July 1993 - cypherpunks-legacy

money tracing
by Tyler Yip - UnixWeenie 30 Jul '93

30 Jul '93

since 1990, the Treasury has placed a nylon strip inside the paper of most of the printed money ($10's and above, I believe). This strip has letters on it, spelling out "USA TWENTY" (for the $20 bill) such that it can only be seen if light is passed through the note. This was officially meant to prevent the high quality scanners and color printers from being able to forge money, since the scanner would not be able to reproduce the reflectively-invisible letters in the strip. Wonder if they could include such a technique in money tracking. Has anyone ever checked the green ink on money for magnetic resonance?

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Re: I'm not paranoid... They *are* out to get me!
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 30 Jul '93

30 Jul '93

Nick MacDonald's note on bar codes on Canadian money, and speculation about banks tracking what bills they give you, is something they're probably not doing now, but could if they wanted; USA Today had an article a while back about proposals to do that with US money. You really can't do a perfect tracking job, but a large amount of cash comes from banks, gets spent at stores, and goes back to banks, and could easily enough be tracked it it were bar-coded and banks were forced (or paid) to read it with bar-code scanners. Maybe you'd only track 50%, or 80%, but that could have a major impact on privacy, and a major "improvement" in the government's ability to keep tabs on us. It's really no tougher to print bar coded serial numbers than human-readable ones. Sounds like it's a good time to get digicash out into the market, or stock up on rrolls of quarters :-) Bill # 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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looking for FTP site for fingerprint
by khijol!erc＠apple.com 30 Jul '93

30 Jul '93

Does anyone know which sites have fingerprint on them? I poked around, but couldn't find it. Any help would be appreciated - thanks! -- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc(a)apple.com 510/659-9560 If you want magic, let go of your armor. Magic is so much stronger than steel! -- Richard Bach, "The Bridge Across Forever"

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CASH: sites & idea
by Karl Barrus 30 Jul '93

30 Jul '93

Those addresses were cwi.nl in /pub/CWIreports/AA CS-R9318.ps.Z and CS-R9323.ps.Z netcom.com in /pub/joule DSR1.ps.Z You know, what would be really cool (and unfortunately I can't implement this since today is my last day at work since I'm heading to Rice to be a full time grad student once more) is a cypherpunks gopher site! Having text files like the manifesto, back cypherpunks articles (I have quite a few), information like the remailer list, etc. available for browsing... /-----------------------------------\ | Karl L. Barrus | | elee9sf(a)menudo.uh.edu | <- preferred address | barrus(a)tree.egr.uh.edu (NeXTMail) | \-----------------------------------/

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Digital Cash ftp site...
by Oliver Seiler 30 Jul '93

30 Jul '93

Somebody recently posted a message with an ftp site with some articles on digital cash, but I deleted it before I had a chance to get the site name. Could someone e-mail me or repost the site for these articles? I am planning on doing an undergraduate thesis this next school year, and one of my proposed topics may be in the area of digital cash. I'm looking for more specific topics. Anybody know any problems or potential thesis topics (I'm a fishin' for topics :) suitable for an undergraduate thesis? Another area suggested to me has more to do with cryptography and copyrights. Specifically, encrypting copyright information into some data which does not need to be a direct copy (like a program or a text file), but something like an image or sound (song) file (as on DAT or CD)... The encrypted copyright information would have to be robust, so that further modification of the data, in efforts to break copyright information, would still allow for the extraction of the original copyright info. What sort of work has been done in this area? If anybody knows of any papers or references to this, could you please e-mail or post here? -Oliver | Oliver Seiler + Erisian Development Group + Amiga Developer + | oseiler(a)unixg.ubc.ca +-------------Reality by the Slice--------------+ | oseiler(a)nyx.cs.du.edu | (604) 683-5364 | | ollie(a)BIX.com | POB 3547, MPO, Vancouver, BC, CANADA V6B 3Y6 |

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anonymous email article
by Dwayne Campogan 30 Jul '93

30 Jul '93

I had received a forwarded post about you writing an article about anonymous email and misc. other things dealing with Cyberpunk subculture... May I ask for what publication you are writing this and it distribution purposes... I have been in the "Cyberpunk" atmospherical genere for many years now, I also am a writer. I am currently working on a book about the government and their shitty recklessness dealing with such problems... I am interested in coresponding with other writers, please do reply soon and I might be able to contribute to your efforts. -Paris

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Re: Paranoia and the Outlawing of Cash
by Morten V. Christiansen 30 Jul '93

30 Jul '93

Jeremy Smith writes: > I too have noticed a growing trend in the use of electronic money >for a wide range of transactions. For example. I have an ATM card that >was issued on my checking account. With it, I can make purchases at any >place displaying the Interlink symbol. This includes gas stations, fast >food places, and a lot of common stores such as the Good Guys, Circuit >City, etc. > Personally, I find this way of doing business a lot more >conveinent than carrying cash money. No large demoninations to worry >about, and if you are robbed, they have to crack your PIN to use the card. >If they use a portabel reader, you could be screwed. But, in most cases >you would have time to call customer service and cancel the card. > I love progress. In Denmark practically everybody has a 'DAN-card', a card with which all purchaces, no matter how small, can be charged directly to one's bank account. There is no charge for using or having the card, and it can be used practically everywhere. If for some reason you still want cash, there are plenty of ATMs around. This means that the banks and the government know pretty much how much each of us spends on everything, but that's ok since we all trust the banks and the government :-( . When are we going to get real and untracable (!) electronic money ? Morten V. Christiansen Morten.V.Christiansen(a)Copenhagen.NCR.COM

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Re: Phrack-43
by Peter shipley 30 Jul '93

30 Jul '93

> I eagerly FTP'ed to aql.gatech.edu to get the latest issue of >Phrack only to find that it is compressed in a form that I can not >uncompress. was it gziped (*.z or *.gz ?) > I can manipulate .z, .Z, and .tar, but >not .gz. .z is .gz (rename it and it will work) > Is there any way for me to get an issue of Phrack-43 that I can > read? if you still can read I will uncompress it and email it to you? q: how much disk space does pgp take?

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Re: Phrack-43
by Jeremy R. Smith 30 Jul '93

30 Jul '93

On Thu, 29 Jul 1993 jim(a)tadpole.com wrote: > Grab gnu zip. > Well, what I'm trying to say is that I, in no way, have access to a Unix prompt line. I am restricted to menus in which I must choose from the listed choices. Gnu zip is not supported by the service through which I gain my Internet access. Is Gnu zip available for the Amiga and/or IBM? Jeremy Smith jersmit(a)eis.calstate.edu

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Re: TECH: encrypted computer?
by hnash＠mason1.gmu.edu 30 Jul '93

30 Jul '93

Peter Baumbach wrote: >I don't >want the owner to be able to decrypt the executable and run >that, he has to run it encrypted. I've been thinking about this also. I think your idea boils down to an encoding for software which allows execution but not modification. This could be called a tamper-proof software encoding. Such an encoding would have all sorts of applications. For example: - public key encryption (a public key is simply a tamper-proof encoding of a private encryption algorithm). - distribution of software with advertisements or credits permanently attached. - distribution of software that requires "fuel" consisting of certificates signed by the manufacturer. - computer viruses that utilize secret information. It's clear that the state variables internal to the algorithm must remain encrypted. If any of the *original* state variables were revealed, the algorithm could be inferred from changes to these variables. Therefore, tamper-proof software requires processing of encrypted data. The problem would be solved by a computationally complete set of functions (ex: NAND) which could produce encrypted output from encrypted input without revealing decrypted input or output. It's a simple problem, but as far as I know it hasn't been solved. I have tried to solve this problem in several different ways, without much success. I found one paper entitled "Processing Encrypted Data" (comm. of ACM v.30 n.9 1987), which reported some very rudimentary results, but which commented intriguingly: "The Department of Defense has invested considerable efforts in recent years in solving this problem ... but the results of this efforts have not been made public." -------------- Yours Truly, ][adon Nash -------------------------------- in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. --------------------------------- ][enry David Thoreau, 1850

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