December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

IP: Cyberwar: Proper Vigilance Or Paranoia?
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: Cyberwar: Proper Vigilance Or Paranoia? Date: Tue, 06 Oct 1998 06:16:19 -0500 To: believer(a)telepath.com Source: ZDNet http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/printhigh/100598/cover/chapter1.html Cyberwar: Proper Vigilance Or Paranoia? By Will Rodger The last war was on land, air and sea. The next one may be on your computer. Armed with reams of data showing dramatic increases in computer crime since 1995, a wide-ranging but little-noticed federal working group is moving swiftly to try to knit together a private and public partnership against armies of hackers, government spies and terrorist agents that could make cyberspace unsafe for democracy. The fear: that no part of the industrialized world is safe from digital disaster. Successful attacks on power grids, hospitals, banks, farms, factories and railroad switches could plunge a target nation into chaos and dysfunction. Administration officials say this is no joke, ticking off threats already encountered: A 19-year-old Israeli hacker, known as the Analyzer, and two California teenagers successfully penetrate U.S. Department of Defense computers in February, setting off fears that their intrusions are related to U.S. troop buildups against Iraq. Russian hacker Vladimir Levin breaks into Citibank systems and steals $12 million in 1994. He escapes arrest for one year, only to be brought to justice as he gets off a flight to London and walks into the arms of Interpol. A study by network security specialist Dan Farmer that shows more than 60 percent of 1,700 high-profile Web sites - many run by banks - can be broken into or destroyed using a program he designed to probe for weaknesses no system administrator should allow in the first place. At the center of the U.S.' attempts to create a cyberdefense structure is the Critical Infrastructure Coordination Group, an assembly of cabinet undersecretaries and other senior officials sworn to work with the FBI and American business to protect a society that now depends on a safe, free flow of bits and bytes. But even as the defense structure emerges, civil libertarians, industry executives and even administration insiders worry about how well the Clinton administration or its successors can steer between protecting against all forms of disruption on one hand and creating a police state on the other. Fears that police agencies will use the threat to gain unprecedented power "reflect a misunderstanding of what we're all about and what the administration is all about," said Michael Vatis, director of the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) at the FBI. "We are structured as a real partnership [between government and free enterprise]. It's our own intention to bring people on board from the private sector. We all say the same thing." But James Adams, former chief executive officer of United Press International and head of the newly formed Infrastructure Defense Inc. consultancy, said government must surrender more power first. "I don't think the government can any longer say we know what's good for you and we're going to take care of it. The government is becoming increasingly irrelevant. I'm not arguing that's a good thing or a bad thing - it's simply a fact." Either way, bitter, seemingly endless disputes between the administration and the people whose cooperation it needs already have tainted the process of developing a national approach to protecting critical information assets, both sides said. A five-year battle over use and export of data-scrambling technologies crucial to data security, for instance, has alienated much of the computer industry. FBI demands that telephone companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make wiretaps easier to perform, meanwhile, have led to charges of betrayal by phone companies that claim they were promised more compensation than they're getting, and civil libertarians who say the new proposals invite abuse by rogue police. As a result, what should be a cooperative effort to secure the nation from outside attacks threatens to bog down in a morass of mistrust and stony silence. "Our members are scared to death of this whole program," a Washington association executive said, insisting on anonymity. "You've got the FBI and the National Security Agency pushing this thing. These guys are spies. Then there are these 'private sector' groups springing up to coordinate 'information sharing' about how different companies have these huge holes in their networks. Some of them are headed by ex-Defense Department people. The whole thing makes us paranoid." Worse, still, the lobbyist said: The nation's chief computer security organization - the secretive, estimated 50,000-employee National Security Agency (NSA) - is the same one responsible for wiretapping and signal interception everywhere outside the U.S. As long as the world's biggest Big Brother has a major role to play, business may be gun-shy of the program. ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

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advances in imaging sensors
by David Honig 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There was an article in a recent EETimes about a new type of very fast imaging sensor, whose circuitry provides for very short exposures, which may find uses in consumer items. I was thinking that very fast image grabbers could be used to identify moving people, e.g., in their cars at an airport, or even on the street. The performance limit will be the sensitivity of the pixels and available light. But motion blur goes away. (In my part of Calif, there are video cameras mounted on signalling poles or streetlights in wealthy suburbs, for 'traffic monitoring' reasons. Images from them (as released to the public) are wide-angle, and people can't be ID'd. But things change.)

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Web TV with 128b exported
by David Honig 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/981005/ca_microso_1.html MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Microsoft Corp.'s (Nasdaq: MSFT - news) WebTV Networks today announced it is the first U.S. company to obtain government approval to export nonkey recovery-based 128-bit-strength encryption for general commercial use. WebTV Networks pioneered low-cost access to the Internet, e-mail, financial services and electronic shopping through a television set and a standard phone line. The WebTV(TM) Network service, combined with the WebTV-based Internet terminals and receivers, is the first communications system permitted by the U.S. government to provide strong encryption for general use by non-U.S. citizens in Japan and the United Kingdom. Such strong encryption allows Japanese and United Kingdom subscribers of WebTV to communicate through the WebTV Network (both within national borders and internationally) without fear of interception by unauthorized parties. etc...

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Re: Another potential flaw in current economic theory... (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1998 20:35:53 +0100 > From: Steve Mynott <stevem(a)tightrope.demon.co.uk> > Subject: Re: Another potential flaw in current economic theory... (fwd) > how can you "own" something yet not control it? fascism is a form of > socialism I 'own' my freedom but I *never* control it. Its expression is a direct result of *others* respecting that ownership. Another example is a very old Chinese proverb from The Masao: You are What you do When it counts The point being, you *never* have anything to say about when it counts. Not to mention the obvious retort, what do you mean by 'control'... > any true cypherpunk must be a libertarian.. In your opinion. ____________________________________________________________________ The seeker is a finder. Ancient Persian Proverb The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Interesting document by an anonymous 'guy' (Echelon)
by Max Inux 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hey, at http://www.bsnet.co.uk/chris/nsa.txt there is an interesting paper on how the NSA has been spying etcetera to do with echelon, i would post some, but it is all good, and is 518K a quick bit from the top.... "I haven't posted or updated it in a while, but here is the gathered documentation on our governments' massive spying on us, including domestic phone calls.", then later..... "This is about much more than just cryptography. It is also about everyone in the U.S.A. being fingerprinted for a defacto national ID card, about massive illegal domestic spying by the NSA, about the Military being in control of key politicians, about always being in a state of war, and about cybernetic control of society" With the recent talk about Echelon I thought I would bring it up..... Max -- Max Inux <maxinux(a)openpgp.net> Hey Christy!!! KeyID 0x8907E9E5 Kinky Sex makes the world go round O R Strong crypto makes the world safe If crypto is outlawed only outlaws will have crypto Fingerprint(Photo Also): 259D 59F7 D98C CD73 1ACD 54Ea 6C43 4877 8907 E9E5

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Sad news ... (... or not ;-)) (http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/current/msg
by Enzo Michelangeli 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> At 6:57 PM -0400 on 10/6/98, Petro wrote:> > > Who owns the patents, Digicash, or Chaum?> > DigiCash, Inc., of the US of A, not DigiCash BV, of the Netherlands.> > Cheers,> Bob Hettinga Uhm, strange: I thought that the main attraction of a Dutch company was the lack of withholding tax on royalty payments made to non-residents, that, combined with the tax treaties between The Netherlands and most countries (which allow tax-free payment from those countries to the Dutch company), makes it an ideal vehicle to receive royalties on a (almost) tax-free basis. But if the patents were held by Digicash Inc., what was the point of having Digicash BV? Enzo

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Baywatch and Visto?
by Visto Corporation 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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RE: GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction (fwd)
by Brown, R Ken 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Matthew James Gering[SMTP:mgering@ecosystems.net] wrote: > >> Though, it does occur to me that the fact that OS/2 has a >> stronger faction in Europe than in N. and S. America in >> relation to Microsoft may be an indication that continental >> saturation is possible. >The conclusions I would draw from that are IBM as the former market >giant had a very strong International infrastructure, channels and >reputation. Since the US market is the principle industry producer, it >was more competitive and less dominated by IBM. Microsoft, therefore, >had an easier time in an already competitive US market than breaking in >overseas. They also had the underdog phenomenon going for them here, the >local competitive market wanting to break IBM's dominance. The fact that >OS/2 utterly flopped in the US and found some adopters overseas is >credit to IBMs international reputation and little else. No - I was there (here) at the time. It was early adopters of "client server" technology who went for OS/2, mainly banks and City finance places. Of course the currency traders & red braces types (remember "greed is good"?) used Unix workstations or rather got their minions to use them for them, but the backoffice applications often went to OS/2. At the time Windows 3.0 was just coming out and it wasn't a serious option. (I used to wander around our office with a folder full of floppies each with a different tcpip stack for Windows - they all had *bad* problems). The Netware people will still mostly on Netware 2 which was a great fileserver but no kind of application server at all. The alternative to OS/2 was Unix, which is where most of these guys went next (& should have gone in the first place) or sticking with Netware+DOS, or going to AS400 (which was, and is, a brilliant platform for exactly these sorts of backoffice, administrative applications that are usually programmed badly because no programmer who is any good can stay awake whilst reading the spec). Of course now everyone uses SAP. Or Baan. If there are reasons that the small minority of big OS/2 adopters in Europe was slightly less small than the even smaller one in the US they are probably: - Unix was always better known in the US than Europe - Lotus Notes took off faster in Europe & it was 100% OS/2 at first (nearest OS/2 ever got to a "killer app") - European companies spend less per seat on personal computing than US, and they were reluctant to lash out on Sun workstations - home computing in the US was almost totally Microsoft by the time OS/2 came out but not so much in Europe. The consumer market won out over the business market. - European banks and finance places were ahead of US in software development back then. That's partly because they had been slower to get started (especially in France & Germany) & so had less mainframe legacy & partly because the "big bang" deregulation of the UK stock market (world's 3rd biggest) and foreign exchange market (world's biggest by a long way - every dollar in your bank account is on average bought and sold in London more than once a week) shook up the banks. So they went for "client server" earlier and at a time when there was no credible MS platform. I used to drive OS/2 for a living (for Lotus Notes mainly). It had a far, far better user interface than Windows or most versions of X. But it was late, slow and never really delivered the reliability or ease of installation it should have. The Extended Editor was the best programmer's editor I have ever seen and Rexx is what Basic should have been - a million Windows programmers suffer every day because of Bill Gates's unreasoning prejudice against Rexx and his pathetic admiration for Basic - but installation and maintenance were a nightmare, and the thing ran like a dog with a broken leg. When we got the chance to replace it with NT we went for NT. But OS/2 versus Windows 3 was a different matter. Relevance to Cypherpunks? Sort of, in that it shows that a consumer product (Windows) can beat a business-directed product (OS/2) in the software market, even if it is inferior. If we want to see ubiquitous strong cryptography the target market isn't the banks but 14-year-olds in their bedrooms. Ken Brown

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question
by Bernie B. Terrado 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

traceroute, is it effective as ping or finger. what other info would I have to know about it @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ It's done..... @ @ metaphone(a)altavista.net @ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

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by positzzzsu＠mailexcite.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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