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Offline xasop

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Re: Trump
« Reply #120 on: January 05, 2017, 08:41:00 PM »
i definitely can't speak to the technical aspects, but i do think his statement makes some naive assumptions about the security of analog communication.  humans have been espionage-ing analog communication for way longer than we have digital, and we're good at it.

"Analog communication" covers things like radio transmissions, which are indeed no better than the Internet for the transmission of sensitive information. But with a written message carried by a trusted, experienced courier, it's not that difficult to determine if it might have been intercepted. For instance, the message could be kept in a briefcase with tamper-evident locks.

for another thing, though, neither the intelligence community, nor any other organization as large as the dnc, can anymore operate using analog communication.  there's just too much data, and a significant amount of that data can't very easily be communicated in writing.

if we're just talking about using analog messages to send the very most important messages, like cipher keys in your example, then what you're saying makes a ton of sense to me; but, my understanding is that the dnc hacks were allegedly done through phishing links/social engineering/whatever, and i dunno that couriers would solve that (except to the extent that a single courier isn't going to carry 30,000 emails, but then we're back to the practicality of it).  i feel like the solution is better training for the humans using the computers, not getting rid of the computers, so to speak.

I'm going to assume that by "analog communication" you mean "written messages", which can't easily be classified as analog or digital (you could argue it either way, using the pattern of ink or individual letters as your base unit).

No, couriers would not solve social engineering directly, but that doesn't negate the fact that they do have security advantages over computer networks. Whether or not those advantages would have prevented the DNC hacks is of no consequence to the validity of Trump's comment.

i'm also mildly skeptical that detecting a compromised courier network is easier than detecting as compromised digital network.  not saying you're wrong, just that intuitively it's easy for me to imagine ways of compromising a person without leaving an identifiable trace or physical clue; i would think it's comparatively difficult to compromise a digital network without leaving a clue.  the computer side of that is literally just speculation on my part, but i think you're underestimating how good people are at spying on people.

The problem is that the Internet is actually composed of many networks (that's what the word "Internet" means; it's an abbreviation of "inter-network"). When you send a message using the Internet, you are not only trusting your own network and your recipient's network (which you should have a strong guarantee of security for), but also every network in between, typically involving multiple ISPs and long-distance carriers.

Furthermore, the Internet was not designed to be secure. It was designed in an age when its only users were large academic, research and government institutions with the funding to purchase expensive mainframe hardware. There were no malicious actors, and everyone could be trusted to do the right thing. All security mechanisms on the Internet were built on top of it years later, once commodity hardware became commonplace, but the base infrastructure is fundamentally insecure to this day.

For example, occasionally routing misconfiguration at an ISP causes network traffic to traverse a different path than it would have ordinarily. This means that you cannot even trust that the same networks between you and your recipient are used for each message, or even each packet within a message. You cannot even trust that using the same IP address will deliver your message to the same host.

To use an analogy for courier transport, imagine you give your message to a courier for secure delivery to the Russian government. He leaves your secure government building and stops at a street corner and asks which way the Kremlin is. He then blindly follows in the direction pointed until he reaches the next street corner and asks for directions again. Eventually, he will come across someone and ask them for directions to the Kremlin, and they will reply: "This is the Kremlin, please give me your message." He hands it over and that's the end of it. That's how Internet routing works.

By contrast, a real courier would be able to recognise whether he has actually reached the Kremlin, or even whether he is in the right country. He would also be able to verify identity documents of the person he hands the message to as necessary. Most importantly, he would be able to provide a reasonably firm guarantee that nobody intercepted his message en route.

While it is possible to use end-to-end encryption to securely send messages using the Internet, that still requires a known trusted key for your communication partner, which requires some other method of communication beforehand. (I'm ignoring the X509 infrastructure commonly used to issue SSL certificates here, because they require you to trust a number of corporations in order to establish a trust chain, which is undesirable for important government messages.)
when you try to mock anyone while also running the flat earth society. Lol

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Offline Lord Dave

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Re: Trump
« Reply #121 on: January 10, 2017, 04:57:51 PM »
So, Trump has already asked Congress to pay for the Mexican wall.
Officially, it's to speed it along using already in place processes.  He then says he'll get Mexico to reimburse the US later.  So remember folks, Trump will buy a wall first then figure out if Mexico will pay for it later.

Congress has also instituted several new(or old) rules including the Holman rule, which was from 1876.  It allows the federal government to (among other things) cut funding to individual people in the employee of the federal government.  And I'm not just saying "We eliminated your department's funding" I'm saying "We can literally have your pay be $0 if we want to while everyone else in your department has full pay."  People bitch about Obama overreaching well, what does this say?  The GOP is solidifying their ability to control the entire government and that means, right now, they can bypass federal employment laws and remove any employee they want at any time for any reason in any department just by making an amendment to an appropriations bill.  Just imagine that, The president gets a list of people who are politically or ideologically against him and he sends that list to the house who then ensures that said person no longer has a paycheck. 
https://fcw.com/articles/2017/01/04/congress-holman-rule-feds.aspx

They have tried to gut the Ethics investigation but Trump stopped them (Go Trump!).

The house expressly forbids the Congressional Budget Office from reporting or tracking ANY costs related to the repeal of the ACA.  Cause, you know, that's not important, right?

Oh and the REINS act is gonna go through the House.  What's the REINS act?  Well, any regulation that is more than $100 million in economic impact (pretty much everything really) needs to be approved by Congress and the president before it can be enacted.  If it isn't in 70 days, it's discarded. 
Let that sink in: Congress, who usually doesn't know shit and complains government gets in the way, is using government to get in the way of departments who know better.  Like the FDA.  If they were to ban certain hand soap chemicals due to no data that it actually does anything helpful nor any decent testing that it's safe for long term use, Congress can just ignore it and suddenly its unbanned after 70 days and the FDA can't do anything about it ever again.
But I'm sure Congress and the president know better than the people that are hired to figure these things out.  Lawyers are experts at bio-medical science, right?
https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/01/06/house-passes-reins-act-to-curb-job-crushing-regulations/

If you are going to DebOOonK an expert then you have to at least provide a source with credentials of equal or greater relevance. Even then, it merely shows that some experts disagree with each other.

Re: Trump
« Reply #122 on: January 10, 2017, 05:05:56 PM »
Just imagine that, The president gets a list of people who are politically or ideologically against him and he sends that list to the house who then ensures that said person no longer has a paycheck. 
https://fcw.com/articles/2017/01/04/congress-holman-rule-feds.aspx

Quite the imagination you have there.

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Offline Lord Dave

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Re: Trump
« Reply #123 on: January 10, 2017, 05:27:25 PM »
Just imagine that, The president gets a list of people who are politically or ideologically against him and he sends that list to the house who then ensures that said person no longer has a paycheck. 
https://fcw.com/articles/2017/01/04/congress-holman-rule-feds.aspx

Quite the imagination you have there.
I know, right?
I mean, it's not like Trump asked for a list of people who oppose his views on climate change or energy....
If you are going to DebOOonK an expert then you have to at least provide a source with credentials of equal or greater relevance. Even then, it merely shows that some experts disagree with each other.

Re: Trump
« Reply #124 on: January 10, 2017, 07:50:00 PM »
Just imagine that, The president gets a list of people who are politically or ideologically against him and he sends that list to the house who then ensures that said person no longer has a paycheck. 
https://fcw.com/articles/2017/01/04/congress-holman-rule-feds.aspx

Quite the imagination you have there.
I know, right?
I mean, it's not like Trump asked for a list of people who oppose his views on climate change or energy....

Trump rounding up dissidents is the left equivalent to "They're gonna take our guns"

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Offline Lord Dave

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Re: Trump
« Reply #125 on: January 10, 2017, 08:17:52 PM »
Just imagine that, The president gets a list of people who are politically or ideologically against him and he sends that list to the house who then ensures that said person no longer has a paycheck. 
https://fcw.com/articles/2017/01/04/congress-holman-rule-feds.aspx

Quite the imagination you have there.
I know, right?
I mean, it's not like Trump asked for a list of people who oppose his views on climate change or energy....

Trump rounding up dissidents is the left equivalent to "They're gonna take our guns"
With one big exception.
The 2nd amendment lets you keep your guns.
There is no amendment that can save jobs from political targeting.
If you are going to DebOOonK an expert then you have to at least provide a source with credentials of equal or greater relevance. Even then, it merely shows that some experts disagree with each other.

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Offline Pete Svarrior

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Re: Trump
« Reply #126 on: January 10, 2017, 09:22:45 PM »
So remember folks, Trump will buy a wall first then figure out if Mexico will pay for it later.
But he's made it clear ages ago how they're gonna pay for it - through trade tariffs. What, in your opinion, is left for him to figure out?
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Re: Trump
« Reply #127 on: January 10, 2017, 09:37:38 PM »
So remember folks, Trump will buy a wall first then figure out if Mexico will pay for it later.
But he's made it clear ages ago how they're gonna pay for it - through trade tariffs. What, in your opinion, is left for him to figure out?

A tariff does not make Mexico pay for the wall. It just raises prices on Mexican goods for consumers. The entire point was to avoid the cost of the wall being offloaded onto Americans. Not to mention that at the rate he'd have to raise tariffs, American consumers will probably just look to other sources for goods, eliminating tariffs as a source of income for the wall.

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Offline Pete Svarrior

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Re: Trump
« Reply #128 on: January 10, 2017, 10:07:03 PM »
A tariff does not make Mexico pay for the wall. It just raises prices on Mexican goods for consumers. The entire point was to avoid the cost of the wall being offloaded onto Americans. Not to mention that at the rate he'd have to raise tariffs, American consumers will probably just look to other sources for goods, eliminating tariffs as a source of income for the wall.
I'm not trying to argue that Trump is right (I'm not at all keen on the whole wall idea), merely that he already presented his plan, and that the plan never suggested they'd pay upfront.

For what it's worth, here's the plan in its entirety (and we can verify that it's been around for months. It consists of making Mexican products uncompetitive on the US market, plus some interesting attempts at extortion.
« Last Edit: January 10, 2017, 10:11:10 PM by SexWarrior »
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Re: Trump
« Reply #129 on: January 10, 2017, 10:17:26 PM »
A tariff does not make Mexico pay for the wall. It just raises prices on Mexican goods for consumers. The entire point was to avoid the cost of the wall being offloaded onto Americans. Not to mention that at the rate he'd have to raise tariffs, American consumers will probably just look to other sources for goods, eliminating tariffs as a source of income for the wall.
I'm not trying to argue that Trump is right (I'm not at all keen on the whole wall idea), merely that he already presented his plan, and that the plan never suggested they'd pay upfront.

For what it's worth, here's the plan in its entirety (and we can verify that it's been around for months. It consists of making Mexican products uncompetitive on the US market, plus some interesting attempts at extortion.

Quote
On day 3 tell Mexico that if the Mexican government will contribute the funds needed to the United States to pay for the wall, the Trump Administration will
not promulgate the final rule, and the regulation will not go into effect.


It certainly sounds like his plan was for Mexico to pay upfront. He said he would seek for the funds for the wall from Mexico on day 3, not at some indeterminate time in the future through indirect means.

Mexico paying for the wall was a nice campaign promise, but it will never happen.

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Offline Pete Svarrior

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Re: Trump
« Reply #130 on: January 10, 2017, 10:56:51 PM »
It certainly sounds like his plan was for Mexico to pay upfront. He said he would seek for the funds for the wall from Mexico on day 3, not at some indeterminate time in the future through indirect means.
Hm, fair enough, I concede that it can be interpreted that way. That part was missing from his speeches on the subject.
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Offline Lord Dave

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Re: Trump
« Reply #131 on: January 10, 2017, 11:29:05 PM »
So remember folks, Trump will buy a wall first then figure out if Mexico will pay for it later.
But he's made it clear ages ago how they're gonna pay for it - through trade tariffs. What, in your opinion, is left for him to figure out?

I'm ok with that but he didn't make it clear.
Also, NAFTA kinda makes that impossible, doesn't it?  He'd have to remove NAFTA first.

It's kind of a "Mexico will pay for it indirectly and only if I do this other step which may cause Mexico to not be able to pay for it anyway if they stop trading with us."  It's self defeating.  Worse yet, by damaging Mexico's economy, he'll only make drugs and illegal immigration more common as people turn to drug running and border hopping for a better life.  In essence, he'll cause the very things his wall is meant to protect.

And much like The Wall of Life in Pacific Rim... it'll take years to build and not work.
If you are going to DebOOonK an expert then you have to at least provide a source with credentials of equal or greater relevance. Even then, it merely shows that some experts disagree with each other.

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Offline Pete Svarrior

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Re: Trump
« Reply #132 on: January 10, 2017, 11:38:08 PM »
Also, NAFTA kinda makes that impossible, doesn't it?  He'd have to remove NAFTA first.
Also part of his promises. Again, not saying that it's a good idea or a viable idea, but yeah.
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Offline Lord Dave

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Re: Trump
« Reply #133 on: January 10, 2017, 11:59:14 PM »
Also, NAFTA kinda makes that impossible, doesn't it?  He'd have to remove NAFTA first.
Also part of his promises. Again, not saying that it's a good idea or a viable idea, but yeah.
Yeah, I know.  The worst trade deal ever, second only to the TTP, of course.
If you are going to DebOOonK an expert then you have to at least provide a source with credentials of equal or greater relevance. Even then, it merely shows that some experts disagree with each other.

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Offline Lord Dave

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Re: Trump
« Reply #134 on: January 11, 2017, 03:40:22 PM »
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-cites-kremlin-statement-to-deny-reports-of-russia-ties-asks-if-we-are-living-in-nazi-germany/2017/01/11/a710f2b4-d777-11e6-b8b2-cb5164beba6b_story.html?utm_term=.276477d4ff44

Summary:
Trump's proof that Russia doesn't have blackmail(or any link) material is that Russia says they don't have blackmail material.

Time is agreed.
http://time.com/4433880/donald-trump-ties-to-russia/

Also, he invokes goodwin's law.


edit - Oh and his Secretary of State pick calls Russia an adversary and agrees that Russia is run by someone close to a dictator.  So very different from what Trump says. 
« Last Edit: January 11, 2017, 04:08:07 PM by Lord Dave »
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Offline Pete Svarrior

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Re: Trump
« Reply #135 on: January 11, 2017, 04:11:29 PM »
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-cites-kremlin-statement-to-deny-reports-of-russia-ties-asks-if-we-are-living-in-nazi-germany/2017/01/11/a710f2b4-d777-11e6-b8b2-cb5164beba6b_story.html?utm_term=.276477d4ff44

Summary:
Trump's proof that Russia doesn't have blackmail(or any link) material is that Russia says they don't have blackmail material.

Time is agreed.
http://time.com/4433880/donald-trump-ties-to-russia/

Also, he invokes goodwin's law.
Sorry, slow down for a moment. Let's examine the original report he's disputing.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-deep-ties-to-russia

You are looking at a document, which, even by the admission of the very people who brought it to the general public, is both unverified and unverifiable. A document produced by an individual paid by Democrats, which is known to contain multiple factual errors.

But suddenly it's Trump's job to prove that these allegations are false.
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Offline Lord Dave

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Re: Trump
« Reply #136 on: January 11, 2017, 04:34:50 PM »
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-cites-kremlin-statement-to-deny-reports-of-russia-ties-asks-if-we-are-living-in-nazi-germany/2017/01/11/a710f2b4-d777-11e6-b8b2-cb5164beba6b_story.html?utm_term=.276477d4ff44

Summary:
Trump's proof that Russia doesn't have blackmail(or any link) material is that Russia says they don't have blackmail material.

Time is agreed.
http://time.com/4433880/donald-trump-ties-to-russia/

Also, he invokes goodwin's law.
Sorry, slow down for a moment. Let's examine the original report he's disputing.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-deep-ties-to-russia

You are looking at a document, which, even by the admission of the very people who brought it to the general public, is both unverified and unverifiable. A document produced by an individual paid by Democrats, which is known to contain multiple factual errors.

But suddenly it's Trump's job to prove that these allegations are false.
Oh no.
I'm fully aware that it's not substantiated.  I'm making the point that his defense is "Russia said so" instead of something more definitive.

I'm watching his press conference and 2 people condemned it and then Trump came on and condemned it all within the first 10 minutes.



But in fairness, Trump spent years demanding Obama prove he was a citizen, even after Obama did.
If you are going to DebOOonK an expert then you have to at least provide a source with credentials of equal or greater relevance. Even then, it merely shows that some experts disagree with each other.

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Offline Pete Svarrior

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Re: Trump
« Reply #137 on: January 11, 2017, 04:42:41 PM »
I'm making the point that his defense is "Russia said so" instead of something more definitive.
Explain to me: How would he dismiss these unverifiable claims, then?

Let's say I told you that Blanko has Parsifal's nudes and is just twitching to post them on FES. Blanko comes here and says "wtf, that's not true". Parsifal comes here and says "wtf, that's not true". What other defence can they put up? Surely it's down to me to prove my allegation?

But in fairness, Trump spent years demanding Obama prove he was a citizen, even after Obama did.
Yes, that was hilarious. Especially when in 2012 he reaaaaaally wanted to donate money to charity but Obama stopped him.

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Re: Trump
« Reply #138 on: January 11, 2017, 04:42:54 PM »
Sorry, slow down for a moment. Let's examine the original report he's disputing.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-deep-ties-to-russia

You are looking at a document, which, even by the admission of the very people who brought it to the general public, is both unverified and unverifiable. A document produced by an individual paid by Democrats, which is known to contain multiple factual errors.

But suddenly it's Trump's job to prove that these allegations are false.

Buzzfeed needs to stick to the hard hitting stories that people care about, like 13 Potatoes That Look Like Channing Tatum

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Offline Lord Dave

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Re: Trump
« Reply #139 on: January 11, 2017, 04:53:06 PM »
I'm making the point that his defense is "Russia said so" instead of something more definitive.
Explain to me: How would he dismiss these unverifiable claims, then?

Let's say I told you that Blanko has Parsifal's nudes and is just twitching to post them on FES. Blanko comes here and says "wtf, that's not true". Parsifal comes here and says "wtf, that's not true". What other defence can they put up? Surely it's down to me to prove my allegation?
I'm not saying there IS a defense nor that it's his to defend, but in your example, if Parsifal said "That's not True!  Just trust Blanko, whose is very untrustworthy." it just sounds weird.  I mean, you can't point to the person who is accused of having the compromising material and say "Trust what they say."
If you are going to DebOOonK an expert then you have to at least provide a source with credentials of equal or greater relevance. Even then, it merely shows that some experts disagree with each other.