August 2001 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: The Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot
by Gil Hamilton 01 Sep '01

01 Sep '01

Nomen Nescio writes: > [snip...] crypto anarchy has the best chance of >survival under a democratic government [... snip] What a comedian! - GH _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp

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

01 Sep '01

Tim wrote: >But, as with Kirchoff's point, the attacker is going to get the design >eventually. If getting the design "eventually" were good enough, why the keen interest in putting in a large order for the beta? There's a reason. Maybe in the long run, it's right to view any objections as being little more than irrelevant, moralistic hand-waving. But I don't find the "they're going to compromise it anyway so why not make a buck when we can" line of reasoning particularly satisfying. >The security of Freedom should not depend on even having access to the >source code, else ZKS would be lying when they claim that even they >cannot trace a message back to the sender. (Something which some may >doubt...) Do you? > Either way, the prospects for "dissident-grade untraceability" are > fairly bleak. >You pontificate as if you know something about our field, when you >clearly know very little. Get some education if you plan to pontificate >like this. You call that pontificating? My saying "Either way, the prospects for "dissident-grade untraceability" are fairly bleak" is either interesting enough to address, or it isn't (for whatever reason.) Going for the gratuitous ad-hominem regarding whatever queer notions you happen to have about what I know or don't know is quite beneath you. >A mixnet of the N extant remailers offers pretty damned good >untraceability. Needs some work on getting remailers more robust, but >the underlying nested encryption looks to be a formidable challenge for >Shin Bet to crack. I'm sure I don't need to tell you a thing about the centrality of a secure implementation. Likewise, I'm sure you know that being a "formidable challenge" never prevented anything from being broken before, and it never will. All place-in-the-pecking-order issues aside, roughly how long do you think it's going to take before "dissident-grade untraceability" becomes a reality? If anyone deigns to show me why the prospects are better than "bleak", I'd love to be proven wrong. ~Faustine.

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Enemies of the People...the customers of strong crypto
by Tim May 31 Aug '01

31 Aug '01

On Friday, August 31, 2001, at 07:22 AM, Fisher Mark wrote: >> When you were asked where were all the supposed wealthy freedom >> fighters >> in communist controlled regimes, you came back with Osama bin Laden. > > 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. Tools are tools -- the uses are what we make of > them. > If you don't want to create tools that can be used for evil, then you > must > forgo the making of tools. > > Crypto anarchy is coming -- we had best prepare for it, lest it > overwhelm > us. In the end, I believe that it will result in more freedom for more > people, by restraining those in government from doing any silly thing > they > like to us. Many of those who have been quibbling about whether "freedom fighters" are terrorists, or whether Osama bin Laden is or is not a FF, etc., are MISSSING THE BIG PICTURE. Take the long view, the more agnostic view. Whether one likes the actions of bin Laden or Pablo Escobar or James Jesus Angleton is not the point Privacy and untraceability tools will be used by many who are seeking to evade others. Some we are taught in American schools are heroes, some we are taught are villains. Here's a list I distributed some years ago at a CFP Conference: (the paper is still available at Prof. Froomkin's site, http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/tcmay.htm ) Appendix: Who are those Bad Guys, anyway? Depending on which nation one is in, which regime is in power, and other factors, here are some of the enemies of the people the laws against strong crypto and the banning of digital cash are intended to crush: Enemies of the People, the opposition party, the Resistance, friends of the Bad Guys, family members of the Bad Guys, conspirators, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, atheists, heretics, schismatics, heathens, leftists, rightists, poets, authors, Turks, Armenians, Scharansky, Solzhenitsyn, refuseniks, Chinese dissidents, students in front of tanks, Branch Davidians, Scientologists, Jesus, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, African National Congress, UNITA, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, colonial rebels, patriots, Tories, Basque separatists, Algerian separatists, secessionists, abolitionists, John Brown, draft opponents, communists, godless jew commies, fellow travellers, traitors, capitalists, imperialist lackeys, capitalist roaders, anarchists, monarchists, Charlie Chaplin, Galileo, Joan of Arc,, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, civil rights workers, Students for a Democratic Society, Weathermen, Margaret Sanger, birth control activists, abortionists, anti-abortionists, Michael Milken, Robert Vesco, Marc Rich, Nixon's Enemies, Hoover's enemies, Clinton's enemies, Craig Livingstone's high school enemies, Republicans, Democrats, labor organizers, corporate troublemakers, whistleblowers, smut peddlers, pornographers, readers of "Playboy," viewers of images of women whose faces are uncovered, Amateur Action, Jock Sturges, violators of the CDA, alt.fan.karla-homulka readers, Internet Casino customers, Scientologists, Rosicrucians, royalists, Jacobins, Hemlock Society activists, Jimmy Hoffa, John L. Lewis, Cesar Chavez, opponents of United Fruit, land reformers, Simon Bolivar, Robin Hood, Dennis Banks, American Indian Movement, Jack Anderson, Daniel Ellsberg, peace activists, Father Berrigan, Mormons, Joseph Smith, missionaries, Greenpeace, Animal Liberation Front, gypsies, diplomats, U.N. ambassadors, Randy Weaver, David Koresh, Ayotollah Khomeini, John Gotti, Papists, Ulstermen, IRA, Shining Path, militia members, tax protestors, Hindus, Sikhs, Lech Walesa, Polish labor movement, freedom fighters, revolutionaries, Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, and "suspects".

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Re: News: "U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship"
by David Honig 31 Aug '01

31 Aug '01

At 02:52 PM 8/30/01 -0400, Faustine wrote: > >And as long as you have companies like ZeroKnowledge who are >willing/gullible/greedy/just plain fucking stupid enough to sell their >betas to the NSA, you never will. > >~Faustine. If knowledge of how something works breaks it, it wasn't worth having. No security gained through obscurity. You have to assume NSA can examine any code they want to. Regular Kevin Mitnicks, them.

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Re: News: "U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship"
by David Honig 31 Aug '01

31 Aug '01

At 02:41 PM 8/30/01 -0400, Faustine wrote: >And by the way, if you're going to question >SafeWeb for cooperating with CIA, you might as well criticize ZeroKnowledge >for selling a boatload of the Freedom beta to the NSA in 1999 as well. What >did they think they wanted it for, farting around on Usenet? I bet they had >that sucker reverse-engineered and compromised in two minutes flat. Were you intending to insult ZK authors[1]? The spooks would have studied the tool and its design, and set up a test net to study the traffic. Depending on their resources and the interesting-ness of the ZK-using 'targets in the field' they would have thought about what can be recovered from observations and interventions. As they do with everything, from code to routers. Maybe they would, in 2 minutes, look at it and say, "oh, well, they used the Foobar library's implementation of RSA, and we know how to exploit a bug in that version, and can leverage that to break their scheme, so all their zero knowledge is ours". Or "lookee here, they didn't check a buffer overflow and we can 0wn their nodes" But exploration takes time, especially for a system designed from start to resist. Unless you think they're magic. [1] I'm not one, nor do I know any

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Not�cias Jur�dicas: 6a.feira, 31 de agosto de 2001 no Espa�o Vital Virtual
by "Espa�o Vital Virtual" <Espa�o Vital Virtual 31 Aug '01

31 Aug '01

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speech + action
by mmotyka＠lsil.com 31 Aug '01

31 Aug '01

Tim, It's not easy to find great links but I still say that speech + action is something that a prosecutor can use to the disadvantage of the accused even if the speech is legal and the action appears to be ineffectual or undirected. Look at how AP was used. 18 U.S.C. 23 1 seems to link speech directly with the action of paramilitary training, even if there is no specific target. The speech portion of the offense enables a heavy response to the otherwise unpunishable action. Whether or not anyone has been convicted under this statute there it sits, ready to pounce. Admittedly these are weak cites but I do think the ( legal_but_unpopular_speech + unpunishable_action = crime ) idea is embodied in laws. I think eventually it'll somehow get extended to address the cyberterrordangerouslyeducatedchaosprogrammerdeaththreat that faces each and every freedom-loving, net-browsing Amurrican today! Maybe the pro bono brigade of the unorganized, non-organizational, casually associational, non-paramilitary, non-coding, non-militia, profusely verbal cypherpunks flying circus will chime in with some fun stuff. Mike http://www.sfgate.com/okc/winokur/0423.html http://www.vpc.org/studies/awapara.htm In 1986, the ADL formulated model state legislation that would ban paramilitary training "aimed at provoking civil disorder."[104] In drafting the model bill, the ADL specifically stated that the statute must not violate First Amendment freedoms of speech and association. Another objective was to draft the statute narrowly so that it would not prohibit legitimate lawful activities such as target shooting and other sporting events. This was important, the ADL stated, for "minimizing opposition to the bill by powerful special interest groups." [105] Laws based on the statute have passed in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, and West Virginia.[106] http://www.channel4000.com/news/dimension/dimension-960425-133523.html http://www.hatemonitor.org/Research_articles/levin10.html - please read the last paragraph - keeping records of public speech becomes part of the procsecutor's toolbox - the speech seems to be a necessary component of the prosecution. "The current federal paramilitary training statute, 18 U.S.C. 23 1, punishes only those who instruct others in fomenting violent civil disorder. Clearly, the statute should punish trainees as well. Similar statutes have been enacted in at least 24 states. " http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cacodes/pen/11460.html - Read this one and think about how speech could be used to facilitate indictment. http://www.adl.org/mwd/faq5.htm look at the end.

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News: "U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship"
by Tim May 31 Aug '01

31 Aug '01

This report says the U.S. Gov't. has plans to make "SafeWeb," the Web proxy company it helped fund through the CIA, available to Chinese citizens who want to bypass their government's censorship. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010830/wr/tech_china_internet_report_dc_1. html (I can already hear Aimee moaning about this anarchic undermining of the official Chinese government...until she realizes it has been blessed by a "legitimate" organ of the government.) So, what happens when Iran decides to finance systems in the U.S. to bypass U.S.G. censorship (e.g., of talk by freedom fighters)? Or when Denmark finances a system to bypass crackdowns on teen erotica in the U.S.? And so on. Here's a brief excerpt: Thursday August 30 3:23 AM ET U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship -NYT NEW YORK (Reuters) - United States government agencies hope to finance an American-based computer network designed to thwart attempts by the Chinese government to censor the World Wide Web for users in China, the New York Times reported in its online edition on Thursday. .... According to the report, the agency is in advanced discussions with Safeweb, a small company based in Emeryville, California, which has received financing from the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites), In-Q-Tel. The discussions were confirmed by parties on both sides, the newspaper said. Safeweb currently runs its own worldwide network of about 100 privacy servers -- computers that help disguise what Web sites a user is seeking to view -- which are popular with users in China, according to the report. The newspaper said the privacy servers have been a continuing target for the Chinese government, which has blocked most of them in recent weeks.

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Re: News: "U.S. May Help Chinese Evade Net Censorship"
by Ken Brown 31 Aug '01

31 Aug '01

Faustine wrote: [...] > Of course it has a trap door, that's probably the whole point of getting it > over there in the first place. And by the way, if you're going to question > SafeWeb for cooperating with CIA, you might as well criticize ZeroKnowledge > for selling a boatload of the Freedom beta to the NSA in 1999 as well. What > did they think they wanted it for, farting around on Usenet? I bet they had > that sucker reverse-engineered and compromised in two minutes flat. Stands > to reason. I wouldn't trust either of them with anything significant. If it can be compromised by NSA looking at a beta, it can be compromised by whoever the Chinese have doing this sort of thing. If it is safe enough to use in a life-or-death situation AT ALL it is safe enough to use if the NSA & uncle Tom Cobbley and all have the source code. If not, not. Ken

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None
by Anonymous 31 Aug '01

31 Aug '01

When I saw the "general response to bombz" post with the below mentioned book, I asked my significant other to please order a copy for me, because she gets a very nice reduction on prices of books she buys as an employed of Borders Bookstore chain. She refused to enter this request into their computer system to place an order, because she claims that the store monitors orders for some categories of special orders, and reports these orders to the police as a custom of policy! Buyers of bookstores beware. -------------------------------------- Eissler, M. "A Handbook on Modern Explosives: A Practical Treatise, with Chapters on Explosives in Practical Applications" London: Crosby Lockwood and Son, 1897. 2nd, Enlarged, fair, illus., appendices, index.

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