-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Thu, 3 Oct 1996, Jim McCoy wrote:

Declan McCullagh <declan@eff.org> writes:

...

You'll have trouble doing a successful boycott of RSA. What, you won't use Netscape Navigator or PGP?

Actually RSA is not a hard target for people like us to threaten. The Diffie-Hellman patent expires in 210 days. Cylink is prevented from taking legal action against anyone for violating this patent while the current lawsuit is being decided. When Diffie-Hellman expires ElGamal is available for use for free. So the best threat one can make against RSA is to directly challenge their revenue stream: start working on making ElGamal an available option in all systems which use RSA.

Rabin public-key encryption will also be free when the D-H patent expires. This has the big advantage that it can use current RSA keys as long as the keys use blum integers (PGP does, I think). Breaking Rabin is provably as difficult as factoring. Mark - -- PGP encrypted mail prefered. Key fingerprint = d61734f2800486ae6f79bfeb70f95348 http://www.voicenet.com/~markm/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3 Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBMlQ+NSzIPc7jvyFpAQFnOQf/TasoroPI6ZUfRuH/13jQedY+R49KYjoc pdOnEmRfzuF3CFt5ZJatB97B+kz50VZMcT4nMGhK24q5fZcvJqTcVDbGMEPJgmeZ 1TZAFiGAXcKjnuB+i1PuGpPkM6SjLkXiuxW4ZASiWtmQ2hCnlCKm/EN+lvW5avjT HjK3W6GiU4HvSmsL292S1jgMrPw/0vbEtQ9J65edamtDboDLfrbYd26OAh0QjUxe vlTHrVcU5v5n4kVxjfvhdVabJOGmFAQ+cIKCVSTmhELPmbYkRp+TIgsRTse15NpK ocEKfpsHZu093AMnealZ6+/neCBWtqKSL2Jz7yHTCDbXkMw0Ab/nLQ== =SJUX -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

You'll have trouble doing a successful boycott of RSA. What, you won't use Netscape Navigator or PGP? -Declan On Wed, 2 Oct 1996, Jim McCoy wrote:

Rich Burroughs <richieb@teleport.com> wrote: [...]

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On Wed, 2 Oct 1996, John Young wrote:

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The New York Times, October 2, 1996, pp. D1, D8. Executives of the International Business Machines Corporation said late yesterday that they were still lining up the final list of companies in the alliance. Those involved will include Digital Equipment and smaller data-security companies including RSA Data Security, Cylink and Trusted Information Systems.

We are in deep trouble.

Wouldn't a letter-writing campaign be in order here? [snip]

The word "boycott" leaped into my mind. I personally do not believe that I will be buying products from any of these companies, as long as thay participate in this GAK charade.

Such an initiative will need publicity and letter-writing early in the campaign will help us set the tone and points of debate on this issue. A boycott works best when everyone knows why and there are a few key phrases which can be used to get the message across. Something like "company X is helping build big brother, boycott their products" or a few similar sound bites are needed fast. The big brother inside stickers from the last campaign were nice, maybe people can come up with variations of various corporate logos or marketting phrases which help get the message across?

jim

// declan@eff.org // I do not represent the EFF // declan@well.com //

Jim McCoy writes:

The big brother inside stickers from the last campaign were nice, maybe people can come up with variations of various corporate logos or marketting phrases which help get the message across?

Big Brother Inside stickers are a classic and should be revived. I would like to see a takeoff of the IBM logo since they are the ones who seem to be cozying up to the USG the most (with the exception of TIS whom nobody has ever heard of). How about "GAK" in the familiar IBM blue pinstripe logo? Or "IBBM" International Big Brother Machines? Everyone recognizes the IBM logo. andrew

At 6:37 AM -0700 10/3/96, Declan McCullagh wrote:

You'll have trouble doing a successful boycott of RSA. What, you won't use Netscape Navigator or PGP?

We should be happy that both Netscape and Microsoft are conspicuously missing from the list of GAK conspirators. We need to somehow keep it this way. On the list of GAK conspirators itself, this just confirms the "behind the doors key escrow deal" I wrote about more than two years ago (check the archives, for August 1994, under the thread name "Software Key Escrow" or something close to this). A person within Microsoft confirmed to me that a deal was being cut to put key escrow into _software_, rather than the Clipper chip-based hardware option which was then dominant in the discussions. (The plan followed revelations of a TIS-NSA-Berkeley axis that developed in early '94 and that was made semi-public at the Karlsruhe, Germany conference in the spring of '94.) That Bill Gates has since come out strongly against software key escrow, and that Microsoft has not joined this deal, is terribly important. Netscape has also spoken against mandatory key escrow systems, in the person of James Barksdale. (I'm not sure what Jim Clarke's position is these days, after his much-discussed pro-GAK comments of about a year ago; in any case, he's no longer actively supporting GAK from what I can see.) Question: If RSADSI supports GAK, and Netscape/Microsoft license some technologies from RSADSI, could Netscape or Microsoft then be forced to adopt GAK? (Personally, I don't see how. The core crypto routines might be licensed, but these deals were probably negotiated a while back. But who knows?) I think we should support Microsoft and Netscape in their nonparticipation in the Cabal. Sometimes being an 800-pound gorilla has its advantages. --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."

At 7:13 pm -0400 10/3/96, Timothy C. May wrote:

GAK, or Girlfriend's Access to Keys, is indeed a very scary thing.

Ah. Maybe we should cross-post this to alt.tasteless?

"Macintosh, the Surveillance System for the Rest of Us."

(Why Apple would go along with this, while Microsoft and Netscape are apparently not playing ball, is incomprehensible to me. Apple risks alienating its remaining core user base, who often characterize Microsoft as "the Borg." So, Apple capitulates, while MS does not. I guess the "Macintosh Crypto Forum" didn't do a lot of good, did it?)

Ouch. My first reaction to the above was to say, "Oh, Yeah??? Well, you're ugly, buddy, and your mother dresses you funny, too!" But, I won't upset the decorum of so august a forum with such eggregious classlessness. Not here on cypherpunks. :-). If one were to be completely uncharitable in the interpretation of Tim's most recent outbreak of vitriol here, it would seem that he's offended that he wasn't asked first to be the keynote at MacCrypto, the conference a bunch of us had at Apple a month ago, which, I might add, was a considerable success. Of course, the real irony here is that Tim *was* the first person we asked to keynote. The irony compounds itself slightly more when you consider the *last* person who we asked, Phil Zimmermann, at the *last* possible minute, graciously accepted our invitation and delivered his keynote speech to a very enthusiastic crowd. Unfortunately, it may be a speaking engagement Phil regrets now, in light of Apple's apparent participation in the most recent Washington GAK-fest. :-{. Anyway, let us *be* charitable, and take Tim's apparent vituperation about Apple's complete capitulation to government pressure, not to mention the appalling failure of the MacCrypto conference to lob any clues over the walls of Fortress Apple, entirely at their face value, shall we? Let's assume that he really *wasn't* trying to rattle the bars on the Mac crypto community's collective cage, and that he actually was trying to contribute something constructive to what appears to be a *truly* apalling situation to anyone who wants strong crypto, and thus internet commerce, to be transparent and easy to do on the Macintosh. The Mac crypto community's cage is plenty rattled by the recent news from Washington, as it is. With that in mind, the best thing most of us can figure is that Ellen Hancock, Apple's chief technology officer, freshly hired from IBM, is in the process of pulling the same kind of crypto-boner for Apple that Netscape's CEO did last year about this time. Frankly, people who run industrial organizations like Apple, and, I might add, Microsoft, don't really understand yet that internet commerce *is* financial cryptography, and, of course, that means strong, and un-GAKked, crypto. I'm sure that the people on the mac-crypto list and the rest of the Mac internet community in general will disabuse her of this notion rather quickly. By the way, most of the hard core of 70 or so people who came to the MacCrypto conference, those who sat through the whole thing from start to finish, were from outside Apple. Clearly, as far as crypto on the Mac goes, the word "evangelism" cuts both ways. However, we got some very good stuff from the Apple folks who did come, including a soon to be released entropy manager -- with public source code -- and a public-key "keychain" project -- with public source code -- , and a volunteer of development participation in serious crypto projects from an Apple fellow (who, by definition, can do anything he wants) and his staff. Frankly, I'd rather see actual code being written than press releases, wouldn't you, Tim? Even if the code isn't on an Intel Pentium Pro 200 using the Microsoft CryptoAPI... Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "'Bart Bucks' are not legal tender." -- Punishment, 100 times on a chalkboard, for Bart Simpson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/

At 11:20 pm -0400 10/3/96, Timothy C. May wrote:

My comments here are not vitriolic, just factual. Clearly, while the "guerilla" crypto meeting was happening, the higher-ups were selling out their customers and going much further than they needed to in ensuring a Big Brother State.

Indeed. Welcome to the club, Tim. I'm reminded of all those c'punk meetings at places like Sun, or SGI, or any of several Bay Area landmark firms, all of whom have managements full of people who think they're "doing the right thing" by helping the Feds spy on us all. That's okay. Cypherpunks, some of them, anyway, write code. And so, your point is?

(BTW, in response to my "the surveillance system for the rest of us" comment, Andrew Loewenstern sent me a note in which he contrasted Apple's "1984" commercial with the current reality.)

Talking about people's private mail in the third person, Tim? It seems I'm not the only one guilty of such stuff. At least I don't post names with the opinions, though I shouldn't have posted anything in the first place. If you remember, it is something which I apologized to the list for at the time. It was late. I was tired. And, I might add, you were pissing on my shoes. Fortunately, I wear my seaboots around here, given our past history on this list.

This is the epitome of armchair psychoananalysis. How can you _possibly_ know what I thought about things? Jeez.

Nope. Can't tell what you think, Tim. Just an opinion. I'm just engaging in a little constant conjunction; to take a leaf from Mr. Hume's book. That is, however right he may be most of the time, Tim May seems to have an ego the size of the Hindenburg, and he can be just about as inflamatory, when he says he's been slighted. If you get in the way of that ego at all, regardless of your facts, he will flame you to your shorts. Happens every time. Impute causality however you want. The phenomena are clearly linked. Must be what happens when you're holed up out in the woods all day with nothing to keep you company but a mailing list.

Who cares? Such comparisons are odious. I responded to Vinnie, not to the "us" implied in "we asked," and the matter would've remained between Vinnie and me had he not shared our e-mail with you and had you not then gone into one of your "free association" rants. Recall that even Vinnie was highly critical of this performance.

Depends on what you call "highly". It seems that if you hadn't gone into a towering snit, he probably wouldn't have said anything, because I was right. And, my point still stands. You were behaving childishly. Both to Vinnie then, to the list then, and to me and the list now. By the way, "we", Vinnie and I, are the people who put MacCrypto together. Admittedly, Vinnie did all the work, but it was ever thus. :-). You say, X is important, we should do it, Vinnie says fine, let's do X, and Vinnie makes it happen. I've never worked with anyone quite like that before. It's very refreshing... Frankly, Tim, you could have just let it pass, or at least have been more of an adult about it, constitutionally impossible though that might be for you. Inadvertantly, your churlishness probably increased the attendance at the MacCrypto conference. So, thanks anyway. *I* certainly got lots of positive comments about our interchange. ;-).

Fuck off, to be blunt. You've got to learn to start making actual points, and not trying to show your writing chops from the Hunter S. Thompson Correspondence School of Creative Writing.

Ah. Tim, are you *jealous*? Of me? Aw, shucks... And *your* mother wears army boots, too. However, in case you missed them, probably because the blood vessels in your eyes were busy hemoraging, I *did* make several points. Allow me to summarize again. They are: 1. Tim's lashing out at Apple because he feels slighted by not being invited first to keynote the MacCrypto conference, though he was in fact invited first, which makes it all mildly ironic, if not humorous. 2. Instead of Tim, Phil Zimmermann *did* speak at MacCrypto, which Phil probably regrets, given the current Mac-GAK flap. 3. Apple's Ms. Hancock, whether or not she's "doing the right thing" by helping the Feds spy on us all, or whether she just thinks corporate, but not government, key "recovery" is, by itself, okay, has clearly stuck her foot in her mouth, in the much same way that Mr. Barksdale(?) of Netscape did last year. Unfortunately, Apple probably won't be as quick to react as Netscape was, because, as an industrial corporation -- like Microsoft -- Apple may live *on* the net, but it is certainly certainly not *in* the net, like Netscape, or you, or I am, Tim. 4. I expect that the people in the Macintosh Crypto community, and the Mac internet community in general, will do their best to disabuse her of any notions she may have in regard to GAK. It has already started to happen. 5. A lot of real good work was done at MacCrypto, which was a resounding success, despite Tim's early efforts to piss all over it, which he seems to be carrying forward to the present. No problem. That's what seaboots are for.

Fuck off. Back into my killfile you go.

Ah. A waste of a good summary. Oh, well. :-). It's interesting to note that the only person who is supposed to be in your killfile is Perry Metzger, even though you respond to him anyway, especially when he says something which offends your vanity. So, such a killfiling claim is probably dubious. Since such luminaries as VZNuri, Dr. Vulis, and Jim Bell are *not* in your killfile, evidenced by your voluminous replies to them, your killfiling me can't be much of a threat, on its face, or, for that matter, to my reputation here on cypherpunks, even. ;-). And, no, Tim, *I'm* not going to put you in my killfile, because *almost* always, though it's becoming harder to see for all the fulminatory theatrics, you're spot on. I believe that, for some reason, I got off on the wrong foot with you from my very first posting, more than two years ago last June. Your nasty crack about the MacCrypto conference is just one of a series of personal fusilades in what seems to be an ongoing pissfight. I bet you wouldn't have given MacCrypto a passing thought, otherwise. The cost of doing business on cypherpunks, I suppose. One gets used to it. So, have a nice day, Tim, and don't forget your seaboots. It's getting wet out here. Again. Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "'Bart Bucks' are not legal tender." -- Punishment, 100 times on a chalkboard, for Bart Simpson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/

At 8:48 PM -0400 10/3/96, Robert Hettinga wrote:

If one were to be completely uncharitable in the interpretation of Tim's most recent outbreak of vitriol here, it would seem that he's offended that

My comments here are not vitriolic, just factual. Clearly, while the "guerilla" crypto meeting was happening, the higher-ups were selling out their customers and going much further than they needed to in ensuring a Big Brother State. (BTW, in response to my "the surveillance system for the rest of us" comment, Andrew Loewenstern sent me a note in which he contrasted Apple's "1984" commercial with the current reality.)

he wasn't asked first to be the keynote at MacCrypto, the conference a bunch of us had at Apple a month ago, which, I might add, was a considerable success.

This is the epitome of armchair psychoananalysis. How can you _possibly_ know what I thought about things? Jeez.

Of course, the real irony here is that Tim *was* the first person we asked to keynote. The irony compounds itself slightly more when you consider the *last* person who we asked, Phil Zimmermann, at the *last* possible minute, graciously accepted our invitation and delivered his keynote speech to a very enthusiastic crowd.

Who cares? Such comparisons are odious. I responded to Vinnie, not to the "us" implied in "we asked," and the matter would've remained between Vinnie and me had he not shared our e-mail with you and had you not then gone into one of your "free association" rants. Recall that even Vinnie was highly critical of this performance.

Anyway, let us *be* charitable, and take Tim's apparent vituperation about Apple's complete capitulation to government pressure, not to mention the appalling failure of the MacCrypto conference to lob any clues over the walls of Fortress Apple, entirely at their face value, shall we?

Let's assume that he really *wasn't* trying to rattle the bars on the Mac crypto community's collective cage, and that he actually was trying to contribute something constructive to what appears to be a *truly* apalling situation to anyone who wants strong crypto, and thus internet commerce, to be transparent and easy to do on the Macintosh. The Mac crypto community's cage is plenty rattled by the recent news from Washington, as it is.

Fuck off, to be blunt. You've got to learn to start making actual points, and not trying to show your writing chops from the Hunter S. Thompson Correspondence School of Creative Writing.

Frankly, I'd rather see actual code being written than press releases, wouldn't you, Tim?

Fuck off. Back into my killfile you go. --Tim May "The government announcement is disastrous," said Jim Bidzos,.."We warned IBM that the National Security Agency would try to twist their technology." [NYT, 1996-10-02] 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."

On Wed, 2 Oct 1996, Jim McCoy wrote:

Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 22:46:58 -0800 From: Jim McCoy <mccoy@communities.com> To: cypherpunks@toad.com Subject: Fighting Clipper III

Rich Burroughs <richieb@teleport.com> wrote: [...]

...

...

...

On Wed, 2 Oct 1996, John Young wrote:

...

The New York Times, October 2, 1996, pp. D1, D8. Executives of the International Business Machines Corporation said late yesterday that they were still lining up the final list of companies in the alliance. Those involved will include Digital Equipment and smaller data-security companies including RSA Data Security, Cylink and Trusted Information Systems.

We are in deep trouble.

Wouldn't a letter-writing campaign be in order here? [snip]

The word "boycott" leaped into my mind. I personally do not believe that I will be buying products from any of these companies, as long as thay participate in this GAK charade.

Such an initiative will need publicity and letter-writing early in the campaign will help us set the tone and points of debate on this issue. A boycott works best when everyone knows why and there are a few key phrases which can be used to get the message across. Something like "company X is helping build big brother, boycott their products" or a few similar sound bites are needed fast. The big brother inside stickers from the last campaign were nice, maybe people can come up with variations of various corporate logos or marketting phrases which help get the message across?

jim

I agree wholeheartedly. A boycott will be usefull, as would letter writing campaigns, bumper stickers, etc. The entire idea, though , must be _VERY PUBLIC_ to be useful. --Deviant There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

On Thu, 3 Oct 1996, Mark M. wrote:

Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 20:39:58 -0400 (EDT) From: "Mark M." <markm@voicenet.com> To: cypherpunks@toad.com, Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> Subject: Re: boycott GAKkers (was Re: NYT on IBM GAK)

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On Thu, 3 Oct 1996, Adam Back wrote:

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(I've seen HP, Sun, RSADSI, TIS, Apple, Atalla, DEC, Groupe Bull, IBM, NCR Corp., and UPS mentioned). Any confirmations? Denials?

IBM and TIS are definitely pro-GAK. TIS is selling a firewall that uses GAKked DES. IBM has been working on developing the "key recovery" technology. The article posted here a while ago that told of IBM's plans to support GAK also said that they were planning to license the technology to Sun and Netscape. I don't know about the accuracy of that last statement.

Mark - --

So really, what it boils down to is that the masses (thats us) have o crack DES before GAK is imposed. --Deviant "The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the flexibility of assembly language with the power of assembly language."