December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: who?
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

i'm sorry to hear the jpunix remailer is down for good-- why can't people learn to be more fuckin responsible! i guess this is just yet another inconvenience we can tank terrorists for and those aol-holes! anybody know the email address of the good samaritans? tia

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Re: The Good Times virus ...
by bshantz＠spry.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thanks to the people who've sent me copies of the CIAC announcement. That should cover my needs for right now. Hopefully I can convince these people not to worry. -- brad

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Re: British Hacker Article
by pstemari＠erinet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:31 PM 1/4/95 -0500, Duncan Frissell wrote: >>From The Independent (London) Tuesday 3 January 1995 - Front Page > ... The US Defence Information >Systems Agency admitted in a private briefing, which has been confirmed, >that the hackers had affected the Department's "military readiness." "Admitted"? Probably "complained without substaniation" would be more accurate. > ... It is understood that >he invented a "sniffer" programme which searched across hundreds of >computers attached to the Internet for passwords and user names. ... If he was really behind the various password sniffers running on Netcom, etc, he has a lot of explaining to do. > ... "They contained information about >firing sites in North Korea and stuff like that. Field intelligence. He >kept detailed logs of communication traffic. ... The Korean files were on >the Girths Air Force Base computer system and therefore the could have been >accessed. ... Harumpf. Either the stuff wasn't classified, or else someone had a major security procedures breach and had classified material sitting on a computer with an uncrypted comm link. --Paul J. Ste. Marie pstemari(a)well.sf.ca.us, pstemari(a)erinet.com

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gif format in newsbytes
by an172607＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

CompuServe GIF License & Royalties Raises Hackles COLUMBUS, OHIO, U.S.A., 1995 JAN 4 (NB) -- On-line giant CompuServe has sparked controversy on the Internet by offering a $1-plus-royalties license for developers to use its previously free GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) image file format. CompuServe terms the fee an offer and a benefit to the on- line community, but skeptics quickly dubbed it a "GIF tax." The new fee system is based on a licensing agreement reached between CompuServe and Unisys Corp. (NYSE:UIS) in June, 1994, for use of LZW (Lempel- Zev-Welch) compression in its GIF format. Unisys has claimed a patent on LZW technology. Under the CompuServe agreement, developers who wish to operate under the on- line firm's LZW license agreement with Unisys pay a one-time fee of $1 plus a royalty of 1.5 percent or 15 cents per registered program, whichever is greater. Downloaded programs that do not get registered are not subject to the fee, nor are end-users. CompuServe announced the new fee system in various areas or "forums" of the service on December 29. The timing has led to suspicions by some that the service was not being fully honest with its members. In an open letter, Pat Clawson, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of TeleGrafix Communications Inc., called it "the online communications community's equivalent of the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor," and added: "The announcement of the CompuServe-Unisys GIF Tax on December 29, during the lull between Christmas and New Year's Day, was clearly timed to cause maximum damage while an unsuspecting public celebrated the holidays." Clawson said his firm, which developed the RIPscrip 2.0 online multimedia technology and the RIPTERM terminal program that leans heavily on the JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) image format, will drop support of GIF images because of the new fee system. RIPscrip 2.0 is scheduled for release January 16. Speaking to Newsbytes, CompuServe spokesman Pierce Reid acknowledged that the release date may have been unfortunate from a public relations viewpoint, but he said it was an accident of timing, not a desire to avoid public scrutiny. Reid pointed out that it took a year and a half to hammer out a licensing agreement with Unisys Corp. (NYSE:UIS). Unisys holds a patent on the GIF format's underlying LZW compression technology. Once the agreement with Unisys was signed in June, 1994, he added, it took CompuServe another six months to arrive at a way to, as he put it, "share" the license. "Six months is not a long time to settle the details of a licensing agreement, if you know how these things work," he told Newsbytes. "We're not making any money on this. We paid a substantial fee to Unisys for the license, and we offered to share the license for the benefit of the development community as well as for ourselves and our subscribers." Reid said the license was based on the fact that CompuServe had found merit in a Unisys patent claim. CompuServe had used the patented LZW technology in its 1987 development of the GIF format, believing the technology to be in the public domain. Unisys contacted the on-line firm about its patent claim in 1993, and that eventually led to the December 29 announcement, the firm said. Commented Reid: "I've been watching the Internet, and those who are commenting are on a bell curve -- the vast majority are taking a reasonable view, but there are always those out on the extreme ends. "A number of people regard this as a real benefit. CompuServe, by requiring no money for negotiations, is saving developers from the need to waste time. There's no worrying about legal or licensing issues, and we've done that for a dollar." (Craig Menefee/19950104/Press Contact: Pierce Reid, CompuServe, 614-538-4571; Pat Clawson, TeleGrafix, 714-379-2140, Internet e-mail rip.support(a)telegrafix.com; Oliver Picher, Unisys, 215-986-5367) Unisys Seeks Royalties On GIF Algorithm BLUE BELL, PENNSYLVANIA, U.S.A., 1995 JAN 4 (NB) -- Unisys Corp. (NYSE:UIS) said it will seek royalty payments from developers of software using the Graphic Interchange Format (GIF). Unisys said it owns rights to an algorithm that is widely used in GIF tools. Oliver Picher, a spokesman for Unisys, told Newsbytes that the online service CompuServe introduced the GIF format in 1987, and incorporated the Unisys algorithm, apparently believing it was in the public domain. Unisys learned that the algorithm was used in the GIF technology about two years ago, contacted CompuServe, and in June, 1994, the companies reached an agreement under which CompuServe paid Unisys an undisclosed sum for use of the algorithm. The payment was "a reasonable amount but not an overwhelming amount," Picher said, declining to reveal the exact sum. CompuServe was the first to license the algorithm from Unisys for use in a GIF tool, Picher said, but about 100 companies have licensed it for other purposes. Picher said one other online information service has already licensed the algorithm, but could not say if it was for GIF-related use in that case. Unisys is negotiating with all the major online services for possible license agreements, Picher said. While he would not give specifics, he said the terms Unisys is seeking are "very reasonable to the point where license fees shouldn't be a barrier" to using GIF. He added that people who have GIF software on their PCs will not be affected. The same algorithm is also used in the Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) graphics format, and Unisys concluded a license agreement with Aldus Corp. some time ago, Picher said. (Grant Buckler/19950104/Press Contact: Oliver Picher, Unisys, 215-986-5367) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

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Re: good news about the EFF...
by jrochkin＠cs.oberlin.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:23 PM 01/01/95, Aron Freed wrote: >Has anyone seen Monty Python's Life of Brian..... DO I hear a parallelism??? >Something to the effect of "The PEople's Judean Front", "The Popular >People's Front", and it goes on an on.... > >HOw about for the modern approach.... CDT, EFF, CPSR, Cypherpunks... Do I >hear more.. Or are we so split up that we can't agree on our common goal.... The more the merrier, in my opinion. As long as they can all get funding, which admittedly could be a problem, but presumably if it is then some of the organizations will just drop out. *shrug* But in general, decentralization is good, right? I'd rather have 5 organizations defending electronic rights then just one, when we know all too well how possible it is for that just one to negotiate a compromise that seems more like a betrayal. The more active, funded organizations, the more it appears to legislators like people are really concerned about this stuff, and the safer we are against point-failure. Decentralize, distribute, good. :) [Of course it remains to be seen if so many organizations at once can remain active and well funded.]

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British Hacker Story
by nobody＠replay.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: newsbytes(a)clarinet.com (NB-LON) Subject: London Newspaper Runs Old "Superhacker" Story 01/03/95 Date: 3 Jan 95 20:44:22 GMT LONDON, ENGLAND, 1995 JAN 3 (NB) -- As the UK started back to work today after the long Christmas and New Year shutdown, readers of the Independent newspaper were treated to the banner headline "British Boy Raided US Defense Secrets." The curious thing about the story was that none of the other nationalpapers or news wires carried any reports. On investigation, Newsbytes discovered why -- the story dates back to July of last year, and briefly resurfaced in early November on the US news wires. According to the Independent, a 16-year-old British boy has been arrested in connection with a alleged unauthorized intrusions into the US government's computers and "was able to watch secret communications between US agents in North Korea during the crisis over nuclear inspections last spring." The story is quite correct, except that the boy in question was arrested last July, when the original story broke. Commenting on the story, Peter Sommer, a leading security consultant and a senior with the Computer Research Center at the London School of Economics, said that it smacked of the British Telecom secrets case of late November,also reported in the Independent. That story, as reported by Newsbytes, turned out to be something of a non-event when the hacker, who posted details of top secret files on BT's ex-directory computer "across the Internet," turned out to be Steve Fleming, a Scottish freelance journalist who worked as a temp for BT in the summer and broke BT's own security rules by downloading files from the BT's Customer Service System (CSS) computer, then mailed them -- across the Internet -- to other people. "I'm amazed at the Independent running yet another story involving the Internet," Sommer told Newsbytes, adding that it is "a very old story. It seems that all they have to do is to work up a story about a hacking attempt, whether successful or not, and weave in a story about the Internet, and it's a headline story." Ken Young, newly installed editor of Communicate, a leading industry communications magazine in London, and a veteran of the UK communications industry for more than a decade, told Newsbytes that the story seemed a little thin. "It looks like another hacking story except that (the newspaper) has written in something about the Internet, and bingo! You've got a report that the information was accessible to 32 million users on the Internet," he said. Sommer, meanwhile, told Newsbytes that he had made his own discreet inquiries about the story with high level authorities when it broke last summer. "There are two problems with this case. Firstly, any lawyer worth his salt would invoke Section 69 of the Police & Criminal Evidence Act," he said. This Act, Sommer explained, requires that, before a computer can be considered as admissible evidence in court, the owner of the computer must issue a certificate of correct working. This, he said, could not be issued, as a casual user of a PC would be unable to make such a certification. Sommer went on to explain that the second reason that the case could be problematic for the prosecution was "that the lawyer would ask the court for full disclosure of all affected files on victim's host computers," which, since such files are almost certain to be classified in the US, could not be revealed in a British courtroom. The facts surrounding the case, as reported by Newsbytes, were that the 16-year-old -- operating under the code name of Data Stream -- was one of several who gained unauthorized access to the US defense computer network in late 1993 and early 1994 and that some files were deleted. At the time, press reports said that as many as a million passwords were compromised, and may have compromised the military readiness of the United States. The case has, Newsbytes understands, been fully investigated by the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) although details of the report of the investigation by the USAF OSI are classified. Originally, the press reports of the time speculated whether the youth would be the first under-18 to be extradited to the US to face charges. It seems that, following last summer's arrest and submission of the report to the Crown Prosecution Service that the case is being quietly shuffled into a file because of the practical problems in pursuing a prosecution.

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The NYTimes article
by nelson＠crynwr.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The New York Times article is on Nando (News and Observer)'s WWW server: http://www.nando.net/newsroom/nt/inf/01029537644.html For those who haven't seen it... -- -russ <nelson(a)crynwr.com> http://www.crynwr.com/crynwr/nelson.html Crynwr Software | Crynwr Software sells packet driver support | ask4 PGP key 11 Grant St. | +1 315 268 1925 (9201 FAX) | What is thee doing about it? Potsdam, NY 13676 | What part of "Congress shall make no law" eludes Congress?

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Re: Anonymous payment scheme
by L. McCarthy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- The Dalai Lama writes: > I know that in Delaware it is illegal for a merchant to request ID when > you pay by credit card. I'm not sure if this is wide spread or just > local. As I recall there was something of a national outcry about this practice several years back. I think California outlawed it at the time, along with other states, though I don't know if any federal law was passed. Since I understand MBNA America is the second-largest employer in Delaware, I'd guess that if Delaware banned it, so did most states. Retail stores often asked one to write one's phone number on the check when paying that way. I remember my father habitually writing the police dept.'s non-emergency number in all such cases :] > -- [Here's something for those friendly mail scanners...] > [...] LSD-25 plutonium north korea terrorist encryption die NSA CERT quiche "quiche" ? The *real* Four Horsemen don't eat quiche ! -L. Futplex McCarthy; PGP key by finger or server "The objective is for us to get those conversations whether they're by an alligator clip or ones and zeroes. Wherever they are, whatever they are, I need them." -FBI Dir. Freeh - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.1 iQCVAwUBLwt8YWf7YYibNzjpAQF02QP/dTKpXWYIIQmc53X+TqctbvSY3Lv2Rohz GP1Lm1RXkMtmEPfsLgmZOg6J+E7dw6NYlr9rpANLHsy3Hf7lPlMSbVKNJ/b3dO7z 6Cox4ve2hG1WjLaHu8tKbzW1mPWASX+wojyvJhe8dX1wCEdlUkJk7qMk5kSLWqKk K4X8H7MH5Nw= =noOA - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBLwt9kSoZzwIn1bdtAQFIrgF+OxMRUbtLW4JhKFMxvdNg62v6Lqdb5Bog IRrUySoeo39h5EL9474TY9Gnd4r7debR =iplm -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Remailers, law and the Church of Scientology
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- AvI Harris Baumstein writes: >> clients' property rights. Courts are holding such >> contributory infringers liable. Two examples are: Sega >> Enterprises Ltd. v. Maphia BBS, 30 U.S.P.Q. 2d 1921 (N.D. >> Cal. 1994) and Playboy Enterprises v. Frena, 839 F. Supp. >> 1152 (M.D. Fla. 1993). >what of these cases? is this just an example of typical lawyerly >intimidation tactics? Neither case is particularly similar to the remailer situation. _Maphia_ concerned a business which sold $350 boxes to copy SEGA programs from and to ROM cartridges; they also sold access to their BBS which held unlicensed copies of SEGA games. The court held that the copying devices had no purpose other than to contribute to infringement, and that when SEGA programs were uploaded to the BBS, the upload was made with the knowledge of the defendants. _Frena_ involved a BBS operator who made copyrighted pictures from Playboy available on his BBS; Playboy trademarks were removed from the pictures prior to posting. Access to the BBS was only available to people who paid for access, or who otherwise did business with the defendant. The court's discussion about the defendant's mental state in _Frena_ consists of a single sentence, and a cite to Jay Dratler, Jr., "Intellectual Property Law: Commercial Creative, and Industrial Property", $ 6.01[3] at 6-15(1991). The court seems to be addressing direct, not contributory infringement. (I don't have Dratler available easily right now so I dunno what it says.) _Maphia_ does cite text from _Casella v. Morris_ 820 F.2d 362 (11th Cir. 1987): "'[o]ne who, with knowledge of the infringing activity, induces, causes or materially contributes to the infringing conduct of another' may be held liable as a contributory infringer." (quoting from _Gershwin Publishing Corp. v. Columbia Artists Management, Inc._, 443 F.2d 1159,1162 (2nd Cir. 1971). I don't think the cases cited stand for what the Church's attorney says they stand for. I'm not convinced that the "contributory infringement" doctrine can be reasonably applied to remailer operators; and I'm not sure that remailer operators have the sort of mental state (knowledge) required to create liability. The letter to operators may be part of a strategy to establish knowledge of the potential for misuse, to later prevent operators from claiming a lack of knowledge. I'm not sure that a vague warning "someone might use your service to infringe a copyright" is strong enough to establish that sort of knowledge. As a remailer operator, I don't see a good way to eliminate infringing uses without also eliminating non-infringing uses; the crazy politics around this Scientology stuff makes it seem like the perfect place for people to use remailers. I also think the non-commercial and political nature of postings to the Scientology groups may make a fair-use analysis turn out differently than in _Maphia_ and _Frena_; both defendants tried a fair use argument, and both lost. On the other hand, I'm a law student, not an attorney, and the person who wrote that letter certainly knows more about law in general and about copyright than I do. I may be totally hosed. Coincidentally or not, I had a long chat today with the sysadmin of the system immediately upstream from mine. He said, out of the blue, "So .. you run a remailer?". In the past he has been privacy-friendly and anon-friendly, and seems to remain so today, but the timing was a little peculiar. I explained about the remailers and told him how to get Raph's list and about alpha.c2.org and all the rest of it. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBLws+TH3YhjZY3fMNAQEpmgP+JnIZKmdzLWx3P8fMVO0v1pEZ33lrlHHe FLZBnk59rDXZBomFhprlZAs65ERmKBbugXRJYkPhFA7aKYqcmpquGj6BqWp0oTul SjHS3OWpsDJhPVEWzt5uOhlV5WrDdhqUWgrI9hN1nfLHnD/Y2NGvPPUt4J2Web/H uD9htAdxH8o= =U4oG -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: C'punks Economist Fan Club
by L. McCarthy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Why is it that so many cypherpunks like the economist? The Economist is my favorite magazine (my parents' too). I don't read it regularly, but that has more to do with my being busy than anything else. It succeeds in providing fairly balanced in-depth coverage of international news that isn't terribly Amerocentric or Anglocentric. At worst it's G7-centric, but I think that's entirely reasonable ;) It's witty, politically aware, relatively technically savvy. The articles exhibit a healthy (IMHO) cynicism about what happens and why, yet maintain some idealism about what should happen. It's not perfect, but it's difficult to imagine surpassing it. I recently read an interview with Bill Gates in which he was asked which periodicals he reads. His first response was: "The Economist, every page". -L. Futplex McCarthy; PGP key by finger or server "The objective is for us to get those conversations whether they're by an alligator clip or ones and zeroes. Wherever they are, whatever they are, I need them." -FBI Dir. Freeh - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.1 iQCVAwUBLwu1BGf7YYibNzjpAQH9nAP/SMG+SpBKMnW0owZJb8mH1+boR8veHxZR ZHF88L2XRKb4PRvzBho8oukfGAneaTJ45EaApZ7PAcz+zWin3PT3IHl6KqsgZger nHl2g7HHVqVO+XXbcpM3eSzvfA8lzbQgWLGM+0RAguYjAPFoMgWNunDU7xUrfuwY 66mBQMCNUlo= =QPTj - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBLwu2ISoZzwIn1bdtAQEw0wGA4UqmMyxtaoR6nzs54zUesF2CvvSROy6O xAOR//mT0N6v7oLdhTmOHlWDVeFqJBXw =M8TG -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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