January 1993 - cypherpunks-legacy

PGP on BBS
by david.brooks＠cutting.hou.tx.us 22 Jan '93

22 Jan '93

I have been mulling over the idea of a BBS door which allows users to send PGP encrypted messages to other users using a system pubkey file. The implimentation seems easy enough except for the problem of the secret key. I don't see a way to do it without the sender having to transfer (at least temporarily) his secret key to the host system. Obviously no one in his right mind would ever consider doing such a thing. Has this kind of a program been tried before? If so, how? If not, does anyone have any ideas? Seems to me it would be a handy door for a BBS to have, but not at the expense of compromised privacy... David david.brooks(a)cutting.hou.tx.us <PGP 2.1 public key available by request> * Q-Blue v0.7 [NR] * ---- +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | The Cutting Edge BBS (cutting.hou.tx.us) A PCBoard 14.5a system | | Houston, Texas, USA +1 713 466 1525 running uuPCB | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Does anyone know of any specific cases
by jgarner＠netcom.com 22 Jan '93

22 Jan '93

Does anyone know of any specific legal cases which have tested or are testing this issue of a conflict between the 5th amendment and Obstruction of Justice? Seems I read about something like this recently in a California newspaper but I cant seem to remember the case.

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Re: the bill of rights hasn't been revoked. not yet, anyway.
by Marc.Ringuette＠GS80.SP.CS.CMU.EDU 22 Jan '93

22 Jan '93

> I've been thinking about this a bit, and it seems that the Constitution's > Bill of Rights has all the provisions required to implement and legally > use digital money, secure encryption, and anonymous communication networks. I agree, but only if you do all the public key encryption inside your head. :-) :-( You're interpreting the first amendment much more liberally than current legal practice would warrant. Just because something is an act of communication doesn't mean it's protected speech under the first amendment. -- Marc Ringuette (mnr(a)cs.cmu.edu)

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Preferably a screw with BIG threads
by deltorto＠aol.com 22 Jan '93

22 Jan '93

I dig Thug's comment about the "two conflicting issues here" (The Fifth Amendment & Obstruction of Justice). Especially the part about "tell[ing] them to go screw themselves." : ) I suppose that certain "specially designated' accounts belonging to certain "specially designated" officials should be open to complete scrutiny by the 'balancing' arms of Government, i.e. the Executive Branch should be 'checkable' by the Legislative, etc, etc. That begins to sound more Democratic, don't it? At least it sounds "democratic" as we hope it would be (maybe not as we know it to be). dave

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...and other Trials
by deltorto＠aol.com 22 Jan '93

22 Jan '93

>> Tom DeBoni adds: >>should university academicians working for state-supported institutions be subject >>to the same constraints on privacy and freedom from arbitrary search and seizure in >>their email and computer files as high federal governmental officials? That's a tough one. I suppose there would have to be a body that decided on a case by case (or a class by class) basis what accounts would be subject to heavy scrutiny. Unfortunately, this begins to create a overseeing body so huge and convolute as to render the entire process unwieldly approaching on the absurd. I read Kafka's "The Trial" and I don't want to face that sort of Juggernaut any time soon. On the other hand, if you don't lump _every_ friggin' state and federal employee (and I didn't) into the picture and only consider those persons with a dangerous largesse inherent in their positions (sorry, but that swell fella Ollie North somehow once again comes to mind), the whole thing takes on a more manageable (notice I said "more") appearance. Hey, this is a tough ethical dilemma. I ain't got all the answers, just an opinion (just like assholes... everyone's got one, right?). Basically, I worry about abuse of email systems by knowledgable/sinister government officials. When you consider how hard it is for the general public to conceive of abuse on paper memos, imagine how much damage and subversion a savvy individual could do with a "computer" (gwarsh, Mickey! Whut's a kum-pee-you-ter?) to the democratic process before anyone would pay attention to a cypherpunk crying "wolf!" Encryption to the Masses! dave

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unsubscribe
by parish＠cactus.org 22 Jan '93

22 Jan '93

Please remove me from the mailing list. Thank you Tom

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Re: random remailers
by DrZaphod 22 Jan '93

22 Jan '93

In Message Thu, 21 Jan 93 12:47:35 PST, Eric Messick <parallax.com!eric(a)netcomsv.netcom.com> writes: >The problem with this is that every site along the way has to know the >final delivery address, at least of this subset of the address chain. >Better to just send it directly, and add some load balancing traffic. > >-eric messick What about letting every remailer see the second to last system in the remailing process, another remailer. Other remailers would route the message around for a specified # of times +/- a small random # [users choice with a max. limit set by remailers]. The second to last remailer would recognize the last remailer from it's public key encrypted message [::Request-Remailing-To: FinalDestination] and send it on down to the last remailer which would decrypt the final remailing block using it's secret key and send the intended message to it's final destination. This would provide random remailing routes without compromising the ending not originating location. The first remailer wouldn't know if it had just received a message from a person, or another remailer. TTFN! DrZaphod [AC/DC] / [DnA][HP] [drzaphod(a)ncselxsi.uucp] Technicolorized

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public servant privacy
by deltorto＠aol.com 22 Jan '93

22 Jan '93

In response and affirmation of Eric Fogleman's note on Communications Policy, I have to concur. ALL documents produced by a public official operating an email system on public time and in pursuit of public policy (e.g. a White House official) should be subject to scrutiny and should not be considered as that person's private property. If such a person wants to have private communications with other private citizens, they should do it on their OWN time and with their OWN money. HOWEVER, if such persons then turn around and abuse this freedom by abusing the public trust in those contexts (i.e. if Ollie North started communicating with NSA officials through CompuServe to order illegal shipments of money to CIA agents in Peruvian cocaine cartels), they should, by virtue of their positions of public trust be subject to the same (presumably high) levels of scrutiny as they are now - Congressional, OMB, GSA, FBI investigations, etc. >>The burden should not be on individuals to constantly be open to scrutiny to >>demonstrate their innocence, but on those with the power to suspend individual >>rights. Yes, private citizens should not be subject to the same sorts of investigations unless there is direct evidence of criminal intent or activity in which case there should be a search warrant and notification of intent to search. Tim May notes (appropriately) that: >>Strong crypto means even Ollie North can fully protect his records. Yes, but shouldn't he be _required_ to "open" his files if he is under criminal investigation just like a drug-dealer who's required to open the locked trunk of his car? I'm sure my opinion is open to development, but this is my gut-level response. dave

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Communications Policy
by norm＠xanadu.com 21 Jan '93

21 Jan '93

I hear concern over privacy and also over erasure of White House tapes. I pose the following question: Should an institution have the right to private communication? Is the White House an institution? Notice that I say "should" not "does". Which sort of world would you rather live in. I have mixed feelings. If we say that all computer communications should be accessible to courts then the effect will be to displace some communications from computers.

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Re: possible solution to the anonymous harrassment problem
by Marc.Ringuette＠GS80.SP.CS.CMU.EDU 21 Jan '93

21 Jan '93

> RSA has a patent on their algorithm. It's quite likely that I can't > even create a key pair without their permission, let alone use it. You're poorly informed. As a condition of a grant from DARPA to RSADSI, RSAREF may be used noncommercially, for free, to do any of the following: - RSA encryption and key generation, as defined by RSA Data Security's Public-Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS) [4] - MD2 and MD5 message digests [3,5,6] - DES (Data Encryption Standard) in cipher-block chaining mode [7,8] Moreover, I believe you'll find that RSADSI has become much more helpful recently. For more information, anonymous ftp to rsa.com and look around. I've just gone over the RSAREF license agreement again. It seems to permit any sort of not-for-profit operation, including a public key service. -- Marc Ringuette (mnr(a)cs.cmu.edu)

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