December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Commerce/Reinsch: Encryption's in the Federal Spotlight
by geeman＠best.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Encryption's In The Federal Spotlight >(08/05/97; 9:00 a.m. EDT) >By Darryl K. Taft, Computer Reseller News > >WASHINGTON -- President Clinton is determined to push electronic >commerce forward, but when it comes to encryption, some safeguards need >to remain in place because of law enforcement and national security >concerns, said William Reinsch, the U.S. Department of Commerce's >undersecretary for export administration. > >Speaking at the National Computer Security Association's (NCSA) >Electronic Commerce Security conference here, Reinsch reiterated that >the >president and U.S. policy favors an electronic marketplace that is not >regulated by the government. > >"It's obvious our policies about encryption is a piece of the large >puzzle that >doesn't quite fit our definition of a free market," said Reinsch, >adding, "The >increased use of encryption carries with it serious risks for public >safety and >our national security. Any policy on encryption must address these risks >as >well if it is to be in the national interest. Our policy provides that >balance by >working in close consultation with the private sector and by working >with the >market, not against it." > >William Murray, an executive consultant with Deloitte & Touche, >disagreed. >Murray said the present government policy favors security and ease of >investigation over crime prevention and "the lawless over the law >abiding. I >know of no criminals who are worried about the administration's >policies, but >my law-abiding clients are." > >Murray, who also spoke at the NCSA conference, said he believed the >government's policy is "sowing so much fear, uncertainty and doubt that >it is >the single most incapacitating thing we have to deal with." > >Meanwhile, Reinsch outlined several areas where he said he felt the >administration's policies regarding export control and key management >are >making a difference. Reinsch said new regulations creating a license >exemption that allows recoverable encryption products of any strength >and >key length to be exported freely after a single review by the Department >of >Commerce, the Department of Justice and the Defense Departments. > >To encourage the development of recoverable encryption products, the >government created a special two-year liberalization period during which >companies may export 56-bit DES or equivalent products, provided they >show that they are working to develop the key management infrastructure >envisioned by the administration, Reinsch said. > >Perhaps the best gauge of industry response to the administration >policies has >been the flow of applications for exports, Reinsch said. In the seven >months >since the policy went into effect, the Commerce department received more >than 100 license applications for exports, valued at more than $500 >million. >In addition, Reinsch said 33 companies have submitted plans on how they >will build key recovery products, and the Commerce department approved >29 of them with more to come. "None have been rejected," Reinsch said, >noting that he could only name the companies that have already announced >their applications, such as Netscape Communications, IBM, Trusted >Information Systems and Digital Equipment. > >Reinsch said the market continues to be confusing because "companies >might >say one thing in private with the government and then take a totally >different >position publicly." Murray said, "The government does the same thing." > >Moreover, Reinsch said industry concerns that foreign availability of >encryption products appear to be exaggerated. "We do not yet see >widespread foreign use of encryption," he said. "We've discovered that >every >country is going through the same issues we are." > > >

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Money magazine on Internet gambling
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A colleague of mine down the hall at Money magazine just stopped by and asked for help on a Net-gambling story. I think she's interested in the offshore issues -- but this being Money, I think they're looking for horror stores as well. (Junior running up a $20,000 tab on Daddy's credit card. You know the drill.) I already gave her my copy of the July Wired with Charles Platt's article on FC97, told her about Sen. Kyl's bill, and gave her the URL to MSNBC's special report. If anyone wants to give her a call, email me for her phone number. -Declan PS: Thanks to everyone who responded about the digital cash story for Money earlier this summer. I printed out all the responses I got and forwarded them along, but the story got killed...

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"Voluntary Censorship" vs. Govt Legislation
by Jim Burnes 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Chris: Considering the volume of email you're receiving on this topic, I doubt that you will get around to reading this letter. But for what its worth, the whole idea of heading off Federal legislation by policing ourselves is surrendering everything that we've won from the defeat of the British in 1776 to the defeat of the CDA. (a slight overstatement seeing that the Brits don't seem to have Parliment passing CDA laws) Can you imagine going into a library and having censorship ratings stamped on the bindings of all the books there? The very thought nearly brings tears to my eyes. Last week I watched Farenheit 451 and realized how close we are coming to that sort of society. If people want their information censored then they should "donate" money to their church and have it write filtering software. This would be a great way for churches to make money -- all tax free. Chances are that people would be able to find a church that agrees with their tastes in censorship. They may even attend that very organization. Think about it! Rather than bland names such as CyberSitter or NetCop or whatever you would have a "Parish Priest" that filters all references to clerical pedophilia, a "Rabbi Goldberg" that bans everything it considers anti- semitic and a "Baptist Minister (southern edition)" that pretty much bans... well .. a lot. Microsoft has been trying to sell user agents for a while. This would beat the hell out of Bob. Someone might actually use it! You would know exactly what you were getting and people won't usually sue their church if they should happen to miss a nasty URL once in a while. The church agents could also keep a tally of all the bad information the kids had been protected from and the nature of the information -- just in case the 'rents need to save them from mortal peril. As for the concept of an RSACi rating for "news sites" that are "officially approved" I can only say this is the most Orwellian proposal so far. After fifty-plus-years of "official" news I'd say that most people have had a belly full. The pure arrogance of such an idea is simply repulsive. To call this hypocrisy would be a affront to hypocrits everywhere. Rather than discussing this issue with the government I suggest you take it to a council of churches where it belongs and not the Feds. The last time the Feds staged a morality play they burned twenty children to death. For an example of how well the media served the people during that "rescue attempt" I refer you to charred corpses of little girls at Public Affair's Waco Holocaust Museum at: http://www.mnsinc.com/SkyWriter/WacoMuseum/ Would Public Affairs get an official "news site" stamp of approval? I thought not. --------------------------------------- When the world is running down make the best of what's still around -sting

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Death of the North American Crypto archive?
by Michael Paul Johnson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Alas, it wasn't government regulation. It wasn't patent entanglements. It wasn't spooks. It is economics. Can anyone suggest an alternate host that might provide room for a few hundred megabytes of ftp access for free (or nearly free)? Can someone else in North American mirror all of that data, quickly, before the site shuts down? I really don't want to shut http://www.sni.net/~mpj/crypto.htm down, but I don't want to face the bills alone... -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQA/AwUBM+qSN0SP4McX10e7EQKAagCg0qQJTkunB3KZpwtiH00epx01xEoAnix0 2KdLJaN3VKsG6P9mSeZtUXiJ =WMhh -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Michael Paul Johnson mailto:mpj@ebible.org (aka mpj(a)csn.net) PO Box 1151 http://www.ebible.org/bible <- Holy Bible Longmont CO 80502-1151 http://www.sni.net/~mpj/crypto.htm <- Crypto archive USA PGP RSA key fingerprint (mpjA): 3E67 A580 0DFB D16A 6D52 D3A9 1C07 4E41 PGP DSS/DH fingerprint: 28AE B775 DD65 62C7 0717 ECDA 448F E0C7 17D7 47BB

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JYA Up
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

AOL/PrimeHost has reactivated JYA. AOL's story for the takedown is that our seldom used ftp component was being used by unidentified parties to traffic in warez and that it had nothing to do with the http part, "whose content does not concern us." Still, it's odd we did not get a call about the problem as was done a few weeks ago for a similar warez invasion. At that time, we offered to close our ftp, but the PrimeHost rep said no, we'll monitor it, as we do other ftps. I specifically asked to be notified if it happened again, but wasn't. And it's not clear why it took a week for me to find out what was what. Or why not AOL did not just close the ftp and leave the http operating. 'Course, maybe the takedown was signal of distrust of JYA innocence. And a warning. Thanks to the folks who offered more help than the teapot tempest seems to have warranted -- so far.

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Old Cryto stuff,
by Jason William RENNIE 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Can anybody suggest any good books on old cryto techniques ?? I'm finally learning to program, along with the stuff i've got to learn as part of the class i thought i would make a start on learning to code crypotgraphic algorithms. I was after some old ones that are simple to code in software. Unfortuently the one in the back of the Schnier book are a little to complex for my limited programming knowledge so far. So can anybody help or will i just be ignored like i have been at other times ? Jason =8-]

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Re: forged cancels (Re: Entrust Technologies's Solo - free download)
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim Skirvin <tskirvin(a)math.uiuc.edu> writes: > >Yes, there are lots of folks who forge cancels for "inappropriate cross- > >posts" in the "big 8". > > Not accepted ones. They're treated as rogues, and asked to stop > it, and you know it. Net.Scum like Chris Lewis, Jan Isley, Tim Brown, Bob Curtis, etc are treated as rogues by me and my friends and told to stop by me and my friends - and if they don't stop, we usually get their plugs pulled. Tim Skirvin defended net-abuse by Jan Isley, just as he defends the "UDP" against UUNet. > > Please be advised that all of Tim Skirvin's FAQs are full of lies (except > > for the parts plagiarized from David Stodolsky :-). > > Umm, no. Examples of lies in Tim Skirvin's Magnum Opus, the "Cancel FAQ" (what else): 1. ]What is a Cancelbot? ] ] A Cancelbot is a program that searches for messages matching a ]certain pattern and sends out cancels for them all. ] ] ]Sounds cool. Where do I get one? ] ] If you have to ask, you don't get one. ] ] ]What? Why not? My cancelbot has been freely available for over 18 months. I've pointed this out repeatedly to Tim Skirvin who continues to provide an answer to a truly frequently asked question that reflects Skirvin's view of what the reality should be, rather than the reality. 2. ]What is Dave the Resurrector? ] ] After a particularly obnoxious run of cancels from ixc.net, ]Chris Lewis decided that it was time to write a program to repost stuff ]that was cancelled on news.admin.net-abuse.misc. The Resurrector, named ]Dave, was the result. ] ] The effect of this is that cancels to news.admin.net-abuse.misc ]are not effective unless Chris says so. It has been pointed out many times that Chris Lewis does NOT repost cancelled articles when he doesn't like the authors, such as myself. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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Eternity Uncensorable?
by Mark Grant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Seems to me there's a fundamental flaw with the current Eternity server; as I understand it the messages are identified by a subject which is the SHA of their URL, so all that a government need do to censor a particular site is to scan for those messages and issue cancels. Sure, your site and those upstream may not accept such messages, but potentially they can still wipe out a large fraction of the system or at least force users to change their eternity URLs on a regular basis. It also doesn't provide true security, since when someone sets up an illegal site the gubment can find the messages on Usenet, decrypt them, and then threaten the remailer operator who posted them. I understand that this is just an alpha release, but I don't see any obvious way to fix these problems with a Usenet-based system. Mark

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Query on cookies
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does anyone have a detailed understanding of how cookies work? I've read Netscape's explanation of the protocol, but I still have some questions. -Declan

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"Virtuosity" -- A New Movie
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I make no apologies for this not being "on topic," where "on topic" is defined as "coding in C." If you don't like my comments to our community, you know how to filter out my messages. I saw "Virtuosity" today, not expecting much. It's been called "a stinker" by at least one reviewer. But I enjoyed it. It had fairly impressive effects and fairly accurate treatments of: -- "microlocators" (implantable localizers) (The technology of which, in the real world, Bob Fleming and Cherie Kushner described at the "Cypherpunks Santa Cruz" meeting/party at my place on Saturday. By the way, the meeting was well-attended, with 22 attendees, including Greg Broiles from Eugene, Oregon, Jeff Simmons from San Luis Obispo, and a bunch of folks from the Santa Cruz area and Bay Area.) -- nanotechnology...well done -- genetic algorithms and evolving programs...very, very well done! -- virtual reality...less well done, especially as it's been done before There were a few disconnects, such as that the time for the movie seemed only a few years in the future, and yet certain technologies were very far advanced. I was impressed, much more so than with "The Net" or other recent high-tech movies. (I can' t wait for "Pulp Science Fiction"!) For those who think this off-topic, "Man does not live by coding alone." --Tim ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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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