August 2001 - cypherpunks-legacy

more than spread spectrum
by cme＠ellisun.sw.stratus.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There are alternatives to spread spectrum, if we're threatened with loss of freedom to communicate. We could lay our own wires/fibers. We could set up a mesh network of infrared lasers through the air. Last time I looked, there were no laws against shining lights out your window as long as they didn't bother anyone. An infrared laser could hardly bother anyone. We could produce a line of cheap cards to plug into a PC which would do packet routing, using a variety of physical links -- our own wires, lasers, very low range radio, .... Each card would connect to three or more neighbors and become part of the global mesh. Adaptive routing with no global map would suffice for the card and would keep the whole system peer-to-peer with no need for central control and no chance for central tapping. Of course all of these solutions require a high density of users. A college campus might be the right place to start. We could then branch out to cities. I suspect that a place like Chicago or NYC with high rise apartments might be the place to start -- many options for line-of-sight communications. The benefit isn't just for Cypherpunks. It's a free network for the masses -- like the original USENET (with each user donating routing and store/forward) but with unrestricted, low-range, continuously operating physical links. I'll volunteer to do the software for the node card. Does anyone have hardware design/fab to donate to the effort? - Carl

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Re: News: "U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship"
by Greg Broiles 08 Sep '01

08 Sep '01

At 05:31 PM 8/31/2001 -0400, Faustine wrote: >Sure. But to what extent can you collaborate without a)approaching full- >blown collusion or b) getting taken for a ride in spite of your best >efforts? When you talk about "collaborating" and ZKS selling beta software to the NSA, are you saying you've got information that ZKS gave the NSA access to more information than the general public got, and/or that the NSA got their access or information meaningfully earlier than the general public? If that's the case, that's interesting, but that's too serious a claim to let pass by as an unstated implication. If that's not the case - and they had the same access to the Freedom beta code that the rest of us outsiders/Cypherpunks/critics/commentators did - then I don't see an issue here. -- Greg Broiles gbroiles(a)well.com "We have found and closed the thing you watch us with." -- New Delhi street kids

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Re: The Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot
by Nomen Nescio 05 Sep '01

05 Sep '01

Mark Leighton Fisher writes: > Tim's point, which many seem to have missed, is that by design a tool that > enforces the privacy, anonymity, and pseudonymity of a women striving for > equal rights in Afghanistan can also be used by the Taliban in their quest > to track down and kill Afghans who converted to Christianity and are now > preaching the Word. That's absurd. The Taliban doesn't need crypto anonymity. They hold the reins of power. If they want to go after Christians, they just issue an edict. Their Islamic police stalk the streets of Kabul armed with guns and whips. They assault who they will, go where they wish. What would they need with anonymous remailers and pseudonym based credentials? The larger mistake, which others have made as well, is that these technologies are "tools" which, once created, may be used by everyone. Granted, with a basic encryption program this may be the case. (And indeed bin Laden is already using this technology, http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001-02-05-binladen.htm.) But the more sophisticated technologies are not self-contained tools. They require a supported and maintained infrastructure to operate. Anonymous posters are painfully aware of how inadequate the current remailer system is. A truly reliable and effective anonymity technology will be more like a service than a tool. This means that the operators choose to whom they will market and sell their services. This was one of the main points of the original message. You can't just deploy a technology and hope that someone finds it useful. You need to identify and target a market segment where the value exceeds the cost. And Tim May himself raised the issue of further looking for profitable markets which are morally acceptable. He sometimes seems reluctant to admit it, but the point of crypto anarchy is to improve the world by reducing the impact of government coercion. It's not supposed to be a nihilistic attempt to tear down institutions just for the sake of destruction. Any cypherpunk who creates a privacy technology which targets bin Laden and his cohorts as a market is deluding himself if he thinks he is making the world a better place. You can say all the nasty things you like about Western civilization, but crypto anarchy has the best chance of survival under a democratic government that pays at least lip service to values of individual freedom. You who believe that the U.S. government is the epitome of evil should spend some time living in Afghanistan. See how far you get with your crypto technologies in a country which has banned the internet, vcrs, satellite dishes, television, movies and music. The point is that cypherpunks have a goal. The technology is not the end, but the means to the end. The end is a world with more freedom and more privacy. Getting there is not easy, the path is not obvious. And it is certainly not inevitable, as the past ten years of failure should have made clear. It is important to identify markets which will advance the cause rather than set it back. Tim May made a good start on this in his earlier posting. Those who reject the idea of judging groups and markets by their morality are the ones who are missing the point.

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Re: speech + action
by mmotyka＠lsil.com 04 Sep '01

04 Sep '01

Tim May <tcmay(a)got.net> wrote : >Which is why I asked for you some actual cases. I pointed out that--so >far as I have heard--there have been _no_ prosecutions for "paramilitary >training." (There may have been some paramilitary types busted for >firing AK-47s, for trespassing, whatever. This is why I listed these as >exceptions.) > You are right. Actual cases in which the bare-assed anti-paramilitary training laws are applied are in short supply. Generally they are associated with other infractions. Do note, however that there is a consistent thread of discussing the speech and the act i.e. the manual-based "training" regarding propane cylinders and the actual posession of same. The separate items are not puniushable but together seem to imply conspiracy to commit the act. http://nwcitizen.com/publicgood/reports/bailhear.html http://www.cnn.com/US/9607/02/arizona.militia/ >Bell's AP was not one of the charges in his case. > Sure, I mention it because despite its being non-functional and unpunishable it seemed to have been brought into the courtroom with the purpose of spicing up the case. >No point in going round and round. I don't think even the U.S.G. has >this power that you think it does, and I cite the non-prosecution of >many right-wing groups as evidence. When busts have occurred, other >alleged crimes were involved, like trespassing, violations of gun laws, >etc. > You are absolutely right. Where I think you misread me is this : I don't think that the government *has* this power, I think the way the laws are written and discussed, this degree of power is something for which they reach. Mike

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Tim's Tips on Avoiding Prosecution
by Tim May 04 Sep '01

04 Sep '01

On Friday, August 31, 2001, at 07:10 AM, Fisher Mark wrote: >> Look at how AP was used. > > Mike, the main reason the Jim Bell prosecution started was his actions, > not > his words. Some of us on the list (myself included) would be majorly > upset > if a stink bomb strong enough to make us vomit was used on us (upset > enough > to want someone to take action against Jim Bell). Had Jim Bell > restrained > himself to speech, prosecution would have been much more difficult to > start. > Not impossible, but much more difficult. Bell's cases and Parker's case(s) have been thrashed-over many times here. Clueful folks like Duncan Frissell have outlined some of the obvious errors (acted as his own lawyer, admitted tampering with mail, the infamous "Say goodnight, Joshua" item, etc.). I believe 10 years in prison is out of proportion. I have direct knowledge of far more serious crimes, including arson, which resulted in no prison time at all. Bell made various mistakes, but I'm not saying he deserves 10 years in a federal prison. And the handling of the case was strange. Others have written about it in a lot of detail. Both the Bell and Parker cases involved identifiable actions that were not just "speech actions." (To JA Terrenson/Measle, there _is_ a difference between speech and action. Planting a stink bomb is not "political speech." Tampering with mail is not speech. Threatening harm, directly and specifically, is not speech.) I'll give you Tim's Tips on Avoiding Prosecution (worked so far...): 1. Never know the specific names of any judges or prosecutors. This cuts way down on the chance that one will slip up and make a comment which might be construed as a specific threat. Keep things general. (I _do_ know the names of Jeff Gordon, Robb London, and Judge Tanner, but only because there have been so many articles and items about them.) 2. Never, ever, make physical contact with Feds. Don't go to their buildings unless required to, don't go near the homes or offices of their employees, just avoid them completely. This makes "stalking" charges mighty hard to press. 3. Don't attend "People's Tribunals" where specific agents, officers, judges, etc. are to be "tried" for their crimes. We see that many/most of these are infiltrated, and that, in fact, the chief rabble-rousers are likely to be government agents or stool pigeons. (Some may be acting to reduce other charges against them, as the Feds wanted Randy Weaver to do--they set Weaver up with that quarter inch taken off a shotgun and then wanted him to infiltrate the Northwest militias and narc them out.) 4. If whackos send you e-mail, don't respond. (I routinely discarded e-mail from Vulis, Detweiler, Toto, Bell, and others I won't name for reasons of politeness. Some of them sent me what I thought were "side channel" communications which looked to be efforts to rope me into their plans. Perhaps the lack of correspondence with Parker and Bell is what saved me from being dragged in front of a grand jury.) 5. At physical Cypherpunks meetings, by all means talk about politics, uses of technology, even "anarchic" things. But avoid being drawn into debates about what to do to specific politicians, judges, etc.. (Attendees at Bay Area meetings will know that for 9 years now we have had occasional heated discussions of these things, but we have avoided the kind of "people's tribunal" crap that helped get Bell into trouble.) 6. Don't actually build bombs or modify weapons to fire in illegal ways. These are "actions," not speech. And neither are very useful. Perfectly OK to talk about either thing (maybe not on the Cypherpunks list, for reasons of relevancy), but may well be illegal to actually build. (It is not necessarily illegal to build bombs, but the specifics matter. One of the "pyrotechnics" newsgroups has discussions of this.) 7. Pay your taxes. Stay away from nutty schemes to not file tax returns, etc. (Part of what got Bell charged the first time was failure to file, fraudulent use of Social Security numbers, etc.) Arguing that taxes are wrong, unfair, etc. is not the same thing as tax evasion. Even promoting schemes to avoid taxes is probably not prosecutable (note that the book writers usually only spend time at Terminal Island when they themselves have used their ideas to evade taxes.). 8. Speech in purely electronic or written form is safer than speech in physical forums. More time to redact words, more ability to modify speech which might be interpreted as direct threats to a person. Less chance to be entrapped by a provocateur. See Rule 1: Never bother to learn the names of agents or judges. This makes it much harder to slip up and say something foolish like "We should use AP to eliminate Judge Foobar!" OK to say "I won't weep if Washington, D.C. is nerve-gassed by Osama bin Laden," as this is an expression of opinion. Ditto for "Shoot all politicians" (a general comment, overbroad, not specific, not credible, protected American anti-politician threat...probably even uttered by guys like Jeff Gordon in moments of frustration. Even legally OK to say "Someone should nerve gas Washington, D.C.," as this is not a call for action that is in way plausibly influenced by the call. Note: I'm not saying that such a call won't get your name put on a list...what I'm saying is that the Feds are unlikely to launch a prosecution over something so nebulous and obviously speech-like as "Defendant said someone should nerve gas Washington, D.C." First Amendment lawyers would jump on a case like this. However, a leader of Aryan Nation, for example, calling for his followers to kill Jews might cross the line ("incitement"). Their have been a few civil actions where the organization or its leaders were held liable for damages caused by followers who were incited to _specific_ actions. (An interesting question is whether any of the more vocal Cypherpunks could be held liable, civilly or criminally, for actions by "followers." I doubt it, given the situation. And the fact that there are no formal leaders, no structure, no real organization, helps. The export of crypto was maybe where there was most exposure.) Anyway, these are some general tips. I don't claim to be either morally pure or to be beyond the scrutiny of prosecutors. Who knows, maybe they're just waiting for me to slip up so they can present charges to a grand jury. But I think my tips are just common sense ways to avoid the situations Parker and Bell fell into. AN ANECDOTE: The closest I think I have come (think, because I don't know about times I never learned about) to being charged with this sort of a crime was when I had the encounter with the Secret Service at Stanford University just as Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea were arriving in the area I was in. The SS and Stanford Sheriff's converged on me from four sides, literally, and were on all sides of me. They demanded to look inside my bag...I refused (had a piece of crypto gear in it they might have thought looked suspicious, and there's the general point about their lack of probable cause). They one of them accused me of planting a bomb in the basement of Meyer Library with the intent of killing President Clinton. Did I plant a bomb in the basement of Meyer Library with the intent of assassinating President Clinton? Of course not. They were bluffing, hoping, I guess, I would freak out and say "I'm innocent. Search my bag if you don't believe me!" After about 10 minutes of staring me down, they told me to walk to the closest point that was off campus and not to return. I asked about my car. "If you are seen on campus, you will be arrested. You can get your car tomorrow." (Great, since I lived 60 miles away.) By the way, the SS also demanded that I give them my name and show them my driver's license. I refused, so at least they never got my name entered into the Master Data Bank of Presidential Threateners. As to why I was on the Stanford campus at precisely the time the Clintons were arriving, I have a pretty damned good reason. (Aside from the point that no reason at all was or is "needed.") I had been invited months before--and long before the Presidential visit was scheduled--to give a talk to Professor Margaret Radin's cyberlaw class. The class began at 4. I brought along my COMSEC (later, Starian) 3DES phone unit, to illustrate to the class some hardware. My encounter with the SS was around 3:30. I looped back around to the west side of the campus and walked back on campus and thence to the law school. I told Prof. Rader about the detainment by the SS and their demand that I open my bag and identify myself and my reason for being on campus. And about the threat to have me arrested if I was seen on the campus again. She said that students and faculty had all been dealing with the effects of Chelsea's arrival as a student and that the law school would be quite happy to handle my case if the SS or Stanford Sheriff's Dept. nabbed me. --Tim May

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secure IRC/messaging successor
by Eugene Leitl 03 Sep '01

03 Sep '01

Gale http://www.gale.org/ seems a well thought out infrastructure. Is the consensus "this is it", or have I missed any alternatives? TIA, -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204/">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBMTO : N48 10'07'' E011 33'53'' http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204 57F9CFD3: ED90 0433 EB74 E4A9 537F CFF5 86E7 629B 57F9 CFD3

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RE: Jim Bell sentenced to 10 years in prison
by Aimee Farr 03 Sep '01

03 Sep '01

> The ultimate evolution of such nonsense is clearly the current situation > in which Jeff "PussyBoy" Gordon's bad Hattie McDaniel impersonation means > Jim Bell has committed a crime. Bad karma, buddy. > Combine this with Judge Jack "Token Negro With Chip on Shoulder" Tanner's > attempts to compensate for his genital inferiority by sentencing people > before they commit crimes, and it is easy to see why Jim Bell can get 10 > years and $10,000 for doing, as they would say on "Weakest Link," > absolutely nothing. There's only one thing worse than calling agents.... > The larger question is what are we going to do about it? Somehow > "Cypherpunks Write Code" doesn't quite rise to the level of an appropriate > response to these pigfuckers. > > -- > Eric Michael Cordian 0+ > O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division > "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law" Your little .sig would make a cute footnote to a judge's opinion. I would say something, but I've been reminded that you're supposed to let convicts dig their own graves. ~Aimee In multiloquio non effugies peccatum.

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Stealth Computing Abuses TCP Checksums
by Bill Stewart 02 Sep '01

02 Sep '01

http://fyi.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/08/29/stealth.computing/index.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/29/199205&mode=thread A group of researchers at Notre Dame figured out how to use the TCP Checksum calculations to get other computers to do number-crunching for them. "Below, we present an implementation of a parasitic computer using the checksum function. In order for this to occur, one needs to design a special message that coerces a target server into performing the desired computation." The article has the amount of great mathematical depth you'd expect from CNN :-) But it does say that the paper will be published in "Nature" this week. It's a really cool hack, though not especially efficient for real work. Of course, the Slashdot discussion follows typical structure - there's an interesting technical suggestion (ICMP checksums may be usable and are probably more efficient than TCP), some trolls and flamers, the obligatory "Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of those!" comment, and some speculation about the potential legalities and other uses for it. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)wasabisystems.com

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Re: The Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot
by Nomen Nescio 02 Sep '01

02 Sep '01

On Monday, August 27, 2001, at 12:56 PM, Tim May wrote: > On Monday, August 27, 2001, at 12:40 PM, Nomen Nescio wrote: > > "Freedom fighters in communist-controlled regimes." How much money > > do they have? More importantly, how much are they willing and able to > > spend on anonymity/privacy/black-market technologies? These guys aren't > > rolling in dough. > > The IRA and the Real IRA have a lot of money, as the Brits have been > complaining about recently. Osama bin Laden is said to control more than > a billion dollars. And so on. I disagree with you assertion that "these > guys aren't rolling in dough." Members of the IRA are not freedom fighters in a communist-controlled country. bin Laden did fall under that definition when he was fighting to get the Russians out of Afghanistan but that was a long time ago. Now he's opposing American influence in Saudi Arabia. Some developers may nevertheless sympathize politically with such these groups and so could work on technology for them with a clear conscience. > > "Revolutionaries overthrowing bad governments." The main > > revolutionaries > > who will be willing to pay money are those who expect to get rich from > > their revolution. These are the ones who want to throw out the tyrants > > so they can set themselves up as new tyrants. It is people like this > > who would be the best customers of cypherpunk technology. You're not > > making the world a better place by giving them tools. > > You make the assumption that overthrowing, say, the PRC or USSR > governments, would result in a "worse or just as bad" regime. I > disagree. And the same tools are still available to deconstruct interim > replacement regimes. The point is that those who will pay large sums to acquire access to these technologies, even for the purpose of overthrowing an evil regime, are not doing it out of altruism. They're not good-guy libertarians who only want to set up a John Galt state. Realistically they're more likely to be interested in taking over the reins of power themselves. And it's pretty questionable to salve your conscience by saying that even if these guys use the tools to bad ends, someone else will then be able to use the same tools against them. The problem is, we're doing this for profit, right? We won't give the tools away once the first generation uses them to take over. We should sell them to the highest bidder. (Better to think of a service than a tool here. Most cypherpunk technologies require a distributed infrastructure that you can charge for.) The high bidders are once again going to be the bad guys who want to take over for selfish reasons. > > "Distribution of birth control information in Islamic countries." > > Again, > > selling to Planned Parenthood is not a business plan which will make > > anyone rich. > > Planned Parenthood is not envisaged as the user.... Pray tell, who exactly will pay large sums to be able to distribute birth control information in Islamic countries? > > The conclusion is that you need to add a third axis to Tim's graph: > > morality, in addition to value and cost. Many of the most lucrative > > potential uses of anonymity technologies are morally questionable. > > If you add this additional filter you are forced to focus on just a > > few application areas (with the additional complication that few people > > will agree on morality, and that morality and legality often have little > > overlap). > > The technology is agnostic to "morality." This is trivial; the same can be said for any technology. It is the users and implementors who are moral actors, and that is who we are considering. > Choate argues that at least 5 or 6 axes are needed. Ever the nitwit, he > fails to realize that the main debate doesn't even use the _two_ that I > have outlined. Yes, I know about phase spaces and multi-dimensional > diagrams. But given that the debate about privacy tools is mired at the > 1D level ("untracebility good, traceability bad...why don't the proles > see this?"), graphing the major users and suppliers on the 2D graph I > outlined is a step in the right direction. It goes a long way to > explaining why people will spend thousands to fly to the Caymans to set > up a bank account while others won't even bother using PGP. Fine, if the only point you want to make is that costs must be considered. But eventually we need to move beyond that simplistic analysis. At that point we do need to consider morality and other issues. > You want to add "morality" to the chart. Fine, except I don't see how it > gives different answers than my chart gave. The answers it gives depends on the questions you ask. If your questions are simple enough (untraceability good?) then your chart will answer them. If your questions are more interesting (what technologies can be practically implemented and make a positive difference in the world) then you need a better chart.

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stump go boom, and keeping kanooks at bay
by Subcommander Bob 02 Sep '01

02 Sep '01

At 11:17 AM 8/31/01 -0400, Duncan Frissell wrote: >Note that the unlicensed private use of explosives may be legal in America >depending on time and place. Need any stumps cleared? Last week, my local (SoCal) Home Depot had Grant's stump remover, which appeared to be homogenous small spheres and KNO3 was mentioned on the ingredients list :-) >How can we stop >that Canadian armoured column slicing through Buffalo and heading down the >Thruway towards NYC? Wait for a snowstorm.

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