An Open Letter from US Researchers in Cryptography and …

An Open Letter from US Researchers in Cryptography and Information Security January 24, 2014

Media reports since last June have revealed that the US government conducts domestic and international surveillance on a massive scale, that it engages in deliberate and covert weakening of Internet security standards, and that it pressures US technology companies to deploy backdoors and other data-collection features. As leading members of the US cryptography and information-security research communities, we deplore these practices and urge that they be changed.

Indiscriminate collection, storage, and processing of unprecedented amounts of personal information chill free speech and invite many types of abuse, ranging from mission creep to identity theft. These are not hypothetical problems; they have occurred many times in the past. Inserting backdoors, sabotaging standards, and tapping commercial data-center links provide bad actors, foreign and domestic, opportunities to exploit the resulting vulnerabilities.

The value of society-wide surveillance in preventing terrorism is unclear, but the threat that such surveillance poses to privacy, democracy, and the US technology sector is readily apparent. Because transparency and public consent are at the core of our democracy, we call upon the US government to subject all mass-surveillance activities to public scrutiny and to resist the deployment of mass-surveillance programs in advance of sound technical and social controls. In finding a way forward, the five principles promulgated at http://reformgovernmentsurveillance.com/ provide a good starting point.

The choice is not whether to allow the NSA to spy. The choice is between a communications infrastructure that is vulnerable to attack at its core and one that, by default, is intrinsically secure for its users. Every country, including our own, must give intelligence and law-enforcement authorities the means to pursue terrorists and criminals, but we can do so without fundamentally undermining the security that enables commerce, entertainment, personal communication, and other aspects of 21st-century life. We urge the US government to reject society-wide surveillance and the subversion of security technology, to adopt state-of-the-art, privacy-preserving technology, and to ensure that new policies, guided by enunciated principles, support human rights, trustworthy commerce, and technical innovation.

Martn Abadi Professor Emeritus, University of California, Santa Cruz Hal Abelson Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Alessandro Acquisti Associate Professor, Carnegie Mellon University Boaz Barak Editorial-board member, Journal of the ACM1 Mihir Bellare Professor, University of California, San Diego Steven Bellovin Professor, Columbia University L. Jean Camp Professor, Indiana University Ran Canetti Professor, Boston University and Tel Aviv University Lorrie Faith Cranor Associate Professor, Carnegie Mellon University Cynthia Dwork Member, US National Academy of Engineering Joan Feigenbaum Professor, Yale University Edward Felten Professor, Princeton University Niels Ferguson Author, Cryptography Engineering: Design Principles and Practical Applications Michael Fischer Professor, Yale University Bryan Ford Assistant Professor, Yale University Matthew Franklin Professor, University of California, Davis Juan Garay Program Committee Co-Chair, CRYPTO2 2014 Shai Halevi Director, International Association for Cryptologic Research Somesh Jha Professor, University of Wisconsin Madison Ari Juels Program Committee Co-Chair, 2013 ACM Cloud-Computing Security Workshop1 M. Frans Kaashoek Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Hugo Krawczyk Fellow, International Association for Cryptologic Research Susan Landau Author, Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies Wenke Lee Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology Anna Lysyanskaya Professor, Brown University Tal Malkin Associate Professor, Columbia University David Mazires Associate Professor, Stanford University Kevin McCurley Fellow, International Association for Cryptologic Research Patrick McDaniel Professor, The Pennsylvania State University Daniele Micciancio Professor, University of California, San Diego Andrew Myers Professor, Cornell University Vern Paxson Professor, University of California, Berkeley Jon Peha Professor, Carnegie Mellon University Thomas Ristenpart Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin Madison Ronald Rivest Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Phillip Rogaway Professor, University of California, Davis Greg Rose Officer, International Association for Cryptologic Research Amit Sahai Professor, University of California, Los Angeles Bruce Schneier Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School Hovav Shacham Associate Professor, University of California, San Diego Abhi Shelat Associate Professor, University of Virginia Thomas Shrimpton Associate Professor, Portland State University Avi Silberschatz Professor, Yale University Adam Smith Associate Professor, The Pennsylvania State University Dawn Song Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley Gene Tsudik Professor, University of California, Irvine Salil Vadhan Professor, Harvard University Rebecca Wright Professor, Rutgers University Moti Yung Fellow, Association for Computing Machinery1 Nickolai Zeldovich Associate Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This letter can be found at: http://MassSurveillance.info Institutional affiliations for identification purposes only. This letter represents the views of the signatories, not necessarily those of their employers or other organizations with which they are affiliated.

1 The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is the premier organization of computing professionals. 2 CRYPTO is an annual research conference sponsored by the International Association for Cryptologic Research.

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An Open Letter from US Researchers in Cryptography and ...

Sean Wilentz Tries to Change the Subject

How much does it really matter what Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, and Julian Assange believe about politics?

Eminent Princeton historian Sean Wilentz has published a piecetitled, "Would You Feel Differently About Snowden, Greenwald, and Assange If You Knew What They Really Thought?" Wilentz promises to examine "important caches of evidence" which have been overlooked and reveal the unholy troika's "true motives" which are at odd with the liberal portrayal of them as "truth-telling comrades intent on protecting the state."

I think it's worth knowing the politics that animate "the leakers," as Wilentz dubs them, and engaging them. But hasn't this engagement been going on for some years now?Glenn Greenwald's politicshave long been a subject of debate among liberals. Haven't Julian Assange's politics also been up for debate, particularly among feminists?I guess Edward Snowden's politics haven't been as closely examined, but that only leads to deeper critiqueEdward Snowden is significant because of what he told us about the NSA, not because he's Paul Wellstone reincarnated.

In short, I think we know quite well what "the leakers" are thinking, but we're much more interested in what the NSA is doing.I know Wilentz is a prominent and celebrated historian, this piece just reads like elongated ad hominem. If Edward Snowden was a white supremacist, I would still be concerned about NSA officers spying on their exes, and James Clapper lying to the Senate.

See Henry Farrell's thorough response for more.

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Sean Wilentz Tries to Change the Subject

The rise and rise of dogecoin, the internet’s hottest cryptocurrency

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Jackson Palmer, co-founder of Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that uses the Shiba Inu dog character from the 'Doge' Internet meme as its mascot.

Forget about bitcoin. The latest go-to cryptocurrency is called dogecoin, a digital denomination that began life less than two months ago as a jokey tweet made by 26-year-old Australian Jackson Palmer.

That's true virality. [Dogecoin] grew a mind of its own

But his joke has now taken on a life of its own. The total value of the market for dogecoin (pronounced dough-je coin) has just topped $US60 million ($68 million) and it has spawned a community comprising thousands of buyers, sellers, merchants, beggars, speculators and "miners", the people who mint the money.

Virtual economics: Jackson Palmer's jokey tweet took on a life of its own. Photo: Tony Walters

The current value of the bitcoin market is $US10 billion.

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This week, transactions worth a total of $US14 million were made, including one Chinese investor who bought $US5 million worth of the virtual currency. And on a daily basis dogecoin transactions are outstripping those in the more established bitcoin market, albeit for a smaller overall value.

Mr Palmer, who is a product manager based in the Sydney office of the software company Adobe, is both amazed and elated by the experience of introducing so many newcomers to virtual economics.

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The rise and rise of dogecoin, the internet's hottest cryptocurrency

What is Bitcoin anyway?

What is Bitcoin?

Its an electronic cash system that allows online payments to be sent directly from one person to another without going through a financial institution (like a bank) or a third party (like PayPal).

Dan Zak

Boosters of the cryptocurrency make their case on Capitol Hill and want an ATM within easy reach

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Bitcoins are an unregulated, underground online currency and the FEC may permit political campaigns to receive them as contributions.

Whos in charge of it?

No one. Or, rather, everyone who uses it. Bitcoin functions on a peer-to-peer computer network based on cryptography rather than a trusted third party. It is an open-source and self-governing system. A software code maintains a public ledger that records and verifies each transaction without revealing the identity of the users. Users who provide hardware and bandwidth for these transactions are rewarded by the algorithm with new denominations of bitcoin to save or sell into circulation. This process of earning new bitcoin is called mining.

How much bitcoin are in circulation, and what are they worth?

Thursday afternoon there were nearly 12.3 million bitcoin in circulation. The value of a single bitcoin fluctuated between $848.53 and $868.93 through 5 p.m. Thursday, according to CoinDesk, a digital currency news site that averages the price of bitcoin across several high-volume exchanges. One year ago a single bitcoin was worth about $13. Bitcoin are released into circulation at a predictable but diminishing rate based on a software algorithm that caps circulation at 21 million bitcoin (which the system is expected to reach in 2140). Bitcoins are currently divisible by eight decimal points; $1 (USD) equaled about 0.0012 bitcoin on Thursday.

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What is Bitcoin anyway?

Secret draft of TPP talks on environment show little enforcement measures

A secret draft of what would be Australia's biggest trade agreement shows it will be toothless in enforcing environmental agreements.

The draft environment chapter of the twelve-nation Trans Pacific Partnership agreement published by WikiLeaks proposes next to no enforcement mechanisms with those that are suggested opposed by each of the 12 nations other than the United Stastes.

A summary on the WikiLeaks website says the draft makes use of the 'get out clause' approximately 43 times, using language such as: "Where possible and appropriate, the Parties shall seek to complement and utilise their existing cooperation mechanisms and take into account relevant work of regional and international organisations."

The word "may" is also found 43 times in the 23-page draft.

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Governments are urged to "...make every effort to arrive at a mutually satisfactory resolution...", "...take measures to prevent...", "...make best efforts...", "...exercise restraint in taking recourse...", and retain "the right to make decisions...".

WikiLeaks says other favourite words are "enhance" (12), "consider" (12), "encourage" (11), "address" (10), "endeavour" (9) and "seek" (9).

A report from the chairpersons of the environment section of the agreement despairs at ever getting meaningful agreement saying the so-called "red line" or non-negotiable positions appear irreconcilable."Many of the red lines for some parties were in direct opposition to the red lines expressed by other parties," it says.

"It bears emphasising that it is these differences that have prevented the environment working group from reaching agreement on all aspects of the chapter."

Australia is siding with Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam in opposing US moves to give the resolutions of biodiversity, climate change, fisheries and conservation more force.

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Secret draft of TPP talks on environment show little enforcement measures