December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Email privacy policies at universities
by Rich Graves 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We don't really have one, because we respect privacy in general. Kind of a "congress shall make no law" approach. Skidmore seems to have a pretty reasonable policy at http://www.skidmore.edu/help/rules/mail-privacy.html If you know of others, please pass along for the discussion on the resnet list, http://www.acns.nwu.edu/resnet/resnet-forum/resnet-forum.html The subject line there reads "off topic" for that list, but I don't think it is. -rich

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

17 Dec '03

At 07:48 PM 4/11/96 GMT+01DST, Powers Glenn wrote: >- It's called "S/A" (Selective Availability) which is the NWO term for adding >- errors that "authorized" users can remove. (Not to be confused with A/S, or >- anti-spoofing) It was originally intended to be turned on in wartime to >- deny the enemy accurate fixes, but during the Gulf War military GPS >- receivers were so scarce that the soldiers had to use commercial products, >- so the S/A actually was turned OFF then! >- >- Since then, pressure has been building to turn off S/A, since its usefulness >- is nearly zero. Even so, the amplitude of S/A errors are only a little >- larger than natural errors caused by satellite timing errors, atmospheric >- propagation variations, etc. The result is that DGPS is useful, which is >- (more or less) a fixed antenna and GPS system which knows where it is, and >- subtracts where it "seems" to be by GPS every second, and broadcasts the >- resulting error data on some terrestrial system to receivers locally. The >- result is errors down to the 1-meter level and even lower. That system >- compensates for both natural errors and S/A, so the whole purpose of having >- S/A is negated. Eventually S/A will probably be turned off permanently, but >- even then we'll want to continue to use DGPS systems. > > Close, but not quite: >S/A is an ADJUSTABLE variable, not on/off. Huh? You sound like you're trying to correct me, but you're not. I'm already aware that the magnitude of S/A is adjustable; nothing I've said above contradicts this. >it can reduce accuracy to 10 meters or 100 meters or whatever. For ordinary C/A code (the kind civilians are allowed to use) it can't "reduce accuracy to 10 meters." The minimal error in C/A mode is based on atmospheric propagation and other errors. Adjusting S/A down or off can eliminate the ADDED error, not reduce it below C/A's normal minimum RMS value. >It's a DoD term, not NWO term. I was being a bit facetious. Nevertheless, my implication was correct: The term is "selective availability" and it was specifically chosen to sound "positive" rather than "negative." (I can't tell you exactly which issue of GPS World magazine mentioned this, but I've read every copy since it was started a few years ago. It was probably in this magazine. It would have been more accurate, I suppose, to call this "Newspeak.") > 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. It's called "PPS," for "Precise positioning Service." Check the most recent issue of GPS World for an article on making that even more accurate. Nevertheless, even PPS is only accurate to about +/- 2 meters; DGPS is easily accurate to 1 meter, and I've seen ads that talk about 0.15 meter accuracy with differential GPS in C/A mode. > The difference S/A makes is on the order of magnitude, therefore not >"useless." That depends on what you compare it to. If you compare it to non-differential, C/A code signal, it turns +/- 25 meter (approx, of course) errors to upwards of +/- 100 meter errors, although as I understand it S/A is normally toned down to about +/- 50 meters. BTW, I don't doubt that DoD has the technical ability to increase S/A even beyond +/- 100 meters, but that would be a pointless exercise. It would also strongly piss off the average civilian GPS user, and since by far the largest number of GPS users are now civilian (and this number is growing rapidly) the DoD knows which side of its bread is buttered. And using DGPS, the effect of S/A is essentially nil, since both it and most "natural" (unintentional) errors are cancelled out. So, what part of "useless" do you not understand? Please note that I didn't say it had no effect, merely that it was "useless." As in, no militarily significant effect. If you still disagree, please formulate a plausible (and, ideally, a PROBABLE) scenario under which the presence of S/A achieves a military benefit based on a rational view of whichever "enemy" you choose. Since DGPS receivers are available for well under $1000, you're going to have to hypothesize a poverty-stricken enemy indeed. >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. Just a couple of days ago, I saw a note HERE reporting that Clinton had backed down (his normal behavior, interestingly!) and had decided to turn off S/A. I haven't seen any confirmation of this claim, but then I haven't looked either. If that report was correct, your opinion is already wrong. I am fully aware that it could later be turned back on, if there was a genuine reason to do so. This would be in line with the original intent behind S/A, to turn it on only when there was some real reasons to do so. Why they did not adopt this planned mode years ago, I don't know. >I know Jim's opinion. Discussion of this point is pointless. In other words, "Don't confuse me with the facts." > DGPS transmission are made from a multiple single points, which >(to the best of my knowledge) are not networked. > glenn That's only partially true. There is nothing to prevent the world-wide distribution of a data stream which represents the complete differential correction data for GPS, broadcast from multiple locations by FM subcarrier, idle cell-phone site, HF, pager channels, or other. In fact, it has been argued that it should be transmitted, in the band of the GPS signals(so that a separate differential antenna is not required), from satellites, with the receivers built into GPS units, so that it would be available to everyone no matter where he is. The attraction of this system, from a government/military standpoint, is that it would tend to foster dependance on this correction system by the average GPS user, and would tend to deter development of DGPS stations independent of the government. That means that the government would actually be able to keep the "S/A advantage": When it wants accuracies to be degraded, they will be. Its current policy, however, practically guarantees that DGPS stations will be broadcasting in every major population center within just a few years. Isn't it a good thing that government is so (CDA alert!) fucking stupid? Jim "He only talks about one subject" Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Know Your Net.Enemies Project [noise]
by jf_avon＠citenet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Rich Graves <llurch(a)networking.stanford.edu> ambiguously wrote: >definitely be added. I'll write the FUCKING STATIST section. Do you use 'FUCKIN' as an adjective or as an active verb? :) Sorry, couldn't resist :-> JFA

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Re: Scientologists may subpoena
by SBinkley＠atitech.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>with bated breath to see whether or not the subpoena is issued. But if >chaning outside the US won't even work, then the remailers aren't going >to do a whole lot of good. What if we set up a chaining remailing system in as many countries as possible, all working in double blind mode. You could have it randomly pick 20 or so remailers before actually sending the message to its destination. That isn't a very clean method, but would sure slow down the process of obtaining court orders in each respective country. I have this other idea, but it would be difficult to set up. Again, with many many remailers, you could set it up, so that any message you send is sent to a random FTP site of the day. Each of the remailers randomly picks messages out of the pool at the FTP site, and sends it on its way (all is encrypted of course). At the end of the day, the FTP site is erased, and a new one is set up somewhere else (all remailers would then scan there). The beauty is that when a remailer pulls a message out of the FTP site, it has no idea where the message came from, nor which remailer (country) sent it there (providing the pooled messages have had the return addresses removed). This would make it very difficult to track down to the source. The disadvantage is that it requires cooperation between remailers, and that a message cannot be replied to. Anyway, just my $0.02 /sb

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No Subject
by JonWienke＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

e. > However, since the protocol requires that Alice send out location data, >once >she starts using it she reveals her physical location to Eve, Mallory, and >anyone ese > who can see the packets. Since the nature of the protocol is that Alice's >location does >not change frequently (and needs to transmitted via a trusted channel to >Bob when it >does), after the first usage Mallory *knows* the physical location he is >trying to >simulate, and can use this information for future spoofing. > > The upshot of this is that Denning's scheme not only provides no >security against >spoofing, and leaks potentially sensitive data about locations. > > If Sadaam Huissain (sp?) had used this scheme during the Gulf War, we'd >have been >able to send a cruise missile directly to his keyboard. This could be prevented by encrypting the data packets, but that would introduce more delay into the protocol, and make it easier to spoof distant locations. >[These flaws in the protocol seem so obvious that I can't help but wonder if >we're >missing something - Dorothy isn't *that* stupid.] Isn't she about the age where Alzheimer's starts kicking in? Jonathan Wienke

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Re: WWW User authentication
by stillson＠ashd.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> >Well, if you use SSL, it's useable by a "large number of browsers" since >> >Netscape has such a large share of the browser market. And then all of >> >the things you're doing w.r.t. authentication are hidden, at least from >> >casual eavesdroppers and others too if you use more than the 40-bit option. >> >There's really no other choice to reach a large number of browsers. > >> Once again mister barber is being an idiot. netscape is not a "large number >> of browsers". > I have to apologize for this. Me having a bad day is not a good reason to call Jeff Barber an idiot. My aplogies. >> He is right that ssl is probably a good way to go. (shttp would >> be better :) ) > >SHTTP might be better if it didn't have to be "useable by a large number >of browsers" -- since Netscape doesn't support SHTTP. (I'm sorry that you >apparently find Netscape's success so frustrating, but it is a fact.) Again, I probably went a little overboard. I just get worried when any one company has as much control over the technology (in this case net based encryption) as netscape has. That, and I used to work for one of their competitors and I get tired of people telling me that netscape is the only company out there. Sorry to be a jerk

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Re: No matter where you go, there they are.
by Paul_Koning/US/3Com%3COM＠smtp1.isd.3com.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: perry @ piermont.com ("Perry E. Metzger") >Aren't things even worse? Since the satelite signals are not >authenticated with anything like public key methods, couldn't I just >synthesize a signal appropriate to any spot on the planet, knowing the >positions of the satelites relative to that spot? In the case of the C/A (civilian) code, absolutely. In the case of the P code (military) only if you have the key, but in that case, yes. As Jim Bell pointed out, there are boxes you can buy for suitable amounts of money that are "GPS simulators" -- they construct out of whole cloth the signals you would receive if you were at location X with satellites {Y1, Y2, ...} overhead. However, if all you set out to do is fool a location authenticator, deriving shifted location data from the actual satellites is far easier and bound to be much cheaper. There is one limitation this has that the simulator approach doesn't -- delaying real signals requires having access to the same satellites (or a large enough subset, i.e., 3-4 of them) that the checking station has overhead. paul

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Re: Protocols at the Point of a Gun
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:50 PM 4/10/96 -0700, Jeff Weinstein wrote: > Given that the IETF has no "official" (whatever that means) sanction, >what would prevent any other organization from coming in and trying to >take over their turf? ... It seems to me that this question represents a classic case of the costs of market entry. IETF has a pretty good reputation as a standards body. If another body were to take over its function, they would have to have superior reputation in the relevant market (i.e. IP protocol suite implementors and their customers). Superior reputation could come from: (1) Better response to proposals. (Hard to imagine in the current climate.) (2) Government coercion. (We will throw you in jail if you don't ...) (3) Government coercion. (We won't buy equipment that doesn't meet x standard.) (4) Large User coercion. (We won't buy equipment that doesn't meet x standard. Probably no user is currently big enough to force standards in this way, not even Microsoft.) Regards - Bill ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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: questions about bits and bytes
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:36 AM 4/11/96 -0400, Blake Coverett wrote: >> 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. >> >> I notice you gave no examples. Why is that? >> >> Jim Bell >> jimbell(a)pacifier.com > >In a past life I worked on a Honeywell DPS8 box that had >36 bit words and 9 bit bytes. I'm seeing a few notes of this sort which make such claims, but there is not enough information included to establish that anybody _originally_ called those 9-bit data items "bytes" or not. It appears to me that after the fact, 20+ years later, there is a tendency to call ANYTHING other than a single bit a byte, at least during that time frame. What I'm looking for, however, is an indication that this was actually the term used, THEN, for that data structure.

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washington post notices archives
by Andrew K. Bressen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hi-- we here at HKS.net have today received a cease and desist letter from the washington post regarding editorial copy of theirs that was evidently posted to c'punks and then abosrbed into our c'punk archives. Once the archives are restored (RSN) we'll probably manually edit out the messages from the archive. We're trying to get the post to give us URLs for their copies of the content in question so that we can point to their archives, but their legal dept wasn't sure whether or not their archives were on the web. The posts in question date back some time (archive volume 1); I'm not too concerned about a recurrance (though it would make an interesting attack), but thought it was interesting enough to warrent mention, since it seems likely that the washington post was grepping the net looking for themselves. I wonder if robot exclusion on our site would have prevented this? Although the legal staffer who sent the letter did come up with a URL for the offending messages, she seemed unaware of the concepts of "mailing list" and (semi-automated) archives according to the person here who spoke to her. - --andrew k bressen bressen(a)hks.net -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.3, an Emacs/PGP interface iQCVAwUBMW17+1u2h42ZEVfZAQFslQP/avVguGOK/hRz/1SmZtZpld79edoDyJnf yeBkX7WdrfVt1/xSkOdD4xtVHf1FENfeFr50xnt2PPVb8g0E0DQqMv6Cz4ZNy5Su bXzsmvK/zCvLKPn7gueeRjk3jQKohGRf7R9Y6rr6N6jNbCS4zZQQ/nwN7sWdhZA2 epRRPjbH52A= =8d5T -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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