December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Cryptophone
by Mike Ingle 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Where is the cryptophone project? I haven't seen anything about it for a while. Last I read, a company had a commercial triple-DES product with no public key - has anyone seen this? How is the sound quality? The cryptophone is the best way to drive a stake through the heart of Clipper. Suppose someone writes a crypto program and gives it to some friends. One of the friends uploads it to a BBS. Someone calls up from a foreign country and downloads it from the BBS. Who is at fault? The person who wrote it, for not retaining control over his product? The friend who uploaded it, for placing it where a foreigner could access it? The operator of the BBS, for not screening the file and preventing the foreigner from downloading it? Or the foreigner himself, who is probably out of range of U.S. law in any case? Suppose someone writes a crypto program and makes it generally available to anyone who wants it. It goes out of the country, but there is no way to know who sent it out of the country or how. Can they prosecute the person who wrote it for not maintaining control over it? If they can, this means, among other things, that selling the Norton Utilities to someone without checking to see that they are a citizen is illegal, and that having PKZIP on your BBS is illegal. If the precedent gets established that the person who writes such a program is responsible for keeping it out of the hands of foreigners, that would be a big problem. All crypto would have to be published anonymously, because nobody could risk signing their name to it. This must not happen! The flamewar going on here is counterproductive; they must be laughing down at the fort. --- MikeIngle(a)delphi.com

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Re: Definition of "Zero Knowledge"
by doug＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

bill(a)twwells.com (T. William Wells) said: >Got a good reference for ZPT? Something that the mathematically >inclined, who wants just the facts, all the facts, and none of >the BS that passes for explanations and which usually obscures >more than it clarifies? In the current context, the best reference that I know of is to the methodology of Goedel's Theorem rather than to ZPT; it has each of the properties that I mentioned except for the ZPT operations, which can be added in a conceptually straightforward way. The most readable in depth treatment of that that I know of is "Goedel's Proof" by Ernest Nagel and James R. Newman, c. 1958 and still in print as a cheap paperback. If someone has good ZPT references that would be interesting too; I've lost the stuff I used to have on that. Doug

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Re: Restrictions on crypto exports
by ANSPRING＠delphi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

hal finney quotes: "Public domain" is defined in 120.18: "Public domain means information which is published and which is generally accessible to the public: (a) Through sales at newsstands and bookstores; (b) Through subscriptions which are available without restriction to any individual who desires to obtain or purchase the published information; (c) Through second class mailing privileges granted by the U.S. Government; or, (d) At libraries open to the public." I'm way out of my depth here, but can it be argued that what constitutes ublic domain" is not being exhaustively defined here? That is, does the legalese here mean that ONLY a,b,c, and d publishing modes are PD, or can you argue that a,b,c, and d are just *examples* of PD publishing, and that there are other modes that just weren't mentioned. If making something available for anonymous FTP is not putting it in the public domain, then what the hech is it?

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Re: reporter seeking interview subjects
by stig＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In <93Sep17.230857pdt.14382-4(a)well.sf.ca.us>, Matt Binder wrote... > Hi, my name is Matt Binder. Please help me... > I'm a radio reporter in the SF Bay area working on a series > of pieces about invasions of privacy in the computer age. I'm > looking for interesting "case studies" that I can use to horrify > my listeners out of their complacency. I think it's really important that if you're looking to shock your audience that you also show a glimpse of not only the "light at the end of the tunnel" but also a glimpse of the reasons that people would be better off making a dash for the end of the tunnel than trying to run back to the tunnel's start. Otherwise, you're just fueling the anxieties of countless luddites and techonophobes. > My most immediate need is > to find someone whose medical records were used (perused!) I hardly speak for all of the cypherpunks, of course, but generally we work the "Big Brother" side of the street. There are others who are more on top of this sort of thing. Judyc@well might be a good resource for this sort of thing. Stig ;; __________________________________________________________________________ ;; Stig(a)netcom.com netcom.com:/pub/stig/00-PGP-KEY ;; It's hard to be cutting-edge at your own pace... 32 DF B9 19 AE 28 D1 7A ;; Bullet-proof code cannot stand up to teflon bugs. A3 9D 0B 1A 33 13 4D 7F

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Retry flyer
by jkhastings＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I got some strange mail failure messages from my speech flyer. This attempt won't include any "cc:" to extropians. --------------------------------------------------- "State Evader" comes out of the Green Dragon Tavern BBS (213) 365-1132 pseudonym closet to shamelessly promote his upcoming speeches at the H.L. Mencken Forum and the Libertarian Party of CA Region 62 Los Angeles Westside: ------------------------------------------------------------ State Evader = J. Kent Hastings Assistant Director of the Agorist Institute, "Techtics" columnist for the Tactics of the Movement of the Libertarian Left newsletter, internet cypherpunk, and ham radio operator WA6ZFY. Both speeches will be on the topic: "Cyber Cash: Free Market Money Comes of Age" I will talk about untraceable digital cash, public-key cryptography, spread-spectrum radio, unmanned vehicles, and the latest government actions that threaten everyone's privacy: The Clipper/ Skipjack key escrow agents and the subpoenas served to the Austin Code Works and ViaCrypt for all PGP, RSA export info. -------------------------------------------------------------- Mencken info: (310) 289-3234 (reserve now!) L.P. info: (310) 477-6491 -------------------------- Mencken location: The Old Spaghetti Factory 5939 Sunset Blvd near Hollywood Freeway in L.A. Wednesday September 22, 1993 6:30 Libations, 7:00 Dinner, 8:00 Speaker, 10:00 Adjourn ment First time "virgins" reserved: $3 -------------------------------------------------- L.P. of CA Region 62 L.A. Westside: Chris's Italian Restaurant 10105 Venice Blvd. at Clarington Ave Thursday, September 23, 1993 Cocktails 6:30, Dinner 7:00, Talk 8:30 Not sure if admission is charged. ---------------------------------------------- Kent - <jkhastings(a)aol.com>

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Re: KEY ESCROW PROCEDURES
by cme＠ellisun.sw.stratus.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Meanwhile, where is the proof that the key being requested corresponds to a person on whom a wiretap has been ordered?

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Bidzos on ITAR
by L. Detweiler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to H. Finney's probing, sterling, and brilliant analysis of ITAR (which I was utterly embarrassed to see buried and sandwiched in sordid flames) J. Bidzos claims that ``The ITAR specifically exempts software from being considered public domain'' and points out that the PKP FTP site in question that H. refers to as `causing a big stink' was *non-anonymous*. I would like to see J. Bidzos' sci.crypt posting reposted here *ASAP* by some bored cypherpunk who would like to ``contribute''! Major cyberspace points await!

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Does this seem illegal?
by an15348＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

* Reply to msg originally in CYPHERPUNKS Uu> From: gg(a)well.sf.ca.us ("George A. Gleason") Uu> ...Thank you, operator. A warm bulge rises in your pants as Uu> you contemplate your next move. Boy are you going to teach her a Uu> lesson! Uu> This special moment brought to you by Sprint TeleMap. Wait. You've done this before, right? ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

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Re: Definition of "Zero Knowledge"
by doug＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

khijol!erc(a)apple.com (Ed Carp) said: >This reminds me of a science fiction story that I read once, published in >Analog: the smart-ass encrypted the solution of how to produce stable >antimatter, or cold fusion, or something similar, using Godel's Theorem. > >The politicos back on Earth said that it would take them 200 years to >factor the N-size number that was sent back to Earth. :) > >Now, if I could just remember the name of the story and the issue... "The Gold at the Starbow's End", Frederik Pohl, Ballantine Books, 1972. Serialized in Analog in '71 or 72. Great book! You're showing your age. ;-) ( Like I'm not...if anyone on the list wasn't born at that point, I don't wanna hear about it :-) I think this was the first place I ever heard of Go"del numbering. Doug

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Re: Does this seem illegal to you?
by doug＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

mgream(a)acacia.itd.uts.edu.au (Matthew Gream) said: >Although, it must be said that CDROM whitepages are available, and i'm >ignorant of what limitations have been built into them to stop people >(i.e. corporations) turning them into reverse directories. In the U.S., you can buy CD-ROM white pages for the entire US for $99, and the same database reverse-directoried for another $99. (Approximately; this is from memory from a magazine ad I saw 4 days ago.) Such things have been available on paper for a long time, but this media and these prices will doubtless have social repercussions. As before, people can make a point of having their address not listed in any such directory, forward or reverse, if they're careful enough. However, the need to do so probably increases as reverse indexing becomes so vastly more available. Doug

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