December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

FWD: Announcing the release of RIPEM version 1.2.
by Christopher Allen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Announcing the release of RIPEM version 1.2. RIPEM 1.2 contains extensive modifications by Jeff Thompson of RSA Data Security to provide a measure of true Internet PEM interoperability, and to implement a "direct-trust" model for public keys. This new certificate-based trust model is more secure than RIPEM 1.1's but less hierarchical than Internet PEM's. RIPEM 1.2 can read all RIPEM 1.1-formatted messages, and can also read genuine MIC-ONLY and MIC-CLEAR Internet PEM messages. RIPEM 1.2 cannot read or produce encrypted Internet PEM messages. RIPEM 1.2's outputed messages can be read by RIPEM 1.1. Before using RIPEM 1.2 to produce messages, you must first generate a "self-signed" certificate. This is done automatically during key generation. For current RIPEM users, you can create a self-signed certificate by simply invoking RIPEM in change-password mode: ripem -c -S output-private-key-file -P output-public-key-file The old field of Originator-Name is only supported for backward compatibility. RIPEM 1.2 really uses the self-signed cert in the Originator-Certificate field. When you receive a message from a sender for the first time, RIPEM will tell you that you don't have a validated certificate for the sender and will display the sender's self-signed certificate digest. You can call the sender and verify that it's correct. Then, you receive the message in -v validation mode which will create and store a certificate from you to the sender. From now on, RIPEM uses it. When you encrypt a message, the message includes something like Recipient-Name: jefft(a)chirality.rsa.com Recipient-Key-Asymmetric: MFkwCgYEVQgBAQICAgUDSwAwSAJBFc8Mu+7j0iRqZ7eY39hyLUVSKPIRB+oVaGOJ 9ttcJrBDPaucqCcp50leLhh48n9eUbvkQW9L7Yu8RiaLjeaNlU0CAwEAAQ== Key-Info: RSA, Ep8yateOeP3bCBZzh4JYs9ZhlsZJ9B1WSM64nFnV2Y5gCExnKwIT/lhZssZTN0as V/i1ysZIp5QUPsRz/mlF0Ck= Recipient-Name is only included for backwards compatibility. RIPEM 1.2 really uses Recipient-Key-Asymmetric, which is the DER encoding of my public key. When jefft sees this while receiving the message, he knows the associated Key-Info is for him. Using the public key is nice because you don't have to know what your correspondant's issuer and serial number are. It supports this direct trust model nicely. RIPEM 1.2 uses a home directory which currently holds two files: privkey and pubkeys. privkey is the same as the old RIPEM -s private key file. The pubkeys file holds the user's self-signed certificate and the direct-trust certificates they make for other users: User: jefft(a)chirality.rsa.com UserDistinguishedName: CN = jefft(a)chirality.rsa.com, OU = Persona Certificate, O = RSA Data Security, Inc., C = US CertificateInfo: MIIB0zCCAX0CEHvlDG8l4VHdqec4RvFBuGIwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQECBQAwbzELMAkG A1UEBhMCVVMxIDAeBgNVBAoTF1JTQSBEYXRhIFNlY3VyaXR5LCBJbmMuMRwwGgYD VQQLExNQZXJzb25hIENlcnRpZmljYXRlMSAwHgYDVQQDFBdqZWZmdEBjaGlyYWxp dHkucnNhLmNvbTAeFw05MzExMzAxOTE1NTFaFw05NTExMzAxOTE1NTFaMG8xCzAJ BgNVBAYTAlVTMSAwHgYDVQQKExdSU0EgRGF0YSBTZWN1cml0eSwgSW5jLjEcMBoG A1UECxMTUGVyc29uYSBDZXJ0aWZpY2F0ZTEgMB4GA1UEAxQXamVmZnRAY2hpcmFs aXR5LnJzYS5jb20wWDAKBgRVCAEBAgIB/gNKADBHAkAtAto1Bdion6FnjY2qkliO 7n6RxmL68IJ8r5XMMPX5IERpo4pSEiE/Fbrw2jVlFUTbdQ36Y65tezhS1E4oNsUX AgMBAAEwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQECBQADQQAK/hg100zdjSCapJusmVSzwDaj6YKAa0p3 GJBYYMMIMZbGlE2gx1bnMiI+twftqA2nRj7v7zlaWv3WiP+pihyx Notice that there is no public key by itself, since it is now validated inside the certificate. For RIPEM 1.2, a user's distinguished name is formed with the old RIPEM username as the common name in a Persona distinguished name. Important: During ripem -e -m encrypted -u username, RIPEM looks up the recipient's certificate by scanning pubkeys for a "User:" field as specified by -u and uses the first one it finds. It is possible that there are multiple users with the same common name, so RIPEM always displays the full distinguished names of the recipients it finds when encrypting. If one of these is the wrong DN, the user can abort sending the message. Notice that the Originator-Certificate field is a self-signed cert, a RIPEM signed message conforms closely to RFC 1424. In fact, since the names are already Persona names, you can send it to persona-request(a)rsa.com and it will return a real Persona certificate. (The RIPEM 1.2 documentation doesn't mention this because there's really nothing a 1.2 user can do with a hierarchical cert right now, but you can see what the future plans are.) Lastly, RIPEM 1.2 doesn't make use of key servers except for backwards compatibility. Quoting from the user manual: Note: RIPEM 1.2 does not use key servers or finger to manage certificates. RIPEM 1.2 only transmits a self-signed certificate, and the only other certificates that are made are direct peer-to-peer. As a RIPEM 1.2 user, you make a certificate from yourself to, say, fred(a)snark.edu. No one other than you and fred would be interested in this certificate. Hence, RIPEM 1.2 makes no provision for these certificates to be on key servers. A future version of RIPEM is planned which will allow certificate chaining. This will allow you to indirectly trust users directly certified by users of your choice. You will be able to say "I trust all users certified by fred". When this future version of RIPEM is available, it will become meaningful to place certificates on key servers. RIPEM 2.0, with certificate chaining ("web-of-trust") and full Internet PEM interoperability, is expected to be available within a few months. As usual, this distribution can be found on ripem.msu.edu. Only US and Canadian citizens/permanent residents are allowed access; see ripem.msu.edu:/pub/crypt/GETTING_ACCESS. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ..Christopher Allen Consensus Development Corporation.. ..<consensus(a)netcom.com> 4104-24th Street #419.. .. San Francisco, CA 94114-3615.. .. o415/647-6383 f415/647-6384.. ..Mosaic/World-Wide-Web Front Door: .. ..ftp://netcom7.netcom.com/pub/consensus/www/ConsensusFrontDoor.html ..

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RIPEM 1.2
by Christopher Allen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Now that there is a new version of RIPEM available, what do you think of it? What do you think is the value in using it over PGP? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ..Christopher Allen Consensus Development Corporation.. ..<consensus(a)netcom.com> 4104-24th Street #419.. .. San Francisco, CA 94114-3615.. .. o415/647-6383 f415/647-6384.. ..Mosaic/World-Wide-Web Front Door: .. ..ftp://netcom7.netcom.com/pub/consensus/www/ConsensusFrontDoor.html ..

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Re: Re: re: re: digital cash
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Jim McCoy <mccoy(a)ccwf.cc.utexas.edu> > [...] > There will be nothing more liquid than information in an information > society. Nothing. I'm not sure about this. Liquidity refers to the ease of conversion to cash. Some kinds of information may be easily convertible, others may not. Even with digital cash the relevant definition of liquidity might be acceptability or ease of conversion to other currencies. Digital cash is easy to copy and so there will always be a risk in accepting it unless the bank is accessible or it is highly reputable and is known to cover bad (duplicate) cash. Communications problems, whether technical or political, may make such access difficult. And banks, being unable to collect assets by force to cover their debts, may be vulnerable to some kinds of failures that governments are not. > Seriously, the secret is to remember that the net transcends geopolitical > boundaries. All you need is _one_ bank that can/will convert cash to > digital money and then _everyone in the world who can get an internet > connection can use it_. Well, there are some more requirements. The bank has to be in a setup where it cannot easily be shut down, or more specifically it does not experience any reasonable probability of being shut down in the near future. The net links have to be reliable, as I mentioned above. The bank presumably has to convert digital money back to cash as well as converting in the other direction. The question is, how do you get your cash to/from the bank? Via an anonymous, private, electronic transaction? If you can do that, you don't need digital money; your cash is already electronic and private. But if you have to send your cash the old- fashioned way then you are still vulnerable to the same government pressures you have today. > That is the real danger digital cash poses to > government authority over the monetary system. Once I can get my dollars > or dinars, or donuts exchanged into digital cash it is possible for me to > do things to it never before dreamed of. I can take my locally exchanged > digital-donuts, put them on the net, and send them over to a bank in some > small island nation with lax banking laws for instant conversion at the > moments rate to some other international currency and transferal through > several anonymous accounts, and then zip them over to a network gold server > that will create a certified bullion deposit for me in a real bank. This is the point in these kinds of discussions that I always lose track of things. We are dazzled by the picture of monetary flows flashing all around the world. What I am always unable to pin down is, what exactly prevents this kind of thing from being done today? If you want to invest in gold, you can go down to the coin store and buy some, right? Or you can put your money into a gold-investing mutual fund and use it as a checking account. If you want yen, or marks, you can invest in those. If the point is to do so secretly, why is it easier to mail your paycheck to the digicash bank in the Bahamas than to mail it to an existing bank there? > I can untracably convert my paycheck into a gold deposit in a foreign > nation while sitting in my living room wearing nothing but my socks. I can > conduct intricate financial transactions that are completely outside the > realm of my governement to regulate, imagine what would happen to the > governement if _everyone_ could hide and launder assets as easy as criminal > syndicates. If this does not cause some federal banker an ulcer or two > then they have no idea what the future will bring them, all the better for > us... > > jim Perhaps my problem is that my financial affairs are too limited to really benefit from intricate financial transactions. Investing in a non-dollar- denominated mutual fund would be a major adventure for me :-). If avoiding taxes is the major goal, my problem is that by far the bulk of my taxes are withheld from my paycheck. I know, Sandy or Duncan said, "What? You still have a paycheck?" but let's face it, most people do. It seems to me that the weak point in these bypass-the-government digicash schemes is the conversion between paper cash and digital cash. That looks like the choke point where the government can still keep control. Hal

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Re: (fwd) Who's watching you... 01
by jim＠bilbo.suite.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What do people think of the idea of creating a news group dedicated to discussing surveillance technology and its potential impact on society? Jim_Miller(a)suite.com

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Re: RIPEM 1.2
by smb＠research.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

2) ripem still uses DES RIPEM supports triple DES as well.

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Re: RIPEM 1.2
by mch＠sqwest.wimsey.bc.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Subject: Re: RIPEM 1.2 > 1) ripem is illegal for non-north-american users Well, export of RIPEM is illegal. Then again, export of PGP is illegal. The difference is that PGP has already been exported and distributed/improved outside of North America. > 2) ripem still uses DES RIPEM has supported triple DES since version 1.1 (I'm the person who added triple DES support to RIPEM). > 3) using ripem supports the notion that PKP holds some valid patents As a practical matter, I am willing to use what the person on the other end of the connection is using. Some people won't/can't use PGP because they don't want to pay (and are worried about the legal issues, IDEA/RSA patents). Some people won't/can't use RIPEM because they are outside of North America, have a religious axe to grind about software patents, or believe that RIPEM is part of an NSA plot to take over the planet. So, I'll sign with PGP. Why? More people on cypherpunks use it. Mark -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.4 iQCVAgUBLYeIZuULSAGiySfVAQEALAP/UqI9CyYXlhDZnbHDG8QJR30sT7uFGQf4 ji/Hc5T48GI20YdW1IkymsNt8lzB8ECowX185g8I0Nxq4yirCWPohThwIrgqVNSt bEMf4cxSxBqRSJ4rVx5xi8c9soovxmgf+LSCNTW/rweJ1ogRVneKoBEl0WwHY1uA FpQhbd/xUdE= =lR1k -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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FOIA text
by jdblair＠nextsrv.cas.muohio.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

#include <bndwdth-apology.h> Does anyone know an ftp site where I can find the full text of the Freedom of Information Act? -john. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Blair: <jdblair(a)nextsrv.cas.muohio.edu> voice: (513) 529-4877 PGP public key available upon request. KILL YOUR Privacy in the information age is a right, not a privilage. TELEVISION Information = Power = Control. Fight the centralization of information.

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Re: (fwd) Who's watching you... 01
by ag588＠cleveland.Freenet.Edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Reply-To: ag588(a)cleveland.Freenet.Edu (John C. Brice, ESQ) From:Surveillance.Center/Population.Control/High.Command To:Field.operatives Re:Citizen.unit.miller/terrorist.free.speech.subversives Cc:[censored] Operatives: Once again citizen.unit.miller is getting out of hand. You have been warned about allowing these subversive postings of his [see below] to reach the Net. Having failed in your primary duty, you are hereby instructed to encourage the creation of the referenced message base. Once this is accomplished, these subversive elements will have unwittingly established (1) a method whereby we can more closely monitor the level of their knowledge; (2) a method whereby we can measure information dispersal rates; and (3) a convenient source for the infusion of disinformation. You know what to do. The Management. > > > >What do people think of the idea of creating a news group dedicated >to discussing surveillance technology and its potential impact on >society? > > >Jim_Miller(a)suite.com > > > -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am an attorney, seeking a position in the area of Computer Law. If you know of such a position available, or of someone who may know of such a position, please send e-mail! Thanks.

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how to get mini-JIR
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I don't know what happened to the message I sent right after my mini-JIR announcement. If it's just that TOAD.COM is backed up, sorry about the duplication. The issue you want is 1994-03. --------------------------- 1994-03-10 How to Subscribe / How to Get Back Issues (*) mini-JIR The mini-Journal of Irreproducible Results is an electronic publication, available over the Internet, free of charge. It is distributed as a LISTSERV application. We expect to publish 6-12 issues per year. To subscribe, send a brief E-mail message to either of these addresses: LISTSERV(a)MITVMA.MIT.EDU or LISTSERV@MITVMA The body of your message should contain ONLY the words "SUBSCRIBE MINI- JIR" followed by your name. Here are two examples: SUBSCRIBE MINI-JIR Irene Curie Joliot SUBSCRIBE MINI-JIR Nicholai Lobachevsky To stop subscribing, send the following message to the same address: SIGNOFF MINI-JIR To obtain a list of back issues, send this message: INDEX MINI-JIR To retrieve a particular back issue, send a message specifying which issue you want. For example, to retrieve issue 93-00002, send this message: GET MINI-JIR 93-00002 If you have questions about how to subscribe, or if you would like to re-distribute mini-JIR, please send e-mail to: mgeller(a)mit.edu [PLEASE NOTE: if you are regularly posting mini-JIR on your gopher, WWW, news group or mailing list, please drop an e-mail note to mgeller(a)mit.edu so that we can compile a complete resource list -- thanks!]

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Denning Presentation and Q&A at George Mason University
by cfrye＠ciis.mitre.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On March 8, Dr. Dorothy Denning was a guest speaker for LRNG 572 - Taming the Electronic Frontier, a course at George Mason University. The professor, Dr. Brad Cox, is a veteran software developer who has turned his attention to developing models for electronic commerce and "student-centered education". The latter is my own term for his concept of students, through a demand-based process, having much more control over and interaction with the university education process. Brad has expressed strong opinions on several issues regarding personal privacy and the Clipper/Digital Telephony proposals; I don't presume to speak for him, but I should note that our homework includes installing PGP 2.2 or 2.3a on our personal machines, generating key pairs, distributing our public keys, and broadcasting an essay encrypted with everyone else's public keys. The lecture was broadcast on the George Mason University channel, 48 on Media General Cable Systems in Fairfax County, VA, and other channels around the DC Metro Area. Tapes are available in the GMU Library and, I believe, may be copied and distributed freely. If any of you would like a copy of the session, I'll look into what has to happen to get it done. I do not have a VCR at home and am not referring to the tape as I write this summary, so there may be some inaccuracies. Further, as I was not taking careful notes, my own comments and questions are most prominent in this summary. In my note to the class, I'll ask them to contribute their own views of the proceedings. I am forwarding this note to Brad, Dr. Denning, and the class to ensure all parties have the opportunity to correct any misrepresentations or omissions. ***The Presentation*** Dr. Denning was clearly nervous -- she indicated that she had never worked with the combination of television, overhead projector and computer-cueing system in the video classroom. Also, I surmise that Brad had warned her that she wouldn't be facing the most sympathetic audience in the world. Each student had written an essay about Clipper and emailed it to Brad, cc'ing the rest of the class. Most of the class didn't think Clipper/Digital Telephony was a hot idea, but there were several supporters. After a brief intro describing Clipper as a "voluntary" standard, she quickly described the key initialization and two-party decryption processes. This part of the lecture was notation-laden and somewhat hard for me to follow, and I've read most of Schneier's _Applied Cryptography_! The folks around me seemed to be lost in the particulars of how the various keys were generated and interacted (especially the session key). However, I believe the basic points got through clearly enough - the class is mostly professionals and is sophisticated enough to pick up anything that's explained well. After Denning indicated that NIST and Treasury were to be the two escrow agents, I asked about VP Gore's 9 February remarks on the potential problems of both agents being in the Executive Branch etc. She glossed over the issue by replying that the process was still being examined and that she didn't see a problem with the two agents residing in the same branch of government. The theme that "the key escrow system prevents abuse" resonated throughout her presentation. A few minutes later, I asked Dr. Denning whether she her earlier published (on Usenet, anyway) statements to the effect that if Clipper were made mandatory she would probably withdraw her support for the standard. She did not dispute the basis of the question but did not answer it per se, either. Her final response (paraphrased) was that she could not foresee all possible outcomes and did not want to commit herself to a position without observable results. After further questions, Denning described the Digital Telephony proposal, stressing that the idea was to maintain the current level of wiretap capabilities despite technological advances. She was very careful to delineate the goals for Clipper and Digital Telephony as follows: o Clipper is designed to provide US citizens strong cryptography that won't threaten US national security; o Clipper is *not* designed to catch crooks; o Digital Telephony is designed to maintain the current level of wiretap capabilities and gives law enforcement officials no new abilities. The first statement is hard to dispute on its face, despite the invocation of that vague concept called "national security". As many others, including Tim May, have said, the government is fighting an imaginary enemy which is, by virtue of it being imaginary, capable of anything. If cellular phones, baby monitors (!) and regular telephones used Clipper-like technology, many citizen-to-citizen privacy worries would be solved since ham radio and scanner operators would be unable to monitor these transmissions. However, the idea that the standard is voluntary, an idea she defended even when pressed that everyone in the government (except the judiciary) answers to the same guy raises a question as to how voluntary the standard is. The second statement goes against much of the rhetoric Clipper supporters have used to link the proposal to the War on Drugs and the general fear of crime. It's interesting to note that, even while she was disavowing Clipper's link to catching crooks, she read anecdotes from the back cover of a book entitled something like _The World's Dumbest Criminals_ and opined that, if someone is dumb enough to call hotel security and report $1000 of cocaine missing from his room, they just might be dumb enough to use Clipper. After all, they talk in the clear now! I think this argument has gotten short shrift on Cypherpunks and does deserve more attention. If the price of ClipperPhones comes down enough so that they're affordable _and_ there's no market competitor of note, why wouldn't drug dealers use the equipment? After all, even assuming the full search warrent process is bypassed, the government needs to know what's happening before they tap the line. The solution, of course, is to market alternative crypto-boxes that can fit between the phone unit and the wall socket. Price competition against high volume manufacturers will be a serious obstacle to successfully circumventing the escrowed technologies. The difference in the rhetorical significance of crime-fighting when Clipper is presented to technical and non-technical audiences is interesting. The final theme, that Digital Telephony adds no new law enforcement capabilities, was not something anyone in the class seemed to have the knowledge to dispute on technical grounds. When I raised the issue of phone calls being directed to central law enforcement sites instead of requiring agents to move to a remote location, Dr. Denning indicated that wiretaps are done by directing calls to a central location now. While J.P. Barlow challenged related issues in the America On Line debate, I have not seen a refutation of this particular point. Can anyone elaborate? ***Personal Notes and Editorials*** o None of us brought up the government ability to request and examine phone usage information without a warrant or pointed out that law enforcement agencies currently do this more than 100,000 times per year. [I wasn't aware of the number until Barlow cited it on AOL.] o I would hope that the ability of government to accumulate behavioral dossiers on private citizens through the information mosaic and link analysis tools is something that would appear in _Time_ right beside the Clipper and Digital Telephony expository articles in the future. If Digital Telephony makes this ability stronger, there is a greater danger of the fishing expeditions and data matching exercises the 1974 Privacy Act is designed to prevent. o In my opinion Dr. Denning sincerely believes these proposals will make a positive difference; however, the sincerity of the advocate does not give credence to the position advocated. -- Best regards, Curtis D. Frye - Job Search Underway!!! cfrye(a)ciis.mitre.org or cfrye(a)mason1.gmu.edu "MITRE's in the past, now. Time to move on!"

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Re: digital cash
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mike McNally wrote: > > > >Neither Mark Hittinger nor Perry Metzger wrote: > > > > The global monetary system... > It was me, the well-known international monetary expert. And if it hadn't been him, it could have been me. Watch whenever I'm buying or selling precious metals or stocks, and do the opposite, and you should be able to out-perform the market just fine :-) Unfortunately, as they say, knowing Murphy's Law doesn't help either, so I'm not able to use this strategy effectively....... Bill

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digital cash hot and cold
by Mark Hittinger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Yes. There will be nothing more liquid than information in an information >society. Nothing. How about dis-information and lies? >> As more people see >> the advantages of digital cash then there might be bidding for the >> available pool. If digital cash supply is restricted in some way, >> early converters would gain advantage. >Limiting the pool is harder than you would think. Use all the numbers you >want, we'll make more :) If the supply of digital cash is unlimited, then how can it have value? --------- His system was just roadkill along the information superhighway. -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.3a mQCNAiz4FWMAAAEEALBCb7HZS7V4gbsp9yJ7Yty49jQ9wcgRhkLjNNgdyJbrJZCq 5/sv4Ljy/4AhVhjlJyZS8L3owS8l0ClZVzWw4/kO3KN7MPz4YPPR7+qIlPQVM0yv gWpJ43EZZ8b8cvAkE9HATCKWktY2ReRSX5DLnScDH/n5jivw+MD/UO8fURCVAAUR tCBNYXJrIEhpdHRpbmdlciA8YnVnc0BuZXRzeXMuY29tPg== =VbKi -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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The Joy of Digicash
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It occurs to me that digital cash could be a collector's item. Paper money is widely collected, as are coins. I got a book out of the library on old American paper money, and many of the old bills are startlingly beautiful. Interestingly, the old money is still legal tender so there is a floor under the value of the bills that you collect. Until 1861, the U.S. did not issue any paper money, only coins. In those days, paper money was issued by private banks (usually with state charters). The money was backed by dollars, coins, which the bank owned. Unfortunately, capitalism is a dynamic system and in those days bank failures were no more unusual than corporate failures are today. When this happened, the bank's notes became worthless. Counterfeiting was also a big problem with the thousands of different banks issuing notes. It is interesting to speculate that digital cash might lead to an electronic system with some similarities to those old days. Collecting digital cash has some problems. Collectors are generally attracted to items that are beautiful, interesting, and rare. Digital cash is interesting enough, but its beauty is rather abstract. Rarity is also hard to evaluate; each individual note has a unique serial number, and what it has in common with other notes of its denomination is the bank key and the exponent. Uncirculated notes are generally more valuable than others in the paper world; with digital banknotes the only way to tell whether it has been "circulated" would be to have access to the bank's database of spent notes, to verify that the note had never been deposited. Rarity could be determined by the bank's key and exponent. The Magic Money system has a provision for the bank to periodically move to another set of exponents to represent the same denominations (in order to keep the size of the note database from growing too large). If banks would do this at regular intervals, then particularly the early issues would be relatively rare. One might even have an early banknote notarized (digitally timestamped) so that one could prove its value in later years. Beauty is harder to deal with. Strictly speaking, digital cash is invisible, consisting only of an information pattern in RAM chips or on a disk. The numbers which represent the cash can be printed out, though, and this representation could perhaps have some beauty. Unfortunately, in my opinion several lines of random hex digits are not beautiful. I have been working on ideas to display the information in digital cash in some other way that is more esthetic. It would be nice if the display somehow only worked for correctly signed cash notes, with forged cash not displaying anything nice. My general idea is to display a "fingerprint" of each individual banknote, something that is unique to that note and which has a sort of beauty. One idea I have worked on is to seed a 1-D cellular automaton with a bit pattern based on the digital cash. This seed is then processed by the CA algorithm to produce some pattern, with each row being a function of the previous row. My thought was to start the CA at the top and the bottom of the screen with the two different functions applied to the cash which should be equal if the cash validates (taking the number to the proper exponent on one hand, and applying the MD5 hash of the serial number on the other, for the case of magic money). Then we work inwards with the two seeds. Proper cash will produce a symmetrical pattern. By choosing good CA rules, the patterns will be different for each bill, some nicer than others, leading to attractive fractal-looking patterns for many bills. When you wanted to "look at your money" you could run the program on the digital cash. People might even trade for especially attractive bills. A similar idea is to use the cash as the basis for some fractal algorithm. Many fractals have the property that most of the plane is plain, while only a fraction looks really fractal. Digital cash has the property that when exponentiated it leads to a number most of whose bits are fixed but which has a small number of varying bits. If we had a mapping which took the fixed digicash bits onto the interesting parts of the fractal, then fake cash would not produce pretty pictures, while real cash would produce some part of a beautiful fractal. Again, you would have validation and beauty being tied together. I've been doing some experiments with the first idea, hoping to produce something nice. With a little more thought I hope to come up with a viewer for your Magic Money that will bring out its natural beauty and rarity. This will be a must for all serious collectors of digicash. Hal

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OTP for remailers?
by jimn8＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I hope this isn't redundant; if this idea has been covered, sorry. Wouldn't it make sense for remailers to use OTP's for encryption? Public keys are great, but they can be black-bagged. I'd imagine that a copy of the private key to a popular remailer could be very valuable to anyone who could monitor remailer traffic transparently. A one-time pad on CD-ROM should hold enough pad data to last for several days' worth of data sent between remailers, even at high message volumes. So OTP's could be used practically between friendly remailers. Do existing remailers change their public keys often enough to limit exposure by their users in the event of the key being compromised? If so, perhaps I should be less concerned than I am. Nevertheless, I'd like to be able to talk to a remailer via a one-time pad. The OTP could be sold to remailer users as a means of generating revenue (a OTP CD-ROM could be made for about $20 and sold for a very reasonable price but still be profitable!) Once the OTP is used, it can (and should) be destroyed. On the other hand, data encrypted with a public key is vulnerable to black bag attacks on that key, as I just said. The cost of burning CD-ROMs is going down pretty rapidly. Wholesale cost of a burning mechanism should be well under $1,000 within the next year or two, and RNG hardware is coming online too. Blank media runs $15-$20, although Kodak sells PhotoCD media cheaper, at a loss, to developers who promise to use the discs for PhotoCD images ;) I don't really have anything in principle against the use of public keys for remailers; it would just make me feel a bit easier about their security if the private key couldn't be black-bagged with a using them if my communication to them couldn't be black-bagged with a simple bug that transmits the private key. I'd imagine a bus snooper chip could be made easily enough that could look for instruction and data flow corresponding to keys, and transmit it over low bandwidth channels to a listening station. I find it harder to imagine a device that could tap an entire data stream from a hard drive and transmit the complete contents undetected (assuming the remailer operator checks for bugs.) Now for a discussion on how to get a OTP CD from Finland without having the mail intercepted... nahh, never mind. - Jim Nitchals

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No Subject
by Ed Switalski 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

------- Forwarded Message Return-Path: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com Received: from hedera.bnr.co.uk on bnsgs200.bnr.co.uk over SMTP (5.65c/UK-2.1-MX(adur)); Thu, 17 Mar 1994 09:37:18 GMT Received: from eurogate.bnr.co.uk by hedera.bnr.co.uk with SMTP (PP); Thu, 17 Mar 1994 09:37:14 +0000 Received: from relay2.UU.NET by eurogate.bnr.co.uk with Internet SMTP (PP) id <25474-0(a)eurogate.bnr.co.uk>; Thu, 17 Mar 1994 09:37:08 +0000 Received: from toad.com by relay2.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AAwhpd03977; Thu, 17 Mar 94 04:28:59 -0500 Received: by toad.com id AA08739; Thu, 17 Mar 94 01:16:04 PST Received: from eurogate.bnr.co.uk by toad.com id AA08728; Thu, 17 Mar 94 01:15:46 PST Received: from bnr.co.uk by eurogate.bnr.co.uk with SMTP (PP) id <25199-0(a)eurogate.bnr.co.uk>; Thu, 17 Mar 1994 09:15:20 +0000 Received: from bnsgs200.bnr.co.uk by hedera.bnr.co.uk with SMTP (PP); Thu, 17 Mar 1994 09:15:11 +0000 Message-Id: <199403170915.5154(a)bnsgs200.bnr.co.uk> Received: from bnsgs207.bnr.co.uk on bnsgs200.bnr.co.uk over SMTP (5.65c/UK-2.1-MX(adur)); Thu, 17 Mar 1994 09:15:06 GMT To: Matthew J Ghio <mg5n+(a)andrew.cmu.edu> Cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Re: Radio Networking In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 16 Mar 1994 21:12:00 EST." <YhVvlky00awO45VkcL(a)andrew.cmu.edu> Date: Thu, 17 Mar 1994 09:14:32 +0000 From: Ed Switalski <E.Switalski(a)bnr.co.uk> Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com Precedence: bulk >About how far can one transmit with 250mw? *** Quite Far ! With coherent CW you can key morse Japan/US i.e cross the Pacific on a few watts. CCW involves getting the Tx master oscillator and the receivers local oscillator phase-locked (by using the local time/frequency standard transmitter (e.g. WWV MSF etc -one can also get nifty little rubidium standard clocks quite cheaply these days). US readers might care to look in the ARRL handbook for 1982 or thereabouts. CCW implies slow signalling speeds- a few baud, very narrow detection bandwidth few hertz (to match signalling) and coherent TX and RX. The ultimate limit is probably phase shift in the ionosphere. Use a frequency that a bit off Big Brother's scanner channel spacing and your emmission may not be detected -unless the spook is right on top of you. Which is just as well given it might take DAYS to download a .ps document ;-( Note this is a slow and gentle way of doing things, as opposed to a high-bandwidth, time-compressed (fairlyly high-power) "screech" transmission with somthing like meteorscatter. Regards, __o __o Ed \<, \<, _________________________________________()/ ()_____()/ ()_____________ Ed Switalski email: eswitals(a)bnr.co.uk Dept GM21, BNR Europe Ltd, Oakleigh Rd South, tel: +44 (0)81 945-2924 New Southgate, fax: +44 (0)81 945-3116 London, N11 1HB LON40, internal ESN (730) 2924 _______________________________________________________________________ ------- End of Forwarded Message

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Clipper hearings
by Black Unicorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Begin Forwarded Message talk.politics.crypto #3763 (4 more) Subject: Clipper hearings. Not yet scheduled for CSPAN. From: kwebb(a)unm.edu (Kyle L. Webb) Date: Wed Mar 16 21:07:21 EST 1994 Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque Lines: 28 Forgive me if this has been put out before. I called Senator Leahy's office, and was told that the Clipper hearings were to be held Friday March 18th at 1030 am EST in room 226 Dirksen Senate Office Building. I sent email to cspanviewr(a)aol.org which is CSPAN's viewer comment address letting them know of this. Today I got back a reply that there was as yet no plan to cover this event, but that the info had been forwarded to the programming staff. My guess is that it is far more likely that these hearings will be shown by CSPAN if there are a large number of requests to either the email address for CSPAN or phone calls to the CSPAN office, inquiring if the hearings will be broadcast. If getting information on Clipper into the public eye is important, then getting the hearings carried by CSPAN would be a good way to start. CSPAN's viewer services phone number is (202) 626-7963 (I got this number from CSPAN's gopher server, so it's been on the net before) Kyle L. Webb Dept. of Physics + Astronomy kwebb(a)carina.unm.edu University of New Mexico - fin -uni- (Dark)

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Senator Leahy's hearing
by bart＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Will you be covering this hearing on the important issue of the Clipper chip and our rights to privacy? It will be on March 18th, this Friday, at 10:30 am EST in Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Hope you can tape it for rebroadcast if you can't cover it live. Please let me know your schedule as soon as possible as I would hate to miss it, and have lots of friends who I would like to advise of the time and date.

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Address correction
by bart＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The address given by Black Unicorn to mail to cspan was in error, my mail to cspanviewr(a)aol.org bounced. To rattle their cage, try cspanviewr(a)aol.COM.

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Guardian, front page, March 17.
by gtoal＠an-teallach.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"The security services are said to have warned the Department of Trade and Industry that they will need to act more publicly if the service (talking about the Royal Mail - G) is privatised. They also point out that unlike the privatisation of the telephone network, which left the British Telecom network intact and easy to tap, the privatisation of the Royal Mail will lead to independent competitor services, making the interception of mail much more difficult." G

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OSS
by Mike Markley 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Last night (4/16/94) both the Discover Channel and A & E Network ran specials on the OSS and the part that they played in helping the Allies win World War II. It was kind of interesting to see what went on back then. I didn't watch the whole thing because I grew tired of watching grainy black and white footage of people walking through mud and water in rain forests on Pacific islands. I'm just curious if there is any connection between these broadcasts, which were quite rah-rah about the need for covert intelligence agencies, and the current Skipjack debate. Mike. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Mike Markley || The opinions here do not represent the mmarkley(a)microsoft.com || opinions of my employer. Attempts to || associate the two are pointless. "I want to look at life, In the available light" - Neil Peart -

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Whats so bad about a surveillance state
by Brian D Williams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are my own and do not represent the views of Ameritech or it's alliance partners. Blanc Weber Postulates: > -With the rise of fiber telcos are laying fewer cable > routes and just stuffing the routes they do dig up with > more fiber than is necessary for replacement of the > existing copper, leaving some major areas with only a > single path in and out as one bundle of fiber replaces > tons of copper that was laid in multiple paths > originally becayse it would not fit in one path. Saves > the telcos money, but a single backhoe might be able to > cause some major damage now... Well, I can't speak for the other Telco's, but here in the Midwest this is flat out untrue. Project looking glass which resulted in a Billion dollars of additional fiber installed in the last year, and an additional billion a year for the next 6 years is completely diversified. Countercurrent rings, diverse pathways, the whole bit. I believe the Internet was a model for these strategies. I might add that this is not new, we've been pursuing these strategies as long as I've been here. (about ten years) There were a couple of incidents involving landscape contractors in the last year, none resulted in significant outage. This is particularly interesting since the utilities run a service called JULIE (for Joint Utility Locating something or other) which you are supposed to call 48 hours before you dig, we'll send someone out to make sure you don't encounter anything. Brian Williams Extropian Cypherpatriot "Cryptocosmology: Sufficently advanced comunication is indistinguishable from noise." --Steve Witham -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLYiI2NCcBnAsu2t1AQGlPwP/ax2RmIZf0gFe86gwQmFqxNKcte5lRscW 2Y3AaPjLWIkN9O8IfMf5ZUaLQMMCEKJWfWUzq1B53Gwp3O3aTvpNhCpCnrHI8od7 uw8OcwyNKkYy4MyAtd4aCDkf7dMDuo4APZgSrS7IFSVRIK5ciFx6FopYyATuaOCa ZuywqzZWObI= =2g/i -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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RE: The Joy of Digicash
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From Hal: Proper cash will produce a symmetrical pattern. By choosing good CA rules, the patterns will be different for each bill, some nicer than others, leading to attractive fractal-looking patterns for many bills. When you wanted to "look at your money" you could run the program on the digital cash. People might even trade for especially attractive bills. ..................... This sounds really cool, if it could work that way. I can imagine a large screen wall display of these fractal images continuously running in color in the entertainment room, as a kaleidescopic display of all my cash holdings.......if the patterns begin to repeat themselves too soon, it means I don't have very much in the digibank. :>) So there couldn't be anything else which would produce these same patterns and thus be confused for the original or actual? Blanc

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EFF gun-shy of legally employing PGP
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Newsgroups: alt.2600,comp.org.eff.talk From: grady(a)netcom.com (Grady Ward) Subject: Re: "Porn Press Release" from EFF is a Hoax Message-ID: <gradyCMtHxp.M6L(a)netcom.com> Followup-To: alt.2600,comp.org.eff.talk Organization: Moby lexical databases X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL1] References: <CMI2AL.uAD(a)sernews.raleigh.ibm.com> <2m2mou$mp1(a)eff.org> <1994Mar15.170955.21185(a)nntpd2.cxo.dec.com> <2m5p3f$gt4(a)agate.berkeley.edu> Distribution: inet Date: Thu, 17 Mar 1994 16:32:13 GMT Lines: 78 Steve Pope (spp(a)zabriskie.eecs.berkeley.edu) wrote: : page(a)solvit.enet.dec.com (My name is...) writes: : > Yes, but the point of the reply, is that PGP signatures SHOULD : > be used by sysops. : Hmmm... why PGP, as opposed to the FIPS Digital Signature Standard? : Is the latter not in place yet? Yes, you can use the DSS (unless it is given away to PK partners, that is). The importance of using PGP or another strong privately developed crypto is that it supports the industry rather than relies upon the government. But since Mr Godwin has answered the question to his satisfaction and is not responding to further questions, I guess we will never know the real reason why the EFF will not use PGP to digitally sign press releases. Apparently Mr Godwin chooses not to be responsive to the EFF membership with respect to this issue. He only has said that sysops don't use PGP so rumors would not be quashed anyway. From a person of his intelligence this is about the lamest reason I've heard. Let me see if I can speculate on the real reaons the EFF may not choose to use PGP to sign press releases: (0) Using PGP would be provocative to the very powers we seek to infiltrate [ViaCrypt PGP is perfectly legal and fully licensed.] (1) There is not a problem with authenticity. [This must be false, otherwise Mr Godwin wouldn't have begun this thread] (2) Signing with PGP is not effective. [false; MD5 and RSA have no known weaknesses] (3) Signing with PGP is too hard or would take too much time [false, perfect for irregular press releases] (4) PGP signatures take too much bandwidth. [false, again perfect for the mmoderate to longer press releases] (5) Sysops don't use PGP, rumors would spread anyway [Sysops might begin with suitable leadership; the signature of course could be ignored and the rumor spread anyway -- but if there *were* a question of authenticity an individual could check the authenticity without needing to log on to EFF's server or needing to personally contact an EFF official] (6) Signatures make the press release harder to read [false, a single line at the beginning and a block of lines at the end are added, none of the body is changed in any way] (7) We are journalists and attorneys, not nose-picking nerds [??????] (8) We are journalists and attorneys, this might expose up to greater liability and less 'deniability'. [???????] (9) We just defend these 'PGP' and 'BBS' people. We don't actually want to ASSOCIATE with them more than we have to. Cooties. [???????] (10) The EFF does not have to explain its actions or inactions to anyone. [???????] While Sternlight is merely annoying, and sometimes entertaining, EFFs lack of dialogue on this leadership opportunity supporting private crypto signatures is very, very disappointing. -- Grady Ward | +1 707 826 7715 | finger grady(a)netcom.com for free 3449 Martha Ct. | (voice/24hr FAX) | Moby lexicon brochure & samples Arcata, CA 95521-4884 | 15E2ADD3D1C6F3FC | KN6JR monitoring 14.178 & 14.237 USA | 58ACF73D4F011E2F | 1800 UTC - 2000 UTC daily

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US Patent & Trademark Office Web server online
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A friend from the USPTO mentioned that he'd set up a PTO WWW server at http://www.uspto.gov/ Went and had a look, not a whole lot of stuff yet, but there's some probably- important material here, including transcripts of the Arlington and San Jose hearings on software patents. These can now be found also at ftp://ftp.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/Intellectual_Property/ gopher://gopher.eff.org/00/EFF/Policy/Intellectual_Property/ http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/Intellectual_Property/ The www.uspto.gov site has the benefit of having html versions up, so that you can find specific testimony, which is quite handy: http://www.uspto.gov/text/pto/hearings/arlington.html http://www.uspto.gov/text/pto/hearings/san_jose.html There are also Unix ASCII, DOS ASCII, compress'd ASCII, gzip'd ASCII, Adobe Acrobat Exchange PDF, and MS-Word for Mac (BinHex'd StuffIt archive) formats available at the PTO site. Also available (at both the USPTO and EFF paths) is a file containing the collected written testimony submitted to both hearings. -- Stanton McCandlish * mech(a)eff.org * Electronic Frontier Found. OnlineActivist "In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last week by Yankelovich Partners, two-thirds said it was more important to protect the privacy of phone calls than to preserve the ability of police to conduct wiretaps. When informed about the Clipper Chip, 80% said they opposed it." - Philip Elmer-Dewitt, "Who Should Keep the Keys", TIME, Mar. 4 1994

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Re: NSA and PGP rabblerousing
by markh＠wimsey.bc.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Note that doubling the key size from 1024 to 2048 bits is also > probably a ruse, since it dramatically increases computation time (I > think). 1024 bits are a lot of bits as it is. On the other hand, with 1. the right algorithms for multiple precision arithmetic 2. a little assembler code for time critical sections 3. reasonable hardware (say an intel 486DX/33. Nothing 'state of the art') encryption, decryption, signing &c. with a 2048 bit modulus can be quite practical (or at least tolerable). But yes, it does increase computation time considerably, so one has to be a lot more careful about how one does things if RSA is still going to be practical. Can you afford to wait 15 seconds to sign a message? What is the time limit for us to consider RSA practical? Mark -- Mark Henderson markh(a)wimsey.bc.ca (personal account) RIPEM MD5OfPublicKey: F1F5F0C3984CBEAF3889ADAFA2437433 ViaCrypt PGP Key Fingerprint: 21 F6 AF 2B 6A 8A 0B E1 A1 2A 2A 06 4A D5 92 46 cryptography archive maintainer -- anon ftp -- wimsey.bc.ca:/pub/crypto

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