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No Subject
by Scott Schryvers 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

NBC News at Sunrise has just announced the discovery of alien life on the planet Mars. The lifeform that became extinct more than 2 billion years ago was found as a fossil in a meteor that originated from mars and landed on earth. The fossil found was a primitive germ life form. PGP encrypted mail preferred. E-Mail me for my key. Scott J. Schryvers <schryver(a)radiks.net>

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Phone tapping in India
by Arun Mehta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"The Pioneer" headlined on August 6, 96: "CBI can tap at whim -- Agency has 6 bugging machines" (The CBI is effectively the Indian equivalent of the FBI) Apparently, these machines costing Rs. 7.5 million = $200,000 each, can each tap 7 phones in a 25-km radius, and were bought from a Hyderabad-based company, Fidelity Systems. Apparently, all that is needed to tap a phone is for the sleuths to dial the number through the machine, which then automatically starts and stops recording all conversations carried out with that number, as well the numbers dialled by the target. As it is, the law on wiretapping is draconian in India: on the occurrence of an emergency, or for "public safety", a designated government officer can direct that "any message or class of messages to or from any person or class of persons, or relating to any particular subject, brought for transmission by or transmitted or received by any telegraph, shall not be transmitted, or shall be intercepted or detained or shall be disclosed to the government." (This is from the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885(!), and applies to e-mail and BBSes as well). But with these new machines, even this designated officer can be bypassed. Under a box titled "Beware of blank calls", the newspaper mentions that when the sleuths ring your number to start tapping, you get a "blank" call (which one is quite used to here -- if that were enough evidence, the whole of India is being tapped!) What technology is this? If it indeed works this way, what is to prevent any large company or rich person from procuring the same hardware? Apparently, the purchase was authorised by former prime minister Rao, who is now complaining that his own phone is being tapped (serves him right). Arun Mehta Phone +91-11-6841172, 6849103 amehta(a)cpsr.org http://www.cerfnet.com/~amehta/ finger amehta(a)cerfnet.com for public key

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Re[2]: SSNs (was Re: Internal Passports)
by Steve Coltrin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Simon Spero <ses(a)tipper.oit.unc.edu> wrote: >one silly thought: lots of people use cypherpunks as the username and >password for all those websites that want an id. What about a cypherpunks >3-2-4 number for those cases where an SSN isn't appropriate. Anyone know >what J. Edgar Hoover's SSN was? According to one of "George Hayduke"'s books, Richard Nixon's was 567-68-0515. -spc

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Re: Freeh slimes again: Digital Telephony costs $2 billion now ...
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:59 PM 8/6/96 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote: >I haven't been able to find the reference, but a month or two ago >there was an article on the net or in a newspaper about the targets >of wiretapping - how many wiretaps were for drugs, gambling, tax evasion, >and of course terrorism. The number of wiretaps for bombs and guns >was something low like 80 in the last 5-10 years - about 1/10%. > (Did anybody else see this article??) Gilmore has a chart on wiretap use in various crimes in his Brain Tennis match on Wired: http://www.hotwired.com/braintennis/96/32/index0a.html DCF

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Anonymous Remailers at work
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

One of the big problems with remailers is getting them deployed widely. How can we create a demand for the service that will encourage people to both (a) deploy them and (b) think of them as good rather than bad? Aside from cypherpunks, spammers, and everyone using anon.penet.fi, there aren't really a lot of people familiar with them. I've recently run into a couple of business problems at work that could be solved by (slightly modified) remailers. 1) Manager performance review, suggestion boxes, and questions to visiting honchos - there are several departments that are using "email to the secretary who'll take your name off and forward it" to handle this problem. Remailers are an obvious solution. (More obvious if we weren't using (gack, phfft!) Microsoft Mail :-) It would probably be worth modifying the remailer to use a permit-list as well as a block-list for destinations and maybe sources, so that companies don't get surprised by outside spammers, and people can get used to using the things at work. Distribute the thing as an OmbudsKit or whatever. You'd obviously want the default to be non-logging. 2) Sending sensitive email across the real Internet - between customers, and for those days that the departmental dialup mail server or remote LAN access isn't working and you need to send something from home or on the road. A standard remailer would do the job, though you'd probably want to add a permit-list, and you might want to add logging and/or return receipts. Mail to pgprelay(a)foobar.com and it distributes it.... (Requires putting a key somewhere well-known, like in DNS or on the key servers.) (Hmmm - an alternative implementation is to use a CGI script to do the mailing and use SSL; some companies may find this easier to deploy, depending on their firewall configurations.) (Does it make sense to deploy something like this as a standard feature of an IPSP gateway system like John's?) Any other reasons to install anonymous remailers at work, and things you'd do to make them more attractive or less scary to corporate network administrative types? # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Defuse Authority!

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Re: Stop the presses -- Anti-terrorism bill not that bad
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:38 PM 8/6/96 -0400, hallam(a)Etna.ai.mit.edu wrote: >which such a claim was made. As for the UK laws, there is >practically no defense against a libel claim that one can >file in court. There is absolutely no basis on which to >justify them. This is why the Singapore government uses them >as a form of censorship. There was a recent US appeals court decision in which an attempt to enforce a UK libel judgment was rejected on First Amendment grounds. The court refused to allow the application of UK law here. DCF

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THAT BRIT AGAIN
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C'punks, Phillll came up with an excellent weasel this time. He's offered to "bet" on the Foresight Exchange. The relevant part of their FAQ says: How is FX different from a bookie? Besides the obvious fact that FX isn't real money, it differs from placing bets with a bookie in that FX is a market. In other words, it really isn't a bet at all. Instead of putting his money where his mouth is, Phillll has decided to put his mouth where his mouth is once again. Nice try guy. S a n d y ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Re: Corporate e-mail policy
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I used to work for a company which had a surprisingly liberal policy about e-mail.The gist of it was: "Private e-mail will not be read by anyone other than the recipient. The only exceptions to this are: 1) Systems personnel may examine mail messages to determine if the mail system is working correctly; [e.g., checking mail logs against users' mailbox contents to verify delivery] 2) [basically said e-mail would be treated like any other system files in the event of a criminal investigation, etc.]" The policy specifically required authorization from the line VP for either of these actions, and reinforced that the systems people were to treat the e-mail as administratively confidential data. The only time I heard of anyone even asking for e-mail was when a project manager wanted a copy of a message that a sponsor sent to one of his subordinates, who was on vacation. The systems folks cited the policy, the line VP backed them up, and the manager went away empty-handed. (He wound up calling the subordinate at her hotel and browbeating her into authorizing the computer center folks to forward a copy of the message to the manager. But that's another story.)

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announce: WEAK S/MIME support for netscape messenger
by Anonymous Sender 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hello all, here's a new weaken patch, this time for netscape's mail client with S/MIME support. when you send an encrypted email, it is first encrypted with a secret key. the secret key is then encrypted with the recipient's public key. this patch will modify netscape's mail client so that whenever it generates a new key, it generates an all 0x72s key. i hope i'll find time to release an S/MIME encrypted message parser... so that anyone can verify the info. the magic sequence : look for : 51 6a 00 e8 86 27 00 00 83 c4 0c 8b f8 and change with 6a 72 51 e8 b5 98 94 77 83 c4 0c 33 ff by just changing 9 bytes, you can read all the encrypted emails ! like the previous sequence, this substitues a call to GenerateRandom to a memset of course it may be possible to do something more clever, like hashing a 16 bits random key to produce a 128 bit one ! my ex-boss is already doing that. here's how to know if the weaken sequence works on your browser: use the md5 in fortify distrib md5 -r 0x400-0x32ca00,0x384a00:0x58400 ...\program\netscape.exe that should produce aea2aba6f731468e34fd1141f603ea20 the md5 for the whole program (netscape.exe) is : 294dfe9a5e941d12b04e10adafb0c769 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: cp850 iQCVAwUBNTKmWpVRLpSyKBl9AQGVAgP+Opot5VnJOouhwcS58JIdur1Q+xd2twWR /1q0SlpfsaTi99YIgFBrDpoVhqrW+wQWJmFmGppR5wZtyMNbSm3GPaRm0m9wAOiK vXsxS9VapEgjVh50caeTEh7e6GEwNBhNEENKbt1WvGWTrnh7K8dqiC3Pla7kmG3Q syimJN1toCs= =GIYU -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.3i mQCNAzUuVR4AAAEEALkjQwGKIsBT16nqJbZsWiPOH6gfRkzFav0RmWgjBu/bjDKe PmC2aGoQV2FXFYGGnX0bHyBz8Qjewdb7aDg/MQsAXjxsSZvqxNEkXGa6bH4U/Fe8 32WBddLrScc6vikaPv0o3D8bgzr+qQM0s9FSP4n5Jb+N/y2YjJVRLpSyKBl9AAUR tAVtYXJrb4kAlQMFEDUuVR6VUS6UsigZfQEBI9AD/RM6l/Gmw3+IPNQ1fRSFAME3 ZLoWUC6mAW5kUP0IaOFD/tXGXT+ekehcFojHpk9/QIO1mVpxr3bp97/ETZb1ZJiS EHTEjAP/85gja/YlRubfihUUb5/MoIz94a+MWsoDB0qLDJbQ48vyNsftNDrolUFf KUdCME7v3al/m6c0wufP =Bnx/ -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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Re: Internal Passports
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:37 PM 8/5/96 -0700, you wrote: >Personally, I don't care. In fact, when employing gardeners and yard works >I prefer Mexicans. But the law says, these days, that I must verify the >legality of workers *if* they appear to be dark-skinned, Mexican, Latin, or >the like. I say "if" because there are no requirements in general for >white-skinned, Anglo workers....no work permits, no proofs of citizenship >(such a document is currently lacking in the American pantheon...I, a mixed >descendant of Mayflower colonist and Scandinavian immigrants, lack such >"proof"). If you're _employing_ Anglos, you're currently required to disrespect their honesty and demand proof that their papers are in order to fill out the I-9 form. There's a list of "one from column A or one from columns B and C" of acceptable papers, such as passports, birth certificates, driver's licenses, US Military ID, etc., which the government uses to determine whether they want to give you permission to hire them and give them permission to work. If you don't have these, you can join the Army, and they'll give you some papers. I hope you weren't Un-American enough to be born at home, though - without that government-issued birth certificate, the Army won't be able to verify your age. None of that is really proof of citizenship - after all, you could have renounced your US citizenship and become stateless or joined a foreign government. But President Buchanan's loyalty oath requirements should take care of that, as well as help with the problem of all these immigrant Brits and Irish and Canadians flooding our shores - I mean, look around you, they're everywhere. Y'all can't walk into a 7-11 these days without some clerk speaking funny-soundin' English at you. And the reason you can't legally just hire contractors and not have them count as employees has a lot to do with Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), who made a lot of money running ADP, a computer-services bodyshop, that wanted to preserve its advantages against more flexible competition. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Defuse Authority!

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