At 11:34 AM -0700 7/24/00, Michael Motyka wrote: > > >The CP threads are just the ripples from a torpedo that is long gone. >They'll be expended agitating the plankton and polishing sand on a >beach. > >I'm a little bummed about Cryptome. The vulnerabilities of the net are >scary. Anyone can be nixed, anytime. This needs to be corrected. Adding >FBI nodes to ISP's sites is a definite dozen steps backwards towards >totalitarianism. That's why Congress will probably allow it. It's historically been hard to nix Usenet. (Nix Usenix? Never mind.) The PSIA docs posted widely to Usenet would be awfully hard to stop. (As for the file sizes, the 130K size is less than most of tens of thousands of binaries posted daily. The entire PSIA file is less than "HeatherHootersBigTits176." A drop in the ocean. Alt.cypherpunks exists. Mail to Usenet gateways exist. Do the math.) Cryptome, like ZKS, like Sealand, has some bothersome single points of attack/failure. The fact that John Young is a Known Person, with a Known Site, at a Known Provider, opens him up for all kinds of mischief, ranging from black bag jobs to install bugs and keyboard sniffers all the way to criminal prosecution under the Espionage Act. The FBI leaned on the site owner with the "Y2K training tape," and various USG and other nations' agencies have leaned on sites before. If a site can be traced to a jurisdiction, expect trouble. All of these above entities act in varying ways as "data havens." Cryptome for all of the traditional Web site stuff, ZKS for ostensibly permitting unpopular political and religious and sexual views (*) to be untraceable, and Sealand because they are supposedly untouchable by British and European law. Well, these ain't real data havens. The "work factor" in attacking these sites--legally, physically, denial of service, etc.--is just not very large enough. These approaches are ind of like the "ROT13" of data havens--OK for very casual use, but too small a speed bump to be interesting. (The underlying crypto of both Freedom and the various PK crypto of Sealand may of course be quite good. But the "work factor" has many elements, ranging from attaching Semtex to the supports or placing a padlock over ZKS's front doors.) We've discussed real data havens many times over the years. (* I still hope ZKS succeeds, but their terms and conditions about being willing to cancel nyms doesn't give me hope that this is a stable, usable, long-term platform for data haven types of activities. Had John Young been running Cryptome via a Freedom node, I expect his nym would have been cancelled when the RCMP and other Canadian agencies leaned heavily on ZKS. Even more obviously, had a site for Homolka-Teale material been operated via Freedom, it surely would have been shut down. Even if the nyms were usd by U.S. residents.) --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
