December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Spam Update/Cyber Promo attacked
by The Spectre 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Fri May 09 09:48:11 1997 > > Like I said, it's more of a passive agressive thing. If I were to > > come across a page that said "Click here to spam some spammers" and > > that's all I had to do, why wouldn't I take 2 seconds of my time to > > do it? That's > > Can you think of a way to have it originate at the browser's machine, > not your machine? Perhaps an activex program for w95 :-) java program/script could do this as well. > > certainly less time than it takes to go through the amount of spam in > > my mail each day. > > I suggest you learn to filter your e-mail. Hmmm... I'm hearing a lot of "you have a right so long as it doesn't interfere with me" kind of talk here... if the gentleman has a right to spam, then this person as the same right to spam him back.. I personally detest getting crap like the guy sent in my mailbox.. filtering doesn't stop it from wasting bandwidth. > > And who cares if the pings/emails are coming from my site? For the > > email version I just add a header that says something to the effect > > of "This email was sent to you on behalf of someone at $REMOTE_HOST" > > and set the > > You could also try an html form whose actions send mailto:your@enemy yup. > > > Return-Path to <root@localhost>. At that point, how can you prove > > that it was sent by your script or just by someone using your SMTPd? > > He'll just filter out your site. Wallace has some very smart > people working with him. Maybe he needs some smarter people working "against" him.. this has potential to get fun. The Spectre spectre(a)nac.net - -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.2 mQENAzM2vJwAAAEH/1uuDgh1udD+DbU9ies8Lst3j7bmlM+m+aN0gVwerfx+uA14 AG6RDZwwCLwCZYxh0/AizW1b25nHs5XDFW7QIVo1/agtbyz3rt7plcp3wi+rXPxo zFPgILegG2k81mHYIYVJ1g9bEExVGsNc7GMthkaOjPL2VYirQPRtAa4ZZc6JuCLH I85xIcwuLppYajUU4WMMf4yz+5w1WtTlHdL9+ec6BHoF+fOhsF/8DMd5nveFl0aM G52t+z6okMw9vFjLbEtj0BbDRsMjRJNM5uFQWzU+nPEaUzVP+MySe/yrjR2P3dZa UKjpG3Er7U4DV7rb8mE20Wet10jJoALjG8yMZrUABRG0HVRoZSBTcGVjdHJlIDxz cGVjdHJlQG5hYy5uZXQ+iQEVAwUQM0qy66AC4xvMjGa1AQGNLAf/QY5SyC/jybOQ asYfNqhPFip0gZwUutOOgPdyrEsXoxFOWJ9OG95dzvNJ3of22zh4RLusUt5NT7lB DFUKiP4aQsNf5XmW+qk/R1nmqyO/XHAAAdIos2SGsYew2d3JatIlFZIQ+vMkEOC0 +oPotz7effhkDKeYl+Qdla9eZ1C47Be2NrA1sH26jKYhCob6VnAK+zAin8ZPEnb0 XEKQTMVdE2ehv2Q8PxygZhDI0L6sM6EgguvDWjJuGN4bIhxh22dAyNRJ7CVQsqwV rj4TtkAuqUb0nyQvD2xUeJcB/O+1LCH7oFBE4EG1qEIl7asVjEURrfej7OwxRrA0 J0Lc5tZToA== =tS4W - -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBM3MrHaAC4xvMjGa1AQH6jwf8DvSZdcz61rx4I9l1pnTjRqiPECiGZfuN LRDFyXGiLwz5w7InPk3y4VYbDrRXWQKpfxWE51HO+HZs0kYbgGnsshIvJjpxS3ej zcmqywEcJBhLdBXfxOz6sNW518zom2J7VBaHBvkQq/hNWTSiVV7ALot4rFZLzyU5 +1PUebikvme+ISonmae6OLCZgwC1D/7zZHJ+S4D+QTyuZlyk9q/VhVK2MAZ5MRze F6bzjvq+KRD+QvPZnhx6UKZwkQIhHQ/WCDpyr3ztXO/a8HT2MnrUxYAgBkFl6CKT Y1PNiPUs4tzDrF/2eUotg3Lpn4gXR+JR5foEWNrTV+cpy1+P6wyjmg== =Pv6d -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Wired coverage of 'new' admin rules
by Ariel Glenn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Quite a different spin on it in this article... ---- Banks' Crypto Permit Not as Free as It Looks by Kristi Coale 6:12pm 8.May.97.PDT When the Commerce Department on Thursday gave its blessing to the export of the strongest available encryption products for electronic banking and finance, the Clinton administration wasn't really giving any ground on its stance on key recovery. That's because the likely customers for these products - banks and financial institutions - are already subject to tough rules when it comes to tracking transactions and accounts to individuals. And these institutions are legally bound to share this information with the authorities. Given the scope of current regulation, the Commerce Department's key recovery requirement would only be duplicative, a department spokesperson said. That's why banks have been allowed to export government-approved Data Encryption Standard technology since the early 1980s. And that's why they'll now be able to use stronger encryption to secure transactions, including account and credit card numbers. The government standard has a fixed-key length of 56 bits; encryption being readied for electronic commerce such as Secure Electronic Transaction can have keys of 1,024 bits and longer. It is assumed that it would take years and enormous computing power to crack the longer keys. In remarks Thursday before a Washington gathering of the American Bankers Association, Undersecretary William Reinsch outlined the plan which gives banks the ability to export direct-home-banking products with encryption keys of unlimited length. However, if a commercial software company - and not the bank - develops the banking product, the program must meet the administration's requirement for a key-recovery plan. Key recovery provides a "back door" that allows third parties to open and read electronic transmissions such as email. Under the administration's plan, these keys would be stored with government-sanctioned escrow agents such as Trusted Information Systems, a computer security firm, or Bankers Trust, a bank holding company. With these keys, police, prosecutors, and spy agencies with court orders can get access to any message or document. But privacy advocates distrust this system. To organizations like the Electronic Privacy Information Center, key recovery is no different from the administration's plans for government access under the failed Clipper initiatives. And given the current level of regulation, exempting the financial institutions from the key-recovery requirements represents a mere "fig leaf of a concession" on administration policy, said Dave Banisar, EPIC staff counsel. Developers have their own concerns about the Commerce Department announcement - namely, that by telling companies seeking to sell electronic commerce software to banks that they must include key escrow in their products, the administration is playing to prominent a role in the process. Companies such as Hewlett-Packard which support key escrow prefer to implement it in products where it makes business sense for them to do so, said Fred Mailman, the company's regulatory manager. Mailman is worried that the door may now be open for the government to tell companies what product families will have key recovery instead of the companies choosing themselves. While companies sort this out, the pressure on the industry to capitulate to the administration's key recovery plan increases, Mailman said. Related Wired Links: Netscape's Key Recovery: That's Business by Michael Stutz Law and Order and a Crypto Bill by Rebecca Vesely Andreessen: Market, Not Policy, Pushes Crypto by Michael Stutz arrow [INLINE] Find Read a story in the Wired News archive. Feedback Let us know how we're doing. Tips Have a story or tip for Wired News? Send it. Copyright ) 1993-97 Wired Ventures, Inc. and affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

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EVENT: Two big events you can be a part of at democracy.net on May 13!
by Shabbir Safdar 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

========================================================================= _ _ __| | ___ _ __ ___ ___ ___ _ __ __ _ ___ _ _ _ __ ___| |_ / _` |/ _ \ '_ ` _ \ / _ \ / __| '__/ _` |/ __| | | | | '_ \ / _ \ __| | (_| | __/ | | | | | (_) | (__| | | (_| | (__| |_| |_| | | | __/ |_ \__,_|\___|_| |_| |_|\___/ \___|_| \__,_|\___|\__, (_)_| |_|\___|\__| |___/ Government Without Walls Update No.7 http:/www.democracy.net/ May 8 1997 _________________________________________________________________________ Table of Contents - democracy.net needs your help! - Internet Caucus field hearing @ Library of Congress: May 13, 3-5pm Eastern - Live Town Hall Meeting with FCC Chairman Reed Hundt: May 13, 7pm Eastern - In our archive - About democracy.net / Subscription and Unsubscription Information ___________________________________________________________________________ DEMOCRACY.NET NEEDS YOUR HELP! On Tuesday May 13, democracy.net will be testifying before the Congressional Internet Caucus about the use of the Internet for bringing citizen participation to the democratic process. We occassionally get letters from all sorts of people who tell us how much they appreciate democracy.net. Help us tell your story. Take a moment to answer the questions below and send the results to feedback(a)democracy.net! 1. Answer the following questions where appropriate. How old are you? Where are you when you participate in democracy.net events? At home? Work? What does democracy.net allow you to do as a citizen that you couldn't do without it? Have you used material from the democracy.net website in an article, term paper, school paper, or book? What do you like most about democracy.net? Does democracy.net help you overcome other barriers to being an active citizen? How are the democracy.net archives useful to you? 2. Send the answers to feedback(a)democracy.net ___________________________________________________________________________ INTERNET CAUCUS FIELD HEARING @ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS: TUE MAY 13, 3-5PM EASTERN One of the most crucial benefits of the Internet is it's ability to allow government agencies to publish information to the public at a very low cost. Numerous examples of how the Internet has revolutionized access to the democratic process and government exist today, including: * The Library of Congress' THOMAS service (http://thomas.loc.gov/) which makes available bills and speeches from the Congressional Record, * The Federal Communications Commission's Daily Digest and Website (http://www.fcc.gov/) which allows citizens to track every issue moving through the agency's processes, and * The National Aeronautics and Space Association's Website (http://www.nasa.gov) which has made available photos and other astronomical images available to the very taxpayers that funded them. These projects and others like them have fundamentally changed the way Americans today keep tabs on their government. But there's still a long way to go, and this Internet Caucus field hearing will examine nine examples of how the Internet is being utilized to make the government more accessible to Americans. You can attend this event live by listening to the live audio feed, submit questions to the Senators and Representatives from the Internet Caucus for the witnesses who will be there, view live photos from the hearing room, and discuss the issue with Internet users and Congressional staffers in interactive chat. * Congressional Internet Caucus Hearing - How To Participate * DATE: Tuesday, May 13, 1997 TIME: 3-5 pm Eastern / noon-2 pm Pacific (Event will last +/- 90 mins) LOCATION: http://www.democracy.net In advance of the hearing, please visit http://www.democracy.net for background information on this issue, including the list of witnesses who are testifying. You can also submit questions in advance. _____________________________________________________________________________ LIVE TOWN HALL MEETING WITH FCC CHAIRMAN REED HUNDT: TUESDAY MAY 13, 7PM ET During the May 7th Universal Service Proceeding, Internet users submitted their questions and comments via democracy.net. On Tuesday May 13, FCC Chairman Reed Hundt will join democracy.net for a live Virtual Town Hall meeting to discuss the Universal Service proceeding, respond to Internet users questions, and discuss other Internet-related issues before the FCC. This is a great opportunity for Internet users to talk with one of the key telecommunications policy makers. * Online Town Hall Meeting with FCC Commissioner Reed Hundt * * How To Participate * DATE: Tuesday, May 13, 1997 TIME: 7:00 pm Eastern / 4:00 pm Pacific LOCATION: http://www.democracy.net Visit http://www.democracy.net/ in advance of the event to submit questions. Additional information can be found at the FCC home page: http://www.fcc.gov _______________________________________________________________________________ IN OUR ARCHIVE * FCC UNIVERSAL SERVICE RULEMAKING FROM MAY 7TH NOW AVAILABLE IN OUR ARCHIVE! -FCC Chairman Reed Hundt at May 7th public meeting on Universal Service, broadcast by democracy.net! You can get the entire audio or text-based transcript of the meeting, or selected excerpts, at http://www.democracy.net/archive/05071997/ _______________________________________________________________________________ ABOUT DEMOCRACY.NET / SUBSCRIPTION AND UNSUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION democracy.net is a joint project of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and the Voters Telecommunications Watch (VTW) to explore ways of enhancing citizen participation in the democratic process via the Internet. To this end, democracy.net hosts live, interactive cybercasts of Congressional Hearings and online town hall meetings with key policy makers. democracy.net is made possible through the generous support of WebActive (http://www.webactive.com) Public Access Networks (http://www.panix.com) the Democracy Network (http://www.democracynet.org) Cheetah Cybercasting Service (http://www.cheetahcast.com/) and DIGEX's ISP-TV (http://isptv.digex.net) More information about the democracy.net project and its sponsors can be found at http://www.democracy.net/about/ To receive democracy.net announcements automatically, please visit our signup form at http://www.democracy.net/ or send mail to majordomo(a)democracy.net with "subscribe events" in the body of the message. To stop receiving announcements on the democracy.net "events" mailing list, please send mail to majordomo(a)democracy.net with the phrase "unsubscribe events" in the message body. _____________________________________________________________________________ End update no.7 05/08/1997 =============================================================================

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No Subject
by bureau42 Anonymous Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

:: Subject: Remailers for Dummies? I'm interested in setting up a remailer (I already have, to a small degree), but I'm looking for a remailers-howto, something that covers the issues beyond `mere' compiling. Things like, getting a Mixmaster and a Type1 remailer to cooperate nicely; how to minimize complaints and legal hassles. If there's a remailer- operators list, I'd love to know about that too. Please address replies to dave(a)columnist.com - as much as anything, I'm sending this message through my proto-remailer (based on the freedom code) to make sure it works :)

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Re: Clinton Admin. to announce new Crypto regs
by Will Rodger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 10:39 PM 5/8/97 +0000, Rick Smith wrote: >These "new" regulations "to be issued" are scrambling to catch up with >previous and current practices. It doesn't change things at all. I disagree. Here's why: New regs unquestionably do change things for US banks. Right now banks may export nothing stronger than unescrowed DES. Period. So - what do they use the dirt-cheap, insecure Internet for? Nothing terribly important outside the US. One banker from JP Morgan told me yesterday that this was big news for them since they would soon move tons of stuff onto the Net. JPM, you'll recall, does business with huge, multinational institutions. They don't do retail banking. They aren't interested in small deals. What do you suppose JP Morgan's bill for proprietary network use is each year? How much will they save by moving to the Internet? It's worth noting, too, that banks and consumer software companies will soon export things like PC banking software with minimal delay. >This announcement is simply a public acknowledgment that the BXA will look >favorably on export requests to banks and that someday they'll try to draft >specific regulations on the subject. Meanwhile you do it by grinding >through the bureacracy. It goes beyond banks. It affects any company that writes financial software for use with the banking infrastructire, including companies like CyberCash and Intuit. Consider this: Last time Cybercash got approval to export it took them 15 months - count 'em - to get approval. OpenMarket had a similar wait. Regs like those may as well prohibit export. Now DOC says similar deals should be routine and take weeks to complete. Regs are supposed to appear soon - within the month, according to Reinsch's deputy. That's a significant change. Will Rodger Washington Bureau Chief Inter@ctive Week -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBM3NA/UcByjT5n+LZAQGMrQf+LYo0Hr1Intna+9yr7E+D0Pmor0G02qxn tHvyk1SAZI/NF8ps9VncboyxVrTVMRtD+eM+l962XHyjF/+PP2J/u7wZH6AivzV5 CeER7l/J6GoZLCFG4I1+1drHsgfHgR3QOuqehYTUg+CfscYYej7T7FkN6mL7jRZ8 ZDNzqYqrNQVhDJHUQJevUUJvHUELS+btSvo0m6sIyzn2WV8pBVwQZqzBxqf74KXd FojRLnKwBquMZwLKZ1jVqlrdwY+S2La8r7XDEQI4VMetEPtKnsdczrJwKUDvYMKg ZqLBR3CCAO50yWw7AcP7YIaAg2drcYJIZKF6DARjfr9eotQfFZ1nmA== =KVo4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: El Gamal
by Hal Finney 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The next version of PGP will offer the combination of El Gamal for encryption and Digital Signature Standard (DSS) for signatures, as an alternative to RSA. These are based on the discrete log problem. El Gamal is really almost the same as Diffie-Hellman. You have a secret x, he has a secret y, and together you calculate g^(xy) which is your shared secret. With DH you then just use that shared secret as your message encryption key; with El Gamal you multiply (or xor, or add...) your key with the shared secret. PGP uses El Gamal so that we can send along not only key info but also which algorithm to use for the message body encryption, and also a checksum. It is true that El Gamal encrypted messages will be about 128 bytes bigger than RSA for 1024 bit keys. DSS on the other hand produces somewhat smaller signatures than RSA, by about 85-90 bytes. But neither of these is really significant in typical applications. The Diffie-Hellman patent expires September 6, 1997. I gather that it would also cover El Gamal since that is a variant. The Hellman-Merkle "knapsack" patent, which claims to cover all public key cryptography, expires October 6, 1997. After that date, at least some forms of public key cryptography will be unpatented in the U.S. The RSA patent expires September 20, 2000. It is possible that the next three years will see greater use of discrete log cryptography because of the patent state, although RSA has a significant "brand" advantage in the business market. (This patent info is from "Handbook of Applied Cryptography", from Menezes et al, which I recommend as a supplement to Schneier.) Hal

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Admin Feigns Back Off On Crypto Bill
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

News report today: Reinsch told reporters that strategy will be to follow advice he has been given and not to circulate Administration draft bill. Issue is so polarized, he said, that that bill would be dismissed quickly, and some of its content that lawmakers might want to adopt also would be rejected because it came from Administration. Reinsch said it's close call, and Administration is reevaluating its tactics constantly. This seems to coordinate with Kerrey's initiative to lump all crypto bills into one "acceptable to the leadership and the White House." http://jya.com/backoff.htm BTW, another report claims that proposed new regs will allow banks the special privilege of strong crypto if they come up with an acceptable KMI within two years. This seems to be what Kerrey means when he says NSA's Crowell is working with industry to develop an acceptable KMI along the lines of what government is preparing for its own use. All interests to be subservient to the Number One interest?

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"constructive" possession of a gun
by William H. Geiger III 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Senate Judiciary Committe -- 08 May 1997 Well the JackBoots are at it again. Under current Federal Law 5yrs can be tacked on to a criminal sentance if a gun is used in the commision of a crime. Now they have a new twist to add: "constructive" possession of a gun during the commision of a crime. Now what does "constructive" possession mean? Well according to those who testified from the various depts of the Excutive Branch it means that a gun happens to be in the area, or the potential to use a gun or if you recoment that someone else use a gun durring the commission of a crime even though the weapon was never used. Some examples given: If durring the planning of a bank robbery you recomend that a gun be used durring the robbery even though you did not use the weapon or was not even present durring the robbery you could still get the extra 5yrs. If durring a drug deal taking place in the back seat of a car there is a gun under the front seat of the car you would still get the extra 5yrs even though the the gun was never used. If durring a drug raid on your home and a gun is found anywhere in the house, yes you would be elegible for the extra 60 months. <sigh> why do they even pretend to be running a constitutional government? - -- - ----------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. Finger whgiii(a)amaranth.com for PGP Key and other info - ----------------------------------------------------------- Tag-O-Matic: "640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Registered User E-Secure v1.1 ES000000 iQCVAwUBM3KQGo9Co1n+aLhhAQEHkAQAtBlcEtyXzRNKKI7HtEx0H1glMGmlzN+8 cQD91dlgHhNbN24C5Ixq+hDBvBYWTs0yUY8fHOIgMo5HqQWRr4VMG2yrfcM42vyH LuhKuldAYem4mKWoEm4wl0LYTxn18r0w/4f5NCT3VN+7aTrrme6QjYkN7BXNr6lU Mxd1YGeAFzM= =ZpFe -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Tag-O-Matic: Windows is to OS/2 what Etch-a-Sketch is to art.

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Wine Politics Again!
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text X-Sender: mcooley(a)pop.tiac.net Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 22:25:28 To: dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu From: Marianne Cooley <mcooley(a)nethorizons.com> Subject: Wine Politics Again! Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: bounce-dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Marianne Cooley <mcooley(a)nethorizons.com> This one is not just an Internet message. In fact, I should probably take it to my marketing list ;)--but just to keep y'all up to date with the latest commerce developments. Marianne forwarded message: Hello friends of the Virtual Vineyards and family wineries. Remember the felony direct shipping law in Georgia I wrote about a few weeks ago? Well, Governor Miller signed it, unfortunately. Ship a bottle of wine, go to jail. Amazing. Here it is again, this time in Florida. The wholesale liquor lobby is pushing a bill through the state houses making it a felony to ship a bottle of wine to a Florida consumer. If you believe, as we do, that this is unreasonable restraint of legitimate commerce, please register your opposition directly with Governor Chiles. This is not just a Florida issue, as other states are watching the development of such laws very closely. If you have friends in Florida please pass this on to them and urge them to act quickly. The bill will soon be on the governor's desk. Here is a sample letter for Governor Chiles with several ways to contact him. Personalize it if you wish, or send it as is: E-Mail: chilesl(a)eog.state.fl.us Fax: 904-487-0801 Phone: 904-488-4441 Governor Lawton Chiles Office of the Governor Florida State Capitol, Talahassee, Florida 32399-0001 Dear Governor Chiles: I call upon you to veto HB 725 (SB336), the felony direct shipment bill. This bill is sponsored by the state's Liquor wholesalers in order to protect their monopoly on wine sold to Florida consumers. Out-of-state sellers of wine support Florida Attorney General Butterworth's counter-proposal, and are willing to register with Florida, pay state excise and sales taxes and assure that all Florida laws protecting minors are observed. If HB 725 becomes law, Florida wine consumers' choices of products will be narrowly limited to the few wines represented by the Liquor wholesalers and Florida itself will be making a statement that small family winegrape growers and wineries in over 40 states deserve to go to jail, and lose their farms and vineyards, if they ship a bottle of wine to a customer who happens to reside in Florida. HB 725 is hostile to consumers and agriculture. I urge you to use your veto. Sincerely yours, Peter D. Granoff, M.S./Virtual Vineyards http://www.virtualvin.com 800-289-1275 415-938-9463 415-919-1977 fax 3803 East Bayshore Rd., Suite 175 Palo Alto, CA 94303 ********************************************************************* Marianne Cooley Internet Special Interest Group NetHorizons Unlimited SigNet.org--where online users meet mcooley(a)nethorizons.com http://www.signet.org 617.433.0825 Join "Life at Internet Speed" on www.boston.com Wednesdays from 1-2pm! For a chat topic reminder, send an email to majordomo(a)signet.org and write "subscribe life" (no quotation marks) in the body of the message. ********************************************************************** ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To unsubscribe from the dcsb list, send a letter to: Majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu In the body of the message, write: unsubscribe dcsb Or, to subscribe, write: subscribe dcsb If you have questions, write to me at Owner-DCSB(a)ai.mit.edu --- 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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e$: In Vino Veritas
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I love this prohibition stuff. First recreational drugs, then guns, then cryptography, then tobbacco, and now, the grandaddy of all prohibitions, alcohol sales, on the net in Florida, with good old vino being retreaded as a brand new thin edge of the tired old wedge of government behavioral control. Once again, a whole generation of libertines now becomes moralistic in their old age. Same as it ever was. Remember that the Romantics (Beethoven, Chopin, the waltzing Strausses, etc.) grew up to become the Victorians (the temperance, missionary, conservation, and "indian school" movements). So, maybe it *is* time to move to a country where the average age is under 30. Fortunately, there are a lot of them, thanks to exploding life expectancy caused by advancing technological progress and Peale's "demographic transition". Maybe soon they'll have enough wealth (and technological creativity) of their own to ignore the increasing constrictions of what Tim May likes to call the "Terror State". I'd gladly exchange a moribund environment of backward-looking luddism for a cheerful attack on the problem of making the future happen, anytime. Unfortunately, that doesn't look like an option, not just yet, anyway. The other thing which comes to mind with all this is, of course, financial cryptography, which, contrary to the opinion of more than a few on the e-mail lists I'm on, I see as the thin edge of another kind of wedge. It is financial cryptography which will kill cryptographic prohibition, and, someday, prohibition of other technologies as well. Currently, the relaxation of export controls on cryptography is now merely a cudgel to make us submit to ubiquitous wiretapping, and not for national security, the original purpose of such controls. Former National Security Agency Chief Counsel Stewart Baker said at the Digital Commerce Society of Boston luncheon this Tuesday that the management of the NSA gave up on succeeding with cryptographic export controls in 1993, and that their only hope was to enlist Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Louis Freeh in their efforts by showing him threat of cryptography to his wiretap apparatus. It's now quite clear that the NSA is fighting a retreat on strong cryptography, and that they're using Louis Freeh and the FBI to do it for them. So, at this point, any residual attempts by the national security apparatus per se to control exports, beyond assisting Freeh in slowing down technological progress, is just regulatory inertia. Still real and very dangerous to anyone who believes in freedom and privacy, but lacking any further accelleration to move it forward, once the momentum it already has finally goes away. In my conversation last year with senior people there, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), responsible for catching money launderers and other financial criminals and another would-be cryptographic hoplaphobe, certainly seemed to understand that if blind-signature digital bearer certificates are proven to be as economically efficient as a few of us on the net think they will be, FinCEN's ability to monitor transactions on the net will just disappear. Not only because they can't see those transaction behind the Chaumian blind-signature algorithm, but because the sheer volume of transactions (the micromoney mitochondria, digital-cash-as-microprocessor-food idea I like to throw around, as an extreme example) will physically choke any monitoring effort they attempt to build. In yet another paraphrase of John Gilmore's law of internet censorship, the net sees surveillance as damage, and routes around it. Again, inertia is a problem here, and the powers-that-be at FinCEN haven't given up quite yet on ultimately controlling the impending explosion of internet financial cryptography, as NSA's management seems to have with crypto in general. Mostly because all the starry-eyed claims people like me make on behalf of digital bearer certificates are just that, claims, with no empirical evidence so far to back them up. Yet. :-). Finally, that leaves wiretaps, and the FBI's Louis Freeh, a man who got his law-enforcement bones because of bugs and wiretaps, and who has never seen a wiretap he didn't like. First of all, Freeh faces the same problem FinCEN faces. Even if it were economically possible for the FBI to get the monsterous wiretap capability that the freshly legislated CALEA now crams down the collective financial throat of every telecoms manufacturer and provider on earth. Even if he did get access to all cryptographic keys, which he can't physically do, because economics will require that most of those session keys be disposed of as fast as they're used. Even if, in spite of both of those flights of economic fantasy, he were able to do so, Freeh still can't physically monitor all that communication, in the same sense that FinCEN can't follow all those transactions on the internet. Gilmore's Law strikes again. But, the joke here, of course, is that surveillence technology in meatspace itself is going to continue to increase. The eventual prospect of ubiquitous videobugging both by government and private sources means that a lot of David Brin's surveillance society will probably come to pass, and physical crime will continue to diminish as a result. The law-enforcement need for tapped or "excrowed" communictions will probably disappear, because even when Freeh & Co. couldn't just subpoena some stored private video somewhere, planting a physical bug, Gotti-style, will be much easier than listening in to an "excrowed" communication with disposable session keys. Much in the same way, I might add, as if the NSA bunch had never mentioned the idea of key escrow at all to Louis Freeh. That's because the inherent need of corporations to secure their own data from the hostile or accidental behavior of their own people would have already created a market for encrypted data recovery anyway. All the law enforcement community would need to do to get access to that information is the same thing they use for anything else: a subpoena. Again, the "rational control" of government destroyed what would have been a much more efficient market driven technology. Like the filtering of offensive internet content was before the Communications Decency Act threatened to "require" it, some very creative people were thinking very hard about private key and cryptography data recovery schemes and now won't touch them because the government wants to mandate key escrow, er, "recovery", into existance. However, the last laugh in the upcoming surveillance society will eventually be had by privacy advocates on would-be totalitarians like Mr. Freeh, and, it seems, on Al Gore, who seems to be Freeh's chief cheerleader in the Clinton administration. Remember that Stalin, too, came to totalitarianism from the absolutism of the extreme left, and leftist absolutism is something Mr. Gore's book "Earth in the Balance" is chock full of. Somewhere, Freddy Hayek is laughing. Anyway, in the ultimate twist of fate, all those ubiquitous surveillance devices will be predominantly in *private* hands, and, as the cleptocracy of the modern nation state continues to implode from it's own greed and power-lust, those surveillance devices will, eventually, be linked to privately held security firms, and, maybe someday to autonomous *munitions*. See the "Mesh and the Net", <http://www.shipwright.com/meshnet.html>, for some hints to this kind of defensive military technology. I claim that as we will be able to allocate network resources with some kind of cash settled economy, so too will we someday be be able to directly "purchase" the services of these kinds of technologies, without the centralized economic distortion of a nation-state. In other words, we'll be much more physically secure without people like Mr. Freeh, than with them. While that's a long way off, it's probably not so far as freedom and privacy advocates fear. For instance, if, say, 10 years from now, as some people have predicted, your home security system had complete visual coverage of your property with a swarm of very cheap CCD videocameras, all streaming that encrypted video over the net to some secure (possibly anonymous) storage place, then not only do criminals have a tougher time comitting crimes against your person and property, but so too does government. In addition, with such a system, there's nothing to keep a private cop or detective from appearing at the scene of the crime, probably at much less cost than that of a government one. Heck, the purchase of the cop's or detective's time could occur on a cash-settled auction market, for that matter. Paid by private crime insurance, of course. :-). Once again, information technology reduces government to the functional equivalent of ceremony, following monarchy down the road to mere decoration and, lately, occassional entertainment. Now, I agree that just waiting around for all this to mysteriously appear won't make it happen any faster. The faster the technology is built, deployed, and most important, made profitable, the better. And, these days, all this statist encroachment on our freedom feels, very debatably, like being a Jew on Krystallnacht waiting for the Americans to win the war already. But, this technology *is* going to happen, and, while nation-states aren't going to go down without fighting for their institutional lives, they *have* lost. Hopefully, the sooner they know they've lost, the sooner they'll give up, join the human race, and get on with building the future. Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- 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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