[UCLA-LUG] Announcement, Privacy/Security Forum, Free, Sat, July 22, 2000, Ten AM to Four PM, Torrance, CA,

[John Wenger]

What: LULA, the Linux User Group of Los Angeles) will be
presenting a six-hour free program on Threats to Electronic
Privacy, and Technological Countermeasures to these Threats.

When:  This coming Saturday, 2000-07-22, from ten AM through
four PM.

Where: At the eLinux.Com Building at 2555 West 190th Street,
in Torrance CA 90504-6002.  Computer generated driving
instructions can be found on the meetings section of the
LULA website http://WWW.LULA.Org/meetings.html.

Location Coordinates:  Conceptually, it is just a little
East of the I405 (San Diego) Freeway, and is located on
190th Street.  From the North, exit the 405 Southbound onto
Crenshaw, drive a few blocks South to 190th, turn Left
(East) onto 190th, and drive to the far-end of the giant
parking lot on your LEFT (North) side, turn LEFT into the
driveway, and follow the signs into the biggest lot.

Why:  Broadband Internet access (both DSL and Cable) is
always on, giving crackers a continual opportunity to probe
your computers for weaknesses for breakins, if for no reason
than to attack more high profile sites such as Yahoo, the
White House, or perhaps the Pentagon.  The experience of
having your home or business computers violated is
unpleasant.  This forum will address those threats and
suggest countermeasures.  Beyond that, it will cover threats
to [1] threats to privacy, [2] Keeping secrets on the net
(pgp, ssl, ssh, vpns, secure email, etc.); [3] Creating
anonymity on the net (anonymous network clients, remailers,
etc.); [4] Data Havens (protecting data on the net, e.g.
Freenet, steganographic havens); and [5] Medical records,
both paper and electronic, and will seek solutions from the
other technologies covered, and from the audience, to
protect the privacy of this most-private data.  

Cost:  Completely free.

Room Capacity: about 120.

Speakers: four top experts from the LA area.  All four
speakers are ***extremely*** knowledgeable, and all are good
public speakers, and can explain complexity well.

The Program will include:

The Threats of Your Medical Records to Your Privacy.  Ismet
Kursunuglo, M.D., will speak upon the current paper-based,
and emerging electronic-based medical records, and the
threats to your privacy.  The output of this session will be
a list of the problems posed, and the candidate solutions
proposed.

Protecting Your Secrets.  Michael Elkins will introduce
public key encryption, PGP, GPG, and Mutt (the email client
he wrote), and show the as-yet-undocumented process for
integrating GPG into Mutt.  This talk will provide the
understanding of public key encryption that will enable the
listener to understand the other privacy-protecting
technologies that are encryption-based.  Beyond that, it
will explain the concept of the web-of-trust that can be
used by people to establish trusted relationships with
people they have never met, based upon their degree of trust
of a mutually known intermediary.

Protecting Your Systems and Network:  Linda True in her talk
on "In(Security) Tools" will discuss the threats to system
security, and the countermeasures to protect against those
threats.  She will also discuss some of the anonymity
technologies that lead into the next session.

Anonymity on the Net:  Chris Smith will cover several
anonymity techniques, particularly the Freedom product from
Zero Knowledge Systems.

Data Protection:  Chris Smith will cover data havens for
protecting your data on the net, steganography, etc.

Following this, the speakers will convene as a panel to make
general comments, and then answer questions from the
audience.

Please heck the web site later this week for biographic data
on the speakers, a schedule of speaker time slots, breaks,
etc., and other emerging information: 
http://WWW.LULA.Org/meetings.html.

Thanks for reading this.

John Wenger.

P.S. If you have questions, please use your "Reply" function
of your email client so that your msgs come to my direct
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