Some folks may be interested in contributing to a new Linux magazine. We received the following announcement:
"My name is James Colannino and a couple weeks ago I started up a new Linux Online magazine called, 'The New Penguin Times.'
The URL is: www.newpenguintimes.com. I'm seeking any articles or tutorials
about Linux, but especially right now I'm searching for articles on programming in a Linux environment, both scripted languages and compiled
ones.
"
Your Webmaster apologizes for a rather clumsy job of presenting Will Wilgus's notes which he provided after the December 17th
meeting. Will's formatting codes confused our mark-up causing several words and even sentences to disappear, taking the sense
along with them. Also a few links were broken, especially to the slides. All of this has hopefully been repaired, and you are
urged to have another look at this rich collection of stuff on "Encryption"
Joe Bruno opened the meeting by showing his ample torso graced with the red t-shirt of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and making one more plea for support to head off the
Hollywood suits, Software Moguls, and Publishers who are trying to lock up copyright and "Digital Rights Management"
in ways that could destroy the Open Source Movement, Linux, and the Internet. Maybe at the next meeting others will have joined him and Charles
in the fight for our freedom!
THE MEETING was a free-ranging Q&A session focussed loosely on encryption and security, often remote from specific Linux issues,
but of concern to us all. In the "it could happen here" category, the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were recalled as
examples of what could happen when the government feared internal and external enemies. Thomas Jefferson killed the worst of them,
but the issue was re-visited in 1942 with the (mal)treatment of Japanese aliens AND citizens. Part of this was sparked by e-mail
some have received warning "Did you know...that the government and police are installing black boxes in ISPs to record your
Internet surfing and downloads for evidence?" Will said it was true, but the software offered would not help. Subpoena's are
required to obtain this information from ISP's, but with a court order and seizure of their or our hard drives, even wipe-deleted
material could be recovered.
People were surprised to learn that over-writing or re-formatting does not prevent a determined high-tech investigation to recover data,
even after more than eight over-writes. Analogous to the encryption issue, it all depends on how badly the data is wanted.
This led to discussion of traffic analysis, where even encrypted data can tell authorities something if movement of encrypted data
between user "A" and user "B" falls into a pattern that can link conspirators, etc. So the next step is anonymous re-mailers. These
services mask your identity by re-sending your e-mail with a dummy address. Problem here is the integrity and guts of the re-mailer who
holds the key to your traffic. One of the earliest, whom some of us remember, was penet.fi. This guy was allowing users to post
anti-Scientology stuff anonymously on Web Sites. The Scientologists (from the US!) sued him, and the Finnish Government cooperated
to the point of demanding he disclose the links. To his credit, Penet refused, but had to shut down his operation.
In England today, to refuse to give the government the key to encrypted material they want to read is itself a criminal offense!
It was pointed out that Wireless keyboards are a gold-fish bowl in which authorities and other snoops can fish. Will said a game
some techies play is driving through a neighborhood with appropriate detection equipment and finding a computer broadcasting its
keystrokes to the world. As the hobo's during the depression marked houses which gave sandwiches, these guys "wire-chalk" the curb
for the pleasure of their fellow-snoops. Privacy just isn't what it used to be!
There was discussion too technical to report on setting up RAID drives in your PC (sounded like Windows to me), the technique for
adding Linux to a multiboot laptop, copying an operating system from one drive to a larger one (possible, but not easy), and other
points your recorder cannot remember.
Great meeting! Better to be there than to read about it.
