Tag: double secrets

Ten reasons quantum crypto will not

There may be more reasons that quantum crypto will not protect you against those evil villains out there, as suggested here (in Dutch) but quod non!!! (as I said; in Dutch ;-| ), for the not ten but one single reason:

When ‘hackers’ will not be able to access your comms when you will be using quantum crypto, so governments will also not so forget about it you will be jailed for life for using quantum crypto in the first place and also you are the most suspect of all and if still you’d try to use it, you will be whacked off-line … and your house raided, etc.etc. Because this.

And because, however clever you might think you are, obviously in vein, there will always be the ‘endpoint-to-you gap’ where parties may intervene.

Or they put a gun to your head. Good luck refusing.

And governments will restrict to their own comms; the most powerful one grabbing the scene and leaving all of the rest in the dust. And IF you believe their beneficial ethics, well you just removed yourself from serious discussion.

Anyway:
[Drone with too much tilt shift, or ’70s display scanned from an (actual, physical) slide..? (mine; ed.); <undisclosed location>]

Knitting against Cyberrrr…

This here piece, being the explanation why hiding in plain sight beats overtly-crypto tools. Quite enough said, right, apart from the note that the solution is a form of arms’ race flipping, as predicted. Would only wonder (again) how many cat pics out there, have stego messages, and how many TLAs are constantly scanning all Pinterest- and others- uploaded pics for nefarious content. Where the sheer volume created by innocent users, helps the bad guys (girls…!) to escape (timely) detection, or what?

Maybe sometimes human interaction can still help, like with this. Of quite another category but deserving massive global support nevertheless. Can ABC’s and Facebk’s image recognition engines be sollicited, or are we looking at the hardest pics still eluding the strongest AI-yet ..?

Back to knitting-style help it is … And:

[If you recognise this’ your country, you just got an interesting PM story… (truly congrats)]

Bringing back symmetry/-ia

Some issues, aspects of interest, collided a couple of weeks ago.
Macron’s team with their skillful double-cross deceit in the ‘leakage’ of election-sensitive info (!read the linked and weep over your capabilities re that, or click here for (partial?) solutions or others or devise your own).   One down, many to go; Win a battle, not win a war yet.
In unrelated (not) news, what are the tactics used IRL to actively engage in pre-battle tactics? Can we plant our own systems with scar (?) tissue i.e. fake immunised (for us!) / unused information that is weaponised with trail collecting (or only source-revealing) capabilities, like shops and private persons can get “DNA” spray paint thus called because it’s uniquely coded so is identifiable and traceable? Can we harbour ‘hidden sleeper (?) cells’, pathogens i.e. malware, that doesn’t affect us but when ‘leaked’ to an adversary’s environment / stolen, oh boy does it become virulently active and destruct? (Silent) tripwires, boobytraps where are you?
How far behind the curve are the general public (us, I) with intel on developments in these areas? If the French used some of this stuff (using is revealing, qua tactics, unfortunately) certainly others would have considered the methodologies involved. Raises questions indeed, as were around, about whether or not the cyrillic traces were planted into WannaCry1.0 or left there in error. [There’s no such thing as perfect Opsec but this would severely hurt some involved at the source / would’ve cared better, probably.]

Just so we can get a better view on the balance being shaken up so vehemently, between asymmetric simpleton hacks [the majority you know (like, you actually can learn about; the real majority you may not hear about) of big organisations with their huge attack surfaces and attackers only needing one pinhole] and more-or-less regaining-symmetric nation-state attacks against each other (all against all) where the arms’ race of tooling now is so out of balance.

Would like to know, for research purposes only of course, really.

We’ll see. And:
[Yes that’s real gold dust on the façade hiding in plain sight, but you wouldn’t be able to scrape it off. Would you? Toronto]

Profiling the politics of the GDPR

When looking up the definition of ‘politics’, no-one can escape the notion that it regards something-choice or in any form the application of power to make decisions applying to all members of a group.
When looking up what leeways for profiling there is in the GDPR, even when so completely fellow-traveller-like as e.g., here [apart from the many, many more errors of logical reasoning, of thought, and of morality and ethics in that piece], the special category of data immediately springs to mind … that is about political opinion – representing the individuals’ autonomy in matters of choice. As any behaviour in public of said individuals is a matter of display of preference qua conduct in social affairs. As hence anything that has to do with profiling [even if only for the mundane making decisions of what ads to show to certain groups or not; abstracting even from the right (…) to have a human in the loop, seriously], has to do with political preferences.

Where is the field of study, by the way [not so much; rather a both parallel and intertwined track], of metadata and inference being special2 categories of data, not requiring consent but should’ve been outlawed per se ..?

Plus:

[Artful bars, but suppressing; Brittas Museum London]

Not there yet; an OK Signal but …

But the mere fact that Congress will use strong crypto Signal, can mean many things. Like, “we” won the crypto wars, as Bruce indicated, or the many comments to that post are correct and it’s for them only and will be prohibited for the rest (us), or … nobody cares anymore who uses Signal, it’s broken and those that balked in the past, now have some backdoors or other coercive ways to gain access anyway. [Filed under: Double Secrets]

But hey, at least it’s something, compared to nitwittery elsewhere… And:

[Ode to careless joy; NY]

Predictable consequences

Dutch police start with ‘predicting’ crime.

For graduation, at kindergarten level:

Can you prevent bias?

What happens to accidental bypassers?

What will be the effect on Free society?

How many years in prison will the police chiefs get for this outright attempt to overthrow (the core principles of freedom of movement, innocent until proven guilty, etc.etc., of) the constitution and the UDHR whilst failing to fulfill the duties, to protect and serve [whatever variation] those?

Remember, this is at kindergarten level. Have fun, kids! Plus:
[Is this still a thing? Yoga at Briant Park, NY]

GoTo Statement Considered Political

Bear with me; this is a mindstretcher.

Desperately few (still alive) have ever really fully read The Original (no, not that one).
And now I realise It (not it) was, and is, very valid today, as the opposite – at a meta(?)physical, quasi(?)(in)formal-logic level of abstraction – of what latter-day politicking looks like, in so many places around the world. Dangerous, that is, the latter.

Where the danger of GoTo is in its contextless jumping, ripping away the checks and balances that govern it, keep the oversight. In BASIC and others (JMP anyone?), at least there’s a form of kernel ‘hyperviser’/BIOS sort-a function, as underpinning foundation or supervisor to fall back to in last resort. [Yeah, I know one could program to wreck that but that’s not the point, and often disallowed by technical cast-in-concrete barriers.]
Where the danger of presidentiality-, morality- and common decency-less lies and alternative fact mumbo jumbo, is in its destruction of the checks and balances that govern that, keep the oversight. In reality, there’s no over/underpinning control mechanisms. They get destroyed.

’nuff said. And:
[Looks so real it’s ridiculous! But Fake!; Barça]

Nutty cryptofails

Considering the vengeance with which cryptobackdoors, or other forms of regulation into tautological-fail limitations, are pursued over and over again (case in point: The soon luckily carved out surrender (to Monay) monkeys [case in point: anyone who has seriously tried an invasion, succeeded handsomely]), it may be worthwhile to re-consider what the current situation is. As depicted in the following:

In which D is what governments et al can’t stand. Yes, it’s that big; pushing all other categories into corners.
Where C is also small, and probably shrinking fast. And B is known; maybe not empty but through its character and the knowledge of it as cracked-all-around part, hardly used if ever, by n00bs only.
And A is what governments want for themselves, but know they can’t have or it will quickly move to B — probably without governments’ knowing of this shift…

And all, vulnerable to the XKCD ‘hack’:

Against which no backdoor-for-governments-only policy will help.
I’ll rest.

What you said, doesn’t matter anymore

Yet another proof class busted: Voice being (allegedly) so pretty perfectly synthesizable, that it loses its value as proof (of identity). Because beyond reasonable doubt isn’t beyond anymore, and anyone venturing to bring voice-based evidence, will not be able to prove (beyond…) that the sound heard, isn’t tampered with i.e. generated. Under the precept of “whoever posits, proofs”, the mere remark that no madam Judge we honestly did not doctor this evidence, is insufficient and there can be no requirement for positive disproof for dismissal from the defense as that side is not the one doing the positing. What about entrapment, et al.?

So, technological progress brings us closer to chaos. “Things don’t move so fast”-believers must be disbarred for their demonstrated gross incapacity — things have moved fast and will do so, ever faster. Or what ..?

Well, or Privacy. Must the above ‘innovator’ be sanctioned severely for violation of privacy of original-content-sound producers ..? Their (end) product(s) is sold/leased to generate false identity or doctored proof, either for or against the subject at hand, <whatever> party would profit thereof. Like an equipment maker whose products are targeted at burglars, or worse e.g., guns. Wouldn’t these be seriously curfewed, handcuffed ..?

[Edited to add, after drafting this five days ago: Already, Bruce is onto this, too. Thanks. (Not my perspective, but still)]

Oh, or:
[Apparently so secure(d), ‘stormed’ and taken practically overnight (read the story of); Casa Loma, Toronto]

Mixing up the constitution

When your state secretary is mixing up all sorts of things. When at the official site, at last email (and other ‘telecomm’) is listed to be included as protected on the same footing as snail mail has always been, qua privacy protection.

Which raises the question: Does that include the right to use (uncrackable) encryption, because that is what is equivalent to a sealed envelope ..? When the same government wanted to ban that, or allow simply-crackable [i.e., with bumblinggovernment means – the most simpleton kind or ‘too hard’] encryption only?
Why would this have to be included so explicitly in the constitution no less, when just about every other tech development isn’t anywhere there, and in the past it has always been sufficient to interpret/read the constitution to automatically translate to the most modern tech without needing textual adaptation ..? [As has been the case in every civilised country, and maybe even in the US too.]
And where would GDPR impinge on this; is the rush necessitated by GDPR (with all its law-enforcement exemptions, pre-arranging the ab-use of those powers GDPR will give), or is this an attempt to pre-empt protection against Skynet overlords (pre-pre-empting GDPR protection for citizens), – recognising that anything so rushed will never be in favour of those citizens – or what?

One wonders. And:
[So many “unidentified” office buildings in NY, NY …]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord