November 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Spelling corrections are now export-controlled
by Major Variola (ret) 02 Nov '03

02 Nov '03

At 04:05 PM 11/2/03 +1300, Peter Gutmann wrote: >Still... it occurs to me that the State >department is setting itself up for a DOS attack -- what would happen if 10% >of all US academics were to apply for one of these licenses? It would facilitate the blacklisting and later roundup. And hmm, where do academics get their $ from? Any questions? Imagine McCarthy with computers. McCarthy on a paranoid speed binge, with computers. Or don't imagine, just visit DC. Hmm, if it didn't cause problems for the list maintainers I'd post some technical queries from a spoofed address from an axis of whatever nation. Then again, maybe I'm from an axis country spoofing the US, and you're all as fucked as a Chinook with a SAM locking onto its tail :-) ---- Of course there are limits in regards to freedom of speech. They are as follows: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Everything else is, of course, allowed. -Sunder

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Re: ECC and blinding.
by James A. Donald 02 Nov '03

02 Nov '03

-- James A. Donald: > > Simple Chaumian blinding works fine on EC. On 31 Oct 2003 at 15:26, Adam Back wrote: > So Chaumian blinding with public exponent e, private exponent d, and > modulus n is this and blinding factor b chosen by the client: > > blind: > b^e.m mod n -> > sign: > <- (b^e.m)^d mod n > = b.m^d mod n (simplifying) > > and divide by b to unblind: > m^d mod n > > how are you going to do this over EC? You need an RSA like e and d to > cancel. See:"Anonymous Electronic Cash" http://www.echeque.com/Kong/anon_transfer.htm Lower case letters represent integers, capital letters elliptic curve points. Let k be the banks secret key. The bank promises to pay a specific sum of money for any secret of the form ( x, P), such that P = k * H(x) where H is a hash function mapping random integers onto points on an elliptic curve and k is a secret known only to the token issuer Bob has an existing old used token of this form, and therefore knows that V= k * U even though he does not know k. Bob invents the random numbers t and q, constructs an elliptic point R = t *U + Hash( q ) and pays the bank to construct T= k * R He then calculates Q = T- t * V He now has a new token ( q , Q) of the required form, even though the Bank did not generate Q, has never seen it before, and when it sees it will not recognize it as having any relationship to T or R. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG ONKujWd8zHpibnZny18642N1+yn2u22b10pYMq9S 4JTKi/HgEDA3K9dghxgfMcU8LPnOgG8ibhebtAfJR

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Spelling corrections are now export-controlled
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 01 Nov '03

01 Nov '03

Looks like the USG is going to outdo its ITAR silliness of a few years ago with something even more ridiculous: Grammar and spelling corrections now require an export license. The following was forwarded to me by Clark Thomborson: -- Snip -- Dear colleagues, If I'm reading http://chronicle.com/free/2003/10/2003100201n.htm correctly, any US citizen must get a license (from the US State department) before providing editorial services to any citizen or resident of any country embargoed by the US. ... The Treasury Department's response on Wednesday, in a letter to the IEEE, affirmed its position that editing scholarly papers provides a service to authors. "U.S. persons may not provide the Iranian author substantive or artistic alterations or enhancement of the manuscript, and IEEE may not facilitate the provision of such alterations or enhancements," wrote R. Richard Newcomb, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Trade policy prohibits "the reordering of paragraphs or sentences, correction of syntax, grammar, and replacement of inappropriate words by U.S. persons," according to the letter. The institute may apply for a license to edit papers, Mr. Newcomb wrote. ... I guess this embargo would apply to professors as well as to editors of technical journals headquartered in the US, although I'm not keen to ask the State department for a ruling on this! Apparently this embargo on editorial services applies to Iran, Cuba, Iraq, Libya, and Sudan. I guess I must check http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/eotffc/ofac/sanctions/index.html frequently, if I wanted to be a really obedient US citizen. Wow. I have to laugh, but of course it's not really funny unless you look for the humourous side. For example I have tried to infer the public-policy objectives that might be (in some bureaucrat's mind) served by this regulatory decision. Perhaps one of the objectives is to make it easier to recognise terrorists -- some terrorists will have bad grammar when they speak English, and no US citizen will dare to help them improve it! (This could be good new for the Kiwi English-education industry I guess, but if NZ did this in a big way there might be diplomatic repercussions or even trade sanctions.) Of course there'll be a lot of "false positives" in any terrorist recognition- by-grammar scheme but hey, it's apparently good public policy (from the perspective of the US Congress) to hassle (or maim, kill, or whatever seems appropriate at the time) a large number of non-US citizens if this might save a few US lives? Anyway I don't have to worry about being falsely recognised as a terrorist becuz my grammer and speling is alwys good. I don't think I'll bother to apply for a license to supply editorial services to citizens of embargoed countries. Still... it occurs to me that the State department is setting itself up for a DOS attack -- what would happen if 10% of all US academics were to apply for one of these licenses? Clark

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Jim Bovard on C-SPAN, Sunday 11/02 8-9pm Booknotes, Terrorism and Tyranny
by Freematt357＠aol.com 01 Nov '03

01 Nov '03

Author James Bovard will appear on C-SPAN 's Booknotes with Brian Lamb this Sunday, 11/02, from 8 pm to 9 pm (I believe it may re-air from 11 pm to midnight). Bovard will be discussing his new book "Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil". I've read the book and recommend it highly. For program notes go to: http://www.booknotes.org/Program/?ProgramID=1752 For additional information on the works of James Bovard please go to: http://www.jimbovard.com bfrom the publisher's website "The war on terrorism is the first political growth industry of the new Millennium." So begins Jim Bovard's newest and, in some ways, most provocative book as he casts yet another jaundiced eye on Washington and the motives behind protecting "the homeland" and prosecuting a wildly unpopular war with Iraq. For James Bovard, as always, it all comes down to a trampling of personal liberty and an end to privacy as we know it. From airport security follies that protect no one to increased surveillance of individuals and skyrocketing numbers of detainees, the war on terrorism is taking a toll on individual liberty and no one tells the whole grisly story better than Bovard. Regards, Freematt-

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Re: Chaumian blinding & public voting?
by Major Variola (ret) 01 Nov '03

01 Nov '03

First, much thanks to Howie Goodell for his reply. (Note that printing stuff on transparencies was proposed (by Shamir?) some time ago, perhaps for quorum-required info.) At 09:17 PM 10/31/03 -0600, Neil Johnson wrote: >On Friday 31 October 2003 12:10 pm, Major Variola (ret) wrote: >> Is is possible to use blinding (or other protocols) so that all votes >> are published, you can check that your vote is in there, and you >> (or anyone) can run the maths and verify the vote? Without being >> able to link people to votes without their consent. >> > >Doing this would allow vote buyers to verify a voter voted the way they >wanted. Yeah, so? I've voted from home for a decade. Nothing stops me from showing Vinny (Vinny the votebuyer, he's Eve's cousin on Mallory's side) my ballot before I mail it. Or registering my cat to vote. They are illegal, and detectable, that suffices. [Note to furriners: in the US you don't need "ID" to register or to vote, just a signature, and for that an X suffices.] Although I *do* agree with you --resistance to votebuying is a desirable feature if you can have it. (Insert cellphone-with-camera-in-voting-booth discussion here.) (And yes, voting at home is succeptible to spousal coercion. Better than queueing up with the sheeple! Which is also a form of *meteorological* coercion, folks don't go out in crappy weather. Also snipers and bombs, in places with that kind of weather, will deter centralized voting.) >One option might be to give the voter a MAC of their ballot and then print the >MAC's in the paper. The voter could check to see if their vote had been >altered. That's a good idea. I don't think Chaum's transparency-printing scheme does this. Its also possible to write-in candidates for elections you don't care about as "tracers" to make sure your ballot (albeit not other votes in the same bundle) made it. I voted for Monica Lewinsky a few times that way. >I still think far better methods for improving voter turn out other than >Internet voting are: >1. A National Election Holiday (but in the middle of the work week so people >can't use it to extend a vacation). Too expensive. >2. Couple the Election with a National Lottery with local, state, and national >prizes. With appropriate delink of voter's identity from the way they voted >of course. Well, lotteries are evil in my book, but they certainly do inspire the innumerate sheeple. I doubt it would work unless the "prizes" were huge --I only get DoS'ed by queues at 7-11s when the prizes orders of magnitude larger than 1e6. >(I'm not claiming that this would actually improve things overall, just >increase voter turnout). Have a hollywood actor run. Or have recalls every year. Worked in Calif! On the other hand, perhaps it should be made harder to vote. Democracy is mob rule, after all. Testing citizens on the Bill of Rights would be a good start.

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anonymous weblog publishing
by Nomen Nescio 01 Nov '03

01 Nov '03

http://invisiblog.com/ Coolt Uses Mixmaster and GPG

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