December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: 'what cypherpunks is about' [RANT]
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:26 PM 11/2/96 -0800, Dale Thorn wrote: >Following similar logic was Teddy Roosevelt, then the mad fire-bombers of World War 2, >capped by the ultimate terrorist fire-bombing of all at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then >by immense fire-bombing of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, etc., followed by prodigious fire- >bombing of Iraq and a deliberate fire-bombing and massacre of retreating troops at the >end of the "Gulf War". Fighting the U.S. can be literal Hell! Terror bombing of civilians was a European not an American invention, though. >Quick, how many times have you heard this pro-interference argument? The pro- people >will even show "proof" that the "savages" (it actually says this in the United States >Declaration of Independence) were as mean to each other as the invaders were to them. >What they fail to say, however, is that the "meanness" in such things as human sacrifice >and so forth were imported to native cultures by "god-like" superiors who descended on >the locals to "help" them to the next level of technology and hero-worship. Fooey! The death rate among civilians in many pre civilized wars was as high as civilian death rates in many of our 20th Century wars. We have the piles of bones to prove it. In addition to peonage, serfdom, chattel slavery and the treatment of women as chattels, pre civilized people were considerably more xenophobic than the worst US redneck. Many had problems accepting the denizens of the next village a few miles away. They tended to be racists as well. And did I forget to mention infanticide and royalism. DCF

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Re: Telling quote from Bernstein hearing
by Rich Burroughs 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:31 AM 11/3/96 -0800, Dale Thorn <dthorn(a)gte.net> wrote: >Lucky Green wrote: >> In the recent hearing of the Bernstein case, Anthony Coppolino for the >> Justice Department said: >> "We don't care about the theory; we don't care about >> the idea Mr. Bernstein has, which was to take a particular type >> of algorithm and use it to allow for an encrypted interactive >> conversation. That's his idea. >> We don't care about his idea; we care about the >> result of what it can do." > >[snip] > >Could I suggest a translation? "We're going to trust Professional Government Consultant >Organization XYZ to tell us about Mr. Bernstein's idea, since we obviously won't >understand Mr. Bernstein's own explanation." (And we do care about his idea, but we >can't admit that, because it would make us look stupid) Heh :) I think that Lucky hit on a choice quote from Coppolino -- it was really at the heart of his arguments. Since Judge Patell ruled that source code is speech, the ground has really shifted from just limiting crypto to limiting Bernstein's freedom of speech, and this is much to the government's disadvantage. Coppolino tried to avoid the issue by claiming that the government is not interested in restraining Bernstein's ideas (claiming several times that the government does not interfere with academic discussion of crypto), but that they want to impede the specific functionality of Snuffle. Bernstein's attorney, Cindy Cohn, aptly replied that the ideas behind the crypto _dictate_ the functionality, and that you can't restrain one without affecting the other (or words to that effect). I don't think that Coppolino meant that they do not understand Bernstein's ideas :) (though perhaps he does not...) Rich ______________________________________________________________________ Rich Burroughs richieb(a)teleport.com http://www.teleport.com/~richieb See my Blue Ribbon Page at http://www.teleport.com/~richieb/blueribbon U.S. State Censorship Page at - http://www.teleport.com/~richieb/state New EF zine "cause for alarm" - http://www.teleport.com/~richieb/cause

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more interesting ITAR/CJ stuff @ eff.org
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In addition to the transcript of the 9/20 hearing that Lucky mentioned, there's other good (new) stuff in EFF's archive, including a declaration from an editor with MIT Press where he indicates he was told informally that the NSA had asserted that the paper copy of the PGP Source Code book was subject to the ITARs. (There was no official response made, two printings were sold out, and the book has gone out of print.) <http://www.eff.org/pub/Privacy/ITAR_export/Bernstein_case/Legal/>, "961004_prior.declaration" -- Greg Broiles | "We pretend to be their friends, gbroiles(a)netbox.com | but they fuck with our heads." http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | |

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Re: NSA Report: Anyone seen this?
by Norman Hardy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I just finished reading the report "How to Make a Mint: The Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash" by Law, Sabett & Solinas. It can be found at <http://jya.com/nsamint.htm>. It is very well written with only identification of the issues except in the last short paragraph where they clearly lean toward government interests. They identify and distinguish interests of the bank, the consumer's privacy, and the government. Some of the measures that they describe (providing for traceability) might well be done by a bank operating in an anarchy. Imagine that you are running a bank in an anarchy and the son of one of your good customers is kidnapped and held for ransom. Suppose that the kidnapper is a good customer of another bank with whom you have an arm's length relation. The arguments are not simple. Only towards the end does the paper begin to conflate the interests of the government and the bank. Some of the law enforcement purposes that they describe would apply to the anarchy bank, others would not. The paper is the best description I have seen of several advanced money schemes. It has a better description of Chaum's off-line scheme than I had seen before. It describes sever even more advanced schemes, both abstracted form the mathematical details, and then with the details filled in.

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FW: Dr. Vulis is not on cypherpunks any more
by blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Those of you who think that it was wrong, unwarranted censorship for John Gilmore to take Dr. Vulis off the list should note this sentence from John's message: When he posted a message saying that we'd have to use technical means to stop him from flaming the list, I said, "OK". It was Vulis who challenged John to stop him by technical means. It was at John's discretion to do so, and he took the liberty of following up on Vulis' challenge. Vulis did everything to set himself up for what he got, did he not. .. Blanc

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Censorship on cypherpunks
by Will French 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Except it's not very effective, is it, since he's still posting flames? In any case, it's an admission on John Gilmore's part that libertarianism can't work without some measure of authoritarianism; the only argument is over _just how much_ authoritarianism we need. I'm quite upset about this. Up to now I was able to tell people that "there is at least one mailing list on the net that functions in a completely open manner". No more. Will French <wfrench(a)interport.net>

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RESPONSE FROM CYBERPROMO
by abusebot＠savetrees.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Version 10-9-96: Cyber Promotions has started to implement stricter Terms of Service policies WITH TEETH. We have just recently terminated several accounts for abuse of our policies. (Updated TOS at end of message). The following email accounts have been *recently TERMINATED... *jrtkjs(a)savetrees.com 10-9-96: Forgery and spamming INTERNET *jrtkjs(a)answerme.com "" "" "" "" "" "" *dollars(a)savetrees.com Non-existant account. The account was forged by the people who opened the accounts above. *info1(a)cyberpromo.com 10-8-96: Unsolicited ads to INTERNET addresses *changes(a)answerme.com 9-30-96: Unsolicited ads to INTERNET addresses *changes(a)cyberpromo.com 9-30-96: Unsolicited ads to INTERNET addresses *changes(a)savetrees.com 9-30-96: Unsolicited ads to INTERNET addresses *catalog(a)savetrees.com 9-30-96: Unsolicited ads to INTERNET addresses *catalog(a)cyberpromo.com 9-30-96: Unsolicited ads to INTERNET addresses *catalog(a)answerme.com 9-30-96: Unsolicited ads to INTERNET addresses *eleven(a)answerme.com 9-28-96: Forgeries *eleven(a)savetrees.com 9-28-96: Forgeries *eleven(a)answerme.com 9-28-96: Forgeries *tsahk(a)cyberpromo.com 9-27-96: Unsolicited ads to INTERNET addresses *tsahk(a)answerme.com 9-27-96: Unsolicited ads to INTERNET addresses *icssender(a)omni.cyberpromo.com 9-19-96: FORGED unsolicited email, making it appear that Cyberpromo's auto-sender was responsible. If you are in receipt of the message, please look through the headers and complain to the appropriate postmasters. networkes(a)answerme.com 9-17-96: Ignored remove requests networkes(a)cyberpromo.com 9-17-96: Ignored remove requests networkes(a)savetrees.com 9-17-96: Ignored remove requests reminders(a)answerme.com 9-17-96: Unsolicited ads to INTERNET addresses reminders(a)savetrees.com 9-17-96: Unsolicited ads to INTERNET addresses reminders(a)cyberpromo.com 9-17-96: Unsolicited ads to INTERNET addresses salespromo(a)answerme.com 9-16-96: Unsolicited ads to INTERNET addresses salespromo(a)savetrees.com "" "" "" "" salespromo(a)cyberpromo.com "" "" "" "" promo(a)answerme.com "" "" "" "" promo(a)savetrees.com "" "" "" "" promo(a)cyberpromo.com "" "" "" "" info4free(a)answerme.com "" "" "" "" info4free(a)savetrees.com "" "" "" "" info4free(a)cyberpromo.com "" "" "" "" manda(a)cyberpromo.com 8-28: Massive abuse to INTERNET addresses / FORGERY manda(a)answerme.com 8-28: Massive abuse to INTERNET addresses / FORGERY website(a)cyberpromo.com 8-27: excessive abuse to AOL / removals ignored sevenmil(a)cyberpromo.com 8-27: excessive abuse / all removals ignored sevenmil(a)answerme.com 8-27: "" "" "" "" "" "" vera(a)cyberpromo.com vera(a)answerme.com zol(a)answerme.com website(a)answerme.com allied(a)cyberpromo.com allied(a)answerme.com lists(a)cyberpromo.com lists(a)answerme.com If you have a complaint about an account that was not listed above, please forward it to our President's personal account: wallace(a)cyberpromo.com We currently operate the following servers: answerme.com cyberpromo.com omni.cyberpromo.com gamut.cyberpromo.com We DO NOT operate the following servers: uunet interramp athens.servint cais postman.com powernet pwrsite Cyber Promotions is *not* in business to annoy people. We are in the business of sending (and assisting in sending) commercial (and noncommercial) email to people who are *not* offended by the receipt of these messages. Unfortunately, due to many experiences (many of which were out of our control) we have had some problems accomplishing our goals without upsetting some people. We are truly sorry about that fact, and we plan to "clean up the streets" as best as we can. Some people have been under the impression that all email that appears to come from cyberpromo.com, is from Cyber Promotions. That is not true. Most of the complaints that we have recently received have been in reaction to people who have "autoresponders" and "virtual email addresses" on our system. In that case, their mail would have referenced an account on our system, but originated from a different site. Unfortunately, software like Pegasus enables their mail to appear as if it came from us, driectly. But, their true origination is still evident in the headers. You can determine where it originated if you know how to decode headers. But when doing so, remember that Pegasus, for example, actually logs into *our* sendmail. At this time, the only messages that originate from Cyber Promotions, use our proprietary Cyber Sender 2.1+ protocol which will always be indicated in the organization: header. Due to these "look alikes," it could appear that recipients' remove request were being ignored. WE DO NOT IGNORE REMOVE REQUESTS. We now also maintain a "master" remove list of people who have asked to be removed from all commercial mailing lists. If you have received an email from "Cyber Sender 2.1+", our new proprietary transport agent protocol, then the remove features *do* work properly, now that all of the bugs have been fixed (uppercase and lowercase now match, too). No mail is allowed out of our system, if the recipient's address is in our master remove list. We currently have over 1.1 million email addresses in that file. 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ASIO encryption ?
by Benjamin Grosman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear All, Does anyone happen to know what encryption methods, algorithms, or procedures ASIO (Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation) uses? Any information regarding ASIO's methods, cryptographic or otherwise, would be appreciated. Yours Sincerely, Benjamin Grosman

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VOO_doo
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

October 25 Science reports on the latest teleportation research in "To Send Data, Physicists Resort to Quantum Voodoo." It describes a laser-driven apparatus for transmitting highly secure encoded (but not encrypted) messages via entangled photon states. IBM's Charles Bennett says, "as other researchers work to harness quantum mechanics for computation and cryptography, teleportation could become the equivalent of a quantum mail service." ----- http://jya.com/voodoo.htm VOO_doo (txt) Science is at: http://www.sciencemag.org/

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URG_ent
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

11-02-96. "Transaction Records Urged for Smart Cards" Electronic money systems must generate transaction records to help law enforcement agencies track money launderers, a senior Justice Department official said last week. "In a paper environment ... we can get bank records, we can get credit card records. Our goal is only to preserve this ability." "Internet insecurity " Jeff Schiller: The Web has a lot of potential vulnerabilities. There's plenty I know about that I don't want to talk about. People who know about the vulnerabilities are reluctant to talk about them because if we disclose what we know to the public, the bad guys will take advantage. And if we address them with the vendor community, they don't do anything about them. There's a lot of hooey out there. Never trust the advice of someone selling you a product, especially if the sales pitch is, "My product makes your problem go away." "RSA offers kit for secure credit-card transactions" RSA Data Security, Inc. will announce today a tool kit for developing secure applications that support credit-card transactions on the Internet called S/Pay in support of SET. "Medcom introduces a "Super Cafe" data encryption product" Medcom's latest data encryption product, the Secure Socket Relay (SSR), features strong encryption with full key length (56-bits DES). A demo version can be downloaded at http://www.medcom.se/. "On Technology's Security White Paper" "Taking The Threat Out Of Network Security," will stimulate the industry into discussing some of the issues of security that face the Internet industry and its users. Copies of the paper are available on request from On Technology. The company's Web site is at http://www.ontech.co.uk . ----- http://jya.com/urgent.txt (21 kb) URG_ent ---------- In another story on gov-spooked insecurity: NEC announced that it successfully demonstrated country-to- country virtual private networking (VPN). During the tests, privacy and security was maintained between the two sites by deploying DES and triple-DES encryption. Since DES encryption technology cannot be exported from the United States, a Japanese version of DES, developed outside the U.S., was used.

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