December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: State Charges in Weaver Case
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ray Arachelian wrote: > > On Thu, 21 Aug 1997, Mike Duvos wrote: > > > I suppose it has something to do with that "only following > > orders" thing. :) > > Fine, then what shall we charge the one that gave the order with? And > what shal be the punishment? If the one who takes the order relinquishes > reposability, then the one giving the order must be doubly responsible. Jeez, Ray. If you follow this twisted train of logic, you end up expecting the President and the Legislature to take responsibility for the State of the Union. Are you some kind of godless Commie, or something? You'll certainly feel foolish when the FBI lab proves that the trigger was pulled by a drug dealer who was told to do so by a child molester. It's just a shame that those poor federal agents had to be there to witness the tragedy. GovtLicensedMurderMonger

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Welfare Solution #389
by Lynne L. Harrison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:30 AM 8/22/97 +0200, Anonymous wrote: > >Welfare Solution #389: > Many in the welfair class have their basic needs met by the government >and then steal to buy heroin. > How about this? - When a person on welfare is busted for heroin use, >or theft to support a habit, the State thereafter sends the person's >welfare check to a Crime Restitution fund and lets the person keep >stealing, only now it is for the purpose of supplying their own >basic needs. In NY, when a defendant gets convicted of a crime including a drug offense, s/he has to pay a mandatory surcharge part of which is a Crime Victims' Fee. [Query: who is the victim in a drug case? -- but I digress...]. Also, if it was a crime where the victim suffered financial losses, the defendant not only has to pay the Crime Victim's Fee but also restitution to the victim. Additionally, pursuant to Federal Law, anyone convicted of a drug charge and, who is residing is federally-subsidized housing, becomes subject to eviction proceedings. [Quirk: if one family member is engaged in such business activities, the entire family is captured under the law's umbrella but, again, I digress..]. > The crime rate stays the same, but the victims receive some amount >of recompensation. So-called crime rates are subject to the compilation *and* interpretation of statistics, and for those of us who were lucky enough to have studied Statistics, we know that these so-called statistical rates are ripe for producing the desired results versus providing an accurate statistical account. Case in point: Prior to Reagan's Administration, the Armed Forces were never included in the employed or non-employed categories. Reagan added the Armed Forces to the employed category, and the masses were tickled pink when the government announced that employment rates increased dramatically. >Damn, I'm smart... Since I don't know you, I am in no position to comment. You may be smart, highly intelligent, or a genius - or you may possess the analytical processes of a gerbil. Whichever category you are within, perhaps you should keep in mind the old saying: "It's a thin line between genius and insanity." [A little appetizer for thought...]. ************************************************************************** Lynne L. Harrison, Esq. | Lazlo's Chinese Relatively Axiom: Poughkeepsie, New York | "No matter how great your triumphs or lharrison(a)mhv.net | how tragic your defeats, approximately http://www.dueprocess.com | one billion Chinese couldn't care less." ************************************************************************** DISCLAIMER: I am not your attorney; you are not my client. Accordingly, the above is *NOT* legal advice.

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Re: Inside the Cypherpunks Cult (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 19:24:51 -0700 > From: Tim May <tcmay(a)got.net> > Subject: Re: Inside the Cypherpunks Cult > On the subject of cults, neither do cult leaders sit on panels at the > Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference and mingle with the leading > lawyers, law professors, NSA employees, and Justice Department > representatives. Never heard of the Pope then... or Reverend Moon perhaps? Or Mother Teresa... Or perhaps the crazy guy from Oklahoma or Kansas or wherever who sat with Bush during the final moments of his first election. I believe he was also there when Desert Storm was launched. Has a big university named after him. Oh Jesus, just can't think of his name... Cults of personality are a function of being human, not what that human does with their time. You are confusing cause and effect. > Where we differ is that first, I don't worry overmuch about what some > foreigners are doing to other foreigners. I take George Washington at his > word: avoid foreign entanglements. Not America's business if the Hutus are > killing the Tutsis, or vice versa, or if the Nazis are killing the Jews, or > vice versa. And, yet, at the same time he had no compunction at all against buying arms and influence from France... Are any of them American Jews?... Remember one thing oh Great Bawana Hunter May... He who stands alone, dies alone. What I would like to see is our favorite TLA jack-booted thugs to surround some poor compound and then find themselves surrounded by thousands of pissed-off gun-toting Americans daring the chicken-shits to do anything about it. Any TLA clown that doesn't put their guns down immediately clearly doesn't make much of the oath they swore to uphold the Constitution. And any soldier who fires on Americans is clearly going against prima facia evidence that the framers intended for American military force to NEVER be used against American citizens on American soil. The soldier who killed the kid down in the valley and got off scott free should face charges of treason. So should his commanders all the way to ole Billary. Consider, the law recognizes a parents right to sue an amusement park because some incidental activity led to emotional distress what prevents us from sueing the federal government for various criminal and civil penalties relating to the physical and emotional suffering their actions have caused. Hell, file a suite in the name of all Americans... ____________________________________________________________________ | | | Participation requires more than just bitching! | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Marc Rotenberg on Time cover story on privacy (fwd)
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 14:12:25 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Marc Rotenberg on Time cover story on privacy [My comments on privacy that I forwarded yesterday under the Subject: line "Response to Time cover on privacy" were in response to Marc's criticism, attached below. -Declan] ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 11:49:13 -0400 From: Marc Rotenberg <rotenberg(a)epic.org> To: declan(a)well.com Subject: Re: FC: Response to Time cover on privacy ---- Josh - I appreciate the excellent coverage of privacy issues in this week's Time Magazine and at the Pathfinder site, but I am concerned about three particular points made in your article and the general tenor of your reporting. First, much of your discussion of the privacy issue assumes that there is a necessary trade-off between privacy and social benefit. Give up some data, get a good parking space. I think this is a very shallow view of privacy rights. A person who lives in a prison has very little privacy and very little benefit. An affluent person in a democratic society, however, may have both. Clearly, there is something more going on than a zero-sum game. Many of the current efforts to promote genuine privacy enhancing techniques, such as anonymous cash, are based on the belief that we can obtain many of the same benefits of customized service without giving up personally indentifiable information. In this context, the discussion of cookies is critical -- a non-actual user identified cookie is very good for service and privacy, but a user-identified cookie can be good for service but bad for privacy. But your discussion of cookies glosses over this critical point. These questions come up all the time. Should intelligent highways capture actual IDs? Can medical services be delivered psuedo-anonymously? What about communication services? Web access? You substituted an old privacy cliche ("in the modern world we give up some privacy for some benefit") for coverage of the interesting, cutting edge policy issues that the net and the debate about identity has raised. Second, following Alan Westin's line, you suggest that we have generally avoided privacy legislation in the private sector. This is simply not true. We have federal privacy legislation for credit record (1970), school records (1974), bank records (1978), cable subscriber records (1984), stored email (1986), video rental records (1988), junk faxes and auto dialers (1991), and dozens more at the state level for everything from insurance and health records to library records. You can say that these laws are at times ineffective or incoherent -- why federal privacy for video records but nor medical records? -- but it is just wrong to start tearing pages from the history books and the US code to support a bias against privacy laws. Alan should know better; you should as well. Finally, you and Kevin K. take a big swing at my call for privacy legislation and a privacy agency. I appreciate that it is a cardinal rule of some to oppose any government anything, but at least understand the argument for the privacy agency "We need new legal protections to enforce the privacy act, . . ." The Privacy Act was established in 1974 to restrict the ability of government to collect information on citizens and to give citizens the right to get access to their own files. But since '74, federal agencies have shown little interest in upholding the law and privacy concerns *across the federal government* have mushroomed. Do I take from Kevin's criticism that he would prefer that there was no effort to improve enforcment of the Privacy Act, limit record sharing in the government, and ensure people get access to their own files? Is that right? Can we at least agree that the Privacy Act plays an important role in protecting citizen rights and that efforts to strengthen it should be supported? " . . . to keep federal agencies in line, . . .' So that, for example, when law enforcement agencies in the federal government press the White House and the OMB for new law enforcement authority there is a counterveiling agency in the government that requires that privacy concerns are addressed before the proposal reaches the President's desk. And if they aren't adequately addressed, maybe the proposal doesn't get to the President's desk. It is obvious after both the Clipper episode and the OECD Crypto Guidelines that governments with privacy agencys have done a better job resisting these calls for extended government surveillance. The problem is that the one-dimensional critique of government provided in the article (and Wired and Netly) simply doesn't allow for the possibility that one of the best ways to constrain government power is through checks and balances. That, btw, was the key to controlling government authority in the US Constitution. In the absence of a federal privacy agency, you can almost be guaranteed that administration proposals will always tip in favor of surveillance. And the irony of the opposition by some to a federal privacy agency is that it has made it easier over the last few years for NSA/FBI to push forward crypto standards and roll the Department of Commerce. What in the federal government should stop them? Absent an office to push back, they have a clear course to the President's desk. " . . . to act as a spokesperson for the Federal Government . . ." This is for the fairly obvious reason that privacy is one of the biggest issues today in the US and there is no office in government that can even say authoritatively what the position of the US is. (Note that this problem doesn't exist over on the surveillance side or with copyright protection. The government values both. So David Aaron was given the title and the authority to promote the Administration position on key escrow/key recovery, and Bruce Lehman did the same at WIPO for copyrights interests. Do you understand now what's going on?). The result is that there is not even a basis for trade discussion or government negotiation. . . . and to act on behalf of privacy interests." So that when SSA is putting PEBES on line there is some privacy evaluation. Or, to take a recent European example, the new German communications law encourages the development of anonymous payment schemes to promote on-line commerce and to protect privacy. Where did the idea come from? The privacy agency. So, I have to ask, what is it exactly in my proposal that you/Kevin/Declan object to? Is it the fact that there will be a government <something>? I can't argue against that. You're entitled to your religious beliefs, but it has nothing to do with reporting or policy. Is it the fact that Trustee, OPS will do all of this better? If you have been following my point, you'll realize now that doesn't make any sense. Or what if it costs taxpayer dollars? In 1993 I backed creation of a federal privacy agency. Total cost: $5 m. The industry balked. "Too expensive. We have to trim the federal budget." The following year they backed Digital Telephony and a $500 m authorization to make the phone system easy to wiretap. I am also getting a little tired of the myth of the small town where everyone knew everything about everyone else and that there was no privacy. First off, this myth runs directly contrary to another, better description of American society -- the unexplored frontier. Where exactly did all those frontiersmen come from? The answer is the small town. People were constantly picking up and moving, building new homes, and establishing new identities. Many people born in these small towns left and went to school, joined the military, started businesses, moved to the city. Mobility, more than any other characteristic, is central to the American experience. Read Tocqueville. Civic association was and is constantly formed and reformed. Finally, I do agree with Kevin that privacy is very much about social relations. In fact the tag line for the book that Phil Agre and I edited for MIT Press, "Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape" http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/book-home.tcl?isbn=026201162X begins "Privacy is the capacity to negotiate social relationships by controlling access to personal information." Privacy rules essentially establish the base lines for negotiating social relations between individuals and organizations. If you collect personal information, you take on some responsibilities. If you give up some information, you get some rights. You'll find those principles in just about every privacy law and policy in the world. Not only is this commonsense, but it has some nice benefits for an era when technology allows us to shape new forms of social relations -- we can design techniques that allow organizations and inviduals to interact without disclosure of personal information. Indeed, the web and the Net provided all of this to us, but now it could be quickly lost. I don't know what it will take to persuade some of the opinion leaders in the on-line world that law will play a critical role in protecting individual privacy in the coming years, but I'm willing to listen and learn.And I hope, whatever form this dialogue takes, we can all move beyond ideology, myth, and charicature. Marc Rotenberg. EPIC. ================================================================== Marc Rotenberg, director * +1 202 544 9240 (tel) Electronic Privacy Information Center * +1 202 547 5482 (fax) 666 Pennsylvania Ave., SE Suite 301 * rotenberg(a)epic.org Washington, DC 20003 USA + http://www.epic.org ==================================================================

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Say No To Robertson (was Say No To Christ)
by Antonomasia 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> <http://apocalypse.berkshire.net/~ifas/fw/9707/update.html#aliens> > Great Barrington, MA -- In a recent > pronouncement, television evangelist and > head of the Christian Coalition, Pat > Robertson, advocated death by stoning for > UFO enthusiasts. > Robertson used the news of the July 4th > Mars landing to promote his extreme > beliefs. > "The Bible says the Earth belongs to man, > but the heavens belong to the Lord," > Robertson said. "The earth is the LORD's and the fulness thereof;" Psalm 24:1 Administration != Ownership an idea seemingly beyond all politicians -- ############################################################## # Antonomasia ant(a)notatla.demon.co.uk # # See http://www.notatla.demon.co.uk/ # ##############################################################

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Re: The Real Bell Issue / Re: Bell, etc
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Duncan Frissell wrote: > He could have been aggressive and fought instead of wimping out. Lots of > people have faced much more serious crimes and won. It's not like Jim had > anything better to do. The fact of the matter is, none of us know what Jim knows, and what he knows is likely only what his government appointed schill has told him. I recall Vin Suprynowicz mentioning a prominent attorney contacting Bell's attorney in an effort to help, and receiving no reply. Neither do we know if Bell has merely decided that he should concede the legal ground in order to be able to pursue the issue later, on turf that suits him better. > In such cases, an aggressive show of strength of character is best. Weakness > invites oppression. We have already seen the results of Tim McVeigh wanting his government schill replaced--a big FUCK YOU. McVeigh's problem is not weakness, but lack of knowledge about the legal system and the quality of his legal representation. Unfortunately, I have no doubt that the government already has lawyers in place whose job thus far has been to gain McVeigh's trust, so that they can screw up his appeals, as well. TruthMonger

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Re: Spam-killing PGP5/ecash postage plugin Was Re: Remailer chaining plugin for Eudora
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text X-Sender: rah(a)mail.shipwright.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 18:31:17 -0400 To: e$(a)thumper.vmeng.com, mac-crypto(a)thumper.vmeng.com From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: Re: Spam-killing PGP5/ecash postage plugin Was Re: Remailer chaining plugin for Eudora Sender: <e$(a)vmeng.com> Precedence: Bulk List-Software: LetterRip 2.0 by Fog City Software, Inc. List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:requests@vmeng.com?subject=unsubscribe%20e$> List-Subscribe: <mailto:requests@vmeng.com?subject=subscribe%20e$> At 4:29 pm -0400 on 8/21/97, Somebody wrote: > Sorry, but I think e-postage is among the worst ideas I've ever heard of. I > don't think it's clear that it would eliminate spam. It might even increase > it -- I'll bet the overall costs of email are lower than for paper mail -- But the relative present cost of spam (free) is, um, siginificantly, less than it would cost with e$postage. > and it would be the death of mailing lists. Not at all. At the very least, mail from lists I'm subcribed to could come postage due. And, since I'm the person who's charging postage, sender pays, remember, I could charge free postage to my friends, like the 1000 or so in cypherpunks, or the 300 on e$ and mac-crypto. :-). There are work arounds. Face it, the world is going to specific cash settled auction pricing on internet services, and not bulk, or even probabalistic, pricing. No problem. It'll mean cheaper services in the long run, not only because someone then owns the "commons", but because efficient autonomously run cash-settled auctions are always cheaper than transfer pricing and "planning". It's like comparing the Chicago Board of Trade wheat pit, the world's most efficient wheat market, to the committee which set Soviet wheat production quotas. Notice who was selling wheat to whom in *that* scenario. :-). Reality, economic or otherwise, is not optional... Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Where people, networks and money come together: Consult Hyperion http://www.hyperion.co.uk info(a)hyperion.co.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------- Like e$? Help pay for it! See <http://www.shipwright.com/beg.html> Or, for e$/e$pam sponsorship, <mailto:rah@shipwright.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------- --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

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Re: Mathematics > NSA + GCHQ
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May wrote: >Thus, as bright as Brian Snow or Don Coppersmith or John Conway may be, the >"edge" the NSA may have once had is largely gone. Which is not to say that >they are not still a formidable technical organization, with substantial >computer resources. > >But modern crypto systems are, as we all know, based on fundamental >mathematical results ... Along this line: A few days ago we received an 8-page excerpt from "Shift Register Sequences," by Solomon W. Golomb (at USC), Holden-Day, Inc., no date, with a handwritten note: NSA has tried to suppress knowledge of this stuff. Nearly all NSA 'good' algorithms are based on this technology. IANAM, so would any of the mathematicians here give any credibility to this claim? We'll scan and put the excerpt on our Web site if worthwhile. It's composed of the book's 3 page preface and 5 pages of text and diagrams of Chapter 2 on The Shift Register as a Finite State Machine, with principal focus on de Bruijn diagrams for shift registers.

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ROTFL / Re: Socio-Economic Cults (Re: CypherPunk Cults)
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ray Arachelian wrote: > > On Thu, 21 Aug 1997, Tim G. May wrote: > > > "When all you have is a gun, everything looks like a target." > > > > Tim G. May > > When all you have are arrest warrants, everyone looks like a drug dealer. > :) "When all you have is spam, everyone looks like Tim C. May." - Dimitri Vulis, KOTM

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heart
by Zooko Journeyman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A million monkeys operating under the pseudonym "Ray Arachelian <sunder(a)sundernet.com>" typed: > > Meethinks (not speaking for Tim) that years under a fascist natzi-like > regime bent on ripping out all out freedoms one by one and confiscating > all things threatening to it would cause any awake person to lose any > compassion for the scum that run our Freeh country. BULL SHIT. This is a cop-out, used by emotionally stunted men to excuse themselves from their solemn responsibility to ethically justify their own actions and to deal fairly with their fellow humans. By reciting mantras to one another emphasizing their sense of having been mistreated and their sense of having _unquestionable_ moral superiority, people in this situation persuade each other to become more and more fanatical in their attitudes, less and less in touch with reality, and less and less compassionate towards the "others" who have been demonized in the process. Note that this process _always_ includes a group of other humans which are demonized in order to serve as a scapegoat and as a concrete focus for the participant's negative emotions. This process is objectively identical to the process experienced by _all_ hate groups, gangs and nationalists. You are standing in the auditorium, Louis Freeh's face is displayed on the screen, interposed with film of jackbooted thugs breaking down your door, and you are screaming wordlessly at him along with all of your brethren during the Two Minutes Hate. THAT should give you pause for thought, Ray. Listen to me: I might take up arms in the trenches next to you someday, if it comes to that. I might murder enemies or civilians in their sleep, if I were convinced that it was the only way to preserve the people and the ideals that I love. I might work to deploy ideas and technologies that threaten to induce social chaos, if I believed that those ideas and technologies were the only way to ensure the blessings of liberty and prosperity for my children. But I will _never_ take one of these actions while intoxicated by a cloud of hatred and self-righteousness. I will _never_ tell myself that I am part of a sacred jihad which absolves me of all guilt, and I will _never_ re-classify my enemies as sub-human in order to justify my treatment of them. So take a fucking BREAK man. Just get up from the computer and go for a fucking walk in the mountains and think about your fucking family and loved ones. Z

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