April 1993 - cypherpunks-legacy

Reaction time and Crypto
by uni＠acs.bu.edu 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

I must complement the group on the speed and vigor with which they have pursued the Clinton proposal. It is my hope that we can somehow make it apparent to the public that they are losing, not winning here. It seems to me that the following technologies are going to be of increasing import despite the outcome of the Clinton proposal. 1. Raw headerless output from packages like PGP. It seems obvious that if crypto is regulated, it must be easier to disguise the type of crypto one is using, or indeed if one is using crypto. 2. Methodology for the disguising of cyphertext in more innocous data. 3. The proliferation and consistant use of Crypto for even everyday communications. 1> The harder it is to find, the less potential there is for regulation. 2> The harder it is to look for, the less potential there is for regulation. 3> The harder it is to abolish, the less potential there is for regulation. More than the specific plan here, I am stunned by the emerging MOVEMENT that seems to be at work here. I can only ask, what's next? I don't think any proposal to regulate crypto will focus on the users, but rather the development and distrubution of said crypto. This is what frightens me the most. The precedent for regulation of private software and hardware applications is painfully visable on the horizion. Someone said before: Be afraid, be very afraid. uni (Dark)

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WIRETAP: press articles wanted.
by Eric Hughes 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

Speaking as the ftp site maintainer, I'm looking for all the press coverage there is on this wiretap chip, both national and local coverage. I've seen quotes from several other sources, but not whole articles. So type in what's at hand and send it to me. I'll put it up for ftp. I've got Saturday's article from the SF Chronicle here, which I haven't yet typed in, but I should warn you that this piece is one of the most slanted things I've seen in that paper. (Those of you who've read the Chron know this is a real insult.) I'll get it typed in myself unless someone can send me a copy. Eric

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Re: WIRETAP: boycotts
by karn＠qualcomm.com 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

Boycotts seldom do much by direct economic pressure. If they accomplish anything, they generally do so by the publicity they generate. Phil

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Re: Info on Mykotronx
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

Harry Shapiro said he wasn't able to find much information on Mykotronx. The San Francisco Chronicle says it's a "little-known company in Torrance, CA"; "Mykotronx Inc., founded in 1979 by two former engineers from TRW Inc., already sells classified encryption chips to protect satellite communications." "San Jose-based VLSI Research Inc. will manufacture the chip, called the Clipper. VLSI was chosen largely because it has a unique manufacturing process that makes it nearly impossible to take the chip apart and decode it." The Washington Times says that "Government engineers at NSA and [...] NIST designed and developed the chip, which was then produced by privately owned Mykotronx and a publicly traded subcontractor, VLSI Technology." In their discussion of comments by Ted Bettwy, exec VP of Mykotronx, "He said the chip announced yesterday, internally referred to as MYK-78, costs about $40 and uses an algorithm 16 million times more complex than that used by chips now on the market. Computer hackers have penetrated the current chips." Bill Stewart

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Verbosity by Mail from NIST
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

I called the phone number for NIST given in one of the announcements, and was routed to Sherry Hankey 1-301-975-2820, who faxed me their package of information they're sending out. There's no new technical information (Dorothy Denning's article and some non-technical viewgraphs), but there's a lot of newspaper clippings, pro and con, the announcements we've seen on the net from Clinton, Q&A, etc., and what look like viewgraphs from a couple of talks. Overall, it looks like they don't know much more than we do :-). One talk is "U.S. Technology Initiative for Secure Telecommunications" Raymond G. Kammer, Acting Director, NIST, 4/16/93 which is basically the announcements turned into viewgraphs (if I've sucessfully decoded the tangle of fax paper :-). Another part of the package looks like another talk, which covers Wiretap cases by the FBI and other agencies, including a summary table for 1982-1991 of State and Federal wiretap authorizations, arrests, and convictions (there's a footnote that reporting of convictions seems to substantially lag actual convictions, though the ration of arrests to convictions has decreased, averaging 2:1 over 10 years, 3:1 recently.) Most wiretaps are State and local, not FBI. Cases they cited included the usual drug dealing and money laundering, a judge taking bribes, a Chicago street gang El Rukn proposing to shoot down an airliner for the Libyans, some Mafiosi, a RICO case against the Concrete and Cement Workers Union "Prevented economic loss $585Mil", some fraud in defense contracting and health care contracting, and the Masters of Disaster "computer hackers" case. Bill Stewart wcs(a)anchor.att.com # Bill Stewart wcs(a)anchor.ho.att.com +1-908-949-0705 Fax-4876 # AT&T Bell Labs, Room 4M-312, Crawfords Corner Rd, Holmdel, NJ 07733-3030

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A Volunteer in a Suit Has Appeared!
by tcmay＠netcom.com 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

I am pleased to announce that the Search Committee has found an Executive Director for the newly renamed "Privacy Institute." He will serve as both manager and as external spokesman for the Institute. We searched for a respectable person, preferably middle-aged, who knew how to communicate with bureaucrats and was prepared to relocate to the Washington, D.C. area to act as our official lobbyist (the matter of his compensation will be dealt with in a later memo, one which also explains our dues structure. membership grades, and official bylaws). Our candidate is an active poster in sci.crypt, is well-known to the Net, and yet has strong connections with the Washington bureaucracy. We feel he will do much to project a more proper, even anal, image of our group. We hope his appointment as Executive Director, The Privacy Institute, will go a long way toward improving the image we developed during our first phase of existence when we were known by the c-word name. Our new Director intends to immediately correct many of the wrongs he sees. Without further ado, here is his name: David Sternlight I hope you'll all join me in welcoming Sternie, or Sterno, as his friends call him, to the Privacy Institute. -Tim May, Recording Secretary, The Privacy Institute ("Don't call us Cypherpunks!") (The preceeding spoof was brought to you as a public service.)

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Re: CLIP: Legal Aspects
by karn＠qualcomm.com 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

At 08:11 AM 4/22/93 -0700, Eric Hughes wrote: >Exploratory wiretaps, illegally made and whose evidence is not >directly admissible, provide information that may lead investigators >to other information. This secondary information _is_ admissible. > >It would be a wonderful if the ER were strengthened so that all >evidence which resulted from an illegal search _and all of its >subsidiaries_ were conidered tainted. That battle, however, is a much >longer one to fight. I thought this was already true, at least in theory. It's known as the "fruit of the poisoned tree" doctrine. Evidence gathered as a consequence of illegally gathered evidence is in itself inadmissable. Of course, this is probably what has been weakened the most by the Reagan/Bush Supreme Court. >Even in that situation, though, the defense would have to prove that >an unauthorized wiretap took place. *This* is the fundamental problem. There are many possible ways that illegal wiretaps can further the collection of other evidence, without the existence of the illegal wiretap ever having to be revealed. Phil

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PGPHELP: Digisigning that petition
by zane＠genesis.mcs.com 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

I was looking over PGP in order to figure out how digisigning a petition could work, and I couldn't figure out how to get PGP to do it properly. (It was frustrating, because I remembered doing it before.) What I *want* PGP to output is: -- Begin PGP Signed Message -- We hate the clipper -- End PGP Signed Message -- -- Begin PGP Sig --- dsfDSCSA43523csdcsad235s -- End PGP Sig --- In the same form as many post to this list. How about the format which makes a seperate file out of the PGP -sig, and STILL brackets the PGP signed message. (The PGP sig file would be in ascii armor following a message saying: "This is a PGP-sig cert." I *do* remember doing this before.. I can't figure out HOW I did it though.) -- | Sameer Parekh-zane(a)genesis.MCS.COM-PFA related mail to pfa(a)genesis.MCS.COM | | Apprentice Philosopher, Writer, Physicist, Healer, Programmer, Lover, more | | ----STOP THE WIRETAP CHIP/BIG BROTHER PROPOSAL!---MAIL ME FOR DETAILS! __/ | "Be God" - Me __ "Specialization is for Insects" - Robert A. Heinlein__/ \_____________/ \___________________________________________________/

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What should be done.
by treason＠gnu.ai.mit.edu 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

I agree as well that this mail is horrendous. 50+ mailings a day is a troublesome thing. I would like to suggest a method of mailing that would be less pain to the mailer, and more useful for storing purposes. I suggest we start an archive. All mail sent to the list in one day is put within this archive, and mailed ONCE per day. Sure this mailing would be rather large, and you may have to wade though alot of stuff that may be uninteresting to you to get to what you want to see, but you could store it in temp, and use vi on it or something...it would be a minor inconvienience. Much more livable than what we have now. I have seen a great list done in this same way. It has the mail header for the list, an index of all articles subjects within at the start, and then basically each article stored linearly with mail headers intact. For those who have seen the archive for the Ultrasound Digest, you know what Im talking about. I suspect that the individual running the list has an automation program generating this Digest each day, and mailing it when the time is appropriate. There are examples of this digest on archive.epas.utoronto.ca in /pub/pc/ultrasound/digest for those of you who want to see what it looks like. I would be happy to consult the list moderator and beg for the software in the lists best interest if we get a good number of wants. treason

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tapping method unmentioned
by ghoast＠gnu.ai.mit.edu 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

In all the articles that I've seen posted, and in the grumbling done about the advancement of government regulated cryptography, I haven't seen much mentioned on *how* the government would go about collecting a certain exchange. Pardon me if I'm missing something key here, but wasn't there some bill circulating in the legislature that proposed that phone co's build tappability into the newer non-copper phone system? Is the phone co's cooperation on this issue part of a bargain to exclude such capability from the system (yeah, right) or is the government focusing on this issue now because it has already accomplished what it wants in other areas of privacy (read: tapping) ~

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