December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Rotenberg as the Uber Enemy
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May wrote: > > I suppose I am developing a reputation amongst the Inside the Beltway Cyber > Rights Groups (tm) as a pain in the ass A polite, mild-mannered person such as yourself? I can't imagine. > The latest quote is from Marc Rotenberg, on a CNN piece on spam and > anti-spam legislation, saying that what the legislators in Congress really > need to look into is how the spammers develop their data bases..... > > Incredible. Does he propose investigations of private data gathering? > Perhaps search warrants served on those who take public postings and > construct data bases? > > Look, I'm annoyed by getting 5-10 "unwanted" spam messages a day. But I > realize I'm certain you also realize that enough of our rights and freedoms are being taken away in order to save us from "dangerous threats" from every conceivable source, that we have little use for even more of them being taken away to protect us from "annoyances." I think I'll email Rotenberg and suggest that he enlist Tim May's support by promising legislation to support warrantless searches for the purpose of stopping the ASCII art slams of Tim. Knowing how our "saviors" end up walking with the Devil *over* the bridge once they become enmeshed in the D.C. mentality, Rotenberg will probably thank me for the idea. To save the citizenry from the "annoyance" of unregulated sidewalk traffic the city of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, passed a law requiring people to walk on the left side of the sidewalk. I sent in a facetious letter to the newspaper supporting the law, saying things like, "Use of the sidewalk is a privilege, not a right." etc. I couldn't believe the number of lunatics who took my letter seriously and supported my position. One of my goals in life is to hunt down, mutilate, maim and torture the individual who coined the expression, "There ought to be a law." TruthMonger

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Remailer Follies
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jeff Burchell wrote: > > I have added your address to my block list, this remailer won't send > anything directly to you in the future. > -Jeff > Operator... Huge.cajones.com I have a friend who used to operate a remailer and he told me a story about receiving an abuse complaint and request for blocking from an acquaintance who was unaware that he was the operator of the remailer. The person making the complaint was also a user of the remailer. My friend composed a highly officious reply which indicated that he had logged and read the remailer messages of both parties and had reached the conclusion that the complaintant was indeed a fascist, asshole, etc. and thus did not have a valid complaint according to the policy of the remailer. He included enough personal details regarding the complaintant to indicate that he had actually been snooping through the messages. The complaintant was dumbfounded and responded with a message asking, "Are you crazy? Do you have any fucking idea what the concept of anonymity implies?", etc. He concluded by stating that in the future he would be using encryption in his remailer activity and send them via other remailers. My friend enlisted the aide of another remailer operator who was a close friend of the complaintant and was known by him to be the operator of the second remailer. The second fellow emailed his friend to announce that a group discussion between remailer operators had resulted in the decision that his friend would only be allowed to send plaintext messages through the remailers since it was standard policy to monitor the messages to and from "troublemakers" in order to protect the operators from unfounded accusations against them. At this point the complaintant was slightly suspicious of being the butt of a joke but he was still gullible enough that the two remailer operators had a bit more fun before copping to the fact that they were just yanking the complaintant's chain. They had the decency to promise not to use the complaintant's real name when telling the story of their prankery. > P.S. Besides... aren't ad hominum attacks on Tim May a Cypherpunks > tradition? A day without a Tim C. May attack is like a day without moonshine. MailMonger

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Re: Quadratic Residue: Vulis
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Demento Vulis's mother attempted to pro-choice the unwanted little bastard by fishing with a coat hanger in her giant cunt, but failed miserably to pull the rabbit and succeeded only in scraping out the contents of little Demento's fetal cranium (not much to begin with). (_) _____ (_) /O O\ The Proctologist Demento Vulis ! I ! ! \___/ ! \_____/

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Re: Public Key Break Paper
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote: >As a meta-point any securirty person knows that employees and >ex-employees are the most serious security risks. Its not exactly >unknown for someone to go nuts and then come out with loony >paranoid theories. > >This may not be the case in this instance but its a good idea not >to start seeing black helicopters around every corner... "All cryptologists are rightly paranoid, they break the rules of the game and lie to hide how it's done." -- Anonymous. For what it's worth, it was Sandia who disclosed Payne's public key break paper, not him. He's suing SNL for privacy violations. His suit of DoE and NSA is about being fired for refusing to carry out illegal work which craven colleagues jumped to do. William Payne could be the Bellwether of spilling the dark national lab secrets unless, ahem, he gets his million dollar settlement. I say good luck to him and the others fighting the secret-hoaders. Payne's dispute with Sandia and NSA shows once again how the gatekeepers of top secrets manipulate those who work on classified projects: Lure the best and brightest with flattering invitations to join prestigous secret work. Require high-penalty NDAs for participation. Invite to work on repugnant projects, and if refused, fire for insubordination or other pretext ("displeasing the customer" or "to protect national security"). Then, destroy careers by precluding ever again working on classified projects. Finally, stigmatize the victim and publicize to frighten other workers into subservience. This entrapment into fearful servitude happens repeatedly in high affairs of state: Oppenheimer, Snepp, McGee, Halperin, and so on. There are dozens of current pending cases at DoE, CIA, NSA and the like in the US, and many more in other countries. To be sure, wisely obedient government workers will never have to cry "help me, my former colleagues are attacking, I did nothing wrong." Still, it seems that there must be ritual sacrifices of the innocent, as Shirley Jackson wrote in "The Lottery," to expatiate collective guilt, any innocent will do -- "for all are equally guilty," so the gods and secret-keepers hyper- guiltily smirk. Who's next to exaptiate the guilt of the mega death national and university labs? Surely not Hallam-Baker or Crisp? Or, as Tim suggests, how about sacrificing the secret labs (and black-chip fabs)? There's a bill before Congress to redo the NLs, but why dawdle when there's a surefire crypto-lottery.

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RE: RSA, PGP IN LEGAL FLAP OVER ENCRYPTION TECHNOLOGY
by Chris DiBona 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I don't pretend to be patent law knowledgeable, but I'll try to address this. While pure mathematics is unpatentable, the inventions based on it are not. Remembering you can't get patents on ideas, only inventions, I decided to go and check out the RSA patent and see why it has held up and been allowed renewal (no kidding. Think of all the trouble that could have been saved if renewal had been denied!) This first thing I noticed is that not only is RSA patented, but so is Stego, under patent 5613004. The RSA patent is abstracted and here it is: ABSTRACT: A cryptographic communications system and method. The system includes a communications channel coupled to at least one terminal having an encoding device and to at least one terminal having a decoding device. A message-to-be-transferred is enciphered to ciphertext at the encoding terminal by first encoding the message as a number M in a predetermined set, and then raising that number to a first predetermined power (associated with the intended receiver) and finally computing the remainder, or residue, C, when the exponentiated number is divided by the product of two predetermined prime numbers (associated with the intended receiver). The residue C is the ciphertext. The ciphertext is deciphered to the original message at the decoding terminal in a similar manner by raising the ciphertext to a second predetermined power (associated with the intended receiver), and then computing the residue, M', when the exponentiated ciphertext is divided by the product of the two predetermined prime numbers associated with the intended receiver. The residue M' corresponds to the original encoded message M. For the actual details of the patent go to IBM's patent server: http://patent.womplex.ibm.com/details?patent_number=4405829 Notice how careful they were to title it a "System" and a "Method". It is that they are patenting. I think if someone had good enough lawyers, they could probably challenge this patent using prior art claims, but what the hell do I know. I'm thinking however that the Secure Telephone Units had a dual key system, and were introduced by AT&T long before the RSA patent was granted, but I'm not sure. So indeed they are patenting the method of using the mathmatics. Which is thier invention, which is why (IMO) they were granted the patent. I wish that they hadn't been able to get it renewed. It would have been nice to see how RSA would do competing thier software libraries against alternative competitors. Ah well, guess we'll have to wait another 17 years. Too bad. Chris DiBona -----Original Message----- At 19:47 5/13/97 -0700, Kent Crispin wrote: >On Tue, May 13, 1997 at 07:11:48PM -0800, Jim Bell wrote: >> However, I've been waiting many years for some patent-law-knowledgeable >> person to explain why mathematics, which was widely seen as being absolutely >> unpatentable prior to the invention of public-key cryptography, suddenly >> became patentable just in time for RSA, etc. >> >> Until I hear such an explanation, I _DO_ begrudge RSA and others that "right." > >Wow! I agree with you! Sit down until the feeling goes away. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Videocrypt/Videocrypt2 any cryptanalytic results?
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Has any progress been made in cryptanalysing the algorithms used in the european Videocrypt and Videocrypt2 standards used to encrypt satellite broadcasts? Particularly, is there any information I can obtain about the protocols, the data communicated between the decoder and card, and the algorithm itself. I am looking at the possibility of a new version of the "season" card simulator software created some time ago, which is now obselete, which used to be used against videocrypt broadcasts...

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Re: Public Key Break Paper
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Phillip M. Hallam-Baker wrote: > > >I just took a brief look at it, (thanks for forwarding, Lucky), > >and it's pure crap-ola. > > As a meta-point any securirty person knows that employees and > ex-employees are the most serious security risks. Its not exactly > unknown for someone to go nuts and then come out with loony > paranoid theories. Whenever I see the dying embers of the spam debate being blown to life (along with similar non-issues), I wonder what the disinfo artists are trying to distract me from. I don't have to wonder too hard, however, since I can always count on the usual suspects to step forward and pooh-paah whatever they don't want anyone to look at too closely. Anything Phill casts aspersions on has to be worth checking out: http://jya.com/snlhit.htm TrafficMonger

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Kill a Fag, Go to Congress / Was--Re: Disinformation in L.A.
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tom Allard wrote: > > Didn't her boss's murderer walk on the charge by using the defence > > that he ate too many Twinkies? > > No political intrigue here... > > That was the defense, yes. Dan White was a former cop and treated like a > hero by fellow cops. The prosecution never really challenged the Twinkie > defense, nor did they bring up politics or homophobia as motives. With a > prosecution like that, who needs a defense? I remember that it was seen as being a message to the gay community that they were getting too "uppity" for their own good. (I wonder how they got that idea? <former cop kills a queer, gets treated like a hero, prosecuters play with Little Peter while he gets off for eating too many Twinkies, and Swinestein is waiting in the wings to do an "LBJ">.) The government is a lot like the Mob--other politicians can't really trust you until you've whacked somebody and they have it to hold over your head so that you'll play along. SwineMonger

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HUGE NEW PROFITS FROM THE NET!
by helpers＠prep.future.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: The War is Underway
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- \At 10:44 AM 5/10/97 -0800, Tim May wrote: >This is the "race to the fork in the road" I have long talked about. The >future will be pulled between two attractors, with essentially no middle >ground >At one side lies a surveillance state >At the other side lies crypto anarchy Except that their branch of the "fork" is illusory. It depends on public support and physical powers they lack. The reason that I'm a technoptimist is *not* because I think that modern technology is an all-powerful mechanism which has shattered the control capabilities of the coercive state apparatus. The really beautiful thing is that today's technology is merely piling onto a pre-existing trend which favored individual choice. Things were already trending towards markets and self government long before crypto and the Internet hit the front pages. Even mainframe computers helped. If you look at the graphs, you'll see that computers started forcing institutional downsizing as early as the late '60s in the U.S. and Britain. Mechanical technology and the wealth it produced was sufficient to get things going. Since the Second World War, people have been getting wealthier and hence more powerful. First here in America and later spreading throughout the worlds like a health-giving virus. Remember, it's not just technology. If I can move and trade in a very efficient market, I have a lot more power than someone with my same level of wealth in a primitive society with limited capabilities. Cheap radios (the first micro technology product) and jet engines helped push things along as much as anything. The slow development of market institutions which, today, give individuals the power to buy, sell, and lease almost any good or service eventually reached a critical point as well. Rich people are *much* harder to push around than poor people. (If you push them too much, they just leave.) So factories produced wealth which produced power which automatically increased individual choice. You will note that the 60's happened, for example. As time went on, markets spread, tyranny contracted and people became harder and harder to control (for good or ill). Pile crypto and the Net onto this trend, and you get an accelerated beneficial movement towards enhanced personal choice. Obviously, "the generation that was born into bondage in Egypt cannot enter the Promised Land." They have to die off before the changes can become obvious to all. The Net can help in this by changing our cultural and social environment so much that it allows us to, in the words of yet another Timothy, "Metaprogram the human biocomputer." I must say, however, that I find it hard to believe that other people can't see the amazing progress that we've made in the last decade. The utter destruction of totalitarian communism, the transformation of Latin America from 26 dictatorships and 1 democracy a few years ago to 26 (more or less) democracies and 1 dictatorship today, the liberation of the Forex markets, the ideological dominance of market liberalism, the Death of the PTT communications monopolies, the deregulation of transportation, the lowering of trade barriers, etc. Note that last month, Mongolia became the first country since the dawn of the nation state to abolish all tarrifs and quotas. Now if you can just get to it, you can trade freely. The control capabilities of the government depend on the attitude of the people. If they support the government or are intimidated by it, they will obey. Today, support for most OECD governments is at historic lows. Cynicism about government policies is widespread. And the simple ignoring of rules and regs is "out of control." DCF "You don't have to be nice to nation states you meet on the way up if you're not coming back down." -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 4.5 iQCVAgUBM3os3YVO4r4sgSPhAQHTRgQAvXFT8D+v2rpRe1d6bev87ODWCm4Pr1HS 0akwfOIBdGcCIWzRVRywTe1uBkMlnP2rXg819q+LLMkLK2J0Oma0zCPbCOqG8OSd aChGNuLq1106YjRPGXsbpKOBugbpW5AgLXUlUXtwjMBJzoZ9GNRCQDJlGCHuO0Q3 gDVw2CRSW6A= =33tc -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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