- cypherpunks-legacy@lists.ogf.org

Re: Should we become "suits"?
by dmandl＠lehman.com 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

1) God bless Tim May. I am in complete agreement with his response to Perry Metzger re his name change proposal (shouldn't be a surprise, as I believe I was the first one to express my horror at it). 2) The time I can devote here at work to this sort of thing is very limited. If I had more time, I'd send a much more in-depth response to Perry's proposal; I don't, so this will have to be shorter and pithier than I'd like. Perry says: > No one said anything about becoming "suits", Tim. I think you did, even if it was indirectly. > The problem is this: the name "Cypherpunks" makes us sound like people > who break into computers for fun or other such stuff. I was on the > phone with John Markoff of the New York Times a couple of days ago, > and I was unhappy that no one had yet changed the name of the group > because I frankly felt that I could not encourage him to subscribe -- > the results would be unpredictable. I encouraged him to read more > sci.crypt instead, which he has already been doing. I don't have the same problem you do with people who "break into computers," though I wouldn't do it. Nevertheless, the cypherpunks as a group never advocate, and rarely even discuss, cracking. I couldn't care less what journalists think, especially journalists from the New York Times. If someone makes an inference like that (the sort of distortion or basic cluelessness I wouldn't be surprised to see in the NYT), he's a bad journalist, and that's his problem. And what does our name have to do with "the results" of subscribing to the group? I take it you're referring to the content of our discussions, which wouldn't change along with our name--unless you're also suggesting that we should tone down our more inflammatory rhetoric (and I think it's a short step from the name change to that anyway). > I've been associated with radical political causes for a while. I've > found that in general, the radicals are their own worst enemy. People > are NOT happy about being lectured to by strange-acting people. So don't lecture them. I don't lecture people. I think people are open- minded about reasonable-sounding ideas if they make sense and are explained in a reasonable way. > Bill Winter of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire was their > chairman over the period in which the LPNH went from four members of > the state party to actually becoming a force in New Hampshire > politics. New Hampshire is the *only* LP outpost to make any > significant electoral inroads, *anywhere*. He once told me this: you > can get people to accept strange sounding ideas when promulgated by > normal looking people. You can get them to accept normal-sounding > ideas when promulgated by strange looking people. You can't get them > to accept strange ideas when promulgated by strange people. Big deal. If they became a wing of the Democratic Party they'd have even more supporters. The electoral system is a scam, and the LP is deluding itself by getting involved in it. (Ancient anarchist wisdom: "If voting could change anything, it would be illegal.") I won't get any deeper into this, because it's getting way off the subject. > The simple change in our name from something confrontational that > makes us sound like machine crackers to something that expresses what > this group is about would make a radical positive change in our image. > > Now, what are the benefits of keeping the current name "cypherpunks"? > > Well, lets see Tim's list. > > >In a sense, Cypherpunks fill an important ecological niche by > >being the outrageous side, the radical side...perhaps a bit like the role > >the Black Panthers, Yippies, and Weather Underground played a generation > >ago. > > None of whom accomplished any of their goals. You REALLY want to Do you really think the Black Panthers would have accomplished more if they wore suits? Ever hear of Cointelpro? The murder of Fred Hampton? In fact, the Panthers were much more reasonable than John Q. Public thought they were. There was a massive propaganda campaign from the government and the straight press to appeal to white America's basic racism and make the Panthers look like some crazed niggers who wanted to kill whitey and rape his daughter. It would have been the same thing no matter what. I've got news for you: if we do change our name, and the FBI is pissed enough, they'll call us crackers and cypherpunks anyway. There are millions of precedents for this. > emulate them? I've been an occassional visitor to #9 Bleeker Street, > where Dana Beal, last of the Yippies, holds court. He doesn't wash > regularly, and he wonders occassionaly why no one takes his drug > legalization crusade seriously. Hint: they are connected. I know Dana. People don't take him seriously because he's a jerk. > I WANT the New York Times reporter reading this group, but I don't > want him to think we are crackers or nuts. How can the name we use influence his opinion of us more than the 50 messages a day posted to the group? I don't have time to respond to the rest of Perry's message; there's just too much to say. But I repeat: there are more "respectable" groups involved, like the EFF and CPSR, so you're free to work with them when talking to the media. Perry, I have very strong differences with your views of how the media and the "spectacle" work, and I can't do justice to the subject given this limited space and time; it's also not directly relevant to cypherpunks business. For anyone wanting a more modern take on how the media works today, I humbly suggest you read the situationists, who addressed all these issues twenty-five years ago, or Jerry Mander's great book "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television." --Dave.

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Answers revealed! Film at Eleven!
by fergp＠sytex.com 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

To make a long story short, don't try to (-e) encrypt anything with PGP on a STACKERed drive -- it ain't gonna work. When I got in this morning, I proved this point by encrypting without nary a problem on a non-compressed drive. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak. Cheers. (BTW, Kelly -- the second message that you sent is still crippled. What are you doing? Software (PGP) development? ;-) Paul Ferguson | Uncle Sam wants to read Network Integration Consultant | your e-mail... Centreville, Virginia USA | Just say "NO" to the Clipper fergp(a)sytex.com | Chip...

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Fowarded messages from RISKS
by fergp＠sytex.com 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

Greets. These two forwarded message are from the RISKS Forum (14.51). I thought some of you folks might be interested. (Padgett Peterson is a fellow assembler buff who is better known on comp.virus.) ---- Forwded Messages -------------------------- Date: Mon, 19 Apr 93 9:21:53 EDT [RISKS-14.51] From: Clipper Chip Announcement <clipper(a)first.org> Organization: FIRST, The Forum of Incident Response & Security Teams Subject: Slide presented at White House briefing on Clipper Chip Note: The following material was handed out a press briefing on the Clipper Chip on 4/16. Chip Operation Microchip User's Message +----------------------+ ------------------> | | 1. Message encrypted | Encryption Algorithm | with user's key | | | Serial # | 2. User's key encrypted | |--> with chip unique key | Chip Unique Key | User's Encryption | | 3. Serial # encrypted Key | Chip Family Key | with chip family key ------------------> | | | | +----------------------+ For Law Enforcement to Read a Suspect's Message 1. Need to obtain court authorized warrant to tap the suspect's telephone. 2. Record encrypted message 3. Use chip family key to decrypt chip serial number 4. Take this serial number *and* court order to custodians of disks A and B 5. Add the A and B components for that serial number = the chip unique key for the suspect user 6. Use this key to decrypt the user's message key for this recorded message 7. Finally, use this message key to decrypt the recorded message. - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Apr 93 09:12:57 -0400 [RISKS-14.51] From: padgett(a)tccslr.dnet.mmc.com (A. Padgett Peterson) Subject: "Clipper Chip" I suppose we should have expected something after all of the sound and fury of the last few years. The announcement does not really give enough information though. My first thought involves conventional compromise: what happens if the keys are captured through theft *and you know about it* - how difficult is it to change the keys ? What do you do between the time the loss is detected and the time a new key set is approved. How difficult is it to program the chip or do you need a new one ? (and if the chip can be reprogrammed, how do you prevent covert changes that will not be discovered until authorization to tap is received and the agency finds out that it cannot ?). Potentially this must occur every time a trusted employee leaves. For some time, I have been playing with dynamic access cards ("tokens") as seeds for full session encryption rather than just for password devices. Since the encryption requires three parts (PIN, challenge, and token) which are only physically together at the secure system, and since only the challenge passes on the net, and since once encryption starts you have not only provided protection to the session, you have also authenticated both ends simultaneously (by the fact that you can communicate), it seems ideal. *And everything necessary already exists*. >From several US companies. It just has not been put together as a commercial product (FUD at work 8*(. Since key generation is on-the-fly at the onset of the session, obviously what the gov needs is not the key but the "key to the key" (of course computers, even a PC, are really good at this. The real question is "Why a new chip ?" The technology to do this has been around for years and several DES chips are available commercially today. The BCC laptop (I like Beaver better 8*) 007 provides this internally today with (I believe) the LSI-Logic chip and Enigma-Logic's PC-SAFE (plugs) does the same with software alone. As indicated in the announcement, financial institutions have been using encrypted transmissions for years without any great outcry. IMHO the real hold-up has been $$$ - cheap error-correcting modem technology to prevent synch losses rather than a lack of good crypto algorithms. Today this is a done deal (actually we have known how to keep in synch since the sixties but you couldn't buy 56kb for under $300.00 at BizMart - now part of K-Mart ! - then). True, there are a lot of questions yet to be answered, but again IMHO most center on the exception cases and not the encryption technology itself. Padgett ---- End Forwarded Messages -------------------------- Cheers. Paul Ferguson | Uncle Sam wants to read Network Integration Consultant | your e-mail... Centreville, Virginia USA | Just say "NO" to the Clipper fergp(a)sytex.com | Chip...

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DC Meeting this weekend?
by William Lee Nussbaum 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

Hello, all... If there is going to be a DC meeting this weekend, please try to determine by this evening what it will be... I won't have mail access after about 9am tomorrow until the end of the weekend, and I will be in DC (Although, since I'm traveling with others, I don't know whether I'll be able to make it even if I do know, but if I have some sort of contact information, that can be worked out in other ways.) Please excuse the pushiness, just trying to get a hectic couple of weeks organized... - Lee

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ADD falcor@agora.rain.com
by falcor＠agora.rain.com 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

Or, if this is human-maintained, please add falcor(a)agora.rain.com to your mailing list! (cypherpunks) Thanks! -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ // Falcor, aka // InterNet: falcor(a)agora.rain.com // If you're bored, // // Andy Burt // FidoNet: 1:105/354.0 // you must not be // // // // paying attention // ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Status of Voice Encryption with PC/Mac?
by uni＠acs.bu.edu 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

I keep hearing about voice scrambling technology in conjunction with high speed modems and soundblaster cards.... Anyone care to comment on the availability of said devices? The Supra people mentioned something, I'll check into it. how about the potential for RAW cyphertext from PGP? Hiding cyphertext in other mediums...? Is any of this available today? uni (Dark)

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more details from Denning
by jwarren＠autodesk.com 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

I've been collecting this flow over the last few days, and finally have a chance to upload it to 'punks. I think all of it is new, but part of it might have already appeared in the last several daze [sic] deluge. If so, apologies for repetition. And, a coupla tidbits about Dorothy: I have known her for several years, worked closely with her on creating the first Computers, Freedom & Privacy conference in 1991, have absolutely the *highest* regard for her integrity, honesty and candor -- and absolutely trust what she says ... even when it's about a subject on which we may disagree. Dorothy Denning is an honorable person with great personal integrity, and I urge that she be treated as such -- even in disagreement. --jim Jim Warren, MicroTimes futures columnist; InfoWorld founder; DataCast founder; founder & chair, First Conf. on Computers, Freedom & Privacy, blah blah blah :-) ============echoing the messages of significance==========

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Wiretapping chip
by szabo＠techbook.com 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

I agree we should write letters, but not (or not just) to government officials. Consider targetting the big phone makers -- both domestic and overseas. Let them know our privacy needs as customers -- that we want secure encryption, that means encryption with _published algorithms_ and without having the key available to _any_ third party, be it the U.S. or any other government, or any nontrustworthy private organization. I almost agree with Sandy that "we've won", but an important part of the market process that brings such victory is giving good customer feedback to communications suppliers. Also for consideration: boycott AT&T and all other companies making phones with the wiretap chip, and let the phone makers know about the boycott early and often. Also I am curious specifically how (a) encrypted international phone calls and (b) foreign-made phones will fair under this proposal (or possible follow-on proposals when they see the weak points in this one). Can the U.S. government dictate key registration to the world? I agree with Perry that "cypherpunks" is a bad label when these kinds of issues get raised in public, and would also add "crypto-anarchy" to that. Our main "talking point" is privacy, and other less popular stuff is best kept -- private. Nick Szabo szabo(a)techbook.com

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Thoughts on the proposal
by Phil Karn 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

Some points to add, some of which I don't think have been made yet. It is entirely possible that Clinton, if he understands anything at all about this proposal, sincerely thinks that he's helping the cause of personal privacy. Consider that his entire education on the subject of cryptography probably consisted of a 5 minute briefing that probably went something like this: The US government is making available, for widespread public use, encryption technology developed by the greatest cryptographers in the world - NSA's. Civilian cryptographers are simply not capable of producing anything as good, so what does it matter if the keys are registered with the government? Users will still be better off than they are now, so what do they have to lose? And I bet that this would sound perfectly reasonable to the average man on the street, too. Well...I'd say we know better. And we have a big educational job to do. We need to let the public know that civilian cryptography is already quite good. Good enough that the communications industry doesn't need any "help" in the form of new chips from the government to secure its communications, thank you very much. And simple and cheap enough that it would have already have been made widely available in products such as digital cellular telephones if the government hadn't considered it "too good" and done everything they could behind the scenes to stop it. Clinton needs to learn that if he *really* wants to help the cause of civilian cryptography, he only needs to call off the goons over in NSA. We don't need their "help". We just want them to get the hell out of our private conversations and our private lives. Phil

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SUBSCRIBE steve@oc3s-emh1.army.mil
by Steve Greenberg 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

SUBSCRIBE steve(a)oc3s-emh1.army.mil

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