December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: legality of wiretapping: a "key" distinction
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:22 PM 10/7/96 -0700, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote: >>and an argument about the constitution: >> >>"The constitution says I must be given a choice between disclosing and >>contempt." >> >>I don't remember seeing any examples of the latter come across the list. As >>I remember things, the context of my statement above was a discussion of >>why third-party key escrow is not the same as self-escrow. > >the point is that many cpunks feel that warrants and wiretaps and >subpoenas are things to defy. it's a hypocritical double standard >in which they cloth themselves in the wrapping of the constitution >or law whenever it is useful to their arguments, and then advocate criminality, >such as via defying legal warrants etc, whenever the case suits them. Grandly ignoring the 5th amendment, I see?!? I don't see any contradiction: We can look to the Constitution, simultaneously, for rights for ourselves AND for restrictions on government. > >[wiretaps] > >>It's rarely quoted here because it is unremarkable; just as the list is not >>a place for basic crypto education, it is not a place for basic legal >>education. > >ooops, you fell for Unicorn's muddying misstatement of my question. OBVIOUSLY >there is lots of case law on wiretaps. what I was trying to point out >was that I find little discussion of cases here trying to discredit >wiretap law for various reasons, such as that the wiretapped >person is not informed. the distinction of the person *not*being*informed* >of the wiretap is very important as otehrs here agree, and I would >expect everyone would be familiar with a simple case that gives a >decision on it (in much the way many constitutional cases are >regularly quoted) or that people would advocate wiretap law would >be challenged on the basis of the lack of such a precedent case. Now _THAT'S_ a very valid point. Unicorn totally ignored that issue. I pointed out my expectation that the only reason wiretaps are secret is their technical ability to do them while staying secret. I've occasionally pointed out that if tomorrow, scientists discover some sort of teleport system that allows cops to sneak through walls, at the same time being invisible, cops and judges will suddenly announce that the requirement that people searched need to be informed of that search is, uh, no longer applicable. This is a problem. No, not the precise hypothetical I imagined above; I don't think it's going to be possible as stated for a long time and probably never. The problem, however, is that "the authorities" have respect for the rights of the citizens more in the breach than in the observance, and if they find what they consider to be a good reason to ignore them, they will with little hesitation. >>(The answer to most of the "how do I find out about 'X'?" questions > >you have a lot of good advice, but I ask none of the things you are >attributing to me. I simply would like to carry on a discussion with >a civilized lawyer who specializes in the subject, rather than have >a people tell me why I cannot even do this, and must become a law >specialized before I can even use the word "wiretap" with any >meaningfulness. It's particularly pointless that some of these lawyers keep saying things like, "You don't understand how the law works!" when it is quite obvious that in most cases, the people who are complaining DO know enough about how the law works to identify when it is being abused. This is not surprising: For example, I can't ice-skate worth beans, but I easily tell the difference between a bad and a good ice-skater. I can't make music, but I can tell the difference between bad and good music. I don't know much about architecture, but if I see a building collapse I can see that somebody made a mistake. I don't act, but I can tell the different between a good and bad actor. It is a frequent conceit among "experts" that the only people who should be able to criticize them are people who know as much as they do on a particular subject. Black Unicorn is particularly bad in this regard. >the chief point of my post was to question why the EFF etc. are not >at all interested in challenging the wiretap "status quo" in spite >of what many people here believe/advocate-- that wiretapping was >never legitimate in the first place. this is curious because EFF >etc. *are* willing to back up the cryptography cases out there, >ala Bernstein etc. Probably mostly because they expect that the government is going to be completely unwilling to admit that it's wrong. In fact, of course, that's exactly why the government is very much afraid of the advent of good encryption: Ubiquitous crypto telephones make the government's use of wiretapping irrelevant, totally without regard to what any cop or judge or prosecutor says. Fundamentally, it's a technical fix to a legal mistake. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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challenging wiretap law
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

alright, let me try to rephrase this. if you feel the urge to flame me over a simple post, without actually posting anything substantial, please avoid it. I was trying to get at something in a previous post. I regularly see cpunks here scheming about how to attack things they don't like using court decisions. I think it's a great way to try to move the law in a favorable direction I see Bernstein/Junger as really embodying cpunk guerilla-like tactics in trying to take on the status quo govt using the legal system. of course this is not cheap, but EFF is helping out at least, and PRZ proves the public is generally willing to put its money where its mouth is on these issues. there's also a lot of scheming over patent laws going on among cylink, RSA data securities, etc. the point is that I don't recall seeing this same kind of scheming against wiretap rules here; if it was here then forgive me, I missed it. for anyone who would like to, I'd be very interested in a brief discussion over wiretap laws and which ones have gone to the supreme court in court challenges. here's my curiosity: if you were a lawyer, or actually are one, how would you go about challenging the legitimacy of wiretaps, in the same spirit in which ITAR is being challenged? note that even if there are court precedents at "lower" courts, this does not preclude strategizing to try to take the cases to the supreme court. I am not asking anyone to do my "homework" for me. I'm merely proposing that this might be a neat exercise for the collective cypherpunk brain. of course it won't get far if people rant about it, but merely discussing existing case law would make a good and interesting topic imho. if there are people out there who are familiar with it and would like to discuss it, and can stand Unicorn ranting at you no matter what you say, please do-- it would be signal in the noise around here. challenging these laws in the weak spots could be a very devastating means of defying law enforcement claims that they only want to "preserve the status quo" and want "no new authorities to wiretap". could wiretapping be "nipped in the bud" somehow? there is tremendous economic incentive for laywers to challenge things like patents etc, but this same incentive doesn't seem to exist in challenging wiretap rules. hence I wonder if they have been challenged to the same extent that other court decisions have been. of course, there are areas where wiretaps have been challenged and the challenges failed. but that doesn't mean there aren't weak spots that might exist somewhere that could "crack" it. it's like hacking, a bit, in this way, hence why I think it would make a good topic for discussion. or would the lawyers assert there are no weak spots in the wiretap laws? that the issue has been fleshed out as far as it will ever be in courts? again, what I am trying to suggest is that if there was a "new angle of attack" not used in any previous wiretap cases, it's highly relevant. again, merely because certain cases approved wiretapping does not necessarily mean all future decisions will support it.

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RE: WINDOWS NT ????
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sun, 6 Oct 1996 11:39:53 +0100, Matthew Richardson wrote: >> Okay, correct me if I'm wrong on this (as if you wouldn't...): >> 1. Microsoft markets NT with C2 security >> 2. Numerous industry magazines report that you can bypass NTFS file >> security by booting off of a diskette and using NTFSDOS. >> 3. Numerous industry magazines (and I believe MS finally mentioned it >> in some routine status update) all say that NT should now be considered >> C2 *ONLY* on machines w/o floppy drives. > >Microsoft only claim C2 security when the machine is physically secured >and not attached to any network. Specifically NTFS makes no claim of any >encryption and can thus be read by non-NT software. Now. They used to claim C2 for a machine w/floppies. Now they don't. # 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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Big Brother vs. Cypherpunks
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Time, October 14, 1996, p. 78. The Netly News Joshua Quittner Big Brother vs. Cypherpunks For more than three years, the White House and the U.S. computer industry have sat locked, eyeball to eyeball, in a seemingly intractable face-off over who will control the secret codes that protect our most sensitive communications. The government claimed to be working to protect us from nuke-carrying terrorists; the computer industry said it was championing the individual's right to privacy. Neither was telling the whole truth. Last week, in a concession to Silicon Valley, the Administration blinked -- or perhaps it merely winked. Fittingly, in the arcane world of code making and breaking, it's difficult to ferret out who's doing what to whom. And why. A few things are incontrovertible. Vice President Al Gore announced the new encryption initiative at midweek, timed to coincide with support from an alliance of high-tech businesses that included such hardware heavyweights as IBM, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard. However, most of the big software makers -- and every civil liberties group -- still opposed it. At the core of the initiative is a new code-making scheme known as "key recovery." Here at last, the government and its supporters claimed, was a way to get around the more noxious aspects of the reviled Clipper chip, the Administration's first doomed attempt to balance the industry's call for stronger encryption with law enforcement's need to surveil our shadier citizens. Clipper, as proposed, would use a powerful encryption formula to encode communications sent over telephones and computer networks but would require that a "back door" key be built into each chip that would give police -- where warranted, of course -- a means to eavesdrop. Nobody -- especially foreign companies -- liked the idea of the U.S. and its agents holding those keys. The new key-recovery proposal tries to get around that objection by chopping the keys into several pieces and storing them with "trusted agents" of the user's choosing. Some nice Swiss banks, perhaps. But the Administration's plan still falls short of what civil libertarians, and especially a vocal group of cryptoextremists who call themselves cypherpunks, say they need: encryption powerful enough to give back to the citizenry the right to absolute privacy, which we have lost in the information age. According to the cypherpunks, the so-called 56-bit code the Administration has okayed for export can be cracked by the National Security Agency's supercomputers in a matter of hours. Are they right? It's hard to know whom to believe in this cloak-and-dagger debate. Civil libertarians tend to gloss over the fact that the world is full of bad people with crimes to hide. The software industry -- which makes 48% of its profit overseas -- is clearly less concerned with privacy than with losing foreign sales. And it may be no accident that the Administration chose to start making concessions the same week an influential software CEO -- Netscape's Jim Barksdale -- excoriated Clinton's cryptopolicy and endorsed Bob Dole. The issue is too complex -- and too important -- for political gamesmanship. It will never get sorted out until somebody starts playing it straight. ----- Read the Netly News daily at netlynews.com on the World Wide Web [End] Thanks to JQ.

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Re: EUB - Pay attention next time guys.
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:09 PM 10/7/96 -0400, Black Unicorn wrote: > EUB is probably in more trouble than they realize because they chose an > interesting solution to their bandwidth problem. > > [...] > > Prediction: EUB will change its structure dramatically in the next 6 > months if it still exists at all in that time. Prediction: Nothing much will happen to European Union bank. Possibily their US web site will be closed down, in which case twenty guys will echo it, and they will have to pay more for bandwidth. > Lesson learned: Never > involve the United States directly. Lesson learned. The United States is just a speed bump on the information highway. The critical error is not involving the United States directly, the critical error is leaving assets or information in a place and form where US thugs with guns can get at it. I see no reason to believe the EUB has made this error. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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BEL_cor
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We've grabbed the Bellcore reports on EZ-tamper smart card crypto for those who want to try it: http://jya.com/belcor.txt (17 kb for 3) ftp://jya.com/pub/incoming/belcor.txt BEL_cor Bellcore's Ken Branson says that the researchers are due to publish the work in more detail in a distinguished journal -- for mucho Erdos numeros and The Wild Bunch infosec cultists. Why, Ken prys and spies, are los architectoes del jya.commie, curious about such esoterica topicana? It's obvious, jyawns, guzzling tequila sombreroly, the sweaty-palm topic's matt-blazing hot, like the Bellcore rocket miraging del web page. RH, eatcher heart out. TM, oh my, herding cats.

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Re: Put up or shut up!
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:18 AM 10/7/96 -0400, Black Unicorn wrote: > There is no > one good solution, and anyone who sells you a universal package is selling > you a bill of goods. Surely there is at least one good solution to an exceedingly common problem -- large assets in the US that are known to the authorities. > Careful, professional, and highest quality service is required to properly > design any investment design. Again, you get what you pay for. Smoke. The reason that no one publishes "How to" step by step instructions for discretely expatriating your money is exactly the same reason as the reason that nobody publishes "How to" step by step instructions for buying dope. For example one ever popular method of expatriating money, (or repatriating it to preferred politicians), is by means of a friendly cattle futures broker. First find your friendly cattle futures broker. Despite this, many people manage to buy dope and many people manage to discretely expatriate their money. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: unsubsribe
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:04 AM 10/2/96 GMT, GOULDING CP wrote: >unsubsribe How to unsubsribe is a closely guarded cypherpunk secret. I will send you unsubsription information if you prove you are a genuine cypherpunk by sending me the secret code word in a PGP encrypted message. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: Put up or shut up!
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:22 PM 10/6/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: > It turns out that I would save nothing in taxes by moving some of my liquid > assets to some particular coral atoll. (Unless I lie on my 1040, which is > always an option.) Hmmmm.... --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: Can somebody unsubscribe cyberpromo from CP?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:43 PM 10/7/96 -0400, Simon Spero wrote: >On Mon, 7 Oct 1996, Timothy C. May wrote: > >> At 10:23 AM -0800 10/7/96, jim bell wrote: >> >I think somebody subscribed that Cyberpromo organization to the Cypherpunks >> >list. It needs to be unsubscribed... >> >> "I have a solution." >> > >[Looks through pockets] - 7 Zlotys, 1.5 DM, and 1.20 GBP says October >21st, in the library, bludgeoning to death with 20lbs of junk mail Your code name is "Col. Mustard." Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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