December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Restrictions on crypto overseas
by um＠c2.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> What about other nations that have recently passed restrictions on the use > of crypto? Other than Russia, which are they? Is there a list anywhere? http://cwis.kub.nl/~frw/people/koops/lawsurvy.htm

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Re: SAFE forum -- remarks of Herb Lin
by Herb Lin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

You're entitled to any spin you wish (see your [...] below). But my original intent was to say the part about "and it is" in any event; unfortunately, the audience started snickering before I got to it. In the future, I will say "Crime prevention ought to be, and is, a part of the FBI's mission", thereby pre-empting premature snickering by an audience pre-disposed to be unfriendly or derisive to law enforcement. Begin personal comment from herb: The "overview and recommendations" document summarizing the report notes that "Input from [..] diverse sources demonstrated to the committee a considerable amount of confrontation and disconnect between interest groups (e.g., information technology vendors, businesses, law enforcement, private individuals, national security) that fail to understand or appreciate the validity of each other's policy needs and interests with respect to cryptography. . . . Public debate based on hyperbole is unproductive. All of the stakes described above -- privacy for individuals, protection of sensitive or proprietary information for businesses, ensuring the continuing reliability and integrity of nationally critical information systems and networks, law enforcement access to stored and communicated information for purposes of investigating and prosecuting crime, and national security access to information stored or communicated by foreign powers or other entities and organizations whose interests and intentions are relevant to the national security and the foreign policy interests of the United Statesare legitimate; informed public discussion of the issues must begin by acknowledging the legitimacy both of information security for law-abiding individuals and businesses and of information gathering for law enforcement and national security purposes." My experience with the FBI and other law enforcement officials is that they are honorable people trying to do a very hard job. You may disagree with them on policy grounds -- indeed, the NRC report does disagree with the Administration in certain important ways -- but in my personal opinion, law enforcement deserves credit rather than censure for trying to anticipate a future problem, You may believe the proposed solution to be inappropriate, but I'd ask those of you who follow the debate to engage it on substantive rather than ad hominem grounds, Many of you in the cypherpunk community have done so, and I applaud such efforts. [End personal comment] herb == On Wed, 3 Jul 1996, Herb Lin wrote: > Folks -- I object to the characterization of my remarks about crime prevention > being made with sarcasm. The complete remark was "Crime prevention ought > to be part of the FBI's mission, ... and it is -- ask them, and they acknowledge > that." OK, sorry, my reading. I'd certainly hate to jeopardize any professional relationships by implying that you'd been poking fun at them on purpose. There's already far too much distrust to go around. As I recall, the sequence went "Crime prevention ought to be part of the FBI's mission [audience snickers, Herb realizes what he just said and smiles]... and it is -- ask them, and they acknowledge that." The best standup comics are the genuine straight men, I guess. To avoid any trouble, I'll be using that line *without* specific attribution from now on. -rich

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Re: Lack of PGP signatures
by Clay Olbon II 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>It is not possible to clear-sign binaries with PGP. The point of clear- >signing >is to have signed text that is readable to people who don't have the >software >necessary to process the text. It would make sense to clearsign a file that >is base64'ed or uuencoded, which wouldn't alter the contents of the file. I >can't see how such an option would be harmful, except that it might lose >some >characters that are important to the context of the message. > Mark, Of course you can use pgp to sign binaries. How else did the pgp binary itself get signed? You can either sign it in a separate file, or in the same file. PGP sorts it out for you. What do you use it for? Same reasons you sign text. "I signed this file" means that you vouch for it in some undefined way (maybe I wrote and compiled it, or somesuch). Clay *************************************************************************** Clay Olbon II * Clay.Olbon(a)dynetics.com Systems Engineer * PGP262 public key on web page Dynetics, Inc. * http://www.msen.com/~olbon/olbon.html ***************************************************************** TANSTAAFL

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Re: The Net and Terrorism
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:33 PM 7/3/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >My article made my points, so I won't rewrite it here. You are of course >not required to agree. You are free to live in crowded cites--near "soft >targets." You are welcome to lobby for world peace and for economic changes >to lessen terrorism. > >(I think this is mostly hopeless. No matter how "nice" conditions get, for >game-theoretic reasons there will be some groups seeking changes.) I am not sure who is right in this debate. I know that the "why can't we all just get along?" crowd is asking a stupid question. There are lots of reasons people can't get along and there have been enough "top-down" imposed social changes this century to suggest that "changing society" won't preserve the peace. On the other hand, I'm not sure that Tim's pessimism is warranted. This argument that cities will become completely unlivable and the only way to survive is to move out into less populated areas has been going on in the libertarian, survivalist, and right-wing-nut communities since the 1960s. The magazines Vonulife and Libertarian Connection used to talk a lot about the relative merits of Nomadism or Troglodytism, suitcase nukes, and such. Those who took the advice and moved into caves in 1969 have sure had an uncomfortable 30 years. Mel Tappan (author of Survival Guns) may have died from a heart attack which he could have survived had he not moved into the boonies. I note as well that Tim is not all that far away from civilization and its discontents. North Dakota or Labrador would be better choices if separation were really desired. Those of us in the Techno-Libertarian Panglossian Community argue that it is at least possible that the spread of markets will serve to bend the world's population to bourgeois values before nanotech gives everyone the power to destroy the world. Note that markets (like networks) can expand faster than outside observers can believe once a critical mass of participants is achieved. We see that happening all around the world in the case of both markets and networks. Even hard cases like Africa and the Middle East will find themselves swept up in a short time (by historical standards). It's hard to get people who are making lots of dough to strap dynamite to their bodies and go blow up a bus. Then Larry said: >>because it is a fact of life, is erroneous in my view. it is a common >>libertarian argument that goes, "criminality is everywhere, so why try >>to stop it?" a rather juvenile ideology. In all my years of reading and listening to libertarian agitprop, I've never heard this argument. And back to Tim: >(And my point about moving out of cities referred to what *I* am doing; >others are of course free to mingle in crowded markets, hoping that the >bombs won't come that day. Others are free to send their children to day >care centers located in likely targets for ZOG's enemies to bomb, and so >on.) Kids sent to day care centers operated by the federal government or schools operated by local governments are going to be in a bad way in any case whether or not they are blown up or shot (as in Stockton and Scotland). I *love* the Volvo ads which feature mom driving her kids to school in a Volvo with all of its safety features and then turing the kids over to the government for indoctrination. Much better she should drive them to private schools in a Chevy Corvair. They'll live longer (certainly in the spiritual sense of "live"). DCF

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I confess [Was: Who was that Masked Cypherpunk?]
by liberty＠gate.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Duncan Frissell <frissell(a)panix.com> wrote: >OK, fess up. Who was it who amended the anti-key-escrow language of the >Libertarian Party Platform live on CSPAN? Specific reference to >cypherpunks. 'Twas me, the guardian of the *original* definition of the fine old term "escrow" against the slick denizens of Newspeak. I have found this Libertarian convention to be a super-fun experience, and I will be demonstrating PGP, Private Idaho, and lots of other fun stuff on Saturday at 3PM. All are invited to attend. Watch for "Pennies for Perot" this afternoon! ;) JMR -- Dade Chairman and Florida Delegate. Regards, Jim Ray -- DNRC Minister of Encryption Advocacy "It is long past time to end the laughable presumption that voters who can easily cope with the choices offered at Burger King are somehow 'confused' by more than two choices at the voting booth." -- me [From my Miami Herald article.] "Truth is stranger than fiction, especially when 'truth' is being defined by the O.J. Simpson Defense Team." -- Dave Barry 6/16/96 ___________________________________________________________________ PGP id.E9BD6D35 51 5D A2 C3 92 2C 56 BE 53 2D 9C A1 B3 50 C9 C8 <mailto:liberty@gate.net> http://www.shopmiami.com/prs/jimray Coming soon, "Pennies For Perot" page! CYA with http://www.anonymizer.com ___________________________________________________________________ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Freedom isn't Freeh. iQCVAwUBMd1Ii21lp8bpvW01AQEBWAQAoWqyLNe921Dx9HXbMFVoW2ReNGp0Qo6r mZd3FvNcJDw4bOeI434sekDwAEg9G2SiCCnBMBFrilZnKscMZpZp0XdNV6+b52FN MtyYW9yYQSRRgixjf3+j6O6jecPynztdugnnWY7Y8jWcb3ukipYYt4cQAVL13sX4 Aknxd4DXtzc= =lvW8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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

17 Dec '03

At 07:29 AM 7/5/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >At 2:37 AM 7/5/96, vinnie moscaritolo wrote: > >>>There is no cure for the "revolutionary" terrorists .. >>> If we do not even print their obit, there is no glory! >> >>Tim, you are asking for the liberal media to act responsibly.. what were >>you thinking? > >I did not write that. > >However, I wouldn't think that "not printing their obit" is acting >responsibly. As far as I'm concerned, I want the full news, or at least >some reasonable approximation of it, not propaganda. >--Tim May Well, whoever wrote those two lines above, he hit upon something I've long believed: The ability to force other people to (in effect) ignore dissent up to and including "terrorism" is extraordinarily valuable. Remember the old philosophical question, "If a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody there to hear, does it make a sound?" Scientifically, the answer's obvious. But _politically_ it isn't so obvious: If an act of "terrorism" occurs and the government can cover it up (or merely cover up the terroristic cause), the government is probably actually better off (considering _only_ the government's own interests) ignoring it and not exposing an embarrassing vulnerability, or possibly an embarrassing guilt, which induced the terrorist to attack. The government would probably have much preferred, for example, for 160+ people to be killed in an airliner that just happened to disappear off the radar screen and fall into the ocean, than the bombing in Oklahoma City, because the latter incident puts a powerful onus on the government to "do something" while an unexplained event (or one where the cause is covered up) has no such imperative. And I'm not talking primarily of retribution or punishment, either: Today, the government's under some pressure to simply stop doing things that would be expected to lead to retribution, like Waco and Ruby Ridge, and the government's misbehavior is highlighted by incidents such as the OKC bombing. In addition, a potential "terrorist" is less likely to try something if the government is likely to be able to cover it up. Ironically, this probably tends to induce such people to do things (like huge bombings) which _can't_ be covered up, rather than smaller, more individualized strikes. That makes the non-governmental public less safe, which is a serious conflict of interest between the government and the citizenry. I consider it axiomatic that whoever bombed the OKC building, he would have preferred killing one to two dozen people most responsible for Waco or Ruby Ridge than those who actually died. The public has every reason to prefer this alterative as well. The only people who can be expected to disapprove are government employees, who don't want to be held responsible (legally or "illegally") for what they did. If anything, I think the public would be far better off if there was a mechanism to allow even these "terrorists" to speak directly to the public, without censorship by the governments or heightened risk of capture. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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

17 Dec '03

At 3:37 PM 7/5/96, Duncan Frissell wrote: >On the other hand, I'm not sure that Tim's pessimism is warranted. This >argument that cities will become completely unlivable and the only way to >survive is to move out into less populated areas has been going on in the >libertarian, survivalist, and right-wing-nut communities since the 1960s. >The magazines Vonulife and Libertarian Connection used to talk a lot about >the relative merits of Nomadism or Troglodytism, suitcase nukes, and such. > >Those who took the advice and moved into caves in 1969 have sure had an >uncomfortable 30 years. Mel Tappan (author of Survival Guns) may have died >from a heart attack which he could have survived had he not moved into the >boonies. I note as well that Tim is not all that far away from civilization >and its discontents. North Dakota or Labrador would be better choices if >separation were really desired. Duncan, I said no such thing. Puh-leeeese. :-} What I _said_ was that _my_ response to increasing crime, the growing threat of serious terrorist actions, and the generally ratcage-like nature of large urban areas has been to move away from such urban centers. (Not that towns like Santa Cruz are crime-free. But they are not prime targets, when more tempting, fatter, softer targets are so nearby.) I've never said cities are "completely unlivable," just that, for me, better options exist. And in the vein of Harry Browne's "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World," I think a better response to terrorist actions is not to crack down further on civil liberties, but to decentralize. Personally, if not nationally. A variant which might be called "How I Found Security in an Insecure World." >And back to Tim: > >>(And my point about moving out of cities referred to what *I* am doing; >>others are of course free to mingle in crowded markets, hoping that the >>bombs won't come that day. Others are free to send their children to day >>care centers located in likely targets for ZOG's enemies to bomb, and so >>on.) Well, there it is. You quote my clarification to Detweiler's mischaracterizations. I'm not saying that cities are unlivable for all, just that concentratios draw attackers of various sorts, and I expect such attacks to increase in the future. And small cities are not unlivable, either. Last night, for example, I celebrated the Fourth at a free Beach Boardwalk concert with the Drifters. Fine music, resonating even in the Rap Generation's skulls, judging by the wild reaction from tens of thousands of folks crowded on the beach... (Now _that_ was a "soft target," in which a lobbed grenade could've taken out 20 or 40 people....Lots of such soft targets, and little that even a police state can do to stop it. Personal avoidance, by whatever measures one deems important, are the best bet.) If there's any meta-point I'm making is that people are best served by making their own security arrangements, be it home protection, financial security, health security, or the security from rioters, criminals, and terrorists being talked about here. Turning over increased powers to a government to do these things is a recipe for failure, at very high costs (economic and civil liberties costs). --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: Lack of PGP signatures
by Clay Olbon II 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mark M. <markm(a)voicenet.com> wrote: >I didn't say that binaries couldn't be signed. I said they couldn't be >*clear*-signed. There is a difference between clearsigning and creating a >signature certificate that is either concatenated with the data or written >to a separate file. If somebody who doesn't have PGP gets a file that is >signed by PGP, the file is completely useless to that person. > My mistake. I guess I still don't understand your point however. Of what use is a signature on a file to someone who cannot check its validity? It seems to me that a separate signature file for a binary would serve the same purpose ("gee, it LOOKS like somebody signed it"). Clay *************************************************************************** Clay Olbon II * Clay.Olbon(a)dynetics.com Systems Engineer * PGP262 public key on web page Dynetics, Inc. * http://www.msen.com/~olbon/olbon.html ***************************************************************** TANSTAAFL

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Re: Moviepunks [NOISE]
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Didn't see either of those flicks, but saw "The Cable Guy" a week ago. Actually has more 'net relevance, even though no one there uses the 'net. If you imagine the utopian 'everything delivered by cable' (phone, TV, 'net, video games, shopping, etc.) and mix with the power a psychotic and corrupt cable installer has, the plot has potential. (It's actualisation was something else, though.) The movie is apparently such a flop that it turned out the group of friends I was with were the only people who wanted to see it that day, so we had the theatre all to ourselves. A rare opportunity indeed... I only with the movie was worse than it actually was so we could have made it into a kind of MST3K thing... but it actually held our interest. 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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Shrink-Wrap Lic. uphelo by courts. From Edupage, 4 July 1996
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Thu, 4 Jul 1996 17:27:43 -0400 (EDT) From: Edupage Editors <educom(a)elanor.oit.unc.edu> Subject: Edupage, 4 July 1996 ***************************************************************** Edupage, 4 July 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. ***************************************************************** [..] "SHRINK-WRAP" LICENSES OKAYED BY COURT The validity of the "shrink-wrap" licenses that many software publishers rely on for copyright protection was bolstered by a recent appellate court ruling in Chicago. Last month, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court's finding that shrink-wrap agreements were unenforceable. Plaintiffs in the case, ProCD vs. Zeidenberg et al., charged the defendants with distributing the software program via the Internet. The defendants had argued that they couldn't be held to the license terms because they'd had no chance to negotiate or object to parts of the agreement. They also said the license agreement should be printed on the outside of the box, where it could be read before purchasing. The latest ruling found this suggestion to be an onerous burden, but did say the box must have a notice saying there's a licensing agreement inside, and that buyers should be able to return the software if they don't agree to the license once they read it. (Investor's Business Daily 3 Jul 96 A5)

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