December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Canada allows crypto exports
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 1:30 AM 5/22/96, M. Plumb wrote: >Several months ago I filed a set of export applications requesting >permission to export cryptographic software from Canada. I learned a >few things from these applications, my conversations with people at >Export Controls, and my own careful reading of Canada's export laws. > > There are a few countries to which you may not export anything, > without a permit. Except for trading with Cuba, same countries U.S. specifies. > You need a permit to export most cryptographic software. As per arrangements with U.S. > Cryptographic software of U.S. origin may be exported, but you > need to file paperwork. Canada is the 51st state, or possibly only a terrritory or possession. > Cryptographic software from other countries may be exported without > any paperwork. As with the U.S. > These are the Canadian rules. Canada interprets and enforces the > U.S. export laws when they think it is necessary. While the U.S. > government has sometimes objected to a Canadian interpretation, no > Canadian exporter, acting with Canadian permission, has been charged > by the U.S. government. Despite the above, just how could a Canadian exporter, in Canada, be "charged" by the U.S. government? Please explain. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Remailers vs Nyms - conflicting assumptions?
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"raph(a)cs.berkeley.edu" "Raph Levien" 19-MAY-1996 05:46:40.03 >Bruce Baugh wrote: >> What would it take to create a nym server that could route around the death >> or disability of any given mailer? >Well, that would be a serious problem. The big question is: who decides >the routing? With the existing nym setup, the client decides the entire >route. The nymserver knows only the first hop. For the nymserver to be >able to route around damage, it would have to know that there is damage, >and that implies knowing the route. Could a reply block be restructured so as to have a series of binary/trinary/whatever decisions embedded in it, in encrypted form? In other words, the remailer doing the remailing knows (transiently, hopefully) to whom it's sending. It would have a choice of two remailers to use for this, and would wipe the other reply block (replacing it with random gibberish). If two were down, it could do a random choice; if one was down, it would send it via that one; if both were down, you get the same situation as currently. Now, one problem that I can see is increasing the length of the reply block-perhaps greatly if it was done enough. Given the need for fixed lengths (e.g., Mixmaster) to really get around traffic analysis, this could be a problem. There's also the question (to be left up to the user) of whether you should try any remailers again in the chain if the choice had earlier said no. If the answer was yes, then you'd have a greater chance of it hitting a remailer that didn't realize another remailer was down. If the answer was no, traffic analysis would be helped by knowing - if a remailer was subverted - that it was less likely that a particular remailer was going to be used. Indeed, with subversion you could choose the easier-to-trace remailer to send messages through when you had a choice. -Allen

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Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"llurch(a)networking.stanford.edu" "Rich Graves" 21-MAY-1996 03:48:35.01 >I certainly think that limiting newsgroup posting would be prudent. It's >inexcusable that it's possible to use anonymous remailers to post >*forgeries* (see the smoking flames cross-posted to alt.syntax.tactical). Hmm? Aside from the very basic "forgery" of adding someone else's name to a post (which only the veriest idiot will pay attention to, especially if the remailer operator adds adequate warning labels outside the headers), what forgeries are possible? -Allen

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FTC online workshop on privacy
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Pointing out encryption, anonymnity, etcetera as means couldn't hurt... BTW, at the end of the message is something from this Adam Starchild fellow, with a web address for "Asset Protection & Becoming Judgement Proof." I'd be interested in a review of it. -Allen From: IN%"rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu" 22-MAY-1996 01:05:58.45 From: Phil Agre <pagre(a)weber.ucsd.edu> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below. You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" command. For information on RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, send an empty message to rre-help(a)weber.ucsd.edu =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Date: Sun, 19 May 1996 14:41:06 -0700 From: Adam Starchild <taxhaven(a)ix.netcom.com> To: privacy(a)ftc.gov Subject: FTC Workshop on Consumer Privacy in Cyberspace FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION WORKSHOP ON CONSUMER PRIVACY IN CYBERSPACE TO BE HELD IN JUNE 1996 The Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Education will hold a public workshop on June 4 and 5 to focus on privacy issues in the online marketplace. The development of technologies such as the Internet and the World Wide Web has allowed online businesses to collect and use personal information about consumers, often without consumers' knowledge or consent. The workshop will examine consumer privacy issues in this new marketplace, consumer and business education about the use of personal information online, and ways to enhance the growth of the online marketplace by fostering consumer confidence. Workshop topics will include the use of consumer information, the use of medical and financial information online, the collection and use of information about children, electronic approaches to protecting consumer privacy online, and the European Union's directive on the protection of personal data. The workshop will be open to the public and will be held on June 4, 1996 from 9:00AM to 5:00PM in Room 432 of the FTC headquarters building, 6th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., in Washington, D.C. On June 5, 1996 the workshop will be held from 9:00AM to 12:30PM in Room 332 of the FTC headquarters building. The Bureau invites representatives of consumer groups, industry, government agencies, and other groups to take part in the workshop. Any person wishing to be considered for participation in the public workshop must file a written request, on or before May 24, 1996, to Martha Landesberg, Division of Credit Practices, Bureau of Consumer Protection, Federal Trade Commission, Washington, DC 20580. Posted by Adam Starchild Asset Protection & Becoming Judgement Proof at http://www.catalog.com/corner/taxhaven The privacy list is run automatically by the Majordomo list manager. Send a "help" command to majordomo(a)ftc.gov for assistance.

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Re: The Crisis with Remailers
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"bruce(a)aracnet.com" "Bruce Baugh" 19-MAY-1996 04:10:44.56 >a point here. I don't think most cypherpunks realize how anonymity is >perceived out in the net at large. >Take news.groups, a fairly important group I happen to read regularly. With >the exception of Rich Graves' presence, _all_ the uses I see there are for >cowardly abuse in a way that lets the poster escape having to answer for his >views. I'm not talking about presenting important information where >wrong-headed authorities could engage in reprisals, either, but baseless >accusations of theft, child abuse, and just plain torrents of obscenity. Would you suspect that having more warning labels (before & after, not just in the headers) would help with any negative reputation thus generated? >That's _all_ it's used for (again, with the exception of Rich). >There's a problem here. It's one thing to say that the benefits of anonymity >outweigh the problems. I'm inclined to that view myself. But it's much >harder to defend that view in a forum where anonymity is used so commonly >for problematic ends, and to offer anything in the way of constructive >solutions. It would be pleasing to see more cypherpunks actively dealing >with these problems out there in net.land. You might try pointing out that the only remailing that people see is for allegedly illegitimate reasons. Psychiatrists who are beginning to interact with patients over the net certainly have a good cause to use such remailers... including to prevent governmental tapping, given A. authoritarian governments such as China (blackmail for espionage purposes, for instance); and B. insane U.S. legal decisions like the one I heard about on NPR on 5-21, in which a judge ruled that there was no confidentiality protection prohibiting turning over psychiatric notes. One wonders what that judge's reaction (and the lawyer who asked for the notes) would be to having their confidential documents put into public view... I see no reason to give lawyers more of a privilege than religious/psychiatric individuals. -Alle

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Re:
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 21 May 96 at 19:43, Bad Message trolled: > ! Theses peoples refuse to register their guns, although it is > ! mandatory in canada (to be registered within 7(?) years...) > > There has been total firearm registration since 1968. Absolute BS. Since the late seventies, the mandatory registration of all firearms purchased is in effect and you must hold a valid (in french) A.A.A.F. But you did not have to report firearms you already owned. But with our new law, you *have* to register them within 7 years. And apparently, you have to show proof of ownership of a registered firearm to buy ammunitions. But I must read about this aspect a little more... jfa DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee; Limoges porcelain, silverware and crystal JFA Technologies, R&D consultants; physists, technologists and engineers. PGP keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891 I reserve the right to post publicly any private e-mail sent to me. Unsollicited commercial e-mail will be proofread at US165 $/h Any sender of such material will be considered as to have ac- cepted the above mentionned terms.

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Re: Long-Lived Remailers
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:07 PM 5/21/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >Sure, Alice can always herself add remailer steps. I explicitly mentioned >this in my message last night, when I wrote: "(Hal, to use him as the >example, could start using his own choice of remailer hops to accomplish >much the same result. We've talked about this for a long time, too...." > >But this is just using more remailers. We know this works. What Mark Grant >was suggesting was something different, a kind of "disposable final >emanation point," designed to go away easily under legal pressures. Ideally the final emanation point will be epherimal indeed. Perhaps only a few minutes or an hour or two. That will protect Alice against attacks of the form, "I sent something to Alice and it was posted from the same place as that attack on my dictitorial rule." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Frantz | The CDA means | Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 | lost jobs and | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | dead teenagers | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: Hiding remailers behind nymservers...? (fwd)
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"tcmay(a)got.net" 21-MAY-1996 15:27:09.74 >Now it may be that operating a remailer may be interpreted by some courts >as being a "public nuisance," a theory I credit to Brad Templeton, but this >has not yet come even close to happening. Interesting. Let me guess, on the copyright grounds? Kinko's and library copy machines appear to do fine with warning labels; some equivalent should be possible. -Allen

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Re: Toastmasters?
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"unicorn(a)schloss.li" "Black Unicorn" 20-MAY-1996 22:30:15.23 >Ask every state which has such reporting requirements (which is every >state in the union). >If you wanted to form an offshore corporation you'd have to form an >exempted one. IIRC, there was some discussion of some form of blind trusts a bit back... it was used under English common law to enable stuff before the actual invention of corporations. The ownership of the stock of such an offshore company by one or more such trusts might get around such problems, especially if the trusts had those (very interesting) flight provisions I believe you mentioned a bit back. >That would clearly change the analysis. RE: making a profit. Well, yes, it is a pretty good argument that you aren't just going for lack of liability, since that's part of what corporations are _for_... -Allen

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Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"markm(a)voicenet.com" "Mark M." 21-MAY-1996 02:41:22.53 >One problem I see with this is that if even one remailer operated using the >block lists instead of permit lists, then every other remailer in the chain >could hypothetically be held accountable for the contents of the message. >This idea of permit lists makes sense, but I am not sure it would really solve >anything. Well, that would depend on the traffic analysis defeating features not working right. Admittedly, for the next-to-last or so remailer, they may not work well enough anyway... but proof beyond a reasonable doubt would be difficult. Civil suits unfortunately don't follow that standard (even for the punishment done through punitive damages), but they do require some proof. -Allen

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Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"droelke(a)rdxsunhost.aud.alcatel.com" 21-MAY-1996 22:04:32.30 >Heaven forbid that I use spammers as an idea base, but >to borrow something from them.... Set up the headers >on an anonymous message such that a Reply would result in >the user automatically being placed on the "deny" list. Automatically placing someone on the deny list from an email to an address added to the _body_ would be a good thing, in this context, although would mean having to have more than one email address for the remailer. -Allen

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Re: The Crisis with Remailers
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"adam(a)lighthouse.homeport.org" "Adam Shostack" 21-MAY-1996 15:23:24.24 >Lance Cottrell wrote: Oops, I just misremembered your name. Sorry. >| >| An interesting problem with anonymous postage is that it is likely to kill >| cover traffic generators. >| >Postage is most needed at the point of delivery. >That is the node that will be taking the heat/paying the lawyers. I'd >operate a remailer if I was never the last node, becuase I don't have >a site that can take the heat/seizure of machines for me. If we pay >those final nodes to do more, than intermediate nodes can still carry >cover traffic for free. One difficulty with this on cover traffic is that one use of it is to send to dummy addresses, with mail that looks PGP encrypted but is actually garbage. Perhaps mail received without postage should be replaced with garbage by the remailer, then sent to a dummy address chosen by the remailer? -Allen

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Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns (fwd)
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"tcmay(a)got.net" 21-MAY-1996 05:18:04.13 >This is one reason we often talk about the dangers of remailers looking at >what flows through their systems. Not so much to establish "common carrier" >status, especially as that kind of status is just not something one sets >out to establish!, but because the protection of being ignorant gets tossed >out as soon as one admits to screening, or editing. Exactly how little can a remailer log and still keep adequate functionality? I may be setting up one or two Mixmaster-type to-other-remailers-only remailers sometime this summer (with one at Lance Cottrell's company so I can get his help easier...), so it is a practical question.... and one the answer to which may depend on whether one is remailing to another remailer, or to a public setting, or to an email address, or from an email address, etcetera. -Allen

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Re: Senator, your public key please?
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"frantz(a)netcom.com" 22-MAY-1996 01:45:15.84 >Perhaps what is needed is anti-gravity for those signitures that are not >desired by the key owner. The resulting map should show the closeness of >the relationship. I could see two different maps, one with such a feature (eliminating relationships, or causing to repulse those which weren't with permissions - via signing the signatures, or via mutual signing, as mentioned before by you and me), and the other with all links. Both would give some interesting interpretations. One other way to use this would be to try out different transitivity of trust measurements and see what produced the most logical result while still (via other analysis) avoiding spoofing/MITM problems. -Allen

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Advanced Surveillance Technologies Conference II
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu" 22-MAY-1996 03:08:05.95 From: Phil Agre <pagre(a)weber.ucsd.edu> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below. You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" command. For information on RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, send an empty message to rre-help(a)weber.ucsd.edu =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Date: 15 May 1996 13:06:53 -0500 From: "Dave Banisar" <banisar(a)epic.org> To: "Privacy International" <pi(a)privacy.org> Subject: AST II Conference Preliminary Conference Announcement ADVANCED SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGIES II Sponsored by Privacy International Electronic Privacy Information Center September 16, 1996 Citadel Ottawa Hotel and Convention Centre Ottawa, Canada ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The rapid evolution of technology is leading to the creation of a seamless web of surveillance across much of the world. Powerful technologies originally developed for the military are being adopted by law enforcement and civilian agencies, and private companies to monitor entire populations. This has been further fueled by the end of the Cold War and increasing demands for greater bureaucratic efficiency. Existing laws and regulations have failed to keep up with these developments. This one day conference will examine a range of advanced surveillance technologies and their impact on privacy and other civil liberties. It will explore the process of planning and implementation of the technologies, their operating conditions, and the people and organizations responsible for them. The conference will also examine possible technical, regulatory and legal responses. The conference will also address in detail the findings of Privacy International's "Big Brother Incorporated" report which examined the international trade in surveillance technology and the involvement of the arms industry. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- PARTIAL LIST OF SPEAKERS Phil Agre, University of California, San Diego Dave Banisar, Electronic Privacy Information Center Colin Bennett, University of Victoria Simon Davies, London School of Economics & Director, Privacy International Wayne Madsen, Author, Handbook of Personal Data Protection Bruce Schneier, Counterpane Systems & Author, Applied Cryptography CONFERENCE SUBJECTS * Artificial Intelligence Systems * Biometric Identification * Digital Cash * Information Superhighways * Information Warfare * Infrared and Passive Millimeter Wave Detectors * Intelligent Transportation Systems * Other New Technologies ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MORE INFORMATION More information on the conference will be available at the Privacy International mailing list at pi-news(a)privacy.org (subject: subscribe) or at the PI Home Page at http://www.privacy.org/pi/conference/ottawa/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- HOTEL The Conference will take place at Ottawa Citadel Hotel in Ottawa, Canada. A block of rooms has been reserved at the hotel at a discounted rate of CAN $81.00/night for a single $91/night for a double. The hotel should be contacted directly for reservations, mentioning the AST II Conference to get the special rates and early reservation is recommended. The address is Ottawa Citadel Hotel, 101 Lyon St., Ottawa, Canada K1R 5T9, attention reservations, fax 613-237-2351, phone 613-237-3600. In North America you can call toll free at 1-800-567-3600. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- OTHER EVENTS THAT WEEK There are several other conferences in Ottawa that week. On Tuesday, September 17, Industry Canada will be sponsoring a one day Symposium and Demonstration of privacy enhancing technologies. On September 18 - 20, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada will be hosting the 18th International Privacy and Data Protection Conference. Contact: 613-995-2410 or email jroy(a)nstn.ca. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- REGISTRATION Registration Fees [] Standard - $250 CAN ($175 US) [] Non-profit organizations/Educational - $125 CAN ($75 US) Information Name: ___________________________________________________________ Organization: ______________________________________________________ Address: _________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ Phone/Fax: _________________________________________________________ Electronic Mail:_____________________________________________________ Credit card Number/Expiration Date: _________________________________ (Do Not Email!) Fax Registration form and credit card number to +1 202.547.5482 Send Check or Money Order in $US made out to Privacy International to: Privacy International Washington Office 666 Pennsylvania Ave, SE, Suite 301 Washington, DC 20003 USA 1-202-544-9240 (phone) 1-202-547-5482 (fax) pi(a)privacy.org(email) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Senator, your public key please?
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:35 PM 5/21/96 -0400, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote: >From: IN%"frantz(a)netcom.com" 18-MAY-1996 21:54:01.23 > >>This is exactly analogous to slanderous attack on someone's reputation. As >>soon as people realize that the mere fact that a key has a signature does >>not mean that the key-owner solicited the signature, the problem goes away. > > This is interesting in light of social networks analysis as applied >to the web of trust (one interesting web-reference on such analysis is at >http://www.mpi-fg-koeln.mpg.de/~lk/netvis.html; as well as some examples - use >a graphics-capable web browser - it has some links to a FTP site with >programs). One method of such analysis uses what is sometimes called "gravity;" >under it, positions move to be close to those to which they are linked. This >can be one-way or two-way; the above fact may imply that signing someone's key >should move one closer to that person - and not the other way around. Of >course, when analyzing the result, one should keep in mind that one may not >have beneficial intent when signing a key; LD's signatures are examples. Thus, >closeness on such a network may imply a high degree of relationship, but not >a high degree of _positive_ relationship. Perhaps what is needed is anti-gravity for those signitures that are not desired by the key owner. The resulting map should show the closeness of the relationship. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Frantz | The CDA means | Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 | lost jobs and | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | dead teenagers | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: Long-Lived Remailers
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"tcmay(a)got.net" 21-MAY-1996 05:37:17.56 >At 4:56 PM 5/20/96, Rev. Mark Grant, ULC wrote: >>With regard to the problems of remailers being shut down when we want >>long-lived addresses, wouldn't seperating the input and output be one >>possibility? That is (like Hal's Alumni remailer) you'd send mail to >>'remailer(a)anon.ai' and it would be forwarded via a disposable account >>elsewhere. All messages would appear to come from 'disposable(a)foo.com' and >>if that account was shut down a new one could be opened to replace it >>while incoming mail simply backed up at the main remailer account. >This is a very good idea. Agreed. >Traffic analysis will be quite easy to do, of course, as all mail sent to >the persistent address comes out of the "disposable(a)foo.com" address. >Q.E.D. As has been pointed out since your message, one could logically have multiple remailers all using the same output account for messages. Extensions on this idea would be having them use it only for ones going to other than another remailer, to prevent the traffic from being noticed (if lots of traffic to remailers is coming out of one account, someone's going to notice...). Several people could run such output accounts, sending encrypted data on how to access the latest one(s) to (a subset of) remailer operators. (I say a subset in order to stop the NSA from running a remailer and letting, say, AOL know about each new output account on AOL. If some remailer or group of remailers wasn't told about a new output account, and the output account lasted statistically significantly longer (controlling for level of output), then that'd be cause for suspicion.) Which one was used for any given message through a particular remailer could be randomly chosen from those that remailer knew. Another aspect of this is that it would spread out the cost of operating the output account. One way to deal with this would be to have the postage going to the output account owner instead of to the remailer, or two items of postage (one to the remailer, one to the output account owner), or three items of postage (one to the first remailer in the chain, one to the last, and one to the output account). >(Hal, to use him as the example, could start using his own choice of >remailer hops to accomplish much the same result. We've talked about this >for a long time, too. If I ran a remailer, I think I'd route *all* traffic >leaving my site through at least one other remailer...kind of a "hot >potato" effect. Of course, if _everyone_ did this, an infinite loop would result. Lots of interesting twists, though, as messages could be set to "leak out" of the loops.) Oh? What's this idea? -Allen

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Re: Long-Lived Remailers
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"dsmith(a)prairienet.org" 22-MAY-1996 01:33:37.30 >Actually, there's an Idea. Set up a single address; use added >headers in the style of: >:: >Remailers-To-Chain: 7 >Remailers-To-Avoid: remailer(a)nsa.gov >Final-Destination: tcmay(a)got.net >Each remailer could construct a message that decrements the >remailers counter, preserving the other headers. The >usual caveat on encrypting at each step would apply; but since >remailers' pubkeys are available, that's a trivial concern. Well, if you use this for the entirety of the chain, you'll be giving away the cleartext at each step. Not too good of an idea. You won't want the mails to an output location to themselves go through remailers; you'd want multiple remailers going to the same output location (or group of output locations, which is probably preferable) via a more direct means such as POP. Otherwise, you've simply got the same old - but good nonetheless - of adding on new full remailers to the end of a chain, which doesn't avoid problems for the full remailer at the end. (Re: TCMay's post in response to yours.) -Allen

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Re: Long-Lived Remailers
by loki＠infonex.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:39 PM 5/21/96, snow wrote: <SNIP> > > Randomize the output remailer? Sometimes Alice exits Bob, >Sometimes Charlie, sometimes Tom etc. > > >Petro, Christopher C. >petro(a)suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff> >snow(a)crash.suba.com A list of reliable back end remailers (output) could be kept, and automatically used by the front end remailers. This would allow the back end remailers to be highly transient, but keep the remailers used in chains stable. A remailer would randomly choose one of the 99% reliable back end remailers for each outgoing message. This could be done even more disposably using alpha type nyms. Speaking of which, it looks like my nym server is working: alias(a)alias.cyberpass.net Send to help(a)alias.cyberpass.net for instructions and the key. -Lance ---------------------------------------------------------- Lance Cottrell loki(a)obscura.com PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server. Mixmaster, the next generation remailer, is now available! http://www.obscura.com/~loki/Welcome.html or FTP to obscura.com "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come." --Nietzsche ----------------------------------------------------------

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Bit tax proposal?
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu" 22-MAY-1996 01:51:18.54 From: Phil Agre <pagre(a)weber.ucsd.edu> This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below. You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" command. For information on RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, send an empty message to rre-help(a)weber.ucsd.edu =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Date: Sat, 11 May 1996 16:59:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Arthur Cordell <acordell(a)clark.dgim.doc.ca> SCENARIOS FOR THE FUTURE: WORK AND EDUCATION The First of Four Sessions Leading to the World Leadership Conference "New Taxes for a New Economy" September 14, 1995 Victoria University, in the University of Toronto Arthur J. Cordell Special Advisor Information Technology Policy Department of Industry Ottawa* *The views expressed are those of the author alone and are not necessarily those of any department or agency of government. ======================== It's a pleasure to be part of the panel this evening. Ran told us about the problematique and Sally told us about one way to re-engage people with the economy and society in general. I am proposing one way to get at the productivity of the new economy so that income can be distributed to those who are no longer working. My talk is "New Taxes For A New Economy." Many of the ideas expressed by me this evening first appeared in a paper that Ran Ide and I co-authored for a meeting of the Club of Rome last year. Called The New Wealth of Nations,the paper dealt with ways of getting at the productivity of information technologies. Creating a new source of revenues that can be used in a variety of ways, including re-distribution as income. First a bit of history. As you all know in the not too distant past-- before 1900--most people worked in agriculture. When automation of one sort or another took place, people moved off the land to the new jobs opening up in manufacturing. Over the next decades automation of one sort or another took place and people moved to the new jobs opening up in the service sector. Now that the service sector is itself being automated, it is not clear where workers go. Where do people find work in an increasingly automated world? My view is that information technology is like no other. It is energy saving, capital saving and labour saving. It is also distance insensitive. It can replace people in a great number of functions. Remembering, deciding, judging, estimating, counting, etc., can all be done by information technologies, and can be done better, faster and cheaper than by people. So I think that we are going into a time of innovation and greatly increased productivity throughout the economy. Jobs will grow, but at a much slower rate. A short-hand way of saying this is that we'll be seeing 'jobless growth.' Rather than seeing this as a disaster, I prefer to see it as an opportunity. After all the industrial revolution--the development of steam power, electricity, the internal combustion engine--was all about eliminating work, not creating work. The industrial revolution was about releasing people from dangerous, hard and mind-numbing work. You know in the 'old days' a job was a means to an end because that is how people got income. In the past few decades job creation has become an end in itself because this is how income can be distributed. While there are many important social and psychological benefits in having a job---job creation can be a very costly way to distribute income. So in the debate and discussion about the future of work my position is that the issue is income, not jobs. In my view we need to get consensus on a positive vision of the New Economy. One possible positive vision is that the New Economy will be one where few people work in traditional ways. It will be an economy that is VERY infotech intensive and highly productive--but the new wealth created by the productivity is distributed as income in new and novel ways. Anything wrong with aiming toward this sort of outcome? But how do we get income to people who are no longer working in the traditional areas of society? I think that we have to go back and take a closer look at the tax system. If everything else is changing with information technologies and the New Economy, I think the tax system itself deserves a closer look. Today in Canada we are wringing our hands at the lack of tax revenues. Some of the tax concerns pre-date the 'new economy' and carry over from the recent past: tax breaks to small business; a growing underground economy based on cash; transnational companies who 'transfer price' in ways so that profits are declared in low tax areas of the world; the rise of tax havens. The tax base is also threatened by the labour displacing capacity of new technologies. More and more services are the result of people interacting with computer-based interfaces including touch-tone phones connected to digital networks. As do it yourself banking, shopping, libraries, etc., take hold, the number of people displaced increases. Although this adds to the over-all productivity of the system, the workers who lose jobs no longer pay taxes, rather they make demands on the system for income support of one kind or another. What happens to the productivity gains created by digital networks? Some gains show up in profits, some show up in lowered prices, some goes to domestic labour and some to domestic capital--some is 'lost' in the networks. In some cases off-shore capital benefits from productivity advances. While part of the increased productivity may show up in earnings to firms adopting the technology, to banks, to telecom firms or other network operators, it appears that some of the productivity gains just disappear. It is either a non-monetary item (eg., time saved in using ATMs for banking) or the productivity is diffused over so many domestic and foreign players that it is not appropriated effectively, if at all. The challenge is to access the new productivity. There is a strong case to be made that government has not fully accessed the new wealth. That government has not yet realized where and how wealth creation is taking place. That government has not yet figured out a way to tax and re-distribute some of the new wealth created by global digital networks. By viewing the new economy through the prism and mindset of the old economy we are unable to see just how wealthy and productive the economy has truly become. Outdated ways of looking at the economy have led us to neglect the new wealth. We are neglecting the new productive capacity created by and carried on global networks. Digital networks that provide so much of the new wealth also provide a way for us, through our governments, to get at some of the productive potential of a knowledge-based economy. Over two hundred years ago Adam Smith wrote about the Wealth of Nations. He concluded that wealth was based on the division of labour and the extent of the market. Today we can add something else to society's production function: knowledge, information and communications. The new wealth of nations is to be found in the trillions of digital bits of information pulsing through global networks. These are the physical/electronic manifestation of the many transactions, conversations, voice and video messages and programs that, taken together record the process of production, distribution and consumption in the new economy. Digital flows are the new element of production whether in the form of entertainment such as movies and video games; or, in the form of financial management such as electronic commerce for business and automatic tellers for the average citizen; or, in systems designed to control aircraft traffic in the skies and baggage distribution on the ground below; or, in managing the maze of telephone calls, faxes, e-mail and charge card accounts that characterize life in this latter part of the twentieth century. The suggested new tax is a turnover tax on interactive digital traffic. This new tax would be similar to a gasoline tax or paying a toll on a bridge or toll road or having a license plate on a car. These current excise and indirect taxes apply by weight of truck, by amount of gas used, not on the value of the commodity carried by the truck. Moving from the old highway to the metaphor of the new highway, my proposal is to tax the digital traffic on the Information Highway. Proposed is an easily administered tax on each digital bit of information. A 'bit tax.' Whether the digital bit is part of a foreign exchange transaction, a business teleconference, an Internet e-mail or file transfer, electronic check clearance or an ATM transaction, each bit is a physical manifestation of the new economy at work. Whether the tax is levied on the traffic carried by a fibre optic cable or on micro-wave or whether the tax is levied on interactive satellite traffic, the bit tax presents a way of accessing the new wealth being created by the New Economy. The bit tax would be applied to value added interactive digital transactions. Interactivity makes the transaction valuable. A broadcast message may or may not add value, that is if it is heard. An interactive transaction: a conversation, data search, accessing an ATM--is an activity you choose to do because it does something for you. You get something for doing it, you get something out of doing it: otherwise you wouldn't be do doing it. It is this new value, this new productivity that is creating so much new wealth in networks. All interactive digital information would be subject to the new tax. Thus digital broadcast and digital radio (all 'one to many' broadcasts) would be exempted from the tax. Digital broadcasts of one to few eg., TV broadcast to a few stations for later rebroadcast, or newspaper transmission by satellite to remote printing plants are interactive (because they are 'addressable') and would be subject to the bit tax. The bit tax would not be a user pay tax. Increased use by a region would however result in higher bit taxes. So without getting into too complex a discussion, one could imagine that at the local level an average of digital traffic would be measured by designated region (this could be by area code, metro area, province or state, or nation). This statistical average would provide the basis for the bit tax rate at the designated local level. Leased lines would pay some percentage of the carrying capacity of the line while long distance public lines would be metered by usage patterns. To summarize: the implementation of the tax would fit into three broad categories: 1. Long-distance lines (general public), a tax directly proportional to digital flows between major long-distance nodes in the country. 2. Leased lines (private lines), a fixed rate dependent on the bit-carrying capacity of the line. 3. Local Traffic, a variable rated based on a statistical average of gross information flows captured at each local switch using software already in place. The bit tax will be transparent. It will be something metered 'out there' and remitted to governments. It will vary with the collective usage of networks. Use of the system by any one individual will not affect the amount of taxes being collected. So it won't be a user-pay tax. At what rate should nations tax digital bits? How would the new taxes be collected? For sake of argument, the bit tax could be .000001 cents per bit. Automatically collected it would cause fewer collection problems than most other direct or indirect taxes. Collected by the telecom carriers, satellite networks and cable systems the revenues would flow directly to the national revenue service of the respective country. Much work has to be done on the burden or incidence of this new tax. Is the tax progressive or regressive? Will it be absorbed by the carriers or will it be passed on to consumers? Can one nation enact a bit tax or does it have to a collaborative venture? Perhaps through the OECD or the G-7 group of nations. And what about the tax rate itself? Is it too high or not high enough? If the tax of .000001 cents per bit yields too much revenue, then it can always be adjusted. The 'bit tax' is one way to begin to deal with the dilemma of increasing productivity and declining employment. It represents a new tax base that is at the heart of the new economy. It is also a new tax base that is growing. It is a tax base that can be easily identified, one where collection is in few hands. In the New Economy it would be a tax that is difficult to avoid. At a European Community meeting last year, the US Ambassador to the US mission, Stuart Eizenstat, said the issues surrounding the quality and quantity of available jobs in the New Economy will not be solved by a conference here or a workshop there. He noted that we are facing a major change in our economies. The change will not be easy or smooth: just as the cold war took many years to resolve peacefully, so too will the transition to the new economy take years of discussion, dialogue and new methods of conflict resolution. So the bit tax itself is just a modest beginning. We need to go further: to re-think the notion of employment as a method of income distribution; to re-think the quest for ever more energy-intensive economic growth in a time of environmental limits. We need to re-think much of our economic theory. But as a modest beginning, the bit tax is one way for all of society to profit and benefit from the development of new technology. The bit tax can help provide the new fiscal framework to distribute the productivity of the new economy as income when the job link is disconnected...When Jobless Growth becomes the rule. Thank-you for your attention. I look forward to your questions, comments and discussion.

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Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns
by loki＠infonex.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Might Rot13 be enough? It would prevent accidental viewing. -Lance At 12:39 PM 5/21/96, Ben Holiday wrote: >After pondering a bit it seems to me that the "knock knock" remailer >approach (only send anon-mail if the recipient agrees to receive it) could >be made feasable pretty easily. > >Rather than hold the mail while waiting for a consent to release, you >could simply encrypt the peice of mail with a symetric algorythm on its >final hop, and send the encrypted mail to the recipient. > >At this point there are 2 options, which I havnt examined closely: The >first is that you require them to send a request for their "consent-code" >which can be used to decrypt the mail. Under this arrangment you could >possibly provide for a user to specify a specific consent code, so that 2 >party's who had previously agreed to communicate could avoid "knocking". >If you strip the subject, then it would be all but impossible for a person >to include the consent code in the actual peice of mail. > >The second is to simply include the >consent-code along with the encrypted peice of mail and a legal notice >stating that decryption of the mail constitutes your consent to receive >the mail, as well as your agreement to hold the remailer-operator harmless >should the mail be found to be in some way offensive. Further, the >recipient would agree to be solely liable for the contents of the mail, >etc etc.. I leave the actual agreement to the net.lawyers to figure out. > >As far as I can tell an agreement of this form would be at least as valid >as the software licenses ("NOTICE: Opening this envelope constitutes your >agreement to the terms.. blah blah blah") that are commonly used today. >Also would seem to be a similar concept to "Opening the case of this >device void's your warranty" stickers on appliances. > >Under this approach persons would receive mail whether they'd consented or >not (unless they requested to be blocked). But it would be difficult for >anyone to raise any serious legal issues about something they havnt read, >and impossible for them to make noise about what they read, after the >implied consent they gave when decrypting. > >Under both approaches it would be wise to have a list of addresses who've >already consented, which would contain all of the known remailers.. >whether or not an operator chose to have names besides remailers in the >list would be at his/her discretion. > >Ben.. ---------------------------------------------------------- Lance Cottrell loki(a)obscura.com PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server. Mixmaster, the next generation remailer, is now available! http://www.obscura.com/~loki/Welcome.html or FTP to obscura.com "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come." --Nietzsche ----------------------------------------------------------

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Re: MixMaster fair use
by loki＠infonex.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:14 PM 5/21/96, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote: >From: IN%"loki(a)infonex.com" 21-MAY-1996 17:19:02.59 > >>The problem is RSAREF. I can't chose license terms for that. > > Oof... I see the problem. No, it's not you, it's them. I've forgotten >exactly what claims RSA has; patent (when does it expire?), copyright (can >it be rewritten), or trade secret (wasn't it broken?)? Without some form of >getting around this (or licensing from them), usage for pay will be kind of >difficult. > -Allen It is patent on RSA, which expires in 2000 as I remember. It can be licensed, but it is not cheap. I don't know how they would handle a free program which people pay to use. -Lance ---------------------------------------------------------- Lance Cottrell loki(a)obscura.com PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server. Mixmaster, the next generation remailer, is now available! http://www.obscura.com/~loki/Welcome.html or FTP to obscura.com "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come." --Nietzsche ----------------------------------------------------------

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Clipper III analysis
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I just read over the Clipper-III paper. Here's the main scoop. The Government is trying to force key escrow on the world by incorporating it into key certification systems. They are playing on public ignorance of key certification, and are trying in some cases to deliberately mislead people into thinking that key certification and key escrow are the same thing. Key certification is a way for a third party to declare that a particular public key "belongs to" a particular identity. E.g. that key 85197FB5 really belongs to John Gilmore. In PGP, people who know you can "sign" your key to make this declaration. Then, anyone who trusts those people will know that your key is really yours. When they encrypt mail with public key 85197FB5, they can believe that only John Gilmore can read it. Key certification NEVER involves giving anyone a copy of your *private* key. Your private key is, and always should be, private to yourself and nobody else. Key escrow is a way for governments to get access to your private key and read your private communications whenever they don't like what you are doing or saying. Or for any other reason. So far, the only government that is really pushing for this is the US government. Their published policies for when they will access your key are disturbingly non-specific. I believe this is to cover for access by the spy agencies such as NSA, which the public would not sanction if it knew their current policies. Even if the published policy for accessing your escrowed keys required that a judge issue a warrant based on probable cause to believe a crime has been committed -- which it doesn't -- that provides no protection from a government that feels free to make any harmless act into a crime. As in the Soviet Union, lofty principles can be written into the legal documents, but somehow citizens end up without enforceable rights anyway. I don't want to see my country go this route, though it's obviously 80% of the way there already. Because large-scale key certification systems will to some degree involve centralization, they provide pressure points where the government can try to force people to do bad things. (One thing that has kept the Internet free is that there was no central place to sue, arrest, threaten, or otherwise terrorize into submission.) In this case, the bad thing they'll try to force is that the central certification authorities will refuse to certify your key as yours, even though they know it's yours, unless you first give the government a copy of your private key. Foreign relations are important to this policy, since if a significant number of countries don't adopt this model then it won't work. (Those countries will build good crypto and export it, and it will leak out around the world because of the worldwide demand for real privacy.) The US is working hard in the OECD, the European Community, and in one-on-one discussions with other governments, to convince them all to impose key escrow on their citizens. That's the scenario laid out by the Clipper-III paper. It's a pretty good strategy on their part. Our job is to make it come out some other way. John Gilmore PS: The whole paper is at http://www.eff.org/pub/Privacy/Key_escrow/ Clipper_III/960520_nist_clipper3_paper.draft.

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Re: TCM: mafia as a paradigm for cyberspace
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:55 PM 5/21/96 -0500, snow wrote: >On Mon, 20 May 1996, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote: > >> the assassination politics is quite Hitleresque at its root. >> "kill our enemies, and everything will be better. it is our enemies >> that are the root of all evil in the world. extinguish them, and >> you solve all problems automatically" > > It is more the MAD theory brought down to the personal level. With all due respect, I think that comparison is a bit flawed. MAD (mutual assured destruction) is based on a model where you know the enemy (country) attacking you, in the national model by sophisticated radar systems. It is also based on the (reasonable) assumption that there is no way to pre-emptively attack in such a way as to defeat the ability of the enemy to counter-attack. With AP, and a world populated by 5 billion people, there is no way to know, for sure, who is targeting you. You may _guess_, and you may be right, but such a guess must be based on external information that you've received elsewhere. With AP, you CAN attack and destroy an individual in such a way he doesn't know who hit him. A crook who has victimized many people would be an excellent example of a target who can't know, because he has many enemies. A person who has just jilted a rich lover and has no other enemies would be the opposite. I contend that the kind of targets which are the most "deserving" will tend to be those who don't know who's targeting them. Those that are least deserving will have a good clue about who's giving them the finger. Since such prices are publicly known, a donor would have to be particularly careful about targeting a generally good, well-liked person, if that person could reasonably guess who's naming him. This is one of the many reasons I have a fair degree of confidence that AP will do a lot of good, and very little bad. > The >government has the power and authority to kill anyone of us, AP brings out >into the open the fact that WE ALL HAVE THAT POWER. KIlling people is >(physically) very easy, AP turns the THREAT back on those who hold the >power. This I agree with. But remember that the ability to combine the desires of thousands of people counts for something as well. If the only time you had to worry is if one individual was mad enough to see you dead, and would either do it himself or pay the whole bill himself, you'd feel relatively safe. If, on the other hand, the cost could be split up 10,000 ways or more, you'd better not be a crook! >Note: I don't necessarily think that AP is a good idea. I think >that people should do their own dirty work. In practice, I think this would be comparatively common as well. What currently deters such "take the law into your own hands" is the fact that police (being, essentially, in the business of protection) don't want you to provide for yourself by protecting yourself. They make it hard on people, in the same way they did with Bernard Goetz, the guy who shot four muggers on the New York city subway system. Once AP gets rid of the police, it will be much easier to protect yourself and not risk jail time, etc. Superficially, a person might argue that the lack of police would also make it easier for the muggers. However, a "professional mugger" would make a LOT of enemies, and it wouldn't take long before he's dead. He'd only have to be caught once. Any victim of any mugger would be happy to donate to see him gone. >> such is the total moral perversion of the thinking behind >> "assassination politics". most of the adherents work from the >> following argument, nicely summarized by JFA above: >> 1. the government is corrupt >> 2. therefore, it is okay to kill people who further that corruption. >> wow, what brilliant logic. > > How about this: > Goverments, and the people in them are corrupt. This corruption, >caused by acts of these people, lead to oppression and death. By THEIR >MORALITY oppression and killing are ok, so it is ok to use their tools >agaisnt them. In part 7 I use somewhat different justification. I believe that a person should be able to use whatever level is force is necessry to get rid of the transgression, with no upper limit. In any case, I think that government corruption is way more than enough to justify whatever level of counter-attack is needed. >> there is a trite saying, "two wrongs do not make a right" (trite >> because most have mastered the simple truth of it in their pre-teen >> years). a concept not grasped by some second-graders. some >> require a lifetime of lessons to comprehend it in the end.. > > Putting people in cages is wrong. > Stealing is wrong. > Is putting people in cages for stealing wrong? Yes; I've noticed that people who oppose AP generally don't want to address the question of self-defense issues. >> carefully the errors of those who have come before you. write >> a long treatise with lots of footnotes to past assassination >> difficulties and how you would advance past them. I tell >> you flat out that any respectable assassin would be quite embarrassed >> to be associated with you at the moment because of your arrogance >> and ignorance. > > I might be wrong here, but I don't think that Mr. Bell actually >wants anyone actually shot, Shot? Not necessarily. Let's not forget about blown up, poisoned, stabbed, beheaded, etc. B^) > well, maybe he does, but what he wants is to >have the same power over members of governments than they have over him. Right. Moreover, I believe that governments simply cannot exist as we know them under these circumstances. Besides, they won't be necessary. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: SEVERE undercapacity, we need more remailer servers FAST (fwd)
by hendersn＠zeta.org.au 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Had he posted it through a remailer, I think it would have been well >justified. He was obviously blowing the whistle on what he saw as illegal >activities. The only reason that Keith could post NOTS 34 at all was because it had previously been posted to a.r.s anonymously. Prior to that, no-one outside of the Church had a copy of any NOTS materials(or so the Church says). > That's a much different matter than posting the entire NOTs >series, though. The wholesale copying is what most people seem to object >to, though my observations tell me that the "Church" objects to any >copying, even for fair use... Grady Ward got sued by the Church just because he _asked_ for a NOTS pack to be sent to him. The Church will do everything within its not inconsiderable power to prevent NOTS material being disseminated on the Internet - up to and including destroying the anonymous remailer network. Zed(hendersn(a)zeta.org.au) "Don't hate the media, become the media" - Jello Biafra PGP key on request

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DC area physical meeting, this saturday
by Pat Farrell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Appologies to the 1000+ folks who are too far away to care about this... The next Washington DC area cypherpunks physical meeting will be this saturday, May 25 at 3:00 PM, at Digex.net. Details, directions, etc. at http://www.isse.gmu.edu/~pfarrell/dccp Pat Pat Farrell Grad Student http://www.isse.gmu.edu/~pfarrell Info. Systems & Software Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA PGP key available on homepage #include <standard.disclaimer>

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Re: The Twilight of the Remailers?
by middle-man-admin＠alpha.c2.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Tue, 21 May 1996, Timothy C. May wrote: > At 7:59 PM 5/21/96, Alex Strasheim wrote: > >I'm closing my mixmaster, nsa(a)omaha.com, on the 4th of June. > Between Hacktic going down, Hal's comments that he may shut down his two > sites, and this, plus others who are more quietly making plans to shut > down, I think the thread title "The Remailer Crisis" is more apt than ever. I tend to agree. I realize that the middle-man remailer requires that there be bastion remailers on the end of the chain. Without them, the "middle-man" concept won't work. I thank the remailer sites the allow the middle-man to work. Anyway, with all the remailers that have either vocalized their retirement and those that are silently considering retirement, I would like to announce that the middle-man remailer should be available for download as early as this weekend. Utopia.hacktic.nl (basement) and c2.org have agreed to carry the middle-man remailer on their FTP sites. As soon as I can get the documentation finished, I'll post it. middle-man-admin

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Reply to e$: The Wealth of Nation-States
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 23:35:22 +0900 To: rah(a)shipwright.com From: tatsuo(a)glocom.ac.jp (Tatsuo Tanaka) X-Sender: tatsuo(a)izanagi.glocom.ac.jp Subject: Reply to e$: The Wealth of Nation-States Cc: tatsuo(a)glocom.ac.jp (Tatsuo Tanaka) MIME-Version: 1.0 Dear Mr. Robert Hettinga, Please allow me to write you. I am a visiting research fellow of Columbia University, and study digital cash from the economics point fo view. I read your article on "e$:The Wealth of Nation-States." ineterestingly. I also think that digital cash will cause a conflict with the Nation-States, though my major concern is financial economics view point, not taxation problem. I wrote a paper on this issue,"Possible Economic Consequences of Digital Cash " which is supposed to be presented at the coming INET96. This paper's URL is http://tenjin.glocom.ac.jp/tanaka/inet/DigitalCash_v1e.html I hope this paper might be of interest to you. Following is an abstract of this paper. Author discusses possible consequences of digital cash from the view of economics and forcasts a possible scenario for the future. Digital cash will bring us benefits as well as problems. One major benefit of digital cash is its increased efficiency which will open new business opportunities, especially for small businesses. On the other hand, it will bring us four problems: taxation and money laundering, instability of the foreign exchange rate, disturbance of money supply, and the possibility of financial crisis. There is one important attribute of digital cash, however, that overshadows these benefit and problems. It is the transnationality of digital cash, that is, the ability of digital cash to flow freely accross national borders. Every bank can issue it and everybody all over the world can use it. This transnationality is a cause for both benefits and problems, and could have significant repurcussions internationally. From the economic stand point, the most important characteristic of digital cash is its transnationality. If digital cash circulated only within a traditional national border and was controlled under a central monetary authority, there would be no economic implications that would be worth analyzing. In this case, digital cash would be nothing more than a convenient transaction method such as a credit card. However, digital cash is more than that. Its transnationality has the potential to cause conflict between cyberspace and nation states. If digital cash spreads successfully in the 21st century, its history may be written as a record of its battle with nation states. Thank you for your time. Sincerely yours, Tatsuo TANAKA Tatsuo Tanaka Email:tatsuo@glocom.ac.jp -Current Address- -Contact in Japan- Center on Japanese Economy & Businness Center for Global Communications 521 Uris Hall International Univ. of Japan Columbia University 6-15-21, Roppongi,Minato-ku New York, NY, 10027, USA Tokyo 106,Japan Fax:+1-212-678-6958 Tel:665-5028 Fax:+81-3-5412-7111 Tel:5411-6677 --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "If they could 'just pass a few more laws', we would all be criminals." --Vinnie Moscaritolo The e$ Home Page: http://thumper.vmeng.com/pub/rah/

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Re: The Crisis with Remailers
by Matts Kallioniemi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:58 1996-05-22 +0200, bryce(a)digicash.com wrote: >Matts, _floating_ point numbers are _not_ useful >if you want to handle a number with a lot of precision, nor >indeed, if you want to be able to _know_ the precision! If you >have a number that represents money, you want to know the >precision! As I said yesterday, there are in fact people dealing with billions in all major currencies that keep their money in 64 bit floats. The precision is far better than anything you can do in 32 bit integers. Trust me, this is a fact and can easily be proven. >I shall try to refrain from taking umbrage at your comment that >DigiCash is "not real". The "get real" was a pun on floats. Many languages, such as Pascal, calls them real numbers. Sorry I forgot the smiley. >Also that DigiCash doesn't "do" currency. What could you possibly >mean by that? In my client (2.1.5a MT) there is no way to do currency conversion. If I go to a FIM or DEM merchant I can't buy anything in the store. This will probably change in the near future when a new client is released, and then we'll have the question of how to represent these currencies in one wallet. What do you think will happen if you have a one italian lira coin and you try to deposit it with Mark Twain's USD account? With integer math it won't be pretty. >For further reading on floating point and other representations >of numbers in computing, I recommend any good introductory >university text on mathematical computing. Sorry I don't have >mine handy or I'd give you a specific reference. Maybe you should start looking for it. You'll need it when the lira arrives... Regards, Matts

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Re: Clipper III analysis
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John Gilmore wrote an excellent description of GAK 3 (aka Clipper III, aka Enabling Privacy, Commerce, Security and Public Safety in the Global Information Infrastructure). Here are a couple of other points that even the proponents of this scheme should agree to: (1) GAK3 does not provide for the significant public purpose of protecting dissident groups under repressive regimes. Human rights groups in Bosina/Serbia have used PGP to protect their files. Since their computers have been frequently seized, the only protection for those people who have made human rights complaints has been that the local government has not had access to the keys. (2) The paper fails to differentiate between the needs of communication privacy and data storage privacy. No rational person would want to GAK their communication keys. Data lost because keys are lost can always be retransmitted. Since communications are easy to intercept, having a long term GAK key greatly increases the chances that the long term key will be stolen and the session keys intercepted. Communication session keys should be decided by techniques such as Diffie Hellman which ensure that the only entities with access to the key are the programs/hardware at each end of the link. A better case for escrowing long term data storage keys can be made. Physical security provides some protection for the cyphertext. Loss of a key can mean loss of the data. However, it is not clear why encrypting for data storage is any different from storing confidential data in a safe. If the government has a legitimate need to access the data, they can access it through the same legal processes they use to access data in safes. While long term data storage can use escrow agents, it does not need GAK for any legal public purpose. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Frantz | The CDA means | Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 | lost jobs and | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | dead teenagers | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Another Analysis -- Re: NIST Draft Key Escrow Paper
by Joseph M. Reagle Jr. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Declan McCullagh and Gilmore have already provided a brief summary of the doc, here are a few thoughts I sent to some others last night: - the meat is in the footnotes. - buzzword compliance: key recovery and Key Management Infrastructure (KMI). - intro: market forces and government/industry cooperation. - key bullet points: o Certificate authorities will operate within performance standards set by legislation o Agreements between governments will serve as the basis for international cross certification. o Self-escrow will be permitted under specific circumstances. [1] [1] The escrow agency must meet performance requirements for law enforcement access. - Denning's CACM survey key escrow article and Hoffman's "Building in Big Brother" are cited. - A lot of talk about "mutually trusted CAs" A footnote [4] "A mutually trusted authority is an escrow agent trusted by users to store keys and trusted by law enforcement to provide access upon certification of lawful authority." One has freedom to choose any CA, as long as the mutual trust exists. - At the international level "Law enforcement and some national security concerns would be protected since government agencies would be able to obtain escrowed key pursuant to government-to-government agreements." - Products can be exported to countries with these agreements. - Self escrow: "To avoid this risk [of investigations being compromised], independent escrow authorities could be added as another layer. Such a solution would drive up the cost to operate the PKI and drive down the efficiency of conducting public key certification functions, particularly for individual users." [Ok, so independent CAs are "bad" things"] "The solution may be a national policy which allows CAs for an organization to be escrow authorities if they can reliably turn over keys in a timely fashion when requested and to protect the confidentiality of any request for escrowed key. To this end, the government should seek legislation that would shield organization certificate authorities from internal pressures in the course of law enforcement investigations." [A "good" thing?] - provisions for legislation on civil or criminal liability on the commercial/private side. - gives requirements for KMI: key integrity, key accessibility, key recovery with respect to confidentiality, availability and responsiveness (24 hours) requirements. So Clipper III is a bit meaner and leaner. If Clipper I would have sunk because of sheer clumsiness, a sleeker ship carrying the same load will now be developed by the free market. The load is the assumption that citizens can be "compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." _______________________ Regards, We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world. -Helen Keller Joseph Reagle http://farnsworth.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html reagle(a)mit.edu E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65 BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E

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REMINDER: Leahy at Hotwired 5/22/96 4pm EST
by shabbir＠vtw.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

------ Date: May 22, 1996 (THIS IS TODAY) Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) will be on HotWired TODAY, May 22nd at 4pm EST at http://www.hotwired.com/wiredside/ You can tune in and listen to the chat with the RealAudio software (http://www.realaudio.com) You can ask questions of the Senator through a moderator and get real, immediate responses. Topics likely to be covered: Clipper I/II/III and Net Censorship -Shabbir J. Safdar shabbir(a)vtw.org

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Misquoting and Vlad (LD?)
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Here, I quote some text that is quoted frequently: > >> such is the total moral perversion of the thinking behind > >> "assassination politics". most of the adherents work from the > >> following argument, nicely summarized by JFA above: ^^^^^ > >>1. the government is corrupt > >>2. therefore, it is okay to kill people who further that > >> corruption. wow, what brilliant logic. I would appreciate if everybody would stop using that example. No threat or heinous tone here, but simply a reasonable request. I am getting tired of it. Of course, the collectivist who wrote that sentence is totally wrong because I never said such things in the context he meant them. But again, it is not everybody that followed the thread and I am fed-up of seing thoses words attributed to me. I have no problem in building my bad reputation myself. I don't like it when other do it... So, please, if ever you quote it again, put at the beginning of the paragraph: "Vlad Z. Nuri wrote:" or "Vlad Z. Nuri aka L. D(R)otweiller wrote:" Thanks and Regards. JFA DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee; Limoges porcelain, silverware and crystal JFA Technologies, R&D consultants; physists, technologists and engineers. PGP keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891 I reserve the right to post publicly any private e-mail sent to me. Unsollicited commercial e-mail will be proofread at US165 $/h Any sender of such material will be considered as to have ac- cepted the above mentionned terms.

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Floating Point and Financial Software
by mpd＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There seem to be a few mini-flames on the list over whether floating point data representations are appropriate for financial software. In a nutshell, the answer is "YES", and the use of floating point arithmetic is common in such applications. One argument heard against the use of floating point is that it is inherently "imprecise." In reality, floating point representations and the results of floating point operations are perfectly well defined, and the points on the real number line which are exactly representable by double-precision floating point values are usually a superset of those representable by the default integer on most machines. Storing monetary values as double-precision floats having integer values in cents is even common in COBOL programs, where the "COMP-3" data type allows the use of fast floating point in lieu of the default and slow manipulation of packed decimal and decimal data. It is even common in certain CPUs, like CDC Mainframes and SPARCS, which are primarily floating point engines, to omit integer divide and sometimes even multiply, and to provide a subroutine which employs floating point calculations to emulate these operations. This is completely transparent to the user of the machine, and there is no problem in using floating point to do integer operations. In fact, when running financial applications on large engineering mainframes, which generally lack a business instruction set, floating point is not only commonly employed, it is the obvious way to get the maximum performance out of the machine. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

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Re: Bit tax proposal?
by Rev. Mark Grant, ULC 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> All interactive digital information would be subject to the new tax. > Thus digital broadcast and digital radio (all 'one to many' broadcasts) > would be exempted from the tax. Gosh, so the TV and radio companies would get to broadcast tax-free and the rest of us would have to pay. Not like this is intended to turn the scary old Internet into the digital equivalent of the broadcast media. I'm sure that idea never even considered crossing their minds... Hmm, maybe "Cypherpunks Productions" should start broadcasting soap operas and gameshows with email and Usenet stego-ed into the low bits. Mark

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Re: The Crisis with Remailers
by Bruce Baugh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:30 AM 5/22/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote: > Would you suspect that having more warning labels (before & after, >not just in the headers) would help with any negative reputation thus >generated? Probably not. Does it really matter how many times I tell you "I'm not being a jerk" if everything I send you is in fact jerky? (FBI and "this is not an assault", anyone?) Pointing people at legitimate uses of anonymity, as various folks have suggested, is undoubtedly a good idea. Would anyone care to suggest a few newsgroups where the vast majority of anonymous posts have really good reasons for being so? In cases where there's been serious abuse of remailers that's been caught and dealt with, some PR on the part of remailer operators might go a long way toward helping things. "Yes, this person was doing loathsome things, but we put a stop to it [insert details here." >put into public view... I see no reason to give lawyers more of a privilege >than religious/psychiatric individuals. Ditto. Likewise, I liked the instance last year of a student applying for the mail logs of the local (state?) government. It is Good for rulers to feel the same weight of the rules they impose on others. -- Bruce Baugh bruce(a)aracnet.com http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce

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CDT Policy Post 2.20 - Clinton Administration Floats Clipper III Draft
by bobpal＠cdt.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

----------------------------------------------------------------------------- _____ _____ _______ / ____| __ \__ __| ____ ___ ____ __ | | | | | | | | / __ \____ / (_)______ __ / __ \____ _____/ /_ | | | | | | | | / /_/ / __ \/ / / ___/ / / / / /_/ / __ \/ ___/ __/ | |____| |__| | | | / ____/ /_/ / / / /__/ /_/ / / ____/ /_/ (__ ) /_ \_____|_____/ |_| /_/ \____/_/_/\___/\__, / /_/ \____/____/\__/ The Center for Democracy and Technology /____/ Volume 2, Number 20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A briefing on public policy issues affecting civil liberties online ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CDT POLICY POST Volume 2, Number 20 May 22, 1996 CONTENTS: (1) Clinton Administration Floats Clipper III Key-Escrow Proposal (2) Join Sen Leahy TODAY (5/22) At HotWired to Discuss His Crypto Bill (3) Subscription Information (4) About CDT, contacting us ** This document may be redistributed freely with this banner in tact ** Excerpts may be re-posted with permission of <editor(a)cdt.org> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) CLINTON ADMINISTRATION FLOATS 'CLIPPER III' KEY ESCROW PROPOSAL The Clinton Administration Tuesday (5/21) unveiled a new encryption policy proposal which would use a government-sanctioned key certification system as an incentive to virtually impose key escrow on domestic users. The draft proposal, "Achieving Privacy, Commerce, Security and Public Safety in the Global Information Infrastructure" (already dubbed Clipper III), seeks to establish a "public key infrastructure" for encryption. Broadly speaking, a public key infrastructure would enable users to clearly identify the people they are communicating with and facilitate key management, and is widely viewed as an important component of a secure and trusted communications environment. However, the Clipper III would establish this infrastructure at a price: All users of the public key infrastructure would have to ensure government access to their encryption keys through an approved key escrow authority. A detailed analysis of the Administration's latest draft proposal is attached below. Among other concerns: * The proposal is hardly voluntary - Key-escrow would become a prerequisite for participation in the Global Information Infrastructure. * The proposal contains few guidelines for how keys would be shared with foreign governments. * The proposal encourages the collection of highly sensitive private key information. * The proposal does not address major privacy concerns such as liability for key holders, limitations on law enforcement access, audit requirements, and other concerns that many have already identified as crucial to protecting individual privacy even in a voluntary key escrow system. CDT believes that the Administration's draft proposal does not meet the privacy and security needs of Internet users or the demands of the marketplace. While the proposal represents real progress by the Administration in recognizing the importance of encryption and the value of a public key infrastructure, in reality it provides few provisions to protect individual privacy. Moreover, the Clipper III proposal, like its predecessors, continues to put law enforcement and national security concerns above the privacy and security needs of the American public. The latest Administration proposal comes in the midst of Congressional efforts to relax encryption export controls and encourage the widespread use of strong, easy-to-use encryption and prohibit the government from imposing key escrow domestically. It also comes in the wake of a letter signed by over 27 Representatives last week urging the Administration to abandon its key-escrow initiative (See CDT Policy Post 2.19) A copy of the Draft proposal is available on CDT's encryption policy web page (http://www.cdt.org/crypto) SUMMARY OF THE PROPOSAL: ------------------------ Taking a nod from the efforts currently under way through the European Commission to establish a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) in Europe, the Clipper III seeks to establish a means of ensuring authentication and key management for Americans. Among other things, the Clipper III draft proposal: * RECOGNIZES THAT THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT IMPOSE ENCRYPTION STANDARDS ON MARKET: One positive element of the new proposal is an explicit recognition of the importance of encryption and the need for private sector, as opposed to government solutions. The draft states, "Government can no longer monopolize state of the art cryptography ... It is unrealistic to believe that government can produce solutions which keep ahead of today's rapidly changing information technology". * ESTABLISHES KEY MANAGEMENT INFRASTRUCTURE: The draft proposal would create a new public key infrastructure designed to tie individuals and entities to their public keys. * RELAXES EXPORT CONTROLS FOR KEY ESCROW PRODUCTS: The new draft would continue and expand the effort started with the Clipper II proposal by allowing the export of software with 64 bit key lengths (80 bits for hardware) on the condition that products contain a key-escrow function. Keys could be escrowed in the United States or where the US has a bilateral escrow agreement. Other exports to certain markets would be considered on a case-by-case basis. * PROVIDES FOR 'SELF ESCROW' OF ENCRYPTION KEYS: Self Escrow (where a corporation or individual could become an escrow agent for its own private keys) would be permitted, though the exact conditions of and obligations are not specified in the draft. MAJOR FLAWS IN THE CLIPPER PROPOSAL RENDER IT A NON-STARTER ----------------------------------------------------------- * CLIPPER III IS NOT VOLUNTARY & MAKES KEY-ESCROW A PRECONDITION FOR PARTICIPATION IN THE GLOBAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE While the Administration deserves credit for recognizing that a trusted public key infrastructure is an important component of a workable National Encryption policy, the latest proposal attempts to use the need for a public key infrastructure as a means to impose key escrow domestically. Although the Administration has repeatedly stressed that any key-escrow initiative would be a voluntary system, the text of the latest draft directly contradicts that contention. The proposal states that in order to participate in the Global Information Infrastructure, users will need to escrow their keys; if they choose not to participate in the key infrastructure, "users cannot know with whom they are dealing on the network, or sending money too, or who signed a document, or if the document was intercepted and changed by a third party." (page 3). The proposal goes on to state: "To participate in the network a user needs a public key certificate signed by a CA [Certification Authority] which 'binds' the user's identity to their public key. One condition of obtaining a certificate is that sufficient information (e.g., private keys or other information as appropriate) has been escrowed with a certified escrow authority to allow access to a user's data or communications." (page 5) In other words, the Clipper III proposal would require individuals and businesses to use key-escrow encryption as a condition of participating in the Global Information Infrastructure. Under the proposal, an individual cannot obtain certification by a Key Certification Authority (a necessity under the Clipper III scheme) unless he or she registers with a "certified escrow authority". There is no technical or structural reason (beyond law enforcement access) why key escrow must be a component of a public key infrastructure. In fact, a robust example of a public key infrastructure exists today for exchanging PGP keys (the PGP public key server at MIT <http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~bal/pks-toplev.html>). * CLIPPER III TARGETS DOMESTIC USERS While export controls have ostensibly been aimed at controlling the use of encryption by foreign users (and indirectly, at domestic users as well), the Clipper III proposal is aimed directly at the domestic use of encryption and seeks to establish a system whereby key escrow becomes a de-facto component of domestic encryption products. * RAISES MAJOR QUESTIONS WITH RESPECT TO INTERNATIONAL KEY EXCHANGE In order to work, Clipper III assumes bi-lateral agreements between the US and other countries with respect to law enforcement access to escrowed keys, who could legally be an escrow agent, and other factors. Currently no such agreements exist. Bilateral agreements also raise important privacy issues, including how to deal with releasing keys to foreign governments, particularly those without any tradition of privacy protections. Finally, a patchwork of international agreements can create problems for interoperability. The same encryption and or authentication scheme exportable to Germany or England might not be exportable to India or China in the absence of a appropriate bi-lateral agreements. * CONTAINS NO PRIVACY PROTECTIONS/RESTRICTIONS ON LAW ENFORCEMENT ACCESS TO ESCROWED KEYS: Like Clipper and Clipper II, the latest proposal does not squarely address standards for law enforcement access to escrowed keys, unauthorized disclosure of keys by escrow agents, and other privacy issues associated with key escrow. * CREATES VULNERABILITY AND INSECURITY BY ENCOURAGING STORAGE OF PRIVATE KEYS: The proposal suggests that escrow agents hold either a user's private key or "other information as appropriate". Allowing escrow agents to accumulate private keys creates severe vulnerabilities in the network. Once a private key is disclosed (either to law enforcement or to an unauthorized third party), *every* communication using that key is compromised. Although the draft does attempt to limit this concern by allowing escrow agents to hold "other information", the proposal no where specifies what that would be. NEXT STEPS ---------- Congress is currently considering legislation which would head off the Administration's efforts to encourage domestic key-escrow encryption schemes and promote the widesprad avaiability of strong, easy-to-ues encryption technologies. Several bills, including S.1726 (the Pro-CODE bill) sponsored by Senators Burns (R-MT), Leahy (D-VT), Dole (R-KS), Pressler (R-SD), Wyden (D-OR) and others, along with HR 3011, sponsored by Reps Goodlatte (R-VA), Eshoo (D-CA), Campbell (D-CA) and over 25 others are currently being considered by Congress. Both bills would relax export restrictions and prohibit the government from imposing key escrow domestically. CDT looks forward to working with Members of Congress to pass legislation that encourages the widespread availability of strong, easy-to-use encryption technologies based on marketplace, not government, standards. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- (2) JOIN SENATOR LEAHY TODAY (Wed 5/22) TO DISCUSS PRIVACY AND SECURITY ONLINE Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the "Senior Senator from Cyberspace", ardent proponent of Net.Freedom and co-sponsor of 2 bills to repeal encryption export controls, will hold an online "town meeting" on Wednesday May 22 to discuss privacy and security online. DETAILS ON THE EVENT * Wednesday May 22, 4 - 5 pm ET (1 pm Pacific) on HotWired URL: http://www.hotwired.com/wiredside/ To participate, you must be a registered HotWired member (there is no charge for registration). You must also have RealAudio(tm) and a telnet application properly configured to work with your browser. Please visit http://www.hotwired.com/wiredside/ for information on how you can easily register for Hotwired and obtain RealAudio. Wednesday's town meeting is another in a series of planned events, and is part of a broader project coordinated by CDT and the Voters Telecommunications Watch (VTW) designed to bring the Internet Community into the debate and encourage members of Congress to work with the Net.community on vital Internet policy issues. Events with other members of Congress working on Internet Policy Issues are currently being planned. Please check http://www.crypto.com for announcements of future events ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (3) SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION Be sure you are up to date on the latest public policy issues affecting civil liberties online and how they will affect you! Subscribe to the CDT Policy Post news distribution list. CDT Policy Posts, the regular news publication of the Center For Democracy and Technology, are received by more than 9,000 Internet users, industry leaders, policy makers and activists, and have become the leading source for information about critical free speech and privacy issues affecting the Internet and other interactive communications media. To subscribe to CDT's Policy Post list, send mail to policy-posts-request(a)cdt.org with a subject: subscribe policy-posts If you ever wish to remove yourself from the list, send mail to the above address with a subject of: unsubscribe policy-posts ----------------------------------------------------------------------- (4) ABOUT THE CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY/CONTACTING US The Center for Democracy and Technology is a non-profit public interest organization based in Washington, DC. The Center's mission is to develop and advocate public policies that advance democratic values and constitutional civil liberties in new computer and communications technologies. Contacting us: General information: info(a)cdt.org World Wide Web: URL:http://www.cdt.org/ FTP URL:ftp://ftp.cdt.org/pub/cdt/ Snail Mail: The Center for Democracy and Technology 1634 Eye Street NW * Suite 1100 * Washington, DC 20006 (v) +1.202.637.9800 * (f) +1.202.637.0968 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- End Policy Post 2.20 5/22/96 -----------------------------------------------------------------------

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Criminal Law Web Site
by AFDA2＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The upgraded Web site for the Association of Federal Defense Attorneys (AFDA) is now available at http://www.afda.org The site provides several valuable tools for criminal defense attorneys who practice in the federal courts: (1) a convenient compilation of over 100 Web sites pertaining to federal law, including search capabilities through all the statutes and case law rulings; (2) an online newsletter that is updated weekly; (3) a message board; (4) a form library for downloading documents (we will soon begin uploading documents to the library); (4) a listing of upcoming seminars for which you can register online; (6) a feedback form so that you can give us your comments and suggestions; (7) and a survey function so that we can conduct polls within the criminal defense bar online for submission to Congress. The Web site is financed through membership dues on a non-profit basis. Until mid-June, the site will be free to all users but will then become password-protected for members only. We hope you will take advantage of this important resource and join the Association so that we can continue providing the defense bar with needed support. To join, simply click the "Join AFDA" bar on the main page of the Web site. Best regards to all. Greg Nicolaysen (Los Angeles)

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Re: Another Analysis -- Re: NIST Draft Key Escrow Paper
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:35 AM 5/22/96 -0400, Joseph M. Reagle Jr. wrote: >Declan McCullagh and Gilmore have already provided a brief summary of the >doc, here are a few thoughts I sent to some others last night: [schtuff deleted] >So Clipper III is a bit meaner and leaner. If Clipper I would have sunk >because of sheer clumsiness, a sleeker ship carrying the same load will now >be developed by the free market. The load is the assumption that citizens >can be "compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." I didn't notice any specific reference to the difference between materials encrypted for long-term storage or transmission (data, email) and on the other hand audio telephone communications, the original stated application for the Clipper chip. I can't see any reason that an individual would want the key to his own crypto telephone keys escrowed; unlike the key for data on a computer, which at least theoretically might be lost, the cryptophone data is by definition lost as soon as it is used. Therefore, I can see no argument which would make a person support this key escrow for that purpose. Since the whole system is supposed to be "voluntary", who is going to accept this? Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns (fwd)
by David Rosoff 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 10:24 AM 5/21/96 -0800, jim bell <jimbell(a)pacifier.com> wrote: >At 06:28 PM 5/20/96 -0500, Jim Choate wrote: >> >>Forwarded message: >> >>> Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 15:02:08 -0700 >>> From: Hal <hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> >>> Subject: An alternative to remailer shutdowns >> >>> was apparently sent through my remailer. According to 18 USC 875(c), >>> "Whoever transmits in interstate commerce any communication containing >>> any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of >>> another, shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more >>> than five years, or both." I may not be able to continue operating >>> either of my remailers (alumni.caltech.edu and shell.portal.com) for >>> much longer due to this kind of abuse. >> >>There should be a section in there dealing with 'knowingly'. If not then we >>should immediately bring charges against any and all newspapers who have >>ever printer a ransom letter, or perhaps even the Unibomber Manifesto since >>there is clear evidence of 'threat to injure the person of another'. > >But even "knowingly" needs to be carefully defined. A remailer operator >today KNOWS that his system COULD be used for illegal activities; he merely >doesn't know that they are, currently. I think that the definition should >be so narrow that it is impossible for a third party (or the government >itself) to incriminate the remailer operator by having his system forward >arguably illegal or copyright-violating material. > > >Jim Bell >jimbell(a)pacifier.com Can the same sort of standards as per the U.S. CDA be applied? The first draft of the CDA would have held ISP's responsible for, e.g., porn transmitted using their services. Isn't this the same sort of thing - that is, that remailer operators provide a service, and they cannot be held responsible for people who abuse that service? I think that this line of thought is reasonable. David -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMaNZlxguzHDTdpL5AQGkIgQAkfTaXyFp32yX1CiKK/7xlfvojYK+oG2U BWS5w2gMWeorRB1jPJW3Aec3cAlUQCoYg7TOd+Z8EgHWqHxR30cDUBd56oq1wlmf 0X3d2rjnM64Bcq8gonFXPxeSU+C3O0qobdj58BUpo+o2ueNo0sPGLK79KKAHuhWW oBBXV6jGTWc= =AXOt -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: The Crisis with Remailers
by John Deters 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:14 PM 5/22/96 -0400, Perry wrote: > >Matts Kallioniemi writes: >> At 17:44 1996-05-21 +0200, bryce(a)digicash.com wrote: >> >Matts, you don't want to do floating point for money, because >> >floating point doesn't give you good control of precision. >> >> Yes I do. Several major currency traders in Sweden keep all >> their money in 64 bit floating point storage. > >I have trouble believing you. None of the forex accounting I know of >in the U.S. is done in floating point. It simply isn't accurate >enough. > >It is true enough that *rates* can be stored as floats if you want, >but never actual sums. I wish there were a hard-and-fast rule that this were true. I work in Point Of Sale (POS or cash registers), and occasionally we will see a vendor whose software stores money/currency in floating point data types. I try very hard to make sure we do not purchase their software, because this implies the most gross lack of understanding imaginable. Floating points are simply not accurate when you're performing math on other people's money. And, yes, rates are acceptable to store and use as floats, but even the conversion process ultimately yields a long, not a float. And, we usually go out of our way to code rates up as integers and perform the decimal point shifting in code. In the currency class we use, we have an exponent property that defines where the decimal point is. I imagine that by converting the exponent from a short to a long we could even handle lira! :-) * * Note to persons who respect the Italian economy**: That was a joke! ** Note to persons who believe there are people who respect the Italian economy: That was a joke! -john -- J. Deters >From Senator C. Burns' Pro-CODE bill, which I support and you can find at: http://www.senate.gov/member/mt/burns/general/billtext.htm " (2) Miniaturization, disturbed computing, and reduced transmission costs make communication via electronic networks a reality." +---------------------------------------------------------+ | NET: jad(a)dsddhc.com (work) jad(a)pclink.com (home) | | PSTN: 1 612 375 3116 (work) 1 612 894 8507 (home) | | ICBM: 44^58'33"N by 93^16'42"W Elev. ~=290m (work) | | PGP Key ID: 768 / 15FFA875 | +---------------------------------------------------------+

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Re: (Fwd) Re: TCM: mafia as a paradigm for cyberspace
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Take note: If you want me to read you, cc me since I unsubscriVed :) from Cypherpunks... While frothing at the mouth (and god knows what other sphincters...), on a 22 May 96 at 12:37, somebody that behaves like a Rotweiller wrote: > oh, so in other words, a lot of "innocent" people will be murdered > under AP. ah, another great "feature", not a "bug", right?? Yes, but please note that the point for the validating of his statement is that even if this will happens, overall, *less innocents* will suffer from the seemingly random violence of AP than from the actual system. He might be wrong, but you seem to bring no new knowledge that would elucidate the question. Should the US have not dropped the A-Bomb on Japan and let happen 10 times mores casualties (from both sides)? The following paragraphs illustrate very well the way our local Rotweiller sees the world, which is very close to the vision of most statists. > ah, like murder. I see. well, I think you are violating my rights > by disagreeing with me. I shall arrange your consequences > accordingly. > but who decides what is wrong? the arbitrary opinion of some single > human idiot out anywhere in the world? don't you see the tyranny of > this? > it is far worse than the tyranny of a government if I were to > be killed by someone who believes that I violated his rights by > breathing air particles or whatever. via AP, you wish to give him > the mechanism to murder me without trace. Why do you fear so much for yourself? I guess, thoses who want to murder for all sort of reasons like hunting white baby seals or smoking in public simply share your psycho-epistemology. They would have no reasons to put a contract on you. Or would they anyways? > deny rights, legitimacy, justice, blah, blah, blah. the terms you > use have no meaning in the system you are advocating. there are no > "rights" in an anarchy, because a government is the entity created > to safeguard/protect them. all actions are legitimate in an > anarchy, because there is no civilized system that rejects any ones > in particular. By definition, you are right. But note that *they* never advocated true anarchy, only *you* claim that they do. Their vision of Life clearly entail some vision of Rights, Rules of Conduct, etc. They did *not* rule out laws, they only said that they do not like laws that are there to oppress peoples. Now, might you say, how are you gonna know? Because your philosophy is somewhat of a cross between Nietche and Sartre, you see no way out. But they (proponents of AP) have a vision of life that value, as the good old american constitution say, life, liberty and "pursuit of happiness". I might even agree with you, dear Rotty, that Jim Bell is a bit naive and shows a kind of outdated philosophy. Jim Bell et al. entertain the delusion that human beings are intrinsically joyous rationnal animals that, most of the time, love life. Therefore, for them, the AP scheme cannot lead to anything but a kind of laissez-faire world where everybody would be able to pursue happiness to the best of their abilities. OTOH, you believe that the natural tendency of AP would bring a world as you describe it vocally here. A world where the essence of Mankind is not to be a rationnal animal, but an animal, period. In that vision, you believe that a bloodthirsty beast within us will always take over. Maybe you learned that truth from your *own* life experience, I have no idea. So, according to your logic, anybody who doesn't like you will put a prize on your head, and probably look up the necrology section of the paper everyday while gigling. And here, I have to conceed that you may be right. After all, what philosophy ran the country since a hundred years? Huhh? So many peoples are so convinced of that that AP might very well turn against it's originator and further corruption. Don't you think so? > if you think that a government is a tyranny, perhaps you are not > aware of the tyranny of the irrationality of individual men. That sentence should earn one of the top spot of the CP top-ten-of-the-year list! ROTFL and L and L and L ! > it will "work" exactly as anonymous murdering now works. Nobody is more deaf than the blind who does not want to smell... > ah yes, exactly what we need. "enhanced anarchy". you and TCM really > should get together and collaborate. I'm sure you'd come up with > some fruitful conclusions. Who knows? JFA DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee; Limoges porcelain, silverware and crystal JFA Technologies, R&D consultants; physists, technologists and engineers. PGP keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891 I reserve the right to post publicly any private e-mail sent to me. Unsollicited commercial e-mail will be proofread at US165 $/h Any sender of such material will be considered as to have ac- cepted the above mentionned terms.

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Re: MixMaster fair use
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"loki(a)infonex.com" 22-MAY-1996 03:43:54.45 >It is patent on RSA, which expires in 2000 as I remember. It can be >licensed, but it is not cheap. I don't know how they would handle a free >program which people pay to use. Do they allow non-profit usage? If so, you could send out a new version that supported ecash payments, with an agreement not to use it for profit. I'd call building up a reserve against legal fees a justifiable action for a non-profit organization (if the interest went back into the same account or toward operating the remailer), but IANAL. Could someone who is comment, preferably after looking over the RSA license? -Allen

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Number one story on CNN this hour.
by Alan B. Clegg 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There are 40 million 'attack capable' systems connected to the Internet and over 120 countries have developed or are developing 'attack software'. [BTW, there will be a BUNCH more attacking systems when 'a new protocol is deployed because they are running out of addresses'] Sheesh. -abc \ Alan B. Clegg Just because I can \ Network Technologist does not mean I will. \ gateway.com, inc. \ <http://www.gateway.com/>

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Re: TCM: mafia as a paradigm for cyberspace
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:02 AM 5/22/96 -0500, snow wrote: >On Wed, 22 May 1996, jim bell wrote: >> more, you'd better not be a crook! > > Or turn in too powerful a crook. Since ratting on people can always be anonymous (and especially so after the advent of good encryption and remailers, assuming they survive!) I don't think it'll be a problem to turn in somebody "too powerful." In fact, the AP system will probably spur the simultaneous development of a system to anonymously reward people who identify and locate bad people of all kinds, even if all they do is this. But unlike the current form of rewards, the snitch won't have to reveal himself to anybody. > Law enforcement won't just go away. That's true, but with a caveat: Post-AP, there will be no such thing as "laws" per se. What there will be is an amorphous world of various interests, of people who feel stepped on if you abuse them, etc. Cumulatively, those interests will constitute "laws," but not like a list of hard-and-fast rules. >There will always be those of us who feel that most crimes _don't_ >deserve the Death Penalty, and that some sort of penal system will >continue to be necessary. In your system this would not be possible >because most people would be afraid to turn people in for fear of >reprisal. Unfortunately, I still haven't written up a description of a replacement for the current "criminal justice system" that I anticipated, and another person on a different list independently though of and described in much greater detail: A set of independant, privatized court systems which an agrieved victim can go to (perhaps anonymously) to charge the "defendant." The defendant, however, doesn't have to show up because it's a voluntary system. The punishment will probably be usually a monetary penalty, which if not paid is numerically added to the reward fund against that person. A defendant is motivated to defend himself to prevent such an eventuality. The accuser is, likewise, motivated to use this system because if the defendant is exposed as an unchallenged criminal, potential assassins (and AP organizations) will presumably work cheaper for their deaths if the defendant doesn't pay the fine. > I think that the biggest flaw in your system is the belief that >people will act rationally. Do you think that the Menendez(sp?) brothers >would have hesitated one second in having there parents offed to collect >the inheretance? Did the Menendez family have relatives who might have wanted retribution for the killings? If so, they could have gotten their revenge very cheaply. How about other rich people who didn't want their to be a precedent that two sons could kill their rich parents and get away with it? >> >Note: I don't necessarily think that AP is a good idea. I think >> >that people should do their own dirty work. >> >> In practice, I think this would be comparatively common as well. What >> currently deters such "take the law into your own hands" is the fact that >> police (being, essentially, in the business of protection) don't want you to >> provide for yourself by protecting yourself. They make it hard on people, >> in the same way they did with Bernard Goetz, the guy who shot four muggers >> on the New York city subway system. Once AP gets rid of the police, it will >> be much easier to protect yourself and not risk jail time, etc. > > Umm... I think that the biggest reason that the Police don't want >you taking the law into your own hands is that civilians tend to screw up >badly. They get the wrong target, they don't stop when they should etc. While I can't quote a specific study, I seem to recall a statistic that civilians were actually MORE likely to shoot and/or kill the RIGHT person, as opposed to the wrong person Remember, most police show up substantially after an incident starts, and they don't know who's in the wrong. A person who's in the right KNOWS this already; he's seen the incident from the beginning. Also, you said civilians "don't stop when they should." Who decides when they should stop? Well, more likely than not it's the police, who would prefer to NOT obsolete themselves, and a dead criminal is far less valuable to the police, prosecutors, and jailers than a live one. I'd say that's a conflict of interest, wouldn't you? (a live criminal results in profits to all these groups, plus lawyers, etc.) > The POLICE usually don't have a problem with an individual >protecting themselves (as long as the response fits the crime, killing a >shoplifter is a no no.) It is the court system that frowns on it. It doesn't really matter which group is making it difficult on the civilians, if they are doing it, it makes it harder for the civilians to protect themselves. > Is there the ability to predict a "mild beating" with your system? >or a "severe beating", or simply a killing? Having one level of punishment >is not a very good legal system. AP cannot replace it. It can with the competing, privatized system with punishments based on fines that I described above. >> Superficially, a person might argue that the lack of police would also make >> it easier for the muggers. However, a "professional mugger" would make a >> LOT of enemies, and it wouldn't take long before he's dead. He'd only have >> to be caught once. Any victim of any mugger would be happy to donate to see >> him gone. > > Give me the name of a mugger. Offer to pay money for such information in most inner cities, and you'll get plenty of takers if the reward's high enough. (and can be collected anonymously.) Remember, AP works because certain people with access to information are given the financial motivation to either kill the criminal or simply reveal (possibly anonymously) who he is. The current system uses money rewards only sparsely, and does not publicize them very well. >> Right. Moreover, I believe that governments simply cannot exist as we know >> them under these circumstances. Besides, they won't be necessary. > > See, you have far more faith in humanity than I do. I have plenty of faith that once the centralized, heirarchical political structure is demonished, things will be better. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: The Crisis with Remailers
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"bruce(a)aracnet.com" "Bruce Baugh" 22-MAY-1996 17:00:33.67 >Pointing people at legitimate uses of anonymity, as various folks have >suggested, is undoubtedly a good idea. Would anyone care to suggest a few >newsgroups where the vast majority of anonymous posts have really good >reasons for being so? While it isn't usage of true cypherpunk remailers, the sexual abuse survivors newsgroup(s) would appear to be a place to start. Some of the groups discussing human rights cases are also a possibility, as is alt.religion.scientology. -Allen

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Alleged abuse of anonymnity/pseudonymnity
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Someone's forgetting that it would be smart - and should be possible - for the men in question also to be anonymous/pseudonymous. As it was, they could have been, and were evidently too dumb. Edited for fair use. -Allen >Kansas veterinarian extorts husbands on 'married but looking' chat line >Copyright 1996 Nando.net >Copyright 1996 The Associated Press >(May 21, 1996 10:41 p.m. EDT) Men flirted shamelessly with "Rita" in >America Online's "Married But Looking" computer chat line. The typed chatter >often got steamy, and she even offered them provocative photos of herself. >But some men found that "she" was a "he" -- with printed copies of their >explicit exchanges and blackmail on his mind. >Veterinarian Ron Hornbaker, 29, of Shawnee Mission, Kan., pleaded guilty to >extortion Tuesday in a case that some say illustrates problems in the >unpoliced Internet. He faces two years in prison and fines up to $250,000. >"It's an old crime, just new tools," said assistant U.S. Attorney John >McKenzie, who prosecuted the case in U.S. District Court in Rockford, Ill. [...] >In August 1995, Hornbaker created an America Online profile of himself as a >married woman named Rita, authorities say. He would log into "Married But >Looking" or similar chat areas and start engaging male victims in typed >conversation. After a while, he would ask them to go to a more confidential >area called a private chat room "to get to know each other better. >"There Rita would engage each man in erotic conversation, asking the victim >to get her "hot" and offering a sexy photograph. >Hornbaker, meanwhile, stored the conversation and printed out transcripts. >Victims awaiting the nude photograph instead got a threatening letter. In it, >Hornbaker -- now posing as Rita's enraged husband -- said he'd found a >transcript of the conversation between the victim and Rita. >Hornbaker set up boxes at private mail services to handle the bribes, >usually between $500 and $2,000. None of the recipients paid him.

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(Another) alternative to remailer shutdowns
by Leonard Janke 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Instead of having the last remailer in the chain store the plaintext of an encrypted anonymous message, it might be more convenient to have the sender split the message into two messages and send these. The first message would contain random characters, and the second would contain the xor of these random characters with the anonymous message. By themselves, each piece would, of course, be harmless random text, so remailer operators greatest crime would be spamming. If the two pieces were sent through chains with different last remailers, no one operator could be held accountable, and, of course, it would be ridiculous to suggest that one operator could be held responsible for that fact that another sent some random text which happened to be the xor of the random text another had sent with a harassing message. (For instance, the other operator could be trying to frame the first, with the help of the receiver.) It seems to me that the only way to deal with a remailing scheme of this kind would be outlaw anonymous remalining in general. Leonard

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Re: (Fwd) Re: TCM: mafia as a paradigm for cyberspace
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I will quote an anonymous AP proponent with the initials EAS >>the above sentence I find absolutely abhorrent: it justifies killing, >>not merely because of the effect (the sort of "ends-justifies-the-means" >>argument used by most here), but that in addition it is >>supposedly "ethical". ethical?!?!? for g*d's sakes, promote your >>depraved scheme under any other heading, but do not claim it is >>"ethical" unless you want to further demonstrate how far from >>morality you have twisted your brain. > > In other words, if I'm shooting at you, it's unethical for you to >shoot back? get a clue. I didn't argue against someone shooting at you. I argued against the claim that you should be allowed to shoot anyone in the government because you think the government is corrupt. While I'm not sure whether I approve of Assasination Politics or >not (I'm not sure whether it'd lead to more or less violations of rights than >other possible means of changing the current setup), as I wrote, there is no such thing as a "right" in a society in which people decide who they would like to kill based on their own whims. there are no rights in a socieity in which killing is considered an everyday part of life, period. note I do agree this applies to some forms of government. I do achnowledge the >rightness of self-defense against governmental evildoing. ah, now there's where the silly non-sequitur of AP proponents comes in. "the government is corrupt, therefore we should be able to shoot any government employees we choose". the government is not sticking a gun down your throat this minute, are they? well, why are you seriously contemplating the converse? oh, you say that FIGURATIVELY the government is doing this to you? and you want to respond LITERALLY? I wonder who is the tyrant in this situation? "the government might shoot me if I don't pay my taxes". uhm, can you point out who this actually happened to you? what? you have an example? out of the 250 million people in this country, you actually found one? and you are concerned this will happen to you? well if you keep making a lot of noise, maybe you can achieve what appears to be your wildest fantasy!! AP proponents piss on the english language in their quest for "justice". the ways that AP proponents are twisting language, AP trash is almost worse than much classic government propaganda that has started past wars. "we have rights. we want justice. our rights are being violated. we are acting in self defense." TRASH, TRASH, TRASH To use your >example of Hitler, somehow I think an assasination of him would have been >ethical. I used him as an example of the kind of thinking that "murdering your enemies solves all your problems". yes, that was his point of view, and you inform me that you share it? well, congratualations!! hitler doesn't have too many friends and can use all the sympathy he can get. murdering Hitler would not have solved all the problems of WWII. the problem was militarism that was embodied by many cultures outside of his own, e.g. Japan and Russia. AP proponents believe that: 1. the world is full of people that are part of the problem or part of the solution 2. I can tell precisely the difference 3. I'd like to kill those that are part of the problem. 4. if AP existed, and it appeared there was a way to kill other people without trace, I would go through with it. 5. I have a lot of teachers I hated in my childhood too. I think I will go for them next. possibly not before seeing if they beg for mercy.

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Re: (Fwd) Re: TCM: mafia as a paradigm for cyberspace
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"vznuri(a)netcom.com" "Vladimir Z. Nuri" 22-MAY-1996 15:50:29.93 To: IN%"EALLENSMITH(a)mbcl.rutgers.edu" "E. ALLEN SMITH" CC: IN%"vznuri(a)netcom.com", IN%"cypherpunks(a)toad.com" Subj: RE: (Fwd) Re: TCM: mafia as a paradigm for cyberspace Received: from netcom11.netcom.com by mbcl.rutgers.edu (PMDF #12194) id <01I50FPCUY748WW02X(a)mbcl.rutgers.edu>; Wed, 22 May 1996 15:50 EDT Received: from localhost (vznuri@localhost) by netcom11.netcom.com (8.6.13/Netcom) id MAA29965; Wed, 22 May 1996 12:52:08 -0700 Date: Wed, 22 May 96 12:52:07 -0700 From: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri(a)netcom.com> Subject: RE: (Fwd) Re: TCM: mafia as a paradigm for cyberspace In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 22 May 96 00:57:00 EDT." <01I4ZKIOEV7G8Y5IL9(a)mbcl.rutgers.edu> To: "E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH(a)mbcl.rutgers.edu> Cc: vznuri(a)netcom.com, cypherpunks(a)toad.com Message-id: <199605221952.MAA29965(a)netcom11.netcom.com> X-Envelope-to: EALLENSMITH >I will quote an anonymous AP proponent with the initials EAS >>>the above sentence I find absolutely abhorrent: it justifies killing, >>>not merely because of the effect (the sort of "ends-justifies-the-means" >>>argument used by most here), but that in addition it is >>>supposedly "ethical". ethical?!?!? for g*d's sakes, promote your >>>depraved scheme under any other heading, but do not claim it is >>>"ethical" unless you want to further demonstrate how far from >>>morality you have twisted your brain. >> >> In other words, if I'm shooting at you, it's unethical for you to >>shoot back? The above is evidence that your accusing anyone of reposting private email is the pot calling the kettle black, LD (unless, as Dr. Vulis said, you're too dumb to be him). That was specifically sent in private email, for the simple reason that I saw no reason to clutter up the list with another response like the 10 others that had been sent. >get a clue. I didn't argue against someone shooting at you. I argued >against the claim that you should be allowed to shoot anyone in >the government because you think the government is corrupt. Nobody, so far as I know, is arguing that one ought to shoot anyone in the government... I'd be in danger if that were the case, given that my current employer is a state university. If someone is in government and is doing something very wrong (although one may disagree on what is wrong, of course), then they're a proper target. >>I do achnowledge the rightness of self-defense against governmental evildoing. >ah, now there's where the silly non-sequitur of AP proponents comes >in. "the government is corrupt, therefore we should be able to shoot >any government employees we choose". the government is not sticking >a gun down your throat this minute, are they? well, why are you >seriously contemplating the converse? oh, you say that FIGURATIVELY >the government is doing this to you? and you want to respond >LITERALLY? I wonder who is the tyrant in this situation? If the only workable method of self-defense is to kill the person, then that's a justifiable means of self-defense. Hopefully, other means of removal of those in government who do what is wrong is possible; I do my best to work for this. But if it isn't, I'll support AP as an alternative. >>To use your >>example of Hitler, somehow I think an assasination of him would have been >>ethical. >I used him as an example of the kind of thinking that "murdering your >enemies solves all your problems". yes, that was his point of view, and >you inform me that you share it? well, congratualations!! hitler >doesn't have too many friends and can use all the sympathy he can get. All your problems? No. But leaving it out as a possible partial solution is irrational. >murdering Hitler would not have >solved all the problems of WWII. the problem was militarism that >was embodied by many cultures outside of his own, e.g. Japan and >Russia. Executing Hitler would have saved a lot of lives, even if it didn't stop the war entirely. Germany without him would, more than likely, not have held together nearly as long as it did. >AP proponents believe that: >1. the world is full of people that are part of the problem or part >of the solution >2. I can tell precisely the difference No, I don't think that I can tell precisely the difference. But it appears possible that I'd make less mistakes than the current government does, even considering only the cases in which they do kill people (e.g., shootouts with drug dealers et al). >3. I'd like to kill those that are part of the problem. If that's the only way that works, yes. >4. if AP existed, and it appeared there was a way to kill other people >without trace, I would go through with it. Again, if that's the only way that works, yes. >5. I have a lot of teachers I hated in my childhood too. I think I >will go for them next. possibly not before seeing if they beg for mercy. I invite you to look at the psychological defense mechanism known as projection, preferably along with a trained psychiatrist or clinical psychologist in inpatient therapy. -Allen

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