December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: More proposals for European censorship
by Asgaard 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Mon, 23 Sep 1996, Peter Trei wrote: > > It's probably no coincidence that the recently busted, utter horrible > > child-molesting ring, with obvious protection from various persons > > in the establishment, was centered in Belgium - that's where the EU > > bureaucrat nomenklatura play their power games and go to bordellos. > What exactly are you suggesting when you say 'it's probably no > coincidence?" I can't quite figure it out. Obviously not only the arrested killer used the schoolgirls chained in underground cells. They were for hire. High officials used his 'services', then ordered the police to cover it up. Why else would some ten policemen be arrested? The EU bureaucrats are served by hordes of prostitutes. Surely there are pedophiles among the hordes. Probably some EU pedophiles have a connection to the gang. I don't know this of course, but speculation is cheap. Asgaard

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Re: Snooping ISP admin??
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:15 AM 9/23/96 -0700, "Michael E. Carboy" <carboy(a)hooked.net> wrote: >Question for the group: I have encountered a situation that causes me >to believe an ISP is snoopingthrough encrytped mail. It seems that >PGP'd mail has aroused the curiosity of an ISP (not hooked.net) Well, if it's encrypted, it shouldn't matter much if they're snooping :-) >I have >encountered "POP3 account in use by another user" several times in the >past few days and I am the only user... wondering if that "in use" >messsage is the result of a clumsy sysadmin being caught with his hand >in the cookie jar. Three possibilities 1) The sysadmin (unlikely). Aside from the fact that most sysadmins know better, it's easier for them to just copy your mailbox to /tmp and read it with emacs instead of using the POP handler to read it. 2) Crackers, especially if you've got a wimpy password 3) System problems - I use Eudora with my Netcom account, and sometimes I'll have bad modem connections or Windoze crashes that will hang my computer or connection in the middle of fetching mail. This leads to that kind of symptom - the server doesn't quite realize that I've hung up. Usually this times out in an hour or two, but your mileage may vary, especially depending on you're ISP's POP server. Start by assuming it's a computer problem, then try attributing stupidity, and only then go for malice. :-) And if they are snooping, asking them about the "technical" problems you're having would at least let them know to stop it. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> # You can get PGP software outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto

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List participation
by Eric Hughes 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have been informed that Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM <dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com> wrote: > [...] Tim's off-topic spews have driven Eric Hughes, John Gilmore, > Rich Salz, and many other former valuable contributors off the > mailing list [...] As for me, I stopped having time to read cypherpunks a year and a half ago. Tim had nothing to do with it. The cypherpunks list has changed and I have changed; so be it. Eric

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Bernstein Case in "The Recorder", SF Law newspaper
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I didn't have 4 quarters handy to feed the newspaper machine, but "The Recorder", a San Francisco law newspaper, has a headline today about "Feds On The Ropes In Export Law Suit", about the Bernstein case. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> # You can get PGP software outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto

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possible solution to cyber S/N
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've written many times on the problem of signal to noise here in cyberspace and have tried to think through some elegant solutions to this very vexing problem. moments ago I just came up with an intense brainstorm fully worthy of sharing with the list <g>. it's clear that the web functions very much like a directed graph in many ways. sites and traffic between them are one graph. however, another graph involves thinking of each page or "article" on the web as a single node in the graph, and hyperlinks as the edges between the nodes. what we have today is a directed graph in which one can follow the forward direction of hyperlinks very readily. however, it is much more difficult to follow the reverse direction, i.e. find "all the sites that reference this paper". of course this is part of the beauty of the web, that anyone can link to anyone without actually having to register or something like that. the "referrer log" feature on a server is a mechanism that does allow a server to get some idea of who is linked up to that site. the basic idea I have is that references are an excellent way of discriminating Signal to Noise and are used routinely in the scientific arena. a paper that is pivotal and influential is referred to ad infinitum. obscure papers are forgotten and never referred to in subsequent literature. taking this idea to the cyberspace arena, the application is immediately obvious-- pages that are linked to by a lot of other pages are valuable, those that are not are not as valuable. (another closely related idea is how much hit traffic a web site gets-- wouldn't it be a *tremendous* improvement in the current search engines if they returned the pages ranked according to how many hits they get per time?) there are some problems with all the above, however. currently only the site that actually houses the pages can keep track of hits, and referrers are not very well kept track of at all. in a robust system, cheating, such as reporting more hits than one is getting, would not be possible. anyway, I tend to think that future S/N problems in cyberspace are increasingly going to be solved in some particular ways that are just now being tried out: 1. rating agencies. agencies that both reject and find "cool stuff" (like Point Communications etc.) 2. hit statistics. how many people are hitting various pages? if we could get an arbitron-like system that works the same way that newsgroup readerships are now reported (each site compiles statistics and sends them to centralized databases) we could have search engines that rank results according to hit statistics. I'm not saying it would be perfect, and there are all kinds of obvious nitpicky things that people here will harp on, but I still insist it would be better than no statistics at all. eventually a system like this that involved voluntary submissions of hit counts to the centralized servers (or just some way of search engines to get hit statistics from servers about the pages they own/serve) may evolve into a more robust system that makes cheating impossible (such as falsely reporting a high hit count to attract people to the site). 3. linking statistics. again, I think this is an extremely powerful way of separating signal from noise-- how many other sites are linked to the page in question? if it has few links, it isn't as interesting, if a lot of other people point to it, it's far more interesting. I encourage system designers to keep some of these ideas in mind when they are working on the current generation of software tools such as search engines etc. in particular there is a tremendous amount of innovation going on right now between search engine designers, and adopting some of the above ideas into a search engine might be a very powerful way of distinguishing it from the "competition" by returning more useable search results to the end user. again, I suspect we will be seeing increasingly ingenious and efficacious ways of dealing with what today is the horrible S/N problem. perhaps today will be thought of as the dark age of cyberspace because of all the muck we are routinely wading through <g>

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Eudora 3 EMS API stuff
by Dave Del Torto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anyone interested in creating plug-ins for Eudora 3.x that provide encryption/remailer/etc support needs this information. dave ................................. cut here ................................. ABOUT THE API The EMS API is one of several complimentary facilities available for integrating 3rd party applications and services with Eudora email. "Plug-ins" interface with Eudora via the EMS API. For Windows the plug-ins are DLL's and on the Macintosh they are Components. Abstractly speaking, the EMS API is most suited for performing transformations, conversions and some other forms of processing on email messages as they are sent and received by Eudora. In practice it is very useful for encryption, digital signatures, and compression. These are all processes that involve encapsulating a message attachments and all. The EMS API is also very useful for text processing and conversions. These might include simple formatting and sorting utilities, or human language translation, and some forms of text-based encryption. EMS API plug-ins can be used to do data format conversions on things ranging from graphic images in attachments to international character sets. Another interesting category are plug-ins that process messages in some way, but don't necessarily change them. For example, a plug-in could be set up so that it scans certain messages for updates to a database like a catalog and automatically makes the change in the local database. Another could be used to scan incoming message attachments for viruses. In a sense, plug-ins can function as filters. DOCUMENTS AND SDK As of the end of July we have documentation and support available at <ftp://ftp.eudora.com/quest/emsapi> as follows: emsapi1.pdf - Adobe Acrobat document describing API version 1 (current on Mac) emsapi2.pdf - Acrobat document describing the API version 2 (current for Windows) chngs2.pdf - Acrobat document showing changes between version 1 & 2 EMS-API-SDK-1.0b3.hqx - Macintosh developer's kit ems1b2.zip - The Windows software developer's kit The developers kit includes a number of support utilities and source code for four sample plug-ins. CURRENT STATUS As of the end of August, Macintosh Eudora Pro 3.0 is shipping and supports the EMS API version 1. The current Macintosh Eudora Lite (the free version) does not support the EMS API, but it will and a beta version is expected in early September if not sooner. Version 1.0b3 of the SDK for the Macintosh is currently available from our FTP site. Windows Eudora 3.0 is in beta test right now and supports EMS API version 2. A copy can be obtained from our ftp site. Version 1.0b2 (a public beta release) of SDK for the API is also now available from our ftp site. MAILING LIST AND MORE INFORMATION If you have specific questions about the API you can write to <mailto:emsapi-info@qualcomm.com>. If you'd like to keep up to date on the API you can join a mailing list we have for announcements and discussions. To join, send a message to <mailto:msapi-dev-request@qualcomm.com>. This mailing list is manually administered and is not a listserv, majordomo or listproc, so no special formatting is needed in the request message.

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BAA, BAA, SAY THE SHEEPLE
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 08:24:36 -0700 To: <other people>, rah(a)shipwright.com From: <somebody> Subject: BAA, BAA, SAY THE SHEEPLE COLORADO SENATOR CHARLES DUKE ON THE LOSS OF LIBERTY By Senator Charles R. Duke, September 16, 1996 Colorado District 9, (719) 481-9289 BAA, BAA, SAY THE SHEEPLE Who would have thought America would be where it is today? Earlier in the week, news stories appeared announcing that a proposal to do background checks on regular passengers came from a commission studying terrorism. This, of course, would do absolutely nothing to stop terrorism. Any decent terrorist knows enough to not travel under a real name. In any case, most airline terrorist incidents will likely be caused by someone who doesn't fly on the same plane for which the incident is planned. Since these ideas are patently obvious to the most casual observers, what, then, is the purpose of this tyranny? Is it simply to get the American sheeple so accustomed to government spying that we don't mind? To do this would require some sort of identification number and what better number to use than the Social Security number? Having the SSN flying around all these databases would also allow those who have access to such numbers to examine our bank records and credit history, along with many other records. Oh, nuts, I say. This proposal is just too depressing. So I pick up the Wall Street Journal for Friday the Thirteenth of September. Might as well read a little financial news to get in a better mood. I mean, our economy is really doing okay, or at least so the government would have us believe. I never got to the stock tables. There, on the front page, is a story from San Mateo, California, where den mothers, coaches, and other volunteers who work with children will now be subjected to fingerprinting and background checks. The idea, you see, is to keep our children safe from child abuse. Don't look now, Toto, but this doesn't feel like Kansas, anymore. This will be totally ineffective at curbing child abuse, but you probably already knew that. This writer knows something about child abuse and can assure everyone that the overwhelming majority of child molesters become neither den mothers nor coaches. We have a Fourth Amendment to our U.S. Constitution that flatly prohibits these unreasonable searches and seizures. Specifically, the Amendment states, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized." It means that our private effects and our private lives are none of any civil authority's business, unless they have probable cause, and can obtain a warrant, sworn to by an oath or affirmation before a judge. The only way any nosy government gets away with this open and flagrant violation of constitutional rights is if the sheeple allow it. Where is the hue and cry from everyone about these measures? Have we become so conditioned to prying eyes that we have forgotten what privacy is about? Why are you, who have the courage to read this column, just standing idly by and letting our God-given rights be stripped from us on a daily basis? Where are the letters to the editor and civil demonstrations about this blatant tyranny? Our forefathers paid for these rights with their lives and their blood. They must be churning in their graves with the lackadaisical attitude we have today about our Constitution. They fought a War for Independence because King George was allowing warrantless searches and incarcerations. It was considered by our Founding Fathers to be a sacrilegious violation of rights granted to us by our Creator and not subject to the rule of Man. Somehow, in 1996, we have been lulled into complacency and apathy by a government totally dedicated to the absolute subjugation of our free will. Most of us have never really been free. We have been enslaved so long it is not clear we would know how to behave if by some process we had our real freedom restored. It is possible the American people actually deserve what is about to happen to us. We deserve it because of our collective inaction, our collective morals, our collective set of values, and our collective embrace of a failed political process. There are many examples in history where societies created and led by moral and just people have lasted for long periods. Almost without exception, the collapse of these societies were preceded by a loss of character in the people governed. Where would you put America today? --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "'Bart Bucks' are not legal tender." -- Punishment, 100 times on a chalkboard, for Bart Simpson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/

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Snake Oil Lists, Blacklists, and Anonymity
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:16 PM 9/23/96, Mark Rogaski wrote: >An entity claiming to be Lance Cottrell wrote: >: I agree in principle, but for the foreseeable future I think the list will >: be a "good thing". >: > >As long as the descriptions of the products are comprehensive. Concern >about legal issues has been expressed from the beginning. But, I don't >think that libel/slander laws will be a stumbling block, as long as >the publication is similar in nature to "Consumer Reports" or somesuch. I have to agree with Lance that the "ratings list" is more important and more useful than the "FAQ." (My comments about the "Snake Oil FAQ" were directed towards the _educational_ aspects of the FAQ, which I believe are covering territory already well-covered by good books and existing FAQs. A list of thumbs ups and thumbs downs, dynamically changing, is another matter--it is _not_ something covered in published books, due to the time factor, and would be a contribution.) However, bear in mind that such a list of products could involve legal battles. The mention of "Consumer Reports" is apropos of this. CR has been sued many times, and has a staff of lawyers both reviewing all articles they post for any hint of litigatable (?) reviews, and for dealing with the corporate lawyers of companies whose products did not fare well in the CR reviews. (Recall certain high-profile cases such as the sport utility vehicle "roll-over" tests.) Also, one of the audio magazines (or possibly even CR itself...my memory has faded) was sued in the 1970s by Bose Corporation for an unflattering review of Bose's flagship loudspeakers, the Bose 901s. The magazine basically said Bose's "direct-reflecting" multipattern array of small cones was "snake oil." (I don't know if the mag used this term, but this is what they said. And "snake oil" is a term used a _lot_ in the audio community, where snake oil salesmen sell things like the "Tice Clock," an ordinary LED clock ($7 at Radio Shack) which has been "cryogenically processed" and which, Tice claims, when plugged in to any wall outlet in the listening room will improve the soundstage, improve the sound by interpolating bits into the harsh digital stream, blah blah blah. Of course, Tice charges $200 for their special snake oil clock.) Back to the list of products. It would be best to handle it through an anonymous remailer...what others do with it, in terms of reposting it to public newsgroups (where Deja News, Yahoo, Alta Vista, etc. could find it), is their business. Reviews should be digitally-signed, probably by pseudonyms. The "anonymous reviewers" would actually be pseudonymous, and reputations would develop over time. (TANSTAAFL) The BlackNet model (message pools) could be used to get responses (letters to the editor?) back from customers, so that one might see messages like: "My company bought 5 copies of the SnakeTronics ScrambleMatic product, and found the key is stored in plaintext in the scramble.config file! Needless to say, we have stopped using ScrambleMatic and have asked SnakeTronics for our money back! signed, DisgruntledUser." (In other words, a formal rating or evaluation, perhaps from A to F, or 10 to -10, etc., could be supplemented with "blurbs," both positive and negative, from users.) The reason I recommend anonymous remailer distribution, and pseudonyms, is because of the litigation issue. Even if reviewers are not sued often, the threat of a suit influences reviews, which is why most reviews in most mags are puff pieces (glowing reviews, often strongly correlated with who is advertising in the mag). One can imagine Matt Blaze, for example, choosing to say _nothing_ about SnakeTronics' ScrambleMatic, for fear (justified) that he might get letters from their lawyers, thus taking up his time and even eventually landing him in court. Also, this sort of "blacklist" paves the way for similar anonymously-situated blacklists of doctors, lawyers, etc., and you can bet your last dollar that a list of "bad doctors" would be aggressively pursued in the courts of all major countries! Hence the use of remailers and BlackNet-style message pools will be paramount for such things. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Live Cybercast of GA lawsuit press conference
by camcc＠abraxis.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>X-Sender: rcostner(a)intergate.net >Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 11:48:46 -0400 >To: efg-action(a)ninja.techwood.org >Reply-To: efg-action(a)ninja.techwood.org > >Live Cybercast of HB1630 lawsuit press conference > >The ACLU, Electronic Frontiers Georgia, Mitchell Kaye (Georgia State >Representative), and others will hold a press conference on their lawsuit >against the State of Georgia, concerning HB1630, which is now law. The joint >press conference will be broacast live on the internet at 10:30 am on Tuesday >September 24, 1996. To listen to the press conference, see > > http://www.efga.org/realaudio/hb1630.htm > >A note about EFGA: Electronic Frontiers Georgia has a new website ><http://www.efga.org/>. We are now referring to ourselves as EFGA, rather >than EFG. Please update your websites accordingly. > > -- Robert Costner (770) 512-8746 > Electronic Frontiers Georgia > rcostner(a)intergate.net > http://www.efga.org/

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Re: TAG_ent
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> security issues are solved, he said. "The Internet is > fundamentally flawed in that regard right now," Reed > said. "At this moment in time at least, we at Citicorp > would feel very uncomfortable accommodating any > transactions on the Internet," he said. But then they thought Plus and Cirrus were bad ideas as well. DCF

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Another security problem reported in Microsoft's Internet Explor
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(This is posted to both www-security and cypherpunks. Please be careful where you send responses). See: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,3707,00.html at C|net's news site for the whole story. Short version: InfoSpace has released a program as an IE plugin, which, once the user has agreed to install it, registers InfoSpace as a 'trusted publisher' in Explorer. This apparently means that later requests to download Infospace programs would not trigger the dialog boxes requesting permission to download. InfoSpace describes this as a bug, and is releasing a corrected version. Commentary: I hope that all IE plugin (ActiveX, script, whatever) publishers are as responsive. Ideally, I suppose, a downloaded executable component should not be able to silently manipulate the security policies of the system it arrives on, but it's hard to see how to prevent this in Microsoft's active content model. The Java model is more robustly protected against this problem, but as a result is not as capable. The scary thing is that a clever author of Trojan horses could write an ActiveX control which does nothing but open the gates, and let other programs in without the Authenticode check. It could even let in another version of itself, which is also properly signed, but has no malicous code. Thus, it could cover it's tracks. Peter Trei trei(a)process.com Disclaimer: I do not represent my employer.

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Re: A daily warning regarding Tim ... [edited]
by laverty＠matrixNet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Eudora Pro 2.2 will also filter out all of the crap... At 08:24 AM 9/23/96 -0500, you wrote: >>On Fri, 20 Sep 1996, John Anonymous MacDonald wrote: >> >>> Tim C[*] * studied yoga back-streching exercises for >>> five years so he could * * (*). >> >>Likely the NSA has nothing better to do these days. They got bored with >>just listening, so now they're spamming. Can we lock this fucker out of >>the list? Sure, he'll probably pick another nym to post from... >> > > >Can't lock him out of the list, but you can either set up a kill file, or find >something like the 3.0b version of Eudora, which has filters; you can set it up >where, if an incoming message has a certain From: string, it is transferred >directly into the Trash mail folder, which is, as a rule, cleaned up before >quitting. > >Daniel. > >-- >If in fact we are the only intelligent life on this planet, why the fuck are >we in this goddamn mess? >-- >Find my public key on the World Wide Web -- point your browser at: >http://bs.mit.edu:8001/pks-toplev.html > > > >

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Taking crypto out of the U.S.
by haggis＠brutus.bright.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Soon I am going to be going overseas to Japan, and I want to take my notebook with me so I can keep up with everything, however, I have encrypted my hard drive and usually encrypt my mail. Is this in violation of the ITAR to keep everything the same when I go over?

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No Subject
by camcc＠abraxis.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From cypherpunks-errors(a)toad.com Tue Sep 24 00:20:12 1996 Return-Path: cypherpunks-errors(a)toad.com Received: from toad.com (toad.com [140.174.2.1]) by oak.westol.com (8.7.5/8.6.9) with ESMTP id AAA16114 for <shadseek(a)westol.com>; Tue, 24 Sep 1996 00:20:11 -0400 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by toad.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id MAA24022 for cypherpunks-outgoing; Mon, 23 Sep 1996 12:43:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp1.abraxis.com (SMTP1.ABRAXIS.COM [206.155.199.210]) by toad.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id MAA23992 for <cypherpunks(a)toad.com>; Mon, 23 Sep 1996 12:41:23 -0700 (PDT) From: camcc(a)abraxis.com Received: from [206.155.199.39] by smtp1.abraxis.com (NTMail 3.01.03) id ua044324; Mon, 23 Sep 1996 15:44:56 -0400 Message-Id: <2.2.32.19960923194301.0069bebc(a)smtp1.abraxis.com> X-Sender: camcc(a)smtp1.abraxis.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (32) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 15:43:01 -0400 To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Reply-To: camcc(a)abraxis.com Subject: GA HB1630 Lawsuit: Press Advisory Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com Precedence: bulk X-UIDL: 843538926.000 Status: U >X-Sender: rcostner(a)intergate.net >Reply-To: efg-action(a)ninja.techwood.org > >Joint Media Advisory: > >AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION >ELECTRONIC FRONTIERS GEORGIA >REP. MITCHELL KAYE > >Groups to Mount Legal Challenge to Georgia Cyberspace Law > >FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: See list below >Friday, September 20, 1996 > > ATLANTA, GA-- -The American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontiers >Georgia, Georgia State Representative Mitchell Kaye (R-Marietta) and others >will be holding a news conference on Tuesday, September 24 at 10:30 a.m., >immediately after filing a lawsuit seeking a preliminary injunction against a >Georgia law barring communications in cyberspace. > > The suit names Governor Zell Miller and Attorney General Michael Bowers as >defendants, and will be filed on behalf of 13 plaintiffs. >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >-------------------------------------- > > WHO: > >Attorneys Ann Beeson (ACLU) and Scott McClain (Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore) > >Plaintiffs Robert Costner (executive director, Electronic Frontiers Georgia); >Jeff Graham (AIDS Survival Project); Rep. Mitchell Kaye (GA House of >Representatives); Bonnie Nadri (The Page Factory); Teresa Nelson (ACLU of >Georgia); Eric Van Pelt (Atlanta Veterans Alliance); Josh Riley (individual >plaintiff); and Kimberly LyleWilson (Atlanta Freethought Society). > > WHAT: > >News conference to announce filing of legal challenge to Georgia >cyberspace law. > > WHEN: > >Tuesday, September 24, 10:30 a.m. > > WHERE: > >ACLU of Georgia >142 Mitchell Street SW (at Peachtree), Suite 301, Atlanta >(404) 523-6201 > >Note: Copies of the brief and plaintiff affidavits will be available at the >news conference and online at the EFGA website, <http://www.efga.org/> and >through the ACLU's website <http://www.aclu.org> and America Online site >(keyword: ACLU). > >Contacts: Teresa Nelson, ACLU GA Ann Beeson, national ACLU: 404-523-6201 > Robert Costner, EFGA: 770-512-8746 > Rep. Mitchell Kaye: 770-998-2399 > Scott McClain: 404-881-4138 > Emily Whitfield, ACLU Nat'l Press Office: 212-944-9800 x426 > > >

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GA HB1630 Lawsuit: Press Advisory
by camcc＠abraxis.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>X-Sender: rcostner(a)intergate.net >Reply-To: efg-action(a)ninja.techwood.org > >Joint Media Advisory: > >AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION >ELECTRONIC FRONTIERS GEORGIA >REP. MITCHELL KAYE > >Groups to Mount Legal Challenge to Georgia Cyberspace Law > >FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: See list below >Friday, September 20, 1996 > > ATLANTA, GA-- -The American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontiers >Georgia, Georgia State Representative Mitchell Kaye (R-Marietta) and others >will be holding a news conference on Tuesday, September 24 at 10:30 a.m., >immediately after filing a lawsuit seeking a preliminary injunction against a >Georgia law barring communications in cyberspace. > > The suit names Governor Zell Miller and Attorney General Michael Bowers as >defendants, and will be filed on behalf of 13 plaintiffs. >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >-------------------------------------- > > WHO: > >Attorneys Ann Beeson (ACLU) and Scott McClain (Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore) > >Plaintiffs Robert Costner (executive director, Electronic Frontiers Georgia); >Jeff Graham (AIDS Survival Project); Rep. Mitchell Kaye (GA House of >Representatives); Bonnie Nadri (The Page Factory); Teresa Nelson (ACLU of >Georgia); Eric Van Pelt (Atlanta Veterans Alliance); Josh Riley (individual >plaintiff); and Kimberly LyleWilson (Atlanta Freethought Society). > > WHAT: > >News conference to announce filing of legal challenge to Georgia >cyberspace law. > > WHEN: > >Tuesday, September 24, 10:30 a.m. > > WHERE: > >ACLU of Georgia >142 Mitchell Street SW (at Peachtree), Suite 301, Atlanta >(404) 523-6201 > >Note: Copies of the brief and plaintiff affidavits will be available at the >news conference and online at the EFGA website, <http://www.efga.org/> and >through the ACLU's website <http://www.aclu.org> and America Online site >(keyword: ACLU). > >Contacts: Teresa Nelson, ACLU GA Ann Beeson, national ACLU: 404-523-6201 > Robert Costner, EFGA: 770-512-8746 > Rep. Mitchell Kaye: 770-998-2399 > Scott McClain: 404-881-4138 > Emily Whitfield, ACLU Nat'l Press Office: 212-944-9800 x426 > > >

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Crypto Files in the BA Archives (fwd)
by Dave Emery 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: >From boatanchors(a)theporch.com Mon Sep 23 14:15:39 1996 Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 12:54:28 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <Chameleon.4.01.2.960923135510.jproc@> Errors-To: listown(a)jackatak.theporch.com Reply-To: jproc(a)worldlinx.com Originator: boatanchors(a)theporch.com Sender: boatanchors(a)theporch.com Precedence: bulk From: jproc(a)worldlinx.com To: Multiple recipients of list <boatanchors(a)theporch.com> Subject: Crypto Files in the BA Archives X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Comment: Amateur Radio Equipment Using Vacuum Tubes Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Chameleon - TCP/IP for Windows by NetManage, Inc. Dear BA'ers, For those of you in the group who are interested in crypto gear, I have posted two files to the BA archives which discuss the KL7 off line crypto unit and the KWR-37 online crypto receiver. To obtain the files, send a message to: listprocessor(a)theporch.com In the body of the message type: get boatanchors kl7.crypto.unit get boatanchors kwr37.crypto.receiver The second article is the one which will be submitted to AWA Old Timers Bulletin. BA'ers get to read it first. Regards, ------------------------------------- Jerry Proc VE3FAB E-mail: jproc(a)worldlinx.com HMCS Haida Naval Museum Toronto, Ontario 'Looking for a 'AN/SRC-501' -------------------------------------

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Re: Snake-Oil FAQ
by Krenn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Tim May wrote: > The reason I recommend anonymous remailer distribution, and pseudonyms, is > because of the litigation issue. Even if reviewers are not sued often, the > threat of a suit influences reviews, which is why most reviews in most mags > are puff pieces (glowing reviews, often strongly correlated with who is > advertising in the mag). One can imagine Matt Blaze, for example, choosing > to say _nothing_ about SnakeTronics' ScrambleMatic, for fear (justified) > that he might get letters from their lawyers, thus taking up his time and > even eventually landing him in court. I agree, hence my original post. I for one would not contribute to such a list without anonymity, tho my critiques might be right. The hassle of dealing with a person or organization bent on causing you legal headache is more than I am willing to deal with. It is obvious, given the current state of the legal system in this country, that a lawsuit against a even a well-respected cryptographer might drag on for some time, costing ennumerable dollars and hours, and _might_ even succeed. Krenn -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMkcaT0nqfwPpt/QVAQHzJwP/VG1E60TeZ8xtomW2VmKO/b/jV+a6orWT ebxhtlCX6CicVYtS0L4NBqcY8rQk8bcbeMXed3o5tY7B4FHwANml9Ubcbg7Wo7yL 2JvWI2E6M/4yfKIPuO0aqId57Qx5v36RiDAjZsozKhOJERTGasFJCOFOu/pMOa6M 36lWaXY0tyg= =PTUE -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Security flaw in Microsft Explorer
by Gary Howland 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Program compromises IE security By Nick Wingfield September 23, 1996, 10:45 a.m. PT A start-up Internet company has posted a program on the Net that could allow Web sites to bypass the security controls in Internet Explorer, CNET has learned. The company, InfoSpace, created a program aimed at Net search engines such as Lycos and Excite that want to become the default search engine in Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3.0. But the program, which is actually featured on the Lycos Web site, manages to circumvent Explorer's security warning window--an action that could let InfoSpace sneak programs onto a user's personal computer without warning. Although the InfoSpace program apparently was not created with malicious intent, it underscores the fragility of Internet Explorer's security defenses, as well as broader security issues related to downloading software over the Internet. The InfoSpace program sidesteps a security feature in Internet Explorer, called Authenticode, which is designed to allow users to verify the origins of a piece of software code, such as an ActiveX control, a script, or a plug-in. The Authenticode system requires a user to entrust the developer of a program, whether it's InfoSpace, Lotus Development, or IBM, not to install viruses or other destructive programs on the user's system. Although Authenticode does not prevent software developers from creating such programs, they can be held legally accountable for bad code. That's because the programs contain "digital signatures," a sort of ID card that allows perpetrators to be tracked down by law enforcement agencies. Microsoft works with VeriSign to provide digital signatures for programs. Last month, VeriSign took matters into its own hands by asking a developer, Fred McLain, to remove an ActiveX control called Exploder from his Web site. The Exploder control was designed to crash a user's computer after downloading. "Code signing is not a guarantee of code quality," Charles Fitzgerald, a product manager at Microsoft said. "It's an accountability trail." As with all digitally signed programs, users are offered the option to accept or to reject the InfoSpace program before installing it on their systems. Users are also offered the option to bypass the Authenticode warning window for all InfoSpace programs in the future. But the company's program registers InfoSpace as a "trusted publisher" in Explorer, effectively opening the browser to intrusions. The operation is akin to inviting a guest over to your house for dinner and having them copy the key to your front door without permission. InfoSpace executives denied that there was any malice intended in its program, adding that it has provided Lycos with an updated version of the code. Lycos plans to post the new program later this evening, according to InfoSpace. "It was a bug that got incorporated into the production code," InfoSpace CEO Naveen Jain said. Lycos CEO Bob Davis said he was not aware of the bug in the InfoSpace program and could not comment on it. The program is identified as Lycos Quick Search on the search engine's site. However, Microsoft officials expressed concern, saying it is hard to defend against once a user has consented to download code from the Net. "Clearly their software is doing something a tad aggressive," said Rob Price, a group program manager for Internet security at Microsoft."[With Authenticode], users are making a one-time trust decision, this is a persistent trust decision." Microsoft argued that Explorer provides better security than Netscape Communications' Navigator, which does not currently allow digital signatures on plug-ins. In Explorer, users are warned before downloading code even if the program does not contain a digital signature, though the source of the program is not identified. In contrast to plug-in software and ActiveX controls, Java applets are prevented from damaging a user's computer through built-in restrictions in the Java Virtual Machine. "Java is the model for dynamic executable content on the Net," said Eric Greenberg, group security manager at Netscape.

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Re: Go away CIA
by Wayne H. Allen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:45 AM 9/23/96 -0400, Wearen Life wrote: >The CIA has many powers both great and small. If the can cover up findings >of UFO's Has this list sunk that low? Wayne H.Allen whallen(a)capitalnet.com Pgp key at www.capitalnet.com/~whallen

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Re: AP [NOISE]
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:10 PM 9/23/96 -0400, hallam(a)vesuvius.ai.mit.edu wrote: > >Jim, > > I do support the presence of troops in Northern Ireland and >do not consider that to contradict my belief that there should be a >united, autonamous Ireland. I do not believe that the "loyalists" are >in fact loyal to the British way of life, any more than the KKK are >representative of the US south. > > Troops are in Northern Ireland for a very simple and depressing >reason. People like Jim want to impose their will on others by force. Quite the contrary. I want to reduce, as much as possible, the ability of people to impose their will on others by force. Read my essay. Eventually you might figure it out. The difference is, I recognize that if you set up a government to try to minimize non-government violence and coercion, you'll get just that: A minimization of NON-GOVERNMENT violence and coercion, at the expense of vastly increasing the GOVERNMENT kind. And I don't consider that progress at all. >Despite prolonged attempts by each faction to assasinate the leaders of >the other they have been unsuccessful. I suppose it didn't occur to you that this is EXACTLY why this dispute has gone on so long? What if instead of being "unsuccessful," these attempts suddenly became 100% successful. Easy, even. Just push a button and the top guy on the other side dies. And you could do this as often as, say, once an hour, with all of his replacements. And the other side can do the same to your leadership. How long do you think it would be before people decide that maybe, they DON'T want to "step up to the plate" and get killed for the sake of their cause? >If terrorists trained by Lybia >and Syria are unable to assasinate at will then we can be sure thaqt Jim's >band of kooks is not going to get any further. Which means that you clearly don't understand the motivating factor of a large, totally anonymous e-cash payment. And why should a handful of "terrorists" be successful? The "AP gang" will consist of 5 BILLION people who want to collect the reward, including anyone close to the target. It'll put an entirely new, ominous meaning into the phrase, "Friends and Family"! B^) >If the integration of both Irealand and the UK into the European >Union has not ended the situation the complete lack of government >will not either. Hell, the whole reason for this dispute is heirarchical social systems, in this case governments and religions! And adding the European Union merely increases the problem by adding to the heirarchy. My solution eliminates the heirarchy, totally. Why, then, should EU's failure imply a failure by AP? It's the diametrically opposite tactic. > It is suprising that someone from the press has not seized upon Jims >ideas as cause for another cyber-scare. I suspect this is because people >like Markof are somewhat more responsible. No, it's probably because they think, nervously, that I might just be right. Even that won't necessarily want to make them want to associate their names with my ideas. If they truly understand them, they'll recognize that it'll happen regardless of the amount of approval it gets from polite society. >This is not going to stop me >from producing an op-ed piece linkiing the net libertarians to assasination >politics unless I hear a few more repudiations of Bell's ideas. A doubt whether most people feel themselves obligated to repudiate a proposal, particularly if they don't know that it won't constitute an improvement over the status quo. On the other hand, if the world engineers a good, permanent solution to the Northern Ireland problem in the next six months, as well as the Middle East problem, the India/Pakistan problem, the Chechnya problem, the North/South Korea problem and a few other heretofore intractable problems, you can start feeling confident that my "extreme" solution will be avoidable. Until then, don't get your hopes up. >If you >don't very clearly reject his murderous ideas you are going to regret it >just as the left regreted having the USSR or the RAF associated with them. > Phill Time will be the best judge of this, I think. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: provably hard PK cryptosystems
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:29 PM 9/23/96, Asgaard wrote: >On Sun, 22 Sep 1996, Timothy C. May wrote: > >> Suppose a tile is placed at some place on the grid, and another tile >> (possibly a different tile, possibly the same type of tile) is placed some >> distance away on the grid. The problem is this: Can a "domino snake" be >> found which reaches from the first tile to the second tile, with the >> constraint that edges must match up on all tiles? (And all tiles must be in >> normal grid locations, of course) > >Intuitively (but very well not, I'm not informed enough to know) >this might be a suitable problem for Hellman's DNA computer, the >one used for chaining the shortest route including a defined >number of cities? No, massive parallelism does not help with the _general_ case. (For any specific instance, especially for a finite grid, obviously the amount of CPU power is directly relevant.) Even assuming Adleman's "DNA computer" works and scales relatively well, its CPU power only goes up roughly with the volume of the computer. While it may sound impressive to speak of "moles" of computers, or "swimming pools" of computers, such volumes are utterly inadequate to solve combinatorially-explosive problems. (Remember, it doesn't take a very big RSA product before the 10^75 elementary particles in the Universe are not enough to factor it in a billion times the age of the Universe even if every particle were a Cray! So much for a tank full of DNA computers.) The domino snake or tiling problem is a similarly explosive problem. Try playing around with some tiles on even a 5 x 5 grid, and then contemplate how large 25! is. Then think about a 10 x 10 grid, and 100! Then a 100 x 100 grid. And it may be that the domino snake reaching from tile A to tile B snakes around and about in a far, far larger grid space than this! (Even if one is confined to a 100 x 100 grid, easily displayed on a sheet of graph paper, no intelligence in the universe will ever be able to find a snake reaching from A to B, except in special situations (e.g., the same tile, etc.).) This sort of problem is the essence of some "zero knowledge interactive proof systems" (ZKIPS) sorts of proofs. I present such a snake as proof that I am who I say I am. (Because I just "made up" some random snake, then announced only the starting and stopping points, A and B. Nobody else in the universe could ever find such a snake, but I can display my solution as proof I generated it in the first place. Of course, once shown I have given the proof away to everyone. The ZKIPS trick is in twiddling the grid and/or tiles in such a way that I can give _probabalistic_ information away. I don't know how to do this for the domino snake problem, but it's easy to understand the Hamiltonian cycle version.) --Tim May (Late News: I just heard (12:30 p.m., PDT) that Seymour Cray is in extremely critical condition after suffering head injuries in a car crash. It will be a sad day if he dies, or is permanently disabled. Though he started working for the Agency in the 1950s, in a precursor to Control Data Corporation, and worked for them on various contracts in the next couple of decades, he was a true pioneer. (The CDC 6600, 7600, etc., and the Cray-1 were funded by contracts from the AEC and NSA, and the first few of each were delivered to Fort Meade, Los Alamos, Livermore, etc.)) We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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US Govt. recent involvement in digital money & dig. signature issues
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Excerpted from Edupage.] ALL EYES ON E-MONEY Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin has formed a task force to examine what impact the move toward electronic money transfer and storage technologies will have on consumers. Specifically, the team will look at how these technologies will affect lower-income Americans, and assess standards for consumer protection. The task force also will come up with non-regulatory measures that can be taken to protect consumers while allowing the market to develop. "I want to be certain that we make the right decisions as we begin this new era so that the benefits of these developments are broadly shared and have a positive impact on our economy," says Rubin. (Investor's Business Daily 20 Sep 96 A19) Meanwhile, the Bank of Japan and Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. have jointly developed a very advanced, secure electronic money system, using NTT's high-speed digital signature system and its patented E-sign algorithm. The new system allows a number of banks to issue the same type of e-money to customers, relieving them of the responsibility of developing their own proprietary e-money systems. NTT hopes its new system will become the de facto standard for e-money in the country. (BNA Daily Report for Executives 13 Sep 96 A2) [...] POSTAL SERVICE TESTS ELECTRONIC POSTMARK The U.S. Postal Service is testing a system that would place an electronic postmark on e-mail messages, verifying the date and time the message was sent, and guaranteeing that the content had not been tampered with. The new system would enable more business functions to be conducted electronically, and would also provide an archive service, maintaining copies of "e-postmarked" mail, should any questions arise later. The current test will determine what price people would expect to pay for such a service, and which features work best. (St. Petersburg Times 20 Sep 96 E6) -- <HTML><A HREF="http://www.eff.org/~mech/"> Stanton McCandlish </A><HR><A HREF="mailto:mech@eff.org"> mech(a)eff.org </A><P><A HREF="http://www.eff.org/"> Electronic Frontier Foundation </A><P> Online Activist </HTML>

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Factoring technique, faster than trial division?
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

just an idea I came up with today, I don`t suggest it is a fast factoring method, but it would be interesting to know if it is faster than say trial division: Calcuate a composite number H such that H has a large number of prime factors (hundreds). now use the euclidean algorithm to try to find a gcd of X (the number being factored) and H, if there is none try a new H, if there is you have found a factor. It is hardly elegant but I would nevertheless be interested to see if it is apreciably faster than other kludge methods like trial division. Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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RE: SAK_net
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sep 23, 1996 14:16:40, 'John Fricker <jfricker(a)vertexgroup.com>' wrote: >Didn't SAIC buy Network Solutions (registration part of the NIC) as well? Yes. This is part of the Administration's plan for government and industry cooperation to provide a secure information infrastructure for beneficial commerce and education and well-being of the commonweal, as well as joyful, healthy and even-tempered computer-addicted families in beautiful cyber-communities, even a tad of on-line virtual racial and gender justice, not counting assurance of a bountiful food and flowing spirits and languid afternoons of concupiscence and gluttony, overwatched by faith in a SupremeOrderliness, all arrayed along clean-wiped, info-streets and never-sweat GAK-global policies, just quiet, timely and comfortable transportation across speedbumpless borders, and, for the eyes and ears, lots of time left over for staring at the landscape rushing by and enjoying Tesh and Streisand and Julio and Jane's Addiction. Al Gore's office promised straight-jacketly.

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Re: Bernstein hearing: The Press Release
by R. J. Harvey 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:59 PM 9/23/96 -0700, Lucky Green wrote: >Yes, you can be sued for sexual harrasment for trying to pick up a >stranger in a bar, should that stranger still feel bothered by your >advances while at work the next day. > >The courts have ruled, > Let's see some citations. Only if the two people involved are employed by the same employer might such an argument apply, and even then it's a long stretch under a "hostile work environment" argument. Cite a case in which individuals working for DIFFERENT employers successfully brought such a ridiculous suit. There's no way. rj

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