December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: whitehouse.gov/robots.txt
by Major Variola (ret) 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

I'd suggest "wget" for spidering sites. It can be told to ignore .robots files. It is good for mirroring sites which you suspect may be taken down. Win/Unix versions available.

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Re: cypherpunks discussions
by Major Variola (ret) 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

At 11:24 AM 12/8/03 -0800, Tim May wrote: >No, I think few topics on the Cypherpunks list are taken private. > >My reasons are two-fold: First, to get them to stop lurking and >participate. Second, to work up the energy to compose an essay (or >mini-essay, whatever), I need some motivation. I am not energetic about It can also be imprudent, as in a free trip to a grand jury in a distant land, possibly with you fronting the govt the money for the trip. All to hear you mention the Bill of Rights, repeatedly, of course. Neophytes are encouraged to look up Jim Bell, Declan, John Young, etc.

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Speaking of Reason
by Freematt357＠aol.com 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

Tim's whine (complaint) withstanding, I just got the January issue of Reason in the mail and of interest is Mike Godwin's interview of Bruce Sterling- Cybergreen: Bruce Sterling on media, design, fiction, and the future (p 42-50). It's worth a read. Regards, Matt-

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(No Subject)
by edo 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

Lne is on dialup? Wow. Anyhow, I'm a newbie who has been lurking a while. Privacy concerns and what intelligent people think about it is what got me on this list.With the USA becoming the world's most totalitarian state in disguise... The sheen on the illusion of liberty here will wear thin soon, IMHO.People think that they enjoy liberty here because they can buy a gun. Yes the libertarians can claim that the guns protect them, and Afganistan and Iraq have been demonstrations of how it prevents a hostile takeover (just like someones sig about an RPG a day...) What good does it do inside the USA unless civil war breaks out? How does it protect the war protestors in NYC or those in Miami? I don't oppose guns, but just want to point out that the govt has been rapidly diminishing our civil liberties despite all the guns... As far as I'm concerned, true anonymity in finacial affairs (and secure communication channels) is the only real method open to peacefully combat the all seeing, all powerful government. I'm sure the interest in this will first focus on things like e-gold when common people see their life savings evaporate as the dollar continues its plunge. Any one with thoughts on this? Of course only a small percentage of the general public will be bright enough to see that a fiat currency does not last forever... and is dependent on the ever increasing projection of power by a nation state, which is not a stable sort of situation.The majority of them will want federal bailouts etc. What I'm curious about is digital currencies. Can anyone speak about the Digital Monetary Trust or DMT? I'm sorry I have not read the last upteen years of mail archives, but I'm interested in what people think NOW about Orlin Grabbe, DMT, e-gold etc. Anyone with anonymous or otherwise stories? People who've been part of the battle? Sorry for the ramble, but the most interesting comment recently was about David Chaums patents expiring soon... any word on its potential impact? Peace and liberty.

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Re: alt.anonymous.messages
by Nostradumbass＠SAFe-mail.net 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

-------- Original Message -------- From: Anatoly Vorobey <mellon(a)pobox.com> > > You do not need to use remailers to take advantage of > > alt.anonymous.messages. If someone posts directly to > > alt.anonymous. messages, still the adversary cannot tell who he > > is posting to. (Assuming his recipient sets his newsagent to > > always download all new messages) > > Oh, that's true of course; but the adversary would be able to know > that you posted something (given that he's monitoring your traffic). > That's already something, and frequently more than you'd want to > give away. Use your laptop and random open Wi-Fi hotspots (esp. a consumer's) for such sensitive communication.

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Re: Has this photo been de-stegoed?
by Tyler Durden 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

Well, that sounds reasonable on the face of it, but there's got to be a lot more discussion before I'm convinced. Remember that psuedorandom or encrypted data has a certain noise spectrum. This noise spectrum is extremely different based on what PRBS one is using...PRBS 2^23-1 looks completely different from other 'noise' (and remember noise is a relative term). If you spatially fft a random photo, you'll find that the image detail energy largely occupies certain bands. These are not the bands that stego uses (or so I assume...it really can't be otherwise). The stego-able spectrum will indeed be noise, but this noise will have a certain spectrum. Stego, done well, will I assume try to mimic this noise, but there may be problems. If the message is encrypted, then merely loading that message into the photo will, I assume, NOT result in a noise spectrum that looks like real noise. So you'll need some kind of chopper or spectrum-spreader I guess. If no chopper's used, however, I'm guessing that stego-ed 'noise' doesn't look like true photo noise. If the photo has been de-stegoed stupidly (ie, by writing a random message in its place), that noise won't look like photo noise. So it seems to me that you'd need a sophisticated agent to make the de-steoed photo look like it never had stego. In other words, if the FBI are your man-in-the-middle, then you'll be able to detect that the photo was de-stegoed. If the NSA is your man-in-the-middle, you might not be able to tell. Any of you TLA lurkers wanna come in on a remailer and set me straight? -TD >From: "A.Melon" <juicy(a)melontraffickers.com> >To: cypherpunks(a)minder.net >Subject: Re: Has this photo been de-stegoed? >Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 13:28:31 -0800 (PST) > >Tyler Durden (camera_lumina(a)hotmail.com) wrote on 2003-12-08: > > Is it possible to determine that the photo 'originally' (ie, when it was > > sent to me) contained stegoed information, but that it was intercepted >in > > transit and the real message overwritten with noise or whatever? > >Hardly, given the simple fact that well-encrypted content is >indistinguishable from noise. _________________________________________________________________ Dont worry if your Inbox will max out while you are enjoying the holidays. Get MSN Extra Storage! http://join.msn.com/?PAGE=features/es

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Zombie Patriots and other musings [was: Re: (No Subject)]
by Nostradumbass＠SAFe-mail.net 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

From: "J.A. Terranson" <measl(a)mfn.org> > On Tue, 9 Dec 2003, Anatoly Vorobey wrote: > > > On Tue, Dec 09, 2003 at 12:47:27AM +0100, edo wrote: > > > With the USA > > > becoming the world's most totalitarian state in disguise... > > > > That's a pretty silly thing to say. > > Sure you don't want to educate yourself on those other states in the > > world? > > It's not silly at all: look again. He said "becoming". And it is. Fast. > It's *long* past time for the inhabitants here to have taken up arms and > blown holes in a *lot* of Federal heads. > > Just a few hundred dead federal goons, spread over a relatively short period > (~6 months), where the attacks were obviously coordinated, made against > officers enforcing particularly rancid unconstitutional laws (say the federal > tax code), and without discoverable perpetrators, would result in an almost > instantaneous shortage of officers available to enforce such uncontitutional > laws - the survivors would simply refuse. > > Long fucking overdue. At first it seems that there isn't much one person or even a few can do about this, but I'm no longer so sure. The politics and power of government is, in the end, always dispensed from the end of a gun. For this reason very few citizens even consider contending with the government for political purposes until they fell there is little choice. Nothing less than a guerilla war seems necessary to restore something akin to the original constitutional balance in the U.S. But where to recruit these people? My suggestion: the terminally ill. Many TI come to the table with a 'gift', the certainty of impending death and for some the possibility of fearlessness for physical harm or imprisonment. While the majority of the TI will not see any reason to buck the system in their final days (ideological disagreement, fear for the effect on their families, lack the health, resources, skills or mentality for such a ' final adventure ') I did some back of the envelope calculations that show that more than 100 people die in the U.S. every day who could fill the bill. I've coined the term Zombie Patriots to signify the TI who volunteer to give their last full measure to the American Restoration. Operating alone or in small groups they could form the backbone of an American Civil Liberties Army. ZPs need an education in how to create a personal plan of action and acquire the needed skills and resources (Paladin Press where are you when we need you). A Domestic American Patriot Family Fund may also be desired.

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Two interesting communication privacy tools
by Nostradumbass＠SAFe-mail.net 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

1. Invisiblog http://invisiblog.com/ lets you publish a weblog using GPG and the Mixmaster anonymous remailer network. You don't ever have to reveal your identity - not even to us. You don't have to trust us, because we'll never know who you are. 2. File-Exchange https://www.meshmx.com/fe/ allows you to exchanging files with other people without giving away your identity or harming your privacy. Furthermore it is so simple that you need nothing else but a web browser. No need for special software, hardware, resources etc. How to use it? You simply upload a file through the front end and get back an "access-key". This key can be send to any other person by email, instant-messaging or IIP. Anyone who has that key can download the file again by entering the key into the front end.... By default the file will render unaccessible one hour after it had been uploaded.

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Re: ALTA/DMT privacy [was: Re: (No Subject)]
by Nostradumbass＠SAFe-mail.net 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

-------- Original Message -------- From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart(a)pobox.com> > On 10 Dec 2003 at 15:19, Nostradumbass(a)SAFe-mail.net wrote: > > E-gold and other DGCs do not do much if any due diligence in > > checking account holder identification > > Unfortunately, they also don't due much if any due diligence in > identifying themselves in messages to real or potential customers, > so it's extremely difficult to determine if I've gotten any > administrative messages that really _were_ from them > as opposed to the N fraudsters sending out mail asking you to - > log in to e-g0ld.com or whatever fake page lets them steal > your egold account number and password so they can drain your balance. Actually they do. Sort of at http://www.e-gold.com/unsecure/alert.html - Never click hypertext links in HTML formatted e-mail to access your account. - Confirm that you are on the e-gold website before entering your e-gold passphrase into either a logon form or a payment authorization form (see note below about e-gold shopping cart interface): - Verify the address/location/URL starts with: https://www.e-gold.com/ - Verify that the site certificate is issued by VeriSign to www.e-gold.com > > A policy of PGP-signing all their messages using a key > that's published on their web pages would be a good start, > though it's still possible to trick some fraction of people > into accepting the wrong keys. Too few customers would know what to do with such a key. >For now, my basic assumption > is that any communications I receive that purport to be from them > are a fraud, and it's frustrating that there's no good mechanism > for reporting that to e-gold. They know about most of the fraudulent emails circulating. They don't want to hear about them from customers because it would exhaust what customer service resources they have. I have never received an email from e-gold following my account creation confirmation and I beleive its their policy not to send emails for just this reason.

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Re: ALTA/DMT privacy [was: Re: (No Subject)]
by Freematt357＠aol.com 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

In a message dated 12/10/2003 10:34:22 PM Eastern Standard Time, timcmay(a)got.net writes: > I receive several messages a month saying I need to re-verify > information with an E-gold account (which I never recall establishing, > by the way). > > If I ever determine that E-Gold personnel have faked an account on my > behalf, You're a moron Tim. Everybody here probably gets the scammers messages, I get e-gold and paypal cons on regular basis- E-gold never advertised itself as anything other than what it is, a bailee. What e-gold is really good is for is micropayments and I have personally found it good for making payments internationally. I know the principals involved, and I've personally viewed one of their vaults and the gold, etc. is really there. Regards, Matt-

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Re: alt.anonymous.messages
by Nostradumbass＠SAFe-mail.net 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd(a)echeque.com> > > You do not need to use remailers to take advantage of > alt.anonymous.messages. If someone posts directly to > alt.anonymous. messages, still the adversary cannot tell who he > is posting to. (Assuming his recipient sets his newsagent to > always download all new messages) Or access Usenet via a satellite feed.

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ALTA/DMT privacy [was: Re: (No Subject)]
by Nostradumbass＠SAFe-mail.net 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

At 10:37 AM 12/10/2003, James A. Donald wrote: -- On 9 Dec 2003 at 0:47, edo wrote: >> What I'm curious about is digital currencies. Can anyone >> speak about the Digital Monetary Trust or DMT? I'm sorry I >> have not read the last upteen years of mail archives, but I'm >> interested in what people think NOW about Orlin Grabbe, DMT, >> e-gold etc. ...snip.. >None of these accounts provide Chaumian anonymity, which means >they can track identity, which means they must track identity, which costs them. >However one can withdraw, and deposit, physical gold, which actually is anonymous, and provides a physical mix, since one gold atom looks very like another. E-gold and other DGCs do not do much if any due diligence in checking account holder identification, so if you use an effective proxying means (e.g., an open Wi-Fi hotspot) to create and access your accounts you are pretty safe. If you fund you accounts using money orders, you may be safe (depending on whether you've employed others to purchase the money orders or your physical identity is being captured at the money order agent during the transaction). Although ALTA/DMT doesn't support blinded tokens, it does support tokens. http://www.orlingrabbe.com/dmt_bearercert.htm ALTA/DMT does have a certain degree of un-linkability in that once accounts are deleted all db references in the system to that account are also deleted from all ALTA/DMT dbs. This means if value is transferred from account A to Account B and subsequently Account A is deleted all traces of the transaction should be unlinked from Account B. It also means if you delete an account with a balance, accidently or otherwise, the money is gone. Two e-gold exchange agents have announced either formally or informally that they will now transact with ALTA/DMT. I beleive thay both accept money orders for fuding. Money can be withdrawn using e-gold and/or ATM cards either directly supporting ALTA/DMT (https://www.liquidprivacy.net/) or e-gold.

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Re: Has this photo been de-stegoed?
by A.Melon 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

Tyler Durden (camera_lumina(a)hotmail.com) wrote on 2003-12-08: > Is it possible to determine that the photo 'originally' (ie, when it was > sent to me) contained stegoed information, but that it was intercepted in > transit and the real message overwritten with noise or whatever? Hardly, given the simple fact that well-encrypted content is indistinguishable from noise.

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Type III Anonymous message
by Nomen Nescio 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

-----BEGIN TYPE III ANONYMOUS MESSAGE----- Message-type: plaintext Tim, I AM GETTING TIRED OF SEEING CYPHERPUNKS RESTRICTING WHAT INFORMATION FLOWS AND TO WHERE IT FLOWS... -----END TYPE III ANONYMOUS MESSAGE-----

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Codecon 2004 CFP - Just a few days left
by Bram Cohen 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

CodeCon 3.0 February 20-22, 2004 San Francisco CA, USA www.codecon.org Call For Papers CodeCon is the premier showcase of active hacker projects. It is an excellent opportunity for developers to demonstrate their work and keep abreast of what's going on in their community. All presentations must include working demonstrations, ideally open source. Presenters must be one of the active developers of the code in question. We emphasize that demonstrations be of *working* code. CodeCon strongly encourages presenters from non-commercial and academic backgrounds to attend for the purposes of collaboration and the sharing of knowledge by providing free registration to workshop presenters and discounted registration to full-time students. We hereby solicit papers and demonstrations. * Papers and proposals due: December 15, 2003 * Authors notified: January 1, 2004 Possible topics include, but are by no means restricted to: * community-based web sites - forums, weblogs, personals * development tools - languages, debuggers, version control * file sharing systems - swarming distribution, distributed search * security products - mail encryption, intrusion detection, firewalls Presentations will be a 45 minutes long, with 15 minutes allocated for Q&A. Overruns will be truncated. Submission details: Submissions are being accepted immediately. Acceptance dates are November 15, and December 15. After the first acceptance date, submissions will be either accepted, rejected, or deferred to the second acceptance date. The conference language is English. Ideally, demonstrations should be usable by attendees with 802.11b connected devices either via a web interface, or locally on Windows, UNIX-like, or MacOS platforms. Cross-platform applications are most desirable. Our venue will be 21+. If you have a specific day on which you would prefer to present, please advise us. To submit, send mail to submissions(a)codecon.org including the following information: * Project name * url of project home page * tagline - one sentence or less summing up what the project does * names of presenter(s) and urls of their home pages, if they have any * one-paragraph bios of presenters (optional) * project history, no more than a few sentences * what will be done in the project demo * major achievement(s) so far * claim(s) to fame, if any * future plans Program Chair: Bram Cohen General Chair: Len Sassaman Program Committee: * Bram Cohen * Len Sassaman * Jonathan Moore * Jered Floyd * Brandon Wiley * Jeremy Bornstein Sponsorship: If your organization is interested in sponsoring CodeCon, we would love to hear from you. In particular, we are looking for sponsors for social meals and parties on any of the three days of the conference, as well as sponsors of the conference as a whole, prizes or awards for quality presentations, scholarships for qualified applicants, and assistance with transportation or accommodation for presenters with limited resources. If you might be interested in sponsoring any of these aspects, please contact the conference organizers at codecon-admin(a)codecon.org. Press policy: CodeCon strives to be a conference for developers, with strong audience participation. As such, we need to limit the number of complimentary passes for non-developer attendees. Press passes are limited to one pass per publication, and must be approved prior to the registration deadline (to be announced later). If you are a member of the press, and interested in covering CodeCon, please contact us early by sending email to press(a)codecon.org. Members of the press who do not receive press-passes are welcome to participate as regular conference attendees. Questions: If you have questions about CodeCon, or would like to contact the organizers, please mail codecon-admin(a)codecon.org. Please note this address is only for questions and administrative requests, and not for workshop presentation submissions.

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Re: whitehouse.gov/robots.txt
by FB` 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

I really would expect that preventing *spiders* (some spiders, even) using the *publicly accessible* robots.txt would be a pretty horribly ineffective form of "skullduggery"... can think of 10 things to do that are easier, more effective and less of a potential pr fiasco... see http://shock-awe.info/archive/000965.php FB`

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whitehouse.gov/robots.txt
by Eugen Leitl 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

Can somebody with a webspider crawl these documents, and put it up on the web? http://www.whitehouse.gov/robots.txt -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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Tim May is Free!
by Tyler Durden 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

"I pretty much agree with your views, minus the racism and misogny. >On days that the brilliant thoughtful Tim posts, I'm in awe. >When Tim the asshole posts, I'm disgusted. Unfortunately >these days the latter Tim isn't letting the former Tim >near the keyboard very often." I dunno...sometimes his racism and child-killing and "fuck them deads" seem to be fairly logical consequences of his basic philosophies. In fact, Tim May can only be truly free after every other human being in the world is dead... (Fade to wavy fluctuations of the visual field) The time is 2023, and Tim May finally figures out how to release a plague of nanobots that kill every human being in the world but himself. Now we see Tim May driving a Hummer over the rolling hills of No Cal, on his weekly excursion to view the piles of dead bodies on the outskirts of San Fransisco. He stops by a 7-11, picking up some supplies, and tosses a handful of pennies onto the counter, in front of the skeleton of the counter boy. "That's what the market can bare, my friend, and then some," he says with a sly grin. Arriving at the outskirts of San Fransisco he drives up to a tall hill, where some bodies are visible in the foreground, and downtown San Fransisco is visible in the distance. Complete silence pervades. Raising his fist in the air he shouts at the top of his lungs: "SODOMITES! NEGROS! STATISTS! BOLSHIES! I'M FREE, DO YOU HEAR ME! FREEEEEE!" Today he needs to re-gas the small powerplant that keeps his server farm alive. He decided to open his own Cypherpunks node, to which he posts on a regular basis. He's been issuing a stream of posts on "Darwinian Implications of Humanocide", and on how Darwinian evolution will eventually create a species much more advanced and free than the one he killed off. -TD >From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> >To: cypherpunks(a)lne.com >Subject: Re: Speaking of Reason >Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 08:26:22 -0500 > >At 4:57 PM -0800 12/9/03, Eric Murray wrote: > >I pretty much agree with your views, minus the racism and misogny. > >On days that the brilliant thoughtful Tim posts, I'm in awe. > >When Tim the asshole posts, I'm disgusted. Unfortunately > >these days the latter Tim isn't letting the former Tim > >near the keyboard very often. > > > >> Fuck you dead. Fuck all of you Bolshies dead. > > > >Ok, bye! > ><plonk> > > > >Eric (just to make it crystal clear, Tim's going in my _personal_ >killfile) > >To quote a famous flying squirrel, that trick never works. Tried it myself >a few times over the years, and one usually misses too much of what this >list is for, as you noted yourself, above. > >Unfortunately, if you want to read Tim, you have to read his evil twin >Skippy, too. > >Living in *his* killfile, on the other hand, and if he actually uses it, >can be useful. Try it, you'll like it. > >Cheers, >RAH > >-- >----------------- >R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> >The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> >44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA >"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, >[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to >experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' _________________________________________________________________ Get holiday tips for festive fun. http://special.msn.com/network/happyholidays.armx

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Re: Speaking of Reason
by Freematt357＠aol.com 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

In a message dated 12/9/2003 6:12:26 PM Eastern Standard Time, timcmay(a)got.net writes: > As for you, Gaylor, you subscribe for a while, contribute nothing, > vanish from the list for a couple of years, then resubscribe and > immediately start ranting that I am not doing enough for the cause. > > > Fuck you dead. Fuck all of you Bolshies dead. > It's interesting to note you keep track of subscription patterns. "Fuck you dead", hmmm, I suppose that's better then your old refrain of threatening to shoot someone. Do you feel self-censored, afraid of the authorities, or just don't want to get your got.net account yanked? My point about Reason Magazine is your inability to understand that the magazine has improved. Regards, Matt-

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Re: Speaking of Reason
by Freematt357＠aol.com 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

In a message dated 12/9/2003 11:58:23 PM Eastern Standard Time, rah(a)shipwright.com writes: > Green = Red. > > Bruce Sterling is, for all intents and purposes, a commie. > > "Veridian", my ass. > My thoughts exactly. Regards, Matt-

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members
by privacy.at Anonymous Remailer 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

Hello I'm curious. You say the list got some 400+ members right now and that's only the lne node too. Can you provide some statistics on the users? How many addresses are .gov? Any valid TLA addresses in there?!

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Type III Anonymous message
by privacy.at Anonymous Remailer 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

-----BEGIN TYPE III ANONYMOUS MESSAGE----- Message-type: plaintext Tim, I AM GETTING TIRED OF SEEING CYPHERPUNKS RESTRICTING WHAT INFORMATION FLOWS AND TO WHERE IT FLOWS... -----END TYPE III ANONYMOUS MESSAGE-----

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Re: Larry Lessig on ending anonymity through "identity escrow"
by Tim May 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

On Dec 5, 2003, at 5:53 PM, Jamie Lawrence wrote: > >> I have nothing against Lessig, but it bugs me that he's considered by >> some to be one of the Great Cyberspace Thinkers when his ideas are so >> easily dismissed...and were argued on both sides so many years ago. >> >> Larry Lessig ought to read, and think deeply about, the first ten >> years >> of traffic on the Cypherpunks list. Especially the first five years. > > Lessig is a very smart man, in the framework he's very smart at dealing > with. And probably more beyond that. > > Unfortunately, I don't think copyright is an appropriate framework from > which to launch a discussion about wider modes of human communication. > > Correcting him early and often is absolutely in order - hopefully he'll > rethink a thing or two. This actually fits in with something Lessig is widely known for, his "technology-custom-law" trichotomy (*). (* He may call it something different...I haven't checked in a while. And I recall he may have a fourth component. I was talking in similar terms many years ago, too. Not that I am saying Lessig borrowed from my ideas, as I am sure many of us independently realized this. Cf. via Google some of the things I wrote about VCRs and how they changed the ground truth of what was legally copyable. Or how Gutenberg created a technology which made existing custom (e.g., the Church) and law (e.g., the Guilds) effectively moot.) Those who make Grand Plans about such things as "pseudonymity with legal warrant access" need to take systems and computer science (and hence math) into account. This usually comes through thinking about possible attacks, weaknesses, and design flaws. For example, I have cited the obvious case of someone, call him "Tim," using "Larry's LEO-Friendly Remailer." But Tim is _not_ a LEO-friendly remailer, and Tim has taken in articles from other such non-LEO-friendly remailers. The only way Larry knows that Tim is doing this is if Larry "peeks" (examines the content to see what it is, to see that it does not contain seditious or pornographic or non-LEO-friendly packets). Or Larry can wait for the eventual "legal warrant" and then find that Tim was remailing packets which could not be traced. Oops. Larry can then cancel Tim's account. More generally, I think Lessig has failed to understand the very fundamental, underlying structure of true Cypherpunks-style remailers: ::request-remailing-to: foo(a)anotherremailer.org This can be any arbitrary text, and all that is passed on to the next remailer or recipient. And this text block is not tagged in any way with sender ID. And this text can be encrypted, readable only by the specified "nextremailer." And this text block can included further requests for remailing, and so on and so forth. Tim again. With this structure, nested and packaged as a payload, for Lessig's scheme to actually give "warrant-only traceability," it must ban such nested remailings. Which means, ban on crypto. (For if crypto is allowed, then even a warrant cannot crack it. "Oh, then we'll have key escrow...") And so on. A little bit of thought reveals numerous such attacks on a "LEO-friendly remailer." And the "fixes" are all in the direction of, in the final analysis, banning strong encryption. Of course, Lessig may say that he is only advocating an ultra-weak system of remailers that only dummies will use. He may say he does not propose to actually ban "strong remailers." Some argue that weak systems--remailers or crypto--will thrive "because most crooks are lazy" has been dealt with many times. Sure, some people doing things use weak systems, out of ignorance, out of laziness, out of a sense that they are immortal and cannot be caught. But others doing illegal or marginal things are amongst the earliest adopters of relatively robust systems: offshore banks, encrypted disks, and, ironically, secure anonymous remailers. (When the Finnish police finally forced Julf Helsingius to reveal the pseudonym attached to the Church of Scientology "NOTS" documents, they found that inside was a packet from a true Cypherpunks remailer, whose last node was at C2Net, the company Sameer Parekh founded. End of trail. This showed that even as early as 1995 someone was thinking ahead to the day when the Finnish police would force a "weak pseudonymity" system like PENET (Julf's system, based on earlier code written by another hacker) to give "warranted access" a la Lessig. So much for people being too dumb to use a strong system!) If Lessig is truly _only_ proposing that some idiots be encouraged to use weak remailers and weak crypto, then, fine, no harm done. However, the goals Lessig is avowedly seeking, of access to identities through "legal warrants," then his system will rapidly become unused after the first few "legal warrant" convictions. So long as strong systems cost little more than weak systems, strong systems prevail. (And, for various reasons, strong systems are in most cases cheaper to use than weak systems.) In a kind of reverse of Gresham's Law ("weak money drives out good money"), strong crypto drives out weak crypto. (Actually, this is not so much a reverse of Gresham's Law as its manifestation in terms of what money is: people seek to get rid of (= spend) weak money and hold on to (= hoard, save) strong money. So they spend their "debased" currency and hold on to their gold double eagles. This actually confirms the above point.) Bottom Line: In the ecology of encryption, remailers, and digital money, weak systems that are LEO-friendly will ultimately lose out to strong systems. Unless the strong systems are outlawed, and maybe not even then. --Tim May "I'm sorry that Tim is being a bother again. He has a long history of being obnoxious and threatening. So far, he has not broken any laws. We have talked to the authorities about him on numerous occasions. They have chosen to watch but not act. Please feel free to notify me if he does anything that is beyond rude and actually violates any laws and I will immediately inform the authorities." Thank You Don Frederickson (co-owner and CEO of got.net, Santa Cruz)

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Re: Is Matel Stalinist?
by Tyler Durden 09 Dec '03

09 Dec '03

Tim May wrote... "This is silly, socialist nonsense. I know some of the book buyers at the "Borders" store in Santa Cruz (the very one that the "anti-bigness" lefties tried to ban from opening in Santa Cruz). Not only do they have a "local authors" section which is larger than the similar section at the "local" bookstore, but they have a sophisticated system for re-ordering books based on sales. If a title sells, they know it. And can order replacements." Nothing particularly socialist about my original statement. I was trying to point out how the knee-jerk mimicry of top-down structures prevented even big companies from making as much money as they could, by awarding and leveraging local talent and information. It would be nice to think that part of Border's success is from doing some of this. As for the small, independent bookstores, I personally helped trounce one in particular...the owner was not only a know-it-all DICK he really wasn't a very good businessman. He tried to tell his customers that they should want what he was selling and it didn't work. (Every now and then I'd try to send a customer or two his way to get the kind of books the Central Office wouldn't let us carry, and on several occasions the reply was "No thank you, I'm never shopping THERE again..."). So I'm not advocating 'requiring' big retail companies to get smarter, nor am I advocating non-shopping at the big Borders and Barnes and Nobles. My point was that a lot of corporate cultures blindly mimic hierarchies even when that's not appropriate, because it just about the only social model anyone's ever experienced. >And being a shareholder in a bunch of non-Silicon Valley companies, I can >also assure you that their 'high-level strategic decisons" are NOT "made >almost entirely in the vacuum of power." Well, I'm thinking of the Lucents, Nortels and Alcatels of the world. Oh, and all the big old financial houses as well. Those two sectors I can claim some decent familiarity with (I too am a shareholder in various companies). When Lucent bought Chromatis, or when Sandy Weil told Jack Grubman to uppe his rating on AT&T or...well, these major, corporation-shaking decisions were pretty much made in a vacuum of power. There's no way shareholders could give the thumbs-down to those absurd deals, or even (really) chuck out those responsible. Of course, you'll argue that the shareholders could vote with their feet until something was done, but that's besides the point. The point here is that shareholders, Boardmembers, and upper management alike are so used to an environment where little or no feedback is possible that something like this happens so often. I'm not saying "there should be a law"...it's a cultural thing, and the culture sucks, because we're used to being told what to do by somebody else who's "in charge". >You silly Bolshies are obviously on the wrong list if you think strong >crypto is going to help your cause. Not so fast my fine, crypto-fascist friend. Let's look at Grubman. At the time Sandy Weil gave him his marching orders he probably had (at least) 10s of millions of dollars-worth of immature Citigroup options. You can also bet he was paying out the friggin WAZOO for whatever upper-east-side space he had (as well as whatever East Hampton 'bungalo' he had). So in a way, he was on the hook, and stood to make a hell of a lot more on the AT&T deal. So he probably didn't really WANT to put lipstick on that pig, but he didn't have a lot of choice. (OK, he had plenty of choice, but that's a different matter...) Now let's say some kind of really sophisticated blacknet were available, able to support even short-selling and whatnot. In that case Grubman might have secretly shorted the AT&T deal and then given Sandy the finger, all the while preserving his tattered (but then still-salvagable) reputation as at least an "honest" pump-and-dump analyst, while being able to keep himself afloat in high-end hookers and other goodies (that's what I would have done!). >From this perspective, crypto would have allowed enough holes to be punched in the deal so that real market forces could tear it apart like pirana, which is what should have happened. -TD _________________________________________________________________ Winterize your home with tips from MSN House & Home. http://special.msn.com/home/warmhome.armx

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Re: Anti-globalization
by Declan O'Reilly 09 Dec '03

09 Dec '03

On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 02:18:37 +0200 Anatoly Vorobey <mellon(a)pobox.com> wrote: > That was a rhetorical question. In the "old Soviet oligarchy", you > would get into real trouble for publicly speaking against it. In > "today's corporate oligarchy", this is obviously not true. Therefore > the comparison is flawed, and it's not at all true that "just the names > and titles are different". > > -- > avva Oops , my bad Thanks Anatoly Declan O'Reilly

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Re: cypherpunks discussions
by Sarad AV 09 Dec '03

09 Dec '03

hi, I just a pick a book and learn and if i am in doubt, ofcourse i do have a lot of stupid ones. but thats how i learn. I have friends who will help me with my queries. I prefer not getting flamed like every one else and that too in quick succesion :-). so my guess is that as far as newbies are concerned all the discussions are taken private. Moreover,there is no loss in interest in cryptography, we pursue it with our heart and soul. Sarath. At 03:26 PM 12/7/03 -0800, Tim May wrote: >But even if crypto got trendy again, I just don't see the young >students of today flocking to our particular mailing list. Too many >other choices. Probably they'll read someone's daily blog.... A few observations. Nowadays, colleges offer courses in crypto. This was not the case when I started reading this list. And 'net social issues were not widely discussed; now there are many fora and public organizations that one can look at. Probably college courses on that, too. So *perhaps* neophytes interested in these things have many more places to learn. Just an optimistic possibility. I did much like your "the nose rings of the followers" comment though. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing. http://photos.yahoo.com/

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Re: Decline of the Cypherpunks list...Part 19
by Anonymous 09 Dec '03

09 Dec '03

Let's look at some real-world metric of cpunkish issues: 1. Surveillance and data harvesting. The main reason many "joined" cpunks (including me) was the issue of wide-spread surveillance and sophistication of data harvesting that computer networks enabled. I could protect my traffic no problemo. And I couldn't care less if some moronic consumer/sheeple type could not. That was not the issue. The issue was that government(s) (there used to be more than one in old times) had too good take on the pulse of the population, and would make less mistakes due to this feedback. Well, they succeeded and cpunks miserably failed. There was no way to jam the crypto down the throats of the unwashed. Today most of them keep their e-mails and http pages on disks that belong to LEA-friendly corps - there is no need to intercept - all TLA needs to do is search. There is more data harvesting today than ever before. It's not even mentioned any more. It's not a news item or a sexy maillist topic. 2. Crypto tools Widely available. This is a big success. One can readily download PGP or ssh. Seldom used. I don't count "protect-your CC # with SSL" kind of use. Only NSA knows, but I'd guess that the number of PGP users is pretty stable in the last decade. The biggest win of the government was removing surveillance from the focus. My guess is that all the early fuzz about crypto tools was fear that they will be widely used. When it became obvious that it will not happen the fuzz stooped. ECHELON? ITAR? No one even bothers to mention these any more. But you can safely assume that *all* mail traffic through MAE nodes is archived, along with google queries and that most net users have "files" with histories of search strings and similar. I would be disappointed with the waste of my tax dollars/euros/pounds if this is not the case. The only way out is new communication technology. Internet is too old and has been completely coopted. We need the Next Thing, now. I don't know what it is but these things seem to come up quite regularly. So forget about Internet doing anything for the cpunk agenda. Tune in the Next.

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Re: Decline of the Cypherpunks list...Part 19
by proclus＠gnu-darwin.org 09 Dec '03

09 Dec '03

I'm still quite new to this list, so if you find this interesting, please take it as from a newbie ;-}. On Sun, 7 Dec 2003, Tim May wrote: > > Read the archives and note the drop-off in certain kinds of > > political discussion. Even some of the former nodes have vanished; my > > hunch is that many of those subscribed to the vanished nodes never > > bothered to find another node. (I have no idea how many subscribers the > > list has. The nodes I know of don't allow listing the subscribers. I'd volunteer GNU-Darwin.org as a new node, but we are having issues with SMTP, dynablocker, spews list, etc. (BTW, if anyone can recommend a reliable and inexpensive closed relay service, that would be a big help.) Anyway, is there a FAQ, HOWTO, volunteer person, where I can learn how to set up a new Cpunks node? I'd love to do this, if it would help, and I'm sure that most of our users would also love the idea of GNU-Darwin assisting the Cypherpunks list, which seems quiet apt. I frequently post to other forums crypto-related items, which could include a link to the Cypherpunks list. > > bothered to find another node. (I have no idea how many subscribers the > > list has. The nodes I know of don't allow listing the subscribers. > On 7 Dec, J.A. Terranson wrote: > None of mine will allow it either, with the reason being the protection of > the list contributors. A partial solution would be to list the number of subscribers in the list info, which reveals the info that is important to the community without revealing the identities of the subscribers. > CP has always been so much more than crypto. The history here is political, > with crypto not always playing a part. Even the non-crypto discussion is > almost completely lost. Here is an old post of mine. I was worried about being off-topic, so I did not continue with it. http://www.mail-archive.com/cypherpunks@lne.com/msg00722.html I'm a person who could post a ton of political stuff, which some might find interesting, but some of it may not be related to crypto at all. I support crypto against a government which would like to be called libertarian, which prats vacantly about democracy, free trade, and globalism while undermining freedom and constitutional liberties. This is the situation which necessitates private crypto. Conversely, many here likely would not be happy if I called myself libertarian, because I feel that corporations are titanic forces unfriendly to the vast majority of human beings and unworthy of human liberty. In short, I think that the libertarian position has been entirely undermined, coopted , and lost conceptual utility. The whole libertarian debate has become distasteful, trollish, and counter-productive, and it is driving people out of forums like this one, not attracting them. I would probably get labeled as a political spammer or a troll myself. I'm not sure this is what you want here. Regards, proclus http://www.gnu-darwin.org/ -- Visit proclus realm! http://proclus.tripod.com/ -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GMU/S d+@ s: a+ C++++ UBOULI++++$ P+ L+++(++++) E--- W++ N- !o K- w--- !O M++@ V-- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP-- t+++(+) 5+++ X+ R tv-(--)@ b !DI D- G e++++ h--- r+++ y++++ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type APPLICATION/pgp-signature]

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Re: Decline of the Cypherpunks list...Part 19
by Freematt357＠aol.com 09 Dec '03

09 Dec '03

In a message dated 12/8/2003 8:27:05 PM Eastern Standard Time, declan(a)well.com writes: > >As for writing for "Reason," they haven't asked, and their editorial > >focus is increasingly statist. Cf. Cathy Young's quote at the bottom of > >this post. > > I disagree. I went to a Reason gathering in Washington last Thursday > and found the staffers there definitely not statist. > Reason has improved mightily after Nick Gillespie took over from Postrel as editor. After the Cathy Young statement I raised holy hell with Reason and to their credit both David Nott (President, Reason Foundation) and Mike Alissi (Publisher) both wrote me and promised, which they delivered, pro encryption articles. Around ten years ago I had a heated argument with one of the deep pocketed Trustees of the Reason Foundation about what I considered the magazine's divergence from libertarian thought. He basically said that if the magazine went into a more overtly libertarian direction, they'd lose subscribers- I thought then that was bs, and even let my subscription lapse. I resubscribed a couple of years ago and have found the magazine much improved. Regards, Matt Gaylor-

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Marijuana once again legal in Ontario, Canada
by Tim Meehan 09 Dec '03

09 Dec '03

An unforeseen consequence of government incompetence. http://ontario.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=25324 TORONTO - Ontario Consumers for Safe Access to Recreational Cannabis is happy to inform consumers that, because of Health Canada's failure to implement constitutional Medical Marijuana Access Regulations, wide-open marijuana legalization is back in Ontario! "The police will likely still have their 'business as usual' public relations line, but since Health Canada has defied the order of the Ontario Court of Appeal by not allowing a grower to supply multiple patients, as ordered, the MMAR is unconstitutional," said Tim Meehan, communications director of OCSARC. "Because it's unconstitutional, that means that according to the Parker decision by the same court in 2000, the possession of marijuana law is dead once again." OCSARC reminds people that while they might still be arrested and prosecuted by police and prosecutors who refuse to acknowledge the status of the law, they may seek substantial financial compensation later. "This is a notice to police that while they do have the power to arrest harmless marijuana smokers, they will be doing so at their own peril. Cannabis consumers will not allow themselves to be treated as second class citizens, and many will be armed with legal information and representation in case the harassment continues," said Meehan. OCSARC (Ontario Consumers for Safe Access to Recreational Cannabis) is a Toronto-based organization working to end prohibition and promote reasonable and responsible regulation and quality assurance in the cannabis market.

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None
by Keith Ray 08 Dec '03

08 Dec '03

who end

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Re: Decline of the Cypherpunks list...Part 19
by Freematt357＠aol.com 08 Dec '03

08 Dec '03

In a message dated 12/8/2003 2:46:37 PM Eastern Standard Time, timcmay(a)got.net writes: > So, you are free to be "Matt Gaylor, Activist!" and to try to get > articles published in "Liberty" or "Gold Currency Times" or wherever > you get published, but I have other things I'd rather be doing. > > Preaching to me that I ought to be sacrificing my time for the > betterment of some skatepunks by publishing in "Piercing Magazine" is > the silliest kind of altruistic thinking. > No Tim, not altruistic. My reason for wanting you to write is a selfish one. Self preservation. You are able to tie technology into the bigger picture, and you do have something valuable to say. You already sacrifice your time in pointless diatribes about the good ole' days on CP- I'm just making a plea that you do something more useful- Regards, Matt Gaylor-

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RE: Got.net and its narcing out of its customers
by Tyler Durden 08 Dec '03

08 Dec '03

Tim May wrote... "I consider Don Frederickson despicable, and stupid. To not bother before understanding the context of the thread and say, basically, "Yes, we have narced out this customer to law enforcement, but they are just watching" is reprehensible." Well, I saw the got.net quote before and that brief sample seemed to indicate something entirely different to me. First of all, it says they've 'talked to the authorities about him' seems allows for the possibility of having been contacted BY said authorities. Second, it points out "he hasn't broken any laws"...third it says "please notify me when he actually breaks the law..."...that's kind of a nice, business-smart "fuck off" as I see it. In other words, the guy seems to acknowledge that he doesn't like a lot of Tim May's philosophies, but he won't even think about doing anything unless Mr May personally murders someone or whatever. In other words, he's saying he's going to support Tim May's free speech, but he's saying it in a way that won't cause him to end up in Guantanamo. But then again, that's the only quote I've seen... -TD >From: Tim May <timcmay(a)got.net> >To: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> >CC: cypherpunks(a)lne.com >Subject: Got.net and its narcing out of its customers >Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 13:17:22 -0800 > >On Dec 8, 2003, at 1:15 PM, Declan McCullagh wrote: > >>On Sat, Dec 06, 2003 at 01:59:26PM -0800, Tim May wrote: >>>This actually fits in with something Lessig is widely known for, his >>>"technology-custom-law" trichotomy (*). >>> >>>(* He may call it something different...I haven't checked in a while. >> >>I was reading some of David Friedman's articles over the weekend and >>noticed that he also used the same trichotomy, predating Lessig. >> >>>"I'm sorry that Tim is being a bother again. He has a long history of >>>being obnoxious and threatening. So far, he has not broken any laws. We >>>have talked to the authorities about him on numerous occasions. They >>>have chosen to watch but not act. Please feel free to notify me if he >>>does anything that is beyond rude and actually violates any laws and I >>>will immediately inform the authorities." >>> >>>Thank You >>>Don Frederickson (co-owner and CEO of got.net, Santa Cruz) >> >>When did Don Fredderickson write this? >> >>-Declan >> > > >You can Google Groups for any of the unique text to find it, and the >context. > >Or, here's the thread (search on my name for the exact spot, or go to >August 22nd): > ><http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF >-8&safe=off&threadm=220820032357238678%25timcmay%40removethis.got.net&rn >um=1&prev=/ >groups%3Fq%3Dfrederickson%2Bgot%2Btim%26hl%3Den%26lr%3Dlang_en%26ie%3DUT >F-8%26oe%3DUTF >-8%26safe%3Doff%26selm%3D220820032357238678%2525timcmay%2540removethis.g >ot.net%26rnum%3D1> > >Searching GG on "don frederickson got tim" is maybe more reliable than >pasting this URL. > >(If you are asking did Don write this on or about the 22nd?, I assume so, >of course, as this is when this "Kal" nym was foaming and threatening to >get my account yanked and have the cops raid my house.) > >It happened in one of the "movies" groups (rec.arts.current-movies), when >the thread was on DVD copy protection and the (claimed) illegality of >making DVDs of movies. > >I explained how I was cheerfully making an average of a DVD a day of my >favorite current movies. > >A couple of "nyms" went ballistic and foamed that they had forwarded my >"admissions" to the RIAA and how I would face civil penalties and jail >time, oh my! > >Then one of them claimed he had arranged to have my account yanked, for >"violation of the DMCA." He claimed he had sent copies of my "criminal" >admissions to Got.net, to the RIAA, to "law enforcement" (shudder!), and >so on. > >The owner of Got.net replied to him and the above got posted (not by me). > >I consider Don Frederickson despicable, and stupid. To not bother before >understanding the context of the thread and say, basically, "Yes, we have >narced out this customer to law enforcement, but they are just watching" >is reprehensible. > >The earlier owners/operators of Got.net took the stance that what people >said on Usenet or on mailing lists was of no interest to them, save for a >few carefully-spelled-out TOS issues (like spam). > >The new owner apparently thinks it's his job to narc out his customers to >law enforcement and then to tell others who are not even his customers >that he has done so. Were I the litigious sort, I might contemplate suing. > >(I haven't quit Got.net yet mainly because I am evaluating options for >broadband in my rural location. Currently, DSL is about half a mile away, >so may arrive soon--when it does I expect I will get it. Cablemodem is >available to the top of my hill, but not down my long driveway, and the >cable company will not allow me to either string my own lines or mount a >WiFi or IR or similar atop the telephone pole. (My utilities are >underground, but were laid when the house was built, circa 1976. No cable >lines. Which is one reason I got a satellite dish, DirecTV, shortly after >moving in. And, yes, I have looked at satellite broadband options like >DirectLink...not impressive at all.) And the "Pringles can" approach is >not something I want to spend my time engineering or debugging.) > >My hunch is that Frederickson and Got.net have been forwarding copies of >some of my e-mail to "law enforcement," which would have put them in >violation of the ECPA, except that after 9/11 and the Patriot Act and all >these actions are now considered just good corporate citizenship. > >--Tim May _________________________________________________________________ Cell phone switch rules are taking effect find out more here. http://special.msn.com/msnbc/consumeradvocate.armx

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Re: Decline of the Cypherpunks list...Part 19
by Freematt357＠aol.com 08 Dec '03

08 Dec '03

In a message dated 12/7/2003 10:58:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, timcmay(a)got.net writes: > My generation was very active, on all sides. The droids born after > about 1980 are mainly followers. Probably what the nose rings are for. > Hey Tim, why don't you continue your activism and make an attempt to get your writing into more places where generation X might find it. If they are truly droids surely you with your grand intellect could be become their pied piper, leading their revolution. You might feel better venting to the cloistered culture here on CP, but what good does that do? Regards, Matt-

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Re: Decline of the Cypherpunks list...Part 19
by Freematt357＠aol.com 08 Dec '03

08 Dec '03

[demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type message/rfc822]

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Has this photo been de-stegoed?
by Tyler Durden 08 Dec '03

08 Dec '03

OK...let's say I receive a photo that I expected to contain stegoed information on it, but then find that there's nothing I can retrieve using the likely methods or software. Is it possible to determine that the photo 'originally' (ie, when it was sent to me) contained stegoed information, but that it was intercepted in transit and the real message overwritten with noise or whatever? Now I know pretty much nothing about this subject, but I would suppose that de-stegoing a photo must like some kind of spatial spectral fingerprint that should be visible after the photo is FFT'd (is there freeware software out there?). Now I IMAGINE that a sophisticated interceptor could substitute 'believable' de-stego-ing noise so that it would look like the photo never had any stego in the first place. OR...is this actually 'impossible' to do perfectly? And then, what if the interceptor tried to put an alternate message in there instead? Is there a way to tell that there was originallya different message there? My assumption first of all is that nothing was done to prepare the photo against these possibilities. A simple stego message was placed without real thought about whether it might be intercepted and altered. -TD _________________________________________________________________ Take advantage of our best MSN Dial-up offer of the year six months @$9.95/month. Sign up now! http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup

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Re: cypherpunks discussions
by Major Variola (ret) 08 Dec '03

08 Dec '03

At 07:22 AM 12/8/03 -0800, Eric Murray wrote: >Other people have made the point that mailing lists are "old tech" >and I agree. I don't like the new replacements (blogs, web boards) >as much as lists, but perhaps that's because of what I used first. Its not just "the First is the Only Way" phenom. What's going on is that folks are online all the time now, so things interactive (web boards, IM) have become more popular than they could have been in the dial-up past. The big advantage of email, which was the original "killer app", was store and forward. Ie, asych; offline. IM strikes me as perverse. If I wanted to be interrupted I'd answer my telephone. Email clients of olde allowed aliasing to lists, which predated (and motivated) mailing list exploders/auto-managers. They are still widely used for group-of-friends 'private' lists. Even my parents understand Bcc: nowadays. Yahoo boards have options to use email, and modern clients manage multiple email addresses. But for online folks a board is perhaps more convenient, since the board is accessable everywhere. For home/office/school mobility this is a feature, even if its regressing to the "PC as dumb terminal" mechanism. The advantage of eg Yahoo groups (and presumably blogs) is their moderation; the lack thereof enabled spammers to bulldoze the commons of usenet. Inevitable. Also the reason why lne.com is the best node. >Kids these days don't know how to use shell shortcuts either. Not sure what you mean by that. "Shortcut" is a M$ term for lame-ass sym link. ---- "Remember, it takes 42 muscles to frown and only 4 to pull the trigger of a decent sniper rifle." Michael Hohensee

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Re: Decline of the Cypherpunks list...Part 19
by Major Variola (ret) 08 Dec '03

08 Dec '03

At 03:26 PM 12/7/03 -0800, Tim May wrote: >But even if crypto got trendy again, I just don't see the young >students of today flocking to our particular mailing list. Too many >other choices. Probably they'll read someone's daily blog.... A few observations. Nowadays, colleges offer courses in crypto. This was not the case when I started reading this list. And 'net social issues were not widely discussed; now there are many fora and public organizations that one can look at. Probably college courses on that, too. So *perhaps* neophytes interested in these things have many more places to learn. Just an optimistic possibility. I did much like your "the nose rings of the followers" comment though. ------ "When I was your age we didn't have Tim May! We had to be paranoid on our own! And we were grateful!" --Alan Olsen

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Cypherpunks List Info
by cpunk＠lne.com 07 Dec '03

07 Dec '03

Cypherpunks Mailing List Information Last updated: Oct 13, 2003 This message is also available at http://www.lne.com/cpunk Instructions on unsubscribing from the list can be found below. 0. Introduction The Cypherpunks mailing list is a mailing list for discussing cryptography and its effect on society. It is not a moderated list (but see exceptions below) and the list operators are not responsible for the list content. Cypherpunks is a distributed mailing list. A subscriber can subscribe to one node of the list and thereby participate on the full list. Each node (called a "Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer", although they are not related to anonymous remailers) exchanges messages with the other nodes in addition to sending messages to its subscribers. A message posted to one node will be received by the list subscribers on the other nodes, and vice-versa. 1. Filtering The various CDRs follow different policies on filtering spam and to a lesser extent on modifying messages that go to/from their subscribers. Filtering is done, on nodes that do it, to reduce the huge amount of spam that the cypherpunks list is subjected to. There are three basic flavors of filtering CDRs: "raw", which send all messages to their subscribers. "cooked" CDRs try to eliminate the spam on that's on the regular list by automatically sending only messages that are from cypherpunks list subscribers (on any CDR) or people who are replying to list messages. Finally there are moderated lists, where a human moderator decides which messages from the raw list to pass on to subscribers. 2. Message Modification Message modification policy indicates what modifications, if any, beyond what is needed to operate the CDR are done (most CDRs add a tracking X-loop header on mail posted to their subscribers to prevent mail loops). Message modification usually happens on mail going in or out to each CDR's subscribers. CDRs should not modify mail that they pass from one CDR to the next, but some of them do, and others undo those modifications. 3. Privacy Privacy policy indicates if the list will allow anyone ("open"), or only list members, or no one ("private") , to retrieve the subscribers list. Note that if you post, being on a "private" list doesn't mean much, since your address is now out there. It's really only useful for keeping spammers from harvesting addresses from the list software. Digest mode indicates that the CDR supports digest mode, which is where the posts are batched up into a few large emails. Nodes that support only digest mode are noted. 4. Anonymous posting Cypherpunks encourages anonymous posting. You can use an anonymous remailer: http://www.andrebacard.com/remail.html http://anon.efga.org/Remailers http://www.gilc.org/speech/anonymous/remailer.html 5. Unsubscribing Unsubscribing from the cypherpunks list: Since the list is run from a number of different CDRs, you have to figure out which CDR you are subscribed to. If you don't remember and can't figure it out from the mail headers (hint: the top Received: line should tell you), the easiest way to unsubscribe is to send unsubscribe messages to all the CDRs listed below. How to figure out which CDR you are subscribed to: Get your mail client to show all the headers (Microsoft calls this "internet headers"). Look for the Sender or X-loop headers. The Sender will say something like "Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)lne.com". The X-loop line will say something like "X-Loop: cypherpunks(a)lne.com". Both of these inticate that you are subscribed to the lne.com CDR. If you were subscribed to the algebra CDR, they would have algebra.com in them. Once you have figured out which CDR you're subscribed to, look in the table below to find that CDRs unsubscribe instructions. 6. Lunatics, spammers and nut-cases "I'm subscribed to a filtering CDR yet I still see lots of junk postings". At this writing there are a few sociopaths on the cypherpunks list who are abusing the lists openness by dumping reams of propaganda on the list. The distinction between a spammer and a subscriber is nearly always very clear, but the dictinction between a subscriber who is abusing the list by posting reams of propaganda and a subscriber who is making lots of controversial posts is not clear. Therefore, we tolerate the crap. Subscribers with a low crap tolerance should check out mail filters. Procmail is a good one, although it works on Unix and Unix-like systems only. Eudora also has a capacity for filtering mail, as do many other mail readers. An example procmail recipie is below, you will of course want to make your own decisions on which (ab)users to filter. # mailing lists: # filter all cypherpunks mail into its own cypherspool folder, discarding # mail from loons. All CDRs set their From: line to 'owner-cypherpunks'. # /dev/null is unix for the trash can. :0 * ^From.*owner-cypherpunks@.* { :0: * (^From:.*ravage@ssz\.com.*|\ ^From:.*jchoate@dev.tivoli.com.*|\ ^From:.*mattd@useoz.com|\ ^From:.*proffr11@bigpond.com|\ ^From:.*jei@cc.hut.fi) /dev/null :0: cypherspool } 7. List of current CDRs All commands are sent in the body of mail unless otherwise noted. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Algebra: Operator: Subscription: "subscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo(a)algebra.com Unsubscription: "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo(a)algebra.com Help: "help cypherpunks" to majordomo(a)algebra.com Posting address: cypherpunks(a)algebra.com Filtering policy: raw Message Modification policy: no modification Privacy policy: ??? Info: ??? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- CCC: Operator: drt(a)un.bewaff.net Subscription: "subscribe [password of your choice]" to cypherpunks-request(a)koeln.ccc.de Unsubscription: "unsubscribe <password>" to cypherpunks-request(a)koeln.ccc.de Help: "help" to to cypherpunks-request(a)koeln.ccc.de Web site: http://koeln.ccc.de/mailman/listinfo/cypherpunks Posting address: cypherpunks(a)koeln.ccc.de Filtering policy: This specific node drops messages bigger than 32k and every message with more than 17 recipients or just a line containing "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" in the subject. Digest mode: this node is digest-only NNTP: news://koeln.ccc.de/cbone.ml.cypherpunks Message Modification policy: no modification Privacy policy: ??? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Infonex: Subscription: "subscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo(a)infonex.com Unsubscription: "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo(a)infonex.com Help: "help cypherpunks" to majordomo(a)infonex.com Posting address: cypherpunks(a)infonex.com Filtering policy: raw Message Modification policy: no modification Privacy policy: ??? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lne: Subscription: "subscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo(a)lne.com Unsubscription: "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo(a)lne.com Help: "help cypherpunks" to majordomo(a)lne.com Posting address: cypherpunks(a)lne.com Filtering policy: cooked Posts from all CDR subscribers & replies to threads go to lne CDR subscribers. All posts from other CDRs are forwarded to other CDRs unmodified. Message Modification policy: 1. messages are demimed (MIME attachments removed) when posted through lne or received by lne CDR subscribers 2. leading "CDR:" in subject line removed 3. "Reply-to:" removed Privacy policy: private Info: http://www.lne.com/cpunk; "info cypherpunks" to majordomo(a)lne.com Archive: http://archives.abditum.com/cypherpunks/index.html (thanks to Steve Furlong and Len Sassaman) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Minder: Subscription: "subscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo(a)minder.net Unsubscription: "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo(a)minder.net Help: "help" to majordomo(a)minder.net Posting address: cypherpunks(a)minder.net Filtering policy: raw Message Modification policy: no modification Privacy policy: private Info: send mail to cypherpunks-info(a)minder.net --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Openpgp: [openpgp seems to have dropped off the end of the world-- it doesn't return anything from sending help queries. Ericm, 8/7/01] Subscription: "subscribe cypherpunks" to listproc(a)openpgp.net Unsubscription: "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to listproc(a)openpgp.net Help: "help" to listproc(a)openpgp.net Posting address: cypherpunks(a)openpgp.net Filtering policy: raw Message Modification policy: no modification Privacy policy: ??? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sunder: Subscription: "subscribe" to sunder(a)sunder.net Unsubscription: "unsubscribe" to sunder(a)sunder.net Help: "help" to sunder(a)sunder.net Posting address: sunder(a)sunder.net Filtering policy: moderated Message Modification policy: ??? Privacy policy: ??? Info: ??? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pro-ns: Subscription: "subscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo(a)pro-ns.net Unsubscription: "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo(a)pro-ns.net Help: "help cypherpunks" to majordomo(a)pro-ns.net Posting address: cypherpunks(a)pro-ns.net Filtering policy: cooked Posts from all CDR subscribers & replies to threads go to local CDR subscribers. All posts from other CDRs are forwarded to other CDRs unmodified. Message Modification policy: 1. leading "CDR:" in subject line removed 2. "Reply-to:" removed Privacy policy: private Info: http://www.pro-ns.net/cpunk

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Larry Lessig on ending anonymity through "identity escrow"
by Declan McCullagh 05 Dec '03

05 Dec '03

See also: http://politechbot.com/pipermail/politech/2003-December/000268.html --- >Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 09:12:16 -0500 >To: politech(a)politechbot.com >From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> >Subject: Larry Lessig replies to Politech over limiting anonymity [fs][priv] > > >--- > >[Why do I get the feeling that Larry Lessig doesn't like "absolute" >anonymity much at all? Systems for building and defending "absolute" >anonymity already exist in the form of anonymous remailers and Freenet, >among others. It would be foolish to follow Larry's advice and concede too >quickly that such technologies have so few legitimate uses that they >cannot be reasonably defended. Even the oft-benighted Eurocrats have >recognized this: a 1997 EC directive encourages anonymity, as does a >German federal law (http://www.iid.de/rahmen/iukdgebt.html) In the U.S., >since the Federalist Papers were published with effectively "absolute" >pseudonymity, surely the framers of the U.S. Constitution had them in mind >when crafting the Bill of Rights. Justice Thomas lists more >contemporaneous examples in his McIntyre concurrence >(http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-986.ZC1.html) Saying >anonymous technologies are indefensible concedes a crucial point: that the >government's power is so sweeping that police have the right to learn our >identity in all cases. So much for whistleblowing and anonymous reports of >public brutality. > >Perhaps more to the point, the twin privacy-encroaching technologies of >automated electronic surveillance and efficient large-scale databases did >not exist decades or centuries ago. "Absolute" anonymity lets us reclaim >some of that lost zone of privacy. Lastly, trying to remove "absolute" >anonymity from the Internet (banning strong encryption and computers that >can be programmed not to keep logs) would be far more disruptive, >destructive, and harmful than proposals like Hollings' CBDTPA that Larry >has rightly opposed. --Declan] > >--- > >From: Lawrence Lessig <lessig(a)pobox.com> >Cc: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> >Subject: Re: [Politech] Economist, Lessig want to preserve freedom by >ending anonymity [fs][priv] >Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 10:16:31 +0900 >To: Aaron Swartz <me(a)aaronsw.com> > >It's not an inaccurate quote, but it is taken out of context. > >What I said was that the trend in our laws was to destroy any privacy at >all -- that the idiocy of Patriot Acts, etc., was effectively eliminating >any form of privacy. There are two kinds of responses to this -- one to >try to defend and build a system protecting absolute anonymity; the second >is to build effective protections for pseudonymous life, which is >shorthand for traceable transactions, but where the permission to trace is >protected by something like a warrant requirement. I'm not saying the >government should build these systems, but that they should be permitted >and indeed encouraged. > >In my view, we will make no progress following path one, but that we would >strongly advance privacy if we could advance path two. A strong ethic and >architecture of pseudonymous identity, properly protected, would give us >more privacy than we have today. > >Of course, it is possible (and probably likely) that such an architecture >would not properly protect the link between a transaction and the privacy >of a person. Government officials, for example, upon mere suspicion would >be able to break the link, etc. That of course is not what I am promoting. >I would promote a regime where the gov't required a very strong >warrant-like reason before it could break the code that makes the link. >But I will not that the baseline from which we're starting is a world >where no real showing is necessary for this sort of surveillance. > > >On Dec 4, 2003, at 9:26 AM, Aaron Swartz wrote: > >>>To preserve freedom further, suggests Mr Lessig, anonymity could be >>>replaced by [warrant-traceable] pseudonymity. >> >>Can you explain this? The Economist article seemed to be total nonsense, >>but I'm surprised they paraphrase you as saying something like this. In >>general, for eliminating anonymity to make sense you need to answer three >>questions: >> >>1. Is anonymity the problem? Between DMCA subpoenas and national security >>letters, it seems that very few people on the Internet have even limited >>anonymity. >> >>2. Will the people who are anonymous evade things? The people who _are_ >>anonymous, of course, are people like crackers. If you outlaw anonymity, >>crackers will likely find security holes that let them hide their >>identity and pass their actions off as those of others (e.g. using the >>WiFi network of some squeaky-clean grandma to launch the attacks). >> >>3. Is it worth the cost? Even if you can answer the above questions, >>it'll be difficult to do without knocking large groups of people off the >>Internet. (If the digital divide is bad now, imagine what it'll be like >>when you need a credit card to get on the Net.) >> >>Were you misquoted? If not, can you answer these questions? Or is this >>more blind optimism? >>-- >>Aaron Swartz: http://www.aaronsw.com/ >----- >Lessig >Stanford Law School >559 Nathan Abbott Way >Stanford, CA 94305-8610 >650.736.0999 (vx) >650.723.8440 (fx) > > Ass't: <laura.lynch(a)stanford.edu> > <http://lessig.org/blog> > <http://creativecommons.org> > <http://eldred.cc> > > Help reclaim the Public Domain: Please sign this petition: > http://eldred.cc/sign > > How else can you help? Check out: > http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=Lessig

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Privacy and Property on the Net: Research Questions
by Eugen Leitl 05 Dec '03

05 Dec '03

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/302/5651/1686 PERCEPTIONS OF SCIENCE ESSAY: Privacy and Property on the Net: Research Questions William Sims Bainbridge* The Net, which consists of the Internet plus the parallel networks of commercial and military data communication, raises serious issues of personal information vulnerability and ownership of intellectual property. Peer-to-peer sharing of music files over Internet, for example, challenges the existing system of copyright. Counterterrorism "data mining" systems hunt for signs of suspicious activity across vast databases of information about people who do not wish to be spied upon. Research by social and information scientists is needed to clarify many such issues. To a sociologist, perhaps the most interesting quality of Internet and other data transmission networks is their potential to alter power relationships with respect to personal privacy and intellectual property. Both are restrictions on the free flow of information. Government is implicated in both, on the one hand by providing legal support for them and, on the other hand, by potentially violating them in the pursuit of its own goals, such as national security. Social scientists have only just begun framing research projects to learn how the Internet is liberating information from traditional restraints or to understand the likely human consequences. Although both privacy and property are rooted deep in humanity's evolutionary past, they are variables, and societal norms change. For example, until a century and a half ago, U.S. census takers would post their completed enumeration forms in the town square for anyone to read, but from 1850 until 1954 when Title 13 of the U.S. Code forbade publication of an individual's records, a complex series of steps gradually increased confidentiality protections (1). Today, the Census Bureau keeps the data confidential for 72 years. This change has largely been driven by the increasing government collection of data about its citizens, to facilitate social services, taxation, and management of the economy (2). By offering confidentiality, government hopes the public will relinquish some of its traditional privacy. Whether citizens benefit from government collection of data about them is another matter. In Maryland, every prospective juror is asked what his or her religion is, even though this information is not used in the jury selection process. The religion data are kept confidential, but all information about prospective jurors that is used in the selection is made public. Thus, we have the bizarre situation of costly information being kept confidential precisely because it is useless. The idea that government should regulate intellectual property through copyrights and patents is relatively recent in human history, and the precise details of what intellectual property is protected for how long vary across nations and occasionally change. There are two standard sociological justifications for patents or copyrights: They reward creators for their labor, and they encourage greater creativity. Both of these are empirical claims that can be tested scientifically and could be false in some realms (3, 4). Consider music (5). Star performers existed before the 20th century, such as Franz Liszt and Niccolo Paganini, but mass media produced a celebrity system promoting a few stars whose music was not necessarily the best or most diverse. Copyright provides protection for distribution companies and for a few celebrities, thereby helping to support the industry as currently defined, but it may actually harm the majority of performers. This is comparable to Anatole France's famous irony, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges." In theory, copyright covers the creations of celebrities and obscurities equally, but only major distribution companies have the resources to defend their property rights in court. In a sense, this is quite fair, because nobody wants to steal unpopular music, but by supporting the property rights of celebrities, copyright strengthens them as a class in contrast to anonymous musicians. Internet music file sharing has become a significant factor in the social lives of children, who download bootleg music tracks for their own use and to give as gifts to friends. If we are to believe one recent poll done by a marketing firm rather than social scientists, 48% of American Internet users aged 12 to 17 had downloaded music files in the past month (6). In so doing, they violate copyright laws, and criminologists would hypothesize they thereby learn contempt for laws in general. A poll by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that two-thirds of an estimated 35 million Americans who download music files do not care whether they are copyrighted (7). Thus, on the level of families, ending copyright could be morally as well as economically advantageous. On a much higher level, however, the culture- exporting nations (notably the United States) could stand to lose, although we cannot really predict the net balance of costs and benefits in the absence of proper research. We do not presently have good cross-national data on file sharing or a well-developed theoretical framework to guide research on whether copyright protection supports cultural imperialism versus enhancing the positions of diverse cultures in the global marketplace. It will not be easy to test such hypotheses, and extensive economic research has not conclusively answered the question of whether the patent system really promotes innovation. We will need many careful, sharp-focus studies of well-formed hypotheses in specific industries and sectors of life. For example, observational and interview research can uncover the factors that really promote cultural innovation among artists of various kinds and determine the actual consequences for children of Internet peer-to-peer file sharing. The classic sociological theory of privacy asserts two main principles that are relevant to current information debates (8, 9). First, private relations between individuals are not merely a personal luxury but the very basis of all societies. Thus, surveillance of citizens in the name of national security undermines the very society it was intended to protect. Second, privacy and its violation are inescapably issues of power, with power defined as the ability to defend one's own privacy while being able to invade the privacy of others. Thus, citizens' privacy is violated by government surveillance, even if the information is kept confidential afterward by the agencies. Computer scientists have begun to develop systems that would defend people's information privacy (10). For example, the World Wide Web consortium, which is the chief forum for development of Web standards, has launched the Platform for Privacy Preferences, which automatically manages personal information when interacting with Web sites, following the explicit wishes of the user (11). Ethically informed research can be valuable for design and implementation of information systems. Data mining, for example, can be used in noncontroversial situations like intrusion detection, when you need to defend your own data against attack from outside. But it can also be used aggressively to sift through vast troves of data, pulled together via the Net in a process called data fusion, in a way that violates the privacy of law-abiding citizens while hunting for a few criminals or terrorists. In its recent report, Information Technology for Counterterrorism, the National Research Council blithely suggests that all airport security baggage x-ray machines could send their pictures to a unified computer network that would monitor the collective movements of terrorists boarding different airplanes in different cities, incidentally spying on everybody else who flies (12). Proper sociotechnical design could limit the harm. For example, an automatic data-mining system could seek patterns of suspicious behavior, without allowing any human being to see the data. Then, specially sworn court officials could carefully examine the suspicious cases, before reporting to law enforcement only those few that met statutory definitions of probable cause. What is the optimal design for such a multitiered confidentiality system? Would there be unintended consequences? Would it be acceptable to the public? Without good answers to such questions, information technology could fall under the same cloud of public suspicion that hangs over nuclear power and genetic engineering. Already, aggressive telemarketing has made people very reluctant to answer scientific surveys administered by telephone (13). Internet-based surveys have promise, but they typically lack the reliability of traditional random-sample polling. Another challenge is that impartial research on the real consequences of government security-motivated data fusion and mining may not be possible within the government security regime itself, because impartiality in science requires the research to be made public. Like other buzzwords, "data mining" is difficult to define precisely, and it is practically indistinguishable from a wide range of statistical and pattern recognition techniques used throughout the sciences. Thus, if it is brought into disrepute by privacy violations, science could be harmed. Similarly, many scientists use data that belong to other people, such as the social survey data archived at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (14), so they would be affected by any change in the intellectual property regime. Internet arose as a medium of scientific communication and is an indispensable tool for scientists today. Thus, research on Internet privacy and property issues could benefit science itself, as well as society. Only an anarchist would argue for complete government deregulation of information, but any social scientist would find it interesting to contemplate the implications of major changes in government enforcement of intellectual property rights and government collection of data about its citizens. This essay has briefly sketched theoretical issues that would underlie research on information privacy and property in the age of Internet, and policy-makers should be aware that current practices may reflect cultural lag, the conflict-ridden situation when technological development has rendered traditional norms obsolete (15). References and Notes 1. R. McCaa, S. Ruggles, Scand. Pop. Stud. 13, (2002). 2. D. Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (Basic Books, New York, 1973). 3. C. A. Ganz-Brown, J. World Intellect. Property 1, (1998). 4. National Research Council, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2000). 5. W. S. Bainbridge, in Social Sciences for a Digital World, M. Renaud, Ed. (Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, Paris, 2000). 6. Ipsos-Insight, "Legal issues don't hinder American downloaders" (14 March 2003); [cited from www.ipsos-reid.com 5 May 2003]; available at www/ipsos-insight.com. 7. M. Madden, S. Lenhart, "Music downloading, file-sharing and copyright" (July 2003) at www.pewtrusts.com. 8. B. Schwartz, Am. J. Sociol. 73 (1968). 9. W. S. Bainbridge, "Privacy," forthcoming in Encyclopedia of Community, K. Christensen and D. Levinson, Eds. (Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2003). 10. National Research Council, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, Who Goes There?: Authentication Through the Lens of Privacy (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2003). 11. World Wide Web Consortium at www.w3c.org. 12. National Research Council, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, Information Technology for Counterterrorism (National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2003). 13. D. El Boghdady, Washington Post, 8 September 2002, p. H1. 14. Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research at www.icpsr.umich.edu. 15. W. F. Ogburn, Social Change (Huebsch, New York, 1922). 16. The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily represent the views of the National Science Foundation or the United States. The author is in the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems, the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering, National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA 22230, USA. E-mail: william.bainbridge(a)verizon.net -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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[IP] Markle Report -- Creating A Trusted Information Network for Homeland Security (fwd from dave@farber.net)
by Eugen Leitl 05 Dec '03

05 Dec '03

----- Forwarded message from Dave Farber <dave(a)farber.net> -----

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Uniform Police apparently unconstitutional
by kawaii ryuko 04 Dec '03

04 Dec '03

http://www.constitution.org/lrev/roots/cops.htm "Police work is often lionized by jurists and scholars who claim to employ "textualist" and "originalist" methods of constitutional interpretation. Yet professional police were unknown to the United States in 1789, and first appeared in America almost a half-century after the Constitution's ratification. The Framers contemplated law enforcement as the duty of mostly private citizens, along with a few constables and sheriffs who could be called upon when necessary. This article marshals extensive historical and legal evidence to show that modern policing is in many ways inconsistent with the original intent of America's founding documents. The author argues that the growth of modern policing has substantially empowered the state in a way the Framers would regard as abhorrent to their foremost principles." (Stolen from Declan's Politech list and reposted here.) Ever lovable and always scrappy, kawaii

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[IP] The Third Annual Workshop on Economics and Information Security (fwd from dave@farber.net)
by Eugen Leitl 04 Dec '03

04 Dec '03

----- Forwarded message from Dave Farber <dave(a)farber.net> -----

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Recommended Pro freedom discussion list
by Freematt357＠aol.com 03 Dec '03

03 Dec '03

[Note from Matt Gaylor: I've been on this list for a couple of years and on occasion I find the discussion lively and interesting. It's coming from Kent State University, the place where actual real assault rifles were used May 4, 1970 to wound 9 and kill 4 student war protesters. Ohio Guardsmen opened fire during a noontime demonstration. For a chronology of the shooting please go to: http://members.aol.com/nrbooks/chronol.htm. I can think of no better way to remember the fallen, than by discussing liberty via the school they attended.] -=> the libertarian discussion list <=- ldl(a)listserv.kent.edu The ldl list is intended for discussion of libertarian issues, as well as announcements of local and state events. We encourage lively and active discussion, and discourage mean, derogatory, or wildly off-topic posts. - To subscribe, send 'subscribe ldl' in the body of an email message to listserv(a)listserv.kent.edu - To get a reference of listserv commands and options, send 'info ref' in the body of an email message to listserv(a)listserv.kent.edu - For other problems or questions, send email to list owner Bob Hart at bobhart(a)neo.rr.com

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Re: [p2p-hackers] Peer-to-Peer Journal (P2PJ) CFP (fwd from sam@neurogrid.com)
by Eugen Leitl 03 Dec '03

03 Dec '03

Right now we're getting increasing FUD from the sides of Elsevier & Co against emerging open content journals. I don't think there's a turning of the tide, though, as early adopters have already embraced alternative channels of publication (physicists and math people foremost in arXiv), and it's only a matter of time before more conservative branches of science (medical, chemistry and biology people: that's you) are to follow. We might be getting the publishing monopolists to try grasping for DRM for paper copyright. I'm wondering why they haven't started watermarking their .pdfs yet, shough a crawler looking for phrases or computing document hashes would do just as nicely. Either way, the librarians are attempting to revolt using whatever little leverage they have. Fact is, the budgets are shrinking, and the shelves are emptying, while the content owners have established a de facto pay per view. ----- Forwarded message from Sam Joseph <sam(a)neurogrid.com> -----

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Inferno: PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column (fwd)
by Jim Choate 03 Dec '03

03 Dec '03

What I find most interesting in this article is not MS marketing noise but the comment about the White House, robot.txt, and Google... http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20031120.html Truly a despicable act for a -public servant-. -- -- Open Forge, LLC 24/365 Onsite Support for PCs, Networks, & Game Consoles 512-695-4126 (Austin, Tx.) help(a)open-forge.com irc.open-forge.com Hangar 18 Open Source Distributed Computing Using Plan 9 & Linux 512-451-7087 http://open-forge.org/hangar18 irc.open-forge.org James Choate 512-451-7087 ravage(a)ssz.com jchoate(a)open-forge.com

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Japan police arrest two Winny/Freenet users
by R. A. Hettinga 02 Dec '03

02 Dec '03

<http://asia.cnet.com/newstech/security/printfriendly.htm?AT=39159923-390011…> Japan police arrest two P2P users By Staff, CNETAsia 3/12/2003 URL: http://asia.cnet.com/newstech/security/0,39001150,39159923,00.htm A Japanese peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing network which claimed to keep user identities untraceable has failed to work--two users in Japan have been arrested. The developer of the P2P software has also had his home searched by police, according to a report in the Mainichi Daily. There are around a quarter of a million users of the supposedly anonymous file-trading network, called Winny, which rides on the more well-known Freenet network. Such networks differ from other file trading software such as Kazaa in that they claim to be able to hide the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of users. It is not known how the police managed to track down the two users, or why criminal action is being taken against them. In other countries, P2P users have been hit with civil lawsuits instead. The creator of Freenet, Ian Clarke, has cast doubt on whether Winny uses Freenet's full identity-cloaking features or its cryptography, according to a report in New Scientist. Freenet is an open-source project and is most prominent of a growing number of projects aimed at giving people the ability to communicate online without being tapped, traced or monitored. The software marks an attempt to create a network that exists as a parallel Internet, where content of any kind can be uploaded and downloaded without any way to track who created a given "site". Unlike other peer systems, Freenet has a built-in method of pushing content between different computers, so that a given file can migrate around the network between different people's hard drives until it is stored near regions where it is most often used. The arrested are two men, aged 41 and 19, said the Mainichi Daily report. Among other charges, the older man is accused of sharing the Hollywood movie A Beautiful Mind while the teenager is being held for making the game Super Mario Advance available online. Several companies, including game maker Nintendo, are pressing charges against the pair. This is the first known case of legal action being taken on users on anonymous file-sharing networks. In Korea and Taiwan, lawsuits have been filed against users of P2P networks. A copyright body in Taiwan is suing three users of file sharing networks while in Korea, recording companies are threatening to do the same. In both countries, creators of file sharing software have been brought to court, but defendants are arguing they are not responsible for what people choose to share. Both cases involve homegrown P2P networks sharing local-language music. In Taiwan, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has sued three P2P users who are said to have shared files on the locally-popular Kuro and Ezpeer networks. Unlike internationally popular networks such as Kazaa, both Taiwanese services are fee-based. The Recording Industry Association of Korea (RIAK) is said to be mulling suing end users of free-use P2P software Soribada. Soribada's 4.5 million users have lost the recording industry millions in revenue, claimed the RIAK. The makers of the software have been slapped with a US$16,300 fine, despite claiming that they are not responsible for the actions of its users. In the U.S., the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has targeted hundreds of P2P users for legal action. There is some evidence that the controversial RIAA lawsuits against ordinary computer users are making a dent in the file-swapping world. According to Web analysis firm Nielsen/NetRatings, weekly usage of the Kazaa software in the United States plummeted from a high of 7 million people in early June to just 3.2 million people in late October. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Silly Linux Kernel Bug
by Eric Cordian 02 Dec '03

02 Dec '03

As reported today on Slashdot, in linux kernels prior to 2.4.23, it is possible to map the kernel into user space with brk(), since apparently no one ever bothered to check that the argument passed was in the lower 3 gig of the address space. This is almost as funny as early linux kernels in which the LDT was user writable. In any case, the patch is to stick the following check in do_brk() in /mm/mmap.c if ((addr + len) > TASK_SIZE || (addr + len) < addr) return -EINVAL; This is of course a serious bug, since anyone on a vulnerable machine has access to kernel memory by writing a terse no-brainer C program, of which I will not give an example, because enough people on the Internet hate me already. :) An interesting occurrence, because it demonstrates that massive numbers of open source participants auditing the code aren't sufficient to ferret out every giant coding blunder. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

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[discuss] national Community Technology Network conference, Austin Dec 7-9 (fwd)
by Jim Choate 02 Dec '03

02 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2003 16:01:35 -0600 (CST) From: gene crick <gcrick(a)main.org> To: discuss(a)effaustin.org Subject: [discuss] national Community Technology Network conference, Austin Dec 7-9 Comrades, the Time Has Come To Arise! [I still miss ole Leon Trotsky and his gang] EFF supporters have a unique opportunity to hear and be heard at the Sixth Annual Community Technology Networking Conference at the Holiday Inn (I-35 at Woodward this Monday and Tuesday. Public interest technology is facing near-crisis: we're out of fashion with government and corporate leaders, telecom providers are avoiding underserved people, challenges like spam and threats to free speech are back on the rise. 2004 will be a critical year. But there are good prospects as well. Community Information Communications Technology (ICT) is one of the few telecom professions solidly growing, and the major players are coming to Austin to meet with us in a few days. (FCC, Department of Commerce, Gates Foundation and many more) You need to be here. EFF should be solidly represented, sharing views and plans for the future of the Internet as something more than a mass marketing sales outlet. Cost for the conference is no barrier either: register as student is only $50, includes three meals, and we don't check student IDs :) (regular is $100) So come join us; we finally have a chance to make our concerns known! thanks gene Gene Crick TeleCommunity Resource Center EFF, EFF-Austin [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type APPLICATION/MSWORD which had a NAME of CN2003 invitation.fin.doc] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: discuss-unsubscribe(a)effaustin.org For additional commands, e-mail: discuss-help(a)effaustin.org

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