Re: [LINK] Security 'vs.' Privacy
On Thu, 2013-12-19 at 06:54 +, step...@melbpc.org.au wrote: > And IETF folk are 'really' pissed at NSA morons screwing with their baby. Do NOT make the mistake of thinking they're morons. "think him a rogue if it please you; never believe he's a fool" Regards, K. -- ~~~ Karl Auer (ka...@biplane.com.au) http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer http://twitter.com/kauer389 GPG fingerprint: B862 FB15 FE96 4961 BC62 1A40 6239 1208 9865 5F9A Old fingerprint: AE1D 4868 6420 AD9A A698 5251 1699 7B78 4EEE 6017 ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
Re: [LINK] Security 'vs.' Privacy
> > And IETF folk are really pissed at NSA morons screwing with their baby. > > Do NOT make the mistake of thinking they're morons. "think him a rogue if > it please you; never believe he's a fool" Regards, K. The NSA are/were fine technical nerds. Throw enough money at them, wind up their handles, set them of on a blind limited-objective path, and sit back. They've undeniable money/time smarts, though little political/social/human intelligence. "Golly gee here's a good techie challenge I wonder if we can do it?" And so, nerdy in the worst sense, to the core. "Good heavens we've been discovered! Who'd have thought that normal humans would so rat on us?" Clearly with world outrage, it was IQ over EQ. And so "big picture" morons. Techie smarts blindly oblivious to an eventually serious collateral damage. They've managed a first uniting all of the world major IT business players in America together against them. And, many countries throughout the world. How is that not moronic? Message sent using MelbPC WebMail Server ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
Re: [LINK] Wireless Broadband for Regional Australia
On 18/12/13 11:40, Paul Brooks wrote: > ... FTTdp model in the Strategic Review ... distribution > point) is a pit at the bottom of the driveway - or more likely, > attached to the side of a nearby power pole ... If most householders are accessing their broadband via WiFi and Mobile Broadband, could you use it as the link from the distribution point (DP) in the street into the household? That way no extra equipment would be needed in the house and a service could be provided to mobile users in the street, as well as households. Where the DP is on a pole the wireless signal would have a reasonably clear path to the surrounding houses. If the DP is a pit, would the existing copper phone cable carry the signal into the houses? -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/ PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
[LINK] itNews: BitTorrent to offer Secure Chat
[Has anyone had a critical look at this? [ http://engineering.bittorrent.com/2013/12/19/update-on-bittorrent-chat/ BitTorrent readies alpha of secure P2P chat app Juha Saarinen itNews Dec 20, 2013 7:15 AM (1 hour ago) http://www.itnews.com.au/News/368153,bittorrent-readies-alpha-of-secure-p2p-chat-app.aspx Private instant messaging mooted. BitTorrent, the company best known for the eponymous distributed file sharing protocol, has intensified work on a decentralised peer-to-peer chat app that aims to make it harder for government spy agencies to snoop on users' communications. The server-less chat client was announced in September this year. Referring to NSA contractor Edward Snowden's revelations about mass government surveillance of phone and Internet users, BitTorrent says that events have since made it clear that the company needed to devote time and resources to develop a messaging app that protects privacy. Unlike traditional instant messaging systems, BitTorrent Chat will not use a central server for authentication of users as well as routing and storing their communications. Under that model, compromising the central server or eavesdropping on the communications to and from it would leave all users of an instant messaging service vulnerable to identification and interception. Instead, BitTorrent Chat makes it possible for users to talk directly to each other over an encrypted channel. By using an encrypted distributed hash table (DHT), users' BitTorrent chat clients locate others by querying neighbours for addresses, until the right peer is found. Only the person issuing the query knows the address in question, BitTorrent says. An invite-only alpha or early pre-release version of BitTorrent Chat is currently being readied by the company along with a new open sourced DHT bootstrap server for freshly installed clients that do not yet have any peers to communicate with. -- Roger Clarke http://www.rogerclarke.com/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 2 6288 6916http://about.me/roger.clarke mailto:roger.cla...@xamax.com.auhttp://www.xamax.com.au/ Visiting Professor in the Faculty of LawUniversity of N.S.W. Visiting Professor in Computer ScienceAustralian National University ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
[LINK] more filter fiasco -- UK this time
[I guess the pushers for this approach in Australia moved back to the 'home country' with the same predictable failure.] UK porn filters blocking education sites, domestic abuse hotlines Will Oremus Published: December 20, 2013 - 9:32AM Of pornography, US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once claimed, "I know it when I see it." The same, it seems, cannot be said for the automated pornography filters that the British government has required the country's major internet providers to install on everyone's broadband service. An investigation by the BBC finds that the filters part of conservative Prime Minister David Cameron's "war on porn" are failing to block some major porn sites. Worse, they are blocking important educational sites, including an award-winning, youth-focused sex-education site called BishUK.com. Also blocked as "pornographic" by British ISP TalkTalk's porn filter are sites such as the homepage for the Edinburgh Women's Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre. Meanwhile, TalkTalk failed to block 7 per cent of the 68 major porn sites tested by reporters for BBC's Newsnight. Another ISP, Sky, succeeded in blocking 99 per cent of the actual porn sites tested, but also blocked porn-addiction sites which seems a little counterproductive, no? A third provider, BT, blocked online domestic-abuse resource centres. Parents' groups are also complaining that the porn filters are problematic even when they work. That's because they imply to parents that children can be kept safe on the web simply by activating certain filters, rather than by actually talking to them about the risks associated with various online behaviours. This is, of course, what happens when you take your domestic-policy agenda from the Daily Mail, whose anti-child-porn campaign was widely credited with spurring Cameron to action. No doubt this is all working quite well for the Mail, however, which in addition being a righteous crusader against pornography is one of the web's leading purveyors of wardrobe malfunctions and sideboob. Slate This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/uk-porn-filters-blocking-education-sites-domestic-abuse-hotlines-20131220-2zopp.html Melbourne, Victoria, Australia jw...@janwhitaker.com Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna die, so how do you fill in the space between here and there? It's yours. Seize your space. ~Margaret Atwood, writer _ __ _ ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
Re: [LINK] more filter fiasco -- UK this time
Yes, To paraphrase Auld Robbie: "The best laid plans of mice and moralists ..." :) No filetering regime I've ever seen put into practice seems to work, as anticipated that is. Just my 2 cents worth ... --- On 20 Dec 2013, at 10:57 am, Jan Whitaker wrote: > [I guess the pushers for this approach in > Australia moved back to the 'home country' with the same predictable failure.] > > UK porn filters blocking education sites, domestic abuse hotlines > > Will Oremus > Published: December 20, 2013 - 9:32AM > > Of pornography, US Supreme Court Justice Potter > Stewart once claimed, "I know it when I see it." > The same, it seems, cannot be said for the > automated pornography filters that the British > government has required the country's major > internet providers to install on everyone's broadband service. > > An investigation by the BBC finds that the > filters – part of conservative Prime Minister > David Cameron's "war on porn" – are failing to > block some major porn sites. Worse, they are > blocking important educational sites, including > an award-winning, youth-focused sex-education > site called BishUK.com. Also blocked as > "pornographic" by British ISP TalkTalk's porn > filter are sites such as the homepage for the > Edinburgh Women's Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre. > Meanwhile, TalkTalk failed to block 7 per cent of > the 68 major porn sites tested by reporters for BBC's Newsnight. > > Another ISP, Sky, succeeded in blocking 99 per > cent of the actual porn sites tested, but also > blocked porn-addiction sites – which seems a > little counterproductive, no? A third provider, > BT, blocked online domestic-abuse resource centres. > > Parents' groups are also complaining that the > porn filters are problematic even when they work. > That's because they imply to parents that > children can be kept safe on the web simply by > activating certain filters, rather than by > actually talking to them about the risks > associated with various online behaviours. > > This is, of course, what happens when you take > your domestic-policy agenda from the Daily Mail, > whose anti-child-porn campaign was widely > credited with spurring Cameron to action. No > doubt this is all working quite well for the > Mail, however, which in addition being a > righteous crusader against pornography is one of > the web's leading purveyors of wardrobe malfunctions and sideboob. > > Slate > > This story was found at: > http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/uk-porn-filters-blocking-education-sites-domestic-abuse-hotlines-20131220-2zopp.html > > > > > Melbourne, Victoria, Australia > jw...@janwhitaker.com > > Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, > you're gonna die, so how do you fill in the space > between here and there? It's yours. Seize your space. > ~Margaret Atwood, writer > > _ __ _ > ___ > Link mailing list > Link@mailman.anu.edu.au > http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
Re: [LINK] Wireless Broadband for Regional Australia
On 20/12/2013 8:34 AM, Tom Worthington wrote: > On 18/12/13 11:40, Paul Brooks wrote: > >> ... FTTdp model in the Strategic Review ... distribution >> point) is a pit at the bottom of the driveway - or more likely, >> attached to the side of a nearby power pole ... > If most householders are accessing their broadband via WiFi and Mobile > Broadband, could you use it as the link from the distribution point (DP) > in the street into the household? That way no extra equipment would be > needed in the house and a service could be provided to mobile users in > the street, as well as households. Sure you could add some form of femto-cell function for augmenting the mobile cellular broadband networks, to serve nearby homes and walking-by pedestrians - but I suspect you'll have real problems with phones in cars driving by due to the extremely rapid cell-switching that would occur every few seconds. Phones in cars wouldn't finish the handshaking with one cell before moving into the next. I distinguish very separately household networks (generally cabled and WiFi), and public networks (cellular mobile broadband) - and it goes a lot further than the link technology. Household WiFi is generally a private network, with no bandwidth/volume charges, relatively secure (on the household side of the firewall), and often relies on functions within the WiFi router to facilitate non-trivial apps such as NAT, port forwarding, VoIP proxies, multicast proxies, etc - which you lose in that model. A model such as you propose here (no extra equipment needed in the house) would: * be effectively forcing everyone (and every device) into the same security model as WiFi access at McDonalds, coffee shops, etc; * be useless for devices with cabled ports and not WiFi (think printers, set-top-boxes, DVD players, smart TVs etc), and high-bandwidth devices such as NAS storage. So you'll still need a wired hub for these cabled devices, while forcing all access from one of your devices to the files on your NAS through a double-WiFi hop (remembering that WiFi is only half-duplex). If the data charging model was similar to mobile broadband, it would be unworkable. Most devices with just WiFi connectivity tend to assume there is a firewall/NAT device located on the other end of the WiFi hub - which would be missing in this instance - and you don't want to have to force your wifi-connected photo frame to have to jump through the web-based captive portal hoops that a tablet or laptop has to go through accessing coffee-shop/airport-lounge wifi systems. You lose the compartmentalisation that is important for home networks in limiting the scope of network broadcasts, particularly server advertisements. Imagine using the network browser to find a shared drive, and having to wade through all the services, servers, shared drives, network printers, DLNA sources and displays, etc etc located in all of the neighbourhood's homes! (and the security problems that might bring). The alternative might be to keep the WiFi-enabled broadband router in the home to keep the firewall and broadcast containment functions, with the uplink being also WiFi, or cellular mobile broadband to the pole outside - with all the performance limitations that brings. Personally, I think the initial assumption (most people are accessing their broadband via WiFi and Mobile Broadband) is an incorrect starting point. At home, people don't 'access broadband', they use broadband to 'access devices/servers/content' - its the same sloppy thinking that conflates "broadband" with "the Internet". In a home context, to an increasing degree much of those devices/servers/content is also located in their home and is not accessed over a public broadband link, and would have their utility killed if they were forced to be. Paul. ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
Re: [LINK] Wireless Broadband for Regional Australia
On 20/12/13 1:27 PM, Paul Brooks wrote: > On 20/12/2013 8:34 AM, Tom Worthington wrote: >> On 18/12/13 11:40, Paul Brooks wrote: >> >>> ... FTTdp model in the Strategic Review ... distribution >>> point) is a pit at the bottom of the driveway - or more likely, >>> attached to the side of a nearby power pole ... >> If most householders are accessing their broadband via WiFi and Mobile >> Broadband, could you use it as the link from the distribution point (DP) >> in the street into the household? That way no extra equipment would be >> needed in the house and a service could be provided to mobile users in >> the street, as well as households. > Sure you could add some form of femto-cell function for augmenting the mobile > cellular > broadband networks, to serve nearby homes and walking-by pedestrians - but I > suspect > you'll have real problems with phones in cars driving by due to the extremely > rapid > cell-switching that would occur every few seconds. Phones in cars wouldn't > finish the > handshaking with one cell before moving into the next. > > > I distinguish very separately household networks (generally cabled and WiFi), > and > public networks (cellular mobile broadband) - and it goes a lot further than > the link > technology. Household WiFi is generally a private network, with no > bandwidth/volume > charges, relatively secure (on the household side of the firewall), and often > relies > on functions within the WiFi router to facilitate non-trivial apps such as > NAT, port > forwarding, VoIP proxies, multicast proxies, etc - which you lose in that > model. > A model such as you propose here (no extra equipment needed in the house) > would: > * be effectively forcing everyone (and every device) into the same security > model as > WiFi access at McDonalds, coffee shops, etc; > * be useless for devices with cabled ports and not WiFi (think printers, > set-top-boxes, DVD players, smart TVs etc), and high-bandwidth devices such > as NAS > storage. > > So you'll still need a wired hub for these cabled devices, while forcing all > access > from one of your devices to the files on your NAS through a double-WiFi hop > (remembering that WiFi is only half-duplex). If the data charging model was > similar to > mobile broadband, it would be unworkable. > > Most devices with just WiFi connectivity tend to assume there is a > firewall/NAT device > located on the other end of the WiFi hub - which would be missing in this > instance - > and you don't want to have to force your wifi-connected photo frame to have > to jump > through the web-based captive portal hoops that a tablet or laptop has to go > through > accessing coffee-shop/airport-lounge wifi systems. > > You lose the compartmentalisation that is important for home networks in > limiting the > scope of network broadcasts, particularly server advertisements. Imagine > using the > network browser to find a shared drive, and having to wade through all the > services, > servers, shared drives, network printers, DLNA sources and displays, etc etc > located > in all of the neighbourhood's homes! (and the security problems that might > bring). > > The alternative might be to keep the WiFi-enabled broadband router in the > home to keep > the firewall and broadcast containment functions, with the uplink being also > WiFi, or > cellular mobile broadband to the pole outside - with all the performance > limitations > that brings. > > Personally, I think the initial assumption (most people are accessing their > broadband > via WiFi and Mobile Broadband) is an incorrect starting point. At home, > people don't > 'access broadband', they use broadband to 'access devices/servers/content' - > its the > same sloppy thinking that conflates "broadband" with "the Internet". In a home > context, to an increasing degree much of those devices/servers/content is > also located > in their home and is not accessed over a public broadband link, and would > have their > utility killed if they were forced to be. > Paul. > ___ > Link mailing list > Link@mailman.anu.edu.au > http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link > I'll chime in on another point. WiFi standards like 802.11n and the next one, 802.11ac, achieve their high speed by using MIMO - multiple in, multiple out - to provide spatial multiplexing. There are multiple antennas at the transmitter and the laptop (not, however, on mobile phones or tablets). Taking a conservative calculation: if you have 4 x 4 antennas and each spatial path gets 50 Mbps - then the aggregate is 200 Mbps. OK so far ... These standards just LOVE having lots of reflective paths around to choose from - such as you get inside a house. They don't like a long distance between transmitters and receivers. At close-ish quarters, the four antennas may have a spread of 1 degree arc from the point of view of the receiver. At 20 metres, that's much less (if you want it w
