December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

PROMISe them anything (was Re: whitehouse dossier database?)
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 1 Jul 96 at 23:39, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote: > holy cow, is this real? Grabbe cites several credible references. Ask Phil Resuto. [..] > ------- Forwarded Message [..] > Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 8 Num. 30 > ====================================== > ("Quid coniuratio est?") [..] > THE WHITE HOUSE "BIG BROTHER" DATA BASE > ======================================= [..] > The White House "Big Brother" Data > Base & How Jackson Stephens > Precipitated a Banking Crisis Jackson Stephens? Why am I thinking of Steve Jackson Games, operators of the Illuminati BBS that were raided by the SS a few years back... [..] > What Deutch failed to mention was that this > "banking crisis" in large part was itself created by one of > the U.S. intelligence agencies--the NSA in cahoots with > Stephens' software firm Systematics. The Citibank heist > by Russian hackers, for example, took advantage of a back > door in Citibank's Systematics software. (The Russian > hackers were apparently aided by the son of one of Jim > Leach's House Banking Committee investigators.) Have > any major banks thought of instituting lawsuits over this > deliberate breach of security on the part of a software > supplier? Huh? I thought the Russian 'hackers' helped write the software, and used one of their own backdoors. [..]

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Paper: "A Socially based Identity Model"
by Christian Wettergren 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi! I've written a paper where I introduce a "name spectrum" as a identity model. The name spectrum has increasing levels of identification; anyone, anyone with alias, established pseudonym, well-reputed pseudonym, escrowed pseudonym, identity and True Name. I try to show how law enforcement still can find criminals, even though they (we) have privacy. I argue that the power balance between the individual and the law enforcement should be approximately the same as it is in ordinary life. I talk quite a lot about the analogy between real life and cyberspace when it comes to power and trust. I have a suggestion for how to deploy traffic mixers (DCnet) without tilting the power balance too much to the advantage of the user as well. I suggest reputation servers where an efficient reputation market can be maintained. I'd appreciate any comments on the paper. It is still preliminary, though. It is available at http://www.it.kth.se/~cwe/phd/ in a number of formats. -Christian Wettergren, cwe(a)it.kth.se

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Re: The Net and Terrorism
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:23 AM 7/2/96 -0700, Lucky Green wrote: >At 0:54 7/2/96, snow wrote: >>On Mon, 1 Jul 1996, Simon Spero wrote: >> >>> I want my, I want my, I want my Atropine >> >> No, you don't. > >Simon, you got to be more careful when synthesizing that Sarin. Always >check that the vent is working first. Also, you don't want JUST that atropine; trimedoxime and benactyzine are also helpful. BTW, the first symptom of sarin poisoning is a tightness in the chest... Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: LOS_tit
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:22 PM 7/2/96 GMT, John Young wrote: > 7-2-96 UST, page one: > The Clinton administration is to announce, as early as > this week, a commission to determine the federal > government's role in securing cyberspace, from terrorism > to petty crimes. > http://pwp.usa.pipeline.com/~jya/lostit.txt (13 kb) A commission which will probably be made up of government, ex-government, and industry people, totally ignoring ordinary citizens yet again. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Net and Terrorism.
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:58 AM 7/2/96, snow wrote: >T.C. May wrote: > >Can anything be done? To stop the likely effects of lots more >surface-to-air missiles, lots more nerve gas available on the black market, >and so on? > >In a word, "no." >/* > I disagree. Terrorism, political terrorism is fear. There are ways to >protect military targets that are quite cost effective, unfortunately they >are politically unpopular. (What just happend in Saudi is on my mind. >STUPID military commanders getting the same pie in the face time and time >again. There is NOTHING so unchanging as the military mind set.) Well, attacks on military targets are almost, by definition, not "terrorism." (I'll spare the list a debate about the semantics; U.S. journalists tend to refer to anything done to "us" as "terrorism," whether the target is military or civilian.) The focus of my comments was really on civilian or non-military targets. (Including destruction of government buildings, maybe. I'm not sure whether the Oklahoma City bombing and the recent Phoenix/Viper Militia case is "terrorism" in a formal sense, or counter-government action, but my point is that such things are likely to be happen.) >Civilian targets are harder to protect, but certain steps can be >taken to lessen chances of a sucessful attack. Sure, any particular "soft target" can be hardened to some extent. But not all of them, and even harder sites can be reached. This is left as an exercise for the reader. (Hint: The Japanese cult's Sarin gas attack on the subways...there are tens of thousands of comparable targets in the U.S. alone. Look around, and ask what it would take to harden each one. A minor cryptographic connection is that hardening N of M sites makes the remaining M - N sites all the more tempting.) >Another method, and this would be very unpopular (and >hypocritical of the US) would be simply to announce that we (the Country) >are going to hold the _manufacturing_ nation responcible for the use of >weapons of mass destruction. So if Soviet Nerve Gas is used, we gas a >city in the Soviet Union. MAD carried to a lower level. You are essentially making my point, that the biggest danger of the current responses to terrorism is that nations will turn to national terrorism and police state tactics. >A third option is quite simply to buy as much of it as possible. No, wouldn't work. As with the "War on (Some) Drugs," all this does is raise the price a bit, actually making it a more tempting market for many to get into. (And various CBW agents are incredibly cheap to make, with the precursors available in common products. How ya gonna buy up all the peach pits, for example? Or "buy up" all the fertilizer and fuel oil?) --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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Message pools _are_ in use today!
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:28 PM 7/1/96 -0700, David Wagner wrote: >If folks have better ideas for how to achieve really good recipient >anonymity, I hope they'll speak up! Once they start offering Internet news/email/USENET feeds (one way) by DSS-type dish antenna from satellite, it'll be mighty hard to figure out who's receiving the data. They could probably easily provide 10 megabits per second, which I assume would be more than enough for what's needed. (BTW, for a few years a company called "Planet Connect" has been providing FIDOnet data feeds, although they use the older-style, large antenna systems, and their data rate is 19.2kbps, not even close to enough for Internet service.) Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: But what about the poor?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:37 AM 7/2/96 -0400, Duncan Frissell wrote: >At 11:25 PM 7/1/96 -0700, Bill Frantz wrote: > >>Current government "Key Escrow" systems cost $200/key/year. [Craig Mundie] >>These systems can best be described as key-rental systems. > >This is shocking, shocking. Oh, but what a business opportunity! I assume a floppy can hold 1000 keys. Even if I undercut the going rate of $200 per year by a factor of 10, that's a potential income of $20,000 per floppy per year. A box of 20 floppies on the shelf, and I'm set for life! >This argument against key escrow never made it onto that long list of >questions we made up in the Spring of '93 when Key Escrow was first proposed >by the Admin (it was probably Vince Foster's fault). We showed a lack of >imagination. There's no doubt that the government will want to bribe the escrow agents, first to tolerate the system at all, and second to foster enthusiastic cooperation later on, and possibly even ILLEGAL cooperation. Over-paying them is just one way to do it. One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how the government can continue to ignore the likelihood (hell, certainty!) that since "key escrow" will only be attractive to the extent it actually benefits the user, such users will be served by escrow agents who store only encrypted or anonymously-held keys. These are inherently protected against any kind of disclosure, yet provide all the claimed benefits of key escrow. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: hard drive encryption
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:53 AM 7/2/96 -0700, Cerridwyn Llewyellyn wrote: > >What is the best utility freely available for encrypting an entire drive >that won't be used for a length of time? ie: I'm going away for a period >of time and wish to encrypt the drive while I'm gone, but have no interest >in actually using it while it's encrypted. I also have no real preference >in what algorithm is used, as long as it's relatively secure. Speed is >also not a big consideration, as it will be used once when I leave to encrypt, >and once when i return to decrypt. >Thanks in advance for the help... You could just de-install and hide the drive. Replace it with some old cast-off drive. (The easiest way to get somebody to stop looking for something is to let him find it.) Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: But what about the poor?
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:37 AM 7/2/96 -0400, Duncan Frissell wrote: >"Gee Ossifer I'd love to let you read my files but I just couldn't afford >expensive socialistic key escrow so I bought cheap efficient private key >escrow instead." "Gee Orificer, I'd love to let you read my files, but I just couldn't afford any key escrow, so I went naked and didn't use it." :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | The Internet may fairly be | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | regarded as a never-ending | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | worldwide conversation. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: SAFE Forum--some comments
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:40 PM 7/2/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >... Phil Zimmermann, who told a humorous story of going >to Congressman Dana Rohrabacher's office, seeing the picture of Ollie North >on the wall (much laughter), but finding Rohrabacher's staffers aghast at >the crypto laws and ITARs. Someone pointed out that Phil and Ollie have something in common. They have both been accused of illegally exporting crypto. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | The Internet may fairly be | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | regarded as a never-ending | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | worldwide conversation. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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