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Re: Latency, bandwidth, and anonymity
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My initial reaction to "Anonymous video conferencing" was "That's when you wear black ski masks and use voice scramblers and call from video payphones", i.e. not very useful. ("Subcomandata Marcos here...") On the other hand, Wei Dai's followup message about > In the longer term, anonymous communication is in danger of being used > only by fringe groups if it falls too much behind the non-anonymous kind > in terms of latency and bandwidth (and cost, I guess). Maybe ONLY drug > dealers, nuclear terrorists, etc., will use anonymous remailers when full > sensory virtual interaction is the must popular way for most people to > communicate and remailers are still the only choice for the > anonymity-conscious. puts a different spin on it. It's a real problem, if not now, then maybe in 5-10 years. I realize that those of us in the Phone Company who have predicted universal Picturephone in the past have been over-optimistic :-), but the video compression people and the faster-chip people keep bringing us closer to having good-quality low-bandwidth video, and ISDN and fast modems are bringing available loop-end bandwidth up to the point that reasonably-priced circuits can carry it. (Long-haul raw bits have been cheap enough for a while; it's the distribution and switching technology that have a lot of the cost, and providing cheap high-bandwidth circuits makes it hard to make money on voice calls.) The approaches to anonymous video conferencing will depend a bit on whether the technology takes off on the nets or the phone system, if those two are still different by then. It's easier to obscure the origins of a call on the nets, where users own large parts, than it is on the phone system, where the Phone Companies own and operate most of it; the latter environment would require Phone Remailers, such as PBXs you call into on T1 lines and get shuffled out on other circuits - it's hard to get adequate mixing except in rather large environments.... Recircuiting on the nets will be left as an excercise to the reader. I suspect the harder parts of the job may be doing the faces and voices right - anonymous voice conference bridges are ok if the participants mostly don't know each other, but they're less useful if people know each other and cops with computerized voiceprint equipment may be eavesdropping (not common now, though computers and models of the human voice are improving; I suppose voice disguisers may improve from the kid's-toy quality to something better if there's a market, or if computers with full-duplex soundcards become more common.) Faces are harder, and they're not really a crypto problem - how do you fake them well? It's not too hard to do a "quayletool" quality solution that generates moving lips in front of a static picture, even timed with an audio feed, but that won't play too well in the business world, and having the camera pointing at your calendar or home page is only semi-useful. If video-calling evolves on the nets, there'll be a lot more need for speed-matching services, and it may be that computer-enhanced video receiving for high-bandwidth users will fund the technology development for face-simulation? If so, maybe you can use it to start with fake stills instead of real ones? Bill

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Re: Data Haven problems
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

dfloyd asks for ideas about preventing spamming in data havens, for the code that he's working on. It's a hard job. A related problem is how to prevent your data haven from becoming the porno-ftp site of the week, and either being swamped with traffic or raided by the Post Office Reactionary Neighborhood Police. One way to stop spamming is to charge sufficient money for the service that using it always pays for itself - spamming is then reduced to a source of profit, e.g. no problem. If people want to hire you to store spam, it's their money they're wasting. But that requires an anonymous digital cash infrastructure, which we don't really have yet. And it's a lot less interesting academically (:-) than finding solutions which can also work in a cooperative system, or at least a system that doesn't charge per transaction. Probably the most important step you can take is to build in operator-selectable filtering, because the problems keep changing. Operators probably need to be able to block storage and retrieval by specific users and sites (It's easier to prevent access by president(a)whitehouse.gov than it is to detect forged requests, and you probably want to keep both real and fake Cantor&Siegel users off, plus the bozo of the month and the broken-remailer of the day.) Some operators may find it useful to limit the amount of data that can be stored or retrieved by a specific user or site, though this is less useful with anonymous and pseudonymous remailers around, since "a specific user" becomes vaguer. Filtering by filename and type can also be useful - if you don't allow files named *.gif and *.jpg, users may be less likely to spam you with pornography. Namespace control in general is an issue - do users get to choose filenames, or list directories, or do they have to know the names of files to retrieve. Another issue is whether files can only be retrieved by the sender - probably a local policy issue. Some sites may only accept encrypted files, which reduces the spam potential considerably, as well as reducing your exposure to the porn police, though it's difficult to do anything about files that are encrypted with a public key whose private key has been posted to the net, or fake crypto headers in an otherwise unencrypted file, unless you put in lots more code to check the insides of files and watch the net for such postings, which is unrealistic. There's also the problem that PGP and especially RIPEM files are non-stealthy, and users may not want to leave even keyids in their files. Bill

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List of reliable remailers
by Raph Levien 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I operate a remailer pinging service which collects detailed information about remailer features and reliability. To use it, just finger remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu There is also a Web version of the same information, at: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/remailer-list.html This information is used by premail, a remailer chaining and PGP encrypting client for outgoing mail, which is available at: ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/cypherpunks/premail/premail-0.30.tar.gz For the PGP public keys of the remailers, as well as some help on how to use them, finger remailer.help.all(a)chaos.bsu.edu This is the current info: REMAILER LIST This is an automatically generated listing of remailers. The first part of the listing shows the remailers along with configuration options and special features for each of the remailers. The second part shows the 12-day history, and average latency and uptime for each remailer. You can also get this list by fingering remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu. $remailer{"vox"} = "<remail(a)vox.xs4all.nl> cpunk pgp. post"; $remailer{"avox"} = "<anon(a)vox.hacktic.nl> cpunk pgp post"; $remailer{"extropia"} = "<remail(a)extropia.wimsey.com> cpunk pgp special"; $remailer{"portal"} = "<hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> cpunk pgp hash"; $remailer{"alumni"} = "<hal(a)alumni.caltech.edu> cpunk pgp hash"; $remailer{"bsu-cs"} = "<nowhere(a)bsu-cs.bsu.edu> cpunk hash ksub"; $remailer{"rebma"} = "<remailer(a)rebma.mn.org> cpunk pgp hash"; $remailer{"c2"} = "<remail(a)c2.org> eric pgp hash"; $remailer{"soda"} = "<remailer(a)csua.berkeley.edu> eric post"; $remailer{"penet"} = "<anon(a)anon.penet.fi> penet post"; $remailer{"ideath"} = "<remailer(a)ideath.goldenbear.com> cpunk hash ksub"; $remailer{"usura"} = "<usura(a)replay.com> cpunk pgp. hash latent cut post"; $remailer{"desert"} = "<remail(a)desert.xs4all.nl> cpunk pgp. post"; $remailer{"nately"} = "<remailer(a)nately.ucsd.edu> cpunk pgp hash latent cut"; $remailer{"xs4all"} = "<remailer(a)xs4all.nl> cpunk pgp hash latent cut post ek"; $remailer{"flame"} = "<tomaz(a)flame.sinet.org> cpunk pgp hash latent cut post ek"; $remailer{"rahul"} = "<homer(a)rahul.net> cpunk"; $remailer{"mix"} = "<mixmaster(a)nately.ucsd.edu> cpunk hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"q"} = "<q(a)c2.org> cpunk hash latent cut ek"; catalyst(a)netcom.com is _not_ a remailer. Last ping: Mon 9 Jan 95 6:00:01 PST remailer email address history latency uptime ----------------------------------------------------------------------- nately remailer(a)nately.ucsd.edu ++++++++++ 1:28:30 99.99% rahul homer(a)rahul.net **#**##****# 4:31 99.99% mix mixmaster(a)nately.ucsd.edu ++-+-++-++ 48:36 99.99% penet anon(a)anon.penet.fi *+****+***** 28:32 99.99% vox remail(a)vox.xs4all.nl ----------- 14:34:13 99.99% usura usura(a)replay.com -- -+--+*** 22:31 99.44% bsu-cs nowhere(a)bsu-cs.bsu.edu +##**##***+# 23:14 99.26% ideath remailer(a)ideath.goldenbear.com * --- ----- 2:08:58 99.12% q q(a)c2.org --+--*++-- 2:33:18 98.62% soda remailer(a)csua.berkeley.edu -..-.- ... 8:10:14 98.47% alumni hal(a)alumni.caltech.edu ++ *-**+**** 7:37 97.74% portal hfinney(a)shell.portal.com ** *-#*#*#** 5:32 97.74% c2 remail(a)c2.org *--*+* *+ 1:13:45 95.50% desert remail(a)desert.xs4all.nl _.----.--- 19:54:01 94.80% extropia remail(a)extropia.wimsey.com ++__ +++++ 13:02:14 84.83% xs4all remailer(a)xs4all.nl *-- -+*** 16:29 76.54% rebma remailer(a)rebma.mn.org -*___-__- 31:31:05 70.47% flame tomaz(a)flame.sinet.org -*-*+ 29:22 37.83% For more info: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/remailer-list.html History key * # response in less than 5 minutes. * * response in less than 1 hour. * + response in less than 4 hours. * - response in less than 24 hours. * . response in more than 1 day. * _ response came back too late (more than 2 days). Options and features cpunk A major class of remailers. Supports Request-Remailing-To: field. eric A variant of the cpunk style. Uses Anon-Send-To: instead. penet The third class of remailers (at least for right now). Uses X-Anon-To: in the header. pgp Remailer supports encryption with PGP. A period after the keyword means that the short name, rather than the full email address, should be used as the encryption key ID. oldpgp Remailer does not like messages encoded with MIT PGP 2.6. Other versions of PGP, including 2.3a and 2.6ui, work fine. hash Supports ## pasting, so anything can be put into the headers of outgoing messages. ksub Remailer always kills subject header, even in non-pgp mode. nsub Remailer always preserves subject header, even in pgp mode. latent Supports Matt Ghio's Latent-Time: option. cut Supports Matt Ghio's Cutmarks: option. post Post to Usenet using Post-To: or Anon-Post-To: header. special Accepts only pgp encrypted messages. ek Encrypt responses in relpy blocks using Encrypt-Key: header. Comments and suggestions welcome! Raph Levien

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RC5 data, anyone?
by Andy Brown 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Has anyone got any plaintext/cyphertext/key data sets that I can use to test my RC5 implementation against? +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Andrew Brown Internet <asb(a)nexor.co.uk> Telephone +44 115 952 0585 | | PGP (2048/9611055D): 69 AA EF 72 80 7A 63 3A C0 1F 9F 66 64 02 4C 88 | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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HUMOR:...and we thought _PRZ_ had troubles!
by ddt＠lsd.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My apologies for this non-crypto posting, but I just _couldn't_ resist sharing. Ironically (incredulously?), paranoia does nothing to improve one's grasp of adjectives and adverbs... Anyway, please, please restrict your replies (if any) to private email amongst yourselves and don't follow my poor example and post anything more about it to the list. BTW..."Half" street?! dave ____________________________________ "Fascinating, Captain." -Mr. Spock =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= cut here =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors Subject: Truth or Paranoia? From: doctor.doom(a)citylink.uu.holonet.net Date: Fri, 6 Jan 95 21:56:00 EST I found the following disturbing post on a BBS in the Washington DC area: Msg # 48 of 83 Date: Fri 12-03-93, 6:29 pm From: UNIT Read: 7 times [1 Reply] Forwarded From: 1900 Half Street, SW Subject: important The story I am about to relate may seem incredulous in many ways even thought it is true and I solemly attest that it is true despite the fact that it seems incredulous in many ways there is verifiable evidence and i urge you to verify the evidence on your own if you should find this incredulous which is the natural response. I am a victim of government sponsored terrorism and racism sponsored by the us government and big corporations which actually work HAND IN HAND with the us government towards these ends. This of course includes the liberal media although some cells of independence remain and not all individual journalists are accessories to the conspiracy. Suffice it to say that democracy does not in any way exist in the United States of AmeriKKKa. The government has been out to get me ever since I was born in 1966 as a result of a specific genetic coding abnormality which makes me unique among the 99.9999 th percentile of the American population and makes people like me marked for harrassment. The abnormality may have been spawned by mass CIA mind control tests conducted in 1961, which affected certain birth patterns. They actually have attempted to cause me to try to kill myself on several occasions and have attempted to drive me crazy by chemical and psychological means including retroactive radio control from the future (any scientist will tell you that radio waves which move faster than light speed are capable of moving backwards in time and thus controlling the past). The constant chemical assaults on my well being mean I cannot leave my apartment except in dire circumstances and then I must breathe through a gas mask. Not only that but people are strategically placed at all places I interact with people out of necessity (I cannot avoid such encounters entirely) to make me self aware and paranoid. These efforts are futile and I continue to defy the Amerikkkan government. On June 11 1986 they deliberately influenced me by radio to be present at the intersection of Sherman Avenue and Harvard Street NW at precisely 1:42 am and I had to cross seven blocks of territory that had been sealed by the police. This is documented. I witnessed seven police forces engaged in a shootout that lasted three hours. THe police forces were shooting at EACH OTHER and I counted at least thirty verifiable casualties. Although this has never made the newspapers due to the government/corporate conspiracy the information is readily obtainable but must be sought through FOIA requests at the FBI. The files are disguised as traffic fatalities and the true cause of death is not noted. Also documentable is my genetic trait which Johns Hopkins in Baltimore will provide upon demand. I am considered a threat to the CIA because of my superior evolutionary status and my radical thoughts. In 1971 the United States abandoned the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates and secretly implemented a dual currency system along with ruling elites from other major countries including the USSR and Red China. I know this because agents have tried to buy me off with this currency which exists solely in the form of informational transactions and has no physical manifestations yet makes a mockery of the valueless Dollar. I am a man of integrity and I refused to participate in this plot. Needless to say the federal deficit is measured in dollars and is therefore nonexistent and irrelevant. The secret currency system is solvent. In 1987 the Wall Street Journal documented the cataclysmic stock market crash but made no mention of the real underlying factors behind it, which again represented a government conspiracy. After I wrote to the Wall Street Journal to point this out, attempts to kill me trebled. There are also listening devices implanted everywhere to monitor my actions and junk mail sorted with DMSO and curare arrives daily. I remove the mail with tweezers and leave it on the counter for the mailman as unreturnable. He wears gloves of course. The only reason I am still alive is because I persist in making my case public at every opportunity, which means the government does not directly try to kill me but relies on third-party means which I have so far avoided. A rental car I obtained in Sausalito in 1989 was irradiated with depleted uranium which increased the total mass of the car by 33% d would have caused me to go over a cliff were it not for the normal precaution I take of always driving 15 mph under the speed limit. But it is this kind of insidiousness which I am consdtantly faced with. I also can only cross the street in crosswalks so that any attempt to kill me with a vehicle could not be blamed on pedestrian error. The only reason I am still alive is because I persist in making my case public at every opportunity, which means the government will not try to kill me directly, since that would verify my claims instantly in the public's eyes. For that reason I urge all of you to write to the media, contact your senators, and do everything you can to let the conspirators know that my story has been heard, and that the eyes of the public are upon the conspiracy. It is only through concerted collective action that I can remain alive and the AmeriKKKan government which has been ruling illegitimately since a secret coup in 1947 (documented at the Library of Congress) can be brought down and freedom restored. -end?-

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Experiments and Toys vs. the Real Thing
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The debate about data havens and what they ought to really be, what they ought to really accept, etc., is similar to debates about what digital money ought to be, how remailers ought to operate, etc. It's useful to categorize projects as "experimental" (or "toy," with no negative connotations implied) or "commercial" (or "real," I suppose): * EXPERIMENTAL, or TOY: Early efforts, meant to help illuminate the issues, uncover problems, gain knowledge, educate people, etc. * COMMERCIAL, or REAL: More robust, well-established. Usually "for pay," and expected to be maintained, available, professionally operated. Now there's a fuzzy distinction between these, a continuum, really. For example, PGP began life (esp. as v. 1.0) as an amateur or experimental thing, with a few hacker experimentalists playing with it. Version 2.x has been usable as a commercial tools, every bit as good as "MailSafe," the ostensibly commerical RSADSI tool. The user community has added enough capability and hooks to clearly put PGP in the COMMERCIAL category: robust, supported, etc. Remailers are _almost_ in the second category, especially when taken as an ecological whole. (That is, any single remailer may be flaky--though many aren't--but the pinging and reputation tools that support the ecology make the ensemble more robust and usable.) Many of us believe that "digital postage" paid remailing will be the final step needed to move remailers into the commercial/real category. Until thien, they're not businesses--they're hobbies and experiments. (Which is fine, as one of the main reasons for Cypherpunks was to take the academic papers presented at Crypto conferences and reify them in working code, as experiments.) Digital cash is more clearly still at the experimental level, as are anonymous markets (like BlackNet), data havens, and so forth. Why do I mention these points? Because there's a danger in "premature professionalization." And a danger in criticizing experimental or toy efforts for not being "pure enough." The recent claims that nascent "data havens" _must_ support all files, including hard-core porn, weapons secrets, etc. seems to be an example of this. I'm not for censorship, just concerned that the data haven _experiments_ are not secure enough, not robust enough, to actually carry high-visibility files. For example, data havens will clearly someday be used to carry defense secrets, troop movements, weapons manufacturing details, etc. But I would not want to carry them on my "experimental data haven," for obvious reasons. Even if I only carried "non-American" secrets, such as reports on Russian troop manouvers around Grozny, I could expect visits from American officials (to stop me, to plant data they want planted, etc.). (And let's not forget "snatch teams" that grab foreign nationals suspected of crimes...Israel, Iraw, Iran, and the U.S. have grabbed people in other countries. And more common is simple execution. If a Swedish data haven carried files related to U.S. operations, and the data haven location was known--part of what I mean by saying the enabling technologies do not yet exist--then various measures would be applied. Diplomatic, equipment sabotoage, even killing the operators. I'm not being Ludlumesque here...clearly such "threats to national security" would be seen as justifying various reactions. Especially to send a message to other potential operators.) Those advocating a "purist" (= professional/real) approach to data havens, seen recently in the calls for data havens to never screen files or accesses, should bear in mind that "data haven technology" is lacking. Remailer chains leading in and out of data havens are still non-robust, subject to attacks and compromises. And of course, digital cash is still being thrashed out. An experimental data haven that allowed unscreened access or depositing of information would also become a a magnet for kooks, for those wishing to sabotage such havens, etc. If truly serious information was found on the haven, huge efforts would be mounted to find the source, get the site shut down, etc. Current remailer technology is just not up to the challenge. (I'm not saying it won't someday be, just not now.) Criticizing experimental data havens for "not going all the way" seems to me to be wrong-headed. First, there's the usual issue of who bears the risk, with those not at risk urging others to put themselves and their sites are risk by being "pure." Second, and more important, the enabling technologies for data havens are just not yet themselves available and robust. A data haven that carries "Four Horseman of the Infocalypse" material will come under strong attack, legal, cryptographic, and physical. There's a place for experimental or toy implementations, e.g., data havens that operate in some limited domain. This allows the issues to get explored before full-scale attacks are mounted. Think of it as a training exercise, a drill, or an immunization. --Tim May, who thinks the first real data havens will come under intense attack and so had better be secure from the start -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Cypherpunks list: majordomo(a)toad.com with body message of only: subscribe cypherpunks. FAQ available at ftp.netcom.com in pub/tc/tcmay

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Rumored CBS "hit" on internet coming
by Brad Dolan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This may be old news or it could be bogus but fyi anyway: >From parsons(a)bga.com Mon Jan 9 05:16:49 1995 >From: Brad Parsons <parsons(a)bga.com> >Subject: CBS/C.Chung Plan Hit Job on Internet? (fwd) >To: bdolan(a)well.sf.ca.us > > >Brad, Could you forward this to the cypherpunks list? Thanks.--BJP > >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Mon, 9 Jan 1995 03:48:01 -0600 (CST) >Subject: CBS/C.Chung Plan Hit Job on Internet? > >A friend tells me that CBS and Connie Chung plan a hit job on Internet >on the evening news today, 1/9/95. Apparently it may be in the context >of youths supposedly learning how to make bombs from online info. In >case I don't get to watch it, could somebody make it a point to watch >it and give us a summary of the report. Thanks. Reply, if you're inclined, via e-mail. I'm off the list until the Carol Ann stuff dies out. - Brad Dolan, bdolan(a)well.sf.ca.us

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No Subject
by Anonymous User 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Pierre Uszynski writes: > Significant abuse is > that which causes significant problems for the operators: posting > secret religious technology, forging prime minister mail, harrassing a > member of any number of opposite persuasions, etc... on that note, check out this excerpt from the remailer-help file of the q(a)c2.org remailer: > Abuse/Self-Preservation Policy: > Abuse of the Q Mixmaster Remailer consists in those uses of the remailer > which endanger its continued operation. Please don't ruin anonymity > services for those people with legitimate needs for them.

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revoked transactions/guerrilla fee remailers
by L. McCarthy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Paul J. Ste. Marie writes: > MC/Visa require the reversibility of transactions as a condition of their > merchant agreements. It's not something peculiar to FV. In fact, under > certain conditions it is mandated by federal law. Escort services have a > similar problem as far as non-returnability goes, but I don't know how they > finesse their way around it. Two plausible tactics for escort services: [0] Price inflation: treat a revoked transaction rather like shoplifting, by passing the costs on to the customers; escort services are not cheap [1] Embarrassment: tip off family and employers of people who accept escorts, then decide not to pay for them; the perceived threat of publicity should keep plenty of folks in line There's not much that can be done to someone who uses an escort service once, revokes the transaction, and doesn't care who knows about it. How might this apply to remailing services ? Right now, with a fairly small customer base, I imagine price inflation would be impractical, but embarrassment might prove fairly effective. In the developed market we envision, presumably operators could get away with price inflation, but embarrassment would lose much of its potential sting. (I assume that once a critical mass of populace uses remailers, an announcement that Josie Worsham has used a remailer would elicit only yawns.) Do others see the resulting applicability of additional regulations to remailers as an issue in having them charge for service ? Within the category of fee-charging remailers, the distinction between non-profit and for-profit operations may be worth considering. I suppose that the IRS and analogous agencies would be inclined to ask questions about it, for starters. My threat model for the remailer bramble includes, at a minimum, a host of typical government agencies obligated to wrap everything in red tape. Look for anti- trust investigations to be launched against a price-fixing cartel of remailers. - - From what I've seen so far, accepting payment would seem to make anonymous _operation_ of a remailer well nigh impossible. Anonymous operation with revenue would require a corresponding level of anonymity in the transfer of money. Until such time as conversion of funds from a net-liquid form to a conventional form becomes unnecessary (or just commonplace ?), financial traffic analysis can't adequately be thwarted. All this bodes ill, IMHO, for the prospect of guerrilla or quasi-guerrilla remailers charging for service any time soon. There's just too much infrastructure to which they'd need to be tied at the moment. -L. Futplex McCarthy; PGP key by finger or server "The objective is for us to get those conversations whether they're by an alligator clip or ones and zeroes. Wherever they are, whatever they are, I need them." -FBI Dir. Freeh - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.1 iQCVAwUBLxHeC2f7YYibNzjpAQGhlQP/fkyvN0QqDkbLhgqecGUaeu3cbCstMd4y lgs/XzCeiXVt6EiQ8tmDVbq4G0QYTGntph/3knciJopGrH+Nu6LVmiqWNiRWFxm8 zJBRenCW2SN9nRixJiI4S2n0yQ//v9C7sOEfmu9SToQDYc+U1CBNSUhhJAveT1GN BD4WNFlm/WY= =VY8W - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- - --- [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 iQBFAwUBLxHfcSoZzwIn1bdtAQGyEAGAwKES86hkJ8GkLsYCr+vEAjH1/L2GdrCj jw0b83L7FHA99sUihIYe2zUUxr+Sqb2b =7Aai -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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data havens
by Raul Deluth Miller 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The problem with encryption, in general, is that it's an attempt to hide information -- unless the information is trivial, encryption is only a temporary measure. Believe it or not, the government (or, more properly, people associated with the government) is still trying to figure out which industries are Iraqi owned -- one technique being brought to bear is statistical analysis of company activities, with special attention to changes which occurred during the gulf war. The only way to have data havens be acceptable to the U.S. government would be to have them become acceptable to the U.S. population (or some significant fraction of them). This would imply phasing out the DEA and the IRS, at a minimum. [Newspaper article this weekend: how it's so horrible that some people deal in cash and thus are evading the IRS.] More generally, the way to keep a data haven from being located is to make sure it doesn't have a location... This is hard to do without severely impacting latency. -- Raul D. Miller N=:((*/pq)&|)@ NB. public e, y, n=:*/pq <rockwell(a)nova.umd.edu> P=:*N/@:# NB. */-.,e e.&factors t=:*/<:pq 1=t|e*d NB. (,-:<:)pq is four large primes, e medium x-:d P,:y=:e P,:x NB. (d P,:y)-:D P*:N^:(i.#D)y [. D=:|.@#.d

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