- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Sat phone permit "wire"taps
by Ted_Anderson＠transarc.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I found these paragraphs in a recent Space News interesting. They were at the end of an article titled "Military Officials Open To Using Civilian Links" in the July 3rd issue. "Officials said government police authorities have expressed concern that satellite telephone systems may enable people to conduct conversations that are out of the earshot of government investigators. This would be particularly true in an area where, for example, there were no gateway through which government investigators could tap into calls. "Iridium, Globalstar, Inmarsat-P and Odyssey all plan to include features to permit authorized eavesdropping, officials said. "``Iridium will include a leased land line to areas where there are now local gateways to permit monitoring,'' Johnson said. ``We are willing to put the technical capability to do this in the hands of the governments. They then will have to pay to have all those people listen to all those telephone calls.''" Ted Anderson

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Re: Sat phone permit "wire"taps
by koontz＠MasPar.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> "Officials said government police authorities have expressed concern >that satellite telephone systems may enable people to conduct >conversations that are out of the earshot of government investigators. Perish the thought that We the People might be sovereign.

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Attachments, crypto, et al
by Donald M. Kitchen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- My rule is no binaries, none of the time. Grepping for whitwater and foster and routing it to /dev/null seems like a good idea too.. And a great big *plonk* to our alt.conspiracy friends... Need to learn what a pointer is... Anyway, my tri-county crime spree for the next weeks will put me in San Francisco, Alameda, and Orange counties. If anyone wants to mutually sign keys, email me and I'll try to arrange something. Unfortunately my cryptoshirt won't arrive in time. I'd be able to wear it in front of LOTS of illegal aliens. So, to make up for it, I'm going to export part of the cryptosig: # Have a nice day. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQB1AwUBMBgIxcLa+QKZS485AQFmVAMA0AijobnuJaumiM3LKfwdUK/ENRlbadJ2 DmElG3VDRaYtx4PNPXtjVXkV3CMt2CHEEvs4nmIlieZgOn/UkK0yWDbz95+qhul/ SCwOZ7jWHrika/pJKy2UX4HaEyjHtyvq =GXbe -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- <don(a)cs.byu.edu> fRee cRyPTo! jOin the hUnt or BE tHe PrEY PGP key - http://bert.cs.byu.edu/~don or PubKey servers (0x994b8f39) June 7&14, 1995: 1st amendment repealed. Death threats ALWAYS pgp signed * This user insured by the Smith, Wesson, & Zimmermann insurance company *

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PS/2 passwd bypassed at bootup?
by jon cameron 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have my crummy IBM PS/2 passwd protected upon turning it on. I know that removing the battery in a PS/2 deletes the password. But can it be bypassed by an MIS-type if that person has an administration-type of diagnostic/setup/boot-up floppy? Jon C.

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Re: Banks and Crypto
by Robert A. Rosenberg 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:03 7/27/95, Robert Hettinga wrote: >At 11:29 PM 7/26/95, Robert A. Rosenberg wrote: >>At 13:25 7/26/95, KDAGUIO(a)aba.com wrote: >>>See attached file: F:\OFFILES\KODMAIL.MSG > >>Is there ANY reason why you did not just paste the text of this file into >>your message? > >Cluelessness? Carelessness? Some version of "-lessness", I'm sure... > >>Also, if you are going to attach files in lieu of writing >>messages, it might be useful to mention what Wordprocessor was used to >>create the file so it can be read. In this case, what format is your file >>in? > >I just used a special feature on my Mac to deal with it. It's called a >"trash can". > >Please remember that almost all such attachments, unless identified (even >if identified, actually) usually get deleted. > I too am a Mac User. I usually pass files like this through MacLink+ first since it can usually spot what flavor of PC Wordprocessor was used. In this case, it was unable to accept it as any flavor of WordPerfect PC (which I assume was the correct designation for the WP Office WP which I assume was used since the MUA was shown in the Header as WP Office.

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Re: Sat phone permit "wire"taps
by tcmay＠sensemedia.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:34 AM 7/28/95, John A. Limpert wrote: >Is there a technical reason why communications through these future >satellite systems couldn't be encrypted? I thought that all of these >systems were based on vocoders and digital transmission, just like >a secure telephone. There should be no technical reason why voice encryption, or even end-to-end digital packet encryption, cannot be used. The various satellite systems (Iridium, Teledesic, Globalstar, etc.) also are targetting laptops, personal communicators (a la Newton, Envoy, etc.), and thus cannot afford to screw with the signal in any significant way. (And error correction codes could easily deal with even fairly massive screwing around with, should the satcom companies be foolish enough to try to "dither" the signals....which I doubt they'll ever do.) The risk is not technical, but legislative. The government of the U.S. could, for example, mandate to the satcom companies that only GAK/escrow encryption is permissable...how enforceable this is echoes the debate we've had for almost three years on such things. But the McCaw/Microsoft/Motorola/Qualcomm sorts of companies may have to make token efforts to comply. I don't expect the crypto banners to win, long run, but I would guess that right now they are jawboning with the main satellite companies to make things harder. The faster systems like "Nautilus" are deployed, the better. --Tim May .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)sensemedia.net | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-728-0152 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Corralitos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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NYT on SuperGrassley
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The New York Times, July 28, 1995, p. A26. [Editorial] Senator Grassley's Surf Police An academic study suggesting that the Internet is awash in bestiality, pedophilia and other kinky sex turns out to have been seriously flawed. Politicians like Senator Charles Grassley who waved the study around as an argument for intrusive regulation have stopped doing so. But Mr. Grassley and his allies have not backed off from their drive to draft unnecessary legislative restrictions on computer communications. Earlier this summer, Senator James Exon attached an amendment to the Senate version of a telecommunications bill that would impose Federal penalties on those who made available material deemed unsuitable for children. The unreliable study that did much to spur this bad legislating was conducted by Marty Rimm, then an undergraduate at Carnegie-Mellon University. It was reprinted in the Georgetown Law Journal and served as the basis for a credulous Time magazine article early this month. Mr. Rimm's academic supervisors have since made clear that the study had serious defects. The likelihood that children will be accidentally deluged with sexually charged computer graphics is much smaller than Mr. Rimm and his promoters suggested. Furthermore, to the extent that any problem exists, the best response is not through heavyhanded, constitutionally dubious legislation but parental education and discretionary user controls. Mr. Rimm's study looked at the computer habits of adults. He focused not on generally accessible areas of the Internet but on separate, commercial adult bulletin board services that require special procedures to find and use. This, critics note, is like visiting an adult bookstore and using the percentage of gamey titles to generalize about the contents of all bookstores. He also looked, less carefully, at specialized areas of the Internet that would be hard to stumble upon by accident. By Mr. Rimm's own calculations, less than 1 percent of all material on the Internet itself is raunchy, although this tiny percentage is unusually popular among the adults he surveyed. Another Carnegie-Mellon study, focusing on families with high school children, suggests that sexually explicit material is much less popular among these users. To be sure, sexually explicit material that would be offensive to some users can be found on the Internet. It is within the reach of computer-literate children using the networks without parental supervision. But the problem is being exaggerated to create a pretext for restricting the material available to adult users of computers. Some members of Congress, out of political greed or ignorance, want to censor what can be put on the Net and prosecute those who post legal but raunchy material. The approaches being advocated by Mr. Exon and Mr. Grassley are unwarranted and unconstitutional. They are also impractical. Material posted to the Internet in foreign countries, beyond the reach of American law, is as available to users as domestically posted material. Items can also be posted through anonymous mailers that make it impossible to identify the original source. Censorship would also have the unwelcome effect of restricting adults to reading and viewing material deemed suitable for children, and would stunt the future of the networks as a medium for artistic expression. Parents who want to restrict what their children are able to call up on their computers can avail themselves of software now available on the market that can block out unwanted material. Filtering out such material at the user end is a more practical, and far less objectionable, approach than limiting a nation of computer users to baby talk. Such devices are not foolproof, of course. The surest defense is for parents to try to teach their children the kind of healthy values that would make them uninterested in, or immune to, sexually exploitative material. [End]

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Banks and Crypto - Again
by KDAGUIO＠aba.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I apologize for the earlier transmission error/offense. Our server has been down intermittently so I have not received many flames yet. The meeting mentioned has already taken place resulting in significant progress toward our goals. The server is now up. Flame away my friends. ...kawika... ****************************************************************** CONTACT: Sonia Barbara FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (202) 663-5469 (1995) ABA REAFFIRMS SUPPORT FOR PRIVATE-SECTOR CONTROL OF CRYPTOGRAPHY Association Recommends a 10-year Extension for the Data Encryption Standard WASHINGTON, July 21 -- The Data Encryption Standard (DES) should be recertified for at least 10 more years to allow interested financial institutions adequate time to convert to any new cryptography standard, the American Bankers Association said in a policy statement issued today. Encryption is the process whereby sensitive data communications, such as wire transfers, credit card and automated teller machine transactions, are protected by secret codes to protect their confidentiality. DES, released in 1977, is the primary method used by financial institutions to encrypt information. Critics say that the longer DES is used, the more likely its code could be broken. While realizing this could limit its life span as a government certified standard, ABA warned that requiring banks to convert to a new standard by 1998 (the year DES's certification expires) could be prohibitively costly due to the high level of electronic funds transfers secured by DES. ABA therefore encouraged the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) to continue to endorse DES as a Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) for use by the financial community. There has been an ongoing debate regarding who should control the development and support of private-sector computer security standards: the government or the private sector. ABA strongly recommends that the U.S. government work with the private sector and Congress in an open forum to develop a comprehensive policy on the commercial use of cryptography. In its newly-revised policy statement on cryptography, ABA proposed alternatives to DES and outlined other criteria that must be met before changes in cryptographic standards can be accepted by the banking industry. These criteria -- which will be presented next week to representatives of the White House, U.S. Department of Commerce, National Security Agency (NSA) and federal banking agencies -- were developed following a two-day meeting held in June of bankers, vendors and crypto experts concerned about the federal government's direction regarding private-sector information security. Specifically, ABA recommended: * The financial services industry be allowed to continue to use DES based on risk assessment (e.g. value of the transaction) and the business application involved. * A security framework encompassing a family of commercially available algorithms, including DES, be developed. This framework should include a process for negotiated algorithm selection based on the level of risk and other business requirements. * Opposition to government mandated key management systems for financial applications where keys would have to be stored outside the financial institution (e.g. key registration/surrender or the mandatory escrow of cryptographic keys). Instead, banks should continue to be responsible for key management and continue to cooperate with government for law enforcement purposes, as required by law. * Export of cryptography for financial applications must not be restricted. * Full participation of Congress and the private sector before establishing a U.S. policy for the commercial use of cryptography, instead of being carried out solely by Executive Order. [Note: These recommendations were summarized. For the full statement, please call Sonia Barbara at 202/663-5469.] The American Bankers Association is the only national trade and professional association serving the entire banking community, from small community banks to large bank holding companies. ABA members represent approximately 90 percent of the commercial banking industry's total assets, and about 94 percent of ABA members are community banks with assets less than $500 million. ###

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Re: Java, Netscape, OpenDoc, and Babel (NewsClip)
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by merriman(a)arn.net (David K. Merriman) on Fri, 28 Jul 3:24 AM >Still tentative, or is there a Web address? The mall will be accessible July 31 from a pointer at http://www.org.com . ---------- OSF Opens Software Web Mall For Java Cambridge, MA, July 26 (NB) -- In a teleconference today, the Open Software Foundation (OSF) unveiled plans to open an Open Software Mall on the Web on July 31, and to start distributing software there this fall that will include Java Ports technology for the Web, DCE (Distributed Computing Environment) Web, and Microkernel Unification Specification, a new technology for building cross-platform applications. At the teleconference, which was attended by Newsbytes, Dr. Ira Goldstein, chief scientist and executive VP, said that the OSF sees the Open Software Mall as a place for users to access and help to beta test new technologies like Java Ports, DCE Web, and Microkernel Unification -- being sponsored by the OSF in conjunction with major vendors -- as well as software from universities and other research collaborators, and eventually, outside "open systems" efforts that are "germane to core OSF technology." Java Ports, a series of ports of Sun's Java technology for the Web, is being produced by the OSF with Sun, Hewlett-Packard, and Novell, Goldstein told the journalists and analysts. The technology will be available on the Open Software Mall in September, he added. DCE Web, an application designed to provide the Web with DCE mechanism for encryption, access control, and naming, is a collaborative project from the OSF, Hitachi, HP and AT&T. DCE Web is "consistent with HTTP and secure HTTP," but able to provide additional services to DCE sites, according to Goldstein. Microkernel Unification -- from the OSF, Hitachi, HP and IBM -- is a technology for building cross-platform databases and other applications by writing directly to a standard, common microkernel application programming interface (API). IBM plans to produce a product that is "mostly compliant" with the new specification in the product's first release, and "completely compliant" in its second release, Goldstein noted. Digital Equipment Corp. might also be participating in the Microkernel Unification specification project, Goldstein reported, adding that he expects to have an answer on this from Digital within a week. >From the OSF's Open Software Mall, users will be able to browse, download, and comment on software executables and software, documentation plans, design documentation, specifications, and commentary in hypertext format, according to Goldstein. The Web mall will also provide Web links to "relevant products, services, education and consulting available from the community," he told the teleconference participants. Java, DCE Web, and Microkernel Unification will each have their own Web stores on the Open Software Mall's ATO (Advanced Technology Offering) Plaza. ATOs are software technology projects, which may or may not lead to productization, where participants seek to minimize risk by obtaining feedback from users, noted the OSF's Peter Shaw. ATO development costs typically range from $300,000 to $600,000. For ATO technologies that become productized, licensing rights are estimated at $25,000 per licensee. The OSF also sponsors other vendor efforts, known as PSTs, in which vendors are closer to "productization" of their work, and development costs tend to be higher, said Shaw. Current PSTs include DCE 1.2 and Motif/CDE (Common Development Environment). In addition, four potential PSTs are "being actively pursued," Shaw maintained. "We expect to have some announcements on these later this week," he added. The PSTs will also be given their own area on the Open Software Mall, to be known as PST Plaza. Aside from the stores for Java, DCE Web, and Microkernel Unification, the ATO Plaza will also include "Web pages for a potpourri of (other) ATOs," according to Goldstein. Additional areas of the Open Software Mall will include "Research Plaza," the Motif/CD Store, and areas for tools, training, and consulting. The mall will officially open next Monday, Goldstein said. Initial offerings will include an explanation of its goals and activities, and the opportunity for user commentary. The mall will be accessible from a pointer at http://www.org.com . (Jacqueline Emigh/19950726/Reader Contact: Open Software Foundation, 617-621-8700; Press Contact: Jane Smeloff, OSF, 617-621-8997)

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Re: Java, Netscape, OpenDoc, and Babel
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Just a quick note to chime in. The OSF just did a deal with Sun >to port Java to several platforms. The OSF is opening a "web mall" >where you can grab software objects and run them. Well, not quite. The "Open Mall" is part of OSF's new advanced technology offerings. Free source for non-commercial use, fetchable from the Open Mall, a Web server. You'll be able to find the mall (in a week or two) from OSF's home page, http://www.osf.org/. The Java ATO includes ports to SVR4 (dunno whose) and HP, and more importantly, a study of the security aspects and implications of Java: is it truly a "safe" language to write in? And what does safe mean, and for whom (server, client, user, hardware, etc)? The study will be a paper, also avail from the mall. See http://www.osf.org/comm/press/950276-ato.html for mroe details. /r$

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