December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Virtual assasins and lethal remailers
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

doug(a)OpenMind.com: > an openly conducted business. For example, an anonymous news post > announces a public key which is to be used to encode a contract kill order, > along with a digital cash payment. The person placing the contract need > only anonymously place the encrypted message in alt.test. Perhaps it is And then the evil assasin, using the Cypherpunk Assasination Remailer (tm) sends an encrypted e-mail to the victim's life-support system and alas! he dies. No? You mean the assasin will actually have to use a {gun/knife/CIA anti-beard poison} and be _physically_ near the victim? Ah well, then the police just got to find the fingerprints and all the usual things, right? What's cyberspace got to do with it? I believe that if you try to criminalize conspiracy, than you risk mass invasions of privacy. Conspiring is just exercising freedom of opinion and expression - the crime, as always even in the days of Caesar, is in the act, not the preparation. And the act is always quite physical, well out of the bounds of cyberspace and the Thought Police. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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Radio Them Back to the Stone Age
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarding List FOP mail by: u2re9toh(a)crrel41.crrel.usace.army.mil (Tim Horrigan) on Fri, 16 Sep 8:22 AM ------------------- At 22:52 9/15/94 -0400, Judith Frederika Rodenbeck wrote: >The medium we >are using can be like radio, like the psyop single-frequency cheapies we >dropped across Vietnam, which a person could only retune by opening up and >diddling with solder. They dropped such radios on Haiti last night as well. Most of them were picked up immediately by the cops and carted away somewhere, according to an NPR reporter. The NPR reporter found this out by listening to the police-band transmissions on his scanner (which seems ironic somehow.) *** TIM HORRIGAN, Climate Data Lab, USACRREL, Hanover, NH 03755 internet: horrigan(a)hanover-crrel.army.mil horrigan(a)crrel41.crrel.usace.army.mil [or whatever weird crap turns up as my return address UNLESS it implies that I'm at "@crrel41.BITNET", which is a nonexistent Bitnet domain!!!!] alt internet: Timothy.Horrigan(a)bbsmail.magpie.com ph: (603) 646-4432 (603) 646-4100 ***

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RE: privacy in Unix enviroment
by Brian D Williams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- " Vladimir Z. Nuri" a.k.a. Larry Detweiler asks: >Subject: privacy in Unix environment >Date: Thu, 15 Sep 94 20:07:03 -0700 >From: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri(a)netcom.com> >Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com >Precedence: bulk >Hello everyone, here is a question well suited for the c'punks. >I'm looking for some kind of utility that will allow script files >to be run, to spawn off processes, but will wipe out environment >and "ps" info from being read. i.e. imagine that the commands >being called must shield their arguments and environment from >the "ps" command run on a system. the ideal program would let >me run csh scripts but make all the unix commands called >(sort, grep, whatever) invisible to other users on my local >system. >can it be done? >note: I am aware of the trick of using symbolic links to hide >command names. >tx. >bye So, what'cha up to now Detweiler? Brian Williams Extropian Cypherpatriot "Cryptocosmology: Sufficently advanced communication is indistinguishable from noise." --Steve Witham "Have you ever had your phones tapped by the government? YOU WILL and the company that'll bring it to you.... AT&T" --James Speth -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.1 iQCVAwUBLnm5UVmp8FjpRfTVAQGcNAP/UXevPpl6kpsZIESGMskR5au8fzmfgm0p pVVKgZURxmPHMqyShWRA4fBkbAkY55duR05VdKt4NiehW3T7vhG2rIUwKELSQ3Al CNdZo4WqafGapNzeeEVQeaDWwkp6BX0hi1QnHG93JiZWgMwtG03kvz7C0CDJ0HZy TexwcHzAzvk= =9QNG -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Virtual assasins and lethal remailers
by doug＠OpenMind.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Rishab Aiyer Ghosh writes: >You mean the assasin will actually have to use a {gun/knife/CIA anti-beard >poison} and be _physically_ near the victim? > >Ah well, then the police just got to find the fingerprints and all the usual >things, right? What's cyberspace got to do with it? The point, of course, is that there is no risk to the person *placing* the contract. The assassin, as you say, has all the usual risks. >I believe that if you try to criminalize conspiracy, than you risk mass >invasions of privacy. Conspiring is just exercising freedom of opinion and >expression - the crime, as always even in the days of Caesar, is in the act, >not the preparation. And the act is always quite physical, well out of the >bounds of cyberspace and the Thought Police. This is oversimplistic. Paying someone else to commit a crime for you is a crime. It is in fact possible to pay someone to commit a crime for you in a completely "non-physical" sense, using anonymous remailers, public key encryption, public bulletin boards, and untraceable digital cash. In the past, it has always been a principle of social dynamics that actions can be eventually traced back to some kind of "source", or responsible parties. Throughout history, the people committing "crimes" have tried to make this connection harder and harder to trace, so that they cannot be tied to the physical agents they use to commit those "crimes". They have been successful to varying degrees, but the assumption of law enforcement and the mechanisms of social justice have been that ultimately these connections are traceable. The responsible parties can be located. This is at the heart of the notion of "criminal investigation". Strong crypto *fundamentally* changes this. If all the tools of crypto anarchy are in place, the causal link between person instigating a social action, and the agent completing the social action, becomes *absolutely* untraceable. The notion of criminal investigation cannot apply in any sense. The "arms and legs" that perform specific physical actions can of course still be located, but the critical component which organizes and directs such actions can in fact be completely secure. Thus strong crypto introduces the potential for a new kind of "social organism". The arms and legs, or physical processes of this organism are visible to society and can be targeted for social or interpersonal reprisal. However, the central control for these physical processes can be absolutely anonymous and untraceable, inviolable -- while the physical processes associated with this central control can come and go with complete fluidity. By the way, let me emphasize once again that I am NOT advocating that we criminalize any of the tools of strong crypto. I AM advocating that people carefully consider the social dynamics of the use of strong crypto. I believe that a society with access to strong crypto may fall into any one of a number of various long-term stable patterns. It is not a matter of simply discussing and developing the tools themselves... we should consider how to achieve desirable long-term stable social dynamics in the presence of strong crypto. This requires carefully considering sequences of introduction of various strong crypto tools into society, and predicting the reactions of society as these tools are introduced. Doug ___________________________________________________________________ Doug Cutrell General Partner doug(a)OpenMind.com Open Mind, Santa Cruz ===================================================================

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Re: PRIVACY REGULATIONS (A Matter of Form)
by merriman＠metronet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>I think you're right. That's the first call one ought to make, when >thrown in jail - to their lawyer, to come up with their expensive >advice on how to deal with it, since ordinary language just wouldn't do >for that special occasion. > You mean "Get me the F**K outta here!!!" isn't sufficient?! >Otherwise, you're considered to be in "contempt" and totally gauche in >a court of law.) It's loathing, mistrust, and suspicion, and thus not contempt. QED. :-) ObQuestion: Whyizzit that President Billary keeps saying "The People", and talking about our "Social Responsibilities" to each other? Dave Merriman - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Finger merriman(a)metronet.com for PGP/RIPEM public keys and fingerprints. Unencrypted Email may be ignored without notice to sender. PGP preferred. Remember: It is not enough to _obey_ Big Brother; you must also learn to *love* Big Brother.

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Copyright Changes Info ...
by Jim choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi all, If anyone is interested in staying up with the current changes as discussed in committee for new legislation regarding copyright law then the contact is: US Commerce Dept. Ruth Ford 703-305-8600 Take care.

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RC4 discsussion also belongs on sci.crypt
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It's something of a tribute to the success of the Cypherpunks list that so much of the discussion about RC4 is happening here, rather than on sci.crypt. However, if we want the source code to get published, the discussion probably needs to to at least be echoed in sci.crypt and similar public fora/forums^H^H^H^H^H places. A journalist I know has expressed frustration that more of the RC4 discussion is not going on a more public place. --Tim -- .......................................................................... 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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Re: if this is RC4
by jazz＠hal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> Decompilation would not preserve the original style. > >Of course it would. If a symbol table was present, you'd even end up >with the same variable names. Decompilation would not preserve stylistic things like indentation and brace usage. With optimized compilers, it's getting pretty hard for a decompiler to actually figure out the original input source statement. The result of a decompile, when again compiled, may indeed produce the same object; but the original and decompiled source code may look radically different. The RC4 source code contains at least one example of a coding idiom that would almost certainly decompile differently. In a couple instances, the posted alleged-RC4 source takes modulo-256 of a particular value. A compiler would in almost all cases emit code which did a simple logical-AND with 0xff; when decompiled, the C code would reflect that logical-AND rather than a mod-256 operation. It looked like real source to me, rather than decompiled. Jason

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Re: The mother of all FAQs
by merriman＠metronet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Rishab Aiyer Ghosh writes: > >Yes, "FAQ" is a misnomer (a miscyphernomer?). And as long as it is, it >won't answer questions that get asked here, such as: > >"I've looked for a FAQ on versions of RC4 that run on the Amiga, and I >can't find anything." > >(Well, I'm kidding about this one, but similarly obscure questions do >come up. Rishab is right that most "FAQs" are becoming much more than >that. It seems to me we need a new term.) > Knowledgebase? Reference? Dave Merriman - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Finger merriman(a)metronet.com for PGP/RIPEM public keys and fingerprints. Unencrypted Email may be ignored without notice to sender. PGP preferred. Remember: It is not enough to _obey_ Big Brother; you must also learn to *love* Big Brother.

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THE I-WAY
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . THE FIVE HUNDRED CHANNEL, MULTI-MEDIA, MOVIE-ON-DEMAND, INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY (AS THE GOVERNMENT SEES IT) "There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the hori- zontal. We will control the vertical.... Sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to participate in a great adventure; you are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to the Al Gore Limits." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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