roundtable: GovAccess.169.snoops: PGPman still free; Privacy Prohibition
roundtable: GovAccess.169.snoops: PGPman still free; Privacy Prohibition
GovAccess.169.snoops: PGPman still free; Privacy Prohibition
W. Curtiss Priest (BMSLIB@mitvma.mit.edu)
Fri, 14 Jul 95 11:37:35 EDT
Message-Id: <9507141539.AA09940@a.cni.org>
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 95 11:37:35 EDT
From: "W. Curtiss Priest" <BMSLIB@mitvma.mit.edu>
To: Telecommunications Policy Roundtable <ROUNDTABLE@CNI.ORG>
Subject: GovAccess.169.snoops: PGPman still free; Privacy Prohibition
FYI, Curt, CITS
Curtiss Priest
<bmslib@mitvma.mit.edu>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 11:04:46 -0300
From: jepladson@CCGATE.HAC.COM
To: Multiple recipients of list <inet-news@nstn.ca>
Subject: GovAccess.169.snoops: PGPman still free; Privacy Prohibition
for those interested.........this is always interesting :)
______________________________ Forward Header __________________________________
Subject: GovAccess.169.snoops: PGPman still free; Privacy Prohibition
Author: jwarren@well.com (Jim Warren) at CCGATE
Date: 7/13/95 4:08 PM
Adding another GovAccess threat - uh, I mean thread (Freudian slip :-) ...
GovAccess.nnn.snoops will focus on government privacy prohibitions, the
terrifying counter-"terrorism" bill, the half-billion-buck national wiretap
system, suppression of innocent citizens' crypto, persecution of privacy
implementers such as PGP's Phil Zimmermann, etc.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Strange ABC News Segment: Has Zimmermann Been Busted? Nope! (At least, not yet)
I caught the somewhat-strange July 2nd ABC Evening News segment about Phil
Zimmermann and his free crypto package, PGP.
There was no mention of him being arrested, and he has not been. Seemed
like a generally accurate and balanced NON-news piece, although they said
he had been under investigation "for months" when it's actually been more
than two years!
Hell! - high-profile, suspected international spies don't get strung out
that long without an indictment or alternative closure of the prosecutors'
active investigation!
What seems most probable to me is that the feds are trying to hype the
horrors of allowing 250-million innocent Americans protect the privacy of
their computer files and personal communications, using globally-available
free crypto software - and ABC didn't buy. Instead, they politely included
FBI Director Louie Freeh's doomsday horrors-of-privacy soundbites from
congressional testimony before Arlen Spector's carefully orchestrated,
media-seeking terrorism subcommittee *months* earlier, and then focused on
a rather reasonable featurette on Phil with some excellent soundbites from
him about personal privacy protection.
On the other hand, it mighta been a slightly-successful p.r. effort by MIT
Press for Phil's new hardbound book about PGP and privacy, "The Official
PGP User's Guide", by Philip Zimmermann, from MIT Press, 128 pages, ISBN
0-262-74017-6, $14.95.
Or maybe ABC just wanted to air a piece they had been preparing for some
time, and got tired of waiting for Phil's possible bust.
I say ABC deserves some applause for NOT hyping the horrors of presumed
innocence.
--jim
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Freedom & Privacy Demolition Squad Acts: The Anti-Electronic "Racketeering" Bill
[GEEZZZ! With Senators like these; who needs dictators? --jim]
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 09:54:44 -0700
From: "Brian A. LaMacchia" <bal@martigny.ai.mit.edu> (by way of
mclow@coyote.csusm.edu (Marshall Clow))
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 15:28:25 -0400
Subject: Anti-Electronic Racketeering Act of 1995
On June 27, Sen. Grassley introduced extensive criminal amendments to the
federal racketeering act. S. 974, the "Anti-Electronic Racketeering Act of
1995," would amend U.S. Code sections 18 USC 1961 (criminal RICO statute),
18 USC 1030A (new section on computer crime), 18 USC 2515, 2516
(wiretapping), and 42 USC 2000aa (Privacy Protection Act).
This proposed legislation is Very Bad. It would make all encryption
software posted to computer networks that are accessible to foreigners
illegal *regardless of whether the NSA has classified the software as a
munition!!!* Here's the language:
"Sec. 1030A. Racketeering-related crimes involving computers
"(a) It shall be unlawful--
. . .
"(2) to distribute computer software that encodes or encrypts
electronic or digital communications to computer networks that the
person distributing knows, or reasonably should know, is accessible to
foreign nationals and foreign governments, regardless of whether such
software has been designated nonexportable."
It's much worse than this. Look at the definition of "predicate act":
`(b) For purposes of this section, each act of distributing
software is considered a separate predicate act. Each instance in
which nonexportable software is accessed by a foreign government,
an agent of a foreign government, a foreign national, or an agent
of a foreign national, shall be considered as a separate predicate
act.
Now, since the bill also makes 1030A violations "racketeering activities",
all you need are two predicate acts and RICO comes into play.
Finally, we begin to see the attack on all forms of un-escrowed encryption.
The bill provides an affirmable defense of giving the keys to the
government ahead of time!
`(c) It shall be an affirmative defense to prosecution under this
section that the software at issue used a universal decoding device
or program that was provided to the Department of Justice prior to
the distribution.'.
There are also some nice surprises related to wiretapping evidence (would
allow the gov't. to use the fruits of an illegal wiretap conducted by a
third party if the government didn't know about the wiretap) and the
Privacy Protection Act.
Get a copy of this bill from:
ftp://ftp.loc.gov/pub/thomas/c104/s974.is.FTP
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Illustrating Why Big Keys are Needed for *Secure* Information Locks
From: "Middleton, Tony/OMIDNV" <tmiddlet@omidnv.ms.ch2m.com>
Date: Fri, 07 Jul 95 18:05:00 PDT
Thank you for publishing such an interesting collection of information and
great rants. I found the following on Usenet and thought you might be
interested.
=-=-=-=
Article 26903 of alt.privacy:
From: pcl@sable.ox.ac.uk (Paul Leyland)
Newsgroups: alt.security.pgp,sci.crypt,alt.privacy
Subject: The BlackNet 384-bit PGP key has been BROKEN
Date: 26 Jun 1995 10:09:15 GMT
Xref: cnsnews alt.security.pgp:37196 sci.crypt:36123 alt.privacy:26903
We announce the first known hostile attack on a PGP public key. ["Hostile
attack" is a technical term in cryptographic circles; gun-control advocates
need not be concerned. --jim]
In 1993, Tim May created BlackNet as a proof-of-concept implementation of
an information trading business with cryptographically protected anonymity
of the traders. He created a 1024-bit key, and invited potential traders to
encrypt their sales pitch and a public key for a reply with the BlackNet
key, posting the result in one or more Usenet newsgroups. BlackNet would
then reply in the same manner. The original proposal went only to a few
people and May acknowledged his authorship shortly afterwards, when his
pedagogical point had been made. It was soon posted to the Cypherpunks
list, and from there to Usenet. Six months afterwards in February 1994, a
384-bit key was created in the BlackNet name, and the BlackNet message was
spammed to hundreds of newsgroups by the new key owner, L. Detweiler.
At least one message was posted encrypted in the 384-bit key. The
encryptor, either by design or by unwitting use of PGP's encrypttoself
option, also encrypted the message to his own key, exposing his identity to
anyone who cared to look him up on the key servers and use finger.
Factoring 384-bit integers is not too difficult these days. We wanted to
see whether it could be done surreptitiously. Jim Gillogly picked the
384-bit BlackNet key as a suitable target, partly because of its apparent
interest and partly because he had saved a copy of the reply. Paul Leyland
took the key to pieces. ...
[Extensive details followed, of interest to cryptoids. --jim]
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
"If cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl."
[via therogue@dnai.com]
Mo' as it Is.
--jim
Jim Warren, GovAccess list-owner/editor (jwarren@well.com)
Advocate & columnist, MicroTimes, Government Technology, BoardWatch, etc.
345 Swett Rd., Woodside CA 94062; voice/415-851-7075; fax/<# upon request>
To add or drop GovAccess, email to Majordomo@well.com ('Subject' ignored)
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Past postings are at ftp.cpsr.org: /cpsr/states/california/govaccess
and by WWW at http://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/states/california/govaccess .
Also forwarded to USENET's comp.org.cpsr.talk by CPSR's Al Whaley.
May be copied & reposted except for any items that explicitly prohibit it.
The following is an attached File item from cc:Mail. It contains
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