December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

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

17 Dec '03

> > ...The cost of conducting these negotiations in the > > physical world is enourmous. > > > > The cost of conducting these negotiations in the real world is negligible... > > Is "the real world" a typo? I suspect you mean something like "in > cyberspace". :) It is most certainly a typo. > I'm not familiar with the line of reasoning you're referring to here. I > suspect it's a large topic. Does it rest on the assumption that cyberspace > and the physical world are largely disjoint? > I think they're not. Activities in cyberspace often > "are about" or "have influence on" the real world. Sometimes vice versa. > Doesn't this mean laws can't be divided into those about the physical world > vs. those about cyberspace, but must in fact be about both? You are entirely missing my point. The superior efficiency of cyberspace, its low transaction costs, have created possibilities there that can not exist in the physical realm. In both realms people have different wants and desires. Because they interact with each other, the actions of one individual can have an impact upon the actions of other individuals. Without any form of social agreement, there would be no security, no certainty about anything. This can be highly inefficient. There is no point in starting a big project today, if there is a high probability that somebody will kill you tomorrow. There is no point in doing something that other people would find useful if there is no mechanism for you to exchange it with them for services that you find useful. To circumvent this inefficiency, individuals enter into contracts with one another. A and B might agree not to kill each other. In exchange for giving up this element of their freedom, they get security. Security has value. It enables them to undertake long term projects that might otherwise not have been possible. But a contract like this is not useful without some mechanism of enforcement, so A and B have to agree to pay for some sort of policeman. This policeman would receive compensation for enforcing the contract between A and B. HERE IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PHYSICAL WORLD AND CYBERSPACE. In the physical realm, in order for a contract like this to work, large numbers of people have to be bound to it. This is true for the following reasons: A) The number of people bound under the contract must be large enough to make it unlikely that the policeman can control them or break his contract. B) Negotiating a contract like this takes alot of time. The compensation for the policeman has to be determined. The mechanisms for disciplining murderers (and determining guilt) have to be determined. The mechanisms for enforcing the contract between the police and the people have to be determined. The mechanisms for determining how much each person will be required to pay have to be determined. This is an extraordinarily inefficient procedure in the physical world. To deal with this inefficiency we have developed laws. Laws specify that all sentient individuals within a given area have to agree to a specific contract. There is no contract negotiation, there is just a contract that automatically applies and because a substantial majority of the individuals within a given locality respect the laws, this system works. In fact legal systems are highly inefficient artifacts in the physical world. In cyberspace, the two motivations for extending contracts to all participants (i.e. having uniform laws) are no longer present. Point A is no longer true. You don't need to have an enforcing policeman whose power is balanced by the large number of people he protects, cryptography can take the policeman's place as the contract enforcer. Point B is no longer valid because the entire negotiation process can be automated by computer with negligible transaction costs. Without any motivation for laws, individuals can get their security through personal contracts with other individuals. If you don't want to worry about fraud, subscribe to a fraud protection agency that you like. Any individual agent that wants to make you an offer will have to first be approved by the fraud protection agency. In exchange for this approval, the agent will pay the protection agency money and then pass along that cost to consumers that required the approval. Alternatively, the agent can agree not to violate the rules of the FPA, and give the FPA a deposit. If the agent screws up, victims of fraud could collect recompense via the method of adjudication specified by the FPA. If the agent isn't willing to agree to the fules of the FPA, then the user and that agent just won't do business. There can be thousands upon thousands of FPAs in a scheme like this and individual FPAs can offer all sorts of protection plans. In the real world a system like this could never be implemented, the cost of administering it would be too great. How could stores know what standard of honesty was required for each individual customer if different customers lived under different laws? The store has to be notified of the specific rules governing a specific customer. The store has to pay a tiny amount to the FPA. It has to be verified that this amount is collected. The store must then alter its sales strategy for the customer. This would clearly no work in the real world. If I wanted to buy a watermelon slush outside of the Kendal T (something I am about to do) it would cost me about $200 in transaction costs beyond the $1 for the slush. This is where the difference lies. It simply becomes feasible to have individually tailored social contracts once you enter cyberspace. Individuals with incompatible social contracts simply can't communicate with one another. You get absolute freedom AND absolute security. JWS

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The Clipper Chip Proposal
by rittle＠comm.mot.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear Mr. Vice President, I am glad to hear that the Administration is willing to back down on some of the highly unfavorable aspects of the Clipper Chip Proposal. I strongly support mandated encryption key escrow for all government employees, such as yourself, but none whatsoever on private individuals or private-sector companies. You all should be accountable to the public. Encryption key escrow of all government employees' keys would help allow the public to hold rogue government employees accountable for their inappropriate actions while in office and hold great power over the public. Get rid of the idea that would place mandatory key escrow on all private users of your encryption standard and, in my opinion, you will go down in history as the first person in government to actually help make this country *more* free and *more* open. I also support completely voluntary (i.e. no outside government coercion) encryption key escrow for all private individuals and private-sector companies, if they themselves so chose it. I cannot see why a private individual would ever want to have their encryption key in escrow, but the private-sector company could gain many benefits. As employee turn- over occurs (by death or disgruntlement), a company would be insured continued access to its information if it had an escrow plan in place. Until the, so called, National Security concerns that are often alluded to, yet never discussed, are bought fully to light on this matter, it is very hard for me to swallow the real need for key escrow for private citizens. Given the low number of legal wiretaps that are authorized each year, it just doesn't make sense to spend the kind of money key escrow would require to implement it on the wide scale you propose. I understand that the White House has already conducted one study on this issue of National Security as it relates to the key escrow issue. Why don't you release this study in full instead of starting another study? I also understand that you have held up the FOIA request to have this study released. Why? In a free society, it is just as important to discuss the National Security issue in the open as the citizen's privacy issue. I leave you with a quote that describes the situation fairly well for me: ``You can have my personal encryption key when you pry it from my cold, dead hands (and even then you can't have it because it has been memorized and my brain is now dead).'' Sincerely, Loren -- Loren J. Rittle (rittle(a)comm.mot.com) Ripem-1.2 MD5OfPublicKey: Systems Technology Research (IL02/2240) D2CE4A0F2BABF33AEF10C8C669DD782D Motorola, Inc. PGP-2.6 Key fingerprint: (708) 576-7794 6810D8AB3029874DD7065BC52067EAFD

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Re: Voice/Fax Checks
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:38 AM 7/21/94 -0400, solman(a)MIT.EDU wrote: >The selling point for digital cash is that it has a low transaction cost >and can easily be used for extremelly small transactions. If agent A and >agent B want to do business without bothering their owners, you had better >have some robust digicash. I've made this claim myself here before. It's possible you're in a position to verify it. Can you? Cheers, Bob ----------------- 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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No Subject
by L. Todd Masco 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

hfinney(a)shell.portal.com writes: > It's pretty clear that credit cards don't work for some of the transactions > people want to do: > > 1) one-cent and fractional-cent charges for connecting to a useful Web > page or ftp site. A useful resource like this wouldn't have to charge much > on a per-user basis to fund the equipment and people. True. This is a big problem that can't be addresses through credit cards, due to per-transactions costs. However, one could cache transactions, perhaps even through a central agent, until the amounts were great enough (say, $5) to use the mechanism. > 2) Transactions with individuals or small companies who are not VISA > clients. It's not that easy for a mail-order shoestring startup to get > the ability to accept VISA cards. Because of the danger of fraud, the > credit card companies like to see a storefront and/or some previous > history. Someone who writes a nifty PGP shell and wants to sell it for > $10 per will have this problem. Not true. Teleflora is a company that sells automatic processing software and also will be a front-end to credit card companies. You pay 'em, you get your merchant ID and go, and start getting checks every so often. Additionally, more and more agents are appearing out there who are perfectly willing to serve as intermediaries. Bibliobytes, for example, is soon going to expand its services to offer not just books but any software that people wish to sell (once we have our processing fully automated and the bugs cleared out -- books are just a boot-strap mechanism). I see a lot of great ideas for e$ out there, but I think they all suffer from a central fault: there's no easy transition from the way people do business in the real world to an e$ model. IMO, you've got to base a system in the way people are used to working and make a gentle transition, or it's simply going to fail purely on the learning curve. -- L. Todd Masco | Books on computer available through any UNIX host with e-mail cactus(a)bb.com | "Information wants to be free, but authors want to be paid."

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Who Detweiler is *really* posting as
by Random H0Z3R 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hello. I've been on this list for a long time and noticed some disturbing correlations between Perry Metzger's and Detweiler's posts. Now, bear with me on this. First of all, has anyone noticed how Perry flames Detweiler with the most rabid virulence of anyone? But what is more interesting is that his flames are always kind of lame. They don't have any cutting comebacks. They're just filled with ad-hominem insults. Now, if you recall how Detweiler was posting under tmp(a)netcom.com to the newsgroups, he intentionally poisoned the reputation of one of his tentacles, "Beavis Butthead", by having it hurl nasty insults, nasty words, and wallow in degrading thoughts. That way, to ridicule a position he finds abhorrent, he has Beavis take the position. An interesting "reputation cancellation" effect occurs, quite like in Shakespearan prose when a slow-witted rioter says, "First, let's kill all the laywers". Its a literary device. So Detweiler, posting from Perry Metzger's addess as a "tentacle", is accomplishing several things. First of all, he hasn't been discovered since the inception of the list. And by flaming Detweiler tentacles so hotly, he maintains the illusion of being a distinct enemy, someone else who is repulsed by Detweiler stuff. And he's been more effective in starting massive flamewars than Detweiler ever was. (In fact, when Detweiler was on the list under his own name, they got into heated arguments over ridiculous issues no one else cared about like "changing the cypherpunk name to something less radical"). But most of all, he has a "negative tentacle" to talk about ideas that he really detests, and causes other people to detest by association. Moreover: Have you noticed that "Perry" rhymes with "Larry"? And that "Lehman" (where he posts from) starts with "L"? And sounds a little like "madman"? Also, Perry talks about stock trading and digital cash. I think this reflects Detweiler's well-known interest in digital cash (he posted to the imp-interest list for a long time). And Detweiler liked to smirk at Perry being the same as Parry, the paranoid AI computer program simulation! I think he *built in* this insult by design! It's his little "inside joke"! Makes you wonder, eh? And has anyone actually MET Metzger? I mean, of the people we can TRUST? He's in New York and has had NOTHING to do with the CA cypherpunk meetings. And it's possible that the Metz part of his name is just based on the NY Mets baseball team! Another little "piece": he has been on the list forever, even when Detweiler leaves (but always comes back). Detweiler is *known* to be drawn to this list "like a moth to a flame". I think he was only *pretending* to go away to start a flamewar while sticking around as Perry (and post from Perry to help heat up the flamewar as he "left"). He reminds me of Sternlight. No one likes him. He has no reputation. But he's immensely effective in starting massive flamewars. Detweiler loves to hurl the ad hominem stuff all over talk.politics.crypto! Metzger has *got* to be a Detweiler tentacle. It makes perfect sense. I've listed far more reasons than those for Kragen (who I wasn't sure about). I have heard of other reasonable-minded people leaving because of the Perry flames, anyway. At least I hope the Perry-tentacle will tone down the routine scathing ad hominem face-slapping routine and posting lame drivel no one cares about. Demonizing people rarely serves anyone's best interests. BTW, I don't like what has been going on the list where there are anonymous attacks on people in the list. Do we really want to bring this kind of toxic rumormongering into cyberspace? If we had some reputation systems our remailers would probably be less dangerous. In fact, that inspires a Zen of Cyberspace joke: Q. If a remailer is yin and a reputation system is yang, what is Yin without Yang? A. The sound of one hand clapping. Voila! <g> Gotta run. Bye.

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clipper and export
by Jonathan Rochkind 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is anyone else distrubed by the way that encryption export policy and the clipper chip seem to be linked {in administration policy, and in the press? The letter from Gore to Cantwell certainly indicates this. He got her to refrain from trying to liberalize export by saying that he'd look into relaxing clipper. This seems awfully insidious, for a variety of reasons. I think everyone has got to make greater efforts to seperate these two issues in the public s mind. If we need to prevent encryption export for national security reasons, as the administration alleges, then that doesn't neccesarily have any relation on whether we need to adopt key escrow too.And if key escrow is neccesary for law enforcement, as they allege, that doesn't say _anything_ about whether encryption export should be liberalized or not. Of course, scrutinizing administration policy revelas the link without too much dificulty. They want to make clipper a de facto standard, and the only way they're going to be able to accomplish this is by refusing to allow exportation of anything _but_ clipper. But the administration isn't publically giving this line of reasoning, because it makes them look bad, and shows that they are mis-using the legislation that allows them to ban exportation of encryption for their own pro-Clipper strategies. But they still manage to link the two issues, as in the "compromise" with Ms. Cantwell, without giving any good reason for the two issues to be related! I don't think we should let them get away with this. If the two issues are going to be linked like this, we the public have got to demand and explanation or rational for doing this. Why did the administration basically offer to re-think clipper _if_ Cantwell didn't try to liberalize export? And when they can't give a good answer, we the cypherpunks have got to offer our explanation. As it is, they're getting a tactical olitical freebie. They've managed to link the issues of export restrictions and clipper such that Joe Public sees how the policies are linked, _without_ giving any actual reasons for the link, because those reasons would make them look so bad.

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Re: Voice/Fax Checks
by frissell＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:19 AM 7/20/94 UTC, j.hastings6(a)genie.geis.com wrote: >"Attention Businesses...Accept Personal and Business Checks Over The >Telephone (or by fax) for Your Orders, Payments, Collections and >Donations!" > >If you want more details about this, drop me a note. I have no >other connection with the company besides the fax from a sales guy, >so far. Does anyone out there know something about this concept? >Could this be useful for a digital cash bank interface? Say that you're selling something and someone says "I'll mail you a check today." This lets you say: "Don't bother. Take out the check you were going to send me, read me the routing code and check number on the bottom. Give me your name and address and the bank's name and address as they appear on the check, the amount you will pay and the date. I'll collect that check electronically without you having to bother to send it." They reconstruct the check as an electronic payment order and submit it. Works. Even easier if they have a fax of the check. DCF Privacy 101 - States without mandatory auto insurance: Alabama, District of Columbia, Iowa, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, Wisconsin. (The last time I looked -- updates welcome.)

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Re: GUT and P=NP
by rjc＠gnu.ai.mit.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

James A. Donald writes: > I was referring to the proposed quantum computers. > > > Since such machines do not operate algorithmically > > > > This statement is exactly wrong. Such machines *define* a class of > > algorithms. > I recommend that you read the following paper. > E. Bernstein and U. Vazirani, {\it Quantum Complexity > Theory}, Proc. 25th ACM Symp. on Theory of Computation, pp. 11--20 > (1993). James, without reading the paper, can you tell me why the following argument is incorrect? 1) By definition, if something can be computed by a turing machine, then it is an algorithm (Lewis and Papadimitriou) 2) a quantum computer can be simulated by a TM with exponential slowdown. (claimed by you on the Extropians list, but also claimed by Feynmann I believe, not about qm computers, but qm systems in general) then by (1) and (2), it follows that 3) quantum computers are algorithmic (if not, it would contradict 2) and possibly 1) It doesn't matter how slow the turing machine runs the simulation because we allow an arbitrary time along with the infinite tape to complete the computation. -Ray

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

17 Dec '03

if you really want to propose an escrow system we can live with, I would demand that it include: 1. unambiguous ID of the person being tapped in the LEAF-equivalent 2. multiple escrow agencies, at least one of which is the NSA HQ (for its superior physical security) 3. watchdogs as escrow agents (e.g., ACLU, Rep & Dem parties, CPSR, EFF, NYTimes, ...) with authorization to look for abuses of authority and to refuse to release keys in such cases and to publicize such cases as well as bringing them to the attention of law enforcement for prosecution. 4. user-generated escrow keys, to reduce the chance of anyone having a backdoor way to get the whole escrow key database.

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