- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

RE: Gmail as Blacknet
by Major Variola (ret) 09 Apr '04

09 Apr '04

At 09:58 AM 4/9/04 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote: >Well, I never claimed to be Einstein, but your "3 simple steps" sound a hell >of a lot like my recipe for making a ham sandwich: Hardly. One could put together a very slick "drop file here for encrypted net storage" script in a day. One could even prototype this using any net mail system like Yahoo, albeit with a rather piddling storage capacity. By including plaintext search tokens (meaning known only to you, perhaps derived from hashing keywords) you could use Gmail's search feature to find stored data. This uses local encryption and net-based storage & backup. Sounds good to me. It would be rather telling if Google said "no encrypted email" wouldn't it? :-)

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RE: Gmail as Blacknet
by Major Variola (ret) 09 Apr '04

09 Apr '04

> And I'd like to see their >adwords facility struggling to come up with something appropriate when >the only legible text is "BEGIN PGP ENCRYPTED MESSAGE". Wow are you non-commercial :-) All the spy stores, sec phone makers, disk encryptors, VPN vendors, etc will be paying top dollar to get seen by privacy fans. Perhaps PGP etc will take out ads for those who *don't* have this header :-)

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Re: voting, KISS, etc. (& social bias)
by Major Variola (ret) 09 Apr '04

09 Apr '04

Perry I agree with you on all *except* that you are prejudiced against folks who are not mobile, have immobile dependants, are busy or agoraphobes. In-person voting doesn't resist graveyard voting much better than lining up the meat. One could say that in-person voting rewards those too lazy or careless with their time to request absentee status. Home voting is important to keep participation high. I believe 25% of the Calif governor votes were absentee. Participation is nominally a figure of merit for elections. And the voter authentication is the weakest I know of: to register you submit a name, signature, and address. To vote, you submit same. Nothing prevents graveyard registration except the law. Why is this relevent? Because you have to consider threat models. Spousal coercion & vote buying is one, well-addressed in this thread. So are tech-implementation and social-trust issues. Snipers or bombers at polling places is another, ignored because we're all modern westerners. Rain and immobility have only been touched on because most of us can drive and walk. Voting from home should be *encouraged* and it should use paper as the transport, not computers. (The paper being kept by the counters not the voters.) Which is how it should be at the in-person polls. Again, keeping tech away is good, fighting coercion is good, but don't argue against absentee voting. In fact, absentee voting (vs. tech in the polling booth) is a good *example* of how to keep things simple and resistant to many (eg tech-enabled) attacks. At 12:46 PM 4/9/04 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > >I'm especially scared about mechanisms that let people "vote at home" >and such. Lots of people seem to think that the five minute trip to >the polling place is what is preventing people from voting, and they >want to let people vote from their computers. Lets ignore the question >of whether it is important that the people who can't be bothered to >spend ten minutes going to the polling place care enough about the >election to be voting anyway. Lets also ignore the totally unimportant >question of vote buying -- vote buying has happened plenty of times >over the centuries without any need for the purchaser to verify that >the vote was cast as promised. Tammany Hall did not need to watch >people's votes to run a political machine. > >I'm much more concerned that we may be automating the "graveyard" >vote, which is currently kept in check by the need to personally >appear at polling places. I'm also concerned about the forms of fraud >I haven't even considered yet because no one has invented them yet. >Election security isn't just about assuring that votes are correctly >counted.

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What Brought on the French Revolution?
by R. A. Hettinga 09 Apr '04

09 Apr '04

--- begin forwarded text

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RE: Gmail as Blacknet
by Tyler Durden 09 Apr '04

09 Apr '04

Well, I never claimed to be Einstein, but your "3 simple steps" sound a hell of a lot like my recipe for making a ham sandwich: First, order a steak in a restaurant. Second, tell them to add two slices of bread. Third, tell them you don't want beef as the primary meat of your steak, you want pork. Tell them, "Uh, change that pork to ham, and put it between the two slices of bread". Oi La! Instant Ham sandwich! -TD >From: An Metet <anmetet(a)freedom.gmsociety.org> >To: cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net >Subject: RE: Gmail as Blacknet >Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2004 02:08:39 -0400 > >Tyler Durden writes: > > "Ironically, some of the features of Gmail bear resemblance to BlackNet. > > In particular, its claimed policy of retaining email indefinitely, > > even after the recipient has stopped using the account, is reminiscent > > of BlackNet's function as a data haven, as well as other Cypherpunk > > projects like the Eternity Network. This retention is objectionable to > > conventional privacy groups, but Cypherpunks will recognize it as being > > deeply in accord with their values." > > > > Poo poo. The difference between a potential blacknet and Gmail is that > > there's little doubt that google will cough up the true names of > > objectionable posters, if and when anyone looking even remotely > > authoritative/governmental comes pounding on their doors. In a >worst-case > > Blacknet, my True Name will only be gettable by agents of the state via >the > > expenditure of very large amounts of resources, if at all. > >You have missed the point of the analogy entirely. BlackNet makes >information available even when the subjects of the information (or >any other parties) want it suppressed. It is a censorship-proof store >of data. If information about you is stored in BlackNet, anyone can get >access to it (for a price, perhaps), and you can't do anything about it. > >To make Gmail more like BlackNet, you should first do as others have >suggested and access it via cryptographic anonymity techniques (see the >recent announcements for the onion routing network now being developed, >http://www.freehaven.net/tor. Now you can use it as a store of data >for your pseudonym without linking to your true identity. > >A second step is to then PGP-encrypt all email going to your Gmail >address. This could be done easily by someone writing a mail forwarder >which accepted email for any username, looked up a PGP key for that name >and encrypted the email, then forwarded it along to the corresponding >username at Gmail. This would be less than one page of Perl. You would >give out the name of a system running such a script as your email address, >but your encrypted mail would then be stored and accessed at Gmail. >You'd gain the advantage of their multi gigabyte storage facility while >protecting the privacy of your own email. And I'd like to see their >adwords facility struggling to come up with something appropriate when >the only legible text is "BEGIN PGP ENCRYPTED MESSAGE". > >A third step is to get a browser plugin which would transparently >decrypt PGP encrypted email stored at web mail services like Gmail, >Yahoo mail, etc. At one time this would have been an overwhelmingly >difficult task due to the multiplicity of browsers; at a later time, >it would have been impractical due to the dominance of IE; but today, >with Mozilla becoming a widely used, standardized, open source alternative >to IE, it is finally possible for such browser customizations to become >generally available and useful. > >So there you have it, a simple three step program to turn your Gmail >account into a privacy-protected, virtually unlimited-size data store. > _________________________________________________________________ Get rid of annoying pop-up ads with the new MSN Toolbar FREE! http://toolbar.msn.com/go/onm00200414ave/direct/01/

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For Guidance in Iraq, Marines Rediscover A 1940s Manual
by R. A. Hettinga 09 Apr '04

09 Apr '04

<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB108137571973077200,00.html> The Wall Street Journal April 8, 2004 PAGE ONE For Guidance in Iraq, Marines Rediscover A 1940s Manual Small-War Secrets Include: Tips on Nation-Building, The Care of Pack Mules By GREG JAFFE Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL April 8, 2004; Page A1 When Maj. Matthew Chisholm shipped out to Iraq in February, he stuffed his dogeared copy of the "Marine Corps Small Wars Manual" -- a 64-year-old guide to battling guerrillas -- into his backpack. "I brought it as a checklist or mental nudge," says the civil-affairs officer. "[It] pretty much describes the intent of everything I do over here: rebuild schools, roads and police stations." It also describes a lot of things Maj. Chisholm isn't likely to see. Dozens of pages are dedicated to the care and feeding of pack mules. "Never feed fresh grass to an overheated animal," it warns. Some passages are, at the same time, naove and patronizing: "Inhabitants of countries with a high rate of illiteracy have many childlike characteristics ... eliciting the untarnished truth from them requires patience beyond words." Another section covers the "killing and dressing of game," warning that meat cooked after rigor mortis has set in will be tough unless it is first boiled in vinegar. In its three-week drive to Baghdad last year, the U.S. military relied heavily on satellite-guided bombs and supersonic jets. But now it is looking to this anachronistic book for some answers. The 446-page manual was born out of three decades of hard-won experience. From 1898 to 1934, the Marines fought a number of small wars, in the Philippines, Cuba, Honduras, China, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. They clashed with guerrillas, built constabularies and held elections. Then, in 1940, a group of Marines set out to capture in writing the lessons of those battles. One year after their book was finished, the U.S. found itself embroiled in World War II, and the manual was forgotten. The manual was classified until 1972. Thus, in Vietnam, where it might have been useful, it wasn't widely distributed and wasn't much read. Now, it is popping up everywhere. Last month, the Marine Corps passed out copies to all officers headed to Iraq. William Luti, an adviser to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and one of the architects of the Iraq war, keeps a copy on a coffee table in his Pentagon office. He praises the book for its keen recognition that in small wars support of the locals is far more important than raw firepower. "One of the visionary aspects of this work is its focus on the social and psychological aspects of small wars," Mr. Luti says. 3 The Marine Corps Small Wars Manual, written in 1940. (Read the manual at www.smallwars.quantico.usmc.mil4) Democrats cite it, too. "We know how to fight wars like Iraq. We even have a how-to guide in the Marine Corps's Small War Manual," Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee insisted last October at a hearing on Iraq reconstruction. Some soldiers and Marines say the fat book has been mythologized by a military that is struggling with change. "It's cited more often than it is actually read," says Lt. Col. Richard Lacquement, who served with the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq. Col. Lacquement suggests that at a time when the U.S. military has been pulled into an unfamiliar and complex guerrilla war, the book harks back to the Banana Wars in Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1920s and 1930s. "The idea that we have a history of doing these sorts of missions well is comforting for a tradition-minded organization like the military," he says. Others say the book has caught on because there are so few alternatives. "The Small Wars Manual is so popular today not because of its excellence -- although much of it is very good -- but because it has little serious competition," says Army Maj. John Nagl, who is deployed near Ramadi, the site of some of the fiercest fighting since the end of the war, and is the author of a history of modern counterinsurgency. In the absence of anything better, the book has become must reading for muddy-boot troops. Before he embarked last week on a four-day mission to track down enemy fighters raining mortars down on a U.S. base near Fallujah, Marine Corps Capt. Adam Strickland reread the sections of the manual that discuss how to cordon off an area infested with enemies. Even the much-derided mule sections are proving useful in Iraq, he says. Marines still keep a handful of mules in California to practice using the animals to carry gear into war. "Unfortunately Marines get hung up on the pictures of the donkeys with rockets on their backs, but what is ironic is that we search every donkey we see here for that exact reason," he writes from Iraq. And well they might. Last November, insurgents packed rockets into a donkey cart and fired them at the Iraq Oil ministry. In Afghanistan, Army Lt. Col. Raymond Millen, who helped write training guidelines for U.S. troops working with the new Afghan National Army, spotted the manual on a colleague's bookshelf. For him the sections on building local constabularies proved prescient. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. efforts to build native armies were plagued by desertions. Recruits complained of poor pay and lousy equipment. At first, U.S. officers worried about the message they'd be sending if they paid young soldiers more than most Iraqis and Afghanis earn. Eventually, the U.S. raised salaries. But had U.S. officers studied the "Small Wars Manual" earlier, some missteps might have been avoided. "In establishing an organization of native troops, attempts should be made to provide better clothing and shelter and food than native civilians of the same social class. This is ... an important morale factor," the book notes. The Marine Corps earlier this year completed a draft update to the original "Small Wars Manual" -- a project that had progressed in fits and starts for almost a decade. One of the manual's principal authors, retired Lt. Col. Noel Williams, was working on the document in the Pentagon on Sept. 11 when a jet struck close to his office. Smoke and fire damage forced him to move out of the building and finish his draft at a nearby annex. One addition is a section that focuses on how the enemy has changed. When the original manual was written, insurgents were motivated primarily by nationalism and confined attacks to a single country. Today's enemies are often driven by religious fervor and a desire to wreak havoc world-wide, the update notes. Also, weaponry is potentially far more powerful. And information technology has increased enemies' reach "to a global scale." In addition to the printed manual, Col. Williams created a "Small Wars" Web site where soldiers and Marines can post hints on everything from avoiding roadside bombs in Iraq to surviving at high altitudes in Afghanistan. "I wanted to give Marines the ability to print off the most current and relevant postings and then stuff them in the pockets of their cargo pants," he says. In February the Marines gave 100 copies of the draft update to officers heading for Iraq and asked them to make suggestions for improving it based on their real-world experience. But, Col. Williams says, "The original will still be on the shelf. We'll still use it." -- ----------------- 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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Steve Brinich: The Criminal
by Thomas Shaddack 09 Apr '04

09 Apr '04

Dug this from my old archives, after finding out it vanished from the Net. Decade-old, but more truthful than before. May it provide some inspiration. -------------------------------------------------- Title: The Criminal Lyrics by: Steve Brinich Tune: The Idiot (Stan Rogers) Date: 1994 Found online at: http://www.access.digex.net/~steve-b/myfilks.htm Recorded on: Subject: Government [This is one of my reactions to the US government's attacks on freedom of electronic speech (I was thinking specifically about the government's Big Brother wiretap/encryption policies, but it applies equally well to the CDA and other such offenses. As for the politicians who vote for these abuses -- alas, cutting out the tongues of oathbreakers has gone out of fashion, so we will have to settle for turning them out to find honest work. They're sneaky characters, but groups such as the Voters' Telecom Watch, Electronic Frontier Foundation, etc. do a fairly good job of monitoring the hired help in Washington and sounding the alarm when they start getting out of line again.] I log onto this homebrew Net where the Feds are not around I've turned my back on Big Brother's track and made this open ground I slip past the surveillance taps; the alarms will make no sound I set up the link and I always think back to my old account I remember back six years ago, this outlaw life I chose When every day the news would say there's another rule to impose Well, I could have stayed and just obeyed, but I'm not one of those I'm remaining free, and that makes me a criminal, I suppose. So I bid farewell to the tamed old Net I never more will see But write I must, and I put my trust in human liberty Oh, I miss support, and the GUI ports, and the realtime videos But I like being free, and that makes me a criminal, I suppose. So, come you fine young hackers all, to the cyber underground This outlaw life's no paradise, but it's better than lying down Oh, the interface isn't cut-and-paste, and the system's often down But the government spies will set their eyes on a licensed Net account So bid farewell to the tamed old Net you never more will see Here your words will ship without censorship; there's real liberty You'll miss the bells and the fancy shells; here we just have plain old prose But you'll be free, and just like me, a criminal, I suppose.

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RE: Gmail as Blacknet
by An Metet 09 Apr '04

09 Apr '04

Tyler Durden writes: > "Ironically, some of the features of Gmail bear resemblance to BlackNet. > In particular, its claimed policy of retaining email indefinitely, > even after the recipient has stopped using the account, is reminiscent > of BlackNet's function as a data haven, as well as other Cypherpunk > projects like the Eternity Network. This retention is objectionable to > conventional privacy groups, but Cypherpunks will recognize it as being > deeply in accord with their values." > > Poo poo. The difference between a potential blacknet and Gmail is that > there's little doubt that google will cough up the true names of > objectionable posters, if and when anyone looking even remotely > authoritative/governmental comes pounding on their doors. In a worst-case > Blacknet, my True Name will only be gettable by agents of the state via the > expenditure of very large amounts of resources, if at all. You have missed the point of the analogy entirely. BlackNet makes information available even when the subjects of the information (or any other parties) want it suppressed. It is a censorship-proof store of data. If information about you is stored in BlackNet, anyone can get access to it (for a price, perhaps), and you can't do anything about it. To make Gmail more like BlackNet, you should first do as others have suggested and access it via cryptographic anonymity techniques (see the recent announcements for the onion routing network now being developed, http://www.freehaven.net/tor. Now you can use it as a store of data for your pseudonym without linking to your true identity. A second step is to then PGP-encrypt all email going to your Gmail address. This could be done easily by someone writing a mail forwarder which accepted email for any username, looked up a PGP key for that name and encrypted the email, then forwarded it along to the corresponding username at Gmail. This would be less than one page of Perl. You would give out the name of a system running such a script as your email address, but your encrypted mail would then be stored and accessed at Gmail. You'd gain the advantage of their multi gigabyte storage facility while protecting the privacy of your own email. And I'd like to see their adwords facility struggling to come up with something appropriate when the only legible text is "BEGIN PGP ENCRYPTED MESSAGE". A third step is to get a browser plugin which would transparently decrypt PGP encrypted email stored at web mail services like Gmail, Yahoo mail, etc. At one time this would have been an overwhelmingly difficult task due to the multiplicity of browsers; at a later time, it would have been impractical due to the dominance of IE; but today, with Mozilla becoming a widely used, standardized, open source alternative to IE, it is finally possible for such browser customizations to become generally available and useful. So there you have it, a simple three step program to turn your Gmail account into a privacy-protected, virtually unlimited-size data store.

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[osint] Gulf conference tackles terror financing
by R. A. Hettinga 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

--- begin forwarded text

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RE: Firm invites experts to punch holes in ballot software
by Trei, Peter 08 Apr '04

08 Apr '04

Major Variola (ret) wrote: >Peter, what would be wrong with having a machine in the booth that >prints >any valid receipt BUT is not connected to the voting system. "To vote >use the red machine; if you're being coerced you can use the blue >machine >to print as many receipts as intimidators." >A trade off between (mild) user complexity and the desire for receipts >(without coercion). The system described allows the user to take a reciept (which has only numbers on it) and use a website to determine that the vote was recorded correctly. A decoy receipt would also have to pass this test. Frankly, the whole online-verification step seems like an unneccesary complication. * Both real and decoy receipts would have to be in the database for verification - which bothers me a lot. * There seems to be no provision for recounts - what are they supposed to do - have everybody send in their receipts? How can you tell the decoys from the real? I give VoteHere kudos for releasing their source, but it doesnt solve the e-voting problem. Peter Trei

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