December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Mailing list liability (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From markm@gak Sat Nov 9 21:03:24 1996 > > Note that none of these say anything about any commercial service being held > liable for defamatory statements because the service cancelled a user's > account or prevented a user from posting in certain areas. I really don't > see why you consider unsubscribing someone from a mailing list the equivalent > of monitoring posts and exercising editorial control. It is exactly editorial control because it prevents, a priori, submissions by Vulis under that account. He is FORCED to resort to other means. That is what the courts will see, it is what the jury will see, and it is what will eventualy sink the list, and place its operator under financial burden for years. I joined this list under my own volition, I agreed to no review by the list operator at any time. I did not agree to not hurt his feelings with my comments or views. I did not agree to agree with the operator of the list. I did not agree to make him feel warm and fuzzy inside. I agreed to NOTHING other than my permission for him to put your submissions in my email box. The only way I can be removed from this list and not open the operator up to legal consequences is by my own volition or the total cessation of this list. This applies to every member subscribed so long as their is no proviso posted at subscription time. They were held liable for the comments of their users BECAUSE they demonstrated editorial control. In removing Vulis from the list he has demonstrated editorial control. Prior to this act he was immune from rantings and ravings of the various idiots on this list. Now he is not. The fact that it was a commercial service was irrelevant and not an issue in the court cases. What was involved was the responsibility of the service operators, the agreement between service and users, and who had editorial control (users v service). And finaly, if your contention is that if you set up a press and start cranking out flyers (digital or otherwise), which defame or otherwise liable, you are immune from prosecution unless you are a business then you are in for a very rude surprise. Sooner or later somebody is going to submit a posting which will go through. That posting will be pointed at a particular personality. That personality will take exception and sue the list operator, and because of this action will have a very high chance of winning. Not only does the list operator loose but we all loose because it is going to set a precedence that will take many years more to recover from. I seldom get personal but there are a few of you folks that have your heads up your collective crypto-anarchy asses. Here is a simple process whereby you can protect yourself from legal reprisals and you don't take it. God help you because the courts shure as hell won't. In case you people don't get it, the whole point is to REDUCE the influence and control of the government (local, state, and federal). NOT to give even more fodder to shoot. For a list operator a primary if not the primary goal is to avoid any legal involvement at all costs. Throwing people off lists with no subscription limitations is not the way to do that. To be a succesful list operator your scruples and the way you treat your subscribers MUST be beyond any reproach. The bottem line is that the act was not professional and impacts the image of mailing lists, Cypherpunks, its operator, and its members in a negative light. I have operated BBS'es and mailing lists since '76 and find such actions on the part of a fellow service operator to be insulting to the profession that I have enjoyed for 20 years. Those of you who contend that because there is no explicit contract between operator and subscriber this is sufficient to allow the operator to enact any policies they wish with no warning or other consideration are in for a nasty surprise. You will find that this will in fact prevent a list operator from doing anything other than upgrading software, buying more disk space, and paying the bills because that is the ONLY way they will be able to retain commen carrier style protections. Without that protection a list operator is faced with reviewing every submission to a list prior to redistribution or face the legal and financial consequences. I do not wish to see the Cypherpunks mailing list to become that litmus test. Consider this, the Cypherpunks mailing list is a very public list in many ways it is the vanguard of what tomorrows net will be like. Is this the sort of environment that can survive? With this as the current list policy I think we are all taking part in a dinosaur. Jim Choate

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by nobody＠replay.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Peter Hendrickson <ph(a)netcom.com> wrote: > What are the benefits of being a cryptoanarchist? Maybe you get > to double your income. Most people won't see this as worth the > trouble. If you don't have enough to eat, doubling your income is worth the trouble. Crypto-anarchy benefits the poor more than the rich. The underlings of society are going to love it.

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Mailing list liability
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Note: Parts of the following are taken verbatim from (1) with some rewording on my part to make the material flow better. Cubby v Compuserve (1991) The court reasoned, "in essence an electronic, for profit library that carried a vast number of publications and collected usage and membership fees from its subscribers in return for access to the publications." The court further ruled that Compuserve had no more editorial control over Rumorville than "does a public library, book store, or newsstand, and it would be no more feasible for Compuserve to examine every publication it carries for potentialy defamatory statements than it would be for any other distributor to do so." The court also found, "A computerized database is the functional equivalent of a more traditional news vendor, and the inconsistent application of a lower standard of liability to an electronic news distributor such as Compuserve than that which is applied to a public library, a book store, or a newsstand would impose an undue burden on the free flow of information. Given the relevant First Amendment considerations, the appropriate standard of liability is whether it knew or had reason to know of the allegedly defamatory Rumorville statements." The court held that Compuserve was not liable because Compuserve was a "distributor" and not a "publisher." The court concluded that because Compuserve did not actively monitor the postings of the forum, it was a distributor. In summary, the court compared Compuserve to a bookstore selling the book rather than the publisher of the book. Cianci v New Times Publishing Co. (1980) "one who repeats or othewise republishes defamatory matter is subject to the liability as if he had originaly published it." Lerman v Chuckleberry Publishing, Inc. (1981) The court held that with respect to news vendors, book stores, and libraries are not liable if "vendors and distributors of defamatory publications are not liable if they neither know nor have reason to know of the defamation." Stratton Oakmont v Prodigy (1995) The critical issue in Prodigy was whether Prodigy exercised sufficient editorial control over its computer bulletin boards to render it a publisher with the same responsibilities as a newspaper or magazine. The court reasoned that there were two distinctions in this case sufficient to qualify Prodigy as a publisher. First, it held itself out to the public and its members as controlling the content of its computer bulletin boards. Second, Prodigy implimented this control through its automated software and established guidelines that board leaders were required to enforce. Prodigy was clearly making decisions as to content. Such decisions constitute editorial control. (1) ;login:, Oct. 1996, V21N5 pp27.

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Thu, 7 Nov 1996 16:43:23 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >* "Legitimate needs." The whole notion Peter raises of banning cryptography >is fraught with problems. Are businesses to be told that all communications >are to be in the clear? Or is Peter's point that some form of GAK will be >used? I'd love to see the government try to tell big business that they can't protect, say, electronic transactions. That'd get a lot of rented senators in action... >(If the latter, then of course we are back to an even better form of >"stego" than stego itself: superencrypt before using GAK. Unless the >government samples packets randomly and does what they say they will do to >open a GAKked packet--e.g., get a court order, go to the escrow key >holders, etc.--then how will they know if a message is superencrypted? And >what if a GAKked message contains conventional _codes_? Are shorthand codes >such as business have long used--"The rain in Rome is warm this month"--to >be illegal?) Also: "Am I being investigated for any crime?" "Then how do you know it's been superencrypted - I thought you could only get access with a warrant?" # Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp # <cadams(a)acucobol.com> | send mail with subject "send PGPKEY" "That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them." --- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft (quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial)

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Re: A Disservice to Mr. Bell
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:18 PM 11/8/96 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote: >At 1:32 PM 11/8/1996, jim bell wrote: >>At 09:12 PM 11/7/96 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote: >>> ...His conviction was not reversed until 1983 in the court of one >>> Judge Patel... > >> However, the fact that it took 40 years to reverse (and didn't, presumably, >> reverse the convictions of others, and didn't compensate people for lost >> property) is yet another reason to take a few pieces out of the hide of the >> SC, as well as a few pounds of flesh nearest the heart. > >Many of us are guilty of a grave disservice to Mr. Bell. I'm sure >that just about every reader of this list can only cringe when >messages such as the one above cross our screens. ("He can't be >a paid provocateur - it would be too obvious!") > >Not only is Mr. Bell apparently calling for the murder of a judge, he >is apparently calling for the murder of every justice on the Supreme >Court of the United States! I'm glad to see that you seem to be catching on. (although you made the minor error of referring to the current roster of the SC, as opposed to the 1943 makeup. But that's a minor point; the 1996 group have their own set of offenses...) In any case, it's really very simple: Kidnapping used to be a capital offense in the US. What the US Government did to the Japanese Americans during WWII was, quite simply, kidnapping. Or, at least, it would have been called kidnapping if it had been done by non-governmental entities. True, it was done "under color of law," but ultimately it amounted to the same thing. Lawyers, who have brought hypocrisy and double-standards to a high art form, are taught to accept this. And they are also taught to fight (at least a bit) for their clients rights. But ultimately, they are taught to accept the decision of a court even if it's wrong. Sure, they may have appeal rights and will occasionally exercise them, but there's no court past the SC. It turns out, of course, that since we now all (?) accept the idea that those SC decisions were simply wrong, it isn't possible to use the "they said it was okay" excuse. The most of the relocations occurred before the decisions, which means the governmental actions were done without them. And I consider a temporary (even a 40-year) approval by a group of nine clowns to be no more definitive than a fresh conviction that hasn't yet been through its first appeal. Please note that if it were 1943 and somebody called for the death penalty for the perp of a kidnapping case, he'd probably be called a fine upstanding citizen. (Interestingly enough, one of the cornerstone objections a lawyer (or judge) might have to my "playing hardball" on this subject is their belief that judges should be immune from prosecution for their decisions. The strange part, however, is that judicial immunity seems to be an entirely fabricated concept: It appears nowhere in the US Constitution, for example.) However, it turns out that there is a solution to this problem, the recent re-emergence of the "Common-law courts." A truly fascinating subject. Having competed (with varying levels of disrespect on both sides) with so-called "Equity courts" in England since well before the 17th century, they frequently represented a bulwark against the misuse of royal authority. Competing court systems might be considered somewhat analogous to competing companies in the private sector: Monopolies breed abuse; competition results in better service. There is no reason to believe that this effect would be any less applicable in courts than other markets. They might merely be a historical curiousity in America, except that the American Revolution had the predictable effect (supported by US court decision, apparently) that as a consequence of George III's loss and our win, all powers previously vested in the King were returned to the American people. Some, but by no means all of them were delegated to the Federal government, as the 9th and 10th amendments show. The really interesting part is that the authority to form common-law courts was never delegated to the Federal government, and (perhaps not surprisingly, considering recent governmental abuses) a number of groups around the country have decided to form their own such commonlaw courts. To American ears this will probably sound a bit like "taking the law into your own hands," but those courts are quite real and I predict they will become a substantially more powerful force in the next few years. Since selection of judges is part of the powers originally owned by George III and lost by him, this means that ordinary people have the power to run those courts and staff them, as odd as this will feel to those of us who were brought up on Perry Mason et al. Naturally, you can expect numerous lawyers and judges (all who consider themselves part of the competing "equity court" system, BTW) to cry foul. The effect is somewhat akin to a child who initially shares a communal sandbox with a neighbor kid, who subsequently moves away and is replaced by a childless couple. After a few years of de-facto sole ownership, the feelings of monopoly ownership are quite real, even if in reality sharing must once again happen due to the arrival of new neighbors. Interestingly enough, the one thing the Commonlaw court system needs is an effective enforcement system. One likely method is the commercial lien process, but even that tends to be resisted by people who are far more used to dealing with equity court personnel. It turns out that my AP system seems to mesh almost perfectly with their needs, although obviously in practice it would only be used as a "last resort." Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Another possible remailer attack?
by Steve Reid 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 12:58:42 -0800 >From: nobody(a)cypherpunks.ca (John Anonymous MacDonald) >Subject: Vulis on the remailers > Please, remailers, source block Vulis for a week. > Remailer Fan Suppose you operate an ISP and you suspect that one of your users (let's call him Dimitri) is using anonymous remailers to submit politically incorrect messages (under a pseudonym, or all with the same writing style) to Usenet, mailing lists, and a well-known phreak/hack publication. Also suppose that these public messages are appearing on a regular basis. You want to know if Dimitri is the person regularly posting these messages. So, you use your powers as ISP to block his access to all remailers. If the public messages suddenly stop then you can be reasonably certain that Dimitri was sending them. I expect this would work even against DC nets. The only solution I can think of is to have an account with multiple ISPs and always send mail from more than one account. This probably wouldn't offer much protection against TLAs (NSA, CIA, FBI, MCI, AT&T ;) who may be able to block traffic no matter where it comes from. Comments?

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RE: His and Her Anarchies
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Black Unicorn <unicorn(a)schloss.li> wrote: >I'm sure if I look hard enough, I'll find the crypto content in here. > >On Fri, 8 Nov 1996 jbugden(a)smtplink.alis.ca wrote: > >> Copyright c 1996, The Globe and Mail Company r >> >> U.S. election reveals his and her politics >> Educated women have different agenda I think it relates to crypto policy via policy in general, also to both the libertarian and the inevitable cryptoanarchy argument we are currently tossing about and brought to mind a comment a few months back from Tim about how the occasional female members of this list tended to not make sense a lot of the time. Sorry if it wasn't clear enough. I had expected a comment regarding the smart bomb message since it would have been better to send to the risks list. Ciao, James

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Apartment complex burnt down... (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sat, 9 Nov 1996 20:53:02 -0800 > From: nobody(a)cypherpunks.ca (John Anonymous MacDonald) > > Suppose Bob lives in an apartment complex. By accident the whole building > burns down. > > Bob manages to escape, but all his papers, including passport, IDs, > credit cards, acount numbers, etc etc gets destroyed. > > What can Bob do? Would the government help him? > > It seems like he'd be in a really unfavorable position... I was there 2 years ago. The Red Cross is about the only group you can count on other than family, friends and a church (if you happen to belong to one). Getting another drivers license was a easy operation. Head down to the local DPS office and request a replacement card for a lost license. The titles and such for property and auto were tedious but not impossible. I didn't need to show anything other than my drivers license and pay the requisite fees to obtain new copies of the deeds. In general the governmental types of documents and such were easy to replace. I personaly had all the necessary copies of the documents I needed within a month or so. The personal items were impossible to replace and caused the most emotional turmoil. In many parts of the country the Red Cross is delepeted both in operating funds and volunteers. If you can, please consider giving them your support. I personaly didn't use them but both my roomies did. Jim Choate

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Apartment complex burnt down...
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Suppose Bob lives in an apartment complex. By accident the whole building burns down. Bob manages to escape, but all his papers, including passport, IDs, credit cards, acount numbers, etc etc gets destroyed. What can Bob do? Would the government help him? It seems like he'd be in a really unfavorable position...

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Apartment complex burnt down...
by drose＠AZStarNet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sat, 9 Nov 1996, John Anonymous MacDonald wrote: >Suppose Bob lives in an apartment complex. By accident the whole building >burns down. > >Bob manages to escape, but all his papers, including passport, IDs, >credit cards, acount numbers, etc etc gets destroyed. > >What can Bob do? Would the government help him? Why? >It seems like he'd be in a really unfavorable position... Umm-hmmm. Calling Sunkyong Moon-Yip (sp?): List please off him getts.

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