December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

re: PA
by A. Padgett Peterson P.E. Information Security 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim rote: >(By the way, I also figured out the anonymous markets for assassinations >bit, too, in 1988, and discussed it in detail then with Eric Drexler, Marc >Stiegler, Mark Miller, Robin Hanson, and others. Long enough ago that I have forgotten the citation, I read an even older SF story about explosive necklaces worn by politicians. If their electronic agreement percentage (and think this was in the sixties folks) dropped too low, a vacancy occured. Warmly, Padgett ps if you have strong principles, and stick by them, sooner or later you will manage to offend everyone.

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Re: Cut the mystical artist crap. (No crypto relevance here)
by tbyfield＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:10 AM 3/11/96, Anonymous wrote: >Was it Thoreau who said "Consistency is the hobgoblin of >simpletons"? No, it was Emerson. And that's not what he said. >What the compromises have to do with are that one lives in >a society with rules, mores, laws. One of those touch-shit >facts of life. You can do what you want, but when it involves You seem to be rather fond of consistency. ;) Ted

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Re: rhetorical trickery
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> all my respondents seem to be missing some basic points I have been > trying to make about law enforcement in the US. > > the law runs on proof, and evidence. a file with the name "diary.pgp" > is not incriminating. it is not evidence. no one could be prosecuted > as a criminal for having a diary. there is the presumption of innocence > unless there is evidence and proof to the contrary. A diary isn't illegal... but if you are suspected or even convicted of a crime, and there's reason to believe that a book or computer file is a diary and that you wrote about more crimes in the diary, then it's worth investigating. Just as if one is suspected of money laundering and it is known that that person has Swiss or Cayman Island bank accounts... having them doesn't mean one is guilty, but if there is other evidence that the crime took place then they are well within the realm of investigating. > furthermore, suppose > the "pedophile" is actually prosecuted successfully. does that mean > the diary was incriminating? no, it does not. in the CA case it happened [..] No. It's just another area of potential evidence. > that the pedophile was prosecuted without decrypting the diary. which > in fact argues in favor of the side that says, "cryptography is not > the end of law enforcement, and this case proves it." One can argue that, yes. In fact I remember some LE type who was pro-crypto who insisted the DT Bill was for lazy cops who didn't want to do the footwork necessary for an investigation. Another is when they cited the World Trade Ctr bombing... seems they already had a handle that it was in the works and did nothing anyway. DT or a crypto-ban or GAK would not have prevented that. [..] > now, a person might be successfully prosecuted for obstruction of > justice, or contempt of court, in refusing to hand over the > decrypted diary (but the other post I made about giving the federal > agents a key that decrypts the file to a cookie recipe handles this > quite nicely). And in some ways one has less rights when in contempt of court then when convicted of a felony.... [..] > please, will people stop sending me responses like the above? do you > understand how the American legal system works? a person cannot > be prosecuted without evidence. evidence cannot be illegally obtained. [..] Ideally, that is how the system works. But if they have a good reason to suspect something is evidence (and in the above pedaphile ase a file named "diary.pgp" would probably qualify) a warrant can be obtained. Note that just having PGP-encrypted files would not necessarily be evidence either. They pointed out a specific file with specific reasons why it should be examined. > a person is not required to testify against oneself. these are all > basic long-established cornerstones of our legal system. It's not clear in terms of court rulings whether handing over decryption keys is self-incrimination or not. From what I have heard, the courts do not view safe combinations as self-incriminating... > look, if someone WANTS to be put in jail for having encrypted files, > I'm sure you can probably figure out some way to pull it off. but > if you don't act like an idiot, such a thing is highly unlikely. it > clearly has not happened to date. Doesn't mean it won't... [..] > such deep fear around here about life in the US today? I'd say > that people here are high up on the list of creating the paranoia. > be careful what you fear, you might get it. Good point indeed. "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." (Flames for an FDR quote from raving anti-socialists will be bounced to /dev/null.) Rob. --- Send a blank message with the subject "send pgp-key" (not in quotes) to <WlkngOwl(a)unix.asb.com> for a copy of my PGP key.

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Bell, Detweiler, Ravings, and Whatnot
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:12 AM 3/10/96, jim bell wrote: >In short, the government is trying to head off "crypto-anarchy," which I >guess is Tim May's trademark. I suggest that we don't allow them to; it >will merely make the government's eventual end even bloodier. Not my "trademark," though it was my coinage (in 1987). I'm happy it's gaining usage, by people as diverse as David Friedman, Dorothy Denning, and various journalists. (By the way, I also figured out the anonymous markets for assassinations bit, too, in 1988, and discussed it in detail then with Eric Drexler, Marc Stiegler, Mark Miller, Robin Hanson, and others. Several of us on the Extropians list discussed the implications, countersteps that might be taken, etc., several years ago. I recall incisive comments by Robin Hanson, David Friedman, Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, and others. And on this list, the topic was discussed a bit later. The archives may be helpful...though I'm not sure I want to help Jim Bell figure out the holes in his logic!) Note to Jim: Your posts are getting longer and longer, often including huge chunks of previous posts. I doubt many of us are reading these "novellas"...I am responding to this part of your latest massive post because I detected my name being used. I urge you to try to limit your quoting to about a screenfull or so...this is what a lot of experience has said is the maximum amount of quoting people are willing to deal with in most cases. And your insulting comments about people whom you disagree with, or people whom you think are not taking your ideas seriously enough, are reminiscent of the ravings of the last victim here of late stage Detweiler's Syndrome. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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To: s1018954
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mail to your "from" address bounces with message "insufficient permission." Care to check that?

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How would Leahy bill affect crypto over HAM radio?
by Mutant Rob 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Subject asks it. I'm not a HAM, but still curious. Wonder if anyone has brought this to Leahy's attention... Comments from the packet folx on the list? --Rob

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Re: TCP/IP Stego (was CU-SeeMe)
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:19 PM 3/8/96 -0800, Jim McCoy wrote: >... The original >technique of doing stego on packets is still valid, and by adding it in >to a WinSock lib or linux tcp/ip implementation the user can send hidden >messages just by connecting to a friendly stego-enhanced web server out >on the net and doing some casual browsing. If you can hack your TCP implementation, you should be able (with a high probability) stego information in a few bits of the TCP checksum by adjusting the packet boundries of the TCP stream. An error correcting code protocol would cover the cases where you couldn't get that *%$# bit set correctly. Please note that this technique would not result in TCP checksum errors. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Frantz | The CDA means | Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 | lost jobs and | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | dead teenagers | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: Lawz to be.
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"PADGETT(a)hobbes.orl.mmc.com" "A. Padgett Peterson P.E. Information Security" 10-MAR-1996 01:15:57.84 >Thought the gotcha was down in the part about the Secretary of Commerce. >My reading is that the secretary will still be required to grant >approval for commercial export. Is past the part about no regulation >inside the US (which is true now - still would be nice to see a "Congress >shall make no law..."). The puzzler is the requirement that a comperable >foreign product must exist before permission to export will be granted. >Will this be like "comparable product" price matching in discount houses ? >Somehow there never is one... Quite. A better format would be "as hard or harder for the NSA to decrypt," given the publically stated purpose for ITAR. -Allen

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Re: No Subject
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"tallpaul(a)pipeline.com" 10-MAR-1996 15:48:49.98 >In other words, this or that person acts as a (perhaps temporary) remailer >from their regular account, gets the material encrypted, and massages it in >various ways before sending it out. The point is to increase entropy by >creating the technological base for an enormous proliferation of >remailer/anon tech at the lowest possible price. >Internationally know "elite" (in the good sense of the word) remailers are >by definition known, and thus easy to monitor. Mixmaster etc sites popping >up from the home computers in the rec rooms of suburbia are not. I have been considering the problem of making sure that these non-elite remailers are actually used by enough people to defeat traffic analysis, be useful, et al. Just posting the location & key in a public place is good, but leads to the possibility of somebody cracking down (especially if it's in someplace like Singapore). The alternatives are: A. Send out the address in some form of reply block, along with the key. If someone wants to use the remailer, they include the reply block at the appropriate stage. Thus, the remailer decoding the reply block (probably an "elite" remailer) will know the address, but none others will. B. Send it to one remailer with a setup such that it will encrypt some percentage of messages coming through it with the key of the "stealthed" remailer and mail them to that remailer. Again, whoever operates that remailer will (if they look) know the location. This can also add length to chains even when others don't know the stealth remailer exists. C. Send it to one of the web-page or other automatic chaining facilities with their automatically using it in some percentage of the cases. Again, this trusts the maintainers of the chaining facility. In all of these cases, one would not want the stealth remailer to be the last one in the chain. But such remailers can still help make things more difficult for an attacker. -Allen

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Very boring test
by uunet!in2.uu.net!psinntp!psinntp!psinntp!interramp.com!usenet＠warwick.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is there anybody *out* there? -- .signature under construction

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