December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Redlining
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"mjmiski(a)execpc.com" "Matthew J. Miszewski" 11-DEC-1996 03:52:03.23 >This is the essence of, at least, my disagreement with you Red. I dont >agree that redlining doesnt harm people. You see no harm. I do. Of course redlining causes harm to those who are redlined... they can't get credit. But the same can be said of any system of keeping track of who is likely to repay credit; it means that someone who has defaulted on past loans won't get future ones. Quite simply, while I would agree with you that racism certainly persists (it would be difficult for me to grow up in the South and not see this), I would argue that you have no evidence for that the basic motivation behind redlining is that the people in such areas are less likely to repay credit. -Allen

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Java DES breaker?
by Ray Arachelian 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Here's a thought, While Java isn't a workhorse performance wise, it's very simple for anyone with a half decent browser to use java applets. Writing an implementation of DES in Java should be fairly easy, however it will run slow on most browsers. This performance drop will make it far easier for Joe Webuser to easily help break DES for us. Previous efforts at breaking DES and RSA have done quite well, but the number of people involved can be greatly increased if you tell someone just go to this page and leave your browser on overnight, every night. The applets would get a key range from the server, process them, and return a yeah or nay back for however far they manage to process before the user returns in the morning. With JIT's (Just In Time Compilers) and the sheer numbers of users that this can attract, the efforts at breaking weaker cyphers can be increased. =====================================Kaos=Keraunos=Kybernetos============== .+.^.+.| Ray Arachelian | "If you're gonna die, die with your|./|\. ..\|/..|sunder(a)sundernet.com|boots on; If you're gonna try, just |/\|/\ <--*-->| ------------------ |stick around; Gonna cry? Just move along|\/|\/ ../|\..| "A toast to Odin, |you're gonna die, you're gonna die!" |.\|/. .+.v.+.|God of screwdrivers"| --Iron Maiden "Die With Your Boots on"|..... ======================== http://www.sundernet.com =========================

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WEB: Yahoo/Firefly Website recommendation service
by Alexander Chislenko 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Firefly Network Inc. has just launched a public beta of our website recommendation service on My Yahoo! This service is the result of a partnership between Yahoo! Inc. and Firefly Network, Inc. in application of Automated Collaborative Filtering (ACF) technology to the Web. It allows users to find interesting websites interest and like-minded people, and otherwise help the user navigate the vast domain of sites and people in an intelligent and personalized way. To access the service, please go to <http://my.yahoo.com/> and then click on Firefly button (top right). The recommendation system draws its intelligence from users' ratings. At this point, the database is still small, so you may not get recommendations in all categories and the ones you get may not be optimal. However, as the system collects more ratings and learns more about your personal preferences, you will notice better and better performance. Your ratings will be included into the initial rating database and will help shape experience of many people who will come to the system after you, so please be considerate rating sites. If you have any remarks on the quality of the system or its interface, please send a message to <webfly-seeding(a)firefly.net> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alexander Chislenko <sasha1(a)netcom.com> www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html Firefly Network, Inc.: <alexc(a)firefly.net> www.ffly.com 617-234-5452 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Utility of Snake Oil FAQ
by C Matthew Curtin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Got a bit of an update for everyone who was interested in the utility of the Snake Oil FAQ. Tim May raised the issue that it seems likely that a usenet FAQ will only reach people sufficiently clued to look for a usenet FAQ, which probably means they're clued enough to already know what's in the FAQ. I myself had this concern, but went ahead taking everyone's input and working on it anyway. I received at least a half dozen requests from folks wanting to include it in internal memorandums, reference it in other (nontechnical) works about Internet and security issues, etc. It would seem that the message is getting out (admittedly slowly, perhaps at the rate of two a month), but I suspect that as more attention is brought to it, we'll continue to reach more people who need to see it. -matt P.S. For those of you who have tuned in late, the URL is http://www.research.megasoft.com/people/cmcurtin/snake-oil-faq.html -- Matt Curtin cmcurtin(a)research.megasoft.com Megasoft, Inc Chief Scientist http://www.research.megasoft.com/people/cmcurtin/ I speak only for myself. Hacker Security Firewall Crypto PGP Privacy Unix Perl Java Internet Intranet

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RE: permanent invasion of privacy
by blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Dale Thorn, who hasn't a clue [on why the cpunks of late haven't discussed children's point of view]: Not lately? And why is that? Don't know, Dale. Would everyone please send a message to Dale, explaining why you haven't been discussing this? -- [on the possibility that abused children might be helped by the uses of encryption]: How is an abused child going to be helped by encryption? Why are you on this list, Dale? -- [on why, as I said, "empathy with children is not borne of government, but of a normal state of mind"]: That's just rhetoric. What normal state of mind? Takes one to know one, Dale. -- [on going out to alt.philosphy.objectivism to evoke detailed discussions of pertinence to his interest in benefitting from government programs]: In other words, if it doesn't offer something for me, the selfish adult, I don't wanna hear it. I'm not *obliged* to hear, it Dale. .. Blanc

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permanent invasion of privacy
by attila＠primenet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'll pass the article along... I'm not sure I wish to even comment on the two social worker do-gooders who are proposing [and have legislation introduced] something worse than Hillary's "It take a global village" other than $E^&*&@!!! the absolute ultimate on invasion of privacy imaginable. might as well add this one to: "...they get my weapon, still smoking, from my cooling hand." or maybe: "54-40 or fight" needless to say, any member of the cypherpunk list would be an automatic loser in this game of life. I for one believe ability and drive is signicifantly more genetics than social environment. -attila == I'll get a life when it is proven and substantiated to be better than what I am currently experiencing. --attila ************** forwarded article **************** LICENSING PARENTS REVISITED The December 1996 edition of the journal Society contains a symposium on the subject of "Licensing Parents" -- a totalitarian proposal with which regular readers of The New American may be familiar. (See "Whose Child Is This?" in our November 28, 1994 issue and "Are You Fit to Be a Parent? in our January 23, 1995 issue.) Included in the symposium were Dr. Jack C. Westman of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, author of Licensing Parents: Can We Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect? and Professor David T. Lykken of the University of Minnesota, author of The Antisocial Personalities. Westman and Lykken are the most prominent advocates of a system of parental licensure in which parents would have to be certified "competent" by the government before being permitted to raise a child. In his Society essay, Lykken writes, "I will testify in support of a parental licensure bill to be introduced at the next session of the Minnesota State Legislature. The only sanction proposed in this bill for unlicensed parents who produce a child is periodic visits by child- protection caseworkers who will do an annual audit of each child's physical, social, and educational progress." However, Lykken asserts, "Minnesotans and their legislative representatives will [eventually] recognize the need to take one further step. That step, I suggest, should be to take custody of babies born to unlicensed mothers, before bonding occurs, and to place them for adoption or perma- nent care by professionally trained and supervised foster parents." Nor is this the last step that Lykken would take toward the abolition of parental authority by the state. The December 17, 1994 Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported, "Under Lykken's system, if children were born to un- licensed parents, the state would intervene immediately. Licenses would be checked in hospital maternity wards. Unlicensed parents would lose their children permanently. Adoptions would be final and irreversible." Furthermore, according to Lykken, "Repeat offenders might be required to submit to an implant of Norplant [a surgical contra- ceptive] as a way to keep them from having another baby for five years." Source: Insider Report, p.12 The New American December 23, 1996

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Re: KRA_gak
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:50 AM 12/13/96 -0500, John Young wrote: > 12-12-96 > "High-Tech Leaders to Facilitate Recovery of Encrypted > Information Globally. Key Recovery Alliance Welcomes 29 > New Members" > The key recovery alliance has more than tripled its membership > and identified its charter objectives. > + expediting the widespread, global use of strong encryption > + evaluating technologies that are flexible and scaleable to meet > various changing commercial needs and policies > + promoting interoperability between different key recovery and > non-key recovery solutions > + defining a commercial infrastructure for worldwide development > of strong encryption > + maximizing security for business While this will, of course, be obvious to those frequenting CP, notice a curious fact here: The commentary above refers to the organization as a "Key Recovery Alliance." Well, one might normally expect that organizations are usually named based on their primary raison d'etre. Yet, the objectives listed above clearly do not require, or even desire, "Key Recovery." Quite the opposite, in fact. If there was any need to demonstrate the illegitimacy of this arrangement to the press or public, you need merely show that the people and organizations participating in it don't even consider the goal implicit in the name to be a desireable outcome. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: ITARs effects
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:23 PM 12/14/96 -0500, Robert Hettinga wrote: >At 7:09 pm -0500 12/14/96, Adam Shostack wrote: >> My understanding is that they choose not to continue >>per^H^Hrosecuting Phil for putting the code up for FTP. Thus, this is >>a change. Or did Phil not put the code up for FTP? > >Actually, it's my understanding that PRZ didn't do it personally. Someone >else got the code from Phil and put it on the net. Phil had nothing to do >with it. Except for writing PGP, of course. :-). I suppose one of the myriad reasons it would have been difficult/impossible to prosecute Zimmermann is that, because the "crime" was approaching the end of the statute of limitations, the prospect existed that sometime during the trial, we could have had a "Perry Mason"-type ending, with somebody else standing up and claiming credit for the (then past the limit) act of uploading PGP. If the standard used for conviction was "beyond a reasonable doubt," it would be just about impossible to convict unless the gov't had some sort of person-specific evidence, rather than merely evidence that PGP got onto the web. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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RE: 40 bit DES [Was:Re: !! Point 'n Crypt]
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Walt Armour <walt(a)blarg.net> wrote: > If I encrypt a $10 million dollar proposal and then get 86'd in > a car accident I would like to go to my grave knowing that the > company could get the proposal back. .... Anyone who stores a $10m proposal on only one machine, without making backups on somebody else's machine, preferably out of the building, is asking for the Clue Fairy to send him disk drive gremlins and software from Bill Gates to scribble on his disk, and his company should probably consider 86ing him before he strikes again :-) Slightly more seriously, there are certainly corporate reasons to store backups of keys for important data, such as backup tapes and communications. GAK-style technology is the wrong level approach for communications - GAK-style access to keys is useless unless you've also backed up the data, so if your corporate officers need the data, give it to them encrypted with their own keys. Similarly, if you want backup access to keys used to encrypt files, back up the keyrings, maybe using a secret-sharer if you want to require multiple people to access the backup, or just have the backups of the files encrypted with the keys for the backup server. > BUT in regards to the general populace, I do not advocate any form of > key escrow/recovery. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk # (If this is posted to cypherpunks, I'm currently lurking from fcpunx, # so please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)

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Parolees limited from using computers, Internet
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Given exactly how big the Internet is for free speech, I'd call this government interference in speech from those with a viewpoint in opposition to its. I can see some restraints on speech in prison itself... but not on someone who is supposedly safe enough to be let out, even under supervision. (I would also point out that this ties into the action of drug laws to cause the disenfranchisement of felony drug offenders. I see no reason to suppose that felony drug offenders (as with any other crime that shouldn't be one) would be any less competent to vote than the average, everyday person (otherwise known as the average idiot)). -Allen > ______________________________________________________________________ > AT&T EasyCommerce Services > ZD Internet Magazine - Free For Wild Ass Net Pioneers > ______________________________________________________________________ > U.S. bans Internet use by some parolees > __________________________________________________________________________ > Copyright © 1996 Nando.net > Copyright © 1996 Agence France-Presse > WASHINGTON (Dec 16, 1996 4:54 p.m. EST) - The U.S. government > announced Monday it will impose restrictions on parolees' use of the > Internet, saying it was responding to "increased criminal use" of the > worldwide computer network. > The United States Parole Commission said it was acting in response to > the "surge of 'how-to' information available on the Internet and other > computer online services relating to such offenses as child > molestation, hate crimes and the illegal use of explosives." > The restrictions include requiring a parolee to get prior written > approval from the commission to use information services such as an > Internet service provider. [...] > Copyright © 1996 Nando.net

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