August 2001 - cypherpunks-legacy

Information for NBCi members about www.nbci.com
by NBCi 17 Aug '01

17 Aug '01

You have received this e-mail because our records indicate that you are a registered user of www.nbci.com. The purpose of this e-mail is to provide you with an update about upcoming changes. A. In the coming days, the NBCi site will have a new look. We hope you like the updated styling and the increased NBC content. B. In conjunction with the launch of the new design, the following services will be discontinued: - NBC TV Clubs - The NBCi Stock Portfolio (but please check out the one offered on www.CNBC.com) C. We expect to provide personalization features on the new site. However, while we update our system, your current NBCi member name and password will not work. We expect to have the system updated in the coming weeks. If you would like to use the personalization features right away, then you can sign up for a new member name and password . If you would like to continue using your current member name and password, then please try to sign in a few weeks after the new design launches. NOTE: Your existing member name and password will continue to work for your e-mail account, even during the transition period. To access your e-mail account, you may use links on the NBCi site OR go directly to www.email.com and sign in. D. Please note that your feedback is important and many e-mails are reviewed by NBC producers and management; however personal responses to e-mails will no longer be provided. To submit feedback about NBC Television shows, please send an e-mail to: nbcshows(a)nbc.com And here are a few quick reminders from previous e-mails: 1. The e-mail account on NBCi is offered through mail.com, which was recently bought by EasyLink. As such, EasyLink owns the code, servers, and support for the e-mail application. To access your e-mail account, you may use links on the NBCi site OR go directly to www.email.com and sign in. If you have specific questions about your e-mail account, contact mail.com (a separate company) directly support(a)email.com 2. Make sure you have a backup of all data stored on www.nbci.com (such as your web site, shared files, address books, and portfolio), as well as on Xoom.com and SNAP.com. -For a new "sharehouse" account visit: http://plus.xdrive.com/target.html?path=signup.html,aff=nbci061301 -For a new web site account visit: http://homesteadannouncements.homestead.com/NBCI.html -For a new portfolio visit: http://www.cnbc.com 3. The following services are no longer provided (and it is no longer possible to recover data stored in any of these services): - Sharehouse - Clubs - Calendar - Clipart - Sweepstakes Note: If you use the NBCi site through one of our ISP distribution partners, such as PacBell, Verizon or Prodigy, please contact your ISP directly for additional information. General Disclaimer Please note that pursuant to our terms of service (which can be accessed from www.nbci.com) NBCi has the right to unilaterally stop all service and functionality to our web sites; however, we understand the importance of your information and desire to provide you with sufficient notice to allow you to act accordingly. Nothing contained in this mailing is intended to or shall supercede our terms of service. You can view our full terms of service if you have any questions at: http://www.nbci.com/LMOID/resource/0,566,home-764,00.html?fd.ft.ts.h.s-764. For risks about NBCi's business, see its Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2000, as well as its other SEC filings. This email was sent to: cypherpunks(a)toad.com

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Single Stock Futures is coming! Are you ready?
by E Street 17 Aug '01

17 Aug '01

Dear Investor, Curious about Commodity futures markets like currencies, stock indexes, bonds and crude oil? With the much anticipated release date of trading in Single Stock Futures on August 21st, Jagfn.com, the internet financial television station with 7 million viewers, has asked E Street Trading.com to appear on their station to discuss the futures markets and the huge impact that Single Stock Futures will have on the investment world ! E Street's Chief Analyst, Pat Westfall will appear live on Tuesday August 21st, 8:30 am Eastern time and we invite you to watch Pat explain various technical methods to the markets as well as a look at how Single Stock Futures could effect your investment portfolio. We would love to have your input! We would appreciate even more if you would like to call us and give us some input on which commodities you would like Pat to discuss live on webcast TV. If you are not already watching Jagfn.com, go to our website www.eStreetTrading.com and click on the Jagfn.com icon it's easy and it's FREE. With the release of Single Stock Futures you may never look at investing the same way again! Please call us at 866-463-7878 and ask for Chris, Chad or Lars. Yours Sincerely, E-Street Trading.com

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Backyard Ballistics
by Jim Choate 17 Aug '01

17 Aug '01

Backyard Ballistics W. Gurstelle ISBN 1-55652-375-0 A new book that explains how to make potato guns, petards, catapults, etc. -- ____________________________________________________________________ natsugusa ya...tsuwamonodomo ga...yume no ato summer grass...those mighty warriors'...dream-tracks Matsuo Basho The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Substantially Cut Costs Increase Sales Via E Mail
by Wayne 17 Aug '01

17 Aug '01

I am sending you this to see if you might be interested in testing E Mail marketing for your company. Based on our experience, targeted E Mail marketing should dramatically reduce your marketing costs while simultaneously boosting your sales. (To reply by E Mail to this message or be removed from our list, Please go to the bottom of this message for an E Mail link. Please do not respond to us by hitting the "Reply" button. Our phone number is also located at the bottom of this message.) I am CEO of a software company based in Southern California. 100% of our sales are business to business, as we produce specialty software designed for business use only; primarily by manufacturers. We launched a new software product this February and so far have marketed it exclusively by E Mail to almost a quarter million companies. The response-and sales-have been tremendous, while our marketing costs have been dirt cheap; the lowest, in fact, by far of any marketing I've done in my 35 year business career, and that includes direct mail, trade magazine and specialty advertising, trade shows, outdoor and broadcast. In order to do our E Mail marketing, my staff and I had to discover how to develop E Mail lists reflecting our business customer profile, how to do the actual E Mailing without antagonizing potential buyers, how to handle leads and referrals to our Web site, how to deal with the spam issue, and the multitude of other challenges inherent in E Mail marketing. During the course of our sales effort, we have been asked by a number of companies to whom we've E Mailed our advertising if we would consider assisting them in developing their own E Mail marketing. As this response has been both unsolicited and quite strong, we have decided to offer our E Mail marketing services on a limited bases to companies which sell business to business only. If you sell products or services to other businesses, please consider the following: 1. We will either develop an ongoing E Mail marketing program for you, or consult with you to set up your own E Mail marketing division in house. 2. If we handle your campaign for you, our services will include development of your E Mail lists for you in your exact customer profile as defined by you, consultation on the creation of your advertising piece, and consultation on the handling of leads, phone calls, and web site referrals. We will also send all of your E Mails for you. Our charges for this service are twenty cents per E Mail address custom developed from your exact customer profile, and $500.00 for the actual sending of the E Mails. You will need to hire us to develop a minimum of 15,000 E Mail addresses of potential business customers for you, which brings a minimum order to $3,500 to reach 15,000 potential customers. The twenty cents per custom E Mail address is a one time charge, and it is not a list rental; we will turn the list over to you at your request. Once your list is developed, resending your list will only cost $500.00, regardless of how big your list becomes, up to 500,000 E Mail addresses. Compare that to direct mail. 3. If you would rather have us consult to set up an E Mail marketing division for you in house, our fee is $15,000.00. This includes specific recommendations, consultation and training on all procedures to develop custom E Mail lists and required software, consultation and training on all procedures to verify E Mail address and required software, consultation and training on all procedures to set up for and the handling of removes and required software, the set up for and the handling of leads, set up of a secure Web site, and all technical set up, bandwidth and software required for the actual E Mailing itself. You would also receive our proprietary software developed for the handling of E Mail lists, tracking promotions sent, handling removes and dead E Mail addresses, and the tracking of criteria used to develop each E Mail address. I would be pleased to discuss this further with you. If you are interested, please just give me a call at (661) 286-0041. Thank you. Wayne McFarland Chief Executive Officer -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This message is sent in compliance of the new e-mail bill: SECTION 301. Per Section 301, Paragraph (a)(2)(C) of S. 1618, To REPLY, if you have questions about our services and wish to respond by E Mail, please click on the E Mail address following and enter "Inquiry" in the subject line. REPLYS please click here: manufsoft99(a)yahoo.com To be REMOVED from our mailing list, please click on the E Mail address following and enter "Remove" in the subject line. REMOVES please click here: jbsptrsft5(a)yahoo.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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OPT: <nettime> PP2P: Massively Distributed Microcrime? (edited highlights) (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Aug '01

17 Aug '01

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 08:39:32 -0400 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 Subject: <nettime> PP2P: Massively Distributed Microcrime? (edited highlights) --- begin forwarded text

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RE: Bomb Law Reporter - special edition
by Anonymous 17 Aug '01

17 Aug '01

Aimee: > ...."quite possibly" ...FBI "Black Ops Blow-Em-Up" teams? Uh-uhm. If had to > guess, I would bet that explosives take a lot of paperwork. Bombs are not > efficient investigative tools for law enforcement. They blow up the evidence > and the criminal. It's hard to run surveillance on a blown-up target. That > would be LEA "disintermediation." They also make a lot of noise. You would find it illuminating to acquaint yourself with the Judy Barri case. The FBI was conducting actual pipe-bomb making classes for the local police, including setting them off in a nearby quarry. This was just prior to the bombing of Judy's car. Interesting too that they were on the scene within minutes of the explosion, to arrest Judy and Darryl for bombing themselves. There's a current suit in fed court about it -- look it up. The guy who was head of COINTELPRO was involved in this.

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Re: Physicspunks
by An Metet 17 Aug '01

17 Aug '01

Tim May graciously wrote: > The physics cited by Anonymous is hand-waving. Absolutely. It's my weak understanding of a beginning physics book. Thank you for your reply. >> If a block of a metal is hollowed out and a small port is drilled to >> see in, the radiance of the cavity is substantially higher than that >> of the surface of the metal. As if that weren't shocking enough, it >> turns out that the radiance of cavities is the same no matter what >> kind of metal is used. (This is so counterintuitive that I almost >> don't believe it!) > > It is not correct to say the radiance is either higher or lower than > some other material: the radiance approximates that of a perfect > black body. My book defines "radiance" in terms of the amount of energy radiated per surface area. (It likes to use W/cm^2.) The radiance of the surface of different materials at various temperatures can be compared. The radiance of a cavity to the surface material can be compared and it is higher. The radiance of two cavities is the same, but this is not immediately obvious to the uninitiated. It's a reasonable thing to measure and discuss. > Nothing mystical at all. If you don't already know, it's actually surprising. > The "perpetual motion" part is a non sequitor. > There are many cases where a material of higher radiance, e.g. the > surface of the earth, is "looking at" (in the sense of the drawing > above) a material or thing of lower radiance, e.g., deep space. > And guess what: the earth radiates more energy toward deep space > than deep space radiates toward the earth. This is one reason > deserts get so cold so fast at night. It's not surprising when a hot body and a cold body approach the same temperature. But, in the case described the two bodies start out at the same temperature. One radiates more energy towards the other one at that particular temperature. So, you would expect that one body would become hotter than the other. This effect (if it really occurred) could be exploited to make an engine which would return the two materials back to the same temperature, but also do some work in the meantime - a perpetual motion machine. >From the hints you've dropped I see the general outline of the solution. The photons going between the two blocks of metal will "thermalize" and the volume between the two blocks will look like the inside of a cavity. The rate of energy transfer in each direction will then be the same. In fact, if the two blocks were contained in a large thermos which perfectly reflected the photons, the same effect would occur. It would be like an inside out cavity. Each block would end up at the same temperature. (Perhaps slightly lower than the start temperature because it must take some energy to fill the space with thermalized photons.)

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IP: MUST READ -- Censorship in action why I don't publish my HDCPresults by Niels Ferguson (fwd)
by Eugene Leitl 17 Aug '01

17 Aug '01

-- 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 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 14:03:52 -0400 From: David Farber <dave(a)farber.net> Reply-To: farber(a)cis.upenn.edu To: ip-sub-1(a)majordomo.pobox.com Subject: IP: MUST READ -- Censorship in action why I don't publish my HDCP results by Niels Ferguson Censorship in action: why I don't publish my HDCP results Niels Ferguson August 15, 2001 Summary I have written a paper detailing security weaknesses in the HDCP content protection system. I have decided to censor myself and not publish this paper for fear of prosecution and/or liability under the US DMCA law. Introduction My name is Niels Ferguson. I'm a professional cryptographer. My job is to design, analyse, and attack cryptographic security systems, a bit like a digital locksmith. I work to make computer systems and the Internet more secure. You would think that people would be in favour of that, right? Computer security and cryptography are hard. It is easy to make mistakes, and one mistake is all it takes to create a weakness. You learn from your mistakes, but there are too many mistakes to make them all yourself. That's why we publish. We share our knowledge with others, so that they don't have to repeat the same mistake. Take a look at <http://www.macfergus.com/niels/dmca/index.html../pubs/publist.html>my publications. You will see a mixture of new designs, analyses, and attacks. This is how we learn and how we improve the state of the art in computer security. HDCP Recently I found the documentation of the <http://www.digital-cp.com>High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) system on the internet. HDCP is a cryptographic system developed by Intel that encrypts video on the DVI bus. The DVI bus is used to connect digital video cameras and DVD players with digital TVs, etc. The aim of HDCP is to prevent illegal copying of video contents by encrypting the signal. HDCP is fatally flawed. My results show that an experienced IT person can recover the HDCP master key in about 2 weeks using four computers and 50 HDCP displays. Once you know the master key, you can decrypt any movie, impersonate any HDCP device, and even create new HDCP devices that will work with the 'official' ones. This is really, really bad news for a security system. If this master key is ever published, HDCP will provide no protection whatsoever. The flaws in HDCP are not hard to find. As I like to say: "I was just reading it and it broke." What do you do when you find a result like this? First, you have to write it down and explain it. Then you publish your paper so that the mistakes can be fixed, and others can learn from it. That is how all science works. I wrote a paper on HDCP, but I cannot publish it. DMCA There is a US law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that makes it illegal to distribute "circumvention technology", such as systems that break copyright protection schemes. HDCP is used to protect copyrights. There are lawyers who claim that a scientific paper like mine is a circumvention technology within the meaning of the DMCA, because it explains the weaknesses of a system. I have been advised by a US lawyer who works in this field that if I publish my paper, I might very well be prosecuted and/or sued under US law. This is outrageous. The risk to me I travel to the US regularly, both for professional and for personal reasons. I simply cannot afford to be sued or prosecuted in the US. I would go bankrupt just paying for my lawyers. I want to make it quite clear that Intel, who developed the HDCP system, has not threatened me in any way. But the threat does not come only from Intel. The US Department of Justice could prosecute me. Any other affected party, such as a movie studio whose films are protected with HDCP, could sue me under the DMCA. That is a risk I cannot afford to take. The simple alternative would be to never travel to the US again. This would harm me significantly, both professionally and personally. It would lock me out of many conferences in my field, and keep me away from family and friends. It all sounds a bit too far-fetched, right? Who would sue over the publication of an article? Well, there are very good reasons to believe that I risk a lawsuit if I publish my paper. A team of researchers led by Professor Edward Felten was recently threatened with a DMCA-based lawsuit if they published their own scientific article. The resulting court case is still pending. Freedom of speech We have this little principle called the freedom of speech. It is codified in the <http://www.hrweb.org/legal/udhr.html>Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the <http://www.law.emory.edu/FEDERAL/usconst.html>US Constitution, and Dutch law. The whole point of freedom of speech is to allow the free circulation of ideas and to let the truth be heard. There can be no doubt that my paper is protected by the free speech rights. The DMCA imposes a serious restriction on the freedom of speech. The DMCA makes it illegal to talk about certain security systems. The equivalent law for non-digital protection systems would make it illegal to warn people about a cheap and very weak door lock being installed on their houses because criminals could also use that same information. In western society we restrict the freedom of speech only for very serious reasons, and after careful consideration. For example, it is illegal to shout "fire" in a crowded theatre, or to ask someone to commit a murder. The DMCA restricts the freedom of speech because the movie industry is afraid of losing money. Below I will argue that the DMCA does not achieve that goal, but that aside: do we really want to sell our freedom of speech for money? The DMCA is a scary development. Next time that commercial interests clash with the freedom of speech, the industry will point to the DMCA and claim they need equivalent protection. They might outlaw the publication of a report detailing bad safety features in a car, or of flaws found in a particular brand of tires. After all, those publications harm industry too. Where will it stop? Jurisdiction The DMCA is a US law. I am a citizen of the Netherlands, and I live and work in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Why do I care about the DMCA at all? The USA is apt to apply its own laws way beyond its own borders. Dmitry Sklyarov, a Russian programmer, was arrested last month in the US. He is charged with violating the DMCA while performing his work in Russia as an employee for a Russian firm. As far as we know, what he did was perfectly legal in Russia, and in most other countries in the world. He is now out on bail, but cannot leave northern California until further notice. Where does this lead to? What if countries start applying their own laws to the things people do in other countries? Will you be arrested next time you go abroad? Do you really want to take that holiday in China if you have more than one child? Are you sure that Germany allows you to have those links to political pamphlets on your web site? This type of extraterritorial application of national law violates a basic human right, because you cannot possibly know which laws apply to you. Imagine living in a country where the laws are kept secret, and you never know whether you are violating a law. Suppose a US citizen works for a firearms manufacturer in the US, making guns. One of those guns turns up here in Amsterdam and is used to commit a crime. This person takes a holiday over here in Europe, and is arrested for violating the Dutch firearms laws because he helped manufacture the gun in the US. That is what happened to Dmitry. Is that fair? Is that how we want to run this world? The principle of applying national laws to anybody that publishes anything anywhere in the world is terrifying. If we allow this principle to be used, we will never be free again. You will get a choice. You can decide to never leave your country for any reason whatsoever. This means you might not even be able to attend a wedding or funeral of a loved one. Alternatively, you can restrict all your statements to satisfy the laws of all the countries you could conceivably travel to. You might as well not say anything, because it is very hard to find something that is legal in all jurisdictions. We either lose our right to travel, or our right to speak and be heard. Which fundamental human right do you want to give up today? DMCA does not work The DMCA is a fundamentally flawed law. It is ineffective, and actually harmful to the interests it tries to protect. It stops me publishing my paper now, but someday, someone, somewhere will duplicate my results. This person might decide to just publish the HDCP master key on the Internet. Instead of fixing HDCP now before it is deployed on a large scale, the industry will be confronted with all the expense of building HDCP into every device, only to have it rendered useless. The DMCA ends up costing the industry money. No points for guessing who ends up paying for it in the end. In the long run, the DMCA will make it much easier to create illegal copies. Why? If we cannot do research in this area, we will never develop good copyright protection schemes. We will be stuck with flawed systems like HDCP, to the delight of the criminals. The DMCA has been called the Snake Oil Protection Act. When a manufacturer makes a defective product, you expect them to fix it. Not in this case. The DMCA protects the manufacturer of a defective product by making it illegal to show that the product is defective. Who came up with this idea? Copyright law Copyright law is a careful balance between the rights of the author and the public interest. The author gets a limited-time exclusive right to reproduce his work. The public gets free use of the work once the copyright expires. Furthermore, the public gets certain "fair use" rights. These include the right to use short quotes from the work in a review, for example, and the right to create a parody. If you buy a copy of a copyrighted work, you also have the right to make an extra copy for your own use. A student can make a copy of a page in his textbook to mark it up while he studies. In a sneaky way the DMCA eliminates all these "fair use" rights of the public. As long as the work is protected using copyright protection technology, none of the "fair use" rights can be exercised, because it is illegal to create or own the tool with which you can exercise your fair use rights. Copyright expires, but the DMCA ensures that even when it does, the work still does not enter the public domain. The US supreme court has held that the "fair use" rights are exactly the safety valve that prevent the copyright law from violating free speech rights. This might be another reason why the DMCA is unconstitutional. In Dmitry's case, he wrote software that decoded encrypted digital books. His software has many uses. Many digital books only allow the book to be viewed on the screen. If you are blind and want to read the book on your braille display you have to use something like Dmitry's software. This is perfectly legal under the "fair use" rules of copyright law, but the DMCA forbids it thereby prohibiting blind people from accessing such books. Why this mess? Why did the movie industry campaign for the DMCA if it doesn't work? The movie and record industry have a history of claiming that new technologies will bankrupt them. When video recorders were first introduced, they swore that they would go bankrupt if people could record movies. Now they make a lot of money selling video tapes. Now they swear that they will go bankrupt if we do not restrict the freedom of speech and the public's fair use rights. Why should we believe them this time around? The DMCA exists because the movie and record industry lobbied heavily for it. It is a very one-sided law that clearly has not been thought through properly. The industry has managed to eliminate the careful balance of the copyright law and replace it with a law that effectively gives them an unlimited monopoly on copyrighted works. Could it just be that this is the real motive behind their lobby? Can we fix the DMCA? Sure. That wouldn't even be very difficult. Making and selling unauthorised copies of copyrighted works is already illegal in most jurisdictions. We could change the copyright law to impose stiffer penalties if the copyright violation involves breaking a copyright protection scheme. A bit like the difference between trespassing and breaking and entering. A law like this would achieve exactly what we want: it would restrict illegal copying of copyrighted works. It would not restrict the freedom of speech, or do away with our fair use rights. More information You can find lots more information about the DMCA and the cases of Professor Felten and Dmitry Sklyarov on the <http://www.eff.org>EFF web site. My <http://www.macfergus.com/niels/dmca/index.htmlfelten_declaration.html>declaration in the Felten court case. ---------- Copyright © 2001 by Niels Ferguson, last update 2001-08-16, comments to <mailto:niels@ferguson.net>niels(a)ferguson.net <http://www.macfergus.com/niels/dmca/index.html../index.html>[home page] For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/

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Stealing DNA (fwd)
by Eugene Leitl 17 Aug '01

17 Aug '01

-- 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 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 10:37:10 -0700 From: Olga Bourlin <fauxever(a)sprynet.com> Reply-To: extropians(a)extropy.org To: extropians(a)extropy.com Subject: Stealing DNA In your opinion, is this stealing DNA? (my apologies if this case has already been posted - I accidentally deleted a few emails about the "stealing DNA" discussion): http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?… Nation & World : Wednesday, August 15, 2001 Rapist snared with a sleight of straw - and his DNA By Christine Hanley Los Angeles Times SANTA ANA, Calif. - A suspect who was tricked by a police detective into leaving his saliva on a straw at a Taco Bell pleaded guilty to two rape charges Monday in a case that even his lawyer said represented a legitimate yet unusual use of DNA evidence. Brea, Calif., police Detective Susan Hanna had been working on the case for months and thought Robert William Bradford Jr. was the culprit when she invited him to a Taco Bell, saying she wanted to pick his brain about the case. After Bradford finished his soda, Hanna got him a refill, replacing his straw and, on her way out, handing the old straw to a detective disguised as an employee. The straw was sent to a crime lab for DNA testing, which connected Bradford to the rapes. "It was a shot in the dark," Hanna said. "It paid off." And despite the detective's ploy, Bradford's attorney said Monday he thinks the evidence was gathered legally. Police "did not unreasonably seize or delay Mr. Bradford. He voluntarily had the soda with the cops. They were tricky. But they weren't illegal," Donald Barkemeyer said. Bradford was sentenced Monday to two life terms in prison plus 52 years for attacking a 24-year-old woman at her Brea home in 1998 and a 19-year-old woman at an apartment complex in 2000. In each case, he slipped through an unlocked door at night. Hanna said she linked the two rapes after the second victim said her attacker reeked of smoke and also recalled how a chain-smoker who lived in the same apartment complex frequently stared in the direction of her home. After identifying Bradford as the suspect, Hanna discovered he used to live in the neighborhood where the other attack took place. That woman confirmed her attacker was a smoker. Copyright © 2001 The Seattle Times Company

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Re: Digression
by Faustine 17 Aug '01

17 Aug '01

Jim wrote: >"and therefore insecurity" >Does not follow. >I would argue that rather the simpler, the stronger. A simple >structure, if it can be broken, would have simple breaks. So what do you make of this bit from the abstract: "The security of Rijndael depends on a new and untested hardness assumption: it is computationally infeasible to solve equations of this type." How long do you think that's going to keep it "secure", all things considered? Even though the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in '78 cleared the NSA of any charges of introducing deiberate weakness into DES by modifying the S-boxes, everybody knows they broke it ages ago anyway. Or at least that's the way the hearsay and hot air blows. What makes you think things are going be any different this time around, the NSA theoreticians aren't anymore likely to give up and kick back than they ever were. You can do a lot with plaintext/ciphertext and statistical calculation: it stands to reason that while most people get stuck nattering on about what you can't do computationally, other people are quietly exploring what else can actually be done with available resources. The smartest, cleverest and most creative prevail, no matter which sector pays their paycheck. The effect of intitutional baggage on performance is a seperate issue, but as the cypherpunk movement itself shows, it's dangerous to discount anyone for not being a part of any given work environment. I happen to think fundamental respect for brainpower and ability should go both ways. ~Faustine.

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