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Re: S. 1284 To Amend (C) Act
by msprague＠owens.ridgecrest.ca.us 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Tom Bell" <BELL(a)odo.law.udayton.edu wrote: >The 9/28/95 Congression Report states that Senators Hatch and Leahy >have introduced a bill to amend the Copyright Act in accord with the >suggestions of the recent White Paper on the National Information >Infrastructure. In relevant part, S. 1284: 1) makes transmission of copies a >type of publication (and thus potentially a means of infringing a >copyright); and 2) prohibits the importation, manufacture, or >distribution of any device the primary purpose of which is to >deactivate any technological protections that prevent or inhibit the >violation of copyrights. What occurs to me is that PGP could be considered a "device" to obscure contents of data therby preventing the determination of a copyright violation. (delitia) > >Tom W. Bell >Assistant Professor >Law and Technology Program >UD Law School >bell(a)odo.law.udayton.edu > >PGP fingerprint: >78 06 76 AC 32 38 A6 4C B3 81 F4 1E 2E 27 AC 71 > > >

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DOD_com
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

10-30-95. Wash Rag: "Pentagon Plans More Espionage. Business Fronts Abroad Would Expand Efforts Of a Unified Service." The Defense Department has merged its separate covert intelligence operations and plans to expand its espionage abroad, starting with establishment of phony businesses overseas as cover, and has formed the Defense HUMINT (Human Intelligence) Service, or DHS. Under the fiscal 1996 intelligence authorization bill, the DHS has been given a trial period of three years to carry on commercial activities "to provide cover security to intelligence collection activities undertaken abroad." The authority "to provide bona fide commercial cover," was so that DHS's covert operatives could "withstand detailed investigation by hostile foreign intelligence services as well as domestic scrutiny." ... scandal of the Army's Yellow Fruit op ... CIA case officers are working with DHS on the cover companies abroad; cooperation is needed because in recent years military spies overseas inadvertently had set up relations with foreigners known to be double agents. Sen. Bob Kerrey called on CIA Director John M. Deutch to "develop his human collectors, planning 10 or more years in advance for their peak usefulness," a reference to placing them abroad under deep cover for use in future crises. DOD_com (8 kb)

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[joanne@theory.lcs.mit.edu: MIT TOC SEMINAR--DAN BONEH--Thursday, November 2--4:15pm!!]
by lethin＠ai.mit.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: joanne(a)theory.lcs.mit.edu (Joanne Talbot) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 95 12:23:33 EST To: theory-seminars(a)theory.lcs.mit.edu Reply-To: theory-seminars-request(a)theory.lcs.mit.edu Subject: MIT TOC SEMINAR--DAN BONEH--Thursday, November 2--4:15pm!! MIT TOC SEMINAR Thursday, November 2, 1995 Refreshments at 4:00pm, Talk at 4:15pm in NE43-518 ``Quantum Cryptoanalysis of Hidden Linear Forms'' by Dan Boneh Princeton University ABSTRACT Recently there has been a great deal of interest in the power of Quantum Computers. The driving force is the recent beautiful result of Shor that shows that discrete log and factoring are solvable in random quantum polynomial time. We use a method similar to Shor's to obtain a general theorem about quantum polynomial time. We show that any cryptosystem based on what we refer to as a `hidden linear form' can be broken in quantum polynomial time. Our results imply that the discrete log problem is doable in quantum polynomial time over any group including Galois fields and elliptic curves. Joint work with Richard Lipton. Host: Shafi Goldwasser

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/dev/random for FreeBSD [was: Re: /dev/random for Linux]
by Mark Murray 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > > On this same track, I suggest that "/dev/random" devices for unix are > > > an excellent idea. Ted Tso did one for Linux that steals all the bits > > > of semi-random timing information it can. > > > > Anyone know where I can find more information on this wonderful device? > > I've just sent patches (versus the Linux 1.3.28 kernel) off to Linus. > There's a fairly long exposition at the beginning of > drivers/char/random.c which explain its theory of operation. A colleague drew my attention to this, and I was so pleased with it that I ported it to FreeBSD. I kept the interface as close to the original as I could, but made some changes for efficiency and ease: 1) I turned the huge comment at the top explaining the theory of operation into a man page (random(4)). 2) We felt that hooking all interrupts might be dangerous. IDE drives can interrupt at a heck of a rate, and so can some serial ports, and we felt that in these cases _not_ using the interrupt was a good idea. So I added an ioctl to allow the superuser to select his own set, appropriate to the hardware in use. It is nearly impossible to do this automatically. Gimme a yell if you want copies :-) M -- Mark Murray 46 Harvey Rd, Claremont, Cape Town 7700, South Africa +27 21 61-3768 GMT+0200 Finger mark(a)grumble.grondar.za for PGP key

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Re: Keyed-MD5, ITAR, and HTTP-NG
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>At the moment, I'm thinking of making the mandatory schemes be Keyed MD5 >for authentication, and weakened RC4 with an IV for confidentiality, with >the added stipulation being that the user must be informed when key >weakening is being used. I may swap RC4 for DES; they're both public >domain, but RC4 is simpler. They're both shared key, but I don't make PK >stuff mandatory. The licensed version of RC4, or the software that was posted anonymously? Do you really feel comfortable basing an IETF standard on that? When you use the term RC4 do you mean the real version or the posted one, what will you do if they ever conflict? Can you even use the name RC4 for the posted version? It seems to me that RC4 means the RSA licensed code, which presumably you wanted to avoid when you wrote no mandatory PK. Where would you swap RC4 for DES? I assume your added stipulation is a "should" not a "must" item. How are you going to handle key management and naming? /r$

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Re: S. 1284 To Amend (C) Act
by Weld Pond 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> S. 1284, s1201: "No person shall import, manufacture or distribute >> any device, product, or component incorporated into a device or >> product, or offer or perform any service, the primary purpose or ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >IANAL, but I thought these types of laws were already tested and deemed >unconstitutional in cases involving video-tape copying boxes, dual video >cassette dubbing decks, SCMS 'scrubbers', etc... I think the large gray area here is the phrase primary purpose. The primary purpose of a device is in the users mind only. Videotape copying of noncopyright materials is done on a vast scale now due to home camcorders. But even if only a few people had camcorders they should be able to purchase equipment that can be used legally. Introducing the concept of "primary purpose" makes law abiding citizens suffer because some people are breaking the law. If an item has any legal purpose it must be allowed. This trend to take technology that *can* be used to commit crimes out of the hands of citizen units is growing. We see it with crypto export controls and recently with the PA law and Federal law making it a crime to posess devices and software to reprogram cell phones. When this doesn't make a dent in the number of these crimes I predict we will see licensing of technologies such as eeprom programmers, spectrum analyzers, frequency counters, and yes of course strong crypto. Weld Pond - weld(a)l0pht.com - http://www.l0pht.com/~weld L 0 p h t H e a v y I n d u s t r i e s Technical archives for the people - Bio/Electro/Crypto/Radio

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Article on PGP (Noise)
by Eric Anderson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- C'punks I saw a good article on PGP in this month's issue of American Survival Guide. Not only did the article portray the use ofstrong crypto as a good thing for privacy and liberty, it also tells the reader where to obtain PGP. After that, the article goes into some of the issues surrounding PGP such as ITAR, Phil Zimmerman's legal troubles (It even tells how to contribute to his legal fund.) and how the government is really against it. After the background, the article gives clear, detailed, step by step instructions on how to use it; from the inital unzipping of the program to setup and key generation and management. All in all, I found this a very informative article for the new user and even some of the more advanced users (Hey-you learn something new every day, right?). It wasn't the type of article that wouldn't be covered in Time or Newsweak that's for sure. Eric -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQBVAwUBMJWDeyQV+sMsxjC5AQGT9QH9E8BHovGCmu7p9wB2nYQzmebqFPw3sfnR 2CuFTSvkdbg/4yArOsE87S+g28I2B/tscaVYdAO8HA5CdhVVAxbH0w== =wjpi -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Cuban Security Conference
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> International Conference Center > Pabexpo, Havana, Cuba > March 4-9, 1996 > 3rd Ibero-American Seminar on Protection against > Computer Viruses and Security of Information Technologies I wonder if they'd be receptive to talks on private communications, digicash, tax avoidance through digital technology, anarchy and collapse of government power, etc. :-) (Maybe they would; Cuba's got to do something to get their economy out of the post-Soviet-subsidy doldrums, and with the US preventing free trade in sugar for them, maybe allowing capitalism will be their only choice...) For any Yankees interested in going, you generally need to be a journalist of some sort to avoid the Trading With The Enemy Act restrictions, but in cyberspace, that's easily arranged. #--- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #---

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Copy Protection Schemes
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:58 PM 10/30/95, Andrew Loewenstern wrote: >IANAL, but I thought these types of laws were already tested and deemed >unconstitutional in cases involving video-tape copying boxes, dual video >cassette dubbing decks, SCMS 'scrubbers', etc... The copy-defeat and SCMS scrubbers exist in a legal limbo, mainly being sold for "other purposes" and often by companies which come and go in the back pages of audio and video magazines. For example, I've used a audio gadget (Audio Alchemy "DTI") that reclocks the bit stream out of a digital source (CD or DAT player)...one of the side effects is that it also strips (or resets, to be more precise) the SCMS bits on a DAT recording. Effectively, it defeats the SCMS (Serial Copy Management System) copy protection scheme. The company that makes it is of coure well aware of this side effect, as is the audiophile/DAT community, but the company (Audio Alchemy) takes great pains _not_ to mention this side effect in their literature. Likewise, the various Macrovision video copy protection scheme defeaters, such as may be found in the back pages of video magazines, are "for the legitimate user only." I'm fairly certain that any open and aboveboard advertising of such products as "copy protection defeaters" would face legal challenges under the copyright laws. The Go Video and other dual-cassette systems have ostensible legitimate uses (notably, copying of tapes one has made, perhaps of lectures or speeches or other personal recordings) and have been "allowed." In particular, Go Video was held up in its plans for a couple of years while lawyers and regulators negotiated. Other cases, such as the Sony-Disney Betamax case, and, indeed, the Xerox machine itself, involve other issues. Practicalities of enforcement are one of the most important issues. The Supreme Court obviously looked at the noninfringing uses (home movies, for example), the difficulty of enforcing laws against the taping of television shows and movies, etc., and concluded that technology and markets had made that particular aspect of copyright law moot. The rationale of "time-shifting" was just the best face they could put on it, in my view. Anyway, there are lots of issues and lots of nuances. --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: /dev/random for FreeBSD [was: Re: /dev/random for Linux]
by Mark Murray 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> When /dev/random doesn't have "enough" enthropy left does reading > from it return an error, or block? I would strongly suggest > blocking, as the non-blocking behavur is not really all that useful. It returns EOF. M -- Mark Murray 46 Harvey Rd, Claremont, Cape Town 7700, South Africa +27 21 61-3768 GMT+0200 Finger mark(a)grumble.grondar.za for PGP key

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