131–140 of 262 posts
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I dunno if I'm gonna change my tires but I imagine if I didn't want to be tracked it would be not too difficult to smash/electrocute/burn the tags into nonfunctionality.
Its extremely unfortunate that if you were to use an arc welder near your tires, the RFID tag may no longer work properly.
I first encountered these checkpoints in New Mexico and Texas this summer. They're really kind of interesting. It looks like a truck weigh station, except the interstate lanes are closed and everyone is forced to exit. They stop everyone at the checkpoint. They have some kind of terminal under a hood, but the officer (C&BP) looked at the terminal, asked me what country I'm from (USA) and sent me on my way (I'm white,…
What you encountered was probably a C&BP interior checkpoint[0]. Whenever DHS apologists use the "air travel is a privilege, not a right" line, this is what I point them to. Between random C&BP highway checkpoints and TSA patrols on Amtrak, harassment-free travel of any form seems to be a privilege nowadays. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol_int...
> "air travel is a privilege, not a right"
Travel is a right. It's a constitutionally granted right.
I find the whole argument that interfering with the travel of every single person on a single _particular_ mode of travel is somehow constitutional a bit vacuous. What about that mode of travel is so special? (AFAICT, "safety"). That the government is also interfering with road travel is ridiculous.
Travel, within the United States, is a constitutional right, one that has been upheld by the Supreme Court (see [1] and [2]): "Since the Constitution guarantees the right of interstate movement…"; the decision in [2] cites even earlier [3] Supreme Court cases that asserted this right.
This Court long ago recognized that the nature of our Federal Union and our
constitutional concepts of personal liberty unite to require that all citizens
be free to travel throughout the length and breadth of our land uninhibited by
statutes, rules, or regulations which unreasonably burden or restrict this
movement. That [394 U.S. 618, 630] proposition was early stated by Chief
Justice Taney in the Passenger Cases, 7 How. 283, 492 (1849):
"For all the great purposes for which the Federal government was formed, we are
one people, with one common country. We are all citizens of the United States;
and, as members of the same community, must have the right to pass and repass
through every part of it without interruption, as freely as in our own States."
We have no occasion to ascribe the source of this right to travel interstate to
a particular constitutional provision. 8 It suffices that, as MR. JUSTICE
STEWART said for the Court in United States v. Guest, 383 U.S. 745, 757 -758
(1966):
"The constitutional right to travel from one State to another . . . occupies a
position fundamental to the concept of our Federal Union. It is a right that
has been firmly established and repeatedly recognized.
". . . [T]he right finds no explicit mention in the Constitution. The reason,
it has been suggested, is [394 U.S. 618, 631] that a right so elementary was
conceived from the beginning to be a necessary concomitant of the stronger
Union the Constitution created. In any event, freedom to travel throughout the
United States has long been recognized as a basic right under the
Constitution."
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Interesting—I haven't seen that term used that way before. If I encrpyt my customers' private data using a well-publicized encryption method, is it still security through obscurity, simply because they are secrets?
No. That would be like saying a locked door is security through obscurity, because the cuts of the key unlock the door - not the physical key. The concept requires a great deal of torturing to get there :) Anyway, the whole idea that the state needs to operate in secret to perform its duties is ridiculous and only serves bad actors. Who would seriously wish for a secret police force anyway? Maybe we should be focusin…
I don't know, that's not such a bad analogy. To put it another way, a key is just a really funny way to write down a bunch of numbers, and a key-lock is just a really esoteric number-pad.
People have actually broken into houses by cutting working keys from pictures they took of victims unlocking their doors—so it's not even obscurity aiding the security per se (or rather, it used to be, but then we greatly standardized the way key-locks work.) Instead, it's just concealment, like the concealed face of a credit card in your wallet.
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There is no way to reverse this. Trying to cage this with paperwork will just lead to more of the same creative interpretations à la NSA. So the rulers don't feel the rules apply to them, big surprise. With that in mind, the futility of fighting the tide, what is the next step? As the ideal solution of reversal is unavailable, we need to go with harm reduction - but what is the harm that we would reduce? Most would s…
I was thinking recently that the best thing that could happen to Internet privacy would be for someone to build a Palantir clone with an open API, such that anyone could dox anyone else for $0.10 a pop. Being able to dox yourself (like Googling yourself, but PRISM-er) in real time would basically give you an OPSEC REPL, perfect for figuring out how to reduce your exposure.
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Tyres have RFID tags in them??! What an unusual thing to put RFID tags in. I wonder what other common items could have tags in them that people are generally unaware of. I'm quite in to cars and I had NO IDEA this was a thing.
Yup, embedded right into the rubber. There are a couple of reasons for this, one is to provide serial numbers which allows you to 'age' the tire. Older tires are less reliable than fresh tires and there are laws in states like California that disallow selling "old" tires as new. You can read the tag and see when the tire was made. The sensors are not used to indicate inflation as far as I know that is a completely se…
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Um, I really don't think it's at East German Stasi-levels. Known dissidents were gaslighted, had objects in their homes moved around, and had informants reporting on them in their apartment buildings/family/workplace. It's bad, it's dystopian, but it doesn't seem to be THAT bad yet.
Serious question, do you think it's that bad for wikileaks employees or volunteers? Jacob Appelbaum claims it is and has moved to Germany where such things are living memory along with their overthrow. I'm inclined to believe him. I haven't seen evidence of his track record for telling lies is worse than government spokespeople and apologists on the general topic.
Here is a link that avoids the paywall: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
This link is safer to say "always works" https://www.google.com/#q=U.S.+Spies+on+Millions+of+Cars Basically you can Google the title and click on first result to see it without limitations of a paywall
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> we can't have cartels knowing the identities of the DEA's informers You should learn about how CIs are blackmailed, used, and discarded, and, often enough die. If informants were outed and the use of CIs ended, it would be a benefit to everyone. Wikileaks? Cables? We lost all our allies, right? Don't fear radical transparency. It will be to your benefit.
Radical transparency would be good, so long as it's not exposed to everyone in the world. We often forget the multitude of wickedness in the world, and while the US government smells, there are actors on the outside that wouldn't hesitate to manipulate/destroy us the moment we free up information. Undoubtedly, the power between the people and the government is unbalanced, but unrestricted transparency is not a one st…
We live in perhaps the finest times of this specie's history, and it's foolish to limit and harm ourselves out of an unspecified anxiety that somebody, somewhere could do something to harm us. We cannot live in fear.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we can't have cartels knowing the identities of the DEA's informers You should learn about how CIs are blackmailed, used, and discarded, and, often enough die. If informants were outed and the use of CIs ended, it would be a benefit to everyone. Wikileaks? Cables? We lost all our allies, right? Don't fear radical transparency. It will be to your benefit.
Radical transparency would be good, so long as it's not exposed to everyone in the world. We often forget the multitude of wickedness in the world, and while the US government smells, there are actors on the outside that wouldn't hesitate to manipulate/destroy us the moment we free up information. Undoubtedly, the power between the people and the government is unbalanced, but unrestricted transparency is not a one st…
Let's stipulate all the bad wickedness you would like me to think there is. How much of that has the actual means to threaten the US in any economically or militarily significant way?
With radical transparency may find that we're harming ourselves more by overspending on security theater, and that, for all their wickedness, most of those wicked people can't afford a bus ticket to the next town, much less to actually do anything with their wickedness.
Same deal in the UK with the national ANPR system (Automatic Number Plate Recognition). Ostensibly to reduce the amount of uninsured/untaxed drivers on the roads. Don't want to sit around in databases? Well, here's a nice list of just a few of the things you can't have: Bank account; Car/motorcycle; Mobile telephone; Internet-connected computer; Credit/debit card; Visible face (oh, we might be safe there, for a few y…
True. Network effects negate the advantages of encryption. You can't use TOR to hide when posting to FB, in other words.