December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: RC2 Source Code - Legal Warning from RSADSI
by Patrick Lamb 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:06 2/1/96 PST, you wrote: > >WARNING NOTICE > > It has recently come to the attention of RSA Data >Security, Inc. that certain of its confidential and >proprietary source code has been misappropriated and >disclosed. Despite such unauthorized use and disclosure, >RSA Data Security reserves all intellectual property rights >in such source code under applicable law, including without >limitation trade secret and copyright protection. (Remainder of warning elided.) Does this mean RSADSI is claiming copyright infringement on the RC2 source code? Pat -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.2 mQENAzACleQAAAEH/2+41W3bZPuWU1gv6A0bq3a57bgCiCAbU1QY41f+NI1I8i/+ a/L314RIpCR0iCZhsNMHNI9rVovsbmOQE4Cf9YYL3cClUoE2VAsLOi9LAjlN8qYc kmAqpsGQ39eaKrnlC/0lxJtFZgypT4m9UIsTU986y3gyy+ZTWwxtbDaLBEdsTiH/ e+zosoBiXmwWYY1n+5yvaKLGMUwa20AKdoRCUgqhJQpkW0nAvItU6WhaqxwH6JXp KCNsuP6k8FBmcKZfSSvUphSOIJnARAq9K9UPhj5BeAy1vKZ416jfgeYQUTxHQOMT rTiQOYR/oAR35gBpGYg6p1lu6Ma5eDPtpBPadUUABRG0IFBhdHJpY2sgTGFtYiA8 cGRsYW1iQGlxdWVzdC5jb20+ =DZzp -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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Tivoli
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mike, Is it fair to assume that it's your Tivoli that's in the NYT and WSJ today, bought by IBM? If so, congrats on never again having to sell your body for everlasting fame and glory. Envious

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Alien factoring breakthroughs
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Came across this little gem on the web the other day. I thought I'd post it - it's as sensible as most of the crap here. Yours conspiratorially, Noddy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: remallin(a)dorsai.dorsai.org (Richard Mallinson) Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy, alt.alien.visitors, sci.math, alt.politics.org.nsa Subject: The Grays' involvement in cryptography and national security Date: 25 Jan 1994 07:05:10 GMT Summary: How the NSA has got help from extraterrtestrials ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- One thing that the NSA will not reveal is the magnitude of their advancement in theoretical mathematics and cryptography. It is estimated that the NSA is about 200 years ahead of the rest of the world in mathematical theory. This not only allows them to break any code devised outside of the NSA, but to devise codes which cannot be broken. A tiny part of this advancement is due to an intensive mathematics research program commenced in the 1960s. Fermat's Last Theorem was proven conclusively in 1964, but only those in the NSA know of it. Some 2,000 theorems and lemmas, all numbered and classified, have arisen. At least a dozen branches of theoretical mathematics such as flag theory, superspace theory, interstice theory, match theory and quantum logic have been developed, and yet not only has the outside world never heard of them, but the NSA has been deliberately inserting disinformation into textbooks, research papers, et cetera to keep everybody else off the trail. Most of this advancement has been achieved with outside help. In 1973, during the Nixon Administration, the NSA hooked up fith the Jason Society, the top-secret body that liaises with the extraterrestrial beings known as the Grays. This gave them an immediate infusion of mathematical theory, as the grays have developed mathematics to a level which we cannot completely comprehend. In return, the grays were given two more bases in New Mexico and a 15% increase in the number of people that they may abduct per year for analysis and extraction of vital fluids. The Grays have renegged on their abduction quota agreement, and are abducting many more people than before. Most of these are returned, after being implanted with a device which allows the grays to have total control over their thoughts and actions. Approximately 40% of Americans now carry one of these devices, which are impossible to remove without killing the host. Richard E. Mallinson ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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No Subject
by anon-remailer＠utopia.hacktic.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Are anon remailers the only way to send anon email without giving up the source eventhough an organization has a wealth of dough/technology and several class B addresses? Couldn't they just trick their mail servers or would a nslookup/whois defeat that? And are nym accounts the only way to receive email without giving up who the intended recipient of tha mail/news post actually is?

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Re: RC2 Source Code - Legal Warning from RSADSI
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Despite being totally uninvolved with whatever this guy's talking about, Jim Bell is responding: At 11:06 AM 2/1/96 PST, baldwin wrote: > >WARNING NOTICE > > It has recently come to the attention of RSA Data >Security, Inc. that certain of its confidential and >proprietary source code has been misappropriated and >disclosed. Despite such unauthorized use and disclosure, >RSA Data Security reserves all intellectual property rights >in such source code under applicable law, including without >limitation trade secret and copyright protection. Hey, I'm not a lawyer, and I don't even play one on TV, but as I understood the law keeping something a secret was an alternative to disclosing it with a patent. Patents had certain advantages and disadvantages; trade secrets had other advantages and other disadvantages. A famous example, the "formula for Coca-Cola" was kept secret for decades; to patent it would have allowed anybody else to build Coca-Cola after 17 years of patent protection. Keeping it secret could, theoretically last forever, but the legal protection against copying is less or even non-existent. I am well aware that the legal system has been abusing the whole concept of patenting software, etc, ever since they discovered they wanted to keep the country from using RSA in the middle 1970's. However, it seems to me that if your "trade secret" is now disclosed, then it really isn't a "trade secret" anymore and you lose "trade secret" status. You may have a valid claim against the discloser, but that SHOULD be unrelated to everyone else. It sounds like you want the best of both worlds: You want to claim "trade secret" status for something that you either can't or don't want to patent.

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Re: Charter of PDX Cpunk meetings
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 10:52 PM 2/1/96 -0800, Alan Olsen wrote: > >I requested that this debate be taken to private e-mail. Since you seem to >not want to do that, and since you insist of making false and unrealistic >claims, Which "false and unrealistic claims"? I am removing your name from the subscription list for >pdx-cypherpunks. This isn't a DEBATE. It is a WARNING to all other potential suckers in the Portland Oregon area that Alan Olsen engaged in highly unethical behavior with regards to the recent cypherpunks meeting, flamed me without justification in the national list, failed to respond to security inquiries, failed to deny issues and matters of truth, and failed to properly deal with a situation that he had a responsibility to handle ethically. Not to mention lying in the comment above. I am going to take this to the national list, because you took it there first in your original flame: I am going to point out that you flamed me for no good reason; you engaged in a "knee-jerk" "debunking" without even knowing what you were ostensibly "debunking," that you failed to respond to my polite request for clarification; that you've attempted to pretend that I was somehow at fault for noticing your transgressions; that your local clique is pre-programmed to defend you in the face of your transgressions. I notice that some of them don't even know what a key-signing meeting is FOR: I've received commentary which suggests that they believe that key-signing somehow vouches for the HONESTY of the person involved; not his IDENTITY. Until you start responding substantively to legitimate complaints, that is all you deserve. The public needs to be warned about people like you. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMRHIE/qHVDBboB2dAQHHMAQAkTFZaMMF6asl79yU8RSkd5O0zYElg9so syuonRR1UnrzTGlQ2cT/8GPZhuV/IIBSiroxu7EwCX6ASR6BTRUGVdTWbN3l27Vi M6FRiduXpBvzpIzQ7XOzwcvPv0D/bLXwXPGHzmUzqsk3chWpsskKw1PKZun7wCKL fG2MVim+Vqk= =Di2Q -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Anonymity -> Untraceability -> High Latency?
by Nelson Minar 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've been trying out various mechanisms for anonymity: remailer chains, HTTP proxies. There's one problem that makes them inconvenient to use regularly: latency. A good Type I remailer chain takes at least an hour to deliver email, instead of the 15 seconds I'm used to. Mixmaster-style takes even longer; the delay is important to the security of the system. Forwarding all my HTTP requests through a proxy adds an extra hop and some processing to all web transactions, noticeably slowing down browsing. I'm not much for waiting for computers. The problem is that that these anonymity schemes rely on untraceability. And to be untraceable, we have to have centralized servers take our traffic and forward it along, stripping out identifying information, burying it in the noise of lots of other traffic. But that forwarding process seems guaranteed to add latency to the communication. Back in the old days (ie: six months ago, before Web search engines were big on the scene) I was reasonably happy with the needle-in-a-haystack anonymity of the unorganized Internet. I posted personal things to Usenet, fairly sure that only the members of that Usenet group were going to see my messages. I ftped files from all over without worrying that my transactions would be logged permanently. But now, with the amazing success of Web searching, I no longer feel that obscurity is sufficient security. Are there other approaches to anonymity that don't impose the latency that forwarding messages around does?

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Helping the Crypto-Clueless
by Bruce Baugh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

While talking with Alan Olsen about the impending Telecommunications Decency Act, a thought struck me: one of the groups that's really going to be hurt by this is pagans. Me, I'm one o' them Christian types; it's my anarchism that'll get me on lists. But insofar as cypherpunks have contact with pagans (and aboriginal American groups and the like), probably there are a lot of folks who should be ramping up for privacy right away. Bruce Baugh bruce(a)aracnet.com

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[noise] Re: Charter of PDX Cpunk meetings
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I think an explanation for this is due. Jim is going to move his complaints here instead of dealing with them with me no matter what I do... A bit of history here... I had seem Jim Bell's postings and had not thought too much about them one way or another. I felt that some people had been a bit too hard on him, but did not care one way or another. I organized a physical meeting on Jan 20th at a public coffee house in portland. Jim showed up. During this meeting he espoused some ideas which I found very bothersome because they sounded far too much like "magical thinking" and pseudo science. I did not challenge him about them at the meeting and tried to move on to other things. A while ago an anonymous poster made a number of comments about Jim Bell's beliefs involving assassination politics. He brought up a number of valid points. Jim ignored all of those points and flamed him on something totally without substance. (Not signing messages and not using an identifiable nym.) This bothered me. I responded to the post. A good portion of this message was flame, but it contained a number of questions about the workability of Jim's pet theories. Jim's response to this was to question the validity of the post, but not deal with any of the substance of the arguments. (He was questioning it because I did not sign the posting.) I ignored the post as I had other things occupying my time... During the period of time between the meeting and the offending post I had created a pdx-cypherpunks list. I had a number of people who were interested and it seemed like a good idea at the time... Well, i posted on the list a question about the next meeting and mentioned about the results from the key signing. (I had three people, who i did not mention by name, who had not signed keys or gotten back to me on it.) I relieved a response from Jim about my messages to him here and why he had not signed anyone's keys. [For those who are interested, I can forward the original messages. They are interesting reading, in an odd sort of way...] It came down to him complaining about my messages on national list. He still did not address any of the issues I had raised (he still has not), but was pretty pissed. A number of the other people on the list took him to task on a number of the comments he made. It grew into a pretty hot flame war on the list. After I started to get complaints and it prevented anything useful being posted, I posted a message to take the discussion to e-mail or I would start banning people from the list. Jim ignored that request and I removed him from the list. That is why it has moved back here. This will be my last response to Jim's rantings in public. i will be glad to deal with questions in e-mail. I have sent a number of responses to Jim already in e-mail and he has ignored them. He has made veiled threats to me on the pdx list and has shown no sign of wanting to deal with this in a rational manner. The issue comes down to this. Jim Bell has a number of ideas i disagree with. I have challenged him on some of those ideas. He is unwilling to answer any questions as to the flaws in his beliefs. Instead, he takes any questioning of his ideas as personal attacks. I refuse to give any respect to an individual who presents his ideas to the world and yet is unwilling to defend them in public (or in private). I suggest you get your killfiles ready. I will be killfileing Mr. Bell's comments on this list as it does not belong here. The following is the last I will say publically on the matter. At 12:16 AM 2/2/96 -0800, jim bell wrote: >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > >At 10:52 PM 2/1/96 -0800, Alan Olsen wrote: > >> >>I requested that this debate be taken to private e-mail. Since you seem to >>not want to do that, and since you insist of making false and unrealistic >>claims, > >Which "false and unrealistic claims"? Well, lets see... The claim that you have a method of "rendering a building uninhabitable by electronic equipment for at least 30 days". The claims that the Portland meeting was a "private meeting". That I did not inform people of that fact. That I somehow owe you an apology for statements which you seem to be unwilling to deal with. I am sure that i can dig up more. >I am removing your name from the subscription list for >>pdx-cypherpunks. > >This isn't a DEBATE. That is because you are not willing to debate. You want your beliefs accepted with no proof and no rational thought. You want them to be accepted without question. >It is a WARNING to all other potential suckers in the >Portland Oregon area that Alan Olsen engaged in highly unethical behavior >with regards to the recent cypherpunks meeting, What behavior was that Jim? I told people about your loonie scheme to "disable hardware"? If you did not want it known, then you should have kept your mouth shut! (The first rule of not being seen is DON'T STAND UP!) You seemed to have some sort of idea that it was a private meeting. Nowhere was it stated that it was private. We were in a crowded coffee house. You were sitting in front of a big glass window. Anyone who wanted to take the time to hear you could have. There was no reasonable expectation of privacy at that meeting. I am sorry that you have suffered embarrassment. Grow up. >flamed me without >justification in the national list, I gave my justification. You are unwilling to respond to criticism of your ideas. You still are. Sorry, but you need to grow an epidermal layer. > failed to respond to security inquiries, I did not sign my messages to him. He assumed that it must be some sort of spoof. I left it unanswered for two reasons. At the time i was not really needing a confrontation (as my personal life was taking time) and I was not certain how to answer. (How do you answer someone who is THAT paranoid?) I wonder if he assumes Tim May's messages are all spoofs. (He may have something there...) >failed to deny issues and matters of truth, Did not answer mail... >and failed to properly deal with >a situation that he had a responsibility to handle ethically. Not to >mention lying in the comment above. Jim is not willing to deal with the issues i keep bringing up so i must be lying... >I am going to take this to the national list, because you took it there >first in your original flame: And I banned Jim from the Portland list... >I am going to point out that you flamed me >for no good reason; you engaged in a "knee-jerk" "debunking" without even >knowing what you were ostensibly "debunking," I was flaming you for being unwilling to clarify your positions. You made extraordinary claims and have been unwilling to explain how any of this is supposed to work or given anyone any sort of reason as to why we should believe you. >that you failed to respond to >my polite request for clarification; Yeah, that one is my fault. i should have responded sooner to that message. > that you've attempted to pretend that I >was somehow at fault for noticing your transgressions; No. You were at fault for ignoring every issue that was brought up. You have been unwilling to deal with anything resembling substance and instead insist on continuing this petty flame war. >that your local >clique is pre-programmed to defend you in the face of your transgressions. i.e. the rest of the Portland list jumped on his case for his behavior. Many of them are my friends. At least one of them is someone i have only met once. You seem unwilling to accept that maybe the idea that no one has sided with you is that they do not agree with you. >I notice that some of them don't even know what a key-signing meeting is >FOR: I've received commentary which suggests that they believe that >key-signing somehow vouches for the HONESTY of the person involved; not his >IDENTITY. As I have stated before, the concept of identity is a slippery thing. Actually the information on the key signing that I posted, and the theories behind it, were from the FAQ written by Derek Atkins. >Until you start responding substantively to legitimate complaints, that is >all you deserve. The public needs to be warned about people like you. You have one legitimate complaint. (That I did not respond to mail in a timely fashion.) Sorry... Guilty. The rest you have blown FAR out of proportion. You are mad because i said some unpleasant things to you on a list where you so much want to be respected. I suspect that you had lost the respect of most of them before I posted. If they are that easily swayed, then you have not done alot to earn their respect and be able to keep it. You have failed to respond to the mail I have sent in private. That makes me suspect that you do not want to resolve the issue with me, but cause problems for me with others as "punishment" for exposing your outlandish views. I am sorry that you feel that you have to go to such extremes. It reinforces my decision to bounce you from the Portland list however. The more you rant, the less I am willing to deal with you. When my daughter acts like you she is sent to her room. In your case, I will just have to ignore you... Find an anagram for "Spiro Agnew". -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMRHgrOQCP3v30CeZAQGHFQf8CVDZAKzBv3vHy4aY9hiV2ydNJ+Dz1DX8 wQiA0Hg1eK5WuCJ4y6lIrZpSOR6h9ok86eGAdyaWqayscgcvDWVyTF1D/VJ3RPyM vhbXLWF01DeG0eU+9ckqjoB4dJSYVYcdLRD18QzO/MDAmaOJaTehfxOT2BlNHHHi WoHpH1SYq0JOHsN+5UoITA7GUR1JNNlTDhHBtcM17Wqm5WXnhwm+z1gpBPExIcZ6 VFMOsPBGqHj02lYZtUVUwFzmVXRlF9zbN7SzqyhnPdK0TkmH/V7jtk2A91C62DAw 6ZCE8KNQbXOMlyKS0RyhtUCXfPZpBTs77leP/9tKs1vyortPxO07GA== =RoA4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Alan Olsen -- alano(a)teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction `finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ Is the operating system half NT or half full?

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Re: RC2 Source Code - Legal Warning from RSADSI
by jrochkin＠cs.oberlin.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 7:06 PM 02/01/96, baldwin wrote: >WARNING NOTICE > > It has recently come to the attention of RSA Data >Security, Inc. that certain of its confidential and >proprietary source code has been misappropriated and >disclosed. Despite such unauthorized use and disclosure, >RSA Data Security reserves all intellectual property rights >in such source code under applicable law, including without >limitation trade secret and copyright protection. In Well, now we know it really was RC2. Is there a law-knowing type out there who can tell us what's going on legally? As I understand things, RSA is just bullshitting here. When something has 'trade secret' status, the only people with legal obligations toward it are those with contractual obligations to RSA--you can only enforce 'trade secrets' through contractual obligations, non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements, etc. Once something has been disclosed, as I understand it, people without contractual obligations in regards to it are free to do whatever they want to it--trade secret status of RC2 has nothing to do with me, who has no contractual obligations to RSA regarding RC2. (Unless the license agreement for RSAref could be stretched to apply somehow, but I don't think so). Now, copyright might be another matter. But you can't copyright an algorithm, only specific text in fixed form (ie, the source code). So this would mean you couldn't use the particular code posted to sci.crypt, but wouldn't stop anyone from using the algorithm, if they wrote their own code (to be safe, without having seen the RSA-copyrighted code, only having the algorithm described to them by someone else). You can _patent_ an algorithm, but as I understand it, something can't be patented and a trade secret--you have to disclose it in full to the patent office to get a patent, at which point it's no longer a trade secret. And the legalese from RSA doesn't even mention patents anyway (because they dont' have one, of course), only copyright and 'trade secret'. I'm not a lawyer of course. Information from someone more sure of their knowledge then I am would be appreciated. But, as I understand it, they're basically making stuff up, and there is nothing stopping any of us, who haven't signed any non-disclosure agreements with RSA, from using the RC2 algorithm.

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