Re: UK: Censors, Tracks and Balkanizes Its Internet; 10yrs for Pirates

[Stephen D. Williams]

On 9/14/16 11:11 PM, oshwm wrote:
> The UK Gov has spent two generations indoctrinating people right from birth 
> that privacy is only for bad people, big corporations
> will look after them, gov dependency is a good thing, debt is a good thing, 
> politics is of no interest and too complicated for
> them etc etc
>
> Only subversive types would think otherwise and so any of you opposing their 
> plans are quite simply extremists and terrorists.

Did the movie V for Vendetta play in the UK much?

We do hear surprising things, like self defense being practically outlawed.

We've gone mostly the other way.  We're chock full of subversives and 
subversive preparation in case it is needed.  This takes a
number of forms, including guns, stand your ground laws, etc.  Just the other 
day someone was showing me his handgun, complete with
silencer.  Legal and licensed for concealed carry in that state, including the 
silencer.

The worst problems, in places like Chicago and parts of Oakland, are that whole 
areas have gone somewhat subversive and rogue, at
least at certain times.  This could be thought of as undirected subversiveness. 
 Google 'sideshows Oakland' for some interesting videos.

>
> Unless the peoples minds can be 'reprogrammed' then those of us subversive 
> types who have somehow avoided being brainwashed will
> become criminals according to the state.

American TV and movies don't help?  ;-)

>
> So, Brits on the list, expect a bumpy ride.
>
>
> On 15 September 2016 00:07:44 GMT+01:00, grarpamp  wrote:
>
> The 90's was simple existance, not the depth of mass application. If 
> people
> think the 90's was the last fight, or a big fight, or some kind of
> defining success,
> it's suggested they're terribly mistaken. The application is causing 
> govt's and
> useless legacy power structures worldwide to lose some control in certain 
> areas,
> and they're approaching panic mode. When an animal is panicked, it
> gets ugly, fast.
> You don't want that. Yet you can't turn back. So you need to push the 
> envelope
> harder, faster... so as to make panic mode but a forgone blink in time, 
> rebuffed
> by the legion of myriad pressure against them... and push them
> straight into a feeble
> state of shock, then kill them before they can regain composure and
> enact vengeance.
>
> Keep yer sails full, keels wet, and cannon hot.
>

sdw

Re: UK: Censors, Tracks and Balkanizes Its Internet; 10yrs for Pirates

[oshwm]

The UK Gov has spent two generations indoctrinating people right from birth 
that privacy is only for bad people, big corporations will look after them, gov 
dependency is a good thing, debt is a good thing, politics is of no interest 
and too complicated for them etc etc

Only subversive types would think otherwise and so any of you opposing their 
plans are quite simply extremists and terrorists.

Unless the peoples minds can be 'reprogrammed' then those of us subversive 
types who have somehow avoided being brainwashed will become criminals 
according to the state.

So, Brits on the list, expect a bumpy ride.


On 15 September 2016 00:07:44 GMT+01:00, grarpamp  wrote:
>The 90's was simple existance, not the depth of mass application. If
>people
>think the 90's was the last fight, or a big fight, or some kind of
>defining success,
>it's suggested they're terribly mistaken. The application is causing
>govt's and
>useless legacy power structures worldwide to lose some control in
>certain areas,
>and they're approaching panic mode. When an animal is panicked, it
>gets ugly, fast.
>You don't want that. Yet you can't turn back. So you need to push the
>envelope
>harder, faster... so as to make panic mode but a forgone blink in time,
>rebuffed
>by the legion of myriad pressure against them... and push them
>straight into a feeble
>state of shock, then kill them before they can regain composure and
>enact vengeance.
>
>Keep yer sails full, keels wet, and cannon hot.

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

Re: UK: Censors, Tracks and Balkanizes Its Internet; 10yrs for Pirates

[grarpamp]

The 90's was simple existance, not the depth of mass application. If people
think the 90's was the last fight, or a big fight, or some kind of
defining success,
it's suggested they're terribly mistaken. The application is causing govt's and
useless legacy power structures worldwide to lose some control in certain areas,
and they're approaching panic mode. When an animal is panicked, it
gets ugly, fast.
You don't want that. Yet you can't turn back. So you need to push the envelope
harder, faster... so as to make panic mode but a forgone blink in time, rebuffed
by the legion of myriad pressure against them... and push them
straight into a feeble
state of shock, then kill them before they can regain composure and
enact vengeance.

Keep yer sails full, keels wet, and cannon hot.

Re: UK: Censors, Tracks and Balkanizes Its Internet; 10yrs for Pirates

[Stephen D. Williams]

Although they can work to coopt and compromise in various ways, there are legal 
limits to control of crypto and security in the US. 
That's what all the fights in the 90's were about.  We've seen that ATT and 
Microsoft seem to easily turn over, or enable to be
turned over, access to everyone's data.  And now there are some avenues to 
combat this in court and public opinion.  Others aren't
so cooperative.  Individuals and new companies can only be convinced on a case 
by case basis.  The Internet is democratic in the
sense that new attempts at perfect security and independence can always be 
synthesized and tried.  Not perfect, but close enough. 
We did not go with the needs-approval-first paradigm which is the diametric 
opposite of freedom and democracy.

Various levels of illegal activity would seem to act as canaries on 
communications systems: If they continue unmolested, then the
venue may be secure.  On the other hand, allowing illegal but uninteresting 
dealings, occasionally spinning up parallel construction
when someone just can't wait, would provide cover for plausible security.  That 
then acts as a honeypot of sorts for target traffic.

There are some obvious ways to combat this.  I wonder if they will be outlawed 
successfully.  I was somewhat surprised to learn of
the widespread illegality of wearing masks in public, notwithstanding cold 
weather and Halloween apparently.  The legal grounding
there seems an overreach; lucky it wasn't successfully applied to online 
personas.

Governments are, variously imperfectly, proxies for their citizens.  What 
communications system would be secure, reliable, and free,
while enabling the right portion of the population to break security when 
appropriate?  If there are terrorists, especially after
the fact but ideally before, how could their activity be exposed reliably while 
also reliably preventing any other traffic from
being exposed?

One answer is to make exposure the equivalent of a noop.  In the past 10 years, 
we've caused this to be true in many ways. 
Oversharing on Facebook is no big deal.  Being silly or stupid is not rare or 
fatal to your long-term persona because we know that
many people do those things.

At a more serious level, we want commercial or government agents to be like 
doctors and priests, holding and generally forgetting
our almost completely mundane secrets when the have to run across them.  That 
requires both strict training and ethics, but also
management, oversight, and some outlets to sense and respond to overstep.  
Failure of the government to police itself well enough or
in murky ways tends to lead to leaks eventually.

Elements of governments have previously had some terrible ideas that they 
pursued using both public and invasion of privacy level of
information.  Some of this still happens, although the gap between reasonable 
ideals and actual persecutions is continually getting
smaller, at least in the US.  There is a long way to go in certain areas on 
drugs, sex, violence, fraud, etc., but we've come a long
long way.  In some ways, I suspect that the need to focus on anti-terrorism has 
caused relaxation and some abandonment of pursuing
some gray areas.

Some people really don't trust that government will consistently converge to a 
reasonable ideal in these areas, although it seems to
be steadily going that way in the US.  Other countries seem generally behind on 
that path, or for various reasons off on some other
random and less effective path.

What do you propose as an alternative that meets many of modern societies 
important goals?  Anti-terrorism is a good example
problem.  Fair and lucid election campaigns are another.  Open commerce that 
has modern controls on the market that we know are
needed for a healthy system is another.

Another thing to consider is whether some crowd-controlled but somehow tyranny 
of the masses avoiding system might also be an avenue
for possibly dynamic jury nullification-like judgment.

sdw

On 9/14/16 12:46 PM, Sean Lynch wrote:
> One step closer to everyone ceasing to pretend the Internet is in any way 
> free or democratic. It was a nice fantasy while it
> lasted. Even where ISPs are nominally private, you can't be a licensed user 
> of the airwaves or have fiber along government
> right-of-ways and expect not to have the government impose its own interests 
> on you. I wonder how long it'll be before they outlaw
> any kind of overlay network they can't snoop on? I guess that's what the 
> attempts to outlaw useful crypto are all about. I bet
> we'll eventually see warrants to decrypt legal, escrowed crypto envelopes 
> entirely on suspicion that the user is using a layer of
> unescrowed crypto inside. Which will accomplish exactly what the content 
> cartels want by forcing those who care about privacy into
> low-bandwidth covert channels while doing nothing to make it more difficult 
> for genuine criminals to communicate privately. Maybe
> it'll be harder to 

Re: UK: Censors, Tracks and Balkanizes Its Internet; 10yrs for Pirates

[Sean Lynch]

One step closer to everyone ceasing to pretend the Internet is in any way
free or democratic. It was a nice fantasy while it lasted. Even where ISPs
are nominally private, you can't be a licensed user of the airwaves or have
fiber along government right-of-ways and expect not to have the government
impose its own interests on you. I wonder how long it'll be before they
outlaw any kind of overlay network they can't snoop on? I guess that's what
the attempts to outlaw useful crypto are all about. I bet we'll eventually
see warrants to decrypt legal, escrowed crypto envelopes entirely on
suspicion that the user is using a layer of unescrowed crypto inside. Which
will accomplish exactly what the content cartels want by forcing those who
care about privacy into low-bandwidth covert channels while doing nothing
to make it more difficult for genuine criminals to communicate privately.
Maybe it'll be harder to share kiddie porn. But at a huge cost to the
future of humanity, as we all know where this road is leading.

Maybe there's some hope for wireless services where the hardware is
licensed rather than the user. Or extremely line-of-sight stuff like FSO.


On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 11:38 AM, grarpamp  wrote:

> https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/09/14/1420226/gchq-
> planning-uk-wide-dns-firewall
> UK surveillance agency GCHQ is exploring the use of a national
> 'firewall' in its fight against cybercrime, according to the
> organisation's head of cybersecurity. Alongside BT, Talk Talk and
> Virgin Media, GCHQ will work to filter out websites and email
> campaigns which are known to contain malicious content. The
> intelligence organisation believes that the best to way to set up such
> a blockade would be to build a national domain name system (DNS). In a
> speech delivered at the Billington Cyber Security Summit in Washington
> DC, director general for cyber security at GCHQ, Ciaran Martin, said:
> 'We're exploring a flagship project on scaling up DNS filtering: what
> better way of providing automated defences at scale than by the major
> private providers effectively blocking their customers from coming
> into contact with known malware and bad addresses?'
>
> https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/09/14/1512257/10-
> years-in-prison-for-online-pirates-a-step-closer-in-the-uk
> The UK Government's Digital Economy Bill has moved a step closer to
> becoming law after its second reading in Parliament. With unanimous
> support, the current two-year maximum custodial sentence for online
> piracy is almost certain to increase to a decade, TorrentFreak
> reports. From the article: Due to UK copyright law allowing for
> custodial sentences of 'just' two years for online offenses,
> anti-piracy groups such as the Federation Against Copyright Theft have
> chosen to pursue their own private prosecutions. These have largely
> taken place under legislation designed for those who have committed
> fraud, rather than the more appropriate offense of copyright
> infringement. Physical pirates (CDs, DVDs) can be jailed for up to 10
> years under current legislation. During the past few years, there have
> been lobbying efforts for this punishment to apply both on and
> offline. That resulted in a UK Government announcement last year
> indicating that it would move to increase the maximum prison sentence
> for online copyright infringement to ten years. They also urge Google
> to do something about growing incidents of piracy.