December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Crimestoppers anon tip mailbox
by David C. Lambert 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Frank Stuart <fstuart(a)vetmed.auburn.edu> writes: > Now that you mention it, it seems to me that completely anonymous tipsters > with the ability to receive ecash rewards would likely be a bigger boon to > law enforcement types than would easily tappable communications lines. > Is anyone in a position to set up a cypherpunks CrimeStoppers mailbox (for > use through the remailers)? I might be. > You could set up a web-page with instructions > and a list of crimes for which there are rewards. Perhaps some civic > organizations would be willing to donate money for tips leading to arrests > and convictions of any crimes. Excellent idea. Then it could be brought to the attention of a candidate or two that have net.crime on their agendas. > Even if it doesn't catch any bad guys, it'd be > great PR for strong crypto, anonymity, ecash and whoever runs it. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Well, I don't know about the last part - it seems to me that opinions would be mixed. The only thing that I'm not sure of is the use of ecash - mostly because I haven't really been keeping track of the state of the art. Could some people who are better informed on the subject discuss whether this is a feasible way to use it? I wasn't actually thinking of rewards, mostly because you'd have to arrange some sort of reply block from the anonymous tip mailbox. Most people (even remailer users) don't know how or don't wish to use these, so I don't know if that part would really fly. David C. Lambert dcl(a)panix.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMFg8D6pplsfgM88VAQG6lQP+OpKrDF73T8zupGfco0VREUa98wLYR7VX Jw2OyUHYML28VQNxwikZNTwBObotEihVo6uH9xRKzhBnpzqol1D/ZAj+1z24x2EK byqhSp4PJEiKmzqW0chWCeIhX6ND45E2vSweBB6/OPotlZw9C7ZfnM+i0cfII3gb Np+Dec/mLHU= =M+KT -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Mixmaster posting poll
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I think that I am not being clear enough about what I want to do. Ah, now I understand -- thanks for the clarification. Let me waste a bit of time on some general news/mail issues. The two formats are very similar, but not identical. This is generally a good thing. For example, it's easy to write a single user interface that handles both. (Many people like having killfiles on their email, for example.) However, when you start to gateway between the two, the differences become more important. For example, suppose an article has To, Newsgroups, and Cc headers. What should happen? Some news user-agents (used to?) email as well as post when given a news article with those headers. And what happens when an article is then gatewayed back out to email, and care isn't taken to strip those headers off? (Rhetorical question; I don't know.) I think this is of particular concern to this community. Imagine a mail->news remailer that gatewayed messages by connection to UUNET's accept-from-anyone server and posted them to alt.blacknet. Interested parties might then get a full feed and locally gateway alt.blacknet into a mailing list. So this kind of multi-time gatewaying, if not common now, could (and should?) be soon. I guess that's a long way of saying "be careful." :) The advantage of using "news.group(a)gateway.host" is that it might avoid these confusions since the Newsgroup header appears out-of-band. However setting up gateways like this is often harder, requiring special prefixes (viz., usenet.news.group(a)gate.host is/was common) hundreds (thousands) of aliases, or the ability to set up special mailer config (typically sendmail.cf on the internet these days) that recognize only the top-level hierarchies (of which there are hundreds, changing weekly). There is also the problem of making sure that the mail newsgroup list is kept in sync with the local host's newsgroup list. An even bigger problem is that cross-postings are essentially impossible (you get multiple copies); this can be annoying if you want to cross-post to a group that the gateway host doesn't receive. A workable trick is to post to control,alt.blacknet -- everyone "gets" control but only those that care will see the article where it should really go. If you use something like mail2news(a)gate.host, then the newsgroups are in the Newsgroups header. You have to be careful about To and Cc but you don't have the problems mentioned above. I think the header problem is more likely fixed/fixable, and therefore suggest the second syntax. If you do local gatewaying, you should really send your article into rnews and not inews. Inews will mess with headers, which is okay for users or scripts that know they can be sloppy. But not okay for gateways which don't want .signature files appended, too-much-quoted-text counted, etc. Feeding into rnews is not difficult -- you need merely ensure that your message has these six headers: Message-ID Newsgroups From Date Subject Path. The other advantage of feeding into rnews is that rnews always spools if the news processor is unavailable, while inews doesn't. Another option is to provide a program that can connect to a specified host and inject the gatewayed article directly using the NNTP protocol. This is not hard; INN includes a program (feedone.c) that does it in about 200 commented source lines. INN is available from many places, including ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/news/nntp/inn/inn1.4sec2.tar.Z and my news/mail gateway software (newsgate) is available by sending me email. Hope this helps. /r$ > > At 8:35 AM 9/13/95, Rich Salz wrote: > >> If the form alt.usenet.group(a)remailer.com was used, wouldn't the > >> system running the remailer have to have an alias defined for each and > >> every newsgroup that it plans on handling? > > > >No. Sites running sendmail, for example, could set up rules that > >just knew the top-level hierarchies and fed those into a special > >"mailer" that gatewayed them. > > > >My opinion is that making any names well-known is a bad idea, and > >that attaching special semantics to "mail2news@xxx" is a real bad > >idea. Instead, just send the message to the specified recipient > >and let do whatever magic needs to be done. > > > >If mixmaster wants to function as a mail/news gateway, it should > >do something special when it sees the Newsgroups header -- process > >the message and feed it into rnews, presumably. > > > >I guess, but not yet having read the code do not know, that this is > >cleaner and more easily extensible (or removable). > > /r$ > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > Lance Cottrell loki(a)obscura.com > PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server. > Mixmaster, the next generation remailer, is now available! > http://obscura.com/~loki/Welcome.html or FTP to obscura.com > > "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly > it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice > weasels come." > --Nietzsche > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > >

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Re: WAS_tem
by Rev. Ben 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > The New York Times, September 14, 1995, pp. A1, B14. > > Use of Computer Network For Child Sex Sets Off Raids [snip] > Lawmakers have debated whether to restrict the use of > computer networks. Today, a bill making it illegal to use > computers to produce child pornography was introduced by > Senator Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican who heads the > Judiciary Committee. > > The bill would expand the definition of child pornography > to include any photograph, film, videotape or computer > image produced by any means, including electronically by > computer, if it depicts or appears to depict a minor > engaging in sexually explicit conduct. If I'm reading this correctly, if I Photoshop a kids face onto the body of the latest Playboy centerfold, I'm in violation of this proposed law? Ben ____ Ben Samman..............................................samman(a)cs.yale.edu I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.-- K. Gibran. SUPPORT THE PHIL ZIMMERMANN LEGAL DEFENSE FUND! For information Email: zldf(a)clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf PGP encrypted mail welcomed--finger samman(a)cs.yale.edu for public key -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Auto-signed with Bryce's Auto-PGP v1.0beta3 iQB1AwUBMFg+8L5ALmeTVXAJAQEJswL+KijGeD+NIxOEdGkusWl/l8kLpigd73r1 JxoOeo1Sv9jc8JEv89SQDt2xY5i9WhquARph/+N2d7m2FR1DvRnLlHtuvjsV7hjS mOwurpzx6wHfmJnivojJUqwfTrqxT5gG =bUJU -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Scientology tries to break PGP - and
by trollins＠hns.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This area of court ordered key disclosure is troubling. I assume that failure to do so would be punished by "contempt of court" much like a reporter that refuses to reveal his information sources. (Jail or Fine until the person complies with the order). If you have PGP encrypted messages on your disk which are encrypted to other people. Is this a libality ? Normally, you have no way to decrypt this data. After looking at a PGP 'Hack' which allows the message to be encrypted with a session key different from the session key encrypted in the RSA header using someones public key. Your data could thus be encrypted in a PGP message to someone without using the session key specified in that RSA header. This someone else may or may not exist. You may have created a key pair and discarded the secret key. It would then seem that you could be found in "Contempt of Court" because you could not come forward with a private key belonging to someone other than yourself. -tom

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Re: Digital Fingerprinting
by patrick＠Verity.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: Mac Norton <mnorton(a)cavern.uark.edu> > To: Patrick Horgan <patrick(a)Verity.COM> > > On Wed, 13 Sep 1995, Patrick Horgan wrote: > > > > > > > > Then, in W.Ky., as in Stockbridge, "You can get > > > > anything you want..."? :) > > > > > > I'd stick with: > > > *********************************************** > > > You can't always get what you want 1 > > > but if you try > > > sometimes, sometimes you get what you need. 2 > > > *********************************************** > > > > > > 1 ability to dump garbage where you want > > > 2 a better appreciation for the environment > > > :-) > > > > > > Why do I feel like I'm sitting on the group W bench? > > I don't know, kid, what you in for? > Encryption. And they all moved away from me on the group W bench there, talking mean hairy eyeballs and all sorts of things until I said, and annoying the NSA, and they all moved back, talking about crime, PEM, PGP, and liberty and justice for all;) Patrick _______________________________________________________________________ / These opinions are mine, and not Verity's (except by coincidence;). \ | (\ | | Patrick J. Horgan Verity Inc. \\ Have | | patrick(a)verity.com 1550 Plymouth Street \\ _ Sword | | Phone : (415)960-7600 Mountain View \\/ Will | | FAX : (415)960-7750 California 94303 _/\\ Travel | \___________________________________________________________\)__________/

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Feeb Slants Feeb Slur
by anonymous＠freezone.remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

FBI Probes Slant Allegations Washington, September 14, 1995 (AP) -- The FBI says it has reviewed more than 250 cases involving work done by its crime lab after one of its agents alleged that his colleagues slanted their testimony and fabricated evidence to help prosecutors in high-profile cases. "To date, no evidence tampering, evidence fabrication or failure to report exculpatory evidence have been found," the FBI said in a statement Wednesday. "Any findings of such misconduct will result in tough and swift action by the FBI." Special Agent Frederic Whitehurst, who made the allegations and was interviewed Wednesday night on ABC-TV's "Primetime Live" program, labeled the FBI statement "garbage." "I am obviously disagreeing with my superiors in this matter. This report is garbage. ... It's garbage. I personally know about the review of those 250 cases," Whitehurst said. Whitehurst said he was under orders not to discuss specific cases. Defense lawyers want to call Whitehurst as a witness at the O.J. Simpson murder trial in Los Angeles because he has claimed that FBI agent Roger Martz, who gave testimony damaging to Simpson, has slanted evidence in testimony in other cases. Asked if there had been evidence tampering at the FBI lab, Whitehurst told ABC, "Yes, I believe there has been evidence tampering." He said he would testify at the Simpson trial "if the FBI orders me to go." Martz could not be reached for comment. There was no answer at the office phones either Martz or Whitehurst late Wednesday. Their home phone numbers could not be be found. The FBI said Whitehurst had, over the past several years, raised "a variety of concerns about forensic protocols and procedures employed in the FBI Laboratory," and that the bureau or the inspector general's office of the Justice Department, or both, had "vigorously investigated" his concerns in all instances and were continuing to do so. The FBI said its laboratory examinations at trials are "constantly subject to extraordinarily vigorous challenge through cross-examination and the presentation of expert testimony by defense witnesses." Whitehurst told ABC he was speaking out because it was his duty as an FBI agent. "I swore to uphold the constitution of the United States, and I swore to enforce the law. There was no caveat in that swearing -- if I caught persons with badges I would turn my back. I am an FBI agent. It's my duty," he said. Whitehurst testified last month at the terrorism trial of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine other Muslims accused of plotting to bomb the United Nations building and other New York City landmarks that he was pressured to distort findings about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to favor prosecutors. Citing a series of internal memos sent by Whitehurst to his FBI supervisors, ABC said the agent listed "one example after another of what he calls perjury, fraud, even the fabrication of evidence" in cases at the crime lab going back at least five years. One of the cases, ABC said, involved a 1991 Georgia mail-bombing that killed a federal judge and a civil rights lawyer. It was investigated by Louis Freeh, now the FBI director. Walter LeRoy Moody Jr. was convicted in the deaths. ABC said Whitehurst alleges that two agents in that case, one of whom was Martz, slanted evidence by testifying about tests that weren't done and scientific conclusions they couldn't support. The FBI lab was used to analyze blood evidence involving Simpson. Martz, a toxicologist, was called by the defense, but was declared a hostile witness. He testified that blood on a sock from Simpson's bedroom and from the crime scene showed only vague signs of a preservative. Simpson's lawyers say the blood was planted and the presence of the preservative proved it. While testifying in New York Aug. 14, Whitehurst said Martz was among several FBI investigators who concluded the World Trade Center bomb was urea-nitrate-based even though it was impossible to prove that scientifically because the substance is so common. After Whitehurst complained to his superiors, he said, reports about the bomb were corrected. He said they were accurate when they were introduced at last year's World Trade Center trial, which resulted in convictions for followers of Abdel-Rahman. At the terror conspiracy trial, Whitehurst said when he first told his supervisor about the errors, the supervisor "advised us that he would now have to embarrass his chemistry toxicology unit chief and that we were never, ever again to do something like that to him." Later, Whitehurst said, the supervisor told him he had been instructed by his bosses to have Whitehurst change his reports, and debates within the FBI about the evidence continued throughout the year. Whitehurst, the FBI's main explosives-residue analyst at the time of the bombing, said he has since been demoted and assigned to analyze paint for forensic evidence. -----

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Re: WAS_tem
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> The bill would expand the definition of child pornography >> to include any [...] >> image produced by any means, including electronically by >> computer, if it depicts or appears to depict a minor >> engaging in sexually explicit conduct. At 10:40 AM 9/14/95 -0400, Rev. Ben wrote: >If I'm reading this correctly, if I Photoshop a kids face onto the body >of the latest Playboy centerfold, I'm in violation of this proposed law? If you draw a picture using paintbrush of an underage person engaging in sexual conduct, you are in violation of this proposed legislation. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: WAS_tem
by Rev. Ben 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Thu, 14 Sep 1995, James A. Donald wrote: > If you draw a picture using paintbrush of an underage person engaging > in sexual conduct, you are in violation of this proposed legislation. Doesn't that directly contradict the stated purpose of existing child porn regulation? That is, doesn't current statute exist in order to prevent the exploitation of children, not to mandate morality? Do the lawyers on the list want to pipe up? Ben. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Auto-signed with Bryce's Auto-PGP v1.0beta3 iQB1AwUBMFhKCL5ALmeTVXAJAQG+eAMAstVn+sOOQkEI8ri6/jroSAwA8oCU5Fzu qRQfeOCnWJxqEeCE75orzaXIJFTIG3+qWdbKlsYNqS5MglPfI70Iw0Iw3VEtbHRB YZ595Aj6WXbBr3Z9SyR0mOCgN1twu2ds =+t1l -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: CYPHERPUNK considered harmful.
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: "Peter Trei" <trei(a)process.com> >Date: Wed, 13 Sep 1995 10:37:46 -6 >-------------------------------------------------------------- > > Towards this goal, I have written a short Q&A that could be >used as a model when discussing cryptography with non-cypherpunks. >Q: Aren't LEAs worried that strong encryption will make it more >difficult for them to catch crooks? Yes, some are -- especially at higher levels. LEAs in the field (by my informal survey) are not. They're worried instead about manpower and normal tools (e.g., computers back at the station, radios, ...). Meanwhile, there is an advantage for LEAs when criminals have, for example, encrypting phones. A phone itself gives the person using it a sense of privacy. [This is probably a side effect of the psychological cues which result from using a handset. If you pull a handset away from your ear or mouth very far, you can't converse. Someone standing in the same room as you probably can not hear the words you hear in your ear. If the handset were another person, this behavior would be called "whispering" -- something done to achieve privacy.] An encrypting phone (or e-mail for that matter) gives the impression (and, to some extent, reality) of extra privacy. When there is a perception of privacy, the people conversing are more likely to reveal things which they don't want overheard. If these people are ciminals, those things might be used as evidence against them. The advantage for LEAs comes from the fact that the person at the other end of the line might well be an LEA in disguise. This is especially true on the Internet (or on AOL, to cite a recent case), where the other person may well be someone you have never met and therefore haven't checked out to verify level of criminality. >Q: What's this 'key escrow' thing? > >A: Some government agencies have been trying to figure out methods which >simultaneously permit US citizens to use strong cryptography against >criminal eavesdroppers, while retaining the ease with which LEAs can >currently tap your calls. The schemes generally involve something >mistitled 'key escrow', in which copies of cryptographic keys would be >stored at sites accessible by LEAs. 'key escrow' is a code word for government access to the unencrypted message. It is a persistent theme, dating back to the NSA's CCEP in about 1987. 'key escrow' is also the name of a technique by which the most recent example of this access, Clipper/Capstone, achieved that government access. ( see http://www.clark.net/pub/cme/html/no-ke.html#etymology ) >Q: Why do you object to it? > >A: This is a bit as if your local police department ordered you to send >them copies of all of your house, car, and office keys, so that they >could enter whenever they felt it warranted, without your knowledge. > >Even assuming no keys will be leaked to criminals from such a valuable >archive, it's an incredible boondoggle. The inital cost is tens of >millions of dollars per year, by the most conservative government >estimates. In reality, it's likely to be hundreds of millions a year, >all to enable LEAs to investigate a type of crime which does not yet >occur, and may never occur. My preferred analogy so far (from http://www.clark.net/pub/cme/html/avss.html) is: It is one thing to permit a police officer to look in an open window, see a criminal act in progress, start an investigation or make an arrest and use what he or she saw as evidence in an eventual trial of the perpetrators. It is something entirely different to prohibit people from using curtains on the grounds that curtains might prevent a police officer from seeing a criminal act in progress. >- ------------------------------------------------------ >Cute signature quotes are needed. There was a great one last week at NIST: "Daddy ... if your data is your own property, does it become less your property after you encrypt it?" [Speaker at the NIST workshop, September 6-7, 1995] - Carl +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Carl M. Ellison cme(a)tis.com http://www.clark.net/pub/cme | |Trusted Information Systems, Inc. http://www.tis.com/ | |3060 Washington Road PGP 2.6.2: 61E2DE7FCB9D7984E9C8048BA63221A2| |Glenwood MD 21738 Tel:(301)854-6889 FAX:(301)854-5363 | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Re: An opportunity not to be missed
by Frank Stuart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> Is anyone in a position to set up a cypherpunks CrimeStoppers mailbox (for >> use through the remailers)? You could set up a web-page with instructions >> and a list of crimes for which there are rewards. > >Someone already tried that. The cops got a copy of the WWW logs and >started investigating everyone who'd looked at the WWW page... So at the >least you'd need a bunch of anonymous WWW proxies as well. Yuck. Well, if this is going to be a problem, you could distribute a periodic FAQ via Usenet instead. >There's also the problem that the current ecash systems do not provide >payee anonymity, so if you pay informers with ecash they can be traced if >the bank and payer collude. That's a real problem and underscores the need for better ecash. :) Frank Stuart | (Admiral Grace) Hopper's Law: fstuart(a)vetmed.auburn.edu | It's easier to get forgiveness than permission.

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