December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

by the way NSA...
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This amplifies Perry's post on the annual intelligence black budget of $28 billion. NY Times, November 25, 1993: . . . the black budget is estimated to be nearly $28 billion this year. The money is hidden under falsified line items in the Pentagon's budget. The secret budget finances the National Security Agency, which conducts electronic eavesdropping; the National Reconnaissance Office, which builds spy satellites; the Central Intelligence Agency, and a host of military intelligence activities. . . . the CIA spends less than 15 per cent of the total espionage budget. Pentagon agencies spend almost all the rest. At the CIA, Mr. Woolsey voiced doubts about disclosing the sum, saying it would lead to a debate over its constituent elements. End quotes. And there is more than this budget covers. For all kinds of intelligence costs (and crypto business opportunities) see Jeffrey T. Richelson's The US Intelligence Community, 1989, ISBN 0-88730-226-2.

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Re: by the way...
by Claborne, Chris 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Perry writes: << For those who believe "the NSA can do ANYTHING" or some such, an article in the New York Times claims the annual black budget now seems to be hovering around $28 Billion per year, for ALL secret government work. >> That's all the money that you KNOW about :) 2 -- C --

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No Subject
by C331673%LBVM6.profs＠mdcgwy.mdc.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is my first post, so please be kind. I have what I I think, IMHO, is a simple question. If the government "outlawed" non-escrow keyed encryption, how would they get a conviction for a supposed violation? How could they prove in a court of law (assuming we would still have courts...) that a note that looks like nonsense, is in fact encrypted? If they decyphered it, how would they know/prove that the new "plaintext" is in fact plaintext that you started with? Could they write code that could fabricate notes from giberish? What if you encrypted a love letter and they 'decrypted' a drug deal? Also, on the national ID card issue, I was involved in bar codes (machine readable labels) and came across really small (grain of rice sized) transponders with ID number encoded. These could then be machine (transducer) readable. They were glass coated and had various industrial applications. I have since read that they have implanted them in pets to identify them if they run away. Next step would be implanting them in people. You would then have an absolute way to ID people (short of surgery). Police could carry transducers, wave it in your direction and know who you are. Cellular terminal could get whatever data they had on you. No way you could impersonate LD. No way to stay 'private'. Hang the transponder on the doorway of a bldg to monitor traffic. (OJ coulda proven his alibi....) Use it in the local supermarket to do biz with. Better then an ATM card, cuz you'll never lose it. A brave, new world awaits. Wadda you think? Conrad Walton Cwalton(a)delphi.com

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Re: Gore's "new and improved" key escrow proposal
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Michael wrote: > >I have tried to think of a positive use for key escrow. The only thing that I >have come up with so far is kind of like having local key escrow within one >company, or something like that. Kind of like having a master key that fits >all the offices in one wing of a building, or something like that. That could >be good in some business uses, provided you could pick your own trusted master >key holder. I don't think that is what Al Gore has in mind. I think there is a use for key escow in our society. As someone else has suggested on this list, all internal communication of the government should use escowed keys. I propse us Cypherpunks as one of the escow agents. Defininity not what Gore had in mind. -- Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> PGP public key by finger

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Re:
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Conrad wrote: >Could they write code that could fabricate notes from giberish? >What if you encrypted a love letter and they 'decrypted' a drug deal? > That would be rather easy to acomplish with a secret algorithm. Still possible, but not quite as easy with a published one. I am sure it will be done. >Also, on the national ID card issue, I was involved in bar codes >(machine readable labels) and came across really small (grain of >rice sized) transponders with ID number encoded. These could then be >machine (transducer) readable. They were glass coated and had >various industrial applications. I have since read that they have >implanted them in pets to identify them if they run away. Next step >would be implanting them in people. You would then have an absolute >way to ID people (short of surgery). > I think this is the real problem that awaits us. While I do not believe that society is quite ready for it to be broadly deployed, I think that it inevitably will happen. First to monitor conviced criminals (to make sure that rapist really stays away from schools), then children (in case they get abduced), soon afterwards everyone else. And you know what? The public will _ask_ for it. Picture of happy shopper. "Citibank transducer (TM). Now nobody can use my account without my knowledge and best of all -- I don't have to remember to bring a card. I can't understand why not everyone is doing it." Jingle. -- Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> PGP public key by finger

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Cypherpunks = soc.women.... ?
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Newsweek cover on sexism on the Net may have basis; there may be a need to discuss these issues; an occassional post on the subject may be useful on this list -- but 40k? Please move this to soc.women.attitudes or alt.fan.true-lies or something. Funny. Our resident editor, Perry, is usually pretty quick on the draw with scathing "what's this to do with crypto" messages. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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Accessing the Cpunk WAIS archive
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Gary Jeffers" <vikram!CCGARY(a)MIZZOU1.missouri.edu> > http://pmip.maricopa.edu/crypt/cypherpunks/Cypherpunks.src > is the location of all the Cypherpunks' posts with index. I can > get to this place by placing a "www" in front of this instruction. Do an archie search for lynx or mosaic or some other decent browser. This is a WAIS indexed archive; no hyper links; you type in a keyword, and get a list of matching articles, and select one (or more) of them to look at. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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Gore to Cantwell
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I hope you've all seen the latest EPIC bulletin. Gore's letter to Cantwell: > "On the other hand, we agree that we need to take action this > year to ensure that over time American companies are able to include > information security features in their program in order to maintain > their international competitiveness. We can achieve this by entering > into a new phase of cooperation among government, industry > representatives and privacy advocates with a goal of trying to develop > a key escrow encryption system that will provide strong encryption, be > acceptable to computer users worldwide, and address our national ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > security needs as well. Horses have blinkers on the sides of their eyes so that they look straight. Do politicians have eyes at all? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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Re: Voice/Fax Checks
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

JWS writes: >Well here are the answers that I'm working with in my model: >First, what you set up has to work off-line. At the same time, validation, >by its very nature, is a process that can only be accomplished online. The >part of my code that I am in the middle of right now (and strugling with) >uses a distributed dynamic hashing scheme (with some attempt at periodic >space minimalization [this is what is making it tricky]) whereby information >is recorded in the public system such that if one part of a bill is used >twice, the cheat's identity is revealed. >[...] >For types of small transactions that will be executed frequently, the >best idea is to establish accounts. In my system, when ever an agent >enters somebody else's computer, it gives the local wizard (the agent >with the final say on computational cycles, storage space, and >communications) a deposit which neither the agent nor the wizard can >cash without agreement by both [do public validation and recording >but hold off on the last steps which allow the wizard to use the money]. >The money is thus recorded globally as having been spoken for. Then, for >all transactions on the local machine, the agent simply uses its local >account, just as anybody would in a much simpler bank-based protocol, >like the ones we have now. This seems like a good approach for a lot of cases. You end up having three classes of transactions: small, medium, and large, with slightly different strategies for each. For large, you do on-line checking; for medium, you detect double-spending after the fact and use crypto to find his identity; and for small you set up an account and dip into that a bit at a time. I am curious about whether you are focussing more on some size range in your plans. One problem I still see is the small transaction where you don't tend to use the same provider again and again. On the net there are a few sites (well, quite a few, I suppose) which are heavily used, but there are a lot of places I might like to just browse through. Paying a penny per site isn't going to bother me much, but if I have to set up an account for each one ahead of time I'm probably not going to bother. So I still think there are problems with the fractional-cent-per-web-site model which I have been hearing about. >I don't agree on this point. I prefer license based e-cash which is modified >on each transaction (and unfortunatelly gets slightly bigger -- the downside >of this method). If we're going to make the conversion to ecash, we might >as well make it as powerful as mathematics will allow. Is this an approach where you determine to whom you will be sending the cash, then make it into a "check" which can only be spent by that recipient? Doesn't that require the bank's (cash issuer's) help? Or is this something else? Hal

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Re: Small transaction amounts
by fnerd＠smds.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Eric speaks of the two kinds of electronic money systems-- closed ones where crypto doesn't have to be done because the system guarantees security, and open ones where crypto has to be used. > The closure, however, of these systems means that they don't scale. > That's bad, fatal, in fact. That doesn't mean that closed systems > will disappear, merely that the largest systems must be open. > > What is desirable economically is that the boundary between closed > clearance systems and open clearance systems be porous enough that the > market can find an optimal distribution between the two varieties. Right...I think. What has to scale is the "semantics of money." Within a small area ("box"), security is guaranteed by how the enclosing system works, and over a larger area it's done by crypto (*). But for the programs, the difference is transparent, except for a cost that resembles communications cost. (*) There's also an issue of, "Can that box over there guarantee me that I can run programs securely within it?" There are ways to do this with tamperproof boxes and such. Or looser ways to do it with reputations. -fnerd - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - nutritional information per serving: less than one (1) bit -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a aKxB8nktcBAeQHabQP/d7yhWgpGZBIoIqII8cY9nG55HYHgvt3niQCVAgUBLMs3K ui6XaCZmKH68fOWYYySKAzPkXyfYKnOlzsIjp2tPEot1Q5A3/n54PBKrUDN9tHVz 3Ch466q9EKUuDulTU6OLsilzmRvQJn0EJhzd4pht6hSnC1R3seYNhUYhoJViCcCG sRjLQs4iVVM= =9wqs -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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