December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Social Security Public Forums
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text From: john.t.sabo(a)ssa.gov Date: Thu, 17 Apr 97 18:30:41 -0500 To: members(a)lists.Commerce.Net MMDF-Warning: Parse error in original version of preceding line at lists.Commerce.Net Cc: john.t.sabo(a)s3abac8.ns1.barrnet.net MMDF-Warning: Parse error in original version of preceding line at lists.Commerce.Net Subject: Social Security Public Forums Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: members-owner(a)ssa.gov Precedence: bulk +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ This message was addressed to: members(a)lists.commerce.net +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ Fellow Commercenet Members: I wanted to make you and your companies aware of an important series of six National Forums that the Social Security Administration will be conducting throughout the country beginning May 5 through the week of June 9, in which SSA will seek public input and expert advice about the appropriate customer authentication and privacy safeguards needed to support SSA's Internet transaction services and ensure public trust. The forums are in response to the media and public concerns raised about our test of Interactive PEBES, which allowed individuals to request a Personal Earnings and Benefit Estimate Statement from SSA online and receive the response online, rather than via the mail, after providing five knowledge-based customer authenticating elements. The initial concerns were centered about the use of the five elements, but media attention soon extended to a range of intermingled Internet and security concerns. As a result, we suspended the test and announced a 60-day period of expert and public input on this important public policy issue. We invite interested CommerceNet members to consider participating in the forums and offering your expert opinion to the government. I'm including current information about the forums, and expect to have more details shortly. I'll be contacting members I know who have expressed interest in providing input, but would welcome hearing from other companies who would like to participate in informed public discussion and public education. John Sabo Social Security Administration --------------------------------------------------------------------- Social Security National Forum on Internet Services -- Backgrounder We are seeking expert opinion regarding a major public policy issue facing the Social Security Administration: the appropriate privacy, system security and other safeguards necessary for SSA to provide transaction services on the Internet with strong public confidence. You may be aware that, in response to public concerns raised about our test of the Interactive Personal Earnings and Benefit Estimate Statement (Interactive PEBES) service on the Internet, SSA suspended the test and announced that we would seek public input on the design of the system, particularly with respect to the authentication and privacy policies and system safeguards necessary to ensure public confidence in Interactive PEBES and in future Internet services planned by SSA. To do this, we have scheduled a series of public forums in Hartford (May 5), Des Moines (week of May 12), Atlanta (week of May 19), San Jose (week of May 26), Austin (week of June 2), and Washington D.C. (week of June 9). We also plan to schedule an Internet Town Meeting on our Website, www.ssa.gov. The forums will address important national issues which reach far beyond our test of the Interactive PEBES. The safeguarding of individual privacy -- as technology removes barriers to accessing confidential information -- and the public's understanding of and trust in using the Internet both for secure, confidential government services and business and financial services are the core critical issues. That is why your input is so important. We are now identifying interested individuals and organizations who wish to participate on panels at each of the six public forum locations. Although we are unable to provide compensation for your participation, we also invite comments in writing or via email if you cannot attend a forum in person. We envision three 1 1/4 -hour panels of 5 people expert in these broad areas: Privacy, Systems Security and the Business/Financial Internet community. There will also be open sessions where members of the public may register to speak. However you or your company may choose to participate, I urge you to consider offering us your thoughtful input into this important national discussion. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent by a majordomo-based automatic list manager. Subscriptions to and archives of this list are available to CommerceNet members, partners, and invited guests. For further information send a mail message to 'members-request(a)lists.commerce.net' with 'help' (no quotations) contained in the body of your message. --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA Lesley Stahl: "You mean *anyone* can set up a web site and compete with the New York Times?" Andrew Kantor: "Yes." Stahl: "Isn't that dangerous?" The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

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My Thread / Was--Re: Light Bulbs & newsgroups
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

List members, Shut the hell up already; I wrote it, and it's OK for anyone to repost it. Just attribute it to me. Anonymous

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by joe＠washerezy.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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WebWorld 36
by Bubba Rom Dos 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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COMMERCE VISIONARY ERIC HUGHES TEAMS WITH FINANCE EXEC AND TECHNOLOGY ARCHITECT TO FORM TRANSACTION TECHNOLOGY COMPANY, SIMPLE ACCESS
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Looks like Hughes and Hilby have found some fresh meat. Given sac.net is currently in collection on nearly $100k (plus or minus lawyers' and collectors' fees) to former suppliers, contractors, and employees, it seems the greater fool theory of internet commerce is alive and well. Hope the new boys are holding on to their wallets. And their nuts. ReputationMunger --------- Media contact: Melody Kean Haller, Antenna Group, 415-896-1800, melody(a)antennapr.com COMMERCE VISIONARY ERIC HUGHES TEAMS WITH FINANCE EXEC AND TECHNOLOGY ARCHITECT TO FORM TRANSACTION TECHNOLOGY COMPANY, SIMPLE ACCESS San Francisco, CA -- March 24, 1997. The limits to growth facing today's commercial transaction systems are fundamental and unavoidable. Current architectures are not able to handle the complexity and auditing requirements of tomorrow, according to cryptographer, commerce visionary, and cypherpunks founder Eric Hughes. The solution is to build airtight accountability into the system from the start, according to Hughes, who has developed an infrastructure design methodology that solves this and several other crucial electronic commerce problems. Hughes today announced that he has formed a company, Simple Access, to build the next generation of transaction systems. He also announced two key additions to the executive team. John McArtor, currently President and CEO of Delta International, Inc., a private merchant bank, will lead Simple Access as chief executive officer. Dwight Koop, formerly executive vice-president of technology for Swiss Bank, will direct project development. Eric Hughes will continue as chief technology officer. "Eric Hughes has a deep and compelling vision of the future of electronic commerce," said Jerry Michalski, managing editor of Esther Dyson's monthly report, Release 1.0. "He understands the science of the Internet and security technologies, has insight into the systemic flow of commerce, and is informed by an overview of the socio-political history of money. The methodology he is proposing aims to enable a future in which transactions are undeniably clear. Anything Eric puts his energy into is worth paying attention to." Hughes said, "Currently, 'electronic commerce' is a euphemism for 'commerce that doesn't work,' or soon won't work on a large scale. In order to prevent disasters on the horizon and build a foundation for safer and better systems, Simple Access is thinking ahead and solving problems at the infrastructure level." "We are working with leading companies that require their suppliers to have solid and experienced managers, so we brought on proven leaders," Hughes continued. "McArtor and Koop meet and exceed those criteria." "With my 25 years of commercial and investment banking experience, I've worked with a lot of bright technologists, and these are some of the best," said CEO John McArtor. "I jumped at the opportunity to join them. The development team at Simple Access has an intimate knowledge of real-world business problems. They are addressing issues at the core of domestic and international finance, issues that are very important to me." Simple Access' Director of Software Development, Dwight Koop, said, "The technologies we are developing will address serious and immediate problems of large-scale commerce. These are elegant designs which can be applied especially well in high-stakes transaction systems to assure an unprecedented level of accountability, auditability and efficiency." Simple Access is in late-stage negotiations with several strategically chosen Fortune 100 companies in different realms of commerce. The company is now developing custom solutions, building on the widely usable transaction methodology that Hughes has developed. The company's current efforts include telephony and Internet provisioning and billing, international trade documents, and digital money. Eric Hughes is a cryptographer and an expert on payment systems and commercial interaction. He has consulted to banks, software companies, and payment processing firms, and frequently speaks on the subjects of security, digital money, and payment systems. He is also renowned as the co-founder of the cypherpunks. Hughes authored "A Long Term Perspective on Electronic Commerce," which comprised the March 1995 issue of Release 1.0. John W. McArtor is president and CEO of Delta International, Inc., a private merchant bank engaged in the business of creative corporate finance and capital management. Since 1972, Delta International has been designing, structuring, syndicating, and managing financial vehicles for private sector investment. McArtor's areas of expertise include the management of capital in domestic and global futures markets, and the creation of venture capital for the telecommunications industry. Dwight Koop was formerly executive vice-president of technology for Swiss Bank, one of the world's premier trading institutions. He will serve as acting director of software development with Simple Access, which will co-develop and co-market projects with New Logic, Inc., where Koop is a principal and practice director of intra/Internet systems development. Koop has more than twenty years of solid management and consulting background in all aspects of technology, with special expertise in creating competitive advantage in the financial industry. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Simple Access is a technology firm that designs and builds infrastructure for finance, commerce, security, telephony, and the Internet. Simple Access develops solutions to facilitate and simplify interaction at the infrastructure level. The company's areas of expertise include payment systems, data security, cryptography, and transaction processing. The privately held company was founded in 1995. Simple Access is located at One Sutter Street, Suite 500, San Francisco, California 94104. To reach the company, phone 415-392-0526, fax 415-986-8113 or send email to info(a)sac.net. For media information please contact Melody Kean Haller, Antenna Group, 415-896-1800, or melody(a)antennapr.com.

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by worker＠inforevo.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Militarily Critical Technologies
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Militarily Critical Technologies List (MCTL) tersely describes the full range of technologies controlled by the ITAR, EAR and Regimes like the Wassenaar Arrangment. Information systems and cryptography are covered in Section 8 of the MCTL which we've put with the TOC at: http://jya.com/mctl08.htm It provides an informative chart that compares information systems capabilities for 27 nations, and the leaders in a few cases are surprising. The document summarizes crypto: 1. Cryptanalytic Technologies (for breaking ciphertext): Critical Parameters: Due to the numerous variables required to implement an information security scheme and the wide range of products and services in which information security can be deployed this technology does not lend itself to specifically enumerated parameters. Critical Materials: None identified. Unique Equipment: Computers of 10,000 CTP, or greater, and software specially designed to test the ability of cryptanalytic systems to perform key searches, statistical, linear and differential cryptanalyses; and factor 110 decimal digit, or larger, numbers. Unique Software: Operating systems and applications for massively parallel cryptanalytic processors (> 16 processors) specially designed to perform statistical, linear and differential cryptanalyses, exhaustive key searches and quadratic and number field sieve factoring. Control Regimes: WA ML 11, 21; WA IL Cat 5. 2. Cryptographic Technologies (for keeping data secure): Critical Parameters: Due to the numerous variables required to implement an information security scheme and the wide range of products and services in which information security can be deployed this technology does not lend itself to specifically enumerated parameters. Critical Materials: None identified. Unique Equipment: Computers of 10,000 CTP, or greater, and software specially designed to perform Randomness, Correlation, Weak Key and Symmetry Under Complementation tests to evaluate the strength of new USG encryption algorithms during development. Unique Software: The software providing the cryptographic functionality must be specially designed and integrated into each application. The system engineering and integration, user system interface, algorithms and key generators must have zero defects. Control Regimes: WA ML 11, 21; WA IL Cat 5. The document states, "A high rate of IS knowledge transfer from the US to foreign competitors occurs through open source US trade journals, technical literature, various international fora, the Internet and intelligence. As a result, the US technology leadership in communications and computer systems has declined in recent years relative to Europe and Japan." Section 9 covers Information Warfare Technology and will interest those who wonder what technologies may be more effective than cryptography for information security, as the NRC Crypto Report suggested. We've put this section (in its original PDF format) at: http://jya.com/mcsec09.pdf (122K)

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Re: SSL weakness affecting links from pa
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Steve wrote: > > If the Netscape folks would integrate digicash into Communicator, > > then I could program my browser to only send referer to sites that > > paid for the information, and rent cookie space. Want your cookie to > > live till 1999? Thats 24 months, at 50 cents per month...do you want > > to pay? > > That would only work until someone abuses it. People could create web > robots to run around selling referers and several gigabytes of > worthless cookie space. Worthless, because nobody cares about the web > browsing habits of J. Random Robot, and they certainly don't want to > blow $50 e-bucks on the bot's repeated visits. Why doesn't somebody come up with a program that gives identity probing programs the identity of browser programmers/executives, and make a cookie file that indicates visits to hate-group and hard- core porn sites? Not that Toto's a troublemaker... NoTot[h]o[mo]

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Re: My Thread / Was--Re: Light Bulbs & newsgroups
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Huge Cajones Remailer wrote: > List members, > > Shut the hell up already; I wrote it, and it's OK for anyone to repost it. > > Just attribute it to me. > > Anonymous Sounds to me like Anonymous is trying to take credit for Nobody's creation. Nobody (#2)

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David Friedman and assassination politics
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

So I just walked home from a party in Dupont Circle where some folks were telling me about a talk David Friedman gave at the Cato Institute about a week ago. (Apart from being Milt's son, David appears to be a well-respected libertarian thinker in his own right.) I didn't have the chance to go myself... Friedman, as I understand it, described how digital cash and anonymous remailers combine to form assassination markets. An assassin can establish a persistent anonymous identity through public key cryptography and take bids on future contracts. These ideas is of course not new to cypherpunks. We've been talking about them for years. But these ideas are slowly infiltrating the DC body politic. Assassination politics, here we come -- right, Jim? Want to give a speech at Cato? Perhaps we can talk some IRS officials into coming... -Declan

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