Codsmack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHFOwlMCdto

John Oliver hosts his first show of the new season -- and his first-ever election-season episode -- and as you might expect, it's amazing. (more…)

“Wide Open” is the latest music video from the British electronic duo The Chemical Brothers. In this Dom & Nic-directed video, dancer Sonoya Mizuno (who many of you will remember from Ex Machina) slowly morphs into a synthetic version of herself.

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There is gulf between how people believe law to work (from watching TV shows like Law and Order) and how law actually works. You lawyer people know what I'm talking about. It's laughable.

The same is true of cyber: there's a gulf between how people think it works and how it actually works.

This Lawfare blogpost thinks it's come up with a clever method to get their way in the crypto-backdoor debate, by making carriers like AT&T responsible only for the what ("deliver interpretable signal in response to lawful wiretap order") without defining the how (crypto backdoors, etc.). This pressure would come in the form of removing current liability protections they now enjoy for not being responsible for what customers transmit across their network. Or as the post paraphrases the proposal:

Don’t expect us to protect you from liability for third-party conduct if you actively design your systems to frustrate government efforts to monitor that third-party conduct.

The post is proud of its own smarts, as if they've figured out how to outwit mathematicians and redefine pi (π). But their solution is nonsense, based on a hopelessly naive understanding of how the Internet works. It appears all they know about the Internet is what they learned from watching CSI:Cyber.

The Internet is end-to-end. End-to-end is the technology shift that made the Internet happen, as compared to alternative directions cyberspace might have taken.

What that means is AT&T doesn't encrypt traffic. Apple's iPhone don't encrypt traffic. Instead, it's the app installed on the phone that does the encryption. Neither AT&T nor Apple can stop encryption from happening.

You think that because most people use iMessage or Snapchat, that all you have to do is turn the screws on them in order to force them to comply with backdoors. That won't work, because the bad guys will stop using those apps and install different encrypted apps, like Signal. You imagine that it's just a game of wack-a-mole, and eventually you'll pressure all apps into compliance. But Signal is open-source. If it disappeared tomorrow, I'd still have a copy of the source, which I can compile into my own app I'll call Xignal. I'll continue making encrypted phone calls with my own app. Even if no source existed today, I could write my own source within a couple months to do this. Indeed, writing an encrypted chat app is typical homework assignment colleges might assign computer science students. (You people still haven't come to grips with the fact that in cyberspace, we are living with the equivalent of physicists able to whip up a-bombs in their basements).

Running arbitrary software is a loose end that will defeat every solution you can come up with. It's math. The only way forward to fix the "going dark" problem is to ban software code. But that you can't do without destroying the economy and converting the country into a dystopic, Orwellian police state.

You think that those of us who oppose crypto backdoors are hippies with a knee-jerk rejection of any government technological mandate. That's not true. The populists at the EFF love technological mandates in their favor, such as NetNeutrality mandates, or bans on exporting viruses to evil regimes (though they've recently walked back on that one).

Instead, we reject this specific technological mandate, because we know cyber. We know it won't work. We can see that you'll never solve your "going dark" problem, but in trying to, you'll cause a constant erosion of both the economic utility of the Internet and our own civil liberties.

I apologize for the tone of this piece, saying you are stupid about cyber, but that's what it always comes down to. The author of that piece has impressive Washington D.C. think-tanky credentials, but misfires on the basic end-to-end problem. And all think-tanky pieces on this debate are going to happen the same way, because as soon as they bring technologists in to consult on the problem, their desired op-eds become stillborn before anybody sees them.

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Note: I get the π analogy from a tweet by @quinnorton, I don't know who came up with analogy originally.

From 1909, for squid fishing.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.

Histrionic

Outfitted

Starcher Trek puts the lunatic spies of ISIS in charge of the Enterprise, using footage from Star Trek: The Animated Series and audio from Archer to cast Sterling Archer as Captain Kirk, Lana as Uhura, and Ray as Sulu. It's a silly joke, but a good one.

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MAKE's Michael Colombo says:

In today’s New York Times article by Heather Murphy, a story was related where a group of lawyers were ordered by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to put their cell phones in the refrigerator before sitting down for dinner. The idea was that the metal-clad fridge would act as a Faraday cage, blocking any electromagnetic signals and preventing the group from being surveilled.

This sounded a bit dubious, since a refrigerator is not completely sealed in metal. A counter surveillance designer by the name of Adam Harvey suggested that a cocktail shaker is a much better alternative. Curiosity got the best of me, so I decided to test out both. See the video above for the results.

Edward Snowden: Can a Refrigerator Function as a Faraday Cage?

Can you fix the internet?

The Business Software Alliance -- a proprietary software industry group -- has pulled a controversial ad that promised cash to people who snitched on friends and employers who used pirated software, after they were credibly accused of pirating the image used in the campaign.

The ad used a photo of a pot of gold, captioned with "Your pot of gold is right here baby. Report unlicensed software and GET PAID." The photo used in the ad was of a cake baked by Cakecentral user Bethasd (the cake itself is pretty amazing! "St. Patrick's Day Pot O' Gold - Chocolate Guinness cake with Bailey's Irish Buttercream").

The BSA has refused to comment on its use of the photo, or to confirm that it was licensed prior to use, but they immediately pulled the ad after being asked about it. Meanwhile, Torrentfreak "encourage[s] 'bethasd' to get in contact with the software industry group, and demand both licensing fees and damages for the unauthorized use of her photo. Surely, the BSA will be happy to hand over a pot of gold to her."

Representing major software companies, the BSA is using Facebook ads which encourage people to report businesses that use unlicensed software. If one of these reports results in a successful court case, the pirate snitch can look forward to a cash reward.

Below is one of the promoted Facebook posts that appeared in the timeline of thousands of people on Saint Patrick’s Day. It features a homemade cake in the shape of a pot of gold and sends a clear message to the readers.

“Your pot of gold is right here baby. Report unlicensed software and GET PAID,” the post reads.

Busted: BSA Steals Photo For “Snitch On a Pirate” Campaign [Ernesto/Torrentfreak]

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The New York Times published a fantastic slideshow detailing how the product is, more or less, bullshit. A splendidly revealing tl;dr: Italy is the world's largest importer of olive oil.

GLONK

OLD MAN WEINERSMITH SHAKES HIS FIST AT THE NEWS

Things are cooking for the return of BAHFest. Stay tuned.

Hey poli sci geeks - my brother, Greg Weiner (yes there are more Weiners), is writing some articles here. Fair warning: They involve nuance and politics, so you will probably be angry at some of them. Enjoy!

At The Price Hike, Bloomberg News food critic Ryan Sutton writes about Sushi Yasuda, a high-end restaurant in New York which recently eliminated tipping. You cannot tip your waiters, but you can eat there (assuming you can afford the bill!) knowing that your wait staff receive a living wage, and benefits including paid sick days and vacation days.

Dope

Operation Troll the NSA