December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: All our eggs in one basket?
by hfinney＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Although Jim's protocol doesn't quite work, as Eric pointed out, because of the re-blinding, it does suggest another approach. If the bank sent you a coin and you claim you never got it (maybe you're telling the truth, maybe not), they can just send it again. You can't cheat because at best this will allow you to get two copies of the same coin. Contrariwise, if the bank cheats and never sends you the coin, just ask them to send it again. They have no basis for refusal. Here we see a case where the ease of duplication of digital money is actually an advantage, rather than the disadvantage it usually seems to be. Hal Finney hfinney(a)shell.portal.com .

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Digital futures - the catastrophic edge
by baum＠newton.apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There's been a lot of talk about digital money, digital identities, how it might work, protocols for verifiability in the face of spoofing, how to remain anonymous in spite of the best efforts of someone to find you, etc, etc. They all (to my unpracticed eye) rely on someone knowing a secret. And only that someone knowing the secret. Well, what if someone else finds it? What if someone breaks into your house, finds it written somewhere, or in some file somewhere? It's one thing to say "anyone who allows that to happen is stupid"- but people can be pretty stupid. Or, conversely, what if the number of people who know it is <1, rather than >1, i.e. what if you lose your secret key. In a world where your identity is digital, the consequences could be catastrophic. I can think of some extremely nasty consequences. It makes the recent stories of people who have been mistaken (& prematurely) declared dead seem pretty minor. So, my question is, what are the damage control mechanisms? Has anyone thought about this much? ************************************************** * Allen J. Baum tel. (408)974-3385 * * Apple Computer, 20525 Mariani Ave, MS 305-3B * * Cupertino, CA 95014 baum(a)apple.com * **************************************************

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anonymous posts
by Black Unicorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-> You say that you wish to remain anonymous, then state where you got your JD etc., but you can't give any details about banking knowledge that may be useful in digital cash schemes. This is a bit inconsistant. I would have (possibly) known less about you if you had just put some new info out to the list. <- Well, what did I tell you? You know that I have a JD from Georgetown and a Masters from some ( not accidently unnamed ) school in International Relations. Considering GU's 600+ member class, and my age (which could range from 26-76) that doesn't narrow it down much does it? In that I admitted being male, I suppose that about halfs the number, but doesn't leave you with much to go on. However, If I provided details about my place of employment and that banks I was associated with in Liechtenstein, where would I be? Not many U.S. educated types in Liechtenstein. Fewer still with a law degree. As it is however, you'd have to file through extensive personal lists past and present in a very secretive country. Even so I'm not about to disclose my former Liechtenstein employer publicly. Without this info, you'd be much better off trying to find all the people who graduated Georgetown and hold a masters in IR from XYZ. That's a lot more comfortable for me. -uni- (Dark)

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Privacy/Money Orders
by an15489＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Many people use local check cashing stores to cash pay checks and buy money orders. Money orders are particularly useful when you want to retain some level of privacy when purchasing things like dirty magazines, subversive literature, etc. There are currently two bills in the House that may force these businesses to close. HR 1448 and HR 3235. I don't have the text of these bills, but some of the check cashing stores in my 'hood are asking customers to write their Hon. Misrepresentative immediately and ask them to block these bills. Does anyone have access to the text of these bills? Jack ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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Privacy/Money Orders
by an15489＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Many people use local check cashing stores to cash pay checks and buy money orders. Money orders are particularly useful when you want to retain some level of privacy when purchasing things like dirty magazines, subversive literature, etc. There are currently two bills in the House that may force these businesses to close. HR 1448 and HR 3235. I don't have the text of these bills, but some of the check cashing stores in my 'hood are asking customers to write their Hon. Misrepresentative immediately and ask them to block these bills. Does anyone have access to the text of these bills? Jack ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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Re: All our eggs in one basket?
by jim＠bilbo.suite.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Eric Hughes writes > > Jim Miller writes > > > >If I failed to reply with a signed receipt, the bank could invalidate the > >digital coin. > > Unfortunately for this idea, when the bank uses a blind signature to > issue coins, it doesn't know what coin it just issued actually looks > like. The bank signs a blinded form of the coin. The blinded form is > unblinded by the withdrawer, and the bank cannot know what it looks > like. > I just got "Applied Cryptography" so now I know what you mean by "blinded form of the coin". I was thinking that the bank actually constructed the coin, but in fact the bank merely signs one of my blinded money orders. This signed blinded money order becomes the "coin" (at least in this scheme). That being the case, I still not sure how I am protected from a bank that cheats by bring the protocol up to the point where I unblind 99 of the money orders and the bank deducts the amount from my account but never sends me the money. I have some more reading to do, it seems. Perhaps I can simply trust the bank not to do this because it wants my future business. Still, if it were possible, I'd prefer not to have to trust the bank. After all, the bank doesn't have to trust me. Jim_Miller(a)suite.com

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Re: Privacy/Money Orders
by smb＠research.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Many people use local check cashing stores to cash pay checks and buy money orders. Money orders are particularly useful when you want to retain some level of privacy when purchasing things like dirty magazines, subversive literature, etc. There are currently two bills in the House that may force these businesses to close. HR 1448 and HR 3235. I don't have the text of these bills, but some of the check cashing stores in my 'hood are asking customers to write their Hon. Misrepresentative immediately and ask them to block these bills. Does anyone have access to the text of these bills? You can get some information on bills via telnet to locis.loc.gov, the Library of Congress Information Service. Here's what I found on those two bills -- it may be possible to get more, if you know how to work the search engine, which I don't. ITEM 1 OF 1 SET 1: BRIEF DISPLAY FILE: C103 (ASCENDING ORDER) 1. H.R.1448: SPON=Rep Fields, C., (Cosp=34); OFFICIAL TITLE: A bill to establish a limit on the fee which certain persons may charge for cashing checks and other instruments, to require despository institutions to cash checks issued by the United States or a State, and to provide that checks drawn by the Federal Government may be mailed only to the personal residence or primary place of business of the payee, to a Federal post office box, or to a federally insured depository institution at which the payee holds an account. ITEM 1 OF 1 SET 2: BRIEF DISPLAY FILE: C103 (ASCENDING ORDER) 1. H.R.3235: SPON=Rep Gonzalez, (Cosp=6); OFFICIAL TITLE: A bill to amend subchapter II of chapter 53 of title 31, United States Code, to improve enforcement of antimoney laundering laws, and for other purposes.

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PRZ on Pseudospoofing
by L. Detweiler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mr. Zimmermann gave a fantastic talk yesterday to a packed house at a Boulder (CO) Unix meeting. I really am extremely depressed that none of the CA cypherpunks showed up (NOT! <g>). He talked about the complex issues associated with his program. He's opposed to the Internet PEM standard because it is a weaker standard than PGP in the sense that it has a standard initialization vector, exposes recipients & senders of messages in plaintext (if I'm not mistaken, sorry, I'm not an expert but do play one on the cypherpunks list). Interestingly, he said that he thought that RSA was somewhat afraid of him because (according to an insider) they didn't want to confront his `folk hero' status. Mr. Zimmermann also had many comments on America as a police state. Unfortunately, I missed most of the talk because I am rather feckless in real-world navigation vs. cyberspace and had a difficult time zeroing in on the meeting geography coordinates (hee, hee). I would have taken copious notes that would have shamed the best CA cypherpunk and reported them wholesale if I had got there in time. I would be interested in hearing anyone else's impressions of the meeting. Mr. Zimmermann appeared to be somewhat sympathetic to my concerns about pseudospoofing, particularly on the part of cypherpunks. He entertained my suggestion of `signature revocation certificates' that would spread virus-like to revoke trust through the `web of trust' when someone realized they had been spoofed (betrayed). He seems to think that as long as everybody follows the guidelines in the PGP documentation, the `web of trust' would not really ever be corrupted. But he seemed to come around in thinking that a `signature revocation certificate' might lead to a more dynamic and responsive (and hence pure) web of trust. An audience member asked Mr. Zimmermann if his arrangement with ViaCrypt and licensing of RSA patents was `making stronger' RSA Inc. and (implicitly) their stranglehold lock on public key patents. He replied that the agreement actually made PGP stronger. BTW don't `harass' Mr. Zimmermann over any features, at least don't expect to see major revisions soon, they are all on the top of the queue while he is in the `promotion of Viacrypt' stage vs. the `major development and feature push' stage. ===cut=here=== To: prz(a)acm.org Subject: a simple question Date: Wed, 17 Nov 93 22:11:31 -0700 From: "L. Detweiler" <ld231782> [Some] cypherpunks have made it clear to me they condone, and perhaps widely practice, the following scenarios related to PGP: 1) real people signing imaginary identity's keys. I.e., I could make up different identities (pseudospoofing) and sign their identities, and have others sign these identities. 2) putting imaginary identities on the key servers. do you have some kind of opinion on these practices? they seem rather dishonest to me, to say the least. But what do I know? Subject: Re: a simple question To: ld231782(a)longs.lance.colostate.edu (L. Detweiler) Date: Thu, 18 Nov 93 1:39:13 MST From: Philip Zimmermann <prz(a)acm.org> It's not something I would do myself. It strikes me as having potential to lead to bad situations, as you have described in earlier notes. I prefer to deal with people only as my real self. It strikes me as unethical if used in fraudulent ways. That's my opinion. [...] Regards, Phil

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War of the Worlds
by L. Detweiler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Apparently, many Cypherpunks hold the Wells' program `War of the Worlds' up as a masterpiece of public deception. `The problem was that people trusted their radios.' Actually, I think the problem was that their radios betrayed them. The radio had been built up as a medium of trust -- with news reports by anchormen that were among some of the most admired and respected public people. They were betrayed by Wells. Wells had the sense to apologize, and many new safeguards and taboos evolved from the fiasco. War of the Worlds, on the radio, is similar to Medusa building up trust with tentacles in cyberspace, and then betraying trust by unplugging them when the going gets tough. Except, however, that Wells and other officials apologized for their lapse in judgement. With Medusa, there is no concept of `plugging away' to resolve an unpleasant situation. Medusa just severs a snake and runs away like a coward or a criminal. There is nothing but disreputable shame in this. When CBS (?) broadcast `the day after', a simulation of a nuclear holocaust, there was a great hullaballoo about all the care they had taken to ensure that no one took the dramatization seriously. Also, NBC ran into intensely unpleasant repercussions for their `fake exploding pickup' piece (didn't someone resign over this)? The point is that the media takes Truth very seriously. They go to the greatest lengths to achieve it. Psychopunks love to cynically talk about how the entire media is just another disinformation outlet. *You're* just another grotesque disinformation outlet, deceiving honest reporters and infecting respectable outlets like Wired and NYT with your soothing lies about `privacy' and `Big Brother' when really talking about `rights and protections for criminals'. The King is Dead. Long Live the King.

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Could someone briefly describe...
by an4914＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Could someone please give a brief description of the "Republic of Desire" for those of us who haven't spent [US]$27 to see Gibson's _Virtual Light_? What is it? A gorilla organization of some sort? What's it for? Why is it such a neat thing to talk about? Thanks in advance... ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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