December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: The Crypto Applications we would rather not talk about
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:00 AM 11/5/95, Nathan Loofbourrow wrote: > > The answers are there and have been published > > in most books on tradecraft, 3 person cells organized > > as pyramids. > >I've read only fictional accounts about the 3-person cell. Any >pointers to nonfiction material? "Tradecraft" didn't seem to be the >magic keyword in the local card catalog. It's easy to work out the relationships from first principles...I'm not sure what a book would add to your understanding. I suspect Kahn's "The Codebreakers" contains at least a brief mention of cell organizations, thought that was not Kahn's focus. Or, look at any of the various books on Soviet spy rings in the U.S., or various spy rings in WW II. For example, I think the true-life book "I Led Three Lives" might still be available--it was the basis of a t.v. show I used to watch in the early 60s. (The t.v. show presumably went to the same Politically Incorrect resting place as "Amos and Andy," mourned by Sapphire, The Kingfish, and me.) --Tim Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Telephone switch capacity -Reply
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 18:43 11/3/95, Rich Graves wrote: >[about the FBI supposedly wanting the ability to tap 1% of all phones in >the US simultaneously] [...] >Of course the FBI doesn't have the staff to listen to all these lines, and >they need an individual court order to authorize each individual >interception, so this numbers game is a bit of a joke. One more time. Despite what you read in the papers, despite what most people - even in the legal profession - believe, telephone wiretaps do _not_ require a court order. They haven't required a court order in over a year. The Digital Telephony Bill, which passed Congress by an overwhelming margin, _explicitly_ allows for wiretap authorizations other than a court order. The law does not impose any rules for these "other forms of authorization". "The captain signed it off" may suffice. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred.

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Telephone switch capacity
by Noah Brodbeck 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Please be aware that the current capacity of the telephone system in the United States (and for that matter, most of the developed world) is only capable of supporting between 15 and 20 percent simultaneous telephone conversations. If the FBI wishes to set up a system that is capable of monitoring 1% of the total number of lines, that equates to a ability to tap 5%, not 1% of all calls in progress. >As the FBI's "interest" shifts from area to area, the whole >country could rapidly come under the 1% surveillance >directive. >1.5 million telephone intercepts. Or more. -=- Noah

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Real randomness generators
by fc＠all.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Two points: 1 - The noisiest thing on most lists is the noise about other peoples' noise. 2 - Why not use the postings of people complaining about other peoples' posts as a source for noise. Surely few things in the Universe are more random. On the the subject at hand: There are two major technical issues I have encountered in using EM waves (which is what video and radio noise are) for generating randomness. 1 - They tend to be biased toward 1 or 0. This can often be compensated for by (for example) xoring one bit stream from the same source with the inverse of another. By doing this enough times, you can eliminate many of the characteristics of interest. 2 - Noise tends to be characteristic for different media and noise causes. This is a more difficult issue. For example, certain types of media tend toward short noise bursts. In these cases, you have to be quite careful to assure that the bit streams meet the randomness criteria of the application. As a side issue, you may find that once you start sending enough information with truly random characteristics, you will be visited by people that don't want you sending it. I know people who have experienced these visitations and felt highly constrained as a result. -- -> See: Info-Sec Heaven at URL http://all.net Management Analytics - 216-686-0090 - PO Box 1480, Hudson, OH 44236

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lp (134.222.35.2)?
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm sure some of you will have seen this, so sorry to toss logs on the listburn fire; still, it seemed worth reposting to CP--no, it's not entirely crypto-related, but nor is it a completely vague allegation. >From GovAccess.183.snoops: > The following is the transcript of an actual communications trace that a > friend ran, while I was sitting next to him, watching -- reprinted here > with his permission. > > He did a "traceroute" of two messages that he sent from his machine in > Switzerland (he'd telneted into it while we were at a computer conference > in California). > > Traceroute automatically reports each Internet node through which a message > passes, as it proceeds from origin to destination. > > He did two traceroutes. The first was from Switzerland to an addressee at > Netcom in San Jose, California. The second was from Switzerland to an > addressee in Israel. > > > Date: Fri, 21 Apr 95 02:54:58 +0200 > From: kelvin(a)fourmilab.ch (John Walker) > To: jwarren(a)well.com > Subject: Traceroute > > > /usr2/kelvin> traceroute netcom11.netcom.com > traceroute to netcom11.netcom.com (192.100.81.121), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets > 1 eunet-router (193.8.230.64) 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms > 2 146.228.231.1 (146.228.231.1) 326 ms 345 ms 307 ms > 3 Bern5.CH.EU.NET (146.228.14.5) 447 ms 408 ms 364 ms > 4 146.228.107.1 (146.228.107.1) 127 ms 37 ms 36 ms > 5 Zuerich1.CH.EU.NET (146.228.10.80) 37 ms 38 ms 175 ms > 6 (134.222.9.1) 65 ms 109 ms 252 ms > 7 lp (134.222.35.2) 196 ms 179 ms 405 ms > 8 Vienna1.VA.ALTER.NET (137.39.11.1) 191 ms 179 ms 313 ms > 9 fddi.mae-east.netcom.net (192.41.177.210) 336 ms 204 ms 303 ms > 10 t3-2.dc-gw4-2.netcom.net (163.179.220.181) 182 ms 251 ms 187 ms > 11 t3-2.chw-il-gw1.netcom.net (163.179.220.186) 305 ms 586 ms 518 ms > 12 t3-2.scl-gw1.netcom.net (163.179.220.190) 537 ms 693 ms 797 ms > 13 t3-1.netcomgw.netcom.net (163.179.220.193) 698 ms 549 ms 754 ms > 14 netcom11.netcom.com (192.100.81.121) 890 ms 1922 ms 1696 ms > > > /usr2/kelvin> traceroute jerusalem1.datasrv.co.il > traceroute to jerusalem1.datasrv.co.il (192.114.21.101), 30 hops max, 40 > byte packets > 1 eunet-router (193.8.230.64) 2 ms 3 ms 2 ms > 2 146.228.231.1 (146.228.231.1) 933 ms 853 ms 874 ms > 3 Bern5.CH.EU.NET (146.228.14.5) 1040 ms 450 ms 525 ms > 4 146.228.107.1 (146.228.107.1) 453 ms 424 ms 188 ms > 5 Zuerich1.CH.EU.NET (146.228.10.80) 64 ms 61 ms 47 ms > 6 (134.222.9.1) 80 ms 312 ms 84 ms > 7 lp (134.222.35.2) 270 ms 400 ms 216 ms > 8 Vienna2.VA.ALTER.NET (137.39.11.2) 660 ms 1509 ms 886 ms > 9 dataserv-gw.ALTER.NET (137.39.155.38) 1829 ms 1094 ms 1306 ms > 10 orion.datasrv.co.il (192.114.20.22) 1756 ms 1280 ms 1309 ms > 11 ... > > > Notice that both messages went through an unnamed site -- 134.222.9.1 and > then a strangely-named site, "lp (134.222.35.2)" -- then through the same > Vienna, Virginia (USA) site ... and thereafter, on to their destination. > I.e., the second message went through Virginia to get from Switzerland to > Israel. > > The whois servers at the InterNIC and at nic.ddn.mil for MILNET Information > report, ``No match for "134.222.9.1". '' and `` No match for > "134.222.35.2".'' > > Now let me see ... which spy agencies are located in or near Virginia? > > --jim

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[NOISE, if interesting NOISE] Assassins
by Black Unicorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Interested parties might want to discuss the effectiveness of murder in politics with the world's most recent assassin. Or at least leave interesting mail to the security forces who will likely be running through his e-mail. Here's your chance to make your life REAL interesting, and test PGP, just send some encrypted mail to our friend and gunman Mr. Amir at: la59(a)popeye.cc.biu.ac.il --- "In fact, had Bancroft not existed, potestas scientiae in usu est Franklin might have had to invent him." in nihilum nil posse reverti 00B9289C28DC0E55 E16D5378B81E1C96 - Finger for Current Key Information

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Re: lp (134.222.35.2)?
by Ernest Hua 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

You don't really need a special (and clearly suspicious) IP address to perform driftnet fishing. All you need is to be sure that all physical packets pass through a checkpoint charlie and just park a sniffer there to watch everything fly by. On the other hand, it would be interesting to see how hard NSA pushes behind the scenes to have physical long distance cables run through the US routers/switches (in the name of US national security, of course). It would be fun (perhaps horrible) to see what the NSA does the first time Isreal or France set up their own high capacity long distance to other friendly/unfriendly countries (thus bypassing the US completely). Second, let France or some other country set up major Internet routing clearinghouses which advertise secure routes to other nations (not US). Ern

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Re: lp (134.222.35.2)?
by Richard Huddleston 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

134.222.0.0 is a Class B network, so if you do 'whois' on 134.222.0.0 (instead of the individual IP addresses) you find: European Unix Users Group (NET-EUNET-X25) Kruislaan 413 NL-1098 SJ Amsterdam NETHERLANDS Netname: EUNET-X25 Netnumber: 134.222.0.0 Coordinator: EUnet Ltd (EU-NIC) hostmaster(a)nic.eu.net +31 20 5925109 +31 20 5925165 (24hr Emergency) +31 20 5925163 (fax) Domain System inverse mapping provided by: NS.EU.NET 192.16.202.11 SUNIC.SUNET.SE 192.36.125.2 192.36.148.18 NS.UU.NET 137.39.1.3 NS2.NIC.FR 192.93.0.4 Record last updated on 07-Mar-94. ...what does this do to your traceroute dumps? Richard

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Re: lp (134.222.35.2)?
by Stephan Somogyi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 7:20 5.11.95, Anonymous wrote: > it seemed worth reposting to CP--no, it's not entirely crypto-related, > but nor is it a completely vague allegation. [...] > From GovAccess.183.snoops: [...] >> Notice that both messages went through an unnamed site -- 134.222.9.1 and >> then a strangely-named site, "lp (134.222.35.2)" -- then through the same >> Vienna, Virginia (USA) site ... and thereafter, on to their destination. >> I.e., the second message went through Virginia to get from Switzerland to >> Israel. >> >> The whois servers at the InterNIC and at nic.ddn.mil for MILNET Information >> report, ``No match for "134.222.9.1". '' and `` No match for >> "134.222.35.2".'' >> >> Now let me see ... which spy agencies are located in or near Virginia? Oh please. The probable reason that the InterNIC doesn't know about the 132.222.0.0 networks is because they're in Europe. If you search for either of the network numbers of the IP addresses mentioned above in the RIPE database <http://www.ripe.net/>, you will find that they belong to the EUnet backbone. After pinging 134.222.9.1 successfully, I telnetted to it and it claimed, quite plausibly, that it's a device (presumably a router) in Amsterdam. I am currently unable to ping 134.222.35.2; this, however, fills me with no dread whatsoever. _______________________________________________________________________ Stephan Somogyi Senior Editor Digital Media

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Re: Sun speaks out - but not to the cypherpunks
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I know that it is rude to follow up one of your own posts, and I apologize in advance for this horrible faux-pas, but hopefully, it's excused this one time. I wrote: >One example of this that should serve as a useful case study is a recent >problem which was brought to the Canadian public's attention just this >week, on a program called the Fifth Estate. The CBC (Canadian >Broadcasting Corporation) detailed a software code problem in one of >AECL's (Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's) instruments which deliver >penetrating radiation. > >The software which controlled the radiation dose, would periodically >override the oncologist's calibration and deliver a radiation dose 100 >times what was prescribed. This software "bug" literally killed wherever >the machine was in use. Does anyone on this list know if the CBC has a web site on the Net? I'm hoping that someone (hint, hint) who has a convenient website, one with lots of spare bandwidth could volunteer to contact the CBC and persuade them to copyright clear the Fifth Estate program clip which documented some of the risks of software bugs in mission critical applications, and allow it to be placed on the Net. I'm hoping that this English language piece reaches a wide international audience. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is a Crown Corporation which has historically received its primary funding from the Government of Canada. Recently, it has suffered under the budgetary ax, and the push for privatization. I'm pretty confident that the Corporation would copyright clear the clip for MPEG distribution across the Net, if they were approached with the concept that the clip was a demonstration of the CBC's journalistic excellence and integrity, a piece which is demonstrative of the critical need to continue their funding. A concrete demonstration of the need for the CBC. And a piece which could well receive deserved international acclaim. The site would help them, and would simultaneously be a site of international public service. Nothing will drive home the need for quality software, quality code, and quality security more than the vivid graphic pictures of the consequences of sloppy code, or of the risks if certain critical systems, LANs, or private networks are compromised, or if security and privacy (which are flip sides of the same coin) are ignored. The sight of a body, that has had a hole burned straight through it from the front through to the spine is truly chilling and drives the message home. Nothing seems to speak as clearly as a picture ... as to what the stakes are ... of what "bugs" in code do ... and of what a network compromise can leave in its wake. A picture of consequences. Six people died in Canada and the United States due to the software flaw. Even after numerous reports of the flaws, the company refused to even acknowledge the existence of a problem, and in fact did everything within its power to make sure doctors, radiologists and physicists were unaware. The attitude of trivialization can only be characterized as fantastic, and would be unbelievable to anyone who has not viewed the piece. It's one hell of a backgrounder which not only details problems, but looks at solutions -- it examines attitudes, especially management attitudes. It truly deserves an expanded audience. From teachers, to students, to the international media, to the concerned private individual, all will be served well if this piece gets wide attention. Takers, anyone?? Alice de 'nonymous ... ...just another one of those... P.S. This post is in the public domain. C. S. U. M. O. C. L. U. N. E.

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My Sympathies to you at this time.
by Censored Girls Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To those of you from Israel or who are Jewish, my deepest sympathies to all of you. Love Always, Carol Anne -- Member Internet Society - Certified BETSI Programmer - Webmistress *********************************************************************** Carol Anne Braddock (cab8) carolann(a)censored.org 206.42.112.96 My Homepage The Cyberdoc *********************************************************************** ------------------ PGP.ZIP Part [017/713] ------------------- M8H,),S$8G>&.WP(8IRA`-M['+`Q%&_C"">5-F%LX@<_Q$;*P'',Q$Z/AA[8M MF=O0H+*%(-S%&>S%+FS&<LS%3(Q&#W1"<]2%`H^;,]^1C$'HBN8PX$4SYAU^ MPGD<Q0ZLA0D+,`MCT!LA**4M[-JPAK9F?40!AJ,CW"'%DR#:'9?Q)3[%<DQ` ------------------------------------------------------------- for next chunk to export --> http://dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/export/

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Re: Credentials Without Identity
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I do not intend my comments below to be disrespectful to the people of Sweden. At 4:32 AM 11/5/95, Mats Bergstrom wrote: >Ah, the Swedish way is so much more convenient. Directly after birth you >get a tag around your arm, with a number that is later changed to an >entry into several databases, including 'Birth Registry' and you get >your Person Number for life, in the format YYMMDD-abcd, which is >unique (at least in Sweden). All forthcoming database entries are based >on this number, usually as a first key field. Surprise immigrants get a The Swedish way may be more convenient, but the Nazi way was even more convenient. The Person Numbers (or NonPerson Numbers, I suppose) were tattooed directly on the arms. For many of us, the essence of strong crypto, crypto anarchy, and the Cypherpunks list is to avoid this "Swedish future." Truly a blight on mankind, if you ask me. The U.S is moving swiftly in this direction. (Ironically, the foreign press clucks at our "fascism" with Proposition 187-type measures, while there own countries are far more restrictive in allowing immigration.) Fortunately, I have heard there is a "right wing" backlash growing in some of the Scandinavian countries, especially Norway and Denmark. ("Right wing" is what the press calls it...I hope it's really "anti-left wing," anti-cradle-to-grave-socialism.) >other person). Most Government databases are open to the public, so >the credit tracking agencies don't have to work very hard regarding The worst of both worlds: the government mandates that information be collected at every turn, then opens the records for all to see. >Now, there are laws against cross-referencing various databases >without the approval of the Data Inspection, which often says no. To my surprise, several people on this list have expressed support for the need for so-called "data privacy laws." I look at it this way: if I put things on my computer based on things I have learned, or even compile lists of people and places, etc., who can enter my home and demand that I expunge these records? The problem with well-intentioned laws about data privacy is that they impinge directly on the freedom to read and write, to make lists, to enter thoughts into computers, etc. (I'm sure the _intent_ is to go after MasterCard-type operations and inaccurate records, but businesses in Britain are already facing investigation for having computerized mailing lists. Ironically, the Cypherpunks mailing list might be illegal in the U.K. unless the legal forms were properly filled out, the fees paid, the parties notified on a regular basis of information about them, etc. And our archiving of posts is ipso facto illegal under several interpretations of the Data Privacy laws of some countries unless extensive notifications are made and permissions received. The Data Privacy laws make us all criminals for storing received messages in data bases.) More practically, giving a government the power to say which data bases are acceptable, and which data bases are illegal, is a terrible thing. Besides the opportunities for abuse (by a Stalin, a Nixon, a Pol Pot, a Clinton), it is also an impractical law to enforce, as Mats' next point makes: >But if you do it illegaly, there is very little risk of detection. >It looks like the Approved ID will be a smart-card with a signing >mechanism (probably escrowed), naturally linked to the Person Number, >real soon now, at least before the mythical y.2000 . Links to physical >characteristics (retina?) are not (openly) discussed yet but may >eventually come into play. ... And: >2) Prepare for Crypto Anarchy. Create untrackable net aliases for > future use. Keep informed of all the tricks to bypass coming > futile attempts to link net pseudonyms to Person Numbers (or > physical characteristics). Enjoy (and help create and protect) > the virtual sanctuary with digital mixes and anonymous http > proxies (and DC-nets or something better eventually). Sad, isn't it, that the world is rushing headlong into an Orwellian future. "Disneyland with a death penalty" ("Wired"--S. Sandfort, W. Gibson). --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Re[2]: FBI seeks huge wiretapping system
by Jay Campbell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>It is a well-known fact that it was common practice for NSA operatives to > ^^^ >masquerade as Injuns in the 1800's and waylay Pony Express riders in order > ^^^^^^ >I think you'll find the NSA was not in existence in the 1800's. I'm disappointed at the sheer number of similar pieces of email I received on this. You'da thought the Capn Crunch reference was silly enough that people would give me a funny look and trash the original message. -- Jay Campbell edge(a)got.net - Operations Manager -=-=-=-=-=-=- Sense Networking, Santa Cruz Node Jay(a)Campbell.net got.net? PGP MIT KeyID 0xACAE1A89 "On the Information Superhighway, I'm the guy behind you in this morning's traffic jam leaning on his horn."

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e$: 24 Hours
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- e$: 24 Hours Yesterday, I had probably the most amazing day I've had in a very long time. As the day revolved around e$, strong crypto, cryptoanarchy, Macs and the life on the internet, I thought I would share it with you. 6:00 Got up before the alarm. Carol, my wife, dropped me off at the gym, where I hadn't set foot in about 6 months. Started up yet another new exercise program. Did a lot of big muscle stuff, like squats and deadlifts -- now I can't climb stairs so well for a while. Shaved off yet another unfinished goatee (3rd time in 6 weeks) because I had to be presentable in public today. 9:30 Showed up at the speaker's desk at Infoworld Boston, got credentialled and went to find David Fox's session on transaction methods. Had some time before, so I ran down to the floor and weaseled an Apple Internet guy named Tom Bartlett into shooting a picture of me with a QuickTake so that Vinnie Moscaritolo, another friend at Apple, wouldn't have a picture of him holding a scrawled sign saying "Bob: send me a GIF for this!" on the e$ web-page he's building for me at http://www.webstuff.apple.com/~vinnie/Rah/ . I had Tom e-mail the GIF to me from the floor, and ran back to the session, with 5 minutes to spare. The session got about 300 attendees, who listened to presentations from Pierre from First Virtual, Cliff from Open Market and Mike from Checkfree, and then I got to talk a bit. I had never spoken to a convention before, and here I was batting cleanup after all the pros pitched their stuff. David Fox introduced me as a "Wild Card", and I did my best to help him out. We were running late, but after asking them to get up and stretch after sitting through 2 hours of dog-and-pony, I asked the audience how many people people were from Boston, and told them about The Boston Society for Digital Commerce and when the meeting was. I then asked them how many of them had ever sold a car, and then asked them whether they took MasterCard from the buyer, and got a nice laugh. I told them that I thought that digital commerce *was* financial cryptography, and that most people settling trades on the net were just figuring that out. I told them to go out and buy Applied Cryptography by Schneier, and Out of Control by Kelley. I told them about the difference between certificate-based and book-entry transaction systems. I told them about Tim May's idea of Crypto-Anarchy, and about the Cypherpunks. Finally I asked them to imagine a world where instead of needing to enforce copyrights and patents, a developer's code would simply refuse to run periodically without a digital receipt saying that some specified amount had been paid, to the developer, preferrably in cash. I told them about Digicash, Mark Twain Bank, and about how important that was, even if it was a bumpy first start. At question-and-answer time, a guy from Germany asked us about the ITARs, regulatory restrictions on international transactions, and deutchmark-denominated business. All of the other presenters allowed that while that was hard, they had patches or were working on it, and that regulations were a problem. I talked about Eric Hughes' idea of regulatory arbitrage, how John Gilmore said that the internet saw censorship, and by extension arbitrary regulation, as damage, and routed around it, and I said that the folks at Mark Twain and Digicash had seen this as a problem and set up their system to be denominated in one of 5 currencies, including marks. I picked up about 10 cards from people who wanted to come to lunch at the Boston Society for Digital Commerce. (Plug: The first Tuesday of the month at the downtown Harvard Club. This month's speaker is Win Treese from Open Market, on how to design systems for digital commerce. E-mail me for details.) In addition, I saw BSDC member Dave Lash, a real-estate mogul turned web-fanatic who told me how to clean up my presentation style for next time. 2:00 After schmoozing, and trying to find a bank to cash a check. I met David Fox and his web guy (forgot your name, sorry) on the trade floor in front of the Netscape booth, which was about 20% the size of the IBM booth, and was blocking the aisles so much that the fire marshall was giving them grief for it. We then went to see Jim Phillips at Security First Network Bank. SFNB is in Atlanta, and while the likes of Citicorp and Chase were putting together proprietary, dial-up, bank-by-phone systems, Jim went ahead and did his stuff on the web for some rediculous fraction of their costs. They were the only bank there. They had this tiny booth way back in the corner, and they were also a fire marshall problem. Jim was talking to a guy from California somewhere about setting up an account right then and there. I told Jim to expect a visit from my anonymous digital signature law source "Irwin" , (for Irwin Cory, The World's Foremost Authority, RIP), who had asked me earlier in the week about SFNB, and how to get ahold of them. Then, David, who was the original Aldus and Radius distributor in Australia before moving here a few years ago, went around lining up sponsors for his WWW pre-tradeshow tradeshow which in turn evolved out of his tradeshow directory business. While we walked around, I talked to David some more about e$pam, my idea for building a group of three e$-mail lists (a filtered list of other e$-ralated sources, an unmoderated "watering hole", and a newsletter), and we agreed to talk more about it on Friday sometime. 3:00 Cashed a check from my first-ever writing sale, a longish rant entitled "The Geodesic Network, OpenDoc, and CyberDog", which originally was posted to apple-internet-users, was cross-posted by bunches of other people in the Mac world to other e-mail lists all over the place, got me fan mail from the likes of Kawasaki, Alsop, Petreley, and various Apple Vice Presidents, and was even cited in a New Zealand law journal. An editor from InfoWorld bashed it from a 20kb rant down to a feature article of about 1300 words, and it will appear this Monday in the November 6th issue. 4:00 Went to see a client, who is the CFO for a famous, er, beauty salon, with about 50 salons world wide. I sort of core-dumped at him about how someday he could send his e-mail his cash to the home office in London every night. He's seen me like this before, so he didn't quite think I was from Mars... 5:45 As a lurker on the internet-marketing list, I got invited to a party at Bob Metcalfe's 5-story Back Bay townhouse. I had recruited Julie Rackliffe, a friend of mine in "Development" at the Computer Museum, to come along so I would know at least one person there. When I got there, I saw Dave Lash again. Small world. Besides the usual groceries, Bob had a big bunch of posterboard on a on his dining room table, and another piece of posterboard on his fireplace mantle. There were a bunch of questions on the table's poster, and one was about winners and loosers. I said that digital financial certificate underwriters would be the winners, and that loosers would be companies which depended on large information hierarchies. There was a question about anonymity, and I quoted Gilmore on network damage again. On the fireplace mantle was this posterboard with an org chart with business-card sized blank boxes all over it. One side of the pyramid said "Client", the other side said "Server", and so I drew a big cloud off to the side with the label "Crypto-Anarchist" in it, and put my card there. A few people moved their cards into the cloud. I was rather pleased with myself... I went upstairs where I met John Levine, who was in the PBS internet special last year, and Margy Levine Young, who wrote "The Internet for Windows for Dummies Starter Kit" in a room with a Windows box, a bonded ISDN connection and a wall projector. I showed a few people the e$ web-page, met the author of the refrigerator magnets page, and found out the John and Margy were fellow Unitarians, and that Margy's husband is the UU webmaster. We're everywhere, we're everywhere. I went up to the third floor, where by that time they were serving coffee and dessert, and Bob Metcalfe was there reccommending desserts to people. By that time I was talking to a trust officer at a very large institutional trustee bank here in Boston about how to underwrite digital cash. This guy was sympathetic because what he really wanted to do was chuck it all and go to work for Open Market. I told him that the next best thing was to let me come in and evangelize his bank a bit. He agreed. Dubiously. Anyway, He wants to come to lunch at BSDC, probably to schmooze the Open Market folks. So while I was standing there waiting for coffee, I told Metcalfe about getting a feature article into his magazine. One thing led to another, and the next thing I know, we're up another flight of stairs, and I'm dumping core again, this time about 10 steps from ARP-1, the original ARPANet transponder. Oh. Metcalfe uses a Mac, even though his internet feed is to a Wintel box. Metcalfe first starts off with a few coy questions about Phiber Optik, and Phil Zimmerman, and he figures out that my interest in cryptography is pretty much in its financial implications. So, for the better part of half an hour, he's quizzing me about stuff like digital cash, digital certificates and financial disintermediation, and pretty much the whole geodesic market rant. He says he likes "Mr., Doctor, Doctor, Huber's" stuff, a reference to Huber's hypercredentialed resume. He talked about these crazy people who were creating a secondary market in Digicash's beta certificates, so I told him about Lucky Green, Rich Lethin and how all of us created ecm. I told Metcalfe about reputation capital, and, when he talked about the evils of anonymity, I talk about how on the net, a key pair *is* your identity, and about Tim May's cryptoanarchy stuff. I told him about BSDC and asked about him speaking sometime, but he says he's working on a conference and a book, and his wife will kill him if he starts making speeches again. He wanted on the BSDC list, though, so I'm going to subscribe him and see what happens. I also said I'd mail him the e$ URL. 10:45 I get home and after telling Carol all about my day, I still can't sleep, so I jump on the net and filter cypherpunks for buyinfo, and then answer some mail from my college roomate, who found me last week. He's a commander in the Navy who's now flying planes at McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. I shot him back a message and told him about the e$ web-page, which he's going to have to sneak into another office to look at some other night, ;-), and I told him that I was writing this and would send it to him when I was through. I still wasn't sleepy, so I plinked on the development version of the e$ page with the new picture, and when I was done with that, I read news, and, in reply to a comment I posted on soc.culture.alaska (I spent middle school in Anchorage), I get a reply from Mr. Pickett, my 7th and 8th grade science teacher, and my favorite science teacher on the whole planet. Since I had just put a picture on my web-page, I put the development page's URL on the message so he could see what I looked like now. 1:45 I finally go to sleep. Cheers, Bob Hettinga -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMJkyyfgyLN8bw6ZVAQFVAAP/Xmkp7H28Q/DfRCqMWiYboEo53T84hOIP n6pM/jjC1XAqf9E1v/i5PRQmCylyoJELEzsq3ET02bs4Wi25tS80dcm6oMHoHtAn 1SFCr6hHGIOxmLPJ+XnKCJgpKZEheLGqsG50ZEos26kQ3O4hD3bjZr5WcEyYFAGi 38i5yTwXR9A= =fKyZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Shipwright Development Corporation, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA (617) 323-7923 "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell >>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf(a)clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<

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Re: lp (134.222.35.2)?
by Alex de Joode 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[..] : This is silly. If the NSA were monitoring traffic with the consent of : EUnet and UUNET (and note that EUnet is owned by UUNET rival PSI), they : wouldn't need to play these routing games; they'd just eavesdrop at an : interconnect or on the leased lines leading into it, run a rough filter : over it to cut down volume, and tunnel the traffic home through other : channels (probably satellite). And if they were monitoring without the : consent of UUNET and EUnet, they still wouldn't play these games because : the providers would be upset about the unexpected load on the expensive : and overloaded transatlantic pipes. PSI has an 11% stake in EUnet, since they took over EUnet Britain, 11% doesn't qualify as 'owning' where I live. Regards, -AJ-

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Re: Photuris Primality verification needed
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"William Allen Simpson" writes: > Folks, I was somewhat disappointed in the response to our previous > requests for verification of the strength of the prime moduli. > > Recently, someone asked for a smaller prime of only 512-bits for speed. > This is more than enough for the strength of keys needed for DES, 3DES, > MD5 and SHA. Perhaps this would be easier to have more complete and > robust verification as well. I think that this is a very large mistake. Allow me to explain why. La Macchia (sp?) and Odlyzko (sp?) have a very nice result which shows that once you've done enough precalculation on a particular modulus, you can break any subsequent Diffie-Hellman operation performed on that modulus with (for our purposes) no effort. 512 bits is, from what I can tell, not far out of the realm of possibility for what someone could try to crack with current machines given enough effort. [Sorry about the spelling. I'm tired, and don't have time to look up your names. I know that Brian at least reads this list and I'm sorry about likely misspelling your name.] Perry

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S/KEY available for HP48 handheld calc
by Laurent Demailly 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Steve VanDevender (<stevev(a)greylady.uoregon.edu>) made available (GNU GPL) an S/KEY implementation for the nice HP hand held calc, It works very nice with both MD4 and MD5 based system (I personnaly tested with my MD4 based logdaemon-4.9, the author recommend OPIE's one) I've put his stuff on my anonymous ftp, you can fetch the stuff starting on ftp://ftp.box.eu.org/hp48/skey/ (ftp.box.eu.org=hplyot.obspm.fr=145.238.44.5) the executable I got from usenet has the following MD5 digest: 1b2613383708d4825f5842ed3e630d40 skey I hear you can get an hp48 for $30 in the Us (I paid my hp48g US$230 when it came out in France two years ago), So no more excuse of clear passwd over the net ! [nor to sell 'smart cards' mega bucks!] ps: Who write PGP for hp48 now ;-) ? [or maybe more seriously some skey hooks to it ?] dl - -- Laurent Demailly * http://hplyot.obspm.fr/~dl/ * Linux|PGP|Gnu|Tcl|... Freedom Prime#1: cent cinq mille cent cinq milliards cent cinq mille cent soixante sept Panama South Africa DST domestic disruption counter-intelligence cracking Legion of Doom -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.3, an Emacs/PGP interface iQCVAgUBMJzlz3k52/beodHxAQEAGQP/XcX3mOw8YIVKe3kEuUkRb6wjB7JAvTi3 t/aQNAT/LQR4ZCx954HbqS231P3qxuz2Hc88xs7HAfbzk91C6VQ9J/r1+C7yBMiR Jlk19lnWny8yHlkwm8KzF1TvqnZ6LvnGgLoiq5ExJIGJpRyJUf912LZf8N06tyFG IJs8ZcN8/Kk= =6RT6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: e$: 24 Hours
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>e$: 24 Hours I have no idea how this got sent out twice. However it happened, I apologize. Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Shipwright Development Corporation, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA (617) 323-7923 "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell >>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf(a)clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<

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Tim, Perry, it's gettin' real old.
by Brad Shantz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May, Perry Metzger, on the topic of off topic things, I think this little flame war of yours can be taken offline. It's getting real old watching two grown men fling mud at each other. That's why I don't watch Presidential debates anymore. (Although I did enjoy Admiral Stockdale turning off his hearing aid when Quayle and Gore were bitching at each other.) This is the last I'll say on the subject. The wonders of freedom allow me to delete any threads I don't want to read. And I exercise that right frequently. Grow up, boys. Brad

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Public Reviews of CheckFree Wallet system?
by Harry S. Hawk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Here is some more information on the Checkfree Wallet (tm) system. I've learn about it from some reporting I've been doing on it.. 1) Has there been any public review of this product? Here is the basic run down It uses a 768-bit key. They claim it is not escrow-ed with the US government. It is export able to most countries except for Sudan, Cuba, North Korea, Syria, Libya, Iraq ot Iran. It encrypts limited bits of information (like Credit Card Numbers) which is why they claim it was able to get export approval. User configures the Wallet(tm) by downloading and installing and configuring it. It works with Proxy servers which I have successfully tested. It generates a public and private key pair using RSA technology. It keeps the payer anonymous to the merchant via the internet. Merchants can learn the payer's name out of band (e.g., by phone). No credit card info is stored on a merchant's site. Payment is encrypted and signed buy the payer and sent to the merchant who add's there version of the transaction and their signature. It is forwarded to check free who then decrypt, compare the payers' and merchant's view of the transaction and if they agree process it. It use is very very quick and easy. It auto configures itself to Netscape. Payment information is sent to the Wallet (TM) from the merchant in a Mime segment, which triggers a launch of the Wallet, the payer binds in their credit card data (all ready at Checkfree (at installation) e.g., which card to use. Then the whole thing is sent to the merchant then the onto Checkfree for processing as indicated above. I was very impressed with the software and it's easy of use. Currently only works on Windows but soon on the Mac.. /hawk -- Harry Hawk Manager of Interactive Communications Warwick Baker & Fiore 212 941 4438 habs(a)warwick.com

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"The Policeman Inside"
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:35 PM 11/5/95, Mats Bergstrom wrote: >Well, also in Sweden, but this is merely against tax money transfered to >the 'less fortunate' (or 'lazy', as you sometimes call them) and is very >little, if at all, connected to anti-surveillance. Cross-referencing >various databases would actually be good for catching those who receive, >for example, unemploment money while actually working full time (especially >common amongst Mediterranian and Middle East 'political' refugees - many >of whom like to come here and work for a handful of years, sometimes adding >a decade to their actual age so they can go home to a warm climate at 55 >to live as kings on their Swedish pensions). Isn't this a dilemma, also at >your home turf? FINCEN efficiency might save some of your tax dollars. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Mats' point is an important issue to think about. The "conservative" who wants to get the bums off welfare and keep his hard-earned kroners or francs may embrace a FinCEN-type computerized police state. In a system of extensive transfer payments, such "person number" tracking is needed to ensure that Citizen Units do not make double claims, do not retire before they have made their full productive contribution to the welfare of the herd, and so on. A "libertarian" would argue that when economic interactions are uncoerced, when there are few if any lay-abouts collecting food stamps, welfare, AFDC, WICC, generous pensions paid by taxpayers, etc., then the "need" for Citizen Unit identification vanishes. This actually has some crypto relevance, besides the obvious crypto anarchy connections. Nameley, parallels with "offline" and "online" clearing. A system in which pieces of paper and various promissory notes are transferred around as money, with later (offline) clearing, tends to require True Names. This so that defaulting parties can be tracked down and collected from. (And of course there are also tax issues, and regulatory issues, but I'm concentrating on the offline or deferred clearing issues that tend to make True Names and physical identities more important.) By contrast, a cash economy--online or immediate clearing--tends to not require identification. "Cash and carry," which has worked for millenia in diverse cultures which have no forms of identification. One pays in corn, or beads, or gold, and that's that. (There are, as Futplex noted I like to say, "lots of issues." We could discuss exceptions to this, such as contracts, age credentials, etc. But, generally, cash transactions tend to produce no compelling need for identification. This is the norm in most retail transactions, unless "checks" or other forms of deferred clearing payment are tendered.) The modern "identity state" is becoming consumed with the notion that everyone needs an index number. Not necessarily because the police want to compile dossiers on them (though this is a factor), but because of the focus on rules and regulations which affect _monetary flows based on identity_. In the U.S. for example, one used to just be able to pay someone to cut one's lawn in cash (or check, if he trusted you, blah blah) or babysit one's children. Now, under new crackdowns on social security laws, income tax estimated payment laws, hiring of undocumented workers laws, etc., this is technically no longer possible. One must, above some tiny threshold of payments, file various tax and social security forms, and take steps to ensure the worker is properly documented (*) (* Most white people in America have little "proof" that they are proper Citizen Units. This leads to uncomfortable situations where only brown- and yellow-skinned persons are asked to prove their identities and their Citizen Unit or Resident Unit status.) There is strong pressure on several fronts to establish a "National Identification Card." Others are opposed. My point, originally, to Rich Graves' mention of Chris Hibbert's excellent FAQ on Social Security Numbers and person numbers, is that it is no longer relevant to fight against a "single index number." Modern data base methods are so well-suited to cross-indexing that it hardly matters whether there's a single point of entry to the data base or not. THE KEY POINT IS THIS: Are voluntary economic transactions between persons to be subject to approval and regulation by the State? If babysitting and lawnmowing, not to mention hiring someone to write some C code, requires submitting tax and Social Security forms, requires checking the J-1 vs. Permanent Resident vs. Approved Citizen Unit status, then the die is cast. Ordinarily, or in earlier years, these rules might have been dismissed as trivial or as mostly ignorable. After all, so long as one is not planning to become Attorney General, who cares whether a housekeeper was "legal" or not? Who cares whether the detailed Social Security, IRS, and Immigration Control forms were filled out properly, or at all? Well, the State is becoming more efficient in tracking such things, and tax penalties are increasing. Further, bounties are being paid to those who inform on "tax cheats." Computerized records are being used to spot those with "apparent incomes" (= lifestyles) inconsistent with their tax filing status. Sure, part of this is to catch "double dippers," such as those collecting unemployment, welfare, AFDC, disability benefits while also doing work on the side. (There's a whole issue here of the laws about welfare recipients not being allowed to work, which I won't get into.) But the danger, and something that should inform our Cypherpunks discussions, is that these laws which are tied to one's status as a Person Unit in the system, inevitably require an extensive "identity tracking" regimen. The libertarian and anarcho-capitalist solution is not to increase the power of the surveillance state to detect fraud and non-compliance, but to roll things back to a more even keel. Even if one believes taxes are "the price paid for civilization," there are superior alternatives to the current system. (My current favorite is: mandatory slavery for X days per year, regardless of age or ability. Instead of taxes, everyone works one day in five, or 2 months out of the year, etc., for the herd. Building roads, picking up trash, administering computers, etc. There are "lots of issues," but even I agree this list is not the best place to discuss it; I mention it in passing.) In closing, we must beware "the policeman inside," to use the William Burroughs term. A surveillance state that arises because modern computers and data bases allow all economic transactions to be monitored, taxed, and approved or disapproved is a horror we should fight with all of our resources. Whether right-, left-, or libertarian-leaning, the implications of this state power to control our lives are horrible. --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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censored? corrected
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

NOTE: More than 8 hours have passed since I sent this text in plaintext directly to Cypherpunks without its being posted, so in this attempt I am sending it encrypted through ALUMNI remailer. - Gary Jeffers gjeffers(a)socketis.net INFO BLACKOUT From THE SPOTLIGHT newspaper's TECHNOLOGY & LIBERTY column by Clark Matthews - Nov. 06, 1995 issue. Powerful national security insiders have established effective control over the entrance gateways to Internet. Disturbing signs are now emerging that the "information superhighway" has been targeted for systematic sur- veillance and political dossier-building on Americans' opinions. This ominous news came in the first of a series of articles by investi- gative journalist Steven Pizzo in WEB REVIEW, an online magazine of cyber- culture and politics (http://gnn.com/wr/) published by Songline Studios of San Francisco. Pizzo is the author of INSIDE JOB, a groundbreaking expose' on the massive fraud and theft of insured deposits in 1980s savings and loan debacle. According to Pizzo, control of Internet "domain name registration" has passed into private hands-with the potential for serious mischief or worse. "Domain names" are the odd looking identifying names that are as- signed to individual computer systems that compose the Internet (logoplex. com, for example). Through a complex chain of licensing arrangements and corporate acqui- sitions detailed in Pizzo's article, this crucial control over Internet domain names has passed from the non-profit National Science Foundation to Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) of Herndon, Virginia. Last May, amid growing public disbelief of Establishment media reports about the Oklahoma City bombing provocation, NSI was purchased by Scientific Applications Interna- tional Corporation (SAIC) of San Diego. SAIC is a $2 billion defense and FBI contractor with a board of direc- tors that reads like a Who's Who of the intelligence community. Board members include Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, the former director of the Na- tional Security Agency (NSA) and deputy director of the CIA; Melvin Laird, defense secretary under Richard Nixon; Donald Hicks, former head of re- search & development for the Pentagon; Donald Kerr, former head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory; and Gen. Maxwell Thurman (ret.), the commander of the U.S. invasion of Panama. Former members of SAIC's board include Robert Gates, the former CIA director under George Bush; current CIA director John Deutch; Anita Jones, Deutch's former Pentagon procurement officer, and William Perry, the pre- sent secretary of defense. The corporation also has a legion of computer network specialists and an entire division of computer consultants. SAIC currently holds contracts for re-engineering the Pentagon's information systems, automating the FBI'S computerized fingerprint identification system, and building a na- tional criminal history infomation system. The Internet is a marvel of computer software technology. It was de- signed to survive a nuclear attack on the United States-like the Post Office, it's literally smart enough to find a way to get the mail through, even if most of the network is missing. But control of Internet domain name registration means the ability to remove troublesome-or outspoken-computer systems from the network. Po- tentially, this control also confers the power to insinuate "phantom" domains into the network-for surveillance purposes, for example-or for real-time, automatic censorship. Furthermore, anecdotal evidence gathered by this author suggests that actual "truth control" is taking place on the 'net now. E-mail messages with controversial contents-including the details of the SAIC takover of domain names-have consistently disappeared as they travel across the net- work. News items concerning the Vincent Foster "suicide" investigation and allegations of NSA bank spying through compromised Inslaw software are being quickly and automatically canceled. And the cancellations are not by by their authors. CRACKDOWN With domain names under the control of secret government insiders, it is even theoretically possible that large parts of the Internet could be SHUT DOWN AND SILENCED at critical times. This could be accomplished by suddenly altering domain name registrations or interposing compromised "domains" at crucial points. These compromised systems could serve as "black holes" at critical times, stopping e-mail and important news from reaching the world-or the rest of the country. Exercises in "turning the Internet off" have already taken place in Taiwan and Hong Kong. In Taiwan, the 'net was successfully shut down. All network traffic-including news, opinions and e-mail sent by computer users-was successfully "bottled up" on the island and prevented from reaching the world. In Hong Kong, the Internet wasn't quite strangled, but the British authorities who control that colony managed to throttle free electronic speech with the rest of the world until everything was bottlenecked into a few little-known satellite links. These are alarming precedents and sure signs that powerful, shadowy forces are preparing to chop at the very roots of America's new Liberty Tree. The secretive people on the board of directors of SAIC are intell- igence professsionals skilled at manufacturing events-and then manufact- uring public opinion and consent by controlling the truth. Will Internet disinformation, censorship or "shutdowns" signal the next American crisis?

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FBI seeks huge wiretapping system
by Jay Campbell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In today's San Jose Mercury, online edition. Forgive me if this has already been passed around. -=- FBI seeks huge wiretapping system BY JOHN MARKOFF New York Times The FBI has proposed a national wiretapping system of unprecedented size and scope that would give law enforcement officials the capacity to monitor simultaneously as many as one out of every 100 phone lines in some high crime areas of the country. Such a surveillance ability would vastly exceed the current needs of law enforcement officials around the country, who in recent years have conducted an annual average of less than 850 court-authorized wiretaps -- or fewer than one in every 174,000 phone lines. The plan, which needs congressional approval for the money to finance it, would still require a court warrant to conduct wiretaps. Still, the proposed expansion of the government's eavesdropping abilities raises questions among telephone industry executives as to why the FBI believes it may require such broad access to the nation's phone network in the future. And privacy-rights advocates see the specter of a Big Brother surveillance capability whose very existence might encourage law enforcement officials to use wiretapping much more frequently as an investigative tool. ``A proposal that envisions some form of electronic surveillance for one of every 100 telephone lines would be frightening to many people,'' said James Dempsey, deputy director at the Center for National Security, a public policy organization in Washington. ``I think law enforcement needs to be honest with the public about what its intentions are.'' Generally, FBI officials contend that an advanced, high-capacity monitoring system will be necessary as more of modern life and business -- and crime -- takes place as voice or computer conversations over digital phone lines. On digital lines, communications are transmitted in electronic pulses represented by the 1's and 0's of computer code. Such communications are harder to monitor than with the old-fashioned analog lines in which conversations are transmitted as electronic signals corresponding to audible sound waves. An FBI spokesman declined to elaborate on the bureau's perceived need for such an expansion of its wiretapping abilities. ``The full implementation is absolutely essential for law enforcement and public safety,'' said Mike Kortan, an FBI spokesman in Washington. ``We are in ongoing discussions with the communications industry. Therefore it would be inappropriate to comment further at this point.'' The plan, which was published in the Federal Register on Oct. 16 but has not drawn much attention yet outside law enforcement and industry circles, is the first comprehensive outline by the FBI of the surveillance capabilities it will require under the controversial Digital Telephony Act that was signed by President Clinton in 1994. The law was adopted in the closing hours of the previous Congress after the administration overcame telephone industry resistance to the extensive network equipment changes that will be required to permit digital wiretapping. In order to overcome that opposition, the administration promised that the government would allocate $500 million to help upgrade industry networks. Whether the law will ever go into effect is an open question, because it requires a federal appropriation, to be paid for out of criminal fines and penalties, that Congress has not yet authorized. The budget legislation now pending on Capitol Hill has no proviso for the digital wiretapping money, although the House budget bill included a wiretapping allocation until last week. The House measure was deleted after objections from several freshman Republicans, including Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia, a former federal prosecutor, who said that he objected to the way the money for wiretapping would be raised and that he had concerns about how the FBI might use such a sweeping surveillance ability. But some lawmakers say the Clinton administration, which has vowed to veto the current federal budget bill, saw little point in pushing for inclusion of the financing for the wiretapping at this time. And others note that money for the digital wiretapping plan, presented as a tough anti-crime measure, could be difficult for lawmakers of either party to oppose outright. The FBI and the Clinton administration are expected to continue seeking funds in the future. The scope of the FBI plan has startled telephone industry executives, who said it was difficult to estimate how much it would ultimately cost to carry out the capacity increases. The officials are worried, however, that if federal funds are not forthcoming, the government may attempt to shift the financing burden to the rates that businesses and consumers pay to use the telephone network. ``The difficulty in this process is going to come down the road when they ask us to redesign our entire systems and not pay us,'' said Larry Clinton, associate vice president for governmental affairs at the U.S. Telephone Association, an Washington-based industry lobbying group. ``If they try to make rate payers pay for this we will run into serious and perhaps even constitutional problems which we hope to avoid.'' The FBI plan, as filed in the Federal Register, calls for designating each local telephone as falling under one of three categories. Category I would be made up of urban areas, where most electronic surveillance currently takes place. In these regions, telecommunications carriers would be required to make available up to 1 percent of their network capacity when sought by law-enforcement officials. In lower-crime urban and suburban areas, designated Category II, phone companies would need to make available up to five-tenths of a percent of their network lines, while the predominantly rural low-crime Category III areas would require 0.25 percent. For many of the most densely populated metropolitan areas, like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, there are tens of millions of phone lines. The FBI document contends that in such places, the demands of digital wiretapping may make it necessary to intercept tens of thousands of phone calls at once. Some industry officials said they were at a loss to understand how the government expected to make use of such requirements. At an industry gathering last year, telephone industry executives discussing the Digital Telephony Act could not think of an example of more than seven wiretaps ever being run from a single phone company office at any one time, according to Ron Peat, director of federal legislation analysis for the Pacific Telesis Group, the San Francisco-based regional Bell company. Some technology experts said that the FBI's projected needs, which the bureau said were based on historical records and on demographic data and market forecasts, reflect a growing belief by law enforcement that electronic surveillance will rapidly increase in importance in the digital age, where most communications will take place using an array of mobile computerized devices. ``These are staggering numbers,'' said Mark Rasch, director of information security law and policy for Science Applications International Corp. in McLean, Va. ``Either they do a lot more wiretaps than they now admit, or they plan on doing a significant larger number of wiretaps in the future because of the fear of domestic terrorism.'' -- Jay Campbell edge(a)got.net - Operations Manager -=-=-=-=-=-=- Sense Networking, Santa Cruz Node Jay(a)Campbell.net got.net? PGP MIT KeyID 0xACAE1A89 "On the Information Superhighway, I'm the guy behind you in this morning's traffic jam leaning on his horn."

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Re: lp (134.222.35.2)?
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by perry(a)piermont.com ("Perry E. Metzger") on Sun, 05 Nov 12:13 PM >Quit looking for the spooks where they aren't. You >should always assume your line is being tapped if you >are saying something you don't want heard, anway. True, it's not Smokey behind the billboard, blinked at you by oncoming headlights, it's the sensors in the roadbed that reads your tag -- when it leaves your home-ain, then at the remailer donkeystops, then at your recreational stash-house, at the pedo-filmery, at the Semtex-Pantex workhide, at the digi-wallet-copyfast, right into ananonymous Ken-Barbie's e-slot. TLA-Smokey is friendly, maybe intra-humanly let you off with a warning, not the anonymous high-techery, it responds only to its friend, the tag -- tracing, storing, mutating the whinefleshers, 0's by 1's. That's the how, maybe, but for who or what or why? Or is it just machines feeding machines incomprehensibles?

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DIR_ty$
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

10-30-95. In slave to Orlin Crabbe's "The Money Laundromat," The NYPaper has a Page One lead story: "Cali Drug Cartel Using U.S. Business to Launder Cash. 105 Firms Suspected. Trade Related Schemes Said to Have Moved $3 Billion Through Companies." DIR_ty$

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