- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: "Hey Phil! Stop telling people *not* to use PGP!"
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 02:00 PM 7/19/95 -0500, Robert A. Hayden wrote: >> I am fond of saying that we PGP enthusiasts have two choices ahead of us >> within a couple of years: either 5,000 enthusiasts using PGP with >> MAXIMAL SECURITY at all times, or 5,000 enthusiasts with MAXIMAL >> SECURITY and 10,000,000 computer-illiterate e-mail users using PGP with >> push-button interfaces and multi-user remote systems. >I said it last week, and I'll say it again. From a sociological >standpoint, it's those 10,000,000 computer-illiterate e-mail users that we >need to focus all of our efforts towards. Those 5,000 literate people we >really don't have to care about. But there are two different classes of issues here - the convenience-only issues, which can be fixed with bells and whistles and GUIs and audio-enhanced-RTFM-buttons, and the security-related issues. For security, there are three classes of users: 1 - folks with standalone systems and dial-up mail - no problem This is a _lot_ of users - AOL, Compuserve, etc. 2 - folks with single-user systems on networks - they need to make sure they've got PGP installed right (relatively easy, with local disks, but fancy install widgets may help), but beyond that they've got to know that PGP is only as secure as their machine and network configuration. Mostly ok, and to the extent it's not, they've got other serious problems. This is also a lot of users. 3 - folks with shared machines - these folks (mostly Unix users and college students, plus people who have web-space they need to telnet to, like me) do need to know their limitations, and currently have the most problems with convenience, having to haul files back to a secure machine to encrypt securely. The first step is education - manuals that say "Don't Panic Unless You Need To Be Paranoid" instead of "Panic Immediately", that can make them aware of the risks and tradeoffs. It's about two pages of well-written stuff, if someone wants to write it. The next step is either building convenient tools to help them with encryption, or building convenient installation scripts for the tools that already exist (e.g. mail, or scriptable terminal emulators which can automate a lot of the hauling around.) The big payoffs are for groups 1 and 2, but a lot of the technically savvy people who read manuals and have to convince system administrators to install stuff are in group 3. So this is basically a writing job, plus talking the PGP 3.0 people and maybe Phil into including the discussion with the manuals. Remailers, btw, are in this class, since they need to leave their passphrases out in relatively unprotected shell scripts. I used to run PGP on a diskless workstation (at least I was one of the people with the root password :-), but I was aware of the risks. I'm now using it both on my Netcom+Eudora+PrivateIdaho system and on the machine where I have web space, which I have to telnet to across Netcom. I take care of the trust problem there by using a short key with a big ugly "untrustable" string in the user name, and using S/Key to log in; if I had an encrypted telnet to run on both ends I'd probably want to use it, so I'm watching the Stel and other new stuff coming out. Bill Stewart -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: You can get PGP by anonymous ftp from ftp.ox.ac.uk iQBVAwUBMA4HvfthU5e7emAFAQFrMwH9Hh1oYQKvsuV/IyVUskv2aZbmuh8fXQgK XpSpucrJV27tlFbjIDVqmapMR77arZVOm2Hs0/NTB2uT2jDG1r5+Lw== =fRtS -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com

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RE: Netscape the Big Win
by Pat Farrell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

tcmay(a)sensemedia.net (Timothy C. May) writes: > * I use Netscape to read News. > * I use Netscape to access the Web. > * I still use Eudora to send and receive Mail. (Netscape can currently > send mail, but not receive it. This is likely to change soon.) I'm not about to argue that the web isn't the hotest thing on the net, which is the hotest thing in computing... But I've got a question that I can't resolve. The current trend is to bundle all types of functionality into huge monolithic programs. Add mail to netscape, add encryption, add ... Yet most of the computers people use are multi-windows, and soon most will even be multi-tasking. Why are all-in-one programs so preferable to using the windowing capabilities that are built into every X-window, Mac or Windows system? Why not use the best mail client, another best webcrawler, and yet another news reader? Microsoft has been preaching the use of OLE and component programs as its development vision for 2+ years, Macs have been popular for ten years, why is the trend still towards adding every possible bell and whistle to single programs? With components, it wouldn't be hard to have a universal Encryption/Signature module. It would get arround any propriatary restriction that vendors may or may not try to enforce ("can Netscape be extended or not" becomes moot). Is clicking on another icon really too hard? Pat Pat Farrell Grad Student http://www.isse.gmu.edu/students/pfarrell Info. Systems & Software Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA PGP key available on homepage #include <standard.disclaimer>

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Re: Netscape the Big Win
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

TC May writes: > Frankly, one of the great boons of my current setup is that I can > completely get away from Unix tools and commands [...] >...my fingers are already forgetting the emacs commands! If I forget thee, O Emacs, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Emacs above my chief joy. (with apologies to the psalmist) Peter Trei Senior Software Engineer Purveyor Development Team Process Software Corporation trei(a)process.com

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Re: Java (was Netscape: the big win)
by cman＠communities.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Does anyone here have any figures on how much memory Java takes up >when running its typical tasks? > These are real ball-park figures based on looking at "free memory" from vmstat from several instances of launching, running, then exiting from the listed programs: Java compiler (written in Java), compiling big program: 2.5 MB HotJava browser (written in Java), after running some applets: 4.0 MB "Hello world" Java program (no GUI): 800K

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RE: Netscape the Big Win(dows)
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- on Thu, 20 Jul 1995 10:39:49 -0700, tcmay(a)sensemedia.net (Timothy C. May) wrote: >The News reader in Netscape 1.1N is as good as the main "separate" news >reader, NewsWatcher, for the Macintosh, and has some added benefits. For >example, URLs in News postings automatically show up as clickable items, >which can be jumped to immediately. (Other News programs _could_ do this, >and maybe some of them do, but not on the Macintosh, at this moment.) Nit: The standard version of Newswatcher does this. Just hold down the command key and click on the URL. In addition, using the Internet Config extension allows you to do this in lots of other standard Mac internet apps, including the Eudora app you're using to read your mail with right now. Newswatcher, in it's enhanced "value added" versions, does filtering, and even will do a one-bounce anonymous remail off the remailer of your choice. >Big programs tend to grow because they can increase market share by adding >capabilities, by pulling in more customers. As someone who's developed and marketed apps for the Mac market, feature creep usually happens more to differentiate yourself from your competition than for any other reason. Don't look back 'cause they might be gaining on you. Frankly, it's more of a death spiral than anything else. You get design by focus group and feature list. The classic example of this in the Mac market is M$ Word, which has now became such a cow that I find myself reccommending WordPerfect (of all things) to my consulting customers. At least with Excel, there's still nothing much better, until the next generation, anyway. >And I'm not going to use half a dozen small programs, each doing slightly >different things and having different commands, when one will do nicely. Only when their feature sets overlap, like in word processors and spreadsheets. When they're fully differentiated like what happened on the Mac TCP/IP internet app market, interface fatigue is not much of a problem. >(I could list other pluses and minuses, a la my outline FAQ, but here's >just one more important item: cross-compatibility. Namely, with N smaller >programs in use, of varying versions, incompatibilities and even crashes >can result all too often ("We have discovered that MailMuncher 2.12 does >not work with NewsNabber 1.1."). At lest with something like Netscape, a >certain amound of cross-operability is likely, for various reasons.) Not as bad as it sounds. Most Mac internetware types are pretty good about fixing cross-crashes, that is until they get too big to care, which may happen with Netscape. In general, Mac stuff doesn't crash nearly as much as it used to, and not nearly as much as Window$ still does. You get more crashes in MacTCP apps because Apple botched their initial TCP implementation. They're fixing that with Open Transport, which I've seen and which is pretty bulletproof so far. Finally, we're still in the chewing-gum and-bailing-wire stage with most internet apps, and the MacTCP based apps are no exception. >In any case, while I respect the views Pat is expressing, about >componentware and "small is better" approaches, the market is voting with >its feet for apps like Netscape, which are becoming the main programs folks >will use for communication, News reading, and Web surfing. Tell us about it in 6 months, Tim, when you've grown out of Netscape. You sound like someone who's totally enamored with their "-works" app. Most people end up using more specialized apps when they hit the wall with something which won't get all those "general purposes" taken care of... >So go ahead and do it! I've been waiting for many years for such things. Soon. Very soon, Tim. There's talk on the mcip (Macintosh Crytography Interface Project) list about version 3.0 of MacPGP which should be completely modular, and should not require a shell-PGP session to work. Until then, the applescript hacks seem to be holding up, though Mr. 'corn's tribulations make a brilliant counterexample. My signature below was done with them... > >To state an obvious non-crypto use of such "modules," why do all major word >processing and page layout apps have their own "dictionaries"? Why do I >have to train the dictionaries of Word, Nisus, FrameMaker, MORE, etc.? That >there have not been "dictionary modules," for many and sundry reasons, is >telling. Claris started to do this, but nobody wanted to standardize on their stuff for obvious reasons (they're owned by Apple)... >(Before anyone mentions it, one can on the Mac use things like >"Thunder" instead of the local dictionaries...this is not the same as a >module usable by all programs, but instead is a user choice to bypass the >local dictionaries. We could quibble for hours about whether this is in >fact a universal module or not. Indeed, though we shouldn't. Because it is. Anyway, you're talking apples <heh> and oranges here. A crypto module like we're talking about would function more as an init, er, sorry, an extension, rather than as a separate app, though Stuffit makes a good example of something which works pretty well as both. Cheers, Bob Hettinga -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMA8WFvgyLN8bw6ZVAQE0agP9FVBNe7lPu8dsqd3tNmGAMY7ivIX0eDR4 uHcogdALmk8+p8eN/a4xpfaAu2uuNp9m/FqTbUC466XREyRI7UVqOZ5EXU8UNEDZ ykkEaqxIWZ42SZpgHgdCaMdLeNWE8Y5T1ekhN1FjmnoU2oNOQpjH1sbqs1TDuuBo jWaTC4slnxU= =MnuL -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Shipwright Development Corporation, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA (617) 323-7923 "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell >>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf(a)clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<

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Re: DOVE/Red Mercury doom U.S. Super State?
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> DOVE/Red Mercury dooms U.S Super State? =20 UNALTERED Desemination of This Important Information is ENCOURAGED :-> (or words to that effect - anyone have the canonical form available?) >& Finally: In the old Feudal days, wars weren't so bad. The >nobility would fight while the peasants watched nearby & >cheered the sport. If this is an example of the depth of your research, then we certainly don't have to worry about anything else in your post. The peasants were economic assets, and their destruction was regarded as a standard practice of war. Try reading Barbara Tuchman's 'A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th century.' [I must admit, however, that the idea of Bush and Sadaam Hussein having it out has a certain appeal - battleaxes in a blacked out cellar sounds appropriate.] Peter Trei Senior Software Engineer Purveyor Development Team Process Software Corporation trei(a)process.com

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Re: big word listing
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>or set it as a variable and fork, or something like that. Berkely-derived unices have a "ps" that can print the environment. /r$

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Declassified crypto-hearing transcript now online
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The URLs, thanks to JYA: http://site108240.primehost.com/hir-hear.htm (97K hearing transcript) http://site108240.primehost.com/crypto-law8.htm (11K Reno letter) -Declan

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Rules for "Them" and Rules for "Us"
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(A copy of this message has also been posted to the following newsgroups: rec.knives, talk.politics.guns,alt.cypherpunks) [Note to Usenet readers. I wrote this for the Cypherpunks mailing list, but decided you folks in rec.knives and talk.politics.guns might be interested too.] Pardon the rant, to borrow a line from Dennis Miller. One of the recent trends which really bugs me, and which seems to be indicative of a major shift in the American system is this: "They" have certain rights the rest of "us" don't have. Who are "they"? - law enforcment - the military - the spies - the secret police The "us" is anyone not in a special group exempted from the ban. (Note: Please don't cite the hackneyed example of how the government has the right to own nuclear weapons but ordinary citizen-units do not. This is indeed so, and I don't even necessarily think this is completely unreasonable...though I now am more inclined to support the right to keep and bear nukes. But, seriously, the issues are not so cosmic as nuclear weapons....the examples I'll cite here are much more mundane, and more pervasive.) Here's an example I ran across tonight, in the group rec.knives: In article <01bc99fa$f7d16420$538a98cf@kevlar>, "James R Thorpe" <kevlar(a)meganet.net> wrote: > > Does the name refer to the blade length.? > > IE only 2 inches and therefore legal in California. > > Nice looking knife. What's the blade made out of? > > daithi > > > Got mine in the mail, it's a sweet little knife. Better than I expected. > Rugged feeling too. ATS-34 Blade, and aluminum handles. Lanyard Hole, where > I tied a piece of leather shoestring, and the blade pivot is tension > adjustable. The blade on the ones PV Knife is shipping now is a little > different than the picture. It has a clip point and hollow grind. It's > small but feels bigger than the picture once you get it in your hand. My > fiancé even wanted to fondle it. Its a very "grabable" knife. After she cut > herself she didn't want to play with it anymore. > Not sure why its named CA Special. You can probably get one shipped to you > with out any LEO/Military credentials due to the blade length. > Jim Here's what these guys are referring to: There are large numbers of knives and knife types which are forbidden for ownership and/or carrying in California, amongst other states, but which are commonly carried by cops. Some are the evil "switchblades" (a category which may or may not include the thumbhole folders a lot of us carry in our pockets, depending on what the local cops decide). Some are "butterfly" knives. Some are just plain knives which are longer than the local burghers (or is it "burgers"? :-)) have "permitted." In California, there is ongoing uncertainty about whether a fixed-blade knife may be carried openly, which may be "brandishment," or may be carried in a backpack (and hence "concealed")...one analysis noted that it is probably a felony to carry a kitchen knife home from a store, as it is either being "concealed" if in a bag, or "brandished" if not. I guess hiring a delivery boy would shift the felony to him...or make one a co-conspirator in a RICO felony. (Practically speaking, there are few arrests and even fewer prosecutions. Cops have been known to tell people to "keep your knife out of sight and you'll be OK," even though the laws are usually quite clear that this is felony concealment. The law is an ass.) OK, enough about knives. The point is that the term "LEO" means "Law Enforcement Only." Meaning, your local cop is free to buy these items, even for personal use in many cases, but the sheeple are not. My local gun stores have sections marked "Law Enforcement Use Only," and these sections are getting bigger every year. Here are some things which now fall into this "Them" vs. "Us" situation: * Knives. They get to own all sorts of things. We are being limited more and more each year: the allowable knives are getting shorter, the types are being further restricted. (All in a putative move to reduce crime...anybody think that telling T.C. May he's a felon if he carries his Benchmade AFCK is going to reduce the number of knifings?) * Guns. 'Nuff said, as we all have heard much about this. A recent example is telling though--the banning of magazines (clips) holding more that 10 rounds. (Unless already made before some date, and some other details.) Cops and even retired cops and retired military personnel are allowed to buy the 15-round magazines their guns are made to use, but the sheeple are not. (And there are proposals to ban magazines holding more than 5 rounds, to ban detachable magazines completely, to ban semi-automatic weapons, to ban all firearms except "sporting" rifles, and so on.) * Ammunition. Believe it or not, some forms of bullets are now restricted to "LEO." (Usually after some shooting spree, or some mass media hysteria--as with the never-produced "Black Rhino" ammo--there are sudden moves to ban some class of ammo. Cops make sure they are not affected, and,voila, a new "LEO" item is added to the list.) * Martial arts supplies. Batons, kubotans, throwing stars, nunchuks, etc. These are allowed for cops, but not for ordinary people, regardless of training. * Drugs. Aside from the evidence that the CIA and other gov't agencies ran drugs into the U.S. (cf. the usual sources), there are lots of drugs the gov't. dispenses to its own troops, including methamphetamines, which it declares to be contraband in the civilian sector. (Pilots, for example, are given uppers to maintain alertness, but of course a truck driver caught with them faces jail.) * Radio equipment. Certain frequencies are not allowed on civilian radios, and there are related restricitons. (Radio buffs will know a lot more.) Some of this may be for "legitimate" (barf) reasons, to maintain radio security for sensitive operations, but mostly it is not needed (and is bypassable by spies and anyone seriously interested in doing so). Note of course that strong crypto would bypass this issue of banning certain types of electronic equipment. (I am not including TEMPEST equipment as being banned, as this seems to be a false rumor. The TEMPEST research may be classified, but there are no laws that I know of that make it a crime to make a piece of equipment radiate very little RF. In fact, the FCC likes it this way.) * Armor. Especially body armor (aka "bulletproof vests"). I believe there are some restrictions on what may be sold to civilians. * Biological research. There are specific laws making it illegal for private individuals or companies to do research in certain areas without government approval. (I believe the specific law dates from around 1975, and covers CBW weapons and related research. Ditto for nuclear weapons, probably under the Atomic Energy Act or somesuch.) * Crypto, of course. Not yet, domestically, but we appear to be entering an era in which the government and its employees have access to crypto the rest of us are forbidden to use. PGP may have a warning sticker: "Law Enforcement Use Only." I assume others of you can think of examples I've left out. Obviously things like wiretap equipment, etc. are often restriced to law enforcement and spies. At least one of those "007" spy shops was shut down for selling to civilians stuff that cops readily have (I heard this on CNN, but I don't have the details). The danger in all of this is not that there are a _few_ things that we let police and soldiers have that we think civilians should not have, but that _so many_ things are now classified this way, with the number of things so classified growing constantly. This makes for a dangerous society, civil liberties-wise, when industrial companies and shops have two classes of customers: them and us. This stinks. We're not talking about private ownership of nukes. We're talking about a situation where a citizen can go to prison for having a knife longer than 3 inches in his pocket, while cops are free to have them for their own purposes. This stinks. --Tim May -- There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: CanadaBanAna Censors US TV (and bans decryption)
by David Yaffe 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is my sarcastic reply to the article.. has a couple of interesting 'facts' about canadian life.. Enjoy! > HOME Box Office, the U.S. cable network, just garnered 90 Emmy > nominations in recognition of quality programming. But HBO is still > banned in Canada. The network was not on the list of foreign services > approved Wednesday by Canada's dictator of cable and satellite > television content, the CRTC. Others banned by the CRTC include > Bloomberg Television and the U.S. versions of the Discovery Channel, > The Comedy Network, the Disney Channel and scores of other program > services deemed too subversive for Canadians to watch in their > original form -- unless, of course, the same programming passes > through the hands of a Canadian middleman or monopolist who will > culturally sanitize the programming by skimming off a fat profit. Hey we don't even have a Canadian version of Sesame Street anymore.. The government controlled TV station (that CBC) decided that the content of the Canadian version of Sesame Street was still to American... (Like 5 year olds know the difference!) > Once a Canadian has grabbed a piece of the action -- as a distributor, > broadcast licence holder, cable operator or satellite owner -- > Canadians are allowed to view the U.S. content. This banana republic > setup has been in place for decades, and now it may be getting worse. > A judge has concluded in one of the satellite disputes that it may > even be illegal for a Canadian to pay for HBO and other networks as > they come in over the border on U.S. satellite systems. Okay, so if I get a video feed of the internet is that illegal in Canada? You bet!! Even PGP-fone is.. after all, telephones are designed for voice communication, the internet is for data. All praise the High and Mighty CRTC. > The oral judgment by Mr. Justice Frederick Gibson of Federal Court of > Canada in the case of ExpressVu versus Norsat and other companies was > issued last month, but the written version sets a number of bizarre > precedents that appear to deeply infringe on individual rights. By > ruling in favour of ExpressVu, the Canadian satellite company, Judge > Gibson has essentially come up with a judgment that is the equivalent > of making it illegal for a Canadian to subscribe to Fortune or > Cosmopolitan magazines or to buy a copy of Vanity Fair or Esquire on > the newsstand. Shit! no more WIRED Magazine & No more comic books... [Snip] > The purpose of the act's clauses on encryption is a technical one to > prevent fraud. Evidence presented by Andrew Roman, the lawyer for > Norsat, makes it clear that the intent of the government was to make > it illegal for people to use counterfeit decoders and other devices to > avoid payment. All the debates in Commons committee focus on the act > as an attempt to prevent theft of signals. No such theft occurs when > Canadians subscribe to and pay for a U.S. satellite service. Yup.. but the government thinks we're all after free TV.. Even those of us who don't even have "Basic cable", and have just the three free channels... (All I need is my Simpson's :) > What makes this judgment even more unusual is that it effectively > attempts to make it illegal for a Canadian to pay for a U.S. channel > on a U.S. satellite, when the identical U.S. channel is available on > Canadian cable or satellite. For example, WGN-TV in Chicago can be > picked up on Canadian cable, Canadian satellite or on U.S. satellite. > In each case, the subscriber pays for the service. But under this > judgment, it would be illegal to pay the U.S. satellite for WGN-TV. > Who does this serve -- other than giving Bell and the cable companies > more revenue. Yup -- Canadians love to pay tax, that's why we pay so much of it.. ( well over half of a Canadian citizen's income is taxes. If the average Canadian were to devote 100% of their paychecks to their taxes for the year, they would start seeing some income in the middle of July. For the first six plus months of the year, they would be paying taxes. I believe that Simon Fraser University does the calcuations each year.. > Even stranger is that many of the networks carried by U.S. satellites > are already available in Canada over the air waves free, or on cable, > or on C-band, an alternative satellite service that has been available > in Canada for years. A Seinfeld episode can be picked up free over the > air from a U.S. television station, or on a U.S. station via cable, or > on a Canadian station on cable. But if the same Seinfeld episode were > bought by a Canadian from a U.S. satellite service, it's illegal. > Canada's specialty networks, meanwhile, are gearing up to flood the > country with copy-cat versions of the networks banned by the CRTC -- > including The Globe and Mail, which is a partner in ROBTv, a business > channel that hopes to benefit from the fact that Bloomberg will be > banned in Canada. Other brilliantly innovative duplications of U.S. > networks are The Home and Garden Channel, History Television, The > Comedy Network, Discovery and Country. Is this unique Canadian > culture? One such Canadian offering, The Family Channel, has even > abandoned all pretext to being a Canadian original: it's changing its > name to recognize the source of most of its content: The Disney > Channel. Don't forget Much Music.. I need my MTV oops muchmusic... No, the problem is not canadian content, the problem is the percieved canadian content. A lot of Canadians think that canadian culture is under constant attack from the US. After all how many magazines are canadian? how much of the music on the Radio is Cancon (canadian content)? How much of the news we get from the newspaper is Canadian? Also, seeing that most of the people in canada (except for the aboriginals) are of European Decent, just like the US.. what does it matter anyway? What the CRTC fails to realize is that canadian culture will do fine even if as Canadians we get American satellite.....

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