January 2002 - cypherpunks-legacy

CodeCon presentations announced and registration open (fwd)
by Jim Choate 16 Jan '02

16 Jan '02

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 05:00:09 -0800 (PST) From: Bram Cohen <bram(a)gawth.com> To: Crypto List <cryptography(a)wasabisystems.com> Subject: CodeCon presentations announced and registration open CodeCon is the premier event in 2002 for the P2P, cypherpunk, and network/security application developer community. It is a workshop for developers of real-world applications that support individual liberties. CodeCon registration is $50, a $10 discount is available if you register prior to February 1st. It will be held February 15-17, noon-5pm, at DNA lounge in San Francisco. http://codecon.org/ Presentations will include - * Peek-A-Booty - a distributed anti-censorship application * Invisible IRC Project - secure, anonymous client/server networks * Idel - lightweight mobile code for p2p cpu sharing * Reptile - a distributed but uniform content exchange mechanism * MNet - a universal shared filestore * Alpine - a social discovery mechanism which can handle high churn rates, malicious peers, and limited bandwidth * Eikon - an image search engine * CryptoMail - encrypted email for all * libfreenet - a case study in horrors incomprehensible to the mind of man, and other secure protocol design mistakes * BitTorrent - hosting large, popular files cheaply --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)wasabisystems.com

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Hot Air Jihads.
by mattd 16 Jan '02

16 Jan '02

http://www.onworld.com/MUT/elecGur.html has a declaration which includes many of the crypto-anarchy concepts. Found in archives circa 96 and still a valid URL. ALSO RUSH die >Salman Rushdie, in a speech I heard several years ago, said that it was >widely doubted that Iran would or could actually come up with the three >million dollar bounty on his head. >This may play a large part in why he is still around. A few people who basically seem to oppose my idea ("Assassination Politics") try to use the Rushdie example as being some sort of "evidence" why it wouldn't work. ("If Rushdie is alive years later, with a few million on his head, that proves assassination doesn't work...") I, on the contrary, believe that it actually SUPPORTS my theory: Clearly, nobody has trusted Iran's leadership enough to genuinely believe he would be able to collect the reward, and thus the apparently size of the reward is discounted in people's minds. When I respond to these objectors, I point out that if Iran was REALLY serious about expecting to see Rushdie dead, they would have long ago set up some sort of system, analogous to AsPol, that would allow an anonymous assassin to kill Rushdie and collect the reward, guaranteed, without risk of exposure. Clearly, that hasn't happened. (I think we would have heard about it if it had.) This doesn't make the Iranians any more "civilized," obviously, it just means that they are either less competent or trustworthy about achieving their goals (or are seen to be so), or that they really don't want to/can't pay anybody the money for Rushdie's death. I don't recall every seeing anyone even attempt to contradict this counter-argument; they always agree that nobody really believes anyone can safely and reliably collect the Rushdie reward. Needless to say, this raises serious doubts about the competence of many objectors to critically analyze the issues in AsPol. It would be interesting to get Rushdie's opinion about AsPol. It's understandable if he had an initial feeling of revulsion about such a system, on the other hand he should recognize that this system would also allow opponents of the Iranian government to eliminate those who called for his death in the first place. It is reasonable to suppose that had this system been functioning years ago, Iran's government would have been taken down long ago. >I think all the analyses of the economic costs of protecting one person >vs. protecting many people are rather beside the point, in light of this.<I agree. AsPol will work even if a few people can be protected, andprotecting many people is simply not an option.

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Treason files: Davis' wiretap illegal
by Anonymous 16 Jan '02

16 Jan '02

Legal Advice Sinks Davis' Wiretap Bill Security: The proposal is dropped after legislative counsel finds "roving" tracking of calls illegal. http://latimes.com/news/local/la-011602taps.story MIGUEL BUSTILLO and NANCY VOGEL, Times Staff Writers SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Gray Davis' proposal to let state and local police obtain roving wiretaps on suspected criminals was dropped from the legislation containing it Tuesday after the legislative counsel's office concluded that it was illegal. The proposal, a centerpiece of Davis' State of the State address last week, had been welcomed by some law enforcement leaders but criticized by civil libertarians and some liberals. Davis unveiled the idea at the outset of a reelection bid in which he faces challenges from three Republicans--former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, Secretary of State Bill Jones and investor Bill Simon Jr.--each vying for the GOP nomination to take on the Democratic incumbent. Asked to size up the chances of a roving-wiretap bill passing now, Assemblyman Fred Keeley (D-Boulder Creek) said: "I think none. There is no opportunity, because whether the Legislature has the will or not, our attorney is telling us it is moot because we lack the authority." <snip>

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by --E-Mail Sale 16 Jan '02

16 Jan '02

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[PLANNING FEB CPUNKS] Who's going to be in the Bay Area in February for RSA?
by Bill Stewart 16 Jan '02

16 Jan '02

The RSA Conference will be in San Jose the week of Feb 18-22. http://www.rsaconference.net/indexforrsa.html As usual, that means a lot of cypherpunks will be in town, and we move the meeting to whichever weekend works best. This year, that's Saturday the 16th, and it's Presidents' Day Weekend. It's also Codecon 2002 http://codecon.org/ , a conference on peer-to-peer, crypto, and similar applications, designed for presentations about actual working code. The conference will be at the DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, San Francisco. The not-totally-firm plans are to have the cypherpunks meeting at Codecon on Saturday afternoon (the conference is Friday-Sunday). Bram (the conference organizer) will probably be able to comp us attendance (the full conference is $50), but he needs to do a schedule. Some of the crypto projects being talked about include Cryptomail and Zooko talking about Mojo Nation derivatives. Who's going to be in town that weekend? Would you like to speak at the Cypherpunks meeting, either as an organized talk or as a works-in-progress session? Thanks; Bill Stewart

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Cypherpunk Agitprop.
by mattd 16 Jan '02

16 Jan '02

http://www.anarchymag.org/52/violence.html "Stop the Violence!"? Policing the antiglobalization movement The antiglobalization movement will continue to build in numbers, coherence and effectiveness as evidenced by the recent events in Gothenburg, Sweden and Genoa, Italy. (This will happen despite the currently overwhelming mainstream-media focus on Bush's crusade against non-US- and non-Israeli-controlled terrorism.) Just as importantly, more and more people around the world are increasingly sympathetic with the range of messages and goals associated with the antiglobalization movement. As a direct result, the establishment media around the world continue to work overtime to put a negative spin on the movement, while the national and international forces of repression are also becoming increasingly active, violent and deadly. This isn't unexpected for all those who understand that no government in the world, nor any multinational corporation seeking to steal and exploit the world's resources, will sit by and allow such a potentially powerful and even potentially revolutionary movement to develop unhindered. Violence has always been the last-though in many places and times also the first-resort of the rich and the powerful when confronted by growing legions of protestors resisting their rule. The responses are predictable. The people who have gained riches all out of proportion to the value of their contributions (if any) to society have rarely made their fortunes without large doses of theft, payoffs, lies, intimidation, or the fruits of other forms of corruption and violence. And the people who occupy positions of official power in government don't generally get there by practicing honesty, sensitivity, justice and nonviolence; they get there by giving exactly what is demanded to the large corporations, powerful institutions and rich families who bought their elections (or otherwise installed them in power). This means that from the minute the first radical activist even thought about protesting global summits, there were already teams of intelligence agents, secret police (FBI, CIA, DIA, BATF, etc.) and local red squads at work to defend their masters. Most of these agents and police carry deadly weapons for a good reason-they are ready to imprison or kill anyone who threatens the status quo of concentrated political power, concentrated wealth, concentrated media, the corporate rape of the earth for the extraction of resources, industrial production and consumption, wage slavery and submission to law. So who are always the first people to call out to those who protest to "Stop the Violence!"? Is it the people who are being assaulted and beaten by cops, gassed with chemical weapons, shot with "non-lethal" as well as deadly weapons? The people who are suffering the brunt of the violence? Of course not. This call almost always comes from those who support the great mass of violence that is always aimed at the protestors by police, their provocateurs and other government-controlled armed forces. All the opponents of antiglobalization protests are quite happy and eager to join in calls to stop the violence of both already self-proclaimed "non-violent" protestors as well as of those protestors who reserve the power to fight back in self-defense when attacked, herded or corralled by cops. At the same time, the ubiquitous police violence remains invisible to these people. Why is this? State authorities, corporate leaders and their bought-&-paid-for mass media have one major aim-to hobble, confuse, and eventually disperse and destroy the current antiglobalization upsurge. Their range of tactics will include anything that works without causing too many other problems for them. This means that police violence and judicial repression, along with lies and the sowing of mass confusion will remain their favored set of weapons. Since the truth about capitalism and globalization is their enemy, they will make every effort to obscure it. And since an informed, concerned, and active populace is also their enemy, they will take every opportunity to intimidate, harass, beat, jail and terrorize protestors whenever they can get away with it. This means one thing above all others for those sympathetic with the aims of antiglobalization protests: Anyone who calls on antiglobalization protestors to "Stop the Violence!" without much more pointedly and vocally calling for an end to violence by cops is playing into the hands of the cops, their governmental masters, and the corporate mass media. The more liberal arm of the establishment, corporate media will rarely fail to encourage and praise the liberal, progressive and pacifist globalization-reform elements for their "responsibility" (read: "ineffectiveness at fundamentally challenging the powers-that-be"), while demonizing the radical anticapitalists among antiglobalization protestors. This is obviously because the liberal arm of the corporate media understands the importance of recuperating radical resistance. The more conservative arm of the mass media, like the "bad cop" of the "good" and "bad cop" routine, will generally denounce any protestors anywhere who aren't explicitly demanding more power to the corporations and state. Thus, the liberal media will always eat up statements like that of Anne Summers, the international board chair of Greenpeace, who wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald (7/23/01) that "...the violent part of the [antiglobalization] movement is to be condemned," even as she expressed (what she obviously considers an uncontroversial opinion) that people should seriously consider the criticisms of the antiglobalization movement by Henry Kissinger (a man responsible for nothing less than mass murder in a number of countries!). By such statements people like Anne Summers make themselves the enemies of the antiglobalization movement and must be treated as such. Any genuine movement criticisms of protest violence must always be framed in the explicit context of the condemnation of the (always much more brutal and illegitimate) violence of the forces of state and corporate repression. Jason McQuinn, Editor

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Al Qaeda Crypto
by mattd 16 Jan '02

16 Jan '02

>>Al Qaeda computer files bought from a seller in Kabul which were encoded and encrypted....<< The Horsemen are loose,the Plagues of Egypt,the Dogs of War,the Grapes of wrath.Round up the usual crypto suspects. Theoretically, because violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 have been included in the terrorism crackdown, hackers and spammers could be sentenced to life in prison.Encryption can pose potentially insurmountable challenges to law enforcement when used in conjunction with communication or plans for executing serious terrorist and criminal acts.- Terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers of the world unite,you have nothing to lose but your dongle. Direct action_ is what it's all about.Killing the president,undermining the state through the spread of espionage networks, through undermining faith in the tax system,through even more direct applications of the right tools at the right times. When Cypherpunks are called "terrorists," we will have done our jobs.HEIL CRYPTO-ANARCHY.HEIL! Font: Daschle-Anthrax-Bold

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rsa CON.
by mattd 16 Jan '02

16 Jan '02

Qing Hua Zi Guang Shun Feng Security 2nd Floor, Bei Lu Office Building, No. 35 Cheng Fu Rd HAI DIAN DISTRICT, BEIJING 100083 Lin Guang Zhang 010-62854806 The Security officers of the ever vigilant totalitarian people's thought police caught a critical poster and locked him away for four years. Beijing Excellink Networks Co., Ltd. Rm311 No 6 An Hui Li San Qu Chao Yang District, Beijing 100080 Bing Guang Chen 010-64974021 Possible synergies with NORTEL in construction of the Great FireWall of China. MORE at http://partnerfinder.rsasecurity.com/PartnerFinder/Reps.asp?Region=Asia+Pac… Dont get me started on Tibet,bear bile farms and http://www.laogai.org/public.htm But if you see that low dog Peter Trei,give him a black eye.

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Al Qaeda Crypto
by John Young 16 Jan '02

16 Jan '02

The Wall Street Journal today reports today on alleged Al Qaeda computer files bought from a seller in Kabul which were encoded and encrypted. A key encrypted document reports on a tour assessing terrorist targets in Egypt and Israel, very similar to the alleged travels of Richard C. Reid. The type of encryption is not identified, nor who provided help cracking the encryption with "an array of high-speed computers programmed to crack passwords." Excerpts: The computer contents included: -- A primer on coding and encryption of documents. Many of the text documents are not only protected by passwords but also couched in elliptical, coded language. The computer report on the travels of the Al Qaeda scout, protected by a complex password, was created on August 19 according to the computer's internal record. The Wall Street Journal commissioned an array of of high-speed computers programmed to crack passwords. They took five days to access the file. End excerpts.

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Slashdot | Scientific American On Bad Patents
by Jim Choate 16 Jan '02

16 Jan '02

http://slashdot.org/articles/02/01/16/0053217.shtml -- -- ____________________________________________________________________ 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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