December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

fyi
by hkhenson＠cup.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry to inflict this *DRAFT* copy of a letter on the net, but I have begun to feel rather paranoid--the kind of feeling you get from stepping into deep water and being among sharks. (I wonder if Danny C. would have done better if he had kept the net informed as he went along?) I have been told that the court clerks and judge's secrataries (who work for the Justice Departement, and are not really under the control of the Judges) do abuse-of-process favors like thoes reported below for the US Attorneys all the time. When the name spellings and facts get checked, I plan to print it out, put on my suit, and hand deliver it to the Judge Patel in open court. I hope to report in a day or so. H. Keith Henson 799 Coffey Ct. San Jose, CA 95123 408-972-1132 Judge Marilyn Patel Northern District of California 450 Golden Gate Ave., 19th Floor San Francisco, CA 94102 March 1, 1994 Dear Judge Patel: As a friend of the court, I suggest you look into the actions of your clerks. It appears they withhold information from you and play games with your calendar. Last Thursday, Richard Williams (a lawyer from San Jose) made telephone contact with Ms Moriyama in the clerk's office. He had a motion to file for return of property and suppression of evidence in a case which itself involves a report of fraud on Judge Brazil to obtain a search warrant. Ms Moriyama told him that the motion could be placed on the calendar of your court for Monday, February 28, 1994 at 2:30 pm if he could get the motion filed early Friday morning. Mr. Williams had the motion filed by courier with the clerks office by about 9 am last Friday. He fully expected to be before your court Monday at 2:30. I learned of the hearing Friday and made plans to be there myself since my affidavit is part of this motion. Two of Mr. William's staffers talked to Ms Moriyama last Thursday, and are prepared to testify as to her agreement to putting the motion on your calendar, though the option was left open that you might shift it to some other department at the same hour. Monday about 10 am, Ms Moriyama called Mr. Williams saying she had no copy of the motion (two were filed) and denying that she had even agreed to put this matter on your calendar, or even that she had talked to Mr. Williams or his staff the previous week. She tried to get the matter placed before Judge Brenin, and when told that a Magistrate-Judge was unacceptable, she got the motion hearing placed on Judge Caulfield's calendar one day before the matter is to be moved to Tennessee, inflicting great costs and business damage upon the plaintiffs. While talking to Judge Caulfield's clerk on Monday, Mr. Williams was told that the US attorney had ordered the clerks to remove the motion from your calendar after it had been scheduled! Though I do not know that Judge Brazil ever saw the letter I wrote to him, one of his staff called me and left a long message (which I preserved) on my answering machine. In it, the staffer stated that it was not a Judge's role to investigate the fraud perpetrated on his court to which I had directed his attention, and that I should contact the US attorney if I wished the matter to be investigated. Given that the US attorney has manipulated your calendar to prevent these very matters from being brought to the attention of your court, I believe this approach would be akin to getting a fox to guard the henhouse. I have never considered myself a naive person. In spite of this, I have always felt that the judiciary in this country was honest. I still feel this way, but how effective can an honest judge be when their information channels are completely controlled by one party in a case? Sincerely, H. Keith Henson

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No Subject
by nobody＠jarthur 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Men in Dark Suits, sunglasses and trenchcoats FORCED Bob Cain to Say: > >it is well understood that only voluntary means of controling this >exist and that liklihood is very small. Persuasion is not working and >the press has been whipped into a near hysterical state over this by we >and our friends (yes, we on the internet are considered to be the force >that has derailed their hopes and that was unforseen.) Thanks Bob... that admission from the opposing forces has made all of our effort in this fight worth it... This makes the complete devaluation of this "Clipper/Tessara" nightmare relatively easy.... we doing good... keep the pressure up!! This has lifted the fog of battle for us momentarily... > >As is obvious I don't consider this government to be a monolithic >antagonistic entity out to strip us of rights. Sure it has happened in >areas but they are reasonably isolated areas. There are *many* people >in this rather diverse government and in an advising capacity to it >whose sole concern is our safety and these people are worried. I find My Saftey is REALLY NONE of THEIR concern... they have already insured in court they cant be held liable for mistakes... >it interesting that there are many people here who lack the imagination >to understand that there probably are a goodly number of reasons for >rightly feeling the need for a Clipper like solution and that it would >not be appropriate for the government to be public about them. Why is >that so difficult to understand in these times of international strife, >terror and technology? Here I start to wonder about you Bob... OUR Government caused the current issues we are seeing haunt this country... and they want the keys to ALL the secrest??? Not a chance in HELL Bob... I AND OTHERS WILL MAKE SURE THAT CLIPPER IS TOTALLY SUNK!!! count on it!! anon p.s. to the punks... keep it up... you are doing a GREAT job...(anon pats himself on the back also!!) > > >Peace, > >Bob >

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low-overhead encrypted telnet
by Jef Poskanzer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've been talking about entrypted telnet with Craig Leres lately, and he came up with an interesting idea. The background is, sysadmins want encrypted telnet so that passwords don't fly around in the clear, but at the same time, they don't want to spend too many extra CPU cycles. I figured at least some sysadmins would resist installing an encryption-capable telnetd because of this concern about overhead. What you'd really like to do so satisfy these people is encrypt only when actually transmitting passwords. Problem is, that's hard to implement. Kerberos does it by supplying new versions of a dozen different programs, and it still only works within your organization, and even there it doesn't handle chained logins (telnet from host A to host B, then from host B to host C, etc.). It's hard because you have different levels of software trying to talk to each other. A solution that worked entirely within telnet would be a lot simpler. A compromise I thought of a while back is to encrypt the first few kilobytes and then switch to cleartext. This lets you log in securely, the average overhead for the session remains low, and there's no interaction between different software levels. But this also doesn't handle chained logins, if the second login comes later in your session. So here's Craig's idea: only encrypt the client-to-server direction. That's the only direction that passwords go, so it's secure; and it's low overhead because you generally type far fewer characters than you read. Just a tidbit for anyone working on encrypted logins. --- Jef

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Re: Dorothy Denning
by Black Unicorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-> Also, I've gotten a message through to Ross Perot about our fight against Clipper, and how to reach me, so if I get a response, I'll let you guys know. Anthony <- Oh god, that is all the cause needs. I can see it now: "Transistor brain Ross Perot opposes it! It must be evil!"

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Re: Virtual Corporations to Avoid Taxes
by an64372＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timothy C. May writes: > Here's an area that has long fascinated me: using corporate entities > as a way to bypass taxes on individuals. > > [misc. examples deleted] I've been researching this and related topics (offshore corporations, non-U.S. banks, mail drops, etc.) and I have many ideas and questions I'd like to discuss. Is this an appropriate mailing list or does a superior venue exist? Is there enough interest for a new list? Are there any commercial providers that run electronic mailing lists (if so, how costly are they)? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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: Stegonography
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There's been a lot of discussion lately about trying to make stego files not have any identifying marks, so that usage of stego would be indistinguishiable from noise. A more effective option might be to insert obvious (or somewhat obvious) stego messages in lots of graphics. Take every graphic file you own and hide something in it with a stego program. Put PGP messages in them (even including the obvious ---- BEGIN PGP MESSAGE ---- headers). Or a BBS ad. Or just cute little messages. Then distribute the files that way. Hopefully, people will take these images and pass them on without ever knowing there was stuff in them. If enuff people do this, graphics will become so "polluted" with stego messages that your truly secret PGP messages will be hidden in plain sight along with all the other graphic files full of stuff, and won't stand out. Plus, you could plausably deny having put it there, claiming that it must have been that way when you got it, and that you didn't know it was there.

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Re: Dorothy Denning
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I objected to Anthony Ortenzi's article on Dorothy Denning. Much of the attacks seemed appropriate for a politician like Clinton (:-)), but aren't appropriate for an academic who's doing politics about technical areas, where there so much more *useful* ways to flame her ideas, rather than her character. > Number 1, if someone is an encryption expert [...], why would they endorse > anyone but the recipient being able to decode the message? You're confusing technical tactics with political/social goals. She's an expert in what you can do with encryption, she just has different values about who should be able to benefit from it and how. > Number 2. [Newsday...] > The argument was just very, well, flimsy is the word I guess. I thought so too. Part of it was from writing for a non-technical audience, but some of her arguments have been appallingly weak. El Rukn was a particularly bad example :-), and as you say, it would be nice if she'd just come out and say the government should spy on all of us to keep us from doing Bad Things; it's an argument people can relate to and discuss (though it'll get a lot of negative reaction, which is not her objective.) > Anyone know: > A) Is she an expert in cryptography? Yes - her book from the early 1980s was *the* standard text on crypto for quite a few years, and she's published some other reasonable papers. Dr. Denning is department head of CS or EE or something at Georgetown. > C) Was she dropped on her head a lot as a baby? Probably got scared by a Commie Terrorist Drug Dealer, and comforted by some friendly federal police officer... or else was educated in government-run schools. :-) > Also, I've gotten a message through to Ross Perot about our fight > against Clipper, and how to reach me, so if I get a response, I'll let Clipper sounds like just the kind of thing Perot would enjoy. Bill

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Corporations
by dwomack＠runner.utsa.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mr. May mentioned corporations; I'd like to hear comments on a concept.... Let's suppose an offshore corp. is established somewhere; perhaps Grenada, perhaps Belize, or where ever. You work for this corporation; the corporation produces a product or service. Now, here is where the potential seems to be: the corporation generates bills from the offshore location. Customers pay to the corp., mailing to the offshore location. Constructive receipt, then, is offshore. My understanding is that corporate earnings are subject to the host country's tax, NOT U.S. tax. And, tax waivers are not difficult to get from these other countries. If one wishes to take some risks, the corp. then makes a loan to the individual, at a fair market rate of interest. This would be in addition to whatever miserly wage the corp. paid to it's employees. Of course, the person would be obligated to declare a forgiven loan as income; they would be on their honor to do so, since there would be no paperwork.... Any thoughts? Or is there a gigantic hole in my thinking? Regards....

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Clipper (Re: Dorothy Denning)
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"W. Kinney" <kinney(a)bogart.Colorado.EDU> writes: > I think this is very perceptive. Clipper is perhaps the best > they could _think_ of given an outmoded set of axioms. > If the presumptions people in government have about their own role > are no longer valid, they probably don't fully realize it yet, > or at least can't admit they do. I disagree. My opinion is that the axioms involved are 1) We're in power, and want to stay there. 2) Some kinds of technology greatly enhance our power if we control them. 3) Crypto Technology is a major threat to our power unless we control it. 4) Maybe we can stop it if we act quickly, at a cost to society that's low enough that we won't cause a major revolt 5) If we pull that off, the success will help consolidate our power. 6) The public believes almost anything we tell them, at least for a while, as long as we sound sincere. Of those axioms, only 4) is really in question, though 1a) is a bit shaky. Even George Bush could pull off 6) as long as the economy was doing ok. Some of the people, though probably not Clinton, have some other axioms, which I'll agree are obsolete or outright bogus, like: -1) Government is inherently a good way to do things. -2) We can accomplish a lot of good things with our power. -3) We're not really interested in power for its own sake -4) We're smart enough to run a planned economy > Clipper is just the kind of woefully clueless thing people in > that position would come up with. It's not at all clueless. It's offensive, unAmerican, and probably won't win, but there's a subtle malignity to it that's almost Nixonesque in its cleverness, and it's tacky enough they may be able to pull it off. Bill # Bill Stewart AT&T Global Information Solutions, aka NCR Corp # 6870 Koll Center Parkway, Pleasanton CA, 94566 Phone 1-510-484-6204 fax-6399 # email bill.stewart(a)pleasantonca.ncr.com billstewart(a)attmail.com # ViaCrypt PGP Key IDs 384/C2AFCD 1024/9D6465

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Cryptography Articles in April 94 Dr Dobbs Journal
by schneier＠chinet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Check out the April 94 issue of Dr. Dobbs Journal. There are four articles on cryptography, and a cryptanalysis contest. The first article is by myself, about the Cambridge Algorithms Workshop last November. The topic of the workshop was high-speed encryption, and ten complete algorithms were presented. The article discusses the workshop, briefly mentions the algorithms, and talks a little about designing secure algorithms. The second article, by Peter Smith, talks more about the LUC cipher. If you remember his article in the Jan 93 DDJ, LUC is an RSA variant that uses Lucas functions instead of exponentiation. Even though Smith claims to have invented this scheme, it has been around since the early 1980s (see p. 318 of my book). In any case, it's a good article. William Stalling's article is about SHA. It explains how the algorithm works very nicely. (If this is any indication of how his new book will look, I am looking forward to it.) And finally, I have an article describing a new secret-key algorithm: Blowfish. I presented Blowfish at the Cambridge Workshop. The article includes a description of the algorithm and source code (that hopefully will compile on any machine--call me if you have problems). DDJ is sponsoring a cracking context for Blowfish. You don't have to break the entire algorithm, just finding a weakness is sufficient. The best attack received by 1 April 1995 wins. Awards are $750 for first place, $250 for second, and $100 for third. Subscribers should expect to receive their copy of the magazine in a week or so, and newsstand copies will be available by mid- March. Bruce ************************************************************************** * Bruce Schneier * Counterpane Systems For a good prime, call 391581 * 2^216193 - 1 * schneier(a)chinet.chi.il.us ************************************************************************** >From owner-cypherpunks Tue Mar 1 13:49:25 1994

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