December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Courts strike down New York and Georgia Net-censorship laws
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 20 Jun 1997 13:48:13 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Courts strike down New York and Georgia Net-censorship laws Two Federal courts ruled today in separate decisions that state laws in New York and Georgia restricting speech on the Internet are unconstitutional. In a 62-page ruling, Judge Loretta Preska of Manhattan's Federal district court struck down a New York state Net-censorship law that restricted online material that might be "harmful to minors," saying that a single state couldn't pass laws that apply to the entire Internet. "The Internet may well be the premiere technological innovation of the present age," Preska said. "Judges and legislators faced with adapting existing legal standards to the novel environment of cyberspace struggle with terms and concepts that the average American five-year old tosses about with breezy familiarity." In Georgia, Judge Marvin Shoob ruled that a state law forbidding anonymity online is unconstitutional since it violates free speech and free association rights. The law is so broadly written, the judge indicated, that even America Online screen names could be considered illegal. This represents a stunning victory for the American Civil Liberties Union (http://www.aclu.org/) which filed both lawsuits. Judge Shoob "understood clearly the very strong need for our plaintiffs to communicate anonymously," the ACLU's Ann Beeson says. Both judges issued preliminary injunctions barring the state attorneys general from enforcing the laws. But the rulings differ in important ways. Manhattan's Judge Preska did not answer whether the New York law violated the First Amendment, saying she was going to wait for the U.S. Supreme Court's to rule on the Communications Decency Act. She said, however, that she didn't *need to answer* that question to strike down the law since it violated the U.S. Constitution's ban on states attempts to regulate commerce outside their borders. This is an vital point: The court ruled that no state, no matter how hard the legislators try, generally can regulate "indecent" or "harmful to minors" material online. "I cannot stretch enough the importance of this conclusion," Beeson says. These rulings mean that the ACLU's attempts to strike down other state Net-censorship laws -- and around two dozen states have passed or are considering such measures -- will be a virtual slam dunk. Georgia's Judge Shoob, in a shorter 21-page opinion, ruled that the law -- that the Democrat-controlled legislature passed in haste last year to muzzle a dissident Republican representative -- violated the First Amendment. This echoes a recent Supreme Court case, McIntyre v. Ohio, in which the justices ruled that the right to anonymity extends beyond political speech; that requiring someone to add their name to a leaflet is unconstitutional; that writing can be more effective if the speaker's identity is unknown. Next stop: The Supreme Court, which is almost certain to rule on the CDA next week... -Declan More info on the Georgia lawsuit: http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/editorial/0,1012,590,00.html More info on the New York state lawsuit: http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/editorial/0,1012,532,00.html http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/editorial/0,1012,811,00.html

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Re: E-Cash
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May is another loser who pays for got.net because he lacks the mental capacity to gain net access as a perk of either employment or academic achievment. ((__)) Tim May (00) (o__o)

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Crypto-compromises in Washington: Burns offers ProCODE II
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Rocke Verser's announcement couldn't have come at a more embarrassing time for the White House. At 3:46 pm yesterday, after five months of painstaking work, the Colorado computer consultant fired off an excited message to the DES challenge mailing list: "WE FOUND IT!" Verser was talking about his group's successful crack of a message scrambled with the 56-bit DES encryption standard. When subjected to the massive computing power of thousands of machines around the globe, the enciphered message finally yielded the secret phrase, "Strong cryptography makes the world a safer place." That's exactly what the Clinton administration didn't want to hear. For years top government officials have argued the opposite, that strong cryptography makes the world a less secure place where criminals and terrorists can scheme with impunity. The White House has long wanted to ensure that it can listen in to all electronic communications through schemes like "key escrow" or the Clipper Chip. Today the Senate Commerce committee is scheduled to vote on two competing crypto-bills, one backed by the White House and one backed by industry and some privacy groups. And now, I've learned, some of cryptography's most loyal supporters on the Hill are talking about cutting a deal... --- I ran into Jim Bidzos, head of RSA Data Security (which sponsored the DES challenge), at a party in the Watergate last night. "Export regulations are a dinosaur," he said. "But it's a dinosaur that'll take out a lot of the city during its death struggles." Bidzos is testifying before a House Science panel today and plans to stress the problems of 56-bit DES; only 128-bit DES is generally regarded as reasonably secure... --- Washington is a city of complexity, painful complexity, when it comes to encryption. Three different lawsuits are challenging the constitutionality of last year's Federal crypto-regulations. This year's Commerce Department regulations add up to an eye-straining 16,000 words. Four different bills are moving through Congress, and the legislative jockeying is even more abstruse. But throughout this muddle, one point remains clear: The Clinton administration wants to hold on to the status quo as long as possible. That means no judicial or legislative tinkering -- and, above all, no general lifting of export controls on encryption products. Even as officials admit privately that attempts to prop up these Cold War rules are eventually doomed, they argue publicly that removing the rules would be catastrophic. "The proliferation of unbreakable encryption would seriously and fundamentally threaten... critical and central public safety interests," FBI director Louis Freeh said earlier this month. For Freeh, the best way to stall for time was to take the battle to Congress. Earlier this week Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) and Sen. John McCain introduced a bill that included everything Freeh and the White House desired: sections creating new Federal crimes for some uses of crypto and an all-but-mandatory key escrow infrastructure. The goal: to facilitate government access to any private data. Privacy advocates leaped to savage it. "The bill threatens any prospect of privacy and security in electronic commerce and on the Internet by opening a huge window of vulnerability to the private data and communications of encryption users," the Center for Democracy and Technology cried. EPIC's Dave Banisar told me it was a "poison pill strategy designed to kill" pro-crypto legislation. The many problems with the bill normally would be bad enough, but it's zooming through Congress at an almost supersonic velocity. Thanks to the sponsorship of McCain, the powerful Senate commerce committee chair, the committee is scheduled to vote on it today, without even holding hearings. This could mean the death of a bill introduced last year, then reintroduced this year by Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.). Called "ProCODE," privacy advocates say it's the best of all the crypto bills in Congress (but then again, that's not saying much). --- In Washington politics, perhaps the worst thing that can be said about you is that you're unwilling to compromise. So it should come as no surprise that the McCain-Kerrey bill prompted Burns himself to offer a substitute ProCODE bill that will be unveiled at the markup session today. "People would say Burns hasn't moved on this issue and he's not willing to compromise. He needs to put something on the table so he can credibly say he has a compromise too. Otherwise it seems like he's not willing to play the game," one Hill observer told me yesterday. "ProCODE II" would allow the export of up to 56-bit DES -- yes, the very same bit length that was cracked yesterday -- only in some circumstances and give the FBI and the CIA more of a say on an encryption panel the bill creates, sources say. (For their part, Burns' staff characterizes it as having only "slight differences" from ProCODE I.) This legislative jockeying takes place against a backdrop of rivalries between Burns and McCain that stretch far beyond encryption. Burns introduced an amendment on a spectrum auction bill that gutted McCain's proposal. A recent National Journal story played up the rift, and only resulted in widening it. McCain's insistence on endorsing the administration's -- and thus the national security establishment's -- position shouldn't be surprising, even if McCain was one of the original sponsors of ProCODE last year. He told Wired Magazine's Todd Lappin in March that "we need to find a middle ground" on crypto: "It's pretty clear that the administration's crypto proposals will have a harmful effect upon the industry. But we can't completely ignore the warnings we get from the heads of the FBI and the National Security Agency... If the president of the United States vetoes a crypto bill we pass, I doubt we'll be able to override his veto." Then there's the Senate Judiciary committee. Its chairman, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), said last week that he may introduce an alternative bill to relax export controls on encryption technology. But he's also talking about requiring key escrow in certain circumstances. Judiciary is holding a hearing next Wednesday on key escrow; the FBI's Freeh is scheduled to testify. For his part, Hatch has control of a crypto bill introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Ver.) and could block legislation that other committtees report. --- Now the focus is on today's scheduled vote in Senate Commerce. Sources say Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) is planning to introduce amendments to the McCain bill that would weaken it. They would delay the implementation of some portions by a year. They would also require that NIST, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Defense publish guidelines on key recovery. Today senators will be faced with a series of unpleasant choices: approve the McCain-Kerrey bill (sponsored by the chair), approve the original ProCODE bill, or approve ProCODE II. Certainly some senators would be wary of endorsing a measure that they haven't had time to read. The buzz, however, on the Hill is that McCain doesn't have the votes for his bill and may postpone the vote after all. What all this legislative turmoil means is exactly what McCain predicted in March: for a bill to get out of committee, there has to be a compromise. As I wrote in a recent Netly News column, 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. That's why the only sane answer to the encryption struggle might be to wait for the courts to strike down export controls as unconstitutional. They're moving forward: a Federal court yesterday heard arguments in the Bernstein case. (Sure, it would put would-be crypto lobbyists out of business overnight, but that sounds like a good thing to me.) Congress can't be trusted not to compromise away fundamental liberties, and any bill that makes it past McCain, Hatch, and Kerrey -- not to mention their counterparts in the House -- is almost certain to include some key escrow provisions. A veteran lobbyist told last night that this could indeed happen -- but only if high tech firms and their Washington lobbyists sell out our privacy by accepting relaxed export controls in exchange for domestic controls on the use of encryption. Businesses might make money, but American consumers would be the ultimate losers... Additional articles: http://pathfinder.com/netly/editorial/0,1012,931,00.html http://pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1022,00.html -Declan

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Where to get your RC5 crackers
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It seems that the RC5 cracking effort had no idea about the loads their web server would be subjected to once thousands of DES crackers moved over to cracking RC5. Their NT based webserver (bad idea...) collapsed. While it recovers, you can still get the client software from ftp://ftp.distributed.net/rc5/ Cypherpunks crack cyphers, --Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred. DES is dead! Please join in breaking RC5-56. http://rc5.distributed.net/

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Re: Crypto-compromises in Washington: Burns offers ProCODE II
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Declan McCullagh wrote: > > Rocke Verser's announcement couldn't have come at a > more embarrassing time for the White House. At 3:46 pm > yesterday, after five months of painstaking work, the > Colorado computer consultant fired off an excited > message to the DES challenge mailing list: "WE FOUND IT!" After the DES challenge began, didn't someone on the cypherpunks list predict that the key would be cracked at a time that was opportune for RSA, et al, and that the key would be found by "c2Nut testicles?" I can't find my printout of the post but if my memory serves me correctly then (s)he predicted more than a few of the events surrounding the DES challenge. The timing of the find is certainly opportune and there is no doubt that the company that found the key is closely connected to c2net (not to mention the spooks the company fronts for in Costa Rica and South America). Also, the Genx effort was plagued with internal and external sabotage, as predicted, and several other efforts were chilled before they ever got off the ground (by government and corporate legal consultants who all seem to have close connections to Colorado DoD agencies). I am not suggesting that RSA and their cohorts would put the fix in just because their is a tremendous amount of money and power surrounding this issue (both corporate and political) but I have certainly noticed that there doesn't seem to be any area of the crypto community where I don't find the same dark figures flitting through the shadows (and they all seem to have agendas linked to secret government labs and unelected government regulatory comittees). I was a bit skeptical of some of the rather paranoid claims I saw on the cypherpunks list at times but I can certainly vouch for the fact that there were more than a few computer admins in the New York area who were told from on high that using their company's computers in the DES challenge would not bode well for future government contracts. I am beginning to wonder if I shouldn't have majored in nuclear physics since there seems to be less political intrigue in that arena than in the crypto arena these days. Chauncey Gardner

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DES: Thank you!
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Well Done! My congratulations go out to Rocke Verser, Mike Sanders, and all of the other people who developed code and/or ran clients for the DES challenge. The crack comes roughly at the time I predicted when I first proposed the challenge, and at a very opportune moment to influence action in the US Congress. I first proposed the challenge on Oct 1, 1996, in a posting to the cypherpunks mailing list: "Can we kill single DES?". Later that month, at the suggestion of Ron Rivest, I approached Jim Bidzos of RSA Data Security Inc. with the idea. From the start, RSA was enthusiastic, and sponsored the challenge to the tune of $10,000. I wrote some of the earliest key search routines, and invented a technique to reduce the key schedule generation from 80% of the total work to less than 5% - a technique which was universally adopted by key search engine writers. I and others also worked on the other major part - the DES round. My initial version was substantially faster than any previously existing Intel version, but later Sven Mikkelsen of Danemark found substantial improvements over my code. Sven, Rocke, and others also invented techniques to speed up the search by reducing the number of DES rounds which needed to be performed; I had reduced the original 16 to 14, but they got it down to under 12. The upshot of this was that searching for keys became faster than straightforward encryption or decryption with a single key. --------------------------- What does this tell us? What do we tell the public? --------------------------- Single DES can be cracked for under $10,000. Any system in which a single DES key protects more than $10,000 in assets is inadequate. Thus, one $10,000 message, or even 10 bank cards with $1000 in their accounts, becomes a tempting target (some banking systems use the same DES key for many cards). Future cracks can only get faster. Processor speeds continue to climb, and the number of available computers increases similarly; thus, the number of available cycles more than doubles every year - and the cost of a cracked key halves. This was probably the *least* efficient way to crack DES; Wiener and others have shown that machines can be built that will crack DES far faster and cheaper, but the method used won because it used existing resources, with no significant upfront development costs. No enterprise which wishes to use or offer security should consider single DES from this point on. If this crack does anything, it demonstrates that the US Government's offers to permit the export of single DES are worthless. Even without formal organization, distributed computing on the Internet can muster awesome cpu power - I estimate about half a million MIP years were used (see below). ------------------------------- How much cpu was actually used? ------------------------------- The following is a very rough calculation, there are lots of assumptions. 1. DESChall searched 25% of the keyspace - other efforts got about the same, so we checked roughly 2^55 keys 2. I'm assuming that most search engines used roughly the same number of operations per key checked, regardless of processor. 64 bit machines could do better, especially with bitslice algorithms. 3. The Pentium code is highly optimized, and thus is executing roughly 2 instructions per clock cycle. Lets do the numbers. from the DESChall benchmark page: Dual Pentium 200 MHz ......... 2.003M keys per second = 200MHz is roughly 400MIPs, due to Pentium's dual pipelines. -> 1 Mkey/sec = 400 MIPs, or roughly 400 instructions per key. (this sounds about right, from my own DES Intel assembly work). 2^55 keys = 3.6*10^16 keys * 400 = 1.44*10^19 instructions = 1.44*10^13 million instructions. = 457,000 MIP years used in the calculation. Lenstra has stated that, in the factorization of RSA-130: "we would have spent about 500 mips years (i.e., 10% of the computing time spent on the 129-digit QS-record) if we had done all the sieving on average workstations with at least 24 megabytes of memory" (from http://enigma.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~dun/rsa-130.shtml) This suggests that cracking DES used roughly 2 orders of magnitude (ie, 100x ) more CPU than RSA-129, which I suspect makes it a record for the largest calculation ever performed. ---------- What next? ---------- Two targets suggest themselves: 1. 56 bit RC5. 2. RSA 135 1. 56 bit RC5. The earlier efforts on 40 and 48 bit RC5 suggest that keysearch for RC5 is substantially slower than DES - perhaps 5-10 x slower. It's probable that the clients have not been fully optimized. RSA has another $10,000 prize for this crack. 2. RSA 135 We used about 1000x the cpu needed for the RSA 130 factorization. I'm not sure how the best current factorization systems scale with the modulus size (Rivest, Lenstra?) but I suspect that it's less than linear. If this is so, then RSA 135 may be doable. RSA135 is roughly comparable to a 448 bit key. RSA also has a prize for this factorization. Peter Trei trei(a)process.com DISCLAIMER: The above represents my opinions only, not neccesarily those of my employer.

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FYI: Who owns Sen. Kerrey (LONG)
by geeman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Actually the profile doesn't look too evil. One wonders who's pushing him on this, since he doesn't come across asa crypto expert ;) Below is from the Project Vote Smart pages... Senator J. Robert 'Bob' Kerrey Performance Evaluations by Special Interest Groups How to Interpret These Evaluations These evaluations are in percentage form. They represent the percentage of time that the incumbent voted with that organization's preferred positions on a number of votes that they identified as key in their issue area. Remember, by definition, these r atings by special interest groups are biased. They do not represent a non-partisan stance. In addition, some groups select votes that tend to favor members of one political party over another, rather than selecting votes based solely on issue concerns. However, they can be invaluable in showing where an incumbent has stood on a series of votes over a year's time, especially when ratings by groups on all sides of an issue are compared. Descriptions of the organizations offering p erformance evaluations are available. Project Vote Smart collects performance evaluations from ALL special interest groups who provide them. If there is a group you that feel is missing from our database, either they do not compile performance evaluations, they would not allow Project Vote Smart to distribute them, or we are unaware of the fact that the group does ratings. Please let us know if you think we are missing a group's ratings and we will contact the group immediately. A final note: The clearest way to read these percentages is, "In [year], the X YZ organization gave Senator/Representative X an 80% rating. That means that on votes they identified as key in their issue area during that time period, he/she voted with the group's preferred position 80% of the time." The exception to this is the evaluation done by the National Taxpayers Union, which represents how often a representative or senator voted to decrease, or not increase, spending. Performance Evaluations by Special Interest Groups Issue Area Year Percentage Evaluating Organization ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Abortion/FamPln 1991 20 Justlife Education Fund (Abortion) Abortion/FamPln 1993-1996 100 Planned Parenthood Abortion/FamPln 1996 0 National Right to Life Committee Abortion/FamPln 1996 100 National Abortion Reproductive Rights Action Business 1995-1996 41 National Federation of Independent Business Business 1996 10 Business-Industry Political Action Committee Business 1996 23 U.S. Chamber of Commerce Children 1995 89 Children's Defense Fund Chr.Fam. Issues 1991-1992 9 Christian Voice Chr.Fam. Issues 1995-1996 8 Christian Coalition Civil Rts/Lib 1991-1992 55 National Gay & Lesbian Task Force Civil Rts/Lib 1993-1994 80 Human Rights Campaign Fund Civil Rts/Lib 1995-1996 67 National Association for the Advancement of C Civil Rts/Lib 1995-1996 90 Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Civil Rts/Lib 1996 47 American Civil Liberties Union Conservative 1995-1996 21 Conservative Index Conservative 1996 5 American Conservative Union Consumers 1996 79 Consumer Federation of America Contractors 1995 17 Associated Builders & Contractors Crime 1995-1996 60 Citizens United for Rehabilition of Errants Defense/Foreign 1991 60 JustLife Education Fund (Arms Reduction) Defense/Foreign 1991 62 Professional's Coalition for Nuclear Arms Con Defense/Foreign 1993-1994 30 American Security Council Defense/Foreign 1995 60 Campaign for U.N. Reform Defense/Foreign 1995 92 Peace Action Defense/Foreign 1996 82 Council for a Livable World Economic Policy 1991 80 JustLife Education Fund (Economic Policy) Economic Policy 1994 20 Competitive Enterprise Institute (Totals) Economic Policy 1995 20 The Libertarian Party - Economic Freedom Economic Policy 1996 23 The Republican Liberty Caucus Education 1993-1994 73 American Federation of Teachers Education 1995 83 National Education Association Education 1995-1996 91 U.S. Student Association Env./consumer 1995-1996 67 U.S. Public Interest Research Group Environment 1994 11 Competitive Enterprise Institute (Environment Environment 1995-1996 74 League of Conservation Voters Environment 1995-1996 100 Fund For Animals Farm 1991-1992 50 National Farmers Organization Farm 1993 56 National Farmers Union Farm 1993-1994 67 American Farm Bureau Federation Farm 1994 100 Competitive Enterprise Institute (Agriculture Gun Issues 1993-1994 0 National Rifle Association Gun Issues 1993-1994 100 Handgun Control, Inc Health 1995-1996 89 AIDS Action Council Health 1996 93 American Public Health Association Immigration 1996 30 American Immigration Control Immigration 1996 50 Federation for American Immigration Reform-Se Labor 1989 100 Machinists Non-Partisan Political League Labor 1989-1990 100 National Federation of Federal Employees Labor 1991 67 American Postal Workers Union Labor 1994 90 United Food & Commercial Workers Labor 1995 30 Transportation Communications Union Labor 1995 62 Communications Workers of America Labor 1995 62 The Teamsters Labor 1995 75 AFL-CIO Labor 1995 85 United Auto Workers Labor 1996 75 American Federation of Government Employees Labor 1996 100 American Federation of State, County & Munici Liberal 1995-1996 81 Public Citizen's Congress Watch Liberal 1995-1996 85 National Committee for an Effective Congress Liberal 1996 85 Americans for Democratic Action Libertarian 1995 35 The Libertarian Party - Combined Score Populist 1995 30 Liberty Lobby Poverty 1996 100 Bread for the World Property 1995-1996 20 League of Private Property Voters Regulation 1994 29 Competitive Enterprise Institute (Deregulatio Seniors 1995 80 National Council of Senior Citizens Seniors 1995-1996 30 The 60 Plus Association Seniors 1995-1996 80 National Association of Retired Federal Emplo Seniors 1995-1996 86 National Committee to Preserve Social Securit Social Policy 1991 40 National Association of Social Workers Social Policy 1995 50 The Libertarian Party - Personal Freedom Social Policy 1995 87 Network Social Policy 1995-1996 77 Friends Comm. on Nat'l Leg. (Senate) Social Policy 1996 44 The Republican Liberty Caucus Social Policy 1996 100 Zero Population Growth Taxes/Spending 1991-1992 17 National Tax-Limitation Committee Taxes/Spending 1994 0 Competitive Enterprise Institute (Taxes) Taxes/Spending 1994 14 Competitive Enterprise Institute (Budget) Taxes/Spending 1994 15 Competitive Enterprise Institute (Spending) Taxes/Spending 1995 28 Citizens Against Government Waste Taxes/Spending 1995 35 National Taxpayers Union Taxes/Spending 1995 60 Concord Coalition Trade 1994 50 Competitive Enterprise Institute (Trade) Veterans 1989-1990 50 Vietnam Veterans of America Women 1989-1990 95 National Women's Political Caucus Women 1993 100 The Woman Activist (Senate) Women 1995-1996 25 Concerned Women for America Women 1995-1996 86 American Association of University Women Senator Kerrey | Nebraska Directory | 105th Congress Directory Project Vote Smart 129 NW 4th Street, Suite 204, Corvallis, OR 97330 Phone 541-754-2746 Fax 541-754-2747 Comments? Questions? E-mail us at comments(a)vote-smart.org Senator Bob Kerrey Sources of Campaign Funding The information in this section was provided by the Center for Responsive Politics and the National Library on Money and Politics. You can read a summary of the laws and procedures governing campaign financing which comes from their book Open Secrets. Another good reference is Supporting Federal Candidates -- A guide for citizens from the Federal Election Commission, July 1994. On-line at PoliticsUSA. FULL CYCLE DATA - 01/01/1989 - 12/31/1994 Net Receipts: ..................................... $5,006,236 Net PAC Contributions: ............................ $1,556,633 Net Individual Contributions: ..................... $3,290,334 The figures below represent Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions by industry and sector. Agriculture: ...................................... $268,605 Agricultural Services & Products........ $84,180 Crop Production & Basic Processing...... $63,425 Food Processing & Sales................. $43,000 Dairy................................... $27,000 Tobacco................................. $22,500 Livestock............................... $17,500 Poultry & Eggs.......................... $11,000 Commodity Brokers & Dealers............. $0 Forestry & Forest Products.............. $0 Miscellaneous Agriculture............... $0 Construction & Public Works: ...................... $20,850 Home Builders........................... $16,100 Construction Services................... $3,500 Building Materials & Equipment.......... $1,250 General Contractors..................... $0 Special Trade Contractors............... $0 Communication & Electronics: ...................... $113,600 Telephone Utilities..................... $65,300 Cable TV................................ $20,000 TV & Movie Production/Distribution...... $14,000 Telecom Services & Equipment............ $6,300 Printing & Publishing................... $4,000 Recorded Music Production............... $2,000 Computer Equipment & Services........... $2,000 Electronics Mfg & Services.............. $0 Misc. Communications & Electronics...... $0 Defense: .......................................... $87,720 Defense Aerospace....................... $49,500 Defense Electronics..................... $28,720 Miscellaneous Defense................... $9,500 Energy & Natural Resources: ....................... $62,005 Electric Utilities...................... $25,755 Oil & Gas............................... $23,250 Waste Management........................ $8,500 Miscellaneous Energy.................... $3,500 Mining.................................. $1,000 Environmental Services & Equipment...... $0 Nuclear Energy.......................... $0 Fisheries & Wildlife.................... $0 Commercial Fishing...................... $0 Hunting................................. $0 Finance, Insurance & Real Estate: ................. $250,060 Insurance............................... $87,050 Securities & Investment................. $65,925 Commerical Banks........................ $57,475 Accountants............................. $20,150 Real Estate............................. $8,710 Miscellaneous Finance................... $7,000 Savings & Loans......................... $2,750 Credit Unions........................... $1,000 Finance & Credit Companies.............. $0 Miscellaneous Business: ........................... $62,905 Retail Sales............................ $20,931 Beer, Wine & Liquor..................... $12,474 Food & Beverage......................... $8,500 Business Services....................... $8,000 Casinos & Gambling...................... $3,500 Miscellaneous Services.................. $2,000 Miscellaneous Business.................. $2,000 Textiles................................ $2,000 Chemical & Related Manufacturing........ $1,000 Misc Manufacturing & Distributing....... $1,000 Lodging & Tourism....................... $1,000 Business Associates..................... $500 Recreation & Live Entertainment......... $0 Steel Production........................ $0 Health: ........................................... $171,049 Health Professionals.................... $79,500 Hospitals & Nursing Homes............... $52,000 Pharmaceuticals & Health Products....... $33,799 Health Services......................... $5,750 Miscellaneous Health.................... $0 Lawyers & Lobbyists: .............................. $63,476 Lawyers & Lobbyists..................... $63,476 Transportation: ................................... $76,850 Air Transport........................... $33,500 Railroads............................... $26,850 Automotive.............................. $7,000 Sea Transport........................... $6,500 Trucking................................ $3,000 Miscellaneous Transport................. $0 Labor Union: ...................................... $250,050 Building Trades & Industrial Unions..... $111,500 Transportation Unions................... $68,000 Public Sector Unions.................... $52,050 Miscellaneous Unions.................... $18,500 Ideological/Single-Issue: ......................... $120,963 Pro-Israel.............................. $73,000 Democrat/Liberal........................ $15,500 Human Rights............................ $10,500 Abortion Policy......................... $10,000 Leadership PACs......................... $4,653 Miscellaneous Issues.................... $3,500 Foreign & Defense Policy................ $2,810 Gun Rights/Gun Control.................. $1,000 Republican/Conservative................. $0 Womens Issues........................... $0 Other: ............................................ $2,000 Other................................... $1,000 Education............................... $1,000 Civil Servants & Public Officials....... $0 Non-Profit Institutions................. $0 Retired................................. $0 Unknown: .......................................... $0 Unknown................................. $0 Homemakers/Non-income earners........... $0 No Employer Listed or Found............. $0 Generic Occupation/Category Unknown..... $0 Employer Listed/Category Unknown........ $0 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- PARTIAL CYCLE DATA - 01/01/1995 - 06/30/1995 Net Receipts: ..................................... $116,890 Net PAC Contributions: ............................ $43,500 Net Individual Contributions: ..................... $21,175 Net Candidate Contributions: ...................... $0 Net Other Contributions: .......................... $52,215 Net Spent: ........................................ $125,359 Ending Cash: ...................................... $7,834 Debts Owed: ....................................... $0 This information is brought to you by Project Vote Smart Senator Bob Kerrey | Nebraska Directory | 104th Congress Directory | Vote Smart Web

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Crypto foes have day in court
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,11674,00.html Crypto foes have day in court By Alex Lash June 18, 1997, 5:45 p.m. PT SAN FRANCISCO--Both sides of a landmark court battle over the use of encryption made their final arguments here today before a federal judge, who now will decide if the government's restrictions on encryption exports go too far. The case focuses on Daniel Bernstein, a University of Illinois math professor who sued the government two years ago as a graduate student when he was not allowed to publish his Snuffle encryption program on the Internet without an export license. But the case extends to the all Internet users, who are coming to rely more on privacy and security for electronic correspondence and transactions. Strong encryption is considered necessary to provide that security. On the other hand, law enforcement officials are worried that the unchecked spread of strong encryption will make communications by criminals impossible to track and decode. U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Patel has already proven sympathetic to Bernstein's case. In April 1996, she ruled that software code is free speech and therefore protected under the First Amendment. From that, she said in December that the government's regulations created unconstitutional "prior restraint" of free expression, meaning the creation of an atmosphere that made the free exchange of protected ideas difficult, if not impossible. Patel can now take as much time as she wants to hand down her decision. She must decide if the government regulations violate constitutional or statutory standards. The judge must also decide what type of relief to grant Bernstein and if that relief--in the form of unimpeded export of encryption software--should extend to everyone. Since her December ruling, the federal export rules have been switched from the auspices of the State Department to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Export Administration. Patel called the lead attorneys for Bernstein and for the government together today to determine if she should reconsider her December ruling in light of the shift. "We think [the issues] are fundamentally the same," Cindy Cohn, lead attorney for Professor Bernstein, told the judge. "All the things you found wrong before are still up in the air." Government attorney Anthony Coppolino essentially agreed, although he claimed the new rules, which were mandated by a presidential executive order, cleared up some of the confusion caused by the State Department rules. "The president's order of transfer made clearer that we want to control the encryption function, not the ideas," he said. Despite Judge Patel's differing perspective, Coppolino maintained that the government's rules, which require publishers of strong encryption software to apply for a government license, were aimed at controlling the unimpeded spread of "easy-to-access, easy-to-use" encryption but not the spread of intellectual expression. Coppolino nonetheless seemed resigned to yet another "adversarial" decision, as he called Patel's previous rulings, and argued that if the judge rules in favor of Bernstein--which seems likely given her remarks today--her interpretation should be as narrow as possible. Coppolino said that a national injunction on the regulations would be overkill. "You can clearly fashion relief [for Bernstein] without throwing it open on a nationwide basis," Coppolino contended. Cohn, who has argued the case pro bono with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, countered that Bernstein's job requires not just his own free expression but free communication in general. "We think that everyone else should be protected," she argued to Patel. "There's no way that Bernstein can speak freely if no one else can speak back." The encryption battle is also being fought in Congress, where several bills aim to strike down the same federal export rules that Bernstein is challenging, while one bill, sponsored by Senators John McCain (R-Arizona) and Bob Kerrey (D-Nebraska), seeks to impose domestic controls for the first time. Introduced yesterday in the Senate, McCain-Kerrey seeks to mandate the use of key recovery--a system that allows law enforcement officials to intercept and decode encrypted electronic communications--for all government products and government-funded networks. It also aims to tie the domestic use of digital certificates--a type of electronic ID card that verifies the legitimacy of an electronic transmission--to key recovery. Under the plan, users will not be able to obtain a digital certificate from a government-licensed "certificate authority" unless they make their private encryption keys available to law enforcement when necessary.

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Party on IRC
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Much happened this week. If you feel like a conversation, join me on #cypherpunks on EFnet. --Lucky, who was going to go to a party, but who's clutch gave up. --Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred. DES is dead! Please join in breaking RC5-56. http://rc5.distributed.net/

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New crypto bill clears committee
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,11693,00.html The fix is in... New crypto bill clears committee By Alex Lash June 19, 1997, 11 a.m. PT just in Just two days after it was introduced, a bill that seeks to impose restrictions on the domestic use of encryption sailed without hearings through the Senate Commerce Committee. The bill, sponsored by Commerce Committee chairman John McCain (R-Arizona) and Bob Kerrey (D-Nebraska), originally was a proposal floated by the White House as an alternative to other bills that aim to lift most restrictions on the use and export of encryption software. The Commerce Committee passed the bill on a voice vote. Unless it is diverted to another committee, the bill will be scheduled for a full Senate vote. Privacy advocates viewed the success of the McCain-Kerrey bill, known formally as the Secure Public Networks Act of 1997, with great concern. "This is majorly bad news," David Sobel, legal counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said today. "It basically mandates use of key recovery encryption in any federally supported network, including universities. It also muddies the waters for the prospects of liberalizing encryption policy, and it's directly at odds with the SAFE bill that is moving through the House." Both the SAFE bill in the House and the Pro-Code bill in the Senate seek to ban federally mandated key recovery. Pro-Code had early success after its reintroduction this year but has stalled in the same committee that just passed the McCain-Kerrey bill. Like the White House proposal, the McCain-Kerrey bill seeks to impose for the first time mandatory key recovery within the United States on top of the White House's crypto export regulations. Despite implementing tight domestic controls on encryption, the bill leaves open a window for looser export controls. It gives the Commerce Department secretary leeway to approve the export of strong encryption software without key recovery if similar products already or soon will be available. The bill slams the door, however, on the possibility of challenging a crypto export denial: "The secretary's decision on the grounds for the grant or denial of licenses shall not be subject to judicial review." The struggle over encryption policy has centered on law enforcement access to private information transmitted electronically or stored on computers. The government argues that criminals will use unregulated strong encryption to keep their plans secret. The use of key recovery requires users of encryption software, such as secure email programs, to store their keys in a place where the government can quickly access them without the users' knowledge. The McCain-Kerrey bill would make key recovery mandatory for all products purchased by the government and for any product used on a network that is even partially funded by the federal government. The bill also states that law enforcement would require only a subpoena to access private keys, whereas current federal regulations require a court order. The new bill would also link digital certificates to key recovery and grant government the authority to license digital certificates. These certificates, which establish and verify the identity of the sender of an encrypted communication, are considered a critical element of electronic commerce. However, if McCain-Kerrey becomes law, users won't be able to obtain a government-approved certificate without storing their keys with a third party. Current regulations administered by the Commerce Department allow software makers to export encryption up to 56 bits in strength without a license or key recovery mechanisms. That limit seems less secure, however, after yesterday's announcement that thousands of people linked their computers over the Internet to crack a 56-bit DES code from RSA Data Security. In a report released last year, a group of leading cryptographers recommended a minimum key length of 90 bits to ensure secure communications. Senior writer Janet Kornblum and reporter Courtney Macavinta contributed to this report.

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