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I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

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Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#301

Post by nicbou »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #259
hutzlibu wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Stasi was, especially in the end, exponentional invasive. Meaning they approached allmost anyone in any slightly important position and put pressure on them, to work with them to report on their collegues. (In the end, there were 90 000 of them, with a population of only 16 million). "you help us (and socialism) and we help your career - or you decline and good luck with your career, or the carrer of your partner…

For an amazing movie (not documentary) about the Stasi, watch "The Lives of Others". It is chilling because you see this institution and how it effects people through the eyes of one of the people responsible for doing the spying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others

This is not just on topic. It's genuinely one of the best German movies.

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#302

Post by conradludgate »

LocalH wrote: post #190
908B64B197 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It completely ruined my respect for authority figures. It sounds like they were right to trust you? Doesn't sound like you ever did anything bad with admin credentials. And you even used it to fix stuff.

My reading is that they weren't called to the principal's office to fix things, but after the fact and in a disciplinatory fashion.

I read the opposite, but it's still meaningful. A sysadmin who can't do his job and has to defer to a kid is embarrassing and at that point how can you trust the "authority" to know what they are doing.

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#303

Post by laurent92 »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #290
riversflow wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar time period, I used portable Firefox and then Chrome on a thumb drive to bypass our content filter. I actually find this surprising in retrospect, but I'd guess they were using Content Advisor on Internet Explorer[1]. I carefully guarded my secret. [1] this pdf appears to lend credence to that idea(no affiliation). https://www.kvcc.edu/pdfs/MyItLab/myitlab_BestPractices_Home...

If I were smarter, I probably would have learned about proxy servers. I was tantalizingly close as is. I had set up port forwarding on our home router and a dyndns account to access my (Linux) desktop via ssh. I'm almost surprised it took me another few years to bump into SOCKS proxies. I already had 99% of the setup, just not the final step. Oh well I guess. Our school was Windows land as well. They blocked executio…

> They blocked execution of certain programs by some policy in Windows explorer in Windows XP. Funny thing was, if you knew the path to them, you could just point Firefox or Chrome at a file:// URI and run it out of your downloads directory. Oops.

Microsoft security baffles me. You could run Windows Update in the browser (and also antiviruses using ActiveX). Who would think of making it possible to alter the OS… from the browser?

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#305

Post by hutzlibu »

nicbou wrote: post #301
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For an amazing movie (not documentary) about the Stasi, watch "The Lives of Others". It is chilling because you see this institution and how it effects people through the eyes of one of the people responsible for doing the spying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others

This is not just on topic. It's genuinely one of the best German movies.

I very much agree.

One of my favourite DDR joke from the movie:

"Erich Honecker gets up in the morning, goes to the window and says: Good morning dear sun!

The sun replies: Good morning dear Erich.

At noon, Erich says: Good day dear sun!

A good day to you, dear Erich.

In the evening before sunset Erich wants to greet the sun again: Good night dear sun.

...

no reply

Again: Good night dear sun!

still no reply.

But dear sun, what is wrong, why are you not answering anymore?

The sun:

"screw you, I am in the west now."

A reference to the people, who managed to escape into the west and no longer had to fake friendliness with the system. And the way the joke is told in the movie and the reactions towards it, are also telling a lot of the spirit of the time.

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#306

Post by smolder »

herbst wrote: post #57
vmception wrote: post #16

Protip: an FBI record means nothing and you can check if you have one too! There is a gov site somewhere maybe someone else knows the url

Is there something like that for foreigners from the NSA CIA WhateverA too?

They have records on you if you exist, and probably if you don't, too.

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#307

Post by kf »

idiotsecant wrote: post #218
giantg2 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I tried to do the right thing but ultimately it ends up being their responsibility to handle it when the customer is standing right in front of them showing their loss of revenue." I bought some lions mane mushrooms from a grocery store, which cost $10-12 per lbs. The cashier rang them up as "regular" (button) mushrooms at $2 per lbs. I pointed out the mistake and she tried to correct it but chose the button mushroo…

Where in the world can you buy lions mane mushrooms in a grocery store? I have been seriously debating growing my own because i cant find them.

Berkeley Bowl

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#308

Post by blfr »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #158
lokimedes wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had sysadmin rights on my school’s Windows servers after some very simple social engineering (for a 10 year old). The real irony was that I was called to the principal’s office on multiple occasions because I seemed to be able to fix things on the network that the local “admin” (e.g. music teacher) couldn’t. Fun times indeed. It completely ruined my respect for authority figures. Which in retrospect has been the mo…

I was in high school from 2007 to 2011. Half of it in rural Alabama, the other half in the Bay. Even being in the tech capital of the world, the school administration's views on technology and information access were so backwards. Our school basically didn't allow accessing any websites that weren't on some allowlist. Teachers had accounts to bypass the content filter. We had a game design class that happened after s…

> Even being in the tech capital of the world, the school administration's views on technology and information access were so backwards. Our school basically didn't allow accessing any websites that weren't on some allowlist.

That sounds very big tech to me, exactly the model towards which Facebook et al. are moving.

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#309

Post by smolder »

14 wrote: post #36

It’s sad that people on positions of authority are always paranoid someone is lying. I was recently pulled over and I was sure I hadn’t done anything and it was on a very busy highway through town and I was literally at a side road so turned off and immediately pulled over. It took seconds. The officer as he approached me put his thumb on the back of my car. From my reading they do that to leave their fingerprints if…

Unfortunately police in the US are often idiot bullies given a badge. In general you're best off if you never interact with them, including asking for help.

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#310

Post by [deleted] »

nicbou wrote: post #184
angst_ridden wrote: post #115

A person I know studied in East Germany in the early 80s via a very limited exchange program. After the wall came down, she requested her Stasi file. It was fascinating what was in the file - lots of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. For example, she was upset when the Challenger exploded, and this mystified the Stasi informers who had previously identified her as a pacifist (in their minds, the Shuttle was 1…

This might be a good way to explain my discomfort with online tracking. Machines categorising you based on your behaviour, without your knowledge nor your consent. It's not so bad when it serves you ads (unless it sells alcohol to alcoholics), but there's no telling what similar algorithms would say about you in the hands of a rogue government. They can find vulnerable people, people who hate certain people [0], peop…

[deleted]
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