RE: [IP] Your people are growing increasingly worried about a 'police state.' For such an educated audience, (fwd from dave@farber.net)
"So perhaps when Mr. Ashcroft erodes civil rights, you can make a valid claim that it introduces only a very slight risk of a police state, or is only the start of a trend. How much risk is enough? If events only presented a 1% chance of taking the path to a police state, would you want to tolerate it?" Hell, for me it doesn't even get that far. I'm not willing to take a DROP of police state risk in order to enable our State's bloodlust. If we hadn't been systematically f*cking over the Moslems for the last 50 years, this might be an academic argument worth debating. -TD From: Eugen Leitl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [IP] Your people are growing increasingly worried about a 'police state.' For such an educated audience, (fwd from [EMAIL PROTECTED]) Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 08:48:16 +0200 - Forwarded message from David Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - From: David Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 18:21:43 -0400 To: Ip <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [IP] Your people are growing increasingly worried about a 'police state.' For such an educated audience, X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.618) Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Begin forwarded message: From: Brad Templeton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: August 5, 2004 5:47:16 PM EDT To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IP] Your people are growing increasingly worried about a 'police state.' For such an educated audience, >Subj: Your people are growing increasingly worried about a 'police >state.' >For such an educated audience, they seem to lack any sense of >proportion, a sense of history or an > awareness of human nature. > Indeed, as you cite, there are many police states and history is littered with ones that have risen and fallen as well. Each time a police state rose, there were those who cried that a police state was coming and were called paranoid. There were those who actively assisted the police state in coming, seeking the security it promised. There were those who assisted the police state in coming, not wanting one, but feeling those who called out the warnings were paranoid. There were those who said and did nothing. Free states are the abberation in the history of mankind. Police states (for the level of technology of the day) the norm. So perhaps when Mr. Ashcroft erodes civil rights, you can make a valid claim that it introduces only a very slight risk of a police state, or is only the start of a trend. How much risk is enough? If events only presented a 1% chance of taking the path to a police state, would you want to tolerate it? Would you find it acceptable to teeter on the edge of a police state, because you were still on the free side of the line? Often, in the defence of free speech, we find ourselves defending people expressing ideas we loathe. Nazis, pedophiles and other scum. We do it not because we welcome a world full of their messages, but because we know that if the Holocaust deniers can publish, we are _really, really_ sure that we can publish. It's not paranoia. - You are subscribed as [EMAIL PROTECTED] To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ - End forwarded message - -- Eugen* Leitl http://leitl.org";>leitl __ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net << attach3 >> _ Get ready for school! Find articles, homework help and more in the Back to School Guide! http://special.msn.com/network/04backtoschool.armx
C# UAV
Kindly ignore absence of Hellfire periphery and (worse) the M$ marketing waffle below: http://research.microsoft.com/displayArticle.aspx?id=685 Unmanned Flight with Windows XP Embedded by Suzanne Ross Project Specs: On-board Technoland PC/104+ form factor 800MHz Crusoe computer USB to serial device provides 4 additional RS232 communication ports Microsoft Windows XP Embedded Kids who graduated from balsa wood bi-planes to radio-controlled airplanes will love what's coming around the corner. Faculty and students at Cornell University have built an unmanned airplane with its own on-board, embedded control system. The large-scale model plane flies by accessing coordinates from an off-the-shelf GPS unit. "The plane is capable of GPS guided flight, surveillance, and is very modular," said Kevin Kornegay, one of the faculty advisors for the project. Last year, the group won an Innovation Excellence Award from Microsoft Research to continue their previous work in designing an autopilot system for a large scale model aircraft. Schools around the globe received awards from the Microsoft Research University Relations program to enable them to conduct research in emerging technologies. "Our previous design represented a very early prototype for an autonomous aircraft. The autopilot system was extremely heavy, it lacked software functionality, but it was a strong version one," said Kornegay. This year the system is based on a PC/104 form factor Windows XP Embedded computer and has a variety of navigational sensors. "The software is written in C#, and is broken into four large applications. The autopilot software resides on the airplane and allows the plane to fly complete missions without any assistance from the ground. The plane also has wireless modems, which it uses to relay telemetry to the ground, and to allow for updated mission guidelines," explains Kornegay. The client software is written to display telemetry to the end user, for instance, where the plane is on a map or how fast it is traveling. The group developed two applications, one for a laptop or desktop computer, and one for a Pocket PC. Students monitored the airplane's flight from the Pocket PC application. The students entered the resulting prototype in the second annual Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems (AUVSI) student competition. In 2003, they placed first in the contest. This year, however, they lost most of their equipment in a fire just before the competition. "We still gave our software demonstration though, allowing us to place 'best of teams that didn't fly," said Kornegay. The mission for the competition requires the plane to take off manually or autonomously, then autonomously navigate a course with five to ten GPS waypoints while using an onboard video or camera system to locate a series of man-made objects on the ground. Each team has 30 minutes of flight time to complete their mission. The planes will be judged on time, aircraft cost and weight, navigation accuracy, efficiency, safety and ability to locate the objects. Cornell Student Team Karl Schulze Andrew Abramson Brian Rogan Ron Hose Jonathon Kron Aaron Kimball Joe Sullivan Will Aber To test their flight control algorithms, the group used Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004, running the algorithms for hundreds of hours. They used a SIG Rascal aircraft with a 110" wingspan. The aircraft is 75 ¾" long and weighs thirteen pounds. The students modified the vehicle for unmanned flight by replacing the factory tail with a custom lifting tail, which moved the center of gravity further towards the rear of the plane. They also installed large in-wing flaps because the wings on the airframe had a heavier than designed for load. The in-wing flaps allowed a slower stall speed and improved takeoff and landings. The system runs off two 512 MB compact flash cards, which provides a storage system with no moving parts able to withstand up to 10,000 Gs. One compact flash card holds the operating system in a protected write mode, while the other stores a real-time flight log - a 'black box' that can be examined to diagnose problems, even if the vehicle crashes. -- Eugen* Leitl http://leitl.org";>leitl __ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net pgpYp87geW2zD.pgp Description: PGP signature
Don't smile for UK Big Brother's passport pix
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/06/passport_scanners/print.html Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/06/passport_scanners/ Home Office prohibits happy biometric passports By Lucy Sherriff (lucy.sherriff at theregister.co.uk) Published Friday 6th August 2004 10:08 GMT The Home Office says all new passport photographs must be of an unsmiling face with its gob firmly shut because open mouths can confuse facial recognition systems. --Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--- + ^ + :"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. /|\ \|/ :They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country /\|/\ <--*-->:and our people, and neither do we." -G. W. Bush, 2004.08.05 \/|\/ /|\ : \|/ + v + :War is Peace, freedom is slavery, Bush is President. -
Re: Wired on Navy's new version of Onion Routing
hi, Since they are using symmetric keys, for a network of 'n' nodes, each node need to know the secret key that they share with the remaining (n-1) nodes.Total number of symmetric keys that need to be distributed is [n*(n-1)]/2. Key management is harder when they network gets larger. Sarath. --- Sunder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,64464,00.html > Onion Routing Averts Prying Eyes > By Ann Harrison > > Story location: > http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,64464,00.html > > 02:00 AM Aug. 05, 2004 PT > > Computer programmers are modifying a communications > system, originally > developed by the U.S. Naval Research Lab, to help > Internet users surf the > Web anonymously and shield their online activities > from corporate or > government eyes. > > > > The Navy is financing the development of a > second-generation onion-routing > system called Tor, which addresses many of the flaws > in the original > design and makes it easier to use. The Tor client > behaves like a SOCKS > proxy (a common protocol for developing secure > communication services), > allowing applications like Mozilla, SSH and FTP > clients to talk directly > to Tor and route data streams through a network of > onion routers, without > long delays. > > > > > --Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--- > + ^ + :"War is Peace > /|\ > \|/ : Freedom is Slavery >/\|/\ > <--*-->: Ignorance is Strength >\/|\/ > /|\ : Bush is President" - Bret Feinblatt > \|/ > + v + : > > -- > http://www.sunder.net > > ___ Do you Yahoo!? Express yourself with Y! Messenger! Free. Download now. http://messenger.yahoo.com
[IP] New US Passport ID Technology Has High Error Rate (fwd from dave@farber.net)
- Forwarded message from David Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - From: David Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 08:29:29 -0400 To: Ip <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [IP] New US Passport ID Technology Has High Error Rate X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.618) Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Begin forwarded message: From: Richard Forno <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: August 6, 2004 8:22:46 AM EDT To: Dave Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: New US Passport ID Technology Has High Error Rate Here is yet another example of security theater (the illusion of effective or enhanced security) being pursued as a matter of national security -- in this case, an unbelievable 50% error rate in the security technology being implemented is deemed acceptable enough by the US government to track passports. -rick Infowarrior.org Passport ID Technology Has High Error Rate http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43944-2004Aug5? language=printer By Jonathan Krim Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 6, 2004; Page A01 The State Department is moving ahead with a plan to implant electronic identification chips in U.S. passports that will allow computer matching of facial characteristics, despite warnings that the technology is prone to a high rate of error. Federal researchers, academics, industry experts and some privacy advocates say the government should instead use more-reliable fingerprints to help thwart potential terrorists. The enhanced U.S. passports, scheduled to be issued next spring for people obtaining new or renewed passports, will be the first to include what is known as biometric information. Such data, which can be a fingerprint, a picture of parts of eyes or of facial characteristics, is used to verify identity and help prevent forgery. Under State Department specifications finalized this month for companies to bid on the new system, a chip woven into the cover of the passport would contain a digital photograph of the traveler's face. That photo could then be compared with an image of the traveler taken at the passport control station, and also matched against photos of people on government watch lists. The department chose face recognition to be consistent with standards being adopted by other nations, officials said. Those who drafted the standards reasoned that travelers are accustomed to submitting photographs and would find giving fingerprints to be intrusive. But federal researchers who have tested face-recognition technology say its error rate is unacceptably high -- up to 50 percent if photographs are taken without proper lighting. They say the error rate is far lower for fingerprints, which could be added to the chip without violating the international standard. < snip > The concerns come at a time of heightened terrorism alerts and urgent calls for changes in national security from the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Among its many recommendations were quick adoption of biometric passports and more secure drivers' licenses, though the commission did not specify which type of data should be used. < snip > "Facial recognition isn't going to do it for us at large scale," Wayman said. "If there's a 10 percent error rate with 300 people on a 747, that's a problem." According to tests by the National Institute for Standards and Technology, two fingerprints provide an accuracy rate of 99.6 percent. With face recognition, if the pictures are taken under controlled circumstances with proper illumination, angles and facial expression, the accuracy rate was 90 percent. < snip > -- End of Forwarded Message - You are subscribed as [EMAIL PROTECTED] To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ - End forwarded message - -- Eugen* Leitl http://leitl.org";>leitl __ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net pgpmyC7WANg9J.pgp Description: PGP signature
[IP] more on a police state (fwd from dave@farber.net)
- Forwarded message from David Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - From: David Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 04:56:51 -0400 To: Ip <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [IP] more on a police state X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.618) Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Begin forwarded message: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: August 5, 2004 10:32:22 PM EDT To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: a police state Well, since the fastest growing black household in America is the cellblock; since here in Philadelphia I still can hear cops step from their cars asking, "Where'd the nigger go?" in front of black onlookers; since Independence Hall now has a clearly visible surveillance camera in its tower and visitors to the Liberty Bell are searched and wanded multiple times; since the fastest growing group of armed police in the US are private security and prison guard, since without trying very hard, I can read more and more about police getting no-knock powers, about prisoners held incommunicado, etc. -- I think we shouldn't wait until we are all getting routinely Taser'd for getting smart at the latest "preventive" roadblock. It's enough like a police state--or a hall monitor's wet dream -- to get me nervous. --Michael McGettigan One recent example -- a friend of mine who worked transmitters for Motorola was sent to a crime-ridden North Philly high-rise project. His mission -- inspect a repeater transmitter that was inside a steel-doored room atop the building -- the transmitter's function was to boost the signals of the various law enforcement/drug authorities that raided it on a regular basis. They'd found that their hand radios often didn't work well enough. The idea that this high-rise should maybe be razed rather than rigged for a permanent state of drug busts didn't seem to occur to anyone. - You are subscribed as [EMAIL PROTECTED] To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ - End forwarded message - -- Eugen* Leitl http://leitl.org";>leitl __ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net pgpGfoDAH75Eu.pgp Description: PGP signature
[IP] Your people are growing increasingly worried about a 'police state.' For such an educated audience, (fwd from dave@farber.net)
- Forwarded message from David Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - From: David Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 18:21:43 -0400 To: Ip <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [IP] Your people are growing increasingly worried about a 'police state.' For such an educated audience, X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.618) Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Begin forwarded message: From: Brad Templeton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: August 5, 2004 5:47:16 PM EDT To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IP] Your people are growing increasingly worried about a 'police state.' For such an educated audience, >Subj: Your people are growing increasingly worried about a 'police >state.' >For such an educated audience, they seem to lack any sense of >proportion, a sense of history or an > awareness of human nature. > Indeed, as you cite, there are many police states and history is littered with ones that have risen and fallen as well. Each time a police state rose, there were those who cried that a police state was coming and were called paranoid. There were those who actively assisted the police state in coming, seeking the security it promised. There were those who assisted the police state in coming, not wanting one, but feeling those who called out the warnings were paranoid. There were those who said and did nothing. Free states are the abberation in the history of mankind. Police states (for the level of technology of the day) the norm. So perhaps when Mr. Ashcroft erodes civil rights, you can make a valid claim that it introduces only a very slight risk of a police state, or is only the start of a trend. How much risk is enough? If events only presented a 1% chance of taking the path to a police state, would you want to tolerate it? Would you find it acceptable to teeter on the edge of a police state, because you were still on the free side of the line? Often, in the defence of free speech, we find ourselves defending people expressing ideas we loathe. Nazis, pedophiles and other scum. We do it not because we welcome a world full of their messages, but because we know that if the Holocaust deniers can publish, we are _really, really_ sure that we can publish. It's not paranoia. - You are subscribed as [EMAIL PROTECTED] To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ - End forwarded message - -- Eugen* Leitl http://leitl.org";>leitl __ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net pgpujJyO43lir.pgp Description: PGP signature
Tor: A JAP Replacement (fwd from brian-slashdotnews@hyperreal.org)
- Forwarded message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 6 Aug 2004 04:26:04 - To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Tor: A JAP Replacement User-Agent: SlashdotNewsScooper/0.0.3 Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/05/2352235 Posted by: CowboyNeal, on 2004-08-06 01:14:00 from the trust-no-one dept. [1]kid_wonder writes "Wired is running an article [2]describing an answer to this [3]previous /. story. Packets are sent through a network of randomly selected servers each of which knows only its predecessor and successor. Packets are unwrapped by a symmetric encryption key at each server that peels off one layer and reveals instructions for the next downstream node. As a 'connection-based low-latency anonymous communication system,' [4]Tor seems to be the answer to [5]JAP to allow anonymous networking activities of all kinds." References 1. http://.moc.nielk-ttocs..ta..nielks/ 2. http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,64464,00.html 3. file://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/18/0051216&tid=158 4. http://www.freehaven.net/tor/ 5. http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html/ - End forwarded message - Onion Routing Averts Prying Eyes By Ann Harrison Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,64464,00.html 02:00 AM Aug. 05, 2004 PT Computer programmers are modifying a communications system, originally developed by the U.S. Naval Research Lab, to help Internet users surf the Web anonymously and shield their online activities from corporate or government eyes. The system is based on a concept called onion routing. It works like this: Messages, or packets of information, are sent through a distributed network of randomly selected servers, or nodes, each of which knows only its predecessor and successor. Messages flowing through this network are unwrapped by a symmetric encryption key at each server that peels off one layer and reveals instructions for the next downstream node. In contrast, messages traveling across the Internet are generally not encrypted, and the path of a message can be seen easily, linking users to activities like website visits. The Navy is financing the development of a second-generation onion-routing system called Tor, which addresses many of the flaws in the original design and makes it easier to use. The Tor client behaves like a SOCKS proxy (a common protocol for developing secure communication services), allowing applications like Mozilla, SSH and FTP clients to talk directly to Tor and route data streams through a network of onion routers, without long delays. Onion routing does not guarantee perfect anonymity. But it helps protect users from eavesdroppers who aren't watching both the initiator and recipient of the message at the time of the transaction. Developers say Tor can be used to prevent websites from tracking their users; block governments from collecting lists of website visitors; protect whistleblowers; and circumvent local censorship by employers, ISPs or schools that restrict access to certain online services. The Navy is financing Tor because it wants to hide the identity of government employees who have long used anonymous communications systems for intelligence gathering and politically sensitive negotiations. "The point of the Tor system is to spread the traffic over multiple points of control so that no one person or company has the ability to link people," said programmer Roger Dingledine. Dingledine and Nick Mathewson, both based in Boston, are building Tor as a research platform with a worldwide community of open-source software developers. Their goal is to blend together a wide range of users and avoid the weakness of many anonymizing services that are located on a handful of machines and vulnerable to a single point of failure. Companies could also use Tor for discreet competitive research, said Dingledine, or to route their employees' Web browsing so employment sites like Monster can't determine which of them are trolling for a job. "Plenty of people don't want their source IP listed in Web logs, especially .mil or .gov visitors," said Dingledine. The security of the Tor service is proportional to the number of nodes in the system. Tor is slowly scaling and looking for tens of thousands of participants who can provide enough nodes to prevent the service from being compromised by what the project website describes as "curious telcos and brute-force attacks." "The current Tor version very effectively builds on 20 years of development in anonymous designs," said cryptographer David Chaum, whose 1981 paper on untraceable e-mail, return addresses and digital pseudonyms set the groundwork for the Tor service. Tor is distributed as free software under the commonly used 3-clause BSD license. About 1,000 users (it's an anonymous network, so developers aren't exactly sure) are running the service in client or server mode. The Tor network currently in
