December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

ID this 31173 NCR keyboard
by unknown＠example.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

! At 05:46 PM 6/3/96 -0700, you wrote: ! >ncr terminals are the most 31173 D0Dz ! ! I'm guessing that "D0Dz" is a variant on "dudes"; ! is "31173" supposed to be an upside-down "ElliE"? ! Having worked at NCR, I like their cash-machines and cash-registers, ! dislike the Microchannels in some of their PCs, ! dislike the terminals they used to make (I think SunRiver ! is the current manufacturer for that product line) ! and like their Teradata descendants. ! # Thanks; Bill ! # Bill Stewart +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com ! # http://www.idiom.com/~wcs ! # Rescind Authority! Oops. I wrote that just looking at the keyboard. Picked it up at Seattle's Ex-Pc for $3. It's so old, I think it requires a non-PC BIOS. No manual, labels etc. Anyone have a clue as to what this is: NCR F1 F2 [...] F18 F19 F20/RESET| ESC [...] TAB |[five direction keys] CONTROL Q [...] }/] CONTROL |CLR 7 8 9 / CAPS_LOCK A [...] ~/` |NEW | - 4 5 6 * [up] |/\ Z [...] [upup] |LINE | + 1 2 3 |NEW [space] | 0_ 00 . |LINE It was designed for easily customizing your keytable, being an actual flat terminal with square keys easily pulled out and interchanged. The back of the keyboard has three switches for the boolean selection of languages: US English, UK/Int. English, French, German, Swedish/Finnish, Danish/Norwegian, Spanish, Italian. So, where to get a NEW keyboard like this: FLAT, with a full set of SQUARE, EASILY pulled out keys.

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Senate Staff Report...
by Lile Elam 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi all, Does anyone know the location on the web of the Senate staff report that was presented on some Wednesday? I read an article about it on the sjmercury that says people with computers do not consider security a high priority... I am curous what else the report says... thanks, -lile

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Hackers prevent Crackers!
by attila 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Addressed to: Cypherpunks <cypherpunks(a)toad.com> Black Unicorn <unicorn(a)schloss.li> ** Reply to note from Black Unicorn <unicorn(a)schloss.li> 06/06/96 03:05am -0400 = > Actually, he's probably right. If all the cypherpunks, say, turned = > "bad," there'd be no government and no economy, because so many big = > systems are so insecure. = = One could make the case that this would actually make the United = States(if c'punks concentrated their attentions there) the most data = secure country on the planet over time. = regardless of their opinion on hackers, that is what secuirty is all about. the same is not true for crackers --maybe we need to run a campaign with the slogan of: Hackers (help) prevent Crackers! -- the last free election in the United States was in 1860.

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Electronic Signatures
by nCognito＠rigel.cyberpass.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Some of the other info in the AP article seems to be coinciding with discussions on the list, so heres a less condensed version of the article. Are we still within the limits of the copyrights? God i hope so. :) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- TAMPA - Flroida now recognizes electronic signatures as legal and binding, however, working out the logistics to implement the new law may take some doing. Andrew Greenberg, an associate at a large Tampa law firm...says, the process saves time by using a computer to handle notary duties that used to be done by hand. he expects the mechanics of electronic certifaction to become simple enough for everybody to use. "It will be like the telephone - anybody can use it without thinking or knowing how it works," he said. Ted Barassi, chairman of the United States Council for International Business, is among a pool of experts Florida Secretary of State Sandra Mortham is expected to call on to set up the state's emerging electronic signature certifacation process. The law does not specify how an electronic document must be signed, but Barassi and others say it probably will mean coding the text and typed signature so they cannot be changed by anyone other than the writer. No on knows yet just how this will be done, but Mortham's own expert on the subject, Gene McGee, envisions a central database that tracks coded computer signatures for individuals and businesses. With Florida already a hub of Latin American trade, cybernotary lawyers could make the state a mecca for international trade, McGee predicts. _______________________________________________________________________ Its kind of scary when the best minds the state could find are so obviously without a clue. One of you politically involved folx could dig up addresses for some of our mis-representatives and forward them discussion from this list, maybe. :) Adios..

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ALERT: Court decision expected soon in free speech case; spreadthe word! (fwd)
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 11:44:10 -0400 From: shabbir(a)vtw.org (Shabbir J. Safdar) To: Multiple recipients of list <com-priv(a)lists.psi.com> Subject: ALERT: Court decision expected soon in free speech case; spread the word! - ------ [Dear Friend-of-VTW, During our "Turn the Web Black campaign", you wrote us regarding that protest. Because of the success of that campaign, we are asking you to participate again in another net-campaign to draw attention to the upcoming decision in the lawsuit to challenge the net censorship legislation. This information is not widely available yet, and I would appreciate it if you did not redistribute this. Because you helped us out during the highly successful "Turn the Web Black" campaign, we are giving you advanced notice of this effort before we tell anyone else. -Shabbir J. Safdar, Voters Telecommunication Watch (www.vtw.org) ======================================================================== __ _________ __ __ ____ ____ _____ \ \ / /_ _\ \ / / / / / ___| _ \_ _| Raise the roof \ \ / / | | \ \ /\ / / / / | | | | | || | for the Court's \ V / | | \ V V / / / | |___| |_| || | decision on net \_/ |_| \_/\_/ /_/ \____|____/ |_| free speech! Voters Telecommunications Watch / Center for Democracy and Technology JOIN TENS OF THOUSANDS OF NET USERS IN SPREADING THE WORD ABOUT THE FIRST RESULT OF THE FREE SPEECH LAWSUIT June 5, 1996 Redistribute (intact, please) only until June 28, 1996 - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Table of contents News - A decision in the court case is near How to participate How will this campaign work? Press information on this event Background: what is the CDA? - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ NEWS - A DECISION IN THE COURT CASE IS NEAR The fate of the Internet and the future of the First Amendment in the information age hang in the balance. As early as this week, three federal judges in Philadelphia are poised to issue a ruling in the law suit challenging the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which restricts constitutionally protected speech on the Internet. Will the court rule that the CDA is unconstitutional? That the Internet is a unique communications technology that deserves the same First Amendment protections enjoyed by the print media? Or will the court side with Senator Exon, conservative "pro-family" groups, and the Justice Department who have argued that the government is the best judge of what material is appropriate online. Regardless of the outcome, the decision will have a profound impact on the future of the Internet as a medium for free expression, education, and commerce. JOIN TENS OF THOUSANDS OF YOUR FELLOW NETIZENS IN ANNOUNCING THE DECISION When the Communications Decency Act was signed into law by President Clinton on February 8, 1996, the World Wide Web went black in protest. When the decision in the historic legal challenge to the CDA is announced, join tens of thousands of your fellow netizens in spreading the word on the decision and its impact. This campaign follows in the steps of the Turn the Web Black campaign, which was a tremendous success. Believe it or not, many Internet users had only superficial knowledge about the proposed law and the enormous press coverage and online awareness afterwards mobilized large numbers of people. In addition to the online campaign, there are currently rallies planned for New York, press conferences from the CIEC and the ACLU, and a net campaign to raise awareness to the decision and the effects it will have on free speech. The result of the first CDA decision is an extremely important milestone in the fight for free speech online. Will the net look more like print, or more like Saturday morning television? - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO PARTICIPATE: In anticipation of the decision, you can help keep your fellow Netizens informed on the latest news and participate in a dramatic demonstration when the decision is announced. 1. Add the following link *TODAY* in a prominent location on your web site: <a href="http://www.vtw.org/speech/"> <img src="http://www.vtw.org/images/cda.gif" alt="Free speech court decision" align=top></a><br clear = all><br> A decision is near in the fight to overturn the Communications Decency Act. <br>Watch this image and follow the link for more information. 2. To let us know you have joined us, fill out the form at http://www.vtw.org/speech/ with your URL. A list of participating will be displayed. 3. Attend the online press conference with lead CIEC (Citizens Internet Empowerment Coalition) attorney Bruce Ennis on HotWired. More details are available on the WWW page. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ HOW WILL THIS CAMPAIGN WORK? After you have added the link (above) to your page, an animated image signifying that a decision in the case is expected soon will be displayed on your site. By clicking on that image, visitors to your page can jump to a site containing the latest news and information on the case. As soon as a decision is announced, the image will be changed automatically (the update will happen at our server - you will not have to do anything), and Netizens throughout the entire global Internet will immediately be aware of the result (win or lose). By clicking on the updated image, visitors to your page will be able to obtain the text of the decision, analysis, and other relevant information. Until the decision is announced, there will be information about upcoming events and rallies on the VTW Free Speech page, http://www.vtw.org/speech/ - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PRESS INFORMATION ON THIS EVENT For more information on this event, including press inquiries, please contact: Jonah Seiger, Policy Analyst, Center For Democracy and Technology (CDT) <jseiger(a)cdt.org> +1.202.637.9800 Shabbir Safdar, Online Representative, Voters Telecommunications Watch (VTW) <shabbir(a)vtw.org> +1.718.596.2851 - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ BACKGROUND: WHAT IS THE CDA? The Communications Decency Act was passed as part of the Telecommunications Reform bill in February 1996. The law seeks to protect minors from objectionable or sexually explicit material on the Internet by imposing stiff criminal penalties on the "display" of "indecent" or "patently offensive" material online. Opponents to the new law argue that while well intentioned, the CDA fails to account for the unique nature of the Internet, and that it will have a far-reaching chilling effect on constitutionally protected speech online. On a global, decentralized communications medium like the Internet, the only effective and constitutional means of controlling access to objectionable material is to rely on users and parents, not the government, to decide what material is or is not appropriate. Two lawsuits have been filed to challenge the constitutionality of the CDA in a Philadelphia federal court. The cases have been consolidated and an decision is expected in early June 1996. The cases have been brought, respectively, by The Citizens Internet Empowerment Coalition (CIEC), comprised of civil Liberties groups, libraries, Internet Service Providers, Commercial Online Service Providers, Newspaper, Magazine and Book Publishers, and over 45,000 individual internet users, and a coalition of civil liberties groups, authors, and others organized by the ACLU. Detailed information on the legal challenges, as well as information about the CDA, is available at the following web sites: Legal Challenges To The CDA - ---------------------------- * The ACLU - http://www.aclu.org/ * The Citizens Internet Empowerment Coalition (CIEC) - http://www.cdt.org/ciec Background Information On The CDA/Internet Censorship Issues - ------------------------------------------------------------ * The ACLU - http://www.aclu.org * Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) - http://www.cdt.org * Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) - http://www.eff.org * Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) - http://www.epic.org * Voters Telecommunications Watch (VTW) - http://www.vtw.org ======================================================================== ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "If they could 'just pass a few more laws', we would all be criminals." --Vinnie Moscaritolo The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/

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Re: FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
by mccoy＠communities.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Duncan wrote: > At 10:41 PM 6/4/96 -0700, Bruce Baugh wrote: > >I think there's a non-trivial chance that this list could be shut down and > >anyone who's made interested sounds in the idea brought in to assist the > >police in their inquiries. > > Yeah and they busted Jack London for publishing >"The Assassination Bureau, Ltd".[...] > > Advocating the general practice of killing one's opponents is as legal as > church on a Sunday. The War College (or is it the NDU these days) does it > all the time. As long as that person is not the President of the United States (at least for U.S. citizens.) This was the issue which initiated this thread, the implied threat made by our favorite nutcase. jim

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re: Fight-Censorship Dispatch #12: CDA deathwatch, copyright update
by minow＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In "Fight-Censorship Dispatch #12", Declan McCullagh writes about "everybody's favorite net.loon," Fred Cherry: >Whatever you think of Cherry's antics, you gotta grant him one thing > not many people have the balls to demand that a Federal court uphold > their right to flame. I suspect that Tom Payne would -- Cherry seems from your description to be a prize example of "the lonely pamphleteer." It would be interesting to know what Nat Hentoff thinks of Fred. Martin Minow minow(a)apple.com

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Re: whitehouse web incident, viva la web revolution
by Bruce Baugh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:17 PM 6/5/96 -0400, Hallam-Baker wrote: >rather than reasoned argument. His dislike for the Clinton is >well known - he recently accused the administration of being >fascist. I know of no evidence that the Clinton administration >has a genocide policy, it is an insult to the 10 million civilians >murdered by Hitler to use the term facist simply as a term of abuse, >especialy if it is being used as a substitute for an argument. Fascism has no intrinsic link to genocide. It is a theory of economics, basically, in which the state has ultimate authority over production and distribution without (as in socialism) actually _owning_ the means of production or distribution. This is generally accomplished through cartelization, the creatin of industry-wide councils in which the representatives of the most powerful firms set policy in conjunction with the representatives of the government. The US has been at least moderately fascist since the 1920s (Hoover was a big fan of cartelization, and pushed it actively). While the mechanisms of the modern regulatory state aren't those of classic fascist theory, in practice most strongly regulated industries in this country operate _exactly_ the way fascist theory says they should. And various of Clinton's policies have, in fact, been fascist in this sense. The man has no doctrinal commitment to fascism (under that name or any other), but in practical terms virtually all modern Western politics are either fascist or socialist. None of this is secret lore, by the way. -- Bruce Baugh bruce(a)aracnet.com http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce

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"Fascism is corporatism"
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:18 PM 6/6/96, Rich Graves wrote: >On Wed, 5 Jun 1996, Bruce Baugh, who usually knows better, wrote: > >> Fascism has no intrinsic link to genocide. It is a theory of economics, >> basically, in which the state has ultimate authority over production and >> distribution without (as in socialism) actually _owning_ the means of >> production or distribution. This is generally accomplished through >> cartelization, the creatin of industry-wide councils in which the >> representatives of the most powerful firms set policy in conjunction with >> the representatives of the government. ... >Yes, I'm afraid these ahistorical myths are widespread. What _do_ they teach >in these schools? > >Pick up anything by Renzo De Felice to gain a basic historical understanding >of what fascism was about, from someone who was sympathetic to them. Rich, I don't think it nearly so clear as you are claiming. The definition of fascism, that is. Without resorting to the usual ploy of quoting Webster's (a ploy I usually am not impressed by), let me cite an "anti-fascist" radio personality, Dave Emory, who I have been listening to nearly every week for several years. Dave is undeniably anti-fascist, an unusual mixture of left-leaning views and National Rifle Association sympathies, and he often quotes Mussolini's famous "Fascism is corporatism" line. That is, a view more similar to Bruce Baugh's point that fascism is primarily an economic theory, about the organization and ownership of production systems, than about hatred of any particular ethnic group. It is certainly true that Italian and German fascism (and the important variant of "national socialism") become intertwined with certain forms of racism, with which we are all familiar, but I don't think Bruce is at all wrong in his definition of fascism. That Hitler and his group combined fascist economic theories with occultist views of racial superiority does not mean the two viewpoints are identical. ("Fascism is corporatism" is of course not an overall indictment of all corporations. "Corporatism" is basically a view that government should identify key industries and corporations and then pick the winners and support them while suppressing their competitors. This oversimplifies what Mussolini, Emory, myself, etc. mean by "corporatism," but I hope this gives at least a glimpse. And we could get off into discussions of "state capitalism" and how the Soviet and Chinese forms of government were essentially examples of "state capitalism," but this would be a long and involved debate.) >I'd also recommend a biography of the very influential and gifted American >modernist poet Ezra Pound, who led the Italian fascist propaganda effort >from 1941 to 1943 and spent six months in an American POW camp, followed by >some time in mental hospitals as his rants against jewish conspiracies under >every bed became increasingly incoherent, for his trouble. Like Orwell's >very complicated views towards socialism and Stalinism (see Homage to >Catalonia), e. e. cummings' anti-government pacifism, Whitman's queerness, >and Byron's essential kookiness, this is something your high school english >teacher probably failed to mention. My high school teachers failed to mention much of anything, but this was hardly surprising to me--I never expected them to. Fortunately, I knew how to read, and so I learned all of these things. (Except for Pound, whom I didn't encounter until my first year in college.) --Tim May 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: FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:54 PM 6/6/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >However, recall that Senator Jesse Helms elliptically threatened President >Clinton by saying that Clinton had probably better be wearing a >bullet-proof vest if he ever visited Helms' part of the country. (Even the >Republicans were shocked by this, and, I surmise, cast Helms into the outer >darkness, as Helms has been keeping a low profile for the past 18 months.) However, Helms is a politician and he's supposed to be on his best behavior. (What Helms' "best behavior" is, is certainly debateable.) >* Third, while I am bored with Bell's "single note" point of view ("I have >a solution for this") Bored? You're bored? Maybe I'm going to have to figure out something to spice it up, huh? By the time everybody is as bored as you are today, then I will have won. >and while I feel his "assassination politics" is both naive "naive"? In what way? > and derivative, Technically, it wasn't derived from anything directly, or for that matter even indirectly. However, since there's nothing new under the sun, similarities exist...with your material as well. Consider this a bow to you, I suppose. > I don't think his advocacy of AP constitutes a direct threat to anyone. Even so, given how much noise we've been hearing out of DC on the subject of the Internet, digital cash, and good encryption, I'd say SOMEBODY is getting a bit worried. I haven't exactly been keeping this stuff a secret: What do you think their reaction has been, so far? When those government-types start considering various scary scenarios, what do you think they are imagining? >He is not actually setting up the betting markets which >would make AP more of a reality, Not quite yet, anyway. I'm very disappointed to have waited over a year for some slick lawyer to show me how I'd be violating some law or another to do so. >nor is he calling for the killing of any particilar persons. I generally don't feel the need to name specific people. I'm sure each reader has his own pet list to fall back on. >* Fourth, merely discussing alternative political systems is not enough to >trigger legal action, at least not today. Wait a year or two. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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