December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

[NOISE] Why there are so many cluless people
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Today, I heard a commercial on the radio. Some company wants to help you make $1k+ per day as an Internet expert. Simply listen to their one week audio tape course and you know everything you need to work as an Internet consultant. Sigh, -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred.

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

17 Dec '03

[ Dorothy - there's been substantial discussion on cypherpunks about your position escrow proposal; the paper that's on your web page was posted here.] At 03:01 PM 4/11/96 -0400, perry(a)piermont.com wrote: >Paul_Koning/US/3Com%3COM(a)smtp1.isd.3com.com writes: >> Suppose I want to pretend that I am 1000 feet closer to satellite 4 than >> I really am. Simple, I take the signals from all the other satellites >> and delay them by 1 microsecond. That looks like a 1 microsecond >> local timebase error together with a 1 microsecond delay reduction >> to satellite 4. >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? No, you can't. One problem is that the Selective Availability coding isn't predictable, since it uses some kind of secret military code - so you don't know what its values are until you hear them. So as long as you share any satellites with the recipient, you need to be sure to output the correct codes for that satellite, which means you need to either be in range or have access to some internet "position remailer" site that's making them available. As far as predicting relative timing between satellites to fake your position, if that's sufficiently unpredictable that you can't fake it, as Denning and MacDoran say, then it should also be equally unpredictable to the verifier who wants to know if you're telling the truth or faking it. And if you require systems to respond to requests for "Where are you now?" or especially "Where were you on the night of April 13th at 8:37pm?", the spoofer can request that information just as easily as the verifier. One method that could be used to prevent faking is GPS receivers with "tamperproof" digital signature capability, which would not only receive the location information but sign it; that's not much more secure than just having a "tamperproof" token in the first place. As far as the multipath issues that some people have brought up, I searched for "MacDoran" on altavista, and found several papers on GPS multipath, so they're aware of the issue, though I don't know how they're planning to address it. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215

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Re: questions about bits and bytes
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:05 AM 4/11/96 -0800, jim bell <jimbell(a)pacifier.com> wrote: >>- From a really quick web search, we find that the SGI Impact jams 9-bit >>bytes [that's what it says] across the Rambus internally. I'm not sure >>if the memory itself is 9-bit. > >Are you sure they're not referring to 8 bits of data and a parity bit? In >any case, please give the address to the list so that it can be checked out. www.altavista.digital.com, which is the address of almost everything :-) If you don't count the parity bit as part of the byte here, you probably shouldn't count it in a typical 7-bit-ASCII-plus-parity situation either. As far as jamming 9-bit-bytes across a bus, that almost certainly _is_ 8 bits of data and one parity bit; people have been agitating for and debating parity on memory busses for a long time. AT&T's Datakit switch (an ancestor of ATM) used 9-bit bytes on its data busses, where 8 bits were data-from-outside and one bit was a control-vs-data indicator, which let cards listening to the bus decide whether to think about the byte with their control processors or just shove them onto an output wire. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215

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Re: "Contempt" charges likely to increase
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"unicorn(a)schloss.li" "Black Unicorn" 6-APR-1996 16:17:13.99 >I might add that the Cayman Islands are full of trust companies with >provisions which forbid the disclosure of data to a client who is >coerced. A law on the books refuses to recognize "consent" orders made >under judicial compulsion. This would give the appearance of total >unavailability of evidence and suggest the futility of contempt >charges. Yet courts have still, and with no small measure of success, >imposed sanctions on witnesses so protected. What measure of success? Getting the data, or locking up the witness? -Allen

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Re: Protocols at the Point of a Gun
by Marshall Clow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Scott Brickner wrote: >Somebody who might be Marshall Clow wrote: >>Multiple IP #s, multiple machines, multiple users, ONE account. >>Which router will insert the "suggested" flag, and how will it decide which >>packets to tag? > >The way I envision it (in my nightmares), you'd have two options: have >the account configured as "kid safe", and live in a cyberspace playground, >or have it configured as "adult", and accept responsibility for your kids' >use. > I have no problem whatsoever with this. Guess which option I'd choose :-) However, given the hysteria that is surrounding the CDA, etc., I think that the second option would be "politically unacceptable". The whole thrust [ sorry for the sexual imagery ;-) ] behind [ oops, now it's sodomy ] the CDA is that it's not good enough for parents to take responsibility for their children's use; the government must be involved. -- Marshall Marshall Clow Aladdin Systems <mailto:mclow@mailhost2.csusm.edu> "Eternal vigilance is the price of PostScript" -- MacUser Jan 96 DTP and Graphics column

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Re: Spinners and compression functions
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have had a somewhat related idea to this on compression regarding steaography and which bits are the best ones to use. How about those that a lossy compression method that's reasonable loses first? These are the ones that aren't going to be noticed by the viewer, and (if the compression method is good) will have at least somewhat higher entropy than the rest. -Allen

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Re: Entropy Estimator
by rick hoselton 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:19 AM 4/12/96 -0400, JonWienke(a)aol.com wrote: >I just added a feature to my entropy graphing program that >estimates the number of bits of entropy in the file, Hey, that's just what I need. I have these two 8-million byte files. One is a recording made by a geiger counter, every bit is uncorrelated with anything else in the universe and each bit is equally likely to be a one or a zero. The second file is an IDEA encryption of all the four-byte numbers from one to two-million. Here's my problem. I can't remember which file is which, and I've forgotten sixty-four bits of the key I used to produce the encrypted file. That's where your technique come in. The first file has sixty-four million bits of entropy. The second file has only sixty-four bits of entropy, total (the missing key bits). Surely, your technique can tell me which file is which. Estimating entropy can be difficult, and I don't expect perfection. But any measuring technique that is not a complete HOAX must be able to clearly find a difference of six orders of magnitude. If you tried to give me a ruler that couldn't detect the difference between a millimeter and a kilometer, I might think you misunderstood something about the concept of distance. If encouraged me to use a clock that could not measure the difference between a minute and a year, many would conclude that you were not an expert in chronology. So, if your technique is worth anything at all, it should be able to accomplish this easy task. PS. I think it is your patriotic duty to report this technique to the Federal government. They frequently need to distinguish between ciphertext and just plain random digits. A breakthrough like this would have a major impact on national security. They might be willing to remove ITAR restrictions from cryptography, out of gratitude to the cypherpunks.

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PICS
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I had a chance for a brief look at the PICS protocol, and it seems to have a lot of cypherpunks relevance. It includes features such as: Multiple third party rating systems Digital signatures I will have to find time to look at it in more detail. 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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Cypherpunks Bay Area - Saturday 1:00 Printer's Ink
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The usual suspects for meeting places having fallen through, there will be a Bay Area Cypherpunks meeting at 1:00 Saturday at Printer's Ink on Castro Street in Mountain View. Meet at the outside tables by the side of the building, and we'll see if the meeting migrates from there. If we're not there, and the meeting has moved when you arrive, look for a note on a lamppost in front of the building. Directions: Castro Street goes between the Central Expressway and El Camino Real in the middle of Mountain View; Printer's Ink is on a corner in the middle. Parking is around back. Coffee is upstairs, books are inside. Directions from far away - take Route 101 to the Moffett exit, head west/south, watch the street name mutate at the Central Expressway and train tracks. Public Transit: Take CalTrain to the Mountain View Exit, walk about three blocks west/south. Agenda: As you've guessed from this highly timely notice, there's a full schedule of events planned. I'd like to talk about remailer spam prevention, and there's been a lot of activity recently on Denning's position escrow, Scientology court cases, CDA, and other entertaining politics. Thanks! Bill Replies to: stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com

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Edited Edupage, 4 April 1996
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"educom(a)elanor.oit.unc.edu" 5-APR-1996 01:25:00.85 >***************************************************************** >Edupage, 4 April 1996. Edupage, a summary of news items on information >technology, is provided three times each week as a service by Educom, >a Washington, D.C.-based consortium of leading colleges and universities >seeking to transform education through the use of information technology. >***************************************************************** >IBM'S INTELLIGENT MINER DIGS OUT THE GOOD STUFF >IBM plans to offer companies "data mining" software and services, allowing >them to make better use of disparate pieces of information stored in their >computer systems. The Intelligent Miner software will be available on IBM's >RS/6000 servers by the fall, and on other platforms by year end. The >company also plans to develop Intelligent Decision Server software for local >area network-based information analysis. (Investor's Business Daily 3 Apr >96 A9) Anyone have any _specific_ ideas on how their Intelligent Miner system works? It would appear to be relevant to the identity-spoofing discussions. -Allen >Edupage is written by John Gehl (gehl(a)educom.edu) & Suzanne Douglas >(douglas(a)educom.edu) Voice: 404-371-1853, Fax: 404-371-8057. >Technical support is provided by the Office of Information Technology, >University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. >*************************************************************** >EDUPAGE is what you've just finished reading. To subscribe to Edupage: send >mail to: listproc(a)educom.unc.edu and in the body of the message type: >subscribe edupage Marilyn Monroe (if your name is Marilyn Monroe; if it's >not, substitute your own name). ... To cancel, send a message to: >listproc(a)educom.unc.edu and in the body of the message type: unsubscribe >edupage. (If you have subscription problems, send mail to >educom(a)educom.unc.edu.)

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