- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

RE: Truth can sometimes be harmful...
by Blake Coverett 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >The Truth? > > > > "The coordinates of Hiroshima are...." > > Q.E.D. Oh no, can the return of abombpunks be far behind? :-) regards, -Blake (who figures if your can't count or measure it, it's an opinion)

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SSL Telnet Proxy?
by herodotus＠alpha.c2.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does anyone know of a publically available telnet proxy, preferably one using SSL? -- Herodotus <herodotus(a)alpha.c2.org>

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The Anti-Briefing...
by pcw＠access.digex.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm sure the "Briefing" is quite impressive and it includes several strong arguments for government surveillance. There are bound to be more than a few kids that are alive today thanks to eavesdropping and the quick thinking of folks in FBI, NSA et al. That being said, I'm sure that there is also an "anti-Briefing" that can be given that illustrates that the huge cost of redesigning the phone system and forcing businesses and people to operate without protection. Here are some examples from the recent press that I think are good arguments for why strong crypto won't change the status quo. 1) A recent video tape on the news showed some convicted bad guy doing drugs and having sex with one of his convict buddies. They just happened to be in a side room of the prison that had a video camera. Some people tried to make political hay by saying that the prisons were really coddling the prisons too much. But prisons already have all of the enforcement tools that the police wish they had. They can strip search people without a warrant. They can read all of their mail and listen in to all conversations with visitors who aren't their lawyer. But there are still drugs in the prison. So how do they expect to eradicate drugs in the real world? 2) There are persistent rumors that Tim McVeigh et al were under some sort of surveillance. I know of no facts to back this up. I've heard some people say that they feel it was part of a sting operation that failed because the bomb actually went off. Who knows? But the World Trade Center bombers were under surveillance and that failed. This doesn't show that surveillance is bad, it just shows that it isn't perfect. 3) Pachinko machines and cell phones have both used weak crypto. Whoops. The gangsters figured out how to break the crippled system. There must more examples but I'm typing from memory. The point is that full surveillance rarely stops crime altogether, but it may make a dent. The question is whether it is worth redesigning our phone system and computer networks to introduce even more weakness just because the police can use this weakness. Some might argue that if weak crypto can save one child's life than it is worth it. This is a strong, sentimental argument, but it really doesn't reflect the reality of the tradeoff. We could spend a lot more money on airlines, trains and cars and save a few kids lives, but the cost could be phenomenal. The fact is that government enforced weak crypto is a tradeoff. We pay for the ease of the police surveillance because we make life simpler for crooks who make their living eavesdropping and circumventing security systems. The big question is whether the tradeoff is worth it.

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Re: Runtime info flow in Java
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 20:06 5/23/96, Norman Hardy wrote: >I am interested in your paper because you define the problem as we do. >There are some who think that capability architectures are the solution. >There is little information on how to solve these problems with >capabilities. I am trying to find time to address some of these issues. I walked away from your presentation of KeyKOS with the impression that a capability system to be secure it would have to be implemented at the OS level. Can you build a such a system on top of an insecure OS, as Java would have to do? TIA, Disclaimer: My opinions are my own, not those of my employer. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred.

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Emptying the trash...
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Sent to Netscape feedback defartment] The next trash I will be emptying will be my installation of Netscape. Netscape has been my only browser since gaining InterNet access, but I am not going to use a product from a company who requires me to jump through hoops to ensure privacy through strong encryption and then tells me to fuck off because they are incapable of verifying my net persona and/or location. If Netscape intends to make their software compliant with the wishes of those who want to illegally monitor my location and identity, then they should at least require those fascists to supply you with this information for you to use for my convenience in acquiring your product. I send weekly death threats to Bill Gates, but I'll bet my ass that Micro$not lets me download their browser so that he can go to his grave clutching my cash in his hand. ~~~~ Toto <president(a)whitehouse.gov>

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stand-by
by an105＠hotmail.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, after adjusting claims for several insurance companies, I found one thing the same. No one seems to know much about what they are entitled to. So I decided to help the public towards even footing with insurance adjusters. I have been a crusader for policyholder's rights for a good many years since and received acclaim from state departments' of insurance and state Governors for my work, albeit obscure. Anyway, you may want to bookmark my "deserve" website just in case that rainy day happens to come your way. Socrates never sold insurance, but his words apply to this industry as well: "The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance." Best wishes, Tony Braga deserve link: http://www.sure-net.com/deserve.html

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Rivest's Chaffing and Winnowing
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The New York Times, March 22, 1998, p. 31. New Method To Veil Data Could Upstage Export Policy Cryptologists find a way to foil eavesdroppers without secret codes. By John Markoff San Francisco, March 21 -- One of the nation's leading computer scientists has proposed a novel technique for scrambling data that could circumvent Government export policies aimed at limiting the foreign sale of encryption technology. The technique, which was described this week in an Internet discussion among computer researchers, was introduced by Ronald L. Rivest, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the inventors of the most widely used commercial encryption scheme, RSA. The new approach, which is described in a short technical paper that has been posted to Mr. Rivest's M.I.T. Web site (http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/chaffing.txt) is described as "chaffing and winnowing" digital information instead of encrypting it. According to Mr. Rivest's paper, it is possible to hide a message by breaking it into packets that are then secretly identified as good information, or "wheat," and gibberish, or "chaff," in such a way that an eavesdropper cannot distinguish the two. Because the individual packets would not be encrypted, Mr. Rivest said, such a system would circumvent current export restrictions. The two principal ways of communicating in secret are encryption and steganography. Steganography uses computer techniques to embed a secret message in a document like a digital image. In encryption, secret information is encoded using functions that require difficult mathematical tasks to decode, and it has become the standard way of transmitting secret information electronically. There are no restrictions on the domestic use of this technology, but the Government has been trying to force the industry to adopt standards that would permit law-enforcement officials to have mathematical keys allowing them to decode messages without the knowledge of the sender or receiver. The Clinton Administration says the standards are needed to fight crime and terrorism. Opponents argue that the Government decoding keys, to be stored in computers, could easily be stolen, compromising privacy and the security of credit card numbers and other personal information. In terms of exports, with few exceptions the Government limits the software to codes that can be easily broken. "Winnowing does not employ encryption, and so does not have a 'decryption key,' " Mr. Rivest wrote in his paper. "As usual, the policy debate about regulating technology ends up being obsoleted by technological innovations." Peter Neumann, an SRI International computer scientist who has read Mr. Rivest's paper, said that although "there is still no certainty that this is a practical idea," if it works, "it throws another clinker at the Justice Department." Other cryptography experts said they were uncertain whether it would be possible to skirt Government export restrictions in this way, but that the idea was an impressive new approach that might have valuable commercial applications. "He's a very clever guy," said George Spix, a Microsoft researcher who specializes in cryptography policy issues. " It goes to show that for all the technological wizardry in the world, there's nothing like an intellect." One of the potential limitations of the new method is that the total information transmitted might need to be hundreds of times larger than the actual message. Mr. Rivest said, however, that he had discussed the idea with Adi Shamir, an Israeli cryptographer, and that Mr. Shamir had proposed compression methods that would reduce the total transmission to only about twice the actual message size. The strength of the idea for chaffing and winnowing is that it is possible to prove mathematically that a message cannot be decoded, Mr. Rivest said. He said he had come up with the idea recently while teaching an undergraduate computer course. In addition to his role as associate director of the Laboratory of Computer Science at M.I.T., Mr. Rivest is a consultant and shareholder in RSA Data Security Inc., a company that develops encryption software. "I put the winnowing and chaffing idea out there to stimulate debate,"' Mr. Rivest said. "I hope it will help clear up some of the issues that have been raised in the policy discussion. [End]

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PILATE SAYETH UNTO HIM... (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hiya Sandy, Forwarded message: > Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 07:43:06 -0700 (PDT) > From: Sandy Sandfort <sandfort(a)crl.com> > Subject: PILATE SAYETH UNTO HIM... > > It isn't obvious that we DON"T agree. It was still a question. If there was an absolute Truth as you postulate the results would be many and varied. For instance, 1. If the Truth were absolute everyone would have to accept it as such even if they disagreed or said it wasn't the Truth, In essence it would at the same time create the ultimate Lie. This leads to a logic inconsistancy, something can't be the ultimate Truth and at the same be the ultimate Lie AND and claim no relativity applies. If you allow relativity into your argument then it is clear that the subject of study is not an ultimate anything. 2. What is the litmus test for ultimate Truth? How do you tell it from regular truth? How do you tell it from a lie? From the Lie? 3. If there were a ultimate Truth then this implies that it is possible to have a system which can fully describe itself. Godel's Incompletenes Theorem would be found invalid, which by extension would have some wide spread ramifications for the rest of our knowledge base. 4. An ultimate Truth would philosphicaly be inseperable from God. Being a pantheist, you are going to have a hard time floating that boat in my pond. 5. An ultimate truth would imply that all existance conformed or was aware of the ultimate Truth. In essence you are claiming that truth and falsity (good/bad) exist as a absolute and not a consequence of human psychology. I would be very interested in your reasoning regarding how a rock on the other side of the Magellanic Clouds could be effected by a ultimate Truth. 6. I suspect that any ultimate Truth would have to be so trival it would be useless. Tautologies are worthless for proving anything. 7. On the issue of postulates (ie unprovable assumptions necessary for the creation of a logical framework - Godel rears its ugly head again) the implication is that we can now prove Euclids 5 postulates absolutely. I am shure many mathematicians would be interested in this. > Actually, I rather fancied Bell and May's responses. To the > extent we do disagree reflects in no way on the Truth, only in > our abilities to determine what Truth is. Again, think of it > as an archetype or reality not as a popularity contest. Which reality? Yourse, mine, a photons? To a photon the entire universe is the photon. Would your Truth be true for it? It is obvious that its truth's are not valid for us (unless you are claiming we are all everywhere at once). If there is no one absolute Reality how can there be a absolute Truth? > Nope, not me. Hell, I don't even claim *partial* omnipotence. > You really have to pay attention to those details. Why are you > having so much trouble understanding the question mark? I understand it quite well. Why are you having so hard a time giving me a straight answer? > > Nice tactical ploy, an ad hominem buried in a straw man argument. > > Thanks, but you got it wrong again. Yes, there was an indirect > (and apparently valid) ad hominem, but apparently you do not know > what a straw man is. For your edification, your out-of-left-field > suggestion that my discussion of Truth represents some claim of > omnipotence on my part is clearly a straw man (and an implied ad > hominem, for good measure). If you admit fallibility then how can one claim to recognize a ultimate anything, let along Truth? Hardly a left field question as you claim. It doesn't qualify as ad hominem because it was not directed at a personality but rather at your basic theoretical assumptions. It is completely valid (and necessary I might) to both question basic postulates (otherwise non-Euclidian geometry would not have existed) as well as to clearly elucidate what those postulates are. You did not do that, I simply asked for clarification. I have never made a attack on personality as a basis for any of my discussion on this list. I have made some comments to folks about the way they treated others, but this is clearly different than a discourse on a technical issue. At no point have I implied covertly or otherwise any statement about anybody on this lists intelligence or ability to reason being a reflection of their basic worth as a human being. I accept you each as being basicly worthy of respect for no other reason than you simply exist. Whether a particular individual was right, wrong, or simply holds a radicly different view than myself is not sufficient reason for me or anyone else to judge anothers worth. An ad hominem is the embodyment of measuring a persons intrinsic worth by their ability to argue or hold an opinion (or spell). To my way of thinking, if the only bitch you have about a argument is whether it was spelled correctly each time, you don't have much to say worth listening to. My responce does not qualify as a straw man argument because I am discussing your original claims, not drawing an analogy and claiming equivalence. You were drawing an analogy and claiming equivalence. I have asked several times if you would accept or believe other situations to be similar, hardly the same as a straw man since you did not ask if others thought they were equivalent but simply stated it as such. To the point, I don't care where the theory came from (ever), I simply want to know if it works. If I had my way the discussion on this list would never have a personality attached to it, complete anonymity.

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Re: The Anti-Briefing...
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:12 PM 5/24/96, Peter Wayner wrote: >I'm sure the "Briefing" is quite impressive and it includes >several strong arguments for government surveillance. There are >bound to be more than a few kids that are alive today thanks to >eavesdropping and the quick thinking of folks in FBI, NSA et al. I expect The Briefing contains unreleased material about FBI stings and apprehensions, such as the apprehension of the group planning to shoot down several airliners in the U.S., the plans to kill Clinton in Manila, etc. No doubt it cites the killing of Pablo Escobar (the real one, not VZNuri) because he was using a typically-insecure cellphone. (Though I doubt they will mention the U.S. involvement in using a cellphone to pinpoint The Bomber, in Palestine.) And almost certainly a few juicy tidbits about "pedophile rings using PGP" (which is almost certainly the case, of course). The Briefing may also contain hints of intelligence ops which caught nuclear material smugglers, which prevented CBW attacks such as the Sarin gas attack in Tokyo, and so on. (Some of this stuff is "CLASSIFIED," and this probably increases the sex appeal to the burrowcrats who get The Briefing. A darkened room, a succession of G-Man accounts of bad guys caught, a glimpse into the world of SIGINT, some nice dramatic music by Lalo Schifrin, and dire warnings about What Will Happen When the Bad Guys Get Crypto.) And so on. As Peter notes, there are undeniably cases where a Surveillance State can in fact capture terrorists, murderers, abortionists, smokers, carnivores, and other criminals and thoughtcriminals. >That being said, I'm sure that there is also an "anti-Briefing" >that can be given that illustrates that the huge cost of >redesigning the phone system and forcing businesses and people >to operate without protection. Here are some examples from the >recent press that I think are good arguments for why strong >crypto won't change the status quo. I agree that there are many examples that could be cited. Here are a few more: -- the spies and moles within the intelligence agencies, from the Walkers to Aldrich Ames. Here is an environment in which communications are ostensibly controlled, in which surveillance is ubiquitous, in which counterintel teams have wide lattitude to investigate, entrap, etc....and yet the crimes occurred. (Of course, we don't really know how much worse the spying would be without such surveillance. But the point is that even heavy surveillance still lets willing perps find ways.) -- drug rings have often operated right under the noses of cops, sometimes out of police stations. (The theme of any number of "Serpico"-type books, movies, and television shows.) -- and let us not forget the "Surveillance States" which already exist, or existed in recent memory. The PRC, implicated in various criminal activities, the leftist and rightist governments of the world involved in the drug trade, and so on. (The point being that even such Surveillance States have plenty of crime, and often the apparatus of the State is used for criminal purposes.) -- and so on... >Some might argue that if weak crypto can save one child's life >than it is worth it. This is a strong, sentimental argument, but >it really doesn't reflect the reality of the tradeoff. We could >spend a lot more money on airlines, trains and cars and save a >few kids lives, but the cost could be phenomenal. The fact is >that government enforced weak crypto is a tradeoff. We pay for >the ease of the police surveillance because we make life simpler >for crooks who make their living eavesdropping and circumventing >security systems. The big question is whether the tradeoff is >worth it. We can all think of repressive steps which undeniably will save the lives of some children, babies, old people, mothers, etc. Banning alcohol, banning smoking, banning sex outside of marriage.... (Some of these were tried, some are even now being tried by do-gooding statists....) Where the USA has gone off the beam is in legislating behaviors which are not directly harmful to others, presumably on the rationale of "the common good." But freedoms are being taken away daily in this rush to make the USA a "more pleasant" place. (The movie "Demolition Man" captured this trend nicely.) And beware the Law of Unintended Consequences. Mandatory airbags in cars, for example. They are having the effect that people are not using seat belts as often as they used to. And inflating airbags are killing children, probably more than are being saved by the airbags in the first place. Whoops. Better rethink that "we know what's good for you and we're going to force you to pay $500 more per car to have it." Meanwhile, the government pays farmers to grow tobacco.... Are things out of whack, or what? --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: TIC_hip
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:46 PM 5/29/96 GMT, John Young wrote: > 5-29-96. FiTi: > > Chips Galore [Editorial] > Texas Instruments' claim to have developed a technology > capable of inscribing 125m transistors, or computing > elements, on a thumbnail-sized slice of silicon is > remarkable chiefly because the technique is commonplace. Having been following the progress of IC technology for over 20 years, I can recall when 1 million transistors/chip was the furthest-out prediction "they" were willing to make. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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