Re: crypto anarchy vs AP

At 02:06 PM 9/26/96 -0500, snow wrote:
>Mr. Beck said:
>> Been reading the AP thread, and thought I'd donate some of my views.
>
>> the Internet.  You'd just cause the government to panic, and this
>> would have negative effects, it would take ages for them to calm down,
>> and the laws they'd pass in the mean time would mean a near certainty
>> of mandatory GAK as a condition to switching the Internet back on.
>> (Before someone takes me to task for the impossibility of switching
>> the Internet off, it all depends on the level of government panic.
>> More specifically perhaps they would disconnect key backbones, and
>> ISPs briefly while they rushed into effect a few presidential decrees
>> outlawing non GAKed crypto, anonymous ecash, remailers, PGP, DC-nets,
>> etc.)
>
>     This would be cutting their own throats. There is SO much commercial
>and government traffic going across "The Net" that many businesses would 
>scream bloody murder, and the government would have MASSIVE trouble with 
>it's agenda.

Yes, that "they'll cut off the Internet!" talk doesn't seem to be very 
practical.  Society very quickly develops dependency on inventions.  Try to 
take away their computers and they'd scream; take away their telephone and 
it'd be worse!  Give Internet another couple of years and 50% of big 
business would be severely impacted should it be cut off.  Wait five years 
and the world would practically stop rotating without Internet.

On a related issue, GPS (global-positioning system) contains a de-accurizing 
mis-feature called S/A, which adds a little error to the location as 
detected by a receiver.  Ostensibly, it was added so that this could be 
turned on in wartime, to deny the enemy the ability to make 10-meter fixes.  
Turns out that it was kept on all the time, probably because if it WASN'T it 
would become politically impossible to de-accurize the system even in wartime.


Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com

jim bell wrote:
>  
> On a related issue, GPS (global-positioning system) contains a de-accurizing
> mis-feature called S/A, which adds a little error to the location as
> detected by a receiver.  Ostensibly, it was added so that this could be
> turned on in wartime, to deny the enemy the ability to make 10-meter fixes.
> Turns out that it was kept on all the time, probably because if it WASN'T it
> would become politically impossible to de-accurize the system even in wartime.

Apparently S/A (selective availability) was turned *off* during the Gulf
war.  "Military Intelligence" in action.

Gary
--
"Of course the US Constitution isn't perfect; but it's a lot better
than what we have now."  -- Unknown.

pub  1024/C001D00D 1996/01/22  Gary Howland <gary@systemics.com>
Key fingerprint =  0C FB 60 61 4D 3B 24 7D  1C 89 1D BE 1F EE 09 06

At 4:21 PM +0200 9/29/96, Gary Howland wrote:
>jim bell wrote:
>>
>> On a related issue, GPS (global-positioning system) contains a de-accurizing
>> mis-feature called S/A, which adds a little error to the location as
>> detected by a receiver.  Ostensibly, it was added so that this could be
>> turned on in wartime, to deny the enemy the ability to make 10-meter fixes.
>> Turns out that it was kept on all the time, probably because if it WASN'T it
>> would become politically impossible to de-accurize the system even in
>>wartime.
>
>Apparently S/A (selective availability) was turned *off* during the Gulf
>war.  "Military Intelligence" in action.

Actually, there were excellent reasons.

First, there was no evidence the Iraqis had any ability to use GPS of any
sort (I suspect the odd unit existed in Iraq, but not enough of them to be
useful in any meaningful sense.)

Second, the military bought a huge pile of _consumer_-grade GPS units,
e.g., from Trimble Navigation, to fill a shortage of military-grade units
(because of the rapid build-up in ground forces).

The reasons for turning off S/A made perfect sense.

--Tim May

We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

Jim Bell <jimbell@pacifier.com> writes:
> At 02:06 PM 9/26/96 -0500, snow wrote:
> >Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> wrote:
> >> [...]
> >> More specifically perhaps they would disconnect key backbones, and
> >> ISPs briefly while they rushed into effect a few presidential decrees
> >> outlawing non GAKed crypto, anonymous ecash, remailers, PGP, DC-nets,
> >> etc.)
> >
> >     This would be cutting their own throats. There is SO much commercial
> >and government traffic going across "The Net" that many businesses would 
> >scream bloody murder, and the government would have MASSIVE trouble with 
> >it's agenda.
> 
> Yes, that "they'll cut off the Internet!" talk doesn't seem to be very 
> practical.  Society very quickly develops dependency on inventions.  Try to 
> take away their computers and they'd scream; take away their telephone and 
> it'd be worse!  Give Internet another couple of years and 50% of big 
> business would be severely impacted should it be cut off.  Wait five years 
> and the world would practically stop rotating without Internet.

Maybe so.  However I suggested that they would more likley outlaw non
GAK crypto, anonymous ecash, remailers, PGP, etc.

Perhaps I should read your later AP essay in case you have already
countered my practicality objections. (Do you have AP on the www
somewhere?),

We've seen people suggest that you couldn't get away with AP, by
claiming that the gambling was legal.  (They'd get you for interstate
gambling, conspiracy probably other things).

So, it seems to me that your only approach is to do the whole thing
anonymously.  That requires anonymous ecash (payee and payor
anonymous).  This means that the anonymous ecash bank will be shutdown
by the government as soon as it becomes apparent what is going on.

Remailer operators are similar soft targets.

The best you could do I think is this.  Publish a PGP public key, and
software or specifications for a robust steganographic encoding for AP
bets.

That would take care of comunication.

You still have the ecash problem.  What do you suggest?

Adam

jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com> writes:
> On a related issue, GPS (global-positioning system) contains a de-accurizing
> mis-feature called S/A, which adds a little error to the location as
> detected by a receiver.  Ostensibly, it was added so that this could be
> turned on in wartime, to deny the enemy the ability to make 10-meter fixes.
> Turns out that it was kept on all the time, probably because if it WASN'T it
> would become politically impossible to de-accurize the system even in wartime

Two funny rumors:

1. Supposedly the DoD users of GPS have access to the accurate positioning
information at all times. (Not sure how this works - the accurate data is
encrypted?) During the Iraq war in '93 they didn't have enough equipment
to take advantage of this, so they turned off the S/A and gave everyone
(including the military users) accurate GPS on commercially available GPS
eq. Then they turned it back on.

2. The DoD is doing a study right now on how to make GPS useless to the
enemy at wartime.

I think figuring out a way to turn off A/S and getting accurage GPS on
commercial equipment at all times would make a nifty Cypherpunks project
- if it really involves breaking some encryption.

---

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps