December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

e$: In Vino Veritas
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I love this prohibition stuff. First recreational drugs, then guns, then cryptography, then tobbacco, and now, the grandaddy of all prohibitions, alcohol sales, on the net in Florida, with good old vino being retreaded as a brand new thin edge of the tired old wedge of government behavioral control. Once again, a whole generation of libertines now becomes moralistic in their old age. Same as it ever was. Remember that the Romantics (Beethoven, Chopin, the waltzing Strausses, etc.) grew up to become the Victorians (the temperance, missionary, conservation, and "indian school" movements). So, maybe it *is* time to move to a country where the average age is under 30. Fortunately, there are a lot of them, thanks to exploding life expectancy caused by advancing technological progress and Peale's "demographic transition". Maybe soon they'll have enough wealth (and technological creativity) of their own to ignore the increasing constrictions of what Tim May likes to call the "Terror State". I'd gladly exchange a moribund environment of backward-looking luddism for a cheerful attack on the problem of making the future happen, anytime. Unfortunately, that doesn't look like an option, not just yet, anyway. The other thing which comes to mind with all this is, of course, financial cryptography, which, contrary to the opinion of more than a few on the e-mail lists I'm on, I see as the thin edge of another kind of wedge. It is financial cryptography which will kill cryptographic prohibition, and, someday, prohibition of other technologies as well. Currently, the relaxation of export controls on cryptography is now merely a cudgel to make us submit to ubiquitous wiretapping, and not for national security, the original purpose of such controls. Former National Security Agency Chief Counsel Stewart Baker said at the Digital Commerce Society of Boston luncheon this Tuesday that the management of the NSA gave up on succeeding with cryptographic export controls in 1993, and that their only hope was to enlist Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Louis Freeh in their efforts by showing him threat of cryptography to his wiretap apparatus. It's now quite clear that the NSA is fighting a retreat on strong cryptography, and that they're using Louis Freeh and the FBI to do it for them. So, at this point, any residual attempts by the national security apparatus per se to control exports, beyond assisting Freeh in slowing down technological progress, is just regulatory inertia. Still real and very dangerous to anyone who believes in freedom and privacy, but lacking any further accelleration to move it forward, once the momentum it already has finally goes away. In my conversation last year with senior people there, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), responsible for catching money launderers and other financial criminals and another would-be cryptographic hoplaphobe, certainly seemed to understand that if blind-signature digital bearer certificates are proven to be as economically efficient as a few of us on the net think they will be, FinCEN's ability to monitor transactions on the net will just disappear. Not only because they can't see those transaction behind the Chaumian blind-signature algorithm, but because the sheer volume of transactions (the micromoney mitochondria, digital-cash-as-microprocessor-food idea I like to throw around, as an extreme example) will physically choke any monitoring effort they attempt to build. In yet another paraphrase of John Gilmore's law of internet censorship, the net sees surveillance as damage, and routes around it. Again, inertia is a problem here, and the powers-that-be at FinCEN haven't given up quite yet on ultimately controlling the impending explosion of internet financial cryptography, as NSA's management seems to have with crypto in general. Mostly because all the starry-eyed claims people like me make on behalf of digital bearer certificates are just that, claims, with no empirical evidence so far to back them up. Yet. :-). Finally, that leaves wiretaps, and the FBI's Louis Freeh, a man who got his law-enforcement bones because of bugs and wiretaps, and who has never seen a wiretap he didn't like. First of all, Freeh faces the same problem FinCEN faces. Even if it were economically possible for the FBI to get the monsterous wiretap capability that the freshly legislated CALEA now crams down the collective financial throat of every telecoms manufacturer and provider on earth. Even if he did get access to all cryptographic keys, which he can't physically do, because economics will require that most of those session keys be disposed of as fast as they're used. Even if, in spite of both of those flights of economic fantasy, he were able to do so, Freeh still can't physically monitor all that communication, in the same sense that FinCEN can't follow all those transactions on the internet. Gilmore's Law strikes again. But, the joke here, of course, is that surveillence technology in meatspace itself is going to continue to increase. The eventual prospect of ubiquitous videobugging both by government and private sources means that a lot of David Brin's surveillance society will probably come to pass, and physical crime will continue to diminish as a result. The law-enforcement need for tapped or "excrowed" communictions will probably disappear, because even when Freeh & Co. couldn't just subpoena some stored private video somewhere, planting a physical bug, Gotti-style, will be much easier than listening in to an "excrowed" communication with disposable session keys. Much in the same way, I might add, as if the NSA bunch had never mentioned the idea of key escrow at all to Louis Freeh. That's because the inherent need of corporations to secure their own data from the hostile or accidental behavior of their own people would have already created a market for encrypted data recovery anyway. All the law enforcement community would need to do to get access to that information is the same thing they use for anything else: a subpoena. Again, the "rational control" of government destroyed what would have been a much more efficient market driven technology. Like the filtering of offensive internet content was before the Communications Decency Act threatened to "require" it, some very creative people were thinking very hard about private key and cryptography data recovery schemes and now won't touch them because the government wants to mandate key escrow, er, "recovery", into existance. However, the last laugh in the upcoming surveillance society will eventually be had by privacy advocates on would-be totalitarians like Mr. Freeh, and, it seems, on Al Gore, who seems to be Freeh's chief cheerleader in the Clinton administration. Remember that Stalin, too, came to totalitarianism from the absolutism of the extreme left, and leftist absolutism is something Mr. Gore's book "Earth in the Balance" is chock full of. Somewhere, Freddy Hayek is laughing. Anyway, in the ultimate twist of fate, all those ubiquitous surveillance devices will be predominantly in *private* hands, and, as the cleptocracy of the modern nation state continues to implode from it's own greed and power-lust, those surveillance devices will, eventually, be linked to privately held security firms, and, maybe someday to autonomous *munitions*. See the "Mesh and the Net", <http://www.shipwright.com/meshnet.html>, for some hints to this kind of defensive military technology. I claim that as we will be able to allocate network resources with some kind of cash settled economy, so too will we someday be be able to directly "purchase" the services of these kinds of technologies, without the centralized economic distortion of a nation-state. In other words, we'll be much more physically secure without people like Mr. Freeh, than with them. While that's a long way off, it's probably not so far as freedom and privacy advocates fear. For instance, if, say, 10 years from now, as some people have predicted, your home security system had complete visual coverage of your property with a swarm of very cheap CCD videocameras, all streaming that encrypted video over the net to some secure (possibly anonymous) storage place, then not only do criminals have a tougher time comitting crimes against your person and property, but so too does government. In addition, with such a system, there's nothing to keep a private cop or detective from appearing at the scene of the crime, probably at much less cost than that of a government one. Heck, the purchase of the cop's or detective's time could occur on a cash-settled auction market, for that matter. Paid by private crime insurance, of course. :-). Once again, information technology reduces government to the functional equivalent of ceremony, following monarchy down the road to mere decoration and, lately, occassional entertainment. Now, I agree that just waiting around for all this to mysteriously appear won't make it happen any faster. The faster the technology is built, deployed, and most important, made profitable, the better. And, these days, all this statist encroachment on our freedom feels, very debatably, like being a Jew on Krystallnacht waiting for the Americans to win the war already. But, this technology *is* going to happen, and, while nation-states aren't going to go down without fighting for their institutional lives, they *have* lost. Hopefully, the sooner they know they've lost, the sooner they'll give up, join the human race, and get on with building the future. Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

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One-Time Pads as Attack Method
by 00043.an＠edtec.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

1. Agents of the Enemy wish to create the appearance of you possessing document A. 2. They obtain some artifact you have emailed, or posted, or possess on your private local storage. --- Possibly even signed. Call this message B. 3. They create the XOR of A and B, the result being a 'one time pad' C. which of course, gives: private message B XOR C = target bogus message A. This result is of course not a one time pad; the plan is to accuse you of possessing materials that prove you are trading with the enemy, exchanging kiddie-porn, any of the usual things. 4. This 'one time pad' file C. somehow finds its way into your possession: it is an email attachment, embedded in some binary --- it could even be stego'ed into a GIF/JPG. 5. The agents break down the door and seize all your effects. 6. They are able to prove that you possess B and C, the XOR of which is A., a fact that is impossible to have happened at random. 7. The jury doesn't know shit, and figures that if the chances of B ^ C = A by accident are 0, then you must be guilty. I'm only looking at the general schema of an attack like this: I'm sure there are many ways the right defense could be mounted about how the files got on the client's computer, etc.etc. The interesting part of this frame-job is using something you may have already publicly posted, making denial of its origin difficult, together with a surreptitious planting of the 'pad' data. Naturally the incriminating data payload could be delivered directly, without the OTP business. But I thought it might be worth examining the implications of this theme.

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Certified primes
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

As `homo' as he might be, Timmy May is not of the species `Homo Sapiens', but rather `Papio Mephitis'. Unlike human beings, he has not descended from apes --- yet. o-:^>___? Timmy May `~~c--^c'

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Security flaw in key recovery -- you're looking at it
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[This is only a test. If I had been in a bad mood, this message would have contained the private key of the CEO of a major Entrust customer, obtained from an Entrust trusted "key safe" server. Who am I? Can Entrust or its customer's officers finger me?]

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How to get contact with Cypherpunks?
by aja.ub＠t-online.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, IŽm a user of internet technologies and interested to learn more about privacy and security in internets/intranets. How can I participate? Greetings from Nueremberg/Germany Andy

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FreeBSD 2.2.1 on CDROM is shipping out of the U.S.A. with full DES
by Loren James Rittle 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

FYI, I hope it is not premature but people are starting to take advantage of the wonderful Patel ruling in the Bernstein v U.S. Department of Justice case. Cool! Loren From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh(a)FreeBSD.org> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: FreeBSD 2.2.1 on CDROM Date: Wed, 07 May 1997 17:48:51 -0700 Organization: Walnut Creek CDROM Message-ID: <337122F3.167EB0E7(a)FreeBSD.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.2-STABLE i386) To: tonyg(a)OntheNet.com.au Tony Griffiths wrote: > I just received the 2.2.1 disk yesterday and it contains the DES stuff > which has been missing on all previous disks I have received! That's because it's now legal for us to export it. An S.F. district judge recently ruled that exporting encryption is legal, at least within her jurisdiction, and so our lawyer has OK'd our taking advantage of this fact [that we fall geographically within her sphere of influence] to export crypto. I have always *wanted* to do this, since shipping "crippled" CDs in order that I might export them was abhorent to me, and now I can. This also means that the unpacked CVS repository on SNAPshot CDs contain full sources for des, kerberos etc and so forth and you can actually _use_ the repository to check out a complete, unadulterated version of FreeBSD at any release version from 2.0 onwards. -- - Jordan Hubbard FreeBSD core team / Walnut Creek CDROM.

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Encryption defined
by Michael Stutz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Online at http://www.wired.com/news/politics/story/3760.html [arrow] ... And That's What Encryption Is by Wired News Staff 2:58pm 9.May.97.PDT It's rare to get a glimpse of the lawmaking mind as it churns policy. But with the help of an unnamed Washington reporter, the public got a look at how two Democratic senators who want to pass a new law on how encryption should be used and regulated think about the issue. The setting was an informal daily get-together with reporters sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. On Thursday, Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska was on hand to announce he is sponsoring a cryptography-control bill. We pick up the proceedings with a reporter's question to the senators: How would you define encryption? Daschle: Encryption is the - and Senator Kerrey can do a lot better job than I can - but my definition of encryption is to create a code by which sensitive information can be protected on the Internet.... Kerrey: Well, I mean, to answer your question, I mean, encryption is - the political equivalent of encryption is you ask me a question, I give you an answer and you don't understand it. I mean, I intentionally garble the answer frequently. I intentionally garble the response so that you can't understand what I'm saying. And that's - you notice that I've got the ability to do that. I don't always do that, but that's what occurs with digital communication. The message is scrambled in a way that is very difficult to unscramble. And depending upon the power of your computer, you in fact may not be able to unscramble it at all. Copyright © 1993-97 Wired Ventures, Inc. and affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

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How many of HOTMAIL's 3,000,000 users want SSL???
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Please consider writing your corporacongressmyn and explaining to them briefly, yet <politely> your concern about packet sniffers. Hotmail's market is exploding and they just might need a way to distinguish themselves from their competitor American Express (usa.net=netaddress.com) during the next year, even while they continue living on the edge with weak push/advertising revenue. Send no money, but these people deserve our support: comments(a)hotmail.com "New features you would like to see or general comments about Hotmail." Or, support(a)hotmail.com "Assistance with using Hotmail's features or technical difficulties with your account." Remember, it just takes A MINUTE to... "contact Hotmail by phone: 408.222.7000 -- 10:00 am to 6:00 pm Pacific Time"

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Bill of Goods, from The Netly News Network
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

************ http://pathfinder.com/netly/editorial/0,1012,931,00.html The Netly News Network http://netlynews.com/ May 9, 1997 Bill of Goods by Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com) Senate Democrats are preparing legislation that requires universities and other groups receiving Federal grants to make their communication networks snoopable by the government, The Netly News has learned. The draft also includes penalties for "unauthorized breaking of another's encryption codes," and restrictions on importing encryption products. At a Democratic leadership press briefing, Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) yesterday said his bill slightly relaxed export rules in exchange for greater federal control over crypto imports. But what he appears to be truly aiming for is a full-scale assault on your right to use whatever encryption software you want in your own home. Academics are indignant over the strings attached to grants. "This is outrageous," says Dave Farber, a university professor at the University of Pennsylvania and an EFF board member. "It's going to generate roaring screams on campus. If you look at Internet II, if you look at the Next Generation Internet, if you look at campus networks -- all those have components of federal funds." It's diabolical. Researchers already have to comply with a legion of rules to qualify for grants. Kerrey's proposed bill, called "The Secure Public Network Act," would add yet another provision to the fine print. It requires that "all encryption software purchased with federal funds shall be software based on a system of key recovery" and "all encrypted networks established with the use of federal funds shall use encryption based on a system of key recovery." Key recovery, or key escrow, technology enables law-enforcement officials to obtain copies of the mathematical keys needed to decipher messages. In other words, someone else keeps a copy of your secret key -- and some proposed bills say that the cops may not even need a search warrant to seize it. And not just universities will be jump-starting the market for domestic key escrow. Organizations from defense contractors to the United States Institute of Peace to the American Red Cross receive federal monies. "This is out-and-out industrial policy," says Jim Lucier of Americans for Tax Reform. "It's going to affect every technology there is for doing business on the Net." What about the penalties for "unauthorized breaking of another's encryption codes?" That would criminalize cryptanalysis, the way to verify the security of encryption software you buy. "The only way to know the strength of a cipher is cryptanalysis," says Marc Briceno, a cryptography guru at Community ConneXion. Then there's Kerrey's statement saying "there will be" restrictions on what encryption products you're permitted to buy from overseas firms. This contradicts Justice Department official Michael Vatis, who told me at a conference this year that the Clinton administration did not want import controls. Though Cabe Franklin, spokesperson for Trusted Information Systems, says Kerrey was misunderstood. "In the briefing afterwards, I found out he didn't mean that at all. He meant import controls, but more regulation than restriction. The same way they wouldn't let a car with faulty steering controls in the country. He meant more quality control," Franklin says. (I don't know about you, but I'm not convinced.) But the real question is: Why does Kerrey think this rat-bastard bill has any chance of passing through Congress, especially when there's already legislation that would generally relax controls on crypto? After all, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.)'s "SAFE" bill already has 86 cosponsors and shot out of subcommittee last week. Sen. Conrad Burns' (R-Mont.) "Pro-CODE" bill is headed for markup next month. The answer is simple: this a trading chit that the White House and the Democratic leadership can play to water down the Burns and Goodlatte bills, and perhaps meld all three together. The Democratic strategy makes sense. Members of Congress are driven by a fierce, desperate urge to compromise. The drive is primal: legislators are compelled to find a middle ground. But to their chagrin, crypto doesn't offer one. Either you keep a copy of the electronic keys to your files or someone else does -- which is exactly what the White House wants. Either you're free to speak privately over the Net using PGP, or you're not -- which is exactly what the White House also wants. This may seem like a lot of high-powered attention on an obscure subject; after all, encryption does nothing more than scramble, verify and reassemble bits of information. Besides ensuring that your messages are private, encryption provides the protocols for scrambling credit card numbers and minting electronic coins. It allows digital signatures, proofs of identity online, digital time stamps and even secure electronic voting. It lets anonymous remailers exist. It supplies the foundation and steel girders for an information society. Kerrey's sudden interest in cryptologic arcana likely stems from a recent addition to his staff: policy aide Chris McLean. McLean is hardly a friend of the Net. While in former Sen. Jim Exon's (D-Neb.) office, McLean drafted the notorious Communications Decency Act and went on to prompt Exon to derail "Pro-CODE" pro-encryption legislation last fall. Then, not long after McLean moved to his current job, his new boss stood up on the Senate floor and bashed Pro-CODE in favor of the White House party line: "The President has put forward a plan which in good faith attempts to balance our nation's interests in commerce, security, and law enforcement." Now, more ominously, McLean just might be Bill Clinton's appointee to fill a vacant slot at the Federal Communications Commission. If you think the White House is out to slam the Net, imagine what the FCC could do... ### ------------------------- Declan McCullagh Time Inc. The Netly News Network Washington Correspondent http://netlynews.com/

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FC: Tax the Net! Report from Capitol Hill...
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

************ Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 21:57:45 -0400 To: fight-censorship-announce(a)vorlon.mit.edu From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> Subject: FC: Tax the Net! Report from Capitol Hill... Sender: owner-fight-censorship-announce(a)vorlon.mit.edu Reply-To: declan(a)well.com X-FC-URL: Fight-Censorship is at http://www.eff.org/~declan/fc/ So I'm sitting in this rundown basement meeting room in the Rayburn House office building listening to a bunch of DC policy wonks spout off about Internet taxation. Too bad I'll have to wait to get back to the bureau to log in. Gotta get Strosser in Purchasing to get me that radio modem. It'll be great for playing networked Quake when Senate Judiciary hearings are yawners. Bruce Cohen from the Treasury Department is speaking. Horn-rimmed glasses, nondescript blue suit, definitely a geek. Tries a joke: "I hope there are no criminal tax evaders in the audience." It flubs; folks glance at each other nervously. I lean over to the guy from Cox's office next to me and whisper, "I guess that's IRS humor." He deadpans, "For what it's worth." Cohen is praising a Treasury Department white paper released last fall that says basically "No New Net Taxes." That's true. But you have to read the fine print. Which I did. That's where one finds the very clear suggestion that existing tax laws must be extended to encompass the Internet -- in the kind of clumsy and misinformed way that has typified federal forays into legislating online behavior. "We have a tax system based on a 19th century model of industry," Cohen continues. "Cash poses problems for cash administrators. Electronic cash poses additional problems." It does. The guy from IBM admitted a couple minutes ago that if I buy _physical goods_ over the Net and have 'em shipped to my zip code (20036), then the usual taxes should apply. Just like mail order. But problems arise when the product sold is virtual. If I buy a copy of an email program from Poland, pay for it with digital cash from an Amsterdam bank, and get a partial refund from a firm in Singapore, which government taxes what? No wonder the Internet Caucus decided to organize today's luncheon. Everyone on the Hill's still scratching their heads. Now Americans for Tax Reform's Jim Lucier (a longtime f-c subscriber) is at the podium. He recommends "reengineering the tax code" to address some of the unique aspects of the Net. A steely silence descends on the room. Okay, that ain't gonna happen. Too bad. Lucier is one of the few folks in the room who has a clue about the Net. To be sure, cypherpunks have anticipated these regulatory problems for years. I remember Lucky Green, a digital cash guru and veteran 'punk, stopping by my apartment last summer. Over beers, we talked crypto-anarchy: as more and more transactions move online, as more folks become "knowledge workers," as they get paid in foreign e-cash for writing or hacking code, the Feds' ability to tax income (and virtual spending) will suffer. But that doesn't mean taxes disappear. (Yeah, I know. What a shame.) Governments always will be able to tax physical purchases and meatspace property. When I buy a loaf of bread at my favorite organic grocery down on Columbia Road, the Man can monitor the grocer to ensure he reports the transaction. Or property taxes: governments will always be able to extract 'em. Taxes will shift from income to sales and property. Things are winding down. Aaron from White's office is asking for questions. Embarassed silence. Nobody asks any. Is it because nobody understands the stuff or because everybody understands the stuff? Time passes. Yep, the silence is definitely caused by nobody wanting to sound stupid. Aaron gives up. The panelists get to ask each other questions instead. Lucier starts rambling about the economics of tax policy, but nobody can understand, so we all ignore it. Then Mark Rhoads, the guy supposedly representing the state legislators, stands up. He says the only funny thing of the afternoon: "I worked for Dirksen when he wasn't a building." Or something like that. Maybe you had to be there. Anyway, he doesn't like the Cox-Wyden bill that would prevent states from taxing the Net: "I'll give you a nightmare scenario. What if you had a garage sale and invited 80 million people to your garage sale. I happen to be a collector of antique plates. The efficiency the Internet creates allows me to find people. The complications involved in taxing that at either the federal or state level are amazing." Anyone want to bet that's going to stop 'em from trying? -Declan ------------------------- Declan McCullagh Time Inc. The Netly News Network Washington Correspondent http://netlynews.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is public. To join fight-censorship-announce, send "subscribe fight-censorship-announce" to majordomo(a)vorlon.mit.edu. More information is at http://www.eff.org/~declan/fc/

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