December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Clipper hearings
by Black Unicorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Begin Forwarded Message talk.politics.crypto #3763 (4 more) Subject: Clipper hearings. Not yet scheduled for CSPAN. From: kwebb(a)unm.edu (Kyle L. Webb) Date: Wed Mar 16 21:07:21 EST 1994 Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque Lines: 28 Forgive me if this has been put out before. I called Senator Leahy's office, and was told that the Clipper hearings were to be held Friday March 18th at 1030 am EST in room 226 Dirksen Senate Office Building. I sent email to cspanviewr(a)aol.org which is CSPAN's viewer comment address letting them know of this. Today I got back a reply that there was as yet no plan to cover this event, but that the info had been forwarded to the programming staff. My guess is that it is far more likely that these hearings will be shown by CSPAN if there are a large number of requests to either the email address for CSPAN or phone calls to the CSPAN office, inquiring if the hearings will be broadcast. If getting information on Clipper into the public eye is important, then getting the hearings carried by CSPAN would be a good way to start. CSPAN's viewer services phone number is (202) 626-7963 (I got this number from CSPAN's gopher server, so it's been on the net before) Kyle L. Webb Dept. of Physics + Astronomy kwebb(a)carina.unm.edu University of New Mexico - fin -uni- (Dark)

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Senator Leahy's hearing
by bart＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Will you be covering this hearing on the important issue of the Clipper chip and our rights to privacy? It will be on March 18th, this Friday, at 10:30 am EST in Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Hope you can tape it for rebroadcast if you can't cover it live. Please let me know your schedule as soon as possible as I would hate to miss it, and have lots of friends who I would like to advise of the time and date.

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Address correction
by bart＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The address given by Black Unicorn to mail to cspan was in error, my mail to cspanviewr(a)aol.org bounced. To rattle their cage, try cspanviewr(a)aol.COM.

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Guardian, front page, March 17.
by gtoal＠an-teallach.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"The security services are said to have warned the Department of Trade and Industry that they will need to act more publicly if the service (talking about the Royal Mail - G) is privatised. They also point out that unlike the privatisation of the telephone network, which left the British Telecom network intact and easy to tap, the privatisation of the Royal Mail will lead to independent competitor services, making the interception of mail much more difficult." G

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OSS
by Mike Markley 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Last night (4/16/94) both the Discover Channel and A & E Network ran specials on the OSS and the part that they played in helping the Allies win World War II. It was kind of interesting to see what went on back then. I didn't watch the whole thing because I grew tired of watching grainy black and white footage of people walking through mud and water in rain forests on Pacific islands. I'm just curious if there is any connection between these broadcasts, which were quite rah-rah about the need for covert intelligence agencies, and the current Skipjack debate. Mike. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Mike Markley || The opinions here do not represent the mmarkley(a)microsoft.com || opinions of my employer. Attempts to || associate the two are pointless. "I want to look at life, In the available light" - Neil Peart -

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Whats so bad about a surveillance state
by Brian D Williams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are my own and do not represent the views of Ameritech or it's alliance partners. Blanc Weber Postulates: > -With the rise of fiber telcos are laying fewer cable > routes and just stuffing the routes they do dig up with > more fiber than is necessary for replacement of the > existing copper, leaving some major areas with only a > single path in and out as one bundle of fiber replaces > tons of copper that was laid in multiple paths > originally becayse it would not fit in one path. Saves > the telcos money, but a single backhoe might be able to > cause some major damage now... Well, I can't speak for the other Telco's, but here in the Midwest this is flat out untrue. Project looking glass which resulted in a Billion dollars of additional fiber installed in the last year, and an additional billion a year for the next 6 years is completely diversified. Countercurrent rings, diverse pathways, the whole bit. I believe the Internet was a model for these strategies. I might add that this is not new, we've been pursuing these strategies as long as I've been here. (about ten years) There were a couple of incidents involving landscape contractors in the last year, none resulted in significant outage. This is particularly interesting since the utilities run a service called JULIE (for Joint Utility Locating something or other) which you are supposed to call 48 hours before you dig, we'll send someone out to make sure you don't encounter anything. Brian Williams Extropian Cypherpatriot "Cryptocosmology: Sufficently advanced comunication is indistinguishable from noise." --Steve Witham -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLYiI2NCcBnAsu2t1AQGlPwP/ax2RmIZf0gFe86gwQmFqxNKcte5lRscW 2Y3AaPjLWIkN9O8IfMf5ZUaLQMMCEKJWfWUzq1B53Gwp3O3aTvpNhCpCnrHI8od7 uw8OcwyNKkYy4MyAtd4aCDkf7dMDuo4APZgSrS7IFSVRIK5ciFx6FopYyATuaOCa ZuywqzZWObI= =2g/i -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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RE: The Joy of Digicash
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From Hal: 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. ..................... This sounds really cool, if it could work that way. I can imagine a large screen wall display of these fractal images continuously running in color in the entertainment room, as a kaleidescopic display of all my cash holdings.......if the patterns begin to repeat themselves too soon, it means I don't have very much in the digibank. :>) So there couldn't be anything else which would produce these same patterns and thus be confused for the original or actual? Blanc

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EFF gun-shy of legally employing PGP
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Newsgroups: alt.2600,comp.org.eff.talk From: grady(a)netcom.com (Grady Ward) Subject: Re: "Porn Press Release" from EFF is a Hoax Message-ID: <gradyCMtHxp.M6L(a)netcom.com> Followup-To: alt.2600,comp.org.eff.talk Organization: Moby lexical databases X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL1] References: <CMI2AL.uAD(a)sernews.raleigh.ibm.com> <2m2mou$mp1(a)eff.org> <1994Mar15.170955.21185(a)nntpd2.cxo.dec.com> <2m5p3f$gt4(a)agate.berkeley.edu> Distribution: inet Date: Thu, 17 Mar 1994 16:32:13 GMT Lines: 78 Steve Pope (spp(a)zabriskie.eecs.berkeley.edu) wrote: : page(a)solvit.enet.dec.com (My name is...) writes: : > Yes, but the point of the reply, is that PGP signatures SHOULD : > be used by sysops. : Hmmm... why PGP, as opposed to the FIPS Digital Signature Standard? : Is the latter not in place yet? Yes, you can use the DSS (unless it is given away to PK partners, that is). The importance of using PGP or another strong privately developed crypto is that it supports the industry rather than relies upon the government. But since Mr Godwin has answered the question to his satisfaction and is not responding to further questions, I guess we will never know the real reason why the EFF will not use PGP to digitally sign press releases. Apparently Mr Godwin chooses not to be responsive to the EFF membership with respect to this issue. He only has said that sysops don't use PGP so rumors would not be quashed anyway. From a person of his intelligence this is about the lamest reason I've heard. Let me see if I can speculate on the real reaons the EFF may not choose to use PGP to sign press releases: (0) Using PGP would be provocative to the very powers we seek to infiltrate [ViaCrypt PGP is perfectly legal and fully licensed.] (1) There is not a problem with authenticity. [This must be false, otherwise Mr Godwin wouldn't have begun this thread] (2) Signing with PGP is not effective. [false; MD5 and RSA have no known weaknesses] (3) Signing with PGP is too hard or would take too much time [false, perfect for irregular press releases] (4) PGP signatures take too much bandwidth. [false, again perfect for the mmoderate to longer press releases] (5) Sysops don't use PGP, rumors would spread anyway [Sysops might begin with suitable leadership; the signature of course could be ignored and the rumor spread anyway -- but if there *were* a question of authenticity an individual could check the authenticity without needing to log on to EFF's server or needing to personally contact an EFF official] (6) Signatures make the press release harder to read [false, a single line at the beginning and a block of lines at the end are added, none of the body is changed in any way] (7) We are journalists and attorneys, not nose-picking nerds [??????] (8) We are journalists and attorneys, this might expose up to greater liability and less 'deniability'. [???????] (9) We just defend these 'PGP' and 'BBS' people. We don't actually want to ASSOCIATE with them more than we have to. Cooties. [???????] (10) The EFF does not have to explain its actions or inactions to anyone. [???????] While Sternlight is merely annoying, and sometimes entertaining, EFFs lack of dialogue on this leadership opportunity supporting private crypto signatures is very, very disappointing. -- Grady Ward | +1 707 826 7715 | finger grady(a)netcom.com for free 3449 Martha Ct. | (voice/24hr FAX) | Moby lexicon brochure & samples Arcata, CA 95521-4884 | 15E2ADD3D1C6F3FC | KN6JR monitoring 14.178 & 14.237 USA | 58ACF73D4F011E2F | 1800 UTC - 2000 UTC daily

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US Patent & Trademark Office Web server online
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A friend from the USPTO mentioned that he'd set up a PTO WWW server at http://www.uspto.gov/ Went and had a look, not a whole lot of stuff yet, but there's some probably- important material here, including transcripts of the Arlington and San Jose hearings on software patents. These can now be found also at ftp://ftp.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/Intellectual_Property/ gopher://gopher.eff.org/00/EFF/Policy/Intellectual_Property/ http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/Intellectual_Property/ The www.uspto.gov site has the benefit of having html versions up, so that you can find specific testimony, which is quite handy: http://www.uspto.gov/text/pto/hearings/arlington.html http://www.uspto.gov/text/pto/hearings/san_jose.html There are also Unix ASCII, DOS ASCII, compress'd ASCII, gzip'd ASCII, Adobe Acrobat Exchange PDF, and MS-Word for Mac (BinHex'd StuffIt archive) formats available at the PTO site. Also available (at both the USPTO and EFF paths) is a file containing the collected written testimony submitted to both hearings. -- Stanton McCandlish * mech(a)eff.org * Electronic Frontier Found. OnlineActivist "In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last week by Yankelovich Partners, two-thirds said it was more important to protect the privacy of phone calls than to preserve the ability of police to conduct wiretaps. When informed about the Clipper Chip, 80% said they opposed it." - Philip Elmer-Dewitt, "Who Should Keep the Keys", TIME, Mar. 4 1994

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Re: NSA and PGP rabblerousing
by markh＠wimsey.bc.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Note that doubling the key size from 1024 to 2048 bits is also > probably a ruse, since it dramatically increases computation time (I > think). 1024 bits are a lot of bits as it is. On the other hand, with 1. the right algorithms for multiple precision arithmetic 2. a little assembler code for time critical sections 3. reasonable hardware (say an intel 486DX/33. Nothing 'state of the art') encryption, decryption, signing &c. with a 2048 bit modulus can be quite practical (or at least tolerable). But yes, it does increase computation time considerably, so one has to be a lot more careful about how one does things if RSA is still going to be practical. Can you afford to wait 15 seconds to sign a message? What is the time limit for us to consider RSA practical? Mark -- Mark Henderson markh(a)wimsey.bc.ca (personal account) RIPEM MD5OfPublicKey: F1F5F0C3984CBEAF3889ADAFA2437433 ViaCrypt PGP Key Fingerprint: 21 F6 AF 2B 6A 8A 0B E1 A1 2A 2A 06 4A D5 92 46 cryptography archive maintainer -- anon ftp -- wimsey.bc.ca:/pub/crypto

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