December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: (no subject)
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:25 PM 12/8/95, Nicholas Philp wrote: >WE WANT SOME PUSSY PICTURES Sorry: You only get them if Netscape continues to play coy on GAK --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: Netscape gives in to key escrow
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:14 AM 12/6/95 -0800, Jeff Weinstein wrote: > Our representative at the NIST meeting said > [GAK violates the rights of netscape's customers] > It should be up on the web site in a few days when he gets > back from DC. Still not there. When do you think it will come up. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re:Internet Stocks
by Ashfaq Rasheed 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Can this be made a regular feature on the list? It will be helpful to discuss on the Internet companies are doing in the stock market. Also it would be interesting to see if any startups have a strong product to survive in the market Thanks! Ashfaq

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BAR_tur
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

12-08-95. W$J: "Microsoft to Adopt Rival Tecnologies." Gates yawned, "its awakening a sleeping giant." "In a fight between a bear and an alligator, what determines the victor is the terrain," Andreesen shat. "What Microsoft just did is move onto our terrain." Ellison puked, "the Internet makes strange bedfellows." Schmidt shreiked, "Java moola." BAR_tur

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No Subject
by anon-remailer＠utopia.hacktic.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> WE WANT SOME PUSSY PICTURES Can't help you there but, I do have some pictures of your mother having sex with a dog because she didn't want you to be an only child.

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Re:Internet Stocks
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:45 PM 12/8/95, Ashfaq Rasheed wrote: >Can this be made a regular feature on the list? It will be helpful to >discuss on the Internet companies are doing in the stock market. > >Also it would be interesting to see if any startups have a strong product to >survive in the market It won't be a regular feature by me, that's for sure! What others write is of course up to them. As I said in my message, I'd gotten some queries in e-mail, enough to indicate justification for one public message summarizing a bunch of points. Especially seeing as how these stocks have been very much in the news this week, and have been discussed on the list. But this is not "StockPunks," so I don't plan to comment unless something important comes up. Investors (and speculators) are well-served by various news sources, including the "Wall Street Journal," which also carries at least one great article per day, and sometimes even two. A bonus URL for you folks: http://www.ai.mit.edu/stocks.html --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: More FUD from First Virtual
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:51 AM 12/8/95 -0500, you wrote: >Excerpts from mail.limbo: 7-Dec-95 More FUD from First Virtual Douglas >Barnes@communiti (1157*) > >I *am* skeptical about the extent to which anonymous cash *can* succeed, What can stop it? What should stop it? >but in point of fact I'd like to help. I think society will be better >off if one of the payment options is truly anonymous. I think that >level of privacy will inevitably carry a high surcharge, however, for >reasons that I keep pointing out and you keep ignoring. Well, maybe I haven't been following those reasons, but I see little or no reason privacy should "inevitably carry a high surcharge." If the relevant encryptions had to be carried out with a pencil and a piece of paper, that claim would make sense, but remember, we've got MICROPROCESSORS on our side! I agree, I suppose, that there are definitely entities (read: governments) which would WANT to prevent the use of anonymous cash, but I view them more of an obstacle to be removed than a permanent bar.

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GAK and Self-Incrimination?
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Duncan Frissell wrote: >At 09:17 AM 12/8/95 -0500, Adam Shostack wrote: > >> "Your honor, we argue that in escrowing his keys with the US >>government, the defendant should have known his communications could >>be listened to, and thus has no expectation of privacy." > >If Clipper were mandated you might be able to resist a prosecution for >"failure to file" keys or for double encrypting your transmissions if you >could prove that you were transmitting illegal messages or evidence of a >crime. Just as those who possess illegal weapons are not required to >register them (self incrimination). You have to be sure your traffic is >illegal though otherwise no protection. Though I'm usually not too interested in smart-ass, overly cute, interpretations of legal loopholes--having been burned by the tax protestor arguments that the tax system is invalid because of definitions of money or that Ohio never entered the Union legally, or somesuch--this whole escrow thing has got me thinking. Given that GAK means one never knows if the government is listening, could a person claim protection against self-incrimination as a reason to not use GAK, and get away with it? (This is different from the phone system, which may also be tapped. The analogy would be the same if the government forced one to pick a telephone it could tap over one it could not, which so far has not been the case, but which soon may be if switching systems which are not compliant with Digital Telephony Act provisions are shut down.) Consider this hypo: I send an encrypted message to a partner in crime containing plans for future crimes and descriptions of past crimes. I don't GAK the message. The government prosecutes me under the Anti-Terrorism and Child Protection Act of 1997. My defense? That GAKKing the message would be tantamount to incriminating myself, which the Fifth Amendment protects me against. (The government might claim that this "tantamount" conclusion is specious, that only with a valid court order could they open my traffic. I would claim that this is suspect, citing the secret court (FISA) provisions, the possible back doors in GAK (64 bits known to be breakable, according to Clint Brooks of the government), and the general confusion about whether opening one message exposes past traffic to reading. I think my lawyers could make a convincing case that GAK will mean my words may be read by the government, via multiple options.) Comments? --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Still more on the Digicash protocol
by Mark Twain Ecash Support 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:17 PM 12/7/95 -0500, you wrote: >Assume the attacker is not doing any traffic analysis. The problem is >that even then, the shop's identity (and product info, and payment amount, >and bank ID, etc.) are still sent *in the clear* in the Digicash payment >protocol. Thus all those items can be correlated to the payee's identity: >a complete loss of privacy for the shop. > >There's no need to send that payment info in the clear -- why not encrypt? DigiCash agrees that it is desirable to encrypt the payment request. The problem is how? You can't use the payor's public key, since the payor is anonymous to the payee. There are other, high overhead, protocols that might be used, but after taking MIM into account, securing the payment request from within Ecash while retaining acceptable latency is much harder to acomplish than one might think. The best solution at this time seems to be to use the already existing https connection to transmit the payment request. The next version of Ecash will offer this feature as an option to the user. --Mark Twain Bank Ecash Support Ecash. The secure Internet payment system that protects your privacy. <http://www.marktwain.com/ecash.html>

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Anyone know of a white paper on security?
by John Fricker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The question I'm seeking to answer is : What criteria should be used to determine whether a scripting language such as Java, LiveScript, etc. is secure? There are obvious issues such as access to the file system but has anyone thought this all the way through and codified a white paper? john.

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The Elevator Problem
by Jerry Whiting 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A group of us have been wrestling with a problem and I'd like to ask for some outside help. We've come to call it the Elevator Problem. Alice and Bob want to establish a secret in from of Eve. In other words, they want to agree on a secret key in an elevator full of Eve's. We don't want the protocol to step on any existing patents (DH, HM, etc.). If the protocol takes numerous steps, that's OK because ultimately we'd like Alice's machine to contact Bob's, who could respond, and back and forth as often as needed. We have also talked about a less than perfect solution IF we can establish mathmatically what the confidence level and risk factor are. Alice and Bob might agree that the value of the secret is such that they can live with a 1 in n probability that Eve too has the secret. Shamir's 3 step seems close but I'm afraid we've been doing the blackboard talks so long that we're missing the solution. IF THERE EVEN IS ONE. thanks in advance, Jerry Whiting jwhiting(a)azalea.com

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Re: DigiCash releases protocol specs!
by Andrew Loewenstern 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> By popular request, DigiCash is releasing the protocol specs. Three cheers to DigiCash, Mark Twain, and Lucky! andrew

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Re: More FUD from First Virtual
by cman＠communities.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Remainder of Nat's largely inaccurate rant deleted] > But basically, what your argument comes down to is that in >the event of a catastrophe, users can be told they have to sacrifice >their anonymity if they want to keep their cash. As I have said all >along, the basic tradeoff is between anonymity and risk limitation in >the event of disaster recovery. NB's errors and distortions are numerous, but for the sake of brevity and topicality I've chosen this particular misconstruction of what I've written as an exemplar. In my proposed approach, users don't sacrifice one iota of privacy when redeeming expired cash. When the user reveals blinding factors on unspent cash, the bank gives the user new (blinded) cash in exchange. No payer-payee relationship is revealed. This is the same wrong argument you've made before. Try reading the (very short) note; this point is made explicitly. I have no clue what Digicash is actually doing in this regard, but one of their engineers alluded to something along these lines at Crypto. It is this systematic distortion of truth by at least two representatives of First Virtual that has lead to this (highly intermittent) "vendetta". I try not to feed the energy creatures, but this particular creature and his minions are literally running around the country, spewing their lies whenever they get the chance. When they slam cryptography in the banking community, you can be assured they don't mention their charity work for Phil, or how they really want to see anonymous systems some day.

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Re: Still more on the Digicash protocol
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:26 12/8/95 -0600, Mark Twain Ecash Support wrote: >DigiCash agrees that it is desirable to encrypt the payment request. The >problem is how? You can't use the payor's public key, since the payor is >anonymous to the payee. There are other, high overhead, protocols that might >be used, but after taking MIM into account, securing the payment request >from within Ecash while retaining acceptable latency is much harder to >acomplish than one might think. Wouldn't a Diffie-Hellman key exchange work here? Or is that too much overhead? ----------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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"Information Technology for Control of Money Laundering"
by Michael Pierson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I've just finished perusing the Office of Technology Assessment's "Information Technology for Control of Money Laundering" <ftp://otabbs.ota.gov/pub/pdf/money.laundering/*.pdf>. It's an informative and fascinating document for anyone interested in the issues of money laundering and its implications for the future of digital currency, as well as its increasing role as an important rationale in promoting government surveillance agendas. Broken into seven chapters, this document provides a valuable overview of the subject from the government's perspective. 1. "Electronic Money Laundering" covers the ABCs of money laundering and its connection to drug trafficking, terrorism and the global underground economy. It traces the relevant statutory history from the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 onward. 2. "Mechanisms of Wire Transfer" examines the basics of wire transfers and the details of the FEDWIRE, CHIPS and SWIFT systems. 3. "Money Laundering and Law Enforcement" examines the laws and regulations involved and the various Federal and State Agency roles and responsibilities. 4. "Technologies for Detecting Money Laundering" is particularly interesting. It discusses the FinCEN Artificial Intelligence System (FAIS), and AI approaches including Expert Systems, Link Analysis, Neural Network techniques, Machine Learning and various statistical modeling methods. 5. "Privacy and Confidentiality" covers different investigative prerogatives, the legal history and case law of privacy jurisprudence, aspects of individual and corporate confidentiality, etc... 6. "International Issues" explores off-shore banking, international law enforcement efforts like the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the subject of bilateral and multilateral cooperative agreements and conventions. 7. "Conclusions and Policy Options" discusses money laundering and the world economy, and various policy directions for the future as well as the type of monitoring regimes that might be established. It pays particular attention to the subject of the future impact of digital money, observing: "As alternative modes of electronic payment, e.g., "digital cash", develop, whatever precedents are set for access to wire transfers might also be applied to these alternatives. If not, digital cash, or "the electronic purse" may provide another channel for dirty money, so that monitoring of wire transfers will no longer be effective." I noticed that major network news reports on the "growing threat" of money laundering were particularly evident in close temporal conjunction to the wide public coverage of the latest FBI CALEA revelations. Just coincidence, I guess... Bonus: While your there you might want to (if you haven't yet) pick up another OTA document entitled "Electronic Surveillance in a Digital Age" which provides some useful additional government position tracking data on the legal and technical aspects of CALEA. It's available in both text <ftp://otabbs.ota.gov/pub/elec.surveil/*.txt> and PDF <ftp://otabbs.ota.gov/pub/pdf/elec.surveil/*.pdf> formats. - -Michael -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMMidCtGJlWF+GPx9AQGROQP+KtumqozBLlFgupOCcoKRIk6udFz0jRt4 Vt1y1noiV0tJCE2XQdEGiU7KhRHDC8QX+Zi1wxVqnlhxNI8hF5g4nDGf+DHyw54r KsXce7fJvPVZ3dn69dYIQ70gpa6BfAvsFXGAP9gnL3RxnxxYGfBknp2xdz0SiBQv t0bnWwIab68= =bWRK -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: More FUD from First Virtual
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:52 PM 12/8/95 -0500, Jon Cooper wrote: > The US government can stop it. It is irrelevant what *should* stop >it, but it's extremely useful to note that the US government's political >climate of paranoia and FUD in general will certainly not allow truly >anonymous cash systems inside of our country in the forseeable future. But who's going to ask? If an anonymous payment system springs up outside the US, we can use it as a store of value if nothing else or for shopping overseas. Domestically, we can convert non-anonymous payment systems into semi-anonymous ones. What counts is difficulty of transaction and market demand not legal structure. Thus, about five minutes after the "temporary VISA card" travelers check substitutes are issued, I can start selling them for (discounted) cash to all comers. Likewise Ecash laundry servers letting anonymous people use non-anonymous Ecash. It remains to be seen how much customers value anonymity. There should be a niche market in any case. DCF "Every man his own ISP."

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Re: PRIVACY: Private traces in public places
by tbyfield＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:26 PM 1/9/96, Alexander 'Sasha' Chislenko wrote: >- Landfills: They are probably the richest source of detailed historical >information > that is not obtainable from any other source and can be used to reconstruct > the detailed history of society, economy, technology and any single >person with > incredible detail. I ain't holding my breath until someone develops a search engine for Fresh Kills. Ted

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Re: A couple of ideas for PGP-based programs
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:32 AM 1/6/96 -0800, Alan Olsen <alano(a)teleport.com> wrote: >1) Something I would like to see on the keyservers for PGP is a way of >retreving all of the key revokations since x date without having to get all of >the keys since that date. The web interface to the MIT keyserver lets you search for keys, and probably some of the other interfaces do too. So do a retrieve on REVOKE, snarf the output, and feed it to perl or grep or something. PGP keyserver >2) I would like to see a program like private Idaho have the ability to send >mail to the key server and grab all of the "unknown signator" keys. This would >have the interesting effect of building a more complete keyring, while using >the "web of trust" to weed out alot of the bogus keys that tend to crop up on >the key servers. I found that a very convenient way to add things to my keyring was to use the keyserver web page and Private Idaho simultaneously. Grab the keys you want on the keyserver, cut+paste into Private Idaho, decrypt (PGP won't find a message, but will find keys), and click on anything you don't recognize. Parsing email isn't too tough, but it takes some work, and it's easier for PC tools to interact through Netscape or finger when they can instead. > After n number of iterations you would have more of the >"important keys" n=4 is an interesting depth, given PGP's default settings..... #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 # # "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" used to mean us watching # the government, not the other way around....

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Re: Revocation, Trust, Policy Models, etc.
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>The question is: is there a "majority vote" mode on the keyservers that >>causes them to remove a key if enough people claim it is no longer valid? No - it's too easy to attack. (It's also outside the scope of what the keyservers do - they're convenient ways to collect the data for the Web of Trust, but they're not trusted themselves.) Even if you wanted "A majority vote of people who've signed a given key" to revoke the key, that's easy to attack - you and your tentacles can all sign the victim's key, send the signatures to the keyservers, and now that you're the majority, you can all send in notes saying "please revoke victim(a)antinuke.org's key - he's an FBI plant". I'm not really satisfied with Matt's description of revocation that requires it to be done by a key's signers, not owner, though there are workarounds for most of the problems, though I agree that PGP's framework is deficient (not inadequate - it's still Pretty Good - but way underpowered.) One problem is that usually _you_ are the one who knows your key needs revoking (either you forgot the passphrase, or you know the computer it was on has been compromised, or whatever.) Under PolicyMaker, I guess the best way to implement this is to always sign your own key (since signers are the ones who revoke keys), and establish policies requiring unrevoked self-signatures. It may be difficult to implement Certificate Revocation Lists in a way that works well for your own keys, though, depending on why you want to revoke them. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 # # "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" used to mean us watching # the government, not the other way around....

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Re: <fwd> Spiegel on CIS Censorship
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:11 PM 1/8/96 -0500, Vin McLellan wrote: >CIS's utter >ignorance of free-speech principles set the stage for the symbolic >Bravarian Censorship of the Net. You'll hear of a dozen other nations >jumping in, with different standards, within the month. Don't overdo the CIS newsgroup "ban". The first sysop to "ban" newsgroups did so many years ago. There are well-developed techniques to read "banned" newsgroups. A FAQ and everything. http://www.ECNet.Net/users/mumbv/pages/banned-groups-faq.shtml Compuserve is just a large proprietary service and sometime ISP (and one of the most expensive ones). They are not a big player on the Net. > I find the tragic association of a "free" Internet and porn to be >painfully common among cyberless adults even in my own community. Odds >are, my state, Massachusetts -- arguably the most liberal of the US states >-- would vote for Censorship Filter tomorrow if it were on a ballot. Luckily it's not and can't be. > It's amazing how incompetent the liberal/libertarian side has been >in this public debate. (So incompetent, in fact, that there has been _no_ >public debate!) Everyone who wants to place control over any filter (any >part of The Filter?) in the hands of the citizen is just another >snuff/torture/kiddy porn addict. Almost all of the articles on the CIS "ban" have mentioned that "therapeutic" groups were also included. Certainly the Net has let CIS know what we think of them. They expressed surprise at our reaction. Their "ban" isn't even a ban as my piece on using CIS to read banned groups shows. (http://www.cs.umass.edu/~lmccarth/cypherpunks/banned.html) It is making it into Wired and the Baltimore Sun (maybe) and was good enough that Michael Miller, author of "Using Compuserve" linked to it from his book page: http://www.mcp.com/people/miller/cistop.htm. DCF

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Re: PRIVACY: Private traces in public places
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by tbyfield(a)panix.com (t byfield) on Wed, 10 Jan 10:42 AM > I ain't holding my breath until someone >develops a search engine for Fresh Kills. (See code relevance at end.) For the curious, Fresh Kills is NYC's main waste archive, the largest built structure in the US (a favorite of Japanese techno-tourists exceeding 256 Great Pyramids of Egypt) and still heaping. Archeologists are indeed excavating selected spots, under grants made after probes revealed that decomposition was not occurring as expected. Newspapers and such were perfectly preserved after years of burial. Due to sophisticated engineering of the mountain to prevent dispersal, air and moisture could not enter to lubricate return to mother earth. However, very profitable methane gas retrieval has been taking place for many years -- which may be a suitable metaphor for mining electronic archives. Now, then, code for this glop? Construction debris can be illegally dumped at Fresh Kills with the proper building-code-compliant green handily hooked to the side of the dumpster for the guard.

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Some questions about ecash[tm]
by David Murray 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Some questions that I send into the ether in the knowledge, or hope, that the great and the good are listening, and will enlighten me... (Since this exercise strikes even me as incredibly presumptious, feel free to ignore this. [It takes less energy than flaming. If you must flame, do it in private email - I'll post a summary to the list :-)]) 1. Has there been any significant/in-depth coverage of the Mark Twain Banks product in the financial/ banking press? Digicash's press file stops just before the launch, and Digicash/Mark Twain Banks press releases are not exactly what I'm looking for. 2. In the Digicash ecash tutorial (also referenced from MT's website) the example is given of Alice sending ecash to Cindy (Candy, Clarissa?). Cindy's bank checks with Alice's bank before crediting Cindy's wallet with the $5.00 sent. In MT's FAQ, they refer, somewhat wistfully, to a future where the ecash systems of different banks may be able to interoperate. How difficult would such interoperation be? Is this something that is inherent/built into the Digicash supplied bank system? Or would it require significant changes to the way things are done? Similarly, since the software supplied by Digicash to MT customers seems somewhat MT specific, how easy would it be for future ecash issuers to piggy back on MT's customer base? How about merchants? 3. The MT ecash[tm] project is repeatedly referred to as an experiment, a system in beta phase. Any word on when the experiment will be over, or what it is trying to prove/discover? The thrust of these questions, of course, is How easy will it be for the next eBank? And the one after that? Is Digicash ready for the move to multiple issuers? Does it have the resources to assist another institution to launch ecash this year? This month? One a month for the year? Whatever. Too many questions that cannot possibly be answered, even if there were answers to give... Dm -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMPTVR1lo3j8JHzalAQG/JAP/dBNTMHdo4MP7TaIAZrKwMxt3U4fH/qsb TipYBcS8lgEgUsD9Pu/enIzxeEs52K6ARnq1BE6V/G1jxFVbfnLmfV6t6TWqRxSM 68FH3eX0+ZBGFGzDMmvOGWaibZETfHikv55q7ZuqYrnfZ+wrIPKlF+UGiNY3lJlw rpNkY3oBwqY= =0g2R -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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COMMUNITY CONNEXION REFUSES TO CENSOR INTERNET SERVICES
by sameer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

For Immediate Release - January 11, 1996 Contact: Sameer Parekh 510-601-9777x3 COMMUNITY CONNEXION REFUSES TO CENSOR INTERNET SERVICES Berkeley, CA - In an open letter sent today to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Community ConneXion, the Internet Privacy Provider, explicitly stated its refusal to agree to their request to restrict access to services based on the content of the web pages their customers may implement using Community ConneXion services. On Wednesday, January 10th, the Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a request to Internet providers and universities to refuse to carry messages that "promote racism, anti-Semitism, mayhem and violence." Their target in the request was not Usenet, the discussion forums on the Internet which were recently targeted for censorship by CompuServe, but the World-Wide-Web, the area of the Internet which allows anyone to serve their words and ideas to the nearly thirty million people on the Internet. Efforts are growing to regulate content on the Internet and restrict freedom of expression. Community ConneXion is opposed to all forms of censorship. In the letter to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Sameer Parekh, President of Community ConneXion, described their position in reply to the Center's request that Internet providers pledge to restrict service, "Community ConneXion considers it our civic duty to provide Internet access, services, and privacy to any individual or group, no matter what their political or social agenda." The Simon Wiesenthal Center is asking Internet providers to restrict access to individuals and groups who would use their services to promote hateful ideas. "The answer to hateful speech is more speech," said Parekh, "Rather than attempting to ban hateful speech, which does nothing to prevent the hate and the effects of hate in the long run, human rights groups should devote their time and energies towards positive activities, such as speaking out debunking the hate groups and holocaust revisionists. Only by speaking out against the hate-mongers can any progress be made. Trying to stop them from speaking will only serve to encourage them." The very same services that Community ConneXion refuses to censor may be used by the persecuted groups who are harassed by the anti-Semites and neo-Nazis to aid them to protect themselves from persecution. "Using our services someone who may be afraid of the neo-Nazis, perhaps because they live in a very intolerant town, may set up web pages speaking out against the anti-Semites, but not reveal their real name or address. In this way people can provide information and speak out against the hate without fearing any repercussions. The very same services which can help drive out hate are the very same ones which the Simon Wiesenthal Center is asking Internet providers to restrict." Community ConneXion, founded in June of 1994, is the leading provider of privacy on the Internet. They provide anonymous and pseudonymous Internet access and web pages in addition to powerful web service, virtual hosts, and web design consultation. Information is available from their web pages at http://www.c2.org/. Attachment: Open letter to the Simon Wiesenthal Center ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Community ConneXion 3038A Mabel St. Berkeley, CA 94702 510-601-9777 http://www.c2.org/ January 11, 1996 The Simon Wiesenthal Center 9760 West Pico Boulevard Los Angeles, California 90035 To Whom it May Concern: This letter is in response to your call for Internet providers to refuse to carry messages which "promote racism, anti-Semitism, mayhem and violence." Community ConneXion, The Internet Privacy Provider, explicitly refuses to take such action as requested by your organization. I will, in this letter, explain the rationale behind our decision. While the reasons to not censor Internet traffic are great, we will only describe a few of them in order to explain our decision. First, the best way to fight speech is with more speech. Second, it violates the fundamentals upon this country was founded, in particular the ideal of freedom of expression. Finally, we believe that trying to restrict harmful speech, which, for example, "conspires against democracy," does more damage to the cause of democracy than allowing the hateful individuals and organizations to speak in the first place. In order to fight the hateful speech to which your organization objects, it is more productive to speak out against the hate and the lies of the anti-Semites and neo-Nazis than to try to prevent them from speaking. By preventing them from speaking, you are giving them more allies, and more legitimacy than they would have if you merely spoke out against them and debunked their words. If you actually take proactive action towards debunking their lies, people will understand that they are actually lying. By preventing them from speaking, you are promoting the idea that they actually might have something valuable to say. Hateful action, of course, should be prosecuted to the fullest extent permissible by law. Second, this country was founded on the ideal of freedom of expression. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is the first one on the list of the Bill of Rights. Restricting access to freedom of expression to only people with acceptable viewpoints is not true freedom of expression. Finally, and most important, restricting speech in order to ostensibly protect democracy does more to damage democracy than to help it. Censorship leads towards a more restrictive society, one which grows ever more similar to the totalitarian government of the Third Reich, which made the atrocities of the Holocaust possible. In order to prevent such an atrocity from happening again, no government must be allowed to gain the power over its citizens that was allowed the Third Reich. By asking for restrictions on speech you are asking for a return to the controls which gave the Third Reich its power. Therefore, we have taken a stance directly opposed to any and all forms of censorship. Community ConneXion considers it our civic duty to provide Internet access, services, and privacy to any individual or group, no matter what their political or social agenda. Thank you. Sincerely, Sameer Parekh President, Community ConneXion

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Net Control is Thought Control
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On CSPAN Friday morning a gentlemen who is, I take it, a lobbyist for TPC or the Competitive Long Distance Coalition (TPCs) said that the Internet could be regulated just like magazines, tv, or anything else. I have long doubted statements like this particularly since they come from people without apparent experience on the Net. I have long suggested that net control=thought control and will prove as difficult in the modern world as the more conventional thought control itself. But why is net control just a form of thought control? It is difficult for others to control our thoughts because they are insubstantial, hidden, and under our control. Small groups (family, village, etc) have a better chance of influencing what we think but even they are not totally successful. Governments who wanted to engage in thought control have usually set up government schools for this purpose with mixed results. Liberal societies (broadly defined) have loosened many of the traditional controls on our thoughts exercised by our families and neighbors. They have tried to replace these controls with bureaucratic thought control systems with limited success. Only the totalitarian states have done much of a job in this area but not enough (obviously) to save themselves from destruction. There has been a general decline in the effectiveness of thought control since the Industrial Revolution made (atomistic) individualism possible and books cheap. The Nets are the next step in this process. Since they allow our thoughts to easily, rapidly, and cheaply leap from our minds to a world-wide communications medium, our minds are in some sense extended worldwide. It becomes cheap and easy for anyone to publish their thoughts. The dramatic changes occasioned by the mechanical production of cheap pulp paper and steam-driven printing presses in the 19th century will be as nothing compared to effects of the speed and reach of Net "publishing." In addition to expanding the scope of our thoughts, the Nets also give us new powers of secret communication. Modern encryption and anonymity technology lets us both keep our thoughts secret and communicate them to anyone else who is interested. Quite an expansion of the capabilities of "the thought in the brain." Also, the Nets allow us to find others of our ilk (however small and deviate that may be) who offer support to us in our thoughts. This further reduces the power of traditional thought controls exercised by our immediate communities. Since my immediate community has included Cypherpunks since February 1993, I am less likely to be influenced "locally" on topics of Cypherpunk interest. The normal primate tendency to look to the "troop" for guidance in what to think and do is sabotaged by our ability to find our own reinforcing communities where ever we like. So even less thought control is possible. As we users know and non-users will find out, the Nets are not "just another medium" like books, magazines, and TV (just as those were not "just another medium" in their day). Control of the Nets will prove as difficult as the control of thoughts themselves. DCF

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Re: When they came for the Jews...
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:33 AM 1/10/96 -0800, sameer wrote: > Is there some way I can get a copy of this letter? Is it >directed at specific ISPs or ISPs in general? An open response, >publicized, to this sounds like something I could do. Publicity is >fun. It's not on http://www.wiesenthal.com/ yet. Maybe I'll query. They are sending it to "hundreds" of ISPs. Hitting the big services first (even though they aren't really ISPs.) DCF

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