- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: rhetorical trickery
by tomservo＠access.digex.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- An entity self-representing as "Vladimir Z. Nuri" writes: >sure, a government agent could insist, "well, don't be a bonehead. >it's obviously his diary, and surely contains all his crimes against >children". A standard attitude among LEOs is: "if you're not guilty of something, what are you hiding?" Skilled ones use this lever to get suspects to allow searches of their property on the flimsiest of pretenses. >ah yes, just as, obviously, even before trial, "the man is a criminal" "Innocent until proven guilty" is at best an abstraction to most police. Given the amount of time they have per case, on average, they're more interested in slorking up whatever evidence they can against a suspect and making a bust. Didn't Ed Meese say something along the lines of, "if they weren't criminals, they wouldn't be involved with the police"? ObCrypto: Having a fair amount of encrypted stuff around makes any given piece stand out less. A couple dozen PGP-encrypted files with names like "1994 1040 Schedule A" and "Business Contact List, 1Q 1995" is a hell of a lot less suspicious than a single encrypted file called "detonate.pgp." :^) Furthermore, if they don't believe me and I choose not to give them the plaintext, isn't that my Fifth Amendment right? Or has that been waived in cyberspace for our convenience? Scott -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQB1AwUBMUNUZuvEnOI8TfM9AQEzjwL/RC1kBe/R8aKru9z0PRFI8wwb+/qhMx8d UFrZ/VA36xDDKY48muwVA+rF+e0tIn3n006DvEBcwMNJ4LfQ15KaVssXjOlDoE0R mAp8umb/K6uK0bZ9+M4/qZe8e6by0VkW =CBfe -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Cryptanalysis
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:45 PM 3/10/96 -0500, you wrote: >IS there anyone outside of governments, doing code-breaking _for a living_? Don't know if it's a full-time income or not, but there are certainly several people offering commercial products for cracking Microsoft and other popular word processor encryption for people who've lost their passwords. And people who are designing good cryptosystems to protect information have to understand how to crack them, so they can tell whether their new system is stronger or weaker. But there's usually not much other legitimate need for cracking real messages; the authorized people usually have the keys. Whether there are also Bad Guys doing the job for profit, I don't know. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281 # "At year's end, however, new government limits on Internet access threatened # to halt the growth of Internet use. [...] Government control of news media # generally continues to depend on self-censorship to regulate political and # social content, but the authorities also consistently penalize those who # exceed the permissable." - US government statement on China...

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Re: Leahy and Mrs. Bemmis (now that's a subject line)
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:24 AM 3/11/96 -0500, A. Padgett Peterson P.E. Information Security wrote: >The Leahy bill is flawed in two areas. Sent a message with proposed wording >to Sen. Leahy via his web page but have not gotten a response. Have a bad >habit of reading laws without thought since this is how LEA and prosecutors >are told to enforce them - as written, not as believed. If an area is >vague, a court is required to decide how to interpret it, not LEA. If badly >written *everyone* loses. Unfortunately, this is not the way CREATIVE prosecutors enforce laws. _THEY_ try to be imaginative, "pushing the envelope" as it were, and expect the courts to stop them. Sadly, those same courts often have ex-prosecutors as judges, people who aren't particularly inclined to dissuade the abuse of laws. (exceptions exist, obviously.) >At the same time am pragmatic enough to accept the idea that it will have >no effect unless it passes and to be passed today it must have something >like the criminalization statement. I've occasionally seen statements like this, but the people who make these claims never seem to back them up with reasoned commentary, let alone facts, which would help to establish that this particular section is a "must" to any particular supporter, certainly not a substantial number of supporters of this bill. Even a quote or two from some political-type saying, "We need that section to pass this bill" would be better than nothing. I'm not suggesting this is totally implausible; merely that it would be lunacy to _assume_ that the bill "needs" this clause to pass, without more evidence or even opinion expressed by key people. It's almost as if you people have surrendered before the "fight" even has begun. _NOW_ do you understand why I'm so astonished at your reaction to this bill? Tim May would object to my use of the word, "Sheeple" here, but I think it fits absolutely. Anybody who would allow himself to be spoon-fed this _entire_, unrepaired bill _IS_ a "sheeple." Anyone who invents some requirement that this bad section be in place is WORSE. Furthermore, if any people (for example, Senators and Representatives) actually are willing to publicly stand up and insist on that section, then I'd say that's a cue for us to ask them some very hard questions. You seem to be unwilling to put them to their proof. I recommend that you stop living DOWN to your reputation, Padgett. > The goal here should not be to throw >it out since that would simply cause the whole bill to fail, Again, you do NOTHING to support this claim. How do you KNOW this to be true? And even with that knowledge, presuming you have it, why are you apparently not planning to use it to our best advantage? Why not try to "smoke out" some of the people who have conspired to include this section into the law? I'll bet they're hoping nobody questions them on their motivations! Moreover, does this comment indicate that you've had conversations or seen information that indicates that the presence of this part of the bill is necessary to its passage? And you're not TELLING US the details of that conversation or information? Suggesting that you're happy to sell the rest of us out? Hmmmmmm? Or are you just jumping to a conclusion? Padgett, the more you say the more you destroy your credibility. > but to word >it carefully enough that it satisfies those who reguire laws Huh?!? Who "require[s] laws"????????? _I_ certainly don't "require" this section to be there, and so far I haven't seen anyone on CP who _personally_ would insist on the presence of this section to condition his support the entire bill. Quite the opposite; most people express varying degrees of reservations about it. > while being narrow enough to avoid exploitation. IMNSHO the best way to do that is to >require that: >1) A felony occured (curiously misdemeanors were ommitted) > and >2) That the individual to be charged was an active participant (before, > during, or after the fact) The problem is, what is your definition of the words, "active participant"? And will YOUR definition actually be the one included in the law? I, on the other hand, see no reason to add crimes, since the implication above is that the person involved is ALREADY prosecutable in court. Why all this "piling on"? On the contrary, I believe it is absolutely certain that this clause will be used to prosecute people who are not otherwise prosecutable or convictable of any other crime. It's curious that you don't see that. > and >3) That encryption was used in furtherance. > >Note: that in the US (1) and (2) seem sufficient for a criminal charge to be >brought, so does (3) really add anything except words or possibly severity ? I sure wish you were better at answering your own questions... >Seizure seems to be a great concern of the group with the point of the >Bemmis Pontiac being brought up. For someone providing a free remailer, >that is a valid concern since the first question a court might ask is >"what was the motivation". I suspect that someone providing a remailer >and charging a reasonable fee to all who might want to use the service >might be in a much better position (not a lawyer so not allowed to know). Playing into their hands yet again, I see! Raising the price is merely a diluted form of banning, BTW. So far, people implement remailers because running them is a comparatively minor cost, and they feel that there is a need for those services. If there was some sort of de-facto rule that the operator had to charge for those services, this would complicate the use of anonymous remailers even more, deter their use even further, and achieve the government's ends just about as surely as a downright ban would do. In fact, accepting a fee might actually INCREASE the liability of the operator, not reduce it, because the remailer operator would have a financial stake in the use of his remailer. He could no longer argue that he did not "benefit" from the abuse (use) of that remailer. >One indicator might be easy to check: Has there ever been a seizure >involving a rental car (Hertz, Avis, etc.) and if so, what was the >disposition ? Well, given the fact that these auto-rental companies do billions of dollars of business each year and are known and "loved" by one and all, you could not use the (supposed) fact that no such incident occurred as some sort of positive sign. Any prosecutor is well aware that he may need a rental car some day, and angering a multi-billion dollar company is not something you do lightly. OTOH, if you discover that EVEN THESE organizations are liable for the transgressions of their renters, either civilly or criminally, that should give you fair warning that anyone smaller (especially an individual running a remailer) and less able to defend himself is certainly going to be a target eventually. Even a failed attempt to get a car rental company to be liable for something done by a renter is a sign that prosecutor was inclined to go after a big target, suggesting he wouldn't think twice before he tried to haul an individual into court. Do you think a person would operate a remailer if he thought it was likely he'd get prosecuted and have to pay thousands of dollars in legal bills, even if he were eventually acquitted? Remember, his legal bills won't be reimbursed by the government, though I believe they should be. Too bad you can't see this, huh? Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: anonymous web pages (Was: SurfWatch)
by Gary Howland 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Nelson Minar wrote: > cp(a)proust.suba.com (Alex Strasheim) writes: > >Has anyone ever considered setting up anonymous web sites on top of usenet? > > I proposed this a couple of months ago, there should be a bit of > discussion left over in the archives. My idea was to have an account > keyed to a password - if you emailed the server with the right > password, it would take the text of your email and put it in the > specified URL. Then you can use remailers to preserve anonymity with > the server. It's sort of like the alias.c2.org accounts. Cant it be done with a web page consisting of usenet references? eg: <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Test</TITLE> </HEAD> <DL><p> <DT> <A HREF="news:199603100645.XAA00982@nelson.santafe.edu?headers=all"> Test of news post </A> </DL> </body> </HTML> Gary - -- pub 1024/C001D00D 1996/01/22 Gary Howland <gary(a)kampai.euronet.nl> Key fingerprint = 0C FB 60 61 4D 3B 24 7D 1C 89 1D BE 1F EE 09 06 - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBMUQJISoZzwIn1bdtAQHsGQGA1a69oJvSO7KXYGVlRzy8H14IxwzIyybK nsWo5tA9fLsGI8qt1o9hBkNdKEfvMt0H =qiC8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Remailer passphrases
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:51 PM 3/12/96 -0500, Perry E. Metzger wrote: >Bill Frantz writes: >> One of the reasons classical (government) crypto users change keys >> frequently is to minimize the amount of data compromised by a broken key. >> We keep hearing about NSA decrypting 20 year old cyphertext and showing >> more of the workings of the atomic spy rings operating in the 40s and 50s. >> If an opponent can rubber hose the key, her job is easy. If she has to >> perform cryptoanalysis, it is much harder. Remailers should regularly >> change their keys to avoid compromising previously recorded traffic. (They >> can have a long lived key for signing their traffic keys.) > >Signed Diffie-Hellman key exchanges have the property known as >"Perfect Forward Secrecy". Even if the opponent gets your public keys >it still will not decrypt any traffic for him at all -- it just lets >him pretend to be you. Thats one reason why protocols like Photuris >and Oakley use the technique. Unless I am badly mistaken, these exchanges need interaction, which makes them unsuitable for simple remailers. Regards - Bill ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Frantz | The CDA means | Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 | lost jobs and | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | dead teenagers | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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re: Video resolution
by A. Padgett Peterson P.E. Information Security 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Note: this refers to the IBM PC & clones only > The point is that they do a lousy job on dithering. So does Microsoft > explorer. They probably purchased the identical code from some clot. Have been watching this go back and forth & get further from the original question as usual. I suspect that if the original poster looks in her/his/ its/other SYSTEM.INI file, the line "display.drv=vga.drv" will be found in the [boot] section. This is the default 16 color driver installed by Windows to be compatible with every 256k 640x480 VGA card. This makes a decent GIF or JPEG - even "64 gray scale" such as the QuickCam produces - look like olifactory solid waste products. To do better, you need three things: 1) A video card with higher resolution (usually at least 1 Mb of video memory is necessary). 2) A video monitor capable of supporting the card's output. 3) An increased resolution (at least 256 colors as the first responder mentioned) video driver to replace vga.drv (YMMV). If any of these are missing, see the second paragraph above. Warmly, Padgett ps the CDA does nothing to block really creative insults 8*).

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Re: Leahy bill nightmare scenario?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:12 AM 3/11/96 -0500, Gary Howland wrote: >Dan Weinstein writes: >Dan says "you" wrote: >> > Question: What, exactly, is the motivation of a person running an >> > anonymous remailer? His motivation is clear: To allow people to >> > send anonymously untraceable messages. Assuming he's of ordinary >> > levels of intelligence or beyond, he is aware that somebody may some >> > day use his system for illegal purposes. You're going to have to >> > explain why a court _CAN'T_ interpret this as being in violation of >> > the law. >> >> If I rent cars, someone might one day use a car rented from me in a >> robbery. Does that make my an accessary? NO. > >This is an unfair analogy. Now if you had said that you rented cars >without asking for proof of identification, thus making your car hire >centre very useful to robbers, that may more closely resemble the >anon-remailer situation. >Gary Exactly! I'm glad you noticed, and commented. As you've noticed, I keep getting faulty reasoning from people who SHOULD know better. Analogies are extremely useful, but if they are poorly crafted, they do little more than show the limitations of their author.

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Re: Another Motivation for the CDA (Federal Sentencing Guid
by JonWienke＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In a message dated 96-03-09 04:05:26 EST, you write: >At 9:59 PM 3/8/96 -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: >>The pizza guy was a thug, but twice as many third-strikers got >>their third strike for marijuana as for all violent crimes combined. >>I assume most of these had large quantities, possibly intended for sale, >>and a number of them had real crimes as their previous felonies >>rather than Prohibition-related offenses. But you can get legally >>serious quantities of marijuana by just growing a couple of plants. > >I wonder how many of these drug dealers previous "real crimes" were related >to using violence to protect their drug business, defense which would have >used the courts and police had drug dealing been legal. What difference does that make? If you are deranged enough to murder someone because they are selling crack in your territory, you are deranged enough to shoot your manager after getting fired from McDonalds, or to do any number of heinous things that ahve nothing to do with drug laws. Sick people will still do sick things, even if some of them are legalized. Jonathan Wienke

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Cryptographers against cryptography
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is the second in a regular series of postings to expose cryptographers and cypherpunks who are either lying to us or making a very serious mistake in there judgement. Why do I say this?? What do these people have in common? Easy. Even though they act like they are on the side of crypto for the masses, every one of them support the Leahy anticryptography bill. This law will make it illegal to run an encrypting remailer and will require key escrow. If it isn't clear why this is the case READ THE BILL!!!! Several wise people on the CypherPunkS mailing list, cypherpunks(a)toad.com have exposed the bill for what it is. Even though these people have been presented with evidence that the bill does these things they have not recanted. They stab us in the back and then they lie about it. Some of these people have been bought out by forces unknown. Others are just blind to the facts and need education. Bizdos is in a class by himself. It's time we "help" them think about this. Email each of these people with youre opinion that they should support cryptography or maybe stop lying to us that they do. What you say and do is up to you. I do not support breaking the law (yet). B. Schneier: bs208(a)newton.cam.ac.uk, schneier(a)counterpane.com M. Blaze: mab(a)crypto.com, mab(a)research.att.com J. Bizdos: jim(a)rsa.com S. Safaddar: shabbir(a)vtw.org D. Weinstein: djw(a)vplus.com P.. Peterson: padgett(a)hobbes.orl.mmc.com B. Stewart: stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com BOYCOTT APPLIED CRYPTOGRAPHY, AT&T, VTW, and RSA!!!!

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shellback.com online
by David K. Merriman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Just a short note to let everyone know that shellback.com is, in fact, online: http://www.shellback.com Note that our domain name arrived in time; none of that IP address stuff needed. It ain't much, but it's mine (and my partners). I'd appreciate any feedback folks might have about our links to privacy/crypto sites. Dave Merriman -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMUOwRMVrTvyYOzAZAQEZrgP/arTmLrZwjHg9u/KLvyie86vwIleiCz6g xTl54ygZBn4DrmqtvvdKZ8K/ysT9jY9iCFymAell5PS/sMnL1UNFtNw4Sl2t4kOo E6us2f1hpThIMCG6w+6zBJhqWEhI7YqQAKLlIXP8+8BUsyM8hEy7NykCMlrZT/+B kvNXHnH8tW0= =cRL7 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------------------------------------- "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." P. J. O'Rourke (b. 1947), U.S. journalist. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> For privacy tools: http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/1148

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