December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: A case for 2560 bit keys
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:38 PM 7/9/96 -0400, Mark M. wrote: >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > >On Tue, 9 Jul 1996, jim bell wrote: > >> I don't think it's going to make a great deal of difference. We've "all" >> shifted to 1024-bit keys, even though it's unlikely anybody will have the >> resources to crack them for decades if not centuries. And the moment any >> government prosecutes anyone with information obtained by a decrypt of a >> 1024-bit key, the (then) stragglers will join the rest of us at 1500 or >> 2000+. The government knows this and there's nothing it can do about it, >> except possibly for GAK and it isn't making much headway in that. > >Wiretaps aren't always used as evidence. It's a very effective way to snoop >on people under suspect and get some information on where some incriminating >information may be, but they rarely produce hard evidence. I'm well aware of that. However, I think we will shortly be entering an era where wiretaps are useless, and it will not be considered worth the risk to do them illegally, because the probability of being able to decrypt them will be so low. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Minitel "saved" by hackers?
by Arun Mehta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm reviewing "Cultures of Internet: Virtual Spaces, Real Histories, Living Bodies" edited by Rob Shields. Chapter 2, "The Labyrinth of Minitel" by Andre Lemos tells a fascinating story, after you get past the verbiage in the introduction (sample: "If modernity refused the artificial, and deepened separations and dichotomies, postmodernity tries to surpass well-established dichotomies, not in the dialectical sense through sublimation and synthesis, but more in the direction of making a place for dialogical complexity"). This may be old hat to cypherpunks, but it seems that the system, conceived as a videotex system, was hacked: "At the end of 1981 the messaging software ... was pirated by some users planning to communicate between each other in real time. Through this detournement -- literally, a 'hijacking' was born the messagerie." These included games dialogs in real time and postings. Soon there was the "messagerie rose", the sex stuff -- which generated most of the revenues. As Claire Ancelin notes,"the public has not hesitated to manifest tastes often opposed to those foreseen by experts, this public has not hesitated to make a serious information tool into a frivolous communication tool." So, shocked by this, what does the government do? Being unable to distinguish between different kinds of messageries, the government put a 30% tax in 1989 on all, and raised it to 50% in 1991! No wonder the Internet is gaining rapid popularity in France. My questions: 1) are any of those 1981 French hackers on this list or known to people here? 2) I checked out "Minitel history" on Alta Vista, and since my French is very modest, downloaded http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december95/12kessler.html, The French Minitel: Is There Digital Life Outside of the "US ASCII" Internet? A Challenge or Convergence? by Jack Kessler, and http://tklab6.informatik.uni-bremen.de/nii/Conference/Abstracts/berne.html THE MINITEL SUCCESS by Dr. Michel Berne. Surprisingly, neither mentioned the 1981 hijack. Can anyone suggest better references? 3) Kessler raised a controversial point: "Centralized control -- its political as well as its social and economic manifestations -- is relatively untested. Some fans of the Internet even deny the possibility of centralized control in their version of "Cyberspace". Yet such control is the single greatest issue of networked information to many Asians. Minitel's approach, which is so different from the Internet's celebrated de-centralized structure, provides useful comparisons for both systems to consider. ... The question for networking's next generation is what will scale up for Asia? To meet this challenge, some "convergence" -- some pooling of talents and approach, combining the sophisticated with the simple, the academic with the commercial, the decentralized and chaotic with the centralized and bureaucratic and controlled -- might not be such a bad idea for both the Internet and the Minitel to pursue now." Do you know of any country in Asia or elsewhere favoring the Minitel "centralized and bureaucratic" model over the Internet?

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Privacy & Anonymous service providers?
by William Knowles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm working on a web page that would include a list of Internet providers that offer anonymous accounts, or a better degree of privacy not usually seen by regular providers. Below is a list I have been able to put together, I'm wondering if there is some that I'm missing. To avoid noise on the list, please reply via e-mail. Community Connexion http://www.c2.org Paranoia http://www.paranoia.com Panhandle Web Services http://www.shellback.com Data Haven Project http://www.dhp.com L0pht Heavy Industries http://www.l0pht.com Offshore Information Services http://offshore.com.ai/ Thanks in advance! William Knowles erehwon(a)c2.org -- William Knowles <erehwon(a)c2.org> PGP mail welcome & prefered / KeyID 1024/2C34BCF9 PGP Fingerprint 55 0C 78 3C C9 C4 44 DE 5A 3C B4 60 9C 00 FB BD Finger for public key --

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Re: MSoft crypto API's
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 9 Jul 96 at 20:34, jim bell wrote: [..] > Unexplained: What if the program Microsoft is asked to sign is not > intended for export? Presumably, NSA has no authority, then, and thus They could insist on only signing exportable software, and in theory use that as ITAR-relaxing leverage. Methinks it's a bad move to only have MS sign software... presumably they won't outright refuse to sign competitors software. It would be a conflict of interest for them not to... very usable as evidence against MS in an anti-trust suit. Independent CA's would be better. IMO, it gives a false sense of sucurity to even require crypto apps to be signed. A lot of folks would want a developer's kit (probably cost $$$) to get around that requirement... nice loophole, BTW, for those that can afford it. Or until somebody patches the code to ignore bad signatures of lack of them and releases the patch. Oh yeah... false sense of security in that if an app is signed, it must be secure. Will the new Windows wipe all temporary files and the swap file? Otherwise it makes a CryptoAPI meaningless. There'll be a problem with PGPlib as well... what if people want to compile their own version? Assuming MS will even sign it... that will be a quagmire. It's likely that if strong crypto is not implemented in the MS API (or it is done so in an insecure fashion), hardly anyone will use it. > presumably Microsoft shouldn't be able to refuse to sign anything they're > asked. Why? Assuming there were no export restrictions... if it's signed by MS, people will take it to mean that MS is vouching for it. If they sign a library that does 'naughty things' or is an incredibly incompetant implementation of an algorithm, it could turn out to be bad PR for them. (Hm... they could use this as an excuse to read competitor's source code.) [..] > Couldn't somebody IMPORT a piece of encryption software, have it signed by > Microsoft, then take the XOR of the signed and unsigned software and export > it? (It's not a tool capable of encryption...) Under that logic, I could do the same to a PGP distribution. I doubt the state department would look at it that way, or a jury for that matter. If you want to risk a few years in Federal Prison, go ahead... though chances are crypto-apps seem to make it out of the country anyway... --- 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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The Nature of the Cypherpunks Community and List
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:11 AM 7/10/96, Black Unicorn wrote: >I wasn't touting conspiracy theories, just making what I thought was an >amusing observation. > >My apologies to Mr. Duvos. I didn't at all mean to suggest he was in any >way responsible for this silliness, rather to point out the degree to >which the conversation has sunk into the sewer. Please, Unicorn, people here are talking about what interests them, as directly demonstrated by the generation of articles and followups. If they were _more_ interested in discussing the IETF, or SFS, or Triple DES, for example, they _would_. (And at times they do, of course. All things have their times, and threads ebb and flow.) And, Unicorn, I recall you yourself generating several *dozen* long rants regarding Jim Bell, just a few months ago... I suggest to all people who claim that the list has become "sewerpunks" that the best way to change the focus of the list is to write essays which generate responses (as you did, Unicorn, several days ago in your excellent "What remains to be done" piece). Leading by example, as opposed to "leading by kvetching." It happens that I like to write essays, more so than to just add simple one-line comments, and it happens that some of my essays have triggered a lot of messages (recently, for example, the "Net and Terrorism," and "Mind Control Drugs" threads were started by my articles). If people, on the whole, would rather discuss _other_ topics, then....then they _would_. A simple concept. Railing against the interests people have is rarely effective. And claiming, as some do, that the "purpose" of the list is to discuss primarily the latest advances in cryptology is mis-stating the nature of the list. While there is no point in debating formal charters, people discuss what they think is important. Natural corrective forces tend to stop the discussion from getting too far afield. I cannot imagine someone writing about UFOs getting much response, but that so many people have thoughts on the "Ritalin" issue (and the role of the government schools in supporting the doping of students) indicates it is within the envelope of topics Cypherpunks think important. Perry has several times threatened to form his own list, where "real cryptography" will be the only topic allowed. I urge him to follow his bliss. And other lists have had other foci, including the "Coderpunks" list, which *is* explicitly about cryptography only. (Is the Coderpunks list still active? I haven't heard anyone here mention it in a long time.) And sci.crypt, sci.crypt.research, and dozens of security- and PGP-related newsgroups are still flourishing. The Cypherpunks folks started meeting in the summer of 1992, and our focus was and remains on a wide spectrum of topics related to crypto-privacy, politics of cryptography, PGP, anonymous remailers, and a bunch of related themes. It *never* was a list devoted solely to pure cryptography; plenty of academic and professional forums already serve that market--IACR/Journal of Cryptology, Crypto, Eurocrypt, Asiacrypt, sci.crypt.*, various other mailing lists, etc. Our focus was always on the more "outre" aspects, the frontiers not often dealt with in the academic journals. (Not that we are better mathematicians, though many on this list are world-class, but because our political focus informs our choice of topics to pursue. That is, we were the first group to look seriously at anonymous remailers (in terms of implementing Chaum's ideas), the first to really fool around with digital cash in a real world environment outside the lab (MagicMoney), and we have explored black information markets, offshore data havens, and so on. I don't think any of the "academic" groups, distinguished as they are, have made the kinds of demonstrations we have in some areas. (Perry will probably disagree, calling us all a bunch of pikers and deadbeats, as he has in the past, and claiming that the only "good" Cypherpunks were Matt Blaze and Steve Bellovin, both of whom he claims were "driven off the list" by people like me. Well, people join and leave lists for all sorts of reasons. Regardless, our list is what it is. If Perry thinks we're such worthless leeches and incompetents, he should create a mailing list more to his liking. Seems fair to me.) It is hardly surprising, nor inappropriate, that we "stray" from core topics. After all, some topics are "worn out" at any given time. I don't think the 8th cycle of discussions about cracking DES or the 13th cycle of debates about NSA surveillance is any more useful than the discussions some object to (but, interestingly, some of the most vocal critics of threads being "off-topic" end up writing the greatest number of posts on that topic :-}). In any case, people can learn to use killfiles to filter out entire threads, or the posts of people they dislike reading. --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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Another bad idea
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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...). One interesting (and somewhat cypherpunk) matter in this is Great idea. Get some (possibly) innocent techie in an oppressive country thrown in jail or executed. Or perhaps s/he gets offended, contributing to the notion that all Westerners are evil perverts out to corrupt them. [..] > An extension of this for web sites, which I understand as possible > but difficult, would be to swap anyone from such a country trying to get access > to a technical web site to instead receive "subversive" information or > pictures. (The pornography mentioned above would probably be more effective in > picture format; other pictures might include information on human rights > abuses). Damn aggrevating for that user, and it could get him/her in trouble. On a wide-scale it could provoke responses from those countries. Imagine this list being bombarded with propaganda, or perhaps somebody here looking at an anti-censorship web page getting pro-censorship messages from religious fundamentalists. Or it could encourage them to use special firewalls which filter content and disallow graphics... (probably many US-based companies would be all-too-happy to sell them the software to do it), or even close themselves off from the Internet altogether, perhaps form separate, unconnected Family/Islamic/Chinese-values networks. 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: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by JR＠ns.cnb.uam.es 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>No. I am proposing that people who wish to voluntarily take a medicine >that they feel improves their condition be left the hell alone by >busybodies like you, Tim May, et al. > And I say I don't care what they do with their lifes as long as it doesn't affect mine. When someone smokes besides me and I have to breath the smoke, s/he's affecting my health. When someone takes antibiotics s/he doesn't need and selects resistant bacteria, that affects me. When someone forces me into doing something, that affects me. All I ask is a say when whatever they do may harm me. If that's being a busybody, I guess I am. Sorry if that upsets you. jr

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Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by JR＠ns.cnb.uam.es 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"mike(a)fionn.lbl.gov" wrote: >have to be able to perform well enuf in school to get good recs >& good marks in subjects that interest them. They didn't make this >system, but they do have to adapt to it somewhat. > Maybe they would be better off fighting against a system that alienates them than contributing to support it? Seems to me that's shooting their own foot. Now, I don't say they should do that. I understand there are many motivations, personalities, pressures, etc... and thet it's perfectly natural that one prefers to integrate in the whole than to be an alienate. But then, why do we worry about crypto here? Why not adapt to the system that the powers-that-be are imposing? Why do we not give up at all and let others make the system? I'd say that some level of inconformism still remains, from which I congratule. Yes, they (we) didn't make this system. But they (we) are making tomorrow's (and this one too). I agree with Perry, it's each one's choice how to live his/her life, but we all are contributing to how every other will be able to live, and we shouldn't forget that. jr

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Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by Clay Olbon II 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

First, a disclaimer: I think adults should be allowed to ingest whatever substances they desire, and parents should be allowed to raise their kids without undue interference from the government. Having said that, I think that the major issue with Ritalin is that parents are giving it to their children in significant percentages of the population. Since Ritalin is "medicine" and is prescribed by doctors, it is assumed to be safe. However, I would bet that many parents whose children are on daily doses of Ritalin would not think of drinking coffee or alcohol while pregnant or nursing. It is important to consider that any drug used over a period of time may have lasting (possibly negative) effects, and that these effects are multiplied when the drugs are taken by still-developing children. While it is crucial for an adult to be able to function and maintain a job, is it really as important for a kid to be able to sit still in school? 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: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:13 AM 7/10/96 -0400, Clay Olbon II wrote: >First, a disclaimer: I think adults should be allowed to ingest whatever >substances they desire, and parents should be allowed to raise their kids >without undue interference from the government. > >Having said that, I think that the major issue with Ritalin is that parents >are giving it to their children in significant percentages of the >population. My real problem with the whole thing is that Ritalin is being prescribed by government employees in most cases. It thus constitutes behavior modification of the population by the government which is certainly a human rights violation. It is arguably a First Amendment violation for the government to chemically prevent you from expressing yourself in certain ways. They should not even be allowed to advocate such treatment. Obviously, I have no problem if private individuals acting alone or in consultation with other private individuals decide to tank themselves up to the gills (as long as they buy their own drogas) but government "suggestions" for B-Mod should be very troubling to most of the readers of this list. Like religion, if you are crazy enough to ask your government what mind-altering drugs you should take, the government should say -- "No Comment. That's up to you." Government does not exist for the benefit of the governed. Public school Ritalin prescriptions do not exist for the benefit of the prescribees. Once there was a 7-year-old girl. The schools of Charlotte, NC diagnosed her as suffering from minimal brain dysfunction (MBD) and prescribed Ritalin. Instead, her parents sent her to a non-government school in another country where they did not employ Ritalin. They substituted teaching in its place. Within a few years, she could decline Latin nouns and everything. DCF "First God was the most important thing in men's lives so naturally men killed each other for God. Then the State became the most important thing in men's lives so naturally men killed each other for the State. Finally, Health became the most important thing in men's lives so naturally men killed each other for Health."

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