- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

ANONYMOUS CONTACT SERVICE
by Warren Keith Russell 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

I received a message from System Daemon telling me that I had sent a message using the anonymous contact service, allocating a code name, and explaining how I can be reached anonymously. What does this mean? Sounds great, but I have no idea how I managed to send such a message! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Keith Russell Dynix Library Systems, Provo, Utah, U.S.A. keru(a)cpu.us.dynix.com or keru(a)devg.us.dynix.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Secure voice software issues
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

> First, there has seemed to be general agreement in our earlier discussions > of this concept that the hard part is compressing the voice to the point > where it can go over commonly-available modems. The government-standard > CELP algorithm is too slow for general-purpose home computers. You need > an algorithm that can operate in real time and compress intelligibly down > to about 13K bits per second. I downloaded a copy of the GSM 06.10 software (gsm-1.0) from some machine at Technische Universitat Berlin, tub.cs.tu-berlin.de, which does a 13.3 kb/s voice coding, and has conversion for Sun, linear, mu-law, and A-law. (Jutta Degener and Carsten Bormann, Copyright 1992.) It runs in two different modes - a strictly-follow-the-standards mode and a cheat-a-little-using-floating-point mode. In standard mode, piping the compressor into the decompressor ran epsilon faster than real time on a Sparcstation 2, and epsilon slower on a Sun ELC. Cheating mode took about 2/3 as long as standard mode. Looked like it was fairly portable. I compiled it with GCC. One of the readmes says that compression and decompression run faster than realtime on Sparcs, but I assume that means doing just one at a time, not both simultaneously. As is typical, the decompression is about twice as fast as the compression. I assume it won't be quite fast enough on a 486 box, but a "Version 1.0" of anything can often be made faster; I haven't looked at the algorithm to see how much optimizing can be done, but the code's cleanly written and has a bunch of medium-sized tables and unrolled loops suggesting they've at least done some work on speed. Both of these were on samples that were a little fancier than /dev/tty voice; one was /usr/demo/SOUND/sounds/sample.au, and one was the 106.au "It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas...." Blues Brothers sound-byte from the net. Haven't tried it on other samples yet, and I need to try running it across the net. I also don't have two 14.4kbs external modems to play with on Sparcs, so I haven't been able to verify which V.42/V.42bis/MNP options will let you squeeze out the start/stop bits to let you fit 13.3 kbps of data over it, but people tell me it should work ok. Bill Stewart

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Re: Secure voice software issues
by plmoses＠unix.cc.emory.edu 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

what about the DSP in the new macs? could this be used for encoding?

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Anonymous code name allocated. (fwd)
by szabo＠netcom.com 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

Looks like everybody who sent mail to cypherpunks lately (T=?) got signed up by anon.penent.fi. Forwarded message: > From daemon(a)anon.penet.fi Wed Aug 11 17:54:43 1993 > [you've been signed up, blah blah] > If you want to use a nickname, please send a message to > nick(a)anon.penet.fi, with a Subject: field containing your nickname. But "nick" is already my name! (insert Marx Bros. routine here) szabo(a)netcom.com

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under pressure from University Computing svcs,
by The Phantom 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

I'm going to have to shut down the phantom remailer. Seems someone complained about a remailed message. I got a copy of the message, and it didn't seem to bad to me, but I've gotta go with what UCS says. As of today, the phantom remailer (phantom@mead) is hereby out of service. Matt Matt Thomlinson Say no to the Wiretap Chip! University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. Internet: phantom(a)u.washington.edu phone: (206) 528-5732 PGP 2.2 key available via email or finger phantom(a)hardy.u.washington.edu

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Privacy-friendly auditing
by szabo＠netcom.com 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

Tony Hamilton: > It is nearly impossible to acquire statistics > on the %ROI and %STDEV on individual investment strategies. This can be > for a number of reasons. Some people, such as yourself, are not willing > do publicly divulge specifics. More often, in all likelihood, those figures > divulged are inaccurate or biased in some way. Sounds like another use for the hypothetical Auditing Protocol recently mentioned on the cypherpunks list. The problem is to figure out a way to audit the accounts of a bank, to determine if there are sufficient reserves, without divulging information on the accounts therein, or having to trust an outside auditing agency with the accounts' privacy. If such a protocol could be discovered it might also apply to this problem (or vice versa), how to audit the returns of an investment fund or strategy, without revealing information on the participants in such a fund, or revealing the specific strategy. One approach might be to express the strategy as a unique string which hashes to a unique digital signature, which can then be published along with the returns. Has anybody thought of a more formal way to express this problem? Ways to audit a bank without divulging customer privacy were also discussed at that July Bay Area cypherpunks meeting, and I'll bring up the question again this Saturday. >[figures from govn't & schools relatively unbiased] Governments are quite biased by political concerns, eg the desire to raise taxes and spending, to make themselves look good for elections, etc. Schools have to worry about their government and corporate sponsors, and both worry about political popularity & correctness, which is hardly unbiased. For example the Luddite reaction against program trading after the '87 crash, the reaction against corporate takeovers by "uppity Jews" like Milken in the 80s, etc. along with the biased statistics used to make cases for arguments against "junk" bonds, program trading, etc. Most importantly, these government and university people have no incentive to get it right, while S&P et. al. make their business on their reputation of getting it right. If it was discovered somebody was bribing S&P to cook the books you could be sure their competitors would make a Big Deal about it. In cases where there is no long-standing reputation on the line (and no trustworthy auditors, whether agencies or algorithms) I join you in being dubious about investment claims. Nick Szabo szabo(a)netcom.com

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Re: Clipper trapdoor?
by smb＠research.att.com 12 Aug '93

12 Aug '93

Consider the following hypothetical: Iraqi agents smuggle Clipper phones out of the U.S. Saddam Hussein uses them to communicate with his military commander in Basra. NSA intercepts the communications. Question: How does NSA decrypt the messages? You raise a valid point. I think there are several possible answers. First, of course, since the key escrow mechanism has not yet been established, an exception could be written into the procedures. (And whether they would be established by law or executive order remains to be seen.) There might be some clause saying, ``NSA may have access to escrowed keys, provided that they certify that the targets of their surveillance are foreign powers, as defined in the FISA. If, upon decryption, it is determined that a U.S. citizen's conversations have been intercepted, the procedures of the FISA for such eventualities will apply.'' Yes, they could abuse such a clause -- but by that logic, they could be listening in to cleartext domestic phone calls today. (And of course, there have been such abuses.) A second possible answer is for export phones to come from a separate production run, using a different family key. These would be export-only, and you'd never get a license to export a ``secure'' model. For U.S. residents to make an encrypted phone call to such a site, either they, too, would need such a phone, or they need some way to interoperate with a phone with a different family key. The obstacle there is the verification procedures such phones have, to guard against bogus narc headers being inserted. I'm not certain whether or not such a solution can be found. --Steve Bellovin

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final post
by Kragen Sittler 11 Aug '93

11 Aug '93

Looks like the sands of time are running out on my account. If there is someone here who can inform me of a service provider for internet access in Albuquerque, NM, tell me about it. It's been nice being here and listening to the discussion, even contributing occasionally. Hopefully I wasn't too shy or too mouthy. See y'all in my next account. Kragen Xentrac finger me for other contact points.

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cypher punks (fwd)
by Warren Keith Russell 11 Aug '93

11 Aug '93

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1993 17:16:21 -0700 From: Kevin Kelly <kk(a)well.sf.ca.us> To: keru(a)cpu.us.dynix.com Subject: cypher punks I heard you were asking about online versions of Levy's WIRED article. I'm the editor of WIRED. It's available in an e-text version in the WIRED folder on American Online, but not elsewhere at the moment. In a few months WIREDs' gopher site will be up. My own article in WER is not yet ready for ftp world. I'm finishing a book of which that is one chapter, and I need to focus on that before geting stuff up on the net. -- Kevin Kelly kk(a)well.sf.ca.us

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voluntary compliance
by fnerd＠smds.com 11 Aug '93

11 Aug '93

An interesting statement from the Skipjack proponents is that its use will be voluntary, and there's nothing that the citizen using it will be required to divulge (he doesn't even know the key and they do), and therefore no one's rights are being violated. Assume for the moment that that will remain true. They just want to encourage voluntary compliance. This is an interesting point. How much encouragement counts as coercion? Is it okay if they tax a dollar from a million people and offer the million to you for your information? Is it okay if they make it illegal to sell non-compromised phones (i.e., you don't have to use Skipjack, you can go unencrypted or roll your own)? These people are purposely, avowedly, trying to "encourage" us to do something they have no legal right to require. Why is that okay? Other than asking us as "good citizens" to do something, how is slanting the incentives okay? Do we have the right not to be nudged? -fnerd quote me

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