Please Make Stable NON-US Homes for Strong Crypto Projects
It's clear that the U.S. administration is putting out feelers to again ban publication of strong encryption. See http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46816,00.html.
The evil gnomes who keep advancing unconstitutional U.S. anti-crypto policies know that the current hysteria in Congress and the Administration will not last forever, so they will probably move very quickly -- within a week is my guess -- to re-control encryption, either by a unilateral action of the Administration (by amending the Export Administration Regulations), or by stuffing a rider onto some so-called "emergency" bill in Congress.
They maneuvered very carefully in the Bernstein case, so that there is no outstanding injunction against violating the Constitution this way -- and even no binding 9th-Circuit precedent that tells them it's unconstitutional to do so. They know in their hearts that numerous judges have found it unconstitutional, but they have proven throughout the seven-year history of the case that they don't give a damn about the Constitution. That means it may take weeks, months, or years for civil liberties workers to get a judge to roll back any such action. Not just days. We won the case, but they squirmed out of any permanent restrictions -- so far.
The U.S. government has a new mania for wiretapping everyone in case he might be a terrorist. There are already two bills in Congress to make it trivial for them to wiretap anybody on flimsy excuses, and to retroactively justify their precipitous act of rolling Carnivore boxes into major ISPs this week and demanding, without legal authority, that they be put at the heart of the networks (see http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cta.091401.html).
Even more than before, we will need good encryption tools, merely to maintain privacy for law-abiding citizens, political activists, and human rights workers. (In the current hysteria, mere messages advocating peace or Constitutional rights might best be encrypted.) The European Parliament also recently recommended that European communications be routinely encrypted to protect them from pervasive U.S. Echelon wiretaps.
Some U.S. developers, who thought such a reversal would never happen, have built or maintained a number of good Open Source encryption tools in the United States, and may not have lined up solid foreign maintainers or home sites.
LET'S FIX THAT! We need volunteers in many countries to mirror current distributions, CVS trees, etc. We need volunteers to also act as maintainers, accepting patches and integrating them into solid releases.
(Note that too many countries have pledged to stand toe-to-toe with the U.S. while they march off to make war on somebody, though they can't figure out who it is yet. If you live in one of those countries, you may suddenly find that your own crypto regs have been sneakily altered. Take care that each useful package has maintainers and distribution points in diverse countries.)
I haven't kept close track of which packages are in danger. I suggest that people nominate packages, that others immediately grab mirror copies of them as they are nominated, and that some of those who mirror them keep quiet, in case hysterical governments make a concerted effort to stamp out all copies and/or all major distribution sites. If you aren't the quiet type, then AFTER immediately pulling a copy of the code outside U.S. jurisdiction, announce your mirror.
We freedom-loving U.S. citizens have had to rely on the freedom-loving citizens of saner countries to do the work of making strong encryption for many years. We had a brief respite, which we will eventually resume for good. In the meantime, please let me apologize for my countrymen and for my government for asking you to shoulder most of the burden again. Thank you so much.
P.S.: Companies with proprietary encryption packages might consider immediately Open Sourcing and exporting their encryption add-ins, so their customers can still get them from overseas archives, or taking other actions to safeguard the privacy and integrity of their customers' data and their society's infrastructure. I also advise that they lobby like hell to keep privacy and integrity legal in the U.S.
freedom
freedom for all...
Too late ...
I would *love* to help, believe me, but ...
... I live in France, where real crypto is considered as a war weapon. So it's not legal here too.
So what countries are "sane"?
What countries do have sane laws about things like crypto? And possibly even more importantly, laws about such things that don't sway with the slightest political breeze? What nations don't arrest teen-agers for writing code to watch legally purchased DVDs? Or programmers for writing code to process a file format? If not many of the EU nations, and not the USA, then where? (And who knows, at this point I'm so disgusted with how little "Americans" care about such issues I might just up and immigrate).
Crypto Programs
Where is the list of files to be kept? Things like PGP, GPG are already mirrored outside of the US... what else should people mirror?
Re: Too late ...
> I would *love* to help, believe me, but
> ...
>
> ... I live in France, where real
> crypto is considered as a war weapon. So
> it's not legal here too.
There was a law project to free encryption (currently limited to 128bits algorithm),
but with the new position in USA, i wondering what will happen to this.
Add to this the software patent, and you will found a nice place for freedom ...
Liberté Egalité Fraternité
==> Freedom Equality Fraternity
Re: Crypto Programs
> Where is the list of files to be kept?
jya.com/crypto-free.htm & cryptome.org/
There you have some url's
Re: So what countries are "sane"?
> What countries do have sane laws about
> things like crypto? And possibly even
> more importantly, laws about such things
> that don't sway with the slightest
> political breeze? What nations don't
> arrest teen-agers for writing code to
> watch legally purchased DVDs? Or
> programmers for writing code to process
> a file format? If not many of the EU
> nations, and not the USA, then where?
> (And who knows, at this point I'm so
> disgusted with how little
> "Americans" care about such
> issues I might just up and immigrate).
I think Germany is very good that way.
Re: So what countries are "sane"?
> What countries do have sane laws about
> things like crypto?
Denmark, I think. And probably the other
Scandinavian countries as well.
wtf?
here is what confuses me... what's going to stop a (potential) terrorist from using an older version of crypto w/out back doors??? i realize that eventually it will be broken but until then....
crypto to mirror
Munitions (munitions.polkaroo.net/)
! This is a great archive, doing exactly what you're talking about. I suggest if you want to help, start helping them out by putting up more mirrors.
OpenSSL (www.openssl.org) (OpenSSH (www.openssh.org) too perhaps)
SSLeay (ftp.pca.dfn.de/pub/too...)
GPG (www.gnupg.org)/PGP
Everything under the following freshmeat categories:
Old Appindex :: Console :: Encryption (freshmeat.net/browse/644/)
Old Appindex :: X11 :: Encryption (freshmeat.net/browse/802/)
Re: wtf?
> here is what confuses me... what's going
> to stop a (potential) terrorist from
> using an older version of crypto w/out
> back doors??? i realize that eventually
> it will be broken but until then....
The Law, of course. Terrorists will abstain from using strong crypto because it is illegal, and they don't want to break the law. Makes sense to me.
Don't re-elect our politicians
We live in the U.S. where our politicians are elected. Can we not make it clear to them that we will not vote for them if they ban encryption? This might be a good excuse for spam mail -- let the populace know what's happening to them.
Re: Don't re-elect our politicians
> We live in the U.S. where our
> politicians are elected. Can we not make
> it clear to them that we will not vote
> for them if they ban encryption? This
> might be a good excuse for spam mail --
> let the populace know what's happening
> to them.
yes, but you have to remember that the majority of the population is ignorant. if they are told by the media that this is a good thing they will favor it... i saw a news site the other day (linked from /.) that said something like 80% of the public favored back doors... of course nearly 100% of the "geeks" fell in that other 20%...
Re: Don't re-elect our politicians
Personally, what I'd like to see is an emigration HOWTO. I bet if I put a draft up on kuro5hin I'd make a bunch of friends..
>
> % We live in the U.S. where our
> % politicians are elected. Can we not
> make
> % it clear to them that we will not
> vote
> % for them if they ban encryption?
> This
> % might be a good excuse for spam mail
> --
> % let the populace know what's
> happening
> % to them.
>
>
> yes, but you have to remember that the
> majority of the population is ignorant.
> if they are told by the media that this
> is a good thing they will favor it... i
> saw a news site the other day (linked
> from /.) that said something like 80% of
> the public favored back doors... of
> course nearly 100% of the
> "geeks" fell in that other
> 20%...
>
Non-US Home
There's a SourceForge clone in Germany at BerliOS.
enemy.org starts sw-mirror
enemy.org is starting a software mirror for some
of the crypto-sources at ftp.enemy.org/pub/crypto.
we are located in austria/vienna.
at the moment we mirror the gnupg and openssl
archives. please comment what else would be important to have archived.
later,
alec
An alternate opinion
I work on a project that needs encryption to assure publishers that their property will not be 'stolen' by software pirates. I also work for an ecommerce company selling software to various parts of the world that encourage breaking of US copyright laws. In both of these situations, the reality is, if someone really wants to decrypt your 'books' or break your copy protection, they'll do it. We must settle with the reality that the best we can do is make it difficult such that a reasonable level of security is obtained; or at least weigh the expense of time and money of further efforts with the additional percentage of protection we get.
My next point will probably not go over very well... I personally don't care if the NSA monitors my email. I would encourage them to do such. I have nothing to hide. And in the wake of September 11th, the price (whatever that might be; I'm not thinking of anything that troubles me right now) is well worth it.
Unlike people in many other countries, I really elect my government. I choose to put people over me and my country and ask them to protect us. I think intelligence is a vital form of this, and I would love for us to be able to write 'nearly unbreakable' encryption, and for them to have the intelligence and other capacity to break it.
SUMMARY: I don't think encryption export laws do anything more than gun control laws. Criminal will NOT obey the law, as others have already commented. I understand our SIGINT capacity is NOT where it needs to be, and this is where my complaint lies. Their call should be, "Fine, encrypt away. We have the best and brightest and we'll have no troubles doing our job."
And as an American with nothing to hide from my government, I say, "Do it well!"
Re: So what countries are "sane"?
> What countries do have sane laws about
> things like crypto?
Canada. Infact some Canadain companies have exported strong encryption to China.
Canadian cryptography export summary (insight.mcmaster.ca/or...)
Re: enemy.org starts sw-mirror
> enemy.org is starting a software mirror
> for some
> of the crypto-sources at
> ftp.enemy.org/pub/crypto.
>
> we are located in austria/vienna.
>
> at the moment we mirror the gnupg and
> openssl
> archives. please comment what else
> would be important to have archived.
>
> later,
> alec
As I put in an earlier comment, it would be agreat idea to become a Munitions (munitions.polkaroo.net/) mirror if you want to help out.
Re: An alternate opinion
> I work on a project that needs
> encryption to assure publishers that
> their property will not be 'stolen' by
> software pirates. I also work for an
> ecommerce company selling software to
> various parts of the world that
> encourage breaking of US copyright laws.
> In both of these situations, the
> reality is, if someone really wants to
> decrypt your 'books' or break your copy
> protection, they'll do it. We must
> settle with the reality that the best we
> can do is make it difficult such that a
> reasonable level of security is
> obtained; or at least weigh the expense
> of time and money of further efforts
> with the additional percentage of
> protection we get.
What you fail to understand here is that cryptography isn't all the same. If you're using it to prevent people from making copies of something you sell them, no, it will not work because that is impossible. Cryptography is about keeping a secret between two or more parties that want it to be a secret. If the recipient of the message wants to share it, there's nothing you can do to stop him.
However, If you're using cryptography in a case where both people *want* to keep the secret (let's say a customer is giving his credit card to a reputable business over the internet), then strong cryptography can be very powerful and extremely difficult to crack.
> My next point will probably not go
> over very well... I personally don't
> care if the NSA monitors my email. I
> would encourage them to do such. I have
> nothing to hide. And in the wake of
> September 11th, the price (whatever that
> might be; I'm not thinking of anything
> that troubles me right now) is well
> worth it.
Saying "I have nothing to hide" shows only ignorance. Perhaps YOU don't use email for anything of any importance, but many people do. Would you be ok with letting government agents come in your house any time they want, then living with you to watch everything you do, just waiting for something they can use against you?
And I shouldn't say just the government, because surely when everything is backdoored you can't believe the government's master secret keys will stay secret forever. The first time something gets out, everyone's screwed.
> Unlike people in many other countries,
> I really elect my government. I choose
> to put people over me and my country and
> ask them to protect us. I think
> intelligence is a vital form of this,
> and I would love for us to be able to
> write 'nearly unbreakable' encryption,
> and for them to have the intelligence
> and other capacity to break it.
>
> SUMMARY: I don't think encryption
> export laws do anything more than gun
> control laws. Criminal will NOT obey
> the law, as others have already
> commented. I understand our SIGINT
> capacity is NOT where it needs to be,
> and this is where my complaint lies.
> Their call should be, "Fine,
> encrypt away. We have the best and
> brightest and we'll have no troubles
> doing our job."
>
> And as an American with nothing to
> hide from my government, I say, "Do
> it well!"
Again, you're confused about encryption. Strong crypto is extremely difficult to break when implemented correctly.
And I think most americans would disagree with you if asked "Do you have the right to keep a secret?"
Re: An alternate opinion
footnote: Thank you, though, for not backing up the ban of crypto. My above rant would have been much nastier ;)
Re: An alternate opinion
> My next point will probably not go
> over very well... I personally don't
> care if the NSA monitors my email. I
Why do think this this won't go over very well? Is it because most people are criminals, or do they fear a government that has no limits?
Don't forget, you can work for the government and be a criminal at the same time. That goes for legislators as well.
> Unlike people in many other countries,
> I really elect my government. I choose
> to put people over me and my country and
Yes, but when was the last time you were personally consulted by your representative before he/she proposed or voted on any public policy? Voting only legitimizes those that hold office, it doesn't legitimize what laws they create. That's why there is constitutional review. The constitution guarantees privacy and with good reason. It's not the government's right to snoop on it's citizens. Not unless we want to toss out the constitution. I for one kinda dig it.
good editorial.
I think it was a good editorial.
Re: So what countries are "sane"?
> What countries do have sane laws about
> things like crypto? And possibly even
> more importantly, laws about such things
> that don't sway with the slightest
> political breeze? What nations don't
> arrest teen-agers for writing code to
> watch legally purchased DVDs? Or
> programmers for writing code to process
> a file format? If not many of the EU
> nations, and not the USA, then where?
> (And who knows, at this point I'm so
> disgusted with how little
> "Americans" care about such
> issues I might just up and immigrate).
Have you ever heard of Sealand? They're a country
(albeit very, very small) which is independent from
almost every digital law currently in effect in other
countries. A quote from their site: "Sealand has no
laws governing data traffic..." Check out their site at:
www.sealandgov.com/
as well as the ISP that resides on the island
(HavenCo.):
www.havenco.com/
Good thing !
If Im not doing anything wrong, I dont need to be worried about using strong encription, if the ban helps to catch people that kill thousands of people.. let them BANN the 128bit encription too...
Shameless plug fore freedom-respecting ISP
For those who checked out the links to the munitions mirrors might have noticed the links to the XS4ALL mirrors. XS4ALL (www.xs4all.nl/) is an ISP in the Netherlands and IMO certainly the very best one here by far. First of all: I'm in no way affiliated with them, aside from the fact that my parents use them for an ISP. (My own connection is currently supplied by the University.)
Please read on while I tell you why I like XS4ALL so very much ... They certainly aren't the cheapest at aprox. $12.50 a month for dialup, but I don't think a single one of their customers minds.
XS4ALL was started by a couple a "hacker-friends" in 1993, making it the first ISP in the Netherlands. From the very start they where devoted to guaranteeing the privacy and rights of their customers. I don't think they have ever pulled one of the pages of their customers because someone told them to(*). A couple of years ago (1997?) when there was a large-scale investigation into child-pornography in the Netherlands they were the only ones to refuse to have their wire tapped, because they believed that the law the criminal investigation team based their 'right to tap' on didn't give them the right to do so. Two years later a judge decided that XS4ALL had been right. Every other ISP had just obeyed because the police told them so, but they didn't. Let me stress however that XS4ALL is no safe-haven for child pornographers. They even assisted in the foundation of the national online organisation where people can report child pornography.
XS4ALL is one of the only ISPs here that doesn't sell the privacy of their customers. They don't monitor their users or sell their addresses to advertisers. No hidden catches such as having to unclick a check box or something like that. During the war in Serbia they kept radio B92 in the air by airing broadcasts over the Internet. They're hosting the site that has broadcasts of the hearings in the Yugoslav War Tribunal in The Hague.
Furthermore they have had telnet (and ssh) access for every dialup account from the very start. (Full access to UNIX systems with fat pipes for normal people from 1993!) They have one the largest set of ftp-mirrors for things like FreeBSD, (afore-mentioned) Munitions, CPAN, Linux distro's, GNU, Xfree, Tucows, Linuxberg, a complete Debian mirror (!), allmactintosh, Beos, etc.
They're one of the few ISP's that haven't yet felt the need to limit the traffic of their DSL-users. They don't close ports when things like virusses such as Back Orrifice of Code Red strike. They never send unsollicited e-mails to their users and have so many technically well-managed services such as a very good (huge!) newsfeed, irc, ftp, bsmtp and dozens of game-servers. Though not officially, they support OS'es other than Windows or Mac: they have the HOWTO's and packages for using DSL with Linux on their homepage! You can meet and talk to many of their technicians on irc or in xs4all.*. You just sense the high level of compentence in every one of their services. It reminds me quite often of Columbia Internet (UF).
You can imagine the huge worries of many people when in 1998 our national telecom-provider (KPN) bought XS4ALL. People were very worried that, even though it was stressed that they would remain independent, freedom and privacy would decline and XS4ALL would be forced to stop many of their 'extra' activities because of 'cost-effectiveness'. I'm glad that such a thing didn't happen so far. I certainly hope they are still there (unchanged), when the University will no longer supply me with Internet.
I'm sorry if you still feel that this is a shameless plug (don't say I didn't warn you in the subject!), but I felt the need to tell you all there's still hope for our freedoms with ISPs like XS4ALL around. I hope the message came across as I might have been rambling away a bit ;-)
* - Some might consider this as bad, as one of their users for example mirrored the anti-abortion pages at their servers when every single ISP in the USA seemed to refuse to host it. It contained a list with doctors that allegedly practiced abortion accompanied with their addresses. Some of the names on the list had suggestingly been 'crossed off'.
--
Matthijs Sypkens Smit
Re: So what countries are "sane"?
That's why I like my country so much. we don't have any laws about it yet!!! Welcome to Argentina!
>
> % What countries do have sane laws
> about
> % things like crypto?
>
> Canada. Infact some Canadain companies
> have exported strong encryption to
> China.
>
> Canadian cryptography export summary
>
xs4all and munitions.
> For those who checked out the links to
> the munitions mirrors might have noticed
> the links to the XS4ALL mirrors. XS4ALL
> (www.xs4all.nl/) is an ISP in the
> Netherlands and IMO certainly the very
> best one here by far.
They are indeed. xs4all gratiously donated
a top-of-the-line server and an unmetered
100 mbps link to host the primary munitions
site.
Speaking of munitions, we are on a mirror
setup drive at the moment. If you are interested
in putting up a mirror, please drop me a
mail at mail@vipul.net (mailto:mail@vipul.net). For a web based mirror,
we need a well connected unix box, running
apache, perl, ssh and rsync with ~3gb of free
space.
Anonymous rsync access died when we shited
the primary to xs4all, but it should be restored by
tonight. If you want to do a files only mirror,
you would be able to snarf the archive with rsync.
More information about mirroring can be found
in this (slightly out-dated) mirroring
HOWTO (munitions.vipul.net/do...).
best,
vipul.
Re: xs4all and munitions.
The HOWTO (munitions.vipul.net/do...) has been updated and anonymous
rsync servers are available again.
best,
vipul.
Re: So what countries are "sane"?
>
> > What countries do have sane laws
> > about
> > things like crypto?
>
> Denmark, I think. And probably the
> other
> Scandinavian countries as well.
>
I'm fairly certain Finland is and there's a load of crypto software hosted on Swedish universities' servers.
I suppose Canada would be as well, given the success of OpenBSD back in the even worse days.
Re: Good thing !
> If Im not doing anything wrong, I dont
> need to be worried about using strong
> encription, if the ban helps to catch
> people that kill thousands of people..
> let them BANN the 128bit encription
> too...
>
That is a fair point, but as you say it is only valid IF it would help catch any criminals. However it is obvious that it will not, firstly strong encryption software is publicly available, anyone who may want it can get it with little difficultly. Should any ban be put in place it will only apply to the US so criminals will either stick with their current encryption software or obtain it from another country. Secondly even if the software can be restricted there are plenty of copies of books that would allow a competent programmer to write a simple but strong encryption program in less than a week. Unless the US Government is advocating book-burnings they cannot restrict this knowledge.
The only other statement I have heard is that if strong encryption is illegal then it will stand out from unencrypted and weakly encrypted communications, but this is clearly not true for any software designed to hide the fact that it contains strongly encrypted data. Firstly all encrypted data resembles random noise, in order to check whether it contains strongly encrypted data it would attempt decryption of every passing message, whether a court order was present or not, which would be a massive invasion of privacy, but technically feasible. The main problem is of that stegnography; software and books about this subject are widely available so as I have mentioned it is impossible to restrict the availability to criminals. Using a stegnography program it is possible to add data to an image or audio file, and since strongly encrypted data is indistinguishable from random noise it is impossible to show that a data file contains hidden data without breaking the encryption itself.
In summary, restricting the availability of encryption software will not help in any way to catch criminals or prevent crimes. It will only succeed in giving people in government organisations more power over law abiding citizens than the have at the moment, which given the history of governments in general and the US Government in particular, would not be a good idea.
Re: Good thing !
I forgot to add that in my opinion these laws are being proposed as a knee-jerk reaction to the tragic events of September 11th. They will appease the majority by persuading them that helpful action if being taken, since many people do not understand the issues involved, but only succeed in hiding the true problems. In order to prevent events like this in the future, effective action could be taken, but all the options are very expensive. Banning strong encryption is cheap but gives the public nothing more than an illusion of safety.
Re: Shameless plug fore freedom-respecting ISP
"I don't think they have ever pulled one of the
pages of their customers because someone told them to"
Didnt they pull some because of $cientology legal harrassment?
Re: So what countries are "sane"?
Unfourtunately, it isn't anywhere near gratis to
host something there. So hosting Free
Software/Open Source Software there is more or
less out of the question.
Sweden seems to be at least partly OK - kerberos
lives at kth.se...
Any suggestions for software packages to mirror
anyway (no one have sugge4sted any higher up in
the thread anyway)?
Encryption laws per country
www.gilc.org/crypto/cr...
lists crypto laws for alot of countries.
ad
Re: So what countries are "sane"?
> Any suggestions for software packages
> to mirror
> anyway (no one have sugge4sted any
> higher up in
> the thread anyway)?
>
Well, besides the base stuff (PGP, OpenSSL, SASL,
kerberos, SSH (what libs does it use?), etc.), I'm not
100% sure. I don't usually follow cryptography-related
info that much, unless I need crypto libraries or
packages for use with other software. I've heard, once
or twice, about a kernel-level filesystem encryption
package before, so you might add that to the list.
Re: Encryption laws per country
> www.gilc.org/crypto/cr...
>
> lists crypto laws for alot of
> countries.
A lot has changed in 4 years. The UK section in particular is completely out of date! (We have the RIP act now, where a `legal authority` can demand keys, under penalty of 2 years in prison (though this will hardly deter terrorists and hard drugs dealers, who will take the 2 years rather than 20/life/whatever)
Re: wtf?
> here is what confuses me... what's going
> to stop a (potential) terrorist from
> using an older version of crypto w/out
> back doors??? i realize that eventually
> it will be broken but until then....
Who needs complicated software? All they have to do is correctly use a one-time pad and the spooks can't do a thing to decrypt it.
I think I have a perfect compromise for these encryption banning yahoos. Tell you what folks, let's register all the handguns and THEN I'll let the government escrow my encryption keys.
I offer a mirror.
I can mirror a not very large project (say up to 1-1.5 gigabytes) on a server I own. It is located in Poland, runs 24/7 and has quite good connectivity. If Anyone is interested, please write me at the advertised hushmail address, or at any address advertised as VALID user iD of OpenPGP key 0x21939169 avaliable at certserver.pgp.com. Please use PGP encryption. Thank you.
<br>
Stomil
Have you guys lost your minds?
Do you really think this would happen? Do you think Americans are that dumb? Do you think banks and finance institutions would let that happen. Do you forget IBM has just put Linux on the NYSE? I'm almost embarrassed, I can't believe you guy listen to one dumb ass about crypto. Do you think the US government doesn't know by changing a law isn't gonna make everyone just quit using crypto, especially criminals? Geeze, do I belong to a cult?
Re: Don't re-elect our politicians
> We live in the U.S. where our
> politicians are elected.
Oh? Excuse me. The ultimate rabble-raiser I heard
talking in the the Senate and the House the other
day got himself there by getting his mates in the
Supreme Court to put him there. Government by the
People for the People. Bah, humbug, and frankly -
right now - lies. Big fat ones.
Re: Shameless plug fore freedom-respecting ISP
>
> Didnt they pull some because of
> $cientology legal harrassment?
Could be. I don't know the exact details of every issue concerning XS4ALL. I do indeed remember something about scientology claiming that the user had infringed upon their copyrights by quoting (some of) their texts. I don't know what happened exactly in that case. The fact still remains however that they are strong defenders of privacy and personal rights.
Re: Don't re-elect our politicians
> We live in the U.S. where our
> politicians are elected.
Really? As I recall, the majority of you voted for Gore, not for
George Double-U. He got president because of an extremely outdated election system and because of a strong army of lawyers behind him and because of a lot of money to pay them (and the campaign).
That is not what I consider a democratic election.
Greetings from Germany,
- Stephan.
Mirror offer for crypto and stego developers and authors
I'd like to offer a (free) mirror (located at Tübingen university in Germany) to any developer or author of cryptographic or steganographic software or documents (HOWTOs, books etc.) Eventually there will also be CVS access for developers. Feel free to contact me. My gpg key can be found at
www-ti.informatik.uni-...
CU
David
Stable NON-US Homes for Strong Crypto Projects
The big hole in the Administration's most recent campaign for e-snooping is that the attack was so low-tech it could have been stopped by 18th century defences. A good swordsman with a rapier (on each flight) could have made skewered the whole bunch, and without endangering passengers with bullets.
Re: Have you guys lost your minds?
When it comes to betting on whether the legislature would comprehend why these laws would be ineffective I would say that the dump legislature would be a safe bet.
I recently changed my jurisdiction for the US house of representatives. I believe my previous representative would understand the issues involved, and would possibly be sympathetic to the cause of keeping strong encryption available. However my current representative is as dumb as a box of rocks when It comes to technology, I'm sure is long as he can "sell it" to the masses as something that will "stamp out" terrorist or law-brakers it will get his rubber stamp no matter how ineffective or ill-conceived. (I voted for his opponent in the last election, even thought he was not much better)
PS. I'm thinking about sending a letter to my old representative, I'm not sure if I should put the return address for my old address or my new one.
> Do you really think this would happen?
> Do you think Americans are that dumb?
> Do you think banks and finance
> institutions would let that happen. Do
> you forget IBM has just put Linux on the
> NYSE? I'm almost embarrassed, I can't
> believe you guy listen to one dumb ass
> about crypto. Do you think the US
> government doesn't know by changing a
> law isn't gonna make everyone just quit
> using crypto, especially criminals?
> Geeze, do I belong to a cult?
>
Re: Don't re-elect our politicians
>
> % We live in the U.S. where our
> % politicians are elected.
>
>
> Really? As I recall, the majority of
> you voted for Gore, not for
> George Double-U. He got president
> because of an extremely outdated
> election system and because of a strong
> army of lawyers behind him and because
> of a lot of money to pay them (and the
> campaign).That is not what I consider a
> democratic election.Greetings from
> Germany, -
> Stephan.
Sure the election system in the US is somewhat
outdated and IMHO urgently needs an overhaul, but
the german system isn't better either. There you can
only vote for a party and they can post anyone they
like to be "president". So the names on the vote are
the party designated candidates, but no law is there if
the parties changed their minds after the election.
That isn't democratic either. The best out there seems
to be switzerland - the people vote and elect directly.
There are even votes for governement decisions to be
made, i.e. for cryptographics - they let the people vote
and the outcome is done. Now that's democratic.
Regards
UC
Democratic society?
I always found it amusing when I'd walk into my local technical bookshop and see a whole shelf on crypto cracking with huge yellow stickers on the front reading, 'Banned by US censors'. Now I know they were serious.
I picked up technical schematics for the AT&T attempt to build a machine which would crack the DES algorithm (also banned by US censors) and the most amusing thing was that after spending a quarter mil, the thing still didn't work. Got the feeling congress isn't so much politically motivated to stamping out cryptography as it is towards preserving the bottom line; And given that i've spent good last 5 years at university studying cryptographic techniques, i'd like to think I could come out with a job at the end.
I'll be your mirror man. :)
Re: freedom
> freedom for all...
I am appalled by my own Senator from Kansas (Sam Brownback). He supports another bill that would give large corporations the power to monopolize certain industries. I do not know the exact bill number, but I have put my response to this atrocious attack on OpenSource and computer security at my page (www.flinthills.com/~dj...).
The Computer Securities Act (the latest episode)will hurt many computer programmers that program under Linux and other open OS's. This will virtually make crypography illegal within the U.S.
This is clearly in strong violation of the Constitution. This can possibly violate the 1st (Cryptography is cosidered free speech in my opinion) and 5th (Potentially incriminating oneself even if innocent-- that be the 4th Amendment though) Amendments.
I urge everyone to contact their Congressmen to bring this bill down.
Thank you for your time.