December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Merry Christmas, CypherWimps-love-SantaSpam
by Santa Claus 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

An Xmas greeting from cypherwimps(a)post1.com ..... ** **** ****** ******** ********** ************ ************** **************** ****************** ******************** ********************** S A N T A * * * N O R T H P O L E | | \____/ Wherever you go, whatever you do, Remember that Santa is always with you. I live in your heart, I dance in your soul, I show you what love is, and good things to know. The Spirit of Christmas spreads all through the land, With joy and the giving of gifts you should have. But gifts are just one thing to give and to get -- We wish you much more, far more than that. My elves send you pride in whatever you do, My reindeer give strength on days you feel blue, My wife, Mrs. Claus, grants wisdom and grace, Belief in yourself and all you create. And me, what do I give? Is there much more? Plenty and plenty you won't find in stores. I give you the knowledge that you can do more Than you ever knew -- of that be quite sure. My sleigh's packed with toys, my list sweeps the floor, A cup of hot cocoa and I'm out the door. Just gaze high in the sky where Peace always soars, And you live in my heart as I live in yours. * * * * * * M e r r y C h r i s t m a s * * S a n t a C l a u s --------- This santa poem was sent to you from the person with the following e-mail address: cypherwimps(a)post1.com If you would like to return the greeting then stop by the ReplyNet Santa Site at www.reply.net/santa.html Your e-mail address is NOT being collected or stored.

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Merry Christmas, CypherWimps-hate-SantaSpam
by Santa Claus 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

An Xmas greeting from cypherwimps(a)post1.com ..... ** **** ****** ******** ********** ************ ************** **************** ****************** ******************** ********************** S A N T A * * * N O R T H P O L E | | \____/ Wherever you go, whatever you do, Remember that Santa is always with you. I live in your heart, I dance in your soul, I show you what love is, and good things to know. The Spirit of Christmas spreads all through the land, With joy and the giving of gifts you should have. But gifts are just one thing to give and to get -- We wish you much more, far more than that. My elves send you pride in whatever you do, My reindeer give strength on days you feel blue, My wife, Mrs. Claus, grants wisdom and grace, Belief in yourself and all you create. And me, what do I give? Is there much more? Plenty and plenty you won't find in stores. I give you the knowledge that you can do more Than you ever knew -- of that be quite sure. My sleigh's packed with toys, my list sweeps the floor, A cup of hot cocoa and I'm out the door. Just gaze high in the sky where Peace always soars, And you live in my heart as I live in yours. * * * * * * M e r r y C h r i s t m a s * * S a n t a C l a u s --------- This santa poem was sent to you from the person with the following e-mail address: cypherwimps(a)post1.com If you would like to return the greeting then stop by the ReplyNet Santa Site at www.reply.net/santa.html Your e-mail address is NOT being collected or stored.

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Merry Christmas, CypherWimps-want-SantaSpam
by Santa Claus 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

An Xmas greeting from cypherwimps(a)post1.com ..... ** **** ****** ******** ********** ************ ************** **************** ****************** ******************** ********************** S A N T A * * * N O R T H P O L E | | \____/ Wherever you go, whatever you do, Remember that Santa is always with you. I live in your heart, I dance in your soul, I show you what love is, and good things to know. The Spirit of Christmas spreads all through the land, With joy and the giving of gifts you should have. But gifts are just one thing to give and to get -- We wish you much more, far more than that. My elves send you pride in whatever you do, My reindeer give strength on days you feel blue, My wife, Mrs. Claus, grants wisdom and grace, Belief in yourself and all you create. And me, what do I give? Is there much more? Plenty and plenty you won't find in stores. I give you the knowledge that you can do more Than you ever knew -- of that be quite sure. My sleigh's packed with toys, my list sweeps the floor, A cup of hot cocoa and I'm out the door. Just gaze high in the sky where Peace always soars, And you live in my heart as I live in yours. * * * * * * M e r r y C h r i s t m a s * * S a n t a C l a u s --------- This santa poem was sent to you from the person with the following e-mail address: cypherwimps(a)post1.com If you would like to return the greeting then stop by the ReplyNet Santa Site at www.reply.net/santa.html Your e-mail address is NOT being collected or stored.

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Re: Neural Nets
by geeman＠best.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This comes up once in a while --- it appears an inappropriate approach, they say, since the solution space for the problem consists of exactly one spike, in the vast sea of all possible solutions ... there is no smooth contour over which to minimize the net's error function, and finding the one spike which is the correct result is no more efficient in such a case than any other exhaustive search. This argument would break down if there were detectable biases in the crypto algorithm that you could exploit. But then whether a nn would be the tool of choice in such a case may be uncertain. At 01:00 PM 12/12/96 GMT, you wrote: >Hi Folkd > >Just sat through a lecture on an itroduction to Neural Nets. > >Thought. Does anybody know of any tools that use Neural Nets to break >ciphers? > >Cheers > >Ste > >

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Re: Java DES breaker?
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

More than one person writes: > Vulis wrote: > > "Mark M." <markm(a)voicenet.com> writes: > > > compiles Java to a stand-alone executable. Details at > > > http://webhackers.cygnus.com/webhackers/projects/java.html . > > It would be very foolish to touch any shit that comes out of Cygnus. > > Why? (specifically, I am about to try using a GCC port to WinNT, and > I would like to know _why_ you think their work is shit). First, because it's King John "Lackbrain" Gilmore's company. :-) Second, because they hire unqualified people (rather, people whose qualifications have nothing to do with the job) and they've already fucked up every project they've ever touched. Third, because they steal from the people who originally developed the free software by charging money for the non-existent "support". I'm quite happy with MS VC++ for NT. I doubt that Cygnus can do a good job porting gcc to NT. People much better than the assholes at Cygnus have not done a great job porting gcc to OS/2. If I want gcc, I just run it on the Linux box, or a Sun box. Fuck Cygnus. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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Puffer 2.1
by KDBriggs1＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Puffer 2.1 is now available from http://execpc.com/~kbriggs Puffer is a shareware file and e-mail encryption program for Windows in 16-bit and 32-bit editions. Features 40-bit RC4 encryption in exportable shareware and international versions plus 160-bit Blowfish encryption in US/Canada registered version. A multi-pass data wipe feature is also available for files, file slack, and empty disk space. New for version 2.1: program settings saved in INI file, selectable decryption directory, improved ASCII PUF split option, fixed Windows 95 cache flush bug, other minor bug fixes, new uninstall utility. A patch program is also available from the web site for registered users to self-upgrade from version 2.0. Kent Briggs Briggs Softworks, http://execpc.com/~kbriggs

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Re: Why PICS is the wrong approach
by Joseph M. Reagle Jr. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:58 PM 12/11/96 -0500, you wrote: > PICS is the wrong approach becuase it oversimplifies the ratings of > content, because it places the ratings made by the author in the payload > itself, and because third-party ratings systems are cut out of the loop > (effectively). Perhaps I don't understand what you are saying. I just want to ensure that you understand that the PICS labels can be distributed in multiple ways. (document, server, label bureau.) I suspect you do, and what you are objecting to is that documnet-embedded labels will have a greater weight than those distributed by third parties: > agencies, and laws. But once set, the "binding" has been made. Later > reviews or reviews by other entities cannot affect the binding, at least > not for this distributed instance. And consequently authors have a greater responsibility/liability than you would like: > More importantly, the "payload" does not carry some particular set of > fairly-arbitrary PICS evluations. Binding by the censors instead of by the > originator, which is as it should be. In which case, I disagree. I think accurate, consistent, "objective" (I know this is an argument on the other thread, I think one can get relatively "objective ratings" see my RSAC case study for a break down on the qualities of rating systems on my ecommerce page (home page below)) well branded and reputable agents will have a greater weight, and will have a market motivation for accuracy exceeding regulatory pressure. (Plus, there is nothing preventing thresh-hold tolerances for use with multiple ratings.) _______________________ Regards, Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress. -Thomas A. Edison Joseph Reagle http://rpcp.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html reagle(a)mit.edu E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65 BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E

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[Meeting] Cypherpunks Shooting Club
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Fellow firearms friends, The Cypherpunks Shooting Club will meet this Sunday, 12/14/96, the day after the monthly Bay Area Cypherpunks Meeting. From now on, we will meet once a month, on the day after the monthly meeting. Anyone interested in firearms is encouraged to attend. You don't need to own a gun and you don't need to know how to operate one. Of course, if you do, all the better. Various firearms (rifles, handguns, shotguns) will be available. We will gladly provide safety and operations instructions. When: 2:00 pm 12/14/96 Where: United Sportsmen Rifle Range, Ebora Road, Concord, CA, 510-676-1963 How to get there: o From SF, Oakland, the North Bay: [Cross the bridge to the East Bay if applicable]. Take I580 to Highway 24 to WALNUT CREEK. In Walnut Creek, the 24 merges with I680. Follow I680 NORTH. Past Concord, take Highway 4 EAST. Drive for a few miles. Note the nuclear weapons depot on the right. Just past the depot, exit on WILLOW PASS ROAD. Make a LEFT on Willow Pass Road. Cross underneath the highway. At the end of the road, make a RIGHT. Drive 3/4 of a mile. United Sportsmen is the second dirt road on the LEFT. If you reached some homes, you went too far. o From the Peninsula: Take San Mateo Bridge to the East Bay. Go NORTH for a few miles. Take the freeway EAST (number?) to LIVERMORE. At the PLEASANTON interchange, take I680 NORTH. Follow the instructions above. Why we are meeting in the East Bay: Several regular participants are already meeting Sunday morning in Berkeley. What if it rains: The outdoor range is an all weather range. We will meet unless it really pours. Cost: $5 range fee + ammunition. $15 total should suffice for a first timer. What to bring: o Eye protection [mandatory]. Prescription and sunglasses meet the requirements, though I would advise you to use something safer. Chemistry lab glasses work great. o Ear protection [mandatory]. If needed, you can buy some foam type ear protection at the range. It costs less than $5. o Any firearm you might want to bring. Please RSVP if you plan to attend. See you Sunday, -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred Make your mark in the history of mathematics. Use the spare cycles of your PC/PPC/UNIX box to help find a new prime. http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/justforfun/prime.htm

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Re: Why PICS is the wrong approach
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"reagle(a)rpcp.mit.edu" "Joseph M. Reagle Jr." 12-DEC-1996 23:12:04.05 > > More importantly, the "payload" does not carry some particular set of > > fairly-arbitrary PICS evluations. Binding by the censors instead of by the > > originator, which is as it should be. >In which case, I disagree. I think accurate, consistent, "objective" (I >know this is an argument on the other thread, I think one can get >relatively "objective ratings" see my RSAC case study for a break down on >the qualities of rating systems on my ecommerce page (home page below)) >well branded and reputable agents will have a greater weight, and will have >a market motivation for accuracy exceeding regulatory pressure. (Plus, >there is nothing preventing thresh-hold tolerances for use with multiple >ratings.) Umm... I pointed out a while back the considerable problems with the RSAC attempt at objective ratings. See http://infinity.nus.sg/cypherpunks/dir.archive-96.05.09-96.05.15/0092.html for a review of my objections. The system in question is obviously much more subjective than, say, one that had: Does this page contain any female frontal nudity? Does this page contain any male frontal nudity? Does this page contain any female rear nudity? Does this page contain any male rear nudity? and so on. The parts on violence are particularly subjective. -Allen

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Re: NEWS: Web Security Hole Revealed (opportunity?)
by msprague＠ridgecrest.ca.us 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>At 11:14 PM 12/11/96 -0500, you wrote: >>X-Sender: okeefe(a)olympus.net >>Mime-Version: 1.0 >>Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 19:32:32 -0800 >>To: N E W S R E L E A S E <IPS(a)olympus.net> >>From: "Steve O'Keefe" <IPS(a)olympus.net> >>Subject: NEWS: Web Security Hole Revealed >> >>BREAKING NEWS >>For Release Thursday, December 12, 1996 >> >>MAJOR WEB SECURITY FLAW REVEALED >> >>(New York) -- Edward Felten, head of Princeton University's >>Safe Internet Programming Team (SIP), today revealed a >>major security flaw in the Internet's World Wide Web. >>Called "web spoofing," the breach allows any Internet >>server to place itself between a user and the rest of the >>web. In that middle position, the server may observe, steal >>and alter any information passing between the unfortunate >>browser and the web. (deletia) Wait a minuite; This sounds like an opportunity! I see a possibility for a machine confugured to tx/rx PGP encrypted packets to re-broadcast them with the machines IP. This would become an anonymous ISP

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Re: Why PICS is the wrong approach
by Joseph M. Reagle Jr. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:51 PM 12/12/96 EDT, E. Allen Smith wrote: > Umm... I pointed out a while back the considerable problems with >the RSAC attempt at objective ratings. See I agree that it is not a purely descriptive system, however it is much moreso than others. I thought the following was a useful breakdown for my own purposes: Caveat on Vocabulary Before proceeding with the analysis we must first discuss some of the terms used in the analysis. The usage of terms "objective" and "judgmental" can be rather contentious. To address this, we disassociate any of these terms with any pejorative meanings ( opinionated gut feelings about Web content can be very useful ) and posit that there are three variables with which content labeling systems can be considered: descriptive/judgmental - does the label describe the content, or provide an opinion about the "appropriateness" of the content. deterministic/non-deterministic - is the previous process a deterministic process, or is it "gut" based, and voluntary, mandatory, or third party - does the author label his works voluntarily, is he required to label his works by some other agency, or can other services label his content. No rating system we discuss is purely descriptive or deterministic. Rather, each system varies with respect to where it falls between extremes. _______________________ Regards, Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress. -Thomas A. Edison Joseph Reagle http://rpcp.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html reagle(a)mit.edu E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65 BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E

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Re: Why PICS is the wrong approach
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"reagle(a)rpcp.mit.edu" "Joseph M. Reagle Jr." 13-DEC-1996 00:19:47.19 To: IN%"EALLENSMITH(a)mbcl.rutgers.edu" "E. Allen Smith" CC: IN%"cypherpunks(a)toad.com" Subj: RE: Why PICS is the wrong approach Received: from RPCP.MIT.EDU by mbcl.rutgers.edu (PMDF #12194) id <01ICXWWYIT0GAH4L7K(a)mbcl.rutgers.edu>; Fri, 13 Dec 1996 00:19 EDT Received: from dialup-273.lcs.mit.edu by rpcp.mit.edu with SMTP id AA05830; Fri, 13 Dec 1996 00:20:21 -0500 Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 00:17:54 -0500 From: "Joseph M. Reagle Jr." <reagle(a)rpcp.mit.edu> Subject: RE: Why PICS is the wrong approach To: "E. Allen Smith" <EALLENSMITH(a)mbcl.rutgers.edu> Cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Message-id: <3.0.32.19961213001747.00937d30(a)rpcp.mit.edu> X-Envelope-to: EALLENSMITH Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Sender: reagle(a)rpcp.mit.edu X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Mime-Version: 1.0 At 11:51 PM 12/12/96 EDT, E. Allen Smith wrote: > Umm... I pointed out a while back the considerable problems with >the RSAC attempt at objective ratings. See > I agree that it is not a purely descriptive system, however it is much >moreso than others. I thought the following was a useful breakdown for my >own purposes: The below (from your essay) is a reasonable way to look at it. I would tend to compare a system to obviously possible systems as well as to simply what else is out there, however. >descriptive/judgmental - does the label describe the content, or provide an >opinion about the "appropriateness" of the content. In this regard, I would call the system in question about midway between a truly descriptive system and such obviously judgemental systems as SafeSurf. This partially judgemental nature is probably unavoidable in systems in which one uses a non-binary rating scheme; if the presence of something inevietably means that the system gives a "high" rating, then the system is judging that the something is more important than other factors. In this case, the judgement is pretty obviously that they deem the something in question (such as "hate speech" that calls for "harm" to some class - although I doubt they'd include pro-Affirmative-Action speech in that...) to be worse than the "lower" rated actions. >deterministic/non-deterministic - is the previous process a deterministic >process, or is it "gut" based, and I would agree that RSAC's system is pretty deterministic; the choices of what is labelled are rather arbitrary, but that falls under the description vs judgement category above. >voluntary, mandatory, or third party - does the author label his works >voluntarily, is he required to label his works by some other agency, or can >other services label his content. As currently set up, RSAC is either voluntary or mandatory - a government could require that it be used as a mandatory system, directly or indirectly (e.g., under threat of lawsuits for "corrupting minors"). >No rating system we discuss is purely descriptive or deterministic. Rather, >each system varies with respect to where it falls between extremes. Agreed. -Allen

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Re: Redlining
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

E. Allen Smith wrote: > From: IN%"dthorn(a)gte.net" "Dale Thorn" 13-DEC-1996 00:55:54.44 > >It is possible to understand intelligence as "pattern matching" skills, > >without having to have attendant math and statistics to define it more > >precisely or clinically. This understanding (if you have it) is the key > >to knowing that Black persons do *not* have less IQ than White persons, > >regardless of the standardized tests. Something I know about, as I've > >scored in the top 1/1000 of one percent, etc. > Umm... so have I, and I've also done some extensive reading on > the subject. The IQ tests in question do a good job (better than any > other tests - to study & compare you've got to have some sort of test, > and an IQ test doesn't see what color you are) at correlating with > things such as job performance, educational success (e.g., GPA), > likelihood even within given racial groups of being in poverty, etcetera. I have not associated closely with any Black persons since 1981-1983, but at that time, when I had worked with several such persons in Los Angeles, in close quarters (me being the only White person), I was profoundly impressed with the diversity and complexity of the issue (I was curious about the issue due to my circumstances, although I certainly did not mention it) in dealing with real people. My experience tells me that persons who administer intelligence tests and other related tests, or persons who subscribe to study of such things, should get up close to (for example) Black persons for an extended period of time, and I think they (the White persons) would then seriously question any test results which showed a consistent superiority for Whites. > >Nice that you have good intuition on this point, however, the big question > >in your paragraph is not wherefore the genetic determinant, rather, it is > >the understanding of intelligence in its overall context, which I dare say > >most researchers in that field are probably ill-equipped to grasp. > Actually, my conclusions re: genetic differences are an educated > guess... just one that isn't currently testable. My guess comes from such > factors as that some groups that, to all appearances, have high IQs are > actually pretty closely related to some groups that have low IQs; take > hispanics (mixed caucasian and (via American Indian) asian ancestry). > The debates over what is intelligence, etcetera are quite > thoroughly ongoing in the field in question; multiple books have been > written on the subject. I have recently (Oct. 1996) more-or-less inherited three half-Navajo children, upon the death of their father (mother died 1993). The kids are 9, 11, and 13. I have described to various people (schoolteachers, parents, computer programmers, and so on) that raising kids of this age, at this point in my life, is no more difficult than just living my own life without them. Getting past the emotional weaknesses that can hobble you as a parent or guardian is paramount, and once you do that, the rest is a cakewalk. But what I really wanted to say was that my experience with these children now (whom I didn't know until mid-1996) has convinced me more than ever that intelligence is not only not primarily genetic, but may also be recoverable to a large extent up to the beginning of the teen years, if not beyond that. I would guess that children from most any background, young enough and lacking actual physical brain damage or extremely severe psychological trauma, can probably be brought up to the point where they can perform on an equal level with the best our society has to offer. The main and overwhelming factor in developing children who can accomplish at a superior level is the personal attention of a caregiver, and what that attention consists of. There are some things you can read about in a book and guess what they mean, and there are some things you can know when you're staring them in the face...

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[Meeting] Cypherpunks wanking club.
by nobody＠replay.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There will be a meeting at my place for all cypherpunks so we can pull each other dicks about how clever we are and bag all those non-entities who aren't. All gun lovers are of course welcome and we can exhibit our manhood paranoia by seeing who has the biggest calibre weapon. Having a deadly weapon after all proves we are grown up, right kiddies. Sufferin' Sam

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Re: Laptops and TEMPEST
by Dave Del Torto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:18 pm -0800 12/5/96, Joel McNamara wrote: >Thinking that LCD screens reduce the risks of emanation monitoring is a >dangerous misconception [elided] the gotcha with current laptops is their >backlighting. Electric and magnetic fields are considerably higher >compared with a low-res/contrast device. [elided] An interesting point, but the fluorescent is mostly a constant signal, really, but Hugh pointed out that most laptops have a video chip radiating far more useful data than the flourescent backlight. Just a thought. dave ____________________________________________________________________________ "I mixed this myself. (holds up glass of water) Two parts "H," one part "O." I don't trust _anybody_!" --Steven Wright

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Re: Redlining
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

E. Allen Smith wrote: > From: IN%"dthorn(a)gte.net" "Dale Thorn" 13-DEC-1996 01:53:17.65[snip] > >the rest is a cakewalk. But what I really wanted to say was that my > >experience with these children now (whom I didn't know until mid-1996) > >has convinced me more than ever that intelligence is not only not > >primarily genetic, but may also be recoverable to a large extent up to > >the beginning of the teen years, if not beyond that. > Actually, IQ tests in childhood up until about age 12 aren't > particularly well correlated with adult IQ; they would thus agree with > you on that environment can heavily influence IQ until that point. Again, as a statistical exercise, this might be OK, but, quite a bit of what you would see in the exceptional areas of the curve in childhood would be rather obvious in adulthood as well. The fact that this doesn't seem so obvious across the statistical curve is only evidence of poor granularity in the data. > It is possible to raise IQs somewhat with various environmental > interventions; the question is how much. Research such as that > discussed in Herman Spitz's "Raising Intelligence" (_not_ a conservative > or racist by any means) appears to show that such does, unfortunately, > have some points at which one gets to diminishing returns; see below > for more discussion. A typical researcher or team of same would not be proper candidates to lead an interventionist study such as this. You'd need people with proven track records. As I keep telling my wife again and again, when we go into a book store and she picks up some book on a "health" topic: What's the author's track record, not only for him/herself, but in leading others? > Regarding the "physical brain damage," I have earlier mentioned > prenatal traumas such as lead; other instances would be inadequate > maternal nutrition and the intake of alcohol (signifigantly more harmful > to a child than crack). These are among the factors, other than racism, > making studies showing differences in IQ between black adoptees and > white adoptees difficult to interpret; cultural influences (racism, > white adoptive parents trying to hard to raise black children in their > "own" culture, etcetera) are another major group of factors. > In other words, we don't know yet. > >The main and overwhelming factor in developing children who can accomplish > >at a superior level is the personal attention of a caregiver, and what > >that attention consists of. There are some things you can read about > >in a book and guess what they mean, and there are some things you can > >know when you're staring them in the face... > > Certainly, extremely intensive care can help children who do not > have physical brain problems. This does not mean that genetics does not > play a considerable role; neither I nor (so far as I know) Mr. Chudov > are claiming that genetics sets an unoverridable barrier. It is more a > matter of that it will take a lot more to get a genetically unintelligent > child to a given level than it will a genetically intelligent child. It's just that in my personal experience, I've found that the vast majority of children fall into the category of "exceptional potential". I guess what I'm saying is that the accomplishment/test norms for most children are far enough below where I could get them to with personal attention, that 1) The norms are useful (to me) only as a stasticical exercise, and 2) The differences between typical children and typical children performing at or near their potential obscures the differences found amongst the norms. > In the larger, societal context, it is not possible to have > intelligent parents with ample resources taking care of every child > unless the number of children is considerably reduced. Quite simply, > resources are limited (otherwise we would have no need for an > economic system); money, time, etcetera spent on less intelligent > children is not being spent on other pursuits (such as raising > more intelligent children, who will be able to accomplish more in > later life with the same investment of resources). This is, I believe, what I and others feared from studies which provide material for books such as the Bell Curve. Knowing that the potential of an allegedly unintelligent (or less-than-average) child might be so great that that child (if lucky enough to get the opportunity) could actually develop to be a significantly better performer than another child with 40 more IQ points, even if the child with the higher IQ has a reasonably good environment to develop in. Those kinds of possibilities are (I think) near and dear to what some of our more enlightened founding fathers in the USA had in mind when they wrote what they did, way back when. I value the writings of all philosophers, BTW, but I reject the notions of any that I or any other autonomous individual (a human is more-or-less autonomous by definition, yes?) could be defined, limited, or otherwise constrained by studies such as we've discussed. I say constrained since these studies do not happen in a vaccuum, and there is always going to be some kind of fallout.

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Re: Elliptic curves
by Jill014＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In a message dated 96-12-12 23:47:15 EST, nobody(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu (Anonymous) writes: > Subj: Re: Elliptic curves > Date: 96-12-12 23:47:15 EST > From: nobody(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu (Anonymous) > Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > > Admin(a)bexcol.demon.co.uk writes: > > > You are all a bunch of faggots. Faggot cannot be allowed on usenet as > > dictated by the great dr. Grubor. > > Does dr. Grubor read this list? I never see any postings from him here. Just who is this anonymous poster; does anyone know or have any idea? > > Fuck you all. > > 1. Cypherpunks is not on usenet. > > 2. Faggots created and run Usenet, and there's nothing a pathetic, > powerless little boy like you can do about it. > This is strange. I mean, how do you know who is a faggot? And is this why you all are so sexist? Are all of the faggots so sexist? Just what is it about these queers that makes them hate women so much anyway? Are they jealous of us sexy women because their boyfriends may want us? I have been watching this for a long time here, and this is a very perplexing situation. Just who are these faggots who "created and run Usenet?" Can you give me a list of names? > 3. I enjoy your pathetic little displays of despair about not having > any control over usenet. Please keep whining to the mailing lists > to remind us all of what a pitiful little loser you are. > Yes, but just who is he? Do you know who he really is? With all of you guys always posting through these "nobody" addresses, you can not tell who is who? I mean, how do you know that the anonymous poster is in "despair about not having any control over usenet?" Maybe he does have control. Just who has all of the Usenet control now anyway? Please tell the faggots to stop being so sexist. Jill

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[ADMINISTRATIVIUM] Zero-knowledge interactive proofs
by mixmaster＠remail.obscura.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In a jerk-off competition Tim Mayhem finishes second, third and fifth. \\\|||/// ======= | O O | Tim Mayhem \`___'/ _| |_

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Re: Credentials without Identity--Race Bits
by Jill014＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In a message dated 96-12-13 02:03:26 EST, cmcurtin(a)research.megasoft.com (C Matthew Curtin) writes: > Subj: Re: Credentials without Identity--Race Bits > Date: 96-12-13 02:03:26 EST > From: cmcurtin(a)research.megasoft.com (C Matthew Curtin) > Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Reply-to: cmcurtin(a)research.megasoft.com > To: tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) > CC: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > > >>>>> "Tim" == Timothy C May <tcmay(a)got.net> writes: > > Tim> While it has been claimed by some that "crypto anarchy" means > Tim> that race won't matter, that cyberspace interactions will be > Tim> color-blind, this is misleading. > > Race bits, gender bits, etc., are all interesting possibilities. I > never thought about anyone wanting to do such a thing, but I suppose > that's likely. > > I've tended to think that as we become increasingly digital, issues > like race become less significant (perhaps because it generally isn't > immediately obvious in this medium). This doesn't mean that prejudices > go away, it means that they shift to stay with what is obvious. For > example, people who are unable to spell well (and don't spellcheck > email and usenet posts), or use excessively poor grammar are often > ridiculed for their lack of mastery of the language in which they're > writing. Basically, the prejudices and such continue with us, but > change, so as to remain based on things that are easily discernible. > > Tim> While many--probably most--users will care only for cyberspace > Tim> personna issues, and not meatspace personna issues of race, > Tim> color, height, weight, etc., this is not something built in to > Tim> anonymous transactions. > > As I'm replying, it's occurred to me that we've already got some sort > of persona "certificates" floating around now. (Such as the Geek > Code.) Imagine a field there to include race. Wouldn't take a lot to > do that, after all. > What is the "Geek Code?" > Of course, the implementation of a race bit system that can be trusted > is another issue altogether. Would the White Boyz Club then need to > have its own trusted arbitrator to introduce people of the same race > to each other? (AryanSign?) Is a more elaborate PGP-style web > of trust used? Hmm. So white Boyz Club excludes women to, is that correct?

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Re: Redlining
by Jill014＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In a message dated 96-12-13 02:36:46 EST, dthorn(a)gte.net (Dale Thorn) writes: > Subj: Re: Redlining > Date: 96-12-13 02:36:46 EST > From: dthorn(a)gte.net (Dale Thorn) > Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com > To: EALLENSMITH(a)ocelot.Rutgers.EDU (E. Allen Smith) > CC: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > > E. Allen Smith wrote: > > From: IN%"dthorn(a)gte.net" "Dale Thorn" 12-DEC-1996 14:56:52.69 > > >Actually, there is not only good evidence for the environmental argument, > > >but you can reason it out yourself if you give attention to some things > > >that don't make it into most discussions on this topic. > > > Yes, there are strong arguments for the environment being the determining > > factor. there are also strong arguments (such as interracial adoption > still > > leaving blacks below the average IQ of adopted siblings) for it being > genetics. > > It is possible to understand intelligence as "pattern matching" skills, > without having to have attendant math and statistics to define it more > precisely or clinically. This understanding (if you have it) is the key > to knowing that Black persons do *not* have less IQ than White persons, > regardless of the standardized tests. Something I know about, as I've > scored in the top 1/1000 of one percent, etc. > Are you black?

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KRA_gak
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

12-12-96 "High-Tech Leaders to Facilitate Recovery of Encrypted Information Globally. Key Recovery Alliance Welcomes 29 New Members" The key recovery alliance has more than tripled its membership and identified its charter objectives. + expediting the widespread, global use of strong encryption + evaluating technologies that are flexible and scaleable to meet various changing commercial needs and policies + promoting interoperability between different key recovery and non-key recovery solutions + defining a commercial infrastructure for worldwide development of strong encryption + maximizing security for business To facilitate meeting these and other objectives, the alliance identified a series of working committees targeted to meet within the next 60 days. Soon after this 60-day period, the now 40-member alliance will re-convene to mark the progress of these committees and to identify future benchmarks and deliverables. The new members of the alliance are: America Online, Inc., Certicom, Compaq Computer Corporation, CygnaCom Solutions, Inc., Cylink Corporation, Data Securities International, Inc., First Data Corporation, Digital Signature Trust Company, Gradient Technologies, Inc., ICL, McAfee, Mitsubishi Corporation of Japan, Motorola, Mytec Technologies, Inc., Network Systems Group of StorageTek, Nortel, Novell, Inc., PSA, Price Waterhouse, Racal Data Group, Rainbow Technologies, SafeNet Trusted Services Corporation, Secure Computing, SourceFile, Sterling Commerce, Telequip, Unisys, Utimaco Mergent, and VPNet Technologies. "IBM SecureWay Framework To Accelerate Growth of Electronic Business" IBM announced a new framework which will advance secure electronic business by making it possible for diverse security offerings to work together. The IBM SecureWay Key Management Framework will let businesses use encryption products interchangeably. The new framework will provide for the easy adoption of new and existing key recovery technologies, while not disturbing existing cryptographic and other security functions and operations. It will effectively isolate the application from the unique properties of a specific key recovery implementation. A white paper describing the SecureWay Key Management Framework is available at http://www.ibm.com/security ----- KRA_gak (19 kb)

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Re: Elliptic curves
by aga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Fri, 13 Dec 1996, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: > >From cypherpunks-errors(a)toad.com Fri Dec 13 00:43:05 1996 > Received: by bwalk.dm.com (1.65/waf) > via UUCP; Fri, 13 Dec 96 01:34:42 EST > for dlv > Received: from toad.com by uu.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.061193-PSI/PSINet) via SMTP; > id AA22158 for cypherpunks; Fri, 13 Dec 96 00:43:05 -0500 > Received: (from majordom@localhost) by toad.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id TAA05349 for cypherpunks-outgoing; Thu, 12 Dec 1996 19:07:54 -0800 (PST) > Received: from zifi.genetics.utah.edu (zifi.genetics.utah.edu [155.100.229.31]) by toad.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id TAA05344 for <cypherpunks(a)toad.com>; Thu, 12 Dec 1996 19:07:47 -0800 (PST) > Received: (from bin@localhost) by zifi.genetics.utah.edu (8.8.3/8.6.9) id UAA13495 for cypherpunks(a)toad.com; Thu, 12 Dec 1996 20:07:52 -0700 > Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 20:07:52 -0700 > Message-Id: <199612130307.UAA13495(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu> > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > From: nobody(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu (Anonymous) > Comments: Please report misuse of this automated remailing service to <complaints(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu> > References: <850408570.510393.0(a)bexcol.demon.co.uk> > Subject: Re: Elliptic curves > Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Precedence: bulk > > Admin(a)bexcol.demon.co.uk writes: > > > You are all a bunch of faggots. Faggot cannot be allowed on usenet as > > dictated by the great dr. Grubor. > > > > Fuck you all. > > 1. Cypherpunks is not on usenet. > The fuck it ain't. They are at least two newsgroups out there that carry every piece of e-mail that goes to the cypherpunks list. > 2. Faggots created and run Usenet, and there's nothing a pathetic, > powerless little boy like you can do about it. > This may be true, up until now, but the faggots are now getting kicked off of the new UseNet. There are just TOO MANY faggots like Peter Berger and Tim May and John Gilmore runnung around to allow this faggot subculture to continue. > 3. I enjoy your pathetic little displays of despair about not having > any control over usenet. Please keep whining to the mailing lists > to remind us all of what a pitiful little loser you are. > These faggot cypherpunks are not worth wasting your time on, unless you are ready to take their fucking ass to court and cross-examine them. ARE YOU A FAGGOT, Peter Berger? -- ANSWER THE QUESTION !!! (The faggots must answer this question when you get them on the stand.) That Tim Skirvin is also a faggot, so I have been told by his schoolmates. Has he been fucked in the ass by anybody on this list?

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Re: In Defense of Anecdotal Evidence
by Rob Carlson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Thu, 12 Dec 1996 14:12:23 -0800, Huge Cajones Remailer wrote: >Statistics are a useful tool, but they have their problems. Their >accuracy is often in doubt. Most scientific data comes with an error >analysis so you can tell what the figure means. For some reason >statisticians never do this so we cannot tell whether their numbers >are accurate to within 0.1%, 1.0%, 10%, or even worse. > >There are many other problems. For instance, users of statistics >assume they have a random sample, even in cases where that is far from >clear [ List of other problems deleted ] Of course, anecdotal evidence also suffers from all of these problems. And in greater magnitude. This is true since it is a special case of statistical evidence. With a non-random sample set of one and no controls for observer bias. >The advantage of first hand experience is that it is primary evidence. >You know it's true because you were there and saw it. I have seen women cut in half and rabbits made to appear in an empty hat with my own eyes. I'm quite sure neither of these is true. Humans are poor observers. The data processing unit is easily fooled. Many people make a living off of this fallability such as magicians and politicians. The observer is also tainted by previous experience(or lack of) and individual needs. This leads to bias unavoidable in even the most honest and reliable observers. Statistical methods are used to control for this. Double-blind techniques are one example. Humans also have a need to make conclusions when insufficient evidence is available. Witness the number of people who have an opinion on the innocence of OJ Simpson based on <2 minutes/day condensation of the evidence. >The advantage of anecdotal evidence (in the sense we have been using >it) is that the person who is telling you the anecdote was there and >saw it. You can cross-examine them and get a full understanding of >the evidence provided. The reporting of evidence involves different issues. If you want to believe that women are actually cut in two or that politicians are telling the truth anytime their lips are moving, thats one thing. If you want to tell me its true because you personally observed it, thats quite another. Given the failures of humans as observational tools, your story is unverifiable by me. Perhaps through effective cross examination I can prove you wrong, but I can never prove you right with such a technique.That will require other evidence outside the control of the observer ( statistical is just one available ). Evidence that can be verified independently by many observers increases the reliability. Experiments and polls can be done by me thus eliminating your bias. Independent verification can also check for errors and check the parameters under which the evidence is true. Studies are done with certain assumptions and controls. The evidence loses its reliability when removed from this context. This doesn't make studies or statistical evidence true. Just more reliable than anecdotal evidence. Humans who will lie about their observations will also produce flawed studies. Again the former (anecdotal) is unverifiable, but I can check the latter (statistical) independently. I also don't believe polls can be used to determine the truth. They can only tell what a mass of people believe. And then only if done correctly. To make this on topic, how does this apply to cryptography and crypto-politics? This issue is a foundation of our discussions here. Shall we accept anecdotal evidence such as the "If you only knew what we knew" arguments? What is more reliable: IPG's claims that their product is an OTP because they say it is or Bruce Schneier's book that can be used to point out the fallacy's in their claims? Relying on anecdotal evidence makes you susceptible to the magicians of the world. The honest ones use mirrors and their need is to entertain you enough to get your money. The rest use anecdotal evidence and emotional arguments (verbal misdirection?). Their needs are left as a test of the reader's naivete. Rob Carlson <robc(a)xmission.com>

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Copyright violations
by alzheimer＠juno.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Agence France Presse: Tuesday, December 10, 1996 Visa to Launch Trial Electronic Money Services in Tokyo Visa International said Tuesday it would experiment with electronic money services in central Tokyo [Shibuya district] for about 18 months from June 1998 with Japanese commercial banks and credit card companies. The US-headquartered international credit card firm said it would be the world's largest experiment in terms of the size of participating companies and cards to be issued. The project will be joined by five Japanese commerical banks -- Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd., Dai-ichi Kangyo Bank Ltd., Fuji Bank Ltd., Sumitomo Bank Ltd., and Tokai Bank Ltd. Five Japanese credit card companies, including Credit Saison Co. Ltd. DC Card Co., Sumitomo Credit Service Co., Million Card Service Co. and UC Card Co., will also take part in the trial. Visa said it hoped to use the experiment to assess commercial feasibility and customer affordability before introducing full electronic money services. Visa plans to install its electronic money terminals and issue more than 100,000 cards, including those with built-in integrated circuits, for the experiment. Visa said it had already conducted an electronic money experiment in Atlanta during the Summer Olympic Games. The company is also preparing to try similar systems in Hong Kong and Australia. American Banker: Thursday, December 12, 1996 REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK Home Financial Network Offers Web Software By DREW CLARK The house lights dimmed and music started blaring. Smoke billowed out from the stage and red-and-white lights flashed onto an audience of thousands. Despite the rock-concert atmosphere, complete with an emcee peering out from giant video screens like a live-action "Max Headroom," most of the audience in the Dallas Convention Center Arena was in suits. Welcome to Retail Delivery '96, the new-wave Bank Administration Institute conference covering all that is new and exciting in financial services technology. Having grown into banking's biggest convention, with more than 7,000 people and some 350 exhibiting companies, Retail Delivery made bold promises. Promotional brochures said it would go "beyond the buzzwords." Frank Feather, the Canadian banking consultant in the Max Headroom role, said the event would "unlock the secrets of how to make real money off technology." When the "virtual" Mr. Feather introduced Robert W. Gillespie for the keynote speech last Wednesday, the KeyCorp chief executive officer drew a laugh from the audience by declaring: "This may be the way to start shareholder meetings." Mr. Gillespie and the master of ceremonies were the first of a parade of speakers referring to the dramatic change the industry is undergoing. Mr. Gillespie captured the spirit by describing how his company, the "New Key," is evolving in three directions: national consumer finance, corporate banking, and community banking. His multimedia computer presentation took the audience through a virtual branch and displayed video clips of KeyCorp executives including Steve Cone, its renowned marketing strategist. Mr. Gillespie showcased a marketing campaign so unified that the voice of Anthony Edwards, the company's star ad spokesman, is also heard when consumers dial into KeyCorp call centers. Branding is big in retail banking, nowhere more than at Banc One Corp. The point was reinforced by Kenneth T. Stevens, chief executive of Banc One Corp.'s retail group, who previously worked at Pepsico and its Taco Bell subsidiary. "Strong brands get winning price-earning multiples," he said, which translate into easier entry into new markets and the ability to resist competitive attacks. "Historically, banks didn't need branding because of location," Mr. Stevens said. "With the leveling of competition, the control of brand names will be essential." He said banks' problems are typified by the jumble of logos on automated teller machines -- a stark contrast to the clarity of Coke and Pepsi. Despite such doses of high-level retail strategy, technology held center-stage. The enthusiasm about it was palpable, fueled by the appearances of executives from the Silicon Valley companies Intel Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. Generally admonishing the audience to get on the highway before it's too late, both spoke to banking issues. Intel executive vice president Frank Gill demonstrated remote banking with interactive video; Sun CEO Scott McNealy was critical of bankers' willingness to turn technology management over to others. "I can see a forestry company outsourcing information systems because their assets are in the ground," Mr. McNealy said. "But a bank's assets are information. Outsourcing (for banks) is a self-imposed lobotomy. It's like Budweiser outsourcing beer manufacturing." At the closing session Friday, Mr. Feather came out from behind the big screens to discuss his own keys to the future. Foremost, he said, is the Internet -- "the biggest thing ever in human history. It is not a technology, but a socio-economic system changing the way we live." Yet some bankers still "don't get it," Mr. Feather said. They prefer to think of the Internet as a passing fad, like the videophone, or an important but slowly evolving technology. Referring -- though not by name -- to Citicorp chairman John Reed and his prediction that full electronic banking would not be mainstream for 50 to 75 years, Mr. Feather dismissed it with a barnyard epithet. He suggested Citicorp is just trying to throw its competition off-balance. Mr. Feather's counterprediction: Within 25 years, there will be no full- service branches or tellers in North America. "Tens of thousands of branches will be closed, the entire distribution system will be rationalized," he said.

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Re: Whom can you trust with your keys -- government version
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: Hal Abelson <hal(a)martigny.ai.mit.edu> > Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 15:29:25 -0500 > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Subject: Whom can you trust with your keys -- government version > Reply-to: hal(a)MIT.EDU > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > > > The Commerce Department draft crypto export regulations (see > http://www.steptoe.com/commerce.htm) include the following stipulation > on Key Recovery Agents: > > > Evidence of an individual's suitability and trustworthiness [to > act as a key recovery agent] shall include: > > (i) Information indicating that the individual(s): > > (A) Has no criminal convictions of any kind or > pending criminal charges of any kind; > > (B) Has not breached fiduciary > responsibilities (e.g., has not violated any > surety or performance bonds); and > > (C) Has favorable results of a credit check; > or, > > (ii) Information that the individual(s) has an active > U.S. government security clearance of Secret or higher > issued or updated within the last five years. > > It's nice to know that we can trust ex-cons, frauds, and deadbeats to > hold our keys, provided that they have obtained a Secret clearance. Sorry, but you're mistaken. There is an implied AND between (i) and (ii), not an OR. Curiously, it looks like I may be eligible to run an GAK service. Peter Trei trei(a)process.com

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ASM vs portable code [WAS: Re: Java DES breaker?]
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ray Arachelian <sunder(a)brainlink.com> wrote: > On Wed, 11 Dec 1996, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: > > > I happen to have a Sparc 20 box and a Linux box and a SCO box, and ActiveX > > won't work on any of those. I also work with a bunch of other equipment > > that's much faster than a PC, but doesn't run browsers. (Most of it is not > > connected to the 'net for security reasons, but that's besides the point.) > > Right, and Active X, if those machies were on the web, would not be > supported. > > > If Bill's client is sure to run the platforms that MS IE runs on, then this is > > not a consideration. > > Correct, however there is one thing you have forgotten... (next paragraph) > > > Interpreted FORTH bytestream (which is what Java is) may be "doing quite well" > > when drawing GUI gizmos and widgets, but it can't get anywhere near the > > performance of hand-optimizer assembler that you can stick into ActiveX. > > While ActiveX does support hand optmized assembler, there are Java > JustInTime compilers which take JVM bytecodes and turn'em into raw > assembler. They aren't hand optimized, they are natively compiled code, > but they are native code non the less. A good optimizing compiler may > not be 100% as cool and as fast as hand optmized code, BUT it'll be > almost as fast. And Java will run on just about EVERY platform out there. > And that is a bigger, more important point than a 10%-25% increase in > power over non-optimized code. > > Besides, I'm not arguing AGAINST an ActiveX client, there's no reason > why there can't be both Java and ActiveX clients out there since there is > both a compatibilty issue and a speed increase with ActiveX. While I'm reluctant to ever find myself in the same corner as Vulis, he has a point. As one of the few folks on this list who actually writes code, I say that hand-optimized assembler will beat machine generated code every time. I have figures to back me up. As some of you know, I've been working on a DES key recovery tool. I'm have both portable C and x86 assembler versions. They are currently identical, except that the guts of the DES round is written in "C" in one, and hand-optimized Pentium assembler in the other. For this test, I modified the code to cut out the delays associated with incrementing the key schedule, leaving the most of the crunching in the DES decryption. Both versions were compiled under Visual C++ 4.0, with Optimizations set to 'Maximize speed', and inlines to 'any suitable', and run on a 90MHz Digital Celebris 590 under WinNT 3.51. Averaging several runs: "C": 102,300 crypts/sec ASM: 238,000 crypts/sec With Java, it's possible to add native code methods to the interpreter, though this requires extra work by the user - it's harder than 'click on this link to run my reely kool applet'. This violates the Java sandbox, and requires the user to make trust decisions on the methods they are adding. ActiveX lets you add and run native code with a click, but again involves trust decisions. My philosophy is 'the more the merrier'. I'd like to see people work on DES Key Recovery on a large number of platforms - we just need to standardize on the input and output formats. Peter Trei trei(a)process.com Peter Trei Senior Software Engineer Purveyor Development Team Process Software Corporation http://www.process.com trei(a)process.com

4 3

Credentials without Identity--Racey Bits
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:30 AM 12/13/96 -0500, Jill heatedly wrote: :So white Boyz Club excludes women to, is that correct? By definition, you steaming dreamboat. Drop me a note, kitten. XXOO Snookums

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ASM vs portable code [WAS: Re: Java DES breaker?]
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry if this is a repeat - I got a rather opaque 'delivery failure' message when I first sent it. - pt Ray Arachelian <sunder(a)brainlink.com> wrote: > On Wed, 11 Dec 1996, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: > > > I happen to have a Sparc 20 box and a Linux box and a SCO box, and ActiveX > > won't work on any of those. I also work with a bunch of other equipment > > that's much faster than a PC, but doesn't run browsers. (Most of it is not > > connected to the 'net for security reasons, but that's besides the point.) > > Right, and Active X, if those machies were on the web, would not be > supported. > > > If Bill's client is sure to run the platforms that MS IE runs on, then this is > > not a consideration. > > Correct, however there is one thing you have forgotten... (next paragraph) > > > Interpreted FORTH bytestream (which is what Java is) may be "doing quite well" > > when drawing GUI gizmos and widgets, but it can't get anywhere near the > > performance of hand-optimizer assembler that you can stick into ActiveX. > > While ActiveX does support hand optmized assembler, there are Java > JustInTime compilers which take JVM bytecodes and turn'em into raw > assembler. They aren't hand optimized, they are natively compiled code, > but they are native code non the less. A good optimizing compiler may > not be 100% as cool and as fast as hand optmized code, BUT it'll be > almost as fast. And Java will run on just about EVERY platform out there. > And that is a bigger, more important point than a 10%-25% increase in > power over non-optimized code. > > Besides, I'm not arguing AGAINST an ActiveX client, there's no reason > why there can't be both Java and ActiveX clients out there since there is > both a compatibilty issue and a speed increase with ActiveX. While I'm reluctant to ever find myself in the same corner as Vulis, he has a point. As one of the few folks on this list who actually writes code, I say that hand-optimized assembler will beat machine generated code every time. I have figures to back me up. As some of you know, I've been working on a DES key recovery tool. I'm have both portable C and x86 assembler versions. They are currently identical, except that the guts of the DES round is written in "C" in one, and hand-optimized Pentium assembler in the other. For this test, I modified the code to cut out the delays associated with incrementing the key schedule (this is not in assembler yet, and slows down the assembler version about 30%), leaving the of the crunching in the DES decryption. Both versions were compiled under Visual C++ 4.0, with Optimizations set to 'Maximize speed', and inlines to 'any suitable', and run on a 90MHz Digital Celebris 590 under WinNT 3.51. Averaging several runs: "C": 102,300 crypts/sec ASM: 238,000 crypts/sec With Java, it's possible to add native code methods to the interpreter, though it requires extra work by the user - it's harder than 'click on this link to run my reely kool applet'. This violates the Java sandbox, and requires the user to make trust decisions on the methods they are adding. ActiveX lets you add and run native code with a click, but again involves trust decisions. My philosophy is 'the more the merrier'. I'd like to see able to people work on DES Key Recovery on a large number of platforms and modes - we just need to standardize on the input and output formats. Peter Trei trei(a)process.com

2 1

ITARs effects
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I cross posted the ITAR proposed rev pointers to Firewalls. In addition to an entertaining rant, Marcus posted this: ----- Forwarded message from Marcus J. Ranum ----- >From mjr(a)mail.clark.net Thu Dec 12 17:38:57 1996 Message-Id: <199612122240.RAA10556(a)mail.clark.net> Comments: Authenticated sender is <mjr(a)mail.clark.net.> From: "Marcus J. Ranum" <mjr(a)mail.clark.net> Organization: V-ONE Corp Baltimore office To: adam(a)homeport.org Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 17:42:00 +0000 Subject: that doc.... Priority: normal X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v2.42a) You posted a pointer to that document. It was quite interesting. I see that the feds are making INDIVIDUALS responsible for ENFORCING export laws!!! Read carefully: (9) Export of encryption software. The export of encryption source code and object code software controlled for EI reasons under ECCN 5D002 on the Commerce Control List (see Supplement No. 1 to part 774 of the EAR) includes downloading or causing the downloading, of such software to locations (including electronic bulletin boards and Internet file transfer protocol and World Wide Web sites) outside the U.S., and making such software available for transfer outside the United States, over radio, electromagnetic, photo optical, or photoelectric communications facilities accessible to persons outside the United States, including transfers from electronic bulletin boards and Internet file transfer protocol and World Wide Web sites, or any cryptographic software subject to controls under this regulation unless the person making software available takes precautions as adequate to prevent unauthorized transfer of such code outside the United States. This provision applies both to the uploading and downloading of such software. For purposes of this paragraph, the following shall constitute adequate precautions to prevent unauthorized transfer: This implies that putting something up for FTP == export. Holy shit. mjr. ----- Marcus J. Ranum, Chief Scientist, V-ONE Corporation Work: http://www.v-one.com Personal: http://www.clark.net/pub/mjr "I'll have time to be laid back when I'm laid out on a slab" ----- End of forwarded message from Marcus J. Ranum -----

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Re: Elliptic curves--hot stuff here
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:18 AM 12/13/96 -0500, my baby, Jill, wrote: :Please tell the faggots to stop being so sexist. : :Jill : OK, all you faggots stop being so sexist. :Just what is it about these queers that makes them hate women so much :anyway? Are they jealous of us sexy women because their boyfriends :may want us? Oh, yea, and all you sexy hot AOL chicks stop turning on all the queers' boyfriends. P.S.: Jill, come up and see me sometime. I'm ready to start over if you are. XXOO Snookums

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RSA Laboratories seeks contributions for the "next generation" of PKCS
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Ray Sidney <ray(a)RSA.COM> To: "'e-payment(a)bellcore.com'" <e-payment(a)bellcore.com>, "'firewalls(a)greatcircle.com'" <firewalls(a)greatcircle.com>, "'ietf-otp(a)bellcore.com'" <ietf-otp(a)bellcore.com>, "'ietf-pkix(a)tandem.com'" <ietf-pkix(a)tandem.com>, "'ipsec(a)ans.net'" <ipsec(a)ans.net>, "'www-security(a)ns2.rutgers.edu'" <www-security(a)ns2.rutgers.edu> To: "'rsa-licensees(a)rsa.com'" <rsa-licensees(a)RSA.COM>, "'swan-dev(a)rsa.com'" <swan-dev(a)RSA.COM>, "'smime-dev(a)rsa.com'" <smime-dev(a)RSA.COM> Subject: RSA Laboratories seeks contributions for the "next generation" of PKCS Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 10:07:47 -0800 Comments and suggestions are invited for the next generation of the Public-Key Cryptography Standards, the intervendor specifications developed starting in 1991 by RSA Laboratories in conjunction with industry and universities. The Public-Key Cryptography Standards were established to provide a catalyst for interoperable security based on public-key cryptographic techniques, and they have become the basis for many formal standards and are implemented widely. With several years' experience and review, and with many new developments in cryptography since 1991, it is now time to update PKCS. Suggestions are invited in the following areas: * improvements to the current suite of standards * contributions for new standards, including standards for transport and local storage of personal information such as private keys and certificates, and standards for platform-independent cryptographic programming interfaces PKCS documents are low-level standards stating precisely how one may accomplish specific cryptographic or cryptography-related tasks. Most are concerned with specifying byte-level recipes (often in ASN.1) for formatting various types of data (such as a block which is to be RSA-encrypted), rather than making general security-related recommendations ("An RSA modulus should be at least XXX bits long."). RSA Laboratories is actively soliciting suggestions and contributions for the "next generation" of PKCS from now until the end of April 1997. If you have written up a document detailing extensions you've made to an existing PKCS, and you feel that others could benefit from the use of your extensions, then we'd like to see your document. If you have an idea for a new PKCS, we'd like to hear that, too. And if you have something somewhere in between, send it along; of course, detailed, well-developed contributions are generally preferred. Suggestions should be sent either to the pkcs-tng(a)rsa.com mailing list (you can subscribe to this list by sending email with "subscribe pkcs-tng" in the message body to majordomo(a)rsa.com; unsubscribe with "unsubscribe pkcs-tng") or to pkcs-editor(a)rsa.com, whichever is deemed more appropriate. Current PKCS documents are: PKCS #1: RSA Encryption Standard. PKCS #3: Diffie-Hellman Key-Agreement Standard. PKCS #5: Password-Based Encryption Standard. PKCS #6: Extended-Certificate Syntax Standard. PKCS #7: Cryptographics Message Syntax Standard. PKCS #8: Private-Key Information Syntax Standard. PKCS #9: Selected Attribute Types. PKCS #10: Certificate Request Syntax Standard. PKCS #11: Cryptographic Token Interface Standard (CRYPOKI). The above documents are available from RSADSI's web site, and links to them may be found at http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/pubs/PKCS/. All contributions received shall be examined, and, if appropriate, a workshop (or several workshops) shall be held to further determine the content of the "next generation" of PKCS.

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Enigma
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim C. Mayonnaise, a product of anal birth, appeared with a coathanger through his head. /\_./o__ Tim C. Mayonnaise (/^/(_^^' ._.(_.)_

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ITAR -> EAR; loss of First Amendment Rights.
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Reading the proposed new rules, what disturbs me most deeply is the statement: - start quote - 16. Section 734.7 is amended by revising paragraph (b) to read as follows: 734.7 Published information and software. * * * * * (b) Software and information is published when it is available for general distribution either for free or at a price that does not exceed the cost of reproduction and distribution. See Supplement No. 1 to this part, Questions G(1) through G(3). Note that encryption software controlled under ECCN 5D002 for "EI" reasons on the Commerce Control List (refer to Supplement No. 1 to part 774 of the EAR) remain subject to the EAR even when publicly available. Accordingly, such encryption software in both source code and object code remains subject to the EAR even if published in a book or any other writing or media. - end quote - It appears that we will now have the unique situation that a book which contains cryptographic info or source code will be illegal to export or sell to a non-citizen, without getting export permission. I am not aware of any prior time when the government attempted to claim that printed material, freely available in bookstores and newsstands to US citizens, became contraband when sold or given to a non-citizen. Who's responsible for enforcing this? The vendor? The clerk at Barnes & Noble? The publisher? If the latter, how many publishers will take the risk of printing books with crypto information? Will Wiley pull "Applied Cryptography" from the shelves? This doesn't just chill free speech, it dunks it in liquid helium. It's difficult to think of clearer case of prior restraint. ----------------- Peter Trei trei(a)process.com Disclaimer: I am not speaking for my employer.

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Would you send money to Gary Rasmussen ?
by peter.allan＠aeat.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Gary Rasmussen (RagyR(a)aol.com) replies to me as below: Have people got a view on the second question ? I've had no contact with Gary before and he may very well be honest; but there's proper trust and there's stupidity. > Hi Peter, > > > I'm looking for Kahn's book. Have you an acccurate price now? > > A lot of copies (about 100) have been sold since .... > > > > (And is there anyone I'd know who'd suggest I send you money ?!) > > Good question, but very hard to answer since I don't know who you > know. Can tell you that I operate Classical Crypto Books primarily as > a service for other members of the ACA. Two possible references are > the current and past ACA presidents: > > jimg(a)mentat.com (Jim Gillogly, ACA President 1996-1998) > 75542.1003(a)CompuServe.COM (Randy Nichols, ACA President 1994-1996) > > Operating CCB is not my main occupation (by day I'm a scientist working > for MIT's Lincoln Lab). Can also say proudly that in 1.5 years of operating > CCB I haven't had any complaints. > > Please let me know if you have other questions or would like a complete > copy of the CCB catalog. > > Best Wishes, > Gary Rasmussen > Classical Crypto Books

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[Privacy] Airline background checks...
by aaron＠herringn.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Under plans to overhaul the airline security system, making a plane reservation would trigger an instant profile of a passenger's background, including past travels and possible criminal history information. [...] Government should pay The committee, made up of 23 industry, government and public interest groups, suggested the federal government, not the airline industry, pay for the increased security measures. It estimated the proposals would cost $9.9 billion over the next 10 years. "It's not an airline or airport problem. It's a national security problem," Lally said. "Airports and airlines are surrogate targets. The real targets are the policies and government of the United States." [...] http://www.cnn.com/US/9612/13/airline/index.html

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THE CRYPTOCRACY'S PLAN TO PSYCHOCIVILIZE YOU
by nobody＠replay.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://www.nwlink.com:88/~dbader/

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Chek it out
by Zer0.Faith.Inc.＠website.chek.it.out 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/2608 It's Kool, but still under construction.

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Wired Integrity
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The latest issue of Wired has a nice article about Sameer Parekh and C2Net. What is troubling is that it is written by Sandy Sandfort who works at C2Net. There is no indication of this in the vicinity of the Wired article. The Little Green Man

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From Houghton-Mifflin MIS regarding the ongoing self-mailbombing
by Rich Graves 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- A lesson in stupidity. - -rich [Forwards from impeccable intermediate sources snipped; if you REALLY need to confirm, mail me.] - ------- Forwarded Message OK. I used to work in the MIS department of Houghton Mifflin, and still am good friends with the upper MIS people. In fact I had dinner with them last night. Although the promotion is/was real, PLEASE DON'T SEND THEM ANY MORE EMAIL. The mail gateway is throttling with the incoming mail - we had a long talk last night over how to aleviate this problem. They've gotten alittle over 100k messages in 1 week. The mail server is currently a SPARC 5 w/ 64MB RAM and a gigabyte of swap, and is so hosed that they're switching in an Ultra2 tonight to try to handle the load. The lesson here is: don't do a marketing ploy without first consulting your Tech people. Apparently, the whole thing was cooked up by one of the departments, who neglected to tell MIS. Also, for those of you who might possibly work in industry in the future and are looking for a way to gather email addresses or do some kind of promotion like this, USE WEB HITS. The average email coming in to HMCo is about 4kb, requires disk space, and requires a vfork() of sendmail to deliver. A typical Http hit runs less than 100bytes, is served by a threaded httpd server, and requires very little disk access. Anyway, this is just a note to please spare my friends at HMCo. The kids are going to get all the donations promised, and my friends have enough headaches. Thanks! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQBVAwUBMrHJDJNcNyVVy0jxAQH98wH/RA2dc5bLz3KbX0JoyVha5+XoppMSgNtB 8MvVemU5iOeBRrJTENo1bj6OYx8b7ie8E95OUsBy9Kx0RpFfpOmBSA== =QdmN -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Would you send money to Gary Rasmussen ?
by jimg＠mentat.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yes, I've sent Gary Rasmussen (RagyR, Classical Crypto Books) money and received books. He's prompt and honest, in my experience, and even offered to refund my money on the latest edition of Kahn's "The Codebreakers" when I pointed out that there's very little new info in it (16 pages), and it's not integrated with the text, nor does it include the copious footnotes that make the original so valuable. I met him at the most recent American Cryptogram Association meeting, and he was efficient and personable there as well. In fact, I just sent him another $69.95 today for the Handbook of Applied Cryptography -- the ACA member price. His price breaks are usually much deeper for ACA members; evidently the margin is lower for modern low-volume professional texts like this than for the classical ones I usually buy. Jim Gillogly jim(a)acm.org > From: peter.allan(a)aeat.co.uk (Peter M Allan) > > > (And is there anyone I'd know who'd suggest I send you money ?!)

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Re: In Defense of Anecdotal Evidence
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hats off to Rob Carlson for a great article! At 9:54 AM 12/13/1996, Rob Carlson wrote: >On Thu, 12 Dec 1996 14:12:23 -0800, Huge Cajones Remailer wrote: >>Statistics are a useful tool, but they have their problems. Their >>accuracy is often in doubt. Most scientific data comes with an >>error analysis so you can tell what the figure means. For some >>reason statisticians never do this so we cannot tell whether their >>numbers are accurate to within 0.1%, 1.0%, 10%, or even worse. >> >>There are many other problems. For instance, users of statistics >>assume they have a random sample, even in cases where that is far >>from clear > >[ List of other problems deleted ] > >Of course, anecdotal evidence also suffers from all of these >problems. And in greater magnitude. This is true since it is a >special case of statistical evidence. With a non-random sample set of >one and no controls for observer bias. Excellent point. On the other hand, if everybody operates correctly based on their own (non-random) experience in general the right outcomes will occur. This is rational if the tertiary statistical evidence is unreliable. What you are implicitly assuming is that the studies one reads were done honestly and competently. Yet, the chain of evidence is rather weak. Typically, we don't even know the people who did the study. Given the many contradictory results obtained by social statisticians, we have substantial evidence that there is something wrong with their methods or their application. Another way to judge the experts is through selected in depth studies of their work. I have not found the results to be encouraging. >>The advantage of anecdotal evidence (in the sense we have been using >>it) is that the person who is telling you the anecdote was there and >>saw it. You can cross-examine them and get a full understanding of >>the evidence provided. > >The reporting of evidence involves different issues. If you want to >believe that women are actually cut in two or that politicians are >telling the truth anytime their lips are moving, thats one thing. If >you want to tell me its true because you personally observed it, >thats quite another. > >Given the failures of humans as observational tools, your story is >unverifiable by me. Perhaps through effective cross examination I >can prove you wrong, but I can never prove you right with such a >technique. That will require other evidence outside the control of >the observer ( statistical is just one available ). Occasionally we may teach somebody else about something they observed and change their mind. This is not the same thing as proof, but it is worthwhile. In other cases, we may have beliefs about the integrity of our observer. We may believe that they will not intentionally lie. That means we can separate out their interpretations from the exact details they can recall. Even if our correct interpretation is not accepted by the observer, that does not imply that we can learn nothing of interest. >This doesn't make studies or statistical evidence true. Just more >reliable than anecdotal evidence. I should make clear that I have not ruled out statistical evidence as a tool. We have to be aware of its limitations. >Humans who will lie about their observations will also produce flawed >studies. Again the former (anecdotal) is unverifiable, but I can >check the latter (statistical) independently. Actually, it is cheaper and easier to develop an understanding of the reliability of anecdotal evidence. Often we may have known the observer for some time and be able to form theories about their character and ability to accurately interpret what they have seen. We can ask them what they saw on different occasions and see if we get about the same story back. We can think about whether the person has intentionally lied in the past and, if so, under what circumstances. We can ask ourselves what motivation the person might have to lie. Is there any benefit to giving a particular story? >Relying on anecdotal evidence makes you susceptible to the magicians >of the world. The honest ones use mirrors and their need is to >entertain you enough to get your money. The rest use anecdotal >evidence and emotional arguments (verbal misdirection?). Their needs >are left as a test of the reader's naivete. What needs are satisfied by the white cloaked priests of social science? Which of their needs are satisfied by their work? Very few of these people are independent. They are often paid by people whose interest in the truth is in question. That means that the temptation to fudge (and humans find ways to rationalize such actions) is very powerful. The people preparing the statistical studies are often interested in the fame associated with career advancement. None of this is conducive to the search for truth. >Evidence that can be verified independently by many observers >increases the reliability. Experiments and polls can be done by me >thus eliminating your bias. Independent verification can also check >for errors and check the parameters under which the evidence is true. >Studies are done with certain assumptions and controls. The evidence >loses its reliability when removed from this context. I have serious doubts about these methods. I am not a statistician, so there is a possibility that I am simply ignorant. However, I would expect that if these methods of determining the accuracy of the statistics were effective, that it would be possible to provide some sort of error analysis. When we get a figure for the GDP we know that it is highly unlikely to be exactly correct. What is the probability that it is low by 10%? I fail to see how the figure can even be useful without this information. In the case of a complex study involving the measure of biases to adjust the final conclusions, it would be most useful to discuss the probability that the bias was not measured correctly. This must surely affect our final results, especially when many biases and other measurements are combined. Red Rackham

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Appropriate Topics for Cypherpunks
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:54 AM 12/13/1996, Rob Carlson wrote: >To make this on topic, how does this apply to cryptography and >crypto-politics? This issue is a foundation of our discussions here. >Shall we accept anecdotal evidence such as the "If you only knew what >we knew" arguments? What is more reliable: IPG's claims that their >product is an OTP because they say it is or Bruce Schneier's book >that can be used to point out the fallacy's in their claims? I'm sure Rob Carlson already realizes this, but just in case let's be very clear that a discussion of the value of anecdotal evidence is so on topic to this list that it isn't funny. We are talking about trust models. The reason that the Net is a fundamental threat to the established social order is that it will probably result in a worldwide change in trust models. For one thing, we are now learning just how venal and corrupt the world leadership really is. At the same time, cross-border relationships and trust are flourishing. The rise of anonymous identities raises the question of how we can "trust" somebody we have never met. This immediately leads to the question of why we trust other people we haven't met, such as the President, or scientists, or whomever. It turns out our reasons for "trusting" these people are not as solid as some of us once believed. The attempts to crush strong cryptography - especially if it implies anonymity with strong authentication - is an attempt to undermine the trust developing between disparate groups of people. And, in a sense, that is what politics has always been about: the subversion of trust between groups of people so they can be played off each other for the benefit of the few. Back to what is appropriate to this list: What the cypherpunks is suffering right now is not an excess of well written articles that are off topic. I suggest that anybody who feels very strongly that they are not seeing articles of the appropriate content follow Rob Carlson's example and show the rest of us how it is done. Red Rackham

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NSA/UKUSA Echelon: Exposing the Global Surveillance System
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I don't know the truth of this, but I'm sure it will make interesting reading. -- John Forwarded-By: Dale Amon as Operator <root(a)starbase1.gpl.net> Forwarded-By: Steven Carlson <steve(a)isys.hu> This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). ** Topic: #59 Exposing Global Surveillance System ** ** Written 10:30 AM Dec 3, 1996 by caq in cdp:covertaction ** EXPOSING THE GLOBAL SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM by Nicky Hager ------ The article as it apears in hard copy in the magazine also includes the following sidebars: --"NSA'S BUSINESS PLAN: GLOBAL ACCESS" by Duncan Campbell --GREENPEACE WARRIOR: WHY NO WARNING? and --NZ's PM Kept in the Dark by Nicky Hager ********Hager's book "secret Power" is available from CAQ for $33.******* ----------- IN THE LATE 1980S, IN A DECISION IT PROBABLY REGRETS, THE US PROMPTED NEW ZEALAND TO JOIN A NEW AND HIGHLY SECRET GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM. HAGER'S INVESTIGATION INTO IT AND HIS DISCOVERY OF THE ECHELON DICTIONARY HAS REVEALED ONE OF THE WORLD'S BIGGEST, MOST CLOSELY HELD INTELLIGENCE PROJECTS. THE SYSTEM ALLOWS SPY AGENCIES TO MONITOR MOST OF THE WORLD'S TELEPHONE, E-MAIL, AND TELEX COMMUNICATIONS. For 40 years, New Zealand's largest intelligence agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) the nation's equivalent of the US National Security Agency (NSA) had been helping its Western allies to spy on countries throughout the Pacific region, without the knowledge of the New Zealand public or many of its highest elected officials. What the NSA did not know is that by the late 1980s, various intelligence staff had decided these activities had been too secret for too long, and were providing me with interviews and documents exposing New Zealand's intelligence activities. Eventually, more than 50 people who work or have worked in intelligence and related fields agreed to be interviewed. The activities they described made it possible to document, from the South Pacific, some alliance-wide systems and projects which have been kept secret elsewhere. Of these, by far the most important is ECHELON. Designed and coordinated by NSA, the ECHELON system is used to intercept ordinary e-mail, fax, telex, and telephone communications carried over the world's telecommunications networks. Unlike many of the electronic spy systems developed during the Cold War, ECHELON is designed primarily for non-military targets: governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals in virtually every country. It potentially affects every person communicating between (and sometimes within) countries anywhere in the world. It is, of course, not a new idea that intelligence organizations tap into e-mail and other public telecommunications networks. What was new in the material leaked by the New Zealand intelligence staff was precise information on where the spying is done, how the system works, its capabilities and shortcomings, and many details such as the codenames. The ECHELON system is not designed to eavesdrop on a particular individual's e-mail or fax link. Rather, the system works by indiscriminately intercepting very large quantities of communications and using computers to identify and extract messages of interest from the mass of unwanted ones. A chain of secret interception facilities has been established around the world to tap into all the major components of the international telecommunications networks. Some monitor communications satellites, others land-based communications networks, and others radio communications. ECHELON links together all these facilities, providing the US and its allies with the ability to intercept a large proportion of the communications on the planet. The computers at each station in the ECHELON network automatically search through the millions of messages intercepted for ones containing pre-programmed keywords. Keywords include all the names, localities, subjects, and so on that might be mentioned. Every word of every message intercepted at each station gets automatically searched whether or not a specific telephone number or e-mail address is on the list. The thousands of simultaneous messages are read in "real time" as they pour into the station, hour after hour, day after day, as the computer finds intelligence needles in telecommunications haystacks. SOMEONE IS LISTENING The computers in stations around the globe are known, within the network, as the ECHELON Dictionaries. Computers that can automatically search through traffic for keywords have existed since at least the 1970s, but the ECHELON system was designed by NSA to interconnect all these computers and allow the stations to function as components of an integrated whole. The NSA and GCSB are bound together under the five-nation UKUSA signals intelligence agreement. The other three partners all with equally obscure names are the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Britain, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) in Canada, and the Defense Signals Directorate (DSD) in Australia. The alliance, which grew from cooperative efforts during World War II to intercept radio transmissions, was formalized into the UKUSA agreement in 1948 and aimed primarily against the USSR. The five UKUSA agencies are today the largest intelligence organizations in their respective countries. With much of the world's business occurring by fax, e-mail, and phone, spying on these communications receives the bulk of intelligence resources. For decades before the introduction of the ECHELON system, the UKUSA allies did intelligence collection operations for each other, but each agency usually processed and analyzed the intercept from its own stations. Under ECHELON, a particular station's Dictionary computer contains not only its parent agency's chosen keywords, but also has lists entered in for other agencies. In New Zealand's satellite interception station at Waihopai (in the South Island), for example, the computer has separate search lists for the NSA, GCHQ, DSD, and CSE in addition to its own. Whenever the Dictionary encounters a message containing one of the agencies' keywords, it automatically picks it and sends it directly to the headquarters of the agency concerned. No one in New Zealand screens, or even sees, the intelligence collected by the New Zealand station for the foreign agencies. Thus, the stations of the junior UKUSA allies function for the NSA no differently than if they were overtly NSA-run bases located on their soil. The first component of the ECHELON network are stations specifically targeted on the international telecommunications satellites (Intelsats) used by the telephone companies of most countries. A ring of Intelsats is positioned around the world, stationary above the equator, each serving as a relay station for tens of thousands of simultaneous phone calls, fax, and e-mail. Five UKUSA stations have been established to intercept the communications carried by the Intelsats. The British GCHQ station is located at the top of high cliffs above the sea at Morwenstow in Cornwall. Satellite dishes beside sprawling operations buildings point toward Intelsats above the Atlantic, Europe, and, inclined almost to the horizon, the Indian Ocean. An NSA station at Sugar Grove, located 250 kilometers southwest of Washington, DC, in the mountains of West Virginia, covers Atlantic Intelsats transmitting down toward North and South America. Another NSA station is in Washington State, 200 kilometers southwest of Seattle, inside the Army's Yakima Firing Center. Its satellite dishes point out toward the Pacific Intelsats and to the east. *1 The job of intercepting Pacific Intelsat communications that cannot be intercepted at Yakima went to New Zealand and Australia. Their South Pacific location helps to ensure global interception. New Zealand provides the station at Waihopai and Australia supplies the Geraldton station in West Australia (which targets both Pacific and Indian Ocean Intelsats). *2 Each of the five stations' Dictionary computers has a codename to distinguish it from others in the network. The Yakima station, for instance, located in desert country between the Saddle Mountains and Rattlesnake Hills, has the COWBOY Dictionary, while the Waihopai station has the FLINTLOCK Dictionary. These codenames are recorded at the beginning of every intercepted message, before it is transmitted around the ECHELON network, allowing analysts to recognize at which station the interception occurred. New Zealand intelligence staff has been closely involved with the NSA's Yakima station since 1981, when NSA pushed the GCSB to contribute to a project targeting Japanese embassy communications. Since then, all five UKUSA agencies have been responsible for monitoring diplomatic cables from all Japanese posts within the same segments of the globe they are assigned for general UKUSA monitoring.3 Until New Zealand's integration into ECHELON with the opening of the Waihopai station in 1989, its share of the Japanese communications was intercepted at Yakima and sent unprocessed to the GCSB headquarters in Wellington for decryption, translation, and writing into UKUSA-format intelligence reports (the NSA provides the codebreaking programs). "COMMUNICATION" THROUGH SATELLITES The next component of the ECHELON system intercepts a range of satellite communications not carried by Intelsat.In addition to the UKUSA stations targeting Intelsat satellites, there are another five or more stations homing in on Russian and other regional communications satellites. These stations are Menwith Hill in northern England; Shoal Bay, outside Darwin in northern Australia (which targets Indonesian satellites); Leitrim, just south of Ottawa in Canada (which appears to intercept Latin American satellites); Bad Aibling in Germany; and Misawa in northern Japan. A group of facilities that tap directly into land-based telecommunications systems is the final element of the ECHELON system. Besides satellite and radio, the other main method of transmitting large quantities of public, business, and government communications is a combination of water cables under the oceans and microwave networks over land. Heavy cables, laid across seabeds between countries, account for much of the world's international communications. After they come out of the water and join land-based microwave networks they are very vulnerable to interception. The microwave networks are made up of chains of microwave towers relaying messages from hilltop to hilltop (always in line of sight) across the countryside. These networks shunt large quantities of communications across a country. Interception of them gives access to international undersea communications (once they surface) and to international communication trunk lines across continents. They are also an obvious target for large-scale interception of domestic communications. Because the facilities required to intercept radio and satellite communications use large aerials and dishes that are difficult to hide for too long, that network is reasonably well documented. But all that is required to intercept land-based communication networks is a building situated along the microwave route or a hidden cable running underground from the legitimate network into some anonymous building, possibly far removed. Although it sounds technically very difficult, microwave interception from space by United States spy satellites also occurs.4 The worldwide network of facilities to intercept these communications is largely undocumented, and because New Zealand's GCSB does not participate in this type of interception, my inside sources could not help either. NO ONE IS SAFE FROM A MICROWAVE A 1994 expos of the Canadian UKUSA agency, Spyworld, co-authored by one of its former staff, Mike Frost, gave the first insights into how a lot of foreign microwave interception is done (see p. 18). It described UKUSA "embassy collection" operations, where sophisticated receivers and processors are secretly transported to their countries' overseas embassies in diplomatic bags and used to monitor various communications in foreign capitals. *5 Since most countries' microwave networks converge on the capital city, embassy buildings can be an ideal site. Protected by diplomatic privilege, they allow interception in the heart of the target country. *6 The Canadian embassy collection was requested by the NSA to fill gaps in the American and British embassy collection operations, which were still occurring in many capitals around the world when Frost left the CSE in 1990. Separate sources in Australia have revealed that the DSD also engages in embassy collection. *7 On the territory of UKUSA nations, the interception of land-based telecommunications appears to be done at special secret intelligence facilities. The US, UK, and Canada are geographically well placed to intercept the large amounts of the world's communications that cross their territories. The only public reference to the Dictionary system anywhere in the world was in relation to one of these facilities, run by the GCHQ in central London. In 1991, a former British GCHQ official spoke anonymously to Granada Television's World in Action about the agency's abuses of power. He told the program about an anonymous red brick building at 8 Palmer Street where GCHQ secretly intercepts every telex which passes into, out of, or through London, feeding them into powerful computers with a program known as "Dictionary." The operation, he explained, is staffed by carefully vetted British Telecom people: "It's nothing to do with national security. It's because it's not legal to take every single telex. And they take everything: the embassies, all the business deals, even the birthday greetings, they take everything. They feed it into the Dictionary." *8 What the documentary did not reveal is that Dictionary is not just a British system; it is UKUSA-wide. Similarly, British researcher Duncan Campbell has described how the US Menwith Hill station in Britain taps directly into the British Telecom microwave network, which has actually been designed with several major microwave links converging on an isolated tower connected underground into the station.9 The NSA Menwith Hill station, with 22 satellite terminals and more than 4.9 acres of buildings, is undoubtedly the largest and most powerful in the UKUSA network. Located in northern England, several thousand kilometers from the Persian Gulf, it was awarded the NSA's "Station of the Year" prize for 1991 after its role in the Gulf War. Menwith Hill assists in the interception of microwave communications in another way as well, by serving as a ground station for US electronic spy satellites. These intercept microwave trunk lines and short range communications such as military radios and walkie talkies. Other ground stations where the satellites' information is fed into the global network are Pine Gap, run by the CIA near Alice Springs in central Australia and the Bad Aibling station in Germany. *10 Among them, the various stations and operations making up the ECHELON network tap into all the main components of the world's telecommunications networks. All of them, including a separate network of stations that intercepts long distance radio communications, have their own Dictionary computers connected into ECHELON. In the early 1990s, opponents of the Menwith Hill station obtained large quantities of internal documents from the facility. Among the papers was a reference to an NSA computer system called Platform. The integration of all the UKUSA station computers into ECHELON probably occurred with the introduction of this system in the early 1980s. James Bamford wrote at that time about a new worldwide NSA computer network codenamed Platform "which will tie together 52 separate computer systems used throughout the world. Focal point, or `host environment,' for the massive network will be the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade. Among those included in Platform will be the British SIGINT organization, GCHQ." *11 LOOKING IN THE DICTIONARY The Dictionary computers are connected via highly encrypted UKUSA communications that link back to computer data bases in the five agency headquarters. This is where all the intercepted messages selected by the Dictionaries end up. Each morning the specially "indoctrinated" signals intelligence analysts in Washington, Ottawa,Cheltenham, Canberra, and Wellington log on at their computer terminals and enter the Dictionary system. After keying in their security passwords, they reach a directory that lists the different categories of intercept available in the data bases, each with a four-digit code. For instance, 1911 might be Japanese diplomatic cables from Latin America (handled by the Canadian CSE), 3848 might be political communications from and about Nigeria, and 8182 might be any messages about distribution of encryption technology. They select their subject category, get a "search result" showing how many messages have been caught in the ECHELON net on that subject, and then the day's work begins. Analysts scroll through screen after screen of intercepted faxes, e-mail messages, etc. and, whenever a message appears worth reporting on, they select it from the rest to work on. If it is not in English, it is translated and then written into the standard format of intelligence reports produced anywhere within the UKUSA network either in entirety as a "report," or as a summary or "gist." INFORMATION CONTROL A highly organized system has been developed to control what is being searched for by each station and who can have access to it. This is at the heart of ECHELON operations and works as follows. The individual station's Dictionary computers do not simply have a long list of keywords to search for. And they do not send all the information into some huge database that participating agencies can dip into as they wish. It is much more controlled. The search lists are organized into the same categories, referred to by the four digit numbers. Each agency decides its own categories according to its responsibilities for producing intelligence for the network. For GCSB, this means South Pacific governments, Japanese diplomatic, Russian Antarctic activities, and so on. The agency then works out about 10 to 50 keywords for selection in each category. The keywords include such things as names of people, ships, organizations, country names, and subject names. They also include the known telex and fax numbers and Internet addresses of any individuals, businesses, organizations, and government offices that are targets. These are generally written as part of the message text and so are easily recognized by the Dictionary computers. The agencies also specify combinations of keywords to help sift out communications of interest. For example, they might search for diplomatic cables containing both the words "Santiago" and "aid," or cables containing the word "Santiago" but not "consul" (to avoid the masses of routine consular communications). It is these sets of words and numbers (and combinations), under a particular category, that get placed in the Dictionary computers. (Staff in the five agencies called Dictionary Managers enter and update the keyword search lists for each agency.) The whole system, devised by the NSA, has been adopted completely by the other agencies. The Dictionary computers search through all the incoming messages and, whenever they encounter one with any of the agencies' keywords, they select it. At the same time, the computer automatically notes technical details such as the time and place of interception on the piece of intercept so that analysts reading it, in whichever agency it is going to, know where it came from, and what it is. Finally, the computer writes the four-digit code (for the category with the keywords in that message) at the bottom of the message's text. This is important. It means that when all the intercepted messages end up together in the database at one of the agency headquarters, the messages on a particular subject can be located again. Later, when the analyst using the Dictionary system selects the four- digit code for the category he or she wants, the computer simply searches through all the messages in the database for the ones which have been tagged with that number. This system is very effective for controlling which agencies can get what from the global network because each agency only gets the intelligence out of the ECHELON system from its own numbers. It does not have any access to the raw intelligence coming out of the system to the other agencies. For example, although most of the GCSB's intelligence production is primarily to serve the UKUSA alliance, New Zealand does not have access to the whole ECHELON network. The access it does have is strictly controlled. A New Zealand intelligence officer explained: "The agencies can all apply for numbers on each other's Dictionaries. The hardest to deal with are the Americans. ... [There are] more hoops to jump through, unless it is in their interest, in which case they'll do it for you." There is only one agency which, by virtue of its size and role within the alliance, will have access to the full potential of the ECHELON system the agency that set it up. What is the system used for? Anyone listening to official "discussion" of intelligence could be forgiven for thinking that, since the end of the Cold War, the key targets of the massive UKUSA intelligence machine are terrorism, weapons proliferation, and economic intelligence. The idea that economic intelligence has become very important, in particular, has been carefully cultivated by intelligence agencies intent on preserving their post-Cold War budgets. It has become an article of faith in much discussion of intelligence. However, I have found no evidence that these are now the primary concerns of organizations such as NSA. QUICKER INTELLIGENCE,SAME MISSION A different story emerges after examining very detailed information I have been given about the intelligence New Zealand collects for the UKUSA allies and detailed descriptions of what is in the yards-deep intelligence reports New Zealand receives from its four allies each week. There is quite a lot of intelligence collected about potential terrorists, and there is quite a lot of economic intelligence, notably intensive monitoring of all the countries participating in GATT negotiations. But by far, the main priorities of the intelligence alliance continue to be political and military intelligence to assist the larger allies to pursue their interests around the world. Anyone and anything the particular governments are concerned about can become a target. With capabilities so secret and so powerful, almost anything goes. For example, in June 1992, a group of current "highly placed intelligence operatives" from the British GCHQ spoke to the London Observer: "We feel we can no longer remain silent regarding that which we regard to be gross malpractice and negligence within the establishment in which we operate." They gave as examples GCHQ interception of three charitable organizations, including Amnesty International and Christian Aid. As the Observer reported: "At any time GCHQ is able to home in on their communications for a routine target request," the GCHQ source said. In the case of phone taps the procedure is known as Mantis. With telexes it is called Mayfly. By keying in a code relating to Third World aid, the source was able to demonstrate telex "fixes" on the three organizations. "It is then possible to key in a trigger word which enables us to home in on the telex communications whenever that word appears," he said. "And we can read a pre-determined number of characters either side of the keyword."12 Without actually naming it, this was a fairly precise description of how the ECHELON Dictionary system works. Again, what was not revealed in the publicity was that this is a UKUSA-wide system. The design of ECHELON means that the interception of these organizations could have occurred anywhere in the network, at any station where the GCHQ had requested that the four-digit code covering Third World aid be placed. Note that these GCHQ officers mentioned that the system was being used for telephone calls. In New Zealand, ECHELON is used only to intercept written communications: fax, e-mail, and telex. The reason, according to intelligence staff, is that the agency does not have the staff to analyze large quantities of telephone conversations. Mike Frost's expos of Canadian "embassy collection" operations described the NSA computers they used, called Oratory, that can "listen" to telephone calls and recognize when keywords are spoken. Just as we can recognize words spoken in all the different tones and accents we encounter, so too, according to Frost, can these computers. Telephone calls containing keywords are automatically extracted from the masses of other calls and recorded digitally on magnetic tapes for analysts back at agency headquarters. However, high volume voice recognition computers will be technically difficult to perfect, and my New Zealand-based sources could not confirm that this capability exists. But, if or when it is perfected, the implications would be immense. It would mean that the UKUSA agencies could use machines to search through all the international telephone calls in the world, in the same way that they do written messages. If this equipment exists for use in embassy collection, it will presumably be used in all the stations throughout the ECHELON network. It is yet to be confirmed how extensively telephone communications are being targeted by the ECHELON stations for the other agencies. The easiest pickings for the ECHELON system are the individuals, organizations,and governments that do not use encryption. In New Zealand's area, for example, it has proved especially useful against already vulnerable South Pacific nations which do not use any coding, even for government communications (all these communications of New Zealand's neighbors are supplied, unscreened, to its UKUSA allies). As a result of the revelations in my book, there is currently a project under way in the Pacific to promote and supply publicly available encryption software to vulnerable organizations such as democracy movements in countries with repressive governments. This is one practical way of curbing illegitimate uses of the ECHELON capabilities. One final comment. All the newspapers, commentators, and "well placed sources" told the public that New Zealand was cut off from US intelligence in the mid-1980s. That was entirely untrue. The intelligence supply to New Zealand did not stop, and instead, the decade since has been a period of increased integration of New Zealand into the US system. Virtually everything the equipment, manuals, ways of operating, jargon, codes, and so on, used in the GCSB continues to be imported entirely from the larger allies (in practice, usually the NSA). As with the Australian and Canadian agencies, most of the priorities continue to come from the US, too. The main thing that protects these agencies from change is their secrecy. On the day my book arrived in the book shops, without prior publicity, there was an all-day meeting of the intelligence bureaucrats in the prime minister's department trying to decide if they could prevent it from being distributed. They eventually concluded, sensibly, that the political costs were too high. It is understandable that they were so agitated. Throughout my research, I have faced official denials or governments refusing to comment on publicity about intelligence activities. Given the pervasive atmosphere of secrecy and stonewalling, it is always hard for the public to judge what is fact, what is speculation, and what is paranoia. Thus, in uncovering New Zealand's role in the NSA-led alliance, my aim was to provide so much detail about the operations the technical systems, the daily work of individual staff members, and even the rooms in which they work inside intelligence facilities that readers could feel confident that they were getting close to the truth. I hope the information leaked by intelligence staff in New Zealand about UKUSA and its systems such as ECHELON will help lead to change. n CAQ SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION CAQ (CovertAction Quarterly) has won numerous awards for investigative journalism. In 1996, it won 4 of "Project Censored" top 25 awards for investigative reporting. CAQ is read around the world by investigative reporters, activists, scholars, intelligence buffs, news junkies, and anyone who wants to know the news and analysis behind the soundbites and headlines. Recommended by Noam Chomsky; targeted by the CIA. Each article in the 64-page magazine, which is in its 19th year of publication, is extensively footnoted and accompanied by photographs and graphics. For a single issue, send $6. A one year subscription: US $22; Canada/Mexico $27; Latin America/Europe $33; Other areas $35. A two year US subscription is $38 Please send check or money order in $US to: CAQ 1500 Massachusetts Ave. #732 Washington, DC 20005, USA Mail, phone or fax Mastercard or Visa with address info and expiration date Phone: 202-331-9763 Fax: 202-331-9751 E-mail: caq(a)igc.org CHECK OUT OUR WEB SITES: http://mediafilter.org/caq http://www.worldmedia.com/caq ** End of text from cdp:covertaction ** *************************************************************************** This material came from PeaceNet, a non-profit progressive networking service. For more information, send a message to peacenet-info(a)igc.apc.org ***************************************************************************

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Re: [Privacy] Airline background checks...
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Under plans to overhaul the airline security system, >making a plane reservation would trigger an instant profile of a >passenger's background, including past travels and possible criminal >history information. > >[...] > >Government should pay > [snip] >"It's not an airline or airport problem. It's a national security problem," >Lally said. "Airports and airlines are surrogate targets. The real targets >are the policies and government of the United States." > For those of you not aware of airport procedures, the real terrorism threats are not only from ground personnel but those impersonating LEOs (Law Enforcement Officers). Fake badges are easy to come by and by filling in a form anyone can get on board an airline with their firearm. No procedures are currently in place to allow airline or airport security personnel to easily and positively identify bogus LEOs.

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Re: In Defense of Anecdotal Evidence
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:54 AM 12/13/1996, Rob Carlson wrote: >This doesn't make studies or statistical evidence true. Just more >reliable than anecdotal evidence. Humans who will lie about their >observations will also produce flawed studies. Again the former >(anecdotal) is unverifiable, but I can check the latter (statistical) >independently. One other point I forgot to make: It is expensive to verify a long statistical study. Not only does it require extensive knowledge of statistics, but you may actually need to reproduce much of the work. The only people who can afford to pay for such verification work may not be the same people that I would trust. Anecdotal evidence is inexpensive to collect. In many circumstances the cost benefit analysis favors it. Red Rackham

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Re: Social Security Fraud
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 1:15 AM 12/13/1996, Huge Cajones Remailer wrote: >>What laws would an employee violate? What are the chances of >>conviction? What are the likely penalties if convicted? > > ...upon conviction thereof, be fined not more than $1,000, or >imprisoned not more than 1 year, or both." Ouch! >.. . shall be guilty of a felony and upon conviction thereof shall be >fined under title 18 or imprisoned for not more than five years, or >both." Yikes! Thanks to Catfish Friend for the fine research work. So how often are people prosecuted under these laws? That is, if you pay your taxes and don't steal from people, but do give your employer the wrong SS number, what are the odds that you will be prosecuted? If prosecuted, are the odds high that you will receive jail time? Assume a good lawyer, spotless criminal record, and a favored racial class. Red Rackham

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Is This for Real?
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Can you trust anecdotal evidence? Are the statisticians lying, are the marketeers just keeping you entranced; do covert agencies send electromagnet currents through your body, are blatant, secret plots against your privacy in place? Stay tuned for the latest update from . . . P s y c h o P u n k s ! * Yikes - now we need a discussion on teleology & epistemology. .. Blanc * (just kidding. It's Friday afternoon)

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Re: Is This for Real?
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:35 PM 12/13/1996, Blanc Weber wrote: >Can you trust anecdotal evidence? > > Are the statisticians lying, > are the marketeers just keeping you entranced; > do covert agencies send > electromagnet currents through your body, > are blatant, secret plots against your privacy > in place? > >Stay tuned for the latest update from . . . > > P s y c h o P u n k s ! * > > >Yikes - now we need a discussion on teleology & epistemology. > > .. >Blanc >* (just kidding. It's Friday afternoon) It's not the Cypherpunks that are crazy - it's the world! ;-) Perhaps an example will be persuasive. Richard Feynman had some interesting things to say about the history of measured charge of the electron. If you look at a graph of the "official" value over time you will find that it drifts downwards to the correct value, or at any rate the value which is universally accepted today. If the charge on the electron has been constant this century - and that seems safe - you would have expected the results of each successive study to be scattered around the actual value. Instead, they start out a little below Milliken's original value and steadily move downward. The most likely explanation is that the experimenters did not want to seem too far out in their results and fudged them. (This is Feynman's explanation.) The charge of the electron is verifiable "hard" science to a degree the social sciences cannot even dream of approaching, and yet we find that the "professionals" were fudging their results. Not just one or two, but a whole flock of them working independently. The charge of the electron is hard for people to get worked up over. It has no political relevance. There is no real reason to boost its value. The social sciences, however, are political in the extreme. Aside from issues of anticipated future earnings (or even employment), many social scientists have strong political beliefs which motivate their work. Given that their studies are often not reproduced - one study can take many years to complete - and that they contradict each other when they are reproduced, I do not feel unlimited confidence in their conclusions. Red Rackham

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Re: Social Security Fraud
by AwakenToMe＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It seems to me the government wouldn't like it because someone else (the real owner of the SS#) would be getting the $$$. It is also fraud because this is how the government keeps track of your workplace. Giving a wrong ss# would lead the government to believe that person with that ss# is working two jobs and only paying the taxes in april for one job.

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Re: Wired Integrity
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:35 PM 12/13/1996, Sandy Sandfort wrote: >> What is troubling is that it is written by Sandy Sandfort who >> works at C2Net.... > >...At the time I wrote and submitted the article I neither worked >for Sameer... Thank you for the clear explanation. Just so you know, I did not doubt your integrity for an instant. Wired should have appended a short paragraph explaining the possible conflict of interest. The Little Green Man

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