December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

French Mystics, Martin Gardner, and Transcendentality
by mpd＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

An anonymous traveler on the Path writes: > Actually, the French group is a subsidiary of our Bavarian > operation. However, "centuries" is, well, somewhat > inaccurate, though the mathematician who first mentioned our > existence about that time has since recanted after a visit > from the Elders... "Centuries" was perhaps an exaggeration. I first became aware of the existance of the French group when Martin Gardner published an extremely interesting April Fool's edition of "Mathematical Games" in Scientific American a number of years back. The thesis of his piece was that some very simple expressions involving transcendental numbers such as Pi and E had been proven to be integers. When you checked them on a calculator, they did indeed appear to be exact integers, in spite of a well-known theorem which claimed otherwise. The clever trick was that they were of course transcendental, but differed from integers by a small epsilon far beyond the 15 digit range of most ordinary calculators. A number of us were trying to figure out how Martin Gardner had constructed the expressions he had published, and quickly found that doing so was a non-trivial mathematical problem. We were about to give up when a young associate professor walked in, picked up a piece of chalk, and demonstrated a really clever trick involving rings which permitted one to crank out such expressions with the greatest of ease. When we inquired as to the origin of the work he was citing, we were told that this really clever mystical order in France had recently decided to release this particular discovery into the public domain, where it had served as the source for Martin Gardner's baffling column. Perhaps they will give us a factoring algorithm if we ask them nicely. :) -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

1 0

Re: CDT POLICY POST No.2 -- X9 TO DEVELOP TRIPLE-DES STANDARDS
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yahoo! > From: Jack Repenning <jackr(a)dblues.engr.sgi.com> > In a November letter to committee members, the NSA > threatened to prevent the export of triple- DES, citing > existing US law and potential threats to national > security (see attached NSA letter). > Oh, no, surely not. There must be some misunderstanding here - > they *promised* they wouldn't block export of non-Clipper > things. They wouldn't lie! There's already some extra slack in the law and the official policy for exporting encryption for use in banking; the NSA could get around it by asking the banking regulators to impose some sort of Key Forfeiture nonsense, which wouldn't lose much privacy since most banks are already pretty cooperative about such things. On the other hand, banks are rich enough to hire some off-shore programmer to write triple-DES implementations, given the current protocols, as well as to lobby CONgress or the administration to keep the NSA in line.

1 0

Re: What *is* the power of the FIPS
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> - QUESTION: Just what is the power of the FIPS outside of the > interop issues in sending stuff back and forth from federal agencies? The basic purpose of a FIPS is to instruct governemnt agencies on what kinds of equipment/software they should buy. Some FIPSs are mandatory, but most are pretty optional. However, in this case, the purpose is basically propaganda - the NIST can set standards, and can announce "Hey, this is standard", and even try to get other government agencies to buy lots and lots of Clipperphones. The so-called FIPS for Clipper was a horrendous abuse of the FIPS process; I took advantage of my 10 years as a defense contractor to flame out the proposed spec in great detail. I don't think I've still got my critique, but essentially I contended than the proposed "Escrowed Encryption Standard" didn't describe escrow, didn't specify encryption, and wasn't a standard.... It was fun, if you can do that sort of thing and not inhale :-) It wasn't escrow, because the functions it describes aren't escrow, and it doesn't mandate that they be used in a way that performs escrow functions using the functions it does perform. It didn't specify an encryption algorithm. It wasn't an implementable standard, since it didn't contain enough information for a user agency to specify an equipment design ("ask the NSA" just _doesn't_ rate), or for a vendor to validate whether an equipment design is compliant, or for a user to tell if it's working properly. >From the commentary around the final FIPS, which differed in some detail from the draft FIPS, it looks like most of the public comments were about the political issues, but a couple of changes appeared to be responses to technical details from the public, including things I'd flamed them about. I don't know how positive I feel about that ..... Bill

1 0

ref on crypto formalism
by Pierre Uszynski 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Eric, I dug out one of the references I was thinking of when you were talking last saturday. A summary of the introduction would go: "We describe a theory of authentication and a system that implements it. Our theory is based on the notion of principal and a "speaks for" relation between principals. A simple principal either has a name or is a communication channel; a compound principal can express an adopted role or delegation of authority. [...] We use the theory to explain many existing and proposed mechanisms for security [...]" So anyway, although I haven't read the whole thing in depth, it seems to me a reasonnable way to reason about complex security setups to make decisions about them (including automatically). %A Butler Lampson %A Martin Abadi %A Michael Burrows %A Edward Wobber %T authentication in distributed systems: theory and practice %J Operating Systems Review (ACM SIGOPS Review) %J Proceedings of the 13th ACM symposium on operating systems principles %C Pacific Grove, CA %D Oct. 13-16 1991 %V 25 %N 5 %P 165-182 %K transitive authentication, operating systems, DES, RSA, security, channel, RPC, remote procedure calls, public key encryption, name lookup, groups, access control, delegation, revocation, principals I'm pretty sure I saw somewhere a companion paper titled something like "An algebra of authentication"... hmmm maybe even in CACM... [...15 minutes later...] Unfortunately some of my CACMs are in hiding and not properly indexed... It was work done at DEC SRC in Palo Alto, there must be some research reports too. If somebody has refs for any of these, it would be great if you'd post them. Pierre. pierre(a)shell.portal.com

2 1

Zimmerphone, IPhone, NetPhone, Maven...
by Michael Sattler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:46 2/13/95, usviszpz(a)ibmmail.com wrote: >For those for whom this is already old news, I would like to ask: any idea if >this technology is related in any way to VoicePGP? If not, any thoughts on the >development ramifications of this for VoicePGP? This is not related in any way to VoicePGP (which PRZ calls PGPFone and I call the Zimmerphone). On the CU-SeeMe discussion mailing list we've been hashing out the performance of the costware IPhone (Windoze) and NetPhone (Mac), and the freeware Maven (Mac). They all suck less over 14.4. -----------------------------------------------------------------------+ Michael Sattler <msattler(a)jungle.com> San Francisco, California | Digital Jungle Consulting Services http://www.jungle.com/msattler/ | | You couldn't get a clue during the clue mating season in | a field full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk | and did the clue mating dance. - Edward Flaherty |

1 0

(Fwd) Returned mail
by Richard F. Dutcher 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Date: Sat, 11 Feb 1995 01:41:09 -0600 > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > From: dls(a)mcs.com (David Sallach) > > > >"Free" speech has always been a balancing act. The founders > >certainly didn't intend to provide "free" speech for blacks and > >women. > > The Founders created a larger space for free speech than had ever > existed. Slaves were deprived of many freedoms including speech, of course, > but women and free blacks were included in the Bill of Rights and exercised > free speech, frequently compellingly. > And were frequently thrown in jail for their pains - note especially the experiences of the early feminists [anachronistic label alert]. And let us not forget what happened to the Mormons ... > Check out Frederick Douglass' practicing oration while still a > slave, and then winning his freedom to become one of the greatest > abolitionist orators. Consider the appreciation of diversity of thought and > speech manifested by Jefferson, Lincoln and many other American political > leaders. > > And Douglass spent a good portion of his life as a refugee in a protected enclave [Boston] where he had powerful friends to keep him from being arrested. I'm not dissing the Founders, or the Bill of Rights -- just the simplified pap their invocation in most discourse has become. I was trained in high school as a scientist, and in college as an historian, and in both instances to value the messy contingent realities over the tempting simplicities of ideology and theory. And there are few contingent realities messier than the law ... > > . . . "They" have never liked "free" speech ... :-( > > Invoking poitically 'correct' stereotypes does not strengthen your > argument. > > David Sallach Irony-impaired, are we? There's a Polish word, used by most of the populace after the 1979 coup to refer to the army and apparat, that is usually translated as "them." I [probably incorrectly] recall it as "Oni" -- would you prefer it? My own first encounter with the term "politically [in]correct" was among 70's feminists, who used it ironically, to tell people they needed a vacation/to get laid/to get a grip. Would that Newt used it that way ... =================================== Rich Dutcher, San Francisco Greens P.O. Box 77005, San Francisco, California 94107 USA "That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves." Kim Stanley Robinson, "Green Mars" Greens, of course, only enslave plants - so weed-whackers work better than cops ... ====================================

1 0

Distributed Key Service for PGP (was: why pgp sucks)
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Matt Blaze writes: > >Doesn't having some kind of central record of keys go against > >the principle of PGP? > > The only "principle" of which I'm aware (and particularly interested > in supporting) is that of having widely fielded, useful and strong > privacy and authentication tools that work properly and transparently. > That means, among a great many other things, flexible protocols > and tools that support remote key distribution services. Another main principle of PGP is that it _has_ to be able to work in a decentralized fashion, so it's usable by > the civilizing forces of Anarchy (PGP?) even if the most common uses are in the centralized wired real-world. Perry and other write: [ lots of things about the need for distributed scalable key servers ] [ particularly the numeric-only IDs. ] There are two main times you need to get PGP keys - encrypting a message to someone, and validating a signature from someone. The former can be distributed easily enough - use something DNS-like to serve keys for joe_user(a)foo.bar.com, and add them to your local keyring if they're not there (possibly with temporary keyrings, if that's easy enough on PGP version N.) Fetching keys needs to be a separate tool from PGP anyway, since PGP should be general enough to work on wired and unwired systems, with different protocols and APIs for using the available networks. (And of course, the fetched keys need to be validated using web_of_trust or whatever, adding yet another step.) Sounds like a job for a shell... The latter problem is more difficult - partly PGP's fault, but partly because the underlying problem is harder. Signed documents _may_ arrive from keyids not on the keyservers, whether they're from non-wired users, users who wish to remain pseudonymous, one-or-two-use keys, etc.... What PGP can be blamed for, which will hopefully be addressed in version 3.x, is that it's possible to have collisions in the abbreviated key_ids, especially for the optional short key_ids that have been requested as an added feature for people who _very strongly_ want to remain anonymous. (There have already been collisions in the 24-bit key_ids, and it's been shown that it's possible to generate arbitrary key_ids if you _want_ to cause a collision, as well as birthday-problem probabilities of random collisions.) One way to address it is to make it easy to loop through a bunch of keys with the same key_id, which is a bit tough given PGP's current MS-DOS-like interface. Another way is out-of-band attachment of the user_id with the message, followed by DNS-like lookup, or attachment of the signature key with the message, accompanied by a lookup to validate it. As Matt said, there's a lot of policy-vs-mechanism issues here; PGP version 3.0 will have some library support that makes it easier to build some of these things. Bill

1 0

Re: CDT POLICY POST No.2 -- X9 TO DEVELOP TRIPLE-DES STANDARDS
by Richard F. Dutcher 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > One is forced to wonder at the sort of person that can with a straight > face argue that on the one hand an algorithm is cryptographically > unsound, while at the same time posing a threat to national security. > A lawyer, of course ... ;-} =================================== Rich Dutcher, San Francisco Greens P.O. Box 77005, San Francisco, California 94107 USA "That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves." Kim Stanley Robinson, "Green Mars" Greens, of course, only enslave plants - so weed-whackers work better than cops ... ====================================

1 0

Re: Is Cyberspace Rich Enough?
by Richard F. Dutcher 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

One of the problems commenting on long thoughtful posts is the number of hooks, and limiting oneself to just a few. [delete lots of interesting stuff] > > ... After all, the Soviets > couldn't stop samizdats, the Chinese couldn't stop fax machines, and > the Americans can't stop drug use, so what hope is there in > controlling modems, crypto, cellular phones, satellites, Web links, > stegonography, terabytes of data flowing unobstructed across borders, > and so on. Just to "stop the Net" would disrupt the entire financial > system, which not even Clinton or the next (Republican) President > would be tempted to do....they might as well launch a nuclear war as > try to shut down this "anarchic" ( = high dimensionality) system. > Well, I certainly hope so. But let's remember Poland in 1979, where "they" were desperate enough to shut down the entire phone system. It gained them only an extra 10 years of control, but it cost the Poles a *lot* of misery. But "samizdat" raises an interesting economic issue around security. The Soviets paid just enough attention to the circulation of hand-written or typed copies to make sure people spent a lot of time and energy at it -- time and energy not spent on more obviously dangerous activity. Compare the volume of Solzenhitsen's output before and after exile [let's not debate quality]. That didn't mean samizdat wasn't subversive and long-term dangerous -- but it was very expensive and absorbing to dissidents and potential dissidents. But that's the situation cypherpunks [and friends :] want to put our hypothetical eavesdroppers [government or corporate] in. Not exactly harmless, but spending a lot of time and energy being concerned with the chasing multiple carbon copies of samizdat novellas. > > * Alternative Nets, like FIDONet, are often lost in the discussion of > "the Net," but perhaps we should take much greater interest in these > alternatives. They make a crackdown harder, they lessen the dangers of > a single-point attack, and they provide "genetic diversity" for > building future Nets. (I'm not saying Cypherpunks have the time, > expertise, or incentive to work on this, but just reminding folks that > the Internet is not the end all and be all...) > I find that techno-illiterate Greens have very little trouble understanding FIDONet -- it's the kind of small-scale organizing within larger networks that a lot of progressive activity has always followed. They find it very hard to believe that other kinds of techie nets are really secure in the long run. It is, in fact, the level of activity that the Poles reverted to without the phone system ... > Personally, I think there are fewer long essays and analyses for the > same reason there are fewer large predators than grass-munching > herbivores. > > --Tim May > Geez, I have enough trouble getting card-carrying Greens to use and/or develop good ecological metaphors without some crypto-anarcho-libber punk muscling into the territory! ;-) =================================== Rich Dutcher, San Francisco Greens P.O. Box 77005, San Francisco, California 94107 USA "That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves." Kim Stanley Robinson, "Green Mars" Greens, of course, only enslave plants - so weed-whackers work better than cops ... ====================================

1 0

Re: EPIC to Debate Exon on CNN
by skaplin＠mirage.skypoint.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>On Mon, 13 Feb 1995, Samuel Kaplin wrote: >> A sellout was offered a >> la EFF and DT. Mr. Rotenberg seemed ill prepared and not really >> interested in the issue. > >You expected something different from "EPIC"? > >Cypherpunks are supposed to be paranoid. You are >not paranoid enough. > I don't think paranoia has anything to do with it. I just expect people to do the job that they are supposed to do. IMHO Mr. Rotenberg didn't do his job as well as he should have. I saw numerous opportunities to score salient points and he didn't. What Senator Exon says and what the bill says are two different things. I got the feeling that Senator Exon didn't even understand the ramifications of the bill. The unfortunate part is Joe Blow on the street isn't going to read the bill. He's going to rely on what he has heard. In my opinion Mr. Rottenberg didn't correct Senator Exon forcefully enough. The consumate politician triumphed. Sam

1 0

Internationalism no panacea
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Two recent news stories cast doubt on the principle that the international aspects of the nets will prevent governments from enforcing their laws "in cyberspace". One is the possible trade war between the U.S. and China over that country's continued support of intellectual property piracy, in video, audio, and computer software. Apparently the U.S. is very serious about imposing sanctions because of this problem, while China is threatening retaliation. It is quite amazing to me to see these two big countries going to the mat over "just bits" but as we know bits are big business now. Think of our recent discussions of putting data havens offshore. If the U.S. is willing to turn the screws on a nuclear power like China, how much protection will some dinky Caribbean country offer when people make Windows 96 and Jurassic II available for download for $5 ecash? IMO the trend is going to be toward international enforcement efforts, a general movement towards uniform information laws. The other story related to the idea that individuals can evade laws by moving from country to country as tourists. Apparently in the recent budget bill was a little-publicized change in the tax treatement of people who renounce their U.S. citizenship. (The change would be retroactive to last week and was kept quiet until then to prevent a surge of people leaving.) Since you earned all your assets as a citizen of the U.S., naturally when you leave the grasp of that country you will not longer get to take it all with you. Instead you will apparently have to pay capital gain taxes on some substantial fraction of your assets. The article I read went on to discuss the problems many countries are having with people playing citizenship games. The implication was that this may be just one step in a crackdown to close many of the loopholes that allow people to travel under one flag or another. My take on this is that human ingenuity is sufficient that there will always be new loopholes found, and that a sufficiently energetic and motivated person will probably be able to stay one step ahead of the enforcers. However, this will not be a lifestyle that can be turned into a cookbook; as soon as some trick became widely known, the loophole would be closed. So this is something which will be available to an elite but not to the masses. Hence I don't see "perpetual tourism" as something which will be a serious threat to government power. My views are somewhat iconoclastic for this list; I don't see cryptography as bringing about a libertarian/anarchist state. I continue to believe that the best and only way to achieve freedom for the mass of people is to convince them that it is a good idea. A small elite can and will continue to be able to avoid many laws, and crypto will no doubt be useful to them. But IMO it is not going to change the shape of society. Hal -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQBVAwUBL0BQchnMLJtOy9MBAQGJaAH/WTtd0bYeqKy89AUOSaSdraxN7YNZ2z42 +rJCQH0NS8x3ILT8VT8XtSIuYltBGsQkPagUqYtn3vM/rp3ssPhr/w== =JFan -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

Cypher_punks standards, again.
by M00012＠kanga.stcloud.msus.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Cypherpunks, Q. What do I mean, standards? A. A set of specifications that will allow encryption modules to be incorperated into receptacle encryption interface programs easily. The advantages of programs that comply with the CP standard might be illustrated with an example. Suppose Alice wants to use an interface program, say, GENPGP.EXE, to encrypt a message to Bob. Suppose that GENPGP is an interface encryption receptacle program that allows users to add and use their own encryption modules of choice. If Alice were a command line freak, she could type: GENPGP -RSA_encrypt_the_session_key \ -random_session_key_source ISA_Johnson_Noise_ADC \ -chainsession \ -blowfish -rounds 18 -keylength 2048 \ -idea \ -3descfb \ -compress pkzip \ -plain_text_file topsec.doc -receipient bob Or, suppose Alice is a GUI freak. In this case she could use her entcrypt_lab schematic interface to design and save her encryption scheme for topsec.doc, and simply drop the icon for the doc into her block diagram's input icon. Bob, in either case, is still able to use his own program of choise, GNU_safe_mail, to automatically decrypt Alice's message to him, so long as Bob has incorperated all of the latest modules availible. Q. What are some advantages? A. There are numerous advantages. Some programmers are good at writing user interfaces, and others are better at implementing algorithms. Currently, many programmers of the second type make all sorts of encryption algorithms available, but these are not always easily understood by programmers of the first type, and more importantly, coded algorithms are not easily incorperated into existing programs. Another problem that may arise is that existing programs, and programs that may come out in the next year or two, may gain widespread use (e.g. PGP.EXE), but may at some time in the future become practically worthless, for example, if widely used interface programs rely on encryption algorithms that are discovered or perceived to be weak. If a standard such as the one I am proposing is released and gains acceptance, more programmers will comply, and this will allow the users of their interfaces to painlessly adapt the interface programs. More importantly, such interface programs that make use of CP complient encryption modules will allow users to encrypt as insecurely or securely as their parinoia dictates. Also, as new encryption algorithms are invented and coded, hackers who like to optimize may take the extra step and make their code CP complient. And command line Alice will be able to type: GENPGP -add_module BlowFish.mod Q. What are the disadvantages? A. At first blush, one disadvantage is options, like PGP's -m, (for your eyes only) are not practical for a standard such as the one I am proposing. But then again, even using the command: PGP -em susan.doc is little more than a suggestion to the recepient of the letter to not keep the plaintext around. Q. Why should we? A. If we don't, IEEE or some other organization is bound to, and IEEE seems to be getting more politically correct as the years pass, and this doesn't seem to be compatible with the purpose of an encryption module standard. Consequently, I believe that such a task should be initiated and taken to completion by a renegade group such as the cypherpunks, by committe if possible, with the hopes that government moles will not weaken our effort. Mike Morgan -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAgUBMNBuvbwEeVpjJyiBAQEi5QP/T9FmRS2nwWq0lr9iT+cQWMEMV1++Hpf3 u0OWnYYFlRjgJPxTa5vT549tgGeRGV+CB+TI6N3Aj96+LTWb34qS5Y0W2x7R5FEg +XnACQRs9G5qIK4Zn114KlWXyx7Mj0QQCeo4h86gISdrWkfSJiYkwEoGgzcf6ocF gp45YZLznnk= =cMFk -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

URL for Crypto Hearing Transcript
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We've put the dox at: http://site108240.primehost.com/hir-hear.htm (97K hearing transcript) http://site108240.primehost.com/crypto-law8.htm (11K Reno letter)

1 0

(DBWORLD) Massive Digital Data Systems
by nwosuck＠harpo.wh.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Birds of a Feather Session on the Intelligence Community Initiative in Massive Digital Data Systems To be held in Conjunction with the 1995 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data in the Crystal Room at The Fairmont Hotel, San Jose, California on Tuesday, 23 May 1995 from 7 pm to 9 pm ******************************* Massive Digital Data Systems (MDDS) will require effective management, retrieval, and integration of databases that may be heterogeneous. Achieving this concept of massive intelligence information systems will require new technologies and novel approaches for data management. While several advances have been made in database management technology, the complexity and the size of the database coupled with the unique needs of the Intelligence Community (IC) require the development of novel approaches. The MDDS Initiative has been started by the Community Management Staff (CMS) of the IC to identify the data management issues and challenges as well as to develop possible solutions for managing massive databases., The purpose of the Birds of a Feather Session is to provide an overview of the MDDS program, solicit input toward developing a testbed /framework for the initiative, and to have technical discussions on novel methods for managing massive databases. Tentative agenda for the session is as follows: 1. Overview of MDDS Initiative 2. Overview of MDDS Research Projects 3. Discussion on testbed/framework 4. Discussion on techniques for massive database management Information on the MDDS Initiative can be obtained from : http://www.nml.org/other_programs/mdds/mdds.html For more information contact: Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham K329, The MITRE Corporation, Burlington Road, Bedford, MA 01730 email: thura(a)mitre.org; Phone: 617-271-8873; Fax: 617-271-2352 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The dbworld alias reaches many people, and should only be used for messages of general interest to the database community. Requests to get on or off dbworld should go to listproc(a)cs.wisc.edu. to subscribe send subscribe dbworld Your Full Name to unsubscribe send unsubscribe dbworld to change your address send an unsubscribe request from the old address send a subscribe request from the new address to find out more options send help ------------------------------------------------------------------------FOOTER-

1 0

(DBWORLD) MDDS Session Time Change
by Bhavani Thuraisingham 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

5/15/95 5:17 PM MDDS Session Time Change Birds of a Feather Session on the Intelligence Community Initiative in Massive Digital Data Systems Held in Conjunction with the 1995 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data in the Crystal Room at The Fairmont Hotel, San Jose, California on Tuesday, 23 May 1995 from 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm ******************************* Massive Digital Data Systems (MDDS) will require effective management, retrieval, and integration of databases that may be heterogeneous. Achieving this concept of massive intelligence information systems will require new technologies and novel approaches for data management. While several advances have been made in database management technology, the complexity and the size of the database coupled with the unique needs of the Intelligence Community (IC) require the development of novel approaches. The MDDS Initiative has been started by the Community Management Staff (CMS) of the IC to identify the data management issues and challenges as well as to develop possible solutions for managing massive databases., The purpose of the Birds of a Feather Session is to provide an overview of the MDDS program, solicit input toward developing a testbed /framework for the initiative, and to have technical discussions on novel methods for managing massive databases. Tentative agenda for the session is as follows: 1. Overview of MDDS Initiative 2. Overview of MDDS Research Projects 3. Discussion on testbed/framework 4. Discussion on techniques for massive database management Information on the MDDS Initiative can be obtained from : http://www.nml.org/other_programs/mdds/mdds.html For more information contact: Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham K329, The MITRE Corporation, Burlington Road, Bedford, MA 01730 email: thura(a)mitre.org; Phone: 617-271-8873; Fax: 617-271-2352 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The dbworld alias reaches many people, and should only be used for messages of general interest to the database community. Requests to get on or off dbworld should go to listproc(a)cs.wisc.edu. to subscribe send subscribe dbworld Your Full Name to unsubscribe send unsubscribe dbworld to change your address send an unsubscribe request from the old address send a subscribe request from the new address to find out more options send help ------------------------------------------------------------------------FOOTER-

1 0

Re: Num Rat
by hardin＠cyberspace.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John Young posted: > He's Got Their Number: Scholar Uses Math to Foil Financial > Fraud > > By Lee Berton > Mark Negrini, an assistant professor of accounting at St. > Mary's University in Halifax, is trapping tax cheats, check > forgers and embezzlers with an obscure theory known as > Benford's Law. Formulated by physicist Frank Benford in > 1938, the law lays out the statistical frequency with which > the numbers 1 through 9 appear in any set of random > numbers. > > Mr. Negrini applies the law to the numbers on suspicious > checks or tax returns. A series of legitimate check amounts > or tax write-offs will be genuinely random, while those > dreamed up by a human will not. If the numbers on the > checks or tax returns do not obey Benford's Law, they can't > be random, and "someone is taking the company to the > cleaners," Mr. Negrini says. I just looked @ the front of a M.O. computer catalog & the numerals in the prices are anything but random. A very heavy concentration of eights (8) & nines (9), apparently this company is more into $508.98 (color inkjet printer) & $38.98 (well known game s/w) than the old late night TV standby of "JUST $19.99!". Of course, this is because of excessively documented ad nauseum human psychological tendencies that salescritters, who set at least the lsd's of price, have been aware of for millenia. I'd bet, that 5(five), 8(eight), & 9(nine) are significantly more represented across the board in prices (& thus in amounts for checks & tax write offs) than than their random distribution by Benford's Law or more well known tests for randomness would suggest. Has Mr. Negrini factored this into his program? I guess the lesson is do a few pgp make__random's & convert a few of the hex numbers to dec digits for the lsd's the next time one does creative expense reporting. tjh

2 1

Re: FW: Edupage 7/9/95 (fwd)
by dmandl＠bear.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)imsi.com> said: > Mark Contois writes: > > Would that this were so. There seems to be a burgeoning number of web > > sites spouting neo- (and not-so-neo-) Nazi disinfo. Check out > > > > http://204.181.176.4/stormfront/ > > > > and some of the links provided therein. > > 204.181.176.4 is "stormfront.wat.com". > > I suspect that something is amiss (i.e. faked) about the following, > but wat.com shows up as [etc.] That may be (I wouldn't be surprised if they registered their site with an innocent-sounding name to avoid trouble), but I know that those guys are definitely on the net. I've got their URL at home and I take a look at their stuff now and then, just to keep abreast of what those half-wits are up to. There are at least a few bona fide Nazi/White Power sites out there. --Dave. -- ******************************************************************************* Bear Stearns is not responsible for any recommendation, solicitation, offer or agreement or any information about any transaction, customer account or account activity contained in this communication. *******************************************************************************

1 0

Obscura down for a few days.
by loki＠nately.UCSD.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Obscura is suffering from HD troubles. The backups have failed so I am going to have to rebuild it from scratch. This means that the web page and remailer will be down. All mail to the remailers will be lost. I have changed the name server so I will still get mail sent to loki(a)obscura.com. -Lance -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMALFV1Vkk3dax7hlAQHPvAP6A7IWAczKJ3eimrWUgh0F5DMEr7oSpAXg lJJCC2VV4g9lIDD8C2wob1L6sEZwlDnUt6dMpbKBiT3aksSmBqnvMpe/BlaTd2zk ZRGCYHUZkx3aOSp9iZevRhjI0HEdm+g2+PwjJcMyPn5EUmz5vnPI9exOt9VGyJV1 eSCCC3Ngz9k= =ahD6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

A more sophisticated form of moderation.
by Michael James Gebis 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

With all the recent traffic about if moderation is the future of the net, it seems like an appropriate idea to get some brainstorming on some better forms of moderation. Specifically, I was thinking along the lines of a newsgroup where only selected individuals are able to post, but anybody who wants to can read the group. However, the "selected individuals" could fall into several categories. You could have one or very few "selected individuals" and the newsgroup would work almost exactly like the current moderated groups. You could have many "selected individuals" who may have been selected by proving that they read a FAQ or some other minimal criteria, which could theoretically cut down on newbie fever. You could have several dozen "selected individuals" who are selected by some means (a committee? a vote? a "trusted individual who selects more individuals") and have an unrestricted talk between these individuals. This way, you have a newsgroup where these experts can discuss topics in an unrestricted way. I'm thinking along the lines of the "boards" in _Ender's Game_, where a newsgroup is somewhat similar to a newspaper. Once the reporters get hired, they have a lot of freedom on what they can report about. There are a lot of details to be worked out, including: 1) Can such a system work? Are there protocols which can guarantee authentication on a large distributed system like news? I'm assuming that there would have to be some sort of cryptographic authentication to prevent wide-scale abuse. 2) Is such a system desirable? Is the current "anybody can post anywhere if they know how" system better? Which one promotes cypherpunk goals more? Can I anonymously prove that I am a "selected individual"? Remember, I'm considering this a brainstorming session, so I'd like to hear any comments you may have. -- Mike Gebis m-gebis(a)uiuc.edu Mean people suck. http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/m-gebis/

2 1

Moby ints [Re: Num Rat]
by Jim Gillogly 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> pjm(a)ionia.engr.sgi.com (Patrick May) writes: > This invocation of the name of the diety reminds me of a question > I've been meaning to ask. Is Knuth still a good source of algorithms > for implementing large integers or do more recent books exist that > contain superior methods? While Knuth is now and forever the algorithm deity in general, Arjen Lenstra is as close to godhood as one can get in moby ints these days. I'd look at the Lip package Lenstra wrote; it's used in his state of the art factoring programs. It's available with masses of PostScript documentation from ftp.ox.ac.uk. Studying the code and docs might remind you of some issues that aren't obvious... and, of course, you might decide you don't need to write a moby int package, but could just use his library. Jim Gillogly Hevensday, 18 Afterlithe S.R. 1995, 18:48

2 1

Re: FW: Edupage 7/9/95 (fwd)
by Lyle Seaman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

danisch(a)ira.uka.de (Hadmut Danisch) writes: > There are certain nazi pages in America. They were showing them in > a german tv magazine some time ago, but they didn't tell the URLs. > The URL field in the Mosaic window was painted over. Oh dear. There are certain smut pages in Germany. They were showing them on TV recently, but I couldn't quite catch the URL. I can see it now -- the US government censors the net to keep out the Germans (but the tourists can still come -- hey, at an average of $80K/year annual income, they're welcome to go shopping in New York, though if they want to change clothes on the beach they have to do *that* in California, Florida is right out, eh Lawton?) and the Germans censor the net to keep out the Americans. Oh dear. -- Lyle Transarc 707 Grant Street 412 338 4474 The Gulf Tower Pittsburgh 15219

1 0

Re: FW: Edupage 7/9/95 (fwd)
by Ed Carp [khijol Sysadmin] 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Tue, 11 Jul 1995, Al Thompson wrote: > At 10:44 AM 7/11/95 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > > > >Brad Dolan writes: > >> REGULATING THE INTERNET > >> Shortly after the Communications Decency Act came before the U.S. Senate., > >> Canada's Parliament passed a resolution unanimously committing legislators > >> to get tough with on-line hate-mongering. The Simon Weisenthal Centre in > >> Toronto sent a strongly worded report to federal regulator the CRTC calling > >> for strict regulation of the Internet. (Montreal Gazette 7/7/95 B3) > > > >I'm happy to see Nazism fought with fascism. > > > >.pm > > You mean alleged nazism fought with obvious facism. > > I've never seen any actual nazism on the net anywhere, but this "strict > regulation" tactic is obviously fascist in nature. > > In fact, the only religious-based hate speech I've ever seen on the net is from > someone named "windgate" or something who hates Christians and Christianity, > and > is more than happy to write about his hatred. He hangs out in some of the > 'alt.politics' groups. You oughta go out and borrow someone's shortwave radio or ham HF radio. Between 3900 and 3900 KHz every evening, a bunch of guys in the south (Texas, New Mexico, Arkansas, Louisiana) get on the air and talk about the "goddamn niggers, jews, and fags that are ruining this country." All kinds of folks (meaning non-WASPs, of course) are targeted for this kind of spew. Words like "motherfucker" are often used, especially against "niggers". The speakers rail against "white women with goddamn niggers", and any other non-WASP who happens to arouse their ire. Quite entertaining if you enjoy that sort of thing. Stomach-turning if you don't. Call signs, times and frequencies heard upon request. This sort of thing has been going on for years. A few years back, the FCC attempted to go after a couple of idiots on one of the local LA area 2m repeaters who were spewing all kinds of filth out onto the air waves. The district court said, naaah, that's free speech. So, if the idiots in Congress want to go after this sort of thing, they oughts go after the few hams that are ruining the hobby for the rest of us. -- Ed Carp, N7EKG Ed.Carp(a)linux.org, ecarp(a)netcom.com 801/534-8857 voicemail 801/460-1883 digital pager Finger ecarp(a)netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key an88744(a)anon.penet.fi Q. What's the trouble with writing an MS-DOS program to emulate Clinton? A. Figuring out what to do with the other 639K of memory.

1 0

Down with ITAR - Have YOU exported PGP today? (fwd)
by aba＠dcs.exeter.ac.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is a forward of something I just cross-posted to alt.security.pgp, and talk.politics.crypto. Civil disobedience via illegal .sigs. Adam ====================================================================== From: aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk Newsgroups: alt.security.pgp,talk.politics.crypto Date: Tue, 11 Jul 95 21:03:53 +0100 Subject: Down with ITAR - Have YOU exported PGP today? Distribution: world You all know about the ridiculous US regulation called ITAR and how it applies to crypto software in the US, well here's a fun and relatively safe (YMMV) way for you to export PGP in protest. It is just a token effort, and of 0 practical significance, but the idea is that you just post 3 lines of the uuencoded zipped DOS PGP executable in place of your usual sig in protest. If they lock you up for 3 uuencoded lines which came off a European ftp site and European web page, then well they are stupid. More to the point it would make them (the US state department and the NSA) look stupid. Take a look at this web page: http://dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/export/ it will dole out uuencoded parts of PGP.EXE (the DOS binary for pgp2.6.2i, the international version of PGP, as is available from myriads of non-US ftp sites). See my sig for a sample, the first in a long stream hopefully, And remember, say NO to key escrow :-) Adam -- ------------------ PGP.ZIP Part [000/713] ------------------- begin 644 pgp.zip M4$L#!!0````(`">9ZQX3(*,_DG8!`-JF`P`'````4$=0+D581>S;=UQ3U__X M\9M!$E8,TT(a)PJ$10$1=*41%WW`KX$=Q[M5KK`&R%(HH+(T.M"S>NME8K=31N ------------------------------------------------------------- for next chunk to export --> http://dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/export/

2 1

Re: FW: Edupage 7/9/95 (fwd)
by alt＠iquest.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:45 PM 7/11/95 +0100, Ed Carp [khijol Sysadmin] wrote: >You oughta go out and borrow someone's shortwave radio or ham HF radio. >Between 3900 and 3900 KHz every evening, a bunch of guys in the south >(Texas, New Mexico, Arkansas, Louisiana) get on the air and talk about the >"goddamn niggers, jews, and fags that are ruining this country." All >kinds of folks (meaning non-WASPs, of course) are targeted for this kind >of spew. Words like "motherfucker" are often used, especially against >"niggers". The speakers rail against "white women with goddamn niggers", >and any other non-WASP who happens to arouse their ire. > >Quite entertaining if you enjoy that sort of thing. Stomach-turning if >you don't. Call signs, times and frequencies heard upon request. I don't enjoy it, and don't particularly care to hear it - HOWEVER, I don't see that they are harming anyone (I don't count "hurt feelings as "harm), any more than Malcolm X did when he called all white people "the devil," or when the militant Muslims do when they call all non-Muslims "heathens" or "the infidel" who should be killed. (or any more than wingate does when he says all non-Jews should be done away with). They are simply trying to "sell" their views by exposing their views. If they want to think that, and if they want to say that, then that is their business. I'm free to listen, or to avoid listening. I can avoid their newsgroups, or turn off my radio. That doesn't mean I have to like them, or be nice to them - I am just as free to ridicule their views, and I won't care if I hurt their feelings. If this sort of speech is regulated however, I will no longer have that choice. If I ask the government to prevent them from speaking their views, them only *I* am free to speak mine, so who is the victim?

1 0

Re: Num Rat
by hardin＠cyberspace.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

//--- forwarded letter ------------------------------------------------------- > MIME-Version: 1.0 > Date: Tue, 11 Jul 95 13:22:33 -0600 > From: "zinc" <zinc(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu> > To: hardin(a)cyberspace.com > Cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Subject: Re: Num Rat Pat Finerty <zinc(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu> wrote: > On Tue, 11 Jul 1995 hardin(a)cyberspace.com wrote: > > > John Young posted: > > > > > He's Got Their Number: Scholar Uses Math to Foil Financial > > > Fraud > > > [snip] > > I'd bet, that > > 5(five), 8(eight), & 9(nine) are significantly more represented across > > the board in prices (& thus in amounts for checks & tax write offs) than > > than their random distribution by Benford's Law or more well known tests > > for randomness would suggest. [snip] > > check amounts will also include any relevant sales tax thus skewing the > distribution in some fashion. > > > patrick finerty = zinc(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu = pfinerty(a)nyx.cs.du.edu > U of Utah biochem grad student in the Bass lab - zinc fingers + dsRNA! [snip] Yes, and some vendors will be in state (sales tax) & some out of state (no sales tax). Furthermore, if the vendor is in state but in a different locale, there will probably be some difference in sales tax rates as rates within states are usually based on vendor location. Also some types of purchases for some types of businesses/organizations/entities have various sales tax exemptions or surcharges, again all of which varies by state & locality. ALL of these factors will skew the distribution, eg. sales tax is usualy *.00% or *.25%, *.50%, *.75% etc. so a cursory look shows that 0 & 5 will be over represented due to this factor. tjh

1 0