December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Fair Credit Reporting Act and Privacy Act
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:32 PM 2/14/96 -0500, Tim Philp wrote: > If I apply for a credit card and use it to buy a hockey glove (how >Canadian eh) I should not expect to be on the mailing list of every >sporting goods operation in North America! > > [...] > > Again, I am not suggesting prior restraint. I simply want to sue >the bastards who violated my expectation of privacy. 1. All so called privacy laws against databases *have* involved prior restraint, and thus necessarily involved massive violation of privacy by the state. 2. Absent prior restraint, you may have great difficulty discovering whole leaked information concerning you. 3. Such a law as you propose, without prior restraint, would not violate peoples privacy, and for that very reason it is vastly unlikely that such a law would ever be passed. The primary purpose of laws against acts that are malum prohibitum and not malum in se is to empower those that pass them, and the secondary purpose is to empower established businesses that are threatened by competition. (The digital telephony act should be called the big three preservation act.) When you say "There ought to be a law", ask yourself who would pass such a law, who would enforce such a law, and why. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: A Cyberspace Independence Refutation
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

James Donald writes: >[in reply to strata] >> Your other arguments casually dismiss the very real power that large numbers >> of able people with good communications can exercise, have just exercised >> very recently. At 05:03 AM 2/16/96 -0500, lmccarth(a)cs.umass.edu wrote: >Large numbers of able people with good communications very recently exercised >their putative "very real power" against the passage of the CDA. They had no >substantial impact AFAICS. (I intend no slur against the effort.) Could you >name some examples, and add some qualifications that made the difference in >those cases ? 1. President Clinton declared CDA unconstitutional and directed the Justice department to refrain from enforcing it. 2. The normal course of events, when a new medium starts competing against an old medium, is for the new medium to be censored to an utterly ludicrous degree, analogous to the law requiring a man with a red flag to walk in front of horseless carriages, while the old medium has censorship radically relaxed. In the normal course of events one would expect a strict ban on pictures of women in clothes cut below the neck or above the ankles, and a ban on any unpleasant or disturbing subject. (For example the comics code, and the TV rule that married couples had to have separate beds) Instead alt.pictures.binaries.erotica.children is still going strong. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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ITAR personal use exemption in force
by Michael Froomkin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

61 Federal Register 6111 (Feb. 16, 1996) To be codified at 22 CFR parts 123 & 126 Effective today. Excerpts: "After extensive review, the Department of State has decided to further amend the regulations to provide for an exemption for the temporary export of products for personal use. The exemption does not apply to other circumstances, for example, those in which a person contemplates sales, marketing or demonstration.... ... for purposes of this exemption, a product is considered to be in the possession of the exporter if the exporter takes normal precautions to ensure the security of the product by locking the product in a hotel room, safe, or other comparably secure location; and, while in transit, the exporter keeps the product in his/her carry-on luggage or locked in baggage accompanying the exporter which has been checked with the carrier. This amendment involves a foreign affairs function of the United States and thus is exploded from the procedures of [ordinary rulemaking]. However, interested parties are invited to submit risen comments to the Department of State, Director, office of Defense trade Controls, attention: regulatory change, personal use cryptographic products, Rome 200, SA-6, Washington, DC 20520-0602. [The above was dictated using voice-recognition software, so beware of strange word substitutions.] A. Michael Froomkin | +1 (305) 284-4285; +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax) Associate Professor of Law | U. Miami School of Law | froomkin(a)law.miami.edu P.O. Box 248087 | http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA | It's warm here.

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Re: Looking for GSM A5 info
by jbaber＠mi.leeds.ac.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

<somogyi(a)digmedia.com> writes... > I'm looking for information about the A5 encryption algorithm used in > GSM phones. Specifically: > [...........deleted............] > > Any related information, or pointers to related information, > appreciated greatly. > > ________________________________________________________________________ > Stephan Somogyi Mr Gyroscope Digital Media > > I have a post to sci.crypt from Jun 1994 stored on my web pages that has a fair amount of information on A5 along with an implementation. I can not guarentee that the details are accurate but they may well be of some use. Try: http://chem.leeds.ac.uk/ICAMS/people/jon/a5.html Jon C. Baber jbaber(a)mi.leeds.ac.uk http://chem.leeds.ac.uk/ICAMS/people/jon/

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DCSB: Tales from the Dark Side: Non-Anonymous Digital Cash?
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- The Digital Commerce Society of Boston (Formerly The Boston Society for Digital Commerce) Presents Mark Bernkopf Tales from the Dark Side: Non-Anonymous Digital Cash? Tuesday, March 5, 1995 12 - 2 PM The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston One Federal Street, Boston, MA This past autumn, Mark wrote a couple of studies on electronic money. He will offer some general thoughts on likely winners and losers of the cash-card competition. Mark opposes totally untraceable electronic cash. He is skeptical of private currencies, although he concedes one type of private currency that might succeed. Since late 1993, Mark Bernkopf has been an economic and financial policy analyst at Bruce Morgan Associates, Inc., a small international consultancy in Arlington, VA. He prepares a semi-annual World Economic Outlook, and writes on such subjects as central banking and monetary policy, currency boards, the economics of Korean reunification, derivatives, bancassurance, and industrial policy. His firm's clients are mostly Middle Eastern governments and large East Asian corporations and thinktanks. In previous "incarnations" Mark served at the Clinton White House Office of Communications and at the Open Market Operations Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He is a Wharton grad and a clandestine contributor to Pasi Kuoppamäki's "Jokes about Economists and Economists" http://www.etla.fi/pkm/joke.html This meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston will be held on Tuesday, March 5, 1995 from 12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of the Harvard Club of Boston, One Federal Street. The price for lunch is $27.50. This price includes lunch, room rental, and the speaker's lunch. ;-). The Harvard Club *does* have a jacket and tie dress code. We need to receive a company check, or money order, (or if we *really* know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by Saturday, March 2, or you won't be on the list for lunch. Checks payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston will have to be sent back. Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston". If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements (We've had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for instance), please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work something out. Planned speakers for the following few months are: April Donald Eastlake CyberCash May Perry Metzger Security Consultant and Cypherpunk June Dan Shutzer FSTC July Pete Loshin Author, "Electronic Commerce" August Duane Hewitt Idea Futures We are actively searching for future speakers. If you are in Boston on the first Tuesday of the month, and you would like to make a presentation to the Society, please send e-mail to the DCSB Program Commmittee, care of Robert Hettinga, rah(a)shipwright.com . For more information about the Digital Commerce Society of Boston, send "info dcsb" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu . If you want to subscribe to the DCSB e-mail list, send "subscribe dcsb" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu . Looking forward to seeing you there! Cheers, Robert Hettinga Moderator, The Digital Commerce Society of Boston -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMSS2l/gyLN8bw6ZVAQEtHQP9GoForXlqC37poPqWsXJmjTM+4oNuxrt6 uWDxNeshrJcn1bzwr3pumKQo/5ep+2x0+SSK4Ay2DMmNZwt/vYI/UvaWsfQoRQVg t4vJ3cZQ4/ESuZ5lMbDORPUoUFwcxcJf0qcw0AXT0asZBFfaqRajg98bSqIQECYO 6mNXIuGtoqk= =pR6y -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell The e$ Home Page: http://thumper.vmeng.com/pub/rah/

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LUP_hol
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Two TWP reports on the future of US intelligence and use of nonofficial cover (NOC): "Don't Hobble Intelligence Gathering," 2-15-96. An op-ed by Richard Haass, principal author of a just released report on the future of intelligence by the Council on Foreign Affairs, which, among other things, proposes lifting the ban on use of journalists and clergy as cover. [We expect to get this report shortly and will offer it here; CoFA says the first printing was snapped up so there should be more news reports.] "Loophole Revealed in Prohibition on CIA Use of Journalistic Cover," 2-16-96. Which reports that by special waiver the CIA continues to use journalists as covert agents despite the 1977 ban. Ex-National Security Council staffer Haass and an ex-DCI panelist of the CoFA study claim they were unaware of the loophole OKable only by the DCI. Hmm. LUP_hol

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hawkenet.com
by lane＠sutm.2sprint.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have been trying to log into hawkenet.com for the past few days. Does anyone know what is wrong with it? It seems to have some pretty interesting stuff on it. Lane

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Re: Cypherpunks Decency Act
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 02:50 AM 2/16/96 -0500, t byfield wrote: >At 9:43 PM 2/15/96, jdoe-agamemnon(a)alpha.c2.org wrote: > >>>Perry sent me a polite note asking why I had posted the original post, and >>>He suggested that in the future I make it clear why I think my posts are >>>relevent to the subject of the list. >> >>Is this what we call the chilling effect? > > No. > bell@pacifier--surely not a coincidence--has indulged himself >excessively. Anyone checked out the LD angle on him? Hey, I resent the implication, here! Three months ago I wouldn't have known what you meant by that, but "comparatively" long ago I learned that "LD" is Detweiler, who apparently has a long and established history of using aliases. It sounds like you're trying to imply that I am either a Detweiler "tentacle" (yet another term of art that I learned in the last couple of months) or am somehow in league with him. Right?!? Well, "It ain't so." Now, I realize how difficult it is for me to prove that I'm not some other particular person, but from the snippets I've managed to see over the last few months on Internet, this Detweiler character appears to know FAR more about the use of Internet than I do. (He apparently is a sleazy bastard, but then you probably know much more about that than I do...) Hell, it was only a couple of months ago that I even learned how to use PGP with Eudora. I've only had a full SLIP account for a few months before that. In fact, so far (luckily for me, I guess) my only contact with LD is that I was flamed by him, actually under the Detweiler name, when I first posted "Assassination Politics" to various USENET areas. At that point, I had no idea of his checkered history (still don't know much; I'd appreciate hearing more) and he apparently assumed that I was some Tim May clone. He even referred to May as "TCM," a set of initials that mystified me for a week, until some kind soul sent me a small snippet of the Cybernomicon, the part dealing with "net-killings." At that point, he ignored me, probably classifying me as a clueless newbie. His flaming ceased when he discovered that I was not only not "in the TCM camp," but I hadn't even heard of May and Cypherpunks. In any case, as I understand it from vague commentary, some of you people "out there" know a lot more about LD, and it should be possible for me to show my history in enough detail to convince anybody that I'm not Detweiler. Hell, somebody posted my correct address just a few hours ago (it was no secret; I am well aware of USENET indexing, and I've freely published my address and the correct, current phone number in a USENET area within the last couple of months, and I've never had an unlisted telephone number. Jim Bell, N7IJS, 7214 Corregidor, Vancouver, WA, USA 98664, 360-696-3911 (they changed area codes from 216 last year), MIT Class of 1980, Course 5, Chemistry major. "James Dalton Bell" (yes, THOSE Daltons!) jimbell(a)pacifier.com Klaatu Burada Nikto. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMSSvq/qHVDBboB2dAQG89AP8D+Wv6oXk3Yj0gcLg6pPP7DNvEhQCQG1j q8UzCvz/lA0d2Pv+DR5KCAsgCeWD3H2b5435GrYt4jsUhOSBmwZ4C1KFdogBon5D ELvbNwLyNtf6GGaqeAxlD/ztJ/MMuoPAaohi4tZuUhEnMGe7JMV5UlMHgnSfyRQ+ SKyM7bHg2io= =qC3l -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Computer unmasks Anonymous writer...
by sasha1＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I ran my essays through Word grammar checker a while ago, and was surprised how stable the grammar statistics were. Complexity of the text (grade level) was the same to the decimal point, average length of sentences was consistent, etc. People also use the same styles of smileys or *highlights*, make consistent spelling errors, have their habits of indentation, etc. My suggestion at the time was to have randomizing output filter that would substitute synonyms, change spelling, modify paragraph formatting, etc. - Style anonymizer, I'd call it. Also, if small random changes are applied to every copy of the message you send out, and you keep track of what recipient got which version, you will find it easier to identify the leaks if you send private messages. A dishonest recipient, to protect himself, would have to further randomize the message, which has apparent consequences for the ease of your identification and attributability of the message. Of course there are more subtle consistencies of style one can't easily mask with a filter - but they are not easy to detect either. ----------------------------------------------------------- | Alexander Chislenko | sasha1(a)netcom.com | Cambridge, MA | | Home page: http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html | -----------------------------------------------------------

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Libertarians and crypto and such
by Thomas Grant Edwards 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Isn't it the libertarian types on the list who are into mass killings of >civilians with nukes and the "socialist statists" who tend to oppose it? Libertarians do not believe in killing civilians with nukes. Libertarians do not believe in murder, period. We're not the ones calling for the death penalty for drug lords. We're not the ones calling for military force in foreign countries, be they Kuwait or Bosnia. Infact, the Libertarian Party has often called for nuclear disarmament. Libertarians are interested in democratic change, not violent revolution. ObCrypto: William Winter, Director of Communications of the Libertarian Party, not only ordered the Libertarian Party web site to go dark for "Black Thursday," he also delivered an empassioned speech at the anti-CDA rally in Washington, D.C., last saturday. (http://www.wam.umd.edu/~tedwards/rally.html for pictures and links to audio) The Libertarian Party has consistantly sent out the strongest statements of any political party in support of cryptographic freedom and freedom of expression on the Internet. -Thomas

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