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The NSA called me after midnight and requested my source code (2018)

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Re: The NSA called me after midnight and requested my source code (2018)

#201

Post by illgenr »

marcosdumay wrote: post #196
remcob wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have more information on how to do that? Making things resilient against a kilowatt of non-ionizing microwave radiation seems challenging, in my experience it will burn the traces right off the PCB. A different game from the more common radiation-hardening where the concern is low power ionizing radiation.

Embedding your conductive trails into a large non-conductive material helps, as does putting unrelated trails apart, and making them at the right size. Completely surrounding them with a ground plane helps too, but I have no idea how to include an antenna.

Make your faraday enclosure the antenna (better have some heavy duty protection on the tx/rx circuitry though).

Re: The NSA called me after midnight and requested my source code (2018)

#202

Post by lb1lf »

jaywalk wrote: post #195
SllX wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got me interested so I looked for the English translation. Taken from Constitution.org > Article 100 > There shall be liberty of the Press. No person may be punished for any writing, whatever its contents, which he has caused to be printed or published, unless he wilfully and manifestly has either himself shown or incited others to disobedience to the laws, contempt of religion, morality or the constitutional pow…

Yeah, Norway's Article 100 isn't anywhere near as powerful as the First Amendment. So many broad and vague exceptions are carved out, and as you pointed out it's granting the people of Norway a right instead of enshrining an inherent right.

-That inherent right may, however, be repealed by Congress and state legislatures (not that I can see THAT happen).

To amend our Constitution, two sessions of Parliament -with an election inbetween- must ratify the change proposed at two thirds majority.

That being said, long-standing consensus on Article 100 is that any power-that-be attempts to mess with §100 at their own peril.

Re: The NSA called me after midnight and requested my source code (2018)

#203

Post by filoleg »

downerending wrote: post #158
lb1lf wrote: post #49

I drew the ire of our security services in a much dumber way sometime in the early nineties; after having seen Wargames, I set up my MicroVAX, rescued from a dumpster at the local bank, to ID as a DoD box whenever any of my friends dialled into it. A few weeks into this, I get a summons to get down to the local police station ASAP. The commissioner then gives me a good verbal beating for being such a stupid kid; appa…

I miss the days when you could do stuff like this without ending up in prison.

You were running a lower risk of getting caught, but if you got caught, you could easily get slammed with all kinds of outlandish stuff back then, mostly due to the general public ignorance of computing and hacking. These days, you have a way higher chance of getting caught, but the punishment is more reasonable and fair imo (even though it is still way overblown most of the time).

What instantly came to my mind was the Kevin Mitnick trial, where "law enforcement officials convinced a judge that he had the ability to 'start a nuclear war by whistling into a pay phone'"[0].

0.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick#Arrest,_convicti...

Re: The NSA called me after midnight and requested my source code (2018)

#204

Post by rcoveson »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #170
rcoveson wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I ran an neighborhood ISP, and the cops asked me to spy on a neighbor (for reasons they wouldn't even provide), then I'd shut down first. If they just wanted to search _my_ stuff, sure. But if the only reason that I'm even capable of assisting the government in spying on somebody is that they are my customer, neighbor, friend, or user then I will not offer that assistance. That would be evil. Don't be evil.

Supporting the government in lawful operations is not evil. There are many, many examples of the abuse of power by the government. But at least in the US, there is a system of checks and balances including freedom of the press and an independent judiciary. If we give up faith in those things then we will succumb to a lawless, might-makes-right society. What makes you think you know better than the duly elected and ap…

> Supporting the government in lawful operations is not evil.

No, it often is. I don't think I need to cite examples.

I'm not advocating for anarchy, and I haven't given up faith in the justice system as a whole. However, there are still many things that I will not do, despite being legally compelled. Leveraging my relationships, professional or personal, to help an agency with a dirty track record spy on people is among those things.

Statements like this...

> Tell it to a judge. But if you lose, then comply.

...are extremely problematic. You can argue that most of the time, in a social order that you believe to be a net positive, you should comply rather than rebel. But phrasing it as an absolute perpetuates any existing authority, no matter how corrupt, forever. If you are sufficiently confident that the right thing to do, taking into account all the disruption it may cause, is not to comply, then you are still morally obligated not to comply.

What is right and what is legal do not always agree. And yes, that is still true even in a society that theoretically allows for change "through the proper channels". Even in the US, many of the most important changes to the law have been made by breaking it. Again, I don't feel the need to cite examples, since we have entire days of the year to celebrate most of them.

Re: The NSA called me after midnight and requested my source code (2018)

#205

Post by SllX »

lb1lf wrote: post #202
jaywalk wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Norway's Article 100 isn't anywhere near as powerful as the First Amendment. So many broad and vague exceptions are carved out, and as you pointed out it's granting the people of Norway a right instead of enshrining an inherent right.

-That inherent right may, however, be repealed by Congress and state legislatures (not that I can see THAT happen). To amend our Constitution, two sessions of Parliament -with an election inbetween- must ratify the change proposed at two thirds majority. That being said, long-standing consensus on Article 100 is that any power-that-be attempts to mess with §100 at their own peril.

Our amendment process is not for the faint of heart, and so amendments are rare. An amendment can be proposed by two-thirds of Congress or by 2/3 of the State legislatures, but to be ratified you need 3/4 of the States to agree and each State has equal voice regardless of population.

During the ratification process for the Constitution, there was some debate about whether a Bill of Rights was even necessary, but there were many States that didn’t want to ratify without one. The reason for the debate is that the liberties in the Bill of Rights were taken to already be natural rights and so spelling them out was unnecessary, but the Anti-Federalist faction wasn’t convinced.

Madison eventually won his seat in the election of the First Congress against Monroe (fun fact, they traveled together while campaigning!) by campaigning on the promise to draft and propose a Bill of Rights, but he didn’t see the lack of one as a reason to hold up the ratification conventions.

So repealing the First Amendment wouldn’t have the effect of repealing Free speech per se. Congress would still have to justify regulating speech under its enumerated powers (and could still lose elections over the issue) and many State constitutions already have their own takes on it. Some more like Norway’s Article 100, and some more like the First Amendment.

Re: The NSA called me after midnight and requested my source code (2018)

#207

Post by marcosdumay »

illgenr wrote: post #201
marcosdumay wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Embedding your conductive trails into a large non-conductive material helps, as does putting unrelated trails apart, and making them at the right size. Completely surrounding them with a ground plane helps too, but I have no idea how to include an antenna.

Make your faraday enclosure the antenna (better have some heavy duty protection on the tx/rx circuitry though).

That tx/rx interface is the real problem. But if you enclose things with the right material, you can turn everything into a large varistor and even MOS-FETs will survive.

Re: The NSA called me after midnight and requested my source code (2018)

#208

Post by LocalH »

MichaelBurge wrote: post #126
rcoveson wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source availability helps in crafting successful exploits in the real world. Providing the source of a closed source project to an adversary so that they can break your software is nefarious. If the author's justification was... "My crypto implementation is perfect. There are no bugs in my code, so providing source code (which the user community does not have) to an adversary does not have any effect on any user's se…

Your argument is that withholding source code raises the cost of attack for the NSA. They'll have to buy expensive decompilers, hire competent assembly/C programmers, it'll take longer, etc. Seems like it would similarly be unethical for a local bakery to give the NSA a discount on cheesecake.

NSA buying a decompiler? When Ghidra exists?

Re: The NSA called me after midnight and requested my source code (2018)

#209

Post by ycombi3 »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #170
rcoveson wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I ran an neighborhood ISP, and the cops asked me to spy on a neighbor (for reasons they wouldn't even provide), then I'd shut down first. If they just wanted to search _my_ stuff, sure. But if the only reason that I'm even capable of assisting the government in spying on somebody is that they are my customer, neighbor, friend, or user then I will not offer that assistance. That would be evil. Don't be evil.

Supporting the government in lawful operations is not evil. There are many, many examples of the abuse of power by the government. But at least in the US, there is a system of checks and balances including freedom of the press and an independent judiciary. If we give up faith in those things then we will succumb to a lawless, might-makes-right society. What makes you think you know better than the duly elected and ap…

The government version of "lawful operations" is them just getting some flimsy warrant rubber stamped by a judge who has absolutely no clue (or care) about how technology works.

The great thing about technology is that it doesn't have to put up with things like useless warrants. Using encryption is the equivalent to have a reinforced door protecting you from people who want to do harm to you that ignores all warrants and cannot be broken or talked down. Thank god for encryption that works, it literally saves lives from the current crops of tyrannical governments worldwide.

Re: The NSA called me after midnight and requested my source code (2018)

#210

Post by ycombi3 »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #171
burrows wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cops plant CP your servers. Help them spy on Joey Beer or they'll pursue criminal charges against you. Now what?

What are you talking about? What are the odds of this? I mean really, like out of all the CP allegations, how many of them are fabricated by the police?

You might be surprised.

Check out what the fbi was doing to people a few years back hacking into victim's networks.

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