Date: Wed, 21 Feb 96 09:22:56 EST
Errors-To: Comp-privacy Error Handler <owner-comp-privacy@uwm.edu>
From: Computer Privacy Digest Moderator <comp-privacy@uwm.edu>
To: Comp-privacy@uwm.edu
Subject: Computer Privacy Digest V8#016
Computer Privacy Digest Wed, 21 Feb 96 Volume 8 : Issue: 016
Today's Topics: Moderator: Leonard P. Levine
Re: Anonymous Remailers are a Virus Spreading Online
Re: Anonymous Remailers are a Virus Spreading Online
Re: Anonymous Remailers are a Virus Spreading Online
Re: Anonymous remailers are a virus spreading online! (Replies)
Re: Anonymous remailers are a virus spreading online!
Re: Anonymous Remailers are a Virus Spreading Online
Freedom of Speech and Expression
Re: Web Surfers: Your Computer Is Watching You
Tracking Sales Leads on the Internet
Re: GM unlocks your car with a phone call
Re: SSN Driver's license question
Re: Access to DMV Records by Rental Car Companies
Info on CPD [unchanged since 11/22/95]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: peter@nmti.com (Peter da Silva)
Date: 17 Feb 1996 00:30:22 GMT
Subject: Re: Anonymous Remailers are a Virus Spreading Online
Organization: Network/development platform support, NMTI
References: <comp-privacy8.14.10@cs.uwm.edu>
The introduction of Anonymous Re-mailers into the Internet has
altered the capacity to balance attack and counter-attack, or crime
and punishment.
Nonsense. Sheer and utter nonsense. Anonymous attacks in the real world
are not only possible, they're *commonplace*. Extreme examples like the
Unabomber are simply the far edge of a continuum of anonymous physical
mail attacks that start with chain letters and work up.
If you want to do something, make the post office require a driver's
license before accepting any package. That'd make a difference. The
fact that it'd also have a devastating effect on the economy by
radically increasing the cost of mail shouldn't bother you... should
it?
--
Peter da Silva (NIC: PJD2) `-_-' 1601 Industrial Boulevard
Bailey Network Management 'U` Sugar Land, TX 77487-5013
+1 713 274 5180 "Har du kramat din varg idag?" USA
Bailey pays for my technical expertise. My opinions probably scare them
------------------------------
From: roy@sendai.cybrspc.mn.org (Roy M. Silvernail)
Date: 18 Feb 1996 10:05:32 CST
Subject: Re: Anonymous Remailers are a Virus Spreading Online
Organization: Not that I've noticed
levine@blatz.cs.uwm.edu writes: My most serious question about
anonymous remailers is this: How can we be sure that the operator
of such a remailer is not a federal or other governmental agent?
That person is trusted with our privacy and has all the data needed
to identify a user. If I were the Feds I would already have set up
such a "sting" operation, the temptation is just too great.
That's the reason behind chaining your message through several
remailers. The first remailer in the chain knows your address, but not
the ultimate destination of the traffic. A single uncompromised
remailer in the chain will break the traceability of your message.
--
Roy M. Silvernail [ ] roy@cybrspc.mn.org
PGP Public Key fingerprint = 31 86 EC B9 DB 76 A7 54 13 0B 6A 6B CC 09 18 B6
Key available from pubkey@cybrspc.mn.org
------------------------------
From: fyoung@oxford.net (F Young)
Date: 19 Feb 96 01:05:15 EST
Subject: Re: Anonymous Remailers are a Virus Spreading Online
My most serious question about anonymous remailers is this: How
can we be sure that the operator of such a remailer is not a
federal or other governmental agent? That person is trusted with
our privacy and has all the data needed to identify a user. If I
were the Feds I would already have set up such a "sting" operation,
the temptation is just too great.
I remember reading this on an anonymous remailer FAQ. Chaining at
least three remailers and using PGP to encrypt the message would
greatly reduced the chance of being "exposed." If one of the three
remailers was a government sting, then the worse it could get is big
brother would discover the orign of a message (going to another
remailer) or the destination of a message (from another remailer).
In all seriousness, most of the messages, letters, or phone
conversations that we write or carry on do not have to be absolutely
positively private. However, in principle, citizens should be allowed
the privacy. Also, the fact that some bureaucrat has the power, using
our tax money, to snoop into our private lives is in itself an angering
thought.
------------------------------
From: lmccarth@cs.umass.edu
Date: 19 Feb 1996 03:42:46 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: Anonymous remailers are a virus spreading online! (Replies)
My most serious question about anonymous remailers is this: How
can we be sure that the operator of such a remailer is not a
federal or other governmental agent? That person is trusted with
our privacy and has all the data needed to identify a user. If I
were the Feds I would already have set up such a "sting" operation,
the temptation is just too great.
You will be pleased to hear that this problem was anticipated at least
15 years ago (in David Chaum's paper on "digital mixes"). Briefly, the
solution is to use multiple layers of encryption to distribute trust
among several remailer operators. Before it is remailed, a message is
encrypted with public keys belonging to each of a sequence of
remailers. As each remailer receives a message, it removes the outer
layer of encryption using its private key, revealing another encrypted
message and the next address to which it should be sent. Cooperation of
all the remailers in the chain is needed to link the originating
address to the message that is eventually delivered to a recipient.
For a longer exposition on the current state of the art in deployed
mail anonymizers, see
http://www.obscura.com/~loki/remailer/remailer-essay.html
Note that the availability of strong anonymity critically depends upon
the availability of strong cryptography. If the Department of the
Treasury Automated Systems Division holds all the remailers' private
keys, then it can easily determine the originators of all anonymously
remailed messages.
-Lewis "You're always disappointed, nothing seems to keep you high --
drive your bargains, push your papers, win your medals, fuck your
strangers; don't it leave you on the empty side ?" (Joni Mitchell,
1972)
------------------------------
From: Stanton McCandlish <mech@eff.org>
Date: 19 Feb 1996 18:05:42 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: Anonymous remailers are a virus spreading online!
My most serious question about anonymous remailers is this: How
can we be sure that the operator of such a remailer is not a
federal or other governmental agent? That person is trusted with
our privacy and has all the data needed to identify a user.
Declan B. McCullagh typed: A remailer chain will make such a
"sting" operation fail miserably.
Only if the message is encrypted - if not, any users who use a sting
remailer as the first one in the chain are busted. This could hobble
the use of remailers for any public postings in which anonymity is
essential.
--
<HTML><A HREF="http://www.eff.org/~mech/"> Stanton McCandlish
</A><HR><A HREF="mailto:mech@eff.org"> mech@eff.org
</A><P><A HREF="http://www.eff.org/"> Electronic Frontier Foundation
</A><P><A HREF="http://www.eff.org/A"> Online Activist </A></HTML>
------------------------------
From: daveb@iinet.net.au (Dave)
Date: 20 Feb 1996 23:48:06 GMT
Subject: Re: Anonymous Remailers are a Virus Spreading Online
Organization: iiNet Technologies
References: <comp-privacy8.15.6@cs.uwm.edu>
"Prof. L. P. Levine" <levine@blatz.cs.uwm.edu> wrote: My most
serious question about anonymous remailers is this: How can we be
sure that the operator of such a remailer is not a federal or other
governmental agent? That person is trusted with our privacy and
has all the data needed to identify a user.
One (too?) obvoius defence is to use a remailer in another country. I
greatly doubt if the US Govt. has subverted a remailer in, say,
Finland. The Finnish Govt. might have something to say about that.
--
Dave Brooks
PGP public key: finger daveb@opera.iinet.net.au
servers daveb@iinet.net.au
fingerprint 20 8F 95 22 96 D6 1C 0B 3D 4D C3 D4 50 A1 C4 34
------------------------------
From: rikdavid@freenet.hamilton.on.ca (Rick Davidson)
Date: 19 Feb 1996 12:39:37 GMT
Subject: Freedom of Speech and Expression
Organization: Hamilton-Wentworth FreeNet, Ontario, Canada.
A couple of years ago I spoke to news paper reporter RE: a base ball
game that I officiated and the end result was a Registered letter that
I was Suspended. There was a written complaint sent to my organization
and that group has yet to submitt to me such piculars. My writes have
been violated and thus slandered im my opinion. If you send to me
snail mail address I shall send my story and you may make your own
assumptions and opinions.
Only in Ameriaca
--
Great White North
------------------------------
From: fyoung@oxford.net (F Young)
Date: 19 Feb 96 00:54:43 EST
Subject: Re: Web Surfers: Your Computer Is Watching You
But many PC users may take a dim view of Netscape's failure to draw
their attention to the fact that their behaviour may be tracked i
this way. Moreover, there appears to be only one way to disable
the facility: by manually amending or deleting the COOKIE.TXT file
containing all the cookies.
Is that all? I'm not overlooking the potential privacy problem with
this Netscape implementation, but someone can write a very simple
script to do a DEL COOKIE.TXT say everytime Netscape is loaded or
unloaded. Would that solve the problem?
------------------------------
From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" <levine@blatz.cs.uwm.edu>
Date: 20 Feb 1996 13:54:43 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Tracking Sales Leads on the Internet
Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Netscape, Aurem Announce Agreement to Track Sales Leads
According to a source in the news industry, Netscape Communications
Corp. and Aurum Software Inc. recently (2/20/96) disclosed a strategy
to develop software to track consumers' tastes and interests on the
Internet. Aurum is a closely held company based in Santa Clara,
California.
Aurum's software (SalesTrak and WebTrak) will be added to Netscape's
browser according to this source. The software will provide
registration information to companies about individual computer users
after the users visit certain Web pages. The information is
automatically put into the company's database. For example, a shoe
company could use the software to send specific information to
customers about markdowns.
Last week, Netscape said it abandoned a similar technology, called
cookies, a file that tracks consumers' so-called clickstream, or series
of mouseclicks as they move around the Web.
------------------------------
From: vinod@watson.ibm.com (Vinod Narayanan)
Date: 20 Feb 1996 09:08:52 -0500
Subject: Re: GM unlocks your car with a phone call
Organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
References: <comp-privacy8.14.8@cs.uwm.edu> <comp-privacy8.15.1@cs.uwm.edu>
(Howard G. Page) writes: I wonder whether there is a feature
providing the ability of the "Customer Assistance Center" to
disable your auto if you fall a little behind in your payments. Or
maybe they simply send it a command limiting it's maximum speed is,
say, 30 mph!
Eventhough this is technically feasible, I think that existing laws
already forbid "bombs" of this kind. See the "Computer Law" column in
the February 1996 issue of IEEE Computer magazine (page. 94). This
article discusses software "bombs", but I think that the situation here
is exactly the same.
However, the risk that a government agency can get GM (or whoever the
service provider is) to track your movements using the GPS system and
receiver is very real.
--
vinod@watson.ibm.com
------------------------------
From: macker@willowtree.com (Macker)
Date: 20 Feb 1996 09:03:56 GMT
Subject: Re: SSN Driver's license question
Trip Martin (night@acm.rpi.edu) wrote: Does anyone know about
trying to do the same in NYS? They require the SSN, but as far as
I can tell, they haven't complied with the privacy act either.
levine@blatz.cs.uwm.edu (Prof. L. P. Levine) wrote: In order to
protect the children the federal government now requires SSN in
order to get a driver licence. This is to trace down deadbeat
dads.
I don't know about the rest of the country, but here in Iowa if you
want to get a CDL (Commercial Driver's License, required for driving a
semi or bus) then your license # is your SSN. I know because my father
has a CDL, and was, to say the least, quite unhappy to find this out.
The most common reason for this that I heard (from truckers) was that
it helps to crack down on truckers getting a CDL in another state to
get around traffic violations and such... (CDL's have much more
stringent rules). Anyone know if this is done in other states also?
What is the legality/constituionality of this? Last time I knew, the
SSN was "not to be used for identification purposes"... isn't this
exactly that?
--
Robert
------------------------------
From: bernie@fantasyfarm.com (Bernie Cosell)
Date: 20 Feb 1996 02:00:28 GMT
Subject: Re: Access to DMV Records by Rental Car Companies
Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers
References: <comp-privacy8.14.7@cs.uwm.edu>
Paul Robinson <paul@TDR.COM> wrote: According to a report over the
radio, a little-noticed provision of one of the crime bills which
have come out allows a rental car company to check your driving
record.
I'm not familiar with the general laws on this: I would have assumed
that ones driving record would have been matters of public record
[after all, motor vehicle infractions are *convictions*]. Is there
basis on which you think that your driving record should be kept a
secret? [and indeed, from someone who is about to rent you a $20,000+
vehicle?]
According to the report, two or three incidents - an accident or
certain types of tickets - is enough to cause you to be
blacklisted.
What does 'blacklisted' in this regard mean? Clearly rental agencies
have to do *something* about folks with clearly-bad driving records.
[and look at it from the other side, too: rental car companies don't
print money. The money that goes to pay for their insurance and
repairing their cars comes from [ta dah!] *us* --- the other folk who
rent cars from them. So by allowing carst to be rented to lousy
drivers will necessarily drive up the rental car rates for everyone ---
the good drivers will be forced to subsidize the incompetence of the
bad drivers. Does this sound fair or like good policy?
On the other hand, if the argument were that such folk shouldn't be
*denied* the option of renting a car, but merely should have to pay for
their lack of skill, I'd say that's OK: argue that they should only
levy a premium [perhaps a stiff one] on the drivers with bad records.
[and on the other hand, considering the nature of rental cars and the
competition therein, I can't imagine that some rental car agency won't
offer a deal like that [or just not check driving records at all] ---
you may not be able to rent from Hertz and friends, but I"d guess that
you'll still be able to get something from one of the small fry
outfits...
Where are the problems in this?
1. There is no announcement of this practice; you're not likely to
find out until you get to the counter and can't rent a car.
I'm not sure what you'd want here. There's not much announcement of
ANYTHIGN to do with rental cars [I was very surprised the first time I
learned that I *couldn't* rent a car for cash]. In fact, there's
little announcement of these sorts of things in any venue, is there?
2. There is no appeals process available.
Other than taking your business elsewhere...
3. There is no means available to provide for corrections or to
determine where or how the error occurred in the event you are
caught short by this happening.
I'm not sure what you mean here. If you're talking about what I think
you are, then your "conviction record" is not something maintained by
some invisible operator... you can just go down to the DMV and check it
out yourself. As for corrections, I guess I don't know about that: I
was under the impression that the state was pretty careful about such
things.
4. No consideration is made as to the severity of the offenses or
whether you were even at fault in the accident; if the information
is there, you walk.
I'm not sure what you're saying here. Why do you say "no
consideration"? Since I haven't seen the article to which you're
referring, it is a bit hard to guess --- is there some pact whereby all
the car rental agencies in the universe have conspired to form some
kind of consortium? I'd agree that probably Hertz, Avis, and maybe
some of the big nationals will be nuisances (and may even have the same
rules... but then again, maybe they won't). But it is hard to imagine
that the rules will be that uniform across the zillions of small
operators [as it largely is for credit card stuff... you might get
turned down by Discover but have no trouble getting a department store
card; we actually had a vice-versa situation: we have gold-mastercards
and such, but got turned down for a Lowes [a hardware chain] card]
5. What proof do we have that those who are inquiring into the
database are authorized to do so, that they are actually looking up
the record for that customer, and what privacy protections do we
have against unauthorized inquiries? Do we have the right to
password-protect our own account?
What is the nature of this "database". Ones driving record, as far as
I know, has always been a matter of public record and a trip to the
courthouse in the appropriate state will get a list of "convictions".
It is one thing to complain about the "privacy" of your financial
records, since your financial transactions are inherently private
matters and the question arises as to how 'public' they should be.
But ones driving on the public highway is *inherently*public* and so it
is a bit harder (I'd think) to argue that there is some privacy issue
involved here.
6. What protections do we have against the risk of erroneous data
in a report?
Take it to your state's AG [or secretary of state or the like?)
7. Is this the same data as is available at a DMV or DPS office,
and if not, in what way is it different?
This is certainly the key question, and as far as I can see the *only*
question. If the answer is "the same" [which is what I've been
assuming, since anything else would entail a new definition of "driving
record" for the most part], then to my view virtually all of your
concerns and questions are off the mark. If the answer is "different",
then you have a legitimate question, but it is [again in my view] the
*only* question. If you are going to rent a *car* from me, for
crissake, how can you possibly argue that ones driving record should be
kept a secret?
--
Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers
bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA
--> Too many people, too few sheep <--
------------------------------
From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" <levine@blatz.cs.uwm.edu>
Date: 30 Jan 1996 18:45:30 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Info on CPD [unchanged since 11/22/95]
Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
The Computer Privacy Digest is a forum for discussion on the effect of
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---------------------------------+-----------------------------------------
Leonard P. Levine | Moderator of: Computer Privacy Digest
Professor of Computer Science | and comp.society.privacy
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee | Post: comp-privacy@uwm.edu
Box 784, Milwaukee WI 53201 | Information: comp-privacy-request@uwm.edu
| Gopher: gopher.cs.uwm.edu
levine@cs.uwm.edu | Web: gopher://gopher.cs.uwm.edu
---------------------------------+-----------------------------------------
------------------------------
End of Computer Privacy Digest V8 #016
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