August 1993 - cypherpunks-legacy

[uk.transport] Speed Camera with OCR
by R.Tait＠bnr.co.uk 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

I thought this might be of interest to fellow cypherpunks, especially to those of us in the UK. Has anything like this been done in the US or Canada? -Rick ------- Start of forwarded message ------- Newsgroups: uk.transport From: mreyno(a)sound.demon.co.uk (Marcus Reynolds) Subject: Speed Camera with OCR Reply-To: mreyno(a)sound.demon.co.uk Distribution: world X-Mailer: cppnews $Revision: 1.20 $ Organization: Sound & Vision BBS +44 (0)932 252323 Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1993 20:34:43 +0000 I have just seen an item on the the BBC South East News about a new speed trap in Kent. Apparently the radar clocks your speed, a TV camera records your number plate & then a real time OCR system picks out the actual number & flashes it up on a digital display a short distance further up the road. The idea is to embarrass drivers by letting them & others see their speed & registration. I don't know what type of equipment they are using, but it sounds like a really neat trick. The ability to read a car's plate & decypher the number in real time without any human intervention must take a bit of work. Has anybody heard how reliable this system really is ? I can see a few more uses for such a system than merely embarrassing speeding motorists, if it can work reliably & cheaply. How's this for starters:- City centre entry control & road pricing without the fancy toll booths, just an itemised bill at the end of the month. Tracking stolen vehicles, check every plate against the DVLC wanted list. Tracking any vehicle the State wants to track. Hello Big Brother. -- Marcus Reynolds (Bandwidth saving sig) ------- End of forwarded message -------

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Physical Privacy
by Duncan Frissell 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com W >This might be a step away from 'cypher' W >topics, but, Duncan, I was W >curious as to wether you publish any manuals W >on privacy, and/or can W >suggest books or sources for privacy and W >financial privacy info. Cypherpunks is dedicated to digital privacy. One cannot practice digital privacy without an understanding of physical privacy techniques (and vice-versa these days). Shameless marketing propoaganda will be sent by Email. Duncan Frissell "Privacy is a type of information that has its polarity reversed; I imagine it as anti-information. In a world where everything is connected to everything -- where connection and information and knowledge are dirt cheap -- then disconnection and anti-information and no-knowledge become expensive." -- Kevin Kelly But not *too* expensive. Frissell & Associates, custom crafted legal regimes since 1969. --- ~ WinQwk 2.0b#0 ~ Unregistered Evaluation Copy

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Re: Key-Escrow (black) Humor
by George A. Gleason 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

How many government agents does it take to screw in a lightbulb? a1: None, they don't screw. a2: None, they only screw the general public. a3: That question is forbidden under Don't Ask / Don't Tell. -gg

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Privacy and mail-lists
by Duncan Frissell 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com W >This might be a step away from 'cypher' W >topics, but, Duncan, I was W >curious as to wether you publish any manuals W >on privacy, and/or can W >suggest books or sources for privacy and W >financial privacy info. Cypherpunks is dedicated to digital privacy. One cannot practice digital privacy without an understanding of physical privacy techniques (and vice-versa these days). Shameless marketing propoaganda will be sent by Email. Duncan Frissell "Privacy is a type of information that has its polarity reversed; I imagine it as anti-information. In a world where everything is connected to everything -- where connection and information and knowledge are dirt cheap -- then disconnection and anti-information and no-knowledge become expensive." -- Kevin Kelly But not *too* expensive. Frissell & Associates, custom crafted legal regimes since 1969. --- WinQwk 2.0b#0

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Chaos harnessed for encryption / Fluctuations and Or
by gtoal＠an-teallach.com 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

In article <19930811185438.1.TK(a)ROCKY.AI.MIT.EDU> tk(a)reagan.ai.mit.edu writes: > with some op amps. If you want to play, there's an article in SciAm > this month on building a chaotic "encryption" machine. It probably > provides acceptable security if you use triple DES on signals prior to > sending them. That was smoke and mirrors by people who understand chaos better than they understand encryption. All it boils down to is a synchronised pair of (not very good) PRNGs. It's not a substitute for a one-time pad by a long chalk, which is how they seem to be using it. Basically they've just reinvented every schoolboy's exor encryption program all over again, this time with the latest 'chaos' buzzword thrown in to make it sound hip. Forget it. It's a dead end. G === Personal mail to gtoal(a)gtoal.com (I read it in the evenings) Business mail to gtoal(a)an-teallach.com (Be careful with the spelling!) Faxes to An Teallach Limited: 031 662 4678 Voice: 031 668 1550 x212

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Secure voice software issues
by gtoal＠an-teallach.com 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

In article <9308111916.AA03336@servo> karn(a)qualcomm.com writes: > Voice calls are different, as the availability of a two-way path lets > you do things much more securely. If you generate a session key with > DH and use PGP/RSA *only to sign the exchanges*, not to encrypt the > session key, then even if your RSA secret key is later compromised, it > would not compromise those session keys that had already been created, > used and destroyed. Thanks for that explanation, that bit hadn't sunk in with me! This makes me think... something similar would be a good extension to SMTP wouldn't it? DH exchange of keys before sending point to point mail? With the user's public keys being picked up via their .mailrc or .pgpkey or something... (It would only happen if both SMTP's supported it and both users had made their public key available to the mail system) I'm thinking of ways of automatically and easily encoding all traffic by default, to avoid line snooping. I'm not suggesting this as an alternative to explicitly encrypting things you want to keep private. You could still do that too. G === Personal mail to gtoal(a)gtoal.com (I read it in the evenings) Business mail to gtoal(a)an-teallach.com (Be careful with the spelling!) Faxes to An Teallach Limited: 031 662 4678 Voice: 031 668 1550 x212

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Secure voice software issues
by gtoal＠an-teallach.com 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

In article <9308110421.AA29116(a)jobe.shell.portal.com> hfinney(a)shell.portal.com writes: > A couple of comments on the cryptophone idea. > > First, there has seemed to be general agreement in our earlier discussions > of this concept that the hard part is compressing the voice to the point > where it can go over commonly-available modems. The government-standard > CELP algorithm is too slow for general-purpose home computers. You need > an algorithm that can operate in real time and compress intelligibly down > to about 13K bits per second. It has to be either able to compress and > decompress simultaneously or else you need some switching logic to decide > which person is talking and which is listening at each moment, with both > sides reversing roles in synchrony. Tony Robinson (who some of you might know already) - the author of the lossless 'shorten' sound compression program - is working on an ADPCM version. Currently compresses at 3 bits per (8 bit) sample. This plus a sampling rate of 4000hz instead of 8000hz (keeping it easy, on a sun) just squeezes in under the bandwidth limitation of v32bis, with a little left over for protocol overhead. Graham PS Has the 'netphone' list died or did I just drop off when I moved house like I lost my cypherpunks subscription? I remember there was talk of letting it drop because the situation seemed to be in control, but I haven't seen much progress since on vat et al, and the underground effort to do something on soundblasters that everyone said 'shut up about' has had more than enough time to come up with the goods... === Personal mail to gtoal(a)gtoal.com (I read it in the evenings) Business mail to gtoal(a)an-teallach.com (Be careful with the spelling!) Faxes to An Teallach Limited: 031 662 4678 Voice: 031 668 1550 x212

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Re: Secure voice software issues
by norm＠netcom.com 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

Can someone tell me how fast CELP is when written in C? (On some particular machine.)

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Anonymity Warning! ID stored in TAR files
by L. Detweiler 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

>From Risks 14.81 Aug 11 93 ===cut=here=== From: olaf(a)bigred.ka.sub.org (Olaf Titz) Subject: Surprise! contained in tar file The RISK of trusting in software to save confidentiality has recently been exposed in a German newsgroup. On a debate whether DES is illegal in Germany (it is not, by the way) someone posted a tarred, compressed, uuencoded archive of DES code via an anonymizing service. (No discussion on the topic of anonymization, please.) Not only that he forgot to delete the object code before tarring (thus giving an indication which kind of hardware he uses). The next day someone else posted an explanation why this action was stupid, giving the anonymous poster's full real name and address. He found it out because the tar he used leaves user names (not only UIDs, which would suffice to restore file permission settings) in the tar file. Of course, this fact is not mentioned explicitly in the man page rsp. info file (but the average user wouldn't expect it in the first place...) where an explicit warning could be considered appropriate. Olaf Titz - olaf(a)bigred.ka.sub.org - s_titz(a)ira.uka.de

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Re: (fwd) Wolf's got a thing or two to say here...
by JAW7254＠ACFcluster.NYU.EDU 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >>It's apparently from a fag (Wolf) who was beat up by his lover (David) ^^^ >>whom he had arrested Watch it honey. Intolerance ain't cool on or off net. Just my 0.02. Jim Wise JAW7254(a)ACF.NYU.EDU -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3 iQBVAgUBLGoOYwgFW+TtMfolAQHN2QH/Zlux4YbF4xBcZr/H7CC3v9TeuYfIE6HR rU+WhDnQxLjpLZN2p2UeyE7ZlAKHEo7rsl4mCEO/WOnxP6MRy9I21A== =zpNE -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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