December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

positive publicity for anonymity
by nissim＠acs.bu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've just posted a proposal to alt.config for a new group alt.temping I'm hoping that temporary workers will use this as a forum to compare and contrast temp agencies, wage differences, 'permanent hire penalties' etc. There are about 4.4 million business service temps in the US. Wage differentials are noticeable - one egency will pay $2.00 more than another; this means $320/month to a temp worker. I expect temps to use anonymous posting capabilities to compare wage rates and company patterns *anonymously* because they may fear discrimination from their agencies. (I know I would) This seems like a very positive use of anonymity. Not only will millions of people on the bottom rung of office life be able to gain advantage by information, there are clear parallels to areas in the past of the left where unions and workers rights were seen as causes of first importance. In fact, the troubles involved in being temporary have been championed several times on television. This might make a good counterargument to 'teenagers and pipe bombs' If we say anonymity is a tool that helps up to 3-4% of the work force make intelligent choices and get paid more we may key into the left wing slant of the media. Treon Verdery (not posting from Adam's account this time!)

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Re: intelligent discovery agents
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Visit Sang at http://www.inlink.com/users/sangria/homepage.html >Sang has more information on Robots, Spiders, Ants, and Worms >than any other computer person I have yet to link up with. I suspect your original respondent doesn't get around very much. Rummaging around the above URL gets you little more then http://web.nexor.co.uk/mac/doc/robots/robots.html Tracing down the above URL points you to You really want to get the WWW conference proceedings; try email to wwwf94(a)osf.org and also http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/IT94/Proceedings/Agents.html Ob-crypto: there is a Security.html (instead of Agents) but it's more commerce-oriented, except for the DCE Web paper.

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AT&T produces video encryptor -- is it clipper based?
by perry＠imsi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I just saw a story go by on the dow jones wire saying that AT&T had developed a "comprehensive security system for commercial information services". It is said to be an encryption system developed jointly by Bell Labs and VLSI, and its intedned for set-top boxes and "the internet". VLSI was one of the contractors on Clipper. Anyone know if this is an "escrowed" system? Anyone know any other details? Perry

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(fwd) Re: Racism on the Internet
by jamesd＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Xref: netcom.com alt.internet.services:40076 alt.internet.media-coverage:2932 Path: netcom.com!ix.netcom.com!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uunet!nwnexus!news.halcyon.com!usenet From: mpdillon(a)halcyon.com (Michael Dillon) Newsgroups: alt.internet.services,alt.internet.media-coverage Subject: Re: Racism on the Internet Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 18:11:51 +0000 Organization: Memra Software Inc., Armstrong, B.C., Canada Lines: 36 Message-ID: <dfQ0lapDlT1B073yn(a)halcyon.com> References: <18570UODGFHLRSDHOUP(a)curvet.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: halcyon.com This is forwarded from can.infohighway. Note the quote from Rutkowski at the bottom. This info should be more generally know on the net. In article <18570UODGFHLRSDHOUP(a)curvet.com>, dshaw(a)curvet.com wrote: > > IN>ae763(a)FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Harvey Goldberg) writes: > > >I work for the Canadian Human Rights Commission. > >I am currently doing research on the use of the > >Internet for the propagation of hate material. > >The purpose of the research is to determine what > >measures could be considered to control the use > >of the Net for this type of purpose. > > >I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has > >any views, information or comments on this > >subject or who know of anywhere on the Internet > >where this matter is discussed. > > According to Tony Rutkowski, Executive Director of the Internet > Society, "The Internet from a regulatory standpoint falls into the > category of private value-added networks, and in most countries under > the treaty provisions of the ITU, as well as the GATT, these are > networks that are outside the purview of government. To the extent > that there is any kind of obligation by governments, it is to allow > such networks to exist on a competitive basis". <Internet World, > January 1995>. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Cool cats, brick bats, bad boys wearin' big hats Surf's up, my cup, floating, flying, rising up. Michael Dillon mpdillon(a)halcyon.com C-4 Powerhouse, RR #2 michael(a)junction.net

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Re: Latency, bandwidth, and anonymity
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My initial reaction to "Anonymous video conferencing" was "That's when you wear black ski masks and use voice scramblers and call from video payphones", i.e. not very useful. ("Subcomandata Marcos here...") On the other hand, Wei Dai's followup message about > In the longer term, anonymous communication is in danger of being used > only by fringe groups if it falls too much behind the non-anonymous kind > in terms of latency and bandwidth (and cost, I guess). Maybe ONLY drug > dealers, nuclear terrorists, etc., will use anonymous remailers when full > sensory virtual interaction is the must popular way for most people to > communicate and remailers are still the only choice for the > anonymity-conscious. puts a different spin on it. It's a real problem, if not now, then maybe in 5-10 years. I realize that those of us in the Phone Company who have predicted universal Picturephone in the past have been over-optimistic :-), but the video compression people and the faster-chip people keep bringing us closer to having good-quality low-bandwidth video, and ISDN and fast modems are bringing available loop-end bandwidth up to the point that reasonably-priced circuits can carry it. (Long-haul raw bits have been cheap enough for a while; it's the distribution and switching technology that have a lot of the cost, and providing cheap high-bandwidth circuits makes it hard to make money on voice calls.) The approaches to anonymous video conferencing will depend a bit on whether the technology takes off on the nets or the phone system, if those two are still different by then. It's easier to obscure the origins of a call on the nets, where users own large parts, than it is on the phone system, where the Phone Companies own and operate most of it; the latter environment would require Phone Remailers, such as PBXs you call into on T1 lines and get shuffled out on other circuits - it's hard to get adequate mixing except in rather large environments.... Recircuiting on the nets will be left as an excercise to the reader. I suspect the harder parts of the job may be doing the faces and voices right - anonymous voice conference bridges are ok if the participants mostly don't know each other, but they're less useful if people know each other and cops with computerized voiceprint equipment may be eavesdropping (not common now, though computers and models of the human voice are improving; I suppose voice disguisers may improve from the kid's-toy quality to something better if there's a market, or if computers with full-duplex soundcards become more common.) Faces are harder, and they're not really a crypto problem - how do you fake them well? It's not too hard to do a "quayletool" quality solution that generates moving lips in front of a static picture, even timed with an audio feed, but that won't play too well in the business world, and having the camera pointing at your calendar or home page is only semi-useful. If video-calling evolves on the nets, there'll be a lot more need for speed-matching services, and it may be that computer-enhanced video receiving for high-bandwidth users will fund the technology development for face-simulation? If so, maybe you can use it to start with fake stills instead of real ones? Bill

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Re: Vinge's True Email name ?
by pcw＠access.digex.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Lou Poppler says: >> I knew that old compuserve account was good for something. >> They list Vinge, Vernor San Diego CA 72267.2656(a)compuserve.com > Of course, he might have used his true name because he wanted to hear from people. Tom Clancy seems to enjoy the newsgroup created to discuss his books and he posts there regularily. Many people strive to become famous because they love the adolation of the fans. Others don't. Who knows about VV?

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Re: for-pay remailers and FV
by pstemari＠erinet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:53 PM 1/9/95, Doug Barnes wrote: > ... Also, there is no reason on earth to take FV for payment under >such a scheme, if one wishes to preserve anonymity, and not have >to deal with the fraud/reversal factors. (The stamp issuer >would not know which blind-signed stamps were issued to the >turkey who reversed all his credit card transactions two months >after buying them -- see various threads on this vis-a-vis >using FV to buy blinded digital cash and why it won't work too >well.) > ... I don't see any reason to get FV involved, unless one were so lame >as to be unable to get signed up directly with the credit card >companies as a merchant -- a process of appropriate complexity >to indicate the posession of at least one (1) clue, which is prob. >desirable in someone who's going to be handling remailer finances MC/Visa require the reversibility of transactions as a condition of their merchant agreements. It's not something peculiar to FV. In fact, under certain conditions it is mandated by federal law. Escort services have a similar problem as far as non-returnability goes, but I don't know how they finesse their way around it. --Paul J. Ste. Marie pstemari(a)well.sf.ca.us, pstemari(a)erinet.com

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revoked transactions/guerrilla fee remailers
by L. McCarthy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Paul J. Ste. Marie writes: > MC/Visa require the reversibility of transactions as a condition of their > merchant agreements. It's not something peculiar to FV. In fact, under > certain conditions it is mandated by federal law. Escort services have a > similar problem as far as non-returnability goes, but I don't know how they > finesse their way around it. Two plausible tactics for escort services: [0] Price inflation: treat a revoked transaction rather like shoplifting, by passing the costs on to the customers; escort services are not cheap [1] Embarrassment: tip off family and employers of people who accept escorts, then decide not to pay for them; the perceived threat of publicity should keep plenty of folks in line There's not much that can be done to someone who uses an escort service once, revokes the transaction, and doesn't care who knows about it. How might this apply to remailing services ? Right now, with a fairly small customer base, I imagine price inflation would be impractical, but embarrassment might prove fairly effective. In the developed market we envision, presumably operators could get away with price inflation, but embarrassment would lose much of its potential sting. (I assume that once a critical mass of populace uses remailers, an announcement that Josie Worsham has used a remailer would elicit only yawns.) Do others see the resulting applicability of additional regulations to remailers as an issue in having them charge for service ? Within the category of fee-charging remailers, the distinction between non-profit and for-profit operations may be worth considering. I suppose that the IRS and analogous agencies would be inclined to ask questions about it, for starters. My threat model for the remailer bramble includes, at a minimum, a host of typical government agencies obligated to wrap everything in red tape. Look for anti- trust investigations to be launched against a price-fixing cartel of remailers. - - From what I've seen so far, accepting payment would seem to make anonymous _operation_ of a remailer well nigh impossible. Anonymous operation with revenue would require a corresponding level of anonymity in the transfer of money. Until such time as conversion of funds from a net-liquid form to a conventional form becomes unnecessary (or just commonplace ?), financial traffic analysis can't adequately be thwarted. All this bodes ill, IMHO, for the prospect of guerrilla or quasi-guerrilla remailers charging for service any time soon. There's just too much infrastructure to which they'd need to be tied at the moment. -L. Futplex McCarthy; PGP key by finger or server "The objective is for us to get those conversations whether they're by an alligator clip or ones and zeroes. Wherever they are, whatever they are, I need them." -FBI Dir. Freeh - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.1 iQCVAwUBLxHeC2f7YYibNzjpAQGhlQP/fkyvN0QqDkbLhgqecGUaeu3cbCstMd4y lgs/XzCeiXVt6EiQ8tmDVbq4G0QYTGntph/3knciJopGrH+Nu6LVmiqWNiRWFxm8 zJBRenCW2SN9nRixJiI4S2n0yQ//v9C7sOEfmu9SToQDYc+U1CBNSUhhJAveT1GN BD4WNFlm/WY= =VY8W - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBLxHfcSoZzwIn1bdtAQGyEAGAwKES86hkJ8GkLsYCr+vEAjH1/L2GdrCj jw0b83L7FHA99sUihIYe2zUUxr+Sqb2b =7Aai -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Pornography, What is it?
by Raul Deluth Miller 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Pornography is in the eyes of the beholder. [Especially if the beholder happens to be a postmaster in Memphis...] -- Raul D. Miller N=:((*/pq)&|)@ NB. public e, y, n=:*/pq <rockwell(a)nova.umd.edu> P=:*N/@:# NB. */-.,e e.&factors t=:*/<:pq 1=t|e*d NB. prim=:1&=@| 2&^@<: [. large=:>&(2^1024) x-:d P,:y=:e P,:x NB. (d P,:y)-:D P*:N^:(i.#D)y [. D=:|.@#.d

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data havens
by Raul Deluth Miller 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The problem with encryption, in general, is that it's an attempt to hide information -- unless the information is trivial, encryption is only a temporary measure. Believe it or not, the government (or, more properly, people associated with the government) is still trying to figure out which industries are Iraqi owned -- one technique being brought to bear is statistical analysis of company activities, with special attention to changes which occurred during the gulf war. The only way to have data havens be acceptable to the U.S. government would be to have them become acceptable to the U.S. population (or some significant fraction of them). This would imply phasing out the DEA and the IRS, at a minimum. [Newspaper article this weekend: how it's so horrible that some people deal in cash and thus are evading the IRS.] More generally, the way to keep a data haven from being located is to make sure it doesn't have a location... This is hard to do without severely impacting latency. -- Raul D. Miller N=:((*/pq)&|)@ NB. public e, y, n=:*/pq <rockwell(a)nova.umd.edu> P=:*N/@:# NB. */-.,e e.&factors t=:*/<:pq 1=t|e*d NB. (,-:<:)pq is four large primes, e medium x-:d P,:y=:e P,:x NB. (d P,:y)-:D P*:N^:(i.#D)y [. D=:|.@#.d

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