[117186] in Cypherpunks
Re: Project: Hardening Crypto Against Big Brother
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sean Roach)
Fri Aug 27 23:41:41 1999
Message-Id: <3.0.6.32.19990827222545.007ce610@mail.intplsrv.net>
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 22:25:45 -0500
To: cypherpunks@algebra.com
From: Sean Roach <roach_s@mail.intplsrv.net>
In-Reply-To: <19990826231001.7798.qmail@uni.nowhere.to>
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Reply-To: Sean Roach <roach_s@mail.intplsrv.net>
At 11:10 PM 8/26/99 -0000, Anonymous wrote: >
At sometime in the past, I wrote: >>
>>Better. Use thermite. Since its only almuminum powder and rust, it
>>shouldn't look like more than a large mass of metal, (of which the >>case
has a lot of anyway.)
>
>Won't this be one of the primary things good little security guards
>are trained to recognize?(even if their training consists of
>teaching them that a big flashing screen on their x-ray machine
>with "THERMITE - DETAIN - CALL CLUEFUL SUPERVISOR" means they
>should take action)
>Stick with electrics.a nice camera flash capacitor's energy
>driven through your memory ought to do it. operating system on
>flash rom, nothing on the hard drive but encrypted data (random
>bits,just noise,honest) and decoy data.
>
Interesting story about this. My grandmother was detained for carrying
lead crystal into the United States. Seems that both leaded glass, at
least the good stuff, and plastic explosives both show up as a cloudy area
on an x-ray. They are trained to recognize pieces and hints, not read the
IA's best guess off the screen, (yet.) Since thermite is metal and a metal
oxide, it should block the x-rays pretty good. Looking like a regular
chunk of metal.
BTW. My grandmother was then asked if she had been to England. Seems that
the tech had run into this problem before, and although it required a
physical search of the baggage, knew what to expect.
I was actually hoping that something like a capicator might be
available that could be used as the ignition for the thermite,
since chemical ignitors might show up on some chemical scans.
>>Perhaps a proximity sensor trained on a token hidden by your
>>surgeon. Step too far away and it becomes a >worthless piece
>>of junk.
>
>Oh,great.I;m supposed to embed a radio transmitter in my body to
>AVOID attention?
>Or magnetic?Love to explain that to airport security.even if it
>doesn't transmit constantly,love to pass through a bug
>sweep."um,sir,your arm is a bug"
I was thinking something like that rice grain sized transponder that
professor had stuck in his arm. The same thing we are marking pets,
(and before that, prize race horses,) now. Or something similar.
I'd prefer a biometric solution, but that would take quite a bit more work.
In leu of that, how about a watch that stayed in contact? Make the
watch have a more immediate biometric system. Make it beep
incessantly if it doesn't detect a galvanic skin response inside of
30 seconds. Or make it adjustable so that you can set the alarm for
2 minutes if the line looks too long. Give IT a passphrase to
assure you that it is your watch. You could even integrate it with
your computer like Timex did.
>
>>
>>Also, if you can manage it, the non-executables that you swap
>>around, like text files, should be fully human-readable.
>>Something like HTML, but with better control. (Perhaps a
>>coordinate system for placing of elements like pictures
>>of <sic, I meant or> underlines.) This way, you can visually
>>inspect the word processor documents without having to worry about
>>if someone hid a command in there. This will, however, make your
>>word processor documents much larger for the same output.
>
>bravo! here's the importaent point.you can protect the things that would
>bother them- copies of the constitution or an underground newsletter
>you're distributing.things like perl scripts,even cute 3 liners,or gifs,
>they just don't care about whatever they may say to the contrary.store'm
>in the clear,if they're disassembling your machine to recover bits off
>the hard drive you're in bloody deep anyway,being prosecuted for some
>bootleg gifs is the least of your worries.
>
Actually, I figured on end-to-end encryption, as well as file
encryption. I merely meant that if you could read the code that did
the formatting when you wanted to, even if you rarely bothered, it
would make it more difficult to slip trojans like the infamous
macro-viruses, or trigger commands that you wouldn't notice, into
your system.
Sean Roach
