December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Netscape
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 13:38 7/22/96, Tom Weinstein wrote: >Yes, and that's what we're trying to do. Get strong crypto in the hands >of as many people as we can. I can hardly wait until we get S/MIME in. What will Netscape do to about the 40bit RC-2 default and the signatures on the outside of the encryption envelope design flaws in S/MIME? I can't imagine Netscape releasing software that has these two properties. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred. Defeat the Demopublican Unity Party. Vote no on Clinton/Dole in November. Vote Harry Browne for President.

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Cookie Monster on a Diet
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I love telling Netscape to inform me before it accepts cookies. It's fun seeing who asks and whether they'll let you in The WSJ site won't let you in if you don't accept 2 cookies from it. It looks like they are an encrypted version of your username and password. Maybe Netscape could add a protocol which would let your instance of Netscape tell the server that you are on a diet and the Doctor told you not to accept any cookies. DCF

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Re: Responding to Pre-dawn Unannounced Ninja Raids
by Vinnie Moscaritolo 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> You pop a claymore in a building with any substance up to the level of >concrete re-enforced, and you _will_ be going with them. booby traping your home is a really stupid idea, I promise that your dog/child/spouse will be theone to accidentally set it off. besides for this you can get sued.. every hear the one about the case of a guy who constantly had his radar detector stolen out his his car, he decides to set a trap and rigs his next one with exposive. The perp steals the box, sells it. someclown powers it up on his dash board and BANG!.. well you'd figure justice is served, but the NYC judges awarded the mass of flesh damages and charged the guy with manslaughter. only in Amerika.. Vinnie Moscaritolo "Law - Samoan Style" http://www.vmeng.com/vinnie/ Fingerprint: 4FA3298150E404F2782501876EA2146A

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Re: Symantec's Your Eyes Only
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:17 AM 7/18/96 -0400, Clay Olbon II wrote: >My point was not that govts want to escrow communication keys, it was that >this is appearing more and more in commercial products marketed to >businesses. I run the computer system for a small office and I would >rather not see employee email - maybe I am just naive. However, there >obviously is a demand for this type of product. It must come from either a >lack of understanding of crypto, or a freeh-style authoritarianism on the >part of corporate executives. I wouldn't rule either one out. If it is >the latter, I'm not sure there is anything we can do. A larger organization feels that it has to maintain control over its systems by bureaucratic methods. Smaller organizations can figure out by direct experience whether someone is trustworthy or not. This is not restricted to encryption software, however. Large organizations attempt to determine what their employees should be doing with their time as well. This method of social organization works fine when mass producing large quantities of identical physical products. It is, however, incompatible with small-run, custom production of goods and services in which individual imagination and knowledge play a big part. In the current environment, management can't predict in advance what is the optimal thing that the "workers" should be doing at any given time. What we call "forcing contracts" (you do this, I pay you) are replaced in the modern age with "incentive contracts" (you produce a desired outcome, I pay you). This means that as time goes on many businesses approach closer and closer to the one-man firm model in which everyone buys and sells everyone else's services on the spot market. This didn't work in the past because of the friction of the transaction costs involved but those costs have declined dramatically. In this environment, others don't care how much time you surf the web or what you encrypt as long as your output is of the desired quality and quantity. Indeed, the average firm size has been declining in the US for 15 years or so. Companies may attempt to resist this dissolution and they may attempt to maintain traditional controls on their workers but if it is true that the Nets make it possible for the greater efficiencies of the one-man firm (no downtime paid by the buyer) to come into play, new small firms will eat the dinosaurs. DCF

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Re: Responding to Pre-dawn Unannounced Ninja Raids
by Hallam-Baker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Perry E. Metzger wrote: > > There are surely alternatives to the extremes of unilateral > > disarmament and an arms race? For instance, slowing down the > > race? > > Don't ask the question as though it is theoretical. Don't try > answering it as though your personal values have any bearing, because > there is indeed an objective answer here. Try doing some game theory > simulations and see how well unilateral disarmament works. Perry, just out of curiosity which type of game theory system are you refering to, the standard, single shot game thoery or the communicative model of Alker, Hurwitz and Rothkin? As a computer scientist I would have thought you would have been up on the idea of adding memory to game theory interactions. In such cases the optimal outcome can turn out very differently than in the standard model. Claiming certainty from theoretical results is in general not a good idea. Unless you can explain the relevance of the theory to a situation and explain why the assumptions in the model are justified you are not saying very much. The fact that the US and the USSR did manage to negotiate disarmament despite the standard game theory predictions shows that the system is somewhat more complex than Perry's ideological view. Briefly stated in Alker-Hurwitz a "memory" component was added into the model. The prisoner's dilema was repeated on many occasisons in a variety of contexts, including computer simulation and in practice. In practice the prisoner's chose the joint optimal solution the majority of the time. >Oh, and don't give us stuff about how humans are above evolutionary >pressures or nonsense like that, because we aren't any more above such >pressures than we are above the laws of physics. The "laws" of social scienst are not the "laws of physics". The "laws of physics" aren't so constant either. Theoretical results should inform the intellect not serve as a substitute for it. If you apply genetic programming techniques to the system the strategy that evolves is typically a cooperative one. The facts is that the theory applied in an evolutionary context disproves Perry. Phill

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Re: Length of passphrase beneficial?
by William Ehrendreich 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I disagreed with that assesment. Breaking into a home is easy. > > Adam > > > > -- > "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." Yes and ultimately more obvious. There are about 10 zillion ways that someone could hide a pass phrase. Bits are bits. Under the assumption that breaking into a home may be easy, you have to look at the possibility that this is what the person is looking for. You know, "Big brother broke into my house to subvert my freedoms", ploy. What a great way to get your self on Date Line.

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Re: Responding to Pre-dawn Unannounced Ninja Raids
by Vinnie Moscaritolo 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 19 Jul 1996 19:51:39 Hallam-Baker wrote >It is no coincidence that the Tree of Liberty needs to be watered with >blood on occasion. As a native Bostonian, I have to tell you that the original "Tree of Liberty" was cut down many many years ago and in it's place now stands a storefront, if you look up onto the second floor you will notice a frieze of a tree. This is all that stands to commemerate the "Tree of Liberty". oh btw that storefront is in the comabat zone of boston, and the last time I checked that store was called either the "Naked I"or the "Pussycat lounge", can you guess what they sell? It's been a while since I've been in that neighborhood, so I dont remeber the street corner, ask bob hettinga if you want to know where. Speaking of Bob Hettinga put it to words best, told me that standing on the Concord bridge he could see the colors of the American flag eminating outwards to the rest of the country. Yup this is where it all started.. Vinnie Moscaritolo "Law - Samoan Style" http://www.vmeng.com/vinnie/ Fingerprint: 4FA3298150E404F2782501876EA2146A

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Re: Digital Watermarks for copy protection in recent Billboard
by Alex F 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. > Easy enough. > 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. This is probably yet another case of people not thinking ahead. As usual. People buying CDs at a garage sale & getting arrested for piracy. Wonderful. > > Other issues: what if an eavesdropper steals the music or video? It's If they steal it, well, who cares? If there is something worked out so that they could trace STOLEN (not traded or sold) CDs then fine, arrest them. Do you really think though that anyone would waste so much time over $8? > 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. Probably not done that way. My guess is that the disk ID is assigned to the disk at the time of manufacturing. At the point of purchase the customer is forced to give name, address, ID, whatever. This is then stored in a database along with the disc ID (serial num) which is prolly printed in the ISBN number or cross referenced with that in a national database or something, or just printed right on the disc. Anyway, a number is given to you from the CD, and not vice versa, I would imagine. > > 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. Actually, this would be quite easy. The "watermark" would be a signal that plays inband, but out of our hearing range during the entire CD. The human ear can only hear in the 20-20,000 (Hz, KHZ?, whatever) range. It would be trivial to add a digital ID signal at, say 30,000 or 15 or something like that. This could then be decoded, if need be. This seems the easiest and most efficient way. This could also be defeated with a lot of $$ (and/or a LOT of HD space). If the frequecy is known (it can be found out) it can easily be run through recording studio eqipment that can very effectively isolate the frequency and cut it out. If you have a LOT of HDD space (digital audio at 2 stereo tracks, not sure of the sampling rate or bit resolution, takes about 20MB of HDD space per minute (2 tracks, good sampling and bit rate) ) you could probably find the freq. fairly easily by isolation and just edit it out, and write the new stuff to a CD-R. If the signal is purely digital, I would imagine that it might be even easier that if it were an analog signal (?). Someone w/ good equipment (Digital Labs' stuff, or SAW (Software Audio Workshop) would be able to do this w/o much problem. The question is is the price/effort worth it? In quantity maybe. On an individual basis, only if you already happen to have the erquipment. I have a suspiscion that this type of thing will not really come to any kind of fruition due to not only the ability to defeat this, but mainly due to things like buying at a garage sale, etc. If it did, only MASS market piraters would be investigated. (Another example of a law creating it's own violators. Don't make the law, there won't be mass piratingof "clean CDs" Alex F =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Alex F alexf(a)iss.net Marketing Specialist Internet Security Systems =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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Flaws of Thinkers (Jefferson, Rand, Nietzsche, Voltaire, etc.)
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:54 PM 7/22/96, hallam(a)Etna.ai.mit.edu wrote: >No, the argument is over whether a person should live by the ideals he >preaches. I have more respect fot the likes of Kant and Russell who made >rather more of an effort than Jefferson. > >The observation that history is made by rich people and written by rich >people is not a new one. Until this century there were few countries >where politics were open to anyone but the very wealthy. In the USA >that is still by and large the case. > >Rather than attempting to excuse Jefferson it would be better to >accept that not everything he said was valid when he said it and >to try to engage ones brain rather than using his words as slogans. I agree with much of what Phill says here. His original "throwaway line" about Jefferson's slave-owning did not fully make this point. (As I see it, this is a common danger with throwaway lines, which often look like dismissive insults.) The flaws of leaders and thinkers are well-known. From from what I've read, Voltaire was a real cad. And my favorite aphorist/philosopher, Nietzsche, had his share of bigoted views. And he was apparently not at all a "superman" specimen. But who cares? The ideas of a person are somewhat separable from their quirks as persons. If we demand perfection from all thinkers--assuming perfection could ever be defined and agreed upon--we'd likely have far fewer thinkers to study. (Phill also mentions Rand. She was about as deeply flawed an individual, especially in terms of treatment of her supporters, as one can imagine. She, for example, insisted that her followers smoke, as smoking is (she claimed) proof of Man's dominance over nature. However, many of her ideas were very influential.) I rather suspect the U.S. would have had a more consistent moral stance if a condition for a state joining the Union had been the freeing of all slaves. Of course, giving womyn the vote would have been too much to ask for. (And there were many violations of the rights of Indians, including land-use rights and treaties, which did little to polish the reputation of the U.S. for adhering to its own stated principles.) --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: INFO: Submit your testimony to Congress for hearings on July 25!
by geeman＠best.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Simon Spero says: "paranoid rants have their place; however, if they keep bursting into cypherpunks without knocking first, there could be an accident. Lithium.... it's not just for watch batteries anymore." Seems to apply here, no? ---------- From: initialization[SMTP:initialization@nemesis.meaning.com] Sent: Sunday, July 21, 1996 6:23 PM To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Re: INFO: Submit your testimony to Congress for hearings on July 25! vtw(a)vtw.org writes: > UPCOMING HEARING INFORMATION http://www.crypto.com/events/ after that. ... etc etc etc etc > This is an amazing time for Big Brother, who, in the person of VTW, is gathering the names and addresses of all who oppose it, one by one, under the Rube of "testimony" and "democracy"? What do you think will happen next? You think Big Brother is going to hear what you say and say "oh my god they are right!" and then turn around and mend its ways? NO! You will be marked as a trouble maker in your file, and rounded up or worse, when the time comes! They have duped many into participating, and others, prominent ones like Blaze, Diffie, Schneier, Zimmermann, have been blackmailed into working for them. Turn your back on this sham "democracy". Fuck their "hearings". And demand truth from "VTW". VTW=NSA+FBI front.

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