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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:18 PM 11/7/1996, Ted Cabeen wrote: >At 02:38 PM 11/7/96 -0800, you wrote: >>>Jeremiah A Blatz wrote: >>>ph(a)netcom.com (Peter Hendrickson) writes: >>> Well, once I've got my strong crypto and electronic commerce, and 20 >>> or so virtual identities to do things for me, and the gub'ment can't >>> tell what money I'm making and spending, so they can't tax me. So if >>> they can't tax me, and they can't tax lots of folks, then they can't >>> pay their jack-booted thugs. So the goverment becomes irrelevant. It >>> can't support a huge police state infrastructure, and certainly can't >>> but mega-crays to break my crypto, so how're they going to retain >>> control? >>> When we say anarchy, we mean anarchy. >> This only works if there are large numbers of people who think it is >> a good idea. Otherwise, the resources of the Federal Government >> may be directed quite effectively against a small number of people. >> If you can get a life prison term for your strong crypto you may >> hesitate to use it. If not, then you may get to be an example >> for everybody else. > That's why we have to develop stealth PGP and good stego so that the > government doesn't even know that you're using the strong crypto that has > been outlawed. If they can't prove that there's actually a message in the > picture of the catsgills you just downloaded off of > alt.binaries.pictures.nature, you can't get a life sentence in jail. What happens when they find it on your disk? Remember, you don't have an encrypted virtual disk, or if you do, the consequences are the same if you didn't. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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[rant] Race
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sandy Sandfort wrote: ... >What you mean WE, white man? ... At first I was afraid to comment, as I have been more than vocal in the last 24 hours, but then I decided that I thought this important enough to bring up. This was the first time on this list that I noticed such an obvious reference to race, granted I'm fairly new to the list,(quite new in fact), and when I think about it, there were several references to Russians and Jews in some of the other posts about Dr. Vulis and his practices. In my rose colored view, I had not taken notice, possibly because they were comments about the statements made by an individual, more likely because I'm gratefully ignorant to most of the filth of this imperfect world. I was unaware of some of the hardships some of my friends and their friends still go through just because of their skin color. Not Just with recognized, individual bigots, but also with the police, and I live in a sparsely populated area. The point I was going to make was that this comment caught my eye, because it bridged my real, though I should say corporal as this is quite real, world with my online world. For a week there, I was a individual in a society of minds, our "race" depended on our individual views. I like being online, I am judged by what I think matters. When something threatens my ability to be free of the definitions put on my physical shell, I react. Does this have any relation to crypto? No But it does have relevance to anonymity. Online I can be who I feel like, not what I look like. For those wondering who I am, I may be an AI painted purple with a big intel sticker on my side, it doesn't matter, what do you think about my ideas.

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Re: Group order for "Secret Power" ... (San Francisco Bay Area only)
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>I'm looking for 19 other people interested in "Secret Power" (Craig >Potton Publishers has indicated that there is a discount for 20 or >more copies). If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, please >contact me by phone or E-Mail. If anyone is going to the Usenix e-commerce conference I can bring over some copies for them. I'm already taking over a whole bunch of copies, I can bring over a few more if I can get them (I've pretty much cleaned out the bookshops around here). I can bring them to the conference but what you do with them from there is up to you (ie I won't have time to find post offices to mail people copies or whatever). Cost is US$25 (the NZ retail price is $35 = US$25), delivery is in just over a week. Peter.

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Re: [PRIVACY][BLACKNET] Potential Analyst?
by Steven L Baur 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>>>> "Brian" == Brian D Williams <talon57(a)well.com> writes: Brian> The Pro's say that analysts are born not made. If so whoever wrote Brian> this appears to show potential..... Brian> Send resume to BLACKNET..... It would have been more impressive if it had mentioned that Dimitri "Ray is a typical Californian" Vulis and Ray "You'd be surprised if you knew where I lived" Arachelian appear to live within walking distance of each other. -- steve(a)miranova.com baur Unsolicited commercial e-mail will be billed at $250/message. What are the last two letters of "doesn't" and "can't"? Coincidence? I think not.

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:08 PM 11/7/1996, Timothy C. May wrote: >At 2:38 PM -0800 11/7/96, Peter Hendrickson wrote: > >> If you can get a life prison term for your strong crypto you may >> hesitate to use it. If not, then you may get to be an example >> for everybody else. > Well, this is what in private e-mail to Peter I was referring to when I > said "only a police state" could pull the plug on free speech and strong > crypto once it was ubiquitously deployed. While the term "police state" is not well defined, I do not believe it applies to what I am describing. (There is a risk that it could develop, however.) Laws forbidding the use of cryptography have ominous free speech implications as we would be attempting to outlaw concealed meaning. Concealed meaning can be pretty well concealed and that makes for difficult and dangerous legal questions. On the other hand, the action of running a program which uses forbidden crypto systems is pretty unambiguous and could be effectively isolated from other kinds of speech. Many kinds of speech are already illegal. For instance, I am not allowed to copy somebody else's speech because it would violate copyright laws. I am not allowed to break verbal contracts. In essence, I am punished later for the something I said if I am forced to keep my word. But, this does not constitute a police state. What I am proposing would not require an end to fair trials or warrants or really any other legal customs we have. In case anybody has any doubts, and I doubt Tim does, the existence of a life sentence does not imply the presence of a police state. > Throwing people in prison for life for using crypto is something that is > certainly _possible_, though I rather doubt taxpayers will be keen on > paying for this. Simply executing those who use random numbers makes more > sense. The taxpayers will be happy to pay to keep a small number of criminals in jail if it keeps the rest of us fairly safe within our homes and on the streets. > All implausible, of course. > By the way, I've never claimed that I know crypto anarchy is irreversible, > I just think it is. I've presented some plausibility arguments on why I > think this is so, drawing parallels to other developments in history, but > logical proofs and predictions about the future don't usually go together > very well. Actually, I agree with Tim. I think the deployment of strong cryptography will be irreversible. But, it will be irreversible because the bad aspects of it won't be all that bad and in general it will be a very positive development. The reason it must be stopped now is to stop the voters from discovering this. (Certainly we have seen a strong anti-democratic sentiment among the proponents of GAK, when they propose that we cannot even be allowed to hear the scenarios which should concern us, the ultimate repository of political legitimacy in the United States.) A good comparison can be made to the recreational drug situation. Many people, probably a majority of people, believe that they should be allowed to take whatever drugs they like and many do. Efforts have been made to forbid it, but they are almost universally unsuccessful because of the tremendous popular support for recreational drug use. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:22 PM 11/7/96 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote: >It appears to be widely believed that cryptoanarchy is irreversible. >Everybody believes that the race to deploy or forbid strong cryptography >will define the outcome for a long time. > >I can't think of a reason why this should be so. >If the wide use of strong cryptography results in widely unpopular >activities such as sarin attacks and political assassinations, it >would not be all that hard to forbid it, even after deployment. Simple analogy: Suppose you put two people into a room with a deck of playing cards and a table, instructing "Person A" to build a house-of-cards, and telling "Person B" to stop him from achieving his goal. Who do you think will win? Obviously, the latter will win: It's vastly easier to knock such a structure down than to build it in the first place, and all "Person B" has to do is occasionally take a whack at the structure. BTW, some of your confusion is probably based is the false assumptions in your last sentence above. "..wide use of strong cryptography results in widely unpopular activities such as sarin attacks and political assassinations." First, I contend that the unpopularity of political assassinations is based far less on their presumed undesirability, and much more so on the fact that the average citizen (currently) has no input on who is being killed. He might well suppose that the killings are trying to deny him the little power and influence he has in the political system. ("They shot [fill in the blank}! I voted for him!") But what if assassination was made far more accessible to the common man? Suppose, say, the approval of one million citizens was the only thing necessary to have an assassination legally accomplished? Or, more likely in practice, the vote of a million citizens was interpreted as a kind of terminal veto over that particular politician or government employee, who would have to resign or face the (lethal) consquences! In that case, assassinations wouldn't be seen as bad, they'd be the natural consequence of a politician who overstays his welcome and ignores numerous warnings. Second, things like "sarin attacks" are, in fact, the classic example of actions which WOULD NOT HAPPEN under a crypto-anarchy. Over the last 30 years or so, "terrorism" has come to be associated with random attacks on innocent citizens. But I propose that such attacks only occur because the better, more appropriate targets are purposely made hard to attack. Most people don't realize this. But consider: Wouldn't the people who bombed the OKC Federal building have preferred to kill, for example, the top 50 government officials responsible for Waco and Ruby Ridge, rather than 150 ordinary government employees? Of course they would! If crypto-anarchy means anything to the future of terrorism, it's about helping to ensure that the people truly guilty of oppression get targeted in preference to anybody else. Naturally, such a point of view will be wildly unpopular...with the guilty few. The rest of us should like it just fine. This is why crypto-anarchy will be so popular with the public once it's in place. No more taxes, governments, militaries, wars, holocausts, etc. _THAT'S_ yet one more reason why it's irreversible: people will have seen the results of both systems, and they'll be damned if they're going to allow crooked politicians back in the game! Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:11 PM 11/7/1996, Timothy C. May wrote: >At 5:16 PM -0800 11/7/96, Peter Hendrickson wrote: > >> While the term "police state" is not well defined, I do not believe it >> applies to what I am describing. (There is a risk that it could develop, >> however.) >> Laws forbidding the use of cryptography have ominous free speech >> implications as we would be attempting to outlaw concealed meaning. >> Concealed meaning can be pretty well concealed and that makes >> for difficult and dangerous legal questions. > If the only means of detection is raiding homes to inspect them for > contraband--something not even done during the height of the anti-drug > hysteria, at least not on a regular basis--then I stand by my comment that > stopping private use of cryptography requires a police state such as the > world has not yet seen. Perhaps initially, during the state of emergency declared by our heroic and courageous President, some unfortunate abuses of authority may occur. But, after the first 90% of the terrorists are incarcerated, we will have the luxury of returning to an orderly legal system replete with search warrants. Keep in mind that the drug laws face a large number of dedicated opponents who will go to great trouble to evade the laws. I suspect that these people are in the majority, although I don't know for sure. I find it hard to believe that any sizeable number of people would find the Four Horsemen scenario tolerable. >> On the other hand, the action of running a program which uses forbidden >> crypto systems is pretty unambiguous and could be effectively isolated >> from other kinds of speech. > Oh? How? If the output of such a program looks like quantization or Johnson > noise in a recording, then how could this form of "speech" be effectively > isolated? Sorry, I wasn't very clear. What I mean is that once you've been caught red handed with a stego program, the game is up. That is, I think it is possible to get ideas of who is operating illegally from interceptions. (I may well be wrong.) But, the actual evidence is easily collected off your computer. A program which performs encryption or stego is not very ambiguous about what it is doing. >> Many kinds of speech are already illegal. For instance, I am not allowed >> to copy somebody else's speech because it would violate copyright laws. >> I am not allowed to break verbal contracts. In essence, I am punished >> later for the something I said if I am forced to keep my word. But, >> this does not constitute a police state. > Careful! Some of your examples are not examples of _prohibited_ speech, but > are instead examples of _actionable_ speech. The Constitution is fairly > clear that the government cannot be a filter or censor for speech. > Hence, requirements that people speak in English, or in some other language > that the government can understand, is not required. Not even in a criminal > case, as a matter of fact. (If I speak only Skansko-Bravatlian, and am the > only such speaker in the world, I cannot be compelled to study English or > even Spanish prior to a trial.) > Requiring people to speak or write in a language that is understandable to > some GS-10 at Fort Meade would appear to violate the First Amendment in a > rather serious way. As encrypted speech is really just another language > (tell me I'm wrong on this, anyone), encrypted speech appears to be fully > protected by the First Amendment, which says that Congress shall make no > law about speech, blah blah. Under the right legal environment, and we are not far from it, none of this matters. The Courts can be quite liberal when they think there is a good reason for it. Take seating in restaurants. If you read the Constitution you won't find where the Federal Government is empowered to regulate this. The Courts decided that the Commerce Clause was a reasonable justification. This argument resembles the peace of God. All the Justices have to say is that the Constitution does not specify private speech, just public speech. The same way it doesn't say "assault rifle" it says "arms". The same way it doesn't say "commercial speech" just "speech". The Constitution will likely be a powerful support for cryptoanarchy, but only because I doubt widespread opposition to strong cryptography will arise. >> What I am proposing would not require an end to fair trials or warrants >> or really any other legal customs we have. > I strongly disagree. Prosecution would involve making certain _forms_ of > speech illegal (not the same thing as the _content_ being illegal, as in > ordering the kililng of another, or treason, or shouting "Fire!" > improperly). But we are not objecting to content! We don't care what goes inside the encryption - unless it involves extortion, murder, child pornography, or weapons data - we care that communication has been limited. Cryptography is not a language because nobody can understand it but the recipient. We simply want the recipient to share with the rest of the class - that is an independent legal issue from persecution for one's beliefs which is of course, and thankfully, unconstitutional your Honor. Or how about this argument: It isn't the encrypted message that we care about so much, your Honor. We care that it is evidence that the perpetrator did commit the illegal act of encrypting his communications using military-grade technology which is now highly illegal. When I say it doesn't really put an end to most legal customs, I mean that the courts do not have to behave all that capriciously to make the law stick. For the most part people know how not to break the law and the people who are convicted did break it. Other speech rights do not immediately dissolve away. Yes, there is a risk that they will do so later, but the police state is not required to suppress cryptoanarchy if there is strong public sentiment supporting it. > And detection and collection of evidence would almost certainly involve > illegal searches and seizures. Not in the presence of wide public support. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:56 PM 11/7/1996, Andrew Loewenstern wrote: > ...<several excellent points>... > People will outright demand strong crypto. > This is already happening. Despite intense pressure from TLA's for GAK, > savvy businesses are demanding strong crypto (the idea that no crypto at all > will be used is utterly ridiculous, it will either be strong or GAKed but > there will be crypto). Hardly anyone is bowing to the pressure. It will >take > a mandate from congress to get people to actually use GAK, and the more > businesses and congresscritters begin understand the benefits of strong >crypto > to the bottom line, the less likely such a mandate would happen. This implies that there is a dramatic political opportunity for those who have not yet taken a strong stand on the issue, young congresspeople please note. Federal interference has probably delayed the onset of large scale net commerce by at least a year. The Zimmermann case alone, I suspect, has had a dramatic chilling effect on the development of good security technologies. It is interesting to speculate on the career consequences for those who are currently on the wrong side of the fence. People like Jim Exon will, at most, find their way into an embarrassing footnote in the history books. What about Albert Gore? Since the '92 election his political stock has fallen dramatically amongst people I know. Before his "Information Highway" activities, a few people were suspicious of his wife's inclinations towards censorship, but he was not generally hated. A lot can happen in four years. My guess is that the general public and even the reporters ;-) will have caught on to the issues surrounding strong crypto by the next election which will not be good for Gore's naked ambition. It's also interesting to wonder what will happen to certain institutions which have not been very well behaved. Certainly the ATF is not well loved. That is not lucky for long range funding. I suspect the NSA will be able to salvage their reputation by sticking the blame on the Clinton administration and anybody else who is handy. They seem to be playing both sides of the fence right now. There is a tremendous institutional opportunity for the NSA as the demand for secure systems is growing exponentially and they probably know it. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Re: RICO - (Was: Group order for Secret Power)
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:43 PM 11/7/96 -0500, Black Unicorn wrote: > >I cover RICO because it's a popular prosecution tool, "popular"? Well, only in a rather stilted point of view! > because it is >the predominate vehicle for seizure and forfeiture in federal cases >(of which remailer and encryption issues are likely to arouse) and >because it represents a codification of the approach most courts take >when dealing with seizure cases. In a very real way, RICO represents >the outer extremes of seizure cases in the United States, and is >probably, given the complexity of many state laws, the simplest way >to "grab" something. It also has civil provisions which make >"private prosecutors" out of you and me. But the odd thing is, the one entity we can't seem to attack using RICO is the Federal government, and probably most other governments levels. Looked at purely objectively, it should be easy to demonstrate that the Federal government (and its representatives) have engaged in plenty of crime as a pattern of activity, and certainly enough to rise to the level of the standards of RICO. (It takes only a few instances of such crime satisfy the standards of RICO.) Change the name "Federal Government" to "Organization X," and describe what it's done, and all the evidence will point to a clear pattern of crime. Now, okay, it may seem presumptuous of me to even dream of the possibility of using RICO against the thugs who wrote it. But this country (USA) is SUPPOSED to be under the rule of law, not men, and there is no reason (other than, sadly, pessimism or a-priori realism) to conclude that the government can't be punished when it breaks its own rules. Such punishment could come by way of mechanisms such as the OKC bombing, or the far more selective system Assassination Politics (AP). Take your choice. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:13 PM 11/7/1996, Jim McCoy wrote: > Getting a program to recognize a subliminal message channel is even > harder than teaching a human to do so, check out the book Disappearing > Cryptography or do a web search for "mimic functions" to see how easy it > is to hide messages in text which a program parses as regular English. > The other problem is that more and more of the data being tossed around > the net are images and sound files in which it is incredibly easy to > hide encrypted messages. I doubt it is as easy as you say. Truly noisy sources are unusual. You don't have to be 100% sure you have a crypto-terrorist on your hands to search their house, interrogate them, and talk for awhile to everyone they know and then watch them carefully from then on. You don't have to have very many convictions with life sentences to discourage most experimenters which means that you can afford to spend a lot of time and effort on those that you can find. The perpetrator need only mess up once to be put in jail where he belongs. Assuming that it is possible to identify most crypto-anarchist-terrorists as suspects (possibly through informants or surveillance or tax audits) it should be fairly simple to find their contraband disks and data when you search their house. The problem with executables is that they have to execute so you can tell if they are encryption software. How will you handle this problem? >> In the absence of strong cryptography, remailers do not offer much >> anonymity. > Except for the fact that US law stops at the US border (modulo kidnapping > Mexican doctors or strongarming the rest of the world to obey US > dictates...) Information, on the other hand, is very easy to transport > across national boundaries and such transmission is impossible to stop. > With remailers outside the US I can send a message to a free nation and > have it delivered to whomever I want. Cross border transmissions of illegally encrypted information is as hard to stop as the use of strong cryptography. If you can stop, for the most part, the use of strong cryptography, then you can stop the use of foreign remailers, errrr, I mean espionage mailers. Were there strong support for it, even cross border activity could be significantly curtailed. This would complicate the practice of carrying stego'd materials across by hand. That may seem improbable, but I know that in the late 1960s the Johnson Administration seriously considered limiting U.S. tourism because of the negative impact it had on the dollar. In the model I am positing, there would be broad popular support for such policies. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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