July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

[drone-list] WSJ article
by villa＠ee.ucla.edu 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Hi - article today, "Could We Trust Killer Robots?" This article discusses research (and I'm not making this up) into "lethal autonomous systems" - e.g. algorithms that would enable drones to make automated decisions to launch strikes. John http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303448404577410032825529656.h… _______________________________________________ drone-list mailing list drone-list(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/drone-list If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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FC: Day #2: U.S. v. Jim Bell report from federal court in Tacoma
by Declan McCullagh 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,42860,00.html DOJ: Cypherpunk Threatened Feds by Declan McCullagh (declan(a)wired.com) 9:00 a.m. Apr. 5, 2001 PDT TACOMA, Washington -- A federal prosecutor said on Wednesday that an Internet essayist spent months illegally compiling information about IRS agents through CD-ROM databases and conversations with members of a mailing list of "cypherpunks." Robb London, an assistant U.S. Attorney, said in court that Jim Bell was not conducting a legitimate investigation of government wrongdoing last year but instead was a disturbed person who had never renounced a political treatise he wrote entitled "Assassination Politics." "It's still on the Internet today," London said during the second day of the trial in federal district court. "He has not retracted it." Bell is best known for writing the long-winded thought experiment predicting how future technologies including untraceable digital cash, encryption and anonymity should allow anyone upset with the feds to bet on when a certain government agent will die. The winner, presumably the assassin, wins the pool of money. London said that while Bell may not have directly threatened IRS agent Jeff Gordon, "he has done it indirectly through 'Assassination Politics.'" Bell has pleaded not guilty to five counts of interstate stalking that allegedly took place last year, saying he was legally assembling information about government agents he thought were participating in a conspiracy involving illegal surveillance. He is not accused of making direct threats or seeking physical confrontations. As evidence of Bell's malicious intent, London showed the jury a photograph of four guns that Bell legally owned up until the IRS raided him in April 1997 during a prior prosecution. The weapons: Two SKS rifles, a Smith & Wesson 629 pistol, and a Ruger mini-14 rifle. London characterized this as a collection of assault weapons that amounted to "serious firepower" and said, "That's what the agents were afraid of." That prompted an objection from Bell's attorney, Robert Leen. "(You're) asking the jury to draw an adverse infrerence from what was, at the time, an exercise of a constitutional right," Leen said. The government has not alleged that Bell owned firearms more recently than 1997. Bell pleaded guilty in July 1997 to interfering with IRS agents and using false Social Security numbers. U.S. District Judge Jack Tanner allowed the government to show to the jury photos of the weapons Bell once owned -- one rifle had a bayonet mounted on it -- and warned Bell that if he made any additional outbursts, he would be muzzled or hauled out of the room. Bell had interrupted Leen a few times and pounded on the table two or three times to get Leen's attention. Bell also wrote "SHAM" on a white pad of paper and held it so spectators could see. London complained that some people were downloading public documents through the Pacer service provided by the federal court system, translating the graphical TIFF images into text, and posting the documents on a website. He warned that soon everything will be "splashed all over the Internet for all to see." The prosecutor likened it to an illicit activity: "Transferring court documents from our computer onto the Internet." That got the attention of Tanner, an 82-year-old jurist with little patience for lawyers and even less patience for online open-records activists. He sealed the entire court file, including public documents like the charges against Bell, saying that "anything that's filed" will remain in his chambers. [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if it remains intact. To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- End forwarded message -----

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Removing watermarks from pdfs
by Bryan Bishop 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

How about getting rid of those pesky watermarks in pdfs? As far as I can tell, there are only visible watermarks. Invisible watermarks can be detected by comparing the same pdf retrieved through two different gateways (like from two different libraries). I have checked Nature Publishing Group and Elsevier (specifically ScienceDirect) and found no checksum differences. But there are some culprits out there that do some nasty things to documents: * lines of text added to the document containing an ip address, timestamp, university name, etc. (IEEE Xplore) * entire pages added to documents with tracking information (Wiley? I can't remember exactly.) * possibly some might be using CVE-2010-0188 to phone home to publishers. PDF supports javascript and flash and other terrible things, so it would be interesting to check if any publishers have attempted to use these vulnerabilities to their advantage. * there might be "hidden" information inside a pdf that changes when you download a document, but so far no evidence of this has been found (so I don't believe it's likely, but it's worth keeping in mind). I think it would be useful to work on some ways to remove watermarks from pdfs. I am aware of largely two types of pdfs that publishers distribute. One is the feared "collection of images", which may or may not have extra images slapped on with ip address information. The second is a pdf with actual selectable text. The first type, with just images everywhere, can be de-watermarked by just drawing images over the offensive text. The second type requires some other creative thinking, maybe just a collection of regular expressions. For instance, here's a line that IEEE Xplore once added to a paper that I was reading: "Authorized licensed use limited to: University of Getting Schooled. Downloaded on July 39, 2009 at 15:10 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply." In fact, you can see this line appearing in other (4,000) papers that other people have been reading: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22Authorized+licensed+use+limited+to%22 Here's another example. AAAS/Science is of particular interest. They attach an entire front page and add text in the margins everywhere: "Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 30, 1912" So I think a good first step would be to collect examples of text added to documents that need be detected by any eraser we write. In fact, maybe all identifying information for an article should be removed, and just replace it with an easy-to-copy-down text code (like "blue-apple-oranges" to refer to a specific document in an index). Does anyone else have some samples to share of nasty watermarks worth removing? Also, any favorite ways to manipulate pdfs? - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "science-liberation-front" group. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to science-liberation-front+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: [p2p-hackers] Nash equilibrium on p2p networks
by Michael Rogers 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On 07/03/12 20:05, James A. Donald wrote: > If I understand the proposed system > http://www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/~mrio/papers/infocom09.pdf correctly: > > Every entity has a public key. > > Leechers issue IOUs to seeders. This creates a network of IOUs. The > pledgeroute software looks for ways to cancel out IOUs, thus honoring > them - for example Ann seeds Bob, Bob seeds Carol, and Carol seeds Ann. > > If your IOUs get cancelled out, your key gains reputation, causing your > IOUs to be valued. > > It is not clear to me how the sybil attack is avoided: Is it that you > only gain reputation with those benefiting from the cancellation? If you consider a cluster of Sybils, the creator of the Sybils is free to create any structure of IOUs within the cluster, and any structure of IOUs from Sybils to non-Sybils. But IOUs from non-Sybils to Sybils can only be created by non-Sybils, and that only happens when the Sybils provide a service. No matter how many Sybils a person creates, the total debt owed to them by non-Sybils is limited by the total amount of service they provide. So there's no advantage in creating Sybils. It's not impossible - it's just pointless. I think that's how it works, anyway - it's been a while since I read the paper and I could be confusing it with the Sybilproof reputation mechanisms paper Matteo mentioned. Cheers, Michael _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers(a)lists.zooko.com http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: Ross's TCPA paper
by Paul Harrison 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

on 6/23/02 6:50 AM, R. A. Hettinga at rah(a)shipwright.com wrote: > > --- begin forwarded text > > > Status: U > From: "Lucky Green" <shamrock(a)cypherpunks.to> > To: <cypherpunks(a)lne.com> > Cc: <cryptography(a)wasabisystems.com> > Subject: RE: Ross's TCPA paper > Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 23:01:12 -0700 > Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)lne.com > <Tres Snippage..> > None of these obstacles are impossible to overcome, but not by Joe > Computer User, not by even the most talented 16-year old hacker, and not > even by many folks in the field. Sure, I know some that could overcome > it, but they may not be willing to do the time for what by then will be > a crime. Come to think of it, doing so already is a crime. > > --Lucky Green > > --- end forwarded text > The discussion of TCPA has a tendency to avoid serious discussion of what I feel is the core security issue: ownership of the platform. Comments such as Lucky's: "TPM will make it near impossible for the owner of that motherboard to access supervisor mode on the CPU without their knowledge" obfuscate this. The Trusted Computing Platform includes the TPM, the motherboard and the CPU, all wired together with some amount of tamper resistance. It is meaningless to speak of different "owners" of different parts. The owner of a TCP might be a corporate IT department (for employee machines), a cable company (for set-top boxen), or an individual. The important question is not whether trusted platforms are a good idea, but who will own them. Purchasing a TCP without the keys to the TPM is like buying property without doing a title search. Of course it is possible to _rent_ property from a title holder, and in some cases this is desirable. I would think a TCP _with_ ownership of the TPM would be every paranoid cypherpunk's wet dream. A box which would tell you if it had been tampered with either in hardware or software? Great. Someone else's TCP is more like a rental car: you want the rental company to be completely responsible for the safety of the vehicle. This is the economic achilles heal of using TCPA for DRM. Who is going to take financial responsibility for the proper operation of the platform? It can work for a set top box, but it won't fly for a general purpose computer. --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.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'

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[IP] Ruling on Doe v Chao [ for IP list]
by Dave Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

-----Original Message----- From: janice(a)e-mailamerica.net Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 14:32:50 To:Dave Farber <dave(a)farber.net> Subject: Ruling on Doe v Chao [ for IP list] Dave, The Supreme Court handed down its decision on the important Doe v Chao case today; please see attached. -- Court Protects Gov't From Privacy Suits Associated Press Tue Feb 24,12:29 PM ET WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court made it tougher Tuesday to make the government pay for revealing someone's Social Security (news - web sites) number and other personal information. Justices ruled 6-3 against a coal miner who sought $1,000 in damages after his Social Security number was revealed. He sued under the Privacy Act, a 1974 law which prohibits routine data collection on ordinary Americans and protects people from having their government records intentionally disclosed. The Supreme Court said the Virginia man, known as Buck Doe, had to prove that the government's violation of the privacy law actually harmed him. Justice David H. Souter, writing for the majority, said it is not enough to argue that someone suffers "presumed damages" when information about them is improperly made public. At issue was the Labor Department (news - web sites)'s handling of black lung disease claims. The department used miners' Social Security numbers as case numbers and then published the numbers in reports that became part of computerized legal research databases. In a dissent that was longer than the ruling in the case, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (news - web sites), joined by Justices John Paul Stevens (news - web sites) and Stephen Breyer (news - web sites), said that the miner was emotionally damaged by the government's mistake. He should not have to prove out-of-pocket expenses, Ginsburg said, like fees for credit reports to ensure his identity was not stolen, or costly prescription drugs for anxiety. The case is Doe v. Chao, 02-1377 ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as rah(a)shipwright.com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.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'

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Re: [IP] Verizon says phone record disclosure is protected
by Ethan Ackerman 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

free speech Greetings Dave, If I understand correctly, Verizon is now arguing in the NSA spying cases that turning over records to an arm of the government is protected 1st Amendment speech, even if the process of turning them over was of questionable legality. Maybe they want to run that by their co-defendants AT&T first, because AT&T has argued just the opposite... A little over a year ago, AT&T employee Mark Klein turned over proprietary records to the US District Court (an arm of the government) hearing the NSA spying cases brought by EFF. AT&T strongly objected, asserting trade secret claims and that the process of turning them over was of questionable legality. Maybe AT&T's proposed solution in its case should apply here as well: "The Confidential Documents were taken outside of the discovery [[[FISA]]] process. They contain confidential and proprietary AT&T [[[US citzen caller's]]] information. AT&T therefore has filed the Confidential Motion requesting that the Court order plaintiffs [[[NSA]]] to return the documents and make no further use of them unless and until they are obtained by proper [[[FISA-compliant]]] means." from http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/ATT38_sealing_motion.pdf bracketed comments mine, obviously. On 5/8/07, David Farber <dave(a)farber.net> wrote: > > >Begin forwarded message: > >From: Joshua Tinnin <krinklyfig(a)gmail.com> >Date: May 8, 2007 11:09:44 AM EDT >To: David Farber <dave(a)farber.net> >Subject: Verizon says phone record disclosure is protected free speech >Reply-To: krinklyfig(a)gmail.com > >http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070507-verizon-says-phone- >record-disclosure-is-protected-free-speech.html > >Verizon says phone record disclosure is protected free speech > >By Nate Anderson | Published: May 07, 2007 - 01:48PM CT > >Verizon is one of the phone companies currently being sued over its >alleged disclosure of customer phone records to the NSA. In a response >to the court last week, the company asked for the entire consolidated >case against it to be thrown out - on free speech grounds. > >The response also alleges that the case should be thrown out because >even looking into the issue could violate state secrets, of course, >but >a much longer section of the response tries to make the case that >Verizon has a First Amendment right to "petition" the government. >"Based >on plaintiffs' own allegations, defendants' right to communicate such >information to the government is fully protected by the Free Speech >and >Petition Clauses of the First Amendment," argue Verizon's lawyers. > >Essentially, the argument is that turning over truthful information to >the government is free speech, and the EFF and ACLU can't do anything >about it. In fact, Verizon basically argues that the entire lawsuit >is a >giant SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) suit, and >that the case is an attempt to deter the company from exercising its >First Amendment right to turn over customer calling information to >government security services. > >"Communicating facts to the government is protected petitioning >activity," says the response, even when the communication of those >facts >would normally be illegal or would violate a company's owner >promises to >its customers. Verizon argues that, if the EFF and other groups have >concerns about customer call records, the only proper remedy "is to >impose restrictions on the government, not on the speaker's right to >communicate." > >With all of the phone company cases consolidated into one master case, >Verizon is hoping to have the case thrown out on free-speech grounds, >putting an end to its legal troubles over the issue. Should it >fail, the >Bush administration is already preparing to ask Congress for >retroactive >immunity for all telecommunications companies that assisted the >government after September 11, 2001. The government is also fighting >hard in court on behalf of the phone companies, filing repeated briefs >which claim that "state secrets" trump even the legality of the >alleged >security programs. > > >------------------------------------------- >Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now >RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ >Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[IP] Re: Verizon says phone record disclosure is protected free speech
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Begin forwarded message:

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Workshop on Elliptic Curves
by Tanja Lange 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

The study of Elliptic Curves has been closely connected with Machine computation almost since the invention of computers -- in 1952 Emil Artin had John von Neumann perform an extensive calculation relating to elliptic curves on the IAS MANIAC computer. The fundamental papers of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer in 1965, which gave rise to the Birch-Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture were buttressed with extensive machine computation. There has been extensive interplay between theory and computation relating to ranks of elliptic curves, Heegner points, Galois representations, Sato-Tate distributions, and many other areas. The year 2010 marks the beginning of a 25 year period in which a number of influential papers initiated a fundamental connection between elliptic curves, cryptology and the theory of computation. . Rene Schoof about fast algorithms for counting points on elliptic curves over finite fields . Hendrik Lenstra about integer factorization using elliptic curves . Victor Miller and Neal Koblitz about the security of using elliptic Curves over finite fields in a Diffie-Hellman key exchange. . Shafi Goldwasser and Joe Kilian about primality proving using elliptic curves . Len Adleman and Ming-Deh Huang about primality proving using abelian varieties . Oliver Atkin and Francois Morain about primality proving using elliptic curves. Since 1997 there has been an annual workshop on Elliptic Curve Cryptography. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the above papers we will hold a full week meeting intermixing talks which are concerned with the applications of elliptic curves in cryptography and other fundamental results concerning elliptic curves and computation. The meeting will be held from Oct 18-22, 2010 at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, USA. The organizers are Victor Miller (Center for Communications Research), William Stein and Neal Koblitz (University of Washington), and Kristin Lauter (Microsoft Research)

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Workshop on Elliptic Curves
by Tanja Lange 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

The study of Elliptic Curves has been closely connected with Machine computation almost since the invention of computers -- in 1952 Emil Artin had John von Neumann perform an extensive calculation relating to elliptic curves on the IAS MANIAC computer. The fundamental papers of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer in 1965, which gave rise to the Birch-Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture were buttressed with extensive machine computation. There has been extensive interplay between theory and computation relating to ranks of elliptic curves, Heegner points, Galois representations, Sato-Tate distributions, and many other areas. The year 2010 marks the beginning of a 25 year period in which a number of influential papers initiated a fundamental connection between elliptic curves, cryptology and the theory of computation. . Rene Schoof about fast algorithms for counting points on elliptic curves over finite fields . Hendrik Lenstra about integer factorization using elliptic curves . Victor Miller and Neal Koblitz about the security of using elliptic Curves over finite fields in a Diffie-Hellman key exchange. . Shafi Goldwasser and Joe Kilian about primality proving using elliptic curves . Len Adleman and Ming-Deh Huang about primality proving using abelian varieties . Oliver Atkin and Francois Morain about primality proving using elliptic curves. Since 1997 there has been an annual workshop on Elliptic Curve Cryptography. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the above papers we will hold a full week meeting intermixing talks which are concerned with the applications of elliptic curves in cryptography and other fundamental results concerning elliptic curves and computation. The meeting will be held from Oct 18-22, 2010 at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, USA. The organizers are Victor Miller (Center for Communications Research), William Stein and Neal Koblitz (University of Washington), and Kristin Lauter (Microsoft Research)

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