December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Responding to Pre-daw
by harka＠nycmetro.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-=> Quoting In:hua@chromatic.com to Harka <=- > > If you want to own guns then you should accept the fact that you risk > > having your head blown off in the middle of the night by a SWAT team. > > Just as the car has introduced the risk of being killed in a trafic > > accident the gun has introduced new risks. If society dosen't like the > > risks then it can opt to ban the technology. > > Except that getting killed in a traffic accident IS an accident (mostly :) > while having black clad Fed's storming into your house was _consciously_ > decided by them, because THEY have a problem with YOUR guns (?!)... In> I think the original point was that they MIGHT storm into your house In> by mistake (say, because they incorrectly accepted a informant's In> story). Therefore, it is truly a mistake. Well, not really. It would be severe case of neglegence which is not the same as a mistake. When you drive, you have to prove that you know what you are doing by getting a driver's licence. If you are a SWAT guy and some informer would come along and say "This and that person is a terrorist, I know for sure" and you go into that house and shoot everything that moves, well, doesn't sound much like an accident to me... Harka ___ Blue Wave/386 v2.30 [NR]

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RE: Reverse Engineer
by Bill Olson (EDP) 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >What do you mean by "reverse engineer?" I have heard this word several times >especially in the world of hacking, but... can someone tell me what it really >meant? Reverse engineering is process of 'mimicking' the specifications of another product by copying the 'abstract interface' of it. Example: I write a desktop application that greatly increases employee productivity, and it sells like hotcakes. Another company decides that I am gaining too much market share with my product and decides to reverse engineer the product so that they can create a competing product. They hire an engineer who takes the program and analyzes the input and output with a detailed script of test patterns (heaven forbid he might even decompile the program and snoop). By doing so, he now has a complete product specification minus the implementation (i.e. how it works). He then takes the product specification and gives it to another engineer (actually it's done through 'clean' liaisons) who then creates a product that does the exact same thing as mine--but with a different implementation process. Because the product copies the specification and not the implementation, it does not infringe on copyrights or patents.

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Don't "Rush" to Judgment
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:51 PM 7/19/96, Hallam-Baker wrote: >The people of the USA fortunately disagree. Its no coincidence that Limbaugh >has been unable to continue his tv show after his coverage of the OKC bombing. Gee, Phill, you might want to hire a new fact-checker, >From the latest issue I have of the Usenet Limbaugh Newsletter: "LIMBAUGH WATCH "July 16, 1996 - It's now 1336 days after Bill Clinton's election, but Rush is still on the air with 650 radio affiliates (with more than 20 million listeners weekly world-wide), 234 TV affiliates, and a newsletter with more than 500,000 subscribers." If you simply make up your facts, say so. --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: Responding to Pre-daw
by Ernest Hua 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > If you want to own guns then you should accept the fact that you risk > > having your head blown off in the middle of the night by a SWAT team. > > Just as the car has introduced the risk of being killed in a trafic > > accident the gun has introduced new risks. If society dosen't like the > > risks then it can opt to ban the technology. > > Except that getting killed in a traffic accident IS an accident (mostly :) > while having black clad Fed's storming into your house was _consciously_ > decided by them, because THEY have a problem with YOUR guns (?!)... I think the original point was that they MIGHT storm into your house by mistake (say, because they incorrectly accepted a informant's story). Therefore, it is truly a mistake. That said, it is still not justifiable for a SWAT team to FORCE a situation where they may necessarily be in physical danger, and therefore, are forced to respond with overwhelming force when the target may reasonably be innocent. Worse yet, the bureaucrats, whose asses are on the line when a tragic mistake occurs, will rarely, if ever, admit to any wrongdoing. They may be forced out, at worse; there may be a symbolic verbal lynching in front of the Congress, but that would be about it. If such a tragedy were to occur to me, and I were to survive, I would want the responsible PERSONS fully acknowledge their mistakes (and be properly punished). It is a travesty of justice to blame a no-name, faceless "system" as was done in the well-known recent cases (whether or not the target was ultimately found guilty of any misdeeds). Ern

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Re: Netscape 3.0B US version MD5 (was: Re: overseas PGPfone and Netscape)
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:27 AM 7/19/96 -0700, you wrote: >Roy M. Silvernail wrote: >> Anyone sniffing the link >> knows the filename from previous forms submissions, anyway. > You can't sniff the link, since the form submission and the > file download are via SSL. Presumably 40-bit RC4 for most users? :-) (It is still strong enought to reduce casual eavesdropping....) # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # http://www.idiom.com/~wcs # Confuse Authority!

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Firewall Penetration
by Jerome Tan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is it possible to penetrate a firewall?

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WORD Mail: A Part of Our Lives...
by Your_Pal＠IConNet.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It's our birthday. Come blow out the candles at <URL:http://www.word.com>. Love, The Word Staff

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RE: NSA response to key length report
by geeman＠best.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What I don't get is why the "report" is so semi-literate? The grammar errors are curious given the supposed source; it even makes me a little skeptical as to the source. My take on the bit about "high processing speeds -> I/O bound" isn't that they're talking IPC, but bus timing (??) I don't have the original paper handy and I don't recall what the proposed processor speeds are. "Total exhaust time" --- is this truly as meaningless as it sounds? ---------- From: Matt Blaze[SMTP:mab@crypto.com] Sent: Friday, July 19, 1996 2:10 PM To: Ernest Hua Cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Re: NSA response to key length report Ernest Hua <hua(a)xenon.chromatic.com> writes: > > It sounds like most of their "counter-arguments" are just stalling tactics. > > If you are a lawyer for someone you know is guilty, you still would choose > to find every reason in the book to attack the prosecution's case. Here we > have precisely the same effect with the NSA. Any tactical manuveur to keep > stalling the impending collapse of ITAR. > > (It is human .. er .. rather .. bureaucrat-esque to claim innocence in the > face of overwhelming evidence of guilt.) Particularly impressive is that our key length report was hardly above criticism from several angles, but their rebuttal managed somehow to avoid them. What I find most disturbing about this is that their report was provided secretly to policymakers in the administration and in Congress, without independent technical review that would have quickly exposed the fallacy of the arguments. I never would have seen it had several of the recipients not faxed it to me. This is the first hard evidence I've seen of NSA providing anything less than the highest quality technical analysis to other parts of the government. A non-specialist reader would be easily misled by the technically dense, but completely irrelevant, "rebuttal". It smacks of either ill-informed sloppiness, or, perhaps worse, self-serving disingenuous cynicism. Either conclusion is scary, and, to me in fact, quite surprising. -matt

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Re: MSNBC and cookies
by harka＠nycmetro.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-=> Quoting In:tcmay@got.net to Harka <=- In> patrons, the Web Awareness Program tracks user interests at Web sites. In> The WAP has already allowed the FBI and other intelligence agencies to In> check up on several people who appeared to have an unusual interest in In> the TWA 800 case. In> (Don't spend too much time in certain sites, friends.) Or be there 'anonymized'... (http://www.anonymizer.com) Harka ___ Blue Wave/386 v2.30 [NR]

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take the pledge
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Look, folks, we all know that 99% of what David Sternlight posts is garbage. Why don't we all pledge not to answer any of his posts, and then he'll go away. If necessary, someone can be appointed to post a weekly "the views expressed by David are junk and we are deliberately not replying to them directly" message. David has plenty of places to argue with the wind. We don't need to add this one. I'd like to ask people to publically pledge that they will not reply to David's messages. This is such a pledge. Perry

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