December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Freedom and security[noise]
by liberty＠gate.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Uni wrote: >On Wed, 1 May 1996, Steven Weller wrote: > >> >Jim Ray wrote >> [...] >Watch your attributation, Jim Ray did not write this. > Now three people, counting me, have corrected him. I feel flattered knowing folks are actually watching what I say so careully. If I'd only known, I would have kept my mouth shut. I had a typospasm earlier today during my pre-coffee jury-nullification rant this AM, so I guess I should also try harder to do my best to take care before hitting the ol' button. Regards, Jim Ray <liberty(a)gate.net> "The FAA, FBI, Customs, CIA, Justice, DEA and the IRS were all involved in Mena. They won't say how they were involved, but they will tell you there is nothing there." -- Bill Plante, CBS News Correspondent, & Michael Singer, Producer, CBS News, New York. in Tuesday, May 3, 1994's Wall Street Journal letters to the editor section. [OK, OK, I know, we aren't Menapunks!] :) JMR _______________________________________________________________________ PGP key Fingerprint 51 5D A2 C3 92 2C 56 BE 53 2D 9C A1 B3 50 C9 C8 Public Key id. # E9BD6D35 -- http://www.shopmiami.com/prs/jimray _______________________________________________________________________ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Freedom isn't Freeh. iQCVAwUBMYgACm1lp8bpvW01AQF/SQQAivRbyRfl6mMwq73voOfCX+BrQhGEQU6l ZHozejbwpYlWYxJsb/ncFSi5S5DZM7LjpVcY88QFRbGnGRZP1FmaWaktmBSGA/4d XJ8Cr9tnXxlWuvt6j0Gx840NwV5WIGoY88Z+UFyz2RTFYceLqVg4zuiouOri/WEs 17EwaQZcxKE= =RnJd -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Update II/113- Election Hoax (fwd)
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 30 Apr 96 13:38 CDT From: sns(a)borealis.com To: shomronnews(a)felix.dircon.co.uk Subject: Update II/113- Election Hoax SNS News Service "Election Hoax" April 30, 1996.. 11 Iyar 5756..Volume II, Number 113 ..Update from Israel [snip] Election Hoax According to a report released by the prestigious Jane's Defense Weekly, the new missile agreement between Israel and the United States is politically motivated and does not hold water. Mr. Christopher Fosi, an Editor of the Jane's Defense Weekly, and Mr. Douglas Barry, Aviation and Defense Editor of Flight International Weekly Magazine, stated the Nautilus Anti-Missile System is at least 4 years from being ready. The report states the system is "a poor fit or just does not meet Israel's needs". The report explains that since the Katusha rockets are launched from mobile sites, they can be moved around in a pick-up truck and this is just one reason the system is ineffective. Fosi discounts tests that were carried out in Mexico as not accurate and stated the reasons behind the ceremony surrounding the new missile deal appear to be political in nature, rather than a military-defensive move to protect Israel from Hizbullah rockets. The report also explains that Israel's Arrow Anti-Missile System is also not designed for Katusha rockets and is not an effective deterrent. Despite promises by President Clinton to supply Israel with an operational Nautilus system by late 1997, the two experts state it is not reality. (UPI..4/30, Ma'ariv Newspaper..4/30..Page 2). ****

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[RANT] Mr. Scruffy versus Mr. Neat
by mpd＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH(a)ocelot.Rutgers.EDU> writes: > One interesting phenomenon is the in-migration of neats > into formerly scruffy-only domains. For instance, take a > look at the third, fourth, and fifth international > conference proceedings on genetic algorithms. You've got > scruffies who are just doing what feels right and seeing if > it works (my viewpoint) and mathematicians/neats who are > trying to derive what _should_ work the best. The scruffy/neat competition has been around for a long time in the hard sciences as well. Good examples are the competing notions used by mathematicians and physicists for doing differential geometry, calculus of variations, and field theory, and the physicists who think physicists can do chemistry better than chemists can. Ultimately, there tends to be a merger of notations and approaches. The big Misner, Wheeler, Thorne book on Gravitation, for instance, presented everything both from the view of the physicists, who like to write everything as algebraic equations in terms of components of geometric objects with respect to a basis, and the view of mathematicians, who like abstract maps between abstract geometric objects, and terms like tangent spaces, exterior products, and germs. Usually the scruffies get great results using formal manipulation that horifies the neats, and then the neats come in and do the rigorous proofs that demonstrate that everything the scruffies did was valid. This was certainly the case in quantum mechanics as well, where questionable formal manipulation got the right answers for many years before a rigorous theory of unbounded linear transformations on Hilbert spaces was developed. Indeed, physicists happily computed commutators and anti-commutators of such operators blithely unaware of their domains and ranges long before the equivalent definitions in terms of one parameter Lie groups or projection valued measures were known. While Java is currently a scruffy invention and has yet to recieve the official blessing of the neats, there are a number of things that speak in its favor. First, object-oriented runtime structures such as those used by Java have pretty much been researched to death in various other venues, such as APL, APL2, Smalltalk, and the MIT Lisp Machine project. It is not likely that we will discover some previously unknown mode of corruption in such systems, and defensively coding interpreters for these kinds of languages and verifying them to prove that they contain no errors which could result in the violation of container boundaries is a well-developed art. This doesn't mean that such systems are free of bugs, of course, but it does mean that they are free of the type of really cute bugs that allow users to trick the machine into executing arbitrary machine instructions, or into making disingenuous requests to the kernel. Second, there is quite a bit of experience on the part of OS designers in meeting various levels of MIL Specs for security, and with the standard techniques, such as audit trails, authentication, and ACLs, which are commonly employed to implement the features required. So although the neats have not yet given Java their blessing, it is extremely unlikely we won't manage to create an environment which can safely run untrusted Java code, and filter the program's requests for system services in a way which will block and log any attempts to do nasty things, both for the Applet model, and for more general applications. A prior poster suggested that in the absence of formal proofs of correctness, flaws permitting the exploitation of covert channels and other such things in a language such as Java were "a certainty." I think the situation is more complicated than this suggests, and while I probably wouldn't want an artificial heart with Java software today, I think a lot of the worries will resolve themselves as time passes, and the things we are all discussing are implemented.

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Re: Calling other code in Java applications and applets
by Jason Martin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 10:12 AM 4/30/96 -0500, you wrote: >I (and some others, I think) was hoping that it would be possible to build >powerful crypto applets and put them up on web pages. That way everyone >with a java enabled copy of Netscape could use a remailer or send crypted >mail without having to download, install, and configure software. What with the concern of hacked or modified clients, I would think that trusting a java applet someone put on their page would be rather difficult. How could the user know that you weren't really sending their cleartext back to you? >If people have to download and install a plugin to use a java mixmaster >applet, why not just download and install a native mixmaster client? I have not seen a mixmaster client for the PC/Win95 yet. Did I just miss it? >Of course there are other reasons to use java -- platform independence, >for example. Remember that we can't really know if their applet is secure or just a trojan horse. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMYbXgA4CsinapZ9dAQFyzwQAkMX2YOYQ9llJse1CIbhFsUnxYij/5Ny0 H8aqs4jsVjBpcGoER4vHCNnjaFHJPelaN4LArLFvjmWsgOo4yF2MIJyp4AHe+jU3 BhqsTCf6XfG1ydzCF/jFDUc/PHg7cA/gtZS5NnQiIy4ZYok4/x7+zJQCZaS8DZqq /vp2WLw933o= =vdz3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- +-------------------------------------------------------+ |If the above is not PGP signed, I MAY not have sent it.| |jhmartin(a)kent.wednet.edu * Key available via server | | KR Annual Staff | PGP 'crypted mail preferred.| +-------------------------^-----------------------------+

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Re: Why I dislike Java. (was Re: "Scruffies" vs. "Neats")
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> > > The Web is the universal marketplace these days. Being unable to use > the web is the equivalent of being unable to use the phone. I have > research analysts at large trading houses begging for > Netscape. Unfortunately, these people have a need for top notch > security, because vast amounts of money are at stake. > [...] > Unfortunately, when the same machine runs Netscape so the > trader can read the UUNet/MFS merger press release and also has the > big shiny red "trade!" button on some application, you get nervous. Aren't you holding Java to a higher standard than ordinary applications? If your traders run any software at all on their machines there is the risk of harm. The Netscape binary itself could be hacked to do bad things. Likewise with any other software they run. Wouldn't it be safer to run a Java applet than a typical program from the net? At least applets run in an environment which is designed to restrict the harm they can do. In OS's like Windows 95 there are no such restrictions on programs. Take a specific example: Mixmaster. This is a client for the remailer network. It is reasonably well suited to being implemented as a Java applet given the current restrictions on the language. If you had a choice between downloading and running the client as a program on your PC, versus loading and running it as an applet, which would you prefer? Or if you would do neither, how would you go about acquiring this functionality? Would you forego it forever, or would there come a time, say if no one else reported problems, that you would be willing to run one or the other? What I am really trying to get at is how you balance the risks that come automatically when you interact with the net against the benefits you get by doing so. You have chosen a certain point on the risk-reward continuum, one for which Java applets are apparently on the too-risky side. So I am wondering what principles you use to decide where a proposed application falls. Hal

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Re: Former CIA Director and *Strategic Investment* Editor
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:06 AM 5/1/96 +0000, Jonathon Blake wrote: >> known to be so!) that his neighbor would call the cops just because he, >> ONCE, stayed a little longer than normal? > > I guess you've never had the pleasure of living in a small town. > If you had, you'd know just how observant people are, of others > habits. However, you haven't explained why mere "observance" would translate into a call to the cops (if that's what happened; according to the reports it did) under those circumstances. I can observe a lot that doesn't necessarily induce me to drag the cops into it. Initially, I was thinking that perhaps the neighbors might have become suspicious, walked over and saw a capsized canoe. However, according to another item the canoe was over 400 yards from the house, which is sufficiently far to make it difficult to see along many shorelines. Do you have an alternative explanation? >> What's wrong with this picture? > > You ability to see conspiracy where there may be non. It's odd. You're the third person to use the term "conspiracy" when I haven't mentioned the word. Somehow, I think that you guys must be misusing the term "conspiracy" when what you really mean is something else. Why not pick up an OED, an choose a better word. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Lolitas and Cyber Angels
by mpd＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(CyberAngels Director : Colin Gabriel Hatcher) writes: > Child pornographers encrypt their hard drives so that law > enforcement cannot gather crime evidence - that is certainly > a state of greater security for the pornographer, but it > does not improve our Community, and as child pornography > increases, the law is by definition broken more and more, > and so the Community becomes less free than before. This is silly on several levels. First, given that a finite amount of resources are available to combat the sexual exploitation of children, law enforcement should concentrate their resources on the production of such material, and not on the incidental evidence of its production long after the fact, and in a context completely unrelated to any economic link back to the original producers. Someone who has an encrypted file on their hard drive from some motheaten child porn magazine published 20 years ago is no more guilty of the exploitation of the models portrayed than someone who downloads the Simpson crime scene photos from alt.binaries.pictures.tasteless is guilty of killing Nicole and Ron. If anything, such a picture is little more than historical documentation of a bygone era and an expensive distraction for police officers who might better spend their time. Indeed, if encryption inhibits the ability of the government to create exceptions, based solely on irrational public hysteria, to the First Ammendment right of citizens to communicate amongst themselves on any subject, including via the use of visual material, then encryption is serving a valuable purpose. Now before anyone accuses me of advocating a thriving market in child porn, let me say that I have no objection at all to laws which set a minimum age for working as a performer in the sex industry, and to enthusiastic prosecution of individuals who violate those laws. I just think the police should concentrate their resources on real children experiencing real abuse, and leave their prurient interest in the contents of libraries and other peoples computers behind when they go to work. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

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(fwd) Information Infrastructure Project
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu" 1-MAY-1996 00:50:15.50 From: Phil Agre <pagre(a)weber.ucsd.edu> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below. You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" command. For information on RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, send an empty message to rre-help(a)weber.ucsd.edu =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 17:21:36 EST >From: Tim Leshan <LESHAN(a)ksgrsch.harvard.edu> To: IIPLIST(a)ksgrsch.harvard.edu Subject: Workshop Announcement and Call for Papers Information Infrastructure Project Harvard University Commercial Internet Exchange Association (CIX) Internet Society COORDINATION AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE INTERNET Workshop Announcement and Call for Papers This is a first announcement and call for papers and proposals for a workshop to be held at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, MA, USA, on September 8-10, 1996. The workshop will address issues in the international coordination and management of Internet operations. We are seeking papers which address the economic, organizational, legal and technical issues in migrating to internationally sanctioned, industry-supported processes and institutions. What should a fully internationalized Internet look like, and how do we get there from here? Topics to be explored in the workshop and resulting publication include: - policy and management issues concerning: network addresses domain names routing policy settlements interconnect points intercontinental connectivity quality of service standards - legal and institutional structures for supporting core Internet functions; - institutions and policies needed to ensure the future scalability and extensibility of the Internet; - technical and implementation issues presented by heterogeneous national information policies; - the need for data in support of Internet planning, including issues of how data should be collected and maintained; - coordination needed for the deployment of new technology; - international crisis management for the Internet. Although the Internet is already substantially privatized, certain essential functions -- notably the domain name registry, network number assignment, and the routing arbiter -- are still funded by the U.S. Government. Unlike the local telephone exchange, these integrative services are managed by third parties, contributing to an open competitive environment which has helped enable rapid growth of the Internet. Rapid growth, commercialization, and internationalization are putting stress on current institutions and procedures -- which are neither self-sustaining nor officially recognized at the international level. The National Science Foundation plans to phase out support for core administrative services and for international connections, just as it has withdrawn support for production-level backbone services. Conflicts over tradenames and number assignments suggest that international legitimacy is needed for domain name and network number management. Beyond support for essential functions, there are many practical and policy issues where some greater degree of coordination or institutional leadership may be desirable. For example, how can the implementation of new technology and protocols be expedited? What common definitions and guidelines should exist to describe network performance? Should the functions performed by current Internet institutions (such as the Internic, RIPE, APNIC, and the IANA) be brought into a more robust international infrastructure, and if so, how? To what extent are multilateral peering arrangements and settlements needed to encourage continued growth and competition in the Internet access industry? The conference will engage scholars, practitioners and policy makers in examining and discussing these issue. It will bring together stake-holders, academics and individual leaders within and beyond the Internet community to help define the future institutional infrastructure of the Internet. Workshop papers will be revised and edited following the workshop for publication by MIT Press as part of the Harvard Information Infrastructure Project series. Potential participants are encouraged to submit papers that can be developed and revised for publication (copyright assignment is not required). Please send an abstract by June 15, 1996, for review by the program committee. Please direct papers, proposals, and requests for future mailings to: James Keller Information Infrastructure Project Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University 79 JFK Street Cambridge, MA 02138 617-496-4042; Fax: 617-495-5776 jkeller(a)harvard.edu The Harvard Information Infrastructure Project is a project in the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, with associated activities at the Kennedy School's Center for Business and Government and the Institute for Information Technology Law and Policy at Harvard Law School. This event and publication are funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation, Division of Networking and Communications Research and Infrastructure.

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Re: Freedom and security
by liberty＠gate.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Steven Weller wrote: >>Jim Ray wrote > >I haven't bothered reading this particular thread up until now, but in my >opinion, based on this drivel, you're getting dangerously close to being >certified officially by the Cabal as an ignorant kook. > >>Nor does freedom increase through less laws or no laws. [...] Er...I agree with just about all of Mr Weller's comments, but I wish he had been a bit more careful in the attribution department. "Colin Gabriel Hatcher - CyberAngels Director" wrote: "Nor does freedom increase through less laws or no laws." etc. etc. etc., not me. As a partisan Libertarian, I have a reputation to uphold as an officially designated, Cabal-annoying, ignorant kook. :) I'm even in Perry's killfile filter. I actually try to lurk, rather than posting here very frequently, as my thoughts are more relevant to the political ramifications of strong crypto than they are to the implementation of strong crypto. JMR Regards, Jim Ray <liberty(a)gate.net> "My cynical belief is that there is a lack of motivation in either party to fully and properly investigate [Mena] because the results will damage as many Republicans as Democrats." - former prosecutor Charles Black, in April 22, 1996's Wall Street Journal p.A22 _______________________________________________________________________ PGP key Fingerprint 51 5D A2 C3 92 2C 56 BE 53 2D 9C A1 B3 50 C9 C8 Public Key id. # E9BD6D35 -- http://www.shopmiami.com/prs/jimray _______________________________________________________________________ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Freedom isn't Freeh. iQCVAwUBMYfNiW1lp8bpvW01AQH2CQP+MUwSl9tHZNCiU2m6wTmsbByjDI1kZQTJ v7vKoAc2txNkwBofLCxbxqdPSSYVIDO2x87t2+bn/OcxqMrtIDxi9UpNVYMD7VLM LGi6fgZW3dFPaVEzc2WwXgcZ9Py9sSqaI0giBxyMhUiLko8UmtPW5BYBIWxgXJHm D4ExhNVoCZ0= =QXnq -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Former CIA Director and *Strategic Investment* Editor
by rbersten＠ia.com.au 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Has anyone else seen the extraordinarily tasteless press release sent out by Roadshow New media about this? Let me show you: MEDIA RELEASE 30/4/96 Where is William Colby? Rescuers are searching for the former head of the CIA, William Colby, after his mysterious disappearance yesterday. The canoe he had been using was found capsized and abandoned, near his Maryland home. Ironically, Colby's disappearance co-incides with the current release of Spycraft, the CD-ROM game developed with former KGB Major general Oleg Kalugin. ... Is this a publicity stunt from the game's US manufacturer [Activision]? Were some of the secrets given away in the game just a little too close for comfort for the current heads of the CIA? Are the Russians involved? Is it just totally coincidental? Does the Spycraft game itself hold any answers? No doubt police will be looking to the game for clues and have not yet ruled out foul play. Colby and Kalugin both portray themselves within the game and it could prove that Colby solves his own mystery. Spycraft the game is a true-to-life espionage thriller that allows players to experience the danger and excitement of being a real spy caught in a deadly web of international intrigue. Every game element is taken from real-life experience of spymasters Colby and Kalugin. the high level involvement of these espionage experts required that the script be reviewed by the CIA for security clearance. This real life twist to the CD ROM game offers more intrigue for gamers. the Internet facility may provide a solution as players across the world ponder Colby's disappearance. [This is followed by contact details for Roadshow, which, for you non-Australians, is a big games distributor out here] *-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-* + Rosanne Bersten (editor(a)ia.com.au) - Editor, internet.au magazine + + tel: +61 2 310 1433 * fax: +61 2 310 1315 * http://www.ia.com.au + *-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-*

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