December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Dr. Vulis' social engineering "experiment"
by Bill Campbell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sean Roach <roach_s(a)alph.swosu.edu> wrote: > At 02:22 AM 1/21/97 -0800, Toto wrote: > >Bill Campbell wrote: > > > >> I feel we at a *critical* crossroads in this debate, and one of the > >> more important voices has *very* effectively been silenced. > > > > Dr. Vulis? There was an 'attempt' to silence him, but it hasn't > >worked, to date. > > > I believe he is referring to silencing the list, not Vulis. As long as the > members of this list are argueing over semantics, the government has one > less challenger in the fight over our rights. > Remember, one of the oldest tactics of war is to turn the enemy against itself. I thought my meaning was obvious, but thanks for pointing it out to those who didn't get it. When I first began reading this list, I realized that a lot of important information was being put out; and it certainly raised my awareness of issues that I had not previously thought about. I believe that many other subscribers to the list also were exposed to many of these concepts, and that many subscribers to the list were people who could make a difference. I fear that many have now left the list, since it now seems to resemble, in many ways, a list consisting of high school age "wannabes" who think it's really cool to attack people just because they can. The downward spiral into inconsequential meaningless postings began with posts containing the word "fart". So cool, dudes. =Bill=

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Re: Encrypting ZIP drives?
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:21 AM 1/22/97 -0600, David E. Smith wrote: >At 09:35 PM 1/21/97 -0800, you wrote: >>I am looking for a transparent (strong) encryption of ZIP drives. >>Any advice would be appreciated. > >IBM or Mac? Parallel on Win95. Thanks, -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred Make your mark in the history of mathematics. Use the spare cycles of your PC/PPC/UNIX box to help find a new prime. http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm

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Re: Dr. Vulis' social engineering "experiment"
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bill Campbell wrote: > Sean Roach <roach_s(a)alph.swosu.edu> wrote: > > At 02:22 AM 1/21/97 -0800, Toto wrote: > > >Bill Campbell wrote: > > I believe he is referring to silencing the list, not Vulis. As long as the > > members of this list are argueing over semantics, the government has one > > less challenger in the fight over our rights. > > Remember, one of the oldest tactics of war is to turn the enemy against itself. > I fear that many have now left the list, since it now seems to resemble, > in many ways, a list consisting of high school age "wannabes" who think > it's really cool to attack people just because they can. The downward > spiral into inconsequential meaningless postings began with posts > containing the word "fart". So cool, dudes. The list only suffers when you guys stop posting crypto/political info. For example, if tomorrow there are 100 new posts, and 10 of them are crypto/political relevant, and 10 more are like this one (I'm ignoring the other 80 for this example), then the list is only 10% relevant. Take away these 10, and it's 11.1%, but 10 less posts to read. Turn these 10 into something relevant, and voila(!), the list is now 20% relevant. You see, it's up to you, Bill.

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Re: "Technical data" exemptions in new crypto regs
by Richard L. Field 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

That would be Samuel Slater, who built his mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island (still there, on Roosevelt Avenue) in 1793. He reproduced his former boss's factory from memory in order to collect on a bounty offered in the US on the export-restricted patent. - Richard Field At 06:39 PM 1/21/97 -0500, Sean Roach <roach_s(a)alph.swosu.edu> wrote: >This has often reminded me of something that occurred around 1776. >I can't remember if it was before or after. >Remember how the colonies got sophisticated spinning gear? >I believe it was spinning gear. >Great Britain had a ban on the export of functional models, diagrams or >manufacturing instructions to one particular class of equipment. This was >so that they could maintain the monopoly on cheaply made cloth, holding the >outlying colonies in line by maintaining a dependancy. >One man memorized the structure of one of these machines and then came to >the American shores, where he reproduced it workably. > >I can't remember the name of the man or the machine, just that it was used >in the manufacture of cloth, the "spinning jenny" i think. Nor can I >remember the date.

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Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd)
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Choate wrote: > 'We' shouldn't, it is their own country and it is up to their populace to > stop it. Do you really want Singapore or China having a say in how we run > our web? I certainly don't, and won't support any move to force any > particular view on them. And Germany was Hitler and the Nazi Party's own country. Do you really want Clinton and GingWretch having a say in how we run our web? (I don't). It may be 'their' country ('their' being the government), but it is 'their' world ('their' being the people). There was a reason that the Western powers didn't return East Germans who broke the laws of their country by climbing over the wall and running for freedom. Making information available does not 'force' a view on anyone. > > The Web was conceived as offering despots and dictators a choice > > between remaining in the dark ages and allowing freedom of > > speech. I want a couple of whatever this guy is on. > Bull, the web was conceived so physicist and other researchers could share > data in a easily digestible format. No. The internet was conceived so that the DOD could monitor the communications of physicists and researchers who thought it was awfully nice of the government to provide this wonderful method of sharing data and information. Toto

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Re: Keyword scanning/speech recognition
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've found another collection of references on speech scanning/recognition, the February 1989 CACM, p.193, contains 38 references going back to 1980. It'd be an interesting exercise for anyone with access to a large library to trace back through these (some of them look promising, like a 1980 book "Trends in Speech Recognition" from which a number of references are taken) to see how far back you can go and at what point certain things became feasible. The CACM references would be a good starting point for a search. Peter.

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Re: FBI Gets 500 Mil to Tap Your Communications
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>||| FBI moderates its communications-surveillance request ||| > >TBTF for 5/4/95 [6] > >In 1995 the FBI asked for and was granted $500 million to augment the >government's ability to tap communications (of this total $100M has >been released to the FBI so far). Privacy advocates expressed outrage >at the FBI's stated capacity goal: to be able to listen in on 1% of >installed telephone lines at any time. This translates to about 1.6 >million taps simultaneous of all kinds: pen registers, trap-and-trace, >and wiretaps. The FBI withdrew its initial proposal under fire and on >1/14 submitted a revised proposal -- press release at [7], analysis >at [8]. Unlike the earlier draft, this essay lays out its assumptions >and straightforwardly projects needed capacity growth. The result is >a capacity figure of fewer than 60,000 intercepts, less that 4% of >the original request. This level of capability would allow the FBI >simultaneously to monitor more than 500 phone lines in an area with >the population of Manhatta still an enormous increase on historical >numbers of intercepts. > >[6] <http://www.tbtf.com/archive/05-04-95.html> >[7] <http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/tele/telephon.htm> >[8] <http://www.cdt.org/publications/pp_3.01.html> > At least as important was their request to legally tap any telephone line for 48 hours w/o a warrant. What ever happended to that? -- Steve

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Re: FBI Gets 500 Mil to Tap Your Communications
by Steve Schear 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>||| FBI moderates its communications-surveillance request ||| > >TBTF for 5/4/95 [6] > >In 1995 the FBI asked for and was granted $500 million to augment the >government's ability to tap communications (of this total $100M has >been released to the FBI so far). Privacy advocates expressed outrage >at the FBI's stated capacity goal: to be able to listen in on 1% of >installed telephone lines at any time. This translates to about 1.6 >million taps simultaneous of all kinds: pen registers, trap-and-trace, >and wiretaps. The FBI withdrew its initial proposal under fire and on >1/14 submitted a revised proposal -- press release at [7], analysis >at [8]. Unlike the earlier draft, this essay lays out its assumptions >and straightforwardly projects needed capacity growth. The result is >a capacity figure of fewer than 60,000 intercepts, less that 4% of >the original request. This level of capability would allow the FBI >simultaneously to monitor more than 500 phone lines in an area with >the population of Manhatta still an enormous increase on historical >numbers of intercepts. > >[6] <http://www.tbtf.com/archive/05-04-95.html> >[7] <http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/tele/telephon.htm> >[8] <http://www.cdt.org/publications/pp_3.01.html> > At least as important was their request to legally tap any telephone line for 48 hours w/o a warrant. What ever happended to that? -- Steve

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Re: ADSL (Was: GSM technology
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>At 09:43 AM 1/20/97 -0500, Nurdane Oksas wrote: >> Does anyone use ADSL lines? or are they still very expensive? > >They're not widely available yet; I don't know if any of the (US) >phone companies offer it as more than trials. One limitation is that >the technology works over copper wire, so it has to be offered at >your local telco wire center. Of course, your local telco has to >have something useful to do with the bits once the user sends >them to the telco, and has to have some useful bits to send the user. >This means they've got to haggle about standards for 5 more years >(or just do the right thing and deploy IP, with some respectable >bandwidth to the outside world) (or deploy ATM to get a layer 2 >connection to something outside.) That was the intent of at least one sectio of the recently enacted Telecom Reform Act, but now the Baby Bells are trying to block local access provisions in the SC which would allow, for example, ISP to offer ISDN/ADSL/HDSL via their own CO equipment (bypassing the telco switches). > >Don't know if the telcos have a clue about pricing, either. >It's obviously got to be more than cost, but they'll probably >thrash around a lot the way they did with IP.... > ># Thanks; Bill ># Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com ># You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp ># (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)

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Re: ADSL (Was: GSM technology
by Steve Schear 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>At 09:43 AM 1/20/97 -0500, Nurdane Oksas wrote: >> Does anyone use ADSL lines? or are they still very expensive? > >They're not widely available yet; I don't know if any of the (US) >phone companies offer it as more than trials. One limitation is that >the technology works over copper wire, so it has to be offered at >your local telco wire center. Of course, your local telco has to >have something useful to do with the bits once the user sends >them to the telco, and has to have some useful bits to send the user. >This means they've got to haggle about standards for 5 more years >(or just do the right thing and deploy IP, with some respectable >bandwidth to the outside world) (or deploy ATM to get a layer 2 >connection to something outside.) That was the intent of at least one sectio of the recently enacted Telecom Reform Act, but now the Baby Bells are trying to block local access provisions in the SC which would allow, for example, ISP to offer ISDN/ADSL/HDSL via their own CO equipment (bypassing the telco switches). > >Don't know if the telcos have a clue about pricing, either. >It's obviously got to be more than cost, but they'll probably >thrash around a lot the way they did with IP.... > ># Thanks; Bill ># Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com ># You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp ># (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)

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RE: ADSL (Was: GSM technology
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bill Stewart <stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com> wrote re: ADSL lines> They're not widely available yet; I don't know if any of the (US) phone companies offer it as more than trials. One limitation is that the technology works over copper wire, so it has to be offered at your local telco wire center. A previous poster mentioned that because of the copper wire restriction, that they may deploy first in older centers. This would appear to be the case, since a Canadian telco (Sasktel) is offering ADSL in Saskatoon for 60$/month with unlimited internet access. Saskatoon falls into this category - in my opinion. I was only is SK briefly over New Years, but perhaps Toto can fill in details. James

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EZP_ikn
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

01-21-97: "Method and apparatus for end-to-end encryption of a data packet in a computer network (Assignee -- Digital Equipment Corporation)" Inventor(s): Hawe, William R., Lampson, Butler W., Gupta, Amar "Mykotronx Upgrades US Army Satellite Comms" Mykotronx will develop and manufacture the refurbished Batson encryption subsystem, called the RBatson. Also known as KIG-34, the system will provide critical command and control protection for the US Defense Satellite Communication System (DSCS), including encryption, authentication, and anti-jamming capabilities. ----- EZP_ikn

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Re: Fighting the cybercensor.
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:50 PM 1/21/97 -0500, Phillip M. Hallam-Baker wrote: >Mission: > >Singapore and China are blocking certain net groups. I think >this is a bad thing, question is how can we stop it? The Web >was conceived as offering despots and dictators a choice >between remaining in the dark ages and allowing freedom of >speech. Blocking and filtering schemes threaten this ideal. > > >Requirements: > >A scheme which makes blocking of individual IP addresses >impractical. > > ... >2c) Some crypto hack I can't quite work out (hence the post to >cypher punks). I can phrase the challenge more compactly though. >We have two sets of opposed groups A and M. The A group wish to >establish a continued conversation with groups B and C. M is >willing to permit communication with group B but not C. Whenever >M discovers that a member of group B is willing to act on behalf >of group C, M transfers that member to the C group. > >The problem is to keep A's channels of communication open despite >the efforts of M for very large group sizes. > ... > >Comments? If people are willing to work on this I can provide >some facilities and act as a media contact. > I believe that I heard a suggestion here once involving accepting Vulis's posts, all of them, but only distributing them to Vulis. I have also heard, on a web-based bulliten board (please excuse the spelling), about setting up a proxy for the CDA supporters routing all of thier requests to a VAX loaded with only "clean" stuff, either by engineering it for them, or routing all of thier communications to an existing "clean" site. The idea here is, if the government doesn't know what sites to block, i.e. thier in office checks of said site checked out but everyone gets a different look, they can't block them. To begin blocking proxies, they would have to get spies in the population to tell them where the "trash" is, or pay a bounty for every such site, which they would then have to figure out how to verify. This would require spies on our part as well. Ones to say that so-and-so citizen has been informing to the government so that the operators could put that citizen on the government list, the list of people to give the filtered "wholesome" feed to. Such an effort would require a great amount of effort and would probably be best suited to the EFF or other existing freedom protection organization. The setup would be similair to a "pirate broadcast" in the views of the government and would thus be best operated from safe shores. The spy ring would be simple. A e-mail address or other semi-secure drop-off point would be maintained for snitches. This address would be well advertised on the board, a SINGLE system. When a tattler is fingered by a fellow tattler, the government side tattler is baited with highly inflammatory, but mostly worthless, articles about the government. If the site is blocked, the informer is blocked. There are several kinks to work out. The single site would be easier to maintain, having "disposible" repeater sites which the government can see to block. Thus the main site would never be seen unshielded, though if it was, it wouldn't mean anything.

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David Kahn advocates GAK
by Robert Rothenburg 'Walking-Owl' 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In today's (22 Jan 97) Long Island, NY Newsday Viewpoints, p. A31: "Let Feds Overheard Cellular-Phone Talk" by David Kahn (an editor at Newsday and author of "The Codebreakers") He intones the usual horseman: "...such criminals as terrorists, drug- runners, kidnappers and child-pornographers are increasingly using encryption to conceal their plans and activities, the FBI says." He also mis-states opponenents of GAK positions, claimingthe criticism is that "key escrow [at least he doesn't call it key recovery] won't work all the time", ignoring anti-GAK mentions of COINTELPRO, J.Edgar Stalin^H^H^H^H^H^HHoover, etc. etc. And the usual nonsense about "every day that criminal messages can be heard is a gain" w/out noting that anyone smart enough to use crypto now will not use it if GAK is fully implemented. Newsday is part of the LA Times Syndicate, so member papers may also have the same viewpoint appearing in their pages within the next couple of days. Their website is http://www.newsday.com ... I don't know if the viewpoint is on-line there. Rob ----- "The word to kill ain't dirty | Robert Rothenburg (WlkngOwl(a)unix.asb.com) I used it in the last line | http://www.asb.com/usr/wlkngowl/ but use a short word for lovin' | Se habla PGP: Reply with the subject and dad you wind up doin' time." | 'send pgp-key' for my public key.

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EZP_ikn
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

01-21-97: "Method and apparatus for end-to-end encryption of a data packet in a computer network (Assignee -- Digital Equipment Corporation)" Inventor(s): Hawe, William R., Lampson, Butler W., Gupta, Amar "Mykotronx Upgrades US Army Satellite Comms" Mykotronx will develop and manufacture the refurbished Batson encryption subsystem, called the RBatson. Also known as KIG-34, the system will provide critical command and control protection for the US Defense Satellite Communication System (DSCS), including encryption, authentication, and anti-jamming capabilities. ----- EZP_ikn

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RE: ADSL (Was: GSM technology
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bill Stewart <stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com> wrote re: ADSL lines> They're not widely available yet; I don't know if any of the (US) phone companies offer it as more than trials. One limitation is that the technology works over copper wire, so it has to be offered at your local telco wire center. A previous poster mentioned that because of the copper wire restriction, that they may deploy first in older centers. This would appear to be the case, since a Canadian telco (Sasktel) is offering ADSL in Saskatoon for 60$/month with unlimited internet access. Saskatoon falls into this category - in my opinion. I was only is SK briefly over New Years, but perhaps Toto can fill in details. James

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David Kahn advocates GAK
by Robert Rothenburg 'Walking-Owl' 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In today's (22 Jan 97) Long Island, NY Newsday Viewpoints, p. A31: "Let Feds Overheard Cellular-Phone Talk" by David Kahn (an editor at Newsday and author of "The Codebreakers") He intones the usual horseman: "...such criminals as terrorists, drug- runners, kidnappers and child-pornographers are increasingly using encryption to conceal their plans and activities, the FBI says." He also mis-states opponenents of GAK positions, claimingthe criticism is that "key escrow [at least he doesn't call it key recovery] won't work all the time", ignoring anti-GAK mentions of COINTELPRO, J.Edgar Stalin^H^H^H^H^H^HHoover, etc. etc. And the usual nonsense about "every day that criminal messages can be heard is a gain" w/out noting that anyone smart enough to use crypto now will not use it if GAK is fully implemented. Newsday is part of the LA Times Syndicate, so member papers may also have the same viewpoint appearing in their pages within the next couple of days. Their website is http://www.newsday.com ... I don't know if the viewpoint is on-line there. Rob ----- "The word to kill ain't dirty | Robert Rothenburg (WlkngOwl(a)unix.asb.com) I used it in the last line | http://www.asb.com/usr/wlkngowl/ but use a short word for lovin' | Se habla PGP: Reply with the subject and dad you wind up doin' time." | 'send pgp-key' for my public key.

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Re: Fighting the cybercensor.
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:50 PM 1/21/97 -0500, Phillip M. Hallam-Baker wrote: >Mission: > >Singapore and China are blocking certain net groups. I think >this is a bad thing, question is how can we stop it? The Web >was conceived as offering despots and dictators a choice >between remaining in the dark ages and allowing freedom of >speech. Blocking and filtering schemes threaten this ideal. > > >Requirements: > >A scheme which makes blocking of individual IP addresses >impractical. > > ... >2c) Some crypto hack I can't quite work out (hence the post to >cypher punks). I can phrase the challenge more compactly though. >We have two sets of opposed groups A and M. The A group wish to >establish a continued conversation with groups B and C. M is >willing to permit communication with group B but not C. Whenever >M discovers that a member of group B is willing to act on behalf >of group C, M transfers that member to the C group. > >The problem is to keep A's channels of communication open despite >the efforts of M for very large group sizes. > ... > >Comments? If people are willing to work on this I can provide >some facilities and act as a media contact. > I believe that I heard a suggestion here once involving accepting Vulis's posts, all of them, but only distributing them to Vulis. I have also heard, on a web-based bulliten board (please excuse the spelling), about setting up a proxy for the CDA supporters routing all of thier requests to a VAX loaded with only "clean" stuff, either by engineering it for them, or routing all of thier communications to an existing "clean" site. The idea here is, if the government doesn't know what sites to block, i.e. thier in office checks of said site checked out but everyone gets a different look, they can't block them. To begin blocking proxies, they would have to get spies in the population to tell them where the "trash" is, or pay a bounty for every such site, which they would then have to figure out how to verify. This would require spies on our part as well. Ones to say that so-and-so citizen has been informing to the government so that the operators could put that citizen on the government list, the list of people to give the filtered "wholesome" feed to. Such an effort would require a great amount of effort and would probably be best suited to the EFF or other existing freedom protection organization. The setup would be similair to a "pirate broadcast" in the views of the government and would thus be best operated from safe shores. The spy ring would be simple. A e-mail address or other semi-secure drop-off point would be maintained for snitches. This address would be well advertised on the board, a SINGLE system. When a tattler is fingered by a fellow tattler, the government side tattler is baited with highly inflammatory, but mostly worthless, articles about the government. If the site is blocked, the informer is blocked. There are several kinks to work out. The single site would be easier to maintain, having "disposible" repeater sites which the government can see to block. Thus the main site would never be seen unshielded, though if it was, it wouldn't mean anything.

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Re: David Kahn advocates GAK
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yep, thanks for the pointer, Rob. Kahn's online at: http://www.newsday.com/mainnews/rnmi0522.htm Anybody unable to access, send us a note: KAH_nak

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Re: David Kahn advocates GAK
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yep, thanks for the pointer, Rob. Kahn's online at: http://www.newsday.com/mainnews/rnmi0522.htm Anybody unable to access, send us a note: KAH_nak

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Re: EZP_ikn
by Mike McNally 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John Young wrote: > > 01-21-97: > > "Method and apparatus ... > > Inventor(s): Hawe, William R., Lampson, Butler W., Gupta, Amar I thought Lampson worked for Microsoft? -- ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Mike McNally -- Egregiously Pointy -- Tivoli Systems, "IBM" -- Austin mailto:m5@tivoli.com mailto:m101@io.com http://www.io.com/~m101 ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

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Re: Donna Rice, etc.
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 1:50 am -0500 1/22/97, Bill Stewart wrote: >>Yes, it's the very same Bimbo who scuttled Gary Hart's campaign, >I think you have to give Gary all the credit for that; >the "Hey, I'm not doing anything wrong and you could follow me >around 24 hours a day and not find anything" bit convinced me that >Hart was a major flake A pal of mine from Mizzou was the photographer who took the Donna/Gary lap-sit photo. He got the Pulitzer prize. Whole episode says more about American "journalism" than anything else, and *I'm* a congenital Republican. ObGeodesicMarkets: It was a joke about Donna Rice that got me thinking about the speed of information propagation in the capital markets. ("What did Donna Rice say when the reporters caught her leaving Gary Hart's house? She said she was taking a poll. <hyuk!>) The joke appeared on the Morgan Stanley equity trading desk no more than 15 minutes after the story hit the Reuter's newswire. In that time, the joke was thought up, somewhere in the world, and disseminated all over, ending up in the midwestern hinterlands of Chicago, by way of London. Since trading desks talk to each other with direct lines, the network formed by them is a geodesic one, even though people are the "switches". Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "The cost of anything is the foregone alternative" -- Walter Johnson The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/rah/ FC97: Anguilla, anyone? http://offshore.com.ai/fc97/ "If *you* don't go to FC97, *I* don't go to FC97"

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wired news: Germany Gets Radikal About Extremists on Web
by tank 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

T O P S T O R I E S Germany Gets Radikal About Extremists on Web Tuesday - Are the German government's tactics for barring extremist material on the Internet realistic? Germany Gets Radikal About Extremists on Web by Rebecca Vesely 5:03 pm PST 21 Jan 97 - The German government, never shy about expressing its disdain for left- and right-wing radicals inside its borders, has taken to combing the Internet for signs of extremist activity. But Germany's effort to stop the distribution of terrorist manuals and Nazi propaganda is like pointing a fire hose at a beehive - instead of quashing the bees, it only scatters them, and makes them more insistent. Last week, German authorities filed charges against a member of the communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), Angela Marquardt, for linking to the banned left-wing magazine Radikal from her homepage, causing Net activists to anticipate another incident like that last September, when several German ISPs temporarily blocked Radikal's server, XS4All. In response, the magazine was mirrored on more than 50 Web sites around the world. "The decision to prosecute for linking to Radikal will probably bring yet another escalation of events, where this censored magazine will become all the more popular on the Net," said Felipe Rodriquez, managing director of XS4All, which is based in the Netherlands. "Censoring the Internet is usually very counterproductive, and an insurance that many people will mirror the information and start distributing it." XS4All, which describes itself as "networking for the masses," hosts some 4,600 homepages, and was recently in the news for posting several homepages for media banned in Serbia, such as Radio B92, that continue to offer via the Web live RealAudio feeds and frequent updates on the continued nationwide protests against the Serbian government. Banned in Germany 12 years ago, and published underground for the past decade, Radikal advocates the overthrow of the German government. German officials say the magazine's publishers provide terrorist information in their pages, including how to sabotage train lines. But the publishers argue that they have the right to publish material contrary to the German government. "We fundamentally reject the notion that the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force," the publishers wrote in an article titled "Who We Are" in 1995. "The existing social conditions can only be changed if left-radical groups and associations build up their abilities and structures so as to be able to counter some of these effects even today. This, of course, includes militant and armed intervention, but these would be empty gestures if there wasn't also some sort of linkage or means of conveying their message." While publishers continue to produce the magazine in print form outside of Germany, sympathizers have been posting it to a homepage on XS4All. "As an act of solidarity with them and with Radikal we decided to put it on the Internet and, of course, to frustrate this censorship attempt of the German authorities," the sympathizers wrote in an email to Wired News. They added that while they had no contact with the publishers of Radikal, they are currently being investigated by Germany's public prosecutor general and have no plans to "go on holiday in Germany." Although Radikal is not banned in the Netherlands, the German government says that linking to the magazine from inside Germany is "aiding a felony," spokesman Ruediger Reiff told Reuters. In December, Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Cabinet approved a bill banning the electronic distribution of forms of hate speech, terrorism, and indecent material. The new German law places responsibility on the loosely defined "suppliers," and in response, CompuServe considered moving its administrative operations to a neighboring country. PDS member Marquardt says her prosecution has less to do with Radikal, than an attempt to quiet German citizens who, like herself, are outspoken critics of the government. "This is hardly about bomb-building instructions or highly detailed descriptions of train lines and their weaknesses," Marquardt, who could not be reached for comment, wrote in a statement posted on her Web site. "The all-too-stubborn guardians of the state will quickly learn: The Net interprets censorship as a malfunction and circumvents it." In the meantime, XS4All has not received any official communication from the German Justice Department, nor from the Dutch Justice Department. "Our policy is that as a provider we are not in the position to judge whether this magazine is illegal in the Netherlands, therefore we do not interfere with the liberty of speech of our user," XS4All's Rodriquez said. Copyright =A9 1993-97 Wired Ventures, Inc. and affiliated companies=

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Re: Seismic Crypto
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:39 PM 1/21/97 -0500, John Young wrote: >In a NYT report today on a "mysterious" blast in the >Australian outback in 1993, there's mention of "seismic >weapons" and research on them by Nicholas Tesla >in the 1930s. > >Would any of our weapons connoisseurs have more >info on what these are and how they were supposed to >work? Electrical, chemical, nuclear? ... Pick up a copy of the Johnson Smith Catalog, lots of fun to read and they sell t-shirts with greys on them. The catalog sells several "contriversial" books and tapes, including psycic healing techniques, astral projection, the infamous alien autopsy tape, and several books about and works by Tesla, including one specifically about the device that you are talking about. On another thread, pick up the Cheek3 Scanner modification guide while your at it, I hear that it is a good resource.

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Re: Seismic Crypto
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:39 PM 1/21/97 -0500, John Young wrote: >In a NYT report today on a "mysterious" blast in the >Australian outback in 1993, there's mention of "seismic >weapons" and research on them by Nicholas Tesla >in the 1930s. > >Would any of our weapons connoisseurs have more >info on what these are and how they were supposed to >work? Electrical, chemical, nuclear? ... Pick up a copy of the Johnson Smith Catalog, lots of fun to read and they sell t-shirts with greys on them. The catalog sells several "contriversial" books and tapes, including psycic healing techniques, astral projection, the infamous alien autopsy tape, and several books about and works by Tesla, including one specifically about the device that you are talking about. On another thread, pick up the Cheek3 Scanner modification guide while your at it, I hear that it is a good resource.

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