December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Bobby Inman
by karn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In case you haven't been following the news for the past two days or so, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin has resigned, and Clinton has already nominated Bobby Inman, a retired 4-star Navy admiral, as his replacement. Inman was NSA director during the Carter administration. He is probably best known for his outspoken calls for draconian laws regulating private cryptography. He wanted all cryptographic research, public or private, to be "born classified", just like nuclear weapons, with NSA given authority over all publications. He lost, of course, but his becoming Secretary of Defense just as the issue of private crypto regulation is coming to a head again does not bode well at all. Phil

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Re: Bobby Inman
by Pierre Uszynski 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There was some mentions that he spend some time in the private sector since "then". Anybody knows what he was doing? Pierre Uszynski pierre(a)shell.portal.com

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Is VIACrypt PGP authorized for use byPKP?
by Syl Miniter 803-768-3759 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I would appreciate some commentary as to whether the VIACRYPT PGP MSDOS package is licensed for use by PKP (Public Key Partners). It is my belief that it is.

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Writable CD-ROMS as one-time pads
by trestrab＠GVSU.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is there anything inherently superior about CD-ROMs as a one-time pad ? The size differential vis a vis Bernouli drive cartridges, floptical disk drives, or just plain old floppy disks is kind of a mixed blessing, and still doesn't answer the major question with one-time pads - secure dissemination. Jeff

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Digital Telephony Threat Returns
by jim＠Tadpole.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Digital Telephony Threat Returns According to FBI Dir. Louis Freeh, the development of sophisticated digital telecom and networking technology threatens the ability of the Feds to wiretap. In a Dec. 8 speech at Washington's National Press Club, Freeh annouced a renewal of the FBI's 'Digital Telephony' legislation scheme: the return of the controverial 'Wiretap Bill'. The bill is strongly opposed by organizations and individuals concerned about privacy, as well as the telecommunications and computing industries at large. The FBI's 'need' for this legislative action is under review by the Administration as part of its examination of security and encryption issues. The reappearance of this Bureau effort contradicts statements by Special Agent Barry Smith of the FBI's Congressional Affairs Office, who stated less than a month ago that the 'Wiretap Bill' had been tabled. According to classified documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the FBI and the Electronic Communications Service Provider Committee or ECSPC (an ad hoc industry working group, which formed in March), are attempting to decide if technical solutions can be found to satisify law enforcement. According to a Nynex representative co-chairing the group, Kenneth Raymond, no solution has yet been found, but that FBI has yet to prove any solution is needed at all. Raymond likened Freeh's tactics to "yelling out the window" - an attention-getting move that needs some sort of clarifying followup. Though the ECSPC claims to be attempting to evaluate the problem and to solve it "in some reasonable way that is consistent with cost and demand", Raymond indicated that the group considers one 'solution' to be building wiretap access into future telecom hardware - like the Clipper chip backdoor, but a 'feature' of all switch specifications for phone and data lines. This news was just received, and a more detailed analysis and statement from EFF will follow soon.

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Re: Program to circumvent the Sep 1 Legal Kludge part 1/5
by Tom Jennings 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Tue, 23 Aug 1994 0x7CF5048D@nowhere wrote: > This is a 5 part binary=noklg.zip > Please make publicly available. put on BBS's, public ftp sites. > part 1/5. Can you please stop mailing me these unidentifyable, undecodable files from a person I cannot identify, nor detect the reason for the anonymity? Maybe if there was an explanation as to why I should bother to play with all this, I would understand. As my telepathy seems to not be working right now, you'll have to write it in plain english (lame monolanguage american). Thanks. PS: You misspelled 'cypherpunks' in the Reply-to field, which is where this seems to be going, and I'm sure my reply to the list will annoy everyone. Take it out on the anonymous bulk-mailer person. Tom Jennings -- tomj(a)wps.com -- World Power Systems -- San Francisco, Calif.

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Radiation experiments & not trusting gov
by Mike Ingle 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>I find the recent disclosures concerning U.S. Government testing of >the effects of radiation on unknowing human subjects to be yet more >evidence that you simply cannot trust the government with your own >personal safety. I was disgusted but not particularly surprised to read about these experiments. It's been known for many years that they deliberately exposed troops to atomic fallout and chemical weapons to determine their effects. They also tested LSD, mind control, and truth drugs on unsuspecting human lab rats. >Some people, given positions of power, will naturally >abuse those positions, often even if such abuse could cause severe >injury or death. Unfortunately, these people are exactly the type who seek power, and the culture of militarism and secrecy helps them to ignore any small amount of humanity they might otherwise have. >I see little reason, therefore, to simply "trust" the >U.S. government -- and given that the U.S. government is about as good >as they get, its obvious that NO government deserves the blind trust >of its citizens. What country has ever fallen because of too little oppression, too few prisoners, too little espionage on the people, or too much freedom? >"Trust us, we will protect you" rings quite hollow in >the face of historical evidence. Citizens must protect and preserve >their own privacy -- the government and its centralized cryptographic >schemes emphatically cannot be trusted. Most people know that; they just don't know what to do about it. I have the Time magazine from 1985 announcing Gorbachev's rise to power in the Soviet Union. They interviewed several Russians. Their attitudes were very much like Americans' today: yes, we know it is screwed up, but what can anyone do about it? Public anger grows quietly and explodes suddenly. T.C. May's "phase change" may be closer than we think. Nobody in Russia in 1985 really thought the country would fall apart in 6 years. Politics has never given anyone lasting freedom, and it never will. Anything gained through politics will be lost again as soon as the society feels threatened. If most Americans have never been oppressed by the government (aside from an annual mugging) it is because most of them have never done anything to threaten the government's interests. For example, much of the progress that's been made against media censorship is in danger of being lost in the hysteria over violence. But could the government ban a book today? Of course not, at least not after one person typed it or scanned it into a computer. Technological gains are permanent. The political approach is only useful as a tactical weapon, to hold them off until technological solutions are in place. If you want to change the world, don't protest. Write code! --- Mike

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Re: Radiation experiments & not trusting gov
by doug＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mike Ingle <MIKEINGLE(a)delphi.com> said: >I was disgusted but not particularly surprised to read about these >experiments. It's been known for many years that they deliberately >exposed troops to atomic fallout and chemical weapons to determine >their effects. They also tested LSD, mind control, and truth drugs >on unsuspecting human lab rats. I agree with Perry, and even more with what Mike there. Considering that such *has* been well known for so many years, I was a little bit startled at the current media reaction to the radiation experiments. Did they only just wake up or something? Or more likely, it's just been a few years since the media has had the opportunity to make a fuss over such things, so now it's "fresh news" again, as if that category of things had never happened before. BTW on the subject of how much was known about the long term effects of low level radiation exposure 4 or 5 decades ago: *LOTS*! Let us not forget that the nuclear age was not ushered in during WWII; decades prior to that it was well known that prolonged exposure to low level radiation could cause hideous cases of cancer. Remember the radium elixer cases? The luminous watchdial painters? (I think the latter came up twice; once early on with radium-based pigments, and again later with tritium.) What did Madame Curie die of? Even Roentgen got cancer from x-raying his hand so much. That's a bit of a digression, but people seem to forget, so there it is for the record. >Unfortunately, these people are exactly the type who seek power, and >the culture of militarism and secrecy helps them to ignore any small >amount of humanity they might otherwise have. True enough, but that doesn't really explain why the participating *physicians* did it. Probably 50% callousness and 50% willful ignorance, I would guess. >If you want to change the world, don't protest. Write code! I've been quiet here the last few months because that's what I mainly do. :-) Doug Merritt

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CFS source code available January 12
by Matt Blaze 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Source code for version 1.0 of CFS, the Cryptographic File System, will be distributed upon request in the United States starting on January 12, 1994. CFS pushes encryption services into the Unix(tm) file system. CFS supports secure storage at the system level through a standard Unix file system interface to encrypted files. Users associate a cryptographic key with the directories they wish to protect. Files in these directories (as well as their pathname components) are transparently encrypted and decrypted with the specified key without further user intervention; cleartext is never stored on a disk or sent to a remote file server. CFS employs a novel combination of DES stream and codebook cipher modes to provide high security with good performance on a modern workstation. CFS can use any available file system for its underlying storage without modification, including remote file servers such as NFS. System management functions, such as file backup, work in a normal manner and without knowledge of the key. CFS runs under SunOS and several other BSD-derived systems with NFS. It is implemented entirely at user level, as a local NFS server running on the client machine's "loopback" interface. It consists of about 5000 lines of code and supporting documentation. CFS was first mentioned at the work-in-progress session at the Winter '93 USENIX Conference and was more fully detailed in: Matt Blaze, "A Cryptographic File System for Unix", Proc. 1st ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, Fairfax, VA, November 1993. (PostScript available by anonymous ftp from research.att.com in the file dist/mab/cfs.ps. The version being released differs from the version described in the paper in a few ways: * The encryption scheme has been strengthened, and now provides approximately the security of 3-DES with the online latency of only single-DES. * Support for the smartcard-based key management system is not included. * A few of the tools are not included (in particular, cname and ccat). * The performance has been improved. * The security of the system against certain non-cryptanalytic attacks has been improved somewhat. CFS is being distributed as COMPLETELY UNSUPPORTED software. No warranty of any kind is provided. We will not be responsible if it deletes all your files and emails the cleartext directly to the NSA or your mother. Also, we do not have the resources to port the software to other platforms, although you are welcome to do this yourself. (Note in particular that CFS has not been tested on either Solaris or Linux, and we have no plans ourselves to support either of these systems.) We really can't promise to provide any technical support at all, beyond the source code itself. Because of export restrictions on cryptographic software, we are only able to make the software available within the US to US citizens and permanent residents. Unfortunately, we cannot make it available for general anonymous ftp or other uncontrolled access, nor can we allow others to do so. Sorry. Legal stuff from the README file: * Copyright (c) 1992, 1993, 1994 by AT&T. * Permission to use, copy, and modify this software without fee * is hereby granted, provided that this entire notice is included in * all copies of any software which is or includes a copy or * modification of this software and in all copies of the supporting * documentation for such software. * * This software is subject to United States export controls. You may * not export it, in whole or in part, or cause or allow such export, * through act or omission, without prior authorization from the United * States government and written permission from AT&T. In particular, * you may not make any part of this software available for general or * unrestricted distribution to others, nor may you disclose this software * to persons other than citizens and permanent residents of the United * States. * * THIS SOFTWARE IS BEING PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED * WARRANTY. IN PARTICULAR, NEITHER THE AUTHORS NOR AT&T MAKE ANY * REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY OF ANY KIND CONCERNING THE MERCHANTABILITY * OF THIS SOFTWARE OR ITS FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE. If you would like a copy of the CFS source code, please send email to: cfs(a)research.att.com DO NOT REPLY TO DIRECTLY TO THIS MESSAGE. Be sure to include a statement that you are in the United States, are a citizen or permanent resident of the US, and have read and understand the license conditions stated above. Also include an email address in a US-registered domain, and say whether you'd also like to be included on a developer/user mailing list that is being set up. For a number of reasons, I am unable actually send out code until January 12, 1994. Unless you specify some other format, you'll get a uuencoded compressed tarfile. I'll be at the January USENIX conference in San Francisco, and will announce CFS at the WIP session there. -matt

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trust your government
by Brad Dolan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Re. government radiation experiments, radium dial painters, & Marie Curie. Many of the radium dial painters received _stupendous_ doses. So, I surmise, did Marie Curie. Marie Curie, unlike many of the dial painters, lived to a relatively ripe old age. She might done better if she hadn't added the dose of a zillion X-rays to the dose from her internal radium burden. Interestingly, her husband was killed when he was run over by a horse-drawn cart. Anyway, the recent revelations should remind anyone who needs it how much trust should be accorded government. I'll stop preaching to the converted. Regards, bdolan(a)well.sf.ca.us

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