December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: American Survival Guide
by Brian D Williams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Stanton McCandlish writes: >Oct. issue of _American_Survival_ has an article called "Clipper >Inside". >Dunno anything else about it, might be good, might suck rocks. CLIPPER INSIDE "CLinton's Orwellian plan to bug every compute,telephone,and fax... * Does a fair job on clipper. * mentions Matt Blaze's paper but gets it wrong. * does a side blurb on the EFF. * does another side blurb on PGP. * mentions Digital Telephony but doesn't mention EFF/FBI collaboration. * essentially very Anti-clipper * picture on page 46 alone worth the price of admission hehe... Typical issue, even better is the article "Liberalism as a form of codependency." Even better was last month's article "Make mine a Shotgun!" 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 iQCVAwUBLn79rlmp8FjpRfTVAQFgEAP+JMxaoOGcn9/nbCDwFCuSHuEmYf0ljI8I /HCkLmOOTOooVi0mLgQrSfFUA7DvwV/N9IwqkY6Th4l2Q1jw8MmOThShzL/RpRND sl/VJTbbhV/z0rdbHB2yc/DU10bBvrpQZyI0fVS5g/uouKsYEXoj0TB3ytXwo/aI dedfaVwGQOc= =+8W5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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any CP going to the International Cryptography Institute this week?
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have the program in front of me and it looks ominous. - Carl

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Laws Outside the U.S.
by usura＠vox.xs4all.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

tcmay(a)netcom.com (Timothy C. May) writes: : > It would be interesting for those in other jurisdictions to comment about : > how *their* rulers might view anonymous communications and strong crypto. : : I heartily agree with Duncan here! There has been very little said by : the good residents of France, Germany, Sweden, Holland, Italy, etc. : about just what the crypto-related laws of their countries are. [..] : So, I appreciate that some of our European readers may be tired of : hearing about U.S. policy or proposed laws, but the proper solution is : _competing speech_. That is, give us something new to talk about. Tell : us about what *your* country is doing. Tell us about any laws limiting : what kind of modems can be hooked up to your PTTs, as a concrete : example. Tell us about the raids on BBSs in Italy. Tell us about the : rumor that the Netherlands plans to ban unapproved crypto. There was a draft for a proposal for a law that would have outlawed crypto in the Netherlands. It would only be legal to use crypto if you had deposited the KEYs and if you had received a license. The use, trade and possesion of crypto was forbidden. It would be illegal (to dutch law) to have cryptosoftware available at some ftp-site (somewhere in the world) that would be accesable from the Netherlands (really!). (laws and enforcement of those laws are two -totally- different things in Holland :)) The draft was revoked, due to the huge amount of protest', the good thing is that we are in the proces of founding the dutch equivelant of the EFF: "de db.nl". -- Some loose thoughts any comments ? -- There are basicly four scenario's that a state can follow to regulate crypto: - outlaw it totally This was the path Holland choose briefly. - key depositing This is what the US is trying to do with Clipper et al. - try to develop a standart This is what the US did with DES and is trying to do now with Clipper. - do nothing The most prosperous scenario. Crypto use will boom, but lawenforcement agencies will be deprived from a useful tool, they can't bug phones any more. That will hinder their investigations but advancements in hardware/software could balance that: it is more easy to localise phonecalls, bugging equipment has become smaller and more powerful. Lawenforcement agencies have computerised databases that can link fingerprints, names etc in near "real-time". Large scale use of crypto could balance out some of the recent advancements in information technology that have given them a clear edge. -- Exit! Stage Left. Alex de Joode <usura(a)vox.hacktic.nl>

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Re: On the crime bill and remailers
by Mike Markley 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hal <hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> writes: | | Black Unicorn <unicorn(a)access.digex.net> writes: | >I believe anonymous | >remailers have some use. But they are so targeted to prevent GOVERNMENT | >observation and intercepts, that they just plain look bad. | | I strongly disagree with this. Anonymous remailers as presently constructed | will be almost completely ineffective against any significant government | attempts to surveil email traffic. The government does have the resources | today to defeat most uses of remailers. Since present-day remailers lack | padding features, the correspondence between incoming and outgoing messages, | even with encryption, is relatively easy to establish. This is made worse | by the lack of general support for reordering, which renders the task | almost trivial. | | Instead, anonymous remailers are clearly targetted against non-government | traffic analysis, generally local associates, system operators, employers, | supervisors, and so on. They allow people to communicate without | repercussions and retribution at work or at school. They let people exchange | email in an insecure environment while hiding both the message address and | its contents. They allow whistle blowers to expose malfeasance without | being punished. These are the kinds of things the remailers are good for. | | Claims here that remailers are designed to support sedition or to | prevent government surveillance are both wrong and harmful. This kind | of material could show up at some future prosecution of a remailer | operator. It is important that we understand clearly what the capabilities | and limitations of current remailers are. | | Hal | Why not make distributed remailers then? You could set up a chain using either mail or ftp or ? that would take all messages and fragment them into nice 1K blocks and then either mail or otherwise transport the blocks to other physical machines, these machines would then follow the imbedded instructions on how to reassemble the blocks into a coherent message and mail it out. Admittedly there is no sure fire method to prevent someone from monitoring all of the traffic generated but it should be possible to generate so much traffic that just wading through the volume would take more time than is practical. Also by encrypting all packets going between remailers and making the packets uniform sizes should help make monitoring more difficult. I'm not sure that I'm worried about the government monitoring my communications as much as I'm worried about individuals with bad intentions monitoring my communications. Mike. ===================================================== Mike Markley <mmarkley(a)microsoft.com> I'm not a Microsoft spokesperson. All opinions expressed here are mine. =====================================================

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Social dynamics and remailers
by doug＠OpenMind.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Blanc Weber makes many excellent comments and raises good questions in the post titled "Re: Virtual assasins and lethal remailers" dated 9/18/94. I would summarize the gist of that post as questioning the value or even possibility of attempting to predict social dynamics. Today, Hal Finney writes: >Anonymous remailers as presently constructed >will be almost completely ineffective against any significant government >attempts to surveil email traffic.... >...Instead, anonymous remailers are clearly targetted against non-government >traffic analysis, generally local associates, system operators, employers, >supervisors, and so on. I think that here is an excellent example of how a consideration of social dynamics can lead to suggestions for action today. Even if we cannot really hope to control or predict the reactions of society, this shouldn't excuse us from doing what we can. In this particular case, Hal points out that it is really the relative insecurity of remailers today which makes them unthreatening to the government and society at large. If cypherpunks successfully deployed a network of remailers which used message padding, message reordering, etc. so that they were secure against even government level monitoring, then we could expect to see the government/society to become quite alarmed by them and attempt to regulate and control them... probably successfully. Anonymous remailers certainly are useful and valuable even in their current form. I perceive that many cypherpunks would not question the assumption that making them even more secure would obviously be a desirable thing. Yet it might be precisely this course of action which would most quickly lead to the rapid imposition of controls on their use. Doug ___________________________________________________________________ Doug Cutrell General Partner doug(a)OpenMind.com Open Mind, Santa Cruz ===================================================================

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Re: art encryption...
by roy＠viewgraphics.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

While I was at the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) show last year, I came across a company in the radio hall that had developed a way to mark audio so that if it was copied, it could be traced back to its original source. Sampling has made this a significant problem in the recording information. The person that I talked to did not say or seem to know much about the actual process used, but claimed that the signature could withstand sampling and manipulation. I don't remember the name of the company, but I think the name started with cyrpto Roy

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A meme about politics of country X
by sw＠tiac.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>My hunch is that most of the Western nations are looking for policy >guidance to Washington... Now there is a scary thought. We need a counter-meme. (Mike Godwin has a fun article about how he invented a counter-meme and watched it spread, in the latest *Wired*.) My meme is: "Boy, don't immitate what *Washington* (or insert your country's capital here) is doing, those Americans (or whoever) have let their government go *totally* haywire." This requires a little support. For America it's easy (your mileage may vary): "Americans all think they're outlaws and ignore what's going on in government. They just buy lawyers and accountants and don't think about it. The people in Washington get no feedback from the public so they watch TV for ideas. Bad cop shows, mostly." I think it works best if you only talk about one country this way in any given context. If two people use the same meme about different countries in the same context, they can say, "Is it that way *there*, too? Oh, my." --Steve - - - - - - - - - - Steve Witham's .sig contains four a's, one b, two c's, two d's, twenty six e's, six f's, two g's, three h's, ten i's, one j, one k, two l's, two m's, twenty n's, seventeen o's, one p, one q, five r's, twenty nine s's, twenty-one t's, four u's, six v's, twelve w's, four x's, five y's, and one z.

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Re: Virtual assasins and lethal rema
by TJHARDIN＠delphi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adam is absolutely right. A somewhat similar case comes to mind that happened a few years back. Remember the SOF contract cases? Ads for "high risk employment" were placed in SOF by hired killers & employers responded to mail drops. Although not as anonymous as what we are discussing, interception of those communications did not break those cases. It was good old fashioned police work combined with mistakes on the part of employers & employees. Only after the case was pretty well solved was the method of hiring revealed (by suspects talking.) SOF paid a big civil judgement & agreed to stop running personal employment adverts. Even if a killer is so anonymous that she can't be linked to a given crime by the employer who will talk 99.9% of the time any pressure is applied, she must still continue to accept various contracts. The police would then set up one of their stings & "hire" her anonymously for another job & snatch the killer up when she attempts to fullfill this contract. Likewise, the very first offer of employment may well be of this sort. All of this presupposes that there are still some police around, which I kinda hope they aren't. They have rarely been around when I needed them & with all the moraline addicts they have to fix they don't have time for real crimes against person & property anymore. tjh pgp261 available

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Re: On the crime bill and remailers
by nobody＠kaiwan.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: Black Unicorn <unicorn(a)access.digex.net> >Subject: Re: On the crime bill and remailers > >Anonymous must be a Baker & Botts associate. Now that's funny. >> 1) The act does not make it a per se offense to have a remailer. Below it is asked whether this is assertion or assumption. Neither. It is obvious. If the act wished to make running a remailer a per se offense it would simply say so. It doesn't say anything like that. [...much deleted. Time preses and this is unpaid...e$ anyone?...] > >Instead you might ask how the statute will be read in the context of the >differing language between the investigation threshold requirement and >the definition of offense. Why would one mention intent so explicitly >and the other ignore it? Did congress anticipate the difficulty of >showing intent in this type of prosecution and structure the act >accordingly? This would be my argument as a prosecuter. This argument is not frivolous. But I doubt it would work, particularly since the counterweight is constitutional due process. > >> 3b) Query: why would it be a violation of due process to >> have a ban on unknowingly aiding terrorists in the manner Mr. Unicorn >> wishes to read the satute? > >Ah, but the counter to this arguement (obviously structured well into the >statute) is that there will never be any investigation into the offense >without resonable facts to suggest intent. (This is the killjoy to the >due process arguement.) This won't work either. First, it is not "obviously structured well into the" badly drafted statute. Second, a limit on investigations does not in this world of police and prosecutorial discretion operate as a meaningful, or even mesurable, limit on prosecutions. Suppose the police get information in the course of a separeate investigation? Suppose they are following Carlos and see him go into your resturant? [...] > >You rely on the construction tending to constitutionality here, but it is >equally valid to construct the statute as meeting the due process >requirement via the investagatory intent requirement. This was my entire I disagree completely. See above. >point. Given the difference in the requirements between allowing >investigation and definition of offense, there is a basic imbalance in >the act. Why? Accident, poor drafting? Intent? Neither. A guess, and only that: the investigation limit (which I would argue is uneforceable) is intended as a signal to cops/sop to civil libertarrians that the act should not start witch hunts. > >> N.B. these problems could be cured, and due process observed, by finding a >> duty to make enquiry or imputing a negligence standard of some sort, but >> we do not see any hint of this in the statute. > >Exactly. So why are they not? Why is this never mentioned. I can only stupid drafters is the most likely explanation >believe that the structure of the statute is intended to provide this >arguement as a loophole. I'm not paranoid enough to want to claim that >this is to peg remailer operators specifically, (duh) but what are the >implications for a very soft offense definition in a federal crime bill? Standard operating procedure these days. Hmmm...maybe a literal-minded court is not so bad? [...] >> Ratzlaf v. United States, >> 114 S.Ct. 655 (1994) [summary quoted below], in which the Supreme >> Court imputed a scienter requirement into a money laundering >> statute which on its face required no such scienter at all. > >I have not had time to look at 31 USC 5324(3) in detail with reference to >this problem. Nor have I looked at the case. At first glance it looks >promising, but I remain a skeptic. It is too tempting to use the >language in the investigatory intent requirement to dismiss the >arguements you make. > I disagree. Intent from investigation won't cure the due process problem. Intent -- at a minimum in the sense of knowingly committing the act of aiding a terrorist, not necessarily in the sense of knowing that it is illegal to do so -- must be read into the offence itself. Only a very, very clear statutory command to the contrary would suffice to avoid this reading -- and then we have pretty much created a per se offense of running an open remailer since it is impossible to know who you are dealing with. I might add that I believe it would be a violation of the First Amendment to make running a remailer a per se offense, but that's not required for the argument [...] > >> //QUOTING-- >> SYLLABUS: > >> time it is called into play. Because currency structuring is not >> inevitably nefarious, this Court is unpersuaded by the United >> States' argument that structuring is so obviously "evil" or >> inherently "bad" that the "willfulness" requirement is satisfied >> irrespective of the defendant's knowledge of the illegality of >> structuring. > >In any event, this is the real key here. What do you think a judge will >find encrypted remailing rates on the "nefarious" scale? In context I >think it will be quite harsh. Especially given the very nature of the Given the importance of money laundering to drug deals, and the 1st Amendment aspect of remailing, I rate it at least a tie or better. [...] Since we are now being civil, I should note that the Ratzlaf case has been criticized by almost every commentator as wrongly -- even insanely -- decided, and I tend to agree with the critiques. Nevertheless, the decision is of a piece with other odd, hyper literal, statutory construction cases in the past two years and the odds are it will be followed. SOLONg

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Re: Scienter and all that stuff
by chen＠intuit.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> In article <9409201859.AA00254(a)doom.intuit.com>, > Mark Chen <chen(a)intuit.com> wrote: > >> The facts and the law only matter when the government doesn't have > >> a hard on for you. If the government wants to get you [and, perhaps, > >> if you're not a millionaire "sports figure"] it will get you. The > >> crime bill just makes the task a bit easier. > > > >This is quite accurate. Howard Zinn makes the same point in > >_Declarations of Independence_. > > Where does Steve Jackson fit into this theory? > > I don't think it's nearly as black & white as you suggest: Our systems > are not monolithic and some consitutional and democratic principles do > still have some sway. Noam Chomsky discusses this when he talks about > reasons for optimism. > > Which is not to belittle the orginal point that we have reason to be > paranoid: it's just to say that we don't have total justification for > despair, either. Yes, it's often easy to identify a single piece of the overall dynamic and use it to account for everything that happens. I'm only saying that legal guarantees are not necessarily the last word about what the government can and can't do to you. Chomsky's optimism (as you know) doesn't stem so much from a faith that our legal system will one day start working properly, as from a faith that people are capable of evolving - an outlook that you and I seem to share, but that many on this list don't. - Mark - -- Mark Chen chen(a)netcom.com 415/329-6913 finger for PGP public key D4 99 54 2A 98 B1 48 0C CF 95 A5 B0 6E E0 1E 1D

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