- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: More on digital postage
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:40 AM 2/15/97 -0600, snow wrote: >Mr. Bell wrote: >> At 03:31 AM 2/14/97 -0800, John C. Randolph wrote: >> >Tim may says: >> >>By the way, I think the "junk fax" and "junk phone call" laws are clearcut >> >>violations of the First Amendment. I understand why the herd _wants_ these >> >>laws, as it reduces the costs involved in replacing fax paper, running to >> >>the telephone only to find someone trying to sell something, etc., but it >> >>is quite clearly a prior restraint on speech, however well-intentioned. >> >I have to disagree here. The junk fax law is a restraint on unauthorised >> >use of property, i.e. *my* fax machine, *my* phone, etc. >> However, you connect that fax machine to a phone line, when you know full >> well that should it be enabled to do so, it will automatically pick up the >> phone when it "hears" a ring, and will print out a fax based on information >> provided. It isn't clear why sending a fax is any "wronger" than mailing >> junk mail, or making a (voice) phone call to somebody. > > That is a ridiculous argument. The door to my home is connected >to the street,m and I know full well that that makes it easy for anyone >to come wandering in to my home. Is it legal, just because I have my >home hooked to the street, for someone to come in and help themselves to >a beer out of my fridge? No, you're taking the issue to ridiculous extremes. That's why we have doors, and locks, etc. And, for that matter, "No trespassing" signs. But having an address, and a walkway, and a doorbell is generally considered if not explicit permission, but at least toleration of the idea that somebody can walk up and knock on the door, etc. Having a telephone with a number that anyone can dial is going to result in some level of intrusion. Having a fax machine is a similar issue, unless technology provides a way to block unwanted faxes. I certainly don't claim that we shouldn't try to do anything about these limitations! Quite the opposite, technology should be employed to protect privacy. But faxes are not fundamentally different than telephones, doorbells, and walkways: They facilitate interaction, even potentially undesirable interaction. > Nope. Sure I realize that they _can_, but that doesn't make it right, >and it doesn't make it legal. "Legal" is an arbirary concept; the opposite, "illegal," is merely what some bunch of brainless legislators get together and disapprove. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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48-bit RC5 code broken [fwd]
by Steve Schear 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 8:02:49 PST From: "Peter G. Neumann" <neumann(a)csl.sri.com> Subject: 48-bit RC5 bites the dust In RISKS-18.81, we noted that Ian Goldberg of U.C. Berkeley had cracked the 40-bit RC5 in 3.5 hours -- the first step in the RSA Data Security challenge posed on 28 Jan 1997. The second step was taken on 10 Feb 1997 by Germano Caronni, a graduate student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Caronni (with a lot of help from his friends) has recovered the key for text encrypted with 48-bit RC5, with the help of 3,500 computers and attaining an peak rate of 1.5 trillion keys searched per hour, over a period of 312 hours. A press release from RSA (given some circulation in the media) on gives some details. Close to the median expected effort, about 57% of the key space was exhausted. The Caronni team is now working on the next challenge, RC5-56. It is easy to clone yourself through virtual replication. [In this case, the team has a lot of Caronnis!]

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No Subject
by owner-cypherpunks 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: Keep it Simple and the Cypherpunk Way
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote: > what TCM continues to stick his head in the sand over > is the fact that the list noise levels have gotten outlandishly > out of control over recent times, far beyond anything in memory. > what is it due to? "Out of control" says it all, don't you think? (as in "control freaks", that is). > it appears that there is a basic law of cyberspace that S/N decreases > as you add more people. it seems to be a very obvious and repeatable > property. No, it decreases rapidly when your forum more-or-less suddenly becomes a hot item on the web. If it weren't hot, nobody would bother, believe me. > there are some significant lessons about cryptoanarchy that are > completely evading TCM. how well does anarchy scale? apparently, not > well. TCM would like to pretend that just deleting posts and having > outsider filterers is a "solution" to the problem and argues for > business as usual, upholding the status quo. "Scale" is a term used by controllers. > the problem is that when you have a deteriorating situation, the > status quo is not a valid concept. keeping the status quo means > further deterioration. Look at the big picture. Some people have proposed unacceptable methods for controlling human population, and it should be no surprise that the same mentality would pervade these forums. > TCM also fails to address the problem of AGENT PROVOCATEURS. the > cyberspace list is intensely fragile and susceptible/ vulnerable > to them as Vulis demonstrates. it only takes ONE and a lot of > tentacles. does TCM propose a solution to this? no, of course not, > because he has a blind spot when it comes to realizing the > PATENTLY OBVIOUS FLAWS OF CRYPTOANARCHY that stare him in the face. Unless, of course, the forum itself (and its proponents) are themselves the "agent provocateurs". > if cpunks had a formal way of making decisions, and some loyalty > to each other, instead of BAILING OUT at the slightest difficulty, > perhaps the situation would be different, eh? see how quickly people > who were once friends simply WALK OUT on each other in the cryptoanarchist > approach? where is the loyalty? the sense of working for the greater > good? it's gone. TCM simply ABANDONS the list at the first opportunity, > and ignores the years of hard work that J.G. has put into it. Loyalty? Amongst anarchists? Two points: Loyalty on c-punks was almost entirely a negative factor (i.e., sucking up to Gilmore). Two, Tim May is for Tim May (as he should be), and he didn't abandon his ideals one bit, which is a helluva lot more to say for him than Gilmore or Sandfort. > timmy, cpunks, etc. you are getting a lesson in REALITY. you are seeing > the logical conclusion of your views playing out before you. acrimony, > bitterness, resignation, chaos, confusion, cacaphony, anarchy. Perhaps you should turn your talents to writing country songs.

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No Subject
by owner-cypherpunks 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: More on digital postage
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:40 AM 2/15/97 -0600, snow wrote: >Mr. Bell wrote: >> At 03:31 AM 2/14/97 -0800, John C. Randolph wrote: >> >Tim may says: >> >>By the way, I think the "junk fax" and "junk phone call" laws are clearcut >> >>violations of the First Amendment. I understand why the herd _wants_ these >> >>laws, as it reduces the costs involved in replacing fax paper, running to >> >>the telephone only to find someone trying to sell something, etc., but it >> >>is quite clearly a prior restraint on speech, however well-intentioned. >> >I have to disagree here. The junk fax law is a restraint on unauthorised >> >use of property, i.e. *my* fax machine, *my* phone, etc. >> However, you connect that fax machine to a phone line, when you know full >> well that should it be enabled to do so, it will automatically pick up the >> phone when it "hears" a ring, and will print out a fax based on information >> provided. It isn't clear why sending a fax is any "wronger" than mailing >> junk mail, or making a (voice) phone call to somebody. > > That is a ridiculous argument. The door to my home is connected >to the street,m and I know full well that that makes it easy for anyone >to come wandering in to my home. Is it legal, just because I have my >home hooked to the street, for someone to come in and help themselves to >a beer out of my fridge? No, you're taking the issue to ridiculous extremes. That's why we have doors, and locks, etc. And, for that matter, "No trespassing" signs. But having an address, and a walkway, and a doorbell is generally considered if not explicit permission, but at least toleration of the idea that somebody can walk up and knock on the door, etc. Having a telephone with a number that anyone can dial is going to result in some level of intrusion. Having a fax machine is a similar issue, unless technology provides a way to block unwanted faxes. I certainly don't claim that we shouldn't try to do anything about these limitations! Quite the opposite, technology should be employed to protect privacy. But faxes are not fundamentally different than telephones, doorbells, and walkways: They facilitate interaction, even potentially undesirable interaction. > Nope. Sure I realize that they _can_, but that doesn't make it right, >and it doesn't make it legal. "Legal" is an arbirary concept; the opposite, "illegal," is merely what some bunch of brainless legislators get together and disapprove. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Moderation experiment almost over; "put up or shut up"
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Igor Chudov @ home wrote: > Dave Hayes wrote: > > Ok. I'll "put up". > > If the cypherpunks will have me, -I'll- run the cypherpunks > > list. Those that know me know that I will *not* censor, moderate, or > > otherwise alter the content (other than the stuff majordomo does with > > "resend") of any messages to the list. > I think that it is a great idea. If you want to contribute to the > effort to keep the list, this is great. You could join the network of > other cypherpunks mailing lists. > There is a small list for discussing these networking issues, > cypherpunks-hosts(a)algebra.com. It is not for crypto-discussions per > se, but rather for discussing how we proceed with these lists. If I understood the last several hundred messages correctly, they have tried to make the point that the cypherpunks mailing list (unedited) was more ideal than a newsgroup. If this is what Dave is offering, I'm surprised if more people don't jump on it. Then again, they took their good ol' time jumping onto cypherpunks-unedited.

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None Enigma
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timmy Mayonnaise must have been sharing needles with a rabid hedgehog. o-:^>___? Timmy Mayonnaise `~~c--^c'

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FYI
by fjegan＠airmail.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This was posted to a financial information site on Friday: OPEN MARKET INC (OMKT) Yesterday, stock was given a modest lift from news that company received approval from the Department of Commerce to export its Internet-commerce software with a very strong version of encryption software, becoming one of the first companies allowed to do so without first agreeing to go along with a controversial White House requirement. Frank ********************************* **********Frank J. Egan********** *Chance Favors The Prepared Mind* *********************************

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Re: Excerpt on SPAM from Edupage, 11 February 1997
by Roy M. Silvernail 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In list.cypherpunks, ichudov(a)algebra.com writes: > My opinion on this: I personally feel that this scheme is the way to > go for spammers. Obviously, it is possible to build mail readers that > would verify some kind of trusted signature on the attached postage, and > would highlight all such messages. The meaning of signature is "these > people are not crooks, there really is an encrypted dollar there". I much prefer the plan where a potential mail correspondant includes an e-cash dollar directly cashable by me. If I like the mail (and the sender), I throw the dollar away and the sender goes on the approved list. If not, I keep the dollar, and the sender goes on the twit list. Paper junk mail costs an advertiser more than $1 per piece, so they'd still be getting a bargain. And potentially, some receivers may throw away the dollar and welcome the spam. > Clearly, spammers who pay their readers to read their messages (and who > do get them to read) will have a very high response rate. That may > justify adding postage to their letters. It should also spur development of intelligent agents which can retrieve this cash without human intervention. Spammers will doubtless alter their pages to require more interaction to find the key to the cash. Then the IA's will be improved. Then... remember the copy protection wars? This isn't necessarily a negative point. > The advantages are obvious. The disadvantage is a possibility of someone > stealing the money on the way, if the letters are not encrypted. Or that the money wasn't there in the first place (absent a trusted signature system), or the key doesn't exist, or the wrong key is offered, or the sender put the same e-dollar on all 60000 mails sie sent and it's already been redeemed. - -- Roy M. Silvernail [ ] roy(a)scytale.com DNRC Minister Plenipotentiary of All Things Confusing, Software Division PGP Public Key fingerprint = 31 86 EC B9 DB 76 A7 54 13 0B 6A 6B CC 09 18 B6 Key available from pubkey(a)scytale.com, which works now -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMwXqzxvikii9febJAQHv7QP9HQ+S3dZ+MCOTfUJYZwQ/l7xDU83RUIZI IMve5eFvBbSHabXacwM//1dHmWVpMqVpfN7kchXm/N+vsEqpGMGgNkNj7dGZdoWn NN6cHkDHJywgnlhT62BZ0u6n2lb4wJcKMaGn63bnmHCRSUN9HwUCKFrFXi72s08r sxju8mXi8N0= =4Skg -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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