December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

MS Access encryption?
by Ed Carp 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anyone know how secure the encryption is that Microsoft uses in its Access database product? I was asked that by a client, but didn't know the answer....thanks in advance. -- Ed Carp, N7EKG Ed.Carp(a)linux.org, ecarp(a)netcom.com 214/993-3935 voicemail/digital pager 800/558-3408 SkyPager Finger ecarp(a)netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key an88744(a)anon.penet.fi "Past the wounds of childhood, past the fallen dreams and the broken families, through the hurt and the loss and the agony only the night ever hears, is a waiting soul. Patient, permanent, abundant, it opens its infinite heart and asks only one thing of you ... 'Remember who it is you really are.'" -- "Losing Your Mind", Karen Alexander and Rick Boyes The mark of a good conspiracy theory is its untestability. -- Andrew Spring

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Re: FCC & Internet phones
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:56 AM 3/10/96 -0500, "Harry S. Hawk" <habs(a)warwick.com> wrote: >> I wonder what exactly the FCC means by the term "Internet Phone." >> Does this just mean that software like IPhone will be regulated, or >> will this also apply >The thing is that at "best" the Iphone people (et al), are sell >Equipment!. NO ONE is SELLING phone service.. I mean Selling phone >service means some guy in NYC putting a sign on a store front offering >10 cents a minute calls "anyway where in the world." Maybe nobody is selling phone service, and the internet provider is selling packet-transfer service, but phone service _is_ being provided. One possible response would be for the FCC to require internet providers to block phone connections (highly unlikely; you could offer the service on any port you wanted, and I think one of the versions runs over IRC); another would be for them to block the sale of the software (tough to block sale of Israeli software, much less free software.) Bogus. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281 # "At year's end, however, new government limits on Internet access threatened # to halt the growth of Internet use. [...] Government control of news media # generally continues to depend on self-censorship to regulate political and # social content, but the authorities also consistently penalize those who # exceed the permissable." - US government statement on China...

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RE: rhetorical trickery
by blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Vladimir Z. Nuri[ please, will people stop sending me responses like the above? do you understand how the American legal system works? a person cannot be prosecuted without evidence. evidence cannot be illegally obtained. a person is not required to testify against oneself. these are all basic long-established cornerstones of our legal system. ................................................................................... Please, please, when Nuri-logical makes a public post, will people stop copying him in their responses? At least, not until you have read about the Clipper chip, the V-chip, key escrow, ITAR, the CDA, who those "four horsemen" are, etc., and understood how the American legal system works? Personally, I am really amazed at all the times when people point out basic liberties to the NSA or the law enforcement agencies, and somebody says, well yes BUT so-and-so hypothetical situation might arise. Why is there such deep fear about citizens? I'd say that some people there are high up on the list of creating a paranoia about life in the U.S. today. I t is almost as if some people have a public "prosecute you" wish. .. Blanc

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No Subject
by JonWienke＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

d 96-03-10 11:44:01 EST, you write: >Jim Bell wrote: > >> 2804. Unlawful use of encryption to obstruct justice >> Whoever willfully endeavors (by means of encryption) to (obstruct, >> impede, or prevent) the communication of (information in furtherance >> to a felony) (which may be prosecuted in a court of the United States), >> to an investigative or law enforcement officer shall... > >I think the following is a tad better: > >Whoever willfully endeavors (by means of encryption) to (obstruct, >impede, or prevent) the communication of information (in furtherance >to a felony (which may be prosecuted in a court of the United States)), >to an investigative (or law enforcement) officer shall... I prefer this: 2804. [Deleted] Top that! Jonathan Wienke

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How to get test messages to test your mail filters
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sending test messages to mailing lists of 500-1000 people just to test your mail filters is rude, and it's been happening a lot lately. On the other hand, building interesting mail filters is a reasonable cypherpunk topic - issues like reputation servers, email privacy, etc. are relevant technology, though this isn't mailpunx. So if you want to send us all a test message, it'd be nice if there were some description of the cool stuff you're implementing :-) On the other hand, if you just need someone other than yourself to send you mail, one useful technique is to send email to bogususer(a)wellknownmachine.com, for some value of wellknownmachine. Since most machines don't have a user named "bogususer", it'll bounce, unless of course it's running OS/2, which assumes that email for any address on the machine is targeted at the real user (or unless it's running an email system that doesn't implement bouncing...) At 01:40 AM 3/9/96 -0800, Bryan Koschmann <bryank(a)comtch.iea.com> wrote: >just a test to see if my filter works..sorry3 for any inconvenience > Gate|<eepeR (!-=Gate|<eepeR ruLeZ=-!) #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281 # "At year's end, however, new government limits on Internet access threatened # to halt the growth of Internet use. [...] Government control of news media # generally continues to depend on self-censorship to regulate political and # social content, but the authorities also consistently penalize those who # exceed the permissable." - US government statement on China...

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re: PA
by A. Padgett Peterson P.E. Information Security 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim rote: >(By the way, I also figured out the anonymous markets for assassinations >bit, too, in 1988, and discussed it in detail then with Eric Drexler, Marc >Stiegler, Mark Miller, Robin Hanson, and others. Long enough ago that I have forgotten the citation, I read an even older SF story about explosive necklaces worn by politicians. If their electronic agreement percentage (and think this was in the sixties folks) dropped too low, a vacancy occured. Warmly, Padgett ps if you have strong principles, and stick by them, sooner or later you will manage to offend everyone.

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Re: rhetorical trickery
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> all my respondents seem to be missing some basic points I have been > trying to make about law enforcement in the US. > > the law runs on proof, and evidence. a file with the name "diary.pgp" > is not incriminating. it is not evidence. no one could be prosecuted > as a criminal for having a diary. there is the presumption of innocence > unless there is evidence and proof to the contrary. A diary isn't illegal... but if you are suspected or even convicted of a crime, and there's reason to believe that a book or computer file is a diary and that you wrote about more crimes in the diary, then it's worth investigating. Just as if one is suspected of money laundering and it is known that that person has Swiss or Cayman Island bank accounts... having them doesn't mean one is guilty, but if there is other evidence that the crime took place then they are well within the realm of investigating. > furthermore, suppose > the "pedophile" is actually prosecuted successfully. does that mean > the diary was incriminating? no, it does not. in the CA case it happened [..] No. It's just another area of potential evidence. > that the pedophile was prosecuted without decrypting the diary. which > in fact argues in favor of the side that says, "cryptography is not > the end of law enforcement, and this case proves it." One can argue that, yes. In fact I remember some LE type who was pro-crypto who insisted the DT Bill was for lazy cops who didn't want to do the footwork necessary for an investigation. Another is when they cited the World Trade Ctr bombing... seems they already had a handle that it was in the works and did nothing anyway. DT or a crypto-ban or GAK would not have prevented that. [..] > now, a person might be successfully prosecuted for obstruction of > justice, or contempt of court, in refusing to hand over the > decrypted diary (but the other post I made about giving the federal > agents a key that decrypts the file to a cookie recipe handles this > quite nicely). And in some ways one has less rights when in contempt of court then when convicted of a felony.... [..] > please, will people stop sending me responses like the above? do you > understand how the American legal system works? a person cannot > be prosecuted without evidence. evidence cannot be illegally obtained. [..] Ideally, that is how the system works. But if they have a good reason to suspect something is evidence (and in the above pedaphile ase a file named "diary.pgp" would probably qualify) a warrant can be obtained. Note that just having PGP-encrypted files would not necessarily be evidence either. They pointed out a specific file with specific reasons why it should be examined. > a person is not required to testify against oneself. these are all > basic long-established cornerstones of our legal system. It's not clear in terms of court rulings whether handing over decryption keys is self-incrimination or not. From what I have heard, the courts do not view safe combinations as self-incriminating... > look, if someone WANTS to be put in jail for having encrypted files, > I'm sure you can probably figure out some way to pull it off. but > if you don't act like an idiot, such a thing is highly unlikely. it > clearly has not happened to date. Doesn't mean it won't... [..] > such deep fear around here about life in the US today? I'd say > that people here are high up on the list of creating the paranoia. > be careful what you fear, you might get it. Good point indeed. "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." (Flames for an FDR quote from raving anti-socialists will be bounced to /dev/null.) Rob. --- Send a blank message with the subject "send pgp-key" (not in quotes) to <WlkngOwl(a)unix.asb.com> for a copy of my PGP key.

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Re: Lawz to be.
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 09:55 PM 3/6/96 -0500, Matt Blaze wrote: >> No, what the wording seems to outlaw was the use of encryption to obstruct >> the commission of the crime, not the investigation. Read it again please. >I suppose you could parse it that way if you really wanted to, If you acknowledge that, you are agreeing that a prosecutor could take that position to court, and until the Supreme Court decides he's wrong, he gets to harass citizens. > but it seems to me that the obvious meaning of this rather tortured language: > "Whoever willfully endeavors by means of encryption to obstruct, impede, or > prevent the communication of information in furtherance to a felony which > may be prosecuted in a court of the United States, to an investigative or > law enforcement officer shall..." >is "...willfully endeavoring to obstruct by means of encryption the >communication to an investigative or law enforcement officer information that >is in furtherance of a felony..." But what, exactly, is included in that latter meaning? Does a person who runs an anonymous encrypted remailer, who is fully aware that somebody could be using his system at any moment to break a law, classify as in violation? That's the problem, I think: The government wants to shut down the USE of encryption among those it decides to target, while ostensibly keeping encryption legal. >I think no reasonable person (judge, jury or prosecutor) would interpret >it any other way. You're just as optimistic as Weinstein. I'm not. > Fortunately, the law is not a program that gets run on a >computer. People have to interpret it. That's a mixed blessing. Are you aware of the fact that in the 1930's, the Supreme Court ruled that a farmer growing corn and feeding it to his pigs was engaging in "interstate commerce" because (the court "reasoned") if he didn't grow the corn it would have to be brought in to the state from another state (or displace other usages which would, themselves, have to need a similar import) so he was doing "interstate commerce." (and just a few years later, in three separate cases, they upheld the internment of Japanese-Americans on the west coast as a preventative measure...) Ignore this all you want, but the fact is that judges are sleazy people who will do exactly what they want to do regardless of how wrong it is. > In the case of this section, the >awkward wording is an artificat of several iterations of narrowing it from >what was originally a rather broad crime (as it still is in the House bill). Whose fingerprints are on this portion of the bill? >I would rather have the awkward (but still clear) wording than a broader crime. I don't want any "new crimes," except possibly those that punish acts by government employees and officeholders. >As it stands, several lawyers whose judgement I trust have told me that this >provision is worded narrowly enough to apply only to people who can already >be conviceted of the underlying crime and who can be proven to have used >encryption for the SOLE purpose of thwarting law enforcement. That's not how the proposed law reads. I realize that what you were given may be the "Walt Disney" version of the law, but reality will be dramatically different, I can assure you. Maybe you ought to ask one of these lawyers if he is willing to write a legal brief describing the "worst-case scenario": What a malicious prosecutor COULD do with this law if he so chose. And remind him that the operators of encrypted remailers don't have the funds to take any appeals to the Supreme Court: Lawyers are usually trained to knee-jerk assume that they can eventually get the "right" decision from the SC, which assumes _they_are_hired_ by a defendant who can afford this route. > I don't like >this new crime (since it still stigmatizes encryption as being something >criminals use), but I can probably live with it. I cannot. I _will_not_. >Personally, on balance, I think the bill, as written, is a big >enough step forward to be worth supporting. >-matt It sounds like you're assuming that this bill is a "take it or leave it" type of proposition. I'm not. I see no reason to come to some sort of a "Siskel and Ebert"-type of thumbs-up/thumbs-down decision on the whole thing. I'll say it again: If the only way this bill can be passed is the inclusion of this particular section, then that must mean that somebody "out there" must want that part REALLY badly. And if they want it that badly, I want it gone even more! Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMUMjBvqHVDBboB2dAQGAlgP+IbkQsBm3FPKQNGQe/RvYAYHaoPvWVeZd 86AFx8hqi60nWvWUsAnZ0qGofjaMf1xNW49XKPOhY1lM3uJmeOnp4Wai0UOcwzSM qvUufKkgyeEjC0RJgWqGWg1lKVmHKp4O3mava8jjYv8xQ4yYHP+yvHkAtGN9iLZr 3hjxMBp5S+8= =2Ym6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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To: s1018954
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mail to your "from" address bounces with message "insufficient permission." Care to check that?

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Re: Lawz to be.
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"PADGETT(a)hobbes.orl.mmc.com" "A. Padgett Peterson P.E. Information Security" 10-MAR-1996 01:15:57.84 >Thought the gotcha was down in the part about the Secretary of Commerce. >My reading is that the secretary will still be required to grant >approval for commercial export. Is past the part about no regulation >inside the US (which is true now - still would be nice to see a "Congress >shall make no law..."). The puzzler is the requirement that a comperable >foreign product must exist before permission to export will be granted. >Will this be like "comparable product" price matching in discount houses ? >Somehow there never is one... Quite. A better format would be "as hard or harder for the NSA to decrypt," given the publically stated purpose for ITAR. -Allen

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