December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

No Subject
by ltech1!ltech1!mercury＠heifetz.msen.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Electronic Democracy: A Bibliography of Articles by Michael E. Marotta "Hannah Information Systems Offers Legislative Services," Michigan Computer News. Win?/Spr? 1988 "Online Government," FOCUS, August 1988. "Computers Facilitate Legal Research," Greater Lansing Business Monthly, September 1988. "Data General at the Grass Roots," FOCUS, September 1990. "Electronic Government," TELECOMPUTING, Nov/Dec 1990. "Online Databases Serve Law Libraries," LIBRARY MOSAICS, Jan/Feb 1993. "Digital Democracy," MICHIGAN COMPUTER USER, July 1993. "The Citizen as Watchdog," PC TODAY, November 1993. "Legislation Online," WHOLE EARTH REVIEW, Winter 1993.

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Pseudo-spoofing the Gov't
by Michael Edward Marotta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What happens when governments are online and someone pseudo-spoofs the state legislature? Writing about "Free Willy" I said that as a mere user, I had no way to know whether or not this came from president(a)whitehouse.gov except by the content. If the content passed a style analysis, then I would have to accept it as real. The SOURCE of my problem is the parameters for email chosen by the administrators of a point, two systems away from me. Mark@blackplague, suggested that there was no problem at all: "You just have to learn to read mail headers to get the gist of what they are saying." Well, yes, but this is the header I saw: Message 5/12 From President(a)whitehouse.gov Dec 19 '93 at 2:13 pm pst Return-Path: <heifetz!toad.com!owner-cypherpunks> Return-Path: <President(a)whitehouse.gov> Date: Sun, 19 Dec 93 14:13:02 PST That's all I saw. And I said that in my original post. The problem remains unsolved for me. The message came from the White House, was picked up at heifetz and I got it here. Seems clear. Mark@blackplague suggests: A big clue is when it has "Apparently-To:" in the header... But I see this all the time. I have an account on the Well. I transfer email from there to my local system with a forward file. Proves only that the mail was forwarded from one system to another. And again, I didn't see any of that, myself. I was merely comparing the analysis of headers offered by two 'punkers to show that the "solutions" offered differed from each other. The problem remains. Nothing on a computer can be trusted. PGP? Sorry, it's not for users. I see these PGP Keys appended to messages all the time. Garbage characters. I have no intention of grabbing them, making them fields in a record or records in a file or files in a database, on the unlikely chance that someday I might want to send a secret message to someone. Speaking as a mere user, when the government cracks down on crypto, no one will care. By comparison, the mainstream magazine INFORMATION WEEK tried to make a story out of Alona Shores. No one cared. Also, consider that Prodigy hasn't gone out of business. I get their free diskettes whenever I can and then reformat them for my own use as backup media. But 99% of Prodigy's clients were unaffected by the Burning Issues. By comparison, in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, pirates from Cilicia lived by kidnapping people and selling them as slaves. They thrived because slavery was accepted. They raided and destroyed the freeport Delos. No one cared much. They erred when they nabbed rich Romans. Pompey shut them down. But slavery wasn't ended. The pirates weren't erased: they merely became (respectable) subjects of the Romans. We live in a society that accepts slavery. Before you "revolt" remember Spartacus: Pompey shut him down, also. We COULD verify "Free Willy" of course. (stop me if you've heard this) The White House publishes its public crypto key. Using its private key, it sends out a message. The published key unlocks the message and we know it came from Willy Himself. Great idea. Until and unless there is a paradigm shift, it will never happen. That shift could mean an end to browsing the newsies, since you'd have to have a key for every source. What happens when governments are online and someone pseudo-spoofs the state legislature?

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Re: Reveal your key or else.
by jpinson＠fcdarwin.org.ec 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mike Ingle writes: >Since the Canadian case, there's been a lot of talk about the >problem of being coerced to reveal your key. If the coercers play by stuff deleted.. >Steganography can hide your data, but then you have the steg program >itself. If they find the program, they have reasonable grounds or >assuming you have hidden data, particularly if you have large >quantities of the sort of data which can conceal files, such as >sounds and graphics. So what you need is the ability to hide both the >"real" secret data and some decoy data at the same time. This could >be done using something like MD5 as a random number generator. Actually, there is a somewhat easier method that uses the one- time pad technique. Take your confidential text and xor it with a random byte file (your key) and call the output file "secret.msg". Then copy the random file off the hard drive and store in a secure location, perhaps off-site, and wipe all traces of the random key file from your disk. Now, type up you Mother's chocolate cookie recipe, and other goodies and pad it so it is the same size as the "secret.msg" file and xor this file with your "secret.msg" file. Rename the output "secret.key", and hide somewhere on your hard drive. (but don't hide it too well). If some one finds "secret.msg", and demands the key, you give in (after some arm twisting), and confess that the "secret.key" is the key file they want. When "secret.key" is xor'ed with "secret.msg", out pops the cookie recipe. Later, you can fetch the "real" key, and restore your original data. Of course, as Mike Ingle suggests, a more believable approach is to xor the encrypted file with some mild pornography instead of a cookie recipe recipe. (One of the great ways of lying is to plead guilty , but to a lesser crime). Of course this technique could be used against you as well. Someone would could xor your "secret.msg" file, with nuclear bomb secrets, and pretend to find this "key" somewhere else in your house. Following the same logic, one can produce a key, that when xor'd with Microsoft's "command.com", will produce output revealing Microsoft's secret plans for word conquest :-) Jim Pinson

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Random numbers and "dirty" books
by jpinson＠fcdarwin.org.ec 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have been working off and on for some time on a one-time pad application (that I will release next week). Since the success of an OTP is dependent on having a good source of random numbers, I have kept my eyes open for any information related to random numbers, and their generation. Conventional wisdom has it that the best way to generate random numbers is to measure some physical phenomenon such as radioactive decay, and use these measurements to form your "random" number sequence. Recently, I came across an interesting article in the "New Scientist" (May 8, 1993) entitled "The half Life of a Dirty Book". This article indicates that phenomena-based measurements may have some interesting properties. A number of years ago, when people used log tables (any of you remember the CRC tables?), some astute observers noticed that the front section of the log tables were more heavily used than the back section. This seemed odd, since it would seem reasonable that all portions of the table should have an equal chance of being examined. In 1938, the physicist Frank Benford made a study of numerous measurements based on natural phenomena. He looked at surface areas of lakes, molecular weights of compounds etc. He discovered that the first digit of any such measurement was most likely to be a one, and least likely to be a nine. The probability that this digit takes a given value decreases in a regular manner as the digits increase from one to nine. This is called Benford's Law. Later, a report in the European Journal for Physics (vol 14, page 59) showed that that alpha decay half lives, both predicted and observed, followed Benford's law. What was also interesting was that Benford's law is scale- invariant. According to the article: "The same law applies whether you measure the areas of lakes in hectares or square yards, whether you multiply house numbers by seven or 93, or whether you count the half-lives of alpha particles in seconds or centuries". The article concludes that Benford's law may actually be a part of chaos theory. Fractals, they also point out, are scale - invariant. All this may indicate that random number produced from observations of physical phenomena may have characteristics that set them apart from software-derived random numbers. Does this give a tool for breaking random number based encryption? I can't see how, since you still can't figure out the exact sequence. But it perhaps means there may be fractal patterns there, at least for numbers derived from physical phenomena. Interesting. Of course, with an 8 bit random number sequence (with a maximum number of 255), it would be hard to generate a number sequence that did not follow Benford's law.. You would have to throw in a lot of 9's , and 99's to get as as many numbers begining with '9' as you do that begin with a '1' (1, 10-19,100-199). So let's see..... first we had flat distributions vs. normal distributions, now Benford vs. non Benford..... Jim Pinson Confused in Galapagos.

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Something to think about...
by m5＠vail.tivoli.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In the "is this weird or what?" category, I came across something fascinating in the December 1993 issue of "Smithsonian" magazine. In an article by John F. Ross about ventriloquists, an outfit called Maher Studios in Littleton, Colorado is described. Maher is a major supplier of ventriloquism "how-to" books and tapes, including "Maher's Home Ventriloquism Course" ($79.95). In it are revealed (quoting Ross) "secrets of the art, information once kept closely guarded by the now defunct International Brotherhood of Ventriloquists". The proprieter of Maher Studios is a middle-aged (judging by his photograph) man named Clinton Detweiler. [ roll Twilight Zone theme... ]

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Re: Random numbers and "dirty" books
by Jef Poskanzer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>New Scientist >Benford's Law >chaos theory >fractals Use of buzzwords can often be an inpediment to understanding. When the first-digit distribition thing came up in Martin Gardner's column in Scientific American, "chaos" and "fractals" hadn't become popularized yet, so he was reduced to actually figuring out what was going on instead of giving it a mysterious and sexy-sounding label. --- Jef

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Re: Happy Holidays
by Pierre Uszynski 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> As one who reflexively deletes all of Larry's posts under whatever > his name-of-the-moment may be, I sometimes wonder if I'm missing > some gems hidden in the mass of text. Yeah, he should feel free to include an abstract at the top of his rants (5 lines tops). Or maybe there is a market for a Detweiler-watcher out there to publish a monthly newsletter, or weekly abstracts. I'm not going to suggest a name for that newsletter, thank you :-) Pierre Uszynski pierre(a)shell.portal.com

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Re: anonymous video rental store - Libraries
by Carl M. Kadie 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Out of curiousity, has any ftp-archive maintainer tried to join the >American Library Association, either directly or as part of some >university's library system? I think anyone can join the ALA. Their Office for Intellectual Freedom has run at least one computer censorship item in it's newsletter. The director of the OIF, Dr. Judith Krug (U59587(a)UICVM.uic.edu) was at Computers, Freedom, and Privacy '93. There is a good chance she'll be at CFP '94 since it is in Chicago, her city and ALA headquarters. >It would be an interesting way to start building precedents. Under some state laws, a computer BBS might be called a "library" (depending on how it is run). See references at the end of this note. >Are there any equivalent international or >non-US national library associations that take strong anti-censorship >pro-privacy positions? I don't know of one, but Article 19 is an international anticensorship organization (see refs). - Carl ANNOTATED REFERENCES (All these documents are available on-line. Access information follows.) ================= news/cafv02n16: Message-Id: <1992Mar31.152657.1753(a)eff.org> ================= An article from the Computers and Academic Freedom News 02.16 Note 12 is about the Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom. 12. "One place good place to report censorship incidents is the Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom. Reports here may help increase awareness of, for example, computer-media censorship. The Newsletter only prints reports that are documented with newspaper articles." ================= news/cafv01n27 ================= The eighth note tries to define "library" to see how well term can cover a Netnews service. The note lists the legal definition of "library" for the few states that have such a definition. Indiana's definition seems the best.<1991Sep12.185627.26936(a)eff.org> ================= civil-liberty/anti-censorship.addr ================= * Addresses for Anti-Censorship Organizations Addresses for a number of organizations interested in censorship issues (including Article 19). ================= ================= If you have gopher, you can browse the CAF archive with the command gopher gopher.eff.org These document(s) are also available by anonymous ftp (the preferred method) and by email. To get the file(s) via ftp, do an anonymous ftp to ftp.eff.org (192.77.172.4), and get file(s): pub/Academic/news/cafv02n16 pub/Academic/news/cafv01n27 pub/Academic/civil-liberty/anti-censorship.addr To get the file(s) by email, send email to archive-server(a)eff.org. Include the line(s) (be sure to include the space before the file name): send acad-freedom/news cafv02n16 send acad-freedom/news cafv01n27 send acad-freedom/civil-liberty anti-censorship.addr

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Another groups handling of disruptive people
by hawkwind＠dink.foretune.co.jp 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Subject: Unfairly banned from #anime! From: Casca, bertishg(a)db.erau.edu Date: 26 Dec 1993 12:21:35 -0500 In article <2fkh6v$2f4(a)scorpius.db.erau.edu> Casca, bertishg(a)db.erau.edu writes: > >On Friday, the 24th of December, I logged on to IRC. I joined #anime! >to find that there were only two other people on, [Starman] and Ichijyo. >I did not find this unusual because it was around 12:00 pm Eastern Time. > >I attampted to engage in communication with [Starman] and Ichijyo, but they >were asleep on channel, meaning that they were logged in, but not doing >anything, and were not marked as being away. I left to find better company. > >During the course of the day I joined and left #anime! several times, both >as Casca and in another persona I have for another channel, #vampires, as >Brujah. > >During one of the times I joined as Brujah, I attempted to stimulate >conversation, the lifeblood of IRC. This is what I did: > >*** Brujah (bertishg(a)db.erau.edu) has joined channel #anime! > ><Brujah> hey all > > ** no response ** > >* Brujah slaps [Starman] around for a bit > ><Brujah> Dammit, if you're going to log on channel, either do something or >+ don't bother joining at all! > ><Brujah> shit.... > >*** Brujah has left channel #anime! > > >This is, to the best of my recollection, what occured. I did not have a log >file >running, but with the exception of some of the words not being verbatim, >this is a correct account of what happened. > >I admit that my language was a bit salty. This is due to the fact my Brujah >persona talks like this frequently, and also because I was irritated that these >people were sleeping on channel. > >I then left for greener pastures for a few hours. > >I returned when I noticed that #anime! was beginning to fill with other people. >I logged in, with my nick still Brujah, having forgotten to change it. > >Immediately after logging, on [Starman] confronted my thusly: > ><[Starman]> Hey Brujah, remember this shit? > >and he played the segment of his log where I slapped him around, then made >my statement. > >I was then promptly kicked and banned, without even being given the opportunity >to present my case. I was then messaged by [Starman] as such: > >*[Starman]* I don't know who you are, but you aren't welcome here. > >*[Starman]* BTW, all your msg's are being ignored. > >Again, this is as close as I can remember it. > >I then attempted to communicate with other members of the channel, and finally >my friend Prisoner was able to gain ops and unban me. [Starman] had left by >this time. > > >Thinking this incident was over, I again attempted to join #anime! on 25 Dec, >at app. 1:30 pm EST, as Casca. > >I was kicked as soon as I joined. I rejoined, only to be kicked again. Then >I was banned. > >I then formed the alternate channel #anime in an attempt to begin communication >with [Starman]. I invited my friend Sonida to my channel and explained my case. >He agreed with me. I then invited [Starman] to join in an effort to solve this >dispute in a civilized manner. I was ignored. > >Sonida also tried, and was also ignored. > > >Therefore, all attempts at private resolution of this matter have failed. I >have therefore decided to let popular opinion judge this matter. > >I have mailed copies of this letter to everyone I know, and also posted a copy >to USENET rec.arts.anime in an effort to reach those whom I do not know. > > >My logic is this: > >IT WAS JUST A JOKE, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!! > >Anybody who has seen me spar with Asrial on channel knows I do these actions >only in jest, and I have done far worse to her (I've dropped meteors on her, >thrown her into acid, etc.). But we still remain friends. In fact, I only do >these to those people I feel I have known long enough to be able to goof around >with. > >I could understand this if I had insulted [Starman] or his mother, but for >virtual actions which harm no-one? For attempting to start a conversation on >a chat channel? > >Doesn't this seem like over-reacting to you??? > >Therefore, I bring this before a forum of all those who attend #anime! >regularly, semi-regularly, or those who have only joined once. > >I believe that [Starman] has over-reacted and is acting immaturely by kicking >and banning me without even attempting to work this out. > >I wish to have the ban dropped and be re-admitted to #anime!, for I feel I have >commited no crime. > >My e-mail address is bertishg(a)db.erau.edu > >[Starman]'s e-mail address is ~render1(a)teak.njit.edu > >Please do not hesitate to email me or post your feelings on the matter. > >I wish this problem resolved in a civilized, mature manner. > >Thank you for your time. > >Sincerely, > >-- Casca >(bertishg(a)db.erau.edu) > >******************************************************************************* >* >"No one holds command over me. No man. No god. No Prince. What is a claim of >age for ones who are immortal? What is a claim of power for ones who defy >death? >Call your damnable hunt. We shall see who I drag screaming to hell with me." > -- Gunter Dorn, DAS UNGEHEUER DARIN >******************************************************************************* >* > Subject: Re: Unfairly banned from #anime! From: Lisa Richardson, priss(a)tcp.com Date: 27 Dec 93 00:05:40 GMT In article <priss.756950740(a)tcp.com> Lisa Richardson, priss(a)tcp.com writes: >Actually, net-ettique should be observed. Regardless of your persona, you have >no right to insult a person or make a joke of a person who happens to be idling >on an IRC channel. I may not know a lot about IRC stuff, but as a MUCK Wizard, >I don't go around insulting people who are sleeping on their character. Even >if you want to liven things up, you could leave a question and get a response >later. What you do, gave Starman a justifiable reason to ignore you, because >you 'attacked' him without provocation and without justifyable means other than >him idling on a channel. There is no law against him doing that, but there is >some common decency about being rude to a person who is not on-line. > >-- >Lisa Richardson (aka Priss on about a half dozen MUCKs) >priss(a)glia.biostr.washington.edu and/or priss(a)anime.tcp.com >"Live fast, Die young, and make hearts melt as you go away" - Lisa Richardson >Priss the MUF Wizard of _AnimeMUCK_ at anime.tcp.com (128.95.10.106) 2035

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Benford: Why and Why Not (non-Math-heads: SNOOZE ALERT)
by collins＠newton.apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Howdy, Here is an explanation of why more numbers start with '1' than with '9', how to make a system where that isn't true, and why you don't need to. If you don't like math, you've already extracted everything from this message that you could possibly need. ----- For any integral magnitude x in the range 0..N, there are infinitely many polynomials of the form c_1 b_1^e_1 + c_2 b_2^e_2 + ... + c_L b_L^e_L = x c_i, b_i, e_i integers. This is trivially provable given the single term (x b_1^0), in combination with all the possible terms where c_i = 0. Let us distinguish polynomials of a form where, for terms i and j, i != j: 1. b_i = j_i 2. e_i = L-i 3. b_i^e_i <= x 4. 0 <= c_i < b_i Condition 1 allows only polynomials where b is the same for every term. Condition 2 allows only polynomials whose terms are in strictly decreasing order by the exponent, and contain every integral exponent from L-1 downto 0. Condition 3 ensures that the c_1 != 0. These four conditions, restrict the set of polynomials that can represent x, for any B such that b_i=B, to 1. These conditions are, in fact, the 'normalization' rules for representing numbers as strings of symbols, in any base B. Since B can be assumed, and e_i adduced, any x can be represented by concatenating symbols drawn from an alphabet of size B, representing the magnitudes 0..B-1 according to c_i. When B=10, and the alphabet is { '0'=0, '1'=1, '2'=2, ... '9'=9 }, we call this the decimal system. Consider the journey of x as it goes from 0 to B^(i+1)-1. It has to progress from 0 to B^i-1 to 2B^i-1 to B^(i+1)-1. Graph(?) A: B^(i-1)-1 (B^i)-1 (2B^i)-1 (B^(i+1))-1 |..........|..........|........................................| R r S s T t R' Distance r = s = B^i. Distance t = (B-2)B^i. These three 'legs' of x's journey represent, starting with s, a contiguous range of representations beginning with '1', t, a contiguous range of representations _not_ starting with '1', and r, a range 1/B the size we are disecting, which is itself divided in the same proportions. Thus, from S to T, the fraction of strings beginning with '1' increases to (about) 1/2, and from T to R' it decreases to 1/B. And since r is a minor copy of rst, at R and S, the fraction must be 1/B. So, for any period, the fraction rises to 1/2 in time s, and falls to 1/B in time (B-2)s. Consider the normalized decimal representations of integers drawn from the range [0,N]. When N=1, the set in question is {'0', '1'} of which 1/2 begin with '1'. As N goes to 9, eight strings are added to the set, none of which begin with '1', thus, at N=9, only 1/10 of the sets elements begin with '1'. As N goes to 19, the fraction swings quickly back up to 1/2. As N goes to 99, the fraction drops, again, more slowly (8 times more slowly), to 1/10. On a log graph, this behavior is a saw-tooth pattern: Graph B: . . . . . . 0.5 ....*.........*.........*.......... . * . * . * p . * *. * *. * . * . * . * 0.1 ............*.........*.........*.. * . . . . . N . 0 1 19 199 1999 Note that this graph describes properties of a representation for numbers. That is, this is the graph of a distribution of strings, not of integers. A different representation would yield a different behavior. Consider the graph of log_B(N). Here the x-axis is N, the y-axis log_B(N), and it is graphed on log_B, paper as '*'s: Graph C: 3 - +---------* | * 2 - +---------* | * 1 - +---------* | * 0 - * | | | | B^0 B^1 B^2 B^3 Ceiling(log_B(N)), shown in the graph with lines, is the length of the base B representation of N. This shows that even if the 'unfair first digit' problem were avoided by a different representation, any log based distribution would still exhibit a similar problem in string _lengths_. i.e., only 1/B of all strings from 0..N are shorter than log_b(N): an 'unfair distribution of lengths'. For a flat distribution of strings, you require a representation scheme where, for any N, 1/B strings begin with a_i (a symbol from B's alphabet), and for range of allowable lengths of strings in the scheme (1..L), for any l, the number of strings for numbers in N is the same. Here are two such schemes. 'Base-1' representation: the alphabet has one symbol, any magnitude x is represented by x concatenated instances of the symbol. The first property is satisfied because the alphabet has 1 symbol, and 1/1 of the strings from 1..N begin with that symbol. The second property is satisfied because the allowable lengths vary from 1..N, and for each length, only one string exists of that length, thus every possible length has the name number of strings. Fixed length representation: All numbers from 0..N, N = B^L, are represented by strings of length L comprising symbols from B's alphabet, constructed according to the normalization rules but replacint condition 3 with the rule e_i=L-(i+1) (forcing all strings to be the same length). The second property is satisfied because there is only one allowable length. The first property is satisfied, because, since N=B^L, every distinct string of length L of symbols from B's alphabet is a valid number in this representation, and of those strings, for any position p in the string, including p=0 (the first symbol), 1/B of the strings will symbol a_i in that position. An example of this scheme is a byte of computer memory used to hold magnitudes from 0..255. But, since the 'Base-1' scheme doesn't exhibit the predictability problem of our normalized decimal system, and is a dramatically 'real' representation of numbers (although inconvenient) one might guess that even if one can predict features of representations, it does not necessarily follow that such a prediction can be exploited into guessing the number itself. Something near half of all decimal representations begin with a symbol from { '1', '2', '3' }, but that doesn't actually help me guess the next number, just make some predictions about its representation. This is, in fact the case. Our normalized log-based representation schemes are 'unfair' in the distribution of strings, essentially using all the 'good' ones first (for oft' used small numbers). The further out we go, the longer strings we need, and the log distrubition problem surfaces. But for any range, the actual (formless) magnitudes themselves are evenly distributed, in spite of what you might guess from our biased strings. Thus, Benford distribution is the kernel of a great bar bet, but an unlikely alley in predicting the underlying magnitudes. ----- Fractals? Well, r is a 'little copy' of rst. Chaos theory? No. How about just some good basic algebra (OK, a little calculus if you want to calculate the area under under the curve in Graph B, and from that, the amount to bet at the bar). Hope you enjoyed this, Scott Collins | "Few people realize what tremendous power there | is in one of these things." -- Willy Wonka ......................|................................................ BUSINESS. voice:408.862.0540 fax:974.6094 collins(a)newton.apple.com Apple Computer, Inc. 5 Infinite Loop, MS 305-2B Cupertino, CA 95014 ....................................................................... PERSONAL. voice/fax:408.257.1746 1024:669687 catalyst(a)netcom.com

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