HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com (Bill Stewart +1-908-949-0705)
Subject: Re: Finally!  We're getting somewhere.
Organization: New Jersey Re-Education Facility for the Differently Clued
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 01:36:00 GMT
Followup-To: comp.org.eff.talk

In article <1992Nov4.191531.17572@spider.co.uk> paulq@spider.co.uk (Paul Qualtrough) writes:
   >This seems to ignore constitutional issues, like forcing a person to
   >testify against himself,
   What?!?!  Has the land of truth, justice and cotton fields done away with
   the standard swearing-in phrase of "...the truth, the _whole_ truth, and
   nothing but the truth" which, if agreed to, implies that you must testify
   "against yourself" if some part of the truth is incriminating?

The right not to be forced to testify against yourself has been part
of our Bill of Rights since it was first adopted, and the
interpretations of it have been much stronger since the early-1960s
Supreme Court rulings that prevent prosecutors from using illegally
obtained evidence, such as confessions obtained by beating.

Other parts of the Fifth Amendment have been substantially weakened,
like the right not to have your life, liberty, or property taken
without due process of law, but the self-incrimination part is pretty strong.
The main workaround is to compel you to testify under a grant of immunity,
or to have the prosecutor and judge tell the jury that since you
wouldn't confess you must be hiding something and therefore guilty, ....

   The companies who supply the "net" may well be within their rights to only
   forward messages which comply to certain rules, and if the goverment dictates
   that one of those rules is that "no encrypted message shall pass without
   a registered assault key" then is there really any constitutional comeback

So far, the rules for "common carriers" say that they're not liable
for the contents of the information they carry (e.g. phone conversations),
though that may be covered by the Drug Exception to the Bill Of Rights.
However, assuming that they don't verify every message before
transmitting it, which would be nearly impossible, and that they at
most use simpleminded checking to detect encrypted traffic, no problem.
It's easy to make encrypted messages look like unencrypted binary data,
enough to fool a medium-quality artificial intelligence,
and if the "suspiciousness detector" is set too high, you reject too
many valid messages.

   "once a bad law is passed, it is virtually never repealed."
That's one reason we're all arguing so rabidly with Dr. Denning,
especially since she's been one of Us rather than one of Them.
--
#				Pray for peace;      Bill
# Bill Stewart 908-949-0705 wcs@anchor.att.com AT&T Bell Labs 4M312 Holmdel NJ
# Nov 12 - Anniversary of Indonesian massacre in East Timor, 1991
# Indonesia first invaded in 1975, and about 1/3 of the people have been killed.
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: butzerd@blanc.eng.ohio-state.edu (Dane C. Butzer)
Subject: Re: pseudo one time pad...
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Electrical Engineering
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 00:01:52 GMT

In article <1992Nov11.144908.4035@memstvx1.memst.edu> ujacampbe@memstvx1.memst.edu (James Campbell) writes:
>In article <1992Nov11.173642.29608@ee.eng.ohio-state.edu>, 
>     butzerd@columbia.eng.ohio-state.edu (Dane C. Butzer) writes:
>

[My orignal stuff omitted]

>
>    Dane, do you happen to have a working implementation of the DES handy?
>Good.  Now, make a file of ASCII 0's and encrypt it with some key.  Lookee,
>Lookie, you get a list of random bits!  64 BITS LONG, to be exact, and the
>same list is repeated for the length of the ciphertext file.  That's a big
>reason why cryppies don't use BLOCK CIPHERS like the DES for one-time-pad
>generation.  Of course, it would work fine if you limited your messages to
>a length of 8 bytes... ;-)

Nice sarcasm.  Anyways, I guess I should have specified DES in cipher
feedback mode.  No little 8 byte blocks. :->

>    Using cypher-block chaining would create a more random-LOOKING bit
>stream, but intuition tells me that it would have similar faults, and would
>be reasonably easy to break as well (of course, I could be wrong...).
>    I think you're probably looking at the one-time-pad scheme as a way of
>IMPROVING on the DES.  

Nope.  I was just using DES as an example, since its output in CFM is
unpredictable as well as statisctally random.  The real question was: If
you have a good enough PRNG (or try URNG - unpredictable random number
generator), why is a pseudo one time pad bad?

>Remember, though, that only OTP ciphers that use
>truly random numbers are perfectly secure (in transmission, anyway), and
>using a PRNG will always reduce this security to some degree. 

Yes, but DES (and even RSA) aren't perfectly secure.  They're just
computationally secure.  Only (so far) a true one time pad (based on some
natural random process) is perfectly secure, right?

>To break any
>encryption scheme like this, your adversary need only break the PRNG to do
>it.  If this generator is the DES, then your OTP cipher scheme is no more
>cryptographically secure than the DES itself.
>    Finally, if you're going to use it as a generator, why not just encrypt
>the plaintext with the DES in the first place, and skip the XOR step?

If I were really going to use it for encryption, I'd do just that :-)

Thanks for the reply,

Dane Butzer
butzerd@ee.eng.ohio-state.edu
From: george@tessi.com (George Mitchell)
Subject: Re: A Copper Balloon
Organization: Test Systems Strategies, Inc., Beaverton, Oregon
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 17:40:38 GMT

denning@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu writes:
>[another proposal to make crypto keys available to the Government,
>but requiring the co-operation of carriers.]

First, thanks for being willing to modify your stand.  I still don't
agree with your new proposal -- it is about as friendly as turning all
employers into branch offices of the Immigration and Naturalization
Service -- but I'm glad that we can at least continue the discussion.

So let me try to pare this down to its essentials.  Are you really
willing to turn over to the Government the ability to examine all of
your communications?  Assume that, sooner or later, some bureaucrat
will come up with some justification, no matter how ridiculous, for
examining every single thing you ever choose to encrypt.

-- George Mitchell (george@tessi.com)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,alt.privacy,comp.org.eff.talk
From: brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: A Silver Bullet to Limit Crypto?
Organization: ClariNet Communications Corp.
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 04:25:49 GMT

Sorry to join this too-voluminous-to-read thread at this point, but I
don't understand why people are proposing registration of encryption keys.

The implication seems to be that this is to placate law enforcement people
who want to continue to be able to tap/intercept/read private communications,
perhaps to stop them from trying to ban encryption altogether?

Is this some sort of joke?  Do people seriously suggest such sort of
placation is necessary or a good idea?  Or is it law enforcement that's
pushing for this registration?

There is no need to compromise.  Law enforcement is just going to have to
face a hard fact -- in a few years they won't be able to wiretap.  It is
a heavy price for them to pay, but the other options are simply too much of
a burden on either our freedoms, or our industries.   I think the chance of
them winning a ban on encryption are small.  There is no need for anybody
to compromise with key registration schemes that will be meaningless in the
long run.

(Surely any criminal element would use a registered key for outside encryption
and an unregistered method for inside encryption, facing only the charge of
unregistered encryption if they are wiretapped.)
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Sunnyvale, CA 408/296-0366
From: jim@rand.org (Jim Gillogly)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: New Encryption Method - a Challenge!
Date: 10 Nov 92 21:31:21 GMT
Organization: Banzai Institute

In article <n0e07t@ofa123.fidonet.org> Erik.Lindano@ofa123.fidonet.org writes:
> I realize that it must be a lot easier to just post theoretical 
> considerations on such matters than to do any _actual_ decryption, 
> but I thought that the experts here were knowledgeable in a 
> real, practical sense, and capable of putting their obvious 
> knowledge to actual use, that's all.  Perhaps I was mistaken.

No need to get offensive.

> The most peculiar thing about your rejection, and that of the other
> person who replied, is that both of you are rejecting the challenge
> _without having ever seen the product you are rejecting!_.  This 
> worries me immensely.  Makes me wonder if you may not simply be 
> avoiding the challenge under some pretenses.  Am I mistaken?

Yes, you are.  I was one of the people who replied directly, and I pointed
out that if you want us to tell you how strong the algorithm is, you
should tell us what the algorithm is.  I would be interested in the
challenge -- but without seeing the algorithm, I don't know whether it's
worth the trouble to try it.  If he's rediscovered Vigenere encipherment
with 8 bit characters, then we can explain to him what his problem is.  If
it's new and wonderful, he can make a splash.  What's the problem?

> But if all these experts are unwilling to even _try_... hmmmm.

Again, if you want cooperation, let's have a reasonable test rather than
this "if you people here think you're so smart, why are you scared to
accept any kind of silly challenge I make" attitude.  With DES, we saw the
algorithm and a lot of us took swings at it.  Several people have stuck
algorithms and challenges on sci.crypt and won -- Andreas Nowatzyk, for
one.  Others have proudly displayed their unbreakable algorithms and had
their clocks cleaned.  So -- if you want us to tell you how strong your
algorithm is, tell us what your algorithm is.

A word of advice to new cipher constructors: figure out what niche you
think your cipher belongs in.  Is it to be stronger than DES?  Just as
strong but faster to calculate?  Provably secure in some interesting way?
Is it a public-key system that doesn't violate any patents?  A lot of the
"new" ciphers we see are cute and perhaps nice for keeping your own diary,
but have no practical application in the real world, because the only
niche they're likely to be aimed at is already filled with something
better.

And another word of advice: don't try constructing new ciphers for some
niche unless you have practical experience in breaking them.  There's no
way you will anticipate the kinds of attacks that are available without
starting from the cryptanalysis end.

-- 
	Jim Gillogly
	U.S. National Debt: $4,128,313,176,663
	Your Share: $16,143
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: ritter@cactus.org (Terry Ritter)
Subject: Re: Limits on the Use of Cryptography?
Organization: Capital Area Central Texas UNIX Society, Austin, Tx
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 22:28:38 GMT


 In quotable email, <mike@upolu.gsfc.nasa.gov> Mike Jones responds:


>This has little to do with sci.crypt

 I disagree.  Should society elect to limit the use of cryptography
 by law this will affect cryptographic design.  Systems may have
 to archive old message keys, for example, or even ciphertext.


>You and I and everyone else knows how to get that
>information. Put the alleged child molester on the rack and use
>heated irons
>until you have the information.

 Nonsense.  Two possibilities are presented:

 1) Require the use of registered crypto keys; if other keys are
    actually used (as we expect), this would itself be a crime;

 2) Require users of cryptography to reveal their keys (after due
    process); if they did not (or *could* not), this would itself
    be a crime.

 Nobody gets heated irons; this is rule of law.  The issue is
 whether a normal legislator could be convinced that this would be
 *bad* law.


>On a technical level, you know that a registered key will not
>guarantee the results can be decrypted. It may be XORed with an image of
>daisies.

 The question of whether a defendant has provided the desired
 plaintext can be addressed under oath by experts, and decided by
 juries.  Deciding issues of fact is what juries do.

 ---
 Terry Ritter   ritter@cactus.org

Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: dmandl@shearson.com (David Mandl)
Subject: Re:    Information needed about Zero Knowledge
Reply-To: dmandl@shearson.com
Organization: Lehman Brothers, Inc.
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 15:10:48 GMT

In article 104626C51885@TRMETU.BITNET, <C51885@TRMETU.BITNET> () writes:
>Hello,
>  I want to get detailed information about Zero knowledge Techniques.
>I will be very pleased, if you send me informations, documents, sources
>etc. about it..
>             Thanks Ismail Tore.
>

Me too, please.  Thanks.

   --Dave.

---
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
         Dave Mandl            |    Opinions expressed here
       New York City           | are not those of my employer,
   (dmandl@shearson.com)       |          believe me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: TSOS@uni-duesseldorf.de (Detlef Lannert)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: Time Locks...
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 14:44:47 GMT
Organization: Universitaetsrechenzentrum, Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet, Duesseldorf
NNTP-Posting-Host: lannert.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de
Summary: Beam me up, Scotty, I wanna look at tomorrow's keys.

>>Does anyone out there have an idea of how to achieve this time-release of
>>info (probably of an encryption key rather than of a body of text) with the
>>independence of human good behavior but a decent time interval?

Wouldn't it be sufficient for many purposes to have a device that regularly
(e.g. daily) generates an encryption key and broadcasts this, but keeps the
decryption key secret for a well-defined period (one day, seven days, one 
year, ...) after which it adds it to the daily broadcast?

Maybe this quick-and-dirty solution has been suggested before, and it's
not bullet-proof at all. The paranoid will suspect that either the key
sequence is not really random or that the bad guys will gain access to
the internally stored decryption keys before the time interval is elapsed.
But now that we've arrived at talking about satellites, one could as well
assume that the time lock device orbits round the planet so that the Cosa
Nostra would have to rent a space shuttle to have a look at the stored
keys.

The software could be inspected by several independent scientists (and
hackers) to make sure that there is no pseudo-randomness in the keys and
that the memory cannot be tapped by special signals. After all, this thing
would need no control input at all. The daily dose of keys could be
distributed over the networks; whoever wants to, can compare them to the
direct satellite signal.

Such a solution would IMHO suffice for private and small business related
issues, not for anything that's worth launching your own rocket. Given
that, it's still safer than relying on upper bounds on the computational
power of future generations of workstations ...	
--
Detlef Lannert      DC3EK      E-Mail: tsos@rz.uni-duesseldorf.de
"Gedanken sind nicht stets parat,
man schreibt auch, wenn man keine hat."             Wilhelm Busch
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: karn@qualcom.qualcomm.com (Phil Karn)
Subject: Re: Registered Keys - why the need?
Originator: karn@servo.qualcomm.com
Reply-To: karn@chicago.qualcomm.com
Organization: Qualcomm, Inc
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 23:13:05 GMT

In article <1992Nov7.133526.1682@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu>, denning@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu writes:
|> Law enforcers would not be able to activate a tap.
[...]
|> My understanding is that the phone companies keep an audit of all taps.

Lest this seem a little too reassuring, I would like to quote one of
the members of the industry committee that established the standards
for authentication and "privacy" for the new generation of digital
cellular telephones. I asked why the government was so strongly
opposed to the secure encryption of the over-the-air part of a
cellular call when they could still go to the telephone company and
tap the land side of the call where it connects with the regular
public telephone network.

The response? A warrant would be required to gain the telephone
company's assistance, and warrants were considered to be "too
impractical" in many cases.

Draw your own conclusions. Professor Denning ought to spend some time
in the real world before making proposals that implicitly trust the
government to follow its own rules.

Phil

Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: zeke@fasttech.com (Bohdan Tashchuk)
Subject: Re: Finally! We're getting somewhere.
Organization: Fast Technology
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 12:42:54 GMT

I was going to mail a reply to this, but decided that it might be of some
interest to foreign readers.

This doesn't have that much to do with sci.crypt anymore. Stop reading now if
you're not interested in the politics behind why so many here are opposed to
key registration.

In <BxFF18.1oA@constant.demon.co.uk> slangley@constant.demon.co.uk (Simon Langley) writes:

>However, our constitution is, as you imply, not written, and for this reason,
>the final say on our laws belongs to the elected representatives of the
>people rather than a group of unelected Supreme Court judges.  Our system
>has served us well for 350 years, how is the US system "safer"?

First of all, if your system worked all that well in the 1770's, my email
address today would also end in ".uk". But it doesn't. So, "well" is quite
relative. In my opinion the US is the older republic.

Just in case you aren't aware of it, a lot of people over here didn't think
the system was working well at all 216 years ago. We wrote down some of
our complaints against your leader, in another great document titled the
Declaration of Independence. A direct quote:

	The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of
	repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the
	establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States. To prove this,
	let facts be submitted to a candid world.

It doesn't sound like your "elected representatives" were limiting the King's
power all that much at the time. I won't type most of the rest in, but here
are some really juicy parts:

	He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with
	manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

	He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of
	their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

	He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms
	of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

	He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns,
	and destroyed the lives of our people.

This is great stuff. It's what epics are written about. The guys who signed it
took it all pretty seriously, since they ended with:

	And for the support of this Declaration [...]
	we mutually pledge to each other our lives,
	our fortunes and our sacred honor.

-----

It's easy for a legislature to change laws. It's MUCH harder to change our
written Constitution. Our system is safer because it has more "checks and
balances". In order to take away a fundamental right (without passing a
Constitutional amendment), first the Congress would have to pass an
unconstitutional law, and then the President would have to sign the law,
and then the Supreme Court would have to uphold the law.
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.privacy,talk.politics.guns
From: gurgle@netcom.com (Pete Gontier)
Subject: Re: Registering "Assault Keys"
Organization: cellular
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 07:11:35 GMT

sjo@cci632.cci.com (Steve Owens) writes:
>Please state an example
>of something that is legal to do, that you do not do, and still feel
>your right to participate in such activity should be banned.

Smoking tobacco. Drinking alcohol. Telling kids they'll go to hell
if they do taboo thing X. I could go on for a while.

>It would keep the law-abiding
>citizen from participating in a very satisfying form of recreation.

True. But what's recreational satisfaction compared to the blood
of innocents?

An aside: why is it that terms like "law-abiding" creep into
these descriptions? Are criminals unable to derive the same
recreational satisfaction?

>Since there is no evidence to support the claim that a ban would work, 
>there is no reason to support such a ban.

Name just about any country in the EC. Remember, we're talking
about kids finding Daddy's gun and shooting each other with it out
of ignorance. That's *all* I'm talking about.

>Why can't we address the underlying problems?

How much time do you have? :-) In short, for all the reasons Perot
outlined in his campaign speeches. (Not that I voted for Perot,
nosir.)

>"Patching the system" simply adds kludge on top of
>kludge until you have a system that is so huge noone can understand it
>and noone can support it.  If that's the case, it's time for a new system.

Ah, now we've gotten to crux of the problem, haven't we?

Programmers refer to an old, creaky, patched up system as "mature",
at least when they're trying to hire new blood. "Mature" is the way
I'd describe our system. Hell, it's just about the oldest government
on the planet.

>>I understand that a ban on handguns would merely be a band-aid. That
>>doesn't change my preference.

>If you realize a handgun ban doesn't address the problem, then
>for what reason do you support a handgun ban?

A band-aid *does* address the problem. Just not very well.

>If you really want to solve the problem, try studying the problem
>and comming up with real solutions instead of supporting a band-aid that 
>will only effect law-abiding citizens like you or me.

I'm too cynical for that. Maybe when I have lots of money I'll
start thinking about solutions. For now, band-aids'll do fine.
-- 
 Pete Gontier // EC Technology // gurgle@netcom.com
From: marc@tanda.isis.org (Marc Thibault)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: WordPerfect encryption
Date: Sat, 07 Nov 92 14:47:15 EST
Reply-To: marc@tanda.isis.org
Distribution: usa
Organization: Thibault & Friends

In article <1992Nov5.174223.16111@ucsu.Colorado.EDU> 
(SPEAR WILLIAM AARON) writes: 

> Does anyone know how to get the password for an encrypted WordPerfect
> file?

        ftp:
         cs.uwp.edu  /pub/msdos/wp/passwp.zip
         garbo.uwasa.fi /pc/util/wppass2.zip


---
 Marc Thibault        |  Consulting Systems Analyst  |  The PC: Colt '45
 marc@tanda.isis.org  |  R.R.1, Oxford Mills,        |  of the information
 CIS:71441,2226       |  Ontario, Canada  K0G 1S0    |   frontier
 NC FreeNet: aa185    |                              |

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: 2.0

mQBNAiqxYTkAAAECALfeHYp0yC80s1ScFvJSpj5eSCAO+hihtneFrrn+vuEcSavh
AAUwpIUGyV2N8n+lFTPnnLc42Ms+c8PJUPYKVI8ABRG0I01hcmMgVGhpYmF1bHQg
PG1hcmNAdGFuZGEuaXNpcy5vcmc+
=HLnv
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

         
Xref: sparky sci.crypt:4505 comp.org.eff.talk:6883 alt.privacy:2162 talk.politics.guns:23795
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.privacy,talk.politics.guns
Subject: Re: Registered Keys - why the need?
From: jim.wenzel@grapevine.lrk.ar.us (Jim Wenzel) 
Date: 7 Nov 92 09:32:00 GMT
Reply-To: jim.wenzel@grapevine.lrk.ar.us (Jim Wenzel) 
Distribution: world
Organization: The GrapeVine BBS *** N. Little Rock, AR *** (501) 753-8121


David Sternlight * In most  of the world  cars have been  registered for
                   many  years, yet  no democratic  government has  used
                   that as  a way to  confiscate cars (except  for those
                   used in law violations).
                                 = = =

  Bad analogy (IMHO).  Having your car registered does  not mean that it
  can be searched without your permission. Where as with registration of
  private keys  the possibility exists that  your private messages could
  be  read at  will without  your permission  and/or knowledge.  Totally
  different scenario.
---
 * SM 1.06 A0059 * IBM?  [I]ncredibly [B]oring [M]anuals.
                                                                                                    
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,alt.privacy,comp.org.eff.talk