December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: relevance to Hayek research?
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 11:21:28 -0400 To: Gregransom(a)aol.com From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: Re: relevance to Hayek research? Cc: austrianecon(a)agoric.com, VPostrel(a)aol.com Bcc: X-Attachments: Greg Ransom just set my subscription to Hayek-L to "review" because of the DCSB announcement I sent both there and to AustrianEcon. Since I figure that this posting probably won't see the light of day on Hayek-L, I'll just send it here to AustrianEcon instead. :-). Of course, I'm not complaining, really. Greg can do anything he wants with Hayek-L. I mean, he owns it; the internet being alloidial, and all. But, I thought I'd clear the air here a little bit about why I thought the June DCSB meeting would be useful to people both on AustrianEcon, and, even :-), Hayek-L. At 7:29 pm -0400 on 5/17/97, Gregransom(a)aol.com wrote: > Can you motivate this posting to the Hayek-L list for > me? Wow. I feel like a method actor or something. Say hello to Mr. Stanislawski for me, would you, Greg? > It is important that all posting to the > Hayek-L list be relevant to Hayek and his work, appropriate for the research > community, and not overly promotional or commercial in nature, nor in the > vein of advertising. Yeah. Anything that smacks the least bit of capitalism should be strictly avoided in such an academic setting. Hey, even *I* understand that one. ;-). If it's any consolation, DCSB really *is* just a bunch of people who get together to have lunch on first Tuesday of the month. It's not like I'm leveraging the old Harvard Club membership to create a massive personal fortune, or something. :-). I do confess that I sent the announcement to both place, and mostly on impulse, because I thought people in the Austrian economics trade would want to hear about a relatively unique economic phenomenon on the net, particularly as it reveals interesting things about how the net's decreasing the "latency" of money changes, or at least better defines, all kinds of transaction processes, and, maybe, the underlying economics of same. Not only do the type of instantaneous, continuous, digital cash-settled recursive auctions that Fred Hapgood is going to talk about at the June 3rd DCSB meeting have the potential to remove any need for copyright law on the internet, which I'll get to in a moment, but they're the tip of the iceberg for something waaay bigger. The technology behind the digital cash these recursive auctions will eventually use is all by itself a nation-state killer. In the long run, anyway. <and now, for a few blatantly commercial messages...> Since the strongest form of David Chaum's "ecash" <http://www.digicash.com/> digital bearer certificate transaction settlement protocol doesn't require book-entries, it doesn't require the force monopoly of a nation-state to backstop its transaction clearing process. There's a quote which might be useful here. It's from FC97, the first conference on Financial Cryptography, which we held in Anguilla this February and (plug, plug) a conference I had the good fortune think up ;-) <http://www.offshore.com.ai/fc97>. Doug Barnes, a fellow cypherpunk and now the Marketing VP for C2Net, a pioneering financial cryptography company in Berkeley <http://www.c2.net/>, said, during the legal session, "It's a bad idea when your internet payment protocol, in one of its terminating steps, says, 'and then you go to jail'". See my web page, <http://www.shipwright.com/>, for more details about this kind of stuff if you're interested. Also, see the debate I had in March with someone from the American Banking Association about the subject of digital bearer certificate technology. It's on HotWired's Brain Tennis site, <http://www.braintennis.com/>. Remember that, due to to the structure of the debate, he got in the last word, though. :-). <we now return you to the heresy trial, currently in progress> Now you can see why the war cry for most of my cypherpunk crypto-anarchist financial cryptography developer friends is "write software, not laws." That sounds pretty Hayekian, I'd say. Last September I was on the law enforcement panel, of all things, at the Institute, nee Office (go, Newt!), of Technology Assessment's "Symposium on the Regulation of Digital Cash". This thing was held in a conference room deep in the bowels of the Capitol Building. Yech. Talk about the lion's den. Anyway, they had me speaking, dead last in the whole symposium, immediately after the Justice Department's brand-new, wet-behind-the-ears and freshly-lobbied-for-by-the-EFF Assistant Attorney General for "computer crime", whatever that is. And, before him, and more to the point for our discussion here, spoke the Assistant Director of FinCEN. FinCEN stands for the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a truly amazing government agency which has the ability to tell anyone with a credit card or checking account not only what his current bank balance is, but, through perfectly legal "administrative requests" to his bank, what his, say, total clothing and grocery expenditures were last year, categorized by store. Couple that with those wonderfully subpoenable scanner cards at your supermarket, and I would say that Orwell almost has his revenge with us, eaten very cold indeed, for being so far behind schedule with '1984'. Anyway, there I was, at ground zero, in the very belly of the beast, and, if I do say so myself, I was a wonder to behold. I scared them so bad that the everyone's eyes actually bugged out. Their jaws really bounced on the floor a few times in true Tex Avery fashion. Proving, once again, that cartoon physics really is the only kind of science they allow inside the Washington Beltway. I told the assembled unholy host of legislative aides, beltway bandits, and various other corridor-crawling symbionts to Le Infame Moderne that David Chaum's blind signature patent created fully anonymous digital cash (issued by private free banks, mind you), something they vaguely knew already and were gathered there to try to stop. But, even more frightening to statists everywhere, it was quite a simple matter, really, to use the same cryptographic protocol to create anonymously held digital *bearer* forms of any negotiable instrument you could care to imagine: bonds, stocks, futures, or any derivative thereof. I told them Perry Metzger's joke about "Gold Denominated Burmese Opium Futures". That was good for a titter or two of nervous laughter... Remember, of course, that, and increasingly so, most assets are financial, and thus completely convertable to digital bearer form if the transaction protocol for them turns out to be significantly cheaper than the book-entry settlement methods of the status quo. After all, it wasn't too long ago in financial history that paper bearer certificates were the norm. There's a lot of cultural memory still there. The word "coupon" as a synonym for bond interest is a perfect case in point. Then came the real bombshell. The guy from FinCEN absolutely agreed that if the transaction costs of digital bearer certificates proved to be an order of magnitude (or, say, three) lower than book entries, which I claim they will be (without proof, of course, just yet ;-)), FinCEN would be pretty much out of business. The whole "crime" of money laundering would become the equivalent of a "legislated" value for Pi. An example which, I might add, proves Avery's Laws of Cartoon Physics, um, reigns, in legislative bodies the world over, and not just inside the Beltway. "Actually, it's worse than that, ladies and gentlemen," I said, quoting myself. "Virtually *all* of the current tax infrastructure is based upon book-entries and the necessity of audit trails to verify tax compliance: capital gains, income and sales taxes, even import duties. Those audit trails are there primarily to prevent non-repudiation in the execution of a transaction protocol, that is, all the double-entry bookeeping between the buyer and the seller and the financial intermediary(ies) underwriting the trade. Those audit trails are *not* there to enforce taxes, believe it or not." They didn't get the point, so I drove it home. I said, "Without the requirement to prevent non-repudiation (and, I ask you, when was the last time you had a cash transaction fail to clear?), the marginal cost of tax compliance will become unsustainable over time. Uncle, and his relations elsewhere, are all going to have to figure out something else to tax, in other words. Now, *what*, exactly, do you need all that money for?" I had all the right people standing up and yelling at me at question time, so I knew I was on to something. :-). So, somewhere, Greg, I think Dr. Hayek must be laughing out loud. That's why this kind of stuff might be important to your readership. Oh. Yeah. I forgot. The actual topic of this missive. What's a "recursive auction"? Jason Cronk, who subscribes to AustrianEcon, by the way, did a talk on them at the rump-session of, you guessed it, FC97 in Anguilla. Ian Grigg, a major free banking fan, and also a subscriber, presented an idea which is exactly the obverse(?) for *his* paper, which was accepted for the main conference session. Ian's paper dealt with a way to organize the "buy" side of the same process. Springer Verlag will be publishing the conference proceedings sometime this summer, and I'll announce that here, if there's interest. Anyway, a recursive auction market, for lack of a better analogy, is kind of like institutionalized software piracy. I create something new and digital. I go on the net, and I sell the first copy to the highest bidder. Then I sell the next copy to the next bid, which, of course, is probably lower than the first. I keep on doing this until people stop bidding. Of course, everyone who buys what I'm selling can turn right around and sell it to someone else in turn, probably at a lower price than they bought it from me. This is the only instance I can think of where buying high and selling low makes you money. ;-). Well, on an item-price basis, anyway. Obviously, the total return is higher on the sell side than the buy side, or nobody would be foolish enough to buy anything from you for resale. Just by forgetting the whole quasimystical issue of "rights" to electronic intellectual property (which, like the current "intellectual capital" craze, is, at best, a polite regulatory fiction), timeliness of content is rewarded, as is novelty, which keeps people who create new stuff right on cranking it out. A person who's invested in a big switch and bandwidth, or who has the most valuable use of any other kind, can afford to pay more for earlier, "fresher", copies of something than someone without the same net.resources. Because, for instance, in the case of the person with all the bandwidth, he can resell copies faster than anyone else. A person who doesn't need something badly can wait a while and pick it up at a lower price after the initial feeding frenzy's over. Finally, the person who continually invents something new gets paid as soon as something he makes becomes usable to anybody at all. The things which get sold can be anything from a jotted down brainstorm, to the first draft of a novel, to more perishible "content", like an hour of teleoperated surgery, say. So, for works of art, whatever that means, copyright law becomes superfluous. More to the point, given sufficient attention to such matters, *all* parties in recursive auction transactions can be completely anonymous, and everything still works. I mean, when was the last time you had to produce identification for a cash transaction? Okay, besides at the bank, and even then for deposits greater than $10k. That's the very exception which proves the rule, obviously. Cartoon physics comes to banking. Remember, again, book-entries cause book-entry taxation and regulations, not vice versa. Anyway, whether at the increasingly hysterical legislative cartoons, or because of the now sandy foundations of the nation state, again, Hayek, somewhere, *must* be laughing, Greg. Cheers, Bob Hettinga Moderator, The Digital Commerce Society of Boston (among other things...) --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

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Government Conspiracy
by nobody＠hidden.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timmy C. Mayflower sexually molests little children, farm animals, and inanimate objects. < > < > V )_.._( V Timmy C. Mayflower \\ <____> // ~ <______> ~ > /~\______/~\ // /~\_____/~\ /_\ /~\____/~\ /_\ /~\___/\~\ _/_\/ \___/\__/__\/ \___/__\/ There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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INFO: Encryption battle heats up in House; experts weigh in (5/30/97)
by Shabbir J. Safdar 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

============================================================================= ____ _ _ _ / ___|_ __ _ _ _ __ | |_ ___ | \ | | _____ _____ | | | '__| | | | '_ \| __/ _ \ _____| \| |/ _ \ \ /\ / / __| | |___| | | |_| | |_) | || (_) |_____| |\ | __/\ V V /\__ \ \____|_| \__, | .__/ \__\___/ |_| \_|\___| \_/\_/ |___/ |___/|_| PRO-ENCRYPTION BILL CLEARS SECOND CONGRESSIONAL HURDLE; FACES TOUGHER TEST IN COMING WEEKS. CRYPTOGRAPHERS AND COMPUTER SECURITY EXPERTS ASSAIL GOVERNMENT KEY RECOVERY PLANS Date: May 29, 1997 Expires July 1, 1997 URL:http://www.crypto.com/ crypto-news(a)panix.com Redistribution of crypto-news is allowed in its entirety. _____________________________________________________________________________ Table of Contents Encryption battle heats up in the House Experts assail government key recovery plans What YOU CAN DO NOW! Background What's at stake How to start or stop receiving crypto-news Press contacts _____________________________________________________________________________ ENCRYPTION BATTLE HEATS UP IN THE HOUSE On May 14th, the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill designed to dramatically enhance the ability of Internet users to protect their privacy and security online. The bill now moves to the House International Relations Committee, where it is expected to face tougher opposition from the FBI, NSA, and the Clinton Administration. The International Relations Committee is expected to consider the bill soon. The Security and Freedom through Encryption Act (SAFE - HR 695) will prohibit the government from imposing mandatory law enforcement access to private online communications inside the US, affirm the right of American Citizens to use whatever from of encryption they choose, and relax current export restrictions which prevent the development of strong, easy-to-use encryption technologies. The Clinton Administration, led by the FBI and the National Security agency, opposes SAFE and is pushing for a policy of domestic restrictions on the use of encryption, guaranteed law enforcement access to private communications via government designed "key-recovery" systems, and continued reliance on out-dated, cold-war era export controls. For the first time in history, Congress is close to passing real encryption policy reform legislation which will protect privacy, promote electronic commerce, and recognizes the realities of the global Internet. Pointers to additional information on the SAFE bill and other efforts to reform U.S. encryption policy are attached below. Congress needs to hear from you! If you value your privacy and care about the future of the Net, please take a few moments to join the Adopt Your Legislator campaign. Instructions are attached below. ________________________________________________________________________________ CRYPTOGRAPHERS AND COMPUTER SECURITY EXPERTS ASSAIL GOV'T. KEY RECOVERY PLANS On Wednesday May 21, a group of leading cryptographers and computer scientists released a report which for the first time examines the risks and implications of government-designed key-recovery systems. The report cautions that "The deployment of a general key-recovery-based encryption infrastructure to meet law enforcement's stated requirements will result in substantial sacrifices in security and cost to the end user. Building a secure infrastructure of the breathtaking scale and complexity demanded by these requirements is far beyond the experience and current competency of the field." The report substantially changes the terms of the ongoing debate over US encryption policy. For more than four years, the Clinton Administration has pushed for a policy of continued export restrictions on strong encryption, and the development of global key escrow and key recovery systems to address the concerns of law enforcement. The study, the first comprehensive analysis of the risks of key recovery and key escrow systems, calls into question the viability of the Administration's approach. The Report's authors, recognized leaders in the cryptography and computer science field, include Hal Abelson, Ross Anderson, Steven M. Bellovin, Josh Benaloh, Matt Blaze, Whitfield Diffie, John Gilmore, Peter G. Neumann, Ronald L. Rivest, Jeffery I. Schiller, and Bruce Schneier The report is be available online at http://www.crypto.com/key_study/ ________________________________________________________________________________ WHAT YOU CAN DO NOW 1. Adopt Your Legislator Now is the time to increase our ranks and prepare for the fight that lies a head of us in Congress. Please take a few minutes to learn more about this important issue, and join the Adopt Your Legislator Campaign at http://www.crypto.com/adopt/ This will produce a customized page, just for you with your own legislator's telephone number and address. In addition, you will receive the latest news and information on the issue, as well as targeted alerts informing you when your Representatives in Congress do something that could help or hinder the future of the Internet. Best of all, it's free. Do your part, Work the Network! Visit http://www.crypto.com/adopt/ for details. 2. Spread the Word! Forward this Alert to your friends. Help educate the public about the importance of this issue. Please do not forward after July 1, 1997. _____________________________________________________________________________ BACKGROUND Complete background information, including: * A down-to-earth explanation of why this debate is important to Internet users * Analysis and background on the issue * Text of the Administration draft legislation * Text of Congressional proposals to reform US encryption policy * Audio transcripts and written testimony from recent Congressional Hearings on encryption policy reform * And more! Are all available at http://www.crypto.com/ ________________________________________________________________________ WHAT'S AT STAKE Encryption technologies are the locks and keys of the Information age -- enabling individuals and businesses to protect sensitive information as it is transmitted over the Internet. As more and more individuals and businesses come online, the need for strong, reliable, easy-to-use encryption technologies has become a critical issue to the health and viability of the Net. Current US encryption policy, which limits the strength of encryption products US companies can sell abroad, also limits the availability of strong, easy-to-use encryption technologies in the United States. US hardware and software manufacturers who wish to sell their products on the global market must either conform to US encryption export limits or produce two separate versions of the same product, a costly and complicated alternative. The export controls, which the NSA and FBI argue help to keep strong encryption out of the hands of foreign adversaries, are having the opposite effect. Strong encryption is available abroad, but because of the export limits and the confusion created by nearly four years of debate over US encryption policy, strong, easy-to-use privacy and security technologies are not widely available off the shelf or "on the net" here in the US. A recently discovered flaw in the security of the new digital telephone network exposed the worst aspects of the Administration's encryption policy. Because the designers needed to be able to export their products, the system's security was "dumbed down". Researchers subsequently discovered that it is quite easy to break the security of the system and intrude on what should be private conversations. This incident underscores the larger policy problem: US companies are at a competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace when competing against companies that do not have such hindrances. And now, for the first time in history, the Clinton Administration has DOMESTIC RESTRICTIONS on the ability of Americans to protect their privacy and security online. All of us care about our national security, and no one wants to make it any easier for criminals and terrorists to commit criminal acts. But we must also recognize encryption technologies can aid law enforcement and protect national security by limiting the threat of industrial espionage and foreign spying, promote electronic commerce and protecting privacy. What's at stake in this debate is nothing less than the future of privacy and the fate of the Internet as a secure and trusted medium for commerce, education, and political discourse. ______________________________________________________________________________ HOW TO START OR STOP RECEIVING CRYPTO-NEWS To subscribe to crypto-news, sign up from our WWW page (http://www.crypto.com) or send mail to majordomo(a)panix.com with "subscribe crypto-news" in the body of the message. To unsubscribe, send a letter to majordomo(a)panix.com with "unsubscribe crypto-news" in the body. Requests to unsubscribe that are sent to shabbir(a)vtw.org will be ignored. _____________________________________________________________________________ PRESS CONTACT INFORMATION Press inquiries on Crypto-News should be directed to Shabbir J. Safdar (VTW) at +1.718.596.2851 or shabbir(a)vtw.org Jonah Seiger (CDT) at +1.202.637.9800 or jseiger(a)cdt.org _____________________________________________________________________________ End crypto-news =============================================================================

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Clinton on privacy and the Internet
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 22:04:03 -0500 From: Andrew Shapiro <ashapiro(a)interport.net> To: telstar(a)wired.com, declan(a)well.com Subject: Clinton on privacy Todd and Declan: I assume you've both seen this quote about privacy (below) from Clinton's commencement speech last week. Declan, you might want to put up on the FC list -- if you haven't already. Cheers, Andrew *** From: http://www.epic.org/privacy/laws/clinton_speech_5_18_97.html#privacy Third, technology should not be used to break down the wall of privacy and autonomy free citizens are guaranteed in a free society. The right to privacy is one of our most cherished freedoms. As society has grown more complex and people have become more interconnected in every way, we have had to work even harder to respect the privacy, the dignity, the autonomy of each individual. Today, when marketers can follow every aspect of our lives, from the first phone call we make in the morning to the time our security system says we have left the house, to the video camera at the toll booth and the charge slip we have for lunch, we cannot afford to forget this most basic lesson. As the Internet reaches to touch every business and every household and we face the frightening prospect that private information -- even medical records -- could be made instantly available to the world, we must develop new protections for privacy in the face of new technological reality. (Applause.)

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INFO: Encryption battle heats up in House; experts weigh in (5/30/97)
by Shabbir J. Safdar 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

============================================================================= ____ _ _ _ / ___|_ __ _ _ _ __ | |_ ___ | \ | | _____ _____ | | | '__| | | | '_ \| __/ _ \ _____| \| |/ _ \ \ /\ / / __| | |___| | | |_| | |_) | || (_) |_____| |\ | __/\ V V /\__ \ \____|_| \__, | .__/ \__\___/ |_| \_|\___| \_/\_/ |___/ |___/|_| PRO-ENCRYPTION BILL CLEARS SECOND CONGRESSIONAL HURDLE; FACES TOUGHER TEST IN COMING WEEKS. CRYPTOGRAPHERS AND COMPUTER SECURITY EXPERTS ASSAIL GOVERNMENT KEY RECOVERY PLANS Date: May 29, 1997 Expires July 1, 1997 URL:http://www.crypto.com/ crypto-news(a)panix.com Redistribution of crypto-news is allowed in its entirety. _____________________________________________________________________________ Table of Contents Encryption battle heats up in the House Experts assail government key recovery plans What YOU CAN DO NOW! Background What's at stake How to start or stop receiving crypto-news Press contacts _____________________________________________________________________________ ENCRYPTION BATTLE HEATS UP IN THE HOUSE On May 14th, the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill designed to dramatically enhance the ability of Internet users to protect their privacy and security online. The bill now moves to the House International Relations Committee, where it is expected to face tougher opposition from the FBI, NSA, and the Clinton Administration. The International Relations Committee is expected to consider the bill soon. The Security and Freedom through Encryption Act (SAFE - HR 695) will prohibit the government from imposing mandatory law enforcement access to private online communications inside the US, affirm the right of American Citizens to use whatever from of encryption they choose, and relax current export restrictions which prevent the development of strong, easy-to-use encryption technologies. The Clinton Administration, led by the FBI and the National Security agency, opposes SAFE and is pushing for a policy of domestic restrictions on the use of encryption, guaranteed law enforcement access to private communications via government designed "key-recovery" systems, and continued reliance on out-dated, cold-war era export controls. For the first time in history, Congress is close to passing real encryption policy reform legislation which will protect privacy, promote electronic commerce, and recognizes the realities of the global Internet. Pointers to additional information on the SAFE bill and other efforts to reform U.S. encryption policy are attached below. Congress needs to hear from you! If you value your privacy and care about the future of the Net, please take a few moments to join the Adopt Your Legislator campaign. Instructions are attached below. ________________________________________________________________________________ CRYPTOGRAPHERS AND COMPUTER SECURITY EXPERTS ASSAIL GOV'T. KEY RECOVERY PLANS On Wednesday May 21, a group of leading cryptographers and computer scientists released a report which for the first time examines the risks and implications of government-designed key-recovery systems. The report cautions that "The deployment of a general key-recovery-based encryption infrastructure to meet law enforcement's stated requirements will result in substantial sacrifices in security and cost to the end user. Building a secure infrastructure of the breathtaking scale and complexity demanded by these requirements is far beyond the experience and current competency of the field." The report substantially changes the terms of the ongoing debate over US encryption policy. For more than four years, the Clinton Administration has pushed for a policy of continued export restrictions on strong encryption, and the development of global key escrow and key recovery systems to address the concerns of law enforcement. The study, the first comprehensive analysis of the risks of key recovery and key escrow systems, calls into question the viability of the Administration's approach. The Report's authors, recognized leaders in the cryptography and computer science field, include Hal Abelson, Ross Anderson, Steven M. Bellovin, Josh Benaloh, Matt Blaze, Whitfield Diffie, John Gilmore, Peter G. Neumann, Ronald L. Rivest, Jeffery I. Schiller, and Bruce Schneier The report is be available online at http://www.crypto.com/key_study/ ________________________________________________________________________________ WHAT YOU CAN DO NOW 1. Adopt Your Legislator Now is the time to increase our ranks and prepare for the fight that lies a head of us in Congress. Please take a few minutes to learn more about this important issue, and join the Adopt Your Legislator Campaign at http://www.crypto.com/adopt/ This will produce a customized page, just for you with your own legislator's telephone number and address. In addition, you will receive the latest news and information on the issue, as well as targeted alerts informing you when your Representatives in Congress do something that could help or hinder the future of the Internet. Best of all, it's free. Do your part, Work the Network! Visit http://www.crypto.com/adopt/ for details. 2. Spread the Word! Forward this Alert to your friends. Help educate the public about the importance of this issue. Please do not forward after July 1, 1997. _____________________________________________________________________________ BACKGROUND Complete background information, including: * A down-to-earth explanation of why this debate is important to Internet users * Analysis and background on the issue * Text of the Administration draft legislation * Text of Congressional proposals to reform US encryption policy * Audio transcripts and written testimony from recent Congressional Hearings on encryption policy reform * And more! Are all available at http://www.crypto.com/ ________________________________________________________________________ WHAT'S AT STAKE Encryption technologies are the locks and keys of the Information age -- enabling individuals and businesses to protect sensitive information as it is transmitted over the Internet. As more and more individuals and businesses come online, the need for strong, reliable, easy-to-use encryption technologies has become a critical issue to the health and viability of the Net. Current US encryption policy, which limits the strength of encryption products US companies can sell abroad, also limits the availability of strong, easy-to-use encryption technologies in the United States. US hardware and software manufacturers who wish to sell their products on the global market must either conform to US encryption export limits or produce two separate versions of the same product, a costly and complicated alternative. The export controls, which the NSA and FBI argue help to keep strong encryption out of the hands of foreign adversaries, are having the opposite effect. Strong encryption is available abroad, but because of the export limits and the confusion created by nearly four years of debate over US encryption policy, strong, easy-to-use privacy and security technologies are not widely available off the shelf or "on the net" here in the US. A recently discovered flaw in the security of the new digital telephone network exposed the worst aspects of the Administration's encryption policy. Because the designers needed to be able to export their products, the system's security was "dumbed down". Researchers subsequently discovered that it is quite easy to break the security of the system and intrude on what should be private conversations. This incident underscores the larger policy problem: US companies are at a competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace when competing against companies that do not have such hindrances. And now, for the first time in history, the Clinton Administration has DOMESTIC RESTRICTIONS on the ability of Americans to protect their privacy and security online. All of us care about our national security, and no one wants to make it any easier for criminals and terrorists to commit criminal acts. But we must also recognize encryption technologies can aid law enforcement and protect national security by limiting the threat of industrial espionage and foreign spying, promote electronic commerce and protecting privacy. What's at stake in this debate is nothing less than the future of privacy and the fate of the Internet as a secure and trusted medium for commerce, education, and political discourse. ______________________________________________________________________________ HOW TO START OR STOP RECEIVING CRYPTO-NEWS To subscribe to crypto-news, sign up from our WWW page (http://www.crypto.com) or send mail to majordomo(a)panix.com with "subscribe crypto-news" in the body of the message. To unsubscribe, send a letter to majordomo(a)panix.com with "unsubscribe crypto-news" in the body. Requests to unsubscribe that are sent to shabbir(a)vtw.org will be ignored. _____________________________________________________________________________ PRESS CONTACT INFORMATION Press inquiries on Crypto-News should be directed to Shabbir J. Safdar (VTW) at +1.718.596.2851 or shabbir(a)vtw.org Jonah Seiger (CDT) at +1.202.637.9800 or jseiger(a)cdt.org _____________________________________________________________________________ End crypto-news =============================================================================

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Re: Continuing spam from vulis
by Jeff Burchell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Fri, 30 May 1997, Paul Pomes wrote: > The wider circulation is due to the complete lack of response from > remailer-admin(a)cajones.com. Be careful when you say "Complete lack of response". You've got no idea what I did and didn't do once I got your message. I have previously talked with the operator of the cypherpunks list (this was about 2 months ago when someone else was abusing the remailer to post trash to that list). At that time, I offered the standard good will gesture that remailer operators can offer: "Would you like me to block the list, so this remailer won't send anything to it". Because of the nature of anonymous remailers, this is about the extent of the action that I can take. To this, I recieved a very firm "no!" (cypherpunks is of course a list where people do have good reasons to use remailers). Because of that, I _WON'T_ block cypherpunks, until I am instructed to by May, Gilmore, Hughes, et.al. Period. This holds true for all mailing lists. I need to have authorization from the list maintainer to block the list. I have added your address to my block list, this remailer won't send anything directly to you in the future. If you don't want to read anything from this mailer that comes across lists, then you should either manually delete anonymous messages before reading them (the headers and return address make it obvious when a message has come through a remailer), or turn on some client-side mail filters. Your own company makes a product with adaquate functionality to do this. -Jeff Operator... Huge.cajones.com P.S. Besides... aren't ad hominum attacks on Tim May a Cypherpunks tradition? P.P.S. Isn't there a non-flames moderated cypherpunks? Perhaps you want to be on that list instead of the free-for-all. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- "When they came for the 2nd Amendment, I said nothing, for I owned no gun Then the sixth was next to go, and I remained silent, as I was not on trial They took away the fourth, and I said nothing, as I had nothing to hide And then they came for the First, and I could say nothing."

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And speaking of spamming! (was: Stanton McCandlish)
by Tim May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Speaking of unwanted messages, which legislators call "spamming." An EFF person, whom I do respect, by the way, added my name to a spammer's list, some shtick they have called "sixdegrees." Here's the spam I just got, complete with what they claim is my "password." Inasmuch as I never requested this password, and have no intention of using it, and have no contractual relationship with either "sixdegrees" or Stanton McCandlish, you folks might want to have some fun with this alleged service and (unrequested) password. The password may only work if it comes from "tcmay(a)mail.got.net," but, then, I hear that such "From:" fields are easily spoofed. --Tim >X-From_: bmkf0032(a)auto.sixdegrees.com Sat May 31 10:43:36 1997 >X-Real-To: <tcmay(a)mail.got.net> >From: "sixdegrees" <bmkf0032(a)auto.sixdegrees.com> >To: "May Tim" <tcmay(a)mail.got.net> >Reply-To: "sixdegrees" <bmkf0032(a)auto.sixdegrees.com> >Subject: Stanton McCandlish >Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 13:45:12 Eastern Daylight Time > >Name: May Tim >E-Mail Address: tcmay(a)mail.got.net >sixdegrees Password: cusproll > >You've been listed by Stanton McCandlish as "Acquaintance" >as part of a free Internet networking service called sixdegrees(tm). > >WHAT WE ARE: > > sixdegrees is a Web site at http://www.sixdegrees.com/ that's > based on the theory that everyone on earth is connected to > everyone else through a path of six people or less. We hope to > use the power of the Internet to revolutionize the way people > network. > >WHAT'S IN IT FOR YOU: > > You can come to http://www.sixdegrees.com/ and use our FREE > services to network with the people you want to know through > the people you do know. You can find out how you're connected > to specific people, like that person who's interviewing you for > a new job next week. Or, you can find out how you're connected > to certain kinds of people, like pediatricians in San Francisco, > or inline skaters in New York. > >WHAT'S IN IT FOR US: > > We make money by selling ads on the sixdegrees site. We > never sell lists of names or any specific information about > our individual members to anybody. To find out more about > our policies regarding privacy, just visit > http://www.sixdegrees.com/about/privacy.cfm > >HOW IT WORKS: > > If you list your contacts and how you know them, we'll forward > them an email like this one. They'll be invited to confirm their > relationship to you and to participate in sixdegrees themselves > by listing their contacts. > >WHAT TO DO NEXT: > > Just reply to this e-mail by following the INSTRUCTIONS below > (you may want to print it out first - it's easier that way.) > > > And remember to visit http://www.sixdegrees.com/. Click on Services, > log-in with your password, which is cusproll, and enjoy > networking on a whole new level. > >=================================================================== >INSTRUCTIONS FOR REPLYING: > >FIRST: > > Click your mail program's REPLY button. > >SECOND: > > On the FIRST line of the message body of the reply e-mail that > opens, type only the word CONFIRM or DENY to let us know if you > are in fact Stanton's Acquaintance. > >THIRD: > On the next line of the message body list the first and last names > and e-mail addresses of at least TWO people you know, and the > relationship numbers that correspond with how those people are > related to you. > >MAKE SURE: > >* That the first name, last name, e-mail address and relationship > number are separated by SEMI-COLONS. > >* You list at least TWO people if you want to become a member. > (You can list as many as you want - the more you list, the > larger your network of contacts will be.) > >* Each entry is on its OWN LINE. > >* You follow the format of these examples: > > John; Smith; jsmith(a)fakeplace.com; 12 > Jane; Doe; superjane(a)fakeplace.com; 3 > >* And that you define each relationship by choosing a number from > this list: > > 1=wife 2=husband 3=life partner > 4=significant other 5=mother 6=father > 7=sister 8=brother 9=daughter >10=son 11=other family member 12=friend >13=employer 14=employee 15=co-worker >16=client 17=service provider 18=business contact >19=fellow alum 20=acquaintance > > >FOURTH: > > Click send, and that's it. We look forward to hearing from you. > >=================================================================== > >** PLEASE NOTE: All replies to this address are processed by a > computer. If you have any problems, questions or requests send an > e-mail to issues(a)sixdegrees.com and someone will get back to you > as soon as possible. > >** If you'd rather not participate in sixdegrees and would prefer > not to receive any further e-mails from us at this time, please > send an e-mail to remove(a)sixdegrees.com that says "REMOVE ME". > >=================================================================== > > > >E.DB.ANB.1 >

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Re: Continuing spam from vulis
by Tim May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(I've removed 9 of the addresses from this response.) At 12:42 PM -0700 5/30/97, Jeff Burchell wrote: >I have previously talked with the operator of the cypherpunks list (this >was about 2 months ago when someone else was abusing the remailer to post And just who is "the operator of the cypherpunks list"? If this was about 2 months ago, it would've been well after the Cypherdiaspora, so there would be even less of a concept of the "operator" than there was before. And why would he or she or they have anything to say about blocking remailers? >trash to that list). At that time, I offered the standard good will >gesture that remailer operators can offer: "Would you like me to block the >list, so this remailer won't send anything to it". Because of the nature >of anonymous remailers, this is about the extent of the action that I can >take. > >To this, I recieved a very firm "no!" (cypherpunks is of course a list >where people do have good reasons to use remailers). Because of that, I >_WON'T_ block cypherpunks, until I am instructed to by May, Gilmore, >Hughes, et.al. Period. This holds true for all mailing lists. I need to >have authorization from the list maintainer to block the list. Neither May nor Gilmore nor Hughes have any say over blocking remailers, blocking use of remailers, etc. >-Jeff >Operator... Huge.cajones.com > >P.S. Besides... aren't ad hominum attacks on Tim May a Cypherpunks > tradition? I mean no disrespect to Jeff, but even getting involved in the slightest way in debates about remailer traffic and what should/should not be blocked is what can only be called a "conceptual error." Ideal mixes, which today's remailers are of course only an approximation of, do not pass and reject messages based on content, or even on sources and destinations. The ideal mix is a soulless black box executing certain protocols. (Practicality may dictate that a remailer place certain minimal, and hopefully publicized, constraints on the process, e.g., no sending to whitehouse.gov, no sending to hundreds of addresses, whatever.) --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Elliptic Curve Rumor
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 10:53:16 -0700 To: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> From: Somebody Subject: Elliptic Curve Rumor Mime-Version: 1.0 I assume you will pass this information on. Please don't associate my name with it. I have heard that Apple has a working implementation of Elliptic Curve Cryptography. Because of the export regulations they don't want to include it in their products. If anyone wants to try to change their minds, now would be a good time. --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

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Janus (now called LPWA) ready for pre-testing)
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 13:31:25 -0400 From: alain(a)research.bell-labs.com (Alain Mayer) To: rah(a)shipwright.com Subject: Janus (now called LPWA) ready for pre-testing) Cc: alain(a)research.bell-labs.com Hi Robert, the Janus system I presented at FC97 is now running on a proxy at Bell Labs, accessible to everyone. Maybe you can send the announcement below to the fc97 mailing list? Many thanks and I hope everything is fine with you, -- Alain ======================================== Hi, Janus (now called the Lucent Personalized Web Assistant, LPWA) is now pre-testing. Its main goal is to increase convenience, security, and privacy for browsing the web, especially with sites that require registration (and hence user names, passwords and e-mail addresses). We hope that you will use it for a while and give us some feedback on what you like and what kind of things are annoying. Note, that you can only participate if you are able to configure your browser to directly connect to our proxy. Some of you might be behind a firewall or ISP where a particular proxy is required. Instructions can be found at http://lpwa.com:8000. More on the project is located at http://www.bell-labs.com/project/lpwa/ An arbitrary list of (free) sites which require registration can be found at http://www.bell-labs.com/projects/lpwa/extended_summary_tmp.html#account Please note that this project has not yet been publicy announced and that documentation and code are currently being revised. Also, the current set-up, where you have to connect to LPWA/Janus over an insecure connection is not "optimal" (to say the least, but all in all much better than if you browse the "usual way"). Hence, we are really looking for "friendly users" at this time whose feedback might help us to make improvements. Regards, -- Alain --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

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