December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Bankers, Check Your Email
by se7en 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Fri, 21 Jun 1996, William Knowles wrote: > I belive you are thinking of Vince Cate's operation in Anguilla > > http://www.offshore.com.ai/ > > Poke around his personal web page and you will find yourself calling > your travel agent for the next plan down. Offshore.com is the closest > site you are going to come to that will have Sterling's 'Islands in > the Net' coming to mind very quickly. There is other links to offshore > business, corporations, lawyers, Everything you need to break free from > doing business in whatever country you are in now. > > > Another bank offered a diplomatic passport and its related diplomatic > > pouches (off limits for US and other goverments) for a minimum > > investment. This was in the Seychilles Islands. > > Seychelles, One of the few places where communism works. Offers > a wonderful service if you can afford it, For 1 million U.S.D. > You can stay in the Seychelles without worry of being extradited > to another country, i.e. if you were the poor bastard that nearly > crushed Barring's Bank in the U.K. and you invested here, well the > govt would protect you from the authorites in that country (Singapore) > > The Seychelles does have an Internet connection but I have yet to > find the providers contact e-mail address. Some enterprising > hacker might want to look into this further for offering Net service > to future residents of the Seychelles. The offshore domain you mention would be the one. He does warn that it is a financial data haven, and not a criminal data haven, as you can still be prosecuted under their local laws for such activities. The Seychilles Islands is also correct. I found the article, and it is as you suggest. Diplomatic rights start at $10 Million investment level. se7en

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Re: Sen. Specter and Kerry move to delay crypto legislation
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:51 AM 6/21/96 -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote: >Two things: >1. The letter was copied to Mark Heilbrun, and a phone number is helpfully >provided below. >2. D'Amato was copied to encourage him to claim jurisdiction over part of >this legislation, yank it into the banking committee, and delay, delay, >delay. > >-Declan >declan(a)well.com > United States Senate > Select Committee on Intelligence > > June 7, 1996 > SSCI #96-2219B > > The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy > United States Senator > Senate Russell Building, Room 433 > Washington, D.C. 20510-4502 > > Dear Pat: [rest of letter to Leahy deleted] Since "everybody" is supposed to agree that the Leahy encryption bill is dead, dead, dead, I don't see this as being any kind of problem. It was disliked by Clinton and the Denning-types, and with the exception of a short flurry of mistaken optimism around here, it was roundly excoriated here as well. The one thing I found disgustingly amusing was the statement from the letter: > Also, both the Congress and the > Administration have undertaken to conduct a thorough analysis of a two-year > congressionally-mandated study on federal encryption policy that was > facilitated by the National Research Council. We therefore feel that your > legislation initiative at this time is premature. They seem to have to do an "analysis" of a two-year study. Harrummmph! Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Science Lessons in the Mountains of New Mexico
by se7en 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cryptography may not academic science's only contribution to making business work in an unpredictable, technology-driven world. If a growing community of natural scientists, social scientists, and business theorists are right, then the cryptographic algorithms taht make electronic transactions secure will soon seem downright prosaic. This unusual admixture of pure researchers and real-world practitioners tends to congregate around research institutions in New Mexico, which has been a scientific hotbed ever since the atomic bomb project of the 1940s. The current thinkers are looking into not just mathematical complexity, but complexity itself. Complexity theory. Complex systems of any definition--the weather, perhaps, or the human immune system, or the organizational behavior of insects--and how their workings and adaptations might hold lessons for other fields, not least business. It all comes together at the Santa Fe Institute, at a hilltop cul de sac just far enough removed from the New Mexico tourist mecca to give a small community of visiting researchers the distance and quiet they need to contemplate anything from the microbial to the cosmic. The Santa Fe Institute was founded in 1984 on the idea that molecular biologists, cosmologists, and virtually any other specialists could make interdisciplinary breakthroughs through shared perspectives. "Putting people together from different fields is what we do," said institute vice president L.M. "Mike" Simmons. "The theme is multidisciplinary research on complex systems." "This is a place where people can get away, exchange ideas, and learn from each other--to harness creativity at the boundries between fields." In a classic example, immune-system research cross-pollinated with computer science and produced a computer security technique that protects against viruses and other attacks. Business and economics are very much in the mix with earth sciences, genetics, and advanced products of computer science like adaptive computation, machine learning, and artificial life. Software guru Esther Dyson, retired BankAmerica Corp. chairman Leland Prussia, and Stewart Brand of Whole Earth Catalog fame are institute trustees. Kenneth Arrow, the Stanford University economist and Nobel Prize winner, sits on the institute's science board. The board's co-chairmen are trustees Murray Gell-Mann, a Nobel Laureate in physics from California Institute of Technology, and John Holland, a leading complexity theorist from the University of Michigan. Prof. Gell-Mann happens to be "in residence" on the subject of "complexity, entropy, and teh physics of information." In 1994, Santa Fe Institute launched a Business Network for Complex Systems Research. The more than 25 members include Allied/Signal, Boston Consulting Group, John Deere, Ernst & Young, McKinsey & Co., Pacific Bell, Shell, and one financial services representative--Citicorp. The members each pay $25,000 a year to support the institute's complex systems research. In return, they have access to the research and the scientists, meet periodically to pursue and share lessons, and nad send representatives to summer school to rub shoulders with doctoral fellows. Citicorp has sadi little about its involvement or what it gets out of it. "They've been a big supporter since our first economics program in 1987," Mr. Simmons said. "I can only conclude that they support the mission of pure research." Citicorp has gone so far as to endow a Santa Fe Institute professorship, held by Stanford economist Brain Arthur, who directs the program on "The Economy as a Complex Adaptive System." Mr. Arthur has done some deep thinking about how knowledge- and information-based economic forces turn the iron law of diminishing returns on its head. His notion of "increasing returns"--defined by Wired magazine as "the more you sell, the more you sell"--influenced the Justice Department in its decision to block the proposed Microsoft-Intuit merger last year. Mr. Arthur presumably has influenced Citicorp's strategic thinking. Colin Crook, the bank's chief technology officer, quotes him liberally in campaigning for a more "adaptive" organization and culture. Meanwhile, the Citicorp-Santa Fe axis is spawning synergistic byproducts of its own. The Financial Services Technology Consortium, a group of 14 mostly large U.S. banks that Citicorp organized to explore and test emerging payment and communications technologies, has worked closely with the Department of Energy's national research laboratories. Santa Fe is conveniently situated between two of them--Sandia, to the south in Albuquerque, and Los Alamos, a half-hour drive northwest--and many consortium meetings have been held in the area on such subjects as data security, biometric identification, and fraud control. Plenty of Los Alamos brainpower--Mr. Simmons himself spent much of his career there--is now concentrated at the Santa Fe Institute. The Smart Card Forum, another initiative of Mr. Crook's Citicorp technology office, has parallel Santa Fe connections that may be getting stronger. Catherine Allen, the former Citibank vice president and founding chairman of the Smart Card Forum, has settled in New Mexico to launch a consulting firm, the Santa Fe Group. She expects to keep working for the forum and on card-technology advances while pursuing new ideas and business opportunities in emerging management and complexity theories. Ms. Allen has developed close ties to the Santa Fe Center for Management Strategy, which has been trying to link the Santa Fe Institute principles with business problems in a seminar series called "Complexity and Strategy in Action." The collaboration may result in one or more ongoing forums to expose business people from various industries and disciplines to the new ideas. The management center was organized by Howard Sherman, a successful franchising enteprenuer, one-time philosophy professor, and member of the Santa Fe Institute's business network, whose intellectual quest runs from Plato and Aristotle through Kant to Einstein and Brian Arthur. "Brian Arthur has said that all business problems and failures are cognitive problems and failures," Mr. Sherman said. "I am interested in the impact of complexity on what he and I call "the cognitive." se7en ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Resources: Los Alamos National Laboratory Industrial Partnership Office Irene Gabel 505-665-2133 The Santa Fe Group Catherine Allen 505-466-6434 Santa Fe Institute Bruce Abell or Mike Simmons 505-984-8800 Santa Fe Center for Management Strategy Howard Sherman 505-466-7901 Sandia National Laboratories Technology Transfer and Commercialization Center Warren Siemens 505-843-4200

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CDT Policy Post 2.25 - Senate Encryption Hearing to be "Cybercast" Live Online6/26
by editor＠cdt.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

----------------------------------------------------------------------------- _____ _____ _______ / ____| __ \__ __| ____ ___ ____ __ | | | | | | | | / __ \____ / (_)______ __ / __ \____ _____/ /_ | | | | | | | | / /_/ / __ \/ / / ___/ / / / / /_/ / __ \/ ___/ __/ | |____| |__| | | | / ____/ /_/ / / / /__/ /_/ / / ____/ /_/ (__ ) /_ \_____|_____/ |_| /_/ \____/_/_/\___/\__, / /_/ \____/____/\__/ The Center for Democracy and Technology /____/ Volume 2, Number 25 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A briefing on public policy issues affecting civil liberties online ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CDT POLICY POST Volume 2, Number 25 June 21, 1996 CONTENTS: (1) June 26 Senate Encryption Hering to be "Cybercast" Live Online (2) Submit Your Comments for the Hearing Record (3) Attend the S.A.F.E. Forum on Encryption - July 1, Stanford, CA (4) How to Subscribe/Unsubscribe (5) About CDT, contacting us ** This document may be redistributed freely with this banner intact ** Excerpts may be re-posted with permission of <editor(a)cdt.org> ** This document looks best when viewed in COURIER font ** ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) SENATE ENCRYPTION HEARING TO BE "CYBERCAST" LIVE ON THE NET JUNE 26 In a historic first that demonstrates the increasing power of the Internet Community as a political force, HotWired, DIGEX, the Voters Telecommunications Watch, and the Center for Democracy and Technology have teamed up to provide a live, interactive "cybercast" of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee encryption hearing on Wednesday June 26. The "cybercast" will provide netizens concerned about privacy and security on the Internet the ability to participate in the hearing, ask questions of the witnesses, and submit comments for the record. Details on how you can participate are printed below. This hearing is the second encryption hearing held before the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Space and Technology; the first hearing was held on June 12. Subcommittee Chair Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) presided over both hearings. Witnesses scheduled to testify at the hearing, which will focus on the Burns/Leahy Pro-CODE bill (S. 1726) include: * Phil Zimmermann, Inventor of PGP * Whit Diffie, Father of Public-Key Cryptography * Jerry Berman, Executive Director, Center for Democracy and Technology * Matt Blaze, Cryptographer * Phil Karn, Cryptographer * Barbara Simons, Chair of US Public Policy Committee, ACM * Marc Rotenberg, Director, Electronic Privacy Information Center * AND YOU!! (See below for details) The hearing will focus on the need to reform US encryption policies, proposals to relax export controls on encryption, and the privacy issues raised by the current policy. Specific information on the schedule, including approximate times the witnesses will testify, will be posted within the next few days at the URLs listed below. HOW TO JOIN THE HEARING LIVE ONLINE The following sites contain detailed information on how you can participate. Please visit these sites often for the latest information: * http://www.senate.gov/~burns/crypto.htm * http://www.crypto.com/ * http://www.cdt.org/crypto/ * http://www.hotwired.com/wiredside/ * http://www.digex.net/crypto/ INSTRUCTIONS: On Wednesday June 26, 1996, between 9:00 am ET and 1:00 pm ET, point your web browser at: http://www.hotwired.com/wiredside/ WHAT YOU NEED: You will need to have RealAudio properly installed on your computer in order to participate in this event. You can download RealAudio software *FREE* by visiting (http://www.realaudio.com/) All netizens with realauido capabilities can listen to the hearing live online. In order to participate in the accompaning chat session (and to ask questions of the witnesses) you will need to be a member of HotWired. Membership is *FREE*! Visit http://www.hotwired.com/ for details. ________________________________________________________________________ TELL CONGRESS WHY ENCRYPTION IS IMPORTANT TO YOU - ADD YOUR VOICE TO THE CONGRESSIONAL RECORD Senator Burns, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and the other sponosors of the Pro-CODE bill want to hear from the Net.community about why encryption is important to privacy and security on the Internet. Please be sure to visit http://www.crypto.com/ and add your voice to the debate over encryption policy on Capitol Hill. Responses will be tabulated and the results, along with selected statements, will be included in the Congressional Record by Senator Conrad Burns. The restults will also be featured during the Security and Freedom through Encryption Forum (SAFE) on July 1 (details on that event are attached below). To add your voice to the crypto debate in Congress, visit: http://www.crypto.com/submit/ ________________________________________________________________________ ATTEND THE SAFE FORUM - JULY 1, 1996 STANFORD CALIFORNIA On July 1, 1996, in the heart of California's Silicon Valley at Stanford University, members of Congress, prominent computer industry leaders and privacy advocates will meet to discuss the need to reform U.S. encryption policy. The event is FREE and open to the public, but space is limited and is going fast. To find out more, and to reserve your free ticket, visit the SAFE Forum Web Page at: http://www.crypto.com/safe/ CONFIRMED SPEAKERS INCLUDE: Among other prominant industry leaders, cryptographers, privacy advocates and members of Congress, confirmed speakers include: Industry Leaders and Cryptographers Members of Congress * Marc Andreeson, Netscape * Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) * Jim Bidzos, RSA * Rep. Tom Campbell (R-CA) * Eric Schmidt, Sun Microsystems * Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) * Brad Silverberg, Microsoft * Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) * Phil Zimmermann, PGP Inc * Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) * Matt Blaze, AT&T * Sen. Larry Pressler (R-SD) * Bruce Schneier, Counterpane Systems Privacy Advocates and Legal Experts: * Michael Froomkin, U. of Miami Law School * Jerry Berman, Center for Democracy and Technology * Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform (invited) * Ken Dam, U. of Chicago Law School (invited) This event will be "cybercast", whith full audio and still video clips, live online with the help of MediaCast. Details on the cybercast are available at http://www.crypto.com/safe/ SAFE FORUM SPONSORS This important discussion on the need for an alterative policy to protect privacy and security and promote commerce on the Global Information Infrastructure is being made possible by the generous support of the following companies and public interest organizations: America Online Americans for Tax Reform AT&T Business Software Alliance Center for Democracy and Technology Center for National Security Studies Commercial Internet eXchange CompuServe Incorporated Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility Cylink Corporation EDS Electronic Frontier Foundation Electronic Messaging Association Electronic Privacy Information Center Information Technology Association of America IEEE - USA MediaCast Media Institute Microsoft Corporation Netcom Online Communication Services Netscape Communications Corporation Novell, Inc. Oracle Corporation Pacific Telesis PGP Inc. Prodigy, Inc. Progress and Freedom Foundation Securities Industry Association Software Publishers Association Sybase, Inc. Voters Telecommunications Watch Wired Magazine Please visit the SAFE Forum Home Page for more information. (http://www.crypto.com/safe/) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (4) SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION Be sure you are up to date on the latest public policy issues affecting civil liberties online and how they will affect you! Subscribe to the CDT Policy Post news distribution list. CDT Policy Posts, the regular news publication of the Center For Democracy and Technology, are received by nearly 10,000 Internet users, industry leaders, policy makers and activists, and have become the leading source for information about critical free speech and privacy issues affecting the Internet and other interactive communications media. To subscribe to CDT's Policy Post list, send mail to policy-posts-request(a)cdt.org with a subject: subscribe policy-posts If you ever wish to remove yourself from the list, send mail to the above address with a subject of: unsubscribe policy-posts ----------------------------------------------------------------------- (5) ABOUT THE CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY/CONTACTING US The Center for Democracy and Technology is a non-profit public interest organization based in Washington, DC. The Center's mission is to develop and advocate public policies that advance democratic values and constitutional civil liberties in new computer and communications technologies. Contacting us: General information: info(a)cdt.org World Wide Web: URL:http://www.cdt.org/ FTP URL:ftp://ftp.cdt.org/pub/cdt/ Snail Mail: The Center for Democracy and Technology 1634 Eye Street NW * Suite 1100 * Washington, DC 20006 (v) +1.202.637.9800 * (f) +1.202.637.0968 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- End Policy Post 2.25 6/21/96 -----------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: "Filegate" may be good news for us
by minow＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>The current flap over the Clinton Administration's request for and receipt >of FBI dossiers is being called "Filegate." The Administration has claimed >the requests were innocent, and based on outmoded Secret Service lists. The >Secret Service denies this, and says the list did not come from them. ... >Why is this good news for us? (Besides the partisan issue of embarrassing >and degrading the current government, which is always a good thing.) > >Because it underscores how difficult it is, even with ostensible >safeguards, to control the distribution of dossiers, secret files, and >surveillance reports. Another reason is that it shows the problems with sensitive data even if people have *legitimate* access to that data (i.e., assuming that there was no mischief involved. Ignoring all privacy issues, escrowed encryption keys will be extremely valuable as they will allow insight into financial transactions. Thus, they will be very attractive targets for economic espionage. Martin Minow minow(a)apple.com

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For the public record: My submission for the crypto hearings (LONG)
by Ernest Hua 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I would encourage others to submit their opinions ASAP at: http://www.crypto.com Ern ------- Forwarded Message Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 17:47:51 -0400 (EDT) From: hua(a)chromatic.com Subject: Testimony submitted for Congressional hearings on 6/26/96 The following testimony was submitted from http://www.crypto.com/submit/ Please contact Shabbir J. Safdar at shabbir(a)vtw.org if any information is not correct. Do you use encryption technogies today (e.g., PGP, etc..): no If no, why not: Because it is not built in to a lot of the products I use today (e.g. email programs) As an Internet user, security and encryption are crucial to my privacy because: Both 1 and 2 equally Tell us more about why you would (or would not) use strong encryption as an individual Internet user: Unlike murder, terrorism, burglary, etc, there are activities which are socially "borderline", meaning that some people want to outlaw but some people don't. There are activities which may be embarassing to publicly acknowledge, but aren't really illegal. I firmly believe in our legal system, but I also firmly believe that there are questionable laws, and today's criminals and trouble makers could be tomorrow's civil right advocates or Nobel peace prize winners or freedom fighters. Encryption does not allow these "questionable" people to murder or harm anyone. It is just software. It is not a knife or a gun. Unlike what the FBI wants everyone to believe, encryption does not mean hackers can now break into the Federal Reserve and destroy the US banking system (in fact, encryption, among many other technologies, help protect these systems in the first place). As a business owner or employee, security and encryption are critical to my business because: Both 1 and 2 equally Tell us more about why you would (or would not) use strong encryption as a business user of the Internet: Hackers, viruses, industrial espionage, privacy, network traffic control, time stamping, etc. I don't believe, for a moment, that being a government official exempts a person from having character flaws or less-than-saintly behavior. I don't think they are necessarily any WORSE either, but I believe everyone is human to some degree. There are honest mistakes, there are less-than-honest mistakes, and there may, on rare occasions, be horrible evil. We must hold people in power (governmental and otherwise) to high standards, but we cannot lower our guard just because we expect them to be saintly. Given what you know about Key Escrow systems: I would use an escrow system only if I could choose the key holder (including my friends, lawyer, accountant, etc.) Do you think that the government should be able, under certain circumstances, for a limited time, and only with the specific authorization of a Judge, have the authority to conduct electronic surveillance in order protect public safety and national security? Yes Tell us why or why not: I think the government should have the resources to be "above current technology". They can invest in super-wiz-bang decryption and surveillance technology that the ordinary person cannot buy or make. However, if the ordinary person can buy or make it, then it is silly to think that a law will make a criminal NOT buy or make it. Just look at the illegal weapons trade as an example. Encryption should be illegal if it a morally, ethically bad thing to possess or use. However, making it illegal just because it becomes extremely inconvenient for law enforcement is like requiring that every room in every house be installed with a government-approved video camera, just in case you were involved in some illegal activity. Afterall, significant percentages of child abuse or child molestation (or pick your favorite emotionally-charged crime) are done within the comfort of the child's home. This last idea, about the cameras in every room, is not that far off in some countries. Britain has cameras in many public areas already. It would be law enforcement's (excuse the language) "wet dream" to have such all-seeing access. The only reason they have not asked for it is because it would never be acceptable to the public. But, unlike video cameras, encryption is something which very few people understand yet, so the FBI can feel okay about asking for something which only a few "hackers" and "liberals" are against. What does strict control of encryption buy law enforcement? Not much. Encryption is only hides information, but the more globally accepted illegal behaviors are far more tangible than information. A murder assumes that there is a missing person or dead body or traces to be recovered. A molested child assumes that there is a child who is harmed. No amount of super-military strength encryption can hide these physical things. So this issue becomes one of why should we give up privacy for the sheer convenience of the law enforcement community. There is also the question of why, no matter how much escrowing, should there be a strength limitation on encryption? Who ELSE is trying to decode this stuff besides law enforcement, who presummably has access to the escrowed keys? This aspect of the pro-escrow proposals raises all sorts of questions about just how much hidden abuse is there in the government. If you are not a US citizen (and live out side the US) and you use encryption, please tell us what you use and how you obtained it. I am now a citizen, but I was previously a citizen of Taiwan during some very tough times. The government was honest about violation of privacy: On the phones were clear warnings stating that you should NOT talk about political issues over the phone; you may be tapped. That's not a nice situation, but at least they were honest about how widespread the use of wiretaps would be. And those were exceptional times of crisis. But we, in the US, are not in a time of military-grade crisis. There is no foreseeable need for wide-spread imposition of martial law. There is no uprising, no wide-spread terrorism of any sort. I just do not see the need for the surveillance powers that the FBI wants. Business name:Chromatic Research Street:615 Tasman Drive, Sunnyvale State:CA Zip code:94089-1707 Phone number:(408) 752-9375 Business WWW URL:http://www.chromatic.com Description of business: High performance media processors for personal computers. ------- End of Forwarded Message

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Re: Federal Key Registration Agency
by David Rosoff 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 03.05 AM 6/21/96 -0700, William Knowles wrote: >On Thu, 20 Jun 1996, jim bell wrote: >> If done in parallel, on a dedicated, 200 MHz custom chip, my WAG says that >> such a chip could try, and statistically analyze the results of 10 million >> DES codes per second. (it would do the decrypts on a number of parallel >> DES blocks, and look for typical ASCII code pattern probabilities, again all >> in parallel.) A typical cracking system might have 100 boards of 100 such >> chips, or perhaps a 100 billion such decrypts per second. Checking the >> keyspace would require 2**19 seconds, or about a half million seconds, or 6 >> days. Average decrypt, of course, in 3 days. Wasn't there a crypto paper three or four years ago that said if custom chips were used, a million dollar custom machine could crack a DES key in less than a day? =============================================================================== David Rosoff (nihongo o sukoshi dekiru) ----------------> drosoff(a)arc.unm.edu For PGP key 0xD37692F9, finger drosoff(a)acoma.arc.unm.edu 0xD37692F9 Key fingerprint = 25 7D AA 01 85 41 43 89 50 5A 33 76 F1 F1 99 67 Non-technical beginner's guide to PGP ---> http://www.arc.unm.edu/~drosoff/pgp/ Anonymous ok, PGP ok. If it's not PGP-signed, you know that I didn't write it. === === === === === === === === === === === === === === === === === === === === "Truth is stranger than fiction, especially when truth is being defined by the O.J. Simpson Defense Team." -Dave Barry -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMctQlxguzHDTdpL5AQE0MgP9GAtJIBZRhV+VIIqiojiZsO5qz3vqN3xe 5UQ0W1uRxZgckLOs5h57/IiDhAGTwzoB1x4pOKlbsp/Pv2zgDNl5hTAUJiQIKpHX vdcyJBUYRUCCfHuZfRxXVeEhhWMzSowLvWNVyapLSwFo6exY1ozMgcchy1YSx1sd kEpJtlUegiE= =MfyQ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Science Lessons in the Mountains of New Mexico
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:39 PM 6/21/96, se7en wrote: >Cryptography may not academic science's only contribution to making >business work in an unpredictable, technology-driven world. If a growing >community of natural scientists, social scientists, and business >theorists are right, then the cryptographic algorithms taht make >electronic transactions secure will soon seem downright prosaic. > >This unusual admixture of pure researchers and real-world practitioners >tends to congregate around research institutions in New Mexico, which has >been a scientific hotbed ever since the atomic bomb project of the 1940s. ... Se7en, I am curious. Did you write this, or is this a forwarded article? If you wrote this, it is very typical of journalistic treatments, and is well-written. You have a career in journalism ahead of you (or perhaps you currently are a journalist, under another name, in which case you should still indicate what your actual journalistic name is, as I doubt you write under the name "se7en." If you did not write this, then you need to start including indications about who did write it, and where it appeared, and that it's a forwarded article. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Sen. Specter and Kerry move to delay crypto legislation
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Two things: 1. The letter was copied to Mark Heilbrun, and a phone number is helpfully provided below. 2. D'Amato was copied to encourage him to claim jurisdiction over part of this legislation, yank it into the banking committee, and delay, delay, delay. -Declan declan(a)well.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence June 7, 1996 SSCI #96-2219B The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy United States Senator Senate Russell Building, Room 433 Washington, D.C. 20510-4502 Dear Pat: We write to express our concerns about legislation you have sponsored which would impact directly upon federal encryption policy, including export control policy. Recognizing that American innovation in encryption technology is unequaled, we appreciate the need to balance US economic competitiveness with the need to safeguard national security interests. As such, it is our belief that this legislation requires careful study and reflection and that the Senate and the Congress as a whole should proceed with caution until all of the implications of such an initiative are fully discerned. Along these lines, it is our understanding that industry representatives are currently meeting with the Administration to discuss new policy initiatives to address this issue. Also, both the Congress and the Administration have undertaken to conduct a thorough analysis of a two-year congressionally-mandated study on federal encryption policy that was facilitated by the National Research Council. We therefore feel that your legislation initiative at this time is premature. We appreciate your efforts to bring some needed clarity to United States policy in this area and wish to keep the lines open for discussion and debate on this important issue. The staff point of contact on this issue is our Committee Counsel, Mark Heilbrun, who can be reached at 224-1700. Sincerely, Arlen Specter J. Robert Kerrey Chairman Vice-Chairman cc: The Honorable Alfonse D'Amato Chairman, Senate Committee on Banking --------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Federal Key Registration Agency
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Michael Froomkin writes: >> I have seen the text of the speech. The wire service accounts wildly, >> wildly exaggerate. This is a non-story...except for AG Reno's assertion >> that it would take the government a year to break one DES message with a >> "supercomputer". She presumably believes this. .... At 07:54 AM 6/21/96 -0400, Perry wrote: >The numbers in the Blaze et al paper are very realistic on this. A >year is total bull -- not even within several orders of magnitude of >accuracy. Actually, it may even be low - Cray-type supercomputers aren't particularly designed for the bit-twiddling you need to do DES well. An application- specific cracking machine can do it several orders of magnitude faster for a smaller amount of money. Wiener's design was two orders of magnitude more cost-effective than the two previous designs (Peter Wayner's content- addressible-memory design and somebody-from-DEC's GaAs chip design were both about $50M for a 1-day crack), and those were substantial breakthroughs when they came out. But yes, she's giving out very misleading numbers for what cracking DES really costs, and I'd assume she's way too competent to be doing so by accident - or at least she should be... As far as Jim Bell's cracking cost estimates go, a Wiener-style machine would cost about $1M for a 3.5-hour crack, or about 7 keys per day with known plaintext. If the on-chip penalty for detecting probable patterns instead of specific ones is small (e.g. first cut is to accept keys which have all the high-bits zero, which is 1/256 of the total), you should be able to do better than three days per crack, especially if it's also not too expensive to haul the key-schedule out of the chip on the 1/256 hits. Double the cost if you think there's a random initialization vector, and do other minor annoying things to the chip design if you're checking for several popular known plaintexts and other creeping featurism, and you're still close. You may be willing to feed the hits from the first round set of crunching into a more normal computer as well... # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # http://www.idiom.com/~wcs # Dispel Authority!

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