December 2000 - cypherpunks-legacy

CDR: RE: Re: Anonymous Remailers cpunk
by Trei, Peter 09 Jan '01

09 Jan '01

> ---------- > From: Jim Choate[SMTP:ravage@einstein.ssz.com] > Reply To: Jim Choate > Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2000 7:09 PM > To: cypherpunks(a)einstein.ssz.com > Subject: CDR: Re: Anonymous Remailers cpunk > > > On Tue, 3 Oct 2000, Steve Furlong wrote: > > > <<Proposal to limit spam sent through anon remailers by requiring that > > the traffic be encrypted>> > > > Perhaps we're talking at cross purposes. This subthread came along > > because some people have noticed that anonymous remailers are used for > > an awful lot of spam. Peter Trei proposed that remailers could pass > > along only encrypted mail. My understanding was that Alice, the > > message's author, would encrypt the message with Bob's public key; Bob > > is the end recipient: a person or a mailing list or whatever. Alice > > would send the message through Ramona, the anonymous remailer. Ramona is > > requiring that messages be encrypted as a means of filtering out spam. > > Ramona does not need to know Bob's public or private keys; Ramona cares > > only that the message is encrypted. > > So? I set up a email address that I offer to the spammers to sign up to > the anonymous remailers and then it proxies their email into the encrypted > network. I figure this baby'll stop'em for about six months. > Jim: A spammer (or your spammer's proxy) is not going to individually encrypt messages to thousands or millions of end-recipients, each with their own public key - the time factor makes this uneconomical, and the hassle factor of finding all the recipient public keys makes it impractical. Thus, only remailers which send out plaintext are useful to spammers as exit remailers. It is only exit remailers (ie, the remailer which sends to the final recipient) which get hassled for sending spam. The goal is to make remailer operators life easier by preventing them from being used to spam random lusers, who may initiate complaints against the remailer operator. It is not to prevent spam passing through a remailer somewhere in mid-cloud. While such encrypted spam will increase the volume of traffic, for most remailers that is a Good Thing - more material to confuse the traffic analysis. As long as it gets dropped before leaving the remailer network, no harm is done. Steve understands this, as does every one else but you. What's the problem? > For it to really stop spam it would need to be well distributed. So how do > you offset the increased sys admin issues this raises? > Any remailer operator can decide not to pass along plaintext. So long as the message sender is aware of this property, nothing more needs to be distributed. There are no increased sysadmin issues. > Then there is the old key management problem. > > James Choate > No, there is not, beyond the fact that the message originator must know the final recipient's public key. Jim, do you really understand how remailer chaining works? Peter Trei > Vizzini: HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE! > Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you > think it means. > - The Princess Bride > > >

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Re: The Cost of Natural Gas [was Re: The Cost of California Liberalism]
by auto58194＠hushmail.com 05 Jan '01

05 Jan '01

I wrote: > > California's importing power from elsewhere, so why didn't these other generators > > commit to natural gas suppliers? > Mac Norton wrote: > Perhaps because they don't burn gas at their stations. Duh. My response to Raymond was in reference to natural gas price increases. Again, if they're not burning gas, how are they causing shortages leading to price increases? Who's burning the gas? Where'd it go? I wrote: > > Hint: transmission losses aren't a recent discovery. > Mac Norton wrote: > No shit. That's why line loss is taken into account in prices. > So, er, what? So if line loss is taken into account in prices it should also be taken into account in figuring out how much power to generate and should also be taken into account when figuring out how much natural gas needs to be committed to. It doesn't matter where the plants are. Raymond's pointed out that some gas plants normally idle are now running full-time to meet demand. To me this reads the same as using idle plants instead of building new ones. Perhaps not a bright move in terms of safety, efficiency and reserve capacity, but nothing that should have changed natural gas commitments. "Raymond D. Mereniuk" wrote: > This power plant sits there mainly unused. The local tree hugger > types whine too much about the pollution. The facility is not small, > probably enough capacity for a city of 250K. It is used only at peak > times and in emergency situations. When there are low reservior > levels (which is part of your problem) it is used more often. > > In a properly planned electrical system this type of extra capacity is > considered essential. These plants were never intended to be > used fulltime so they tend to have low natural gas storage capacity > and smaller inbound pipelines. In your system you are using > facilities such as these for full-time power generation. > > In your state these plants has a quota of pollution they are allowed > to produce on an annual basis. A number of these facilities had > reached their annual quota of emissions so they shut down for > maintenance. Since they were never intended to be used full-time > they require some down time. Within the last two weeks your state > government lifted the pollution quotas and pressured the operators > to bring these plants back on stream. OK, but do you deny that natural gas suppliers and pipeline operators are responsible for making the call for sizing their supply and their pipelines? Does California need to step in and do that for them? They sized for the expected usage from these plants and actual usage has ended up higher. Oops. The gas suppliers and operators could have also figured that without more power plants being built, these plants might need to run more (even despite regulations) and taken appropriate actions. Perhaps the suppliers aren't dumb and actually figured that out but ran some numbers that said they'd make more money by allowing a shortage to occur? (And hey, we can make it look like California's fault and get some good press in B.C. while ripping them off too!) In your eastern vs. western pipeline example, you showed a case where some supply problems would have been solved by connecting the two systems but then pointed out that the company didn't do that so they can charge a premium in the western system. Is that a cost of California Liberalism or a cost of Capitalism? > Energy production is big business in western Canada and a lot of > people are making big dollars from the consumers in the northwest. > The actions of the California voters have made this possible. The actions of California voters have helped to make this possible. The cold weather has helped to make this possible. You and I heating our homes has helped to make this possible. Not connecting the eastern and western pipeline networks helped to make this possible. Lots of other things have helped to make this possible, but above all, Capitalism has made this possible. California's not responsible for making commitments to put the magic demand number over the limit to build new pipelines. Is it also God's fault for not committing to a cold winter? I'll let Tim make the causality rant if he feels it necessary. Californians don't want to live near power plants but have a huge electricity demand. Great! I smell opportunity for neighboring states to get lots of tax revenues from plants supplying California electricity. Why haven't they been built? Nevada liberalism? Oregon liberalism? Why not build plants in Mexico? Is Mexico a bastion of liberalism with stringent pollution laws? Why are natural gas suppliers and electric utilities not meeting demand? Are they morons or have they calculated that they make more money by risking and allowing shortages rather than by increasing capacity? This whole thing is no different than OPEC deciding to leave oil in the ground to raise prices except that instead of being honest bastards like OPEC, they're being dishonest bastards by babbling about California Liberalism. If anything it's the cost of not being liberal enough! Damnit, they told us we'd all become rich by investing in all these glorious deregulated energy companies and now look what's happened! We forgot the profit was going to come out of our pockets first. Those bastards told us competition would lower prices! We forgot all our anti-trust lawyers were busy with Microsoft and not making sure the energy industry wasn't acting in collusion. What hath we wrought? > I just wish I was still in the energy business rolling in dollars rather than > whining about paying an extra $1,000 per year for heating. Shame on you. Bad capitalist! Bad capitalist!

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Anarchy Eroded: Project Efnext
by Eric Cordian 03 Jan '01

03 Jan '01

Almost since the inception of the Internet, Usenet and IRC have been uncensorable distributed resources defined only by adherence to published protocols. With no centralized administration, and resilience against the loss of individual servers, they carry enough traffic to provide complete and total plausible deniability for any server operator over content which gores some specific group's ox. Indeed, alt.anonymous.messages, a Usenet newsgroup, is often used as the basis for Cypherpunkish schemes, in which people need to talk to each other without any third party being able to discern either content or traffic patterns in the discussion. Unknown to much of the Internet, there is a plan brewing to "upgrade" Efnet, the primary IRC network, to something called "Efnext." Server software is being rewritten and tested. Efnet server admins have been contacted and promises to move to the new network during a "transition period" exacted. People who won't play ball have been identified, and plans to delink them and not connect them to the new regime fabricated. Efnext is a very different kind of IRC than we are used to. It is centrally administrated, with the Efnext Cabal passing judgment on who may link to the new system, as well as having the ultimate say over the policies and selection of administrative personnel on individual servers. The identity of individual IRC servers has been blurred whenever possible, and IRC Operators have been given many new powers, which span individual servers, and apply globally to the entire Network. The old Efnet policy that IRCops didn't get involved in "channel issues" has been replaced by one where operators are encouraged to do so on Efnext. Operators on Efnext will be able to globally reserve nicks, channels, and even entire servers, making them inaccessible to people using IRC. They will be able to enter channels, adjust modes, op themselves, and mass deop others. They will even be able to remote k-line on any server. There will be global logs of how these new powers are used, and operators will work with one another to present to the users an unvarying monolithic implementation of the policies and doctrines created by the centralized Efnext administration. In short, and in secret, and without many comments by the people affected, IRC as we know it is about to get the equivalent of AOL Chatroom Monitors, with the identities of individual IRC servers becoming invisible to the users as IRC is transformed from a server cluster into a monolithic network object under a single authority. One could very easily envision a similar thing happening to Usenet, with everyone awakening one morning to "Usenext," whose centralized authority can turn newsgroups off and on with ease, and control who is permitted to post, and what they are allowed to say, both before and after the fact, and globally across all NNTP servers. Freeh and Reno will love Efnext. Saddam Hussein will love Efnext. Channels like #%%%100%MoslemWomenWithoutVeilsPix and #Feinswine&HatchCanMunchMySphincter will be able to be disabled with little more than a friendly phone call by the cops to the people publicly advertising themselves as being in charge of the vast majority of IRC. "Suspected pedophiles, money launderers, drug traffickers, and terrorists" can just have their nicks turned off, or be k-lined on all servers. All for the greater good of the greater number, of course. With centralized administration will come centralized responsibilty, centralized liability, and of course, like the rest of the camel into the tent, centralized policy. Perhaps centralized policy like... "No channel names with naughty words in them" "No discussions which exploit Gyno-Americans, Under-18-Americans, or Differently-Tinted-Americans" "No talk of how to make drugs or explosives" And of course, where ever there is centralized authority, people will be encouraged to rat out anyone they suspect of such things to the classroom monitor, and the path of least resistance will be to disable the resource involved until the accused proves otherwise. Perhaps Efnext will even include the ability to log problematical channels at the request of law enforcement. I wouldn't be at all surprised. You can learn more about Efnext at http://www.efnext.net/ "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own." We are Efnext. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

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Re: The Cost of Natural Gas [was Re: The Cost of California Liberalism]
by auto58194＠hushmail.com 02 Jan '01

02 Jan '01

"James A. Donald" wrote: > > He describes the california system as "deregulated", but the fact that it > takes many years to get permission to build a power plant -- that it takes > longer to get permits than to actually build one, is undoubtedly a > contributing factor to the crisis. > Of course it is. With plenty of excuses to hand out, a deregulated industry will act more boldly. If it's so hard to build power plants in California, what is the obsession with building them in California? Looking at the queue of plant requests within California they also seem to be obsessed with building them in highly populated areas. I suppose one has to consider the plight of the capitalist here. Given that the ROI on a plant closer to demand is higher (less additional infrastructure such as transmission lines and substations) than one far away, it becomes a no-brainer which to build from a profit standpoint. Considering power plants were competing with dot-coms for investment capital, it's no surprise that ROI on a plant needed to be made as high as possible to have any chance of being funded. Thinking about it that way, it shouldn't be too surprising the result is high-ROI plants get built where people don't want them but eventually accept them after a year or two's delay. The capital for the plant is just invested elsewhere during the delay, so the delay doesn't harm the capitalist. If anything, it helps as the delay just serves to let shortage warnings and emergency notices go out, lets prices go up, makes people worry about blackouts, and then the next plant can be built with an even higher ROI. So in a perverse sort of way, the system works just fine. For the capitalist anyways.

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Re: The problem with SSH2
by Jim Choate 01 Jan '01

01 Jan '01

On Sun, 31 Dec 2000, Markus Friedl wrote: > On Fri, Dec 29, 2000 at 06:30:01PM +0000, Peter Fairbrother wrote: > > Why not use a communication method that makes MITM attacks impossible to > > successfully complete? Doesn't that "not expose them to risk at all"? > > as Damien wrote: SSH2 + pk auth 'makes MITM attacks impossible to > successfully complete'. 'pk auth' is handwaving. How do you defeat the MITM attack against the key server this approach requires? You don't, at some point there is a question of nothing but 'trust'. And it isn't testable. This is the fundamental weakness any any security scheme that requires anything approaching public pk distribution. The original point that what is needed is a distributed system with no interest in message content is still valid. Then the parties using the system can impliment the appropriate security for their purposes. Any central server based system should be avoided. Any system that pre-dictates the low-level format (ie non-delivery related) should be avoided like the plague. Any system that requires single source (prefer Open Source or PD) tools should be avoided like the black plague. What we really need is a distributed network/process model (ala Plan 9) that impliments content encryption at all levels, though 'next level' addressing should still be in the clear. Key management at the network layer should be node-to-node (peer-to-peer) and left to the discression of the individual parties. We accept that we need trust in our model and distirbute it to the lowest level as well. This limits any breach of security without massive amounts of resources, which limits the targets of such attacks to reasonably readily identifiable, and as a result protected, lists. Then using a distributed file system we can break the actual contents up and store them 'holographically' (this probably means multi-site storage for each little blob of a target file) so small amounts of sites dropping off are irrelevant to the integrity of the file system. At that point with some sort of 'anonymous thunking layer' (eg standard anonymous remailer, posts through Usenet, or anonymous IP proxies) we can impliment a 'data haven' sort of mechanism. This effectively means I can access my 'home workspace' from anywhere on the Internet anonymously and transparently (with respect to resource usage). As an aside, this sort of architecture would also solve a lot of the wireless issues as well. ____________________________________________________________________ Before a larger group can see the virtue of an idea, a smaller group must first understand it. "Stranger Suns" George Zebrowski The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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remove
by chris ulmer ulmer 31 Dec '00

31 Dec '00

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Live like the RICH
by lifecging＠hotmail.com 31 Dec '00

31 Dec '00

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The Freenet Project: Vapourware?
by George＠Orwellian.Org 31 Dec '00

31 Dec '00

(via slashdot) "The Freenet Project: Vapourware?" by Ian Clarke, 30th Dec 2000 http://freenetproject.org/index.php?page=vapourware

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pager
by Sharon 31 Dec '00

31 Dec '00

tried to call the 1-800 number.. Can't get thru. I am interested. Eric Hurley

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by William Jefferson 31 Dec '00

31 Dec '00

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