December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

International Net-Censorship Efforts Update
by Declan B. McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've just doubled the number of international net-censorship efforts that I track on my web page: <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~declan/zambia/>. Included are new updates reporting on Germany, France, Australia, Singapore, Canada, and China, among others. Please send me reports on countries I've missed! -Declan -------------------------------------------------------------------------- OTHER INTERNATIONAL NET-CENSOR EFFORTS By Declan McCullagh declan(a)well.com http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~declan/zambia/ France, China, Germany, Singapore, Jordan, the U.S., and many other countries are moving towards tighter control of the Internet. France and Germany want to see an international agreement of information controls emerge. Recently China required all of its estimated 40,000 Internet users to register at the local police station. This international crackdown marks a turning point in the development of the Net. Germany Germany cuts off access to holocaust revisionist web site (1/96) German Internet update, new laws planned (3/29/96) Los Angeles Times on German vs. U.S. netcensorship (3/13/96) German minister predicts collapse of governments (3/12/96) Germany's CompuServe net-censorship (12/31/95) France French government bans controversial book (1/96) French Jewish students sue ISPs for revisionist materials (3/14/96) French Jewish students sue ISPs for revisionist materials (3/15/96) France calls for "global Internet rules" (2/3/96) Europe Swiss statement on voice over Internet (3/16/96) Sweden proposes CDA-type law to control Internet (4/3/96) Italian net-censorship necessary, says Simon Wiesenthal Ctr (1/11/96) Turkey cracks down on Internet (2/18/96) Belgium bans non-escrowed encryption (1/10/96) Asia and Pacific Rim Singapore leader condemns Net (3/7/96) Indonesia attacks Net (3/11/96) Malaysia complains about uncensored Net, censors it (3/11/96) Singapore censors political, religious net.info (3/6/96) China China cracks down on Internet, "state security" cited (1/24/96) China's anti-cyberporn efforts (2/4/96) New York Times on China's net.crackdown (2/5/96) China's history of Net-regulation, cyberporn concerns (1/1/96) China requires Internet users to register with police (2/16/96) U.S. State Dept criticizes China's net.censorship (3/8/96) China applauds German net.censorship (1/11/96) Australia Australia considers net.legislation (2/13/96) New South Wales tries net-censorship (4/3/96) Australians upset by German Zundelcensorship (4/7/96) Canada Letter to Canadian minister (3/19/96) Canada needs to regulate Net, says Simon Wiesenthal Ctr (2/20/96) Middle East Persian Gulf States reluctant to move online (4/6/96) Jordan installs Internet screening facility (1/8/96) Saudi Arabian government says no unrestricted Net access (1/10/96) --------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: the cost of untracability?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:53 PM 4/7/96 PDT, Jim Gillogly wrote: > >jim bell <jimbell(a)pacifier.com> writes: >>FWIW, I think that there is no capital-gains-type tax on currency >>conversions. In other words, if I take dollars and buy yen today, and the > >I bounced this off a CPA, who said she would be very suprised if this is >really the case: in general the IRS considers increases in wealth to be >taxable, and unless there's a specific exclusion for currency transactions >that she doesn't know about, she suspects this is not the case. As a >conceptual counterexample she points out that you are responsible for any >profit you make from selling your car for more than you pay for it (but, >as you might expect, you don't get to take a loss if you sell it for less). That assumes that there is "profit" from exchanging currencies. On any given transaction, there is never any "profit." The only thing that might be called a profit is a difference in exchange rates, and that really isn't an increase in wealth at any point. Ask that CPA to look it up. This makes sense: If the currency in my pocket becomes less valuable due to inflation, I cannot deduct the loss. If it becomes MORE valuable due to deflation, I do not need to declare the difference as income. Currency transactions only generate "profits" from a change in conversion rates, which are simply differences in inflation rate between two currencies. >>interconvert rate changes and I convert back and make a "profit," that is >>not considered income. If that's the case, then ecash has an excellent >>precedent behind it to avoid any taxes on interest, especially if that >>interest is, in effect, paid by increasing the inherent value of the >>currency. > >My tame CPA also volunteered the information that the IRS is very interested >and concerned about how they're going to capture transaction information for >electronic transactions, and they do think it's in their bailiwick... she's >read some articles on it. The answer is, "They're not!" That's right, you heard me. It's uphill all the way for the IRS.

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Re: So, what crypto legislation (if any) is necessary?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The following is a comment of mine that Unicorn didn't respond to. My comments are included as well. I repeat this because I just saw a quote from Lysander Spooner which was appropriate under the circumstances. Those who read Unicorn's notes will notice that he frequently ignores embarrassing gaffes that he makes. [beginning of re-quote] At 08:56 PM 3/30/96 -0500, Black Unicorn wrote: >> Naturally, you won't address this >> problem, but the man-on-the-street is more realistic about his own privacy. >> How many times must I raise this issue? How many times do you ignore it? >> Face it, people are smarter than you give them credit for. They will simply >> not tolerate any more shit from the government. > >Funny, the latest primary has been one of the highest voter turn outs in >quite a while (except in Deleware). Considering those are the law-and-order >types who are most likely to invade personal liberities, I think its a >bit hard to make the case that the temper of the country is anything but >very pro-political process. Unicorn again displays his cluelessness. If people know that the system is sick, and they believe (even wrongly) that the only way to fix the problem is through "the political process," they can reasonably be expected to take one last, desperate effort at fixing the situation. That doesn't make anybody "pro-political-process," in fact they could be disgusted with the lack of progress that this system produces. They simply believe that they have no alternative. To put it in simple terms that even you should be able to understand, the fact that a drowning person moves his arms and legs around a lot doesn't mean that he LIKES to swim, it may merely mean that he likes drowning even less. [end of re-quote] Spooner's quote follows: "Doubtless the most miserable of men, under the most oppressive government in the world, if allowed the ballot, would use it, if they could see any chance of thereby meliorating their condition. But it would not, therefore, be a legitimate inference that the government itself, that crushes them, was one which they had voluntarily set up, or even consented to." Lysander Spooner

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Re: RC4 improvement idea
by nyap＠mailhub.garban.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> For one key in 256, you can tell what eight bits of the state box are. > For one key in 64000 you can tell what sixteen bits of the state box are, > and so on and so forth. > > Such keys are not weak. Any statistical correlation can be used to an attacker's advantage. Maybe your kid sister might not be able to figure it out, but someone else out there will.

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Re: the cost of untracability?
by Frank O. Trotter, III 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> FWIW, I think that there is no capital-gains-type tax on currency > conversions. In other words, if I take dollars and buy yen today, and the > interconvert rate changes and I convert back and make a "profit," that is > not considered income. If that's the case, then ecash has an excellent > precedent behind it to avoid any taxes on interest, especially if that > interest is, in effect, paid by increasing the inherent value of the currency. > > And most of the "interest" will simply be the avoided inflation loss that > would have otherwise occurred. Buying ecash may be equivalent to buying an > absolutely non-inflating currency that the government can't manipulate. > > Jim Bell > jimbell(a)pacifier.com > There is a tax event that occurs when one converts from one currency to another (be it capital or current). In your example the purchase of Yen and later sale may result in a gain if the Yen appreciates, or a loss if it drops. This is a taxable event. You actually refer to the method that was used in the 14th - 16th century in europo to pay interest when it was against church (really "Church") law. Early banks would do currency or metals-to-currency trades with people and imply a rent or interest rate. It was also the begining of the discount trade bill (I'll give you 90 cents today and get your dollar in a year from the person you sold those chairs to). I'll still cling to my Ecash is curency not a currency agument as well BTW. Frank O. Trotter, III - fotiii(a)crl.com www.marktwain.com - Fax: +1 314 569-4906 --------------------------------------------

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questions about bits and bytes
by Jack Mott 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This may be a bit of a no brainer, but everything I have read sorta skips over this point. a bit is 1 or 0 8 bits make up a byte (0-255) If I have a 5 byte key, does that make it a 40 bit key? The only reason this doesn't make sense to me is it seems useless to use 5 byte keys, yet that is what companies export since the government limits keys to 40 bits. -- thecrow(a)iconn.net "It can't rain all the time" RSA ENCRYPTION IN 3 LINES OF PERL --------------------------------------------------------- #!/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj $/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1 lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)

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Re: RC4 improvement idea
by nyap＠mailhub.garban.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I got a paper from the cryptography technical report server > "http://www.itribe.net/CTRS/" about a weak class of RC4 keys. The > report said that with some keys, it was possible to predict what some > parts of the State-Box would be. I was thinking of a way to fix this, > and had this idea: > > do some sort of hashing function with the key that derives a number > between 55 and 500 or something like that, then scrabmle the S-box that > many times. In this way, the chances that the State-Box will have any > correlation becomes extremely small. I think it is 1/125 to begin with > anyway, so this would make it around 1/(125*NumPasses). And since the > exact number of passes is a function of the key, the cracker won't know > how many times it went through. I tried this out and having 1000s of > passes doesn't effect the randomness of the state-box in any negative > way, possibly it makes it more random? If anyone has any thoughts I'd > love to hear them. The S-Boxes in DES were optimized to hinder Differential Cryptanalysis. I've seen no studies on the effectiveness of jumbling the S-Boxes during encryption -- even Biham and Shamir's book doesn't mention it -- but, I figure, if it helps, DES would probably already be doing it (unless of course the NSA thought the jumbling would make too good an algorithm).

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Re: the cost of untracability?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:30 AM 4/7/96 -0700, Wei Dai wrote: >I think you're right. There is no need for the issuer to pay explicit >interest. The easiest way to eliminate signorage would be to steadily >increase the value of each denomination of ecash. It would be kind of >like a mutual fund that doesn't pay dividends. In fact, if the ecash is >backed by a portfolio of investment securities and its value floats with >the value of the portfolio, then it would be almost exactly like a mutual >fund. > >Of course, as Jonathan Wienke pointed out, the IRS would not be very happy >about this. Then again, the IRS would not be happy with a lot of the >technology discussed on this list. Some more than others, huh? B^) FWIW, I think that there is no capital-gains-type tax on currency conversions. In other words, if I take dollars and buy yen today, and the interconvert rate changes and I convert back and make a "profit," that is not considered income. If that's the case, then ecash has an excellent precedent behind it to avoid any taxes on interest, especially if that interest is, in effect, paid by increasing the inherent value of the currency. And most of the "interest" will simply be the avoided inflation loss that would have otherwise occurred. Buying ecash may be equivalent to buying an absolutely non-inflating currency that the government can't manipulate. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: "Contempt" charges likely to increase
by ddfr＠best.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>It is exactly this attitude that we need to change. I presume you saw my >comment from a day ago, when I pointed out that before 1968, local phonecos >were doing wiretaps without any sort of court order, ... >I'm still waiting for somebody to show that the majority of crimes that are >investigated using subpoena power are "malum in se" crimes, as opposed to >"malum prohibitum" ones. > >Jim Bell Have you read _The Hacker Crackdown_? I think it is pretty clear that part of what was going on there involved law enforcement people deliberately punishing BBS operators for behavior that was wicked but not illegal--basically facilitating communications involved in committing crimes (credit card number theft and the like). The punishment consisted of seizing the computer and backups and holding it for a year or so as "evidence"--without ever filing charges. Conceivably the owner could have taken legal action--but doing so would give the law enforcement people an incentive to file charges, thus imposing large costs on the owner even if he was innocent of any crime and could eventually prove it. I suspect that a good deal of this goes on in most law enforcement systems, in one form or another. Charging and convicting people is costly, even if they are guilty--and there is often behavior that law enforcement people want to prevent that is not even illegal. On the other hand, there are lots of things police can do that impose sizable costs but do not require a conviction, such as arresting you, holding you in a cell overnight, but never actually trying you for anything. David Friedman David Friedman School of Law Santa Clara University

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Re: Australia's New South Wales tries net-censorship
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:40 PM 4/8/96 -0400, Declan B. McCullagh wrote: >Excerpts from internet.cypherpunks: 8-Apr-96 Re: Australia's New South >W.. by Mike Duvos(a)netcom.com >> I'd be interested to know if the courts have ever had a case in >> which a person has been declared to have been in "possession" of >> illegal material merely by virtue of its momentary presence in >> their cache, screen buffer, or usenet spool. >> >> There is a case now involving the University of Pittsburgh in >> which the Feds are attempting to prove that an individual was in >> possession of certain child porn images on his own PC during a >> brief span of time in 1993. > >For it to be a crime, I would presume that the courts would require >"guilty knowledge" of the act. (At least I hope they would!) But what is "guilty knowledge"? Let's suppose I'm web-browsing, and I come across something I shouldn't. If I'm aware of caching, I _know_ that the stuff is in my memory or HD or somewhere, and I _know_ it's illegal. Does that constitute "guilty knowledge"? What if a person is unaware of this caching? Does he lack the same guilty knowledge? See, this is the problem with the "guilty knowledge" idea: It really isn't knowledge which should be illegal, intent is vital. Part of the reason "our" system is so screwed up is that police can misrepresent our actions in this way. I have an easy solution for this: _NO_ information should be illegal. None. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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