December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: "European Union Bank"
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:06 PM 10/8/96 +0300, Jüri Kaljundi wrote: >According to one offshore magazine European Union Bank is a very bad >choice for Internet banking. What they did was they assigned they named >Lord Mancroft who sits in the UK's House of Lords as chairman of the bank. >Only thing Lord Mancroft himself did not know a thing about it, although >the bank marketing materials had a letter of welcome supposedly from that >prominent person. So he is thinking of taking legal action against the >bank. I have at hand a brochure from "Shorex 96 - The Premier Offshore Exhibition" to be held November 20-22 in London. Day One features a section on "Offshore and the Internet" including a panel "Will the Internet Increase the Market Share of the Offshore Industry?" Featuring "Lord Mancroft, Chairman, European Union Bank, Antigua." I wonder if he'll be there. If we are both there, I'll ask him. DCF "If control measures are so effective, why does everything seem to be more and more out of control?"

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Re: Voice Stress Analysis of Debates?
by vin＠shore.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Bell queried the List about potential AP decision-support tools like voice-stress detectors which could identify truth-tellers among politicians and other possible candidates for Mr. Bell's much-debated proposal to cleanse the body politic. One anon C'punker responded with a fine terse summary of VS/PSE tech (along with the surprising news that VS/PSE chips are now available at $89.95 per.) Another, Sandy Sandfort, noted: >The original device was the PSE, the psychological stress >evaluator. It was, as still is, sold by a company called >Dektor. It is located in the DC area (Maryland?) and is run >by a group of ex-spooks. It's been around for 25 years or so. Dektor Counterintelligence is located in Savannah, Ga. The Dektor PSE was developed by Col. Allan Bell (USA, ret.) shortly after he retired from the Army, where -- towards the end of a long career which included, as I recall, a stint in charge of the MI detachment in West Berlin -- he had played "Q," the inventive spy-supply wizard, at the US Army military intelligence headquarters. Dektor's PSE came into some prominence after Col. Bell, then a civilian, showed up with his black box to assist Italian police during their huge investigation of the kidnapping of US Army General James Dozier by the Red Brigades in '82. The fact that Dozier was located and rescued by the Carabinieri commandos after five weeks in captivity -- while Prime Minister Aldo Moro had been murdered by the Red Brigades, eight weeks after his kidnapping in '78 -- led inevitably to stories, probably mythical, that Bell's PSE was a significant factor in the investigation. As Clarke or someone said, any technology sufficiently advanced will be considered magic -- and it is doubtless true that, for many Italians interviewed during the Drozier inquiry, the quiet presence of the diminutive American civilian, with his utterly mysterious "truth-detector," inspired fear and awe. The Legend that came out of Italy was doubtless a factor in Dektor's subsequent success selling the $5K PSE into the corporate and security market. (There was a period where corporate negotiations were sometimes held in a hotel chosen only just before the start of the talks, for fear that one party or the other might have pre-installed a PSE.) In the mid and late '80s, dozens, perhaps hundreds of PIs -- and maybe a few journalists -- were actually running around using tape recorders to interview people, then running back to their hotel rooms to spin the tape for their PSE. All of this was something of a giggle for Allan Bell, a Cold Warrior with a sense of humor who would _love_ this List. Bell offered (when asked) a much more modest description of the potential of the PSE. As I recall, Bell described the PSE as tool which could allow an investigator to identify, with reasonable certainty, the utterly innocent (lumped together, perhaps, with the utter psychotic; those who couldn't themselves separate truth from falsehood)... but which offered only limited utility in sorting the liars from others of various types who might experience stress or tension when faced with an interrogation or interview. The utterly innocent and the utterly psychotic both being relatively uncommon breeds (even among politicians and/or Libertarians,) the PSE never quite made it as a standard tool for criminal justice, or journalistic, inquiries. Bell set up what I always believed to be an elaborate practical joke on the Beltway Bandit Culture when, at the height of the PSE craze, he let Dektor's sales office in suburban D.C. -- Vienna, maybe? -- be used after-hours as the world headquarters/classroom/PR center for the short-lived Mensa University. (MU's president of which was a local PSE distributor, and very much a true believer.) The idea that the very bright might have to be very honest to matriculate intrigued me... but I'll admit I wasn't surprised when MU, quite honestly, collapsed into something of a laughingstock. Suerte, _Vin Vin McLellan +The Privacy Guild+ <vin(a)shore.net> 53 Nichols St., Chelsea, Ma. 02150 USA Tel: (617) 884-5548 <*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*>

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Re: Missionaries BLAH BLAH BLAH
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

:Date: Wed, 09 Oct 1996 09:30:34 -0600 :From: Shawn Willden <swillden(a)cs.weber.edu> :To: Dale Thorn <dthorn(a)gte.net> :Subject: Re: Missionaries :Dale Thorn wrote: :> > Biblical creationism is "wrong": there's ample evidence that the :> > Earth is *much* more than 6000 years old. Yet lots of seemingly :> > rational people believe biblical creationism. :> :> Which years? BLAH BLAH BLAH ;And Christian theology also offers an explanation as to why God would :do such a thing: so that faith is required for belief. : :Logic is of no use in theological discussions.I've dealt with more :than a few. BLAH BLAH BLAH As a Mormon missionary I spent quite a :bit of time discussing :theology with people :-) BLAH BLAH BLAH :Shawn Much better to bash Tim (no offense meant, I like Tim's style--or lack thereof) than this drivel. Makes me want to puke. To quote: "As for what this whole thread has to do with crypto, i have no idea..." BLAH BLAH BLAH

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Injunction Against Spammers
by Otto Matic 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Today Concentric Network Corp. won an injunction [15] against Cyber Pro- motions, Inc. -- the outfit against which AOL lost a court fight to keep its subscribers free of email spam -- see TBTF for 9/8/96 [16]. Cyber Promotions, it seems, was forging a Concentric Network return address in their spams, so thousands of outraged Netizens bombarded the ISP daily with demands that Concentric stop supporting an activity that is, in fact, forbidden by their terms of service and of which Concentric was entirely innocent. The wording of the promise that Cyber Promotions was compelled to sign forbids them specifically from thus abusing Concentric in the future. It seems to me that the spammer will be free to choose another ISP "goat," or to forge a nonexistent return address on their future spams, without penalty. This timely news just arrived on Glen McCready's <glen(a)qnx.com> "0xdeadbeef" mailing list. [15] <http://home.concentric.net/press/spam.html> [16] <http://www.tbtf.com/archive/09-08-96.html> otto =-=-=-=-=- Otto Matic "Fuckin' A, Miller!" Bud, Repo Man --------------------------------------------------------- Get Your *Web-Based* Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ---------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Government Denial of Service Attacks
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:33 AM 10/9/96 +1000, Julian Assange wrote: >I will not coment on the correctness of the U.S government's funding >allocations, however the above statement is clearly designed to be >deceptive. Given the GDP of the U.S as a whole during fiscal 1996 was >greater than that of any other country at any other time, including the >U.S in previous years (the U.S like most other countries has postive >growth), of course the absolute value of taxes collected will be larger. I make the point only because this very important fact never occurs to anyone. Our rulers like to say that they can't make do with a cent less of the vast sums they collect from us and, in fact, all of them say that they will need more. Just pointing out that with all they have, they can probably stand to cut back a little. The Fortune 500 did. DCF

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RE: legality of wiretapping: a "key" distinction
by blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Black Unicorn [in reply to Vlad the Conqueror] I understand that it's difficult for you to grasp how firmly entrenched the concept of wiretapping is in law enforcement, courts and the legislature, and that your novel new approach has been tried before. .................................................................. This should help him understand it. I won't say who this quote is from, but he was a very respected French author: "Both the English and the Americans have kept the law of precedents; that is to say, they still derive their opinions in legal matters and the judgements they should pronounce from the opinions and legal judgements of their fathers. [...] The English or American lawyer who thus, in a sense, denies his own reasoning powers in order to return to those of his fathers, maintaining his thought in a kind of servitude, must contract more timid habits and conservative inclinations than his opposite number in France. Our written laws are often hard to understand, but everyone can read them, whereas nothing could be more obscure, and out of reach of the common man, than a law founded on precedent. Where lawyers are absolutely needed, as in England and the United States, and their professional knowledge is held in high esteem, they become increasingly separated from the people, forming a class apart. A French lawyer is just a man of learning, but an English or an American one is somewhat like the Egyptian priests, being, as they were, the only interpreter of an occult science. [...] Thus it is England, above all that supplies the most striking portrait of the type of lawyer I am trying to depict; the English lawyer values laws not because they are good but because they are old; and if he is reduced to modifying them in some respect, to adapt them to the changes which time brings to any society, he has recourse to the most incredible subtleties in order to persuade himself that in adding something to the work of his fathers he has only developed their thought and completed their work. Do not hope to make him recognize that he is an innovator; he will be prepared to go to absurd lengths rather than to admit himself guilty of so great a crime. It is in England that this legal spirit was born, which seems indifferent to the substance of things, paying attention only to the letter, and which would rather part company with reason and humanity than with the law." .. Blanc

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RE: Microsoft CAPI
by blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Andrew Loewenstern I ask: "Who Cares?" It is easy enough to distribute with the secure-non-GAK plug-in a patch for disabling the module authentication. Heck, you could even make an ActiveX applet that did it... andrew "Click Here to Download and Install Real Crypto" .................................................... Like PGP, it would need to be widely (& anonymously) made available before anyone could do anything about it.... .. Blanc

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Swan song...
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Well, folks, after four or five years here, I'm finally leaving. I've picked this moment for two reasons. First, the signal to noise ratio here is now too low to be measured without expensive lab equipment -- as bad as Usenet, or even worse. Second, I now have two candidate sites to host a new cryptography & cryptography politics mailing list to replace this one. The new list will be run very tightly. Some people will doubtless label me a fascist and say I'm impinging on their ability to be "free". Those that feel that the best use of their freedom is to urinate into their own drinking water are entitled to their beliefs -- but they will not be welcome on the new list.* It is time to get back to cryptography. You all remember cryptography, don't you? Its the "cipher" in CYPHERpunk. Years ago, on cypherpunks, Phil Karn noted, after Stuart Baker of NSA named his nightmare vision of strong crypto embedded in every $20 phone and every fax machine, "Gentlemen, I believe we have our design specification." One cannot imagine that sort of thing being said here now. Four years ago, PGP 2.0 was released, and the first shot was sent across the bow of those that would stop us. It is more than time to fire off another round or two. Cypherpunks file lawsuits! Cypherpunks develop protocols! Cypherpunks write RFCs! Cypherpunks start companies! Cypherpunks WRITE CODE, damn it! Cypherpunks don't wait for the administration to move -- they move first! They move FASTER! Cypherpunks don't wait for someone else to deploy cryptography -- they deploy it themselves! Cypherpunks do not sit on their asses and pull their puds while discussing warmed over theories about personal freedom. Cypherpunks BUILD THE TOOLS TO IMPLEMENT THE THEORY! Cypherpunks don't fantasize, they create! In short, CYPHERPUNKS DO! They don't live for blather. Cypherpunks Mark I used to be a glorious place. Son of Cypherpunks may fail, but we must make the attempt to create it. In short, Cypherpunks is dead, Long live Cypherpunks! I will post pointers to the new list within ten days -- on or before October 20, 1996. Perry * Those that feel that peeing into their own drinking water is a good idea are directed to http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/coe/snuffit2/living_water.jpg and http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/coe/snuffit2/lifewater.html where you will find others who agree with you.

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AW: Binding cryptography - a fraud!
by Eric Verheul 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >>The idea is that any third party, e.g., a network or service provider, >>who has access to components 2, 3 and 4 (but not to any additional >>secret information) can: >>a. check whether the session keys in components 2 and 3 coincide; >>b. not determine any information on the actual session key. >> >>In this way, fraud is easily detectible: a sender that attempts to >>virtually address a session key to the TRP (component 3) that is >>different from the real one he uses on the message (or just nonsense) >>will be discovered by anyone checking the binding data. If such >>checking happens regularly, fraud can be properly discouraged and >>punished. > >I am at the same time dismayed and disgusted at the tendency of some people >to want to "detect fraud" on the part of ordinary citizens, as this paper >appears to want to do, but says _nothing_ about preventing fraud >_by_government. How is the average citizen to know if keys are being given >out to government agents for valid reasons? First of all, that (and the legitimacy of "wiretaps" in general) is something that should be regulated in national law (including procedures, checks and balances, penalities). Maybe you have the opinion that that is impossible to achieve, [or at least that making wiretapping as such by government impossible is the only satisfactory way of doing it (-; ]. Our concept assumes that it is possible and acceptable, although legislation (and especially appliance of it) in some countries might be improved.. Second, the concept is flexible in the choice of Trusted Retrieval Parties; we have the opinion that if you don't trust the existing TRPs then, hey, setup your own TRP. We believe that should be possible (and forsee serveral "privacy-protecting" organisations doing so). However, as you don't want to have criminals setting up TRPs, some legislation on this point should be made... Finally, as said in the announcement: "In [VKT], we explain how we envision the framework in which the binding concept could present a security tool in the information society." > >I am further enraged by the last portion of the paragraph above where he >says, "fraud can be properly discouraged _and_punished_" Why "punished"? >Why call it "fraud"? Why should sending the "wrong" bits become a crime? >The US government, for example, has repeatedly claimed that key-escrow >systems should be "voluntary." Presumably, except for authoritarian and >totalitarian countries, no other country should force their own citizens or >others to use any sort of key-escrow/GAK system. Wait a minute. It is a *voluntary* system, but it has some rules that apply. The whole idea here is: if you don't like it, use your own system. "Fraude" refers to using the system without sticking to its rules, maybe fraude has a wrong connotation. > >Maybe I'm biased: I'm a libertarian who believes that sending the wrong >bits shouldn't be considered a crime. The problem we have is with the Depends, it might be childrens pornography. The information society is *not* about bits, but about information. >politicians, NOT primarily the criminals. Giving the government the ability >to punish people merely for sending the wrong bits (absent some other, REAL >crime) is an enormous step backward. And if they're guilty of a real crime, >why bother about the bits? In a democratic country one needs evidence to convict someone. > >Even if I believed in GAK, which I don't, I don't think governments or >anyone else should be able to determine whether the "correct" code is >included with the data until and unless the government has a valid warrant, Code is checked (on protocol compliance) by third parties all the time. They should not get any wiser from it, that is the point. > > >Jim Bell >jimbell(a)pacifier.com > > Thanks for the feedback, Eric Verheul

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Re: Recent Web site cracks [CIA & DOJ sites]
by William Knowles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Igor Chudov asked after stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com wrote: >> The DOJ and CIA sites were actually cracked; don't know the mechanisms. >> The dole-kemp96.com and dole-kemp96.org domains were spoofs - they >> have similar names to the real site, and people reach them by accident >> or by hearing about them. According to today's San Jose Mercury News, >> the web designer who registered them did so just before Dole announced >> Kemp as his VP, and tried to sell his design services to the campaign. >> They didn't buy it, and the names were sitting around with nothing >> better to do anyway, so he decided to have a good time with them. >> Supposedly he's gotten about 40,000 hits and the "real" >> site got 1,000,000. > > Anyone got a copy of the cracked CIA page? Try: http://www.dis.org/se7en/hacktrash/index.html Both the CIA and the DOJ sites are mirrored there. Cheers! William Knowles erehwon(a)c2.net -- William Knowles <erehwon(a)c2.net> 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 -- Vote Harry Browne for President -- http://www.HarryBrowne96.org

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