Phone Taps And Prevalency In Australia

[Quad Damage]

chong all ya need to do is say I gave a mate a cone the other day and your fucked...you are now distributing an illegal drug.....thats evidence enuff for them to even look at you...

[Guest]

Its fucked as all fuck I agree. But what can you do? Really? Not everybody is going to pay for encryption. Straight away you got haves and have nots who can't communicate to one another. We want this board to grow. Not become divided.

[F420]

For a start the board is already divided, the admin and mods have their own forum that we cant access.

Its not a problem and serves as a tool,

 

 

I feel 100% safe here, If i didnt I wouldnt have hung around.

If my ISP gave my personal detail to the police without a warrant I would sue the fuckers.

as far as safe garding your computer, just use zone alarm.

 

StOnEd sorry

Edited April 4, 2004 by Ferenge420

[Guest niall]

Not everybody is going to pay for encryption. Straight away you got haves and have nots who can't communicate to one another. We want this board to grow. Not become divided.

Huh? SSL website encryption is transparent to the user, there's no cost to you. Many members have offered more than enough cash to Ozstoners to get it onto SSL encryption, but we're never taken up on the offer.

 

Email encryption like GnuPG is entirely free and easy to use. There are no haves and have-nots, just those who care about their privacy and those who are too lazy or ignorant to bother.

[Luke Skywalker]

But it's an open forum... Everything we type or post is shown to the world at large in our posts....

 

I mean, if they knew you were "x" member, then all the evidence they need is what's been posted by "x" on the boards. Would SSL encryption make a difference to that?

 

Perhaps I'm missing something, I most likely am, but I don't see how SSL would make a difference to members security...

[jaikai]

good point luke, someone else mentioned identificatory(?) stories etc, but at the end of the day you just gotta be a copper to tell your boss "look at this website, full of pot heads, lets get onto the ISP`s and bust `em..." the cunts are busy chasing criminals, not dealing with us. you also gotta think of the legal precedents involved...pot heads busted from internet sites, ISPs linked to privacy breaches...fucken easier to catch motorists for going 2 kay over the limit or pass a new tax bill for new home owners. you see a result quicker and money...ive said it before but its true, go about your shit decently and properly and no-one comes round querying your life`s situation...trust me, it works...

 

JAIKAI...

[pipeman]

But it's an open forum...  Everything we type or post is shown to the world at large in our posts....

 

I mean, if they knew you were "x" member, then all the evidence they need is what's been posted by "x" on the boards. Would SSL encryption make a difference to that?

 

Perhaps I'm missing something, I most likely am, but I don't see how SSL would make a difference to members security...

Basically I agree in that I don't think there's any real security issue posting here.

 

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but if the cops got sus about anything being posted here and wanted to look into it further, they could trace any username back to an ISP account encryption or no encryption couldn't they?

 

Either way I would like to see a proper discussion on this with Oz Stoner's input and get it resolved one way or the other. As niall said money isn't an issue....

[Guest niall]

But it's an open forum...  Everything we type or post is shown to the world at large in our posts....

 

I mean, if they knew you were "x" member, then all the evidence they need is what's been posted by "x" on the boards. Would SSL encryption make a difference to that?

 

Perhaps I'm missing something, I most likely am, but I don't see how SSL would make a difference to members security...

 

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but if the cops got sus about anything being posted here and wanted to look into it further, they could trace any username back to an ISP account encryption or no encryption couldn't they?

No. The site is hosted outside of Australia, so they'd need International co-operation - these days not unheard of, but for a pot site? Not likely. Most security problems will come from users' PCs or, and this is where SSL comes in, traffic to and from the site. If it's encrypted, all your ISP (and hence law enforcement) can see is that you're interacting with a webserver in the USA.

 

They can't see what you're posting or reading - they need to either serve a warrant and take away your PC for forensics, or serve a warrant on the hosting company in the USA and get their logs (containing exact pages, IP addresses, timestamps etc.).

 

If they know which account is yours, sure - they already know who you are. You've got a much bigger problem there than the majority of users who are not identifiable and would like to remain anonymous.

 

Either way I would like to see a proper discussion on this with Oz Stoner's input and get it resolved one way or the other.  As niall said money isn't an issue....

 

Me too. It can only increase security for users. Ozstoner has said that this site is "secure" and that there's no problem at his end. Well what about our end? Why not do everything possible for the members here to maximise their security, privacy and anonymity? Why not?

 

Internet security is what I do, I know what I'm talking about. SSL is a good thing!

[Medicalman]

Well.....

 

They can't see what you're posting or reading - they need to either serve a warrant and take away your PC for forensics, or serve a warrant on the hosting company in the USA and get their logs (containing exact pages, IP addresses, timestamps etc.).

 

The US has declared drug trafficing as being terrorism. "Conspiracy" across national boundries strengthens that stance. Since 911 and Patriot Acts I and II, they don't really need a warrant (at least not in the normal sense) if they get the desire. And the US does what it wants outside of it's own borders anyways.

 

As for PGP and such being secure, yeah they are relatively secure. But not unbreakable. Do I really think the US is going to waste the time on us or other similar sites? Not really. But they could. The US govt has the largest collection of supercomputers on earth. They also have the largest collection of PC's anywhere. So what's a lowly PC gonna do with PGP? Have you ever heard of distributed processing? Check out setiathome for a good explanation. Mathematical and analytical problems are broken up into small parts. Each part is sent to a single pc. During that pc's down time, a "screensaver" turns on. Only it isn't a screensaver, it uses the processing power of that pc to calculate it's little part of the problem. when that info packet is finished, the results get transmitted to the collating computer and the pc gets another piece of the pie to work on. Just the number of pcs inside the pentagon is a pretty formidable amount of computing power, far exceeding that of the Crays and other supercomputers that the NSA has.

 

Check this out,

United Devices Grid (distributed) Processing page

 

UD has already done much work with the US dept. of Defense. Publicly, on the search for an anthrax cure. But who knows what else? When you download UD Agent and start processing for them, you don't really know what info your computer works on. They say cancer research, etc, but it could just as well be PGP algorithms for all we know.

 

UD says that the anthrax project which would have taken more than a year using supercomputers was completed in 23 days by using UD Agent and "civilian computers" that all voluntarily signed up for the project. I've got a feeling that a pgp key is pretty simple work for this type of setup. Its not even complicated, it just means trying every possible combination.

 

Scary stuff isn't it. Time for a puff.

MM

[Guest niall]

The US has declared drug trafficing as being terrorism. "Conspiracy" across national boundries strengthens that stance.  Since 911 and Patriot Acts I and II, they don't really need a warrant (at least not in the normal sense) if they get the desire. And the US does what it wants outside of it's own borders anyways.

Exactly - the USA is not a safe place for pot websites like this one, just look at the absurdity of Operation Pipe Dreams and Chong's imprisonment!

 

As for PGP and such being secure, yeah they are relatively secure. But not unbreakable. Do I really think the US is going to waste the time on us or other similar sites? Not really. But they could. The US govt has the largest collection of supercomputers on earth. They also have the largest collection of PC's anywhere. So what's a lowly PC gonna do with PGP? Have you ever heard of distributed processing? Check out setiathome for a good explanation. Mathematical and analytical problems are broken up into small parts. Each part is sent to a single pc. During that pc's down time, a "screensaver" turns on. Only it isn't a screensaver, it uses the processing power of that pc to calculate it's little part of the problem. when that info packet is finished, the results get transmitted to the collating computer and the pc gets another piece of the pie to work on. Just the number of pcs inside the pentagon is a pretty formidable amount of computing power, far exceeding that of the Crays and other supercomputers that the NSA has.

 

Sure, but PGP is effectively unbreakable. Distributed computing projects like the Distributed.net's RC5 project have taken almost a year to break 56 bit encryption, and almost 5 years to break 64 bit encryption. Each extra bit makes the problem twice as hard i.e. cracking 64 bit is like cracking 56 bit 256 times in a row. With PGP and GnuPG we're talking about 1024 bit encryption, 2048 bit encryption, and HIGHER! It's simply not possible anywhere on Earth. At our current computing power, it would take longer than the lifetime of the Universe, and a power source that simply doesn't exist on Earth:

 

"

Furthermore it has been calculated that due to Thermodynamic Limitations the minimum amount of energy that could ever cause a change of information, (i.e. altering a bit in a sequence of keys to be tested), is 4.4 * 10-23 Joules. In order to completely count from zero to 2187 would take the entire energy output of the Sun for one year, 1.21 * 1035 Joules, (i.e. It would take all the Sun’s energy for a year to even attempt to break a 187-bit key). If we harnessed all the power of a Supernova, 1044 Joules, we would be able to count from zero to 2219. With this in mind the brute force cracking of 256-bit keys can never be attempted.

"

 

See: http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~mrpunch/BraveNewWorld/Privacy.htm

 

I understand what you're saying, but it's effectively impossible to crack good encryption. That's why the US Government limited exported encryption technology to 40bit (and then 56bit) for so many years. PGP and GnuPG are safe. SSL is safe.