- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

RE: DNA (fwd)
by Brown, R Ken 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mathew James Gering wrote: >Monozygotic [maternal] twins do have the same DNA. Hence they >are identical. Genetically identical that is, there are non-genetic >variations. Dizygotic [fraternal] twins do not. Fraternal twins can >be visually nearly identical, but they are not genetically identical. That's right. "Monozygotic". I'd forgotten the word. >Clones on the otherhand and have identical nuclear DNA, but >are notnecessarily identical because some early development >processes rely on maternal genome material and not nuclear >DNA, and depending on the cloning process they may have >different mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Yep - if you mean Dolly-style clones derived from nuclear transplants into eggs. there was an interesting article in this week's "New Scientist" magazine (http://www.newscientist.com/ns/981010/contents.html) about the changing popular meaning of the word "clone". It was originally used for a group of plants produced vegetatively, like by cuttings or runners. Then it was extended to other organisms that can reproduce by division, like so-called protozoa Then to DNA replicated from one ancestor. And now to artificially cloned things like Dolly. If you got a Dolly-style clone made from you he or she wouldn't be your child, but your sibling and wouldn't be identical to you for all the reasons Matt pointed out. And of course because of different education/experience/upbringing et.c nto to mention the knowledge that they had been got in such a different way, which must do *something* to the psyche. (Anyone read "Cyteen" by CJ Cherryh?) Identical twins of course are a clone in the original sense, just as much as a variety of apples or a colony of bacteria are a clone. Really genetically identical, right down to the maternal contribution, because they drive from division at an early embryo stage (Sea-urchins can do it as well but insects can't...) If it were possible to re-potentiate adult cells and transform them into embryos (it works in plants - but then it has to because they can't move cells from one organ to another so any shoot tip has to be able to produce any kind of plant tissue) then we could make "real" twin-like clones of humans. If the search for the mysterious foetal stem cells pays off that might be possible (though why anyone would want to clone a human foetus is beyond me. Assume all the crude jokes about it being more fun to make another one using the traditional method). Ken Brown

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No Subject
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From Springfield poxmarked 9 October 1998: Subject: Springfield CypherPunks Physical Meeting FPP 10-5-98 Date: Every Saturday thru Thursday (except when it rains) Time: During 'REC' Hour. Place: Recreation Cages/The Hole (TM) Nuthouse Number Nine Looney Level 'Leven Springfield, Missouri Directions: Walk to the Cell Door. Turn around, squat down and put your hands behind you, and through the Slot In The Door. Stand up after Handcuffs are in place, turn around and wait for Guard to open Door. Step into hallway and wait for Pat-Down. (Smiling, Wisecracks & Hard-Ons not advised.) Follow first Inmate & Guard. There will be a short period for everyone to cop a few butts (cigarettes only, please), if they don't have any, light them and Shoot the Shit or Settle Old Scores before the Speakers begin to Rant & Rave or Blather Aimlessly. This Weeks Topics/Speakers Saturday: Where Are Everybody's Shoes? ~ MAY, T.C. Sunday: Does Anybody Remember What We Talked About Yesterday? ~ FroomNOSPAMkin, M. Monday: I *TOLD* You They (TM) Were Out To Get Us! ~ replay.com, N@ Tuesday: If They're So Certain This Prison is Secure, Then Why Won't They Provide Us With Blue Prints? ~ Geiger, Wm III Wednesday: This Isn't What I Had In Mind When I Helped Set the Prison Standards ~ Hallam-Baker, P. I'm Sure Glad I Put In A Side Door ~ Sameer, P. I Broke Out! (But I Can't Provide You With Any Details) ~ Zimmermann, P. How many Beatings Does It Take To Change A Prison Cell Light Bulb? ~ Costner, R. I Bet Bill Gates *Stole* Everyone's Shoes! ~ Hun, A.T. I *Love* This Prison! ~ Hettinga, R. Thursday: Prisoner #7-9-12-13-15-18-5, J. is a COCK SUCKER! ~ Warden Vulis, D. (KOTM) (DON'T FORGET YOUR SHOES!)

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No Subject
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From Springfield porkmarked 9 October 1998: Subject: Virtual Heist -- FPP #6 "I put Six Million into Hog Futures first thing this morning." Yesterday's Power Suit told his lunch companion, hoping to impress her. "Silicon Valley." Today's Power Skirt replied, almost leaning over to whisper, as if speaking loud enough for the Differently Dressed Deviate at the next table to hear would make E.F. Hutton roll over in His or Her grave. "That's where the Smart Money's going again." she continued, glancing nervously at the Differently Dressed Deviate whose Well-Tailored Suit seemed so out of place and ... well, Threatening ... in this Chicago Mercantile Exchange Lunch Room. Today's Power Skirt crossed her legs and casually admired her new Rolex as she told Yesterday's Power Suit, with a hint of disdain in her voice, "I just put *Twenty-Six Million Dollars* into ..." "Everybody Freeze!" screamed the Differently Dressed Deviate as i jumped to His or Her feet, pulling a Digital Uzi out of His or Her Well-Tailored Suit, which was a Cammo Montage of Colors Weaves & Cuts of the Power Suits of a wide span of Time & Generations. "Army of Dog!" Cammo Monty continued, sending a Shiver of Terror down the spines of the Lunch Crowd gathered today, as they were everyday, discussing (over their bag lunches) their movement of Other People's Millions into and out of various Money Market Accounts, et al. Cammo Monty pointed the Digital Uzi at the breast pocket of Yesterday's Power suit. "Let's see your Bank Book, Dick Face." Horrified, Yesterday's Power Suit shakily withdrew the Bank Book from his pocket, opened it and placed it on the table in front of him. "Just over three hundred bucks." the Army of Dog Digital Terrorist told the Lunch Crowd, causing much chuckling and snickering throughout the room. "Let's have it, Twat Face." Cammo Monty spun around pointing the Digital Uzi directly at the Bank Book of Today's Power Skirt, as she was trying to slip it out of her Briefcase, unnoticed. Reluctantly, she opened it and lay it on the table. "A hundred and twenty-eight dollars ..." Cammo Monty announced to the tittering Lunch Crowd, "and seventeen cents." i finished to a chorus of guffaws. Cammo Monty leapt onto his chair, and placed one foot on the table, waving His or Her Digital Uzi around the room, seeing the Fear (TM) in the Eyes of each Wanna Be Money Kontroller in the room - thinking that they might be the next to have their finances exposed. "Today's Power Skirt," Cammo Monty told the Lunch Crowd, "bought her Rolex on a Payment Plan," a shudder went through the room, "with a *ten percent*," i spit out the words as she began to moan, "down-payment." Today's Power skirt collapsed in tears ... "You Fucking Morons (TM)!" Cammo Monty screamed at the group, causing them to cringe in shame. "You are handling Other People's Money. It's not *your* money, you idiots, so Wake The Fuck Up (TM) and stop pretending that it is ... to yourself and to each other." <J <J Across town, one of Cammo Monty's A0D Non-Conspirators was making a similar speech to a Lunch Crowd of Federal BureauCraps. "Sunshine is the best disinfectant." the Beautiful Army of Bitch Terrorist nagged the whimpering BureauCraps, for the hundredth times, as i laid yet another Digital Printout on the Overhead Projector. "This is the amount of National Debt that is a result of you Fuck Wads holding meetings to discuss the agendas of future meetings." Beautiful Bitch snarled at the Group. "This," i continued, slapping down a picture of a Family With 2.5 Children onto the Overhead Projector, "is who is *paying* for your Incompetence & Departmental Squabbling." "Don't look away!" the Beautiful Bitch screamed, using the Zoom Feature to Highlite the Child with no arms or legs in the picture. "It's NOT YOUR MONEY you Dumb Assholes!" i continued to nag at the BureauCraps. "But you're not content to force the Taxpayers to pay An Arm & A Leg to support your Wasteful Spending - now you want *Two Arms & Two Legs* ..." "CHILDREN'S LEGS!" the Beautiful Bitch raged at the terrified BureauCraps.

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DCSB: Risk Management is Where the Money Is; Trust in Digital Commerce
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: rah(a)pop.sneaker.net Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 11:01:58 -0400 To: dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu, dcsb-announce(a)ai.mit.edu From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: DCSB: Risk Management is Where the Money Is; Trust in Digital Commerce Cc: Dan Geer <geer(a)world.std.com>, Terry Symula <symula(a)ma.ultranet.com>, "Heffan, Ira" <HEFFAN(a)tht.com>, Roland Mueller <roland(a)secunet.com> Sender: bounce-dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- The Digital Commerce Society of Boston Presents Dan Geer Senior Strategist and VP, CertCo, Inc. Risk Management is Where the Money Is Tuesday, November 3rd, 1998 12 - 2 PM The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston One Federal Street, Boston, MA The focus of "security" research today is the study of "trust management," i.e., the study of how trust is created, propagated, circumscribed, stored, exchanged, accounted for, recalled and adjudicated in an electronic world. This is both natural and mature -- natural because security is a means and not an end, mature because security technology must differentiate along cost-benefit lines. All the security technology that you can buy today enables some aspect of trust management and the academic and entrepreneurial segments alike are busy supplying many novel ways to propagate trust. They have it all wrong. Trust management is definitely exciting, but like most exciting ideas it is not important. What is important is risk management, the sister, the dual of trust management. And it is risk management that is the part of financial services that will drive the security world from here on out whether you realize it or not. Dan Geer is VP and Senior Strategist for CertCo, Inc., market leader in digital certification for electronic commerce. Dan has been at a number of security oriented startups in the Boston area since leaving academia where he was Manager of Systems Development for MIT's Project Athena. He holds a S.B. in EE/CS from MIT, and a Sc.D. in Biostatistics from Harvard. He was deeply involved in medical computing for fifteen years. A frequent speaker, popular teacher and member of several professional societies, he has been active in USENIX for some years at the Board level. His recent publications include "The Web Security Sourcebook" (Wiley, 1997) and the security chapter in Leebaert's "The Future of the Electronic Marketplace" (MIT, 1998). This meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston will be held on Tuesday, November 3, 1998, from 12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of the Harvard Club of Boston, on One Federal Street. The price for lunch is $32.50. This price includes lunch, room rental, various A/V hardware, and the speaker's lunch. ;-). The Harvard Club *does* have dress code: jackets and ties for men (and no sneakers or jeans), and "appropriate business attire" (whatever that means), for women. Fair warning: since we purchase these luncheons in advance, we will be unable to refund the price of your lunch if the Club finds you in violation of the dress code. We need to receive a company check, or money order, (or, if we *really* know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by Saturday, October 31st, or you won't be on the list for lunch. Checks payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston will have to be sent back. Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", in the amount of $32.50. Please include your e-mail address, so that we can send you a confirmation If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements (We've had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for instance), please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work something out. Upcoming speakers for DCSB are: December Joseph DeFeo TBA January Ira Heffan Internet Software and Business Process Patents February Roland Mueller European Privacy Directive We are actively searching for future speakers. If you are in Boston on the first Tuesday of the month, and you would like to make a presentation to the Society, please send e-mail to the DCSB Program Commmittee, care of Robert Hettinga, <mailto: rah(a)shipwright.com>. For more information about the Digital Commerce Society of Boston, send "info dcsb" in the body of a message to <mailto: majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu> . If you want to subscribe to the DCSB e-mail list, send "subscribe dcsb" in the body of a message to <mailto: majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu> . We look forward to seeing you there! Cheers, Robert Hettinga Moderator, The Digital Commerce Society of Boston -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.5.5 iQEVAwUBNiYOVsUCGwxmWcHhAQFxUggAjVPIS2STdjusV7TZJd/VrrA9NOzw12al 9k9wFsEcWwvknad85QCiTY1Vkwa7hCakuH9YkU9BZlWLgNhpm0tBTZ/nkMjGRaaX 3V8d89CfjaXoMfxYEmL95Cm0HEND5hUFoSmlWPQUjvThcQwrbWzXubzsmPn0Jd7M kqUrp/oFmqv4XYjgFWQxIz6va4dB772fTKCCmGJankNYh/ho+/HWm0pasymTzl/b akPKYSnTgCNQrUqHy6zSJJiinrAWQkPYcEinWktnT/TJGU1DFuxciJzQhu1c1eVr 8xtkgPn86Rmz4HXKnLRRm+lTWOKAo6+IDR4N1vR38pCiHx4ySIQ+PQ== =/Xht -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request(a)ai.mit.edu" with one line of text: "help". --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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pgp 6 src out
by Steve Mynott 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

hmmm pgp 6 source books have been released .. I wonder if there will be a pgp 6i unix version now? -- 1024/D9C69DF9 steve mynott steve(a)tightrope.demon.co.uk http://www.pineal.com/ i was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and i did. i said i didn't know. -- mark twain

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Commerce Undersecretary William Reinsch defends the governments encryption policy
by nospam＠freedom.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I especially like the part about DEEPCRACK and how because EFF knew that the message was in English that it doesn't really prove that the FBI can break 56bit DES encryption. --------------------------------------------------- http://www.infosecuritymag.com/sept/q%26a.htm Q & A WITH WILLIAM REINSCH Cryptos Key Man Commerce Undersecretary William Reinsch defends the governments encryption export policyeven though it puts him "in the hot seat." BY ANDY BRINEY Q: How would you characterize current U.S. cryptographic export policies? A: The President has consistently articulated a policy of balancebetween privacy, electronic commerce, law enforcement and national security. We believe all four elements are important, and were trying to produce a policy that takes all of them into account. But is it really possible to balance all these issues at the same time? We think so. Im not sure the industry agrees with us, and its not easy. The privacy issues involved have been discussed for 50 years in debates about wiretaps and law enforcement devices for intercepting phone conversations. Encryption poses some of the same issues: privacy vs. law enforcement. The country has come to terms with wiretaps over the years, and people still use phoneseven though, with proper court orders, theres the possibility that law enforcement could be listening in. We think well be able to arrive at the same common public understanding with encryption. But theres no question that getting there will be difficult. What kind of time frame are we looking at? Is the administration looking at releasing a "final" crypto export policy within the next three months? Six months? A year? The policy I articulatedone of balanceis based on implementations in the marketplace. We expect the market to develop the products we like, and we expect that there will be a demand for the products. We want to work through the market. What that means is, if the market turns in unexpected directions, we have to be ready to re-evaluate our policy. So I dont think youre going to see a "final" versionever. As long as the market moves and changes, our policy will be tweaked to accommodate whats happening. In the short run, however, the policy we are currently operating under expires January 1. Weve told industry we expect to revisit that policy this fall, and make judgments about whats going to happen after January 1. So weve committed to trying to come out with the next update, hopefully by Labor Day, although my expectation is it may take a little longer than that. Can you be more explicit about what this policy might entail? No. Because were not there yet. What has been the industrys reaction to current policy? Industry has been quite active, particularly with submitting key-recovery plans. We provide more liberalized export controls for companies that provide plans by which they will build key-recovery products. Weve approved some 55 plans nowwith a few more pending. I dont think theyre doing it just because the government asked them to; theyre doing it because they see a market. In addition, in the spring the FBI and the Justice Department asked companies to come in to see if a technical solution could be found to deal with these issues. Companies have done that, too. At the same time, of all the economic sectors in the country, this ones moving the fastest. Theres a real danger that, if we cant get our policy together and out there in the marketplace soon, we could be overtaken by events overseas. Recently, a panel was charged with developing a Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS). One of this groups directives was to design a federal computer security system that includes back doorswhich they failed to do. Whats next for this panel, and for this issue? My understanding is that, at the request of a majority of the panels members, the Secretary [of Commerce] has extended their charter to the end of the year. The Secretary received a letter from the panel in which the majority felt they would be able to complete their work with additional time. However, they also said they werent entirely confident that at the end of the day it would be unanimous product. Even if it were possible to do key escrow on the scale the government is asking, would anyone willingly buy such a product knowing that stronger encryption products without back doors are available? To prevent this, wouldnt it be necessary to criminalize the domestic possession of stronger crypto? First of all, we havent supported the latter. Second, I think you need to look at this problem in pieces, not as a unitary problem. The pieces are: stored data, data in transit (such as e-mail) and voice communications. I would argue that with the first two of those pieces, theres going to be substantial demand in the market for the kinds of products that are helpful from our standpoint. For stored data, we see a demand for key recoverywere not using the term "key escrow" much anymore. Particularly in business and financial institutions, theres a demand for recovery products, because people want to be able to access employees data in the event of accidents or other such things. As for e-mail, the most significant development there was the announcement nine companies made in early July. Each of these companies submitted an application for a so-called "door bell" technology, which connotes a variety of means of recovery at the server level. What we see developing here is growing use of network encryptionas opposed to encryption at the PCfor secure transmission of messages. Employers will want that, for employee control purposes. From the standpoint of law enforcement, thats a happy development, because it creates two "third point" locationsthe senders server and the recipients serverthat are physically separate from the sender and recipient of the message. These points are often controlled by third parties, namely contractors running the system. So, with the proper court order, law enforcement could go to those third points and obtain plain-text access. What was your reaction to the Electronic Frontier Foundations cracking of DES in July? I think you have to contrast that situation, which was reasonably artificial, with the reality of law enforcement. In this case, it took a decent amount of resources to crack a specific message that, I believe, the people doing the crack knew was in English, and knew was one message. Now, if youre the FBI, think about that. From their standpoint, were talking about traffic that isnt so easily identifiable. It might be a long stream of encrypted material that theyre trying to intercept in real time; they dont necessarily know what language its in; they dont necessarily know what part of the message is of interest to them; and they dont know whether its words or text or graphics or what it might be. Telling the FBI that, under those circumstances, you can buy an expensive computer and crack one message in 56 hoursthats not a lot of comfort to the FBI. And it doesnt seem to me that it should make anybody in the private sector nervous about the security of 56-bit products. If thats the best were going to get56 hours for a single message decrypted by equipment most people dont have and arent ever going to havethat doesnt exactly mean that its an unsecured product. But it does illustrate a trend. As time passes, its taking fewer and fewer resources and less and less time to crack the same algorithm. In 1997, it took three months. In February, it took 39 days. Now, its one $250,000 computer and 56 hours. Whos to say in two more months it wont be cracked in an even shorter amount of time with even fewer resources? You can project that curve, and maybe youll be right. The immediate effect of that is that its going to accelerate a trend thats already begun anyway, which is toward 128-bit products. I think thats a trend that would have occurred regardless of this particular event. The technical people Ive talked to say that once you get beyond 90 or 100 bits, it doesnt make all that much difference because youre talking about brute-force cracking times that are beyond any real time that you can imagine. Obviously, the faster you can crack 56 bits, the faster you can crack 90 or 100. But since each successive bit doubles your time, by the time you get to 90, I think youre into thousands of years... But the question is, assuming that 90 is safe, wouldnt it then be prudent to have a policy that allows uniform export of 90-bit products without special dispensation? I dont think we expect to set bit-length requirements. We believe in the marketplace deciding what is secure and what is not. The government is not going to say that 90 is good or 128 is good But right now its saying 56 is sufficient. No, the government is saying that 56 can be exported under certain circumstances. What the government has also said is that if its a key-recovery product, it can be exported with any bit length without constraint. And thats what we would prefer to focus onto tell people, if youre product has recovery features, bit length doesnt matter. Thats the incentive. What happens if a key-recovery standard cannot be agreed upon? Is there a fallback plan? We are doing everything we can to encourage people to find it acceptable and to get the market to move in that direction. We think thats whats happening. So I dont think weve developed a Plan B in that sense. Can you discuss progress on the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)? No. Im not particularly involved in that. I think you need to talk to some NIST or NSA people about that. ALSO Q: You seem to be the governments point man on encryption policy issues. Is that a function of your office, your background, or what? A: "Designated victim" is the term we use [laughs]. Actually, its a function of the office. An integral component of our policy involves export controls, and the BXA [Bureau of Export Administration] administers export controls of dual-use items for the government. So I end up in the hot seat. EDITORS NOTE: Next month, Bruce Schneier, author of the definitive text Applied Cryptography, will respond to Undersecretary Reinschs comments in a special Word in Edgewise article.

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Evans on tradition, common law & Hayek
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 11:43:25 EDT Reply-To: Hayek Related Research <HAYEK-L(a)MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: Hayek Related Research <HAYEK-L(a)MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: Stephen Carson <SWCarson(a)AOL.COM> Subject: Evans on tradition, common law & Hayek To: HAYEK-L(a)MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU M. Stanton Evans has an excellent discussion of tradition & common law as it relates to liberty & consent in his _The Theme is Freedom: Religion, Politics, and the American Tradition_, (1994, Regnery). Chapter 5 of that book, "The Uses of Tradition", is particularly helpful. From that chapter... [emphases his] "The reason for this libertarian effect is that the common law created a tremendous obstacle to the *workings of unchecked power in the state*. For if the law grew up by way of custom and tradition, over great intervals of time, then it was not the work of any individual and could not be changed at anyone's discretion. It was outside the ordinary workings of the process, pre-existed the powers of the day, and would survive them. This made it superior to the will of any king, or group of legislators, and gave it independent status." -p. 80 "...the common law cannot be made over by the decree of any given individual, group, or even generation. It consists instead of the accretion, over time, of ways of thinking and acting that many generations have accepted. When you think about it - and the common lawyers did - this is a *species of consent*. It means that people are *voluntarily choosing to do things in a certain way, without any central direction or design*. Another common lawyer of the Stuart era, John Davies, put it as follows: 'The common law of England is nothing else but the common law and custom of the realm... A custom taketh beginning and groweth to perfection in this manner; when a reasonable act once done is found to be good and beneficial to the people, and agreeable to their nature and disposition, then they do use and practice it again and again, and so by often iteration and multiplication of the act it becometh a custom... customary law is the most perfect and most excellent, and without comparison the best, to make and preserve a commonwealth. For the written laws that are made by either the edict of princes, or by council of estates [i.e., Parliament] are imposed on the subject before any trial or probation made, whether the same be fit and agreeable to the nature and disposition of the people, or whether they will breed any inconvenience or no. But a custom doth never become a law to bind the people, until it had been tried time out of mind...'" -p. 88 "This notion of *custom as consent*, in contrast to top-down command, is among the key ideas of the free society. With the statements of Davies and Wilson, in fact, we approach the modern exposition of this point by Hayek, who devotes a series of penetrating essays to the subject. The distinctive features of a libertarian regime, Hayek argues, is that it permits the organization of society by free decision, and that this results in an ordered system that no single person or even group of people has designed, and that could not have been created by top-down methods. An obvious example is the development of language - a structure that has grown up over a considerable course of time, invented by nobody in particular, but used conveniently by many." -p. 89-90 I had never quite connected this aspect of consent in with the common law. This makes the connection between spontaneous order, custom, time & consent much clearer to me. Stephen W. Carson <mailto:SWCarson@aol.com> "Premature optimization is the root of all evil" -Donald Knuth --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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FW: IAB statement on "private doorbell" encryption
by Fisher Mark 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: The IAB[SMTP:iab@ietf.org] > Sent: Thursday, October 15, 1998 9:35 AM > Subject: IAB statement on "private doorbell" encryption > > > > The IAB and IESG are concerned by published descriptions of the > "private doorbell" approach to resolving the encryption controversy. > Essentially, the private doorbell requires that encryption and > decryption be done at a gateway, rather than at an end system; see > http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/779/govtaff/policy/paper/paper_index.html > for one description. This is in conflict with the "end-to-end" > principle, a fundamental tenet of the Internet architecture. While > there is certainly a place for gateway-based encryption in some > circumstances, to require it in all places (and to exclude end-to-end > encryption) would warp the protocol structure. Furthermore, it > offers a significantly lower level of security, in that there is > no longer protection against inside attacks, which by all accounts > are a serious threat. > > In addition, putting all security at the gateway ignores the need > for different levels of protection in different situations. For > some applications, encryption to the gateway may suffice. Others > may require encryption and cryptographic authentication of the > individual machine or even user. Should a strong encryption > algorithm be used, or a very efficient one? It is very difficult > to make these decisions anywhere but the end-system. But the > "private doorbell" scheme would block deployment of such fine-grained > protection. > > ========================================================== Mark Leighton Fisher Thomson Consumer Electronics fisherm(a)indy.tce.com Indianapolis, IN "Their walls are built of cannon balls, their motto is 'Don't Tread on Me'"

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IP: HOUSE APPROVES Y2K BILL
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: "Peter J. Celano" <celano(a)ic.net> Subject: IP: HOUSE APPROVES Y2K BILL Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 13:24:30 -0400 To: ignition-point(a)majordomo.pobox.com HOUSE APPROVES Y2K BILL The U.S. House of Representative has voted 407-3 to authorize the president's Council on the Year 2000 Conversion to take control of computer systems of critical agencies if they're unlikely to be able to avert a crisis because of the Year 2000 software problem, in which old programs using 2-digit codes for years will be unable to do correct date-based calculations. The Senate has not yet voted on the measure. (AP 13 Oct 98) ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

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FBI Affidavit on Ex-NSA Cryptanalyst
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We offer the FBI's 23-page affidavit of charges against David Sheldon Boone, ex-NSA cryptanalyst who allegedly passed top secret SIGINT, EW and nuclear targeting plans to the Soviets: http://jya.com/dsb100998.htm Tantalizing hints on means and methods, quoting the affidavit of the FBI agent in charge: On one occasion, "Igor" [Soviet agent] told BOONE that the KGB/SVRR had access to United States Signals Directive (USSID) Zero, which was an index of all other USSIDs, and from this index IGOR asked BOONE to obtain specific USSIDs. I have ascertained that USSIDs are classified NSA publications for use in providing Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) support to the United States military. BOONE told the OA [FBI Operational Asset posing as Soviet agent to set up Boone] that he had given "Igor" a photocopy of an NSA document entitled "United States Signals Intelligence Directive (USSID) 514," dated May 6, 1988. BOONE told the OA that this USSID was unusual because it was one of few USSIDs to be classified TOP SECRET rather than SECRET. BOONE told the OA that USSID 514 was not widely disseminated but that one copy had been at USAFS Augsburg. And more on Boone's training and duties in cryptanalysis at Fort Meade and in Germany. Bad Ausburg is the location of one of the NSA intercept stations for the Echelon program is it not?

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