Given that the manpower of the NSA is actually quite limited, I see no reason why John Fenderson is incorrect. If I contact someone using what is advertised as his public key, even if the NSA runs a MITM against us, it would have to have a real human editing our conversation to prevent us from exchanging enough information to be able to detect the MITM attack. There is no way an automatic logger (which is all the NSA can afford to run against "Average Joe Who Is Probably Not A Terrorist Or Otherwise Interesting") is going to be able to prevent us from confirming our PK fingerprints.
I find the most likely reason that the lobster law is on the books is that the catch-wild-lobster lobby has more money than the (as yet unborn) raise-cultured-lobster lobby, rather than your (intentionally?) silly justification --- which, by the way could easily be extended to making it a crime to catch adult lobsters, since this behavior, if unregulated, could lead to over-catching and to the extinction of the species, thus depriving future generations of the ability to enjoy... er... watching them from scuba dives.
Raising cultured lobsters is a $100 million dollar industry in Vietnam (not without its own problems, however)...
And of course, recent events would lead one to think that it could well be that both of these industries will be largely put out of business by culturing lobster cells in large vats (if the combined lobster lobbies don't manage to make it illegal before that industry gets its product on the market).
The original case was dismissed in the Southern District of NY on that date, and I had started to be worried that this was just an attempt to blackmail the blackmailers and go for a quick settlement bid.
But it seems that the plaintiffs have refiled in California and are serious about this. Actually now that I think about it, Warner has little recourse but to fight, because any settlement out of court will be seen to be an admission of the weakness their claims, and will only lead to a never-ending succession of other challenges in reply to a demand for licensing fees.
(On an aside: I was happy that I found a new interesting case on which to use up my uncharged $15-per-quarter PACER allocation, but wow --- just downloading the whole docket used up over $1. I see I can download just a partial docket by searching by document numbers, but does RECAP have any automatic consolidation in place for these kinds of partial docket searches?)
Yes, but said customer would still be liable for any kind of judgment of the court, if, for example, the court found that the case was so frivolous that it wanted to award the other side's legal fees. Not very likely in the US, but still possible.
IANAL, but I suspect that US law disallows any kind of indemnification by a third party for such fees or other monetary liabilities.
> It's the conclusions that are wrong. So they should be.
Well, to be perfectly honest, the paper's main recommendation is that "scientists should learn more about statistics" --- one of the main causes is that research results concentrated on achieving the wrong statistical result ("p value").
Still, another reason behind the result was bias --- and this includes "publication bias" --- caused by journal publications accepting less papers with negative or merely replicative results because they are "less sexy" and worse for marketing. The move to (presumably less profit-driven) open access should actually cause this bias to decrease --- another, less talked about advantage to open access.
> And if it hasn't, it will just hold the data until
> it can crack it.
Unfortunately for the NSA, most modern ciphers are secure enough that it is unlikely that this kind of waiting is worthwhile. The only justification is that they might be able to later hack into an active suspect's computer(s) in order to discover the encryption key (or possibly use a side-channel attack like TEMPEST).
Ioannidis's well-accepted paper, if you actually read it, makes it clear that the reason for the conclusions he came to are not because 80% of research is executed by researchers who are intentionally committing fraud or academic misconduct of any kind. He doesn't even mention fraud as a significant cause.
Nice way to misrepresent the ramifications of an interesting piece of research.
If anyone had previously been considering running a darknet node, but was concerned over inadvertently aiding activities they did not approve of (whatever your personal "bete noir" is), these kinds of national initiatives (bans like Russia and China, fishing/snooping like US) may make it easier for them to decide in favor of the benefits of the darknet vs. whatever detriments they see in it.
I know it's for sure pushing me in that direction.
> Gafni admired bikes made from sustainable bamboo, but their
> high cost seemed prohibitive. He wondered, Why not make
> them from cardboard, instead?
Hey, everyone, just think... if enough of us reply to this guy, we might manage to overload his self-admittedly minuscule brain capacity... and we would finally succeed in shutting up a troll merely by feeding him!
On the contrary, because of the way the NSA criteria are worded, the fact of the existence of steganography enables them to save anything they want ("well, it might have a secret meaning")...
Use your (in-game) hacking skillz to create botnets capable of sending SWAT teams to innocent family's houses (or for an extra special achievement, to the houses of relatives of IP trolls)!
Widespread encryption versus current business models
If this revelation would cause people to adopt encryption widely (for example, browser plugins for encrypting and decrypting webmail), lots of companies (e.g., Google) would end up losing access to a lot of data.
OTOH, let's face the reality, it's probably not going to happen.
As if Shift + Delete on a Windows system actually would make a file unrecoverable --- numerous utility programs can "undelete" such files (in many cases).
Well, there is a small chance that they've modified Windows so that Shift + Delete does an actual secure deletion --- but I'd be pretty surprised if that were actually the case.
It's "law" enforcement, not "non-bitchiness" enforcement
One of the job requirements for a law enforcement officer is the ability to know the difference between bitchiness and illegality. Another requirement is the ability to control one's anger --- especially since a lot of their job is arresting people who don't.
The discussion here suffers greatly because of inexact language: people using the word "privacy" when what is actually meant is "anonymity".
People in public places (should) have no expectation of privacy. What some people do have is an expectation of anonymity. This is because, even 10 years ago, it was not practical for an average person to identify a stranger, even given a photograph of him or her.
This is no longer true, and therefore older people's expectations are out of phase with reality. Unfortunately, (some) people believe this can be "fixed" via legislating a new reality.
I predict this will work just as well as legislating in order to fix broken business models.
On the post: Online Security Isn't Over; It's Just Beginning
Security is not binary
On the post: If You've Got Nothing To Hide, You've Actually Got Plenty To Hide
Lobster law
Raising cultured lobsters is a $100 million dollar industry in Vietnam (not without its own problems, however)...
And of course, recent events would lead one to think that it could well be that both of these industries will be largely put out of business by culturing lobster cells in large vats (if the combined lobster lobbies don't manage to make it illegal before that industry gets its product on the market).
On the post: Warner Music Reprising The Role Of The Evil Slayer Of The Public Domain, Fights Back Against Happy Birthday Lawsuit
Moved to California
But it seems that the plaintiffs have refiled in California and are serious about this. Actually now that I think about it, Warner has little recourse but to fight, because any settlement out of court will be seen to be an admission of the weakness their claims, and will only lead to a never-ending succession of other challenges in reply to a demand for licensing fees.
(On an aside: I was happy that I found a new interesting case on which to use up my uncharged $15-per-quarter PACER allocation, but wow --- just downloading the whole docket used up over $1. I see I can download just a partial docket by searching by document numbers, but does RECAP have any automatic consolidation in place for these kinds of partial docket searches?)
On the post: Court Says Cisco Has No Right To Sue To Invalidate A Patent That Is Being Used Against Its Customers
Re:
IANAL, but I suspect that US law disallows any kind of indemnification by a third party for such fees or other monetary liabilities.
On the post: DailyDirt: Mistakes In Science Publishing
Re: Human condition
On the post: European Commission Report Says Open Access At 'Tipping Point'
Re: Brainwashed American is obvious
Well, to be perfectly honest, the paper's main recommendation is that "scientists should learn more about statistics" --- one of the main causes is that research results concentrated on achieving the wrong statistical result ("p value").
Still, another reason behind the result was bias --- and this includes "publication bias" --- caused by journal publications accepting less papers with negative or merely replicative results because they are "less sexy" and worse for marketing. The move to (presumably less profit-driven) open access should actually cause this bias to decrease --- another, less talked about advantage to open access.
On the post: Thirty Years Of NSA 'Oversight' And The Only Change Is Better Snooping Technology
Crypto progress makes NSA's life difficult
> it can crack it.
Unfortunately for the NSA, most modern ciphers are secure enough that it is unlikely that this kind of waiting is worthwhile. The only justification is that they might be able to later hack into an active suspect's computer(s) in order to discover the encryption key (or possibly use a side-channel attack like TEMPEST).
On the post: European Commission Report Says Open Access At 'Tipping Point'
Fraudulent _title_ to your post
Nice way to misrepresent the ramifications of an interesting piece of research.
On the post: Russia Prepares To Block Tor And Anonymizing Proxies
Makes any moral dillema less of a dillema
I know it's for sure pushing me in that direction.
On the post: Did The NSA Think The Public Can't Do Math? Attempt To Downplay Data Collection Fails Miserably
Re: Re: Well...
On the post: Irony: Congress May Declare Today 'National Whistleblower Day' As Court Announces Manning Verdict
Welcome to The Village
On the post: Awesome Stuff: Maybe Awesome, But More Info Needed
Re:
> Gafni admired bikes made from sustainable bamboo, but their
> high cost seemed prohibitive. He wondered, Why not make
> them from cardboard, instead?
On the post: Prometheus, Meet Thomas Jefferson: On Fire, Stealing And Sharing
Re: Stealing my brain capacity
On the post: NSA: If Your Data Is Encrypted, You Might Be Evil, So We'll Keep It Until We're Sure
Re: Steganography
On the post: California AG Pretends Copyright Infringement Is Theft; Charges Streaming Site With Grand Theft
Great new video game concept
Use your (in-game) hacking skillz to create botnets capable of sending SWAT teams to innocent family's houses (or for an extra special achievement, to the houses of relatives of IP trolls)!
On the post: Why The Tech Industry Should Be Furious About NSA's Over Surveillance
Widespread encryption versus current business models
OTOH, let's face the reality, it's probably not going to happen.
On the post: DoD: If You See A Leaked NSA Document, Press SHIFT And DELETE To Get Rid Of It
Idiots
Well, there is a small chance that they've modified Windows so that Shift + Delete does an actual secure deletion --- but I'd be pretty surprised if that were actually the case.
On the post: If You're Going To Illegally Seize Citizens' Cell Phones, At Least Make Sure You're Grabbing The Right Ones
It's "law" enforcement, not "non-bitchiness" enforcement
On the post: Lots Of People Don't Turn Off Their Devices When They Fly
Obligatory
On the post: Congress Grandstanding Over Google Glass 'Privacy' Concerns; Next Up: Privacy Concerns Over Your Eyes
Privacy vs. anonymity
People in public places (should) have no expectation of privacy. What some people do have is an expectation of anonymity. This is because, even 10 years ago, it was not practical for an average person to identify a stranger, even given a photograph of him or her.
This is no longer true, and therefore older people's expectations are out of phase with reality. Unfortunately, (some) people believe this can be "fixed" via legislating a new reality.
I predict this will work just as well as legislating in order to fix broken business models.
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