December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

whither NetBill? (micropayments)
by Thomas Grant Edwards 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

NetBill (http://www.ini.cmu.edu/netbill/) appears to be a great way for implementing micropayments. Does anyone know what the deal is, or did Visa sign on just to keep it from happening? -Thomas

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Re: Netscape, Corporations, and GAK Support
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:08 PM 11/30/95, hallam(a)w3.org wrote: >Folks, lay of Netscape on this one. _EVERYONE_ is doing Terissa for the feds to >use themselves. There are reporting requirements (FOI) which most people >on this >list seem to enjoy which make the privacy issue moot. There are other >people who do >not want to have non escrowed data flowing over their internal nets, nuclear >installations etc. Ah, but Jim Clark's comments were as follows, and indicate that the issue is the _government_ reading _private Net communications_: ---section of interview or speech with/by Jim Clark of Netscape, emphasis added by me--- To secure Net communications, the government will need to have access to private data exchanges ^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ using what is known as a key escrow security system, said Clark. He added that an invincible security system for the Net is possible, but such asystem won't be built unless the government ^^^^^^^^^^ has a stake in it. "That's where key escrow comes in," said Clark. Key escrow is a controversial security system advocated by the Clinton administration that gives the government access to private Net communications. It uses public key cryptography, a system ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ in which messages are coded and decoded using a set of private and public keys. In key escrow, the private key is held by both the individual or group and the government. The government can ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ use the key ostensibly to read messages for intelligence and national security reasons. ---end of section--- This is not then just an issue of supporting voluntary key escrow for corporations, nuclear installations, germ warfare labs, and the Church of Scientology, this is GAK, pure and simple. Phill, very few of us are opposed to the voluntary use of escrow schemes. I, myself, would be interested in a robust system wherein my lawyer, for example, could have a "duplicate key" to some of my files. We have discussed this issue many times. Truly voluntary key escrow means that the criteria described above by Jim Clark, that government access to private communications is "where key escrow comes in," would be impossible to achieve. Clearly, the type of key escrow being supported by Jim Clark, Dorothy Denning, David Sternlight, Stuart Baker, and others is hardly voluntary. >Key escrow is not bad in itself. It is the idea that individuals be forced to >use it for private conversations that is the bad idea. Carefully read Jim Clark's direct quotes and the views attributed to him in the article. > >If people want to argue "make the technology avaliable and it will be >abused" then >let them. Just remember that we normally argue the other side of the case. No, the issue is that the proposal is explicitly GAK, not a voluntary system. Details of deployment are of course murky, and this firestorm may help to kill it for now, but the issue is clearly that Jim Clark is saying the government needs to be able to read private communications and that key escrow is needed. Given that he is the Chairman of Netscape, this is worrisome. --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Getting a copy of the Jim Clark speech
by Raph Levien 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I called Netscape public relations. Here's what I found out: 1. Netscape PR does not keep transcripts, etc., of Jim Clark's speeches. 2. You can order a tape of the speech from Conference Copy for $12. Their phone number is +1 (717) 775 0580. Be advised, though, that it will take three weeks. If we are lucky, an amateur recording technician (trained by the Grateful Dead, perhaps?) will come out of the woodwork before then. Failing that, maybe a Fair Witness was there and is willing to speak. Raph

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query...
by BlackHeart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Reply to: DR940788(a)caper1.uccb.ns.ca I am currently putting together an e-zine covering computer security issues, non-mainstream music, and basically anything else people want to write about. This is an open query for submissions on any kind. Here are good examples of what I will consider putting into the zine : --------- Good chance of getting in: a. interviews, quotes, etc. from "net personalities", writers, band members, people with interesting computer-related jobs/hobbies/etc. b. people involved in the field of computer security on either side of the wall, hackers, phreaks, system admins, police, etc. and their tales c. reviews of independant, or non-mainstream software, movies, music, etc. d. any kind of new digital tech. that is interesting and unique, a description and review e. basically anything else that is related to the information age, digital, cyber (even though i hate the word), 'net related, etc. --------- NO chance of getting in: a. political views/essays which are not a concern of the computer and/or net community b. fiction of ANY sort (sci-fi, cyberpunk, etc, etc.) c. anything else not related to alternative or "tech" field (ex - reviews of mainstream albums, movies, etc., also articles on things such as the environment and gay rights will be turned away, simply because this is not what the magazine is aiming for) --------- If you have an album, tape, CD, software, device, etc. you want reviewed, send it along to : Terminal Obsession P.O. Box 831 Sydney, Nova Scotia CANADA B1P 6T7 If you are interested in subscribing to the completed 'zine, wait until you see an announcement, as the zine is not complete as of yet, and may not be for a short while, so i have nothing to send you yet!

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Netscape's Delicate Balancing Act
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The market valuation of Netscape Communications is not specifically a Cypherpunks topic, though many of us interested in it, and/or use Netscape. But there are some issues about Netscape's future product plans which may affect market valuation, and which also could hinge on PR issues like Jim Clark's apparent support for mandatory key escrow. To wit, Netscape is currently valued at $5 billion or so, despite having essentially no revenues or profits (sure, it has a little of each, but not much). This is more than the market capitalization of many sizable, respected companies. Companies like General Dynamics, Apple Computer, CBS (which was just sold to Westinghouse for $5B). Granted, Netscape investors are betting on the come. (And contrary to what someone said, investors in companies like Netscape are not mostly interested in profits. Rather, they are interested in selling at a higher price, for whatever reason. This is also known as the "greater fool" theory: that no matter how high the price of a stock, there is some greater fool who will buy it a higher price. Of course, the corrolary to the greater fool theory is that there is usually a greatest fool.) So, can Netscape keep a $5 billion valuation? (And more to the point, can it double from where it is now, say, and sustain a $10 B valuation? I am skeptical, personally, but I've been wrong before.) What Netscape has to offer is based on a *public* standard, the Web and all the various pieces that so many companies are supporting. Netscape's _server_ market--which is said to be where the revenues are mostly coming from--is likely to face heavy competition. As is the browser, of course. (Spyglass Mosaic, Ravi's company, HotJava, CyberDog, MacWeb, and a bunch of others). Scenario #1: Netscape sticks to an open standard. Hard to see what keeps the valuation at $5 B with so many free browsers, free servers, low-cost servers, etc. (From the browsing side, "brand loyalty" is probably minimal: I've used several browsers, and currently use Netscape 1.1N for _some_ of my Web needs. I'll switch "on a dime" to another browser if it offers features I like. Others I have talked to feel the same way. I think "loyalty" to a particular browser is close to nil. Much less than loyalty to a text editor, for example.) Scenario #2: Realizing this, Netscape seeks to "differentiate itself" by proprietary technology. "'Nuff said." I can't see any means of "proprieterizing" the Web that Netscape could hang on to. Any good ideas will be quickly copied or reverse-engineered by other companies and groups. Unlike a chip company, with various and complicated secrets tied up in internal chip design data bases and in billion-dollar fabrication plants, what could a browser or server really keep secret? Unlike a company like Adobe, with various programs whose functionality can mostly be protected from copying by use of copyright laws, a Web browser that operates on public standard files in standard ways will be hard to protect. (Ironically, Netscape's valuation is significantly higher than Adobe's, and Adobe had something like $700 million in yearly sales and $100+ million in profits.) So, it is my thesis that "brand loyalty" to Netscape is ephemeral, that users will flock to the Next Whizzy Thing faster than you can say "price collapse." The connection with crypto and key escrow is that any bad publicity, any hint that Netscape is signing-on to be an agent for Big Brother, could hasten this conversion. While I would never, ever suggest to anyone that the sticker idea I devised a few years ago--"Big Brother Inside"--be applied here, I can imagine others will. Netscape is in a very delicate balancing act. Jim Clark may turn out to be the Karl Wallenda of the Web (with no Net to catch him). --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Netscape gives in to key escrow
by vinnie＠webstuff.apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

GAK or is it Gack!!! You know, one possible solution lies in the direction of Apple's CyberDog. It is based on OpenDoc and should be portable to windoze, I hate to say Rah told you so but... Even with all the ITAR silliness, even if on the contigincy that Apple can't provide a SSL or whatever in thier HTML part, YOU can always write your own HTML part, (its just not that complicated) in the Cyberdog environment and override the Apple CyberDog HTML part. This looks like a great opertunity for some Cypherpunks to write code, and code that people DO care about.. a CypherPunk CyberDog part to replace the Apple HTML viewer with one that has hooks for an encryption API (GSSAPI?) (lawyer types beware: This is definitely my opinion and you and I both know Apple is old enough to speak for itself.) ------------- Vinnie Moscaritolo Apple DTS Sniper "One Shot..One Kill" http://webstuff.apple.com/~vinnie/ Fingerprint = 4F A3 29 81 50 E4 04 F2 78 25 01 87 6E A2 14 6A --------------

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Re: Netscape, Corporations, and GAK Support
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:09 PM 11/30/95, Timothy C. May wrote: >To secure Net communications, the government will need to have access to >private data exchanges > ^^^^^^^^^^ >^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Sorry about the misaligned text and emphasis marks--it looked OK when I was composing the message, but some hidden characters must've been present when I cut-and-pasted the Clark text. I think you all get the gist, though. --Tim Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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CyberDog?
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:16 PM 11/30/95, Vinnie Moscaritolo wrote: >You know, one possible solution lies in the direction of Apple's CyberDog. >It is based on OpenDoc and should be portable to windoze, I hate to say Rah >told you so but... > >Even with all the ITAR silliness, even if on the contigincy that Apple >can't provide a SSL or whatever in thier HTML part, YOU can always write >your own HTML part, (its just not that complicated) in the Cyberdog >environment and override the Apple CyberDog HTML part. > >This looks like a great opertunity for some Cypherpunks to write code, and ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >code that people DO care about.. a CypherPunk CyberDog part to replace the >Apple HTML viewer with one that has hooks for an encryption API (GSSAPI?) Go for it, Vinnie! Let us know how it works out. Being at Apple, I presume, you're in a position to do what you suggest. The problem of course is that many, many pieces of code "need" to be written: several projects mentioned on this list frequently could use more coders. Integrating the casual work of volunteers is usually hard to do. If the idea is really a good one, and will result in an interesting product, then probably the best approach is for someone to do more than just volunteer some free time: he should set out to build a product he can sell or at least get some recognition for. (A la Eudora, Stuffit, Red Ryder, etc.) I'm a Mac user, but am taking a wait-and-see approach to this "CyberDog" (dumb name!) thing. If it works out, great. But until OpenDoc (and the alphabet soup of object standards like Ole, Bento, DOE, SOM, etc.) appears in real products and demonstrates usefulness, I don't see a rush of folks moving from Windows and Unix platforms to the Mac to develop it. If CyberDog is really a decent Web browser--and I've heard some good things about it, admittedly from Macintosh partisans--then many of us will probably use it. --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Netscape gives in to key escrow
by Corey Bridges 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Speaking for me and not Netscape: I am not in favor of governmental key escrow. Getting that news yesterday made for the worst day I've had in a while. However, I think that history will look back on this period and snicker. "They thought they could pull off key escrow? Yeah, right." I think that things are going to get pretty ugly over the next few years, but ultimately, it's too late. The genie's out of the bottle. I'm not going to say "Don't give up on Netscape." Do what you feel you should. *I'm* not giving up on Netscape, however. We haven't adopted this as a company position, and besides, I think I can do more good on the inside than on the outside. In a related matter, there was talk a couple days back about creating a PGP plug-in for Netscape Navigator. I've actually been thinking about that for a couple months, but I make a much better writer than a programmer. (And if you've ever read any of my books, keep your jokes to yourself.) Anyway, if people out there are interested in doing the real work on such a product, I'd be more than willing to help with the documentation, UI, and other things where I have a modicum of talent. I'd also put a copy of it on my home page and hype it internally. In an unofficial capacity, natch. Corey Bridges Security Documentation Manager Netscape Communications Corporation 415-528-2978

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Re: GAKzilla & British MPs
by KJC＠cityscape.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > >On Thu, 30 Nov 1995, KJC wrote: > >> for ages - I give up!.- BTW- after 'Britland' MPs posted hear a while back > >Interesting, that must have been during one of my sanity vacations from the >list. Do you remember approx. when or maybe what their names were? >Might make it easier to hunt it down in the archives. >Thanks. > >You know it's really strange, the only people around here I've found >interested in crypto and aware of sci.crypt and this list were government >spooks. I even sold my 1st edition Applied Crypto to one. >Friendly people, but totally discouraging. > >> I thought _maybe_ we'd hear more.Will the last one to leave Grate Britain >> please switch out the lights! >> kc >At least you have better weather. > > I think it was around March '95. Adam Back(?) cross-posted an email from sci.crypt (written by Chris Smith and concerning Cambridge(U.K.) MP Anne Campbell).At some point Campbell posted to the list herself(?) Sorry,I'm not very clear on this but for some reason I always thought she wasn't the only MP involved. Yadayadayada... they're a bit like London buses- nothing for hours then 3 or 4 arrive at the same time... I've posted this to the list 'cause maybe someone can update the story... I'd _still_ like to know if there has been any discussion(by MPs) since then Sorry about the bandwidth kc p.s. Weather better now its been sold to the French.

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