October 2001 - cypherpunks-legacy

You Can Have Your Rights Back When We're Done
by Anonymous 17 Oct '01

17 Oct '01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59466-2001Oct14.html

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None
by Mark Staton 17 Oct '01

17 Oct '01

What is ur phone #? Does this $3 envelope program require any personal advertising I have to do myself like placing an ad in a newspaper or do u give me all the evelopes stams supplies, etc needed to complete the task? _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp

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Public Anonymity (Re: FIPR Release 16/10/2001: EMERGENCY POWERS ALLOW MASS-SURVEILLANCE FOR NON-TERRORIST INVESTIGATIONS
by Peter Fairbrother 17 Oct '01

17 Oct '01

> Richard Clayton wrote: > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 > > In article <005f01c1572f$060bca80$742b4ed5@fleetfoot>, Paul R. Pettitt > <prpettitt(a)onetel.net.uk> writes > >> All you need do is use a free service like that at http://www.anonymisers.com >> and nobody is able to monitor or log what you read or post. >> > "nobody" is too strong ... the people who run that web site are in a position > to log what you do -- they may well not choose to do so, but that's not quite > the same thing. > > They seem to have a clear understanding of what they are offering, and their > FAQ is quite sensible, starting as it does with the sentence: > > The answer to the big question quite simply is - no. It is not possible to > ever be totally anonymous on the Internet despite what anyone else may try and > tell you. > This is simply wrong. There are several techniques which can provide public anonymity, ie anonymity when _all_ parts of the communication system are compromised. Some are well-known. I have been working on this for some time, for possible inclusion in m-o-o-t. I'm thinking of publishing a paper on this soon, and I have attached part of an early draft of the introduction, which gives an overview. It's just notes, I haven't finished it, so don't expect total accuracy (or clarity). -- Peter Fairbrother ............................. Public Anonymity. Public anonymity is anonymity when all the inner workings of the transmission system are public, so anyone can see what is transmitted, stored, manipulated, see who did it, but still can't detect if a message is sent, or who the sender or recipient are *. To set a scene, Alice wants to send Bob an email. Alice's comms with her ISP are tapped, so are Bob's, and all the mail servers and anonymous remailers in the world are secretly run/compromisable by the FB!/NSA/GCHQ. Also, Alice and Bob are potentially subject to Court orders to reveal keys to encrypted data. There are several ways that this can be accomplished. Steganography (sending hidden messages in eg pictures on the web that are accessed by many people) is an obvious example, but it suffers from the disadvantage that if a receiver is compromised than the sender can potentially be identified. So, to a lesser extent, do simple broadcast systems or just-a-bunch-of-files systems (I just stole/made up those terms). (Also, most stego software writers don't know what they are doing, which I can quite understand as it is usually theoretically impossible for them to do so **.) A simple broadcast system works like this: eg 1 million users (including Alice) each contribute on average 10 (some random, some signal) bytes/sec to a 10MB/s broadcast signal. It's fairly easy to arrange for only intended recipients (or a subset of them) to be able to determine which bytes of the broadcast are meant for them, and to be able to decode only those bytes. This system requires Bob to be online all the time. A just-a-bunch-of-files system works like this: Sid (the server) makes a lot of files and fills them with random data. Alice (and everyone else) overwrites some of them with either encrypted or random data (and perhaps a time). Bob reads _all_ the files from Sid's public database, and decrypts those files intended for him, including Alice's message, with covertraffic from the other users for anonymity. This requires Bob to read a lot of data, but allows him to do it not in real time, ie Alice and Bob don't have to be online at the same time. It also requires that Bob collects his messages within a short time, otherwise they will be overwritten. Anonymity in both these systems comes from Bob receiving lots of data, only some of which is meant for him. The senders of data meant for him can't be identified. Another twist, to foil traffic analysis and provide plausible deniability against Court orders to reveal keys, is the sending of meaningless data as a part of the system, eg: whenever Alice logs on, whether or nor she has a message to send, she sends data. With good crypto it is impossible to tell if she actually sent a message. The difficulty with both these systems is the large amount of data Bob has to read. It is possible to put this large transfer requirement on Alice instead of Bob, but not much is gained overall by doing so. Simple techniques to reduce transfer in these systems, eg Bob connecting at a set time of day in the first case, or reading only a subset of the files in the second, only reduce anonymity. ----------------------------- (the paper itself will describe two methods for reducing this transfer requirement, without decreasing anonymity, They're based on SFS-like technology, undetectably moving hidden data around a too-big-to-transfer SFS, actually doing it as part of other user's writes) (I hope, it's not finished yet!) ---------------------------- * (There is another potential qualification, that the very existence of Alice and Bob's comms can't be detected, but I won't fully address that here, because in the present situation it isn't relevant. If Governments impose requirements for key escrow, or mandate encryption software control, it may become relevant. This attack can be defeated, though the useable bandwith may become very low, and users may be required to generate lots of plausible covertext and/or (shared) key material.) ** I'd love to argue this with you, but I will only do so once (unless you are really interesting).

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Fuck Thomas Wales, and Fuck His Whole Family....l
by sonofgomez709 17 Oct '01

17 Oct '01

I'm sure all of the 'nice' things you say about the federal prosecutor who was recently removed from office are true. However, since he had a part in my being tortured in a seatac federal prison while being denied even the most basic of constitutional rights, I believe that whatever fate he met was undoubtedly the result of his having made a choice to actively participate in the abuses of justice and basic human decency which are endemic in the Western District of Washington federal courts. It is not surprising that Thomas Wales was extremist in his views of the need to disarm the American Citizens, since the crimes being committed by himself and his coworkerconspirators were being done at gunpoint, thus allowing them to shit all over justice and the constitution with impunity in the course of their PerseProsExecutions of their victims. I am certain that the one-sided garbage you write about these criminals will serve to maintain your world view -- which cannot survive the reality of accepting that perhaps hiding the atrocities being committed by the average GoodGuy <nod-nod> <wink-wink> in Imaginary America will not be sufficient to protect them from the fact that we reap what we sow... Your hypocrisy, OfCourseOfCourse [TM], lies in the fact that eWe and your ilk are so quick to place responsibility for the fate of the PerseProsExecuted on their own decisions and actions, while completely ignoring this aspect of Reality [TM] in regard to those who maintain your Imaginary Ameri%a by the use of guns and the abuse of the citizenry. CJ Parker <sonofgomez709(a)yahoo.com> "Proud To Be A Felon In Ameri%a" ['%' Is For SWASTIKA!] http://profiles.yahoo.com/sonofgomez709 http://www.technopagan.org/politics/xenix/ http://members.w-link.net/~sog/INDEX.HTM http://jya.com/cejfiles.htm

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More coverage of Larry Ellison's fascism
by Khoder bin Hakkin 17 Oct '01

17 Oct '01

http://www0.mercurycenter.com/local/center/id101701.htm Choice quotes from the Man, who doesn't realize that the Constitution protects *everyone* in the US, regardless of residency status: The cards would be voluntary for all U.S. citizens, he said Tuesday. Any American without a card still could board a plane, but only after undergoing a more rigorous search. The cards would be mandatory, however, for foreign visitors, including students on visas and non-citizens living and working in the United States who now carry ``green cards,'' he said. Ellison has not offered specifics on how the estimated 8 million illegal immigrants in the United States might be affected. .......... Boycott Oracle

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NOW IT'S PERSONAL...
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Oct '01

17 Oct '01

C'punks, So I head out before 7 this morning so I can do my civic duty as a juror (don't ask). I go down into the BART station* to await a train. A train to another destination pulls into the platform, stops and sits... and sits... and sits. Finally, a voice comes over the intercom and tells everybody to get off the train because it is going out of service. It seems someone reported "white powder" on the train. Jee-zus! The bad guys have already won if this sort of irrational panic has become the order of the day. Later in the jury room, I discovered some "white powder" on the coffee stand. Instead of having the federal building cleared, I scooped some of it up with my finger and did a quick taste test. Verdict: Sweet n Low. (Now I've got these terrible flu symptoms...) S a n d y *"Bay Area Rapid Transit" for those not familiar with San Francisco.

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Company sends powder via mail; USPO says OK
by Optimizzin Al-gorithm 17 Oct '01

17 Oct '01

Lets see... anything labelled 720 Winners Circle, St. Cloud, Minn is safe? What part of "social engineering" don't you understand? Packet-routed networks are networks, and addresses can be spoofed. ---------- Postal Service Informs of Mailings The Associated Press Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2001; 1:39 p.m. EDT ST. PAUL, Minn. With fears of anthrax in the mail running high, postal inspectors in St. Paul have given their colleagues a heads-up that Publishers Clearinghouse is sending out packages of powdered detergent. "There's nothing to be alarmed about in that package," Inspector Jeanne Graupman said. She added: "Just the timing of it wasn't very good." The Oxyclean household cleanser is being sent out in 1=-pound packages with the return address 720 Winners Circle, St. Cloud, Minn. The St. Paul Postal Inspection Service issued an advisory to inspectors Tuesday. Graupman said she sent the memo after postal inspectors got a call from a worried customer who had received a leaky package of the powder. Chris Irving, senior director of consumer affairs for Publishers Clearinghouse in Port Washington, N.Y., said Oxyclean is being mailed only to customers who ordered it. Publishers Clearinghouse sells household items in addition to magazine subscriptions.

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hoaxing, anonymity, traceability, unabomb crypto
by Optimizzin Al-gorithm 17 Oct '01

17 Oct '01

Remember not only to wear gloves when Anthraxing, but to obtain your common materials from another city visited tracelessly. The prints of the salesclerks can give you away. Maybe wash the paper in solvents? This is why Ted K. sanded all the parts of his gizmos, even though he wore gloves, ---to erase others' prints. According to the book by Shores & Waits. Ted K. also encrypted his 'queerer' (more incriminating) stuff, with a homemade cipher, but he included the "key" amongst his written materials. Classic mistake. [Alas more details of algorithm not given; maybe strike up a written correspondance with TK?] ----- Anthrax by Gatorade: Is it in you?

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Re: Kill Killfile
by John Young 17 Oct '01

17 Oct '01

This comes up regularly, Seth, I may have said it myself, but don't remember, having seen the charge laid here so often about all sorts of upper IQ interesting people. Tim, ever different than most, never denies it, never affirms it, just keeps writing and raging about what he's good at. Nobody who appreciates the sine curve quality of imaginative literature on cpunks will be surprised as what comes of this best seller low roader -- which you got to admire, foretells the future better than most, may Minerva protect us, and goose us into amazing flights of fancy to ward off dulling conventional wisdom, and, as always, Mars-inspired paranoia and rage and petty-minded schemes for making the world worse than ever before in history, that is, aching for shallow recognition like you, and the minor deities, wretched bedfellow provocateurs of discredited authority. Dance the Watusi, drink the blood of patriots and tyrants. Seth Finkelstein you wrote: > I'm telling ya, you heard it from me first, someday we're going to >find out that Tim May is a government agent. Not that he started out >that way. But somewhere along the line, probably in return for a deal on >firearms charges, we'll find out he agreed to be an informant/provocateur. >It always amazes me how hidebound are so many of the cypherpunks list >members. If the goverment was planning a crack-down on suspicious people, >using a few _agents provocateurs_ would be utterly unsurprising. > >-- >Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer sethf(a)sethf.com http://sethf.com

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Re: Who represents the detained? Nobody...
by Anonymous 17 Oct '01

17 Oct '01

It's nice that there's a forum available to you where you are free to assert and assume whatever you wish, without the inconvenience of any substantiation. > >Naturally the thin legal fiction of having a lawyer technically >representing you, no matter whether you've been able to speak with him They were allowed to speak >or exchange any useful information, How do you know what information was discussed? >makes any brutal prison regime >an acceptable one. No matter that the Washington Post article, which >started this thread, did not say that all post-Sep.11 detainees have >lawyers, and there is reason to believe some do not. You are free to believe whatever you wish. But that's not a standard of proof that means anything. Personal belief, supposition, unsubstantiated assertion. I'm glad we're not talking about anything like you'd see in a star chamber or brutal prison regime. Glad you exhibit a pristine standard of evidence in contrast to those you revile. Hypocrite. > >-Declan > > >On Wed, Oct 17, 2001 at 12:55:00PM -0700, Anonymous wrote: >> >>>They HAVE representation, and I don't THINK the

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