December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

"Not the views of my government"
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:16 PM 11/13/95, Brian Davis wrote: >And, being personally familiar on the Government's position on many of >the issues discussed here, I can certify that many/most/all of Tim's >views are not the views of the United States government! Indeed. Though many would argue that some (large) fraction of the views I and others express are right in line with the views of the Founders. Certainly Jefferson, Franklin, Henry, and others would be aghast at the modern interpretations of the Constitution. "What do you mean my inn may not allow smoking? Surely it is up to customers to freely choose to enter my inn or not enter my inn." "What do you mean I must hire fixed quotas of various ethnic and racial groups, no matter my preferences?" "How can the government command me to pay more for a worker than I wish to freely pay?" "Why are these things you call helicopters flying over my farm at all hours? if they are looking for "illegal crops," why is this their concern? Why do they subsidize tobacco production? Why is government paying farmers to grow some crops and not to grow other crops?" "What, pray tell, is this "key escrow" business? Do we no longer have protections against unlawful search? Are our papers and conversations now to be "escrowed" with the King's men? What country have I been brought back into?" "I am just an ignorant Founder; I know not the ways of your strange land." --Timothy Jefferson 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."

1 0

URL Version for ALPHA.C2.ORG FAQ
by Andre Bacard 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hello Remailer Users, Due to popular demand, I've created a URL version of my ALPHA.C2.ORG Remailer FAQ. Please link to this address: http://www.well.com/user/abacard/alpha.html See you in the future, Andre Bacard ====================================================================== abacard(a)well.com Bacard wrote "The Computer Privacy Stanford, California Handbook" [Intro by Mitchell Kapor]. http://www.well.com/user/abacard Published by Peachpit Press, (800) Enjoy your privacy... 283-9444, ISBN # 1-56609-171-3. =======================================================================

1 0

Re: POTP Security
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We ordered POTP based on the initial blurbs by Kahn and others. It took a while to get it, we talked to Elementrix HQ and got voicemail, stutters and recordings saying be patient. We read c'punks' slash and burns in the waiting period. When the boxes appeared, we read the extra-thin documents -- mostly PR gush -- reflected, decided to leave the red white and blue boxes At No Time Padded. Later a POTP distributer's rep called to ask how we like the product. We said, haven't tried it, because we learned a bit from reading cryptography lists. We wondered if he knew what was being said. He said, yes, we know, but they're all wrong, it's a fabulous product, totally secure. How you gonna prove it, we asked, to consumers like us who don't know who to believe? You know, we're reading more these days about hacks of cryptography and we want to know more than press releases. The people you're citing for endorsement aren't cryptographers. Yes, he said, that's what we're hearing, that's why I'm calling you, we looking for users to endorse the program while we're waiting for patent approvals, and trying to get the crypto authorities to sign NDA's. Sorry, we said, we're can't take a chance on your product. Call us back after you get the crypto fuck-authorities to hack at it in public.

1 0

Re: unsuscribe all news groups [NOISE]
by liberty＠gate.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Someone wrote: > >I wish to unsuscribe to all news groups as I feel I should be on a different >planet. The planet of the clues. JMR -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Freedom isn't Freeh iQCVAwUBMKex/m1lp8bpvW01AQEvdAQAqjSV16hsO3mvGF71I1UkD9Ti/scw5slg yd51BAttoIb7qDMox7W6ofBAaRW9YrJuD2hoU+/FGJMecEDgsjGnZgcPO2joh4AF zJD4RU3a2VnEHzKRL+n9xQEtzn6Swo+rnDpRmJKtWso9jpUNXkasl9VTvVRzhf78 hweN2FR/nN4= =4bJ9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Regards, Jim Ray "...the politicians have been arguing over whether to increase the budget enormously or just hugely. The news media refer to this process as 'cutting' the budget." -- Dave Barry Visit my "Pretty Good Homepage" at http://shopmiami.com/prs/jimray/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PGP key Fingerprint 51 5D A2 C3 92 2C 56 BE 53 2D 9C A1 B3 50 C9 C8 Key id. # E9BD6D35 (key on page & servers) <liberty(a)gate.net> IANAL ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Help Phil! email zldf(a)clark.net or http://www.netresponse.com/zldf _______________________________________________________________________

1 0

Re: Photuris Primality verification needed
by Phil Karn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>I don't know. Maybe the right thing to do is require conforming >implementations to support a large modulus but include recommended >smaller moduli. Then Alice can always force Bob to use the large >modulus but, if both agree, they can use something smaller from the >standard or even their own home-grown modulus. Thanks. That's pretty much what we are doing -- requiring a particular 1024-bit modulus but recommending several others as options. There's a 2048 bit optional modulus and may even be a 4096-bit option if I can find one in reasonable time. There was going to be a 512-bit optional modulus but the group has reacted so strongly to it that I'm willing to withdraw it. Phil

4 4

Hakim Bey mention of gvm't crypto policy
by Jon Lasser 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is a very brief excerpt from a Hakim Bey piece available at http://www.t0.or.at/hakimbey/boundary.htm, dealing with... well... lots of stuff, actually. Including stuff talked about on the list. I recommend the entire piece highly. Jon -------------------------------------------- Knowledge itself can be seen as a kind of virus. On the psychological level this perception manifested recently as a panic about "computer viruses", and more generally about computer hacking -- boundary violations in cyberspace, so to speak. The government wants access to all computer cypher-codes in order to control the "Net", the InterNet, which might otherwise spread everywhere, transmitting secrets, even secrets about "abuse" and kiddy porn -- as if the Net were a disease, rather than simply a free exchange of information. America's immune system can't take "too much knowing" (or whatever T.S. Eliot's lame-ass phrase was); America must be "protected" from penetration by foreign chaos cabals of evil hackers (who might look just like you and me) -- borders must be imposed. ---------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jon Lasser <jlasser(a)rwd.goucher.edu> (410)494-3072 Visit my home page at http://www.goucher.edu/~jlasser/ You have a friend at the NSA: Big Brother is watching. Finger for PGP key.

1 0

what's going on
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn't want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn't want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world. If two parties have some sort of dealings, then each has a memory of their interaction. Each party can speak about their own memory of this; how could anyone prevent it? One could pass laws against it, but the freedom of speech, even more than privacy, is fundamental to an open society; we seek not to restrict any speech at all. If many parties speak together in the same forum, each can speak to all the others and aggregate together knowledge about individuals and other parties. The power of electronic communications has enabled such group speech, and it will not go away merely because we might want it to. Since we desire privacy, we must ensure that each party to a transaction have knowledge only of that which is directly necessary for that transaction. Since any information can be spoken of, we must ensure that we reveal as little as possible. In most cases personal identity is not salient. When I purchase a magazine at a store and hand cash to the clerk, there is no need to know who I am. When I ask my electronic mail provider to send and receive messages, my provider need not know to whom I am speaking or what I am saying or what others are saying to me; my provider only need know how to get the message there and how much I owe them in fees. When my identity is revealed by the underlying mechanism of the transaction, I have no privacy. I cannot here selectively reveal myself; I must _always_ reveal myself. Therefore, privacy in an open society requires anonymous transaction systems. Until now, cash has been the primary such system. An anonymous transaction system is not a secret transaction system. An anonymous system empowers individuals to reveal their identity when desired and only when desired; this is the essence of privacy. Privacy in an open society also requires cryptography. If I say something, I want it heard only by those for whom I intend it. If the content of my speech is available to the world, I have no privacy. To encrypt is to indicate the desire for privacy, and to encrypt with weak cryptography is to indicate not too much desire for privacy. Furthermore, to reveal one's identity with assurance when the default is anonymity requires the cryptographic signature. We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence. It is to their advantage to speak of us, and we should expect that they will speak. To try to prevent their speech is to fight against the realities of information. Information does not just want to be free, it longs to be free. Information expands to fill the available storage space. Information is Rumor's younger, stronger cousin; Information is fleeter of foot, has more eyes, knows more, and understands less than Rumor. We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We must come together and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to take place. People have been defending their own privacy for centuries with whispers, darkness, envelopes, closed doors, secret handshakes, and couriers. The technologies of the past did not allow for strong privacy, but electronic technologies do. We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money. Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can't get privacy unless we all do, we're going to write it. We publish our code so that our fellow Cypherpunks may practice and play with it. Our code is free for all to use, worldwide. We don't much care if you don't approve of the software we write. We know that software can't be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can't be shut down. Cypherpunks deplore regulations on cryptography, for encryption is fundamentally a private act. The act of encryption, in fact, removes information from the public realm. Even laws against cryptography reach only so far as a nation's border and the arm of its violence. Cryptography will ineluctably spread over the whole globe, and with it the anonymous transactions systems that it makes possible. For privacy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract. People must come and together deploy these systems for the common good. Privacy only extends so far as the cooperation of one's fellows in society. We the Cypherpunks seek your questions and your concerns and hope we may engage you so that we do not deceive ourselves. We will not, however, be moved out of our course because some may disagree with our goals. The Cypherpunks are actively engaged in making the networks safer for privacy. Let us proceed together apace. Onward.

1 0

[NOISE] Credit Card security in the New York Times
by Nelson Minar 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Today's New York Times has a nice article in the business section about credit card security on the Internet. It's more of an editorial than an article, but it's an editorial with the (IMNSHO) right spin: shipping a credit card number over the Internet, even unencrypted, is no less secure than giving it out over the phone. The NYT has been doing a nice job covering computer issues in the past few months, in the Monday's business section. Worth reading if you want to keep an eye on intelligent media coverage of the net. -- __ nelson(a)santafe.edu \/ http://www.santafe.edu/~nelson/ PGP key 9D719FAD Fingerprint 3B 9B 8E 58 1C 90 57 3E B7 99 ED 13 65 2E 0B 24

1 0

FBI Computer Chief
by James M. Cobb 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Friend, 11 06 95 Computerworld 92 runs this "Briefs" item that may be of interest to you: FBI names computer chief Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Louis J. Freeh last week announced the appointment of Carolyn G. Morris to head the FBI's Information Resource Division, which has 2,000 employees and a budget of $200 million. Morris will oversee all automation matters for the FBI and research and development for the new National Crime Information Center, a nationwide computerized system for law enforcement. Cordially, Jim NOTE If you wish to subscribe to Computerworld, call 1 800 669 1002

1 0

REMINDER: PARTY! Nov. 18th, sponsored by Community ConneXion
by sameer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Subject: REMINDER: PARTY! Nov. 18th, sponsored by Community ConneXion Here's a little reminder: We're having a party in a little over a week. I hope you can make it. Community ConneXion: the Internet Privacy Provider is having a party! We're partying to celebrate the spread of privacy on the net, through the increased security of internet products, as well as the growth of our services. (Many new services and new features on existing services will likely be announced before the party. Stay tuned.) We're inviting all our customers and other potentially interested parties, which includes you, if you've received this note. So please join us, and send a copy of this invitation to anyone else you may know who would be interested in attending. Where: Icon Byte Bar & Grill 299 9th Street (at Folsom) SF CA 94103 When: Sat. Nov. 18 1995 7:00 PM This is a good chance to meet and network with the people who are making privacy on the internet a reality. Find out more about the HackNetscape and HackMicrosoft contests. Learn about our specialized web services, found nowhere else but at Community ConneXion. Hear about the anonymous and psuedonymous servers here and what we're doing to improve them. There will be catered snacks and a no-host bar.

1 0