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The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

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Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#171

Post by CyberDildonics »

coliveira wrote: post #166
white-flame wrote: post #2

To me, Comey is a man who has lost the goal in pursuit of his particular mission. Defense, intelligence, policing, all these things exist in order to uphold the constitution, protect the "American ideals", etc. Many of his statements pretty directly show that he doesn't care about the collateral damage to innocent people's privacy or any founding principles, he just wants his mission to be unhindered. It's the same m…

I don't understand why smart people have so much trust on encryption mechanisms. For any information to be useful, it has to be converted in some way. For example, if it is an image it has to be unconverted and presented as pixels in a screen. If you're typing an email it has to come unencrypted from a keyboard. Encryption only make it difficult to access the information once it is transmitted, but it is still pretty…

> pretty easy to create a virus or something

Step 1: Find someone using encryption

Step 2: ???? pretty easy to create a virus or something ????

Step 3: Access encrypted information.

Why dig a well when water evaporates into the air? Because pragmatically the amount of water over time matters and what could be described in an incredibly naive way as an absolute suddenly becomes a very different scenario when looking at reality.

The NSA has tapped fiber backbones, encryption would stop them from getting information from that source.

If you think there is already no privacy, post your full name, address and a picture of yourself in the shower, I'll leave it up to you whether you want to encrypt it or not.

(Also the fact that anyone is able to store crypto-currencies pokes an immediate hole in your theory)

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#172

Post by CyberDildonics »

rdl wrote: post #29

I care about audio so much more than video, and text/keys/etc captured from the machine even more. As long as my screen and keyboard are out of the frame of the camera, I don't really care about it getting RATed. At worst, you'll see me naked, or making angry/etc. faces at someone on irc or email. While embarrassing it would be less bad than most of what you could accomplish by stealing actual information. OTOH, carr…

It is already possible to run a VM and get 95% of the normal performance with a processor with recent virtualization instructions. My next computer will be built with this specifically in mind. I think this is an important step to better computer security.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#174

Post by thotpoizn »

kobayashi wrote: post #156
thotpoizn wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am hesitant to engage at this level, but - you just couldn't be more wrong about Comey. I know him to be every bit as thoughtful and reasonable as your glowing description of Hayden. That doesn't mean I agree with all of his positions, but he is one of the smarter people I've met, and I do not believe that is an indication of how sheltered my life has been. I also know him to be perfectly capable of acknowledging w…

Might you share an example of what leads you to believe that Comey is capable of acknowledging when he's gotten things wrong, changing course, and moving on? I've never had the chance to meet him but even General Hayden's remarks on Comey seem less glowing than yours. For example, while Hayden does describe Comey as a "very competent" and "very honourable man", Benjamin Wittes, in a conversation with Hayden, describe…

I wish I could provide such an example in good conscience, but a (very broad) NDA with a former employer precludes me from doing so. They might not mind, and he might not mind - but I would have gone back on my word, which I definitely would mind.

I know that this reduces the strength of my argument to essentially "nuh-uh!" ... sorry. But I will tell you that, when he says (in that keynote address) that he is willing to explore the possibility that he could be wrong - I believe that he is being completely honest.

As to your description of his "singular focus and unwillingness to consider the validity of alternative perspectives" - that just doesn't seem accurate at all; it describes neither this speech nor his observable approach at large. It does, however, remind me of a funny pinterest picture/quote:

"Once you hate someone, everything they do is offensive. 'Look at this bitch, eating those crackers like she owns the place'. "

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#175

Post by livus »

Honest question. Not to ignore any flame wars

I have been following this surveillance and privacy debate. I understand that encryption cannot go both ways. We cannot create back doors that are only available to the good guys. Add to this that the 'good' guys are known to abuse power.

But I also cannot deny that at certain times there are legitimate reasons for law enforcement. What solution, maybe political if not technical, can we adopt to meet the legitimate demands of law enforcement?

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#176

Post by diego_moita »

coliveira wrote: post #166
white-flame wrote: post #2

To me, Comey is a man who has lost the goal in pursuit of his particular mission. Defense, intelligence, policing, all these things exist in order to uphold the constitution, protect the "American ideals", etc. Many of his statements pretty directly show that he doesn't care about the collateral damage to innocent people's privacy or any founding principles, he just wants his mission to be unhindered. It's the same m…

I don't understand why smart people have so much trust on encryption mechanisms. For any information to be useful, it has to be converted in some way. For example, if it is an image it has to be unconverted and presented as pixels in a screen. If you're typing an email it has to come unencrypted from a keyboard. Encryption only make it difficult to access the information once it is transmitted, but it is still pretty…

I got dizzy by your own confusion on this subject.

You need encryption for the same reason you need locks. Locks are not the only trick to provide you security but they are pretty much a very necessary tool. Without solid encryption you can't have a lot of the good things on the internet: online banking, online shopping, filling taxes online,...

> it is still pretty easy to create a virus or something that access the data at the moment it is used

It is not so much anymore. Viruses are getting quite harder to make, even for Microsoft Windows. And, even if you were right, you still need encryption for people that are smart enough to avoid viruses.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#177

Post by slimsag »

livus wrote: post #175

Honest question. Not to ignore any flame wars I have been following this surveillance and privacy debate. I understand that encryption cannot go both ways. We cannot create back doors that are only available to the good guys. Add to this that the 'good' guys are known to abuse power. But I also cannot deny that at certain times there are legitimate reasons for law enforcement. What solution, maybe political if not te…

Cool question, I was thinking of much the same last night.

But, politically, nothing can be done because encryption and decryption is purely technical -- there is no middle ground that I see.

From a technical perspective.., the solution is also just to give the keys away. Theoretically we could give all the private keys to "just one government agency" so that no middleman (e.g. a CDN, etc) can decrypt the data, but this still 100% trusts the government with all the data.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#178

Post by diego_moita »

livus wrote: post #175

Honest question. Not to ignore any flame wars I have been following this surveillance and privacy debate. I understand that encryption cannot go both ways. We cannot create back doors that are only available to the good guys. Add to this that the 'good' guys are known to abuse power. But I also cannot deny that at certain times there are legitimate reasons for law enforcement. What solution, maybe political if not te…

> What solution, [...], can we adopt to meet the legitimate demands of law enforcement?

One big problem is how to distinguish "legitimate" from not. In ideal conditions you'd have a court order to do so. But what good is a court order in places where it is very hard to know the difference between a gangster and a police officer (e.g.: Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, ...)? How do you protect the "solution" from the bad guys when you are not sure who the good guys and the bad guys are?

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#179

Post by grkvlt »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #171
coliveira wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why smart people have so much trust on encryption mechanisms. For any information to be useful, it has to be converted in some way. For example, if it is an image it has to be unconverted and presented as pixels in a screen. If you're typing an email it has to come unencrypted from a keyboard. Encryption only make it difficult to access the information once it is transmitted, but it is still pretty…

> pretty easy to create a virus or something Step 1: Find someone using encryption Step 2: ???? pretty easy to create a virus or something ???? Step 3: Access encrypted information. Why dig a well when water evaporates into the air? Because pragmatically the amount of water over time matters and what could be described in an incredibly naive way as an absolute suddenly becomes a very different scenario when looking a…

> The NSA has tapped fiber backbones [...] If you think there is already no privacy, post [etc.]

I'm actually OK with the idea of sending my full name, address and a picture of myself in the shower to the NSA, CIA, SIS or similar, to be included in one of their databases. Because that's what we're talking about, privacy from law enforcement and intelligence agencies searching for criminals, spies, terrorists etc. To suggest that posting such information publicly is exactly the same as it existing in these agency databases is pretty disingenuous.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#180

Post by lyle_nel »

deftnerd wrote: post #168
rdl wrote: post #29

I care about audio so much more than video, and text/keys/etc captured from the machine even more. As long as my screen and keyboard are out of the frame of the camera, I don't really care about it getting RATed. At worst, you'll see me naked, or making angry/etc. faces at someone on irc or email. While embarrassing it would be less bad than most of what you could accomplish by stealing actual information. OTOH, carr…

I typically buy older Lenovo laptops that I can put LibreBoot on, an open-source BIOS replacement. Then I open it up and disconnect the speakers, microphone, and camera. When I close the laptop back up, I usually place tamper-resistant seals over several locations. For an OS, I run Whonix and have it configured so the system wipes the memory and shuts down immediately if anything foreign is attached or removed from U…

How do you do the shutdown on USB change? I would like to try that out.

I would imagine, depending on how it is done, that the malicious usb device might get a few keystrokes in before the system is completely down.

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