Phil Zimmermann's New Venture Will Offer Strong Privacy By Subscription 219
New submitter quantic_oscillation7 writes with this excerpt from the Register: "Phil Zimmermann and some of the original PGP team have joined up with former U.S. Navy SEALs to build an encrypted communications platform that should be proof against any surveillance. The company, called Silent Circle, will launch later this year, when $20 a month will buy you encrypted email, text messages, phone calls, and videoconferencing in a package that looks to be strong enough to have the NSA seriously worried. ... While software can handle most of the work, there still needs to be a small backend of servers to handle traffic. The company surveyed the state of privacy laws around the world and found that the top three choices were Switzerland, Iceland, and Canada, so they went for the one within driving distance."
They better not do the mistake of Hushmail... (Score:5, Interesting)
Canada is decent, but they can still be forced to modify their code to catch people on demand of Interpol there.
Look what happened with Hushmail.
Re:They better not do the mistake of Hushmail... (Score:5, Informative)
Also there's been a bill on the order paper for a few years that would require them to backdoor it, and it looks like the bill is probably going to pass this time.
Re:They better not do the mistake of Hushmail... (Score:5, Interesting)
If I were doing a service like this, I'd split the company into five independent divisions, either owned by a holding company in Antigua, or otherwise protected the same way the telephone scammers keep a step ahead of the authorities.
First company does the billing. Then it sends money to the other three companies, using tokens that change often. This separates users from their online userIDs.
Second company does the client coding and makes packaged, signed executables.
Third company takes the packaged code from company #2 and installs it. The reason for this is to make it harder for backdoors to be inserted at the whims of a local government. Users will easily see the executables have invalid signatures. Because company #2 is a separate firm, it is harder to demand they create a bongoed executable.
Fourth company provides the VPN service, and tosses logs between IPs.
Fifth company does the servers. Since the clients do a layer of encryption, commanding the server holding company to cough up user data is going to not give much, other than perhaps traffic analysis reports.
This isn't perfect, but it means that if the servers get seized, the data isn't compromised. Same if the client making company gets demanded they insert a backdoor, or the network between the servers is seized.
I would like to work on a service like this However, the main reason why I wouldn't run it is because of cynicism -- it would turn into a nice stomping ground for the child pornography crowd, not to mention a haven for people who are interested in turning the a local church or synagogue into rubble.
Re:They better not do the mistake of Hushmail... (Score:5, Insightful)
If we want freedom we have to accept an increase in terrorism an violated children. This is a very tough call that we should not avoid discussing. Anyone has evidence on how many children, synagogues we have to sacrifice for how much children? Sure would be interesting reading.
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Re:They better not do the mistake of Hushmail... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They better not do the mistake of Hushmail... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok kill me if you like. I really do not endorse CP in any form. But sending JPEG or AVI files around does not do any real harm. Cut the balls off the dude who actually took the pictures; do whatever you want.
But there is a good case for strong encryption within legal bounds. Why do we have to hand over all our civil liberties just because someone says Terrorism and Pedophiles?!
The police should do real police work, like infiltrate the organisations, instead of relying on stupid criminals and technological gizmos. I can still use strong stenography and encryption on my open e-mail connection, if I feel like it.
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The company surveyed the state of privacy laws around the world and found that the top three choices were Switzerland, Iceland, and Canada, so they went for the one within driving distance.
Going for the pro-citizen countries, are we? Switzerland has also recently allowed external investigators into its banks (as an example of on-demand privacy violations). I am not judgind it, I am only saying that it happened. So that's why the option that includes the servers sitting on a volcano and being surrounded by the ocean seems like a good choice.
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The "Lawful Access" provisions don't require access to the end-user terminals.
Re:They better not do the mistake of Hushmail... (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. It's like none of them get the idea that paranoid users are paranoid, and keeping out 99.99% of all various intruders, but letting in the 0.01% via a mandated backdoor is the same, mentally speaking, as letting in 100% of all various intruders. Having a backdoor means the solution is inherently insecure, and requires trusting someone which, let's be honest, you don't know. ("Dude, it's totally cool. Your files are totally secure, except that because of a recent law, we have to create a master key that unlocks all the files, at once, and yes, if this key were ever compromised / stolen for any reason, all of our users would have their proverbial asses hanging out the window onto oncoming traffic, but yeah, come on, what are the chances that'd ever happen? Why wouldn't you want to use an almost-secure solution?").
Not everyone using these services is a spy, thief, hacker, cracker, mentally ill, or otherwise questionable person trying to hide something. Sometimes they're just people who like the idea of living quiet lives, and would like a secure / protected e-mail service to actually live up to its name. But there are some eccentric people in positions of power which don't like that idea -> they can't sleep at night until they know for sure that there isn't a bogeyman living under your bed!
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personally, I am ok with a backdoor, provided that there are some proper controls around it, such as:
- Access only granted to specific law enforcement agencies (listed publicly)
- Access only granted after due process, i.e. a judge issues a wiretap warrant for a specific suspect in a specific case
- Access is rescinded as soon as the warrant runs out
- The government agencies themselves have prop
Re:They better not do the mistake of Hushmail... (Score:5, Insightful)
personally, I am ok with a backdoor, provided that there are some proper controls around it, such as:
- The government is entirely composed of perfect beings that would only use the backdoor against actual criminals.
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"The government is entirely composed of perfect beings that would only use the backdoor against actual criminals." -> Thank you.
I find it odd that people can interact with government officials day and day out for years, and forget that they're human beings. No human being should be invested with the kinds of powers they're after.
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Except most governments these days consider all their citizens as prospective criminals. Anybody who can think for themselves and wants other than government-mandated media for their news is a potential criminal.
TFA (Score:4, Informative)
Link is http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/14/pgp_seal_encrypted_communications/ [theregister.co.uk] since it wasn't in the summary.
Re:TFA (Score:4, Informative)
Help me out here... (Score:5, Insightful)
encrypted email, text messages, phone calls, and videoconferencing
With the proper encryption software on the endpoints, and properly encrypted storage, why does the server location even matter?
If nothing was actually stored on the server (or if everything stored there was encrypted with keys unknown to the operators) there would be no point in any government agency grabbing the server other than to shut it down. And nothing prevents that better than multiple sites.
It would seem to me the best solution would be for that server to have zero knowledge about the content of any data, and serve as a store and forward repository for content where one or the other party is off line (file transfer or email). For Video conferencing and text messages the servers might serve only as a routing agent for firewall piercing (where each participant is behind a firewall). But in no case should it contain un-encrypted data, and all logging should be to /dev/null.
Almost all of this is available today using a variety of off the shelf software with PGP keys, etc.
Wouldn't concentrating this traffic in a single place make it easier to monitor? If nothing else, a monitoring agency can gain the equivalent of pen register data simply by doing packet analysis at the upstream of such a service provider.
Wouldn't merely subscribing to such a service (and leaving a money trail) become a red flag?
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why does the server location even matter?
I'd go one step further and wonder why it needs dedicated servers at all.
If email is end to end encrypted (a thing that's very easy to do already) it does not need any NEW infrastructure. The existing email infrastructure works just fine, the only difference being that the messages are encrypted, and anyway the encryption keys better be known only to the endpoints, or it defeats the entire purpose.
Same for IM and other things - all that's needed is client support. The very fact that there is some custom s
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it's been around forever and it won't go away because of this. geeks know about it, no one else does. i think zimmerman would mostly be happy that you keep doing what you're doing.
normal people (who deserve privacy too) just might care when they can say to their neighbors "this company is taking care of it; they have Secure Servers!", secure in the fact that ex-military folks and a Huge Fucking Bundle of Money (the only thing normal people care about as far as technology goes) are involved. that's how peopl
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Think about the business model: They're probably providing the authentication (i.e. you're really talking to whoever you think you're talking to). If they provided a way around that then you wouldn't need their subscription, would you?
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Well, if they were providing the authentication, then that would suggest that they would have way too much knowledge if you ask me.
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It should be decentralized, P2P (with redundancy).
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It should be decentralized, P2P (with redundancy).
You mean like so? ,etc.>br>
2. Shares public key with receiver via OOB mechanism
1. endpoints encrypt email/files/whatever with PGP/GNUPG, etc
3. Endpoints/send receive data via P2P mechanism (SMTP anyone?)
4. Profit!
Brilliant. No one else could ever have thought of that.
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Except that if you read the summary, this is about more than just secure email. They also want to do it for text messaging, phone calls, and videoconferencing. I think it would be pretty hard to use SMTP for all of that.
Re:Help me out here... (Score:5, Insightful)
With the proper encryption software on the endpoints, and properly encrypted storage, why does the server location even matter?
You're new here. Okay, from the top ... If the server gets disappeared in some government raid, then the services offered by said server are no longer available. Sorta obvious there. The internet requires some types of centralization to function; As to any services that run on top of it. DNS, e-mail, Facebook, BGP, etc. -- everything on a packet-based network which lacks broadcast/multicast ability needs to have a static point of entry into whatever superstructure you build on top of it.
In this case, the server acts as a mediator of identities: Person A wants to talk to Person B, so Person A subs Person B's public key, and the server returns Person B's IP address, drop box, or whatever, thus allowing the transaction to complete.
It would seem to me the best solution would be for that server to have zero knowledge about the content of any data
The server would regard the data as a binary blob with a source and destination. You know, just like a router does. Except the data is encrypted, so the only useful data that can be recovered is where it's going, and where it's coming from.
But in no case should it contain un-encrypted data, and all logging should be to /dev/null.
But what if someone unlinked /dev/null? Server should immediately self-destruct, Mission Impossible style? :P
Almost all of this is available today using a variety of off the shelf software with PGP keys, etc.
One word: Convenience. And another word: Cheaper.
Wouldn't concentrating this traffic in a single place make it easier to monitor?
Dude, the NSA is building a massive data center under a mountain in Arizona to monitor every packet sent or received on the internet domestically as you read this. The "single place" is now the entire network. Europe is doing the same thing, but requiring ISPs to store all the data instead. If you want something hard to monitor, go back to sneakernet and drop boxes.
Wouldn't merely subscribing to such a service (and leaving a money trail) become a red flag?
I see that you're paying with cash, instead of credit card. You filthy terrorist. Well, actually, everything these days is a red flag. Carrying a bottle of water in your car? You must be using drugs. Breast implants? Possible weapons of mass distraction. Driving a car at the speed limit -- you're paying too close of attention, you must be up to no good. Ah, the rationalizations are endless. Look, there's no technology on this planet that's going to save you from a government that decides (for whatever reason) to make you disappear. All these laws, the constitution, your rights, it's all for show and it always has been. The powerful do whatever they want, and then give it post-facto legitimacy after the fact.
All that said, I do all my browsing on Tor. Which mostly includes posting to slashdot and reading the Skyrim wiki. If you encrypt everything, and everyone else does the same, then you have made stateful packet inspection a waste of time. Nobody should be sending packets in the clear these days anyway -- most of you are reading this from a processor with an AES encryption/decryption module built into the CPU that can run at gigabit speeds with very little overhead. -_-
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"and then give it post-facto legitimacy after the fact." Yeh, that's the best kind of post-facto legitimacy. :)
Well, not everyone knows what post-facto means! I just wanted to be extra clear. :( Slashdot isn't what it used to be.
Re:Help me out here... (Score:5, Funny)
also you are always at war with your own penis
Are we not all at war with our own penises?
You would have to be. My Penis tells me to do some incredibly dumb, stupid, and impulsive shit all the time that is quite counterproductive to my continued standard of living. If I listened to him, I would probably be penniless on the side of the road with two nuts for company.
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also you are always at war with your own penis*
*(or vagina)
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For ZRTP proxy and automated SAS would be my guess. Also for an IM presence server and you have to put e-mail servers SOMEWHERE. E-mail isn't p2p.
http://zfone.com/docs/asterisk/man/html/u_guide.html [zfone.com]
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Also for an IM presence server and you have to put e-mail servers SOMEWHERE. E-mail isn't p2p.
With proper encryption, it doesn't matter where that is, and concentrating it in one place isn't going to help.
Ask Blackberry.
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Yes, but...
E-mail will not work without a server. Since you need one, you might as well put it somewhere that has the tightest restrictions on privacy. A place that has the most hoops a gov't has to jump thru to force you to cough up data.
By data I mean the non-encrypted stuff like customer name, billing info, how often e-mail is sent/received, the source and destinations, etc.
Encryption doesn't hide any of that.
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It's called "traffic analysis", and it's a wonderful source of intelligence even in its simplest forms.
Of those nations, Canada seems the most likely to assist with a US official "request". Iceland would love to resist but has little power.
Re:Help me out here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Our current Canadian government (Harper's Regime) would quite likely be willing to hand over all Canadian internet traffic to the US free of charge, even before they request it. Harper seems to worship the Republican party sadly :(
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Almost all of this is available today using a variety of off the shelf software with PGP keys, etc.
Yes, and a lot of good security software is available free and open source, but it's not very easy to use and/or effectively marketed.
Wouldn't concentrating this traffic in a single place make it easier to monitor? If nothing else, a monitoring agency can gain the equivalent of pen register data simply by doing packet analysis at the upstream of such a service provider.
Wouldn't merely subscribing to such a service (and leaving a money trail) become a red flag?
Absolutely, anyone can use free HushMail, but in so doing, you are marking yourself as a less than 1% minority that cares enough about privacy of your communications to actually do something about it - and as such, I'd assume you'll be first against the wall in any witch hunt investigation since you are rare and "they" can't really be sure what all you have effectively hidden
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Hushmail was a bit of a pain, 4securemail seemed to work well (no affiliation and no link, google it up yourself).
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Sorry to let my cynic show, but all medical providers who want to adhere to HIPPA have to do is subscribe to a service that claims to provide HIPPA compliance to their operations, pass the cost along to the insurance companies (and those who pay insurance premiums), and wait for somebody to scream "Bloody hell NO that's not what HIPPA means and I'm going to sue!!!" - settle, probably involving a small modification to the HIPPA compliance service procedures, rinse, lather, and repeat.
My favorite outcome of H
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Maybe I'm just a retard..... (Score:2, Interesting)
But if it's made up of a bunch of ex-navy seals, can you really trust that it's going to be secure against american intelligence access? And if it *IS*, what does that say about these EX-SEAL personnel? The old 'loyalty to your job' versus 'loyalty to your country' :D
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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But if it's made up of a bunch of ex-navy seals, can you really trust that it's going to be secure against american intelligence access?
I was going to reply with a list of the algorithms and constructions used here, and then point out that they are all standard and widely studied. Then I noticed that the website does not actually have that information, so unless someone would like to post a link (I could have just missed something obvious), no, I do not think you can really assume anything. Phil Zimmerman did good work with PGP, but that does not mean that he will do similarly good work here.
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Indeed. That was the first red flag that caught my eye -> "ex-Navy Seal would be nice if I were expecting the offices to be physically attacked, but I don't know how well they'd hold up against various intelligence people questioning their 'loyalty' to their own..."
Canada is a questionable choice (Score:3, Insightful)
Are they aware of the Canadian Conservative party's utter contempt for online privacy and willingness to grant broad snooping powers with no oversight to completely unqualified authorities? All without a warrant? Bill C-11 is currently in the process of being rammed through along with plenty of other unpopular legislation. Need I even mention the unabashed kowtowing to the whims of U.S. media conglomerates?
"You can either stand with us or with the child pornographers" - Vic Toews, Minister of Public Safety.
Canada (Score:3)
As a Canadian resident, I wouldn't count on our privacy laws remaining strong, or - above all - being strongly enforced - with the Conservative party in power. They should have gone with Sweden or Switzerland.
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Warrants are required in Canada, even under exigent circumstances now. The SCC recently struck down even prior existing laws(telephone) on that. The only exception is home entry in case of emergency, where you can see/hear/know a person in an obvious case of distress.
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I do not believe that the Conservative party has any interest in maintaining the privacy of Canadians. In fact I think they are actively working to weaken/eliminate privacy here, in the same way they are actively working to destroy the environmentalist movement and scientific research into GCC. Steven Harper has only the interests of Steven Harper in mind, no one else. His focus is to stay in power long enough to change Canada in the way he wants to. Whatever gets in the way will be swept aside (latest vict
Re:Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Sweden has few effective laws for private citizens. It's explicitly codified into law that the authorities are allowed to snoop on your communications. It's a bit better than England ( where you can be jailed for not giving police your encryption keys ) , but there's really no good way to defend against a hostile government. If you truly want to avoid government meddling with your communication your best bet is probably hiding in plain sight. I.e, make sure you and your communication appear dull enough that your government can't be bothered to look at it.
What do SEALs have to do with privacy? (Score:4, Insightful)
What do SEALs have to do with it? Are they going to infiltrate the datacenters of privacy violators and blow them up? Secure this company's underwater cables? Now some NSA or CIA signals intelligence veterans might be helpful.
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No, duh. They are launching a subscription service in the US. The SEALs are there for the TV commercials.
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No, duh. They are launching a subscription service in the US. The SEALs are there for the TV commercials.
Because Act of Valor showed the world that SEALs are incredibly talented actors?
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No, because it showed they don't have to be...
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No, because it showed they don't have to be...
That's debatable. The movie was enjoyable, but some of the dialog-heavy segments were stilted enough to make it difficult to maintain suspension of disbelief.
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Eh, I wasn't talking about what it did for the movie, I was talking about about the reputation Navy SEALs have with middle America after the whole bin Laden thing (and the movie, etc).
If you are a 65 year old retiree in Kansas, who's security software are you going to use, something called "McAfee" with commercials featuring boring guys in suits talking about IT infrastructure, or one called "Silent Circle" with a fucking Navy SEAL guarding your computer! ;)
Re:What do SEALs have to do with privacy? (Score:5, Insightful)
But you know one big thing they contribute just by being there? This company will be accused of being anti-American, of "helping the terrorists win." There's nothing that will help inoculate them against that as much as having a couple of combat veterans as founders.
And to those who will say the presence of veterans means you can't trust this organization because they will provide a backdoor for the feds, the people in our armed forces hold a range of political opinions, they are not all clones. And there are a lot of them who agree with a libertarian or traditional conservative view of highly restricted government power and lots of freedom. A lot of people in the military are there to fight for our freedom, and that includes opposing the Orwellian encroachments of our own government.
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The SEALs mentioned both operate physical security companies. Their expertise will probably come in handy in securing the datacenters.
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"all your encryption is worthless, they will just park outside your lawn and point a device towards your keyboard. The electrical charge generated by each key can somehow be translated into clear text."
Failing that, they will just park outside of your lawn and point a device towards your head. The adrenaline generated by you knowing the "device" is a 7.65 long barrel can somehow be translated into clear text too.
Obliged reference: http://xkcd.com/538/ [xkcd.com]
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Friend of a guy who worked in intelligence here, all your encryption is worthless, they will just park outside your lawn and point a device towards your keyboard. The electrical charge generated by each key can somehow be translated into clear text.
Not everyone who wants my data has a black van full of electronics, readily available for dispatching, in my area.
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Canada? (Score:2)
Canadian privacy... (Score:4, Funny)
They just nee to make sure they don't discuss any details of the service at the airport...
why not put a server center in each? (Score:2)
A password is enough? (Score:2)
You get the apps at the iPhone/Android store, so does it just use a password? Where's the 2/3 factor authentication, or a security quiz from the system before you can start using it? Can you set an 'alarm' password that tells everyone you're under duress, or an innocuous password that only shows fake data?
Trying to make it easy to use is commendable, but trading ease for security would be better.
No thanks (Score:3)
They teamed up with Navy SEALs to develop this. That means a branch of the US Government is involved.
No thanks.
Encryption System (Score:2)
Sounds good.
I believe them when they say it is a good privacy protection package, and $20 sounds reasonable.
It better be open, and available for public comment, for every single line of code that goes into it otheriwse, then no, I don't believe it is safe to use.
I want to see it and make my own determination.
-Hack
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Someone correct me if I'm wrong; because I'm not exactly sure about that.
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You're wrong. PGP was never Open Source (in the sense of free to modify) when it was commercial, however all the code was available for anyone to download and test, at least until Symantec bought it a couple years ago. PRZ had next to nothing to do with the product after NetAss bought it and nothing other than advisory when it was in it's second corporate incarnation.
I stand corrected. You're right; it wasn't Open Source. It's source was available for inspection and testing.
But I still don't trust the commercial versions, at the very least. On that, we most certainly agree.
Privacy as a service. What's wrong here? (Score:2)
The concept of "privacy" as a paid, centralized service leaves something to be desired.
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Sound familiar, kinda like extortion.
Remember when the Mob approached local politicians and promised not to let out any of their secrets, for something in return?
Why should the NSA be worried? (Score:2)
Now it's time for me to put some copper foil on my hat; because the tinfoil doesn't block enough of the mind-control waves...
Canada? (Score:2)
Canada might not be a good choice. Our privacy laws right now might be decent, but the Harper government is selling rights to write our laws to the US and to US lobbyists. Don't count on Canada having sane privacy laws nor "Intellectual Property" laws for much longer.
The MPAA, RIAA, and NSA count more to Harper than citizens.
Only published source can be secure. (Score:2)
Therefore the only way such software can be known to be secure is if the source is published.
Use free software for security.
Bad actor (Score:2)
Zimmerman and PGP opened a back door to their encryption on orders of the US spooks years ago - hence GPG, an open-source alternative that the spooks don't backdoor.
Why o why would I let them have my encrypted voice communications when I know full well they'll hand the keys to the spooks?
Why Not Open Source? (Score:2)
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That's happened before, but it's still perplexing after the OP linked The Register in the submission [slashdot.org]. *shrugs*
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Well, you can't say the editors never do anything. They clearly do things related to editing submissions.
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Timothy is an Excellent Editor and deserves a Pay Raise
"That's all right - he tried. That's the important thing. I think he should get a nice big raise for trying so hard." - Hazel Bergeron (in the short movie 2081 [imdb.com]).
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No one is adopting "austerity measures" for fun, and those measures are not disastrous, nor have those measures cause any sort of recession etc. The underlying economies of countries adopting "austerity measures" are disasters! These "austerity measures" are a last-gasp attempt to prevent total collapse of economies, not some 1%-er imposed hardship!
Countries that wildy overspent beyond their means (e.g., Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain) are finding that no one now believe that ending them even mo
Re:lesson learned (Score:5, Informative)
My definition of "rent seekers" is people who accumulate wealth while contributing nothing to society.
It's called the Paul Ryan budget.
Greek workers put in as many hours as German workers. They retire no earlier than German workers. When you talk about "living within their means" you aren't talking about the working and middle classes. The ones that didn't "live within their means" were entirely the financial sector and the "1%".
Yes. the "rent seekers" whose income is entirely in capital gains.
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Well, fine, mean whatever you want to mean when you say "rent seekers", but what most people mean is "those who seek income from the government", via monopoly or other corruption. For example, if you pay a tax on a blank CD that goes directly to some company, that's a perfect example.
Maybe you're talking about bank bailouts? While bank bailouts are generally messed up, in the European countries currently in trouble, it's mostly holders-of-public-debt who are getting bailed out (which do include banks!).
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You bet: the energy industry, telecommunications industry, banking industry, pharmaceutical industry, private capital industry, insurance industry, all of Wall Street, hell, the entire financial sector. Start at the top of the Fortune 500 and work your way down. Rent seeking with exceptions you can count on one hand.
Yes, I think that covers it, but I'm sure I can think of a few more if I think about
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Well, I won't argue with your definition of your pet phrase, since it's basically irrelevent.
As you seem to agree, printing more money doesn't change the actual amount of goods and services available - so what would you actually change? Give control of the means of production to a Central Planning Committee? You'd have to be completely blind to history to think that was a good idea. Leave wealth in current hands, but take away any rewatd for making wise investment decisions? Might as well just bail out
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Post secondary education in Canada is not free.
Iceland went through a economic collapse and currency devaluation in 2008, savaging the savings of it's citizens. It's stock market fell 90%. At one time it's external debt was nearly 8x GDP. For weeks external currency transactions were frozen making critical imports difficult.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aVFtDRGwcc50&refer=europe [bloomberg.com]
It was the largest economic collapse by any country in history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E [wikipedia.org]
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It was a banking collapse. Iceland's economy is now growing, lives improving, and most importantly, the economic disparity, which is the source of so many social problems, is lessening.
If you are a middle class 23 year old in Iceland, your financial future is brighter than a middle class 23 year old in South Carolina.
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Major collapses are normally followed by economic improvement. Sometimes they collapse again, sometimes they continue to improve for a long time.
The fact is the the purchasing power of a family in Iceland is now 30% less than it was prior to the collapse. The currency devaluation effectively cut wages 50%. These as disasters.
The loss of economic disparity = loss of capital and flight of capital from Iceland dooming the country to slow future growth. The only industries they have that are healthy now are fis
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Post-secondary education in Canada is not free.
And the reason we don't need austerity measures like some other countries is that we have a well-regulated banking system that couldn't give dubious loans to greedy consumers with an inflated sense of entitlement.
Canada went through some austerity measures back in the 1990s and our economy is much stronger as a result. The US cannot take the necessary painful steps to fix its economy because the political system in the US is fundamentally broken. Polarizi
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You believe the banking crisis in 2008 was because of "greedy consumers with an inflated sense of entitlement"?
If so, you don't know enough to participate in this discussion.
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[citation needed]
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This has no one worried. PGP was broken in 1991 and is the only Phil Zimmerman is not in jail.
That's why we use one-time pads. :)
It wasn't so much "broken" as it was that PZ was pressured into compromising it himself after having the IRS sicced on him. I remember those days very clearly. It was around the time I stopped using PGP...
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I also note that he says the source to PGP is still Open.
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Also, won't using this tool immediately flag the user as suspicious?
Not to the NSA. They'll just use their backdoor, and have a look. They MUCH rather you'd use this service (Ex-Navy SEALs, fercrissakes. If THAT isn't a "red flag", I don't know what is...) than some one that was independently developed WIHOUT the NSAs involvement.
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bill C-11--going through the house right now that will make it illegal to even make a backup of media we buy
If you do, I doubt that penalties for individual infractions will be worth anyone persuing. The Supreme Court of Canada has used the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to slash excessive restrictions on individual freedoms, and so would probably not tolerate the heavy-handedness that exists in the US.
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Tor will be illegal/compromised shortly. Or the ISPs will make the use of Tor an offense under their terms of service, and shut the nodes down. The new worldwide police state ain't gonna let you operate an encrypted network for long.