December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Anonymous Post Control
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It's hard to filter anonymous posters. I want to see what a few of them have to say so I can't filter on the remailers. If anonymous posters PGP sign their posts, it is still hard to filter using a lame filter software such as that which comes to Eudora. It would be nice if toad.com would verify signatures and insert a header into the messages with the PGP User Id of every poster. Then it would be very easy for many people to filter the messages using widely available off-the-shelf mail software. (I volunteer to adapt majordomo for this task if it seems like a good idea.) Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Re: what is a law if it cant be enforced?
by Ryan Russell/SYBASE 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

As long as it can be selectivley enforced, that's all they need. Ryan ---------- Previous Message ---------- To: cypherpunks cc: From: mrwilhe @ odin.cmp.ilstu.edu @ smtp Date: 12/30/96 07:43:01 PM Subject: what is a law if it cant be enforced? can our gov possibly enforce this crypto law? --esp over the net? I think what happend is the dod released the net (arpanet/Internet) to the people without looking at the implications that could arise. The people now control the net and not the gov--and they don't like it! anyway our government is ruled by the people for the people--so we should not have any kind of special laws--ones that only apply to the net and not the rest of the world, after all we have a thing called free speech! fsh

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Professor Asks for Constitutional Review of New Encryption Regs
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Thanks to all the local c'punks for your support of this court case! If we do end up asking for a temporary restraining order, there'll probably be another hearing soon. I'll give you as much notice as I have. --gnu] PROFESSOR ASKS FOR CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW OF NEW ENCRYPTION REGS "Shell Game" Attempts to Continue Unconstitutional Rules December 30, 1996 Electronic Frontier Foundation Contacts: Shari Steele, Staff Attorney +1 301 375 8856, ssteele(a)eff.org John Gilmore, Founding Board Member +1 415 221 6524, gnu(a)toad.com Cindy Cohn, McGlashan & Sarrail +1 415 341 2585, cindy(a)mcglashan.com San Francisco - Laywers for Professor Dan Bernstein today asked the Government to delay enforcement of new encryption restrictions until they can be reviewed by a court for Constitutionality. The new regulations contain the same features struck down earlier this month by Judge Marilyn Hall Patel. "The government apparently decided to ignore Judge Patel's findings.", said Cindy Cohn, lead attorney in the case. "Instead of listening to Judge Patel's analysis and attempting to fix the regulations, they simply issued new ones with the same problems. We are giving them a a chance to fix this before we bring the issue up in court." President Clinton ordered on November 15 that the regulations be moved from the State Department to the Commerce Department. Judge Patel's decision of December 6 (released December 16th) struck down the State Department regulations as a "paradigm of standardless discretion" that required Americans to get licenses from the government to publish information and software about encryption. Over Christmas, the Clinton Administration published its new Commerce Department regulations, containing all the same problems, and put them into immediate effect today. The new regulations once again put Professor Bernstein at risk of prosecution for teaching a class on encryption and publishing his class materials on the Internet. His class begins on January 13 at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Professor Bernstein's letter of today proposes that the Government agree to delay enforcement of the new regulations while Judge Patel reviews them for Constitutionality. Failing that, Professor Bernstein will ask the court for a temporary restraining order to block their enforcement. "The government is forcing us to go back to Judge Patel again to have the new regulations declared facially unconstitutional." said Ms. Cohn. "This time we believe that a nationwide injunction against their enforcement is merited." "The new encryption rules are a pointless shell game," said John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which backed the suit. "Industry and Congress had asked that the draconian State Department regulations be eliminated in favor of existing, reasonable, Commerce Department regulations. Judge Patel invalidated the State Department regulations because they were draconian. Rather than address the concerns of either, President Clinton moved the draconian regulations into the Commerce Department -- and made them tougher in the process. It's his political decision whether to ignore and anger industry leaders, but he can't ignore a federal district court judge." Civil libertarians have long argued that encryption should be widely deployed on the Internet and throughout society to protect privacy, prove the authenticity of transactions, and improve computer security. Industry has argued that the restrictions hobble them in building secure products, both for U.S. and worldwide use, risking America's current dominant position in computer and communications technology. Government officials in the FBI and NSA argue that the technology is too dangerous to permit citizens to use it, because it provides privacy to criminals as well as ordinary citizens. Background on the case The plaintiff in the case, Daniel J. Bernstein, Research Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, developed an "encryption algorithm" (a recipe or set of instructions) that he wanted to publish in printed journals as well as on the Internet. Bernstein sued the government, claiming that the government's requirements that he register as an arms dealer and seek government permission before publication was a violation of his First Amendment right of free speech. This was required by the Arms Export Control Act and its implementing regulations, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. The new regulations have the same effect, using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Export Administration Regulations, and a "state of national emergency" that President Clinton declared in 1994 and has re-declared annually. In the first phase of this litigation, the government argued that since Bernstein's ideas were expressed, in part, in computer language (source code), they were not protected by the First Amendment. On April 15, 1996, Judge Patel rejected that argument and held for the first time that computer source code is protected speech for purposes of the First Amendment. On December 6, Judge Patel ruled that the Arms Export Control Act is a prior restraint on speech, because it requires Bernstein to apply for and obtain from the government a license to publish his ideas. Using the Pentagon Papers case as precedent, she ruled that the government's "interest of national security alone does not justify a prior restraint." Judge Patel also held that the government's required licensing procedure fails to provide adequate procedural safeguards. When the Government acts legally to suppress protected speech, it must reduce the chance of illegal censorship by the bureacrats involved -- in this case, the State Department's Office of Defense Trade Controls (ODTC). Her decision states, "Because the ITAR licensing scheme fails to provide for a time limit on the licensing decision, for prompt judicial review and for a duty on the part of the ODTC to go to court and defend a denial of a license, the ITAR licensing scheme as applied to Category XIII(b) acts as an unconstitutional prior restraint in violation of the First Amendment." She also ruled that the export controls restrict speech based on the content of the speech, not for any other reason. "Category XIII(b) is directed very specifically at applied scientific research and speech on the topic of encryption." The new regulations continue to insist that the Government is regulating the speech because of its function, not its content. The judge also found that the ITAR is vague, because it does not adequately define how information that is available to the public "through fundamental research in science and engineering" is exempt from the export restrictions. "This subsection ... does not give people ... a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited." Judge Patel also adopted a narrower definition of the term "defense article" in order to save it from unconstitutional vagueness. ABOUT THE ATTORNEYS Lead counsel on the case is Cindy Cohn of the San Mateo law firm of McGlashan & Sarrail, who is offering her services pro bono. Major additional pro bono legal assistance is being provided by Lee Tien of Berkeley; M. Edward Ross of the San Francisco law firm of Steefel, Levitt & Weiss; James Wheaton and Elizabeth Pritzker of the First Amendment Project in Oakland; and Robert Corn-Revere, Julia Kogan, and Jeremy Miller of the Washington, DC, law firm of Hogan & Hartson. ABOUT THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a nonprofit civil liberties organization working in the public interest to protect privacy, free expression, and access to online resources and information. EFF is a primary sponsor of the Bernstein case. EFF helped to find Bernstein pro bono counsel, is a member of the Bernstein legal team, and helped collect members of the academic community and computer industry to support this case. Full text of the lawsuit and other paperwork filed in the case is available from EFF's online archives at: http://www.eff.org/pub/Privacy/ITAR_export/Bernstein_case/ The full text of today's letter from Professor Bernstein to the Government, and proposed stipulation, are at: http://www.eff.org/pub/Privacy/ITAR_export/ Bernstein_case/Legal/961230.letter http://www.eff.org/pub/Privacy/ITAR_export/ Bernstein_case/Legal/961230_proposed.stipulation The new Commerce Department Export Administration Regulations are available at: http://www.eff.org/pub/Privacy/ITAR_export/961230_commerce.regs

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Constitutionality of new regs.
by Bovine Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

One issue which I haven't seen anybody address is the provision to make export licenses easier to obtain for those companies which show a credible business plan that supports GAK. 1) Isn't this showing favouritism in an administrative decision to people who support the government's political agenda. 2) If the export of a certain encryption `item' is inimical to `National Security', isn't the harm to the `National Security' the same regardless of whether the exporter plans to produce GAK products in the future or not? Based on these two points shouldn't this aspect of the regulations considered as being `arbitrary' and hence unconstitutional. A further thought. If you obtain an export license by showing the government a business plan that supports GAK, but then do not follow your business plan, how will the goverment `get' you?

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Shell Game News
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Online reports on the new crypto regs. MSNBC features Bernstein's challenge, with multiple sidebars. http://www.msnbc.com/news/49260.asp http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncs20.htm (AP brief)

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17 Dec '03

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Musical Instruments WELCOME TO INTERNET'S BEST FULL LINE MUSIC STORE
by mozart＠asianet.net.hk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: Zippy, anonymously
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:18 PM 12/31/96 -0500, Adam Shostack wrote: >http://www.metahtml.com/apps/zippy/welcome.mhtml > >Let Zippy provide you with web service. Chaining through the >anonymizer works, too. :) A suggested page is: http://www.metahtml.com/apps/zippy/zippy.mhtml/http://www.nsa.gov:8080/dirn… Pretty damn funny! (At least the version I got...) --- | If you're not part of the solution, You're part of the precipitate. | |"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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Re: Hardening lists against spam attacks
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:04 PM 12/31/1996, Douglas Barnes wrote: > The problem with payment schemes like this is that they're hard > to rationalize (as Lucky points out here). > A direct mail piece (via snail mail) can easily cost the sender > more than a dollar when all costs are taken into account. This > does not seem to have appreciably slowed down junk mailers IRL. > Spam to a large mailing list has a multiplicative effect (although > it's also easier to throw out and/or ignore.) Certainly if someone > had a real product, it would be worth anywhere from $1 to $25 to > post an advertisement to a sizeable mailing list. > On the other hand, a blanket charge would serve as a disincentive > to people who make valuable contributions, unless it were a > completely negligible cost, in which case the advertisers would > have no problem coughing up the money. There's a serious imbalance > between how annoying spam is and how much we're willing to pay > to post (most of us would like to see them charged to the point > where they wouldn't do it at all.) It won't be worthwhile for a year or two for spam artists to go to the trouble of figuring out how to do this. I'm not sure I have a good solution to this problem in the long term, however. If our custom was to send money to people who make good posts, then you could imagine the fee being quite high, say $20, since most of the money will be made back. Voila! We have a wonderful feedback system for how much contribution we have made. People who want to make sure that they are putting in at least as much as they take out can make a little rule for themselves: I won't take money out of my cypherpunks e-cash account. I will only send it to other people for their good posts. In effect, this is a fully distributed tokening system without the choke point of a single token administrator. > In general it seems very difficult to balance the various aspects > of maintaining a lively discussion, fostering a sense of community, > allowing anonymous postings, and keeping the whole thing simple > enough to actually implement. I agree that we should keep it sweet and simple. That's one nice aspect of the e-cash scheme. All the software is already out there, except (maybe) the majordomo part which I have volunteered to do. Keep in mind that if the list brings in, say, $1000/month that buys a lot of food. I have to think that this will liven up the monthly meetings and create many positive and lasting relationships. > I've been on the verge of responding to certain posters over the last > few months, and I've realized before I've hit the "send" key that > I'd be giving them just what they want -- attention -- while further > degrading the signal to noise ratio. This is exactly the sort of process which is facilitated by paying a dollar. In your case it won't make a difference, but most people will find their presence on the list becomes much more responsible when they have to put up a buck. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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No Subject
by Bovine Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Criminal, criminal, who's the criminal... WSJ, December 30, 1996: Obscure Treasury Unit Helps DEA Uncover Scheme >From the beginning, it was The Case That Didn't Add Up. It started with a woman in St. Louis who wanted to pay Federal Express $38 to ship a package supposedly containing a $2 paperback book to Los Angeles. The company called the local Drug Enforcement Administration office. [Thanks, FedEx assholes!] Ralph Moore, a DEA agent, got a search warrant, [Seems like pretty flimsy grounds for a warrant to me.] opened the package and found $10,000 in cash. [So?] He checked his records: The woman was on welfare. He searched her house and found a new car, $25,000 stuffed into a coat pocket and papers showing the woman owned seven buildings. "Follow the money" is supposedly an axiom for federal investigators, but in November 1994 Mr. Moore was discovering how tough that is to do in drug cases where suspects are rich and financially savvy. So who was Mr. Moore going to call? He noticed a DEA memo about an obscure unit of the Treasury Department, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. [Dum-da-dum!] The St. Louis case became a prime example of how Fincen, the nation's smallest intelligence agency, brings the latest in high-tech firepower to the never-ending battle against money-laundering schemes. The agency, created in April 1990, uses a staff of 200 analysts and agents to offer state- of-the-art computer tracking and analysis to state and federal agents and prosecutors, giving them more time to work the cases from the street. The DEA's Mr. Moore desperately needed the help. The woman who had mailed the package had a boyfriend who made $20,000 a year working for an electric company. The agent found he had more than 30 different accounts in one bank. Bank records showed hundreds of thousands of dollars flowing through them in patterns that never repeated themselves. Enter James Petrakis, a graying, 47-year-old Fincen investigator, who flew out from Washington. Mr. Petrakis designed a computer program for the case that could follow the money as it flowed through companies -- some phony, some real -- and through people who transferred ownership of some 30 pieces of local real estate that seemed to be involved. There were gaps in the digital portrait that emerged, but the general outlines were stunning: Mr. Moore had uncovered a family-run drug- distribution business that appeared to have stashed between $5 million and $7 million in various investments and purchases in St. Louis banks. Because the business also trafficked in guns, the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tax and Firearms was working on the case, too. Robert Nosbisch, the top bureau agent, agreed that tracking the money was going to be key. "The objective in a case like this is to get anyone who has a significant role into jail and take all of their assets," he says. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ [What do you do when the highwaymen wear badges?] Mr. Moore's chief suspect, a short, hot-tempered man named William Y. Jones, "was too good," he recalls. Mr. Jones had a way of anticipating the federal agent's moves. "It was almost like a chess game. As I would move a piece, he would move a piece," the agent adds. There were other odd things. Although Mr. Jones was 43 (in 1995), his credit records and other personal history only went back to 1985. Before that, he had no records. Mr. Jones's biggest drug moves usually happened on government holidays, when the DEA and ATF staffs were slim. Mr. Moore had a theory: Mr. Jones was probably a federal informant, a man who had worked with federal agents in drug cases before. [More like a graduate of the Federal Witness Protection Program, I'd say. Seems odd that they want to ID us down to the last gnat's eyebrow while making up IDs for their buddies.] "We needed to become unorthodox," Mr. Moore recalls. When wiretaps led them to a $1 million stash of Mr. Jones's cocaine in a car, they seized the drugs and the car, too. Later they heard Mr. Jones say on his tapped cellular phone that federal agents didn't steal cars. One of his drug partners, Mr. Jones concluded, must have double-crossed him. [So now they'll just steal stuff from you and not even notify you that it has been confiscated. Amazing!]

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