December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: The Coming Police State
by Eric Johnson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

: James Bamford has been : quoted as saying that he could fill an entire new book with the machination : of the Surveillance State. Does anyone know what James Bamford is up to these days? Any chance he will write such a book? --Eric

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Re: 2nd CJ update
by smb＠research.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Looks like the stalling tactics have begun. I just got a phone call from "Susan Shea" from the National Security Agency. She said that to "make a better determination" she would need a copy of the diskette. I explained (as I had in my written request) that the diskette in question contained exactly the same source code as was printed in Part 5 of the book Applied Cryptography, byte for byte. But she claimed that as she did not have a copy of that, she would still need the diskette. Right. The NSA doesn't have a copy of Applied Cryptography, and has never seen one. Yet, apparently, they signed off on my original CJ request to export the printed book (the State letter mentions comments from the Department of Defense, which is always a code phrase for the NSA in such situations). It's not that ``NSA'' doesn't have the book; it's that that office may not. Or at least, making that claim isn't totally beyond the realm of possibility. As for the original request -- they *don't* want to rule that a book needs a license, of any sort; it opens them up to judges who understand books but not floppies. (Let me commend to this audience Kenneth Pierce's paper ``Public Cryptography, Arms Export Controls, and the First Amendment: A Need for Legislation'', Cornell International Law Journal vol. 17, 1984, pp. 197--236 -- it's a very good summary of the legal issues. Though the details of the ITAR have changed, the underlying legal theories have not.) Sigh. I will send it off to them. This should buy them about two days, unless I get really extravagant and switch from Priority Mail to Express Mail... Phil PS. Does anybody consider it odd that someone from the NSA would actually identify themselves as such? My impression is that they've realized that that game is a bit stupid at this point, and that they're giving up on unnecessary secrecy.

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Re: The Coming Police State
by smb＠research.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

<tcmay> writes: >> prepared me for my later role as a hunted CyberFelon. ("Shockwave" is >> also credited by many to be one of the first mentions of "worms" in >> computers....though Brunner may've been talking to folks at Xerox >> PARC...wormly cross-fertilization.) and I digress wildly: Mid-November, 1988, after the great Morris Worm Stomp[1], a bunch of people who'd helped hunt the Worm were invited to the NCSC[2] to give talks at a "Post-Mortem", as it were. The MIT and Berkeley crowds had the most real technical data on it[3], though at least one of the government labs had done a fair job at decompiling it. The relevant part was that while the NCSC didn't have much useful info on the Worm itself[4] they had *categorized* it, and among their spiffy color slides, they had a "taxonomy" slide which surprised me by including Brunner's worm. The NCSC seems to officially credit Brunner as the first literature reference to the idea... Personally, I give the credit to David Gerrold, in ``When Harlie Was One''. Here's a netnews posting of mine that explains my reasoning.

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What's so bad about a Surveillance State?
by jim＠bilbo.suite.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It is obvious to me that many people in the government wish to turn the US into a surveillance state. What wrong with that? Seems like a lot of good could come from it. Now that I have you're attention... E-mail me your reasons why a surveillance state is a good thing or a bad thing. I will summarize both the pros and cons and repost them to the list. Jim_Miller(a)suite.com

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Re: Improvement of remailer security
by Black Unicorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

->\ I think the recent death-threat-to-Clinton desaster has made clear that the remailers we have are not very secure, mainly because incoming and outgoing mail seems to be monitored at many sites. <- Wait, the threat was posted with a remailer? I heard about the threat, not the remailer.... Details? -uni- (Dark)

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2nd CJ update
by Phil Karn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Looks like the stalling tactics have begun. I just got a phone call from "Susan Shea" from the National Security Agency. She said that to "make a better determination" she would need a copy of the diskette. I explained (as I had in my written request) that the diskette in question contained exactly the same source code as was printed in Part 5 of the book Applied Cryptography, byte for byte. But she claimed that as she did not have a copy of that, she would still need the diskette. Right. The NSA doesn't have a copy of Applied Cryptography, and has never seen one. Yet, apparently, they signed off on my original CJ request to export the printed book (the State letter mentions comments from the Department of Defense, which is always a code phrase for the NSA in such situations). Sigh. I will send it off to them. This should buy them about two days, unless I get really extravagant and switch from Priority Mail to Express Mail... Phil PS. Does anybody consider it odd that someone from the NSA would actually identify themselves as such?

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Re: The Agency Whose Name May Not Be Spoken
by lefty＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>(Prior to the 1980s, mention of NSA was rarely made. Employees of NSA >didn't mention it, and "Fort George Meade" was the only thing >mentioned. Prior to the mid-70s, the NSA name never even appeared in >Congressional budgets or reports. Its existence was very widely known, >though.) As Bamford mentions in _The Puzzle Palace_, it was, in fact, a Federal offense for NSA employees to state that they worked for the NSA up until, I believe, the mid-to-late-70s. The standing joke in Washington was that "NSA" stood for "No Such Agency". -- Lefty (lefty(a)apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.

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Re: Surveillance cameras
by gtoal＠an-teallach.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

: From: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay(a)netcom.com> : Most American airports, especially those with international : connections, routinely videotape all passengers. I can't cite a source : for this, but I think it's common knowledge (not that this means its : true). : The recent film "The Pelican Brief" has this as a plot device, with a : terrorist captured on tape on his departure to Paris. : Paranoid note: Ear shapes are said to be a fairly unique : characteristic, hard to disguise, and easy for computers to process ( : a line scan). This may mean the return of long hair. (No wonder Biometric technology, unfortunately, is advancing too rapidly :-( New Scientist this week ran a story on how the US is investing in a new system which takes a 'heat print' of your face. You can be sure your face will go on file next time you enter the US through immigration. They say that the IR photo of your face is much much harder to fool even with cosmetic surgery. I guess you'd have to implant popsicles under your forehead or something :-( G

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2nd CJ update
by mpd＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Phil Karn <karn(a)unix.ka9q.ampr.org> writes: > (the State letter mentions comments from the Department of Defense, > which is always a code phrase for the NSA in such situations). > PS. Does anybody consider it odd that someone from the NSA would > actually identify themselves as such? Maybe the agency is getting less paranoid now that it is more publicly known. Back in the early '80s, everyone working there used to say only that they worked for the Department of Defense. I also recall that they used to get quite upset if you called someone's phone inside the agency and said the words "National Security Agency" while talking to them. They answered their phones by simply saying "Hello" and gave no other identifying information. Now they probably have a public relations department. :) -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.3a Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

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Re: money...
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sandy writes: > On Wed, 9 Mar 1994, David L Womack wrote: > > . . . The rumor is > > that it is possible to detect, at a modest > > distance, the existance of and the amount > > of currancy being carried. Thus, if a person Seems nonsensical. Detectors of money containing trace amounts of magnetized metals would have real trouble with other magnetized metal going by, and they're not going to stop people at airports to check whether they're carrying lots of currency or a book snuck out of the library without getting *lots* of abuse from business travellers. Once we've had our National Health ID Smart Cards upgraded to non-privte digicash, maybe they'll think about adding transponders... > *IF* this is true, you will probably still have > the "Taco Bell" solution available to you for the > foreseeable future ("Run for the Border"). > When that gets shut down, there will still be > private aircraft and private yachts. About 5 years ago, the government put a "luxury tax" on boats; you had to get a registration sticker for any size boat that a rational individual might use to get in/out of the country. My immediate reaction was that it was for identifying who might be escaping or smuggling drugs or illegal immigrants. The tax was small, maybe $25, but they could ding you for not having the sticker on your boat. There was some effort by boaters to get rid of it, but I think it's still there. ("Rational individual", above, doesn't count people immigrating from Cuba on windsurfers :-) Bill

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