December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

No Subject
by bureau42 Anonymous Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

NSA, Crypto AG, and the Iraq-Iran Conflict by J. Orlin Grabbe One of the dirty little secrets of the 1980s is that the U.S. regularly provided Iraq's Saddam Hussein with top-secret communication intercepts by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Consider the evidence. When in 1991 the government of Kuwait paid the public relations firm of Hill & Knowlton ten million dollars to drum up American war fever against the evil dictator Hussein, it brought about the end of a long legacy of cooperation between the U.S. and Iraq. Hill & Knowlton resurrected the World War I propaganda story about German soldiers roasting Belgian babies on bayonets, updated in the form of a confidential witness (actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S.) who told Congress a tearful story of Iraqi soldiers taking Kuwaiti babies out of incubators and leaving them on the cold floor to die. President George Bush then repeated this fabricated tale in speeches ten times over the next three days. What is remarkable about this staged turn of events is that, until then, Hussein had operated largely with U.S. approval. This cooperation had spanned three successive administrations, starting with Jimmy Carter. As noted by John R. MacArthur, "From 1980 to 1988, Hussein had shouldered the burden of killing about 150,000 Iranians, in addition to at least thirteen thousand of his own citizens, including several thousand unarmed Kurdish civilians, and in the process won the admiration and support of elements of three successive U.S. Administrations" [1]. Hussein's artful slaughter of Iranians was aided by good military intelligence. The role of NSA in the conflict is an open secret in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Only in this country has there been a relative news blackout, despite the fact that it was the U.S. administration that let the crypto cat out of the bag. First, U.S. President Ronald Reagan informed the world on national television that the United States was reading Libyan communications. This admission was part of a speech justifying the retaliatory bombing of Libya for its alleged involvement in the La Belle discotheque bombing in Berlin's Schoeneberg district, where two U.S. soldiers and a Turkish woman were killed, and 200 others injured. Reagan wasn't talking about American monitoring of Libyan news broadcasts. Rather, his "direct, precise, and undeniable proof" referred to secret (encrypted) diplomatic communication between Tripoli and the Libyan embassy in East Berlin. Next, this leak was compound by the U.S. demonstration that it was also reading secret Iranian communications. As reported in Switzerland's Neue Z^Árcher Zeitung, the U.S. provided the contents of encrypted Iranian messages to France to assist in the conviction of Ali Vakili Rad and Massoud Hendi for the stabbing death in the Paris suburb of Suresnes of the former Iranian prime minister Shahpour Bakhtiar and his personal secretary Katibeh Fallouch. [2] What these two countries had in common was they had both purchased cryptographic communication equipment from the Swiss firm Crypto AG. Crypto AG was founded in 1952 by the (Russian-born) Swedish cryptographer Boris Hagelin who located his company in Zug. Boris had created the "Hagelin-machine", a encryption device similar to the German "Enigma". The Hagelin machine was used on the side of the Allies in World War II. Crypto AG was an old and venerable firm, and Switzerland was a neutral country. So Crypto AG's enciphering devices for voice communication and digital data networks were popular, and customers came from 130 countries. These included the Vatican, as well the governments of Iraq, Iran, and Libya. Such countries were naturally skeptical of cryptographic devices sold in many NATO countries, so turned to relatively neutral Switzerland for communication security. Iran demonstrated its suspicion about the source of the leaks, when it arrested Hans Buehler, a top salesman for Crypto AG, in Teheran on March 18, 1992. During his nine and a half months of solitary confinement in Evin prison in Teheran, Buehler was questioned again and again whether he had leaked Teheran's codes or Libya's keys to Western powers. Luckily Buehler didn't know anything. He in fact believed in his own sales pitch that Crypto AG was a neutral company and its equipment was the best. They were Swiss, after all. [3] Crypto AG eventually paid one million dollars for Buehler's release in January 1993, then promptly fired him once they had reassured themselves that he hadn't revealed anything important under interrogation, and because Buehler had begun to ask some embarrassing questions. Then reports appeared on Swiss television, Swiss Radio International, all the major Swiss papers, and in German magazines like Der Spiegel. Had Crypto AG's equipment been spiked by Western intelligence services? the media wanted to know. The answer was Yes [4]. Swiss television traced the ownership of Crypto AG to a company in Liechtenstein, and from there back to a trust company in Munich. A witness appearing on Swiss television explained the real owner was the German government--the Federal Estates Administration. [5] According to Der Spiegel, all but 6 of the 6000 shares of Crypto AG were at one time owned by Eugen Freiberger, who resided in Munich and was head of the Crypto AG managing board in 1982. Another German, Josef Bauer, an authorized tax agent of the Muenchner Treuhandgesellschaft KPMG, and who was elected to the managing board in 1970, stated that his mandate had come from the German company Siemens. Other members of Crypto AG's management had also worked at Siemens. Was the German secret service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), hiding behind the Siemens' connection? So it would seem. Der Spiegel reported that in October 1970, a secret meeting of the BND had discussed how the Swiss company Graettner could be guided into closer cooperation with Crypto AG, or could even merged with it. The BND additionally considered how "the Swedish company Ericsson could be influenced through Siemens to terminate its own cryptographic business." [6] A former employee of Crypto AG reported that he had to coordinate his developments with "people from Bad Godesberg". This was the location of the "central office for encryption affairs" of the BND, and the service instructed Crypto AG what algorithms to use to create the codes. The employee also remembers an American "watcher", who strongly demanded the use of certain encryption methods. Representatives from NSA visited Crypto AG often. A memorandum of a secret workshop at Crypto AG in August 1975, where a new prototype of an encryption device was demonstrated, mentions the participation of Nora L. Mackebee, an NSA cryptographer. Motorola engineer Bob Newman says that Mackebee was introduced to him as a "consultant". Motorola cooperated with Crypto AG in the seventies in developing a new generation of electronic encryption machines. The Americans "knew Zug very well and gave travel tips to the Motorola people for the visit at Crypto AG," Newman told Der Spiegel. Knowledgeable sources indicate that the Crypto AG enciphering process, developed in cooperation with the NSA and the German company Siemans, involved secretly embedding the decryption key in the cipher text. Those who knew where to look could monitor the encrypted communication, then extract the decryption key that was also part of the transmission, and recover the plain text message. Decryption of a message by a knowledgeable third party was not any more difficult that it was for the intended receiver. (More than one method was used. Sometimes the algorithm was simply deficient, with built-in exploitable weaknesses.) Crypto AG denies all this, of course, saying such reports are ""pure invention". What information was provided to Saddam Hussein exactly? Answers to this question are currently being sought in a lawsuit against NSA in New Mexico, which has asked to see "all Iranian messages and translations between January 1, 1980 and June 10, 1996". [7] The passage of top-secret communications intelligence to someone like Saddam Hussein brings up other questions. Which dictator is the U.S. passing top secret messages to currently? Jiang Zemin? Boris Yeltsin? Will Saddam Hussein again become a recipient of NSA largess if he returns to the mass slaughter of Iranians? What exactly is the purpose of NSA anyway? One more question: Who is reading the Pope's communications? Bibliography [1] John R. MacArthur, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, Hill and Wang, New York, 1992. [2] Some of the background of this assassination can be found in "The Tehran Connection," Time Magazine, March 21, 1994. [3] The Buehler case is detailed in Res Strehle, Verschleusselt: der Fall Hans Beuhler, Werd Verlag, Zurich, 1994. [4] "For years, NSA secretly rigged Crypto AG machines so that U.S. eavesdroppers could easily break their codes, according to former company employees whose story is supported by company documents," "No Such Agency, Part 4: Rigging the Game," The Baltimore Sun, December 4, 1995. [5] Reported in programs about the Buehler case that were broadcast on Swiss Radio International on May 15, 1994 and July 18, 1994. [6] "Wer ist der befugte Vierte?": Geheimdienste unterwandern den Schutz von Verschlusselungsgeraten," Der Spiegel 36, 1996. [7] U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, William H. Payne, Arthur R. Morales, Plaintiffs, v. Lieutenant General Kenneth A. Minihan, USAF, Director of National Security Agency, National Security Agency, Defendant, CIV NO 97 0266 SC/DJS.

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Re: SynCrypt: the new PGP?
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > It is like pgp but has lots of cool features. File wiping, group > > encryption, automatic encryption of files put in certain directories. > > Am I supposed to be impressed? They only support the proprietary > products of a company supporting draconian gun controls. You mean Microsoft. It's foolish to reject encryption software because it runs on the OS used by 90% of its customers. > >Is this the new pgp? No gak or even cak in sight. > > No source no security. You don't trust Schneier? You've seen the limitations of source code release. Experts like Schneier and his team designing the crypto is worth more than a bunch of know nothings scratching their heads and wondering where to begin with 1000+ pages of source code.

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Larry Lessig: a new CDA better than censorware?
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

*********** Date: Mon, 3 Nov 1997 11:11:56 -0500 From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic(a)WELL.COM> Subject: Law Professor calls for new CDA To: NETLY-L(a)pathfinder.com (I have been saying for some time that Professor Lessig, despite how he characterizes himself, is no friend of freedom of speech. But here's where the other shoe has dropped.) From the online edition of the New York Times: October 30, 1997 By CARL S. KAPLAN Is a Better CDA Preferable To Opaque Censorship? he Communications Decency Act is dead, and most free speech advocates say, "good riddance." If there must be a solution to the problem of kids and cyber-pornography, let a thousand software-blocking packages bloom in homes, libraries and schools. Professor Lawrence Lessig of Harvard Law School is having none of this, however. In a recent controversial draft essay on the regulation of cyberspace, Lessig, a respected cyberlaw scholar, argues that if government must embrace a solution to indecent speech, a revamped CDA-like plan would be far more protective of traditional free speech values than the dangerous filtering products that many civil libertarians seem to love, or at least to prefer. "My sense is that this first major victory [in Reno v. ACLU] has set us in a direction that we will later regret," Lessig writes, referring to the Supreme Court opinion striking down the CDA on First Amendment grounds. "It has pushed the problem of kids and porn towards a solution that will (from the perspective of the interest in free speech) be much worse. The (filtering products) touted by free speech activists in Reno are, in my view, far more restrictive of free speech interests than a properly crafted CDA." Lessig is not the first free speech advocate to damn filtering software. But he goes further than most in his nostalgia for a revised CDA. He also knows that his conclusions may invite some fury. "Promoting a CDA-like solution to the problemb of indecency is very much to step out of line," he writes. "I am not advocating a CDA-like solution because I believe there is any real problem. In my view, it would be best just to let things alone. But if Congress is not likely to let things alone, or at least if the President is more likely to bully a private solution then we need to think through the consequences of these different solutions. . . . We may well prefer that nothing be done. But if something is to be done, then whether through public or private regulation, we need to think about its consequences for free speech." Lessig's article, titled "What Things Regulate Speech," is a trove of ideas and legal scholarship on the permissible scope of government regulation of indecency, the evils of filtering and the nature of law in cyberspace, where restrictions on speech, for example, are apt to be enacted not by federal or state statues, but by minimally debated software codes. Happily, the article is written in plain English, not law school professor-ese. Many of the author's ideas have been expressed in earlier articles, law review essays and speeches. Boiled down and simplified, the main points of Lessig's CDA argument run like this: First, he argues that government has the power to place or "zone" hard-core pornography out of the reach of kids, so long as the means chosen is the least restrictive form of discrimination that existing technology permits. For example, Lessig notes that a California law making it a crime to sell porn in unattended vending machines, unless the machines are equipped with an adult identification system, was upheld by a Federal Appeals court. The Supreme Court earlier this year declined to review the case and thereby left the California law standing. In a historical footnote, the denial was issued in the same week the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the CDA case w another matter involving the distribution of porn to kids. Next, Lessig points out that the success in the CDA case came in persuading the Court that other, less restrictive means for protecting children from porn were still available. The evils associated with the less restrictive means [ traditional blocking software ] are legion, however. For one thing, blocking software is crude because it tends to filter out too much [ sites opened to discuss AIDS or gay rights, for example ] because of mistaken associations with indecency. Also, blocking software is opaque, because the lists of banned sites are not published. Finally, the filtering companies, prompted by the demands of the market, tend to offer generalized censorship [ restrictions on access to a variety of potentially objectionable sites, from those dealing with violence to gambling ] not just censorship of so-called indecent sites. The upshot is that to the extent that government embraces filtering software, or mandates its use in libraries or schools, for example, such state action may be unconstitutional, because the government is exceeding its narrow justification in separating kids from hard-core pornography. As bad as private blocking is, PICS is worse, Lessig argues. PICS, an acronym for "Platform for Internet Content Selection," is a proposed labeling standard that makes it possible to rate and block material on the Net. "It was motivated as an alternative to the CDA," Lessig, 36, said in a recent telephone interview. "The MIT geniuses who thought it up realized it had broader potential that just blocking indecent speech." Like blocking software, PICS will probably be used as a general filtering tool w far exceeding the narrow interests of government, Lessig says. Another problem is the invisible nature of PICS: "If I use PICS on a search engine, and PICS returns two hits, and blocks 8 hits, it doesn't report back to me that 8 sites have fallen off the Earth," Lessig says. Most ominously, he argues, PICS can be imposed by anybody in the distribution chain. Thus a filter can be placed on an person's computer, or at the level of a company, an ISP or even a nation without the end user ever knowing it, Lessig says, making it easier for centralized censors to place filters on the Net. Taken together, filtering software and PICS lead to a hard-wired architecture of blocking that is antagonistic to the original free-wheeling and speech-enhancing values of the Internet, Lessig argues. By contrast, the scheme proposed by the old CDA wasn't that bad, he suggests. Of course, the original CDA was flawed because it went after a category of speech that was too vague to pass constitutional muster, Lessig says - a problem that CDA II could fix by taking sharper aim at hard-core pornography. More important, the scheme envisioned by the old law was somewhat protective of free speech values. Under the CDA, the "means" offered to separate kids from pornography was to put porn behind a wall that screened out kids with reasonable effectiveness. The technique was not filtering. It was to set up identity checks on the doors through which people wanted to pass. This type of system has two things going for it, says Lessig. First, its restrictions extend only as far as the legitimate governmental interest w screening kids from porn. Second, it is unlikely to morph into a more comprehensive system for general censorship. Lessig adds that this type of identification system - contrary to the court's factual findings - is workable. Reaction to Lessig's ideas from the free-speech cohort is understandably mixed. James Boyle, a law professor at American University, for example, agrees with Lessig's point that people should be very suspicious of technological solutions to indecent speech on the Internet, like blocking software and PICS. "There's a kind of belief that technological solutions are pure and neutral. They have an allure - like Jetson's Jurisprudence," he says. "But I agree with Larry; people need to understand that technology isn't necessarily benign." Even so, Boyle is disinclined to reconsider the merits of the CDA adult identification scheme. "I do diverge there," he says, adding that it is impractical to be totally against filtering systems. "The question is how to design filtering systems so they have the maximum vibrancy." Jonathan Wallace, a New York lawyer and writer on cyberspace issues, also shares Lessig's skepticism on blocking software and PICS. But he thinks a dusting off of the CDA is "wrongheaded." Even assuming that an adult identification scheme were viable - which he doubts - Wallace asserts that any attempt to redefine indecent speech more narrowly would invite lawsuits from right-wing groups intent on proving that under their community standards, objectionable speech should be banned. Carl S. Kaplan at kaplanc(a)nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions. Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- We shot a law in _Reno_, just to watch it die. Mike Godwin, EFF Staff Counsel, is currently on leave from EFF, participating as a Research Fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center in New York City. He can be contacted at 212-317-6552. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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17 Dec '03

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More on Censorware Summit, from Communications Daily
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Communications Daily November 3, 1997, Monday ONLINE SUMMIT ON KIDS' ISSUES SET FOR DEC. Broad-based effort by industry, consumer and advocacy groups to come up with means to protect children who use Internet and online services will begin to announce its solutions at summit meeting Dec. 1-3 in Washington. Summit, which could involve as many as 300 participants, is result of meeting at White House in July following Supreme Court decision to strike down key parts of Communications Decency Act (CDA). At meeting, industry promised to find ways to protect children. While original focus was on protecting children from pornography, plan is being drawn up to include examination of other issues with children online such as privacy and marketing. Longer term project could take another 6 months or as long as year, said Christine Varney, ex-FTC member now in private practice who is chmn. of summit. She was heavily involved with online issues during her tenure at FTC. Varney said there will be other events next year, tentatively set for Feb., April, May and June, although structure for those hasn't been set. Idea was to concentrate first on children's safety issues for Dec. meeting, she said in interview. Dec. conference in Washington will announce tools and recommendations that industry and interest groups have come up with in safety area, Varney said, and there will be "concrete action at each stage" of process on issues to be considered. Those recommendations aren't yet final, but could include some types of rating system. Varney rejected notion that there are First Amendment concerns involved, saying project "is not at all about censorship." Biggest danger, she said, is that there could be single rating system -- it's not censorship if there are many rating systems. Daniel Weitzner, deputy dir. of Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), one of groups that challenged CDA, agreed, saying that key difference is between govt.'s taking role of censor and parents' deciding what can be seen by children. He, too, said he was worried about proposals for "some kind of mandatory labeling, which would be clearly unconstitutional." Because of technical limitations, TV can accommodate only one system, Weitzner said, but computers are much more flexible. He added: "I know of no interpretation of the First Amendment which says individuals, private citizens, can't control what they read." There is some disagreement, however. David Banisar of Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) called meeting "censorware summit." He said it's "attempting to undo what the Supreme Court did when it struck down the CDA," and "this is something that should be avoided because it's worse than the disease." Banisar agreed no First Amendment restraint is involved, but more basic principles of free speech can be violated by filtering tools and software that could be used on national level. That possibility, he said, is "equally as dangerous as the CDA." Banisar said he's working with "a coalition of free speech groups on alternatives" to summit. He said private industry and group effort is more dangerous than legislation because "at least with legislation there are certain rights under the First Amendment that can be applied." One of Varney's challenges in heading project is to bring together groups who spent years fighting each other over CDA and to determine whether there could be some areas of agreement. So far, she said, process has been working very well. In addition to goal of coming up with recommendations on substance of issues is goal of "creating partnerships where they didn't exist before," process that she said was particularly important because it's taking place as new medium develops. She acknowledged that there must be concerted effort to maintain focus on children in deliberations while persuading former opponents to "check their differences at the door" on CDA and other issues. Donna Hughes, communications dir. for Enough Is Enough, anti-child porn group, said she was pleased that summit has adopted much of her group's agenda. She said she was "pleased to be at the table, to work very closely with many people who we had debated for 3 years." One benefit of summit, she said, is to "get to know each other. That's always constructive." Hughes said she doesn't view online summit process as refighting of CDA issues, saying result of CDA debate was to focus public attention on dangers to children. Varney agreed, saying that "great beauty" of process is that "folks so divided on the CDA" are agreed on children's' issues. But Banisar takes different view. He said his group was part of anti-CDA coalition that had view different from CDT. Now, he said, CDT is taking "a very industry viewpoint on this." Commitment of America Online (AOL), another CDA defendant and major sponsor of online summit, to free speech "has been premised that it doesn't want to be held liable for what its people said. It doesn't mind when it's censoring."

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Re: PGPsdk is out, but not for free (fwd)
by Brian B. Riley 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 11/1/97 5:02 PM, Jim Choate (ravage(a)ssz.com) passed this wisdom: >Hmmm, will have to rethink suggesting any PGP based products to my customers >now. I simply refuse to pay anybody any percentage of my product revenues >simply because I use their tool. I buy a SDK for a flat fee like I buy a >book, screwdriver, or a car. I can't imagine Black & Decker wanting a >percentage of the house sale simply because the carpenter used their hammers >and saws. Ford or Chevy wanting to see my income statement each year so they >can figure out how much I owe them because I drive their brand of vehicle to >my customers sites...yeah right. Have you ever priced earth moving equipment ... the price on them is easily 150-300% of what it should be, say comparing it to 'consumer' items, like cars and small pickups and extrapolating up for the backhoe or whatever ... everyone I talk to in the contracting business says the same thing, "... its an item you are going to use to make money and they are taking a cut of your profits up front" Brian B. Riley --> http://www.macconnect.com/~brianbr For PGP Keys <mailto:brianbr@together.net?subject=Get%20PGP%20Key> "The Box said Win '95 or better - So I used a Macintosh!" -- Harold Herbert Tessman

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Re: Why porn must be stopped at all costs, by Jodi Hoffman
by semprini＠theschool.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Someone on this list, I forget who, has made numerous attempts at > convincing us that pornography 'does no harm' to children. It is > exactly at this point that I must draw a line. Studies have shown that > an event which lasts even so much as three-tenths of a second, within > five to ten minutes has produced a structural change in the brain. > Exposure to porn causes actual brain damage, especially in a child. Wrong. Exposure to pornography does not cause "brain damage" or "structural changes in the brain." That's like saying that holding up dirty pictures in front of an office building is going to cause "structural changes" in the building. Sure, a percentage of the little people inside looking out the windows are going to have a twisted little grin on their face, but holding up the pictures isn't going to compromise the integrity of the building structure. I'd like to know where you get your information, because it's false.

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Re: Copyright commerce and the street musician protocol
by Landon Dyer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Someone recently told me that game manufacturers have stopped worrying > about piracy. Why? Because most new games come on CD-ROM, and > copying a CD-ROM is an expensive, time-consuming operation. Bulk > duplication of CD's is substantially cheaper than one-off duplication, > and since games are cheap, people will usually buy them rather than > copy them. you can duplicate a CD for about $2, in half an hour i've already encountered some copy-protected software (the CD duplicates don't work). my guess is we'll see a lot more of this > I'm unconvinced that there really is an Internet copyright problem check out the "warez" newsgroups... peace, -landon

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Re: SynCrypt: the new PGP?
by Jim Russell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>Anybody heard of syncrypt? I have. Of course, being one of its authors, that's to be expected. >>File wiping, group encryption, automatic encryption of files put in certain directories... hiding encrypted files in pictures! True, true, true and true. I might add that the Secure Delete file wiping passes Kent Briggs' "Directory Snoop" check on Windows 95. >>It pulls them back out again too. We'd have some unhappy customers if it didn't. <g> >>Plus it has an interesting "20 questions" method for backing up your passphrase. For the algorithmically inclined among us, this was implemented via Shamir's secret-sharing scheme. There was also a great deal of discussion about what questions to ask -- "What's your favorite color?" doesn't provide as much entropy as "What was the last name of your favorite grade school teacher?", for example. >>Bruce Schneier is working with them, so they should have good crypto. Yes, having Bruce and his colleague Chris Hall consulting with us was invaluable. They beat up on us pretty good during the betas, which is exactly what we wanted. >>No gak or even cak in sight. Absolutely true. Our enterprise level product, SynCrypt Gold, is currently in development, and its data recovery features will be implemented in such a way that it could *never* become an infrastructure for GAK. Jim Russell <jrussell(a)syndata.com> Chief Software Engineer SynData Technologies, Inc. http://www.syncrypt.com

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To TruthMonger
by snow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > snow wrote: > > You must live in such a nice world, where the sky is always blue, > > the grass always green, and the police eager and willing to serve a happy > > populace. > > Can I come live in your world? > snow > take two of the green ones, three of the yellow ones, and four of the > red ones But But But all I have are little pale blue ones, and big honkin white ones.

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