December 2001 - cypherpunks-legacy

bin Laden tape reliability
by Talley Anonymous Remailer 14 Dec '01

14 Dec '01

Have any of the cypherpunks run across useful analyses of the recently released bin Laden videotape? Mainstream media seems ready to question the accuracy of the translation - but I'm curious if the tape has any basis in reality at all. Purportedly, it was discovered by unidentified parties in an abandoned house in Afghanistan, then delivered to the CIA for processing before release by the Defense Department. How do we know it wasn't manufactured in order to mislead? Perhaps it was left in the abandoned house as a deliberate red herring - something like that would take some budget, which would seem to suggest it was produced by the intelligence arm of at least a moderate- sized nation. (Like Israel. Or the UK. Or the USA. Or ..?) Perhaps it wasn't found in an abandoned house at all, but was born somewhere in the DC suburbs. If someone intended to make a distracting fake, it seems like they might follow one of two paths - they could find (or help create, with some Hollywood magic) a bin Laden lookalike, and have him interact with some other Afghan/Arabic-looking folks. Or, they could go digital, and create a wholly artificial animation model of bin Laden. The first method is probably easier, but also probably easier to detect, if analysts are inclined to compare things like facial geometry or voice characteristics. (It's a shame the tape has such poor quality.) The second method would likely allow the creation of near-undetectable fakes, especially if they overlaid the animated creation on top of a physically constructed set with natural lighting, etc (though lighting and shadow might be good places to look for evidence of forgery, or lack thereof.) Maybe the tape is exactly what it purports to be - hard to say. But the media's not even asking the interesting questions.

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RE: CNN.com on Remailers
by Nomen Nescio 14 Dec '01

14 Dec '01

On Sat, 15 Dec 2001, Anonymous wrote: > Lucky Green writes: > > A popular remailer will handle some 3,500 messages a day. But this > > includes intra remailer-network traffic. How many of those messages are > > messages entering and leaving the cloud is any remailer operator's > > guess, since current remailer statistics software has no means to > > differentiate between internal and boundary traffic. Of course any > > self-respecting TLA would know the those figures that the remail > > operators themselves are currently unable to obtain. > > It's a myth that remailers don't distinguish between inter-remailer and > outside traffic. Actually, remailers generally have built-in knowledge > of every other remailer, and mail from them is handled specially. [...] I think what Lucky means is that the remailer operators have no way of knowing if the messages passing between remailers are actual messages, dummy traffic, stats pings, etc. All that a remailer can tell is the number of real messages entering or leaving his server (and even this would require modification to the remailer software). Unless all the remailer operators collected and shared this information, we can't know accurate stats for the remailer network as a whole. How much are dummy messages that come from one remailer and die at the last remailer? How much are pings that return to the originating remailer/stats collector? These aren't helpful if you are a remailer user wishing to hide in the crowd -- you need lots of other remailer users generating traffic.

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RE: CNN.com on Remailers
by Anonymous 14 Dec '01

14 Dec '01

Lucky Green writes: > A popular remailer will handle some 3,500 messages a day. But this > includes intra remailer-network traffic. How many of those messages are > messages entering and leaving the cloud is any remailer operator's > guess, since current remailer statistics software has no means to > differentiate between internal and boundary traffic. Of course any > self-respecting TLA would know the those figures that the remail > operators themselves are currently unable to obtain. It's a myth that remailers don't distinguish between inter-remailer and outside traffic. Actually, remailers generally have built-in knowledge of every other remailer, and mail from them is handled specially. The reason is because of flood detection and prevention, which is a feature of modern remailer software. Attacks against the remailer network in the form of message floods have been a common nuisance in recent years. As a countermeasure, current remailer software detects and automatically blocks addresses which provide excessive quantities of mail. Unfortunately, the most common cause of large incoming volumes is that the other sender is itself a remailer. Hence it is necessary to maintain a database of all extant remailers and disable flood detection for those addresses. This is a common practice for remailer operators. It's also one of the main reasons why certain remailer chains "mysteriously" fail to work. With the set of remailers changing frequently, especially in recent months, it takes time, often weeks, before all the remailers get around to updating their databases to reflect the current set of addresses. Until then you have a failure with any chain which goes from a remailer to another remailer which has not yet added it. You end up with these strange situations where A can send to B which can send to C, and C can send to A, but any chain where A sends to C fails. At one time there was a somewhat romantic and idealistic notion that remailers would all operate independently, with no need to be aware of each other's existence. Experience has proven that this is not the case. Remailers do know about each other, they need to know about each other, and they coordinate their efforts via various mailing lists and newsgroups. Given this reality, it is time to consider a different approach to remailers, one in which all remailer operators work together in a peer to peer network. It's crazy for remailers to use RFC2822 email to communicate with each other, with all of its problems with reliability and the many layers of software which mail goes through to and from the remailing functionality. Remailer operators should have permanent encrypted links to one another, with constant (or at least message-uncorrelated) traffic volumes. They can still use latency, message pools, and other features, of course. But when it comes time to deliver messages to the next remailer in the list, that should be done with a reliable and direct connection that doesn't have to depend on the vagaries of sendmail, procmail, Microsoft servers or the many other layers that get in the way. This would both increase the reliability of the remailer network and improve its security by hiding inter-remailer traffic.

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RE: bin Laden tape reliability
by Trei, Peter 14 Dec '01

14 Dec '01

> From: Talley Anonymous Remailer[SMTP:nobody@talley.remailer.org] > Sent: Friday, December 14, 2001 6:47 PM > To: cypherpunks(a)lne.com > Subject: bin Laden tape reliability > > Have any of the cypherpunks run across useful analyses of the recently > released bin Laden videotape? > > Mainstream media seems ready to question the accuracy of the translation - > but I'm curious if the tape has any basis in reality at all. > If it's a fake, it's a damn subtle one. I've read the transcript, but not seen the tape. The contents do not unequivocally prove UBL to be behind the 9/11 attacks, but it's a very reasonable inference. It does clearly show that UBL claiming to have foreknowledge of the attacks. If you want to go beyond what I consider reasonable, you could argue that UBL is taking credit for someone else's work. I find it difficult to believe that someone would go to the trouble of producing a fake, and not use it to show UBL categorically taking responsibility for the crime. I'm inclined to believe the tapes reality. > Purportedly, it was discovered by unidentified parties in an abandoned > house in Afghanistan, then delivered to the CIA for processing before > release by the Defense Department. > > How do we know it wasn't manufactured in order to mislead? > > Perhaps it was left in the abandoned house as a deliberate red herring - > something like that would take some budget, which would seem to > suggest it was produced by the intelligence arm of at least a moderate- > sized nation. (Like Israel. Or the UK. Or the USA. Or ..?) > > Perhaps it wasn't found in an abandoned house at all, but was born > somewhere in the DC suburbs. > > If someone intended to make a distracting fake, it seems like they might > follow one of two paths - they could find (or help create, with some > Hollywood magic) a bin Laden lookalike, and have him interact with some > other Afghan/Arabic-looking folks. Or, they could go digital, and > create a wholly artificial animation model of bin Laden. > > The first method is probably easier, but also probably easier to detect, > if analysts are inclined to compare things like facial geometry or > voice characteristics. (It's a shame the tape has such poor quality.) > Facial geometry would be an interesting test. The folks claiming to be able to spot baddies by facial recognition systems could do an interesting demo - feeding known pictures of UBL into their system to build a profile, then seeing the the UBL on the tape matches. I gather the sound is pretty poor, so voiceprints may not be doable. > The second method would likely allow the creation of near-undetectable > fakes, especially if they overlaid the animated creation on top of > a physically constructed set with natural lighting, etc (though lighting > and shadow might be good places to look for evidence of forgery, or > lack thereof.) > Near-undetectable? I don't think so. Convincing human faces are just about the hardest thing to do in CGI animation. Humans are hardwired to recognize and differentiate between faces, and we're very sensitive to fakes. Look at Pixar's efforts, or the recent video game based movie (Final Fantasy???) No one is going to watch the humans in either of those for more than a few seconds without realizing that they are not real. CGI humans are still like dancing bears - which are applauded not because they dance well, but because the dance at all. > Maybe the tape is exactly what it purports to be - hard to say. But > the media's not even asking the interesting questions. > Perhaps, but I'll take the position it's real until more evidence appears to the contrary. Peter Trei ============================================================================ ================ This e-mail, its content and any files transmitted with it are intended solely for the addressee(s) and are PRIVILEGED and CONFIDENTIAL. Access by any other party is unauthorized without the express prior written permission of the sender. If you have received this e-mail in error you may not copy, disclose to any third party or use the contents, attachments or information in any way, Please delete all copies of the e-mail and the attachment(s), if any and notify the sender. Thank You. ============================================================================ ================

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Re: SWOT (formerly "Phil Zimmermann on key exchange")
by Nomen Nescio 14 Dec '01

14 Dec '01

Paul Holman writes, to about 10 email lists: > All, please forgive the cross-posting, I haven't been following any of > these lists recently, but have a vested interest in this conversation > and would like to be CC'd on this thread in the future. > > First, can somebody please send me a reference for this alleged "Robot > CA" article so I can read it. See http://zgp.org/linux-elitists/20011113171821.D10036@zgp.org.html, which has links to an article about the Zimmermann speech at http://linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=5605 and some ideas from Brad Templeton at http://www.templetons.com/brad/crypt.html.

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Re: Poor little child pornographer
by mattd 14 Dec '01

14 Dec '01

Birdbrain nescio plops>>Declan McCullagh has been producing a one-sided series... Well he's a prime CALC suspect.Ill grant you that. >>everything the pornographer says is taken as gospel Corn patch moving violation? Tim? anyone? >>the police are filthy liars. Season with a little truth as garnish >>McCullagh's twisted narrative On Cato yes.sadly. >>Missing from this tidy story is the cost-benefit analysis from the part of the evil policeman. He has supposedly committed a felony that could lead to decades in prison, just to avoid the difficulty of handing the computer back with an apology, which happens all the time in police work. Im suspecting NN as filth now,he's dirtier than 'Faustine". The standard of police work gets exposed sometimes like the OJ fuckup. They've not handed back my computer yet,either.This particular policeman sounds like 'Maniac cop' to me. Bad lieutenant. >>Smears,classic cointelpro coin of the realm.Agent nomen nescio crawls out into the light.no name nsacia.Slime.

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by Information Interface Ltd. 14 Dec '01

14 Dec '01

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RE: : Re: How do you sleep?
by mattd 14 Dec '01

14 Dec '01

Peter Trei sent >>mattd is still a newbie to this list. He will eventually learn that the title of the list: 'cypherpunks' tells nothing about the views of list subscribers, which range widely. In particular, he will learn that participation in the list does not imply acceptance of any particular stance, attitude, or agenda towards crypto, stego, or government or lack thereof. The only thing which can really be said about subscribers in general is that they think crypto is worth discussing. > Your fellow PUNK for ANARCHY,mattd. > You are not my fellow. I am not a punk. Since no one here even agrees what anarchy is, it's incorrect for you to assume that anyone agrees on that, either. Peter Trei << Im a newbie to a list titled cypherpunks,not cyphershills,cypherprats,cyphergoons,cyphersucks,cypherfeds,etc,etc. Punk does imply something whatever you say.To accept lies,propaganda and self delusional CALC,would be fatal for this list.The natural selection of good ideas will sort this all out,let the rivers flow red. You are not my fellow now;So?.Not that I want you for my fellow or asked you,I was talking to declan,there still may be hope for him.I also dont just write for those neutral,balanced,objective,scientific,cleareyed,lucid,rational pragmatists such as your good self.I have to account for the foul,creepy vermin of so called law enforcement and possible data miners from the year 2010.ie.Posterity. If crypto-anarchy is as big as I think its going to be this list will be hirstorically significant.

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None
by mattd 14 Dec '01

14 Dec '01

Peter Trei sent >>mattd is still a newbie to this list. He will eventually learn that the title of the list: 'cypherpunks' tells nothing about the views of list subscribers, which range widely. In particular, he will learn that participation in the list does not imply acceptance of any particular stance, attitude, or agenda towards crypto, stego, or government or lack thereof. The only thing which can really be said about subscribers in general is that they think crypto is worth discussing. > Your fellow PUNK for ANARCHY,mattd. > You are not my fellow. I am not a punk. Since no one here even agrees what anarchy is, it's incorrect for you to assume that anyone agrees on that, either. Peter Trei << Im a newbie to a list titled cypherpunks,not cyphershills,cypherprats,cyphergoons,cyphersucks,cypherfeds,etc,etc. Punk does imply something whatever you say.To accept lies,propaganda and self delusional CALC,would be fatal for this list.The natural selection of good ideas will sort this all out,let the rivers flow red. You are not my fellow now;So?.Not that I want you for my fellow or asked you,I was talking to declan,there still may be hope for him.I also dont just write for those neutral,balanced,objective,scientific,cleareyed,lucid,rational pragmatists such as your good self.I have to account for the foul,creepy vermin of so called law enforcement and possible data miners from the year 2010.ie.Posterity. If crypto-anarchy is as big as I think its going to be this list will be hirstorically significant.

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Axed Intel Man Loses E-Mail Case
by mattd 14 Dec '01

14 Dec '01

"Disgruntled cypherpunk of the Year." me,when I find out this is not about an axe attack on tim may Choates not a poster,he's a spamming menace.How longs he been here?

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