Monday 27 Sep 2010 7 comments
The NY Times, quoting an FBI lawyer:
"No one should be promising their customers that they will thumb
their nose at a U.S. court order," Ms. Caproni said.
"They can promise strong encryption. They just need to figure out
how they can provide us plain text."
U.S.
Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet,
27 Sep 2010
In other words,
they can pretend to promise strong encryption.
And from an op-ed piece last month (added blue words mine):
But in the end, it is governments, not private industry,
that want to rule the
airwaves and the Internet.
Texting
With Terrorists, 9 Aug 2010
Phil
Zimmermann said that
a bill
(introduced by Joe Biden in 1994) that included these words
It is the sense of Congress that providers of electronic communications
services and manufacturers of electronic communications service equipment
shall ensure that communications systems permit the government to obtain
the plain text contents of voice, data, and other communications when
appropriately authorized by law.
spurred him to make
PGP available--where PGP is, of course, encryption
for the masses (strong, not make-believe).
For a while, PGP included an algorithm
which,
Wikipedia
tells us,
... derives much of its security by interleaving operations
from different groups ... which are algebraically "incompatible" in
some sense.
where "in some sense" is handwaving, and where the groups in question are
- addition modulo 65536 (i.e., C65536)
- multiplication modulo 65537 (isomorphic to C65536)
- bitwise exclusive OR
(i.e., C2×C2×C2×C2×C2×C2×C2×C2×C2×C2×C2×C2×C2×C2×C2×C2)
Tuesday 07 Sep 2010 1 comment
Two things.
At Jaguar, the typical customer is referred
to as the fictional "Mrs. Schwartz on Long Island" (at least,
so
says the NY Times). This amuses me because I'm from Long Island.
A German brewery
won
an appeal* at the Trade Marks and Design Registration
Office of the European Union,
allowing them to use the trademark
Fucking hell for their brand of pale ale
(and associated clothing, ...). The name derives, of course, from
Fucking, Austria
and from
hell being German for "pale".
* Under Article 7(1)(f) CTMR, signs may not be registered if they are
disparaging, discriminatory, blasphemous or derogatory,
incite criminal offences or insurrection.
September 2010 archive
