December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Unsubscribe
by Paul Gilberti 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Please unsubscribe me. I really thought that this list was for serious discussion of crypto technology/news. Instead, I'm just tired of weeding through my mail of immature postings of posters who are afraid to post under their own names (DL), and all the traffic regarding the censorship of the same.

1 0

democracy and L. Detweiler
by baumbach＠atmel.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

L. Detweiler is a champion of democracy. He has argued strongly for it here on this forum. I am not a supporter of democracy. A crowd of people has no greater rights than one person. L. Detweiler disagrees with this. I shall confront this disagreement with an example that strikes to its core. I propose a vote. This vote will have no time limit. If at any point you wish to change your vote you are free do so. This vote is non-binding on those who do not support democracy. This vote will be conducted publicly on this list. ======================================================================= VOTE: Proposition desist L. Detweiler will cease posting to the cypherpunks mailing list. He will no longer concern himself with the activities of those on the cypherpunks mailing list here or on any other forum. [I support]/[I Do not support] ======================================================================= L. Detweiler will be the only judge of the results of this vote. If he believes a majority of unique individuals carry this proposal one way or another, then by his honor and support for democracy he is bound by it. If he recants his support for democracy, then he is not bound by it. ------------------ I shall cast my vote here: I support Proposition desist. Peter Baumbach baumbach(a)atmel.com

1 0

Re: The Cure
by hawkwind＠dink.foretune.co.jp 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>It craves fame. It resents what it perceives to be the fame of the >better-known members of this list to be. It is jealous of that fame, >and wants some for itself. It is sick and ugly, small and unintelligent, >resentful of its underdeveloped brain and the fact that everyone he looks >up to instantly recognizes his stupidity. And now it has found a way to get >those very people to acknowledge it, discuss it, feel threatened by it. >It is used to rejection, so the endless repeats of it mean nothing. And >then even less in the face of the warm glow at the center of the >Cypherpunks collective attention. > >This is the first and the last word I'll ever write about about it. >If we all did that, it would go away. > >Coerr > REALLY excellently stated! Great analysis of the nature of the problem. Thank you, do you mind if I quote this to others? Alas, though, I can not from long and bitter experience agree with you about the solution. In the real world physical verbal/facial expressions of disapproval and disdain might rapidly rid the group of the problem person, but in cyberspace, such traditional cultural prods are non-existent. The aberrant user KNOWS he faces no meaningful penalties or censure and thus has no inducement not to continue his chaotic ways. I do feel that in addition to the observations you made above, that such people often take sheer perverse delight in the mere poisoning of the creativity of the group being creatively atrophic themselves.

1 0

Who is this Detweiler guy anyway?
by an48848＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

As a fairly recent addition to this list, I'm unfamilliar with the history of cypherpunks. Can anyone enlighten me? Thanks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.

3 2

Re: Knights who say NII (was Crypto(A), govt & NII)
by fnerd＠smds.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Steve Witham writes: > > > Giving the government savvy advice, telling them they should do whatever > > will promote, say, competition or open forums...what effects will these > > have? They may provide justifications, expertise and targeting info > > for interventions, for instance. New ways to get involved... Mike Godwin replies: > The government is already tempted to get involved, all the time. We can't > make the government go away by resolving that it would be nice if they > weren't around. Best to work from where we are, not where we'd like to be. Sure, I agree. It's just, will the process-that-be have a tendency to be encouraged to intervention in general, by positive-sounding things in what you say. > > I can't think of one positive thing (as opposed to the negative thing, > > disengagement) government can contribute to the goals of EFF. On being true police, see below. > Government is not the only potential source of harm--private industry can > be plenty harmful. Private business can be nasty, slow and unhelpful, but short of physical sabotage and threats, they can't do nearly the kind of harm and prevention of alternatives that government does. > > ...the most centralized organization in the world as the > > decentralist's tool or ally doesn't seem workable to me. The > > means clashes against the ends. > > I don't see how. One actually can use a weapon to keep the peace, for > example. Yes, you're right. I wasn't thinking about that because I assumed there's a minimum of physical crime in the communications industry. But now that I think about it, there's one thing State governments could limit: local governments' interference (franchises) in communications. But other than real basic policing like that, the means clash with the ends. Government is okay at nabbing true bad guys, not at trying to steer people in good directions. > > Telling a bull that he should make whatever > > positive contributions he can to the china shop...is worse than just > > not mentioning that there are none. > > I think you're reasoning from your conclusions here, not toward them. Well, sure, I'm talking from my view of how things are. Mostly I'm just saying that the *need* for positive government involvement is dubious while the *danger* is obvious in the current state of things, and if you aren't always saying that, then your well-informed comments and laudible goal statements can be misconstrued more easily, because in certain circles, radical deregulation is not assumed. That's my not-so-humble-but-trying (IMNSHBTO?) point in a nutshell. Your participation without this particular sternness, may, as one side-effect, encourage and assist where we all won't be happy it did--and maybe it'll fail to push through the single most helpful idea. I know, it's not your particular hobbyhorse. It's just what I'm afraid will happen. > What's more, government ain't the only bull in this shop. Although the FCC is smaller than AT&T, there's nothing in private industry with the momentum, power and difficulty of correcting that our layers of government have. Business without the power of government behind it (which status-quo businesses do have right now) faces much more immediate corrective pressure than government. Even combinations of big nasty companies are less of a problem. Throw me in that briar patch, puh-*leeze*, it's better than this one. -fnerd(a)smds.com quote me -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a aKxB8nktcBAeQHabQP/d7yhWgpGZBIoIqII8cY9nG55HYHgvtoxiQCVAgUBLMs3K ui6XaCZmKH68fOWYYySKAzPkXyfYKnOlzsIjp2toust1Q5A3/n54PBKrUDN9tHVz 3Ch466q9EKUuDulTU6OLsilzmRvQJn0EJhzd4pht6hanC0R3seYNhUYhoJViCcCG sRjLQs4iVVM= =9wqs -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

What recipient-end mail filters are available?
by Anthony Garcia 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm aware of two mail-filtering systems that operate at the recipient's end, procmail and Elm filter. Are there others? -Anthony Garcia agarcia(a)neosoft.com

3 2

Entropy, Randomness, etc.
by jerry＠terminus.dell.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

With all this talk about entropy, randomness, and gaussian distributions, I'm hoping we can clear up some of the confusion that I am having. My understanding of a random number is a number is generated from two or more unrelated events. In order for this number to be most useful cryptographically, it needs a even distribution. This distribution is such that any one number in the range of possible values is equally probable as any other number. Does this make this distribution a gaussian distribution? Maybe I just don't understand the theory behind the random numbers well enough, but with all of these terms floating around it is hard to keep track. The reason I want to get some of these things clarified, is because I am becoming more interested in some of the analysis people have been talking about being possible. Also how are these statistical measurements done? Is it as simple as a histogram? (useful for simple alphabet transliterations). Are we talking frequency analysis with FFTs and more advanced things? How do we measure the entropy of a random number, or a series of random numbers? Have people on the list done this, or is this still in the range of people that do math and number theory for a living? Give a particular set of data used to generate a random key, such as, a unix box's /dev/mem, how can one measure the number of bits of entropy? These topics are probably covered in some of the basic books in the field, but all of the reference's I've been able to locate don't go into specifics of how to measure the quality of random numbers. Unless some measurements are made, you can't really be sure that those /dev/mem MD5 hashes don't come up the same 10%, 30%, or more of the time. It seems that a lot of assumptions are being made about what is good and what isn't. I plan to build a hardware random number generator and I have a couple of different circuits to do it, but I've heard some comments about some types of noise not being "good" cryptographically. -- Jeremy Porter ------------- Systems Engineering -------- Dell Computer Corp. ------ jerry(a)terminus.us.dell.com ---- --- 70 4F BD AE 6D E9 D2 66 48 18 8B E7 64 7F 59 8F --- Support your Second Amendment rights to encryption technology.

4 3

soundfile stego
by jel＠sutro.SFSU.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> Also, I am told that humans have a tough time identifying >> the phase of the frequency components of the sounds they >> identify. So one could hide date in the phase relationships >> among the frequency components of, say, recorded speech. > >This sounds interesting. How about detection, how will some >random phase relationships stand out against normal phase of >various frequencies? I suspect that the unusual phase relationships would stick out, to anyone looking at the speech with,say, an oscilliscope. Eg, a squarewave would look pretty mangled if you shifted its component frequencies by some random amount, even though a human being might not be able to detect the difference between a squarewave, and a component-frequency shifted squarewave. On the other hand, how often does speech over some electronic medeum actually get analyzed this deeply?

1 0

A change of pace
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk From: strnlght(a)netcom.com (David Sternlight) Subject: Re: EFF Op-Ed from the NY Times Message-ID: <strnlghtCHBurB.7on(a)netcom.com> Reply-To: david(a)sternlight.com (David Sternlight) Organization: DSI/USCRPAC References: <199311301632.LAA28210(a)eff.org> Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 23:04:21 GMT In article <199311301632.LAA28210(a)eff.org>, Stanton McCandlish <mech(a)eff.org> wrote: >From the New York Times Op-Ed Page, Wednesday, November 24, 1993 > >A Superhighway Through the Wasteland? > By Mitchell Kapor and Jerry Berman [Proposal for new laws to regulate the information highway omitted] Like most elitists and autocrats, eff's leaders believe in government intervention for the things they like (this topic) but not for the things they don't (Clipper). They believe in the private sector unrestricted for things they like (cryptography) but not for the things they don't (the information highway). David -- David Sternlight When the mouse laughs at the cat, there is a hole nearby.--Nigerian Proverb

1 0

re: Big Brother/Bank Acco
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

M >Given the material in the WiReD 1.6 article, how likely is it that a M >true anonymous digital cash system would be allowed? I know, I know; M >there's "no way to prevent it"; however, I think that concept is M >based on the premise that the Government proceeds rationally. The East German government did not "proceed rationally" and yet is no longer with us. M >If somebody with an axe to grind gets hold of the "kidnapped baby" M >scenario described in _Applied_Cryptography_, plenty of public M >outrage and indignation could be generated. To what end. We have had the Kiddie Porn Over the Nets story of the Day every day for the last six months in the US and the UK. Have the nets been shut down? With the clearance rate for *murders* in NYC falling down towards 30%, I doubt if we have much to worry about for our minor "crimes." M >Go on, reassure me that "all is well". All is as well as can be extected and much better than we used to fear. DCF "I never expected to live to see the Death of Communism" -- Friedrich Hayek a few months before his death (and a few months after the SU's death. --- WinQwk 2.0b#1165

1 0