waashk/20ng huggingface dataset:
In article <strnlghtC5t3K6.InF@netcom.com>, strnlght@netcom.com (David Sternlight) writes: > In article <tcmayC5rs6n.Lz8@netcom.com> tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) writes: > >After the Waco Massacre and the Big Brother Wiretap Chip, any tactic > >is fair. >  > This is pernicious nonsense! >  > David Sternlight         Great care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of  Since the FBI's account of what happened is being contradicted on an increasingly frequent basis by other officials investigating the fire, the most pernicious idea of all is believing that Big Brother is going to be well-behaved with respect to cryptographic keys.  In light of the very serious allegations with respect to the DOJ selling software to various other intelligence services, what do you suppose the chances are of some future DOJ selling escrowed keys to business firms?  Trusting the government to be honest and fair is putting the  fox in charge of protecting the chickens.
In article <1993Apr16.113151.7648@cs.aukuni.ac.nz> pgut1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz writes:  >In <C5Jzsz.Jzo@cs.uiuc.edu> kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M Kadie) writes: > >looks like you can't be forced to reveal a password, if anyone can provide >a convincing legal argument to the contrary (ie an actual court case) I'd >be most interested... > This is the case in Britain, according to the head of the computer crime unit here when I interviewed him a couple of months ago.  wg
I want to add link encryption to a module that multiplexes upper level routines into a single data link. The upper levels won't know about this, and thus key exchange shall only need to occur once (at the initial link establishment). I figure that I can do this with DES and a Diffie-Hellman key exchange.  Is using a Diffie-Hellman exchange to establish a 64 bit DES key acceptable, in other words, what are the pro's and con's of such a  setup? Are there any important issues to watch out for (aside from filtering out unacceptable keys)?  And in order to achieve this, I guess I will need to use 64bit math routines (for probable prime number calculation, exponentiation etc), so could someone point me towards a good package (this is strictly non-commercial).  Matthew.
Gentlefolk,          It seems to me that the "Step 1" of taking a warrant to the         telco to get a wiretap is so much stinky red herring (don't         you love animal metaphors).          With each phone broadcasting the serial number of its chip         ("E(N;F)" is not syntactically different than "N"), all they         have to do is aim a reciever in the general direction of         today's target and use the serial number to identify the         session they want, and get the chip number of the other end of         the conversation. Even without the key, this is great for         traffic analysis. I can think of several ways to learn the         right serial number.          It looks like one intended effect of the Clipper is to         eliminate the awkward business of getting the telco to         cooperate (or risking getting caught in the act with your         alligator clips erect). This is particularly handy if you have         S1 and S2.          BTW, did anyone explain why they are scrambling the serial         number?                  Cheers,                 Marc  ---  Marc Thibault                             | marc@tanda.isis.org  Automation Architect                      | CIS:71441,2226  R.R.1, Oxford Mills, Ontario, Canada      | NC FreeNet: aa185
strnlght@netcom.com (David Sternlight) writes:  > I will provide one hint: it is reported that RSA expressed puzzlement (at > their conference) that nobody has asked for permission to use RIPEM to > write a PGP-compatible program.  This actually supports Bill's speculation - IF there is a backdoor in RSAREF and IF PKP is supported secretly by the NSA, then it is more than natural that they will welcome ANY public-key implementation that uses RSAREF and will strongly oppose themselves against ANY implementation that doesn't.  I personally cannot see how one could put a backdoor in a long-precision modular arithmetic library that comes in source, but, of course, the fact that -I- cannot see it means nothing...  Regards, Vesselin
In article <1r74a4$h2t@transfer.stratus.com> cme@ellisun.sw.stratus.com (Carl Ellison) writes: > >I've been reading the sci.crypt, alt.privacy.clipper and comp.org.eff.talk >discussions about the Clipper chip and find (as usual) that most of us >think alike -- so there's a lot of repitition.  If each of these messages >were sent to Clinton as well as to the net (or instead of to the net), we >might actually have some effect. > >	0005895485@MCIMAIL.COM  (White House)  Is this "White House e-mail address" really working yet? Someone posted such an address on CompuServe a few months ago, but apparently the White House wasn't really set up to recive hundreds (thousands?) of messages a day to that account and didn't want people to use it yet. So is this MCI address something the people at the White House actually read, or is it another Craig Shergold story? I don't know -- I'm just asking.  Unless the people at the White House print and distribute this mail every day, you may have better luck printing out a letter (on paper, that flat white stuff all over my desk) and Snail-Mailing it to the White House. I imagine writing to your local representative and senator wouldn't hurt either. Heck, why not write to Al Gore while you're at it?  				greg
In <1993Apr21.001707.9999@ucsu.Colorado.EDU> andersom@spot.Colorado.EDU (Marc Anderson) writes:  >(the date I have for this is 1-26-93)  >note Clinton's statements about encryption in the 3rd paragraph..  I guess >this statement doesen't contradict what you said, though.  >--- cut here ---  >        WASHINGTON (UPI) -- The War on Drugs is about to get a fresh >start, President Clinton told delegates to the National Federation >of Police Commisioners convention in Washington. >        In the first speech on the drug issue since his innaugural, >Clinton said that his planned escalation of the Drug War ``would make >everything so far seem so half-hearted that for all practical >purposes this war is only beginning now.'' He repeatedly emphasized >his view that ``regardless of what has been tried, or who has tried >it, or how long they've been trying it, this is Day One to me.'' >The audience at the convention, whose theme is ``How do we spell >fiscal relief?  F-O-R-F-E-I-T-U-R-E,'' interrupted Clinton frequently >with applause. >        Clinton's program, presented in the speech, follows the >outline given in his campaign position papers: a cabinet-level Drug >Czar and ``boot camps'' for first-time youthful offenders.  He did, >however, cover in more detail his plans for improved enforcement >methods.  ``This year's crime bill will have teeth, not bare gums,'' >Clinton said.  In particular, his administration will place strict >controls on data formats and protocols, and require the registration >of so-called ``cryptographic keys,'' in the hope of denying drug >dealers the ability to communicate in secret.  Clinton said the >approach could be used for crackdowns on other forms of underground >economic activity, such as ``the deficit-causing tax evaders who >live in luxury at the expense of our grandchildren.'' >        Clinton expressed optimism that the drug war can be won >``because even though not everyone voted for Bill Clinton last >November, everyone did vote for a candidate who shares my sense of >urgency about fighting the drug menace.  The advocates of >legalization -- the advocates of surrender -- may be very good at >making noise,'' Clinton said.  ``But when the American people cast >their ballots, it only proved what I knew all along -- that the >advocates of surrender are nothing more than a microscopic fringe.''  Just doing a quick reality check here - is this for real or did someone invent it to provoke a reaction from people?  It sounds more like the sort of thing you'd have heard, suitably rephrased, from the leader of a  certain German political party in the 1930's....
In article <1993Apr20.145338.14804@shearson.com> 	pmetzger@snark.shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger) writes:  [I wrote:] >>The chip and algorithm are classified.  If you reverse engineer it and >>tell people, you are likely to go to jail.  >Well, I'm not a lawyer, but from what I can tell this is completely >and utterly untrue.  >The U.S. does NOT have an official secrets act. We do have laws that >will punish you for revealing what classified information you learned >in your capacity as a government official, contractor, etc, and we >have laws that prohibit stealing such information. However, if they >sell you the chip, I can't see that they can make reverse engineering >it and revealing the details illegal.  In most cases information you come by properly is yours to use as you wish, but there are certainly exceptions.  If you write a paper which includes sufficiently detailed information on how to build a nuclear weapon, it is classified.  As I understand the law, nuclear weapons design is _automatically_ classified even if you do the work yourself.  I believe you are then not allowed to read your own paper.  A less serious example: if you tell drivers about a speed trap they are about to run into, you can be fined, even though you might argue that you broke no law when you discovered the location of the policeman.  The charge is interfering with a police officer, which is quite similar what you would be doing by reverse engineering the Clipper chip.  Don't tell me that you think this violates the Constitution -- find some court cases which have struck down such laws.  Many people would not be comforted by the fact that the government violated their rights when it imprisoned them.
About 50 people so far have asked, "Once the FBI gets your Clipper keys, won't they be able to read all your future and past traffic?"  There has been no response from NIST, NSA, Ms. Denning, Mr. Hellman, or anyone else who might be able to give us an authoritative answer. This is troubling.  Didn't NSA think about this?  Or is it a feature, and they thought we wouldn't notice?  I would have thought that by now they would have responded with something of the form, "Well, that won't be a problem because ...."  Very curious.
My thoughts on why the algorithm is secret :     The chip is (regretably) likely to become a standard.   There will    be many applications where economic factors dictate use of this    chip, like it or not.     If the alrogithm is public, and the code is as secure (absent the     access to escrowed keys) as represented, an enterprising sort     would make "compatible crypto chips for which no key had been    escrowed".  This is likely what the release was refering to when     they refered to the secrecy of the algorithm protecting the    security of the escrow system.
In article <KCKLUGE.93Apr27233027@krusty.eecs.umich.edu> kckluge@eecs.umich.edu (Karl Kluge) writes: >In article <1993Apr17.071859.9555@csus.edu> sphughes@sfsuvax1.sfsu.edu (Shaun P. Hughes) writes: >   >encryption's dual-edge sword:  encryption helps to protect the >   >privacy of individuals and industry, but it also can shield >   >criminals and terrorists.  We need the "Clipper Chip" and other >    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >      Just a random passing thought, but can anyone cite a documented use >   of encryption technology by criminals and terrorists. >      (Excluding the Iran-Contra Gang) > >Sure, the rum-runners in Prohibition. See Kahn's _The Codebreakers_. >The irony was, they were using better codes and key security than >most governments were.  Yes -- great chapter.  Elizabeth Friedman (sp?) comes shining through.  However, the chapter also notes that these rum runners invented their own crypto -- hired ex-military folks, in fact.  (How's that for a revolving door?)  Now, given that today's rum runners (coke runners, actually) have even more money than yesterday's, it's reasonable to expect them to have even better cryptography.  I doubt they have a chip foundry of their own yet, but ....  So, my question of the FBI/NIST/NSA is: "How are you going to make the rum runners use the Clipper Chip?"  Answer:  	you're not.  Question:	OK -- in that case, your justification for taking away our 		rights has evaporated.  How do you justify our loss of rights 		if you can't use the drug dealers and terrorists?
Argh. This is what I get for acknowledging David Sternlight's existence.  In article <strnlghtC602x2.Ir2@netcom.com> strnlght@netcom.com (David Sternlight) writes: > Though I think this an overstatement, it does contain a grain of truth. It's > drug dealers, spies, terrorists, and organized crime figures (assuming > enough probable cause to convince a judge) who need to be watched, not > law-abiding citizens.  Okay, it looks like I am going to have to do the history lesson after all.  During the Vietnam war, there were a great many citizens opposed to it who considered themselves perfectly law abiding, although Mr. Nixon and his lackeys thought otherwise.  The Federal government had no compunction about adding "people who are otherwise decent, law abiding and upstanding, but disagree with us" to your nice little list. Do you think this could never happen again?  Note that I am not speculating about what the government could do, but discussing the sort of "observation" - including but not limited to phone tapping - that the government put its citizens under during a time of national tension.  Your naivete is still appalling, BTW. I mean, read what you posted again. How are we to differentiate between Good People and Bad People? Answer: A priori, we can't; we have to assume. Now, which way do we assume? Do we assume a priori that a citizen is law-abiding, or rather a potential CommunistDrugLordChildAbuserCultMessiah? One of the things that's supposedly great about America is the freedoms enjoyed by citizens who are presumed to be law-abiding until proven otherwise. --
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----  In article <cliftonrC69tvt.4AL@netcom.com> cliftonr@netcom.com (Pope Clifton) writes:  [...] > If I want to talk to someone, I don't need to have previously exchanged > keys with him, I just call him up, and the phones establish a session key > for us using a zero-knowledge algorithm or something of the kind.  (If I've > misunderstood this part, it probably invalidates the rest of this notion.) >  > This lends itself to spoofing. [...] > I go buy a pair of Clipper phones to go on a pair of phone lines in a back > room somewhere, and have the digital switch programmed to redirect his > calls to one of my two lines instead of to his, whenever he receives a > call.  The two phones are wired back-to-back in the clear.   > Anyone see any problem with this scheme, other than to assume that all > public officials and phone company employees are totally incorruptible?  As far as I can see, no matter how the session keys are generated (be it Diffie-Hellman or whatever), any Cripple conversation which travels in whole or in part over a land-line is vulnerable to this scheme.  Law- enforcement agencies can do it legally at the telco, or illegally by finding some part of the phone line that they can cut into.  The degree of risk depends very much on location - not good in the middle of a busy street, but not bad on a line in open country (leading to a drug lord's ranch).  The only way to defeat it would be if your phone had the equivalent of a public key indexed against phone number for every phone you might want to call (all of them) - totally impractical, even if some part of the Cripple algorithm could be used as a kind of public key (I don't understand enough about these things to know).  This sort of encryption scheme is only really workable over a radio link, and even then you could probably interevene without causing problems for other phones nearby if you were physically close to the target phone.  Gosh, yet another way to get round Cripple encryption.  How many is that we've found so far?  And that's without even knowing the details of the algorithm.  - --Paul  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.2
In <1993Apr17.032828.14262@clarinet.com>, brad@clarinet.com sez: > >Do the police normally reveal every tap they do even if no charges are >laid?   In many ways, it would be a positive step if they had to. >Judges set time limits on warrants, I assume.    Under the relevant federal law, 18 USC sec. 2518(8)(d), the authorizing judge must notify the targets within 90 days after the tap period (with extensions) expires.  This is the "normal" practice.  Of course, no wiretap law would be complete without the Unless Clause, which in subsection 8(d) reads like this: "On an ex parte showing [i.e., by the gov't without opposition, since that would obviously involve notice to the targets] of good cause to a judge of competent jurisdiction the serving of the inventory required by this subsection [the order itself; dates of interception; etc.] *may be postponed*" (emphasis added).   [Followups directed to a few select groups.]
In article <1993Apr21.001230.26384@lokkur.dexter.mi.us> scs@lokkur.dexter.mi.us (Steve Simmons) writes:   >Normally I'd be the last to argue with Steve . . . but shouldn't that >read "3.8 years for *all* solutions".  I mean, if we can imagine the >machine that does 1 trial/nanosecond, we can imagine the storage medium >that could index and archive it.      Hmmmm.  I think, with really large keyspaces like this, you need to alter the strategy discussed for DES.  Attempt decryption of several blocks, and check the disctribution of the contents.  I don't think it's at all feasible to keep 2**80 encryptions of a known plaintext block on *any* amount of tape or CD-ROM.  And certainly not 2**128 such encrypted blocks.  (Anyone know a cheap way of converting every atom in the solar system into a one bit storage device?)      Actually, a keysearch of this kind shouldn't be much worse than the simpler kind in terms of speed.  It's just that you have to do it over for *every* encrypted message.      Dumb question:  Has anyone ever done any serious research on how many legitimate ASCII-encoded 8-byte blocks there are that could be part of an english sentence?  For attacking DES in ECB mode, it seems like a dictionary of this kind might be pretty valuable....
David Sternlight (strnlght@netcom.com) wrote: : In article <1993Apr22.170418.15799@news.eng.convex.com> gardner@convex.com : (Steve Gardner) writes:  ...cascades elided to preserve our sanity....  : That wasn't my point. My point is that your implied position about the "Waco : Massacre" is an assertion cum political position. According to a CNN poll, .... : What you call the "Big Brother Chip" is right now a proposal under : discussion, and it is not yet clear that strong crypto is going to be : banned.  Just to set the record straight, Steve Gardner was not the author of the bit you quoted--I was. Steve just took issue with David's characterization of my words as "pernicious nonsense."  I won't further comment on my own views...folks either support 'em or they don't, and the lines in question were neither central to the points I was making in my original post nor to the important debate here in sci.crypt and elsewhere.   -Tim May, who continues to hold the same views but doesn't feel like debating politics
In this giant bally-ho over this Clipper chip I noticed a rather disturbing trend in some of the E-mail and posts I've tossing back and forth.    Somebody asked me what was wrong about overreacting in cases such as this.  The reason is very simple:  How many people do you want to die in a riot?  In a new Civil War?   Everybody is jumping up and down and screaming about it, and I'm worried that people are going to reach for their hammers and rifles before their pens and paper.    Can people work within the system before trying to break it?  Examine your history books, and find out how many armed revolutions led to Democratic (or Democratic style) governments.  I think you'll only find one in over five thousand years of written history.  That's not very good odds.    Somebody once said something like: "Armed Violence is meant only to be used in response to an armed attack.  It is not meant to be used in agression.  This is the difference between self-defence and murder."  Let's try to avoid killing things, eh?  There's enough blood shed in the world, without adding a couple of riots, Civil Wars, etc.  I'm probably overreacting.  But what I've read scared me a lot.  I don't want my children growing up in a War Zone.
In article <1r9m97$enn@news.intercon.com> amanda@intercon.com (Amanda Walker) writes: >CompuServe is in Columbus, OH.  So are the corporate headquarters of several  >major insurance companies, the largest private R&D company in the world  >(Batelle Memorial Institute), DCSC (The Defense Construction & Supply  >Center), Ohio State University (one of the three largest US universities),  >OCLC (the Online College Library Center), and so on.  You'd be amazed,  >actually.  Don't forget Chemical Abstracts Service (which is pretty much the international clearinghouse for all chemical information), whose former director (Ronald Wigington) and head of R&D (Nick Farmer) were openly former NSA employees.
For some reason my fingers want to type "probably" cause whenever I want to say "probable" cause. Sorry for any confusion in the previous message.  David
The M code stream  might be independently attacked based on knowledge of clipper chip protocols as revealed plaintext.  This could be invalidated by changing the temporal and or spatial relationship of the clipper M stream and the actual transmitted stream, under the control of a secure key generator synchronized between endpoints.  The useful life time of captured law enforcement blocks might be limited based on hostile forces using them as targets following transmission interception.  You would need a large number of them, but, hey there's supposed to be millions of these things, right?  Adding time stamps to the encrypted law enforcement block is probably impractical, who wants an encryption chip with a real time clock?  *****************************************************************************  The entire idea of the law enforcement block can be invalidated.  I just had the thought, that you could capture your own law enforcement blocks for session keys K that you will not use in actual transmissions as the session key authenticators.  The proviso that you don't mind your own serial number being discovered.  d. denning just sent out further information of a new version of the clipper chip.	If a hash function were to be embedded in a clipper M transmission block reflecting the law enforcement block, it better not fall on 64 bit block boundaries.  If it were a recognizeable datum, you could lie with it too.  I like the randomizer inclusion in the MYK-80.  I remember reading that Intel had an approved random noise source on silicon, hence the ability to put it Inside.
In article <1993Apr16.204207.24564@eff.org> Danny Weitzner <djw@eff.org>  writes: >The 80-bit key will be divided between two escrow agents, each of whom >hold 40-bits of each key.   Presumably, the key split is so that no one group controls the privacy of the key, and that it would be infeasible to illicitly gain access from both agents.  However, if one agent wishes to break the crypto without the cooperation of the other agent, a 40-bit key is not going to stand in the way of a brute force attack.  If an agency (for example, the NSA) were to hold one of the two key-halves, then I don't imagine they really need the other half of the key to start listening in.  Or was that the point?   <grin>   (This is not to imply, at all, that I like the idea of the rest of the system.)
gtoal@gtoal.com (Graham Toal) writes: > >In the UK, it's impossible to get approval to attach any crypto device >to the phone network.  (Anything that plugs in to our BT phone sockets >must be approved - for some reason crypto devices just never are...) >  Whats the difference between a V.32bis modem and a V.32bis modem?  I'm not being entirely silly here: what I'm pointing out is that the modems that they have already approved for data transmission will work just fine to transmit scrambled vocoded voice.  -- Perry Metzger		pmetzger@shearson.com