- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

DMCA Feedback
by Mike Rosing 20 Nov '02

20 Nov '02

There's a few opinionated people on this list, I think :-) Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike ---------- Forwarded message ---------- >From MX%"giffin(a)cs.wisc.edu""Jonathon Giffin" Fri Jul 6 02:39:13 2018 From: MX%"giffin(a)cs.wisc.edu" "Jonathon Giffin" 20-NOV-2002 18:19:49.35 To: MX%"secrsch(a)cs.wisc.edu" CC: Subj: [PKILAB] [SECRSCH] DMCA Feedback For anyone who is interested in voicing their opinion, the US Copyright Office is accepting feedback on the effects of the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act). Feedback will not change the law but may affect enforcement. http://www.copyright.gov/1201/comment_forms/ Jon

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Re: OPPOSE THE WAR! We are going to ruin Iraq to get the oil. Who's ne
by Peter Fairbrother 20 Nov '02

20 Nov '02

Kevin Elliott wrote: > 2) rifled muskets were not effective because of the ponderous reload > time (I don't have precise figures, but the number 1/6th-1/10th the > rate of fire of a smoothbore musket comes to mind) There isn't that much difference in reload times - say 30 seconds for a Kentucky rifle, as opposed to 20 seconds for a Brown Bess musket, for well-trained troops. However, if you are in a volley line and waiting for the last man to reload before firing a volley, that's a lifetime. Remember, you are standing up to reload! Putting a few men armed with rifles in a line of musketmen, they would seem useless, or worse, a liability. Before I get flamed about those figures, may I point out that modern black powder flintlock rifle shooters can and do shoot about one round a minute, without trying to fire fast - a hotspot on the barrel can cause the powder to cookoff unexpectedly, so they service the bore and touch hole between shots, which slows them; but this isn't so important on the battlefield when risks can be taken. It is said that Simon Kenton could reload his Kentucky rifle in 12 seconds. The world record Springfield reload is about 6.5 seconds, a Brown Bess will take a bit longer than a Springfield. At first glance the rifle was a better infantry weapon, but pitched battles at 300 yards just didn't happen - and smoke obscuring the battlefield made aimed shots difficult after a few volleys. Muskets weren't usually aimed, just pointed in the right direction - musketmen were sometimes told to close their eyes when firing to prevent injury from pan flash. In volley fire it isn't really possible to aim - for aimed fire you need to fire when the rifleman is ready, not on command. The superior accuracy of a rifle is no use if you can't or don't aim it. The time taken to aim also slows the rate of fire over an unaimed weapon. Another problem was that early rifles weren't optimised for battle or use in an army. It was often difficult starting the ball down the barrel, which can slow reload time - there's a tool to do it, and you then use the ramrod, but if the rifle/ball/patch combination is right you can start the ball by hitting it with the ball of your hand, and the ramming can be quite quick. Rifles were seldom fitted with bayonets, important to the tactics used at the time - fire a volley or two, then a bayonet charge while your opponents are reloading. They were also too fragile to use as a close quarter club. Rifles weren't standardised either, so ammunition and parts couldn't be shared and the riflemen had to cast/roll their own balls. Rifle balls need to be more accurate than musket balls. Rifles take more training to use as well. But I think the main reason that rifles didn't play a bigger part, apart from the usual military inertia (google Ferguson rifle for a British example of this), was the simple lack of rifles, and their cost. Many men fighting in the Revolutionary War didn't have any firearms at all. -- Peter Fairbrother

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Re: Psuedo-Private Key (eJazeera)
by Peter Fairbrother 20 Nov '02

20 Nov '02

Tyler Durden wrote: [...] > Let's say I've been coerced into revealing the private key to a certain > encrypted message. And now, of course, the authorities use that key and open > the message, and see the contents (let's assume they are picture of a > demonstration or whatever). > > WOULDN'T IT BE NICE...If the original encrypted message actually had TWO > messages inside it, both very similar. In this example, one of the messages > is the "incriminating" pictures of the demonstration, the other is pictures > of Pam Anderson or whatever. > > AND, this double message has two private keys associated with it: one > corresponds to the Pam Anderson photos, the other corresponds to the > Demonstration photos. When coerced, I give up the key that opens the Pam > Anderson photos (while hopefully annhilating the Incriminating photos). > > Of course, there's no way the authorities know that there was another > message (not if done very cleverly...Pam Anderson photos might be a little > obvious) that they destroyed when they used the fake Private Key. > > Does this exist? Would it be difficult? Yes it exists. It's called deniable encryption. Two-level deniable encryption is not hard, but it usually involves increases in data size. There is some stuff about this in Crypto and Eurocrypt reports. Steganography and steganogaphic filing systems can do something similar, but the increase in message size tends to be larger. I am developing a form of deniable encryption (as part of m-o-o-t) that works slightly differently and does not involve message-size increases - in fact it it decreases message size. It's grammer-based and works a bit like this: A sentence is parsed, and eg a noun is encoded as a number relating to one of a publicly shared dictionary of nouns. This number is then encrypted. Decrypting with a random key will give a noun in that position in the sentence in all possible decryptions, and a good proportion of all randomly keyed decryptions will apparently make sense. There is a lot more involved, so eg both parties can give out the same false key, and so eg the same nouns used more than once in a message will decrypt to identical nouns in decryptions, as well as notions of closeness in the words used in a typical message, but I have done both the theoretical unicity calculations and some practical tests, and it works for email-length messages. The main implementation problems I have are coding time and that the only parser that works well enough is proprietary. If anyone else is working on something similar I would like to know. I'm probably not a cypherpunk, more a privacy avocate, but I do write code. :) -- Peter Fairbrother

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Re: Psuedo-Private Key (eJazeera)
by Tyler Durden 20 Nov '02

20 Nov '02

Well, the basic idea is to co-encrypt some "fake" data that looks like the real data, so that when they find it (using the key to the fake data of course) they'll figure you gave them the real key, because they won't know that there ever was a fake key leading to fake data. (And I suppose there's no reason not to allow for mutliple batches of fake data that get encrypted along with the real data.) And depending on the situation, the key-holder will decide whether to give them a key that destroys the real data, or that doesn't (and hides it). In some situations, the fake data could be something completely innocuous and unrelated to what "they" were looking for, or in other cases it could look like what they were looking for albeit with doctored information. >From: dmolnar <dmolnar(a)hcs.harvard.edu> >To: Tyler Durden <camera_lumina(a)hotmail.com> >CC: keith(a)nullify.org, <cypherpunks(a)lne.com> >Subject: Re: Psuedo-Private Key (eJazeera) >Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 15:49:55 -0500 (EST) > > > >On Wed, 20 Nov 2002, Tyler Durden wrote: > > > to have a big jpg of a hand with middle finger extended...) More than >this, > > they will have unknowingly destroyed the real data. (Perhaps a 3rd key >is > > needed that DOESN'T destroy the original data, just 'hides' it a la > > Rubberhose.) > >The question I've seen asked about this is then -- how do you get them to >stop beating you? If they know you might have some number of duress keys, >one of which might undetectably hide the data, what stops them from >beating you until > > 1) you give them a key that shows them what they want to see > 2) you die > >Maybe this isn't that different from the ordinary unencrypted case, where >if they don't find it on your HD they can accuse you of burying disks in >the backyard or something. Or is the goal protecting the data and not >protecting your life? > >-David _________________________________________________________________ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

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RMS on "Treacherous Computing"
by Steve Mynott 20 Nov '02

20 Nov '02

"Who should your computer take its orders from? Most people think their computers should obey them, not obey someone else. With a plan they call "trusted computing", large media corporations (including the movie companies and record companies), together with computer companies such as Microsoft and Intel, are planning to make your computer obey them instead of you. Proprietary programs have included malicious features before, but this plan would make it universal." <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html> -- Steve Mynott <steve(a)tightrope.demon.co.uk>

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Onion Self-Censorship
by Eric Cordian 20 Nov '02

20 Nov '02

Cable News is reporting that the Onion, America's Finest News Source, has pulled from its Web site an article on the recent siege at the Moscow theatre by Chechen rebels. Does anyone have a copy of the article they could post? I'd like to see what sorts of comments about "terrorism" are unacceptable to publish, even as parody. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

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Virus Alert
by abuse＠bizmailsrvcs.net 20 Nov '02

20 Nov '02

We have detected a virus (WORM_KLEZ.H) in your mail traffic sent from arh(a)entertainmenteventsinc.com in the file valign.pif on 11/20/2002 14:39:51. We took the action delete. If you have questions regarding files or updating/installing Anti-virus protection on your PC, please contact your e-mail administrator or help desk.

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How IRS/TIGTA shares information with FBI
by Declan McCullagh 20 Nov '02

20 Nov '02

released today... http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-50R

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Re: OPPOSE THE WAR! We are going to ruin Iraq to get the oil. Who's ne
by Tyler Durden 20 Nov '02

20 Nov '02

"As to dangerous, I find that most of the people using violence in this country are anti-drug, not pro." Can't exactly agree with ya' here. Just watch COPS...most of those actually committing stupid crimes are apparently pro-Alchohol. Pot? We can't have THAT be legalized now, or the CIA will lose a valuable source of covert action funding. >From: Jim Choate <ravage(a)einstein.ssz.com> >To: <cypherpunks(a)einstein.ssz.com> >CC: Alif The Terrible <measl(a)mfn.org> >Subject: Re: OPPOSE THE WAR! We are going to ruin Iraq to get the oil. >Who's ne >Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 00:50:09 -0600 (CST) > >On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, Mike Diehl wrote: > > > As to drugs and employment. I'm glad to see that you recognized that a > > programer, like myself, has far fewer responsibilities than a (mere?) > > babysitter. But, I still don't want to go to work with someone who is >high > > on something. When people are high, they are unpredictable, and >potentially > > dangerous. Drugs are a form of escapism. > >That is complete and total bullshit. The fact -some- drugs have problems >doesn't equate to -all- drugs. > >Further, people are unpredictable in and of themselves. Drugs or no drugs. >As to dangerous, I find that most of the people using violence in this >country are anti-drug, not pro. > >When was the last time a group of pot heads kicked anyones door down? > > > -- > ____________________________________________________________________ > > We don't see things as they are, ravage(a)ssz.com > we see them as we are. www.ssz.com > jchoate(a)open-forge.org > Anais Nin www.open-forge.org > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963

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RE: OPPOSE THE WAR! We are going to ruin Iraq to get the oil. Who 's ne
by Tyler Durden 20 Nov '02

20 Nov '02

"In school yard politics this edge is normally a weapon of some sort that can equalize the playing field (guns usually in the US, try going to an inner city public school for 2 years). Saddam sees this and that is what let him to develop those WMD, to equalize against a superior foe / bully" A good point from Mr Trei. I'd follow this up by saying that most kids, when getting that weapon, do not plan on using it, but hope that it's presence alone will act as a deterrent..."You c-c-can't push me around anymore 'cause I got THIS..." At the very least, it changes the nature of the discussion at the bargaining table (this is precisely what Mao meant by "Diplomacy comes out of the barrel of a gun". The problem with Saddam, however, is that he does have a track record of actually using such weapons, most notably with the Kurds (where he gassed a few 10s of thousands). Not a great scenario, no matter how you look at it. _________________________________________________________________ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

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