December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Identity, anonymity and reputations
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'll bother you all yet again with an episode of my column. This one's on identity, anonymity and reputations. I haven't seen any article on this for the lay reader; I'd appreciate info on any such articles. Electric Dreams Weekly column for The Asian Age by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh #12, 16/May/1994: I e-mail, therefore I am When you read what I write, do you know whether I exist? Do you know who I am? Do I know who I am? Well, you know my name. You assume that I am a real person of that name, and that someone at this newspaper has contact with me. (In fact I file my column electronically, though I admit to have been seen on occasion!) Despite technological advances, people still start professional (or other) relationships after acquiring verifiable identification -- an address, a bank account, a face. What would happen in cyberspace, where people may be far apart geographically, and identities less rigid and secure? Electronic identities as widely used, are limited to e-mail addresses. As with a physical address, an e-mail address provides a way to contact an individual. Like the postmark stamped on tree- murdering paper envelopes, e-mail headers generally indicate that a message has, indeed, come from a particular address and hence a particular person. Unfortunately these headers are easily forged. Not only can someone pretend to be me, I can pretend to be someone who doesn't exist! Cybernauts see two issues here. The inherent insecurity of cyberspace, which makes normal interactions unreliable, is a lapse that demands attention. On the other hand, the amorphous nature of identity that the Net encourages is actually a Good Thing, balancing the ease with which privacy can be violated, and making the advantages of an information society apparent. There are a number of ways to ensure distinct identities. That is, to ensure that Rishab Ghosh who writes this column is the author of the previous episode. Digital signatures are secure, backed by the arcane mathematics that proves the difficulty of factoring large numbers. A digital signature is a very large number, correlating the signed data with other publicly available numbers that define an individual's identity. Though these identifying numbers are public, a signature cannot be forged, as it also depends on a private key kept secret by the individual. Similar methods can be used by anyone to send encrypted messages that can be read only by the intended recipient. There -- now I have an electronic identity. You might have noticed, though, that there is no link at all between an identity in cyberspace and any physical (real?) one. I could plausibly have multiple identities, for different purposes, conducting public arguments with each other. Which brings us to the Good Thing. There's no reason why I shouldn't write columns as Rishab Ghosh and poetry as Alfred Prufrock, while living the rest of my life as John Doe. I might have to, lest evil marketing managers monitor all my public actions and learn more about me than I do. To formalize this separation of identities, cybernauts have created services known as anonymous remailers, which accept conventional e-mail and repost them, shorn of all their direct identifying marks -- addresses, names and so on. It is up to the poster to create pseudonymous identities using signatures and other methods. There are varying degrees of anonymity provided; with many services it is even possible to reply to anonymous mail without knowing a 'real' e-mail address. This sort of anonymity might primarily be used for privacy -- from consumer surveys, cloak-and-dagger maniacs, and other assorted net pests. In an ideal world, we would be free to say what we like; till we are, anonymity allows us some freedom to express without reprisal. This freedom is already being taken advantage of; in Internet news groups such as alt.sexual.abuse.recovery, for instance, victims can comfort each other in public electronic gatherings without the risk of public exposure. As with any technological advance, anonymity can be abused. While 'whistle blowing' might be the right thing to do sometimes, there is no way to be compensated for anonymous defamation. Attempts are being made towards a system of reputations, where people would gradually build (or ruin) a reputation for their identities, as their posts are tested by time. A totally anonymous accusation will of course have a very low reputation. Reputation systems will not end identity abuse. Hopefully, as people depend on them to be taken seriously, and unsubstantiated accusations are taken with large helpings of salt, we will enter a more tolerant society, that concentrates on the expressions rather than the expressor. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh is a freelance technology consultant and writer. You can reach him through voice mail (+91 11 3760335) or e-mail (rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in Voicemail +91 11 3760335; Vox/Fax/Data 6853410 H-34C Saket New Delhi 110017 INDIA The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says: Support your right to bare arms! --------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Patent infringement (fwd)
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Brian Beker <beker(a)netcom.com> > From: David Sternlight <strnlght(a)netcom.com> > I found his .plan file contained a PGP 2.3a key. That infringes RSADSI's > patents. That this is so has recently been confirmed by an independent > inquiry by lawyers retained by MIT. > > The patent holder, RSADSI, has said that no only do versions of PGP except the > soon-to-be-released 2.6 and the commercially sold Viacrypt version 2.4 > infringe in the U.S., but posted keys and key servers constitute inducement > to infringe and/or conspiracy to infringe. This is the argument Schiller's message on 2.6 foreshadowed. However, there are some counterarguments you can make: - It's not clear that RSADSI has actually said that merely posting a key with the words "Version: 2.3a" in and of itself constitutes inducement or conspiracy to infringe the patent. Schiller speculated that running a key server which accepted pre-2.4 keys could represent contributory infringement but I haven't seen any statements from Bidzos that agree with this, let alone the stronger statement Sternlight is making. - Just because the key says "Version: 2.3a" doesn't mean much. This version string is appended by the program which turned the key into ASCII format. It says nothing about the version of the program which used the RSA algorithm. Granted, in practice this suggests that the key was extracted from a key ring using PGP 2.3a, but extracting from a key ring is not a patented process. Only communicating using RSA is patented. The mere existence of this key does not show that patent infringement is going on. - Possession of a 2.3a key does not necessarily constitute inducement to infringe the patent. Perfectly legal programs exist which will work very well with a 2.3a key (versions 2.4 and up). So by possessing a key labelled 2.3a you are not inducing others to violate anyone's patents. - In any case, Sternlight does not have any standing in making this charge. He is not a lawyer and is not affiliated with RSADSI in any way. At best his reports are second- or third-hand interpretations of his understanding of RSADSI's position. Unless or until the patent holder speaks directly to make these charges, there is no need to respond. Hal Finney hfinney(a)shell.portal.com

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Re: NSA's Baker to debate key escrow live on AOL, May 26
by nelson＠crynwr.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: Thu, 19 May 1994 03:03:31 -0700 From: Phil Karn <karn(a)unix.ka9q.ampr.org> In article <NELSON.94May14232954(a)crynwr.crynwr.com>, you write: |> I've heard Baker. He's not particularly articulate, especially when |> confronted by another lawyer (viz Karl Auerbach at Interop). He tends I missed that session, opting to head for the airport before the rush. What exactly did Auerbach say? Sorry I missed the fun. I missed it too, so I bought the tapes. This is transcribed from the tape of the Networld+Interop "The Clipper Chip Controversy" debate between Baker of the NSA and Weitzman of the EFF. Karl Auerbach was the first questioner: Auerbach: Okay, well, my name is Karl Auerbach, and first a calibration tone. I grew up reading the cases of Sacco and Vanzetti, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and I remember Kent State, and things like that. So, do I trust my government? No. Certain things. First, a technical question. You said that you sent the chip off to the national labs for reverse engineering. Did anyone sent it to Taiwan? <audience chuckles> Next thing. Baker: Are these all going to be hypothetical? A: Did you really try giving it to the experts? I mean, is it really reasonable to expect that someone isn't going to try to reverse engineer this thing? B: I think it's quite reasonable to buy devices with the chip in it and sent it to whomever you'd like. I don't necessarily believe that I share your belief that you know who has the best technology for doing this because the people at the national labs get to practice against someone besides Intel and Motorola. <audience chuckles> Just a response, Karl. A: I'd like to see them have a try. Anyway, getting more to the legal matters, If I have a clipper phone, it's used by lots of people. And, does that increase the expectation of privacy which is recognized by the supreme court and what happens to other people -- are we going to enact parallel legislation that restricts the further use of just ancillary conversations on the phone by a third party. To make this work, we're going to have to enact legislation that prohibits the use of superencryption like pgp. Are we going to do that? And also B: NO! A: And also, are we going to allow PGP then? And we're going to superencrypt it. So that means that your total system is dead. B: <splutter> I have to ask myself, what is the value to you of superencrypting? A: So you can't read it! B: Yeah, that's right <audience laughs, applauds> Of course, but A: If you want to do police work, get the police to find the key that the pedophile used to encrypt his file. Get your warrant to look for that key. He kept it somewhere. It was just sloppy police work that didn't get the key he's got somewhere <audience applauds>. And I don't know what piece of information you had that led you to know that that encrypted file had what you thought was in it. Can you point, can you specifically articulate reasons that would give you probably cause to think that that information was in those files? And I might remind you, the Supreme Court requires that. <audience murmurs, whistles, claps> B: I'm trying to figure out which of your points to address first. Let me start with the suggestion that superencryption somehow makes this pointless. I agree that if the government said that the only kind of encryption you can use is clipper, that superencryption would be a way of evading some kind of enforcement mechanism designed to ensure that only clipper encryption was on the system. A: So if I use PGP then you'll have probable cause to get a warrant? B: No. First, there's no suggestion, hasn't been a suggestion, you've got denials left and right, that this is going to be a required system. If it's not a required system, what's the point of adding PGP to clipper? You can encrypt with PGP if you want to, and you get whatever strength PGP gives you. You add to that clipper and the government has probably cause to decrypt your clipper conversations, what you have is a single PGP-encrypted conversation, which is as good as not having bothered going through the clipper encryption at all. A: No, what I was expecting was that you're going to make the argument that if we've got clipper, and we find that someone is using PGP in addition to clipper, that therefore they've got something to hide, and we'd better go after them. B: Yeah, I think that's a paranoid suggestion. A: Well, I'm paranoid, but the government... <baker chuckles> And the other thing is, we saw an earlier slide that says that this will only be available to the federal government. Now, if my statistics memory is right, most criminals are investigated by state governments. So is this somehow, what's going to happen with the states? Are they going to have access to this, or are we going to create more magistrates? Are we going to deputize all the local police as federal agents? B: About 37 states have wiretap authority. If they encounter A: So the first slide lied. B: I don't think so. A: So those state police are now federal employees. So this is more than federal wiretapping, this is state wiretapping as well then? And I bet there's far more, how many state wiretaps are there per year? B: I think the 900 includes that. And the wiretapping proceeds in this country pursuant to federal law. It's regulated by federal law even when it's done by state authorities. That, probably, is the answer to the other point you had suggested, which is that we need some special law to protect third parties who might have conversations with people. In fact, there are already requirements on the books that, after all, if you're conducting a wiretap, of John Gotti, you're always going to get two people in those conversations. There's not much point in wiretapping him when he's not talking to somebody. Consequently, if he calls somebody to order pizza, or if his daughter orders pizza, or talks to her friends, there are already legal requirements that you cease the recording of those conversations when they're plainly not related to the crime. A: And finally in respect to the escrows, since this is personally identifiable information, I assume that under the privacy act, I have access to it. <someone else>: Karl, it's not personally identifiable in the sense that what the escrow agents maintain is a chip id and an encryption key and there is not a mapping maintained in the system in general, at any point, of who bought which device with chip id, so if that's what you were referring to, I don't think it qualifies as you described it. <someone else yet>: Let me just add that unfortunately there's a law enforcement exception to the privacy act, so I think it's an interesting question whether it is personally identifiable or not, but either way, there is an exception for on ongoing investigation. I heard somebody made a good crack to Baker about how he must have worked for the tobacco companies. Was that Auerbach? No, that was the person who spoke after him. It was "Mr. Baker, I just have a very simple question about your position on all this. Do you ever feel like a cigarette industry executive?" <audience laughs, applauds> B: Let me turn that around a little, and I'll ask that about the EFF. I wonder whether they don't ever feel like the NRA, because in fact, <audience laughs> the analysis we hear of this issue, and the stuff, you've all heard it, "they'll get my crypto key when they pry it from my dead, cold fingers". All that stuff is a deliberate invocation of the same kind of analysis that gave us the gun policy that we have in this country. And so I guess if you like the gun policy that the NRA gave us, I think you're going to love the privacy consequences of the policies that the EFF is urging on us. <other>: Isn't that what the United States Constitution says, though? B: <splutter> I don't think the constitution requires either of these things. etc. -russ <nelson(a)crynwr.com> ftp.msen.com:pub/vendor/crynwr/crynwr.wav Crynwr Software | Crynwr Software sells packet driver support | ask4 PGP key 11 Grant St. | +1 315 268 1925 (9201 FAX) | Quakers do it in the light Potsdam, NY 13676 | LPF member - ask me about the harm software patents do.

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Re: Mosaic to support digital money in September
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: jamesd(a)netcom.com (James A. Donald) > The model uses account based digital money. It is overly > centralized, but it is an excellent step towards a > decentralized system of digital money. > > The cypherpunks are experimenting with digital token based > money. Digital token based money is damn inconvenient, > and each digital token currency requires a single > centralized server which tends to monopoly and is thus > highly vulnerable to government coercion. Although the > server does not know which of its clients has been > transacting with which, it does know the thing that the > government is most interested in knowing - how much the > client got, and how much he spent. > > For this reason I think decentralized account based > digital money is the best hope. I don't know to what extent this system represents "account based digital money". It doesn't sound that different from emailing your credit card number, something you can do already using PEM or PGP2.4. I suppose you will have digital checks with this system as well. But all of these systems will allow total tracking of your transactions by the banks. The digital cash systems we have been experimenting with do not know "how much the client got, and how much he spent." There is nothing stopping a given holder of Magic Money cash from being anonymous to the bank. He does not have an "account" with the bank. (The structure of the client interface is somewhat misleading in this regard - the user has to go through an initialization step in which he communicates with the bank, and it might appear that he is in some sense registering or opening an account. Actually, he is just grabbing an information packet which shows the current exponent-to-cash-value mapping.) In a (hypothetical) "mature" Magic Money system, people could exchange cash tokens issued by a number of banks using anonymous networks to communicate with each other and the banks. There is no need to trust the bank's circumspection or immunity to political pressure to preserve your privacy. Hal

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Re: AOL for Acronym OverLoading
by fnerd＠smds.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

And the current worst AOL (acronym overload): ATM Network -- Automatic Teller Machine, Asynchronous Transfer Mode Recently saw an employment ad for an "ATM Network Administrator". The whole job description was ambiguous ("you will oversee the operation of our ATM network...") until you got to the name of the company. -fnerd - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To auditors without the code, calls seem indistinguishable from noise. --George Gilder -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a aKxB8nktcBAeQHabQP/d7yhWgpGZBIoIqII8cY9nG55HYHgvt3niQCVAgUBLMs3K ui6XaCZmKH68fOWYYySKAzPkXyfYKnOlzsIjp2tPEot1Q5A3/n54PBKrUDN9tHVz 3Ch466q9EKUuDulTU6OLsilzmRvQJn0EJhzd4pht6hSnC1R3seYNhUYhoJViCcCG sRjLQs4iVVM= =9wqs -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: David Sternlight's Slurs About Folks With "2.3a" Keys
by strnlght＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

By publishing a private e-mail, both beker and Johnson are in violation of my copyright in that message, since it was a private communication and no permission was given to republish. Thus beker has now committed a new violation of his netcom agreement, and Johnson shows he has bad judgement. What's more, by trying to make what should be a private matter, to be decided by netcom based on their own rules, into a public cause celebre, and by writing to netcom as Johnson did to intervene in a private matter, he has made the situation worse for beker, not better. Netcom is perfectly capable of telling me to go peddle my papers if I'm wrong. Complaining against another user to netcom is with netcom's rules. I am, of course, content to rely on netcom's decision in these two matters. The behavior of officious intermeddlers like Johnson speaks for itself. By the way, I sent a copy of my complaint to beker at netcom support's own suggestion, in fairness to him. beker's abuse of that courtesy private e-mail means he has given up any chance of getting such courtesies from me in future. David

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Re: Patent infringement (fwd)
by peb＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I don't see how having a key on netcom is a problem; the key itself cannot infringe on a patent. Paul E. Baclace peb(a)netcom.com

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ANNOUNCE: Bay Area physical meeting May 21.
by hughes＠ah.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

ANNOUNCEMENT ============ SAME cypherpunks time! NEW cypherpunks channel! (er, location) What: Bay Area physical cypherpunks meeting When: May 21, 1994 12:00 noon - 6:00 p.m. Where: Silicon Graphics, Mountain View, CA Building 5, SGI cafeteria, aka Cafe Iris Many thanks to Katy Kislitzin for arranging us a new and larger meeting space. With Cygnus meetings averaging 40-50 people each month, we'd just plain run out of space in their small conference room. And many thanks to John Gilmore for the well-used Cygnus room. We'll be in Cafe Iris, with 75 seats and plenty of A/V equipment. There will be full MBONE support, including video. We'll have a camera, so those who want to broadcast their likenesses to the whole world will have the opportunity. The MBONE session has been advertised on 'sd' already. The New York Times magazine is doing a story on us, and a photographer will be there to take a group photo, last I heard. This month's theme is Protocols. We'll be doing protocols and other technical cryptography. Here's what's known to be on the schedule right now: -- Arthur Abraham. Broadband subliminal channel in the DSA -- Eric Hughes. Narrowband subliminal channel in the DSA These two will be presenting work by Gus Simmons on the various subliminal channels in the Digital Signature Algorithm, based on a pair of papers presented last year. Folks can prepare for these presentations by reading Schneier's _Applied Cryptography_, p. 300 and following, on El Gamal signatures, Schnorr signatures, and the DSA. -- Eric Blossom. Secure telephony Eric is working on a hardware-based secure telephone, similar to the clipper-ized AT&T secure phone. He will be discussing details of the protocols, not all cryptographic, required for implementation. -- the usual contributions from the attendees See you all there! Eric ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Thanks to Katy Kislitzin for directions--EH] Place: Silicon Graphics, Inc. Building 5 (SGI Cafeteria) 2025 North Shoreline Boulevard Mountain View From 101 take Shoreline East. Turn right onto Steirlin Court at the big red metal sculpture. Go almost to the end, and building 5 is on the right.

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Restoring the list membership
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

to notify all those lost Cypherpunks that they may resubscribe if they wish to. Majordomo reports 295 subscribers just now, but I have a list from Feb. 22 that had 642 and I recall the number 700+ being spoken of. Is there a Perl wizard who might pop a differential remailing informing the lost of the reason for their de-subscription, and the process to resubscribe? I'm not competent personally. And immediately apologize for suggesting work to someone else. The diff betweenan old list and the current one produces 535 addresses. I've been through them manually, and there don't seem to be any 'bogus' ones. I'm willing to send something similar to Tim's form letter to all of them. I'll wait for two days in case anyone on this list has strong objections to returning the membership to status quo ante. If not, I'll send the form letter. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in Voicemail +91 11 3760335; Vox/Fax/Data 6853410 H-34C Saket New Delhi 110017 INDIA The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says: Support your right to bare arms! --------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Dr Dobbs CDROM
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Phil Karn <karn(a)qualcomm.com> > [the DDJ CDROM with crypto sources] > > It would seem that this may be another appropriate pair of subjects > for official State Department Commodity Jurisdiction requests. I could I know people who've ordered and received it here. My guess is that DDJ has made a CJR and was _given_ permission to export. One of the main objections to the Schneier disk was the "ease of use," the code came ready to compile. The DDJ CD can be browsed through a reader program supplied with it, and the only way to extract some code is to find it (the CD has all the text of the articles as well) and copy it through the Windows Clipboard. _Then_ you name the files, separate them into modules, create a make file etc. Would not be _much_ harder to just type in what you want. If the Schneier disk was as inconvenient to use, Phil Karn's CJR might have been successful. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in Voicemail +91 11 3760335; Vox/Fax/Data 6853410 H-34C Saket New Delhi 110017 INDIA The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says: Support your right to bare arms! --------------------------------------------------------------------------

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