December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Arkansas Phone Scramblers, etc.
by John C. Randolph 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I just had an interesting exchange with the latest person to take up residence in my bozo filter. I get this message from some clown I've never heard of, sent from AOL, saying that he wants one of these Radio Shack scrambler frobs, and hinting that he'd be willing to pay lots for it. I sent him back a note pointing out, among other things, that I don't know him, he doesn't know me, and that we're talking about buying and selling a frob that at least one set of JBT's doesn't think he should have. I concluded by telling him that I wouldn't sell him one if I had one, that I wouldn't tell him whether I had one, and that if he wants to have a private conversation with someone, he should just get a copy of PGP phone, like everyone else. He sent me a huffy note, saying I'd better learn some diplomacy. So, what do you think guys? Did I just piss off some federal prosecutor who was hoping to body-grab me to a clueless jusrisdiction like Arkansas to try me for crypto-terrorism, or did I piss off another fucking AOL'er? Amused and Torqued at the same time, -jcr

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Re: microcurrency: Netscape vs. Microsoft
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:46 AM 1/20/97 -0800, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote: >[microcurrency] >>It will also not catch on until there are better standards involving >>microcurrency transactions amongst the vendors. It would also help if >>there was a single interface (or "helper app") for whatever vendor you >>decided to go with. I am not sure that is feasible. Single interface, perhaps. Sun's Java Wallet is step in this direction. Single helper app, not a chance. The systems are too different, and do not share a sufficient number of properties, to use the same helper app. >as I see it, I think there are a few key standards that need >to be devised: > >1. an html tag that indicates how much a link costs, probably in >the <a href="" cost=xx> type syntax This could be done, but is, IMHO, too inflexible. >2. modification of http to support a payment mechanism, by sending >a token. Take a look at PEP and UPP. This may not be what you are looking for, but it is a start. Available at any IETF draft repository. [...] >>Currently every vendor of payment schemes has made it proprietary in some >>way. (At least the ones I have seen.) This means that if the user visits >>three different web pages, each using a payment scheme from a different >>vendor, that user has to be signed up with all of those vendors. (Or at >>least have their helper apps.) The systems are *not* interchangeable due to fundamental differences in the design. This is not a software/UI issue. I do not expect the signup requirements to last much longer. To give just one example, take a look at the current discussions on dev-lucre, a list for the Unofficial Cypherpunks Implementation of Ecash. [Sorry, I don't have the archive URL.] http://www.isaac.cs.berkeley.edu/ntlucre/ has the latest version. The list is currently discussing an ActiveX Ecash control. With -lucre, you no longer need to sign up with an issuer. Assuming an ActiveX control, the client software installs itself. As to the merchant software, Stronghold already ships with Ecash support built in. Netscape has announce that Navigator will ship with CyberCash. There is definitely movement at the browser/server end. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred Make your mark in the history of mathematics. Use the spare cycles of your PC/PPC/UNIX box to help find a new prime. http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm

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Hard Drive Encryption
by FrozenHell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I found a program on the internet called POTASSIUM HYDROXIDE that says it will encrypt your hard drive... then when ever you turn on your computer it will request a password before it even accesses your DOS. If you put in the right password it will load as a TSR that will let your access your encrypted hard drive. But I have a Western Digital Caviar Hard Drive and have the use the W.D. Disk Manager v6.03d that comes with it... this is another program that loads before your DOS... does anyone know if this program Potassium Hydroxide will work with W.D. Disk Manager and work under Win 3.11/95. I don't want to risk gibbling all the info on my hard drive. If not does anyone know of a program that will let me encrypt my hard disk and decrypt it will a password before my DOS is loaded and work with the above programs of mine. If it helps I am using DOS 6.21 with Windows 3.11 ( I'm upgrading to `95 soon ;> ) -FrozenHell (fhell(a)nether.net)

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Re: Dr Vulis's crypto experiment (Re: IMDMP: SOURCE CODE RELEASE ANNOUNCEMENT)
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Igor Chudov @ home wrote: > my predictions: > 1) Dale Thorn will become another Kagalenko and will mailbomb mods Unless someone can give me good enough reason to get involved with communications programming, even at a macro level, I doubt I'll be much of a technical threat to c-punks et al. I suspect that the main reason for much of Sandy's fear and loathing of late is not the incessant Spamming of the c-punks list, but rather the presence of a superior, dominant intellect which threatens his space here. Which would you fear most: The government looking over your shoulder, checking for possible ITAR violations, or a relentless critic who's apparently made it his current life's mission to ceaselessly point out your limitations to the whole world? > 2) 90% of cypherpunks-moderated will be about moderation > and censorship This topic should be one of the easiest to cut.... > 3) there will be massive openings of alternative cypherpunks > mailing lists, all doomed to fail Failure or success depends on many factors. Unfortunately, most successes in real life are money-sponsored, and therefore necessarily contain a driving, but hidden agenda. > 4) several alt.* newsgroups like alt.cypherpunks will be created Most people watch TV rather than get involved in anything. Whatever is interesting about that (other than as an academic study) I don't know. > 5) main business of freedom-knights will be shitting and spitting > at cypherpunks in alt.cypherpunks I've been posting some intense material to freedom-knights, but the response has been quite restrained. One could conjecture that the interest level there is not high (as far as c-punks goes), or that the maturity level is higher than other places... > 6) moderators will spend increasing amounts of time on their work In mathematics, when something doesn't compute intuitively, although on paper the proposition looks OK, you'd say "there's something wrong or missing here, it doesn't add up", etc. Moderators spending lots of time moderating postings from the hoi polloi doesn't add up either. > 7) crossposting between alt.cypherpunks and mail.cypherpunks > will be prohibited by alt.cypherpunks FAQ, posted monthly > by Dr. John Martin Grubor This thing about crossposting is way overblown. I was told forcefully once not to crosspost to c-punks and coderpunks, as though one list were a true subset of the other. Posters should be advised of the specific reasons for not "crossposting" to certain list combinations, unless you are referring only to commercial Spam or other 'bot-generated mail.

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Thoughts re moderation, filtering, and name changes
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(I wrote a pretty long message and decided that the last few paragraphs said what I was really getting at. So I put the long message on the web at <http://www.io.com/~gbroiles/cpunks.html> and have sent along only the last bit.) This discussion of public perception now finally reaches what finally spurred me to write in the first place, which is the relationship of all of this to the name of the list, and whether the unfiltered list should be called "cypherpunks" or "cypherpunks-unedited" or whatever. I think that the dispute over the name (or, more accurately, grumbling and dissent about John Gilmore's decision about naming) is reducible to a dispute over whether it's more important that the list be perceived as a "free expression zone" where any message is accepted, or if it is perceived as a mailing list with a high signal/noise ratio. At a purely technical level, these are both non-issues; the name "cypherpunks(a)toad.com" is merely a string of text, and we could all just as easily subscribe to "mxfgfds(a)toad.com"; and motivated subscribers can use automated tools to tweak the signal/noise ratio to their individual liking. But most people will follow a path of least resistance; they will (remain) subscribe[d] to "cypherpunks(a)toad.com", and they will not use filters, and what they get is what the world at large will think "cypherpunks" is. While I don't care (and suspect many others don't care) what the perception of "cypherpunks" is, per se, I do care about whether or not interesting people choose to send their thoughts and information to the list. So to the extent that public perception changes that, I'm interested. And we've been doing the "free expression zone" for several years, and what we're ending up with is a mixture that's mostly crap - of the messages I see (and I filter a lot out), a small fraction (10%?) is pure garbage (e.g., the "cocksucker" messages), a large fraction (60%?) is on-topic but uninteresting or not useful, and the rest is useful in that it's got information or a perspective I hadn't been exposed to before I read the message. Other lists which are moderated (either by message or by author) attract people whose messages are frequently useful; many of those people have been on the Cypherpunks list at one time or another and have found it unsuitable. So I'm ready to experiment with a new configuration because I'd like to get more useful information. One approach to the name question would be to eliminate "cypherpunks(a)toad.com" and force old/new subscribers to choose between "cypherpunks-edited" and "cypherpunks-unedited". The advantage I see is that it provides more accurate feedback about what people want; the present method provides information about the perceived value of unmoderation weighed against the bother of dealing with subscribing & unsubscribing. The disadvantage is that it's likely to eliminate many subscribers, and that it tends to abandon the "cypherpunks(a)toad.com" history which is, by now, ~5 years old. -- 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: Airport security [no such thing]
by Eric Murray 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adam Shostack writes: > The '3 questions' ("Pack your luggage? let it out of your > sight? Taking any gifts?") originated with El Al, where they are the > introduction to a very expensive (and privacy invading) set of > screening questions. The El Al people are trained to watch you as > they ask the questions, and respond to signs of lying or rehersal. > The Americans read the questions off the screen, and pay no attention > to your answers. Some airlines here in the US have set up "check in" terminals near the gate so you can check in there instead of having to deal with human beings at the desk. The terminal asks the magic three questions. No chance for seeing someone's reaction to the questions there (unless of course there's a hidden camera pointed at the terminal, or some sort of biometric device attached). One time I asked a ticket guy if he's ever had anyone say "yes" to the magic questions, his answer was that the one time it happened the person turned out to be an FAA three-questions enforcement squad conducting a check. -- Eric Murray ericm(a)lne.com ericm(a)motorcycle.com http://www.lne.com/ericm PGP keyid:E03F65E5 fingerprint:50 B0 A2 4C 7D 86 FC 03 92 E8 AC E6 7E 27 29 AF

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Re: Dr. Vulis' social engineering experiment
by Jane Jefferson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Also Sprach Toto: > > If what you say is true, then Dr. DV K's efforts are quite possibly > the most important issue being addressed in this conference, because > behind free speech, lies the most important issue of all--when does > it start, and when does it stop. Exactly. > The military-industrial complex proclaims this necessary for the > purposes of state-security, and denies that it is used in order to keep > their 'sins' from being exposed. (If you believe this, then please > contact me by private email regarding an ocean-front property I have > available in Tucson, AZ. If you act quickly, I will throw in a set > of the Amazing Ginzu Knives as an added bonus.) The heart and soul of the problem is that "sin", "freedom", "good", and "evil" are abstract concepts which fluctuate from individual to individual. If Dr. Vulis is indeed an adjunct professor at Fordham University, I think that perhaps he has been hanging out and drinking too many beers with my former philosophy professor Quentin Lauer. ;-7 > The crypto-cognizant citizen proclaims cryptographical ability as > a means of empowering their rights of free speech. The more intelligent > of them recognize as misinformation the government's feeble claims that > they cannot successfully investigate someone moving tons of illegal > drugs into the country unless they have the capacity to eavesdrop on > the private correspondences of 'all' of their citizens. (Which is the > equivalent, in my mind, of claiming that AIDS cannot be held in check > without knowing the details of all of the citizens sex-lives.) Governments, however, are made up of the very same people who claim to require these rights to privacy. Those people create, codify and enforce the laws. The problem is that the people who find themselves in this position of power are not always the most moral or concerned with the best interest of the majority. And fiendishly, it is the very chaos and anarchy and random chance espoused by proponents of the cypherpunk philosophy that allows these people to gain this power, unchecked! Thus, the real problem ends up being not "how to control the government so that the government doesn't control us", but "how to deal with the government when it goes into control-freak mode". That it will go into such a mode is a given -- based on human nature and history. This is a fundamental cycle of evolution and human behavior. We have to face the fact that humans are predators, and as long as we are, the cycle of this behavior will continue. The human race has not evolved to such a point where privacy is not an essential thing. If tomorrow everyone turned instantly telepathic and we all were capable of knowing each other's thoughts, you'd best believe the suicide rate would be beyond belief. Buisnesses would instantly fail, countries would instantly be absorbed by other countries, many relationships based on love and trust would be destroyed. And during that time, the deadliest person alive - the toughest and the meanest, and the most effective in the face of all the chaos, would not be the person who was capable of preserving their privacy. Rather, it would be the one who was capable of surviving in it's complete absence. This is not to denigrate the efforts of the cypherpunks, but merely to point out an area that they may not have thought of as a method to battle the trend towards fascism. -- Marcus: "They'll try to kill you." | "You won't see me in Xena: "Oh, I still have a few tricks | front, but you can't left up my sleeve...I don't | leave me behind!" have any sleeves!" -- Xena bloopers | -- YES

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Re: Dr Vulis's crypto experiment (Re: IMDMP: SOURCE CODE RELEASE ANNOUNCEMENT)
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Igor Chudov @ home wrote: > my predictions: > 1) Dale Thorn will become another Kagalenko and will mailbomb mods Unless someone can give me good enough reason to get involved with communications programming, even at a macro level, I doubt I'll be much of a technical threat to c-punks et al. I suspect that the main reason for much of Sandy's fear and loathing of late is not the incessant Spamming of the c-punks list, but rather the presence of a superior, dominant intellect which threatens his space here. Which would you fear most: The government looking over your shoulder, checking for possible ITAR violations, or a relentless critic who's apparently made it his current life's mission to ceaselessly point out your limitations to the whole world? > 2) 90% of cypherpunks-moderated will be about moderation > and censorship This topic should be one of the easiest to cut.... > 3) there will be massive openings of alternative cypherpunks > mailing lists, all doomed to fail Failure or success depends on many factors. Unfortunately, most successes in real life are money-sponsored, and therefore necessarily contain a driving, but hidden agenda. > 4) several alt.* newsgroups like alt.cypherpunks will be created Most people watch TV rather than get involved in anything. Whatever is interesting about that (other than as an academic study) I don't know. > 5) main business of freedom-knights will be shitting and spitting > at cypherpunks in alt.cypherpunks I've been posting some intense material to freedom-knights, but the response has been quite restrained. One could conjecture that the interest level there is not high (as far as c-punks goes), or that the maturity level is higher than other places... > 6) moderators will spend increasing amounts of time on their work In mathematics, when something doesn't compute intuitively, although on paper the proposition looks OK, you'd say "there's something wrong or missing here, it doesn't add up", etc. Moderators spending lots of time moderating postings from the hoi polloi doesn't add up either. > 7) crossposting between alt.cypherpunks and mail.cypherpunks > will be prohibited by alt.cypherpunks FAQ, posted monthly > by Dr. John Martin Grubor This thing about crossposting is way overblown. I was told forcefully once not to crosspost to c-punks and coderpunks, as though one list were a true subset of the other. Posters should be advised of the specific reasons for not "crossposting" to certain list combinations, unless you are referring only to commercial Spam or other 'bot-generated mail.

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Hard Drive Encryption
by FrozenHell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I found a program on the internet called POTASSIUM HYDROXIDE that says it will encrypt your hard drive... then when ever you turn on your computer it will request a password before it even accesses your DOS. If you put in the right password it will load as a TSR that will let your access your encrypted hard drive. But I have a Western Digital Caviar Hard Drive and have the use the W.D. Disk Manager v6.03d that comes with it... this is another program that loads before your DOS... does anyone know if this program Potassium Hydroxide will work with W.D. Disk Manager and work under Win 3.11/95. I don't want to risk gibbling all the info on my hard drive. If not does anyone know of a program that will let me encrypt my hard disk and decrypt it will a password before my DOS is loaded and work with the above programs of mine. If it helps I am using DOS 6.21 with Windows 3.11 ( I'm upgrading to `95 soon ;> ) -FrozenHell (fhell(a)nether.net)

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Re: RSA challenge: is it legal to try?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:33 PM 1/16/97 -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: >At 08:13 PM 1/14/97 -0800, jim bell wrote: >>US. Alone, that would have denied non-US patents to RSA. However, such an >>explanation grandly ignores the fact that computer software (let alone >>mathematics in general) was not considered patentable ANYWHERE (?) before >>public-key systems made their appearance in 1976. >... >>I'm still waiting for an "innocent" explanation for the US patent office >>beginning to issue software patents. I don't think there is one. > >The first software patent was Dennis Ritchie's patent on setUID. So what year was that? >Computer security is one area that, if you're going to allow patents >on software at all (which I think are a bad idea, but that's politics) No, it's not JUST politics. It's also (im)practicality. Even if, arguably, software OUGHT TO be patentable, going from a time in which software wasn't patentable to software patentability is essentially impossible. First, it requires (or, at least, ought to require, if they were to do it right...which they didn't) a searchable compilation of all previously existing software ideas and constructs to ensure that obvious or previously-existing ideas were not given patents. Since prior to about 1976 there was no motivation on anyone's part to collect such a database (secrecy being the most useful protection) then it was practically guaranteed that the Patent Office would be unable (or unwilling???) to refuse to grant patents on old ideas. Further, unlike a lot of big-ticket engineering, programming can be done by individuals with a relatively low-cost computer. Many if not most of the software constructs that were later called "patentable" were probably actually invented by people who had no interest in patenting them...and the few greedy ones who did were given the rewards. That's not fair, particularly when they may have been invented during a time in which software patents were known to be impossible to get. Also, since unlike other areas of engineering current programmers didn't have to pay for previous software constructs ("do-loops were free") there should have been distinct limits on the royalties that anybody could ask for in software-patent cases. Another problem is that much of the costs of most software companies are personnel and advertising. Any realistic royalty system (even assuming all other problems were solved) would have to determine what portion of a program's functionality was attributable to a patented concept, which I assert is essentially impossible. Do you charge for execution time? (the guy who patents the "wait loop" would make a fortune!) Length of code? Number of times called? Royalties must, presumably, be limited to a reasonable and practical level, and also (obviously) they may also have to be divided among a number of potential claimants, in the same way that (for instance) a car manufacturer may have to pay royalties on potentially hundreds or even thousands of patents to sell a single car. If no mechanism currently exists to arrive at a fair division of such royalties (about 20 years after the patents for the various encryption systems were filed) , I think it may be presumed that nobody seriously believes that this is possible. In short, I think it's absolutely foolish to believe that any sort of workable system could ever have been arranged to patent software, even if all of the issues above had been addressed fairly. And the reason I asked for an "innocent" explanation is to give people the benefit of the doubt so that they could show that the system was working. It isn't, and you know it. It's not surprising that no REAL LAWYERS (tm) around here were willing to tackle this issue. They know it's all a fraud. >>It also ignores the strong likelihood that the reason for the Patent-Office >>policy change (done, apparently, without benefit of a corresponding law >>change) was because with public-key/RSA there was finally an example of >>software the government wished to deny to the average citizen, >>and the only mechanism (short of secrecy, which was broken) to do so >>was to patent it. > >D,H,R,S, and A didn't _have_ to apply for patents.... >With hardware security products, the NSA has the power to seize and >classify systems which are applying for patents, for no particularly >good reason, and they used to do it often. Actually, I don't think they REALLY "have the power." What I mean by this is simple: Since American patents are supposedly grantable for applications filed up to one year prior, there is no guarantee that they will even see a patent application to grant until long after the cat is out of the bag. For instance, there was >an analog scrambler for CB radios that got its patent applications >seized in about 1980. And most software patent applications for >crypto have involved machinations to avoid getting trapped by this, >like publishing in foreign journals before submitting applications. Why should they have to publish in FOREIGN journals? Like I said before, since up to one year can elapse after disclosure (and, apparently, even longer in the case of the DHM patent, submission to ANY journal, not merely domestic ones, should do to prevent NSA's tricks. (and today, publishing on the Internet should achieve exactly the same results.) Richard Schoeppel commented this way: "Roger Schlafly has made a reasonable case that the DHM patent is invalid because the invention was "published" more than a year before the patent was filed. (He dug up a copy of a preprint they were circulating with a stamped received-date of ?May 1976?.)" What are we to conclude? These sleazebags can't even follow their own rules! Look, I asked for an INNOCENT explanation of software patents. INNOCENT explanations don't include the obvious kind of scams pulled like this. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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