July 1993 - cypherpunks-legacy

Is this mailing list gatewayed into any news group?
by Ian! D. Allen [NRC/IIT] 27 Jul '93

27 Jul '93

I'd rather not subscribe and fill my mailbox if I can read it via Usenet...

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thanks for the help on MacPGP
by deboni＠diego.llnl.gov 27 Jul '93

27 Jul '93

To all who emailed me with helpful info and advice, thanks! You're too numerous to mention. To all who sent me unencoded versions and the old version of MacGZ, thanks, also! I've got it squared away, now. Tom DeBoni deboni(a)llnl.gov

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ANON: remail abuse
by Karl Barrus 27 Jul '93

27 Jul '93

Earlier, Chris Odner brought up some concerns about abusing anonymous remailers. (I deleted the message before saving it, so I can't quote from it). He mentioned his friend is getting abusive mail, probably from telnet to the smtp port, and then mentions the "remailers are perfect for those who would harrass and abuse others." Wait a second... here is an example of harrassment right now, without anything to do with the remailers! I mean, if you want to really hassle somebody, you could just wait patiently until someone leaves their machine for a few seconds and type sh (or ksh) while true do uuencode /vmunix irritate | mail somebody@somewhere done followed with a clear and then leave quickly. I guess I'm one of those people who would get upset and blame the person responsible for the action instead of software and/or technological advancement for possible providing a means. As Peter mentioned, payphones are already perfect for harrassment. So is junk mail... and the crucial thing here is these services cost money. I'm sure future remailers will incorporate digital cash and be a pay-for-each-remail service. Chris also mentions concers about distributing porn and stuff like that through remailers. I guess this could be done, but why give up the speed and convenience of ftp, fsp, irc (dcc), and usenet posting? These services distribute files faster and further than remailing. /-----------------------------------\ | Karl L. Barrus | | elee9sf(a)menudo.uh.edu | <- preferred address | barrus(a)tree.egr.uh.edu (NeXTMail) | \-----------------------------------/

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Digital Money
by guy＠theporch.raider.net 26 Jul '93

26 Jul '93

I'm new to the list and this may be a dumb question, but what is currently being done in the area of digital money? Anything? -- Jonathan R. Guy | The opinions expressed above are not E-Mail: guy(a)theporch.raider.net | those of my employer. Nor are Snail: P.O. Box 158325 | they my own. Actually, I copied them Nashville, TN 37215 | from the encyclopedia.

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CP T's
by fergp＠sytex.com 26 Jul '93

26 Jul '93

On Sun, 25 Jul 93 19:22:20 PDT, Timothy C. May <uunet!netcom.com!tcmay> wrote - > P.S. Speaking of t-shirts...maybe we ought to think about some > Cypherpunks shirts? Now that's an idea. Something along the lines of the "Pretty Good Revolution" and/or "Crypto Rebels" would be interesting... The more I think about it, the more I like the idea. I'd surely opt to get one. ;-) Cheers, Paul Ferguson | "Government, even in its best state, Network Integrator | is but a necessary evil; in its worst Centreville, Virginia USA | state, an intolerable one." fergp(a)sytex.com | - Thomas Paine, Common Sense I love my country, but I fear its government.

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Re: Remailers/PayPhones and Today's NYT
by covin＠cs.uchicago.edu 26 Jul '93

26 Jul '93

"George A. Gleason" <gg(a)well.sf.ca.us> writes: >And did you read Hugh's posting about the 7pm to 8am coin >curfew in Czechago? ... >Wake up, how much evidence do you need that it's a simple matter of bigotry >and classism? Hm. Perhaps it is. On the other hand, it could also be a combination of a little bit of greed for power with a bit of genuine fear and despair. You see, if the Chicago Tribune can be believed, there are actual citizens' groups lobbying for the removal of pay phones from certain areas of the city. Groups of citizens who *live* in those same areas. These folk claim that public pay phones attract drug dealers, presumably because of the semi-anonymity they provide. I don't know personally how true this claim is, but I can understand the advantages that a pay phone might offer to a drug dealer. Sure, the "big time" dealers might not use anything as plebian as a public pay phone, but drugs are a big booming business, and clearly there are far more small-time dealers than big-time ones. They further claim that drug dealers attract violence. I don't know myself if this is true, but I do know from reading the paper that an absurdly large number of people are killed in Chicago by stray bullets shot by drug dealers in conflicts with each other. And, of course, still more folks who *are* drug dealers are killed directly, each year. Finally, they claim that merchants in certain areas are pandering to the drug-dealer market for pay phones by installing far more than one would otherwise think necessary. I haven't seen this myself, but the article I read did mention what seemed like unusually large clusters (street corners with 7-10 pay phones). That's the fear and despair bit. It could be bigotry, it could be classism-- but stray bullets are damn good motivators too, and here in Chicago we have a lot of them. As for greed: this could be a factor, it might not. At least one alderman has made it illegal to install new pay phones in his ward without his explicit permission. Clearly this adds to his power. The same fellow has made much of his public name in recent campaigning against these public pay phones, and threatening to take an axe to them himself if some of them weren't removed. Make of this what you will. How much more evidence do I need that it's a simple matter of bigotry and classism? Well, a bit more than I've seen so far. Cypherpunk content? This is a damn good illustration of the problems that can crop up with an anonymous service. Though services on the net have the advantage of not being tied to a physical location, like pay phones are; so they probably won't serve to attract a "bad element" to any particular place. On the other hand, any sort of public terminal service offering encrypted email, might very well. -David

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Re: Secured E-mail standard?
by smb＠research.att.com 26 Jul '93

26 Jul '93

Has a proposal been made to officially adopt a header field in standard Internet mail messages that would essentially include security signature information? Something like: X-Security-Type: PGP 1.0 X-Security-Code: asdui&Dh1daOFajsFNOA...etc. These generic field names would allow for various types of security methods. Most important, would make it a lot easier for smart e-mail systems to recognize secured e-mail, with the option of allowing the user to filter out such fields when reading text. The current scheme of having to "frame" the content (plain text) and add the PGP signature is distracting. This won't fly for several reasons. First, X- implies a non-standard header. Second, in the Internet world PEM is on the standards track, and it uses a PGP-like encapsulation. (More precisely, many facets of the PGP appearance were taken from PEM.) PEM does provide for various security mechanisms, I should note, not just the current RSA+DES. Finally, the scheme which you label ``distracting'' (and I agree) was adopted because there's simply too much information to put into headers in any comprehensible fashion, and to really do the job properly requires an encoded (and hence unreadable) plaintext of the message, independent of the encryption or signature algorithms. (These folks worried, and rightly so, about character sets, gateways that would add or drop trailing blanks or tabs, etc.)

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There's an echo here! There's an echo, hear?
by tcmay＠netcom.com 26 Jul '93

26 Jul '93

I know the site "cypherpunks(a)indigo.mese.com" was supposedly removed from the Cypherpunks list, as per a message from Eric Hughes, but I am getting several bounces per day. I assume you folks are, too. What's apparent is that each of these long bounces (400-500 lines) is *getting longer* each cycle through the process. I noticed this when I was deleting them. I suppose the extra lines--roughly 20 extra lines each cycle--are more error messages being added by cypherpunks(a)indigo.mese.com and then sent back to the List. This is *not* a complaint, though I hope it stops soon. Instead, it's a comment that e-mail systems and lists may need (soon!) more sophisticated positive reputation filters, to screen out such pathological behaviors, mail bombs, and the like. I feel sorry for the List members who are on more restrictive mail systems, including those who may have to (gulp!) pay for incoming mail by the byte. -Tim -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.

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Re: Remailers/PayPhones and Today's NYT
by George A. Gleason 26 Jul '93

26 Jul '93

Citizens lobbying for removal of payphones in their neighborhoods sounds like more of the same old "fix a cut toe by chopping off the foot" syndrome. People have to be pretty desperate to go that far. Next step: remove indoor plumbing because some dope dealers flush their stuff when the cops come to the door. Gee, how about tatooed ID on the wrists, eh? Drug dealers and violence: now there's a decent issue. And of course the idea of removing the *guns* won't go anywhere, but since there isn't a National Payphone Association, taking away the phones is easier politically. On the other hand, a lot of parents have themselves to blame for letting their little kiddies play with toy guns and watch violent BS on TV. Training, as it were. Alderman Payphone Permit: is probably also violating FCC rules there; a decent Federal case could be made. Too many phones? Hey, what about the number of places where one can purchase alcohol? Here in the Bay Area, they're starting to crack down on liquor stores, since these seem to attract a lot of nastiness also. That seems more reasonable, given that 50% of homicides and suicides involve alcohol. Baddies in Cyberspace: oh, as soon as they get Cellular Modems, you can bet they will. Back to race & class. Take a look at what has happened to the urban ghettoes over the last 10 years. If you look at drug abuse as self-medication (which has been well demonstrated), what we see is an incredible number of people in intolerable pain in their daily lives. Reduce the pain with jobs, decent places to live, and some sense of opportunity, and drugs will have far less attraction. I'll never forget the woman who was interviewed locally on the radio; saying, essentially, "we have nothing at all, no hope of anything better, and every day is a desperate scramble to survive; when I do a hit of dope it's like I've eaten a meal, had a bowel movement, made love, and taken a nap all at once." Sounds like hyperbole until you see the numbers, that something like half of black children don't get three meals a day, and over half of black families can't afford rent *and* food every month. When you're dying slowly anyway, shaving off a few more years with a dope habit is a bargain if those remaining years hurt a little bit less. *We are developing a serious underclass in this country,* have been for ten years now. Take a look at any 3d world city; look back at the slums here, it all looks the same. Punishing these people even more by taking away one after another of the amenities of civilisation can only make it worse over the long run. People are very obliging; if they're treated like animals, they respond accordingly. -gg

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DARE T-shirts
by Dan M. Shaw 26 Jul '93

26 Jul '93

Timothy C. May writes: >Anyway, I have long wanted to get a t-shirt or sweatshirt >silk-screened with "D.A.R.E." on it, as so many phony >parents are nowwearing (I think the kiddies get gold >stars if they sell one of these shirts to their parents). >But *my* shirt would go something like this: >"D. rugs > A. re > R. eality > E. nhancers" A friend of mine is in the T-shirt business... he can take a GIF or other graphics file, print it on a color printer, and heat-transfer it to a T-shirt. Not quite as nice as silk-screen, but the set-up cost is much lower, especially for onesies. Consider taking a paint program and, um, "rolling your own" custom T-shirt design. Perhaps run an official DARE poster through a color scanner and make suitable modifications. If you're interested, I will ask him for details.

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