December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Satellites, the NSA, & Clipper
by djw＠eff.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I just returned from a presentation at Comsat about Clipper and other crypto issues. They asked EFF & NIST to come and square off before them so that they could begin to think about the issues. They may not get too deeply involved, but most of the manufacturers & users represented seemed quite sympathetic to our position. I also picked up an amusing tidbit. All satellites that carry US government traffic must have an NSA-designed black box which secures the satellite control channel from enemy interference (ie. Libya tries to move US satellites around to screw up our communications). Guess who builds the black box. You got it, Mykotronx. ************************************************************************** "Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy." --Orson Welles ...................................................................... Daniel J. Weitzner, Senior Staff Counsel <djw(a)eff.org> Electronic Frontier Foundation 202-347-5400 (v) 1001 G St, NW Suite 950 East 202-393-5509 (f) Washington, DC 20001 *** Join EFF!!! Send mail to membership(a)eff.org for information ***

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Directory of 'punks
by Jim Sewell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

As another thought, would there be interest in compiling a list of cypherpunks who agreed to be included, their occupations, and any notable experiences such as "Served for 3 years on the Foreign Affairs Committee" or whatever. With tools like a "press kit" and a directory of members we will become viewed as a cross-section of America, citizens with a point of view shared by many, contributors to the general welfare of society rather than a bunch of fanatical computer geeks that haven't given anything to society. (well, maybe...it's a tough battle.) Jim -- Tantalus Inc. Jim Sewell Amateur Radio: KD4CKQ P.O. Box 2310 Programmer Internet: jims(a)mpgn.com Key West, FL 33045 C-Unix-PC Compu$erve: 71061,1027 (305)293-8100 PGP via email on request. 1K-bit Fingerprint: 8E 14 68 90 37 87 EF B3 C4 CF CD 9A 3E F9 4A 73

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Re: CIA & FBI, a marriage made in ___?
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Black Unicorn (from an earlier post) In so far as the law is a matter of perspective, I think everyone should try to embrace the concepts of the law, and in particular, the constitution. (from the above named post) Yes, I'm tired of the issue [of the political aspects of crypto] being framed as a crime problem that needs political attention through law enforcement when in actuality it is a question of regulation and domestic policy. ...................................................... I'm not seeing the consistency in embracing the concepts of the law, while questioning the regulation of crypto through law enforcement. It all rather looks the same to me: political attention-> law enforcement-> regulation-> domestic policy. ?? Blanc

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Re: Paranoia
by Phil G. Fraering 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>I personally can't think of any reason for an elite fighting force to >be stationed in an area of urban sprawl. Uh, last time I checked, the most recent two conflicts the U.S. may be getting involved in or got involved in were in Mogudishu and in urban areas in the former Yugoslavia. Not to mention the urban environment of Seoul. Whether you're a hawk or a dove, the fact is, the US has been, might be, or just plain is (if there's a war in Korea) committed to conflicts where there's going to be combat in an urban or "suburban" area. You might debate the wisdom of our overseas commitments, etc., but if you think we should have an army that should have as its hope of survival the idea that the enemy will always be fighting in rural areas, you're foolish in the extreme, and if you implement those ideas you will kill a great many of your own army. Phil

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May 4 Crypto Talk...
by lile＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I thought you might be interested. It would be great if some folks from this list could show. -lile *************** Please Circulate Freely *************** You're Invited to Our Next General Meeting! Admission Free/Open to the Public Wednesday, May 4, 1994, 7:30 P.M. First Presbyterian Church 1140 Cowper Street, Palo Alto (3 Blocks North of Embarcadero -- See Map on Back) Wire Taps and Cryptography in Your Future with Nelson Bolyard Everyone is talking about the Clipper Chip, and lots of people are wondering about the FBI's digital telephony initiative. This talk will discuss both of those things and provide some historical perspective on the battle between Congress and the Administration over control of standards for civilian cryptography, and CPSR's role in that debate. Nelson Bolyard is an engineer for a major computer manufacturer in the Silicon Valley. He has background in cryptography and highly secure systems, and is presently working in high-speed networking. Sponsored By: Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility CPSR\Palo Alto: P.O. Box 717, Palo Alto, CA 94302

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Re: RSA-129
by lefty＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Istvan Oszaraz von Keszi writes: > >Now let's see, where's my slide rule, let's see 5,000 mips years >at $30,000 /mips = damn, where is that calculator. :-) $30,000 per mips!? Want to buy a (slightly) used Quadra 700? -- Lefty (lefty(a)apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.

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Re: PGP Question
by Istvan Oszaraz von Keszi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Derek Atkins wrote: > This is a joke, right? Gee, either that or the Towers of Hanoi. O.K., quick now off the top of my head. Make a key. Make an ultimately trusted key for each of your employees. Have employees make their key. Sign each of the employees keys with your ultimately trusted key for employee. Fire all of your employees. Worry about someone thinking that said employee is still an employee, revoke ultimately trusted key for employee. Yes, a key management problem, but maybe someone could write some code . . . (You know, I much prefer multiple guess.)

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Re: spooks on cypherpunks
by rustman＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: nobody(a)jarthur.cs.hmc.edu > Date: Thu Apr 28 00:36:57 PDT 1994 > > NetSurfer <jdwilson(a)gold.chem.hawaii.edu> > Robert Mathews <mathews(a)gold.chem.hawaii.edu> > > be aware You know, spooks need strong Crypto, too. I think you're making the assumption that the only reason a spook is here is to infiltrate us and do us harm. I bet it is quite the opposite. What is the best way to stay hidden and secure? Use strong crypto that can be found almost anywhere (like PGP). Strong crypto that doesn't scream goverment or worse. Blend in with the rest fo the crypto traffic. Spooks get *caught* by doing things that are out of the ordinary. Spooks stay in business by not standing out and disappearing in the crowds. It probably sounds silly, but there are probably more or at least as many spooks who *like* what we're doing than those who oppose it. Rusty Hodge, Cyberbeticist, Resident Futurist. <rustman(a)netcom.com>

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Re: spooks on cypherpunks
by joshua geller 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>It probably sounds silly, but there are probably more or at least as many >spooks who *like* what we're doing than those who oppose it. I have a childhood friend who grew up to be a new york city cop. we used to smoke mega drugs together. I met him at my brothers wedding and asked him about his vocational choice, it seemed strange. he said 'there are 20,000 new york city cops. every kind of person you can imagine is a new york city cop'. all generalizations are false. josh

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Random #'s via CD-ROM?
by grendel＠netaxs.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hello cypherpunks (first post): In the hopes of starting an cryptograpy-related thread... I have been reading the section in _Applied Cryptography_ about random number generators, and some proposed hardware random number generators. It seems to me that with the CD-ROM drive becoming increasingly common these days, this could be exploited as a source of randomness. For example: [1] Read a pseudo-random section from the CD-ROM. Unless you catch the blank end of a sector, you should obtain random data (this is one obvious problem with this method). [2] Read a pseudo-random section from the CD-ROM, and use this data to select another chunk of data from the CD-ROM (more random, yet we still have a problem if we read the blank end of a sector...). The two above ideas are okay, but they both suffer from the same problem, namely if you read the unused portions of the cluster you will get a random sample of all 0's. Not good. The idea that really interests me is this: Place an *audio* CD in the CD-ROM drive. Most CD-ROM drives know about audio discs now, and I believe they can be made to read the binary waveform data even if they don't understand the Red Book audio format. If you have something really random/discordant (Ministry / NIN / Curve / Sonic Youth / Pain Teens / Diamanda Galas / Coil / etc) and you take samples of the waveform and play with them as described in _AC_, you could get some pretty random samples. Of course, care must be taken to only read within the portions of the CD/CD-ROM that have actually been encoded.... What do you all think? I have code to work with CD-ROM drives, works on my system and a friend's CD-ROM drive as well (for DOS machines). I don't know about Mac / UNIX CD-ROM drive programming, sorry. =( I welcome all comments, criticisms, flames, love letters, etc. Post if there's wide enough appeal, or just email me. [ I am also taking suggestions for random / discordant / loud music to use with this method. Please email me, don't post, as I'm sure the rest of the list would dislike us discussing that in public ] -- ========================================================================== | Michael Brandt Handler | <grendel(a)netaxs.com> | Philadelphia, PA | ==========================================================================

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