December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Censorship on cypherpunks?, from The Netly News
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Netly News http://www.netlynews.com/ November 11, 1996 Cypher-Censored By Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com) The cypherpunks mailing list, so legend goes, coalesced around two principles: the dissemination of strong encryption and an absolute commitment to free speech. It was a kind of crypto-anarchist utopia: Here was a place where anonymity was encouraged and PGP-signed postings were the norm -- and nobody seemed to be in control. That is, until recently, when Dimitri Vulis was given the boot. After he refused to stop posting flames, rants and uninspired personal attacks, Vulis was summarily removed from the mailing list. Now, normally, when someone gets evicted from a mailing list, it excites little attention. But here was an ironic -- some would say momentous -- event: The list is run, after all, by John Gilmore, the EFF cofounder, a cypherpunk god who is famous for having once said that the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. And it was none other than Gilmore who gave Vulis the boot. The shunning of Vulis was "an act of leadership," Gilmore said. Thus began a debate over what the concept of censorship means in a forum devoted to opposing it. Did Gilmore have the right to show Vulis the virtual door? Or should he have let the ad hominem attacks continue, encouraging people to set their filters accordingly? The incident raises deeper questions about how a virtual community can prevent one person from ruining the forum for all and whether only government controls on expression can be called "censorship." Vulis, a 31-year old Russian emigre who completed a PhD in mathematics last year at the City University of New York, is described as sociable, even friendly, by people who have met him. Online, though, he's almost notorious. His .sig file, for instance, proudly points out that he's a former Kook of the Month; Vulis was also a Net-legend and even has the alt.fan.dimitri-vulis newsgroup named after him. Vulis portrays himself as a victim, but as I posted to the list last week, I disagree. Anyone who's spent any time on the 100-plus-messages-a-day list can read for themselves the kind of nasty daily messages that came from Vulis's keyboard. The list is on Gilmore's machine and he can do what he wants with it; he can moderate the postings, he can censor material, he can shut the whole thing down. By kicking off an offending user, a list owner merely exercises his property right. There's no government involvement, so the First Amendment doesn't apply. And the deleted, disgruntled user is free to start his own mailing list with different rules. But then the question is whether Gilmore should have exercised that right, especially in such an open forum. Again, I think Gilmore's actions were justified. Consider inviting someone into your home or private club. If your guest is a boor, you might ask him to leave. If your guest is an slobbish drunk of a boor, you have a responsibility to require him to leave before he ruins the evening of others. Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA, runs a number of mailing lists and has kicked people off to maintain better editorial control. Volokh says that the most valuable publications are those that exercise the highest degree of editorial control. But what if your private club's express purpose is to cherish free speech? That's where the terrain gets mucky. One 'punk wrote: "For someone who espouses freedom of speech to arbitrarily censor someone is indeed hypocritical." Another called it a "big cypherpunkish move" that couldn't be condoned "even bearing in mind the inane and wearisome behaviour of Dr. Vulis." Still others said that this demonstrated that "libertarianism can't work without some measure of authoritarianism." (Libertarianism being the primordial flame war topic, the debate nearly consumed itself at this point.) Vulis told me yesterday: "I'm particularly disappointed by John Gilmore's actions. I've known him and communicated with him before. His treatment of me was rude and unprofessional and inappropriate." In posts to the mailing list, Vulis levels the additional criticism that it was "arbitrary and capricious" and that he was not notified that he would be forcibly unsubscribed. This week Vulis busied himself by saying that now Gilmore can be sued for what happens on cypherpunks, arguing that the list owner is exercising greater control and so is subject to greater liability. Of course, in this country anyone can sue for anything. But it's highly unlikely the suit would go anywhere. Solveig Bernstein, a lawyer with the Cato Institute, says: "Chances are in a defamation lawsuit he'd be treated like a publisher or bookstore owner.. They exercise some control over content and enjoy pretty broad immunity from lawsuits." For his part, Gilmore calls removing the Russian mathematician "an act of leadership." He says: "It said we've all been putting up with this guy and it's time to stop. You're not welcome here... It seemed to me that a lot of the posts on cypherpunks were missing the mark. They seemed to have an idea that their ability to speak through my machine was guaranteed by the Constitution." What does Vulis's ouster mean to the community that sprang up around this mailing list, of which he had been a member for nearly three years? Many of his peers think he did it for attention or notoriety; one longtime list-denizen declined to be interviewed for fear of encouraging him. (If that's his goal, he's already succeeded. Will Rodger from Inter@ctive Week and Lewis Koch from Upside Magazine are writing about this.) Other cypherpunks wonder why Vulis is abrasive online, yet mild-mannered in person; Gilmore likened him to "a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality." The flap comes at a time when other prominent cypherpunks are leaving, citing too many flames and too little content. Perry Metzger, another longtime member, announced last month he would start his own, moderated mailing list. The hard-core programmers have moved on. Yet the list membership has never been higher, at 1,949 direct subscribers. And the cyber-rights issues the group discusses have never been more important. Ironically, tools like anonymous remailers that the cypherpunks labored to create now make it impossible to get rid of Vulis completely. Blocking posts from remailers is unthinkable to the cypherpunks. So the embattled Russian émigré continues to read the list under a pseudonym and appears to be posting as frequently as ever. But perhaps Gilmore succeeded in part. If not more polite, Vulis's messages now are at least on-topic. ###

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Re: "Nightmare on Crypto Street--the Return of Sun Devil"
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Peter Hendrickson wrote: < snip > ... the more we can erode the barriers between code and language, >the stronger the case is that laws governing code are violations of >the First Amendment. What if you had a compiler that accepted English >language instructions for how to build a crypto system? "Take a >random number 64 bits long. Then find a prime which is a little >larger. Then...." The language itself should remain protected by the >First Amendment even if somebody else has a compiler which can turn it >into software. Agreed, and this is happening (slowly). Some have said that "cypherpunks spread crypto" is a better motto than just "cypherpunks write code," for this reason and because it covers broader ground, although coding will always be essential to any of the other cypherpunk efforts in the end. Theres a lot of talent on this list, despite a few nuts mixed in. >Another conclusion we can draw is that cryptoanarchy is more of a >political issue than many of us would like. That means we might put >more effort into public opinion than just straight coding. (Tim may >claim otherwise, but I think he agrees with this in practice.) Distasteful, but probably true. >It may also be that the "bad boy" image of the Cypherpunks is >counterproductive to our goals. I'm not sure it's so bad, among the better educated anyway.

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Re: ENT_ice
by John L. Tocher 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John L. Tocher THE CITY-a bounded infinity. A labyrinth where JLTocher(a)Earthlink.net you are never lost. Your private map where every PGP: CE 72 1A 11 07 47 35 block bears exactly the same number. Even if you 35 9A C1 DE EA 64 21 BC 94 lose your way, you cannot go wrong. --Abe Kobo

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RE: two bogus messages to this list
by Mark M. Lacey 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Um, not to disagree with you re Intel/Micro$loth, but most UNIX systems >can be brought up in single-user mode and the root password changed by >anyone with physical access to the system. You could end up with even >more trouble than if someone messed with your M$ box. Microsloth has, at the heart of it's system, a call which traps ALL KEYSTROKES and EVENTS. This call exists from Win32s on, and can be placed inside of a DLL which most users would have no idea was loaded. Even under NT, this DLL can be made to remain resident and trapping Keystrokes, events, and window contents. This is (or was?) no problem under X Windows the last time I tried it (not recently), too. In fact, you could monitor the keystrokes of any machine that you had access to remotely, as long as X was running. All it took was a short little C program. So what call is it on NT that you're talking about? Mark M. Lacey <mml(a)halcyon.com> "Speaking for nobody but myself." [Finger mml(a)halcyon.com for my PGP public key.] [If you don't have 'finger', e-mail me for it.]

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Re: Not. [Was Re: Federal Reserve Bank is ILLEGAL?]
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:57 PM 11/11/96 -0500, Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote: >On Tue, 12 Nov 1996, Doug Renner wrote: > >> article nearly head-on. However is it true that what you are saying is >> that two fundamental premises in the article you refer to as "rabid" are >> incorrect? Namely: >> >> "ARTICLE 1, SECTION 8 OF THE CONSTITUTION STATES THAT CONGRESS SHALL HAVE >> THE POWER TO COIN (CREATE) MONEY AND REGULATE THE VALUE THEREOF. > >The above is a true statement. Note however that "congress" cannot >operate the mint. It must -- **MUST** -- delegate this duty to the >executive branch (or someone outside the legislative branch, cf. Chadha >v. U.S.) if it wants it done. Congress is free to select the type >of agent it wants to do this. Indeed, if Congress chose to license >private mints, that would, IMHO be legal. The point here is that the >states don't have the power to coin money. But, apparently, during the 1800's states (?) and individual banks did indeed print their own currency. The way I see it, a positive statement in the Constitution that the Feds have the power to coin money does not necessarily exclude other people/banks/states/foreign countries from doing likewise. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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BizWeek speaks on Crypto
by John Fricker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://www.businessweek.com/1996/47/b350287.htm --j ----------------------------------- | John Fricker (jfricker(a)vertexgroup.com) | -random notes- | My PGP public key is available by sending mail with subject "send pgp key". | www.Program.com is a good programmer web site. -----------------------------------

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Children & Privacy
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:26 AM -0800 11/11/96, Hal Finney wrote: > >>I have two kids entering their teens, and I'm sure other list members are >>parents as well. What can we do for our children to help them enter their >>adult lives with better chances to retain privacy? Perfect privacy is very difficult to achieve but with practice, one can learn (and teach one's children) much improved privacy. The following suggestions are not the most radical ones. They represent things that you can do at little cost or risk. Things you can do to teach your children to protect their privacy. 1) Practice privacy yourself. Children learn by example. 2) Don't apply for an SS# for your child. 3) Do apply for a passport for your child (without an SS# of course). Use it as the foundation for an ID pack for your child because passport apps don't contain much useful information on a person and can even be obtained without a birth certificate when the child is an infant. 4) Make up some facially valid SS numbers for future use using a freeware program like ssn.exe. 5) Teach your child to give your accommodation address and voice mail number as his address and phone number whenever asked (just like you do -- you do do that, don't you). 6) In descending order of importance: keep him out of government schools, keep him out of private schools in your country of residence, home school him. (Government schools give the government a direct opening into information about your family. Handing a child over to the government effectively ends any parental rights you might have while he is in school. Additionally, he may never learn to read and write.) 7) Introduce privacy concerns into your ideolect: Whenever you are driving around and see a police car say "There's the Geheime Staatspolizei" and explain who the "Home State Police" were. 8) Play privacy games like: Let's think of things we can say to people who ask us why we're not in school." "Let's think up some neat names to give to people when we don't want them to give them our real name." "Let's practice giving random answers to the question 'What's your name, address, and phone number.'" 9) When driver's license time comes teach them how to get a license in another state or country than their state of residence (and why this is important). 10) Get them a secured credit card in their true name to add to their ID pack. If you like, you can get them one in a nom de guerre as well. Secured credit cards are the best ID money can buy. (Because people think they're ID but they're not). DCF

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Children and Privacy
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:31 AM 11/12/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >(Side note: Jim McCoy's suggestion that kids can be kept off the >parental-unit's tax returns and thus not get a SS number is fraught with >problems. Many schools--including public schools--use the SS number for >various internal and tracking reasons. Anyone who turns their children over to puiblic schools cannot be very interested in privacy since public schools are the major pathway that governments use to exert social controls on families. In addition to all the paperwork on and tracking of the children, public schools record and track the families. The various state child protective services agencies use information derived from schools to control children and parents. If you are not on welfare and do not have your children in a government school, you will almost never come to the attention of those authorities. >Even if the kid is free of SS >numbers until he's a teenager--at a cost of thousands of dollars a year in >IRS deductions not taken--he'll essentially have to have an SS number in The "fine" for not listing your kids SS# on returns is minor ($50) and is not usually assesed in any case. You can still deduct them. Also those millions of parents who don't file their returns don't face the problem either. >his high school years, for a variety of reasons. Maybe this can be avoided, >but I doubt the reward is worth the hassles.) It is very rare to have an SS# bounced back at you if you just make one up which is valid on its face. This applies to both schools and jobs. DCF

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Copyright violations
by alzheimer＠juno.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Financial Times: Friday, November 8, 1996 Credit Card Group Set for Control of Mondex By Tim Burt MasterCard International, the credit card consortium, has stepped up its bid to take a leading position in the embryonic cash card business by agreeing to acquire a majority stake in Mondex International of the UK. Mondex is a leading developer of "electronic purses" -- plastic cards with memory chips that can be "loaded" with cash and used for small purchases. The deal is expected to give MasterCard 51 per cent of Mondex, set up by National Westminster and Midland of the UK but now jointly owned by 17 banks. Under the agreement, MasterCard would promote the Mondex electronic cash card through banks which carry its franchise. The Mondex system has been piloted in Swindon, Wiltshire, and Hong Kong. It works by storing cash on a microchip card, which can be loaded using automatic telling machines or specially equipped telephones. Cards -- including credit, debit and store cards -- are used for payments worth an estimated #2,000bn a year. MasterCard believes Mondex could give it a greater share of that market, although some industry observers doubt the appetite for such electronic cash cards. The acquisition could exacerbate tensions between MasterCard and Visa, its main rival, in attempts to establish an industry-wide standard for chip cards. Visa has already done pilot tests of its electronic purse at the Atlanta Olympic Games last summer and in Spain, Australia and Argentina. It is understood Mondex would become a free-standing subsidiary of MasterCard, and its existing management is expected to remain. Banking analysts said the deal could signal an admission by MasterCard that trials of its own electronic purse had not proved an unqualified success. Yesterday, however, MasterCard said it would be conducting a full-scale trial of its own smart card in New York next March. Electronic purses are undergoing trials elsewhere in Europe and North America, and some of Mondex's rivals claim it does not conform to the international standards for chip cards developed by companies such as Visa and Europay. Mondex has had a mixed reception among UK customers and retailers but said this week that it had been received enthusiastically in the Far East. In Hong Kong -- where Mondex was launched last month in conjunction with HongkongBank and Hang Seng Bank -- more than 20,000 customers and 400 stores have signed up to join the scheme at the two malls where it is being tested. The card is also being tested in Canada and is expected to be launched in Australia next year. Financial Times: Friday, November 8, 1996 World Tries Out New Electronic Purse Systems By George Graham Ever since inventors figured out how to implant a miniature computer chip in the thickness of a standard payment card, banks have been toying with the possibilities opened up by this extra memory and processing power. Top of most lists is the electronic purse: a way of loading money on to the card so that it can be used as a direct substitute for cash in small transactions such as buying a newspaper or a bus ticket. Mondex is among a host of electronic purses now on trial around the world. Originally piloted in Swindon, England, it is also being tested in Canada and was launched this week in Hong Kong. The arrival of MasterCard, the international payment card consortium, as its prospective majority shareholder will give Mondex the opportunity to move beyond local and national trials to, potentially, worldwide use. MasterCard had run trials of its own electronic purse in Canberra, though reports that these proved unsatisfactory would appear to be borne out by its imminent new link with Mondex. But Mondex is not alone in the electronic purse contest. Visa, MasterCard's great rival, piloted its Visa Cash electronic purse at the Atlanta Olympics, and in such countries as Spain, Australia, and Argentina. It will be launching a trial in the UK next year. Europay, despite being MasterCard's partner in Europe, has already launched its own purse called the Clip. Other national electronic purses range from the disposable Danmont card in Denmark -- sold for face value and thrown away when used up, like a phone card -- to the reloadable Quick chip in Austria, which is integrated into the customer's regular cash card. The most heavily used electronic purse so far, and arguably the only one that can yet claim to be a commercial success beyond a closed circuit such as a university, is the PMB card in Portugal. It has 170,000 cards in active use, and an expected 50,000 point of sale terminals installed by the end of this year. But no winner has yet emerged. "The reason for all of these pilots is that no one has proven the business case. I'll be really interested to see if anyone makes money out of this," Mr Eugene Lockhart, president of MasterCard International, said earlier this year. Banks generally like the idea of an electronic purse, which cuts out the risk they run on a credit card payment of not getting paid. It is also cheaper to operate than a debit card: because the money is already loaded on the card, there is no need for each transaction to be authorised by a central computer. 'The reason for all these pilots is that no one has proven the business case' weighs particularly with late night shops and with bus and taxi drivers who do not want to have to carry change around with them. But they do not want to install new card terminals until they are sure what the standard will be. The gains are much less obvious for consumers. To compete with cash, an electronic purse has to be not only free but very widely accepted. That threshold has so far been crossed usually in very limited geographical areas, such as the Sydney suburb where an electronic purse accepted at petrol stations, shops and fast food outlets has been successfully married with a bus pass. Mondex's technological features make it a closer replica of cash than most competitors. Mondex money moves anonymously from one person to the next, and can even be transferred to another individual's Mondex card, instead of only to a shop with a special terminal. In most other systems each transaction ends up being processed through a central computer. That leaves more of an audit trail -- a plus point with police. But Mondex's biggest shortcoming has been that it stood alone, raising questions on whether it would gain acceptance beyond the confines of Swindon. Rivals say it does not conform technically to the international standards for chip cards developed by Visa, MasterCard and Europay, although Mondex officials have demonstrated its cards will work in standard terminals. Mondex took a big step towards wider acceptance this summer, when National Westminster Bank, its creator, sold control to a broad international consortium of banks. With MasterCard expected to take control, the Mondex card has will be crossing another threshold toward worldwide acceptance.

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Make.digital.money.fast
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Rabid Wombat <wombat(a)mcfeely.bsfs.org> writes: > On Sun, 10 Nov 1996, Clay Olbon II wrote: > > > Pyramid schemes could be a growth market in a crypto-anarchic world. It is > > yet another market such as gambling, or the lottery, that could be conducte > > with anonymity. And it appears to be much more widespread on the internet > > How is it like gambling? If I get a pyramid letter instructing me to send > money to five people on the list, add my name to the bottom, send to 5 > people, or whatever, there's nothing stopping me from removing all the > names, adding my name and those of four friends, and passing the letter > along. With an anonymous system, I could easily be all five people, > without even the bother of getting five different post office boxes. > > There's no gambling involved; only blantant stupidity. I agree - MMF is stupid. Gambling in Las Vegas is stupid. Buying lottery tickets is stupid (except in rare cases when the jackpot is very large.) The way most investors play the market is stupid. It's unbelieavble how many billions of dollars move around in non-productive activities which can only be described as stupid. Coming back to MMF, I recall the famous quote from Dave Rhoad's original post which said approximately: "The success of this project depends on the honest and integrity of each participant." (By the way, DR is a real person, living in California.) My small-scale survey indicates that almost all the people who post MMF try to "cheat" in a minor way by not sending the $5 to the 5 people upstream of them. I think this casn be prevented cryptograhicaly if the MMF post includes digitally signed assertions from the 5 upstream people certifying that they've received their $ from this particular poster. A slightly more sophisticated form of "cheating" is described by RW above: the poster generated 5 nyms, generated 5 receipts from these nyms, and effectively starts a new pyramid. A partial response to that would be to require each new nym to be certified by its immediate upstream neighbor: sort of like the web of trust, rooted in Dave Rhoades himself. But that too can be circumvented by a single person "spamming" the pyramid by multiple nyms all belonging to him. There's no good way to ascertain that mutliple nyms don't belong to the same person. > --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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