CDR: RE: New OLD cryptograph patent for NSA
My question is this; why would they patent something that is 64 year old technology? This is like the Enigma machine no?! On Wednesday, October 11, Bo Elkjaer Wrote:
Yesterday oct. 10 NSA was granted another patent for a >cryptographic device invented by William Friedman. The >application for the >patent was filed oct. 23 1936 -- 64 years >ago.
On 11 Oct 2000, raze wrote:
My question is this; why would they patent something that is 64 year old technology? This is like the Enigma machine no?!
Note that the patent-application was filed in 1936. Obviously they were interested in keeping any info relating to the invention confidential. But theres no need for that anymore, given that the technology in the patent is completely obsolete by now. Yours Bo Elkjaer, Denmark
On Wednesday, October 11, Bo Elkjaer Wrote:
Yesterday oct. 10 NSA was granted another patent for a >cryptographic device invented by William Friedman. The >application for the >patent was filed oct. 23 1936 -- 64 years >ago.
Bevar naturen: Sylt et egern.<< URL: http://www.datashopper.dk/~boo/index.html<<; ECHELON URL:<< http://www1.ekstrabladet.dk/netdetect/echelon.iasp<<;
On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, Bo Elkjaer wrote:
Note that the patent-application was filed in 1936. Obviously they were interested in keeping any info relating to the invention confidential. But theres no need for that anymore, given that the technology in the patent is completely obsolete by now.
So... How do you defend such a patent? How does this sort of thing mesh with the idea of patents as a reward for disclosure? Sampo Syreeni <decoy@iki.fi>, aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university
Sampo A Syreeni wrote:
On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, Bo Elkjaer wrote:
Note that the patent-application was filed in 1936. Obviously they were interested in keeping any info relating to the invention confidential. But theres no need for that anymore, given that the technology in the patent is completely obsolete by now.
So... How do you defend such a patent? How does this sort of thing mesh with the idea of patents as a reward for disclosure?
The inventor worked for the NSA (or, rather NSA's predecessors) and the inventions were classified "for national security". In other words, it's for the chiiiildren. -- Steve Furlong, Computer Condottiere Have GNU, will travel 518-374-4720 sfurlong@acmenet.net
At 2:23 PM +0300 10/12/00, Sampo A Syreeni wrote:
On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, Bo Elkjaer wrote:
Note that the patent-application was filed in 1936. Obviously they were interested in keeping any info relating to the invention confidential. But theres no need for that anymore, given that the technology in the patent is completely obsolete by now.
So... How do you defend such a patent? How does this sort of thing mesh with the idea of patents as a reward for disclosure?
There is no defense of such patents. You are correct that patents are intended to encourage disclosure and yet protect inventors for some limited period. (Not all of us even support patents. Namely, ideas are just ideas. Making it illegal for some to use ideas, which they may well have thought of on their own, is thought control. In a crypto anarchic society, patents will mostly be moot.) Granting patents to work done in the 1930s is bizarre. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
At 12:36 PM 10/12/00 -0400, Tim May wrote:
In a crypto anarchic society, patents will mostly be moot.)
Really? If you have a factory, or open a virtual storefront, you have a public (meat, seizable) presence. Patents are enforced by guns against locatable assets which have exploited the patents. I realize that *copyrighted* bits will be hard to track, but not an address that ships patent-infringing (or for that matter, trademark-infringing) goods. To paraphrase, Meat is vulnerable, bits are safe. But (with the exception of software patents) patents are embodied in things, and things are traceable.
On Thu, 12 Oct 2000, David Honig wrote:
At 12:36 PM 10/12/00 -0400, Tim May wrote:
In a crypto anarchic society, patents will mostly be moot.)
Really?
Actualy, with respect to free market theory, yes. Per Hayek, 1. A homogeneous commodity offered and demanded by a large number of relatively small sellers and buyers, none of whom expects to exercise by their action a perceptible influence on price. 2. Free entry into the market and absence of other restraints on the movement of prices and resources. 3. Complete knowledge of the relevant factors on the part of all participants in the market. Consider 1, It must be universal in nature or design (homogeneous, one is like any other, interchangeable). None expect to make an influence in the price so clearly no participant 'owns' or 'controls' any particular aspect about the widget or its availability. Consider 2, The 'free entry' requires that any party wishing to participate as either a buyer or seller is free to do so. Contrary to both patent and copyright theory. Consider 3, Probably more applicable to copyright over patents. Patents are intended to make the knowledge wide spread but control the actual use/implimentation. A rather long quote from Hayek, Patents, in particular, are specially interesting from our point of view because they provide so clear an illustration of how it is necessary in all such instances not to apply the ready formula but to go back to the rationale of the market system and to decide for each class what the precise rights are to be which the government ought to protect. This is a task at least as much for economist as for lawyers. Perhaps it is not a waste of your time if I illustrate what I have in mind by quoting a rather well known decision in which an American judge argued that "as to the suggestion that competitors were excluded from the use of the patent we answer that such exclusion may be said to have been the very essence of the right conferred by the patent" and adds "as it is the privilige of any owner of property to use it or not to use it without any question of motive." It is this last statement which seems to be to be significant for the way in which a mechanical extension of the property concept by lawyers has done so much to create undesirable and harmful privilige. ____________________________________________________________________ He is able who thinks he is able. Buddha The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
At 11:36 PM 10/12/00 -0400, David Honig wrote:
At 12:36 PM 10/12/00 -0400, Tim May wrote:
In a crypto anarchic society, patents will mostly be moot.)
Really? If you have a factory, or open a virtual storefront, you have a public (meat, seizable) presence. Patents are enforced by guns against locatable assets which have exploited the patents.
I realize that *copyrighted* bits will be hard to track, but not an address that ships patent-infringing (or for that matter, trademark-infringing) goods. To paraphrase, Meat is vulnerable, bits are safe. But (with the exception of software patents) patents are embodied in things, and things are traceable.
It's often hard to tell whether a physical object violates a given patent or not - bitspace is often pretty subtle stuff, especially if it's manufacturing methods rather than end results that are the subject of the patent. But increasingly, the interesting patents are (gak) software, (gak gak) algorithms, and (gak phfft) business methods, all of which are basically bits that are potentially easy to make untraceable. Sure, if you actually have to ship somebody the infringing code on a CDROM or DVD, then there's some traceability, but that's decreasingly interesting as a distribution method. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
At 10:55 PM 10/12/00 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote:
It's often hard to tell whether a physical object violates a given patent or not - bitspace is often pretty subtle stuff, especially if it's manufacturing methods rather than end results that are the subject of the patent.
But increasingly, the interesting patents are (gak) software, (gak gak) algorithms, and (gak phfft) business methods, all of which are basically bits that are potentially easy to make
untraceable.
Sure, if you actually have to ship somebody the infringing code on a CDROM or DVD, then there's some traceability, but that's decreasingly interesting as a distribution method.
Before anyone else starts, don't take my hypothesis that patents will survive in a crypto-abundant world as endorsement for the USP&TO lunacy we've all seen. You can limit the context to physical-object or manufacturing patents. It is has been pretty well argued that bits will be very hard to regulate in any sense of that word; and also that USPTO has been doing too much PCP during work hours.
I guess they wanted the patent for recognition. A sort of pat on the back. The government grants patents so I suppose they can grant themselves as many as they like if it makes them feel good. Rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's. Whit Diffie gave an interesting talk about intellectual priority and scholarly recognition at UCL over here a couple of years ago - of course the spooks don't get any outside their own fences, the poor little lambs... Ken Brown Tim May wrote:
At 2:23 PM +0300 10/12/00, Sampo A Syreeni wrote:
On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, Bo Elkjaer wrote:
Note that the patent-application was filed in 1936. Obviously they were interested in keeping any info relating to the invention confidential. But theres no need for that anymore, given that the technology in the patent is completely obsolete by now.
So... How do you defend such a patent? How does this sort of thing mesh with the idea of patents as a reward for disclosure?
There is no defense of such patents. You are correct that patents are intended to encourage disclosure and yet protect inventors for some limited period.
(Not all of us even support patents. Namely, ideas are just ideas. Making it illegal for some to use ideas, which they may well have thought of on their own, is thought control. In a crypto anarchic society, patents will mostly be moot.)
Granting patents to work done in the 1930s is bizarre.
--Tim May
On 11 Oct 2000, raze wrote: <SNIP!> On a sidenote: This is a link to a picture of cryptograph-inventor William Friedmans grave. Note the inscription: "knowledge is power". http://www.findagrave.com/pictures/2631.html
Bevar naturen: Sylt et egern.<< URL: http://www.datashopper.dk/~boo/index.html<<; ECHELON URL:<< http://www1.ekstrabladet.dk/netdetect/echelon.iasp<<;
On Wednesday, October 11, Bo Elkjaer Wrote:
Yesterday oct. 10 NSA was granted another patent for a >cryptographic device invented by William Friedman. The >application for the >patent was filed oct. 23 1936 -- 64 years >ago.
On 11 Oct 2000, raze wrote:
My question is this; why would they patent something that is 64 year old technology? This is like the Enigma machine no?!
Um, actually, no. The attacks we know on Rotor machines assume that the rotors rotate at predictable, constant intervals. This was true of the Engigma, but not true of some later Rotor machines. The papertape variation of this system, with every cipher wheel rotating by some varying amount between each letter, won't fall to any rotor attacks we know of until the papertapes have repeated at least twice each. Even then, it takes some fancy mathematics to figure out *how* to apply the rotor cryptanalysis to the system. After reading this newer patent, I think it's actually *LESS* secure than the system it purports to replace. I could be wrong here -- I'd like to actually see the diagrams and drawings and my browser doesn't support 'em -- but it looks like the rotations are constant per keystroke with this system, which would make it fall to rotor cryptanalysis. The crucial question, the one I can't make out without looking at the diagrams, is whether the mapping of rotations to rotors is different each time. Here's what I bet: department of the army didn't like the paper tape idea -- too fragile, too vulnerable to wet, required delicate machinery to read that had to be maintained -- and they wanted something a lot more rugged. So he designed something that ditched the paper tape idea for them. It wasn't as secure, but it was still better than the Hebern-style machines that were likely under consideration as an alternative. Bear
participants (10)
-
Bill Stewart -
Bo Elkjaer -
David Honig -
Jim Choate -
Ken Brown -
Ray Dillinger -
raze -
Sampo A Syreeni -
Steve Furlong -
Tim May