September 2002 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: lqu
by daohNatasha 22 Sep '02

22 Sep '02

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Cypherpunks and Irish Travellers
by Anonymous 22 Sep '02

22 Sep '02

Terrific article below about the "Irish Travellers", an inbred gypsy-like society which has decades of practice in anonymity, multiple identities, secret languages, fake IDs, and other cypherpunk-like practices. They live in trailer parks and make their living with home improvement scams and various frauds, just like many cypherpunks. They even reside in towns with names like White Settlement. I thought that was Tim May's house! Read on for a glimpse of the future of cypherpunk culture... Woman videotaped hitting child has local ties By MELODY McDONALD Star-Telegram Staff Writer FORT WORTH - The woman captured on videotape beating a child in an Indiana department store parking lot last week is believed to be an Irish Traveller with ties to the Fort Worth area. Madelyne Gorman, 25, also known as Madelyn Toogood, has been the subject of a nationwide search since Indiana law enforcement authorities distributed copies of the videotape to the media earlier this week. Gorman, who is believed to be affiliated with a Traveller group in White Settlement and Fort Worth known as the Greenhorn Carrolls, is also wanted on unrelated warrants in White Settlement and Fort Worth, authorities said. Irish Travellers are descendants of a nomadic ethinic group that came to the U.S. in the 1800s to escape the potato famine, roaming the country by horse and wagon in search of itinerant work. Shiny trucks and travel-trailers now carry them to the nation's distant corners and unassuming places like White Settlement. They are devout Roman Catholics who share biblical names, marry within the group and speak their own dialect. Most of the men make their living in home-improvement and business-repair work, such as paving, painting and roofing. Law enforcement authorities said some scam their clients in the process. Joe Livingston, a senior agent with the South Carolina Law Enformcemnt Division who has investigated Travellers for 18 years, said there are various subclans of Irish Travellers around the cournty. "In Texas, they are the Greenhorn Carrolls. The South Carolina Travellers are known as the Georgia Boys. In Memphis, they are known as the Mississippi travellers. This girl appears to be a branch of Texas." "How many are there?" he asked. "Who knows." The Greenhorn Travellers -- the Carrolls, Gormans, McDonalds, Daleys and Jennings -- found themselves in the spotlight in January 2000 when five of their young members were killed in a wreck on Interstate 30 in Fort Worth. The accident -- one of the worst in city history -- shocked the public. Questions arose when authorities learned that none of the boys was older than 14 and four of them were carrying false driver's licenses misrepresenting their ages. After the accident, some Traveller families withdrew their children from area schools. Victims' families met with investigators only once. Livingston, who is researching the Madelyne Gorman case, said he has discovered that Gorman has driver's licenses in Indiana, Missiouri, Texas and New Jersey. Computer searches reveal she has listed addresses in Mission and Fort Worth; Elkhart, Ind.; and Independence, Mo., among others. "This again, shows the transiency of these people," said Livingston, who said he received a call from an informant Friday morning about the case. "My guy says they've gone underground. They're not going to find this girl." In addition to the arrest warrant out of Indiana, Gorman is wanted in White Settlement and Fort Worth for unrelated crimes. In White Settlement, a warrant was issued for Gorman's arrest on April 9 after she failed to pay a $202 traffic ticket. According to the city's municipal court clerk, Gorman received a citation for no driver's license on Dec. 12, 2001, in the 1400 block of south Cherry Lane. The following month, Fort Worth police issued a warrant for Gorman's arrest after she failed to appear in court to face theft charges, said Lt. Mack West, of the Tarrant County Sheriff's Department. According to a computer records and a Fort Worth police report, Gorman and another woman, Rose Ann Carroll, were arrested March 27 at a Kohls department store in Fort Worth on charges of theft $50 to $500.

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[BrinWorld] precrime squad in Del: more pigs needing killing
by Major Variola (ret) 21 Sep '02

21 Sep '02

WILMINGTON, Del. -- The city police department's Corner Deployment Unit is known as the "jump-out squad" for bursting out of vehicles to question and search suspects. Its officers also are known for something else: snapping photos of suspects they stop, even those they don't arrest. City officials defend the practice as a legal and effective part of fighting drug dealing and street crime. Critics say it violates the constitutional rights of innocent people. In an era when surveillance cameras peer from buildings and parking lots, courts have ruled that people can't expect privacy in public places. Civil libertarians argue that police photographing people they don't arrest is a different matter. "There's no authority to forcibly photograph someone and enter them into a database when they have committed no crime," said Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "I'm not aware of any other municipal police department that has engaged in this type of behavior," he said. Wilmington Mayor James Baker describes such criticism as "blithering idiocy," saying police take pains to protect the rights of law-abiding citizens while targeting people "who are killing our neighborhoods, who are killing our people." City officials deny police are photographing individuals they believe are likely to commit crimes. Some media reports have compared the technique to "Minority Report," a recent science fiction movie in which police identify criminals before they commit crimes. "It's not a Gestapo technique, it's not anything other than a progressive means of policing an urban environment," said police spokesman Cpl. Stephen Martelli. Among other things, the photos can serve as proof that a person arrested for loitering received other warnings. They also are kept as "possible evidence for ongoing investigations," authorities said. Police Chief Michael Szczerba said his department has taken photographs of suspects for years without complaints. It's "highly improbable" that innocent people were caught up in the stops, he said. According to city officials, 658 people were stopped and questioned between June, when the jump-out squad's "Operation Bold Eagle" began, and last week. Among them, 546 were arrested, and 708 charges were filed. Police believe the other 112 are involved in criminal activity, even if officers didn't find enough evidence that day to arrest them. Drewry Fennell, executive director of the ACLU's Delaware chapter, argues that shouldn't matter. "Their criminal histories are not relevant to their rights to move freely about on the street," Fennell said. The ACLU is considering a lawsuit but, so far, no one has come forward with a formal complaint, he said. City officials have met with ACLU, NAACP and Urban League representatives to hear their concerns, and another meeting is scheduled Wednesday. In crime-troubled neighborhoods, some residents have welcomed the camera-toting police. "I would rather have innocent people's pictures taken than innocent people shot," said Barbara Washam, who joined a rally last week to support the police. Mayor Baker said the photo policy doesn't violate the Constitution or the U.S. Supreme Court's 1968 decision in Terry v. Ohio that police may stop and frisk people if they have reasonable suspicion they are engaged in criminal activity. The state attorney general and chief federal prosecutor for Delaware agreed that Wilmington police appear to be acting within the law. But others disagree, saying the Terry decision allows police only to briefly detain and question suspects. "They can't use Terry as a pretext to go out and gather a photographic database of suspects," said professor Phyllis Bookspan, who teaches constitutional criminal procedure at Widener University. City officials say officers exercise discretion. On a recent Friday night at a corner reeking of alcohol, the squad frisked and questioned six men while investigating suspected drug dealing. Patrol Officer George Collins questioned one of the men, then pulled a digital camera from his pocket and asked if he could take his picture. "Can I ask why you're doing this to me?" replied the man, who showed identification and told police he just was walking to the store. "If you're not a criminal, you don't have anything to worry about," Collins answered. "It's for future reference." Satisfied with the identification, Collins pocketed his camera without snapping a photo. "He was a resident, so I gave him the option," Collins explained. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-police-photos0921sep21(… ----- Got Osama?

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all your .gov netadmins are belong to us
by Major Variola (ret) 21 Sep '02

21 Sep '02

Wouldn't it be cool if a paki gunman shows up at a .gov NOC, just like he did at the CIA some years back? http://www.securitynewsportal.com/cgi-bin/cgi-script/csNews/csNews.cgi?data… VeriSign Inc has stopped providing access to information about the .gov internet domain, which is restricted to US government bodies, over concerns the data could be used in planning internet attacks, ComputerWire has learned. On September 16, the company posted a notice on its web site saying that from September 13 (three days earlier) it would no longer provide FTP access to the so-called "zone file" for .gov, which contains the IP addresses of all the name servers that point to .gov domains. Ken Silva, VeriSign's director of networks and security, told ComputerWire the company had removed access to information "of potential value to hackers", and that the decision was made "in conjunction with" the General Services Administration, which administers the .gov zone file. Silva pointed out that while VeriSign manages the .com, .org and .net zone files, and continues to make those available to those willing to enter a no-cost agreement with the company, it does not run .gov, and merely made the data available as a free informational service. Malicious hackers wanting to take down government web sites would hypothetically be able to do so by denial-of-service attacking the name servers associated with .gov domains. It was not immediately clear if the .gov zone file data is made available in bulk from other sources, but the GSA does not seem to do so. Also removed from the FTP site was the zone file for in-addr.arpa, which is used for reverse-DNS lookups (when somebody wants to find out what domain is associated with an IP address, rather than the other way around) It seems so logical to take that .gov WHOIS info offline that you have to wonder why it wasn't done last year. After all, who really needs to do WHOIS look ups on government sites except hackers, mail spammers that are harvesting government email addresses and fearful folks who like checking where the IP's of mysterious visitors to their web sites originate from... I wonder whether the same will be done for the .edu and .mil which also are prime targets..

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[HereticalCode] DeCSS Redux: DVDSynth
by Major Variola (ret) 21 Sep '02

21 Sep '02

Summary DVDSynth is an open platform for developing various "virtual devices," particularly virtual CD/DVD-ROM drives and virtual discs to put in them. One of the most interesting things it can do is apply filters to physical devices in the system. Filters can change the contents of a CD or DVD in arbitrary ways on the fly. This early release of DVDSynth contains only the filtering support together with the following three filters: DVD subtitler: This filter effectively adds a new subtitle track to a DVD, by inserting new data into the MPEG stream and updating the various navigation pointers on the fly. Since it works at the device-driver level, it's compatible with all software and hardware DVD players. It comes with a fairly sophisticated subtitle rendering engine which supports asynchronous overlapping subtitles in multiple fonts and colors, fade-in and fade-out, the full Unicode character set, vertical Japanese "sidetitles," etc. Unrestrict DVD: This filter removes various usage restrictions from a DVD, including region lockout, APS (Macrovision), and disabled fast-forwarding, menu call, angle change, and so forth. SCSI protocol spy: This lets you monitor the SCSI commands and data passing to and from your drive, in the tradition of such utilities as FileMon, RegMon and Spy++. It's useful for debugging, and interesting to watch if you're curious. http://www.roundelay.net/dvdsynth/prerelease.html#download

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Re: Random Privacy
by AARG! Anonymous 21 Sep '02

21 Sep '02

Greg Broiles wrote about randomizing survey answers: > That doesn't sound like a solution to me - they haven't provided anything > to motivate people to answer honestly, nor do they address the basic > problem, which is relying on the good will and good behavior of the > marketers - if a website visitor is unwilling to trust a privacy policy > which says "We'll never use this data to annoy or harm you", they're > likely to be unimpressed with a privacy policy which says "We'll use > fancy math tricks to hide the information you give us from ourselves." > > That's not going to change unless they move the randomizing behavior > off of the marketer's machine and onto the visitor's machine, > allowing the visitor to observe and verify the correct operation of > the privacy technology .. which is about as likely as a real audit of > security-sensitive source code, where that likelihood is tiny now and > shrinking rapidly the closer we get to the TCPA/Palladium nirvana. On the contrary, TCPA/Palladium can solve exactly this problem. It allows the marketers to *prove* that they are running a software package that will randomize the data before storing it. And because Palladium works in opposition to their (narrowly defined) interests, they can't defraud the user by claiming to randomize the data while actually storing it for marketing purposes. Ironically, those who like to say that Palladium "gives away root on your computer" would have to say in this example that the marketers are giving away root to private individuals. In answering their survey questions, you in effect have root privileges on the surveyor's computers, by this simplistic analysis. This further illustrates how misleading is this characterization of Palladium technology in terms of root privileges.

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All your canadians are belong to us
by Major Variola (ret) 21 Sep '02

21 Sep '02

At 11:08 AM 9/21/02 -0400, Greg Vassie wrote: >> says Dr Ann Coavoukian, the commissioner of information and privacy in >> Ontario, U.S.A. "People are lying and vendors don't know what is false [or > >As a resident of Ontario, Canada, I'm quite surprised to learn that >Ontario has been annexed by the United States. Ontario, California?

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Re: Random Privacy
by R. A. Hettinga 21 Sep '02

21 Sep '02

At 12:32 PM -0400 on 9/21/02, Adam Shostack wrote: > | > Ontario, U.S.A. "People are lying and vendors don't know what is >false [or > | > what is] accurate, so the information is useless." > | > | As a resident of Ontario, Canada, I'm quite surprised to learn that > | Ontario has been annexed by the United States. > > Randomized geography. :) Ontario, California? Of course, California is another country. :-). Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- 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'

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Re: Random Privacy
by Tim May 21 Sep '02

21 Sep '02

On Saturday, September 21, 2002, at 09:29 AM, Tim May wrote: > On Saturday, September 21, 2002, at 02:16 AM, Blanc wrote: > >> Interesting little article from >> http://pass.maths.org.uk/issue21/news/random_privacy/index.html: >> >> Excerpt: >> How old are you? How much do you earn? >> > > Not a new idea. Ted Nelson (IIRC) wrote about using coin flips to > randomize AIDS poll questions. ("Have you engaged in unprotected sex?" > Flip a coin and XOR it with your actual answer.) I remember talking to > Eric Hughes, Phil Salin, and others around 1990-91 about this. > > (BTW, as you probably know or can imagine, there have been crypto > methods proposed for safeguarding certain kinds of data collection, > e.g., schemes using "random coin flip protocols" for answering > questions > like "Are you homosexual?" (supposedly "useful" for public health > planners trying to deal with HIV/AIDS issues. The idea is that the > pollee XORs his answer with a random bit. His answer then doesn't > _implicate_ him, but overall statistics can still be deduced from a > large enough sample.lawmakers will try to take us down the first path. > " Cordian correctly points out that merely XORing with a random bit gives the same statistics as the random bit(s). Now that I think about it, I recollect the proposal was something along these lines: Alice is confronted with a question with a yes or no answer. She flips a coin. If the outcome is "H," she answers the question honestly. If the outcome is "T," she then flips another coin and gives that outcome as her answer. Half the population of pollees is ostensibly answering honestly, the other half is randomizing. No particular person can be linked to an answer. More sophisticated versions, as I recall, had more complicated series of coin tosses (to reduce "noise"). --Tim May

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Re: Random Privacy
by Greg Broiles 21 Sep '02

21 Sep '02

At 02:16 AM 9/21/2002 -0700, Blanc wrote: >But researchers at IBM think they have the solution. They have developed an >ingenious method to protect our privacy, while still giving companies the >information they crave. That doesn't sound like a solution to me - they haven't provided anything to motivate people to answer honestly, nor do they address the basic problem, which is relying on the good will and good behavior of the marketers - if a website visitor is unwilling to trust a privacy policy which says "We'll never use this data to annoy or harm you", they're likely to be unimpressed with a privacy policy which says "We'll use fancy math tricks to hide the information you give us from ourselves." That's not going to change unless they move the randomizing behavior off of the marketer's machine and onto the visitor's machine, allowing the visitor to observe and verify the correct operation of the privacy technology .. which is about as likely as a real audit of security-sensitive source code, where that likelihood is tiny now and shrinking rapidly the closer we get to the TCPA/Palladium nirvana. So, no, fancy tricks won't solve the basic problem, which is that once you give information to other people, you've got no control over what they do with it. -- Greg Broiles -- gbroiles(a)parrhesia.com -- PGP 0x26E4488c or 0x94245961

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