December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

TOMMY THE TOURIST IS COMPROMISED DON'T USE IT
by Jeff Gostin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tommy the Tourist (Anon User) <nobody(a)CSUA.Berkeley.EDU> writes: > Tommy the Tourist is compromised, it is possible to trace who sent the > message from the anonymous remiler called "Tommy the Tourist" > Anonymity cannot be assured, please direct anonymous traffic through > other anonymous remailers. I'll believe you when you post this signed with TtT's PGP key? Is there a 'punk that can verify this, or is just an assanine game played by adolesents? --Jeff -- ====== ====== +----------------jgostin(a)eternal.pha.pa.us----------------+ == == | The new, improved, environmentally safe, bigger, better,| == == -= | faster, hypo-allergenic, AND politically correct .sig. | ==== ====== | Now with a new fresh lemon scent! | PGP Key Available +---------------------------------------------------------+

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Re: reordering
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Steve Witham writes: > > (Oh, you mean the key is to _randomly reorder_ the messages, not just > > delay them by an hour when the average number of messages in an hour > > is less than 1 anyway? Oh, now I see. Never mind!) > > > > --Tim May, who is as tired as Eric is of hearing the hoary old > > chestnuts about 'random delays,' this without regard to calculating > > the amount of reordering. > > Tim, you sound like you mean calculating the amount of reordering based > on the delay vs. average traffic--exactly what Eric is arguing against! > The thing is to write the software to do reordering directly, not > calculate how much it's going to do after you've written it... No, I mean that if it is desired to reorder with a batch of 10 messages (10 messages in, 10 messages out), then that's what one does, whether it takes 10 minutes or 10 hours to get this many messages. I think in my last paragraph above I made it clear that "random delays" are a lose, generally, and that the "amount of reordering" is what's needed. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Improved remailer reordering
by jdd＠aiki.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In message <199408081502.IAA08127(a)jobe.shell.portal.com> Hal writes: > >You need not pass over the 'flaw of lack of message quantization in > >the final sending'. Someone running a private high security gateway, > >an "empowered user", participates in the same way as the other RemailerNet > >gateways, and there is in fact no way to determine even whether he is > >sending or receiving, or in fact whether he is doing anything at all. > >He may be just sending and receiving noise packets. > > >Users accessing the net using low security versions of the software do > >have less security, but that is a consequence of their use of low > >security software. > > I could see this would come up in Jim's description. Who exactly are these > "empowered users"? And how much security do the second-class citizens ac- > tually get? Will it work for everyone to become "empowered", or are there > scaling problems in terms of bandwidth? > > It seems to me that the most sensible approach is to make message fragmen- > tation into standard-sized packets, along with reassembly, be at the > end user site. This way everyone becomes a first-class citizen. I think that you want at least three levels in this system, with increasingly strong requirements as you go up the levels and (necessarily) increasingly weak security as you go down. You should be able to pop messages into the system from any terminal anywhere, just using ordinary email. But you should also be able to casually dump a few hundred megabytes into the system without making too big a splash, if you have the right equipment. Ideally, the empowered user's (your term, yes?) system is functionally a gateway, but it has a nice front end on it, something like Mosaic. It is probably a single user system with a RemailerNet interface bolted on to it; it probably runs under Windows; it may even be a modified version of Mosaic. The system at the next level up is a workhorse. Its user interface would be a system manager's, designed to show him how traffic is flowing, highlighting bottlenecks, etc. It would be designed to run automatically. -- Jim Dixon

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PGP 2.6 for UNIX
by dwomack＠runner.utsa.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've been having difficulty compiling PGP 2.6 for UNIX V, Release 4.0. There *_were_* some compiled executables out there for 2.3, but I've failed to find the same for the 2.6 version. Any ideas? Thanks! Dave

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Re: Digicash address?
by Vinod Valloppillil 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If you're looking for info on digicash, it might be more polite to mail to info(a)digicash.nl than to mail directly to David Chaum's account.... Vinod ---------- From: Dave Banisar <tc(a)phantom.com> To: Adam Shostack <adam(a)bwh.harvard.edu> Cc: Cypherpunks Mailing List <cypherpunks(a)toad.com> Subject: Re: Digicash address? Date: Monday, August 08, 1994 8:53AM You can reach David Chaum at chaum(a)digicash.nl -dave On Mon, 8 Aug 1994, Adam Shostack wrote: > > Could someone send me contact information for David Chaum's > Digicash company? An email address would be great... > > Thanks in advance, > > Adam >

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Re: Digicash address?
by jim＠bilbo.suite.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I see others have posted e-mail addresses..here's DigiCash's Web URL in case you're looking for general info: http://digicash.support.nl/ Jim_Miller(a)suite.com

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RE: Remailer ideas
by John Douceur 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >From: Eric Hughes <hughes(a)ah.com> >Date: Saturday, August 06, 1994 4:02PM >Hal's random-send spool has an expected value of latency which is >approximately the size of the spool but has no deterministic upper >bound for that latency. Fine. Great. No problem. There should be >zero hesitation here, because the expected value -- the probabilistic >average -- is what you want. There is an important distinction between systems for which the only observable behavior is the probabilistic average and those for which the observable behavior is that of the individual actions. An example of the former system is a hash table with open addressing: The absolute worst case for a lookup is as bad as that in an unsorted list; however, this is not usually a problem, because programs generally perform large numbers of lookups, and the performance that the user observes is therefore equal to the probabilistic average. An example of the latter system is the case in point, a remailer: If a message is delayed unduly, the sender is unlikely to be contented by the fact that many other users' messages were serviced with considerably greater promptness. Therefore, the probabilistic distribution of service times is as important a metric of a remailer's performance as the probabilistic average service time. It may thus be quite reasonable to build in a hard cutoff in service time, such that any message that has been delayed by more than a set amount will be guaranteed to be sent on the next transmission. For some user of the remailer, this will make an observable improvement in performance; and since the extreme delay which triggers the expedited transmission is an unpredictable and infrequent event, it will not make cryptanalysis of the remailer any easier. JD -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAgUBLkaHjEGHwsdH+oN9AQGOjAP/eCDAPlVfsdzB7HsBO5FLmFaxt5udMAPE UrFYw1EvrFP8gbMd6976dU6+o/A6xtDbZXCN8UOX5SYsY4+ixWxR3X5x86f4VAPi BowglJWs9hrGH/iSGH1tk2+ehbpFNKA4vUlvRtjKfX5vudYr5+fHWjCndFiVTo6K VXy0N2iQI4U= =uTv6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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*credit info
by Gary Jeffers 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

*CREDIT CARD INFO " Among other faults, being disarmed causes you to be despised." - close quote of Machiavelli. According to Chariman Mao "Political Power grows out of the barrel of a gun." In which case wouldn't a democracy be made by widely distributed, numerous, individual owned, Non-confiscable weapons, & other "democracies" would be mere frauds? In Missouri, in order to get your driver's license, you MUST supply your SSN. They have signs that say that since driving is a "privilege", not a right, it is ok to require the SSN. I understand that this practice is spreading to other states as well & is being pushed sy- stematically by the feds. Funny, when they 1st started out social security, they promised that the SSN would never be used for purposes other than social security. Then again, when they first started out the federal income tax they promised that it would only be on the rich & would never be more than a few %. Don't they also promise that the National census would only be used for statistical purposes, Yet I believe that it has been used to track down "dead beat dads" among other things. I'm not clear on that. Will walking be our next "privilege"? I've never seen it expressed legally as a right. OTHER LAW DEVELOPMENTS On the CRUSADERS news program on tv last night, they reported that a Ca. city, I believe Palo Alto, has been enforcing traffic law, such as revoked licenses & drunk driving, by taking the drivers' cars. They brag that the program pays for itself. They think that it is a bright innovation & are promoted it for other jurisdictions as well. Very clever, stealing peoples' property to enforce law. Reminds me when the law 1st started doing "sting" operations & bragged that they were terribly clever - participating in crime to catch criminals. The criticism of entrapment now has mostly been forgotten. STALKING LAWS By the way, these current stalking laws - whats up? The utility of a stalking law is so obvious, that in the U.S.'es 200 + year history they could not possibly be overlooked. Therefore, their faults must be being purposely overlooked. Media conspiracy? population stupidity? both? No debate - strange. Yours Truly, Gary Jeffers

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TEST
by Test 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST

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Re: Anonymous Transport Agents (Was: Latency vs. Reordering)
by Jeff Gostin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hal <hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> writes: > I can see two problems. First, at least the first machine on the trans- > port path will see both your origin address and your destination address. > So it is in a perfect position to do traffic analysis. Many users may > not have the ability to control which machine this is since routing is > usually automatic these days. Fair enough. Let's assume that ESMTP will anonymize and sanitize each message, making it appear as if it first appeared on the site. In other words, lets say I send a message via ESMTP to someone. It gets sanitized and anonymized (the return address is encrypted). This removes ALL traces of the fact that it left from my node. Every site up the chain until it gets to you will do the same. Finally you get a VERY anon/sanitized message. I said the return address is encrypted. That's true: it's encrypted piece-meal. What happens is that the originator's site the sender's name with its own key. Then, it encrypts its site name with the next site's key. When it's sent, the site encrypts it's name, PLUS the previous encrypted packet with the key of the next site up the net. This happens until it reaches its destination. Even if the packet is intercepted, the hacker only knows the previous site it came from. Let's say he intercepts it between my feed and my feed's feed. This gives some 15+ choices as to which MACHINE it came from, let alone which USER sent it, and that's only on the first hop. On the Nth hop, it's AT LEAST 2^N possible MACHINES, assuming that each hop has at least two feeds. More realistically, after about 4 hops, the number of choices becomes entirely too large to efficiently track. What do you think? > Second, if each machine simply saves a message and sends it on, then even > if the messages are encrypted there will probably be timing relationships > between the incoming and outgoing messages which will allow them to be > linked. Quite true. However, if the encryption system adds random-x bytes of entropy to _each message_, the message sizes will never be the same coming in as going out. It will always be larger, but each additional hop makes the chance of tracking less and less. How many hackers can watch the whole backbone?? > So someone monitoring the intersite communication channels may be > able to track a message through the network just by noticing when it comes > into and goes out of each node. This is why Chaum introduces message > batching and mixing at each node. Very true. But, again, it shouldn't matter... By the time it gets to a place where the message is passed through 3 or 4 machines that one person can watch, it's already been sanitized to the point of obsurdity, no? Opinions? --Jeff -- ====== ====== +----------------jgostin(a)eternal.pha.pa.us----------------+ == == | The new, improved, environmentally safe, bigger, better,| == == -= | faster, hypo-allergenic, AND politically correct .sig. | ==== ====== | Now with a new fresh lemon scent! | PGP Key Available +---------------------------------------------------------+

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Postal Inspection (was Common Carriers...)
by fnerd＠smds.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May says- > Package delivery services like UPS and Federal Express *do* have > immunity from prosecution based on what they carry, but this is in > exchange for allowing inspection of packages under specified > circumstances. Thus, if the DEA suspects a package contains cocaine, > it can be inspected, and the shipper will most likely cooperate in > resealing the package and continuing the shipment. That reminds me. I once got a conference announcement from Europe in the mail. Printed on the envelope was a little icon showing a profile of the head of a guy wearing a hat (like a policeman or mailman's hat), and an arrow pointing from about his eye level to a picture of an open envelope. This looked like the original envelope, untouched, and the icon seemed to have been there from the start. Anybody know what it means? -fnerd - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - nutritional information per serving: less than one (1) bit -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a aKxB8nktcBAeQHabQP/d7yhWgpGZBIoIqII8cY9nG55HYHgvt3niQCVAgUBLMs3K ui6XaCZmKH68fOWYYySKAzPkXyfYKnOlzsIjp2tPEot1Q5A3/n54PBKrUDN9tHVz 3Ch466q9EKUuDulTU6OLsilzmRvQJn0EJhzd4pht6hSnC1R3seYNhUYhoJViCcCG sRjLQs4iVVM= =9wqs -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Key Coercion after encrypted message transmission.
by 7CF5048D＠nowhere 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- There seems to be much written about key coercion lately. It seems to me that the key coercion problem can be divided into two problems. First, there is the problem of Princess Leia storing data on her computer disk for later reference. Then Darth Vadder seizes the disk and the Princess and coerces the Princess for the encryption key. This problem may be called the static storage coercion problem (SSCP). I am not sure that there is a good way of addressing this problem short of dividing the key in some way among multiple people so that Darth has a hard time seizing them all. This idea has already been discussed elsewhere. The second problem is the case where the Princess wants to send a secret message to Hans Solo in the horsehead nebula. She sends the message encrypted to Hans, but the encrypted message is intercepted by Darth. Hans decrypts the message, but unfortunately six months later Hans is captured by Darth who tortures him for the decryption key. Note the Hans is in a worse position than if he were tortured for the content of the message, because if he were merely asked the contents of the message with no way to verify, he could simply lie. But Darth can verify if any keys that Hans gives really does decrypt the intercepted cipper-text to a sensible message. This problem could be called the transmission retroactive coercion problem (TRCP). Unlike the static storage coercion problem, the transmission retroactive coercion problem does have a technical solution. If Hans and the Princess were using a public key encryption system that stores secret keys on disk as a conventionally encrypted file, like PGP, then Hans could create a separate key pair for each message. Hans has one long term public/secret key pair which never changes. He could send temporary public keys in advance to the Princess as a signed (using his long term public key) message. Then when the Princess needs to send him a message she chooses one stored temporary public keys and sends Hans the message using that key. She then throws the key away and never uses it again. When Hans receives and decrypts the message, he destroys the secret key stored on disk by overwriting it. Then when Darth goes to torture Hans six months later for the secret key, Hans can only tell him the passphrase for the now non-existent key. People can use this protocol right now with PGP to protect themselves against this kind of retroactive coercion. It will work. However, the problem of manually generating the keys and sending them to the other party and the whole bureaucratic hassle of keeping track of everything makes it unlikely that anyone would actually do so. Software to the rescue! Suppose that Hans runs a mail server on his account which recognizes certain messages as requests for new public keys and responds by sending back unused temporary public keys to the requester. It could work similarly to some cypherpunk remailers which look for some special characteristic in the message to be responded to, letting the rest pass normally to the owner of the account. The Princess could also have a mail server on her account which looks for returned temporary public keys and automatically stores them in her database after checking for the correct signature without bothering her. Further, whenever she sends a message, a program could check her database of unused temporary keys, and if it is low, a request for more keys could automatically be sent. It seems clear that the whole protocol could be made largely automatic with no constant intervention required by the parties concerned once the system was set up. It works best if Hans has a hardware random number generator. Then the key generator part of the process could be set up to run when no one is using the computer. (Modifications to PGP have been published that use hardware RNG's for their Random numbers.) Since in this case, the computer is unattended, the PGP passphrase associated with the secret key must be assumed to be known. To protect the secret keys against theft in this case, the temporary secret key file could be encrypted using Hans' long-term Public key. If there is no Hardware RNG present, then Hans must be present at temporary key generation time, to type in all of the stupid keyboard timing strokes! In this case, Hans will want to create a number of keys in advance to be stored in a database so that the mailserver can dole them out when people request them. A little thought shows that such a system could be used in some applications of interest to cypherpunks. The ability to implement such a system is clearly within our grasp. Therefore, the cypherpunk CODE requires that the cypherpunks analyze, design, code and make such a system widely available according to the grand traditions established by previous cypherpunks. Here are some beginning questions to get the ball rolling. How many different CPU's Operating systems, mail transport mechanisms and mail programs can such a program be adapted to? Should such a program use PGP to do its encryption, or should it have its own built in encryption routines. What Language should such a program be written it? I think the program should be portable to all computers for which the program is technically possible. Can someone outside the U.S. be persuaded to code such a program? It would be best if such a person could be found. What do our fellow cypherpunks think? Remember that when disusing this or any other encryption software on the net, it is important that our usages be defensively formulated. Encryption technology should always be used against evil and for good. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAgUBLkA6ug2Gnhl89QSNAQFEwwQAv00ZbSiZnFSEg/hBZvFX6RMAAt6uqa2y UACKlf235ShWff0J2jk6tt2LjrZzoNr1J2qBpaeuXgRqj5zIN3vrvxlW3m9ntlSb BgLLZbpSjt8FcgWOxDPIIo6bp4U4Qh2NzkNl77kKInpquYmnn3WYZl+KQdwRlsf+ VC3zCfh966M= =pzkq -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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e$ barter & sub(parasites)
by Gary Jeffers 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My congraulations to Hal for his contribution to the e$... thread with his barter text. My congradulations to Peace for his contributions to the e$ thread with his barter & parasite text. Hal says: ---------------------------------------------------------- >The second problem is the regulation of "scrip" and barter systems. Ths >was pointed out on the list last year by someone who had actually been >involved in a private barter or scrip system which was shut down by the >government, at great cost to all concerned. These regulations can be >found at 26 CFR 1.6045-1. From subsection (f)(5)(ii), "Scrip is a toke >issued by the barter exchange that is transferable from one member or >client, of the barter exchange to another member or client, or to the >barter exchange, in payment for property or services". I think this on >will eventually get the "NetBank" people in trouble. (You call a 900 >number and in exchange for a charge on your phone bill they give you a >digital token you can exchange for property or services by participatin >merchants.) Barter exchanges are required to get the names and SS numbrs >of all participants and report their transactions to the IRS. This woud >be inconsistent with the privacy we seek from ecash. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Peace says:******************************************************* >I can recall that many years back the casinos in Las Vegas all >accepted the chips from the other ones and then had a great >exchange each day where the accounts were settled up. Even the >gift shops took chips in place of cash. The US Treasury put a stop >to this as it was considered to be a replacement for cash. >Also I hear a lot about bearer bonds, but never in the US. OTOH >the NYC subways have started a cash card that they expect merchants >to accept in lieu of coins. It would be nice to know what the Feds >will or won't accept. BTW, does it matter if the e$ are US denominated >Could e$ be presented as travelers checks? The possibilities here are >extremely interesting. - - - >Bob said>> However, it's a stupid parasite which >>kills it's host, and that's what I'm counting on here. >Not really true. All parasites kill their host or they would not >be considered parasites (ie. live at the EXPENSE of the host). The >only question is how quickly the host dies. There is an entire >epidemiology of parasitism, ie. which strategies are best for the >parasite. The virulent ones must be able to find a new host quickly, >the ones that can't exit quickly rely on the host living for a long tim. >There was a good article in SciAm on this a little while back. >Also remember, it is the US Supreme Court which ruled that the >power to tax is the power to destroy. Sounds like as good a >definition of parasitism as any. ******************************************************************* They have demonstrated that the Fed state will not tolerate an alt- ternate cash system & repeatedly kill them. This is because they know that an alternate cash system could be easily fashioned to kill them. - as though there was any benefit to keeping the giant Federal parasite alive. They have also demonstrated that the only in-US alternate cash system that will survive is an alternate cash system that will florish without the Feds permission. This implies anonymous e$ with encryption & remail- ers. Chaum's e$ with an offshore clearinghouse comes to mind. I thought Peace'es more accurate description of a parasite & his characterization of the Fed State as a parasite were particularly NICE:- :-) : -) :-) :-) There are other evils of this monocash system. 1. It allows elite in- siders to profit from secret Federal Reserve moves. 2 It allows a privat organization (the Federal Reserve) to manipulate the US'es money system. 3. It is an anti-freedom monopoly of cash. 4. It kills experiments with superior cash systems that would proliferate otherwise. & 5.It supresses script driven barter systems that circumvent the frequent low volocity problems with other instruments that is in conventional systems.-Some- times most people hold their cash & wait for a buyer (with cash) before they spend. That way everybody is waiting for someone to buy from them before they buy. With script driven barter systems, you make script by providing something. To restate this more clearly, in barter systems business activity is encouraged. - The increased volocity of "cash" is encouraged. Deals are more fluidly made & business (tranactions) are encouraged. PUSH EM BACK! PUSH EM BACK! WWWAAAYYY BBBAAACCCK! BBBEEEAAATTTT STATE!

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FWD>Health Care Privacy Ale
by Dave Banisar 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date 8/8/94 Subject FWD>Health Care Privacy Ale From Dave Banisar To Interested People CC Beverly Woodward >From CPSR FWD>Health Care Privacy Alert FYI, pls respond directly to the address below. Date: Sun, 7 Aug 1994 12:43 EDT From: WOODWARD(a)BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU (Beverly Woodward) Subject: Health Care Privacy Alert ALERT The health care legislation proposed by Gephardt in the House and Mitchell in the Senate contains provisions which would establish a national health care data network and override most state medical confidentiality laws. All health care providers, whether paid by insurance or not, will be required to provide the network with data from the patient medical record after every clinical encounter. (The data elements will not be limited to what is necessary for billing purposes.) A very weak "privacy" (or "fair information") code will regulate the redisclosure of such patient-identified information. The law will permit person-identified information to be made available in various circumstances to law enforcement officials, medical and social studies researchers, and government authorities without the knowledge or consent of the patient. These legislative provisions are being promoted as administrative simplification and cost-saving measures, but they will seriously erode patient privacy. Unfortunately the general public has not been informed about these sections of the health care reform bills. Legislation of this kind requires intensive debate and should not be folded into a bill to extend insurance coverage and reform health care financing. Contact your Representative and your Senators to urge that the "Administrative Simplification," "National Health Care Data Network," and so-called "Privacy" and "Fair Information Practices" sections of these bills be deleted. The general telephone number for Capitol offices is 202, 224-3121. Watch for further updates! You may contact us at 617, 433-0114. Coaltion for Patient Rights, Massachusetts

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ANNOUNCE: the TAZONO is here
by hughes＠ah.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm flying to New York this week to go to the HOPE conference put on by 2600, so I've arranged to throw a party. Here's the announcement. HOPE is the two days after this, so if you're planning on that, come a day earlier. You're all invited, but I only expect those in range of New York to actually attend. And I would like to meet all the NYC cypherpunks, or at least as many as I can. So show! Eric ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Blazin' Cypherpunks present a T.A.Z.O.N.O. Temporary Autonomous Zone One Night Only (perhaps also to be known as just a party) Friday, August 12, 1994 8:00 p.m. EDT until whenever almost in New York City, but not quite with the theme of Bring Your Own Everything (or) The Creation of Anarchy out of a Cipher Eric Hughes, cypherpunks founder, and Matt Blaze, swIPe'r of Tesserae security, are throwing a party, and Eric, who lives somewhere other than the East Coast, will be in town for it. We've managed to liberate, through completely legal means, an almost completely empty apartment for the purposes of joy and frivolity and much talking. Join us! Special Event: Midnight Impromptu Two-Minute Rant Contest. A suitable theme will be chosen by shout-outs, and judging will progress by catcall and heckling volume. Real Prizes! Given the manner of acquisition of space, there will be nothing there when the party starts. It's Bring Your Own Everything. We need all of the following: Your Friends and other Diverse People Furniture (street discards accepted, as long as _you'd_ use it) Music (live and recorded) Drink (as always) an Internet connection Food (whatever you like to eat) a Gong Stimulants (my favorite being Neitzsche) as many copies of the game Twister as we can get Pillows and Cushions a Roll of Butcher Paper a Constitutional Amendmend Guaranteeing Freedom of Cryptography and Anonymity Special Prize for the "Most Creative Use of Scavenged Material in Furtherance of the Ludic Atmosphere of the TAZONO." So, uh, where is it? It's in Jersey City, at an address we're not going to tell you just here. We just thought it best not to post the address to the world. But we'll give you a clue; it's near the Pavonia-Newport Path Train station. In fact, if you just show up there, there may be more clues. And I'll send you the address if you send me, Eric Hughes, email at the address hughes(a)ah.com. You can also call me at 510-849-4729 (I'm in the phone book, so this is no big deal). Rules of Invitation: If you see this, you're invited. It's the day before 2600's HOPE, so any of you that are in town the night before can stop by. Please print out copies and get them to your non-Internet friends who'd be interested. Please feel free too forward this by private email as well. THE SECRET WORD IS "PLUGH". REMEMBER THE SECRET WORD.

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forwarded message from System Daemon
by Daniel Carosone 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Another one.. *sigh* it's still going on? please remove this anon id, I won't be using it. ------- start of forwarded message (RFC 934 encapsulation) ------- Message-Id: <9408090808.AA14325(a)anon.penet.fi> From: daemon(a)anon.penet.fi (System Daemon) To: danielce(a)ee.mu.oz.au Subject: Anonymous code name allocated. Date: Tue, 9 Aug 94 11:08:40 +0300 You have sent a message using the anonymous contact service. You have been allocated the code name an120044. You can be reached anonymously using the address an120044(a)anon.penet.fi. If you want to use a nickname, please send a message to nick(a)anon.penet.fi, with a Subject: field containing your nickname. For instructions, send a message to help(a)anon.penet.fi. ------- end -------

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Re: In Search of Genuine DigiCash
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:27 AM 8/23/94 -0400, Peter Wayner wrote: >tcmay(a)netcom.com (Timothy C. May) wrote: >> >>I don't think any of us on this list is yet ready to present a plan to >>real bankers. Eric Hughes has told me he agrees. > >Real bankers may be well ahead of everyone on this list. I'm told that >Citibank has some very intriguing work pending at the patent office. It's >for digital cash. Thank you. This is exactly the kind of stuff I've been talking about. Real bankers aren't completely necessary. This is why my thinking has changed on the subject. You need financial accumen to make sure you don't spend down your suspension account, but that (cash portfolio management) can be purchased from lots places besides real banks. The technology of digital cash is something that Citicorp thinks it has to reinvent. That's par for the course. But you don't need a real banker to run a secure www/Secure Mosaic node. You barely need real bankers to hook in to the ATM system as long as you can prove that nobody, including the underwriter, sniff the user's card swipe and PIN number. You don't need real bankers to make sure that the fraud laws cover double spending of digital cash. You don't need bankers to make sure that you comply with cash reporting requirements when money comes on and off the net. Wiring all the above together to make a digital cash underwriter is doable at a relatively small level, without bankers for the most part. This is why Citicorp, and other banks like it, are going to shoot themselves in the foot when they try. I 'm pretty sure, having worked for Citicorp myself, they spent big piles of money trying to engineer around Chaum (or anybody else). Chaum almost has a viable product, which will cost a whole lot less (even if he gets his cut of profits) to implement from the underwriter's standpoint. Citicorp has tried this "We are The Technologists" tack in Travel (CIMS), Point of Sale data collection (CPOS), Telephone Banking (they even invented their own dial up terminal!) and several other unrelated businesses. They failed because of an institutional mentality of Not Invented Here and a very centralized, top-down management style. They're not much different from most other very large banks, I'm afraid. Citicorp's early success in bank Data Processing during the late 60's and early 70's, first in ATMs (they aren't the largest any more by a long shot), and the credit cards (same here), makes them, and some readers of this list, think they are a 900lb gorilla when it comes to digital cash. They aren't. Neither is any bank, no matter how large they are. I'd be real interested to see if Citibank can beat an onslaught of smaller underwriters who can offer cash at smaller margins than they can. Folks, the costs of an operation like a digital cash underwriter aren't too difficult to imagine. The entry cost for the average underwriter (if the market is there to support one) is not nearly the amount that Citicorp is going to spend putting up theirs, and so Citicorp will loose money on this investment as well, and eventually back out. It's like people who go in to see the machine The Well runs on. Their jaw drops at how small the box really is. If Citicorp did it the machine would be 10 times bigger and cost 10 times as much, to justify their hockey-stick earnings estimate and a cast of a thousand managers and analysts. The thing that's important here is Grove's Law. Chips have an economic half-life of 18 months, which drops the cost of any computer based business accordingly, along with the costs of entry into those businesses. I've personally seen large companies go into a new high-tech service businesses and kill their entry with overengineering and bloated middle management. You see it in the Wall Street Journal all the time. At some point, if the market is there, there will probably be a consolidation in digital cash underwriting, and larger companies will emerge as economies of scale become evident. But to think that any company can come into a completely different operating paradigm and take over from the start just because they're huge somewhere else is probably not going to wash. Think about railroads and airplanes. If the railroads seriously tried to fund aircraft development, they would have gotten smeared. They would still be trying to make a steam powered plane fly the day Douglas delivered the first DC-3. The banks aren't the big bad monsters we fear them for. Their participation in the market is necessary, as is the participation of most financial instutions, but an Argumentum ad Bacculum with the Banks as the threat of force is pretty much a waste of breath. Sorry. I promise not to turn blue next time. Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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Re: Nuclear Weapons Material
by jdd＠aiki.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In message <paBMkOwscIgG070yn(a)io.org> Mark Terka writes: > Not to mention the fact that without tritium, the "trigger" for nuclear > weapons (and extremely expensive and rare at $ 100m a gram) all you have > is a radioactive paperweight. To the best of my knowledge, tritium is not used in nuclear weapons (meaning A-bombs), only in thermonuclear weapons (H-bombs). One of my teachers was involved in the Manhattan project; he never mentioned any need for tritium. -- Jim Dixon

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Re: Voluntary Governments?
by jdd＠aiki.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In message <199408230610.XAA15960(a)netcom3.netcom.com> "Timothy C. May" writes: > Jason Solinsky wrote: > > Easily. They could deny you access to services of greater value than the > > tax being imposed. MIT weilds this power quite successfully. This thread > > Jason is confusing markets and governments. > > A movie theater that sells tickets is not "taxing" its patrons--it is > selling access. A university that charges tuition is not "taxing" its > customers. > > [ complications deleted] > > To call all negotiated prices "taxes" is, bluntly, > absurd. It also cheapens the language by throwing away the essential > distinction between market prices and taxes. Jason's use of the term 'tax' in a special sense is no more an abuse of the language than the attempt to change the conventional meaning of the word 'government'. He says that institutions like MIT govern the behavior of their special populations, that they can impose levies on their users, and that they can enforce rules against their users without the use of physical force. > In any case, something is a "market price" if one can walk away from > the transaction. I know of almost nothing the U.S. government calls a > "tax" that taxpayers are free to walk away from, to not pay (and thus > not receive the service). You can walk away from almost all US taxes by walking away from the USA. I have. What about luxury taxes, fishing licenses, flying licenses, and so forth? If you insist on calling these 'market prices', you begin to really rip the fabric of the language. -- Jim Dixon

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Death & Taxes
by frissell＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Steve Witham & Jason W Solinsky seem to be sowing a bit of confusion about government and taxes. Steve says: >This is the "monopoly on force in a geographical area" definition of >government. It's also pretty much government as we know it. It's a >fundamentally bad idea and it's what James and I are against. But I don't >think it's a good definition of "government." It *is*, however, the definition that my very commie-liberal poly sci department taught me when I was studying with them. Also "That institution charged with the authoritative allocation of values in society." >The reason is that what most people mean by "government" is a set of >services, the main ones being what James calls "true law": police, courts, >and defense--protection services for large numbers of people. Experts in taxonomy always try to define a species by the characteristics that *distinguish* it from other species. Not those characteristics that are the same. Governments are distinguished by their claim of monopoly on judging the appropriateness of uses of force within a given geographic area. Thus the symbol of a king's office is often a mace (club) and a sword. The American Eagle has arrows clutched in one claw. And in most times and places only the sovereign and his cronies are allowed to carry weapons. The peasants are prohibited from doing so. Jason says: A cybergovernment says "Do as we say or you can't communicate with our citizens" MIT says "Do as we say or go somewhere else" US democrats say "If you don't like US laws, move somewhere else" Actually, if you are a citizen you are bound by US tax laws even if you move to Alpha Centauri. Or if you are a narco terrorist you need not even be a citizen. MIT remains largely consensual. Governments do not. If they become mere market actors as I expect that they will, then they will no longer be the sorts of monopoly institutions that we refer to with the word -- "government." Actually "Self-Government vs. Others-Government" is the real split (with thanks to the Advocates for Self Government. DCF "You speak Treason!" - The Lady Marion Fitzwalter "Fluently!" - Sir Robin of Loxley Not from the politically correct version.

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Zimmerman's use of PGP
by Bill O'Hanlon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

As anyone who has ever sent an encrypted "Really neat program, Phil!" message to Phillip Zimmerman knows, he doesn't run PGP where he reads his mail. He has to download messages to decrypt on a local machine. All of the cute elm/vi/emacs/mh/pine scripts you wanna post won't help him. -Bill (P.S. Back when he didn't get so much mail, if you'd done the above, you'd get a response in a couple weeks, telling you this. He mentioned that he saw the irony of the situation -- that the inventor of PGP couldn't make convenient use of it.)

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archives for cypherpunks?
by PatHuff＠world.std.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Do any archives exist for this group? I would be intereted in scaning them. Pat. PatHuff(a)world.std.com

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Re: Voluntary Governments?
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:14 PM 8/23/94 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: >Russell Nelson says: >> In our high school we had a student government. We had no prisons >> and no guns. >> >> Then you were a club. > >Indeed. [snip] >(I once was part of a >debate held by Columbia University's Philolexian Society on the topic >"Resolved: Student Government is Amazingly Lame", in which I noted >that the low probability of a student government coup d'etat complete >with tanks rolling about the campus, and of the following student >government dictatorship run by a student military junta, demonstrated >that the student "government" wasn't a government but a weak way to >keep students placated, devoid even of the mild entertainment the >occassional revolt could bring.) Alas. How true. One of my friends got elected student government president at the University of Missouri by standing outside polling places in a clown suit bribing people to vote for him with play money. Later that year, I authored a student senate declaration of war against the University of Wisconsin. They had originated the concept of snickerocracy, or rule by clowns, and as potential competition for scarce laughs had to be destroyed. The declaration passed unanimously. We passed the hat in the bars for our defense budget (to be spent by the sacred Council of War, COW for short), and sent four determined and somewhat inebriated agriculture majors to Wisconsin's dairy barns to collect one ton of bullshit and deposit it on their student union steps at 3 am. In their defense, I must say that the administration generously let us (the senate) vote on the allocation of about $1.3 million of the university's money (somewhat less than 1% of the total, I believe), which made for a lot of sand in the old sandbox. And, I got to meet both Timothy Leary and Ralph Nader out of the deal. I have trouble telling them apart to this day... Ah, Yout'! Adulthood is terminal, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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Re: Voluntary Governments?
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:37 PM 8/23/94 -0500, Jim choate wrote: >Can't speak for MIT but I can speak for UT Austin, they do have cells to hold >prisoners. The security forces at that school attend the Tx Dept. of Public >Safety training school and hold state law enforcement positions. The last >thing you want to do is really piss one of these guys, you would end up >in one of the state prisons for several years, Huntsville probably. The University of Chicago, where I went for awhile, has the third largest police force in Illinois, after the Chicago PD and the State troopers. They have guns and cells. During the Cambodian days of rage, the administration had an interesting tactic. The acquiesced to the students' demands and took their pictures as they left. Then they expelled them all. Not violent, really, but harmful, maybe. "Hyde Park, where Black and White stand shoulder to shoulder against the Poor." (Nichols and May[not Tim]), Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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Re: Voluntary Governments?
by elton＠sybase.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Right ... I had taken this offline, but it looks as though it ain't quite dead yet. Kindly stop reading now if you wish this subject would go away. Consolidating two messages from Jim Dixon: >Jason's use of the term 'tax' in a special sense is no more an abuse >of the language than the attempt to change the conventional meaning >of the word 'government'. and >You can't simply take over the ownership of words in the English >language. 'Government' is indeed the name used for an entity that >exercises authority or enforces laws. Of course we can -- it happens all the time. However, this time I haven't usurped the meaning of anything. Force -- the threat or actual use of violence -- is the essence of government. You just said so yourself: "enforces laws". Here's the closest applicable dictionary definition of "government", taken from the Random House Dictionary of the English Language: "1. the political direction and control exercised over the actions of the members, citizens, or inhabitants of communities, societies, and states; direction of the affairs of a state, community, etc.; political administration." This is amplified by looking at "govern" in the same dictionary: "1. to rule by right of authority, as a sovereign does." "Rule", or "political ... control" are only ever exercised through force. People keep using that word, "enforce", without looking carefully at it. >From the same dictionary: "to put or keep in force; compel obedience to." "Enforcement", regardless of the dry dictionary definition, is the essence of government. Without the power to enforce arbitrary rules, there can be no government. There are several methods of achieving compliance with a set of rules: social pressure (shunning, as some religious sects do); withholding of goods or services (the degree that Jason spoke about being denied); and topical application of violence ("enforcement"). Of these, the first two are related, and are commonly practiced by social units that don't recognize the right to use force on one another. The last named is the only one that results in physical damage to the person being "ruled", and is also the only one that can physically prevent that person from engaging in the proscribed behavior. The others can make life bloody unpleasant, but they won't terminate it. One other thing: >I grew up in a small town of 5,000. It had a city government. The >county government was in the same town. No one denies that California >has a government, I think. And then there was the US government. And >we had city police, the sheriff's office, the Highway Patrol, and the >FBI paid an occasional visit. Uh ... you _do_ understand that that's a specious argument, yes? What do you suppose the outcome would be if your home town were to legalize marijuana, and then attempted to prevent the DEA from enforcing the overriding federal law? Yes, we have a distributed government, with each layer operating under the authority of the next layer up; but each layer can only add restrictions, never remove them, and each enforces its restrictions by the same method as the layers above it: main force. Further, each attempts to prevent other agencies from enforcing sets of rules counter to the ones they themselves enforce. That's what makes them true "governments", rather than some other social institution. Here, someone will surely object that by this definition, the Mafia can be considered a government. Well, if they can successfully kick the existing thugs off of some plot of ground, and then defend it against all comers, then yes: that's exactly what they'll be. How else do you suppose that governments become established? -- Elton

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