December 2001 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: CNN.com on Remailers
by Anonymous 16 Dec '01

16 Dec '01

How much would be gained by using DC-Nets for inter-remailer communication? Generally, DC-Nets increase the traffic by a factor equal to the number of nodes in the net. Suppose there were a core set of always-connected remailers with about a dozen members, few enough to make a DC-Net practical given current traffic loads. Would this eliminate the benefits of remailer-to-remailer cover traffic? Would it allow for shorter remailer chains while maintaining anonymity? How much benefit do you get for the cost?

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update.568 (fwd)
by Jim Choate 16 Dec '01

16 Dec '01

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 09:33:49 -0500 (EST) From: AIP listserver <physnews(a)aip.org> To: physnews-mailing(a)aip.org Subject: update.568 PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News Number 568 December 7, 2001 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein, and James Riordon ULTRASOUND SCANS ARE AUDIBLE TO A FETUS, [SSZ: text deleted] TRACKING DNA MOTION WITH PICOMETER ACCURACY. [SSZ: text deleted] BREAKING A QUANTUM SYMMETRY ON THE TABLETOP. A recurrent theme in art and science, the concept of symmetry has become a powerful scientific tool for the analysis of physical systems. However, under special circumstances, a "quantum anomaly" occurs: the laws of quantum physics break a system's apparent symmetry. After a long search, a research group (Horacio Camblong, University of San Francisco, camblong(a)usfca.edu, and collaborators at Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina) has found a relatively simple example of a quantum anomaly: the interaction of a polar molecule with an electron. A polar molecule, despite being neutral, has a permanent separation of electric charge--a dipole. This dipole produces an electric field, which can capture electrons if it is strong enough. Can such an arrangement exist as a stable ion, with its "extra" electron? The researchers formulated the answer to this question in the language of symmetry. In physics, symmetry means that a system, such as the molecule-electron arrangement, behaves the same after you perform a change to it, such as stretching the molecule to larger scales and making appropriate adjustments to other variables in the system. At first glance, the electron-molecule interaction exhibits a remarkable scale invariance: the system "looks" the same when viewed from different scales in space and time--at least in a classical physics description which treats the molecule as a dipole and the electron as a point of charge. But this tidy picture breaks down with a proper treatment of the system, as prescribed by quantum field theory. A quantum field theory treatment requires the process of renormalization, which removes certain mathematical infinities and inconsistencies from the quantum approach. This process also makes the molecule's energy levels discrete or quantized rather than continuous. Examining the system this way, the researchers found that the scale invariance broke down. In fact, a large body of existing evidence, both experimental and numerical, supports their conclusion. While all other known quantum anomalies occur at high energies (an example is chiral symmetry in nuclear physics), the work suggests that quantum symmetry breaking can occur at much lower energies, in the domain of interacting electrons and molecules. (Camblong et al., Physical Review Letters, 26 November 2001.)

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Russian Duma Adopts Law On Digital Signatures (fwd)
by Jim Choate 16 Dec '01

16 Dec '01

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2001 22:38:40 -0500 From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> To: Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs(a)philodox.com>, dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu, cryptography(a)wasabisystems.com, DIGSIG(a)LISTSERV.TEMPLE.EDU, cyberia-l(a)listserv.aol.com Subject: Russian Duma Adopts Law On Digital Signatures http://www.rferl.com/newsline/2001/12/1-RUS/rus-141201.asp DUMA ADOPTS LAW ON DIGITAL SIGNATURES The Duma adopted on final reading on 13 December the bill legalizing the use of electronic digital signatures and giving them the same status as conventional signatures, "Kommersant-Daily" reported. However, the bill recognizes the validation of digital signature only after an original document has first been signed with a conventional signature. According to Duma Committee for Taxes and Duties deputy head Ashot Egiazaryan, the bill is intended to speed up the work of Russian stock exchanges and, in general, to reduce expenses for mailing documents. VY -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)wasabisystems.com

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FW: Re: bin Laden tape reliability
by Dean, James 16 Dec '01

16 Dec '01

> Perhaps it wasn't found in an abandoned house at all, but was born > somewhere in the DC suburbs. Do videotapes preserve the frequency of the fluctuations of incandescent lamps caused by the frequency of the electric current? Washington DC is at 60 Hz but according to http://kropla.com/electric2.htm, Afghanistan is at 50.

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The MS DRM Patent and Freedom to Speak and Think (fwd)
by Eugene Leitl 16 Dec '01

16 Dec '01

-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBMTO: N48 04'14.8'' E11 36'41.2'' http://www.leitl.org 57F9CFD3: ED90 0433 EB74 E4A9 537F CFF5 86E7 629B 57F9 CFD3 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 23:08:13 -0500 From: Seth Johnson <seth.johnson(a)RealMeasures.dyndns.org> To: fork(a)xent.com Subject: The MS DRM Patent and Freedom to Speak and Think In his November 6 essay "You're Free to Think," (http://davenet.userland.com/2001/11/06/youreFreeToThink) Dave Winer comments that whatever else happens in the ongoing, increasing trend towards policing of the public's right to use information and information technology, we are still left with the freedom to *think* for ourselves. He seemed to me to be offering this comment as a bare source of solace against the government's increasing intent to control the prospects of communications technology. Microsoft's favorable treatment of late caused him to wonder what kind of deal Bill Gates must have worked out with the Bush Administration. He wondered what Microsoft might have given the government in return for the highly favorable terms of the settlement that's currently on the table in the court proceedings against the company, for monopoly practices in the operating systems arena. He commented specifically on the current ramifications of Microsoft's increasing position of power in the operating systems market: > Now, they have to get people to upgrade to > Windows XP -- that's the final step, the one that > fully turns over the keys to the Internet to them, > because after XP they can upgrade at will, routing > through Microsoft-owned servers, altering content, > and channeling communication through government > servers. After XP they fully own electronic > communication media, given the consent decree, > assuming it's approved by the court. Now, it has just come to light that Microsoft has been awarded a software "patent" for a "Digital Rights Management" operating system. This development shows us exactly where we stand now. Microsoft doesn't have to offer anything to the government; it has only to hold possession of a patent covering the "DRM" elements of its latest OS, thereby providing an almost absolutely assured trajectory toward establishing the terms by which the public's ability to communicate digital information will be controlled. Please see the message I am posting below, from the CYBERIA email list, which quotes from the patent. The real kicker is right here: > The digital rights management operating system > also limits the functions the user can perform on the > rights-managed data and the trusted application, and > can provide a trusted clock used in place of the > standard computer clock. The ability to use information freely is now going to be policed at the most intricate level, in the name of exclusive rights and to the detriment of the most fundamental Constitutional principles of our society. Whereas the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution assures that every American citizen has the full right to freedom of speech, we see here the ultimate legislative and technical trappings by which the public will be demarcated as mere information consumers. Facts and ideas are not contraband and may never be copyrighted or otherwise constrained under the terms of intellectual "property," whether they are bound up in an expressive work or not; and the computer is a *logic* device that now sits on nearly every citizen's desktop -- it is *not* a consumer appliance. From both the standpoints of speech and thought, so-called digital "rights management" is a utterly desolate *dead end.* Whether we speak of the constituent pieces of expressive works, or the nature of the computer itself, so-called digital "rights management" marks the beginning of a grand rollback of the means by which the promise of our participation in and advancement of civil society have lately been greatly augmented. Rather than facing the simple, plain truth that the power given in the U.S. Constitution for Congress to grant (or deny) to authors and inventors "exclusive right" to their works, was intended to cover products that do not intrinsically bind up the very means of communication and of our participation in civil society, we instead are experiencing a social condition wherein monopoly interests exploit the fluidity of logical products to evade the very terms of antitrust law and to assure that the public's ordinary rights do not gain purchase against their interests. Antitrust law is all about competition in a particular product, but software is as amorphous in its possibilities as our own vaunted power to think. Thus Microsoft easily maintains it is not in the browser market, competing with Netscape; it is, rather, in the market for "innovative operating systems." We are now seeing just how "innovative" that operating system can really be. If we do not confront the ludicrousness of the idea of holding a patent of this nature, and the outrageousness of our courts' failure to confront the truth about what holding market power in the field of informatin products really means, we will soon be free to speak and think -- only so long as we don't use our computers to do it. Thus, in the name of exclusive rights, Microsoft is serving old world publishing interests, acting by means of legal fictions to assure that citizens who seek to further the prospects of information technology, will be inexorably locked into the role of information consumers, blocked from exercising their own tools in full accordance with the rights that our Constitution supposedly guards. We are *all* information producers, whether we manifest this as a routine, inalienable part of the ordinary rights we exercise in our everyday lives, or whether we engage ourselves in the present, increasingly desperate and furtive struggle to guard commercial interests by restricting the use of information delivered in digital form. We have always been information producers, and we must not accede to the interests of those who do not regard the public at large as full and equal citizens, but rather as mere consumers. Seth Johnson Committee for Independent Technology December 14, 2001 Information Producers Initiative: http://RealMeasures.dyndns.org/C-FIT > -------- Original Message -------- > Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 23:18:08 -0800 > From: John Young <jya(a)PIPELINE.COM> > > Microsoft's patent for a Digital Rights Management > Operating System was awarded yesterday: > > http://cryptome.org/ms-drm-os.htm > > Abstract > > A digital rights management operating system protects > rights-managed data, such as downloaded content, from > access by untrusted programs while the data is loaded > into memory or on a page file as a result of the > execution of a trusted application that accesses the > memory. To protect the rights-managed data resident in > memory, the digital rights management operating system > refuses to load an untrusted program into memory while > the trusted application is executing or removes the > data from memory before loading the untrusted program. > If the untrusted program executes at the operating > system level, such as a debugger, the digital rights > management operating system renounces a trusted identity > created for it by the computer processor when the > computer was booted. To protect the rights-managed data > on the page file, the digital rights management > operating system prohibits raw access to the page file, > or erases the data from the page file before allowing > such access. Alternatively, the digital rights > management operating system can encrypt the > rights-managed data prior to writing it to the page > file. The digital rights management operating system > also limits the functions the user can perform on the > rights-managed data and the trusted application, and > can provide a trusted clock used in place of the > standard computer clock. > > ********************************************************************** > For Listserv Instructions, see http://www.lawlists.net/cyberia > Off-Topic threads: http://www.lawlists.net/mailman/listinfo/cyberia-ot > Need more help? Send mail to: Cyberia-L-Request(a)listserv.aol.com > ********************************************************************** http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork

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A�d Moubarek Sa�d
by Gratuit＠MarocMail.com 16 Dec '01

16 Dec '01

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by Biggus Dingus 16 Dec '01

16 Dec '01

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Re: CNN.com on Remailers
by Tim May 16 Dec '01

16 Dec '01

On Tuesday, December 11, 2001, at 10:07 PM, Meyer Wolfsheim wrote: > "So far, U.S. and European authorities battling terrorism and cybercrime > have apparently focused their surveillance elsewhere. The FBI and the > National Security Agency, which monitors international > telecommunications, > declined to comment on what strategy, if any, they have for dealing with > remailers." > > That would have made the article much more interesting.. > > What *is* the FBI/etc.'s strategy on dealing with remailers, other than > ignoring them (and hoping that anti-spam/anti-terror legislation will > make > them illegal?) The article was not completely silent on speculations about FBI/LEA efforts: Magic Lantern was mentioned as a way to get the keys. I'd guess that remops are likely targets for future "sneak and peek" black bag jobs. Warrants are no longer needed, say the criminals in D.C. (though the Constitution differs). Packet sniffers are another approach. Remember that we have Shimomura's own words that he was working on such sniffers for various intelligence agencie back during the Mitnick affair. Correlation analysis remains promising. Messages go in, messages leave. Without sufficient traffic to get the N^M entropy, imagine what sophisticate statistical analysis does to establish probable mappings. As we (again) discussed at this past Saturday's physical meeting, in Santa Cruz, a sparse set of users and messages is almost a toy system. Remailer traffic needs to go up by a large factor, whether actual messages or dummy messages. Remailers need to be more robust (uptime, strong policies) and need to be incentivized (paid remailers, an old topic). A chicken or egg situation? Ideally, simultaneous development...plenty of precedents for market forces pushing stronger products that customers are willing to pay for. --Tim May "Dogs can't conceive of a group of cats without an alpha cat." --David Honig, on the Cypherpunks list, 2001-11

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Re: Tailgunner jamesd
by mattd 16 Dec '01

16 Dec '01

>>> Fisk is one of those rare beasts,a truthful journalist. >>I was filled with rage when I read him piously declare that he understands why they're angry and doesn't hold it against them at all. Doesn't seem to take much does it jimmy?,communal,libertarian socialists pick that up on subtle signals from you.{ I vigorously declare that Im sorry the 4th plane didnt wipe out the W/house.or Congress/rest of pentagon.btw.} >> Such saintly piety reminds me of Heng Samrin. --digsig James A. Donald Hengs famous for that , I guess.What a journo! Sure you dont mean Wilfred B? All roads led into a morass,in my days. Words gave us away to the executioner. There was little I could do.yet our rulers would have been happier without me,I hoped Thus passed the time allotted to me on this earth. "For those born after us",by Bertolt Brecht.

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Tailgunner jamesd
by mattd 16 Dec '01

16 Dec '01

>>> wrote: A particularly powerful article by Robert Fisk on > his beating in Afghanistan. > > http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=109257 It is obvious they did not beat him enough. Let us hope they do it again, and the next time do a proper job of it. For example he still has his eyes. If they took out his eyes, he could see >>better than he does now. --digsig James A. Donald Fisk is one of those rare beasts,a truthful journalist.Declan could learn from the fisks,pilgers,hunter s thomsons and danny casoleros of this world when he's not greasing up to the cato crowd.Maybe if we removed declans eyes with the old soft drill. Jamesd meet jamesk,on this day...1953 -- Veteran James Kutcher, who lost both his legs in WWII, informed his disability was being cut of due to his membership in the Socialist Workers Party. Happy now?

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