December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: crypto cd once more
by Rick Osborne 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Questions are: >1) is there a system that can handle unix, windows and mac filenames > (long ones!)? >2) if not, is zip-support given on mac and unix systems? >3) does anyone have suggestions on how to deal with the problem? I have a CDR sitting right next to me and this is how it handles your questions: 1) This CDR can burn in 4 modes: 1. ISO xxxx compliant (without trailing version numbers on filenames), 2. strict DOS 8.3, 3. Joliet (DOS 8.3 & Win95 up to 63 chars), 4. Romeo (strict Win95 up to 128 chars). According to the help, option 1 is made to be at least Mac readable. It doesn't mention UNIX, though. 2) Yes. 3) No problem: use this CDR. If you want info on the particular CDR, email me personally. Rick Osborne Overall Internet Stud osborne(a)gateway.grumman.com ====================================================================== 'Zog? What do you mean zog? Zog what? Zog yes, Zog no?'

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Re: VENONA Project; KGB files reveal clue that broke British spy
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From belarus(a)solar.rtd.utk.edu Wed Oct 2 19:30:59 1996 Received: by bwalk.dm.com (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Wed, 02 Oct 96 20:43:54 EDT for dlv Received: from SOLAR.RTD.UTK.EDU by uu.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.061193-PSI/PSINet) via SMTP; id AA20681 for dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com; Wed, 2 Oct 96 19:30:59 -0400 Received: from (LOCALHOST.rtd.utk.edu) by solar.rtd.utk.edu; Wed, 2 Oct 96 19:25:40 EDT Date: Wed, 2 Oct 96 19:25:40 EDT Message-Id: <2.2.32.19961002203102.006d4274(a)direct.ca> Errors-To: kasaty(a)seanet.com Reply-To: belarus(a)solar.rtd.utk.edu Originator: belarus(a)solar.rtd.utk.edu Sender: belarus(a)solar.rtd.utk.edu Precedence: bulk From: Stefan Lemieszewski <stefanl(a)direct.ca> To: Multiple recipients of list <belarus(a)solar.rtd.utk.edu> Subject: VENONA Project; KGB files reveal clue that broke British spy X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0b -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Comment: BELARUS issues and communication Fyi for any researchers in this field, accompanied by a related article in The Daily Telegraph. Stefan Lemieszewski ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------ The VENONA Project "In July 1995 the Intelligence Community ended a 50-year silence regarding one of cryptology's most splendid successes - the VENONA Project. VENONA was the codename used for the U.S. Signals Intelligence effort to collect and decrypt the text of Soviet KGB and GRU messages from the 1940's. These messages provided extraordinary insight into Soviet attempts to infiltrate the highest levels of the United States Goverment.=20 Today, we are proud to offer these exceptional documents on the NSA home page and we invite you to study and interpret them in the context of history. NSA will declassify over 2200 messages related to VENONA. We believe they will not only provide a window into Soviet espionage during the 1940's, but will also give you a glimpse of the important contributions signals intelligence and cryptographic expertise make to our nation's security. " The above quote is from from the introduction to the VENONA Project by Mr. William P. Crowell, Deputy Director, National Security Agency You can find Venona at:=20 http://www.nsa.gov:8080/docs/venona/ddir.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------- The article below is from The Daily Telegraph, October 2, 1996: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------- KGB files reveal clue that broke British spy ring By Michael Smith=20 The name's Bond, Vladimir Bond THE intercepted KGB messages that detail Moscow's dealings with the British spies Kim Philby, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess were released by GCHQ yesterday. The move was forced on the Cheltenham spy base by the Americans, who released on to the Internet the results of Operation Venona, the top-secret project to decipher Moscow Centre's communications with its foreign stations. The files placed in the Public Record Office at Kew yesterday include the vital clue that led to the collapse of the Cambridge spy ring. They also name another Cambridge-based spy, Dr Theodore Hall, an American who worked inside the Manhattan Project, the secret programme to develop the atom bomb. He was never prosecuted and still lives in England. But it is Maclean, recruited by Philby while he was still a Cambridge student, who emerges as the jewel in the KGB's crown. In April 1944, as a rising star in the Foreign Office, he was posted to the Washington embassy. The deciphered messages show he gave the Russians a wealth of information on Anglo-American relations and their secret post-war agreements, including the exchanges of atomic secrets. Since his wife Melinda was pregnant and living with her mother in New York, Maclean had the perfect excuse to go there every weekend to pass the information on to his KGB control, away from the routine surveillance of diplomats in Washington. MI5 narrowed down those names to a handful of people who would have had access to the top-secret exchanges between London and Washington It was not until 1949 that the Venona team managed to break into the messages from New York to Moscow containing the information provided by Maclean, who was identified by the cover name Homer. Philby, who was posted to Washington as an intelligence liaison officer shortly after the messages were deciphered, described how the FBI concluded that any one of 6,000 people might have been Homer. "It had so far occurred neither to them nor the British that a diplomat was involved, let alone a fairly senior diplomat," he said. "Instead, the investigation had concentrated on non-diplomatic employees of the embassy." But slowly, MI5 narrowed down those names to a handful of people who would have had access to the top-secret exchanges between London and Washington. Then in April 1951, the Venona cryptanalysts found the vital clue in one of the messages. For part of 1944, Homer had had regular contacts with his Soviet control in New York - using his pregnant wife as an excuse. The names had been narrowed down to just one - Donald Maclean. Tipped off by Philby, who had access to the Venona material, he fled to Moscow with Burgess. Dr Hall is the Cambridge scientist named in the files as the KGB's main spy in the Los Alamos complex in New Mexico, where the US atomic bomb was developed. He refused to comment last night. He came to Britain in the 1950s after US intelligence discovered that he was Mlad, the man who along with his British colleague Klaus Fuchs gave the Russians the technical details of the so-called Manhattan Project. Fuchs, a German emigr=E9 who became a naturalised British citizen, became a KGB spy in 1941 Because he never confessed, the authorities could not prosecute him without giving away the extent to which the KGB messages were being read. Dr Hall, who is now 70 and suffering from terminal cancer and Parkinson's disease, still lives with his wife Joan in a semi-detached house in Cambridge. Within the university, where he worked until the mid-1980s, he is renowned for his pioneering work on biological X-ray microanalysis, which allows scientists to work out the presence of various elements within living matter. Hall was a brilliant man who was already a Harvard graduate when, at the age of 19, he was recruited first by the Manhattan Project and then, almost immediately, by the KGB. As well as providing technical explanations of the atomic processes, Dr Hall gave Moscow a complete list of universities doing work on the Manhattan Project so the KGB could seek out other agents within them. The files show that he and Fuchs were far more important than the more famous Julius Rosenberg, cover named Liberal, and his wife Ethel, who were both sent to the electric chair. Fuchs, a German emigr=E9 who became a naturalised British citizen, became a KGB spy in 1941. He confessed and in 1950 was sentenced at the Old Bailey to 14 years' jail. In the mid-1950s he was allowed to go to East Germany, where he died in= 1988.

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Justice Dept completes second phase of CDA appeal, from HotWired
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 04:47:33 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Justice Dept completes second phase of CDA appeal, from HotWired http://www.hotwired.com/netizen/96/40/special3a.html HotWired, The Netizen 3 October 1996 CDA and the Supremes by Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com) Washington, DC, 2 October Racing against a midnight deadline, the Justice Department late Monday evening completed the second phase of its appeal to the Supreme Court after its initial loss in the Communications Decency Act lawsuit. The solicitor general only has to argue in the 28-page jurisdictional statement that there's a substantial constitutional issue at stake in this lawsuit - something transparently obvious to anyone who's been following the CDA court battle. The next move is up to the attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Library Association. They plan to file a motion asking the High Court to uphold the Philadelphia court's decision without scheduling a full hearing. Chris Hansen, who heads the ACLU legal team handling the CDA case, says that if the Supreme Court grants their motion, it would effectively be saying "the lower court was so deeply correct" that the justices don't need to learn more about the case. As a legal tactic, it means the more censor-happy justices couldn't water down the Philadelphia judges' unanimous decision upholding free speech online. "Anytime the Supreme Court decides the case with a full briefing, there's no guarantee that we'll win - or win in the same terms," Hansen says. But because this is a precedent-setting and controversial lawsuit, the Supremes almost certainly will want to hear the appeal themselves. When the justices place this case on the court's calendar, they'll likely give both parties a few months to file the next stage of the lawsuit, which will be a strained and torturous collection of arguments from the government trying to explain why the lower court was wrong. Then oral arguments will be held next spring. The solicitor general's jurisdictional statement itself largely summarizes the arguments the government has already made. It does additionally argue, however, that a cable television indecency case the High Court decided after the June CDA decision buttresses the government's defense of the law: "Because the CDA's definition of indecency is almost identical to the decision [the Supreme Court] upheld against a vagueness challenge ... that decision reinforces the conclusion that the CDA's restrictions are not unconstitutionally vague." Not so, says the ACLU's Hansen: "Even if that were true, it wouldn't change the result in our case. All three judges in our case thought the CDA was flawed in other ways besides vagueness." The government also cites the Shea v. Reno lawsuit - a weaker case that challenges half of the CDA - that Joe Shea filed in Manhattan earlier this year on behalf of his online publication, the American Reporter. Shea won only a partial victory on 29 July, which the DOJ is now exploiting: "The three-judge court in Shea v. Reno ... held that the CDA's definition of indecency is not unconstitutionally vague. The district court in this case erred in reaching a contrary conclusion." [...]

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Can we kill single DES? #2
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yesterday I posted 'Can we kill single DES?', and I count about 20 responses, counting both those to the list, and those to me personally. One offer was made of a $1000 reward in return for a crack, if the offerer could make publicity hay of the offer (no, I don't have a problem with that, but I'd like it set up so that others could add to the reward as well). If the reward got big enough ($10k?) I think it would be a major incentive for otherwise uninterested people to run the screen saver. On the other hand, it might get into legal hassles - I don't know. The total cpu power pledged at the moment could sweep the key space in 300-400 years, if my speed estimates are correct. I'm concerned that the key scheduling may be worse than I estimated in my earlier letter - Phil Karn's code to generate the key schedule takes about 150x as long as my code takes to test the key. However, neither he nor I have bothered yet to optimize this part of the code, or reduce it to assembler. It looks like I can get this part down to two instructions per round, at least most of the time. ----------- I'm really concerned about the problem of a search failing, or succeeding only after too long a time. Perry's proposal of about a month of real time is on the right order, though I could see up to 3 months being possible. Here's what I'm thinking of doing: 1. Writing a prose description of the platform independent speedups. 2. Writing a proposal for a client-server protocol for doling out keyspace and returning results. Aside from the direct Internet interface, there will also be a mechanism for i/o via plain text - suitable for cut-and-paste, or simple CLI interfaces. 3. Writing a generic 'C' implementation of the keysearch client and server, which demonstrates the i/o and the various speedups. This should be highly portable (but probably non-exportable). You'd also be able to search randomly, or from a designated starting point. 4. Work on the screen-saver based version of the client. I'm still very interested in hearing about any hardware based approaches actually underway - not a pile of wild-assed guesses and hopes. Those who want to look at a fast DES in assembler should check out Phil's 386 version, which includes both generic C and a variety of assembler implementations for the actual encryption step. See: ftp://idea.sec.dsi.unimi.it/pub/security/crypt/code/des386.zip Phil also has a Pentium version (a little slower than mine) which he mails to US citizens. Peter Trei trei(a)process.com

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Re: Clipper III on the table
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hip Hip Hooray! Clinton will finally let us use _some_ 20+year-old encryption code, which has been known to be relatively weak for 15 years, as long as we give them all our keys! What a guy! I assume he's partly doing this to make a big "See, I'm in favor of high-tech trade and crime-fighting" push in time for the election, and unlike RC4/40, cracking DES on general-purpose processors _is_ a big enough job that probably can't do a distributed crack in two weeks. But still, get real - the NBS/NIST kept recertifying DES every 5 years only because it was in widespread use and there weren't good fast alternatives for the first couple of years (except triple-DES, which on the computers of the time was annoyingly slow.) There were far more powerful systems like Diffie-Hellman and later RSA that were too slow for general use and are now fairly practical, but they're not letting us use them.... >>Here we go again...from today's NYTimes...Clipper III ... >That URL is http://www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/1001code.html # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> # You can get PGP software outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto

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Re: [FACTS] Mountain Meadows Massacre
by Deana Holmes 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 3 Oct 96 at 8:58, attila wrote: > AFTER THIS POST, ALL RELIGION MUST GO OFF THE LIST! see banner below attila, if you wouldn't post propaganda from the Church, then I *might* agree with you. But you can't do that and expect those of us who know better to keep quiet. <snip Dmitri Vulis nonsense> > Now, concerning the completely ignorant, erroneus, and slanderous > comment of Dimitri, the facts will follow the usual disclaimer: > > *************************************************************** > I am neither an authority of nor a representative of "The Church > of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints" of which our current > living Prophet, President Gordon B. Hinckley, is the sole authority > to this world. Love your CYA statement, dude. It's terribly doubtful that Hinckley knows the details of Mountain Meadows, or that he would want to discuss them, if he did. > I do not speak for the Church, nor am I a recognized > historian and/or spokesman for the Church. Any opinions stated > herein are my viewpoints as discerned from my studies of religion, > in particular the historical aspect of the Church, and I accept all > responsibilty for same. Very good. You know, of course, that if you say the wrong thing in public, that your fate will be that of D. Michael Quinn, the excommunicated Mormon historian, who lost his Church membership because he would not stop telling unpleasant truths about the Church's early history. Just so the other c-punks know that speaking truth has consequences. ******************************************************************* > If some of the list wish to either ask questions RESPONSIBLY or > conduct a shared learning experience of the Mormon religious, > community, and work ethic, please drop me a personal note, and > I will both answer reasonable questions, and serve as moderator > of a list if there is sufficient interest. I think the libertarian faction > in particular might be both surprised and *stunned* by many of > the actual conditions in Utah versus preconceived views. > ******************************************************************* If anyone wants a more jaundiced view of Utah, please drop me a line. I can be a Utah cheerleader if I want (there are many good things about living here) but the fact of the matter is that we live in a Church State. I resent the fact that the dominant religion seems to want to tell *everyone* here how to live their lives. > > now, back to our regularly scheduled programming <g> > > the following is a compilation of information which is as > reasonable a representation of the foul deed as I could assemble. <snip> I would suggest two books, both by historian Juanita Brooks: "The Mountain Meadows Massacre" "John D. Lee" Before the days of Boyd K. Packer, historians weren't excommunicated. Mrs. Brooks' punishment for writing these two books was to be shunned in her southern Utah community. But they remain *the* sources on Mountain Meadows and the general attitude of the people at the time. I notice that attila didn't mention these sources. Deana (who doesn't really approve of the pap that passes for history in orthodox LDS circles) Deana M. Holmes April 1996 poster child for clueless $cientology litigiousness alt.religion.scientology archivist since 2/95 mirele(a)xmission.com

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EzStego in Java!: Now Disappearing At A Site Near You
by romana＠glamazon.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

EzStego, my tool for "steganography made easy", now has its own web site at http://www.fqa.com/ezstego/ EzStego is currently alpha software. Use it at your own risk. It is a reimplementation in Java, with much improvement, of my notorious shareware product, Stego. EzStego is also shareware. I have made the source code available for peer review and verification. EzStego and EzSteggy are (C) Romana Machado 1996. All rights reserved. Romana Machado romana(a)fqa.com http://www.fqa.com/romana/ http://www.glamazon.com/

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Re: White House crypto proposal -- too little, too late
by Joseph M. Reagle Jr. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"if you become a dangerous criminal," <> "innocent until proven guilty" At 10:39 AM 10/2/96 -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote: >[But how does one undo the dangerous criminals without violating the >privacy rights of everyone else? --Declan] >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 10:30:43 -0700 (PDT) >From: Joe Shea <joeshea(a)netcom.com> >To: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> >Subject: Re: White House crypto proposal -- too little, too late > > > If you become a dangerous criminal, Declan, I think law >enforcement does have the right to use key escrow to undo you. That has >nothing to do with spying. You need to be a little more selective about >your language, and to make distinctions a little more rationally than you >do. > >Best, > >Joe Shea >Editor-in-Chief >The American Reporter >joeshea(a)netcom.com >http://www.newshare.com:9999 > > >On Wed, 2 Oct 1996, Declan McCullagh wrote: > >> BTW, Joe, I'm still waiting for your response to my comments on why >> your endorsement of key escrow (GAK) is braindead. Or do you still >> think that the Feds should have the right to spy on my conversations, >> just like you thought that "porn isn't speech?" >> >> -Declan >> >> >> On Wed, 2 Oct 1996, Joe Shea wrote: >> >> > Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 09:47:59 -0700 (PDT) >> > From: Joe Shea <joeshea(a)netcom.com> >> > To: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> >> > Cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com >> > Subject: Re: White House crypto proposal -- too little, too late >> > >> > >> > >> > Declan, how does your list work? Do you only publish comments >> > that agree with you? I didn't see my first two, and this one only came >> > with your response. Is this your version of freedom of the press, or what? >> > >> > Joe Shea >> > Editor-in-Chief >> > The American Reporter >> > joeshea(a)netcom.com >> > http://www.newshare.com:9999 >> > >> > >> > On Wed, 2 Oct 1996, Declan McCullagh wrote: >> > >> > > >> > > >> > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- >> > > Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 20:19:16 -0700 (PDT) >> > > From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> >> > > To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu >> > > Cc: joeshea(a)netcom.com >> > > Subject: Re: White House crypto proposal -- too little, too late >> > > >> > > [Joe, this may be yet another area where we disagree. It represents a >> > > power grab by law enforcement; the infrastructure is prone to failure >> > > and can be compromised; it's more government meddling and coercion and >> > > more restrictions on free speech; the Fed bureaucrats controlling this >> > > are vulnerable to special-interest lobbying; the Constitution gives >> > > the Federal government no right to impose such restrictions; the FBI >> > > has demonstrated that we can't trust the Feds with our most personal >> > > information; it violates an absolute right to privacy; and it's >> > > technically impractical for a good number of applications. --Declan] >> > > >> > > >> > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- >> > > Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 15:57:51 -0700 (PDT) >> > > From: Joe Shea <joeshea(a)netcom.com> >> > > To: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> >> > > Cc: fight-censorship >> > > Subject: Re: FC: White House crypto proposal -- too little, too late >> > > >> > > >> > > Declan's most recent piece makes much more sense than the earlier >> > > one. He is quite correct in emphasizing the future vulnerability of the >> > > encryption logarithms rather than centering on whether or not terrorists >> > > might use them. By making them impossible to crack without the key, and >> > > permitting the key to be available to appropriate law enforcement >> > > authorities when absolutely necessary, everyone's real needs are >> > > satisfied, I think. I enjoyed this report a lot. >> > > >> > > Best, >> > > >> > > Joe Shea >> > > Editor-in-Chief >> > > The American Reporter >> > > joeshea(a)netcom.com >> > > http://www.newshare.com:9999 >> > > >> > > >> > > >> > > >> > > >> > >> >> > > > _______________________ Regards, You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. -Mark Twain Joseph Reagle http://rpcp.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html reagle(a)mit.edu E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65 BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E

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Re: FUCK!!!!!!;-)
by Will Rodger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Someone who won't put his name to things he writes wrote: At 04:05 AM 10/3/96 -0400, Anonymous wrote: >+ --- begin forwarded text >+ >+ "Keys" are strings of computer code that lock and unlock data. Key recovery >+ is an approach that permits the recovery of lost or damaged keys without the >+ need to store or "escrow" them with a third party. This approach could also >+ meet the needs of law enforcement to act under the authority of a court order >+ without risking the confidentiality of business data. > >Just wondering how much of a problem "damaged keys" really are in >practice. Is this something specific to Microsoft filesystems or >really cheap tape drives? I've never seen that problem under Unix, >and something like a private RSA key doesn't change very often, so you >would expect to have encrypted copies of it on many backup tapes. > >Or maybe this journalist, like most, doesn't know what the fuck he's >talking about? > To which this card-carrying member of the media replies: Companies cited in the PRESS RELEASE - that means public relations product, not journalism product - were involved in signing off on what went into the release. By definition, no member of the press was involved in producing this document It seems directing questions to the companies would be a good idea. Will Rodger Washington Bureau Chief Interactive Week.

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Net-freedom roundup: Algiers, Malaysia, Burma, Hong Kong...
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 05:59:08 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Net-freedom roundup: Algiers, Malaysia, Burma, Hong Kong... [Update on situations in Algiers, Malaysia, Burma, Singapore, European Union, U.K., Hong Kong, China, and Germany. More at http://www.eff.org/~declan/global/ --Declan] ******** SUSPENDED ALGERIAN DAILY OFFERED INTERNET PAGE Copyright 1996 Reuter Information Service PARIS (Sep 30, 1996 1:24 p.m. EDT) - A press freedom watchdog on Monday offered the suspended Algerian daily La Tribune a page on its Internet site to give it an airing during the six-month ban. "Thanks to this initiative, these journalists, banned from writing by the Algerian authorities, will be able to practice their trade again," the Paris-based Reporters without Borders (RsF) said. An Algiers court suspended La Tribune for six months on September 3 over a cartoon mocking the Algerian flag. [...] Fifty-seven journalists have been murdered by suspected rebels. RsF said authorities had suspended or seized newspapers on 55 occasions and 23 journalists had been held for more than 48 hours since the conflict broke out over the 1992 cancellation of a general election fundamentalists were poised to win. ******** UNITED NATIONS, Sept 27 (Reuter) - Malaysia's prime minister accused the West on Friday of spreading smut and violence, particularly on the Internet. In his speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Mahathir bin Mohamad said that although the information age facilitated worldwide knowledge, it also demeaned moral values. ``Smut and violence gratuitously distributed by criminals in the North is no less polluting than carbon dioxide emissions nor less dangerous than drug trafficking.'' In a reference to the United States he said if one great power could apply its laws to citizens of another country for drug trafficking ``why cannot countries with different moral codes extradite the traffickers of pornography for legal action?'' ``Before the whole world sinks deeper into moral decay, the international community should act. Abuse of the ubiquitous Internet system must be stopped,'' he said. Politically, he said the monopoly of the West's electronic media should be broken on so-called world news networks. ``Not only are distorted pictures of our countries being broadcast but our own capacity to understand what is happening is being undermined,'' he said. [...] ``It is boring almost. And yet nothing much has been done which could bring about amelioration of this sad state of affairs, `` he said. ********* RANGOON, BURMA, 1996 SEP 27 (NB) -- Burma has made owning, using, importing or borrowing a modem or fax machine without government permission a crime, punishable by up to 15 years in jail, according to a report by United Press International. Burma's military government has imposed what's called "The Computer Science Development Law" which empowers the Ministry of Communications, Posts and Telegraphs to specify what exactly can be restricted, UPI reports. UPI quotes the government-run newspaper New Light of Myanmar as saying the same punishment is prescribed for anyone who sets up a link with a computer network without the prior permission of the ministry, or who uses computer network and information technology "for undermining state security, law and order, national unity, national economy and national culture, or who obtains or transmits state secrets." UPI reports that in July a diplomat, Leo Nichols, died in prison after he was sentenced to a lengthy term for illegal possession of fax machines. *********** SINGAPORE, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- Internet users in Singapore are complaining that a new system to police the massive global communications network is slowing down access to websites rather than speeding it up as promised by government officials, news reports said Saturday. Earlier this month, special computers called proxy servers began censoring all requests for websites from Singapore Internet users, blocking access to those deemed ``objectionable'' by the government. The proxy servers, which began regulating cyperspace Sept. 15, delay access to the Internet because they first have to check a list of banned websites before retrieving requested homepages, the Straits Times reported. ``I've found that it can take twice as long to access the sites I commonly access,'' said Teo Mei Chin, a 22-year-old undergraduate. Users pointed out that slower access translated into longer on-line time and higher telephone bills. Although many Internet subscribers in the tightly-controlled city- state anticipated such delays under the new system, the Singapore Broadcasting Authority assured users access to certain websites would actually be quicker since the proxy servers are able to store frequently requested homepages. But Internet users say the filter computers also are dishing up outdated homepages. Walter Wu, who uses the Internet for up-to-date stock market and business data, said some financial websites he requested were at least a day old. [...] *********** LONDON, ENGLAND, 1996 SEP 27 (NB) -- By Steve Gold. The British government has added its support to plans to handle the problem of child pornography on the Internet. The proposals, which have been drawn up by the Home Office with assistance from Peter Dawe, the founder of Pipex, the UK's largest Internet service provider (ISP), are known as Safety Net. According to Dawe, recent discussions in the industry, culminating in a letter from the police to the various ISPs in the UK, has meant there is considerable pressure on the ISP industry to exercise a degree of self-regulation. "Public opinion said that something had to be done. I came to the conclusion that it was going to be impossible to establish industry- wide consensus on how to tackle this issue," he said, adding that the idea of Safety Net is gathering support in the UK ISP community. According to Dawe, Safety Net has the backing of the Internet Service Provider's Association (ISPA), as well as the London Internet Exchange, two groups which claim to represent most of the ISPs currently operating in the UK. [...] Quite how the ISPs will tackle the problem, such as blocking access to those Web pages, remains to be seen, but Dawes claims that the ISPs will have no excuse in law of being unaware of offending Web pages and Usenet newsgroups. [...] ********** BRUSSELS (Reuter) - 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.'' 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. The accord follows an agreement by EU justice ministers in Dublin Thursday to extend the scope of the EU police agency Europol so it can fight the sex trade in women and children. The moves come in the wake of the discovery in Belgium of a paedophile network and the murders of four young girls. 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. [...] ******** CENTRAL, HONG KONG, 1996 SEP 26 (NB) -- By Eric Lai. A Hong Kong Internet enthusiast is claiming that his Web site, featuring sexually suggestive photos of himself, was forcibly removed by his Internet service provider (ISP) two days ago in a seeming act of premature censorship. Donald Tu, 32, is a former radio and TV presenter and aspiring bodybuilder and model. In May, he put up his Web site, http://members/hknet.com/~hkstud/ , which featured photos of himself topless, often wearing nothing more than wet, slightly transparent briefs, posing in a studio and outdoors at scenic locations around Hong Kong. Tu, who was interviewed on last night's premiere of the Dataphile On-Air radio show, says his site has received thousands of "hits" coupled with encouraging e-mail, especially after a local Chinese language newspaper on September 17 reviewed his Web site. But a single complaint outweighs those thousands of positive comments, at least according to his Web host, HKNet. After receiving a single complaint from a member of the public, HKNet wrote to Tu on Tuesday that "the government may take action against the site because of its content and 'exposure,' based on the letter of the law governing obscene and indecent materials, and recent experiences in its enforcement. Therefore, we have made the decision to bar access to the questionable materials for the time being." But ISPs which censor and regulate content are not currently being compelled by the government, according to a spokesperson at the Broadcasting, Culture, and Sport Branch. The Branch has been devising Internet content regulations all summer which should be announced soon. [...] ********* BEIJING, Sept 27 (Reuter) - China's Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin moved on Friday to tighten the communists' grip on the state media and to strengthen his position with a blaze of publicity before a party plenum. He used a visit to the Beijing offices of the People's Daily, the party mouthpiece, to deliver a hardline speech on the importance of maintaining communist control of all media, the newspaper reported, splashing the news and three photographs of Jiang across its front page. Diplomats said the speech by Jiang was aimed at bringing back into line Chinese writers and more daring media organisations that have tried to push the limits of propaganda [...] ``Historical experience has proved repeatedly that whether guidance of news is right or wrong has to do with the party growing strong ... the solidarity of the people and the prosperity of the nation,'' Jiang said. [...] ******** HotWired 27-29 Sept 96 The Netizen by Wendy Grossman London, 26 September Last Monday, a unified front of British police, government, and representatives of leading ISPs announced proposals for cracking down on illegal material available on the UK's portion of the Internet. The first target is child pornography, but the protagonists have already said they've set their sights on other types of illegal material such as copyright violations, obscenity, and possibly hate speech. Called R3/Safety-Net, the proposals were presented to the media by Science and Technology Minister Ian Taylor and representatives from the Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA), the London Internet Exchange (LINX), and the Home Office, which is the government department charged with law enforcement. [...] As it turns out, Demon and the Department of Trade and Industry had been talking without publicity for months about taking action against obscenity on the Net. But the media raised the pressure, as did complaints on uk.censorship about a list of 133 newsgroups that Superintendent Mike Hoskins of the Clubs and Vice unit of the Metropolitan Police had sent ISPs as a guide to the location of illegal material. Hoskins and the ISPs all swear no threat was intended or taken, but the underlying tone was still: You do something about it, or we'll do something about it. R3/Safety-Net is that something. [...] No one is going to oppose these measures. How can they, when the 1994 revision of the Criminal Justice Bill allows the police to arrest, without warrant, people suspected of obscenity and certain child pornography offenses? Child pornography is, of course, illegal to create, distribute, or possess in Britain. For the purposes of the Obscene Publications Act and the Protection of Children Act, if something looks like a child in a sexual act, it is child pornography. [...] So it seemed like with Monday's announcement, everybody wins - almost. The government gets to look like it's doing something big. The ISPs get to stay out of jail. The police get to arrest people. Peter Dawe gets to be a hero. Britain gets to be a world leader. And we get ... well, what do we get? We get the certain knowledge that they will not stop here. They have already said so. Books like the Anarchist's Cookbook are banned here in print, and in a country where last Monday police seized a massive haul of IRA explosives intended to rearrange the landscape, the argument for letting people read alt.engr.explosives is likely to lead to the withdrawal of reference books from the public libraries. Britain has an Official Secrets Act, not a Freedom of Information Act. Government can proceed only with the consent of the governed, and on Monday what that unified panel asked for was our trust. They will not censor free speech; it's just the small percentage of illegal stuff they want cleaned up. So we're left asking before every move, "Daddy, is this illegal?" ********** Subject: Germany Bans Web Pages for Minors - and ALL To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 13:37:52 +0100 (MET) Reply-To: um(a)c2.net (Ulf Moeller) Organization: private site, Hamburg (Germany) From: um(a)c2.net (Ulf Moeller) The report is essentially correct. In Hamburg, the prosecutors decided themselves that AOL had done nothing illegal, so as far as I know there was no court decision. Also, it appears that said Federal Office is neither responsible for electronic nor for foreign publications. I think the minister is trying to spead FUD. >From: taxbomber(a)taxbomber.com >Newsgroups: alt.censorship,alt.privacy,alt.security,news.admin.censorship >Subject: Germany Bans Web Pages for Minors - and ALL >Date: Sat, 28 Sep 1996 06:46:58 GMT >Message-ID: <324cc9c7.7567566(a)news.c2.net> >NNTP-Posting-Host: md19-017.compuserve.com According to Germany's leading tabloid paper "Bild" (Saturday edition), Federal Minister for Familiy Affairs, Claudia Nolte (Christian-Democrat), in an unprecedented decision has formally had several Web pages banned for being "X"-rated by the "Federal Office for the Evaluation of Literature Hazardous to Minors". These are pages featured by Ernst Zuendel, a leading political revisionist located in Canada whose purportedly "Neo-Nazi" views have been the subject of much controversy in Germany. Ms Nolte is quoted as saying: "It is not tolerable that the Internet should be an island with special privileges, on which thoughtless or unscrupulous providers may pursue their infamous activities with impunity." This effectively forces Internet providers to restrict minors' access to said pages - a technical impossibility since most minors accessing the net are be using their parents' accounts. No "Netwatch" or other self-censorship software will suffice to conform with this provision, as it is THE PROVIDERS, not the kids' legal guardians who have to comply with this restriction. Following a recent decision by the State of Hamburg's Supreme Constitutional Court to the effect that service providers cannot be held responsible for possibly illegal contents of data transfers via their networks (here, AOL was accused of disseminating child pornography), this move must be regarded as a circumvention tactics to put the thumbscrews on ISPs nevertheless by invoking Minors Protection legislation instead. (Also note that the Hamburg decision ruled that email message were protected by privacy laws as any snail mail letter - hence, providers could not be expected to monitor their contents as this would violate constitutional rights.) This implies that German based ISPs (including AOL's and Compuserve's local services) will actually have to ban ALL GENERAL access to the Zuendel pages from their systems unless they are willing to risk running afault of the law. ******** [Posted to soc.culture.singapore through an anonymous remailer in\ Germany. No wonder the SBA wants to censor the Net! --Declan] Mon, 23 Sep 1996 01:32:06 soc.culture.singapore Thread 228 of 350 Lines 18 SBA is screwed!! No responses mix(a)squirrel.owl.de Squirrel Remailer __ __ __ __/o \_ __/o \_ __/o \_ \____ \ \____ \ \____ \ / \ / \ / \ __ //\ \ __ //\ \ __ //\ \ __/o \-//--\ \_/__/o \-//--\ \_/__/o \-//--\ \_/ \__SBA ___ \ | \__ISP ___ \ | \__PAP ___ \ | || \ |\ | || \ |\ | || \ |\ | _|| _||_|| _|| _||_|| _|| _||_|| #### # # #### # # ##### # # #### ### ### ## # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #### # # # ## # #### #### #### ### #### # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #### #### # # # # # #### ### ### # # ###

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