December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Universal Service for the Net: Why it's a bad idea
by Frank Willoughby 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:53 AM 11/8/96 -0800, Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> wrote: 8< [snip] >* Why should a Beverly Hills high school get a discount of 20 percent? > Can't they afford to pay for ISDN? Depends on how their telco's tariffs are set up. Here in Indiana, we have a monopoly called "Ameritech" who, out of the kindness of their hearts, charges ***per-minute*** ISDN rates. Expect costs of over $600/month for a permament connection (one line) to the Internet. Beverly Hills High School *might* be able to afford it. Most other places can't. <sigh> Best Regards, Frank Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature. -- Rich Kulawiec <standard disclaimer> The opinions expressed above are of the author and may not necessarily be representative of Fortified Networks Inc. Fortified Networks Inc. - Vendor-Neutral Information Security Consulting http://www.fortified.com Phone: (317) 573-0800 FAX: (317) 573-0817 Home of the Free Internet Firewall Evaluation Checklist

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No Subject
by brazie＠ipa.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

UNSCRIBE

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No More
by YoungSik Jeong 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I want take off mail list

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RE: Smart Bombs
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Marshall Clow <mclow(a)owl.csusm.edu> wrote: >James wrote: >>Of course, not having a card may subject you to greater scrutiny at check-in >>time due to the reduced tracking ability. >> >I think that you have this backwards. There will be less tracking ability for >people flying w/o tickets. Less tracking for people w/o tickets, but more scrutiny for people w/o smart cards. I can easily see the working assumption that smart carded people have _already_ passed the security check, while those who pay cash would be under greater scrutiny.

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RE: His and Her Anarchies
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Black Unicorn <unicorn(a)schloss.li> wrote: >I'm sure if I look hard enough, I'll find the crypto content in here. > >On Fri, 8 Nov 1996 jbugden(a)smtplink.alis.ca wrote: > >> Copyright c 1996, The Globe and Mail Company r >> >> U.S. election reveals his and her politics >> Educated women have different agenda I think it relates to crypto policy via policy in general, also to both the libertarian and the inevitable cryptoanarchy argument we are currently tossing about and brought to mind a comment a few months back from Tim about how the occasional female members of this list tended to not make sense a lot of the time. Sorry if it wasn't clear enough. I had expected a comment regarding the smart bomb message since it would have been better to send to the risks list. Ciao, James

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Re: WebTV a "munition"
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:12 PM 11/8/96 -0800, Rich Graves wrote: >Eric Murray wrote: >> >> Page 3 of the San Jose Mercury News has a small blurb >> about WebTV's browser/set-top box that "uses >> computer-security technology so powerful that the >> government is classifying it as a weapon >> that will require a special export license before >> it can be sold overseas".[...] >> shouldn't be too difficult. If they didn't use the "export" >> level SSL CipherTypes, then what're they up to? Are they >> fighting crypto export laws (for which they should be congratulated >> and supported) or are they just looking for free publicity? > >Based on the lack of public policy pronouncements from the WebTV folks, >I would answer C) They're clueless. I'm not sure that management even >understood, or wanted to understand, that they'd have an export problem. >See http://www.webtv.net/ However, I estimate that the "investment" of probably under $1 million, and certainly under $10 million dollars, would easily sweep away any legal obstacle to the export of these devices. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: [rant] Race
by Lynne L. Harrison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Fri Nov 08 21:16:34 1996 > ObCrypto: Is it true that "Kemo Sabe" is Abanake for "Horse's Ass"? The author had some fun with their names. Kemo Sabe is a play on words and actually stands for "que no sabe" which, translated from Spanish, means "he who knows nothing." Tonto in Spanish means stupid. ************************************************************ Lynne L. Harrison, Esq. | "The key to life: Poughkeepsie, New York | - Get up; lharrison(a)mhv.net | - Survive; http://www.dueprocess.com | - Go to bed." ************************************************************ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMoPpgj5A4+Z4Wnt9AQFHsgP5AVSS0pG5Sp2VqtTm+BefXkA9IcA//LvQ IXISs4RaLUrUmPjMkggFbyoMEEmIIz2TjdUr2Rjn+0+T/8cmSSXTrUqofroOu8rC G00MlCPGzLWuQ5g3iuxGfxZMszWuYWEkb7m37nP0ozdPgR3xG6sYkAeuTPiny27x ZXXPgmMbidU= =m/jZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Source blocking Vulis is futile
by Bovine Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John Anonymous MacDonald wrote: > > Please, remailers, source block Vulis for a week. > Remailer Fan > % telnet smail.based.host.edu smtp 250 Smail Ready ... ... mail from: someone(a)someplace.gov rcpt to: remailer(a)blacknet.org data Subject: Insert your favorite subject(spit) here Request-Remailing-To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com :: Insert your favorite message body (fart) here .. 250 Message Accepted quit Connection closed by foreign host. %

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Alongside Night on the WWW [long]
by J. Kent Hastings 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The following article is the foreword to the new edition of _Alongside Night_ by J. Neil Schulman, available for download in HTML format from http://www.pulpless.com/nite.html . Permission to cross-post in appropriate newsgroups, mail lists, and file bases granted. Copyright (c) 1996 by J. Neil Schulman. All other rights reserved. Pulling Alongside Night The Enabling Technology is Here by J. Kent Hastings (jkenth(a)c2.net) J. Neil Schulman is a prophet. Two weeks after his twenty-third birthday, on May 1, 1976, J. Neil Schulman finished the first draft of _Alongside Night_, a novel that accurately discerned the outline of 1996 reality. He finished the final draft in 1978, for publication on October 16, 1979. _Alongside Night_ describes things that weren't around in the '70s but arrived later, or are becoming commonplace now. "Citizens for a Free Society" could be the populist/libertarian source group for today's Patriot movement. The "TacStrike" division of the novel's Revolutionary Agorist Cadre could be recruited from today's militias, revolutionaries, and mercenaries, while today's cypherpunks could form the basis for the novel's "IntelSec." In the future of _Alongside Night_ as in our own 1996 -- but not in the 1970's when it was written -- panhandlers and the homeless are omnipresent due to economic hardship, professional youth gangs roam the streets of New York freely while big-time drug and people smuggling are ubiquitous; videophones are hitting the consumer market and computers are in use everywhere. Schulman's "First Anarchist Bank and Trust Company," a Swiss bank subsidiary, uses accounts denominated in gold, linked offshore -- a dream of today's cypherpunks. He predicts re- prohibition of gold, with TV actors warning "that just one little ounce of gold bullion can put you away in a federal penitentiary for up to twenty years." Transportation to one of Schulman's "Agorist Undergrounds" shields against all transmissions to prevent discovery of location aboveground, including heartbeat detectors being put into use in 1996 by the Immigration and Naturalization Service at the Mexican border. Weapons, cameras, recorders, transmitters, and radioactive materials are checked in transit. Security at the A.U. uses non-lethal weapons. Guards disarm guests upon arrival, then return their guns on their way to the trading floor. One shop is called "The Gun Nut," and "Lowell- Pierre Engineering" sells nukes. Rental per-square-foot calculates any risk of a government "G-Raid" against the costs of security measures. Cadre General Jack Guerdon, also the builder of some A.U.s including "Aurora," explains how the location of a large complex could be kept secret from the construction workers: "They were recruited from construction sites all over the world, were transported here secretly, worked only inside, and never knew where they were. If you think security is tight now, you should have been here during construction; a mosquito couldn't have gotten in or out." Thinking about it now, robots with telepresence may achieve the same security, with even less risk, since only Cadre equipment would be inside. TransComm's smuggling of contraband predicted marijuana traffic expanding into the sort of operation done in the 1980s by the cocaine cartels, small airports and all. Aurora's trading floor offers non-prescription drugs, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and LSD sold in defiance of DEA and FDA regulations, but with voluntary warning labels. Dialogue in _Alongside Night_ decries smoking prohibition at the time of the story. In California today, you aren't allowed to smoke in restaurants, workplaces, airports or other public buildings. The U.S. FDA classified nicotine a drug this year, so it's just a formality to prohibit delivery systems (cigarettes, cigars, and pipes) nationwide as well. Classroom video intercoms exist in the novel, even before consumer VCRs were a hot item. One of _Alongside Night_'s characters, Chin, uses a video capable laptop in a sequence written years before IBM introduced the first PC, and more years before anything you could call a laptop. Consumer electronics? "Aurora's library had a fair collection of books, videodiscs, and holosonic music cassettes" -- years before DAT was introduced. All trading and billing is done by computer with access controls, a projection made before most banks even had ATMs, much less telephone bill-paying.. Elliot chooses a pass phrase like today's PGP requires, and the Cadre contract assures authorized disclosure only. Aurora's hotel room keys are computerized in the novel, but it wasn't like that at hotels in the 1970s. Also in Aurora, computer terminals are in each hotel room. The electronic contract used by the Cadre in _Alongside Night_ is imitated today by digital forms used millions of times daily on the World Wide Web, including Schulman's own site http://www.pulpless.com/. Schulman wrote the first chapters of the book in 1974, describing his fictional economist "Martin Vreeland," winner of the Nobel prize for economics -- two years before Milton Friedman actually won his in 1976. And while Schulman did fail to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union, his description of the almost casual fall of the United States government over the two week timespan in his novel parallels the bloodless coup attempt against Gorbachev in 1992, which completed the fall of the Soviet Union. Neil predicted Chinese Norinco handguns and rifles being imported into the United States: Elliot Vreeland carries a ".38 caliber Peking revolver." Such imports were legalized after Alongside Night was written and, after becoming popular items, imports of Chinese firearms into the U.S. are now banned again. The Cadre are armed, but not on an aggressive revenge mission against the feds, as a "drive-by" with a non-lethal, temporarily-blinding magnesium flash, used to evade a FBI sedan, demonstrates. Foreigners with hard currency buy relatively cheap U.S. assets in_ Alongside Night_, before Rockefeller Center or major portions of the entertainment industry were bought by Japanese conglomerates. Schulman predicts the "mall-ization" of America because of fear of crime on city streets, and police replaced with private patrols such as "Fifth Avenue Merchant Alliance Security (FAMAS)." "Air Quebec" indicates Schulman's prediction of Quebec secession, which seems likely soon after a fifty-fifty split in the last election to test the issue. The secession of Texas doesn't seem as far-fetched these days as it did in 1976. Just think of the Montana legislators who introduced a bill to secede a couple of years ago. Schulman's novel is set during the final two weeks of a catastrophic "wheelbarrow" inflation. Confiscatory taxes have forced people out of aboveground jobs and into either working "off the books," or unemployed on the dole. Gresham's Law has Americans using blue "New Dollars": "More than anything else, it resembled _Monopoly_ money"; and fixed-value coins disappear so fast for their metallic value that vending-machine tokens fixed daily to the price of the "eurofranc" are just about the only real money in circulation. The President complains about the U.S. being treated like a banana republic by the "European Common Market Treaty Organization, a combination of the European Common Market and a U.S.-less NATO," the U.S. having been kicked out for no longer being able to afford keeping overseas troop commitments. The Chancellor of EUCOMTO informs the White House, "Mr. President, even bananas do not decay as quickly as the value of your currency these past few months." In the 1970's, the European Union was not yet negotiated and NATO was still almost entirely controlled by the United States. In _Alongside Night_, political dissidents are arrested on secret warrants, and the FBI gulag they're stuck in (codenamed "Utopia") is blown up by the feds as a cover-up. Of course, nothing like that could ever happen in real life, right? Schulman's account of a Federal Renovation Zone rebuilding Times Square in N.Y. predicts today's sweeping federalization of lands, opposed by the sagebrush rebellion. Future conflict between militias and the feds seems inevitable today since both sides see the other as a fatal threat and neither side is backing down. An Oracle headline in _Alongside Night_: "FBI Chief Powers attributes last night's firebombings of bureau offices to outlaw 'Revolutionary Agorist Cadre.'" The recent FBI raids in Colorado and West Virginia against militia groups supposedly planning terrorism -- not to mention Waco and Ruby Ridge -- demonstrates that anti-federal sentiment isn't laughed off as harmless anymore. The FBI chief in the novel keeps copies of "confidential" enemies lists at home, long before Filegate. In the 1970's when J. Neil Schulman wrote his novel, the general image of the FBI was Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., on _The FBI_. Today's FBI is better characterized by the paranoia of _The X-Files_, where higher-ups are usually in complicity with dark forces. The Emergency Broadcast System in _Alongside Night_ extends even to telephones -- using the phone system during the crackdown requires authorized beepers -- while radio and TV programming simulates normality while the government collapses. Today's FBI digital wiretap law will provide capability for millions of simultaneous wiretaps and the major broadcast networks have accepted official explanations uncritically of everything from who started the fire at Waco to the cause of the explosion that destroyed TWA Flight 800. In _Alongside Night_, we learn that a _New York Times_ front-page story headlined "Vreeland Widow Assures Public Husband Died Naturally" is disinformation. Echoes of Vince Foster and the Arkancides? An "Oracle" headline in _Alongside Night_ predicts military dissent: "TEAMSTER PRESIDENT WARNS POSSIBILITY OF ARMED FORCES WILDCAT STRIKES IF PENTAGON DOES NOT MEET DEMANDS..." And when -- due to a busted budget -- an absence of government paychecks combines with the latest government scandal, a two-century-old superpower collapses like a house of cards. Where did a prediction of revolution in the U.S. come from, if not the fevered dreams of a militant paranoid? Young Schulman, a student of Austrian economics, just "followed the money," determining who would earn it and who would control it. During the 1970s, hippies dropped out and moved to communes, while tax and sagebrush rebels fought to keep the government out of their pockets and off their lands. California's Proposition 13 and the election of U.S. President Ronald Reagan were the results of the establishment co-opting anti-government positions. Despite this, the current political situation in the U.S. is more volatile than ever. Job security doesn't exist for anybody, so leftists are forming new parties out of disgust with the Democrats, while right-wingers who believe Republicans indistinguishable join militias. But perhaps the most revolutionary development is the Internet and the World Wide Web, which threaten government currency controls, tax collection, and media restrictions. _Alongside Night_ predicted revolutionary cadres organizing to resist and replace the State with an "agorist" society. Agorism, according to Samuel Edward Konkin III, who coined the term, is the integration of both libertarian theory and counter- economic practice, neither inactive "library libertarians" prattling on with their idle complaints, nor simple criminals preying on society. Agorists insist on both civil and economic liberties for all individuals, encourage efficient restitution for contract and rights violations, yet oppose a monopoly of coercion from even a limited "minarchist" State. From Konkin's _New Libertarian Manifesto_: "Coercion is immoral, inefficient and unnecessary for human life and fulfilment." This is not pacifism because defensive violence is not coercion. Coercion is the _initiation_ of violence or its threat. You can't morally start a fight, but you can finish one. ... "When the State unleashes its final wave of supression--and is successfully resisted--this is the definition of _Revolution_." Most citizens go along with the government, whether "right or wrong," to preserve order, defend freedom, and more recently to assist the poor and protect the environment. When it becomes obvious that the government is hostile to these purposes, many of its subjects will no longer feel guilty about joining the radical opposition. A rich, slave-owning, dead European white male cracker named Thomas Jefferson (sorry, he's not "the Sage of Monticello" anymore), wrote similar things about King George III in the _Declaration of Independence_. I'm sure T.J.'s writings would be found in Aurora's library, along with the following titles, most of which are specified in _Alongside Night_. Productive workers will "withdraw their sanction," according to Ayn Rand's 1957 _magnum opus_, _Atlas Shrugged,_ and this will lead to "the collapse of the Looter's State." Rand also described an underground "Galt's Gulch" of black market revolutionaries in her classic novel. Murray Rothbard hinted at stateless defense in _Man, Economy, and State_ (1962). Robert Heinlein portrayed a stateless legal system and revolution in _The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress_ (1966). Rothbard describes stateless defense services fully in _Power and Market_ (1970), echoing Gustavus De Molinari's 1849 essay "The Production of Security." Molinari was an economist in the original French _laissez- faire_ school of Frederick Bastiat. Molinari concluded that justice and defense were goods like any other, best provided in a competitive market rather than political monopoly. Konkin's _New Libertarian Manifesto_ (published in 1980, based on a talk given in February 1974 which influenced _Alongside Night_) inspired the creation of The Agorist Institute, "symbolically founded on the last day of 1984," now with a web site at http://www.agorist.org/. That's all fine for free-market supporters, but wouldn't "progressive" groups try to impose their own one-party dictatorships? What's in it for the masses? Despite their famous friendship with Newt Gingrich, Alvin and Heidi Toffler are active in labor and ecology circles. They point out that telecommuting is 29 times more efficient than physical commuting in private cars. If 12% telecommuted, the 75 million barrels of gasoline saved would completely eliminate the need for foreign oil and future Gulf Wars. Real estate now used for office space could be used for local housing. The Tofflers believe traditional factors of production such as land, labor, and capital are being dwarfed by the growing importance of information. Information is inexhaustible, it can be shared but still kept. Widely copied software brings more user suggestions and faster improvements. It puts scarcity economics on its ear. Expensive bulky production methods are being "ephemeralized" (to use a term coined by Bucky Fuller), replaced by flexible cheap computers to satisfy local consumer tastes. More people can afford access to computerresources, with less damage to the environment. Telecommuting is safer than driving, which currently kills a Vietnam War's worth of fatalities each year, without requiring "strategic" resources to fight over. Silicon comes from sand, which is plentiful. Because programs like PGP protect users from both evil hackers and a fascist global police state, traditional leftists embrace the new technology, and even build their own web sites. Karl Marx wrote of objective and subjective conditions being necessary for Revolution. "Objective" in this case means the physical ability to overthrow the current regime. "Subjective" means the desire and mass support to do it. The 1960s arguably provided the subjective conditions: an unpopular war, a vicious police crackdown on agitators, and hundreds of thousands of protesters marching in the streets. But these subjective conditions weren't perfect. The economy was still robust, not yet weighed down with the debts racked up in the 1970's by the Wars On Poverty and Vietnam, and no stagflation and oil crisis yet. The objective conditions were bad. Individuals and small groups could not do much mischief without being overwhelmed by Chicago police or National Guard troops thrown against them. Today, a single troublemaker can afford to sign up for Internet service under a pseudonym and use anonymous remailers to post messages in widely read "newsgroup" conferences, distributed to more than 135 countries without identification. The Rulers and the Court Opinion Makers won't let their ill- gotten monopolies collapse without a fight. Every day we hear about the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse: Terrorists, Pedophiles, Money-Launderers, and Drug Smugglers. Defenders of privacy and free speech on the Internet get smeared for "fighting law enforcement" just like the Revolutionary Agorist Cadre in _Alongside Night_. Restrictions on the Internet are likely to be passed for "crime and security" reasons and to hold users "accountable." Civil libertarians complain that such pornographically-explicit words as "breast" are being filtered by online services fearing prosecution, with the "unintended consequence" of forcing breast cancer survivors to choose euphemisms like "tit". Critics of data censorship say these restrictions are like trying to stop the wind from crossing a border. For example, when France (in anti-_laissez-faire_ fashion) blocked some newsgroups, an ISP in the United States, http://www.c2.net/, made them available to French users via the World Wide Web. Next there's the problem of how to make a living underground. Schulman watched Anthony L. Hargis found a "bank that isn't a bank" in 1975, with "transfer orders" instead of checks, denominated in mass units of gold. ALH&Co. survives to this day, despite IRS inspections, hassles with the Post Office and local authorities, and ever-tighter banking restrictions against "money-laundering." Hargis explicitly forbids (by voluntary contract) his account holders from selling drugs, which suggests how proprietary communities can choose to be drug-free within a future agorist society. Hargis is sincere in this restriction, not just playing clean to fool the authorities. Unfortunately, Hargis is not enthusiastic about encryption or the Internet. "Honest Citizens have nothing to hide." Rarely does the weed of government research bear anything but the bitter fruits of mass destruction, disinformation, and bureaucratic disruption of innocent people's lives. Exceptions may include public-key cryptography, spread-spectrum radio and the Internet Protocol. Programmers such as Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)'s Philip R. Zimmermann are using the government sponsored RSA algorithm to thwart the efforts of every State's security agent. In Myanmar (formerly Burma), where PGP is used by rebels fighting dictatorship, the mere possession of a network-capable computer will bring a lengthy prison sentence. In 1995, David Chaum announced the availability of untraceable digital cash ("Ecash"), denominated in U.S. Dollars (Federal Reserve Units, or "frauds" as Hargis would call them) from Mark Twain Bank in St. Louis, MO. Ecash can be withdrawn, deposited, and spent without fee anywhere on the Internet. The only charge is when exchanging Ecash for a particular currency. Chaum lives in Amsterdam, the location of the "secret annex" in _The Diary of Anne Frank_. During World War II, the Nazis seized the government records in Amsterdam before partisans could burn them, and used them to track down and kill Jews, including members of Chaum's own family. Perhaps this explains his desire for computer privacy. In 1985, David Chaum described his invention in an article as "Security Without Identification: Transaction Systems To Make 'Big Brother' Obsolete." Ecash protects privacy yet thwarts deadbeat counterfeiters. Similarly, software filters against "spam" and other unwanted messages obviate a State crackdown against anonymity. Chaum's Digicash company now serves a number of banks in different countries, and provides the "electronic wallet" software for use by their account holders. With Ecash, items may be purchased without identifying the buyer, even if the banks and merchants exchange information, but the seller may be disclosed if the buyer wishes to publicly dispute a purchase. As it exists, privacy is compromised because of bank disclosure requirements, but it isn't hard to imagine underground banks with unofficial ecash (as opposed to proprietary Ecash), using their own currency or gold. Respecting your right to be secure in the privacy of your own home would let you advertise, send catalogs, take orders, send processed data or tele-operate machinery (in other words, do your _work_), then send invoices, collect ecash payments, and deposit your unreported earnings scot-free in offshore accounts. Using ecash and encrypted remailers, there would be no way for tax collectors to tell if you made $100 last year or $100,000,000. If measures such as mandatory internal passports and routine checkpoints can't restrict who can work or determine accurate income taxes due, they'll have to employ ubiquitous surveillance--a totalitarian system will be the only way to protect the privileges of the tax eaters. Although necessary for the future survival of the State, a crackdown will provoke resistance. Private communications bypass official propaganda, as the Committees of Correspondence did during the American Revolution. They'll be forced to bug your house. Don't worry, the automatic image-processing (exists today!) 24-hour cameras will be labeled "for your protection." Worse than Orwell's _1984_, they won't need humans to look through them, they'll identify everyone and trace their movements with blessed convenience. Couldn't they just tap the phones? Sure, but with encrypted data to and from an Internet Service Provider they wouldn't get much. Couldn't they require back-door "escrowed" keys and outlaw strong encryption? Not good enough, they need _constant_ monitoring (not just with a court order) to collect taxes. Scofflaws might send innocent looking images and sound files with steganographically hidden data using methods designed to thwart detection and disruption. In 1996, for real, any data collected about you can be shared with the FBI, U.S. Customs, DEA, IRS, Postal inspectors, and the Secret Service because the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), located down the street from the CIA in Vienna, Virginia pools the data. I guess anything goes to stop crime and protect the children, right? In _Alongside Night_, temporary relays and infrared modulation of engine heat disguises communication signals. With enhancement of spread-spectrum radios recently introduced, a channel wouldn't be defined by a single radio frequency, but by a "spreading code" of frequency hops with staggered dwell times, so that jammers and eavesdroppers won't be able to predict where, and for how long, the carrier will go next. A hybrid with the direct sequence technique would mix each bit of the message with several pseudo-random "chip" bits, to spread the signal at each hop. A transmitted reference in one band, of purely random thermal noise in a resistor for example, can be compared to the reference mixed with a message in another, so that the authorized receiver correlates the two to recover the message. Low-powered microwave, lasers, unreported underground cables, antennas disguised as flag poles and many other methods would insure that the email got through during a blackout. Today, when "rightsizing" has made a temporary placement firm the largest employer in the U.S., and the President's own budget projects a federal tax rate of 84%, not including state, county, city and other local taxes, we can count on greater numbers swelling the ranks of radical movements in the face of a hostile establishment. "Dr. Merce Rampart," the woman leading Schulman's Cadre, offers advice to dislocated personnel in the "New Dawn" of a proprietary anarchist revolution: "With the exception of those government workers who perform no marketable service--tax collectors, regulators, and so on--we are urging them to declare their agencies independent from the government, and to organize themselves into free workers' syndicates. Shares of stock could be issued to employees and pensioners by whatever method seems fair, and the resultant joint-stock companies could then hire professional managers to place the operation on a profitable footing. I can envision this for postal workers, municipal services, libraries, universities, and public schools, et cetera. As for those civil servants whose jobs are unmarketable, I suggest that most have skills in accounting, administration, computers, law, and so forth, that readily could be adapted to market demand. That's the idea. It's now up to those with the necessary interests to use it or come up with something better." In the 1980's, after _Alongside Night_ was published, this idea became popular among libertarian-leaning conservatives. It's called privatization. _Alongside Night_ shows us a world where such ideas aren't merely a smokescreen for greater efficiency in the service of an ever more encompassing State. ## J. Kent. Hastings is co-director of the Agorist Institute (http://www.agorist.org) a partner in the Pulpless.Com online publishing venture (http://www.pulpless.com) a long-time cypherpunk, and radical activist.

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Re: Legal Deffinition of Encryption?
by Benjamin Grosman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear Sir, >Is there any law(s) that actully define encryption? > >At it's very basics encryption is taking a group of 1's & 0's converting them into a different group of 1's & 0's and providing a mecanisim to change them back to the original group of 1's & 0's. > >>From a legal standpoitnt how is PGP any different than PKZIP? How does the law make a diference between an "encryption" program and a "compression" program other than the fact that the encryption program is advertized as encryption and the compression program is advertized as compression? I have absolutely no idea: this is a very interesting problem. Not for just compression and encryption differention legally, but also, well, ANY other data form. If one defines a new format for saving data (i.e a new image format), and then exports this technology from the USA, is this exportation of munitions due to it's unknown qualities? Or what? I know that in Australia there have been problems defining electronic data, especially pictures (usually porn), for the purposes of prosecution. Because, really, a pornographic picture is no more than 1's and 0's arranged in a different way by a different algorithm. Thus I think it most likely that the law would try and approach it from the direction of the algorithm that saved the data and the intent with which the algorithm was written. Otherwise, I don't know. Yours Sincerely, Benjamin Grosman

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Re: "Nightmare on Crypto Street, Part 1"
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:42 AM 11/8/1996, Timothy C. May wrote: > And whenever any of us raised issues of Constitutionality of the measures > Peter was predicting, such as random searches, conviction based on > possession of an illegal tool, forced escrow, etc., it seemed that Peter's > response was usually some variant of: > "Won't matter. The people will demand action." Yes, in a pogrom situation, the Constitution is not much protection. However, you can do quite a bit without straying far outside the bounds of the Constitution. Certainly without straying farther than the Supreme Court has already done. Random searches are probably not necessary and the procedure of issuing search warrants need not change. Instead of making the transmission of encrypted messages illegal, encrypted messages become just cause for a search of somebody's house for illegal cryptography software. There is no prior restraint of free speech in this legal scenario. What you make illegal is the possession and operation of cryptography software. Consider this analogy: I get up on a podium and announce "I shot the Sheriff." I have a legal right to do this. However, if somebody did recently shoot the sheriff, it is also likely that my house will be searched. The degree to which the Constitution needs to be eroded is slight if there is broad popular support for the measures. The reason for this is that the list of suspects will be short. If the list of suspects is short, you can go to some trouble to follow Constitutional procedures with each one. Witch hunts and random searches will occur if there is large minority devoted to pursuing cryptoanarchy and a majority which is just as strongly devoted to putting a stop to it. It is not one hundred percent clear to me that the operation of cryptographic software is speech. The software certainly does not add meaning to the messages you are sending. Unfortunately, the term "free speech" is vague and confusing. You can broadcast any number you like, unless it happens to be the number that corresponds to the Windows95 executable. You can say anything you like, but you can't say anything that is untrue about a private person. Where in the First Amendment is any distinction drawn between public and private people? Why am I allowed to say untrue things about public figures? And so on. There are any number of ways to make the possession of cryptographic software illegal. For instance, the government could change the patent laws to make cryptography patents have a 100 year term. (This will be done to promote cryptography. ;-) Then, after the evils of cryptography are "discovered" the government can nationalize the software patents and beef up the penalties for patent violations. > But I think this "nightmare scenario" is implausible. I agree. The reason we have to consider this "straw man" is that it is considered to be a legitimate policy discussion amongst people at the highest levels of our society. > And the points many of us have been making about digital commerce, the > central role of the Net in so many things, and the international > connections, mean that a pogrom launched against the Net just isn't going > to fly. Too many corporate interests are at stake. I agree with this, too. I think a lot of people have been sitting on the fence waiting to see which way the crypto ball is going to bounce. I think it's going to bounce towards cryptoanarchy. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Spam Hater: fight back the spammers
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From http://www.compulink.co.uk/~net-services/spam/ Hit back at the Spammers! Get lots of e-mail offering you get-rich-quick schemes? Want to hit back? "Spam Hater" is free Windows software that helps you respond effectively and makes it hot for these people. Analyses the Spam Extracts a list of addresses of relevant Postmasters, etc. Generates a "WHOIS" query to help track the perpetrator Prepares a reply Choice of legal threats, insults or your own message Appends a copy of the Spam if required Puts it in a mail window ready for sending Spam Hater works with lots of popular e-mail programs directly - there's no tedious cutting and pasting. Supported E-Mail Programs Ameol, AOL 2.5I, Eudora Light 1.5.2, 1.5.4, Eudora Pro 2.2, Free Agent 0.99, Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 (4.70.1155), Netscape 1.2N, 2.02, 3.0, Pegasus Mail V2.4X, Virtual Access V3.51. Download here.. If you already have VBRUN300.DLL, save some time with the "lite" version. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred Member JPFO. "America's Aggressive Civil Rights Organization"

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:41 PM 11/8/1996, Matthew Ghio wrote: > If, as is presumed in this discussion, society will become divided into > two somewhat distinct groups of people, the crypto-anonymous group and > the traceable-identifiable group, then the predictable outcome is that > members of the traceable-identifiable group will become increasingly > victimized by members of the crypto-anonymous group. People who are > easily identifiable and tracked are easy prey. If people feel they have to go "underground" in order to protect themselves, you will see near unanimous support for mandatory GAK. This qualifies as a nightmare scenario for almost everybody, even many of the readers of this list. Universal traceability and identifiability is not necessarily a consequence of GAK. By universal I mean "available to everyone." Were this to be a problem, the information would be confined to "responsible" parties. I think I can describe a way to do this in nearly every scenario. There is certainly no reason why driver's license data need be on the Web. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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[Announcement] Cypherpunks Shooting Club
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

By popular request, I am following up on the three year old idea of the Cypherpunks Shooting Club. All Cypherpunks in the San Francisco Bay Area interested in participating are welcome to contact my by email. If enough individuals wish to participate, the first practice session will be held at the United Sportsmen Rifle Range in Concord this Sunday. Bring your own firearm or use one of the ones provided. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred Member JPFO. "America's Aggressive Civil Rights Organization"

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Re: "Nightmare on Crypto Street, Part 1"
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:42 AM 11/8/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >I also summarize Peter's set up much as you did: > >"Suppose the Four Horsemen ride in. Suppose planes are being shot down, >buildings in every city are being blown up, people are being killed left >and right by crypto-hired-killers, Sarin gas is wafting through the >subways, and cats are afraid to go out at night. People will get out their >pitchforks and break in the doors of their neighbors in search of the >demonic crypto tools of Satan. Don't forget the flaming torches! Carried by the throngs of terrified villagers! Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: HAPPY GUY FAWKES DAY!
by apoulter＠nyx.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Being English I did a double take when I read the following:- Sandy Sandfort wrote:- > On this day in 1605 the Gunpowder Plot was foiled. Guy Fawkes > and his compatriots had intended to blow up Parliment. > > The English celebrate it because Guy Fawkes failed. > > I celebrate it because he tried. :-) I'm sorry Sandy, you are supporting the wrong side. Guy Fawkes was not against government but just Protestantism. He wanted a Catholic restoration in England enforced by foreign governments. This would have involved many people being tortured and executed for their religious beliefs. It was the growing rift between Parliament and the Stuart Kings over who should rule that lead to the English Civil War, Charles the First being executed on the 30th January 1649 and the end of government by birthright. In the period of the Commonwealth, when Parliament ruled alone, all sorts of strange political ideas appeared, like the one that everyone had a right to individual freedom (Winstanley and the Levellers). All this would have been derailed had Guy Fawkes succeeded. I am more than happy to celebrate Guy Fawkes night with the kids and give a penny for the guy. Alan Poulter

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Electric Library
by Electric Library 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear Electric Library Trial Member, Your free trial membership to Electric Library has recently expired. First, we'd like to say "thanks for trying our service." We sincerely hope your experience was enjoyable. We'd also like to invite you to take advantage of full membership...because we know that if you had the opportunity to use the service during your trial membership, you won't want to go a single day without it! So subscribe now, and for less than the cost of a daily newspaper, continue to have access to all of the Electric Library benefits you sampled during your trial period. Visit to www.elibrary.com and you will immediately begin to... -> Save valuable time. Make the most of your time online and even save trips to the local library. -> Access high quality, full text publications all on one site. -> Provide your entire family with a safe, comprehensive online research library. -> Receive unlimited personal access to the entire Electric Library for just $9.95 per month. We also wanted to make sure we are doing everything we can to create the best Electric Library possible. Serving our members is our highest priority. At any time, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about Electric Library, please share them with us by emailing to elibrary(a)infonautics.com or call 1-800-247-7644 (6 days a week, Monday through Friday from 8 AM to 8 PM EST and Saturday, from 8 AM to 4 PM EST). Once again, thank you for trying Electric Library! We hope to welcome you as a subscriber soon! Here's how to subscribe: ->To Sign up Online: 1) Open your web browser to http://www.elibrary.com 2) Click on the "Subscriptions" link on the left side of the home page and follow the directions. ->To sign up Offline : Please print this form and fill it out completely and deliver it via email, fax or mail. We will create an account for you and notify you via e-mail, usually within 24 hours of our receiving this form. Email: info(a)elibrary.com Fax : (610) 971-8851 Mail: Subscriptions Infonautics Corporation 900 West Valley Road, Suite 1000 Wayne, PA 19087 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscription Form: (Please fill in all information) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please be sure to write your name and address as they appear on your credit card First Name:_________________________________ Last Name:_________________________________ Telephone:_________________________________ E-mail Address:_____________________________ Address Line One:______________________________ Address Line Two:______________________________ City:________ State:____ Zip:____________________ Country:______________________________________ We currently bill only through all major credit cards: WE DO NOT ACCEPT CHECKS OR MONEY ORDERS. Credit Card Number:_________________________________________ Credit Card Type:___________________ Expiration Date: __________ Please choose a User ID and password for your Electric Library membership. User names should be more than six characters in length but less than thirteen. User Name:________________________________ Password:____________ Finally, please review the Terms and Conditions of our service posted at www.elibrary.com. By subscribing to the Electric Library, you indicate your acceptance of these terms and conditions. These terms apply to individuals only.

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Re: Vulis on the remailers
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Vulis writes: >nobody(a)cypherpunks.ca (John Anonymous MacDonald) writes: > >> Please, remailers, source block Vulis for a week. >> Remailer Fan > >I'm not sending anything via any remailers. Hmmmm. Let's see...I'll respect you in the morning, the check is in the mail, I won't come in your mouth... Get real, kook.

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Re: Legal Definition of Encryption?
by Richard L. Field 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The U.S. Export Administration Regulations (Commerce Department) include the following definitions: "Cryptography" -- "The discipline that embodies principles, means and methods for the transformation of data in order to hide its information content, prevent its undetected modification or prevent its unauthorized use. 'Cryptography' is limited to the transformation of information using one or more 'secret parameters' (e.g., crypto variables) and/or associated key management. Note: 'Secret parameter': a constant or key kept from the knowledge of others or shared only within a group." (Part 772) "Information security" -- "All the means and functions ensuring the accessibility, confidentiality or integrity of information or communications, excluding the means and functions intended to safeguard against malfunctions. This includes 'cryptography', 'cryptanalysis', protection against compromising emanations and computer security." These definitions and others are used within the Commerce Control List (Supplement No. 1 to Part 774) to regulate the export of certain Information Security related equipment, software, etc. (Category 5:II). The U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (State Department) also regulates (until 1/1/97, when jurisdiction is expected to move to Commerce) the export of certain "Cryptographic systems", etc. including those with the capability of maintaining secrecy or confidentiality of information systems. (The United States Munitions List, Section 121.1, Category XIII-Auxiliary Military Equipment) - Richard Field At 01:48 PM 11/8/96 -0400, "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii(a)amaranth.com> wrote: >Is there any law(s) that actully define encryption? > >At it's very basics encryption is taking a group of 1's & 0's converting them into a different group of 1's & 0's and providing a mecanisim to change them back to the original group of 1's & 0's. > >>From a legal standpoitnt how is PGP any different than PKZIP? How does the law make a diference between an "encryption" program and a "compression" program other than the fact that the encryption program is advertized as encryption and the compression program is advertized as compression?

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No Subject
by Bovine Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim C. May has been beaten up numerous times by fellow prostitutes for driving blow job prices down.

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allow me to state the obvious....
by SUCRUM22_at_INDY-ADP＠smtp-gw.cv62.navy.mil 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

i am your average joe who uses the computer for work and e-mail and the occasional jaunt into the internet. going along reading this whole crypto-anarchy thing makes me want to cry. the whole point of cryptography is getting info from my eyes to yours. period. you can say that "illegal" information passes along the internet, but hello people - illegalities have been going on since long before the invention of the computer (or even the notion of cryptography - if i may stop to point out the obvious). the only reason _i_ use encrypted stuff is because i don't want my nosy sysadmin reading my mail. its that simple. think about it. how many times is your e-mail handed off? when sent it naturally follows the most convenient path to its destination, and even anonymous re-mailers (can) keep a hard copy of the messages that cross their connections with the original address included. you can go off into spoofing address and so on, but your average joe may (or may not) have the time or knowledge (much less the motivation) to do that. keep that in mind before you go saying that crypto is a good/bad thing. ---------------------- SUCRUM22(a)cv62.navy.mil ----------------------- a calculated risk based on the possible consequence of an action is better than a haphazard one based on poor judgment or ignorance --------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't confuse my views with those of the DoD or the United States Navy

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Re: Information [for new PGP user]
by Paul Bradley 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >I'll bet you can't find 10 out of 1,000 users who have read the total source, > >let alone comprehended and validated it. > > Depending on the system, compiler and version of PGP, compilation may or > may not function as expected. I know, I class myself as quite an experience programmer (though I haven`t done a lot of code recently) but I spent several days weeding through the bugs and it still wouldn`t compile on Borland C++ V4.51 so I just read the core code and hoped the executable was really derived from that code. I`m normally more paranoid than that but I just don`t have the time to spend getting borland to compile it. It won`t even compile on my system with the borland makefile than comes with PGP. Has anyone else on here managed to get it to compile under Borland and how long did it take them???? Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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New Linux-IPSEC mailing list for the S/WAN project
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm sending you this message because you might be interested in helping to build or test or document, or teach about, my S/WAN project to secure 5% of the net by Christmas. There is now a public mailing list which you can join to find out what's happening in the project, get the latest software for testing, ask questions, etc. To join the list, send mail to: linux-ipsec-REQUEST(a)clinet.fi The email should contain a single line that just says: subscribe This mailing list will have discussions, not just announcements, and will be very technical (not political or social). The S/WAN project's goal is to provide free software that makes it easy to encrypt a site's net traffic automatically, and to encourage acceptance and deployment of this software. My original timetable aimed to have 5% of the net encrypted by Christmas. We will not meet this goal; it was romantic, but very ambitious. Instead, my current goal is to have our first complete software release available by Christmas, which people can use to encrypt 5% of the net in the following months. This is still an ambitious goal. In case you haven't been following developments in the project, there's a new version of the Domain Name System BIND code that you can install to enable your site to publish its keys to the net. Our software to USE the keys isn't ready yet -- but it usually takes weeks or months to get your domain administrator to update their version of BIND, so it's a great idea to get them started now. There's also a very new test version of the Linux kernel code that implements low-level packet encryption. This code requires manual configuration, and only implements single-DES rather than triple-DES. It has a long way to go. But it enables you to manually set up encrypted tunnels to other sites around the Internet (such as other sites in your company, or which you collaborate with). Shaking out this layer and making it solid and bulletproof is important, so we can depend on it as we build the higher layers that provide encrypting tunnels automatically and opportunistically. Details on how to get the test software are in the web page at: http://www.cygnus.com/~gnu/swan.html I hope that having a mailing list for the helpers and implementers will make it easier for everyone to stay up to date, and easier for everyone to contribute. If we all push in the same direction, we may have 5% of the net traffic encrypted by Easter... John Gilmore PS: The new Linux-IPSEC mailing list is graciously hosted in Finland by Tatu Ylonen, author of ssh, another good piece of cryptographic software. Linux is the free operating system on which the project is being built. IPSEC is the set of (Internet Protocol SECurity) protocols which add packet-level encryption to TCP/IP.

2 1

Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by Paul Bradley 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> It appears to be widely believed that cryptoanarchy is irreversible. > Everybody believes that the race to deploy or forbid strong cryptography > will define the outcome for a long time. This is certainly my position... > I can't think of a reason why this should be so. > If the wide use of strong cryptography results in widely unpopular > activities such as sarin attacks and political assassinations, it > would not be all that hard to forbid it, even after deployment. I don`t think so. The point is that cryptoanarchic ideals and strong cryptography will be too widely deployed to remove them from circulation. Also I believe that the sheer amount of traffic over the internet will make it virtually impossible to find encrypted messages even if strong encryption is outlawed. And last but not least the system of anonymous remailers and the ease with which return addresses can be forged means people using strong cryptography couldn`t be traced anyway. Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

1 0

French Smart Card Firms in Merger Deal
by Dildophus 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

NEW YORK -- Schlumberger Electronic Transactions, a leading French smart card company, said Wednesday it signed a letter of intent to acquire Soliac, a unit of the French processing company Sligos that makes magnetic stripe and smart cards. The Schlumberger company's agreement to buy Solaic points to further consolidation in the smart card industry, which has seen a number of joint ventures and acquisitions in the past year. Solaic has manufacturing facilities in France and Spain. Its marketing operations are primarily in those countries, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The proposed transaction, which is subject to the signing of definitive agreements, would include a partnership to develop smart-card-based systems.

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FICS Group to Build On Microsoft Platform
by Dildophus 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

BRUSSELS -- FICS Group, an international banking systems company, announced a major electronic delivery initiative based on Microsoft Corp. technology. Expanding on the personal computer and telephone modes of banking service delivery, FICS said it is expanding into smart phones, personal digital assistants and wireless phones, electronic wallets, and Internet-based services. Microsoft platforms play a major role in FICS offerings, and Microsoft's Activex technology will be employed in Internet development. "The fact that FICS has chosen Windows NT as one of its key development platforms and adheres to the Open Financial Connectivity standard makes the company a valuable partner for Microsoft," said Ashley Steele, the Redmond, Wash., software company's marketing manager for the banking industry. FICS also participates in the Tandem Computers Inc. "payments factory" program, also based on Windows NT. Separately, FICS said it entered into a strategic partnership with Swift, the global banking telecommunications network. As a Level 3 partner, FICS is one of a few select firms that exchange strategic information with Swift and promote each other's products.

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Re: No More
by brazie＠ipa.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:53 PM 11/8/96 -0500, YoungSik Jeong wrote: >I want take off mail list > > >so do i, i tried but i keep getting all this damn mail

2 1

Why Crypto Is Hard
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We've put Bruce Schneier's "Why cryptography is harder than it looks" November 6 post to Risks at: http://jya.com/whyhard.htm Thanks to SZ.

1 0

Re: [Announcement] Cypherpunks Shooting Club
by camcc＠abraxis.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:54 PM 11/8/96 -0800, you wrote: :By popular request, I am following up on the three year old idea of the :Cypherpunks Shooting Club. : :Bring your own firearm or use one of the ones provided. :-- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred How timely, especially after (or during) Flame Wars--96! How are targets to be determined, by lot? Cordially, Alec PGP Fingerprint: pub 1024/41207EE5 1996/04/08 Alec McCrackin <camcc(a)abraxis.com> Key fingerprint = 09 13 E1 CB B3 0C 88 D9 D7 D4 10 F0 06 7D DF 31

2 1

Why Crypto Is Hard
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bruce asks his Risk post not be distributed on the Web. Okay.

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DCSB: Money Laundering -- The Headless Horseman of the Infocalypse
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----BY SAFEMAIL----- The Digital Commerce Society of Boston Presents "Black Unicorn" "Money Laundering -- The Headless Horseman of the Infocalypse" Tuesday, December 3, 1996 12 - 2 PM The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston One Federal Street, Boston, MA S. L. vonBernhardt, <mailto:unicorn@schloss.li>, is an attorney, a member of the board of directors of two European financial institutions, author of "Practical and Legal Problems Confronting the Asset Concealer in Relation to Offshore Financial and Corporate Entities" and a former member of the intelligence community. He is currently working to develop and preserve institutions dedicated to traditional standards of financial privacy. One of the most disturbing products of the "war on drugs" has been the effective criminalization of many forms of formerly legal financial transactions. The resulting legislation places serious burdens on financial institutions in the form of "due diligence" requirements, as well as building what can be an inflexible barrier before those who would implement uncompromised digital commerce systems. Mr. vonBernhardt will address the legislative burdens imposed on financial institutions, the likely impact on future systems of digital commerce, potential solutions through regulatory arbitrage, and the practical problems facing jurisdictions seeking to enforce regulations in the face of advanced systems of digital commerce. No cameras, please. This meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston will be held on Tuesday, December 3, 1996 from 12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of the Harvard Club of Boston, One Federal Street. The price for lunch is $27.50. This price includes lunch, room rental, and the speaker's lunch. ;-). The Harvard Club *does* have dress code: jackets and ties for men, and "appropriate business attire" for women. We need to receive a company check, or money order, (or, if we *really* know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by Saturday, November 30, or you won't be on the list for lunch. Checks payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston will have to be sent back. Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston". If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements (We've had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for instance), please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work something out. Planned speakers for DCSB are: January Rodney Thayer Applying PGP To Digital Commerce February David Kaufman 1996 in Review / Predictions for 1997 We are actively searching for future speakers. If you are in Boston on the first Tuesday of the month, and you would like to make a presentation to the Society, please send e-mail to the DCSB Program Commmittee, care of Robert Hettinga, rah(a)shipwright.com . For more information about the Digital Commerce Society of Boston, send "info dcsb" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu . If you want to subscribe to the DCSB e-mail list, send "subscribe dcsb" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu . Looking forward to seeing you there! Cheers, Robert Hettinga Moderator, The Digital Commerce Society of Boston -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----BY SAFEMAIL----- Version: 1.0b4 e22 iQCVAwUBMoSp3PgyLN8bw6ZVAQFaqgP/XPH82Z2EcgEpIQ0V2YiySW7Zlh/mYcxz xxoYtwVg5YwYmdlT7ueqFwRyzf/KfI4/MbLSj1NB+pDh2yEpZlokIo+u0qJPfYgT aP/bQg7fKOJ3iwrQUTlJuuxhM2TlUcqSlZXymgvvq/VZnq6uygT2GSC/OxMBTGrg aUq8cXlnNaI= =U4Mr -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "The cost of anything is the foregone alternative" -- Walter Johnson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/

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Re: Pseudo-law on the list and libel (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > > >This opens up the potential, for example, for Tim May to sue the operator of > > >the Cypherpunks mailing list now for posts from users (even anonymous ones) > > >which defame or otherwise liable his character, reputation, or ability to > > >pursue income in his chosen field. In short the operators of the list > > >becomes publishers and distributors of the material. It is the legal > > >difference between a bookstore and a book publisher. > > There is a very distinct difference between ejecting disruptive influences > and conducting one's self as a publisher and distributer. Exactly. Because the list takes in submissions from ALL parties and then resubmits them to ALL SUBSCRIBED parties it qualifies as a publisher. The real issue here is that folks on the net want the protection of the 1st Amendment but they don't want the responsibility that goes along with it. This list qualifies as a press. As a result it has a responsibility relating to what it distributes. Vulis was unpopular he was not distruptive. At NO time did he interfere with the normal operation of the list software or prevent submissions or remailings. > > Pseudo-law on this list is really getting out of hand. > > We need more lawyers. That should replace the pseudo-law with real law. We need fewer lawyers and better laws. Most pseudo-law is practiced by lawyers. Jim Choate

3 2

Re: "Nightmare on Crypto Street--the Return of Sun Devil"
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:11 AM 11/8/1996, Timothy C. May wrote: > As I said in my "Nightmare on Crypto Street" piece, it seems that Peter > counters every one of our counterarguments with some variant of "won't > matter--they'll have a dozen agents and 20 MIT graduates looking for > evidence." Or, "won't matter, the Bill of Rights will be suspended for the > duration of the Emergency." Well, it's hard to argue with such points. I've created some confusion with my posts which have been less than organized. That's a consequence of making it up as you go along. The dialogue has helped me to refine my thinking. (Thanks, guys!) This is the rough structure of my thinking: 1. Hypothetically, let's say "Nightmare on Crypto Street" happens. 1.1 We can't guarantee this will not happen, therefore it must be addressed. 1.2 This is an unlikely scenario. 2. Thus, there would be broad public support for GAK. 2.1 By broad, I mean even many former cypherpunks would recant. 3. Broad public support makes suppression of strong cryptography feasible. 3.1 And, without dramatic short term erosion of the Constitution. 3.2 Or, a short term break down in the rule of law. 3.3 The number of violators would be small, so resources would be available to do hard things. 3.3.1 Such as having 20 MIT grads go over your house with a fine toothed comb. 4. What are the motivations of the GAKers? 4.1 They appear to want to suppress strong cryptography *before* we there is *any* evidence of a problem. 4.2 That is unnecessary, because if 1. occurs, it may be addressed. 4.3 It is as easier to impose GAK after 1. occurs, rather than before. 4.2 Could it be that they want to prevent the public from discovering the benefits of cryptoanarchy? 4.3 Why have the GAKers failed to address the risk of a police state? We've seen many police states historically. They are an obvious and serious risk. The GAKers have been oddly reticent regarding this point. In the future I will try to make it more clear which area I am addressing. I'm sure many cypherpunks feel we are just rehashing issues that were settled long ago. I think it never hurts to go over our assumptions and help new people to fully understand cypherpunk ideas. It never hurts to anticipate future moves by the GAKers, either, even ones they haven't thought of yet. These discussions generate ideas of how to effect the changes we want to see. For instance, if we develop low tech inexpensive and easy ways to support cryptoanarchy, it makes it much harder to suppress. The difficulty in suppression may prevent ill-advised attempts to do so. Also, the more we can erode the barriers between code and language, the stronger the case is that laws governing code are violations of the First Amendment. What if you had a compiler that accepted English language instructions for how to build a crypto system? "Take a random number 64 bits long. Then find a prime which is a little larger. Then...." The language itself should remain protected by the First Amendment even if somebody else has a compiler which can turn it into software. Another conclusion we can draw is that cryptoanarchy is more of a political issue than many of us would like. That means we might put more effort into public opinion than just straight coding. (Tim may claim otherwise, but I think he agrees with this in practice.) It may also be that the "bad boy" image of the Cypherpunks is counterproductive to our goals. Many people do not know how strongly I feel that GAK is a terribly risky policy, as I have been playing Devil's Advocate for the last couple of days. Given almost every situation that is likely to arise, I am totally opposed to GAK, and not just mandatory GAK, any GAK whatsoever. For instance, were I given the choice between intellectual property laws (off which I have made my living), and GAK, I would seriously consider discarding the intellectual property laws. It is that bad of an idea. And, like just about everybody else, the idea that certain forms of arithmetic could be illegal is deeply offensive in its own right. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:30 AM 11/9/1996, Adam Back wrote: >Peter Hendrickson <ph(a)netcom.com> writes: >> Where will you keep your secret key? Remember, when they go through >> your house they bring 20 young graduates from MIT who are just dying >> to show how clever they are and save the world at the same time. > Keep your secret key in your head. I think this is hard to do in practice. I have tried. >>> This is the essence of steganography and the nature of signal and >>> noise are fundemental principles of information theory. >> >> The concept of noise is not all that well defined, however. There >> is no way to look at a signal and say "this is all noise." >> Sometimes physical theories may lead you to believe that it is all >> noise. That is fine for many applications, but when becomes less >> convinced of things if the consequences are severe. > Your plausible deniability has to get quite low before it will stand > up as "proof" in court. (This goes under 3.1 or 3.2 of my outline, which you may not have received yet.) My idea is that the lack of noise is used as evidence to get a search warrant. The search warrant is used to get the evidence to put you away forever. (This goes under 3.3 of the outline.) The severe penalties and significant chance of capture will keep the number of cryptoanarchists low. > Your real challenge is keeping your stego programs safe. Boot > strapping a stegoed encrypted file system while leaving no stego code > lying around isn't that easy. Excellent point, especially since you don't have an encrypted virtual disk. Can anybody resolve this? >>>> If you are not doing it by hand, you own terrorist software and will pay >>>> the price. >>> Ah yes, terrorist programs like cat and perl and operating systems like >>> Linux which contain a loopback filesystem that I can hook a perl >>> interpreter into at compile-time (which is enough for me to rewrite the >>> program from scratch each time if necessary, unless things like math >>> libraries are also outlawed on computers :) I think that the crypto >>> concentration camps are going to be very crowded places. >> Can you elaborate on this? I am curious to know exactly what you are going >> to keep in your head and what goes on the disk. Please post the Perl >> code that you would type in from scratch every time. > My specialty :-) > rc4 in C: > #define S,t=s[i],s[i]=s[j],s[j]=t /* rc4 key <file */ > unsigned char s[256],i,j,t;main(c,v)char**v;{++v;while > (s[++i]=i);while(j+=s[i]+(*v)[i%strlen(*v)]S,++i);for( > j=0;c=~getchar();putchar(~c^s[t+=s[i]]))j+=s[++i]S;} > rc4 in perl: > #!/usr/local/bin/perl -0777-- -export-a-crypto-system-sig -RC4-3-lines-PERL > @k=unpack('C*',pack('H*',shift));for(@t=@s=0..255){$y=($k[$_%@k]+$s[$x=$_ > ]+$y)%256;&S}$x=$y=0;for(unpack('C*',<>)){$x++;$y=($s[$x%=256]+$y)%256; > &S;print pack(C,$_^=$s[($s[$x]+$s[$y])%256])}sub S{@s[$x,$y]=@s[$y,$x]} (Under 3.3) I would have a hard time memorizing these programs. This pretty much guarantees that the number of cryptoanarchists will be small. (I am deeply envious of your legal right to post this code, however. Now, why was it that we broke away from the Mother Country?) I would like to see a longer exposition of your approach. Given a hostile environment, how would I operate a small anonymous perl coding service using your techniques? Don't forget to tell me how I get paid and when I get to spend my "ill-gotten" gains and how nobody will notice that I am doing it. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Black Unicorn exposed?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:00 AM 11/9/1996, Robert Hettinga wrote: > S. L. vonBernhardt, <mailto:unicorn@schloss.li>,... Black Unicorn recently stated that had taken measures to shield his identity so that people would be unable to cause harm to his professional activities by making unsubstantiated claims that could scare off prospective clients. It appears now that this protection has evaporated. It will not be very hard in the future to put this information together with other statements people may make about Mr. Unicorn. We are hardly operating in a hostile environment. Yet, somebody who has apparently gone to some effort to have an anonymous identity has been exposed. The implications of this are worth considering. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Bruce's 'Why Cryptography Is Hard' is still draft
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

----- Forwarded message from Phil Agre ----- >From rre-request(a)weber.ucsd.edu Sat Nov 9 05:16:00 1996 Resent-Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 20:50:17 -0800 (PST) Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 20:50:15 -0800 (PST) From: Phil Agre <pagre(a)weber.ucsd.edu> Message-Id: <199611090450.UAA27962(a)weber.ucsd.edu> To: rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu Subject: notes Resent-Message-ID: <"7C7uBC.A.H1G.I2Ahy"@weber> Resent-From: rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu Reply-To: rre-maintainers(a)weber.ucsd.edu X-URL: http://communication.ucsd.edu/pagre/rre.html X-Mailing-List: <rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu> archive/latest/1379 X-Loop: rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu Precedence: list Resent-Sender: rre-request(a)weber.ucsd.edu Notes on network computers, blind copies, democratic culture, monopolies, and the idea of an Internet establishment... As a periodic reminder, a Web archive of nearly all the RRE messages ever sent can be found through http://communication.ucsd.edu/pagre/rre.html It turns out that the article on cryptography by Bruce Schneier that I forwarded from the Risks Digest the other day was actually an unfinished draft that Peter Neumann sent out by mistake. Bruce asks that everyone refrain from propagating that version around the net. ----- End of forwarded message from Phil Agre ----- -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume

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Re: Black Unicorn exposed?
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sarah v. Bernhardt will be thrillingly laid bare in Beantown. Swiss cheese, she flashed, foxily fluttering the lie-machine. That "no cameras, please" is spooky-spooky tease, no dirty-looky pix of the Wonder Bare *ookie. Pseudo-Actors for hire. Harvard-bred, breeding lot of the B&B beaners. Dirty laundrying of tropical hula-moola, you betcha your rubber check, get there early, to admire the hall sweepers. Keep your eye peeled for the one-eyed one-horn in overalls using infra-red.

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Re: Who owns cypherpunks [RANT] (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Jim Ray wrote: > > > I'm sure John's quaking in his boots. Reread my campground analogy, and try > > to refute it. You can't. Go start your own list with no moderation. Go start > > a more moderated list than John's, like Perry's will be. Do whatever, but > > this moronic thread must end! I run several lists and have for quite a few years. In that time I have never censored any member. I have had similar instances as to Vulis and my responce has been and will continue to be. "This is your problem, I have no authority to prohibit membership or submissions of members of the list. If you wish to not see such submissions from some party then it is your responsibility to deal with it. In short, either unsubscribe or filter." > Ironic, isn't it? Jim says "this moronic thread *must* end", and yet, this very list > that is John's *private* property is filling up with rants about censorship. Tsk tsk. I never said any such thing. Please quit attributing comments to me which are untrue. > Maybe next time they'll make it more apparent at subscription time that there's no > assurance of free speech here! The fact that it is 'private property' is irrelevant to this issue. Most 'presses' are private property. Trying to change the subject won't work. As to making it clear at subscription time what the actual operating rules are is my EXACT point. In fact you are agreeing with my position. At the current time there are no indications at log on that this list is considered private property, that the operator reserves the right to edit or refuse submissions, etc. which is what makes it a 'public' list and what makes him legaly liable for the cencorship he has enacted without warning. I have been on this list for several years and at no point in that time have I agreed to anything which gives the operator of the list my permission to modify or refuse my original submissions. If he or a third party wishes to refer to them in part or in toto in their own submissions is fine. That is the whole point of the list. Jim Choate

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Re: New Linux-IPSEC mailing list for the S/WAN project
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:29 AM 11/9/96 -0800, John Gilmore <gnu(a)toad.com> wrote: >I'm sending you this message because you might be interested in >helping to build or test or document, or teach about, my S/WAN project >to secure 5% of the net by Christmas. > >There is now a public mailing list which you can join to find out >what's happening in the project, get the latest software for testing, >ask questions, etc. To join the list, send mail to: > linux-ipsec-REQUEST(a)clinet.fi >The email should contain a single line that just says: > subscribe Actually, it needs to say subscribe linux-ipsec # 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

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Re: FW: Dr. Vulis is not on cypherpunks any more [RANT] (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From: "networks(a)vir.com" <networks(a)vir.com> > Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 15:15:38 -0500 > > It seems that, like a bookstore, the cypherpunks mailing list has the > right to choose the content it distributes and who it distributes the content > to. Actualy bookstores distribute the books they are under contract to distribute via the publishers they have contracts with. An easy way to tell if a bookstore is a reasonable distributor and one with some level of ethics is to ask if they participate in the yearly banned books week. If they don't I would suggest you go elsewhere. Businesses in general are not allowed to prohibit patrons based on their belief, speech, or action unless it can be shown to pose some threat to the operation of the business or they post said policy in a public place where patrons can see it. An example may be in order. Here in Austin, TX. we have a problem with bums and kids who are homeless. They urinate on the walls and commit various other acts that are not acceptable to the community at large. In order to do anything about these people on public property the city HAD to pass two laws. These two laws are that it is now unlawful to camp overnite on public property. In effect you cannot reside on public property in Austin, TX between midnite and 6am. The other law was that it is now a crime in Austin, TX to emit a 'objectionable odor in public'. Strictly interpreted if you are in a city park at 12:01AM or before 6:00AM you can be arrested. Also, if you were to emit a fart outside your personal property you can be arrested. (Note that these laws have not resolved the indigent problems we have here) In short without this law (ie contract) it was not possible for the city or private businesses to do anything about this. > Bookstores are free to select what titles they offer for sale, and can > even refuse to sell a book to a particularly annoying customer if they > so choose (my legal knowledge is lacking, but I think this is correct). Irrelevant. The point is that bookstores are not legaly responsible for the contents of those books except in very special cases. The distributors or publishers are responsible. This list qualifies as a publisher so long as it retains editorial control of content of submissions prior to distribution. If they have no editorial control then they are in the situation of a bookstore which is protected from legal action on the contents of the books they carry except under special conditions. The action taken by the list operator explicity acts as an example of that editorial control. > To extend the analogy, what has happened in this particular case > is that Dr. Vulis is now forced to buy all his books by mail order :) What has happened here is that a member of a community has been expunged based on their beliefs. Not on any particular action they took which posed any sort of threat to that community. Jim Choate

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exclusion/censorship and the law (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From: Greg Broiles <gbroiles(a)netbox.com> > Subject: exclusion/censorship and the law > > never faced any extended scrutiny because the parties settled. Also, > Prodigy, the defendant in Stratton Oakmont, exercised much greater > editorial control over postings on that service, and had the ability to > remove postings, which is something John Gilmore can't do. He certainly can, this list runs under Majordomo which allows exactly this kind of control if desired. I use it on my own lists and am quite familiar with its operation. It is completely feasible for the operator to look at EVERY submission prior to re-distribution and set the time stamp in such a manner that there would be no evidence it ever occured. > So my impression is that you've got the tail end of a useful concept > (ability to control is frequently a factor used to determine liability) but > are making far too much out of it. One really big difference I see here is > that editorial control of the Cpunks list has occurred once (in 4? 5? years > of the list's existence), is on a per-person not a per-message basis, and > *does not function to restrict who can send messages but only limits Vulis' > ability to _receive_ them on his usual system(s)*. How often it occurs is irrelevant, this is like saying one rape is not a crime but two is. Utter hogwash. Vulis was removed from the list, this means he can't SUBMIT posts. This is censorship. The act was based on the content or personality of Vulis' submissions. It was not based on a limitation of the software, the Internet feed to the list, or the ability of the hardware to handle more traffic. In short it was an emotionaly based action. > You might take a look at Mike Godwin's article on net defamation at > <http://www.eff.org/pub/Legal/net_libel_godwin.article>; by now it's a > little old, but I don't think anything's happened since which would change > its reasoning. I have read it. I live in Austin, TX. and am quite familiar with the whole Steve Jackson event (I was involved in it peripheraly) as well as how it started EFF. I am currently peripheraly involved with the Austin EFF chapter through the Austin Cypherpunks mailing list (which I host). My first exposure to PGP was v1.0 from Adelante BBS, and I had been using and playing vith various crypto related programs for quite few years prior to that. > The problem with absolute statements like this is that they ignore > important distinctions about scale - e.g., I think that it's very important > that people, generally, be free to discuss whatever they want in private > homes. But I also think it's very important that I be able to tell other > people that they're not willing to discuss whatever they want in *my* home. An action is right or wrong, irrespective of scale. If one person does it doesn't make it any more wrong than if hundreds or millions do it. Right and wrong are NOT scalable. But this is not a private list. It has no warning about policies at subscription time. It has been advertised for years as a open forum for the discussion of crypto and speech related issues in clearly public venues. I run a couple of 'private' lists. It is not possible for you or any other party to become involved without agreeing before the fact to certain editorial policies. This does not occur here. Where the 'press' is located is irrelevant to this discussion. The point which seems to be missed is that it takes in a single submission and then distributes multiple copies (without editing) to ANYONE who wishes to subscribe. In point of fact, the various articles in Mondo 2000 (back when the list first started) and those since can be clearly interpreted as an invitation to join the list via clearly publicly distributed medium. In effect it would be like declaring your home an 'Open House' via the local newspaper. > Not because I'm especially excited about censorship, but because I enjoy my > privacy and my peace & quiet. So on the level of national rights, yes, > unrestricted speech is an excellent thing. But on the level of my living > room, unrestricted speech is a very bad thing. Then don't invite people to your house via magazines, newspapers, or Intenet. Unrestricted speech is a good thing. Speech without personal responsibility for the consequences is a bad thing. There were no consequences to Vulis' speech other than the emotional impact it apparently had on the list operator. Personaly, I use the same standards of speech that I apply to the public at large as I do to that small sector I explicity invite into my home. I don't have a double standard in this regards. > I don't think anyone who is arguing that it's fine to throw Vulis off the > list would make the argument that it would be acceptable for the government > to throw Vulis off of the Internet. Who does the throwing is irrelevant. The point is that a policy of 'hands-off' was enacted over the years and it was changed with no warning or opportunity for other list members to become involved. This list is a community, it is not some individuals private property. In no way can you successfuly argue that my email address in the subscription list qualifies me in any way as 'property' of the list operator nor does it imply any agreement on my part to allow that party editorial control of my submission under the previous submission limitations (ie none). Another aspect is that the credibility of this list as an open forum for the discussion of crypto and speech related issues has been tarnished if not downright lost. As to the anarchy aspect, that has forever been lost. > The closest thing I can see to a First Amendment argument against Gilmore > is the "company town" argument, that the list is so much like a city or > town that it ought to be subject to the restrictions that the First > Amendment puts on municipalities and traditional public forums - but even > this (rather far-out) argument got shot down a few days ago when our > beloved Wallace of CyberPromo tried it in _Cyber Promotions v. America > Online_. The judge said "no way", and I think that argument's a lot more > plausible against American Online than against John Gilmore. It has nothing really to do with the First. It does have to do with the agreed upon contract between the operator of the list and its subscribers. By enacting this policy of censorship the original 'contract' (ie none) has been broken and a new contract put in place. Had everyone received a warning and then been unsubscribed and at the time of re-subscription a clearly worded explanation of new policy been made available I would have no problem. I do have a problem with arbitrary reprisals against individuals based upon their submission content. There but by the grace of God go I (or you). As a matter of fact, the issues raised in both the CompuServe and Prodigy cases did NOT revolve around the First but rather who held editorial control. This is EXACTLY the issue here. My previous referal to ;login is a pointer to a discussion of these two cases explicitly. > I don't think this makes any sense. "Public list" has no special meaning. public list = unmoderated and open to anyone > My impression is that you're trying to make an analogy to public places > which are privately owned like motels and lunch counters and amusement > parks, where the owners (despite being private actors) cannot discriminate > on the basis of race, gender, national origin, etc. (See, e.g., Civil > Rights Act of 1964, 42 USC 1981 et seq) Not at all. A 'public' list is a list which has no editorial policy and is open to any party for membership. It in effect has no qualification criteria. > But I don't think there's any especially credible allegation that Vulis was > discriminated against on the basis of protected class membership; nor is it > clear that the Civil Rights Act can be extended to the operation of mailing > lists. Can it be extended to my operation of a paper printing press in my garage through which I distribute pamphlets or flyers to any party which requests them by sending me their address? If so then it applies here. > If there's no prohibited discrimination (either because there's no > prohibition, or there was no "discrimination" within the terms of the > statute) then I don't see a cause of action. Wanting something you're not > getting isn't enough. Owners of "public places" like malls or stores or > restaurants are still free to exclude some people for non-prohibited > reasons (like not meeting the dress code, or having behaved poorly in the > past). But to do this they MUST post or publish those codes in a place where a patron can clearly see them. This was not done here. > I am pretty disappointed to see that none of the people who profess to be > shocked and wounded at Vulis' exclusion have bothered to set up your own > lists. In my mind, whatever moral outrage you claim to have looks awfully > small compared to the relatively small burden of doing something about what > you say is bothering you. I run several lists including two that are crypto related (Austin Cypherpunks and Advanced Computer Experimenters). > I think that "cypherpunks write code" can/should be understood as a > question, e.g., "what are you doing to change the things that bother you?" Among other things I am bitching about the arbitrary and unfair way this list is being run considering the environment it was supposed to foster. Jim Choate

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Pyramid Schemes
by Benjamin Grosman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear Sir, Aren't these Pyramid Schemes Illegal? Yours Sincerely, Benjamin Grosman

5 5

Re: [rant] Re: Censorship on cypherpunks (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 20:42:46 -0500 (EST) > From: "Mark M." <markm(a)voicenet.com> > > This is why contracts are important. There is no contract, implied or > otherwise, to which John Gilmore is bound that forces him to protect everyone's > "right" to be subscribed to cpunks and post whatever they want to the list. The lack of an explicit contract detailing this is what makes it impossible for the operator of the list to enforce such actions. When I subscribed I gave the operator no permission to edit or otherwise control my submissions. I also gave no permission for such submissions to be considered property by any party other than myself. It is not possible to argue that my subscription implied such permission. When I subscribed to the cpunks list it was with the explicit intent of seeing a multiplicity of views, not those views which happen to be acceptable to the list operator. The fact that he chooses to host the list by paying its bills is irrelevant. If the operator wants to protect themselves legaly as well as ethicaly they should put a notice at time of subscription detailing exactly what editorial policies are active as well as sending a policy notification to all currently subscribed members. Jim Choate ps I never saw the post about the camp ground example. If the author would please forward me a copy I would be happy to critique it.

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Re: A Disservice to Mr. Bell
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:18 PM 11/8/96 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote: >At 1:32 PM 11/8/1996, jim bell wrote: >>At 09:12 PM 11/7/96 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote: >>> ...His conviction was not reversed until 1983 in the court of one >>> Judge Patel... > >> However, the fact that it took 40 years to reverse (and didn't, presumably, >> reverse the convictions of others, and didn't compensate people for lost >> property) is yet another reason to take a few pieces out of the hide of the >> SC, as well as a few pounds of flesh nearest the heart. > >Many of us are guilty of a grave disservice to Mr. Bell. I'm sure >that just about every reader of this list can only cringe when >messages such as the one above cross our screens. ("He can't be >a paid provocateur - it would be too obvious!") > >Not only is Mr. Bell apparently calling for the murder of a judge, he >is apparently calling for the murder of every justice on the Supreme >Court of the United States! I'm glad to see that you seem to be catching on. (although you made the minor error of referring to the current roster of the SC, as opposed to the 1943 makeup. But that's a minor point; the 1996 group have their own set of offenses...) In any case, it's really very simple: Kidnapping used to be a capital offense in the US. What the US Government did to the Japanese Americans during WWII was, quite simply, kidnapping. Or, at least, it would have been called kidnapping if it had been done by non-governmental entities. True, it was done "under color of law," but ultimately it amounted to the same thing. Lawyers, who have brought hypocrisy and double-standards to a high art form, are taught to accept this. And they are also taught to fight (at least a bit) for their clients rights. But ultimately, they are taught to accept the decision of a court even if it's wrong. Sure, they may have appeal rights and will occasionally exercise them, but there's no court past the SC. It turns out, of course, that since we now all (?) accept the idea that those SC decisions were simply wrong, it isn't possible to use the "they said it was okay" excuse. The most of the relocations occurred before the decisions, which means the governmental actions were done without them. And I consider a temporary (even a 40-year) approval by a group of nine clowns to be no more definitive than a fresh conviction that hasn't yet been through its first appeal. Please note that if it were 1943 and somebody called for the death penalty for the perp of a kidnapping case, he'd probably be called a fine upstanding citizen. (Interestingly enough, one of the cornerstone objections a lawyer (or judge) might have to my "playing hardball" on this subject is their belief that judges should be immune from prosecution for their decisions. The strange part, however, is that judicial immunity seems to be an entirely fabricated concept: It appears nowhere in the US Constitution, for example.) However, it turns out that there is a solution to this problem, the recent re-emergence of the "Common-law courts." A truly fascinating subject. Having competed (with varying levels of disrespect on both sides) with so-called "Equity courts" in England since well before the 17th century, they frequently represented a bulwark against the misuse of royal authority. Competing court systems might be considered somewhat analogous to competing companies in the private sector: Monopolies breed abuse; competition results in better service. There is no reason to believe that this effect would be any less applicable in courts than other markets. They might merely be a historical curiousity in America, except that the American Revolution had the predictable effect (supported by US court decision, apparently) that as a consequence of George III's loss and our win, all powers previously vested in the King were returned to the American people. Some, but by no means all of them were delegated to the Federal government, as the 9th and 10th amendments show. The really interesting part is that the authority to form common-law courts was never delegated to the Federal government, and (perhaps not surprisingly, considering recent governmental abuses) a number of groups around the country have decided to form their own such commonlaw courts. To American ears this will probably sound a bit like "taking the law into your own hands," but those courts are quite real and I predict they will become a substantially more powerful force in the next few years. Since selection of judges is part of the powers originally owned by George III and lost by him, this means that ordinary people have the power to run those courts and staff them, as odd as this will feel to those of us who were brought up on Perry Mason et al. Naturally, you can expect numerous lawyers and judges (all who consider themselves part of the competing "equity court" system, BTW) to cry foul. The effect is somewhat akin to a child who initially shares a communal sandbox with a neighbor kid, who subsequently moves away and is replaced by a childless couple. After a few years of de-facto sole ownership, the feelings of monopoly ownership are quite real, even if in reality sharing must once again happen due to the arrival of new neighbors. Interestingly enough, the one thing the Commonlaw court system needs is an effective enforcement system. One likely method is the commercial lien process, but even that tends to be resisted by people who are far more used to dealing with equity court personnel. It turns out that my AP system seems to mesh almost perfectly with their needs, although obviously in practice it would only be used as a "last resort." Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Black Unicorn exposed?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:45 AM 11/9/96 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote: >At 11:00 AM 11/9/1996, Robert Hettinga wrote: >> S. L. vonBernhardt, <mailto:unicorn@schloss.li>,... > >We are hardly operating in a hostile environment. Yet, somebody >who has apparently gone to some effort to have an anonymous >identity has been exposed. The implications of this are worth >considering. It seems obvious that this exposure was entirely intentional by him. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Pseudo-law on the list and libel (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 10:10:19 -0800 > From: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay(a)got.net> > > So, if a bookstore ejects a drunken lout who is disturbing the other > patrons, is the bookstore suddenly reclassfied as a book publisher? By your > logic, you seem to think so. Not at all. The drunk is not being ejected on the content of their expression (beliefs). Vulis posed no physical or economic danger to anyone, the operator simply could take no more of his POV. This is distinctly different than the example you are trying to equate. In short, another straw man. > So, if I have a party at my house and limit who I invite, or eject someone > who is misbehaving (insulting my other guests, barfing on the floor, > smoking when I tell him not to, whatever), you are saying that I "open > myself up for libel suits" by other guests who don't like the things they > hear from others at my party? Only if you advertise the party through a public forum as open to anyone and you are the one supplying the booze (as advertised in the ad). The operator of this list has NEVER implicity or explicity expressed any form of policy concerning who may subscribe to cpunks. > So, anyone who exercises ownership rights to his property suddenly becomes > legally responsible for the alleged misdeeds of anyone visiting his house? My subscription to this mailing list does not imply any ownership toward its operator. He owns the software and hardware, he does not own my thoughts or the fact that I use this forum to distribute them. The fact he pays the bills does not give him any right to edit or otherwise control my submissions without an explicit warning to me prior to his acceptance of my submission. > Could you cite some cases supporting your point of view? Try CompuServe and Prodigy. The logic that was used in both those cases is 1-to-1 applicable to this. For somebody who supposedly supports individual initiative, liberty, and anarchy you sure rely on precedence a lot. The whole point to crypto, Internet, and technology in general is to break the status quo not to promote it. > this outcome, strongly. However, it is far from establishing that a bar > which enforces certain rules ("no shirt, no service") and which has an > entire class of employees hired to _eject_ patrons has suddenly become > liable for slanderous comments made by customers. And so on.) Look at the recent 'Hooters' case involving women waitpersons. For a business establishment to impose 'no shirt, no shoes, no service" they MUST post such rules in a public place. This was NOT done EVER on cpunks. Again, you are trying to equate two distinctly different cases as equivalent, another straw man. Jim Choate

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Apartment complex burnt down...
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Suppose Bob lives in an apartment complex. By accident the whole building burns down. Bob manages to escape, but all his papers, including passport, IDs, credit cards, acount numbers, etc etc gets destroyed. What can Bob do? Would the government help him? It seems like he'd be in a really unfavorable position...

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Small "Hard" Problems Wanted
by mpd＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Fellow C'Punks, In my quest to reduce NP-Completeness to NP-Not-So-Hard-Ness, I have just finished coding and debugging a very complicated algorithm which manages to solve circuit satisfiability problems of up to 1000 nodes in a few minutes and about half a meg of memory. It works directly from the connectivity information and the time required is not a function of the number of input bits. Circuit satisfiability problems, and other well known problems like Max P-Sat, are amongst the more useful canonically NP-Complete problems, since other problems map very nicely into them. The algorithm is currently in APL, and I am in the process of recoding it in C, after which I plan to test it on reduced round DES, full 16 round DES, and some RSA problems of various sizes. I already have C code to map RSA and n-round DES problems into an appropriate circuit satisfiability problem and generate appropriate input for the algorithm, so finishing up the C version is the only remaining step before these tests can begin. The current APL reference inplementation can still handle problems up to about 1000 nodes, which should include a lot of stuff for which exhaustive search would be intractable, even on supercomputers. Nothing I have so far fed the reference implementation has bombed it, and I would like to make sure it is perfect before the finely tuned C version is complete. So if anyone has a "hard" problem they are dying to solve, which maps into a circuit satisfiability problem that isn't over 1000 nodes, Email it to me and I will see if I can divine the answer. I will post any interesting results to the list, of course. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

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Re: FW: Dr. Vulis (ad nauseum) (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 17:12:47 -0500 > From: camcc(a)abraxis.com (Alec) > This is not a they; this is an individual with (and within) his own rights. Who or how many own the (digital) press is irrelevant. > Nonsense, no policy has been stated. The owner determined that the good Dr. > had been disruptive and had become a detriment to the owner's list (and > possibly sanity). Exactly! With no policy and the wide advertising of this list as a open forum for the discussion of crypto and speech related issues such action by the list operator constitute censorship (ie editorial control) and make the operator legaly responsible for the actions of those messages which LEAVE his machine. No contract means no contract. It applies to all parties involved. > PLEASE, let's not drag poor Tim into this. Hasn't he suffered enough?! > This does not follow even from the tortured logic above. Nobody ever suffers enough. > "Implies the right"?? Rights either exist or do not exist (endowed by their > Creator); they are not be implied. I suggest you read the 9th Amendment again then. You obvously didn't get the point the other time(s). > The content of speech is certainly not irrelevant. Disruptive speech and > behavior have never been protected. Vulis's speech was not distruptive. It did not interfere with anyone else being able to submit or filter submissions. His speech was outside the norm but posed no threat to the operation of the cpunks mailing list. > It says CONGRESS! We're not discussing an action by the federal govt. here. > I may choose to ask those visiting my house to refrain from discussing mumbo > jumbo; if the individuals persist, I can ask, nay demand, that they leave. > : > :And just to make shure it is clear, the right to put something on the paper > :(ie speech) is distinctly different from being the one doing the actual > :printing. Agreed. It was intended to make the point that this is the ideal we should all be striving for. We as members of a free democratic society should NEVER censor anyone on the content of their speech. > What paper? What does this mean? This list is a digital press. > Advertised? It has been a matter of regret that I _stumbled_ into this > unruly tangle of wits. Then you have not been reading a lot of computer and crypto related material. I see references to this list and how to subscribe several times a year in various sources going back several years. > Simply because one has argued that "the list is ... a defacto public list," > don't make it so any more than my arguing that a newspaper available to the > public can have no control over its own editorial policy. True, but the paper MUST publish that policy in its editions. Which papers and magazines do religously. Jim Choate

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by nobody＠replay.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Peter Hendrickson <ph(a)netcom.com> wrote: > What are the benefits of being a cryptoanarchist? Maybe you get > to double your income. Most people won't see this as worth the > trouble. If you don't have enough to eat, doubling your income is worth the trouble. Crypto-anarchy benefits the poor more than the rich. The underlings of society are going to love it.

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