Re: OS/2 encryption utilities

[attila <attila@primenet.com>]

** Reply to note from mirele@xmission.com 04/20/96  2:26pm       
 
= Due to the fact that I have been threatened by the Church of Scientology 
= with legal action if I do not cease and desist posting encheferated 
= parodies of their secret scripture (per a letter I received from Cult 
= attorneys via Federal Express today) I am in search of OS/2 disk 
= encryption programs. 
=  

                                DISCLAIMER: 

    I am not a practicing attorney; I am not offering you legal advice 
in any form.  I personally would be first and foremost concerned with
all the ramifications of destroying evidence; and, testing the rules of
discovery.  In no way am I condoning any action which may be contrary to
the rules of justice in any jurisdiction.

    Keep in mind what "schwarzerPford mit gehornt" said: having asked 
for help in a public forum, the Co$ attorneys potentially will be going 
for discovery violations.
 
    That said..................
 
    The only way you are going to get automatic disk encryption with 
OS/2 is to write a driver which would need to distinguish between
drives and/or partitions as you would probably not wish to encrypt the
operating system and routine files.  

    Secondly, if you have _all_ your files encrypted, you are begging
for a contempt citation if you refuse the keys.  alternatively, you
could reverse engineer one of the disk compress programs (__.sys
drivers) and add a stream function for encryption --again begging
contempt.
 
    A better way from my perspective to preserve some of my first 
amendment rights would be to use an IOMega optical floppy (flopitcal).

    IOmega has a new 100+M byte unit for around $200 which can double as 
a standard 3.5 floppy and runs on SCSI cards like the Adaptec and
others (they may have an EIDE version).  I believe there is now a
version which is bootable.  The blank disks are under $20/100MB (quite
reasonable).  Unless you are storing an enormouse amount of data, 100MB
is a lot of space (maybe not on my OS/2 system which has 4G!).
 
    Again, if you wish to run the encryption automatically, then you are   
required to write a new driver. 
 
    Keep in mind, with a driver, you are immediately faced with the 
problem of the encrytion keys --particularly if they are embedded in the 
controller.  You could have one of the keys embedded in each floptical 
and a utility program to enter the second key, password, etc.  when the
driver started up...  however, from my perspective, you would be better
off to just convert your encrypted files to plain text to work with your
files; then re-encrypting the material when you are done.
 
    needless to say, the floptical is not very obvious...  and
confiscating your system does not give away the keys, etc.  However, 
you would be wise _not_ to involve another individual, etc.  Not only is
that a weak point, but it puts them in the loop and provides the 
government with an opportunity to include conspiracy --which carries the
same penalty as the "crime" and additional charges of obstructing 
justice.
 
    pgp is available for OS/2, obtainable from Hobbes. BTW, do NOT keep
your key ring, particularly the private key king, on the hard disks;
keep it on a *separate* floppy.  do NOT keep it on the floptical with
the encrypted material.

    we are all concerned with privacy: the first, second, fourth,  
fifth,etc. amendment rights --what little there is left of them.  However, 
regardless of any anarchistic-libertarian viewpoints, the best advice is
not to raise your head --put your helmet on the rifle butt and raise
that if you must --and, if you're riding in a helicopter, sit on your
helmet.

    revenge may be a dish best served up cold, but anonymous remailers, 
particularly the encrypting ones, (do not use penet) are wonderful 
tools for the underground publishing of unpopular political and/or 
religious beliefs.  There is a long line of court decisions which 
permit anonymous publishing --despite the fact Bubba certainly intends
to take away our rights, particularly in cyberspace.

    lastly, learn from many who have preceded you: don't stonewall the 
court --that "fool" in the black robe can ring your bell however he 
wishes with contempt citations; there is little you can do about it and 
the local jails are not Club Fed.





--
    "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


cc: Black Unicorn <unicorn@schloss.li>
    Cypherpunks <cypherpunks@toad.com>