December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

now we know why it was called altavista!
by Huge Cajones Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

... Cylink (CYLK) announced today that the government has approved export of the company's security products containing strong encryption. Likewise, Digital Equipment (DEC) has also won approval and plans to begin shipments of encryption-enabled networking and system software immediately. A third company, Trusted Information Systems, effectively had approval before January 1 because of its existing key recovery technology. ... http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,7575,00.html

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New X-Ray Imager
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

New X-ray gun trades privacy for safety Reported by Andy C Seen in The Nando Times on 13 August 1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Passive Millimeter Wave Imager can X-ray through clothing to "see" a concealed weapon, plastic explosives or drugs. A police officer can surreptitiously aim it into a crowd from as far away as 90 feet. The new X-ray gun is becoming a symbol for an unlikely alliance of civil libertarians and gun owners who fear the fight against crime and terrorism may be waged at the expense of personal freedoms. "I'm incredibly concerned," said John Henry Hingson, a past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, meeting here this past week. "The entire nation could become a victim of illegal searches and seizures and the law is powerless to protect them from these police abuses." But in these nervous times following the the crash of TWA Fight 800 and bombings at the Olympics, Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center, many Americans are now willing to trade some of their privacy and civil liberties for greater security. A poll last week by the Los Angeles Times found that a majority of people -- 58 percent -- said they would curtail some civil liberties if it would help thwart terrorism. Thirteen percent said it would depend on what rights were at stake. The poll didn't ask people to single out any rights. The Clinton administration has proposed increased wiretapping and other anti-terrorism steps, and is doling out research grants for cutting edge anti-crime technology that once may have been intended for only military use. Last year, the National Institute of Justice awarded $2.1 million to three companies to develop weapon detectors for airports, stores and public buildings. Two models are being developed of the Passive Millimeter Wave Imager, a creation of Hadley, Massachusetts-based Millimetrix Corp. The larger one, about the size of a shoebox, is mounted on a patrol car and pointed at the unsuspecting person. The gadget doesn't send out X-rays; instead, it picks up electromagnetic waves emitted by human flesh. Anything that stands in the way of those waves -- like a gun -- or anything that emits weaker waves -- like a bag of cocaine or a plastic explosive -- will show up on a little screen in the patrol car. Clothes emit no waves. Neither do walls, allowing the device to be used from even outside a room. A second model is a smaller, battery-operated version that an officer can operate by hand, like a radar gun. Millimetrix hopes to field test the larger model soon at a police agency. Hingson argues the device runs roughshod over bans against illegal searches and seizures. The law says police can stop and frisk a person only when an officer has a "reasonable suspicion" the person is armed or involved in a crime. Millimetrix points out that while the imager can see through clothing, it still leaves people some privacy. The device's display screen, the company says, "does not reveal intimate anatomical details of the person." Chip Walker, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, noted that devices like the imager threaten the legal rights of people in 31 states who are allowed to carry concealed weapons with proper licenses. "We certainly support efforts to disarm criminals, but we need to be careful that we're not painting with too broad a brush here," he said. Walker said that as troubling as terrorism is, people may be playing into terrorists' hands by giving up their privacy. "One of the broader issues is that if we start giving up certain civil liberties, that essentially means that the terrorists are starting to accomplish one of their goals," he said. Contact email address: acobley(a)mic.dundee.ac.uk --------------------- (From a TRW development program description) The Passive Millimeter Wave sensor detects thermal energy, which is radiated from objects and reflected from other objects such as the sky in the 94 Giga Hertz frequency band. The advantage of this frequency is that there is little attenuation of the energy by water particles in the air (fog). The camera operates very much like a television camera except that it operates at mm-wave frequencies (near 90 GHz) instead of in the visible spectrum. It has components analogous to a television camera: optics to focus the image, a readout device to convert the electromagnetic energy into electrical signals, signal processing electronics to prepare the signals for display, and display unit to view the scene. The optical system images the blackbody radiation emanating from the scene on the Focal Plane Array (FPA), which consists of an array of small antennas, each coupled to a very small MMIC W-band (90 GHz) direct-detection receiver. ---------------- >From a description of the National Law Enforcement & Corrections Technology Center/Northeast (NLECTC) at Rome Laboratory (more on that later). The Millimeter Wave Imaging Radar Consortium seeks development of a suitable technology and effective, affordable products for concealed weapon detection (CWD) and through-the-wall surveillance (TWS) application --- well-established objectives for both military operations other than war and civilian law enforcement agencies. Consortium members include Millimetrix Corp., South Deerfield, Mass.; Technology Service Corp., Trumbull, Conn.; and Riverside Research Institute of Lexington, Mass. They will contribute $2,035,087 to the research program, while the government's share will be $2,018,491. Military applications of the envisioned technology, in addition to operations other than war, would include use by military police and special forces personnel, all weather aircraft operation, shipboard and airborne missile warning, helicopter obstacle avoidance, battlefield surveillance, fire control, and missile seekers. Civilian law enforcement agencies would be able to use the technology in curtailing terrorist acts and juvenile handgun crimes that frequently involve the use of concealed weapons, bombs and other contraband that cannot be detected using currently available technology see <http://www.nlectc.org/E144T127/june.htm> --Steve

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Your tax dollars at work
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

NIJ Opens Regional Technology Center in Rome: Representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice, state and local elected officials, and Air Force leaders officially opened the National Law Enforcement & Corrections Technology Center/Northeast (NLECTC) at Rome Laboratory. The Center will work with law en forcement and corrections organizations from 16 states --- stretching from Maine to Minnesota --- to determine operational requirem ents and identify, evaluate, develop, demonstrate and assess new or improved technology applications to meet those needs. The Center will also provide assessment of law enforcement products information, standards and testing. The Northeast NLECTC is co-located with Rome Laboratory within the Griffiss Business and Technology Park. Rome Laboratory is the Air Force's research and development laboratory responsible for command, control, communications, computer and intelligence technologies. The laboratory was selected as a regional technology center for the Justice Department's National Institute of Justice (NIJ) in December 1994. It joins four other regional centers across the country that use existing facilities and resources to support the NI J's Office of Science and Technology and law enforcement and corrections organizations. The Northeast NLECTC will support law enforcement and corrections activities in the following states: Maine, New Hampshire, Verm ont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio Michigan, Wisconsin, Io wa and Minnesota. It will facilitate technical interchange between prospective users and developers or technology through regional symposia, exhibitions and workshops. Participants range from the law enforcement and corrections community to the Department of De fense and the commercial sector. Each of the five regional centers has a specific technological focus, with the Northeast NLECTC capitalizing on Rome Laboratory' s more than 40 years of expertise developing technologies that provided the vital eyes, ears and voices for the nation's military. The Rome Laboratory Law Enforcement Team will be working with the Northeast NLECTC to convert a variety of defense technologies to the benefit of law enforcement and corrections. At the current time, efforts are directed at transferring technologies in the foll owing areas: *** Sensors: concealed weapon detection, Over-the-Horizon radar, wall penetration surveillance, and passive location, tracking and tagging. *** Information Technology: image processing, natural language processing, and identification using optical correlation. *** Intelligence Exploitation: speech processing, timeline analysis, automated firearm identification, and forensic sciences. *** Communications: applications of high-speed networks, multiband multifunction radios, and rapidly deployable communications. *** Command and Control: collaborative planning, visualization techniques, and Joint Automated Booking Station. Over the past four decades, researchers at Rome Laboratory have developed a vast array of technological tools for the military to e mploy in our national defense. Within the shared framework of command, control, communications and intelligence, many of those tech nologies apply to the domestic law enforcement mission as well. As one of NLECTC's regional law enforcement technology centers, Ro me Laboratory will continue to make substantial contributions to the war on crime by developing technologies that meet the increasi ng needs of law enforcement. Rome Laboratory Signs Law Enforcement Technology Agreement with City of Rome Representatives of Rome Laboratory and the City of Rome signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRDA) to establ ish a formal working agreement for the purpose of testing and evaluating military technologies in a law enforcement setting. The C RDA signing was the first official action following a ribbon-cutting that opened the National Institute of Justice's Northeast Regi on National Law Enforcement & Corrections Technology Center at Rome Laboratory. Signing the agreement were Col. Ted. F. Bowlds, com mander of Rome Laboratory, and Rome Police Chief Merino J. Ciccone. During the five-year agreement, Rome Laboratory will supply a variety of technologies to the Rome Police Department. Police department officers and officials will then test, evaluate and report back to Rome Laboratory regarding the effectiveness of the test technologies. Some of the technical tasks to be performed under t he CRDA are enhancing the computing capability of the Rome Police Department, including improved access to law enforcement data bas es and access to the World Wide Web/Internet, as well as synchronization of 911 Emergency System, computer and alarm time clocks. Rome Police Department personnel will also gain access to advanced technologies such as the "sniffer alcohol detection flashlight," night-vision goggles and hand-held digital assistants. German Magazine interested in Rome Laboratory's Law Enforcement Efforts Dr. Frank Ochmann, a science editor for Germany's Stern Magazine, visited Rome Laboratory to interview engineers and managers involved in law enforcement technology. The interview was requested in light of the April issue of the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, which carried an eight-page article covering a wide variety of C3I technologies developed by the Laboratory. Rome Laboratory Awards Funding to Research Consortia for Dual-Use Military and Law Enforcement Applications ROME, N.Y., June 25, 1996 --- Rome Laboratory has awarded funding totaling more than $5 million to three research consortia. Combined with investment by the consortia partners, the total amount of research will approach $17 million. Rome Laboratory will serve as the agent for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in managing the three research programs that were instituted under DARPA's Technology Reinvestment Project. The goal of all three programs is to develop new technologies with applications to both the military and commercial markets. The Quick Reaction Spoken Language Translator (QRSLT) Consortium seeks to develop a product prototype of a hand-held or body-mounted QRSLT that would allow military personnel in a hostile environment or civilian law enforcement personnel in an emergency situation to communicate with a non-English speaking individual using an easily portable, automatic translation device. The government is contributing $2,374,821 to the program, with consortium members sharing a cost of $3,632,852. Consortium members include Language Systems Inc., Woodland, Calif.; Entropic Research Laboratories Inc., Menlo Park, Calif.; and Eloquent Technology Inc. of Ithaca, N.Y. Language Systems Incorporated, developed the initial spoken language translation prototype under the direction and funding of Rome Laboratory, in support of military requirements. The QRSLT will accept spoken English input from a military or law enforcement user, translate the input into Spanish or Arabic, and generate the computer-spoken translation. The translator will also accept spoken Spanish and Arabic inputs and translate them into spoken English output. This will be an innovative advance over currently available "speaking translators," which produce speech based on typed inputs, which cannot accept spoken input, and which are not customized for military or law enforcement operations. The Millimeter Wave Imaging Radar Consortium seeks development of a suitable technology and effective, affordable products for concealed weapon detection (CWD) and through-the-wall surveillance (TWS) application --- well-established objectives for both military operations other than war and civilian law enforcement agencies. Consortium members include Millimetrix Corp., South Deerfield, Mass.; Technology Service Corp., Trumbull, Conn.; and Riverside Research Institute of Lexington, Mass. They will contribute $2,035,087 to the research program, while the government's share will be $2,018,491. Military applications of the envisioned technology, in addition to operations other than war, would include use by military police and special forces personnel, all weather aircraft operation, shipboard and airborne missile warning, helicopter obstacle avoidance, battlefield surveillance, fire control, and missile seekers. Civilian law enforcement agencies would be able to use the technology in curtailing terrorist acts and juvenile handgun crimes that frequently involve the use of concealed weapons, bombs and other contraband that cannot be detected using currently available technology. The Speaker Identification for Law Enforcement Consortium will be funded with $3.2 million, evenly divided between the government and consortium members T-NETIX Inc. of Englewood, Colo., and Dictaphone of Stratford, Conn. The goal of the consortium is to transfer previously developed speaker identification technology into commercial and military applications. With specific emphasis on minimal size, weight, power and cost, the technology is envisioned to have widespread civilian law enforcement surveillance applications. see <http://www.nlectc.org/E144T127/june.htm>

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"Secret" Postal Device -- Update.
by Jim Ray 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It seems as though it's a keyring(!) with one (some?) of the/those key(s) they use to unlock all the mailboxes for apartment houses. I guess it's a keyring too big for a pocket, but I don't know. Herald reporter revealed this today, but didn't want to. I guessed right, and he ended up admitting it after I informed him of how I know various Herald reporters and sorta social engineered him into saying too much by keeping him talking. :-) My mail has been acting up all weekend due to something unknown happening at Sprint. JMR -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEPAwUBMvZg9TUhsGSn1j2pAQFSNQfPTQ5WVwEu5AoNGoAY/jguoMIMdmOBtp0i fB6ralJD29b0VJ0ci8Z7l/vDoqhwMCT+nbP0Upp8xFDP391hbg4I2/H3KcDUxEen YRzB61k64UOuEVVQoeLJDq8/yyutZHLc599J93lTC6nmPqaogUzdYEjcyMnLuW/D j91pXvst+4IddZ7Aavnucu5AdwN84AitWc5/1sCBUpNlE6StcDtMtndkDnZT3f5H SZezlFpBB0UcRPirehSjaeSbWkgFeiLBIVLfLfFfJ+Fn1zHAeJ20L5fw7M7dAwp6 DruKucQ0jaIGpfeZJnPkwqYyKAmD63e+fFprw2/LaGQgxw== =pcrs -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Regards, Jim Ray <jmr(a)shopmiami.com> DNRC Minister of Encryption Advocacy One of the "legitimate concerns of law enforcement" seems to be that I was born innocent until proven guilty and not the other way around. -- me http://shopmiami.com/prs/jimray/ PGP id.A7D63DA9 98 1F 39 BA 93 86 B4 F5 57 52 64 0E DA BA 2C 71

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Race and IQ
by nobody＠zifi.genetics.utah.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dense Vinegar had his foreskin ripped off last night by a vacuum cleaner. ^-^-^-@@-^-^-^ (..) Dense Vinegar

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Re: VOICE STRESS ANALYSIS
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:25 PM 2/2/97 -0800, jim bell wrote: >Awhile back we were discussing voice-stress analysis; just got this item on >the subject; he said it's okay to post it. > > > >>From: Spectre334(a)aol.com >>Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 09:31:17 -0500 (EST) >>To: jimbell(a)pacifier.com >>cc: BLAMES2778(a)aol.com, AFSCA(a)aol.com, JLeek426(a)aol.com >>Subject: VOICE STRESS ANALYSIS >> >>MR. BELL: >> >>I FOUND YOUR QUERY ABOUT VOICE STRESS ANALYSIS ON THE INTERNET, AND I TOO, >>HAVE FOUND A DEARTH OF INFORMATION THERE - UNTIL NOW. >> >>I'M PLEASED TO REPORT THAT VOICE STRESS ANALYSIS (VSA) IS ALIVE AND WELL. IT >>HAS BEEN QUIETLY PERFORMING IN THE SHADOW OF THE POLYGRAPH FOR MANY YEARS. >> NOW, HOWEVER, IT IS COMING INTO ITS AND IS USED IN MANY STATES TO AID IN >>CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS AND OTHER APPLICATIONS. >> ... >>THE DIOGENES GROUP, INC., OF WHICH I AM PRESIDENT, HAS DEVELOPED A TOTALLY >>DIGITAL APPROACH TO VSA, AND BEGAN DELIVERING SYSTEMS TO LAW ENFORCEMENT >>AGENCIES IN DECEMBER, 1996. THE PREMIER DIOGENES VSA PRODUCT IS REDUCED TO >>THE SIZE OF A NOTEBOOK COMPUTER, BUT PRODUCES REALTIME PROCESSING FOR >>SOFTCOPY DISPLAY, AND HARDCOPY PRINTING WITHIN SECONDS. >> >>YOU MAY BE FAMILIAR WITH THE PREVIOUS STATE-OF-THE-ART, WHICH WAS A >>RELATIVELY LARGE ANALOG MACHINE, USING A SINGLE CHANNEL AND PRINTING OUT THAT >>DATA ON A ROLL OF THERMAL PAPER. THOSE DAYS ARE GONE FOREVER. >> >>IF YOU WOULD LIKE MORE INFORMATION ON THE DIOGENES GROUP AND ITS PRODUCTS, >>PLEASE USE THIS CHANNEL TO SEND ME YOUR MAILING ADDRESS, PHONE NUMBER, AND >>FAX NUMBER. >> >>THANKS FOR YOUR INTEREST IN VOICE STRESS ANALYSIS. ... Check the Readers Guide for the last couple of years. I don't have my Popular Electronics collection handy, but not too long ago they put out the plans to a smaller unit based around some Cell Phone part. It operated on a single frequency as opposed to a varient modulation of the voice. This allowed the unit to be much smaller and simpler, sacrificing some of the accuracy for a reasonable price (PC board, parts and case available for, I think, less than $100). The whole unit fit in a case about the size of a transistor radio and used a couple of bar graph displays (LED) for output. The whole operating theory is regulary printed with the schematics, and a parts list and foil diagrams are included for those who want to make the project from scratch. While your at it, look up the subliminal mixer from about 1992, I made one of these and only prevented from using it by the lack of a decent power supply. The single frequency mentioned above is further explained in the text. The local library can get a copy of either of these issues, or any others that catch your interest, for you if you ask really nicely.

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Re: RC5-12/32/5 contest solved
by A. Padgett Peterson P.E. Information Security 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>I received a nice flyer in the mail the other day from "Chip Express" >(www.chipexpress.com, 800-95-CHIPX). They are offering Laser >Programmed Gate Arrays. It appears to be a reasonable way to get some >Wiener chips built. As I recall, the Wiener design required about >23,000 gates. Their blurb had the following table in in: > FPGA Gates ASIC Gates 500 Units 1000 Units 5000 Units > 40,000 20,000 $77 $45 $10 > Not Avail 200,000 $176 $150 $82 First I can buy a 486DX-66 (with fan) for $37, but to make it into a PC takes just a wee bit more. Second, there is a world of difference in speed between a Field Programmable Gate Array and an Application Specific Integrated Circuit. The second is much faster (have heard of up to 200 Mhz) but doubt that you can get there with a laser (probably where the 50 Mhz figure comes from). I suspect you will need to have a mask made first - that is where the real money goes. However lets consider that you are really lucky and the first mask works and you get 100% yield (good chips). Next you need a backplane with an input mechanism to prime each of those chips with the text to break (will assume you have built in the initialization sequences for each chip). Then you need a path to provide the KPT to the XOR at the output, powersupply, RF shielding, and a few other minor items (can probably use a PC for a front end). Then, you need a way to report success but that is trivial. Finally, you need to hope that none of those 5000 chips experiences infant mortality or that you have some scheme to detect if that happens and to which chip (was there BITE in the design ?). Personally, would design the 5,000 to provide possible answers (say 2^32) as an initial step and then push that into a single MasPar or similar. Might find out some interesting things that way while reducing the overall complexity. Just some food for thought. Warmly, Padgett ps couple of people last year were working with FPGAs, I corresponded with them briefly. Why not ask them how my "guesstimates" correlated with their experiments...

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what's in a name?
by Wei Dai 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've stayed out of the debate about list moderation so far, but a recent post from tmcghan(a)gill-simpson.com reminds me of something I've been thinking about. An interesting way to look at what happened is that John Gilmore owns the name "cypherpunks(a)toad.com" and has chosen to exercise that ownership. Even though those of us who disagree with the way he has done so are free to leave and set up our own mailing list, it is costly to do so, and the problem of central name ownership remains. List subscribers have made investments that are specific to the name "cypherpunks(a)toad.com", and most of the cost of switching to a new list is in the new investments they would have to (re)make. The fact is that a promise of no censorship is not enough incentive for us to do so. I suspect that the hierarchical nature of name ownership on the Internet today will be an important technological barrier for the establishment of truly anarchic virtual communities. Unless this problem is solved, the closest we'll come is pseudo-anarchies that exist with the tolerance of beneficent dictators. Wei Dai

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Re: Moderation [Tim,Sandy]
by snow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I believe that Cypherpunks is beyond hope of recovery. In fact, each day > Cypherpunk (as in cypherpunks(a)toad.com) lives on, it does damage to the > cause. Let's kill the list. Once and for all. Let the hard core crypto go > to Coderpunks, the politics to Cryptography, and the garbage into the void. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't(wasn't) there an implied threat of moderation on the cryptography(a)c2.net list? Mr. M started it with the intent of getting away from much of the cruft (ADD, & etc.) that had accumlated here, and he was quite open about moderating it if he thought it needed it.

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Re: My Departure, Moderation, and "Ownership of the List"
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C'punks, On Mon, 3 Feb 1997, Scott V. McGuire wrote: > Sandy, you said that you thought the list had improved since you began > moderating. How could you think otherwise? When you send an article to > the flames list its because you think the list would have been worse > otherwise. If I wasn't clear, I'm sorry. I think the quality of content and the degree of civility have improved. My extreme example was the increase in polite, on-topic posts from Dimitri, but are others. That's the sort of improvement to which I was referring. S a n d y ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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