December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

M.M. / Re: Sovreign Right of Lawful Access
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mike McNally wrote: > Somebody wrote: > > This morning at the RSA keynote, David Aaron, the US Crypto > > ambassador quoted the "Sovreign Right of Lawful Access" as > > something that goverments were determined to preserve. > > Speaking as a private indiwidual, and not as a drone in the employ > of IBM (don't get me started on the "but wait, key recovery *isn't* > the same as key escrow" hoo-ha), that dude scared the piss out of > me. That plinking sound you hear is the sound of NSA's bloodhounds stamping the phrase, in reverse, on the bottom of their jackboots. "Sovreign Right" has that certain ring to it which suggests the rhetoric of Dictators who imagine themselves to be Kings. "Lawful Access" has that "Of course, we will only use this 'right' against drug dealers.", kind of feel to it. Perhaps the student who popped RSA's test balloon could propose the "Universal Right to Casual Access." Toto

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Re: Rejection policy of the Cypherpunks mailing list
by Richard Fiero 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Get it straight Sandy Sandfort. I'm not in your home. I am in my home and I will observe my priorities, not your's. Sandy Sandfort writes: > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mail lists are far >more like private homes, businesses or clubs. When you are a >guest there, you are subject to their rules of behavior. If Dr. Vulis was pushing the envelope in list-abuse as a multi-stage social experiment, Sandy Sandfort has surpassed him by far. In part I refer to a Sandy Sandfort reply to a criticism made by Paul Bradley. The reply was made public two hours before the criticism was. This is not moderation. It is manipulation and interference. Since I have a low tolerance for self-serving pedantry, I never would have noticed the criticism if it had not been preceded by the reply. In the reply, Sandy Sandfort employs the name-calling "sophist" and "hypocrite." Also in the reply is the Freudian slip or obscene proposition: > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "Force," my ass. Shouldn't this have gone to cypherpunks-flames? One might wonder just what the rules of proper decorum are. -- Richard Fiero

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Re: East German Collapse (Was: Fighting the cybercensor
by Hallam-Baker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

One point I had forgotten. The demonstration took place on the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht. This is one explanation as to why the border guards did not attempt to open fire with firearms or attempt to break up the demonstration with tear gas. Also consider that the Tiennamen square massacre had occurred only a few months before and it did not appear to have settled the issue of who controlled china. Many of the dissidents were still at large, China was a pariah nation. East Germany had recently been visited by Gorbachev who did not appear ready to help keep the regime if things got sticky. The mass defections were taking place at their peak at a rate of tens of thousands in a day. Something like a quarter of the youth between 18 and 25 had defected. Bill if anything understates this point. Certainly if the people decide that the structures of state are not worth supporting change can be astonishing. I think that the spending into bankrupcy thesis might be argued for the case of the USSR and more plausibly the US. The problem is that I don't think that the military spending in either case bore any relation to need, to the threat from the other side or to any rational determination. I think both budgets simply increased to the limit that the economies could support and beyond. There is a similar problem in the third world today. Many third world countries spend more on arms than they do on health or education. Much of the alledged "foreign aid" is in fact subsidies for this trade. The arms are primarily to suppress internal dissent. There are plenty of governments left in need of similar reform. Phill

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Re: East German Collapse (Was: Fighting the cybercensor
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:59 PM 1/28/97 -0500, "Phillip M. Hallam-Baker" <hallam(a)ai.mit.edu> wrote: >>That's it? The system collapsed because the guards left their posts? >>And no mutiny charges? Incredible. >I was there. >The collapse of East Germany was quite spectacular. There >was at most three months of warning. First there was a series >of sit ins at foreign embassies, then a migration of large >numbers of people in their twenties within the eastern block. In particular, people started leaving East Germany by way of still-somewhat-communist Hungary (where the Germans let them go) and from there into Austria (where the Hungarians let them go), and it was getting to be tens of thousands of people per month. Once a system like that starts leaking, it's hard to contain. (ObCypherpunksContent: if substantial amounts of tax money starts escaping into Cypherspace, it's not easy to maintain a modern CorporatistWelfare-for-Bureaucrats state either.....) >Unfortunately US commentators tend to see everything in terms of >US cultural norms, many of which were explicitly rejected by the >protestors. The East Germans wanted West German affluence, they >wanted to be part of Western Europe. They were certainly not >responding to US military spending as right wing theorists claim, >nor was the economy collapsing because of the arms race, it >was collapsing because of the costs of a totalitarian state and >the incompatibility of that state with modern industrial >organization. The US right wing does argue that the Soviets couldn't afford to run a military industrial complex big enough to outrace theirs, and that it was a major contributor to the economic collapse (which it probably was.) Of course, they also consider that Communism isn't an economically viable system, ignoring the similar problems with the Good Old American Patriotic Military-Industrial-Complex, and somehow think that now that there aren't any Russian Commies to kick around any more that we need a bigger army, as well as a supply of easily-kicked-around enemies. Unfortunately, I suspect that sometime soon they'll remember that there still are a billion Commies left, and that Oceania has always been at war with EastAsia. Hopefully the Communist system in China will have fallen apart by then to the extent that it can admit to being a semi-capitalist kleptocracy instead of pretending to still be in charge of anything. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)

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Re: Last nail for US crypto export policy?
by Z.B. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Tue, 28 Jan 1997 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com wrote: [snip] > >EXPORTABLE CRYPTOGRAPHY TOTALLY INSECURE: CHALLENGE CIPHER BROKEN IMMEDIATELY > > > >January 28, 1997 - Ian Goldberg, a UC Berkeley graduate student, > >announced today that he had successfully cracked RSA Data Security > >Inc.'s 40-bit challenge cipher in just under 3.5 hours. > .... > >Goldberg used UC Berkeley's Network of Workstations (known as the NOW) > >to harness the computational resources of about 250 idle machines. > >This allowed him to test 100 billion possible "keys" per hour -- > Good grief...I just remembered that this challenge started today when I read this letter. A question - how does DES differ from the RC5 cyphers that are also up for breaking? Where can I find some software to use on these? Zach Babayco zachb(a)netcom.com <-------finger for PGP public key If you need to know how to set up a mail filter or defend against emailbombs, send me a message with the words "get helpfile" (without the " marks) in the SUBJECT: header, *NOT THE BODY OF THE MESSAGE!* I have several useful FAQs and documents available.

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Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd)
by Hallam-Baker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > I am a cyber-revolutionary and the world has bought into > > the chaos of our revolution. I never intended the Web to be a tool > > for confirming the present social order which is manifestly > > corrupt. > > Which of course is why you were in contact with Billy's boys right? We did consider very early on the idea of proceedings of congress annotated with the campaign contributions of the various speakers. Imagine if instead of Newt Gingrich you saw Newt Gingrich ($243,493 Tobbacco Industry) as a speaker note. We were in contact with the Clinton folks because the Bush guys ignored the Web and the Internet completely. They just were not interested. Nor were the Perot folks either - odd since the electronic townhall was a big part of their platform. Even in this campaign the Perot page could not be read with Netscape 6 months before the election. On the other hand have a look at www.buchanan.org If you thought that Pat got a bum rap off the press when they called him a neo-Nazi just take a look at his site. Buchanan Brigade? Look at the choice of topics for the speaches. Phill

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Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd)
by snow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Phill wrote: > I'm a philosophical anarchist and I don't consider the state to have > "rights" over its "subjects", nor do I believe in the pure ideology of > property you do. > > Its worth noting that the origin of property is theft. In the case of the BULLSHIT. BULL FUCKING SHIT. The origin of property is labor. Claiming that _my_ property is the result of ME stealing, and hence what I OWN belongs to the community IS theft. I work, and as the result of that work something is created. That something is MINE to do with as I will. If I choose to sell that work for money, that money is mine. If I trade that money for shoes, those shoes are mine. THere is no theft involved. > controllers of China literally so since they stole most of their "property" > from the previous rulers. They "won" it in combat. The people of china obviously prefered new government to the old one, or they would have prevented the takeover. > I believe that the relationship between a state and individual is > a much more complex one than the slavish subjection model > you propose. In this I am in agreement with practically every > philosopher since Locke. Practically every philosopher since Locke has recieved their education at a Government or "Elite" sponsored school, and made their livings the same way. I'm not claiming conspiracy here, but those that feed at the trough aren't going to insult it overmuch.

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Re: Last nail for US crypto export policy?
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >January 28, 1997 - Ian Goldberg, a UC Berkeley graduate student, > >announced today that he had successfully cracked RSA Data Security > >Inc.'s 40-bit challenge cipher in just under 3.5 hours. I just ran out of asswipe. Does anyone have any RSA Data Security, Inc. stock they'd like to sell? Toto

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Re: [noise] RE: Shave the Whales
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mullen, Patrick wrote: > Is there a way we can keep the caricatures w/out getting the rest of the > message > w/ these postings? I like the ASCII art, but... I've just started clipping and saving the characters w/o the text that accompanies them. I've got a dozen so far, so check back in a week or so and I'll forward a set to anyone who wants. Unless, of course, someone has a bucket of them now. BTW, some of the recent ones are pretty amazing: a bat, a scorpion, a cow, etc.

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Altavista
by mjw＠VNET.IBM.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Mark Waddington Subject: Altavista > However, the doubleclick.net ads appear to bear no relationship to the > keywords being searched... Interestingly, I've just noticed over the last couple of days that the in-line ads are directly relevant to the search words I enter. I did a search yesterday on "Quicken" and "security" and all the in-line ads I was shown referred to security or penetration detection products. Mark Waddington Interactive Financial Services | Phone : +61-3-96266574 Business Development Manager | Mobile: +61-412-217316 IBM Asia Pacific | Fax : +61-3-96266273

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