December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

NYT on Electronic Purses
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The New York Times today reports: Quotes: "Electronic purses" may mean the end of cash. Banks, credit card companies and even some governments are racing to introduce electronic purses, wallet-size cards embedded with microchips that store sums of money for people to use instead of cash for everything from buying fast food to paying highway tolls. * * * Long-range planners in the banking industry see the weaning of small businesses and consumers from cash as the last step to closing many expensive branches and conducting virtually all business by telephone, through cash machines and perhaps home computers. * * * "As more and more people do business on the Internet, we have to look for how you pay for things," said Catherine Allen, a vice president in Citibank's technology office and the head of the Smart Card Forum, an industry group. "The smart card allows me to identify myself securely." * * * But Mondex [Britain's system] has still another wrinkle: privacy. Unlike most other electronic purse systems, Mondex, like cash, is anonymous. The banks that issue Mondex cards will not be able to keep track of who gets the payments. Indeed, it is the only system in which two card holders can transfer money to each other. "If you want to have a product that replaces cash, you have to do everything that cash does, only better," Mondex's senior executive, Michael Keegan said. "You can give money to your brother who gives it to the chap that sells newspapers, who gives it to charity, who puts it in the bank, which has no idea where it's been. That's what money is." End quotes. The article describes smart card systems in the US and other countries. Describes how customers "recharge" the card by home phone or other means. Email copies wanted? It's about a half-page in size. John

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Re: Governments and repression
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Date: Wed, 31 Aug 1994 08:35:12 -0400 >From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)imsi.com> Perry, >I would refer to most governments as being no more than large >organized gangs, differing from the Mafia or Hezbollah only in so far >as they have convinced large numbers of people of their legitimacy. It's always bothered me that gov'ts were people wielding power for its own sake. I had hoped we had progressed beyond the tribal chieftan stage of development. Then again, I remember the bullies in grade school. To what extent is gov't a home for bullies and to what extent is it the collective defense against bullies (both ideas finding models in the Wild West Sheriff)? How do we turn it from the first to the second? - Carl

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Re: Problems with anonymous escrow 2--response
by blancw＠pylon.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by solman(a)MIT.EDU The skills of an entity without any reputation capital are absolutely worthless. But usually an anonymous entity will come around brandishing all sorts of certifications (reputation capital). .......................................................... Well, I was thinking that certifications & reputations wouldn't mean all that much to me, nor either knowing or being unfamiliar with someone's identity (or pseudonymity). I would be more convinced with a demo. Something which could demostrate facility or ability would be more valuable to me than a second-hand proof. I realize some professions cannot provide such demonstrations, but I myself would rather have a way of making decisions based on the excercise of first-hand judgement whenever possible. This anonymity/identity and certification/reputation business looks to me like trying to have one's cake and eat it, too, as the expression goes. A featureless landscape with remote associations to actual substance so as to both please the aloof-ers & appease the uncertain. It's a bit odd, because for every method which is found by which to hide, another method is found by which to reveal what was heretofore undetectable in Nature. While scientists push back the envelope & reveal what was previously 'invisible' to our eyes, others work to effect stealth techniques against the tools of Consciousness. Kind of strange, though interesting. Blanc

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more detweiler foo
by Mark Hittinger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

~Newsgroups: misc.invest ~Path: sdd.hp.com!hpscit.sc.hp.com!cupnews0.cup.hp.com!news1.boi.hp.com!rdetweil ~From: rdetweil(a)boi.hp.com (Richard Detweiler) ~Sender: news(a)boi.hp.com (Boise Site News Server) ~Message-ID: <CvppJx.E02(a)boi.hp.com> ~Date: Tue, 6 Sep 1994 14:28:44 GMT ~Nntp-Posting-Host: hpbs4189.boi.hp.com ~Organization: Hewlett Packard - Boise Printer Division ~Isn't this amazing? I've cut down the newsgroups to just misc.invest. The article is discussing a recent forgery. Maybe since the summer is over and its back-to-work time he has to cut back to one group? He-he-he-huh-huh.

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Re: Remailer at Wein?
by Matthew Ghio 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mark Terka wrote: > Is the remailer at remailer(a)ds1.wu-wein.ac.at up and running? Test > messages to that site kept bouncing. It answered my ping last night (finger remailer-list(a)chaos.bsu.edu) > Also, how do I get ahold of that remailer's public key for encrypting > messages through them? finger remailer.help.all(a)chaos.bsu.edu

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Re: AIDs testing and privacy
by frissell＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:48 AM 9/7/94 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: > >And don't forget that hospitals and doctors will be forwarding patient >records to the National Health Recovery Act headquarters outside >Washington, right near the CIA, NSA, NRO, Central Imagery Office, FBI, >and, of course, the Big Three credit agencies. > >I'm less worried that a pharmacist will add me to some database he >keeps than that my doctor will be instructed to compile a dossier to >government standards and then zip it off over the Infobahn to the >authorities. I suppose I shouldn't admit this as a privacy advocate but I wonder why anyone is interested in all this health/credit data. Since they can't *do* anything with it in the real world, seems like a waste of time. Especially the health data. Suppose "they" find out something about your health status and "they" deny you insurance. Under the system "they" have constructed, you just show up and get "health care" anyway -- whether at the local hospital or in Toronto or London. The only "advantage" that "they" get from finding out about your health status and denying you insurance is that you no longer have to pay them any money. You still get the same level of care. If you are a bright person with a big mouth, you can get them to spend as much dough on you -- sans insurance -- as they would on a normal schlubb *with insurance*. That's the way "they" set up the system. It may not even be too illibertarian <G> of you to play the system like that since they have used force to prevent you from buying your care on an open market. As for the credit info, since you can get whatever you *really* want without a good (personal) credit history, what is the point of all these conflicts over credit reporting. I like to practice privacy and, like normal medical intervention, it can help individuals on the margin, neither personal privacy nor personal medical intervention are statistically significant when we consider the well-being of the general population. Strong market institutions are more important than privacy and sewers and vector control are more important than office visits for securing (respectively) human wealth and human health. DCF "You don't have to be nice to nation states that you meet on the way up if you're not coming back down."

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Rabin-Miller
by nobody＠BU.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Has anyone checked to see if the Rabin-Miller Primalty testing algorithm is included in PRZ's new release of PGP 2.61?

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PGP 2.6.1 Available from MIT
by Jeffrey I. Schiller 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- MIT is pleased to announce the availability of PGP 2.6.1, a free public-key encryption program for non-commercial use. PGP 2.6.1 provides for digital signatures and confidentiality of files and messages. PGP 2.6.1 is distributed in source form for DOS/UNIX platforms. For convenience, an MSDOS executable is also part of this release. Because source is available, anyone may examine it to verify the program's integrity. For Macintosh users MIT is currently distributing MacPGP 2.6. An update to MacPGP 2.6 will occur at a later date. PGP 2.6.1 contains fixes to many of the bugs reported in PGP 2.6 and MIT encourages all U.S. PGP users to upgrade. How to get PGP 2.6.1 from MIT: PGP 2.6.1 is available from MIT only over the Internet. Use anonymous FTP to login to net-dist.mit.edu. Login as anonymous. Look in the directory /pub/PGP. In this directory, available to everyone, is a README file a copy of the RSAREF license and a copy of a software license from MIT. Please read the README file and these licenses carefully. Take particular note of the provisions about export control. The README file contains more detailed instructions on how to get PGP 2.6.1. Also in /pub/PGP is a copy of the PGP Manual (files pgpdoc1.txt and pgpdoc2.txt) and the file pgformat.doc that describes the PGP message, signature and key formats, including the modifications for PGP 2.6.1. These are being made available without the distribution restrictions that pertain to the PGP source and executable code. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.1 iQCVAwUBLmywV8UtR20Nv5BtAQHsTgP/co0ff5OVXOCMo85BxWKKYulmWk1S1Xns qypYTbKvYETn98mAqXol3dolQPW9OWhgtG2km/R4C2Zq4G/NZBjPy7yfTpO/ket8 lfC0muTQSzAVxzwMhHTRNSItwISCiVwlWDwMADlz3uXKKckJkfntAR+jXd+Foxk/ gizPTNo4ytc= =7ndy -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: NY Times Fears C'punks
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: John Young <jya(a)pipeline.com> >Date: Sat, 3 Sep 1994 11:19:14 -0400 >The New York Times Magazine, p. 23 >September 4, 1994 >Perhaps the most surprising democratization of high technology is that >of cryptography, once an elite art of those who guarded Government's >most precious secrets. This is infuriating. Has no one read Kahn? Cryptography has been developed by amateurs since the beginning, over 3000 years ago. How about an e-mail or (ugh) Snail address for the NYTimes? - Carl

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NO THERE, THERE
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C'punks, Lucky Green informed us: ... I just checked out Vice President Al Gore's home page at http://www.financenet.gov/vpgore.html ... except for the "This is the Vice President's Mosaic Home Page" header, it is all empty.... How symbolically apt. To paraphrase an old adage about the law, "Politics is the triumph of form over substance." S a n d y ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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