December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

No Subject
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It is quite probable that this has been said before. In case it hasn't, however, I feel compelled to point out that mandatory key escrow/recovery could likely mean an economic disaster of unimaginable proportions. Okay, key escrow, whether by the goobermint or a contracted third-party, is beginning to scare the living crap out of me. Okay, let's assume that the ammended SAFE passes and is promptly signed into law(despite what the administration says, I don't think anyone believes for a second that it would be signed without hesitation). It's a simple matter for the Commerce Dept. to modify their review criteria to specify that the key escrow/recovery feature be enabled and that the end user not be able to disable it. This obviously doesn't affect anyone who can get their hands on the source and comment out a line or two, but think about what happens with big corporations, especially financial ones. It's highly likely that a good number of them will use crypto software just the way Big Brother would like them to, happily sending their keys off so that our friends in Washington can keep them nice and safe. 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.. Of course, one doesn't even have to be an underpaid govt. worker to join in on the fun. Just find a buffer overflow in the key repository's daemon software and trick it into tacking on a few secret keys with its "Big Brother thanks you for your cooperation." packet. Considering that even the CIA can't keep their severs secure, why should ANYONE, even thouse naive enough to trust the govt. to respect their privacy, ever trust such a corrupt and insecure organization with their encyption keys. Along the same lines, it's almost certain that someone is eventually going to fat-finger some code and keys are going to get sent in the clear, posted publicly, or something equally bad - with the government running the "key management infastructure", it'll probably be a 12 year old kid who got bored with Minesweeper who causes the global economic collapse.

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Re: Taxless society concerns
by bureau42 Anonymous Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Thu, 11 Sep 1997, Warpy wrote: > First off. In such a society, who cares for the old, the sick, and the > infirm? How is such care going to be payed for? How will basic services be > maintained without the necessary taxes required to pay for them? Haven't you ever heard of ZPG? The problem with Medicare is that the taxpayers are paying to keep the old people alive, no matter how close to death they are!! Then, on top of that, we give them free money! Come on people, we already have nigh 6 billion people on this planet, I think we can stand to lose anybody over 65. > But the question remains. In such a taxless society, and little or no > government, how are those less fortunate than us going to be cared for? As for the less fortunate, welcome to Evolution 101: Survival of the Fittest, where fit means good education, good job, and enough money to giev your kids the same. -- Run.exe * Value Your Privacy? The Government Doesn't. Say 'No' to Key Escrow! * Adopt Your Legislator - http://www.crypto.com/adopt "If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith." -- Albert Einstein runexe(a)ntplx.net http://www.ntplx.net/~runexe/ PGP encrypted mail prefered

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3% to Freedom
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Just heard a Canadian MP state that he was voting in favour of gun registration because 52% of his constituents were in favor of it. Killing 3% of the people to save the rights of 48% of them seems like a fair trade-off to me. We could kill them with hammers until we killed enough that they passed hammer registration laws. Then we could switch to scissors. Then forks. Then rocks. Of course, it would be impossible to bust all the people who were in possession of unregisterd rocks in their yards, so they would probably have to use selective enforcement against just blacks and longhairs and the like. Am I ready to run for public office, or do I need to get stupider? If so, then I propose that we start killing people by filling their mouths with dirt, then we can pass dirt registration laws. Then we can kill people by filling their lungs with air until they burst and we can pass air registration laws. Then we can leave people out in the sun until they die and pass sun registration laws. "The reason I pulled you over, guys, is because the sun came up. Unless one of you cops to possessing it, I'm going to have to take you all in." Am I stupid enough to be a cop, now? If not, then we can kill people by taking them to the roofs of buildings and throwing them to the ground. Then we can pass roof and ground registration laws. "Hey, pal. Your feet are on the ground. You got a permit?" "Sorry pal, this permit is for a different piece of ground. I'm going to have to take you in. And, since the sun is out, you're going to get an extra five years for possession of the sun in the commission of a crime."

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Soldiers
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is there a small country that a thousand of us could go to and get citizenship and then have the country declare war on the U.S. after we are all back in the country? If a thousand of us could kill as many people as we could until we got caught, then we could kill a lot of people who are bad for the country and then once we're all caught the small country could surrender and we would all have to be released as prisoners of war, right? We could all be privates. They can't blame privates because they have to follow orders. The guys in the small country could make old guys who were dying soon the leaders, and then when it was time to quit, they could overthrow them and get US government aid. They could set the old guys trial dates for two years down the road and then send them home to die. I saw a guy get killed once and they told the guy who killed him that he shouldn'a done it and they sent him home and said we'll call you and then they took the dead guys sister to jail because she wouldn't stop saying fuck. When they were taking her away I told her she should kill the cops and then go home and wait for them to call. How about if we made a law that you had to kill the president and your congressmen and senators and if you didn't you had to pay a $500.00 fine every year? Do you think they would make sure we all made some money? How about a law here you could kill any politician that forgot to call you sir or ma'am? Or who forgot your birthday? We could save a lot of money just by putting all the politicians who are running for office on a stage and then killing them at random until we had the right number left. Then they would have to think about if they really wanted it. How about if we let people be elected on a first-come first-serve basis but then we could vote to kill them any time we wanted. Think they would do things to make us not want to kill them instead of the other way around like it is now? How about if we killed all of them and just pretended there was someone running the country. Is that a good idea?

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Re: Different Ways to Serial Murder AOL Members' Children
by Syniker＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Subj: Different Ways to Serial Murder AOL Members' Children Date: 97-09-12 01:00:46 EDT From: remailer(a)bureau42.ml.org (bureau42 Anonymous Remailer) Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)Algebra.COM To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Different Ways to Serial Murder AOL Members' Children: 1. I already ate all of mine. How many you got that are edible???? 2. 3. 4. 5.

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House panel votes behind closed doors to build in Big Brother
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 23:37:39 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: fight-censorship-announce(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: House panel votes behind closed doors to build in Big Brother Software that protects your privacy is a controlled substance that may no longer be sold, a Congressional committee decided today. Meeting behind closed doors this morning, the House Intelligence committee voted to replace a generally pro-encryption bill with an entirely rewritten draft that builds in Big Brother into all future encryption products. (The Senate appears to be moving in a similar direction.) The new SAFE bill -- titled in a wonderfully Orwellian manner the "Security and Freedom through Encryption" act even though it provides neither -- includes these provisions: SELLING CRYPTO: Selling unapproved encryption products (that do not include "immediate access to plaintext") becomes a federal crime, immediately after this bill becomes law. Five years in jail plus fines. Distributing, importing, or manufacturing such products after January 31, 2000 is another crime. NETWORK PROVIDERS: Anyone offering scrambled "network service" including encrypted web servers or even "ssh" would be required to build in a backdoor for the government by January 31, 2000. This backdoor must provide for "immediate decryption or access to plaintext of the data." TECHNICAL STANDARDS: The Attorney General will publish technical requirements for such backdoors in network service and encryption products, within five months after the president signs this bill. LEGAL TO USE CRYPTO: "After January 31, 2000, it shall not be unlawful to use any encryption product purchased or in use prior to such date." GOVERNMENT POWERS: If prosecutors think you may be selling, importing, or distributing non-backdoor'd crypto or are "about" to do so, they can sue. "Upon the filing of the complaint seeking injunctive relief by the Attorney General, the court shall automatically issue a temporary restraining order against the party being sued." Also, there are provisions for holding secret hearings, and "public disclosure of the proceedings shall be treated as contempt of court." You can request an advisory opinion from the government to see if the program you're about to publish violates the law. ACCESS TO PLAINTEXT: Courts can issue orders, ex parte, granting police access to your encrypted data. But all the government has to do to get one is to provide "a factual basis establishing the relevance of the plaintext" to an investigation. They don't have to demonstrate probable cause, which is currently required for a search warrant. More interestingly, this explicitly gives the FISA court jurisdiction (yes, the secret court that has never denied a request for a wiretap). If they decode your messages, they'll tell you within 90 days. GOVERNMENT PURCHASING: Federal government computer purchases must use a key escrow "immediate decryption" backdoor after 1998. Same with networks "purchased directly with Federal funds to provide the security service of data confidentially." Such products can be labeled "authorized for sale to U.S. government" ENCRYPTION EXPORTS: The Defense & Commerce departments will control exports of crypto. Software "without regard to strength" can be exported if it includes a key escrow backdoor and is first submitted to the government. Export decisions aren't subject to judicial review, and the "president may by executive order waive any provision of this act" if he thinks it's a threat to national security. Within 15 days, he must send a classified briefing to Congress. ADVISORY PANEL: Creates the Encryption Industry and Information Security Board, with seven members from Justice, State, FBI, CIA, White House, and six from the industry. INTERNATIONAL: The president can negotiate international agreements and perhaps punish noncompliant governments. Can you say "trade sancation?" (Other provisions barring the use of crypto in a crime and some forms of cryptanalysis are also in the bill.) Next the Commerce Committee will vote on SAFE, and a former FBI agent-turned-Congressman is vowing to ensure that similar language to this is included. (The committees are voting on the bill in parallel, and a four-person team of Congressmen is working to forge a compromise before Commerce votes.) Then the heads of the five committees that have rewritten the legislation will sit down and work out another compromise. If it's acceptable to the House Rules committee -- and if the FBI/NSA get what they want it will be -- the bill can move to the floor for a vote. That's why the encryption outlook in Congress is abysmal. Crypto-advocates have lost, and lost miserably. A month ago, the debate was about export controls. Now the battle is over how strict the //domestic// controls will be. It's sad, really, that so many millions of lobbyist-dollars were not only wasted, but used to advance legislation that has been morphed into a truly awful proposal. I wrote more about this at: http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1385,00.html -Declan

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Re: The problem of playing politics with our constitutional rights
by Syniker＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Well -- I wasn't thinking of an encrypted 'channel' -- I mean, just put the damn crypto right on the page as a graphic -- it's a work of art, see -- it's a digital painting... and when it's on the WWW, it's auto public knowledge, and in the public domain... Anyways, I'm not waitin' -- I redid my homepage and have got the two RSA Perl lines on there... I'll hang it by the weekend... too damn tired tonight... Also -- if I can get PGP running this weekend, first two encrypted emails will be to GagMe Gallegly and Diane F... Wait.... fuckin' Gagme doesn't even have email..........OK -- FAX.... Larry.

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Re: House panel votes behind closed doors to build in Big Brother
by Syniker＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We got ourselves one sicko government. I'll never comply or approve of any part of this. Larry.

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Re: The problem of playing politics with our constitutional rights
by Seth Finkelstein 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: David H Dennis <david(a)amazing.com> > I must confess that I'm wondering what Seth Finkelstein, Pro-Government Warrior, I resent this part of the description, but let it pass. > able to jump over 50 Libertarians in a single bound, able to out-flame 5 or so Libertarians in a single thread is more accurate. > thinks of all this. Crypto restrictions are natural to oppose in a > Libertarian world, due to our fundamental distrust of government. > Where do they fit in a Liberal one? I'm *solidly* against such restrictions. Hey, if *Lizard* recommends me here, you've got to believe it :-). Here's a quick political lesson: Being a Liberal in the US means very roughly ONLY that one believes that the government has some role to play in moderating the excesses of the market. It does not particularly *make* you a civil-libertarian. However, because Liberals think about general social power and the abuse of it, they are very often led to the civil-libertarian view. In the opposite direction, sometimes they just want power themselves. It is with great regret that I must debunk the myth that being a Liberal makes you a saint (it only seems that way in comparison to everyone else around ... :-) ) It also helps that Liberals are *predominantly* drawn from ranks of those who are the targets of both public and private abuses. So they often both favor government action against business abuse, and strong civil-liberties guarantees to keep government power in check. It is *possible* to be a Conservative civil-libertarian, but this much lesser group, and has in the past decades very much been purged from the Republican party by the theocrats and hence from the national scene. The net result of this process: Not all Liberals are civil-libertarians, but civil-libertarian opposition will almost always come from Liberals (read this sentence several times until you understand it. I get so tired of people attacking the strawman that all Liberals are civil-libertarians, nyah, nyah, look at e.g. Dellums). Now, when you comprehend that, we go on to the next lesson: The Fundamental Problem in American politics is GET-A-MAJORITY. It is not "be a constitutional scholar", it is not "construct and defend the most rigorous argument for your position in terms of axiomatics from first principles", it isn't even "know what you're talking about". It is GET-A-MAJORITY. Old joke: After a campaign rally, a supporter told Adelai Stevenson "Mr. Stevenson, you've got every thinking man's vote!". He replied "That's not enough, I need a majority." Semi-digression: Business is "make a profit" - if you do that by throwing widows and orphans out into the street, it still works. What matters is how many dollars are made, not people affected. This is why Liberals view a population-based civil system as a necessary constraint on the imperatives of capital. Because ultimately we're people, not dollars. The goal of GET-A-MAJORITY is in great tension with intrinsically minority-rights, anti-majoritarian concepts such as civil-liberties. Any politician ignores this at great peril. Thus, Liberals who don't have to be elected can be a lot more vocal civil-liberties supporters than those who need to GET-A-MAJORITY. Thus even Liberal, civil-libertarian politicians may *vote against their principles* (do I hear gasps from the peanut gallery) because of electoral imperatives. Corollary 1: Detonating a nuclear device in DC will not solve this problem. The surviving government will just have a very good excuse for crypto-controls. Corollary 2: Repeated Libertarian rantings won't solve it either. Now, personally, you're probably not going to be seeing me on the crypto-barricades in the future. Is it because I'm a Big-Brother-loving government-worshipper? No, not at all. I was thinking today about what I could do on the issue. And I came to the conclusion that I'm basically so crippled and exhausted as a net.activist that I shouldn't do more (general statement, but set off by this particular topic). I can't stand a huge number of the people I'd have to work with, and I just don't have the patience and energy to keep pounding grains of understanding into them, it's like filling a sandbag with tweezers. But don't you dare assume support for crypto restrictions from that, it's rather coming to the point of being completely fed up with the drain of electronic activism on my life. ================ Seth Finkelstein sethf(a)mit.edu

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Re: Any talk of limiting _existing_ crypto?
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May wrote: > > OK, so the imminent legislation will ban sale or distribution unescrowed > crypto products after 1999 or 2000 or whatever. Exact details unclear. But > I see no language declaring existing products to be contraband. (Though > such language could still come, of course...nothing would surprised me at > this point.) Jesus Tim, are you getting senile? Bet the farm on the outlawing of existing crypto and you will have more money than Bill Gates in a couple of years. The new reality has become: any fascist, evil thing you can think of that it is possible for the government to do--ask *when*, not *if*. We are not arguing about the end of democracy in the US anymore. We are merely discussing the timetable, now. > If existing crypto is fully legal to use, then it could be years and years > before the Freeh-Reno-SAFE outlawing has any significant effect. Tim, you are forgetting about "the crisis." Which one? Name one. Make one up out of random Scrabble letters. Yup, that's the crisis that is going to require the outlawing of strong crypto. I would recognize it anywhere.

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