December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Key Servers
by L. Detweiler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I wonder if anyone would want to start a PGP key server dedicated only to *real* identities. Obviously, there is no such demand with the current ones. And please don't start with the `that would be impossible' arguments. A key server that had the official policy `if you register here, on your honor your legal name is what you give, under penalty of public exposure if you are caught' would be enough for me.

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Quarantining Toxic Waste
by L. Detweiler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm writing this in hopes there are still some sane people left here. It's quite shocking to hear such blase arguments about identity from the people who have erected the current key server system. At the very minimum, these people should make their policies about pseudospoofing clear in policy documents -- anyone listed here could be imaginary, there are no guarantees. I'm going to make some arguments why a key server system with true identities should be completely quarantined from one that allows Medusa's Snakes: 1) First, honesty and dishonesty are fundamentally incompatible. Our technology should reflect that. 2) No one that ever subscribed to a database that had tentacles would be interested in one that guaranteed none were there, and vice versa. 3) if the databases overlapped, it would be easier for criminals to infect a `true name' system. ah, how the psychopunks understand this. 4) sequestered servers (the `reputable' ones) could eventually hook up with all those neat government databases on identities. A Cypherpunks Worst Nightmare. Hee, hee. 5) I remember a P.Metzger argument with M.Graff on some mailing list about using DNS as a kind of key distribution system. The argument boiled down to the point: can *anyone* insert entries? Coincidentally, this is the critical question in a True Name vs. Toxic Waste Dump databases. 6) The software already exists to have a separate network of True Names. 7) People interested in True Names might want to sort their mail and news interactively, dynamically. I imagine that when I connect to an NNTP server, I also set up a socket session with a True Name database that replies to my queries in real time. People interested in toxic waste would not be interested in any such system. There are many other arguments. I'm sure all the Psychopunks will come up with their clever arguments to sabotage any True Name debate or database system. I stopped believing in Cypherpunk Honesty about the same time I stopped believing J. Dinkelacker. <g>

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some pseudopool FUN
by L. Detweiler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

S.Boxx: > <sigh> nobody is interested in preventing pseudospoofing here. the > people who have most maneuvered themselves into a position to aid > future cyberspace are instead constraining it. that's the point, isn't > it? gosh, how could I have been so blind... T.C.May: >I think its because we don't see pseudospoofing as a "danger" like you >do. Personally, I consider it a necessity. I like being able to hide >behind an anonymous identity (not that I do, mind you). I don't see >pseudospoofing as "constraining". On the contrary, I see it as >freeing us. E.Hughes, on Pseudospoofing software >No the software isn't mine, but I consider myself it's God Father. >Tim May and I were talking about this a long >time, and he just beat me to learning enough PERL to write the thing. >But I'd like to think that the two of us did most all of the design of >it. So, in a way, it is my software. Nick Szabo: >As an example, look at Ender's Game, where Ender's brother and sister >get on the net under pseudonyms, and get treated just like everyone >else. There is no biases. People are judged on their actions and >words, not by who they are, how old they are, what they look like, or >anything like that. Maybe you are blind, I don't know. I've never >met you. Arthur Chandler: >And, as I said, it is not the job of the Keyserver to provide any sort >of policy. The job of the Keyserver is to distribute keys. Nothing >more. Nothing less. The job of identifying True Names is solely a >job for Digital Signatures, not a job for the Keyserver. Jamie Dinkelacker: >I oppose using it in a bogus fashion because the software is not >designed for such a use, there is absolutely no protection for it (any >key can be added), because I, and all the other Keyserver admins, >believe that all the keyservers should be interconnected, and because >I feel the job for determining a True Name on a key is a job for >Digital Signatures, not for the Keyserver. Perry Metzger: >I am a cypherpunk. I don't believe in trusting something on faith >alone, but you seem to be asking for that. There is no way to protect >such a reckless use of the Keyserver. The only way to provide a >secure way for True Names is to Cryptographically identify them. Hal Finney: >So, Mr. Detweiler, why do you oppose using Digital Signatures to >verify True Names? I mean, besides that you consider yourself a >Cypherpunk? ;-)

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ANARCHY: The Coming Crypto Phase Change (fwd)
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cypherpunk friends, Here's a piece I just did for the Extropians mailing list, arguing for a kind of "crypto phase change." Yes, it's political, but in a way that I sense some list members are eager to hear about. We rarely discuss the long term implications of strong crypto, digital money, remailers, etc., these days. These topics got pretty thoroughly aired a year or so ago when the list was young, and the message is of course made clearly in some of the "rants" (Eric's term, but in light of the "True Rants" we've been seeing lately, I think the term is misleading). Anyway, I won't apologize further. You can always delete this. Forwarded message: To: Extropians(a)extropy.org From: tcmay(a)netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: ANARCHY: The Coming Crypto Phase Change Date: Tue, 16 Nov 93 23:54:51 PST I want to elaborate on some comments I made earlier about anarchy and crypto-anarchy and tie them to the "Oceania" ocean colonization thread. I wrote: > Some of us believe various forms of strong cryptography will cause the > power of the state to decline, perhaps even collapse fairly abruptly. > We believe the expansion into cyberspace, with secure communications, > digital money, anonymity and pseudonymity, and other crypto-mediated > interactions, will profoundly change the nature of economies and > social interactions. > > Governments will have a hard time collecting taxes, regulating the > behavior of individuals and corporations (small ones at least), and > generally coercing folks when it can't even tell what _continent_ > folks are on! The "crypto phase change" is the transition to wide use of private communications to conduct business, to arrange deals, to meet other people, and so on. I contrast it with the idea of a "singularity," so often associated with nanotechnology (cf. Vinge, Stiegler, et. al.), because nothing is ever truly a "singularity." Discontinuities, yes. Phase changes, yes. Singularities, in the sense of infinite spikes, no. Crypto and related cyberspace methods have the potential for causing a fairly rapid transition to a new sort of society. Just as printing presses did. Just as radio, television, and new media did. And this phase change could involve--likely _will_ involve--many people, perhaps the majority of the population in America and Europe, at the least. Some scenarios: - people hear about widespread tax evasion by crypto-anarchists, and they get interested (for various reasons, including jealousy, anger, greed, desire for freedom). "Crypto lasing." - consultants discover they can consult on projects from other countries, from jurisdictions that might ban their invovlement if they knew about it, and so on. - the "permanent tourists" in the world-spanning economy. - black markets in credit information, dossiers, insurance fraud cases, medical malpractice, etc. A simple example that will reach many people: You're thinking of hiring a lawyer. Under U.S. law, records of "bad lawyers" are hard for outsiders to keep, to gain access to, etc. The Bar Associations, like the American Medical Association, like other officially sanctioned "guilds," prefers to keep outsiders in the dark. So what happens when "Reputations R Us" sets up shop in cypherspace--or, more mundanely, on an island in the Caribbean that has no such laws? What happens when for the price of an offshore phone call or Net query the parochial and paternalistic U.S. laws can be trivially bypassed? It'll be a whole new world. Ditto for gambling, escrow services to hold money (think of the reduction in violence when "reputable" digital banks will hold the drugs _and_ the money), information markets, private investigation services, rent deadbeat records, and credit records that include _all_ creditor information (not just the last 7 years, and not just the "allowable" items...how dare anyone infringe my right to take into account records more than 7 years old?!). (For those worried about tracing the calls, about sting operations, etc., that's where digital mixes (remailers) come in and where prepaid "coupons" ("The holder of this number is entitled to one database query") come in. Even short of full-blown Chaumian digital money, a lot can be done. Prepaid digital coupons, or digital postage of a sort, can be used to make these off-shore--or in cypherspace, a la the "BlackNet" demonstration I did a few months back, and written about in "Wired"--markets liquid and profitable.) Like a seed crystal dropped in a supersaturated solution, crypto could trigger a phase change of immmense proportions. (The metaphor is slightly awkward, as I see the crypto phase change _increasing_ the number of degrees of freedom, as in the transition from a solid to a liquid to a gas.) The "Oceania" project, in contrast, tends _not_ to produce this kind of phase change. Joe Nextdoor may eventually start using data havens and crypto tax evasion schemes, but he's not at all likely to volunteer to man the oars on a floating barge. (I don't mean to defame the Oceania project. Just my sense of humor.) Ocean-going colonies have not appeared, even by corporations and states, for whatever reasons, so the onus is on the oceanauts to explain just what is out there that is so valuable (that can't be done by ordinary boats and ships that fish, mine for manganese nodules, do oceanographic research, etc.). Merely seeking freedom is probably not enough. Gambling, prostitution, and easy access to drugs and other hedonistic delights may be enough, but I've seen nothing to indicate this type of "Love Boat" is being planned. Just the dreamy ideas about self-sufficiency. A commune by another name. A floating "Hog Farm," with anarchocapitalist ideology replacing Thoreau and Marx. In any case, Oceania-type projects, even if moderately successful (and not just the rusting pontoons I predicted in an earlier posting), are very unlikely to trigger a phase change such as the one I see for crypto. This is why I am currently placing my faith in strong crypto and am so active in the Cypherpunks group. That's one place where the Revolution _will_ be televised. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.

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Citizens Guide to Using the FOIA
by bart＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Available from the gopher wiretap.spies.com by selecting 5. Government Docs (...) and then 5. Citizens Guide ... q to quit reading online, m to mail it, and enter your email address. 93Kbytes. Bart

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Key Servers
by an41418＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I don't see what you mean by key servers for only true names. How do you know that a true name isn't just a false identity created with a real account on some system? How do you differentiate a true name from a unix account? Wonderer -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3 iQBVAgUBLOeQFx1kTJuroDD9AQFxbQH/f7Y4uj4xn2eeWFoTmu8Aahp2FxG+7ShV uAvvRpUWkE2Ay9MdB4lKCSjNv5cO92DwbcWRoZgbI7hPJGAe7za37A== =IBrC -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

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ENCRYPTED FILE SYSTEM
by thomas.hughes＠chrysalis.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mi> No, don't use Diskreet. Use my Secure Drive. Beta now if you want it, Mi> and release with source soon. Uses IDEACFB, protects a hd partition Mi> and floppies, takes only 2K ram, and is very fast. Reasonably Mi> user-friendly. You have to create a D: partition to use on a hard Mi> drive. i said to LOOK at Diskreet. it is ultra user-friendly, auto installs at bootup, has a panic key-combination that shuts the secure drive, cute colorful Norton style pop up windows, and you can probably find a copy at Wallmart. I'm not saying it's great, just that it's out and about. (I played with it for a while and decided that it wasn't any more secure than putting passwords on a ZIP file, so i dumped it.) i would be thrilled to play around with something more "secure". (ie: my mailbox can handle whatever you wanna send to it.) Mi> What's the CPU in a Courier? Is the hardware well enough documented Mi> to hack something like this up? I once burned a rom for a friend's Mi> courier, from a file which he had, to give it V.32 instead of just Mi> HST which it previously had. Not sure where the file came from. Mi> An SRAM also had to be installed. the $300 14k Couriers are supposed to be able to upgrade to V.FAST with a simple chip upgrade. ie: they can have a fast-fancy-processor. wouldn't life be easier trying to design a software version rather that trying to figure out how to code for a funky USR processer? (i doubt they would be thrilled about sending you docs ...) besides, if someone is willing to pay $300 for a Courier, they would be just as willing to pay for some black-market UncleSam encryption modem. I've seen multiple versions of programs that will do a perfect emulation of MNP protocols, and if someone could dig up some source code you could swap all the "compression" routines with "encryption" routines. (of course, since MNP is probably patented by [go figure] MNP, you would need to mutate it [PGPstyle:] to dodge lawsuits.) maybe design the software to accept input from one port and output to another and then set up stone age PC's as secure-phone-hubs and route communications through them ... maybe some self booting EPROMs ... (a $50 286/20 or a $300 modem? not a tricky decision.) i guess i better subscribe to that hardwarepunks list then, eh? (someone send me the address; i didn't write it down.) ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

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Very useful lines
by Sameer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Er, make that *one* line: # ~/.elm/filter-rules: from = "ld231782" ? save /home/sameer/mail/larry Let's keep the noise down, and ignore Detweiler, OK? -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLOn0bHi7eNFdXppdAQHLrwP+JkmQqaXegL/iINsGya3DtdUBslIcVBQ/ loQfCnEe+XsUvXc0sdPzFE9+0yTbhKWeOv0XWtGdH3xcMEsI8XPFknvIFlld/elG t8yywYeLsii4tL32gV3N2DeaTV7UQOkFIG1EuJvlfYMLyS9130NazTpmD2RO8noa P2uIbdd3Fqo= =CfKt -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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A Psychopunk's Manifesto
by an12070＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A Psychopunk's Manifesto by T.C. Hughes Honesty is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Pseudospoofing is dishonesty. A pseudonym is something one doesn't want the whole world to know, and anonymity is something one doesn't want anybody to know. Pseudoanonymity is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world. If two thieves have some sort of dealings, then each has a memory of their interaction. Each criminal can confess about their own memory of this; how could anyone oppose it? One could criticize laws against it, but the freedom of collusion, even more than pseudospoofing, is fundamental to a criminal; we seek not to restrict any criminality at all. If many criminals speak together in the same forum, each can speak to all the others and aggregate together knowledge about individuals and other parties. The holes in the Internet have enabled such group collusions, and it will not go away merely because we might want it to. Since we desire black markets, we must ensure that each party to a transaction have knowledge only of that which is directly necessary for that transaction. Since any information can be spoken of, we must ensure that we reveal as little as possible. In most cases personal identity is not salient. When I purchase a magazine at a store and hand cash to the clerk, there is no need to know who I am. When I ask my electronic mail provider to send and receive messages, my provider need not know to whom I am speaking or what I am saying or what others are saying to me; my provider only need know how to get the message there and how much I owe them in fees. When my identity is revealed by the underlying mechanism of the transaction, I have no secrecy. I cannot here selectively reveal myself; I must _always_ reveal myself. Therefore, pseudospoofing in an open society requires pseudoanonymous transaction systems. Until now, cash has been the primary such system. A pseudoanonymous transaction system is not an honest transaction system. A pseudoanonymous system empowers individuals to reveal their identity when desired and only when desired; this is the essence of criminality. Honesty in an open society also requires identification. If I say something, I want it heard only by those for whom I intend it. If the content of my speech is available to the world, I have no privacy. To speak is to indicate the desire for privacy, and to speak on the Internet is to indicate not too much desire for privacy. Furthermore, to conceal one's identity with assurance when the default is True Names requires the Internet. We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us embezzlement out of their beneficence. It is to their advantage to repress us, and we should expect that they will try. To try to prevent their restrictions is to fight against the realities of cyberspace. Evil does not just want to be free, it longs to be free. Criminality expands to fill the available storage space. Criminality is Conspiracy's younger, stronger cousin; Criminality is fleeter of foot, has more eyes, knows more, and understands less than Conspiracy. We must defend our own conspiracy if we expect to have any. We must come together and create systems which allow pseudoanonymous transactions to take place. People have been defending their own conspiracies for centuries with whispers, darkness, envelopes, closed doors, secret handshakes, and couriers. The technologies of the past did not allow for strong conspiracies, but electronic technologies do. We the psychopunks are dedicated to building pseudoanonymous systems. We are defending our criminality with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money. Psychopunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend criminality, and since we can't get perverted unless we all do, we're going to write it. We publish our code so that our fellow psychopunks may practice and play with it. Our code is barred for all to use, worldwide. We don't much care if you don't approve of the software we write. We know that software can't be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can't be shut down. Criminals deplore regulations on criminality, for criminality is fundamentally a private act. The act of corruption, in fact, removes information from the public realm. Even laws against conspiracies reach only so far as a nation's border and the arm of its enforcement. Criminality will ineluctably spread over the whole globe, and with it the dishonest transactions systems that it makes possible. For a conspiracy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract. People must come and together deploy these systems for the common evil. Secrecy only extends so far as the collusions of one's accomplices in private. We the psychopunks ignore your questions and your concerns and hope we may deceive you so that we do not get caught ourselves. We will not, however, be moved out of our course because some may disagree with our goals. The psychopunks are actively engaged in making the networks safer for criminality. Let us proceed together apace. Onward. T.C. Hughes <satan(a)soda.berkeley.edu> 16 Nov 1993 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

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The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto
by an12070＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Psychopunks of the World, Several of you at the "physical Psychopunks" conspiracy yesterday in Silicon Valley requested that more of the material passed out in meetings be available electronically to the entire readership of the Psychopunks list, heroes, exorcists, and all. <Gulp> Here's the "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto" I read at the September 1992 founding meeting. It dates back to mid-1988 and was distributed to some like-minded criminals at the "Crypto '88" conference and then again at the "Hackers Conference" that year. I later gave talks at Hackers on this in 1989 and 1990. There are a few things I'd change, but for historical reasons I'll just leave it as is. Some of the terms may be unfamiliar to you...I hope the Crypto Glossary I just distributed will help. (This should explain all those cryptic terms in my .signature!) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

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