- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

No Subject
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: Anthony Garcia <agarcia(a)sugar.neosoft.com> > P.S. Larry, if you're still lurking around here: the "Yay Sedition!" and > "Yay Tax Evasion!" are especially for *yoooouuu*. funny think about garcia, his first time ever post on c'punx was about larry too...... strange times indeed when a newbie bursts on the scene knowing all about us Date: Wed, 19 Jan 1994 23:18:22 -0600 From: Anthony Garcia <agarcia(a)sugar.neosoft.com> Message-Id: <199401200518.AA05127(a)sugar.NeoSoft.COM> Cc: agarcia(a)sugar.neosoft.com Subject: Detweiler's SQUISH broadcast: can remailers filter out addressee? I'm not familiar with anonymous remailer internals. Would it be cheap in terms of hack-time to add the capability for an anonymous remailer to maintain a list of addresses (or address regexp's) which do not wish to receive anonymous remailed messages? That way, if Detweiler is sending unwanted msgs to say, "chess-fans(a)foo.bar.com" via an anonymous remailer, and the readers of chess-fans complained to the (hopefully responsive) remailer operator, the remailer operator could add the "chess-fans" address to a "don't- remail-to-these-folks" list so that the nice readers of chess-fans can read mail in peace. However, if the "Don't-mail-to-these-folks" list gets too long, it would probably degrade remailer performance... sigh. (remailer authors: is this a correct assumption?) (Perhaps the "don't-mail" addresses could be tagged with amount of time somebody last attempted them; addresses that no one's attempted to hit in say, a year, could be expired.) -Anthony Garcia agarcia(a)sugar.neosoft.com NeoSoft is a commercial access provider, not my employer. (They didn't demand identity verification when I signed up, either. Yay, capitalism!) P.S. Larry: I didn't make the "tentacle" list in your SQUISH post? I feel slighted! Please correct in the next version.

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Crime and punishment in cyberspace - 3 of 3
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

All this brings us to a related issue - another one hinging on principles: Do cypherpunks accept the need for wiretapping? Wiretapping is necessary to solve many 'crimes'. If we accept that these crimes are important enough to justify wiretapping, than there is little difference between wiretapping analog phones and tapping data. The EFF and other organizations have pursued the laudable goals of extending laws guaranteeing freedom of expression, privacy etc to cyberspace, adapting them, as and where necessary, to the nature and technology of digital networks. It is only to be expected that the FBI, theoretically a socially agreed upon body enforcing laws made by socially agreed upon legislators, to attempt to extend the powers granted to it for wiretapping to cyberspace. _Adapting them, as and where necessary (eg. digital encryption), to the nature and technology of digital networks. If we accept the need for wiretapping, than the only problem is to find a way to make Clipper/DTII as protective of privacy as current analog-tapping laws; as inconvenient as current analog tapping. If we accept the need for wiretapping, we can find such ways. Variants of Micali's fair crypto; an open, publicly available no-trapdoor algorithm; a requirement that, as with primitive exchanges, DTII'd ones would still have to be visited by LEOs to work a tap, etc. We can then respond to the various (non-serious) calls from Freeh, Denning et al for an 'alternative'. Or else, if wiretapping per se does more harm to privacy than it does to crime, call for an end to wiretapping altogether. There is an anecdote about George Bernard Shaw (or Bertrand Russell?): At a social event, he hypothetically asks the lady next to him whether she would sleep with him for a million pounds. For a million pounds, she says, she migh consider it. "Would you sleep with me for sixpence, then?" he asks. Outraged, she replies "What kind of woman do you think I am?" His response: "We have already established what kind of woman you are. We are just haggling about the price." Rishab (ps. no offence intended -- that's an illustratory anecdote, c'est tout) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh They came for the Jews, and I was silent because I was not a Jew; rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in They came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not protest, because I did not Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 belong to a trade union; Voicemail +91 11 3760335 They came for the Catholics, and I said nothing because I was not a Catholic; H 34C Saket And then they came for me. New Delhi There was no one left to say anything... INDIA ----Father Niemoeller

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Censoring the Internet
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A >The agenda of people like David Sutherland, L.Detweiler's A >friend at the NSA who rants about a "Waco in cyberspace", A >Al Gore, and their ilk runs along the lines of the following: A > There won't be a "Waco in Cyberspace" until the feds can figure out how to stuff a couple of hundred BATF and FBI agents with tanks down a strand of glass fiber. DCF & LR "Watch the Senate Hearings on HSA'94 on CSPAN. Would you hire any of those guys to clean your yard much less design a health care 'system'?" --- WinQwk 2.0b#1165

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Re: Sternlight & PGP
by Tom Allard 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- greg(a)ideath.goldenbear.com (Greg Broiles) wrote: > [...] > > Derek's list is incomplete; Sternlight also alleged that there were > "copyright problems" with PGP, insinuating that some of the code in PGP > had been copied (or derived from) RSAREF code - he backed down pretty > quickly when asked for substantiation. He also wrote to the administrators > of US-based FTP sites, suggesting that PKP/RSADSI was contemplating legal > action against them if they didn't stop making PGP available via FTP. I > suspect (but cannot prove) that he was also the person who reported those > FTP sites to Bidzos, thus creating the lawsuit threat that he then pretended > to protect the FTP sites from. > > He also recently wrote to Netcom administrators, encouraging them to take > action against a user who included a public key marked 2.3a in his > .plan file. Re: copyrights, I have yet to hear Herr Sternlight say that pgp23a does not have copyright problems. He may not be asserting that as much, but he has yet to recant. It all started in a discussion about NAFTA, GATT and patents. Someone posted a passage from GATT about expansion of copyrights (NOT patents). He then used that post to assert that pgp23a infringes in Europe. When it was pointed out that the discussion had been about patents, he asserted that pgp23a also violated copyrights (I think he was just too embarrassed to admit confusing patents and copyrights). When I last asked him directly about why he thought pgp23a violated, he used the fact that the pgp doc's referred to itself as "contraband" as evidence. Re: SternCop, he wrote to support(a)netcom.com complaining that he had found a pgp23a key in beker(a)netcom.com's .plan file. Netcom told him that he should take the matter up with PKP/RSADSI. Beker posted Sternlight's message here and I forwarded it to alt.security.pgp. This really bugged Sternlight and he then wrote ANOTHER letter to support(a)netcom.com asserting that beker had violated his copyright. He also sent me a similair message and told me that he knew the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and that I had better publicly apologize to him. He warned me that his complaints about me would not go to postmaster but rather to his own contacts. Why he thought economists would care about usenet is beyond me. Anyway... support(a)netcom.com told him they didn't think beker violated his copyright and if he wanted to pursue the matter further he should sue beker. I have yet to hear about his complaints about me. If he did complain to anyone about me, they must've completely blown him off. Anyway, my all-time favorite Sternlight quote follows: > Newsgroups: sci.crypt > From: strnlght(a)netcom.com (David Sternlight) > Message-ID: <strnlghtCpH991.8GK(a)netcom.com> > Reply-To: david(a)sternlight.com (David Sternlight) > Organization: DSI/USCRPAC > Date: Sun, 8 May 94 05:34:13 EDT > [...] Something did snap, and it did so > with the death of Richard Nixon. On thinking of his achievements, and the > way he was savagely hounded by the left all his life (not without cause, but > not deserving of the extreme demonizing he got), I decided it was time to > stop pussy-footing around here, and start calling jerks, cowards, hoodlums, > and defamers for what they were. [...] rgds-- TA (tallard(a)frb.gov) I don't speak for the Federal Reserve Board, they don't speak for me. pgp fingerprint: 10 49 F5 24 F1 D9 A7 D6 DE 14 25 C8 C0 E2 57 9D -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAgUBLfORNKAudFplx0TNAQHVeAP5AXttXRYS9gyp5xoCIRA9q91Bl6+XhKYk nCcFxFBeSsOzde6pOXpAD5Gnyl1H3p7Dnw6vveYBtjYY06x3iG5S8ZRodkbwPIG/ PbCE+y2K155ORm+jV/Yz6ZmTtKMeS/oXWiOrvtSbabTYqH2HM3Wzp7PbNMlQ0h1b j9PRTDDmtG4= =Z20z -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Clipper alternatives debated
by thad＠pdi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This was in the Mercury News business section yesterday, June 7 1994. It looks to me like a bunch of beltway sharks circling a big pile of money that will soon be available again... Reprinted without permission. Clipper substitutes suggested * Computer and telephone industries offer alternatives to controversial encoding system. By Robert S. Boyd WASHINGTON - The Clinton administration and the computer and telephone industries are discussing ways to resolve their conflicts over the government's plan to enable it to eavesdrop on coded communication. Industry representatives hope the discussions will produce a substitute for the controversial Clipper chip, an electronic encoding and decoding system that the government is pushing over opposition from the computing community and privacy advocates. Several alternatives were suggested Monday at a conference on cryptography and privacy attended by government and industry officials. At the conference, Lynn McNulty, associate director for computer security at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said the administration is "willing to discuss alternatives to Clipper." McNulty said the Commerce Department is asking industry to join in cooperative research projects to develop cryptographic methods, both hardware and software, that would satisfy law enforcement agencies and also be acceptable to private business. One industry proposal woud provide computer software to law enforcement officials that would allow them to decode encrypted messages by suspected criminals or terrorists. The software would replace the Clipper Chip, a hardware device costing about $1,000 that can be placed in telephones to scramble conversations electronically. "Software is much cheaper than hardware," said Steve Lipner of Trusted Information Systems, the Glenwood Md. firm that set up the White House computer security system. Low-cost cryptographic software could be embedded in widely used computer applications, such as word processors or data bases, Lipner said. "This would be a market-acceptable way to build cryptography into high-volume products." Another proposal discussed at Monday's conference would let private companies, instead of the government, keep the electronic "keys" required to decode encrypted data and conversations. Police or the FBI could get the key by court order, such as is now required for wiretaps, according to Jon Roberts, president of TECSEC Inc., a security consulting form in Vienna, Va. "The government could subpoena the key from the bank that holds Mafia records or from the fraudulent government contractor," Roberts said. Under the Clipper chip system favored by the Clinton administration, the key would be held "in escrow" by the government, but, to minimize the risk of abuse, it would be split in half. One have would be held by the Treasury Department, the other half by the Commerce Department. A court order would be needed to get both halves to decode a message. Privacy experts protest that splitting the key between two departments of the executive branch offers little protection against a rogue administration. A third proposal discussed Monday, therefore, was to give one half of the electronic key to the legislative or judicial branch of government. The Department of Justice has already ordered 9,000 Clipper chips for distribution to federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. McNulty said no decision has yet been made to use the chip in other departments. A gloomy note was struck by Susan Landau, a staff member of a special government-industry committee on cryptography that was created to give Congress recommendations on how to balance the government's needs with those of business. After months of study, the committee, organized by the ACM, a major industry trade group, was unable to agree on what should be done. The committee will publish a report in July that simply identifies unresolved issues for continued debate. They include the cost of cryptographic security, the needs of law enforcement, national security, international trade, privacy and civil liberties, Landau said. Thad Beier Pacific Data Images 408)745-6755 thad(a)pdi.com

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Re: Crime and punishment in cyberspace - 3 of 3
by koontzd＠lrcs.loral.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>If we accept the need for wiretapping, than the only problem is to find a way >to make Clipper/DTII as protective of privacy as current analog-tapping laws; >as inconvenient as current analog tapping. If we accept the need for >wiretapping, we can find such ways. Variants of Micali's fair crypto; an open, >publicly available no-trapdoor algorithm; a requirement that, as with primitive >exchanges, DTII'd ones would still have to be visited by LEOs to work a tap, >etc. We can then respond to the various (non-serious) calls from Freeh, Denning >et al for an 'alternative'. The problem is that the Genie of strong cryptography is out of the bag. A large part of the internet community is capable of implementing strong crypto. Given a publicly available no-trapdoor algorithm, requiring the 'source' be visited, denies wiretap capabilities. The LEO follows the flow of information further and further upstream/down stream, noting that encryption is used. Eventually one follows the communications media directly to someones office/residence/car/pocket (which implies bugs instead of wiretaps). On the pro-wiretap side this is unacceptable. On the anti-wiretap side, what we see is the result of haggling over the price, provisions for wire and control records, which provide for fishing expeditions in the event the traffic is not particularly enlightening. As a corallary, allowing wiretapping but making them extremely expensive and dangerous to use could be explored - again haggling over the price. One can imagine making the LEO requesting a tap personally at risk for draconian retribution in terms both civil and criminal. It is unclear whether the antis should be prepared to negotiate at all. There is historical precedence by the U.S. supreme court to suggest that the right to privacy is absolute. The problem is that contrary to the Radio Act of 1934 and various other statutes covering public utility provided communications, the right to privacy is not being respected for electronic forms of expression. Before negotiating to give anything away, this issue should be satisfied. Hence the direction of a lot of groups like EFF, etc. The arguments go that no one has an expectation of privacy on unprotected media. The answer to that is to use strong crypto. The second level argument is that this denies the 'traditional' monitoring for law enforcement purposes of communications that had no expectation of privacy. Well I expect privacy with strong encryption. Tough teat. But then criminals will have privacy! (It may be their constitutional right.) I'm not particularly shocked to hear that someone may commit a crime in private. There should be compelling proof to show the needs of society overide the rights of the individual (in a republic). The arguments put forth by the pro-wiretap sides are inadequate to that determination, relying instead of emotional appeals and other propaganda.

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Matt in Newsweek
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Catch page 60 of the June 13th Newsweek - "Foiling the Clipper Chip" for an article on Matt. Pull quote "Has the National Security Agency foisted a nightmare on itself?" DCF

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Re: Remail: It's impossible to make anything foolproof, because fools areso ingenious
by jamiel＠sybase.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:55 AM 06/08/94 -0700, Matthew Ghio wrote: >I've had a lot of people make mistakes when using my remailer. Maybe this Out of curiousity, how do you handle this mail? The thought occurred to me once in thinking about the ethics of remailers. What do you do with it?

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Censoring the Internet
by an50＠desert.hacktic.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

: GG> In another vien, it was noted that a David Southerland of the National : GG> Advisory Council on the Information Highway stated that the council was : GG> advising the Canadian Government on the regulation and control of the : GG> 'net, and were pushing for a means of tracing messages sent through the : GG> Internet [Does anyone know who these people are?, where they come from?]. : David Sutherland headed the organizing committee for the National : Capital FreeNet and currently holds the positions of Chairman of the : Board of Directors and acting President. Mr. Sutherland is Director of : Computing and Communications Services at Carleton University in : Ottawa. His major interests in this context are public literacy in the : use of telecommunications technology and services, the social impacts : of these services and the development of a "new democratic process" : via computer mediated communications. >Now isn't this gentleman also the person who recommended (and possibly >decided upon) the banning of the alt.sex* newsgroups at Carleton University? "Electronic democracy" and "accountability", when applied to the Internet, are being used as nice-sounding buzzwords that coverup their practical consquences: the oppression of intellecual and political minorities, and the conversion of the Internet from a decentralized system, relatively free of coercion, into a centralized, politically controlled "Information Superhighway", a convenient metaphor for centralized government takeover of the next generation media, on which our ability to freely express ourselves depends. The agenda of people like David Sutherland, L.Detweiler's friend at the NSA who rants about a "Waco in cyberspace", Al Gore, and their ilk runs along the lines of the following: * identification and tracking of all posters and other Internet users for the purpose of "accountability", ie, the ability to threaten and apply coercive retaliation for expressing views that embarass them . The targets for censorship are for now not explicitly political (except for such universally loathed groups as Nazis), but rather selective enforcement of vague notions such as "obsecenity", "harrassment", etc. These serve to set precedents to allow further centralization and control in the future. These bullies call people who wish to speak free of such threats, such as anonymous posters, "cowards" because we do not wish to submit to their threats. * attack against "pseudospoofing" (the alleged use of multiple pseudonyms to make it appear more people favor a point of view). Many "electronic democracy" fans worship the results of opinion polls rather than thinking for themselves; they get truly pissed by the possibility that their lemming mentality could be manipulated. As freinds of the status quo, they ignore the fact that modern centralized media can manipulate our view of "popular" opinion far more radically than "pseudospoofing" possibly could. As L.Detweiler (aka tmp(a)netcom.com) has quite unintentionally demonstrated, it is very difficult to maintain even a few vocal pseudonyms in practice without folks catching on. * imposing radical, unprecedented controls on cyberspace to promote outmoted varieties of commerce (enforcement of some kinds of copyrights and patents recognized by some jurisdictions, attempts to resolve commercial non-repudiation problems in ways that require elimination of privacy on the Internet, etc.) instead of working on new forms of free enterprise that complement, rather than destroy, the freedom and privacy available on the Internet (multinational small business, privacy preserving digital cash, etc.). For "Info Superhighway" fans, "the needs of commerce" can provide nice-sounding excuses to kill free enterprise. * similarly, extending outmoded forms of government operation, such as Canada's ban on media coverage of certain court trials, attempts to enforce collection of taxes on international information exchange, and attempts to monitor "conspiracies" (broadly enough defined to cover any group talking about things that threaten them, and might be illegal somewhere). The way they propose to avoid these "threats" is, again, to radically alter the entire Internet (not just Usenet) by instituting panoptic monitoring and content control. Many politicians and fans of the status quo would rather impose 1984 than adapt their operations to the coming era of private, and even cheaper, worldwide communications. * calling for "community standards" for a network that criss-crosses communities that include, by no means at the extremes, both Baghdad and Bangkok. Often, the assumption is that their view of North American standards can be applied to the Internet, and everybody else just better go along, including those of us in North America with different standards. They'd rather impose their community standards on others than using filters to define their own unique local communities. Freedom is, practically, given as much (or more) by the tools we can build to protect it, as it is by our ability to convince others who violently disagree with us not to attack us. On the Internet we have tools like anon remailers and PGP that give us a great deal of freedom from coercion even in the midst of censors. Thus, these tools piss of fans of centralized information control, the defenders of the status quo, like nothing else on the Internet. You'll see these folks attacking anonymous remailers, cryptography, psuedonymous accounts, and other tools of coercion-free expression and information interchange on the net, ironically often in the name of promoting "commerce". You'll hear them rant and rave about "criminals" and "terrorists", as if they even had a good clue about the laws of the thousands of jurisdictions criss-crossed by the Internet, and as if their own attempts to enable coercion bear no resemblance to the practice of terrorism. The scary thing is, they really think they have a good idea about what all those laws should be, and they're perfectly willing to shove it down our throats, regardless of the vast diversity of culture, intellectual, political, and legal opinion on the planet. Alas, you'll also hear rhetoriticans otherwise promoting privacy and freedom piously dismiss tools as "mere technology", or react against some of their unexpected, unfamiliar, in some ways radical enchancement of privacy and freedom. They do this because as with most development, it follows a real-world nonlinear path, not a nice logically consistent political argument. These are the otherwise devoted libertarians who will quick to say, "I'm no crypto-anarchist", after their opponents have called them that in the midst of their typical reactionary ranting. But all the convicing rhetoric in the world doesn't finally decide these issues; in the end its what specifically we do with our cyberspace technology that will decide how free we are in cyberspace. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- This message was mailed through the remailer anon(a)desert.hacktic.nl Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to kafka(a)desert.hacktic.nl For help, send a message to help(a)desert.hacktic.nl. Send a message ping(a)desert.hacktic.nl to allocate an anonymous account. -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.3a mQBNAi2+t1EAAAECALUS6KI7WLBB47y5dDIN+vHAW2XLxu+ELJCNkHLKYxhAr6vY Ku1e9oMry+bHizW8wCt0JPWMlnzZOkhZplIGsqkABRG0O0Rlc2VydCBBbm9ueW1v dXMgUmVtYWlsaW5nIFNlcnZpY2UgPGFub25AZGVzZXJ0LmhhY2t0aWMubmw+iQBV AgUQLb63vZRymF15lPcFAQF88AH/TdqfNlZ2uNH/CpQiy6BneDa0+FJTmBFgy5W+ wcpbsljOFFheH3zz5zA2rkpxIBoy/nd4vQ9kaa6fc1TkVMeBfokAlQIFEC2+t6C+ ZjYIMi0DBQEBT4YD/0NK9fCG8JjE0fS/0SlFshWAGSZxUYREKoQiwo8/ZPEbORHa +a6E8mXOjy7XHVH00S8/1aOO+ji89FFY2aVNqVVDfZI53er9pZAeNSQ1mvD7isor B3IOQ+WeKgXL/IvOEaZro0ZA/FWtry0Ty7RZbPwX4j1TkBTxlRI08e2dG7YI =MfIT -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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Re: 6/6 New Yorker anti-crypto, anti-net article
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Regarding the author of the anti-net/anti-crypto article, someone says: > I do not have Seabrook's e-mail address, but he is on CompuServe > and it can be obtained from Compuserve's directory. -- Stanton McCandlish * mech(a)eff.org * Electronic Frontier Found. OnlineActivist "In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last week by Yankelovich Partners, two-thirds said it was more important to protect the privacy of phone calls than to preserve the ability of police to conduct wiretaps. When informed about the Clipper Chip, 80% said they opposed it." - Philip Elmer-Dewitt, "Who Should Keep the Keys", TIME, Mar. 14 1994

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