December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: New X-Ray Imager
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:38 AM 2/4/97 -0500, Adam Shostack wrote: > >| A poll last week by the Los Angeles Times found that a majority of people -- >| 58 percent -- said they would curtail some civil liberties if it would help >| thwart terrorism. Thirteen percent said it would depend on what rights were >| at stake. The poll didn't ask people to single out any rights. > > Its worth noting the 'if it would help thwart terrorism.' It is irrelevant if terrorism is indeed be thwarted. The public does not require this to happen. All that matters is to generate the *perception* of increased security, not to increase security itself. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred "I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." Mahatma Gandhi

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Re: Moderation, Tim, Sandy, me, etc. * Strong crypto == DES?!
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"gnu(a)toad.com" "John Gilmore" 4-FEB-1997 12:20:22.10 >Tim, the Cypherpunks have chosen to follow Sandy's lead for this >month. I'll admit I made it easy for them, but the results are >conclusive. There are 1311 addresses in the cypherpunks list today; >42 in the unedited list; and 19 in the flames list. Forty people >cared enough to read every posting; the other thousand either wanted >to try the experiment -- or didn't care enough to send an email >message. Which, as we all know, is a very low threshold. You're making an invalid assumption... namely that people who stayed on the moderated list are neccessarily wanting it to be the main list. This isn't the case with me, for instance. I'd also point out that some of us - including me - were taking the time to take a look at what happened with the moderated list. On the one hand, it did result in a decrease in the trash messages... on the other hand, it also drove away 1+ good posters (TCMay for one). As I've said before, I might wind up going with Sandy's (or some other) filtered list. But changing the name (effectively, to cypherpunks-unedited) was a bad idea. >I'm definitely bugged by the community's attitude toward my >"censorship". Rather than being glad that someone, anyone, was doing >something about the major problem on the list, 99% of the reaction was >to create even more ill-considered, emotional flamage. *I* didn't >make the signal/noise get worse at that point -- *you-all* did. I can see how you might ignore objections from those who did make the signal/noise get worse... but from those who didn't? _I_ tried to help you by letting you & Sandy know when something was going wrong. >Perhaps at that point I should have shut down the list, as Lucky is >now suggesting. "Asking the list what to do" was clearly not a useful >option. Sandy cared enough about the community to make some concrete >suggestions to me about how to get the list back on track. They >involved a lot more work than the previous setup. I told him if he >was willing to do the work, we could try it. As Dale suggests, I >wasn't about to waste my time reading the whole list in real time and >passing judgement on the postings. Sandy was, for a month. I (and others, I believe) are gratified by y'all's attempts to help. I just think that you went about it the wrong way. >Start a mailing list on another site! Move this list to somewhere! [...] >The experiment will be over in a few weeks. Who's going to take over >deciding how to run the list, and running it? Would you be willing to help in starting up a distributed list? That would appear to solve at least some of the toad.com problems (keeping it running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) with which I am sympathetic. >If you want to help organize what I'll call the `progressive crypto >community', for lack of a better term, then please do. Otherwise, in >the immortal words of Lazarus Long, "PIPE DOWN!". I'm willing to help the _libertarian_ crypto community, to the limit allowed by my available resources (I'm a grad student). Organize? I'm not so sure to what degree that's helping. Progressive? I'm not a liberal. Slight but meaningful difference in terms. >PS: Can we talk about crypto too? It's clear from the last few days >of press releases that the pro-GAK forces are again working to confuse >novices into thinking that two very different things are the same >thing. Last time it was "public key infrastructure" and "key >recovery". This time it's "strong crypto" and "56-bit DES". What >should we do about this? Educate the public? The public won't listen until 56-bit DES is broken; then, they can be told that "somebody broke the cryptography used by banks" and they might listen. In other words, what can be done is supporting DES-breaking efforts (ideally, via the collection of different possible keys and their indicators, as someone had mentioned earlier - sorry, I'm a biologist, not a mathematician, so I've forgotten the actual terms. It was something that would essentially enable the near-instant breaking of _any_ DES code after the competion of the project. My apologies if I've gotten mixed up on this). -Allen

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Re: New X-Ray Imager
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:38 AM 2/4/97 -0500, Adam Shostack wrote: > >| A poll last week by the Los Angeles Times found that a majority of people -- >| 58 percent -- said they would curtail some civil liberties if it would help >| thwart terrorism. Thirteen percent said it would depend on what rights were >| at stake. The poll didn't ask people to single out any rights. > > Its worth noting the 'if it would help thwart terrorism.' It is irrelevant if terrorism is indeed be thwarted. The public does not require this to happen. All that matters is to generate the *perception* of increased security, not to increase security itself. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred "I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." Mahatma Gandhi

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Re: New X-Ray Imager
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Lucky Green wrote: > At 10:38 AM 2/4/97 -0500, Adam Shostack wrote: > >| A poll last week by the Los Angeles Times found that a majority of > people -- > >| 58 percent -- said they would curtail some civil liberties if it would help > >| thwart terrorism. Thirteen percent said it would depend on what rights were > >| at stake. The poll didn't ask people to single out any rights. > > > > Its worth noting the 'if it would help thwart terrorism.' > > It is irrelevant if terrorism is indeed be thwarted. The public does not > require this to happen. All that matters is to generate the *perception* of > increased security, not to increase security itself. Let's remember though that perception of security applies not only to passengers, but also to potential terrorists. If they *think* that they would not be able to bring a bomb easily, they would be less inclined to do so. - Igor.

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Re: Moderation, Tim, Sandy, me, etc. * Strong crypto == DES?!
by Against Moderation 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John Gilmore <gnu(a)toad.com> writes: > Tim, the Cypherpunks have chosen to follow Sandy's lead for this > month. I'll admit I made it easy for them, but the results are > conclusive. There are 1311 addresses in the cypherpunks list today; > 42 in the unedited list; and 19 in the flames list. Forty people > cared enough to read every posting; the other thousand either wanted > to try the experiment -- or didn't care enough to send an email > message. Which, as we all know, is a very low threshold. I just have to point out that you are ignoring some important factors (though I do trust your intentions and believe it is unintentional). I initially tried subscribing to all the lists, but the headers of the edited and unedited lists were identical making it impossible to sort the mail. To make matters worse, some messages seem to have gone out only to the edited list, and not to the unedited (particularly at the beginning), so that, unable to come up with a decent filtering scheme easily, I finally gave up and just subscribed to cypherpunks. In general, unsubscribing and resubscribing to a mailing list is not completely trivial. In addition to the particulars of cypherpunks, there are also the issues of what if your E-mail address depends on the machine you send mail from and your unsubscribe request gets delayed for confirmation. What if the new list no longer works properly with your mail filter and you end up with 1,000 pieces of cypherpunks mail in your main mailbox, etc. These are not insurmountable obstacles, but they certainly provide a strong enough disincentive for people to switching their list subscriptions that I think the numbers you list above are meaningless. Perhaps a better comparison would be to look at how many people subscribe to the other two filtered cypherpunks lists. > Perhaps at that point I should have shut down the list, as Lucky is > now suggesting. Well, you don't appreciate the content of the list, and you seem to feel that many members of the list don't appreciate what you are doing. Why not shut the list down? I can think of one reason: cypherpunks seems to suck in a lot of crap, and might be keeping that crap away from the coderpunks list. Other than that, though, I think killing this list would probably be a good idea.

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Re: Moderation, Tim, Sandy, me, etc. * Strong crypto == DES?!
by Jeff Barber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm another long time list member. I've posted before on a number of occasions but not often. And I was one of those who subscribed immediately to the unedited list. Anyway, herein my 2 cents. John Gilmore writes: > Tim May said: > > I don't want Sandy Sandfort sitting in judgment on my > > posts, deciding what the Cypherpunks--a group I co-founded for God's > > sake!!!!--are to be allowed to read and what they may not. > > Tim, the Cypherpunks have chosen to follow Sandy's lead for this > month. I'll admit I made it easy for them, but the results are > conclusive. There are 1311 addresses in the cypherpunks list today; > 42 in the unedited list; and 19 in the flames list. "Conclusively" this has shown only that most folks are willing to go along with an experiment -- especially if it requires them to do exactly nothing. The results of the moderation experiment itself can't possibly be conclusive until the moderation has gone on for much longer--a few months at least, possibly years. Then, we'll see how many people are willing to put up with the high volume over the long term, even possibly in the absence of thoughtful essays from long-time list members (like Tim) who have been driven away from the list. Even if it "survives" by that criteria, it may not survive in *my* book. There are only a handful of people whose posts make the cypherpunks list worthwhile (IMO of course). There're quite a few others who contribute to the discussion but aren't themselves worth the trouble (no offense intended to anyone; I would certainly count myself in this group as well). I don't deny that putting up with the noise on the list takes some effort. In fact, after years of surviving with only my 'd' key, I'd finally been driven to install a procmail filter shortly before moderation was announced. Interestingly, since that point, it *has* become more difficult to filter--but IMO that's because it's also gotten less interesting (how do you know if you're filtering is successful?). In fact, lately I've begun to "filter" *all* of cypherpunks into an alternate mailbox file, and find that I'm perfectly content to look at it only every couple of days, and just pick and choose among the posts based on author and subject. I don't claim to be representative of the average cypherpunk, but in my view, this is a bad sign--it indicates a lack of compelling "content". It might as well be a Usenet group--I don't feel like a "member of the Cypherpunks list" anymore. As the list stands now, I would hardly even notice (or care) if I were no longer subscribed. > I'm definitely bugged by the community's attitude toward my > "censorship". Rather than being glad that someone, anyone, was doing > something about the major problem on the list, 99% of the reaction was > to create even more ill-considered, emotional flamage. *I* didn't > make the signal/noise get worse at that point -- *you-all* did. Well, I did do something. When the volume got too high for me to take unassisted, I installed procmail to tailor the list to my own likings. Many have been advocating it on the list for years. I was just too lazy to do so until the pain of not having it finally got too high. As for the signal to noise ratio, John hasn't made it worse, but he hasn't made it much better either. No offense is intended--John's posts were always at the top of my reputation list--but he posts so infrequently that he falls into that "not worth subscribing for" group. What was the problem with the list that finally required that somebody "do something"? Sure, the list was high volume. And there were a lot of flames and silly useless garbage. But this is no different than it has been for years. And the Vulisgrams were no more (or less) vicious or annoying than Detweiler's Medusa and S.Boxx rants from the old days. (The reason I personally could stand it [without procmail] back then was that I wasn't on so many *other* mailing lists at the same time.) > The experiment will be over in a few weeks. Who's going to take over > deciding how to run the list, and running it? Can't we just forget any of this ever came up? Drop the moderation, resubscribe the Vulis 'bot and go on as before. > PS: Can we talk about crypto too? ... Sorry, that would be off-topic; this list is only for discussions of the cypherpunks moderation policy. Maybe you could post something on Perry's "cryptography" list though. (:-) -- Jeff

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Re: Dissolving Choke Points
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:36 PM 2/3/97 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote: >What I have seen is a pretty complete elimination of the signal that >was there. Some might argue that this is "just" because Tim stopped >posting. But so what? The result of moderation was the elimination >of signal. Nonsense. The signal had left long before the moderation began. The steepest drop in signal (not S/N ratio) was between shortly before Perry left and Vulis had completed his takeover. Signal is cause by signal generators. Most top signal generators, other than Tim, had left because of pollution caused by the likes of Vulis, aga, and his homophonic boyfriends. Moderation has nothing to do with the loss of signal other than that signal from Tim was lost. And while I appreciated Tim's essays, they were never the sole source of signal on the list. Tim did not even provide the majority of signal. "Best individual contributor", sure. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred "I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." Mahatma Gandhi

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e$
by mixmaster＠remail.obscura.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timothy May is so full of shit that some of it bursts out on this mailing list. o /\O/ O Timothy May 0 \\ | 0-# // | / \

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[UPDATE] Making OCR'ed code transfer easier
by nobody＠zifi.genetics.utah.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Deceased Vilus has such a small penis because the mohel who circumcised him was trying to do the world a favor. _ /| `o_O' Deceased Vilus ( ) U

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Press/Digital Wins US Dept of Comm. Approval to Export Encryption Prod. (fwd)
by Vincent Cate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 08:37:24 -0500 From: DIGITAL PRESS RELEASE <irprod(a)nimv03.das.dec.com> To: pr-news(a)majordomo.das-x.dec.com Subject: Press/Digital Wins US Dept of Comm. Approval to Export Encryption Prod. |||||| Digital Press and Analysts News |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Digital Equipment Corporation Maynard, Massachusetts 01754-2571 Editorial contact: Patrick Ward (508) 493-9441 patrick.ward(a)mail.dec.com Digital Equipment Corporation Wins US Department of Commerce Approval to Export Stronger Encryption Products 56-bit Data Scrambling Technology Safeguards Internet Commerce Worldwide MAYNARD, Mass., February 3, 1997 -- Digital Equipment Corporation today announced that it has won United States Department of Commerce approval to export 56-bit encryption products worldwide, the strongest yet for protecting Internet commerce worldwide. Last week a University of California at Berkeley graduate student used a set of workstations to crack a 40-bit encryption code in 3.5 hours. "The same workstations would require more than 20 years to break a 56-bit Data Encryption Standard (DES Code), according to Samuel H. Fuller, DIGITAL's vice president and chief scientist. "The Commerce Department's action enables DIGITAL to provide its international customers with complete systems for electronic commerce over the Internet, including the necessary security software," according to DIGITAL's Chairman, Robert B. Palmer. "This makes the Internet more attractive for our customers worldwide, and represents an exciting market opportunity for DIGITAL." "We are very pleased with the leadership shown by DIGITAL's top management, including Robert Palmer, in making a long-term commitment to develop, produce and market key recovery products and to take advantage of the Administration's new policy on encryption exports," said Sue E. Eckert, assistant secretary for Export Administration. DIGITAL will immediately export 56-bit encryption for its OpenVMS operating systems and for its RoadAbout/DES Product for wireless LAN computing. Shipments of the 56-bit export version of AltaVista Tunnel will follow this year. "AltaVista Tunnel software can simply and cost-effectively create 'Virtual Private Networks,' allowing customers who are traveling or at remote sites to securely access their company's private network over the public Internet," said Ilene H. Lang, president and chief executive officer of AltaVista Internet Software, and a vice president at DIGITAL. "Now the Virtual Private Networks we offer to customers in the United States can become Global Private Networks as the market expands worldwide." The Commerce Department announced on December 30 that American companies could export "strong" or Data Encryption Standard (DES) encryption products, such as DIGITAL's industry-leading AltaVista Tunnel, if the companies could demonstrate progress in developing key-recovery products over the next two years. Previously the US government had restricted export of strong encryption for security reasons. Digital Equipment Corporation is a world leader in open client/ server solutions from personal computers to integrated worldwide information systems. DIGITAL's scalable Alpha and Intel platforms, storage, networking, software and services, together with industry- focused solutions from business partners, help organizations compete and win in today's global marketplace. #### Note to Editors: DIGITAL, the DIGITAL logo and OpenVMS are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation. CORP/97/537 ============================================================================ Digital Press and Analysts News is sent as a courtesy to members of the press, analyst and consulting community. For subscription information please contact pr-news(a)pa.dec.com. All Digital press releases, fact sheets and backgrounders are archived on ftp.digital.com in the /pub/Digital/info/pr-news directory. They are also available at http://www.digital.com/info/pr-news/ on the World Wide Web . ============================================================================

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e$
by Mixmaster 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timothy May is so full of shit that some of it bursts out on this mailing list. o /\O/ O Timothy May 0 \\ | 0-# // | / \

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Are cypher punks capable?
by Secret Squirrel 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Against Moderation wrote: > In general, unsubscribing and resubscribing to a mailing list is not > completely trivial. Do you think that a cypher punk is not able to solve these problems?

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[UPDATE] Making OCR'ed code transfer easier
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Deceased Vilus has such a small penis because the mohel who circumcised him was trying to do the world a favor. _ /| `o_O' Deceased Vilus ( ) U

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Re: My Departure, Moderation, and "Ownership of the List"
by Scott V. McGuire 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Tue, 4 Feb 1997, Dale Thorn wrote: > Scott V. McGuire wrote: > > > (Even within the community, some people are more a part of > > it than others, and nobody is more a part of it then Tim.) > > Is this like saying "some of the pigs were more equal than the others"? > No, in this case there is not even a pretense of equality. - -------------------- Scott V. McGuire <svmcguir(a)syr.edu> PGP key available at http://web.syr.edu/~svmcguir Key fingerprint = 86 B1 10 3F 4E 48 75 0E 96 9B 1E 52 8B B1 26 05 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBMveNb97xoXfnt4lpAQEqMQP/QfEoEMy+deAwSB1l5J4i9pNolcSJ47Bw SuhfHyMwCWzzmeB0G+Ce5WVUPw0CH/gJcA8+WYRXdumF3ddhmxxKi7uWkfFYBvTH 4ZuiuvelFPgGuC0yOMcXQ3Hn18li+hKvdJuEpcRRJBD5aYYvQA9SNfs8c+ezgPOc 8hs2/3LbASM= =7FcR -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: CAST
by Peter Gutmann 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've just had mail from Carlisle Adams in response to my question about the status of CAST-128: >CAST-128 is available free for commercial and non-commercial use. This >has been stated publicly in a press release from Entrust Technologies >(see http://www.entrust.com/press.htm for details). The cipher >itself is described in complete detail, along with test vectors, etc., >at the same web site (see the "Technical Papers" section of >http://www.entrust.com/library.htm) > >Feel free to post this response wherever you think it appropriate. > >-------------------------------------- >Carlisle Adams >Entrust Technologies >cadams(a)entrust.com >--------------------------------------- The algorithm is well worth looking at (see the URL above) - it's a nice royalty-free drop-in replacement for IDEA for example. I've had a version half-finished for inclusion in cryptlib for a few months now, but something else always seems to crop up... Peter.

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Re: MY DEPARTURE, MODERA
by DAVE HODGINS 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- AB> My main complaints about the `filtering' service forced upon the list AB> readership are that: AB> 1. It was done to the main list! If cypherpunks were left unchanged, AB> and a `cypherpunks-edited' were created I wouldn't have a problem, it AB> would be just another filtered list. However there are already As a lurker (I've only sent 4 messages to the list in the last 3 years), I agree completely with Adam Back's post. I'd also like to point out, that I rarely read all of the messages, and tend to select which messages to read, based on the subject. Because of this, I missed the message announcing that the moderation had started, and that there was a new, unedited list. I didn't realize the moderation had started, until I noticed the lack of autobot insults, and then looked at some of the messages from the moderation thread. I get the list via email, through a pcboard bbs, mixed in with all of my personal email. I wrote a program, to separate everything from the list into separate folder. Switching over to the unedited list, will require a bit more for me, then just unsubscribe/subscribe. I'll wait and see if the moderation continues on the main list. If it does, I'll go through the bother of switching to the unedited list. Regards, Dave Hodgins. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: cp850 iQEVAwUBMveOxYs+asmeZwNpAQEDxwf+O0NjHdHdD3zdu6JHtF+ESmQHkmknmZos INN9YQQPmFEsn5Dd3CEsr9YAcqgJUUVGoStcJqM9RQ2SeN0ASa/aRoXICGWMxjuO crV18nSNL6ZJ92/V/Q4/LDe7O8zMIS3w86WRTH5JEhnrN+EabH5QnlpF9CNPRwAD TsS9I/IiXKNtVUxMUvTDB93DHEDGkkFcqiNUfGPvDq8cHeSDVqrZ1EQNOOhDkglY rk2/+E7IleUIv+b7PgoDk5Z8T5n3eNJBqAnOC9qWJsJPE7eZHXX9xZO7sod9c8IK p/SthYca2tI2/7yt3wW4oQP/FT5mIXmWECy84l9+Mlb78P1eq7ZyCQ== =Mv14 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --- ~ RM 1.31 0820 ~ Internet:Dave.Hodgins@Westonia.com Rime->1347 Fido 1:250/636

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Re: Dissolving Choke Points
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"gbroiles(a)netbox.com" "Greg Broiles" 4-FEB-1997 14:55:18.91 >But my impression is that many moderation opponents would also be opponents >of a move to Usenet. Perhaps I'm wrong. But Usenet offers precisely what many >people claim we must have for the list to be viable, e.g., >uncontrolled/uncontrollable distribution and messaging. So I'm curious about >whether or not the proponents of an open, uncontrolled list really want it to >be *that* open and uncontrolled. In the past, there's been strong opposition >to that. But it's possible that most of the people who had strong feelings >about not wanting to be subjected to the downside of Usenet have already left >the list. >(And if the current opponents of moderation don't want to see the list be >quite that open, I think what we're arguing about here is not "censorship v. >no censorship" but "what degree of censorship do we want? one lump, or two?", >which pretty much eliminates anyone's claim to have a moral high ground from >which to argue.) Umm... there's a difference. Moderation is control by a _person_; not moving to Usenet is control by nobody except how things happen to be set up. >The good side I see to a move to Usenet is that it lets people use the >comparatively better tools for managing messages - e.g., NoCeM, threading, nn >(whose killfiles will kill by thread, author, regexp, and can be time limited >so you can easily give annoying people a 30-day 'timeout' and see if they're >still a kook later on), AltaVista and DejaNews archiving/searching, and >server architecture that's designed to cope with storing/indexing many >messages. Hmm... since both you and Bill Stewart are pointing out various advantageous things about Usenet, I may need to retract my previous statement that mail fitering is better. On the other hand, other people have mentioned the susceptibility of email to write-your-own filtering and other processing. (For instance, I've got a project that needs cypherpunks (and other controversial groups) to be on mailing lists instead of (or at least as well as) news servers to work right.) Is there a full-scale equivalent of procmail for Usenet, including functions like shunting messages to programs et al? >The down side is that Usenet is more or less a sewer these days, and some of >it's bound to spill over. Quite. -Allen

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IBM's SecureWay Key Recovery technology
by Marshall Clow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From <http://www.ibm.com/Security/html/prkeyrec.html>: >At the RSA Conference, IBM announced the details of its highly >anticipated SecureWay key recovery technology. IBM is developing this >technology in response to market demands for exportable strong >encryption required to advance the growth of global e-business. >[ yada yada yada snipped ] I attended this presentation. Basically, what they do is to add two packets to the "channel setup process", one that depends only on the coorespondents, the other that contains the information about this particular session. A problem with this, as I pointed out to the presenters, is that the first packet can be trivially used for traffic analysis. The eavesdropper may not be able to determine who is cooresponding, but they can tell if it is the same people as in a previous conversation. >From <http://www.ibm.com/security/html/wp_keyrec2.html> >In order to minimize the preparation overhead, the recovery information >is prepared in two phases: one phase is independent of the particular >session/archive key being prepared; the second phase is dependent on the >particular key and session parameters. The first phase, which uses >public-key encryption, can be shared across multiple invocations of key >recovery preparation, thus reducing overhead. The public-key encryptions >can be stored for repeated use. > As you can see, IBM suggests cacheing the contents of the first packet, so that you don't have to recalculate it each time. Imagine how easy traffic analysis would be if the identification packets were identical instead of just related. -- Marshall Marshall Clow Aladdin Systems <mailto:mclow@mailhost2.csusm.edu> Warning: Objects in calendar are closer than they appear.

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Re: Moderation, Tim, Sandy, me, etc. * Strong crypto == DES?!
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"gnu(a)toad.com" "John Gilmore" 4-FEB-1997 12:20:22.10 >Tim, the Cypherpunks have chosen to follow Sandy's lead for this >month. I'll admit I made it easy for them, but the results are >conclusive. There are 1311 addresses in the cypherpunks list today; >42 in the unedited list; and 19 in the flames list. Forty people >cared enough to read every posting; the other thousand either wanted >to try the experiment -- or didn't care enough to send an email >message. Which, as we all know, is a very low threshold. You're making an invalid assumption... namely that people who stayed on the moderated list are neccessarily wanting it to be the main list. This isn't the case with me, for instance. I'd also point out that some of us - including me - were taking the time to take a look at what happened with the moderated list. On the one hand, it did result in a decrease in the trash messages... on the other hand, it also drove away 1+ good posters (TCMay for one). As I've said before, I might wind up going with Sandy's (or some other) filtered list. But changing the name (effectively, to cypherpunks-unedited) was a bad idea. >I'm definitely bugged by the community's attitude toward my >"censorship". Rather than being glad that someone, anyone, was doing >something about the major problem on the list, 99% of the reaction was >to create even more ill-considered, emotional flamage. *I* didn't >make the signal/noise get worse at that point -- *you-all* did. I can see how you might ignore objections from those who did make the signal/noise get worse... but from those who didn't? _I_ tried to help you by letting you & Sandy know when something was going wrong. >Perhaps at that point I should have shut down the list, as Lucky is >now suggesting. "Asking the list what to do" was clearly not a useful >option. Sandy cared enough about the community to make some concrete >suggestions to me about how to get the list back on track. They >involved a lot more work than the previous setup. I told him if he >was willing to do the work, we could try it. As Dale suggests, I >wasn't about to waste my time reading the whole list in real time and >passing judgement on the postings. Sandy was, for a month. I (and others, I believe) are gratified by y'all's attempts to help. I just think that you went about it the wrong way. >Start a mailing list on another site! Move this list to somewhere! [...] >The experiment will be over in a few weeks. Who's going to take over >deciding how to run the list, and running it? Would you be willing to help in starting up a distributed list? That would appear to solve at least some of the toad.com problems (keeping it running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) with which I am sympathetic. >If you want to help organize what I'll call the `progressive crypto >community', for lack of a better term, then please do. Otherwise, in >the immortal words of Lazarus Long, "PIPE DOWN!". I'm willing to help the _libertarian_ crypto community, to the limit allowed by my available resources (I'm a grad student). Organize? I'm not so sure to what degree that's helping. Progressive? I'm not a liberal. Slight but meaningful difference in terms. >PS: Can we talk about crypto too? It's clear from the last few days >of press releases that the pro-GAK forces are again working to confuse >novices into thinking that two very different things are the same >thing. Last time it was "public key infrastructure" and "key >recovery". This time it's "strong crypto" and "56-bit DES". What >should we do about this? Educate the public? The public won't listen until 56-bit DES is broken; then, they can be told that "somebody broke the cryptography used by banks" and they might listen. In other words, what can be done is supporting DES-breaking efforts (ideally, via the collection of different possible keys and their indicators, as someone had mentioned earlier - sorry, I'm a biologist, not a mathematician, so I've forgotten the actual terms. It was something that would essentially enable the near-instant breaking of _any_ DES code after the competion of the project. My apologies if I've gotten mixed up on this). -Allen

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Press/Digital Wins US Dept of Comm. Approval to Export Encryption Prod. (fwd)
by Vincent Cate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 08:37:24 -0500 From: DIGITAL PRESS RELEASE <irprod(a)nimv03.das.dec.com> To: pr-news(a)majordomo.das-x.dec.com Subject: Press/Digital Wins US Dept of Comm. Approval to Export Encryption Prod. |||||| Digital Press and Analysts News |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Digital Equipment Corporation Maynard, Massachusetts 01754-2571 Editorial contact: Patrick Ward (508) 493-9441 patrick.ward(a)mail.dec.com Digital Equipment Corporation Wins US Department of Commerce Approval to Export Stronger Encryption Products 56-bit Data Scrambling Technology Safeguards Internet Commerce Worldwide MAYNARD, Mass., February 3, 1997 -- Digital Equipment Corporation today announced that it has won United States Department of Commerce approval to export 56-bit encryption products worldwide, the strongest yet for protecting Internet commerce worldwide. Last week a University of California at Berkeley graduate student used a set of workstations to crack a 40-bit encryption code in 3.5 hours. "The same workstations would require more than 20 years to break a 56-bit Data Encryption Standard (DES Code), according to Samuel H. Fuller, DIGITAL's vice president and chief scientist. "The Commerce Department's action enables DIGITAL to provide its international customers with complete systems for electronic commerce over the Internet, including the necessary security software," according to DIGITAL's Chairman, Robert B. Palmer. "This makes the Internet more attractive for our customers worldwide, and represents an exciting market opportunity for DIGITAL." "We are very pleased with the leadership shown by DIGITAL's top management, including Robert Palmer, in making a long-term commitment to develop, produce and market key recovery products and to take advantage of the Administration's new policy on encryption exports," said Sue E. Eckert, assistant secretary for Export Administration. DIGITAL will immediately export 56-bit encryption for its OpenVMS operating systems and for its RoadAbout/DES Product for wireless LAN computing. Shipments of the 56-bit export version of AltaVista Tunnel will follow this year. "AltaVista Tunnel software can simply and cost-effectively create 'Virtual Private Networks,' allowing customers who are traveling or at remote sites to securely access their company's private network over the public Internet," said Ilene H. Lang, president and chief executive officer of AltaVista Internet Software, and a vice president at DIGITAL. "Now the Virtual Private Networks we offer to customers in the United States can become Global Private Networks as the market expands worldwide." The Commerce Department announced on December 30 that American companies could export "strong" or Data Encryption Standard (DES) encryption products, such as DIGITAL's industry-leading AltaVista Tunnel, if the companies could demonstrate progress in developing key-recovery products over the next two years. Previously the US government had restricted export of strong encryption for security reasons. Digital Equipment Corporation is a world leader in open client/ server solutions from personal computers to integrated worldwide information systems. DIGITAL's scalable Alpha and Intel platforms, storage, networking, software and services, together with industry- focused solutions from business partners, help organizations compete and win in today's global marketplace. #### Note to Editors: DIGITAL, the DIGITAL logo and OpenVMS are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation. CORP/97/537 ============================================================================ Digital Press and Analysts News is sent as a courtesy to members of the press, analyst and consulting community. For subscription information please contact pr-news(a)pa.dec.com. All Digital press releases, fact sheets and backgrounders are archived on ftp.digital.com in the /pub/Digital/info/pr-news directory. They are also available at http://www.digital.com/info/pr-news/ on the World Wide Web . ============================================================================

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Re: My Departure, Moderation, and "Ownership of the List"
by Dave Hayes 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Steve Boursey writes: > Well EFF itself is a lie--the were very well exposed by Wired Mag. a > while back as being nothing more than a corporate whore. They represent > the interests of owners not consumers--the ACLU has been very open > in their critisism of the EFF in this regard. A large corporation > waves some money in front of their noses and tells them to bend > over you can be sure they'll bend over. It's not clear from where I sit that the EFF is intrinsically evil. A case can be argued for their initial good intentions followed by the subsequent poisoning of this intent by people with lots of money. Of course, -any- organization is as susceptable to infiltration as their weakest member. > Respectable free speech advocates do not associate with EFF. If one is going to advocate free speech, I strongly suggest one learns to deal with one's own greed and one's own need for power first. ------ Dave Hayes - Altadena CA, USA - dave(a)jetcafe.org Freedom Knight of Usenet - http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet You possess only what will not be lost in a shipwreck.

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BA Crypto Machine Photos (fwd)
by Dave Emery 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: >From boatanchors(a)theporch.com Tue Feb 4 12:01:17 1997 Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 10:53:20 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <Chameleon.4.01.2.970204112304.jproc@> Errors-To: listown(a)jackatak.theporch.com Reply-To: jproc(a)bellglobal.com Originator: boatanchors(a)theporch.com Sender: boatanchors(a)theporch.com Precedence: bulk From: jproc(a)bellglobal.com To: Multiple recipients of list <boatanchors(a)theporch.com> Subject: BA Crypto Machine Photos X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Comment: Amateur Radio Equipment Using Vacuum Tubes Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Chameleon - TCP/IP for Windows by NetManage, Inc. Dear BA'ers, Recently, I acquired some BA crypto machine photos courtesy of the Canadian Security Establishment. If anyone wants full size, selected, JPEG copies of these photos, please let me know and I can send them as attached files to E-mail. As a reminder, there are two stories beginning with the same file name in the BA archives which accompany the photos. KL7.JPG Colour 108 kbytes KWR37.JPG B & W 51 kbytes BTW, does anyone know the meaning of 'order wire mode' in the context of a crypto broadcast? This mode is found in the KWR-37 online crypto receiver. Please send all photo requests or responses via private E-mail. Regards, ------------------------------------- Jerry Proc VE3FAB E-mail: jproc(a)bellglobal.com HMCS Haida Naval Museum Toronto, Ontario 'Looking for a 'AN/SRC-501' -------------------------------------

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Are cypher punks capable?
by Secret Squirrel 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Against Moderation wrote: > In general, unsubscribing and resubscribing to a mailing list is not > completely trivial. Do you think that a cypher punk is not able to solve these problems?

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BA Crypto Machine Photos (fwd)
by Dave Emery 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message:

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Re: Dissolving Choke Points
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

E. Allen Smith wrote: > > Hmm... since both you and Bill Stewart are pointing out various > advantageous things about Usenet, I may need to retract my previous statement > that mail fitering is better. You were right initially, I agree that mail filtering has better tools than news filtering (if you use Unix). Procmail can do absolutely any filtering, unlike most news readers. - Igor.

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