December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: The Crisis with Remailers
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:32 AM 5/20/96 -0700, Ian Goldberg wrote: >I mentioned this to Chaum, and he didn't really seem agree with the need for >something lower-level... > >Another problem with postage in Mixmaster: the minimum ecash payment is >$0.01. Do we want to charge that much for email? Need we consider >micropayments? Absolutely! Given the exponentially increasing rate of data transmission ease, and corresponding cost reduction per bit, any "reasonable" minimum payment today becomes an unreasonable one tomorrow, and a hilariously outrageous one 10 years from now. Suppose the US Government had put a "information storage tax" on hard disks in about 1980, of about $10 per megabyte which would have worked out to be about 1/20 of the retail value at that time. Today, a 1.6 gigabyte hard disk would cost about $1850, which would be $250 for the drive and $1600 for the tax... Any more questions? Many months ago, I suggested using the idea of "probabilistic payments," in which a person could make a very tiny purchase with a large coin, by in effect "gambling" with the payment: You could buy a 0.1-cent email with a 1-cent coin, in which the likelihood of actually paying is 10%. Statistically, both myself and the vendor will be happy in the long run. An advantage of this system is that the payments can be made arbitrarily small and of indefinite granularity: I can pay you 0.3156893 cents with only 1-cent coins. I would be surprised if I was the first to think of such a system, at least in the ecash world, but I never heard anything to the contrary. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: encrypted open books (Was why does the state still stand)
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Mon, 20 May 1996 jamesd(a)echeque.com wrote: >> Look up cypernomicon, "open encrypted books" At 01:30 PM 5/20/96 -0700, Wei Dai wrote: > There is indeed a short section in the Cyphernomicon about encrypted open > books. Unfortunately it doesn't describe it in detail, An organization, such as a bank, issues signed, non anonymous promises to pay to various nyms -- in other words bank accounts, or interest bearing bonds, or some such. A nym would like to know what the total amount of such signed obligation is, so that he can be sure it is less than the total value of the institutions good name and readily findable and confiscatable assets. But we do not want a bunch of outsiders getting a list of lots of private information about who owns what, (such as auditors who are usually in the pockets of the tax collectors). The institution needs to be able to prove that it only owes total amount X in this form, without letting Tom, Dick, and Harry know who it owes amount X to, and why. To do this it organizes its accounts in a binary tree, and constructs a one way checksum tree checksum, revealing to each custom the part of the tree he is on, all the way up to the root, which must be the same for all customers, and must be placed in some public place, so that any customer can tell that his account is included in the total openly admitted obligations of the institution, and any customer can, by revealing secret information, prove that he is one of the people that the institution has publicly admitted owing money to. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | 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

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INFO: Sen. Burns tells White House "Three strikes and you're out"
by Voters Telecommunications Watch 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

============================================================================= ____ _ _ _ / ___|_ __ _ _ _ __ | |_ ___ | \ | | _____ _____ | | | '__| | | | '_ \| __/ _ \ _____| \| |/ _ \ \ /\ / / __| | |___| | | |_| | |_) | || (_) |_____| |\ | __/\ V V /\__ \ \____|_| \__, | .__/ \__\___/ |_| \_|\___| \_/\_/ |___/ |___/|_| SENATOR BURNS (R-MT) TELLS THE WHITE HOUSE "THREE STRIKES AND YOU'RE OUT" OF THE ENCRYPTION DEBATE BURNS SAYS CLIPPER III PLAN IS A "SWING AND A MISS" Date: May 20, 1996 URL:http://www.crypto.com/ crypto-news(a)panix.com If you redistribute this, please do so in its entirety, with the banner intact. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents News Text of press release from Senator Burns (R-MT) How to receive crypto-news ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- NEWS The hemorrhaging of the White House publicity campaign surrounding the Clipper III proposal that started in Interactive Week and the House of Representatives continues today in the Senate. Earlier today we received the attached press release from Senator Burns' (R-MT) office. Although this author has not yet seen the proposal, it is wonderful to see Congress leading the fight against the White House on this issue. >From the recent slew of encryption legislation (H.R. 3011, S.1587, & S.1726), it's clear that Congress understands that the best people in the world to sort out this issue are the public and industry. The three Clipper plans have been hatched by a secretive Executive agency without considering the needs of the public and industry. This is the start of a highly-charged tug-of-war between Congress and the White House over who holds the keys to your privacy: you, or the government? Congress says you, the White House says the government. It's crucial that we support Congress as they go head-to-head with the White House. Keep an eye out for the first leaks and analyses of the Clipper III report that will undoubtedly appear on the net soon. DON'T FORGET! Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) will be on HotWired *THIS WEDNESDAY*, May 22nd at 4pm EST at http://www.hotwired.com/wiredside/ You can tune in and listen to the chat with the RealAudio software (http://www.realaudio.com) You can ask questions of the Senator through a moderator and get real, immediate responses. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- TEXT OF PRESS RELEASE FROM SENATOR BURNS (R-MT) [Note that feedback to Senator Burns can be sent via email at conrad_burns(a)burns.senate.gov -Shabbir] For immediate release: Contact: Matt Raymond Monday, May 20, 1996 (202) 224-8150 Randall Popelka (202) 224-6137 Burns: Clipper III Strikes Out New Clinton Computer "Wiretap" Plan Circulates With Few Changes WASHINGTON, D.C. _ Montana Senator Conrad Burns today criticized the Clinton administration's latest computer security proposal as yet another government-driven mandate and urged swift passage of Burns' "Pro-CODE" bill, which addresses export of encryption technology and prohibits mandatory decryption-key escrow. Burns reacted to the circulation of a draft administration proposal entitled "Achieving Privacy, Commerce, Security and Public Safety in the Global Information Infrastructure." The proposal, dated May 10 and dubbed "Clipper III" by critics, moves toward the loosening and possibly eventual elimination of export controls on encryption technologies, but only if companies and individuals surrender a copy of their code keys to a government-approved third party. "It's three strikes and you're out at the old ball game, and I would say that the third version of the administration's Clipper Chip proposal is a swing and a miss," Burns said. "It's time to quit relying on government mandates for what is truly a matter of great concern to the private sector: the expansion of commerce on the Internet and other computer networks. "The administration has been using export restrictions as a billy club to force American companies into accepting government control over the keys to their computer files and transmissions. At least this new proposal admits that the current 40-bit limit on exports is outdated and a poor guarantee of electronic security and integrity, but it again operates from the standpoint that the government, and not the private sector, knows best when it comes to key strength and control over those keys. "We can only stick our heads in the sand for so long. It is important to point out that the criminals and trouble-makers who are apparently targets of this plan are unlikely to enroll in any key-escrow system. Law-abiding businesses and individuals would suffer at the hands of this misguided proposal. "While this may appear to be a compromise of the administration's earlier positions, we have to remember that an executive action can be reversed just as quickly after an election year. It is crucial that we pass legislation to codify a solution to the administration's current outdated export policies, and to ensure that the government won't force anyone to give up the keys to their computers." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- HOW TO RECEIVE CRYPTO-NEWS To subscribe to crypto-news, sign up from our WWW page (http://www.crypto.com) or send mail to majordomo(a)panix.com with "subscribe crypto-news" in the body of the message. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- End crypto-news =============================================================================

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No Subject
by unknown＠example.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

! > The Australian law is (or was) based on the idea that if you charged ! > someone $2500 for eating the flesh of christ, it then becomes ! > legitimate for the government to check out whether or not the ! > customer was getting actual flesh of Christ. ! ! Well, although it makes for an expensive steak, it is still quite ! cheap considering that in the days of JC, they did not have ! refregirators. Must have gone to great pains to preserve the stuff! Mohels suckle the blood from infants with vino as chaser. The origion of lycanthropy. Love, Qut

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Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From hfinney(a)shell.portal.com Mon May 20 22:32:43 1996 > Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 20:33:33 -0700 > From: Hal <hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> > Message-Id: <199605210333.UAA04650(a)jobe.shell.portal.com> > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com, ravage(a)ssz.com > Subject: Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns (fwd) > > I think Jim is right about the knowledge requirement, which although not > stated explicitly in the statute, has been held by the courts to be an > essential element. My point in quoting is more to show an example of the > kinds of clearly illegal postings which operators have to deal with. > The point I was trying to make was that if this position is the official position of the FBI then they are guilty of the crime because they posted the Unabomber Manifesto in toto on their webpage which is accessible inter-state.

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Re: SEVERE undercapacity, we need more remailer servers FAS
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 20 May 96 at 9:53, jamesd(a)echeque.com wrote: > The Australian law is (or was) based on the idea that if you charged > someone $2500 for eating the flesh of christ, it then becomes > legitimate for the government to check out whether or not the > customer was getting actual flesh of Christ. Well, although it makes for an expensive steak, it is still quite cheap considering that in the days of JC, they did not have refregirators. Must have gone to great pains to preserve the stuff! Or did I misunderstood a few things? JFA Le mur est jaune, la banane est jaune, donc la banane est mure!

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Re: The Crisis with Remailers
by loki＠infonex.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:40 AM 5/20/96, sameer(a)c2.org wrote: >> >> Another problem with postage in Mixmaster: the minimum ecash payment is >> $0.01. Do we want to charge that much for email? Need we consider >> micropayments? >> > > one cent could well be too low. > An interesting problem with anonymous postage is that it is likely to kill cover traffic generators. -Lance ---------------------------------------------------------- Lance Cottrell loki(a)obscura.com PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server. Mixmaster, the next generation remailer, is now available! http://www.obscura.com/~loki/Welcome.html or FTP to obscura.com "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come." --Nietzsche ----------------------------------------------------------

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Remailers, Copyright, and Scientology
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:15 PM 5/20/96, Rich Burroughs wrote: >At 01:08 AM 5/20/96 -0700, tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) wrote: >[snip] >>And the issue of CoS seeking legal actions against those they claim are >>violating their copyrights is separable from their religious status. > >Not at all. Their actions are based on their religious doctrines, as passed >down by Hubbard. "Always attack, never defend." Their claims of copyright >violation are part of an ongoing effort to silence those who criticize their >illegal and immoral practices. They should be examined in that context. I don't care what their motivations, religious or other, are. As I see it, some people here (including some good friends of mine, by the way) are caught up in a religious war. Those opposed to CoS are "outing" putative CoS secrets by aggressive use of remailers. The CoS is fighting back. Is anyone surprised? >> As I >>have said many times, "Newsweek" would likely take similar actions in >>similar circumstances.) > >AFAIK, "Newsweek" does not file lawsuits just for the purpose of harassment, >as Hubbard counselled his followers to do. AFAIK, "Newsweek" does not hire >PIs to harass those who criticize them.\ Well, I have heard Brad Templeton (Hi, Brad!, when you find this reference to yourself with Alta Vista) say several times why he and his company, Clarinet, aggressively go after those he thinks are infringing. Brad has to protect his copyrights, or the transitive copyrights of AP, Reuters, etc., that he acquires through licensing. And as I recall, a whole bunch of people have gotten "cease and desist" letters. Even some friends of mine. This gets less attention than do similar letters sent to Grady Ward and Keith Henson, for example, because Grady, Keith, and others are caught up in a Holy War against L. Ron, and the Battles with the Clams are more interesting to most of us than some otherwise-obscure copyright infringement filed by "Newsweek." (Having worked at Intel for a number of years, let me assure you right away that if remailers were used to post internal Intel documents--and I don't mean stuff like the "unauthorized opcodes"--that Intel would come down on the remailer sites and anyone else they could reach like two galaxies colliding. By the way, I expect something like this to happen eventually.) --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Is Chaum's System Traceable or Untraceable?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:10 AM 5/20/96 -0700, Ian Goldberg wrote: >>So are there any flaws with above procedure? > >Yup; with the current protocols, there's no way to do change. For the shop >to pay you change, besides suddenly losing your anonymity as a payee, you >would have to go online immediately to clear the coins, which assumedly >is infeasable. > >However, if you use the "fully anonymous" protocol, change becomes trivial. >You don't have to go online; the payer (the shop) does, which it assumedly >already is. Another benefit is that coins received in this way as change >are immediately spendable by you, without having to go online in between. > >The "fully anonymous" protocol turns out to be _exactly_ what is needed >for situations like this. Wouldn't it be interesting if someday, somebody paying for something with digital cash asked the shopkeeper "Why can't you give me change for my purchase?" and the answer was, "If we could give you change, you could overthrow all the governments in the world." Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Assassination politics
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

So, how would I go about betting that a certain AIDS patient in Seattle area won't have his legs broken? :-) --- Dr. Dimitri Vulis Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns (fwd)
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Jim Choate <ravage(a)ssz.com> > > From: Hal <hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> > > "Whoever transmits in interstate commerce any communication containing > > any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of > > another, shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more > > than five years, or both." > > There should be a section in there dealing with 'knowingly'. If not then we > should immediately bring charges against any and all newspapers who have > ever printer a ransom letter, or perhaps even the Unibomber Manifesto since > there is clear evidence of 'threat to injure the person of another'. I think Jim is right about the knowledge requirement, which although not stated explicitly in the statute, has been held by the courts to be an essential element. My point in quoting is more to show an example of the kinds of clearly illegal postings which operators have to deal with. Hal

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Anonymous info
by admin＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

You have requested information about your account at anon.penet.fi. Your code name is: <an611909(a)anon.penet.fi> Your real e-mail address is: <cypherpunks(a)toad.com> Your nickname is: <> Your password is: <> Regards, admin(a)anon.penet.fi

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re: "Very Famous Reporter"
by minow＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From a message by Robert Hettinga: >> I was talking to someone who was talking to someone (have I said this is a >> rumor yet?) who was solicited for comment by a Very Famous Reporter ... At a lecture about his recent book, John Markoff, the New York Times' Silicon Valley reporter, said (and I quote from memory): "The most dangerous animal on earth is a reporter on deadline." Martin Minow minow(a)apple.com

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Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns (fwd)
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:33 AM 5/21/96, Hal wrote: >From: Jim Choate <ravage(a)ssz.com> >> There should be a section in there dealing with 'knowingly'. If not then we >> should immediately bring charges against any and all newspapers who have >> ever printer a ransom letter, or perhaps even the Unibomber Manifesto since >> there is clear evidence of 'threat to injure the person of another'. > >I think Jim is right about the knowledge requirement, which although not >stated explicitly in the statute, has been held by the courts to be an >essential element. My point in quoting is more to show an example of the >kinds of clearly illegal postings which operators have to deal with. "Scienter" is the legal term for having knowledge. This is one reason we often talk about the dangers of remailers looking at what flows through their systems. Not so much to establish "common carrier" status, especially as that kind of status is just not something one sets out to establish!, but because the protection of being ignorant gets tossed out as soon as one admits to screening, or editing. This is not perfectly accurate in all situations. A bookstore owner is generally not held liable for the contents of the books in his store, even though he makes certain choices about what to carry and what not to carry. A magazine editor is more often held liable for content of articles (e.g., infringing materials, libel, etc.). We discussed this many times when I was on the Cyberia list. As best I could figure things out, the bookstore owner is excused from liability because we can't expect he'll have actually read the books in his store, even if chooses which ones to carry, but we expect that the editor of "The New Republic" has personally looked at all of the articles, or had a staff of underlings do so. BTW, I think that remailer operators don't fit either the publishing or bookstore models. While it is tempting to compare them to telephones, I think a better comparison is to *package delivery services* like the U.S. Postal Service, UPS, Federal Express, Airborne, etc. As we have discussed *so many* times (:-}), these package delivery services cooperate in various ways with law enforcement investigations, e.g., shipping of drugs by FedEx, but they are not held liable for illegal materials delivered or for crimes committed with the aid of their services. (And these delivery services DO NOT always insist on valid return addresses, in case anyone brings this up. Letters can be dropped in mailboxes, obviously, and pre-paid mailers are available. When I've used FedEx, I don't recall any checks of my identity.) --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Remailers & what they get out of it...
by loki＠infonex.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:17 PM 5/19/96, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote: >From: IN%"ravage(a)ssz.com" "Jim Choate" 18-MAY-1996 09:43:06.96 >>To me the biggest problem with the crypto work right now is that not enough >>professionals are involved. If more remailers and such were initiated as >>a business there would be legal avenues to explore. Also, in this vain is >>the apparent lack of support for commercial ventures by developers of such >>apps as MixMaster (whose license explicity prohibits commercial use). > > It prohibits commercial use? That's silly. Is it a >holdover from when the idea was to turn Mixmaster into a company? > Mixmaster is licensed under the GNU copyleft. -Lance ---------------------------------------------------------- Lance Cottrell loki(a)obscura.com PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server. Mixmaster, the next generation remailer, is now available! http://www.obscura.com/~loki/Welcome.html or FTP to obscura.com "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come." --Nietzsche ----------------------------------------------------------

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DOS/WINDOWS Mixmaster Client
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anyone know if there is a DOS or Windows version of the mixmaster client?

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Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns
by Rich Graves 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Tue, 21 May 1996, Declan B. McCullagh wrote: > An alternative I am considering would reduce the utility of the remailer > while still allowing these "consensual" uses to continue. Presently the > remailers deal with abuse via "block lists", sets of addresses that mail > can't be sent to. Generally these are created when someone complains > about some mail they have received. By setting up blocking, at least > they will not get harrassing anonymous mail once they have complained. > But in some cases, as in the case that is causing me headaches now, even > one message is too much. > > My thought is to turn the block list concept on its head, and make it a > "permit list". Simply, the remailer will only send mail to people who > have voluntarily indicated their willingness to receive it. How would you know that the message you received is actually from them? I don't see how this would really help. I like the "knock-knock" approach, though it would of necessity impose load. If someone has an anonymous message waiting, send them a simple note with instructions on how to retrieve it. From: Anonymous Remailer <hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> To: random person <somebody(a)there.com> An anonymous message is waiting for you. If you wish to receive this message, simply send an email message with [some unique string, maybe an MD5 hash of the actual message] in the body of a message to hfinney(a)shell.portal.com. The simplest way to do this is to reply to this message, quoting this text. I certainly think that limiting newsgroup posting would be prudent. It's inexcusable that it's possible to use anonymous remailers to post *forgeries* (see the smoking flames cross-posted to alt.syntax.tactical). -rich

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Hiding remailers behind nymservers...?
by Steve Reid 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- This 'middle-man' remailer... What does it really accomplish? Sure, the operator is hidden, but that's only because of his/her nym at c2.org... AFAICS, the 'middle-man' has just taken the liability off himself and put it on the unhidden remailers. Why not just use the existing unhidden remailers??? I think this is similar to the idea that came up about having some (but not all) remailers only deliver to other remailers, for use as any link in a chain except the last link. The operator doesn't have his email address attached to spam, and there's very little liability because Co$ and other pressure groups will always(?) go after the last remailer in the chain, since that's the only one they can know was involved. I think the pseudonymously hidden remailer is an interesting idea, but I don't think it offers anything over the unhidden remailers, since it's still depending on the unhidden ones.. If you want to aviod liability, what's wrong with running a remailer that only delivers to other remailers, as I mentioned above? Am I missing something here? ===================================================================== | Steve Reid - SysAdmin & Pres, EDM Web (http://www.edmweb.com/) | | Email: steve(a)edmweb.com Home Page: http://www.edmweb.com/steve/ | | PGP (2048/9F317269) Fingerprint: 11C89D1CD67287E68C09EC52443F8830 | | -- Disclaimer: JMHO, YMMV, TANSTAAFL, IANAL. -- | ===================================================================:) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3ia Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBMaEhlNtVWdufMXJpAQEUbwf9F1081yRIazOUcr/z+ifihD5PLTr70V9X zvp13QXvPVao5Jg1N83Tfrar7zQYnvHU2RYPVBLecxZAY0hhbRRhOF/GVhkfcm2g ehNuQdTxilVTRbCez49zLpXxQEKvnullLYOZY3qv1xe9MaqjuS5C73c3H5oNhQTz B79cdvLynsIrhXD5oLyZyUxX/fggsFIfQsAh6a1KAdC0OclF1/dm1WeJKADSMFq4 bBt5BZcd410tfwpy+VTD5TUt7tb2wAOv56tVKVcPIXPZ04hr4Nlww6pQ+dtR4/B0 j1lzfrdDxos6h33abB9TpKrfo8uBsGxlkGyefqre+qvfexZwv/Wpmg== =sJVW -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns
by William Ono 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Mon, 20 May 1996, Don may have written: > Re: "permitted" list > > Addresses must be hashed. That makes sense. I don't think the processing time is very significant here. Even using somewhere where collisions can be created is not much of a problem, as email addresses tend to be picky for syntax. > Possibly auto-added to the list when mail comes > from that address. How would mail spoofing be prevented? Sending mail with a given From: address is laughably trivial, even making Recieved: look feasable is easy. Having people PGP-sign their 'add' requests might work, but then anybody can create any keys with any email address attached to it. Asking the remailer operator to verify each key would be unimaginable. Sending back acknowlegements suffers from storage problems, processing power problems, and also makes it significantly easier for traffic analysis. (One mail in, one mail out, one mail in, lots of mails out. Pairs of mails roughly corresponding.) On the whole, I think the idea of 'permit lists' is good, but not one that is very workable under the current "structure". IANACoNE (cryptologist or network expert) -- ** NOTE NEW KEY ** As of 08/28/95! Old key 0x2902B621 COMPROMISED! William Ono <wmono(a)direct.ca> PGP Key: F3F716BD fingerprint = A8 0D B9 0F 40 A7 D6 64 B3 00 04 74 FD A7 12 C9 = fingerprint PGP-encrypted mail welcome! "640k ought to be enough for everybody."

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Re: The Crisis with Remailers
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:25 AM 5/21/96, Lance Cottrell wrote: >An interesting problem with anonymous postage is that it is likely to kill >cover traffic generators. > I doubt it. It's easy enough for remailers to, for example, pass out free tokens to other remailer operators. (Jukebox and other coin-op concessions often pass out tokens (slugs, or marked coins) to storeowners and bartenders to use to stimulate the market.) --Tim Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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PROTOCOL: Encrypted Open Books
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Wei Dai wrote: "There is indeed a short section in the Cyphernomicon about encrypted open books. Unfortunately it doesn't describe it in detail, and since the hks.net archive is down, I can't look up Eric Hughes' original e-mail on the topic. If anyone has a copy of it in his personal archive, please repost it. I'm sure other people would be interested as well." Your wish is my command! >Date: Mon, 16 Aug 93 13:57:51 -0700 >From: Eric Hughes <hughes(a)soda.berkeley.edu> >To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com >Subject: PROTOCOL: Encrypted Open Books >Status: OR > >Kent Hastings wondered how an offshore bank could provide assurances >to depositors. I wondered the same thing a few months ago, and >started working on what Perry calls the anonymous auditing problem. I >have what I consider to be the core of a solution. > >All the following protocols and ideas are in the public domain. > >The following is long. > >My notation here will also be much less formal than I am capable of; I >don't want to make the uninitiated read TeX. > >The basic idea is that summation can be performed encrypted by using >exponentiation in a finite field. That is, if I represent an amount x >by g^x and an amount y by g^y, then I can compute the sum of x and y >by multiplying g^x and g^y, getting g^(x+y). Very basic. > >So let us take a very simple version of this protocol, which leaves >out many desiderata. If a shared funds account, say, has a bunch of >transactions made on it, then we can publish each of those amounts x_i >(for the non-TeX'd, underscore means subscript) encrypted as g^(x_i). >I know what my transaction number, i, is, and what the amount was, so >I can verify that my transaction appeared in the public list. We also >publish the beginning and ending balances, givings use a total >difference X. Now anyone can verify that g^X equals g^(Sum_i x_i). >That is, everyone can verify that the aggregate effect of the >transactions is what is claimed without revealing the amounts of any >of them. > >What does this protocol reveal? It reveals the number of transactions >on each account and thus the total number of transactions. It is also >subject to known plaintext attack. If I get an account on this system >and make one transaction in each amount, I can decrypt by table lookup >the whole transaction flow. The total number of transaction accounts >is also revealed, or, for a bank, the number of customers. > >We can easily solve the known plaintext attack by blinding each >transaction. Instead of publishing pairs <i, g^(x_i)>, we have for >each transaction a blinding factor r_i and publish triples > > <i, g^(x_i + r_i), h^(r_i)> > >The notation has grown. g is a generator of a finite field G, and h >is a generator of a different finite field H. > >We also publish R = Sum_i r_i in addition to X = Sum_i x_i. > >What is the public verification procedure? Basically the same as the >first case, but in addition taking into account the blinding factors. > >Step 1. Calculate Product_i h^(r_i) and make sure that it equals h^R. >This validates the blinding factors. > >Step 2. Calculate Product_i g^(x_i + r_i) and make sure that it >equals g^(X+R). This, given the validity of the blinding factors, >validates the actual transactions. > >How does this resist known plaintext attack? Since the blinding >factors r_i are flatly distributed over their range (caveat! you pick >the order of G smaller than of H to assure this), the x_i + r_i sum >acts exactly as a one-time pad to encrypt the amount. In summary, >what is going on here is that both the messages (amounts) and the keys >(the blinding factors) are being sent out as images of one-way >functions (exponentiations) that preserve exactly the relationships >that we want. > >There's more. For a real business, we want to keep double entry books >and not just single entry accounts as above. By extending the number >of terms in the transaction, we can do that too. In double entry >bookkeeping, the total amounts for each transaction must sum to zero >over the various accounts being transacted upon; I say this knowing >that when you print out the information for an accountant you'll have >to do some sign twiddling for the asset and liability/equity halves of >the books. Also, a single transaction may involve more than two >accounts, even if in practice most involve only two. > >The basic idea here is that each transaction is a set of the above >transactions whose sum must be zero. So for a transaction i, we publish >a set of triples, indexed by j, > > < T_i,j, g^( m_i,j + r_i,j ), h^( r_i,j ) > > >where the subscripts are doubly indexed and where T_i,j represents the >account that amount m_i,j is changing. Now we can perform, on each >transaction, the following very similar verification procedure for >each fixed i. > >Step 1. Verify that Product_j h^( r_i,j ) = 1. This verifies that >the blinding factors sum to zero. > >Step 2. Verify that Product_j g^( m_i,j + r_i,j ) = 1. Since the >blinding factors sum to zero, this ensures that the transaction >amounts sum to zero. > >Not that both of these sums are done over j, not i. In other words, >we validate each transaction individually. > >Now we also publish aggregate changes in the public accounts just as >before. The holders of private accounts know what how their accounts >have changed. Then we can use the the single account verification >method as above to verify that the totals match. Everyone can verify >that the public accounts match, and the holders of private accounts >can verify that they match. > >To summarize: The transactions are doubly indexed. If you group by >transaction, then you verify that each transaction sums to zero. If >you group by account, then you verify that the change in that account >is as expected, be it public or private. > >In the scenario that Kent originally proposed, one of the public >accounts would be a gold account, which through independent public >auditing would be verified to be accurate. I personally would not use >gold but rather denominate certain accounts in shares of mutual funds, >which are resistant to the currency inflations of mining and stockpile >sales. > >What information is still being disclosed? The most worrisome to me >is that the total number of transactions per account is revealed, that >is, aggregate activity, but not total money flux. I have an insight >that may allow the _account_ to be blinded as well as the amounts, and >be revealed in aggregate just as the amounts are, but I have not >worked out the details because I am not fully up to speed on the >relevant math. > >BEGIN BIG MATH >I only expect a few people to follow the next paragraphs, so if you >don't understand it, skip it. > >Here's the idea. The modular exponentiation is performed in a finite >ring. We choose a ring that has lots of distinct prime ideals of >sufficiently large order. To each account we assign one ideal. We >represent dollar amounts as elements of this ideal; since the ideal is >prime, this is straightforward. The property of the ideal we use is >that the sum of any two elements of the ideal is also in the ideal. >Hence by partitioning the ring, we also partition the computation of >the accounts. We are blinding the transcations by account because we >rely on the fact that blinding is not an intra-ideal operation, and >thus does not preserve that invariant, which would otherwise be >public. > >We must be careful not to allow operations that would result in an >element which was in the intersection of two ideals. This requires >upper bounds both on the transaction amount and on the number of >transactions per cycle. There might be rings of order p^n+1 which >would be suitable for this operations, but I am not sure of the >security of the discrete log in such cases, except for p=2, in which >case it is bad. > >END OF BIG MATH > >The protocol as specified, though, is useful as it stands. I have not >specified all the details. For example the blinding factors should >likely be created in a cooperative protocol at the point of >transaction; blinding factors for intra-bank transactions should not >contain subliminal channels. Certificates of deposit and withdrawal >should be tied to the published transaction information. Etc. >Remember, this is the core of an idea. > >One criticism I do wish to address now. I don't think it matters if >the bank manufactures fake transactions. The customer can reveal the >sum of all the blinding factors for transactions on that account, in >public, and can thus prove what should have been there. Since the >blinding factors were committed to in public, there is a strong >assurance that these blinding factors are what they are claimed to be. >This in itself can be made into an actual proof of liability. Note >that even this revelantion does not compromise individual >transactions. It only reveals the aggregate value change, which is >exactly what is at issue with the bank. > >On the other hand, all of the bank assets that are held external to >that organization can be externally audited in the same way. The >other institutions that hold money might be persuaded to undertake a >legal obligation to honor what the encrypted open books say they >should have; this may not be difficult because they can verify that >their record of the transactions matches what has been published. > >If we use the contents of the encrypted books at the organizational >boundary points to create suitable legal opbligations, we can mostly >ignore what goes on inside of the mess of random numbers. That is, >even if double books were being kept, the legal obligations created >should suffice to ensure that everything can be unwound if needed. >This doesn't prevent networks of corrupt businesses from going down >all at once, but it does allow networks of honest businesses to >operate with more assurance of honesty. > >Eric

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Re: Long-Lived Remailers
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:56 PM 5/20/96, Rev. Mark Grant, ULC wrote: >With regard to the problems of remailers being shut down when we want >long-lived addresses, wouldn't seperating the input and output be one >possibility? That is (like Hal's Alumni remailer) you'd send mail to >'remailer(a)anon.ai' and it would be forwarded via a disposable account >elsewhere. All messages would appear to come from 'disposable(a)foo.com' and >if that account was shut down a new one could be opened to replace it >while incoming mail simply backed up at the main remailer account. This is a very good idea. It keeps the advantages of having persistent accounts (which other users, chaining programs, etc. can use) while making it appear that the mail is coming from another account. "Security through obscurity," I hear you snort. Well, not really. The _legal_ account is the one that an unhappy recipient sees on the "From:" line. The Church of Scientology sees "disposable(a)foo.com" and fires off a letter to foo.com requesting that foo.com cause this account to disappear. So it does, but "transient(a)bar.com" picks up the slack. An idea worth trying, of formally/legally separating the functions. Of course, in some sense this is a special case of having disposable accounts for "instant remailers" (see recent thread on this). >The only potential problem I could see would be that the disposable ISP >might have logs which could track the outgoing messages back to the other >account. You'd also obviously need to open the disposable account >anonymously or using an ISP who'd protect your identity. Traffic analysis will be quite easy to do, of course, as all mail sent to the persistent address comes out of the "disposable(a)foo.com" address. Q.E.D. (Hal, to use him as the example, could start using his own choice of remailer hops to accomplish much the same result. We've talked about this for a long time, too. If I ran a remailer, I think I'd route *all* traffic leaving my site through at least one other remailer...kind of a "hot potato" effect. Of course, if _everyone_ did this, an infinite loop would result. Lots of interesting twists, though, as messages could be set to "leak out" of the loops.) But this scheme, here, and Mark's scheme, are variants on the idea of trying to make the remailers less clearly-identifiable targets. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Senator, your public key please?
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:45 PM 5/20/96, Andrew Loewenstern wrote: ... >Your local KCA (KKK Certification Authority) could as easily issue a "This >key is owned by a Nigger." certificate for a public key as TRW could issue a >"This key is owned by a Deadbeat." certificate. Presumably, future versions >of PGP and other public-key crypto systems will support free-form certificate >generation and not the quasi-fixed-definition signatures currently found in >PGP. Indeed, this is one of the things I was referring to. To wit, that one can possibly (emphasis on "possibly," modulo legal actions, a la my point) use "Metzger's Web of Trust" to effectively discriminate. (ObCaveat: I personally think a free society cannot/should not outlaw discrimination in any form, save that by government.) >You can be sure that there will be rallying cries for laws to be passed to >ensure the accuracy of statements made in key certificates, that characters >are not defamed, that libel is not committed, etc... Lots of the same issues >involving any other type of speech and the international and sometimes >untraceable nature of the Net. What do you do about a signature on your key, >posted anonymously to the net, which names you as one of the Four >Horsemen(*tm)? By the way, this issue has some echoes of another technogical issue: the use of neural nets for loan approval software. Turns out that when a bunch of things are entered into a NN loan package, including the all-important default rate, the applicant's age, income, race, sex, education, employment history, credit history, etc., that NN loan packages "end up" rejecting many black applicants, more so than white or Asian applicants. (The NN "concluded" that blacks were higher risks for default than whites/Asians.) Even if no human being ever entered his or her biases and prejudices, the NN spit out this result. I recall there being talk about requiring "equality of outcomes," and that such NNs might have to have deliberately-biased inputs fed in, but I don't know what ever happened to this issue. In any case, I think this sort of issue, and the semi-related issue of "discrimination via key signatures," to be likely important issues in the courts in the coming years. --Tim Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:47 AM 5/21/96, Rich Graves wrote: >On Tue, 21 May 1996, Declan B. McCullagh wrote: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > >> An alternative I am considering would reduce the utility of the remailer >> while still allowing these "consensual" uses to continue. Presently the >> remailers deal with abuse via "block lists", sets of addresses that mail >> can't be sent to. Generally these are created when someone complains >> about some mail they have received. By setting up blocking, at least >> they will not get harrassing anonymous mail once they have complained. >> But in some cases, as in the case that is causing me headaches now, even >> one message is too much. >> >> My thought is to turn the block list concept on its head, and make it a >> "permit list". Simply, the remailer will only send mail to people who >> have voluntarily indicated their willingness to receive it. You reply-quote process must have been hit with an alpha particle, because all of this was written by Hal Finney, not Declan. --Tim Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Rumor: DSS Broken?
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 19 May 96 at 21:48, Tim Dierks wrote: [..] > PPS - Any chance the original rumor surrounded RCA/Hughes' DSS satellite TV > system, and not the Digital Signature Standard, and we've all been barking > up the wrong tree? Hm. Check the cable/satellite tv newsgroups. Rob. --- No-frills sig. Key-ID: 5D3F2E99 1996/04/22 wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com (root@magneto) AB1F4831 1993/05/10 Deranged Mutant <wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com> Send a message with the subject "send pgp-key" for a copy of my key.

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Re: CAPITALISTS' SUCK
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 20 May 96 at 4:07, Dave Harman wrote: [..] > ! >Dave Harman writes: > ! > > ! > CAPITALISTS' SUCK > ! > ! What witty social commentary. > > Information wants to be free. Information doesn't want to be free (or anything else) anymore than the stapler on my desk wants to be free. The day that abstract qualities like "information" or "color" have desires would be an interesting day indeed. And that has little to do with who or what the capitalist down the street is sucking. --Mutant Rob

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Hiding remailers behind nymservers...? (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 18:53:15 -0700 (PDT) > From: Steve Reid <root(a)edmweb.com> > Subject: Hiding remailers behind nymservers...? > > This 'middle-man' remailer... What does it really accomplish? Sure, the > operator is hidden, but that's only because of his/her nym at c2.org... > AFAICS, the 'middle-man' has just taken the liability off himself and put > it on the unhidden remailers. Why not just use the existing unhidden > remailers??? > The first thing it accomplishes in my mind is establishing pre-meditation to conspire to the commission of a felony. Jim

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Re: The Crisis with Remailers
by Matts Kallioniemi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:08 1996-05-21 +0200, bryce(a)digicash.com wrote: >The "minimum ecash payment" is not known at this time, >although we think it might be greater than 2^-32 US Dollars How do you create such tiny payments? When I try (2.1.5a MT) to pay $.001 I receive the warning "Too many digits after '.'!" and even though it's just a warning I can't do the payment. Assuming that you had a client that allows tiny amounts, how would you represent a tenth of a cent in binary? To to it exactly would require an infinite number of coins... Matts

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Re: The Crisis with Remailers
by Marcel van der Peijl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> How do you create such tiny payments? When I try (2.1.5a MT) > to pay $.001 I receive the warning "Too many digits after '.'!" and > even though it's just a warning I can't do the payment. > Assuming that you had a client that allows tiny amounts, how would > you represent a tenth of a cent in binary? To to it exactly would > require an infinite number of coins... The minimum denomination for each currency is (sort of) configurable. For instance, for Belgian Franks the minimum is 1 (and no '.'). If a bank requested a currency capable of handling a mimimum of 0.00005 we could make that happen real easy. Note that with the maximum coin size 2^15 times minimum amount, the maximum coin would get a lot smaller, so that it would become more impractical to pay large amounts in that currency. On the longer term we can of course even change - the 2^15 maximum - maximum number of coins per message (currently 75) if the requirements were there. // Marcel van der Peijl, DigiCash bv, http://www.digicash.com/~bigmac/ // ----------------- insert subliminal message here ------------------

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Re: The Crisis with Remailers
by Matts Kallioniemi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 15:34 1996-05-21 +0200, bryce(a)digicash.com wrote: >Well how do we represent 0.01 U.S. Dollars in Mark Twain >Ecash(tm)? Easy-- we take a few bits of data, interpret it as >an unsigned binary number, and then say "this number is how >many U.S. pennies this coin is worth." Now we're back to pennies again. I was more interested in your earlier claim of tiny payments, on the order of $2^-32. >Actually it can sometimes get more complicated than that, and >there are some details about how the forthcoming ecashlib >handles this to be found at "http://www.digicash.com/api". Will the api make it possible to create coins of arbitrary value? Is the mint software (and the bank accountants) capable of doing floating point arithmetic? Matts

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NIST Draft Key Escrow Paper
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Forward] From: Elaine Frye <elaine.frye(a)nist.gov> Subject: draft key escrow paper May 20, 1996 Note To: Key Escrow Distribution List From: Ed Roback, NIST Subject: Release of DRAFT Key Escrow Paper FYI, today the Interagency Working Group (IWG) on Cryptography Policy released a DRAFT paper entitled "Enabling Privacy, Commerce, Security and Public Safety in the Global Information Infrastructure." The DRAFT paper discusses a voluntary draft key management infrastructure, supported by private sector key management organizations, that would permit users and manufacturers free choice of encryption algorithms, facilitate international interoperability, preserve law enforcement access, and, most importantly, provide strong system security and integrity. FYI, the paper was released by the IWG co-chairs Ed Appel (NSC) and Bruce McConnell (OMB). Comments on the draft paper are being solicited. No deadline is specified. At present, I do not have an electronic copy of the draft (25 pp). Copies are available through the OMB publications office at 202-395-7332. I anticipate that the document will soon be available widely on the net and will forward you a web address when available. ***************************************************** Elaine Frye Computer Security Division National Institute of Standards and Technology Bldg. 820, M.S. Room 426 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-0001 Voice: 301/975-2819 Fax: 301/948-1233 *****************************************************

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MixMaster fair use
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi all, Perhaps I am confused about what MixMaster's license allows. I have joined the confusing part (for me anyway)... README.no-export : All the files in this archive contain crpytographic code which is restricted by the ITAR regulations on munitions. These files may only be retrieved by US citizens, and only on condition of agreement not to export any of this software or dats, and to extract a similar agreement from any person they may transfer it to. To access the export-controled materials on this site, you must agree to "THE AGREEMENT" below. If your email address ends in one of the following: .edu .com .edu. .gov .mil .org .net .us .ca Do this by sending "THE AGREEMENT", exactly as it appears, to mix-request(a)jpunix.com If it does not, but you qualify to retrieve Mixmaster under "THE AGREEMENT", then send mail to perry(a)alpha.jpunix.com, explaining your situation. In either case you will be sent a message containing the name of a hidden directory in which you will find the controlled software. The name of the directory changes frequently, so you must get the name each time you want to access the hidden directory. -John A. Perry 5/6/95 -------------------------------------------------- THE AGREEMENT: I am a citizen or national of the United States, or of Canada, or have been lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the United States under the Immigration and Naturalization Act. I agree not to export Mixmaster, or RSAREF or any other software in this archive, in violation of the export control laws of the United States of America as implemented by the United States Department of State Office of Defense Trade Controls. Before I download Mixmaster, I will read and agree to the terms and conditions of the RSAREF license (in ftp://ftp.jpunix.com/pub/rsalicen.txt) I will use Mixmaster solely for non-commercial purposes. ---------------------------------------------------------- Directory name last changed at: Wed May 1 09:00:01 CDT 1996 End README.no-export What confuses me is the part above that states that I agree to use Mixmaster for solely non-commercial use. This is NOT GNU or copyleft. Jim Choate

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Remailer extensions
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi all, In pondering the last few days of discussion it occurs to me that a test might be possible. In short: Is it legal for a business to anonymously remail physical mail? The process I propose is as follows: 1. Some party mails an envelope to 'Remailers-R-Us'. 2. Inside that envelope is the real mail addressed and stamped along with say a $1 money order for processing. 3. The people at Remailers-R-Us simply take the dollar and deposit it in the bank while depositing the letter they received in the local mail drop. Now the Remailers-R-Us obviously can't open the mail since that would be tampering. To this end I make reference to some comments I made about a year ago regarding the results of encrypting every stage of the remailer sequence. To wit, the only way to guarantee protection is if the remialer is not able to read the actual contents of the mail, even if they were so disposed. I would also like to point out (the obvious I admit) that the founding fathers apparently embarced anonymous distribution via their 'publius' handle. It seems to me that a federal prosecutor would have a hard time claiming there was no precedence for such actions. Such a claim to my way of thinking would be fundamental in any attempted prosecution for anonymous remailing. Also, as far as I can find out, there was no persecution of the newspapers for printing this material anonymously, they apparently were not held to task for the content. This seems to indicate that English commen law of that day (and its descendants here today) embraced anonymous speech as well. Jim Choate

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Re: MixMaster fair use
by Rev. Mark Grant, ULC 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Tue, 21 May 1996, Jim Choate wrote: > What confuses me is the part above that states that I agree to use Mixmaster > for solely non-commercial use. This is NOT GNU or copyleft. Isn't that because it uses RSAREF? AFAIR the RSAREF license says you can't use any RSAREF applications commercially without paying license fees. Mark

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Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns
by Rev. Mark Grant, ULC 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Mon, 20 May 1996, Rich Graves wrote: > On Tue, 21 May 1996, Declan B. McCullagh wrote: > I like the "knock-knock" approach, though it would of necessity impose > load. If someone has an anonymous message waiting, send them a simple note > with instructions on how to retrieve it. I have a partial implementation of this for Mixmaster if anyone wants to try integrating it into the main code. It works (or worked) for single packet messages but I never finished the multi-packet code. Of course, if Mixmaster is being rewritten anyway then it won't be much use. AFAIR it also relies on the 'In-Reply-To:' field in the header working correctly. Mark

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Re: Long-Lived Remailers
by Rev. Mark Grant, ULC 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Tue, 21 May 1996, Timothy C. May wrote: > Traffic analysis will be quite easy to do, of course, as all mail sent to > the persistent address comes out of the "disposable(a)foo.com" address. > Q.E.D. Yeah, but the attack model I was assuming was lawyers rather than intelligence agencies. The NSA could probably easily link the two together, but the Church of Foobar(tm) probably couldn't. They'd only have access to the logs on the ISP and the information you gave when you signed up, not the raw packets on the Net. Mark

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Re: MixMaster fair use (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 16:06:07 +0100 (BST) > From: "Rev. Mark Grant, ULC" <mark(a)unicorn.com> > Subject: Re: MixMaster fair use > > On Tue, 21 May 1996, Jim Choate wrote: > > > What confuses me is the part above that states that I agree to use Mixmaster > > for solely non-commercial use. This is NOT GNU or copyleft. > > Isn't that because it uses RSAREF? AFAIR the RSAREF license says you can't > use any RSAREF applications commercially without paying license fees. > But, it doesn't say word one about RSAREF not being used, it specificaly mentions Mixmaster. Jim Choate

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Re: NIST Draft Key Escrow Paper
by declan＠well.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Contrary to what the attached note says, there is no draft copy available yet. OMB publications at the number below says: "We're just finding out about the report. We're not sure if they're going to give us copies or not." -Declan > [Forward] > > From: Elaine Frye <elaine.frye(a)nist.gov> > Subject: draft key escrow paper > > May 20, 1996 > > Note > > To: Key Escrow Distribution List > > From: Ed Roback, NIST > > Subject: Release of DRAFT Key Escrow Paper > > FYI, today the Interagency Working Group (IWG) on > Cryptography Policy released a DRAFT paper entitled > "Enabling Privacy, Commerce, Security and Public Safety in > the Global Information Infrastructure." > > The DRAFT paper discusses a voluntary draft key management > infrastructure, supported by private sector key management > organizations, that would permit users and manufacturers > free choice of encryption algorithms, facilitate > international interoperability, preserve law enforcement > access, and, most importantly, provide strong system > security and integrity. FYI, the paper was released by the > IWG co-chairs Ed Appel (NSC) and Bruce McConnell (OMB). > > Comments on the draft paper are being solicited. No > deadline is specified. > > At present, I do not have an electronic copy of the draft > (25 pp). Copies are available through the OMB publications > office at 202-395-7332. I anticipate that the document > will soon be available widely on the net and will forward > you a web address when available. > > > ***************************************************** > Elaine Frye > Computer Security Division > National Institute of Standards and Technology > Bldg. 820, M.S. Room 426 > Gaithersburg, MD 20899-0001 > Voice: 301/975-2819 Fax: 301/948-1233 > ***************************************************** >

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Re: NIST Draft Key Escrow Paper
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We've just heard back from Ed Roback of NIST that he'll fax us a copy of the Draft Key Escrow Paper, which we'll scan and send to Pat Farrell for his Web site. I'll ask Pat to announce it's availability when ready.

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Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns
by Bruce Baugh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:02 PM 5/20/96 -0700, Hal <hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> wrote: >My thought is to turn the block list concept on its head, and make it a >"permit list". Simply, the remailer will only send mail to people who >have voluntarily indicated their willingness to receive it. On the whole, I like it. The problem comes when someone is trying communicate anonymously with some other person who doesn't have a clue about the whole thing. It would be neat to have soem way of generating a message to the effect "Someone is trying to communicate anonymously with you. [short explanation of good and bad uses of anonymity] If you would like to receive this message, [instructions about permitting]" Unfortunately, I don't know how one could separate those messages from all the rest of the traffic. -- Bruce Baugh bruce(a)aracnet.com http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce

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Re: The Crisis with Remailers
by droelke＠rdxsunhost.aud.alcatel.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

tcmay(a)mail.got.net wrote: > > At 5:25 AM 5/21/96, Lance Cottrell wrote: > > >An interesting problem with anonymous postage is that it is likely to kill > >cover traffic generators. > > > > I doubt it. It's easy enough for remailers to, for example, pass out free > tokens to other remailer operators. > > (Jukebox and other coin-op concessions often pass out tokens (slugs, or > marked coins) to storeowners and bartenders to use to stimulate the > market.) > Wouldn't the "income" from other cover generators help cover the cost of a remailer running its own cover generator? Also - remailers could possibly give postage free service to traffic for other remailers.... i.e. only the last node (who has the most exposure anyways) would require payment. Dan ------------------------------------------------------------------ Dan Oelke Alcatel Network Systems droelke(a)aud.alcatel.com Richardson, TX

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Re: SEVERE undercapacity, we need more remailer servers FAST
by hendersn＠zeta.org.au 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>At 02:08 AM 5/20/96 EDT, you wrote: >> What countries are noticeable for being anti-Scientology? >> They would appear to be good locations for special-purpose >> remailer ultimate-output ends. > >Scientology was illegal in Australia last time I heard. Not at the moment. It was only banned in one state(can't remember which one) and that ban was lifted some time ago. > They declared >that you could not be a religion and charge a fee for religious service >the way that Scientology charges. It was tried, but didn't work. The final court ruling was that Australian Government wasn't allowed to decide what did or didn't constitute a genuine religious practice. $cientology can charge what it likes. > They then defined them as practicing >medicine, and hit them with snake oil laws. And the religion cover let them skip away unharmed. The Church's "benefits" are spiritual in nature(allegedly) and therefore not subject to medical regulations. Now to try to get this back on-topic, there was one NOTS document which was posted anonymously before the whole pack made it to alt.religion.scientology. It described a process(or "ritual" if you prefer) designed to help _physical_ affliction. It _may_ violate an FDA ruling prohibiting the Church from practising medicine. It is _definitely_ a violation of copyright to post it and one person, Keith Henson, is getting sued for quoting it. Now, was sending this NOTS document through an anonymous remailer a good or a bad thing to do? Zed(hendersn(a)zeta.org.au) "Don't hate the media, become the media" - Jello Biafra PGP key on request

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Re: Hiding remailers behind nymservers...? (fwd)
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:57 AM 5/21/96, Jim Choate wrote: >Forwarded message: > >> Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 18:53:15 -0700 (PDT) >> From: Steve Reid <root(a)edmweb.com> >> Subject: Hiding remailers behind nymservers...? >> >> This 'middle-man' remailer... What does it really accomplish? Sure, the >> operator is hidden, but that's only because of his/her nym at c2.org... >> AFAICS, the 'middle-man' has just taken the liability off himself and put >> it on the unhidden remailers. Why not just use the existing unhidden >> remailers??? >> > >The first thing it accomplishes in my mind is establishing pre-meditation to >conspire to the commission of a felony. No, think of scienter again. And creating something or some service that _may_ be used in connection with a crime does not make the creator a conspirator, unless it can be shown that he was involved in the planning of the crime used with his thing or service. For example, if I open up a car rental place and one of my cars is used in a bank robbery, was I involved in a "pre-meditation to conspire to the commission of a felony."? Clearly not. (And before anyone brings up "required ID" at car rental agencies, such ID is not required by any local, state, or national laws, so far as I have ever heard. It is perfectly legal for me to rent things to people without demanding credentials. A sufficiently large deposit may be enough. ID is often used to satisfy insurance requirements, and to help in collecting any unreturned items.) Now it may be that operating a remailer may be interpreted by some courts as being a "public nuisance," a theory I credit to Brad Templeton, but this has not yet come even close to happening. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns (fwd)
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:28 PM 5/20/96 -0500, Jim Choate wrote: > >Forwarded message: > >> Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 15:02:08 -0700 >> From: Hal <hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> >> Subject: An alternative to remailer shutdowns > >> was apparently sent through my remailer. According to 18 USC 875(c), >> "Whoever transmits in interstate commerce any communication containing >> any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of >> another, shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more >> than five years, or both." I may not be able to continue operating >> either of my remailers (alumni.caltech.edu and shell.portal.com) for >> much longer due to this kind of abuse. > >There should be a section in there dealing with 'knowingly'. If not then we >should immediately bring charges against any and all newspapers who have >ever printer a ransom letter, or perhaps even the Unibomber Manifesto since >there is clear evidence of 'threat to injure the person of another'. But even "knowingly" needs to be carefully defined. A remailer operator today KNOWS that his system COULD be used for illegal activities; he merely doesn't know that they are, currently. I think that the definition should be so narrow that it is impossible for a third party (or the government itself) to incriminate the remailer operator by having his system forward arguably illegal or copyright-violating material. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Private e-mail...[was Re: AP]
by liberty＠gate.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Must ALL my e-mail be re-posted to this damn list? I will AGAIN remind careful readers: _Anything_ that does not begin with the words: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED.... and end with my little play on the sound of J. Edgar Freeh's name may *or may not* be from me, and is more likely to simply be from someone:a) clue-impaired and b) noisy. Actual Jim Ray posts also tend to have fewer typos, and be both more detailed and shorter than this did, because I proof them and I tend not to proofread private e-mail. I will now clutter the list to respond to this nitwit's moronic claims in public, please direct all Perrygrams to <jf_avon(a)citenet.net> [GROAN!--Why me???] Oh yeah. Ray's Corrolary to Murphy:"You will be spared _NOTHING_." <sigh> I'll attempt to cut as much as possible to put wasted space to a minimum. My apologies to those not interested, who are advised to hit delete now (I'd imagine that includes many or most of you). JMR jf_avon(a)citenet.net for some strange reason posted: ... >Is there a Detweiller FAQ somewhere? There's even a page, near the top of my page. He's also mentioned under "don't feed the animals" in the welcome message. He is intelligent, and he's quieter than he used to be, perhaps taking his meds. >Interesting. Has AP ever popped-up in the conventional medias? AFAIK not yet, but I could be wrong. If I were Slick Willie, it would have been all over the place by now. [BTW, for the record, I don't make a habit of calling those who would advocate violence "loon" in a public forum. There are thus self-preservation advantages to actually convincing the clueless to lurk, look at message headers, and read "Netiquet" before posting. <sigh>] >Then, again, I know an awfull lot of people who would applaude Bell. >But most of them are not computer litterate. They are from another >generation, not brainwashed by "Don't ask what your country can >do for you; ask what you can do for your country"... How do these people vote, though? [Prediction: majority statist.] You can't complain when the govt. gives what you ask for... [Absent the unConstitutional ballot-laws we are blessed with here in Florida.] >> I'm 35, and I may actually die before I do. I hope not. [Sniped to convey no context whatsoever] I was talking about the very low odds of me someday actually *respecting* a living US President, for those of you without telepathy skills. I *would* feel old by haing this revealed, but I just learned of a cypherpunk _grandmother_! [No, I won't say who.] >[Black humor] any AP proponents with an eye (or a buck) on you? :) Possibly. Bell insists Libertarians like me shouldn't worry. I worry, because statists' money spends just as well as mine. Tim joked a while back about putting a "fire-and-forget" K out on me when I was *last* misquoted as the "Cyberangel." I seem to attract this crap, but I assure you it's NOT AT ALL deliberate. All is forgiven, no apology needed, just please try to be careful and remember the other 1000+ subscribers. ... >> This kind of thinking might authorize a massive Cherokee >> massacre if it spread, IMO. > >Please, do point out the similarities and the differences... I think >that the context is very different. Not really, only the time in history. Their property was 100% taken, and they were marched to OK from GA. The IRS may be bad...but they aren't THAT bad...[disclaimer: I am (a tiny) part Cherokee, and I hate the IRS (a lot).] ... > >Are you talking of an open war a la Bosnia? Hopefully not. It is what I fear. >> We must either leave some wrongs in the >> past or be cursed with them forever. > >This is what I was talking about taking things out of context. Since >you agree on that, the Cherokee thing is ruled out. But govt action >are a matter of the present and future. Some peoples see it as >legitimate self-defense. I disagree on ruling Cherokees out, _I_ decide what I rule out, not you. The legitimate *peaceful* self defense options have not yet been adequately explored, IMO. >... >> Bottom line for me: "Two wrongs don't make a right." > >Please state the basic premise that make you declare what is "wrong" >in the context of AP. "Thou shalt not kill..." [pretty basic stuff here...] > I am not bugging you simply to do so. For >example, do you think that, for ethical reasons, you are not only >justified but actually *obligated* to use physical violence in >certain contexts? I guess not. No, just not as a first-resort in non-life-threatening contexts. > But many peoples think they have >to... If they break my door down and want my gun or PGPkey, I may shoot. No matter who does this, they could die if they go far enough. I will not seek to kill anyone from afar, though, and I'd have to feel in immediate fear for my life before I can morally justify killing another person. Luckily, it hasn't happened so far. >I think that you simply try to evade the necessity of defining for >yourself what exactly is what the govt is doing. Taxation is theft, I fail to see your point. Murder isn't the sole, or even first, option to prevent theft when you can do things like lock your doors. [encrypt] Did the OKCity bombing reduce the size of government, or increase it? (As I predicted, increase. I hate it when I'm right.) Violence begats violence. Always. ... >General opinion is not what define truth nor reality. If I refuse >to pay my taxes, they'll use physical violence to get what they >want. You might object that I enjoyed the benefits of the spending >of taxes, but I am yet to see any contract that I entered with >"society". > At this point, as an individual protest, a (suicidal) "freeman" like stand is justified if you like the idea of being a dead hero. I don't. Yet. There are other options. But general opinion _does_ define political reality, so best that there be more responsible uses of anonymity at this very delicate point in the remailernet's political life. There seem to be less. ...me -- [AssPol would have to entail an oligarchy...] >This scheme is *not* an oligarchy. Pay a visit to any good dictionary >near you. Words have precise meaning and it is *much* better to >stick to it... I said entail, *you* read a dictionary. The scheme relies on $, and more $ gives you more "votes" on who to kill. Oligarchy, a rule by the rich. I stuck exactly to it. Read more carefully in the *non-header* part of messages, too. >Actually, since it is ruled by money, it might be a "buckarchy", but >again, everybody can spare a few bucks, so it might be a democracy >too if you insist on twisting the meaning of words. HUH???? "buckarchy" isn't in my dictionary...I neither twisted *nor invented* any words. Democracy is also a legitimate fear, and the operative word in your statement is "might." Well, might NOT also... I happen to prefer a constitutional republic to democracy anyway. Tim May has written well on this, and on why. [Hi Tim.] >> and I think I'd be an easy target for >> wealthy statists, who could also use the system. > >At first look, of course. But operationnally, you have to consider the >mind of the statist to figure out the likeliness of their using the >system? I do not deny that it is very likely that a few statists will >use the system. But most won't because they don't like to slain >their milk cows. That's not how I view statists. Your faith is admirable, but I won't share it soon. Hitler, Stalin, Clinton, Bush, Biden, Dole, etc. - they all would just as soon see me as hamburger as milk cow. As hamburger I'm no longer such a smart-ass under their skins. I have seen how history describes the minds of statists who don't get their way & it's not pretty. _Many_ statists have the $ to kill me, without AP, this would make me cheap and compromise the privacy of the remailernet [probably] or just cause remailers to be outlawed. If I operated a remailer, and you bought or sold 500 lbs of cannabis through it, I would try to cooperate to the minimum possible extent of the law, ad perhaps go to jail for contempt, it depends. If you tried AP, I would let the BATF (yes, I hate them, too) log all your use (while trying to somehow protect my innocent users' privacy). I again boil it down to my Jim Ray test:"Where's the victim?"<imagine Clara Peller here> >> If Bell could post >> fewer times, he'd be more convincing. He is in many killfiles. >> JMR And now, it's likely that I am, too. Allow me to reduce noise even furter by preemptively saying "Plonk" right now, so it doesn't need to be announced twice on the poor, groaning list. >Many peoples cannot stand to see any opinions that differs from >theirs. But why care at all be read by such peoples? It's not that, I was speaking of post-frequency-noise. I had seen the idea before Jimbell ever had it, in Tim May's Cyphernomicon. Tim has interesting, different things to say. Jimbell doesn't. Whether I agree has nothing at all to do with repetitiousness. I will try VERY hard not to post again on this. Please help by letting me have the last word (for once). How's this: Unsollicited[sic] public posting of private e-mail will be refuted at US165 $/h Any sender of such material will be considered as to have accepted the above mentionned[sic] terms. JMR PS, while I am making non-crypto-noise anyway... ================================================ Tim also wrote [in another message/thread]: <...> >(ObCaveat: I personally think a free society cannot/should not outlaw >discrimination in any form, save that by government.) Which is exactly the opposite of what we are faced with right now. Gee, I wonder why race relations are doing so poorly nowadays? We need more government intervention in this vital area... </sarcasm> Jim Ray -- DNRC Minister of Encryption Advocacy. "Your federal government needs your money so that it can perform vital services for you that you would not think up in a million years." -- Dave Barry ___________________________________________________________________ PGP id.E9BD6D35 51 5D A2 C3 92 2C 56 BE 53 2D 9C A1 B3 50 C9 C8 <liberty(a)gate.net> http://www.shopmiami.com/prs/jimray ___________________________________________________________________ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Freedom isn't Freeh. iQCVAwUBMaHkdG1lp8bpvW01AQFJzAP6A0Vc25O61daOa6hnnZ8b0iSA5KYCS++q zYXWrpYWujH6L8qF0USTkJ7Su1rVW3ge4GSsBMflwp8fp4Wh2By3PafX1CPF7TTl a2Ns6eCO8SeUu4oGWnTQ2xeNR7ic07b2k+yuAVooR0f7qZQbE7SI7YHx/jhpz4Cp AtBuBs9hYLo= =FMxv -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: AP
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 20 May 96 at 22:59, Jim Ray wrote: > >Is there a Detweiller FAQ somewhere? > > There's even a page I found one out. Interesting. Vlad might very well fit the profile. > >Interesting. Has AP ever popped-up in the conventional medias? > > AFAIK not yet, but I could be wrong. If I were Slick W., > it would. I don't think Slick W. will make it pop-up. They know damn well that no matter what the media might pretend the population thinks, there will be enough peoples more than willing to spend a few bucks to cause major joepardy. > >Then, again, I know an awfull lot of people who would applaude > >Bell. But most of them are not computer litterate. They are from > >another generation, not brainwashed by "Don't ask what your country > >can do for you; ask what you can do for your country"... > > How do these people vote, though? [Prediction: majority statist.] > you can't complain when the govt. gives what you ask for... Theses peoples refuse to register their guns, although it is mandatory in canada (to be registered within 7(?) years...) > Possibly. Bell insists Libertarians like me shouldn't worry. > I worry, because statists' money spends just as well as mine. > Tim joked a while back about putting a "fire-and-forget" K > out on me when I was misquoted as the "Cyberangel." So, are you saying that you chose to not endorse Bell's system because you fear you'd be a target? Just asking... > >> >You'll note that the psycho-epistemology necessary to > >> >commit murder is quite close to the one necessary to coerce > >> >poeples to pay taxes. > >> > >> This kind of thinking might authorize a massive Cherokee > >> massacre if it spread, IMO. > > > >Please, do point out the similarities and the differences... I > >think that the context is very different. > > Not really, only the time in history. Their property was > 100% taken, and they were marched to OK from GA. The IRS > may be bad...but they aren't THAT bad...[disclaimer: I > am (a tiny) part Cherokee. You did not answer my question: When our local Mohawks accuse the white peoples to have stolen their land, I ask "when did I do that? I can't remember..." I refuse to be held responsible for things that were done several hundred years ago. Period. As I said, I *never*, not even in my early years, believed in original sin. > >Are you talking of an open war a la Bosnia? > > Hopefully not. What I meant is "do you believe that the AP scheme can lead to such events?" I personnally believe that in the event AP is used against govt, no statist will be able to retaliate. They might possibly make a few examples, but nobody will get fooled. Anyways, since the system is completely delocalized, there is no target to aim at. And furthermore, I think JB is right in saying that the middle-management level is much more likely to be hit first. But thoses affluent statists are not middle-management. You have to figure out who will be targeted, and what are their means of reprisal. > and the legitimate self defense > options which are peaceful have not been adequately explored. IMO Well, pardon my lack of imagination but I never found out too many effective ones. I'll be delighted to consider any alternative you propose. Encryption and anonymity tools *are* widely discussed and could make AP obsolete (hopefully). > >> Bottom line for me: "Two wrongs don't make a right." > > > >Please state the basic premise that make you declare what is > >"wrong" in the context of AP. > "Thou shalt not kill..." [pretty basic stuff here...] I am sorry, but I do not accept that as a valid argument. What if somebody came to take away your means of feeding your kids? What if somebody was menacing you or your kids? There are instances, as you seem to agree, when killing is justified. What is meant by the sentence is: Thou shalt not initiate lethal violence. > >but actually *obligated* to use physical violence in > >certain contexts? I guess not. > > No, just not as first resort. > > > But many peoples think they have > >to... > > If they break my door down and want my gun or PGPkey, I shoot. > No matter who, Jim Bell or Bill Clinton, they may die if they > go far enough. I will not seek to kill anyone from afar, though, and > I'd have to feel in fear of my life. This is the dilemna that peoples in pre-war germany faced. I met a wonderfull old german gentleman who worked on the german radar during the war. I asked him about how Hitler was perceived by the general thinking population. He said that 60% of the population tought very little of him, and did not agree with war. Theses were the educated germans. But at the same time, since Hitler rallied the other 40% of the population, the thugs at heart, they lived in constant fear. Nobody dared to say anything because nobody came back from some interrogations... And I was told the exact same thing by a previous girlfriend of mine, doing her PhD in chemistry. She was iranian. She had an irakian boyfriend for a while. They were madly in love. but what a fuss it made... Anyhow, she told me that while in high school, seven of her schoolmate, sixteen years old girls, were taken from the classes by Khomeiny's political police. Nobody, friends nor family, heard of them ever again. AP simply turn the ethics of assasins toward other like minded. Unfortunately, it can turn said mind toward valuable peoples too. And this is good reason to object. > >I think that you simply try to evade the necessity of defining for > >yourself what exactly is what the govt is doing. > Taxation is theft, I fail to see your point. Well, depends. If you agreed to be taxed, then, maybe not. But suppose it is: what are the essentials of theft and what are the justified actions againts it? Now, does a kid stealing apples the same as the state stealing individual's earned wealth ? Does the same measure apply? Is the offense comparable? (You must first define the exact context of each) > Murder isn't the sole, or even first, option to prevent theft when > you can do things like lock doors. [encrypt] In the case of govt, it have the legal monopoly on the use of violence. And it does not seem to hate using it. But if you shoot some govt official who decided that he wanted you PGP key or your gun, you'll pay for it dearly even if you win in court. The most precious thing in life is time. And the way we found, as rationnal animals, to exchange time is to condense time into money. Money is an abstraction for productive time of our life. The govt is working very hard, at the victims expense, to make anything that can act as a lock illegal. And they enforce that with guns. So, do not surprize yourself if many people find AP fully justified or is the only way left to them. I do not advocate AP, notwithstanding what some others pretend (LD?). I think that inducing the death of govt as we know it by financial starvation through encrypted transactions is the way. But I also think that AP is impossible to prevent from happening because so much peoples agree with the preceding paragraph. > >> Even then, I prefer the judicial process to the oligarchy > >> this scheme would entail > > > >This scheme is *not* an oligarchy. Pay a visit to any good > >dictionary near you. Words have precise meaning and it is *much* > >better to stick to it... > > I said entail, *you* read a dictionary. The scheme relies on $, and > more $ gives you more votes on who to kill. Oligarchy, a rule by the > rich. I stuck exactly to it. Read more carefully. Sorry, I don't have an english-french dictionnary. But I think it means "might lead to" or "might imply". Grand Larousse en 5 Volumes, Vol 4, p. 2229 : (I translate from french) Oligarchy: noun, feminine. (gr: oligarkhia) 1) political system in which power is held by a small number of individuals who constitutes either the intellectual elite (aristocracy) or the owning minority (plutocracy ?), theses two aspect often coinciding. 2) when a minority accaparates a power or an authority. I have to do some more thinking on that. I concede that I used the wrong words. To me, even if AP would fit the operationnal definition of oligarchy, it is not. Maybe because the definition had as a basic premise that it is impossible to structure power without communication. I think that anonymity technologies might force a re-definition of the word in more precise terms. In AP, it is completely different in the sense that nobody agrees to the ideas of other peoples. They simply pass *their own* judgment using *their own* reason and make *their own* decision to put a few bucks on this or that head. In oligarchy, the "intellectual elite" share some common premises, ideas. In AP, although you can derive a probability distribution of the values held by the anonymous donators, they do not actively share ideas. And neither do the assassins. There is no collusion, no exchange of information, no peer pressure, no conspiracy, no nothing. The only factor is the wealth a given donator is willing to donate. And this makes it a "buckarchy", i.e. the ideas and values of peoples who made it to wealth are statistically more likely to be implemented. But again, it is only a statistical, macroscopical truth. Only, theses peoples achieved wealth by sticking to a certain type of values (considering that it takes years to build a reputation and seconds to destroy it); they must have a stong tendency toward a set of values that are pro-freedom, pro-economy, and pro-productivity. Laissez-faire, the french expression, means "let do". > >> and I think I'd be an easy target for wealthy statists, > >>who could also use the system. But OTOH, if you remain silent, you'll attract no one. > >At first look, of course. But operationnally, you have to consider > >the mind of the statist to figure out the likeliness of their using > >the system? I do not deny that it is very likely that a few > >statists will use the system. But most won't because they don't > >like to slain their milk cows. > > That's not how I view statists. your faith is admirable, but > I won't share it soon. Faith: zero, zip, none... > hitler, Stalin, Clinton, they all > would see me as hamburger just as soon as milkcow IMO. I > have seen how history describes the minds of statists who > don't get their way, it's not pretty. (Did you read the complete AP essay?) Yes. But you also have to recognize that *never* in the history of mankind a media like the net ever existed. The net is, IMO, a turning point in the history of humanity, just as the discovery of toolmaking was. I think it will change the human history even more than the invention of the printing press. > Many statists have > the $ to kill me without AP, this would make me cheap and > compromise the privacy of the remailernet probably, or just > cause them to be outlawed. A few questions here: Why any statists would want to target *you*? There are plenty of guys like you who hates the guts of govt, have big mouths, and they don't get offed. By being a C'punk, it is even more dangerous for them: if they try to make an example by killing you, the others CPunks will go underground, set up AP remailers and get rid of them. At least, they recognize that the last thing to do in such circumstances, is to make martyrs. Compare the number of active posters to the number of readers, and you'll see that a lot of C'punks stay in the shadow, without making any waves. Now, to deal with that volume of e-mail, one must have *some* sort of interest. Unless the silent majority *all* work for NSA... Ciao JFA PLEASE NOTE: THIS POST DOES NOT MEAN THAT I ENDORSE MR. BELL'S SYSTEM. MY RATIONNAL CONCLUSIONS ABOUT IT'S INTERNAL MECHANICS AND IT'S INTRINSIC LOGICS DOES NOT MEAN THAT I LIKE NOR ENDORSE THE SYSTEM. I SIMPLY CONCLUDED THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PREVENT THE SYSTEM FROM BEING IMPLEMENTED. IMO, IT IS UNAVOIDABLE. DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee Limoges porcelain, Silverware and mouth blown crystal glasses JFA Technologies, R&D consultants. Physists, technologists and engineers. PGP keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891

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Re: The Crisis with Remailers
by camcc＠abraxis.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:40 AM 5/20/96 -0700, you wrote: > one cent could well be too low. I have been a client of the c2.org pre/re mailer on several occasions. What with all the discussion of remailers falling away (or being pushed), I am concerned that the 10 cent fee I, and hopefully others, have been paying in e-cash is not sufficient to keep c2.og's remailer in operation. I would be willing to pay, say for discussions sake, the postal rate for the convenience and security it offers. Alec Every suceeding scientific discovery makes greater nonsense camcc(a)abraxis.com of old-time conceptions of sovereignty. A. Eden PGP Fingerprint: Key ring: 'c:\pgp\pubring.pgp', looking for user ID "0x41207EE5". Type bits/keyID Date User ID pub 1024/41207EE5 1996/04/08 Alec McCrackin <camcc(a)abraxis.com> Key fingerprint = 09 13 E1 CB B3 0C 88 D9 D7 D4 10 F0 06 7D DF 31 Alec McCrackin

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Re: Rumor: DSS Broken?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:32 PM 5/19/96 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote: >At 08:05 PM 5/19/96 -0800, Jim Bell wrote: >>It should occur to all of us that if the NSA was actually doing the job we >>are vastly over-paying them to do, it is THEY who should be finding, >>exposing, and correcting these kinds of cryptography faults. > >They may have; they're just kind of selective in who they expose them to :-) Yes...but... How can the NSA serve two masters? If the NSA has the American public's best interests at heart, then it should have revealed the flaw if it knew of it. (Otherwise, it can't be trusted...) If it did not, then it likewise should admit to this to show that their trustworthiness and reliability isn't particularly high and we shouldn't trust their opinions on Clipper etc. It is at least arguable that the NSA might have a vested interest in allowing an enemy to continue to use a flawed encryption system, as in Enigma. However, MD5 produces what ought to be secure hashes, right? A flaw in MD5 allows the person knowing the secret flaw to fake a file that produces a similar hash. What interest could the NSA possibly have in allowing such faked files to be produced? Is this part of the NSA's job description? >Also, there are expert cryptographers outside the NSA, and outside the US; >you might check where Dobbertin lives. And this is a Good Thing. Yes, it is. But I'd like to think that the NSA isn't acting as if WE are the "enemy." Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: The Crisis with Remailers
by Matts Kallioniemi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 17:44 1996-05-21 +0200, bryce(a)digicash.com wrote: >Matts, you don't want to do floating point for money, because >floating point doesn't give you good control of precision. Yes I do. Several major currency traders in Sweden keep all their money in 64 bit floating point storage. I think that DigiCash will go floating point (get real?) when you start doing currency. If you sell 1 DEM, you don't want to get paid in cents, you want to get paid in 10-15 decimal places. That's where the currency action is right now, and before Ecash(tm) is fully deployed we'll probably see traders going for 15-20 decimal places. Floating point is the way to do it, but are your accountants ready for it? >Keep in mind that only Ecash(tm) Mints can create Ecash(tm) >coins and choose what values the coins have. Sorry, I thought that the client created the coins and the mint just signed them. I guess I should go back to RTFAPI. Regards, Matts

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Re: Long-Lived Remailers
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:00 PM 5/21/96, Rev. Mark Grant, ULC wrote: >On Tue, 21 May 1996, Timothy C. May wrote: > >> Traffic analysis will be quite easy to do, of course, as all mail sent to >> the persistent address comes out of the "disposable(a)foo.com" address. >> Q.E.D. > >Yeah, but the attack model I was assuming was lawyers rather than >intelligence agencies. The NSA could probably easily link the two >together, but the Church of Foobar(tm) probably couldn't. They'd only have >access to the logs on the ISP and the information you gave when you signed >up, not the raw packets on the Net. The traffic analysis on this fixed mapping system needs no access to packets and is childishly simple. Let's call the first site "Alice" and the emanation site "Bob." That is, all messages sent to the persistent site Alice appear to come from the site Bob. The Church of Clams can simply send messages addressed to themselves through the Alice remailer and see immediately that they appear to come from Bob. Q.E.D. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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