December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

What is a Credit Union?
by cman＠IO.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I received this very good question from one of the list readers, and thought it might be of some interest to those following the Digital Credit Union discussion: > > Doug, > > Could you tell me what a Credit Union *is*? I don't know enough about > USAan culture. Actually, they started out in Germany, where I believe they still exist. They are one of the earliest forms of institutionalized cooperation, one of the founding pillars of the cooperative movement of the 19th c. Basically, they were a reaction to the big landowners and manufacturers controlling all the financial institutions; they have their roots in somewhat informal 'lending societies' which were groups of folks who would, rather than put their money in banks, pool it and lend it to members of their group. (A practice still common in Asia; even my students at various banks there engaged in this practice, and in fact were quite discursive on how they operated.) Nowadays Credit Unions are sanctioned by the government; however they still retain many of their desirable features. They can be created with as few as 300 members, they (legally) require only $1,000 starting capital, they are democractically controlled by their members, they are essentially non- competitive (old ones are often glad to help a new one get started), and they already operate as a national network to combine buying power for many third-party transaction processing services. Generally, Credit Unions are able to provide credit at rates lower than banks, and have generally had a much more customer-focused approach than traditional banks, although many large banks are catching on to this and have maintained parity on some of the technical innovations; it's hard though to duplicate the lending ecnonomies and general coziness of a bank that is owned by its members, all of whom either know each other or share a common bond. Also, to be a federally sanctioned CU, you have to have deposit insurance; the most common provider of CU insurance is the National Credit Union Asssociation, which also devotes a large part of its resources to assisting new or troubled Credit Unions. So, if for some odd reason I forget round fractional cents in transactions, I can pick up the phone and ask. Doug

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Health Reform Smart Cards
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

L.>"The Clinton Administration proposal would put smart cards in the L.>hands of every US citizen and some legal aliens that would L.>provide billing reference identification as well as carry up to L.>about 30 pages of medical data about the individual. "The long-term strategy for health care information envisions creation of a Point-of-Service information system that brings valuable information to consumers, health providers, payers and policymakers." [the FBI, the NSA, the DIA, the CIA, Janet, Donna, Chelsea, Socks in real time] The President's Health Security Plan -- Page 127 No smartcard initially. They start with cards "much like ATM cards". The "unique identifier" may be the SS# or it may be another number (they haven't decided yet but not to worry because it will be illegal (or at least against policy) to link health and other records. This is a continueing cypherpunks issue because it means we have to finish our deployment before January 1, 1997. That should be plenty of time. Today's messages: THE COW IS LAME, THE COW IS LAME. THE BALD MAN ATE CHILI, THE BALD MAN ATE CHILI. THE CORN RIPENED EARLY THIS YEAR, THE CORN RIPENED EARLY THIS YEAR. And now back to our regular program already in progress... Duncan Frissell "In the 20th Century, Health became the most important thing in men's lives so naturally they started to kill each other for Health." --- WinQwk 2.0b#1165

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Re: Breaking DES
by an41418＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Since I started this thread, and because I have always had a problem with the rude way many people discuss things in this group, I was wondering, Perry Metzger, what contribution your sarcastic tone and occasional insults make to your argument. I believe it is possible to continue this debate and stick to the technical issues without getting personal or being rude. I wish more people would realize this. Wonderer (peacemaker?) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

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E[gcd(p-1,q-1)]
by cme＠ellisun.sw.stratus.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry, folks -- the formulae I posted yesterday are flawed. More later. - Carl

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WinPGP
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

anyone have a site name for this beta of Windows PGP? Or just a filename, so it can be archiefied? -- -=> mech(a)eff.org <=- Stanton McCandlish Electronic Frontier Foundation Online Activist & SysOp NitV-DC BBS 202-232-2715, Fido 1:109/? IndraNet 369:111/1, 14.4V32b 16.8ZyX

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Re: PGP,etc. by PSDAA
by wak＠next0.math.pitt.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Look (anon ftp) in soda.berkeley.edu/pub/cypherpunks.

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Native American Encryption?!
by Arthur Chandler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I remember hearing many years ago that one of the branches of the armed aervices during WWII used a native American -- Cherokee? Apache? -- language to communicate. The Japanese (the story goes) went nuts trying to crack the code -- unsuccessfully. Two questions: 1) Can anyone give me a reference for this story (assuming it's true)? 2) If one used a natural language for encryption, and the would-be code crackers did not know it was natural language (say, Hittite), could they crack it? I seem to remember that hieroglyphs were undecipherable until the Rosetta Stone was discovered. But maybe current techniques would do a better job....?

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Re: EFF GIF recall/Duncan's question
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message:

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NSA Can Spend a Billion on a Computer
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Whit Diffie has some more info, including a clarification, on the differences between Hagelin and rotor machines: Forwarded message: To: tcmay(a)netcom.com (Timothy C. May) From: whitfield.diffie(a)Eng.Sun.COM Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1993 at 08h00 Subject: NSA Can Spend a Billion on a Computer Minor technical point > The Harvest machine was particularly good at brute force breaking of > Hagelin-type rotor machines, the "DES of its day" Hagelin machines aren't considered rotor machines even though their main moving elements do rotate. Rotor machines had rotating elements that were wired wheels implementing table look-ups, i.e., S-boxes. The six wheels in a Hagelin machine merely have setable bits around their edges. The are in effect pieces of binary key that rotate --- much like the C and D registers in DES. Feel free to redisseminate this if you like. Whit

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TIS testimony
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Just in...got "Testimony by Stephen T. Walker, President, Trusted Information Systems, Inc., for Subcommittee on Economic Policy, Trade and Environment, Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, October 12, 1993". This is about a 75k document, and is to be found via FTP as: ftp.eff.org: /pub/eff/temp/testimon.tis It begins thusly: "I am pleased to testify today about the negative impact that U.S. export control regulations on cryptography are having on one of the few industries where the U.S. remains dominant worldwide: the information system software industry. The major point of my testimony are that U.S. export controls do not prevent the international availability of good quality cryptography but do penalized the U.S. software industry and U.S. business in general." I'd post it, but it's 1500+ lines. -- -=> mech(a)eff.org <=- Stanton McCandlish Electronic Frontier Foundation Online Activist & SysOp NitV-DC BBS 202-232-2715, Fido 1:109/? IndraNet 369:111/1, 14.4V32b 16.8ZyX

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