December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Another bad idea
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 12 Jul 96 at 9:40, Arun Mehta wrote: [..] > As I see it, the Chinese communist government will not live to see more > than a few years (if any) of the 21st Century. We are all aware of the > devastating impact of telecommunications, TV and computers on authoritarian > regimes. E.g. in the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Easterners watching West > German TV was a significant contributory factor. Some say Hong Kong might be a contributing factor. > Satellite TV is available all over China.The government may, for a while, be > able to ban satellite dishes, but soon their size will reduce to that of a BTW, similar problems in Iran fro what I've heard. I remember hearing a blurb that VOA Chinese Programs explained how to make a setellite dish out of aluminum foil, so pick up special VOA boradcasts I'm sure... (That's rather intersting, because you can crumple it up or wrap leftovers in it immediately.) [..] > What that does is give us a window of opportunity. Hongkong has one > remaining year of guaranteed unfettered flow of information. China still > has the Internet. What can we do? I'm told by some friends that the Chinese, in large part due to the writing system, prefer FAXs over the internet. That's something to keep in mind. Hm... interesting project: a graphics program that works with PGP or PGPlib. One can import scanned images or draw onto the screen and then encrypt it for mailing. Are there any secure FAX protocols that could be worked into communications software and standard modems? > 1) Collect the e-mail addresses as Allen suggested (including those in > Hongkong), and send them a single, short message offering to teach them free > of cost how to use pgp and all the goodies at > http://www.eskimo.com/~joelm/cbsw.html Might be condescending. 'Civilized white man brings PGP to the barbarians...' They may well know about PGP, but not in a position to make that knowledge widely known. And if I were in a 'totalitarian' or restrictive country I'd be damn suspicious, maybe frightened by this ('are the secret police setting me up?' or 'will the notice if I reply?'). What if that person like the way their country is? They could inform the local authorities and set in motion a crackdown that would not have happened, perhaps. I'd leave the specifics to activists who are already familiar with the respective cultures, societies, politics, etc.... chances are they are already doing things along those lines. Otherwise, if you don't know what you're doing, you can unintentionally mess up somebody else's life, if not your own. 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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Singapre Sling? FWD "Singapore Unveils Internet Guidelines"
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From LI newsday World Briefs, 12 July, p. 21: "Singapore Unveils Internet Guidelines" Singapore unveild steps yesterday to regulate political and religious content on the Internet, and keep its cyberspace free of pornography. According to the Singapore Broadcast Authority, the guidelines, effective after July 15, require all operators to register with the SBA.

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Re: I@Week on crypto export loophole 6/24/96
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:30 PM 7/11/96 -0400, Will Rodger wrote: >Bidzos' pending deal brought forth several questions: >1 - Could others try something like the DES deal with stuff under copyright >and still make money doing it? >2 - If so, was the administration aware of it? and; >3 - Who, if anyone, would be the first to try it? > >The answers were: >1 - Yes, someone else could try it. >2- The administration wouldn't comment, but had an official reply that >showed it grasped all the implications within 15 minutes of our asking. >3 - No one's stepping forward, but Ken Bass, atty. for Phil Karn and Phil >Zimmermann, among others, said he knew some folks were considering moves >along those lines, though he gave few details. > >Steptoe & Johnson cyberspace atty. Stewart Baker suggested such a move would >be "extremely aggressive advice," though "not quite insane." if I remember >correctly. Well, lawyers have to be really careful about appearing to endorse something that's on the edge of legality. Also, it's obvious that the advice given would be vastly different depending on who was doing the asking. If it were one of the two companies potentially involved, they'd probably be told that doing this would be frowned on. If it were the individual considering secretly exporting the program, he'd be told "Don't tell us! And whatever you do, don't get caught!" >A few caveats to any US citizen who finds himself trying to help such a >situation occur: > >1) The loophole can be closed by executive order with little or no notice, It's unclear if a foreign national on foreign soil can be considered within the jurisdiction of the US, especially merely for being the recipient of software whose export would have been illegal under US law. If the copy is re-mailed to him from a third country, he doesn't even know for sure if the software was ever illegally exported. And "executive orders" are already on constitutionally shaky ground anyway, as are export controls for crypto. (As I understand it, "executive order" was originally considered binding only on government employees; it was akin to an order internal to a company.) An executive order prohibiting a private-company's receipt of money for licensing fees on software which, IF EXPORTED, would require a license is straining credulity more than a bit. And moreover, there's the question of whether or not this logic extends to any licensing regardless of how remote it is. Could a US semiconductor company be barred from licensing ordinary semiconductor technology, if the foreign recipient of that license decides to use it for building an encryption chip? What if they use it to build an ordinary DRAM chip that just happens to be installed into a crypto phone, perhaps by a third party? Could the writer of a C++ compiler be denied the right to export simply because one foreign customer used a copy of that program to compile an encryption program abroad? And, they should be able to turn the royalty payment into something that achieves the same payback (say, the use of a logo signifying approval) rather than the specific use of a particular piece of software. and >2) Any citizen aiding the export of such software will of course, be brought >up on some pretty serious felony charges if caught. Foreign nationals are >doubtless subject to the same laws if on US soil while the deed gets done. "Getting away with it" probably involves no more than writing a floppy with software, putting a few stamps on it and addressing it to a foreign country, putting either no return address or a fake one on it, and then tossing it in a convient USnail box. (Taking all the usual precautions against fingerprints, DNA testing, etc.) In practice, the likelihood of getting caught if you're careful is somewhere between zero and nil. Pre-encrypting the data with the recipient's public key makes it that much more difficult for the USG to show that it's being illegally exported. >Then again, Baker said, "if one gets away with it, dozens will try it, too." >I won't be the first to try. As I see it, the most important issue is not the legal status of the one actually doing the export/mailing, but in fact the organization which is the recipient and thus, the beneficiary of this act. _THAT_ organization will be well-identified, yet will not have done anything obviously illegal. Is there any indication that Baker was trying to distinguish between the one physically mailing it, and those receiving it? Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Another bad idea
by Arun Mehta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:06 10/07/96 +0000, Deranged Mutant wrote: >On 9 Jul 96 at 18:26, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote: >[..] >> Like China, various other countries are trying to get the Internet's >> benefits (such as technical information) without its other consequences >> (extension of civil liberties into countries that want to deny them). One idea >> that I've had for preventing such problems is to look for addresses from such >> countries that are posting to technical newsgroups, to technical mailing lists, >> or that are attempting to get access to web pages on technical subjects (which >> access they will hopefully be denied, although an alternate possibility). Then >> mail information to those addresses that those countries don't want getting >> into their countries, such as on human rights abuses (or well-written >> pornography...). > >Great idea. Get some (possibly) innocent techie in an oppressive >country thrown in jail or executed. >[..] >Damn aggrevating for that user, and it could get him/her in trouble. > >On a wide-scale it could provoke responses from those countries. Damned right, and it should. Your religion teaches to "DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU." Good advice for anyone on the Internet, and the last thing you want to teach newbies is to spam. Imagine if you were to send the cypherpunks list unsolicited porn, info about some prisoner in Texas who is getting the death penalty... you get the picture. If I were at the receiving end, I'd send back a polite but firm note asking you to desist, and if you didn't, complain to your sysop, or remailer operator. Which is what you would do in my shoes. But if you want to do something, I have a better idea (thanks for the willingness to help): As I see it, the Chinese communist government will not live to see more than a few years (if any) of the 21st Century. We are all aware of the devastating impact of telecommunications, TV and computers on authoritarian regimes. E.g. in the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Easterners watching West German TV was a significant contributory factor. Satellite TV is available all over China.The government may, for a while, be able to ban satellite dishes, but soon their size will reduce to that of a wok (might even double as one). The Internet will soon be widespread. The real crunch will come when Hongkong becomes part of China. Inevitably, other parts of the country will want to know why the special status of Hongkong cannot be extended to them. There is a chance that instead of China taking over Hongkong, the reverse might happen. In cyberspace, the students have the more powerful tanks. Can you imagine how different a massacre a la Tiananmen Square would look in a couple of years? Images captured on camcorders would be beamed back to the Chinese via satellite, all the information would flow both ways on the net, the Hongkong stock market would take a dive, ... I would suggest that tacitly or at least implicitly, the Chinese goverment has conceded that it will never try a major violent suppression of political unrest again. That, or it will decide that the Internet is a bad influence, and should be abolished. What that does is give us a window of opportunity. Hongkong has one remaining year of guaranteed unfettered flow of information. China still has the Internet. What can we do? 1) Collect the e-mail addresses as Allen suggested (including those in Hongkong), and send them a single, short message offering to teach them free of cost how to use pgp and all the goodies at http://www.eskimo.com/~joelm/cbsw.html 2) Encourage the production of simple, cheap devices such as a PGP phone that they can manufacture in Hongkong and other parts of China, which will allow secure communications. Basically, people without a computer, Internet connection or sufficient literacy should be able to use effective encryption. Cheap. 3) Find people who beam radio transmissions into China (Rupert Murdoch via his Star TV satellite is one ;-) and ask them to devote an "Internet hour" in which people can mail or phone in messages (via remailers and encryption too) to be broadcast. The whole thing can be automated, and *everybody* has access to radio. More on this subject later. Thoughts? Arun Mehta, B-69 Lajpat Nagar-I, New Delhi-24, India. Phone 6841172,6849103 amehta(a)doe.ernet.in amehta(a)giasdl01.vsnl.net.in amehta(a)cerfnet.com http://mahavir.doe.ernet.in/~pinaward/arun.htm "I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any."--Gandhi

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RE: Technology and Privacy
by .. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

DM,sir, you always bring good stuff, but...am i really supposed to believe that a warrant or other writ will really control the process? ---------- From: Declan McCullagh[SMTP:declan@well.com] Sent: Monday, July 01, 1996 7:13 PM To: John Young Cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Re: Technology and Privacy > To set the record straight, military thermal imaging is > used to support civilian law enforcement only after other > probable cause for a search warrant, such as power bills, > observation of boarded-up windows, vents on the roof to > draw away heat and buys by confidential informants, are > documented. The military is then called in, using thermal

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Digital Watermarks for copy protection in recent Billboard magaz
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Paged through a recent (June or July 13) edition of Billboard magazine yesterday. There was an article about the music industry, the internet, and copyright issues. Didn't have a chance to read in thoroughly, but it mentioned using digital watermarks which contained info on to who (CC number) and when the material was sold... the watermarks allgedly could survive if a CD was taped, copied several times and redigitized. It's rather interesting for several reasons... imagine if every CD you owned was tagged with a link to your identity. So imagine getting a used CD or from a garage sale... after several years a pirated edition is floating around the internet... The anti-piracy scheme is only useful for direct sale to a customer though. If you buy music anonymously, how is it traced? This only works for pirating on-demand purchases. Other issues: what if an eavesdropper steals the music or video? It's tagged with your ID. If he spreads pirated material, you get in trouble even though it's not nec. your fault (if no secure communications are available, anyway). If it uses a credit-card number as (part of) an ID, that's pretty bad. Someone can sniff for CC numbers if they know how it's stored. The system will have to rely on proprietary tech and security through obscurity. Even know how watermarks are stored without understanding the math, one must be able to somehow garble the sound without distorting it, but which renders the watermark useless. That a watermark can survive when the music is converted to analog and then redigitized is interesting... (if it's saved as inaudible tones, what's to prevent one from blurting them out with noise in those frequencies?) Guess I'll have to hunt down that issue and post useful excerpts from it...in terms of far use, of course. (Or perhaps an alt-vista search...) 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: Minitel "saved" by hackers?
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 12 Jul 96 at 5:51, Daniel Salber wrote: [..] > As Minow pointed out, this is not the only case of "hijacking". The > telephone was first intended as a way to listen to remote concerts. Then > users found out they could use it for one-to-one conversations. This is innacurate. No, methinks it's wrong. From every history of telephones I have read and heard, it was never that way. The original conception was of using the telephone for broadcasting. It's implementation in most countries was for point-to-point communication... it wasn't a matter of the users 'found they could use it' (at least not in the US). 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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Chancellor Group (symbol = CHAG) (spam)
by David Lesher 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

|Chancellor Group, Inc. (symbol CHAG) just reported big quarterly earnings. I hear tell "enforcement(a)sec.gov" is interested in hearing of such.... -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz(a)nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

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Re: Minitel "saved" by hackers?
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 12 Jul 96 at 14:07, Daniel Salber wrote: [..] > Well, sorry if it is. That's what I read in a book about the early history > of telephone. I don't have the reference handy right now, though. Understandable. > BUT: how do you explain that from the original conception (using the > telephone for broadcasting), the telephone came to be a one-to-one > communication tool ? Even if the implementation allowed it, someone had to > think of it, right ? Bell thought of the idea orig. as a broadcaster. Then somehow when it was set up he or someone else in AT&T did that. If I recall (no refs handy) it had to do with the telegraph being (sort of) point-to-point... Bell used to tour the vaudville circuit showing off the telephone. I think the idea emerged during that time... during such shows of tech (common at the time) there was a Q&A from the audience. Rob > > Thanks for the clarification anyway. > > Daniel > > > > --- 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: Word lists for passphrases
by Remo Pini 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:18 AM 7/6/96 -0500, you wrote: >At 12:09 AM 7/6/96 -0500, snow(a)smoke.suba.com wrote: >>On Fri, 5 Jul 1996, Erle Greer wrote: >> >>> Word-List Builder (this is not an ad) >Unix, you can do, but the recursive subdirs aren't a prob for me. A final dream >would be to convert it to VB4, use MS's WWW custom control, and unleash it as a >spider. If you send me the source, I'll give it a shot (port to vb4 with x-controls) ----------< fate favors the prepared mind >---------- Remo Pini Fon 1: +41 1 350 28 82 mailto:rp@rpini.com Fon 2: +41 1 465 31 90 http://www.rpini.com/remopini/ Fax: +41 1 350 28 84 --------< words are what reality is made of >--------

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