- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: clipper and export
by Jonathan Rochkind 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > Is anyone else distrubed by the way that encryption export policy > and the > clipper chip seem to be linked {in administration policy, > and in the > press? > > Well, we helped made this connection happen! We, in the sense of the > overall letter-writing campaign...all those exhortations for us to > please get the Cantwell Bill moved along, those daily updates, etc. > EFF, CPSR, EPIC, and messages here on Cypherpunks and in other fora > (or forums). WEell, sure. And we all know that there _is_ actually a connection; liberalized export policies will make it hard for them to impose clipper as a standard without prohibiting other crypto. And I would assume they know this, and that's why {they wont' do it. And I would assume the privacy-freaks know this too, and that's why they support liberalizing export. But my concern is that no one seems to bring up the point that this is really _bad_ reasons for determining national policy regarding encryption export. The legislation that allows them to restrict export only does so on the basis of national security. _Not_ on the basis of "it'll make it easier to implement our domestic encryption policy". Everyone involved with the debate extensively realizes that this _is_ the basis on which the administration is determining export policy. But there seems to be no outcry abou{t it. I haven't even seen it brought up in any media, digital or print. And this is what I see is a problem. {Not only is {the government messing around with us here, but we seem to expect it so much that we dont' even bother to point it out or complain about it. I think we should be doing that. The public debate about export restriction should center on "is it actually a national security risk, and if it isn't, why not liberalize things?" Instead, there really is no debate, it's ob{vious that actual national security isn't even an issue in the Administration decision to {keep encryption export restrictions tight, and no one seems to think this is a problem! That's what I find disturbing.

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UNRELATED ABUSE OF BANDWIDTH
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C'punks, This is not a crypto post. It is a personal request, primarily directed to Cypherpunks in the San Jose area. It also skates perilously close to having "commercial" content. Please tune out now if any of this bothers you. My son-in-law wants to barter services in exchange for a good second-hand computer. He is an RC (Radio Controlled) airplane flight instructor. He can also offer other RC related services. His preference would be a Mac, but he would consider a PC clone. It doesn't have to be the most up-to-date model. He wants to use it for business applications, CAD and video editing. I also want him to have a modem so he and I can keep in touch. (I guess the crypto tie-in is that I'll expect him to use PGP.) If you are interested in the swap, send me e-mail, or call him directly. His name and number are: Walter Berggren 408-971-0110 Thanks for reading this message, S a n d y ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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by the way NSA...
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This amplifies Perry's post on the annual intelligence black budget of $28 billion. NY Times, November 25, 1993: . . . the black budget is estimated to be nearly $28 billion this year. The money is hidden under falsified line items in the Pentagon's budget. The secret budget finances the National Security Agency, which conducts electronic eavesdropping; the National Reconnaissance Office, which builds spy satellites; the Central Intelligence Agency, and a host of military intelligence activities. . . . the CIA spends less than 15 per cent of the total espionage budget. Pentagon agencies spend almost all the rest. At the CIA, Mr. Woolsey voiced doubts about disclosing the sum, saying it would lead to a debate over its constituent elements. End quotes. And there is more than this budget covers. For all kinds of intelligence costs (and crypto business opportunities) see Jeffrey T. Richelson's The US Intelligence Community, 1989, ISBN 0-88730-226-2.

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No Subject
by C331673%LBVM6.profs＠mdcgwy.mdc.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is my first post, so please be kind. I have what I I think, IMHO, is a simple question. If the government "outlawed" non-escrow keyed encryption, how would they get a conviction for a supposed violation? How could they prove in a court of law (assuming we would still have courts...) that a note that looks like nonsense, is in fact encrypted? If they decyphered it, how would they know/prove that the new "plaintext" is in fact plaintext that you started with? Could they write code that could fabricate notes from giberish? What if you encrypted a love letter and they 'decrypted' a drug deal? Also, on the national ID card issue, I was involved in bar codes (machine readable labels) and came across really small (grain of rice sized) transponders with ID number encoded. These could then be machine (transducer) readable. They were glass coated and had various industrial applications. I have since read that they have implanted them in pets to identify them if they run away. Next step would be implanting them in people. You would then have an absolute way to ID people (short of surgery). Police could carry transducers, wave it in your direction and know who you are. Cellular terminal could get whatever data they had on you. No way you could impersonate LD. No way to stay 'private'. Hang the transponder on the doorway of a bldg to monitor traffic. (OJ coulda proven his alibi....) Use it in the local supermarket to do biz with. Better then an ATM card, cuz you'll never lose it. A brave, new world awaits. Wadda you think? Conrad Walton Cwalton(a)delphi.com

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Re: Gore's "new and improved" key escrow proposal
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Michael wrote: > >I have tried to think of a positive use for key escrow. The only thing that I >have come up with so far is kind of like having local key escrow within one >company, or something like that. Kind of like having a master key that fits >all the offices in one wing of a building, or something like that. That could >be good in some business uses, provided you could pick your own trusted master >key holder. I don't think that is what Al Gore has in mind. I think there is a use for key escow in our society. As someone else has suggested on this list, all internal communication of the government should use escowed keys. I propse us Cypherpunks as one of the escow agents. Defininity not what Gore had in mind. -- Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> PGP public key by finger

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Accessing the Cpunk WAIS archive
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Gary Jeffers" <vikram!CCGARY(a)MIZZOU1.missouri.edu> > http://pmip.maricopa.edu/crypt/cypherpunks/Cypherpunks.src > is the location of all the Cypherpunks' posts with index. I can > get to this place by placing a "www" in front of this instruction. Do an archie search for lynx or mosaic or some other decent browser. This is a WAIS indexed archive; no hyper links; you type in a keyword, and get a list of matching articles, and select one (or more) of them to look at. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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Gore to Cantwell
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I hope you've all seen the latest EPIC bulletin. Gore's letter to Cantwell: > "On the other hand, we agree that we need to take action this > year to ensure that over time American companies are able to include > information security features in their program in order to maintain > their international competitiveness. We can achieve this by entering > into a new phase of cooperation among government, industry > representatives and privacy advocates with a goal of trying to develop > a key escrow encryption system that will provide strong encryption, be > acceptable to computer users worldwide, and address our national ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > security needs as well. Horses have blinkers on the sides of their eyes so that they look straight. Do politicians have eyes at all? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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Re: Small transaction amounts
by fnerd＠smds.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Eric speaks of the two kinds of electronic money systems-- closed ones where crypto doesn't have to be done because the system guarantees security, and open ones where crypto has to be used. > The closure, however, of these systems means that they don't scale. > That's bad, fatal, in fact. That doesn't mean that closed systems > will disappear, merely that the largest systems must be open. > > What is desirable economically is that the boundary between closed > clearance systems and open clearance systems be porous enough that the > market can find an optimal distribution between the two varieties. Right...I think. What has to scale is the "semantics of money." Within a small area ("box"), security is guaranteed by how the enclosing system works, and over a larger area it's done by crypto (*). But for the programs, the difference is transparent, except for a cost that resembles communications cost. (*) There's also an issue of, "Can that box over there guarantee me that I can run programs securely within it?" There are ways to do this with tamperproof boxes and such. Or looser ways to do it with reputations. -fnerd - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - nutritional information per serving: less than one (1) bit -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a aKxB8nktcBAeQHabQP/d7yhWgpGZBIoIqII8cY9nG55HYHgvt3niQCVAgUBLMs3K ui6XaCZmKH68fOWYYySKAzPkXyfYKnOlzsIjp2tPEot1Q5A3/n54PBKrUDN9tHVz 3Ch466q9EKUuDulTU6OLsilzmRvQJn0EJhzd4pht6hSnC1R3seYNhUYhoJViCcCG sRjLQs4iVVM= =9wqs -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Double DES calculations
by DAVESPARKS＠delphi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hal Finney wrote: > I'll give you one similar example, though. I think this is the technique > used in Pollard "rho" factoring. You have an iterated series, x=f(x), and > you want to know if it has any cycles, any values which are eventually > repeated. At first glance you might think that to look for a cycle of > length N you would have to store N values of the series and check each > value for a match, taking order of N in time and space. The Pollard tech- > nique instead runs two copies of the iteration at once, one twice as fast > as the other: x=f(x) and y=f(f(y)). Each time you just compare x and y > for a match. This takes about twice as long but uses no memory. The thread was concerning the vulnerability of Double-DES with an intermediate layer of IDEA in the middle. It was proposed that if IDEA could ultimately be TRIVIALLy cracked, then DES-IDEA-DES was no stronger than Double-DES. At that point I did some "back of the envelope" calculations on the cost of breaking Double-DES using a MITM attack. I'm not sure how "cycles" fit into DES. The brute-force technique I was hypothesizing involved trying all possible keys on the encrypt and decrypt sides, storing them the resultant 64 bit blocks (all 2^60 bytes of them), then comparing them. How would Pollard rho speed that up? /--------------+------------------------------------\ | | Internet: davesparks(a)delphi.com | | Dave Sparks | Fidonet: Dave Sparks @ 1:207/212 | | | BBS: (909) 353-9821 - 14.4K | \--------------+------------------------------------/

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Dialogue With Detweiler
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Blanc, While your conversation with LD may be too much for the whole list (I for one have been ambushed by this sudden spurt in activity) as his posts are rarely less than 15k, I'd request you to archive them, so that they can be added to The Detweiler Files, available on ftp from someplace on Robert Hayden's site. They should be interesting. After all, students of information society unable to find a topic for their theses can always choose The Proliferation Of Pseudospoofing Tentacles, or The Sniffer Of Medusas. Seriously. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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