May 1993 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: MCI, Sprint or bust ...
by peb＠PROCASE.COM 19 May '93

19 May '93

>though their "Friends and Family " plan stinks of bigbro also Hah! Sprint is even better at this. They have a new service where they `help you move'; you give them the addresses of all entities that need address changes (!) and they do it all for you. They pay for the postage, all you have to do is eliminate your privacy in exchange. Paul E. Baclace peb(a)procase.com

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RICO
by fergp＠sytex.com 19 May '93

19 May '93

Can anyone suggest an available electronic transcript containing the verbage of the RICO Act? I'm sending an ARCHIE search, but I thought someone on the list may know where to find this info. Cheers. Paul Ferguson | "... certain unalienable Rights, Network Integrator | that among these, are Life, Liberty, Centreville, Virginia USA | and the pursuit of Happiness." fergp(a)sytex.com | -- The Declaration of Independence Stop the Wiretap (Clipper/Capstone) Chip.

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A good venue for distributing Clipper info perhaps
by corwin＠Cayman.COM 19 May '93

19 May '93

Topic> npr Station: Internet Multicasting Service Channel: Internet Town Hall Program: National Public Radio meets the Internet Release: May 21, 1993, 2-3PM EDT Content: Talk of the Nation/Science Friday On May 21, we will be joining the Internet to National Public Radio for a special edition of Talk of the Nation/Science Friday. Host Ira Flatow will field questions from users sitting in front of computers as well as users sitting next to telephones. Questions from the Internet will come from videoconferencing tools on the Multicast Backbone (MBONE) using a gateway provided by Ron Fredrick and Steve Deering of Xerox PARC. (If you don't have MBONE connectivity now, you probably won't have it by Friday. To learn more about the multicast backbone, ftp to isi.edu and get the file /mbone/faq.txt. If you do have MBONE connectivity, check SD for a listing for Internet Town Hall.) In addition to the audio link, we will have two other ways to participate. First, starting now, you can send mail to ira(a)radio.com with your comments and questions. Some of this mail may be read as part of the show. We encourage you to narrow your your comments to the subject of the Internet, how it is used, and the future of networking in the western world. Second, with the help of Rick Gates, we will be conducting an Internet Treasure Hunt and reading the results over the air. The purpose of the hunt is to illustrate the diversity of methods and data available on the network. The questions will be posted on the network 24 hours before the show and will be read by Ira Flatow at the beginning of the show. Even if you don't participate with a computer for this show, we hope you will listen to your local National Public Radio affiliate. Guests will include Carl Malamud, Brewster Kahle, and Tim O'Reilly. For those of you that have computers but no NPR affiliate, we will tape the show and send it out as an audio file approximately 48 hours after it airs. Participants in the Internet Town Hall include Cornell University, the National Press Club, the National Science Foundation, O'Reilly & Associates, Sun Microsystems, WAIS, Inc., Xerox PARC, and many others. Network connectivity for the Internet Town Hall is provided by UUNET Technologies. For information on Internet Talk Radio, write to info(a)radio.com. More information on Internet Town Hall will be available shortly. For a current, partial listing of sites, write to sites(a)radio.com. corwin

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Boycotts
by stub23 19 May '93

19 May '93

well i dont know about boycotting AT&T if you do, i would reccomend that you write a letter to them telling them EXACTLY why you dropped their service because boycotting someone without telling them that you are doing it is pointless i like AT&T more than Sprint or MCI as companies but then again i used to work for AT&T so im kinda biased... but i can guarentee that SPrint and MCI are more evil than AT&T and using ANI was something i did as part of my life its how i worked out billing, although it DOES provide a means for finding out your phone number whne you might not want it known its main use is billing and NO, most people dont know about it so what do WE do to educate them?

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Re: alt.whistleblowers
by jrk＠information-systems.east-anglia.ac.uk 19 May '93

19 May '93

Julf writes: >> it had been my understanding >> that julf was going to newgroup alt.whistleblowers... > >Er... I definitely remember somebody else announcing he was going to >create it... Anon.penet.fi (and especially MK II alias penet.anon.com) >will definitely support it. It would seem in keeping with the spirit of alt.whistleblowers for the newgroup to be performed anonymously. Does anon.penet.fi support the control newsgroup? :-) More seriously, why doesn't everyone who knows how and wants the group created simply forge an anonymous creation message? -- ____ Richard Kennaway __\_ / School of Information Systems Internet: jrk(a)sys.uea.ac.uk \ X/ University of East Anglia uucp: ...mcsun!ukc!uea-sys!jrk \/ Norwich NR4 7TJ, U.K.

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Re: BBSs under fire!
by Hal 19 May '93

19 May '93

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I agree with Stanton that BBS's have a rather unsavory image in the media and the public at large, compared with Usenet. A lot of people think of BBS's as meeting grounds for malicious hackers, whereas most people have never heard of Usenet. Here are some possible reasons for the difference: 1) BBS's are often used by kids. Parents see them using the computer to access BBS's. Usenet is available mostly to college campuses, research labs, and corporations. Lay people never see it operating. Usenet is largely based on Internet, which exists for research purposes. 2) People who use Internet tend to be college students and professional adults. They are more articulate and better able to defend their interests than most BBS users. 3) Usenet is decentralized but largely accountable. People who post objectionable material can be traced and recorded. On BBS's most posters are completely anonymous - only the operators are known. Perhaps the govern- ment feels more comfortable being able to monitor those who post material it doesn't want to see. And there are many cases where people have gotten into trouble for Usenet postings. A few months ago there was discussion on comp.org.eff.talk about a student at a large Northeastern university who got in legal trouble for posting possible child porn, including visits from the FBI. A few weeks ago in comp.admin.policy there was discussion about someone who posted what could be interpreted as a desire that Clinton die, and whose office was visited by the Secret Service shortly afterward. These things could not be done on a BBS, or only the operator could be investigated. Note also that our efforts for providing anonymity on Usenet threaten this capability. It's interesting to see how many of the vested interests on Usenet (system operators and such) opposed anonymity and have been working to shut it down. 4) All Usenet traffic could be monitored from a central location. To monitor all postings on all BBS's would be far more difficult. There could be all kinds of wild things being discussed on random BBS's here and there and the government would never know about it. This isn't true of Usenet. 5) Some BBS's have had illegal activities as their major purpose, including telephone fraud (exchanging stolen credit card numbers). Such activities would not be possible on Usenet. 6) BBS's often have cute or clever names that make them sound frivolous or childish. Usenet newsgroups and systems have functional names. Here is a list of local BBS systems I found: The Birdhouse BBS The Bowhead Whale BBS Buddha's Place BBS The Cat's Meow Network /dev/bbs Eco BBS The Enright House Enterprize BBS Fat Aggies The Haunted Castle of Alchemists The Haunted Manor Idiots Eternal Legal Plus Service BBS The Library Annex Manhattan Network XXIII Prevailing Winds Research BBS Reality Ltd. Santa Barbara Jaycees BBS SBCC BBS Swagland BBS The Seaside The Silican Embassy The Thunder Penguin The Wett BBS The Wimp There are some legitimate-sounding systems here, but a lot of them sound like they don't have a useful purpose. === In making these comparisons I don't mean to attack BBS operators or users, just to identify some differences in perception between BBS's and Usenet, which after all do have a lot of similarities in how they are used. I think that as more BBS systems connect to the net the line between BBS's and Usenet will blur. Also, if our efforts succeed to provide anonymity on the Internet the government will not be able to track objectionable postings to their source. Probably at that time Usenet itself will be attacked due to the threat it will present to those in power. Hal Finney 74076.1041(a)compuserve.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.2 iQCVAgUBK/oyD6gTA69YIUw3AQEY5QP/V3nsvcpJfJKq/91KB2iX9B3mmDriYZ1j XY2lr9+0p8/EutEd/AGvcn8p5LkUqERqvylzSSAhswrinqB9lw+bjf8T0PpjsoxX 01ftHNPHiZO/uPCWvsjmsaKATduNesnOmNgOFxMFN7Dp+KmcchjKwl3coBQbOY9J W9Ijlv2RV/I= =JERo -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: BBSs under fire! (or on fire, if BATF gets into the act!)
by judic＠sunnyside.com 19 May '93

19 May '93

>I'd like to invite discussion, either private or listwise, on: Why is the govt. >targetting BBSs? Welcome to the real, growing, dangerous world, Stanton, where all your fears are true. judi <judic(a)sunnyside.com>

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Re: Random numbers
by jrk＠information-systems.east-anglia.ac.uk 19 May '93

19 May '93

Fallen Angel writes: >Wouldn't it be ppossible to apply the Mafia-numbers-game solution? >i.e. For your numbers (or seed for a large volume of numbers) take >a random pubically accessible number like the last 3 digits of the >attendance of a sporting event. > >I have never seen any formalizations, but that type of number should be >as close to totally random as possible. How do you know that these numbers aren't already in use as a code system, under the control of someone who may not have your interests at heart? Mafia numbers indeed! -- ____ Richard Kennaway __\_ / School of Information Systems Internet: jrk(a)sys.uea.ac.uk \ X/ University of East Anglia uucp: ...mcsun!ukc!uea-sys!jrk \/ Norwich NR4 7TJ, U.K.

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BBSs under fire! (or on fire, if BATF gets into the act!)
by Stanton McCandlish 19 May '93

19 May '93

I'd like to invite discussion, either private or listwise, on: Why is the govt. targetting BBSs? I note Eric S. Raymond accuses the govt and its mouthpieces of using the largely manufactured horror of 'kiddie porn' as a "fait acompli", to yank the rug from under our feet when we take exception to the idea that the U.S. Govt. should have the authority to inspect our private lives and operations. Not to mention also using the treat of 'terrorism' and 'dangers to national security' et al. ad nauseum. I'd like to tell you a short anecdote: I frequently grep the entire disk system here for accessible .GIF files. I need them for my BBS, and even though this grepping about hogs CPU time, it is certainly less bandwidth costly than firing up a full FTP session to go hunting for such "warez". Inevitably, many of these graphics files are 'porno'. Also inevitably a few are 'illegal' porno, such as that featuring beastiality and or nude children. Most of these appear to originate from the orient and from Europe. I have no use for such materials, but apparently someone does. I did an experiment. Noting the filenames, I looked about in alt.binaries.pictures.erotica, and did an xarchie search, and many of these files are available from US educational institutions, via both FTP archives (usually in the uploads area -- I am confident that the maintainers of such sites ditch this stuff in a jiffy. There are exceptions, however) and the UseNet system. Now, maybe I missed something, but I have yet to see the secret service raid ftparchive.blah.edu, or UNM where I work, for 'pandering'. Yet BBSs get raided for SUSPICION of having such material, and get their equipment con- fiscated. I am pissed off enough that I am having a hard time even formulating my displeasure into a logical post, but here goes anyway: 1) who gave the govt the right to distribute this material, and deny others to do so (for whatever reason) - these universities ARE part of the govt. 2) why is the govt scapegoating BBSs? Are we THAT 'dangerous and subversive'? 3) why is it that people in general cannot see this BS for the BS it is? Is it REALLY so hard to see that "terrorism" and "kiddie porn" are not real threats, but that stomping all over our privacy rights IS? 4) why is nothing much really being done about these civil rights violations? The SJG case is a case in point. EFF did plenty to help out, but where was the ACLU? I see lots of NETTERS mad about clipper, but where is the media blitz? Where are the demonstrations on the White House lawn? Are the people in this country really so apathetic? Where is the outcry over the Waco massacre? For a govt to willy-nilly burn a bunch of children to death and lie like hell to the people the whole time, is enough to start a civil war in a lot of places, yet here it's just another "oh well". Well before I really get lost here, I will just finish up by saying that I became a BBS system operator with enthusiasm and happiness, and now find my self embroiled in the fringes of a bitter war, and one which the general populace seems 100% ignorant of. I don't care what Mike Godwin says, the media DO see BBSs as a threat. I just got word that the article that was supposed to be done by a local paper on BBSs in our area was nixed. I don't like conspiracy theories, but christ, it is almost impossible to get the media to do anything on the online world that is not negative; the only VR-oriented movie I have ever seen was a horror film designed to turn people OFF the idea (_Lawnmower_Man_), MTV wants to do stories about neo- nazis using BBS for their goals; the media worked hand in hand with the govt in the Waco mess, and now the media are generally silent, even supportive, about the clipper; I try to do my part in distributing crypto, and get legal threats from a govt. contractor... What gives? How far is this going to go? -- Testes saxi solidi! ********************** Podex opacus gravedinosus est! Stanton McCandlish, SysOp: Noise in the Void Data Center BBS IndraNet: 369:1/1 FidoNet: 1:301/2 Internet: anton(a)hydra.unm.edu Snail: 8020 Central SE #405, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87108 USA Data phone: +1-505-246-8515 (24hr, 1200-14400 v32bis, N-8-1) Vox phone: +1-505-247-3402 (bps rate varies, depends on if you woke me up...:)

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Random numbers
by anon03e2＠nyx.cs.du.edu 19 May '93

19 May '93

One of the main factors in crypto seems to be a source of random numbers which most computers don't really have. Wouldn't it be ppossible to apply the Mafia-numbers-game solution? i.e. For your numbers (or seed for a large volume of numbers) take a random pubically accessible number like the last 3 digits of the attendance of a sporting event. I have never seen any formalizations, but that type of number should be as close to totally random as possible.

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