- cypherpunks-legacy@lists.ogf.org

CLIP: Legal Aspects
by Matthew J Miszewski 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

Clinton Clipper Legal Stuff: With regard to the fear that the issuance of your 'Klinton Key' will allow your favorite TLA to decrypt all conversations taped previous to the issuance of the warrant granting the key, there is precedence that disallows it. In US v. Plamondon 407 US 297, the Supreme Ct. held that *prior* judicial approval is a must for any evidence sought to be admitted. Therefore, while the precedence does not prevent them from actually decyphering your previous conversations, there is support that states it can not be used against you. In US v. Donovan (sorry lost the cite), the court held that the actual application must Identify *all* parties to be surveilled. Thus, the CIA cannot simply run a tape on you and expect to use it in court. It is important that everyone understand that none of these cases *prevent* any agency from *doing* the surveillance, and that probable cause is still an easy standard to meet in order to get the warrant. These cases merely tell you what would be admissable against anyone in court (i.e. this does not affect TLA (three letter acronyms) from blackmailing you or scaring the hell out of you. There is an enormous body of law out there on this topic and could use some guidance from the Cypherpunk elders for search topics. What's needed out there. Email me privately. TOTALLY aside from the Clipper topic: Just got the new WIRED. Excellent article. Groovy pix. Which one is Murdering Thug? 8^) mjmiski(a)macc.wisc.edu CyberLaw, etc. Matt

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Automation package.
by J. Michael Diehl 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

Since I've been using encrypted mail for about a month, now, I've developed a few usefull batch files and telix script files. Would anyone be interested in having them. For the most part, they're pretty simple, but I use them, and they work. ;^) I don't use the perl scripts that came with pgp since I don't trust the phone connection. I xfer encrypted messages and read them at home. BTW, I use 4dos version 4.02 as opposed to command.com as my command interpreter; some of my batch files require features that 4dos has that msdos does not. Anyway, 4dos is a much better package than straight pms-dos. I think we need to develope methods to make encryption as simple to use as possible. Is this something that you all are interested in or am I just blowing smoke? ;^) +-----------------------+-----------------------------+---------+ | J. Michael Diehl ;-) | I thought I was wrong once. | PGP KEY | | | But, I was mistaken. |available| | +-----------------------------+---------+ | mdiehl(a)triton.unm.edu | "I'm just looking for the opportunity | | mike.diehl(a)fido.org | to be Politically Incorrect! <Me> | | (505) 299-2282 | | +-----------------------+---------------------------------------+

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ADMIN: delayed mail yesterday
by Eric Hughes 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

Some of you may have worried that the list was down to due government interference yesterday. The truth is much more prosaic. toad.com, where the mailing list resides, is on the commercial side of the Appropriate use barrier. In order to send to NSFNET hosts, all the traffic must pass through uunet. The default mail router that toad uses, relay2.uu.net, was munged for mail yesterday. All the queue has been flushed out at this point. Thanks to Hugh Daniel and John Gilmore for figuring this out. Eric

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name change?
by grady＠netcom.com 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

I vote we change our name to the "CryptOrchids." Many people like flowers and lots of people don't care for dangling gobbets of flesh. ObCrypt: Leonard Rosenthal of Aladdin Systems, Inc. confirms that the previously strong DES family encryption option has been replaced in Stuffit 3.0 with a system that has been 'approved' for export. However, Leonard asks me not to call it a 'weak XOR' system because he says no one has broken it yet. ObCrypt Prime: I am testing the IDEA block cipher implementations and needs some golden test vectors. I've looked through the postscript IDEA chapter but the single example gives me zero degrees of freedom. I'll contact the inventor if necessary but since we are paying him money for use of his invention, I'd like to offload this from him. Anybody got vectors? (No disease vectors, please).

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RE: Crypto Activism and Respectability
by fergp＠sytex.com 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

Let'em all eat cake. On Wed, 21 Apr 93 14:46:55 -0700, <uunet!netcom.com!tcmay> Timothy C. May wrote - TM> Crypto Activism and Respectability, or, Should We Become TM> "Suits"? In a word: No. The name is fine (Cypherpunks), and the attitude is great. There are plenty of us who do wear ties on a daily basis and have our hearts in the right place. ;-) Thanks for the sanity check. You've got my support. Now if we can "Win the hearts and minds" of the public and change the venue of our own Stalinistic government... BTW, who (off-hand) knows the fax number of the G. Gordon Liddy show at WJFK in Washington? I have this fax I need for him to see .... Cheers. -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.2 mQCNAiuk0/8AAAEEALqlLc+x9lmgiJCRSpu/aPhQdi0hMjwiGlN2B/GJQqgZPhTb pR+u5/blGogqT+WwcXZ2XfEdIV19FrJY4BXGGn4+4TjdVN3XuuCHuueoygBAmOQD IloU6SJuDqJa0kFA5X/i/1ELn86I5+8A4Hx88FiYJIVUBR6SApRLcZSdHMBNAAUR tB9QYXVsIEZlcmd1c29uIDxmZXJncEBzeXRleC5jb20+ =0Kua -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- 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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Re: Making Clippers More Secure
by George A. Gleason 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

As for me, I still think software-based steganography is the answer. If you can't detect it, you can't prosecute. For instance, how many people do you think are fired from their jobs for LSD on their drug tests...? Far fewer than do LSD, according to people I know in Silicon Valley who say that certain mil subcontractors are infested with acid-taking Deadheads; because LSD dissapears from the bloodstream a couple of days after you take it.

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Re: Intergraph employee claims trademark violation
by George A. Gleason 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

Most interesting about Intergraph! Someone look into this one QUICK and if there are any attorneys reading this, could you help Intergraph go after whoever might be violating their trademark... in particular AT&T...? -gg

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Non-Technical description of problems with wiretap chip
by dstalder＠gmuvax2.gmu.edu 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

The WIRE-TAP Proposal: Problems with it. The White House sent out a press release on Friday 16 April about a voice encryption chip called the Clipper chip. This has come to be known as the Wiretap chip since it allows any Law Enforcement agency to automatically decrypt any conversations made with it with a search warrant. The LE presents said search warrant to two different escrow agencies to obtain the keys (80 bits long) that automatically decrypts your conversation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) have both criticized the proposal. There was even a negative article already in Network World (19 Apr 93). The paragraphs that follow are facts and problems I have collected by listening to other discuss the Wiretap chip. Say you wanted to encrypt your talk with someone over a phone. Well, since you and the person you want to talk to both have the Wiretap (Clipper) chip in your phones, you can automatically encrypt your conversation. All fine and good encryption for the consumer. Now, what if you come under investigation by the local constabulary? The get a court order and ask the escrow agencies (non-law enforcement types) for your key. They already have the family key since that is the same in each chip. They now have your specific key. With these two keys, they can decrypt all conversations that you have. This includes conversations that are not legal to wiretap such as attorney-client, doctor-patient and so on. They also have that key for any all future sessions that you use that phone for. Start to see the problem? This part is all legal... Search warrants are even exceedingly easy to get at times. There have been reports of the FBI get groups of 50 signed and blank search warrants from the DoJ. Now, there are other problems. Would you give the IRS keys to your house and filing cabinet as long as they promised that they would only use it under proper authorization? The key length of 80 bits is still considered cryptographically weak. The cryptographic algorithm is also being kept classified. This is not the usual practice. In the cryptographic community, algorithms are public. This way people can be assured there aren't any back doors and that the algorithm can stand on its own strengths, not that of secrecy. It is clear from the description that the plan for key registration would be compromised if the algorithm was made public; anyone could make chips or software that implemented it, using their own keys. These keys, of course, would not be registered. It is not that difficult to reverse engineer a chip these days. It may also be true that the algorithm itself is too weak to be shown to the public. This was true of a digital cellular encryption standard (IS-54B). It is not available to the public and is incredibly weak. Finally, some of the implications behind this announcements are dire. The Wiretap chip could become the market or legislative standard. This could mean that other implementations of cryptographic voice transactions would be very difficult to obtain or would be illegal to obtain. Why would a criminal use the Wiretap chip when they knew it wouldn't encrypt their conversations against the LE agencies? They wouldn't, they would use other encryption technologies. Would this mean that using something other than the Wiretap chip is probable cause and puts you under suspicion? The way the encryption works also allows for ludicrously easy call-tracing. Each chip has a serial number that is transmitted with each message. That serial number is encrypted with the "Family" key. This key is the *same* for every chip. You gain that key and you can track when and for how long any person or groups of people calls *anyone* else. (Easy to do, since any LE agency can gain the 'family' key with a search warrant. It would leak easily into other hands.) One last fishy thing is that AT&T has already (on the same day) announced phones with this chip. This implies (means?) that AT&T has known about this chip for a while. They seem to be more concerned about getting a jump on the competition than producing a product that will actually give their users real security. 'Course, there is the question of collusion between the governement and industry. Only two companies will be allowed to manufacture the chip, VLSI and Mykotronix. Jeff Hendy, director of new product marketing for VLSI, says his company expects to make $50 million of the chip in the next 3 years. (This from the San Jose Mercury News.) Permission is granted to distribute this document to whomsoever you should desire. You may change it only if you send me the changes. Think Free, -- Defeat the Torin/Darren Stalder/Wolf __ Wiretap Chip Internet: dstalder(a)gmuvax2.gmu.edu \/ PGP2.x key available. Proposal! Bitnet: dstalder@gmuvax Finger me. Write me for Sprintnet: details. Snail: 10310 Main St., Suite 110/Fairfax, VA/22030/USA DISCLAIMER: A society where such disclaimers are needed is saddening.

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Explanation of Clipper Chip Name
by tcmay＠netcom.com 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

In the days before Xerox machines, one provided copies of correspondence to others by using sheets of carbon paper to make duplicates when typing. This is the origin of "cc" or "cc:" on memos and correspondence. Henceforth, "cc" refers to the automatic carbon copy provided by the "cc" chip, the Clipper Chip. BB (Big Brother) gets a CC of everything. (I know, it's a voice encryption standard, and it's voluntary, but a quick look at the "Capstone" chip reveals it's a complete crypto package, containing the DSS government signature standard, and lots of other stuff. The Wiretap Chip will be used for more than just voice, I'll be willing to bet.) -Tim -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.

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Problems
by fergp＠sytex.com 22 Apr '93

22 Apr '93

I relaize that this is a bit off-topic, but I'm experiencing a problem that may be just a case of either user stupidity or Stacker. (Okay, hold the leers and jeers, my laptop has Stacker installed for a reason.) Trying to (-e) encrypt a textfile with someone's pubkey produces both "DOS general read errors" and "device not ready" errors. I suspect that PGP is using some direct BIOS calls for this, which bypass Stacker, however I haven't looked at the source code yet. (Silly me.) Every other function of PGP that I have utilized seems to work okay. After invoking PGP with the following parameters - PGP -e text.txt userid I get these errors. Also, after being bumped back out to the system prompt, any further requests to access the file system is greeted with the same errors. (Lucky me.) Anyway, after rebooting the system and fixing the file allocations errors (yes, usually two to three files created by PGP named filename.$01, filename.$02, etc. are classified by DOS as mis-allocated), everything is just peachy. Like I said before, all othere PGP functions (adding and validating keys, etc) work okay. I point the finger at Stacker, but I figured it might be worth my time to toss a message into the group for advice... Cheers. For what it's worth, I don't normally use Stacker for the same reasons that Steve Gibson forbids his employees to use any disk compression software -- the problems and possibilty for irreversible data loss greatly outweigh the silly need to compress. 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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