September 2001 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Cypherpunks declared to be a terrorist organization?
by Eric Murray 27 Sep '01

27 Sep '01

On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 05:59:57PM +0200, Eugene Leitl wrote: > On Thu, 27 Sep 2001, Tim May wrote: > > > Given the new Anti-Terrorism laws the Congressvermin are racing to > > pass, there's a chance the Cypherpunks list/group will be placed on > > the list of terror organizations, with any support for (such as > > running nodes) declared to be illegally supporting an illegal > > organization. > > Are any cypherpunks nodes being operated outside of U.S.? Not that I know of. Want to run one? It doesn't take much bandwidth, just a host that's up most of the time. You or anyone else who wants to set up a node is welcome to use some or all of the majordomo mods I made to filter spam. > Can subscription to an international mailing lists be outlawed? Sure. It might be difficult to pass such a law in the US, and completely unconstitutional, but that doesn't always stop them. It's more likely that the cypherpunks list would be declared a "terrorist organization" under sealed FISA orders, and the various "ringleaders" rounded up in the middle of the night. But I don't think even that is likely; it's easier and more productive to ignore the list and target the rare list member who does something chargeable in real life.. Eric

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Re: Cypherpunks declared to be a terrorist organization?
by drt＠un.bewaff.net 27 Sep '01

27 Sep '01

Eugene Leitl <Eugene.Leitl(a)lrz.uni-muenchen.de> writes: > Are any cypherpunks nodes being operated outside of U.S.? I'm trying to operate a node and an archive at http://koeln.ccc.de/mailman/listinfo/cypherpunks drt -- "Before the Internet, a certain breed of deconstructionists had a lot of fun telling everybody that "privileging of dominant paradigms" was wrecking the world. The Internet has taught us that privileging certain views is absolutely crucial to avoid drowning in the ravings of idiots." -Keunwoo Lee

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Leads
by Vince Matlock 27 Sep '01

27 Sep '01

Adbrokerz.com has a number of mortgage companies spending in excess of $500,000 per month in advertising. We are looking for fresh, exclusive, first (refinance) and 2nd mortgage (debt consolidation) leads. Please call or email me if you have extra inventory. Best Regards Vince Matlock www.adbrokerz.com vincem(a)adbrokerz.com (877) 568-0155 xt 15

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XXX Megasite!
by nastysluts＠aol.com 27 Sep '01

27 Sep '01

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Aimee == FBI?
by citizenq＠hushmail.com 27 Sep '01

27 Sep '01

>It is discouraging to see the disdain in which many of you hold the FBI >during a time when we need cooperation and insight from nontraditional >sources. > "we" --- do you mean "WE ALL need..." or "WE AT THE FBI need..." Or am I behind the curve on this one? You-all may have determined this some time ago, sorry if I missed the posts. >In some cases, maybe FBI agents are an inappropriate vehicle for

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Congresscritters with gas masks
by Declan McCullagh 27 Sep '01

27 Sep '01

Roll Call is one of the two major papers (along with the Hill) covering Capitol Hill... --Declan --- http://www.rollcall.com/pages/news/00/2001/09/news0924b.html Protective masks for every House Member and floor staffer were placed in an area readily accessible to lawmakers in the Capitol roughly a year ago to guard against a chemical or germ warfare assault, according to senior House staffers. "There were plenty of meetings where this was discussed and it was put in place," a knowledgeable House GOP aide said. Another House staffer added that masks are available in multiple places within the Capitol building.

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Re: Cypherpunks declared to be a terrorist organization?
by bo.didley＠hushmail.com 27 Sep '01

27 Sep '01

The only obvious potential terrorist on the Cpunks list is Tim May. He fits the profile. He is paranoid,armed to the teeth,hates democracy. Hates the U.S. Government, which he refers to as the Z.O.G. Has called for the Nuking of Washington D.C. Only 300 killed in the recent attack. He must be real disappointed but maybe many more next time Tim. Hates big cities especially on the east coast. Hates Israel. Hates Jews. Hates those that don’t think like he does, “they need killing”. Is generally unhappy with the modern world and would see it burned down and rebuilt in his own particular vision. Seems Tim never has a nice day. Except perhaps 9/11. Bo D.

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Scary Crypto
by mmotyka＠lsil.com 27 Sep '01

27 Sep '01

CY's article ( the crypto portion ) : The world is changing, new technologies sometimes have nasty applications. So let's embrace the illusion that governments can actually control everything and protect us from what scares us. In short, let's stick our collective heads in the sand and avoid evolving because the outcome is uncertain. That makes the outcome certain and not in our favor. Definitely not welcome in my foxhole. What a dipshit. Mike

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RE: Defeatist Compromising Commentary From Reason Magazine
by Nick Gillespie 27 Sep '01

27 Sep '01

All, I appreciate your response to Cathy Young's recent column that was originally written for the Boston Globe and posted recently to reason.com. As I've noted to the Politech list, Young is a highly valued and often controversial contributor to REASON, both in print and on line, and I'm happy to post her writings even when I disagree with her on a specific issue, including encryption and whether the threat of terrorism should shrink civil liberties. As you may know, I and other members of the REASON writing community consistently and adamantly argue in favor of unfettered encryption, freedom from government oversight, and maximum civil, personal, and economic liberties in all spheres of human activity. For the unconvinced, I recommend a wider walk through our site and our print magazine (including our December issue, which features Declan McCullagh's contribution--among others--to a symposium about which civil liberties are most at risk in the government's new total war against terrorism). Yours, Nick ************** Nick Gillespie Editor-in-Chief REASON magazine www.reason.com gillespie(a)reason.com ************** -----Original Message----- From: Tim May [mailto:tcmay@got.net] Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2001 10:33 PM To: cypherpunks(a)lne.com Cc: Nilsphone(a)aol.com; freematt(a)coil.com; gillespie(a)reason.com; davidn(a)reason.org; Charles Platt Subject: Re: Defeatist Compromising Commentary From Reason Magazine On Wednesday, September 26, 2001, at 06:15 PM, Nilsphone(a)aol.com wrote: In a message dated 2001-09-26 17:21 Pacific Daylight Time, freematt(a)coil.com writes: "Between Cato arguing for victim disarmament and Reason arguing that "right to liberty is preceded by the right to life," I say we just kill them all and let Rand sort them out." If you find Ms. Young's comments against encryption disturbing please write to Nick Gillespie <gillespie(a)reason.com> Editor-in-Chief of Reason Magazine and David Nott <davidn(a)reason.org> President, Reason Foundation.] I think Reason got it wrong. Crypto technology might simplify a terrorist's life a little, that is all. If there are no secure channels, terrorists can meet in person. The "GO" order can be done in the clear, "lets go" needs no encryption. Alternatively, low volume comm between people who know each other, and can meet beforehand, can easily be done using one time pad, which are drop dead easy to use, foolproof (as long as you dont lose or re-use them) etc, but not suitable for mass communication. I can write a one-time-pad program in minutes that does it all for you. You need a source for the pads, GM-tubes are best, rooms full of lava lamps and a digital camera have been used. Not very hard, can be set up at a central location, once, and then the pads distributed by hand. (This latter is a must and the catch in mass communications.) Nils Andersson (long time Reason subscriber, from the beginning in the 70-s) They fucking DID meet in person! There is not one iota, not one shred, of evidence that Atta and and his 20 or so co-conspirators used "crypto" in any form! (Including image file steganography, the form I invented in 1989-90 and which Kevin Kelly profiled in his book "Out of Control," based on interviews in 1992. I mention this because several journalists have been writing b.s stories aoubt Osama using "steganography, files hidden in images.' B.S.) And even had Atta and Company used crypto, which there is no evidence whatsoever of, this would be no more justification for "key escrow" or "backdoors" than the use of curtains by Al Capone to hide his activities was grounds for "transparency escrow" modes in curtains or for banning sealed envelopes. Most crime takes place out of sight of law enforcement. So? Atta and his co-conspirators met in apartments, motel rooms, and sent overnight letters. Unless the bozos at Reason are arguing for opening of all mail, for microphones in motel rooms, for "1984" levels of apartment surveillance, there is nothing that could have been done to stop the planning. This is all just very basic stuff, written about by some of us in the mid-80s. That so many journalists are just now "discovering" the crypto issue is symptomatic of our times. That bimbo at "Reason" is why "Reason" is just another enemy of liberty. --Tim May (P.S. I used to read "Reason" back when it was published out of my college town, Santa Barbara. Circa 1971-2 or so, maybe '73. A friend of mine knew Rob Poole pretty well. And I voted for John Hospers in '72. And my roommate at UCSB later worked for "Reason." And so on. But it got so repetitive and boring that I stopped reading it around 1980. They have missed out on the important trends.)

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Are Plea Agreements Always Accurate
by Eric Cordian 27 Sep '01

27 Sep '01

[Yes, this is a duplicate. I screwed up my From: line on the prior one] According to an article by Declan in this morning's Wired News, Brian K. West has decided to take a plea agreement in the government's case against him for accessing an inadvertantly left wide open web site at a newspaper. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,47146,00.html The plea agreement alleges, amongst other things, that Mr. West intended to modify the newspaper's Perl scripts and market them commercially, as well as using a password file to access "private areas." As I remember the original story, Mr. West snarfed a local copy of the site to edit with Microsoft's FrontPage, to see what some modifications to it might look like, and in doing so, discovered that the copy of the site on the newspaper's server could be accessed and modified by anyone without need of a password, with complete access to all its scripts and other files. In the collection of files presented to the public was something that looked like a password file, and Mr. West tried one entry from it to see if access was granted, much like trying a key one finds on the ground in a nearby lock to see if it fits. Mr. West then informed the newspaper, which instead of simply fixing the misconfiguration, called the authorities, who then visited Mr. West under false pretenses, and attempted to get him to incriminate himself, and subsequently raided the premises and seized his computer. The newspaper, which had noticed the log entry from the password being tested, decided the whole thing was an attempt to steal their extremely precious Perl scripts, and market them to the public. The prosecutors, as prosecutors tend to do, managed to lie by juxtiposition by stating the fact of access using a password, a count of files transferred to Mr. West's machine, and the newspaper's allegations of software theft, in a way which suggested that Mr. West had "hacked" his way into the site using a stolen password, and used that access to steal hundreds of files, with the intent of making a profit from marketing the newspaper's stolen intellectual property. In fact, testing one of the passwords was incidental to the file transfer, the files were obtained because the site was wide open, not because a password was used, and the allegations that Mr. West intended to become the next Larry Ellison by stealing some Perl scripts a product of the newspaper's paranoid imagination. Now I find it unremarkable that Mr. West has chosen to take a plea agreement in this case, on a misdemeanor charge, instead of standing trial in the aftermath of the World Trade Center flattening as an Evil Terrorist Hacker, where the government's proof of nothing more than "unauthorized access" could send him to prison for many years. I also find it unremarkable that the plea agreement offered Mr. West to sign contains a complete laundry list of both the newspaper's and the prosecutor's twisting of the facts, and numerous confessions of "intent." What I find remarkable, is that Declan has written an article claiming that the plea agreement constitutes a "confession" by Mr. West, and that it demonstrates how easily "well-meaning" Netizens can be lead astray by a person who's really a dangerous criminal. Declan also has glowing words for the prosecutor, who he characterizes as unfairly maligned, and for the plea agreement, whose every word he characterizes as "fact." One wonders if Declan also considers everything in the Jim Bell and Carl Johnson plea agreements to constitute "fact" as well." The slant of Declan's article is also not helped by the fact that all the links provided by Wired as "also see" are about an exploit in Microsoft's Web server software having nothing to do with this case. Wired News and MSNBC continue to run neck in neck in the Birdcage Liner Olympics. -- 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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