December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Thoughts about Morph Escrow Crimes
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) wrote: >As the law cannot tell if an image of prurient interest started out as a legal image of Raquel Welch or Jennifer Aniston, or started out as an illegal image of a minor child, morph escrow will force all image possessors and distributors to produce proof that the image started out legal. It is not hard to imagine a future where computer modelling has reached the stage that a real picture is not required. An obvious extension of this is a film with computer generated actors. Now, consider this scenario: 1) The computer generated image is "indistinguishable" from reality. 2) The computer generated image depicts something considered obscene or illegal under present laws (e.g. pedophilia). At some point in the future it would seem possible that the computer generated image will be treated as a real image under the law (and evaluated accordingly) because it is indistinguishable from a real image. Or perhaps we will take the other tack and simply say: What is truth? I'm not quite ready to wash my hands on this issue. James Welcome to MorphSex - Fulfilling your fantasies - Painlessly. Select Gender [M/F/H]: Select Age [2-80]: Options: [Orgasm/Suffocation/Dismemberment/Disembowlment/Ennui]

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Re: Fed appellate judge remarks re anonymity, free speech on the net
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:40 PM 9/12/96 -0700, Greg Broiles wrote: > >The Daily Journal, a LA/SF legal newspaper had an article today (9/12) about >a lunchtime address given by Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski last Monday >at an Internet Law Symposium in Seattle. > >The article quotes Kozinski as saying "I have a severe problem with >anonymous E-mailers . . . You don't have a right to walk up to somebody's >door and knock with a bag over your head." The article says Kozinski likened >anonymous E-mail to menacing someone. I wish somebody would go up to these guys and point out that since the Internet is, more or less, a huge, worldwide, VOLUNTARY association of people, _we_ don't think these judges have any sort of "right" to regulate its content. Furthermore, it isn't clear that the proper regulators of the Internet shouldn't be an entirely different set of people selected by Internet users, RATHER than the same old government system that's managed to screw up the rest of the world so far. And if you're looking for "menacing," I'd say that describes the government's behavior towards the Internet over the last year or two. >Kozinski also suggested that computer-generated or morphed images of >children involved in sexual acts may not be protected under the Constitution >because of ongoing trauma to the child, Which child? Does he understand what "computer-generated" means? >while computer-generated or morphed images of adults would be protected. What about the "ongoing trauma" to the adults? I smell hypocrisy. >The article says that Kozinski was skeptical that he or other federal judges >necessarily agreed with the 3rd Circuit's ruling in _ACLU v. Reno_ (finding >the CDA unconstitutional). > >Kozinski is considered relatively conservative and relatively libertarian, >as 9th Circuit judges go. Which means that he'll last just a little longer "when the cyber-revolution comes." Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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"Unwanted Mail"
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:48 PM 9/12/96, Rabid Wombat wrote: >> >> These people have invited the email, and the associated expense, by placing >> a public email-to: button on their public www page. > > >Most people put up an "email to:" button on a public page for >communications related to what's on the page. It's quite a stretch to >assume that this invites any and all email from anyone who cares to send >whatever they want. I can't say I've ever seen one that said "Please send >SPAM(tm) to:" ... But to attempt to define "SPAM" (unless you're Armour) is dangerous. This whole notion of "unwanted mail" is ill-defined and not something "the law" should get involved in, in my view. (And CP technologies certainly are consistent with this, e.g., placing the role of screening on those who set up gates, not on tracking down True Names for prosecution.) >However, since others may think like you, I guess I'll have to add a line >above my link stating that email not related to the purpose of my site >will be happily proof-read at the rate of $200 per hour, 1 hour per 60 >lines, minimum. Perhaps I'll get lucky. If I get a big enough chunk of >SPAM(tm), it might be worth the costs of breaking down the anonymity. As the legal eagles will tell you, the essence of a contract is a two-way agreed upon set of terms, not a one-way "if you send me mail I decide I don't want, you will have incurred a charge of $1000." Try enforcing your $200 an hour "proofreading charge" in any court in the land. (I've been saying this thing for several years. Who knows, maybe Rabit Wombat was the first to use it. Whatever, it's as unenforceable and meaningless now as it was several years ago.) >No, this b.s. is more like having someone put a dead skunk in my mailbox, >with no return address, trying to prevent me from sending them 100 dead >skunks as a return favor. And about as welcome. In the case of actual USPS mailboxes, there are laws which prevent others from using them (e.g., no UPS or FedEx deliveries). For sure, dead skunks can be placed in mailboxes, or under porches, or whatever. The law can't fix everything. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: PANIX.COM down: denial of service attack
by pjb＠ny.ubs.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From cypherpunks-errors(a)toad.com Thu Sep 12 18:16:43 1996 > Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 09:09:18 -0700 > From: #6 <thevillage(a)void.gov> > X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.01 (Win95; U) > Mime-Version: 1.0 > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Subject: PANIX.COM down: denial of service attack > Content-Type> : > text/plain> ; > charset=us-ascii> > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Content-Length: 969 > > WSJ 9/12/96 > > Paraphrasing: > > Panix has been under attack for the last week by someone flooding > their server with bogus "requests for information" [see below] ... > > The attack(s): > > * "Have rendered almost defenseless the small NY company" > * "...began late Friday afternoon ... were still continung yesterday" > * have targeted "computers that control WWW pages, store e-mail, and > still others that link Internet addresses to Panix subscribers." > > "The hacker [sic] has been sending up to 150 requests a second to > Panix's computers, seeking to establish a connection ... the requests, > presumably generated by a malicious computer program, contain fake > Internet addresses, which the computer must sort out before they can > discard them. The computers have choked under the deluge." > > "As to who might be targeting Panix, the firm's Mr. Rosen speculated it ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ It could, of course, also be someone, from a set of several million, that find Mr. Rosen to be such as odious prick that they did it just to drive him out of their misery. Just thinking out loud.. > could be someone upset by the fact that the site hosts, free, the Web > site for Voters Telecommunication Watch...." > -paul

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Re: Fed appellate judge remarks re anonymity, free speech on the net
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:24 PM 9/12/96 -0700, zachb(a)netcom.com wrote: >> (Also in today's news, the 9th Circuit upheld a CA statute forbidding sales >> of material considered "harmful to minors" from vending machines.) > >Even if this statute is meant only to apply to cigarette machines, which >would seem to be the case given all of the anti-cig stuff going on now, >what good will it do? Whoops. Sorry. Wrong context. What I should have said was "the 9th Circuit upheld a CA statute forbidding sales of *printed* material considered 'harmful to minors' from unsupervised vending machines". The publication(s) at issue are those newsprint swingers' magazines (e.g., "me and my friend want to screw you and your friend. here is a picture of us naked."). (doh!) -- Greg Broiles | "We pretend to be their friends, gbroiles(a)netbox.com | but they fuck with our heads." http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | |

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56 kbps modems
by Asgaard 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>U.S. Robotics and Rockwell International are planning new modems with >speeds up to 56 kbps a second, almost double the speed of the fastest >rate now available. The new devices should be available by the end of >the year, although their top speed initially may be less than 56 kbps. >(Wall Street Journal 12 Sep 96 B11) People who seemed to know used to say that 'the Shannon limit' set an absolute upper limit around 40 kbps. Has Shannon been proven wrong, or what? Asgaard

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position of cellular phones
by SCN User 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-->After seeing the messages about Federal Express doing something similar, -->I thought this would be of interest: Date: Mon, 09 Sep 96 17:41:31 GMT From: campbellp(a)logica.com (Peter Campbell Smith) Subject: Re: Locating the position of cellular phones (Stover, RISKS-18.41) There is an interesting article in Traffic Technology International, Aug/Sept 96 issue about a system called CAPITAL that uses cellular phone calls as a probe to monitor road traffic around Washington DC. It describes an experiment which has been running for two years and which has demonstrated that this is an extremely cost-effective alternative to conventional means of traffic monitoring. The system is independent of the cellular phone system per se, but has antennae on the cellular phone masts which listen to the cellular frequencies. Every time a call is initiated, CAPITAL locates the caller by a combination of directional multi-element antennae and time-of-arrival analysis between different masts. The geographical accuracy is reported to be to about 115m, and subsequent tracking allows the speed of the vehicle to be established within 30 to 50sec to an accuracy of 5mi/h. At any time only less than 5% of vehicles are making calls, but this is a sufficient sample for analysing the traffic speed (though not presumably the traffic density). Moreover, when the traffic slows down even more people make calls, so there is a better density of data from the areas most interesting to those monitoring traffic flows. It is claimed that the boxes ignore the voice content of the call and that the data they deliver has randomly assigned identifiers for each call, so that nothing leaves the system which would allow calls to be associated with specific phones. -->Until the government thinks it needs the info! Peter Campbell Smith, Logica, London, UK campbellp(a)logica.com

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(fwd) Email Robot draws fire from CypherPunkz
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Path: news.eff.org!news.umbc.edu!haven.umd.edu!cs.umd.edu!news.abs.net!ddsw1!news.mcs.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!howland.erols.net!agate!boulder!ucsub.Colorado.EDU!peterson From: peterson(a)ucsub.Colorado.EDU (Peterson Penny) Newsgroups: alt.privacy Subject: Email Robot draws fire from CypherPunkz Date: 12 Sep 96 02:57:19 GMT Organization: University of Colorado at Boulder Lines: 11 Message-ID: <peterson.842497039(a)ucsub.Colorado.EDU> NNTP-Posting-Host: ucsub.colorado.edu NNTP-Posting-User: peterson X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #8 (NOV) The Cypherpunks gang has apparently attacked a San Francisco artist's www site, harrassing him and mail-bombing his service provider in an attempt to get him to drop the account. The Cpunks objected to an applett that this artist had on one of his pages that would send a mail greeting to people who had a *mail-to:* button on their www pages. This greeting consisted of his URL only and went through an anon remailer. More info and a sample of the email robot can be found at: http://www.hipcrime.com -- // declan(a)eff.org // I do not represent the EFF // declan(a)well.com //

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Re: Jury Nullification = Voting One's Conscience
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:39 PM 9/12/96 -0400, Brian Davis wrote: >> Though I often condemn aspects of the American political and legal system, >> it is true that an awful lot of things are done right. > >Perhaps, like democracy, it is the worst system possible, except for >every other system man has invented. >EBD I have to disagree with that... Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: 260_0it
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:02 PM 9/13/96 GMT, John Young wrote: > FiTi: "Intelligent machines will take control of our lives" > > Before long, every vehicle will be fitted with a GPS > receiver, making its position known to local area > traffic management systems. In the home, a financial and > stock control system would automatically order food and > groceries when necessary. Intelligent machines might > "decide" that it would be more efficient not to order > any more food - and shut you out of the house. > > "It's more or less inevitable. Business and science will > drive this to the utmost." "Open the garage door, HAL." "I'm sorry, Dave, but those sirloin steaks in the refrigerator are too valuable for me to allow you to eat them. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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