Re: crypto anarchy vs AP
At 02:06 PM 9/26/96 -0500, snow wrote:
Mr. Beck said:
Been reading the AP thread, and thought I'd donate some of my views.
the Internet. You'd just cause the government to panic, and this would have negative effects, it would take ages for them to calm down, and the laws they'd pass in the mean time would mean a near certainty of mandatory GAK as a condition to switching the Internet back on. (Before someone takes me to task for the impossibility of switching the Internet off, it all depends on the level of government panic. More specifically perhaps they would disconnect key backbones, and ISPs briefly while they rushed into effect a few presidential decrees outlawing non GAKed crypto, anonymous ecash, remailers, PGP, DC-nets, etc.)
This would be cutting their own throats. There is SO much commercial and government traffic going across "The Net" that many businesses would scream bloody murder, and the government would have MASSIVE trouble with it's agenda.
Yes, that "they'll cut off the Internet!" talk doesn't seem to be very practical. Society very quickly develops dependency on inventions. Try to take away their computers and they'd scream; take away their telephone and it'd be worse! Give Internet another couple of years and 50% of big business would be severely impacted should it be cut off. Wait five years and the world would practically stop rotating without Internet. On a related issue, GPS (global-positioning system) contains a de-accurizing mis-feature called S/A, which adds a little error to the location as detected by a receiver. Ostensibly, it was added so that this could be turned on in wartime, to deny the enemy the ability to make 10-meter fixes. Turns out that it was kept on all the time, probably because if it WASN'T it would become politically impossible to de-accurize the system even in wartime. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com
jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com> writes:
On a related issue, GPS (global-positioning system) contains a de-accurizing mis-feature called S/A, which adds a little error to the location as detected by a receiver. Ostensibly, it was added so that this could be turned on in wartime, to deny the enemy the ability to make 10-meter fixes. Turns out that it was kept on all the time, probably because if it WASN'T it would become politically impossible to de-accurize the system even in wartime
Two funny rumors: 1. Supposedly the DoD users of GPS have access to the accurate positioning information at all times. (Not sure how this works - the accurate data is encrypted?) During the Iraq war in '93 they didn't have enough equipment to take advantage of this, so they turned off the S/A and gave everyone (including the military users) accurate GPS on commercially available GPS eq. Then they turned it back on. 2. The DoD is doing a study right now on how to make GPS useless to the enemy at wartime. I think figuring out a way to turn off A/S and getting accurage GPS on commercial equipment at all times would make a nifty Cypherpunks project - if it really involves breaking some encryption. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps
jim bell wrote:
On a related issue, GPS (global-positioning system) contains a de-accurizing mis-feature called S/A, which adds a little error to the location as detected by a receiver. Ostensibly, it was added so that this could be turned on in wartime, to deny the enemy the ability to make 10-meter fixes. Turns out that it was kept on all the time, probably because if it WASN'T it would become politically impossible to de-accurize the system even in wartime.
Apparently S/A (selective availability) was turned *off* during the Gulf war. "Military Intelligence" in action. Gary -- "Of course the US Constitution isn't perfect; but it's a lot better than what we have now." -- Unknown. pub 1024/C001D00D 1996/01/22 Gary Howland <gary@systemics.com> Key fingerprint = 0C FB 60 61 4D 3B 24 7D 1C 89 1D BE 1F EE 09 06
At 4:21 PM +0200 9/29/96, Gary Howland wrote:
jim bell wrote:
On a related issue, GPS (global-positioning system) contains a de-accurizing mis-feature called S/A, which adds a little error to the location as detected by a receiver. Ostensibly, it was added so that this could be turned on in wartime, to deny the enemy the ability to make 10-meter fixes. Turns out that it was kept on all the time, probably because if it WASN'T it would become politically impossible to de-accurize the system even in wartime.
Apparently S/A (selective availability) was turned *off* during the Gulf war. "Military Intelligence" in action.
Actually, there were excellent reasons. First, there was no evidence the Iraqis had any ability to use GPS of any sort (I suspect the odd unit existed in Iraq, but not enough of them to be useful in any meaningful sense.) Second, the military bought a huge pile of _consumer_-grade GPS units, e.g., from Trimble Navigation, to fill a shortage of military-grade units (because of the rapid build-up in ground forces). The reasons for turning off S/A made perfect sense. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
Jim Bell <jimbell@pacifier.com> writes:
At 02:06 PM 9/26/96 -0500, snow wrote:
Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> wrote:
[...] More specifically perhaps they would disconnect key backbones, and ISPs briefly while they rushed into effect a few presidential decrees outlawing non GAKed crypto, anonymous ecash, remailers, PGP, DC-nets, etc.)
This would be cutting their own throats. There is SO much commercial and government traffic going across "The Net" that many businesses would scream bloody murder, and the government would have MASSIVE trouble with it's agenda.
Yes, that "they'll cut off the Internet!" talk doesn't seem to be very practical. Society very quickly develops dependency on inventions. Try to take away their computers and they'd scream; take away their telephone and it'd be worse! Give Internet another couple of years and 50% of big business would be severely impacted should it be cut off. Wait five years and the world would practically stop rotating without Internet.
Maybe so. However I suggested that they would more likley outlaw non GAK crypto, anonymous ecash, remailers, PGP, etc. Perhaps I should read your later AP essay in case you have already countered my practicality objections. (Do you have AP on the www somewhere?), We've seen people suggest that you couldn't get away with AP, by claiming that the gambling was legal. (They'd get you for interstate gambling, conspiracy probably other things). So, it seems to me that your only approach is to do the whole thing anonymously. That requires anonymous ecash (payee and payor anonymous). This means that the anonymous ecash bank will be shutdown by the government as soon as it becomes apparent what is going on. Remailer operators are similar soft targets. The best you could do I think is this. Publish a PGP public key, and software or specifications for a robust steganographic encoding for AP bets. That would take care of comunication. You still have the ecash problem. What do you suggest? Adam
participants (5)
-
Adam Back -
dlv＠bwalk.dm.com -
Gary Howland -
jim bell -
Timothy C. May