December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

"How many times erased does DOD want?"
by Ng Pheng Siong 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, I'm looking for the news posting with the subject line as above. Poster David Hayes, comp.periphs.scsi, 24 July 91, message-id 1991Jul24.050701.16005(a)sulaco.lonestar.org. Got no luck with Dejanews, reference.com and Altavista. The topic is data recovery from magnetic media. Also appreciate any pointers to info on same. TIA. Cheers. - PS Ng Pheng Siong <jlumstoi(a)pacific.net.sg>

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Queen of Pseudononymity
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://customnews.cnn.com/cnews/pna.show_story?p_art_id=186693&p_section_na… British Queen Admits to Being a Keen Web Surfer NewsBytes 22-JUL-97 LONDON, ENGLAND, 1997 JUL 22 (Newsbytes) -- By Sylvia Dennis. Buckingham Palace's press office has revealed that one of the reasons for the opening of the Royal World Wide Web site at http://www.royal.gov.uk in March of this year was Queen Elizabeth's fondness of the Internet. According to press reports in the serious UK press over the weekend, both The Queen and her husband, HRH Prince Phillip, The Duke of Edinburgh, are keen users of the Internet. The Queen is apparently using Internet e-mail to keep in touch with favored UK citizens. Rather than use the obvious e-mail address of one(a)buckinghampalace.co.uk, however The Queen is apparently using a number of pseudonyms to hide her true identity. Only the recipients of her e-mail are alleged to know who is really behind their messages. -- He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

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Re: Problems with anonymous escrow 2--response
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anonymity & reputation as assets: >From Hal: Besides the question of trustworthiness, another problem I see with anonymous escrow agents applies more generally to any form of anonymous business. Anonymity makes sense to me for the individual. Each person manages his own affairs and he can keep secret or reveal what he wants. But at the business level it is going to be much harder to keep the same level of secrecy. >From Tim: ...what good would assets do if they can't be traced? More generally, reputation capital is what they need, not physical assets. ............................................................... I'm not seeing the relationship of these two concepts of anonymity in conjunction with reputation. How could such attributes co-exist? Can they really function successfully together for both the agent & their client: how could one individual or escrow agent be both unknowable and yet depend upon reputation capital to go on? To have reputation means that one's behavior from the past must be known & evaluated for future interactions, but to be anonymous means that their client will not know who that particular entity is with whom they is dealing: so would this like doing business with God, where you only know what s/he's *supposed* to deliver, but never really know who it is wot does the deed, or whether there really is one? Blanc

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Re: Government and Repression
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We're getting fairly far off topic here..... if we're going to talk about anarchy, some spontaneous order would be useful :-) > I disagree: In the U. S. we have real repression. Current real total > taxation is approx. 45%. I believe the serfs of Europe only paid a > small amount above 1/12 of their production to their lords. That's a > little in excess of 8.3% We revolted against English rule for taxation > that was tiny compared to current burden. Fairly typical taxation during English serfdom was two days labor per week for the landlord. 40% of an average US worker's work week is also two days, though serfs probably worked 6-7 days most weeks, less in winter. Serfs were generally not allowed to leave, while Americans are. Serfs could be drafted when there were wars, so can Americans. Control by the lords came partly from conquest, and partly (especially in France) from imposition of fealty in return for protection from invaders. Some of the somewhat vaguely cypherpunk-related issues are: - Serfdom and the social structures around it had troubles dealing with the emergence of merchant classes; non-government- controlled trade in an information economy may be similarly disruptive. (Serfdom was also seriously disrupted by the labor shortages following the Black Death, which gave lots more power and mobility to the remaining laborers.) - Health care insurance is becoming increasingly used as a technique for keeping track of all citizens, especially kids who are otherwise hard to trace - not only has Clinton proposed a health care smart card and a not-an-immigrant permission-to-work card, the administration's health/pension regulation bureaucrats have been demanding SS numbers on dependents' insurance claims. One of the big reasons is to keep people from going into the underground economy, but another is presumably the draft - current draft reservation is massively evaded, though that becomes much more difficult if you have databases of kids. Bill

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The Real Revolution: Net Guerrillas, from The Netly News (fwd)
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 21:53:56 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: fight-censorship-announce(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: The Real Revolution: Net Guerrillas, from The Netly News ------ http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1183,00.html The Netly News Network (http://netlynews.com/) July 21, 1997 The Real Revolution: Net Guerrillas by Elizabeth Frantz The recent kidnapping and assassination of Spanish politician Miguel Angel Blanco by the Basque separatist group ETA has ignited a violent backlash that is spilling into cyberspace. In the wake of the widespread protest against ETA, the Spanish government requested last week that the Cable News Network (CNN) remove its link to the group's web site. Miguel Garzon, spokesman for the Spanish Embassy in Washington D.C., defended the move by saying the ETA should be considered terrorist and not separatist, and therefore links should not be made to them. The ETA has killed nearly 800 people since it took up arms in 1968 to fight for independence for Spain's northern Basque provinces. CNN refused the Spanish government's request, saying that it was standard practice to provide links that relate to the subject matter -- even if the subject is terrorism. More and more terrorist groups are creating pockets of resistance online, a fact that is beginning to raise serious questions, especially for educational institutions, where John Q. Taxpayer might be indirectly paying for a Zapatista web site. [...]

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Re: including key fingerprints
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

One of the better uses for key fingerprints is for inclusion in signature files and other places that a key itself is too bulky. By widespread dissemination of the fingerprint, the chances of a bogus key being undetected are decreased, since there ar more channels for the fingerprint to get to recipients, and more channels for the owner of a key to see any bogus fingerprints out on the net. It's also easier to validate keys with someone you don't know very well, since you've got more chances to see what the key for Joe X. is before meeting a person who tells you he's Joe X. and he'd like to have you sign his key, fingerprint 123456ABCDFEFG. On the other hand, if people widely start checking fingerprints they see, there *is* some opportunity for the Bad Guys to create a distrust and disinformation campaign by spreading false fingerprints and false keys. (Now that Tommy the Tourist's NSA-bait is getting more sophisticated, I'm almost surprised it's not including random PGP keys or fingerprints, whether real ones or bogus ones to prod people into checking signatures...) Bill

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Australia to Censor the Net
by apache＠gargoyle.apana.org.au 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Electronic Frontiers Australia Inc. Media Release July 20th 1997 GOVT INTERNET PROPOSALS -- THREAT TO FREE SPEECH; BURDEN ON ISPS Online civil liberties group Electronic Frontiers Australia has warned that the proposals for Internet regulation released this week by the Minister for Communications and the Arts, Senator Alston, and the Attorney-General, Mr Williams, would threaten free speech and place an impossible burden on Internet service providers. EFA Chair Kimberley Heitman said the Government had done well to avoid the totalitarian censorship recommendations of the Senate Select Committee in its June 1997 report. However the proposals were still "an unnecessary intrusion by Big Brother". There are several problems with the suggested principles for legislation. The principles make Internet Service Providers (ISPs) responsible for content created and published by others. "It is quite simple.", said Mr Heitman. "Content providers should be responsible for content. The whole concept of making service providers responsible for content is bizarre. It is as senseless as making paper-makers responsible for books published using their paper". The principles require ISPs to make judgements about how material published by their users would be classified by the Office of Film and Literature Classification. "The recent Rabelais case in the Federal Court illustrates the complexity of the OFLC classification system", said Mr Heitman. "But now ISPs, whose skills are primarily technical, are expected to enter the legal minefield of censorship classification. This is an extraordinary burden which can only result in perfectly legal material being removed 'just in case'." The principles do not explain how jurisdictional issues resulting from States passing their own censorship laws would be resolved. "Requiring ISPs to take into account whether material would 'otherwise be illegal under a State or Territory law' could be a total nightmare, especially for national service providers", commented Mr Heitman. "It would effectively allow individual States to impose their values on the entire country". The principles fail to take into account that clearly objectionable material such as child pornography is already illegal under existing law, or that the vast bulk of "adult" material is sourced from outside Australia. "The Clinton administration in the USA has just abandoned attempts to regulate the Internet - yet Australia seems to be trying to do the impossible all by itself", said Mr Heitman. There is still no evidence that there is any problem for which legislation of this kind is the solution. User education and community awareness are important, but these can not usefully be compelled by legislation. ENDS -------------------------------------------------------------- Electronic Frontiers Australia Inc -- http://www.efa.org.au/ representing Internet users concerned with on-line freedoms -------------------------------------------------------------- Media Contacts Kimberley Heitman Phone: +61 8 9458 2790 Email: kheitman(a)it.com.au Danny Yee Phone (home): +61 2 9955 9898 Phone (work): +61 2 9351 5159 Email: danny.yee(a)efa.org.au -------------------------------------------------------------- BACKGROUND DCA principles: http://www.dca.gov.au/policy/fwork_4_online_svces/framework.htm EXERPT: [snip] PRINCIPLES FOR A REGULATORY FRAMEWORK FOR ON-LINE SERVICES IN THE BROADCASTING SERVICES ACT 1992 1. The Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (BSA) should be amended to establish a national framework of effective industry self-regulation for on-line service providers, supervised by the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA), in relation to content transmitted through on-line networks. Objectives 2. The regulatory regime should aim to : (a) encourage on-line service providers to respect community standards in relation to material published by means of their service; and (b) encourage the provision of means for addressing complaints about content published by means of an on-line services; and (c) ensure that on-line service providers place a high priority on the protection of minors from exposure to material which may be harmful to them. 3. The legislation should encourage the development of self-regulatory mechanisms and in particular avoid inhibiting the growth and development of the on-line services industry by placing unreasonable regulatory constraints on the on-line services provider industry regarding the publication and transmission of material. 4. The legislation should codify the responsibilities of an on-line service provider in relation to objectionable content and other content that is of concern to the community accessed by means of the on-line service provider's network. [snip] -- .////. .// Charles Senescall apache(a)quux.apana.org.au o:::::::::/// apache(a)bear.apana.org.au apache(a)gargoyle.apana.org.au >::::::::::\\\ Finger me for PGP PUBKEY Brisbane AUSTRALIA '\\\\\' \\ Apache

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Re: OFFSHORE DIGITAL BANKS
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by tcmay(a)netcom.com (Timothy C. May) on Tue, 30 Aug 12:12 PM >The link with crypto is an important one: with the loss >of the U.S.S.R. as a superpower, the world is >"unipolar" in terms of real superpower force. The U.S. >can throw its weight around, encouraging compliance >with U.S. polices in most areas. Everything from >abortion policy to banking secrecy laws to key >escrow. > >(I'm not saying the U.S. threatens force against, say, >Luxembourg or Italy, just that the pressures to go >along with the U.S. New World Order are strong. Tim, would you expand the link to crypto of unipolar superpower? Maybe some of the non-US c'punks can add more. Here's my >$.02: Some folks in other countries of more afraid of the USG and national security capitalism (protection of "national interest") than some of us are. They view it as normal that the Government will advance and protect interests of its economy, including, if necessary, by military force. Those who have lived abroad know that fear of our foreign policy is greater than the US public may want to believe. Our domestic-oriented politics clouds understanding of the effects of what is perceived to be aggression against the sovereignty of other nations' culture. Other countries' drive for nuclear weapons, or alliances with those who have nuclear capabilities, is based what they think is a "real politik" necessity to the loss of being able to balance the Soviets against the US. China, as the most obvious example, is working this fear-of-the-west hard to gain support in Asia and the Middle East for its nuclear program. Smaller countries have shown in their UN votes that they might welcome increased Chinese power to offset the Soviet loss, even as they hold out hands to the US. It will be difficult to convince these skeptics that US business can compete in the world without military backing. John

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FW: Problems with anonymous escrow 2--response
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Oooopppps - I meant to say "...but to be anonymous means that their client will not know who that particular entity is with whom they {are} dealing" Blanc

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

17 Dec '03

Hey, has anyone taken a look at this file on RSA's ftp? ftp://ftp.rsa.com/pub/smail/smailbeta10.zip It is encrypted using only the zip cypher, as far as I can tell. There is a known plaintext attack against this cypher by Biham and Kocher. There are files compressed and encrypted in the archive that are freely available online. A known plaintext attack would seem easy but the files are compressed with a version 5.0 for NT. Is the encryption algorithm in this product different (more secure) than in other versions? Is it a good idea for RSA to distribute their software like this? Would it be legal to export (intentionally or not) files while encrypted and seemingly unusable if the algorithm used to encrypt could be easily broken? Cheers! --Anonymous

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