December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: web pages sucking secrets from your hard drive
by Michael Sattler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 17:13 2/9/95, jltocher(a)CCGATE.HAC.COM wrote: >While you're connected to your favorite Web page, it's also connected >to you, and could be copying all sorts of information off your hard >drive, say industry experts. Wrong. >In fact, it happened last year when >Central Point Software used registration software developed by >Pipeline Communications Can you tell the difference between a web session and an installer? -----------------------------------------------------------------------+ Michael Sattler <msattler(a)jungle.com> San Francisco, California | Digital Jungle Consulting Services http://www.jungle.com/msattler/ | | You couldn't get a clue during the clue mating season in | a field full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk | and did the clue mating dance. - Edward Flaherty |

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RE: a new way to do anonymity
by jrochkin＠cs.oberlin.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:51 PM 02/09/95, Wei Dai wrote: >It seems to me that if a user maintains a 24-hour a day pipe to an >uncompromised server, then the method I described earlier against >remailers should not work against that user. Otherwise, some kind of >in-out statistical analysis may work. Ay, what a good point. I know this connection is incredibly obvious, but just in case no one has yet made it, I will. A "pipe-net" host running Wei's L- modification to Matt's ESM, which was also running a remailer, would provide pretty much untraceable entrance to the remailer net. The remailer software wouldn't even need to be integrated with the pipe software in any way, as long as the user had a secure connection to the host, he could just connect to the SMTP port and send the message to the remailer that way. I would guess that the attack Wei described, as well as almost every other, if not every other, traffic analysis attack would fail if users were utilizing this. You could trace the message to a given "pipe net" host using traffic analysis, but you wouldn't be able to trace it to a user, if he was using the pipe net appropriately. Obviously, this also requires a sufficient number of people to be using the pipe net host, so that no real information is gained just by tracing the connection to a given pipenet host. And of course non-pipe-net users are using the remailer on the machine to, which makes things a tiny bit more complicated for the traffic analysits Note also that the bandwith could be kept extremely low. Even something like 10cps. So, maybe it takes you up to a couple hours to actually transit your message to the pipe-net host remailer, but we currently dont' expect instantaneous remailernet transmission anyway. We've learned to live with latency on the order of hours, as opposed to seconds, so adding several more hours onto the chain isn't a problem. And with a bandwith maintained that low, the pipenet host could theoretically host many many "pipe net remailer" client users, without causing a serious problem. This seems like a really exciting thing to me. That we already have the tools available for, right now at this very second, now that Wei has done the link encryption mod to ESM.

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Re: LESM - Link Encrypted Session Manager (3rd try)
by cactus＠seabsd.hks.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In article <199502100243.AA03571(a)mail.eskimo.com>, Wei Dai <weidai(a)eskimo.com> wrote: >I tried to distribute LESM to the cypherpunks mailing list twice, and >neither of them made it to the nntp.hks.com list archive (my >laster posts HAVE). What is going on here? This is a second repost. nntp.hks.*net*. hks.com is someone else. We were off-line for several hours today, so it's possible that they're still sitting in a mail queue somewhere. Netcom is our denial of service provider, colluding with NyNex... 'nuff said. - - -- Todd Masco | "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've cactus(a)hks.net | constructed." - Darth Vader Cactus' Homepage - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBLzqp4xNhgovrPB7dAQGrxAP+Ota+9gBiOGmkE0XLxiIcLlE+rq0FMvcg STYMFJPZbGc0QymyNZWWIQrFZS5yo7Zr8hRmmw6a/h3+MjzioiWvDJzDFdmPhwNd CAvlvfAV97ZC4sYqc+KeeLjjxEGXpUbUQFbcKe4KAqx4XG6UXtWseeGbz+ZzSstu iP1KSx5Oznw= =QaIT - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBLzrjMCoZzwIn1bdtAQF6rQF/e9K678EztVO+4lr/oH+POXVFZm4Eg8ao 4DqXfTkbQ+fpnWHacueth1/9xFrt8RJd =s71u -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Da Judge-L FAQ -- We are not Amused
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It has come to Our attention that Our FAQ, the Da Judge-L FAQ, is being distributed amongst the rabble. We are not amused. The so-called Cypherpunks List, having been a party to this illegal and "most heinous" distribution, is hereby invited to appear in our Chambers on the morning of Tuesday, 29 February, 1995, at a place of our choosing. Defense will be heard, and then the guilty will be punished. Royally Yours, Da Judge-L

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Re: HR830 - Anyone tracking this?
by hendrix＠acs.bu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >The recent version of the EFFector Online had some information about the >House of Representative's Bill HR830. They say that this bill is being >rammed through Congress and would cripple FOIA. It would seemingly >change any public information that is given value to non-public >information. Does anyone have any further information? > >Mike > In response to your post I am passing on some info that came my way on Tuesday, please excuse the length. Apart from the message below there is a letter written by James Love of TAP to Honorable William Clinger, Jr. the Chairman of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, but due to it's length I have not included it here. I can E-mail it to anyone who is interested. Julian Burke ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 02:45:55 -0800 Send reply to: love(a)Essential.ORG From: James Love <love(a)Essential.ORG> To: Multiple recipients of list <law-lib(a)ucdavis.edu> Subject: Help! West Publishing seeks broad change in FOIA (fwd) Originally to: law librarians <law-lib(a)ucdavis.edu>, Distributed to TAP-INFO, a free Internet Distribution List (subscription requests to listproc(a)tap.org) TAXPAYER ASSETS PROJECT - INFORMATION POLICY NOTE CROWN JEWELS CAMPAIGN - Juris, Legal Information February 7, 1995 We need help from everyone!!!!!!!! Please distribute this widely. jamie love (love(a)tap.org, 610/658-0880 or 202/387- 8030) - Hearings set for today (Tuesday February 7) on bill containing special interest provision for West Publishing. Hearings will be held before the subcommittee on "Regulatory Affairs." - House republicans have slated quick action on the bill. Subcommittee Mark-up is set for thursday and full committee mark-up is set for friday. (Telephone and Fax numbers of committee members given below) - House republicans introduce legislation with a section requested by West Publishing that will provide sweeping changes in federal freedom of information act, and prevent federal agencies from creating a public database that use the West Publishing page numbers to reference case law. - The "West Provision" would also end its lawsuit with Tax Analyst, a Virginia publisher, who is seeking access to the Department of Justice JURIS database of court decisions in order to put the information into the public domain. Tax Analysts alleges the JURIS database of court decisions are subject to FOIA and not protected by copyright. A victory by Tax Analysts in this case will lead to a public domain database of federal court decisions. - The West Provision in the legislation would extend far beyond West Publishing's struggle to maintain its grip on the market for legal information. It would exclude all contractor generated records from the federal Freedom of Information Act. Examples of databases that would be affected by provision would be the SEC's EDGAR database and the Department of Education ERIC database. - Help needed in removing this special interest provision. Telephone and fax numbers for the Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs are given below. >From best we can determine, the so called "Paperwork Reduction Act" bill was introduced late yesterday or will be introduced early today. We do not have a bill number yet. There will be a hearing on today (Tuesday February 7) before the "Subcommittee on National Economic Growth, Natural Resources, and Regulatory Affairs," more commonly referred to as the subcommittee on "Regulatory Affairs." Subcommittee Mark-up is set for thursday and full committee (the apparently misnamed Committee on Government Reform and Oversight) mark-up is set for friday. A provision in this bill [Section 3518 (f) of the "Chairman's Mark"] would do the following. If any person "adds value" to public information, the federal government would not have "any right to obtain, collect, acquire, disseminate, use or convert," the data, database or information product, or "any method used by the person to identify such resulting data, databases or information product," except "under terms that are expressly agreed to by such person." This provision is being sold as a simple restatement of the law, but that is a far from true (or more bluntly, a lie). The provision in the bill is so broad that it covers all contractor performed work on behalf of agencies, and effectively exempts contractor generated records from the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). For example, since LEXIS "adds value" to the EDGAR database by taking the incomming filings from the government and putting them in a database, even if the government had a copy of the database, it could not dissmeinate the records without the consent of LEXIS. Likewise, many databases, such as the Department of Education ERIC database, are largely put together by private contactors. Indeed, if Oliver North had used a private contractor for the White House email system, those records would appear to be off limits to both FOIA and a government supeana. Moreover, the provison would apply even in cases where the firm did not have a copyright or any other protectable intellectually property right, a huge change in federal law. The provision would specifically apply to an active federal lawsuit between West Publishing and Tax Analysts, over the Department of Justice JURIS database. West Publishing was a contractor on JURIS, an online system run by the Department of Justice, which contains several decades of federal court decisions. West Publishing is trying to prevent Tax Analysts from obtaining copies of court decisions contained in the government's JURIS database. Tax Analyst believes the records are subject to FOIA, and not protected by copyright. If Tax Analysts (fmi, Tom Field, 703/533-4400 or Eleanor Lewis 301/652- 3453) wins the law suit, which has been very expensive, it plans to put the data into the public domain, creating a public database of federal court decisions -- something that West Publishing is fighting against. Moreover, the West assertion of its copyright of legal citations is being challenged in federal court in New York by Hyperlaw, a small CD-ROM publisher (fmi, Alan Sugarman, President, 212/877-1371, sugarman(a)panix.com) If Sugarman wins his case, the West provision would prevent the Department of Justice from using the West citations in a public database. --------------------------------------------------------------------- TAP-INFO is an Internet Distribution List provided by the Taxpayer Assets Project (TAP). TAP was founded by Ralph Nader to monitor the management of government property, including information systems and data, government funded R&D, spectrum allocation and other government assets. TAP-INFO reports on TAP activities relating to federal information policy. tap-info is archived at essential.org and cpsr.org. Subscription requests to tap-info to listproc(a)tap.org with the message: subscribe tap-info your name --------------------------------------------------------------------- Taxpayer Assets Project; P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036 v. 202/387-8030; f. 202/234-5176; internet: tap(a)tap.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Labour and capital in a post-industrial economy
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Earlier I'd written on the fall of corporations due to cryptoanarchy. This one is on the decline of (knowledge) capital and property rights, and the rise of labour. ------cut here------- Electric Dreams Weekly column for The Asian Age by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh #47, 6/February/1995: Labour and capital in a post-industrial economy The information economy will require not only knowledge capital, but also knowledge labour. Labour has historically been subservient to capital (or land, in agricultural societies) as a source of power and wealth, leading to various forms of political upheaval contrary to the naturally unequal relationship between these two essentials of an economy. But the knowledge revolution will change the nature of labour even more than it will that of capital, while also decreasing the distinction between them. One of the major differences between capital and labour in the past is that capital, owned and protected by property rights, can earn for its owners without their making any significant effort. Labour, though, is inherent in its 'owners' - you really don't need laws to protect your ownership of your capacity to work - and earns only with considerable effort from them. It follows that owners of capital are wealthier than providers of labour, at least until a digital deluge changes the rules altogether. A strict (but not universally accepted) definition of knowledge capital would consist primarily of those relatively static forms of intellectual output - specific ideas, software, works of art - that can be treated as property, thereby inviting legal protection in the form of patent and copyright. Like traditional capital, these don't necessarily require the intervention of their owner (after the work of painting or inventing is over) to generate cash. Intellectual property rights will do the earning. Unfortunately for fans of intellectual property rights, they are unworkable. As the sprawling information economy grows volatile and fast-changing, copyrights and patents are simply not going to be enforced. The ease of undetectable duplication, together with the suffocating effects of strong protection on growing markets, have been acknowledged by everyone familiar with both the technological as well as economic aspects. Expertise, then, not information, is the key. Expertise, which is dynamic and constantly adapting, is not 'intellectual property'. It hardly requires legal protection, and cannot be separated from its owners, the experts, in whom it inheres. Nor do experts earn without themselves making active use of their skills. Experts are, in fact, knowledge labourers. Not, of course, that these labourers own no capital. Quite the contrary -experts almost always rely on more static works, ideas, resources, that are their own. However, this 'property' being less important than their expertise, knowledge labourers (or knowledge workers, to use a more familiar but not always equivalent term) often don't bother about patents or copyrights. Knowledge capital is not, after all, as valuable as expertise and is also more inconvenient to rely on - so it will act as the auxiliary resource, rather as labour has done in industry. Once we realize this reversal of roles between labour and capital in a post-industrial economy, we face the prospect of a vast labour force of experts of all sorts. Knowledge labour will not always be high-end, though - for every millionaire quant plotting coffee futures against money- market derivatives, there will be the human agent, cybrarian in the jargon, hunting for curious clients rare species of data amid the information jungle. And there will always be some who cling on to their intellectual property rights and attempt to extract license fees from the on-line universe. But their share of the economy will shrink, and finally, in the era of expertise, what you have will matter less, than what you do. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh is a freelance technology consultant and writer. You can reach him through voice mail (+91 11 3760335) or e-mail (rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in) --====(C) Copyright 1994 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED====-- This article may be redistributed in electronic form only, PROVIDED THAT THE ARTICLE AND THIS NOTICE REMAIN INTACT. This article MAY NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES be redistributed in any non-electronic form, or redistributed in any form for compensation of any kind, WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION from Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in) --==================================================================-- ------cut here------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- For Electric Dreams subscriptions and back issues, send a mail to rishab(a)arbornet.org with 'get help' as the message Subject. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in rishab(a)arbornet.org Vox +91 11 6853410 Voxmail 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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Re: Selection key crypto protocol trial balloon
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

wcs(a)anchor.ho.att.com writes: > > Um no. The main thing is that what is extracted with the selection key is > > _different_ from what was put in... > > But the only things the selectioon key can extract are what the senders > put in plus what the system did to it once it was there, which is not > informationally different than what the senders put there. True, just as ciphertext is not different, informationally, from plaintext. It's just a pair of transformations, both by the system, one in response to the sender and the other in response to the receiver. A bit like an airlock - if the two transformations are the right ones, extraneous information such as the identity should not pass through. > I suppose you could play some games by sending the message in > multiple parts, with parts sent by 1-way anonymous remailer, > but there's still a certain amount of traffic analysis you can do. > > Bill ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "In between the breaths is rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in the space where we live" rishab(a)arbornet.org - Lawrence Durrell Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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Re: Selection key crypto protocol trial balloon
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hal <hfinney(a)shell.portal.com>: > Let me get straight where we are. Rishab's concrete proposal was not an > implementation, but rather a set of requirements. There was no > suggestion about any specific algorithms that would meet those > requirements, right? The question is whether any such algorithm could > exist. Right. > It is hard for me to see how this could possibly work. The message > receiver sends this "selection key" to the intermediary, and that somehow > pulls out the saved message, but in a form such that the intermediary > doesn't recognize it. And the intermediary himself can't tell exactly > which message is produced. But it is nevertheless exactly the message > which was meant for this particular receiver. It need not be the same information - i.e. if the encryption process adds enough noise to the message, the extraction process might by lossy, without any total loss for the receiver. This may be possible particularly if Fourier-style transforms are used, as the "selection key" could pick up less "frequencies" of a message than are stored at the intermediary. > The thing is, the receiver does not have much more information than the > intermediary. The same could be said of a private/public key pair. What is crucial is the association between the keys. This said, while I can imagine separate systems for the intermediary loosing correlation between incoming and outgoing messages (eg - it's _really_ tough, without fancy pattern recognition, to associate a JPEG with the original), and for generating three associated keys (secret splitting? something to do with Brands' blind signatures?), I really can't imagine a way of putting it all together. Someone will have to be inspired, as Diffie was... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- For Electric Dreams subscriptions and back issues, send a mail to rishab(a)arbornet.org with 'get help' as the message Subject. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in rishab(a)arbornet.org Vox +91 11 6853410 Voxmail 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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stupid legislation in Oregon
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Ugh. This has been a stupid week. Oregon House bill 2319 was introduced by Rep. (Kevin?) Mannix on 1/16/95, and referred to the House committee on Commerce on 1/18/95. Rep. Mannix has also introduced another bill, HB 2310, which "Creates the crime of electronically furnishing obscene material to minors; punishes by maximum one year imprisonment, $10,000 fine, or both." HB 2310 was introduced 1/13/95, and referred to the House Judiciary committee on 1/16/95. He's introduced 38 bills so far this session - including others re mandatory minimum sentencing for felony convictions, one which appears to bar surrogate-pregnancy agreements, and another (HB2303) which prohibits physicians from performing artificial insemination on an unmarried woman. Damn this fucking state. I'll be on the phone with my representative in the morning to see if I can find out more. Westlaw's legislative tracking database doesn't have much information. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBLzsecH3YhjZY3fMNAQH9DwP9GA1oai9JA2ftMSCLKH+jnfqxD/svI0ZD N1yWpHwStmoZ3x6fr9MRpqFIwAfsTzfj+P0B07HBy1V53pVhKw+bFyCZZ+/ZmA7u lAXR/eR6xr53ZMZJt2SSsFElE8VB8syjJRWe48a37q+3Ma9iGhvlfLx5IuX+qZR7 E9de+WMg/Pw= =rOtS -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Delphi and Encryption??
by Harry S. Hawk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

RUPERT'S BIG PLANS Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has big plans for his Delphi Internet Services -- he wants to boost it from fifth to first place in online service providers. "Internet, Delphi and TV as it becomes interactive, all will become very much integrated," predicts HarperCollins' publishing VP. By choosing existing software modules, such as Mosaic, instead of developing its own graphical user interface, Murdoch hopes to leapfrog the competition and come out on top. Delphi's data encryption technology will also enhance its ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ position among privacy-conscious consumers. (Upside Feb.'95 p.39) Anyone know anything?? /hawk

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