Re: Moral Crypto
Compare this with the original claim: in a properly designed anonymity system the users will be, well, anonymous, and it should be impossible to tell any more about them than that they pay their bills on time. These examples illustrate the falsehood of this claim. Much more is learned about the customers as they enter the anonymous system. But how do you know they've entered the anonymous system? If you are already being pursued by your antagonist, *and* you have been personally identified, then you have trouble you can't solve by any current software-based security technology. If you have not been personally identified, then your antagonist must either personally identify you or monitor all possible remailer network entrances. Monitoring all remailer network entrances can be done, but it is not for the weak of wallet. Even large governments do not have unlimited resources -- they must pick and choose their targets, rather than trying to go after everyone. The Soviet government and its puppet states encouraged people to turn each other in just so they didn't have to pay for 50% of the population to watch the other 50%. Large resources != infinite resources. === Mark Leighton Fisher[EMAIL PROTECTED] Thomson multimedia, Inc.Indianapolis IN The Illuminati are not dead -- they're just pining for the fnords...
Re: Moral Crypto
Killing remailers will be a by-product of regulating the net. Regulating the net to this extent would be a huge undertaking. Trying to regulate dead-tree publishers to this level would be a large undertaking, a task not likely to be accomplished without a lot of debate in Congress -- and there are many fewer dead-tree publishers than net publishers. The only way this could be done would be to attack at the large ISP level, which then brings up First Amendment issues along with common carrier issues. It could be done, but it would likely take a covert operation so large that: * It could only be funded by a government or other large body; and * Which would likely come to light relatively quickly (three can keep a secret, if two are dead). (Covert operation in the sense of staging many events that use the net in the process of harming people, as in using remailers for staging terrorist-like attacks for the express purpose of scaring the American public into abrogating their First Amendments rights unilaterally on the net.) === Mark Leighton Fisher[EMAIL PROTECTED] Thomson multimedia, Inc.Indianapolis IN The Illuminati are not dead -- they're just pining for the fnords...
Re: The Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot
When you were asked where were all the supposed wealthy freedom fighters in communist controlled regimes, you came back with Osama bin Laden. Tim's point, which many seem to have missed, is that by design a tool that enforces the privacy, anonymity, and pseudonymity of a women striving for equal rights in Afghanistan can also be used by the Taliban in their quest to track down and kill Afghans who converted to Christianity and are now preaching the Word. Tools are tools -- the uses are what we make of them. If you don't want to create tools that can be used for evil, then you must forgo the making of tools. Crypto anarchy is coming -- we had best prepare for it, lest it overwhelm us. In the end, I believe that it will result in more freedom for more people, by restraining those in government from doing any silly thing they like to us. Although I see many people complain about the excesses of corporations, in about every case I can think of the harm they did was enabled by the collusion of government officials. If you can restrain the actions of government (by crypto anarchy, voting the rascals out of office, or whatever), you will generally improve the amount of freedom people have to live their lives. === Mark Leighton Fisher[EMAIL PROTECTED] Thomson multimedia, Inc.Indianapolis IN Display some adaptability. -- Doug Shaftoe, _Cryptonomicon_
An efficient Scheme for Proving a Shuffle
An efficient Scheme for Proving a Shuffle, Crypto 2001, Jun Furukawa and Kazue Sako (NEC Corporation), apparently could be used to show that a remailer is processing all messages without revealing the header or contents of any message. (Apparently because I haven't read the paper -- just heard of it on the nymip-res-group list.) === Mark Leighton Fisher[EMAIL PROTECTED] Thomson multimedia, Inc.Indianapolis IN Display some adaptability. -- Doug Shaftoe, _Cryptonomicon_
RE: California bars free speech of those cutting deals on votes
Radio is cheap and hot. When was the last time you heard a Libertarian sentiment on radio (except talk radio). The closest I've heard are the "Vote Freedom" ads by Charleton Heston. Last week I heard 2 different ads for Indiana LP candidates on a station that plays hip-hop, alternative, and pop music (Radio Now FM 93.1, Emmis Communications). The ads were paid for locally, IIRC. === Mark Leighton Fisher[EMAIL PROTECTED] Thomson Consumer ElectronicsIndianapolis IN "Display some adaptability." -- Doug Shaftoe, _Cryptonomicon_
security software: InTether
David Honig writes: You want to overwrite a dozen times with random (each time) data. I'd be cautious about saying that. Way back when I held a security clearance, the instructions were: * Overwrite with patterns 99 times for SECRET materials; and * Overwrite with patterns 999 times for TOP SECRET materials. As the forensic technology has undoubtedly improved in the past 20 years, I strongly doubt that "a dozen times" would be anywhere close to obscuring all evidence of the data. You're much better off physically destroying the disk by melting it or somesuch. If you don't have the option of physically destroying the disk, writing random data for a few hours ought to get you on the way towards making your original data unrecoverable. (Note that I said "on the way"!) === Mark Leighton Fisher[EMAIL PROTECTED] Thomson Consumer ElectronicsIndianapolis IN "Display some adaptability." -- Doug Shaftoe, _Cryptonomicon_
RE: Nym meat (was RE: How to avoid participating in census legall
Don't take offense at such personal deconstruction. I'm merely pointing out what we *actually* know, vs. what is claimed. Your reply was the funniest thing I've read today. "Group of ephemeral psyop pranksters" indeed! == Mark Leighton Fisher Thomson Consumer Electronics [EMAIL PROTECTED] Indianapolis, IN "Their walls are built of cannon balls, their motto is 'Don't Tread on Me'"
RE: CyberPatrol sues cryptanalysts who revealed flaws in itssoftw
Ed Gerck wrote: As to the counter-example you ask, the general public profits by lack of disclosure of the algorithm that allows nuclear bombs to be made with 1 pound of enriched uranium. We have less nuclear powers. I'd like one of the real physicists on the list to weigh in on this, but a 1 lb. enriched uranium nuclear bomb sounds unrealistic to me. Last I knew, it was more like 25-50 pounds of enriched uranium. Now, a plutonium bomb can supposedly be made with 10 pounds of plutonium, which is around the size and shape of a goose egg. [Once I'd heard that, I knew that suitcases nukes would someday be made, just because they could be made.] === Mark Leighton Fisher[EMAIL PROTECTED] Thomson Consumer ElectronicsIndianapolis IN "Their walls are built of cannon balls, Their motto is `Don't tread on me`"
RE: U.S. Census questions
What I object to is the _forced_ "kindness" based on mob rule, where it is decreed that we must all donate money at the point of a gun to support welfare bums who got high instead of reading and studying. Welfare may have started with the best of intentions, but the result is multiple generations of families on welfare, welfare mothers and fathers entering 'AFDC' as their occupation (Aid to Families with Dependent Children, i.e. welfare), kids being dragged through crackhouses from birth and then shipped off to school where the teachers are supposed to overcome all the bad influences the child took in from birth to 5, etc. Not to mention parents who say, "I never learned my multiplication tables and it never hurt me none." [I suspect Tim and I could swap lots of these kinds of stories, with my wife and his sister both being teachers.] Receiving welfare without having to work for it in some way doesn't work -- we have given it a fair try as a society, only to prove just how bad the idea was. We should not only end taxation as we know it today, we should imprison those who have stolen our taxes and force them to work off their debts. Put them in camps and let them work off their debt. For most of them, this will make life in the camps. Sounds fair to me. Maybe it's because I'm a Lutheran small-'l' libertarian who thinks that even Lucifer will eventually be redeemed, but imprisoning them doesn't seem to solve the problem to me. Just giving current welfare recipients the choice of working or starving seems like the best solution to me, as it addresses the current problem of the welfare recipient taking from society and not returning anything to society. Anyone who can't adapt to that solution will either starve or turn to crime. Those who turn to crime will eventually be ground under the wheels of justice -- although the chance of getting caught on any one burglary is only 2%, burglars have a yearly chance of 78% of being caught due to the necessary repeat nature of the crime. Justice is not swift, but it is relentless in a relatively law-abiding society like the U.S.A. === Mark Leighton Fisher[EMAIL PROTECTED] Thomson Consumer ElectronicsIndianapolis IN "Their walls are built of cannon balls, Their motto is `Don't tread on me`"
