December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

radio security through obscurity
by Tom Keenan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thanks to the 2 dozen or so people who gave me interviews at CFP94. As I mentioned the primary purpose of them is for a CBC Radio segment to be aired on "Sunday Morning" (which many NPR stations carry.) I think I told you that it would air on Easter Sunday but I now realize the show is pre-empted so it will be some other Sunday. i will put the exact time in the list when I have it. As for TV coverage I am going to do an open-line phone in show on CFP related things on CBC's NEWSWORLD network. The airdate for that is (live of course) 1230-1300 MST (and local equivalent) Thursday April 7/94. Would love to have some intelligent phone calls. The 1-800 number (not sure what it is offhand) is Canada only but somehow I don't think that will be much of a barrier! Cheers, Tom -- Dr. Tom Keenan, I.S.P. Dean, Faculty of Continuing Education University of Calgary 2500 University Dr. NW Calgary, AB T2N 1N4 CANADA Voice: (403) 220-5429 FAX: (403) BUG-EXIT = 284-3948

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Cerf calls for "international cryptography standard"
by Eli Brandt 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Subject: E-d-u-p-a-g-e 03/29/94 > INTERNET STILL VULNERABLE > Testimony at a House Subcommittee on Science indicates that threats to > Internet security should be viewed as on-going rather than isolated events. > Internet Society President Vinton Cerf says that development and use of an > international encryption standard is the only reliable solution to the > problem. (Chronicle of Higher Education 3/30/94 A22) He's right, but I'd like to think he doesn't have Clipper/Capstone in mind. Oh, I'll throw this in too: > SOFTWARE REPLACES SPORTSWRITERS > A $100 software program called Sportswriter is capable of churning out > reasonably good sports copy by intelligently stringing together words > between facts. Some 80 small newspapers in the Midwest have purchased the > program and are using it to cover high school sports events. (Wall Street > Journal 3/29/94 A1) Eli ebrandt(a)hmc.edu finger for PGP key.

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questions for the NRC crypto committee...
by Herb Lin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The NRC crypto study is a study of national cryptography policy intended to lay down a framework for the long term; this study was ordered by the U.S. Congress and will be launched this summer (we hope). It is not focused on any particular technology such as Clipper, Skipjack, or Tessera, though the study committee will be addressing these and other technologies as necessary. Thus, it is different from the review committee charged with examining Clipper. Indeed, the composition of the NRC study committee has not been determined at this time. This committee will still be soliciting input from the community, and the offer I made earlier stands -- If you (and other cypherpunks) have questions you think the NRC committee should be asking regarding the formulation of crypto policy, please forward them to me. tnx herb lin Computer Science and Telecommunications Board National Research Council National Academy of Sciences *** Bellovin writes: A useful exercise for this group might be to compile a list of questio ns that they *should* answer if they're playing it straight. These could be forwarded to the review committee, too. If we come up with a good list, I'm willing to submit it to them. **** As the guy staffing the NRC's review project of national cryptography policy, I encourage you (and other cypherpunks) to do so. Please forward to me the questions you think the review panel should be asking. So that your q uestions stand out, please put in the subject line: Crypto panel question thanks.. herb lin Do you want to collect the questions or should I? I volunteered because I know 3 of the 5 committee members.

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Stanford,CA Clipper debate Wed 30Mar: Rotenberg vs. Asst US Atty
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry for the late notice; I just found out today: ... I saw this notice at the law school yesterday ... "Encryption and digital communications: law enforcement or privcacy? An Oxford-style depate with J. Kent Walker, Assistant US Attorney and Coordinator, high-tech task force; and Marc Rotenberg, Wash. Director, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibiltiy Wed. March 30 at 5:30 Stanford Law school room 290

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Re: the rest of the key
by Graham Toal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I was just wondering.... If the NSA could get it's hands on half >(40) of any particular clipper key, wouldn't that just leave 2^40 >to compute? Even with brute force, it's trivial even next to DES. "half" is a a random number which is XOR'd with 80 bits. Both halves look random. The XOR of the two halves is not. Oh yes, and the guy who is asking the spooks about the technical stuff - be sure to find out where this 80-bit random number comes from and where it goes when it's been used... Anyone who knows the split-pattern only needs to subvert *one* of the escrow agencies. G

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Quantum Physics
by W. Kinney 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Choate is making a lot of strange statements, but I'm picking this one: > First off, EM fields are NOT QM. Sure they are, in Quantum Electrodynamics, which is the quantum-mechanical theory of electromagnetism. > They do have some characteristics which > 'bleed' over form the Quark level. Quarks have nothing whatsoever to do with electromagnetic fields, except that they carry charge. >Also since EM fields are made of > hardons [sic ;-)] No. Protons and neutrons are hadrons. Hadron comes from the (Greek?) word for "heavy", lepton from "light". The distinction you're trying to make here is that matter fields are _fermions_, with spins an integral multiple of 1/2, and gauge fields (like photons) are bosons, with integral spin. Both hadrons and leptons are fermions. >and not leptons (which an electron is) may blow a hole in this > approach since leptons do not follow the same sort of charge conservation > rules as hadrons. Charge conservation applies to everybody. Hadrons, leptons, everybody. Even your mother. Perhaps you're thinking of the fact that bosons and fermions obey different spin-statistics rules. > > As to infinite precision and its non-presence....Beeep....wrong answer... > > Electrons change state in zero time, this implies at least some form o f > infinite precision (otherwise how does the system know the difference between > zero and some small-o value?). I suspect this is another error based on > the implied (and incorrect) implication in this line of discussion that > hadrons and leptons use the same rules. What? Not that this is the appropriate list for particle physics, but this kind of semi-mystical expounding on how quantum mechanics forces you to rethink all the rules is better science fiction than science. QM _does_ include some spooky things, but by and large they are subtle and limited -- for instance, the "faster than light communication" implied by spin-polarization measurements cannot be used to transmit information. It's a purely statistical effect, and it does _not_ violate relativity. Nothing I've ever heard of in QM invalidates assumptions one might make about computability or the properties Turing machines. Stuff like Roger Penrose comes up with in _The Emperor's New Mind_ is speculation, and he clearly labeled it as such in his book. Don't take it too seriously. -- Will

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Re: Crypto and new computing strategies
by Peter Wayner 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Analog computers have very different behaviors than digital computers. I believe that it is possible to find the longest path in a graph merely by building a string model of it which takes O(n) time. This is rusty. Some guys have also build an analog machine that can solve 3SAT problems in linear time. They surmise, though, that the machine must be built with precision that is exponential in the number of terms. I.e. it won't work. I would assume that any QM machines will _not_ be exclusively digital. This is the easiest programming model, but someone may come up with a better one. -Peter

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Secure MPEG ???
by danisch＠ira.uka.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hello, does anyone know what's "Secure MPEG" and how it works? Of course it must have something to do with security and mpeg compression, but I am looking for details and specs. thanks Hadmut

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Anti-Clipper leaflet at government expo
by System Operator 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is a few days late, but in a going through the stack of items I picked up at the FOSE show in Washington, DC, last week, I found a 3 inch by 5 inch yellow flyer with the following message: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- STOP THE CLIPPER CHIP! For more info Before it's too late: [ fist with two lightning bolts ] CYBER RIGHTS NOW! Electronic Frontier Foundation - membership(a)eff.org Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility - cpsr.info(a)cpsr.org WIRED's infobot - infobot(a)wired.com "get help" in msg body Read the April 1994 issue of WIRED Concerned Cyberdykes for Electronic Freedom Not associated with WIRED, EFF, or CPSR ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Someone was busy with a copy machine. The FOSE show was a particularly good choice -- the vast majority of attendees were government employees, presumably the ones most likely to be using Clipper. Dan -- system(a)decode.UUCP (System Operator) Cryptography, Security, Privacy BBS +1 410 730 6734 Data/FAX

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The Focus on Clipper Details Plays into Their Hands
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I believe the focus on Clipper/Skipjack details and technical issues plays into the hands of those who want to deploy these systems. * By concentrating on issues of key length, escrow details, availability of the chips, etc., attention is shifted from the real issue--the mandatory use of Clipper (probably) and why this is so wrong--to the issue of _practicality_. * If the issue becomes _practicality_ instead of _ethicality_, then we ultimately lose, I fear. Any criticisms we successfully raise can be more or less responded to by the NSA, Denning, Sternlight, and so on. Then we'll look for new practical problems, and the chase will continue. Meanwhile, Clipper will be that much furhter along. * My response when people ask me about arcane details of key length, family keys, etc., is to just _snort_ and shake my head and say: "Who cares? I don't plan to use it." * I'm really not slamming those on this list who are actual experts on the Clipper system, as much as anyone outside the NSA can be of course. Their intelligent comments, their poking of holes, and so forth, has been useful. * My concern is that too much attention can be focussed on a fundamentally wrong idea, much like the syndrome of the pilot of an aircraft staring at his altimeter and tapping it furiously as he crashes. * If, for example, the Cypherpunks and others help to compile a list of questions about Clipper (and recall that we did just that about a year ago) and then these questions are answered or otherwise dealt with, where does this leave us? In my opinion, the very notion that one's private keys have to "escrowed" with the local cops is ethically flawed. If the proposal were that house keys had to be escrowed, or that personal diaries had to be escrowed, would we be debating the technical details of what kinds of envelopes the diaries would be sealed in? Granted, Cypherpunks is a techncally-oriented group, more so than legally or politically oriented (though most of us are politically aware and motivated by ideology), and so we have a store of knowledge about crypto that most folks don't have. Hence a focus on Clipper's arcane details is to be expected. But let's be sure it doesn't divert us away from a prinicple rejection of the whole concept of key escrow. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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