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SubjectRe: [patch] PIII/Katmai & FXSAVE support, disable serial-#, 2.2.2
On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Nicholas J. Leon wrote:

> On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Mailing lists wrote:
>
> # So it's impossible to include such possibility to web browser, but
> # with PIII psn such possibilities became real. And I never buy PIII until
> # psn will be removed at all. I don't thrust Intel. I don't thrust that
> # once disabled this psn possibility can't be reenabled in some (may be
> # undocumented) way.
>
> But whats the big deal? Consider this scenerio: you walk into CompUSA. You
> buy a CPU. You pay cash. You go home and install it.
>
> Whats the big deal? Theres still no connection between you and your serial
> number.
>

When I was a young kid, everybody was worried about the Russians.
The whole country was watching each other to see if neighbors had
any "Communist characteristics".

I thought that this was amusing. I had access to a Teletype-500
at school that was not connected to anything. However, by mucking
around, I could make it print a random assemblage of characters.

I took a printout and made a "thermal" copy (we didn't have Xerox
then). I then made a copy of the copy.

Then I went to a store and bought a box of envelopes. I took one
out of the center, was careful not to touch it, and threw the
rest away.

I addressed the envelope to Radio Moscow, Moscow, USSR, using a
new ball-point pen which I also threw away. Without touching
anything, I inserted the "encrypted" message, added a stamp and
mailed it from a mailbox in a city 30 miles from where I lived.

Within two weeks, the FBI visited me at school. Although I never
admitted nor told anybody anything, they knew everything. They
even knew how I got to the city 30 miles from where I lived.

Those were the days in which J. Edgar Hoover kept a file on
practically every man, women, and child. These records were kept
by humans. Now they use computers.

If you don't want somebody to know what you are typing on your
computer, turn off the power. The only thing that keeps you
safe from prying eyes is statistics. There are just too many
persons typing at computers at any one time, so your pecking
away is mere noise in a sea of information.

It takes only a single photo-diode, a lens, and a video amplifier
for me to duplicate on my computer screen everything that's on
your screen if ANY light from your terminal gets outside your
home or office. I'm not talking about being able to see the face
of the terminal. All you need is (even defused) light from the
terminal screen. This is because, in the process of writing pixels,
the horiz/vert scanning does this in a very ordered way.

The light coming from the terminal is modulated (flickers) in this
ordered way. The tiny pixels are contained in the high-frequency
information, these bursts of high frequencies lie between the
horizontal sweep-rate, and the groups of horizontal lines lie
between the vertical refresh. Putting this information back together
is trivial, even for a High School student. Any HAM Radio Operator
knows how to do it.

Modem connections are often monitored by "Long Lines" the inter-
city department of your telephone company. Everything you do can
be seen at the Central Office if somebody bothered to hook up
available equipment.

The US Department of Energy monitors Internet communications
supposably to protect the United States nuclear power plants.
The main facility is is Kansas City, Kansas (not MO). Keyword
searches are automatic. If something seems "strange" the data
are saved and a human can look at it.

The point is that serial numbers inside chips mean nothing. The
idea was to be able to write Internet-access-blocker programs
that would keep kids out of porn sites by having parents
register their kids computers. Nothing in the computer could
be bypassed by kids, which are getting smarter all the while.
The actual protection would occur at the porn site. It is
the actual computer that would be denied access rather than
some local "trap" program that could be readily bypassed.

If any government wanted to be bothered to watch your activities
all the tools already exist. You can help keep the guys and
gals in Kansas City employed by putting "grep bait" in your
signature file.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
Penguin : Linux version 2.2.2 on an i686 machine (400.59 BogoMips).
Warning : It's hard to remain at the trailing edge of technology.
Bait : plutonium Cuba president assassination killed Iran Honduras
nitrate tritium toluene ammonium subway 747 pits iodine critical nuclear



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