December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Why the Poor are Mostly Deserving of their Fate
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:32 PM 5/18/96, Sean Gabb wrote: >On Sat, 18 May 1996, Duncan Frissell wrote: > >> It was understandable to be poor when all the world was poor. It is >> understandable to be poor in those nations today that make the >> accumulation of wealth a crime for most people. It is not understandable >> to be poor (for long) in the US where one can reliably get out of poverty >> simply by doing three simple things: >> >> 1) get a high school diploma >> 2) get married >> 3) get any job >> >> Only about 2 tenths of 1% of those who satisfy those three requirements >> incomes below the official poverty line. >I've done all these things - and rather more in the way of education. But >while I don't fall on or near the poverty line, I'm still poor as a church >mouse. What am I doing wrong? * Point Number One: Sean Gabb <cea01sig(a)gold.ac.uk> ^^ * Point Number Two:"...not understandable to be poor (for long) in the US" ^^ Q.E.D. Actually, I think Duncan's "high school + marriage + any job" point is a bit simplistic, and I'm surprised about the ".02%" estimate. As someone else noted, there are a lot of folks in the rural South, Appalachia, and other places, who graduated from high school, are still married, and have some sort of job, and yet who make $6-8 an hour or less. I think more is needed. I would have added "savings/investment" and "hard work." Those who can force themselves to set money aside for investment get the compounded returns later on. And of course hard work--including taking a second job, having the extended family work, etc.--is also key. (Many immigrant Asians arrive penniless in the U.S., then get help from immigrant Asian who arrived earlier, live in crowded houses and apartments, have 4-6 wage-earners in a household, save as much as they can, and then open a small business. Success is almost inevitable. Hence the cycle continues. This tradition of the various Asian subcultures is almost completely lacking in certain other subcultures in America. More's the pity.) Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! 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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re:
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:54 AM 5/19/96 -0700, anonymous-remailer(a)shell.portal.com wrote: >Cypherpunks is not a political newsgroup. ROTFLMAO!!! Since *WHEN*? (Actually the above is right -- sort of. This is not a newsgroup, it is a mailing list.) One of the reasons I read this list is for the political content. The quoted article was information I was interested in reading, and as far as I am concerned (as if anyone cares), on topic. You are new here, aren't you... ]:> --- | Remember: Life is not always champagne. Sometimes it is REAL pain. | |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ | alano(a)teleport.com |

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Re: The Crisis with Remailers
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:00 PM 5/18/96 EDT, dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com (Dr. Dimitri Vulis) wrote: >> 2. there is no good way to deal with spams or other so-called "abuse" >Nor should there be. What's one person's abuse is another person's >free speech. Internet traffic should not be censored based on contents. I disagree - when I was running a remailer, I found several varieties of abuse, and some of them were worth blocking. Usenet, in particular, is divided into newsgroups so material can be directed to the groups where the readers want to find it, which is filtering, not censorship. * The most common was spammers sending lots of mail to a specific person who didn't want it; that's easy to block, and keeping up with that was a major part of traffic on the remailer-operators news groups. * Another was spammers who were sending out large volumes of spam; my remailer would shut down if it got too much volume (operator-settable), but usually I blocked senders like this based on remailer-operators notices from other remailers that were being spammed through. * Another was inappropriate news postings; most of the complaints I got were from phone sex ads in the pictures newsgroups, where they're unwanted (as opposed to misc.forsale or other group where they're in scope). They're a minor annoyance, and I didn't censor them; there'd probably be less of them from 2-way remailers, since people who objected could spam back. In general, these were posted to many newsgroups, and reducing the number of newsgroups that a message could be crossposted to would probably have helped, though it might have just resulted in multiple postings. * The nastiest spam, which I wasn't able to block, was to sign someone else's name on flamebait hate postings. Blocking by content (e.g. blocking postings with the address of someone who had complained) would cut down on repeat postings, but it only takes one or two postings to get thousands of flames sent to the victim. The damage could be reduced by putting disclaimer notices at the beginning and end of the text, reminding the reader that it may be a forgery, etc.; simple mail headers don't seem to get the attention of enough readers, even those whose newsreader software doesn't discard them. Similar spams can be done to mailing lists... # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 # goodtimes signature virus innoculation

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Re: Remailers vs Nyms - conflicting assumptions?
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Refreshing deals with the long-term problem, but not with the short-term >one. Maybe I need to settle for a higher level of mail loss than I'm >comfortable with, but precisely because I'm not comfortable with it, I do >remain interested in alternatives. The alternative is constant monitoring, though of course this risks traffic analysis. If you ping yourself daily, using some random-path random-delay chain of encrypted remailers, then you can tell if your nym still works. To reduce traffic analysis, the remailer system needs lots of remailers and lots of cover traffic, and you need to use the remailers a lot so your mail to them doesn't look regularly scheduled. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 # goodtimes signature virus innoculation

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Re: crosspost re remailers
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:00 AM 5/16/96 -0700, Rich Graves <llurch(a)networking.stanford.edu> wrote: >The entry points into the system, though, have value. You need to be able >to locate and trust them. Remailer reputations are valuable. Otherwise, >you're liable to send your message into the NSA-remailers-are-us system. >You need a web of trust among remailers at the very least, which means >some level of exposure (at least by "social analysis" by observing the >relationships among the various remailer nyms). There are two ways around this problem - chaining remailers, and encryption. As long as one remailer on the chain from your source to your destination is not compromised, you can send mail encrypted to each remailer in the chain (i.e. send Alice's Remailer the message E(Alice, E(Bob, E(Carol, message)))) and the message won't be compromised, though it may be blocked. For reply-style remailers, chaining is much harder, at least if you use a non-stealth encryption system like PGP or RIPEM which reveals the recipient's public key in the headers, and if the remailers don't include a public key to encrypt the message contents with as well as a key to encrypt the connection to the next remailer with. (Otherwise, if the sender encrypts a message to NymA@Alice, and Alice encrypts it with Bob's key and sends it to Bob, Bob decrypts it, encrypts with Carol's key, and sends.... Zed decrypts it, encrypts it with your key, and sends it to you, then any node compromised by Bad Guys will see a message encyrpted to NymA. >Chaos within the system is good. Moving remailers around could be good, >provided that a service location infrastructure is established. >Raph's list is a good start, but it needs to be more automatic and dynamic -- >which to me (perhaps wrongly) suggests formalization, which means points >of failure. It would be much easier if there were a DNS hack that lets you connect to dns.remailer.net:registry, which takes your IP address and serves it as remailerN.remailer.net until you log off (using a short DNS expiration time). This does provide a large number of interesting attacks on the system - denial of service is easy (make lots of connections, filling all ports), and it's easy to add subverted remailers (just connect!) It also doesn't spoof reverse lookups unless your system is able to handle multiple IP addresses (which requires cooperation from your ISP's routers, unless remailer.net is also running a packet laundry, which increases its targetness.) Signed DNS responses would help some attacks, once that's standardized. Does anyone have any ideas on how to do this correctly? # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 # goodtimes signature virus innoculation

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Burmese Excommunication
by camcc＠abraxis.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 10:54 AM 5/19/96 -0700, you wrote: >Cypherpunks is not a political newsgroup. > I agree; I am concerned, however, when I read that any government, theirs or ours, acts or prepares to act to stop or stifle the free traffic of information. Your point is well taken; my post was intended for information and perhaps discussion value. Take it as you choose. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMZ/M2CKJGkNBIH7lAQHZZAP+KVLlk6REEaL4sskjV7mM28uMOOzGLxxf 3lf3UZGheizpgx6Ms3QpOyJpAADg365R4Lsgusynih49PM2EF+LLs1fNu6dUxbTm beXwK1UJBiBQhglL6pG5tKbjf8vQTdZWOBkEIVLjw4vsPQJlsRlAc8jkijJ/sq/+ uYd0Rof3boY= =adoY -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Too cheap to meter
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>At 07:09 PM 5/15/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote: >> One problem with the development of such high-end technologies is that >>they tend to increase economies of scale to the point where it's impractical to >>have anything but a monopoly or ogliopoly. As well as concerns about the degree >>of control such an organization may be able to exert in and of itself (acting >>like a government, in essence), there's also that such an organization is >>easier to pressure than a lot of small providers. Anyone have a suggested >>solution, or reasons that I shouldn't be so worried? The nice thing about economies of scale is that they make it possible to do things that used to be too expensive with older technology. For instance, the Internet has problems now because the Network Access Point capacities are really too low to let everyone connect to them, so there are limited numbers of powerful ISPs feeding the rest of us: the DEC Gigaswitches handle 16 users, and the FDDI-based systems don't have the capacity to support more than a couple T3-capable ISPs. Faster technology may let more people on. Faster technology also changes the balance between communications and computing - it's really hard to _do_ anything with 1Tb/s other than shove packets around between multiplexers. On the other hand, if the NSA (or NASA or Yoyodyne or some other surrogate) is on a FDDI NAP, they can promiscuously receive all the packets that go by and sniff for interesting addresses. Jim Bell: >You might as well forget about this 1 Tb/s fiber, for example. In order to >justify such a thing, you need to have 1 Tb/s of information that you want >to take from "here" to "there". A city of 1 million people would have to It's true that that's about 10 million simultaneous voice calls, which is enough for about 60 million typical business phones if they all went through the fiber, which they wouldn't, since they're mostly local. It's alternatively enough for 10,000 uncompressed TV-quality video streams, if you like variety in your television networks. Or 20,000 T3s. One major effect that happens if bandwidth becomes cheap (and I'm not sure that the mux costs for a system that size would really let it be cheap) is that it becomes cost-effective for far more people to get into the phone basis, bypassing the current local phone companies. The last mile to your house may still be expensive (that's also changing), but the last mile to any large office building or apartment complex isn't, for voice. > ....eggs in one basket... For redundancy, you'd probably use 4 fibers in a FDDI-like ring. Most of the major long-distance carriers are deploying their SONET as fully redundant rings, though one or two of them may still be considering non-fully-redundant SONET configurations, and even the carriers who are doing the Right Thing may do the Cheap Thing transitionally. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 # goodtimes signature virus innoculation

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Re: Rumor: DSS Broken?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:33 AM 5/19/96 -0400, Robert Hettinga wrote: >At 9:41 PM -0400 5/18/96, Bill Stewart wrote: >> MD5 is at least weakened, maybe broken; there's an abstract by Hans Dobbertin >> that says something about generating collisions, and gives an example >> (though the abstract doesn't say how general the method is.) > >That's what I get for not reading the DSS stuff when it came out. I'd heard >lots about the MD5 stuff, but I didn't put the two together. > >It also looks like I'm behind in my reading. Time to buy another edition >of Applied Cryptography... It should occur to all of us that if the NSA was actually doing the job we are vastly over-paying them to do, it is THEY who should be finding, exposing, and correcting these kinds of cryptography faults. Has anybody ever heard any evidence that the NSA has ever acted in this sort of responsible role? Another question: If the government provided DSS, and it's now toast, and it provided Clipper... Somebody ought to ask The Wicked.... er... Dorothy Denning how she thinks we should be willing to trust the government's vetting of anything like Clipper when DSS may be flawed...and the government didn't find the error! Think about it. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: News from Burma
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:54 AM 5/19/96 -0700, an anonymous entity wrote: >Cypherpunks is not a political newsgroup. Cypherpunks is a _highly_ political newsgroup, it's just focussed on enabling technology and not too worried about political agreement. In this case, there are folks in Burma using PGP, and the cypherpunks goals of creating the ability to have private communications make it relevant to discuss societies where you can be busted for simply possessing communications technology even if the Thugs can't tell what you're saying on it. And a 9-line PBX may be usable as a telephone remailer... # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 # goodtimes signature virus innoculation

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Re: Assassination Politics 1-3
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 19 May 96 at 20:31, you, Pat Trainor, wrote: > On Sun, 19 May 1996, Jean-Francois Avon wrote: > > Back to AP, I did not invent the scheme nor do I approve or like > > it a lot. But I find it very interesting to discuss. > > > > The author of AP is Jim Bell <jimbell(a)pacifier.com>. > > That was what I was interested in. You see, I read a story exactly > along the same lines a long time ago, and I thought the group would > like to know just what happenned during that 'scheme'. > > > I would gladly read the long letter that you wrote. > > Here's the text, and if you didn't see it posted, please repost > with a cc to Mr. Bell. If you did see it, then just erase.. But the > damnest thing that my email is so squirrely!! > > Thanks again!! > > (if anyone wrote me in a reply, I never got it. ISP is putting a new > T1 in, and this is causing errors in traffic I'm told.) > > >From ptrainor(a)aura.title14.com Sun May 19 20:23:48 1996 > Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 22:09:16 -0400 > From: Pat Trainor <ptrainor(a)aura.title14.com> > To: jimbell <jimbell(a)pacifier.com> > Newsgroups: talk.politics.crypto, talk.politics.libertarian, > alt.politics.libertarian, alt.society.anarchy, alt.privacy, > alt.security.pgp, alt.activism, alt.anarchism, alt.cyberpunk, > alt.politics.datahighway > Subject: Re: Insurable Interest Assassination Politics 1-3 > > On Thu, 9 May 1996, jimbell wrote: > > > > How will this be enforced, someone with more resources, > > >money, drugs, guns, better planned religion, icbms, will start to > > >gather "like minded individuals" and start to tell others how to > > >live., some will join them, others will fight, and we're back > > >where we started. > > > > No, because any threatening individual or group will be "predicted > > to death" posthaste. > > I haven't followed this thread from the beginning, but I recognize > the theme. I read _eons_ ago a short story in which this exact > mechanism was used to enforce a leaderless society. Now I'm no > economist, nor historian (future or otherwise) but I do vividly > remember this story. > It was in a science-fiction compilation, as I was very prone to > read (Nebula Awards, etc..) in my early days in the military and > before. > > My question would be: have you ever read a story with this precice > theme? The assisns looked like (sorry) Star Wars storm troopers in > white, air conditioned suits. They were not anonymous, except that > you couldn't see their faces (is that enough?). > > The story treated the same (apparently) hypothesis you mention. The > 'Assassin's Guild' I think was the title. Irrelevant to AP since nobody knows anybody, nor what anybody else do. > One of the problems in the model I read about was that the area to > be policed was too large to allow an elite minority to cover > properly, or even effectively. Again, irrelevant to AP. This scheme suppose some clan against another (the govt). Re-read Jim Bell's essay and you'll realize that it wouldn't work that way at all. > It was a situation of ratios. To be superior, even with a > technological edge, you need numbers. You have to offset the balance > somehow. Population control was attempted by the guild in the end as > a measure to increase the odds in their favor. This caused an > understandably intense reaction with the masses, who were ultimately > those being served. Not in AP. Because the aim when using AP against government or any other entity is not to get rid of it by killing it's members, but rather to get rid of it by scaring any individual that would participate to it. > Another problem was that the technology required for a large > coordinated effort required organization of a military nature (rank, > etc..). This was necessary due to the myriad of decisions that had > to be made. <Lots of stuff absolutely irrelevant to AP deleted>. Re-read the essay again. > Surveillance was the issue. In order for the Guild to be able to > identify a problem, an immense amount of surveillance was required. > Again the technology and the infrastructure required to support it. Are you saying that problems are difficults to identify? > The decision had to be made by superiors who were in touch with all > the information from all areas under surveillance to make the > ultimate decision. There needed to be, effectively, a steering > committee to determine if the proposed action was both affordable > and warranted. To Cypherpunks: I did not write the following paragraph. It was probably from Jim Bell, but I only guess. To: Pat Trainor: Ask Jim Bell to send you his paper. I'm sure he will do it wilfully. Pat Trainor wrote: >somebody wrote: > > To the eventual outcome. The system's inevitable. Read the > > essay; it explains why. I'll forward it to you; I assume it's no > > longer available on your newsfeed. > > I wouldn't mind reading it, it sounds a lot like what I'm > describing. > > > They might be wrong. I might be right. > > The Assassin's Guild was bought into in phases by the ruling > elements of all major powers only after they had all lost their > ability to maintain an effective repel borders and the place (earth) > was a mess. > > Realistically, you can't build from the ashes any faster than > anyone else is. And human nature doesn't change because of a new > caveat in religion or 'law'. A human will always be a human, > regardless of what law they proport to follow or heed. > > > Thomas Edison tried hundreds of differnet materials to make light > > bulb filaments before he found one that would work. > > Actually he directed experiments! :) But this statement reminded me > of the 'Infinite Number of Monkeys' theory, except applied to 'self > rule', well, I guess not, well..? > > > And BTW, we're already all "in fear of our lives." You know, > > muggings and carjackings. How is my system worse, > > quantitatively? > > Actually, you'll find folks doing the most desparate things in a > desparate world. If you try to forge order out of chaos, you quickly > find that the order you are trying to enforce feeds the chaos. You > create your own increasing difficulty by default. A society (or > group of societies) in anarchy will fear order. This, coupled with > the fact that you have to create from the same resoucres the masses > have access to, makes your efforts incredibly difficult. You will > never find a unified agreement among a society that can't feed or > cloth itself. If you do, you instantly become what you are telling > the people you are trying to prevent. Folks will see through this > veil and vanquish such an effort favoring a predictable anarchy over > a concerted organized rule. > > > >To change the world you have to understand the rules, > > > > But you don't necessarily have to _follow_ the rules! > > That's a good point, and one I think I've shown means that you will > always have rules. Sometimes yours, sometimes theirs, if lucky a bit > of both.. But they will be there. We are a self-righteous > pack-oriented species. We thrive on group individuality! That must > be why psychologists make so much money! > > > The system I've described will work even if only a small > > proportion of the population uses it, at first. That's what makes > > it so amazing, really. > > Again, I'd appreciate a look at your paper. > > Now for the subtle problems pointed out accurately in the > Assassin's Guild. As a strategic planner for a living, I have > learned to live by a good rule: Make your best estimates for a > project's completion, then double them. > > A support structure required for the Assassin's Guild required > things you would never immediately think of. Support from several > areas are required. Remember, you are basically operating a country > with soft borders covering all areas, no matter how distant. > > For solely the guild's efforts, no others, a few of the things > required are: > > Manufacturing > Fabrication > Research & Developement > Quality Assurance > Medical > Clothing > Shelter > Food > Recreation > Self-Rule > Coordination > Information Exchange > Communication > Information Retrieval > Surveillance > Commerce > Expansion > Earth Sciences > > The trouble is, each and every one of the above is subject to > espionage, revolution, corruption, pranks, etc.. Therefore each must > be treated with complete encapsulation within the guild. The only > way to exclude interference from within or without, was to closely > monitor each and every aspect of the guild's organization. > Self-policing. > > When you start visualizing what the organization would actually be > running (never mind the seemingly impossible task of starting the > organization from scratch), it seems a very impractical proposition. > > Plus, the guild found all the military stuff laying around pretty > useful.. Folks were NOT excited about another police state.. > > Anyhow, sorry for the long post, but I thought perhaps you'd enjoy > the problems the Assassin's Guild had, and compare it to your own > model. > > later! > > pat > :) > > Pat Trainor * WARNING: THE OPINIONS I EXPRESS MAY NOT BE MY OWN > * finger for key: ptrainor(a)aura.title14.com > http://www.title14.com/ > Key fingerprint = 4B 14 97 D7 11 41 35 76 28 43 1E E3 2E E3 81 > D6 "Winning may not be everything, but losing is NOTHING!" -Ed > Bighead > > > DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee; Limoges porcelain, silverware and crystal JFA Technologies, R&D consultants; physists, technologists and engineers. PGP keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891 Unsollicited commercial e-mail will be proofread at US165 $/h Any sender of such material will be considered as to have ac- cepted the above mentionned terms.

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