December 2001 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: The fucking essay
by mattd 12 Dec '01

12 Dec '01

>>Hate to break it to you but Freud <> Psychology. On choate prime maybe.Read G.steinem on fraud? I do reckon WH Reich <> mass pschology of fascism. >>Where jim > appeals to > the angels of our better nature is probably also flawed as a realistic > appeal to human psychology.(last page 10) >Jim appeals to nothing more than his own vanity. Lucky he's not here to defend himself eh jimmy? >What the fundamental flaw is to expect individuals to use AP to protect themselves while at the same time expecting those attacked through AP to do nothing other than lay down and take it. "we have a right to destroy those who would destroy us"...jim bell? yassar arafat?...actually its El presidente arbusto e neuman. I expect those attacked to possibly start a nuclear war,but Im a pessimist.Individuals may use anonymity/obscurity to protect themselves.AP is here jim,the only 'flaw' is the israelis,anti-choice nutters and US special forces are the only ones using it.(oh,and the soprano waste management co.of NJ) Lie back and think of choate prime. >>If fundamentaly mis-understands that two wrongs don't make a right (even if one is done in self-defence) and that when you attack a person their reaction is to act in self defence This is the misunderstanding I get all the time at indymedia.Police torturer and murderer so and so should not be the target of operation soft drill because,a) two wrongs etc. They need some tim may steel in their spine.b) He will just be replaced etc. Only after a few replacements I think we quickly reach critical mass,Who is to be master?People still have trouble conceiving of a lack of hierarchic power. c) Fear of absolute repression;You'll bring down heat on the movement,etc.Fuck that noise! Call yourselves anarchists! Your not fit to tie makhnos bootlaces,Yaada yada. Even from a moral or ethical view jimmy your wrong cos to rebel is an inalienable right and if you are willing to sacrifice your life you can attack whoever you want.No war on terror will ever stop that. If your a 'turn the other cheek' guy,I agree,up to a point simply for tactical reasons.Mass civil disobedience and all legal and semi-legal avenues should be explored before violence against persons is contemplated.Violence might be as American as cherry pie ,yet I support OSD as a way to minimize it.Not eliminate,minimize.Its paradoxical that an extremely potent threat to life and limb might do just that.Its worth it on a personal level because my bleeding heart concern for the oppressed is on record,the authorities dont wish to martyr me and I dont have to sign stupid petitions,grovelling pleas for mercy,whinging moans about abuse of power,etc. Its fun sometimes.How do you get justice on choate prime? >>It's just another example of the CACL failure with respect to the human factor. On one hand they speak of what sheep, and on the other they propose that these sheep will do the right thing 'if only....'. CALC has little to do with it.In the last year I've inaccurately been labeled a Nazi, a Communist, a Maoist, a Jew, an Anti-Semite, a KKK tool, a trotskyist,Racist, a Spic-Lover, a Capitalist Stooge,Sexist,Fed, Tool of the Ruling Class if not an Oppressor Myself, and a lawyer.(that hurt) This OSD thang trancends labels and pigeon holing.Its already taking hold,we can use it in a reputation enhancing way or rapidly become a sort of 'dot bomb'.We still have a choice. Planet earth,its diversity protected and future made sustainable or every ones own "insert name' prime.Your choice.

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IP: Federal agents raid warez groups (fwd)
by Eugene Leitl 12 Dec '01

12 Dec '01

-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBMTO: N48 04'14.8'' E11 36'41.2'' http://www.leitl.org 57F9CFD3: ED90 0433 EB74 E4A9 537F CFF5 86E7 629B 57F9 CFD3 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 18:58:47 -0500 From: David Farber <dave(a)farber.net> Reply-To: farber(a)cis.upenn.edu To: ip-sub-1(a)majordomo.pobox.com Subject: IP: Federal agents raid warez groups >From: "Bill Sodeman" <bill(a)sodeman.com> >To: <farber(a)cis.upenn.edu> > > >http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/11/technology/11CND-PIRACY.html?pagewante >d=print > >December 11, 2001 >In 27 Cities, U.S. Carries Out Raids in Software Piracy Case >By DAVID STOUT > >WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 - Federal agents carried out dozens of raids today >against a far-flung network suspected of pirating billions of dollars >worth of computer software - ranging from operating systems to the >latest music videos and movies - over the Internet. > >Agents seized computers and hard drives in at least 27 cities in 21 >states in raids on businesses, university computer centers, Internet >service providers and many residences. Foreign law enforcement people >staged about 20 similar raids in Australia, Britain, Finland and Norway. > >Treasury and Commerce department officials said more raids will be >conducted in the weeks ahead. No arrests were made in the United States, >partly because today's operations were aimed at gathering evidence. Some >of the people implicated, aware that they could face charges of >conspiracy or theft of intellectual property, are already cooperating >with the authorities, department officials said. > >The operation that culminated in today's raids, after a 15-month >inquiry, is part of "the largest and most extensive investigation of its >kind," Customs Commissioner Robert C. Bonner said. > ><snip> > >Officials said offenders could face up to three years in prison, upon >conviction, and depending on their willingness to cooperate. By midday, >the authorities said, more than 60 people in the United States had been >identified as being involved in the pirating operation. Several suspects >have already been charged overseas. > >The target of the raids was the "Warez" group, a loosely affiliated >network of software-piracy gangs that duplicate and reproduce >copyrighted software over the Internet. Of special interest today was a >Warez unit known as "DrinkOrDie," probably the oldest and best known in >the Warez network, officials said, adding that DrinkOrDie members take >special pride in having cracked and pirated the Windows 95 operating >system three days before its release to the public. > >Members of Warez includes corporate executives, computer-network >administrators and students at major universities, government workers >and employees of technology and computer firms, the Customs Service said >today. The agency said the piracy ring is aided by insiders in stealing >the software and that the ring relies on elaborate computer-security >devices to minimize risk of detection. > >Raids were carried out today at the University of California at Los >Angeles, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, >Duke University and the University of Oregon, officials said. They said >the universities themselves, like the various companies raided today, >were not involved in the wrongdoing by their employees and were >cooperating in the inquiry. > >Cities where raids were staged included New York, Washington, Houston, >Indianapolis, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, Atlanta and >Chicago, the government said. > >========================== > >Bill Sodeman >bill(a)sodeman.com / http://bill.sodeman.com > >1-512-845-0119 For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

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Re: AP Al Qaeda
by Nomen Nescio 12 Dec '01

12 Dec '01

Danny Popkin writes: > > Rather, the problem with AP is that it is mob rule at its worst. > > Worse than the secret ballot? Much worse. With a secret ballot you need to get a majority to support any particular position. That's a significant hurdle to overcome. But with AP any small group of people that can put up enough money to hire an assassin can get their way. The going rate for a murder is around $5-10K to off an average person, more if he's heavily guarded. If 100 people put up $100 each then that's enough to get someone killed. Imagine a secret ballot where any measure to increase government power would pass if it received as few as 100 votes. How much freedom would you have left in such a society? That's what AP represents. And keep in mind that the people buying the assassination are fully anonymous. There is no way to know who is funding the AP market. There is no check or limit on the extent to which anonymous individuals with private grievances can buy the deaths of anyone who gets in their way. The only good thing about this situation is that it would encourage everyone to go anonymous post haste. We would see a rapid change in society to allow anonymous business transactions, corporate ownership, stock transactions. Insider trading laws would become unenforceable. Board members would meet only electronically, spending their time barricaded inside their mansions. Even elective office would change. You'll walk into the ballot box to vote for your government officials from a list of nyms who meet only on the net. Police forces, heavily armed and always travelling in teams, will receive their orders via encrypted, digitally signed messages from elected officials. Any government official who must interact with the public, whether a building inspector, a drivers' license examiner, even a fireman, would get hazardous duty pay. Wearing masks might become routine for such officials. Taxes (much higher than before due to the greater expenses of operating the government) could be charged based on imputed property values depending on zip code and acreage. Everyone in a particular neighborhood would be charged a fixed amount per square foot. Any household which does not provide the required fee (via cryptographic anonymous transfer into the government account of course) would have its property subject to confiscation by police. Armed resistance would be met by military force including helicopter gunships. We can live in a world of crypto anarchy, but it won't be pretty. And the government certainly won't wither away. Anyone who thinks that attacking the government will weaken it should have learned a lesson from September 11th. When it feels itself under attack, the government strikes back. We are all the losers as our freedoms are destroyed.

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[Remops] And when he returns in February? (fwd)
by Eugene Leitl 12 Dec '01

12 Dec '01

More drama unfolds. -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBMTO: N48 04'14.8'' E11 36'41.2'' http://www.leitl.org 57F9CFD3: ED90 0433 EB74 E4A9 537F CFF5 86E7 629B 57F9 CFD3 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 18:47:31 -0500 From: Secure Beer <almostt(a)beer.com> Reply-To: remops(a)lexx.shinn.net To: remailer-operators(a)anon.lcs.mit.edu Subject: [Remops] And when he returns in February? Last night I had my life threatened. The death threat was posted here and on the remops list. The message in question is <OQYAQQO737236.1811574074@anonymous> from the APA-S thread Re: A comparison of Frog-Admin, the Script-Kiddie, Anonymous Trolls and other plagues of the privacy community. The author of the death threat posted anonymously and used the nick Sade. But the writing style and especially the last few lines reveal that it was Frog-Admin who threatened my life. "Thank you, Champerty, for letting me experiencing the same kind of double ecstasy: first when I was crucifiing your ass and your friends', and now when you make me remember those delicious moments." That is part2 of a 2-part threat. He chooses to write part1 in his mother tongue, perhaps not knowing that I am bilingual. In French, he quotes from Marquis de Sade describing how Saint-Fond anally rapes Juliette and, while raping her, orders her head sliced off so that the clenching of her muscles at the moment of her decapitation might intensify his sexual pleasure. Champerty is a gender-neutral pseudonym. And although I am male I can't help wondering whether Frog-Admin thought he was threatening a woman when he decided to include that description of the sexual torture and murder of an 18 year old woman. Male or female. It's a death threat. Im my country it's criminal. It's one of the worse things he's done. And, as we are beginning to realize, he has done a lot of sleazy, under-handed things. Where did this rage come from, you might ask? In addition to an ego already on steroids, Frog-Admin was exposéd recently by an anonymous poster as being the individual responsible for much of the floods and trolling in APA-S over the past two years. Frog-Admin assumed that this anonymous poster must have been his arch rival from 1998-2000: Champerty. This is a knee-jerk reaction for him. You see, he can't get his head around the idea that there is more than one person who thinks he is wrong. Embarrassed and humiliated by the exposé he has announced that he will be closing down his remailer tomorrow (Wed Dec 12 2001) . He has also had a bit of a temper tantrum as the deluge of anti-Champerty anti-Boschloo and pro-Frog messages demonstrates. As he explains himself in a recent message "You didn't expect me to remain silent did you?" He has promised to be back from his vacation in February 2002 and intends to put his remailer back online. What do remailer users think about Frog-Admin now? Is this the type of remailer operator that you want in your remailer network? And operators? I ask you to please, for once, take a public stand for or against whether Frog-Admin will be welcomed back in February after the shit he has pulled over the years and especially in recent days. Death threats cannot be dismissed as merely "bad form". Flooding APA-S, discrediting and silencing critics, attacking ISPs, scapegoating innocents like TB and Orange Admin. These things should not be tolerated simply because they don't directly affect YOUR individual remailer. Farout Admin has declared himself supportive of Frog Admin and hopes he returns in February. What about the rest of the operators and stats maintainers? 'Time to take a stand. Secure Beer (formerly Champerty) almostt AT beer DOT com Beer Mail, brought to you by your friends at beer.com. _______________________________________________ Remops mailing list Remops(a)lexx.shinn.net http://lexx.shinn.net/mailman/listinfo/remops

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Re: Quantum encryption and lunatic jamesd hazard
by mattd 12 Dec '01

12 Dec '01

>>I am happy to observe that the intellectual level of the remaining socialists has been sliding downhill rapidly since the fall of the Soviet Union. I aim to please.Say ahhh. >>Hey mattd, better get moving or you will miss your ride on the comet. Judas priest! Someone here cares about me! Its just old tailgunner jamesd but thats good enough for me.

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RE: Professor Punished for Witty Remark
by Trei, Peter 12 Dec '01

12 Dec '01

> Eric Cordian[SMTP:emc@artifact.psychedelic.net] wrote: > > There's also a blacklist on the Web of people in academia who have > publicly stated less than glowing support for Bush's war against "evil." > Where is it? [...] > Eric Michael Cordian 0+ > Peter Trei

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Quantum encryption hazard
by mattd 12 Dec '01

12 Dec '01

Quantum mechanics based on heisenbergs uncertainty principal is under attack.The two slit experiment has another explanation that even revives 'ether' According to electrical engineering professor,bill honig. The theory feynman was sure no one quite understood and einstein mistrusted may be about to be superceded with potential to crack crypto's,holy grail,Quantum encryption. Quantum mechanics is 75 years young and the cornerstone of the modern scientific world view.But it has its dissidents. Bill honig's an internationally recognized inventor,journal editor and long time academic at curtin university.A skeptical inquirer whose doubts about the orthodoxy are caused by logic. His rebellion took shape as a teen prodigy at a brooklyn high school,asking too many questions about quantum mechanics.He went into electrical engineering and rose high in military research.Then in mid-career,while working on nuclear weapons he had a change of heart.Looking in an atlas for a new home that might be safe and peaceful and passing over iceland he settled on perth.WA.au. Believing we can and must describe the fundamental particles of matter as they really are there and not blurs of probability is carrying on einsteins fight.In this old/new picture of the subatomic world,the basic particles are spinning,electromagnetically charged droplets;as they change speed they cast off expanding "photexes"that are compared with smoke rings,rippling outward.Space is an ether made up of two oppositely charged fluids. END extract.more at... http://www.physicsessays.com/ Honig has picked up and carried forward work by paul dirac.

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Re: CNN.com on Remailers
by Tim May 12 Dec '01

12 Dec '01

On Tuesday, December 11, 2001, at 09:41 PM, Len Sassaman wrote: > On Tue, 11 Dec 2001, Tim May wrote: > >> [The "prompted a bunch of programmers to rethink" comment has it all >> backwards. Chained remailers were deployed in 1992. The theory was >> known from Chaum's 1981 paper, and the flaws in the >> Kremvax/Kleinpaste/Julf/Penet type of approach were widely known: this >> was why chained remailers, in multiple jurisdictions, were deployed. >> Hal Finney wrote the first code for this, building on the >> Perl/Sendmail scripts Eric Hughes had already released.] > > The quoted portion is basically accurate (true to what I said), but I > was > talking about theoretical attacks at that point. I think I said > something > along the lines of: > > "The cypherpunks developed a system based on the ideas in Chaum's 1981 > paper. Penet-style remailers were potentially vulnerable to hackers and > court orders, which in fact ended up being the downfall of > anon.penet.fi. > These problems prompted them to build better remailers." > > I had this post up my screen when I was talking to him: > http://www.inet- > one.com/cypherpunks/dir.1997.05.29-1997.06.04/msg00310.html > > Penet was *in operation* prior to Eric and Hal's chained remailers, > right? > If not, then that's my error. The Kleinpaste/Julf anonymizing service had been in operation, widely, since 1991-2, before Cypherpunks, yes. The CNN article is enormously misleading in many areas. The suggestiong that Lance Cottrell used the Julf experience to add nested encryption is false. The URL you quote above is one of the most detailed histories of remailers, even if I do say so myself. (Thanks for reminding me/us of it.) From your recollection of what you said to the reporter, it looks like the misunderstanding came from his thinking that the actual Penet failure was what triggered the modern remailer approach, when in fact you meant "these problems" in the sense that Chaum and others (us) realized the obvious limitations of "anonymity services." And apparently the reporter then spun a story about how Lance Cottrell then invented message nesting, etc., all after the Penet failure. This is completely backwards. (It's not just the inaccuracy, or giving Lance too much credit...it's also that it makes it look as if we missed something so utterly obvious, that we were blindsided by the legal attack. Not so. And Chaum knew this at least as far back as '81.) In the big scheme of things, maybe no one who matters will read the CNN article. But it is false history and should be refuted. If not refuted, future historians who write about this interesting period may use it as primary source material. If it isn't apparent, I make these points to correct the record, not to criticize Len, Lance, Julf, or anyone else. But as the URL above points out, we were fully aware of the problems with Kleinpaste/Julf-style services and knew they were neither interesting from our point of view or a stable basis for what we were seeking to build. --Tim May "Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound"

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"Spoiling" digital cash
by georgemw＠speakeasy.net 12 Dec '01

12 Dec '01

An idea just popped into my head, I was wondering if anyone had thought of this before. Most likely someone has, and has either proven the idea is impossible or has figured out how to do it. Th idea is, when buying some good or service with digital cash, the customer first forwards the cash to the vendor in some transformed way such that the vendor can't yet spend it, but can verify that it is good cash of the correct amount, and that the customer will no longer be able to spend it. The idea is, if the vendor follows through on his side, the customer will supply the additional information the vendor will need to redeem the cash. The customer can still rip the vendor off by refusing to do so, but he has no incentive, the money's already gone for him. Conversely, an unscrupulous "vendor" could in principle trick a customer into throwing away money on nothing, but he would gain no profit in doing so. I realize the same effect is trivial to achieve if you have a mutually trusted third party willing to act as escrow agent, but if you don't, is there a a way to build this into a transfer protocol? Thanks, George

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Re: CNN.com on Remailers
by Meyer Wolfsheim 12 Dec '01

12 Dec '01

"So far, U.S. and European authorities battling terrorism and cybercrime have apparently focused their surveillance elsewhere. The FBI and the National Security Agency, which monitors international telecommunications, declined to comment on what strategy, if any, they have for dealing with remailers." That would have made the article much more interesting.. What *is* the FBI/etc.'s strategy on dealing with remailers, other than ignoring them (and hoping that anti-spam/anti-terror legislation will make them illegal?) -MW-

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