December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Moderation, Tim, Sandy, me, etc. * Strong crypto == DES?!
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"gnu(a)toad.com" "John Gilmore" 4-FEB-1997 12:20:22.10 >Tim, the Cypherpunks have chosen to follow Sandy's lead for this >month. I'll admit I made it easy for them, but the results are >conclusive. There are 1311 addresses in the cypherpunks list today; >42 in the unedited list; and 19 in the flames list. Forty people >cared enough to read every posting; the other thousand either wanted >to try the experiment -- or didn't care enough to send an email >message. Which, as we all know, is a very low threshold. You're making an invalid assumption... namely that people who stayed on the moderated list are neccessarily wanting it to be the main list. This isn't the case with me, for instance. I'd also point out that some of us - including me - were taking the time to take a look at what happened with the moderated list. On the one hand, it did result in a decrease in the trash messages... on the other hand, it also drove away 1+ good posters (TCMay for one). As I've said before, I might wind up going with Sandy's (or some other) filtered list. But changing the name (effectively, to cypherpunks-unedited) was a bad idea. >I'm definitely bugged by the community's attitude toward my >"censorship". Rather than being glad that someone, anyone, was doing >something about the major problem on the list, 99% of the reaction was >to create even more ill-considered, emotional flamage. *I* didn't >make the signal/noise get worse at that point -- *you-all* did. I can see how you might ignore objections from those who did make the signal/noise get worse... but from those who didn't? _I_ tried to help you by letting you & Sandy know when something was going wrong. >Perhaps at that point I should have shut down the list, as Lucky is >now suggesting. "Asking the list what to do" was clearly not a useful >option. Sandy cared enough about the community to make some concrete >suggestions to me about how to get the list back on track. They >involved a lot more work than the previous setup. I told him if he >was willing to do the work, we could try it. As Dale suggests, I >wasn't about to waste my time reading the whole list in real time and >passing judgement on the postings. Sandy was, for a month. I (and others, I believe) are gratified by y'all's attempts to help. I just think that you went about it the wrong way. >Start a mailing list on another site! Move this list to somewhere! [...] >The experiment will be over in a few weeks. Who's going to take over >deciding how to run the list, and running it? Would you be willing to help in starting up a distributed list? That would appear to solve at least some of the toad.com problems (keeping it running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) with which I am sympathetic. >If you want to help organize what I'll call the `progressive crypto >community', for lack of a better term, then please do. Otherwise, in >the immortal words of Lazarus Long, "PIPE DOWN!". I'm willing to help the _libertarian_ crypto community, to the limit allowed by my available resources (I'm a grad student). Organize? I'm not so sure to what degree that's helping. Progressive? I'm not a liberal. Slight but meaningful difference in terms. >PS: Can we talk about crypto too? It's clear from the last few days >of press releases that the pro-GAK forces are again working to confuse >novices into thinking that two very different things are the same >thing. Last time it was "public key infrastructure" and "key >recovery". This time it's "strong crypto" and "56-bit DES". What >should we do about this? Educate the public? The public won't listen until 56-bit DES is broken; then, they can be told that "somebody broke the cryptography used by banks" and they might listen. In other words, what can be done is supporting DES-breaking efforts (ideally, via the collection of different possible keys and their indicators, as someone had mentioned earlier - sorry, I'm a biologist, not a mathematician, so I've forgotten the actual terms. It was something that would essentially enable the near-instant breaking of _any_ DES code after the competion of the project. My apologies if I've gotten mixed up on this). -Allen

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Panel - Copyright and the Net: Is Legislation the Answer?
by Dave Banisar 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Copyright and the Net: Is Legislation the Answer? ACM97: The Next 50 Years of Computing Sunday March 2 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM Fairmont Hotel San Jose, CA Sponsored by the U.S. Public Policy Committee of ACM (USACM) Panelists: Hank Barry, Pam Samuelson, Mark Stefik, Gio Wiederhold Moderator: Barbara Simons, Chair, USACM o What is the role of copyright in all-electronic publication world? Will it be replaced by contract law? o Can the needs of authors who want to publish for renown (academics) and authors that want to publish for pay (entertainment etc) be handled in one mechanism? o Should browsing on the World Wide Web of full copyrighted texts be made illegal because people make temporary copies in their computer's memory when they look at a web page? o Should online service providers, including libraries and universities, have to monitor user accounts in order to enforce copyright laws? o Should firms that compile data have intellectual property rights so that scientists and news reporters can't use the data without permission or payments? o How should existing differences in national copyright be handled in a networked world where national boundaries and are little more than a speedbump on the information superhighway? o Does technological protection for copyrighted works inherently undermine fair use ? These and related issues will confront the 105th Congress in the coming year. They will also be examined by this panel, which will discuss controversies surrounding the extension of copyright law to deal with cyberspace. Examples include: How does proposed legislation reflect the net? How much influence have lobbyists for the entertainment industry had in writing legislation? What should be the role of professional societies in analyzing policy initiatives? We will discussed legislation and international treaties that have been proposed by the White House. We will also examine both technical and legal approaches to problems created by the net, as well as how various approaches might impact the science, technology, and business communities. A significant amount of time will be allowed for audience interaction in the discussion. Biographical sketches Hank Barry is member of the firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and is Chairman of the firm's Interactive New Media practice group. He represents publicly and privately-held companies in the multimedia, software, computer, on-line and entertainment industries. Hank has authored numerous articles in the fields of venture capital, interactive media and technology transactions. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Cyberspace Lawyer. Hank received his law degree in 1983 from Stanford University, where he was managing editor of the Stanford Law Review. Pamela Samuelson is a Professor at the University of California at Berkeley where she holds a joint appointment at the School of Information Management and Systems and in the School of Law. She has written and spoken extensively on the challenges posed by digital technologies for the law, particularly in the field of intellectual property. She is a Contributing Editor of Communications of the ACM and a Fellow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Mark Stefik is a principal scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. At Stanford University he received a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics in 1970 and a Ph.D. in computer science in 1980. His current research activities are in approaches for creating, protecting, and reusing digital property. Stefik is review editor for the international journal "Artificial Intelligence" and has authored two books on AI-related topics and a third book on the Internet. Gio Wiederhold is a professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, with courtesy appointments in Medicine and Electrical Engineering. His research focuses on large-scale software construction, specifically applied to information systems, the protection of their content, often using knowledge-based techniques. Wiederhold has authored and coauthored more than 250 published papers and reports on computing and medicine. Wiederhold received a degree in Aeronautical Engineering in Holland in 1957 and a Ph. D. in Medical Information Science from the University of California at San Francisco in 1976. He has been elected fellow of the ACMI, the IEEE and the ACM. He currently serves on the ACM Publications Board, focusing on the move to electronic publication. Barbara Simons received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley in 1981. She joined the Research Division of IBM in 1980; she is currently working in IBM Global Services. Simons is a Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and ACM. In 1995 she was selected as one of 26 Internet "Visionaries" by c|net, and in 1994 Open Computing included her in its list of the top 100 women in computing. She was awarded the 1992 CPSR Norbert Wiener Award for Professional and Social Responsibility in Computing. Simons founded and chairs USACM, the ACM U. S. Public Policy Committee.

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

17 Dec '03

At 11:14 PM 2/3/97 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >Several people have also commented on this, that their filters are still >working overtime. As it should be, really, as no moderator can make the >list match any given person's preferences. > >(Personally, I'm not even convinced filters are essential. It takes no >longer than 5 seconds to glance at a message and know whether to scrap it >or not. Granted, it takes a bit of time to download, especially at slower >modem speeds. But whether Sandy's censorship is producing any significant >"savings" depends on how many messages he's sorting into each >pile...clearly if 20% or less of the total posts are being filtered out, >then the savings are ignorable. That might not be quite true, or at least not complete. Another effect is that the new structure of the list may deter some of the flamers from posting, when they don't think their notes will be seen on the moderated list. In any case, however, I agree that spam and trash are easy to filter out. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: BA Crypto Machine Photos
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>BTW, does anyone know the meaning of 'order wire mode' in the context of a >crypto broadcast? This mode is found in the KWR-37 online crypto >receiver. Please send all photo requests or responses via private E-mail. If it means the same thing as in the telecom industry, its an out-of-band (often analof) channel between two locations connected by wide-band (e.g., T1) facilities. Its primary purpose is to provide service personnel, at each end point, the ability to converse with one another while performing work on that link. --Steve

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Announcing ZDNet Exclusives!
by announce＠lists.zdnet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Unofficial DES Challenge Clearinghouse
by Joel McNamara 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Until someone comes up with an automated method of keyspace allocation for the DES challenge (and maybe even after), I've decided to run the Unofficial DES Challenge Clearinghouse. This Web page will list keyspace that's already been searched (or is planned to be searched) with links to any brute force utilities. If you clear part of the keyspace, e-mail me the range, and I'll update the page. http://www.eskimo.com/~joelm/des.html Yes, I agree that a trusted, verifiable method of keyspace allocation and reporting needs to be put in place, but in the meantime, this rather simple page will hopefully reduce some duplication of effort. Joel

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bye.bye
by Bjorn Asman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have to agree that Mr. Tim C May have a big point. Even if i didn't like all the things Mr. May wrote so could i read it, and that is the point i think Mr. Sandford missed. That is to have a list that is a "living" list. You have to have all the people giving their chanche to say what tehy like even if they dont are "mentaly healthy".I have one more thing to "say". Namely to say bye.bye. to this list. I have never posted to this list, i have only read it, because i like the freedom in it (free speech and so on), but if i have to change my subscription to unedit-cypherpunks just to "hear" the freedom of speech, i rather just say no and unsubscribe. bye.bye bjorn.asman(a)infodesign.se.org Roerstrandsgatan 7a 41703.Goeteborg Phone +46-(0)31-221056 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The subjects are cyborg, nature is coyote, and the geography is Elsewhere -Donna Haraway ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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re: Moderation, Tim, Sandy, me, etc * Reputation Capital
by nobody＠replay.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I found this post from Mr Gilmore deeply disturbing, and I thought I'd take this chance to, as someone recently said, "Fly with the Eagles." John Gilmore said: >Tim, the Cypherpunks have chosen to follow Sandy's lead for this >month. I'll admit I made it easy for them, but the results are >conclusive. There are 1311 addresses in the cypherpunks list today; >42 in the unedited list; and 19 in the flames list. Forty people >cared enough to read every posting; the other thousand either wanted >to try the experiment -- or didn't care enough to send an email >message. Which, as we all know, is a very low threshold. Careful. The statistics you are throwing around here are misleading. So if 1350, say, subscribers were subscribed to an unmoderated cypherpunks list, what would that tell you? As has been pointed out, beaten to death, and generally repeated: there are already filtered c'punks lists. By filtering the main list, you are just making your own life difficult and corrupting the reputation capital of "cypherpunks", and the results are far from conclusive. >all I want is something that works. The cypherpunks list was unusable >for this kind of discussion, only a month ago. It's usable now. > >I'm definitely bugged by the community's attitude toward my >"censorship". Rather than being glad that someone, anyone, was doing >something about the major problem on the list, 99% of the reaction was >to create even more ill-considered, emotional flamage. *I* didn't >make the signal/noise get worse at that point -- *you-all* did. Again, maybe that 99% is trying to tell you something? Maybe there is some provocation for this outpouring of "emotional flamage." Also, here you claim that the s/n ratio is worse than before, but above you said that the "moderation" has made the list usable. These two statements seem contradictory. >Perhaps at that point I should have shut down the list, as Lucky is >now suggesting. "Asking the list what to do" was clearly not a useful >option. Sandy cared enough about the community to make some concrete Not a useful option? Why not? If there aren't any ideas left in this community, I'm with Lucky. Pull the plug. >gratifying. You-all remind me of a passage from Booker T. >Washington's book _Up From Slavery_, describing what happened on the >night that news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached the South: <quote snipped> >Most of the people on the list haven't bothered to face that freedom. >Your de-facto "leaders" have faced it for you. It is a more serious "You clearly don't take your freedom seriously. Now try a month without it." >Start a mailing list on another site! Move this list to somewhere! >Create and nurture an alt group! Make an independent moderated list My problem with this is that you are currently holding the reputation capital tied up in the name "cypherpunks" hostage. If hosting this discussion forum has grown so tiring, then you are free to pull the plug in a heartbeat. I've heard a few even go so far as to ask "what's in a name" when others get so upset about the list called "cypherpunks" being moderated. Well, I'll tell you. Reputation capital. Thats why so many lurkers have waded through the muck for so long. I've seen the crown jewels that have surfaced here in the past, and spread the word. "Cypherpunks" was where the action was. It was fast and loose and inhabited by a prolific core of sharp minds. Old memes die hard, as is evidenced every time we see a warning about the "Goodtimes Virus." >The experiment will be over in a few weeks. Who's going to take over >deciding how to run the list, and running it? As I said, if you don't want the list anymore, pull the plug. It will pop up again elsewhere and you need never worry about it again. This post from Mr Gilmore certainly is revealing. Perhaps inevitably, he has assumed the traditional paternal role of authority when its motives and/or power to regulate is questioned. Golem

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Re: Moderation, Tim, Sandy, me, etc. * Strong crypto == DES?!
by aaron＠herringn.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>I'm glad we're talking about some of the real issues here. > >Tim May said: >> I don't want Sandy Sandfort sitting in judgment on my >> posts, deciding what the Cypherpunks--a group I co-founded for God's >> sake!!!!--are to be allowed to read and what they may not. > >Tim, the Cypherpunks have chosen to follow Sandy's lead for this >month. I'll admit I made it easy for them, but the results are >conclusive. There are 1311 addresses in the cypherpunks list today; >42 in the unedited list; and 19 in the flames list. Forty people >cared enough to read every posting; the other thousand either wanted >to try the experiment -- or didn't care enough to send an email >message. Which, as we all know, is a very low threshold. [huge snip] If I might make a suggestion: Some people want moderation. That's fine, I've never been very big on letting other people choose what I read, but some people want it. For those who want it, let someone moderate the list for as long as they care to do it. Approved messages get a "X-sandy-approved" header. The responsibility for setting up a filter to toss everything that doesn't have the header is the responsibility of the end user. Toad will need to filter incoming posts to make sure they don't come "pre-approved", but that's the only hole I can think of. Everyone gets all of the Cypherpunks list. Those who want moderation filter the unapproved posts, those who want all of it get all of it. Hopefully, this will make (almost) everyone happy.

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Re: Geiger and long, unreadable lines
by Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adam Back <aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes: > > Dimitri Vulis <dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com> writes on cpunks-flames: > > Adam Back <aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes on cpunks-flames: > > > > > > Mr William H. Geiger III "Author of E-Secure" writes on cpunks: > > > > <sigh> for the benifit of those misfortunate enough to be still working > > > > dumb terminals I have disabled my PGP script until I have time to add a > > > > word wrap routine to it. > > > > > > <sigh> it is you who were demonstrating your ineptitude by spewing > > > 120+ line length postings. Why is it so difficult for you to keep > > > under 80 chars? Would you like some technical assistance? Notice how > > > near every one else apart from yourself is managing to keep under 80 > > > chars? > > > > Notice how near every one else apart from yourself bends over for the NSA, > > and is willing to use a 40-bit key "escrowed" with the feds? Why is it so > > difficult for you to keep under 40 bits? Would you like some technical > > assistance? Why are you setting yourself apart from the Internet community > > that so happily embraces GAK? Why do you desire "privacy" for your traffic > > when everyone else does not? What have you got to hide? Are you looking to > > transmit child pornography, bomb-making instructions, and/or cannabis > > legalization propaganda? We better have a look at your hard disk soon. > > btw Dimitri, a crypto question: > > Diffie-Hellman key generation, there are two main ways of generating > the diffie-hellman prime modulus, method 1: > > p = 2q+1 > > where q is a prime also. > > And method 2: > > p = r.2q+1 > > where q is a prime and r is a randomly generated number. > > With method 1, the security parameter is the size of p in bits (or > size of q, as they are related). > > With method 2, there are two security parameters, size of q and size > of p in bits. > > Method 2 has the advantage that key generation is faster as it is > quicker to generate new random numbers r, than to repeatedly generate > trial prime q as you have to do in method 1. However is the security > weaker in method 2? What size of p and q do you have to use to get > the same security as for same size of p in bits as in method 1? What > should be the relationship between the size of p and q? > > (this isn't cpunks, this is cpunks-flames, so your non-crypto pledge > shouldn't hold, besides Sandy has a stated policy of killing the whole > thread, so I thought it amusing to continue your crypto relevance in > moving on to technical topics rather than political) My advice is to stay clear of any cryptosystem that relies on factoring being hard. I'll send you pointers to some very interesting new work based on the zeta function in private e-mail when I dig it up (please remind me if/when I forget this promise). I'm reluctant to say anything crypto-relevant on this defunct mailing list because last time I did, the moderator repeatedly cited it as evidence that his moderation works. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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