December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: A Libertine Question
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Alan Horowitz <alanh(a)infi.net> wrote: <Something about horseshit not being allowed on city streets> _________________ Punkers denounce arrests - Police nab 70 Montreal Gazette, July 30, 1996, Page A1 Punkers returned to Berri park last night to protest against the arrest of 70 of their own during an earlier demonstration in defiance of a city curfew on parks. More than 250 punkers and other marginalized youth gathered in the park around 12:30 a.m. yesterday to protest against a new bylaw that changed the designation of the site from a *public place* to a city park. The change means that the park closes between midnight and 6 a.m. and can't be used overnight by punkers and the homeless. The bylaw also gives police the power to ticket people for such infractions as walking on the grass or taking up more than one space on a park bench. _________________ Greg Broiles <gbroiles(a)netbox.com> wrote: >The regulation of ordinary social and economic activity is not a >"homelessness issue", it's a "freedom issue". If you admit that it can >legitimately be regulated but reassure yourself with your trust in the >discretion and good judgement of the regulators, your liberty is more a >matter of grace than of right. Have a nice day. Welcome to our model community. Please don't walk on the grass. Sit up straight. And remember to smile at all times. James

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Re: Dry Under the Waterfall
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:57 AM 7/30/96 -0700, David Kline wrote: > >A question though: What about the 3 million hard-working, reading, >middle-class folks who have been downsized into oblivion the last three >years alone? What about the tens of millions of readers who had the skills >needed for the industrial age, but not for the information age? I forgot to include a little anecdote about education in my original post. There seems to be a belief extant that education is something that you are completely dependent on others for. The masses will just sit there and melt away unless they are given a "program." "I need a program. Who's got a program? We need a program. All God's chillun's got programs." This is provably false. People can learn whatever they have to. (Within very broad intellectual limits.) If they *choose* not to learn (and you are not their parent or employer), it is a violation of their autonomy to browbeat them. You should leave them alone in their ignorance and, of course, not waste any money helping them since they have demonstrated that they aren't interested. An economist might say that those who reject education are making a choice. They are deciding that, for them, the value of today's leisure (L) plus today's income (I) is greater than the recreational value of education (R) plus the present value (PV) of future financial and psychic gains from education. L + I > R + PV In other words, all those people who were drinking beer or working construction while TM was going to college, graduate school, studying physics, and working for Intel were making the decision that *for them* the value of all that time off, plus current income, plus lack of skull sweat was greater than the chance of becoming a millionaire and retiring at 30-something. And they may well be right. In any case, we should honor their choices as we expect them to honor ours. To intervene in a big way in their lives (or in TMs) to challenge their choices is deeply wrong. We can't tell from the outside what the value of the education/work/leisure tradeoff is for an individual. All we can do is observe their actions. If you doubt that people can learn if they really have to... Greta spent her teens fleeing with he mother from Poland into the USSR on foot in advance of the Wermacht (religious differences). As the Wermacht receeded, so did Greta and her mother who preferred the West. In the course of events, they ended up in a Displaced Persons (DP) camp in Austria. There was an understandable reluctance on the part of the DP to be repatriated to areas in the Soviet Zone of Occupation. (Operation Keelhaul would later hand many thousands of DPs over to the commies.) England or America were *by far* the first choice. A rumor went around the camp that England was desperately short of glove makers. Some people in the camp knew how to make gloves. Within a few weeks, everyone in the camp knew how to make gloves. English lessons were also very popular. There were no "programs" to teach either of these skills. The happy ending to the story is that Greta and her mother secured a trip to New York City. In the 45 years since she's been here, Greta has neither returned to Europe or ever felt the desire to do so in spite of the superior European social welfare systems. When asked why, she says that Europe had its shot at her and she doesn't believe in tempting fate. The point is that people can learn if they have to and if they don't have to they don't have to. Life in America today is as easy as it's ever been in human history (at least since the invention of agriculture), so if people want to relax we should let them -- and not subsidize them. DCF

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Re: Photo IDs (Re: A Libertine Question)
by William Knowles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Wed, 31 Jul 1996, Duncan Frissell wrote: > At 02:56 AM 8/1/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: > >I can easily make my own photo I.D.s, or even order "fake I.D.s" from > >various mail-order outlets advertising in the Usual Places. If I show up at > >the airline with two photo I.D.s, one showing me to be "Security Officer > >Mickey Mouse" and the other showing me to be "Mickey Mouse, Internal > >Security Agency," will I be violating any laws? > > > >--Mickey Mouse (I just changed my name--if you don't like it, FAA, fuck off) > > They want "government-issued" photo ID. They haven't said which government > have they. Time to get my Barbados driver's license. What about one of those camouflage passports from Britsh Honduras that they sell in the back of the Robb Report for $300? I personally doubt that your basic $4.75 an hour airport security guard knows about that. 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: Game Theory and its Relevance to Cypherpunks
by Jerome Tan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In Iran, Chenghis Khan killed 30 millions out of 40 who previously lived there. Ghenghis Khan, not Chenghis Khan. It basically proves that people now are no better and no worse than people then. Really, there is no reason for things to be otherwise. I agree with you. Massacre done before is more worst than now. But there are a lot of moral people in those times.

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Re: G7T_err
by koontz＠netapp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

thanks

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RE: Violation or Protection? [OLYMPICS]
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:51 PM 7/31/96, Blanc Weber wrote: >>From: tcmay(a)got.net >> >>If the Centennial Park is a public place, not a private one, as I believe >>to be the case, then it seems to me a person is within his rights to turn >>down the offer to be inspected, frisked, interrogated, etc. >........................................................ > >But if the park was a private one, would it make any difference? Of course, which is why stores can have "bags will be searched" policies, restrictions about atire, and all sorts of other policies which are not allowed in public places. Disneyland is a private park, and has rules which are not the rules a public park can have. Put it this way, "My house, my rules." > I mean, either it is, or it isn't, a "right". When could it really be >okay to violate that definition. How are the law enforcers to do their >job if they can't intrude into your shopping bag, when it's a critical >National Emergency. This is what Denning is always referring to. One needs to distinguish "rights" vis-a-vis government actions, and the policies of private actors. The usual point about "freedom of speech" applies. E.g., Blanc has "freedom of speech," but not inside Microsoft. Not to lecture, but this frequent blurring of public vs. private areas, of government vs. corporate actions, of "property rights," is hurting the cause of liberty. --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: Photo IDs (Re: A Libertine Question)
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:09 PM 7/31/96, William Knowles wrote: > >What about one of those camouflage passports from Britsh Honduras >that they sell in the back of the Robb Report for $300? > >I personally doubt that your basic $4.75 an hour airport security >guard knows about that. All of the I.D. checks I have received have been at the ticket counter, to receive my boarding pass. The airport security guards have never asked me for any form of I.D., picture or otherwise. (As has been commented upon by many analysts, it's likely that the airline companies are enforcing the picture I.D. rule so as to stop the practice of people buying discount tickets and then selling them to others. Specifically, many corporations buy tickets in advance of knowing who the actual business traveller will be. The airlines are causing many who arrive at the ticket counter to "upgrade" to a full-fare ticket under their real name.) The "security" implications are a joke. More pablum fed to the gullible. --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: "And who shall guard the guardians?"
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:57 PM 7/31/96, Martin Minow wrote: >On Cyperpunks recently, Tim May wrote: > >>The Latin maxim "And who shall guard the guardians?" has some relevance to >>the headlong rush into converting the U.S. into even more of a security >>state than it is now. > >About 30 (thirty) years ago, I asked the same question at a large >computer conference. Then, a representative of the FBI was presenting >the NCIC computer system that was under development at the time. This >system gives local officials access to a national database of arrest >and conviction information. Abuses of the NCIC system are legend. I once received the home address (and other particulars) involving the famously-reclusive Thomas Pynchon. (The author of "Gravity's Rainbow," "V," "The Crying of Lot 49," and "Vineland" has not ever given a public interview, no photos are known to exist of him since his 1954 high school yearbook photo, and even his residence was unknown.) Pynchon, as I have noted before here, lived for almost 10 years about 3 miles from me; I may have passed him many times in local stores and on the street. Without knowing it, of course. A "fan" of his used the NCIC system, the data base into which all drivers and many others are placed, to locate him. At least this fan did not stalk and kill him, as has happened in the past with NCIC data base accesses. As we computerize the Surveillance State, the possibilities for abuse and for repression (if not by Clinton, then by others, or by Aldrich Ames-type situations) become astronomical. The "key registration" and "national I.D. card" proposals just square or cube the problem. --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: FPGAs and Heat (Re: Paranoid Musings)
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have really scrambled up the quotes from verious people. My appologies if you think I have misrepresented your viewpoints. >Bill Frantz said: >>If we assume a machine designed to break *every* message, NSA's response >>makes more sense. > At 4:07 PM 7/31/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >I don't believe that even _they_ would plan for something like this, unless >RC4 is a lot weaker than experts seem to think it is. One of NSA's traditional roles is to automatically scan communications and pull out the "interesting" stuff. To continue this role, they have to be able to decrypt the messages. I wouldn't, particularly when thinking in paranoid mode, assume they have given up on that role. At 2:14 AM 7/31/96 -0800, Jim McCoy wrote: >There are two types of FPGAs, one is based on anti-fuse technology which is >essentially a big complicated PROM, but the Xilinx FPGAs use SRAM to >configure the interconnections between logic elements. ... At 9:07 AM 7/31/96 -0800, jim bell wrote: >However, I think it very unlikely that an organization like the NSA would >bother with an FPGA to do a cracking engine. FPGA's have substantial >limitations, as you alluded to above, due to the need to make them "general >purpose." A non-field programmable Gate Array, a hard-wired chip, would >tend to optimize the interconnections on chip including minimizing the >delays, but not incur the full-custom costs such as the penalty for low volume. >Bill Frantz said: >>Now I have no problem with believing NSA would invest $7 million. However, >>$700 million makes me wonder. With FPGAs, there is a significant risk that >>people will change the crypto system and make the investment worthless. >>(Which, I guess, is why they prefer general purpose computers.) However, >>if they can get the equivalent of a few bits of key back by cryptanalysis, >>then they knock the costs down to entirely reasonable (for them) levels. I was assuming program only once chips, like the old burn-the-fuse PROMs. If you are ordering in quantity 700,000, for the RC4-40 engine, then you have no need to worry about the cost of small runs of Mask programmed chips. At 4:07 PM 7/31/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >I conclude, roughly speaking, that spending $100 M on a specialized machine >to break RC4 or any other modern cipher (that is breakable at the key >lengths used) would not even give them pause. If they are using Programmable-only-once Gate Arrays or Mask programmed ones, $700 million for a machine which will cost $7 million for a simple reprogramming might give them pause. Or at least make them consider if there is an alternative. If they are using easily reprogrammable arrays, then they have a general purpose computer specialized for certain types of parallel processing. If this machine cost $100 million, I agree they would probably build it. At 12:42 AM 7/31/96 -0700, David Wagner wrote: >Those estimates assume that a single FPGA can break RC4 in hours. I think >that is an extremely optimistic assumption, given the available public >information. But perhaps NSA is orders of magnitude ahead of us in chip >design (unlikely) or orders of magnitude ahead of us in RC4 cryptanalysis >(and we're back to paranoid musings). >> If we assume a machine designed to break *every* message, NSA's response >> makes more sense. I feel like I'm leaning over backwards to defend NSA's response, an extremely uncomfortable position (and I could crack my skull when I fall) :-). The most important issue is, what is NSA's state of the art. If we accept their $1000/FPGA chip, then they are indeed at the bleeding edge, and suffering from the associated low chip yields. If they are at the best cost-performance point for 2-3 years ago or whenever they started approving the export of RC4-40, then they are certainly subject to David Wagner's performance limits. A number of people have mentioned the heat problems. I, and I think also NSA, never said they couldn't be solved, but solving them involves engineering costs, whether it is to design cooling or distribution techniques. I think the bullets in their response were primarily to justify that $10 million NRE cost. (Getting to $10 million isn't hard on a government project.) At 2:14 AM 7/31/96 -0800, Jim McCoy wrote: >One of the speakers ... was the Product Line Manager from Xilinx and one of >the goodies he handed out was pre-release data sheets for the new XC6200 >series of FPGAs they are producing (the chips are already out in limited >quantities) so here is a little update on the state of the art in this area. > >The interconnection problem has also been solved in this chip series. ... >Given the relatively compact design in Ian and >Dave's paper and the new chips one might even fit two or four cracking >engines on a single FPGA. > >The newest line from >Xilinx, the XC6000 series has the capability to be reconfigured either >partially or completely from an on-chip cache in 5 ns. That is five >nanoseconds and you have a completely different piece of virtual hardware. If >the configuration is loaded through the slowest I/O port on the chip it only >takes 200 microseconds. Given this kind of hardware, the only reasonable assumption is that if NSA hasn't built a general purpose cracking engine, they will. >Even if the encryption algorithm is secret these >chips open up interesting posiblities for developing general-purpose >cryptanalysis machines. [Hmm, there may be a paper in there... "Evolving A >General-Purpose Cryptanalysis Engine"...] The idea of a genetic system to "learn" an unknown cypher system and then brute force crack it is indeed worth a paper, perhaps several. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | Cave ab homine unius lebri | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | [Beware the man of one | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | book] - Anonymous Latin | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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New Clinton Administration Ping Policy
by Ernest Hua 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Press release: CLINTON ADMINISTRATION FACT SHEET: U.S. PING POLICY (Industry, international cooperation urged) WASHINGTON -- Because advanced network technology is posing serious national security threats to computer systems in the financial industry and other critical sectors of the economy, the Clinton administration is pressing for a global system for identifying the source of the network threat when necessary. An July 30 fact sheet from the U.S. Department of Commerce elaborates the administration approach, called ping recovery escrow. While the United States sets no limit on the level of number of pings that networked systems may send within local area networks, it does restrict exports of ping packets outside LANs. The administration says it might relax those export controls if U.S. industry cooperates on building a ping recovery infrastructure. Following is the text of the fact sheet: (begin text) U.S. Cryptography Policy: Why We Are Taking the Current Approach We live in an age of electronic information. Network technology is transforming society, creating new businesses, new jobs and new careers. The technology also creates new opportunities for network- enabled systems in critical sectors of the economy such as financial, military, or government systems. As a result, these systems are extremely vulnerable to anonymous security breaches via standard Internet connections. The United States is the world leader in networking technology. U.S. firms continue to dominate the U.S. and global information systems market. Retaining this leadership is important to our economic security. The Clinton administration, through its National Information Infrastructure initiative, has long recognized that government has an important role as a facilitator and catalyst for the industry-led transformation of the way we use computer and communications technology to work and live. In particular, government has a strong interest in promoting the legitimate use of robust ping technology to support U.S. international competitiveness, foster global electronic commerce, prevent computer crime, and ensure that the information superhighway is a safe place to conduct one's business. At the same time, there is a growing recognition, affirmed most recently by Congressional studies of network security that computers everywhere are being attacked via the global Internet. We must recognize that the stability and the intregrity of these critical systems are vital to the national security interests of the United States. The importance of the U.S. information technology industry, the security stakes, and increasing congressional interest make it clear that there is an urgent need for clear policy and direction. The administration's proposed approach is broadly consistent with industry suggestions. We believe the right balance must be struck between network technology and national security. Effective immediately, the Department of State will transfer its export control authority over ping technology to the Department of Commerce. The procedures for one time review by the National Security Agency will remain in place. Controls on ping packets exports from local area networks will be relaxed immediately to certain non-critical sectors of the Internet, provided that packet lengths longer than 40 bits are properly escrowed for law enforcement recovery. We will continue discussions with industry, other members of the private sector, the Congress, and governments at all levels to arrive at a solution that promotes a future of safe networking in a safe society. (end text) -------- Just can't wait until 4/1 for this one. Ern

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