December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

"A Closer Look"
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

April 22, 1996 Electronic Buyers News, Page 2. A Closer Look column, by Jack Robertson "bigbrother.com" Orwell would have loved it. National tyrants are helpless to control the free flow of information within their borders. And if they do succeed in closing down ramps to the global data superhighway, their economies crumble. Not that some folks aren't trying to rein in the Internet. Strong-arm governments--including China, Vietnam, Singapore, and some African military dictatorships--want to control domestic access to the Net. Even democracies such as Germany want to censor the Web, and the European Union is debating regulation of it. The United States itself could end up trying to control the Net in well-intentioned but dubious efforts to censor content deemed obscene. The censor's club could be provided unwittingly by the movie industry and by consumer-electronics manufacturers. Their rigid copyright protection plan for DVD would require that every computer I/O interface be designed to block out the copying of any copyrighted motion picture. Once in place, others could sieze the I/O block to bar access to any content thought to be objectionable. Uncle Sam could also end up giving ammunition to Internet censors in a yet-to-be-released proposal to the G-7 economic powers pertaining to copyright protection on the Internet. The Clinton administration will submit the plan to the next G-7 conference in Lyon, France, in late June. The administration's earlier copyright plan for the U.S. National Information Infrastructure has stirred plenty of controversy in th is country over its potential shackling of the free flow of information. So far, the unruly and ubiquitous Internet has defied almost all restraints. Governments, businesses, politically correct factions can't get their arms around this amorphous giant. Stalin could jam out the BBC and the Voice of America. Iran can bar newspapers and periodicals. Singapore can threaten judicial to try to keep the press in line. But how do you cordon off the Web? Some regimes envision their own national gateways to control Net traffic acrosss their borders. Fat chance. Even if police states could build an Internet firewall, it would take the resources of a National Security Agency to monitor the traffic and ferret out noxious communications. In a first thrust to control electronic data, China is regulating all foreign news services through its Xinhua News Agency. That way, Big Brother can lower the boom wherever a central node can be hit. But the anarchical Internet has no central control points--In fact, very little control at all. A grassroots paradigm, the Net is a totally free democratic voice. Like it or not, we need to keep it that way. [end of article.]

1 0

Re: The Joy of Java
by mccoy＠communities.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Perry writes: > Scott Brickner writes: > > True. It's still lacking a couple of (non-language) features. The > > most important (and most cpunks relevant) is a mechanism to pay people > > to run programs for you. This sort of thing is dangerous without a > > safe environment. This is not as far away as you might think. Trust me... :) > You can do that safely without making it dangerous for your machine. I > know how I would build a restricted execution environment for such > markets. However, Java is 1) too slow, since if you are selling > rendering cycles or such you don't want to be running an interpreter, > 2) insufficently safe, and 3) paradoxically, insufficiently powerful > for the sort of code you would want to run in such an environment. Wow, three incorrect assumption in a single sentence, another hat-trick for Perry. Speed of execution is not a major problem given JIT compiler and interpreter improvements; this has been broadcast far and wide on the net so your presumed ignorance of this is a bit hard to believe. Additionally, if you are buying cycles off the net you can set things up to run in parallel and accomplish more than you ever could without the ability. To farm out code. This is absolutely trivial when it comes to tasks which are inherently easy to break into chunks which can be run in this fashion (like rendering and ray-tracing, etc.) As far as safety goes there are a lot of people working on this problem and for tasks of this type it is not as difficult as you assume. As far as it being insufficiently powerful for running distributed computation and cycle serving I know know for a fact that this is not the case. Rather than trying (and often failing) to prove that unsolvable problems exist in Java why don't you present the net with an alternative that does not suffer from these limitations. jim

2 1

Re: US law - World Law - Secret Banking
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"unicorn(a)schloss.li" "Black Unicorn" 26-APR-1996 01:19:03.47 >What has consistently alarmed me is the United States trend of extending >her own moral and ethical standards world wide. Granted the United States >is the foremost world economic power, but the power to control markets and >the political power to invade the sovereignty of other states are two >distinct issues. The United States is, in one form or another, attempting >to homogonize the legal systems of the world to comply with her own >concept of what is "right" or "fair." This is disturbing. I have no problems with extending US sovereignty where it will improve civil liberties. However, about the only place where it appears to do so is going against child labor. Otherwise, every action of the US government in this regard appears to have been to decrease civil liberties in other countries (and, indirectly, in the United States). >By no means are the states of the world united on the meaning of >anti-trust, the appropriate levels of regulation therein, or the manner in >which to enforce these segments of the law. That the United States should >seek to impose her own will and concepts on foreign states strikes me as >the antithesis of this once noble power's call, indeed the central focus >of her foreign policy, for the self determination of all nation states. Well, I wouldn't say that the self-determination of nation states is the important part. Indeed, most of the cases in which "national sovereignty" is used as an excuse are ones in which the other country is in the wrong. German censorship and Tianenmin (sp?) Square are excellent examples. If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, national sovereignty is the last refuge of a scoundrel nation. I've deleted the rest of your statements because I essentially agree with them. -Allen

1 0

Re: You are now an International Arms Trafficker (#1) ???
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:10 PM 4/27/96 -0700, William Knowles wrote: >Yikes, > >Tell me that conspiracy to break ITAR isn't grounds for becoming >arms trafficker #1 > >I don't even have the latest version of the shortened Perl-RSA >code back from the screenprinters. I thought of a method of exporting encryption code that doesn't require an export license, but better yet makes some _deserving_ soul a criminal. (In hindsight, it seems obvious, although I don't recall seeing it discussed.) Basically, you take advantage of the fact that on the Internet, incorrectly-addressed email is often/usually returned to what appears to be the sender. For example, send PGP source, split into appropriately-sized chumks, to somebody like bigshot(a)nsa.com. Mis-spell his name, of course, and forge the note so that it appears to be coming from some out-of-country address. His ISP's system's email software sees the bad address, "returns" it, and it's sent to that out-of-US location. Keep the messages as evidence; forward them to the appropriate prosecutor, who is stuck between a rock and a hard place: Either he prosecutes a "good guy," or he fails to prosecute an unauthorized encryption exporter and thus sets up a bad precedent. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

1 0

RE: Click here to become an International Arms Trafficker
by Richard C. Carpenter 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- "Declared Munitions Exporter & Trafficker, Nos. 27 _&_ 28" (Not being a glutton, the first try didn't export crypto.) -RCC ================================================================ Key Fingerprint 7A 10 04 1C 81 60 96 FB A1 5A 57 E7 CB 67 4B 06 PGP KeyID A5D1C931 ** public key available on keyservers ** ================================================================ "Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent." -- H.L. Mencken ================================================================ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: cp850 iQCVAgUBMYLyCdjIfSil0ckxAQGTJgQAyBHD7ZGTi/KTDeXaIfxW07c6xxsR2sLI MjJ4jLx608/2bKtRkOw+PIzXZvj9NtTKdZ2elBDasszlgoK6l2Kb+NZS3jU1lYAS ZT7E2LiYE5ShBIWlI04D6nnwIuFWnPMgLPcBgdtIQ7MWrKxnb2qEtuFL9lAxj2kI UxNYSd0zQWw= =PjTz -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

pgpcrack v0.6b
by Mark M. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- PGPCrack v0.6b is now available from http://www.voicenet.com/~markm/pgpcrack6b.tar.gz . It is now more portable and it is less likely to find an invalid passphrase valid. I have also included a passphrase list in the distribution. - -- Mark =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= markm(a)voicenet.com | finger -l for PGP key 0xf9b22ba5 http://www.voicenet.com/~markm/ | bd24d08e3cbb53472054fa56002258d5 "The concept of normalcy is just a conspiracy of the majority" -me -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3 Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBMYK0ULZc+sv5siulAQHJlAQAozGi0IW0GqB3cs/QsHaoeeVLY8YXqbKe 7la4Ybe7MYxSMgRXt7AXG8/5nd3ECNOBlopzEBN91TEotHHe7X4Idqx93cJC94+M jln5HbmnLlExr9JIKFgeyHiwm5wruxbk3UHMIOEn82Hp04OdzazjQxDzfjzst6r0 S38TgBHtoC4= =6ct2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

Re: WWW proxies?
by Ryan Russell/SYBASE 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We use CERN proxies, as well as general purpose proxies, which effectivly narrows it down to someone within my company. But, that only masks the IP address. My impression was that most browsers hand out enough info about you at the application layer that it does little good to mask the IP address. At least for privacy purposes...address translation is a great firewall model, IMHO. Ryan ---------- Previous Message ---------- To: cypherpunks cc: From: unicorn @ schloss.li (Black Unicorn) @ smtp Date: 04/26/96 07:13:06 PM Subject: WWW proxies? Has anyone developed such a beast yet? Will we have as extensive a WWW proxy network as remailer network? --- 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 Opp. Counsel: For all your expert testimony needs: jimbell(a)pacifier.com

1 0

Re: US law - World Law - Secret Banking
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:43 PM 4/27/96 -0400, Michael Froomkin wrote: >I disagree with the assertion that a hypothetical 2 yr old with a US >passport who never set foot in the US again gets nothing for her >citizenship. The evidence is that she didn't rennounce it: if was >worthless to her she could easily do so. > She need not ever have even gotten a US passport. Additionally, she probably can't renounce her citizenship until she reaches majority. Also, if she is born with a fortune and the Clinton Exit Tax (which declares that renunciation of citizenship is a taxable event) is in place, she is out vast quantities of cash for nothing. The problem is the US tax system which tries to maintain an extra-territorial reach and encourages renunciation of citizenship. DCF

1 0

Re: [NOISE] Re: Guardian angels, the decency brigade, and cyberserap
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:31 PM 4/27/96 -0700, CyberAngels Director : Colin Gabriel Hatcher wrote: >Peter Trei wrote about my signature: >> >>It's this last sig-quote that bothers me. It's worth noting that, unlike >>the other two, it has no attribution. It looks like an inversion of >>Benjamin Franklin's: >> >>" They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety >> deserve neither liberty nor safety." >> - Historical Review of Pennsylvania > >It is an inversion of that quotation and it does indeed sum up our focus. >It has no name on it because I switched it around to make a motto for our >work. Not that I disagree with Franklin though. The comment is true both >ways around. I find that to be a disgusting opinion. Quite to the contrary, I think that whenever it _appears_ that giving up "a little liberty" would provide more security, there are other ways of providing that same security that don't require any loss of liberty. For just one example, it is well known that the "war on drugs" actually causes a great deal of street crime. But a person who doesn't see this, or doesn't want to admit this might see that crime and conclude that some loss of liberty (like, for instance, giving the police the authority to stop and frisk all passers-by whenever they want) would improve safety. What he doesn't admit is that by legalizing drugs nearly all of that crime would disappear, vastly improving safety. So it's a false trade-off, in both directions. Authoritarians may disagree. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

1 0

Re: Nazis on the Net
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"llurch(a)networking.stanford.edu" "Rich Graves" 27-APR-1996 02:38:42.42 >On Fri, 26 Apr 1996, Snow wrote: >> Sorry about spewing this to the List, but nobody(a)replay.com would not get >> it back to him. >I'm glad *somebody* realized that. I believe there have been at least a >half dozen messages Cc'd to nobody in the last couple days. In some cases (such as my lone message, which was Cc'd to cypherpunks), they may be simply using a mail reader that doesn't allow retention of the threading reply header without sending it to the address of the original message. (Since these same mail readers, such as mine, also usually don't use the threading information, this is an act of charity.) >Hope this helps. At least with a stable nym, we'd be able to flame you for >off-topic posts. I'm going to be mailing some replies on this topic to some people, off the list; if anyone is curious and wishes to receive them also, let me know (off-list). -Allen

1 0