December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Unicorn vs. tmp@netcom
by Cyber City 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Recently Black Unicorn posted that he had sued tmp@netcom, and settled out of court. A couple of messages followed which were supportive of his action. The text below is a rebuke to Unicorn. I post it in the hope that it will provide dimension to the debate. To Black Unicorn: Once upon a time, two strangers found a dog. Alice said, "That's my dog: I can clearly tell by its markings". Bob said, "No, I'm afraid you're mistaken. See his ears pick up when I call his name". And so the debate continued, until a third person, Sol, arrived. On hearing the pleadings of Bob and Alice, Sol told them, "Stand 10 meters apart and put the dog between you". Sol the scared the dog with a quick movement and a shout, and the dog ran to its true master. Likewise, when you were tested recently by net abuse, you went for relief to your master, the government. This is what distinguishes you from the rest of us. We might react against the abuse (or we might not), but I think that none of us - or at least a very few - would have gone to court for relief. "I spoke to a Federal Court of Appeals Judge who I have known for a number of years to try and poke some holes in the suit on substantive merits." Despite your protestation, "I also don't like to be a bully", it seems to me that your pursuit of this case was predicated on your ability to be a bully and an insider. Like your colleagues Cantor and Seigel, you emitted flamebait and then pretended offense at the inevitable flames. You taunted tmp@netcom about his illness, reminding him at least three times in one message to take his medicine. Nice behaviour for a person who supposedly believes in privacy. It seems to me that you sized up tmp@netcom as a person who could not fight back due to his illness, and then you provoked him in order to establish grounds for your suit. I believe that your case, which is apparently based upon testimony from your friends, could not have succeeded in court. But it didn't have to, did it? You only had to find someone who was ill, and then kick him while he was down. Was it Rousseau who said, "First, we kill all the lawyers"? The cost of a lawsuit in the U.S. today can easily be over $100,000. The cost of a contract murder is said to be $10,000-$50,000. Consider the economics. I think there is a role to be played by lawyers in the future of the net. The net does not like litigation, because it interferes with the free flow of information. But it does like protocols, which are seen to enhance the flow of information. Lawyers, by their training and practice, are especially good at formulating workable protocols. If we had a protocol governing the use of network resources by sick or abusive users, your conflict with tmp@netcom might not have transpired, or else a solution might have been easily achieved. Conflicts like this are resulting in conversion of newsgroups on Usenet to moderated groups - a very unfortunate trend in my opinion, as Usenet does not provide for the removal of moderators. Here is a proper outlet for legal talent, not in self-serving time-wasting resource-absorbing litigation. -- Alex Brock

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(fwd) Re: NSA Helped Yeltsin Foil 1991 Coup
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

An interesting article by Seymour Hersh is cited below. It says that NSA had transcripts of the 1991 coup plotters (and presumably other Russian leaders) and that Bush passed these on to Yeltsin to warn him. If true, a serious compromise of NSA's listening capabilities. Also note the reference to how the coup plotters should've been using PGP. (Prediction: something along these lines will be added to the list of reasons why PGP is bad and Clipper is good..."We need to have Escrowed Coup Plotter Encryption so that we can examine the messages of coup plotters.") --Tim May From: guym@gamma1 (Guy MacArthur) Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk Subject: Re: NSA Helped Yeltsin Foil 1991 Coup Date: 20 May 1994 01:45:54 GMT Organization: University of Arizona, CCIT Lines: 47 Distribution: world Message-ID: <2rh4oi$p2s(a)news.CCIT.Arizona.EDU> ben(a)il.us.swissbank.com (Ben Galewsky) writes: : There is an article on the front page of today's "Independent", a British : daily newspaper. The headline is "US Agents Helped Yeltsin Break Coup". : : It describes how Bush passed on transcripts of encrypted conversations : between the leaders of 1991's failed Soviet coup to Boris Yeltsin. : Apparently the NSA was not too happy that Bush broke their cover and : acknowledged that they could read all of the Soviet military's codes. : : The article reads: : "As soon as the coup started on 18 August, 1991, the NSA, : America's largest intelligence organization was able to decrypt : conversations between the coup's two leaders, Vladimir Kryuchkov, : chairman of the KGB, and Dmitri Yazov, the Defense minister, : taking place over a supposedly secure landline." : : It continues: : "The NSA's ability to decrypt what Soviet military commanders : -- and their successors -- said over their communications system : is probably the most significant intelligence achievement since : Britain broke Germany's Enigma codes during the second world : war." : : Bush decided to pass this info on to Yeltsin. It enabled him to know who : in the military supported the coup and who was against it. : : It finishes by saying that as a result of letting the russians know their : code has been broken "the US intelligence community may no longer be in a : position to have advance warning of momentous events inside Russia -- as : it had months before the coup that brought Yeltsin to power". : : This information came from Seymour Hersh. It will appear in a forthcoming : issue of "Atlantic Monthly" : : I guess the KGB should have been using something secure, like PGP, since : the NSA can't possibly break that ;-) : : At least we can be comforted that the NSA is not allowed to monitor the : domestic traffic. ;-) ;-) : : : Ben Galewsky : ----------------------------------------------------------- : My employer doesn't know I read this group. : They do know I'm posting, though. "Hi Neil!" : ----------------------------------------------------------- :

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Annoucement for Australian Crypto Radio Documentary
by mgream＠acacia.itd.uts.edu.au 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Largely of interest to the Australian -- can we be counted on one hand ? :-) -- audience. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- *PRESS RELEASE* *PRESS RELEASE* *PRESS RELEASE* tales from the crypt =============================================== `There's nothing new about cryptography' ... Bill Caelli. ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Radio National `Radio Eye -- Documentary Features' Sunday Night, June 12th 8:20pm ... presents ... ``TALES FROM THE CRYPT'' Rosie Cross <rx1(a)sydgate.apana.org.au> & Matthew Gream <M.Gream(a)uts.edu.au> (Mixed by John Jacobs) (Sounds by Rob Joyner Jnr) `Cryptography is a very political technology' says Phil Zimmermann, author of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), a computer software program to scramble and protect your most vital electronic messages. Complex algorithms such as those used in PGP now give individuals the ability to carry out conversations locked away from the prying eyes of the most determined Law Enforcement and National Security Agencies. Fearing a widespread loss of effectiveness, these agencies had their wishes granted last year with the US Governments release of the electronic `Clipper Chip'. This insidious device, to be planted in phones and facsimiles, may scramble voice and data between both ends of a connection, but contains a backdoor so these agencies can retain their surveillance edge. Despite assurances by the Government and proponents of the scheme such as leading cryptographer Dorothy Denning, the reaction has been clearly negative as evidenced by echos of dissent across cypherspace. These assurances are easily refuted by John Perry Barlow from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Dave Banisar from the now Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC) [*], representing two of the most active groups opposing Clipper. Viewed from the Australian perspective, Jennifer Seberry describes the Clipper proposal as applying `an atomic bomb, where a drop of ointment is needed' and Trudi McIntosh describes a Government looking on `with interest'. To Roger Clarke, an Australian expert on privacy issues and new technologies, Clipper seems unlikely, but he warns about complacency in his assessment of the possible ramifications for individuals in electronic societies where systematic surveillance and mass matching could serve as a tool of the totalitarian state. In protecting ourselves from an Orwellian society, the need to extend the physical concepts of anonymity into the information world become of increasing importance. The work of David Chaum towards Digital Cash, and truly anonymous payment systems can steer the information superhighways past the military-industrial complex. In the end, the issue isn't about `cryptography', it's about fundamental rights to privacy and freedom from arbitrary intrusion by an increasingly hostile state. --- [*] Formally with Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQBVAgUBLfGDssFkzaa0vXnhAQFW4wH/Sa8KlS92O8plZO0nO1rnrXTF3IWMu7JD T8rVRLm8wunBzwt6DDGMzKPTMAMB/MOpjqISz+wFvKcV6UeyofLRiA== =WVKl -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.3a mQBNAi3xQ7gAAAECALAfA6WqWIqRBhvq6gKDVPKYAoEAO7Zr2C1/fYUOtTdxz7d6 uvmKRBzEV+Sys7Blf1ja4gioX46KwWTNprS9eeEABRO0JlRhbGVzIEZyb20gdGhl IENyeXB0IC0tIFJhZGlvIE5hdGlvbmFsiQCVAgUQLfFDy5lab34em41tAQF1ngQA u66CMVni7n5LRLqAISxYC9gWC7/AU9l8MYaYvR7D91OcAIzfyCGvJBGGEedSnURh q8mPSy43E1n4c0ihBhLlfvvU3ABFLqvCOwznkJjqWqC7XckJRZVJceaniGyf9KE1 scx1IgvpdjDPVvrLOifwEBbzctv8OU6QcB+2ejvKfQM= =dZMI -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- -- Matthew Gream Consent Technologies Sydney, (02) 821-2043 M.Gream(a)uts.edu.au

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Re: The Illogic of Clipper
by norm＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 15:27 6/5/94 +0100, Ed Carp [SysAdmin] wrote: >I'm sorry, but I just don't understand the government's position on >Clipper. After all, the best way for people to ensure that the >government's not going to listen in on their communications is to not use >Clipper. Now, unless it was a crime to use anything other than Clipper, >the government couldn't do a thing about it. I think that NSA, FBI & CIA hope that Clipper will become a de facto standard resulting from its being required for certain kinds of interactions with government agencies. If this were to happen non-clipper products would have a more difficult time attaining a critical mass. The real purpose of Clipper can thus be stated as an attempt to prevent the success of some de facto standard that the government could not tap. I recall hearing someone from NSA say something very much like this. ...

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Re: NYT article "traditional", my ass.
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John Taber writes: > IMO, police wiretapping usurped a power forbidden to it by the Fourth. > To call usurped power "traditional" is pretty smarmy. The Fourth Amendment is a good start, but it's by no means complete protection - after all, it forbids "unreasonable" searches and seizures, leaving only the police and the courts to decide what is "reasonable". The police definition, before the Exclusionary Rule was "sounded useful", and the courts have often let them get away with it - not surprising from an organization with a tradition of upholding convictions of people who dared publish pamphlets against the draft when the politicians were trying to get into a war (Schenck ~1916), or of people who publish books and magazines with non-nice descriptions of sex or support for Commie-nism. Courts have generally been improving, and the Exclusionary Rule has led to changes like New York City police getting search warrants when they want to search places (they didn't bother getting any the year before that rule was made!) And while the 9th and 10th Amendments are largely gone and forgotten, courts do at least acknowledge that there are some rights of privacy. Bill # Bill Stewart AT&T Global Information Solutions (new name for NCR!) # 6870 Koll Center Pkwy, Pleasanton CA 94566 1-510-484-6204 fax-6399 # Email: bill.stewart(a)pleasantonca.ncr.com billstewart(a)attmail.com # ViaCrypt PGP Key IDs 384/C2AFCD 1024/9D6465 KH: "A good friend, good lover, good neighbor" Q: "That's all there is to being an anarchist?" KH: "What did you expect, a lot of rules?" Karl Hess, 1923-1994 - R.I.P.

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Re: Help A Novice Understand
by gtoal＠an-teallach.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd(a)netcom.com> > >Someone said that Sternlight is a high-placed govt official. I don't > >believe this. (That someone was me, folks.) According to Tommy <nobody(a)soda.berkeley.edu> David Sternlight is a member of the council on foreign relations (pg. 176 of the 1993 Annual Report of the CFR) The following Executive Branch officials are also members of this organization: William J. Clinton, President etc etc... The CFR is a politicans equivalent of the rotary club and something you get into in exchange for little more than a few of the green folding ones. Everyone and his dog is in it - the membership must be in the tens if not hundreds of thousands. Basically it's like an English 'Gentleman's Club' - you're paying for the snob value of membership. What they get out of it is a big party cum picnic at somewhere posh once a year (like Camp David) and the chance to schmooze with the nobs. They disguise this on their tax claims as a policy conference. Membership marks Sternlight as a social climber, not as a mover and shaker. G

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No Subject
by nobody＠kaiwan.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There are a number of good text files out on anonymous mail forwarding servers, but nothing that really "ties it all together", so to speak. If you know of such a thing, please post it. Anyway, let me ask a few specific questions: I read that fingering ghio(a)andrew.cmu.edu will produce a current status of all "Cypherpunk" remailers. I did so and it was quite informative. However, "remailer(a)soda.berkeley.edu" was omitted from the list. Is there a reason for that? Do any of the other CP remailers (other than soda.berkeley.edu) offer a post-to-Usenet gateway? If so, do they use the same syntax? Is there a way to disable the encrypted reply address at the Berkeley remailer? I know that a few of the CP remailers have a certain adddress, like "help@<address>" which will provide an info sheet by return mail. Do any of the others support that? If so, would "help" be used, or something else? Thanks... =====================

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New Encryption Scheme
by Terry Ott 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I was told to post here by the kind people on alt.security. I didn't know where to start, and they led me on the path to truth. :):):) Alllll-right, to the heart of the matter: I've designed a new encryption scheme for passwords (or any short string), not for files, as of yet. It might have some glaring holes that you who are knowledgeable could see right through. Since you DO have a pretty good clue what's up, I'd love to see what you all think. I'm willing to give out source code, but I'd love to see what you can do without it. =] Thanks in advance, -Terry +=========================+======================+==========================+ | "Joke 'em if they | U U U U | Terry Ott | | can't take a screw!" | U U U U | Steve.Ott(a)m.cc.utah.edu | | | UUUU Of UUUU | | | --Robin Williams | University Utah | Optimystique Software | +=========================+======================+==========================+

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Contacts for my next trip to Beijing (fwd)
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

C'punks, Thought this might be of interest to the list. The People's Liberation Army seems to be on the cutting edge. S a n d y ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 6 Jun 1994 02:13:27 +0200 From: Miguel Gallardo <gallardo(a)BATMAN.FI.UPM.ES> To: Multiple recipients of list CHINANET <CHINANET(a)tamvm1.tamu.edu> Subject: Contacts for my next trip to Beijing I will be in Beijing from 7th to 13th of July. I will be teaching Cryptology and Electronic Signatures there. I have some friends at China Embassy in Madrid that arranged me this wonderful trip to Beijing. Of course, most of my official conferences will be for Chinesse Army, but I am completely free to have any interview there. At the moment, I do not know my hotel or phone number there, but I am interestedin any contact with people related with technology business there. Any suggestion for me? Thanks before hand. _ _ _ _ Miguel A. Gallardo, President of APEDANICA ' ) ) ) // Alcala de Henares University Lecturer / / / o __ _ // P.O. Box 17083 - E-28080 Madrid (Spain) / ' (_<_(_//_/_</_</_ Tel: (341) 474 38 09 - FAX: 473 81 97 _/ E-mail: gallardo(a)batman.fi.upm.es Cervantes dreamed "El Quijote" close to the place where my PC is now!

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6/6 New Yorker anti-crypto propaganda
by Bradley W. Dolan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Highlights of "My First Flame", an article by John Seabrook in the 6/6/94 _New Yorker_ which explains why we need a benevolent government to help regulate the internet (a very sophisticated piece of propaganda, IMHO): I got flamed for the first time a couple of months ago. [...] I had recently published a piece about Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, about whom this person has also written, and as I opened his E-mail to me it was with the pleasant expectation of getting feedback from a colleague. Instead, I got: Crave THIS, asshole: Listen, you toadying dipshit scumbag... remove your head from your rectum long enough to look around and notice that real reporters don't fawn over their subjects [...] One good worm deserves another. [...] My flame marked the end of my honeymoon with on-line communication. It made me see clearly that the lack of social barriers is also what is appalling about the net. The same anonymity that allows the twelve-year-old access to the professor allows a pedophile access to the twelve-year-old. [...] I sent E-mail to CompuServe, which was the network that carried my flame to me, to ask whether their subscribers were allowed to talk to each other this way. [...] ...[S]ince this person was a respected author, with a reputation to consider, I thought someone might be electronically impersonating him ... so I settled on a simple, somewhat lame acknowledgment of the flame [...] In a few days, I received a reply from the writer, asking when my new column, "Pudlicker to the Celebrated," was going to start. [...] And many of the [new internet] users are not the government officials, researchers, and academics for whom the net was designed; they're lawyers, journalists, teen-agers, scam artists, lonely hearts, people in the pornography business, and the faddists who were buying CB radios in 1975. [Lots of incoherent concerns that the vile e-mail might have infected his computer with a `worm'.] [...] The table of contents for alt.pagan FAQ reads: [...] 20 NIGGER JOKES [...] I suppose you could choose not to double-click on NIGGER JOKES, but it's harder than you think. This is the biggest drawback of the way newsgroups are set up: a really interesting post that enriches your understanding of a subject is next to a post that is appropriate only for the space above the urinal. [...] I considered posting a query about my worm in the newsgroup comp.virus, and I lurked around there for a while, but didn't post, because I was worried that my assailant might hear that I was posting queries about him in a public spaces - it's difficult to keep secrets on the net - and devise some even more elaborate torture to inflict on my computer, or begin spoofing me in some diabolical fashion. I had already seen how the net could be used to hurt someone's reputation. One day, as I was wandering around inside the Electronic Frontier Foundation discussion space, which is one of the most interesting news- groups on the net, I came upon a subject line that said, "Ralph Berkeley made homosexual advances toward me." Ralph Berkeley (I'm not using his real name) is a regular participant in discussions of net policy, who appears, on the evidence of his posts, to be an articulate and thoughtful man, and often takes the postition that completely unrestricted speech might not be such a good idea [...] [Discusses his pain with a net.friend and she replies: ] Imagine these geeks, suddenly afraid that their magic treehouse [the internet] was about to be boarded by American pop culture. [...] And you don't have to be responsible for what you say [on the internet]. The great question for the future of the net is: To what extent will this extraordinary freedom be allowed to remain in the hands of the people, and to what extent will it be limited and regulated? The Internet is not the information highway, but it might become part of the information highway. In order for this to happen, though, the Internet will have to be "civilized" - a word that gives many net users the willies. The net is, fundamentally, about free speech, while the I-way is about commercial and civic transactions: it's a route for delivering videos, newspapers, and catalogues into people's home computers, for filing taxes on-line, eventually for voting on-line. Completely unrestricted speech, which is desirable in a free exchange of ideas and data, is less vital when you're talking to a business competitor or to your congressman. The net poses a fundamental threat not only to the authority of the government, but to all authority, because it permits people to organize, think, and influence one another without any institutional supervision whatsoever. The government is responding to this threat with the Clipper Chip [...] [Discussion about why we need Clipper and why good encryption is bad.] The obvious danger in supplying people with encryption is that encryption makes it easier to keep secrets, which makes it easier for people to commit crimes. With powerful encryption, the net would become an ideal place for criminals to organize conspiracies. [...] Dr. Clinton C. Brooks, the N.S.A.'s lead scientist on the Clipper Chip project, told me, "You won't have a Waco in Texas, you'll have a Waco in cyberspace. You could have a cult, speaking to each other through encryption, that suddenly erupts in society - well programmed, well organized - and then suddenly disappears again." Therefore, in an effort to balance the good and bad sides of encryption, the United States government has proposed that people use a brand of encryption that the government has designed, which is powerful enough to take care of everybody's legitimate encryption needs but has an electronic "back door" that law-enforcement agencies could use, with a court order, to listen to the conversations of people they suspect of being criminals. This brand of encryption is inside the Clipper Chip. [...] In the future, somebody will develop encryption that the N.S.A. won't be able to crack, and smart criminals will be able to talk without being overheard. [...] [Author describes meeting he had with John Norstad of Northwestern University to ask about his "worm".] "Do I recognize the right of this person to flame me? Yes, I do. Do I celebrate his right to flame me? I'm not sure. Do I recognize the right of this person to send me a worm? Definitely not. But at what point does a flame become a worm? I mean, can a virus be a form of free speech? In other words, could a combination of words be so virulent and nasty that it could to property damage to your head?" [Norstad reassures author by telling him that most people on the net "don't have a life."] ----------- bdolan(a)well.sf.ca.us

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