December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

"Filegate" may be good news for us
by tcmay＠got.net 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

The current flap over the Clinton Administration's request for and receipt of FBI dossiers is being called "Filegate." The Administration has claimed the requests were innocent, and based on outmoded Secret Service lists. The Secret Service denies this, and says the list did not come from them. Some say the list was of "Clinton's enemies," as it contained mostly leading Republicans and Bush Administration staffers (even including former Sec. of State Jim Baker). Investigations are underway, and Att. General Janet Reno is suggesting that Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth Starr handled this investigation. Why is this good news for us? (Besides the partisan issue of embarrassing and degrading the current government, which is always a good thing.) Because it underscores how difficult it is, even with ostensible safeguards, to control the distribution of dossiers, secret files, and surveillance reports. If the White House can order up several hundred supposedly-secret FBI dossiers on leading Republicans and political enemies, imagine what they could do with "voluntarily escrowed" crypto keys! (We all know all this, of course. My point is that this is providing a timely demonstration of how little government can be trusted to keep its secrets.) In this political year, this "Filegate" flap may effectively table any serious discussions of Reno-type GAK. Not all news is bad. --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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ALERT: Crypto hearings in D.C. 6/26/96, submit your comments through WWW!
by Voters Telecommunications Watch 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

============================================================================= ____ _ _ _ / ___|_ __ _ _ _ __ | |_ ___ | \ | | _____ _____ | | | '__| | | | '_ \| __/ _ \ _____| \| |/ _ \ \ /\ / / __| | |___| | | |_| | |_) | || (_) |_____| |\ | __/\ V V /\__ \ \____|_| \__, | .__/ \__\___/ |_| \_|\___| \_/\_/ |___/ |___/|_| SECOND SET OF CRYPTO HEARINGS (S.1726) SET FOR 6/26/96 IN WASHINGTON D.C. IF YOU CAN'T BE THERE, YOU CAN STILL HAVE YOUR COMMENTS ENTERED INTO THE RECORD AT WWW.CRYPTO.COM Date: June 21, 1996 URL:http://www.crypto.com/ crypto-news(a)panix.com If you redistribute this, please do so in its entirety, with the banner intact. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents News How to receive crypto-news Security And Freedom through Encryption forum: July 1, 1996 Press contacts ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- NEWS The sponsors of the Pro-CODE bill (S.1726) will hold the second of two hearings on the encryption issue in Washington D.C. this coming Wednesday, June 26. Witnesses scheduled to testify at the hearing, which will focus on the Burns/Leahy Pro-CODE bill (S. 1726) include: * Phil Zimmermann, Inventor of PGP * Whit Diffie, Father of Public-Key Cryptography * Jerry Berman, Executive Director, Center for Democracy and Technology * Matt Blaze, Cryptographer * Phil Karn, Cryptographer * Barbara Simons, Chair of US Public Policy Committee, ACM * Marc Rotenberg, Director, Electronic Privacy Information Center * AND YOU!! (See below for details) The hearing will focus on the need to reform US encryption policies, proposals to relax export controls on encryption, and the privacy issues raised by the current policy. Senator Burns (R-MT), Senator Leahy (D-VT) and the other sponsors of the Pro-CODE bill want to hear from the Net.community about why encryption is important to privacy and security on the Internet. If you're like most of American, you cannot take a day off just to attend the hearings to make your voice heard. Luckily, you can use the handy World Wide Web form to express your opinion and have it entered into the record. Please be sure to visit http://www.crypto.com/ and add your voice to the debate over encryption policy on Capitol Hill. Responses will be tabulated and the results, along with selected statements, will be included in the Congressional Record by Senator Conrad Burns. The results will also be featured during the Security and Freedom through Encryption Forum (SAFE) on July 1 (details on that event are attached below). If you find the WWW form too constraining, or you do not have access to the World Wide Web, send your testimony to Shabbir J. Safdar (shabbir(a)panix.com) who will make sure it gets into the record. To add your voice to the crypto debate in Congress, visit: http://www.crypto.com/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ATTEND THE SAFE FORUM - JULY 1, 1996 STANFORD CALIFORNIA On July 1, 1996, in the heart of California's Silicon Valley at Stanford University, members of Congress, prominent computer industry leaders and privacy advocates will meet to discuss the need to reform U.S. encryption policy. The event is FREE and open to the public, but space is limited and is going fast. To find out more, and to reserve your free ticket, visit the SAFE Forum Web Page at: http://www.crypto.com/safe CONFIRMED SPEAKERS INCLUDE: Among other prominent industry leaders, cryptographers, privacy advocates and members of Congress, confirmed speakers include" Industry Leaders and Cryptographers Members of Congress * Marc Andreeson, Netscape * Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) * Jim Bidzos, RSA * Rep. Tom Campbell (R-CA) * Eric Schmidt, Sun Microsystems * Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) * Brad Silverberg, Microsoft * Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) * Phil Zimmermann, PGP Inc * Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) * Matt Blaze, AT&T * Sen. Larry Pressler (R-SD) * Bruce Schneier, Counterpane Systems Privacy Advocates and Legal Experts: * Michael Froomkin, U. of Miami Law School * Jerry Berman, Center for Democracy and Technology * Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform (invited) * Ken Dam, U. of Chicago Law School (invited) This event will be "cybercast", with full audio and still video clips, live online with the help of MediaCast. Details on the cybercast are available at http://www.crypto.com/safe/ SAFE FORUM SPONSORS This important discussion on the need for an alterative policy to protect privacy and security and promote commerce on the Global Information Infrastructure is being made possible by the generous support of the following companies and public interest organizations: America Online Americans for Tax Reform AT&T Business Software Alliance Center for Democracy and Technology Center for National Security Studies Commercial Internet eXchange CompuServe Incorporated Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility Cylink Corporation EDS Electronic Frontier Foundation Electronic Messaging Association Electronic Privacy Information Center Information Technology Association of America IEEE - USA MediaCast Media Institute Microsoft Corporation Netcom Online Communication Services Netscape Communications Corporation Novell, Inc. Oracle Corporation Pacific Telesis PGP Inc. Prodigy, Inc. Progress and Freedom Foundation Securities Industry Association Software Publishers Association Sybase, Inc. Voters Telecommunications Watch Wired Magazine Please visit the SAFE Forum Home Page for more information (http://www.crypto.com/safe/) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- HOW TO RECEIVE CRYPTO-NEWS To subscribe to crypto-news, sign up from our WWW page (http://www.crypto.com) or send mail to majordomo(a)panix.com with "subscribe crypto-news" in the body of the message. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- PRESS CONTACT INFORMATION Press inquiries on Crypto-News should be directed to Shabbir J. Safdar (VTW) at +1.718.596.2851 or shabbir(a)vtw.org Jonah Seiger (CDT) at +1.202.637.9800 or jseiger(a)cdt.org ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- End crypto-news =============================================================================

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Backdoors (was Re: Current status of RSA patent...)
by Deranged Mutant 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

On 20 Jun 96 at 17:32, Intense wrote: > That is probably true... But, i am sure that goverment is going to want > to keep there [sic] backdoors, they have showed no interest in ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > it's [sic] citizens priviciy [sic] as of yet... and i doubt they have changed... Please elaborate on what backdoors the government already has that it wants to keep. Rob.

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Re:Oil Change software snoops through hard drive
by Deranged Mutant 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

On 20 Jun 96 at 14:42, Jim McCoy wrote: [Stuff about trojans deleted] To heck with trojans... how does it know what version of NiftyMail you are using? So what if you make up a dummy directory and dummy files with proper CRCs for NiftyMail v2.0, so Oil Change upgrades you to a real version of NiftyMail v2.1. Gives a whole new avenue for software piracy here... ...Or does it keep a central database of registered NiftyMail users? Does it pass along things like serial numbers embedded in software? And is info on who owns what software kept private? Or will you be spammed/junk-mailed direct marketing info? Yes. Many questions. Rob. --- No-frills sig. Befriend my mail filter by sending a message with the subject "send help" Key-ID: 5D3F2E99 1996/04/22 wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com (root@magneto) AB1F4831 1993/05/10 Deranged Mutant <wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com> Send a message with the subject "send pgp-key" for a copy of my key.

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Re: Recipients get the postage
by tcmay＠got.net 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

At 12:05 AM 6/19/96, Hal wrote: >I was reading old threads on remailers, where various ideas were >suggested to reduce abuse. One was to charge postage, in order to >discourage spam and somewhat discourage nastygrams, as well as to >compensate the remailer operator for his risks. A variant was to tell >the recipient that he had anonymous mail waiting, and possibly charge him >to receive it. > >I had a different idea, which has probably been suggested before: make >the sender of the anonymous mail pay, but pass the money to the >recipient. An interesting variant; I would certainly like to see _any_ of the various digital postage ideas tried. Alas, none have (save for Sameer's option for charging for remailings). However, I can see some problems which I think would arise with Hal's "recipient gets postage" scheme. * in an ecology of several types of remailers, some not charging postage, some charging postage (with subcategories of some giving the postage to the recipient and some keeping the postage for themselves), who would use the postage variant? (This is a recurring situation where some services are free and some are not. I fully realize that some paid services prosper (duh!, as we still have thriving economies) even where free alternatives exist. That the various newspapers continue to sell, or that premium t.v. channels on cable thrive, when "free" alternatives exist is just one example. How paid remailers would compete with free remailers is a topic we've written much about.) * the "cost" of remailing is not borne by the recipient, in the current situation, so why should a "remailer gets postage" system have advantages? * a recipient may "demand" payment for remailed messages, e.g., by adopting a policy of saying "Unless I find 37 digicents per 10KB of size, I will dump the message...so if you want to reach me, pay me." This "works" by the simple expedient of being a demand that is adhered to. (In this case, the recipient of a message is "selling" a commodity: access to him. The senders of messages can either accept his terms or reject them.) [Note: Current e-mail systems are not very market-based. Metering is almost nonexistent, and it's as if anyone could mail a ton or two of horse manure to anyone for no cost. I expect this to eventually change, and one way it could change is for mail clients to refuse to accept delivery unless certain conditions were met (who the sender is, how much payment is attached, etc.). The ontology of physical package and mail delivery systems has some lessons, though not all translate easily into the Internet domain.] * but it seems to make little sense for a remailer, absent such a demanded price, to give up his postage fee to a recipient! I'm not saying such a system could not work, only that I would not expect a free market ecology of remailers to evolve this as a stable evolutionary strategy. I would expect a more likely future stable strategy to include some combination of payments demanded by remailers and some payment or the like demanded by terminal recipients. >All my complaints come from people who have received mail, never from >people who have sent it. So obviously the steps we take need to make >recipients happier. Paying them is one way to do it. Not to be flippant, but the job of making recipients happier is probably not ours. We don't know whether a digital dime will make them happier for receiving a threat, or a flame, or a 10 MB coredump file. This is why it is up to the recipient to set policies, prices, etc. (Ditto for the remailers, as only they know how much it is worth to them to remail a given message, depending on packet size, perceived risk to them, etc.) Again, I always enjoy gedankenexperiments about digital postage. But I am chagrinned that nearly four years after the first remailers we are still operating in thought experiment mode for the most part. I believe this is because there really is very little market at this time for anonymous remailings. Those who mostly use remailers appear to be willing to use casual-grade remailers, with few of the real Chaumian protections. And they are not very concerned about reliablity, cover traffic, etc. Digital postage would be a bothersome wrinkle and would be routed-around by most. Ergo, no commercial-grade remailers, no insistence on robustness and reliability, no digital postage, and no interest by Microsoft! --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: Federal Key Registration Agency
by jim bell 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

At 09:20 PM 6/20/96 -0400, Michael Froomkin wrote: >I have seen the text of the speech. The wire service accounts wildly, >wildly exaggerate. This is a non-story...except for AG Reno's assertion >that it would take the government a year to break one DES message with a >"supercomputer". She presumably believes this. We know the number for >known plaintext attacks, but assuming you don't have a known plaintext, >what's a more reasonable assumption? If done in parallel, on a dedicated, 200 MHz custom chip, my WAG says that such a chip could try, and statistically analyze the results of 10 million DES codes per second. (it would do the decrypts on a number of parallel DES blocks, and look for typical ASCII code pattern probabilities, again all in parallel.) A typical cracking system might have 100 boards of 100 such chips, or perhaps a 100 billion such decrypts per second. Checking the keyspace would require 2**19 seconds, or about a half million seconds, or 6 days. Average decrypt, of course, in 3 days. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: NWLibs> Stop Cross-Copying (Re: Take the money, Harry, re.)
by tcmay＠got.net 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

At 5:21 AM 6/21/96, jim bell wrote: >The subject was the use of digital cash for accepting Federal matching >funds. I cross-posted ONE message. It was appropriately on-topic in both >areas. > >Okay? No, not okay. The resulting torrent of messages from and to Tonie Nathan, and about Tonie Nathan, had no connection to anything related to the CP list. I didn't single you out as the instigator of the cross-copying, as I had no idea of who it was.... (but now that I know it was you, I can't really say I'm surprised). When messages are cross-copied, warning should be included saying that the message is going to more than one mailing list, and perhaps why this was deemed necessary. And most importantly, urging follow-up posts to carefull consider which groups are appropriate. (Many people don't even bother to edit the To: and Cc: fields, resulting in a pile-up of copied names. I try to excise out all recipients except "cypherpunks(a)toad.com," figuring anyone not reading the list is not worth sending a separate copy to.) --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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Bashing "Wired"
by tcmay＠got.net 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

At 10:08 PM 6/17/96, Mike McNally wrote: >That reminds me. As someone who hasn't yet given up on WiReD in disgust >(instead, I get it and read it faithfully in disgust), I was particularly >pissed-off at the latest "Kids Net Rights" issue. Jonathan Katz >huffs and puffs about how "nobody in the digital world" protests the >idea of rating schemes to keep non-adults away from information, and >indeed claims that "the digerati" (grrr) are pushing rating schemes with >great gusto to save themselves from censorship. > >I guess by "nobody", he probably means "nobody who hangs out in the same >trendy espresso bars as the WiReD trendmeisters". I've seen plenty of >invective directed at the concept of rating systems in general, from >a variety of people including Tim May and li'l ol' me. That's been here >and on some various newsgroups. Indeed, I have not only written _against_ such mandatory rating and age-declaration schemes, I have also written about how such schemes may be used counter to the intended purposes (e.g., the way LolitaWatch helps connoisseurs of young girls locate targets). I happened to pick up that issue of "Wired" today and skimmed it at the bookstore. The same old points of view recycled, refried, retreaded, and ready to be retired. I suspect that author didn't know about our criticisms because we're not published in "Wired," nor in "Netly News" and other such travesties. Most importantly, we're not journalists, "online activists," or moonlighting science fiction writers, and so we don't count. Nearly every issue of "Wired" has the usual columnists, the usual feature writers, and the usual focus on _personalities_ over substance. (Who the fuck cares that on a long drive through the desert Jean Louis Gassee opined to a budding Hunter S. Thompson that "that makes my nipples hard"? I stopped reading that issue of "Wired" when this shit bubbled up out of the sewer.) (I'd go back exclusively to "Scientific American," except they now charge $4.95 for a much-thinner magazine than the old thick and meaty issues of the 60s and 70s, where an issue sold for 60 cents, then 75 cents, then $1.00, etc. Also, the old article format has been replaced by shorter, flashier, more personality-oriented pieces. Still, better than the fluff of "Wired," which is "tired.") And notice that increasingly the "journalists" are the quoted thinkers and strategists in important areas? Someone majors in English, starts writing for "Netizen" or "HotWired," and the next thing you know they're debating crypto policy with Conrad Burns and Dorothy Denning. We're in an age where the medium truly is the message. I do think "Wired" has a few good items, buried deeply in the muck. I dislike their typography and color styles (but then, who doesn't?), but mostly I dislike their hipper-than-thou techno-freneticism. The hundreds of little sound bytes about technolog, what's hot and what's not (wired--tired), the focus on ephemeral personalities (a la "People," it's true inspiration), well, it all makes me glad to never spend more than 15 minutes flipping through it at the newstand. Someone told me recently that "Wired" is either already public, or is about to go public (stock-wise), with an estimated market capitalization of $400 million. (I guess some of those journalists are suddenly very rich....) Caveat emptor. --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: NWLibs> Stop Cross-Copying (Re: Take the money, Harry, re.)
by jim bell 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

At 07:14 PM 6/20/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >At 5:19 PM 6/20/96, RogErick(a)aol.com wrote: > >> I agree with you, Tonie, as usual. >> I struggled with this, for years, until I had a dream. I was on a >>battlefield, pinned down by enemy fire, and I was out of ammunition. >.... > > >Hey, folks, I'm a libertarian, and even voted for John Hospers in 1972. But >the Cypherpunks mailing list has over 1200 subscribers, and cross-copying >to it for these debates is not a good idea. I presume the same is true >about cross-copying Cypherpunks stuff onto "nwlibertarians(a)teleport.co," >but I can't say for sure. > >What I know is that wide cross-posting (or cross-copying) is the bane of >lists these days. There are so many lists, so much overlap, that the >temptation is great to cc: any conceivably-related list. > >Hey, no one speaks for Cypherpunks, least of all me, but I think >cross-copying between libertarian, or digital commerce, or Wobbly, or >International Socialist Women of Color, or Unabomber Brigade mailing lists >to the Cypherpunks list is inappropriate. The subject was the use of digital cash for accepting Federal matching funds. I cross-posted ONE message. It was appropriately on-topic in both areas. Okay? Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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HotWired -- The Tenth Justice (6/20/96)
by Declan McCullagh 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

Check out today's HotWired at http://www.hotwired.com/ for the full article. -Declan -------------- http://www.hotwired.com/netizen/96/25/campaign_dispatch4a.html HotWired: The Netizen The Tenth Justice by Brock N. Meeks (brock(a)well.com) and Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com) Washington, DC, 20 June 1996 Little known and unheralded outside judicial circles, U.S. Solicitor General Drew Days will soon play a key role in the continuing saga of the Communications Decency Act: it's now up to Days to vote thumbs up or down on sending the case to the Supreme Court. Days's decision carries enormous weight with the Supreme Court justices. "The solicitor general is known as the tenth justice," says Llew Gibbons, Temple University law fellow. "He has that much power before the court. It's a level of credibility nobody else has." Although the solicitor general - the No. 3 spot in the Department of Justice - is a political appointee, the job has historically been above politics; as Gibbons says, the solicitor general's real client is the Constitution. At the same time, it's a coveted position widely seen as a steppingstone to a seat on the Supreme Court, as it was for Thurgood Marshall. In addition, the job's independence allows the solicitor general to rule according to his understanding of constitutional law, not party allegiance - which is why Days's decision on the CDA will carry so much weight with the high court. Nonetheless, as independent and influential as Days may be, should he decide not to send the case on, he could still be overruled by Attorney General Janet Reno. Days has traveled this road before. Shortly after he took office in 1993, he wrote a decision arguing that the Bush administration had screwed up in sending a controversial child pornography case to the Supreme Court. The court, having already decided to take the case, reversed itself and, on the strength of Days's argument, sent it back to the appeals court. [...]

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