December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Ring: Server problem
by don＠cs.byu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- AAAAAAAAAAAKKKKKKKKK My server has had problems with both incoming ftp and rz. Not only is it very flakey, but they've mis-applied a timeout lately, meaning I have to press a key every 10 minutes during ftp or the process gets killed. Oh, and they did that just before becoming very busy. I delayed announcing my keyring until I could physically transfer the keyring by disk. After getting mail reporting it being corrupted, I had to delete it. It's possible that when I mounted my disk, it could have defaulted into an ascii conversion. I am currently trying to uuencode the entire file and mail it to myself from my local machine. (Heh) If that fails, the keyring will unfortunately not be available until tomorrow, when I can physically transfer it. Sorry for the delay. Don -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQB1AwUBME9UYcLa+QKZS485AQFiAAL/bOEgCAeQVPfIzaU3fbRzowK+Wh+lwgaY TY/O9DssheM34qbQcaM3qx9/7Gv4J+kamvhNOgNPhInsQ9ZATKFFtfbPTKimH/jm dP6g51WxbhdQV6mUdXoPT1z1yFAUPEiL =HaPy -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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A Distributed Network Cache Service
by Mike Duvos 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've been thinking a bit about the micropayment-based distributed network file system of the future. It should be scalable, with the addition of servers being a simple process. Anyone should be able to run a server. Kidnapping a server should disclose nothing about the contents of files stored there. Which files are stored on which servers should be concealed from mere users of the network. Anyone should be able to use the system by connecting to the server nearest them. Deterministic routing between servers should be used by servers to provide files to other servers. The system should provide for replication of files on a fixed number of servers, with "k of n" parts being sufficient for reconstruction. Aside from replication done for reliability, there should be only one copy of a file in the system at any time. If multiple users submit the same file, there should be no more copies than if one user submitted it. The architecture of the system should be completely independent of any specific file system organization, and any user should be able to sync all or any part of his file system with the network file system, or cache against the network file system on his local machine. The system should be completely secure, even from operators of servers. The person submitting a file receives a secret necessary for its reconstruction, and the file may only be accessed by the owner and those to whom the secret is communicated. The war room at the Pentagon and TCMay should be able to use the same server as an extension of their local file systems without any security worries. Let's consider the following service... Bob has an string of 100,000 octets he wants to make available to Alice and a few of their closest friends. Bob makes a secure connection to a Trusted Agent doing business with the network file system, and gives the Trusted Agent the string, and a micropayment of $1/MB or 10 cents. Working in a secure box, the Trusted Agent batch compresses and scrambles Bob's string into a much smaller string of seemingly random bits, and gives Bob two 128 bit values, a TAG, which will identify Bob's data to Bob, and to anyone else Bob may wish to share his data with, and a CONTEXT, which will unravel Bob's data back into its original form. The Trusted Agent then signs Bob's data, declaring that the resulting digital coccoon produced from Bob's data is associated with the TAG, and that the CONTEXT necessary to recover the data has been communicated to Bob and all copies destroyed. The agent gives Bob the TAG and CONTEXT, and sends the processed data and the TAG to the distributed file system, and it is stored on one or more of its servers for the next 100 days, after which it expires. For the next 100 days, Bob and all of his friends may use the 256 bit TAG/CONTEXT pair in place of Bob's data and may serve that data for free any number of times off any network file system server. They simply make a secure connection to any server, and send the TAG. The server returns to them the seemingly random stream of bits, after which a freeware program takes that data and the CONTEXT, and regenerates the original data. After 100 days, bob may fork over another 10 cents for another 100 days, or his data will disappear. The TAG assigned to an Octet String is unique, and no two strings have the same TAG, and no string is ever assigned multiple tags, no matter how often it may be entered and purged from the system. Now, almost everything you could want from a network wide distributed file system can be carried on top of this simple service, which might be considered a system of temporary lodging for popular Octet Strings. You rent your Octet String a room, where you and people you authorize may have unlimited visits for 100 days, and at the end, your Octet String checks out for parts unknown. One can do an almost unlimited number of useful things with such a service which, given a fast network connection, allows you to store any file in 256 bits for a period of time ranging from 100 days to forever, for a small fee. Bob could back up his entire file system to the network, sending each individual file or directory as an Octet String, with hard links to files replaced with TAG/CONTEXT pairs. The TAG/CONTEXT pair for Bob's root directory would then be used to access Bob's file system off any network server. If Bob changed some files, he could resync his FS with the server by only updating a few Octet Strings. If Bob synced his FS with the network daily, and jotted down the TAG/CONTEXT pair for his root directory, Bob could mount his file system as it appeared at backup time for any of the last 100 days, with no replication of material on the servers that contained it. Bob could write a "compression" program, Bobzip, which would produce an "archive" where each file only took 256 bits of space, and which could be "unBobzipped" on any machine connected to the Network for the next 100 days. Bob could mail this small "archive" to his friends. If browsers understood URLs referencing the distributed file system, Usenet binaries could be replaced with appropriate pointers in Usenet articles, ending the endless replication of binaries on thousands of machines, and reducing Usenet back to a managable volume of data. Users could boot their machines off the Network, and instantly see gigabytes of software available to them. After syncing their cache file system with the network, they could drop their PC off the roof, buy another one, and by typing in just one TAG/CONTEXT pair, see all their files again. Cache proxys could be set up which would grab files from the servers and provide NFS access to them, permitting other hosts to export NNTP, HTTP, and FTP access to the distributed network data. I would imagine a typical useful node in such a distributed system would need about 10 gig of disk, a fast network connection, and a reasonably fast processor. Such a node could hold 100 meg of compressed data for each of the 100 days until the space was reused. At full utilization, each node would generate in excess of $100 a day of revenue at $1/MB. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ enoch(a)zipcon.com $ via Finger $ {Free Cypherpunk Political Prisoner Jim Bell}

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Magazine / Goodbye
by dr261＠cleveland.Freenet.Edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hello, everyone.. <warning: semi off-topic post> I am posting this to let everyone know that I am starting a semitechnical magazine titled _The_Carrier_Wave_. It will be published every two months to begin with, and hopefully monthly if I receive enough material. I am requesting articles, columns, news, bits, etc.. Whenever anything -interesting- happens, I'd appreciate it if someone could write a long or short blurb about it and forward it to me. Events, meetings, tradeshows, milestones, new algorithms... Stories about PGP, Clipper, etc... Use this to get the word out. If someone could run a "Cryptography Column" or "CryptoNews" or a Cypherpunks column, that would be great... If you are interested, please send me mail at dr261(a)cleveland.freenet.edu.. Also note, I have unsubscribed to Cypherpunks because I will be very busy lately and an overflowing mailbox is undesirable. Thanks! !!! -- Tobin Fricke (aka LightRay) The Digital Forest BBS (714)586-6142 dr261(a)kanga.ins.cwru.edu KE6WHF Amateur Radio, 1:103/925 fido

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Announce: Web of Trust Ring
by don＠cs.byu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- WEB OF TRUST KEYRING GENERATION PROJECT I have completed my project to make a condensed version of the keyserver PGP keyrings, containing only the "web of trust" inter-related keys. My methods were rather crude, and unfortunately only extracted those people who have signed someone (already on the list) else's key. That means that people who are well connected on the web of trust are included, while those people who only receive signatures from well-connected people are not included. The keyfile is approximately 1 megabyte, as opposed to 5-6 in the keyservers. Building it required 12 successive passes to the MIT keyring, each requiring 4-6 hours on my poor 386. I also made a subsequent pass using the UNIMI keyring. To seed the list I used warlord(a)mit.edu (Uh Derek? Hello??) and those keynumbers that cpunks mailed me. (Unfortunately some people sent only their key blocks, which I didn't use. Also, my server "lost" mail _twice_ due to "disk crash" while I was collecting key numbers.) I assume that requiring 13 passes means that the longest possible chain with a single connection (not necessarily a trust connection) to one of the seed keys is 12 keys. All included keys are exactly as they are on keyservers. The keyring can be trivially validated as much as possibly simply by validating one of the well-connected keys, like the ones that come with PGP. Warning: not responsible for assigning trust levels for all those people. That's your job. Have fun. Why did I do this: 1) Because I wanted to. 2) Because I really had nothing better to do with my CPU time. 3) wait, wait, ok for reals: 1) Because I want a web of trust keyring for myself, and that big old 5+ meg clunker keyfile is tooooo slow to use. 2) Because I feel that a DNS-style keyserver would not suit many web-of-trust activities that I wanted the keyring for, IE: pgp aware tools like news and mail readers for on-the-fly validation. 3) Because I feel that a system like this would encourage strengthening the web-of-trust, ie, trusting the KEYS. The current system has a lot of disjointed keys (uh, 4 meg worth I guess, eh?) which I found myself trusting simply because they were on the Keyservers. While this facilitates creation of a stable nym(*), real or not, I found myself even trying to justify to others trusting a key simply because it was on a keyserver. * = I agree with Bill Steward that we are a bit obsessed on True Names(tm) bit. I understand when Someone(tm) like Derek Atkins wants to see a True Name ID card(tm), but I'm sympathetic to having Nym signing, with the problem to overcome being simply the man-in-the-middle thwarting. Updates: Currently I am not really planning to do much in the way of updates to this, unless people actually are interested in updates. To be frank, this keyring is what I'm dropping into my own PGP, other than that it's not too exciting. If you get a copy, please tell me what you think of the project. The location is ftp to bert.cs.byu.edu, pub/donring.pgp. Unfortunately I don't know if you can tack that together as a ftp:// address. If you do, try ~ftp/pub/donring.pgp for good measure. I have suggested in the past that keyserver software could be modified to update the web of trust (using a keyfile such as mine for a base) instead of accepting just any key. I am not capable of making such modifications to the keyserver program, nor do I know of a keyserver operator who is willing to run such a system. A "for real" web of trust keyserver would want to fully expand my keyring by adding what I left out - those keys who are signed by included keys, but are not themselves included because they were not a seed and have not signed an included key. Having coded that, an update system that checks for a relation to a already-included key would be trivial. A second issue is that "The Web" of trust depends on the keys used to seed it. It's very possible that many of unimi's (for example) key file (500k bigger than MIT) keys do not have signatures connecting them to the people who came out with PGP, but have a robust web of trust none the less. Unless the project can obtain a seed which connects to that web, none of it is included. However, as I stated, that is a fact which will _encourage_ people to seek each other out for key signing. I suppose I could also make a list of the keyring generation script, if anyone actually wanted to ftp it. It would take between 15 and 35 hours to run on a 386 Linux box such as mine, mere hours on a big, fast box. There is really no need for it except to regenerate the keyring, for paranoia purposes or other reasons. Don -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQB1AwUBME6dqsLa+QKZS485AQFiBwL/boAb6BOdvcVHVyV+rGRmMTNk8iibcXvX kdngbRLrBEc2r4pJkuNpDvT2M/GmmGEGYxiAXKV9LDmWa7RLnCicjidP1RJVcu+3 xtVeO9PF+4ZecgEUJl4j6JdPEE52guOr =nm0W -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- <don(a)cs.byu.edu> fRee cRyPTo! jOin the hUnt or BE tHe PrEY PGP key - http://bert.cs.byu.edu/~don or PubKey servers (0x994b8f39) June 7&14, 1995: 1st amendment repealed. Death threats ALWAYS pgp signed * This user insured by the Smith, Wesson, & Zimmermann insurance company *

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Re: Notes from NIS&T Key Escrow Export conference.
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:26 AM 9/7/95 -6, Peter Trei wrote: >"If keys are escrowed, what purpose does a 64 bit limit serve?" A 64 bit limit serves lots of purposes, like letting the NSA crack stuff; I suspect escrow is being used as an excuse to get big vendors to standardize on wimpy 64-bit crypto as much as anything else. >Secondarily, I observe that this apparently precludes the use of OTP. Not to the devious (though the devious may not be able to get export approval) After all, you could escrow a _lot_ of 32-bit OTPs :-) (yeah, I know, the requirement that you identify which escrowed key is being used makes that less than useful, unless the final standard comes out with clear, unambiguous language which fails to cover all cases and can therefore be abused - that's one problem with the current "ask the NSA" rule.) #--- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #---

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Re: Scientology and police visit XS4ALL Amsterdam
by patrick＠Verity.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> My personal view is co$ deserves all the flak they get. I know who you're referring to by saying co$, but what do co$ mean? Co-DollarSign? Co-Dollar? Patrick _______________________________________________________________________ / These opinions are mine, and not Verity's (except by coincidence;). \ | (\ | | Patrick J. Horgan Verity Inc. \\ Have | | patrick(a)verity.com 1550 Plymouth Street \\ _ Sword | | Phone : (415)960-7600 Mountain View \\/ Will | | FAX : (415)960-7750 California 94303 _/\\ Travel | \___________________________________________________________\)__________/

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tax_1.html
by Damaged Justice 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[1]Reuters New Media [ [2]Yahoo | [3]Write Us | [4]Search | [5]Info ] [ [6]Index | [7]News | [8]World | [9]Biz | [10]Tech | [11]Politic | [12]Sport | [13]Scoreboard | [14]Entertain | [15]Health ] [ Reuters | [16]Wired | [17]ZDNet ] _________________________________________________________________ Previous Story: [18]SkyBridge Applies With U.S. For Satellite Network Next Story: [19]Altera Tumbles After Sales Warning, Others Follow _________________________________________________________________ Friday August 29 9:52 AM EDT Report Says Net May Help Tax Dodgers CANBERRA - Increasing use of the Internet for electronic commerce may lead to a rise in tax avoidance and accidental non-compliance, according to an Australian Taxation Office report. However, the report found Internet use would have no immediate impact on Australian tax collections because issues such as bandwidth limits and electronic payment system immaturity were restricting the amount of electronic commerce. While the report finds that the impact on the tax base will vary according to industry, tax and income type, there is no immediate appreciable impact on tax collections," it said. (But) there are also concerns about the increased scope for tax planning, especially using tax havens, and for increased accidental non-compliance, as ... businesses engage in international trade and become subject to international taxation obligations with which they may not be familiar." The ATO said international co-operation would be needed to fully respond to these issues. In addition, the ATO was seeking to: -- have Australian Company Numbers (ACNs) displayed on commercial Internet sites; -- have proper registration procedures for Internet businesses; -- apply comparable regulations to electronic money as for physical cash; -- make use of the available technology to ensure the integrity of electronic records; and, -- examine the electronic commerce distribution chains for new intermediaries. The ATO said there was potential for the Internet to cause difficulties in identifying parties behind Internet businesses. It was also possible that businesses would be able to store tax records offshore or to alter them without trace. The Internet could also lead to the removal of tax collection points in the distribution chain from producer to consumer. The report said its recommendations were designed to help the ATO avoid these problems. Copyright, Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved _________________________________________________________________ ________________________ ___________ [20]Help _________________________________________________________________ Previous Story: [21]SkyBridge Applies With U.S. For Satellite Network Next Story: [22]Altera Tumbles After Sales Warning, Others Follow _________________________________________________________________ [ [23]Index | [24]News | [25]World | [26]Biz | Tech | [27]Politic | [28]Sport | [29]Scoreboard | [30]Entertain | [31]Health ] _________________________________________________________________ Reuters Limited [32]Questions or Comments References 1. LYNXIMGMAP:http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/970829/tech/stories/tax_1.html#re… 2. http://www.yahoo.com/ 3. http://www.yahoo.com/text/suggest.html 4. http://www.yahoo.com/text/search.html 5. http://www.yahoo.com/text/docs/info/ 6. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/ 7. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/news/ 8. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/international/ 9. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/business/ 10. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/tech/ 11. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/politics/ 12. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/sports/ 13. http://sports.yahoo.com/ 14. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/entertainment/ 15. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/health/ 16. http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/wired/ 17. http://headlines.yahoo.com/zdnews/ 18. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/970829/tech/stories/skybridge_1.html 19. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/970829/tech/stories/altera_1.html 20. http://www.yahoo.com/docs/info/news_search_help.html 21. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/970829/tech/stories/skybridge_1.html 22. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/970829/tech/stories/altera_1.html 23. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/ 24. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/news/ 25. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/international/ 26. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/business/ 27. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/politics/ 28. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/sports/ 29. http://sports.yahoo.com/ 30. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/entertainment/ 31. http://www.yahoo.com/text/headlines/health/ 32. http://www.yahoo.com/docs/info/news_faq.html

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Re: Why Key Escrow (GAK) is So Bad
by Robert A. Rosenberg 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:22 9/7/95, Timothy C. May wrote: >(Ironically, I just heard about a case in Texas where a judge ordered a >mother to stop speaking in Spanish to her child at home, calling it "child >abuse." The implications of this are self-evident.) You have the facts slightly wrong. The order was no to stop talking Spanish and to use English but only to Not use Spanish EXCLUSIVELY but to also use English (so as to allow the Child to Grow up in a Bilingual Environment). Waiting until the child was old enough to go to school would put the Child at a disadvantage in learning English since the window of Chance for Language Skill Pickup would have closed.

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Re: Announce: Web of Trust Ring
by don＠cs.byu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- First: after mailing myself the file in 16k chunks... the ring is up, and intact. The only difference from what the original was supposed to be is that both of my keys are now assigned a trust of unknown instead of undefined. *shrug* From: Bryce Wilcox <wilcoxb(a)nag.cs.colorado.edu> >A very interesting project! Can you give us some data like how many is the >maximum number of hops necessary to connect two people on the WoT? (I am >aware that one wouldn't want to trust such a connection, and that PGP >doesn't actually allow you to do so for hops > 2...) My original message details the brute-force approach I took, and the imperfections that it intails. If everybody who signed a key recieved a signature back from the same person, the ring I generated really would be "The" WoT. (I don't mean to center on "my ring" versus local WoTs that people have, but I centered around Warlord, Zimmermann, and Jeff S., and seeing as how those happen to be keys that come with PGP, that's where I'd imagine most people would start looking.) Unfortunately, there are a lot of nobodies included just because they signed someone elses key. For the same reason, someone who was signed by a well-known key, but didn't sign back, and didn't sign anybody elses key who was included, didn't make it to the ring. Imperfections aside, the ring is 4.5 meg smaller than the unimi keyring, which makes it Pretty Good[tm]. (ha ha) I forgot to mention it before, but this keyring is most accurately described as a keyring full of some of the people who are more relevant to the Web of Trust than lots of the people who aren't in the keyring. PGP lets you define how many levels of trust you want. Due to the way in which the ring was constructed, I'd guess that the longest chain could not be longer than 6-8 keys. >(P.S. I guess "12" based on the number of passes necessary. That seems >like a really high number to me...) No kidding. I ran the program with high priority most of the time, but I was doing on my home 386... Hence the 4-6 hour runtimes per pass. >Are any obvious pseudonyms in? (I would guess not.) YEEEEEEESSSSSSS, there are. (Hint: check for @whitehouse.gov) >I wonder what sorts of statistical analyses could be done on this WoT? It's still full of _nobodies_ who only got in because they signed a known key of someone they never met and mailed it to a keyserver. Unfortunately, I don't have the technical abilities to check for mutual signatures, or only include keys that are signed by someone already in the WoT. That's _my_ expert statistical analysis... >Is it fairly evenly spread out or are the noticeably larger "clumps" of >mutual signatures? How many keys *are* there in this (subset of the) WoT? There's a couple people that have half a zillion sigs. Many people have signed someone else's key but have noone else's sig on their own. >Here's a question: for two randomly selected members of your WoT, how many >signatures would a Man In The Middle have to fake in order to isolate >the one member from the other? If we talk about the WoT instead of the WoN (web of nobodies) then I would guess faking 2-3 specific (attacker-chosen) people would cut off a good share of the keys, 4-5 for many more, and about 500 (ok, maybe only 15-25) for some of the well connected people. For jargon's sake we can call those the Dial-up, the ISDN and the T3 people respectively. >Thanks for this, Don. :) - -Don the Dialup -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQB1AwUBME95P8La+QKZS485AQHmHQMAs0UXaSan5PWDfppPU1WCNuz7eiXgpxeS Y+2vHc1ZofT+Mq99Y2+aMgZGPasowQ/zdLIf4mNLZR1QNEf7eUf9wCLXY2fH5REw t4uwpvRlz9TkkaUbwSmW+kBXept8H7WE =8kPL -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Feasibility of censoring and jamming pronography and racism in informatics
by 3umoelle＠informatik.uni-hamburg.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A European parliament study evaluating `Feasibility of censoring and jamming pronography and racism in informatics': "SUBSCRIBER PROTECTION: In this scenario [...] it would be necessary for access providers to use firewall and PICS technology (in some instances implemented with in proxy applications) to implement a management regime consistent with provisions for protection of society as in other media, ie media parity. Implementation on this basis would be necessary to ensure subscribers could not tamper with management settings. The impact of implementing the necessary technology on the operating economics of access providers appears to be small. That technologies of these types have already been employed by access provider organisations [...] could potentially be considered to confirm this." From: kris(a)koehntopp.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Kristian_K=F6hntopp?=) Newsgroups: de.soc.zensur Europarl: STOA Homepage http://www.europarl.eu.int/dg4/stoa/en/default.htm Europarl: STOA Publications http://www.europarl.eu.int/dg4/stoa/en/publi/publi.htm Europarl: STOA Workplan 1996 http://www.europarl.eu.int/dg4/stoa/en/wp96.htm A. Information and telecommunications policy options A.LP.2 INTERNET AND MULTIMEDIA IN THE INFORMATION SOCIETY (In cooperation with the specific research programme of DGIV: REX/Internal Market/New technology/STOA) Sub-projects: (iv) Technical feasibility of jamming or censoring pornography and racism in informatics - Civil liberties ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ STOA European Parliament * Batiment Schuman Bureau 4/82 L-2929 Luxembourg Luxembourg Phone: +352 4300-2511 Fax: +352 4300-2418 * Batiment Eastman Bureau 113 B-1047 Brussels Belgium Phone: +322 284-3747 Fax: +322 284-9059 Email the STOA Team in Luxembourg at _STOA(a)europarl.eu.int_ Email the STOA Team in Brussels at _ksercu(a)europarl.eu.int_ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This document is a working Document for the 'STOA Panel'. It is not an official publication of the STOA. This document does not necessarily represent the views of the European Parliament. Feasibility of censoring and jamming pronography and racism in informatics ***DRAFT*** Final Report Luxembourg, May 1997, PE number: 166 658 <del del del> 7 Conclusions 7.1 Technical Feasibility 7.1.1 The central question posed to this study is whether it is technically feasible to use the content managment technology to censor and jam pornography and racism on the Internet. 7.1.2 It is concluded that available technology does no and is not likely to provide any satisfactory means for automatically classifying such material. Such judgements will therefore have to be made by humans. 7.1.3 Once such judgements are made, however, technology provides for these judgements to be distributed and used by content managment systems to make the following content managment actions feasible (in principle) to a high degree: - subscriber choice, in that individuals can choose the extent to which they permit or exclude such material on their own behalf or on behalf of others for whom they have responsibility; - subscriber protection, in that precautions against unintentional or unsolicited exposure to such material can be implemented as defined by statute or other form of code or regulation; - prevention of Internet abuse, in that it is possible to detect the exchange of such material within closed groups of offenders to a very substantial extent; - detection of offenders, in that offenders can be identified when offences have been detected or notified involving sites and services where the user has explicitly authenticated identity; - flexible and multi-cultural implementation of content management, in that content management policies can be defined: - to meet the requirements of very small subscriber groups, eg. selected subscribers or a selected group of terminals; - differentially for different types of Internet service, eg Web access and e-mail; - to meet the needs of one culture with respect to the material originating from another without the cooperation of the originator; 7.1.4 The principal technical limitations in these capabilities are: - automated content classification systems can not, because of the complexity of legal definitions, identify Internet content to be racist, pornographic, illegal or harmful - hence this classification must be made by human judgement; - the potential flexibility and coverage offered by the technology can not be achieved in full, at present, because - currently implementations of the key technology (PICS) in Internet applications is incomplete and hence the ratings information can not yet be used to manage all types of Internet content explicitly; - ratings databases are currently incomplete in terms of the types of service they consider and the full range of Internet services available; - it can not be absolutely guaranteed that Internet anonymity services can not be used to frustrate detection of offenders in certain circumstances. 7.1.5 The principal practical issues involved in implementing these technologies are: - defining rating systems which are sufficiently explicit regarding content managment requirements to allow automatic content management whilst still being: - practical to apply to large volumes of information; - meaningful outside the culture in which they are originally applied; - funding the large effort required to categorise the huge and growing volumes of Internet content. 7.2 Implications of policy scenarios 7.2.1 The study investigated the following policy scenarios: Subscriber choice 7.2.2 In this scenario, essentially the status quo, subscribers would either coose to exercise explicit controls over their Internet experience, eg through the use of parental control software, or not. Potentially, subscribers could elect to implement management regimes consistent with privision for protection of society as in other media, ie to provide media parity, but this could not be enforced. 7.2.3 Currently, the technical capability of these products is increasing as vendors invest in the development of new facilities. In the longer term, however, it is not clear that the current subscriber uptake of such tools (on a purely discretionary basis) will sustain their development or the maintenance of databases upon which they depend on a long term basis. 7.2.4 The principal social objection to this policy scenario is that it does not in any way act to reduce abuse either on the Internet or in the 'real' world. The principal legal issue which arises is that it does not provide for media parity. Subscriber protection 7.2.5 In this scenario, subscribers would continue to have the option to exercise management controls accordings to their preferences - potentially including screening unsolicited communications from 'strangers' or anonymous sites. In addition, however, it would be necessary for access providers to use firewall and PICS technology (in some instances implemented with in proxy applications) to implement a management regime consistent with provisions for protection of society as in other media, ie media parity. Implementation on this basis would be necessary to ensure subscribers could not tamper with management settings. 7.2.6 The impact of implementing the necessary technology on the operating economics of access providers appears to be small. That technologies of these types have already been employed by access provider organisations (without discernible impact on end-user charges) could potentially be considered to confirm this. 7.2.7 The principal legal issues which arise in this scenario are: - the liabilities of those who apply labels to content provided by others; - the liabilities of those who are charged with implementing content management on the basis of labels applied by others; - the potential for content labelling providing a legal obstacle to free trade. 7.2.8 These legal issues potentially have substantial social impact in that: - if liabilities are potentially large, those who accept them, either through compiling ratings databases or providing Internet access service, are likely to be very conservative with respect to the material with which they will deal; - international e-commerce in certain services may be compromised by nations exploiting differences in ratings procedures as a pretext for blocking material originating from other countries. Preventing Internet abuse 7.2.9 It is concluded that only implementation of the most intrusive surveillance technology could be exspected to impact heavily upon abuse of the Internet on committed offenders (because of their ready access to strong encryption and covert communication technologies). To enable this policy scenario, it would be necessary for access providers to constrain the equipment used by subscribers to access the Internet to be such that: - no content could be removed; - all content and processing could be subject to automatic and manual surveillance. 7.2.10 The technical and economic feasibility of the necessary technology is evidenced by the emergence, with purely commercial motivations, of technical systems which privde the basic facilities required to implement the necessary measures. It is notes that this coincidental emergence of such systems may raise siginificant privacy issues outside of the scope of this study. The economics of manual surveillance, however, can not be assessed. 7.2.11 This technical approach is, however, completely non-specific in the terms of the subject of censorship which could be implemented and in the scope of (potentially private) material to which surveillance access would be required. It therefore seems highly unlikely that, when the commercial implications, legal obstacles and social objections are considered, application of this technology in this way can be considered a proportionate general response. 7.2.12 Finally, it seems highly probable that the principal of impact of implementation of these measures, if they were to be implemented generally and were found to be effective, would be to displace abuse to other communications means. Detecting offenders 7.2.13 If access providers and service providers maintain proper subscriber authentication systems and system management environments, offending actions at the site to which the subscriber authenticates can be traced to the offender. Detection of offenders committing offences 'at a distance' (ie a subscriber in a country committing an offence in another), however, would require: - access and service providers to take steps to ensure subscriber identity information is carried in their transmissions; - monitoring of services provided on the Internet to prevent subscribers misusing anonymity services to remove such information. 7.2.14 Whilst a variety of means exist to attach identity information, detection of anonymity services is not straightforward. However, monitoring such services would be exspected to limit the number available for overt, eg to transmit offensive material to innocent parties, offensive use. 7.2.15 Legally, handling offences detected through voluntary authentication would be relatively straightforward as the offending subscriber would be resident in the country where the offence was committed. However, offences can only be detected through forced identification, ie those committed 'at a distance', would currently be subject to extradition arrangements and it is not clear that new opportunities for prosecution would arise in practice. Meanwhile, it may be that the social implications of forced and general identification of Internet subscribers would leave subscribers open to a variety of forms of intrusion on privacy and discrimination. 7.3. Options for action at Member State level 7.3.1 It is concluded that, in technical terms, Member States could implement combinations of the technical measures identified in this report according to their own perceptions of harm and proportionality of response in accordance with principles of media parity. This could, technically, be achieved without the cooperation of any external party and provide for different levels of content management according the requirements/vulnerabilities of individual subscriber groups. 7.3.2 The principal potential implications for a member state adopting measures at variance with international norms would be: - obtacles to free trade, including possible infringement of Single Market requirements; - reduced availability of Internet content; - having to bear the costs of maintaining classifications of Internet content alone. 7.4 Options for action at European level 7.4.1 It is concluded that cooperation at the European level could mitigate the implications of uni-lateral action by Member States if action were taken to establish a common content management system. This would comprise: - technical standards in the definition of rating systems to minimise costs of researching Internet content and spread them over the largest possible population; - regulations for harmonisation in the application of agreed standards to ensure that their use did not lead to artifical obstacles in trade; - technical standards in the implementation of content selection mechanisms in Internet applications to ensure that ratings information can be used in a consistent and appropriate way.

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