December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Bandwidth According to Seabrook
by Brian Beker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The New Yorker's John Seabrook on the Charlie Rose show tonight: "...bandwidth, which is basically the width of the wire coming into your home..." [quoted from memory -- verbatim or nearly so.] Brian

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LA Radio Program
by kentborg＠world.std.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Bidzos is damn impressive. I heard most of the Which Way LA program on the rerun as I recorded it. (I think I got it all--the tape flip was during Marc Rotenberg's introduction, but we mostly know who he is--next question, what do I do with the tape? KCRW-FM sells tapes, so they might object to free distribution of said recording...) Bidzos did a wonderful job. He sounded nice and approachable, the practical businessman, and the independent American standing up on principles. He left no obvious openings for the other side to make points, it was a great appearance. (Apparently from an airport lounge, all the more impressive.) Don't get me wrong, all the privacy phreaks sounded good (even the "neutral" member of the press, Steven Levy), it is just that Bidzos was really in the flow this afternoon. Generally a very well done program. To me it seemed obvious which side came out ahead, yet the other side got such a good opportunity to clearly make their case that they probably think the same. (To me the TLA case is so damming that a clear statement is thrilling.) -kb, the Kent visiting in Venice, CA P.S. As a MA resident I wish I had Moakley's correct fax number. Effector says his House Rules Committee is the next battle in the Cantwell bill crypto-export war.

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Subscription Info Request
by tcann＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Please send subscription and general info to tcann(a)netcom.com Thanx

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Re: Bandwidth According to Seabrook
by tim werner 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Date: Wed, 29 Jun 1994 00:04:10 -0700 (PDT) >From: Brian Beker <beker(a)netcom.com> > >The New Yorker's John Seabrook on the Charlie Rose show tonight: > > "...bandwidth, which is basically the width of the wire > coming into your home..." > >[quoted from memory -- verbatim or nearly so.] Finally an explanation I can understand. tw

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Un-Documented Feature
by trollins＠debbie.telos.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

PGP 2.6ui has an undocumented feature. When generating a Public/Secret key pair PGP documentaion shows the command "pgp -kg" as the way to generate the keys. I had posted about how pgp uses a small public key exponent of 17 which is 5 bits. It turns out that this is only the default setting. An Un-Documented feature in PGP 2.6ui (I don't know about other versions as I don't have source code for them) lets you specify the number of bits in your public key exponent. The command "pgp -kg keybits ebits" will let you specify this public key exponent size. For example "pgp -kg 1024 256" will generate a key with modulus of aprox 1024 bits and a public key exponent of 256 bits rather than the 5 bit default. Too Bad pgp doesn't let you look at the public key exponent. I had to write some code to see them. -tom

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ACM Press Conference on Crypto 6/30
by David Banisar 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

FYI - CLIPPER REPORT RELEASE ON THURSDAY ACM TO MAKE POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS A press conference will be held at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, June 30 at 10:30 am to announce the release of a new study on the controversial Clipper cryptography proposal. The ACM cryptography panel was chaired by Dr. Stephen Kent, Chief Scientist for Security Technology with the firm of Bolt Beranek and Newman. Dr. Susan Landau, Research Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts, co-ordinated the work of the panel and did most of the writing. The panel members were: Dr. Clinton Brooks, Advisor to the Director, National Security Agency Scott Charney, Chief of the Computer Crime Unit, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice Dr. Dorothy Denning, Computer Science Chair, Georgetown University Dr. Whitfield Diffie, Distinguished Engineer, Sun Microsystems Dr. Anthony Lauck, Corporate Consulting Engineer, Digital Equipment Corporation Douglas Miller, Government Affairs Manager, Software Publishers Association Dr. Peter Neumann, Principal Scientist, SRI International David Sobel, Legal Counsel, Electronic Privacy Information Center. The final report of the panel will be made public at the Thursday press conference. Also, the policy committee of the 85,000 member ACM will release a statement on cryptography issues facing the Clinton administration. For more information, call (202) 298-0842. Additional press announcement forthcoming. Cryptography report announcement. 10:30 am, Thursday, June 30, United States Capitol building, room SC-5.

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Re: Bandwidth According to Seabrook
by lefty＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>Date: Wed, 29 Jun 1994 00:04:10 -0700 (PDT) >>From: Brian Beker <beker(a)netcom.com> >> >>The New Yorker's John Seabrook on the Charlie Rose show tonight: >> >> "...bandwidth, which is basically the width of the wire >> coming into your home..." >> > >Finally an explanation I can understand. I was very happy to read this. I plan to spend my lunch hour increasing the bandwidth of my network connection by wrapping the cable in electrical tape. -- Lefty (lefty(a)apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.

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Got Rep. Moakley's fax #
by fnerd＠smds.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I called Representative Moakley's office and got their correct fax number: (202) 225-3984 -fnerd quote me - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - the liquidy snack that drinks like a beverage! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a aKxB8nktcBAeQHabQP/d7yhWgpGZBIoIqII8cY9nG55HYHgvt3niQCVAgUBLMs3K ui6XaCZmKH68fOWYYySKAzPkXyfYKnOlzsIjp2tPEot1Q5A3/n54PBKrUDN9tHVz 3Ch466q9EKUuDulTU6OLsilzmRvQJn0EJhzd4pht6hSnC1R3seYNhUYhoJViCcCG sRjLQs4iVVM= =9wqs -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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US Chauvanism -- hurting us
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The announcement calling for calls to Moakley includes the following explanatory blurb: >Why is there a restriction on exporting products with technology >in them? > >For many years the United States was a leading researcher in >cryptography. High quality cryptographic technology was available only >within the United States. The US government thought that if they did >not let this technology be exported, foreign individuals would not be able >to obtain it and use it against us (by keeping US intelligence agencies >>from eavesdropping on their communications) > >Since then, cryptography research has been published in international >journals. Companies have been created throughout the world who >export cryptographic technology from countries that do not have >these restrictions. You can now buy the same, high-quality cryptographic >technology from many international firms. Although the marketplace >has changed, the regulations have not. This is inaccurate chauvanism and is hurting our cause. The US (and especially the NSA) wanted to believe it was the leader in cryptography. The NSA wanted to believe, and probably still believes, that the only cryptography worthy of the name is what they produce. Everything else is mere toys. The only crypto the US produces is therefore theirs and therefore all crypto leaving the US needs to be controlled. To the contrary, Switzerland has long been a producer of very good, commercial crypto. The US military even bought crypto devices from Switzerland during WW-II, if I remember Kahn correctly. Over the years, different countries have taken the lead (since it's usually tied to individuals and to national export and mfg laws). In the 4000 year history of cryptography, private citizens of various countries have been making, using and distributing their own strong cryptography, without concern for government controls. The US and the NSA might want to believe they're all that important, but in fact they're not and never have been (except possibly for a momentary period starting in about 1950 -- a period during which the US was #1 in *everything*, since the rest of the world had been bombed back to subsistence level). Crypto is not a US product and *never has been*, wishful thinking by the NSA notwithstanding. Strong crypto has always been dual source and dual use, except during those periods when civilians had it and the gov't didn't. Strong crypto outside the government and outside the USA is far from something new. If we concede that point to the proponents of export controls and of Clipper, we have lost a major battle. - Carl

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Arguing Crypto: The Engineering Approach
by kentborg＠world.std.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Who knows how well it plays, but my faxed letter to Moakley on crupto export took a different approach from my usual privacy tirades. I tried to (calmly) argue that we need strong cryptography for fundamental engineering reasons. Data is so damn flexible. This is both good and bad. The bad is that data can be capricious and flighty. If our physical world were to allow objects to appear out of no where and disappear again, transmorgraphy beyond recognition, or become massively duplicated in unknown locations, we would find it disconcerting--to say the least. We would go to considerable lengths to keep physical objects reassuringly in one place. In fact, with some physical objects that often do carpiciously vanish, we go to inconvienient extremes in hopes we can prevent the vanishing. Look at some of the anti-theft devices people will put on their cars. There are good engineering approaches which can force data to behave itself. Many of them involve cryptography. Our government's restrictions on crypto limit our ability to build reliable computer systmems. We need strong crypto for basic engineering reasons. Note, my fax to Moakley was phrased (and spelled?) considerably different from this posting. I am still wondering how best to make this argument. Something I want to avoid is too strong a reliance on "pulling rank": "We are professionals, we need these tools to do our jobs, don't try to understand the reasons.". Just using words like "engineering" smacks of that enough, let's leave it at that. One thing I like about this approach is that is avoids the kneejerk positions the word "privacy" prompts. -kb, the Kent who tries to sound reasonable -- Kent Borg +1 (617) 776-6899 kentborg(a)world.std.com kentborg(a)aol.com Proud to claim 29:45 hours of TV viewing so far in 1994!

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