disappointed that you've not released usage figures that I could find easily on your website (both downloads and average customer lifespan for the standard or premium products)...are people rushing to use the products? oh, and a minor point, but how much further have you cut your market share by focusing only on w2k, w98 and wme? You should correct me if I've mis-analyzed the info provided on the zks website. Anyway I don't like criticizing products per se (every products has weaknesses), but I do think criticisms lead to more aware investors/customers and perhaps even better products in the future. So in a sense it's helpful to listen to commentary from may or lists like this one.
Re: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
On Thu, Aug 30, 2001 at 09:14:46PM -0700, Tim May wrote: | A mixnet of the N extant remailers offers pretty damned good | untraceability. Needs some work on getting remailers more robust, but | the underlying nested encryption looks to be a formidable challenge for | Shin Bet to crack. http://anon.efga.org/Remailers lists about 35 Mixmasters and 45 type 1 remailers. An awful lot depends on what you mean by pretty good untracability.For example, if you send a dozen messages from Alice to Bob, then I'd bet you can do an entry-exit correlation attack. It becomes harder if you add substantial cover traffic, but Kocher-esque reductions in the noise are very powerful. If Alice and Bob are smart spies, and use a different hotmail recieving address each time, then you get pretty good untracability, but that untracability comes as much from the one-off nature of the messages as the mix network between them. And, depending on how good I think Shin Bet is at traffic analysis, I'm not sure if I'd even draw attention to my messages by sending them through 1/40^5 remailers. Thats 28 or 29 bits with 5 hops. If you start looking at reliability, only half or so of the remailers have 99% reliability, although only 10 are below 95% which means either a smaller pool, or a need for redundancy, both of which reduce your security. Adam -- It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. -Hume
Re: News: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
Faustine wrote: [...] Of course it has a trap door, that's probably the whole point of getting it over there in the first place. And by the way, if you're going to question SafeWeb for cooperating with CIA, you might as well criticize ZeroKnowledge for selling a boatload of the Freedom beta to the NSA in 1999 as well. What did they think they wanted it for, farting around on Usenet? I bet they had that sucker reverse-engineered and compromised in two minutes flat. Stands to reason. I wouldn't trust either of them with anything significant. If it can be compromised by NSA looking at a beta, it can be compromised by whoever the Chinese have doing this sort of thing. If it is safe enough to use in a life-or-death situation AT ALL it is safe enough to use if the NSA uncle Tom Cobbley and all have the source code. If not, not. Ken
Re: News: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
At 10:02 AM 8/30/01 -0700, Tim May wrote: Alas, the marketing of such dissident-grade untraceability is difficult. Partly because anything that is dissident-grade is also pedophile-grade, money launderer-grade, freedom fighter-grade, terrorist-grade, etc. --Tim May How about a marketing/psyop campaign promoting Mistress Grade crypto, and get licensing rights for the Chandra Levy images... or Congressional-Diary Grade crypto if Packwood will do cameos...
Re: News: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
-- On 30 Aug 2001, at 14:52, Faustine wrote: And as long as you have companies like ZeroKnowledge who are willing/gullible/greedy/just plain fucking stupid enough to sell their betas to the NSA, you never will. There is nothing wrong with selling betas to the NSA. I make my crypto source code available to the NSA, and to everyone else. Everyone should do this. Anyone that fails to do that is up to no good. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 67dYNaWosvJqHSU041w2pF90I0cE+VHfMhQxInsf 4Is1TS6sNGfG1fhrdBPgbEbNEPYuv+XqX9gM0Ua0i
Re: News: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
-- On 30 Aug 2001, at 14:41, Faustine wrote: Of course it has a trap door, that's probably the whole point of getting it over there in the first place. And by the way, if you're going to question SafeWeb for cooperating with CIA, you might as well criticize ZeroKnowledge for selling a boatload of the Freedom beta to the NSA in 1999 as well. What did they think they wanted it for, farting around on Usenet? I bet they had that sucker reverse-engineered and compromised in two minutes flat. Stands to reason. I think it most unlikely that they could compromise rot-13 in two minutes flat, and as for reverse engineering, any decent crypto system makes its engineering publicly available, so that reverse engineering is quite unnecessary. No one should ever use a system that has to be reverse engineered. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG vmwKl1+31thMlrC2hl4XzwiD6EPSMqrBX8OqN5J0 4qFXhFjCIcqlGNHPzxbUC4Kfz95pkdg5H60E8+j1v
Re: News: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
At 02:52 PM 8/30/01 -0400, Faustine wrote: And as long as you have companies like ZeroKnowledge who are willing/gullible/greedy/just plain fucking stupid enough to sell their betas to the NSA, you never will. ~Faustine. If knowledge of how something works breaks it, it wasn't worth having. No security gained through obscurity. You have to assume NSA can examine any code they want to. Regular Kevin Mitnicks, them.
Re: News: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
At 02:41 PM 8/30/01 -0400, Faustine wrote: And by the way, if you're going to question SafeWeb for cooperating with CIA, you might as well criticize ZeroKnowledge for selling a boatload of the Freedom beta to the NSA in 1999 as well. What did they think they wanted it for, farting around on Usenet? I bet they had that sucker reverse-engineered and compromised in two minutes flat. Were you intending to insult ZK authors[1]? The spooks would have studied the tool and its design, and set up a test net to study the traffic. Depending on their resources and the interesting-ness of the ZK-using 'targets in the field' they would have thought about what can be recovered from observations and interventions. As they do with everything, from code to routers. Maybe they would, in 2 minutes, look at it and say, oh, well, they used the Foobar library's implementation of RSA, and we know how to exploit a bug in that version, and can leverage that to break their scheme, so all their zero knowledge is ours. Or lookee here, they didn't check a buffer overflow and we can 0wn their nodes But exploration takes time, especially for a system designed from start to resist. Unless you think they're magic. [1] I'm not one, nor do I know any
Re: News: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
Tim wrote: But, as with Kirchoff's point, the attacker is going to get the design eventually. If getting the design eventually were good enough, why the keen interest in putting in a large order for the beta? There's a reason. Maybe in the long run, it's right to view any objections as being little more than irrelevant, moralistic hand-waving. But I don't find the they're going to compromise it anyway so why not make a buck when we can line of reasoning particularly satisfying. The security of Freedom should not depend on even having access to the source code, else ZKS would be lying when they claim that even they cannot trace a message back to the sender. (Something which some may doubt...) Do you? Either way, the prospects for dissident-grade untraceability are fairly bleak. You pontificate as if you know something about our field, when you clearly know very little. Get some education if you plan to pontificate like this. You call that pontificating? My saying Either way, the prospects for dissident-grade untraceability are fairly bleak is either interesting enough to address, or it isn't (for whatever reason.) Going for the gratuitous ad-hominem regarding whatever queer notions you happen to have about what I know or don't know is quite beneath you. A mixnet of the N extant remailers offers pretty damned good untraceability. Needs some work on getting remailers more robust, but the underlying nested encryption looks to be a formidable challenge for Shin Bet to crack. I'm sure I don't need to tell you a thing about the centrality of a secure implementation. Likewise, I'm sure you know that being a formidable challenge never prevented anything from being broken before, and it never will. All place-in-the-pecking-order issues aside, roughly how long do you think it's going to take before dissident-grade untraceability becomes a reality? If anyone deigns to show me why the prospects are better than bleak, I'd love to be proven wrong. ~Faustine.
Re: News: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
On Friday, August 31, 2001, at 11:43 AM, Faustine wrote: Tim wrote: But, as with Kirchoff's point, the attacker is going to get the design eventually. If getting the design eventually were good enough, why the keen interest in putting in a large order for the beta? There's a reason. Perhaps the NSA wanted to use the product without making illegal copies? Your earlier point (that they wished to reverse-engineer the product) is in fact undermined by this fact that they bought N copies. --Tim May
Re: News: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
On Fri, 31 Aug 2001, Faustine wrote: Tim wrote: But, as with Kirchoff's point, the attacker is going to get the design eventually. If getting the design eventually were good enough, why the keen interest in putting in a large order for the beta? There's a reason. As I recall, this was an open beta. The NSA would probably have ordered a copy under a private individual's name (and had it sent to a residential address) had ZKS denied them the sale. (They didn't need a large number of copies to examine it for flaws.) Maybe in the long run, it's right to view any objections as being little more than irrelevant, moralistic hand-waving. But I don't find the they're going to compromise it anyway so why not make a buck when we can line of reasoning particularly satisfying. That's not the reasoning that anyone here is stating. They're going to obtain a copy of the software anyway, so why not make a buck while we can, is what's being said, coupled with they shouldn't be able to break the software even if they have the source, so if we've done our jobs there is no reason not so sell it to them. Please. If you are going to participate in this debate, possess the ability to paraphrase the opponent's arguements correctly. -MW-
Re: News: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
On Friday, August 31, 2001, at 11:43 AM, Faustine wrote: Tim wrote: But, as with Kirchoff's point, the attacker is going to get the design eventually. If getting the design eventually were good enough, why the keen interest in putting in a large order for the beta? There's a reason. Perhaps the NSA wanted to use the product without making illegal copies? Your earlier point (that they wished to reverse-engineer the product) is in fact undermined by this fact that they bought N copies. Unless you believe reverse engineering is only useful for making pirated copies, there's no reason to assume any sort of contradiction at all. As if the NSA would use anything from the private sector they didn't know inside out. ~Faustine.
News: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
This report says the U.S. Gov't. has plans to make SafeWeb, the Web proxy company it helped fund through the CIA, available to Chinese citizens who want to bypass their government's censorship. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010830/wr/tech_china_internet_report_dc_1. html (I can already hear Aimee moaning about this anarchic undermining of the official Chinese government...until she realizes it has been blessed by a legitimate organ of the government.) So, what happens when Iran decides to finance systems in the U.S. to bypass U.S.G. censorship (e.g., of talk by freedom fighters)? Or when Denmark finances a system to bypass crackdowns on teen erotica in the U.S.? And so on. Here's a brief excerpt: Thursday August 30 3:23 AM ET U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship -NYT NEW YORK (Reuters) - United States government agencies hope to finance an American-based computer network designed to thwart attempts by the Chinese government to censor the World Wide Web for users in China, the New York Times reported in its online edition on Thursday. According to the report, the agency is in advanced discussions with Safeweb, a small company based in Emeryville, California, which has received financing from the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites), In-Q-Tel. The discussions were confirmed by parties on both sides, the newspaper said. Safeweb currently runs its own worldwide network of about 100 privacy servers -- computers that help disguise what Web sites a user is seeking to view -- which are popular with users in China, according to the report. The newspaper said the privacy servers have been a continuing target for the Chinese government, which has blocked most of them in recent weeks.
Re: News: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
On Thursday, August 30, 2001, at 12:16 PM, Adam Shostack wrote: As far as your opinions of our business, well, I'm really uninterested in getting into a pissing match with you. The reality is that customers and investors give us money tp produce privacy tools, and they, not you, are the ones I need to keep happy. I was being quite calm was not getting into a pissing match. If you react to comments about ZKS by saying people are pissing on you, I'd call you overly sensitive. And I certainly recall you yourself commenting on products from RSA and many other companies. --Tim May
Re: News: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
Faustine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote : Adam wrote: On Thu, Aug 30, 2001 at 10:02:54AM -0700, Tim May wrote: | Alas, the marketing of such dissident-grade untraceability is | difficult. Partly because anything that is dissident-grade is also | pedophile-grade, money launderer-grade, freedom fighter-grade, | terrorist-grade, etc. I think a larger problem is that we don't know how to build it. And as long as you have companies like ZeroKnowledge who are willing/gullible/greedy/just plain fucking stupid enough to sell their betas to the NSA, you never will. ~Faustine. Holy faulty logic Batman! This has to be one of the more doofy things I've heard. It's right up there with the EMI Grounding Strap thread. What're you going to do, sell a product in CompUSA with instructions to the cashiers that the NSA is not allowed to buy it? If the NSA is willing to pay for some software that's great. They've got as much right to buy it as anyone else. As long as they obey the law! and don't reverse engineer it, let them share in financing further development. I would find it more relevant to know which commercial product designs have been influenced by which non-commercial agencies. oy g'vay ( sp? ) Mike
RE: News: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
Faustine wrote: I wouldn't trust either of them with anything significant. More importantly, the claims that safeweb/triangle boy actually works may be misleading to the people who will rely on its claims of securely circumventing government censorship in china. The entire in/out bound traffic for the system can be effectively blocked or monitored. Plus did it strike anyone as odd that the 'triangle boy' software, to be used when access to safeweb.com is blocked, is downloaded from the safeweb.com website? I've not seen that software anywhere else and frankly downloading/having that triangleboy software in itself is a dead giveaway of suspicious activity isn't it? I'm not as worried about US citizens using the stuff in the usa, just concerned for chinese dissidents using it in china. phillip
Re: U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship
Mike wrote: Faustine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote : Adam wrote: On Thu, Aug 30, 2001 at 10:02:54AM -0700, Tim May wrote: | Alas, the marketing of such dissident-grade untraceability is | difficult. Partly because anything that is dissident-grade is also | pedophile-grade, money launderer-grade, freedom fighter-grade, | terrorist-grade, etc. I think a larger problem is that we don't know how to build it. And as long as you have companies like ZeroKnowledge who are willing/gullible/greedy/just plain fucking stupid enough to sell their betas to the NSA, you never will. Holy faulty logic Batman! This has to be one of the more doofy things I've heard. It's right up there with the EMI Grounding Strap thread. What're you going to do, sell a product in CompUSA with instructions to the cashiers that the NSA is not allowed to buy it? If the NSA is willing to pay for some software that's great. They've got as much right to buy it as anyone else. True, of course they do. Technology is morally neutral, sure, whatever. Yay capitalism. I still think handing over your security product beta on a silver platter in exchange for a nice fat government contract is a stupid, stupid idea. As long as they obey the law! and don't reverse engineer it, let them share in financing further development. Do you really think that anyone would have the slightest qualm about reverse engineering a product like this when national security interests are at stake? I would find it more relevant to know which commercial product designs have been influenced by which non-commercial agencies. Either way, the prospects for dissident-grade untraceability are fairly bleak. oy g'vay ( sp? ) close enough. ;) ~Faustine.
