December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: The Continued Attack on Cash (Was: "The Right of Anonymity"...)
by James O'Toole 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim, the "social pressure" I was referring to is the process through which the obstacles to privacy-protecting measures are created and enforced. Examples include both government regulation, which derives part of its support from publicity connecting cash with money laundering with drugs and/or crime, as well as finality/liability rules within non-government financial consortiums, which may strongly encourage proof-of-identity. Let's take your example of the Institute of Applied Ontology (IAO) corporate Amex card (Ax)... Even with no relevant government regulations, we may find that Ax's agreement with merchants requires Ax to at least either pay the merchant or reveal to the merchant all relevant information known to Ax about the cardholder. The right contract terms between the merchant and Amex will be good for them, and may be good for most consumers, and could easily be sub-optimal for the subset of consumers who highly value privacy. The impracticality of negotiating special terms with each merchant means that the best plan to get the privacy/anonymity you want may be to set up a card such that Amex will be willing to operate without knowing much about the cardholder. I assume that's the intent of your IAO corporate Ax card. What allocation of the liability for card usage do you expect among Amex, IAO, and the cardholder? Amex will want the liability allocated to IAO and the cardholder, and if Amex does not possess traceable identity information on the cardholder, then Amex will want an enforceable promise to pay from IAO. To get this, or even to get funds in advance from IAO, we will find that Amex ends up knowing a lot about the identity of IAO or one of its officers. Pretty soon we'll run up against the problem of whether Tim May can configure a corporate in the U.S. to be operated by people who don't know who he is, and who can't find out who he is (when properly encouraged to cooperate by Ken Starr...). With or without government regulation, the most reliable people you can hire to operate that corporation for you may only want to do so if they are given the opportunity to somehow "know" you. I think you can probably use a bank in a privacy-enhancing-locale such as Switzerland as an effective intermediary in Amex card issuance, but if you really don't want the bank to know who you are, you'll probably need a corporate intermediary between you and the bank, with nominee officers. The real trick is probably to structure the whole thing so that neither the bank nor the nominee officers have anything to lose, including their reputations. As long as part of their reputation is that they don't act as front men for drug dealers and criminals, we may find that they keep trying to find out enough about who you are to satisfy themselves that you are a good guy. That's the social pressure flexing its muscles. >An interesting question about the Privacy Card product is whether the >social pressure against it is strong enough to defeat its privacy whenever >the product is well advertised. In other words, will a privacy product >survive in spite of its own publicity in our current environment, or can Corporate cards are already widely accepted...most of you probably have a card issued to you through your employing institution. I see no "social pressure" to block usage of my Institute of Applied Ontology corporate AmEx card. The real roadblock is that government makes such privacy-protecting measures either difficult or illegal. --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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The War on Some Debts
by Eric Cordian 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In a further blatant erosion of Constitutional rights, the California Supreme Court has ruled that a person owing child support who fails to seek or accept work may be jailed and fined for contempt of court, and that this does not violate any Constitutional bans on involuntary servitude or imprisonment for debt. This reverses nearly a century of contrary rulings. Look for this "improved" interpretation to be expanded to other kinds of debts and judgments as well, as soon as massive public acceptance of it for the carefully picked child support issue is engineered. The credit card companies are no doubt carefully analyzing this decision as we speak. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

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the best justice money can buy --Lessig suspended
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >>> the best justice money (and politics) can buy I really do not believe this --this is bought justice as appeals courts never, or at least rarely such as a blatant in the case of a blatant error in a capital murder criminal trial, interfere with a sitting federal judge. the damage is immense; it delays the first round of adjudication by at least 5 months. if I were Joel Klein I would go for the jugular and file action for an immediate divestiture of M$ including injunctions against operations and management by Bill Gate$ and Steve Ballmer. the appeals court would probably suspend the actions, but they would still be there and on the table. Jackson at this point will be furious --hopefully he keeps total cool. the obvious next move on the part of M$ will be to have Jackson disqualified for bias. that will make 2 judges in the DC circuit who M$ has wasted. Royce Lambert refused to accept the 1994 plea bargain --obviously M$ would ask him to recuse if his name came out of the barrel; theoretically, cases are assigned by lottery --in reality, you can influence the choice of a judge as the cases are assigned at the time of filing by rotation. --M$ obviously is capable of shopping for a judge. at this point, I would say M$ has won the game. W98 will be released with IE4 as the desktop, complete with push channels and www.msn.com --at that point, Jackson --if he is still the sitting judge-- will be forced to make a bad law decision if he tries to block it on the 1994 agreement: the product is 'integrated' --M$ had the foresight to hoodwink the DOJ --Royce Lambert saw through the smoke screen but the appeals court removed him from the case. so... we will have multiple choice of OS: M$ on Intel, M$ on SGI, M$ on Alpha --and SUN goes down the tubes as they will never capitulate. M$ will bury IBM with their NT alliance with Ahmdal who clones all the IBM iron --which is fading against the clustered servers. IBM long since gave in on OS/2 versus M$ --it may figure in their corporate strategy, but unless they are willing to update past Netscape 2.02 they will lose that as well --in fact you can no longer any of the IBM PCs with OS/2 preloaded --except by special order: in quantity. Bill Gate$ for President? might as well... maybe Lee Harvey Oswald will come to the rescue. Lessig appointment suspended By Dan Goodin, C|Net February 2, 1998, 6:40 p.m. PT A federal appeals court has immediately suspended the appointment of a contested computer expert charged with collecting and weighing evidence in the antitrust case the Justice Department has brought against Microsoft. In a ruling handed down late Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia granted Microsoft's request to halt, pending further review, the proceedings before visiting Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig. U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson appointed Lessig a "special master" in mid December, giving the computer and Internet law expert until May 31 to recommend factual and legal findings in the high-profile case. The one-page ruling is a significant--but by no means final--win for Microsoft, which repeatedly has objected to Lessig's appointment. In briefs filed first in district court and then with the court of appeals, Microsoft strenuously has opposed the designation of any special master in the case, but has argued further that Lessig is an inappropriate choice because he appears to be biased against the software giant. In a sternly worded order issued two weeks ago, Jackson denied Microsoft's request, calling the allegations of bias "trivial" and "defamatory." Today's ruling by the court of appeals is in stark contrast to Jackson's order, and may indicate that the three-judge panel assigned to hear matters in the case sees things in a different light. Rather than permanently halting the proceedings, today's ruling is an agreement only to consider Microsoft's challenge to the special master--known in legal parlance as a writ of mandamus. In a sign that the judges may be inclined to agree with Microsoft's arguments on the issue, however, they handed Redmond an additional win by immediately halting the proceedings scheduled to take place before Lessig while the challenge is being heard. "It is extremely unusual for a court of appeals to reach down and stop what a district court has ordered," said Rich Gray, an antitrust attorney at Bergeson, Eliopoulos, Grady & Gray. "The court of appeals is saying, 'We're interested in hearing more about this, and in the meantime, we're going to put the special master on hold.'" A Microsoft spokesman agreed. "This is a very positive step, but it's only one small step in a long process," said Jim Cullinan. "We look forward to presenting our evidence to the appeals court as well as the trial court." The court of appeals already had agreed to hear a separate appeal, in which Microsoft is fighting a preliminary injunction Jackson issued in December that requires Microsoft to separate browser software from its Windows products. Today's ruling consolidates both motions into the same April 21 hearing. It also requires both sides to file additional briefs concerning the special master challenge by April 7. Moreover, the government must file its opposition to Microsoft's appeal of the preliminary injunction by March 2, and Microsoft must respond to that brief by March 9. Justice Department representatives were not immediately available for comment. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be iQBVAwUBNNc8R7R8UA6T6u61AQH3swIAtVNkbSk80Crg/dseQOP4pPpIbEDGchsl rWj/sEmXn/2EnWxXBTp4OnkRpJlFbobhbkT3lJqE4Jj2V+MnEGUFzw== =9S7I -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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too little too late: SPA takes on M$
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >>> too little and too late, SPA takes on Microsoft this might have been a good action in so much as they are well entrenched, in part on M$' money, as Washington lobbiests. now, with Lessig's role as the court appointed expert suspended by the appeals court until a 21 Apr hearing (submissions due in early April), their voice will be lost in the court action. any action they stimulate with Orrin Hatch's judiciary is a) too late; too slow --at least two years; 3) of little consequence as Congress can not legislate against a specific company --they can legislate by regulation against an industry; and, 4) more importanty, the Appeals Court castrated Johnson's order for the special administrator. still, it is another voice; even though the guidelines are bland, there is no mistalking who the target is; and, in typical M$' fashion they are threatening to drop their membership instead of renewing in August. there are three areas where M$ is exercising monetary influence, even control of the agenda, in legislation or justice: the DOJ action with their crying to Daddy (the appeals court), the SPA guidelines which they intend to force SPA to withdraw, and as part of the closed circle negotiating the rules on intellectual property and trade for the Western Hemisphere free trade zone --closed meetings. as I said: Gate$ makes Cornelius Vanderbilt look like a choir boy. Software group takes on Microsoft By Courtney Macavinta February 2, 1998, 5:05 p.m. PT As the federal antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft barrels forward, a prominent high-tech trade association tomorrow will release a list of competition principles that strike at the heart of the case and angered the software giant. The Software Publishers Association (SPA) hasn't officially responded to the Justice Department's accusations that Microsoft violated a 1995 consent decree by requiring computer makers to bundle its Internet Explorer browser as a condition of licensing its Windows 95 operating system. But the new guidelines echo some of its smaller members' and the government's complaints regarding Microsoft. The SPA's guidelines come one day after New York State's attorney general said he and ten other state prosecutors subpoenaed Microsoft for evidence of potentially illegal bundling of Windows and Internet software. In addition, the Senate Judiciary Committee and regulatory agencies from Japan and the European Union also are looking into Microsoft's business practices. (See related story) The SPA says it set out to develop the principles to define its role in the fair competition debate, which focuses on its largest member. The SPA has been sought for advice by lawmakers in the past, and it states that the new principles are intended to "guide government officials" in antitrust enforcement. Hitting home with Microsoft foes, the SPA principles state: "Operating systems should not be used to unfairly favor its own products and services, or its favored partners, over those competing vendors. The operating system vendor should not include its own services or products as part of the operating system or user interface unless it gives the same ability to integrate products and services into the operating system to competing vendors." The SPA went on to state that "the tying of certain applications to the sale of other applications has the effect of restraining competition among independent software vendors for the 'virtual shelf space' of [PC makers]." Dominant operating systems also should not "favor Internet content" that it owns or licenses, according to the guidelines. The principles say that healthy competition is reliant on equal access to retail customers. On the other hand, pre-announcing products that do not exist yet, so-called vaporware, stifles competition. Prior to developing the principles, the 1,200-member group surveyed its domestic members. Of the 164 that responded, anticompetitive activity was a top concern. As reported in January, the issue also took the spotlight at two scheduled meetings in Santa Clara, California. The SPA's Government Affairs Committee even met with Joel Klein, the Justice Department's lead attorney in the lawsuit against Microsoft. Microsoft fired back today, calling the SPA's process "short-sighted" and the publication of the principles "self-destructive." The company also quipped that it is undecided on whether it will renew its SPA membership, which expires in August. Although Microsoft was present at the SPA's California meetings last month, so were some of its main competitors, such as Novell, Netscape Communications, Apple Computer, and Oracle Corporation. "It's unfortunate that a handful of Microsoft's competitors are trying to use the SPA to drive a wedge into the software industry. This whole process has been such an obvious attack on Microsoft," Mark Murray, a spokesman for the company, said today. "I think the primary impact of this is that the SPA will be discredited, and that it will weaken their ability to serve as a legitimate voice," he added. The SPA knew its principles would be searched for hidden meaning regarding the Microsoft case, but the group contends it wasn't targeting the company. "The principles are not intended to prescribe remedies that might be applied by federal and state antitrust enforcers to any particular company or set of circumstances," SPA president Ken Wasch said in a statement. "Nor are these principles a call for general regulation of our industry. Rather, the principles reflect an industry consensus of how some business practices promote or impair strong competition." Still, for a group with no regulatory power, the SPA's opinion will hold some weight. The group is expected to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee when it holds hearings on issues of competition in the high-tech industry this year. Moreover, the new principles amend the organization's existing guidelines, which were presented to the Federal Trade Commission during a hearing two years ago. During the hearing, the SPA advised the government to carefully scrutinize companies that allegedly impede others from getting space on retail store shelves. The SPA also took the position that owners of dominant operating systems should release essential technical information to other developers. Both points remain in the new eight-point plan. The remaining SPA competition principles include: Maximize innovation to benefit consumers. The owners of dominant operating systems should license their "interface specifications to any third party for the purposes of developing application software." "Barriers" should not be put up by dominant operating systems that limit consumers' or hardware makers' ability to reconfigure their desktops or utilize any software or online content services. Software vendors "should not intentionally disable, cripple, or otherwise interfere with the intended functionality and execution of other products." Operating systems should not prohibit Web sites from "exploiting the access capabilities of competing products" or force sites to display and promote their products. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be iQBVAwUBNNc1UbR8UA6T6u61AQHEQwH/cpSHIdQwCR0XVoxqEVya3E15ZBrmI5M8 hln8Dm2qFF39UjsNVLJhp4J4xDnyTdeRCDkGDixzI5qJqDwChz5prw== =sN0q -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Data Fellows wins another acclaimed award
by Mia Westerholm 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Data Fellows Ltd. Media Release For immediate release 4 February 1998 DATA FELLOWS WINS ANOTHER ACCLAIMED AWARD International Success Recognized by Head of State The developer of F-Secure data security products, Data Fellows Ltd., has received the President of Finlands Export Award. This award is granted annually to the most outstanding export companies in the country. This is the first time a developer of commercial software packages has been granted the award. Data Fellows is one of the worlds leading developers of data security products. It has offices in San Jose, California, and Espoo, Finland, as well as distributors in over 50 countries all around the world. Its products have been translated to over 30 languages. The companys annual growth in net sales has been over 100% since it was founded in 1988. "The award is a recognition of our status as a leading international data security development company," says the Chief Executive Officer of Data Fellows Ltd., Mr. Risto Siilasmaa. "I believe our success is based on two things: excellent products and high quality services." The most successful product group of the company is its F-Secure Anti-Virus products. Data Fellows is the developer of the revolutionary CounterSign Technology, which enables the use of several scanning engines simultaneously. Due to this groundbreaking technology, the theoretical chances of a virus slipping through to a computer or a network are smaller than ever. F-Secure Anti-Virus offers unrivalled protection by combining the best available single scanning engine F-PROT with the AVP anti-virus engine, which also ranks among the best in the world. Another fast growing business area for Data Fellows is its F-Secure cryptography software products. The F-Secure product family uses the best available military strength encryption and authentification algorithms to protect confidential data. F-Secure products are based on the SSH protocol, which provides a generic transport-layer encryption mechanism for network connections. The SSH protocol provides both host authentication and user authentication, together with privacy and integrity protection. The products of Data Fellows have already won numerous international tests and competitions, including the 1996 European Information Technology Prize; Data Communications Magazines Hot Product of the Year 1997; SVM Magazine, May 1997, Best Anti-Virus; and SECURE Computings Editors Choice. Data Fellows belongs to an elite group of companies that have a triple-A rating from Dun&Bradstreet. Triple-A is the highest possible credit rating. For further information, please contact: Data Fellows Ltd. Mr. Risto Siilasmaa, Chief Executive Officer Tel. +358-9-859 900 e-mail: Risto.Siilasmaa(a)DataFellows.com or visit the Data Fellows web site at http://www.DataFellows.com €€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€ Mia.Westerholm(a)DataFellows.com http://www.DataFellows.com Data Fellows Ltd. PL 24 FIN-02231 ESPOO, FINLAND Tel. +358 9 859 900 Fax. +358 9 8599 0599

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BSAFE 4.0 to force GAK?!
by steve 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

FYI Jan. 26's Network World has an article on page 33 titled "RSA blasts (but also supports) Government encryption policy". The paragraph of note is the fourth paragraph which reads:"The next version of the RSA encryption toolkit, BSAFE 4.0, will force those building products with anthing over 56 bit strength encryption to use a key-recovery center for exportable products...." I haven't been able to confirm this with other sources yet but the glaring question is how will this be enforced and how will it affect domestic products that wish to use BSAFE 4.0 for their crypto. Further what ramifications does this hold for their S/Mail toolkit for S/MIME? and I haven't seen this discussed on the list yet. Steve O -- A picture tells a thousand words. Stego -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GCS/IT/S d--() s+: a-- C++++(++)$ ULS+++@ P++@ L+(++)$ E- W+(+++)$ N++$ !o K-? w++(+++)$ !O+>++ !M !V PS+(+++)@ PE(++)@ Y++$ PGP@ t+@ 5++@ X++>$ R+++>$ tv+@ b+@ DI+++>$ D+++@>$ G@ e++@>++++ h r* y+ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

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A fatal flaw in PGP 6.0
by Bill＠rumplestiltskin.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This was posted anonymously to alt.security.pgp last night >Subject: PGP 6.0 alpha3 >Date: 3 Feb 1998 00:15:56 +0100 > >Anyone else having problems with the alpha of PGP 6.0? When I try to encrypt e-mail I get an error: > >FATAL ERROR > >Unable to find key "ghost(a)nsa.gov" >Please obtain a new key from Network associates. > > >Other than that it's pretty slick! I'm not sure I'd have the default cypher as ROT-13 though! I changed mine to RC-2 255-bit. > >Anyone else? Anyone like to confirm this?

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A fatal flaw in PGP 6.0
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This was posted anonymously to alt.security.pgp last night >Subject: PGP 6.0 alpha3 >Date: 3 Feb 1998 00:15:56 +0100 > >Anyone else having problems with the alpha of PGP 6.0? When I try to encrypt e-mail I get an error: > >FATAL ERROR > >Unable to find key "ghost(a)nsa.gov" >Please obtain a new key from Network associates. > > >Other than that it's pretty slick! I'm not sure I'd have the default cypher as ROT-13 though! I changed mine to RC-2 255-bit. > >Anyone else? Anyone like to confirm this?

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A fatal flaw in PGP 6.0
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This was posted anonymously to alt.security.pgp last night >Subject: PGP 6.0 alpha3 >Date: 3 Feb 1998 00:15:56 +0100 > >Anyone else having problems with the alpha of PGP 6.0? When I try to encrypt e-mail I get an error: > >FATAL ERROR > >Unable to find key "ghost(a)nsa.gov" >Please obtain a new key from Network associates. > > >Other than that it's pretty slick! I'm not sure I'd have the default cypher as ROT-13 though! I changed mine to RC-2 255-bit. > >Anyone else? Anyone like to confirm this?

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New RAND IW Study
by Steve Schear 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A very interesting RAND study, In Athena's Camp, was recently released. From the preface: "New modes of war, terrorism, crime, and even radical activism-are all these emerging from similar information-age dynamics? If so, what is the best preparation for responding to such modes? When the subject is warfare, for example, it is common wisdom that militaries tend to prepare for the last war, and there is much historical evidence to support this notion. Today, however, it is clear that defense establishments around the world-and especially in the United States-are thinking about how war will change, how the "revolution in military affairs" (RMA) will unfold, and how the next war may well be quite different from the last. Whether the focus is warfare, terrorism, crime, or social conflict, we have striven to anticipate what the spectrum of future wars and other types of conflicts will look like." http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR880 --Steve

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