December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: USENET on a tape
by Alexander Chislenko 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jeremy Porter writes: > ... Usenet traffic being rated at some 21gigabytes a year > (traffic through UUnet) considering the low information value > of the vast majority of it, no one will be interested in storing it. Wait a minute... How much would it cost to store all this info? a few hundred thousand dollars a year? This seems to be the cheapest (per byte) archiving opportunity in the history of civilization; storage cost is many orders of magnitude lower than the efforts spent creating this info. Many times as much is spent on archaeological/historical research projects that 1) can wait and 2) get much, much, much less information, while the hugest ever information traffic disappears without a trace. This is unbelievable! Apart from regular merits of any archive and far-fetching perspectives of Internet archives becoming a part of global intelligence, this traffic can be invaluable for studies of evolution of languages and subcultures, development of particular concepts, detailed biographical material (there are many historical figures whose biographical data collection took a lot more resources than is needed to store all net traffic), and so much more... In general, I would expect that if people spent a 1000 dollars worth of efforts to write messages, it should be worth it to spend another penny to store them forever... It's likely, though, that some agencies do keep full net archives; if even not, much of the traffic may be recoverable from partial archives scattered all over the world; the attempt will sure be made some day - but at what cost? > In usenet no one can hear you scream... :-( ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Alexander Chislenko | sasha(a)cs.umb.edu | Cambridge, MA | (617) 864-3382 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: value of privacy?
by baumbach＠atmel.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> example, it doesn't _hurt_ me to get targeted junk mail, but I find it > unsettling that direct marketers know enough about me to send the 'right' > mail. I see it this way; 'they' make decisions about me and initiate a > relationship with me without my knowledge or consent. The relationship is > artificial and uneven; 'they' know more about me than I know about 'them'. An idea that I have never used, but was suggested to me by my father, goes like this: RING RING me: Hello ??: Mr. Peter Baumbach, I am calling from ICK inc. to offer you .. me: Excuse me, but I am busy right now. Could you give me your name and home phone number, and I will call you back later? ??: Huh? I can't give you my home number, that's private. me: But you know my name and number. This hardly seems fair.

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Re: value of privacy?
by Dave Hart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I use a variation on the below whenever I get a telemarketer calling -- but instead of asking for the home number, I just ask for their number, meaning work number. Amazingly, it's very effective. Apparently outbound telemarketers often don't want to get inbound phone calls. ---------- | From: <netmail!baumbach(a)atmel.com> | | An idea that I have never used, but was suggested to me by my father, goes | like this: | | RING RING | | me: Hello | | ??: Mr. Peter Baumbach, I am calling from ICK inc. to offer you .. | | me: Excuse me, but I am busy right now. Could you give me your name and | home phone number, and I will call you back later? | | ??: Huh? I can't give you my home number, that's private. | | me: But you know my name and number. This hardly seems fair. | |

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Re: ALERT: FBI's Wiretap Bill is Back!
by Brock N. Meeks 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Geez, Stanton, if you're going to rip off my story, you might want to give me some credit... or isn't EFF's self-proclaimed "Online Activist and Sysop" into proper journalistic practices of attributing where he gets his information. Just to clear things up, Stanton's message is a poorly rewritten copy of an article I wrote for _Communications Daily_ that ran on Dec. 9. The comments by FBI agent Barry Smith and Ken Raymond were made to me during one-on-one interviews, not open press conferences. There's no way you could have these quotes or this information Stanton unless you first read my story. Next time try giving credit where it's due... Or steal your information from someone not on the Net. Brock Meeks Reporter Communications Daily

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Privacy as a Commodity
by Michael Edward Marotta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

SOME OBSERVATIONS AND THOUGHTS ON PRIVACY AS A COMMODITY by Michael E. Marotta <mercury(a)well.sf.ca.us> About a year ago, maybe less, Kevin Kelly suggested that privacy is or could be a commodity. It was on The Well in the EFF Conference on another topic entirely. He just dropped this bomb. I suggested a Loompanics article and he said he didn't have time but that I was welcome to develop the idea. So I proposed "Privacy as a Commodity" to Computers Privacy and Freedom (CPF94) in Chicago. Frank Lloyd Wright said that privacy is the hallmark of civilization. He built his houses to ensure the privacy of the occupants. He pointed to the village as an environment without privacy. Today we say that we live in a global village. Therefore, the expectation of privacy is inappropriate. However, there is a lot of history between the first permanent settlement today's worldwide community. Merchant princes graced several ages. Metropolitan and cosmopolitan cities developed new patterns of interaction. Quite likely, the demand for privacy is relatively recent. There is a quote from Leonardo da Vinci: "When you are alone you are all your own." A brief look the pre-Socratics (ed., Honderich) reveals no discussions even remotely approaching "natural rights" from which privacy would be deduced or infered. Plato's "Republic" is well known. Tonight, discussing the ancient world with another numismatist, he pointed out that accumulations of wealth were virtually impossible before Roman Law. The Athenians (and others) would ostracize anyone simply for being personally successful and therefore a potential threat. Neither of us could identify the general who defeated the Persians and was rewarded with exile. In such an environment, a plea for privacy would be ludicrous or even lunatic. We have the saying in English: "A man's home is his castle." The Magna Carta (1215) had many provisions limiting the power of the crown and upholding the rights of free people (somewhat different for men than woman). Typical of them is this: "No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go or send against him, except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land." That sentiment continues today. However, force of arms is not the appropriate medium for securing your expectations of privacy. The Magna Carta limited the power of the state. It did not address problems of peer review and peer pressure. The best arrangements we have that work among equals are agoric. The marketplace depends on voluntary agreements for personal profit. The successful merchant doesn't argue religion with the client. ("Religion" of course includes art, politics, sports and anything else not proximate to supply, demand and price.) In this sense, privacy is inherent in the market. Today, however, we buy and sell information about people. If you buy a new automobile, you are a potential client for insurance, if not for a Caribbean vacation. Since the problem is agoric, the solution must be agoric: you will have to invest in objects or processes that show their return in increased privacy for you. It is possible that there is another set of solutions. There may be something beyond politics and the market. For instance, it is possible that a philosophical revolution will cause us to freely give information we now hide if we choose to merge with the Great All. No doubt still other paths exist. Be that as it may, for now, market solutions seem the best way to address problems in privacy.

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Re: Improved DH system.
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Unfortunately, you can't really do a brainless black box phone with security that's much better than Diffie-Hellman (The "send half the key at a time" variant is somewhat better, but still can be tampered with.) The problem is that to do better security, you need some way to authenticate the Diffie-Hellman exchange. One way is to have a display on the phone which shows the data received, and read it to the other person (which is secure, but not brainless). Another way is to use digital signatures such as RSA on the Diffie-Hellman key parts, which requires some mechanism for users to create keys and distribute them securely, also non-brainless. One way to do this would be to use a central key-distribution server, perhaps based on phone serial number or telephone number or whatever, but that requires a lot of complexity, extra phone calls, etc.; this compromises a certain amount of security, though if it's implemented well enough to be non-spoofable, the major risks are the insecurity that comes from registration and the ability of people who compromise the keyserver (i.e. the government or keyserver-operator) to send incorrect public keys to wiretap victims allowing man-in-the-middle attacks. Another way that's not quite brainless would be to have public keys generated in the phone for signatures, and allow users who want to to exchange keys; you could build some relative of an automatic web of trust if you put enough memory in the phones, but then you'd have to provide memory management etc. which is distinctly not in the brainless category. Bill

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Re: Improved DH system.
by loki＠nately.UCSD.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Well, you seem to have summerised our thoughts on the matter exactly. We are thinking about sticking a bunch of memory in the phone and keeping track of the last ,say 100, phones called and the public keys that they used. One could use the readback to certify the keys. Some sort of KCA could also be invoked. We are designing the system for easy upgrade and modification. Lance

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"Cipher"
by Arthur Chandler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Neil Postman, in his *Technopoly*, asserts that the word "cipher" derives ultimately from the Hindu word for void, and therefore "suggests the idea of nothingness." (p 128) Does anyone else have info on the origin of this word? Is Postman correct?

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Re: Dorothy Denning
by Black Unicorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-> Chill... I thought that our prime objective was to defeat Clipper... even if you don't like Ross, he does have some pull with the people of this country, and that's what we need... we need the *PEOPLE* to fight Clipper. We need the fight not to just be "a group of civil libertarians", but the general populous. Maybe Ross isn't the answer, but at least I've taken a real step to try to oppose Clipper. What the hell have you done, Black Unicorn? Anthony <- In the circles I travel in Mr. Perot is considered a dangerous paranoid. I agree he has the ear of some *PEOPLE* (as you so nicely put it) but as much as you fear the branding of the anti-clipper movement as JUST "a group of civil libertarians," it is possible that there are other brands just as destructive to credibility. Mr. Perot is in my opinion represenative of one such brand. The Good Perot Keeping Seal might sink the "general populous" boat we would so much like to travel on. As far as your efforts in this matter v. mine, Anyone can post some messages to the list Mr. Ortenzi. -uni- (Dark)

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Re: Standard for Stenography?
by Jef Poskanzer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Firstly, congratulations for Sergey Goldgaber's stubborn pushing of >this topic, for Bill Stewart's observation: "simple stego-programs, >stealthy encryption programs" I disagree with pretty much everything in your message, and since I'm the one who opened the topic and who is writing the code, my opinion would seem to count for quite a bit more than yours. I'm not going to repeat the reasons why the kind of standard you propose is a bad idea, you can fetch the messages as easily as I can. Cc:ed to the list only so that no one thinks Gary's proposal was accepted. The permutation idea remains the best. By the way, this discussion is an example of something I have labelled the "silence is invisible" phenomenon. It goes like this: there's a discussion; some of the participants work out an answer, and as far as they're concerned the discussion is over. However, other participants don't understand the answer, and keep on talking. In a physical meeting, the talkers would notice the annoyed looks on the faces of everyone else; or if the meeting had a good facilitator, he or she would catch on to the misunderstanding and correct it; but in cyberspace, those feedback mechanisms don't happen. --- Jef

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PC Expo, Mac World, Comdex, etc...
by rarachel＠prism.poly.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If a few of us who have a bit of money to spend on disks and duplication could come together (or work apart) we could just go out infront of PC Expo, or any other expo and simply hand out free disks with stuff like PGP, SecureDrive and whatever else, maybe even include a flyer with info about getting more info on issues like clipper and such... Perhaps some sort of self running hypertext demo to show analogies, say via a caricature of Dorothy Denning or Billary Clingon trying to install bugs in the phones of the viewers, cameras in cable TV boxes, microphones in bathrooms etc, all bearing the word "Clipper" on them... :-) (The distribution method isn't my idea, a dude who runs or works for an internet mail/news only carrier approached me and gave me a flyer...) "Get your free PGP disks here, learn about how Uncle Sam is spying on your privacy, etc..." :-) Now for some rude awakenings to follow... are there any laws against handing out >FREE< disks to people exiting or entering a convention center? (hopefully not too many.) Putting up an informercial will reach a lot of people who couldn't care less. Putting this stuff in the hands of those who have the interests of big business will reach a wider bit of the people we need to reach.

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What's Wrong with the List--Part 2
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

While I'm on a rant about what's wrong with the way the list is going, let me mention another serious problem: * People who want others to "do more." It seems that every few months someone starts loudly whining that others are not doing enough. This is very grating. For example, Detweiler started down his path to neurosis by begging and pleading for folks on the list to do more to help fulfill his vision of a "whisteblowing" group (note that others had discussed this idea, too, so Detweiler cannot claim all the credit). His pleas were eventually answered by Miron Cuperman, who went ahead and newgrouped "alt.whistleblowing" or similar. This is, by the way, now an essentially zero traffic group. More recently, "Xenon" got it into his head that the most important project in the universe was "Stealth PGP." Again, a good idea (and one that Phil Zimmermann, Kelly Goen, and others were calling by that exact same name more than a year ago). But Xenon figured that if he excoriated us enough for not immediately implementing his vision, we'd eventually work on it. He flamed out after a brief stint on the list and says he is now unsubscribed. (Which is too bad, as he had some good ideas. His problem is that he got _too excited_ about some particular ideas. Yes, getting "too excited" can be a problem: when one exhorts others to do the work one cannot or will not do oneself. In other words, badgering, lecturing, and moralizing. Xenon apparently came to see the lack of a rush to his flavor of steganography as some sort of failure of will by the Cypherpunks, and unsubscribed.) These are the dangers. Whenever I feel the urge to exhort others to work harder and longer at some task, I think about this situation. (I have no problem with political rants, exhorting folks to adopt my point of view on something. But I avoid--I hope--asking others to do work that I am unwilling or unable to do. It just isn't right. If one wants others to do something concrete, a less "bossy" approach is called for, and one should be prepared to give something in return.) Closely related to this issue is the habit some have of talking about what "we" have decided "our" goals are and how these goals of "ours" should be fulfilled. (As a sidenote, L. Detweiler kept asking what the "Cypherpunks goals" were and what the "leaders" expected to be done. When many folks told him in no uncertain terms just what kind of anarchy the List is, poor Detweiler just couldn't handle it. I think "control freaks" like Detweiler want plans, want others in harness to fulfill these plans, and want to boss others around.) I'll stop with the rants for now. Take my comments any way you like, but I hope they are taken in the spirit in which they are given--as honest observations of some of the problmes affecting a list with nearly 800 subscribers. Cheers! --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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HUMOR: Sternlight on the CPSR Clipper Petition
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cypherpunks, And now for some humor amidst my rants. This is a post I did that makes light of David Sternlight's bizarre assertion that the anti-Clipper petition of the CPSR contains few valid signatures because he, David Sternlight, asked those who signed the petition to send him e-mail....and he only got 35 responses! QED, the CPSR either faked the signatures or others forged messages. (Sternlight even cites "cypherpunks" as likely culprits, noting that they are skilled at creating phantom identities....I guess Detweiler was listened to by at least one kindred soul.) The methodological flaws in Sternlight's line of reasoning are too obvious to go into here, and Sternlight has sunk to a new low in terms of respect. His claims that he was recently a senior government policy advisor give me new insights into why the government is as screwed up as it is. Finally, I've avoided flaming Sterno in public, and I had some qualms about kicking him while he's so much of a fool over this issue, but my satirical urges got the best of me. Here it is: Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk,alt.privacy.clipper,alt.security.pgp,talk.politics.crypto,alt.security.ripem,alt.fan.david-sternlight From: tcmay(a)netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: Re: CPSR Clipper Petition test results Message-ID: <tcmayCM320o.6I0(a)netcom.com> Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 09:50:47 GMT Matt Austern (matt(a)physics2.berkeley.edu) wrote: : The US government claims that over 100 million people voted in the : 1992 Presidential election. Fewer than 50 people, however, personally : told me that they voted in that election. : It won't play, fellas. 50 people out of 100 million? Clearly, this : supposed "election" didn't really happen. This effect is far more widespread than you suspect. Several days ago I posted a request in rec.skate for people to send me e-mail if in fact they watched the Olympics--any or all of it. While the pundits at CPSR (Central Polling for Sports Research) would have us belief that _more than_ 100 million Americans (which is "many" but not "most") watched some or all of the Olympics, I received a paltry 3 responses, and one of these was a string of moronic insults, so I really only count 2 valid response. Could 100 million Americans have watched the Olympics if I only received 2 valid responses to my poll? My many years advising the government in senior policy postions, and my Ph.D in statistics tells me "Not on your life." Applying the Black-Scholes significance test (with a quartile scatter factor normalized to the Kolmogorov constant), I have concluded that the actual number of Olympics watchers was 135 plus or minus 7.32. I thus conclude that CBS, the Olympic Committee, the Tonya Harding Kneecapping Club, and the ever-treacherous CPSR are all lying to us! I will, however, not discuss this matter any further! (At least not until I do.) --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Hands On Action
by Greg - Kucharo 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Thanks for your posts Tim.They really got me motivated.Indvidual action gave > us the rights we now enjoy and are threatned.Invidual action will save them > from extinction.When George Washington got fed up with the British slagging > on his rights he didn't sit around a Mt.Vernon getting stoned with Martha > and saying how nice it would be if those lackeys down in Boston would kick > the Redcoats out.He got his musket,saddled his horse and marched his army to > get them out himself,and make way for The Constitution.I don't have a musket > or a horse,but I do have a computer,knowledge of programming and a Computer > Club.It took awhile,but the DeAnza Computer Club is now educated in PGP and > we now turn to our fellow students.As young Americans we arent as used to > being jerked around by our government,and we don't intend to start getting > used to it.I will probably spend a great deal of my adult life on the network > I'll need my rights in there just as much as outside. > Since I have educated my fellow club members and forwarded List posts to them > we are going to start writing crypto programs for use here on campus and on > our club machine.If everyone takes up Crypto arms,we can drive out the Redcoats > and make George proud.

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DC 'punks meeting
by Pat Farrell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm willing to try to russle up a suitable place for a physical meeting in the DC area in parallel with next Sat's politically oriented left coast meeting. But the number of folks attending will change where I can hold it. If you are interested in attending a DC-area meeting next Saturday, 3PM EST until 5 or so, please send me email. Thanks Pat Pat Farrell Grad Student pfarrell(a)gmu.edu Department of Computer Science George Mason University, Fairfax, VA Public key availble via finger #include <standard.disclaimer>

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Re: DC 'punks meeting
by Harry Shapiro Hawk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Pat Wrote: > I'm willing to try to russle up a suitable place for a physical > meeting in the DC area in parallel with next Sat's politically oriented > left coast meeting. But the number of folks attending will change > where I can hold it. I can't make that meeting, but I will be in the Baltimore area on the weekend of 19th. hakw Harry Shapiro Hawk Manager of Computer Services Warwick Baker & Fiore habs(a)uucp.warwick.com

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Need info on Encyption book
by KEPERRIER＠setpoint.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi all, I have joined the "Small Computer Book Club" and in their "Top 10 Best Sellers" is a book by Gilbert Held called _Top_Secret_ - Data Encryption Techniques. Below is the text description: "Learn how to get people the information they need...without prying eyes getting a look at it, too. This book/disk package introduces you to techniques you can use to secure messages transmitted over internal company networks or public electronic message systems. You'll learn how to protect your communications with techiques for transposing characters in text, replacing characters, with new ones, using arrays, and more. Plus, your free disk features source code for the book's enciphering programs. Softcover, with 3.5" disk. 218pp 1993." Has anyone heard of this book and is it with the $19.95 that they want for it? Thanks Kent Perrier keperrier(a)setpoint.com (work) kperrier(a)neosoft.com (play) Corporations don't have opinions, people do. These are mine. PGP 2.3a Public Key available by request

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Re: Standard for Stenography?
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Jef Poskanzer <jef(a)ee.lbl.gov> > > > Firstly, congratulations for Sergey Goldgaber's stubborn pushing of > >this topic, for Bill Stewart's observation: "simple stego-programs, > >stealthy encryption programs" > > I disagree with pretty much everything in your message, and since I'm the > one who opened the topic and who is writing the code, my opinion would seem > to count for quite a bit more than yours. I'm not going to repeat the > reasons why the kind of standard you propose is a bad idea, you can fetch > the messages as easily as I can. > > Cc:ed to the list only so that no one thinks Gary's proposal was accepted. > The permutation idea remains the best. I share Jef's disagreement with the spectacularly bad "neon sign" steganography header, but I don't think Sergey's approach was correct and I hope he does not feel the issue is closed yet. Bill Stewart is IMO far more experienced and has far better understanding of the issue than Sergey, who has been a list member for only a few weeks and again IMO suggests a very naive security-through-obscurity approach. Bill Stewart, Norm Hardy, and other list members who have more experience and who have discussed these issues in the past will I think agree that the correct approach is to separate the function of the stegonography program to be a simple and clean insertion, and to have other components be responsible for assuring that what is inserted is statistically indistin- guishable from what is replaced. This notion that a "secret offset" will prevent the stego from being discovered is highly naive IMO. The correct approach is to make it so that the stego cannot be recognized even if the opponent knows where it is. Adding offsets is like attempting to "improve" regular RSA by putting a secret amount of noise padding at the front (not of a stego file, but of an openly encrypted file). This is unnecessary if you trust your encryption, and if you don't trust it then this approach should not make you trust it. Similarly, if your stego is so weak that knowing where it is in the file will allow the opponent to detect it, adding a random offset should not make you feel secure. The correct approach is to have statistical identity between what you are inserting and what you are removing. The stego program itself should then be as simple as possible. Now I will add my own little moral lesson, in the spirit of Tim and Jef. Sometimes when these discussions are re-hashed, old-timers are too busy or bored to join in. New list members express naive views that are not vigor- ously refuted. This is OK, but then some other new member takes these views to represent list consensus. I think it is great that Jef is working on a steganography implementation, but IMO the notion of "random offsets" is so fundamentally misguided that I hope he will reconsider. Hal Finney hfinney(a)shell.portal.com

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spooks
by fhalper＠pilot.njin.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If there are any spooks on this list aren't they required by law to say that they are if somoeon asked if anyone on on th list was employed by CIA, DOD, FBI or NSA? Reuben Halper

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Next Physical Gypherpunks meeting
by solovay＠math.berkeley.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is it scheduled for March 5 or March 12th? --Bob Solovay

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Forbes magazine against the Clipper?
by Mike Markley 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I just noticed in the March 14, 1994 issue of Forbes magazine that there is a small blurb about Clipper/Skipjack. >From page 26 "HIGH-TECH SNOOPS" "The Administration is about to browbeat American computer manufacturers (as well as cable and telephone operators) into installing in its machines a special chip that would enable the government to eavesdrop on all computer and telephonic transmissions." It goes on to somewhat describe the governments theory on why they need to do this. Then the article says the following. "This is a really dumb idea. High-tech exports will be devestated. Foreigners aren't going to buy equipment with such a decoding device. More to the point, criminals and terrorists won't either." "The Clinton Administration promises that the enormous power that the Clipper Chip gives the feds will not lead to abuses of our privacy. Baloney." This is not a full reproduction of the article but covers the main direction of it. All quotes are fully intact and not paraphrased. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Mike Markley || The opinions here do not represent the mmarkley(a)microsoft.com || opinions of my employer. Attempts to || associate the two are pointless. "I want to look at life, In the available light" - Neil Peart -

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Re: standard for stegonography?
by Sergey Goldgaber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Tue, 01 Mar 94, you wrote: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Then that generator is used to make a *permutation* > of the bit locations in the image, and the file's bits are stored in > the permuted order. Will this be reversible? Will a plain-text header be neccessary for the intended recipient to how to reverse the function? > I'm not going to have ITAR problems with this, am I? RNGs are still > legal to export? Haven't you heard? Everything mathematical is under restriction now! ;) Sergey

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Internet World article on Clipper
by Mike Godwin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A Chip Over My Shoulder: The Problems With Clipper Column for July 1994 issue of Internet World By Mike Godwin "Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy." --Orson Welles Your government is deeply troubled by the possibility that you can keep a secret. Or, to put it more precisely, the government is disturbed by the prospect of widespread powerful encryption tools in individual hands. Once you can keep your communications and data truly secret, officials worry, the value of wiretapping, an important law-enforcement and intelligence tool, will evaporate. It's unclear whether the government's arguments are valid. But regardless of whether they are, the government's latest efforts to prevent us from adopting powerful and uncrackable encryption technologies raise serious questions about personal liberty, the role of government, and the possibility of privacy in the 21st century. If you're not already familiar with these efforts, here's an update. The Clinton Administration has embarked on an ambitious plan to prevent a mass market for uncrackable encryption from arising. The first step in this plan has already been announced: the Administration has called for the entire federal government to adopt the Clipper Chip--an encryption standard with a "back door"--for communications and data security. In addition, the government has declared its intention to use every legal method short of outright prohibition to discourage alternative forms of encryption technology. "Just what is this Clipper Chip?" you may be wondering. The short answer is: the chip is an encryption device, developed to National Security Agency specs, that keeps your communications and data secret from everyone ... except the government. To understand how the chip works, you need to look at what officials call its "key escrow encryption method." Manufactured by a private company called Mykotronix, the chip uses an NSA-developed algorithm called "Skipjack, " which, by all accounts so far, is a remarkably powerful algorithm. But the chip also includes the "feature" that its primary encryption key can be divided up mathematically into two "partial keys." The government proposes that each partial key be held by a separate government agency--the Administration has picked the Department of the Treasury and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)--from which the keys can be retrieved when government officials obtain a wiretap order. The NSA and the FBI love this idea. With the Clipper Chip in your phone or computer, they believe, you have the power to keep your information private from crooks and industrial spies and anyone else who wants to pry--except of course for law enforcement and the NSA. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies would be barred from seeking those escrowed keys in the absence of legal authorization, normally a court order. "And of course you needn't worry about us," say government officials. "We're here to protect you." Chips Off the New Block The current initiative has been a long time coming. It was in April of last year the Clinton Administration first announced Clipper--the announcement was met with a public outcry from civil-liberties and industry groups. Civil libertarians were concerned about the government's insistence on its need to prevent citizens from having access to truly unbreachable privacy technologies. Computer and telecom industry leaders worried about a standard that might crush a potentially vital market in such technologies. At first the Administration expressed a willingness to listen. The Digital Privacy and Security Working Group, a coalition of industry and public-interest organizations headed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, outlined its objections and expressed the hope of engaging in talks with the Administration about the issue. In early February of this year, however, the Clinton Administration and various agencies announced to the world that, in spite of the grave misgivings of civil-liberties and industry groups, it would be proposing the Clipper Chip's encryption scheme as a new Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS). The standard, stresses the government, will be entirely "voluntary"--but the government plans to use export-control laws and other methods to frustrate the market for any competitive form of encryption technology. Current export-control laws restrict the sales in foreign controls of encryption hardware and software. The laws have not been entirely effective in keeping commercial encryption technologies out of foreign hands--it's possible these days to buy encryption products in Moscow, for example. But the laws do succeed in deterring the American software industry from developing powerful and easy-to-use encryption products, since any company that does so is denied the right to sell the product on the global market. Still, if Clipper is voluntary, you may ask, what does it matter to *individuals *what standard the government adopts? The government also adopted the ADA programming language, after all, yet there are still people programming in all sorts of languages, from BASIC to C++. The answer is simple--"freedom of choice" is meaningful only if there are real choices. The government's export-control strategy is designed to make sure that there aren't any choices. If commercial software companies aren't allowed to sell encryption to the world market, they're unlikely to develop strong, easy-to-use alternatives to Clipper. And that means individuals won't have access to alternatives. Now, it's perfectly possible, in theory, to thwart the government-approved Clipper scheme by using a non-commercial encryption application, such as PGP, to pre-encrypt your messages before sending them through Clipper-equipped devices. But PGP and other products, because of their slowness or difficulty, are never likely to expand beyond the circle of hobbyists that enthusiastically support them. For encryption products to give rise to a genuine consumer market, they have to be quick and almost transparently easy to use. The government knows this, which is why their focus is on nipping (clipping?) the commercial encryption software market in the bud. It's the commercial market that really matters. The government's side When asked to substantiate the need for Clipper, or the threat of unbreakable encryption, the government often talks about crime prevention. As a practical matter, however, wiretaps are almost always used *after* crimes are committed--to gather evidence about the individuals the government already suspects to have been involved in a crime. So, the hypothetical cases involving nuclear terrorism or murder-kidnappings aren't really convincing--it's the rare case in which a wiretap prevents a crime from occurring. As a practical matter, the single most important asset to law enforcement is not wiretaps but informants. And nothing about unbreakable encryption poses the risk that informants are going to disappear. One of the more rational statements of the government's case for Clipper comes from my friend Trotter Hardy, a law professor at William and Mary, who writes: "The government's argument, I take it, is that the benefit is law enforcement. That strikes me as at least as great a benefit as minimum wage laws; perhaps more, since it protects everybody (at least in theory), whereas [minimum] wage laws primarily benefit their recipients. Maybe EPA regs are the better analogy: everybody gets reduced pollution; with Clipper, everybody gets reduced criminal activity. Is that not a reasonable trade-off?" But the problem is that the government refuses to be forthcoming as to what kind of trade-off we're talking about. According to government statistics, there are fewer than 1000 state and federal law-enforcement wiretaps per year, and only of a minority of these wiretaps leads to convictions. Yet we are being asked to abandon the chance for true privacy and to risk billions of dollars in trade losses when there has never been shown to be any crime associated with uncrackable encryption whatsoever. And we're also being asked to believe that the kind of criminals who are smart enough to use encryption are dumb enough to choose the one kind of encryption that the government is guaranteed to be able to crack. Moreover, there are fundamental political issues at stake. This country was founded on a principle of restraints on government. A system in which the privacy of our communications is contingent on the good faith of the government, which holds all the encryption keys, flies in the face of what we have been taught to believe about the structure of government and the importance of individual liberty. In short, the government fails to make its case in two separate ways--pragmatically and philosophically. Trotter goes on to write: ".... I don't think the government cares whether an accountant in India can password protect a spreadsheet. I would guess that even Clipper or DES [the government's current Digital Encryption Standard] or whatever would be more than enough protection for such a person. I think the government cares that it be able to detect foreign intelligence that is relevant to US security or interests. I am not sure where I come out on the question, but at the very least it seems to me that the government is reasonable in this desire." Yet there are some premises here that need to be questioned. Do we really suppose that "foreign intelligence" is dependent on the American software industry to develop its encryption tools? Diffie-Helman public-key encryption and DES are already available worldwide, yet Microsoft can't export software that contains either form of encryption. No, the real issue is that, to the extent that a mass market arises for encryption products, it makes the NSA's job more difficult, and it may at some future time make some investigations more difficult as well. When asked to quantify the problem, however, the government invariably begs off. Instead, government spokespeople say, "Well, how would you feel if there were a murder-kidnapping that we couldn't solve because of encryption?" To which my answer is, "Well, I'd feel about the same way that I'd feel if there were a murder-kidnapping that couldn't be solved because of the privilege against self-incrimination." Which is to say, I understand that limits on government power entail a loss in efficiency of law-enforcement investigations and intelligence-agency operations. Nevertheless, there is a fundamental choice we have to make about what kind of society we want to live in. Open societies, and societies that allow individual privacy, are *less safe*. But we have been taught to value liberty more highly than safety, and I think that's a lesson well-learned. What's more, we need to be able to engage in rational risk assessment, and that's something that the government resists. Instead, the government subscribes to the reasoning of Pascal's Wager. Pascal, you may recall, argued that the rational man is a Christian, even if the chances that Christianity is true are small. His reasoning is quasi-mathematical--even if the chances of Christianity's truth are small, the consequences of choosing not to be a Christian are (if that choice is incorrect) infinitely terrible. Eternal torment, demons, flames, the whole works. This is precisely the way that the government talks about nuclear terrorism and murder-kidnappings. When asked what the probability is of a) a nuclear terrorist, who b) decides to use encryption, and c) manages otherwise to thwart counterterrorist efforts, they'll answer "What does it matter what the probability is? Even one case is too much to risk!" But we can't live in a society that defines its approach to civil liberties in terms of infinitely bad but low-probability events. Open societies are risky. Individual freedom and privacy are risky. If we are to make a mature commitment to an open society, we have to acknowledge those risks up front, and reaffirm our willingness to endure them. We face a choice now. After a century of technological development that has eroded our ability to keep our personal lives private, we finally possess, thanks to cheap computing power and advances in cryptography, the ability to take privacy into our own hands and make our own decisions about how much, and how well, to protect it. This prospect is frightening to a government that has come to rely on its ability to reach into our private lives when it sees the need to do so. But I have faith that our society is not dependent on our government's right to mandate disclosure of our personal records and private communications--that a mature society can tolerate a large degree of personal privacy and autonomy. It's a faith I hope you share.

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Re: Need info on Encyption book
by lefty＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Has anyone heard of this book [_Top_Secret_ - Data Encryption Techniques] and >is it with the $19.95 that they want for it? Only if you have a pressing and immediate need for a doorstop, or need special help solving the "Cryptoquotes" in your local paper. Based on my inspection of a copy at a local bookstore, it's utter and complete rubbish. Spend the extra thirty bucks and get a copy of Bruce Schneier's book _Applied Cryptography_ instead. -- Lefty (lefty(a)apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.

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Re: Dorthy Denning
by a2＠ah.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Robert Cain writes: > exist and that liklihood is very small. Persuasion is not working and > the press has been whipped into a near hysterical state over this by we > and our friends (yes, we on the internet are considered to be the force > that has derailed their hopes and that was unforseen.) > How did it happen that "we on the internet" was an unforseen force? The first answer is obvious: they didn't realize that cohesive action would arise out of the internet. The second is not so obvous, but illuminates part of the Clipper strategy: The Clipper promoters assumed the the issue to be beyond most citizen's technical horizo. However, the unexpected thing which happened was that the initial few who did understand rapidly interneted the information to others.i Without the internet, the information, and opposition, would have spread more slowly. Cain observes that Denning and friends are afraid of the *unknown* that will come out of the new communications technologies. The reaction to Clipper, and how developed, should convince them they are right. -a2

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