December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

"Technical data" exemptions in new crypto regs
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Can anyone who knows more than I do answer this? --Declan] --- Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 14:45:44 -0500 (EST) To: declan(a)well.com (Declan McCullagh) From: Solveig Bernstein <sberns(a)cato.org> What have the new crypto regs done to the "technical data" and the "public domain" exemptions from ITAR? The problem is this: as I understand it, the Commerce Dept. regs exempt teaching and print presentations generally, but these exemptions do not apply to "encryption software." Does this mean that the exemptions do not apply to *teaching about* encryption software or *publications about* encryption software? Or *only* that the exemptions do not apply to diskette-contained source code or object code. In other words, the new regs might completely decontrol teaching and publication of something like Professor Bernstein's Snuffle. On the other hand, the new regs might, like ITAR, restrict teaching and publication of Snuffle (as well as publication of source code in diskette format). The purpose of the question is to understand whether a First Amendment challenge to the new regs is a First Amendment challenge to a restriction on *teaching, publication, and program distribution* or just a challenge to a restriction on *program distribution.* Solveig Bernstein, Esq. (202) 789-5274 (202) 842-3490 (fax) Assistant Director of Telecommunications & Technology Studies Cato Institute 1000 Mass. Ave. NW Washington, DC 20001 ------------------------- The Netly News Network http://netlynews.com/

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Re: [FLAME] [PURE VITROL] Re: IMDMP: SOURCE...
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sean Roach <roach_s(a)alph.swosu.edu> writes: > At 10:05 PM 1/18/97 EST, Dr.Dimitri Vulis wrote: > >> Non sequitor. > > ^ > >Do "cypher punks" use lousy spelling as a kind of "poor fag's crypto"? > > I'm a heterosexual, so I may be off the mark here, but. Reguarding my > history books, Mr. Hoover (can't remember his first name), of F.B.I. fame, a > reported homosexual, was one of the biggest gaybashers of his era. By your > acidic comments, are you trying to tell us something? Homosexual activists have accused many prominent people, like Hoover and da Vinci, of sharing their sexual perversions. I have seen no evidence that Hoover was a pervert other than a claim by one woman, a proven liar, that she was present at an orgy where Hoover wore a woman's dress and engaged in sex with men. Several other people who she claimed were present at the orgy called her a liar. She's dead, or she would have probably been supporting Geekmore and EFF today. You may recall that the moderator cocksucker Sandfart invited me to a "cypher punks" meating in San Francisco, and if I had accepted, would have told many lies about my participation in their homosexual orgies. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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Re: I beg you, PLEASE prove that 0.123456789101112131415 is IRRATIONAL
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:38 PM 1/19/97 -0600, snow wrote: > x=0; > x1=0; > x++; > x--; > > Would give you all int's, the only problem you have is granularity. Nice, but you have a typo, the result would be the same as x is both incremented and decremented before it can be output. I am assumming that the second block of code has it right. > x=0.00000000001; > y=0.00000000001; > x1=x; > x=x+y; > x1=x1-y; Also, I am assumming that the increment, decrement portion of the code should be in a loop. Otherwise this will result in exactly one value for x, and one for x1. The output of the first block is x=1, x1=0. The output of the second block is x=0.00000000002, y=0.00000000001, x1=0.00000000000. Also, the code does have other errors that don't "ring any bells" as they allow the mind to figure out what your intent is. Not unlike the many complaints in "The Far Side" where everyone complains that it is the female mosquito that bites people while ignoring that no mosquito has ever willingly walked into an appropiately scaled house wearing a hat.

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Re: I beg you, PLEASE prove that 0.123456789101112131415 is IRRATIONAL
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:38 PM 1/19/97 -0600, snow wrote: > x=0; > x1=0; > x++; > x--; > > Would give you all int's, the only problem you have is granularity. Nice, but you have a typo, the result would be the same as x is both incremented and decremented before it can be output. I am assumming that the second block of code has it right. > x=0.00000000001; > y=0.00000000001; > x1=x; > x=x+y; > x1=x1-y; Also, I am assumming that the increment, decrement portion of the code should be in a loop. Otherwise this will result in exactly one value for x, and one for x1. The output of the first block is x=1, x1=0. The output of the second block is x=0.00000000002, y=0.00000000001, x1=0.00000000000. Also, the code does have other errors that don't "ring any bells" as they allow the mind to figure out what your intent is. Not unlike the many complaints in "The Far Side" where everyone complains that it is the female mosquito that bites people while ignoring that no mosquito has ever willingly walked into an appropiately scaled house wearing a hat.

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Re: Sandy and the Doc
by Bill Frantz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:19 PM -0800 1/19/97, WinSock Remailer wrote: >Bill Frantz <frantz(a)netcom.com> writes: > >> I hope if such a system is set up, people who use it will realize that >> email is not 100% reliable. Just because algebra.com sent mail to >> toad.com, doesn't mean that toad.com actually received it. A small >> fraction of a percent of these messages will be lost. > >Failing something catastrophic like a disk failure or a host down for >more than a week, this should not be the case. Almost every site >running sendmail has the Os ("SuperSafe") option set. That means >sendmail will not respond to a "." at the end of a DATA command with >SMTP code 250 until it has written the incoming message (and queue >info) to disk and called fsync. Thus, you may get 2 copies of a >message, but mail messages should not just disappear regularly at all, >even if the network goes down or a machine crashes. > >Non-sendmail MTA's tend to be even more strict about this, not even >allowing this behavior to be disabled. About 9 months ago, I lost somewhere between 50 and 100 email messages because they were written to a disk with a corrupted file system. Now failures of this kind may be in the category of "catastrophic disk failure", but in my unfortunate experience, they are not all that uncommon. Note that since I lost multiple messages due to one failure, tests of the form, "Once is happenstance, twice coincidence, three or more is conspiracy" might say, "conspiracy" even for just one failure. The chances of this test criteria error increase for frequent posters. At 4:02 AM -0800 1/20/97, Toto asked: > Are there any critereon established, yet, as to what type of content >will be necessary for a letter to get 'lost'? See the above discussion of disk failure. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | Client in California, POP3 | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | in Pittsburgh, Packets in | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | Pakistan. - me | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: microcurrency: Netscape vs. Microsoft
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[microcurrency] >It will also not catch on until there are better standards involving >microcurrency transactions amongst the vendors. It would also help if >there was a single interface (or "helper app") for whatever vendor you >decided to go with. as I see it, I think there are a few key standards that need to be devised: 1. an html tag that indicates how much a link costs, probably in the <a href="" cost=xx> type syntax 2. modification of http to support a payment mechanism, by sending a token. 3. browser "piggy bank". there are other standards, such as how a person might get cash into their piggy bank etc., but most would be related to the above items. notice that we don't really need a good interoperable standard to begin with. often Netscape and MS invent tags that are not interoperable between them, and later standardization arrives at a consensus / convergence. as I see it, I think the browser manufacturers should just pick their favorite digital cash scheme (cybercash, digicash, whatever) that is easiest to implement, and do so, with the intention of integrating other schemes at a later date. >Currently every vendor of payment schemes has made it proprietary in some >way. (At least the ones I have seen.) This means that if the user visits >three different web pages, each using a payment scheme from a different >vendor, that user has to be signed up with all of those vendors. (Or at >least have their helper apps.) hence, a good opportunity for the browser manufacturer to remove all these additional complications and make it point-and-click simple. I agree, this is not going to be a total nonbrainer. but better the browser manufacturer do it for their software, allowing everyone who uses it to benefit, than every single cash user in cyberspace trying to replicate the same difficult series of steps to get their cash going. >I will not even go into the hastles of trying to set it up from the server >side. (The last payment scheme I installed (cybercash) was not very well >documented. The documentation on the web site contradicted the software >with the tar file. (And both were wrong at some point.)) Until these >payment schemes are easier to deal with for the web page provider, they >will not catch on. (There will also need to be more support for Internet >service providers with multiple vendors all on different payment schemes.) > >Until there is a single standard hammered out, micropayments will still be >few and far between. generally, that's what I'm calling for, some ad hoc standards being put into place immediately by the browser manufacturers, in the same way new tags are always being invented. standardization generally results *after* an initial, minimally constrained innovation phase, imho.

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Re: microcurrency: Netscape vs. Microsoft
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> notice how much crypto really caught on when Netscape >> incorporated it, and how this action alone did more for >> the proliferation of crypto in cyberspace, almost, than >> all prior efforts combined. I think that microcurrency >> will be unleashed in a very similar way. > >I assume you are referring to secure web connections via SSL in talking >about crypto. In that case there was a very strong pent up demand for >the service. Customers were afraid to send credit card numbers and >other personal information across the web. Sellers were pressuring the >net server companies to do something to quell these concerns so on-line >selling could succeed. Netscape did it, and in the grand tradition of >the net, implementation beat design and SSL defeated SHTTP. neither has "beat" the other at this point. but this does show something I have always believed: companies should just invent ad-hoc, quick-and-dirty standards if full standards are not immediately available. it makes no sense to me to delay the introduction of some new feature because there isn't industry standardization. the case is often that the initial ad-hoc standards will tend to converge into a better standard down the road. I don't see standards as "forever". standards should be viewed as stepping stones to better standards. hence I think netscape and/or MS should invent a "plug and play" (i.e. trivial to use) micropayment standard immediately, regardless of what industry standardization does not or will exist. it wouldn't be pretty at first but standardization to better interfaces could ensue later. the main thing is to get it on the table, and get people using it, to create the demand. services are rarely developed unless there is a demand. hence I suggest that a *rudimentary* form of the service be first devised and implemented asap to increase demand for one with much more finesse. In its early >versions SSL had a lot of problems but it was a good enough solution for >what it needed to be. exactly. >The question is whether there is similar market demand for pay per view >web pages. don't think this is a valid question. the whole point of microcurrency is just decreasing the cost until people hit the page and don't care about the cost. hence I think there is a guaranteed market, because with microcurrency you can always shave off your price to virtually infinitesmal values (say pennies a hit) that will guarantee you will have at least some audience. Do web service operators think they can offer value added >services which will motivate customers to click through the for-pay link? I'm imagining just putting a teeny little transaction charge on top of every single hit that now exists. if it is small enough, consumers won't care very much. >There is also the issue of sellers learning to use the various payment >systems which are out there. Here again if Netscape and Microsoft would >just pick one then everyone could standardize on it, which would >increase acceptance a great deal. well, pick one payment scheme and then competing companies could adopt the same standard (but offer competing systems and features) >Ecash as it is implemented now has the problem that the customer has to >open a special bank account. What you need is a payment system where >you can use your existing VISA card and withdraw cash against it into >your electronic wallet. This is pretty close to the FV model but their >payment system is somewhat clumsy. exactly. someone who reengineered the whole thing from top to bottom and made it absolutely trivial to use-- I suspect the future of the browser wars will belong to the company that does this. again, I note it might be doable in a plug in, but as I said, I think browser manufacturers are eventually going to put it into their own code because of its sheer importance.

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Re: a comment of Vulis's
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dr Vulis made a comment that there was the threat of persons in favor of the moderator being able to get away with slander while those victims being unable to respond. I assume that the moderator will refrain from such action, but if something were actually cut, I could get it through anyway. At least until majordomo is secured against such intrusion. The list won't be truly secure until no one can request the subscription list. If I felt that I needed to get my message past the moderator, I would just request the complete listing of cypherpunks subscribers, copy that into the Bcc: field of eudora, and forge an address. Now my message would get through, my computer would probably be tied up for an hour or so distributing my statement, but my message would get through. The security necessary to counteract this would be to either make the subscription list unavailable, or delete the actual addresses from the list. For instance Sean Roach <roach_s(a)alph.swosu.edu> would become Sean Roach. Now people could still see who was on the list, but couldn't use it to negate the established distribution system.

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A Prayer For Swiss Banks
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- This happened a year ago but I couldn't resist posting it in light of the current political attacks on the privacy of Swiss banks. MANILA, Philippines (Feb 24, 1996 9:45 p.m. EST) - Former Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos presided over a bizarre ceremony on Sunday to mark the 10th anniversary of the People's Power revolution that forced her and her corrupt husband into ignominious exile. Marcos -- notorious shopaholic, convicted criminal and now a legally elected member of the Philippine Congress -- asked God to bless Corazon Aquino and other leaders of the 1986 revolt. But she also asked the Almighty to enlighten Swiss bankers holding some of the estimated $5 billion the Marcoses and their cronies are accused of looting from the national economy. "May the Lord enlighten ... the Swiss banks -- that they might uphold justice and preserve the integrity of their own laws and the laws of confidentiality, trust and basic decency between the banks and their clients," she said in a speech. Two Swiss banks holding some $475 million linked to the Marcoses are currently embroiled in a row over what to do with the money. The Philippine government wants it back but a U.S. court has ordered it distributed to victims of human rights abuses during the late Ferdinand Marcos's 20 years in power. ***** DCF -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 4.5 iQCVAgUBMuPAIIVO4r4sgSPhAQFhSQQAiLrFwcvR0CxiZDrG1f6RSysX8ypxe2y4 Az2MejxFj4ACZIw9lCN98pxRwM8QwEQnCo+RKpMEchurk1bx0EEK749+kxpccsw2 qi+VW1lhBLV38YyzAm0vRwK1pwsKuW/E0UjMOvfTfQynRljohiLvLxQDMJ4DQLHi qi+R9K2Gpr0= =wmjK -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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"Technical data" exemptions in new crypto regs
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Can anyone who knows more than I do answer this? --Declan] --- Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 14:45:44 -0500 (EST) To: declan(a)well.com (Declan McCullagh) From: Solveig Bernstein <sberns(a)cato.org> What have the new crypto regs done to the "technical data" and the "public domain" exemptions from ITAR? The problem is this: as I understand it, the Commerce Dept. regs exempt teaching and print presentations generally, but these exemptions do not apply to "encryption software." Does this mean that the exemptions do not apply to *teaching about* encryption software or *publications about* encryption software? Or *only* that the exemptions do not apply to diskette-contained source code or object code. In other words, the new regs might completely decontrol teaching and publication of something like Professor Bernstein's Snuffle. On the other hand, the new regs might, like ITAR, restrict teaching and publication of Snuffle (as well as publication of source code in diskette format). The purpose of the question is to understand whether a First Amendment challenge to the new regs is a First Amendment challenge to a restriction on *teaching, publication, and program distribution* or just a challenge to a restriction on *program distribution.* Solveig Bernstein, Esq. (202) 789-5274 (202) 842-3490 (fax) Assistant Director of Telecommunications & Technology Studies Cato Institute 1000 Mass. Ave. NW Washington, DC 20001 ------------------------- The Netly News Network http://netlynews.com/

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