[sudo-discuss] Breaking: Oakland to lead country in, diverting anti-terror funding to ubiquitous warrantless surveillance

[Shawn Lesniak]

On 2013-10-17 06:41, GtwoG PublicOhOne wrote:
> 
> Hi Shawn-
> 
> Re. "slut-shame":  I was merely expressing envious admiration at the
> proclaimed prowess of anyone who says they need GPS and on-the-fly email
> to get laid, because they must have an outstandingly busy "social
> calendar."  Sorry I misunderestimated an admittedly inept attempt at a
> light-hearted and encouraging comment;-)
> 
If this were your first sex-negative post on the list I might have
believed that.

> Re. Panasonic GPS etc.:  It maintains a list of places I've programmed
> into it.  Mostly client sites, no exciting social calendar or anything. 
> But it doesn't transmit either, or connect to the internet.  So if
> someone wants to get at what's in it, they have to obtain it first, and
> it's not in the vehicle unless I'm using it (primarily because I don't
> want my windows smashed for a device that can be sold for a crack rock
> or three). 

In addition to crack being a racist allusion, it also reinforces the
idea that the war on drugs is important which you should realize enables
the surveillance state
> 
> LPRs:  I've been contemplating solutions to those, but they're a lower
> priority until or unless they get commercialized, at which point I'll go
> on the warpath.  The first time I drive past an an electronic billboard
> that suddenly flashes "Hey G, we know you're shopping for a
> toaster-oven, here's a great deal..." I'll pull over and spraypaint
> obscenities across it.
> 
Trailer hitch, reflective coat, mud

> FasTrak:  Wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole, and neither should
> anyone else who values their freedom of association.  I recognized that
> as a surveillance device when it first came out; keyword "bumper beeper"
> for the oldschool version. 


Guess you won't be crossing the Golden Gate any time soon.
> 
> BTW, did you know that SF Muni buses not only record video of the
> passengers, but also AUDIO?  First time I saw that notification on the
> side of a Muni bus was the last time I rode Muni. 
> 

I do and I remind other passengers of that on occasion.

> House bugged: Probability asymptotically approaching zero, for reasons
> that needn't be discussed in public.  Car bugged:  Nope, ditto. 
> 

Because you're not as important as you fancy yourself?

> I don't worry about LE and the TLAs, for various reasons including that
> we have recourse at the voting booth.  (Yes, the faith some of us have
> in elections is touching, too...)  I do worry about the unregulated
> private sector, particularly the Bigs, and as I said, anyone who
> believes it's only about "personalized advertising" is welcome to
> contact me to buy a bridge I have for sale cheap. 

Right, so which was the anti-surveillance candidate?
> 
> Misuse of terminology:  You say to-may-toe, and I say to-mah-toe, you
> say fell-lay-tio, and I say fell-lah-toe;-)  The point stands that what
> Google and Facebook do is basically the same thing as a roving wiretap:
> tracking persons and their communications across multiple devices and
> locations.  While we're at it, do you know how small a sample of text is
> needed to get author attribution?  Just say Twitter... details in
> person.  And voiceprint attribution was 99.96% accurate as of 1962
> (published); fast-forward at the speed of Moore's law, draw your own
> conclusions, and more details in person. 
> 

I have no interest in talking to you in person.  If something were
sensitive, I would not reveal it to or trust it from the person who
wanted to invite undercover cops to a lockpicking workshop.

> Consumer cellphone detectors:  I should have specified, "a cellphone
> detector that you or someone else in the community has verified works
> properly."  Many are the devices that claim to work, and many are the
> spam five-star reviews; the S/N ratio for consumer devices and random
> electronics is nasty so I don't bother to keep track of them. 
> 
Buy it from somewhere with a good return policy.  It's not like it's
hard to find a cell phone to test it with.

> I was involved with crypto a decade before Cypherpunk, and involved in
> Cypherpunk too.  (A couple of sentences redacted here.)  More details in
> person, including what the best physical RNG is and according to who. 

Intel RDRand?  If you actually had something important to redact, you
would do so silently.

> 
> Agreed, Goolag's voice rec happens on the server side, which also
> enables "flexible" control of keyword lists.  How the device behaves in
> normal use is one thing.  How it could behave under various other
> circumstances remains to be seen and tested.  For example use GPS output
> to determine when person is in an "interesting" place, trigger device at
> preset incoming audio volume level, etc.  More easily, activate when
> device owned by person A comes within X distance of device owned by
> person B.  Etc.


You can speculate all day and night, or you can read some indictments
once in a while.
Maybe if you actually read about this stuff and had an interest in
communicating about this sort of thing, you'd see that this idea already
has a name, geofencing.
> 
> I've never tried meth either, but one doesn't need to, in order to
> conclude it's bad for one's wetware. 
> 
I wonder sometimes if your goal is to say as many tangential
inflammatory statements as possible.  Sneak in whatever controversial,
misleading statements you want into your emails and people who try to
counter them are missing the point and people who are tacit are
agreeing.  Casual meth use is possible, I know people who have partaken,
giving into the drug scare encourages the surveillance state.

> Good to hear we agree that Goolag Glass is a one-way mirror, but I do
> not trust it to only activate when people wink-nudge it.  Same case as
> "smart"phones: selective activation by triggering criteria.  Looking
> forward to ways to thwart it. 

You are then unaware of the battery life.  If it turned on more, the
battery life may be cut in half.

> 
> Agreed it's reasonable to assume people around me carry "smart"phones. 
> I try to be aware of devices in my environment, and I don't hesitate to
> request devices-off for certain conversations in certain surroundings. 

You should try all devices in this car/box/whatever that is not close to
the conversation rather than turning off devices which signal for one
could easily correlate synchronized phone turn off events.

> 
> There was a time when most cellphone batteries were far more easily
> removable, and people routinely removed them before they started private
> F2F conversations.  Since "9/11 constant-contact syndrome" has set in
> with a vengeance ("someone I love might call me when they're about to
> die") it's harder to get people to unhook even briefly.  Weird.
> 

If by routine, you mean by cyberpunks, and other people under intense
scrutiny (other than journalists who are allergic to opsec)?

> The time will eventually come when "second-hand surveillance" is
> recognized as being every bit as obnoxious to non-consenting parties as
> second-hand smoke is to nonsmokers.  That or the future looks like Brave
> New World, "predict & control" via consumer lifestyle.


Right, and there will be a time where we use the metric system for
everything too
> 
> Ask people in the (whatever relevant earlier era) what they'd think
> about thermonuclear weapons, climate change, drug-resistant bacteria,
> etc.  We're still fighting over teaching evolution in public schools. 
> 
Old people don't like new things, good or bad.

> Heath Robinson is as near to your keyboard as consumer cellphone
> detectors are to mine, but here's a link: 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath_Robinson  As I said, if you needed
> an ad-hom to use on me, "chasing squirrels while believing he's the
> reincarnation of Heath Robinson" would do nicely;-)  Read the link and
> unpack the suggested ad-hom, and you'll probably agree it's
> well-compressed and works on multiple levels.

Maybe I should have clarified and said I don't care either.  I don't do
research to get jokes, especially for people I've never found to be funny.

> 
> One thing though.  Comparisons with Ted Kaczynski really are highly
> objectionable, seeing as he's a domestic terrorist & multiple-murderer. 
> I read his "manifesto" back when the FBI were pleading with every lefty
> in the Bay Area for help catching him.  I found it to be a tangled mess
> of nonsense, fit for inclusion in an anthology of post-modernist horse
> shit.  Come to think of it, comparisons with post-modernists are highly
> objectionable too... 
> 

So how'd you deal with the cyberpunk mailing list being hosted on
al-qaeda.org?

Your analysis of his writing differs from the analysis of many scholars
who said he had a gift for writing.  I found it to be quite readable and
made some excellent points.  No other Luddite author comes to mind.
When Sleepytime Gorilla Museum needed a writer to counterpoint the
Italian Futurists, they picked Ted Kaczynski.

Also, terrorist fear mongering encourages surveillance.

> So let's not go using comparisons to terrorists, or calling each other
> post-modernists, OK?  Especially when there are plenty of symbolic furry
> animals and creators of deliberate absurdity to use for comparisons
> instead, and cheeky comments about social calendars and so on. 
> 

How about you explain what separates you from Luddites.  Ideology and
methods are different.  I can agree that many terrorist acts were
committed by people whose ideologies I agreed with.

If you're not for civil rights of terrorists, then you're not for civil
rights.

> In any case we have more in common cause than we have opposing each
> other.  My central point here has always been that unregulated
> private-sector surveillance is more dangerous to civil liberties than
> the TLAs, by a decent handful of decimal places.  We can agree to
> disagree about that, and let history be the judge.

I'm insulted by that.  TLAs don't face jail time if they go 'too far'
and get caught.

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