December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: RSA Algorithm
by nobody＠zifi.genetics.utah.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Drunkard Vagina has been fired for masturbating in front of his boss. ^-^-^-@@-^-^-^ (..) Drunkard Vagina

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Re: concerning Ben Franklin
by David Farber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My favorate Ben Franklin quote is "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin, ~1784

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Re: Moderation [Tim,Sandy]
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:48 PM 2/3/97 GMT, Adam Back wrote: > >Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> writes: >> I believe that Cypherpunks is beyond hope of recovery. In fact, each day >> Cypherpunk (as in cypherpunks(a)toad.com) lives on, it does damage to the >> cause. Let's kill the list. Once and for all. Let the hard core crypto go >> to Coderpunks, the politics to Cryptography, and the garbage into the void. > >What about the leaks? (rc4.c, Mykotronics dumpster contents, etc) >Where do they go? I have been thinking about this question. I don't really have an answer other than that the more recent leaks posted to this list drew zero response. How many of you remember the anonymous message posted to this list revealing that Skipjack is an elliptic curve cipher? [One of the most respected names in cryptography confirmed this to me in private conversation. No, the person was not privy to the secret specs. The person didn't need to be. :-] If nobody cares about the leaks, why do we need to provide a forum for them? Besides, there are other fora that could be used. sci.crypt or Coderpunks are both good places to post "found" code. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred "I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." Mahatma Gandhi

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Embarrass a Marylander, Go to Jail
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 19:25:51 -0500 (EST) To: Multiple Recipients of e$pam <e$pam(a)intertrader.com> From: e$pam(a)intertrader.com (e$pam) Reply-To: e$(a)thumper.vmeng.com X-Comment: To unsubscribe, send any email to e$pam-off(a)intertrader.com Precedence: Bulk Subject: Embarrass a Marylander, Go to Jail X-orig-from: Randy Cassingham <arcie(a)netcom.com> X-e$pam-source: Various Forwarded by Robert Hettinga ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 14:37:56 -0700 (MST) From: Randy Cassingham <arcie(a)netcom.com> Subject: Embarrass a Marylander, Go to Jail To: listmom-talk(a)skyweyr.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Precedence: Bulk Reply-To: listmom-talk(a)skyweyr.com Passed on without comment. / Randy Cassingham * Author, "This is True" * arcie(a)netcom.com \ | For info on What I Do, send a blank e-mail to TrueInfo(a)freecom.com | \ or check out <http://www.freecom.com/> * I promise you'll like it / + FIGHT SPAM! Send a blank e-mail to nospam(a)mailback.com for help! + ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Excerpted from... ============================================================= AOP Bulletin Friday, February 3, 1997 Volume 97:05 ============================================================= The following is information distributed to members of the Association of Online Professionals and others involved in the online communications industry. Contacts and other information about AOP may be found at http://www.aop.org. ***************************************************** Maryland Recycles Law On "Annoying" E-Mail ***************************************************** A Maryland bill that would make it illegal to send "annoying" or "embarrassing" e-mail was introduced this week by Democratic General Assembly member Samuel Rosenberg. The bill got little support when it was introduced last year, but Rosenberg hopes to play off of recent murders involving electronic mail to see the bill passed. Civil liberties groups argue that the law would be unconstitutional, and that the terms "annoy" and "embarrass" are too vague to be meaningful. If passed, House Bill 778 would amend the state's criminal harassment law to prohibit the use of email to annoy, abuse, torment, harass, or embarrass other people, with violators receiving a fine up to $500 and three years in jail. A similar bill introduced last year is quietly progressing through New York's state legislature. Senate Bill 1414, introduced by Democratic State Senator Ray Goodman, could be voted on in the House early this year. Full text of the Maryland bill can be found at http://mlis.state.md.us/1997rs/billfile/HB0778.htm. -------------------------------------------------- The e$ lists are brought to you by: Intertrader Ltd - Java e$ Software Developers in the UK Visit <http://www.intertrader.com/> for details ... Where people, networks and money come together: Consult Hyperion http://www.hyperion.co.uk info(a)hyperion.co.uk Like e$pam? Help pay for it! See <http://www.atanda.com/rah.html> Or, for e$pam sponsorship, see <http://thumper.vmeng.com/pub/rah/> Thanks to the e$ e$lves: Of Counsel: Vinnie Moscaritolo <mailto:vinnie@webstuff.apple.com> (Majordomo)^2: Rachel Willmer<mailto:rachel@intertrader.com> Commermeister: Anthony Templer <mailto:anthony@atanda.com> Interturge: Rodney Thayer <mailto:rodney@sabletech.com> HTMLurgist: Cynthia Zwerling <mailto:czrider@@webstuff.apple.com> --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity." -- Jerry Pournelle The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/rah/ FC97: Anguilla, anyone? http://www.ai/fc97/

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Re: My Departure, Moderation, and "Ownership of the List"
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

<tmcghan(a)gill-simpson.com> writes: > in a message allegedly from: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay(a)got.net> > > > I would have had no problem had John announced that he was creating > > a new list, the "Good Stuff" list, with Sandy has his Chooser of > > Good Stuff. > > > But by making the _main list_ the censored one, this skewed things > > considerably. > > > But the clear message by having Sandy censor the > > main list (the default list, the list name with the main name, the > > list we all know about, etc.) > > Now that the horse is out of the barn, ( or maybe not? ), I can't help > but ask whether one specific 'change to the change' would have > satisfied most of your objections: retaining 'cypherpunks' as the > name of the unedited, all-the-crud-you-can-read-and-then-some, > version, and adding an 'cp-worthwhile' list for those of us who prefer > not to wade thru mountains of garbage to glean a few precious tidbits. That was the objectionable part of the moderation experiment to me. > What's in a name? Is perception more important ( to you ) than > reality? If just swapping names between cp and cp-unedited would make > such a large difference, I humbly suggest to you that you consider how > much labels need to matter. Is the title of the group more important > the the content? From where I sit, this looks a lot like a > style-over-substance complaint. There is a lot in a name. The name `Cypherpunks' has, or had a reputation. Tricks like censoring the list are not helping that reputation. This wording indicates that the other two lists are to satisfy purists: (relevant output from sending message with body `lists' to majordomo(a)toad.com) : cypherpunks (THE MAIN LIST) Fermenting ideas on crypto and society : cypherpunks-flames (FLAMES DELETED BY MODERATOR) Ideas on crypto and society : cypherpunks-unedited (THE UN-MODERATED LIST) Ideas on crypto and society The naming convention indicates that cypherpunks is the main list, as does the ordering (moderated first). The text in the sign up message: (extracts from output from sending message with body `info cypherpunks' to majordomo(a)toad.com) : cypherpunks moderated to suppress spam and flames : cypherpunks-unedited all submissions, just as they arrived : cypherpunks-flames the submissions that didn't pass moderation Also I note in passing that if I recall correctly this section used to give Hugh Daniel's email address. Seems John is managing majordomo himself now? Is Hugh's no longer being list manager related to the moderation decision? : For other questions, my list management address is not the best place, : since I don't read it every day. To reach me otherwise, send mail to : : gnu(a)toad.com > It may also be worth noting that the current 'status quo' is a > transient experiment, with a fairly short time limit. When JG, > Sandy, et al. evaluate the results with an eye to future > direction(s), they may well consider an 'inverted default' for the two > list names (i.e.: cp / cp-unedited) It would be nice also if JG, Sandy et al, took some notice of the list opinions next time. It really would have been better to create a _new_ moderated list, rather than take over the existing list address, and subscribers. Maybe those who initiated the moderation experiment thought they wouldn't get many people moving over to the moderated list if they had to go to that effort. Another alternative would have been to discontinue `cypherpunks' and start `cypherpunks-edited' and `cypherpunks-unedited' forcing people to choose. I wouldn't have liked that either, but it would have been a better experiment. (Likely that would have lost many altogether, who simply wouldn't have bothered to resubscribe at all). Several times in the past, a USENET newsgroup alt.cypherpunks was suggested. Some people were against it because they felt that it would attract more noisy posters. Perhaps it is time to reconsider the benefits of alt.cypherpunks. (As an aside, it is ironic that John Gilmore was the guy who started the alt.* USENET hierarchy, specifically to facilitate freedom of speech). Adam -- print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

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Re: My Departure, Moderation, and "Ownership of the List"
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adam Back wrote: > > Perhaps it is time to reconsider the benefits of alt.cypherpunks. (As > an aside, it is ironic that John Gilmore was the guy who started the > alt.* USENET hierarchy, specifically to facilitate freedom of speech). > An interesting idea. - Igor.

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Re: Govt & cyberspace
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[snip] >"tech envy"-- what impact is this going to have on our >government? it's becoming a huge issue. it may be a >really great opportunity for a populist movement to >truly reform the government in the process of upgrading >their computers. Even better, this is an opportunity to choke off all, or certainly increased, funding in order to hasten its collapse. >I suspect that the "groupware" technology >that is just getting started will have major influence >in these areas. as private companies find increasingly >sophisticated ways of managing themselves, the obvious >question will arise, "why can't we have an efficient govt >when our private industries are"? the answer is, we >can!! Don't improve it, remove it! > >I've written about "electronic democracy" repeatedly. many >people object to the idea. but when it is phrased in terms >of groupware, it becomes more palatable. imagine a small >company humming along with its groupware application that >allows it to make company-wide decisions using a democratic >process. moreover, the software is robust and scales well. >why can't the same principles be scaled up, up, up? I predict >that they will be in a rather extraordinary revolution. > >a new "velvet revolution"? comments anyone? Democracy is not without its significant shortcomings. If you doubt this read Tocquevelle. --Steve

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Re: Moderation [Tim,Sandy]
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> writes: > I believe that Cypherpunks is beyond hope of recovery. In fact, each day > Cypherpunk (as in cypherpunks(a)toad.com) lives on, it does damage to the > cause. Let's kill the list. Once and for all. Let the hard core crypto go > to Coderpunks, the politics to Cryptography, and the garbage into the void. What about the leaks? (rc4.c, Mykotronics dumpster contents, etc) Where do they go? You expect Perry to stick his neck out and approve them? (Perry Metzger is the moderator of cryptography(a)c2.net, started recently as a moderated version of cypherpunks for those who don't know what the `cryptography' list is). The existance of cryptography argues against the need for `cypherpunks' to be moderated. Why two competing moderated lists? Secondly the status of garbage is in the eye of the beholder. There are a few posts which are probably considered garbage by near everyone, but lots of other stuff which really just depends on what the reader is interested in. The problem with censorship or moderation is that it waters down the absolutism of free speech. Free speech in electronic media, with cypherpunks type I, and type II remailers, is the closest thing to truly free speech yet. A lot of people seem to regard Jim Bell's assasination politics as suitable material for censoring. Yet it is pretty crypto relevant. Sandy's job is pretty hard to do. For instance I recently posted this, which ended up in cpunks-flames, due to being in a thread which contained a mild flame 2 messages back: : Diffie-Hellman key generation, there are two main ways of generating : the diffie-hellman prime modulus, method 1: : : p = 2q+1 : : where q is a prime also. : : And method 2: : : p = r.2q+1 : : where q is a prime and r is a randomly generated number. : : With method 1, the security parameter is the size of p in bits (or : size of q, as they are related). : : With method 2, there are two security parameters, size of q and size : of p in bits. : : Method 2 has the advantage that key generation is faster as it is : quicker to generate new random numbers r, than to repeatedly generate : trial prime q as you have to do in method 1. However is the security : weaker in method 2? What size of p and q do you have to use to get : the same security as for same size of p in bits as in method 1? What : should be the relationship between the size of p and q? (I freely admit to injecting additional crypto relevance just for the fun of seeing it be filtered cpunks-flames -- though I was interested in discussion also). > I am well aware of the name recognition and reputation capital associated > with CP, still I believe it best to *kill the list*. I'd prefer to see various filtering services offered, and the list retained. My main objection with the moderation experiment is that the main list was renamed. Adam -- print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

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Re: Dissolving Choke Points (fwd)
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: ####### ### <###(a)###.com> > To: ichudov(a)algebra.com > Subject: Re: Dissolving Choke Points > > ichudov(a)algebra.com writes: > > i do have unix (linux) and stuff, but i can't take a lot of subscribers > > -- maybe 200-300 or so. > > > > i actually wrote a proposal for a mailing list without a central control > > point, with several advantages being impossibility of control, absense > > of a single point of failure, and cryptographic verification of honesty > > of moderators. > > > > if there is any interest, i will post it here. > > Please do. > > Regards, > > ####### ### Here, I propose a new scheme for the Cypherpunks mailing list that would 1) Ensure that no one person is able to take over the control over the list 2) Ensure that there will be no single point of failure, i.e., shutdown of any single computer will not kill the list 3) Ensure that even people with relatively small Net resources can help keep the list afloat. The idea is as follows: even though Cypherpunks is one group, the group will be based on multiple mailing lists with identical content. These lists may be named, for example, cypherpunks(a)algebra.com, cypherpunks(a)toad.com, and cypherpunks(a)netcom.com (obviously, these names are used as an example only). Any user is free to subscribe to any of these lists. All of these lists will interact with each other in the following way: 1) Each node would forward ALL incoming submissions to a) all other nodes and b) to all subscribers "attached" to the node 2) Each node will send information about all new subscriptions to each other node. The following procmail recipes for cypherpunks@ accounts may be used to ensure quick forwarding: # is it sent to cypherpunks (some spams will be trashed here) # and is it not a mail loop? :0 * ^TOcypherpunks * !^X-Loop: { # # This recipe removes duplicates! # :0 Wh: msgid.lock | formail -D 32768 msgid.cache # forward it to other cypherpunks lists :0 c !cypherpunks(a)netcom.com cypherpunks(a)toad.com # send it to all local subscribers :0 c !majordomo -some -arguments # store the checksum and message-id for honesty verification (see below) :0 |accounting } # suSCRibe/unsuSCRibe recipes go here This scheme ensures that the list is run in a cooperative fashion and can be maintained by a number of individuals without any one of them having an expensive internet connection or being "in charge". It also ensures that even if one node fails, traffic can be re-routed to other nodes. Just as well, it ensures that any attempts of cheating will be noticed: it is easy to write a bot that would subscribe to all of these lists and see if any messages get "lost". Users can send their articles to only one node, or, if they feel paranoid, to several nodes at once. All we need is to make sure that all Message-IDs of outgoing messages are unique at every node. Honesty verification: I suppose that there may be some more elaborate, crypto-based schemes to control and monitor article distribution. For example, there can be another list, cypherpunks-control, where each of the nodes posts a publicly available signed summary of checksums of articles that went through, and individual users would be able (with the help of s simple client program) to verify that 1) They received these articles 2) That summaries received from all nodes are identical 3) That all articles were received by all nodes They do not HAVE to do it, but they can if they want. If they do, there will be no way for list maintainers to censor anything. If a node goes down or if the users' verification scripts indicate a potential for cheating, they can resubscribe to some other node and let everyone else know what's going on. My proposal strikes me as fairly simple and potentially workable. Even though 90% of the users will never get to usnig the verification mechanism, it will ensure honesty. Note also that this mechanism is a gross simplification of the way USENET works, so some may vouch for a usenet group instead. Your opinions will be appreciated. - Igor.

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Re: Dissolving Choke Points
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:55 AM 2/3/97 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote: ... >Another lesson is the danger of choke points. We can see how >tempting it is for people to exercise their control. Even John Gilmore >was unable to restrain himself from involuntary social engineering >experiments. Who would we have considered to be more trustworthy? > >Toad.com is a choke point, not just in terms of moderation but in >terms of the rate at which it can distribute messages. Let's >replace it. > >What we want are many machines carrying the cypherpunks list. A >message posted to any machine goes to all of the others. Each >machine sends messages to its subscribers only once. Some of >these machines should be across borders. > >The mail loop and multiple posting problems are solved by observing >the message IDs. > >Fast implementation: use moderated mailing list software. Put a >filter in the .forward file of the "moderator" account which looks >at the message ID and forwards the message if it hasn't been seen >already. The mailing list machines all subscribe each other. ... What you are suggesting is reminiscent of IRC. Except, I think that each IRC network has a central computer which could be controlled. On your idea for fast implementation, this could be hacked by would-be censors. A message comes into the list, the censor sees that the post is from a regular enemy. The censor then copies the header information onto a new message, one containing garbage, or snippets from old posts, reads the new post to see if it is acceptable, and if it is, adds a new header, probably only the time would be changed, and transmits it out. If the would be censor was the sysop of a machine near the origin of the message, and if the censor operated the censorship either by bots, or monitored the feed 24 hours a day, (not likely), then the actual message would get to few.

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