December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: RIPEM 1.2
by smb＠research.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

2) ripem still uses DES RIPEM supports triple DES as well.

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Re: RIPEM 1.2
by mch＠sqwest.wimsey.bc.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Subject: Re: RIPEM 1.2 > 1) ripem is illegal for non-north-american users Well, export of RIPEM is illegal. Then again, export of PGP is illegal. The difference is that PGP has already been exported and distributed/improved outside of North America. > 2) ripem still uses DES RIPEM has supported triple DES since version 1.1 (I'm the person who added triple DES support to RIPEM). > 3) using ripem supports the notion that PKP holds some valid patents As a practical matter, I am willing to use what the person on the other end of the connection is using. Some people won't/can't use PGP because they don't want to pay (and are worried about the legal issues, IDEA/RSA patents). Some people won't/can't use RIPEM because they are outside of North America, have a religious axe to grind about software patents, or believe that RIPEM is part of an NSA plot to take over the planet. So, I'll sign with PGP. Why? More people on cypherpunks use it. Mark -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.4 iQCVAgUBLYeIZuULSAGiySfVAQEALAP/UqI9CyYXlhDZnbHDG8QJR30sT7uFGQf4 ji/Hc5T48GI20YdW1IkymsNt8lzB8ECowX185g8I0Nxq4yirCWPohThwIrgqVNSt bEMf4cxSxBqRSJ4rVx5xi8c9soovxmgf+LSCNTW/rweJ1ogRVneKoBEl0WwHY1uA FpQhbd/xUdE= =lR1k -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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FOIA text
by jdblair＠nextsrv.cas.muohio.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

#include <bndwdth-apology.h> Does anyone know an ftp site where I can find the full text of the Freedom of Information Act? -john. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Blair: <jdblair(a)nextsrv.cas.muohio.edu> voice: (513) 529-4877 PGP public key available upon request. KILL YOUR Privacy in the information age is a right, not a privilage. TELEVISION Information = Power = Control. Fight the centralization of information.

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Re: (fwd) Who's watching you... 01
by ag588＠cleveland.Freenet.Edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Reply-To: ag588(a)cleveland.Freenet.Edu (John C. Brice, ESQ) From:Surveillance.Center/Population.Control/High.Command To:Field.operatives Re:Citizen.unit.miller/terrorist.free.speech.subversives Cc:[censored] Operatives: Once again citizen.unit.miller is getting out of hand. You have been warned about allowing these subversive postings of his [see below] to reach the Net. Having failed in your primary duty, you are hereby instructed to encourage the creation of the referenced message base. Once this is accomplished, these subversive elements will have unwittingly established (1) a method whereby we can more closely monitor the level of their knowledge; (2) a method whereby we can measure information dispersal rates; and (3) a convenient source for the infusion of disinformation. You know what to do. The Management. > > > >What do people think of the idea of creating a news group dedicated >to discussing surveillance technology and its potential impact on >society? > > >Jim_Miller(a)suite.com > > > -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am an attorney, seeking a position in the area of Computer Law. If you know of such a position available, or of someone who may know of such a position, please send e-mail! Thanks.

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how to get mini-JIR
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I don't know what happened to the message I sent right after my mini-JIR announcement. If it's just that TOAD.COM is backed up, sorry about the duplication. The issue you want is 1994-03. --------------------------- 1994-03-10 How to Subscribe / How to Get Back Issues (*) mini-JIR The mini-Journal of Irreproducible Results is an electronic publication, available over the Internet, free of charge. It is distributed as a LISTSERV application. We expect to publish 6-12 issues per year. To subscribe, send a brief E-mail message to either of these addresses: LISTSERV(a)MITVMA.MIT.EDU or LISTSERV@MITVMA The body of your message should contain ONLY the words "SUBSCRIBE MINI- JIR" followed by your name. Here are two examples: SUBSCRIBE MINI-JIR Irene Curie Joliot SUBSCRIBE MINI-JIR Nicholai Lobachevsky To stop subscribing, send the following message to the same address: SIGNOFF MINI-JIR To obtain a list of back issues, send this message: INDEX MINI-JIR To retrieve a particular back issue, send a message specifying which issue you want. For example, to retrieve issue 93-00002, send this message: GET MINI-JIR 93-00002 If you have questions about how to subscribe, or if you would like to re-distribute mini-JIR, please send e-mail to: mgeller(a)mit.edu [PLEASE NOTE: if you are regularly posting mini-JIR on your gopher, WWW, news group or mailing list, please drop an e-mail note to mgeller(a)mit.edu so that we can compile a complete resource list -- thanks!]

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Re: Re: re: re: digital cash
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Jim McCoy <mccoy(a)ccwf.cc.utexas.edu> > [...] > There will be nothing more liquid than information in an information > society. Nothing. I'm not sure about this. Liquidity refers to the ease of conversion to cash. Some kinds of information may be easily convertible, others may not. Even with digital cash the relevant definition of liquidity might be acceptability or ease of conversion to other currencies. Digital cash is easy to copy and so there will always be a risk in accepting it unless the bank is accessible or it is highly reputable and is known to cover bad (duplicate) cash. Communications problems, whether technical or political, may make such access difficult. And banks, being unable to collect assets by force to cover their debts, may be vulnerable to some kinds of failures that governments are not. > Seriously, the secret is to remember that the net transcends geopolitical > boundaries. All you need is _one_ bank that can/will convert cash to > digital money and then _everyone in the world who can get an internet > connection can use it_. Well, there are some more requirements. The bank has to be in a setup where it cannot easily be shut down, or more specifically it does not experience any reasonable probability of being shut down in the near future. The net links have to be reliable, as I mentioned above. The bank presumably has to convert digital money back to cash as well as converting in the other direction. The question is, how do you get your cash to/from the bank? Via an anonymous, private, electronic transaction? If you can do that, you don't need digital money; your cash is already electronic and private. But if you have to send your cash the old- fashioned way then you are still vulnerable to the same government pressures you have today. > That is the real danger digital cash poses to > government authority over the monetary system. Once I can get my dollars > or dinars, or donuts exchanged into digital cash it is possible for me to > do things to it never before dreamed of. I can take my locally exchanged > digital-donuts, put them on the net, and send them over to a bank in some > small island nation with lax banking laws for instant conversion at the > moments rate to some other international currency and transferal through > several anonymous accounts, and then zip them over to a network gold server > that will create a certified bullion deposit for me in a real bank. This is the point in these kinds of discussions that I always lose track of things. We are dazzled by the picture of monetary flows flashing all around the world. What I am always unable to pin down is, what exactly prevents this kind of thing from being done today? If you want to invest in gold, you can go down to the coin store and buy some, right? Or you can put your money into a gold-investing mutual fund and use it as a checking account. If you want yen, or marks, you can invest in those. If the point is to do so secretly, why is it easier to mail your paycheck to the digicash bank in the Bahamas than to mail it to an existing bank there? > I can untracably convert my paycheck into a gold deposit in a foreign > nation while sitting in my living room wearing nothing but my socks. I can > conduct intricate financial transactions that are completely outside the > realm of my governement to regulate, imagine what would happen to the > governement if _everyone_ could hide and launder assets as easy as criminal > syndicates. If this does not cause some federal banker an ulcer or two > then they have no idea what the future will bring them, all the better for > us... > > jim Perhaps my problem is that my financial affairs are too limited to really benefit from intricate financial transactions. Investing in a non-dollar- denominated mutual fund would be a major adventure for me :-). If avoiding taxes is the major goal, my problem is that by far the bulk of my taxes are withheld from my paycheck. I know, Sandy or Duncan said, "What? You still have a paycheck?" but let's face it, most people do. It seems to me that the weak point in these bypass-the-government digicash schemes is the conversion between paper cash and digital cash. That looks like the choke point where the government can still keep control. Hal

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Re: digital cash
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mike McNally wrote: > > > >Neither Mark Hittinger nor Perry Metzger wrote: > > > > The global monetary system... > It was me, the well-known international monetary expert. And if it hadn't been him, it could have been me. Watch whenever I'm buying or selling precious metals or stocks, and do the opposite, and you should be able to out-perform the market just fine :-) Unfortunately, as they say, knowing Murphy's Law doesn't help either, so I'm not able to use this strategy effectively....... Bill

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digital cash hot and cold
by Mark Hittinger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Yes. There will be nothing more liquid than information in an information >society. Nothing. How about dis-information and lies? >> As more people see >> the advantages of digital cash then there might be bidding for the >> available pool. If digital cash supply is restricted in some way, >> early converters would gain advantage. >Limiting the pool is harder than you would think. Use all the numbers you >want, we'll make more :) If the supply of digital cash is unlimited, then how can it have value? --------- His system was just roadkill along the information superhighway. -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.3a mQCNAiz4FWMAAAEEALBCb7HZS7V4gbsp9yJ7Yty49jQ9wcgRhkLjNNgdyJbrJZCq 5/sv4Ljy/4AhVhjlJyZS8L3owS8l0ClZVzWw4/kO3KN7MPz4YPPR7+qIlPQVM0yv gWpJ43EZZ8b8cvAkE9HATCKWktY2ReRSX5DLnScDH/n5jivw+MD/UO8fURCVAAUR tCBNYXJrIEhpdHRpbmdlciA8YnVnc0BuZXRzeXMuY29tPg== =VbKi -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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The Joy of Digicash
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It occurs to me that digital cash could be a collector's item. Paper money is widely collected, as are coins. I got a book out of the library on old American paper money, and many of the old bills are startlingly beautiful. Interestingly, the old money is still legal tender so there is a floor under the value of the bills that you collect. Until 1861, the U.S. did not issue any paper money, only coins. In those days, paper money was issued by private banks (usually with state charters). The money was backed by dollars, coins, which the bank owned. Unfortunately, capitalism is a dynamic system and in those days bank failures were no more unusual than corporate failures are today. When this happened, the bank's notes became worthless. Counterfeiting was also a big problem with the thousands of different banks issuing notes. It is interesting to speculate that digital cash might lead to an electronic system with some similarities to those old days. Collecting digital cash has some problems. Collectors are generally attracted to items that are beautiful, interesting, and rare. Digital cash is interesting enough, but its beauty is rather abstract. Rarity is also hard to evaluate; each individual note has a unique serial number, and what it has in common with other notes of its denomination is the bank key and the exponent. Uncirculated notes are generally more valuable than others in the paper world; with digital banknotes the only way to tell whether it has been "circulated" would be to have access to the bank's database of spent notes, to verify that the note had never been deposited. Rarity could be determined by the bank's key and exponent. The Magic Money system has a provision for the bank to periodically move to another set of exponents to represent the same denominations (in order to keep the size of the note database from growing too large). If banks would do this at regular intervals, then particularly the early issues would be relatively rare. One might even have an early banknote notarized (digitally timestamped) so that one could prove its value in later years. Beauty is harder to deal with. Strictly speaking, digital cash is invisible, consisting only of an information pattern in RAM chips or on a disk. The numbers which represent the cash can be printed out, though, and this representation could perhaps have some beauty. Unfortunately, in my opinion several lines of random hex digits are not beautiful. I have been working on ideas to display the information in digital cash in some other way that is more esthetic. It would be nice if the display somehow only worked for correctly signed cash notes, with forged cash not displaying anything nice. My general idea is to display a "fingerprint" of each individual banknote, something that is unique to that note and which has a sort of beauty. One idea I have worked on is to seed a 1-D cellular automaton with a bit pattern based on the digital cash. This seed is then processed by the CA algorithm to produce some pattern, with each row being a function of the previous row. My thought was to start the CA at the top and the bottom of the screen with the two different functions applied to the cash which should be equal if the cash validates (taking the number to the proper exponent on one hand, and applying the MD5 hash of the serial number on the other, for the case of magic money). Then we work inwards with the two seeds. Proper cash will produce a symmetrical pattern. By choosing good CA rules, the patterns will be different for each bill, some nicer than others, leading to attractive fractal-looking patterns for many bills. When you wanted to "look at your money" you could run the program on the digital cash. People might even trade for especially attractive bills. A similar idea is to use the cash as the basis for some fractal algorithm. Many fractals have the property that most of the plane is plain, while only a fraction looks really fractal. Digital cash has the property that when exponentiated it leads to a number most of whose bits are fixed but which has a small number of varying bits. If we had a mapping which took the fixed digicash bits onto the interesting parts of the fractal, then fake cash would not produce pretty pictures, while real cash would produce some part of a beautiful fractal. Again, you would have validation and beauty being tied together. I've been doing some experiments with the first idea, hoping to produce something nice. With a little more thought I hope to come up with a viewer for your Magic Money that will bring out its natural beauty and rarity. This will be a must for all serious collectors of digicash. Hal

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OTP for remailers?
by jimn8＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I hope this isn't redundant; if this idea has been covered, sorry. Wouldn't it make sense for remailers to use OTP's for encryption? Public keys are great, but they can be black-bagged. I'd imagine that a copy of the private key to a popular remailer could be very valuable to anyone who could monitor remailer traffic transparently. A one-time pad on CD-ROM should hold enough pad data to last for several days' worth of data sent between remailers, even at high message volumes. So OTP's could be used practically between friendly remailers. Do existing remailers change their public keys often enough to limit exposure by their users in the event of the key being compromised? If so, perhaps I should be less concerned than I am. Nevertheless, I'd like to be able to talk to a remailer via a one-time pad. The OTP could be sold to remailer users as a means of generating revenue (a OTP CD-ROM could be made for about $20 and sold for a very reasonable price but still be profitable!) Once the OTP is used, it can (and should) be destroyed. On the other hand, data encrypted with a public key is vulnerable to black bag attacks on that key, as I just said. The cost of burning CD-ROMs is going down pretty rapidly. Wholesale cost of a burning mechanism should be well under $1,000 within the next year or two, and RNG hardware is coming online too. Blank media runs $15-$20, although Kodak sells PhotoCD media cheaper, at a loss, to developers who promise to use the discs for PhotoCD images ;) I don't really have anything in principle against the use of public keys for remailers; it would just make me feel a bit easier about their security if the private key couldn't be black-bagged with a using them if my communication to them couldn't be black-bagged with a simple bug that transmits the private key. I'd imagine a bus snooper chip could be made easily enough that could look for instruction and data flow corresponding to keys, and transmit it over low bandwidth channels to a listening station. I find it harder to imagine a device that could tap an entire data stream from a hard drive and transmit the complete contents undetected (assuming the remailer operator checks for bugs.) Now for a discussion on how to get a OTP CD from Finland without having the mail intercepted... nahh, never mind. - Jim Nitchals

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