- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: Liberating Schneier's Code?
by Peter Wayner 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In re Schneier's property rights: ` He didn't write most of it. The stuff I donated to the collection is freely distributable (but not public domain). I suspect that someone else could put together their own collection.

2 1

Re: Gee...
by dmandl＠lehman.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: "Phil G. Fraering" <pgf(a)srl01.cacs.usl.edu> > > All those cryptographers, and their solution to exporting restricted > source code is to print them up as barcode in books.\ > > How about tarring the code together, encrypting it, and e-mailing the > message out? See you in jail. Anyone can get this stuff out of the country surreptitiously. I think the point was to get it out _legally_, through the law's _own_ loopholes. Then they're completely powerless to stop it or persecute the responsible parties in any way. It also makes any further attempts to stop the export of the algorithm pointless (though I guess that wouldn't stop them anyway--the government has spent billions of dollars protecting "secrets" that have long since been leaked by renegade CIA agents.) --Dave.

3 2

Re: Liberating Schneier's Code?
by Peter Wayner 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yes, books are hard to update, but hardware is even harder. What is going to happen to all of those Capstone chips that use the "old" unfixed version of MD-5? Imagine what would happen if the Capstone was widely used in the country? It could easily cost many millions to update an algorithm in hardware.

3 2

Re: Crypto books
by koontzd＠lrcs.loral.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: Karl Lui Barrus <klbarrus(a)owlnet.rice.edu> >I have this book - "Cryptography and Secure Communications" by Man >Young Rhee. It covers basic cryptography (number theory, DES, block >ciphers, stream ciphers, public key systems) and also communications >(BCH codes, Reed-Solomon Codes, Error control for cryptosystems). If you like the Meyer/Matras book 'Crptography', you'll like this one.

2 1

tcmay on wfmu-fm (nyc)
by dmandl＠lehman.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

New York City-area cypherpunks: Tim May has graciously agreed to be on my radio show again this Saturday (via telephone). We'll be talking about the Big Brother aspects of Clipper/Capstone, and maybe a bit about Digital Telephony if we get to it. The vital stats: WFMU (East Orange, NJ) 91.1 FM Saturday, April 30, 12 noon local time (my show runs from 11 to 1). No, I won't be taping it. Tell all your friends. --Dave.

1 0

Re: Gee...
by dmandl＠lehman.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Sandy Sandfort <sandfort(a)crl.com> > On Wed, 27 Apr 1994, David Mandl wrote: > > > Anyone can get this stuff out of the country surreptitiously. > > I think the point was to get it out _legally_, through the law's > > _own_ loopholes. Then they're completely powerless to stop it > > or persecute the responsible parties in any way. . . . > > Wrong on both counts. Getting it out legally would be nice--it's a great > *fallback* position--but that's not the object of the game. The idea is > to get it out and make it widely available. Period. First of all, the above was not my position (though I have no big problem with it). I was just explaining the point of this thread, which the previous poster seemed to be unaware of. Now, are you saying I'm wrong about it being easy to get crypto software out of the country illegally? If so, you've got to be kidding. This stuff has probably crossed the border fifty times TODAY. Everyone on this list knows that. If simply getting crypto code out of the country By Any Means Necessary was the goal, this thread would never have been started, Perry would never have considering publishing code in machine-readable form, and no one would have done the little test with Schneier's book (Hal?...I forget who it was). The point was to get it out in such a way that no one had to hide from the lawman or pretend the code was written overseas, and we could all walk in the sun. Me, I have no problem with people exporting it illegally to their heart's content. > The Constitution and other laws are not magic talismans. It is fantasy > thinking that technical compliance with the government's laws renders > them "completely powerless." A Smith & Wesson beats four-of-a-kind. Your point? Sure, the government can do whatever they want. So? I have no interest in the Constitution and the "Law" (though I obey the latter because I'm not keen to spend the rest of my life in jail). I just don't care. All I was doing above was explaining this thread to someone who seemed to miss the whole point. > S a n d y, (Attorney-out-law)

2 1

No Subject
by nobody＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

rarachel(a)prism.poly.edu (Arsen Ray Arachelian) wrote: > <<How about tarring the code together, encrypting it, and > e-mailing the message out?>> > > > Gee, how about getting arrested for exporting munitions? People have been doing that for years and no one's gotten arrested yet. :) In case you haven't noticed, people outside the US requesting crypto stuff usually don't have too much trouble finding a volunteer willing to send it to them.

1 0

a test server?
by nelson＠crynwr.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is there a PGP test server anywhere? I'd like to use its public key to encrypt a message, mail it to the server, and have it mail the plaintext back to me. I'd also like to have it look up my pubic key in the appropriate repository (which is?) and verify that my message was signed properly. -russ <nelson(a)crynwr.com> ftp.msen.com:pub/vendor/crynwr/crynwr.wav Crynwr Software | Crynwr Software sells packet driver support | ask4 PGP key 11 Grant St. | +1 315 268 1925 (9201 FAX) | Quakers do it in the light Potsdam, NY 13676 | LPF member - ask me about the harm software patents do.

1 0

No Subject
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Since I haven't seen this article float through the list, I hope John doesn't mind it being reposted. From: gnu(a)toad.com (John Gilmore) Newsgroups: alt.politics.org.nsa,comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Why is clipper worse than "no encryption like we have today"? Date: 27 Apr 94 08:50:17 GMT Organization: Cygnus Support, Mt. View, California Mike Tighe <tighe(a)convex.COM> wrote: > But the NSA is not going to control the keys, are they? I thought it was > going to be under the control of two independent agencies. And even if they > are leaked, how is that worse then the system we have today, where no keys > are required? It's worse because the market keeps moving toward providing real encryption. If Clipper succeeds, it will be by displacing real secure encryption. If real secure encryption makes it into mass market communications products, Clipper will have failed. The whole point is not to get a few Clippers used by cops; the point is to make it a worldwide standard, rather than having 3-key triple-DES with RSA and Diffie-Hellman become the worldwide standard. We'd have decent encryption in digital cellular phones *now*, except for the active intervention of Jerry Rainville of NSA, who `hosted' a meeting of the standards committee inside Ft. Meade, lied to them about export control to keep committee documents limited to a small group, and got a willing dupe from Motorola, Louis Finkelstein, to propose an encryption scheme a child could break. The IS-54 standard for digital cellular doesn't describe the encryption scheme -- it's described in a separate document, which ordinary people can't get, even though it's part of the official accredited standard. (Guess who accredits standards bodies though -- that's right, the once pure NIST.) The reason it's secret is because it's so obviously weak. The system generates a 160-bit "key" and then simply XORs it against each block of the compressed speech. Take any ten or twenty blocks and recover the key by XORing frequent speech patterns (like silence, or the letter "A") against pieces of the blocks to produce guesses at the key. You try each guess on a few blocks, and the likelihood of producing something that decodes like speech in all the blocks is small enough that you'll know when your guess is the real key. NSA is continuing to muck around in the Digital Cellular standards committee (TR 45.3) this year too. I encourage anyone who's interested to join the committee, perhaps as an observer. Contact the Telecommunications Industry Association in DC and sign up. Like any standards committee, it's open to the public and meets in various places around the country. I'll lend you a lawyer if you're a foreign national, since the committee may still believe that they must exclude foreign nationals from public discussions of cryptography. Somehow the crypto conferences have no trouble with this; I think it's called the First Amendment. NSA knows the law here -- indeed it enforces it via the State Dept -- but lied to the committee. -- John Gilmore gnu(a)toad.com -- gnu(a)cygnus.com -- gnu(a)eff.org Can we talk in private? Join me in the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Not if the FBI and NSA have their way. Ask membership(a)eff.org how.

1 0

No Subject
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I simply had to pass this article along to c'punks... Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk From: milles(a)fi.gs.com (Stevens Miller) Subject: NSA remarks at "Lawyers and the Internet" Date: Tue, 26 Apr 1994 17:04:33 GMT I'm a computer programmer and attorney who is a member of the Committee on Technology and the Practice of Law, a task force assembled by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. Last Friday we held a conference on "Lawyers and the Internet." Approximately 200 lawyers attended. Speaking in favor of the Clipper proposal was Stuart Baker of the NSA. I won't repeat his substantial arguments, but his formal approach (which Mike Godwin tells me is becoming a standard component of the government's pro-Clipper road show) is worth some attention. Parroting his own words at CFP, Baker told us: - The debate over the Clipper proposal is "really just a culture clash among net-heads." - Those opposing the proposal are late-coming counter-culturists, "who couldn't go to Woodstock because they had to do their trig homework." - Opponents envision themselves as would-be "cybernauts in bandoliers and pocket-protectors." I quote these remarks (as best I can from memory; my hands were shaking too much to write clearly at this point) to make it clear that our government's representative has reached a conclusion about the community opposing its plan. He has concluded that the members of that community are so beneath his respect that it is more appropriate to make fun of them than it is to respond to their views. As Godwin pointed out later, the NSA really just doesn't care what anyone says. That, he said, is why Baker repeatedly invokes the spectre of child-molestation as the chief evil Clipper will prevent; by that invocation is much meritorious debate deflected. Baker replied to this by emphasizing the reality of the pedophilia potential of networks, telling us that many users of networks "are teenaged boys with inept social skills." Regardless of the law-enforcement potential of this plan, it is worth noting that an official spokesman for the government endorses it by pointing out that its opponents valued their studies more highly than they did rock and roll. That because the popular image of the bookworm can be juxtaposed against that of Rambo in a funny way, bookworms don't have to be taken seriously. That if you play with computers as a youngster, your community, your parents and your own brain can't save you. That the government must protect you from your own ineptitude, whether you want its help or not. The message was pretty clear: Stuart Baker doesn't care what you say, but he wants the power to listen. --- Stevens R. Miller |"The complete truth is not the (212) 227-1594 | prerogative of the human judge." sharp(a)echonyc.com | New York, New York | - Supreme Court of Israel

8 8