July 1993 - cypherpunks-legacy

Thoughtcrime
by Duncan Frissell 06 Jul '93

06 Jul '93

(Ed Carp?) >There are no quasi-legitimate issues surrounding child pornography in the >United States. It doesn't matter, legally whether consent was obtained or >not, etc. Child pornography is not legal. To make, sell, possess, distribute, >or conspire to do any of the above is a crime. Not quite. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently threw out the sell, possess, and distribute parts of the Child Pornography act on the traditional 1st Amendment grounds that retailers can't be punished for failure to examine (and get the model's age certificates) for every page or every film frame of every item in their inventory. Such blanket coverage is vague and overbroad. Who knows what the Supremes or other Circuits not located in San Francisco will do but the state of the law is still fluid. The question of morphing or animated kiddie porn is an interesting one. I haven't read the law so I don't know if they would be arguably covered. Pure *text* kiddieporn is legal of course. Remember all the battles over text pornography? Isn't it great that the video/graphics revolution has eliminated most censorship issues concerning pure text. ******************************************************************** * DUNCAN FRISSELL Attorney at Law, Writer, and Privacy * * CIS 76630,3577 Consultant since the Nixon * * Internet: Administration * * 76630.3577(a)compuserve.com * * or frissell(a)panix.com * * Easylink 62853962 * * Attmail !dfrissell * * TLX: 402231 FRISSELL NYK * * * * Privacy Checkup still only $29.95. Buy today before price * * controls force me to raise my prices. * * * * Would you like a debit VISA card from your secret offshore * * bank account. Let me show you how. * * * ********************************************************************

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PC Week hops on the bandwagon
by dmandl＠lehman.com 06 Jul '93

06 Jul '93

Sorry if this has been mentioned already, but the new issue of PC Week contains a big special report entitled "Privacy in the Workplace." It's got about five or six separate pieces on electronic eavesdropping in the workplace, encryption, Clipper, etc., etc. I've only had a chance to scan it quickly (I mean with my eyes), but it seems that there's no mention of PGP at all, even in the piece on public-key encryption. Shocking. And the piece on Clipper, while it of course mentions all the opposition to the proposal, seemed just a bit wimpy to me. Anyway, it's the June 28 issue. Worth checking out, I guess. --Dave.

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REMAIL: list 7/6/93
by nobody＠rosebud.ee.uh.edu 06 Jul '93

06 Jul '93

NOTE: new remailer @entropy.linet.org! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Last update: 07/02/93 Q1: What cypherpunk remailers exist? A1: 1: nowhere(a)bsu-cs.bsu.edu 2: hh(a)cicada.berkeley.edu 3: hh(a)pmantis.berkeley.edu 4: hh(a)soda.berkeley.edu 5: 00x(a)uclink.berkeley.edu 6: hal(a)alumni.caltech.edu 7: ebrandt(a)jarthur.claremont.edu 8: phantom(a)mead.u.washington.edu 9: remailer(a)rebma.mn.org 10: elee7h5(a)rosebud.ee.uh.edu 11: hfinney(a)shell.portal.com 12: remail(a)tamsun.tamu.edu 13: remail(a)tamaix.tamu.edu 14: remailer(a)utter.dis.org 15: remailer(a)entropy.linet.org 16: remail(a)extropia.wimsey.com NOTES: #1-#5 no encryption of remailing requests #6-#15 support encrypted remailing requests #16 special - header and message must be encrypted together #9,#14,#15,#16 introduce larger than average delay (not direct connect) #9,#14,#15 running on privately owned machines ====================================================================== Q2: What help is available? A2: Check out the pub/cypherpunks directory at soda.berkeley.edu (128.32.149.19). Instructions on how to use the remailers are in the remailer directory, along with some unix scripts and dos batch files. The public keys for the remailers which support encrypted remailing requests is also available in the same directory. Mail to me (elee9sf(a)menudo.uh.edu) for further help and/or questions. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3 iQCVAgUBLDRKRYOA7OpLWtYzAQEoQgP+MS4qW2ITP5UCSACcG/ngSid3/o/I1fic guGXQ5Ay6QWu9CVdc6YlbmkxxL6ekbLhtFSmMyXC356yixJ8Nvxcs7MYypHLlo3W oG7C6HDPmAq6JgVUdD4YCUXOS7haBt3HJ3K/utXFe3G6ybbEfG0TSUvwqgIVADql LSKB4yfpsk8= =04Iy -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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(fwd) GIFs--Now it can be told
by tcmay＠netcom.com 06 Jul '93

06 Jul '93

Cypherpatriots, Here's a little experiment I've been conducting. A week ago I posted an ecrypted GIF to a bizarre new newsgroup that showed up on NETCOM, "alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.children." Quite a controversial group, pushing several buttons. My posting generated some real heat, though there was absolutely no evidence it was anything more than just a file. Apparently the mere fact of it existing was a kind of "thoughtcrime" in these politically correct times. Anyway, I let it brew for one week, then wrote this explanation and posted it. Several Cypherpunk list readers were slightly involved, some to criticize me, some to say "Not so fast." You know who you are. :-} All in all, a pleasant little experiment. Here's the posting I sent out: Newsgroups: alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.children,alt.config,netcom.netnews From: tcmay(a)netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: GIFs--Now it can be told Message-ID: <tcmayC9L0zI.2C3(a)netcom.com> Date: Sat, 3 Jul 1993 09:28:29 GMT One week ago tonight a new group appeared at my site, "alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.children," a group certain to provoke controversy, to bring out the Net Cops, and to induce a certain kind of "Stockholm Syndrome," wherein some folks scramble to initiate censorship prior even to the Feds doing it. (Their battle cry is "Eeek! If we don't nip this in the bud, _right now_, think of what might happen!) My experience has been that these Net.Censors are usually too quick to claim something has clearly gone beyond the bounds of decency and acceptability. Thankfully, they usually fail in their efforts. Anyway, seeing this strange new group appear on my system, I decided to conduct an experiment. I posted an "encrypted GIF," not further identified, and waited for the reaction. The file was as follows (only part of it shown): -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- Version: 2.2 b2cCrVJKUYUZf7UBA/i1tSSz66dOx4+cJKzNkm1JBhGigMdRvxM8Slm3TyC7kgWW L8J3w/On10thisi487rU/Gl7xOMajxCQedHrb6k0+wYDGjxmVcu9xwLWAWpkgq+5 fUiNKBnF/SUA/JisFrWvn63rt44n+DqROwx8CXuSvL1mUdqLRTS0t/timjHnhIwC VmLN1FTnSD8BBACFa38SqiwByarfcVhFg/fuKWc4AgKtYqSt5oWW6sYLckC3nEen ZcHV+DNFo36Exg7r0trapoBXpjoe9ENCsCbFJ7i/M7FwFYvK1QAcxQ6zGt+3HICM 9Hsxg1d5Goqp4+nmpW+9Y/UVY16+WVl9moY3c7Iv04Cp0ipu2B5qfIxPZoSMAlKv ..... Not to my surprise, about 20 people have (so far) requested the key to this file. (The whole encryption rationale is covered later.) I didn't reply to them...some of them asked for the key a second time! What surprised me is that nobody carefully looked at the file. Here it is again, with some places marked: -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- Version: 2.2 b2cCrVJKUYUZf7UBA/i1tSSz66dOx4+cJKzNkm1JBhGigMdRvxM8Slm3TyC7kgWW L8J3w/On10thisi487rU/Gl7xOMajxCQedHrb6k0+wYDGjxmVcu9xwLWAWpkgq+5 ^^^^ fUiNKBnF/SUA/JisFrWvn63rt44n+DqROwx8CXuSvL1mUdqLRTS0t/timjHnhIwC ^^ VmLN1FTnSD8BBACFa38SqiwByarfcVhFg/fuKWc4AgKtYqSt5oWW6sYLckC3nEen ^ ZcHV+DNFo36Exg7r0trapoBXpjoe9ENCsCbFJ7i/M7FwFYvK1QAcxQ6zGt+3HICM ^^^^ 9Hsxg1d5Goqp4+nmpW+9Y/UVY16+WVl9moY3c7Iv04Cp0ipu2B5qfIxPZoSMAlKv ....... I put a couple of other "subliminal messages" in, which I suppose could provoke the Religious Right into squawking that "Satanic messages" are being hidden in computer files *that children could possibly read*. Gasp! Needless to say, such ASCII surgery performed on a PGP file (which, by the way, was just some random message someone had sent me a while back, utterly unreadable by anyone other than the two of us--and not even that after I mutated various characters) makes it completely unreadable. Even if someone had the other half of the PGP key pair--which never existed--the file would not even checksum as a legal PGP file! (Putting plaintext into the file was both a message I hoped astute readers would eventually notice--though it *is* pretty hard to see--and an ironclad proof that the file could not be a real PGP message, let alone a GIF, let alone kiddie porn.) There are some quasi-legitimate issues surrounding the area of child erotica. Was the child coerced? Was consent meaningful? Etc. But the posting of mere bits qua bits causing such anger and flamage indicates a serious overreaction. Are mere thoughts the crime? Orwell covered this, didn't he? * What if such images merely "look like" children (and just what is the age of consent? 18? 16? "Children" of 15 can get married in most countries of the world.)...are such "fakes" illegal? * What if they are computer-generated images, of children that never existed outside of a computer? Which children were exploited? We're back to thoughtcrime again. (Don't laugh, a leading interpretation is that even computer-generated child porn would be illegal, not because of crimes committed against children, but because of the "atmosphere" and "climate" it might produce. That is, thoughtcrime.) * What if the images were morphs? Not wholly computer-generated, but the morph of an adult image into that of a child? * What if one 15-year old child took photos of a another 15-year old child? What if one child "exploited" another? What if a child took pictures of herself, self-portraits? * What if the images, if they were ever to be posted, originated someplace where they are legal? Perhaps Amsterdam, someone suggested. If the U.S government tries to stop the Net (which is already a market anarchy, thankfully) from distributing this material, mightn't all the various countries that have different laws than ours do the same thing? There goes alt.fan.salman.rushdie. And there goes soc.motss and all the "normal" alt.binaries.pictures.* groups. Of course it won't likely happen, nor will alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.children go away,either. Get used to it. (Again, I don't care for it, but wailing and moaning won't make it go away.) * What if someone scanned-in images from the widely available books by David Hamilton, or Robert Mapplethorpe? Certainly many of these photos are of nude children...would the imminent death of Usenet finally happen if someone went down to B. Dalton Books, bought a David Hamilton collection, and posted some of the photos in a.b.p.e.c.? So, I would encourage folks to lighten up. In a week on the Net, not a single kiddie porn picture has been posted. And if it does happen, try to just ignore it. The kid whose picture was taken is probably grown up by now (I'm guessing that many such images are from old magazines, etc.). In any case, the occasional picture is hardly going to create a new slave trade in children. The issue of how the media may react is a more serious one. Part of the reason I'm explaining my little experiment now is to make sure my posting, at least, is not used by some nitwit reporter as the basis of a story. (If it's being used, then he'll soon have egg on his face.) That's the story. I hope you enjoyed the ride. P.S. I said I'd say something about why I used encryption. Aside from not being a real PGP-readable file, the idea was to make it look like one. This is the likeliest way for such material to get posted, along with anonymous remailers. The "look for the key in the 'usual places'" bit was to resonate with the "binary nerve gas" idea, where the dangerous pieces are stored separately and only combined at the last minute. I don't know if such techniques are already in use, but I expect them soon. The mutant condors that one reader (who claimed to be a Pope in the Church of the Subgenius, but who humorlessly missed the joke--but I forgive him, for he knew not what he saw) wanted to feed me to, can now stop circling my house. -Tim May -- .......................................................................... 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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Encrypted cypherpunks list
by hfinney＠shell.portal.com 06 Jul '93

06 Jul '93

As Eric Hughes suggested, I put together a little perl script to remail cypherpunks mail, PGP encrypted, to all names on a list. If you'd like to receive your cypherpunks messages encrypted, send me your address and your PGP key and I'll add you to the list. Then you can unsubscribe from the regular list. I'll upload the script once I test it a little more. Initial subscribers should consider themselves alpha testers and feel free to complain. Hal Finney hfinney(a)shell.portal.com

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More on remail error reporting
by miron＠extropia.wimsey.com 06 Jul '93

06 Jul '93

I've created a digest list for error reporting. The digest list is errors-d(a)extropia.wimsey.com. Send a message to errors-d-request to subscribe. Following this is an example of a digest. Notice that the subjects (which include the ID of the messages in question) are the the top for quick browsing. Currently, the digest is transmitted every 12 hours. I'm also handling bounces now, not only remail errors. --- cut here --- Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1993 09:30:29 -0700 From: errors-d-request(a)extropia.wimsey.com Reply-To: errors(a)extropia.wimsey.com Subject: errors-d Digest V1993 #2 X-Loop: errors-d(a)extropia.wimsey.com Precedence: list To: errors-d(a)extropia.wimsey.com errors-d Digest Volume 1993 : Issue 2 Today's Topics: Remailing error, ID = (No subject supplied) Remailing bounce, ID = "Horror That Scares" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 3 Jul 1993 13:44:36 -0700 From: anonymous(a)extropia.wimsey.com To: errors(a)extropia.wimsey.com Subject: Remailing error, ID = (No subject supplied) Message-Id: <199307032044.AA26014@xtropia> No receipient could be ascertained. Note: No encrypted contents was found (encryption is required). No subject was included. Please supply a subject in the future for reporting. It will be stripped-off before remailing. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1993 09:30:04 -0700 From: anonymous(a)extropia.wimsey.com To: errors(a)extropia.wimsey.com Subject: Remailing bounce, ID = "Horror That Scares" Message-Id: <199307051630.AA05344@xtropia> Bounced mail: > From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <MAILER-DAEMON(a)extropia.wimsey.com> Subject of 'Returned mail: User unknown'. ------------------------------ End of errors-d Digest V1993 Issue #2 *************************************

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Non-cypherpunk question.
by Mark 05 Jul '93

05 Jul '93

>I just started reading this mailing list and I've run into a few problems >reading some of the messages because they include MIME information >which my copy of MH chokes on for some reason. It doesn't like the x-text >and text/x-pgp content-types. Would anybody on this list have a fix for >that so I can continue to read this list with MH? Any help would be appreciated. I use elm to read the list and it barfs on metamail messages as metamail hasnt been installed. What i did was to get cat.c and remove the arg checks so it didnt try to interpret the metamail switches elm piped to it and to not report missing files. Then it just catted it's arguements so /tmp/mail-aa0127 is catted and piped through less so i am able to read metamail (which are just nomal messages with a different Content-Type: line int he header anyway). Bit of a kludge but it works. Mark mark(a)coombs.anu.edu.au

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[daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU : On-Line Congressional Hearing]
by marc＠Athena.MIT.EDU 05 Jul '93

05 Jul '93

------- Forwarded transaction [6484] daemon(a)ATHENA.MIT.EDU (hearing-info(a)trystero.malamud.com) Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet 07/05/93 14:27 (70 lines) Subject: On-Line Congressional Hearing Date: Mon, 5 Jul 93 14:28:25 -0400 To: com-priv(a)psi.com From: hearing-info(a)trystero.malamud.com Reply-To: hearing-info(a)trystero.malamud.com Station: Internet Multicasting Service Channel: Internet Town Hall Program: On-Line Congressional Hearing Release: July 5, 1993 Content: First Announcement/On-Line Congressional Hearing On July 26 at 9:30AM EDT, the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance of the U.S. House of Representatives will hold the first Congressional Hearing ever held over a computer network. The oversight hearing on "The Role of Government in Cyberspace" will take place in the Grand Ballroom of the National Press Club at 14th and F Streets, N.W., Washington, D.C. The hearing is open to the public. An open house will be held from 3-5PM on the same day in the same location and is also open to the public. Chairman Markey has asked that this historic occasion demonstrate the potential and diversity of the global Internet. Thirty Sparcstations will be in the hearing room, allowing members of Congress, staff, and their guests to read e-mail, use Gopher menus, read testimony in WAIS databases, browse the World Wide Web, and otherwise use the resources of the global Internet as part of the hearing. Some witnesses for the hearing will testify remotely, sending audio and video over the Internet. Audio and video of the hearing will also be multicast over the Multicast Backbone (MBONE). We are hoping that C-SPAN and other traditional media will also carry the event. *MORE DETAILS ON MBONE AND OTHER WAYS TO WATCH THE HEARINGS REMOTELY WILL BE FORTHCOMING SHORTLY.* One of the primary points that we are hoping to demonstrate is the diversity and size of the Internet. We have therefore established an electronic mail address by which people on the Internet can communicate with the Subcommittee before and during the hearing: congress(a)town.hall.org We encourage you to send your comments on what the role of government should be in the information age to this address. Your comments to this address will be made part of the public record of the hearing. Feel free to carry on a dialogue with others on a mailing list, cc'ing the e-mail address. Your cards and letters to congress(a)town.hall.org will help demonstrate that there are people who use the Internet as part of their personal and professional lives. We encourage you to send comments on the role of government in cyberspace, on what role cyberspace should play in government (e.g., whether government data be made available on the Internet), on how the Internet should be built and financed, on how you use the Internet, and on any other topic you feel is appropriate. This is your chance to show the U.S. Congress that there is a constituency that cares about this global infrastructure. If you would like to communicate with a human being about the hearing, you may send your comments and questions to: hearing-info(a)town.hall.org Support for the Internet Town Hall is provided by Sun Microsystems and O'Reilly & Associates. Additional support for the July 26 on-line congressional hearing is being provided by ARPA, BBN Communications, the National Press Club, Xerox PARC, and many other organizations. Network connectivity for the Internet Town Hall is provided by UUNET Technologies. --[6484]-- ------- End forwarded transaction

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Non-cypherpunk question.
by Chris Parrinello 05 Jul '93

05 Jul '93

Hi, I just started reading this mailing list and I've run into a few problems reading some of the messages because they include MIME information which my copy of MH chokes on for some reason. It doesn't like the x-text and text/x-pgp content-types. Would anybody on this list have a fix for that so I can continue to read this list with MH? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance! Chris

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"Wired" has more than one cover--why?
by tcmay＠netcom.com 04 Jul '93

04 Jul '93

I noticed that some copies of the latest "Wired" have Peter Gabriel on the cover and others have Mitch Kapor on the cover. What gives? Some sort of experiment? A novel way to gauge reader reaction to the covers? A lawsuit that forced a change in the covers? Esthetics? (My issue, with Peter Gabriel on the cover, is much artier, though harder to figure out, than the relatively mundane image of Kapor.) (Peter Gabriel, being a musician, may be said to be doing "a cover of a piece by Mitch Kapor.") Is Crunch on another set of covers? Did the issue with some of us Cypherpunks on the cover merely represent one of _several_ versions of the cover? (I envision the "Crypto Rebels" covers going to the Bay Area, the "Dish-Wallahs" covers going overseas, and the "Brenda Laurel" covers going directly to "Mondo 2000" headquarters in Berkeley.) -Tim May P.S. The issue of "Wired" is superb, as always. -- 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: by arrangement Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.

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