December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Jim Clark, "Mr. Bubble"
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Alex Strasheim, 12/2/95, 6:53 PM: >I don't expect Netscape, as a corporate citizen, to engage in civil >disobedience. But I hope that Netscape will take seriously its obligation >to protect the rights of citizens. I do. I regard the capacity to do so as crucial, and I regard the fact that you *don't* expect them to as very telling. As has been pointed out extensively, the chances that he'll manage to hang on to his soft-earned cash until he can sell out are a long shot--unless he takes a stand against GAK. Governmental policy on the subject of crypto has relied upon secrecy, obscurity, and above all terrorizing individuals; the gov't would be extremely reluctant to throw the book Netscape, given its symbolic significance in the market. And even if it did, Clark's future would be assured--maybe after he got out of Club Fed, but assured nonetheless. Let me be clear: if Clark and Netscape said "We're implementing and releasing a version with a key length we support," crypto policy would be the lead story on the evening news--and the gov't would lose. The only question is how fast. >The decison that Netscpae is faced with now is a big one. It's going to >have widespread and long lasting consequences for privacy and civil >liberties all over the world. When you look at what's going to happen on >the ground, it's probably as important as a major decision by the Supreme >Court. >>We understand that government officials in this country and elsewhere are >putting pressure on Netscape. But you should understand that the public >is overwhelmingly in favor of universal access to strong crypto. This is >a democracy, after all, and the FBI and NSA still work for the people. >If you need help standing up for what's right, you'll get it. Take your >case to the public, and you'll be suprised at the response you'll get. You set forth all these silly generalities as though they suggest that NS's best bet--for Clark, for itself, for the public--is to go along with US policy? Bullshit. Their best bet is to use their golden-boy status to sucker punch the gov't. >Why not say: > > 1 Netscape will follow all laws and regulations. > 2 The current rules are forcing Netscape to choose > between providing reasonable levels of privacy > to its customers and competing in the international > marketplace. > 3 Netscape feels the rules should be changed to make > this choice unnecessary. Bah. Why not: 1 Make illegal software available by FTP 2 Explain it's doing so because ITAR is bullshit 3 Face the gov't down in the press and in the courts >If you make that argument publicly, you'll get widespread support from the >business communitity and the general public. And if it turns out that we >can't win, you can always fall back on selling totalitarian-friendly >products. If NS did this, they'd win BIG. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQBVAwUBMMHndb3g0mNE55u1AQG3cAH/dQnrTUyZRIdz1P3lTGhQzOqvG2NSWdeh YVYPN+wTZBfnBWlMwIkODAuyafbyFEGr5+lsgTBOtYDCVWFsW8LdWQ== =+Wxw -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Remind me why we're so mad at Netscape
by Matt Blaze 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Could someone please remind me what it is we're mad at Netscape about? As far as I can tell it's some combination of the following offenses: (a) - Jim Clark made a speech in which he revealed that he thought the government would be a player in determining the way cryptography ends up being deployed on the Internet. He was quoted in the trade press, but it was unclear exactly which words were actually his. Asked to clarify, he said that Netscape would implement mandatory government access across its product line only if required to by law, but he observed that things seem to be moving in that direction. I share his pessimism, unfortunately, unless we find a way to shift the winds. (b) Netscape contracted with the government to produce a ``Fortezza'' version of their browser for government use. They negotiated to get a lot of money for this (maybe something like $5 million). Good for them. Personally, I *like* the Fortezza interface; the API seems to provide a good abstraction for hardware and software crypto, it's easy to replace the module with something else (like software 3DES with no key escrow), and it's easy to defeat the key escrow features. Of course, maybe I'm just defending them out of guilty self-interest here, since I've played around with the Fortezza interface quite a bit myself, although they never sent me my $5 million. (c) No one from Netscape attended Bernstein hearing. I wish someone had let me know beforehand that that was to be the litmus test for the right to claim cryptographic correctness, or I would have flown right out. I guess I blew it, too. (d) Their stock price is very high, many times greater than their profits and physical assets would seem to justify. I'm not sure I understand the implication here. Maybe that this is proof that in exchange for selling out (by committing sins (a), (b) and (c), above), the secret NSA stock-price-manipulation cabal rigged the market to overvalue their stock? Wow. Don't get me wrong here; it may be useful to make clear that the market (to the extent that any of us can claim to represent any market they would be interested in) won't tolerate vendors who put the government's desires ahead of their customer's security needs. But I have yet to see any actual evidence that that's what's happened here, and I'd hate to see Netscape loose a lot of good people who could go a long way toward deploying real security on the net over something that turns out to have been a false alarm. Disclaimer: I'm employed full time by a soon-to-be-tri-vested major player in the military industrial complex, and us sellouts like to stick together. -matt

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Re: "Got a subpoena?"
by btmoore＠iquest.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 12:09 PM 12/1/95 -0600, Al Thompson wrote: >At 06:57 PM 11/30/95 -0500, JHupp(a)Gensys.Com wrote: > >> And at that point, you shut down the remailer and log each and every >>bounce. >> >> Now, they could get an order forcing you to run a remailer ~ but that >>would open up a whole new can of worms i.e. can you be forced, under >>court order, to commit a crime? > >That's not how they do it. They will tell you that unless you cooperate, >you will >be charged for the "crime" you have been committing. Where do you think >confidential informants come from? They're just people who have been caught >or set up by the cops, who are trying to save their own ass. > There are times when all that can be said is Amen!!! Most of these people have absolutely no clue to the way the government REALLY works! The feds will set up a "little" fish in order to catch what they consider to be a "big" one. Ask Randy Weaver! They weren't really after him... they were after the Aryan Nations. They wanted Mr. Weaver to infiltrate for them... So they attempted to encourage his enthusiasm... How? They set him up on a bogus gun charge... when that wasn't successful... They killed his family! The problem is people still live under the mistaken notion that there are rules! When the congress and the courts passed laws allowing the confiscation of property without due process and further allowed the proceeds from the sell of that property to fund the coffers of the agencies that took those properties, they assured our descent into a totalitarian state. We are like the walking wounded, soon to be the walking dead. We are dead and don't know it! Unless the tree of Liberty is watered soon... it seems we are doomed! Benjamin T. Moore, Jr. btmoore(a)iquest.net (Jian #AJF IRChat) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMMD7YISAJOVFNaChAQGolwf+IBbGrWn5HvRwHpIuAu+GbVgOgIP3ZIyo CVt8EgvoAiq11Qo6B/aRawGhwxgmLCEZWbFaW/QrHQTsOWspqPmKd8N0h5ZIhn73 c84NOxjXEOcOUHwtmGgDL5kK1hvaqClmTXG3DjmCVoYgXIbHm73JB1liKwGsHn2E TXAT4jEDUp2wBWiDNc2/z2dPzPgm/l+0xwzLZYPNMkL2/vgCrfSVewwBKXmk1oDZ lYysKonja02NgYWUy2Ujz9gr69kfriZgdz4SIO+mbakhbPBqJZUEQg8fwZnz8fgU hRmFoVFudRPRn1qyU65tzLbGurpXT8hxYbWwv895qaDfLHdQ2IH0iQ== =On3V -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Talking to Jim
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sat, 2 Dec 1995 anonymous-remailer(a)shell.portal.com wrote: > > The market seems to "think" that it's a better present judge > > of what Netscape has than he does. It's almost as though > > the "market" has developed a "mind" of its own. > > Well, of course! Markets are the most efficient integration of the minds > of the participants, hands down. Hands down efficient integration?? Not especially. First you have to really wonder what and who the "participants" in this market are. As an example, year-ends have certain particular momentums. So do capital gains considerations. All part of the mind of Buddha, as some of the fruitcake players might say ... and all part of the known interplaying "participants". > > It's own particular neural network. > > Exactly. Literally. And huge, too. Except that this one doesn't listen to any of its sensors or input devices. It's learned to ignore all of *that* information, because all of *that* information is inherently untrustworthy, so it simply listens to it's very own dialogue. Sort of like feeding off of a feedback loop. > > It's almost as though there is automated software at work. Just like October, 1987. It simply listened to itself and kept telling itself that it was "actually" making money all the way down. Portfolio Insurance be damned, it was doing "OK". > There is: Wetware. Massive concurrent processing, heavy parallelism, > inefficient I/O. Distributed, redundant memory. Inefficient but infinitely > adaptable interprocessor routing. Capable of handling any degree of > outage. All elements individually expendable. Self-replicating processors > that have significant lead time but integrate smoothly into the net. > Designs and builds its own outboard peripherals and interconnects. Best > damned planetary computing system in this star system. But I diverge... IMHO, there is very little wetware left in the market. This is now the 90's. Time to get with the programs. > It's not always right (though self-fulfilling prophecy is often a big > part of the equation), and it often misses the anolamies, but because it > IS an integration is precisely why it may mean something different than > you suggest. Oooo ... duelling programs ... especially one which is designed to ignore the other one and not listen to any of its "blather" ... this oughta be interesting to watch ... Luckily, I'm outside this theatre of operations. > Netscape's share price more directly reflects the personal involvement and > upward view of real people with respect to the Internet/WWW than anything > else we have. "Personal" involvement and "real" people have very little to do with a market that is driven by institutions and other vectors. Institutions which have to "show" what their exposure to the "technology and Internet" sector is when they file their portfolio reports will want to show something on their book. And they'll look for a safety in numbers thing, and will flock to the "darlings". "Real people's views" also won't count for much if Netscape defines an entire new economic sector -- the ground floor of the Internet. "Real people" don't factor in if it becomes part of the S&P 500 and every index fund "has" to -- by definition -- buy it. "Real people" also have very little impact on the blow crazed trader who's on a run and actually actively managing and turning-over the pension funds or mutual funds of some group. (Or even a sector fund, whose by-laws won't allow it to sit on cash, as it flows in the door.) These guys have far more influence than the aggregate of individuals who might buy or sell "small" lots at the market. "Real people" don't impact nor control the communications networks of block trading reports. And they don't impact systems which *must* put their money out, and put it to work. Real people are really just noise in the flow. The idea that individual supply/demand is what moves prices is a fallacy. It's not the "reality" behind the shell game. Buying or selling pressure doesn't ever function as a price mover, because for every "buyer" there is a corresponding "seller". Zero-sums type of stuff. It no more reflects the inherent strength of the Internet, than the Dutch Tulip craze reflected the inherent strength of Tulips. > Remember, there are still naysayers out there, declaiming in places > from books to columns to TV, while the reality is that computers are > now outselling televisions, and a key new form of synergistic human > communication is exploding in exponential growth. Humans deal on a > personal level only moderately well with linear processes, and > poorly with geometric processes -- it's understandable that the > growth of the Internet/WWW and the implications of thereof would be > late in being recognized and be incorrectly understood until > sometime AFTER the changes have rocked the society. Nonsense. (No offence, btw ...) We're back to the man who simply closes his eyes to what's happening, or the ostrich sticking its head in the sand. We've already got the experience to understand how these things work. They've got the "play book", and are following it step by step. > Capitalize ME to the tune of $5 billion, for instance, and I may > be influential not only during the course of your life but the lives of > your great-grandchildren. Capitalize how? Balance sheet? Or market? A $1 Billion or $2 Billion rights issue might be one thing, but this one is another. > Selling Netscape short may or may not be a wise move -- selling market > processes short is usually a fool's exercise in self-delusion. It really depends on what and how you use that tool, doesn't it?? As an example, short sales are excellent ways of "creating" stock in thin markets. They can work to create a virtual share. This might sound strange, but it's a feature of the "market". "Shorts" usually sell borrowed stock hoping to buy it back cheaper at some later date. A broker goes out and "borrows" the stock from another broker, and then that stock is sold to a buyer. The two legs of the short sale actually work together to create a "virtual" share of the corporation. This creates "volume" by trading a "virtual share". At some point, these used to be called derivative plays, before that word became dirty in and of itself. To explain. Let's say that XCO owns 100 shares of Spyglass. And YCO "shorts" 100 Spyglass. What actually happens is that YCO has simply signed a note saying that they "owe" XCO's broker 100 shares of Spyglass. If YCO now sells that stock to ZCO, then there are actually now 200 shares of spyglass out there. 100 actual ones owned by XCO, and 100 virtual ones owned by ZCO. (And a note to someone that says ... I owe ya, a 100 Spyglass.) But the "virtual" stock is indistinguishable from the "actual" stock. Of course the generally known risk is that with price movements that YCO could loose a lot of money on its short. Especially in a "squeeze" play. But if YCO and ZCO are actually "friendly" then all they have to do is shift a lot of money around as the price gyrates. Back-to-back credit facilities usually suffice for this purpose, since all that they really need is a "note" from their banker saying that they're "good people" and are "good for the money", if something does go wrong. That their credit is good in the casino. (And mathematically in fact ... they are good for the money ... cause they don't have a market "position" or opinion, even though they can trade one heck of a lot.) In this case, the short can't be "squeezed" cause he's actually covered. But it can lead to some really interesting optics. And these programs do listen to optics. Especially if YCO and his ZCO friend are up against ACO and his BCO friend. I think it's all just a virtual war at that point. Something to watch via Quotron. But then you'd need a Quotron for that, wouldn't you?? Alice de 'nonymous ... ...just another one of those... P.S. This post is in the public domain. C. S. U. M. O. C. L. U. N. E. > > We Jurgar Din > (that will have to suffice: I do not yet live in a free country) > > +"The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone. It is to the+ > +vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, Sir, we have no + > +election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now + > +too late to retire from the contest." -Patrick Henry 1775 + > > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: 2.6.2 > > iQBVAwUBMMCsBEjw99YhtpnhAQE04QH8C+jk59lxyAqkVlfhd2VLw3TJKnECdXXJ > fNE7S0QZyd5eqFnZ4wTyHeX18YfTg+xiFZPPfxpRCdgO/x2K8sxFWQ== > =/2cN > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > > > > > > >

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Do the Right Thing
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My thesis is that both Netscape and Microsoft are in positions at this time to either do the right thing (tm) or to help build in the tools for a police state, an Orwellian surveillance state. Netscape, being the dominant browser company, and Microsoft, being the dominant OS company, are in special positions to "build in Big Brother." I'm not claiming they are, just that they are clearly in a position to make it technologically more feasible to make non-GAK illegal. They both need to carefully think about the role that's been "given" to them (whether by fortune, hard work, or being in the right place at the right time) and do what's right. Strong words, perhaps, but the implications of mandatory key escrow are quite clear. We debated these points for a long time during the Clipper debate, and later when "Software Key Escrow" began to rear its head. I won't repeat these arguments against GAK here, but will take this opportunity to quote from a new book that actually quotes my words: "May, ever the idea juggler, also weighed in with some powerful arguments _for_ PGP that appealed to a stodgy old Democrat (small "d" as well) like me. Even the Feds should have grasped them. "Could strong crypto be used for sick and disgusting and dangerous purposes?" May asked. And then he answered himself: "So can locked doors, but we don't insist on an 'open door policy' (outside of certain quaint sorority and rooming houses!). So do many forms of privacy allow plotters, molesters, racists, etc. to meet and plot." Whatever May was, anarchist, libertarian, objectivist, or nothing, he was making more sense in those three sentences than Baker could have in a 1,000 essays." [David H. Rothman, "NetWorld! What People are Really Doing on the Internet, and What it Means to You," Prima Publishing, 1996. Note: I don't recall meeting Rothman, and didn't know about this book until I stumbled across it last night in a bookstore.] It is important that such companies as Netscape and Microsoft fully understand that crypto policy will largely determine civil liberties in this country and other countries for a long time to come. And they must understand that they can influence the direction. Bill Gates, after some early waffling, seems to now fully understand the implications of GAK and has written persuasively against it. Jim Clark does not seem to me have thought about it as deeply, or perhaps has views of civil liberties which are not at odds with mandatory key escrow, the "open door policy" mentioned above. And time is of the essence. Things move very fast. It is no longer the case that a law is passed, then companies respond to the new legal regime with their own policies and products. Companies, especially in high tech, are "partners" from the start, as we saw with the Clipper development (where AT&T had known about Clipper for years prior to the first public announcement, and was cooperating in the development of it, not to mention the other companies such as Mykotronx, VLSI Technology, etc., which were involved in secret for years). It is only sheer speculation on our part (some of us, at least) that negotiations about GAK have been going on with the major software companies. Jim Clark, for example, learned what he knows about key escrow _someplace_, and it probably wasn't from our list or from articles he'd read. I'm betting, but could of course be wrong, that he and other folks at Netscape (and I mustn't leave out Microsoft, Sun, SGI, Apple, etc.) have been briefed on key escrow and that various negotiations are already underway. This would match how things were done with Clipper, and would explain Clark's voiced support for the need for GAK. I hope Jeff W. and Jim C. can have some _long_ chats. The stakes are too high for product decisions to be made without full awareness of the implications. The statements from Jim Clark do tend to imply a kind of defeatism, and even Jeff's comments seemed laden with qualifications about "only if the government requires us to." As Hal Finney noted in his post, it's as if the Netscape people are preparing for the inevitable. Maybe it's not an indication that GAK is being considered within Netscape, but maybe it is. After all, one rarely hears "only if we have to" qualifications on things that are truly from out in left field. And what Netscape agrees to put in future releases of its browsers or its servers could have dramatic effects on the whole climate. (A side point, somewhat abstract: The dominance of Netscape, rising from nowhere to becoming the major player in this debate, illustrates a point about "monocultures" and their ecological effects. If yellow corn is good, replace other strains of corn with yellow corn. Pretty soon, the world's corn output is 96% yellow corn. Some ecological downsides to this. In this case, Netscape is becoming the yellow corn of the Web, and an obvious "choke point" for the NSA and its sisters to mandate crypto policies. Hence, the role of non-yellow-corn alternatives...) Should Netscape play ball with the NSA or refuse to cooperate? I'm not suggesting that Netscape "break the law." Actually, there are *no* laws at present about GAK or about the use of strong crypto within the U.S., and most of us want to keep it that way. Thus, Jim Clark and Netscape could strongly lobby for keeping things the way they are, and could even say "If foreign governments demand GAK, let them build it in themselves--we will not produce the software to run a police state." And if export laws demand GAK in exported products, Netscape should "do the right thing" and have two versions. It may add to their costs a little, but it's better than building in the machinery for a GAK law to later be passed. (Explain something to me. I have never, ever understood why it is a concern of the U.S. government that we help build in GAK for foreign governments, that we make sure that products intended for export to France or Syria have GAK that allows those governments to read the traffic of their citizens. And if the concern is that exported versions of software must be readable to the _United States_, then this is a non-starter in terms of sales in many or even most foreign countries! I'm sure France will welcome with open arms a version of Netscape that allows the NSA to read the traffic of French citizens. Oh, by the way, what legal jurisdictions will be involved in obtaining the escrowed keys of foreigners? The answers are both clear and murky, if you catch my drift.) If the U.S. insists on GAK _within the U.S._, as many of us fear is the long-term danger, then all bets are off anyway. But I would hope that Netscape does nothing to make it _easier_ to make this the case! A viable thing for Netscape to do is to announce forthrightly that it will separate the issue of export from what it sells in the U.S., that there will be NO GAK included in any U.S.-sold packages. The quest for an "all world" version, freely exportable, should not take precedence over the civil liberties issues. And I predict that any slight losses in market share or slight increases in product cost will be _less_ than the effects Netscape will see if their product comes to be associated with "Big Brother Inside." Enough for now. --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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toy story: more power
by amp 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-- [ From: amp * EMC.Ver #2.3 ] -- obcrypto: i'd like to see how bruter.c would have run on their 'renderfarm'. MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. (Nov. 30) BUSINESS WIRE -Nov. 30, 1995--The making of "Toy Story," the stunning new movie from Walt Disney Pictures that is the world's first full-length completely computer-generated animated film, involved the use of more than 100 high-powered computers from Sun Microsystems -- which together comprised one of the most powerful graphics rendering engines ever created. =snip= For the movie, Pixar created a networked bank or "cluster" of 117 Sun(TM) SPARCstation(TM) 20 workstations -- each containing at least two microprocessors, and running on Sun's Solaris(TM) operating environment -- to handle the critical task of "rendering" each of the 114,000 frames in the 77-minute movie. =snip= Sun worked closely with a team from Pixar to create its RenderFarm, which serves as Pixar's central resource of computer processing power. The RenderFarm uses a network computing architecture in which a powerful SPARCserver(TM) 1000 acting as a "texture server" supplies the necessary data to the many rendering client workstations needed to complete the rendering process. The RenderFarm was assembled by Sun and Pixar engineers in less than a month and drew upon Sun's own experience in setting up "farms" of many systems linked together. Some facts about Pixar's RenderFarm and the computing aspects of "Toy Story": -0- -- The RenderFarm is one of the most powerful rendering engines ever assembled, comprising 87 dual-processor and 30 four-processor SPARCstation 20s and an 8-processor SPARCserver 1000. The RenderFarm has the aggregate performance of 16 billion instructions per second -- its total of 300 processors represents the equivalent of approximately 300 Cray 1 supercomputers. -- Each system is the size of a pizza box, and all 117 systems work in a footprint measuring just 19 inches deep by 14 feet long by 8 feet high. -- Sun is the price/performance leader, in Pixar's own rankings. The SPARCstation 20 HS14MP earned a rating of $80 per Rendermark (a Pixar measurement for rendering performance), while the comparable SGI Indigo Extreme came in at approximately $150 per Rendermark. -- Using one single-processor computer to render "Toy Story" would have taken 43 years of nonstop performance. -- Each of the movie's more than 1,500 shots and 114,000 frames were rendered on the RenderFarm, a task that took 800,000 computer hours to produce the final cut. Each frame used up 300 megabytes of data -- the capacity of a good-sized PC hard disk -- and required from two to 13 hours for final processing. -- In addition to the high-resolution final rendering, the RenderFarm was also used to generate the test images animators needed to plan and evaluate lighting, texture mapping and animation. Since fast response is key in doing tests, RenderMan could produce test frames in as little as a few seconds. -- Scalability is built-in: the RenderFarm can be upgraded (with more processors and disk storage) to a nearly four-fold performance level, without requiring any additional space. The RenderFarm also integrates seamlessly with Pixar's existing computer network containing different types of machines. =snip=

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No Subject
by 103155.2774＠compuserve.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hello...i'm new to this, but love it...Tell me how exciting this is!!!!!///

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Re: EXO_ner
by Dave Del Torto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:34 AM 12/2/95, John Young wrote: >SenXon and The Washrag blow today about which has the most to >be ashamed of and hide from the filthy lingerie leering >republic. Exon, Exoff, XON, X-off, Exxon, ex-off. dave ____________________________________________________________________ "Packwood's supporters were left groping for answers." --news anchor

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Re: Remind me why we're so mad at Netscape
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:33 PM 12/2/95 -0500, Matt Blaze <mab(a)crypto.com> wrote: >Could someone please remind me what it is we're mad at Netscape about? >As far as I can tell it's some combination of the following offenses: > >(a) - Jim Clark made a speech in which he revealed that he thought the >government would be a player in determining the way cryptography ends >up being deployed on the Internet. He was quoted in the trade press, >but it was unclear exactly which words were actually his. Asked to >clarify, he said that Netscape would implement mandatory government >access across its product line only if required to by law, but he >observed that things seem to be moving in that direction. I share his >pessimism, unfortunately, unless we find a way to shift the winds. I give Netscape a lot of credit for the way they've handled things so far; their US commercial version supports strong crypto (modulo a few bugs :-), and interoperates with their free exportable version, which is itself far stronger than a minimal 40-bit version could have been. And they're adding secure email to the new version. And (while they can't officially say this, of course) anybody overseas can pirate the strong-crypto version if 40 bits aren't enough. PGP gave anybody who wanted to do a bit of work the ability to do trusted communications, but it's still not widely used because it does take extra work; the most important things it's done have been to raise public awareness and make it obvious to everybody that the cat's out of the bag, which also pressured the government into dealing with the issue. Netscape is putting built-in strong crypto in the hands of tens of millions of people; fait accompli like that make it much harder for governments to impose stupid and offensive rules. Maybe Netscape will come out with GAKed versions for export to nosy-governmented countries like France and the US; as long as the main version has secure communications, and they're open about how their crypto really works, we can talk securely domestically, and other folks can pirate them to use instead of GAKware. If the government wants to pay extra to support special hardware crypto modules for their own use, and the modules do GAK, that's an internal problem (as long as we can subpoena their records.) Of course, in case the main US versions ever have GAK as a default, I do reserve the right to flame Netscape again :-) >(d) Their stock price is very high, many times greater than their >profits and physical assets would seem to justify. I'm not sure I >understand the implication here. I think it's that "Netscape is now in a financial position that pushes them to care more about making some profits to justify their appallingly high stock price so they're more likely to lose big bucks if they don't sell out, and I should have bought it at $70..." >Disclaimer: I'm employed full time by a soon-to-be-tri-vested major >player in the military industrial complex, and us sellouts like to >stick together. Definitely. Back when I was a tool of the military-industrial complex, I was two floors down from Matt, in an RF-shielded room :-) #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0663 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 # Anybody notice that Microsoft's Wide Open Road ad has barbed-wire fences # on both sides of the road?

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Re: Use of PGP as an export?
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:09 PM 12/2/95 -0800, Ted Cabeen <cabeen(a)netcom.com> wrote: >I think this has been brought up before, but I could only find one reference >to it in the archives and it wasn't too helpful, so I'll ask again. If a >university provided a copy of PGP for use on their unix machines and a >non-resident, non-citizen *used* the copy of PGP on the server, but did not >download it onto their own machine, but instead just ran PGP on the server >alone, would it be a violation of the ITAR? My school is interested in >putting a copy of PGP on the university server and wants to know if they >should somehow restrict access to citizens and legal residents only. Thanks. That's not giving technical data to the foreigner, that's providing a service; the ITAR doesn't seem to restrict that. It's not an especially secure way to operate, but that's an inherent problem with multi-user systems or file servers. One way to implement it that would be only mildly insecure would be to put PGP on a file server, with execute-only permissions; users of client machines still could be attacked by somebody faking out NFS, but they wouldn't have to send their passphrases across the net the way they would in a telnet session. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0663 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 # Anybody notice that Microsoft's Wide Open Road ad has barbed-wire fences # on both sides of the road?

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