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Re: New Remailer (hidden)
by Raph Levien 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bill Stewart wrote: > > Cool. I've got a test message going now. > Does your remailer accept PGP-encrypted email? > It's really critical for high-security applications, > at least for first remailer hops, but your key's not on > the MIT keyserver. At present, middleman accepts only Mixmaster format messages. Obviously, if it also supported type-1 messages, it would be important to accept PGP encrypted messages as well. > BTW, how do we know you're not a plant? :-) > Aside from having an interesting nym, > you've probably got the first remailer that > makes it difficult to tell who's running it. > You could be Sameer, or you could be Louis Freeh, > but we don't know. At least folks like Xenon were > known to be real people.... I am able to vouch for the fact that middleman is not a plant. > Even if you _are_ a plant, of course, we can still use > your system, but I'd want to do encrypted email through > other remailers on one end or the other. Always a good idea. Raph

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Long-Lived Remailers
by Rev. Mark Grant, ULC 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

With regard to the problems of remailers being shut down when we want long-lived addresses, wouldn't seperating the input and output be one possibility? That is (like Hal's Alumni remailer) you'd send mail to 'remailer(a)anon.ai' and it would be forwarded via a disposable account elsewhere. All messages would appear to come from 'disposable(a)foo.com' and if that account was shut down a new one could be opened to replace it while incoming mail simply backed up at the main remailer account. The only potential problem I could see would be that the disposable ISP might have logs which could track the outgoing messages back to the other account. You'd also obviously need to open the disposable account anonymously or using an ISP who'd protect your identity. Mark

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Re: AP
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 20 May 96 at 10:28, Jim Ray wrote: > >A long time ago (few hours) JFA replied to Vlad Z. Nuri (but > >Jim Ray seemed to indicate that >his other name was L. > >Detweiller) : > >I think that you are writing way out of context. > > >First, wether or not the AP scheme is used for the control of > >government, as Jim Bell pushes it, does not mean that it will not > >be implemented for other purposes, such as killing successful > >businessman or your neighboor's son who is screwing your wife > >(noticed that she smiles all the time since a while? ) . > >Second, > >everybody like Jim Bell who is pushing the AP scheme is >doing so > >on ethical basis: that the coercion the government imposes >on to > >the individuals by regulations, and guns backed taxation >justifies > >the killings. I have to see yet any cypherpunks who >seems to > >agree with AP that envision another use than govt control. > > > I disagree BECAUSE of the other likely uses, & see below. Just the one I pointed out in theses two paragraphs. I don't like the scheme either. > >And you'll also note that the anonymity issue generate more > >interest from more CPunks because it (hopefully) will acheive the > >same goal without any killing. > > our > anonymity-baby threatens to have govt. kill it in the crib, It is not yours, it only *is*. > with the support of the people. Here, again, Jim Bell would probably say that this sentence proves him right... > I have not respected a US > president in my lifetime, yet I get _pissed_ when they get > shot/shot at. I somehow agree with you here. > Killing seems to be a first resort for some, > and IMO ends do not justify means. Well, here, you are threading on a very difficult path. Of course, the ends does never justifies the means in an *uncoerced* context. But what JB says, is that AP would be a justified "self defense" against coercion. It is only that the self-defense uses statistics. You'll note that the psycho-epistemology necessary to commit murder is quite close to the one necessary to coerce poeples to pay taxes. Thus, he might pretend (JB) to only turn the living expression of an idea against itself. Personnally? I still was not able to sort it out... Ciao JFA DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee; Limoges porcelain, silverware and crystal JFA Technologies, R&D consultants; physists, technologists and engineers. PGP keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891 Unsollicited commercial e-mail will be proofread at US165 $/h Any sender of such material will be considered as to have ac- cepted the above mentionned terms.

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The Ontology of Nyms, Trust, Belief, etc.
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[I've changed the thread name from "Sen. Leahy..."] At 10:50 AM 5/20/96, bryce(a)digicash.com wrote: >Indeed we have, and it verged on philosophical territory, and >I would really enjoy discussing the issue again with you >sometime, although perhaps we've gotten about as much as we can >get out of it in e-mail. Yes, I also enjoyed the MITM ontological debate--up to a point. Technology reifies what were once philosophical abstractions, and brings them to the fore. >Unfortunately PGP 2 only allows one kind of certificate. The >"key-signature". To PRZ and most other people, it is a >certificate asserting a mapping between a key and a true name. >To me it is as I described above. To TCMay, it is a kind of >endorsement. It's just too bad that PGP 2 doesn't have >different _kinds_ of certificates to represent these different >assertions. Until a certificate technology like that is >implemented, and probably even after that time, we need to >avoid confusing these various meanings for "key-signatures". I agree with this point, that the "scalar" nature of key-signings is not very rich. A Digression on Tensors: The next step up would presumably be "vector" signings, where one has multiple attributes, just as with ratings, reviews, etc. And the step after that would be "tensor" signings--it's perhaps a leap into the abyss, but tensors have an interesting property that a value in one direction, for example, and a value in another direction, say, do not "vector add" to some resultant value. While "wind" acts as a vector field, with a north wind and and a west wind giving a northwest resultant, think of "stress" (as in a crystal, a piece of glass, a structural member): stress in one direction is independent of stress in another direction, and they don't add as vectors do. Hence, the "stress-energy tensor" is needed to describe the stress in a material...or the gravitational field! (This is just a conjecture that this model might be useful at some point. Near term, I think even having "user-defined" belief fields would be a useful step. And I don't think it needs to be hacked into a next version of PGP...it seems better to add these things on later.) >Now more seriously, the alacrity with which I bring up >disagreements with Tim should in fact be construed as a measure >of my _respect_ for his opinions and for his mind, rather that >as a lack of respect for same. Thanks, and I promise I'll respect you in the morning, too. (g) That several of us (and probably many of those who aren't commenting) have differing interpretations of key signings, trust, belief, identity, proof, etc., is not surprising to me. (I didn't put "Licensed Ontologist" in my .sig for nothing. Actually, it's also meant as a tweak of some local Santa Cruzans who want professions licensed by the State and ordered to report various forms of physical, psychic, and existential "abuse" to the proper licensing authorities. I get a great rise out of them (in scruz.general) by announcing that "my clinic" refuses to narc out its patients to the authorities...I love getting threats from them saying that they plan to contact Sacramento to "have your license revoked." Predictably, and sadly, I've never gotten a call from any state authorities on this...I can always hope.) --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Religions, Scientology, and Ritual Cannibalism
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:53 PM 5/20/96, jamesd(a)echeque.com wrote: >At 01:08 AM 5/20/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >> But any country that is "anti-Scientology" is likely to be >> repressive in various ways we would find inimical to our goals. >> [...] >> >> (The issue of how believable the claims of CoS are is no more relevant than >> similarly outlandish claims that taking communion is eating the flesh of >> JC.) > >The Australian law is (or was) based on the idea that if you charged someone >$2500 for eating the flesh of christ, it then becomes legitimate for the >government to check out whether or not the customer was getting actual >flesh of Christ. This seems to me a lot less repressive than the American >FDA. Caveat: I'm an atheist, a non-believer in the supernatural. When I die, my CPU and consciousness will vanish. If there are various gods and goddesses, sprites, trolls, Supreme Being(s), I see no evidence of them. Having said this, I don't want _any_ government intervening in religion, for any purposes. If the Church of Zed says that one's tithing to the Church will buy one eternal salvation and healthy gums, I don't want some government demanding to see "proof." (Inasmuch as at most one religion is right, this makes the remaining N - 1 religions automatically fraudulent in some sense. This is why the "Schelling point" in mostly-free societies is "we won't interfere with religions and their various bizarre claims...caveat emptor.") As far as I'm concerned, if a church can convince some yokels to pay $2500 for getting to eat a couple of pounds of Jesus every year (cooked, or Jesus tartare?), I'd say they've got a pretty good racket going. More supernatural power to them, I say! (And if the Clams can convince some out-of-work actors in Hollywood to pay $250,000 to be e-metered, have their engrams analyzed, and eventually "go clear," it seems like L. Ron made good on his bar bet with Heinlein that he could invent a new religion and make millions of buck. As another SF put it, "think of it as evolution in action.) --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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An alternative to remailer shutdowns
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Several remailers have shut down recently. This may be in part a byproduct of the ongoing struggle between dissidents and adherents of the Church of Scientology. Also, levels of abuse seem to be increasing in general as more people come on the net and learn to use the remailers. Since by their very nature remailers prevent accountability, there is nothing to stop one or more persons from sending illegal material which will cause the remailers to be threatened by legal actions. I was contacted by the FBI on Friday due to some threatening mail which was apparently sent through my remailer. According to 18 USC 875(c), "Whoever transmits in interstate commerce any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another, shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both." I may not be able to continue operating either of my remailers (alumni.caltech.edu and shell.portal.com) for much longer due to this kind of abuse. Shutting down remailers not only reduces the number available for general use, it also causes problems for people who are using the remailers to manage pseudonyms. If their reply chains used a remailer which shuts down they have to reconstruct the chains, which is at least a nuisance. There was also a posting recently to comp.org.eff.talk by Jonathon Cline, jcline(a)trumpet.aix.calpoly.edu, about efforts to set up fully anonymous nym based mailing lists. He mentioned that the decrease in the number of remailers is causing problems with their plans. An alternative I am considering would reduce the utility of the remailer while still allowing these "consensual" uses to continue. Presently the remailers deal with abuse via "block lists", sets of addresses that mail can't be sent to. Generally these are created when someone complains about some mail they have received. By setting up blocking, at least they will not get harrassing anonymous mail once they have complained. But in some cases, as in the case that is causing me headaches now, even one message is too much. My thought is to turn the block list concept on its head, and make it a "permit list". Simply, the remailer will only send mail to people who have voluntarily indicated their willingness to receive it. Someone who has not sent in a message granting this permission will not be sent mail. For larger forums such as newsgroups and mailing lists, permission may be granted by some consensus mechanism. Most would be blocked, but a few like alt.anonymous.messages and the cypherpunks list would be permitted, and others could be added if they wished. This should hopefully essentially eliminate complaints about abuse, much more effectively than the current method of block lists. People who want to test the remailer by sending mail to themselves, as most people do when they are learning, can simply register themselves on the permit list. People who want to receive anonymous mail, or participate in anonymous mailing lists, can register themselves. People who want to use nyms can register themselves. People who run other remailers can register. It's all voluntary, and if someone does get some objectionable message at least they will know that they granted permission. They can always ask to be taken off the list. Feedback welcome - Hal Finney -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQBVAwUBMaDr2BnMLJtOy9MBAQHWBAIAlh2uIanxTnI+GBqZ1zWcBE/AgF2TtQA/ TztTYczW7FI8ktAa3WVtsUkJeIOYxUDfC2jLvhHuGMXhEPs+jVijJg== =QajL -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: PGP MIME INTERNET DRAFT considered harmful.
by elkins＠aero.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Note: CC'd to the pgp-mime list.] Paul Elliott writes: > [Encrypted & Signed binary data.] > Now when there is a data path for PGP's cyphertext, PGP provides a > binary data path for its plain text. Thus, the inner base64 that PGP > MIME internet draft requires is totally unnecessary. It will cause a 30% > increase in the size of those messages that are encrypted and signed and > large amounts of CPU time will be used applying & removing the base64. This design decision actually serves a purpose. The scenario is as follows: Suppose you are a company which has west-coast and east-coast offices, and the only connectivity which exists is via the open Internet. Suppose further that you wished to send out a company memorandum to all the employees. Obviously you will want to sign and encrypt your message. However, one it reaches your offices, you would like to have the encryption "layer" stripped leaving just the signed message. Now, if when you generated that message you did not restrict yourself to 7 bits, there is a likely probability given todays software, that you are not going to be able to transmit that message over an SMTP framework. Now, this does present some bloat for people who do not strip the encryption, but it seems far better to design the protocol such that this case will work. > [Signed binary data.] > Now let us consider the question of what PGP-MIME draft requires users > to sign. Suppose we want to send a signed .gif file to a sysop. The > sysop wants to store the .gif in his download section. Suppose the sysop > wants to store the signature as a detached signature so that people who > download it can check the authorship. But the signature proposed by the > PGP-MIME draft is useless for this purpose. It has MIME headers attached > and it has been base64'ed. People who download such a file from a BBS > have no use for it, unless they have MIME. [...several other examples deleted...] PGP/MIME is _not_ meant to be used in this fashion! It never was! PGP/MIME is only to be used for transport, not for long term storage. If you need a persistent signature, you should generate a detached signature as an attachment. > If users get in the habit of signing binary files which represent > multimedia data, and which can not be examined with commonly available > inspection tools, it is inevitable and predictable that sooner or later > this will cause some kind of negative security event. By this argument nobody should bother signing e-mail or news posts. I haven't seen any good tools to handle this easily for PC's and Macs. New proposals have to be made before the tools become available. This draft is the result of experience with what does and doesn't work. For example, the application/pgp content-type which many people like is horribly broken for what it's probably used for 95% of the time. > There is no good reason to sign the base64 rather than the original > data. Once a file has been base64ed, the file can not be examined > with the usual inspection tools. Yes, base64 is just another stream of bytes, but there are FEW places on the Internet SMTP framework that can support BINARY transport. BINARY streams often contain very long lines which existing software simply can't handle. There is also another reason to sign the encoded version. Remember that it also includes the content headers of that part. This is very important especially for automated processing of messages. > The typical user of MIME software is not necessarily technically > sophisticated. When the deficiencies and disasters associated with > software patterned on this draft become apparent, not everyone will know > exactly which software component is at fault. The problems associated > with the draft (or its successors) may adversely affect the reputation > of PGP. Bad implementations can always adversely affect your reputation, even if the theory behind it is solid. The average non-technical user which you have been describing in this message will should not even be aware of the underlying details if the implementation is done correctly. > The draft should be withdrawn. People should rethink and create a better > plan to combine the benefits of PGP and MIME. You are more than welcome to submit your proposal the the pgp-mime mailing list. [send mail to pgp-mime-request(a)lists.uchicago.edu with a subject of "subscribe"] We've seen a lot of different proposals go by, and none of them have stood up to PGP/MIME. From my point of view, most of the problems that people have with the draft is their failure to understand what it is to be used for. Many people have the impression that PGP/MIME is meant to be the end-all-be-all for PGP. But it's not! PGP/MIME is meant to securely transmit messages across the Internet in a manner which all platforms can use. PGP/MIME is text based because most transport systems in use are. Nowhere is anyone saying "thou shalt not use PGP without MIME." I think if more people understood that, we wouldn't have so many objections to it. > It should not require any additional space overhead (more than that > which may be necessary for transport) when signing and encrypting. The note in parens is interesting. What you consider overhead I consider necessary for transport. me

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Re: SEVERE undercapacity, we need more remailer servers FAST
by Rich Burroughs 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:53 AM 5/20/96 -0700, jamesd(a)echeque.com wrote: >At 02:08 AM 5/20/96 EDT, you wrote: >> What countries are noticeable for being anti-Scientology? >> They would appear to be good locations for special-purpose >> remailer ultimate-output ends. > >Scientology was illegal in Australia last time I heard. They declared >that you could not be a religion and charge a fee for religious service >the way that Scientology charges. They then defined them as practicing >medicine, and hit them with snake oil laws. And Germany, or course, as Tim mentioned. CoS suckered the US State Dept. into putting pressure on the Germans, and the Scientologists on a.r.s. have made plenty of Nazi allusions when discussing the German "bigotry." I know that there was a big crackdown in England while Hubbard was still alive, though the anti-Scientology laws there were rescinded some time ago, I believe. At one point foreign Scientologists weren't allowed into the country. There may still be a lot of anti-CoS sentiment there. Ironically, if someone had asked me this questions a few weeks ago, I probably would have answered, "The Netherlands." Rich p.s. I'm a bit more caught up on my facts now. The NOTS materials (newer than the OT materials in the Fishman affidavit) were posted to a.r.s. through hacktic recently. I'm assuming that was the cause of the CoS pressure to shut them down. The NOTS materials were not in the public record (like parts of the old OT materials were, as they were evidence in the Fishman case), so the court's ruling in the case against Karin Spaink and her ISP, XS4ALL, wouldn't seem to apply towards their being posted. IANADL (I am not a Dutch lawyer...) ______________________________________________________________________ Rich Burroughs richieb(a)teleport.com http://www.teleport.com/~richieb See my Blue Ribbon Page at http://www.teleport.com/~richieb/blueribbon New EF zine "cause for alarm" - http://www.teleport.com/~richieb/cause

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No Subject
by unknown＠example.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

! With regard to the problems of remailers being shut down when we want ! long-lived addresses, wouldn't seperating the input and output be one ! possibility? That is (like Hal's Alumni remailer) you'd send mail to ! 'remailer(a)anon.ai' and it would be forwarded via a disposable account ! elsewhere. All messages would appear to come from 'disposable(a)foo.com' and ! if that account was shut down a new one could be opened to replace it ! while incoming mail simply backed up at the main remailer account. ! ! The only potential problem I could see would be that the disposable ISP ! might have logs which could track the outgoing messages back to the other ! account. You'd also obviously need to open the disposable account ! anonymously or using an ISP who'd protect your identity. That's silly. The problem isn't liability but lack of popular knowledge on setting up a remailer. The more remailers, the liability is reduced. GOALS 2000: 2,000 QUT

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Re: Is Chaum's System Traceable or Untraceable?
by Tim Dierks 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:10 AM 5/20/96, Ian Goldberg wrote: >In article <199605190626.BAA62897(a)rs5.tcs.tulane.edu>, >Matthew Carpenter <mcarpent(a)mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu> wrote: >>My PDA receives >>back any coins as change if needed, and logs info about the transaction >>for my financial records. >> >>When I get back home I 'deposit' my change using the same ATM interface. >>This also removes from my home computer the copies of the coins I spent, >>and automatically updates the transaction records on my PC. >> >>So are there any flaws with above procedure? > >Yup; with the current protocols, there's no way to do change. For the shop >to pay you change, besides suddenly losing your anonymity as a payee, you >would have to go online immediately to clear the coins, which assumedly >is infeasable. > >However, if you use the "fully anonymous" protocol, change becomes trivial. >You don't have to go online; the payer (the shop) does, which it assumedly >already is. Another benefit is that coins received in this way as change >are immediately spendable by you, without having to go online in between. > >The "fully anonymous" protocol turns out to be _exactly_ what is needed >for situations like this. Not that full anonymity isn't a Good Thing, but couldn't this be solved by having the merchant (who presumably is on-line) provide PDA <-> mint connectivitiy for the purposes of getting change, exchanging coins, etc.? My assumption is that all the ecash protocols are not subject to a MITM attack, which I would just presume to be good practice. Also, given the fully anonymous protocol as you've described it (both payor and payee blind the coins), what's to prevent the merchant from depositing your change before he gives it to you? Unless your PDA is online, you'll be home before you find out the hot dog vendor shorted you. (It's my understanding that the current digicash system does not support Chaum's method of revealing the identity of double-spenders). - Tim Tim Dierks -- timd(a)consensus.com -- www.consensus.com Head of Thing-u-ma-jig Engineering, Consensus Development

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