From: Black Unicorn <unicorn@schloss.li>
Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 06:39:09 +0800
To: cypherpunks <cypherpunks@toad.com>
Subject: Re: The War is Underway (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.96.970510181630.9012N-100000@polaris.mindport.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



On Sat, 10 May 1997, Adam Back wrote:

> 
> Tim May <tcmay@got.net> writes:
> > However, while we may think their power is gone, or is almost gone, they
> > think otherwise. And we're seeing an accelerating pace of lawmaking, [...]

[The fork in the road is discussed]

> > Who will actually win?
> > 
> > I think we will. They think they will. The war is underway.
> 
> So what are we doing to fight our side?  (Apart from fantasizing
> about nuking the bastards till they glow :-)
>
> So what can cypherpunks do?
> 
> Write code?

Yes.  One of the major stumbling blocks I have run into is a lack of code
which really is refined and reviewed enough to serve the purposes I need
it to serve.  FC97 did a lot to make some more obscure things obvious, and
familiarize the players with each other, but the details are often hard to
come by.  Many of the applications out there are painfully behind in
interface areas forcing developers to use complicated "toolkits" which
often lack the basics we need. Finding an analogy to easily explain even
the basics to a customer is very difficult unless the front end jibes with
the attempt.

The amount of confusion over what represents a good algorithm is also
interesting.  Take CAST, which seems a promising cipher and which we
considered using over IDEA.

On asking 4 "experts" about CAST, I got 4 answers.

1>  A 64 bit cipher with 40 bits secret.
2>  A 64 bit cipher - not expected to be very complete.
3>  A 128 bit cipher.
4>  "Not worth discussing."

In fact, as I understand it, CAST is of variable key length (Up to 128
bits), and quite resistant to many attacks which plague DES and even IDEA.

But digging out that information was painfully difficult.  (It may not
even be correct).

> Perhaps it's time for some stego interfaces to remailers.
> 
> Usually around this time Black Unicorn gives us his wish list of
> crypto anarchy apps.  I'm not sure we've progressed much towards his
> wish list since the last time he posted it.

Most of what concerns me is the need to keep keylengths "obscenely large"
because what is obscene today may not be so obscene after 5 years of
chilled crypto development.

Given the success (or lack thereof) of my call to arms before, I'm not
sure I'll be anxious to repeat it soon.  (The largest keylength of any
widely used cipher of which I am aware remains at 128.  There still is no
effective PipeNet, no real mainstream "stealth crypto."  No significant
work on detering traffic analysis or denial of service with the exception
of the below).

> I thought the Eternity Service I announced a week or so ago was a step
> towards reducing the possibility for government censorship of web pages.
> (http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/eternity/) Not much interest to date.
> Ideas stand on their merit, but the success of crypto anarchy services
> also depends on ease of use, funding, volunteer effort, publicity, and
> evangelizing.  I haven't done much of the latter yet lacking an
> example server to bootstrap the system, I hope to have this up in a
> few weeks.

Hearty kudos.

An online bank is useless if it can be blocked by a few keystrokes.

(But that's what secure INMARSAT phones are for too)

Still, these are areas that I wish c'punks would start looking at again.
Even if strong unforfeited crypto is legal in the U.S., it will not be in
other countries for quite some time.

There is strength in numbers, not just safety.  The more crypto users
there are, the less government, or anyone else, can do about it.

C'punks should wish to provide clandestine crypto services for the entire
population.  Laws which may or may not pass in the United States should
bore c'punks, because they should realize that legislation is irrelevent
because the genie is already out of the bottle.  Unfortunately, I don't
think the genie is all the way out of the bottle.


NOTE:  I'm not on cypherpunks anymore, mail me directly for replies.

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