December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: REMAIL: down (sortof) remailers
by nobody＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> (I figure they were just renamed and locked because the grad > student who admins rosebud probably can't figure out how to remove > an account being a VMS guy ;) Or he found the remailers and is handing over full logs to the FBI on a regular basis.

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Key escrow for all encryption?
by jimn8＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Fellow Cypherpunks, Please gently correct my misinterpretation of the White House press release. I read it to state that commercial encryption must embody key escrow, even if it's not Clipper. Does this mean we must turn over our one-time pads and our PGP private keys to a government agency? I don't like this. Not one bit. Perhaps the CPSR request for votes should have read, "I oppose key escrow," not just "I oppose Clipper." - Jim Nitchals

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Re: Blacknet worries
by dwomack＠runner.utsa.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

With all due respect....the U.S Government has PLENTY of tools to go after those deemed to be violators of various rules and regs...with or without Blacknet, with or without encryption. For the purposes of discussion, let's assume perfect, unbreakable encryption, all undistinguishable (even in principle) from noise. Yes, I admit, that is a big assumption. What other tools can be used, well... 1. Imputed income. If you live well, and don't show enough reportable income, the IRS can determine how much you are _Really_ making, and figure your tax thereon. You disagree? Prove it in tax court. By the way, the burden of proof is on ...YOU. 2. Criminal conspiracy. Elements are a. two or more people b. a prepatory act So...if we were talking about any number of possible illicit activities, conspiracy is a really viable charge. Even if nobody ever commits the act. Think about this one next time you talk with anyone you don't know really well about anything much more controversial than the *_Lovely_* weather we've been having! 3. CCE (Continuing Criminal Enterprise). Did you know that the statute of limitations is suspended under this law? And, testimony from third party *_unidentified_* informants is admissable? 4. IRS-1040, Schedule B, Part III, Foreign Accounts and Trusts. Except for one relatively minor loophole, if you fail to report a foreign bank account, it is considered prima facie evidence of tax fraud. Sound like a really bad day in the making? 5. If you have more than $10,000 in US Dollar value in an offshore account, you are required to fill out a special form for the IRS giving your account numbers; unless you want to declare that you have more than 20 such accounts, aggregating to more than $10,000. 6. RICO. They got Mike Miliken using this...indeed, Barron's magazine did an interesting report on RICO, with the conclusion that a determined Federal Prosecutor could use the law to convict a ham sandwich. 7. Did you know that Federal prosecutors have a better than 90% conviction rate? 8. HOW does one spend "magic money"? If you have bunches of cash offshore, and bring it in, records are created. If you buy something, potential witnesses are created. Can you really expect that the clerk in wire transfer at XYZ bank (who makes $6.50/hr) won't tip off someone when you wire in the $20,000 to buy ...whatever? 9.. Spies, criminals, and others often get in trouble due to their own and others' lack of discretion. Can we really expect users of a hypothetical blacknet would never drink too much, never wish to impress someone, never trust someone unwisely? NO, I'm not an attorney...by all means, check out what I've said; and, wherever you find errors, please correct them. Hopefully, I've not given offense. I enjoy encryption, and I'm all for more of it; but, I really don't think it will be anything more than a minor inconvenince for law enforcement and prosecutors if people engage in wholesale criminal acts. The rather silly efforts in Waco, where those inside used assault rifles to shoot at battle tanks; comes to mind as analogous to use of encryption to stave off prosecution. Now...your turn. Let the Flames begin! Regards, Dave

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New Remailer up!
by Matthew J Ghio 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At last, my long-promised pseudo-account remailer is open for testing. Here's how it works. Send mail to mg5n+getid(a)andrew.cmu.edu you will receive back an encrypted email address of the form: mg5n+eaxxxxx(a)andrew.cmu.edu (ea=encrypted address, in case you were wondering) All mail sent to that address will be forwarded to you. When you post anonymously, you can include that address for people to make replies to. That way, people can send replies to your messages but not know who you really are. Most of the cypherpunk remailers allow you to insert a Reply-To: header. Random padding is added to the address before it is encrypted. Therefore, every time you request an encrypted address, it will be different. This allows you to get a different email address for each of your cypher-tenacles. :) Messages sent thru the remailer are not anonymized. The complete, unaltered message is forwarded. If you want anonymnity, first send your mail thru one of the anonymous remailers. Source code is availaible. Email me if you want it. P.S. Expect a moderate delay for messages sent thru this remailer.

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ADMIN: cypherpunks went down
by hughes 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This message counts as a test message. Please DO NOT respond to it. Hugh and I took the list down last night. This is the same list spewing problem that we had last week, only this time it's worse, because toad.com just got a CPU upgrade; it's four times faster now. Sorry. Please, Please, PLEASE in the future if this happens, DO NOT send more mail to the list; it only makes the problem worse. These messages were started to spew as well. Send urgent mail about list problems to me, hughes(a)ah.com, or postmaster(a)toad.com. Many thanks to Hugh Daniel for squashing sendmail processes like cockroaches. (He was laughing maniacally for a bit, there, "DIE!, DIE!") We managed to catch the problem before it went on for too long. I took everyone off the list after backing it up and left only me and Hugh on it, so most of the problem didn't go to the list. What happened was that the sendmails started spawning faster and faster. I got a megabyte and a half of repeated mail before we squished everything. Eric

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Re: New Remailer up!
by stevenJ 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Elric of Melnibone muttered something about... :: ::Ok, is it Just me. or did Mr. Ghio send 10 copies of that letter saying ::his new remailer is up? No, it was more like 50 copies of the item. How kind of him to do this for those of us who have poor memories. e x t r a p o l a t e steve j. white _____________________________________________________________________________ Gort, klatu barada nicto. aragorn(a)alpha1.csd.uwm.edu

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ADMIN: another test message
by hughes＠ah.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is another test message. Please don't respond to it either. Eric

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ADMIN: majordomo is running on toad.com
by hughes＠ah.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The two preceding test messages were brought to courtesy of majordomo(a)toad.com, to which all list requests should now be directed. Sending a blank message there will get you a help file. Sending mail to cypherpunks-request will get you a different help file. We enabled the unsubscribe filter that majordomo has, so that problem may go away. I've got some list traffic from the last day salted away, but I'm pretty sure I didn't manage to snag all of it. I'll get as much as I can out this evening, but I'm going to discard all the commentary about "how many messages". I hope this all helps. We didn't put up the extropians list software because we didn't have it and because we needed something quickly. There is a 'who' command available on majordomo, so it's even easier to get a list of subscribers now than it used to be. If you don't like this, get off the list or get a pseudonym. Removing the feature requires majordomo hacking, which is not high on my priority list. Many thanks to Hugh Daniel for doing most of the installation. Eric

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Banning of scientific information (re:FDA,etc.)
by ccat＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I don't know if they are still doing it,but last year there was a discussion on sci.med about the FDA's pressure on certain medical journal publishers not to publish certain peer-reviewed medical studies here in the US. And,as far as I can see,their policy of supressing information is effectively suppressing an effective nutritional therapy that helps people quit crack..(L-Tyrosine) Why?,Who knows. But it's telling that they always seem to support the large corporate approach to global pharmaceutical marketing.. Shades of the Opium Wars. Remember,its ten years after 1984.

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Remailer Update
by Matthew J Ghio 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Eric Hughes wrote: > We managed to catch the problem before it went on for too long. > I took everyone off the list after backing it up and left only me > and Hugh on it, so most of the problem didn't go to the list. > What happened was that the sendmails started spawning faster > and faster. I got a megabyte and a half of repeated mail before > we squished everything. I'm glad you caught the problem. I'd hate to see what would have happened if it had gone on for too long. :) My remailer was off-line from midnite to about 18:00 hours (eastern time) today. I took it off-line so I could handle the toad.com mail bomb. I have restored the remailer and FAQ server to normal operation. About 15 messages piled up in the queue during this time, and I sent them out about an hour ago. Let me know if there were any problems. Also, let me know your opinions on overall functionability of the remailer, and any bugs/problems. To everyone who requested the source code, sorry I haven't gotten to it yet. I will... P.S. The remailer info I maintain at mg5n+remailers(a)andrew.cmu.edu has gotten quite popular. When I first set it up, I got at most 2-3 requests a day. The last couple of days I have been getting 10 to 15 remailer-info requests a day. I wonder where they're coming from...I guess some non-cypherpunks groups have gotten on the anonymnity bandwagon. Wow... there goes another one. (I have it display a message on my screen whenever a request goes thru.)

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