December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Unauthorized Advertising Attempt
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Explanation: The Citizen-Unit known as Timothy C. May is a well-known subversive given to the wide dissemination of disinformation and not expected to comply with Authorities, regulations, or advertising fee schedules. There is no mistaking him: in our exhaustive search through all the phone books on the National Database, there was only one. ~ Data

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Re: Creating privacy crises: Society hacking
by Jeff Gostin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

nelson(a)crynwr.com (Russell Nelson) writes: > I have compiled the following information on your 17-year-old > daughter from open governmental sources, e.g. voting records, birth > records, DMV records, etc. Perhaps the government shouldn't be > keeping these records? More importantly, and in addition: Your dear Kimberly has a 2.3 gpa at Lower Central HS. She is in Aerobic Gum Twiddling until 10:30, at which time she proceeds to Some Math Class 3 until 12:00. At 12:00. . . Definately much scarier. :-) --Jeff -- ====== ====== +----------------jgostin(a)eternal.pha.pa.us----------------+ == == | The new, improved, environmentally safe, bigger, better,| == == -= | faster, hypo-allergenic, AND politically correct .sig. | ==== ====== | Now with a new fresh lemon scent! | PGP Key Available +---------------------------------------------------------+

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Re: Digital cash market
by frissell＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:16 PM 8/21/94 -0500, Jim Hart wrote: >At this point Duncan Frissel will regail us with some wonderful >scheme, understandable only to lawyers, that can be used to >get credit cards under aliases, perfectly legal if you >use a doubly nested corporate structure going through Aruba >and the Caymans, and the IRS and FBI don't decide to get >to get you on some technicality Duncan failed to mention. I can't recall any time I've laid out a complicated structure to avoid the privacy invaders. Most of my techniques are simple and depend merely on a willingness to not do the conventional things that other people tell you are necessary if you are to prosper. In fact, hasn't Tim May actually accused me of offering solutions that are too simple and that are not based on careful and exotic Harry Margolis sort of International Tax Planning? The many people who have gotten anonymous Visa and Mastercard credit cards for example have used the simple scheme of applying for a secured credit card in a nome de guerre. Others have opened bank accounts in convenient names that come with Visa debit cards. It is actually easier than it has ever been to obtain credit cards in names other than your own. Signet Bank is promoting it's secured credit card with TV ads. >The surprisingly large number of folks who actually do go to Frissell style >lengths is proof that there are plenty of peope who care about privacy. Gee, I wish you could convince my wife that I "go to great lengths." She always accuses me of taking the easy way out. <G> DCF "How is it that the bulk of the 'Great Unwashed' manage to stand out in the pouring rain and never get wet? Persons of all ages whine these days about how tough and boring things are even though there are more exciting and profitable things going on in the world today than ever before in human history."

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Scanner Banners
by j.hastings6＠genie.geis.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - From ham operator N8TQJ @ W8BI.#DAY.OH.USA.NA: I gained access to a memo from Tandy Inc. headquarters in Fort Worth Texas that stated that because of an "engineering defect" the Realistic Pro 23 and the Pro 46 handheld scanners were to be immediately pulled from the shelves and NOT allowed for sale. This "defect" causes these 2 radios to fail the "compliance" specs of this "law". All district supervisors for Radio Shack are to monitor sales records of all stores within their jurisdiction on a DAILY basis, and ANY sales of the Pro 23 & 46 by ANY employee will result in "...immediate termination of employment". This is because these 2 radios do "...not conform" to the FCC ban of any scanner that can be "...easily modified" to receive 800 MHz cellular phone frequencies. This "ban" went into effect April 24, 1994, yet allows the sale of scanners already in this country, none may be imported, designed or built after this date. The memo went on to say that there will be no further warehousing and store restock of the Pro 51 handheld and the Pro 2026 moblie (similar to the BEARCAT 560 & 760) scanners and that all supplies of these 2 scanners will be sold out and not replenished. However, there are stores within the Dayton- Cincinnati-Columbus triangle that have the 2026 and the 51 and are allowed to sell them. This situation defies all logic and makes no sense at all whatsoever, Let's look at some facts: 1) ALL these scanners are cell-phone modifiable, and "easily". 2) The 23(banned from sale)and the 51(not banned)are both contemporous in design and date of model introduction. Both of these radios modify by a keyboard keystroke manipulation(1994 model introduction). 3) The 46(banned from sale)and the 2026(not banned)are both contem- porous in design and date of model introduction, and are electrically similar in design. These radios are "hardware" modified, a wire cut in the 2026 and 2 chip jumpers removed and one relocated in the 46. Why this jumbled shuffling? I think that this is another boot-licking snafu by Tandy, as the incident where Tandy pulled ALL scanners from the shelves in The People's Republic Of New Jersey when this State proposed a ban of ALL scanners. I would love to know what the Feds are up to, as cellular phones will be digitally encrypted shortly. Is this cell phone "ban" a legal prec- ident to ban further frequencies from citizen's monitoring access? Are we on the road to Soviet-like Goverbment controls: * Firearms confiscation * Internal passports * Limits on communications outside of local areas Noah's flood began with one raindrop. 73 To All - From The UnHappy Club Corny N8TQJ@W8BI - ---------------- The message above taken from the ham packet network. Thought it might be of interest here. Kent - j.hastings6(a)genie.geis.com Ham packet AX.25: WA6ZFY @ WB6YMH.#SOCA.CA.USA.NA -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3 iQCVAgUBLljVFTQYUX1dU7vxAQG4sAQA3HCTZ/SxZmbFOVRy1mIjeUorFeFWLuAN C26A4JM87O7iMvQa3sa0ZiUZd7syVBZy4+mINiert+7Uu/RRLjb4wIThyD0HAQZp 83B45XDHu2QI13dvtxwd4xC/Vqbgknraduma385gWjUSMexFW9nPtd+gcKGyO82P /4tehiEeX1s= =atNQ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: EPIC Statement on FBI Wiretap Bill
by Lile Elam 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Good show, my man! At least some group is taking a stand other than the short-changed stand that the EFF has taken. How do I join EPIC? Glad I never joined the EFF.... :) -lile

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Multiple Solutions
by blancw＠pylon.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Questions for Cryptids: Considering that: Everyone wants to have access, but no one wants 'their' info to be available indiscriminately. Everyone wants ease-of-use, but no one wants to have their system made vulnerable by it. Everyone wants wide markets, but no one wants to have easily duplicatable products. Everyone wants to corner the market for their product, but no one wants a monopoly of one - or a reduction in choices. .. Would you say that ideally all electronic information should be encrypted as a matter of course; is it the best circumstance to have absolutely everything encrypted, with systems or processes for access available only to select or paying members of the chosen cabal, no exceptions? Given that personal information is shared almost automatically between & among all sorts of businesses & gov. agencies, and that in order to prevent that, laws & regulations would be called on to put the label of illegality & the force of the law behind them: .. How could (would, should?) the procurement of services, where one is requested to give out personal financial or other information in order to receive them, be accomplished in an anarcho-capitalist system of operations whereby interactions/transactions might be 'illegal' yet supremely functional & directly beneficial, while not also being intrusive & offensive? How could all of this data be 'contained' so that it would not be irreverently distributed by irresponsible parties? .. What, in such a system, would be a method for redress of violations of contract - personal vendettas? I'm imagining these elements within a context wherein all things are electronically possible, though only some are desireable, but all are individually manageable & controllable. Blanc

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Why to define "government" generously
by sw＠tiac.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm a libertarian, an anarchist even. I used to say that government-- properly defined--was what I was against. James A. Donald seems to think that way; he closed a recent letter like this (the signature is relevant): >...It is killing, violence, and extortion that make government >organizations different from non government organizations. > --------------------------------------------------------------------- >We have the right to defend ourselves and our >property, because of the kind of animals that we James A. Donald >are. True law derives from this right, not from >the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. jamesd(a)netcom.com This is the "monopoly on force in a geographical area" definition of government. It's also pretty much government as we know it. It's a fundamentally bad idea and it's what James and I are against. But I don't think it's a good definition of "government." The reason is that what most people mean by "government" is a set of services, the main ones being what James calls "true law": police, courts, and defense--protection services for large numbers of people. Now it's true that most folks lump this in with all the features of government as we know it--they think that a monopoly on force is necessary to produce protection services--but it's bad to define "government" based on that confusion. The reason is that people like me (and James, judging from his signature) would still like protection services to be available to people. When "government" can plausibly be used to mean those good things, then it's bad to narrow the term to mean the worst aspects of government as we know it. What is the point? So that we, a minority, can have a convenient term to name what we're against? So that our position can be stated in as few words as possible, or sound as striking and radical as possible? So that we can sound like we know what we're talking about by knowing the *real* definitions of terms? So we can use the same terms consistently forever? I think it's bad to define your position in terms of what you're against because it's backward-looking. There are at least as many problems in the future as in the past. Arguing over or refining definitions is a sign you've wandered into a timesink. Make up some temporary terms for what each side is talking about and get on to content. --Steve - - - - - - - - - - why did the chicken cross the infobahn? finger for more info.

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Re: NSA Spy Machine and DES
by jdd＠aiki.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In message <9408221018.ZM4791(a)simple.sydney.sgi.com> Ian Farquhar writes: > On Aug 18, 8:13pm, Jim Dixon wrote: > >In message <9408190809.ZM4528(a)simple.sydney.sgi.com> Ian Farquhar writes: > >>Actually, I would be surprised if the "SIMD" processors were not a huge > >>array of reprogrammable FPGA's, quite possibly Xilinx's. The possibilities > >>of a large array of these chips, each with local memory, is quite > >>interesting. I have personally seen an array of 64 Xilinx chips in a DEC > PeRL > >>box doing RSA, at speeds similar or better to almost all available custom > >>hardware implementations of the cipher. > > >The delays in getting data on and off the chip are too large and the amount > >of space wasted in redundant functions is too great. > > That is a rather sweeping statement. Want to back this up with some facts > and figures from real FPGA implementations? Certainly the early bit-slice > designs you mention later on did suffer from these problems, but FPGA's > bear little relationship to those rather venerable devices. 1. I have been using various kinds of programmable logic devices in designs for years. In doing such designs, you avoid using one device to drive another, because the effect of this is usually to increase your delays by 80% or so. There are a number of reasons for this. (a) You almost invariably duplicate functions if logic is spread over more than one chip. (b) The impedance and capacitance of the device pins and PCB tracks are far greater than those on-chip. As a result, for example, the setup time on an input flip-flop on an Actel A14100A is 3ns, but the setup time on an internal flip-flop is 0.8ns, about 75% less. In general off chip delays are an order of magnitude higher than on chip delays. FPGAs use longer internal routes than would be necessary on an ASIC and as I understand it the fuse impedance is a significant problem Both of these factors increase capacitance and impedance, slowing down the circuits. 2. The redundancy should be completely obvious. An FPGA is programmable. It has circuits whose sole function is to program the device. These occupy space. They cover the entire device. Once the device is programmed they serve no purpose. An ASIC also has a fairly high level of redundancy, because logic is assembled out of elementary logic blocks. A custom circuit, such as a microprocessor, has very little redundancy. To understand the effect of this, go price a 64K bit static RAM. ($5?) Then calculate the cost of implementing the same function in FPGAs, especially with comparable speed. > >You might prototype > >it using FPGAs, but even this is unlikely. Why not just buy one of the > >existing SIMD processors and simulate your target system? > > Because the FPGA solution is obviously less flexible, but a hell of a lot > faster than software simulation of another architecture. In this application > speed will win every time. For prototyping, speed is not usually a major consideration. What you are trying to do is to get the system to work, you are debugging it. > > People used to build fast processors out of separate chips (bit slices). > > They don't do that any more because it's too slow and too expensive if you > > are building in volume. > > But this application is NOT building in volume. It was my understanding that the project involved on the order of 10^4 to 10^6 chips. If the size of the system is small and the number of chips is low, then the use of FPGAs would be justifiable (and I myself have justified this in another context). > And yes, people do still > built multichip CPU's: most traditional supercomputing and mainframe vendors > for a start. Indeed, I would be surprised if this application didn't design > it's own FPGA (for ease of interfacing with the comms network for a start), ? what do you mean by 'design [an] FPGA' ? Do you just mean "do the design using FPGAs" -- easy -- or literally, "design a new type of FPGA"? This would be very expensive and pointless. Commercial designers are almost always going to do something cheaper and better than something done under a government contract. > but I'd argue that a SIMD configuration of reconfigurable FPGA arrays (ie. > a fixed array of reconfigurable arrays) would be an awesome system for > many problems that the NSA would deal with. Why SIMD? Why not a reconfigurable architecture as well? -- +-----------------------------------+--------------------------------------+ | Jim Dixon<jdd(a)aiki.demon.co.uk> | Compuserve: 100114,1027 | |AIKI Parallel Systems Ltd + parallel processing hardware & software design| | voice +44 272 291 316 | fax +44 272 272 015 | +-----------------------------------+--------------------------------------+

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Re: Electronic Cash
by roy＠sendai.cybrspc.mn.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- A pointer to an interesting article in comp.society.privacy. The Message-ID is <comp-privacy5.25.1(a)cs.uwm.edu>. In comp.society.privacy, mckeever(a)cogsci.uwo.ca writes: > Anonymity is not a problem with digital cash. [...] > CONCLUSION: While the techology exists to mimick the anonymity of > physical cash, it is extremely UNWISE to ignore the ease with which > machines can be regulated by government. Consequently, it is unwise to > assume that the benefits of anonymity will continue if digital cash > replaces physical cash, and even if they did, somehow, continue, > taxation would still be quite easily done by regulating the possession > and use of the machines that transfer credits from one entity to > another. [ quote ends ] - -- Roy M. Silvernail -- roy(a)sendai.cybrspc.mn.org "I'm a family man, model citizen." -- Warren Zevon -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAwUBLlnqlBvikii9febJAQHbagQAjMIV50ik7jeXVO0CWIp4exdbVC3ZBVTu EFmOYU8gCOhj0EgbW47lnYynJHA9UKPx+BWFps8/XtDQr/mcfp5hvduUfRJ5cofG 5DMEaO7m3skjmUz8HWsWD+fgXuSQbsy36h6GqEOsrJxdmTeMRxdgf5hF9Zp+6acd 8EoMxhxCRn0= =M3YO -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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pgp -c,no initialization vector, possible bug, pgp 26ui
by 0x7CF5048D＠nowhere 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In pgp 2.6 UI When pgp is called with the -c switch, the routine idea_encryptfile in crypto.c is called from main in pgp.c. > status = idea_encryptfile( workfile, tempf, attempt_compression); >int idea_encryptfile(char *infile, char *outfile, > boolean attempt_compression) >{ > FILE *f; /* input file */ > FILE *g; /* output file */ > byte ideakey[16]; > struct hashedpw *hpw; Note that idea key is a 16 bytes. Now idea_encryptfile calls squish_and_idea_file in crypto.c with this 16 byte key. > /* Now compress the plaintext and encrypt it with IDEA... */ > squish_and_idea_file( ideakey, f, g, attempt_compression ); Now squish_and_idea_file calls idea_file in the module crypto.c with the same 16 byte key. >static int squish_and_idea_file(byte *ideakey, FILE *f, FILE *g, > boolean attempt_compression) >{

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