I am pleased to announce the project I have been working on the last couple of months is ready for beta testing.

DoxBox: Open-Source disk encryption for Windows. Think Truecrypt++

Features

• Easy to use, with a 'wizard' for creating new 'DoxBoxes'.
• Full transparent encryption, DoxBoxes appear as removable disks in Windows Explorer.
• Explorer mode lets you access DoxBoxes when you don't have admin permissions.
• Compatible with Linux encryption, Cryptoloop "losetup", dm-crypt, and LUKS. Linux shell scripts support deniable encryption on Linux.
• Supports smartcards and security tokens.
• Encrypted DoxBoxes can be a file, a partition, or a whole disk.
• Opens legacy volumes created with FreeOTFE
• Runs on Windows Vista onwards (see note below for 64 bit versions).
• Supports numerous hash (including SHA-512, RIPEMD-320, Tiger) and encryption algorithms (Including AES, Twofish, and Serpent) in several modes (CBC, LRW, and XTS), giving more options than any other disk encryption software.
• Optional 'key files' let you use a thumb-drive as a key.
• Portable mode doesn't need to be installed and leaves little trace on 3rd party PCs (administrator rights needed).
• Deniable encryption protects you from 'rubber hose cryptography'.

Please note this is a Beta version with some known limitations. Particularly in Portable mode an extra step is needed on 64 bit Windows to avoid the error message "Windows requires a digitally signed driver".

links
Download
Download DoxBox Portable
GitHub Page
Download page
Release notes and announcement
Please repost to whichever forums you think apt.

s'qute is now no-script friendly, it's possible to use all the features of the site (including posting anonymously) with JavaScript off, and it's perfectly usable in links.

Leaving JS on will make some pages easier to use, e.g. loading comments in the background.
The bot defences have had to be reworked, so you may see more captchas than before.

A thread on comp.misc has drifted into talking about Nicholas Negroponte's vision for "software agents":

This first reported on comp.misc.

From the "already under your tinfoil hat" dept.

MIT technology review reports on a military funded $70 million program to try to develop brain implants able to regulate emotions in the mentally ill.

Researcher Jose Carmena has worked for years training macaque monkeys to move computer cursors and robotic limbs with their minds. He does so by implanting electrodes into their brains to monitor neural activity. Now, as part of a sweeping $70 million program funded by the U.S. military, Carmena has a new goal: to use brain implants to read, and then control, the emotions of mentally ill people.

This week the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, awarded two large contracts to Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of California, San Francisco, to create electrical brain implants capable of treating seven psychiatric conditions, including addiction, depression, and borderline personality disorder.

There couldnt possibly be any other use for this technology, could there?

This story first reported on comp.misc:

Bruce Schneier has comments on a talk[pdf], described as "jarring" and "riveting", given by the mammal biologist and SF author Peter Watts based on his post about the "Transparent Society".

From the talk:

Back in 2003 I attended a talk by David Brin, ... People are primates, Brin reminded us; our leaders are Alphas. Trying to ban government surveillance would be like poking a silverback gorilla with a stick. âoeBut just maybe,â he allowed, âoetheyâ(TM)ll let us look back.â

Dude, thought I, do you have the first fucking clue how silverbacks react to eye contact?

...

Alpha primates regard looking back as a challenge. Anyone who's been beaten up for recording video of police beating people up knows this; anyone whose cellphone has been smashed, or returned with the SIM card mysteriously erased. Document animal abuse in any of the US states with so-called 'Ag-gag' laws on their books and youâ(TM)re not only breaking the law, youâ(TM)re a âoedomestic terroristâ

...

Natural selection favours the paranoid, those who run away. ...The link between surveillance and fear is a lot deeper than the average post-privacy advocate is willing to admit.

...

A lot of critics say blanket surveillance treats us like criminals, but it's deeper than that. It makes us feel like prey. Weâ(TM)re seeing stalking behaviour in the biological sense

Instead of 'looking back', Mr Watts recommends cloud services offer a "scorched earth" guarantee:

âoeHereâ(TM)s a wild thought: Donâ(TM)t just offer data protection, especially since you canâ(TM)t guarantee it,â he said. âoeOffer data destruction instead. Iâ(TM)m not talking about having the lions lie down with the lambs. Itâ(TM)s more Darwinian than that, when the lions come, you burn down your chunk of the veldt before the lions get their hands on it. A scorched-earth society.â

He is aware this would be illegal (âoethe cats get to write the laws for the mice,â as he says) , but

âoeIt appeals to those of us who feel powerless and screwed over and want to take back some measure of control of our lives, even if it costs us. I personally donâ(TM)t use cloud-based services, but Iâ(TM)d sign up for a scorched-earth service purely for political support.â

Another write up of the talk is here

This story first reported on comp.misc
GCHQ is whining to the PM that Google and Facebook are now encrypting traffic between their servers.
As a reddit commenter explains, this only affects their mass surveillance, they can still get a court order for data on specific suspects.
The Daily Mail has a typically inflammatory headline "Internet giants including Google and Facebook are shielding terrorists and paedophiles".
The comments on the daily mail site are more insightful, among the highest rated comments:

"shielding terrorists and paedophiles"? Er no. These demands are not for this purpose though are they? These endless demands to intrude on the privacy of people are all about control and agencies hate any control over their ability [to] abuse it. We already have laws allowing agencies to plant bugs and spy on people that were supposedly designed to be used only with terrorists, only to discover that the local councils are using them to spy on people with a rogue pets, late library books or untidy gardens. This man can dream on if he thinks the people will be happy with the Big Brother society he wants.

In other words they are trying to pave the way for the government to control the Internet by using the same old scare tactics, peadophiles and terrorists...

The trouble is the government want blanket surveillance of the all communications; this and the fact that they use their powers for such trivial matters as name calling & so called "hate crimes" means that their current stance and statement holds no water for the majority of us. They got caught out and we just don't trust them any more. If they want data, let them get a court order for each person and instance and let them have to prove that it is necessary to collect evidence for terrorism or serious criminal offences.

It looks like the search engines are finally growing a pair and telling the various agencies where they can stick their unreasonable intrusions into the British people's privacy. It's only because of the whistle blowers mentioned that the rest of us know how invasive and unjustifiable these agencies abuses of power have been and how dishonest they've been regarding who they say they're after and why. Bring on quantum encryption, it's time to shut these agencies out for good.

I find the mainstream reaction to this interesting. It looks like people are finally picking up on what hactivists have been saying for years.

Reported on squte.com in the comp.misc.news.internet group. There's a bizarre court record of a cross examination here

Q: Do you have a separate business that you have incorporated ... or is this something you do just in your own name?

A. Sir, I had a vision back when I was a child that nobody else in this world could recognize but myself.

I know where Osama bin Laden is today.
I know the cure for SARS today. I know many, many things in this world that other people don't recognize and don't understand and don't know.

Simply because I follow the chicken.
That sounds stupid, it sounds unrealistic to - you think it's childish. But the national bird is the eagle. But the international bird is the chicken. The chicken will carry you down the darkest alleys of the world safely. The eagle will take you down that road by yourself to get you killed. The chicken will take you down there and sleep you in the attics of Muslims. It'll sleep you in the hotels of kings and the palaces of kings and queens. I've lived with the mayor of Djibouti, I've lived with the daughter of the advisor of the president of the Philippines. I've been to Guadalajara, I've been, if I set here, I would hate to make him have to write the places that I've been for the chickens ...

COURT REPORTER: wait a minute

A - you know what I'm saying. I've been around the world six times on the back of a chicken. I ...

Q. Hang on Mr Pittman, I think you're losing the court reporter with some of this stuff.

COURT REPORTER: I didn't get none of that.

found here

I have made some updates to the site. As well as minor bug fixes and UI changes, the big change is 'notifications'. You can 'subscribe' to posts in particular groups, or to other posters, tags, etc and be emailed when there are new posts. As always, I am relying on you to tell me of any bugs you find. If I don't know about it, I can't fix it!
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