December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

If you don't vote...
by dmandl＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: lefty(a)apple.com (Lefty): >In case anyone's been wondering, I vote a straight "None of the Above" >ticket. Every election. I happen to believe that if you don't punch holes >in your cards (we don't have those big, fun voting booths here in >California like they do back East), you have no right to complain. At the risk of prolonging an irrelevant thread, I feel I've got to point out the bum logic in this argument. If you go to Las Vegas, put a thousand bucks down on the blackjack table, and lose, you can't complain. You made a bet knowing the risks involved, and you lost. You would gladly have accepted the profits if you'd won. If a blackjack dealer comes over and takes a thousand dollars out of my pocket, he's just robbed me. If you vote, you're tacitly accepting that it's a fair game and agreeing to abide by the rules. If your candidate loses, that's the way the cookie crumbles. If you don't vote because you think the whole game is rigged and don't want any part of it, you're clean. You never wanted to play to begin with. Many people on this list are familiar with Lysander Spooner's article "No Treason," which explains that the Constitutional "contract" is not a binding contract at all, because you and I never signed anything. Same argument. I understand why some anarchists vote (though I think it's a big mistake), but there's no way I can be told that I've got no right to complain because I didn't agree to play. If you DO vote, don't complain. --Dave. -- Dave Mandl dmandl(a)panix.com

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Re: Unicorn suit
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From Uni: Again, it is not my responsibilty to guard myself against defamation. <intermediate statements skipped> I should be able to conduct business, without interference, in peace, with whomever, whenever, whatever, and however uptight, as I choose. ................................ But who will guard you against defamation when you insist on doing business so indiscriminately, wouldn't you say that you bear a bit of responsibility for the kind of associations you engage in which could endanger your reputation? If you were doing a furniture business deal with third-world drug lords (you never know!) and they suddenly declared you to be a scum-bag lawyer who was really a double-agent spy working with the DEA, could you expect much success in taking them to court for accusations which besmirched your reputation? Guess you could try, huh. Many things are possible, although somewhat difficult to achieve. Blanc

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Re: Official Anarchism
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Sandy Sandfort in reply to the question: > is there an official Anarchist codicil? What makes one an official anarchist? Official Anarchists are issued an official certificate (suitable for framing). . . . ............................................ I have one of these, stamped on my forehead. It's in invisible ink, but somehow collectivists can always read it, and react as expected. Blanc

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on detectability of PGP versions
by hughes＠ah.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The issue has arisen of whether displaying some particular version number of PGP on the inside of messages or signatures implies that one is using that version number. How could it? The format that one bit of public software makes can be duplicated by another. If there are two bodies of code which produce the same output, an external observer can make no decision as to which one was used if the only evidence were one of format. If, however, there were only one piece of code (say PGP 2.6), there would be a statistically valid judgement that a 2.6 version number indicated a 2.6 use. Let's say we want to avoid that. I'd suggest that a future derivation of the 2.3a code base or the as-yet-mythical 3.0 code base use the version number in the PGP formats (both binary and ascii) as format version numbers, and let the version numbers of PGP proper diverge. To make it really convenient, the config file might have a version_output flag which indicated what kind of message to generate. There's no good functionality reason why such a PGP shouldn't write post-Sept. 2.6 messages, 2.3 messages, 2.4 messages, even non-PKCS 2.2 messages. Ditto for reading and verifying all those kinds of messages. Could anybody really tell the difference? Eric

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PGP 2.confusion
by Robert A. Hayden 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I guess I'm sorta confused. 2.3x cannot 'legally' be used in the U.S., and it seems that the release of 2.6 is motivated in part so that U.S. users of 2.3 can become "special friends" of the RSA goonsquad. Yet, 2.6 cannot be used by anyone outside of the U.S./Canada. So what is the solution that will be legal, secure, and useful for the whole world? Do we (the cypherpunk community) perhaps need to come up with EBP 1.0 (Even Better Privacy) that abandons the RSAREF patent problem with some other public-key system that is functionally equial and just as safe? Sorry, I'm babbling, but as I said, I do not relish the thought of becoming a special friend of RSA's lawyers. (Or worse, what if 'exporting' a digital signature violates ITAR and makes you a very special friend of an over-ambitious federal district attorney?) ____ Robert A. Hayden <=> hayden(a)krypton.mankato.msus.edu \ /__ -=-=-=-=- <=> -=-=-=-=- \/ / Finger for Geek Code Info <=> I do not necessarily speak for the \/ Finger for PGP Public Key <=> City of Mankato or Blue Earth County -=-=-=-=-=-=-=- (GEEK CODE 1.0.1) GAT d- -p+(---) c++(++++) l++ u++ e+/* m++(*)@ s-/++ n-(---) h+(*) f+ g+ w++ t++ r++ y+(*)

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"illegal": law and tort
by hughes＠ah.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Not everything that lands you in court is illegal. If there's a law passed and you violate it, that's an illegal act. If you cause someone harm, that's a tortious act. Law is a criminal matter; tort is a civil matter. Both end up in court, but the difference between civil and criminal is enormous. I got some private mail that pointed out that I didn't address the copyright issue on PGP 2.6. I'll do so here. The RSAREF-1 license doesn't apply outside US and Canada, as I recall. (And let me be explicit--I'm feeling too lazy to look it up right now.) So use of RSAREF-1 products, including PGP 2.6, in Europe is not licensed, and therefore infringes the copyright of RSADSI. Copyright infringement is a tort (a harm), not a violation of law. Saying that infringing software is "illegal" because it infringes is incorrect. Infringing software is tortious, certainly. Let's put an end to confusing tortious with illegal. This distinction makes a big difference. In the case of illegality, the government takes you to court. In the case of tort, the offended party takes you to court. Now while one could conceivably be extradited for the ITAR (criminal), one couldn't be for copyright infringement (civil). Now, if someone in Europe were to use PGP 2.6, what could RSADSI do about it? They could sue in civil court for damages. Which court? If in the USA, then their remedy is limited to what the USA civil court can order, and if the European user were to have no assets in the USA, that's pretty much the end of the remedy. If the court were in Europe, RSADSI would have to sue in a European court. Now _you_ guess what that costs. For an individual user, there's almost nothing to worry about. Eric

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Re: (fwd) Re: NSA Helped Yeltsin Foil 1991 Coup
by jpp＠jpplap.markv.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: Fri, 27 May 94 18:54 PDT From: jpp(a)jpplap.markv.com (Jay Prime Positive) Infact, the birthday paradox just about garantees that the number is less than E1*E2*E3. After thinking about it some more, I think I would like to rephrase that. I don't think 2^k is nearly close enough to ((2^k)!)^(1/2) for me to say 'garantee'. But, it is possible for E1*E2*E3 to excede the number of permutations of the e1( e2( e3( x ))) system. j(no i am not a tmp tenticle)'

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Re: PGP 2.confusion (fwd)
by Robert A. Hayden 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This was sent to just me by mistake, and I'm forwarding with permission of Jay. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 27 May 94 21:26 PDT From: Jay Prime Positive <jpp(a)jpplap.markv.com> To: hayden(a)krypton.mankato.msus.edu Subject: Re: PGP 2.confusion Date: Fri, 27 May 1994 23:49:55 -0500 (CDT) From: "Robert A. Hayden" <hayden(a)krypton.mankato.msus.edu> Do we (the cypherpunk community) perhaps need to come up with EBP 1.0 (Even Better Privacy) that abandons the RSAREF patent problem with some other public-key system that is functionally equial and just as safe? EBP would have to provide the two critical functions of PGP -- digital signatures, and key distribution. There exist signature standards other than RSA. Perhaps the USA's DSS can be exported. If not, there may well be other systems out there. Feel free to implement DSS, or others. But the critical problem seems to be encryption. Or more exactly the key distribution problem. How do I and my secret corespondant share a secret key? I only know of four kinds of solutions. Send the key via a secure channel. Secure chanels are hard to find, and as history teaches us, not fully secure. (Read Kahn for instance.) Use a trusted key distributer. Trusted. Ha. This is cypherpunks list. Public key cryptography. The problem is that PKP (or is it RSADSI?) claims pattent rights to the whole PK ball of wax. The Diffe Helman key exchange (oblivious transfer?) pattent will expire the soonest, and it can be used in the future. The really exciting result, IMHO, is from crypto 92 that I mentioned a while back. If A and B can hear a source of bits S with some errors, then they can generate a shared secret which even an eves dropper with much greater (listening) resources can't discover. This is exciting. Is it pattented? Does it work on the internet? I don't know. Unfortunately all of these suffer from various active tapper attacks. More unfortuneately, on the internet active tapping isn't very hard to arrange. If you can come up with aditional solutions, or ones more resistant to active tappers, please publish. j'

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The Assault on Unicorn has Begun
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Earlier today I predicted that Unicorn's satisfaction with tmp's "apology" would be short-lived, that the so-called apology actually looked like a dead ringer for Detweiler's "abject apology" to the Cypherpunks list several months back. I predicted that Detweiler/tmp's latest "apology" would presage a major new assault. Faster than I imagined, it arrive tonight. Filled with invective, forgeries, thinkly veiled death threats, and more accusations that Black Unicorn is the mastermind of a plot to cause the collapse of Western governments (let's hope Unicorn's Swiss clients are spared this one). Unicorn challenged me today about when the last time I responded/defended myself against tmp's rants--I said it was a couple of weeks ago (and then to expand on a point, not to answer the juvenile rants). Generally, any response, no matter how reasoned, not matter how measured, produces a ten-fold resonse from Detweiler. It's pointless to respond. Detweiler is apparently now persuaded that Unicorn cannot touch him, and plans to go for the jugular. If Unicorn's True Name and True Phone Number is known to LD as a result of their recent negotiations (which were apparently moot), I expect we'll see this soon enough in Detweiler's phony sig blocks. (Fortunately, in all the months LD has been attaching my phone number, 408-688-5409, in his various sig blocks, I've never gotten a phone call asking what the hell is going on. Restores my hope.) Anyway, the action is raging in talk.politics.crypto. For whatever reason, Detweiler has to date made only limited use of remailers. All hell will break loose when he really starts. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Why it is legal to export PGP under ITAR
by nobody＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The US ITAR law exempts many things from export restrictions, among them, materials availiable in public libraries. It gives no special definition for a library. My American Heritage Dictionary defines "library" as, among other things, "An orginized collection of recorded data arranged for ease of use." IOW, an ftp site. Which means that if a program is available from a public ftp site, you're legally allowed to export it. :)

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