December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Deloitte-Touche?
by Marshall Clow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Several people wrote: >I wrote: >>ObCrypto policy: >> Was anyone else besides me amazed by the guy >>from Deloitte-Touche at the Internet Privacy Coalition luncheon >>last week? I mean, he all but advocated violent overthrow of >>the government. [...] > >For the benefit of those of us who were not at this luncheon (probably >not even in the same country), could you please say more about this, >Marshall? What was the subject? What _did_ the DT speaker say, exactly? > After a while, I stopped taking notes, because I was so astounded at what he was saying. (Maybe someone with more complete notes could post a better summary) But, here a brief overview of the luncheon: Last Wednesday, January 29th, the Internet Privacy Coalition had a "policy lunch" in San Francisco. It was in one of the hotels hosting the RSA conference, and at the same time that the conference was breaking for lunch, so it was easy for attendees to "switch lunches". The speakers (as I remember, apologies to any I miss) were: Whit Diffie John Gilmore Kenneth Bass (counsel in Karn vs. Dept of State) Herb Lin (who ran the NRC staff for the crypto study) Marc Rotenberg William Hugh Murray (Deloitte & Touche) and a couple others that I missed, as I left early. Mr. Murray gave a long, impassioned speech. He said that the government is going to crack down on domestic possession and use of crypto, that they were looking to increase their wiretapping capabilities 100-fold, and so on. He was very emphatic about not trusting anything that the government says, and that once they got their "foot in the door", that they would seek to expand their abilities to regulate, etc, etc. He advocated deployment of strong crypto. He insisted that there was no way the government could stop the export of strong crypto. He exhorted people to refuse to obey the ITAR/EAR regulations, and to lobby their congresscritters to get the PRO-CODE bill passed. It wasn't really what he said that amazed me, because I had heard most of it (in bits and pieces) before. It was presenting it all in a package, in an emotional manner, by an elderly, conseratively dressed accountant who was representing a large corporation whose job it is to help people obey the government. [ My father was an accountant. He worked for Deloitte-Touche, in fact. I don't expect accountants to be passionate about government regs, and especially not to advocate disobediance. Maybe that's why this affected me so strongly. ] -- Marshall Marshall Clow Aladdin Systems <mailto:mclow@mailhost2.csusm.edu> Warning: Objects in calendar are closer than they appear.

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ITAR and Paper ROM
by Steve Schear 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Given that high-density inkjet printers can do 600x600 dpi resolution, it >should be possible to achieve the equivalent of 100x100 bpi of >easily-recoverable data on ordinary paper. That's about 800 kilobits, or >100 kilobytes. What does ITAR say about this? > > >Jim Bell >jimbell(a)pacifier.com I'm not sure if what I did in the 80s, trying to create what I called 'paper ROM, is applicable. In these investigations I used matricies of small (1-3 mm) squares of gray (16 levels) or color (64 levels) with a mind to replace diskettes for inexpensive mass data distribution. I was able to reliably get 100-200 KB/page side using standard offset printing. With modern ink-jet/laser printers you should be able to reliably get at least 10-50KB/page side. Although a technical success, I abandoned the effort when I discovered someone had patented (4,488,679) something similar a few years earlier. -- Steve

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Re: John's: In anarchy -everyone responsible
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:05 PM 2/4/97 +0000, Attila T. Hun wrote: >on or about 970204:0312 Greg Broiles <gbroiles(a)netbox.com> said: >+ Is the desire for an anarchic community at odds with a desire for >+ good use of resources? Actually, it is quite possible that an "anarchic community" is _more_ efficient in the use of resources than some sort of organized community. It is explained, for example, that the reason there are so many different kinds of life on earth is that there are so many ecological niches to fill. > In a "popular" anarchy, Jim Bell's assassination politics make > perfectly good sense; but, a "popular" anarchy is not an _anarchy_. I guess I don't understand the distinction you are trying to make, between a "popular anarchy" and an "anarchy." Maybe you were trying to distinguish between "dictatorship of the few (or one)" and "dictatorship of the many (perhaps a majority)" but it didn't come out very understandably. Put simply, "anarchy is not the lack of order. It is the lack of _orders_." > anarchy is only possible in an ideal world where _everyone_ > assumes not only responsibility for themselves, but for the common > good. no malice, no greed, no need for assassination politics.... No, that's traditional thinking and that's wrong. See AP part 8. Freud believed (as "everyone" else believed, even myself, before AP) that anarchy was inherently unstable. But it ISN'T, if the tools of AP are used to stabilize it. And no, no altruism is necessary for AP to work as well; no individuals are being asked to sacrifice themselves for the common good. Rather, they are given the opportunity to work to achieve a reward offered, cumulatively, by a number of citizens. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: John's: In anarchy -everyone responsible
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:05 PM 2/4/97 +0000, Attila T. Hun wrote: >on or about 970204:0312 Greg Broiles <gbroiles(a)netbox.com> said: >+ Is the desire for an anarchic community at odds with a desire for >+ good use of resources? Actually, it is quite possible that an "anarchic community" is _more_ efficient in the use of resources than some sort of organized community. It is explained, for example, that the reason there are so many different kinds of life on earth is that there are so many ecological niches to fill. > In a "popular" anarchy, Jim Bell's assassination politics make > perfectly good sense; but, a "popular" anarchy is not an _anarchy_. I guess I don't understand the distinction you are trying to make, between a "popular anarchy" and an "anarchy." Maybe you were trying to distinguish between "dictatorship of the few (or one)" and "dictatorship of the many (perhaps a majority)" but it didn't come out very understandably. Put simply, "anarchy is not the lack of order. It is the lack of _orders_." > anarchy is only possible in an ideal world where _everyone_ > assumes not only responsibility for themselves, but for the common > good. no malice, no greed, no need for assassination politics.... No, that's traditional thinking and that's wrong. See AP part 8. Freud believed (as "everyone" else believed, even myself, before AP) that anarchy was inherently unstable. But it ISN'T, if the tools of AP are used to stabilize it. And no, no altruism is necessary for AP to work as well; no individuals are being asked to sacrifice themselves for the common good. Rather, they are given the opportunity to work to achieve a reward offered, cumulatively, by a number of citizens. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Cypherpunks FOIA request
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On 1/18/97, I sent freedom of information act requests to the FBI (main and San Francisco offices), CIA, NSA, and Secret Service, asking them for copies of information in their files relating to or referring to the cypherpunks list, the cypherpunks meetings, and copies of any messages sent from or to "cypherpunks(a)toad.com". To date, I have received three responses: one from the SF office of the FBI, indicating that they have no records responsive to my request; one from the NSA, indicating that they are processing my request, and one from the Secret Service, asking for a copy of my signature. (I've got no clue why they want that; unless I screwed up, I believe my initial request was signed.) Copies of my requests and the responses are available online at <http://www.io.com/~gbroiles/cp-foia/>. I'm not sure what I think about the response from the SF FBI branch - it seems unlikely that they'd never have paid any attention to the list, given the media coverage in Wired and other places. On the other hand, maybe the FBI doesn't read Wired. :) While they're not supposed to be monitoring noncriminal domestic activity, I figured they'd at least have something about the Mykotronix stuff. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 4.5 iQEVAgUBMvhHPf37pMWUJFlhAQGBSAf/XIdNAMrxn3flb6O7Q1TZYL1xd/RHAAZv YsuuXs/n6Dih/SnJVqc35tF5/33N0gK0xWhyPCBWdIitVCgHpt+214WEOg3IWBqO KGcnbXg/YMs4xN50zLgpV+Xoim4rjfwCROqNNWvrBqwo6RicAyJbLRoRGE+KdDkx WSslCzxsVYzRHzzkF48rhbYAXqU2vUesG0t8Alg17R/2w4TvjAzlQ3PpclUukB8U VglMVB+dicn+5B2zITt1WG21xMmSHQea5rpwKpDxZdjBvBKXLhgH8L1Hdl6nu3zI sqDEENxeV+bI5UdSzemQDy+TDQoy7BSN7Tby8JgwXE9x3AitY2A05g== =S1Zy -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Greg Broiles | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell: gbroiles(a)netbox.com | http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto. |

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ANNOUNCEMNT: February 1997 Cypherpunks Bay Area Meeting
by Hugh Daniel 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What: San Francisco Bay Area Cypherpunks monthly physical meeting When: Saturday February 8th, 1997 Where: Turning Auditorium, Stanford University, Stanford California Agenda: 11:++ setup, gossip, face feeding etc. 12:00 USG Export 'Laws' of the week, Roz Thomsen, PGP inc. 13:00 PGPmail & PGPdisk overview, Dave Del Torto, PGP inc. 14:00 Break 14:30 Announcements, late breaking news, etc. 15:00 The 3 hour 40bit challenge, Ian Goldberg, UCBstudent 16:00 Why bother killing the list?, Hugh Daniel Future Meeting Planing, IPSEC Update, etc. 17:00 This hour left bank for future expansion... Dinner: 18:30 Dinner at Thai City, 3691 El Camino Real, PA (All times are approximate and likely to be totaly ignored...) Directions: Turning Auditorium is in Polya Hall, Jordan Quad, Stanford University, Stanford, Santa Clara County, California, USA. A (bit)map to the part of the Stanford Campus where the meeting will be held is at: http://www-facilities.stanford.edu/transportation/PGrid4.html General directions: - From Hwy 101, take the Embarcadero exit all the way to campus. Turn right (clockwise) on Campus Drive. Turn left into the Jordan Quad parking lot. - From Hwy 280, take Sand Hill. Turn right on Junipero Serra, then left (counterclockwise) onto Campus Drive. Turn right into the Jordan Quad parking lot. Host: Many thanks to Richard Graves <llurch(a)stanford.edu> and to Stanford University for providing the space for this months meeting. Notes: We will have a small NHK (Nipon(Japan)) film crew at much of this meeting, they are doing a documentary and are interested in how this (main) branch cypherpunks works (or does not work as the case may be...). We have a wonderful space to do demos in this month, Turing Auditorium has Internet, projections screens, audio amps and a Clone-PC and a Macintosh to demo software, web sites etc. If you have something Cypherpunkish to demo, this is the month to do so!

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Re: Deloitte-Touche?
by Mark Voorhees 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Wed, 5 Feb 1997 10:45:30 -0800, Marshall Clow wrote: >It wasn't really what he said that amazed me, because >I had heard most of it (in bits and pieces) before. It >was presenting it all in a package, in an emotional >manner, by an elderly, conseratively dressed >accountant who was representing a large >corporation whose job it is to help people obey the >government. I'm almost certain that Murray is a consultant rather than or in addition to an accountant. He's been saying these things for years at conferences, in papers, on mailing lists, etc. Mark

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Re: John's: In anarchy -everyone responsible
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- on or about 970204:2343 jim bell <jimbell(a)pacifier.com> said: +At 09:05 PM 2/4/97 +0000, Attila T. Hun wrote: +> In a "popular" anarchy, Jim Bell's assassination politics make +> perfectly good sense; but, a "popular" anarchy is not an _anarchy_. +I guess I don't understand the distinction you are trying to make, +between a "popular anarchy" and an "anarchy." Maybe you were trying +to distinguish between "dictatorship of the few (or one)" and +"dictatorship of the many (perhaps a majority)" but it didn't come out +very understandably. +Put simply, "anarchy is not the lack of order. It is the lack of +_orders_." disagree. pure anarchy is not the lack of "orders" --pure anarchy implies that everyone is imbued with that perfect sense of responsibility. +> anarchy is only possible in an ideal world where _everyone_ +> assumes not only responsibility for themselves, but for the common +> good. no malice, no greed, no need for assassination politics.... +No, that's traditional thinking and that's wrong. See AP part 8. +Freud believed (as "everyone" else believed, even myself, before AP) +that anarchy was inherently unstable. But it ISN'T, if the tools of +AP are used to stabilize it. And no, no altruism is necessary for AP +to work as well; no individuals are being asked to sacrifice +themselves for the common good. Rather, they are given the +opportunity to work to achieve a reward offered, cumulatively, by a +number of citizens. aah, but that is the difference between a _pure_ anarchy and a _popular_ anarchy. A pure _anarchy_ is sufficiently idealistic in that _noone_ lacks the necessary resonsibility to keep society moving, each individual in their own niche. As long as there is perfect responsibility in a perfect anarchy, then there is no need for AP. AP is a negative, or _punative_, influence; I might liken it to the Catholic Church which is a religion of fear, and an instrument of political control. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be iQCVAwUBMvixAL04kQrCC2kFAQECsQQAlPSQRpEE2dAKkqrWSlPf79QhSBtYbjXa rEyAlOrmi8NOxgyb8hGF/VwVkURUKnPr4gGJW9JvwuPB2x/AQeT11ZEQyVqeFGNF 0W6WR7yv3XsOT9UM6JCP9hFLWU33BumcPd26w8f/Z5mx87qEUoXeJD4ApLv5QNI3 WlyL0xDT1PM= =sfD3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Moderation, Tim, Sandy, me, etc. * Strong crypto == DES?!
by C Matthew Curtin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >>>>> "Jeff" == Jeff Barber <jeffb(a)issl.atl.hp.com> writes: John> Tim, the Cypherpunks have chosen to follow Sandy's lead for this John> month. I'll admit I made it easy for them, but the results are John> conclusive. There are 1311 addresses in the cypherpunks list John> today; 42 in the unedited list; and 19 in the flames list. Jeff> "Conclusively" this has shown only that most folks are willing Jeff> to go along with an experiment -- especially if it requires them Jeff> to do exactly nothing. This is precisely the category into which I fall. It is a pain to unsubscribe from a list, since my "From_" header doesn't agree with my "From:" header (the former has a specific host included, the latter only a zone), and this often triggers a message to the list owner for processing. In any case, I am willing to go along with the experiment. But a NoCeM-style approach to killing the noise is much more preferable. Failing that, an individual filter (such as procmail) is good. In any event, the responsibility of what to post and what to read should be in the hands of each reder individually. - -- Matt Curtin Chief Scientist Megasoft, Inc. cmcurtin(a)research.megasoft.com http://www.research.megasoft.com/people/cmcurtin/ I speak only for myself Hacker Security Firewall Crypto PGP Privacy Unix Perl Java Internet Intranet -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Have you encrypted your data today? iQEVAwUBMvtGmH6R34u/f3zNAQFQbwf9HYoT51vkHSjSJOnzXcphD7WLoOEq8WV1 rj33PUweZiibTyZg1JADdbS09QVgl80TE90YDJGQ/c77wwBuMKiJTVAz8jaixjCK kUJ6IiQ4Ul3Q1LfyM5iC/kphQc/ILld0PHpaZl104pLoJ13rK6FCzMaQd+MZpWoJ ZLWxrKaebFF5IH0dW9avJ3Vb5Kp+6OSGmpBwooFiq+nhuUCaeAZtOAwmutDM5d1g oDTXGmdFuDLzjAuLcQnNAwc/nRd0bBLj3b3KFYkOzNjnl3BjOw3s4XVMF4sELOCX aOnxZE/u7lP3HkAQtJ+PxHgthUbODE0ixDU0iuWSrDVm8gRAe4Xm0A== =78/T -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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ISPs vs Bells - Email FCC
by Derrick Storren 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Baby Bells want us to pay by the minute. An opportunity to tell the FCC what we think via email at isp(a)fcc.gov -- article follows. ***************************************** By Michelle V. Rafter LOS ANGELES - Regional phone companies and Internet service providers are waging a war of words over Internet traffic on the nation's local telephone network and who should pay for upgrades as the online boom continues. As a drama, the phone companies vs. Internet providers contest is dry, complicated stuff, lacking the sex appeal of, say, the power struggle between Netscape and Microsoft for control of the personal computer desktop. Even so, analysts and other industry watchers counsel consumers and businesses to take heed of the tug of war because it could affect how much they pay to use the Internet, and ultimately, how they connect to it. In one corner, Pacific Bell, Bell Atlantic and other regional phone carriers say the growth of Internet traffic is pushing local telephone networks to the breaking point. Pacific Bell, for example, says Internet surfers use its phone lines an average of 45 minutes a day -- more than twice the amount the network was built to handle. Heavy Internet use in Silicon Valley led to brief service outages in that area earlier this year, the company said. Pacific Bell and other local phone companies say they've poured millions of dollars into hardware improvements as a result of Internet traffic, improvements they claim would otherwise have been unnecessary. To help defray costs, phone companies think providers should pay for service on a per-minute basis, the way long-distance companies do, rather than by the line, like other business phone customers. Internet providers have been exempt from paying so-called access fees under a 1983 federal ruling meant to foster growth of compute data networks. On the other side, Internet service providers say phone companies have it all wrong. A recent report sponsored by the Internet Access Coalition, an industry lobby group, maintains computer traffic poses no threat to local phone networks and that earlier phone-company studies identifying trouble spots were based on theoretical claims and a few areas with engineering and planning problems that could easily be rectified. If Internet traffic was such a threat, phone companies wouldn't be exacerbating the problem by jumping into the Internet access business themselves, providers say. Rather than hurting phone companies, Internet traffic has been a windfall, according to the coalition. In 1995, local phone companies spent a total of $245 million adding 6 million residential phone lines used primarily for Internet access, but reaped $1.4 billion in revenue on those lines, the group said. If providers are required to pay access fees, they'll have no choice but to raise their rates, which could stifle Internet growth just as it's taking off, they say. Internet providers and phone companies are arguing their respective positions in Washington, where the Federal Communications Commission is considering the access-fee issue. As part of ongoing telecommunication industry reform, the FCC said in late December it would cut access fees levied on long-distance carriers and is investigating options for doing that. But the agency held off making a decision affecting Internet use to allow time for parties with an interest in the issue to present their cases. The FCC took the unusual step of setting up an e-mail address -- isp(a)fcc.gov -- consumers and others can use to send their thoughts. Internet providers and phone companies have until Feb. 21 to submit formal comments, and the agency is expected to make a ruling later this year. Even if the FCC levies access fees on providers and companies raise rates accordingly, it won't dampen consumers' love affair with the Internet, some analysts said. If, for example, Internet providers passed through an access fee of 1 cent a minute, a subscriber spending 10 hours online a month would pay an extra $6 -- hardly a deterrent, said David Goodtree, an analyst with Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. "Cable TV rates have doubled in the last three or four years, we got nothing more for it, but cable subscribership didn't go down because of it," Goodtree said. On one point everyone agrees -- the nation's current analog telephone network eventually will not be able to handle demand from Internet users, and must be supplanted by a digital system better suited to transmitting computer data. Both phone companies and Internet providers have begun working on solutions. Phone carriers that have offered digital ISDN (integrated services digital network) lines are stepping up their marketing efforts. Phone companies and Internet providers are investigating a new technology called digital subscriber line, or DSL, which routes Internet phone traffic around analog phone-company switches into all-digital networks. But inevitably, discussion of DSL and other new technologies circles back to who'll pay for upgrades. Sky Dayton, president of Internet provider Earthlink Networks in Pasadena, Calif., believes it is in phone companies' best interests to spend on digital upgrades because of the profit potential from selling them to companies such as his. But why should phone companies pick up all the costs when Internet service providers will benefit, too, says Pacific Bell spokesman Bob Deward. (Michelle V. Rafter writes about cyberspace and technology from Los Angeles. Reach her at mvrafter(a)deltanet.com. Opinions expressed in this column are her own.) Copyright, Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved

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