December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Postition determination
by Mok-Kong Shen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I am told that GPS can only locate to about 100 meters but a refined technique can do that to 0.5 meter. There seems to be a practically useful method of somewhat different vein. See http://www.rfid.org M. K. Shen

1 0

I'm getting mail from people i never heard off...
by Jan Dobrucki 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is a weird one. It had nothing in the body of the message... so what the heck can this all mean? JD Return-Path: <Mohammed_Lazhar(a)cch-lis.com> Delivered-To: s1180(a)qmail.pjwstk.waw.pl Received: (qmail 26032 invoked from network); 22 Oct 1998 13:46:38 -0000 Received: from ny1.cch-lis.com (firewall-user(a)208.203.201.2) by qmail.pjwstk.waw.pl with SMTP; 22 Oct 1998 13:46:38 -0000 Received: by ny1.cch-lis.com; id BAA16396; Wed, 21 Oct 1998 01:11:42 -0400 Received: from notes(165.181.145.8) by ny1.cch-lis.com via smap (4.1) id xmaa15665; Wed, 21 Oct 98 01:08:39 -0400 Received: by notes.cch-lis.com(Lotus SMTP MTA SMTP v4.6 (462.2 9-3-1997)) id 852566A4.001D343C ; Wed, 21 Oct 1998 01:18:59 -0400 X-Lotus-FromDomain: CCHLIS@LIS NET From: "Mohammed Lazhar" <Mohammed_Lazhar(a)cch-lis.com> To: Jan_Dobrucki_ <s1180(a)qmail.pjwstk.waw.pl> Message-ID: <852566A4.001CE903.00(a)notes.cch-lis.com> Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 01:15:46 -0400 Subject: Mohammed Lazhar is out of the office. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Status: O X-Mozilla-Status: 8003

1 0

Re: Child-Molesting Forger's Chilling Confession!!!1!
by Jay T. Lee 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

application/www-form-urlencoded

1 0

Re: Word choice
by Michael Motyka 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> How does this differ from the motives of your ordinary politician? > > Post-revolution, will there be caliber limitations when hunting them? Hunt all you want. The post-revolution utopia will be administered by persons of the same mentality as those we have administering our Democratic Republic now. They will use the same if not more advanced techniques to acquire and maintain power. "Nature abhors a vacuum", right? Mike

1 0

Rendering ( was MIB Subponeas )
by Michael Motyka 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Protective intelligence programs are based on the idea that the risk of > violence is minimized if persons with the interest, capacity and willingness > to mount an attack can be identified and rendered harmless before they > approach a protected person. I'm all for reducing the risk of violence but... Interest, capacity and willingness are insufficient when taken alone. Collecting real names and addresses is, apparently, enough of a concrete step to at least begin the "rendering" process. Through rendering we can provide many useful by-products including fertilizer, soap, glue and a horrible stink downwind from the plant. If an AP bot were renamed, for instance, a Collectively Rewarded Action Program would it be as obvious a target? One could then post Action Items and Action Rewards to it anonymously. Everything from cleaning the litter off Rt 680 in Fremont to hosing Monsanto ( the foul-milk, press-squashing, poison-cow BST boys ). Then what would be needed is some sort of Eternity Service for an active server - detect tampering and jump hosts. Mike

1 0

Cameras in Public Places
by Michael Motyka 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Privacy is also needed on public places (e.g., violated by face > recognition systems) These early systems have got to have some major problems. The appropriate way of dealing with them is to wait for some people to be misidentified and then file suit against the municipality using the equipment. Harassment, false arrest, invasion of privacy, abuse of power, loss of reputation, loss of the ability to earn a living - take a few of the cities for $10 or $20 million and they'll get the message that they've been had by the SW vendors. However much I like technology, it looks more and more like politics is king. For now. Mike

1 0

IP: Uncle Sam Wants Spooks.
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: ignition-point(a)majordomo.pobox.com X-Sender: believer(a)telepath.com Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 09:31:49 -0600 To: believer(a)telepath.com From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: Uncle Sam Wants Spooks. Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: owner-ignition-point(a)majordomo.pobox.com Precedence: list Reply-To: believer(a)telepath.com Status: U Source: Wired http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/15816.html Uncle Sam Wants Spooks by Arik Hesseldahl 4:00 a.m.26.Oct.98.PST With the Cold War over and United States intelligence agencies in flux, both the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency have begun to struggle with an issue plaguing the private sector: how to hire and retain talented employees. In a world that increasingly uses computer networks to communicate and transfer information, the agencies are specifically looking for people who can navigate the Net and other networks. The CIA launched the most ambitious hiring program in the agency's history earlier this year, and it is expected to hire record numbers of case officers between now and 2005. Along with a new, Java-heavy recruiting section on the agency's home page, the agency is advertising widely in magazines like The Economist and recruiting on college campuses and within the military. "Our recruiting efforts are much more focused than they have been in recent years and we have a better idea of our target audience," said CIA spokeswoman Anya Gilsher. "We're facing increasingly difficult challenges like terrorism, mass destructive weapons, and narcotics. These are all very difficult targets, which require innovative approaches and a talented work force." Computer programmers and engineers are as in demand in the intelligence business as they are in any other industry, Gilsher said. "We're looking for people who can deal with different computer systems and software. Someone who is creative in their ability to handle and manipulate information technology and build programs that could be useful to us," she said. While Gilsher would not go into specifics, an article in The New York Times in June suggests that the proliferation of computer networks around the globe has, for example, complicated the ability of agents to slip in and out of countries covertly using fake passports. It's a different story for the National Security Agency, the country's super-secret signals intelligence agency. In an unusually candid series of answers to written questions, the NSA said it is struggling with one of the same issues plaguing the private sector: employee retention. A recent article in the magazine Government Executive said the agency is suffering a "brain drain," losing some of its best code-makers and code-breakers to the private sector. In a written statement, NSA spokesman Patrick Weadon confirmed that the agency is working harder than it has in the past to attract and keep its employees. "NSA, like most of the nation's IT community, has had significant challenges in hiring and retaining IT personnel," Weadon wrote. "Having said that, NSA has been successful attracting computer professionals with the stimulating nature of the work, student programs, and the total benefits package." The NSA also happens to be the country's single-biggest employer of mathematicians, and expects to hire more than 100 Ph.D.-level mathematicians in the next three years. Like the CIA, the NSA has launched a recruitment Web page, which has attracted 20 percent of its recent resumes. The NSA also posts its job openings on employment Web sites like Job Web and Career Mosaic. The agency has been aggressively marketing itself to students, offering several internship programs. One program gives college juniors 12 weeks of summer work experience, after which they return to school for their senior year with a job offer in hand. Another program allows college students to alternate working for the agency and going to school each semester. Some personnel also qualify for a fully funded graduate studies program, during which they can go to school full time for a year and still earn a salary, provided they commit to work for NSA for three years. NSA employees aren't likely to take jobs for the money, however. Computer science jobs at the NSA pay between US$35,000 and $70,000 a year, much less than in the private sector. "IT professionals seek out the NSA due to the unique nature of our work," Weadon wrote. "This has made us successful in attracting computer professionals over the past several years, and we believe this appeal will continue into the future." Not everyone agrees. Steve Aftergood, a research analyst for the Federation of American Scientists, said the allure of working in the intelligence community is wearing thin. "The intelligence agencies have an unattractive air about them," Aftergood said. "They have an aura of failure about them, especially in recent years. Rightfully or wrongly, they have been attacked as incompetent and even obsolete. Those charges may or may not be true, but they cast a long shadow over the agencies in the public mind." In recent years, the CIA has faced its share of problems within and criticisms from without. This year, for example, the agency was criticized for not having predicted nuclear weapons tests by India and Pakistan. In 1994, CIA employee Aldrich Ames was caught after revealing the identities of CIA operatives in the Soviet Union over the course of nine years. For its part, the NSA has been criticized for its efforts to keep strong encryption systems out of the hands of private citizens. Both the CIA and NSA still maintain a technological edge over the private sector, but Aftergood said that lead is shrinking. "The reality is that the private sector now competes in many areas that used to be the exclusive domain of the intelligence agencies," he said, citing encryption, computer software implementation, and analysis of foreign military and economic conditions as examples. The schools that train the spies and intelligence analysts of the future are placing a new importance on learning to use the Net and other online resources to get the job done. Robert Heibel, director of the Research/Intelligence Analyst Training Program at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania, said students get a thorough exposure to the Net and computers in general. The program trains students to "drink from the firehose," to glean important nuggets of information as tools for decision makers, Heibel said. Graduates of the program have gone on to become analysts for the CIA, NSA, FBI and other agencies swimming in the intelligence community's alphabet soup, he said. "We teach a concept called open source and public domain intelligence -- that is, taking what is in the public domain and creating new knowledge by analysis and interpretation," he said. "If you spend 20 percent of your intelligence budget on open source intelligence you'll be able to answer 70 percent of the boss's questions." Applying for a job with the CIA is easy: Send a resume. The CIA scans the resumes it gets using optical character recognition technology. An applicant for either agency must also submit to a thorough background investigation, a polygraph test, and medical and psychological examinations, said Gilsher, who went through the process herself. The process currently takes five to six months, but the agency is hoping to shorten that to three or four months, she said. Copyright © 1994-98 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved. ---------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- **************************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address or (un)subscribe ignition-point-digest email@address **************************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **************************************************** --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

1 0

Re: Java applet security, exportability, Jon Postel haiku
by Martin Minow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A few Java comments on David Conrad's <drc(a)adni.net> questions: > >As they go through the data entry process I collect bits of entropy from >mouse and keyboard events in a java.security.SecureRandom object. Java 1.1 lets you attach event handlers to every user-interaction class. For example, you can watch mouse movement, mouse entry and exit into your components, and character entry in all text fields. You might try adding handlers and capturing mouse position and the system clock. Each event, by itself, won't give you much entropy (and, of course, they are highly correlated event-to-event), but you should be able to get a bit or two from each event. > >... I was flabbergasted when I found out that jdk >1.0 had no printing API and so our applet, if it should allow users to >print, must be a 1.1 applet, and very few browsers have 1.1 support Java 1.1 is real, and support is becoming available on all platforms. The lack of a printing API in Java 1.0 was probably a good thing: printing is hard to get right, especially in a cross-platform environment, and waiting for a more mature AWT will avoid compatibility issues. Since your customers use a browser, why not display the data and have the browser handle the printing? Martin Minow minow(a)pobox.com

1 0

RE: capitalism run amuck by Korton
by Matthew James Gering 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

David Korton wrote: > exchange rates and stock markets into wild gyrations wholly > unrelated to any underlying economic reality. Who has both the motive to deny economic reality and the power to do so in the short term? > To understand what is happening we must educate ourselves > about the nature of money http://www.ecosystems.net/mgering/money.html > we give to the institutions and people who control its > creation and allocation the power to decide whether we > shall live in prosperity or destitution. Who controls it, how and why? > Contrary to its claims, capitalism is showing itself to > be the mortal enemy of democracy and the market. Capitalism and democracy have nothing to do with each other. "capitalism is...the mortal enemy of ...the market." "capitalism is...the mortal enemy of ...the [free] market." "capitalism is...the mortal enemy of ...[free] market [capitalism]." "capitalism is...the mortal enemy of ...[capitalism]." Hmmm, there is a problem here. "[Modern pseudo-]capitalism is the mortal enemy of [free] market [capitalism]." There, that works. > Under capitalism, money rules. Money can't rule, it is not sentient. Who controls money? > The challenge is to replace the global capitalist > economy with a properly regulated ...economy > United Nations, as the protection of people and > communities from predatory global corporations > and finance I can't believe after 69 years people are still shoveling the same socialist and protectionist bullshit. I cannot figure out how someone can get so close to pointing on the problem with [modern] capitalism and still come to all the wrong conclusions. I've never seen populism and [free] market economics twisted together so perversely. Matt "I think you have to define what you mean by a free market. If you have a fiat currency, which is what everyone has in the world --- ...That is not a free market. Central banks of necessity determine what the money supply is. If you're on a gold standard or other mechanism in which the central banks do not have discretion, then the system works automatically. " --Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan

1 0

log files (was: Re: dbts: Cryptographic Dog Stocks, The Dirigible Biplane, and Sending the Wizards Back to Menlo Park )
by Steve Bellovin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> It strikes me that while Mr. Hettinga and other e$ seers may have > spent the past decade considering how to allow transactional exchanges to > escape a human linkage, most professional sysops and network managers have > been concerned with how to strengthen the linkage between on-line accounts, > actions, and audit trails -- and the humans to which a user's account has > been assigned. Leaving aside the rest of this discussion, Vin touches on a point that I think has been ignored by some: operations demand log files. That is -- and I'm doffing my security hat here and donning the hat of someone who has been running computer systems and networks for 30+ years -- when I'm trying to manage a system and/or troubleshoot a problem, I *want* log files, as many as I can get and cross-referenced 17 different ways. This isn't a security issue -- most system administrator headaches are due to the "benign indifference of the universe", or maybe to Murphy's Law -- but simply a question of having enough information to trace the the perturbations caused to the system by any given stimulus. The more anonymity, and the more privacy cut-outs, the harder this is. I claim, therefore, that the true cost of running such a system is inherently *higher*. There may be, as some have claimed, offesetting operational advantages. But the savings from those advantages need to be balanced against losses due to hard-to-find bugs, or even bugs that one isn't aware of because there's insufficient logging. Remember that double-entry bookkeeping catches all sorts of errors, not just (or even primarily) embezzlement. To be sure, one can assert that the philosophical gains -- privacy, libertarianism, what have you -- are sufficiently important that this price is worth paying. With all due respect, I will assert that that debate is off-topic for this list, and is best discussed over large quantities of ethanol.

2 1