December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: LACC: CDA Court Challenge: Update #6
by Julian Assange 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> This would ONLY impact packets that carry pornographic material, and all > other packets would remain unchanged. Naturally, you would not be able > to have Classified Pornographic material under this scheme, but I think > that's probably an acceptable tradeoff. Oh, I don't know. The remote satalite imaging lab in reston has been known for sometime now to have enough resolution to look down a good clean cleavege, and certainly their perspective is vertical enough. > Furthermore, any parent that wanted to allow a child to attach to the > Internet and wanted pornographic protection would be responsible for > setting their own filter up to limit these packets. Thus the provider > of pornographic material and the parent of the child using the net are > the only two groups affected by this change. The rest of the net can > continue unhindered. ISPs don't have to identify users. After all, it > is the parent and the bookstore owner who are responsible for keeping > children out of the dirty book section, not the bus driver who brings > the child to the neighborhood or the company that paves the street. I've thought about this as well. You could also use the IP TOS minimise-cost bit, which is defunct, doesn't require IP options, is included in every packet and in most modern unix's and rfc1122 complient TCP/IP protocol interface stacks can be set at user level with a simple setsockopt() call. That said, it has a granularity of one. To my mind, it is value judgement, and a difficult one at that to decide when information is appropriate or otherwise for a given age group. A given community may feel the age of maturity is something other than 18, and physiologically the age of maturity is different for differing racial groups. It is a strange world where it is permissible to get married at 16 -- and all that implies, but not permissible to think freely until 18, or 21 in certain states. More appropriate would be content flags. Using the security option there is a resonable number that could be assigned. OPT_R_UPPER_NUDITY, OPT_R_LOWER_NUDITY, OPT_R_FULL_NUDITY, OPT_R_FEMALE, OPT_R_MALE, OPT_R_BIZARRE, OPT_R_HOMOSEXUAL, OPT_R_BESTIALITY, OPT_R_DISECTION, OPT_R_INTERCOURSE, OPT_R_VIOLENCE and OPT_R_ADVERTISING come to mind. Unlike TOS however, many IP stacks have no real support for the security option. The value of re-using it then for this purpose it dubious. There is no reason another IP option couldn't be added. Perhaps the spare TOS bit could be used as a catch-all until a content option is implimented. Most french wouldn't be concerned about OPT_R_FULL_NUDITY provided OPT_R_HOMOSEXUAL wasn't set. -- "I mean, after all; you have to consider we're only made out of dust. That's admittedly not much to go on and we shouldn't forget that. But even considering, I mean it's sort of a bad beginning, we're not doing too bad. So I personally have faith that even in this lousy situation we're faced with we can make it. You get me?" - Leo Bulero/PKD +---------------------+--------------------+----------------------------------+ |Julian Assange RSO | PO Box 2031 BARKER | Secret Analytic Guy Union | |proff(a)suburbia.net | VIC 3122 AUSTRALIA | finger for PGP key hash ID = | |proff(a)gnu.ai.mit.edu | FAX +61-3-98199066 | 0619737CCC143F6DEA73E27378933690 | +---------------------+--------------------+----------------------------------+

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Entropy Estimator
by JonWienke＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I just added a feature to my entropy graphing program that estimates the number of bits of entropy in the file, in addition to making the graph. I tested it on some ZIP files, comparing the sum of the results obtained from each file individually to the results from the ZIP file containing all of them. So far, the results have been consistent within 20%. EXE's show 3-4 entropy bits/byte, ZIP files show 6-7, and DLL's and text files show 1-2. Source code (Visual Basic) available to anyone who wants it, but I think I will hold off on the EXE and VBX's until I find someone who will put it on their FTP/WEB site. Suggestions via email regarding this would be appreciated. Jonathan Wienke

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Re: (Fwd) British Study Claims That Photo Credit Cards Don't Work
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:42 AM 4/11/96 -0400, Clay Olbon II wrote: >At 11:10 AM 4/9/96, jim bell wrote: >>At 07:57 AM 4/9/96 -0500, Mike McNally wrote: >>>There are supposedly some new techniques that look at the infrared >>>signature of your face (like, I guess, distribution & position of >>>hot & cold spots), and that's less likely to be fooled by facial >>>hair and other superficial disguises. It's probably a fairly simple >>>technology, and could be applied to the credit card ID problem. >> >>I think this is based on looking at your face with near-infrared, not the >>medium and far (thermal) infrared. Near infrared is supposed to penetrate >>flesh far better, so your blood vessels are visible and form a pattern >>which can be recognized. >> >>Jim Bell >>jimbell(a)pacifier.com > >Jim, > >Where did you get your info? Near IR is around 1-1.5 microns, at these >wavelengths, the body radiates very little energy. I think most of the >systems you are discussing use mid (3-5) or long-wave (8-12) IR, where >objects that are room to body temp radiate most of their energy. I get most of my information in this area from Photonics Spectra magazine, and Laser Focus World magazine. No, Clay, I did not say that the flesh RADIATED near IR. (it does, but only a very tiny amount.) The identification system I describe would probably use 940 nm IRLEDs to illuminate the face, and a silicon CCD detector to pick up the images. Or it would use ambient near-IR, perhaps from the sun or a tungsten filament or fluorescent lighting, along with an IR filter to ensure that the CCD camera picked up only the IR bands of interest. It would be easy to check out the results: Put such an IR-passing filter in front of a CCD-based camcorder, and take a picture of somebody. Incidentally, this simplicity shows the flaw in using this kind of system as an identifier: Since people's faces are usually visible, and can be photographed in the near-IR surreptitiously, it isn't clear how to prevent faking a face which appears to have the same IR signature and pattern. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: No matter where you go, there they are.
by David Loysen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[CHOMPED] > Close, but not quite: >S/A is an ADJUSTABLE variable, not on/off. it can reduce accuracy to >10 meters or 100 meters or whatever. It's a DoD term, not NWO term. > The "this is where you really are" percision location (forgot >the designation off hand) is ENCRYPTED (yes, there is crypto >revelance here...) in the data stream from the satellites. The >difference S/A makes is on the order of magnitude, therefore not >"useless." It should be pointed out that different regions of the >earth can have different degrees of accuracy based on the S/A system. > I doubt S/A will ever be turned off, but this is my opinion. I >know Jim's opinion. Discussion of this point is pointless. > DGPS transmission are made from a multiple single points, which >(to the best of my knowledge) are not networked. > glenn Does anyone else get a little upset at the thought of one Government agency (DoD) spending money to install the GPS system, then making it less accurate than it should be, and then a second Government agency (US Coast Guard) spending money to improve the system by installing DGPS stations. Plus, in order to get the real accuracy of GPS right now I have to spend more money on a much more expensive DGPS unit. Pisses me right the F### off.

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Demonizing the Opposition: Bruce "The Toolman" Taylor
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At CFP96, Bruce Taylor, Brock Meek's "lawyer with brass balls", and Declan McCullagh's "architect of the CDA" (who seems like a Pretty Stand-Up Guy, except he wants to tell us how to think), sat on the dias and made repetitive inflamatory references to a picture of "female genitalia nailed to a board", and others to a picture of "a penis with a blister on it", citing them as examples of the Rampant Filth and Corruption We Find on the Internet Today, Brothers and Sisters, Say Haleluja. Unfortunately, as hard as I tried to remain true to the Spirit of CFP, and not Demonize the Opposition, I couldn't help but come up with a spiffy new moniker for Mr. Taylor, which I will try to remember to use from time to time, viz., Bruce "Penis with a Blister" Taylor abbreviated PWAB, or "Blister" I suppose Of course, the CDA-able version of this proposed new handle would be, Bruce "The Toolman" Taylor shortened to "Toolie"? "The Tool"? "Toolboy"? ;-). Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- 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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Mardi Gra Cash Card
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

WSJ 4-12-06 reports that England's "Mardi Gra" bomber is demanding of Barclays "access to the bank's cash reserves through the use of a special cash card, although details could not be confirmed." Police are communicating with the bomber through cryptic notices in personal columns of newspapers, the latest stating: "MARDI GRA We are ready to help and give value. Contact us on the verification number." Barclays says 25 bombs have been sent to its branches. The bomber -- who has been compared to America's Unabomber -- may be a former employee among those 18,500 laid off during the past 5 years, or a small businessman with a grudge. [Or ...]

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Re: questions about bits and bytes
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:17 PM 4/11/96 -0500, Sten Drescher wrote: >>>>>> jim bell writes: > >jb> At 06:29 PM 4/10/96 -0700, Simon Spero wrote: >>> No, bytes are no always 8 bits - some machines use(d) 9-bit bytes. > >jb> I notice you gave no examples. Why is that? > > As I recall, the Honeywell H6000 used 6-bit bytes and 36-bit >(6 byte) words. Here's the problem with this kind of counter-example: You do not explain whether or not these data structures were actually called "bytes" by the manufacturer, or whether the term "byte" was inflicted later on by people who didn't know better. Remember, in the absence of any name for a "6-bit data object" I'm sure the temptation was probably very strong to misuse a term, especially in hindsight. See, I do not challenge the fact that there were plenty of data objects of length other than 8-bits. The issue is whether or not the people back then actually believed that a correct, official usage of the term "byte" included lengths other than 8. Dmitri Vulis at least acknowledged that when he looked back into the documentation, he discovered that the term used for his counter-example was "character", not byte. How many other of these counter-examples would show this kind of thing?

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Re: On computer face recognition:
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 7:14 PM 4/11/96, David Loysen wrote: >Take a peak at http://www.neci.nj.nec.com/homepages/lawrence/papers. One of >Lawences papers is on using Neural networks to recognize faces. Methinks >that the state of the art is advancing rapidly and such problems as not >looking at the camera or changing your expression are rapidly being overcome. One system I read up on a few years ago relied heavily on ear shape....it seems that the profile of ears varies tremendously and ear profiles are fairly easy to get a kind of hash of, assuming the ear profile is not obstructed by hair. "Get a haircut" may once again return to favor. --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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Re: No matter where you go, there they are.
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: Roger Williams <roger(a)coelacanth.com> > >>>>> Hal <hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> writes: > > > Note however that Denning did not mention the Internet in her > > spiel. > > Well, assuming that she wrote *any* of the spiel, she does: > > "Where it works > > ... Location-based > authentication could facilitate telecommuting by countering the > vulnerabilities associated with remote access over dial-in lines and > Internet connections..." She wrote it. The original of the paper may be found at http://all.net/journal/csi/csi-96-01.html Peter Trei trei(a)process.com

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Re: On computer face recognition:
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:48 PM 4/11/96, Alan Horowitz wrote: >How do _people_ recognize faces? Still an open question, last I heard. It may be unknowable, at least in a formal sense. That is, we know that babies can recognize the faces of their mothers in fractions of a second (no, I don't have a reference for this, but I remember the number from my days as an AI person at Intel). There may be no simple description that is used, such as angles between eye line and mouth, convexity of chin, whatever. What is important is that face recognition happens in about 30-100 "cycles" of the brain, implying massive parallelism (hardly surprising). There are, of course, very few recognition algorithms that run on conventional computer architecures in so few cycles. By "unknowable" I don't mean "supernatural," merely not practically describable as an algorithm runnable on conventional von Neumann-type machines. "Neural net" is the buzzword usually associated with this. --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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