December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: The Politics of Export Restrictions
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:44 PM 1/29/97 -0800, Rick Hornbeck wrote: >Is it possible the unreasonable crypto export restrictions are simply being >imposed at this time for the purpose of making Al Gore look good when he >runs for President in 2000? I suppose it's plausible, but it's an opportunity open to both candidates, and more plausibly (because of lack of collaboration) to the Republicans - e.g., Dan Quayle and the "Crypto Freedom For Americans" platform, promising to rescue Silicon Valley from those evil regulatory Democrats. If I were an evil politician trying to set up a trick like you suggest, I think I'd want a scheme that my opponent(s) couldn't hijack and use against me. -- 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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The Politics of Export Restrictions
by Rick Hornbeck 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is it possible the unreasonable crypto export restrictions are simply being imposed at this time for the purpose of making Al Gore look good when he runs for President in 2000? In other words, his campaign could include promises to retract existing crypto export restrictions established by his predecessor. The campaign would be accompanied by slogans and rhetoric such as "export crypto, not jobs" and the crypto/high-tech community would support Gore and the Democratic party in droves.

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Re: Altavista
by Leonid S Knyshov 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Isn't it the future of internet advertising? I mean its just like Juno's and other companies, the only ads shown to customers are those that are relevant to their needs as submitted. Like do a search for web promotion and you are gonna get ads of various services etc. It is highly unlikely that detailed logs are kept since Alta-vista gets overwhelming number of hits. The way I go around all these ads is that I use Internet Fast Find by symantec and I love it, I purchased it after evaluating for 3 days. Sorry for commercial ;) I think it is a good idea, no wonder doubleclick.net is one of the leaders in advertising. You are shown only the ads that will potentially interest you, search for shopping and you are gonna get one of those ISN ads etc. I think it is a good idea FWIW. I wouldn't think that a company such as doubleclick.net will do you any harm. One of my job assignments is Internet research and I search for such variety of topics that those robots have no use on the information submitted. On the other hand, if I find my site on Altavista and go to it, in my referer_log I will see the entire search query and that is a valuable marketing information, you learn about how the customer found you etc. Well, this list isn't marketing101(a)anywhere.com so I am afraid I won't bother with more thorough explation :) I am sorry if you consider this an OFFtopic message but I am just answering the question. On Wed, 29 Jan 97 01:03:35 EST mjw(a)VNET.IBM.COM writes: >From: Mark Waddington >Subject: Altavista > >> However, the doubleclick.net ads appear to bear no relationship to >the >> keywords being searched... > >Interestingly, I've just noticed over the last couple of days that the >in-line >ads are directly relevant to the search words I enter. I did a search >yesterday >on "Quicken" and "security" and all the in-line ads I was shown >referred to >security or penetration detection products. >

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Re: Sovreign Right of Lawful Access
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:11 PM 1/28/97 -0600, Mike McNally wrote: >Somebody wrote: >> >> This morning at the RSA keynote, David Aaron, the US Crypto >> ambassador quoted the "Sovreign Right of Lawful Access" as >> something that goverments were determined to preserve. > >Speaking as a private indiwidual, and not as a drone in the employ >of IBM (don't get me started on the "but wait, key recovery *isn't* >the same as key escrow" hoo-ha), that dude scared the piss out of >me. I think that terminology is odd. They're getting desperate. "Soverign Right of Lawful Access" doesn't state HOW DIFFICULT that "access" is to be. Interpreted broadly, that would outlaw any encryption even if it only impeded that access a tiny bit! Or under an alternative interpretation, the mere fact that it is hypothetically possible to decrypt a message means that nothing (other than mathematical improbability) stands in the way of doing the decrypt. Also, it didn't say SECRET ACCESS, although experience tells us that they (the thugs) probably assume this. I've long pointed out that ordinary search warrants require informing people who are being searched, even if they're not home and assuming the thugs didn't trash the place the way they frequently like to. I see no reason to believe that the advent of telephone technology in the late 1800's should have retroactively re-written the US Constitution to make secret searches okay. Technically, the Bill of Rights prohibits "unreasonable searches and siezures," and doesn't specifically mention the secrecy issue, but since (am I correct in this, Real Lawyers <tm>?) the practice up until that time required people searched to be informed of searches, a change in policy that wiretaps could be secret sounds more like taking advantage of a technological windfall, not "discovering" that the Constitution allowed something that had always before been prohibited. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Best Computer School?
by Hal Abelson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Rick Osborne <osborne(a)gateway.grumman.com> writes: The only thing I didn't have that the next MIT applicant had was money. I made the mistake of letting them know that I was dirt poor and would need full aid/grants/etc, and to quote "The Great Escape" it was "Zzzt! To the Russian front!" Just to set the record straight, MIT's admissions is need-blind. Lots of things go into our admissions decisions, but whether or not an applicant needs financial aid is not one of them. Admissions and financial aid are handled out of separate offices, and the people making the admissions decisions don't even see the financial aid requests. One exception: We are experimenting with the possibility of considering the amount of aid needed in the case of a few international applicants, but even here this is only a minor consideration for a small number of applicants. For domestic applicants, financial aid plays no role at all in the admissions decision. -- Hal Abelson

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Best Computer School?
by Hal Abelson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Rick Osborne <osborne(a)gateway.grumman.com> writes: The only thing I didn't have that the next MIT applicant had was money. I made the mistake of letting them know that I was dirt poor and would need full aid/grants/etc, and to quote "The Great Escape" it was "Zzzt! To the Russian front!" Just to set the record straight, MIT's admissions is need-blind. Lots of things go into our admissions decisions, but whether or not an applicant needs financial aid is not one of them. Admissions and financial aid are handled out of separate offices, and the people making the admissions decisions don't even see the financial aid requests. One exception: We are experimenting with the possibility of considering the amount of aid needed in the case of a few international applicants, but even here this is only a minor consideration for a small number of applicants. For domestic applicants, financial aid plays no role at all in the admissions decision. -- Hal Abelson

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Re: Sovreign Right of Lawful Access
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:11 PM 1/28/97 -0600, Mike McNally wrote: >Somebody wrote: >> >> This morning at the RSA keynote, David Aaron, the US Crypto >> ambassador quoted the "Sovreign Right of Lawful Access" as >> something that goverments were determined to preserve. > >Speaking as a private indiwidual, and not as a drone in the employ >of IBM (don't get me started on the "but wait, key recovery *isn't* >the same as key escrow" hoo-ha), that dude scared the piss out of >me. I think that terminology is odd. They're getting desperate. "Soverign Right of Lawful Access" doesn't state HOW DIFFICULT that "access" is to be. Interpreted broadly, that would outlaw any encryption even if it only impeded that access a tiny bit! Or under an alternative interpretation, the mere fact that it is hypothetically possible to decrypt a message means that nothing (other than mathematical improbability) stands in the way of doing the decrypt. Also, it didn't say SECRET ACCESS, although experience tells us that they (the thugs) probably assume this. I've long pointed out that ordinary search warrants require informing people who are being searched, even if they're not home and assuming the thugs didn't trash the place the way they frequently like to. I see no reason to believe that the advent of telephone technology in the late 1800's should have retroactively re-written the US Constitution to make secret searches okay. Technically, the Bill of Rights prohibits "unreasonable searches and siezures," and doesn't specifically mention the secrecy issue, but since (am I correct in this, Real Lawyers <tm>?) the practice up until that time required people searched to be informed of searches, a change in policy that wiretaps could be secret sounds more like taking advantage of a technological windfall, not "discovering" that the Constitution allowed something that had always before been prohibited. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: The Politics of Export Restrictions
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:44 PM 1/29/97 -0800, Rick Hornbeck wrote: >Is it possible the unreasonable crypto export restrictions are simply being >imposed at this time for the purpose of making Al Gore look good when he >runs for President in 2000? I suppose it's plausible, but it's an opportunity open to both candidates, and more plausibly (because of lack of collaboration) to the Republicans - e.g., Dan Quayle and the "Crypto Freedom For Americans" platform, promising to rescue Silicon Valley from those evil regulatory Democrats. If I were an evil politician trying to set up a trick like you suggest, I think I'd want a scheme that my opponent(s) couldn't hijack and use against me. -- 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: DES challenge status?
by Anil Das 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ben Byer wrote: >=20 > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >=20 > What exactly is the status of RSA's DES contest? I understand that at > least two of the smaller contests have already been cracked, but I > haven't seen much beyond theoretical discussion on the list on the > topic of the DES contest. >=20 =09Two? The only publicized solution so far is the RC5/32/12/5 solution from Ian Goldberg at Berkeley (and independently from Germano Caronni at ETH Z=FCrich). =09Are you saying that you know that the 48 bit RC5 contest is solved already, or are you just counting Ian's and Germano's solutions separately? -- Anil Das

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Best Computer School?
by Hal Abelson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Rick Osborne <osborne(a)gateway.grumman.com> writes: The only thing I didn't have that the next MIT applicant had was money. I made the mistake of letting them know that I was dirt poor and would need full aid/grants/etc, and to quote "The Great Escape" it was "Zzzt! To the Russian front!" Just to set the record straight, MIT's admissions is need-blind. Lots of things go into our admissions decisions, but whether or not an applicant needs financial aid is not one of them. Admissions and financial aid are handled out of separate offices, and the people making the admissions decisions don't even see the financial aid requests. One exception: We are experimenting with the possibility of considering the amount of aid needed in the case of a few international applicants, but even here this is only a minor consideration for a small number of applicants. For domestic applicants, financial aid plays no role at all in the admissions decision. -- Hal Abelson

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