Re: For Liars and Loafers, Cellphones Offer an Alibi
On Jun 26, 2004, at 23:56, J.A. Terranson wrote: On Sat, 26 Jun 2004, Major Variola (ret) wrote: Do any models let YOU decide to send your location to ANOTHER phone? Mine, an Samsung I330 PDA/Phone (actually a rebranded Handspring) allows you to selectively *disable* non-lea queries. Based upon this, I do not believe that the system is broadcast-based, but rather operates solely upon a query-response model. Do any models even let YOU know your OWN approx location (to within that 100m Fedfascist standard)? Mine does not, but I understand that there are models now coming into the market which do. I'm a little late to this thread, sorry... ATT m-mode models have had this kind of functionality for quite awhile. http://www.mobileinfo.com/news_2002/Issue25/ATT_Finder.htm With a few keystrokes on a wireless phone, a m-mode subscriber is given the approximate geographic location of his friend, such as a street intersection. The two friends can then exchange messages, call the other, or choose a place to meet from a directory of nearby restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and bookstores. I'm pretty sure they don't use GPS for this... I think they do some form of triangulation from the cell towers. --bgt
Re: message, but also test
On Apr 29, 2004, at 20:03, An Metet wrote: I'm a big user of anonymity systems, and the worst problem I've had with proxies is remembering who I am supposed to be at the time. Several times with Freedom and more recently with other proxies, I have done stuff using my real name when I was in the mode where my nym was being used, and vice versa. Oops. That's a pretty big mistake to make and can totally destroy your pseudonymity, both at the time and throughout the past lifetime of the nym. What I'd like would be some kind of big, glaring indication that I am in anonymous mode, like overlaying some kind of color display on the screen, or maybe a crawling animation around the edges, or something. I realize that this is out of scope for most efforts of this type, but from my experience it's a big problem. If I recall correctly, (and it's possible I don't), the ZKS freedom.net client had features to pattern match strings (that you configure) when you were using your nym, and warn you with a popup message box when it detected them in outgoing traffic. So you could be sure you weren't inadvertently sending data that could compromise your nym (like your real name, or your other nym's names, etc). --bgt
Re: The Gilmore Dimissal
On Mar 30, 2004, at 13:22, Bill Stewart wrote: Greyhound demands ID at some locations as well; my brother got surprised when his trip, which hadn't demanded ID on the way out, got routed through Chicago on the return and they did demand ID. I was curious about that. I notice now that Amtrak requires ID as well: http://www.amtrak.com/idrequire.html Does anyone know when this happened, or have experiences with having to show ID on Amtrak? You need ID to drive, bus, train, or fly... I guess all that's left is walking and possibly biking. :P --bgt
Re: Anonymizer employees need killing
On Mar 28, 2004, at 9:05, R. A. Hettinga wrote: Anonymizer is set up to prevent *businesses*, stalkers, and small-time crooks like spammers, from seeing your behavior on the net and annoying you there. What's he going to do when uncle Fed shows up with guns? Have a shootout or something? This is exactly my point. You and I are saying essentially the same things. Anonymizer cannot be trusted with your life liberty. It is the equivalent of kid sister cryptography. Lance, however, does not seem to view it this way. And, if you're upset that you can't *surf* anonymously, sure as hell don't blame Lance. What I'm blaming Lance for is snake-oil marketing. When someone posted Anonymizer revealed the identity of a customer to the FBI, Lance posted Anonymizer would never do such a thing. But *of course* he would, because there's a metaphorical (if not real) gun pointed at his head. I'm not pissing and moaning that a single-hop anonymity service doesn't provide perfect anonymity, I'm calling Lance and Anonymizer on their false claims. Lance and Anonymizer should both be upfront and honest about exactly what level of anonymity Anonymizer /can/ provide. Then I would not have anything to say on this thread. I agree, the service is certainly useful for some things, and the world is better with it than without it. And, finally, one last thing. After 5 or 6 years of it from Tim, who started this list, and the original physical meetings, it's no secret I've gotten really tired of the need killing chest-puffing *I* did not say anyone needed killing, so I'm assuming this part of your rant was targeted at someone else. --bgt
Re: Anonymizer employees need killing
On Mar 26, 2004, at 9:13, petard wrote: On Fri, Mar 26, 2004 at 01:32:43AM -0500, An Metet wrote: From http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/36485.html : To download the online picture, he used the Anonymizer.com service, believing the companys privacy policy would protect him. Not so. Dutch The article got it wrong. He used Surfola. They've since corrected it. Of course, anyone trusting their lives liberty to these commercial ip addx obfuscators are incredibly stupid anyway. Anonymizer states plainly that they store usage logs usually for 48 hours and will use them to combat spam or other abuses of netiquette. Even if they didn't state it, how can you stake your life on them not doing so? Any company that /can/ comply with a court order to reveal your identity, probably won't need a court order to be convinced to do so. Just as a point of curiosity (because I think it's irrelevant, for the reason above), An Metet, how are you sure there was no subpoena or court order involved? --bgt
Re: How Tiny Swiss Cellphone Chips Helped Track Global Terror Web
On Mar 4, 2004, at 10:49, Major Variola (ret) wrote: At 10:30 PM 3/3/04 -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote: http://nytimes.com/2004/03/04/international/europe/04PHON.html? hp=pagewanted=printposition= The New York Times March 4, 2004 How Tiny Swiss Cellphone Chips Helped Track Global Terror Web And that, boys and girls, is what traffic analysis is about. You don't need to know the surname of the endpoint of a communication to know that said endpoint is interesting. Also, of course, Al's mistake of thinking that the handset is the endpoint, instead of the SIM. .. And, leaving a plaintext telephone directory of the whole organization lying around in his house probably wasn't the smartest thing either.
Re: Lunar Colony
On Thu, 2004-01-15 at 12:00, Tyler Durden wrote: Even more importantly, we can basically make the entire moon the perfect model of American culture in action, without any other nation to contest our policies there. It could be a paradise, and since no terrorists or ragheads will be allowed, we can also take the opporutnity to make sure that no other undesirables ever get their either, if you catch my drift. (Or that they all /do/ go there, to stay) I had wondered how long it would take for the inevitable U.S. announcement of a renewed push for lunar and mars colonization after the Chinese announced their plans to colonize and mine the moon awhile ago. --bgt
Quartering soldiers
On Tue, 2004-01-13 at 12:48, Tim May wrote: On Jan 13, 2004, at 8:41 AM, Steve Schear wrote: At 11:23 PM 1/12/2004, Tim May wrote: But if I own a computer and I rent out accounts to others and the FBI comes to me and says We are putting a Carnivore computer in your place, how else can this be interpreted _except_ as a violation of the Third? The pure form of the Third (in this abstract sense) is when government knocks on one's door and says Here is something you must put inside your house. For this to make sense, we have to interpret Soldier to mean not just agents of the armed forces (military), it has to mean law-enforcement as well. I can accept the idea of abstracting the Third beyond humans to software/hardware agents, etc... but I'm not so sure about the military vs. law enforcement distinction. Can anyone point me to some founder's writings that may help support the interpretation of Soldier to mean any agent of the government? Even if we did extend the Third to mean law-enforcement... since Congress has repeatedly ceded their authority to determine when the country was in a time of war to the Executive, and as such we are now in a perpetual time of war, any quartering has to be prescribed by law, rather than prohibited outright. For these reasons, I have to agree with Tim's earlier referenced post, to the effect of the only solutions now available are Technology and Terrorism. By the way, there have been a bunch of cases where residents of a neighborhood were ordered to leave so that SWAT teams could be in their houses to monitor a nearby house where a hostage situation had developed. (It is possible that in each house they occupied they received uncoerced permission to occupy the houses, but I don't think this was always the case; however, I can't cite a concrete case of this. Maybe Lexis has one.) If this takeover of houses to launch a raid is not a black letter law case of the government quartering troops in residences, nothing is. Exigent circumstance, perhaps, but so was King George's need to quarter his troops. I think someone in this case would have a much better argument for a Fourth amendment violation (unreasonable seizure of their home, albeit temporarily), though probably, today, still unsuccessful in a court. --bgt
Re: US Finally Kills The 2nd Ammendment
On Mon, 2004-01-12 at 01:26, Tim May wrote: Have you done this since 9/11? I know that in my [red]neck of the woods, I would without question be spending a few days in the system for this. That's what sniper rifles with low light scopes are for: kill one or both or all of the cops who arrested you in this way. Cops who abuse the criminal system and violate constitutional rights blatantly have earned killing. This has probably been mentioned here before, but another interesting approach is what justicefiles.org used to do (I'm not sure what the status of the site is, it seems to be down now). They collected the names of police officers (particularly ones known to be abusive of their authority) in King County, WA and published that + all public information they could find on them (including SSN's, addresses, phone numbers, etc). Of course the police tried to take the site down but the court upheld the site's right to publish any publicly available information about the cops (I believe they excepted the SSN's). --bgt
Re: US Finally Kills The 2nd Ammendment
On Sun, 2004-01-11 at 13:57, Tim May wrote: I don't know if he did, but of course there is no requirement in the U.S. that citizen-units either carry or present ID. Unless they are driving a car or operating a few selected classes of heavy machinery. Many states do have laws allowing the police to detain a person for a period of time (varies by state) to ascertain the identity of that person, if they have reasonable suspicion that they are involved in a a crime. I'm not aware of any laws that specifically require a person to actually carry ID, but when I was stopped in NV several years ago, walking back to my home from a nearby grocery store at about 3am, supposedly because a 7-11 nearby had just been robbed, I was told that if I did not present a valid state ID I would be arrested, taken to the precinct HQ, fingerprinted, and held until I could be positively ID'd. The constitutionality of these laws are being challenged. In Hiibel vs. NV, Hiibel refused 11 times to identify himself to police before he was arrested (illegal under NV statute). The NV Supreme Court has upheld the law, with a few dissents: The dissent then pointed out that the Ninth Circuit federal appeals court not only upholds the right to refuse to provide identification to an officer before arrest, but has specifically found Nev. Rev. Stat. B' 171.123(3) unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. The dissent opinion criticized the majority for reflexively reasoning that the public interest in police safety outweighs Hiibel's interest in refusing to identify himself, noting that no evidence exists that an officer is safer for knowing a person's identity. What the majority fails to recognize, the dissenting opinion continued, is that it is the observable conduct, not the identity, of a person, upon which an officer must legally rely when investigating crimes and enforcing the law. The US Supreme Court has agreed to review and is scheduled to hear arguments this year. http://www.epic.org/privacy/hiibel/default.html --bgt
Re: Sources and Sinks
On Sat, 2004-01-03 at 07:09, Michael Kalus wrote: Where there is no governmental police force, their is demand for private enforcement. And you know what? They regularly do their jobs better than the police. Of course there is no oversight body, so if they use excessive force well, It's all part of doing business and after all they didn't smash YOUR skull so what do you care, right? The only necessary oversight body is the courts. Both public and private police (should) operate under the Rule of Law just like everyone else. As with the public police, if private police have public perception problems related to excessive force, abuse of power, or whatever, they may opt to use a third-party interest to do self-policing by fining, firing, etc (much like pro sports organizations do... contractually). This is strictly a business management decision however, the only legal oversight should be the court. Police (public or private) should be judged and punished (in the legal sense) in the same way any other citizen is. Show me a company that doesn't pay a dime in taxes, please, make it one that actually has employees and does something useful and makes profit. Amuse me and try it out. I don't have a link ready right now, but there were several US corporations as well as some in Germany who did NOT pay any taxes for the past couple of years because of either breaks they got so not to leave, OR because they posted such high losses that they did not post any profit on the books, thus not pay any taxes. Purely for the sake of argument, even if this is correct (which I'm not conceding), a company that is truly in business to make a profit by doing something useful (creating a product, providing a useful service, etc) pays employees who pay taxes, pays employee payroll taxes, pays shareholders who pay taxes, and produces something (product or service) which is almost always taxed, usually in several ways. Just because a company does not pay an income tax DOES NOT mean it isn't heavily taxed in other direct and indirect ways. But all of you who seem to think that social services et al, should be run on a profit maximiation basis, tell me this: How much are you worth in Dollars and cents (or Euros)? I would like to know how much you think you are worth to your friends, family, kids, spouses etc.? I'm not sure what that's got to do with it. (We're talking about essential social services meaning services designed to protect lives, right?) How I value my life is measured by exactly what I will do to protect and enhance my life. I am worth to other people exactly what they would do /voluntarily/ to protect/enhance my life. What that's got to do with whether these services should be privatized or not I'm not sure. Unless you're arguing that (by that definition) I'm not worth very much to very many other people, and since that leaves the responsibility for my life squarely on my own shoulders (and on the shoulders of people I voluntarily engage to start caring about me!). Well, that's the only fair way... coercing other people to care for and by extension pay for my own welfare is immoral and evil. If you care so much for everyone else's welfare, there's plenty of charities you can voluntarily donate your money to that will be happy to look after everyone else. Oh, most people are selfish and wouldn't /voluntarily/ give 30-50% of their money away to total strangers (favoring their own families and close friends instead)? Then please explain how it's moral to FORCE them! (Jeez, I just recently got back onto this list after a several-year hiatus. How the hell did so many statists ever get the idea that ubiquitous cryptography would ever further their goals? Or are they just here to distract us with statism vs liberty type political debates so we can't get any real work done??) --bgt
