December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Public Hearings on Privacy
by Dave Banisar 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Public Hearings on Privacy NEWS US OFFICE OF CONSUMER AFFAIRS FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: George Idelson (USOCA) December 10, 1993 (202)634-4344 Patricia Faley (USOCA) (202)634-4329 PUBLIC HEARINGS ON INFORMATION AGE PRIVACY SET FOR CALIFORNIA AND WASHINGTON, DC. Sacramento: January 10-11, 1994; Washington, DC: January 26-27, 1994. Public Invited to Participate. Representatives from the public, private and non profit sectors will present their views on personal privacy and data protection in the information age at public hearings of a U.S. Government task force in early 1994. The hearings will be open meetings of the Privacy Working Group, chaired by Patricia Faley, Acting Director of the United States Office of Consumer Affairs (USOCA). The Working Group is part of a task force set up by the Clinton Administration to consider how to spur development of an "information superhighway." officially known as the National Information Infrastructure (NII), the "data highway" will be capable of exchanging data, voice and images electronically within a vast network of individuals, businesses, government agencies and other organizations around the world. Ensuring ready access to information is the goal of the Administrative initiative, but protecting individual privacy is essential to its success. The public meetings will examine privacy issues relating to such areas as law enforcement, financial services, information technology, and di:rect marketing. The California mooting, January 10th and llth, will be hosted by Jim Conran, Director, California Department of Consumer Affairs in the First Floor Hearing Room at 400 R Street in Sacramento. The Washington, DC meeting, January 26th and 27th, will be held at the U.S. Department of Commerce Auditorium, 14th & Constitution Ave. NW. Registration begins at 8:30am, meetings at 9am. The public is invited to attend, question speakers and to make brief comments, but space is limited. Concise written statements for the record should be sent to "Privacy," USOCA, 1620 L Street NW, Washington DC 20036 or faxed to (202)634-4135. # # # United States Office of Comumer Affairs - 1620 L Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036-5605

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Looking for users of VIACrypt PGP for comments
by Syl Miniter 803-768-3759 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have purchased the VIACRYPT MSDOS package and would value some "DON"T DO THIS"/"DO DO THIS " as i am completely unfamiliar with using V_PGP and would benefit from the mistakes and learning curves of others. I would also find it valuable to have some people to contact outside the c-punks list with the trivial "what"s zis" kind of questions Thanks fo rthe responses. SYL

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No Subject
by nobody＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1993 10:27:58 -0500 From: sommerfeld(a)orchard.medford.ma.us (Bill Sommerfeld) BTW, I just called Sen. Kennedy's office. Kennedy is on the Armed Services committee, and according to the secretary is in favor of the nomination, but I asked a staffer to ask Kennedy to ask Inman about how he reconciles the First Amendment with statements he's made like these. I just called Sen. Kennedy's office as well. If you're a Massachusetts resident, consider giving them a ring and talking to a staffer. If enough people do this, Sen. Kennedy might actually ask Inman a couple of questions on the topic. (Which, I suspect, is the best we can hope for; but it is *something*.)

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Re: Bobby Inman
by karn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Inman's first job after retiring from his spook's life in the Navy was to start MCC in Austin, TX. I saw him speak in 1984 at Bell Labs Murray Hill shortly after the AT&T divestiture, before Bellcore got its own facilities. He was there to sign up Bellcore for MCC membership, although we didn't know it yet. He gave an almost content-free talk about "regaining America's technological leadership" or something like that. When he finished, I got up and asked him how he could reconcile his stated need to lead the world in high technology with a DoD-dominated export control system specifically geared to keeping us from selling those very technologies in which we lead the world. He waffled like a classic politician. I was still trying to decipher his answer long after he finished. After MCC, I think he went to Westmark, a defense contractor. He also showed up on at least one Baby Bell board of directors (SW Bell?). As a shareholder, I made it a point to specifically withhold my vote for him when the proxies got mailed out. (To be sure, big corporation proxies are about as meaningful as ballots in a Communist election, but what the hell -- unlike the Publishers' Clearinghouse sweepstakes, at least they pay postage. Eventually I started voting against ALL of the directors on all of the Bell proxies, just for the hell of it.) After what Inman tried to do to civilian crypto in the late 1970s, the word "slime" keeps coming to mind. But then again, there are plenty of Inmans in the military-industrial complex. Phil

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DES chips.
by loki＠nately.UCSD.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I am looking for suppliers of DES chips. I wanted to use an IDEA chip in the phone I am designing, but the only one made is 177Mbps and costs about 200SFR. So one possibility is IDEA in software, and the other is DES (or tripple DES) in hardware. So, if you know name, address, phone, or email for companies that produce or sell DES chips, please let me know. ---------------------------------------------------------- Lance Cottrell who does not speak for CASS/UCSD Obscura Security Products loki(a)nately.ucsd.edu PGP 2.3 key available by finger or server. "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come." --Nietzsche ----------------------------------------------------------

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QUOTE from Gerald M. Weinberg
by fnerd＠smds.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Having said all that, I do not shrink from personal responsibility for what I have done in writing this book. We stand at the brink of a new age, an age made possible by the revolution that is embodied in the computer. Standing on the brink, we could totter either way--to a golden age of liberty or a dark age of tyranny, either of which would surpass anything the world has ever known. Perhaps no individual's efforts will make any difference in the result, but we must never cease trying, for then the result is sure to be tyranny. This book is my effort against the tyranny, the enslavement of men by other men and by their own ignorance. Would that it not be adopted by the forces of tyranny themselves, as no doubt it will be. Lacking that hope, I can only hope that its use to the other forces will, in the balance, be greater." --Gerald M. Weinberg, _The Psychology of Computer Programming_, 1971 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a aKxB8nktcBAeQHabQP/d7yhWgpGZBIoIqII8cY9nG55HYHgvtoxiQCVAgUBLMs3K ui6XaCZmKH68fOWYYySKAzPkXyfYKnOlzsIjp2toust1Q5A3/n54PBKrUDN9tHVz 3Ch466q9EKUuDulTU6OLsilzmRvQJn0EJhzd4pht6hanC0R3seYNhUYhoJViCcCG sRjLQs4iVVM= =9wqs -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Writable CD-ROMS as one-t
by smb＠research.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If you record - say - 5 of them and send them by 5 seperate couriers and xor them together to send the message, your enemy has to compromise etc 5 people. Or your enemy has to penetrate your site or your correspondent's site, and copy five CD-ROMs instead of one. CD-ROMs have one advantage: there's a lot of data. But that's not all good, because you *really* want to destroy any keying material you've ever used. I've heard People Who Know say that in the spook and government world, one-time pads are falling out of favor --- because their practical security isn't as good as a really high quality conventional cipher with a dynamically-negotiated session key. I repeat: *practical* security; your enemy isn't going to hit you or bribe you with a copy of Shannon's theorems.

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No Subject
by nobody＠rosebud.ee.uh.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: James Hicks, <71332.747(a)compuserve.com> Well, a couple of nights ago I was sitting here using my modem, I had just finished perusing the C'punks list, when I heard about 5 shots ring out in the alley next to my home. A few lines of garbage zapped across the screen and then the modem was totally unresponsive. Well, I picked up the phone (another line); dead silence. [You guessed it. One of the bullets hit the phone line. ASCII armor was no defense]. Not wanting to go through the night totally out of contact with the rest of the world, I decided to place a call to the phone co. from a nearby neighbors place but decided to sit tight for a few minutes to foil traffic analysis (and give whoever it was running around out there in the dark with the gun a little time to move on). After the sun rose about 10 shell casings were actually found within a few feet of the line break (about 30 residences actually had service interrupted). And It's usually so quiet around here. My neighbor says that a policeman told him that local entrepreneurs will sometimes use fire guns into the air to signal potential customers that they are open for business. Secure communications...who knows? It is _sort_ of digital... >James< 71332.747(a)compuserve.com

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For folks interested in ViaCrypt Use
by Syl Miniter 803-768-3759 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"71332.747(a)CompuServe.COM" "James Hicks" 18-DEC-1993 11:04:13.14 To: IN%"miniters(a)citadel.edu" "Syl Miniter" CC: Subj: ViaCrypt Syl, I saw your question on the Cypherpunks mail list. Recently Dave Barnhart, the ViaCrypt product manager (for Lemcon Systems) became active on Compuserve's Electronic Frontier Forum. The following is a statement he left in the forums message section. He appears more than willing (even eager) to answer questions about ViaCrypt and can be contacted at the addresses given in his message. James |>----------------------------------------------------------------------<| |PGP 2.x Key ID: F9A281 Fingerprint <F2A1A42B 67408691 5A6A2F0F C1104457>| |>----------------------------------------------------------------------<| *========================================================================* From: Dave Barnhart (ViaCrypt), 70275,1360 70275.1360(a)compuserve.com Date: Thu, Dec 2, 1993, 8:45:16 PM [PST] ViaCrypt is a division of a 17-year old company named Lemcom Systems. Lemcom Systems has traditionally produced IBM mainframe communication controllers and other network products. About 1989, we began producing a network product that used DES (That's about the only kind of encryption that IBM will admit exists). About 2 years ago, the ViaCrypt division was formed to develop products incorporating public key cryptography for the PC, UNIX, and workstation market. About 1 year ago, ViaCrypt sub-licensed the RSA patents from Public Key Partners (PKP). Late last summer (1993), we were introduced to Phil Zimmermann, author pf PGP. Phil expressed an interest in finding a way to commercially market PGP. Together with our law firm, one of the coutry's formost experts on intellectual property rights, we examined the terms of our PKP sub-license to determine if ViaCrypt could market a commercial version of PGP, and if so, under what conditions. At the same time, we also investigated obtaining a sub-license for the IDEA cipher from Ascom Tech AG in Switzerland. The opinion was that we could market PGP provided: 1) we substituted ViaCrypt-written RSA code for the existing RSA code in PGP. 2) we did not supply source code. So in late September we signed an agreement with Phil Zimmermann to market the commercial version of PGP, which we chose to call ViaCrypt PGP. Except for the RSA routines, a couple of bug-fixes provided by Phil, and a change in the "welcome banner", the code in ViaCrypt PGP is identical to that found in PGP 2.3a. This means that it is interoperable with PGP 2.3a. Except for the aforementioned changes, we made no other changes or additions to the PGP 2.3a source to produce ViaCrypt PGP 2.4 for MS-DOS. Why would you buy ViaCrypt PGP instead of using the 'freeware' PGP? First, many small businesses and large corporations have expressed a great deal of interest in using PGP, but have not done so because of the legal exposure from RSA. ViaCrypt PGP removes this problem. As for the individual, Dr Hugh Miller said it best on USENET, but I won't quote him here without his permission. Essentially, it's your chance to "stand up and be counted" on the subject of how you want your encryption. It's the best chance we may have to say: 1. "We don't like the rigid, hierarchical trust model in PEM", and: 2. "We don't want any system incorporating key escrow (a la clipper)" ViaCrypt PGP version 2.4 for MS-DOS is available from: ViaCrypt 2104 W. Peoria Ave Phoenix, AZ 85029 Phone (602) 944-0773 FAX (602) 943-2601 Internet: wk01965(a)worldlink.com Compuserve: 70304,41 Price: $99.98 (single user) $299.98 (five users) $824.98 (20 users) Plus $8.00 S & H, (and if you live in a small number of states, I can't remember which ones, they make us collect sales tax.) We intend to have ViaCrypt PGP available for just about every platform on the planet. We should be announcing the availability of ViaCrypt PGP for several UNIX platforms shortly. I hope to have MAC and Windows versions available some time in the second quarter of 1994. And I know it doesn't make for a great story, but at the CSI Computer Security Conference in Anaheim a month ago, Phil Zimmermann was in our booth (we asked him to come). Jim Bidzos was at the same conference, making a presentation. There were no bloody brawls in the hallway, no shouting matches, I don't think the two even encountered each other. The rest of the folks at the RSA booth stopped by, and were actually quite cordial. ho hum. I apologize for the length of this message, but I hope it answers everyone's questions. If not, ask away, or feel free to contact me at ViaCrypt. (If you call ViaCrypt with questions, I'm the one you'll probably talk to, by the way.) Best Regards, David Barnhart ViaCrypt Product Manager Return-path: <71332.747(a)CompuServe.COM> Received: from dub-img-1.compuserve.com by citadel.edu (PMDF V4.2-11 #4957) id <01H6MFHZXKKG9AOW3X(a)citadel.edu>; Sat, 18 Dec 1993 11:04:14 EST Received: from localhost by dub-img-1.compuserve.com (8.6.4/5.930129sam) id LAA11648; Sat, 18 Dec 1993 11:04:58 -0500 Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1993 11:01:43 -0500 (EST) From: James Hicks <71332.747(a)CompuServe.COM> Subject: ViaCrypt To: Syl Miniter <miniters(a)citadel.edu> Message-id: <931218160143_71332.747_DHQ64-1(a)CompuServe.COM> Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

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Stego Help Requested...
by Jim choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi everyone, As some of you are aware I have been looking at stego, in particular trying to calculate the maximum feasible message to insert in a given image. I have determined some techniques that help predict this ratio. In the process of testing them I got side-tracked into converting images to other format (RGB > HSV in this case). Since these are linear but not equaly scaled there is some range alteration in the conversion process. It appears that if a RGB image is holding a image it converts to HSV differently and is thus easy to test for. I am in need of some additional data and basiclly clueless where to find it. The data falls into one of the following ways: > source of images in both HSV and RGB format > pd or shareware software that will convert mathematicaly > access to a video color registration set to generate the above database Any help in locating any one of these would be greatly appreciated. Have a Merry Christmas! Ravage Black Leather Monster

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