December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

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

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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."

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STEGO GUNS
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C'punks, The following is from USA Today of last Friday: In a comprehensive study that may reshape the gun control debate, researchers have found that letting people carry concealed guns appears to sharply reduce killings, rapes and other violent crimes. The nationwide study [from the University of Chicago] found that violent crime fell after states made it legal to carry concealed handguns: * Homicide, down 8.5%. * Rape, down 5%. * Aggravated assault, down 7%. ... The drop isn't primarily caused by people defending themselves with guns, says John Lott, the study's author. Rather, criminals seem to alter their behavior to avoid coming into contact with a person who might have a gun. The official release of the study is scheduled for tomorrow. The study took two years and was peer reviewed. S a n d y ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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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

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Re: e$: Watching the MacRubble Bounce
by Vinnie Moscaritolo 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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. Since all this crap seems to center around a conversation between me and Tim , and really should have stayed that way, (Bob, consider this a rap on the nose with a rolled up newspaper) lets just clear up a few points nad then please move on to the next subject. By developer demand I am hosting a technical workshop for Mac Crypto developers <http://webstuff.apple.com/~opentpt/crypto.html> and asked Tim if he would like to speak, I though that since he has so much interesting stuff to say on the net that he might want to share it with some folks who write code for a living. Tim declined. no problem, normaly that would have ended it there, but Tim went on to state that I excluded him from the Mac Crypto list, I replied that I did no such thing and that I inherited the list (and hence any guilt I guess), He went on further deriding the Mac. I have been on the net long enough to no longer care about religious wars about "how long who's pull down menu was", BUT, I belive that Tim was a bit out of line with some of his comments about Mac Developers and Apple employees. I have a problem with that. We emailed a bit and came to the agreement that Tim would not be an appropriate speaker for a Mac technical workshop. fine, end of story,lets move on. But then Bob comes along and does his rant, the point was not so much to pick on Tim, which I belive he didnt name, but more to point out why the Mac is an important platform for crypto. Tim reacted and the pissing started. Lets just end it now. I am sure you all have better things to do. What I am concerned with is that in all the noise the following points are being lost in the fog of war. 1) there a a LOT of Mac clients on the Net. windoze might be popular in the corporate office, but Macs are still easier to configure (prove me wrong), and hence do have a place in this world. 1a) The Mac also has one of the best networking environment available for the desktop platform, OpenTransport IS very fast. And do me a favor dont complain about opendoc until youve tryed and write code with OLE. 2) Apple is nowhere near dead, anyone who says this is either smoking something harsh or lives in media painted world. The same people that say Macs are dead are the same uneducated liberal buttheads who write in the San Jose Merc Pravda about how a disarmed populus is a free(h)er one. 3) If you want strong crypto to get to the masses then you better start paying attention to genetic deversity or as I like to call it Watership Down syndrome, If you put all your crypto eggs in Bill's basket then don't complain when you find that the MicroSoft CAPI only supports escrowed keys. so lets all grow a little thicker skin and move on with it. while you all piss and moan, your rights are being stolen away, If you want to help crypto suceed then you have to care about Macs, just as much as windoze or Sun or Be or whatever platform. Back to work. Vinnie Moscaritolo ------------------ "friends come and friends go..but enemies accumulate." http://www.vmeng.com/vinnie/ Fingerprint: 4FA3298150E404F2782501876EA2146A

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F2 hash?
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does anyone have a descriptoin of the F2 hash? F2 is a secret hash from SecurityDynamics, and is used in their client software. (Its not the hash in the cards, but if anyone has a copy of that, it might be fun.) I'd be very interested in seeing source code in the public domain to try out a few hacks... Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

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Re:Wee Beasties on Mars [NOISE]
by mccoy＠communities.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > schryver(a)radiks.net: > > > > NBC News at Sunrise has just announced the discovery of alien life on the > > > planet Mars. The lifeform that became extinct more than 2 billion years > > > ago was found as a fossil in a meteor that originated from mars and landed > > > on earth. The fossil found was a primitive germ life form. > > NASA is holding a news conference today to discuss the find. I must > admit I am curious as to how they determined the meteor's origin. > Most material in the solar system is similar in composition. Using the same methods that geologists use to determine whether or not certain meteorites are from the moon, by chemical composition. Material from within the solar system actually has varied composition mainly determined by the distance of the body from the Sun (there are various theories as to why this is, an intro cosmology book will describe them all in detail), the actual percentages of various elements and compounds can be used to make a reasonable guess as to whether or not a particular meteorite was knocked off of a planet or moon to which we have sent a probe. For example, it is possible to buy fragments of "moon rocks" which are not actually samples returned from Apollo missions (which are all owned by the U.S. government) but are from meteorites which match the exact chemical and physical composition of the returned lunar samples. Such determinations are a lot easier for planets/moons which do not have active vulcanism or other events which significantly mix up the composition of the planet. At the news conference given this afternoon the fact that the meteorite was Martian in origin was probably the least controversial. It seems that exobiology may no longer be a field without a subject :) If the results are confirmed what I think will end up being the most interesting fallout of this will be in the creationism/evolution debate. It seems that life may have been independantly generated at multiple locations, barring a "space seed" debate flaring up again, and the "impossible odds" argument has become pretty weak... jim

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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

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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 ========================================================================

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RE: Internal Passports
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- From: John Deters <jad(a)dsddhc.com> Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 1996 3:35 PM To: James Bugden Subject: RE: Internal Passports At 11:39 AM 8/7/96 EST, jbudgen(a)alis.com wrote: > >I've seen the same problem in a department store in Ottawa. They would not >accept a Canadian Passport as identification for payment by cheque but would >accept various credit cards and similar devices. > >My conclusion was that they wanted something that would show my friend's credit >worthiness, not prove his identity. John Deters <jad(a)dsddhc.com> wrote: >On the whole, though, I have been finding that people ascribe all sorts of >paranoid evils to all sorts of organizations, when the ultimate truth >usually starts out more like a Dilbert cartoon. Internally, I can usually >spot the truly evil corporate deception practices. Externally, though, >people can only make guesses based on actions that they've become party to. >And who can blame someone for that? In the case cited above, I confirmed with the store's credit department that a Canadian passport was not considered a valid piece of ID. I suggested that this was due to credit concerns but they denied this. For obvious reasons, I did not believe them. My opinion is that a rule that stated "two pieces of ID that showed credit worthiness" was either too complicated or too unpalatable to use. Instead, the rule is "two pieces of ID" with the definition of ID tacitly restricted to items that indicate credit status. Either that, or Canadian passports are too easy to get forged in Ottawa. This "keep it simple stupid" approach showed itself this week when I attempted to order replacement cheques from my bank over the phone. I was told that they needed my signature, but a signed fax request would be sufficient. I remarked that it was trivial to apply a forged signature to a fax. The response from the person was - wait for it - that I would then have to come in and sign for it in person. It was impossible to convince them that this was not just a problem with my fax machine, but a problem in general. Eventually, I typed up a fax request in Word, pasted in my previously scanned signature, and sent this to the bank. This made them happy, but I might be changing banks soon. In the physical world, a big lock or a steel door can indicate good security. Most people can evaluate the strength of this type of security fairly well. Until we have good analogies for the equivalent types of digital security, we will continue to face real problems. James

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