December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

bernstein case hits appeals court
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

------- Forwarded Message Date: Tue, 09 Dec 1997 12:59:41 To: believer(a)telepath.com From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: Encryption case hits U.S. appeals court Encryption case hits U.S. appeals court Copyright © 1997 Reuters SAN FRANCISCO (December 8, 1997 9:47 p.m. EST http://www.nando.net) - Lawyers for a software developer argued Monday in federal appeals court that government controls on distribution of computer encryption code constitute an unlawful prior restraint of free speech. In the closely watched case pitting national security interests against the right to free speech, a government attorney countered that the software in question was a sensitive product and that its distribution should be limited by the government. At issue is whether a code developed by Daniel Bernstein, now a professor at the University of Illinois, constitutes a form of speech and should therefore be protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Encryption software allows computer data to be scrambled in order to ensure the confidentiality of information. Current federal law prohibits the export of strong encryption software because of concerns over national security, even though powerful encryption codes are already available overseas or on the Internet from foreign manufacturers. Monday's hearing before a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was prompted after U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled in August that the Constitution prevented the government from placing export restrictions on the code. The government appealed. Scott McIntosh, an attorney representing the Department of Commerce, told the judges the code should be viewed not as a form of speech but as a product that in the wrong hands could jeopardize national security. The three justices grilled McIntosh during his allotted 20 minutes, often preventing him from finishing his sentences. "They asked probing questions and beyond that I don't want to characterize," McIntosh told reporters after the hearing. Bernstein sued several government agencies in 1995 after he was told that he would need to be licensed as an arms dealer to post his software encryption code, called Snuffle 5.0, on the Internet. Cindy Cohn, who headed Bernstein's legal team, argued that Snuffle was an expression of free speech and should be protected from the kind of scheme that the government uses to regulate code. "The basic flaw with the government's position is that they use a pre-publication licensing scheme," Cohn said. "That's exactly the point -- when the government sets up a bureaucrat to decide who gets to speak and who does not, that's a form of prior restraint." Compared with the harried questioning of McIntosh, the justices questioned Cohn fewer times, allowing her to finish her sentences more often. Cohn later told reporters she was pleased with the hearing, although she declined to comment on the outcome. A decision by the court could come at any time over the next few weeks. By GREG FROST, Reuters Copyright © 1997 Nando.net ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: subscribe ignition-point email@address or unsubscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** http://www.telepath.com/believer ********************************************** ------- End of Forwarded Message

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Re: Remailer Trivia / Re: Singapore & Freedom (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 9 Dec 1997 15:57:15 -0500 (EST) > From: Jrbl Pookah <lists(a)castle5.castlec.com> > Subject: Re: Remailer Trivia / Re: Singapore & Freedom (fwd) > > Hmm. Excuse the interruption into your conversation here, but > I've signed up (in the past) for long-distance service under an assumed > name, on a telephone line that I held in a different assumed name. At > least in Cincinnati, OH, the phone company didn't (doesn't?) really care, > as long as they had a place to send the bills. When they asked for my > SSN, I simply told them I wouldn't give it to them, and offered my > date-of-birth - which I lied about. They didn't mind. > Was the identity 'anonymous'? The other issues are irrelevant to this discussion. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | | | We built your fort. We will not have it used against us. | | | | John Wayne - Allegheny Uprising | | | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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[Censored] Quote of the Day (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 9 Dec 1997 19:46:07 GMT > From: bureau42 Anonymous Remailer <nobody(a)bureau42.ml.org> > Subject: [Censored] Quote of the Day > From: Quote of the day <qotd-request(a)ensu.ucalgary.ca> > > "Free Speech, Democracy" > > - complete text of a sign put up on a roadside fence in Vancouver by > university law student Craig Jones. Jones was arrested for doing so by > Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who were protecting dictators attending > the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) meeting in Vancouver, > November 1997 from dissent. He was released without being charged > after 14 hours in custody. > > Submitted by: Terry Labach > Dec. 1, 1997 What charge was he arrested on? Was it his property? Did he have the land owners permission? He should have put it on a pole on the right of way. I own some land, you go putting a sign on my fence without my permission and I promise you I will press tresspasing charges in an instant, even if I agree with the sentiment. I've had to threaten several DPS officers (Texas state troopers) with this because they like to park their cruiser in the drive outside my fence but still within the property line without asking my permission to do paperwork and eat. They don't do it anymore. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | | | We built your fort. We will not have it used against us. | | | | John Wayne - Allegheny Uprising | | | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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No Subject
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Last week soon after I took a KRAP, I cracked IDEA using my Windoze calculator in 2.7 hours, smoked a pipe bomb I made from a formula I found on the internet, got invited onto the Jerry Springer Show to embarrass myself but a midget without arms somehow put me in a headlock. I love being on the Cypherpunks list!!!

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Elliptic Curve Tidbit (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: >From owner-austin-cpunks(a)ssz.com Tue Dec 9 10:26:41 1997 Message-Id: <9712091607.AA17974(a)sso-austin.sps.mot.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: combee(a)sso-austin.sps.mot.com (Ben Combee) To: austin-cpunks(a)ssz.com Subject: Elliptic Curve Tidbit Date: Tue, 9 Dec 97 10:06:53 CST Sender: owner-austin-cpunks(a)ssz.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: austin-cpunks(a)ssz.com (From today's TBTF) ..First level of Certicom Challenge falls The first shot is fired in an elliptic-curve challenge Certicom is a maker of elliptic-curve encryption software. ECC al- gorithms are drawing considerable interest and study because they hold out the possibility of offering security comparable to the RSA algorithms using smaller keys, therefore requiring less computation. This possibility is not yet considered verified by most of the math- ematics and cryptosystems research community. The assumption that ECC encryption can use smaller keys is the as- sumption that no subexponential-time solution exists for the mathe- matical problem (the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem) on which ECC is based. The only solution to ECDLP known to exist takes fully exponential time. In contrast, both of the other well-studied mathematical problems that underly modern cryptosystems -- the in- teger factorization problem (e.g., RSA) and the discrete logarithm problem (e.g., Diffie-Hellman) -- have solutions that require only subexponential time. In order to gain exposure and to jumpstart the expert scrutiny that ECC will need if it is to be widely trusted, Certicom is sponsoring a crypto crack contest (they call it a challenge) [17]. The challenge comes in three parts: a series of "warmup exercises" followed by Level 1 and Level 2 problems [18]. A total of $625,000 in prize money is offered. Yesterday Robery Harley <Robert.Harley(a)inria.fr> announced [19] that he and Wayne Baisley had cracked one of two first-level warmup exer- cises, a 79-bit problem [20] designated ECCp-79. At this writing he has had no reply and the Certicom status page [21] has not been up- dated, so it is possible (but unlikely) that Harley's claim will prove not to be the first. If it is, he will receive as a prize a copy of the Handbook of Applied Cryptography (though somehow I suspect he's already read it) and a Maple V encryption package from Certicom. Certicom estimates the difficulty of the warmup exercises thus: > Using a network of 3000 computers, it is expected that the > 79-bit exercise could be solved in a matter of hours, the > 89-bit in a matter of days, and the 97-bit in a matter of > weeks. Harley and Baisley applied 6 computers to ECCp-79 and solved it in a bit under 10 days, which would have amounted to less than half an hour had they had 3000 machines to throw at the problem. Harley takes the opportunity presented by his winning claim [19] to tweak Certicom for their membership in the Key Recovery Alliance [22]. If the company replies to him substantively on this point, I'll post their response on the TBTF archive. [17] http://www.certicom.com/chal/index.htm [18] http://www.certicom.com/chal/ch4.htm [19] http://www.tbtf.com/resource/certicom1.html [20] http://www.certicom.com/chal/curves.htm [21] http://www.certicom.com/chal/ch_52.htm [22] http://www.kra.org/roster.html -- Ben Combee, Software Guru (ARMy Core of Engineers) Motorola > MIMS > MSPG > CTSD > Austin Design Center E-mail: ra3781(a)email.mot.com Phone: (512) 895-7141

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Re: Encrypted InterNet DEATH THREAT!!! / ATTN: Ninth District
by bureau42 Anonymous Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Court Judges TruthMailer wrote: > p.p.s. > You can also charge me with use of 'conventional' encryption > in the commission of a crime. > Must be your lucky fucking day, eh? If I were TruthMonger, I would worry more about being charged with the "use of stupidity" in the commission of a crime.

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Re: Cato forum tomorrow: should money laundering be a crime?
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Steve Schear wrote: >Nerthus wrote: >>Might be a bit of a stretch, but I think this is because money today is >>inherently a liability, that is a debt that someone, somewhere has promised >>to pay back. > >You've got this all backwards. The bearer certificates (paper money) issued >by governments is an interest-free loan by those holding the paper to the >issuer. This is true, but it is only part of the picture. The paper currency issuer (the central bank) is enjoying seigniorage, that is -- in the case of the US - -- the Federal Reserve is collecting revenue from the interest earned on the outstanding paper dollars. This earned interest is given to the Treasury and accounted for as revenue for the federal government. However, this tells us nothing about the currency's real worth. We need to look deeper to find the source of the paper currency's value. When the US government wants to create money, it issues debt instruments such as T-Bills to the Fed or to a commercial bank. The bank then credits the government's deposit (checking) account for the face value of the T-Bill. The bank believes it will collect this money back plus interest in a certain amount of time. The government can then ask the Fed to issue some paper cash in exchange for the deposit currency (new paper is then created). The T-Bill is nothing but a promise by the federal government to pay back a debt. The government has taken a loan from a bank and promises to pay it back in 1,5,10 or 30 years with interest. The money to pay it back comes directly from the tax revenues the government collects from its citizens. Thus paper currency is based on the debt saddled upon future generations of citizens/taxpayers. Interestingly, this is not much different than John Q. Public getting cash advances on his credits cards for a few years and then wondering why he is $25k in the hole and growing at 18% per annum. Many people, especially politicians, always go for the short term gain, regardless of the long term consequences. Debt-based currency (primarily a 20th century phenomenon) has ushered in a new era of political and financial irresponsibility. Eventually the debts must either be reneged on or paid off. When that time finally comes, neither option will paint a pretty picture. Nerthus -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQA/AwUBNIxg7Ra1d3zm4nqOEQJnnwCfaOLKaiCiYuqUJRSVBLc1Q6aZ4VIAoNJY EdB96VwVlxlcI9u3Glnwjf1y =vMJq -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: [Censored] Quote of the Day (fwd)
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Choate wrote: >I've had to threaten several DPS officers (Texas state troopers) >with this because they like to park their cruiser in the drive outside >my fence but still within the property line without asking my >permission to do paperwork and eat. > >They don't do it anymore. Damn, Jim, it's been nice having you here. Huntsville's agape for sugary puckers "threatening an officer." Still that beats joining the roadkill at the bottom of Lake Travis for messing with Texas.

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Re: [Censored] Quote of the Day (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi John, Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 09 Dec 1997 17:34:30 -0500 > From: John Young <jya(a)pipeline.com> > Subject: Re: [Censored] Quote of the Day (fwd) > Jim Choate wrote: > > >I've had to threaten several DPS officers (Texas state troopers) > >with this because they like to park their cruiser in the drive outside > >my fence but still within the property line without asking my > >permission to do paperwork and eat. > > > >They don't do it anymore. > > Damn, Jim, it's been nice having you here. Huntsville's agape > for sugary puckers "threatening an officer." > > Still that beats joining the roadkill at the bottom of Lake Travis > for messing with Texas. Sorry dude, it isn't against the law in Texas to threaten an officer when they are committing a crime, and trespassing on private property without permission, in pursuit of a suspect, or a warrant is most definitely a crime in this state, even for police. In this state if I catch somebody on my property at night in the process of what I *believe* is theft is even grounds for me to use deadly force; but *only* between sunset and sunrise. About 3 years ago we had a female UT-Austin student shoot and kill a peeping tom in the middle of town. She saw the guy through her window, got her gun, went outside and dropped the guy. No charges were filed because it was after dark and his trespassing on the apartment property was enough to invoke the above referenced law. There was a lot of screaming and yelling from a bunch of bleeding hearts about it, but the law still stands. You really should try to understand why you cow-tow to 'The Man'.... ____________________________________________________________________ | | | | | We built your fort. We will not have it used against us. | | | | John Wayne - Allegheny Uprising | | | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Re: Remailer Trivia / Re: Singapore & Freedom (fwd)
by Charlie Comsec 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Jim Choate <ravage(a)ssz.com> wrote: > > With both Nynex and Bell Atlantic, I've gotten phone service under a > > nym. No SSN, no credit references, no problem. > > > > Just don't call yourself Bill Clinton. > > That isn't the same as having it listed under the nym 'anonymous', when > you can get a phone company to start service, accept payment under that > 'name' and keep it that way in their records let me know. Further, with > the cross to the service address your anonymity isn't. But that isn't analogous to making an anonymous post to a public forum such as a Usenet NG or a mailing list. The best telephone analogy to that I can think of would be to place a phone call from a payphone to one of those call-in radio programs, say what you have to say, then hang up and listen to the responses over your radio. Signing up for a telephone under a pseudonym implies that you desire incoming calls (private replies) and is more analogous to a 'nym server. - --- Finger <comsec(a)nym.alias.net> for PGP public key (Key ID=19BE8B0D) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBNI2qrwbp0h8ZvosNAQF0MAf9E6GecTJszUYlfj6D1WCX8HUpJcVBo2gY DwLJOs8l3tgf292xFbcInQpQncJyIWHWY3svOZyGcmxgtUDjAi61vaeAYasU44sA KXJV0NjZgqXtE2bIAAWDSQsRzWalawnOp0UfNv1f3arHJrOx03YttAA8IuzB0365 uyCaZhjZDnhaSYd+Z+yfICcth4PVInRmm+gW6kpthMV3bY/+14hVjC6DAdh3W38E 5mlVG/99OLd2J+dSbo3al0eFmTnLcqyUK0w5kqkWpnStvTYuos1TSvuIX7toBOZi WIDLn83zHYbFwpp25hs68SrbTZ+IrQeiuannd14UtAXvWoGjzNLCQw== =Ldte -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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