December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

A meme about politics of country X
by sw＠tiac.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>My hunch is that most of the Western nations are looking for policy >guidance to Washington... Now there is a scary thought. We need a counter-meme. (Mike Godwin has a fun article about how he invented a counter-meme and watched it spread, in the latest *Wired*.) My meme is: "Boy, don't immitate what *Washington* (or insert your country's capital here) is doing, those Americans (or whoever) have let their government go *totally* haywire." This requires a little support. For America it's easy (your mileage may vary): "Americans all think they're outlaws and ignore what's going on in government. They just buy lawyers and accountants and don't think about it. The people in Washington get no feedback from the public so they watch TV for ideas. Bad cop shows, mostly." I think it works best if you only talk about one country this way in any given context. If two people use the same meme about different countries in the same context, they can say, "Is it that way *there*, too? Oh, my." --Steve - - - - - - - - - - Steve Witham's .sig contains four a's, one b, two c's, two d's, twenty six e's, six f's, two g's, three h's, ten i's, one j, one k, two l's, two m's, twenty n's, seventeen o's, one p, one q, five r's, twenty nine s's, twenty-one t's, four u's, six v's, twelve w's, four x's, five y's, and one z.

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Re: Virtual assasins and lethal rema
by TJHARDIN＠delphi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adam is absolutely right. A somewhat similar case comes to mind that happened a few years back. Remember the SOF contract cases? Ads for "high risk employment" were placed in SOF by hired killers & employers responded to mail drops. Although not as anonymous as what we are discussing, interception of those communications did not break those cases. It was good old fashioned police work combined with mistakes on the part of employers & employees. Only after the case was pretty well solved was the method of hiring revealed (by suspects talking.) SOF paid a big civil judgement & agreed to stop running personal employment adverts. Even if a killer is so anonymous that she can't be linked to a given crime by the employer who will talk 99.9% of the time any pressure is applied, she must still continue to accept various contracts. The police would then set up one of their stings & "hire" her anonymously for another job & snatch the killer up when she attempts to fullfill this contract. Likewise, the very first offer of employment may well be of this sort. All of this presupposes that there are still some police around, which I kinda hope they aren't. They have rarely been around when I needed them & with all the moraline addicts they have to fix they don't have time for real crimes against person & property anymore. tjh pgp261 available

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Re: On the crime bill and remailers
by nobody＠kaiwan.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: Black Unicorn <unicorn(a)access.digex.net> >Subject: Re: On the crime bill and remailers > >Anonymous must be a Baker & Botts associate. Now that's funny. >> 1) The act does not make it a per se offense to have a remailer. Below it is asked whether this is assertion or assumption. Neither. It is obvious. If the act wished to make running a remailer a per se offense it would simply say so. It doesn't say anything like that. [...much deleted. Time preses and this is unpaid...e$ anyone?...] > >Instead you might ask how the statute will be read in the context of the >differing language between the investigation threshold requirement and >the definition of offense. Why would one mention intent so explicitly >and the other ignore it? Did congress anticipate the difficulty of >showing intent in this type of prosecution and structure the act >accordingly? This would be my argument as a prosecuter. This argument is not frivolous. But I doubt it would work, particularly since the counterweight is constitutional due process. > >> 3b) Query: why would it be a violation of due process to >> have a ban on unknowingly aiding terrorists in the manner Mr. Unicorn >> wishes to read the satute? > >Ah, but the counter to this arguement (obviously structured well into the >statute) is that there will never be any investigation into the offense >without resonable facts to suggest intent. (This is the killjoy to the >due process arguement.) This won't work either. First, it is not "obviously structured well into the" badly drafted statute. Second, a limit on investigations does not in this world of police and prosecutorial discretion operate as a meaningful, or even mesurable, limit on prosecutions. Suppose the police get information in the course of a separeate investigation? Suppose they are following Carlos and see him go into your resturant? [...] > >You rely on the construction tending to constitutionality here, but it is >equally valid to construct the statute as meeting the due process >requirement via the investagatory intent requirement. This was my entire I disagree completely. See above. >point. Given the difference in the requirements between allowing >investigation and definition of offense, there is a basic imbalance in >the act. Why? Accident, poor drafting? Intent? Neither. A guess, and only that: the investigation limit (which I would argue is uneforceable) is intended as a signal to cops/sop to civil libertarrians that the act should not start witch hunts. > >> N.B. these problems could be cured, and due process observed, by finding a >> duty to make enquiry or imputing a negligence standard of some sort, but >> we do not see any hint of this in the statute. > >Exactly. So why are they not? Why is this never mentioned. I can only stupid drafters is the most likely explanation >believe that the structure of the statute is intended to provide this >arguement as a loophole. I'm not paranoid enough to want to claim that >this is to peg remailer operators specifically, (duh) but what are the >implications for a very soft offense definition in a federal crime bill? Standard operating procedure these days. Hmmm...maybe a literal-minded court is not so bad? [...] >> Ratzlaf v. United States, >> 114 S.Ct. 655 (1994) [summary quoted below], in which the Supreme >> Court imputed a scienter requirement into a money laundering >> statute which on its face required no such scienter at all. > >I have not had time to look at 31 USC 5324(3) in detail with reference to >this problem. Nor have I looked at the case. At first glance it looks >promising, but I remain a skeptic. It is too tempting to use the >language in the investigatory intent requirement to dismiss the >arguements you make. > I disagree. Intent from investigation won't cure the due process problem. Intent -- at a minimum in the sense of knowingly committing the act of aiding a terrorist, not necessarily in the sense of knowing that it is illegal to do so -- must be read into the offence itself. Only a very, very clear statutory command to the contrary would suffice to avoid this reading -- and then we have pretty much created a per se offense of running an open remailer since it is impossible to know who you are dealing with. I might add that I believe it would be a violation of the First Amendment to make running a remailer a per se offense, but that's not required for the argument [...] > >> //QUOTING-- >> SYLLABUS: > >> time it is called into play. Because currency structuring is not >> inevitably nefarious, this Court is unpersuaded by the United >> States' argument that structuring is so obviously "evil" or >> inherently "bad" that the "willfulness" requirement is satisfied >> irrespective of the defendant's knowledge of the illegality of >> structuring. > >In any event, this is the real key here. What do you think a judge will >find encrypted remailing rates on the "nefarious" scale? In context I >think it will be quite harsh. Especially given the very nature of the Given the importance of money laundering to drug deals, and the 1st Amendment aspect of remailing, I rate it at least a tie or better. [...] Since we are now being civil, I should note that the Ratzlaf case has been criticized by almost every commentator as wrongly -- even insanely -- decided, and I tend to agree with the critiques. Nevertheless, the decision is of a piece with other odd, hyper literal, statutory construction cases in the past two years and the odds are it will be followed. SOLONg

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Re: Scienter and all that stuff
by chen＠intuit.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> In article <9409201859.AA00254(a)doom.intuit.com>, > Mark Chen <chen(a)intuit.com> wrote: > >> The facts and the law only matter when the government doesn't have > >> a hard on for you. If the government wants to get you [and, perhaps, > >> if you're not a millionaire "sports figure"] it will get you. The > >> crime bill just makes the task a bit easier. > > > >This is quite accurate. Howard Zinn makes the same point in > >_Declarations of Independence_. > > Where does Steve Jackson fit into this theory? > > I don't think it's nearly as black & white as you suggest: Our systems > are not monolithic and some consitutional and democratic principles do > still have some sway. Noam Chomsky discusses this when he talks about > reasons for optimism. > > Which is not to belittle the orginal point that we have reason to be > paranoid: it's just to say that we don't have total justification for > despair, either. Yes, it's often easy to identify a single piece of the overall dynamic and use it to account for everything that happens. I'm only saying that legal guarantees are not necessarily the last word about what the government can and can't do to you. Chomsky's optimism (as you know) doesn't stem so much from a faith that our legal system will one day start working properly, as from a faith that people are capable of evolving - an outlook that you and I seem to share, but that many on this list don't. - Mark - -- Mark Chen chen(a)netcom.com 415/329-6913 finger for PGP public key D4 99 54 2A 98 B1 48 0C CF 95 A5 B0 6E E0 1E 1D

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Scienter and all that stuff
by TOMJEFFERSON＠delphi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Re. "Scienter" and all that stuff. Not being handicapped by a legal education, let me tell you how I believe it really is: The facts and the law only matter when the government doesn't have a hard on for you. If the government wants to get you [and, perhaps, if you're not a millionaire "sports figure"] it will get you. The crime bill just makes the task a bit easier. Example 1: Branch Davidians were sentenced to long prison terms for possessing weapons during commission of a crime, even though they were acquitted of the crime they were accused of committing while being in possession of the weapons. Example 2: The jury brought in the "wrong" verdict for the L.A. cops who beat Rodney King, so the feds just stepped in and tried 'em again. The constitutional prohibition against trying people twice for the same crime didn't bother the feds a bit. I know, I know, they were convicted of "violating the civil rights of". What's the difference? Pardon me for my lack of respect for the system. It went out the window when a bunch of drug cops broke into my 71 year old father's apartment by mistake and beat him unconscious for objecting. Outside of F. Lee Bailey's circle, cops and courts can basically do what they want, ignore your protests, and *get away with it*. The only difference between a "crip" and a cop is the color of the uniform.

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Re: (fwd) "Will You Be a Terrorist?"
by Alex de Joode 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In article <199409201054.AA01140(a)panix.com> DFC did write: : >(In this interpretation, the remailers that many of us have talked : >about, designed, written software, run on our systems, etc., could be : >considered to be part of a conspiracy, should Bidzos, Mykotronx, : >ClariNet, the Feds, etc., choose to focus on remailers as "a : >continuing criminal enterprise.") : But we designed and deployed the remailers not as part of a criminal : enterprise but in an attempt to *generally* protect privacy. We may also : have wanted to weaken some of the control measures inherent in the TCP/IP : protocols. : No US Attorney is going to be interested in the sort of messy political case : that would be involved in remailer prosecutions. Please keep in mind that the US jurisdiction doen't cover the whole earth. (There is life outside the US) -- ____ Alex de Joode <usura(a)xs4all.nl> \ /__ =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- \/ / "It's dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." \/ --Voltaire --finger usura(a)xs4all.nl for PGPpublicKEY--

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HTTP authentication efforts
by paul＠hawksbill.sprintmrn.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Howdy guys 'n gals. As much as I'd love to rant about Detweiler getting an account on Colorado Supernet, I must put aside my insidious remarks for the time being. Does anyone know, on the off-chance, who is currently working on HTTP authentication processes for web browsing and Mosiac? Pointers appreciated. _______________________________________________________________________________ Paul Ferguson US Sprint Managed Network Engineering tel: 703.904.2437 Herndon, Virginia USA internet: paul(a)hawk.sprintmrn.com

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Re: Scienter and all that stuff
by chen＠intuit.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

James Donald writes; > L. Todd Masco writes > > I don't think it's nearly as black & white as you suggest: Our systems > > are not monolithic and some consitutional and democratic principles do > > still have some sway. Noam Chomsky discusses this when he talks about > > reasons for optimism. > > Of course Noam Chomsky is optimistic - he favors limitless and absolute > state power and the forcible and violent silencing of all those who > deviate from political correctness. > > If I was campaigning to make a the US a totalitarian terrorist > state, I would be full of optimism. Before this gets out of hand (which it certainly will), I very gently suggest that you read something which Chomsky has written before favoring us all with your opinions. -- Mark Chen chen(a)netcom.com 415/329-6913 finger for PGP public key D4 99 54 2A 98 B1 48 0C CF 95 A5 B0 6E E0 1E 1D

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Re: Scienter and all that stuff
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by jamesd(a)netcom.com (James A. Donald) on Tue, 20 Sep 3:22 PM > >Of course Noam Chomsky is optimistic - he favors >limitless and absolute state power and the forcible >and violent silencing of all those who deviate from >political correctness. > >If I was campaigning to make a the US a totalitarian >terrorist state, I would be full of optimism. I respectfully suggest that that's not what Chomsky advocates. He makes superior detailed analysis and criticism of authoritarian government by brilliantly attacking weak-willed ideologues of all political persuasions which hide under skirts of tyrants. On the contrary, his optimism, it seems to me, derives from his own hard work and original thinking not from parroting any party line. With this he is in the company of original thinkers like Karl Hess, Murrary Bookchin and others who have garnered the courage to grow beyond the simple faith of left-right comforts and conceits. Their writings have a generosity of scope and purpose that exemplify how to assess specific problems and to prescribe remedies, and thereby perhaps help us break free of the mesmerizing, melodramatic defecations of partisan politics. Or so I optimistically muse. John

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Re: Virtual assasins and lethal rema
by doug＠OpenMind.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

TJHARDIN(a)delphi.com writes: >Adam is absolutely right.... Even if a killer is so anonymous that she can't >be linked to a given crime by the employer who will talk 99.9% of the time >any pressure is applied, she must still continue to accept various >contracts. >The police would then set up one of their stings & "hire" her anonymously >for another job & snatch the killer up when she attempts to fullfill this >contract. Likewise, the very first offer of employment may well be of this >sort. Once again (and hopefully for the last time!), I reiterate that it is the person *placing* the contract who is at zero risk (except for the risk of losing their digital cash). Stings can be set up to catch the killer, but providing the person doing the hiring trusts no one but himself, there is no risk to him. To the extent that there is *any* risk to this person, the goals of crypto anarchy have not been met. This pertains to every conceivable security leak that might affect the person placing the contract. Doug ___________________________________________________________________ Doug Cutrell General Partner doug(a)OpenMind.com Open Mind, Santa Cruz ===================================================================

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