June 2002 - cypherpunks-legacy

Vinnie is looking for work..
by R. A. Hettinga 24 Jun '02

24 Jun '02

When it rains, it pours, boys and girls... Vinnie Moscaritolo, Crypto Samoan Attorney (now) for Hire, wouldn't dare do something this, but *I* will. :-). Cheers, RAH --- begin forwarded text

2 1

dbfincher,Most effective means for boosting human growth hormone.
by Marshal Rutledge 24 Jun '02

24 Jun '02

1 0

RE: Ross's TCPA paper
by Nomen Nescio 23 Jun '02

23 Jun '02

Lucky Green writes: > I however encourage readers familiar with the state of the art in PC > platform security to read the TCPA specifications, read the TCPA's > membership list, read the Hollings bill, and then ask themselves if they > are aware of, or can locate somebody who is aware of, any other > technical solution that enjoys a similar level of PC platform industry > support, is anywhere as near to wide-spread production as TPM's, and is > of sufficient integration into the platform to be able to form the > platform basis for meeting the requirements of the Hollings bill. > > Would Anonymous perhaps like to take this question? Gladly. One need only look at a recent cause celebre in the cypherpunk community to see what the Hollings bill intends to mandate. We were assured by the professional paranoids among the cypherpunks that there was a serious measure being promoted by the content companies, a new restriction which we were all going to have to deal with. Remember? They were going to limit all A/D converters. That's right, thanks to the Hollings bill your rectal thermometer will be upgraded so that you can't watch Snow White on it (not that it's likely to be anything like snow white after you're finished with it). Yes, Hollings is determined to plug your analog hole. You heard it here first, folks. And how can you doubt, when it comes from a group with such a balanced and accurate view of the world, and such a marvelous record for accurate predictions? Every cypherpunk knows that paranoid conspiracy theories are by far the most reliable way to interpret events.

1 0

Home Loans - Free Quote
by kristie＠fastmail.ca 21 Jun '02

21 Jun '02

1 0

Weekly Telegraph Newsletter Issue 14!
by editor＠weeklytelegraphmail.co.uk 21 Jun '02

21 Jun '02

1 0

Brinworld: NYT on stabilized cameras (For the Spy in the Sky, New Eyes)
by Major Variola (ret) 21 Jun '02

21 Jun '02

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/20/technology/circuits/20SPYY.html For the Spy in the Sky, New Eyes FLYING in his helicopter, Sgt. Frank Sheer of the Orange County Sheriff's Department in Southern California can be literally miles from the action. But that does not mean that he and his co-pilot do not know what's going on. In fact, Sergeant Sheer says they often have a clearer picture of a crime scene than the officers who are there. "We'll be tracking a suspect on a hillside from the helicopter," said Sergeant Sheer, the chief pilot in the Orange County force, "and the deputies climbing up it will be saying to us, `There's nobody here.' We've actually had them step on a guy who pulled up a bush for cover." It's not just having a bird's-eye view that gives Sergeant Sheer and many other airborne police officers, rescue workers, military personnel, and television news and movie crews almost paranormal vision. Nor is it simply advances in optics and cameras. Ultimately they all rely on complex camera stabilization systems that mix mechanical and electronic technologies to produce steady images, even at high magnification, from inherently unsteady craft like helicopters and boats. When officers pursued O. J. Simpson along the freeways of Los Angeles eight years ago, a covey of police and television news helicopters tracked him with stabilized cameras hanging at the sides in their distinctive ball-shaped pods. But most helicopter surveillance is not that dramatic. If the Orange County Sheriff's Department needs a car discreetly followed, Sergeant Sheer can keep tabs on it from 3,000 feet up and a considerable distance behind a position that would leave most motorists unaware there was a helicopter around, let alone watching them. New systems built around all-electronic motion-sensing technologies are so stable that only the horizon and haze limit how far away observers can be. The use of airborne stabilized cameras to create films or follow athletes in action attracts little controversy. Nor does anyone dispute that the systems allow police officers to capture criminals or rescue people. Some privacy advocates, however, are concerned that the recent proliferation of airborne cameras and the growing capabilities of new systems may mean that anyone who steps outside may unknowingly be a target of an aerial eye. Outdoors, there may no longer be any place to hide. "Because technology affords police what amounts to superhuman vision, that doesn't mean we lose all expectations of privacy," said Barry Steinhardt, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's program on technology and liberty. "There are lots of innocent people who are going to have their privacy invaded observed naked in their backyard sunbathing from far away." There is a long history of efforts to produce steady airborne pictures. But in the early years, the results were for the most part dismal. Steven Poster, the president of the American Society of Cinematographers, recalls his first attempt at photography from a helicopter, in the late 1960's. "It was an Illinois State Fair, and the stabilization came from a rope tied around me to the helicopter," Mr. Poster recalled. "I quickly realized that this was not a very good system." While more sophisticated systems existed back then, they did not differ much from Mr. Poster's rope. Known as side mounts, they generally relied on bungee cords and the user's body to isolate the camera. By the 1980's Mr. Poster was a director of photography for feature films and television advertisements, and he had found an answer to his aerial photography problems with a system made by Wescam, a company now based in Burlington, Ontario. "It's the best way to stabilize a camera," said Mr. Poster, who has used the system in films like "Stuart Little 2," which is to be released this summer. The Wescam system used by Mr. Poster's film crews is remarkably similar to the original Wescam developed in the early 1960's by a Canadian subsidiary of Westinghouse as a battlefield surveillance tool for the Canadian military. (Wescam is short for Westinghouse camera.) Eliminating the vibration from the helicopter was the first step and the easy part. The Wescam ball is attached to a helicopter or airplane through a shock absorber that uses springs and other damping materials. "It is tuned for the natural frequencies of helicopters," said Mark Chamberlain, a mechanical engineer who is president and chief executive of Wescam. But eliminating the vibration does nothing to limit three other kinds of movement by the camera: pitch (plunging up and down), yaw (rotating around a vertical axis) and roll (the side-to-side rotation that creates a moving horizon). To deal with these kinds of movements, inventors of the original Wescam turned to large gyroscopes, which create inertia. It is like strapping a large boulder to the camera to stabilize it, yet without all the weight that a boulder would add. Inside the camera ball are three gyros oriented to offset each of the three types of unwanted motion. Motors attached to the camera mount allow an operator within the helicopter to view images from the camera on a video monitor and point the camera as needed. The gyro stabilization system proved so steady that it has not significantly changed over the last three decades. But the system has one significant drawback: the gyros require frequent maintenance. <snip>

1 0

For Sale by Owner Help
by info＠newabode.com 21 Jun '02

21 Jun '02

NewAbode.com offers you (for sale by owner) the ability to attract potential buyers who might otherwise skip your advertising. Display up to 40 photos of your home on the web with a nice short, easy to remember, web address that you can use in all your advertising. (i.e. NewAbode.com/elm) You send us the photos and we will build your website within 2 business days. --get a short easy to remember Web Address --put it in newspaper ads --put it on your For Sale sign --put it in Internet listings --put it on your listing sheet --put it on your voicemail --view your web activity --up to 40 photos for $250 For more information please see http://newabode.com or simply reply to this email. Happy selling! Peter Ericson NewAbode.com c/o The Complete Website Seven Central Street Framingham, MA 01701

1 0

Manifesto on a New Strategy
by Anonymous 21 Jun '02

21 Jun '02

Global Freedom From Force Independence From Politics and Currency-Based Economies A Precursor to Digital Neo-Tech Revolutions For A Volitional, Anti-Force, Capitalist Civilization Outlining the possibilities of creating freedom through new, non-traditional financial business strategy and technology, in business- and economic details, and specifications for technical development, this manuscript represents the first integration of New-Technology/Internet-driven business infrastructures, logistics, and markets of the future with core concepts of Neo-Tech and Neo-Tech business. It outlines how the integration and evolution of three existing basic concepts -- 1) Wide-scope accounting strategies to protect business assets, 2) Cyberspace/Logistics/Reputation-driven Barter Communities, and 3) A Global Anonymized Computerized Market -- can together lead to total economical freedom and volitional trade, on an individual and ultimately on a world-wide scale. The practical implementation of the strategies described, and the necessary infrastructures, while today in planning by only a small number of businesses, is an enormous opportunity for any entrepreneur, manager or CEO to understand, integrate with his business, contribute to and profit from. First, what is Wide-Scope Accounting a.k.a. Golden Helmets? As a concept, it is almost as old as human society itself, but was first explicitly identified and named by Frank R. Wallace, author at Neo-Tech Publishing. The original explanation of the concept of Golden Helmets, given in a courtroom speech, can be found at: http://www.neo-tech.com/golden-helmet/chapter3.html Wide-scope accounting is a wealth management tool, allowing a person to live without any taxable personal income. Rather, all money is kept by one's company and utilized to expand the company and maximize its values, while one's own expenses necessary to live and work (food, housing, car, etc.) are company expenses. Any individual living this way, in a 100% service environment, but without private income or excess property, therefore, cannot be taxed. One's own company itself focuses not on immediate profits but on building maximum high-quality values, efficiency and new jobs. Taxable profits in a company are minimized by re-investing, while the value-maximized work leads to high revenues, and widens the business through additional partners and employees. Breaking The Chains Of Today's Criminal Politics With Neo-Tech, Frank R. Wallace also openly identified that the reason for the modern, century-old economy-controlling/economy-draining high income taxes are not primarily to satisfy the financial requirements of governments and "the public", which could as well be achieved through less compulsive, more voluntary taxation schemes. Rather, the prime reason for income taxes and their often life-destroying enforcement by armed government hunters is to keep control over people -- legal, bureaucratical, social and psychological -- by controlling everyone with a strong, limiting grip on his or her prosperity, privacy, business, happiness, and ultimately, life. Wide-scope accounting in business lets a company always pay excess taxes indirectly, by creating jobs and boosting markets, which leads to direct and indirect tax payments by multiplying the profits of others, while minimizing one's own financial liability. It allows any businessman to outmaneuver criminal politics without being an "Atlas that Shrugs" -- in contrary, it means producing more and harder than ever, and in the long term, profiting enormously, but at the same time withdrawing all support for the force-backed tax system -- legally, and without making any force or resistance necessary. Regulated Currencies Mean Regulated Values However, despite the tool of wide-scope accounting readily available to everyone, one must face the reality of a politically undermined/controlled economy existing practically everywhere today. Vast economies -- valuable, but yet, drained -- today depend on monetary systems ultimately regulated by local and international political authorities. Thus, the task is to sublimate traditional economical dynamics to direct value-creation/value- exchange dynamics of an economy beyond wide-scope accounting within traditional currency systems -- immune from external force, authorities and corruptions. Without making a mistake about it, official currencies do represent the material values that they are exchanged for. And, contrary to the views propagated by dishonest media, academics, traditionalists, politicians and activists, money is not the "root of all evil". Yet, in a way, all official money is corrupted, since it is regulated directly and indirectly by governments through taxation-, banking-, anti-inflation-, anti-deflation-, public insurance-, tariff-, business- and economic regulations and laws which affect everyone who uses money and indirectly forces everyone to pay up insane proportions of his personally earned wealth. As all official, government-issued currencies for value exchange are regulated, drained and corrupted in traditional economic systems, every magnificent commercial value is, too! Hence, even beyond wide-scope strategies to protect from direct government confiscation, taxation and attacks, the problem of force-backed economic control remains. How could non-authority, non-force businesses and individuals generate sufficient availability and acceptance of efficient, but gradual and fully volitional changes from state-owned systems based on money to individually-controlled, systems based on market value, available world-wide to everyone? Obviously, cyberspace, which cannot be efficiently regulated, may play a role. However, the decentralized Internet is only the foundation, upon which scaling levels of infrastructures for specific financial solutions must be consciously conceived and implemented with foresight and long-term efforts. The globalization of free business activities, i.e., international competition between businesses and between the degree of freedom in different states, is crucial for a cyberspace-based economy to succeed -- as business on the Internet does not have to be based in any single country and be restricted by its laws. Unfortunately, the globalization of recent international political policies, which enforce regulations (e.g. "financial-crime" surveillance, international liability to violation of political/ethical/cultural policies, international trade bans and regulations of certain goods, etc.), may partially limit and dis-empower the trend of overcoming national laws through globalization. These newly emerging freedoms of globalization must not be limited. In order to achieve and maintain freedom from local laws, regulated economies, mandatory regulated currencies, and now, international regulations, a combination of logistical, technological, communicational and financial solutions must be brought forward by market entrepreneurs to prevent or reverse the expansion of international government force. Bartering Communities And The Argentinian Lesson Wide-scope accounting is a simple protective measure, but it can require a full-scale revision of business and employment policies. Ultimately, the question is, Can wide-scope accounting alone and in every situation solve the problem of ending political regulation of earnings and business values? Bartering Communities, mentioned by futurist authors, including Alvin Toffler and Barry Carter, as a complementary approach to wide-scope accounting, especially when upgraded with modern technology and e-commerce dynamics, are ironically exemplified within the politically/economically-collapsing nation of Argentina. The concept is based on the idea of having trade systems for goods and services that do not rely on officially issued government currencies, and hence cannot be regulated by means of regulations based on official currencies. It can also protect against inflation, deflation, fiscal instability and other traditional economical short-term problems. Argentina is taken as an example here because of the interesting grassroots business infrastructures that have been building as a result of the total government-led control and collapse of that country's traditional economy. Those infrastructures are privately created trade/bartering communities, not based in cyberspace, yet highly effective because of the enormous demand. People meet at a physical center, i.e. a local community center, and offer their own goods or service to others for some other goods or services, but not for official currency. "Prices", i.e. the amount and ratio of values is negotiable. Some of the people are well-known (i.e. their identity can be confirmed by others at that center) and carry a reputation. Also, a completed trade of goods or services has effects on the reputation/trustworthyness of both exchange partners involved in that transaction. A completed trade may also establish or re-affirm guidelines for specific exchange ratios, e.g.: "1 pound of sausage for 10 apples", "1 haircut for 1 carwash", "400 sheets of paper and a printer for 2 hours of business- or legal consulting". The same works with privately-issued currencies: goods and services can be traded for ad-hoc currencies, e.g. 5 ANON-Credits, 10 XYZ-Credits, 120 ABC-Credits. Bartering communities are a very capitalistic answer to vanishing government regulation. Capitalistic in the original definition of the term, i.e., a powerful solution, yet, an economical laissez-faire solution that works by volitional free trade, without using force or fraud in any instance. That nonviolent Ghandi-like withdrawal of support from the public systems is even legal according to government's own laws. Removing that support is achieved by ignoring currencies, and by privatizing the issuing of currencies, a concept that only becomes so effective once combined with flexible, and low-cost e-commerce technology -- a possibility that no government originally conceived. As a result, it frees individuals and their businesses financially, the economy, and ultimately, everyone -- from workers, small- business "middle-class" producers, up to the richest, highly successful entrepreneurs, but also and especially the poor, the needy and those without an official job (as observed in Argentina, for example), by offering them easy, unregulated work, as well as highly competitive, minimum-cost products manufactured by unregulated companies using bartering-network logistics. It benefits the whole of productive humanity, excluding only those who decide to rely on support of organized politics or activist/lobbying groups, regulation-based corporate privileges, or established force-backed institutions. In fact, it can effectively ruin all those who live from systems which finance themselves by any means of force (including higher social/ political causes rationalizing force), rather than volitional/competitive work. Important to note is also that today, bartering systems, beyond niche economies or other exceptional situations, are not science-fiction, but already today a practical reality. The facts are that 40% of the world economy is represented by some kind of bartering trade rather than financial transactions, and that over 65% of the Fortune 500 companies at some point are engaged in bartering. Though it may seem as if there are no problems holding back the bartering solution to an unrestricted economy, they unfortunately do exist in form of big-brother governments in the economically most important western countries. The US Internal Revenue Service, for example, claims that any profits made through bartering, including intangible profits, are taxable as income, officially demanding money for the state for each successful bartering deal. Although it is much harder for the IRS to enforce or to prove its taxation cases in bartering scenarios, this still has a profound impact on the growth of the bartering economy. From an official point of view, bartering is regulated and bartering independently of government systems would be tax evasion and illegal. This is a major problem because in business, profound trust, seriousness and security are generally expected and required before a system will become widely accepted and employed. A resolution of this issue could be to avoid relationships between any values offered within the bartering economy and any and all officially issued currencies. While pseudocurrencies, as mere internal aliases for values exchanged, could exist, there must not be possibility to directly or indirectly establish exchange rates of bartering goods and services to official currency. Today's bartering and e-bartering seems to fail exactly here, with none or relatively loose policies regarding the association of bartering values with traditional money. By enforcing contractual policies throughout e-bartering networks against the introduction of official currencies in any exchange, and any products which obviously translate to preset currency value (gold and stocks, perhaps), with all the complications such a move might lead to, this could efficiently make it impossible to tax bartering profits as income. With no easy-to-determine equivalents of money for bartering profits, taxation may become impossible. Whenever that happens -- secure, large, tax-free barter networks -- demand and involvement in such networks by individuals and businesses would rise sharply. An Unassailable New Economical Infrastructure Based On Privacy, Anonymity And Technology Obviously, because of major issues that won't go away -- growing government control and taxation in new areas, the need for permanent security and stability of a widely accepted business system and the need for practical feasibility, broad customer confidence and ease of use -- a solution beyond simple bartering and e-bartering systems is necessary to successfully start off a new, genuinely free economical system on a global scale. The integration of all relevant knowledge, ideas and scenarios on this topic suggests that the only viable route not dependent on politics or social change must be based on technology, which involves cryptography-based anonymity that conceptually cannot be subverted and trust/reputation-based transactions through a decentralized network. Dealing with this concept involves detailed technical specifications of the basic requirements and concepts necessary to develop such a system. While some of these details may not be comprehensible for technical amateurs, it is only important to understand the core concept, and the fact that it is possible to create fully anonymous and untraceable communication infrastructures with the help of extensive cryptography and theories of information technology -- as outlined and partially implemented by the libertarian cypherpunks and others. There have been small-scale and experimental projects such as Freenet, and limited-scope/limited-feature projects with the same goal such as ZeroKnowledge's Freedom or Type-2 Mixmaster remailers. But, nobody has ever attempted anything like the implementation of a global, decentralized, fully anonymous trade and communication infrastructure before. Hence, chances are that such a broad, complicated strategy will work. But first, what are the current problems standing in the way of the achievement of that goal? Realize that the establishment of the first business and private communication infrastructure that couldn't be regulated or effectively banned by governments equals a great confrontation between individual and government interests; perhaps the first major nonviolent confrontation in western countries after the violent days of past revolutions. Now, without any part of the implementation of the infrastructure itself having to be illegal according to current laws, anything that is a de-facto threat to today's authorities resting on bona-fide subjective law, can be declared illegal -- if through no other means, then by "democratic" criminalization through the manipulation of popular opinion through the association with terrorism and other non-sequitours. It is this, and the necessity for political correctness and social acceptibility of today's manipulated western cultures, that practically all significant major businesses adhere to. Most managers feel that their company's success, their customer relations, their very survival, depends on being politically correct and devoting time and energy into what their government deems to be "important tasks", "valid business activity" and "beneficial to society". Yet, those managers and CEOs of major businesses are deeply mistaken. Many of today's business leaders are merely non-thinking, easy-going individuals, manipulated by public-opinion games into a following-mode of following the "public interest" -- actually coming down to political agendas of a few influential lobbyists -- including tax authorities, banking authorities, socialist politicians and other destructive political hardliners. As long as top business executives shun the controversial politically incorrect, they keep shunning the confrontational dynamics of real business -- expansions into new, untouched sectors and strategies that go beyond competition -- especially the competition of government and businesses who count on political support to "succeed" economically. As long as controversial trade, development and infrastructure-building business projects are shunned by stagnant major companies, which once were active business giants, their only option is to continue faking business success and growth off the existing assets of the often great, valuable companies they manage; through creative bookkeeping and projects that only are profitable through government privileges like "public" funding or corrupt, competition-destroying legal/regulatory advantages. To get involved in a confrontation-mode project, a business must be ready for the politically incorrect, be willing to ignore intimidations, and must be growing or willing to grow through hard, independent, competitive efforts and money-generating actions of all of management and all employees. Also, those companies must achieve a large customer base and broad private-sector support in the early phase to be economically and technically successful. >From a technical point of view, the new economical infrastructure would be based on strong cryptography and an ad-hoc public key infrastructuring model. For it to be decentralized, all participating parties should be equal in respect to the kind of communication and communication infrastructure, i.e. a peer-to-peer network. This would effectively mean a decentralized, encrypted network infrastructure on top of the decentralized public Internet. This infrastructure would provide for anonymity (via routing over multiple machines using routers that maintain distinct keys and routing information for each source and destination) or pseudonymity (i.e. anonymity in which parties are associated with an established, verifiable alias/pseudonym which however is not directly linked to and does not reveal their official identity), depending on what is necessary for a particular step in a business transaction. On top of that infrastructure, a decentralized supply/demand infrastructure could be built, with computer-based matching -- either, integrated into an automated peer-to-peer protocol, directly between individual parties, or done by one or many bartering agencies who collect supply and demand messages and provide automated matching services. One array of problems that naturally emerges under anonymous conditions, are reputation issues -- as traditional reputation, trust and legal liability that are given with officially issued identities (i.e. government identities), do not exist or at least cannot be verified and relied on. For an anonymous/ pseudonymous trade system to work, it must efficiently deal with the issue of trust and reputation under conditions lacking an infallible identification of individual parties. With a protocol supporting verifiable identity-hiding pseudonyms that last permanently or for a longer time, initial reputation/trust could be established for untrusted newcomers after a first successful mutually consentual transaction, which would then continue to grow on subsequent transactions. Reputation of a peer increases if he has provided the promised values (including pseudo-currency) according to the transaction, and is given mutually to each other by two or more parties involved in a transaction. Technically, that reputation could take the form of serialized confirmation tracking numbers combined with a cryptography-based digital signature by the party confirming another party's reputation. In anonymous networks, reputation becomes a value in itself because it guarantees more transactions, trade and profit. Money, like pseudocurrencies, is merely an abstract promise to pay later, and exchanged goods and services are direct payments, while reputation assures security in-, and provides potential for trade. Hence, striving for high reputation means more opportunities profits on the direct trade level. Besides internet-driven local and global bartering communities, further great potential is held by the idea of anonymous digital cash (e-cash) systems. Though not using official currency, the existing digital cash systems are not perfectly safe because their transfers can always be logged and parties have to be identified to central servers and each other. Anonymous e-cash and other digital currencies and checks (including anonymous bartering checks) can best be established in a network that allows routing by 1) writing down the value of the check or money transaction 2) adding a unique serial number 3) digitally signing the check with a signing key that identifies the paying party by a known (reputation/trust-based) pseudonym. This one-time certificate for a money or bartering transaction is then sent over an anonymizing network, encrypted with the public key of the recipient's pseudonymous identity. Alternatively, according to a "BlackNet" scheme, encryption keys can also be exchanged in secret, so they are only known by both parties, with only the public-identification signature signing the transaction certificate (which happens a level beyond that encryption layer for confidentiality). Then, those messages are unidentifiable for third parties and can be posted into public forums (such as news://alt.anonymous.messages) using anonymous remailers. A broadly used digital cash system, however, would provide many more benefits than just anonymity. With automated end-to-end transactions, money transactions would become faster and the economy would become more efficient, especially when guaranteed to be free of force-backed bureaucracy. With money being circulated faster and more money circulated within transactions than in static investments or savings, the global amount of money effectively available increases. As a proof, consider that since the financial world similarly migrated to satellite- and computer-based digital bank transactions and online stock trade, the amount of wealth available at any given time has increased, making modern world trade possible. This new infrastructure would most probably resemble an ad-hoc heterogenous environment with many different digital businesses doing combinations of banking, trade, trust and anonymity services. Only some of them would have to offer anonymity, some could offer converting online/digital currency to official currency or paper checks describing an equivalent of digital currency. Also, currency-less bartering checks could be used online and offline, even anonymously with a system that supports it. Bartering is simply a matter of supply and demand, which could be recorded (anonymously) in form of checks with serial numbers, or saved on smart cards which would contain the necessary cryptography algorithms, standard protocols, and public keys. With financial transactions and other (i.e. bartering) exchanges encrypted with public keys of the participating parties and reposted anonymously, they efficiently become independent of, and safe from the surveillance by any third party. Anyone issuing and accepting anonymous transactions could then decide to become a customer of a digital business offering anonymous conversion between pseudocurrencies and official currencies. Payment would largely be in percentages of the exchanged wealth, which could be exchanged anonymously. With confidential and pseudonymous transactions, new types of businesses are imaginable. For example, eBay like matching/bartering services based on pseudonymity and reputation, which could match supply/demand in goods, services, inofficial currency exchange and more. Also, thinking about the huge market that advertising is today, especially on the internet, ad space, ad services, site traffic and hits could become niche markets with dedicated businesses offering ad-hoc exchanges in advertising. Using certification hierarchies, all of these services could also allow users to "export" their reputation/trust gained from successful transactions to other markets. Incubating Unbeatable Businesses The development of wide-scope business policy concepts to protect from taxation and governments; the development of digital trade centers and routine forms of bartering trade, and marketing them to combat inflation and regulation; the design and creation of the underlying technology-based infrastructure for anonymous networks against government regulations, and the anonymization of existing business systems through informal gateways and inofficial exchanges; this is a comprehensive complex of plans. Ultimately, these plans have to be achieved, by one or more businesses, for creating a safe and free future. Here is an outline of a combination approach. Financial wide-scope accounting is necessary for basic individual independence from governement and its destructive institutions. It is going to take the form of general, officially legal accounting strategies in business. The ultimate goal is to prevent all government attacks against private property, -income and -assets. The necessary requirement is the readiness of businesses on a broad scale to adopt new accounting strategies, business policies, business philosophy and payment policies. Digital trade centers are necessary to prevent government interference with world markets. It is going to take the form of legal companies, departments, and business models offering logistics and communication infrastructure for financial trade and exchanging goods and services without currency. The ultimate goal is to prevent inflation and economic depression caused by government taxation and control exerted through regulated official currencies. The necessary requirement is the establishment of providers of logistics trade networks, and reputation/trust systems for pseudonymity, starting websites, and offering start-up funding to build infrastructures for global decentralized trade. Technological anonymization/pseudonymization infrastructures for free trade networks allow untraceable money transactions based on reputation/trust schemes, privacy concepts, and a stealth, decentralized, internet-based network infrastructure which utilizes strong cryptography. This leads to the possibility of uncontrollable, unpreventable, "illegal" money transactions. The ultimate goal is to establish indestructible black markets to catapult the world economy beyond direct government control. The necessary requirements are the establishment of a performant new peer-to-peer internet infrastructure that provides decentralized, indestructible anonymity/pseudonymity, privacy and confidentiality (using public-key encryption, digital signatures and public key infrastructure), as well as trust/reputation services that work with pseudonyms -- as a base for reliable financial transactions. Depending on its size and possibilities, a business may take on all three of these goals, one at a time (although they will eventually be interdependent to some degree), or a partial accomplishment of one of these goals. As the involvement of a Fortune 500 or larger company into this plan cannot be expected, it has to be started by small business/bantam company efforts. So, a more segmented approach is the most realistic -- especially, when it comes to coordinating the efforts of marketing and business-to-business affiliation and infrastructure building. Any company initially creating and offering the technological or logistic infrastructure would do best by disclaiming direct liability of third party transactions performed over its independent infrastructure. Making the burden of legal liability to the third parties who use the infrastructure clear, similar to current internet trading businesses which aim to emulate the Napster business model -- by officially taking the liability that may or may not exist (including tax liability) to the third parties who actually do the transactions -- would mitigate much of the legal risk involved. To get to a free unregulated market one has to physically operate from within today's regulated society. Unarguably, one of the biggest problem is the inability of the majority of persons and small businesses to build private (and investment) capital. Taxes are designed to destroy or prevent accumulation of capital, earnings and potential investments that are necessary for individuals to found their own businesses and jobs, for developing new products, technologies and bootstrapping new business infrastructures. Bartering somewhat does legally solve this problem by allowing tax-free bartering "assets" to exist (according to current regulations on bartering), in form of non-monetary "I-owe-you" service/good exchange checks and certificates. To be efficient at this, however, bartering must include better capital building mechanisms legal according to the current system, possibly via allowing safe accumulated credits based on trust certification, i.e. credits for specific material goods and services, which would not be official or inofficial currency but could serve as de-facto savings currency. The most probable chance for a commercial success of an anonymous trade network is providing commercial incentives for maintaining high standards of reputation. In this probably scenario, reputation would necessarily have to become a second-level currency (as result of successful, mutually consentual transactions, and secondarily, as result of a vote of trust by already highly trusted parties). eBay like systems would be used to build reputations and meta-certification authorities would make the transfer of reputation between different anonymous businesses possible (which could be practically realized as joint ventures between businesses willing to exchange user reputations between their different systems). At least three definite requirements exist for any businesses that expects to be able to launch a project advancing one or more of the three free-trade goals as stated above. First, the independence from political correctness and social acceptance. A competent business must act independently of the opinion or wishes of any authority, only satisfying demand where it objectively exists, by hard effort and trial and error strategies. Fear from government, political entrepreneurs, and business regulations, but also with government agencies, attempts to profit by "public" jobs or government privileges, in the sense of political entrepreneurialism, will hold back the competitiveness and dynamic of a business too much for it to be able to participate in a project as controversial as this. Secondly, the ability to step out of close-ended viewpoints and business strategies is an absolute necessity for growth and success in new, unique areas of business, (as also outlined under http://www.neo-tech.com/global) Businesses must be ready to accept that the evasion of government restrictions through peaceful, volitional, business/technology/free-trade actions and strategies will yield benefits for themselves, and ultimately for society and everyone. This is an important not only for individual businesses, but for the whole corporate world. The question of a controversial new area of business being eventually able to succeed is a question of attaining a critical mass of businesses and entrepreneurs who are ready to discard dogmas for new, "politically incorrect", open-ended business viewpoints and strategies. Hence, being able to easily affiliate with other companies finding business associates, and being very active in the business-to-business area is a key competency of a bantam company participating in a free-trade project, which ultimately requires getting broader support in the business world. Third, building effective customer confidence in systems which do not base on traditional currency, and even in anonymous markets which are vastly different from known economical systems, is crucial. Despite the probably vehement opposition by established media/government authorities, honest business/ technology/media pioneers must propagate the honest facts and show how the goal of markets with full choice, privacy and freedom leads to the greatest net benefits for essentially everyone. High efforts and much care are also required for designing business solutions around the basic concepts that are comfortable, usable and appealing from the start, in order to create a large base of customers/businesses which broadly use and thereby support the bartering and anonymity features of a project, and with that, contribute to its decentralized infrastructure. Such approaches require fast, dynamic and highly adaptive strategies which balance between trial-and-error strategies, and integrated trust/confidence-building strategies from the very beginning. The different aspects of a business venturing into a free-market building project in areas of finance, trust services, trade services, internet services, communication, and so on, include at least: technical (mostly internet software, cryptography and pki, network software, website interfaces, user interfaces, secure payment applications, interfaces to existing e-commerce systems); funding (fund raising and investment, currency systems design, currency stability, user fees, price monitoring, capital management, offshore management, general accounting); advertisement and marketing (promotion and press handling, legal issues and court battles, if necessary also against slander, business plan design, confidence and trust building, mass distribution, quality assurance and ease of use for user applications, marketing strategies, perhaps introducing Neo-Tech memes, business contacts); art and business image (website design, user application design, quality for user-friendlyless, ease of use and general appearance of software and offline systems, corporate identity, press contacts/protection from press slander); economics (wide-scope level infrastructure design, testing and building; establishment of local communities, trials and test deployments of projects). This publication ends here, after having provided much practical, action-mode business information, possible strategies, caveats and solutions, and wide-scope viewpoints on society in respect of a free trade project. What you make of that knowledge, individually, or as entrepreneur, is up to you. Independent economy means independence from criminal politics, regardless of what anyone else thinks, says, or does. Try extrapolating that potential and integrating it with different wide-scope effects. Independence means freedom to create. Efficient value production means increasing efficiency in any areas of business, especially new technology and applied science, including communication, medicine and publishing. Your own efforts count and can effect changes. Realize that anyone investing his or her efforts into the first, most basic steps toward secure routes to business freedom can profit enormously. The achievement of a free trade project is up to individual actions. In any case, it will eventually be achieved, and the speed and the specific routes that are going to be taken are simply undetermined, open opportunities, waiting to be seized.

1 0

Followup: [RE: DOJ proposes US data-rentention law.]
by Trei, Peter 21 Jun '02

21 Jun '02

Two points: 1. According to Poulson, the DOJ proposal never discussed just what would be logged. Poulson compared it to the European Big Brother legislation, which required storage to Web browsing histories and email header data. 2. After I posted the same info to /. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/06/19/1724216.shtml?tid=103 (I'm the 'Anonymous Coward' in this case), Kevin updated his article. The new version may be found at: http://online.securityfocus.com/news/489 The relevant portions read: - start quote - U.S. Denies Data Retention Plans The Justice Department disputes claims that Internet service providers could be forced to spy on their customers as part of the U.S. strategy for securing cyberspace. By Kevin Poulsen, Jun 19 2002 12:24PM [...] But a Justice Department source said Wednesday that data retention is mentioned in the strategy only as an industry concern -- ISPs and telecom companies oppose the costly idea -- and does not reflect any plan by the department or the White House to push for a U.S. law. [...] - end quote - Peter Trei > ---------- > From: David G. Koontz[SMTP:koontz@ariolimax.com] > Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2002 10:57 AM > To: cypherpunks(a)lne.com > Cc: 'cryptography(a)wasabisystems.com'; 'cypherpunks(a)lne.com' > Subject: Re: DOJ proposes US data-rentention law. > > Trei, Peter wrote: > > - start quote - > > > > Cyber Security Plan Contemplates U.S. Data Retention Law > > http://online.securityfocus.com/news/486 > > > > Internet service providers may be forced into wholesale spying > > on their customers as part of the White House's strategy for > > securing cyberspace. > > > > By Kevin Poulsen, Jun 18 2002 3:46PM > > > > An early draft of the White House's National Strategy to Secure > > Cyberspace envisions the same kind of mandatory customer data > > collection and retention by U.S. Internet service providers as was > > recently enacted in Europe, according to sources who have reviewed > > portions of the plan. > > > > In recent weeks, the administration has begun doling out bits and > > pieces of a draft of the strategy to technology industry members > > and advocacy groups. A federal data retention law is suggested > > briefly in a section drafted in part by the U.S. Justice Department. > > > > If the U.S. wasn't in an undeclared 'war', this would be considered > an unfunded mandate. Does anyone realize the cost involved? Think > of all the spam that needs to be recorded for posterity. ISPs don't > currently record the type of information that this is talking about. > What customer data backup is being performed by ISPs is by and large > done by disk mirroring and is not kept permanently. > > I did a bit of back of the envelope calculation and the cost in the > U.S. approaches half a billion dollars a year in additional backup > costs a year without any CALEA type impact to make it easy for law > enforcment to do data mining. The estimate could easily be low by a > factor of 5-10. AOL of course would be hit by 40 percent of this > though, not to mention a nice tax on MSN. Call it ten cents a day > per customer in fee increases to record all that spam for review by > big brother. I feel safer already. > > Whats next, censorship?

1 0

Try the new way to contact Match.com members instantly
by just4you＠foryou.match.com 21 Jun '02

21 Jun '02

<http://www.match.com/promotemplate/index.asp?PageUrl=messenger&TID=100& bannerID=519572> <http://www.match.com/promotemplate/index.asp?PageUrl=messenger&TID=100& bannerID=519572> I'm M F Seeking M F ages 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55+ to 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55+ Zip You have received this offer because you are a Match.com member. To change your email options or unsubscribe, simply log in, click My Account, choose Change My Email Options, and un-check Etips.

1 0