December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by Paul Bradley 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> It appears to be widely believed that cryptoanarchy is irreversible. > Everybody believes that the race to deploy or forbid strong cryptography > will define the outcome for a long time. This is certainly my position... > I can't think of a reason why this should be so. > If the wide use of strong cryptography results in widely unpopular > activities such as sarin attacks and political assassinations, it > would not be all that hard to forbid it, even after deployment. I don`t think so. The point is that cryptoanarchic ideals and strong cryptography will be too widely deployed to remove them from circulation. Also I believe that the sheer amount of traffic over the internet will make it virtually impossible to find encrypted messages even if strong encryption is outlawed. And last but not least the system of anonymous remailers and the ease with which return addresses can be forged means people using strong cryptography couldn`t be traced anyway. Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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French Smart Card Firms in Merger Deal
by Dildophus 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

NEW YORK -- Schlumberger Electronic Transactions, a leading French smart card company, said Wednesday it signed a letter of intent to acquire Soliac, a unit of the French processing company Sligos that makes magnetic stripe and smart cards. The Schlumberger company's agreement to buy Solaic points to further consolidation in the smart card industry, which has seen a number of joint ventures and acquisitions in the past year. Solaic has manufacturing facilities in France and Spain. Its marketing operations are primarily in those countries, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The proposed transaction, which is subject to the signing of definitive agreements, would include a partnership to develop smart-card-based systems.

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FICS Group to Build On Microsoft Platform
by Dildophus 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

BRUSSELS -- FICS Group, an international banking systems company, announced a major electronic delivery initiative based on Microsoft Corp. technology. Expanding on the personal computer and telephone modes of banking service delivery, FICS said it is expanding into smart phones, personal digital assistants and wireless phones, electronic wallets, and Internet-based services. Microsoft platforms play a major role in FICS offerings, and Microsoft's Activex technology will be employed in Internet development. "The fact that FICS has chosen Windows NT as one of its key development platforms and adheres to the Open Financial Connectivity standard makes the company a valuable partner for Microsoft," said Ashley Steele, the Redmond, Wash., software company's marketing manager for the banking industry. FICS also participates in the Tandem Computers Inc. "payments factory" program, also based on Windows NT. Separately, FICS said it entered into a strategic partnership with Swift, the global banking telecommunications network. As a Level 3 partner, FICS is one of a few select firms that exchange strategic information with Swift and promote each other's products.

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Why Crypto Is Hard
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We've put Bruce Schneier's "Why cryptography is harder than it looks" November 6 post to Risks at: http://jya.com/whyhard.htm Thanks to SZ.

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Re: Legal Deffinition of Encryption?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:17 PM 11/9/1996, Mark M. wrote: >On Sat, 9 Nov 1996, Benjamin Grosman wrote: >> I have absolutely no idea: this is a very interesting problem. Not for just >> compression and encryption differention legally, but also, well, ANY other >> data form. If one defines a new format for saving data (i.e a new image >> format), and then exports this technology from the USA, is this exportation >> of munitions due to it's unknown qualities? Or what? >> I know that in Australia there have been problems defining electronic data, >> especially pictures (usually porn), for the purposes of prosecution. >> Because, really, a pornographic picture is no more than 1's and 0's arranged >> in a different way by a different algorithm. >> Thus I think it most likely that the law would try and approach it from the >> direction of the algorithm that saved the data and the intent with which the >> algorithm was written. >> Otherwise, I don't know. > I can't define encryption, but I know it when I see it. They way it will be forbidden is by outlawing the execution of the algorithms. The algorithms (the secure ones anyway) are well defined as is executing them. The legal system has dealt with greater ambiguities than this. An analogy to the drug laws might be useful. We don't outlaw all drugs that cause you to have weird visions and to act strangely. That would be hard to define and would cover a number of legal drugs. Instead, the specific chemicals are forbidden as they are discovered. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Why Crypto Is Hard
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bruce asks his Risk post not be distributed on the Web. Okay.

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Re: "Nightmare on Crypto Street--the Return of Sun Devil"
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:11 AM 11/8/1996, Timothy C. May wrote: > As I said in my "Nightmare on Crypto Street" piece, it seems that Peter > counters every one of our counterarguments with some variant of "won't > matter--they'll have a dozen agents and 20 MIT graduates looking for > evidence." Or, "won't matter, the Bill of Rights will be suspended for the > duration of the Emergency." Well, it's hard to argue with such points. I've created some confusion with my posts which have been less than organized. That's a consequence of making it up as you go along. The dialogue has helped me to refine my thinking. (Thanks, guys!) This is the rough structure of my thinking: 1. Hypothetically, let's say "Nightmare on Crypto Street" happens. 1.1 We can't guarantee this will not happen, therefore it must be addressed. 1.2 This is an unlikely scenario. 2. Thus, there would be broad public support for GAK. 2.1 By broad, I mean even many former cypherpunks would recant. 3. Broad public support makes suppression of strong cryptography feasible. 3.1 And, without dramatic short term erosion of the Constitution. 3.2 Or, a short term break down in the rule of law. 3.3 The number of violators would be small, so resources would be available to do hard things. 3.3.1 Such as having 20 MIT grads go over your house with a fine toothed comb. 4. What are the motivations of the GAKers? 4.1 They appear to want to suppress strong cryptography *before* we there is *any* evidence of a problem. 4.2 That is unnecessary, because if 1. occurs, it may be addressed. 4.3 It is as easier to impose GAK after 1. occurs, rather than before. 4.2 Could it be that they want to prevent the public from discovering the benefits of cryptoanarchy? 4.3 Why have the GAKers failed to address the risk of a police state? We've seen many police states historically. They are an obvious and serious risk. The GAKers have been oddly reticent regarding this point. In the future I will try to make it more clear which area I am addressing. I'm sure many cypherpunks feel we are just rehashing issues that were settled long ago. I think it never hurts to go over our assumptions and help new people to fully understand cypherpunk ideas. It never hurts to anticipate future moves by the GAKers, either, even ones they haven't thought of yet. These discussions generate ideas of how to effect the changes we want to see. For instance, if we develop low tech inexpensive and easy ways to support cryptoanarchy, it makes it much harder to suppress. The difficulty in suppression may prevent ill-advised attempts to do so. Also, the more we can erode the barriers between code and language, the stronger the case is that laws governing code are violations of the First Amendment. What if you had a compiler that accepted English language instructions for how to build a crypto system? "Take a random number 64 bits long. Then find a prime which is a little larger. Then...." The language itself should remain protected by the First Amendment even if somebody else has a compiler which can turn it into software. Another conclusion we can draw is that cryptoanarchy is more of a political issue than many of us would like. That means we might put more effort into public opinion than just straight coding. (Tim may claim otherwise, but I think he agrees with this in practice.) It may also be that the "bad boy" image of the Cypherpunks is counterproductive to our goals. Many people do not know how strongly I feel that GAK is a terribly risky policy, as I have been playing Devil's Advocate for the last couple of days. Given almost every situation that is likely to arise, I am totally opposed to GAK, and not just mandatory GAK, any GAK whatsoever. For instance, were I given the choice between intellectual property laws (off which I have made my living), and GAK, I would seriously consider discarding the intellectual property laws. It is that bad of an idea. And, like just about everybody else, the idea that certain forms of arithmetic could be illegal is deeply offensive in its own right. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Re: Information [for new PGP user]
by Paul Bradley 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >I'll bet you can't find 10 out of 1,000 users who have read the total source, > >let alone comprehended and validated it. > > Depending on the system, compiler and version of PGP, compilation may or > may not function as expected. I know, I class myself as quite an experience programmer (though I haven`t done a lot of code recently) but I spent several days weeding through the bugs and it still wouldn`t compile on Borland C++ V4.51 so I just read the core code and hoped the executable was really derived from that code. I`m normally more paranoid than that but I just don`t have the time to spend getting borland to compile it. It won`t even compile on my system with the borland makefile than comes with PGP. Has anyone else on here managed to get it to compile under Borland and how long did it take them???? Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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Bruce's 'Why Cryptography Is Hard' is still draft
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

----- Forwarded message from Phil Agre ----- >From rre-request(a)weber.ucsd.edu Sat Nov 9 05:16:00 1996 Resent-Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 20:50:17 -0800 (PST) Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 20:50:15 -0800 (PST) From: Phil Agre <pagre(a)weber.ucsd.edu> Message-Id: <199611090450.UAA27962(a)weber.ucsd.edu> To: rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu Subject: notes Resent-Message-ID: <"7C7uBC.A.H1G.I2Ahy"@weber> Resent-From: rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu Reply-To: rre-maintainers(a)weber.ucsd.edu X-URL: http://communication.ucsd.edu/pagre/rre.html X-Mailing-List: <rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu> archive/latest/1379 X-Loop: rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu Precedence: list Resent-Sender: rre-request(a)weber.ucsd.edu Notes on network computers, blind copies, democratic culture, monopolies, and the idea of an Internet establishment... As a periodic reminder, a Web archive of nearly all the RRE messages ever sent can be found through http://communication.ucsd.edu/pagre/rre.html It turns out that the article on cryptography by Bruce Schneier that I forwarded from the Risks Digest the other day was actually an unfinished draft that Peter Neumann sent out by mistake. Bruce asks that everyone refrain from propagating that version around the net. ----- End of forwarded message from Phil Agre ----- -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume

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Re: Black Unicorn exposed?
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sarah v. Bernhardt will be thrillingly laid bare in Beantown. Swiss cheese, she flashed, foxily fluttering the lie-machine. That "no cameras, please" is spooky-spooky tease, no dirty-looky pix of the Wonder Bare *ookie. Pseudo-Actors for hire. Harvard-bred, breeding lot of the B&B beaners. Dirty laundrying of tropical hula-moola, you betcha your rubber check, get there early, to admire the hall sweepers. Keep your eye peeled for the one-eyed one-horn in overalls using infra-red.

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