Uniting in intent and purpose

[mikegideon]

Haha. I was more thinking in terms of electronics communication. Email and similar technologies are based on a very naive view of the world (which was not out of place at the time but which shouldn't have made it to the 21st century).

 

Naive how? Because folks just weren't smart enough to predict that we would be living in Nazi Germany? What kind of networked communication do you envision that's spy proof?

 

Technology isn't our problem, and there's nothing wrong with any of the current technologies. We have a problem with our government. No new technology will fix that.

Edited January 6, 2014 by mikegideon

[tnguy]

The SMTP protocol by default carries no authentication and no encryption. This is not just an issue with government but it is very easy for third parties to monitor emails or view them on disk (this is not an SMTP issue but is typical of most email software). There have been some improvements such as TLS which improves the security on the wire but still leaves issues at the end-points.

 

There are a lot of ways things could be improved. Email would ideally be encrypted using the public key of the recipient then transmitted and stored at the endpoint encrypted. The recipient would have to use their private key to open and read the message each and every time unless they permanently decrypted the message. The sender could also sign the message to prove who it was from. The big email clients (Thunderbird, Outlook) actually support this already but it is bolted on and the infrastructure is not there.

 

Once you have this sorted, you have other options for the transmission. Currently, the spooks can see that you, person A have sent an email to person B (The metadata) and can draw all sorts of inferences from that. If the message is point-to-point encrypted, you can have a dead-drop, even in plain sight and still be reasonably confident of security. I could, for example, put an encrypted message right in this forum posting and only the recipient would receive it if he knew where to look. It might also be possible to use something like magnet links to transmit messages.

 

There are still some attack vectors at the endpoints but they are somewhat harder to compromise than the current situation which is that the government goes up to an ISP and says "Put this box on your network connection"

Edited January 7, 2014 by tnguy

[mikegideon]

The SMTP protocol by default carries no authentication and no encryption. This is not just an issue with government but it is very easy for third parties to monitor emails or view them on disk (this is not an SMTP issue but is typical of most email software). There have been some improvements such as TLS which improves the security on the wire but still leaves issues at the end-points.

 

There are a lot of ways things could be improved. Email would ideally be encrypted using the public key of the recipient then transmitted and stored at the endpoint encrypted. The recipient would have to use their private key to open and read the message each and every time unless they permanently decrypted the message. The sender could also sign the message to prove who it was from. The big email clients (Thunderbird, Outlook) actually support this already but it is bolted on and the infrastructure is not there.

 

Once you have this sorted, you have other options for the transmission. Currently, the spooks can see that you, person A have sent an email to person B (The metadata) and can draw all sorts of inferences from that. If the message is point-to-point encrypted, you can have a dead-drop, even in plain sight and still be reasonably confident of security. I could, for example, put an encrypted message right in this forum posting and only the recipient would receive it if he knew where to look. It might also be possible to use something like magnet links to transmit messages.

 

And... when can we get this rolled out to all the gun owners? Didn't I read the other day that the government is working on decrypting anything on the fly? Private communication between anyone and everyone is history. It's easy to lock down machines that you control. Getting John Q public all on the same page is another deal. 

[tnguy]

I'm sure it's coming. It hasn't been that long since Snowden 

 

Grr. The Google plus button down there just popped up an Ad. Talk about your intrusive spying assholes.

 

As I was saying, it was only last summer when Snowden spilled the beans (on what a lot of people already assumed admittedly). Something that kinda-sorta needed looking at has suddenly been knocked up a couple of notches in priority. I expect to see some progress this year. As to the government decrypting on the fly... That remains to be seen. I'm sure they'd like to and there's some that think they may have weakened the encryption routines they provided deliberately in ways only they understand but that's just rumors so far and there are other encryption methods already available and in development. I do hear they want quantum computing available to them. If that ever becomes a reality, there's a whole lot of stuff that's going to become unraveled in short order (imagine that no bank is safe. Not that they particularly are anyway)

[No_0ne]

The SMTP protocol by default carries no authentication and no encryption. This is not just an issue with government but it is very easy for third parties to monitor emails or view them on disk (this is not an SMTP issue but is typical of most email software). There have been some improvements such as TLS which improves the security on the wire but still leaves issues at the end-points.

 

There are a lot of ways things could be improved. Email would ideally be encrypted using the public key of the recipient then transmitted and stored at the endpoint encrypted. The recipient would have to use their private key to open and read the message each and every time unless they permanently decrypted the message. The sender could also sign the message to prove who it was from. The big email clients (Thunderbird, Outlook) actually support this already but it is bolted on and the infrastructure is not there.

 

Once you have this sorted, you have other options for the transmission. Currently, the spooks can see that you, person A have sent an email to person B (The metadata) and can draw all sorts of inferences from that. If the message is point-to-point encrypted, you can have a dead-drop, even in plain sight and still be reasonably confident of security. I could, for example, put an encrypted message right in this forum posting and only the recipient would receive it if he knew where to look. It might also be possible to use something like magnet links to transmit messages.

 

There are still some attack vectors at the endpoints but they are somewhat harder to compromise than the current situation which is that the government goes up to an ISP and says "Put this box on your network connection"

 

This post made my head hurt... I sure miss those old black tabletop phones...

[tnguy]

This post made my head hurt... I sure miss those old black tabletop phones...

 

Early NSA photograph:

Edited January 7, 2014 by tnguy

[Oh Shoot]

Early NSA photograph:

 

I mostly grew up in Athens, TN because Dad was sent there to help implement the dial system changeover. When we first got there, it was still "hey Mabel, get me John Smith, will ya?". No kidding. You only needed to tell the number if Mabel didn't know who John Smith was, which meant that either the operator or John Smith were new in town.

 

- OS

[tnguy]

Here are a couple of apps that are a step in the right direction (no affiliation)

 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcrime.securesms&hl=en

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcrime.redphone&hl=en

[tnguy]

Silent Circle And Geeksphone Create Privacy-Focused Blackphone

 

 

http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/blackphone-geeksphone-silent-circle-135968

Edited January 15, 2014 by tnguy

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Early NSA photograph:

Yeh, that mortician made a fortune, didn't he? Until the technology overtook his creation.

[Oh Shoot]

Yeh, that mortician made a fortune, didn't he? Until the technology overtook his creation.

 

??

[mikegideon]

??

 

Pain meds kicked in :)

[Guest 6.8 AR]

The story I heard was a funeral director came up with the stepping switch(I think that was what it was called) after the operator

sent a call to a competing funeral home. It may be urban legend for all I know. Kind of a neat story, though.

Evidently it's true. This guy,

Almon Brown Strowger (Penfield, New York, United States, Feb 11, 1839 – St. Petersburg, Florida, United States, May 26, 1902) gave his name to the electromechanical telephone exchange technology that his invention and patent inspired.

Courtesy of that place I use very infrequently: Wiki. :D

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almon_Brown_Strowger

Edited January 21, 2014 by 6.8 AR

[Guest 6.8 AR]

None today and my right thumb and index finger is on fire.

 

And to theconstitutionrocks. See I told you so. :D

Edited January 21, 2014 by 6.8 AR

[Oh Shoot]

The story I heard was a funeral director came up with the stepping switch(I think that was what it was called) after the operator

sent a call to a competing funeral home. It may be urban legend for all I know. Kind of a neat story, though.

Evidently it's true. This guy,

Almon Brown Strowger (Penfield, New York, United States, Feb 11, 1839 – St. Petersburg, Florida, United States, May 26, 1902) gave his name to the electromechanical telephone exchange technology that his invention and patent inspired.

Courtesy of that place I use very infrequently: Wiki. :D

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almon_Brown_Strowger

 

Ah, thanks -- had no idea to what you were alluding -- hell, I checked to see if Alexander Graham Bell has been a mortician or something. :)

 

- OS

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Yeh, I thought it was pretty funny how we got the rotary dial phones.

[mikegideon]

Yeh, I thought it was pretty funny how we got the rotary dial phones.

 

The thought of stepper switches make me cringe. Talk about an accident waiting to happen.

[tnguy]

And still we get charged for touch-tone functionality. How has that managed to remain a real thing?