December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Freedom vs. US-Citizens
by nobody＠zifi.genetics.utah.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/960808/news/stories/crashpoll_1.html Thursday August 8 1:14 PM EDT Terrorism Fears Prompt Support for Limits LOS ANGELES (Reuter) - Most U.S. citizens are willing to give up some civil liberties in order to fight terrorism, according to a poll published Thursday. A nationwide survey conducted by the Los Angeles Times after the explosion of TWA Flight 800 and the bombing at Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park also showed that Americans favored economic sanctions over military action against countries involved in terrorism. It found that 65 percent of those surveyed were somewhat or very concerned that the fight against terrorism could bring restrictions on civil liberties but 58 percent said they would be willing to give up some liberties to help curb terrorism. Government and aviation officials have indicated that increased security measures at airports around the country could mean more thorough and time-consuming inspections of luggage, questioning of travelers and higher fares. Of those polled, 66 percent said they strongly favoured more secure airports, even at such costs, while 17 percent said they ``somewhat favoured'' such measures. Asked what action, in addition to trying those individuals responsible, the United States should take if the TWA crash is linked to another country, 40 percent favoured economic sanctions against that nation, 14 percent opted for military action, 10 percent thought both should be used and 8 percent thought no action should be taken apart from a trial. The telephone survey of 1,572 adults was conducted from Aug. 3 through Aug. 6 and had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

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Re: Anonymous Remailers at work
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've been trying to encourage the scientific ethics people to have an email address for tips + information about using anonymous remailers. As can be seen by the first part (lack of an email address), I haven't gotten very far as yet... -Allen

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Oregon License Plate Site in the News Tonight!
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cypherpunks make the news again. I'm watching the LA NBC news channel, and they report that the Oregon "look up any license plate" Web site is causing a flap. Though apparently legal, the critics admit, the Governor wants the material removed. (Sounds like a good time to mirror it on some other sites, pronto!) --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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Basic Unix Hacking
by CTH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is there a way to get a .plan file to execute shell script when it is read by finger?? I'm sure this is an old question, but it seems there must be a way. echo \"date\" or some damn thing that will execute as opposed to printing. The fingerD I am working with does not seem to call a .fingerrc file. -Chris .. But there *are* a million monkeys on the net, .. and I still aint seen no Shakespeare! <me> ... ... smtp: nozefngr(a)apple.com .. page: 1.800.680.7351 .. http: http://virtual.net/Personal/nozefngr/ .. icbm: lat37*21'.lon121*5' .. .. the kabuki project: http://remarque.berkeley.edu/kabuki/

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Re: Blurring the Chains of Causation
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"tcmay(a)got.net" 1-AUG-1996 18:22:25.80 >Many of the proposed restrictions seek to further blur this chain of >causation, by making someone who provides access to materials which _may_ >later be used in a crime, or which may "inspire" someone to crime, a kind >of criminal. [...] >People who actually commit real crimes are the criminals, not those who >sold them Hostess Twinkies without first checking their blood sugar level. >Not those who let a library patron look at a "dangerous" book. And not >those who provided strong cryptographic tools which _might_ be used by >terrorists, pedophiles, and money launderers. Quite. One analogy that should bring things a bit closer to home to liberal types is that of zoning laws and restrictive covanents. The (unfortunately legally accepted) justification, as I understand it, for many zoning laws is that they prevent reductions in property values. Restrictive covanents, such as against blacks or AIDS patients, have the same argument for them, if one accepts the logic of the proposed restrictions. Blacks/whoever moving in causes racists (or people anticipating the actions of racists) not to want to move in or causes them to sell; this reduces local property values. By the logic of the proposed restrictions, that means blacks/whoever should be held responsible for the decrease in property values and barred or fined. Obviously, this whole idea is nonsense... only if you're the last _person_ in a chain of causation are you the person making a decision for which you should be blameable. (By person I refer to that people are the only beings capable of making such a choice. I neither treat cows as having rights/choices nor do I hold a bull criminally responsible for goring someone. Rights mean responsibility; choices mean consequences.) Otherwise, someone else has the chance to make their own decision and avert the negative results.... or not. -Allen

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Re: AOL crashes and burns
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:16 PM 8/8/96, Warrior wrote: >Great news, eh? No big deal, as I see it. The only reason the AOL outage made the headlines is because of market share. My own local ISP goes out at times, sometimes for more than a day. And judging by the comments of others here (e.g, "my connection has been flaky," "My ISP was down for the past few days," "Could someone mail me the last 3 days worth of traffic?"), I suspect this is common. Market share is what generates headlines. --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: Stealth cookies
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com" "Bill Stewart" 7-AUG-1996 06:58:56.42 >However, there's a way to cheat the cookie spec; I don't know >if this was intentional, but it was realized quickly by the market :-) >The issue is that your browser sends along an HTTP_REFERRER variable, >which points to the last page you visited before the current page. >It's useful for sites to find out where their pages are being referenced, >and they may (legitimately) want to only give out information if you're >coming from one of their previous pages. Does www.anonymizer.com filter out cookies and their requests? I'd also be curious if an alternate means of specifying the url (without having to manually type it in) is possible such that people would have problems doing a search for all pages connecting to a page. I.e., currently, I can search for pages connecting to a particular page through the anonymizer via doing an AltaVista search for link:/page/in/which/i'm/interested.html. If the person had to realize that, say, they had to do a search for page__in__which__i'm__interested.html, that could make unfriendly tracing of backlinks - sensitive backlinks if you're using the anonymizer - more difficult. -Allen P.S. The problem with blank pages from the anonymizer seems to be fixed, or at least I haven't run into it recently - thanks.

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Re: e$: Watching the MacRubble Bounce
by Vinnie Moscaritolo 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Man, you guys have way, WAY to much time on your hands. CP is starting to sound more like a bunch of bickering old ladies than the usual bickering group of old ladies (uh I mean crytpo anarchists) . I would have responded and put a round through the head of this discussion a few days ago, but my digest feed to cp died a few days ago. Since all this crap seems to center around a conversation between me and Tim , and really should have stayed that way, (Bob, consider this a rap on the nose with a rolled up newspaper) lets just clear up a few points nad then please move on to the next subject. By developer demand I am hosting a technical workshop for Mac Crypto developers <http://webstuff.apple.com/~opentpt/crypto.html> and asked Tim if he would like to speak, I though that since he has so much interesting stuff to say on the net that he might want to share it with some folks who write code for a living. Tim declined. no problem, normaly that would have ended it there, but Tim went on to state that I excluded him from the Mac Crypto list, I replied that I did no such thing and that I inherited the list (and hence any guilt I guess), He went on further deriding the Mac. I have been on the net long enough to no longer care about religious wars about "how long who's pull down menu was", BUT, I belive that Tim was a bit out of line with some of his comments about Mac Developers and Apple employees. I have a problem with that. We emailed a bit and came to the agreement that Tim would not be an appropriate speaker for a Mac technical workshop. fine, end of story,lets move on. But then Bob comes along and does his rant, the point was not so much to pick on Tim, which I belive he didnt name, but more to point out why the Mac is an important platform for crypto. Tim reacted and the pissing started. Lets just end it now. I am sure you all have better things to do. What I am concerned with is that in all the noise the following points are being lost in the fog of war. 1) there a a LOT of Mac clients on the Net. windoze might be popular in the corporate office, but Macs are still easier to configure (prove me wrong), and hence do have a place in this world. 1a) The Mac also has one of the best networking environment available for the desktop platform, OpenTransport IS very fast. And do me a favor dont complain about opendoc until youve tryed and write code with OLE. 2) Apple is nowhere near dead, anyone who says this is either smoking something harsh or lives in media painted world. The same people that say Macs are dead are the same uneducated liberal buttheads who write in the San Jose Merc Pravda about how a disarmed populus is a free(h)er one. 3) If you want strong crypto to get to the masses then you better start paying attention to genetic deversity or as I like to call it Watership Down syndrome, If you put all your crypto eggs in Bill's basket then don't complain when you find that the MicroSoft CAPI only supports escrowed keys. so lets all grow a little thicker skin and move on with it. while you all piss and moan, your rights are being stolen away, If you want to help crypto suceed then you have to care about Macs, just as much as windoze or Sun or Be or whatever platform. Back to work. Vinnie Moscaritolo ------------------ "friends come and friends go..but enemies accumulate." http://www.vmeng.com/vinnie/ Fingerprint: 4FA3298150E404F2782501876EA2146A

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Re: Oregon License Plate Site in the News Tonight!
by jfricker＠vertexgroup.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My main concern regarding access to this information rests in the fact that this database has always been available to anyone who understood how to get it and use it. Recently I received a letter from some credit card company offering to provide me with my credit report, social security history, and insurance related records on a regular basis (for a fee of course). How about my police, fbi, school, and dating records while we're at it. How much is already available only to those that know the ropes. Well today AP ran another story about the reaction surrounding Aaron's actions. Nice picture of the back of Aaron's head. They didn't print is lisense plate number either. ObCypherpunks: How many people do you know that are working on a day to day basis with medical records systems, the District Attorney's computers, your doctor's computers, state Department of Health, and so on. I'm sure it's come up before but isn't this an obvious of application of encryption and PAK (Public Access to Keys)? Any legislation currently to _require_ that medical records and such be encrypted with access restricted. Something like: Alice (my primary care giver) and I each have the key to the records that Alice stores. Bob (my dentist) has a legitimate need to these records so I issue Alice and Bob a new key. With that key, the software allows Alice to make a replicate (synchonizable at that) of the record and transfer it to Bob who uses his key to access the data. It may even be that _any_ time, any of the replicas are to be accessed _my_ private key must be employed although one may argue that in times of tragedy it would be prudent to get my medical history immediately. I would say there is little in those records that would help an emergency room doctor make life saving desisions. That anything that the ER should know about me to save my life should be on a Medical Emergency Bracelet. I guess it would not matter if you encrypted with a key short enough to mumble from the back of an ambulance. The market for encryption enabled applications is just about to take off. --j At 03:25 PM 8/8/96 -0700, Rich Graves wrote: >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > >I agree that this project needed to be done to educate the public, but I >must say I'm glad my name isn't attached to it. > >To answer legitimate concerns about abuse, perhaps version 2 could make the >relevant http logs publicly available? So in addition to checking the >governor's son's driving record, you could check which other IP addresses >have been looking at the governor's son's driving record. Spider detection >and retaliation would also be nice. > >(Of course this would have the side effect of increasing the visibility of >the anonymizer/canadianizer/exonizer services, which would not be a bad >thing.) > >- -rich > >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- >Version: 2.6.2 > >iQBVAwUBMgppM5NcNyVVy0jxAQFjFwIAyio1QMkAC7/sH3PdVbGXuTImey+1ewg2 >Nxl7bZlZe/YvYlk2yomKW24bgZJ5Vjiecc7g35SM+jveLRWA0xgbkg== >=yDFP >-----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > >

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Thank you.
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I forgot the name of the person who wrote the patches to the Linux kernel for stego. They work perfectly, and I had no problems setting it up. Many thanks.

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