December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

European Censorship Proposals
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> _________________________________________________________________ > Centura > _________________________________________________________________ > EURO-COMMISSION TO TACKLE PORN ON INTERNET > __________________________________________________________________________ > Copyright &copy 1996 Nando.net > Copyright &copy 1996 Reuter Information Service > BRUSSELS (Sep 24, 1996 08:06 a.m. EDT) - The European Commission, > faced with calls to clamp down on use of the Internet to transmit > pornography following a Belgian paedophilia scandal, will take a first > step in October towards seeing how it can be done. > But Culture Commissioner Marcelino Oreja, who intends to unveil a > discussion paper on new media services on October 9, says that the > process will be a lengthy one in consultation with all concerned and > that at the end of the day a world solution could be needed. [...] > "We have to find mechanisms to see first how we can find the author > who includes this pornography in the Internet and second how we can > encrypt the content of these messages," he said. > The call for a European-wide solution to pornography and paedophilia > on the Internet is expected to be a central theme for EU justice > ministers in Dublin on Thursday and Friday when they discuss ways of > fighting the child sex trade. > EU culture ministers could also discuss it at their own meeting in the > Irish town of Galway on Wednesday. > The discovery of four murdered girls in Belgium and a child murder, > prostitution and pornography ring has focused the world's attention on > the child sex trade and fuelled calls for a clamp down on the > Internet, which at the moment is little policed and where anonymity is > assured. > Oreja said among the options raised in the discussion paper were the > possibility of encrypting access so that only those who pay could see > the material, or including a special computer chip -- commonly known > as a V-chip -- to screen against pornographic content. The obvious solution to this is someone in an unregulated country getting a couple chips or programs for the de-encryption, then making the images/text/whatever freely available. The major hurdles for this are A. digital watermarking to see which chip(s) are used then block their ability to be used (a reason to get more than one chip/program so as to compare to filter out the watermarking - some techniques for watermarking will survive this, but most won't) and B. copyright laws in the countries which do not enforce such provisions. [...] > Oreja, aware that Internet servers can simply move to a neighbouring > country to get round any restrictions agreed at European level, said > problems with satellite television had shown that national and > European regulations were not enough. > "We know that national regulation is not enough, that European > regulation is not enough...We may need to have a world regulation of > these matters, but let's go step by step. We do not have a European > regulation," he said. If they seriously think this will happen, they need to take another look at the international situation. > The idea of a professional code of ethics in which the media would > regulate themselves is acknowledgment that European regulation of the > Internet could face opposition on freedom of information grounds. > "I think everything can not be said. I think that violence can have > its limits, I think that pornography can have its limits. I am in > favour of that, but it can be that the sector itself prepares a code > of ethics," he said. That's funny, if I were in favor of any censorship it would be of government propaganda such as this.... they seem to be calling for violence on a rather frequent basis. > He said such a code could help get round wide differences between EU > member countries, who have widely differing laws on what can be > considered pornography and eroticism. > Copyright &copy 1996 Nando.net

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Re: The Petaflops Boondoggle Computer (was PET_ard)
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:16 PM 9/29/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >At 11:50 AM -0800 9/29/96, jim bell wrote: >>At 10:00 AM 9/29/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >>>(Hoist by their own petards indeed! Don't tell our Russian what petard >>>means.) >> >>Uh, wasn't that the name of the bald captain on Star Trek Next Generation? >>You know, "Jean-Luc Petard"? > >Picard. I forgot the smiley B^) >> The succeeding >>factor-of-1000 improvement appears (if the item above is accurate) to have >>taken 24 years to accomplish, so it's hard to imagine that the next factor >>of 1000 will arrive appreciably sooner than year 2020. > >I agree. (Actually, it was a factor of 4000 since it was only 64 processors, but who's counting?) Anyway, this reminds me: What was Moore's law? Performance doubling every 18 months as I recall? How does this stack up? Well, 24 years is 16 times 18 months, so the increase in performance should have been 2**16, or 64K. Off by a factor of 16, which is fairly close, as exponential expansions go. If I were inclined to make the numbers fit the theory, I would argue that the design for the Illiac IV was probably based on SSI IC technology that was defined in 1966 or so, which would provide the extra 6 years (four doubling periods) which account for the "error." One of the advantages of modern CAD technology is that chips can go from foundry to a working computer far faster. A few months ago, there was an item about how IBM had demonstrated its ability to produce 0.08 um silicon chips, with a gate delay (don't recall how loaded this was...) of about 24 picoseconds. Such a process could probably be used to produce a single chip that can do about 1 giga operations per second, assuming it was pipelined adequately. But even that's "only" a teraflop with 1000 such chips...It makes me wonder what kind of a rabbit they're gonna pull out of the hat to produce a petaflop. >By the way, I knew some of the folks who worked on parts of the >Illiac-IV, which was still limping along as late as the late 70s (maybe >later). I think it was turned off in about 1982 or 1983. I did a web-search on its history a few months ago. >>Yet a look at Intel's pricing for Pentiums shows that they sell a 120-MHz >>chip for about $135, while they sell a 200-megahertz version for around $550 >>or so. Arithmetic suggests that a person would be far better off with a >>4-120-MHz-processor Pentium (cumulative clock rate 480 MHz) than a single, >>200-megahertz version. (admittedly, peripheral logic costs will adjust this >>a little.) Of course, this would also leave Intel flat on its ass >>attempting to compete with AMD, Cyrix, etc, because a somewhat higher speed >>per cpu is just about the only advantage they have. > >Intel is having no problem at all competing with AMD and Cyrix! Both of >them are struggling---AMD just announced a layoff, and Cyrix is facing >financial troubles. Neither are able to make competitive parts, for reasons >I won't go into here, and neither are making the money they'll need to >compete in the future with Intel. (Intel has half a dozen billion-dollar >wafer fabs, running with extraordinarily high yields--so my sources tell me >:-})--and the more money they make, the more factories they build, the more >they learn about how to make 0.35 and 0.25 micron chips, etc.) True, but the world would be FAR better off if the architecture for the commonly-used PC could be extended to allow multiple processors. Yes, I'm aware of the inefficiency issues associated with multiple processors, but I think the dramatic cost reductions associated with the use of larger numbers of cheaper CPU's would much more than compensate for them. As I see it, there are inefficiencies associated with both making a single CPU do multiple tasks, as well as making multiple CPU's do a single task. The former is one of the reasons that PC's have pretty much mopped the floor with mainframes, because the PC's were not "unfairly" hobbled with having to implement complicated time-sharing software. The latter is the classic problem which kept prople from going to massively parallel machines from scalars. However, I don't think that most of the problems a typical PC accomplishes are those "hard to divide" problems that resist parallel implementation. Rather, a multiprocessor PC would assign larger tasks (programs) to individual CPU's and not try to break up a program. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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More on European Censorship
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> _________________________________________________________________ > webslingerZ > _________________________________________________________________ > EU TO ACT AGAINST INTERNET CHILD EXPLOITATION > __________________________________________________________________________ > Copyright &copy 1996 Nando.net > Copyright &copy 1996 Reuter Information Service > BRUSSELS (Sep 29, 1996 00:12 a.m. EDT) - European Union > telecommunications ministers, reacting to a child-sex scandal in > Belgium, pledged Friday to consider ways to keep illegal material that > could harm children off the Internet. > Belgian Telecommunications Minister Elio Di Rupo announced that his > government planned to implement new measures requiring Internet access > providers to monitor and report material featuring sexual abuse or > exploitation of children. > He asked his colleagues to join forces with him. > "Today a big legal vacuum exists, for legislation is falling behind > technological evolution," he said, according to a speaking note that > was distributed to reporters. > "There is a big risk that it will create an enormous market of > children fed on by criminals." Market? Wider distribution of such pictures will lead to _decreased_ production, for the simple reason that the producers won't be able to go to courts for stopping copyright violations, so they can't make any money. > The ministers agreed to expand a working party that has already been > set up to look at the question of illegal material on the Internet and > asked it to come up with concrete proposals before they meet again in > November. > The group will include representatives of the 15 EU telecoms > ministries and of companies that provide access to online services or > prepare the content, a statement adopted by the ministers said. [...] > But some of the telecoms ministers, including those from Britain and > Sweden, warned that the EU could not wander into censorship and had to > focus on fighting truly illegal material. > British Science and Technology Minister Ian Taylor advocated a > self-regulatory system that was announced in his country earlier this > week. > Two British trade associations announced that an independent body, the > Safety Net Foundation, would be established to rate material carried > on the Internet and to set up a "hotline" service to receive > complaints about illegal material. > They said Internet service providers would also adopt policies for > removing illegal material and reducing the scope for subscribers to > act with untraceable anonymity. I suspect that any anonymous remailers operating in Britain may want to look out for ISP interruptions... > Swedish Communications Minister Ines Uusmann told reporters that EU > countries needed to exchange ideas and to speak with one voice in > tackling a global problem. [...] > Copyright &copy 1996 Nando.net

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Re: Utah as a Religious Police State
by Ryan Russell/SYBASE 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hmm...never heard that one before. Care to produce a reference? (Or am I supposed to be ignoring this guy when he makes ridiculous claims?) Ryan ---------- Previous Message ---------- To: cypherpunks cc: From: dlv @ bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM) @ smtp Date: 09/29/96 05:54:09 PM Subject: Re: Utah as a Religious Police State Ryan Russell/SYBASE writes: > I guess that depends on your definition of liberty. The Mormons > originally moved there to have a place to practice their religion, > and have freedom from persecution. I suppose one could extend that > to wanting a place to have the freedom to have a set of rules consistant > with their beliefs. Should that include freedom from interferance from > folks such as yourself who want to change their rules, even though > you're not presently effected? It's worth noting that one of Utah mormons favorite pastimes was to ambush the settlers heading for California, kill them all, and take their property. However the mormons were dealt with much less severely than the local Indians who tried the same tricks. Pity. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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Re: Utah as a Religious Police State
by Ryan Russell/SYBASE 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yes, my mail gateway sometimes does rude things to the mail headers...Just ignore it :) Anyway, you mave have a clear cut line between who gets to control kids, but I think it may not be so clear as you make it out to be. Why should you be able to say what times you kids have to come in? Why should you be able to limit their civil liberties? Because you are the parent? Why should that be any better reason than because they're the government? Is it your God-given right as a parent? (Don't answer that, I don't even want to start on religion with this crowd..) Conversly, if you think a parent has the right, why shouldn't a group of parents (who agree) be able to set some rules? Why not a town? These were originally nearly all-Mormon areas...Why shouldn't they be allowed their rules just because a non-Mormon chooses to move in? One might argue "if you don't like the rules, don't live there." I suppose you aren't familiar with the rules for participating in church activities, or attending BYU. The rules are generally very simple, live by the Mormon standards, or don't participate. So, that means that students at BYU can't smoke, drink, etc... So is the line between "public" and "private"? i.e. if BYU were an even partially publically funded school, they shouldn't be allowed to have any but the lowest-common-denominator rules? That sounds overly arbitrary to me, and doesn't appeal to the spark on libertarian I have :) Seriously, since laws are all based on a publically held set of morals, why shouldn't some places be able to have a higher set of standards than others. I think that's part of the arguement for state's rights. After all, we allow a lower than normal set of standards (Nevada.) Ryan ---------- Previous Message ---------- To: cypherpunks cc: cypherpunks From: tcmay @ got.net ("Timothy C. May") @ smtp Date: 09/29/96 01:17:46 PM Subject: Re: Utah as a Religious Police State (I received this message, with "cypherpunks(a)sybase.com" as well as "tcmay(a)sybase.com" (???) cc:ed, so I assume this message was intended for the Cypherpunks list, with some sybase domain name weirdness, or reflector, going on.) At 12:30 PM -0400 9/29/96, Ryan Russell/SYBASE wrote: >I guess that depends on your definition of liberty. The Mormons >originally moved there to have a place to practice their religion, >and have freedom from persecution. I suppose one could extend that >to wanting a place to have the freedom to have a set of rules consistant >with their beliefs. Should that include freedom from interferance from >folks such as yourself who want to change their rules, even though >you're not presently effected? Well, if Utah can rig a way to _secede_ from the Union, your arguments would make more sense. But so long as they are part of these United States, their religious beliefs about when children should be at home cannot supersede basic liberties. (There are some thorny issues about whether _minors_ have full civil rights. But I certainly know that _my_ civil rights are being affected when my children are not allowed on the streets after some hour. If my child is out, this is my problem. I neither want cops to stop-and-detain my children, nor do I want my tax monies to be used to control the behavior of other people's children. Providing no crimes are being committed, curfews for the sake of controlling the behavior of children are no more just than would be a bunch of related behavior control laws, e.g., a ban on comic books, a mandate that all children join after-school youth leagues, etc.) As for "changing their rules," you're missing the point. There are presumably many in Utah who believe as I do (maybe even some Mormons). Those who are living in Utah, as renters, owners, whatever, should not be bound by unconstitutional rules, no matter how many Mormon Elders favor them. Unless the Mormons own _all_ of the property (and maybe not even then, as renters have civil rights), they cannot impose their own notions of morality on the rest of the population, except in compelling cases (e.g., involving the well-known actual _crimes_). I don't mean to pick on Mormons, as other communities have also attempted to impose curfews and other restricitions on the children of others. My ire was raised by Attila's enthusiastic support for laws which no freedom-loving person should be enthusiastic about. Again, I have no problem with Attila restricting his own children's movements, or joining with other parents to control the behavior of their _own_ children, via religious camps, religious schools, youth leagues, etc. He can even make his own kids wear funny uniforms, funny religious hats, whatever. But, for example, tellling _me_ when _my_ children may be out on public streets (doing nothing illegal, neither robbing nor spray-painting nor committing any other real crimes) is unacceptable. I urge Attila (and others) to rethink enthusiastic support for curfews. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: GPS [MARGINAL, at best]
by P. J. Ponder 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There was an article in _Scientific American_ February 1996 about GPS. I couldn't find the magazine, but they had this squib on the www.sciam.com website: The Global Positioning System Thomas A. Herring Two dozen satellites hovering thousands of miles up can locate your position on the earth's surface to within a few centimeters. Originally constructed for military applications, this network of space beacons today finds civilian applications--such as landing airplanes in fog--that demand accuracy beyond what its designers had thought would be technically possible. According to the website, there was also a letter in the June 1996 issue responding to Herrings article. Here it is: MILITARY ADVANTAGE I was pleased when I first saw your February article "The Global Positioning System," by Thomas A. Herring. As developers and operators of GPS, we in the Department of Defense and our partners in industry are justifiably proud of the technology. GPS represents the best of American scientific and technical ingenuity as well as being an excellent example of cooperation between the military and civilian sectors. But after reading the entire article, I was disappointed by its unbalanced discussion of the national security aspects of GPS. Yes, the Defense Department does operate GPS with unpopular security features. But these features were not designed to inconvenience the peaceful users of the system, as Herring implies. Rather they were designed to provide U.S. and allied forces with a crucial military edge. Furthermore, the Defense Department is well aware that the security aspects of GPS are an additional burden for many users. And while we believe such measures are still needed at this time to help preserve our military advantage, we have set a goal of discontinuing regular use of the feature known as Selective Availability, the component that degrades GPS accuracy, within a decade. Both time and resources are needed to replace the advantages Selective Availability provides. In light of the revolutionary contributions of GPS to both military and commercial enterprise, Herring could have portrayed the technology in a more evenhanded manner. PAUL G. KAMINSKI Under Secretary Department of Defense -- end of quoted material -- The article, as I recall, was about ways in which civilian users have found, or are finding, ways around the built-in inaccuarcy of the GPS. I don't recall whether crypto was mentioned in the article. My recollection of it was that they had been diddling with the timers or the clock signal or something, as opposed to encrypting anything. But then again it has been a while, and my memory of it isn't too clear. I seem to remember another crypto scheme discussed here at length about GPS, based on a paper by Dr. Dorothy [?] Denning, which involved having the intended recipient's coordinates - which were somehow involved in the encryption. The coordinates are in 3-D. Spheres centered on three of the GPS satellites intersect within a very small space. -- public service announcement: ------------------------------------------------------------- To remove yourself from the cypherpunks mailing list send to: majordomo(a)toad.com a message that contains the text: unsubscribe cypherpunks in the body of the message, not the subject line. --------------------------------------------------------------

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RE: Does any body know anything about this?
by geeman＠best.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Snakeoil? Matt Blaze? Where _you_ been, cowboy? ---------- From: John Anonymous MacDonald[SMTP:nobody@cypherpunks.ca] Sent: Sunday, September 29, 1996 2:38 PM To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Does any body know anything about this? Is this just more snakeoil or is this real? <<<<<<<< FORWARDED MESSAGE >>>>>>>> From: Ross Anderson <Ross.Anderson(a)cl.cam.ac.uk> Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 09:05:28 +0100 Subject: Seminar in Cryptology and Computer Security *** *** *** *** *** University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory EXTRA SEMINAR SPEAKER: Matt Blaze AT&T Research DATE: Monday 23rd September 1996 at 11.30 am PLACE: Room TP4, Computer Laboratory TITLE: SYMMETRIC-KEY CIPHERS BASED ON HARD PROBLEMS A useful principle in cipher design is to reduce or at least relate closely the cryptanalysis of the cipher to some long-studied problem that is believed to be difficult. Most public-key ciphers follow this principle fairly closely (e.g., RSA is at least similar to factoring). Modern symmetric-key ciphers, on the other hand, can rarely be reduced in this way and so are frequently designed specifically to resist the various known cryptanalytic attacks. In this informal talk, we examine a simple cipher primitive, based on Feistel networks, for which recovery of its internal state given its inputs and outputs is NP-complete. We outline simple and efficient block- and stream- cipher constructions based on this primitive. * * * The regular Michaelmas term seminar series will resume on the 8th October with a series of talks on Tuesday afternoons at 4.15 PM in room TP4, Computer Laboratory, Pembroke Street, Cambridge. A list of speakers will be circulated shortly. * * *

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Re: Public Schools
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sun, 29 Sep 96 07:55:34 +0000, attila wrote: > "That's our advantage at Microsoft; > we set the standards and we can change them." > --- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft > (quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial) > > and, if this is not the gawd-awful truth, I must have just got > off the bus... typical, typical MS arrogance. > a toast! a toast to their early demise! Now there'd be an almost acceptable use of AP! I bet Team OS/2 alone would contribute enough to paste billg. Not to mention what IBM or Sun or Apple or Lotus or Borland or [company that got screwed] would do. <g> # Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp # <cadams(a)acucobol.com> | send mail with subject "send PGPKEY" "That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them." --- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft (quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial)

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The ever-vigilant John Anon
by P. J. Ponder 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Date: Sun, 29 Sep 1996 14:38:01 -0700 >From: John Anonymous MacDonald <nobody(a)cypherpunks.ca> >To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com >Subject: Does any body know anything about this? > >Is this just more snakeoil or is this real? This is quite real, and was posted on the CCC list a while ago. It turns out the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (Cambridge, UK) has been having a regular series of seminars on crypto and papers from a distinguished group of presenters. Several of the agenda notices, etc., have been posted here from time to time, hidden in the usual spew. Look for the proceedings to be published by Springer Verlag. Do a web search on 'Information Hiding' or 'Turbo Codes' or just go look at: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/ihws.html Snake oil, indeed. > ><<<<<<<< FORWARDED MESSAGE >>>>>>>> >From: Ross Anderson <Ross.Anderson(a)cl.cam.ac.uk> >Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 09:05:28 +0100 >Subject: Seminar in Cryptology and Computer Security > > *** *** *** *** ***

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Re: The Petaflops Boondoggle Computer (was PET_ard)
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sun, 29 Sep 1996 12:16:27 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >Symmetric multiprocessing is available, but it's often much less hassle to >have a single CPU running at 200 MHz than to try games with multiple >processors (which means more PCB real estate, more sockets, more of other >things). As far as SMP goes, it's actually not all that expensive. People in the linux-smp list have reported differences of as little as $50 for a uniprocessor vs. dual pentium system. Of course, every so often we'll get a message about a $30,000 system that can handle up to <drool>64 Pentium Pros</drool>! # Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp # <cadams(a)acucobol.com> | send mail with subject "send PGPKEY" "That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them." --- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft (quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial)

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