December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Privacy as a Commodity
by Michael Edward Marotta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

SOME OBSERVATIONS AND THOUGHTS ON PRIVACY AS A COMMODITY by Michael E. Marotta <mercury(a)well.sf.ca.us> About a year ago, maybe less, Kevin Kelly suggested that privacy is or could be a commodity. It was on The Well in the EFF Conference on another topic entirely. He just dropped this bomb. I suggested a Loompanics article and he said he didn't have time but that I was welcome to develop the idea. So I proposed "Privacy as a Commodity" to Computers Privacy and Freedom (CPF94) in Chicago. Frank Lloyd Wright said that privacy is the hallmark of civilization. He built his houses to ensure the privacy of the occupants. He pointed to the village as an environment without privacy. Today we say that we live in a global village. Therefore, the expectation of privacy is inappropriate. However, there is a lot of history between the first permanent settlement today's worldwide community. Merchant princes graced several ages. Metropolitan and cosmopolitan cities developed new patterns of interaction. Quite likely, the demand for privacy is relatively recent. There is a quote from Leonardo da Vinci: "When you are alone you are all your own." A brief look the pre-Socratics (ed., Honderich) reveals no discussions even remotely approaching "natural rights" from which privacy would be deduced or infered. Plato's "Republic" is well known. Tonight, discussing the ancient world with another numismatist, he pointed out that accumulations of wealth were virtually impossible before Roman Law. The Athenians (and others) would ostracize anyone simply for being personally successful and therefore a potential threat. Neither of us could identify the general who defeated the Persians and was rewarded with exile. In such an environment, a plea for privacy would be ludicrous or even lunatic. We have the saying in English: "A man's home is his castle." The Magna Carta (1215) had many provisions limiting the power of the crown and upholding the rights of free people (somewhat different for men than woman). Typical of them is this: "No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go or send against him, except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land." That sentiment continues today. However, force of arms is not the appropriate medium for securing your expectations of privacy. The Magna Carta limited the power of the state. It did not address problems of peer review and peer pressure. The best arrangements we have that work among equals are agoric. The marketplace depends on voluntary agreements for personal profit. The successful merchant doesn't argue religion with the client. ("Religion" of course includes art, politics, sports and anything else not proximate to supply, demand and price.) In this sense, privacy is inherent in the market. Today, however, we buy and sell information about people. If you buy a new automobile, you are a potential client for insurance, if not for a Caribbean vacation. Since the problem is agoric, the solution must be agoric: you will have to invest in objects or processes that show their return in increased privacy for you. It is possible that there is another set of solutions. There may be something beyond politics and the market. For instance, it is possible that a philosophical revolution will cause us to freely give information we now hide if we choose to merge with the Great All. No doubt still other paths exist. Be that as it may, for now, market solutions seem the best way to address problems in privacy.

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Re: Improved DH system.
by loki＠nately.UCSD.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Well, you seem to have summerised our thoughts on the matter exactly. We are thinking about sticking a bunch of memory in the phone and keeping track of the last ,say 100, phones called and the public keys that they used. One could use the readback to certify the keys. Some sort of KCA could also be invoked. We are designing the system for easy upgrade and modification. Lance

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Re: Digital cash announced today by UK bank.
by cypher01＠eternity.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In message <199312091906.TAA22687(a)an-teallach.com> gtoal(a)an-teallach.com writes: > Apparently the Natwest Bank (or some spoonerism thereof) announced > today that they were releasing digital cash in the form of some > sort of smartcard. I have no more details - does anyone else? > I saw this a few days ago in the Guardian. Big front page splash, and lots of radio coverage. The system is called "Mondex". I'm looking into it, myself, as I know about as much as you do. Midlands Bank is cooperating in the scheme, which is not surprising, as they already have shared-ATM agreements. > Primarily I'm interested in knowing if it's *anonymous* digital > cash - knowing our govt, I suspect it's unlikely to be. Any new > opportunities to track the masses are always gratefully received > by the powers that be... > Interestingly, none of the press coverage even mentioned the *issue* of privacy. I've told Tom Burroughes at the East Anglian Daily Times (tom(a)reptile.demon.co.uk) he's deputy chief reporter there, and was a speaker at ECFP '93. He's looking into it now; if you wish to speak to him, call 0473-230-023 and ask for him in the newsroom. He may be out, as he's also chief court and legal reporter, but he always calls back. I'll be calling Australia in a few minutes to see if I can raise Simon Davies, who's out there on business. Simon (davies(a)privint.demon.co.uk) is director of Privacy International, and was another ECFP speaker... the most well-connected privacy advocate I've ever met. > G > > -- Russell Earl Whitaker whitaker(a)eternity.demon.co.uk Communications Editor AMiX: RWhitaker EXTROPY: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought Board member, Extropy Institute (ExI) Co-organizer, 2nd European Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy, London, October 1994

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USENET on a tape, and future privacy
by nate＠VIS.ColoState.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I was just thinking. My roommate mentioned that he saw an ad for a service available in europe. They send you an 8mm tape evey week that has all the USENET traffic on it. I was thinking that a large corporation thinking of hiring me (or you, you just never know!) could pay some service to scrounge up all the USENET posting you have made for the last, say, 10 years, and run them through a filter to get a feel for the nature of the posts (assuming you were too prolific to have the job-hunters read _al_ of your posts). This really scared me, so I think I will start making more frequent use of the remailers in the future. Just my $0.02 (revalued to $15.00 with recent inflation) - -nate - -- +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Nate Sammons nate(a)VIS.ColoState.Edu (303) 491-1578 | | Colorado State University -- Computer Visualization Laboratory | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Please unsubscribe from mailing list
by Paul Rushizky 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Please unsubscribe me from your mailing list. Thanks.

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Re: "Cipher"
by grand-central!amix!chip 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Arthur Chandler writes: > Neil Postman, in his *Technopoly*, asserts that the word "cipher" derives >ultimately from the Hindu word for void, and therefore "suggests the idea >of nothingness." (p 128) Does anyone else have info on the origin of this >word? Is Postman correct? Postman may be right about his etymology; I don't know, though I'm sure one of the many folks out there with an OED could answer this. However, arguing from etymology is one of the most irksome of the many bogus rhetorical techniques that the academic establishment has developed as part of its standard toolkit and really wish they would cut it out. The answer to the broader question, "Is Postman correct?", is "no".

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One Time Pads $5000|Cheap
by Harry Shapiro 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The cost of write once CD-ROM drives (CD-R) drives is really going down in price. You should be able to get a complete set-up for less than $5000. I would think you could use the CD-R drive to create a bunch of one time pads. Any thought? /HAWK -- Harry S. Hawk habs(a)extropy.org Electronic Communications Officer, Extropy Institute Inc. The Extropians Mailing List, Since 1991 EXTROPY -- A measure of intelligence, information, energy, vitality, experience, diversity, opportunity, and growth. EXTROPIANISM -- The philosophy that seeks to increase extropy.

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Re: One Time Pads $5000|Cheap
by freeman＠MasPar.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Since it is quite easy to make an electronic widget that creates random noise by amplifying up shot noise and counting detections across a threshold (varying the amplifier gain to adjust the rate), I suspect you are right. -- Jay Freeman

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Re: USENET on a tape, and future privacy
by jerry＠terminus.dell.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In article <2ee0sd$o5s(a)uudell.us.dell.com> you write: > >From owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com Sun Dec 12 02:49:42 1993 >Return-Path: <nate(a)vangogh.VIS.ColoState.EDU> >From: nate(a)VIS.ColoState.EDU (CVL staff member Nate Sammons) >Message-Id: <9312120152.AA25408(a)vangogh.VIS.ColoState.EDU> >I was just thinking. My roommate mentioned that he saw an ad for >a service available in europe. They send you an 8mm tape evey week >the last, say, 10 years, and run them through a filter to get a feel for Hm.. 1 tape a week at 52week/year, gives 520 8mm tapes, assuming they can process one tape every 30minutes, thats nearly 11 days. Proably will take about 1 to 2 hours a tape, just to read through the stuff. You are talking about thousands of dollars of cost to do such a search. Then someone has to weed out all of the other "Doe, John" messages that were not you. Considering most business don't bother to verify references, and those that do still usually only check employment history. Once again your are offered a limited protection by the volume of information. Usenet traffic being rated at some 21gigabytes a year (traffic through UUnet) considering the low information value of the vast majority of it, no one will be interested in storing it. In usenet no one can hear you scream... -- Jeremy Porter ------------- Systems Engineering -------- Dell Computer Corp. ------ jerry(a)terminus.us.dell.com ---- --- 70 4F BD AE 6D E9 D2 66 48 18 8B E7 64 7F 59 8F --- Support your Second Amendment rights to encryption technology.

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Re: LPC for speech (fwd)
by Timothy Newsham 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > >I'm not sure if a 486 can do the analysis in realtime. I'm sure ^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^ > >the 486 could do the analysis in real time. I have C code for ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > >LPC that will do synthesis to a file in realtime on a 486 machine. > >(The code is mostly generic C and will compile on most machines) > I'm not sure what you mean, it could or couldn't be done on a 486? > I think that you meant that the compression could not be done in > realtime but the expansion could? Or vice versa? Good one eh? Sorry for the confusion. I'm sure the 486 can do *synthesis* in real time. I'm not sure it can do *analysis* in real time. > Jeremy Porter ------------- Systems Engineering -------- > Dell Computer Corp. ------ jerry(a)terminus.us.dell.com ----

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