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Topics - Quietguy

#1
Gil, I thought this might be of interest to you because of where the hosting service for this forum is located.  A week or so ago there was an article on Brian Krebs' blog about inconsistencies in court documents filed in the Silk Road drug bazaar case.  The FBI claimed it identified the server location because of a Captcha screen leaking the true IP of the server, bypassing the Tor hidden services the main site used.  Lawyers for the Silk Road defendant, as well as some security experts, threw the BS flag on that claim.  Krebs explained the background in this post:
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/10/silk-road-lawyers-poke-holes-in-fbis-story/

Today the Naked Security blog from Sophos had information on the government's response to the legal challenge.  Among other things, they said:

QuoteThe server was located offshore in a data center in Reykjavik, Iceland. Once the FBI figured out its location, it was Reykjavik police who accessed and secretly copied the data on it.

There is a lot more, but the bottom line is the Feds are claiming 4th Amendment protections don't apply for several reasons - including the server being located in Iceland, so the lack of a search warrant didn't matter.

Here's the full article:
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/10/10/fbis-warrantless-hack-of-silk-road-was-legal-prosecutors-claim/

Of course, the Silk Road was an extremely high value target for prosecution, but I thought the logic behind the FBI's thinking might be of interest to people interested in security topics.

Wally
#2
General Discussion / Hey RadioRay...
January 18, 2014, 09:05:50 PM
Congratulations on your promotion.  See, I told you if you did all your homework, didn't stay out late and ate your cereal you would make it.

Wally
#3
Digital Modes / Sometimes it still surprises me
June 01, 2013, 10:40:05 PM
Several years ago we didn't have suitable backup email in case our DSL service went down, which it could do with a good storm here in more or less rural southwest Washington state.  At that time cellular service available at our property was limited to voice only.  A good friend introduced me to the magic of email over HF radio and the Winlink system.  That was before Winmor, RMSExpress and other sound card solutions were available, so I bought a Kantronics KAM+ to start out.  It worked extremely well and I had backup email plus I was able to trade peer-to-peer messages with friends.  It was great, but it was slow with only Pactor 1.  Then, many of the Winlink 2000 stations stopped accepting P1 connections because of the slow throughput.  I gulped, choked a little, and bought an SCS modem so I could do Pactor 3 and play with the big kids.  It was fun... one day I went to my shack and had a direct, peer-to-peer, no commercial infrastructure needed jpeg photo of my friend's new sailboat.  How cool was that?  He asked me to post it to a forum where we hung out, but my radio computer didn't/doesn't have internet access, so I used WL2K to forward it to my normal email account and posted it from my main computer.

I'm embarrassed to admit I have let my simple wire antenna deteriorate markedly in the last few years.  All that is left of it is the 135 feet 80m part of a 80/40/20 fan dipole The other day I started checking to see how much capability I still have and after doing some testing I left the station sitting on a 20m WL2K frequency.  Later I saw where my station had monitored a WL2K station in Florida - and that startled me.  So today I thought I would give him a try... I was hearing faint Pactor sounds in the noise and figured there wasn't much chance of connecting, but what the heck.  I was amazed when our stations linked almost immediately when I initiated the connection.  His signal was very strong and we had an excellent connection that would have supported pretty decent throughput.  This was about 1830 PDT (2130 EDT or 0130Z) on 20m.

I mention this for a couple of reasons... one is that I didn't think I had much chance of making that connection given today's conditions, but it turned out to be a slam dunk.  It didn't cost anything to try, so why not give it a shot?  Sometimes a quiet band does not mean it is dead.  Another reason is just to plug email over radio as another useful tool in the communications toolbox.  If my SCS modem were to die today I would have lower cost options for replacing it - RMSExpress/Winmor are viable methods now that were not available when I got stated.

Now I need to get a replacement antenna in the air.

Wally
#4
Is the NTSD net an ARRL function?  I see some information is on the ARRL website, but a lot of the details are on a private site. 

http://home.earthlink.net/~bscottmd/n_t_s_d.htm

I was wondering if NTSD is an extension of ARRL's old NTS, or if it is a separate function.

Thanks,
Wally
#5
General Discussion / New guy checking in...
April 13, 2013, 08:36:26 PM
I've been lurking for a few days after signing up and decided I should officially check in.  I found the forum when another member (an old friend) sent me a reference to it.  The place looked reasonably coherent so I thought I would sign up and stick around a little while.

I'm retired and live in a more or less rural area in the wet side of Washington state.  Although I'm an Extra class operator I haven't been doing a lot of radio stuff lately other than participating in our local ACS group.  The QRP/CW discussions between Gil and Radioray have piqued my interest (again) along those lines and reminded me of some unfinished projects I need to finish.  I passed the 5 wpm test when it was still required for General but I made the mistake of not getting on the air with CW, so now I need to start over.

Anyway, hello to the forum.
Wally