December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Sex & Crime TV filter
by tcmay＠sensemedia.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Wow! I think Ted just hit on something that could be used to quickly derail the "V-chip": At 4:02 PM 7/31/95, Thaddeus J. Beier wrote: >The chip that interprets the content does it solely based on the rating >information. This is the so-called "v-chip" (v for violence, I think, >not for video) that you see in the press. ... >qualifications of most people. Besides, what I would really >like to filter out, what I find to be incredibly violent to the >minds of children, is commercial advertising. Private rating >services could take care of these, easily, as well. I agree, of course, about it not being the role of government/FCC/etc. to mandate such ratings, such chips, etc. However, to help derail this V-chip being mandated, what if we (I mean activists, writers of columns, etc.) "insisted" that _commercials_ be similarly labelled? "Yes, if violence and sex is to be "voluntarily rated," we think that commercial advertising ought to be similarly rated." It might be hard for the legislators to avoid the logic of this. Advertisers, fearing people would of course mute the commercials, would then quietly urge them to drop the whole idea. --Tim May .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)sensemedia.net | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-728-0152 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Corralitos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Zimmermann legal fund
by nsb＠nsb.fv.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:20 PM 8/1/95 +0800, Enzo Michelangeli wrote: >Now, my main objection to opening a US account is that it's unclear >whether or not, for simply receiving payments there, a non-resident and >non-citizen account holder like myself incurs in any tax liability with >Uncle Sam's Inland Revenue. Can anybody on this list shed light on the >issue? Last time I checked, the guys at FV weren't sure either. The real question isn't based on your bank account, but on whether or not Uncle Sam thinks you are "doing business in" the US. This is the fundamentally thorny question that is raised by cyberspace businesses. Having payments made to a US bank account may make it more likely that the US will decide that you are doing so, but they could decide it anyway just because you have buyers in the US, or because you're using a US-based payment server. The laws are, to say the least, not clear on such points. As a practical matter, however, it is true that using a US account will make it easier for Uncle Sam to tax you if it decides that's appropriate. -- NB

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Software Glitch FYI
by lindat＠iquest.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A Congressman's aid called me today to explain that if you send email to all the Congressmen's offices at one time, the software at their end causes each Congressman to receive 50 copies. Please be sure everyone is aware of this glitch. To prevent 50 copies from being sent to each Congressman, it is necessary to break the mailing list into 5-10 addresses at a time. Every list I've ever received of Congressional Emails has annoying spaces and formats, so my list doesn't have that. It can be copied directly into a nickname box in Eudora or to a Bcc: list on a message. senator(a)boxer.senate.gov senator_brown(a)brown.senate.gov, sen_dodd(a)dodd.senate.gov, senator_lieberman(a)lieberman.senate.gov, joe_biden(a)biden.senate.gov, senator_coverdell(a)coverdell.senate.gov, tom_harkin(a)harkin.senate.gov, chuck_grassley(a)grassley.senate.gov, larry_craig(a)craig.senate.gov, dirk_kempthorne(a)kempthorne.senate.gov, senator(a)simon.senate.gov, senator(a)moseley-braun.senate.gov, wendell_ford(a)ford.senate.gov, senator(a)breaux.senate.gov, senator(a)johnston.senate.gov, senator(a)kennedy.senate.gov, john_kerry(a)kerry.senate.gov, senator(a)mikulski.senate.gov, senator(a)levin.senate.gov, mail_grams(a)grams.senate.gov, senator(a)wellstone.senate.gov, john_ashcroft(a)ashcroft.senate.gov, max(a)baucus.senate.gov, conrad_burns(a)burns.senate.gov, bob(a)kerrey.senate.gov, mailbox(a)gregg.senate.gov, opinion(a)smith.senate.gov, senator(a)bradley.senate.gov, senator_Bingaman(a)bingaman.senate.gov, senator_domenici(a)domenici.senate.gov, senator_reid(a)reid.senate.gov, senator_dewine(a)dewine.senate.gov, nickles(a)rpc.senate.gov, lugar(a)iquest.net senator_chafee(a)chafee.senate.gov, senator(a)hollings.senate.gov, tom_daschle(a)daschle.senate.gov, larry_pressler(a)pressler.senate.gov, senator_frist(a)frist.senate.gov, senator(a)hutchison.senate.gov, senator_robb(a)robb.senate.gov, senator(a)warner.senate.gov, senator_leahy(a)leahy.senate.gov, vermont(a)jeffords.senate.gov, senator_Gorton(a)gorton.senate.gov, russell_feingold(a)feingold.senate.gov, senator(a)rockefeller.senate.gov, everett(a)hr.house.gov, budmail(a)hr.house.gov, sbachus(a)hr.house.gov, jdickey(a)hr.house.gov, edpastor(a)hr.house.gov, dcaucus(a)hr.house.gov, woolsey(a)hr.house.gov, gmiller(a)hr.house.gov, sfnancy(a)hr.house.gov, talk2tom(a)hr.house.gov, petemail(a)hr.house.gov, annagram(a)hr.house.gov, tellnorm(a)hr.house.gov, zoegram(a)hr.house.gov, samfarr(a)hr.house.gov, george(a)hr.house.gov, andrea22(a)hr.house.gov, tellbuck(a)hr.house.gov, jharman(a)hr.house.gov, tucker96(a)hr.house.gov, housesst(a)hr.house.gov, rpackard(a)hr.house.gov, skaggs(a)hr.house.gov, schaefer(a)hr.house.gov, bozrah(a)hr.house.gov, cshays(a)hr.house.gov, delaware(a)hr.house.gov, kthurman(a)hr.house.gov, cstearns(a)hr.house.gov, canady(a)hr.house.gov, pdeutsch(a)hr.house.gov, hastings(a)hr.house.gov, jlinder(a)hr.house.gov, georgia6(a)hr.house.gov, saxby(a)hr.house.gov, ga10(a)hr.house.gov, runderwo(a)hr.house.gov, brush(a)hr.house.gov, luisg(a)hr.house.gov, hfawell(a)hr.house.gov, dhastert(a)hr.house.gov, durbin(a)hr.house.gov, johnhost(a)hr.house.gov, emailpat(a)hr.house.gov, edky01(a)hr.house.gov, mward2(a)hr.house.gov, bunning4(a)hr.house.gov, torkma06(a)hr.house.gov, jmoakley(a)hr.house.gov, cardin(a)hr.house.gov, tellhoek(a)hr.house.gov, congehlr(a)hr.house.gov, davecamp(a)hr.house.gov, repsmith(a)hr.house.gov, chrysler(a)hr.house.gov, lrivers(a)hr.house.gov, jconyers(a)hr.house.gov, gil(a)hr.house.gov, dminge(a)hr.house.gov, mn03(a)hr.house.gov, vento(a)hr.house.gov, tellbill(a)hr.house.gov, tocollin(a)hr.house.gov, oberstar(a)hr.house.gov, goldsmit(a)iquest.net talentmo(a)hr.house.gov, demldr(a)hr.house.gov, bemerson(a)hr.house.gov, bthompson(a)hr.house.gov, funnc02(a)hr.house.gov, thechief(a)hr.house.gov, mail2nc5(a)hr.house.gov, crose(a)hr.house.gov, myrick(a)hr.house.gov, chtaylor(a)hr.house.gov, melmail(a)hr.house.gov, epomeroy(a)hr.house.gov, zeliff(a)hr.house.gov, franksnj(a)hr.house.gov, dzimmer(a)hr.house.gov, mpforbes(a)hr.house.gov, lazio(a)hr.house.gov, tmanton(a)hr.house.gov, molinari(a)hr.house.gov, rangel(a)hr.house.gov, jserrano(a)hr.house.gov, engeline(a)hr.house.gov, boehlert(a)hr.house.gov, bpaxon(a)hr.house.gov, portmail(a)hr.house.gov, hokemail(a)hr.house.gov, istook(a)hr.house.gov, furseor1(a)hr.house.gov, pdefazio(a)hr.house.gov, murtha(a)hr.house.gov, jonfox(a)hr.house.gov, mchale(a)hr.house.gov, pa16(a)hr.house.gov, jspratt(a)hr.house.gov, cwilson(a)hr.house.gov, samtx03(a)hr.house.gov, barton06(a)hr.house.gov, doggett(a)hr.house.gov, frost(a)hr.house.gov, ggreen(a)hr.house.gov, enidutah(a)hr.house.gov, ortonut3(a)hr.house.gov, opickett(a)hr.house.gov, talk2bob(a)hr.house.gov, ninthnet(a)hr.house.gov, bsanders(a)igc.apc.org, repwhite(a)hr.house.gov, asklinda(a)hr.house.gov, dunnwa08(a)hr.house.gov, rtate(a)hr.house.gov, mneumann(a)hr.house.gov, badger02(a)hr.house.gov, roth08(a)hr.house.gov, commerce(a)hr.house.gov, slabmgnt(a)hr.house.gov, resource(a)hr.house.gov, housesst(a)hr.house.gov, smbizcom(a)hr.house.gov ============================================ Dr. Linda D. Thompson American Justice Federation 3850 S. Emerson Avenue, Suite E, Indianapolis, IN 46203 Telephone: (317) 780-5203 AEN News BBS: (317) 780-5211 Fax: (317) 780-5209 Orders (Visa/MC) 1-800-749-9939 Internet: lindat(a)iquest.net *******************************************************************************

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Re: commerical busters
by WOOD＠VAX2.ROCKHURST.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

ON: 31-JUL-1995 20:14:46.10, dan(a)netmarket.com wrote: > At 8:50 PM 07/31/95, Patrick May wrote: > > > My dim memories from a project I did for Sony a couple of years > >ago are that commercials are separated by a fixed number of black > >frames and some, at least, have tracking information encoded so that > >advertisers can monitor how often they are played. I'll try to dig up > >more info. > > From: dfitzpat(a)interserv.com > Wednesday July 26, 1995 -- ShopTalk > > - -- > > NEW VCRs TAKE ON COMMERCIALS POINT-BLANK > > By Jonathan Takiff > Philadelphia Daily News Staff Writer > > > Already besieged by Washington politicians over the content of TV > programming (and threats of a show-blocking chip), television > broadcasters are about to be hit with another whammy. This time it's > VCRs that automatically blank out commercials. > > <snip> > > $$$$ $$$$$ $$$$ > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: 2.6.2 > > iQCVAwUBMB193KZKaCr9f/gtAQFa5AP/ZEmtSM/hSXb6zcFHDmv9Me0thtAqqCxZ > 7COYgWxuLkl78+y/INpFKW861mrNig1UlO8Q+vDImKK3qUmTS1tzRWNIH9XVyYtA > pJ05g/Z/WKUPx17jd2no9oRqut4bziLa4iMj59B/4nxAhIjEtE5TZFP6okCQ1HGm > qbFhOteJavc= > =Opny > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > dan Hello all, I have thought about this before, as usual my ideas are not new. My vision was like this. 1. Develop a few methods to recognize commercials through cable T.V. a. The blank spaces between broadcasting? b. Analysis of image information? c. Analysis of sound information? d. Understanding cable T.V. protocols? e. etc? 2. My commerical buster would work on a delay. a. The broadcast information would enter a queue. b. The broadcast information would be evaulated. c. If all of the tests for commericals passed, display. d. If any of the tests fail, the T.V. goes blue, and my CD player is served. e. The time of delay is dependent on the time to analyze the broadcast information. I wish it could happen, I hate commericals. Many Thanks, ------------------------------------------- | "Computers are boring and slow." | | | | David Wood | | Information Systems Specialist? | | wood(a)vax2.rockhurst.edu | -------------------------------------------

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Re: U.S. Banks are not all that bad
by cman＠communities.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

As near as I can tell, there are spotty instances of the behavior Lucky describes, but it is becoming more common, especially wrt required ID. I must say that I've had some absolutely amazingly bad experiences with banks in Asia, Mexico and Central America, so I'm a skeptic when it comes to assuming that non-US banks are light years better. Although I have no direct experience of European banking, I do know that the European banking industry, taken as a whole, is substantially behind the US banking industry in automation and efficiency. Most of the irritation that I hear reported about US banks is the result of pushing customers too hard to change expensive banking habits or erecting policies that eliminate money-losing practices without regard to their impact on customer goodwill. At First Interstate recently, I had to make a withdrawal from the teller, as the ATM was broken. Their policy _does_ reqiure a "counter check", and normally they charge, but when I explained that the ATM was kaput they did it for free. It is _much_ cheaper for them if you use the ATM, and this kind of policy is designed to encourage you to do this. It's the kind of thing that the market will sort out nicely -- if it irritates people and loses them money more than it saves them money, they will stop doing it. Remember, the US has an absolutely fantastic amount of competition wrt banking services, especially when compared to other countries.

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ANNOUNCEMENT: Mailcrypt 3.3 for GNU Emacs
by Patrick J. LoPresti 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Mailcrypt version 3.3 is now available. Mailcrypt is an Emacs Lisp package which provides a simple interface to message encryption with PGP. (You do use Emacs to handle your mail and news, right?) Features: Encryption, decryption, signing, adding keys, extracting keys, passphrase caching with timeout, multiple secret key (identity) support, a simple but flexible interface to Cypherpunk remailers (including chaining, response blocks, pseudonyms, and Mixmaster support), and an automatic keyserver interface via HTTP. *We* think it's the best interface to these functions anywhere, but then again, we're biased. The NEWS file is appended to this message. Obtain it through the Mailcrypt home page at http://cag-www.lcs.mit.edu/mailcrypt/ or from the FTP mirror at ftp://cag.lcs.mit.edu/pub/patl/ and enjoy! - Patrick J. LoPresti (patl(a)lcs.mit.edu) - Jin S. Choi (jin(a)atype.com) Tue Aug 1 15:00:27 1995 -0500 ====================================================================== Noteworty changes in Mailcrypt version 3.3: Numerous minor bugs have been fixed. Mailcrypt now requires at least FSF Emacs version 19.28 or XEmacs version 19.12. Sorry, but anything else is too annoying. Support has been added for reading mail under (ding) GNUS. Noteworthy changes in Mailcrypt version 3.2: Mailcrypt now uses "start-process" instead of "call-process-region" to run PGP; this uses a pipe instead of a temp file for various inputs, including your passphrase. Ahem. All Mailcrypt commands now start with the prefix `C-c /' to bring Mailcrypt into line with documented GNU standards. `mc-insert-public-key' is now bound to `C-c / x' (an in "extract") instead of `C-c a'. `mc-deactivate-passwd' is bound to `C-c / f' (as in "forget"). `mc-read-mode' and `mc-write-mode' are now full-blown minor modes. So you can do, for example, `M-x mc-install-write-mode' from a Text mode buffer and have the normal encryption and signing commands available. The keymaps for the modes are configurable variables. Interactive commands `mc-encrypt-region', `mc-sign-region', etc. are now defined. If you use RMAIL and you say no to "Replace encrypted message with decrypted?", you will be dropped into RMAIL mode for viewing. RMAIL summary mode is now supported. Documentation in the form of a Texinfo file is now part of the distribution. Mailcrypt can now fetch a needed key from finger, HTTP, or any of a list of locally stored keyrings. `C-c / k' initiates a fetch manually; Mailcrypt will offer to initiate one automatically as appropriate during encryption or signature verification. The remailer functions now support Mixmaster. `C-c / d' can handle conventionally encrypted messages. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.3, an Emacs/PGP interface iQCVAwUBMB6GjHr7ES8bepftAQGXLQP/W4sWXEWficWMlQ340StWd+RC5pJmFh4d 9jlAodH/Gmv1slPmJy21WDPqeyp+3z5BJ8BUgz98e7rqooZ3tB7Fy6cT4Q3UJ0Gv +WZQBkNV4tT7bNjCQxjIE3QrowGBeko0CZIMwGlRujioguHMgHcm8XTJO37ZuypB Sn24f/uPkGc= =8f59 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: OS noise [Was: a hole in PGP]
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>On Mon, 31 Jul 1995, Phil Fraering wrote: > >> For better or for worse, we all must use programs (or collections >> of programs) that large or larger: even if PGP could be implemented >> in 1 % of the current source code, it would still be running in an >> operating system that's cramped in 4 megabytes of ram, because that's >> a characteristic of the common modern operating systems. > >Ahem! Commiedore APOLOGIED when it released its 512K OS a couple of >years ago. These things _don't_ have to be this large. Foo. Unix used to work just fine in 64K+64K split I&D space on a PDP-11 :-) It got bigger when lots of stuff was added, especially networking and X windows, and I wouldn't want to go back to small machines. However, during one such discussion on comp.unix.wizards or wherever, Dennis Ritchie posted a nice article about "Mine is smaller than yours", saying "here's how big my OS is" (I think ~250K, and the OS was 8th or 9th Edition), "telnet over to foovax, it's this big", "datakit over to barmips, it's that big", "some other networking method over to some other machine, it's that big", "yet another protocol over to yet another bigger machine", "display size of the operating systems on my 256K Blit and Gnot terminal, etc. And QNX's kernel fits just fine inside the cache on a 486, though it wouldn't actually stay there much. #--- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #--- # Crypto in 3-4 lines of perl --> http://dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/

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Re: a hole in PGP
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>It is definitely much more difficult to implant a backdoor into a program >which is available as source code than into a black box. > >BTW: Has anyone ever found a modified and weakened version of pgp ? Not that I know of, but there were some versions with a bug in the random-input generation - I forget if that was with ~2.2 or ~2.6.0; Colin Plumb had something to do with it. I've recently acquired ViaCrypt 2.7.1 for WinDows, and one nice feature is that in addition to typing in random keystrokes, you can click your mouse in a box and wave it around to input randomness. #--- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #--- # Crypto in 3-4 lines of perl --> http://dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/

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Re: a hole in PGP
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Now, my knowledge, time and resources are limited. I see that MIT >or whomever has made a program that, under test, is more secure than my >XOR 00000000 implementation. I may not fully trust them but it is better >than anything I could come out with. Foo. Clipper is better than anything I could come up with from scratch, and it's provably untrustable. (I could easily build better stuff out of existing pieces like DES and IDEA, but that's a separate issue.) Even Enigma's pretty strong, and look what it got its users... Some of Dr. Fred's distrust is well-founded. DES is also pretty good, and it's looking less and less likely that there's a secret NSA backdoor in it (other than differential cryptanalysis and maybe linear cryptanalysis), but it and IDEA and MD5 fundamentally depend on messiness and obscurity for their security (plus elimination of obvious holes.) Maybe the authors of IDEA are paid by the same space aliens who really run NSA? RSA has some provable strength to it, though it's not totally risk-free. (One Time Pads do too, and yet people manage to misunderstand and misimplement them almost as much as they mishandle keys.) If you want a provably strong cryptosystem, you could build one out of pure RSA, which would merely be painfully slow, but could be usable. Or you could build a Blum-Blum-Shub Random Number generator, and use it to generate one-time-pads (putting BBS into PGP version N+1 would be interesting...) However, the real weak point of PGP doesn't appear to be the algorithms, or the implementation (except ease-of-use issues); it's attacks on the computers themselves. TEMPEST is fun, if difficult and expensive, black-bag-jobs on keyboards are easy and effective if you're a good housebreaker, and you can always try viruses and trojan horses to distribute keystroke-stealers. I seem to remember that Dr. Fred was once a proponent of using viruses for good purposes for propagation of information or whatever? Anathema! #--- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #--- # Crypto in 3-4 lines of perl --> http://dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/

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who cypherpunks
by Jonathon Fletcher 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

... oops. sorry folks

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