December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

telecommunications reform again
by an158409＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Telecom Legislative Effort Opens WASHINGTON, D.C., U.S.A., 1995 JAN 12 (NB) -- The Herculean task rewriting the nation's telecommunications law, an effort that failed in the 103rd Congress, has begun in Washington. The Senate Commerce Committee opened the action this week with a hearing on general concepts of communications reform. The last time Congress successfully addressed the communications needs of the nation was 50 years ago, with the 1934 Communications Act. The new Republican Congress is expected to support deregulation and competition in the provision of telecommunications services. But so do most Democrats, and the devil will be in the legislative details, as the various forces in the marketplace seek to use legislative language to secure competitive advantages. Sen. Larry Pressler (R-SD), chairman of the committee, predicted that his panel will report a bill by July 4. Rep. Jack Fields (R-Texas), who heads the House telecommunications subcommittee, said his group will approve a bill by Easter. But neither legislator has yet to introduce a bill, so experts are unable to predict where the inevitable fights will occur and on whose turf. "Let's pick a starting date -- January 1, 1996 or 1997 -- and say, 'Gentleman, start your engines. We're going to have a race and let the best man win,'" said Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) at the hearing. As the opening bell was ringing in the Senate, Vice President Al Gore was trying to gin up support for the administration's views on telecommunications at a meeting of state regulators and local government officials. "Competition in the information marketplace will provide Americans with lower prices for their telephones, cable and information goods and services and give them more and better choices," Gore said. The White House estimates that competition in telecommunications will also create 1.4 million new jobs over the next 10 years. The contending forces were also getting organized. The seven regional Bell operating companies announced that Gary McBee, former chairman of the United States Telephone Association, will head their lobbying efforts in the new Congress. The Baby Bells support opening all markets to immediate competition. "It's time to open all markets to all competitors, under the same conditions and at the same time," McBee said. "That will mean lower prices, more choices and better service for everyone." McBee's coalition will be called the Alliance for Competitive Communications. (Kennedy Maize/19950111/Press Contact: Bill McCloskey, ACA, 202-463-4129) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

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Remailer@jpunix.com down!!!???
by skaplin＠mirage.skypoint.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I just read that the remailer at jpunix.com went down suddenly and permanently. Anyone know what happened?? I also believe the whole site is down as it didn't answer my pings a couple of days ago. Sam - -- ============================================================================== skaplin(a)skypoint.com | Finger skaplin(a)infinity.c2.org for | a listing of crypto related files PGP encrypted mail is accepted and | available on my auto-responder. preferred. | (Yes...the faqs are there!) | E-mail key(a)four11.com for PGP Key or | "...vidi vici veni" - Overheard Finger skaplin(a)mirage.skypoint.com | outside a Roman brothel. ============================================================================== A man without a God is like a fish without a bicycle. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBLxYycclnXxBRSgfNAQFh8wf9HR9KCppQV5Li70ggDPQ0hTEuUU6Cl3BS m0N4Mx/6bu3OWIyh5XkpBfNSNhvixkSR7UJ2LtqugXAxsfYiYQw+uw2vd1i3rK8k VYuqWYgWh8uu+xNIoTXN7MdosuGoG/+eglVWW5SuZNxpVO5ggVq7KqDjTTtHjpSC TPBwJbSELoMIQbcFfvbA5EgaMVqdVbf1xXxUVLIguh0AreX75gPMPVPzwS9+xOMs BgB/UgsC+XGWYhCH7EjiAF0tPE+MBRkVkQVfCEo1Hk9CrafMUHYIWPzwu/sirq3v vhoZxurEYA6Fr2sbCOtlPGXKv3UAELmU+h7b+vO4CKu6OCn1XhgZmg== =uFxE -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Cellular and Crime
by Mats Bergstrom 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There is this criminal trial going on in Stockholm concerning a group of suspects that entered a bank vault through the roof over a weekend in 1992. They have been prime suspects for a long time but evidently it has taken a lot of time to build up a case against them. Traffic analysis (but not tapping of the actual conversations, GSM? - no mention of the system in the news stories) plays a substantial role in the prosecution. 'A and B were at X at the same time','B and C were in the vicinity of the Bank at this time' etc. The suspects have not tried to argue that their cellulars were on loan to some stray persons. We all know that a booted cellular is a wonderful Area Locator. (I wonder if the suspects new?) But I have (naively) been thinking that the authorities needed prior suspicion using this feature in 'real time'. Judging from what has been written about this trial the police must have requested, and received, logged traffic data quite some time afterwards. Perhaps they log it for ever? Mats

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Re: "safe" Internet access
by Andreas.Elbert＠gmd.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

sorry to correct you, but the 900 MHz licensefree radios, the cellular radios (analog and digital) and Modacom and Mobitex are all different animals. i don't want to go into details though, because it doesn't change your main point, the ability to localize one of these radios while transmitting. Andreas

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Re: How do I know if its encrypted?
by daleh＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

You wrote: >You don't always need the correct answer. You just need the correct >answer most of the time. You're trying to create a presumption about >behavior. Ensuring that you can't read almost all of the traffic is a >pretty good way to assure people that you don't try to make sense of >any of it. I'm still not making my point. Encryption is not a data 'state' that can be tested for in the way that liquid/solid/vapour are states of matter. Encryption is a data 'interpretation' for which there are an arbitrairly large number of interpretations available for any given dataset. There is no algorithmic test that can applied to a dataset that will be able to establish the existance or non-existance of a given interpretation. If you're given an unkown dataset and are asked the question, 'Is this an image file' or 'Is this an encrypted file' or 'Is this an audio clip', there is no algorithmic test that can answer any of these questions in either the affermative or the negative. This is just an alternate phrasing of Goedel's Undecidability Theorem. This problem lies permanantly outside the outer boundary of algorithmic capability. Let me now spin a little tale as to how this affects an operator of a re-mailer or datahaven. This tale has two characters, Paco the child pornogropher and Eric the honest RM/DH operater. Paco begins by inventing the new 'Foolproof Barometric Graphic Image Format' (aka FooBar GIF) of which only Paco knows the internals. A FooBar GIF has a statistical profile that looks remarkably like a PGP file, in fact it even comes with a PGP header! Nothing illegal here. Now Paco writes a FooBar GIF Viewer which he sales to child-porn types. Again, there's nothing illegal about the sale of such a piece of software. Paco now anonymously loads Eric's DH with lots of child-porn FooBar GIF's via Eric's anon-RM. These files of course sail right through Eric's filters with nary a scratch. As far as Eric knows he's holding PGP encrypt files. Now Paco advertises the availability of lots of 'good' picture on Eric's DH that can be used with the newly purchased FooBar GIF Viewers. Then the cops get ahold of one of Paco's FooBar GIF Viewers and downloads some FooBar GIFs from Eric's DH and the last words we ever hear from Eric are "I swear I thought they were PGP files, I swear to God I thought they were....." as the authorities drag his carcass off to jail. Whose going to believe Eric's protests of innocence? "After all", says the prosecutor to the jury, "wasn't Eric explicitly filtering out what he didn't want in. If fact", says the prosecutor, "his filter seems to have been designed specifically to allow these kiddie-porn files in and to reject all others." A sad end indeed! Dale H.

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Re: Microsoft TrueName (tm) (fwd)
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:23 AM 1/12/95, NetSurfer wrote: >I wondered why one of the few registered hosts for Microsoft were called >"Bob" - now it makes sense. (But they've got a good sized chunk of >netblks registered...) Funny thing happened to me last night. I was talking to a guy who had seen Fidelity's new WWW server (shhh! don't tell!) and it turns out he was the guy who actually *had* bob.com. A third party approached him and asked him if he wanted to sell the domain name. He did. He picked another domain name, and last week someone called him if he wanted to sell his *new* domain name. He said no, and they asked him if he would *rent* it to them... Go figure. Cheers, Bob Hettinga Eric, what'll you take for "remailer.net"? ;-). ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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Re: How do I know if its encrypted?
by Ben.Goren＠asu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Here's a solution: Alice sends a file to Dave's DataHaven. When Alice wants her file back, she sends to Dave a secure hash of the file, a key with which to decrypt it, and a handful of plaintext at the beginning of the file. Dave decrypts the file that matches the hash with the key Alice gave him; if the file begins as Alice says it should, Dave returns the file to Alice. This way, only those people who have an intimate knowledge of the files can recover them. The hash isn't vital; Dave could try to decrypt each file on the server with the key Alice gives him until he matches the plaintext--but that's neither elegant nor friendly to the CPU. People can send Dave whatever kind of file they like, but they'll only get it back if it's been encrypted properly. If Dave charges to store a file, he'll gladly welcome as much spammage as people want to send him. If he likewise charges to return a file, he'll just as glady send a file to whoever gives him the cash and can identify it. Dave can have a policy whereby he deletes a file after returning it, unless Alice pays more to keep it there. Thus, Bad Bobby can send his naughty pictures to Dave, tell the 'net how to get them--but the first person who neglects to include the fee to leave the pictures there winds up blocking out everybody else. Similarly, Samaritan Sam could get into a spending war with Bobby. Each time Bobby sends Dave his smut, Sam retrieves the file without paying for its continued storage--and takes a sneak peak at the pictures before deleting them himself. Dave has no way of knowing what people are storing on his machine until the owner asks for the file back, and so cannot be held liable for the storage of "undesirable" files. Mallet could seize the entire archive and have nothing useful. Eve could recover information leaving the haven, but presumably Alice will further encrypt her files however she chooses. Or, as a service, Dave could agree to encrypt the file with an assymetric cipher before returning it. b& -- Ben.Goren(a)asu.edu, Arizona State University School of Music Finger ben(a)tux.music.asu.edu for PGP public key ID 0xCFF23BD5.

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Re: Multiple symetric cyphers
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Actually, a slight correction. PGP does have an algorithm byte > for the encryption algorithm; this byte is inside the RSA block. It's got another algorithm byte - the stuff at the beginning that says --- BEGIN PGP ENCRYPTED MESSAGE ---, letting everyone know it's PGP. That's one of the major risks of "algorithm bytes" - not that it tells the Bad Guys which algorithm you're using, but that it tells them "yes, this is crypto, not just noise". Bill

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essential characteristics of a Data Haven
by Adam Feuer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

folks, looking thru the cyphernomicon, this is about all i could come up with for characteristics of a data haven: |16.22. Data Havens | 16.22.1. "What are data havens?" | + Places where data can be hidden or protected against legal | action. | - Sterling, "Islands in the Net," 1988 anyone have a list of the essential characteristics of a data haven? what differentiates a "data haven" from "reasonably secure offsite storage"? here's my attempt at a working definition: a "data haven"... 1. "securely" stores data files for remote users. 2. will only allow "authorized" entities to store files in the data haven. 3. will only allow "owners" of the files to withdraw their files from the data haven. 4. differentiates "authorized" entities from "non-authorized ones, and "owners" from "non-owners", only by means of cryptographic keys. terms i left undefined are "securely," authorized," and "owner." by "secure" i imagine a DH will attempt to prevent its data from being destroyed, or read by anyone other than the data's "owner." by "authorized" i imagine that a DH will not want to accept data from just anyone. (for instance, people who don't pay.) by "owner" i mean the specific "authorized" entity that stored the data in the DH. i imagine that most DH's will need to accept digital cash to be able to operate. is this an essential characteristic of a cp data haven? what did i leave out? adam adamfast(a)seanet.com

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Re: Pgp where?
by ddt＠lsd.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:52 am 1/12/95, kevin.rock(a)njackn.com wrote: >I think this is the correct board to put this message on, but since there are >no messages to read here I might be wrong. Does anyone know where to locate >the program (algorithm) Pretty Good Protection (PGP) ? I've read about it in >the local newspaper, in Scientific American and in the alternate news message >area. It sounds like a good encryption scheme and I would like to explore >>it's possibilities. Thanks for any assistance. Kevin, FYI, I keep the most recent version of Mike Johnson's excellent guide on where to find PGP in: ftp.netcom.com:/pub/dd/ddt/crypto/crypto_info/where_is_pgp?.txt This is a plain text file, but (for Mac users) the file: ftp.netcom.com:/pub/dd/ddt/crypto/crypto_info/where_is_pgp?.txt.sea.bin is a self-expanding Mac archive (faster transfer time). There're some other informational files in that dir, and any cpunks who know of a quintessential PGP info file is encouraged to let me know so I can post it there. Remember, this "archive" is oriented toward new PGP users who need friendly information on why/how/who/where/when etc. If you're in the US or Canada, you can also find the most up-to-date version of the MacPGP application in this directory: ftp.netcom.com:/pub/dd/ddt/crypto/NOT_FOR_EXPORT Be sure to read the ReadMe files detailing the export restrictions, since transfer of this software to a system or machine outside of the US or Canada is strictly verboten. Send email to <pgp-questions(a)lsd.com> if you have further questions. dave ______________________________________________ "Civil Liberty Through Simple Cryptography."

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