- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

RE: Questions about Microsoft and Software Key Escrow
by gtoal＠an-teallach.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

: I respect your ability to think clearly and with great foresight also, : Tim, but I really cannot think that Microsoft would "sell out" on this : issue. There are too many in the company who would are for privacy for : the individual, and remember they have their customers to think about. I think you're all forgetting something. Satellites. G

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I will Kill SKE for You
by nobody＠kaiwan.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

frissell(a)panix.com (Unverified) wrote: > "No racist - I support the permanent elimination of federal > income taxation for African Americans to compensate them for the > suffering of slavery." And if you find any ex-slaves alive in America, I'll support you on that. OTOH, at 130 years of age, I doubt that any of them are paying much in the way of taxes. But, maybe you're on to something here. Let's expand that to ANY AMERICAN whose ancestors suffered in any way. That would do away with the Federal Income Tax entirely. I LIKE THAT!!!

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What can one do for remail operators?
by Tommy the Tourist 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I am interested in doing something to support the remailer operators that put their necks on the line for us cypherpunks. I have noticed people like Detweiler (dunno who he is) who are basically awed by the fact that a remailer crashes when you send your VM swap file through it, or people using it to do "nanny-nanny-boo-boo, you can't catch me, so pween off" messages, et al. I would like to something in support of these people who are noble enough to keep things running even when EVERYONE it seems is out to get them. If I knew any around here, they would get a free beer, and if the operator of Soda's remailer or Julf was in my area, they would get the whole keg ;). ------------ To respond to the sender of this message, send mail to remailer(a)soda.berkeley.edu, starting your message with the following 8 lines: :: Response-Key: ideaclipper ====Encrypted-Sender-Begin==== MI@```%A_^P;+]AB?X=];G11ZU97K(ZZQ%(8AU>834+"Y)5E3KUBX2/<MQ>'( MBT+==!$N]6_?T:4C:5,Q,BAM)?]<+`\GIHV&$_?,,`(NIK"[)^,Y)\9:_QL[ #\H'B ====Encrypted-Sender-End====

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No Subject
by nzook＠math.utexas.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

nomath 5 19% discrete 7 27% algebra1 4 15% algebra2 3 12% grad 3 12% orals 1 4% orala 2 8% research 1 4% total 26

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DES Vulnerable, Why?
by KentBorg＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It seems the TLAs (in a weak moment) let slip that DES was getting old and creaky and vulnerable. The story is that that is what sent the TLAs off on their search for a new encryption standard. (Unfortunately, they got their mission reversed and decided the need was to *read* plaintext not encrypt it.) My question: if triple-DES is so damn tough to break, what is wrong with DES? Triple-DES is a trivial variation on DES. Is it likely that DES's frailities are not the ones we compute with all those big numbers? Given the public portions of DES's history, what DES weaknesses make sense? -kb, the Kent who is 300+ emails behind due to a biz trip and a damp notebook. -- Kent Borg +1 (617) 776-6899 kentborg(a)world.std.com kentborg(a)aol.com Proud to claim 39:30 hours of TV viewing so far in 1994!

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Just say NYET to censors
by nzook＠math.utexas.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Copyright 1994, Nathan Zook. All rights reserved. Intelectual copyrights pending. NYET-- Non-Youths Exhibit Temperance. Before I start, it may be informative to consider that I consider myself to be a hard-line member of the Christian Conservative movement, and a hard- line advocate of electronic privacy. I am a PhD candidate in mathematics at the University of Texas of Austin, and I got the Electronic Privacy language added to the 1994 Republican Party of Texas platform. I am a member of Trinty Evangelical Free Church, and am twenty-seven years old. As the Internet community continues to grow, the differences of conviction that exists generally in the world find their way into the community. Some demand that newcomers to the net adapt to the mores of this society. Some demand that the net, as a newcomer to the world, adapt to the outside. As recent events have demonstrated, the less reasonable, on both sides, may be endangering the integrity and availablity of the net. Calls for net censorship, it may be expected, will continue to grow unless the net can find some way to police itself. Yet "police itself" is a term that sends the net into fits. My solution, NYET, is for the appropriate users to directly censor the data that they might legitmately lay claim to censoring--data that flows to minors over which they have legal authority and responsibility. Specifically, this is a plan to create two sorts of accounts to the net-- adult and minor. Adult accounts may only be obtained by persons of age eighteen. Minor accounts may only be obtained as adjuncts to adult accounts, refered to as supervisor accounts. Adult accounts would have full access to anything on the net. News readers, telnet, ftp and like software being operated from a minor account would check a file in the adult account to allow access. Newsreaders, in particular, would censor any posts crossed from a non-allowed account. The control files in the supervisory accounts would default to allow-only mode, but could be selected to deny-only. The legal framework that I see important in aiding such a system is as follows: State Level: 1) Declare to hold harmless those BBS operators for charges of Contributing to the Delinquacy of a Minor that obtain and verify the age of account holders, and maintain a NYET system of access for minors. Certain acceptable verification methods specified, with authority to add methods delegated to a regulatory agency. Emphasis to be on ease and speed of verification. Special consideration for in-house systems. 2) Make it illegal to misrepresent age and name data to a BBS. Require BBS operators to maintain a record of age and name of account holders for thirty days after opening of account for hold harmless agreement, and allowing deletion of said data afterwards. 3) Declare aiding in tampering with NYET system to be "Contributing to the Delequency of a Minor". Federal Level: Pass paralell laws for BBSs operating with local numbers from two or more states, or for BBSs operating with 800 numbers. I believe that such a system would protect the full free expression currently enjoyed by the net, while reaffirming parental responsibility in the upbringing of their children. The burden of controlling access devolves all the way to the parents, making charges against BBS operators patently frivolous. Porno charges would then be MUCH more difficult to press, since a jury could be told that specific steps were being taken to prevent access to minors. If parents complained that they didn't want to go to the trouble of spelling out what their children could access, the response is clear: "Oh, so it's not worth the effort to you?" Despite slurs in this group to the contrary, I believe that the proposed us.* heirarchy may well be the first in a series of attempts to censor the net. Remember, we already have had a censor for TV, movies, and radio. It is not really a question of _if_ but _who_ and at _what level_ will this censoring take place. Nathan (Adjusting flame gear)

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One more time... us.*
by L. Todd Masco 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Very little c'punk content, just explaining why the us.* proposal is nothing like a movement towards censorship, but an attempt to resist it] First, you have to understand that nobody has any say over what newsgroups are created on a machine except for the news admin on that machine. Most news admins hand this authority over to Dave Lawrence, the current moderator of news.newgroups.announce, when they install their news software. However, *anybody* can decided to ignore anybody else's decisions on *any* newsgroup and issue a newgroups message (and someone else will usually issue an rmgroup message in response: it's an anarchy, and most of us like it that way). The us.* hierarchy "cabal" idea is *not* to determine what groups will get passed and what ones will not; In fact, the intent is to eliminate "no" votes, passing groups only on the basis of significant interest. If you know any USENET history, you'll know about fiascos like the soc.culture.tibet, soc.culture.macedonia, and soc.religion.islam.ahmadiya proposal -- cases where the newsgroups had a significant amount of interest, but were defeated due to large populations having some sort of grudge or religious/national interest in supressing a point of view. This part of the proposal will, in fact, reduce censorship, preventing organized campaigns from defeating newsgroups, effectively preventing people from discussing their subject on USENET (for the traditional definition of USENET that excludes alt.*). The other part of the proposal, the one which seems to have pushed people's "censorship" kneejerk buttons, is the concept of the "namespace cabal." Again, if you have any knowledge of USENET history, you'll know that there used to be a far stronger cabal than is proposed by the us.* idea: the backbone cabal controlled everything -- they were the news admins at the backbone sites and they had the last word. News admins at other sites listened to them because, well, they were the backbone cabal. They had the connectivity. When the set of newsgroups became too big for news admins to effectively manage them (and the connectivity model changed, there no longer being a real news backbone), a newer system for gaining consensus over newsgroup creation was created. Votes would be taken -- *NOT* on democratic principals or anything of that nature, but simply to gauge interest so that news admins would have some basis on which to approve group creation. Over time, the formula was tweaked in various ways when groups that people thought should never have passed (like the rec.acquaria, sci.acquaria, etc. groups) were created. Still, this is basically the system we have today. As I mentioned above, the current model allows large groups of people to squash newsgroups of interest to smaller (or even equal sized, since the current guidelines require 2/3 majority to pass) groups. THAT is censorship, the tyrany of the majority. There is also another thing that needs fixing. There is a problem with the current USENET namespace management strategy: it is damn near impossible to manage a namepsace by vote. In extreme cases, Dave Lawrence has simply refused to publish the newsgroup creation message, but nobody is very happy with this: it's too much like Dave is censoring the net, and it's wrong to stop the creation of a newsgroup on a subject simply because its proponent insists on a name noone likes. As a USENET volunteer votetaker, I have become embroiled in proposals for groups where a vast number of people wanted a newsgroup but had to wait months, sometimes missing the opportunity to discuss events important to them, because the newsgroup proponent was insisting upon a name that nobody agreed with or because no clear consensus (among users) appeared about the naming of the group. It is the namespace issue that the proposed "cabal" will cover. It's no different than the government refusing to take a vote on where every single book in a public library will end up on the shelves or where each document is stored. Namespace management is simply impossible to do by voting, especially when the "voters" have no understanding of the issues involved. We've squeeked by so far, but only barely -- and as the net grows, it become much more difficult to maintain the current voting scheme. That is why it is absurd to view the "namespace cabal" concept as an attempt to censor a democratic form. It isn't an attempt to censor (it is an attempt to stop censorship), and the current form isn't democratic. Please, before you try to argue this -- check out the facts about the proposal, the history behind it, and the real mechanisms in place before you spout off. -- L. Todd Masco | Bibliobytes books on computer, on any UNIX host with e-mail cactus(a)bb.com | "Information wants to be free, but authors want to be paid."

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Re: Just say NYET to censors
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

nzook(a)math.utexas.edu writes: >Specifically, this is a plan to create two sorts of accounts to the net-- >adult and minor. Adult accounts may only be obtained by persons of age >eighteen. Minor accounts may only be obtained as adjuncts to adult >accounts, refered to as supervisor accounts. Adult accounts would have >full access to anything on the net. News readers, telnet, ftp and like >software being operated from a minor account would check a file in the >adult account to allow access. Newsreaders, in particular, would censor >any posts crossed from a non-allowed account. The control files in the >supervisory accounts would default to allow-only mode, but could be >selected to deny-only. As a parent, I can sympathize with the desire to shield our children from some of the raunchier material on the net. Many parts of the net are more "Animal House" than "Public Library", and you don't necessarily want a nine-year-old girl learning about sex from a.s.b. I think there are real problems with Nathan's proposal, though. Questionable material on the net is not tagged with an R rating. Newsgroup categories could be rated by the parent, but there is nothing to stop cross-posting. Trying to put ratings on each email message, news posting, web site, MUD (although some MUDs do have adult areas), IRC channel, etc., is just not practical. No censor has that much free time. Another problem is that even the "safe havens" where minors congregate may not stay as pure as we would like. Believe it or not, teenagers of below the age of 18 are actually interested in sex. In fact, many, perhaps even a majority, are not virgins. It's going to be necessary to censor the kids' posts more than any others if you want to keep them from talking about what they want to talk about. For a good example of these problems, see that paragon of censorship, Prodigy. My kids use Prodigy a lot. They are pre-teens and I don't worry too much about what they will see on this family-oriented service. Still, the "Teen" BBS on Prodigy gets a little steamy sometimes, even though each and every message is reviewed by a Prodigy censor before it can be posted (at least, that is how it worked at one time. They may have auto- mated filters now.). The "fashion" topic, for example, often degenerates into discussions of how the girls look in their hot lingerie. Basically, the kids are constantly pushing the limits. Since every parent has their own ideas of where these limits should be, Prodigy ends up with sort of a "least common denominator". I'd like to turn my kids loose on the Internet, let them surf the Web and the other resources available. They are very computer-aware and I know they would get a lot out of it. But the way the net is now I don't think it would be responsible parenting to just let them loose, at least not for a few years. So, as I said, I sympathize with Nathan's problem, but I don't think a good solution is at hand. For now I think private, family-oriented networks are a better place for young kids. Hal Finney

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(fwd) Possible compromise of anon.penet.fi
by nzook＠math.utexas.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Path: math.utexas.edu!news.dell.com!tadpole.com!uunet!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!news.duke.edu!eff!news.kei.com!hermes.oc.com!convex!cnn.eng.convex.com!barnett From: barnett(a)convex.com (Paul Barnett) Newsgroups: alt.privacy Subject: Possible compromise of anon.penet.fi Date: 27 Jul 94 22:09:28 GMT Organization: CONVEX News Network, Engineering (cnn.eng), Richardson, Tx USA Lines: 29 Message-ID: <barnett.775346968(a)cnn.eng.convex.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: zeppelin.convex.com Someone has been collecting email addresses, apparently from postings to Usenet, and forging them to anonymous postings through anon.penet.fi to alt.test. The text of the posting states the REAL email address of the poster, under a posting attributed to the anonymous ID assigned to that poster. I received a notification that an anonymous ID has allocated for me, followed by a confirmation of a posting to alt.test. Looking in alt.test, you will see as many as 500 similar postings. Most of the anonymous IDs are numbered sequentially. However, there are some lower numbered anonymous IDs, presumably in previous use by the addressee named in the text of the message. These anonymous addresses are now compromised. I am posting to this newsgroup because there appears to be some correlation between the contributers to this newsgroup and the addresses that were forged to the messages. It may be coincidental, but I thought this was a fair place to post a warning anyway. My condolences to those people that have been caught in this net. This is one of the most despicable forms of net.terrorism that I have encountered. -- Paul Barnett Convex Computer Corp. MPP OS Development Richardson, TX

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RE: Questions about Microsoft and Software Key Escrow
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by Jacob.Levy(a)Eng.Sun.COM (Jacob Levy) on Thu, 28 Jul 7:53 AM > >Blanc > >I respect your feelings on the matter and your ability >to think clearly and with great foresight also :-), >but for this list it would probably be much more >useful if we got some _OFFICIAL_ answer from Microsoft >instead of your "I believe, I cannot think, can't >see", etc. etc. You're obviously a concerned >individual but you equally obviously don't claim to >speak for Microsoft. > >--JYL Would it not be fair to ask that all the parties earlier listed by Tim -- Microsoft, Sun, Apple, IBM and others -- be asked for an official statement of their positions on SKE? Even so, will this produce credible statements? What if confidentiality or secrecy agreements are already in place? Disinformation needs cryptanalysis, no? John

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