August 1993 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Offshore Data Havens and Services
by nobody＠cicada.berkeley.edu 07 Aug '93

07 Aug '93

At 11:56 PM 8/4/93 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >the "900" sex >service numbers, which have mostly been subjected to call blocking and >other forms of regulatory oblivion, have been moved _offshore_. Time for the long distance providers to extend the use of personal identification numbers from calling cards to residences? One PIN per authorized user. This would have saved me from getting the shaft from one of my recent roomates!

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MEET: Boston Area Cpunks meeting
by Derek Atkins 06 Aug '93

06 Aug '93

Announcing the August Boston Area Cypherpunks Meeting. Where: MIT Room 1-115 When: Sat, Aug 14, 1993 Time: 3-8pm Actually, I don't officially have the room until 4pm, but I figure some people will come late, and the people who have it before might decide to leave early. Agenda: well, I don't have an agenda planned, but I'm sure we will have some things to talk about. Bring your PGP key, Magazine articles, and anything else that might be of interest. If you have any questions, either send me e-mail, or give me a call at (617) 868-4469. See you then! -derek

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Re: Cypherpunks, keep your humour dry
by sneal＠muskwa.ucs.ualberta.ca 06 Aug '93

06 Aug '93

Tim May writes: >> At the risk of stating the obvious, I think it is precisely schemes >> like this that Denning was referring to. These are what she wants to >> target. and Ed Carp replies: >My apologies - I guess I wasn't clear. Waht I meant was, does she >honestly think that people *won't* do what I suggested, just because >there are laws >forbidding it? If she does, she is surely living in >a dreamworld. An engineer was attending a convention, and after a hard day of conventioneering, returned to his hotel room and feel asleep. About 3 AM, he woke up and smelled smoke, and realized there was a fire in his room! He immediately leaped out of bed, grabbed the fire extinguisher, and let loose at the base of the flames. After 30 seconds of spraying, the fire went out. The engineer went back to sleep. A couple of months later, a physicist attended a physics convention at the same hotel, and coincidentally was given the same room. One night during the convention, the physicist awoke and found the room on fire! The physicist grabbed a notepad and calculator from the bedside table, and made some calculations. He then picked up the fire extinguisher, and made a quick squirt at a point a few feet from the flames. The fire immediately went out, and the physicist went back to sleep. A couple of months after that, a mathematician attended a mathematics convention at the same hotel, and sure enough, was given the same hotel room. After spending the day in seminars, the mathematician returned to her hotel room and went promptly to sleep. Some time later, she awoke to find the hotel room on fire! She quickly grabbed a notepad from the bedside table, made some calculations, said, "There is a solution in principle", went back to sleep and burned to death. -- Steve sneal(a)muskwa.ucs.ualberta.ca ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyone who believes in the intelligence, efficiency, and integrity of any government anywhere really, REALLY needs to get out more often. ----------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Cypherpunks, keep your powder dry....
by geoffw＠nexsys.net 06 Aug '93

06 Aug '93

> > But as "street corner drug dealers" start to use encryption (it could > happen...the "phase changes" to beepers and cellular phones happened > in a matter of months), there will be calls for restrictions to "keep > "unbreakable codes' out of the hands of criminals and terrorists. This is not a flame on you Tim, but look at the absurdity of this! Containers full of tons of coke come into the US daily, I'm sure these deals are not made on street corners, (their made in bank offices, and import agencies :), Isn't this like trying to keep our nation safe by passing laws outlawing to carrying of a suit case sized container through a busy public area (like grand central station) because someone might have a portable thermonuclear device hidden inside. How much does it take for the average person to totally see through this flimsy sharade? For the capitalist among us, if the street corner crack dealer is making fortunes, how much are the people who supply him getting? Do they use/ need to use encrypted communications? Most of those dealers who are using any form of remote communication (the smart one's at least, will still do their deals heavy on ghetto slang, nuonce and metaphor, More like; "Hey what up, I'll meet you at the spot, it's 3 yards for dorothy." This translates to " Hello, How are you, we'll rendezvous at the usual location $3,000 for an ounce"

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Re: Cypherpunks, keep your powder dry....
by peb＠PROCASE.COM 06 Aug '93

06 Aug '93

>> From: tcmay(a)netcom.com >> there will be calls for restrictions to "keep >> "unbreakable codes' out of the hands of criminals and terrorists. >This is not a flame on you Tim, but look at the absurdity of this! >[...] How much does it take >for the average person to totally see through this flimsy sharade? I think Tim correct about this as a possible scenario, although the magnitude may be small. Re: the Village Voice article's description of the WWII paranoia. Example: During the Gulf War paging people at the San Francisco airport was banned... Paul E. Baclace peb(a)procase.com

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Re: "Big Brother Inside" logo
by peb＠PROCASE.COM 06 Aug '93

06 Aug '93

>I am investigating having Tshirts made with the logo on the front How about the standard red circle with slash for NO Big Brother Inside. Have you uploaded the gif to soda.berkeley.edu yet? (What's the path?) Paul E. Baclace peb(a)procase.com

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NSA and Trust Webs
by norm＠netcom.com 06 Aug '93

06 Aug '93

While US military security models are thoroughly hierarchical I imagine that when NSA deals with foreign countries regarding ciphers used to communicate between governments and regarding mutual foes it too uses a web of trust more Byzantine than most amateurs dream of.

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Offshore Data Havens and
by Duncan Frissell 06 Aug '93

06 Aug '93

To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com J >From: jet(a)netcom.com (J. Eric Townsend) J >Actually, the Feds can do anything they want. Theyve taking to J >raiding off-short pirate radio statons in international waters, there J >was that bit with Noriega, etc etc. Reagan set a standard by J >completely ignore the world court. Omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence eh? We might as well give up and go home. <G> The feds have many powers including the ability to nuke the hell out of everything. The question becomes how usefull those powers are. After all, Caeser or Louis XIV could "destroy the city, leave no stone standing upon stone and sow the ground with salt." The difference today is that the "peasants" of the OECD countries are much more powerful than those of 18th century France. The Feds can apply point force but they can't apply it everywhere. They can do some things in international waters, they can kidnap some "drug kingpins" they can't go after every "criminal" *inside* the US much less overseas. Their limited current powers will be further limited once secure untraceable communications nets are in place. More than that, their power and prestige depend on how the people they rule view them. If we turn aside from them, their power will evaporate overnight. If the KGB couldn't block liberalization, the Fibbies, the Company, and Ft. Meade won't be able to either. Don't worry about it. Social change is underway. We'll achieve autonomy Just In Time. Duncan Frissell ************************************************************************* ATMs, Contracting Out, Digital Switching, Downsizing, EDI, Fax, Fedex, Home Workers, Internet, Just In Time, Leasing, Quants, Securitization, Temps - Not as sexy as Tim May's signature line but just as important. --- WinQwk 2.0b#0

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No Subject
by koontzd＠lrcs.loral.com 06 Aug '93

06 Aug '93

Subject: AT&T DES vs. Clipper phone security products Uncertainty on the availability of DES versus Clipper based products from AT&T has sparked some interest. Parties within AT&T were contacted to determine the state of their products. DES is not available in AT&T TSD products and one person said "NSA doesn't want DES in the TSD." # Also, the clipper algorithm is currently unavailable and expected in "September". This person deferred to a second person who provided the following: The 3600 is available with two proprietary AT&T encryption algorithms, one ITAR compliant, one for U.S. persons only. Two Telephone Security Devices (TSD) will attempt to hierarchially establish security, the higher security being non-ITAR compliant. This will be extended to the clipper algorithm (highest) when available. Neither proprietary algorithm is in the public domain. [Apparently NSA is perfectly happy with these. + ] You can buy TSDs now, and pay an extra fee (reasonable) for the ungrade path to clipper when available (September not absolutely guaranteed). Paying the fee will allow you to exchange the TSD for a new and improved one at a later date. The hold up on clipper is availability from Mykotronx and questions were deferred to "the NSA". AT&T has been performed product integration tests with clipper and is ready to go as soon as chips are available. Their willingness to sell clipper phones is predicated on marketplace acceptance and the prospect of having a national standard with the chance of interoperability between different manufacturers. There is a perceived need for voice security products, and the balance with respect to "legitimate law enforcement access" was discussed. There was some confusion about key management, which was inferred to be present in the clipper chip. [The question arises as to which clipper chip they are waiting on, the MYK-78 or the MYK-80 which has key management features. The question also arises as to whether or not the MYK-78 is susceptible to a captured control programming attack to prevent transmission of the Law Enforcement Access Field, with an inferred assumption that the MKY-80 does not share this vulnerability. *] AT&T will continue to market the present 3600 sans clipper with the two proprietary encryption algorithms (ITAR/U.S. ONLY). This was stressed rather strongly. The question of relative strenght of cryptographic algorithms was brought up. There were no conclusions, as no common metric can be used, with one public algorithm, two proprietary and one classified algorithm. DES availability was discussed and was inferred to be affected by international agreements limiting DES proliferation. The TSD uses RCELP, a proprietary vocoder that is supposed to add fidelity over CELP, and is supposed to encode female voices better, with better treble. AT&T feels RCELP is superior to anything else at 4800 baud. This raised the question of licensing for RCELP. RCELP is not in the public domain to date. Executive resistance to CELP at 4800 baud is supposedly a good sell for RCELP. The 4800 baud limitation is based on the least common denominator of analog cellular communications paths, which won't support V.32 (9600 baud). The greatest need for telephone security devices is seen for cellular communications. The 3600 optionally comes with 5 handset interface modules (as opposed to one for the base product) that interface different phones to the TSD. This is required based on different frequency response of handset microphones as well as signal amplitudes. The 5 interface modules are considered universal - covering all types of phones. Think of this as signal conditioning to make the RCELP vocoder perform better. The standard power supply takes 110 VAC, 60 Hz. An optional universal power supply and international power package are available. ------ # Is DES secure enough to cause heartburn for our 3 letter agencie cousins? + the inferrence being that DES is higher security than either proprietary algorithm. * It has been reported that MYK-80 chips exist and have been tested by Mykotronx.

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a question to ask NSA
by cme＠ellisun.sw.stratus.com 06 Aug '93

06 Aug '93

Would they be happy using Skipjack phones for their own communication if the key escrow agencies were in Bagdad and Tripoli, respectively, and the key generation and chip programming were done in Tehran? There are more details, but you get the drift.

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