December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: "Key Escrow" --- the very idea
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mike_Spreitzer.PARC(a)xerox.com says: > (1) I'm not an anarchist. Does that make me out of place here? No. This is not a list for anarchists. There are some prominent people here that happen to be anarchists -- others are socialists, conventional liberals, conventional conservatives, and every other stripe. Hell, even the 700 Club folks hate key escrow. Perry

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comeon**
by Gary Jeffers 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Lefty says I don't have the wit to speak for him. It would take no wit - just a person with the tastes of a bottom feeder. Lefty, aren't you the little shit who brutally flamed Nobody for using a pseudonym? Lefty? is that your first or last name? Do you have a last name? Are you sure? Say, hero, what is your true name? Lefty, do I have you all wrong, or are you one of those guys who hang back from a fight till you see your opponent is outnumbered? PUSH EM BACK! PUSH EM BACK! WWWAAAYYY BBBAAACCCK! BBBEEEAAATTTT STATE!

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(None)
by Jeff Gostin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

adwestro(a)ouray.Denver.Colorado.EDU (Alan Westrope) writes: > Sorry, but there is NO escrow system I can live with -- I don't > care if John Gilmore is selected to head the escrow agency. Here Here! I don't care if I'M selected to head the escrow agency. I don't (or wouldn't) trust any of my underlings with my security. --Jeff -- ====== ====== +----------------jgostin(a)eternal.pha.pa.us----------------+ == == | The new, improved, environmentally safe, bigger, better,| == == -= | faster, hypo-allergenic, AND politically correct .sig. | ==== ====== | Now with a new fresh lemon scent! | PGP Key Available +---------------------------------------------------------+

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Re: "Key Escrow" --- the very idea
by Berzerk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Fri, 22 Jul 1994 Mike_Spreitzer.PARC(a)xerox.com wrote: > Eight pieces seems too few to me. It's too easy for gov't agencies to "lean > on" eight individuals or organizations (someone else suggested "watchdog" > groups as fragment holding agencies, but that doesn't seem very good. Groups > can change over time, respond to pressure. Putting a lot of fragments in a few > hands seems fairly fundamentally flawed). I'd rather see thousands. That way, NO, what you really need to do is tackle the issue of the government rounding up keys in mass, and instituting an orwellian system of spying. To do this, simply make it legal for the escrow agencies to distroy their database as a whole, in fact, make it a REQUIREMENT that they distroy their database if necessary and enact measures to protect it from abuse. Berzerk.

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Re: "Key Escrow" --- the very idea
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mike_Spreitzer writes: > (1) I'm not an anarchist. Does that make me out of place here? I'm willing to Yes, you are out of place. We took a vote a while back and the anarchists won by 173 votes. The detailed rules of discourse we adopted can be found at the csua.berkeley.edu site. > (2) I think crimes can be committed in cyberspace. Substantially, if not > entirely, in cyberspace. Maybe not so many now. But I think it's I know of no one who disagrees. Of course crimes can be committed in cyberspace, whatever one's definition may be of crime. From forwarding copyrighted material to posting GIFs of children being raped to contracting for hits on one's enemies. (Personally, I treat very few things as being criminal, and thus see few things in cyberspace that could possibly be criminal.) > intellectually dishonest of us who understand the growing importance of > cyberspace to claim there won't be any social contracts there that could be > violated. I accept the terms of the 4th ammendment: search and siezure allowed > when due process followed. "Key escrow" is an attempt to implement the > cyberspatial analog of search. Nope. "Key escrow" is far broader. It is telling people they must "escrow" their house keys with the cops, just in case the cops have a need to enter. It is the requirement that all photographs be "escrowed" with the cops, just in case some dirty pictures need to be looked at. It is the requirement that diaries and journals be written in "approved languages," in case authorities need or want to read them. (By the way, your tacit assumption, that key escrow will become mandatory, is probably accurate, but is in fact not the Administration's proposal. They claim it will forever remain voluntary, though they are then silent on just how this will help with the criminals they seek to catch this way.) The remaining points I'll leave for others to critique. Mandatory key escrow is like telling people they have to use special curtains that can be made transparent if the cops think they need to aim their cameras in our houses. Not exactly what I have in mind for my future. --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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Re: comeon**
by lefty＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Lefty says I don't have the wit to speak for him. It would take no >wit - just a person with the tastes of a bottom feeder. Lefty, aren't >you the little shit who brutally flamed Nobody for using a pseudonym? Er, no, I'm not, which renders the rest of your posting even more content-free than it would otherwise have been, if such a thing were possible. >Lefty? is that your first or last name? Do you have a last name? Are >you sure? Say, hero, what is your true name? I'd tell you, but you haven't demonstrated a need to know. Or a capacity to understand. > Lefty, do I have you all wrong, or are you one of those guys who >hang back from a fight till you see your opponent is outnumbered? Given that you're your own worst enemy, being outnumbered would seem to be a chronic situation for you. You don't qualify as an "opponent", Mr. Jeffers. Or even an hors d'oeuvre. -- Lefty (lefty(a)apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.

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Re: "Key Escrow" --- the very idea
by solman＠MIT.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> (1) I'm not an anarchist. Does that make me out of place here? I'm > willing to live with some amount of government, as long as us owners > stand a chance of controlling or overthrowing it. My biggest problem > with Capstone is that it changes the balance of power too much. Simple solution for people like you: Secret split your key into eight pieces, such that six or seven are required to reconstruct it. Create a mechanism whereby people can anonymously distribute their keys. Have the govenment escrow keep just the names of the people with the other pieces. Periodically require everybody to prove that they still have the same piece by sending hashes. When the government wants your key it presents a warrant to the people holding your pieces. But I find this sort of system to be silly. its only purpose is to eavesdrop in on my conversations. Why would I want somebody doing that? I like my privacy so I'd rather not participate. > (2) I think crimes can be committed in cyberspace. Substantially, if not > entirely, in cyberspace. Maybe not so many now. But I think it's > intellectually dishonest of us who understand the growing importance of > cyberspace to claim there won't be any social contracts there that could be > violated. I accept the terms of the 4th ammendment: search and siezure > allowed when due process followed. "Key escrow" is an attempt to implement > the cyberspatial analog of search. This is total bullshit. In the physical world, the ideal set up would clearly be one in which each individual negotiated with each other individual what the contract between them would be. "I don't want to die and you don't want to die, so lets both agree not to kill each other and put some money towards a system of police that guarantees this. I want property rights so I can enjoy the fruits of my labor..." This scenario is, of course, absurd. It takes time to negotiate things like this. Negotiations also require the possibility of no agreement, allowing the parties to re-examine the strength of their respective positions before going back to the table. The cost of conducting these negotiations in the physical world is enourmous. The cost of conducting these negotiations in the real world is negligible. People who like their freedom can negotiate on their own. The stupid and the insecure can purchase agents from other people that do the same thing. LAWS CAN EASILY BE MADE OPTIONAL IN CYBERSPACE WHILE STILL MAINTAINING THEIR EFFECTIVENESS. Enforcement of a law is a natural part of the agreement to participate in it. There is absolutely no reason why one set of laws with one set of enforcers needs to be adopted simply because the transactional cost is negligible and the results of non-agreement can be determined nearly instantaneously. I will be introducing the paleolithic analog of an information society in the next few weeks. You had better believe that by the time the information superhighway takes off, complex systems that enforce complex rules will be available to those who want them. > (3) The Feds must know they can't prevent modestly well funded, educated, and > motivated folks from using unbreakable cryptography amongst themselves. The > argument for doing key escrow anyway is that by installing a breakable > infrastructure, they'll make enough investigations cheaper and more effective > to be worth it. Note that's a comparison of their money and success rate > against our privacy; no wonder they got it so wrong. It absurd to think that the Feds can control anything in cyberspace without some sort of physical world police state. Its just not feasible, entropy is dominant. JWS

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Re: Double DES calculations
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I missed the start of this double-des thread due to system problems and being gone, and I've never been able to pick up the main point since. It sounds like some kind of meet-in-the-middle attack is being discussed. It is true that with current technology MITM generally seems more costly in terms of space than time. However, I have seen references to techniques which shift this tradeoff some, costing more time and less space. Un- fortunately, I can't remember where I saw them! I'll give you one similar example, though. I think this is the technique used in Pollard "rho" factoring. You have an iterated series, x=f(x), and you want to know if it has any cycles, any values which are eventually repeated. At first glance you might think that to look for a cycle of length N you would have to store N values of the series and check each value for a match, taking order of N in time and space. The Pollard tech- nique instead runs two copies of the iteration at once, one twice as fast as the other: x=f(x) and y=f(f(y)). Each time you just compare x and y for a match. This takes about twice as long but uses no memory. The moral is, be cautious about feeling safe against MITM attacks purely because of memory limitations. If you don't have protection on the time costs as well there may be a tradeoff which can kill you. Hal

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RE: Come On
by cyber1＠io.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Connie Sadler <sadler_c(a)hosp.stanford.edu> writes: <I find lines like the above very offensive/non-professional. I >won't let it stop me from continuing on, but what's the >point? I really don't get it. CypherPUNKs is an offshoot of the cyberpunk paradigm, which can be stated as "high tech/lowlife". There are no claims of professionalism as far as I know. If cypherpunks share a common attribute, it is probably their enjoyment of the _practice_ of encryption and related disciplines. I did not notice anyone insult you personally. Surely if you find the language offensive, the solution is to filter your mail, or else unsubscribe. -- Alex Brock

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Re: Gore's "new and improved" key escrow proposal
by gtoal＠an-teallach.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

: From: Eli Brandt <ebrandt(a)muddcs.cs.hmc.edu> : Tim May said: : > Others here will have a clearer idea than I have, but I don't think a : > "software standard" is what is now being planned. Software-only : > solution cannot possibly have the security that's needed [...] : My reading of the BSA blurb was that software key escrow really is : being planned: "software implementable [and] based on a non-classified : encryption formula". Yes, this sounds pretty silly. I don't see how : you could possibly prevent a rogue phone from interoperating with a : fascistic one. ... except by legislation. Make no bones about it, this is the start of the final attack to outlaw non-escrowed encryption. G

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