December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

InfoWar 7 (Part III of 'The True Story of the InterNet')
by Kent Crispin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: Monetary Economics (fwd) [amusement]
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From owner-traveller(a)Phaser.ShowCase.MPGN.COM Sat Sep 13 07:01:15 1997 > To: traveller(a)MPGN.COM > X-Original-Article-From: Scott Ellsworth <Scott_Ellsworth(a)alumni.hmc.edu> > Subject: Re: Monetary Economics > From: shadow(a)krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) > Message-ID: <970913.000519.9C4.rnr.w165w(a)krypton.rain.com> > Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 00:05:19 PST > In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19970912130653.007c83c0(a)mail.deltanet.com> > Organization: Shadownet > X-Newsreader: rnr v2.20 > Sender: owner-traveller(a)Phaser.ShowCase.MPGN.COM > Reply-To: traveller(a)MPGN.COM > > In mail you write: > > > For this to work, the entity doing the credit management needs to have the > > highest technology available, which I assume the Imperium has for a very > > long time. The techniques are likely known to those who want to find them > > out, because someone would have defected. Thus, you need a scheme that is > > robust, even knowing the algorithm and some of the keys. > > Old rule of cryptology. No code/cipher is secure unless it can provide > protection against someone who knows the algorithm, but not the key. > This is because it is *inevitable* that the algorithm will either leak, > or worse, be guessed. > > If a key is known, that key is blown. But again, knowledge of one key > should not compromise others. If it does, the code system is a piece of > junk. > > Theoretically, one time pads will *always* be secure. The only trouble > is key distribution (well, key generation is tedious, but that's > relatively minor). > > Public key ciphers are subject to mathematical advances. Not > *computational*, because if you have faster computers, then you can use > bigger keys. But if someone comes up with a new mathematical technique > that greatly decreases the work required to carry the mathematical > operation that "secures" the cipher, then you are toast. For example, a > whole bunch of public key schemes went down the tubes a few years back > when somebody came up with a better solution to what's known as the > "knapsack problem". The remaining schemes are based on the difficulty > of factoring large numbers. So if a breakthrough is made in algorithms > for factoring large numbers, they go away. > > But for game purposes, we can assume that factoring is inherently hard > (or that some new trick is found). So public key ciphers would be > usable, though the keys may be a small book's worth of digits (stored > in a tiny bit of storage). > > Given the fact of there being higher tech cultures, one time pads will > be used for military and diplomatic stuff as well as anything that you > are afraid might be trouble if someone with higher tech shows up. > > But for generic business purposes, you just use the highest TL > available for the public key ciphering gear. That way, it's unlikely > that anybody can crack things soon. Sure, if a TL 16 race is found, > they can crack your ciphers in weeks instead of years, but they aren't > likely to *bother* with most commercial stuff. > > -- > Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow) > shadow(a)krypton.rain.com <--preferred > leonard(a)qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort >

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SSZ Move Downtime - Tuesday - Reminder
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, Just a quick reminder that SSZ will be going down Tuesday morning and could be down for several hours. Please make appropriate plans for this outage. We will try to make it as quick as possible contingent upon SWBT getting both the POTS and ISDN installers on site within a reasonable time frame. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Re: Any talk of limiting _existing_ crypto?
by jf_avon＠citenet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> --------------------------------------------------------------------- > This mail is brought to you by the e$pam mailing list > From: Tim May <tcmay(a)got.net> > Subject: Any talk of limiting _existing_ crypto? > Integration with mailers and browsers may not even be such a good idea, as > the evolution of such products will cause obsolescence. What about add-on package to current e-mail packages that does not contain crypto but makes the interface between crypto programs and e-mail client (pgpjn for pegasus, Private Idaho, etc) ? Are they regulated too? -- Jean-Francois Avon, Pierrefonds(Montreal) QC Canada DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee Finest of Limoges porcelain and crystal JFA Technologies, R&D consultants physicists and engineers, LabView programing. PGP encryption keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon http://bs.mit.edu:8001/pks-toplev.html ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891 ID# 5B51964D : 152ACCBCD4A481B0 254011193237822C

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Nightmare Scenario: Public Key Distribution Controlled
by Tim May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Distribute a key, go to prison." How does the New World Order limit the use of strong crypto without "key recovery" when so many copies of older, pre-ban crypto are already out there? Simple, by declaring that public keys themselves are crypto material, as the Brits did in their Trusted Third Parties draft proposal, and hence declaring that distribution of keys after the effective date of the legislation constitutes a violation. Give someone your key, either by placing it on keyservers or even by mailing it to them, and one has just "distributed" crypto. This will make the public key infrastructure essentially useless, as the public key servers go down, as corporations yank any directories they may have, and (possibly) as individuals stop putting PGP or S/MIME fingerprints or pointers in their messages. How possible is this? Recall that the British proposal formally classified key material, the keys themselves, as cryptographic products. The language of the current unSAFE and Procto-CODE draconian bills, still changing of course as committees rewrite them to be more Big Brotherish, is vague on what constitutes crypto. If language is inserted making keys part of the bills, or if "interpretations" by Defense, Commerce, etc. make this determination, then there goes the infrastructure, even for already-distributed keys. Sure, underground use will continue. And those with PGP, and keys, may well have a reasonable defense in court, arguing that the program *and* the keys they used were already in their possession prior to the effective date of the legislation. But the effect would be chilling to almost any normal use of these programs. This is my latest nightmare scenario. --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Make Money With Your PC
by mailhost＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: The problem of playing politics with our constitutional rights (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 12:48:21 +0000 (GMT) > From: Doug Geiger <runexe(a)ntplx.net> > Subject: Re: The problem of playing politics with our constitutional rights > > Government is like the biggest company > > in the nation, with no profit pressure to restrain bureaucracy. > > I wonder what would happen if we created competition for the gov't. Say, > make each state compete with each other, attempting to 'sell' services > (roads, welfare, real estate, etc.) for the cheapest rates (taxes). That > might force the gov't to radically change. One might say that exists now, > as people can choose the state they're in. But what if the state were not > restricted to only 'selling' within state lines, and the federal gov't had > competition as well? A true capitialist-democrasy. > > Just some random thoughts. Not so random, since this is exactly what the founding fathers wanted until a bunch of bozo's went and created the 14th Amendment... ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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In Defense of Libertarianism, from HotWired's Synapse (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 07:47:21 -0700 (PDT) > From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> > Subject: In Defense of Libertarianism, from HotWired's Synapse > Libertarianism is not about anarchy, utopia, or selfishness. Instead, > libertarians simply are skeptical of "nanny government," and recognize > the many ways state power has been abused in the past. They believe > that government programs like health assistance, Social Security, > foreign aid, and corporate welfare do more harm than good. They argue > that everyone must be equal before the law, and everyone has human > rights to personal security, to property, and to free speech that the > government must protect, not violate. If the Libertarians are so gung-ho on avoiding governmental (especialy federal) intervention in their lives why do they support the 14th Amendment? Why do they steadfastly stick to the position that the states should be forced to be homogenous in their laws under the federal government? It is clear that the founding fathers wanted the situation in the several states to be quite dynamic and diverse, otherwise why "Congress shall make no law..." and not something more comprehensive preventing the states from such laws as well? Why do they further not ask why the 9th and 10th are not fully respected and used by both the legislative and judicial branches of the federal government? No, the Libertarians have an agenda that is broader than simply reducing the intervention of government in our daily lives. They want a situation that provides them the upper hand, both politicaly and economicaly, while at the same time reducing the ability of their opponents to gain an advantage. From this perspective they are just another elephant or jackass... ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Re:
by Brian B. Riley 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 9/12/97 1:31 AM, Anonymous (nobody(a)REPLAY.COM) passed this wisdom: [snip] >Now think about this: You're Joe Random Govt. Worker at the >official secret key repository, and there's a budget crisis going >on - instead of paychecks, you're getting I.O.U.'s. Your terminal >has access to thousands, perhaps millions, of secret keys. You grab >one of CitiBank's, forge a few transactions, and 30 seconds later >your Swiss bank account is a few million dollars fatter and >according to the digital signature, the transaction originated in >L.A.. Please correct me if I am wrong, but could not a GAK backdoor be written that will simply permit decryption only of the ciphertext and not encryption. Would not this prevent this from happening? Don'tget me wrong. It scares the hell out of me too, but maybe, in addition to that various things Tim has suggested we might also consider how to make the GAK as secure as cam be to minimize its potential for disaster. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQA/AwUBNBnRQcdZgC62U/gIEQK+qACfSPjDLBIKmN4AgvEU6nBPmKKF+94AnR6T 4ZV9vbLb7vCpaaKGZA1mPTmH =MbPr -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Brian B. Riley --> http://www.macconnect.com/~brianbr For PGP Keys - Send Email Subject "Get PGP Key" "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to stand by and do nothing" Edmund Burke

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Re: in defense on Lon Horiuchi
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Zooko Journeyman blathered: > There are many issues one could legitimately argue regarding > a policeman who accidentally kills a non-combatant bystander > during a fight. But comparing such a policemen to a > terrorist who deliberately targets non-combatants with a bomb > is beyond the pale. That, but for my interruption, this > comparison would have passed unremarked among the cypherpunks > crowd is damning. As Tim and others have noted from time to time, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. A corollary to this is that one man's policeman is another man's terrorist. Calling Horiuchi - a //trained sniper// - a policeman is stretching credulity. Consider too that the Weavers weren't threatening anyone when they were initially attacked/ambushed by the Feds - so in what way were the Feds fulfilling a "policeman" role? In any case, it wasn't really my intention to "compare" the deeds of Horiuchi and McVeigh. I was merely noting that the defense of Horiuchi by Herr Direktor Freeh could have been used nearly verbatim in McVeigh's behalf. As you've pointed out, though, there /is/ that crucial difference though, isn't there? One of them has a badge and gets paid by the taxpayers, which makes him a "policeman."

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