December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Tcl citations from Cyphernomicon
by bart＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Subject: Re: Richard Stallman of GNU on Tcl > Date: Wed, 05 Oct 1994 10:46:50 -0400 > From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)imsi.com> > > > Fascinating, but why are you sending this to cypherpunks? > > Harry Bartholomew says: > > > > On gnu.announce of 9/23, he writes "Why you should not use Tcl". > > Instead, those wanting to use the Tk tools are commended to a > > Scheme interpreter with it called STk. Available from: > > ftp.cs.indiana.edu:pub/scheme-repository/imp/STk-2.1.tar.Z > For the grep-impaired, see sections 4.5.4 and particularly 13.4.14 of Tim's opus for Tcl relevance to Cypherpunks.

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Referrences to SKE and GAK
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: tcmay(a)netcom.com (Timothy C. May) >Date: Sun, 2 Oct 1994 20:31:13 -0700 (PDT) >And I think we have indeed seen things coming before a lot of others >did. The latest such alert, by Carl Ellison, myself, and others, is >about "software key escrow," or what Carl dubs "GAK" (government >access to keys). I think SKE is the wave of future repression, worth >starting to fight now. The popular media is largely oblivious to it, >as usual. (John Markoff, of the NY Times, is on top of it, more so >than most of us, and is waiting for the right time to do something on >this.) As someone at TIS actively involved in looking at SKE and related technology, I find it bothersome that Tim keeps mixing the terms SKE and GAK. I'm not a fan of giving government access to civilian keys, no matter what form it takes. However, my mother was an English major and she taught me to be protective of the language. escrow - n - a deed, a bond, money or a piece of property held in trust by a third party to be turned over to the grantee only upon the fulfillment of a condition >From inside this morass, there are so many options with so many gradations that it's important to keep terms well defined and separate. Try this: KE: key escrow, implementation and grantee unspecified HKE: key escrow, in hardware, grantee unspecified SKE: key escrow, in software, grantee unspecified KEG: key escrow, implementation unspecified, government grantee GAK: government access to keys, method unspecified GAK is clearly more general than KE and even more general than SKE. There is a real danger that (KE/HKE/SKE) could be subverted by the government but there are some real uses (as have been pointed out here) for what Steve Walker (the TIS president) calls a "spare key in the wallet". [I'm hoping to get his paper on the subject on our FTP or Web server -- will tell people when it's there.] A spare key version of SKE would have the key's owner as grantee -- leaving the gov't out of the loop *except through normal subpoena and search warrant access*. My predictions: 1. access by subpoena is still too objectionable for many people and isn't likely to fly; 2. surveillance agencies are not served by these mechanisms so they are not likely to welcome such systems. Meanwhile, NSA access isn't covered by any of these terms, except perhaps GAK. This is relevant since at the last KEA meeting (NIST's "Key Escrow Approaches"), TIS SKE was demonstrated and people from industry were asked if they wanted to participate in an experiment -- put it in some product, let some gov't agency be the guinea pig user community and see if the FBI was happy with the result (this would be SKEG -- SKE with gov't as grantee) -- and the response was that there was *no* interest unless this provided a way to get software exported. Mike Nelson of the White House (their point man on Clipper, etc.) and Clint Brooks of NSA replied with a resounding "we'll have to think about that". [There has been no result of such thinking yet.] The sequence of events is: 1. industry wants to export 2. NSA controls export 3. industry appears ready to do all sorts of things (like provide GAK) in order to get export permission 4. the NSA doesn't get its needs met by SKEG (because the SKEG mechanisms can be circumvented, leaving normal S/W without GAK) 5. the current situation is an impasse 6. the forces of the dark side are so desperate to get GAK that they'll look at anything which might get them there ------- So, there's a real reason to watch SKEG developments. There's also a real reason to get a new Cantwell bill passed. At the same time, although the term KE is tainted by NIST/NSA/FBI misuse, there do exist positive uses for KE (especially SKE) *without* the gov't as grantee. I encourage individuals to give this a little thought. The example Steve Walker keeps using in public is "the second time I locked myself out of my car, I decided to carry a spare key in my wallet". [...] >Dorothy Denning is deeply involved with SKE, Dorothy has seen the TIS SKE demo. Involvement other than that is none, at least on TIS's side, except that she provided one suggestion to the three TIS developers (Dave Balenson, Steve Lipner and Steve Walker) during the design stage (in early May I believe). BTW, my name appears on the TIS SKE paper because I added a variant -- the escrow-less option. That is, instead of having a private key in escrow for the FBI to get and use forever, have the sender split his session key into KS1 and KS2 (KS = XOR(KS1,KS2)) and encrypt each half for a different escrow agent. [That term is already a misnomer in this case, since these "escrow agents" have no databases of keys and therefore escrow nothing. I tell you, this morass has done major damage to the English language, all because the gov't perpetrators are afraid to say what they really mean, in plain English!] LE would then have to send a piece to each escrow agent for each message -- letting the agents do traffic analysis on FBI efforts and also giving out no key lasting beyond a wiretap court order. As with anything else, when faced with a technical problem, if I see solutions I offer them. [PRZ tells a story of an engineer being led to a gallows which has been malfunctioning, letting people go free (through a presumed act of God) -- looking at it and saying "Oh, I see the problem". (sorry if I ruined the joke with abbreviation)] ob.polit.: I don't mind GAK if it is applied only to the military and various executive agencies, as Clipper/Capstone now appears to be. Those people have already given up rights to private communications. However, for military uses of Capstone, it bothers me as a citizen to see the keys kept by Treasury and NIST. I'd rather see them kept by NSA and Fort Knox (and I've said so, to Mike Nelson among others). For private citizens, I intend to fight to my last breath any attempt to declare a government right to our keys. I also intend to fight attempts to declare that the public is volunteering to go along with GAK. I don't buy that and I'm in a position to see if it were true. > working with Miles Schmid >of the NSA Miles is with NIST (or was this a snide comment on NIST? :-). > and the folks from Trusted Information Systems (according >to Whit Diffie, who saw a joint presentation by the bunch of them in >Karlsruhe, and their glee that the Micali escrow patent will likely be >overturned due to prior art in Europe). The TIS SKE stuff was presented at several places, most recently the CSS&PAB. The new thrust by Steve Walker is that the public has no reason to buy KEG products. They add no value to the consumer. However, the public *has* a reason to buy spare-key-in-the-wallet systems. Given the existence of a redundant place to find a message key (or to get it decrypted), law enforcement could mine that database, using existing legal mechanisms (subpoena and search warrant). [This access does not meet the desires of covert surveillance, however, so it's likely to be rejected.] - Carl

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Re: Chomsky (thread from hell)
by nobody＠jpunix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- "Gary Jeffers" <CCGARY(a)MIZZOU1.missouri.edu> wrote: > I remember Chomsky being quoted (I think in a Mother Jones issue) > something to the effect that the opposition to "political correctness" > was not legitimate. Apparently, Chomsky finds at least one kind of > oppression to be not distasteful. > At a Chomsky lecture that I attended, Chomsky described himself as a > left libertarian. I surmise that he finds that grassroots oppression by > the left to be ok. I realize, of course, that "political correctness" > has great mass media & State support. Please post direct, in-context quotes from Chomsky to substantiate your claims, or stop making them. This demonization of Chomsky is so tiresome. ======================================================================= Crim Tideson Privacy is its own justification. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAwUBLpKaIavOblMnt4MdAQEwdQQAu1ztK8Wn9DRaANtklfbXBLZUAw0jRvKI f80gO3YLPZgOqUQV9j9AvoDl8Zqrsonm00gXxo2m7EIoZQtG5MIq9722kzEsxUzS aDipQM3bS9VRDtRrU4UhI5pl730yP6SulcpxRXv65OcSTJOsPNj40U0wC9tipeTk jiPoRSZ71Yg= =2CWO -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Chomsky quote (thread from hell)
by nobody＠jpunix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > jamesd(a)netcom.com (James A. Donald) wrote: > > >Noam Chomsky, in a 4/16/94 e-mail response to a question from Steve > >Shalom, says: > > > > In my opinion, not only mainstream intellectuals but also others > > who produce a constant stream of lies, distortion, racist screeds, > > etc., should be permitted freedom of speech. The state should not > > have the power to stop them. The same freedom extends to > > hypocrites, like faculty senates who choose one particularly and > > usually quite marginal example because career and power interests > > are served thereby, while ignoring vastly more significant and > > awful cases because the opposite is true. And Congress, of which > > the same is correct. > [utterly specious reasoning deleted] > Thus he is actually making a misleading and spurious > argument *against* freedom of speech at the same time as he > is piously declaring himself to be in favor of freedom of > speech. Leaving aside the fact that you've somehow managed to "prove" to yourself that Chomsky means the opposite of what he clearly and consistently says, what has this to do with cypherpunks? ======================================================================= Crim Tideson Privacy is its own justification. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAwUBLpKchqvOblMnt4MdAQGl2wP8DpmSTLSR+H3xQJY/ygEbVzABPZu436eV vAiJNcNV+PoPw5Bg6p3IBowP40JcYoqjn6Va0PomkLxdWyluwGFlNnorsb2Lq8e8 KOhzMlmnX1CIlXYfxXQxN3wCSYVqDfdhbw/9l/ZLVLWLLT+TH/NFNrj3WIhEmuWJ yXHkKKcHWwM= =ot7V -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Remailers in the uk papers
by Jonathon Fletcher 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Today's OnLine in the Guardian (techy bit every thursday) has an article on anonymous remailers. It's not bad, nice introduction to the concepts, listing of some remailers (penet, the hacktic crowd, soda), a little practical instruction for the use of vox.hacktic (what headers to put in and how to delimit them). It introduces chaining, so mailings can be "super-secure". Quite a pro-remailer article - it's nice to read something like this in a public forum. There's a section on Julf and the amount of traffic that get's passed through penet, as well his address in case the reader wants to help sponsor (or donate something) a faster machine and a better connection to make it run faster. As a small quote, the last three sentences read: "Anonyous remailers can be fun, but try not to react like a child with a new toy. Use these services responsibly. Remember, some people need them badly" - OnLine, the Guardian, October 6th, 1994 The author is "Steve Harris <steveha(a)cix.compulink.co.uk>" -Jon -- Jonathon Fletcher. j.fletcher(a)stirling.ac.uk WWW Home Page: http://www.stir.ac.uk/~jf1

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NATIONAL CRYPTOGRAPHY POLICY
by fhalper＠pilot.njin.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I saw this in Edupage, thought I'd pass it along. Reuben NATIONAL CRYPTOGRAPHY POLICY The National Research Council is conducting a comprehensive study of national cryptography policy, including such topics as: the availability of cryptography technology to foreign and domestic parties; the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers and users of such technology; U.S. national security and law enforcement interests; relative merits of various cryptographic technologies; demand for information systems security based on cryptography; the impact of foreign restrictions; the extent to which current policy is adequate for protecting U.S. interests; relative merits of current key escrow implementation schemes; feasible policy options; and recommendations for the process through which all interests are balanced in the formulation of national cryptography policy. Send comments and other correspondence to crypto(a)nas.edu. (NRC Release)

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Re: Impact of Free Strong Crypto (Essay of sorts)
by Black Unicorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Carl Ellison scripsit > > Your message signature was bad, BTW. > Oh? Anyone else on the list have this problem? If so I will be happy to re-up with a new sig. -uni- -- 073BB885A786F666 nemo repente fuit turpissimus - potestas scientiae in usu est 6E6D4506F6EDBC17 quaere verum ad infinitum, loquitur sub rosa - wichtig!

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Digital Telephony vote TODAY 7PM Eastern
by gnu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

According to EFF staffer Jonah Seiger: The bill is expected to be voted on in both the House and Senate TODAY! The House is expected to vote at about 7:00 pm (ET) and the Senate shortly there after (although it is still possible that they may not vote until tomorrow). The bill IS expected to pass both bodies. Do what you think is best. John Gilmore

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overload of the term "Key Escrow"
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There has been much discussion since at least 1992, but especially since April 1993, under the general heading of ``Key Escrow''. This term has been severely overloaded in the process, to the point that the term has no trustworthy meaning. What is worse, this overloading is almost certainly because there are topics which are politically sensitive involved and there is a reticence to express these topics openly. It is my intention to bring all of these topics into the open and discuss them, giving them each a label which we can use instead of the poor overloaded "Key Escrow". My list so far includes: export and intelligence access (NSA wants <= 40 bits to crunch on any alg shipped overseas) law enforcement access (FBI wants all cleartext, for everything, everywhere; failing that, it wants keys; and all have to be delivered to some comfortable central listening post) ?voluntary? compliance The Administration says "voluntary" but does it want: user voluntary, manufacturer voluntary + user mandatory, or mandatory ? Are there any other issues hidden behind the term "key escrow" which gov't people don't talk about that anyone thinks I should bring out in the open? Please reply by direct e-mail. Thanks, - Carl

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Government and Markets (Again)
by Black Unicorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: nobody(a)jpunix.com (Anonymous) >> unicorn(a)access.digex.net: >> Unsafe medical devices? I would say this is a problem with testing >> technology, not a lack of limitation on technological advance. >If medical devices are sold without ANY limitation, e.g. the requirement >that they be safe and effective, the result is unsafe equipment. >Improved testing technology isn't useful if there's no requirement to >use it. And "the market" is composed of people who have neither the >expertise to test the equipment before they consent to its use, nor (in >the case of someone's who's bleeding or in labor) the time. The market adjusts to these problems through the civil litigation system. A product is identified as potentially defective/dangerous and a law suit arises. Either the product appears to be responsible or not. The hospital is either responsible for not insuring that the emergency equipment is safe, or it isn't. The costs are ALREADY allocated in this example. Hospitals begin to look into their products with more care instead of relying on some FDA regulation that took 5 years to instate and is probably out of date. Do you think that FDA regulations are any less lagged? How many people have to die before the FDA passes a ban, or a regulation? And worse, how many people die because new products are kept in the wings for years? >> Genetically tampered food? Why is this dangerous? Have any evidence? >> Most of the livestock/crops you eat today have been altered in one way >> or another, be it selective breeding, low tech botanical splicing, or >> genetic/hormonal therapy. You see this as a regression? >In some cases, yes, I see problems in biotech. For example, hormones >used in cattle in high doses are known to cause tumors in women in low >doses. If the market is so faulty, how is it you have this information? In fact it was easy to get wasn't it? So you probably will watch out for hormone treated meat. Poetry in motion the market can be. Look, you did it without any regulation, and without paying 2000 federal employees between 25 and 90 thousand dollars a year. >Whether people would choose to eat hormone-treated meat is >debatable; I had thought that the right to make the choice was taken by >cypherpunks as an article of faith. Exactly. You have information, you are free to make your choice. If you're not a woman, you can eat all the meat you like and not fret over the study. Why? Because the federal government hasn't taken the meat away, or banned the use of hormones which increase the output of meat in certain cattle. >Without regulation on the >technology, even an innocuous labeling requirement, the right to choose >is taken away because consumers can't detect the difference between >hormone-treated beef and organic beef. I think Tim May put this best: T>Underwriters Laboratories, Good Housekeeping ("Seal of Appproval"), T>and Consumer Reports are better testers than any bureacrats in T>Washington, and they are private. Insurance companies have a strong T>interest in safe equipment, as do hospitals, doctors, and even T>patients. Indeed. Listen to yourself: "the right to choose is taken away because [Insert reason of the week here]" In your case it's because "consumers can't detect the difference between hormone-treated beef and organic beef." But you never explain how this is a function that is impossible to accomplish without federal government. Even worse, how do you reconcile this with your previous assertion that :"I had thought that the right to make the choice was taken by cypherpunks as an article of faith." Who is the blasphemer? In fact there is reason to believe the regulation you propose is more harmful than good. Institutions have a lifetime, a staying power if you will. This is why they are no good at setting technological regulation. FDA is a wonderful example of lag, lunacy and backwardness in standards setting. Tim May comments: T>What often happens with government-imposed standards is that some T>lobbying group decides that "cheese is good for you" and so gets T>cheese installed as one of the government-mandated "basic food T>groups." [...] >> You never make the distinction between regulation designed to promote >> and regulation designed to deter technological advance. >Technological advance is a means to an end. Regulations should properly >be about insuring the public welfare. While we might reasonably >disagree about what that welfare is, clearly technological anarchy >doesn't promote it. Not for all of us. Some of us believe the advance of technology is an end unto itself. So many things follow from the advance of technology, sometimes it's all you have to look at to make progress. The shortest distance between two points.... Often this argument reminds me of those who whine about free trade. They want protectionist tariffs. They point out that their backward business is going to be destroyed because some automaker elsewhere in the world is doing a better job, for less. So in the interest of making this special interest group happy, the market is disrupted and all cars are more expensive. The cheap manufacturer has trouble advancing to even greater heights and consumers get the short end of the stick to preserve.... what? Jobs. It's the same thing for technology. Why are the rest of us being held back from eating tomatoes twice the size at half the cost? Because: 1> Real tomato growers are powerful in politics 2> The FDA is a morass of paper and policy 3> The government has anything to do with the tomato market. Where did we lose the concept that you make money when you sell a good product for a good price? When did sympathy for special interest groups come into the picture? I'll tell you when, the 1930's. The result? Today the average citizen depends on government for over half his assets. HALF HIS ASSETS are government entitlements. Think about that very carefully. Soon they are going to be taking away your drivers license for all sorts of reasons. Do you think driving is a government entitlement? Well it is. Why? Because the government got the foot in the door. Today your car keys, tomorrow your crypto keys. >> Market forces are lathargic, sometimes they need a boost. I propose >> this boost be accomplished with motivators like tax breaks, market >> assisters and privatization. >Either the market works or it doesn't. You can't decry all government >regulation and then call for handouts to businessmen. I just can't agree. There are very few black and whites here. Stewart, Krier and Manell point out what are (IMHO) quite legitimate market failures and where intervention is warranted. 1> There has been a fairly liquid exchange and availability to consumers of information in the marketplace. 2> There are no restricted commodities 3> There are large numbers of buyers and sellers in the market. 4> There are no localized externalities. Even in these circumstances, there are many options for intervention, collectivization and regulation being THE LAST ONE ON THE LIST. Tim May: T>Government standards are a two-edged sword. Many of us would prefer to T>"opt out" of their idea of what's healthy and safe and what's not. And that's what real choice is all about. -uni- (Dark) -- 073BB885A786F666 nemo repente fuit turpissimus - potestas scientiae in usu est 6E6D4506F6EDBC17 quaere verum ad infinitum, loquitur sub rosa - wichtig!

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