March 2001 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Paternity tests [was: WSJ: NSA Computer Upgrade]
by Trei, Peter 15 Mar '01

15 Mar '01

> John Young[SMTP:jya@pipeline.com] > > Men usually got a hangup about paternity, and > many don't want to know the truth, so the 28% is > surely way low, in particular to protect the kids and > the wives and to keep the men in harness. Them's > the facts of biology and culture and healthy > workplace economies. > [...] > Never, ever have your blood tested, nor your brain. > Keep your head up where the sun don't go. Read > the papers, call what you see lies, distortions of > your motherless bastardy. > The Bard dealt with this issue, as he did so many others: Pedro. You embrace your charge too willingly: I thinke this is your daughter. Leonato. Her mother hath many times told me so. Bened. Were you in doubt that you askt her? Leonato. Signior Benedicke, no, for then were you a childe. Pedro. You haue it full Benedicke, we may ghesse by this, what you are, being a man, truely the Lady fathers her selfe: be happie Lady, for you are like an honorable father. Ben. If Signior Leonato be her father, she would not haue his head on her shoulders for al Messina, as like him as she is. - Much Ado About Nothing, Actus primus, Scena prima ... and he here also points out why many men don't bother with testing - family resemblence is convincing enough. I have two daughters. One is the image of my sister as a child, and the other looks so much my mother did at that age that people mistake childhood photos of one for the other. In the absence of any particular reason for doubt, blood tests would be a waste of time and money. Peter Trei

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Repcheck.com Confirmation Code
by Repcheck 15 Mar '01

15 Mar '01

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cypherpunks - Make $2000 a Week
by EarnMor 15 Mar '01

15 Mar '01

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RE: WSJ: NSA Computer Upgrade
by aluger＠hushmail.com 15 Mar '01

15 Mar '01

At Wed, 14 Mar 2001 21:46:24 -0500, John Young <jya(a)pipeline.com> wrote: >Aluger commanded: > >>I'd like to see a cite to this. > >New York Times, March 11, 2001, page 1: > >"According to the American Association of Blood Banks, >280,000 paternity tests were conducted in 1999, three >times as many as a decade earliet. And in 28 percent of >the tests, the man tested was found not to be the father." A skewed figure, in that the sample is taken from cases in which there is already a dispute, not the population at large, as the quote initially suggested. Of course that smaller pool will have a higher incidence of "not dad" findings. They are having the test done because they suspect "not dad" problems. It's like saying that 28% of blood tests showed prostate cancer, without disclosing that all of the tested parties asked for the test because they couldn't piss a single stream. Duh. Free, encrypted, secure Web-based email at www.hushmail.com

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The Privatization of Blacklists
by Eric Cordian 15 Mar '01

15 Mar '01

One of the more fascinating aspects of the Internet is the ability of small groups of motivated individuals to create the types of privacy intrusions that used to be the exclusive domain of governments, law enforcement, and credit bureaus. Gone are the early days when the Net was solely government, business, and educational users, and people spouted their opinions on abortion, gun control, child porn, and drug dealing under their real names, and proudly signed them with their corporate logos. On today's Net, saying anything too controversial, that gores the ox of even a small group of zealots, is enough to get you on a list on someone's Web site, and letters written trying to terminate your housing, employment, and social life, by people pretending to be "concerned citizens." Such "Virtual Communities" of axe-grinders can form almost instantaneously, from disparate bored housewives and wannabe vigilantes, and wield collective power that used to be reserved to the powerful and well-organized. Woe be it to him who publicly offends cat-lovers, rabid feminists, smokers, or Scientologists, and lets his IP be traced. Indeed, as the Surveilance State approaches, it is apparent that most of its tentacles are corporate, not government, with citizen units trading privacy for convenience in droves. Enter RepCheck, an amusing Internet startup created back in December, and acting as a clearing house of gossip and other information on private individuals. http://www.repcheck.com/ RepCheck is a simple idea. RepCheck is free. RepCheck is a database of individuals' reputations, which anyone may add to or access. Employers, landlords, prospective business partners, and others, may check the social and business dealings of anyone through the site, and anyone may leave information on anyone else when the site is visited. You must join to access the database, and in doing so, you agree to a Terms of Service which says that you recognize that RepCheck is merely a distributor of information provided by Third Parties, and has no responsibility for any content, and that should you ever have a legal dispute with the site, you agree to resolve it by binding arbitration. You are also invited to give RepCheck the email addresses of several dozen of your closest friends, so they can say nice things about you, and in order to prevent "Identity Theft", RepCheck wants a working credit card number and expiration date, which "they promise never to charge to." (I vaguely remember some porn sites doing this for age verification and then billing tens of millions of dollars in bogus charges a while ago, BTW.) So all you have to do to defend your reputation, is send all your friends to the site, credit card numbers in hand, and recurse this process with your friends' friends, your friends' friends' friends, an arbitrary number of levels deep. Kind of like Make Money Fast with credit card numbers and Reputation Capital, instead of email messages and $5. :) And, like most such pyramid schemes, the lemings pile on in droves. A leading computer magazine reports that within 2 weeks of opening its servers, RepCheck had garnered 25,000 happy users, and presumedly a working credit card number from each. (Which they promise never to bill to, of course.) The US Government is prohibited from warehousing information on how individual citizens exercise their First Amendment rights, except as part of a legitimate criminal investigation. Credit bureaus only disseminate to their subscribers, and don't contain unedited comments on what your neighbors think of you. Police files are generally not public knowlege until you are arrested and convicted of something. There are no such restrictions on how private individuals or companies accumulate or distribute non-credit information, however. No requirements on what can be said. No procedures for correcting erroneous information. No laws that unverifiable information must be removed. No laws that say how your landlord or employer can use such information. Big Brother can certainly use RepCheck too, when looking for individuals having non-mainstream political or sexual views. Even individuals the government would have no legal right to keep files on. Individuals who have broken no laws, and don't hang out with people who do. Is RepCheck the wave of the future, when everyones skeletons in the closet, as recited by their neighbors and business associates, are no more than a mouse click away from everyone else on the planet? Anonymity just became a whole lot more important. -- 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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ParentsTalk: Sweepstakes and Fun!
by news＠parents-talk.com 15 Mar '01

15 Mar '01

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Wholsalers America-Its Time To Make Some Real Money
by Jason 15 Mar '01

15 Mar '01

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The 4th Amendment
by Jim Choate 15 Mar '01

15 Mar '01

Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. The 4th Amendment does not speak to the quality or type of the target of the search, but rather to the intent to search. The itemized listing is not meant to enumerate the items covered but rather to demonstrate the universal range of protected items. The word 'effects' for example is sufficiently broad in both definition and intent to cover any distinction of 'private' or 'public'. Where does the Constitution say anything about 'public' records? The same argument can be raised there. Was the intent that nothing should receive protection under the 4th? Hardly. ____________________________________________________________________ If the law is based on precedence, why is the Constitution not the final precedence since it's the primary authority? The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Fwd: Britian confiscating all firearms from...
by freedom.zzfvx7mqxs＠freedom.net 14 Mar '01

14 Mar '01

==================BEGIN FORWARDED MESSAGE================== farmers, fact, as I write, easy to do as all are registered, including long guns. Those whom have followed my writings know why, and ditto for Canada, I shall briefly repeat a summation for newcomers. In the WTO, NAFTA, the FTA and the Auto Pact, it was determined Canada had a ratio of wealthy, upper middle calss, middle class, lower middle class to peasant which was out of balance, out peasant, (poor) class' were much to small in the makeup. The USA is seen to have the correct balance, from Eastrern Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi etc including Tennessee, so there was, is, a program to increase the peasant class here. In the way is universal health care, UIC, farmers incomes, wages, the employment rate, many factors. These, one by one, have to go. In the USA, heath care puts an extra $300 per automobile in the cost of manufacture, in Canada, it is much lower, almost zero, so the UAW etc. are in on the agreement to devestate the Auto Pact and medicare here. I list only one example, there are many. As we throw middle class people onto the streets, or into low rate, third class apartments, they might just revolt as poverty is a new condition for most Canadians, so the gopvernmant cannot have guns in the hands of people who would, might, just use them on the powers that be. Surely thjose who ridiculed me can now look to Britian, and ask "why are they confiscating legally owned guns from farmers" today. The answer is obvious, and the government there makes no bones about it. They fear an armed populace. I write as a person graduated from the United Nations Macroeconomics program as it was given to staff officers from United Nations countries. ===================END FORWARDED MESSAGE===================

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Green Nuts Target Feebs
by An Metet 14 Mar '01

14 Mar '01

Militant environmental group targets FBI, others By SAM STANTON Scripps-McClatchy Western Service March 13, 2001 SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Two weeks after claiming responsibility for its first arson attack in California, the Earth Liberation Front has issued a nationwide call for "militant direct action" against FBI offices and other federal buildings. The militant environmental group, which the FBI has called the nation's most dangerous domestic terror organization, on Tuesday issued a statement asking its followers to engage in actions against the federal government on April 5. That date coincides with the scheduled pretrial hearing of Frank Ambrose, who has been charged in Bloomington, Ind., with tree-spiking and is suspected to be an ELF member. Ambrose has denied the charges and his case has become a rallying point for environmental activists who believe he is being unfairly targeted by FBI agents anxious to win a court victory against an alleged ELF follower. Sacramento FBI spokesman Nick Rossi said his agency had little to say about the ELF announcement or FBI security efforts. "We evaluate each threat on a case by case basis," Rossi said. The announcement calls for protests at a time of year when federal agencies typically are at a heightened state of alert because of the April 19 anniversaries of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing and the raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. The call for action on April 5 came through e-mail messages sent to individuals who have asked to be updated on ELF activities. The messages are forwarded by a group of activists based in Portland, Ore., who deny any membership in the group. One of the activists, Lesliejames Pickering, said Tuesday that he believed the latest announcement indicated there would be demonstrations of "support for radical action." "Militant means more organized, more strategic," Pickering said. "There are going to be protests nationwide." He added that he expected protest sites to include either Sacramento or San Francisco. The shadowy organization, which has no official members, says it is a worldwide group that includes anyone who takes action to protect the environment without injuring or killing anyone. The group claims to have caused at least $37 million in damages to various timber operations, ski resorts and other entities ELF members believe have hurt the environment. In one of its latest efforts, the ELF claims to have set a Feb. 20 pre-dawn fire at a cotton gin near Visalia that caused $700,000 in damage. The group claimed it targeted the plant because it contained genetically engineered cotton seeds. But officials said there were no such seeds at the gin, and a fire investigator said Tuesday that officials have not been able to corroborate the group's claims of setting the blaze. The ELF claimed to have placed barrels containing a total of 20 gallons of gasoline and other fuel around the inside of the plant. Capt. Mike Davidson of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said a dog trained to detect accelerants at arsons was sent inside the cotton gin and found no scent of the fuel. "I personally believe that if there were 20 gallons of accelerant inside the dog would have smelled it and the firefighters would have smelled it (when they arrived on the scene)," Davidson said. "I can't eliminate the possibility that the Earth Liberation Front set the fire; I can say that they didn't do the fire the way they said they did." However, FBI officials have said the group's previous claims of responsibility for such actions generally have been accurate. And officials are concerned that the fire in Visalia and the recent announcements indicate ELF followers are planning to increase the number and frequency of such attacks.

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