Crypto Blamed for US terrorist attack - World Exclusive

[Owen Blacker]

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Stephen Wylie, quoting Ian Batten:
> 
> > My recent coining
> > was ``In the UK we have liberty in practice, but not in theory; in the
> > US they have it in theory, but not in practice''.  
> 
> Or used to have: we now have a Human Rights Act, but few human rights,
> only criminals seem to benefit.

To be fair, some minority groups are beginning to benefit from the Human
Rights Act, I believe.

> Every move we make on major roads is now
> surveilled by spy cameras. The repressive legislation 
> restricting freedom of assembly has not been repealed AFAIK.

Indeed the Terrorism Act restricts it further at just about anyone's
say-so.

> [deletia]
> 
> Why bother repressing crypto when they aren't repressing 
> anything else?

Because it's not very inconvenient to Mr Average Joe to do so and, as such,
the governments can be seen to be doing ~something~, even if it's
pointless.

> Except anti-road activists, of course.

Indeed, anyone who disagrees with the govt on quite a lot of major issues.

> > (Don't buy rail shares in the UK - sooner or later the government will 
> > take it all back again)
> 
> I sincerely hope so, and the sooner the better!

Hopefully, pointing out to shareholders that the government pays Railtrack
more in subsidies than the company is worth and, as such, it is going to
seize control without paying the shareholders a penny.

> > > The Son of Star Wars gung-ho techies in the US military have egg on
> > > their faces. Expect less money to go to them & more to the FBI &
> > > immigration control. 
> > 
> > Maybe.
> 
> US federal procurement is based on the 'pork-barrel' principal, so the
> Star Wars scam may well go ahead, in spite of its obvious futility, esp
> in the light of the TIR vulnerability I mentioned above, which allows the
> importation of any quantity of munitions into the West. If I was Saddam,
> my weapons would already be sitting next to their targets.

Plenty of ppl (Caspar Weinberger, for one) are still saying they need NMD.

> > > Nobody will even pay attention to crypto.
> > 
> > It's been mentioned already, but in terms of stego concealment in
> > jpegs.  Impossible to guard or legislate against, I'd suggest.
> 
> Illegalisation of pistols in the UK has been accompanied by a 
> huge rise in police estimates of the number of them held by criminals.

But presumably (an no, I don't have numbers) a fall in deaths by shooting
too?

> > > Of course the rumour that it was all got up by Mossad to persuade the
> > > USA to ignore Israeli repression in Palestine is already doing the
> > > rounds, no doubt helped along by the residual anti-semite > factions
> > > in the US right.
> > 
> > Or got up by the US themselves to justify (fill in paranoia here).
> 
> It was quaint to see former Premier Barak raving on about the threat to
> Western democracy on TV. Last night we had a documentary about Israel's
> involvement in systematic arbitrary detention and torture in South
> Lebanon.  

Was that before or after Israel's unprovoked incursions into Palestine
~again~ last night?


O x

(On topic comments about the glancing mention of crypto on-list,
flames and political critique off-list, eh?  :o)
- -- 
Owen Blacker
Senior Software Developer / InfoSec Consultant    Wheel: Clerkenwell
See http://www.owens-place.org.uk/pgp.html -- more about my PGP keys
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