December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Steganography idea: CU-SeeMe
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:28 AM 3/6/96 +0000, Ed Carp <erc(a)dal1820.computek.net> wrote: >On Wed, 6 Mar 1996, Nelson Minar wrote: >> So here's one idea I've had as a place to hide a channel: network >> video, in particular CU-SeeMe video streams. CU-SeeMe is a lowtech > >I think it likely that people will be sending GIFs and JPEGs to each >other far more often than video. Video is far more an "uncommon >communications channel" than is a uuencoded picture. The Quickcam videocameras are $100; they're the next toy to buy after you've got the Soundblaster, CDRom, and 100MB Zip drive. The Macintosh folks will buy them first (:-), but pretty soon they'll be very common, especially for business LAN users to have desktop video. The problem is that, unlike GIFs, CU-SeeMe and other low-bit-rate video compression schemes are _very_ lossy. You can't just put the stego bits in the raw image before running the compression, because they'll get lost, and if you try to fit them in to the compressed image, you've got to do it very carefully or they'll really drastically affect the image. I don't know CU-SeeMe's compression algorithm, but imagine putting bits into a run-length-encoded file: if you put them in the run-length, you'll change the lengths of the runs a lot. If you put them in the color, you'll get lots of streaks of random-looking noise. Either way, it's quite noticeable. So you've got to work very carefully with the algorithm. The other problem with CU-SeeMe is dropped frames, which someone mentioned. That's easier; any email system, especially a stego type, has to deal with lost message. So try to fit your messages into single CUSM frames, and build some tracking or ack messages or maybe message numbering, so you can detect lossage and request retransmits. It can be as complex as X.25-over-stego-over-CU-SeeMe, or as simple as "Message 14 of 32, RSVP". (If you _do_ implement X.25-over-stego-over-CU-SeeMe, you've got a fine April 1 RFC :-) #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281 #

1 0

Re: Square pegs in round holes, matchmaking, corporate mailservers
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:01 PM 3/5/96 -0500, "A. Padgett Peterson P.E. Information Security" <PADGETT(a)hobbes.orl.mmc.com> wrote: [>>Dimitris Tsapakidis <dimitrt(a)dcs.rhbnc.ac.uk> wrote:] > >Bob must find out whether Alice has declared (commited) her interest > >in him, if and only if he has declared (commited) his interest in her. > >Before he does so, he can at most know that a girl is interested in him. > >Another description: Bob and Alice can have a date if they both commit > >to each other. If only one commits, nobody will ever find out about it. > >- T is the trusted third party. > > Well if we *must* use D-H that is a way, but why do that ? Instead of > using a binary assymetric key, why not a triple ? (Just because I do not > know of any does not mean that one does not exist). > > Consider a function such that Alice has a key such that given a message M, > when encrypted by Alice may be manipulated by T such that Bob can decrypt > it. Similarly, Bob has a key that when manipulated by T' can be read by > Alice. Assymetric but not binary. The advantage here is that while "T" > is trusted by both, he/she/it/other is not able to read either message, > rather acts as a catalyst. Oh, that would work fine. Let a, b, and t be Alice, Bob, and Trent's secret DH keys, and g and p be the generator and prime (all math below is mod p.) If Bob wants to talk to Alice, he sends Trent B = g**b, marked "For Alice", optionally anonymously. Trent calculates X = B**t == g**bt, and sends it to Alice. Alice calculates K = X**a == g**bat, calculates H = Hash(K) and posts it anonymously, or sends it to Trent to post or mail to Bob. If Alice wants to talk to Bob, she calculates A = g**a mod p, sends it to Trent, optionally anonymously, marked "For Bob". Trent calculates Y = A**t == g**at , and sends it to Bob. Bob calculates K' = Y**b == g**abt, calculates H' = Hash(K') and notices that it's the same as the H he pulled off the net earlier. Bob says "Oh, wow! Alice wants to talk to me!", encrypts some lame drivel of a message M with key K'==K, and mails it to Alice if he knows her address or posts it with Subject: H', which Alice receives. Comments: 1) If Alice doesn't also want to talk to Bob, or Bob doesn't want to talk to Alice, they don't both come up with H == H', so they only know that _some_ shy person wanted to talk to them but not who it is. 2) Why does Alice reply to the anonymous message? Maybe just because she's free that evening, or maybe because it included a note with it that made her think the sender is a Nice Guy. 3) Under this method, Alice, Carol, Eve, and Greta can get together and notice that they've all gotten mail with keys X; they don't know who X is, but they know he's interested in all of them and he's probably a trolling loser :-) So they all dump him. However, even though they know Bob's public key B, they don't know t, so they can't tell from g**bt mod p that it's Bob, so they can't send him email saying "Get lost, loser" without revealing their identity. So Trent is providing anonymity, and needs to be trusted. Without Trent, you could do a two-way version of the protocol - if Bob wants to talk to Alice, he posts Hash(A**b), and vice versa, but Alice can go evaluate Hash(B**a), Hash(C**a), Hash(D**a), etc., for everyone in the phone book, and find out that it was Bob. 4) If Bob wants to reduce the level of trust he needs to have in Trent, he can create a bunch of keys b1, b2, b3, ...., bk in addition to b, and use a different one for each note. If I remember correctly, he can often calculate the inverse of b, b1,... (??????) So he sends Trent B1=g**b1, Trent sends Alice X1=B1**t == g**b1t, Alice calculates K1=X1**a == g**b1at, H1=Hash(g**b1at), and posts/sends. Since she's also interested in Bob, she does the same with key a, so Trent gives Bob K'g**bat. Bob calculates Z = K'**binv == g**at(b*binv) mod p == g**at, and then calculates Hash(Z**b1), Hash(Z**b2), Hash(Z**b3)..., and notices that H1 = Hash(X**b1) and says "Oh, it's Alice!" On the other hand, this doesn't appear to work if Alice is also using multiple identities. 5) If Trent is a really trustable guy, he can offer meeting services for people who have unusual tastes, such as liking (Exon) and Duct Tape and Political Party Z and (for bipartite variants) suppliers and consumers of various substances. So he could broker a list of (Exon)fans, as long as the activity is not criminal enough to lead to subpoenas or warrants for his transactions (if he keeps them) or his key t (or t1, t2, t3... if he's running multiple lists.) Dimitris's approach of using Hash(message) could be used to exchange preference here as well. If Alice checks the message for Hash("Duct Tape"), she can decide that she and the unknown sender would be a great match, and if she hadn't thought to check Hash((Exon)) she wouldn't know that Bob enjoyed that also. So it's at least some privacy for low-popularity unusual activities :-) 6) Of course, Trent really could be a front for Blacknet :-) Or Trent's key could be stolen and published, embarassing all his customers. > As to why you would want such a curiosity, consider a corporation with 80,000 > mailboxes. It would be desirable for each person to be able to send E-Mail > to any other person but not desirable for each person to have to hold all > 80,000 keys. Given a triple (tertiary ?) function each individual would only > need their receive key and a "post office" transmit key. On sending a message, > it would be encrypted with a session key and the session key encrypted with the > post office key. The post office would have all 80,000 receive functions but > through the assymetic keying would only be able to convert the session key to something > each intended recipient could decode but not be able to decode the message > itself. > This would meet both criteria (not key escrow but that is under "management") > D-H is wonderful but has difficulties with scalability. If such a function > existed (has anyone looked ?) it would solve the problem. Ah. The method I described above doesn't solve your problem; it just solves the original Shy-People's-Dating problem. If your only concern is scalability, and you don't mind doing the multiple-message handshaking Diffie-Hellman requires (<=SPD...), you can use either a signed-keypart Diffie-Hellman or just use PGP with the mailserver signing keys and keyserving. PGP approach: Bob has Public/private keys B/b, Alice A/a, Trent T/t, Sam S/s. Trent is the mail agent at Alice's company, T is well-known. Sam is the mail agent at Bob's company, S is well-known. "Well-known" means that all the mail servers know each other's pubkeys. If Alice and Bob both use the same postoffice, Sam==Trent, so it's simpler. Bob to Sam: Fetch Alice's Key Sam to Trent: Fetch Alice's Key Trent to Sam: A (signed by T) Sam verifies and caches A(signed by T), and already knows T. Sam to Bob: A (signed by T), T (signed by S). Bob verifies T's signature on A, S's on T. Bob to Sam: To: Alice(a)trent.aliceco.com, PGPEncrypted(Message,A) Bob either caches A, or caches T, or doesn't bother. Sam to Trent: (ditto) Trent to Alice: (ditto) Alice decodes the message. If she needs Bob's keys, she asks Sam to fetch them. So there's basically a key-fetching handshake, with Trent and Sam acting as CAs as well as keyservers, and then regular PGP. Clean, simple, and all your regular tools work, except of course that the keyservers use some database to store keys in instead of a big hulking PGP keyring. A Diffie-Hellman relative is a bit messier, because it's Diffie-Hellman. Assume that the modulus and generator p and g are agreed on (e.g. Photuris's.) Alice and Bob have their PGP public keys A, B. Trent and Sam have their PGP public keys T and S, well-known. Bob generates a random x, calculates X = g**x mod p. Bob to Sam: To: alice(a)trent.aliceco.com, X signed B. Sam to Trent: To: alice(a)trent.aliceco.com, X signed B, B signed S. Trent to Alice: To: alice, X signed B, B signed S, S signed T. Alice generates random y, calculates Y = g**y mod p, also K = X**y mod p. Alice to Trent: To: bob(a)sam.bobco.com, Y signed A Trent to Sam: To: bob(a)sam.bobco.com, Y signed A, A signed T Sam to Bob: To: bob, Y signed A, A signed T, T signed S Bob verifies Y, A, T, calculates K' = Y**x mod p == K. Bob to Sam: To: alice(a)trent.aliceco.com, Encrypted(Message,K). Sam to Trent: (ditto) Trent to Alice: (ditto) Alice decodes the message using K. To make things simpler, Bob might include Hash(K) or some other message identifier. In this case, the key-fetching handshake is piggybacked along with the DH key-exchange halves, and then Bob uses the jointly derived session key to send a conventionally-encrypted message (which he _could_ use PGP for...) #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281 #

1 0

test
by uunet!in2.uu.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!info.ucla.edu!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!pwa.acusd.edu!news＠warwick.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

1 0

Re: PLEASE REPLY!!
by uunet!in2.uu.net!munnari.OZ.AU!news.mel.connect.com.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!usenet＠warwick.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

david(a)emeraldis.com (David G. Cannon) wrote: >Did this message make it out to the "real" world?? Please reply to this message >if it did. Thankyou. > >*David* > Your message did make it David. Hi from Australia!! Jim / jaar1(a)student.monash.edu.au

1 0

No Subject
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi! There was a discussion on How to install phone extension sometimes ago. Is there any appropriate URL or Usenet or Newsgroup or Mailing List available? Please email directly to: Durian(a)alpha.c2.org Thank you.

1 0

Re: crypto ++ where?
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:32 AM 3/7/96 -0500, you wrote: >How can I obtain crypto++, I seem to have deleted the email I had reguarding it. The Cypherpunks mailing list is archived on *.hks.net. You can read it with a news reader on nntp.hks.net, or check www.hks.net (which tends to run a few weeks behind since it's indexed monthly so the current partial-month isn't indexed yet.) #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281 #

1 0

Re: FCC and Internet telephones
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:16 PM 3/6/96 -0800, you wrote: > >Dost my ears deceive me? Is this true? >-------- INCLUDED MESSAGE > FCC Asked to Stop Net Phones True that some organization is asking the _government_ to stop their competition? I'm shocked! Why, next thing you know people will be asking the government to restrict imports of small cars, restrict who can run radio stations, ban the hemp industry, tax imported sugar, or limit campaign contributions to non-incumbents. ("Not possible", you say - "that would be Un-American!") Of course it's true. Will the FCC do what they want? Who knows; it's stupid enough that they just might, but it may end up like the Craig Shergold O'Hair Memorial Modem Tax with people writing them crank letters for years after they've decided not to. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281 #

1 0

Re: Another Motivation for the CDA (Federal Sentencing Guidelines)
by tj_lists＠prado.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

** Reply to note from Deranged Mutant <WlkngOwl(a)UNiX.asb.com> 03/07/96 7:06pm +0000 > Yes and no. Depends on the judge. Some are hard-assed about granting > waivers, others aren't. Part of the problerm is that judges have too ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > much discretion. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Couldn't help noticing this, presume you mean Federal Judges since the waiver would be from aspects of GCA 1968, a Federal law. The fact is, at least in sentencing, Federal Judges now have very little discretion. The Federal Sentencing Guideline structure established in the 1980's provides "guidelines" for a given defendant convicted of a given set of charges. Things like prior offenses add "points", ratting on your friends takes away "points". In this case less is better than more. Anyway, a low level bureaucrat fills out a presentence investigation report on the basis of complicated, arcane rules it is easy to get wrong. This report goes to the judge who can pass sentence only within a narrow range, say 6 months 1 way or the other on a 5 year sentence (very few new Federal "crimes" carry less than this). Any departure from this range, either upward or downward, must be justified in a formal opinion, & can be appealed by either party. Very few judges bother. This system is cookie cutter in-justice at it's finest, & only a lack of bureaucratic imagination has prevented it from being computerized beyond the use of word processors to write the report. Since well over 90% of Federal Criminal cases end in guilty pleas, this method has the effect of transferring discretion that formerly belonged to the judge to the prosecutor, who gets to pick from a variety of charges covering the same offense, and the low level flunkey who gets to fill out the forms. This is exactly the big problem with the new "crime" of using encryption in a felony in the Leahy bill. Assuming for a moment this new law is tailored very narrowly & is only used on people who 1. Commit without governmental entrapment an underlying felony. 2. Exclusively use encrypted traffic in direct furtherance of the underlying felony, (example: murder for hire is negotiated via encrypted messages) there still remains the fact that this is simply another tool of prosecutorial discretion, of which there is way to much already. The problem with prosecutorial discretion is that it is always used to encourage snitching, turning this country into a nation of Pavel Mozorov's (12 year old Hero of the Soviet Union who ratted out his parents to the Cheka for concealing a pig from collectivization. His uncles did as should be done in such cases & cut him up with an axe). However, I do agree that in setting conditions other than fines & prison time, Federal Judges do have too much discretion. Chris Lambert (mthreat, Minor Threat) a 21 year old Austin cracker now doing time in Bastrop FCI, as part of his sentence is forbidden to own or work with any computer w/ modem or network card/connection. This of course is to apply after he gets out. Traditionally, counterfeiters, who come from the ranks of printers, merely have to report to their parole officer & get his ok in order to own or go to work for a print shop. cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com mthreat(a)paranoia.com

1 0

Re: Anonymous remailers and Leahy bill
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 08:03 PM 3/7/96 -0500, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: >At 5:22 PM 03/07/96, jim bell wrote: >>Wouldn't help "Bob" in the least. And you didn't read what I wrote very >>carefully, either: Notice that I said, "under a different name." In other >>words, the source of the note does not identify the user name under which >>the illegal activity is promised to occur. Cancelling this particular >>fellow's account does NOTHING to prevent the illegal activity from >>occurring by other, unidentified users, and "Bob" knows it. > >How is this differnet then me calling up AOL and saying "Using a friend's >account whose password I have, I'm going to send child pornography out to >many people sometime tommorow"? It may be similarly illegal, but it's still a bit different. See below. > >I don't know if it is or not, but hopefully it's the same. As long as >anonymous remailers are legally identical to ISPs, I think we don't have to >worry too much becuase ISPs are now serious money-making businesses with >lots to spend on lobbying and legal fees, and will fight any laws that >effect them such. It is occasionally argued that business doesn't like regulation. That observation is misleading: It turns out that _big_ business actually benefits, at least differentially, from regulation: If it costs a fixed amount to keep a corporation on the right side of the regulation, that's the same for a tiny company and a large company, in fixed dollars. However, as a fraction of sales, it can be vastly different. "Big business" is well aware that regulations keep down the competition. "Big business" wants JUST ENOUGH regulation to achieve its ends of reducing competition, but without being too expensive for itself. > Whether this Leahy bill is passed or not, clearly AOL >is not going to quietly shut down their entire company after receiving such >a phone call. And they can't really do anything to stop the theoretical >next-day child porn mailing either. One big advantage that AOL, or for that matter ANY online service has, is that its customers (or the customers of a competing big service) will be on any jury. They are familiar with how such an organization operates, and they can sympathize a bit with the difficulty of monitoring all this material. They may, in fact, want to KEEP AOL from doing this monitoring, and thus they'll cut AOL some slack when it comes to any decision. Prosecutors know this, judges know this, etc. In this case, familiarity breeds tolerance. Encrypted anonymous remailers, however, are more of a shady, fly-by-night sort of operation. The average AOL user may not even have HEARD about them, let alone actually used them or depended on their continued existence. It is far less likely that a juror will understand why they exist, and will be more likely to think the remailer is responsible for any illegalities committed with that service. Besides, any prosecutor is fully aware that AOL has enough money to defend itself fully, and has the ability to generate angry publicity from its customers against its harassers. Essentially by definition, an anonymous remailer can't count on anyone stepping forward and saying, "I use this encrypted anonymous remailer a lot..." >So it would be beneficial to present anonymous remailers as just another >sort of internet service provider. And we only really have to worry when >there are laws that seem to apply to anon remailers but not AOL. On the contrary: It is the application of any such law which is critical, and that can't be accurately gauged until the law is actually passed and it is in the hands of prosecutors. I'm not willing to give them that chance. I'm certain they will abuse the law. But if you doubt their motivations, I recommend that you try to have that section removed. If that section was put there just as a "throwaway," they won't squawk. But I predict they will be extremely reluctant to remove it, because that's exactly the portion of the bill they really want. They don't want you to know this, of course. Please test them. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com Klaatu Burada Nikto -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMT/FyvqHVDBboB2dAQGWbgQAlEpgHvprqslBSJLaGO4A6uk6ixAzVp9L 0FNEFlBqqnTVzLN4phPcjUb1DTPkjQqqoMDFJYD9nBGucyLWfGdvU5xxxLYD9ZAy Qfh57JQoFeR6og9M4khYwAhic+qCXphWKegH7fIGolMi4vW8SXv+OcSbPMQqTAAk rdGarImmTmc= =/9/5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

Re: FCC v. Internet Phone?
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

TWP March 8: "Long-Distance Dueling. Free Dialing Via Internet Faces a Challenge From Small Phone Firms." VIA_net

1 0

Re: Leahy's guillotine
by Gary Howland 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bill Stewart wrote: > Let's look at the word "willfully". Among other things, it implies > knowledge; under US law, to be guilty you have to know you did something > that you at least reasonably believe is an activity that you're not supposed > to do. Agreed, but it's precisely the sort of thing that is misinterpreted by prosecutors and has to be resolved by a judge after a potentially long stay in prison whilst awaiting trial. (All depending on circumstances of course). Too close for comfort I'm afraid. Jim Bell wrote: > 2804. Unlawful use of encryption to obstruct justice > Whoever willfully endeavors (by means of encryption) to (obstruct, > impede, or prevent) the communication of (information in furtherance > to a felony) (which may be prosecuted in a court of the United States), > to an investigative or law enforcement officer shall... I think the following is a tad better: Whoever willfully endeavors (by means of encryption) to (obstruct, impede, or prevent) the communication of information (in furtherance to a felony (which may be prosecuted in a court of the United States)), to an investigative (or law enforcement) officer shall... Gary -- pub 1024/C001D00D 1996/01/22 Gary Howland <gary(a)kampai.euronet.nl> Key fingerprint = 0C FB 60 61 4D 3B 24 7D 1C 89 1D BE 1F EE 09 06

1 0

FWD: FCC's Implementing the CDA Schedule
by Lynne L. Harrison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

FYI - **************************************************** FCC Schedule for Rulemaking Implementing The Communications Decency Act The FCC has announced a schedule for promulgating regulations implementing the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The Communications Decency Act is number 28 on that schedule. The following is from the FCC announcement: Issues/FCC Bureas 28. Obscene or Harassing Use of Telecom. Facilities CCB [Common Carrier Bureau] [OGC] [Office of General Counsel] Statutory Requirements/Deadlines Pursuant to section 223, FCC may describe measures which are reasonable, effective, and appropriate to restrict access to prohibited communications. (83) FCC shall have no enforcement authority over the failure to utilize such measures. FCC shall not endorse specific products relating to such measures.(83) FCC Proceedings Section 223 Measures Timetable NOI [Notice of Inquiry] Third Quarter 1996 Policy Statement First Quarter 1997 For Further Information Contact: Robert Cannon, Esq. 2358 N. Vernon Street Arlington, VA 22207 202-862-4395 (o) 703-527-6631 (home office) ********************************************************** Lynne L. Harrison, Esq. | "The key to life: Poughkeepsie, New York | - Get up; E-mail: | - Survive; lharrison(a)mhv.net | - Go to bed." **********************************************************

1 0

Re: rhetorical trickery
by jf_avon＠citenet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Or it's the list of local dairies, and the guy can't spel.... Diary, dairies... It gives me diarrhoea! Jay Effay

1 0

Re: FWD: FCC's Implementing the CDA Schedule
by Lynne L. Harrison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Oops. The URL is: http://www.cais.net/cannon/noi.html/ ********************************************************** Lynne L. Harrison, Esq. | "The key to life: Poughkeepsie, New York | - Get up; E-mail: | - Survive; lharrison(a)mhv.net | - Go to bed." **********************************************************

1 0

Explosives, Criminality, and Preemptive Action
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At Sun, 10 Mar 1996 Timothy C. May wrote: > At 7:06 AM 3/10/96, JonWienke(a)aol.com wrote: > >Who says they were going to blow anything up? It is perfectly legit for > >farms to have large quantities of fertilizer around--they use it all the > >time. Same with diesel fuel--what are they supposed to run the tractors and > >combines with? Dog piss? DUHHHH! As far as having the instructions for > >mixing them to go boom, who the hell made that a crime? You could bust most > >of the farmers in this country if you criminalize simultaneous posession of > >fertilizer and diesel fuel. Did these people ever actually mix any of the > >fert. and fuel together? Did they threaten to blow up anything? > > > My personal belief, from the news reports I've read (which may be > incorrect, of course), is that the ingredients were for use in a bomb, > whether or not they'd ever have gone through with it or not. The ancillary > items found (dozens of assault rifles, weapons manuals, patriot literature, > crank, meth, etc.), and the stockpiling of ANFO precursors, suggests an > Oklahoma City-type scenario. Hey!, if I lived on a farm I would no doubt possess similar amounts of fertilizer and diesel. I would also possess a few dozen assault rifles if I could afford to (not that I'm a gun nut [I do happen to enjoy shooting, and would doubtless own a few if I lived on a farm] but would have "stocked up" before Klintons assault rifle bill.) I also possess weapons manuals (ranging from bullwhips to blowguns to 66mm anti tank weapons) and what you would call patriot literature (ranging from books on Jefferson, on the civil war ("The South was Right"), to The Turner Diaries.) I am also an ocaissional drug user, so you may find varying amounts of coke/crack, meth, horse, LSD, peyote, and ecstasy in my abode. In addition to this you would find books on lockpicking, hacking, drug manuafacture, holocaust revisionism, credit card fraud, false ID, smuggling, gun-running and tax evasion. You would also find some very violent movies in my collection. But, despite all of these circumstances, I assure you that I have not (and would, ney, could not) commit any non-victimless crime. I am an out and out pacifist Libertarian. > This is what I think was objective reality. I think this is what I call circumstancial evidence.

3 2

Re: Petty Civil Disobedience
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:31 AM 3/9/96 -0500, Declan B. McCullagh wrote: > Perhaps we should put up our own protest web sites with one or two > explicit sexual images as real civil disobedience? I have added a pornographic image to my web site as an act of real civil disobedience. I urge others to do the same. In the course of doing this, I discovered that on windows, Netscape makes jpegs of naked pretty girls look like crap. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

3 2

Re: Cryptanalysis
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) >The usual: Kahn, Denning, and some of the old Dover Press books on crypto. >Also, Herbert Zim wrote a nice little book about 40-50 years ago on codes. >Some of the standard crypto textbooks will of course have more pointers to >cryptanalysis. (Not to sound harsh to Allen, but why would anyone ask here >on the list for recommendations to such a standard subject when Schneier, >Garfinkel, Denning, etc. all have books listed?) Thanks, I'll check. I don't happen to _have_ a copy of Applied Cryptography, etcetera, immediately available, and I had gotten the impression that those concentrated on cyphers as opposed to codes. >And there are so many interesting areas to pursue with using and furthering >modern crypto, that I just can't understand how people can think that >classical cryptanalysis is useful. It might be fun, as a hobby, but it has >no bearing on modern systems. (Well, I'm exaggerating a bit. I suspect that >classical cryptanalysts at the NSA or GCHQ might have some insights into >some problems with modern systems, such as traffic analysis. So I shouldn't >say there is "no use" for it. But I hope you all understand my point in >general. It is unlikely in the extreme that anyone who fools around a >little with classical cryptanalysis will have anything important to >contribute as a result of this.) I never said I was interested in putting stuff about codes into practical usage. Actually, I'm a roleplaying gamer, and I wanted the info for historical settings. True codes appear to be the historical equivalent of OTPs. -Allen

1 0

Re: Petty Civil Disobedience
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sun, 10 Mar 1996 jamesd(a)echeque.com wrote: > > I have added a pornographic image to my web site as an act of > > real civil disobedience. I urge others to do the same. > > > > In the course of doing this, I discovered that on windows, Netscape > > makes jpegs of naked pretty girls look like crap. At 11:40 AM 3/10/96 +0000, Ed Carp wrote: > Check your screen resolution, and make sure it is displaying 256 colors It is not my screen, nor the image, but rather a very common defect in the way they have implemented Floyd Steinberg dithering. They dither to the color cube, as does the Central Point Software file viewer, whose dithering program I wrote, but the Central point software file viewer does a vastly better job. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

1 0

[govt] artist coercion
by jf_avon＠citenet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Bill Stewart <stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com> wrote: >I'll agree with that, except in cases where the corporate client is >being coerced by government (or other Mafia) into not buying >some forms of controversial art. We'd see more controversial >movies/plays/performance art on TV, for instance, if the government >weren't helping us. The coercion occurs at the govt/businessman interface and it does not concern the artist/businessman interface. If the artist refused to com promise, the businessman activities would be so lame that nobody would get interested in it. And it is about time that the business world regain power. I do not mean the big govt-sucking business but the millions of small business that get fleeced by the govt/big business affiliation. > > >>JFA >>Accepting a grant is accepting stolen money. >Only a government grant, or a grant from other thieves... > >>Restore an objective monetary standard such as gold! > >I can see why you don't want the government telling us we have >to use government-printed soft money, but why should they tell us >we have to use "objective" money, whether gold, silver, or > hempscript? >Why should they be making those decisions for us at all? >The free market can do a fine job of picking between competing >hard, mushy, soft, and totally vaporous currencies, and >encouraging or discouraging people from issueing them. Of >course, if you believe >in using government-funded courts to enforce your contracts, >you're stuck with whatever subjective standards the government >feels like using. I think that you are taking things out of context a bit. A govt is a tool that *we* create in order to help run certains things. Among others, are the defence dept, the courts applying as objective as possibles laws and the issuing of money. But today's govt is a living blood thirsty entity that went loose on it's own... JFA -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i iQEVAwUBMULKtciycyXFit0NAQF47gf9GTIlhde47TbZ3YRqKvCuQPiFZJvXsrgZ TZxuLQBP2HxW2vFnBQZiPdW2tWVmUMl2ZX6dblKX2S2yHK54+JhGSLIdSGRdsTyW iLnbu0b5LUT+bAcXOat7cR7JtoqoycbIbATsxLYi0W7U+9HImKWUhJmqsn8mD+Uo 6KmN4Z5TtWGdJ8MMXGncdAX9nhMZosilBfaAOUcm5vzLK2k0ehxNFvRusetuYGGW i+KXkIV9csnWgZ5qfbT1VluPb/v5LIjP6BRxNTTm3PlqIPW7qFyqKHF+eu7PhPK9 vBrMj+hBVpPCE/oJ0xAI79MpJyTvDCfIcwrQrNMEnPoCTpGgGogc/w== =nfLr -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Public Key at http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon Jean-Francois Avon <jf_avon(a)citenet.net> 2048 bits key ID:C58ADD0D 1996/03/01 fingerprint=52 96 45 E8 20 5A 8A 5E F8 7C C8 6F AE FE F8 91

1 0

Offshore Online
by Anonymous User 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yet another Offshore/Privacy provider is online. Try http://194.157.210.14. If you're running First Class Cleint set the network address to 194.157.210.14 port 3004 and create your own userid when you're online. Cypherpunks/cypherpunks is a valid login, but has a daily time limit of 30 minutes, so you might want to create a new identity.

1 0

Infosecurity News blurb on Notes
by Weld Pond 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From the March/April 1996 issue. Lotus accepts escrow In a compromise to obtain export permission, Lotus Development Copr. has agreed to escrow 24 bits of the 64-bit encryption keys used in the new release of Lotus Notes. The U.S. government allows export of unescrowed 40-bit key strings. Under the Lotus plan, U.S. agents will be able to access the escrowed portion of the key but would still have to decrypt the rest to obtain a clear-text message. Althought the NSA has not said it can decrypt 40-bit DES encryption, many postuylate that it can. [end excerpt] Postulate??? And I thought Notes used RC4? Pretty bad for a security journal. Weld Pond - weld(a)l0pht.com - http://www.l0pht.com/~weld L 0 p h t H e a v y I n d u s t r i e s Technical archives for the people - Bio/Electro/Crypto/Radio

1 0

Re: ANTI-CRYPTO CYPHERPUNKS
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

B. Schneier: bs208(a)newton.cam.ac.uk, schneier(a)counterpane.com M. Blaze: mab(a)crypto.com, mab(a)research.att.com J. Bizdos: jim(a)rsa.com S. Safaddar: shabbir(a)vtw.org D. Weinstein: djw(a)vplus.com P.. Peterson: padgett(a)hobbes.orl.mmc.com I wish to point out that some of these people are just probably misguided and should be educated not hurt. A full mail spool is educatio[nal but but it would IMHO be wrong to do mailbombing the postmaster or hacking their accts etc. Give them a chance.

3 2

ANTI-CRYPTO CYPHERPUNKS
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is the first in a regular series of postings of cypherpunks who have joined big brothers fight to deprive you from Unescrowed Crypto. Some of these pigs have come out in favor of the new anticrypto bill which makes it a crime to use crypto if big bro can't read it and also sets up key escrow but others have just said that they don't care if the government can read YOUR mail as long as they get what they want. A few megabytes an hour of email from real cypherpunks/patriots should help these guys see the errors of their way when they give away your rights. B. Schneier: bs208(a)newton.cam.ac.uk, schneier(a)counterpane.com M. Blaze: mab(a)crypto.com, mab(a)research.att.com J. Bizdos: jim(a)rsa.com S. Safaddar: shabbir(a)vtw.org D. Weinstein: djw(a)vplus.com P.. Peterson: padgett(a)hobbes.orl.mmc.com

1 0

TER_ror
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Economist, March 2, 1996, pp. 23-25. What is terrorism? The use of terror is more widespread and effective than is generally recognised June 1914: a young man in Sarajevo steps up to a carriage and fires his pistol. The Archduke Eerdinand dies. Within weeks, the first world war has begun. The 1940s: the French resistance kill occupying troops when and how they can. June 1944: at Oradour-sur-Glane, in central France, German SS troops take revenge, massacring 642 villagers. August 1945: the United States Air Eorce drops the world's first nuclear weapons. Some 190,000 Japanese die, nearly all of them civilians. Within days the second world war has ended. Which of these four events was an act of terrorism? Which achieved anything? Which, if any, will history judge as justified? And whose history? Terrorism is not the simple, sharp-edged, bad-guy phenomenon we all love to condemn. No clear line marks off politics from the threat of force, threat from use, use from covert or open war. Who is or is not a terrorist? The suicide bomber, the rebel guerrilla, the liberation front, the armed forces of the state? In practice, what act or person earns the label depends on who wants to apply it. To Ulster loyalists all IRA violence is terrorism; to Sinn Fein it is part of a legitimate war.To many Israelis, everyone from the suicidebombers in Jerusalem or Ashkelon to the Hizbollah grenade-thrower in South Lebanon is a terrorist; to many Arabs during the 1982 Lebanon war, the worst terrorists in the Middle East were the -- entirely legitimate, uniformed -- Israel Defence Force. If the concept is not to vanish into all-embracing fudge, two distinctions can be drawn, though habitually they are not. Terrorism is indeed about terror; not just violence, but its use to spread terror. And the violence is aimed specifically at civilians. Classical terrorism, ideological rather than territorial, reveals the niceties. Recent decades saw West Germany's Baader-Meinhof gang and Red Army Faction murder prominent businessmen such as Alfred Herrhausen and Jurgen Ponto (bosses of Germany's two largest banks, Deutsche and Dresdner respectively. Italy's Red Brigades murdered Aldo Moro, a former prime minister. Its far right in 1980 blew up a train in Bologna station, killing 84 people. Which of these was truly terrorism? Arguably, only the last. It was an act of indiscriminate violence to terrorise citizens at large; the others were discriminate assassinations to win publicity and display power. Likewise, lobbing mortar-bombs into a British army base in South Armagh may have deadly results, but it is guerrilla warfare. Planting a bomb that kills a dozen diners in a restaurant is terrorism. The suicide bomber in Jerusalem was a terrorist; the Hizbollah fighter in South Lebanon attacking Israeli army patrols is not. Even in the distinction between guerrilla warfare and terrorism, there are grey areas. The soldier in a tank is a military target. What about one in a jeep escorting civilian vehicles? Or returning on a bus from leave? A bus that may -- and was, when a suicide bomber attacked it in Gaza last April -- be carrying civilians too? There are, in contrast, distinctions often made that ought not to be. What is or is not "terrorism" does not depend on the badness or goodness of the cause, nor on whether those espousing it have the chance to express their demands democratically. When President James Garfield was assassinated in America in the same year, 1881, that a Russian terrorist group blew up Tsar Alexander II, the Russians wrote an open letter condemning Garfield's killers and arguing that: In a land where the citizens are free to express their ideas, and where the will of the people does not merely make the law but appoints the person who is to carry the law into effect, political assassination is the manifestation of despotism ... Despotism is always blameworthy and force can only be justified when employed to resist force. Yet despotism does not justify throwing bombs into crowds (as the group sometimes did). The fact is that a good cause may use terrorism just as a bad one may. South Africa has provided a clear example. The ending of white dominance was a plainly good cause. For the most part, the African National Congress used mass demonstrations and industrial sabotage to advance its cause. But the men who shot up a white church congregation or planted a bomb outside a cinema were terrorists in the purest sense of the word. Nor does the terrorists' ultimate success or failure alter the truth. Menachem Begin got to lead a country; Yasser Arafat may do; Velupillai Prabhakaran, who leads the Tamil Tigers, probably will not. None of that changes the fact that Deir Yassin (a massacre of Palestinian villagers by Israelis fighting to establish their state), the killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972 and this year's Tamil Tiger bomb in Colombo were all acts of terror. The terror of the state So much for the underdogs. Can there be terrorist governments too? The Americans certainly think so when they accuse Libya or Iran of supporting international terrorism. In the cold war, international terrorists were used to wage war by proxy: the East German regime provided safe houses for Baaders and Meinhofs; the modern era's most notorious terrorist, the gun-for-hire Carlos the Jackal, made his career in this world of state-sponsored terrorism. All that was diplomacy by terror. Can a recognised government also be guilty of terrorism against its own people? Yes. Stalin used terror systematically to consolidate his power -- random murders of Communist-Party members and army officers in the 1930s, massacres and exiles of smaller ethnic groups throughout his rule. Much of Latin America practised state terrorism in recent decades. The brasshat regimes of the day faced left-wing, sometimes terrorist movements. Many fought back with terror. And not just through paramilitaries or unacknowledged death squads. The infamous massacre at El Mozote in El Salvador in 1981 was the work of that country's regular army. The unit that did it had a cheerful song of its own, "Somos Guerreros": We are warriors, Warriors all! We are setting out to kill A mountain of terrorists. What in fact they killed was over 500 peasants; probably the worst "official" massacre in Latin America's recent history. Can regular armies, in regular war, be guilty of terrorism? The answer, surely, is yes. Look at the Japanese rape of Nanking in 1937, when not hundreds or thousands but ten of thousands of civilians were murdered, to terrorise the rest of China. Then go a step further. Can the armies of proud democracies be guilty too? A century ago, the rich world, with the rules of war that it claimed to use, would have called attacking civilians impermissable. The modern world has other ideas. The Allied bombing of Germany was aimed at civilians in the hope of shattering morale: in short, terror. The fire bombing of Tokyo and the atomic weapons that vaporised Hiroshima and Nagasaki were arguably aimed at government morale, not that of Japan's population. Their victims did not notice the difference. Who kills and how? What use, one can ask, is a definition so wide that it can go from Stalin to the American air force? There are two answers. First, it is a reminder that terrorism, historically, has been the tool of the strong, not the weak. Medieval armies, having taken a besieged town, would slaughter some or all of the citizens to encourage other towns to surrender faster. During India's struggle for independence, by far the worst terror was the Amritsar massacre in 1919, when British-officered troops shot up a political gathering, and carried on shooting until the bullets ran out; 379 civilians died (and it worked: the rebellious province of Punjab returned to order). In contrast, discriminate assassination was the typical weapon of the 19th-century anarchist and nihilist. By and large, true random terrorism has come in the past 30 years, as in the Bologna train bomb, the recent nerve- gassing of the Tokyo metro by a religious cult, or the Oklahoma City bomb; all three crimes were aimed at no matter whom for a purpose so vague or Utopian as to seem irrelevant, except to the deranged. Even in this period most -- not all -- IRA killing was aimed at defined targets: soldiers, policemen, individual Protestant farmers in border areas. The Basque violence of ETA has often followed this pattern. Peru's Shining Path guerrillas are truer terrorists, but even they (mostly) prefer the tactics, honed by the Vietcong, of killing officials, not just (as in some infamous massacres) everyone in sight. Algeria's and Sri Lanka's terrorists today probably have the strongest claim to be called spreaders of true random terror. The second thing one can learn from the wide definition of terrorism is that the phenomenon is neither uniquely wicked, nor -- still less -- uniquely deadly. People fight with the weapons they have: knives, Semtex, rifles, fighter-bombers. All their users are alike convinced of their own righteousness, all kill and all their victims are equally dead. What they are not is equal in number. The Munich terrorists killed 11 Israelis; Israel's retaliation against the Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh, however justified, killed about 100 Arabs. The State Department has totted up the deaths due to international terrorism from 1968 through 1995. Its total, and it defines terrorism broadly, is 8,700. Twenty-four hours of air raids killed six times as many civilians at Dresden in 1945. One is a crime, says international law, the other a legitimate act of war. The response Is all this mere word-play? It is not. It crucially affects responses to terrorism. One true difference between a terrorist group and a government is that the group is almost impossible to smash. You can destroy or seize a government's ability to make conventional war; you will never get every terrorist's last stick of dynamite or timing mechanism, and it requires wonderfully few terrorists to keep a civilised society on edge. But many other imagined differences are less great than they might appear. It is a common error to suppose that because terrorism is not war, and because its weapons are not the full panoply of war, then the psychology of terrorists must be different too. Of course, there are plenty of curious specimens among terrorism's ranks: Carlos the Jackal, now in French hands, was not just any old gunman; or consider Abimael Guzman, an academic who until his capture in 1992 led Peru's Shining Path movement. Every terrorist must have personal devotion to the cause -- he is, after all, risking his liberty, and often his life; not many reluctant army conscripts, drafted by a legitimate government, are likely feel the same way. And plainly, say those who know them, the IRA and other groups include people who enjoy violence for its own sake. But so do most armies. And most governments, once at war, can produce remarkable devotion to the national cause. In its own terms, a warring terrorist group, like a warring government, is "pursuing diplomacy by other means", even if its means of war are different. It too is subject to highs and lows, to war fatigue and collapses of morale, to premature celebration of a battle won as if it had been the war. It too can be threatened with a heavy hand; some of its members may be wooed with a lighter one. Terrorists, like governments, may be rational: they are pursuing a policy they hope will succeed. And the more it works, the more vigorously they will pursue it. It is always hard, when terrorism is just one element in a complex pattern of events, to identify its impact. But the world is manifestly a different place because of acts of terror. In 1948, the Israelis blew up the King David hotel, the administrative centre of the British rulers of Palestine. The atrocity helped persuade the British to leave. Often, terrorists help advance a general cause, but not their own particular aims. That may be the case with the IRA. Irish Republican terrorism helped dramatise the nationalist cause throughout periods of discriminatory Protestant rule. And Britain has made concessions to the nationalists. In the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985, the British accepted the right of the Irish Republic to a say in a province of the United Kingdom; in the two governments' Downing Street declaration of 1993 Britain said it had "no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland". It is hard to imagine any other government saying such things of its own accord. Yet whether it was the IRA that brought this about, or persistent pressure from the Irish government and peaceful nationalists in the north, is debatable. The leader of the biggest nationalist party in Northern Ireland, John Hume, argues that IRA terrorism has been the main obstacle to a peaceful settlement in Ulster. If so, the IRA may also have harmed the nationalist cause. And sometimes, terrorists can advance both a general cause and themselves. The PLO'S campaigns in the 1970s made the organisation the dominant representative of the Palestinians. They also helped solidify the Palestinians' own sense of their distinct identity, which until then had been relatively weak. Just as terrorists make a difference to the world, so changes in the world make a difference to terrorists. It was not just their own weakness that led the British to quit India, or later Cyprus (whose EOKA gunmen, though damned as terrorists, were more like guerrilla fighters), or later still Kenya (where they faced a genuinely terrorist liberation movement). Weakness played its part, but so did a world view that said colonial empires had had their day. Much the same was true in South Africa. F.W. de Klerk, probably the last white president there, may not have been a more virtuous man than the architects of apartheid who preceded him. But he was and is a realist, who lived in different days and under different pressures. In that case, a just cause plainly helped the terrorists. For Muslim countries the Palestinian cause was no less just. Western countries, guiltily aware of the horrors of Jewish history, disagreed, and it took 20 years of Israeli occupation and the intifada, the Palestinian uprising of 1987-90, to persuade them that the PLO too had a case. It is still not one that much impresses Americans; and though other westerners may have sympathy with Palestinian dreams of statehood, any movement that still seeks a quite different thing, the destruction of Israel, on top will -- very rightly -- find that its bombers face a western world united behind the Jewish state. Like the rest of us -- mostly In all this, what is different about dealing with terrorism? The answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, is not very much. Any government has its own interests, its own pressures, its concessions it can make and those it cannot. It fights its conventional wars with tanks and aircraft, its small-scale wars -- partly terrorist, mostly not -- with intelligence men and small arms. It cannot, usually, zap the terrorists' territory as it could that of a hostile state. But its psychology will be much the same in the two cases -- and so will that of its enemies. The terrorist or suicide bomber or gunman or fighter or liberation hero is not different from other men (men, sic; rarely have women played any notable part, any more than they have in old-fashioned war). With one notable exception: the nutters, whether with a cause or no evident cause at all. The American way-out redneck who thinks he has to plant a bomb, when he could vote for Pat Buchanan, is beyond any but a psychiatrist's reach. So too elitist solipsists like the Baader-Meinhof mob, convinced that murder was justified because they knew all the answers and it was society that was out of step. Among the almost causeless, Italy's far right may have sought instability, but for what? That was never clear. And no known concession could have led Japan's Aum Shinrikyo cult to put aside its chemistry set. Is it coincidence that three of these four groups seem to specialise in the true terrorism, the random murder of civilians for terror's sake? Perhaps it is not. [End] This special essay is from an issue of The Economist that also writes on "in the mind of the terrorist," "a new plan for Ulster" and "Israel, Palestine and Hamas."

4 3

SWI_tch
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Science, 1 March 1996: "Isotope Switch Toughens Transistors." Semiconductor researchers are reaching for superlatives to describe the discovery that a simple isotope switch deuterium for hydrogen can improve transistor lifetimes by factors of 10 to 50, according to a paper just accepted at APL. The finding "has huge implications worldwide," says Dan DiMaria of IBM. "Mixing Nanotube Structures To Make a Tiny Switch." Two research teams have developed a way to make an all-carbon nanotube that behaves like a semiconductor at one end and a metal at the other. The intersection in the middle forms a gatelike junction that controls the flow of electrons. In the macroworld, such gates, known as heterojunctions, form the basis for transistors and a host of other electronic devices. (PRL, 5 February.) SWI_tch

1 0