December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: FAA to require transponders on all aircraft passengers
by Arun Mehta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 00:49 06/08/96 -0500, Robert A. Rosenberg wrote: >They better hold off loading the containers with the luggage until they >lock down/up the plane so they can verify who got on (and can pull any >unaccompanied luggage). It is either that or unloading the plane if there >is a missing passenger. Many airports (e.g. Zurich) require you to identify your baggage on the way to the plane. If somebody merely keeps watch to ensure that you don't run away after identifying your baggage, the system works. There are problems that can be solved without computers :-) Arun Mehta Phone +91-11-6841172, 6849103 amehta(a)cpsr.org http://www.cerfnet.com/~amehta/ finger amehta(a)cerfnet.com for public key

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South Korean ID Card
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Phil Agre <pagre(a)weber.ucsd.edu> [I have enclosed, with the author's permission, a letter from Joohoan Kim <sjokim(a)icg.stwing.upenn.edu> raising alarms about a proposed national electronic identification card in South Korea. JK encourages you to repost the information where appropriate.] =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 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 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [I don't have the original header.] Hi, all, I would like to alarm you that another Big-Brother is coming with its most ambitios dream in South Korea: The Electronic Identification Card, which will be issued to every citizen as a mandatory within a year or so. The Electronic Identification Card project is a part of South Korean government's ultra-speed communication network building project. Managed by the Ministry of Domestic Affairs, the US $413 million project is being carried out in cooperation with the Korea Computer Institute. Once the project is completed in 1997, every Koreans of 18 years or older will be assigned a single integrated circuit (IC) card which will include photo and all kinds of personal digitized information: current universal ID card (currently every adult Korean has a photo ID issued by the Government), driver's license, medical insurance card, national pension card, proof of residence, and scanned fingerprints (!) among other things. (I don't know how many "demoratic" governments are collecting fingerprints of their whole citizens.) DACOM, a big telecommunication company in Korea, which won the bidding for the project, describes it as following: "As 8,000 characters worth of information can be stored on the single credit card-sized card, personal information needed for issuing official documents and certificates can be accessed promptly by public offices, institutions, companies, and banks or other organizations. The Ministry of Domestic Affairs has announced that the new cards will be distributed starting in January 1997. Full implementation is scheduled to be completed by early 1998. While there are some nations in which drivers' licenses are used in place of ID cards, this project will be the first system in the world which combines multiple functions onto one card. Once distribution is completed, the card will greatly boost efficiency, saving the government US$1.3 billion and enabling it to eventually reduce its work force by 5,000 employees." (Quoted from: http://bora.dacom.co.kr/bora/dacom/news-clips.html) As you can see, they have no concerns about protection of personal information and privacy. True, they are a company making money from that project, and probably we shouldn't expect any criticism against the Project. The problem is, however, that almost all of the South Korean news media are talking the same thing about it: the "efficiency" and the "convenience" that the Electronic Identification Card might bring about. I tried to find critical arguments against the project via a comprehensive news data base in Korea, but I could not find any. I also checked many web sites of non-governmental organizations and socio-progressive groups in Korea, but none of them have raised the issue yet. They do not seem to realize the suspending dangers of their own privacy and human rights. Despite obvious and serious danger in protecting personal information and privacy , there is just no social discourse concerning the issue. I have also checked relevant laws (especially newly approved communication-related laws) through the database of the Korean Government, but there seems to be no clear legal basis for the project. The project has been mentioned only in the "10 Plans for Efficient National Informatization," announced by the Ministry of Information and Communication. But the City of Seoul already started to issue the Card as a "test" in March. The Ministry of Domestic Affairs said, as they were issuing the "test" version of the Card to 1,000 citizens, "we will prepare relevant laws and regulations," implying that they are doing the project "before" (and probably "above") the law. Currently, I am writing columns and news stories for "Sisa Jouranl," the weekly news magazine in South Korea, which decided to deal with the Card project as a special topic as I suggested. To write a critical article against the Project, I am starting to gather info about the similar cases, if there is any. And I hope to hear from you about some theoretical and practical knowledge about the similar issues; I would like to quote your opinions in my article, if you allow me to do so. Right after the publication of the news article, I will try to contact various NGO's in South Korea to inform them of the importance of the issue. And I will try to organize an anti-electronic ID Card movement in the cyberspace, if that is necessary. I am very happy to meet you in the cyberspace, who really concerns the privacy issues in the computerized age. Thank you very much. Sincerely, Joohan ****************************************** Joohoan Kim Ph.D. Candidate 3620 Walnut Street Annenberg School for Communication University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104 sjokim(a)icg.stwing.upenn.edu http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~sjokim/home.html

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Re: ****Tacoma, Washington Starts Taxing Internet Access 07/30/96
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:08 AM 8/7/96 GMT, Brian C. Lane wrote: > A slight correction. They are imposing a 6% tax on the Gross receipts of > all Internet Providers who have customers in Tacoma. This includes AOL, > Compu$erve, and my local favorites - aa.net and eskimo.com So if someone has six thousand customers, one of whom is in Tacoma, they want six percent of his gross on the other 5999 customers? --------------------------------------------------------------------- | 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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Babble about universal service
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I wish that people (like Phil Agre, who claims to be in favor of democracy on the Net) might get it through their heads that many - probably most - of those already on the Net have no desire to see every redneck on the planet on here, much less pay for the privilege of their being able to send inane messages to us. -Allen From: IN%"rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu" 17-JUL-1996 23:08:46.62 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: 2 Jul 1996 17:03:29 GMT From: rh120(a)columbia.edu (Ronda Hauben) Organization: Columbia University Report 1 I just returned from a fascinating week in Montreal, Canada where I attended the INET '96 conference held by the Internet Society. I will try to write some reports about what happened at the Conference in the next week or two as it would be good to have the online community discuss some of the issues that were raised at the Conference. What became clear at the conference was that this is an important time in the development of the Internet. People from around the world attended the conference and most expressed the desire that the Internet be made available in their countries for education and scientific and other uses. Some of the focus of the conference was on business uses of the Internet, but it seemed that there was a great concern among the people I spoke to that the Internet be available for educational and scientific and government and community purposes, not just for business uses. I want to start this report however, with the last talk that was given at the conference. The final talk was to be given by Reed Hunt of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. He didn't attend however, and instead the talk was given by Blair Levin, Chief of Staff at the FCC instea. A version of the talk is available at the FCC www site. The talk was a surprise as it seemed uninformed both about the history and importance of the Internet and of the important public policy considerations that need to be taken into account when making any rules for regulating the Internet. At the beginning of the talk, there was the statement that Reed Hunt was the first FCC Chairman to have a computer on his desk, but that he asked his staff to explain how the Internet works. So instead of a commitment to learn about how the Internet developed and the significant impact it is having on the world, the speech presented us with the glib "the Internet gives us the opportunity to change all our communications policies." The problem with this is that the FCC is therefore starting from scratch, throwing out all the lessons that have helped the Internet to grow and develop, and instead, creating its own models. In his talk Blair Levin listed five principles. They were: 1) How can public policy promote expansion of band width? 2) What rules can we get rid of or have? 3) The concern with pricing. 4) How to make sure it reaches everyone, especially kids in schools. 5) How to make sure it reaches across the globe. The problem with this was that it took universal service as the 4th point, and then basically substituted access by kids in schools for the principle of universal service. During the talk Blair described how the NTIA (the National Telecommunications Information Administration) had submitted an important paper to the FCC on the issue of voice over the Internet. This made clear that the NTIA has not submitted any paper to the FCC on the issue of universal service, despite the fact that they held an online hearing on several issues, including universal service and the Internet, in November 1994 and the NTIA has done nothing to act on the broad expression of sentiment for universal service that was expressed during that online public meeting. When asked about that online meeting, Blair said that the FCC knew of the meeting. However, it seems to have had no effect on their deliberations, or on the request of people that the FCC open up their decision making process so that the people who are being affected by their decisions have a means of providing input into those decisions. In response to a question about the need for universal service Blair responded that that was the obligation of other branches of the U.S. government like the Department of Education. He said this despite the fact that at the current moment the FCC is supposedly making rules to provide for the universal service provisions of the Telecommunications Act passed by the U.S. Congress in Feb. 1996. Also, he claimed to welcome submissions into their process, but when told that it would cost over $50 to pay postage costs for a submission since there were over 35 people who had to be served (and postage on a minimal submission was $1.45), he said to see Kevin Werbach a lawyer at the FCC, who had come with him. Kevin Werbach offered no means of dealing with the high cost of making a submission. Many people at the Internet Society Conference applauded in response to the question about the lack of concern by the FCC for the principle of universal service to the Internet. At the Internet Society conference many people spoke up about the need in their countries, whether that be Canada, or Norway, or Ghana, etc. for the Net to be more widespread and available to the public for educational and community purposes. Many were concerned about the lack of ability of the so called "market forces" to provide networking access to other than corporate or well to do users. Yet here was a talk being given in the name of the Chairman of the regulatory body in the U.S. charged with making the rules to provide for universal service, and the talk was unconcerned with the important issues and problems that issue of providing universal service to the Internet raises. It is unfortunate that Reed Hunt didn't come to the conference and take the challenge to learn what the real concerns of people around the world are with regard to access to the Internet. Isolated in Washington, with no access to him possible for most people (though someone from one company told me that he was told to send him email whenever he had a concern), it seems difficult for the rules process to be able to produce any helpful outcome. There need to be open meetings and sessions where people who are concerned with these issues are invited to be heard and to discuss these issues with the FCC. Instead the process is going on behind the same closed doors that the crafting of the Telecommunications Act was created by the U.S. Congress. It is a tribute to the Internet Society that they did make an effort to invite government officials like Reed Hunt to the conference. The FCC will be setting an example for the rest of the world by the telecommunications policy rules it creates. Will the policy be one that recognizes that the so called "market" cannot provide the free or low cost access to the Internet that is necessary to make such universal service a reality? Will the rules created be based on looking back at how time sharing and the the ARPANET and the Internet developed so it can build on those lessons? To have those rules be based on firm lessons from the past and firm principles that can make them fruitful, it is necessary that the FCC process creating those rules be much more open than it is at present. If the FCC could learn from the experience of the Internet and set up newsgroups and real email access to the officials involved that would demonstrate a commitment to a more equitable access to the Internet and to the fcc rulemaking that is needed to make the Internet available to all. But from the recent talk by the FCC official presented at INET '96, there seems little indication that the need for an open process and a many to many means of communication is recognized among those at the FCC and thus there is even less evidence that the FCC is capable of making rules to apply the principle of universal service to make Internet access available to all. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Hauben Teachers College Dept. of Communication Amateur Computerist Newsletter http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/acn/ WWW Music Index http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/music/ Netizens Netbook http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/ Netizens Cyberstop

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Re: Public report of the EU crack.
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Hallam-Baker wrote: >>I consider the political dimension of this affair to >>be more significant that the technical. This brings the >>US and the French into the same category of anti-crypto >>government with a habit of poking its nose into other >>people business and getting caught. Phill - do you know if the French ever got caught actively breaking computers or telecomm equipment outside their country, or have they only been hit for eavesdropping and breakins on their subjects and foreigners within their boundaries? It seems like the US government, if they really did this, has gone a step beyond even France's level of tackiness, as well as exceeding the "legitimate needs of law enforcement" that Louis Freeh has been ranting about. Is this some campaign to reinforce Clinton's call for protecting the National Information Infrastructure, or have they decided that voluntary key escrow is too slow so they'll steal what they can now? The technically interesting part is just that there are bugs in routers and SNMP can be used to attack them. We've seen bugs before, and we've seen bugs used to bug people. At 02:20 PM 8/5/96 -0700, drose(a)AZStarNet.com (David M. Rose) wrote: >> >> Phill > >Say what? John Young I can understand; this blather? > >Att: "Doc" Baker/Mr. Hyde, err, Hallam: any rudimentary text on >diction/grammer/syntax might be helpful to you. > >Sheesh! At least Sternlight seemed to be acquainted with the English language. > David - It's good form, if you _must_ flame people's spelling and grammar on the net, to spell grammar correctly. Understanding grammar well enough to recognize correct English when you see it is a fine point mainly noticed by people whose abilities run beyond the capability of running a spellchecker; Phill's is fine (except a missing 's), if lacking JYA's obscure poetic touch. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Defuse Authority!

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Re: STEGO GUNS
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:28 AM 8/8/96 +1000, Julian Assange wrote: >> >> The nationwide study [from the University of >> Chicago] found that violent crime fell after >> states made it legal to carry concealed handguns: >> * Homicide, down 8.5%. >> * Rape, down 5%. >> * Aggravated assault, down 7%. >> ... >> The drop isn't primarily caused by people >> defending themselves with guns, says John Lott, >> the study's author. Rather, criminals seem to >> alter their behavior to avoid coming into contact >> with a person who might have a gun. >Correlation != causation. What are the figures on other crimes? I >presume they would have to have gone up, since the criminal element has >been deprived of it's "revenue" in this manner. Perhaps they simply >didn't have time for killing, raping and assulting; being too busy >lugging around their legally concealed handguns and pointing them at >shop-keepers. I think this is relevant, albeit in an indirect way, to cypherpunks. We're all familiar with some of the various ways that government tries to justify intrusion based on arguments which look superficially plausible. The nationwide 55 mph speed limit is one, which was first supported based on the claim that it saved gas, but later the justification changed to saving lives. Yet recently studies have shown an actual decrease in accidents in states which raised the speed limit. The other big correlation (which turns out to be an anti-correlation!) is the idea that allowing people to carry concealed handguns leads to greater numbers of deaths. By this study, that claim is shown to be false as well. The reason this is all relevant is that cryptography is currently under attack by the US government, under the guise of ITAR, with the implicit claim that the availability of good crypto will somehow help "terrorists, drug dealers, child pornographers, and Jim Bell" (oops! sorry about that one...) We, on the other hand, recognize that the advent of good cryptography will protect us far more than it might arguably harm us. All of us on CP (except, probably, Sternlight) would gladly accept a world where unrestricted crypto is ubiquitous. By showing previous examples of how government makes false claims and misuses (or ignores) statistics to support its actions, we can challenge any presumptions it makes regarding crypto. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Oregon License Plate Site in the News Tonight!
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cypherpunks make the news again. I'm watching the LA NBC news channel, and they report that the Oregon "look up any license plate" Web site is causing a flap. Though apparently legal, the critics admit, the Governor wants the material removed. (Sounds like a good time to mirror it on some other sites, pronto!) --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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Tim's Mac Tales
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Finger your delete key: What caught my eye in Tim's remarks about Apple was his continued use of Macs. Why was that enticing? It has to do with what hard-headed physicists know about hardware that soft-headed coders don't. So my curiosity: does Tim know Intel intel that we don't know, and can't tell it? More generally, do chip physicists know what crypto coders don't, about the covert features of those world-pervasive chips inside? Would Tim tell, could Tim disclose intel, what the world doesn't know about Intel, about what Intel's hard-headed Moore, the immigrant physicist, whispers in utmost secrecy to Microsoft's soft-headed Gates, the American-way coder? Is soft-hearted OS code the front for cold-hearted hardware spying? Maybe the most that Tim can tell without exposing Intel is that Tim uses Macs. Still, is Motorola more trustworthy than Intel, and if so, for whom? What do Apple insiders know that the world needs to know about the deals of Intel insiders, are they working with inside the Beltwayers, gobbling world-markets, gobbling intel chip by chip? Is Motorola doing the same with its adorable cellulars and satellites and boards and hardware galore, using benign code to conceal hardware malice? Dreamy, maybe, but hard-hearted Tellers did it to the Oppenheimers, and everyone knows that physicists truly enjoy playing dice with God. (Hold on, Tim, this is the way I write after thirty years of grinding out grim technical reports.)

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Re: Tim's Mac Tales
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:50 PM 8/7/96, John Young wrote: >What caught my eye in Tim's remarks about Apple was his continued use of >Macs. Why was that enticing? I have no idea why it would be enticing, inasmuch as I've covered this a bunch of times. Though John is asking this as a joke, I'll pretend he's serious. At least for a few paragraphs. >It has to do with what hard-headed physicists know about hardware that >soft-headed coders don't. Amongst other things, an _operating system_ is not the same as a _CPU_. The Macintosh OS happens to run, for historical reasons, on Motorola processors, and DOS happens to run, for historical reasons, on Intel processors. Other operatings systems, such as Unix, tend to run on various processors. Had history evolved slightly differently, a DOS-like OS could have been dominant on Motorola CPUs, a Macintosh-like OS could have been dominant on Intel CPUs (indeed, many would say this is what Windows 3.x and later are), and so forth. Quibblers may jump in with the usual religious arguments about segmented architectures, the orthogonality of the 68000 instruction set, etc., but these points are tangential to the simple decisions about Seattle Computer and Microsoft coming up with a CP/M-like OS for Intel processors, and Apple committing to the Motorola family. (And recall that windowing systems _did_ exist for the Intel CPU even back in the 80s...Unix systems, including Sun's OS, ran on Intel CPUs.) As several of my messages over the years have explained, including the one sent out yesterday, the Macintosh visual metaphor was the closest to the LISP machine I had been using while at Intel. I did buy an IBM PC in '83 (and an S-100 Sol in '78), running DOS. I even bought Windows 1.0, a truly, totally, completely awful product! (Steve Ballmer of Microsoft admitted as much in his interview on "Revenge of the Nerds.") I looked closely at the Lisa in '83, but it was too expensive. The Macintosh in '84 was priced better, but also lacked a few key things. But by the time the Mac Plus arrived, I was ready to buy. That the CPU was a $40 chip from Motorola rather than a $40 chip from Intel was not even a consideration. (Intel bought Macs to do various graphics arts things, just as I'm sure Motorola bought PCs to do various things.) > >So my curiosity: does Tim know Intel intel that we don't know, and can't >tell it? More generally, do chip physicists know what crypto coders don't, >about the covert features of those world-pervasive chips inside? > >Would Tim tell, could Tim disclose intel, what the world doesn't know about >Intel, about what Intel's hard-headed Moore, the immigrant physicist, >whispers in utmost secrecy to Microsoft's soft-headed Gates, the >American-way coder? Is soft-hearted OS code the front for cold-hearted >hardware spying? I'm having my usual problems trying to parse this? Is this some sort of rhyme, a la "a horse is a horse of course"? Gordon Moore is not an immigrant physicist, not even an immigrant into California. He was born about 40 miles north of where I now live. >Maybe the most that Tim can tell without exposing Intel is that Tim uses >Macs. Indeed, I use Macs because Intel chips have those special NSA instructions in them, like the Cray did. (Funny, we haven't had this thread here that I can recall...it used to be a staple of sci.crypt in the late 80s.) > >(Hold on, Tim, this is the way I write after thirty years of grinding out >grim technical reports.) > I suspected as much, John. Your TRs must be doozies. (TRP, he of The Whole Sick Crew, used to hide from his officemates by placing a large sheet of blueprint paper over his head as he did engineering drawing work at Boeing.) --Tyrone Slothrope

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Scientists discover evidence of life on Macs!
by bryce＠digicash.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Okay, I'll stop. Bryce -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i Comment: Auto-signed under Unix with 'BAP' Easy-PGP v1.1b2 iQB1AwUBMgmgKUjbHy8sKZitAQGH+AMAgUBwBqkZCbHw21xUwiarJe+Gzo+7yDqs gvX0Tos+/YdMSjl2fMbV8480qvbTz+r6izqh8y6D4Fv0sbM12PCUq2AoeJo35naI GWNV3yybBj2N0YsuOmvhQvcE/lDyVesF =kx/N -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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