December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

(fwd)Atlanta NRC Cryptography Briefing
by camcc＠abraxis.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>X-Sender: splatter(a)pop.io.com >Date: Sat, 14 Sep 1996 22:36:19 -0400 >To: 2600(a)ninja.techwood.org, efg-action(a)ninja.techwood.org >From: myron.cramer(a)gtri.gatech.edu (Myron L. Cramer) (by way of * <splatter(a)io.com>) >Subject: [EFG] BoS: c4i-pro Atlanta NRC Cryptography Briefing >Sender: owner-efg-action(a)ninja.techwood.org >Reply-To: efg-action(a)ninja.techwood.org > >myron.cramer(a)gtri.gatech.edu (Myron L. Cramer) > > I am hosting a presentation by Dr. Herb Lin of the prestigious National >Research Council (National Academy of Science). He is the director of >their recent study on Cryptography. > > Cryptography is the key technology that underlies anything being done to >secure the internet or to make electronic commerce a reality. Policies >controlling the use of modern cryptographic technologies will determine the >future feasability of the internet for business both in the near and far >terms. > > National cryptography policies also significantly impact on the >capabilities of the intelligence and law enforcement communities. > > Feel free to forward the following notice to anyone you think would be >interested in attending. > > Thank you. > > Myron Cramer > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Presentation > October 21, 1996 > > "Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society" > > Dr. Herb Lin > National Research Council > > >Cryptography, the work of creating and deciphering coded information using >mathematical formulas, long has been the sphere of spies and the military. >But in the past 10 years private-sector use of cryptography has exploded as >a result of advances in electronic communications and information >technologies. Decisions about national cryptography policy now have >important implications not only for national security, but also for U.S. >economic competitiveness, law enforcement interests, and the protection of >the privacy and other rights of individuals. The Computer Science and >Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council recently >completed a congressionally mandated study to examine the issues and >conflicting interests involved in cryptography and made recommendations on >national policy in this highly controverial area. > >There will be a public briefing in Atlanta, Georgia by the National >Research Council on this report. The briefing will be held at the >Manufacturing Research Center on the campus of the Georgia Institute of >Technology on Monday October 21, from 1:30 to 3:30. Dr. Herbert Lin, >director of the NRC study will conduct the briefing. Questions from the >audience will be entertained. > >For further information, please contact Dr. Myron L. Cramer (404) 894-7292, ><myron.cramer(a)gtri.gatech.edu> at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. > >The event is open to the press and the public. > >Directions: From I-75/85 exit on Tenth Street and head West. Turn left on >Hemphill Street and follow it to where it ends on Ferst Street. The >Manufacturing Research Center is the modern building in front of you. >Parking is limited; use public transportation or allow yourself extra time. > >This meeting is hosted by the Georgia Tech Research Institute and the >College of Computing. > >__________________________________________________________________________ >Dr. Myron L. Cramer, Principal Research Scientist >Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) | Voice: (404) 894-7292 >400 10th St, Room 554B | FAX : (404) 894-8636 >Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0840 | myron.cramer(a)gtri.gatech.edu >__________________________________________________________________________ > > > > >

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Re: HipCrime as MetaSPAM
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:10 AM 9/15/96 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote: >Just a Hippie Of Crime, not a Hippie Of Clue. Indeed. He's also collecting user data for spams or trojan horse attacks in the future; a disassembly of his VisitorID.class and StealStuff.class files reveals that he's collecting (via Java) data about a user's IP address, email address, operating system, machine class (e.g., processor type), and collecting some filesystem info; the filesystem info collector seems to be prepared to cope with Macs, Windows boxes, and Unix systems. The user data is sent back both as an E-mail message and via HTTP to his home system. As far as I can tell, Netscape 3.0 on Win95 won't let it get any file system info but will let it detect IP addr, processor, and OS. He's also got at least one mostly harmless but annoying JavaScript trick where he opens far too many copies of Netscape; I clobbered it after 9 or 10 windows had opened. (the windows claim to be "formatting your hard disk".) As far as I can tell, he thinks that because some artists have a cynical, grouchy attitude, anything he does while affecting such an attitude is art. What he's lost track of is that some artists are also assholes, and some people are simply juvenile assholes (no art). -- Greg Broiles | "We pretend to be their friends, gbroiles(a)netbox.com | but they fuck with our heads." http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | |

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Re: 56 kbps modems
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:31 AM 9/15/96 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote: >Unless they're _really_ talking about ISDN "modems", I'm surprised >to hear somebody saying they can take 56 kbps, turn it into analog, >let the phone company quantize and mu-law the analog into 64kbps, >and still get the original 56kbps back out. But if they can, well, >yee-hah, ISDN is nearly dead :-) (Not totally dead; the signalling is >still useful for some applications, the convenience of two channels on >one wire pair is nice, and the fact that people can get 56kbps without >the phone company's help will pressure them into offering ISDN for >a lower price in areas where the Phone Company's idea of "all the market >will bear" is substantially higher than voice pricing.) If the phoneco was realistic about ISDN value, they'd decide that since anybody can buy a 31k modem for $100 or so, the "value" of a 128K connection is about $400, and then they'd charge based on the actuarial value of this hypothetical one-time fee, at perhaps an interest rate of 5% or so: In other words, about a $20 per year charge, or around $2 per month. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: PRESS RELEASE: GERMANY CENSORS DUTCH WEBSITE WWW.XS4ALL.NL
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Xs4all Internet will rotate the IP-numbering of the website www.xs4all.nl > to ensure that it's 3100 userpages will all remain available for any > internet-user. While you are at it, you could move just the censored material to a separate IP address from the rest of the archives, and issue Web redirects for requests sent to the old address. In fact it might be interesting to redirect readers to various mirror sites automatically, at random and in rotation. Thus, when someone connects to your web site to read censored material, they will be automatically redirected to one of dozens or hundreds of other places where the material can be found. The German censors will likely find it impossible to block access to all those sites (and each such site can also be changing its IP address periodically). It's my impression that the draft Mobile-IP protocols will make it possible for a site to use IP addresses from all over the Internet. Mobile IP is normally designed for permitting a physical host to move to various physical locations while retaining a fixed logical IP address (corresponding to its "home" location). It can probably also be used to permit a physical host at a single physical location to respond to multiple logical IP addresses at multiple virtual "home" locations. See http://www.ietf.org/html-charters/mobileip-charter.html, or search for "Mobile IP" in a web search engine. The Mobile IP protocols require strong authentication in order to "move" around the network securely. We hope this will prevent them from being used to subvert Internet hosts. However, in the presence of *cooperation* from a variety of Internet sites, they can also be used to make the physical location and Internet-address of actual stored information invisible to the requesters of that information -- and to the censors attempting to block access to it. Curiously enough, the National University of Singapore has implemented Mobile IP for Linux! See http://zaphod.ee.nus.sg/mip/. Even in the backyards of the most egregious censors, freely available technology for combatting censorship is being built and distributed. (A second Linux implementation from http://anchor.cs.binghamton.edu/~mobileip/ is also available.) John Gilmore

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Re: Reputation in action
by gregburk＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Well, this looks like a chance to quickly correct some mistakes without spending a lot of time framing the issue. tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) writes: > But this latest episode illustrates the role of reputations. Namely, my own > reputation is not being harmed by bizarre commentaries from the Vulis-bot. ..among people who directly know you. You seem to see this as an example of reputations in action. But there isn't any "repute" in there at all. Surely this grand theoretical "reputation" framework isn't needed to describe simple direct experience. And it seems to me that your usage of "reputation" has at different times meant both direct and indirect exposure. This clearly discards important information, often to the detriment of your analysis. Perhaps you can explain why the two separate things are the same in some important way, aside from merely that they both involve esteem. > As its reputation is (apparently) pretty low, and associated with Serdar > Ardic-style rants about "sovoks," "the cabal," and "spit," such an entity > can hardly "assassinate" my character. > A few years ago Larry Detweiler, aka "vznuri" ("visionary"), aka "S.Boxx," > aka "Pablo Escobar," aka several other alternate personalities, wrote > dozens of screeds denouncing me, Eric Hughes, Nick Szabo, Hal Finney, etc. > Did this have an effect on our reputations? Not to people I respected, of > course. And if Detweiler's rants affected my reputation with his peers, > including Dimitri Vulis, Ludwig Plutonium, Doctress Neutopia, Serdar Argic, > well, this is to the good. > In the mathematics of reputations, a negative reputation held by one whose > own reputation is negative is a positive. I don't think this is an example of any such thing. I would not respect a person even a tiny bit more just because a kook disrespects them. In fact, since the kooks frequently hold each other in very low esteem, the suggested polarity-math is self-contradictory. Rather, I think this is an example of how direct exposure supercedes reputation. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.1 iQBVAwUBMjs9GLMyVAabpHidAQE4PQH/dfVepFTivql8LtygN8BBoE/l03K7NOIH HVvH4QbHBY2MyVNviRN9R6MF2LsJRYp5SzFfdC+1vm/ohnhWEYZ4aA== =LdoS -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Fed appellate judge remarks re anonymity, free speech o
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 14 Sep 96 at 20:14, paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk wrote: > >The article quotes Kozinski as saying "I have a severe problem with > >anonymous E-mailers . . . You don't have a right to walk up to > >somebody's door and knock with a bag over your head." The article > >says Kozinski likened anonymous E-mail to menacing someone. > What is the offense involved then, going bagged in a public place? > since when do I or anyone else not have the right to wear a bag on > my head? <BS_mode> Make-up should be outlawed! The potential for turning oneself into an anonymous creature is *way* to big for not being alarming. There ought to be a law! <BR> And beside, although it is often used as an enhancing tool, of what use is the little and irrelevant egoist human pleasure of looking "nice" when we are viewing things from the standpoint a sensitive and poor and terrified child or frail and defenseless woman? </BS_Mode> jfa Jean-Francois Avon, Montreal QC Canada "One of theses centuries, the brutes, private or public, who believe that they can rule their betters by force, will learn the lesson of what happens when brute force encounters mind and force." - Ragnar Danneskjold PGP key at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891

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Crypto Publicity
by Dave Watson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Orange County Register, a somewhat conservative daily for the county just south of somewhat more liberal Los Angeles, provided a short plug for crypto in today's editorial page. Not that they're necessarily any better than the others, but positive publicity should be encouraged. "The Clinton administration has been trying to control cryptography completely. It doesn't care that its export controls on cryptography put U.S. companies at a disadvantage, unable to secure properly exports of electronic information. A new group has formed to fight against this censorship: the Internet Privacy Coalition. Concerned businesses and private citizens should check out its web site at: www.privacy.org/ipc/" The register is at www.ocregister.com.

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Pipeline Down
by jyy＠gnn.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Pipeline appears to be down. Maybe a SYN sin, maybe just a Sunday sin. If any unanswered messages to jya(a)pipeline.com, try jyy(a)gnn.com

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ISR on the web
by research＠isr.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Internet Security Review is now available on the web. Have a look at http://www.isr.net ==

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Re: Juno Newbies are Great!
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com" "Bill Stewart" 14-SEP-1996 07:37:07.81 >- it's free. Anybody can get on it. Easily. Anonymously, more or less, > since they don't need to have your whole credit history > to be able to charge you money. At most you need a maildrop. As has been previously pointed out, this also makes it nice for disposable remailer front ends. Is anyone currently working on this project? -Allen

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