November 2001 - cypherpunks-legacy

Business 'rights' and free markets
by Jim Choate 08 Nov '01

08 Nov '01

The question has been raised why a business which applies some 'entry cost' to a particular group removes that business from a 'free market'. What does it take to create a 'free market'? Hayeks says 'perfect competition'. What is 'perfect competition'? "According to the generally accepted view, perfect competition presupposes: 1. A homogenous commodity offered and demanded by a large number of relatively small sellers and buyers, none of whom expects to exercise by his actiona perceptible influence on price. 2. Free entry into the market and absence of other restraints on the movement of prices and resources. 3. Complete knowledge of the relevant factors on the part of all participants in the market." Individualism and Economic Order F.A. Hayek ISBN 0-225-32093-6 Chapter V The Meaning of 'Competition' The reality is that Tim's believe that he can refuse to serve a customer because they hold or perhaps practice some action that (while not involving him or his property directly, only his apparently fragile emotional ego) he finds offensive is within the bounds of free market econoimics is just plain crap. Hayek's views on fascism and socialism are well known, and not positive. What Tim proposes is nothing more than fascism at the individual level. -- ____________________________________________________________________ Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind. Bumper Sticker The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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ADV: ATTN: Church Athletic Director
by SIGNATURES 08 Nov '01

08 Nov '01

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ADV: ATTN: Church Athletic Director
by SIGNATURES 08 Nov '01

08 Nov '01

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Re: Security-by-credential or security-by-inspection
by Karsten M. Self 08 Nov '01

08 Nov '01

on Thu, Nov 08, 2001 at 03:58:04PM -0500, Trei, Peter (ptrei(a)rsasecurity.com) wrote: > > Tim May[SMTP:tcmay@got.net] wrote > > > > The confusion "Nomen Nescio" shows in thinking that an is-a-person > > government tracking system fixes the airline security problem is common > > these days. It's the same confusion that causes many to think national > > I.D. cards will fix current pressing problems. They won't. > > > > This is the same "security ticket" problem that shows up in computer > > security with malicious actors obtaining passwords or other access > > permissions. <...> > I've been thinking along these lines myself - Tim got to the post > first. > > There are two points I'd like to make. > > 1. The reasons which are publicly aired for installing the current > 'security' regime are (in my considered opinion) NOT the > actually reasons. > > US airlines insisting on IDs which match tickets has nothing to > do with airline security, and everything to do with extracting as > much cash as possible from the public. > > Before the Pan Am 800 accident, when people were freeer, there > was a secondary market in airline tickets which the original > purchasers could not, for one reason or another, use. If you > bought a non-refundable return ticket, and then could not > use it, you could sell it to someone who did want to travel > on those dates to that location. The price varied, but was > less than the cost to the repurchaser of buying a ticket from > the airline. <...> > It's got nothing to do with security. ...and, as previously reported here, an age-old practice: It's an older practice than you'd think. I just ran across the following while looking at some IBM history, regarding the "Hollerith Card": http://www4.wittenberg.edu/academics/mathcomp/bjsdir/history0.shtml Hollerith claimed he got [the punched data card] idea from "punch photograph cards" used by rail road officials. Used to prevent the theft of railroad tickets from passengers, conductors would "record" the physical characteristics of the ticket owner (e.g. eye color, hair color) by punching specially marked areas on the edge of the card. Hollerith used holes punched through the card, not on the edge of the card. Maybe someone should propose a "three strikes" law for suicide terror attacks. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self <kmself(a)ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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Fwd: more on Nancy Oden
by Reese 08 Nov '01

08 Nov '01

Sorry Sandy, I got it right the first time - it is not an insult to all other women because I specifically identified her, I did not make a general statement about all women - pc-ism be damned. <fwd> ****************************************************** The following message was posted to [a list] ****************************************************** Hi all, I hate talking about individuals on a list like this, but the misleading statements being put out by one Nancy Oden need rapid rumor control. Defending her half-truths would make us look silly. I got to meet Nancy three years ago when she was in Seattle for the national committee meeting of the activist organization known as "the Greens/Green Party USA," which should not be confused with the national electoral organization, "the Green Party of the United States," which nominated Ralph Nader for President and helped get him on the ballot in 44 states. Nancy was incredibly rude to her fellow activists. She talked endlessly about how mean the Maine Green Party had been to her, and about how evil the Greens from "that other Green organization" were. I dismissed her as a run-of-the-mill kook. Then, this past spring, she somehow got elected to the three-member Coordinating Committee of G/GPUSA. Her tenure involved a string of 2-1 decisions taking authority away from the larger Green National Committee, and shutting down various processes in the bylaws that were used to try to overrule her. Eleven of the 13 state parties then affiliated with G/GPUSA had called for a membership referendum on the "Boston Proposal for Unity." (Only six are needed to call such a referendum.) Nancy used her power on the CC to prevent any money being spent to hold the referendum, and continually threatened to fire the two staffers who were trying their best to obey the bylaws. To say that Nancy was abusive toward the staff would be an understatement. When the pro-unity supermajority was unable to ever get a vote called on the Boston Proposal, most of the state parties started disaffiliating. G/GPUSA is now down to four state parties, two of which are still in the process of disaffiliation. Meanwhile, GP-US, which is expected to finally be recognized as "the national committee of the Green Party" by the Federal Elections Commission some time in the next two weeks, has 33 affiliated state parties. Nancy Oden got elected to the G/GPUSA CC on a platform of "real democracy, where We the People ..." Instead, she ran the organization with an iron fist and sent nearly everyone fleeing to more productive ground. Nancy's latest heavy-handed rhetoric does not match up with what I've been reading in the Bangor news. She was not targeted at the airport because she was a leader of the G/GPUSA. She was targeted because she was rude to the security officers. Indeed, the FBI say they had no idea who she was. Other Green Party leaders have had no trouble whatsoever flying. Nancy was not banned from flying. She was simply not allowed to fly that day. Nancy said she did not put up resistance to having her purse searched (a standard procedure long before 9/11) or personal search. She just went crazy at the metal-detecting wand. I know Nancy well enough to know why she would freak out at the use of such a radioactive instrument around her body. She is a long-time anti-nuke activist. We risk delegitimizing ourselves by defending Nancy Oden's hysterical account of airport security. We'd also be causing more well-intentioned Green-Party-activist wannabes to go to G/GPUSA's web site and pay dues to G/GPUSA, not knowing that it is not the national Green Party that put together the convention in Denver and nominated Ralph Nader for president. If GP-US puts out a press release today, I hope it presents a more balanced account of what really happened between Nancy and airport security, and points out that Nancy's organization is *not* the national Green Party. Sorry to rag on fellow activists. <sig redacted> </fwd>

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Leilões ao Preço da Banana!
by info＠giganetstore.com 08 Nov '01

08 Nov '01

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ADV: ATTN: Church Athletic Director
by SIGNATURES 08 Nov '01

08 Nov '01

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Re: Security-by-credential or security-by-inspection
by Tim May 08 Nov '01

08 Nov '01

Greg Broiles and Peter Trei both make excellent points. I kind of regret not spending an hour or so writing a more complete essay. But I wanted to get some of the ideas out, mainly to refute the wrong-headed ideas floating around from folks as diverse as John Ashcroft and Nomen Whatever. Fact is, we have gone down the "is-a-person" route, and the crypto literature is filled with some good discussions, mainly back in the mid- to late-80s. (See Crypto proceedings for papers by Micali, Fiat, Shamir, and others on "is-a-person" issues. Note especially the vexing problem of what happens when some states (Libya, the United States) issue false credentials. (Think of what is-a-person means for states which issue fake credentials, a la the Witness Security Program, agents of various kinds, etc. A t.v. show I like, one of the crop of several such shows (including UC: Undercover, Alias, and 24) is "The Agency." It shows an impressive faking department at work, generating flawless passports, flawless travel documents, excellent "legends," etc. There is no reason to believe that WTC attackers could not have similar state-issued credentials, nor is there reason to believe that private actors cannot generate similar credentials. This is well-known in the biometric security community, and was well-known several decades ago....remember the scene in "Thunderball" where the guy's eyeballs are taken out to gain access to nukes?) The security-by-credential vs. security-by-inspection (capability, direct verification) debate is something which should be getting much more attention. Alas, it is "too obscure" for politicians and legal types...it has taken them a couple of decades to begin to absorb the concept of digital signatures. But there is no excuse for all of the careless thought here on this list (and other lists) such as we have seen from some. A few comments: On Thursday, November 8, 2001, at 12:58 PM, Trei, Peter wrote: > > I've been thinking along these lines myself - Tim got to the post > first. Like I said, it needs a full-blown article. All I had the time and energy to do was to throw some basic points out. > There are two points I'd like to make. > > 1. The reasons which are publicly aired for installing the current > 'security' regime are (in my considered opinion) NOT the > actually reasons. > > US airlines insisting on IDs which match tickets has nothing to > do with airline security, and everything to do with extracting as > much cash as possible from the public. > ... > Due to the vast cost differential (up to 10:1) between the cost > of a ticket to fly tomorrow, vs the cost of a 'two week advance, > The airlines hated this. The 'you must have a government id > which matches the name on the ticket' rule put an end to > the fungibility of airline tickets, which boosted their bottom > line. Indeed, they leapt on "mandatory ID" with great enthusiasm. Without it being mandatory, without this market distortion, then of course some airlines might have (and did) required government identity credentials and some airlines might not have. Indeed, many did not. There's no evidence that airline security was any lower in those days. In fact, the 911 attack happened _after_ the ID regimen, and Atta and others all had government-granted IDs. Q.E.D. Anyway, when the government mandated ID, thus distorting the market, the airlines no longer had to "compete" on the basis of their policies. The result is as Peter said: increased overall costs to business (with increased profits, for a while) to the airlines. (Longterm, it may be that corporations are travelling less. Given a choice between buying a ticket between Chicago and St. Louis for $1000, the going no-notice travel rate, and having a pool of cheaper tickets to use, this may have something to do with a decline in business travel. It's got to be one of the contributing factors.) > > 2. The capability vs credential argument runs all through > security. For example: Signed ActiveX code is using the > credential model, while the Java sandbox uses the capability > model. > > Another: 'Trust us not to look at your email without a warrant' > is the credential model. 'Encrypt your email so they cant look > at it' is the capability model. A good insight. I hadn't been thinking of encryption in terms of the capability model, but it may fit the model. I'll have to think about this some more. I tend to think of encryption as being "objects carrying their own protection." Though giving another actor a key is thus like giving them a capability to access the object, so I suspect your model is correct. > > Techies tend to prefer the capability model over the credential > model - it not only works, but can be seen to work, and does > not rely on trust. Institutions prefer that people use the > credential model, since that allows them to change the rules > at the drop of a hat. Yes, local behavior. Objects, contracts, local enforcement, distributed control, redundancy, non-hierarchical, information-hiding. Many of us believe this is a reason so many software people are libertarians. > > You can imagine applying the two models to airline passengers, > both of which would act to reduce the frequency of security > problems: > > 1. Capability model: You don't need to have ID at all, you can > pay cash on the plane (as I used to do on People Express) > but you'll get searched up the wazoo, and everything down to > a too-sharp pencil confiscated. This works because security is dependent on the dangers actually _carried_ by the passenger. (This does not apply as well to, say, Presidential security, because an actor (an agent, not a Reagan) may carry deadly capabilities in--to use the hackneyed expression--his bare hands.) > 2. Credential model: You can take your Glock on board, > provided it's loaded with frangible bullets. However you'll > have to have biometricaly enabled ID from the NRA certifying > that you've taken the 'Guns on Planes' course, a signed > affadavit from a psychiatrist saying you're sane and not > overly excitable, and a note from Mom saying you can. > > Both are better from a security point of view than having > unidentified armed people on board. And the fallacy people like Nomen Nescio have been making is to assume that "not requiring ID" means there are no other ways to get security. In fact, of the two options above, I'd rather travel under #1. Given how easily credentials may be faked, given the fact that credentials don't imply trustworthiness, given a lot of other factors, the presence of a credential is not very convincing. As I mentioned in my post, there are private travel companies (like FlexJet) which carry VIPs and execs and people they have come to trust. "Know your passenger" works...always has. Not perfectly, but better than most alternatives. Note for Nomen: This is NOT a call for the FAA to adopt some bureaucratic "know your passenger" policy, akin to "know your customer" rules for banks. ("Know your customer" rules for banks are also bogus, but this is another issue. A good toic to think about.) Regrettably, these interesting debates are completely orthogonal to the banal debates actually going on in America. --Tim May "Ben Franklin warned us that those who would trade liberty for a little bit of temporary security deserve neither. This is the path we are now racing down, with American flags fluttering."-- Tim May, on events following 9/11/2001

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RE: Security-by-credential or security-by-inspection
by Trei, Peter 08 Nov '01

08 Nov '01

> Tim May[SMTP:tcmay@got.net] wrote > > The confusion "Nomen Nescio" shows in thinking that an is-a-person > government tracking system fixes the airline security problem is common > these days. It's the same confusion that causes many to think national > I.D. cards will fix current pressing problems. They won't. > > This is the same "security ticket" problem that shows up in computer > security with malicious actors obtaining passwords or other access > permissions. > > The time-honored alternative for airline security, and many other types > of security, is to not rely on permission slips or identity credentials. > Rather, it is to PHYSICALLY inspect. > > Think of this a "capability," in OS/KeyKOS/E language terms. Instead of > some security or identity credential, a direct determination that an > object (passenger) can only have certain kinds of access and property > combinations ("no bombs allowed with passenger"). The way to ensure that > an object or agent does not go outside certain bounds (e.g., to erase or > overwrite files) is not to trust some issuer of a credential from afar > but to require specific allocation of access rights in the object or > actor itself. (This is not meant to be the most concise or elegant > phrasing of what capabilities are. Cf. the usual sources, includinging > Hardy, Tenenbaum, Miller, etc.) > [good stuff deleted] I've been thinking along these lines myself - Tim got to the post first. There are two points I'd like to make. 1. The reasons which are publicly aired for installing the current 'security' regime are (in my considered opinion) NOT the actually reasons. US airlines insisting on IDs which match tickets has nothing to do with airline security, and everything to do with extracting as much cash as possible from the public. Before the Pan Am 800 accident, when people were freeer, there was a secondary market in airline tickets which the original purchasers could not, for one reason or another, use. If you bought a non-refundable return ticket, and then could not use it, you could sell it to someone who did want to travel on those dates to that location. The price varied, but was less than the cost to the repurchaser of buying a ticket from the airline. Due to the vast cost differential (up to 10:1) between the cost of a ticket to fly tomorrow, vs the cost of a 'two week advance, stay Saturday night' Supersaver, it was actually economic for large corporations to buy a steady supply of Supersavers, and hand them out in pairs to execs who had to make quick trips - it was cheaper to eat the cost of the unused whole or half tickets than to buy them only when they were needed. The airlines hated this. The 'you must have a government id which matches the name on the ticket' rule put an end to the fungibility of airline tickets, which boosted their bottom line. It's got nothing to do with security. ----------- 2. The capability vs credential argument runs all through security. For example: Signed ActiveX code is using the credential model, while the Java sandbox uses the capability model. Another: 'Trust us not to look at your email without a warrant' is the credential model. 'Encrypt your email so they cant look at it' is the capability model. Techies tend to prefer the capability model over the credential model - it not only works, but can be seen to work, and does not rely on trust. Institutions prefer that people use the credential model, since that allows them to change the rules at the drop of a hat. You can imagine applying the two models to airline passengers, both of which would act to reduce the frequency of security problems: 1. Capability model: You don't need to have ID at all, you can pay cash on the plane (as I used to do on People Express) but you'll get searched up the wazoo, and everything down to a too-sharp pencil confiscated. 2. Credential model: You can take your Glock on board, provided it's loaded with frangible bullets. However you'll have to have biometricaly enabled ID from the NRA certifying that you've taken the 'Guns on Planes' course, a signed affadavit from a psychiatrist saying you're sane and not overly excitable, and a note from Mom saying you can. Both are better from a security point of view than having unidentified armed people on board. Always remember: The *stated* reason an institution puts a restrictive policy is put in place do not necessarily have anything to do with the *actual* reason the institution wants to put it in place. Peter Trei

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FBI wants to believe in domestic terrorists.
by jamesd＠echeque.com 08 Nov '01

08 Nov '01

-- The evidence is now overwhelming that the anthrax attacks are connected to the 9/11 attack, and the current events in Afghanistan. However the Fibbies are still determinedly pushing the position that these attacks come from internal right wing terrorists. If the anthrax attack is connected to the 9/11 attack, then the fibbies get to play errand boy for the CIA and military intelligence. If the anthrax attack is internal, then they are in charge and they get to spy on all us right wing extremist hate groups. Let us hope that when they finally admit the anthrax attack was middle eastern, Aimee gets sent back to pretending to be a thirteen year old girl in chat rooms. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG /usKb79bOIG673+tHTcQXQ7zxv3JYpQCju1NtcAy 4yL8hsExUPXifzSS5U4Mmbce1l0n4YNFgIVZSBTP9

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