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Re: "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail"
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:08 PM 1/25/96 -0500, hallam(a)w3.org wrote: > >>Why is he our patron saint? He was a government official coming out >>against invasion of privacy. Isn't that what we are all after, in the >>end? > >There is a considerable difference between running a government and being an >individual. It is not merely ethical for one government to read another's mail, >it is a duty. > >By not taking adequate steps to inform itself of the Japaneese intentions the US >suffered the loss of a substantial part of the US fleet at Pearl Harbour. Had >sufficient resources been avaliable the naval codes could have been cracked in >time. The closure of the Black chamber was a key reason why US espionage >efforts were inadequate at the start of WWII. While this may be based on the "classic" view of the start of the direct involvement in WWII, I agree with the opinion of an old college professor that the US KNEW that the Japanese were going to attack, SOMEWHERE and SOMEWHEN (but not exactly), and in fact WANTED the attack to occur to justify getting into a war that we "should" have entered. And in hindsight, I do not necessarily disagree with such a goal, within the limited context of the circumstances at the time. An extention of this interpretation is that much of the fleet was kept at Pearl to "lure" the Japanese into doing an attack that could be used to rally the public. (they needed to have enough "bait" to justify an attack.) Obviously, if that was the intention, then the big surprise was how EFFECTIVE the attack was going to be: Far from just "rallying the public" it smashed our defenses. The reason I mention this interpretation is that it entirely turns around your argument: Our criticism should not be how little we knew of Japanese intentions, but how we incompetently delayed entering a war that "needed to be fought." Naturally, however, considering the results of the attack, it would have been totally unthinkable to reveal to the public that the bigshots had actually DESIRED the attack; a far less incriminating version of the story is that some other people were merely negligent. Now, I was born in 1958 and thus can't claim personal knowledge of the time, but it's truly amazing how UNPERCEPTIVE the public must have been in the late 40's and early '50s about "intelligence" realities. Let me give you a specific example: The classic movie, "The Man who Never Was," relates the (true) story of a counter-intelligence mission done by the British to (I think) mislead the Germans into believing that the attack on Sicily would be substantially LATER than it actually was. The British took a man who had died of some natural disease (with the permission of his family, of course), dressed him up as if he were a courier and dumped his body (carried by submarine) off the coast of (then Fascist) Spain. With the body were (sealed) phony documents that described the FALSE date. (The idea was, the Germans would think that he was on an airplane that had crashed into the ocean...) ( He was given a false name, false address, and basically a false identity to complete the ruse.) By design, he was dumped at a point where ocean currents washed him ashore, where he was identified by papers. Naturally, the British were notified by Spain, and the British played along and INSISTED that none of the documents with the body be unsealed and given to the Germans. Naturally, however, the Spanish cooperated with the Germans, and allowed them to (secretly) unseal the documents undetectably. However, the documents (still apparently sealed and unopened) were returned to the British so that (to the Germans) the British wouldn't be aware that their secrets had been compromised. Follow me so far? Well, in the movie (whose accuracy I don't know) the Germans didn't totally believe that the courier was "real", so they sent an operative (probably by parachute airdrop, or whatever) to check out the particulars of the story they "learned" from the fake background. (Naturally, the British knew about this) At that point, the British had to plant operatives, and support the phony story on the spot, "verifying" the information. At that point, the German agent was able to transmit news that "the information is real!" to the Germans. Now, here was was (to me!) the "funny" part of the movie: The British let the German agent leave Britain. This sounds logical, right? Because if they were to PICK HIM UP as a spy, that would have alerted the Germans that his identity and mission were already known, which would only have been true if the story given the Germans initially had been a FAKE! Yet, in the movie, it was necessary to "explain" to the (early 1950's) audience why they "let that German agent leave Britain"!! I was laughing, practically falling off the edge of my seat, as I was watching that scene! Clearly, ordinary people of that era weren't very perceptive about such things. Had they (Americans) been told that, "We had to get into WWII to save the free world, so we let the Japanese sink half our Pacific fleet!" the public WOULD NOT have understood. This is why I tend to believe that professor's interpretation: While the exact time and location of the attack was not known, IT REALLY DIDN'T MATTER because they WANTED it to happen. The "we couldn't decrypt their traffic in time" (even if it was really true) was merely a convenient cover story for the truth.

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NOISE Test Ignore
by jdoe-agamemnon＠alpha.c2.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Test Test Test

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Re: "This post is G-Rated"
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I typically enjoy Lucky's jaundiced analyses, but I think he is overly paranoid in this one: At 5:28 AM 1/26/96, Lucky Green wrote: >What you will see is something like this: all lists/newsgroups will have to >be moderated with the name of the moderator clearly stated just as it is in >print magazines today. If something that is potentially dangerous to First, printed material does *not* have to have an author or publisher specified. The usual case cited is the Supreme Court decision on "anonymous handbills." I know of some zines that have no identifiable origin point. And anonymous pieces are published (even where the publisher/editor does not know the true author.) Second, Usenet is a global thing. Which national laws will apply? If the U.S. somehow is dumb enough to demand that each of the 12,000+ current Usenet groups have a moderator in a U.S. jurisdiction....well, there are too many issues here to properly deal with in a short note. Third, if the moderator is liable for "allowing" inappropriate material to get through, I predict a rather severe shortage of moderators. It's already a thankless job, so why any sane person take on the liability of doing it? Fourth, the Soviets couldn't control the underground "samizdat" press, and this was when the sanctions were stronger and the channels of communicaton more available. Today, in the West, there are at least two orders of magnitude more channels, and several orders of magnitude more sites, bandwidth, etc. Fifth, major constitutional challenges would be mounted. The First Amendment says that a posting to a public discussion does not first have to be cleared by a censor/moderator! (I'm not saying a group cannot be moderated, I'm saying that making it a crime to have an unmoderated, uncensored group will not pass constitutional muster.) --Tim Boycott espionage-enabled 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, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: "This post is G-Rated"
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:06 AM 1/26/96 GMT, Jeff Williams wrote: >Maybe nobody would use the flag, but I don't see how it could hurt. If I had >kids, I would appreciate having the option of sorting out all the stuff that >is "NIFK" by the author. My concern about such a flag is that if it was implemented widely, it would be a small step from being optional to being mandatory. As things stand, were some legislature to adopt a "mandatory labelling" statute tomorrow, we'd end up with a complex and pointless mess of conflicting and incompatible attempts at compliance, rendering the labelling scheme effectively useless; and, likely, "industry" (e.g., the big service providers + AT&T & MCI & Sprint etc) would oppose the legislation on the grounds that compliance would take several years and complex design to bring about. So we'd get some sort of grace period to argue against it, prepare good test case(s), establish offshore mailing lists/servers, and so forth. But if we let the market do an efficient job of developing and deploying a labelling standard, over the course of the next few years, we're an afternoon's sorry debate and a few bought-and-paid-for committee meetings away from a market standard turning into a statutory duty. This makes me think that if development of a labelling standard is imminent, it's time to find ways to subvert it, misuse it, avoid it, and otherwise treat it like an enemy. It's not necessarily an enemy until it's coopted into service by a coercive force (be it big brother^h^h^h^h^h^h^hgovernment or big brother^h^h^h^h^h^h^hcorporation) but it's a potential threat. Are you sure that your relatively moderate "less NIFK material is a good thing" stance is a good reflection of others' positions? My impression is that many people are dissatisfied with anything less than a "zero tolerance" position re kids & porn or kids & drugs or kids & sexual choice or whatever. Your view of a partial-cooperation world isn't especially draconian, but do you really think that others will be as tolerant of other positions re labelling? -- "The anchored mind screwed into me by the psycho- | Greg Broiles lubricious thrust of heaven is the one that thinks | gbroiles(a)netbox.com every temptation, every desire, every inhibition." | -- Antonin Artaud |

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RE: Another potential flaw in current economic theory... (fwd)
by Matthew James Gering 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > free markets don't work, and lead inevitably to monopoly, > > and therefore we ought to use governments monopolies on > force to prevent > > Where do I *ever* say we need 'government' monopolies. Not > once, not ever. No, I believe he said (meant) government's monopoly on force (i.e. regulation, not anarchism), not government monopolies. > I have said, and stand by it now, that what is needed is an > *impartial* 3rd party. That does *NOT* equate to 'the > government'. Wow, I happen to agree, people need on objective framework in which to take their disputes. The only such framework though that need be a monopoly is one that deals with force as the dispute or where force is the end retribution (i.e. you cannot have regulatory arbitrage with force). The problem is the assumption that any such regulator could be impartial. The need for such arbiter needs to be minimized (hence minimal/limited government = laissez faire != anarcho-capitalism). Matt

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Cypherpunk Enquirer
by anon-remailer＠utopia.hacktic.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(The new issue wasn't supposed to come out for a month or so, but you guys are throwing us WAY too much ammo.) THE CYPHERPUNK ENQUIRER "Encyphering minds want to know." Perry Metzger today resigned from Hillary Clinton's defense team. Spokes- persons for Ms. Clinton refused to comment, but Mr. Metzger's offices did release a statement saying that Mr. Metzger's skills were in the area of debunking conspiracy theorists, and that he had little or no experience in the field of actual conspiracies. Compuserve today restored access priviledges to Dr. Leslie Franklin after receiving written confirmation from two medical doctors that Dr. Franklin is indeed a man. Compuserve, forced to cancel the subscriptions of almost one million female members after complaints from the Saudi Arabian government about unchaperoned conversations between men and women, has stated that in the future, all potential subscribers must supply a semen sample with their subscription request, and that test tubes and .GIFs of Cindy Crawford in skimpy lingerie will be included with a number of major mainstream computer publications in order to facilitate the new requirements. C2.org immediately offered one month's free access to anyone whose application included a PAP smear. The NSA, the CIA, the FBI, and a coalition of 437 other U.S. government agencies today announced that they were dropping their support of the policy of Government Access to (encryption) Keys, commonly known as GAK, in favor of a new policy of Government Access to Everything, or GAE. The new policy, using technology first pioneered by the Prodigy Network and later refined by Microsoft and its Registration Wizard(tm), would require that all new computers include a special government mandated GAE chip which would allow the government to download the entire contents of the computer's hard drive whenever the computer was connected to the Internet or other on- line service. In related news, the Clinton administration, in an unusual display of solidarity with Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, has announced that a new version of GAK will immediately be presented to the Senate, this time requiring government escrow of all house and automobile keys, and the Dow Chemical Company has received a multi-million dollar contract to develop a new fabric for America's curtains and draperies that would become transparent in the presence of a court order. The Cypherpunk Academy of Codes and Cyphers today announced a new nomination for the Perry Award, given to the cypherpunk who has done the most to improve the S/N ratio of the list. Today's nominee is Dr. Fred Cohen, for not posting anything for the past month. Dr. Cohen joins Alice de 'nominous in contention for the prestigious award, first won by Dr. Jonathon Pierce, personal psychopharmacologist to Larry Detweiler. Consumer's Union reported today that an extensive series of tests, performed over a 3 month period, has determined that owners of high-performance snakes, such as blue racers and black mambas, should use Windows NT encryption and security for lubrication purposes, but that owners of more standard models, such as vipers and constrictors, would see little or no benefit from the use of the more expensive NT product, and would be better served by the use of the less expensive Windows 95. "The truth IS out there - we make sure it STAYS out there." Motto of the Central Intelligence Agency Eric Blossom today announced a new filtered version of cypherpunks, "Cpunks Ultra-lite", that will be limited to messages about cryptography and C and C++ programming, and that will probably average about two messages a month. Due to sagging sales for the second edition of "Applied Cryptography", John Wiley and Sons today announced the publication of an abridged version, "Cryptography for Dummies - The Swimsuit Edition", featuring a centerfold of Elle McPherson in an "RC4 in 3 Lines of Perl" thong bikini. Ms. McPherson was reportedly detained at La Guardia airport while NSA officials searched the ITAR for an excuse to confiscate the garment. Governor Pete Wilson of California today ordered the removal of all computers from public school grades K-12, since it was discovered that 79% of them had been "hacked" to receive Spice and the Playboy channel. Rich Graves was forced to change his signature file today when it was discovered that, due to a rider in the present telecommunications bill passed by the Senate, statists are now required to "set a good example" for America's youth, and are no longer allowed to fuck. Frank Semalo today announced he was suing Compuserve for $99.95 plus tax. Mr. Samalo's complaint stated that, due to the small size of the test tubes provided by the defendants and his inability to print out .GIF files in color, the Compuserve registration process resulted in a ruined keyboard. Anonymous User's claim that the NSA has broken PGP was withdrawn today, when it was discovered that the "break" occurred at a recent Washington, D.C. GAE conference, where a NSA spokesman transferred the popular program to CDROM and attacked it with a sledge hammer. The FBI today released accused serial killer Timothy May from custody and issued an apology to the retired Intel engineer, stating that he was no longer a suspect. The agency also issued retraction letters to over one thousand Internet users who had been warned that they might be potential targets. "What else were we supposed to do," asked one unidentified FBI agent, "when we found all of those names in something called a killfile?" Louis Freeh's head is still stuck. The Hoover Corporation today announced a new government contract for the development of a 17 story tall, one billion terrabyte capacity canister style vacuum cleaner with T3 and fiber-optic connection ability. The new machine, to be delivered to an unnamed government agency, would be used, according to a Hoover spokesperson, for "unspecified janitorial work on the Internet." -- CTHULHU for President - Why vote for the LESSER of two evils?

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SMTP mail warning
by postmaster＠ncr-sd.SanDiegoCA.ATTGIS.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

message

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SMTP mail warning
by postmaster＠ncr-sd.SanDiegoCA.ATTGIS.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

message

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Re: Crippled Notes export encryption
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:18 PM 1/24/96 -0800, Jeff Weinstein <jsw(a)netscape.com> wrote: >Mike Tighe wrote: >> > I can see two practical ways to build a netscape product outside >> > the US. The first is to export the source code for the Navigator >> > with the crypto code removed. .... >> Didn't Netscape already promise to remove the hooks? It seems to me all of >> the major software players are already in bed with the government. > > What do you mean by "promise to remove the hooks"? I think Mike's remembering the NCSA freeware httpd server which had the crypto code removed at the NSA's request. I don't remember if that was before or after the Mosaic developers left to form Netscape, but being an organization that gets government grant money subjects you to more leverage than a random commercial company. One seeming paradox of the law is that you're not allowed to export "components of a cryptosystem", e.g. software with the crypto routines removed but everything else there. But you are allowed to export code that the NSA has determined isn't strong enough to bother them, including applications with wimpy cryptosystems. The Clipper II escrow standardization folks attempted to get industry to agree on wiretap-enabled short-key software with tampering protection in return for export permission, but as far as I know the current not-officially-defined policy of 40 bits doesn't require that export-requesting software be non-modular; how much work would it be to binary-patch-replace the 40-bit subroutines in current Netscape with 128-bit subroutines? (More work than just mailing the US version overseas, I suppose :-) Obviously Netscape couldn't do it themselves if they wanted to ever get export permission again, but they could always issue a press release condemning the nasty foreigners for hacking their product ("We're SHOCKED to discover that HACKING is going on with our software!") #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 # # "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" used to mean us watching # the government, not the other way around....

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Re: Why is blowfish so slow? Other fast algorithms?
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> At 07:32 PM 1/23/96 -0500, David A Wagner wrote: >> >If you want authentication, you must use a crypto-strength MAC. >> >Encryption (be it RC4, DES, etc.) is not enough. Are there any simple but crypto-strong hash functions? I've been thinking about doing a "One Page Privacy" program, using the 3-line RSA, 10-line RC4, and some glue, but using a separate MD5 program seemed like cheating (even though the 3-line RSA uses dc :-). I was thinking about using RC4 in some feedback mode as a MAC, but it sounds like that's not secure enough? Is there anything else that's short? MD5 requires too much code. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 # # "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" used to mean us watching # the government, not the other way around....

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