December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

No Subject
by Chris Goggans 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

After a complete sellout at HoHo Con 1993 in Austin, TX this past December, the official Legion of Doom t-shirts are available once again. Join the net luminaries world-wide in owning one of these amazing shirts. Impress members of the opposite sex, increase your IQ, annoy system administrators, get raided by the government and lose your wardrobe! Can a t-shirt really do all this? Of course it can! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "THE HACKER WAR -- LOD vs MOD" This t-shirt chronicles the infamous "Hacker War" between rival groups The Legion of Doom and The Masters of Destruction. The front of the shirt displays a flight map of the various battle-sites hit by MOD and tracked by LOD. The back of the shirt has a detailed timeline of the key dates in the conflict, and a rather ironic quote from an MOD member. (For a limited time, the original is back!) "LEGION OF DOOM -- INTERNET WORLD TOUR" The front of this classic shirt displays "Legion of Doom Internet World Tour" as well as a sword and telephone intersecting the planet earth, skull-and-crossbones style. The back displays the words "Hacking for Jesus" as well as a substantial list of "tour-stops" (internet sites) and a quote from Aleister Crowley. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- All t-shirts are sized XL, and are 100% cotton. Cost is $15.00 (US) per shirt. International orders add $5.00 per shirt for postage. Send checks or money orders. Please, no credit cards, even if it's really your card. Name: __________________________________________________ Address: __________________________________________________ City, State, Zip: __________________________________________ I want ____ "Hacker War" shirt(s) I want ____ "Internet World Tour" shirt(s) Enclosed is $______ for the total cost. Mail to: Chris Goggans 603 W. 13th #1A-278 Austin, TX 78701 These T-shirts are sold only as a novelty items, and are in no way attempting to glorify computer crime.

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Somebody posting fake Detweiler messages
by nobody＠soda.berkeley.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This message was posted to alt.conspiracy. ============================================================================ From: Tommy the Tourist <nobody(a)soda.berkeley.edu> Subject: Apologies Organization: Cypherpunks From: "L. Detweiler" <ld231782(a)longs.lance.colostate.edu> Before the story gets around from other sources, here's what *really* happened. I guess that I should start by saying that I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the tremendous disturbance that I caused, I now see that I was completely wrong. Nick Szabo is a real person, and I was mistaken to say otherwise. I don't know how to go about cleaning up the mess that I made, but I guess that I'll start by humbly asking all of you to forgive me. It began when I was at home one evening last week, watching TV. The voices were back again. They told me that the TENTACLES were going to use his account to spread their LIES, and to RAPE the unsuspecting net.virgins. The more I thought about it, the more agitated I became. Their SCREAMS filled my ears, and their TEARS came from my own eyes. I couldn't sleep because I knew that their fates rested in my hands. I had to do something. The hell that awaited them was known to me alone, and only I could save them. The poor souls would SQUIRM in AGONY and CRY OUT in pain, but the GROTESQUE cypherpunks would only LAUGH. Every time that I closed my eyes, I'd see the inferno. The monsters believed, I knew, that no joy was greater than UTTERLY DESTROYING an unsuspecting user, SODOMIZING their innocent victims just as they do each other. I thought about posting another message, but decided that this time I had to take my stand. The SATANIC CABAL must be BROKEN, as totally and completely as the Tower of Babel. I flew to Washington, D.C., determined to prove once and for all that szabo(a)netcom.com is nothing but a deceiving TENTACLE, bent on PILLAGE and PLUNDER. Once that was done, the fate of the MEDUSA was sealed. Thanks to one of his net *friends*, I had Szabo's phone number. Locating his address was not difficult. I knocked at the door and asked for Szabo. The fellow who answered the door asked my name and, when I gave it, he told me to wait there. A few seconds later I heard a voice from upstairs yelling ``Call 911! Call 911!''. His roommate jumped me and we wrestled until, finally, I freed myself and was able to calm him down enough to talk. Szabo came downstairs and said that he'd called the police, and I'd better hightail it out of there or be prepared to spend some time in jail. Thinking that he was an imposter paid by t.c.may and e.hughes to act as Szabo should anyone check, I agreed to talk with the CHARLATAN. He would meet his fate soon enough, and he would PAY DEARLY for his complicity. I convinced him that I wasn't armed, and he agreed to talk. He insisted that he *was* Szabo and tried many ways of proving it. He produced a drivers license and a passport, both issued to Szabo and with pictures of this same man. They seemed valid. I was confused. He then dialed into netcom as szabo and read some mail. It was then that I noticed the sounds, soft and just at the edge of my hearing. It was a light and breathy sound. It was... LAUGHTER. The VOICES WERE LAUGHING AT ME. It was then that the clouds parted and the gleaming ray of sunlight came down to illuminate my vision. All of the time that I had spent jousting quixotically with the cypherpunks had been wasted, as they weren't the enemy. They weren't the ones who were sending the voices to disrupt my sleep. It wasn't them at all. The voices were my true enemy, and I set out with renewed vigor to seek out and destroy the voices. Um, anyway, I guess that he really is szabo(a)netcom.com. Sorry. Now what I need to know is how do I go about rebuilding the reputation that I've spent so long destroying? So many people have learned to ignore posts from my account that I fear I'll not get another hearing. Gee, maybe on the internet they CAN tell if you're a dog... ============================================================================

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One of our alumni achieves "alt.usenet.kooks" fame!
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Our own former member, but still all-too-frequent contributor, L. Detweiler has achieved fame by appearing in the compilation of net.cranks in the new group "alt.usenet.kooks." I had a hunch he'd be listed there along with such luminaries as Robert McElwaine, Jack Schmidlang, Gary Stollman, and Serdar Argic, and he was. Here's in entry in the draft FAQ: "L. Detweiler (you are all TENTACLES of the CYPHERpunk anarchoSYNDICALIST pseudospoofing CONSPIRACY; everyone who contacts me via post or email is a tentacle of a single Medusa): All information relevant has been deleted (probably by the cypherpunk pseudospoofers); ask around - old-timers can tell you about him, through "safe" avenues (like email). Warning: attempting to disillusion him of his theories usually results in threatening mail and getting incorporated into said theories. Handle With Extreme Care. Appears occasionally on the news.* hierarchy, crossposted to hell and back. Author of the Internet Anonymity FAQ. (Posts as ld231782@<various>.lance.colostate.edu (L. Detweiler) and an12070(a)anon.penet.fi (various constantly-changing identities).)" Which one of us will be next? --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**859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.

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Crypto and taxes
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I can agree that cryptography will make some kinds of illegal private transactions easier. What I doubt is that this will happen at a large enough scale to seriously threaten the ability of governments to fund themselves by taxes. Take Perry's example of one person buying a rare, expensive item from another. This might be made easier to do anonymously with ecash. But how much significance will this have taxwise? If these were private individuals involved in a personal swap, chances are no taxes would be paid even under current conditions. I bought a car from my next door neighbor a few months ago. I doubt that he paid income tax on it. And transactions of this magnitude are rare among individuals in a non- business situation. Most of our transactions are done with businesses, generally corporations. Imagine taking $15,000 in cash to buy a new car anonymously. I believe you will find that the car dealers will not cooperate, that government regulations (designed to crack down on drug dealers) will require them to get some ID from you. Digicash would presumably be under the same restrictions. Furthermore, as I argued earlier, it will be much harder for a large business to successfully switch to cash transactions in the hope of evading taxes. A much larger group of people would have to be "in" on the secret, in order to cooperate to prepare the false receipts and books that would be necessary. Any situation like this will be risky and dangerous to maintain. I don't fully understand Duncan's arguments for how taxes can be avoided through being a non-citizen. I gather, though, that this would require me to either move to another country, or to go to work for a company that is in another country. Neither seems likely in the next few years for the majority of citizens. And if this did catch on, presumably this loophole could be closed, so that you were taxed by whatever country you lived in. (A similar situation exists today with respect to state income tax for people who live in one state and work in another. I don't think they are exempt from all state income taxes.) Sandy may be right that self-employed people who get cash payments do widely under-report their income, and no doubt self-employed programmers do the same to some extent. But I'm really not sure why or how a programming contractor or consultant, let alone an employee, will be able to avoid paying taxes once strong crypto is common. Won't the company paying him still want to record those payments on its books, so it can deduct them as business expenses? I believe similar records are used today to verify tax liabilities of paid consultants. Why won't this be true with crypto involved? And for employees, companies are still going to need a social security number, name and address, and they will still submit records to the government showing how much you were paid. I don't see widespread tax evasion in the picture at all. Sure, some smart people may be able to exploit the new technologies and disappear into the cracks. Self-employed information workers may have the most to gain. But the average worker and the average company aren't going to have major new opportunities for tax evasion. The economy will keep plugging along as it always has, and if the government goes down the tubes it won't be because of the advent of strong cryptography. Hal

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Credit cards vs. digital cash
by szabo＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Steve Bellovin raises some good points about the function of credit cards. A couple responses: > ...in these cases, customers have the potential to run up a > large bill -- that is, a debt -- between interactions with the > provider... A vendor possessing a > credit card number *will* be paid, with minimum hassle. If the > customer skips town, the card issuer eats the charge. Vendors should be able to get the equivalent protection by buying insurance against customers skipping town, for a similar price. That, and collection enforcement, via local jurisdictions which have been lobbied to pass credit card fraud laws, are two of the main functions served by credit card companies. A third is collection of dossiers on customers, which we would like to put under customer control. For online services, where the customer can be billed in near real-time, the case where a large bill approaches the credit limit is at least exceptional, and might be eliminated entirely. Where the largest bill is much smaller than the credit limit, the customer is put at much smaller risk by putting up a deposit then by exposing their entire credit rating to both the vendor and snoopers who intercept the number. Furthermore, the deposit can be made with a neutral third party which serves the arbitrator function for disputes. In this particular case, phone billing could be done in very small increments, in near real-time, with digital cash. > But there's one more important point to consider: U.S. law on > disputed credit card purchases. This company was operating internationally; one of their customers who posted lives in Kuwait. Do all Internet jurisdictions have laws protecting credit card customers? How are these laws enforced? On whom lies the burden of evidence, legal costs, etc.? I agree that the issue of customer vs. vendor assumption of risk deserves much more attention than we have given it. A major goal is to minimize dependence on the maze of Internet jurisdictions to resolve conflicts. One interesting idea is an online escrow services that holds a customer deposit equal to the amount of the largest possible bill, and uses the escrow to resolve disputed billings. The challenge is minimizing leakage of private information, via the escrow. Nick Szabo szabo(a)netcom.com

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szabo@netcom.com is NOT a tentacle!!!
by nobody＠pmantis.berkeley.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

As for the `Szabo being a tentacle thread' in the newsgroups, pmetzger just posted stating that he had indeed posted the name of the town Szabo lives in, as well as the names of his roommates. He refrained from posting that information again. I seem to vaguely recall seeing the original post, but can't find it in the buffers here -- everything before December 21st or so has expired. the thing that ROYALLY PISSES ME OFF is that NOONE WHO HEARD PMETZGER CLAIM THIS has POSTED TO SAY THAT THEY HEARD HIM SAY THAT. reminds me of the infamous rape and murder of that NY woman, with dozens of witnesses hearing her screams, just going about their business. who will be raped next? and who will be silent? everyone who is watching my thread, and being silent about what they know, is a hypocrite and a dangerous accomplice to lies. I guess that's a bit overstated. I suspect people in most major metropolitan areas don't want to get involved partially because they fear retribution, and partially because, with that many people packed together, you tend to care less about your neighbors than you would in a small town, where you know the people in your building or street. I suspect people on the net don't bother because "it's just bits" -- they read the Net like they watch TV, without any connection to the characters or dramas unfolding before them. In large part, what is said here doesn't really matter. People get curious, but it's not worth getting into an uproar. if YOU GIVE A DAMN, POST! Ah, there's the rub. Deep down, I really don't care about this particular issue. To my knowledge, Nick Szabo, whether real or not, has never said anything that has made me even care whether or not he has real. I've never found anything he's said particularly interesting. He's a net.person. Should he turn out to be a "tentacle," that's fine by me -- he won't be the first I've encountered. If he turns out to be T.C.May in disguise, all that means is that there's one less person with T.C.May's ideas in the world than people thought. I think that uncaring attitude, which I regard as fairly dominant among people who've used cyberspace (and especially Usenet) a good amount of time, is the very reason that May's ideas about widespread crypto bringing down governments will never come to pass. People have, and I believe will continue to have, a distrust about putting much faith into computers, and thus cyberspace will always have limitations. I believe people put a great deal of stock in the feel of a crisp paper dollar bill, as well as a smile and a handshake. :-) Perhaps to add more fuel to the fire, a Nicholas Szabo does indeed live in Cupertino, according to a 1990-1991 White Pages from the area. There is no G.Dale listed, however. (I was hoping to correlate the two numbers) I suspect that I need a more recent phone book to make a better test. ------ Legalize: >--<o | I confess to an unatural, and abnormal . \ / :-)-~ o>--< | act I have programmed a computer. . . \ / You are ~1,000,000,000,000,000 .1ms NAND gates have a nice day. . . . \/ The true theory of everything will run on a finite turing machine. . . .

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Re: szabo@netcom.com is NOT a tentacle!!! (fwd)
by Johan Helsingius 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Sigh, more garbage from the cypherwonks list ownere posted to cypherpunks: Sigh. Why do you associate this garbage with the cypherwonks list owner? And who are you refering to by that? Unfortunately *I* am the physical list owner, as I offered to host the list on lists.eunet.fi to channel away the Detweiler discussion from cypherpunks. And I *know* I didn't send that stuff! Julf

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Extropia remailer
by Martin.Greifer＠f28.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is it just me, or is the usually-reliable Extropia remailer (remail(a)extropia.wimsey.com) down? ... Origin: The Crusade for Moorish Dignity, N'orl'ns, LA ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12 -- Martin Greifer - via FidoNet node 1:125/1 UUCP: ...!uunet!kumr!shelter!28!Martin.Greifer INTERNET: Martin.Greifer(a)f28.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG

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But Detweiler _Is_! (Was Re: szabo@netcom.com is NOT a tentacle!!!)
by lefty＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>This feels like Detweiler spoofing again. Anyone else get that >feeling? It's certainly possible. A possibility which, I might add, raises in me an almost uncontrollable desire to yawn, deeply. Isn't it interesting, though, that Mr. Detweiler has become precisely what he rails against? As Friedrich Nietzsche once remarked, "He who fights with monsters should see to it that he does not _become_ a monster." FWIW, I felt that the "Tentacles--I don't get it" posting was a good candidate for hidden Detweiler-hood as well. Mr. Detweiler, the abyss is gazing into you... -- Lefty (lefty(a)apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.

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Bay area BBS bust--fyi
by hkhenson＠cup.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Eric, please put me back on the list. Keith ------ About two years ago I helped a guy from Milpitias (just north of San Jose) deal with a BBS bust at what he described as a "light" porn BBS. The San Jose cops realized shortly that they had really goofed by not considering the ECPA and related laws in their search&seizure. The result was that they gave his system back after five weeks, and stated in a written release that this guy's activities were within the scope of the law. The BBS is called Amateur Action, and the sysop's name is Richard Thomas (408-263-1079). A few minutes ago Richard (who I have yet to meet in person) called. A search warrant was being served at that very moment by the US Postal Inspectors, who (with the help of San Jose cops) were packing up his equipment and carting it out--again. Richard managed to get one of these inspectors on the phone with me. This inspector seemed to be rather knowledgeable of such things as the ECPA, 2000aa, and the Steve Jackson case. He was completely unconcerned! He piously stated that it was their intent to bring the system back to Richard within a "few days" and, as a result of the short interruption of user access, and their good intent "not to look at private email," they were completely safe from the provisions of the ECPA. This postal inspector gave his name as David Dirmeyes, from Tennesse (does this sound like Bible Belt prosecution for pron?) and gave me the name of the US Attorney he was working under, one Dan Newson with a phone of 901-544-4231 in TN (though he stated that the phone # would be of no use because Dan was at a conference for a week). For what it is worth, the postal people were using the San Jose cops on the bust because they did not have the expertise themselves to move the system and make copies. According to the investigator, they did not know that they could get a court order to have a backup of the system made on the spot. It may be that Richard is the target, he said there was a mystery package which came today in the mail today (which his son brought in and his wife opened, but he had not gotten around to seeing what it was) which seemed to the center of the postal inspector's concerns. (In spite of not meeting him, I suspect Richard may be the kind of smart alec who attracts the attention of cops.) I don't know if this is something of marginal concern to those of us concerned with government abuse of people's computers and communications or a major concern. I intend to find out more tomorrow, but if the ECPA is applicable, this guy had about 3500 users, over 2k pieces of protected email on his system, plus (I think) agreements with his uses for him to represent them in an ECPA related legal action--two million dollars if I am multiplying right tonight. (My "Warning to Law Enforcement Agents" was part of his signup screens.) Keith Henson 408-972-1132 hkhenson(a)cup.portal.com

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