RE: Resources discussing secure time (nonce) in a distributed environment.
Kevin A. Burton writes: Does anyone have any references they would recommend which talk about the problems of time in a secure and distributed environment? Try datum.com...they offered a sponsor pitch at intl financial cryptography in Bermuda two weeks ago. Unlike most of the academic (and irrelevant) debate I've seen on this issue lately, their products seem to work pretty well given real world needs/constraints today. Phillip
RE: Official Anonymizing
A. Melon writes: John Young takes a courageous stand: I propose that all anonymizers adopt a code of practice that any sale to officials of anonymizers or their use be disclosed to the public (I suggested this to ZKS early on when first meetings with the feds to explain the technology were being sometimes disclosed). That seems to be a reasonable response to officially-secret prowling and investigating cyberspace. Absolutely appropriate, given cypherpunk goals. It may be difficult to apply in every case but the intention is laudable. Here is an example of the principle put into practice, from the anonymous web proxy service at http://proxy.magusnet.com/proxy.html: : If you are accessing this proxy from a *.mil or *.gov address : it will not work. Given the amount of federal research conducted at the poles you might end up blocking santa claus (which would piss him and his gang of elves off.) It's impossible to determine the ultimate end-user. For example, what if a university performs secure computing research via a federal grant or directly for an agency? Are you going to block *.edu? What if an agency/contractor/employee/grantee uses comcast business internet access? Or speakeasy sdsl service? What about using a qwest cybercenter and peering with dozens of tier-one providers? are you going to block the ones that do business with the government? What about international carriers? Will you block Deutsche Telekom just because the german govt. uses DT? The world is too complex for simple rules such as the above regardless of the intent of the rules. phillip
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: 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: Top Firms Retreat Into Bunker To Ward Off 'Anarchists'
The most sophisticated bunkers in the world are still vulnerable to the average utility digging crew. phillip Matthew Gaylor From: Moon Kat [EMAIL PROTECTED] TOP FIRMS RETREAT INTO BUNKER TO WARD OFF 'ANARCHISTS' Some of Britain's biggest companies are running their Internet operations on systems installed in a 300ft-deep nuclear blast-proof bunker to protect customers from violent anti-capitalist campaigners.
RE: Lawyers, Guns, and Money
isn't it easier to donate $$ to a political party and request an appointment? phillip -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Faustine Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2001 6:05 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Lawyers, Guns, and Money Tim wrote: But people should do what really drives them. Anyone going into law this late in the boom just to make money is probably going to be in for a rude awakening. Ditto for anyone going into it in order to do pro bono work on Cypherpunks issues. Great points. If you're looking to make a difference re: cypherpunk and pro- libertarian issues and have a scientific and practical streak, why not get an advanced degree in policy analysis instead? You get a rock-solid grounding in a number of critical disciplines, and put yourself in a position to seriously affect policy on the broadest possible stage. Not for the ideological purists out there, but personally I don't see anything at all wrong with wringing every ounce of information you can get from the real pros, whether they share your values or not. If there were a number of people committed to advancing libertarian issues who took this approach, I think it would be a great thing. Harvard is supposed to have the best program, but here's a little something I found online from the University of British Columbia which explains what it's all about. This one seems a little business-heavy, but other analysis programs have a lot more room to focus on technology policy. At least this gets you in the ballpark: Policy Analysis and Strategy Overview This PhD specialization covers both business strategy and public policy analysis. It draws strongly on underlying foundations in economics and in applied statistics. Topics in which faculty members have expertise include entrepreneurship and venture capital finance, international investment, the management of research and development, environmental management and policy, experimental tests of game theory, competitive strategy and competition policy, public enterprise and regulation, and international trade policy. Undergraduate or masters-level training in economics and/or quantitative disciplines such as mathematics, statistics or engineering would be a typical background for qualified students. Students with undergraduate backgrounds in commerce or business who have focused on the more quantitative areas would also be well qualified for the program. Once students are admitted they have extensive interaction with faculty members and attend a regular workshop run by the Policy Analysis Division, in addition to normal course work. The first major supervised research project is undertaken in the student's first summer. Except for those funded from outside sources, at least three years of funding is guaranteed to all admitted students. Program of Study There is considerable flexibility in the programs of individual students. All students are required to take a faculty-wide course in research methodology and a faculty wide course in teaching methods. Other required courses include: Economics 500 Microeconomic Theory Economics 565 Market Structure Commerce 581 or equivalent Statistical Methods Commerce 691 Advanced Topics in Policy Analysis The student will take at least four other courses to form two fields (two courses per field) and will normally take one or more additional courses in applied statistics or research methods. These courses will be chosen in consultation with the Graduate Advisor and may be in the Commerce Faculty or in other areas of study. Students normally complete their course work in two years and write comprehensive exams at the end of the second year. However, students who have taken prior graduate work may be able to complete course work requirements more quickly. Sample Program Sequence Year - 1 Fall COMM 693 (Research Methodology), COMM 581 (Statistical Methods), Econ 500 (Microeconomic Theory), Elective or Field Course Year - 1 Winter Econ 565, statistics course, 2 field courses Year - 1 Summer Summer research paper Year - 2 Fall EPSE 506 (Teaching), COMM 691 (Topics in Policy Analysis), statistics course, field course Year - 2 Winter Field courses, electives Year - 2 Summer Comprehensive exams Year - 3 Preparation and presentation of thesis proposal Year - 4 Preparation and defense of thesis
RSA Factoring Challenge
Is anyone working on the current RSA factoring challenge? $10K prize for factoring a 576-bit number; $200K for a 2048-bit number (other awards for 640, 704, 768, 896, 1024 and 1536-bit numbers.) See this page for details: http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/challenges/factoring/numbers.html They've provided me with the C source used to generate the numbers (though not the BSafe toolkit you need to link into the program.) Anyone can receive the source by asking RSA for it. I've decided to enter by using a factoring program which makes guesses about what the prime number factors are (by examining the last two digits, predicting the likely like of one/both factors, using lists of prime numbers generated by a second algorithm, etc.) So far, barring errors in my logic and code (always a possibility), I've completed a little over 5% of the likely candidates for the 576-bit number in a little over 2 days using a single CPU pentium III-600 with 512MB RAM. phillip
RE: Space War
John Young Wrote: Don't overlook what is reportedly happening on the back side of the moon. The URL for an IF-mooncam was posted here a while ago. The stream is encrypted but with weak crypto -- the crypto-processor is 1968-9 vintage. The cam is part of a data package placed on the dark side in a classified operation. Signals bounced off a reflector stationed at the very edge of the moon's profile. What else is being done there remains to be disclosed. Two applications I've heard of: 1. Here's an excerpt from a US Navy press release: Jim Trexler was Lorenzen's project engineer for PAMOR (PAssive MOon Relay, a.k.a. 'Moon Bounce'), which collected interior Soviet electronics and communication signals reflected from the moon. URL: http://www.pao.nrl.navy.mil/rel-00/32-00r.html 2. On another site: ...The new Liberty was a 455-foot-long spy ship crammed with listening equipment and specialists to operate it. The vessel's most distinctive piece of hardware was a sixteen-foot-wide dish antenna that could bounce intercepted intelligence off the moon to a receiving station in Maryland in a ten-thousand-watt microwave signal that enabled it to transmit large quantities of information without giving away the Liberty's location.* *The system, known as TRSSCOMM, for Technical Research Ship Special Communications, had to be pointed at a particular spot on the moon while a computer compensated for the ship's rolling and pitching. The computers and the antenna s hydraulic steering mechanism did not work well together, creating frequent problems. URL: http://www.euronet.nl/~rembert/echelon/db08.htm phillip
RE: Apollo 11 - For all mankind
Bear wrote: Note the commentary that it was strictly a symbolic activity, as the United Nations Treaty on Outer Space precluded any territorial claim. I thought it would be useful to post the US Dept of State's link to the actual outer space treaty: http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/treaties/space1.html The treaty section of interest to me is: ...The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military maneuvers on celestial bodies shall be forbidden. The use of military personnel for scientific research or for any other peaceful purposes shall not be prohibited. The use of any equipment or facility necessary for peaceful exploration of the Moon and other celestial bodies shall also not be prohibited... this doesn't seem to expressly prohibit the activity referred to in the US Navy press release I sent out earlier today, but at the same time the spirit of the outer space treaty doesn't seem to support the navy/SIGINT activities, either. phillip
RE: Pi
this is truly interesting...do you have a link to the original 1996 paper? do you know if anyone has incorporated this into a program? phillip -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Eric Cordian Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2001 2:35 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Pi Interesting article recently posted on the Nature Web site about the normality of Pi. http://www.nature.com/nsu/010802/010802-9.html David Bailey of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and Richard Crandall of Reed College in Portland, Oregon, present evidence that pi's decimal expansion contains every string of whole numbers. They also suggest that all strings of the same length appear in pi with the same frequency: 87,435 appears as often as 30,752, and 451 as often as 862, a property known as normality. Of cryptographic interest. While there may be no cosmic message lurking in pi's digits, if they are random they could be used to encrypt other messages as follows: Convert a message into zeros and ones, choose a string of digits somewhere in the decimal expansion of pi, and encode the message by adding the digits of pi to the digits of the message string, one after another. Only a person who knows the chosen starting point in pi's expansion will be able to decode the message. While there's presently no known formula which generates decimal digits of Pi starting from a particular point, there's a clever formula which can be used to generate HEX digits of Pi starting from anywhere, which Bailey et al discovered in 1996, using the PSLQ linear relation algorithm. If you sum the following series for k=0 to k=infinity, its limit is Pi. 1/16^k[4/(8k+1) - 2/(8k+4) - 1/(8k+5) - 1/(8k+6)] (Exercise: Prove this series sums to Pi) Since this is an expression for Pi in inverse powers of 16, it is easy to multiply this series by 16^d and take the fractional part, evaluating terms where dk by modular exponentiation, and evaluating a couple of terms where dk to get a digit's worth of precision, yielding the (d+1)th hexadecimal digit of Pi. Presumedly, if one could express PI as a series in inverse powers of 10, one could do the same trick to get decimal digits. Such a series has so far eluded researchers. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
RE: Attention to detail lacking
Tim May Wrote: I think Choate is much like this tech of mine: lacking a solid grounding and overly reliant on his own private notions of what mass and energy and group velocity and so on are. All the best cranks view the world this way. maybe Choate is the long lost son of oedipa maas. phillip
RE: A question of self-defence - Fire extinguishers self defence
the newchotian philosophy: reductio ad absurdum. phillip -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Jim Choate Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 5:50 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: A question of self-defence - Fire extinguishers self defence Spirit, Blood, and Treasure The American cost of battle in the 21st century D. Vandegriff, ed. ISBN 0-89141-735-4 Minimal Force: The mark of a skilled warrior John Poole pp. 107 The particular principle that is behind it is called, 'principium inculpatae tutelae' -- Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, Let Tesla be, and all was light. B.A. Behrend The Armadillo Group ,::;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'/ ``::/|/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com.', `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -~~mm-'`-```-mm --'-
RE: THE INCHOATE LAWYER
i'd front the expense of the test and a cab fare between his home and the nearest testing facility (not to exceed $50 total cab fare.) but let's make this interesting: 1. Choate will receive a $500 bonus if he scores above 97th percentile (eg. 97th percentile loses, but 97.01th percentile wins.) (I'll pitch in $100 in prize money, the rest from cpunks?) 2. ETS scores must be presented in original unmodified form to an approved cpunks reader within 72 hours of Choate's receipt of official test scores. 3. Choate pays the EFF $500 for any score less than 85 percentile. Choate must send this money via an approved cpunks reader to the EFF to verify the inevitable transfer of funds. 4. If the ETS scores aren't received by Choate and cpunks within a reasonable period of time (not to exceed eight weeks from the day of the test), Choate will not be eligible for the $500 bonus, and Choate must pay the EFF $250 as per point 4 above. 5. If Choate does not take the exam by September 30, 2001 he must pay the EFF $250 as per point 4 above. phillip -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Declan McCullagh Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 3:19 PM To: Petro Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: THE INCHOATE LAWYER By my count, we now have three or four people willing in principle to either chip in or refund the ~$100 cost. Depending on details (we'd require full disclosure, of course), Choate could make up to $300 on this, after expenses. That should be sufficient incentive. -Declan On Sun, Jul 22, 2001 at 10:23:11PM -0700, Petro wrote: At 9:41 PM -0700 7/22/01, Black Unicorn wrote: I will personally refund the money to Mr. Choate when he presents a valid ETS score report for the test to me or Mr. Sandfort. Willing to make me the same offer?
RE: DMCA has pushed me to my limit.
see this link for papers on steganalysis: http://ise.gmu.edu/~njohnson/Steganography/ essentially, the papers assert that given our knowledge of how images and music files are encoded, and given information about how some of the popular steg. programs work, it's possible to detect the presence of hidden information and perhaps extract that information. this is very early stage work, so it doesn't provide all of the answers... phillip -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of David Honig Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2001 12:34 PM To: Ray Dillinger Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: DMCA has pushed me to my limit. At 08:07 AM 7/18/01 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote: I keep looking at the whole stego thing. But the basic problem remains the same. Stego relies on the *method* being secret, which stands in stark contrast to kerchoff's principle. I mean, sure, you can stego encrypted stuff so nobody who recovers it can read it, but if you use any of the available programs, there will always be utilities that can detect your encrypted stuff and, usually, extract it. 1. encrypted data is indisttinguishable from uniformly distributed noise 2. LSBs in digitizations of analog signals are noise 3. ignoring the nuance of different LSB distributions, how can you distinguish a stego'd from unaltered file? Stego by itself is much less interesting than stego'd encrypted data (with idenntifying headers stripped of course) That spam, mp3, or image could be merely a transport for more privledged info. Posting /reading to a public newsgroup solves traffic-analysis issues too.
RE: lawyer physics (was taxing satellites)
you know one of the things i'd like to do is go into the waste removal business in orbit. lots of junk up there...would like to launch a satellite with a long finger attached to it and poke stuff out of orbit. the nudge. who'd pay? it would be quite an unfornate event if a satellite were mistaken as a piece of debris...or if debris suddenly appeared in a launch window ;) phillip -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Trei, Peter Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 3:24 PM To: 'Ray Dillinger' Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: lawyer physics (was taxing satellites) -- From: Trei, Peter Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 3:05 PM To: 'Ray Dillinger' Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:RE: lawyer physics (was taxing satellites) -- From: Ray Dillinger[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 2:36 PM Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: lawyer physics (was taxing satellites) On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Dynamite Bob wrote: quoting someone who is not participating in this discussion The property in question here is geostationary, said Larry Hoenig, a San Francisco attorney representing Hughes Electronics. Geostationary satellites sit above the equator in a fixed position; they do not rotate around the Earth. So the satellites we're talking about here are not movable property. Actually, there's a curious legal precedent which might help the satellite holders. One of the NASA probes (perhaps the atmospheric probe to Jupiter? Did we have a Venus probe?) had an instrument window made of diamond. The fairly large diamond used drew considerable import duty when it was brought into the US, but that duty was returned after the launch, since the diamond had been 're-exported'. This seems to my IANAL logic to set a precedent that an asset in space is not in the US. ...you can find anything on the net if you choose to look This was the Pionner Venus Orbiter, built by Hughes and launched in 1978. http://www.a1.nl/phomepag/markerink/diamond.txt - FROM: Dr. Mark W. Lund [EMAIL PROTECTED] SUBJECT: Re: Who makes big diamond windows? DATE: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 17:11:44 -0600 ORGANIZATION: MOXTEK, Inc. NEWSGROUPS: sci.optics Nelson Wallace wrote: Big meaning around 1 inch diameter, say 0.1 thick. Regards, Nelson Wallace Wow, you TRW-government-contracting-no-holds-barred- success-at-any-cost-if-you-have-to-ask-you-can't-afford-it guys have all the fun. Hughes Aircraft bought the diamond window on the Venus probe nephelometer from DeBeers. I remember that it was suggested to the principle investigator that he could save a lot of money if he used two smaller windows, but he was worried that they might not be the same temperature, so he splurged. I also remember that when the probe landed on Venus the US Customs people refunded the customs duty, since the diamond had been re-exported.
RE: Cypherpunks, Feds, and Pudgyfaced Voyeurism
if the problem is about keeping ourselves out of trouble re: statements or association with others on this list, I have some observations: first- if defeating traffic analysis is important, hiding message headers and using anonymizing services isn't going to help very much. the existing newsgroup system is trackable (even through anonymizing services). The scenario: someone watches mr. white. mr. white xmits a message to anonymizing service at 9:00pm. at 9:03pm the service routes message to newsgroup. unless the message is encrypted for the anonymizing service, decrypted (to reveal destination) by the anonymizing service, then delays delivery for a random amount of time (5 mintues to 5 hours) to the true destination, the message traffic or content could be pegged to a person. ...plus i don't fully trust anonymizing services because i haven't met the individuals running them, and i've not seen the technology to know there isn't a backdoor, etc. potential solution: need an anonymizing service with encrypted inputs and outputs, along with an encrypted gateway between the newsgroup and the anonymous service. perhaps several unrelated anonymizing services use the newsgroup's public key and only xmits traffic to the newsgroup service using that key...plus the key should change every week. and no one should be able to send messages directly to the newsgroup, even if the public key is known. of course all messages sent to an anonymizing service should be signed using the anonymizing service public key, and posters should not be allowed to post to the same anonymizing service more than 3-4 times before switching services. this can be done if we drop the notion of using a single nym for online messages. btw, would not use PGP for the sigs, either. we should be doing exactly what govts do...use proprietary algorithms which aren't published but are frequently changed. there is enough expertise on this list (i belive) to perform basic cryptanalysis on proposed algorithms, and if we change the system frequently enough it would cause cryptanalysts a tremendous headache -- becomes too expensive to manage if enough messages are encrypted over time. we don't need to create a new AES...just need to make sure there isn't ever enough traffic flow to crack one system before we switch methods/systems. (yep i'm one of those who actually think it's not so great to have publicly available algorithms...makes cryptanalysis much easier even when an algo. is theoretically unbreakable.) second- perhaps the lawyers in this group could provide a standard disclaimer which we could all attach to our sigyou know, something along the lines of 'this message is part of an ongoing satire...don't sue me or take me seriously...' is this possible?? i assume probably not, but it's worth investigating. third- isn't there something terribly anonymous about a huge mailing list like this? i mean if we all simply took care of ourselves and went to whatever lengths we needed to protect our own identities, why complicate the mailing list? if anyone is interested in exploring the first option above, i'd be willing to offer design suggestions or assist in coordinating a red team exercise against the system. let me know. phillip -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Brian Minder Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2001 11:41 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Cypherpunks, Feds, and Pudgyfaced Voyeurism The "secret-admirers" list strips all headers (except the Subject:) from submissions and is gatewayed to/from alt.anonymous.messages. The list intro may be found below. If there was enough interest, it could be hooked up to the CDR instead, or made standalone. Thanks, -Brian __ I would like to announce the "secret-admirers" mail list. The "secret-admirers" list is intended to function in a manner similar to the well-known Usenet newsgroup "alt.anonymous.messages". This newsgroup serves as a dead drop for communications in which the recipient wishes to remain unknown. While access to a Usenet news server is unavailable in many environments, the ubiquity and flexibility of e-mail may be advantageous for the following reasons: - Penetration: More people having access to (pseudo|ano)nymizing tools is generally a good thing. - Pool Size:Higher utilization of the message pool may frustrate traffic analysis. The list may be gateway back into alt.anonymous.messages or vice versa. CDR-like nodes for redistribution may be established to reduce load on individual nodes. - Filtering:E-mail filtering tools are widely available, allowing recipients to draw only pertinent messages from the pool by filtering on tokens which have been negotiated
RE: cell phone anonymity
Hi, I don't believe cell phones can be queried while they're off. The phone has to xmit a pulse (to hear a pulse, crank up your PC speakers, turn on your cell phone and place it within 3 inces of a speaker...you'll hear the speakers produce static at a regular interval [about every 30 seconds or so with my startac]). In an unscientific study, I've placed my cell phone, turned off, next to the speakers and not heard the familiar pulse. Also since you posed the question I ripped open my recently acquired Motorolla Timeport. Not seeing any activity in the xmit circuitry when the battery is plugged in and the power is turned off. Of course I'm having trouble putting the case back on the phone correctly but I'll figure that out later ;) phillip zakas -Original Message- X-Loop: openpgp.net From: Ray Dillinger [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, January 08, 2001 11:10 AM To: Phillip Zakas Cc: Multiple recipients of list Subject: RE: cell phone anonymity On Mon, 8 Jan 2001, Phillip Zakas wrote: Just a minor correction to the below posting: cell phone locations are NOT calculated using GPS. They're triangulated via the three nearest cell sites reading the cell phone signal. Accuracy is much lower than with GPS, but good enough for cops to, say, find a stranded motorist on a highway. I believe resolution is somewhere around 40 meters in densely populated areas (where there are many cell phone towers). This resolution figure varies from region to region. Hm. Okay. I knew there were locators in them, and had assumed that they were GPS. My mistake. Does anyone know any particulars about whether these phones can be queried for their locations while not in use? IMHO, the real privacy issue with cell phones is the security of a conversation. Yes indeed. Privacy is a tougher thing to achieve than anonymity, at least with cell phones. Bear
RE: cell phone anonymity
Thanks for pointing out the article -- love learning new things. Didn't realize companies were moving so quickly to GPS. Not sure how well it would work in urban areas or buildings (hence I guess the two mode system of triangulation and GPS in one). phillip -Original Message- X-Loop: openpgp.net From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Declan McCullagh Sent: Monday, January 08, 2001 1:07 PM To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: cell phone anonymity On Mon, Jan 08, 2001 at 03:10:55AM -0500, Phillip Zakas wrote: Just a minor correction to the below posting: cell phone locations are NOT calculated using GPS. They're triangulated via the three nearest cell sites reading the cell phone signal. Accuracy is much lower than with GPS, but good enough for cops to, say, find a stranded motorist on a highway. I believe resolution is somewhere around 40 meters in densely populated areas (where there are many cell phone towers). This resolution figure varies For now; future trends include GPS. See an article I wrote below. -Declan http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,40623,00.html Qualcomm, for instance, said that its gpsONE technology shifts the choice to whomever is holding the handset. The user has three choices: a default of always on or always off, the option of deciding every time the device is used, or choosing which applications will reveal the information. The company argues that providing its customers with that flexibility will give them even more options than they enjoy with landline phones, which often reveal the subscription address of the person paying for the service. The gpsONE technology, which uses both GPS technology and base station triangulation, can locate a user within a diameter of 5 to 15 meters outdoors, and 30 to 60 meters indoors.
