December 2002 - cypherpunks-legacy

County votes for land use anarchy
by Steve Schear 29 Dec '02

29 Dec '02

Georgia County Fed Up with Too Many Rules and Regulations Excerpt: Fed up with the complexity of zoning ordinances and various other land use restrictions already in existence, and a new raft of rules handed down by the state government, elected officials in Habersham County, Georgia, took a radical and unprecedented step. They voted to eliminate all land use regulations for the county, as well as the planning commission and building inspectors. http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=11369 If you can't join 'em, beat 'em. -- W's global policy of hegenomy

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The Two Towers....
by lcs Mixmaster Remailer 29 Dec '02

29 Dec '02

Blah blah blah wrote... "My hunch is that the new towers will never be filled and will turn out to be a business catastrophe" Who gives a crap? Despite the fact that the original towers were as ugly as hell, they were a giant "Fuck You" to the rest of the world and we New Yorkers loved 'em. (I still say to NJ-based relatives that "All of you" conspired to knock down the towers...I refuse to distinguish between bin Laden, gov Florio (or whoever), and George Bush. All I know is that it was you non-New-Yorkers who did it 'cause you hate us and all our cool food, culture, filth and crime.) And until I stop paying taxes entirely, I might as well SEE something my tax $$$ may have been used to build, as opposed to stealth buildings and giant storage "schools". (I always used the same argument to support the superconducting supercollider....) "oops, I said "business," when in fact it is the Port Authority, a weird melange of jurisdictions which is probably constitutionally invalid)." The PA is certainly one of the more lecherous groups in these parts, including the mob. They were supposed to dissappear after the tolls paid for roads and bridges to be built. But using that ole' loophole (something to do with refinancing), they've maintained their incpometant and corrupt stranglehold on most of our major thoroughfares for lo these many years (increasing the pollution like crazy, too). "I wasn't sorry to see those Bauhaus boxes go." Bauhaus? I guess. More like that 70s warmed over post-Bauhaus fascist crapola. Nobody in NYC really thought they were beautiful, but we do miss 'em (see above!). And Peter Trei wrote... "One thing I liked in particular was that most of the designs weren't afraid to go high into the sky this time around. Building high is an expression of confidence." This I more or less agree with. And it's not a government thing, not a business thing, just a New York thing. We need replacement towers for sure, and that design by David Rockwell & Co (with those odd empty tower-structures) might be good. They have the additional advantage of not casting such a dark shadow over downtown and Brooklyn Heights. PT wrote... "The WTC was a landmark for a huge part of the city; you could see it easily from most of midtown and downtown." but Blah Blah Blah wrote... "Hideous boxes." Again, you miss the point. We New Yorkers navigated by them, and when traveling out in th'sticks (ie, New Jersey and west of the hudson) those ugly boxes would come popping up over the horizon welcoming you home, just like your ugly ole' Mom. Somebody wrote, and I really don't remember or care who. Hell, let's say Tim May wrote it just to piss him off... "My own initiial idea was to rebuild the towers as they were, but in goldtone instead of silver. Now, I'd like to be a little more respectful of the pre-WTC street grid (If you weren't actually going to the WTC, it was a huge obstacle to get around, either driving or on foot). But I still want towers which rise far above the skyline." That original twisty-towers design brought forward in response to how shitty the original official designs were by that Amalgamated Architects was the best design, but for some reason it didn't make it into the official final round. "One hopes not a single fucking dime of taxpayer money will go into rebuilding anything on that site. (Oh, I won't scream if $25,000 is allocated to hire that Chinese architect to replicate her Vietcong wall with the names of the dead so that the weepy ones can do their tracings and all. But nothing more should be spent out of the taxpayer's pocket.)" Like I said, you can either SEE your tax dollars build something (even if its useless), or else they'll just dissappear up some buereucrats (I can never spell that word) nose. Unless you pay zero taxes of course. "(Ayn Rand loved the Twin Towers, ironically, and typically, and disgustingly. But, then, she thought cigarette smoking was a symbolic affirmation of Man's control of fire and his striving to reify A or Not-A through purity of essence!" A read through a couple Ayn Rand books and none of this should be suprising. As far as I'm concerned she wasn't exactly von Neumann. Tyler Durden

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Rde: The Two Towers....
by Anonymous 29 Dec '02

29 Dec '02

Oh that our saviour Osama would come soon and turn all New York into a radioactive pile of rubble.

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Re: The Geodesic Economy: "World Peace Through Free Trade"
by Tim May 29 Dec '02

29 Dec '02

(All of these Hettinga lists elided from the distribution: "'R. A. Hettinga'" <rah(a)shipwright.com>, Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs(a)philodox.com>, dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu, e$(a)vmeng.com, mac_crypto(a)vmeng.com, fork(a)xent.com, nettime-l(a)bbs.think.net, irregulars(a)tb.tf.....) On Sunday, December 29, 2002, at 10:33 AM, Trei, Peter wrote: > What do I think? I think they're one hell of a lot better than the > first batch, which came out last summer. They lowered the > square footage mandated, and told the companies to be a lot > more imaginative. "Square footage mandated"? "Told the companies"? It sure would be great if things were just left this way: "It is up to the owner of the property to decide what to do with the property. He can ask for opinions, hire consultants, of course, as he wishes. But the herd has no say on what he does, so long as uniform building standards and zoning regulations are met." (Issues of zoning, safety, and traffic are easily dealt with, and have nothing to do with the various pronouncements about "more square footage must be provided" and "The Mayor prefers at least two towers.") Regrettably, many levels of government and "the public" are involved. I realize that things got very confusing when a quasi-government agency (Port Authority) bought and paid for the original towers--though it then leased the site and towers to another owner, a private individual. If they wanted to own their building, they should not have then leased it to another, then back to themselves, while diverting the monies in the usual government way. So now we have what should be a private land development deal mixed up with government...again. My hunch is that the new towers will never be filled and will turn out to be a business catastrophe (oops, I said "business," when in fact it is the Port Authority, a weird melange of jurisdictions which is probably constitutionally invalid). Many of the occupants have found other office spaces, and many of them have said they are perfectly happy uptown or midtown. Or out in Jersey or Long Island or the other burrows (ObMisspellingDeliberate). Or decentralized out to where people are cheaper to hire. This is what networks are for. Centralizing people into antheap buildings...ugh. I wasn't sorry to see those Bauhaus boxes go. > One thing I liked in particular was that most of the designs > weren't afraid to go high into the sky this time around. Building > high is an expression of confidence. Or, to many of us, of stupidity. > The WTC was a landmark > for a huge part of the city; you could see it easily from most > of midtown and downtown. Hideous boxes. > I worry about designs which require a huge amount of maintenance > (Libeskind's sky forests), which I can't see being maintained more > than a decade or so, or which devote so much to memorial that > 40 years from now they will seem over the top (Foster has a huge > area which is supposed to be restricted to victim's family members). > > My own initiial idea was to rebuild the towers as they were, but in > goldtone instead of silver. Now, I'd like to be a little more > respectful > of the pre-WTC street grid (If you weren't actually going to the WTC, > it was a huge obstacle to get around, either driving or on foot). But I > still want towers which rise far above the skyline. One hopes not a single fucking dime of taxpayer money will go into rebuilding anything on that site. (Oh, I won't scream if $25,000 is allocated to hire that Chinese architect to replicate her Vietcong wall with the names of the dead so that the weepy ones can do their tracings and all. But nothing more should be spent out of the taxpayer's pocket.) (And to the extent the Port Authority is really a shakedown operation, a gatekeeper, extracting revenues from those who cross into its regime, the use of Port Authority money should be watched carefully. The insurance should cover the rebuilding. If it doesn't, scale back the plans accordingly.) I like the new skyline better. (ObHettinga: Meet the new skyline, same as the old, old one.) But all this yawp coming out of NYC about which of the plans will be selected, how the City wants the towers to be reconstructed, blah blah, is all just an indication of statism. (Ayn Rand loved the Twin Towers, ironically, and typically, and disgustingly. But, then, she thought cigarette smoking was a symbolic affirmation of Man's control of fire and his striving to reify A or Not-A through purity of essence! But, then, she was aynal about a lot of things, such as her support for NASA even though it consumed 50,000 slave-lives to put an American flag on a ball of worthless rock. Hilarious that she died of cancer.) --Tim May "That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." --Samuel Adams

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RE: The Geodesic Economy: "World Peace Through Free Trade"
by Trei, Peter 29 Dec '02

29 Dec '02

> R. A. Hettinga[SMTP:rah@shipwright.com] wrote: > > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > I wonder what people, especially from New York City, think about the > new proposals for Lower Manhattan and World Trade Center site that > came out this week. > > <http://www.lowermanhattan.info/rebuild/new_design_plans/> > > My qualifications: I lived in NYC when I was a little kid, and in Manhattan from the end of college until I moved to Massachusetts 14 years ago. I used to work at 101 Barclay Street, directly across the street from 7 WTC. I've been up the towers many times - I used to take friends from out of town up to the observatory, and dates to Windows on the World. I'd visit the concourse for lunch, and hang out at a bar halfway up the north tower after work. What do I think? I think they're one hell of a lot better than the first batch, which came out last summer. They lowered the square footage mandated, and told the companies to be a lot more imaginative. One thing I liked in particular was that most of the designs weren't afraid to go high into the sky this time around. Building high is an expression of confidence. The WTC was a landmark for a huge part of the city; you could see it easily from most of midtown and downtown. I like the Foster design best. The SOM, Libeskind, and United Architects designs are also very good. The THINK and Peterson designs leave me kind of cold. I don't much like the Richard Meier (tictactoe) design. I worry about designs which require a huge amount of maintenance (Libeskind's sky forests), which I can't see being maintained more than a decade or so, or which devote so much to memorial that 40 years from now they will seem over the top (Foster has a huge area which is supposed to be restricted to victim's family members). My own initiial idea was to rebuild the towers as they were, but in goldtone instead of silver. Now, I'd like to be a little more respectful of the pre-WTC street grid (If you weren't actually going to the WTC, it was a huge obstacle to get around, either driving or on foot). But I still want towers which rise far above the skyline. Peter

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Re: NSA Show Sexually Arouses Hanssen
by Tim May 29 Dec '02

29 Dec '02

On Saturday, December 28, 2002, at 03:16 PM, <jya(a)pipeline.com> wrote: > The 20/20 TV show on December 27, 2002 had a segment on Robert > Hanssen, FBI > spy, in which he is described as becoming sexually aroused by a > National > Security Agency PowerPoint presentation and stroked himself through > his pants, > according to Eric O'Neill, a young FBI agent who had been assigned to > covertly > report on Hanssens's activities. (The show transcript omits the > stroking > description and demonstration on camera by O'Neill.) Crypome invites > information on which NSA presentation aroused Hanssen, and a copy of > it for > publication. > This is silly. Rather than show that Hanssen had any particular erotic reaction to part of the NSA presentation, it is vastly more likely that it shows that anyone under constant surveillance will at some point do something, perhaps out of boredom, out of daydreaming, which surveillers will note with prurient interest. "Citizen-unit Winston Smith was observed engaging in said behavior during the Thursday One Hour Preparation for the Great Hate. Suggest surveillance be increased." --Tim May

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NSA Show Sexually Arouses Hanssen
by jya＠pipeline.com 28 Dec '02

28 Dec '02

The 20/20 TV show on December 27, 2002 had a segment on Robert Hanssen, FBI spy, in which he is described as becoming sexually aroused by a National Security Agency PowerPoint presentation and stroked himself through his pants, according to Eric O'Neill, a young FBI agent who had been assigned to covertly report on Hanssens's activities. (The show transcript omits the stroking description and demonstration on camera by O'Neill.) Crypome invites information on which NSA presentation aroused Hanssen, and a copy of it for publication. Send to jya(a)pipeline.com 20/20 report: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/DailyNews/2020_spykid021227.html

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The Archbishop is right: the nation-state is dying
by R. A. Hettinga 27 Dec '02

27 Dec '02

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-524468,00.html December 27, 2002 The Archbishop is right: the nation-state is dying Philip Bobbitt Writing a long book such as The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History is like sending a message to HQ from behind enemy lines. You may never know if the message was received, or if it was understood, or precisely what action was taken. So I was especially pleased when the Archbishop of Canterbury's Dimbleby Lecture, about the rise of the market state, called upon the Church to take up some of the moral responsibilities the 20th-century nation-state is beginning to shed. Alas, however, the Archbishop cannot assume that everyone who heard the lecture had read the book, and although his analyses drawing on the work were impeccable, I can appreciate how his critics have misconstrued novel terms and ideas that he could describe only briefly. Some reactions were absurd, others far more extensive, and they deserve to be treated seriously. I think that my terminology, and the fact that the Archbishop could only summarise the basis for my analysis, misled otherwise thoughtful commentators into offering reactions that are wide of the mark. Take the estimable Matthew Parris, whose work I so admire that it is quoted in my book. He dissected the Archbishop's lecture as mistaken in every element. "The nation-state is not being torn away," he wrote. "The citizen has never in history enjoyed a higher level of protection and shelter from government. . . The idea that the nation state is being blown away by the global market is a fashionable view for which there is no sound evidence. The delusion has three understandable causes: first, we in Europe are conscious that some functions previously exercised by our domestic governments are in the hands of the European Union. . . Secondly, we are uncomfortably aware of the emergence of a new imperial power. . . Thirdly, now that currencies float and protectionism is out of fashion, we have the illusion of being newly exposed to global market forces." None of the three reasons for the delusion Mr Parris perceives has got anything to do with why the nation state will be increasingly unable to fulfill its citizens' expectations. The state is not declining, nor is the nation dying, but the relationship between the two is changing and the particular version of the State which has dominated for a little more than 100 years is undergoing a profound change. Like earlier versions of the State, stretching back to the Renaissance, the constitutional order of the nation-state (dating roughly from 1865/1871 to the present) rests on its own unique premise for legitimacy: give us power and we will better the material wellbeing of the people. Roosevelt, Hitler and Stalin all made this same promise, although they had different ideas about how to achieve it. Indeed the long wars of the 20th century determined which of three forms of the nation- state - fascist, communist or parliamentary - would accede to the legitimacy of the imperial states of the 19th century. Now, at the moment of its greatest triumph, the nation state is increasingly unable to fulfill its legitimising premise. Five developments are chiefly responsible for this. First, the recognition of human rights as norms that require adherence within all states, regardless of their internal laws; this is why Slobodan Milosevic is in the dock today, not because he disobeyed any of the laws of the state of which he was the elected leader. Second, the development of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction that render the defence of state borders ineffectual; this is why it is untrue that "no generation has ever been better protected". Third, the proliferation of global and trans- national threats - such as those that damage the environment, or threaten states through migration, population expansion, disease, or famine - that no nation-state alone can control or hide from. Fourth, the growth of a world economic regime that ignores borders in the movement of capital, which curtails states in the management of their economic affairs. Fifth, the creation of a global communications network that penetrates borders and threatens national languages, customs and cultures. A constitutional order will arise that reflects these five developments and hails them as requirements which only it can meet. The emergence of this new order will also change how states interact with each other. The European Union, the increased power of the United States (which some mistakenly believe to be a new empire), floating currencies: these are all consequences of the five developments, not drivers. Mr Parris completely mistakes this point and he seems to acknowledge it when he writes: "The second leg of Dr Williams's argument therefore baffles me. 'Where the State was once seen as guaranteeing the general good of the community,' he says, 'the State no longer has the power to keep its side of the bargain.' I have no idea on what the Archbishop bases this remark." Exactly. And having mistaken the analysis, he misses the link to Dr Williams 's point about the emergence of the market state, the likely successor to the nation-state. It is not, as Mr Parris alleges, that Dr Williams claims that we live "in a new and market-driven age of individual greed". And thus Mr Parris's riposte that individuals are no greedier today than they ever were, while doubtless true, misses the point. The link to Dr Williams's argument about the role of faith-based institutions is the following: if the legitimising premise of the nation-state will be increasingly difficult to fulfil, the state will not simply wither away, rather it will change that premise. The premise of the market state is that it will maximise the opportunity of individuals. A market state is not a market. The state is not going away, and in some respects it will be more powerful than ever. Nor does the nation state have a monopoly on nationalism; far earlier constitutional orders reflected intense nationalism. Rather, Dr Williams is arguing that the emergence of the market state will see the state evacuate areas of responsibility that it had, in the last 150 years, undertaken. When the Left argues for affirmative action, and the Right for criminalising abortion; when the Left wants to make hate speech a crime and the Right wants to criminalise drug use; when the Left seeks to create "hate crimes" and the Right wants to ban non-national languages: all are regarding the state as a nation-state, employing law and regulation to enforce moral positions. But when the Left urges the deregulation of reproductive choice, and the Right the deregulation of industry, they have moved to a market-state perspective. Phenomena such as the replacement of conscription with an all- volunteer force, welfare reform that attempts to replace unemployment allowances with education and training to help the unemployed to enter the labour market, and the use of non-governmental organisations and private companies as adjuncts to traditional government activities, reflect elements of the barely emerging market state. And this is the Archbishop's point: that a state that is, owing to these new forces, relatively (compared to the nation-state) indifferent to loyalty, civility, trust in authority, respect for family life, regard for privacy, reverence for sacrifice, equality and solidarity will require that the society it governs promotes these qualities through non-state agencies. As the Archbishop put it: "It is inevitable that governments can no longer deliver in terms of setting out a moral basis in law - other institutions will have to take up a new role." This is why he focuses on "the willingness of the market-state government to engage with traditional religious communities in a new way". I cannot help but wonder whether, if the Archbishop had substituted the phrase "non-governmental organisation" - such as Amnesty International, Medecins sans Frontieres, trade unions or multinational corporations - instead of "religious communities" as taking up new responsibilities, anyone would have been so terribly surprised. After all, underlying his proposals is an analysis that suggests new roles for businessmen, and for the private sector generally, not just for religious institutions. Thus, here, too, the Archbishop's critics mistake their target when they respond to his lecture by saying that the Church has no monopoly on moral argument. I urge the Archbishop's critics to give their reactions to his lecture a second - and a third - thought. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: I Crypto U and your files
by Eugen Leitl 27 Dec '02

27 Dec '02

On Thu, 26 Dec 2002, Anonymous wrote: > One leverage point for possibly encouraging this to happen is in P2P, > methinks. A few power-users have been prosecuted recently, so imagine > a nice little crypto-tunnel (and mp3 disc-encryptor) app that could > easily be injected into the Kazaa or other Gnutella-centric browsers. There's no point in trying to fix braindamaged designs by incremental patchwork. You know about <http://zgp.org/pipermail/p2p-hackers/>, right? > The nice thing here is that if we could get a functioning app, the app > itself could be shared and spread variola-like via the P2P networks > themselves. If the users didn't consent to auto-upgrade, you could as well write a worm with p2p node functionality. God knows some people in China could have used some plausible deniability. > There's the technical difficulty that someone pointed out here that > the IP address of both serv-ants is visible. One possible go-around is Well, duh. > to have an encrypted tunnel materialize through blacknet, but I > strongly doubt this will scale to millions of users very well. Instead of doubting, try creating a model that might work, and test drive it in the simulator with millions of nodes. > Another possibility includes allowing the user to make only a portion > of their content visible to any single user (plus crypto of course), > the logic being that 'they' won't come after the millions of regular > file sharers. The point is to not make content linkable to a specific node. > Any thoughts? If we could develop such an app and roll it over into > the file-sharing networks, then the amount of encrypted files being > moved around could increase tremendously. ANd then, us law-abiding, Instead of inventing a polygonal wheel, try joining any of the many efforts like MNet and Freenet, and start hacking. > flag-saluting supporters of even this governments' insistence on world > destabilisation will feel safer in using crypto on a daily basis, > because crypto will no longer be the sole provence of cranks, kooks, > and libertarians.

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Re: Peace Through Trade, Redux: Medieval Iceland and the Absence of Government
by R. A. Hettinga 26 Dec '02

26 Dec '02

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 9:57 PM -0500 on 12/26/02, Somebody wrote: > Obviously he hasn't read Njal's Saga. Yeah, people say this a lot, but it's more the exception that proves the rule. For instance, multi-generational blood feud that runs over the course of Njal's Saga goes over a century or more, I think, so a simple body count doesn't work very well. In addition, the reason they made a saga out of the story was that the events in it were so exceptional, not just the burning of Njal and the Njalssons, but the whole fight that lead up to it. Like the paper said about Icelandic conflicts in general, when the burning was over, the whole "war" was over -- without dragging in a cast of thousands. Hype is a very old thing. The saga said, among other things, that Gunnar could also jump his own height from a standing start, too, remember? :-). Like they said in the Old West, which was also much more peaceful than the pulp-novels, movies, and gun-control advocates would have you believe, "We didn't need the law until the lawyers came." The Norse, like people in early America were, of course, all armed to the teeth, and an armed society is a polite society. Remember that rabbits fight to the death by disembowelment, while rattlesnakes just bump chests to see who gets the girl... Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0 - not licensed for commercial use: www.pgp.com iQA/AwUBPgvK88PxH8jf3ohaEQJDSwCfXVukQ1nvHKtY55LpGuB2TJCr3qgAoKyC txJTrHdsyw7zKeviCRE7kRRs =S1jd -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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