December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Respect for privacy != Re: exposure=deterence?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:27 AM 1/15/96 -0800, Rich Graves wrote: >On Sun, 14 Jan 1996, jim bell wrote: Richard Graves wrote: >However, you won't consider looking at a dissenting FAQ. Aha! Now you identify it as a "dissenting FAQ"! Let's play a little game. Let's say, for purposes of the argument, that there are people who are "pro-libertarian," "neutral", and "anti-libertarian." I know plenty of people who hardly even know what libertarianism is about, but in fact are more-or-less libertarian in philosophy. Let's call these people "neutral." But in general, people who identify themselves as "dissenters" from libertarianism (claiming they know what it is, and assuming for the purposes of the argument that they are correct about this knowledge) are fucking statists. Somehow, I think I've got you pegged correctly. >> "Proposition 187"? Isn't that from CALIFORNIA, not Pennsylvania? Your >> commentary is very confusing. > >Sorry, an old irrelevant battle. Then don't confuse people with things like that! >There was quite a row between Californian "libertarians" and >non-Californian "libertarians" about Prop 187, with those in California >saying that the illegal people were STEALING MONEY, and those outside the >state, including Reason Magazine, saying it was hypocritical at best to >use government force to deny freedom of movement, especially when neutral >studies showed that the illegal people were a net plus for society. In >effect, Reason Magazine was calling them selfish. You miss the point. (this is probably congenital.) There is a generic problem with "asking a libertarian his position on an issue." See, the question assumes how much of an opinion you want, and what assumptions you're making. I'll try to formulate a relevant analogy: Suppose you're building a new house, you have your plans, I'm your friend, and you ask me over for an opinion on how it ought to be done. On the one hand, my advice might simply be to "change the color of the paint." Or, I could say something more detailed, like, "you should add another floor." Or, finally, I could say, "I don't think you should be building a house THERE, in that low area subject to flooding, you should build it 10 feet higher, 100 yards away." Finally, I could say, "No, I don't think you should build that house AT ALL." Each of these is a form of advice. The difference is the scope of the advice. __YOU__ may only have wanted me to advise you on the color of the paint. My advice was to change EVERYTHING. Both may be quite valid and correct opinions. A third party, observing the discussion, would think that there was some sort of contradiction going on, when in reality (remember reality?!?) it is simply a matter of scope being determined. Now, proposition 187, as I _vaguely_ recall, deals with immigrants, primarily illegal immigrants, and the services a community provides them. So if you ask a libertarian, "what should we do," there are a number of separate and distinct types of advise he could give you, depending on the scope of the question. On the one hand, the natural response of an unrestrained libertarian is to say, "There should be no borders, no governments, no taxes, and no welfare, as well as no public schools, etc." And that would be correct, as far as it went. If you responded to that libertarian, "Uh, sorry, we're not interested in changing EVERYTHING; we're just asking you to decide whether or not we should get public services (paid for by tax dollars stolen from citizens by government) to people who got into the country in violation of the law," then he might provide a more limited form of advice based on this restrictive set of parameters. The important thing to remember, however, is that exactly which kind of advice he gives may be entirely dependent on how restrictive the set of parameters you've insisted that he follow. An intelligent libertarian could give a good and valid piece of advise, with the proviso that since he's being restricted in the scope of his advice, it will not necessarily be a "completely libertarian" position. This should be ASSUMED. Which means that you could ask essentially the same question of two different libertarians, and by subtle manipulation of the parameters, get what might otherwise appear to be two contradictory opinions, depending on how much latitude each is given in his advice. >Obviously, I was on the right side. Obviously, you always THINK you are on the right side. > >> >Where, exactly, do you get off disparaging my political philosophy, with >> >which you are completely unfamiliar? >> > >> >> >See the non-libertarian >> >> >FAQ, at http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html >> >> >> >> Sounds like it would be extraordinarily un-interesting. >> > >> >Good to see you're as open-minded as I thought. >> >> Well, you called it, and I quote, a "non-libertarian FAQ." Well, I know >> what a "libertarian FAQ" would generally contain, information to teach the >> uninformed about libertarianism. These FAQs are generally prepared by >> libertarians, and are often (usually?) intended to convince people to >> support the libertarian cause. >> >> But what, pray tell, is a "non-libertarian FAQ"? > >Information to teach the uninformed about libertarianism. Then you should have called it a "FAQ _for_ pre-libertarians." Or a "FAQ for those not yet informed about libertarianism." But in fact, since above you called it a "dissenting FAQ," more likely, "a FAQ intended to dissuade people from being (or thinking) in a libertarian manner." Far more informative. Which is why I said that I would consider it to be extraordinarily UN-interesting. >> And thus, as I said, I think that would be extraordinarily un-interesting. >> I've heard PLENTY of idiots try to debunk libertarian philosophy, the vast >> majority of which know so little about it as to make their attempt not only >> totally ineffective, but also counter-productive to their intention. > >How many is plenty? In 4 years on FIDOnet? Dozens. >> >I see no sequitur here. Where have I excused anyone's actions? I was >> >talking about ethics, justifiable force, >> >> Libertarians have a principle called "Non-initiation of Force/Fraud." (or >> "Non-Agression principle.") Anyone who collects taxes has AUTOMATICALLY >> initated agression. Violence against him is not a violation of any >> libertarian principle. > >Libertarians have a practice of USING CAPITAL LETTERS and RIDICULOUS JESSE >JACKSON-ESQUE RHETORIC to define anything they DISAGREE WITH as VIOLENCE >AND FRAUD, a non-falsifiable approach that leads to ludicrous conclusions. And you appear to be a fucking statist. >> > and probable cause. If you have >> >probable cause that Watergate or Whitewater has occurred, then further >> >investigation is justified. If you don't, then the customary financial >> >disclosure statements should do. >> >> You're hiding behind the rules of the GOVERNMENT. Rules written for the >> benefit of GOVERNMENT people. Violations of law by GOVERNMENT people are >> hardly ever prosecuted; Rodney King's assaulters were prosecuted only >> because somebody JUST HAPPENED to have a camcorder on at "just the right >> time." > >> >Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, but that doesn't mean you need >> >to spy on everybody. >> >> When my system is in place, we won't have to worry about that ever again. >... >> >No matter what rhetoric you use, it is not nice to respond to a tax >> ----------------------------------------^^^^^^^^ >> >> >collector COMING TO STEAL YOUR MONEY by invading his privacy. >> >> Huh? You're crazier than I thought! You would deny even the principle of >> self-defense! You're truly crazy; you're just about as far as you can >> possibly get from being a libertarian. No wonder you had so many questions >> above! "Nice" has NOTHING to do with it! > >A restaurant denying you a free lunch is the initiation of violence. Do you really believe this, or were you merely trying to misuse this as a contrary (though extremely weak) example? > If >you try to skip a debt What kind of "debt"? One that you agree to?!? > and your creditor finds you, are you then >justified by the principle of self-defense to kill him? After all, if he >pulls a gun on you first, he's the one initiating violence. Your misunderstanding of libertarianism exceeds only your misunderstanding of simple logic. >Measured response and justifiable force. Contracts and justice. When your >kid misbehaves, you spank them. When someone cuts you off on the freeway, >you flip them off. When you disagree with someone, you are supposed to >construct a logical counterargument. When someone insults you, you insult >them back. When someone pulls a gun on you, you blow their head off. > >Nobody's "stealing" "your" money. The IRS is enforcing a contract. I've signed no such "contract." I agreed to no such contract. I'm AWARE of no such contract. The "contract" or "social contract" argument is debunked repeatedly in the various libertarian-oriented political echoes. Actually, it's debunked in non- (not to be confused with "anti-") libertarian echoes too, because even if you ignore all the people who don't yet claim themselves to be libertarians, the rest of the public can't agree on exactly what this "contract" really says. The "social contract" of a liberal contradicts the "social contract" of the conservative. The "social contract" of a Republican contradicts the "social contract" of a Democrat. Even if you take a generous position and say that we owe taxes, it has been repeatedly demonstrated by media/reporter types (by visiting a number of IRS offices, presenting them with the same identical numbers, and asking them how much taxes are owed, and each office gives a DIFFERENT amount. In other words, even if we ASSUME the existence of some sort of "contract," nobody seems to be able to agree on what the terms of that "contract" are. Now, I'm not a lawyer, and I don't even play one on TV, but one thing that I do know about law is that for there to be a "contract" there is necessary to be a "meeting of the minds" about what that contract is actually for. Both (all?) parties to the contract must have the same UNDERSTANDING of the terms of the contract in order for it to be valid. Clearly that is not the case about the "social contract" statist lunatics speak of. Furthermore, in order for there to be a valid "contract" there must be CONSENT. One party cannot threaten or extort from the other, getting the other party to agree to terms that are coercive. Both parties must have the option of NOT entering into that "contract." Yet, practically the whole reason for the existence of governments is "coercion," meaning that absent some clear evidence of arms-length negotiation, it is impossible to come to a valid "contract" with the government. Like I said before, you're a fucking statist. >> Remember the following words: >> "Klaatu Burada Nikto." I'm working on a similar system. You'll >> eventually hear of it. > >You're building a giant robot? Oh my. I thought this was starting to read >like bad science fiction. Just wait. I've decided to post this to Cypherpunks. Forgive me, it's only marginally on-topic, but I think it's vital for the public to know how Richard Graves thinks.

2 1

Re: Reach out! Update 01 (CypherPurists trash this)
by Jeremy Mineweaser 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:10 AM 1/13/96 EST, Dan Bailey wrote: >Regarding the *67 feature to disable Caller ID: >This does not stop your ANI information from travelling >with your call. >A *much* better way to do this is the following: >Dial the Operator. >Ask him/her to dial the 800 number for you. > >This will result in your ANI being (000) 000-5555 >I tested this a couple months >ago using AT&T's 1-800-MY-ANI-IS service. I directly dialed >1-800-MY-ANI-IS and it read back my phone number. Then I had >the operator dial it for me and got (000) 000-5555. This >service doesn't work anymore, YMMV.

1 0

RE: Crypto anarchist getting through customs
by Kurt Buff (Volt Comp) 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To expand a bit: I don't remember if it was a lieutenant, captain, or whatever, but he passed out the questionnaire in futherance of his master's degree in something or other. One question dealt with shooting civilians who disobeyed orders to turn over their arms, even if they were owned under what would now be considered legal circumstances. Shockingly, upwards of 25% of the soldiers (Marines, actually, as I remember it, I'll check my references if anyone wants) would have no problem doing so! This in spite of the fact that officers in the armed forces (not sure about enlisted men, but I believe it's true of them as well) swear an oath to uphold the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic - and I think that under the Constitution as it is now, forcibly depriving people of their arms would probably be a reasonable basis for considering them in contravention of the Constitution, and therefore enemies of it. Kurt ---------- From: Alan Horowitz[SMTP:alanh@infi.net] Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 1996 15:20 To: attila Cc: Timothy C. May; cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Re: Crypto anarchist getting through customs The notorious questionaire to the SEALS wasn't an official action. It was one lieutenient doing an assignment for a night class. I never said that the federal government was good, or nice, or useful. Alan Horowitz alanh(a)norfolk.infi.net

1 0

Job offer for Computer Security Researcher
by bart＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Seen on ba.jobs.offered: Computer Security Research Position The Distributed Information Technologies Center at Sandia National Laboratories, in Livermore, California, is seeking a qualified candidate for the position of Senior Member of the Technical Staff in the area of computer security research. The scope of security research and development at Sandia is very broad, encompassing elements that relate to networking, hosts, and protocols. Examples include high-speed encryption, advanced firewalls, detection systems, and secure agents. The focus of the research is to provide both solutions to security issues relevant to the Laboratory as well as contributions to the security technology base needed by the National Information Infrastructure. The security research staff collaborate closely with the research groups that are involved with distributed computing and advanced networking, with the goal of providing a totally integrated solution to the information infrastructure. In addition to having the technical depth necessary to conduct extensive research projects, this Senior Staff Member will be expected to lead proposal efforts, serve as team leader for projects, and maintain active membership in national organizations that influence the direction of security research. The successful candidate will have an advanced degree in computer security or a related field. In addition, candidates will be evaluated on their demonstrated ability to formulate proposals, perform in-depth research, and report results in the form of papers and presentations. A U.S. citizenship is required for this position. Interested candidates should send their resumes to: Peter Dean, Manager Networking Research Department 8910 Sandia National Laboratories PO Box 969, MS9011 Livermore, CA 94551-0969 (510) 294-2656 pwdean(a)sandia.gov

1 0

Alta Vista, Great Stuff!
by Beethoven 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hey, I saw a message on the list about personal mail showing up in an A.V. search, and figured why not try it out and see what comes up under one of my nyms... Lo and behold, my nym corresponds with the title of a popular comic strip and an episode in a bad TV show... Crypto related? Imagine your nym is related to something common-place at the time of posting. Even though you may be well known under that nym, simple searches for that name will turn up loads of crapola, or at least some light entertainment for someone searching for oyur past posts. (It can also turn some unsuspecting people looking for the crapola onto your interests...) Yes, I know that sophisticated search engines and simple expressions can filter out most of the unwanted junk, but not all of it. Likewise filtering will let some of your posts fall through the web-crawler-cracks.

1 0

Re: new web security product
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:22 PM 1/16/96 +0000, you wrote: >Perry Metzger wrote: >> I don't think its going to fly. No one wants to pay for an unneeded >> $100 piece of hardware to encrypt the same credit card over and over >> again, when a nearly zero marginal cost piece of software can do the >> same thing. > >I agree with Perry. Hardware encryption does add a layer of security >not normally found in software, but it is hardware. > >Shoot, I don't even have a 28.8 modem yet, why would I want a black >box that supposedly does something with my Credit Cards? This is not something that will wind up being used by the average person at home. It will be used by the small businessman/woman who needs to do some credit card transactions on-line. The media is so hyped on this "credit card on the net" train of thought that any credit card encryption scheme will be presented as if it is for the home user. Just another case of the media not understanding the technology they are reporting on... Alan Olsen -- alano(a)teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction `finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ "Is the operating system half NT or half full?"

1 0

Re: Crypto anarchist getting through customs
by pcw＠access.digex.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 1:38 PM 1/15/96, Timothy C. May wrote: >Frequent travellers to Europe will no doubt confirm what I'm saying. I >travelled to dozens of countries in Europe a while back, and never was >checked at any borders, save for a quick glance at my passport. > While this is generally true, I do remember that I decided to take an overnight ferry/train ride between Paris and London to save money by spending one less night on the hotel. I didn't get seasick, but I was very disheveled when I got off the boat. The hours of 3 to 6 am were spent in the ferry's duty-free shop because I was bored and I couldn't sleep. The British customs guy pulled me over and started searching my bags and questioning me. It went something like this: "Are you aware of the duty-free restrictions?" "Yes. You can bring in up to four liters of wine and one liter of hard liquor. Or you can use your one liter alotment of hard liquor on wine and bring in a five liter jug. Cigarettes must be limited to..........." "Okay, you can go on."

1 0

Re: Eggs at Customs (fwd)
by tallpaul＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Jan 15, 1996 16:30:29, 'Rich Graves <llurch(a)networking.stanford.edu>' wrote: >On Mon, 15 Jan 1996, Lindsay Haisley wrote: > >> There has (fortunately!) been a big crackdown recently on the illegal pet >> bird import trade,... >> > >And here I thought it was because eggs were a good medium for >transporting biotoxins. > >I've been hanging out with you conspiracy freaks too much :-) > >-rich > You mean you actually believe the Jesuit/Masonic/ cover story about pet birds!! How naive can you get!!! -- tallpaul

2 1

Re: Need confirmation of Win95 password encryption back door
by gorkab＠sanchez.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A friend and I were working on an exploit of this. It is true. We were not working on a grepper, but we found the offset where the passwords reside and were going to dump them into a dialog box. If you are planning to exploit this, we will stop our previous efforts. ---------- From: Rich Graves[SMTP:llurch@networking.stanford.edu] Sent: Monday, January 15, 1996 5:20 PM To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Cc: frank(a)funcom.no; pgut01(a)cs.auckland.ac.nz Subject: Need confirmation of Win95 password encryption back door -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- A Major Media Outlet requires confirmation that Windows 95, to facilitate its automatic reconnect feature for sleeping laptops and temporary network outages, caches all network passwords (NetWare, NT, UNIX running Samba, SLIP/PPP dialup) in unprotected memory in clear text, whether you've disabled persistent "password caching" to disk and applied the December 14th 128-bit RC4 .PWL patch, or not. There seems to be no way to turn this off. The idea, of course, is that a simple trojan horse could do whatever it wanted with this information. We know that this vulnerability exists in Windows for Workgroups, and Peter wrote a little demo (on hackmsoft page below, without source), but the APIs appear to have changed in Win95. So, anyone have Win95 and some time to kill, or can anyone recommend a good DOS/Windows RAM grepper? - -rich(a)c2.org http://www.c2.org/hacknmsoft/ $ Mon Jan 15 22:17:10 PST 1996 $ $ From llurch(a)networking.stanford.edu to cypherpunks(a)toad.com $ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMPtDLo3DXUbM57SdAQEN7QP+J6Gmk6m8dv3X96SKZciI/L7DM04bDSoi HZa+dIoajAiRrfG9oSNcIYbVDDs67qwCSKGFg9hc5K3x99nhbq3Aw2mio62YQj+2 K62pBT9hQLe4dv8AMhLtIqyG4ZztYy+dDjGzsaUIkBUZKo5//Eh8c81xXLQrqXtk RFV+xkXBgww= =12rk -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ---------- Brian Gorka Key fingerprint = ED 7D 78 7E 95 E8 05 01 27 01 A1 74 FA 4B 86 53

1 0

Spiderspace
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've been thinking a lot about the problems and opportunities that are coming up as more and more "spiders" (Web searchers, crawlers) are indexing directories and files on systems they can find. For the sake of this post, the files and whatnot these spiders and super-spiders can hit constitute a universe I'll call "spiderspace," as it semi-euphoniously matches cyberspace and cypherspace. Two things caused me to think more intensely abou this: 1. At the Saturday Cypherpunks physical meeting, Marianne Mueller (I think) was telling me about an experience where an old letter she'd written to someone showed up in an Alta Vista search. A personal letter, that is. How this happened was that the letter to her friend was buried several subdirectories deep in a directory he made accessible to the outside world. Presto, Alta Vista found it, indexed it, and made it keyword-searchable! (Humans are pretty bad at doing such meticulous file prep work, but all-seeing spiders are very good at seeing everything.) 2. Someone on the Cyberia-l list, Mike Godwin in fact, asked if anyone had a particular post he'd written last summer, a post he'd neglected to save but that he needed. I had not kept that post, according to my own archives, but I decided to see what Alta Vista might turn up. (The Cyberia-l list is not officially archived, and I believe archives of it are discouraged by the list owner, for various reasons especially worrisome to lawyers and law professors!) Sure enough, a search of "Cyberia-l" in Alta Vista showed all sorts of hits, including what appeared to be several _private archives_ of parts of the traffic. (By "private" I mean in the sense that they were someone's personal archives, and not necessarily complete or even semi-officially sanctioned.) And a search of "Cyberia-l AND Godwin AND parental AND Ferber" (some of the keywords in the post he knew he was looking for) produced two hits, most probably of the post he was seeking. (They were on a Kent Law School archive site that, I believe, is no longer accessible to the outside...the Alta Vista spiders must have gotten to it and indexed it before the site was made less accessible...just a thought.) This fits with the point made above, that increasing numbers of odd things--letters, love letters, resumes, job applications, even things like PGP passwords!--will likely show up by accident in spiderspace. I've started to look for things like PGP files laying around buried in subdirectories. I can imagine attacks based on this. Declan McCullagh, on the Cyberia-l list, followed up to my post on this topic by noting that things will really get interesting when the internal file systems of many sites are made searchable, such as with the Andrew File System (AFS) at CMU and elsewhere. Apparently most users make their directories accessible to others. Implications for Cypherpunks? First, an alert for you to be very careful about what you make accessible to the outside world. It's no longer just a matter of people taking the time to rummage through your subdirectories, it's now trivial to find things with the new Web search engines. Second, what is out there in spiderspace is incredibly useful for building dossiers, for compiling correlations, and for doing competitive analyses. Third, more and more kinds of files are going into spiderspace. This may include files compiled by others, such as files containing Web accesses! (All it takes is for someone to keep a record of site accesses, subscriptions, etc., and then put record in a searchable place: it then becomes trivial to search on a name and find out interesting things.) Fourth...left to your imagination. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

2 1