December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: 4th ammendment and Cryptography
by Phil Karn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I presume you are not a lawyer or law student. (Neither am I.) Therefore I would start with a couple of books on the Constitution and Bill of Rights that were written for general audiences to get a feel for how they've been applied in real cases, to set a backdrop for what you want to talk about. Two recommendations: "In Our Defense - The Bill of Rights in Action", Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy [yes, *that* Caroline Kennedy], Morrow, ISBN 0-688-07801-X. "May It Please The Court", Peter Irons, ed. (Book with optional cassettes). Narrated excerpts from actual audio recordings of important Supreme Court cases since 1955. I don't have the ISBN number because I've since given this to my dad. Very well done. Phil

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Re: subpoenas of personal papers
by greg＠ideath.goldenbear.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Chris Knight <uunet!crl.com!cknight> writes: > [quoting Phil Karn] > > There was a flurry of laws during the 1970s that extended somewhat > > similar privileges to reporters and their sources, but they don't seem > > to have held up very well since the Big Lurch to the Right. > > As I mentioned in the second paragraph of my original letter (The one you > didn't quote in your reply), I stated that those cases didn't hold > against reporters because of constutional backing (i.e. Freedom of the > Press). A protection which we do not have, unless you happen to publish. That constitutional backing is of questionable value - Rik Scarce (author of the book "Ecowarriors") recently spent months in jail in Washington State for refusing to reveal, to a federal grand jury, the whereabouts of a person he interviewed for a book about animal rights activists. He was released because a federal appellate court was convinced that holding him longer wouldn't make him reveal the information sought. - -- Greg Broiles "Sometimes you're the windshield, greg(a)goldenbear.com sometimes you're the bug." -- Mark Knopfler -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.4 iQCVAgUBLUYrNn3YhjZY3fMNAQGoPAP/W9ScBEcSeIFQ+ZKljRIyYGS9pV/vghEe EVTIBdmx9PQSwDTTIZITcApcr8vwdyGP3gzLghXfWDfYQz5ZhWlt7W8bgzZlBb3x geUVnSovXwWGqse2ZwlFEZrc8t1YfJcjYYktarhOFSl7Ko/K8ETEEY8zPaOLuRaM /5KygvnmWRc= =m1yI -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Free US Patent Searches! [REPOST]
by trestrab＠GVSU.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I received this message this morning and thought that some on the list might be interested in taking advantage of the service in order to get crypto patent info. Jeff trestrab(a)gvsu.edu ====================================================================== [ This is a repost -- the first attempt apparently did not make it out of my site correctly. Sorry if you see this more than once. Anyway, I thought that the people reading the groups this is being posted to would be interested in this info. If you have questions, please send them to spo_info(a)edsr.eds.com, not to me. Feel free to repost this anyplace appropriate. --chx ] Free US Patent Searches! Electronic Data Systems' Shadow Patent Office (SPO) is offering the Internet community free electronic mail-based patent search services until 5:00 pm CST, January 28th. Keyword and manual searches are now obsolete. With the EDS SPO technology, patent research is now based on the concepts and ideas expressed. The purpose of providing free searches is to determine the interest in such a service within the Internet community, identify any performance bottlenecks not identified in our simulation testing, and to obtain feedback from the Internet community. The SPO database contains US full-text patents from 1972 to the present. SPO utilizes the EDS-designed, high performance MAYA Concept Search Engine. SPO is dedicating 16 of the 32 MAYA CPUs and 20 Gigabytes of RAM for the test. The 1.7 million patents contain 80 gigabytes of textual data. MAYA is used to determine the 100 closest patents from the 1.7 million patents in the SPO database. To obtain a search, simply address an Internet mail message to spo_net_test(a)edsr.eds.com. SPO is offering Internet users access to two types of searches: subject search and infringement search. ---------------------------------------------------------------- SUBJECT SEARCH For a subject search, include in the mail text from 1/4 to 2 pages of text that describes the invention and then send the message. A mail reply will be returned to the sender with the search results The search results include the title, patent id, class and subclass, issue date, and rank of the 100 closest patents. ---------------------------------------------------------------- INFRINGEMENT SEARCH For an infringement search, include the words "patent id:", followed by a space, and a patent number. The patent number must be exactly 8 digits with a leading zero and no commas. patent id: 04626836 Text from the chosen patent will be compared with the 1.7 million patents in the database. The search results include the title, patent id, class and subclass, issue date, and rank of the 100 closest patents. ---------------------------------------------------------------- WEIGHTING To get narrower, more specific search results, you can emphasize unique features by weighting important words when doing a subject or infringement search. The following examples will help you weight keywords related to a subject or infringement search. Weighting Examples: I. Subject Search Example --- keywords --- calendaring scheduling electronic --- keywords --- A method of scheduling meetings . . . II. Infringement Search Example patent id: 04626836 --- keywords --- calendaring scheduling electronic --- keywords --- ---------------------------------------------------------------- MORE INFORMATION For more information on constructing searches and to see sample search reports, you may access SPO's help document by addressing an Internet mail message to spo_net_test(a)edsr.eds.com In the mail text simply type the word help. A help and sample file will be returned to you. If you would like to send us your comments and/or suggestions, please send a mail message to spo_info(a)edsr.eds.com. The information obtained from this free trial will play a significant role in finalizing the product to be offered to the Internet community. A second free trial is to be scheduled after incorporating your suggestions. During this testing period, the response time will depend on the amount of activity on the system. Based on the volume of usage during this testing period, EDS SPO will adjust the number of computers available to produce replies in a timely manner. -- cheeks(a)hydra.unm.edu

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Re: Curve Encrypt 1.0 Release Announcement
by edgar＠spectrx.saigon.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Will Kenney posted: Curve Encrypt 1.0, IDEA encryption for the Macintosh is now available for ftp from ripem.msu.edu, directory: ... Distribution: Curve Encrypt (c)1994 Curve Software. Permission granted for distribution within the United States only. It's fine with me if you make the software available by giving it to your friends, putting it on _local_ BBS's, taping floppies to stalls in the men's room, things like that. But don't export the software, and don't make it available on places like international anonymous ftp sites. And please make sure that the people you give the software to understand the export restrictions. This applies the application and the source and anything that _contains_ Curve Software copyrighted source. Is this sufficiently clear to keep me from getting Swanked? You need have no concern about Swank himself since he is not interested in Macintosh software. It should protect you from being "Swanked" (thank you for making a verb out of my name; a rare honor) by others -if- you independently wrote all the code. But if you copied, for example, the IDEA code from a copylefted product like PGP or SecureDrive then the copyleft applies to your entire product; at least that's my understanding. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLUWy3N4nNf3ah8DHAQGBvwP/XMRhqOr8OSOj5IHWMdRD0k8yi9bXDU+T 3oI3sSmshLSl3VRj9FRX4c6ZqUGFt6T10PWxN5Hc2/prkdx6Cvn2XnY9rejZ7F+2 aEJ2lUtXnAASm07BS7mCPzSZyyYR2THVLQVZapj5YSY+mybhYX5fRpOrOcUxwNH5 ZS7MB1gLOcU= =inso -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- edgar(a)spectrx.saigon.com (Edgar W. Swank) SPECTROX SYSTEMS +1.408.252.1005 Cupertino, Ca

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Re: Randomness of a bit string
by nobody＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I remember one of those MENSA-type tests where your were supposed to find the pattern in a set of numbers. One of the strings were the stops of a NY City subway line!

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unsubscribe
by smm＠engr.uark.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

please remove me from the list. There is still TOO much traffic to read. thanx, steve

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Re: Randomness of a bit string
by rjc＠gnu.ai.mit.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim writes: >But can he ever say "I can prove the number is random"? No. There's >always some chance an even-cleverer puzzle solver will find the >pattern, the key that unlocks the randomness. For example, most >ciphertexts pass nearly all statistical tests for randomness, "look" >random, and even _act_ like random numbers (recall the Blum-Blum-Shub >pseudorandom number generator and how good it is). But simple >application of the key turns the seemingly random >"100010001010110010101" into "ATTACK." But can we say that "100010001010110010101" has been ``compressed'' into "ATTACK"? How do we know? Let IC(x) stand for the amount of information storage used by x. Is IC(100010001010110010101) > IC(ATTACK) + IC(key) + IC(algorithm)? It is not at all clear that this relationship would hold. (in fact, I don't think it will even begin to work out unless the cyphertext is much longer than the plaintext) So in fact, cryptorandom numbers can be considered incompressible if you take into account the algorithm required to perform the operation -- just as if I had used a 100 terabyte dictionary to compress via lookup, or better yet, a one time pad. -Ray All of this is meaningless anyway. Information theory was proven wrong by WEB technologies when they invented a compression program that can recursively compress any input data down to 64k. Harddrives are now obsolete. -- Ray Cromwell | Engineering is the implementation of science; -- -- rjc(a)gnu.ai.mit.edu | politics is the implementation of faith. --

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Re: Why is Chris Knight a Twerp?
by jim＠bilbo.suite.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Please take the "archiving mail-list" thread to e-mail. Thank you, Jim_Miller(a)suite.com

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Archiving on inet
by Matthew J Ghio 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Wow, this usenet copyright issue has touched off a pretty heated debate. Let me just make a few points: In most usenet areas, there are no limitations on who may receive the group. By posting to such an area, you imply that you intend your post to be received by an unrestricted audience. This, of course, includes the possibility that some readers of the newsfeed will be reading it in a time-delayed manner, such as a dialup newsfeed over slip, uucp, or other protocol. A CD-ROM is just another form of delayed newsfeed. There are many areas availiable where restrictions are placed upon who may receive the feed. Many mailing lists, such as extropians, have this policy. Anyone receiving that list agrees that they will not redistribute the messages, and that includes selling CD-ROMs. If you have something which you would like to limit the distribution of, there are many forums availiable where the readers consent that they will abide by such a policy. The general readers of usenet have not consented to any such agreement. What offends me is that some hypocritical people would send a message to an area that they know is public domain, and then complain that they didn't want their message distributed. When you post, you should decide weather or not you want it public domain. But don't complain if you change your mind after the fact. I reccomend that everyone who is concerned about the distribution of some document that you wrote, (ie research paper, commentary, etc) post a message in a public forum giving a brief overview, and then state that it is copyrighted, and that anyone who agrees to respect your terms of non-distribution should send you email and that you will send them a copy. This also allows you to place an expiration time limit on it, so that someone won't find it reading outdated usenet news. To continue Lefty's cable TV analogy: A cable TV company can charge you a fee for assisting you in receiving a publicly availiable signal. However, they do not have copyright on that signal - they can't stop you from buying your own antenna, nor can they stop a competing cable company (if the municipality allows it). The cable company is selling you their assistance in receiving a publicly availiable signal. They do not own that signal or the copyright to it. They are merely a common carrier of the communication. In the same way, internet service companies like netcom are merely providing a service which aids you in receiving a publicly availiable signal. Selling the netnews feed either on a CD-ROM is no different. They are not selling the posts - they are selling their communications services which allow you to receive it. They have no copyright on the posts. They are NOT SELLING COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL - they are SELLING A COMMUNICATIONS SERVICE. If a TV station was to take the broadcast of a competing station, add their own commercials etc, and rebroadcasts it, then we have copyright infringement. They are taking someone else's material and using it for their own benefit - here we have copyright infringement. The cable company does not do this - they are simply distributing the signal unaltered, commercial advertisements and all. In the same way, if someone is selling complete, unaltered archives of usenet, it is a communication service. If they're taking posts, modifying for their own purposes, and selling at a profit, we have the possibility of copyright infringement. I hope you all understand the difference.

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Cypherpunk article in NY
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Life in Cyberspace - Joshua Quittner New York Newsday - Page 59 Tuesday, 01 February 1994 CODING UP A BIT OF PRIVACY MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. This must be how the Founding Fathers looked when they hacked out the Constitution : A roomful of young men, mostly--frazzled hair, eager eyes, wild beards, arms flailing and fingers jabbing in air, reaching for big ideas. You can't help but feel it; urgency tempers their voices. The earnest men plan and argue in this corporate conference room as the last sun rays of a winter Saturday afternoon fade in through a skylight. Time is running out for the Cypherpunks. There is much work to be done before the information highway arrives. The information highway --- that 500-channel shopping mall/cineplex championed by cable and telephone companies --- is a noxious concept to the people in this room. They are not technophobes or Luddites, these Cypherpunks, Instead, they are a collection of clever computer programmers, engineers and wire heads from some of the nation's best-known Silicon Valley software houses and hardware shops. This is their central question: In a future world where all information is centralized on a network, where all information is tracked by the bit, where every purchase you make and every communication can be monitored by corporate America, how does privacy survive? If you go to the bookstore now and buy a book, you can pay in cash. No one knows your name or what you purchased. "What happens to cash transactions on the information highway?" they ask. The Cypherpunks believe that they can preserve your privacy through good cyphers, or codes. But they must hurry, must get their codes out and their networks up and running. "The whole information highway thing is now part of the public eye," explain Eric Hughes, a founder of the Cypherpunk movement. "If we don't change it now, it'll be impossible later." The Cypherpunks know what technology is capable of. We visit them today because they represent one edge of the national debate on the structure of the information highway. And as we all know, extreme positions help define the middle. Many of the Cypherpunks have been heavy Internet users for years and hope to preserve the communal spirit of that freewheeling world of interconnected computer networks. They dread the coming commercial network of televisions and computers, saying it will displace the Internet and destroy many of the freedoms they now enjoy. So the Cypherpunks, with the kind of zeal they professionally bring to marathon, 72-hour sessions hacking computer code, are plotting to keep free networks alive. That's "free" in the sense of unfettered, unmonitored, uncensored. One way they're going about it is by spreading easy-to-use, cheap cryptography. Cryptography is the science of keeping two-way communication private. Computers, it turns out, are revolutionary cryptographic tools, able to encode and decode files quickly. For the first time, virtually unbreakable codes are now possible, thanks to computers. The Cypherpunks post cryptographic software on the Internet where anyone can access it, and can encode their communications, including electronic mail, pictures and video. The the U.S. government is concerned, as governments always are, about the spread of powerful cryptography (terrorists could use it, kidnappers could use it, drug dealers could use it, all of them on cellular phones that encode conversations). It currently is pushing its own commercial cryptographic standard, through a special chip known as the Clipper. The chip is reviled by Cypherpunks and other civil libertarians because it provides a back door that law-enforcement agencies could enter, with the proper warrants, for surveillance. By getting good, unbreakable cryptography out there now, the Cypherpunks hope, whatever the government finally decides will be moot. Software has a wonderful property, the Cypherpunks are fond of saying: Once it's created, it can never be destroyed. It can be copied infinitely, from computer to computer, spreading like a secret. Come what may, unbreakable Cypherpunk code, and Cypherpunk networks, will be out there forever, they hope. But just to be safe, the Cypherpunks are toying with different network-related plans to create an economy of "digicash" --- network money that, like the dollars in your pocket, isn't tied to a user's credit cards or other personal identification. Digicash will help pay for Cypherpunk networks and will allow people to purchase goods without revealing their identity. "I'm starting a bank, and it's not going to be a U.S. bank," Hughes says. He standing at the whiteboard now. A strawberry-blond ponytail dangles down his back and he grasps a magic marker in his hand. "We have several long-term strategies, one of which is the elimination of central banks." He tells the assembled crowd what they already know. Heads nod. Some people take notes. Hughes is a self-employed programmer in Berkeley. His hand flies across the whiteboard, sketching out a schematic diagram, showing how his bank will operate. The bank will store depositors' money (he's thinking a $200 minimum deposit) and disburse payments to anyone --- all over the Internet. It will be based abroad, maybe in Mexico. A Cypherpunk network bank is one way to pay for a network of truly encrypted, private communications, you see. "Is this going to lead the way to portable laptop ATM machines?" someone else asks. "First Bank of Cyberspace!" yells one person. "First Internet bank!" yells another. "The Nth National Bank!" Laughter. Billy goat beards bob. There is much work to be done. ******************************* Net Tips If you have e-mail access to the Internet, you can subscribe free to the Cypherpunks mailing list, which circulates to about 750 people daily. Send an e-mail message to: cypherpunks-request(a)toad.com with the word " Subscribe" and your name in body of message. More information about cryptography, as well as cryptographic software, can be obtained over the Internet by ftp'ing to: ftp.soda.berkeley.edu ******************************** Thanks to Lois for entering this article. --- WinQwk 2.0b#1165

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