August 1993 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: On The Inherent Evil of Electronic Democracy
by plmoses＠unix.cc.emory.edu 13 Aug '93

13 Aug '93

Regarding the Electronic Democracy idea, I vote with Tim May. Look at the way public opinion is molded today through CNN, Tom Brokaw, Connie Chung, Oprah Winfrey, etc. One could even say that Clinton is the "Phil Donahue president" (he 'cares') - just look at the second candidate debate last fall. A talk show if ever there was one. No, erasing procedural safeguards in the name of access by the masses is an *EXTREMELY* bad idea, because a lot of these archaic procedures still have use and serve a filtering function, albeit one that may not be recognized fully until they are removed and drastic, undesirable, unwanted,and unintended consequences follow. What we should be doing instead is focusing our analytic powers on the present bottlenecks and distortions in the system and resolving those rather than opening ENTIRELY NEW "runoff channels". For at the end of the day, the only beneficiaries of innovation are the ones poised to exploit it. And that certainly is not the "enlightened citizen" today. What am I saying? If we allow direct legislating power to go to everyone, we will eliminate the concern with PLURALITY that the Constitution protects. If not sooner, then later.

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Re: CA online legislative database access
by smb＠research.att.com 13 Aug '93

13 Aug '93

Lance Dettweiler writes: > cypherfolks, do you have any idea what these efforts are the faint > glimmers of? Imagine a future society where *anyone* can propose law s, > not just the elite few called Legislators and identified in an Actually, this is my worst nightmare of what this country could become: a direct democracy of the most populist sort. Agreed. Let me put the issue in technical terms: you want a government with hysteresis. Call hysteresis the antidote to hysteria. The concept, if not the word, was well known to Jefferson et al. In fact, that was the reason that Senators serve six-year terms, and are elected at staggered intervals. Why? Well, there was an Op-Ed column in the NY Times recently that explained it quite well -- the instantaneous reaction of the public to certain kinds of events (like shooting up Iraqi missle batteries, or starting a war) is quite noticeable. Was George Bush really doing a much better job the day after Desert Storm started than the day before? A substantial portion of the American people seemed to think so. No, I'll pass. Our current system of government is far from perfect. But a switch to direct democracy (the technical term for what you Lance Dettweiler proposes) is not the answer. (Want more evidence -- look at the effects of the referendum and initiative process, especially in California. While it can -- and has -- acted as a check on government, a vast number of propositions have been passed that reflect either well-financed advertising campaigns or a desire to decree magic.) --Steve Bellovin

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neural nets
by remail＠tamsun.tamu.edu 13 Aug '93

13 Aug '93

Speaking of neural nets and image recognition, my former employers landed a contract with "various law enforcement agencies" although the project manager I spoke to said primarily the FBI and CIA - to develop neural network hardware and software to do face recognition, to be used to identify criminals at the airports. Indeed, I recall being photographed twice when I hired on - normal lighting for my regular id, and low lighting. At the time, I wondered why but didn't think anything of it. The project manager said they were amassing a database of pictures to use as training sets. Pretty interesting...

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Democracy
by fnerd＠smds.com 13 Aug '93

13 Aug '93

A procedural point about this democracy debate, and then a substantive (hah! didn't think I knew that word, did you?) one. It's in line with the idea of this list to keep up with possibilities and developments like electronic direct democracy ideas, and to serve as a way for people who are into things like that to get in touch with each other. But at some point the purely political aspect of the disagreement isn't especially a cypherpunk issue. I hope everybody cools off or takes it elsewhere (I don't know where) before that point. Robin Hanson's Alternative Institutions list seems like a good place for that. That said, I want to throw in my bic lighter... Democracy is bad; smarter democracy would be worse. The system we have is ravenous and stupid, but we're adapted to it. There's nothing "good" about representative democracy except that it's relatively slow-changing and we know some ways of dealing with it. If we made democracy able to respond to events more quickly, it might be smarter and better at what it does best-- prey on us. It might break past our defenses. I feel the same way about calls for efficient government. No-o-o-o-o thanks! This has nothing to do with respect for the common man. I think people are basically decent and reasonably smart. But no one has a right to take part in the crime called government, including the parts people are playing right now, much less more active parts. I think democracy evolved from standoffs in multi-way wars. Wars used to be won by body count, and at some point someone said, "Okay, we'll compromise and make peace for now, but I'm still keeping track of who's on my side, just so you don't get out of line." Voting is a way of predicting who would win a war. Which is nicer than real war, and all respect and rights are ultimately based on what other people can do, but there's nothing inherently right about democracy, and it keeps people in a sort of tense standoff, unable to trust each other. Nothing in democracy itself lets the sides make agreements and structurally keeps them from changing their minds the next day. Cumbersome, procedure-bound setups like we have actually allow those sorts of things somewhat, but not in an up-front and reliable way. Democracy doesn't hold individual voters responsible for the effects and costs of their votes. Even in our "unresponsive" democracy there's little reason for the statistical will of the people not to be flighty and untrustworthy. Technology can help somewhat in replacing the systems we have with better systems. Better would be anarchic. To me, anarchy means shifting from overarching systems for regulating and taking care of people, to ways for people to take care of their own interests. Democracy sounds like the latter, but instead of taking care of your own life, you have a sort of metaphorical surrogate--a minute influence on what happens to everybody. As usual, I would have stopped, but I thought some things I hadn't before. I'll post the body of this to AltInst and then shut up about it on this list. -fnerd quote me

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Re: on the inherent evil
by M..Stirner＠f0.n0.z1.FIDONET.ORG 13 Aug '93

13 Aug '93

Uu> From: plmoses(a)unix.cc.emory.edu (Paul L. Moses) Uu> Regarding the Electronic Democracy idea, I vote with Tim May. Look at Uu> the way public opinion is molded today through CNN, Tom Brokaw, Connie Uu> Chung, Oprah Winfrey, etc. One could even say that Clinton is the Uu> "Phil Donahue president" (he 'cares') - just look at the second Uu> candidate debate last fall. A talk show if ever there was one. As a Second Amendment activist, I am particularly aware of the dangers of an instant-input viewer poll bearing the weight of law following a particularly disgusting piece of BooHoo/Advocacy Broadcast Journalism. . Though I don't see how this is directly relevant to the cypherpunks thang, I do know that I am horrified at the potential for abuse inherent in the "electronic Town Hall" concept. I also find that most computer folk have wild enthusiasm for this idea while bearing no inkling of the ease with which the process could be subverted. ********************************************************************* * <m..stirner(a)f28.n125.z1.fidonet.org> - PGP Key D30909 via servers * * > What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not <* * > warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit <* * > of resistance? Let them take arms!" - Thomas Jefferson, 1787 <* ********************************************************************* ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12 -- M. Stirner - via FidoNet node 1:125/1 UUCP: ...!uunet!kumr!shelter!0!0!M..Stirner INTERNET: M..Stirner(a)f0.n0.z1.FIDONET.ORG

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Re: Secure voice software issues
by smb＠research.att.com 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

I see 160ms round trip times on my SLIP link from home to work, and I can't account for all of this time by just adding up transmission times and store-and-forward delays for the data rates and packet sizes I'm using. And I don't think it can be explained by the trellis decoding in V.32 bis, as that should account for only a few bits of delay. I've since heard of very similar figures for other modems, so It's not just my modem. I'm beginning to suspect the V.42bis packetizing algorithms. Although they're not described in the spec, I suspect that real V.42bis implementations use timers to determine when to send the the currently queued data as a frame. Or maybe there's a Nagle-like algorithm like the one in TCP: immediately send the first byte of data on an idle link, but keep additional traffic pending until the first byte is acknowledged in order to aggregate stream traffic into larger frames. This is all speculation so far, but it does explain the long RTTs I see with packet traffic even though raw character-at-a-time traffic seems to be fast. Stream traffic would see the worst delays of all, which is ordinarily okay for a file transfer, but death to a real time stream like voice. That's why we may be forced to turn off V.42 entirely and speak synchronously to the modem. Time to haul out a protocol analyzer and do some timing measurements. Real timing measurements would help, but it's not just the V.42bis algorithms. A year or two ago, I did some measurements on a number of different modems. I saw large -- and sometimes unacceptable -- delays even without V.42 or MNP in use. My methodology was to enable loopback at various points -- hardware loopback plugs, local loopback on my modem, remote loopback or a plug at the far end, etc. I sent single characters, and timed how long they took to show up. The modems seem to either buffer up several characters, or have to wait a while before sending the first one, but the delays appeared to be for the first character in a ``bunch'' (``packet'' is too strong a word).

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Re: On The Inherent Evil of Electronic Democracy
by James Still 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

>Regarding the Electronic Democracy idea, I vote with Tim May. Look at the >way public opinion is molded today through CNN, Tom Brokaw, Connie Chung, >Oprah Winfrey, etc. One could even say that Clinton is the "Phil Donahue >president" (he 'cares') - just look at the second candidate debate last fall. I don't think public opinion is 'molded' so much, just that it's fancies are entertained too much. (Info-tained?) I dropped by a local bookstore last night to hear Jim Lehrer (McNeil/Lehrer Newhour on PBS) speak about his new book. He brought up this topic, saying that "mainstream news," (never mind the dribble of Donahue or Oprah) has been remiss in *reporting the news* for years, instead sensationalizing news and entertaining the masses. According to Lehrer, T.V. news (and newspapers who must now compete with them) have stopped asking their reporters to "get the facts" instead encouraging them to "get the dirt," or else. Look what has happened: the three major networks have lost over 30% market-share to other outlets like NPR and PBS or from people that just plain turn it off. Extreme voter apathy. Twentynothings from hell :-) The good side to this according to Lehrer is that one day soon a bunch of balding men will sit around the NBC board-room table and say, "We need more viewers, what do we do?" One particularly bright young man will finally say, "I know, let's report the news!," and everyone will bust out in applause. Lehrer's been doing it for 18 years. The info-tainment stuff is a small blip on the Neilson charts and nothing more. Maybe I'm a bit too optimistic for my own good though :^) - Jim

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Re: Real time OCR
by nobody＠shell.portal.com 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

Neural network hardware is currently being trained to recognize the serial numbers on US$. This is being done by a company that has successfully applied its nn hardware to read the numbers off of checks and distinguish between real/fake while obtaining the numbers too.

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Re: Chaos harnessed for encryption / Fluctuations and Or
by collins＠newton.apple.com 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

>[...] that can synchronize without publishing their states. >If this could be done with strong PRNGs, you'd have something. Here is a related article Article = "Secret Key Agreement by Public Discussion from Common Information" Author = Ueli M. Maurer Publication = IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Vol 39, No. 3 Date = May 1993 --Abstract-- The problem of generating a shared secret key S by two parties knowing dependent random variables X and Y, respectively, but not sharing a secret key initially, is considered. An enemy who knows the random variable Z, jointly distributed with X and Y according to some probability distribution Pxyz, can also receive all messages exchanged by the two parties over a public channel. The goal of a protocol is that the enemy obtains at most a negligible amount of information about S. Upper bounds on H(S) as a function of Pxyz are presented. Lower bounds on the rate H(S)/N (as N-->infinity) are derived for the case where X = [X1, ..., Xn], Y = [Y1, ..., Yn], and Z = [Z1, ..., Zn] result from N independent executions of a random experiment generating Xi, Yi and Zi for i=1, ..., N. In particular, it is shown that such secret key agreement is possible for a scenario where all three parties receive the output of a binary symmetric source over independent binary symmetric channels, even when the enemy's channel is superior to the other two channels. The results suggest how to build cryptographic systems that are provably secure against enemies with unlimited computing power under realistic assumptions about the partial independence of the noise on the involved communications channels. --end of Abstract-- Hope you like it, Scott Collins | "Few people realize what tremendous power there | is in one of these things." -- Willy Wonka ......................|................................................ BUSINESS. voice:408.862.0540 fax:974.6094 collins(a)newton.apple.com Apple Computer, Inc. 1 Infinite Loop, MS 301-2C Cupertino, CA 95014 ....................................................................... PERSONAL. voice/fax:408.257.1746 1024/669687 catalyst(a)netcom.com

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Subliminal channels in signature functions may be unavoidable.
by This is _intense_! 12-Aug-1993 1536 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

I was considering the subliminal-channel-in-the-digital-signature question in the shower, and came to an interesting handwaving proof of the following statement: All signature systems (public key and otherwise) that allow timestamped messages contain subliminal channels of bandwidth proportional to the timestamp resolution. Fortunately, this mailing list is wide enough to contain the essence of the proof. 1) Hypothesize an arbitrary signature system that simply provides authentication via a randomish-looking bitstream that is a function only of the input document and (possibly) a secret or public key known to the sender and intended recipient, and that an "external monitor" exists who will verify that each message is indeed signed appropriately; 2) The job of the monitor is to censor communications between the sender and recipient; hie does this by examining the contents of the messages and if 1) their visible contents are innoucuous 2) their signatures do verify he passes the message; otherwise he refuses the message back to the sender. 3) Assume the signature-generating algorithm is published, and is a strongly random function of the input stream. 4) Assume any number of messages may be passed. 5) Assume that the sender and intended recipient have previously arranged for an unknown-to-the-censor second signature and bit count. 6) To send a subliminal-channel message, the sender generates an innocuous message, time-stamps it, and signs it, then signs the signature with the "secret second signature". If the [bit-count] low-order bits of the second secret signature match the desired first N bits of the desired subliminal channel message, then the message plus first (authenticating) signature is handed off to the censor to examine and transport. If the bits don't match, the time-stamp of the original message is updated, and the process repeated until the bits _do_ match. The loop of innoucuous-message/first-signature/second-signature/compare is then repeated again until all the bits of the desired subliminal channel message have been sent. Since for any good signature scheme all bits in the output bitstream are strongly random functions of all bits in the input stream, changing one bit (in the timestamp) has a chance of 1 in 2^bitcount bits of giving the desired secret-signature bitset. Proof of the bandwidth of such a scheme is proportional to 1/2 the resolution in bits of the time-stamp is left to the student. (I just _had_ to say that. :-) ). Extension: If the number of messages per unit time allowed by the censor is limited, then the bandwidth becomes MIN ( [1/2 timestamp resolution] , [bitcount * allowed-message-frequency] -Bill

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