December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Ownership of McCain
by geeman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It was suggested that I look a little at McCain, so here is a dribble; I think it's instructive to see the following PAC's on McCains feedlist. Anyone who thinks that these Co.'s won't profit tremendously in the deployment of a Federally-designed and mandated PKI is taking the wrong drugs ..... (note: obviously these figures are meaningless in terms of actual $$$ amounts. They only serve to indicate that real soft money is flowing from the same source.) 4,000 05/03/95 AIRCRAFT OWNERS AND PILOTS ASSOCIATION POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE 2,500 02/14/95 ALLIED PILOTS ASSOCIATION POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (AKA) APA PAC 2,500 11/17/95 ALLIED PILOTS ASSOCIATION POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (AKA) APA PAC 1,000 02/27/95 AMERICAN AIRLINES POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE 100 03/29/95 AMERICAN SUPPLY ASSOCIATION PAC 500 02/02/95 BDM INTERNATIONAL, INC. POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (BDM-PAC) 500 03/01/95 BP AMERICA PAC >>>> 1,000 02/06/95 CIVIC ACTION FUND - LORAL SYSTEMS GROUP (FKA GOODYEAR AEROSPACE CORP PAC) 2,000 05/11/95 FEDERAL EXPRESS CORPORATION POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE "FEPAC" 1,000 09/18/95 FEDERAL EXPRESS CORPORATION POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE "FEPAC" 3,000 09/18/95 FEDERAL EXPRESS CORPORATION POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE "FEPAC" >>>> 1,000 01/16/95 MARTIN MARIETTA CORPORATION POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE >>>> 1,000 03/13/95 MARTIN MARIETTA CORPORATION POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE >>>> 1,000 02/17/95 MCDONNELL DOUGLAS EMPLOYEES' POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE 1,000 08/17/95 PMAA/SMALL BUSINESS COMMITTEE 1,000 02/10/95 PODIATRY POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE >>>> 1,000 03/11/95 RAYTHEON COMPANY POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE 1,000 02/22/95 SVGGS FUND 1,000 03/14/95 TALLEY INDUSTRIES, INC, POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (TALLEY-PAC) 1,000 02/23/95 UNITED PARCEL SERVICE POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (UPSPAC) 100 03/14/95 UNITED PARCEL SERVICE POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (UPSPAC) 3,550 03/14/95 UNITED PARCEL SERVICE POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (UPSPAC) 350 03/14/95 UNITED PARCEL SERVICE POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (UPSPAC) 31,100

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Assault on Pornography
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Since the U.S. legislature is so concerned about child pornography and the government is interested in promoting world-wide enforcement of laws meant to fight evil, I was wondering about the following scenario: Manuel Noriega sends pictures on the internet to Iraq of women with their ankles showing and their heads uncovered. Iraq sends an armed force to the U.S. to capture Noriega and take him to Iraq for trial. Sure, a few thousand U.S. troops and citizens might die, but it is for the greater good, right? Scenario Two: Bill Clinton sends a picture on the internet to Iraq of Hillary, with her ankles showing and her head uncovered... TruthMonger

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Re: The spam thread
by Ross Wright 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On or About 24 Jun 97 at 9:45, Jason William RENNIE wrote: > Anyway shall we let this thread die at this point ?? I've tried. But I am eternally pulled back in. Sometimes at the first post, sometimes later. As long as people have promiscuous mail boxes they will get spam, use a filter, use your delete key. Denial of service attacks are destructive and unproductive. Die, Spam thread, Die! Out, spot, out! Ross =-=-=-=-=-=- Ross Wright King Media: Bulk Sales of Software Media and Duplication Services http://www.slip.net/~cdr/kingmedia Voice: (408) 259-2795

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Re: how to `go underground' (was Re: The Global Fix is In)
by William H. Geiger III 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <199706221002.LAA06654(a)server.test.net>, on 06/22/97 at 11:02 AM, Adam Back <aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk> said: >Perhaps someone can have a go at adding this to PGP3.x, once Stale has >finished scanning the source code books, and has posted the source. >Also, I hear that PGP3.x has support for RSA keys, but won't generate >them? Perhaps we can add that back in also. I believe that it is only the freeware PGP 5.0 from the MIT site that has RSA key generation disabled. The commercial version should be able to generate both key formats. - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBM609+49Co1n+aLhhAQHjjQQAw/euyv+RsR/PPUBiG4+Ou7BlXrriq0AI 1L8kiDgsndAX+5nnNxItM8P9iy0ALZolShztS/UL4ppaCGKBfcsmZy8gFRvfXii2 DLZ8TQdzFUwmomqIGZZIMo4JQYOzEbB+kqg6gWxW7AnbURKVHXW1md2rreSBy0k9 uZU5pD26cC0= =rSmJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Dirty hands kill more people (80K/yr) than guns (FWD)
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This needed to be shared... Expect government hand escrow any day now. From: aib(a)col.hp.com (Allan Best) Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.democrats.d,alt.politics.usa.republican,al t.rush-limbaugh,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,alt.politics.libertarian,talk.politics .libertarian,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.guns,alt.law-enforcement Subject: Re: Dirty hands kill more people (80K/yr) than guns Date: 17 Jun 1997 20:18:00 GMT Organization: HP Colorado Springs Division ec Roberts (armed_and_safe(a)technologist.com) wrote: : On Mon, 16 Jun 1997 14:00:03 +0900, Jason Gottlieb : <zj5j-gttl(a)asahi-net.or.jp> wrote: : {snip} : >The #1 murder weapon is a hand with a handgun in it. : > : The #1 murder weapon is a hand. This is so, : regardless of the tool in that hand. : Bob The obvious solution is to register all hands. Hands must be kept away from children. To protect children, a hand shall not be transported to within 1000 yards of any school, playground or daycare facility. All concealed carry hands must be registered. Concealed carry is banned in all government facilities, especially US Post Offices, and all public buildings including, but not limited to airports, bus stations, train depots and taxi stands. Furthermore, there shall be a 15-day waiting period and a background check before the purchase of any legal hand can be completed. Anyone caught with an unregistered hand shall have that hand immediately confiscated and be liable to a fine and/or imprisonment. The ownership of fully-automatic hands, assault hands, ugly hands, or cop-killer gloves is expressly forbidden. : > : >-- : >Jason Gottlieb : >Homepage goodies: Japanese SDF info, USA : > gun control info, travellogues, and more! : >http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~zj5j-gttl : **** Armed and Safe(tm) **** : **** www.ivic.net/~ecr **** --- | "That'll make it hot for them!" - Guy Grand | |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.ctrl-alt-del.com/~alan/ |alan(a)ctrl-alt-del.com|

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Decrypting DES
by Wasim Q. Malik 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Folks, here is a project I am working on. Need your help with it as it is really important. You know we often encrypt files using a key (the DES way -- won't talk about RSA here). Examples are the UN*X "crypt", the MS-Office "Save with password" option, and lots of other ciphers using this alorithm. Take a text file, for instance. You provide a key and the file is encrypted using that key, and can be decrypted only if that key is known. It involved only one key/password. Now I was wondering whether we could somehow fool this encryption system to get to the encrypted material without using the key. It could possibly be done in many ways: * The key has to be stored somewhere in the file, in whatever form, with which the entered key is compared. It could somehow be gotten hold of from there. Perhaps a hex editor could be used to scan the first few bytes of a file for the key. * The decryption algorithm/source could be modified to give access even for a bad password. * During the process that the decryptor asks for the input of the key, we could somehow break out of the routine and bypass it to get to the contents of the file. Do you have any ideas about how this could be done? Or is it even possible theoretically? Any other workarounds you can think of? Au revoir, Wasim Q. Malik

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Re: New PGP signatures
by William H. Geiger III 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <Pine.SOL.3.96.970623055041.2746A-100000(a)sirius.infonex.com>, on 06/23/97 at 05:53 AM, Mark Grant <mark(a)unicorn.com> said: >Could I humbly request that people don't post the new (SHA?) PGP >signatures to the list for the time being as it's a pain in the ass for >those of us outside the US who don't yet have the ability to read them. >PGP 2.6.x error handling doesn't know what to do with them and it breaks >our mail-processing code. Hi Mark, You really need to modify your mail-processing code as you are going to see more and more of these. You should also start work on implementing the PGP/MIME RFC as you will be seeing more of these messages. Nothing personal but your code should not "break" on any data that is sent to it. PGP 2.6.x doen't have a problem with these signatures it just returns a error code and goes on it's way. - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBM660l49Co1n+aLhhAQHZEQP+MGX87jPWCO3VZMZG4Pt0R0sgFSSc6N+I 7/3w1QSxJomyd6jt9SUuyKsLMMC5UY7HCC71CHVyp2Aqm4N7Q8ratNC+WMxVPO3z 1DTNM4GYOnZmwdTMgowIPhb0Cfstd4Z+KXlr0jR5pE1Kni6+r3LBG7+jVv+Im6BY SlizRYaent0= =YBoc -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Washington Post says McCain-Kerrey bill "raises red flags"
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 22 Jun 1997 20:52:08 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Washington Post says McCain-Kerrey bill "raises red flags" The Washington Post has a long history of endorsing the Clinton administration's position on export controls of encryption products. On June 10, 1996 the paper editorialized that "national security and law enforcement questions remain too important to be sacrificed lightly." On July 27, 1996: "Congress should be exceedingly cautious about getting out ahead of administration concerns on controls." "Unbreakable codes on the loose strike us as a real danger, a legitimate reason for tight export controls," the Post said on October 4, 1996 -- worrying the White House wasn't strict enough -- and again last month. But even the Post couldn't quite stomach the McCain-Kerrey bill that the Senate Commerce committee approved last week. In an editorial today, the Post said: ...the McCain-Kerrey legislation goes the other way, seeking to expand such restrictions to cover most of the uses of encryption software in the United States. That proposal raises red flags even if you believe, as we do, that there are legitimate national security and law enforcement reasons for controlling the diffusion of such `robust' coding software overseas. Below I've attached five Washington Post editorials on encryption. Thanks to Alan Olsen, Peter Trei, and especially John Young for holding on to these editorials and sending them to me. -Declan --- Senate Commerce committee and McCain-Kerrey bill: http://www.jya.com/declan3.txt http://www.jya.com/declan2.txt Problems with SAFE and ProCODE: http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/editorial/0,1012,1022,00.html Kerrey crypto-bill: http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/editorial/0,1012,931,00.html ------ Net Tangle on Privacy Sunday, June 22, 1997; Page C06 The Washington Post PITY THE senator or representative who still hasn't quite mastered the details of how the Internet works, or the difference between the World Wide Web and e-mail. On the Net-related issues that, by all indications, draw the most urgent public interest -- those relating to privacy protection -- there are now multiple clumps of competing bills, whose differences are both highly important and highly technical. Three of these involve different strategies to curb junk e-mail; two, diametrically opposed, concern encryption. All these bills are tangential, strictly speaking, to the basic concern expressed at hearings before the Federal Trade Commission: how to safeguard personal and sensitive data about yourself once it gets into the hands of institutions and third parties. (The commission itself is weighing whether to recommend such legislation based on what it heard.) But any of them could powerfully affect future privacy protection. A striking example is the newest bill on encryption, sponsored by Sens. Robert Kerrey and John McCain, which the Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday voted to adopt as a replacement for a long-standing proposal by Sen. Conrad Burns, dubbed Pro-CODE. Where the Burns bill would have lifted restrictions on the export of "uncrackable" encryption software abroad -- restrictions that the administration has fought to maintain for national security reasons -- the McCain-Kerrey legislation goes the other way, seeking to expand such restrictions to cover most of the uses of encryption software in the United States. That proposal raises red flags even if you believe, as we do, that there are legitimate national security and law enforcement reasons for controlling the diffusion of such `robust' coding software overseas. The bill, offered as a compromise between the administration's priorities and those of Congress, shows how difficult it is to square this particular circle. It would require users of domestic networks with any government funding (such as universities, many hospitals and government contractors) to deposit an extra "key" to their codes with a licensed "key management" authority -- with the licensing to be done by the government. Like the administration's international policy, this bill envisions the development of whole new government-regulated industries for key management, retrieval and authentication. This meets the needs of domestic law enforcement agencies, which could get the keys with an ordinary subpoena, but at a considerable cost to the consumer confidence that would be expected to drive a market in encryption software to begin with. What you think of these bills has a good deal to do with how you think the worlds of electronic commerce and networked communal life will develop -- and, of course, no one knows. Even the most enthusiastic boosters of the right to encryption concede that very few people actually use it yet. Electronic commerce itself has yet to take real shape. The main force shaping the Internet for now continues to be the perception -- not to mention fear -- of the all-too-likely prospect that anyone who wants to can snoop around in the stacks of your most private data, which are constantly accumulating in unknown files. ---------- The Washington Post, June 10, 1996, p. A18. Global Village Cops? What will be the long-term effect of Internet technologies on global law enforcement? The amazing story of Bill and Anna Young, a k a Leslie Rogge and Judy Kay Wilson, offers one possible scenario. The pseudonymous Youngs, residents of Guatemala who the FBI says have been on a decade-long run from U.S. justice since Mr. Rogge was convicted of a string of bank robberies and other offenses, turned themselves in to authorities after a neighbor recognized Mr. Rogge's face on the FBI home page's Most Wanted list. According to a story first told in the Guatemala Weekly, the person who recognized him was a newly Internet-wired 14-year-old. The vision of the future evoked by this story, of a world in which the familiar "global village" becomes a place not just of instant communication but of neighborly nosiness and where no one can just melt into the crowd, is reassuring and unnerving in about equal proportions. (What if it were a network of hit men or an authoritarian government seeking a dissident, rather than the FBI, making use of this powerful technology?) But it's also worth keeping in mind that, other than the romance of the technology, it doesn't represent that great an advance on current global media that have made celebrities or fugitives' faces familiar to a vast public -- just ask Salman Rushdie. The Rogge nabbing is the first that the FBI credits to its home page specifically, but TV's "America's Most Wanted" has scored similar coups. The impossibility of predicting the exact shape of these extensions of policing is relevant as well to a report that the National Research Council recently issued on another computer technology issue -- the vexed matter of whether to ease export controls on encryption software, which encodes information sent electronically so that only a user with a key can decipher it. The government until now has resisted lifting controls on "uncrackable" encryption software -- that is, codes that are too complex to be broken by brute force -- unless the industry agrees to deposit keys in an escrow arrangement with a third party so the government can seek and obtain a warrant to read encoded communications if necessary. Software makers, meanwhile, are pushing hard to have these restrictions eased. The research council, an arm of the generally neutral National Academy of Sciences, sought to bridge the gap between industry interests and such government agencies as the FBI and national security agencies, whose case, they say, is based largely on classified matter that can't be publicly discussed. Part of the report's conclusion, which favors the easing though not the abolition of current restrictions, is that wider use of encryption technology will actually *help* national security and law enforcement because more data, economic and otherwise, will be secure to begin with. But if the news of the changing terrain tells anything, it is that it is far too soon to base arguments on such a premise. Our own sense on encryption is that the national security and law enforcement questions remain too important to be sacrificed lightly, despite the considerable economic interests of the parties on the other side. But the world of Internet law enforcement is still taking shape. Whatever the public conclusion on encryption, the debate should not rest on any assumptions about what that shape will be. ----------- > The Washington Post, July 27, 1996, p. A22. > > > Speaking in Code on the Internet ... [Editorial] > > > The decibel level has been rising in the argument over how > much control the federal government should have over the > export of encryption technology. The Senate Commerce > Committee held hearings Thursday on a proposal dubbed > Pro-CODE (Promotion of Commerce On-line in the Digital Era) > that would lift current restrictions on exporting > encryption software above a certain level of complexity. > The move is opposed strongly by law enforcement and > national security authorities, who fear the consequences to > their tracking of terrorism or crime if uncrackable > cryptography becomes the global standard. > > > But encryption software -- which scrambles a person's > computer messages so no one can read them without a key -- > also is thought by many in the computer industry to be the > missing piece that's preventing customers from a full-scale > move to the Internet for banking and other confidential > transactions, rather than, as now, worrying about the > security of their data. They also see it as a market in > which the United States maintains a comfortable lead, one > that is threatened if domestic encryption makers can't sell > their products elsewhere. The makers argue that foreign > encryption software will rush in to fill the gap, doing > nothing about the uncrackability problem -- indeed, making > it worse. The administration in turn is pursuing a wider > international agreement to maintain controls on cryptology > export by all the industrialized nations and has been > putting pressure on its colleagues in the Organization for > Economic Cooperation and Development, which will rule on > the matter in a Paris meeting in September. > > > Administration officials, including FBI chief Louis Freeh, > have been pushing for an alternative policy of "voluntary > key escrow" -- encryption makers would deposit a key to the > code with a neutral third body before exporting the > products and could then have access to the codes only by > court order, as happens now with wiretapping. Mr. Freeh, > testifying at Thursday's hearing in favor of an optional > key escrow plan, noted that the point is not to prevent all > copies of uncrackable code from going abroad -- that's > clearly impossible -- but to prevent such high-level code > from becoming the international standard, with architecture > and transmission channels all unreadable to world > authorities. To software companies and Internet users who > have been clamoring for the right to encrypt as securely as > possible, Mr. Freeh and others argue, "the genie is not yet > out of the bottle" on "robust," meaning uncrackable, > encryption. > > > It's far from obvious to anyone that an optional escrow > plan really can prevent the growth of inaccessible > transmissions by international terrorists or criminals. > Encryption, if widely used, could conceivably ease some > privacy problems concerning who gets to see personal and > financial data on individuals -- though such data usually > are vulnerable to being dug out of storage rather than > intercepted in transmission. But neither is it clear that > the encryption enthusiasts' desire for free development > should take precedence over the tracking of terrorism. At > the very least, Congress should be exceedingly cautious > about getting out ahead of administration concerns on > controls that, once lifted, are hardly reversible. ---- The Washington Post, October 4, 1996, p. A22. Crypto Politics [Editorial] The Clinton administration once had a coherent, if unpopular, position on encryption software, the stuff that allows you to encode your email messages or other data so that no one can read it en route without a key. Now, in the wake of word that the president will sign an executive order, the position is no longer coherent, nor discernibly more popular with the high-tech audience it attempts to mollify. People and companies doing international financial business are highly interested in this kind of software, the more powerfully "uncrackable" the better. The U.S. software industry thinks there's a lot of money in it, especially if encryption becomes routine. The administration position till recently was that, much as U.S. software companies might profit from being able to market "uncrackable" encryption software freely, national security and law enforcement considerations dictated that such exports be controlled by license. Powerful encryption, like arms, could be dangerous in the hands of terrorists, rogue governments or international criminals. The software was classed as a munition; software above a certain uncrackability level could not be exported unless law enforcement authorities could get access somehow to the "key" after obtaining the proper warrants. Unbreakable codes on the loose strike us as a real danger, a legitimate reason for tight export controls. But if the administration really believes this, you'd think it would stick with steps that can plausibly meet the goal of control. Instead, trying to please, it has been splitting and splitting the difference between itself and the largely unmoved industry, which argues that no one will buy an encryption product that a government can decrypt at will. As with arms sales, the companies also argue that if they don't sell it, somebody else will, and that anyway it's far too late to fence off rogues. The national security people respond that there is still a "window," perhaps two years, in which they can prevent, if not all leaks of unauthorized crypto technology, at least its off-the-shelf use and wide adoption as the international standard. The administration initially proposed, then repeatedly refined, the concept of key "escrow" -- depositing a copy of the code with trusted third parties -- but never came up with a version the industry would accept. It commissioned a National Research Council report, which recommended a significant easing of restrictions. Now the president appears to have embraced a yet looser form of licensure upon declaration by a company that it will develop a plan within two years for key recovery. Also, the technology no longer will be considered munitions. What kind of plan? Nobody can quite say. What if the plans aren't acceptable? Licensing will revert to the old rule in two years. Will the security issue be moot by then? Probably. Barring some burst of clarity, one is left wondering whether the administration has compromised or caved, and what it now believes about the dangers of exporting uncrackable software. ---------- Showdown on Encryption Sunday, May 25 1997; Page C06 The Washington Post AFTER A YEAR'S rumbling, Congress seems ready to mount a direct challenge to the administration's position on encryption, the sticky issue of how to handle software that creates, for commercial use, codes too strong to break. The House Judiciary Committee the other day passed a bill dubbed Security and Freedom Through Encryption, or SAFE, which would undo existing curbs on the export of "uncrackable" encryption technology abroad without a license. The administration has fought to maintain those curbs against increasing pressure from the manufacturers of such software and from a loose but growing coalition of privacy and civil liberties groups. A similar bill is pending in the Senate. The administration maintains that the sellers of software capable of encrypting electronic messages to a complexity beyond ready cracking shouldn't sell it abroad -- or, if they do, should be prepared to deposit keys to the codes with trusted commercial third parties at home. Police or national security authorities could get these keys with a search warrant or court order, as in normal investigations, and a market would develop to provide the third-party service of holding them. This vision of a worldwide "key management" structure is a clever way to reconcile two otherwise contradictory desires: the desire of Internet users for absolute security and privacy in electronic transactions and the government's desire to prevent criminals and terrorists from making themselves impregnable to a degree never before seen. "Key management" does not, however, exist. And the administration has gone so far toward undercutting its own position -- saying key escrow should be voluntary, trying to accommodate industry with numerous exemptions, licensing uncrackable software separately for banks -- that it's not clear it ever will exist. Meanwhile, the once-obscure drive to make unlimited-strength cryptography available to all has picked up momentum -- and some odd allies. Phyllis Schlafly was among those who testified in favor of the SAFE bill, saying it would protect Americans from unprecedented government intrusion and the FBI reading their mail. Libertarian groups such as Americans for Tax Freedom are enthusiastic about the vision of a world where powerful, widely available encryption renders communications totally safe. The odd part is that there currently are no restrictions on use of uncrackable encryption software within this country. The software industry has argued that the export control makes for a de facto domestic curb, because it's too complicated to market a full-strength version for the domestic market and a weaker one for the foreign market. But this isn't a very persuasive argument, since most popular software programs exist in dozens of versions for different markets and in different languages. The real question is whether you believe this stuff poses a significant national security threat in the wrong hands. If you do -- and we think it irresponsible to assume otherwise -- then it's not enough to declare uncrackable privacy a civil right. You have to at least address the question of how to minimize intrusion into that right while preserving some ability to grapple with the potential danger. Neither the SAFE advocates in Congress nor the administration's voluntary escrow enthusiasts up to now have laid out that vision in a convincing way. ###

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Re: Canarypunk: Jim Bell in a coalmine
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Free speech - Unless Govt. doesn't like it >From talltom <"talltom(SPAMBLOCKER)"@ipns.com> Organization Alternate Access Inc. Date Sat, 21 Jun 1997 19:23:39 -0700 Newsgroups or.politics Message-ID <33AC8CAB.199F(a)ipns.com> This is in reference to a local, that's being held incommunicado in Tacoma. I've personally tried to contact Jim and the Marshalls office said they'd "try" to get a message to him, wouldn't give me an address, and were REALLY interested in my address. I believe the reason for holding Jim incomunicado is that the ACLU requires that the accused ask them for help, and the feds know that if Jim can't ask he won't get their help. Vin covers the situation nicely... [Vin Suprynowicz column:] In the summer of 1995, 39-year-old electronics engineer Jim Bell of Vancouver, Wash. (coincidentally the scene of the climactic battle between militia and central government forces in Ian Slater's current potboiler paperback "Showdown: U.S.A. vs. Militia,") penned an intriguing and controversial essay called "Assassination Politics," which has since been kicking around various Internet discussion groups, triggering responses from delight to outrage. This section from Mr. Bell's introduction gives the gist: "A few months ago, I had a truly and quite literally 'revolutionary' idea, and I jokingly called it 'Assassination Politics': I speculated on the question of whether an organization could be set up to legally announce that it would be awarding a cash prize to somebody who correctly 'predicted' the death of one of a list of violators of rights, usually either government employees, officeholders, or appointees. It could ask for anonymous contributions from the public, and individuals would be able send those contributions using digital cash. "I also speculated that using modern methods of public-key encryption and anonymous 'digital cash,' it would be possible to make such awards in such a way so that nobody knows who is getting awarded the money, only that the award is being given. Even the organization itself would have no information that could help the authorities find the person responsible for the prediction, let alone the one who caused the death. ... "Obviously, the problem with the general case is that the victim may be totally innocent under libertarian principles, which would make the killing a crime, leading to the question of whether the person offering the money was himself guilty. "(But) my speculation assumed that the 'victim' is a government employee, presumably one who is not merely taking a paycheck of stolen tax dollars, but also is guilty of extra violations of rights beyond this. (Government agents responsible for the Ruby Ridge incident and Waco come to mind.) In receiving such money and in his various acts, he violates the 'Non-aggression Principle' (NAP) and thus, presumably, any acts against him are not the initiation of force under libertarian principles. "The organization set up to manage such a system could, presumably, make up a list of people who had seriously violated the NAP, but who would not see justice in our courts due to the fact that their actions were done at the behest of the government. ..." In a followup essay titled "Fishing Expedition Swims Against the Tide," published in the May 14 edition of the daily Portland Oregonian, Bell wrote, in part: "... I've been openly debating the idea on the Internet since then with anyone who will listen. My essay surprises many and shocks more than a few, but I am pleased that such a truly revolutionary concept has been so well received. Even the Columbian newspaper (www.columbian.com) has decided to add a pointer to the essay. "The only 'threat' in the essay is to the jobs of the people who have been parasites on the rest of us for decades, as well as to the future of tyrannies around the world. But that's why, on April 1, 20 federal agents burst in and took my computer, told the news media I was 'armed and dangerous,' and began engaging in a fishing expedition including harassing people simply for knowing me. (No arrest or charges so far.) ..." The charges were forthcoming. Jim Bell was arrested on Friday, May 16, and has been held ever since, without bond, in the Pierce County Jail in Tacoma, Wash., on a federal complaint which alleges: "Beginning at a time unknown, and continuing to the present, ... JAMES DALTON BELL did corruptly obstruct and impede ... the due administration of the internal revenue laws, among other things, by collecting the names and home addresses of agents and employees of the Internal Revenue Service ('IRS') in order to intimidate them in the performance of their official functions; by soliciting others to join in a scheme known as 'Assassination Politics' whereby those who killed IRS employees would be rewarded; by using social security account numbers that were not assigned to him to hide his assets and thereby impede the IRS's ability to collect his unpaid taxes, and by contaminating the area outside of the office of the IRS in Vancouver, Washington, with mercaptan, a chemical that causes a powerful odor." Nor does the complaint stop short with an alleged "stink bomb" floor mat, proceeding to allege that Mr. Bell has at times discussed poisoning water supplies, sabotaging government computers, and, well ... "overthrowing the Government of the United States." The question here would appear to be whether Mr. Bell has actually taken substantive steps, as alleged, to "implement" the theory in his speculative Internet essay, or whether it is the IRS -- who since Feb. 20 have seized the heretofore non-violent Mr. Bell's car, wages and bank accounts (presumably stymying at the very last minute his plan to "overthrow the Government of the United States") -- who are doing the "threatening and intimidating," in an attempt to send a message to anyone who dares speculate about how justice might ever be obtained against federal agents ... given that they are rarely if ever indicted, even for the willful murder of children, as at Waco and Ruby Ridge. If the defendant Bell has indeed taken substantive steps to set in motion the murder of any specific government agent, that of course is a crime, for which he should expect to face the consequences. On the other hand, if writings of the "what if someone ..." variety have now become a felony so serious that one can be seized and held without bond, most of America's adventure and science fiction writers -- who up till now have felt safe spinning thinly-veiled yarns about near-future government coups and such -- had better watch their backsides. Mr. Bell's attorney, Peter Avenia of the Public Defenders Office in Tacoma, says he fully expects Mr. Bell to be indicted by a federal grand jury within the next few weeks. I asked Mr. Avenia if he believes the case will present substantive First Amendment questions. "It certainly does concern me." Is the IRS making an example of Mr. Bell, to chill any further discussions on the Internet of how justice can ever be had in the case of uniformed killers who apparently need no longer fear being indicted or brought to trial in this country? "It's certainly a possibility. In the context of the Oklahoma City bombing it's certainly a hostile atmosphere for any such defendant. I think we can certainly ask whether the government is trying to send a message to people who pen inflammatory writings." Defense attorney Avenia can be reached at the Federal Public Defenders Office, 1551 Broadway, Suite 501, Tacoma, Wash. 98402. The essay "Assassination Politics" is available on the Internet at http://jya.com/ap.htm. The current federal complaint against Mr. Bell can be found at http://jya.com/jimbell3.htm Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at vin(a)lvrj.com. The web site for the Suprynowicz column is at http://www.nguworld.com/vindex/ *** Vin Suprynowicz, vin(a)lvrj.com Voir Dire: A French term which means "jury stacking."

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CP uses for the PGP 5.0 source
by Steve Schear 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

With the on-line availability of PGP 5.0 source code expected any day, perhaps the group should consider what CP goals can now be made practical. Hopefully, PGP will not object to CP uses. I submit the following as CP projects which could be substantially eased by the source code: EMAIL PLUG-INS PGP 5.0 contains some very good code examples for creating email plug-ins for Microsoft Exchange for Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0, Microsoft Outlook for Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0, Eudora Pro/Light for Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, Macintosh, Claris Emailer for Mac only. For cross-platform ease, I suggest we tackle the Eudora emailers, which have a well defined API, first. 1. Remailer: One reason remailers haven't been as popular as we've hoped is the need to operate separate, sometime difficult to use, remailer client software. By integrating these and other functions into plug-ins, creation of persistant identities and integration with key generation and management can be simplified. 2. Digital postage: CPs can gain the high-ground in the battle for handling the SPAM problem by offering plug-ins which enforce restrictions on incoming mail using digital postage. Two postage approaches have been discussed on the CP lists: ecash and hashcash. I suggest that the plug-ins offer both d-postage forms. Hashcash is eligent in its simplicity and its lack of a required central clearing facility. Hascash-based d-postage could also seed the development of commercial distributed computing Net industry, as SPAMers elect to purchase hashcash rather than generating it themselves-the idea isn't to eliminate SPAM, just place it on similar economic footing with junk snailmail. Adam Back has already done a considerable amount of investigation of ways to implement hascash (See http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/hashcash/) ECash could really supply an economic shot in the arm for remailers, making possible commercial (read profitable) remailers. It will also offer a ready-made market for accountless ecash, which will be available soon. Jeremey Barrett's higher level ecash API should greatly simplify ecash integration. --Steve PGP mail preferred Fingerprint: FE 90 1A 95 9D EA 8D 61 81 2E CC A9 A4 4A FB A9 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Schear | tel: (702) 658-2654 CEO | fax: (702) 658-2673 First ECache Corporation | 7075 West Gowan Road | Suite 2148 | Las Vegas, NV 89129 | Internet: azur(a)netcom.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- I know not what instruments others may use, but as for me, give me Ecache or give me debt. SHOW ME THE DIGITS!

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