December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

QuickEmail, A Web-based E-mail message
by whiterose＠liveinfreedomor.die 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

SSA, IRS, VA A-OK FOR Y2K President Clinton says that the U.S. Treasury Financial Management System has completed testing by independent auditors and is now "certified as Y2K (Year 2000) compliant." The Y2K problem or "millennium bug" is found in old programs that (because their authors used only two rather than four digits to designate years) will make mistakes when doing calculations based on dates. The Social Security Administration has led the way in dealing with the Y2K problem, which it first started working on in 1989. (San Jose Mercury News 29 Dec 98) A service provided by TechAID Computer Services, http://www.techaid.net The e-mail address of the sender MAY NOT BE AUTHENTIC.

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CLT&G Update: 29 Dec 98 (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 14:57:08 -0500 > From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> > Subject: CLT&G Update: 29 Dec 98 > Jefferson and Madison were fearful, as more Americans should > be today, of allowing power to be concentrated in the central > government. The entire point of a consitutional democracy is to avoid centralization. A better way to word this is that we should be afraid of the federal government becoming the central government. ____________________________________________________________________ What raises the standard of living may well diminish the quality of life. The Club of Rome The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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STUDENTS WEB SITE COVERED BY THE RIGHT OF FREE SPEECH
by Pallas Anonymous Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A federal judge has ruled against the school district of a Missouri high school student suspended because he and his sister posted a personal Web page using vulgar language to criticize the school's official Web site. U.S. District Court Judge Rodney Sippel has issued a preliminary injunction barring the school district from suspending the student, punishing him, or restricting his ability to post his personal home page. Sippel's opinion asserts: "Dislike or being upset by the content of a student's speech is not an acceptable justification for limiting student speech." (AP 28 Dec 98)

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Re: "Hit 'em Where They Ain't": Deploying Digital Bearer Transactions
by Ryan Lackey 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[BTW, there's a new mailing list to discuss how technical implementation details of DBS would [hypothetically] affect market dynamics, user experience, etc. -- send mail to pecunia-request(a)venona.org if interest. It's for stuff a bit too technical for dbs, and stuff too tenuously connected to cryptography for a mailing list like cryptography or coderpunks.] Quoting Todd Boyle (tboyle(a)rosehill.net) > Much hot air has been expended on directions in which accounting systems > will be re-architected for the internet. Meanwhile Quickbooks continues past > 90% and up, in small and medium sized businesses. It has got the user > interface solved, among many other problems. There is no possibility anybody > will take away the Quickbooks market in the next 3-5 years. I hate this. > But it's reality. > [suggestion: integrate electronic cash clients into Quickbooks] The same argument could be made for integration with the successful shopping cart systems (for retail purchasing), the successful web server (apache, maybe netscape and ms iis if you are feeling charitable), the popular internet client platform (netscape or maybe msie). I believe in this theory to an extent. Unfortunately, it seems easier to develop a platform-independent client for a DBS system first in standalone mode, then work on integrating into various existing applications. * Development and testing tools for generic systems such as Java are generally far superior to those for closed systems * A development team experienced in the other details of a payment system (cryptography, network protocols, security) is more likely to be familiar with generic software development than with developing for a specific application * Debugging a standalone client is generally far easier than debugging a plugin for an application which may itself have bugs. * Disagreements as to which particular proprietary systems should be supported. While Quickbooks, for instance, may control the business accounting market, packages such as quicken are more entrenched for individual (and perhaps very small business), and very large corporations use different packages. Which market segment, even for just accounting, should be the target? * The risk that a proprietary vendor will change the interface on the development team partway through development, or will go out of business, or become less important in the marketplace -- this is more of an issue the longer the product development cycle is. * Substantial minorities who are very attached to particular tools, in contrast to the majority of the target market -- witness the macintosh minority. This is because of the interface, legacy plugins, or whatever, and basically needs to be taken as a given. Looking at another popular crypto application which I believe had considered this issue is PGP. The core functionality of PGP, especially until relatively recently, has been to send encrypted email messages. A fairly compelling number of users use a small number of mail programs (Eudora, maybe Netscape Mail, maybe MS Exchange/Outlook). However, PGP chose to develop and continue developing a standaline application, leaving it to third parties to integrate PGP with existing mail readers. One logic would have said PGP should have created a standalone mail program, subsuming whatever functionality a tool like Eudora offers. There are a few reasons this might be worthwhile -- easier integration for the user by virtue of only having a single tool to use, both in configuration and in daily use -- perhaps market reasons such as greater profits -- greater brand identity -- assurances of secure behavior by the underlying levels (since they're integrated into the applications). However, there are many reasons subsuming the mailer functionality into the security application doesn't make sense. First of all, it was not necessarily known that electronic mail would be such a compelling application for PGP (well, actually it was). Additionally, they rightly noted that people would be reluctant to leave their existing mail programs (additionally, the market was a bit more fractioned at the time). There were the same problems with integrating into multiple applications, and also I don't think Phil Z. or the other early PGP developers had much experience developing application-plug-ins for any of the major mail clients. There are probably other factors involved here which I haven't addressed. My take on the question of how to do clients is that one should first develop functional standalone clients, with a well defined API, then either find existing people doing plug-ins or third-party applications and get them to do the integration work (keeping the code in the main line of the application, if possible, to keep it compatible with the latest releases of the product). Additionally, in some cases there exist wide-ranging standards which are easy to implement (such as the UNIX standards for stdin/stdout and argument handling, or perhaps HTTP/HTML, or maybe at some point XML or OFX) which should be implemented. There are also some applications which are so widespread that their own internal interface standard, if well documented and relatively unchanging, is worth writing to -- perhaps this is the case for browser plug-ins for Netscape and MS IE, perhaps for MS Office add-ons, and maybe the case for Eudora. However, in most of these cases, I'd be much happier writing a standalone system first, getting most of the development process out of the way, then doing a shorter development cycle to integrate the well-tested codebase into a third-party application...this lowers the window of risk for changes in the third party application as well as providing the above advantages. In the long run, though, I agree that integrating DBS into existing accounting systems at least as well as current payment systems, and probably far better, is of very high importance. I wasn't aware quickbooks was that popular, and will look at it soon...it sounds like it would be an interesting package to work with. Happy New Years, Ryan ryan(a)venona.com

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Hoppe on Defense
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text From: "Mises Institute News" <news(a)mises.org> To: <miseslist(a)mises.org> Subject: Hoppe on Defense Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 14:53:24 -0600 Sender: miseslist-owner(a)mises.org Status: U We are pleased to announce another paper in our Essays in Political Economy series: "The Private Production of Defense" by Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Professor of Economics, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Senior Fellow, the Ludwig von Mises Institute). >From the essay: "Among the most popular and consequential beliefs of our age is the belief in collective security. Nothing less significant than the legitimacy of the modern state rests on this belief. And yet, the idea of a collective security is a myth that provides no justification for the modern state. Private-property owners, cooperation based on the division of labor, and market competition can and should provide defense from aggression." This powerful and radical essay can be purchased here http://mises.org/product.asp?sku=p131 or by calling 334-844-2500. The price is $4.00 postpaid (no postage charges will appear on your credit card, regardless of what your shopping basket says). * * * * * A special 4-page, supplemental Austrian Economics Newsletter has been published this quarter. It features an interview with Roberta Modugno of the Center for the Methodology of the Social Sciences at the Libera Universita Internazionale degli Studi Sociali in Rome, Italy. She discusses her new book, Murray N. Rothbard e il libertarismo amerciano (Robbettino Ediotre, Soveria Mannelli, 1998). Students and faculty have been mailed a copy of this special AEN. If you are not on the list to receive one, email susan(a)mises.org with your address. Subscriptions to the AEN are $16 a year. Something to look forward to for Spring 1999: An interview With Richard Vedder (Ohio University) * * * * * The new Mises Review features David Gordon reviewing books by Allen Oakley on Austrian economics; Francis Beckwith and Gregory Koukl on relativism; Richard John Neuhaus et al. on judicial tyranny; Zbegniew Brzezinksi on American foreign policy; Jim Sleeper on liberal racism; Michael Levin on race; and Ronald Dworkin on affirmative action. Individual copies are $5. Subscriptions are $16 per year. Back issues are available on Mises.org. Subscribe: http://mises.org/product.asp?sku=MR * * * * * As we approach the new year, we wish you a happy one, and hope you enjoy Clifford F. Thies's article on millennial hysteria and its historic connection with socialist ideology. http://mises.org/fullstory.asp?FS=+%3Ch3%3EThe+Year+2000 In the next few days on Mises.org, we'll feature an article on the Euro and coverage of the continuing debate between Robert Bork (taking the statist position) and Michael Kinsley (taking the free-market position) on Microsoft's future. It may seem like a strange turnabout, but even stranger things have happened this month, in addition to the political turmoil in the Belly of the Beast: the Mises Institute and the Village Voice agreedthat the U.S. government should not be destroying people and property in Iraq. --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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[EFGA] DragonCon.net Receives Subpoena for User Records
by Robert A. Costner 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 17:02:48 -0500 To: announce(a)efga.org From: "Robert A. Costner" <pooh(a)efga.org> Subject: [EFGA] DragonCon.net Receives Subpoena for User Records Sender: owner-announce(a)efga.org Reply-To: owner-announce(a)efga.org X-URL: http://www.efga.org DRAGONCON.NET RECEIVES SUBPOENA FOR USER RECORDS This week DragonCon.net, a free email service, received a Subpoena requesting information on one of its users including the true and correct legal name, IP addresses, E-mail addresses, E-mail headers and postal address The matter has been referred to attorneys to see if the Subpoena is valid and should be complied with. DragonCon.net places a high value on the privacy of it's users and will not release user info based on a casual request. http://www.dragoncon.net is a privacy friendly email forwarding and newsgroup posting service using technology developed by Electronic Frontiers Georgia (EFGA) <http://www.efga.org>. EFGA is known for it's leadership in the worldwide anonymous remailer community, the Georgia Cracker remailer <http://anon.efga.org>, and as the original plaintiff in the internet anonymity case ACLU vs. Miller. DragonCon.net has been a way to extend a form of privacy and anonymity to those who wish for some anonymity in communications without the burden of encryption imposed by the Cypherpunk remailer system. Dragon*Con <http://www.dragoncon.org> is a science fiction and fantasy convention held each year in Atlanta, Georgia. DragonCon.net is a free email service for members of Dragon*Con which also allows anyone else to have an email account. DragonCon.net, the email service, is operated independently of Dragon*Con by a third party company. Says Chairman Ed Kramer of Dragon*Con, "Dragoncon.net is run by an independent company; we have no control over their policies. However, we certainly respect the privacy of our members and support the pro-privacy polices of the internet service towards their users. We've been told that attorneys are reviewing irregularities in the subpoena, and the internet service may be forced to not honor it." The matter is a civil action against a group of email-name defendants, none of which appear to be the Dragoncon.net user. Dragoncon.net is not a party in the suit. We do not yet know the nature of the civil action. More information will be announced in a few days. For more information contact Robert A. Costner pooh(a)efga.org 770 402-3580 * To join or be removed from this list, send a message to majordomo(a)efga.org with the message body of SUBSCRIBE announce or UNSUBSCRIBE announce

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Fwd: trigger locks on public weapons
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 17:23:38 -0800 To: rah(a)shipwright.com From: Vinnie Moscaritolo <vinnie(a)vmeng.com> Subject: Fwd: trigger locks on public weapons > Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 17:22:51 -0800 > To: staff(a)goal.org > From: Vinnie Moscaritolo <vinnie(a)vmeng.com> > Subject: trigger locks on public weapons > Cc: > Bcc: > X-Attachments: > > congratulations on your move to force the MA legislators to eat their > dogfood by placing trigger locks on the Besses in the state house.. I am > an ex resident of the People's Democratik Socialist Commonwealth of > Massachusetts and was recently visiting the Rude bridge in Concord, > showing my wife the very place where America started. I happened to > visit the museum at the bridge and noticed that that there were three > functional Brown Besses in display, and non of them were properly locked. > I was appalled to see this, after all this is a place where many visitors > come to see where freedom started, where the Colonists stood against the > king who only wished to protect them by confiscating their guns.. and to > find that the weapons displayed there were did not comply with the law of > the day quite dismayed me.. but I thought that if I informed the folks at > GOAL you might be able to contact the propler authorities and set things > straight.. > > good luck my brothers.. Vinnie Moscaritolo http://www.vmeng.com/vinnie/ Fingerprint: 3F903472C3AF622D5D918D9BD8B100090B3EF042 ------------------------------------------------------- Those who hammer their swords into plows, will plow for those who don't." --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: Triple DES "standard"?
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 19:11:37 -0500 To: jehill(a)nexis.org From: Vin McLellan <vin(a)shore.net> Subject: Re: Triple DES "standard"? Cc: Rodney Thayer <rodney(a)tillerman.nu>, Cryptography(a)C2.net Sender: owner-coderpunks(a)toad.com Rodney Thayer reported: >> Curiously enough, there seem to be no references to a standard before >> the X9.52 effort, which appears to be only a year or two old. NIST calls >> Triple DES a "private" standard. Josh Hill <jehill(a)nexis.org> responded variously: >? >Before things become standards, they are just good ideas. Triple DES is >widely used, despite the fact that there is no absolute standard. The >draft standard, itself, is actually quite straight forward... Nothing >really interesting about it, aside from ANSI's blessing. >NIST does the "we'll just refer to another standard and call it ours" >thing a fair bit... Look at FIPS 186-1: The RSA signature scheme accepted >is the one specified in ANSI X9.31. Actually, as I recall the tale, the Amercian Bankers Association-sponsored ANSI-accredited X.9 Committee's blessing of DES3 was itself pretty interesting. I understood that the NSA lobbied bitterly against the X9 effort to standardize 3DES as an ANSI standard, insisting that DES would surfice until its successor was chosen. A couple years ago, when the X9 committee -- or maybe one of the X9 crypto subcommittees -- rejected that advice and initially recommended that 3DES be made a standard, I was told that the NSA rep angrily declared that 3DES would _never_ get an export license and would never be shipped overseas. (Which may have put a damper on the 3DES standardization effort;-) Unfortunately, these standards development efforts usually escape the media's attention. Anyone on the list active in X9 and can give us the real story? Since the birth of X9 in the late 70s, the US National Security Agency has its own representative on the X9 Committee. As one might expect, the NSA has traditionally had significant influence over the ANSI "F" (crypto) subcommittees and cryptographic standards in financial services. There was a time when Ft. Meade effectively dictated those standards. Now, that is not necessarily so.... (After the NSA blundered so badly in trying to force the Banking industry to switch from DES to CCEP/Clipper in the late 80s, the Agency's mesmerizing control broken. The initial intro of CCEP/Clipper -- at an ABA meeting -- proposed that only US owned institutions could have access to Clipper. At the time, as I recall, maybe 10-15 percent of the US banks were foreign owned;-) The bankers couldn't believe that these idiots -- obviously so ignorant about the workings of the industry they were trying to defacto regulate -- were from the NSA of Legend and Lore.) I always felt that the NSA's alienation of the Bankers was probably the single most important factor in the collapse of the government's Cipper campaign. Suerte, _Vin ----- Vin McLellan + The Privacy Guild + <vin(a)shore.net> 53 Nichols St., Chelsea, MA 02150 USA <617> 884-5548 -- <@><@> -- --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: PWL files
by Chris Rowley 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > I've been trying to figure out the method of encryption for OSR2 Win95 and > > Win98 *.pwl files and I was hoping someone had some details about the > > method used. [...] Does anyone have it figured out? > > I think Peter Gutmann and someone else figured it out sometime ago. Peter Gutmann figured out the old system. In reaction the system was changed by the OSR2 patch and in all further releases of Windows. What exactly it was changed to is the question. Chris.

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!! Wanted Home Product Assemblers !!
by Death46760＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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