December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

CNET Digital Dispatch Vol. 2 No. 40
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This was in the latest version of CNET's e-mail list. Anyone want to add a few good sound bytes? > >7. "YOUR TURN": ARE ENCRYPTION LAWS TOO STRICT? > >The White House has finally loosened up the export restrictions on >powerful encryption software: > > http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C4003%2C00.html > >But the software industry and the Web community generally agree >it's too little, too late. How do you feel about the export of >encryption technology? What about the government's continued >insistence that law enforcement be availed of a method to decode >any encrypted message if granted a court order? > >To contribute your opinion, phone CNET at 415/395-7805, enter >extension 5400, and leave a message. We'll listen to the responses >and broadcast some of the best on CNET Radio. > >Each week Digital Dispatch brings you the new "your turn" >question, and each Wednesday you can hear the responses to the >previous week's question on CNET Radio: > > http://www.cnet.com/Content/Radio/ --- Alan Olsen -- alano(a)teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction `finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ "We had to destroy the Internet in order to save it." - Sen. Exon "Microsoft -- Nothing but NT promises."

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"Mormon Asshole?" re: GAK
by John C. Randolph 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Attilla Says: >but what inflames the anti-mormon passions the most is the >paid clergy of other organized religions whose employment is >the paid ministry to their flock. Mormons threaten their jobs; >the mormons have no paid ministry; it is all part of our >"callings" to do the Lord's work. Well, speaking as one who has occasionally been called anti-mormon (although, I'm *really* not that specific!) The only time I feel any anti-mormon "passion" is when I want to throttle one of your missionaries. I like sleeping in, and being awakened by a kid who wants me to join a religion is really offensive. If the LDS church would just give up this damnable proselytizing, I'd find you no more objectionable than the Tibetan Buddhists (whom I actually hold in rather high regard, although they're never going to convert me either!) -jcr PS: I do think it's a Good Thing that mormons don't pay the clergy. One positive for LDS. Did you pick up that idea from the Ba'ha'i?

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Re: ADJ_ust
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ya' know, I keep seeing government references to all this terrorist technology and know-how on the Net, but when I do some pretty exhaustive searches I come up pretty-much empty handed. Are their claims just rhetoric or am I incompetent at using Web search tools? For example, where can one find on the Net: the means to anonymously purchase CBW precursors or strains, manufacuting and know-how? Where can one find practical EMP designs and components? Where can one find practical Fuel/air explosives device construction info? I'm sure you can think of other significant items I've left out. Hope you get the picture. >On Wed, 2 Oct 1996, Adamsc wrote: > >> I have strong >> doubts that someone would come up with a non-nuke that could destroy stuff >> indiscriminately within a useably large area. > >Fuel/air bombs. > >--Lucky

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picture encryption
by scottb＠aca.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sometime back someone mentioned a program that would hide messages inside a picture, by replacing the LSB of the color with the message. Does anyone know where I can get this?? I was thinking that if they outlawed high strength encryption (non GAK approved), not letting them realize that you were sending encrypted information would be an excellent alternative. Of course the message hidden in the image would be encrypted as well. You could spend many months on trying to break the key, only to find out that it was really only a picture. /sb

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Speaker Wanted
by se7en 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I need someone who can give a speech on Contingency Disaster Planning from November 4-6 in Northern California to the computer security group at NASA AMES. Female speakers are encouraged as well. All expenses would be paid as well as a speaker fee for each individual day. While this is a *one time* event, it may be possible that it would lead to other engagements on a periodic basis both across the US, and infrequently in Japan and Europe. Email me if interested or if you need more information. se7en

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Re: Cybertax
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 10:17:00 -0500 Reply-To: Law & Policy of Computer Communications <CYBERIA-L(a)LISTSERV.AOL.COM> Sender: Law & Policy of Computer Communications <CYBERIA-L(a)LISTSERV.AOL.COM> From: Evelyn Brody <ebrody(a)KENTLAW.EDU> Organization: Chicago-Kent College of Law Subject: Re: Cybertax Comments: To: loukidej(a)tor.gpv.com To: CYBERIA-L(a)LISTSERV.AOL.COM The U.S. Treasury Department and other agencies are quite interested in these issues. In September, at a 2-day conference in Washington, DC, on electronic money and banking, Internal Revenue Commissioner Margaret Richardson described the concerns of tax commissioners world-wide about digital currency. Treasury will be issuing a White Paper in the next month or two that will request comments from the public on a range of tax and policy legal issues relating to electronic commerce. These issues will include, among others, permanent establishment, U.S. trade or business, and compliance and enforcement. See the news story in _Tax Notes_ magazine, Sept. 23, 1996, at 1588, by Ryan Donmoyer, "Tax Principles Must Be Applied to Wired Economy, Richardson Says." (A version of this story is also available electronically in LEXIS, Fedtax Library, TNT file (as a new search).) EB --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "'Bart Bucks' are not legal tender." -- Punishment, 100 times on a chalkboard, for Bart Simpson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/

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legality of wiretapping: a "key" distinction
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

reponses to my last post were very illuminating and interesting, and one key point by someone-or-other caught my attention. he made the distinction of "search and seizure" made with the knowledge of the person involved, and "search and seizure" such as wiretapping done without the knowledge of the person surveilled. if one were to try to say that wiretapping was unconstitutional, it seems one would have to define why it is an *unreasonable* kind of search and seizure. and this distinction might be a great, prime candidate: because the participant is *unaware* of the "seizure," there is too great a potential for abuse. it seems to me many people's fears here boil down to this fear of the government surveilling them without their knowledge, of them being denied the right to choose to be in contempt of court and reject handing over information when presented with a warrant/subpoena. (is this a right? is it being broken by surreptitious surveillance?) == I am really amazed that there isn't much case law on wiretaps, which have been around a long time. at least it is rarely quoted here. what exactly is a legal wiretap? has anyone challenged the fundamental authority of the government in making wiretaps in which subjects are unaware of the metaphorical "search and seizure" going on? recent Bernstein and Junger cases are going to be fantastic milestones in our legal system for challenging the cryptographic status quo. I wonder if cpunks might be interested in challenging the wiretap status quo!! it would seem like the first logical step. the FBI has often said they don't want to expand their powers in wiretapping areas. but are those powers they have right now legitimate? if they are not, as many here seem to argue, then they ought to be challenged in court ala the one-man-guerilla attacks like Bernstein and Junger. (any takers? <g>) anyway, I propose that cpunks try to collect all the minutia in the case law about wiretaps and try to make the case that wiretapping that the FBI has enjoyed is itself not legitimate, and therefore any extension of it (such as Clipper) is also illegitimate. == more and more I wonder if this is one of the key differences between libertarian and spook bureacrat's views on GAK, key escrow, key recovery (let us put it all under the heading "key access"). the spooks seem to emphasize that they should be able to get access to communications without giving anyone the opportunity to refuse or possibly even know about such access. libertarians seem to insist that this is a violation of privacy and due process etc. I think there may be a legitimate argument here that might have legal merit that a reasonable "search and seizure" ought to involve the knowledge of the participant, and that unreasonable searches and seizures often do not. hence, wiretapping without suspect agreement may be illegal? (in all the other ways that evidence is obtained through warrants/subpoenas, one needs the cooperation of the suspect?) obviously the government would argue that the cooperation of the suspect is irrelevant and impossible. what exactly does it mean to "present a warrant" or subpoena? is there a right to refuse such a subpoena similar to the way one is guaranteed freedom from self-incrimination?

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Re: DESCrack keyspace partitioning
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Seems to me that a _subset_ of all possible keys is much more likely > to appear than a random selection from an equidistributed population 0..2^56. No, this is not true of a good PRNG > (P)RNG's just aren't that likely to produce a key of 010101010..... > nor 001100110011... etc etc and I have been thinking about how one might formalize > and exploit this randomness property to increase the probability of finding the key sooner. Good PRNGs are as likely to produce these key values as anything else. the reason random looking patterns occur more often is because there are more of them. > Is not the lack of predictability a predictable, and therefore exploitable, attribute? The fact is a PRNG may *LOOK* predictable, ie. 111000111000 but the next bit will have an equal probability of being a 0 as a 1. > Any thoughts here? None whatsoever. Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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Re: The Right to Keep and Bear Crypto
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Crypto relevancy? Well, the so-called "gun nuts" have already tolerated far > more regulation and restriction of guns than we should ever accept. But if > we use their tactics, can we expect any better results? I don`t know so much about the US law, but here in the UK the problem with the gun lobby and the campaigns against internet controls are purely volume and not technique, there has not been enough done. In the UK now we are looking at a total ban on handguns, within 5 or 10 years all guns will probably be banned, the shit has seriously hit the fan over here, all because of the Dunblane murders (15 or so schoolchildren killed by a nutter with a legally owned (licenced) handgun) The fact is the police fucked up, he was known to be a loner and a child molester and they granted him a firearms licence. In addition the media have played a big part too, I don`t know if the US mainstream paper media is as bad as the UK`s but we have about 5 papers which I wouldn`t wipe my ass on, such as the sun, the mail, the mirror etc. all of which have, at sometime during the ordeal used the exact words below: Gun owners are big children who like to play with dangerous toys All gun owners are dangerous psychopaths They have also described gun lobby activists as "gun toting" and "obsessed with firearms" More has got to be done before the USA goes the same way, I sure as hell won`t be living in the UK much longer if the law continues to change like it has. Fuck them all, that is really all I can say, don`t let it happen to you kids... Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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KRF_eat
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A roundup of press reports on GAK: "IBM, other firms, in data encryption alliance" The consortium was initiated by IBM. "Export controls are a fact of life," said Jim Bidzos. "U.S. To Loosen Computer Code Restrictions" "It's wrongheaded, and it's going backward," Peter Harter, at Netscape, said. "U.S. Export of High-Tech Devices Planned" CDT's Danny Weitzner said U.S. companies' and citizens' encrypted communications sent over the Internet could be vulnerable to "improper foreign government access." The administration doesn't want that to happen and is working with major trading partners and other countries to adopt plans that are consistent with the U.S. plan and to expedite electronic key recovery by law enforcement, the CIA's Deutch said. "IT Execs, Lawmakers Reactions Mixed on Encryption Plan" Rick Cardona, a security technology engineer at security software maker TradeWave Corp., said the law doesn't go far enough. "I think this is part of a trend. It's only a matter of time before the government will allow exports of 128-bit key software." "NCR Corp. Joins Alliance To Develop Exportable, Worldwide Strong Encryption " "We also look forward to the rapid movement of the work of the alliance into an established standards- based consortium body." "TradeWave meets new government data encryption requirements" Although other Internet software security companies have announced their intention to support this new key-recovery requirement, no other Internet Web security software company currently offers this service to its customers besides TradeWave. TradeWave's current customers, which include over 350 electric power companies representing over 70% of the electric power industry, are using the TradeVPI software and services which include this key recovery feature. ----- http://jya.com/krfeat.txt (22 kb for 6) ftp://jya.com/pub/incoming/krfeat.txt KRF_eat

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