December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: questions about bits and bytes [NOISE]
by JonWienke＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In a message dated 96-04-11 20:26:44 EDT, jeffb(a)sware.com writes: >[I told myself I was going to stay out of this, but Jim Bell's dogmatic >stance irks me... ] Here's a citation from "Portability of C Programs >and the Unix System" by S.C. Johnson and D.M. Ritchie (yes, that Richie) >in the Bell System Technical Journal volume 57, Number 6, July-August 1978. Citing sources from 1978 in the computing field is a little like using dictionaries from the 1800's to dictate modern English usage. My desktop machine has as much computing power as some colleges had during that era. We've come a long way, baby! Yes, in the past, the term "byte" applied to entities other than 8 bits, but "8 bits" IS the commonly accepted, standard meaning of "byte" now, in the present. The fact that the meaning and usage of words can change over time is not relevant to current meaning and usage. Anyone who wishes to dispute this should study the etymology of the word "gay." Jonathan Wienke

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Re: Digital Cash Escrow
by jf_avon＠citenet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To: Cypherpunks(a)toad.com from: jf_avon(a)citenet.net date: 11 Avril 96 ======================================= John Deters <jad(a)dsddhc.com> wrote: >ObOtherListComplaint (doesn't everyone?): Has anyone suffered ill-effects >by having their mail program filter Jim Bell's postings? Does anyone, especially in Canada, ever noticed that them or their local net friends had their snail mail opened? A friend of mine has his regularly opened; he complained to Canada Post three times, but it stills goes on AFAIK. He is pissed off at me, convinced that the forwarding of Jim Bell's AP related articles is what justified the mail opening. Actually, he does not even reply to my e-mails anymore. We used to be great friends... Neither of us ever engaged in any subversive activities or are involved in illegal actions. It seems that FUD got him. ...sigh... He even refused to *touch* PGP. He is a professionnal programmer, in C++, win, and OS-2. Can you believe it?!? Any comments? JFA -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i iQEVAwUBMW1pKsiycyXFit0NAQG3Rwf+PUFu0geKEXOEYktp5MP6ao4Yb0CfPSWA dbnZ4R4kJsLm7jQ8tNXdo8KsLRhL7+Qe3NNfAKvTQVmvrN45QImyKk+fZd77Cady TLKuNEYCx1FCrIpLewM13sLj4twCcNpvCIJNRsVV8Q3xcyWkfNJ6PSAakDa2POnD spPnEz0Ptepw58KXoM0G36lE6fJnfv83PEeaogjE+h8Gsxf1uzhK1ZAQxpB6QHLP 4cizjFyKNfEZIVKK4kXebWr7wlalE87XTC6wWpXLQ8XuNYtbzKWG+wB747IpbN2a ijKDBf9fXAZRB/qVQUdF/toEWJ/+Vg6LniFgmYq1EQqToUiPMRT48A== =NnBW -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Protocols at the Point of a Gun
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There are serious technical problems with the suggestion that labelling packets as "Adult" or "Child" using IP options and filtering at ISPs for censorship. IP works on a per-machine basis (technically, a per-network-interface basis, though for most client machines that's the same thing.) That means that a web or nntp server including some "Adult" material and some "Child" material either needs a way for an application process to communicate this to the network drivers, or needs to label all packets as "Adult" to avoid the politically incorrect risk of mislabelling a packet as "Child" when it's not. The standard TCP/IP API programming interface software on Windows, Mac, and Unix machines doesn't provide for applications to _tell_ the network drivers about IP options, so even if IPng had censorship features added, the applications couldn't use it. (There are a few military multi-level security versions of Unix that give you more flexibility for this sort of thing, but they tend to provide mandatory security so you _can't_ send a packet marked "UNCLASSIFIED" from a "TOP SECRET" session.) Another problem is that it only addresses single-user client machines, rather than multi-user operating systems such as Linux, which has a million or so users out there. The model works fine when you treat a PC as a fancy version of a dumb terminal, but a machine shared by multiple users (whether many at one time, or one at a time) uses a single connection to support all of them - that means you can't have censored material available to the child and uncensored material available to the parent unless the networking software can pass the censorship labels on to the application program - but again, the standard operating system interfaces (developed over many years by thousands of The Free World's finest developers :-) don't have a way to implement it, because it was never a design goal. Trying to implement censored sessions at a transport level instead has its own problems. First of all, TCP provides reliable sessions; censoring packets based on IP labels in the middle of a transaction means that TCP will retransmit until the packet gets through or it gives up and drops the connection, so any "Adult" packets would dump a Registered Child out of the browser, even if they were unintentional (e.g. from an Adult who labels all packets "Adult" to avoid being liable for mistakes, or packets from Europe that were default-labelled by a service provider to avoid having to read them all, or from the Library of Congress Online Edition if the Librarian labels each packet correctly.) On the other hand, UDP packet exchange, which doesn't use sessions, would require validating the user's ID and authorization on each packet. Furthermore, if the censorship information is carried at the transport level, or at a higher level (i.e. headers in the message itself), the only way the ISP's routers, which work at the IP level, can censor packets is to perform the equivalent of the Post Office steaming open envelopes before delivering them to your house, and refusing to deliver them if there's a child living in the house and the letter either contains a bad word or is written in a language the Post Office doesn't understand, such as Finnish or Japanese or PGP. At 04:03 PM 4/10/96 -0700, Lucky Green wrote: >At 9:48 4/10/96, Duncan Frissell wrote: >>We know that governments would like to impose things like the Simple >>Tax Transfer Protocol on the Net as well as Is A Person (and Is A Minor) >>Protocols. > >There is one thing about the proposed minor flag addition to IP that I >don't understand. [No, I am not surprised by this. Mandatory authorization >to establish a connection and an "Internet Driver License", probably in the >form or a smart card are coming]. >If my computer creates the IP packet, what is there to prevent me from >modifying the value of the "Minor/Adult" flag at my leisure? If you create outgoing packets that are labelled "Minor", and contain "Restricted to Government-Certified Adults Only, and No Felons or Foreigners Allowed" material, you can get busted for it. So you have to either restrict all your outgoing packets to be labelled "RtG-C Adults O,aNFoFA", or else make sure all the material you transmit passes the "Government-Approved-for-Minors, Foreigners, and Victorian ladies" filter. On the other hand, if you don't log in to your ISP with a "government-certified adult, non-felon, non-foreigner, politically stable, not-a-Commie-or-Jew" id, it'll block any packets not approved for you. Any news or web server will also have refuse to send any "Adult"-labelled material to you if the requests arrived on a "Kid"-labelled connection - this means that either the server machine will have to only carry Kid-approved traffic, or only talk to Adults, or add an "Adult" label to all outgoing packets whether marked "Kid" or not, or else it will have to break protocol boundaries by passing IP-layer information up to the application. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215

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Re: Tense visions of future imperfect
by jf_avon＠citenet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >What the bank does is keep a list of all spent serial numbers, not all >issued ones (since it doesn't know those). That way it can detect double >spending. Correct me if I'm wrong: It means that the weakest point of the digital cash chain is the server. If the server's database is tampered with, or lost, then, the double-spending can be done (in case of loss, if ever the server is put back online) Does that means that for all practical purposes, a server should be run from a vault with security comparable to a big money repository? JFA -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i iQEVAwUBMW1dnsiycyXFit0NAQFpPQf6A/IvZWumneiGU1IERxbs/udunwFWHWVG p+rbAK9h7bDYG+6NcFCIJp97n4MGfH8/+bbPLV4eIuv+5eyTKRkB+1IdOkVNUhEq LGcKGN1iAScQvLxj+cM/3nthAhDxdaMBXmyaylnphgqh9slKJg7FppWpBfLI56nt YYZJ69ThyYMVCN/g9o5G0zbzYefKFOzV/0lbxaGUn0G/KoKbURMut1NlMdfmhmqw BbTd50ae8LVWLjxlVs5Gi5Ui9Loa2DKlSR5PIp1vlFDSk1UBAjTbbK8fSKVhkEFn thI+YXLifA73LOJNdBWwvneTWyy+kdVxHBSDVFEXH2HMsR4LYeHF1g== =JxPP -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Know Your Net.Enemies Project
by tallpaul＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Apr 10, 1996 23:47:54, '"Declan B. McCullagh" <declan+(a)CMU.EDU>' wrote: >Would anyone be interested in collaborating on a "Know Your Net Enemies" >project? Feel free to use my writings on the CyberAngels. --tallpaul

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Mystery of the unsuvscrives: SOLVED?
by Black Unicorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On replying to one of the many recent unsubscrivers I got this in return: A creative spam attack? ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996 11:34:53 +0100 From: Batman <batman(a)infomaniak.ch> To: Black Unicorn <unicorn(a)schloss.li> Subject: Re: your mail On Thu, 11 Apr 1996, Black Unicorn wrote: > On Thu, 11 Apr 1996, Batman wrote: > > > Please PUT me OUT of YOUR cypherpunks AND other MAIL-LISTS > > > > Thankx > > Please LEARN to UNSUBSCRIBE from MAILING lists and OTHER THINGS. > > --- > My preferred and soon to be permanent e-mail address:unicorn@schloss.li > "In fact, had Bancroft not existed, potestas scientiae in usu est > Franklin might have had to invent him." in nihilum nil posse reverti > 00B9289C28DC0E55 E16D5378B81E1C96 - Finger for Current Key Information > > I don't think you're the mail-list admin, so, don't send me your advices. I've been flooded and put in that shit mail-list without my permission. GET OUT

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Re: GPS-based authentication
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:33 AM 4/11/96 -6, Peter Trei wrote: >Ms Denning, Mr. MacDoran > >I've read with interest your proposed GPS-based authentication >mechanism (it was posted to the cypherpunks mailing list). Can you >confirm that you wrote this? Some people on the list think it may be >a forgery. > >The participants of the list have noted some apparent vulnerabilities >in the system, and I am curious as to how you address them. If you >respond to me and give permission, I'll forward your response to the >list. > >The problems are two-fold: > >1. The system is easily spoofed. >2. It leaks sensitive location data. It should occur to all of us that what you (and we) call "problems" are, to government sympathizers, actually FEATURES. Identifying people's locations is probably going to be considered enormously important to the government (if it lasts that long). And since the government runs all the GPS transmitters, and can presumably modulate the S/A function any way it wishes, it has a leg up on all of us who have to depend on the integrity of the system. There is also the possibility of them jamming the system locally to either deny the user the ability to make the identification system work and thus deny access, or detect the location of the user by subtly modulating the local signal in such a way as to leak through the otherwise-secure system. (If we trust it that far, which I don't.)

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Australia cracking down on the internet?!?!
by an366601＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

X-Anonymously-To: an366601 Reply-To: an578849(a)anon.penet.fi Thank you CRAM for your informative and interesting peices aznd snippets from the American Press. Out here in the land of Oz, the state governements are whipping up a frenzy of legislation, including laws prohibiting the uploading or downloading of any material that may be offensive to minors. Penalty: $25000 and/or 1 year in jail. The push is on to make ISPs the defacto publishers and censors of all material that passes through them. And as always its the child pronography thing that predominates the discussion. It is unfortunate that at the same time the internet is booming, there is a huge peadophile hunt going on here in Sydney (turns out the peodophiles have powerfull allies amongst the policians and judges, no surprises there). People open their newspapers and see "Peadophiles use internet" and their minds shut like steel doors. Keep up the good work. --****ATTENTION****--****ATTENTION****--****ATTENTION****--***ATTENTION*** Your e-mail reply to this message WILL be *automatically* ANONYMIZED. Please, report inappropriate use to abuse(a)anon.penet.fi For information (incl. non-anon reply) write to help(a)anon.penet.fi If you have any problems, address them to admin(a)anon.penet.fi

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Re: questions about bits and bytes [NOISE]
by Mark J. Reed 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

JonWienke(a)aol.com writes: \ In a message dated 96-04-11 20:26:44 EDT, jeffb(a)sware.com writes: \ Citing sources from 1978 in the computing field is a little like using \ dictionaries from the 1800's to dictate modern English usage. My desktop \ machine has as much computing power as some colleges had during that era. \ We've come a long way, baby! Yes, in the past, the term "byte" applied to \ entities other than 8 bits, but "8 bits" IS the commonly accepted, standard \ meaning of "byte" now, in the present. The fact that the meaning and usage \ of words can change over time is not relevant to current meaning and usage. \ Anyone who wishes to dispute this should study the etymology of the word \ "gay." \ \ Jonathan Wienke \ No, no. What started this whole discussion was someone claiming that bytes have ALWAYS been 8 bits. That was the argument. NO-ONE is claiming that byte doesn't mean 8 bits NOW. I think we have now established that, yes, 'byte' is synonymous with 'octet' in the modern computer era, and no, this was not always the case. Now can we move on to other matters? -- Mark J. Reed Email: mark_reed(a)sware.com - Voice: +1 404 315 6296 x158 - Fax: +1 404 315 6407 Hewlett-Packard Co. / 2957 Clairmont Rd Suite 220 / Atlanta GA 30329-1647 E-Mail Privacy by SecureMail. Visit URL:http://www.secureware.com/ for details. -- Mark J. Reed Email: mark_reed(a)sware.com - Voice: +1 404 315 6296 x158 - Fax: +1 404 315 6407 Hewlett-Packard Co. / 2957 Clairmont Rd Suite 220 / Atlanta GA 30329-1647 E-Mail Privacy by SecureMail. Visit URL:http://www.secureware.com/ for details.

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Re: Protocols at the Point of a Gun
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

For information on the "Internet Philosophy" there is a IETF draft that might be of interest at: ftp://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-iab-principles-02.txt ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Frantz | The CDA means | Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 | lost jobs and | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | dead teenagers | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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