December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

cookie monster
by kickboxer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does anybody have any information on the "Cookie Monster" technology that Netscape and Microsoft are soon going to incorperate in their internet browsers? All I know is that they take cookies and "eat" (destroy) them.

1 0

Phone tapping in India
by Arun Mehta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"The Pioneer" headlined on August 6, 96: "CBI can tap at whim -- Agency has 6 bugging machines" (The CBI is effectively the Indian equivalent of the FBI) Apparently, these machines costing Rs. 7.5 million = $200,000 each, can each tap 7 phones in a 25-km radius, and were bought from a Hyderabad-based company, Fidelity Systems. Apparently, all that is needed to tap a phone is for the sleuths to dial the number through the machine, which then automatically starts and stops recording all conversations carried out with that number, as well the numbers dialled by the target. As it is, the law on wiretapping is draconian in India: on the occurrence of an emergency, or for "public safety", a designated government officer can direct that "any message or class of messages to or from any person or class of persons, or relating to any particular subject, brought for transmission by or transmitted or received by any telegraph, shall not be transmitted, or shall be intercepted or detained or shall be disclosed to the government." (This is from the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885(!), and applies to e-mail and BBSes as well). But with these new machines, even this designated officer can be bypassed. Under a box titled "Beware of blank calls", the newspaper mentions that when the sleuths ring your number to start tapping, you get a "blank" call (which one is quite used to here -- if that were enough evidence, the whole of India is being tapped!) What technology is this? If it indeed works this way, what is to prevent any large company or rich person from procuring the same hardware? Apparently, the purchase was authorised by former prime minister Rao, who is now complaining that his own phone is being tapped (serves him right). Arun Mehta Phone +91-11-6841172, 6849103 amehta(a)cpsr.org http://www.cerfnet.com/~amehta/ finger amehta(a)cerfnet.com for public key

2 1

New domains, Internic, etcetera
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Given previous discussion on here about Internic and their policies, the below URLs may be of interest: http://www.iiia.org/lists/newdom/ ftp://ietf.cnri.reston.va.us/internet-drafts/draft-postel-iana-itld-admin-01.txt The former is the list archive for a list discussing getting more internet domains & equivalents of Internic. -Allen

1 0

Oregen Vehicle Database on the Net
by jfricker＠vertexgroup.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Aaron Nabil has purchased the entire Oregen Vehicle Registration database ($220) and put it on the Web. Did some oregonian piss you off on the highway? snail flame their arse! http://www.spiritone.com/cgi-bin/plates

1 0

Re: Apple people on the li
by Vinnie Moscaritolo 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:15 PM 8/6/96 GMT, John Young wrote: >I'd like to hear Tim, too, in this Big Apple. RealAudio, perhaps. >What would you offer to set off Tim's simmering crypto-anarcho-volcano, >make it heard round the planet? I can't offer much that would satify Tim's needs, he would have to look elsewhere for that (I will restrain my comment about a size 12 boot) The Mac crtpyo workshop http://webstuff.apple.com/~opentpt/crypto.html is just that, a workshop: a guerilla effort focused at Mac developers who write code to start including crypto in thier code. I am also sponsering an effort among developers to do keychain management on the Mac, In a manner similar to the popular Internet Config. Developers get together, talk, hack, and go home with plans to write stuff. What I offer developers is much more important to me right now. people complain about email apps not having built in crypto, I am trying to do something about it. So are folks like Olivier Merenne who does SafeMail http://www.highware.com/highware/safemail/safemail.htm . these are the kinds of people that I want to help. The workshop us not a forum for the very people that Tim complains about, to rant about how great the Mac is or isnt. or why crypto is good or bad, I will leave that to the wired.coms and other non-tech forums out there. I agree with Tim, If you really want to hear tim talk, you cant ead his rants on cp or I have a better idea, maybe you can send him some bucks and he'll send you a cassette tape or something (I would suggest he makes a quicktime movie and put it on your webpage or do a webcast, but that requires you buy into the Apple world doesnt it, so maybe you can do the windoze equiv) nuff said, cp Vinnie Moscaritolo Apple Developer Tech Support http://www.vmeng.com/vinnie/ Fingerprint: 4FA3298150E404F2782501876EA2146A

1 0

Re: Censorship through proxy
by Arun Mehta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 18:12 06/08/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >At 4:23 PM 8/6/96, Joel McNamara wrote: >>http://www.singnet.com.sg/cache/sbareg.html > >Sing Sing (the country is now a prison, so...) is one of the states we >should think about targetting for "special attention." Yes, that would be great, and a trial run for the Big Prize, China. At the site mentioned above, they have a form to fill out, which only people from Singapore are supposed to respond to, which asks a lot of questions, including how much censorship users consider appropriate! If there is some way of making them think the response is coming from within Singapore when actually it isn't, maybe we could flood them with responses saying we want no censorship? Arun Mehta Phone +91-11-6841172, 6849103 amehta(a)cpsr.org http://www.cerfnet.com/~amehta/ finger amehta(a)cerfnet.com for public key

1 0

Re: e$: Watching the MacRubble Bounce
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:15 PM 8/7/96, Vinnie Moscaritolo wrote: >Man, > you guys have way, WAY to much time on your hands. CP is starting to sound >more like a bunch of bickering old ladies than the usual bickering group of >old ladies (uh I mean crytpo anarchists) . I would have responded and put a >round through the head of this discussion a few days ago, but my digest >feed to cp died a few days ago. "Put a round through the head of this discussion"? One of the most common conceits on this list is summarized by this comment: "I've said what I want to say, so now it's time for us to move on to other things." Or the charming equivalent: "You've heard my views, now can't we move on to some _real_ cryptography?" And then there's the old chestnut of claiming others have too much time on their hands. Learn to use the "delete" key for discussions you don't like. --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."

1 0

Re: Digital Telephony costs $2
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:00 PM 8/6/96 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote: >At 11:34 PM 8/5/96 -0800, you wrote: >>What is unclear, however, is WHY they "had to" build a card that couldn't do >>full-duplex. I mean, would there have been a problem implementing that? Or >>was this just another one of those stupid design decisions which could have >>been easily fixed if it had been realized in time? >2) DSPs tend to be really tight on resources, especially RAM, > which you need to do multiple programs at once. $5-10 DSPs are > especially tight. They're starting to come with mini operating systems. I wasn't aware that sound cards made appreciable use of DSP's. Unlike modems, which inherently must massage large amounts of signal to get the data, I assumed that sound cards were more like straight A/D/A systems. >>> It also has the advantage >>>that the data is being moved through your CPU, so encryption is >>>an easy add-on, rather than having one combined modem/voiceblaster >>>card which doesn't have any hooks for crypto or other processing. >>Well, I assume that if implemented as a new type of modem card, the >>processor can be used to do the data transfer. > >If you're doing the voice crunching and A/D conversion and telephony >all on the modem card, with everything tightly integrated >to fit in your tiny cache, why put in hooks for the processor to intervene? You'd put in a hook because it would be easily done, and to fail to do so would be a serious mistake. It could also be bypassed by a hardware switch, I suppose, or a software-controlled switch, to make processor intervention unnecessary. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

1 0

Re: Corporate e-mail policy
by James C. Sewell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:05 PM 8/5/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >At 5:34 PM 8/5/96, James C. Sewell wrote: > >This comparison breaks down completely. The police are not involved, so the >language of "probable cause" is inappropriate. Then use the language "good reason as defined by the company's policy". >Imagine Alice operates a courier service and owns and operates several >delievery vehicles . Here your example breaks down. Email is not like the courier company's vehicle at all. Bob didn't create the truck, he didn't think of it at any time as his, and he is not intending to use it to deal with someone else on a personal level. A better example would be that a letter sent through that courier company that is from Bob. If he pays for it to be delivered then he should have the right to privacy. If, however, the service is offered free to all employees, or if the paper/envelope/time was from the company then we would have the same problem... is it business-related, thus open to the whims of the employer, or is it private and off-limits? The whole question comes down to this: Is a collection of words written from an employee to another individual property of the company when it was written, edited, and transmitted by company equipment. The problem? There's no agreement on the answer to this. >(If anyone suggests that landlords cannot barge into tenant's apartments, >this is a different situation. For one thing, there are usually terms and >conditions spelled out in a contract about when and under what >circumstances a landlord may enter the premises.) There are often terms and conditions spelled out in employment contracts as well. I have had such contracts in every job I have held. They all went to the point of saying, in essence, anything I create on company time/equipment belongs to the company. >> Just remember, as was said, once you make a policy it becomes precedence >>and will stick with you forever... longer if it's a bad one. >> > >Alice the Courier Service is of course perfectly free to announce new >policies, so your point is incorrect. Granting that I meant precedent rather than prescedence I submit the following: precedent - n 1a. An act or instance used as an example in dealing with subsequent similar cases. 2. Custom or convention. They may change their policy at will, but the fact is that the decisions made today will "taint" or "shape" (depending on your point of view) the policies made tomorrow. Jim Sewell - jims(a)tansoft.com Tantalus Incorporated - Key West, FL

1 0

G7 Threat Alert from international Net-coalition (8/7/96)
by declan＠well.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 12:27:21 -0500 To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu From: declan(a)well.com (Declan McCullagh) Subject: G7 Threat Alert from international Net-coalition (8/7/96) Sender: owner-fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu [Redistribute widely. Add'l info at http://www.eff.org/~declan/global/ --Declan] ====================================================================== ALERT FROM A COALITION OF ONLINE CIVIL LIBERTIES ORGANISATIONS G7 THREAT TO ONLINE FREE SPEECH AND PRIVACY IN THE NAME OF COMBATING TERRORISM THE G7 IS PLANNING TO CURB THE FREE SPEECH RIGHTS AND PRIVACY OF INTERNET USERS 7 AUGUST 1996 PLEASE REDISTRIBUTE THIS DOCUMENT WIDELY WITH THIS BANNER INTACT REDISTRIBUTE ONLY IN APPROPRIATE PLACES & ONLY UNTIL 30 SEPTEMBER 96 ______________________________________________________________________ IN THIS ALERT: Summary Background What You Can Do Where Can I Learn More? Organisations ______________________________________________________________________ SUMMARY On July 30th the G7 group of nations met in Paris to discuss terrorism. Among other responses the G7 have endorsed a number of restrictions and controls on the Internet. These include the prohibition or censorship of sources that may contain "dangerous" information, restrictions on the electronic speech of unpopular political organisations, and the imposition of "key escrow" or other means of allowing governments to violate privately encrypted correspondence. This particularly serious threat, which originates from recent events such as a bombing at the Atlanta Olympics and the crash of TWA Flight 800, is another case in a long list of attempts to restrict freedom of speech in electronic networks, of which there are alarming examples in many countries including Australia, Belgium, China, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the USA and Vietnam, under a variety of pretexts ranging from "pornography" to "terrorism" and incorrect political opinion. * The "offensive" material being targeted is no different from similar material available in libraries and bookshops. *What is legal offline must also be legal online*. If material cannot be censored at the newsstand or the university library, it must not be censored in the online newsstands and libraries of our future. * Legislators and agency officials are pushing for speedy passage of censorious and privacy-harming laws, capitalising on fear of terrorism to exclude meaningful public input in the process and substance of these regulations. * Because the Internet is global, and every culture has its own rules about what is and is not permissible, the open nature of the Internet must be protected. No local jurisdiction should be allowed to impose its rules on the rest of the world. ______________________________________________________________________ BACKGROUND This alert is being issued by a coalition of online civil liberties organisations that support online privacy, freedom of speech and human rights. The organisations are listed at the end of this alert along with contact details. Since its inception the Internet has more than doubled in size every year. If this growth continues, more than one billion people will be using the Internet by the turn of the century. Each of these users can as easily publish material as they can read it. The Internet has the potential vastly to improve the workings of democratic government and to spread liberty across the globe. In light of recent bombings in the US and elsewhere, there are again calls to ban from the Internet information on explosives, as well as any other issues that can be related to "terrorism". Anti-terrorist hysteria has become the excuse for governmental attempts to circumvent online freedom of expression, guaranteed by constitutions, laws, and the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Information on how to make bombs, as well as other things that would be "banned", is widely available, often from the very governments pushing for censorship. Banning such publications from the Internet won't make it any less widely available. However it could become the tool for the censorship of any debate or opinion which happens to displease the authorities, or "pressure groups" that do not share those opinions. This is a pure and simple violation of free speech, no matter how it is disguised. Currently, communicating via the Internet is like sending messages on postcards. Anyone between the sender and receiver can read the message. Encryption (data scrambling) technology can be used to ensure the privacy of communications. It's like placing messages in envelopes. Although widely available the technology has not yet become a part of the Internet because of pressures from the "intelligence" and law enforcement agencies. Some countries, such as the United States, treat cryptography as if were a weapon, like missile or a machine gun, and ban its export. Other countries, such as France, have an outright ban on cryptography. Such policies threaten to undermine information infrastructure not only locally, but globally, leaving computer networks open to industrial espionage, and as we are seeing in recent news of electronic spying on the European Parliament, even governmental espionage, as well as criminal exploitation. What the G7 have called for is a way to read all messages sent by terrorists. The only way they can achieve this is to have some way of reading messages sent by anyone. What the G7 are demanding is that the privacy of all communications be compromised in the name of protection from terrorism. However, no real terrorist is going to use such a compromised system when uncrackable alternatives already exist and are freely available. Effectively G7 are demanding that we all compromise the privacy of our communications - for NO benefit. ______________________________________________________________________ WHAT YOU CAN DO 1. Be alert to what your government is doing or planning. Contact your law-makers and urge them to protect privacy and free speech on the Internet. Write to or call publications in your area and suggest that they report on any anti-freedom government action you hear about. 2. Join an online civil liberties organisation. See the end of this release for contact information for several such organisations. 3. If there isn't an online civil liberties organisation in your country, why not start one? Some suggestions on how to start an online civil liberties organisation are available at: http://pobox.com/~mbaker/creating.html and http://www.well.com/~jonl/bonfire.html ______________________________________________________________________ WHERE CAN I LEARN MORE? Further details on the G7 meeting and its effect on the Net can be found in a press release from the Global Internet Liberty Coalition: http://www.aclu.org/gilc/index1.html For a summary of efforts around the world to censor the Internet see the "10 May 96 Silencing the Net" report on the Human Rights Watch gopher site: gopher://gopher.igc.apc.org:5000/11/int/hrw/general For background on global efforts to muzzle the Net see these web sites: http://www.eff.org/~declan/global/ http://www.eff.org/~declan/fight-censorship/ http://www.io.org/~sherlock/doom/threat.html For information on global and international online freedom issues see the Electronic Frontier Foundation web site: http://www.eff.org/pub/Global/ Translations of this alert will be available as follows: Catalan: http://www.lander.es/~jlmartin/ French: pforsans(a)in-net.inba.fr Italian: http://www.nexus.it/alcei.html Spanish: http://www.lander.es/~jlmartin/ ________________________________________________________________________ ORGANISATIONS The following organisations have issued this alert: ALCEI - Electronic Frontiers Italy * http://www.nexus.it/alcei.html CITADEL - Electronic Frontier France * pforsans(a)in-net.inba.fr EFF-Austin (Texas) * http://www.eff-austin.org Electronic Frontier Foundation (USA) * http://www.eff.org Electronic Frontier Canada * http://www.efc.ca/ Electronic Frontier Ireland * http://www.efi.ie/ Electronic Frontiers Australia * http://www.efa.org.au Elektronisk Forpost Norge (Electronic Frontier Norway) * http://www.sn.no/~efn Fronteras Electronicas Espan~a (Electronic Frontiers Spain) * http://www.lander.es/~jlmartin/ HotWired * http://www.hotwired.com/ Human Rights Watch * http://www.hrw.org Reporters sans frontieres * http://www.calvacom.fr/rsf/ Press Contacts: Please choose an organisation above and visit their web site for contact information. ________________________________________________________________________ End Alert ========================================================================

1 0