December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

[CRYPTO] Zero-knowledge commit
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timmy `C' May proves that the Midwestern gene pool needs some chlorine in it. <<<< o(0-0)o -ooO-(_) Ooo-- Timmy `C' May

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EVENT: Online town hall meeting with Rep. Bob Goodlatte (June 3, 8:30pm
by Shabbir Safdar 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

========================================================================= _ _ __| | ___ _ __ ___ ___ ___ _ __ __ _ ___ _ _ _ __ ___| |_ / _` |/ _ \ '_ ` _ \ / _ \ / __| '__/ _` |/ __| | | | | '_ \ / _ \ __| | (_| | __/ | | | | | (_) | (__| | | (_| | (__| |_| |_| | | | __/ |_ \__,_|\___|_| |_| |_|\___/ \___|_| \__,_|\___|\__, (_)_| |_|\___|\__| |___/ Government Without Walls _________________________________________________________________________ Update No.8 http://www.democracy.net/ May 29 1997 _________________________________________________________________________ Table of Contents - Join Encryption Warrior Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) - Background on Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) - How to participate in the Online Town Hall Meeting - Upcoming Events - About democracy.net ___________________________________________________________________________ JOIN REP. BOB GOODLATTE (R-VA) LIVE ONLINE TUESDAY JUNE 3, 8:30 PM ET Who is Congressman Bob Goodlatte? Depending on your point of view, the Republican Congressman from Virginia is either a steadfast champion of online privacy, or a supporter of censorship in cyberspace. This year, Rep. Goodlatte has been leading a successful charge to overturn the Clinton administration's encryption control policies. Goodlatte is the principal author of H.R. 695, "The Security and Freedom through Encryption (SAFE) Act." -- a bill designed to promote privacy and security on the Internet by encouraging the widespread availability of encryption technology. Goodlatte's efforts to protect privacy and prohibit the government from imposing "key-escrow" and "key-recovery" domestically have won him praise from Internet users. The SAFE bill was recently approved by the House Judiciary Committee (the first time an encryption reform bill has ever cleared a major Congressional committee), and is now headed to the House International Relations Committee where a tougher fight is expected. But in 1995, Rep. Goodlatte was a leading supporter of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) -- a law which for the first time imposed broad content regulations on the Internet. The CDA is currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court and a decision is expected before the end of June. Join Congressman Goodlatte for a live, Virtual Town Hall meeting and find out what makes him tick. You can submit questions in advance by visiting http://www.democracy.net. The discussion will be moderated by Todd Lappin, Section Editor at Wired Magazine. ____________________________________________________________________________ BACKGROUND ON REP. BOB GOODLATTE (R-VA) [This information is taken verbatim from Rep. Goodlatte's World Wide Web page at http://www.house.gov/goodlatte/] Bob Goodlatte, age 44, was elected to serve as the Sixth District's Congressman in November of 1992. He was re-elected to his second term without opposition in 1994. He is a graduate of Washington and Lee University School of Law, and his undergraduate degree in Government was earned at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. Before being elected to Congress, Bob served as former Congressman Caldwell Butler's District Office Manager from 1977 to 1979, where he was responsible for helping folks across the Sixth District. In 1979, he founded his own private law practice in Roanoke. He is a former partner in the law firm of Bird, Kinder and Huffman, working there from 1981 until taking office. Bob has long been active in his community, serving as President of the Civitan Club of Roanoke, and he's been active with the Parent Teachers Association at his children's public school and with the United Way of the Roanoke Valley. Bob serves on the Judiciary Committee and the Agriculture Committee. His subcommittee assignments on Judiciary are: the Constitution Subcommittee and the Courts & Intellectual Property Subcommittee. His subcommittee assignments on Agriculture are: the Livestock Subcommittee and the Department Operations and Nutrition Program Subcommittee where he serves as the Chairman. After Republicans won the majority, Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) selected Bob to serve as an Assistant Whip. Bob and Maryellen, his wife of 22 years, live in Roanoke with their two children, Jenny and Bobby. ____________________________________________________________________________ INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO PARTICIPATE * Interactive Town Hall Meeting with Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) * DATE: Tuesday June 3, 1997 TIME: 8:30 pm Eastern (5:30 pm Pacific) LOCATION: http://www.democracy.net In advance of the town hall meeting, please visit http://www.democracy.net and fill out the form to ask Rep. Goodlatte a question. We will collect the questions and forward them to the moderator on the day of the event, and will make every effort to ensure that questions from constituents are asked first. 1. Attend and ask Rep. Goodlatte a question! Please mark this date in your calendar: Tuesday June 3, 8:30PM Eastern at http://democracy.net/ 2. Get your friends and co-workers to join the discussion Members of Congress love to hear from their constituents. If you have friends that live in the district, please forward this invitation and encourage them to attend. _____________________________________________________________________________ UPCOMING EVENTS Visit http://www.democracy.net for upcoming event information. _______________________________________________________________________________ ABOUT DEMOCRACY.NET The 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, Public Access Networks, the Democracy Network, and DIGEX Internet. More information about the 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. _____________________________________________________________________________ End update no.8 05/29/1997 =============================================================================

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e$: Altered States. Transfer payment addiction, Le Infame, andPhil Dick's definition of reality.
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Sender: e$(a)thumper.vmeng.com Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Precedence: Bulk Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 11:57:32 -0400 From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> To: Multiple recipients of <e$(a)thumper.vmeng.com> Subject: e$: Altered States. Transfer payment addiction, Le Infame, and Phil Dick's definition of reality. At 1:23 pm -0400 on 5/28/97, Bill Frantz wrote in cypherpunks: > I object to the state, providing addictive substances/experiences when > private enterprise could do the job. If they are against addiction, then > they should set a good example. For myself, I deplore the state's all-too-successful efforts to "provide" that ultimate addictive substance, the transfer payment. >From the oxymoron of "Social" "Security", to direct subsidies on everything from electricity to sugar to helium, from deliberately mispriced federal assets like lumber, water and mining rights, to indirect subsidies like the tax-deductibility of mortgage interest and health "insurance", we use our government to bleed money, initiative, and, ultimately, freedom from the people who produce wealth and material well-being and give almost all of it to people who do nothing but consume and obstruct. We've all become a nation of innumerate dole-junkies, unaware of the economic consequences of our actions because the state has hidden them behind a veil of pseudoeconomics and political cynicism. The heyday of Roman dole was nothing compared to the "compassion" we increasingly have for ourselves. So, like a lot of people, I hope and work for the day when that giant mosquito on the Petomaine :-) river -- and its larvae in places like Jefferson City -- starts sucking air instead of the economic and moral lifeblood of people who actually work for a living. Then, maybe, this nation of lotus eaters will wake up to the fact that we've no one to rely upon but ourselves. Science fiction author Phillip K. Dick said, "Reality is that which doesn't go away when you change your mind." I would ammend it to say that reality is that which is still there when transfer payments stop. Voltaire used to end all his correspondence with "Death to Le Infame". "Le Infame" translates as "the infamous thing". He was talking about the church then, but nowadays it seems that *all* of us take communion at Our Lady of the Federal Transfer Payment. The end of opressive religeous control of society was the advent of science, the enlightment, and the triumph of reason that resulted from them. The founding of this country was part of that revolution. Unfortunately, unreason shed its priestly vestments and immediately counterattacked in the form of Rousseau, Robespierre and the French revolution. Since then, through the mechanations of Rousseau's intellectual decendants like Karl Marx, and lately, the people that Harold Bloom calls the "School of Resentment", nation states have justified more and more oppression in the interest of unobtainable mirages like "equality" and "security", and in perverting words like "fairness" and "justice" to mean envy and arbitrary confiscation. The very touchstone of reason in political thought, this country's constitution, is now standing on the bottom of a vast lake of irrational statist excrement, with its nose barely above the waterline. Sometimes, I think that, when we can breathe no longer, and we try to return to the shore of reason, we'll forget the swimming lessons the founding fathers and the philosophes of the enlightenment taught us. That we'll drown in our own sloth, envy, resentment, and, more important, lack of faith in ourselves. However, most of the time, I'm much more optimistic. I believe that the increasing ubiquity of all information, and, more important, the means for each person to competitively process that information himself to get independently replicable results, will create a world where people and their computing technology become the equivalent of scientists, testing and verifying facts about the world themselves, rather than having reality served to them on a lotus leaf. The operative word in that Proustian sentence was "competitively". That means markets for everything which can be put into ones and zeroes and sent on a network, which in turn means instant settlement and clearing of those transactions, and, most important, a myriad of autonomous economic entities operating in efficient, competitive, auction markets for that information. Fortunately, we have the technology, in the form of things like the blind signature algorithm, public key cryptography, Moore's law and geodesic networks, to make this happen. I believe that we actually have no economic choice, and so it will happen. It's as if we have found the dole-receptors in our economic neurochemistry, and soon our transfer payment addiction will be a thing of the past. "Reality is that which doesn't go away when you change your mind." Kicking an addiction is by definition a mind-altering experience. :-). Polemically, 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/ ---------- The e$ lists are brought to you by: Intertrader Ltd: "Digital Money Online" <http://www.intertrader.com/library/DigitalMoneyOnline> Where people, networks and money come together: Consult Hyperion http://www.hyperion.co.uk info(a)hyperion.co.uk Like e$? Help pay for it! <http://www.shipwright.com/beg.html> For e$/e$pam sponsorship, mail Bob: <mailto:rah@shipwright.com> Thanks to the e$ e$lves: Of Counsel: Vinnie Moscaritolo <mailto:vinnie@webstuff.apple.com> (Majordomo)^2: Rachel Willmer<mailto:rachel@intertrader.com> Commermeister: Anthony Templer <mailto:anthony@atanda.com> Interturge: Rodney Thayer <mailto:rodney@sabletech.com> --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 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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Re: US grants export license for PGP
by Secret Squirrel 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Joey Grasty writes: > > At 08:00 PM 5/28/97 -0700, Lucky Green wrote: > > > >PGP crypto approved for export > > > > Alright, what's the catch? What kind of GAK does PGP have to > > stick in to get this approval? Encyphering minds want to know... > > The catch is that the license only extends to business use by > subsidiaries of certain large US corporations. > > See PGPInc's press release at: http://www.pgp.com/newsroom/prel34.cgi Well that sure got buried by the "Truth Above All Else (tm)" press. Not surprising however. > > It may be moot since some versions of PGP are available around the > world, but this strikes me as patently unfair to all those companies > not big enough to be on The List. > > On the other hand, maybe this is the beginning of the end. It seems > to me that it will be difficult now to deny a similar license to > Netscape or Microsoft or... We have so many laws in this country, doesn't one of them prevent "discrimination" based on dollar value of corporation? ;) How about extortion... "You must be a large company paying buttloads in taxes and making sizeable contributions to the administration to receive license to use PGP overseas..." Can't we use this against them and force the license to be extended to everyone? > > -- Jeff (currently employed by a Real Company :-) > -- Mr. E (not employed by a Sellout^H^H^H^H^H^H^HReal Company)

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No Subject
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Wed, 28 May 1997, Tim May wrote: > At 5:02 PM -0400 5/27/97, Mark M. wrote: > > >I don't know the reason, but the IRS tax code requires that all passport > >applicants supply their SSNs to the IRS. The penalty for failing to > >notify is $500. I recently encountered this situation and just left > > Good for you, seriously, but you may not yet have heard the last of this. > As with "frivolous returns" (such as writing comments on the tax forms They can always harrass. Supposedly the State Department reports to the IRS anyone who does not give this info, but the IRS seems not to follow up, an the only thing they could do under the law is impose the $500 penalty which would probably not survive a court challenge (I forget the particular reasoning, but if they challenged and lost, no one would have any fear not giving their SSNs out, similarly to why they don't charge every cypherpunk under export laws - fear of grey is more useful than a clear line that will be more liberal than they want). When I applied for a passport (specifically because it is a government recognized ID that need not contain your social security number), I didn't write the IRS at all (you have no duty to notify them), and IF contacted, I would simply say "Who do I make the $500 check out to, and where do I send it, and who should my lawyer contact to challenge it". I have never been contacted. > The woman behind the desk didn't seem interested in my point and just said > that without a valid SS number, no registration tags would be issued. It > was then my choice to drive without tags (and get a ticket anytime a cop > noticed this and decided to act on it) or seek some kind of legal > restraining order (???, but probably $$$). IANAL, but: There is another statute which says that any time a government agency (it does not apply to corporations) asks for your SS# they have to state the reason and authority they have to ask for it (something like a state statute or order - I will look up the info and post here when I have time). Usually the behind-the-counter culture doesn't know about this. You can also give a religous objection. You can ask for the name of the person and their exact title then ask nicely to speak with a manager familar with the law or procedure, and that it might be illegal to ask for that information without citing the authority (with the above law in hand), etc. Since they have to have alternate ID numbers unless they only give licenses out to US citizens and not the Amish or others who have religous objections - you can ask for one of these alternate numbers. You can also be agreeable and say, OK, if you want to see my SSN so that you can confirm that I am me, I will show it to you, but I don't want that specific number on my license, and you can pick any number that is convienient to you, or I can supply my standard "alternate-ID" number. My state uses a number that is a wierd checksum of my name and birthdate and who knows what, so it doesn't apply to my drivers license. I had my SSN used (they didn't tell me that is what it was for, and this was before I was as aware of the privacy matters) on a professional license, and they did things like disclose it to people who bought their mailing list and it appeared in some mailings. I only had to call the state office, explain about the problems of identity fraud, and had a new license with a new number (which I use as my alt-id number) within a week (and they said they would not include SSNs with their mailing list). Some people are reasonable. Generally they try to find the easiest path. When it is clear that you won't go away quietly, and that you are going to be more hassle than it is worth (and that you aren't trying to evade any requirement, e.g. "You agree that I have proper ID, and qualify in every other way, and the only reason you won't is because I won't tell you my SSN even though you can't cite the authority you have ...") you can usually get them to either relent or say something slanderous in public. A silly but necessary game. Now if I can mail in a form, I usually use the alt-id number and write it in place of the SSN with a note right next to it saying it is not my SSN and that if you really want it you have to write me back and explain why they want it. (If they do, I send them a NDA with something to the effect that if I find it has leaked anywhere they have to cover all costs associated with correcting any record, etc.). Given that they are usually desparate to sign me up for whatever it is, and the mail is a hassle for them, they just enter the alt-id number. I keep a copy of the original form with the Not-my-SSN statement in case someone wants to accuse me of any kind of fraud.

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Censored pages
by root 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Message to prolife alliance, CCd to Cypherpunks list: I noticed an article in .net a few days ago detailing how the prolife alliance, a UK anti-abortion group, had been required to remove images of aborted foetuses <sp?> from their web site. Clearly this is another incident of jackbooted motherfuckers censoring images that happen to contradict their particular brand of thuggery. I am sending this message to the prolife alliance to ask them to send a .zip or .tar`d file of their pages to me along with the censored images, I am also of course CCing this to cypherpunks to see if anyone out there not in the UK is also interested in mirroring these pages, if so send me email, or send direct to prolife(a)enterprise.net, who will, hopefully, provide us with a copy of these pages. Note please cypherpunks that if there is any thread I do not wish to start it is a pro/anti abortion thread, therefore, I am making no judgements whatsoever, merely suggesting action to prevent censorship... Datacomms Technologies data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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Mailing list
by TSadoff197＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Please send

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Surveillance State Delayed
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Fascinating article in last Saturday's New York Times about INS plans to revoke the U.S. citizenship of 5,000 people who got that citizenship sans criminal background checks so they could vote for Clinton in '96. Now, the INS revokes a big 25 citizenships a year so they really have a job ahead of them. Demonstrates the enforcement challenges of bureaucracies living in a mass society. They think they can get away with administrative revocations but even those can be appealed to federal court. 5,000 appeals would be quite a burden. If they wait too long and two years pass from time of granting, the Service will lose the administrative option and will have to do full court proceedings to revoke. Even if they revoke, the "aliens" will still have their old proofs of citizenship (passports, etc) as well as their former status as permanent residents so revocation may be meaningless in any case. That's not the cutest bit, though. In addition to the 5,000 new Clinton voters with provable criminal records, they had to go through 180,000 records of people with various sorts of documentation problems to see if any of them were criminals. But the Feds couldn't do it themselves. They lacked the capability. They hired one of the big accounting firms (Peat-Marwick?) to CHECK THE NAMES against the NCIC. They got some 9,000 positive matches but naturally, they can't tell how many of those 9,000 matches are false positives. Lots of work ahead. The gloom and doom types like to claim that it is trivial for the almighty Feds to find out everything about every one, look inside the souls of all of us, separate the good from the evil and unerringly punish the evil. Omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence. Oddly enough, this claim is often made by people who, otherwise, don't believe in God. But this article on citizenship revocation gives lie to this claim of state power. Citizenship applicants have submitted vast quantities of information about themselves to the Feds. They have undergone years of a staged and complex process to move from nonresident alien to resident alien to citizen. At every point, they NARCed themselves out in detail directly to the federal government. And yet, that same government can't even tell if these people are "criminals." If they can't efficiently surveil and regulate this group, what chance do they have to regulate and surveil the other 260 million of us? DCF -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 5.0 beta Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBM43tToVO4r4sgSPhAQHhcAP+O3Kn/rTtonspM+fWF7S/MeoV/zENTgll Di4GCB1oZTlvU9je6ucRxpXvezsjgibmurApR22j3J0rhgHAVOCT8+EjNLAi3yGh mwXXuCH/Z55nAXVit8mZvXSrJ8OPFWMn57Nma33uaD48QJ7AFqVxISi7+pSI91Mx LR0oZ1nJE/8= =oo4o -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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No Subject
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Press Release Pretty Good Privacy Receives Government Approval to Export Strong Encryption SAN MATEO, Calif., May 28, 1997 -- Pretty Good Privacy, Inc. (www.pgp.com) the world leader in digital privacy and security software, today announced that the U.S. Department of Commerce has approved the export of Pretty Good Privacy's encryption software to the overseas offices of the largest companies in the United States. This makes Pretty Good Privacy the only U.S. company currently authorized to export strong encryption technology not requiring key recovery to foreign subsidiaries and branches of the largest American companies. Click here to view the list of approved companies. The approval allows Pretty Good Privacy to export strong, 128-bit encryption without a requirement that the exported products contain key recovery features or other back doors that enable government access to keys. More than one-half of the Fortune 100 already use PGP domestically to secure their corporate data and communications. "Now we are able to export strong encryption technology to the overseas offices of more than 100 of the largest companies in America, without compromising the integrity of the product or the strength of the encryption," said Phil Dunkelberger, President of Pretty Good Privacy, Inc. "We worked closely with the State Department when they controlled the export of encryption, and are now working with the Commerce Department. And we have never had a license application denied." The license allows export of strong encryption technology, without government access to keys, to the overseas subsidiaries and branch offices of more than 100 of the largest American companies, provided that the offices are not located in embargoed countries, namely Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan or Syria. "As far as we know, Pretty Good Privacy, Inc. is now the only company that has U.S. government approval to sell strong encryption to the worldwide subsidiaries and branch offices of such a large number of U.S. corporations, without having to compromise on the strength of the encryption or add schemes designed to provide government access to keys," said Robert H. Kohn, vice president and general counsel of Pretty Good Privacy. "Pretty Good Privacy still opposes export controls on cryptographic software, but this license is a major step toward meeting the global security needs of American companies." The U.S. government restricts the export of encryption using key lengths in excess of 40 bits. However, 40-bit cryptography is considered "weak," because it can be broken in just a few hours. Generally, the U.S. government will grant export licenses for up to 56-bit encryption if companies commit to develop methods for government access to keys. For anything over 56 bits, actual methods for government access must be in place. Pretty Good Privacy's license permits the export of 128-bit or "strong" encryption, without any requirement of a key recovery mechanism that enables government access to the data. A message encrypted with 128-bit PGP software is 309,485,009,821,341,068,724,781,056 times more difficult to break than a message encrypted using 40-bit technology. In fact, according to estimates published by the U.S. government, it would take an estimated 12 million times the age of the universe, on average, to break a single 128-bit message encrypted with PGP. "Pretty Good Privacy, Inc. has been working diligently to ensure compliance with the export control laws. Clearly, the Commerce Department recognizes the needs of reputable American companies to protect their intellectual property and other sensitive business information using strong cryptography," said Roszel C. Thomsen II, partner at the law firm of Thomsen and Burke LLP. "User demand for strong cryptography is growing worldwide," said Marc Rotenberg, director of Electronic Privacy Information Center, and a leading privacy-rights advocate. "This is just one more example of the need to remove obstacles to the export of the best products the U.S. can provide." Companies that are approved for the export of Pretty Good Privacy's strong encryption should contact Pretty Good Privacy's sales office at 415.572.0430 or visit the company's web site at www.pgp.com. Companies that are not currently on the list of licenses obtained by Pretty Good Privacy, but would like to gain approval to use strong encryption in their branch offices and subsidiaries around the world, should also contact Pretty Good Privacy at 415.572.0430 for information about how to be included in future government-approved export licenses for PGP. About Pretty Good Privacy, Inc. Pretty Good Privacy (www.pgp.com) founded in March 1996, is the leading provider of digital-privacy products for private communications and the secure storage of data for businesses and individuals. Pretty Good Privacy's original encryption software for email applications (PGP) was distributed as freeware in 1991 by Phil Zimmermann, Chief Technical Officer and Founder of Pretty Good Privacy, and allowed individuals, for the first time, to send information without risk of interception. With millions of users, it has since become the world leader in email encryption and the de facto standard for Internet mail encryption. Over one half of the Fortune 100 companies use PGP. In order to provide only the strongest encryption software, Pretty Good Privacy publishes all of its encryption source code and algorithms for extensive peer review and public scrutiny. The company can be reached at 415.572.0430; http://www.pgp.com. For more information, please contact Mike Nelson, Pretty Good Privacy's Director of Corporate Communications, at 415.524.6203.

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No Subject
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Last Friday, in a town hall meeting on education in Clarksburg, West Virginia, President Clinton made some news on the technology front. Answering a question from a parent about how to keep children safe on the Net, the president talked about the Communications Decency Act's travails in federal court. Then he said "we're working on" a technological fix, a V-chip for PCs that could protect children from harm. Later, reporters pressed White House aides on whether there was a new V-chip initiative. The new chip is out there, they said, somewhere "within the industry." From White House transcripts of the event and later briefings: Jim Eschenmann: Mr. President, my name is Jim Eschenmann. I'm a proud parent of a 4-year-old preschooler. Your administration, as well as the local board of education, has placed a large emphasis on connecting every classroom to the Internet. What additional measures can we take to protect our school students from the harmful areas of the Internet while guaranteeing full access to post-secondary students and to protect the freedom of speech? President Clinton: Well, you know, I signed a bill - when I signed the telecommunications bill ... I had a provision in there to try to protect against young people being exposed to some of the harmful things that are on the Internet. Not just pornography but, as I'm sure a lot of you know because of the events in the news in the last couple of years, there are even instructions on how to build bombs and things like that. There are lot of things on there that we wouldn't want our children to see. That provision has been thrown out by a court and is still in the courts, I think. So it may be that what we have to do is try to develop something like the equivalent of what we're developing for you for television, like the V-chip, where it's put in the hands of the parents or the educators. And then if it were in the hands of the educators the school board could approve certain guidelines. It's technically more difficult with the Internet. As you know, there are hundreds of new services being added to the Internet every week. It's growing at an explosive capacity and we're in the process actually of trying to develop an Internet II. But I think that is the answer. Something like the V-chip for televisions. And we're working on it. I think it's a serious potential problem myself. But let me say it would be a serious potential problem if they were not in the schools. I think putting them in the schools, because the kids are normally under supervision, you have a far less likelihood that the Internet will be abused or that the children will be exposed to something they shouldn't see during the school hours, in all likelihood, than at home. But I do think you need guidelines in both places and we're doing our best to try to figure out if there's some technological fix we can give you on it. Briefing by spokeswoman Ann Lewis (22 May): Q.: Three things that Clinton said - suggesting V-chips for the Internet, endorsing year-round schooling, and speaking favorably of high school competency tests before graduation. Are any of those new, or are those things he has said before? Ann Lewis: From my understanding, looking at the conversations back and forth on the V-chip for the Internet, as you know this is a principle the president has talked about for a long time, which is giving parents the tools they need, and it's the principle he referred to when he supported the - came out in support of the V-chip. He thinks it continues to be an issue. Second, if you go back and look at his speech on Net Day, when he gave a radio address and we did some talking about the Internet, he announced that he had asked the Department of Education and Secretary [Richard] Riley to come up with a parents' guide to the Internet, recognizing that it is a wonderful resource but that many families also feel they could use some help in ensuring that their children get the most out of the Internet. And, third, it's our understanding, and we just checked this with people at the White House who know much more about technology than all of us put together, that there is in fact technology being developed that would serve as the equivalent of a V-chip for the Internet, and we think that's what the president referred to. Q.: Clinton has talked before about giving parents ways to protect their children on the Internet, but has he ever before suggested the idea of a V-chip for the Internet? Lewis: Not that we know of, but we know - as is clear, I think, from his wording, he is aware that the technology has been developing. Q.: But has he talked about this before? Lewis: We don't think so. We were going to try to do a huge Nexis search; that's going to take a long time. We don't remember that conversation.... Q.: You said the technology is being developed - who is developing it? Lewis: I can't, but we can get you more information. It's my understanding it's being developed within the industry. Q.: That's like the stuff like Kidsitter and all the stuff that's already available on the Internet. There are a lot of sites. Lewis: There are a lot of sort of monitors you can put on that. We think this may be a little more advanced, and we're trying to get more information. White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry and spokesman Barry Toiv (23 May): Q.: Mike, yesterday the president endorsed the idea of a V-chip for the Internet. Was that the first time he did that, and how does the White House plan to proceed? Mike McCurry: Did anyone work on that yesterday? That was - there is some, I think, R&D work, technical work that's being done to develop new software. I'm not sure where within the government they're doing it.... Q.: Mike, I'm still trying to figure out, was yesterday the first time the president endorsed a V-chip for the Internet? McCurry: Did you do any yesterday on the V-chip question? Barry [Toiv] may have handled this up in West Virginia yesterday. Barry Toiv: Well, I'm not sure I have more than you got yesterday from Ann Lewis. The president has not specifically mentioned the V-chip, but this is work that we've been doing because he's been concerned, obviously, about ways that parents can help - can protect their kids with regard to stuff that comes through on the Internet. Apparently, it's our understanding that technology does exist within the industry. It's being developed by the industry. And so I think the president was referring to that yesterday. Q.: Is there any procedure that - I mean, is it something that - is there any kind of official "endorsement" you expect? Toiv: Well, right now - not right at this moment, but it's something we're looking at.

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