December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Encrypted InterNet DEATH THREAT!!! / ATTN: Ninth District Court Judges / PASSWORD: sog
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John <spit> Gilmore <fart> wrote: >The problem: Criminals with a simple >encryption program can scramble their data >beyond even the government's ability to read it. >http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/content/zdnn/1208/261695.html > Fuck the lame LEA pricks who whine about not being able to >stop someone bringing in a planeload of drugs without being >able to invade the privacy of every person on the face of >the earth. > Am I supposed to believe that I have knowledge of when and >where major drug shipments are taking place, simply by virtue >of hanging out as a musician, yet the LEA's are incapable of >finding out the same information by being competent in their >profession? Barf City... If memory serves me correctly then the above was written by the John Gilmore cleverly disguised as TruthMonger who railed mightily against the LEAs for claiming lack of resources and manpower for battling the 4 Horsemen despite the fact that LEAs always seem to have all the time and energy needed to attempt to imprison the grandmothers of our great nation who dare to plug a stranger's parking meter for him or her. I am always amazed that the LEA pleas for increased funding are generally based upon their own lack of effectiveness. i.e. "We are so lame that even with the current mountain of money and resources at our fingertips we cannot catch criminals who are much smarter than us." Perhaps the solution to crime is to fire the current LEAs and hire the criminals to replace them. Not that I am a troublemonger... !TroubleMonger

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Staff changes at the Center for Democracy and Technology
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Graeme Browning voice: 202-637-9800, ext. 275 email: gbrowning(a)cdt.org JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR GRAEME BROWNING JOINS THE CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY AS COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR FORMER COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR JONAH SEIGER TO ESTABLISH CAMPAIGN CONSULTING FIRM Washington, DC, December 9, 1997 -- The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a leading online civil liberties group, today announced that Graeme Browning, a former reporter for some of the country's most prominent newspapers and magazines, as well as author of a recent book on using the Internet to transform politics, has become the group's new Communications Director. Browning replaces Jonah Seiger, who is leaving to form a Washington-based Internet campaign consulting company with Shabbir J. Safdar, former director of the Voters Telecommunications Watch, a public interest group in New York City. With Browning's help the Center for Democracy and Technology will broaden its efforts to promote democratic values, free speech and privacy in the Digital Age. "Graeme's years of experience with both the print and the electronic media will be a valuable resource for us as we build on Jonah's excellent work and reach out to the rapidly expanding audience of citizens who use the Internet," said Jerry Berman, CDT's executive director. "Graeme shares our vision of the Net as the medium best able to nurture the many voices of a democracy. Her ability to articulate that vision will be of critical value to CDT." Browning, who holds a law degree from Vanderbilt University, joins CDT after six years covering Congress and high-tech issues for National Journal, one of the most respected political magazines in Washington. She has also been a reporter with the Washington Post, the Chicago Sun-Times, the (Baltimore) Sun, the (Nashville) Tennessean, and United Press International, and was also legal affairs reporter for the ABC network affiliate in Nashville. Last year Browning established herself as an authority in the Internet policy area with the publication of Electronic Democracy: Using the Internet to Influence American Politics (Pemberton Press, 1996), a guide to computer-based grassroots organizing that the Washington Times called "an essential book for anyone who wants to navigate the political dimensions of the Internet." Seiger, who has been a key staff member of the Center for Democracy and Technology since its founding in late 1994, "played a crucial role in developing CDT's pioneering use of the 'Net as a means of grassroots organizing and public education," Berman said. "Jonah was instrumental in positioning CDT as the leading voice on issues impacting civil liberties on the Internet. He has been a tremendous asset for us from the start." "I am confident that Jonah and Shabbir will be successful at bringing their considerable online organizing skills to a wider audience," Berman added, "and CDT looks forward to collaborating with them in their new venture." In the past three years, Berman said, Seiger has made major contributions to a number of CDT accomplishments, including: * the defeat of an important anti-encryption proposal before the House Commerce Committee, * the "blacken your Web page" protest of the Communications Decency Act in December 1996, * and the recruitment of more than 57,000 Internet users to a coalition supporting CDT's ultimately successful efforts to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Act. * Seiger also organized CDT's production of the first live cybercast of a congressional hearing on the Internet, * and launched democracy.net, a Web site devoted to cybercasting live "Town Hall" meetings with Members of Congress as well as hearings on such issues as encryption and the right to privacy online. Seiger and Safdar's new firm will provide strategic consulting and online advocacy management and campaign design services to help non-profits, associations and candidates use the Internet to advance public policy goals. Safdar founded the Voters Telecommunications Watch in 1994 and has collaborated with CDT on several major online campaigns. The Center for Democracy and Technology, a non-profit public interest organization based in Washington, D.C., works to advance civil liberties and democratic values on the Internet and in other interactive media. # # # # #

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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: Staff changes at the Center for Democracy and Technology
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Shabbir begged: >I'm feeling very left out. Insult me immediately please. Very well. It's a fact that Dick Morris, Stephanopoulos and Gorelick are your business feeds, Scaife, Gates and Dell are your sugardaddies and USG, SG, and CN have bought you for a Net chokehold campaign of global scare dupery, combined with deal for industry giants to ruin workaround pygmies. Your pure-gold credential is all the folks who once trusted you to never, ever swap principle for piles of moola (and cut them out). Now admit it, you're beating hire-me's and lie-for-me's off with a stick. Listen, I've got a near-indicted who needs you.

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FBI's Kallstrom Retiring
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thanks to Anon: CNN is saying FBI Ass. Dir. Jimmy "I never met a tap I didn't like" Kallstrom is retiring. He was the standard-bearer for the FBI Wiretap bill, and is a noted ally of Louie Freeh. He's going to work for MNBA Bank.

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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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