The Three Signs - Book 4 - LisaChapter 14: Endings free porn video

After breakfast, I thought I would check my email; Alonzo would have had time to respond to my email about the ASIO backdoor request. I connected to the PDP 11/70 at Uni, and just as I had thought, there was a reply waiting for me.

Will,
All very interesting what you had to say about your country’s spy agency wanting a back door into your router. Now, all of this is purely hypothetical, of course, as I cannot confirm or deny what any of our three-letter agencies may or may not have requested from us in that regard. A number of us are looking into various encryption methods, working out ways to encrypt the data content of every packet on a particular link. The problem with that is the US government has banned the ‘export’ of certain categories of military technology; things like nuclear weapons, but included in that is high level encryption. I guess our spy agencies don’t want other countries having encryption that they can’t crack. One technique that I have been looking at is called Steganography – unlike encryption, where you take a message and transform the message with a code, this involved hiding the message in some other message or file. The reason behind my interest in that is an encrypted message attracts attention by the very fact that it is encrypted – it’s quite obvious that there’s something the sender wanted to keep hidden. But with steganography, it’s not obvious there’s another message hidden within another, innocuous message. I will keep you in the loop on any developments here. On a completely different topic; there is an Australian rock group performing here later this month, the name seems familiar – “The Dyvinyls”. Haven’t you played with them on occasions? Let me know if you think they are worth seeing.

Regards,
Alonzo

All very interesting, I though; not with what he said, but what he DIDN’T say. Clearly, the CIA, NSA or any of the myriad of spy groups in the US had initiated the work on the router backdoor requirement. But the encryption information was interesting; I wasn’t aware of the US restrictions on the export of encryption technology. How could they prevent algorithms from being transferred to other countries? That was like King Canute trying to hold back the tide; not just futile, but showing a level of ignorance about the way they were trying to control things.

He had emailed me some copies of some research articles; I would print them off and read them at work next week. Since I would be finishing my thesis with the dissertation in June, I was looking for something to turn my attention to. While there were other developments in the world of the internet that were happening and had piqued my interest, encryption and steganography might be an interesting area of research for the future.

There wasn’t anything we had planned for the day; later on in the afternoon we would head up to the Antler for the evening’s gig; but until then I just lazed around the house. I guess I could have worked on the thesis report; at the moment I was stuck, working out how to document the testing that had been done on the EGP software. Writer’s block, I guess. Next week I would refer back to my notes and the thesis journal to make sure I didn’t miss any of the important details.

Since I had spent the previous night with Lisa, and Georgina had shared Fiona’s bed, in the middle of the morning Georgina managed to convince me to spend an hour or two in bed with her. Actually, I didn’t take all that much convincing; she said something like “I would like you to take me to bed and fuck me senseless”, and I replied along the lines of “sounds like a good idea to me”. I didn’t actually ‘fuck her senseless’, but we did make love for a solid two hours, and we were both lathered in perspiration and completely exhausted by the end of that time.

Tomorrow Georgina would be coming to the sailing club with Lisa and me; Celia Craig wanted to talk to her about some artwork for a building design proposal that she and Ian were working on. Meanwhile she was talking about the work she would need to start doing for the museum show on James Barnet; she had a list of locations and buildings that she wanted to add to her portfolio.

We spent the afternoon talking about the evening’s gig; how we would transition from one song to another, lighting effects, and refining our stage choreography. Lisa worked with Allison and Tracie to make our movements look organized and fluid; and somehow making me look less like a ‘spastic penguin’, as Lisa would often say. They had an uphill battle to teach me how to make my movements look fluid and natural; but their advice and suggestions certainly made our stage performances look much better. Eventually it was time to load up, and drive to Narrabeen.

Just as I had predicted, there was a row of young women up next to the stage, ready to show us their ‘beautiful buttocks’ all through the performance. Right from the opening number – ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ – about ten of them pulled up their skirts, removed their underwear, and mooned us. Several pairs of panties were thrown onto the stage; and throughout the evening they continued flashing their breasts, pussies and backsides at us. At least they seemed to be enjoying the music, which was the main thing. We also enjoyed playing; it was good evening all round.

Sailing on Sunday was the final race of the Quartet Bowl series; Lisa managed to helm us to another win across the line. When we were back in the clubhouse, Georgina showed us some sketches that she had made with Celia; Celia was very impressed with the work.

“Ian, all I had to do was describe the style of house, and she was able to draw a pretty close representation; she could depict the landscaping, all from her mind, based on a few suggestions I made,” she said. “I think we need to use her in our practice, neither of us have the artistic ability to produce drawings of this quality.”

“Maybe we can get her started on that proposal for the house in Patrick Street, North Willoughby,” Ian said. “Are you free any time this week, Georgina? I was hoping to have the proposal finished and to the client next weekend, so if you are able to work with us...”

She worked out times during the week when she would be able to get to their office to produce some drawings; she would start on Monday evening, and plan on having some drafts available on Wednesday night to show them what she had done.

On the way back home, Georgina was excited about the work she would be doing for Ian and Celia.

“I never thought that I would be able to get paid for my drawings,” she said. “I started drawing just to entertain myself, and now, through your contacts Will, I’m getting an exhibition and a paying job. I’m really in your debt.”

“I’m just happy to help, Georgina, I like it when I see real talent get the recognition it deserves. Both Ian and Celia know a lot about heritage architecture and garden layout, all they need is someone who can turn their designs and vision into pictures.”

“Yes, Celia showed me their architectural drawings and plans, but many people can’t picture what those plans will look like once they have been built. I guess I’ve studied so many architects’ drawings and plans that I can see the building in my head, and get that image down on paper.”

Once we were home, Lisa and I had a shower to wash the salt from our hair and bodies, then it was time for dinner, watching ‘Countdown’, and eventually to bed.

I dropped Georgina off at her work in the City on my way to the university; after giving the morning’s Computing I lecture, I was deep in writing up more of my thesis when I was interrupted by the phone.

“Will? Gareth Evans here,” the voice on the end of the line said. “Thanks for that heads up on the ASIO investigation into that AARNET development project; I’ve knocked that on its head. There’s no way the Government is going to get into the mass surveillance of anyone, certainly not vacuuming up a crap load of computer communications. As you said, what they were proposing was completely illegal under the current laws on wiretapping and interception of communications, and I told the Director-General of ASIO that I expected a higher standard from his agency.”

“Thanks for looking into that,” I replied. “The whole thing sounded pretty dodgy to me; that’s why I contacted you.”

“No, thank you for that, some of these ASIO agents really don’t understand the limitations on their powers. Now, are you likely to be at the next Federal Conference? I’d like to catch up with you if we get the chance.”

“No, I’m not connected enough to go to even the State Conference, never mind the federal one.”

“Pity; the party needs more young, smart people like you in policy making roles. Hang on, I’ve got to go, some problem has blown up with the bloody Franklin Dam project. Damn Tasmanians! I’ll speak with you later, Comrade.”

“Later, thanks, Comrade,” I said, just before he hung up the phone.

Well, that seemed to have put that issue to bed. I wondered what the issue with the Franklin Dam project was. The Government has campaigned strongly on using Federal powers to stop the construction of the (unnecessary) hydroelectric dam on the Franklin River, in the pristine wilderness area of South-West Tasmania. It seemed that the only people in favour of the dam was the Tasmanian State Government and the state Hydro-Electric Commission. The State Government was posturing that they would fight any attempt to stop the construction all the way to the High Court.

I finished off the section I was writing for my thesis; and decided to take a break from that and clear my head. I had printed off some of the material Alonzo had sent to me regarding data encryption and security; the one paper that interested me was not about encryption per se; but a process of obscuring secure information, called ‘Steganography’. The logic behind it was similar to how one can enhance the physical security of buildings. The article gave an example of how not to draw attention to a building that might contain valuable or secure information. If a building is surrounded by a high wire fence, barbed wire, bars on windows, security cameras and all of that security stuff; doing that will send the message that “there is something in here that I don’t want you to access.” On the other hand, there are building techniques, glass windows referred to as ‘bandit-proof glass’, which looks just like a normal window, and that does draw any attention to the location.

The idea is not to draw attention to a message; if a message is encrypted, then there is clearly something special within that message that you don’t want other people to be able to see. The trick is to somehow embed the message you want hidden into some other, innocuous message, and thus the overall message doesn’t attract any interest. One of the methods suggested was using the least significant bit of an encoded audio file; before decoding the audio file back into the actual signal, that bit would be stripped from the data stream, and that would be the resulting message. Of course, since the secret message was encoded into the least significant bits of each byte, it there was no need to strip that off before playing back the audio, as this would only appear as some random background noise on the signal, if it was detectable to the human ear at all.

I looked back over the notes from my previous subjects on digital communications and signal analysis, and encoding and decoding a signal using such techniques would be relatively simple. I looked at the program for a simple codec I had written last year, modifying that to insert and extract a hidden message wouldn’t be that complex. The trick would be to do it without significantly compromising the audio quality of the source signal. I set that to one side; it would make an interesting project to work on, once I had the thesis out of the way.

The idea of tweaking the collective noses of ASIO, and somehow making it impossible to read messages, even if they did continue with their project of tapping into ARPANET appealed to me. What Alonzo told me that some people were working on, the real-time encryption of the data links would be the ideal way to do; but the chance of getting any decent encryption software through the US embargo on ‘weapons exports’ would be difficult. Plus, once ASIO saw that all of the data was encrypted, they would somehow demand the keys to decrypt the data. And, it would draw attention to the fact that there were some messages that the senders didn’t want the authorities to see. It would be far better to make use of steganography to obscure those messages which the sender thought were sensitive. I was pretty sure I could come up with a useful tool to embed a sensitive file of data in some other file – most likely a digitized audio stream. It seemed to me that ASIO, and other ‘security’ agencies, inordinately targeted left-wing groups. They were still looking for ‘reds under the bed’, and anyone that took a less than ‘official government line’ on subject such as the Middle East, nuclear weapons, de-colonization, anti-apartheid they were immediately suspected of being dangerous subversives.

Probably something I should put on hold until my position at the university was more secure; no point in ‘poking the bear’ to the point where I lost my job over it. The other question would be how to publicise the availability of the steganography software, without alerting the spy agencies that such a tool was out there and available. I then had some worrying thoughts; what if someone took a program I had developed, and used it for some bad purposes, like distributing child pornography, or criminal elements used it to keep incriminating financial documents away from the authorities? How responsible should I feel if programs that I developed were used for ‘bad purposes’? Where should I draw the line on the ethics of what I produced? That was far too difficult to deal with at the moment.

That evening, as we watched the ABC news on Channel Two, there was a report from Canberra, how the Federal Attorney General (Senator Gareth Evans, my champion against ASIO) had authorised the Air Force to conduct surveillance flights over the Franklin Dam site in Tasmania, taking photos showing that the work was still proceeding on the construction of the dam. I guess that was the reason why he had to cut his conversation short earlier today; dealing with the fact that the Tasmanian Government was ignoring federal regulations. I could see a High Court challenge in the not too distant future. The Tasmanian Government, and the Federal Opposition both protested about the Government using the RAAF for domestic political purposes. One of the best comments was from Gareth Evans, when asked why he arranged for the Air Force to conduct surveillance flights over the dam site.

“I’ll use the streaker’s defence,” he said. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“How do you think it will go in the High Court?” Lisa asked.

“I think the Federal Government will win,” Mary Beth said. “Gibbs is less of a conservative Chief Justice than Barwick; but as well as Lionel Murphy, there are two others that are guaranteed to support the Federal Government. It will be a close call, but my money is on the Federal Government winning.”

“I hope so,” Fiona said. “I want to get down there and see that wilderness before it gets destroyed and flooded.”

“It would be interesting to go down to Tassie one of these days,” I said. “Take the car ferry across from Melbourne, drive around. I don’t think as a state it’s all that big. Anyway, it was just as well I called Gareth Evans on Friday about ASIO asking me to build that backdoor; he killed the project before the news of the RAAF flights broke.”

“I guess the only back door you are likely to get involved with will be with Georgina,” Lisa said. “I’m sure she will gladly offer it to you if you ask her.”

“Would you really want to do that?” Fiona asked. “Have you done it before?”

“Yes, and yes,” I replied. “No more details than that, but I have done it before.”

“I’ll let Georgina handle any back door activity,” Fiona said, smiling. “I don’t think that’s for me, sorry.”

“No need to apologise to me,” I said. “The rules we have set up mean that we only do what we are comfortable doing. Just because Georgina might want to do something doesn’t mean that I would expect you to do the same thing.”

“I didn’t think you would do that,” she said, ‘try to force one of us to do something that we didn’t want to do.”

I was still no closer to resolving my dilemma on the ethicality (for want of a better word) in developing some steganography software, and the distasteful, or unpleasant uses it might be put to. I kicked around my concerns with Michelle, Claude and David, but was still no closer to having a satisfactory answer.

“You know in the Faculty of Arts, there is the School of History and Philosophy of Science,” Michelle said. “I did one of their subjects last year, all about establishing an ethical framework for decision-making, social responsibility, things like that.”

“Sounds like some radical left wing wank fest!” Claude said.

“It could have been,” Michelle answered, “but the lecturer running it, William Albury, was really cool, pretty logical and practical. I know they run a number of graduate level subjects, you should talk to the guy, Will.”

“Sounds interesting, I’ll give him a call,” I said.

“You do know, Will, that because you are part of the academic staff here, you can pretty much attend any class that’s run, provided you clear it with the lecturer running the class,” Claude said. “You don’t have to be enrolled in a course, you can just go and sit in on the lectures. I’m not sure how that goes for lab stuff, or things in the Faculty of Medicine, but normal subjects, there’s no problems.”

“As if I don’t have enough to occupy my time at the moment!” I said. “But that’s good to know; I’ll give that guy in the Arts Faculty a call.”

I pulled out our copy of the Arts Faculty handbook, and looked through the subject listings for the School of History and Philosophy of Science. This looked like the subject Michelle was referring to; well, the graduate version of it.

62.710G Science, Philosophy and Social Values

Exposition and appraisal of some of the classical ethical theories. Examination of the claims of science to be able to provide a basis for moral judgements. Attempted establishment of an ethical framework which may serve as a basis for decision-making when problems of an ethical nature arise in science. Selected case studies in which decisions as to the most appropriate form of action are evaluated in the light of the ethical framework previously established. The social responsibility in science movement and its problems.

I called Dr Albury, introduced myself, and outlined the problem I was facing. I said I would like to speak to him about guidance in setting an ethical framework for my work, and he suggested I come over to his office later in the day. After my lunch break, I headed up to the Morven Brown building, to the third floor to look for Doctor Albury’s office; I found it without too much difficulty. I knocked on his door, and I heard him say ‘enter’.

Dr Albury’s office was pretty much how I imagined an Arts Faculty lecturer’s office would look; dark wood panelling on the walls, book cases and cabinets overflowing with piles of papers, in fact, every level surface was covered with precarious piles of folders and papers. Dr Albury was tall and thin; a straggly dark brown beard, and he was wearing suspenders holding up his dark brown trousers. I wouldn’t have been surprised if somewhere in his office there was a coat rack holding a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows.

“Bill Albury,” he said, offering me his hand.

“Will Morris,” I replied as I shook his hand.

“Let me clear some of this paperwork,” he said, shifting a small pile from a sofa in the corner of the office, to which he indicated I should sit on.

“Place is a bit of a mess, I’m sorry. One of these days I’ll get in and sort out all of these papers, file them away somewhere. Now, how can I help you? I seem to remember reading something about your research work in a recent ‘Uniken’ magazine, something to do with connecting computers across different university campuses?”

I gave him a brief outline of the AARNET project, ending up with my recent visit from ASIO, and the spooks wanting to have the ability to monitor all network traffic and see what information ‘subversive’ groups might be exchanging.

“I told them I can’t give them what they want, there are all sorts of legal and technical problems,” I concluded with. “I ended up speaking with the Federal Attorney-General, Senator Gareth Evans, and he killed their project.”

“So, is your concern that these ‘subversive’ groups are using your creation, as it were, to further their agendum?” he asked.

“No, I have no concerns in that area whatsoever. I was communicating with a colleague in the United States who is working on a similar project there, and he told me the various intelligence agencies in the US have made similar requests, but are getting a more positive reception. He then told me how some researchers are looking into methods to encrypt messages on this network, so people who might intercept them won’t be able to easily read them.”

I then spoke about my thoughts on steganography, and how I could write a program that would easily allow someone to hide a message in a seemingly innocuous file. Whereupon I got onto my real concerns, what if some person or group of people used that tool to help them cover illegal activities.

“What if, let’s say, a group of paedophiles used this to exchange pictures of naked little kids, and because they hid them, using my software, the authorities couldn’t get evidence to convict them of a crime?” I asked. “Where do my discoveries or creations cross the line, and allow people to do evil things? Just where does my responsibility stop? I’m not speaking just of the legal liability here, but what if, let’s say, the world’s next Pol Pot used my software to conduct another horrific genocide? Am I morally complicit?”

“Hmm, I can see why you might be concerned,” he said. “That’s a very common reaction in the vast majority of people involved in research, discovery, and scientific innovation. How can you be sure that what you develop will only be used for good, to advance mankind? All I can say is there is no simple, easy answer to that question.”

“I didn’t think there would be,” I replied.

“It all gets back to what people think is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’; what a person’s moral code is, how you determine what is good for society. Now, let me ask you this, how do you determine what is right or wrong? How do you work out how to live your own life?”

“I guess it’s basically the golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I try to treat people the way I would want them to treat me.”

“That’s a good start; but how do you know what is good for you? I mean, we all like to do things that we feel are detrimental to us in the long term. Do you choose not to have that ice cream for dessert, even though you know you really like the taste of ice cream, but know that eating that isn’t good for your health? So, let me pose a slightly different question; do you believe you should not do anything that takes away a person’s fundamental rights, whatever those might be?”

“Fundamental rights, sort of like in the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights? Or what was proposed in their Declaration of Independence? I’m trying to recall the exact wording, something like Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness?”

“Something like that, yes,” he said. “But from a philosophical perspective, the line in the Declaration of Independence – ‘We hold these Truths to be self-evident,’ – self-evident is a real cop out; if I say something is ‘self-evident’, then I don’t have to justify why I believe that, and anyone who doesn’t accept what I say is clearly deluded. As good of an idea as those principals may be, claiming they are ‘self-evident’ doesn’t make for a good, rational foundation on which to base any arguments.

“But, for the sake of our discussion this afternoon, let’s assume that all people have the right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. An interesting observation on that phrase, the Declaration of Independence was drafted by Thomas Jefferson, and his original wording of that was ‘We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable... ‘ He didn’t come up with the second part, the ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness’ himself, there have been debates for ages on whether Jefferson was inspired by the seventeenth century English philosopher John Locke, or from another source.

“The trouble with any philosophical discussion that involved Thomas Jefferson is that it then gets side-tracked into arguments on the role of Government, individual rights versus societal rights, and various factions form, and there’s no chance of consensus. But, that concept does make for a good basis to start any discussion of right and wrong. If we assume that any such actions that take away a person’s fundamental rights are a ‘bad thing’, we can then use that as a yardstick to measure whether an action of ours is appropriate. I’m not wanting to get into morality discussions; what any particular religion may or may not condone as permitted or sinful; that’s more in the realm of religious beliefs and theology. But one can be moral, a person can have their own ‘moral code’ without necessarily involving religion.”

“I would agree on that; I’m sure most mainstream religions would disapprove of how I judge right and wrong; well, at least what I determine is appropriate for my own life. I try to avoid making any judgments on how others might live their own lives,” I said.

“So, in your personal life, how do you determine what is right or wrong; or maybe putting it better, how do you decide if you should do something or not?”

“I guess my aim is not to harm anyone else, not to force my personal opinions onto others, and as I said, to treat others the way I would like them to treat me.”

“What is interesting, that ‘do unto others’, what some call the ‘Golden Rule’, is a common thread in almost all major religions; just about all cultures would have that, or a very similar dictate, in their ethos. Now, let’s turn that to how a scientist might look at how their discoveries or inventions might be used. I’m sure you have heard of the hole in the ozone layer, caused by chlorofluorocarbons depleting the ozone layer, and that increases the level of ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface of the earth, leading to an upturn in skin cancers, and so on. Now, one of the major sources of CFCs is the refrigerant Freon, which was discovered in the 1920’s by researchers at General Motors, as an attempt to replace ammonia as a refrigerant. Ammonia was pretty nasty, and it caused all sorts of problems.

“Now, I’m sure the researchers that developed Freon as an ammonia replacement believed they were doing a really good thing; improving society, making air conditioning and refrigeration safe and cheap. It wasn’t until maybe ten years ago that researchers discovered the dangers of CFCs. So was the development of Freon and its use in refrigerators a bad thing? Now we know the problems, but they weren’t known back then. That’s one of the things about science, not only to we revise theories based on new discoveries; but as we discover problems and dangers with products, inventions and so on, we also change our thinking about previous discoveries.

“So, was DuPont and Frigidaire evil for their production and use of Freon? Given that no one knew of Freon’s effect on the ozone layer, I don’t believe so. Could it have been predicted? I doubt it, it wasn’t until the science had progressed to the point where the hole in the ozone layer could be measured, there was no way anyone could know what was happening. So what can be seen to be ‘bad’ is based on our knowledge of the impacts of what we do, and our ability to measure it,” he said. “Just as peoples’ attitudes change and evolve over time; you should not try to judge peoples’ actions in past generations by the cultural norms of today.”

“I guess that seems reasonable,” I said. “But what I’m trying to work out is how do I judge my actions today against the values of today’s society.”

“Which is all quite reasonable. Let’s put aside any question of the legality or otherwise of something; we don’t want to start down the path of legal liability. There are plenty of lawyers and judges that spend a lifetime in that field. Now, if we consider how our common law system determines criminal liability, there are two elements; ‘actus rea’ – guilty act – and ‘mens rea’ – guilty mind. Not only do you have to do something wrong – the guilty act – but there has to be the knowledge that what you are doing is wrong. ‘ Actus reus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea‘ – ‘the act is not culpable unless the mind is guilty’. So, if you are responsible for some invention or discovery, not intending that it be used for some criminal act, you should not be found to be criminally liable. Of course, the outcome of any liability trial is a lottery, a jury might still find you guilty, even if you didn’t intend for your invention to be used in a crime. So let’s put that whole issue to one side for the moment.