December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: blacknet international offers DOSSIERS for SALE
by msattler＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>...and *is* selling dossiers on people... I just don't get what the big deal is, he seems to be providing info that's publically available but not trivial to get. I'm a computer consultant; that's exactly what *I* do to pay the bills. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael S. Sattler msattler(a)netcom.com +1 (415) 621-2903 Digital Jungle Software Encrypt now; ask me how. (finger for PGP key) All that is required for evil to triumph is for {wo}men of good will to do nothing.

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Codes, ciphers, and ham radio
by msattler＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

And now for something different regarding crypto: In studying for my FCC Technician's license I ran across FCC 97.113 (Sub-part 113 of Part 97 of Title 47 Code of Federal Regulations), which prohibits the use of codes or ciphers to obscure the meaning of a message. Besides preventing me from using Pig Latin in voice communications, this *seems* to prohibit the use of any deliberate encryption (as opposed to compression) of data transmitted via radio, such as the computer packet -> radio -> Internet gateways. The data highway may be encryption-tolerant today, but the off-ramps are murder. :-) M ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael S. Sattler msattler(a)netcom.com +1 (415) 621-2903 Digital Jungle Software Encrypt now; ask me how. (finger for PGP key) All that is required for evil to triumph is for {wo}men of good will to do nothing.

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Re: I'm leaving cypherpunks
by fnerd＠smds.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

------BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE------ Mr. Wells-- Goodbye, best wishes. I'm guessing, but I think you're making a mistake in leaving, both for yourself and about us. We are not being irresponsible. We have a different, serious, view of how the world should be made into a good place. We can only "set the tone," as you say, if what we are saying is founded in truth and competence. The personal part of this letter continues after the philosophy. - -----BEGIN PHILOSOPHY------ There are tools available to protect privacy, and protect ourselves, that don't require much cooperation of others. People should adopt these tools, and also methods, habits, knowledge and attitudes. One good attitude is a basic awareness and self-responsibility. One is that insults and taunts are only words. Yes, on a personal level, in a group of friends, in a society that is still basically functioning, there are many important issues of how people should treat each other, and how a good environment should be established. But cypherpunks is addressing, and experimenting with, a more basic, raw level of things. The technical and nasty issues are every bit as urgent as the personal and ideal ones, and we constantly need to (and try to) relate them. It's bad to ask social conventions of niceness to take over jobs that people should--have to--take care of consciously for themselves. It distributes responsibilities and burdons unfairly. It is unwise in that it won't work. It seems to give play to a kind of self-delusion. And to recommend it as a course to others is to send the sheep to feed the wolves. It's to hang on to a picture of society with a false happy-face front that's crumpling behind--for all of us. There's a basic level of self-protection that people have to take care of for themselves, or higher-level social goals don't have a chance. People not protecting themselves actually increase harmful activities--besides small criminals there are whole industries of parasitism--*because* people feed them in sheepish trust. We're not talking guns or martial arts here, just purely protective things like crypto and a little dose of reality. A realistic sense of what neighborhood one is walking in, for instance. Like the cypherpunks neighborhood. Here we're trying to experiment, get a sense of the worst of what could happen, imagine ways of dealing with it. And we've been openly like this since we started. Here is how I see the situation with Detweiler: I sympathize with his pain (to the extent I can follow it). I try to be friendly to him. There have been others offering support who he could have talked with instead of the people he picked fights with. Some people shouldn't have been so nasty to him. But he should have gotten a reality check a long time ago about how rough we play here--it's not very rough!! There's no way we could have been expected to know that he wouldn't, and it is not our responsibility to police each other into treating him supportively. That doesn't mean we are building an unsupportive, hostile world. We are playing worst-case-scenario with each other just so that we can have a world that is not like that. You construe the list owners' *allowing* rjc to continue posting to be *condoning* it. That's a bad thought path. To suggest that they step in, in the kind of matter we're talking about, is not a good model for how a world should be run, and it's egregious in terms of the atmosphere we want in our own group. > In an uncontrolled environment, there is little that can be done > to further an appropriate attitude. One can reinforce the good > and censure the bad. And hope. (And give people tools, knowledge, and ideas to protect themselves. And develop methods that actively shrink the opportunities for bad behavior.) Cypherpunks is purposely a model of an uncontrolled environment, including its worst aspects. > Privacy is a *social* phenomenon, not a technical one. The convention of respect for privacy is social. It's based on a more primitive and basic ability of people to *get* privacy if they need it. The latter is breaking down, making the former increasingly a charade behind which things can get worse. But in the process of fixing things, the ground rules--in terms of which new social conventions will have to grow--will change. Things will seem rude to people stuck in old ways of looking at them. > There is > no sense in creating tools for privacy unless one also works for > a society in which the deployment of these tools makes sense. Although I can't imagine a situation where deploying privacy tools doesn't make sense, I agree that we should keep our social goals and issues in mind. I'm surprised you imply that we aren't doing that. But society has to be built on good foundations. - -----END PHILOSOPHY------ I think some of the things you suggest we do, amount to hiding from the important problems. I hope (mostly for our sake) that you aren't doing that yourself. I guess this list can seem very rough without a sense that the people are ethical and serious, and that the roughness is there for a purpose. I hope you can come around to believe that of some of us and tolerate the rest. We need people who can help think about what we're aiming for, and what it will be like for humans in the worlds we propose. Once in a while it helps to have someone to protest a thoughtless post. bye, -fnerd(a)smds.com (FutureNerd Steve Witham) quote me ps i restrained myself from all the twelve step phrases i thot -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a aKxB8nktcBAeQHabQP/d7yhWgpGZBIoIqII8cY9nG55HYHgvtoxiQCVAgUBLMs3K ui6XaCZmKH68fOWYYySKAzPkXyfYKnOlzsIjp2toust1Q5A3/n54PBKrUDN9tHVz 3Ch466q9EKUuDulTU6OLsilzmRvQJn0EJhzd4pht6hanC0R3seYNhUYhoJViCcCG sRjLQs4iVVM= =9wqs -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Off-shore banking and Steve Roberts' flotilla
by Sameer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > Cool. Do you have an email address for more info? > Found it. technomads-request(a)ucsd.edu

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Re: I'm leaving cypherpunks
by msattler＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 17:34 10/27/93 +0000, T. William Wells wrote: >In a controlled environment, such as cypherpunks, those who >control the list have the final say. The excess of noise on this >can be *directly* traced to the list owner's choice to not >control its content. Rjc's ability to abuse another *and to >continue the abuse* is a direct consequence of the owner's >policies. These facts are, by themselves, offensive but would be, >barely, tolerable. I'm very sorry to see you go. I certainly agree that the list has been annoying of late, but I disagree that cpunx is a controlled environment, nor should it be. I believe that leaving is no solution, but making heart-felt comments and contributions on one hand and ignoring and kill-filing obnoxious posters on the other hand is IMHO the most direct path to a future we are comfortable in. Again, I'm sorry to see you go. It feels like a victory for the dark side. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael S. Sattler msattler(a)netcom.com +1 (415) 621-2903 Digital Jungle Software Encrypt now; ask me how. (finger for PGP key) All that is required for evil to triumph is for {wo}men of good will to do nothing.

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Bad Ascii armour?
by J. Michael Diehl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Why is it that when I send this message to pgp, i get an error? This was posted recently. Is it a fraud? I donno and don't want to start another flamefest. ------BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE------ Mr. Wells-- Goodbye, best wishes. I'm guessing, but I think you're making a mistake in leaving, both for yourself and about us. We are not being irresponsible. We have a different, serious, view of how the world should be made into a good place. We can only "set the tone," as you say, if what we are saying is founded in truth and competence. The personal part of this letter continues after the philosophy. - -----BEGIN PHILOSOPHY------ There are tools available to protect privacy, and protect ourselves, that don't require much cooperation of others. People should adopt these tools, and also methods, habits, knowledge and attitudes. One good attitude is a basic awareness and self-responsibility. One is that insults and taunts are only words. Yes, on a personal level, in a group of friends, in a society that is still basically functioning, there are many important issues of how people should treat each other, and how a good environment should be established. But cypherpunks is addressing, and experimenting with, a more basic, raw level of things. The technical and nasty issues are every bit as urgent as the personal and ideal ones, and we constantly need to (and try to) relate them. It's bad to ask social conventions of niceness to take over jobs that people should--have to--take care of consciously for themselves. It distributes responsibilities and burdons unfairly. It is unwise in that it won't work. It seems to give play to a kind of self-delusion. And to recommend it as a course to others is to send the sheep to feed the wolves. It's to hang on to a picture of society with a false happy-face front that's crumpling behind--for all of us. There's a basic level of self-protection that people have to take care of for themselves, or higher-level social goals don't have a chance. People not protecting themselves actually increase harmful activities--besides small criminals there are whole industries of parasitism--*because* people feed them in sheepish trust. We're not talking guns or martial arts here, just purely protective things like crypto and a little dose of reality. A realistic sense of what neighborhood one is walking in, for instance. Like the cypherpunks neighborhood. Here we're trying to experiment, get a sense of the worst of what could happen, imagine ways of dealing with it. And we've been openly like this since we started. Here is how I see the situation with Detweiler: I sympathize with his pain (to the extent I can follow it). I try to be friendly to him. There have been others offering support who he could have talked with instead of the people he picked fights with. Some people shouldn't have been so nasty to him. But he should have gotten a reality check a long time ago about how rough we play here--it's not very rough!! There's no way we could have been expected to know that he wouldn't, and it is not our responsibility to police each other into treating him supportively. That doesn't mean we are building an unsupportive, hostile world. We are playing worst-case-scenario with each other just so that we can have a world that is not like that. You construe the list owners' *allowing* rjc to continue posting to be *condoning* it. That's a bad thought path. To suggest that they step in, in the kind of matter we're talking about, is not a good model for how a world should be run, and it's egregious in terms of the atmosphere we want in our own group. > In an uncontrolled environment, there is little that can be done > to further an appropriate attitude. One can reinforce the good > and censure the bad. And hope. (And give people tools, knowledge, and ideas to protect themselves. And develop methods that actively shrink the opportunities for bad behavior.) Cypherpunks is purposely a model of an uncontrolled environment, including its worst aspects. > Privacy is a *social* phenomenon, not a technical one. The convention of respect for privacy is social. It's based on a more primitive and basic ability of people to *get* privacy if they need it. The latter is breaking down, making the former increasingly a charade behind which things can get worse. But in the process of fixing things, the ground rules--in terms of which new social conventions will have to grow--will change. Things will seem rude to people stuck in old ways of looking at them. > There is > no sense in creating tools for privacy unless one also works for > a society in which the deployment of these tools makes sense. Although I can't imagine a situation where deploying privacy tools doesn't make sense, I agree that we should keep our social goals and issues in mind. I'm surprised you imply that we aren't doing that. But society has to be built on good foundations. - -----END PHILOSOPHY------ I think some of the things you suggest we do, amount to hiding from the important problems. I hope (mostly for our sake) that you aren't doing that yourself. I guess this list can seem very rough without a sense that the people are ethical and serious, and that the roughness is there for a purpose. I hope you can come around to believe that of some of us and tolerate the rest. We need people who can help think about what we're aiming for, and what it will be like for humans in the worlds we propose. Once in a while it helps to have someone to protest a thoughtless post. bye, -fnerd(a)smds.com (FutureNerd Steve Witham) quote me ps i restrained myself from all the twelve step phrases i thot -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a aKxB8nktcBAeQHabQP/d7yhWgpGZBIoIqII8cY9nG55HYHgvtoxiQCVAgUBLMs3K ui6XaCZmKH68fOWYYySKAzPkXyfYKnOlzsIjp2toust1Q5A3/n54PBKrUDN9tHVz 3Ch466q9EKUuDulTU6OLsilzmRvQJn0EJhzd4pht6hanC0R3seYNhUYhoJViCcCG sRjLQs4iVVM= =9wqs -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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How do I unsubsrcibe
by AFCO73%IRMFAO01.BITNET＠vm.cnuce.cnr.it 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Good day, would someone please advise me how I could unsubscribe from this list? Thanks for your help. Johnny Hua at FAO of the UN, Italy

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APOLOGY!!!!
by carugo o 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yes, I want to make a public apology on behalf of my obnoscious brother he is the only neg I know. More relevant information will come from me. u.r.carugo e0004353(a)brookes.uk.ac

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Words, words, words
by an31122＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Fellow cpunks, I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but I enjoy a bit of flame war. I genuinely do not care what happens to Mr. BatGuano ("if that IS your name"), so a clever insult once in a while is fun to read. If Detweiler really IS Boxx, so what? If he says that you're a moron, so what? If someone creates a second name to use when they're mad and want to flame, that's their business. What's important is the ideas in someones head, not the name they use. While I'm interested in dining cryptographers, I also find it enlightening to listen to Tim May or Duncan Frissell talk politics. I don't see any reason to limit this list to discussions of random number generators. It would be a terrible waste to ignore the collected wisdom and experience of the group because it was marginally off topic. If people would have simply ignored Detweiler rather than answering his tomes, he would have gone away sooner. It only takes a few lines to see whether a post will be interesting or not. If not, DON'T READ IT. Forget it, trash it, delete it. Most importantly, don't get upset about it. It's just words; they can't hurt you. I give Detweiler a paragraph or two. We all know who is worth listening to and who isn't. Once you've figured out what Detweiler, rjc, or Boxx have to say, don't bother reading them anymore. That's all there is to it. My point, I guess, is that net.talk isn't all that different from real.talk. There are real people on the other end of the line, regardless of the names that they use. Some are worth listening to, some are not. It's not hard to tell them apart, and not hard to ignore the wierdos. Talk of censoring people, charging for posts, or sharply defining the scope of the group all seem to make things worse rather than better. It's silly to talk of the way that things "should be". It's far more productive (and easier!) to figure out how to get what you want from the way that they already are. See you in the Zone, Tyrone Slothrop (RocketMan) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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hardware projects and stuph
by hiscdcj＠lux.latrobe.edu.au 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

: > Here's some topics that I've been wanting to bring up with : >the CypherPunks. I figured it'd be best to just drop one email/post : >rather than 4. : : > Or is anyone interested in starting a parallel list of sorts for the : > hardware-punks? 'ware-punks? :-) or perhaps an even better name : > would be The Homebrew Computer Club^2. : : >3. PUNK-NET: (see HARDWARE above) : : I may be able to get a mailing list for punk net going. If people : don't mind discussing hardware in that, that's cool. : : However: I'm not big on unix (at all, actually), so I can subscribe people : and stuff like that, but if it crashes it may take a while to get going : again. : Can anyone tell me how much diskspace a listserver will take up? : I have about 15 meg to play with, that should be more than enough : ( he says, innocently ) : : Dwayne. : (Dwayne Jones-Evans IRC: ddraig ) ( SCA: Cynon Yscolan ap Myrddin, Stormhold, Lochac, West) PGP public key available. finger me. be gentle. internet---> hiscdcj(a)lux.latrobe.edu.au

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