January 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

WPI Crypto Seminar: Towards a Theory of Variable Privacy
by R. A. Hettinga 19 Jan '03

19 Jan '03

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RE: [linux-elitists] LOCAL Stanford University: face down the DMCA enforcers (fwd)
by John Young 19 Jan '03

19 Jan '03

Based on Larry Augustin's apology for cops and his avowed closeness to them, a protest is even more deserved against him if not the other participants. Larry appears to be quoting from the COPS PR manual for garnering public support to offset deserved criticism of official misbehavior. Larry is not alone in seeing the lucrative benefits of defending the giant law enforcement and national security industries, why you can read the turncoats all around the world of digital opportunity going on about the need for vigilance on the dangerous Net and worse, advocating prowling Intel-inside private computers networks to spot looming threats. As just one example see Counterpane's recent crowing about success, one of its lengthening series of warnings about the need for more and more security against the dangerous digital hordes, and less and less warnings about the need to protect against official and commercial invaders who are handing out lucrative contracts to Net security firms and professionals. Nothng like a fat bribe to convert pagans to organized terrorists screaming beware the sinners. Hmm, wasn't St. Augustine a prime role model for that crossover, as if Larry Augustin is a namesake. To be sure, informers are best recruited from the pagans for they know how to magnify the hazards of their clan. At 12:00 PM 1/19/2003 +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: >Hold your fire for a moment. Could be hitting the wrong ones. > >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 00:25:10 -0800 >From: Larry M. Augustin <lma(a)lmaugustin.com> >To: linux-elitists(a)zgp.org >Cc: 'Don Marti' <dmarti(a)zgp.org>, 'Karsten M. Self' <kmself(a)ix.netcom.com> >Subject: RE: [linux-elitists] LOCAL Stanford University: face down the DMCA > enforcers > >I think that it would be a big mistake to do anything that might be viewed >as even the slightest bit disruptive in this venue. Further, I think you're >jumping to conclusions to assume that the DMCA is relevant to these >speakers. > >Dennis Allison and John Wharton, both of whom I have known for years, are >sympathetic to free software and sympathetic to the problems with the DMCA. >Dennis regularly brings in Bruce, Eric, and Richard as speakers. I've >spoken at this seminar on 2 or 3 occasions. Bruce was just there a few >weeks ago talking about the RAND vs. RF patent policy issues. > >Cops have a tough job. They deserve our thanks for doing a tough job. I >have a number of close friends who are cops. I think they deserve more >benefit of doubt than "Target the _speakers_ and _philosophy_". It doesn't >sound like these are people that write the laws or make policy. Maybe they >spend their time fighting real computer crime like identity theft and >crackers. They deserve our support in that job. > >Has anyone talked to Dennis? Before jumping to any conclusions, or >organizing any kind of protest or demonstration, talk to Dennis. > >Larry

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Re: Fresh Hell
by Kevin S. Van Horn 18 Jan '03

18 Jan '03

Morlock Elloi wrote: >>Funny, but I can't seem to find the passage in the Bible where it talks about cloning. In fact, I can't find any passage that even remotely impinges on the subject >> >[...] wasn't there something about exclusivity of conceiving without fucking ? > As a former believer and student of the Bible, I can assure you that there is no passage in the Bible that says that Jesus was, will be, our should be the *only* person conceived without the benefit of sexual intercourse. And what do you think in vitro fertilization is, anyway? Many / most American Christians stress that they rely on the Bible as their one and only source of religious truth. If so, they have absolutely no *religious* basis for objecting to cloning.

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Re: Petro's catch-22 incorrect (Re: citizens can be named as enemy combatants)
by Harmon Seaver 18 Jan '03

18 Jan '03

On Sat, Jan 18, 2003 at 02:18:52PM -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: > > Perhaps we should try it and see? Ah well. But remember, it just might be > that OBL and Co are not just half a dozen guys in a Pakistani cave. Perhaps > there are thousands who are almost equally angry, Thousands? Gimme a break -- try "millions", eh? -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com

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cloning as heresy (Re: Fresh Hell)
by Major Variola (ret) 18 Jan '03

18 Jan '03

At 09:44 PM 1/17/03 -0800, Morlock Elloi wrote: >>>1) Fucks up the prevailing religion doctrine. >>> >>Funny, but I can't seem to find the passage in the Bible where it talks >>about cloning. In fact, I can't find any passage that even remotely >>impinges on the subject. > >Provided that I had the christian cult in mind (where I am not an connoisseur), >wasn't there something about exclusivity of conceiving without fucking ? He's talking about parthogenesis. You know, a young unwed palestinian gets knocked up, has a schizophrenic bastard son who makes it big in the city, gets a following, and is WACO-ized, more or less.

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Re: Vampires, GM Food and Malawi
by W H Robinson 17 Jan '03

17 Jan '03

Andri Isidoro Fernandes Esteves wrote: > ---------------------------------------------------------- > Malawian vampires now using sleeping gas > > New York Times > > "Malawi, despite the best efforts of its government, is in the grip of a > form of hysteria. Vampires are attacking the villages, people say. [snip] > Their prey, witnesses > insist, are modern-day vampires: men carrying flashlights who disable their > victims with sleeping gas." > > http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/international/africa/14VAMP.html?ex=10432… [snip] > Conspiracies abound ;) "Gee! It's Mr. Adams, the theme park owner!" "I would have got away with it, if it weren't for you pesky meddlin' vigilante villagers." Quoth the article... "Everyone knows that politicians lie, Mr. Kaiya said, which is why few people trust the government's position on vampires." How many people in *your* home town would buy out local garlic stocks if this was the latest orange alert?

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Re: Desert Spam
by Major Variola (ret) 16 Jan '03

16 Jan '03

At 03:44 PM 1/16/03 +0100, Anonymous wrote: > Does anyone know a source for a spam list for US military? Use google. Search for @*.mil Also large bureaucracies use standard forms like First.Surname@blah or FSurname@blah Be subtle. Ask them to disable their weapons and defect. Tell them you don't hate americans, just the regime. Make sure you don't post such info where furringers will see it ---they might abuse it. Also all that furringer mail coming into .mil will annoy DIA

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Re: The Plague
by Major Variola (ret) 16 Jan '03

16 Jan '03

At 03:18 AM 1/16/03 +0000, Andri Isidoro Fernandes Esteves wrote: >And all westerns have some level of aquired imunity, for we are the Surely you mean inherited, not acquired. >descendents of the plague survivors. See _Guns Germs and Steel_ Note however, without occasional plagues, a population would lose resistance...

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RIAA turns against Hollings bill
by Nomen Nescio 16 Jan '03

16 Jan '03

The New York Times is reporting at http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/technology/14CND-PIRACY.html that the Recording Industry Association of America, along with two computer and technology industry trade groups, has agreed not to seek new government regulations to mandate technological controls for copyright protection. This appears to refer primarily to the Hollings bill, the CBDTPA, which had already been struck a blow when Hollings lost his committee chairmanship due to the Democrats losing Senate leadership. Most observers see this latest step as being the last nail in the coffin for the CBDTPA. Some months ago there were those who were predicting that Trusted Computing technology, as embodied in the TCPA and Palladium proposals, would be mandated by the Hollings bill. They said that all this talk of "voluntary" implementations was just a smoke screen while the players worked behind the scenes to pass laws that would mandate TCPA and Palladium in their most restrictive forms. It was said that Linux would be banned, that computers would no longer be able to run software that we can use today. We would cease to be the real owners of our computers, others would be "root" on them. A whole host of calamaties were forecast. How does this latest development change the picture? If there is no Hollings bill, does this mean that Trusted Computing will be voluntary, as its proponents have always claimed? And if we no longer have such a threat of a mandated Trusted Computing technology, how bad is it for the system to be offered in a free market? Let technology companies decide whether to offer Palladium technology on their computers or not. Let content producers decide whether to use Palladium to protect their content or not. Let consumers decide whether to purchase and enable Palladium on their systems or not. Why is it so bad for people to freely make their own decisions about how best to live their lives? Cypherpunks of all people should be the last to advocate limiting the choices of others. Thankfully, it looks like freedom may win this round, despite the efforts of cypherpunks and "online freedom" advocates to eliminate this new technology option. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)wasabisystems.com

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WPI Cryptography Seminar January 20
by Berk Sunar 16 Jan '03

16 Jan '03

WPI Cryptography Seminar Towards a Theory of Variable Privacy BY: Dr. Poorvi Vora, Hewlett-Packard Company, Corvallis, OR DATE: Monday, January 20, 2003 TIME: 10:00 AM PLACE: Atwater Kent, Room 218 ABSTRACT The traditional theory of security, with its focus on perfect secrecy, does not provide a satisfactory framework for the study of situations where information revelation bears a privacy cost and also provides a benefit. We define variable privacy as the use of randomization with user participation in the choice of parameters, and propose the beginnings of a theory for its study. Variable privacy enables the user, or a computational agent working on the user's behalf, to choose a level of interaction, based on a personal cost-benefit analysis of an instance of information revelation. Our theory is based on treating the randomization protocol as a channel for the information to be protected. We demonstrate a one-to-one correspondence between channel codes and a certain class of attacks. Shannon's theorems show the existence of very special attacks, and upper bounds on their efficiency. We use the bounds to motivate a privacy measure of randomization similar to one proposed the database literature, and thus provide connections between the theory of security and statistical privacy protection techniques. We are not aware of any other work that uses Shannon's theorems to construct the special attacks on cryptographic protocols. We are also not aware of any other work that connects error-correcting codes to attacks on randomization. DIRECTIONS: The WPI Cryptoseminar is being held in the Atwater Kent building on the WPI campus. Directions to the campus can be found at http://www.wpi.edu/About/Visitors/directions.html ATTENDANCE: The seminar is open to everyone and free of charge. Simply send me a brief email if you plan to attend. MAILING LIST: If you want to be added to the mailing list and receive talk announcements together with abstracts, please send us a short e-mail message. On the other hand, if you want to be removed from the list, just send a reply to this message with the word "remove" in the subject line. Regards, Berk Sunar and Bill Martin ______________________________________________________________ Berk Sunar, Assistant Professor Electrical & Computer Eng. Dept. Ph (508) 831 54 94 Worcester Polytechnic Institute Fx (508) 831 54 91 http://www.wpi.edu/~sunar http://ece.wpi.edu/research/crypt/ CRIS Laboratory ______________________________________________________________ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- 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' --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)wasabisystems.com

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