December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Database law... silver lining??
by Richard L. Field 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Should a database protection law such as HT 3531 be enacted in the U.S., it just may turn out to be the best weapon yet for the protection of personal data. Why shouldn't a "database" be interpreted to include an individual's personal data? All that is required is that it be "arranged in a systematic or methodical way". Heck, that's not so hard. And a "database maker" isn't necessarily Lexis (the compiler of P-TRAK) and friends, it is each individual who originally made a "substantive" (i.e., lifetime) investment in the collection of the contents of his personal database. Based on this reasoning, P-TRAK, etc. would be considered an infringing use, subject to civil and possible criminal actions, injunctions, impoundment, and monetary relief. Hmmm... - Richard Field

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Computer CPU chips with built-in crypto?
by Norman Hardy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

An important paper on tamper-proof hardware, discusses CPUs that cypher their memory bus. html: www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/tamper.html postscript ftp.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/tamper.ps.gz Has special relevance to smart cards.

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re: sci fi
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Without a doubt contemporary SciFi authors such as Vinge and Stephenson have produced great thought provoking works. Always a good read. But sometimes I'm drawn back to the rollicking rampages of EE Doc Smith or the playful frollicks of Harry Harrison. While not presenting a plausible vision of our future they do offer a significant amount of enjoyment. Pure brain candy! So will some exceptionally creative sort spend 3 or 4 hundred pages exploring BlackNet and the future of global networking? Or has anyone looked at what has happened to trivial networks like IRC's EFnet to see a potential model for how global networking will become balkanized under bandwidth constraints, server cycle shortages, and over worked sysadmins? One physical connection and many virtual, private networks with limitted interoperability and crossover. The internet of the near future may not be the open paradise it is today. I read in InfoWorld that the Telco Dereg act may destroy the local loop market for T1 lines from LD COs. As many as 900,000 new T1's may become available at bargain rates on the order of $40 per month with end point hardware under $700. Watch PairGain Technologies as they are the leader in this hardware market and have some real interesting vox/data over twisted pair toys. Sheesh, I start out talking SciFi and end up talking PairGain! I guess the future is now. diGriz

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Re: Why I Don't Read SF Much Anymore
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Thu, 21 Nov 1996 00:14:49 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >On the issue of why many of us don't read as much SF as we once did... >1. I'm a lot older. The stuff that I thought was really great back when I >was 14-22, or so, and even "pretty good" until I was about 25 or so, now >really looks like dreck. (Not all of it, but more than I thought was dreck >at the time.) >Partly this is age and life experience, partly just increased sophistication. Remember Sturgen's (sp?) law: 90% of everything is crap - I think most of us just take awhile before we agree. The SF genre could be characterized by a couple diamonds buried in a manure pit... >(Vernor V. claimed to a friend of mine that the day he spent talking to >several of us was the most fruitful day he'd spent in a long time...I take >this as evidence that folks like us are to the new generation of SF writers >what folks like members of the British Interplanetary Society were to >writers of past generations.) I'd agree 100%. A community as small as the SF writers *needs* outside influence. Must be neat, though, to read a book and go "I *did* that!" >(Interestingly, Eric Drexler says he cannot enjoy it because Simmons does >not give nanotechnology a central enough role. This echoes the point Duncan nanotech (and other things) can spoil a good story by making things too easy. Take most (all?) of Forward's books - great ideas, but it reads like a press release. >- Orson Scott Card, "Ender's Game." A good fictional exploration of online >anony mity. In many ways, Cypherpunks was explicity a kind of combination >of "Ender's Game," "True Names," "The Shockwave Rider," and "Atlas >Shrugged." I think those books are partly responsible for getting a great many people interested in this sort of thing... >- and of course Heinlein, though his best stuff is 30-45 years old now Always a mark of a great SF author: his stuff is still good even if the science is outdated... Ditto EE smith - it's funny, when you read things like the lensmen series it seems cliched until you realize it *is* cliched - because so many others copied him. # 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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Re: Why I Don't Read SF Much Anymore
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Thu, 21 Nov 96 10:05:46 -0500, Ken Kirksey wrote: >certain romance in the Gersnbackian view of the future that I enjoy, >especially in contrast to the Grim and Gritty (TM) "reality" of most >modern and post-modern SF. I still find Heinlein's juveniles to be fun >reads, probably for this reason. Ditto for Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars >books. That's one thing you could say: The predictors of the future are a lot more pessimistic than they used to be... # 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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Re: Finjan "SurfinGate"
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Thu, 21 Nov 1996 12:10:51 -0600, Mike McNally wrote: >Check out http://www.finjan.com and the stuff about "SurfinGate". The >software supposedly can perform an on-the-fly inspection of a Java >applet or ActiveX control, and then apply a signature to it along with >a "safety" level qualifier to feed into a configurable policy mechanism. > >Any ideas as to how you can look at an ActiveX control and determine >whether it's safe or not? You can't. Anyone who claims to be able to do so is betting their scanning ability against the collective programming skill of hundreds of brilliant-but-twisted programmers/hackers. Remember CHK4BOMB? The old DOS program that would dump strings from an EXE so you could look for things like "Happy birthday yoshi"? They started encrypting and adding polymorphing and stealthing and . . . Now you could write a program that would scan for more 'obvious' attacks but it will probably be a continual catch-up game. You don't even have the ability to do checksumming of existing files (like you do w/virii). # 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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Re: Database law... silver lining??
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:44 AM 11/22/96 GMT, you wrote: >Real-To: "Richard L. Field" <field(a)pipeline.com> > > Should a database protection law such as HT 3531 be enacted in the U.S., >it just may turn out to be the best weapon yet for the protection of >personal data. Why shouldn't a "database" be interpreted to include an >individual's personal data? All that is required is that it be "arranged in >a systematic or methodical way". Heck, that's not so hard. And a "database >maker" isn't necessarily Lexis (the compiler of P-TRAK) and friends, it is >each individual who originally made a "substantive" (i.e., lifetime) >investment in the collection of the contents of his personal database. Cute, but any such proposal is almost guaranteed to allow for independent creation from a non-database source - e.g., warranty cards, info extracted from you when you ask for credit, public records, etc. For example, one comment to Article 3 of the proposed WIPO treaty on sui generis protection of databases provides: "3.02 The protection provided does not preclude any person from independently collecting, assembling or compiling works, data or materials from any source other than a protected database." (see <http://www.loc.gov/copyright/wipo6.html> for more.) It's very unlikely that Congress (or the PTO) intends to do anything that'll screw up what's already working well for big database publishers. Your theory is similar to a patent flavor for databases, while the proposals floated out so far are much more like copyright - e.g., independent creation is OK, but copying is not, even with wide public distribution, and long protection times. With patent, independent creation is not OK, copying (the information, not the device) is encouraged/allowed, and protection time is short. [Friday, 11/22, is the deadline to submit comments to the PTO asking them to withdraw consideration of the WIPO database treaty from the conference in Geneva. (Or encouraging them to submit it, if that's your opinion.) Comments can be sent to Mr. Keith Kupferschmid at diploconf(a)uspto.gov.) -- Greg Broiles | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell: gbroiles(a)netbox.com | http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto. |

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re: sci fi
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:50 PM 11/21/96 -0800, John Anonymous MacDonald wrote: >Without a doubt contemporary SciFi authors such as Vinge and Stephenson have produced >great thought provoking works. Always a good read. > >But sometimes I'm drawn back to the rollicking rampages of EE Doc Smith or the playful >frollicks of Harry Harrison. While not presenting a plausible vision of our future >they do offer a significant amount of enjoyment. Pure brain candy! For absolute brain candy, I recommend "Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers". EE.Doc Smith meets the Hardy Boys. The ending I had to read twice... >So will some exceptionally creative sort spend 3 or 4 hundred pages exploring >BlackNet and the future of global networking? We can only hope. >Or has anyone looked at what has happened to trivial networks like >IRC's EFnet to see a potential model for how global networking will become >balkanized under bandwidth constraints, server cycle shortages, >and over worked sysadmins? One physical connection and many virtual, >private networks with limitted interoperability and crossover. The internet of >the near future may not be the open paradise it is today. The bandwidth will increase and people will find bigger and better ways to chew it up. Governments will make bigger and bigger claims to why their set of petty rule outweigh other governemnts petty rules, increasing fear, uncertanty and doubt in the process. All in all, things will change and life will go on. (Unless we all die and then all bets are off.) >I read in InfoWorld that the Telco Dereg act may destroy the local loop market >for T1 lines from LD COs. As many as 900,000 new T1's may become available at bargain >rates on the order of $40 per month with end point hardware under $700. Watch >PairGain Technologies as they are the leader in this hardware market and have >some real interesting vox/data over twisted pair toys. Mmmm! Bandwidth! I hear of people complaining how much time is spent online. This is going to be a heroin-like fix to those sort of people. (I already have access to a t-1. It can be pretty damn addicting. At least when the rest of the net is willing to cooperate...) I expect that the big winners in the bandwidth wars will be the hard drive manufacturers. Imagine the amount of crap that will accumulate when downloads take seconds instead on minutes (or hours). Buy your stock now! >Sheesh, I start out talking SciFi and end up talking PairGain! I guess the future >is now. Actually the future was last week. Sorry. You missed it. --- | "Remember: You can't have BSDM without BSD." | |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.ctrl-alt-del.com/~alan/ |alan(a)ctrl-alt-del.com|

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/dev/random and similar
by Three Blind Mice 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There was a thread here a while back about /dev/random and similar devices for Linux, but I managed to lose the mails and the hks.net archives still aren't working (any news on that?). If someone could tell me where I could find such a driver, I would appreciate it very much. TIA! --3bmice

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RE: Mass-market crypto phones
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Clay Olbon" writes: > If I'm not mistaken (and I've been known to be from time to time :-), cell > phones are already encrypted between the phone and cell tower. He's mistaken, at least for analog cellphones in the US - digital cellphones (just starting to come in now) may have some form of protection. Before a law was passed, it was easy and legal to listen in on cellphones on most scanners and many ham radio outfits (and even some UHF TVs). Now it's merely easy. It's kind of pathetic - I'm sure that the billions lost to cellular fraud far outweigh the value of crimes that the LEA groups have been able prevent by preserving their ability to illegally eavesdrop on cell calls without a warrant. Peter Trei trei(a)process.com (standard disclaimer applies) Peter Trei Senior Software Engineer Purveyor Development Team Process Software Corporation http://www.process.com trei(a)process.com

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