December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: NSA into antigravity?
by Andrew.Spring＠ping.be 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

: >> >>On July 19, Gerald Ollman and Robert Wayne, two researchers from the >>University of Maryland geophysics department were detained in Fort Meade, >>Maryland, apparently by agents of the National Security Agency, whilst >>taking measurements of the Earth's gravitational field. After 18 hours of >>questioning, they were released after being instructed not to discuss the >>incident. Their equipment and results were not returned. >> >>Neither the University nor the NSA has commented on the incident. However, >>it is believed that Ollman and Wayne were investigating a slight anomaly >>in the Earth's gravitational field centered around Fort Meade. No reason has >>been given for their detention. Missile targeting software depends on good models of the earth's gravity for accuracy, both for design and for simulation purposes. Since Ft. Meade was doubtless the target of many nukes during the cold war (and probably still is), that may account for them having a bug up their asses on the subject. 'Course you know the NSA; the world's largest employer of mathematicians, the largest purchaser of computer hardware, and the largest consumer of Thorazine. -- Thank you VERY much! You'll be getting a Handsome Simulfax Copy of your OWN words in the mail soon (and My Reply). <Andrew.Spring(a)ping.be> PGP Print: 0529 C9AF 613E 9E49 378E 54CD E232 DF96 Thank you for question, exit left to Funway.

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Re: Certificates/Anonymity/Policy/True Names
by monty.harder＠famend.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

TC> This happens all the time, though "I am not a lawyer," in disputes about TC> whether a contract was signed properly, about whether the signer had the TC> right authority, etc. And it is apparently not necessary to have the TC> "state" establish itself, for example, as the keeper of signatures. But the state does establish Notaries Public, and courts put special credence in the validity of signatures witnessed by them. Which is to be expected, of course, having the King's X being good in the King's courts. I don't see this as an either/or binary at all. To me, the natural thing to do is for a person who is already a Notary under the laws of a state to offer digital notary services. I would expect the State of California or Commonwealth of Massachussets to have the Secretary of State's office (or whoever is in charge of Notary Credentials there) to digitally sign the public keys of any Notaries commissioned thereby. In fact, I would like to see provision made for a digital signature to have an expiration date included, so that the SoS office could have its signature on a key set to expire along with the Notary's commission. Thus the existing state framework for verification of identity and consent on contracts is extended into the electronic sphere seamlessly. None of which prevents you or I from doing business without the services of the Royal Notary. * ZenCrafters - Total Enlightenment in about an hour --- * Monster(a)FAmend.Com *

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Re: CPAC, XtatiX, and the Censor-State
by Mike Duvos 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In alt.cypherpunks, Censorship Suck <FBI(a)Sucks.NSA> writes: > That's pretty bad, when there's not even any sex. Yes. Most of these Web pages are not even political or sexual in nature, but cute boys anywhere on the Net these days cause the Fundies to have Grand Mal seizures. > My previous suggestion was to create "virtual" WWW sites > (when necessary, possibly as a stop-gap measure when there > is a censorship attack). I read your earlier post, and find the notion of hosting Web sites on Usenet intriguing. Tim has always pointed out that Usenet already exists as a persistent uncensorable repository of virtually everything, and that applications (eg BlackNet) needing such a facility should simply use the existing one. > By virtual, I mean by posting to USENET, probably encrypted, > with the decryption key following a couple days later. > It involves considerable development for either a newsreader > or preprocessor, but then, the work is implied. A > "gathering" design is necessary. Conceptually, seamlessly extending the Web over Usenet is not complicated. Each document could be posted as a single PGP conventionally encrypted article, with some reasonable convention for encryption keys and message ids that would enable links to be followed. Browsers could be modified to maintain a open connection to an NNTP server, and to fetch and decrypt articles specified by an nntp:<message-id> link in lieu of using http. Suppose I post my favorite banned Web pages to alt.anonymous.messages on a weekly basis, and distribute browser plug-ins and patches to enable Usenet to host Web content. I forsee the following glitches. First, as anyone who has posted a large number of articles to Usenet knows, many servers will only get a subset of them. Second, policy for article expiration is site-specific, and can be made to depend on a number of parameters. Posting once a week may be fine for some servers, and not for others. Third, it is only practical to employ Usenet to host static Web content. This rules out Web-based chat boards, and other such politically interesting content, as well as anything that is cgi-bin based. Fourth, Web content on Usenet will be in an easily identified format and trivial to filter out at local sites. > Because you are exactly right: the ISPs can be attacked, > regardless of the fault-tolerant design of the Internet. > Some version of the above tool WILL route around "damage" > attempts. > Interesting, that this would in part require cryptography. > Would the government go so far as to try and outlaw crypto > posts to USENET? Good luck. Odder things have happened. > Someone should make a complete list of all the > contacts/emails involved in contacting ISPs to get them to > censor. There may be something to learn. (sort of a traffic > analysis deal) It's the "usual suspects." We know who they are, and they are making no attempt to keep their activities secret. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ enoch(a)zipcon.com $ via Finger $ {Free Cypherpunk Political Prisoner Jim Bell}

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NSA cracker - how many TW
by Secret Squirrel 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

iang(a)cs.berkeley.edu > seems also unlikely. (Actually, for all I know, terawatt power sources > may exist; that's out of my field. Please let me know if this is the case. > I just know that at my rates, 7.12 TW for 33 minutes (at about $.10/kWh) I've extracted some figures from an industry publication and arrive at a worldwide electricity generation capacity of 1.6 TW. Assuming that 1% of that power is smuggled into the deep space cracker we're not even close to 33 minutes, and it doesn't matter whether we're looking at a one-off every so often rather than a continuous 40 a day. And that's still on optimistic assumptions including 1) testing keys for free 2a) running on earth at 3 K rather than 300 K or 2b) no bother transmitting power & signals into space (Like if the cracker had been secretly installed on Voyager 2 that'd be your 33 mins gone waiting for the radio.) IBM have published a communications scheme that claims to recover energy normally lost - it was on their website a few months ago. I skipped reading it at the time because it sounded dotty.

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Re: Basically F-C-ed
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by usura(a)replay.com (Alex de Joode) on Mon, 21 Aug 4:28 AM >Airport police was very quick to point out that such >practices were legal, now when they do that ...... What, Alex, FC stands for F*cking Counterterrorists, making work for themselves? Oh my, are those bitter out of work XX-cold warriors heeding X-feebie Liddy, prolonging the 60's blame-the-radicals payoffs.

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Re: (Fwd) 1995 Nanotechnology Conference
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:45 AM 8/19/95 -0400, John Young wrote: > >Fourth Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology And what does this have to do with cryptography? --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: A glance at the future of missing child identification
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

September Wired has an "Updata" on this by Simson Garfinkel, "A Chip for Every Child?" A note says the original story was in Wired 1.6. Excuse the W-word.

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Queries from a Cyper-newbie?
by Chris Avery 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anybody willing to offer a bit of help to a cypher-newbie? I'm trying to sort out a few of the basics: (and if not answers, just a few pointers on where to go for info? ) Thnks. 1. PGP 5.0 -- good software? If not, what problems? Why to use DSS vs/ RSA keys? How is 5.0 different than 2.6.3i ? Which is better? 2. Are emails encrypted using PGP 5.0 decypherable by PGP 2.6.3i (and vice versa?) Using RSA keys? 3. I understand certain encryption s/w cannot be legally exported, I am aware that such s/w is nevertheless being used (and built) abroad. My queries: Is purely domestic use being threatened by the pending legislation? Is it already illegal to send an encrypted msg out of the US? If so, is it illegal to receive an encrypted msg from outside the US? 4. How strong is strong? My MS Explorer has the 128 bit encryption scheme to secure domestic financial transactions (such as credit cards). How "un-encryptable" is this? I read some recent postings here re difficulty of breaking 128 bit keys -- but this had reference to stronger methods of encryption than MS Explorer uses, right? So 128 bits is hard to break (umptyump years, terrawatts, etc.)? Then why does my PGP 5.0 software offer keys that are 768, 1024, etc. up to 4096 bits in length? Are these numbers on the same scale? Any "strength" differences between RSA, DSS, and Diffie-Hellman? IS there some layman-understandable difference between these? 5. Is international data traffic somehow monitored (or monitorable) to detect encrypted traffic? Thanks for any help.

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Third World Man
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(Wow! I just trimmed 7 of the 8 names cc:ed on this message I'm quoting...I think the auto-quoting software most of use is getting out of hand. The trimmed recipients were; To: bdavis(a)thepoint.net, aba(a)atlas.ex.ac.uk, davby(a)ida.liu.se, Damien.Doligez(a)inria.fr, hfinney(a)shell.portal.com, asb(a)nexor.co.uk) Anyway... At 9:19 PM 8/20/95, Adam Shostack wrote: >| So ... has this proven that the banning of strong crypto is the correct >| way to go, and that, at least to some, credit card transactions using >| weak crypto will be acceptable to most (given the ease of getting CC#s >| other ways)? > > No. Banning strong crypto will not help; those darn furriners >are using it anyway. What it will mean is that the Information >Infrastructure of the future will bypass the United States, as without >strong cryptography, it is impossible to build a secure architechture. > > Should the United States wish to relagate itself to the status >of a third world nation becuase of terrorists, druge dealers, child >pornorgaphers and money launderers, that is indeed unfortunate. The U.S. is not likely to find itself relegated to third world status over this issue. Rhetorically, I wish it were so, but it just ain't. This issue--like the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, the race issue in the '60s, the Vietnam war in the '60s and '70s, to name a few cases, _sounds_ really serious. And it is, as those cases were, but predicting the imminent collapse of American civilization is usually a lose. There is no way the technologlcal and manufacturing prowess of leading American companies will be substantially crippled. I would like to see export laws relaxed, especially as they are seldom effective, and so on. You know my views. But the likeliest outcome if strong crypto export remains hard, but import is unaffected, is that strong crypto will be imported from Europe and elsewhere. (It does not violate any laws that I am aware of to have a product for sale in the U.S. with "hooks" for arbitrary crypto, so long as that product and the hooks are not _exported_. Naturally, companies like Microsoft, Lotus, Novell, etc., do not want to have a U.S. version and an export version. But if they _have_ to, they can. My point is that this would certainly not relegate the U.S. to Third World status, at least not faster than many other trends are already doing.) Several European companies are strong in crypto, of course. --Tim May ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net (Got net?) | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-728-0152 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Corralitos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: (Fwd) 1995 Nanotechnology Conference
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by jamesd(a)echeque.com ("James A. Donald") on Sun, 20 Aug 8:17 PM >And what does this have to do with cryptography? The topic has come up here several times in connection with development of molecular computers. It has been suggested that there is a link to Len Adelman's work. But maybe that was just a transparent cover story. Perhaps it's actually a molecular part of the Waco Vince Foster Tom Clancy Pat Robertson Nuclear Weapons Material divulgation. Thanks for provoking. What do you think? Your lively disputations have been missed.

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