December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

re: National Socio-Economic Security Need for Encryption Technology
by Bart Croughs 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Perry Metzger wrote: >Bart Croughs writes: >> But there is another axiom of economics which the >>nationalist/socialist can use for his case against the free movement of >> capital. This axiom states that the wages of workers depend on the >> amount of capital invested. The more capital invested, the higher the >> wages are. >This must be some new axiom of economics that I had not heard of. It's not a sin to be ignorant, but to boast about it... I recommend you read the great libertarian /austrian economists: Murray Rothbard, Henry Hazlitt, etc. Bart Croughs

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Advice from a CPSR conference organizer on conferences
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Given various people on here interested in organizing cryptography conferences, I thought the below would be interesting. -Allen From: Phil Agre <pagre(a)weber.ucsd.edu> X-URL: http://communication.ucsd.edu/pagre/rre.html X-Mailing-List: <rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu> archive/latest/1259 Notes on organizing conferences Phil Agre August 1996 This article is adapted from the post mortem that I write immediately after organizing the 1994 CPSR Annual Meeting, together with notes to myself from other meetings I have been involved in organizing. Its purpose is to offer future organizers the benefit of our experience. I accepted the job of program chair because I wanted to develop my skills for organizing events, and I definitely learned some things along the way. One thing I learned is apparently very subtle, since I've never seen or heard of anybody explaining it. The professional world has a special way of defining identity: people are identified with issues. When I started planning the program, my initial approach was simply to start with the most dynamic individuals in the general area that CPSR covers. So I sent out a batch of e-mail messages to well-connected personages, asking them who we should get to speak. Alas, few of them were able to say anything very useful, saying (usually in a nice way) that they regarded my request as overly vague. I gather that one is supposed to decide first what issues to cover, and then ask who is associated with that issue. For example, "who are some good people to speak on the political aspects of building community networks?" Or, "who is a good person to speak on technology activism on issues affecting people with disabilities?" This is nearly the only form of question I could get answered. Even a simple variant like, "who has something fresh and original to say about topic X?" didn't work very well. It's as though everyone maintains a lookup table in their heads, indexing people to issues. Having started this way, some other problems then arise. Sometimes you can't get the number one speaker on a given issue to speak, so then you ask who else you might get, and you'll get some more names. It's good to ask whether so-and-so is a good speaker or not. Sometimes you'll hear someone say something bad (or something diplomatically irrelevant) about a potential speaker whom you haven't met, and such comments will probably weigh heavily with you, for the simple reason that it's a disaster to schedule an unskilled or irresponsible speaker on your program. This dynamic bothered me, since it seemed to have a built-in tendency to reinforce a single individual's standing even though other people might be equally talented; if someone already has a reputation as a speaker in a given area, those other people don't get invited to speak, so they can't develop reputations as speakers. I had a certain amount of success asking, "who deserves a chance to be heard on this issue?", and some people even volunteered the names of people who they felt deserved a chance. This made me feel better. Start early. You need to get your publicity out in time for monthly publications listing in their schedule. I don't know when precisely this is, since we didn't come close to making the deadline. I didn't start the publicity machinery for our October conference until we had every last speaker pinned down in early summer. Big mistake: people go on vacation in the summer, and your rate of progress in assembling the program will plummet starting in late June. Identify your prominent, featured speakers and get them pinned down first; they're the only ones you need to get your publicity under way. I found e-mail seductive; it's easy to publicize something to the whole net in a few days, so I conveniently forgot that large parts of the world don't read announcements on the net -- print publicity is still absolutely necessary. We had a professional PR person working for us. She works at UCSD in the PR office. She's perfectly good at her job, but I've learned some lessons for working with such people in the future. One is to clarify goals. My central goal was to get a lot of interesting people to attend our meeting; this meant PR aimed at obtaining advance publicity. UCSD's main goal, though, was to get lots of press coverage on the day of the meeting itself; this meant PR aimed at getting reporters to attend the meeting. These two goals are equally valid, but they happen on different schedules. Local advance publicity mostly happened in the three or four days before the meeting, and with a little effort we did well. We made some mistakes in the meeting brochure. One was that the brochure only mentioned the three main speakers, even though it had room for much more. This might not have been so bad, except that the three-line summaries of those three speakers' speeches all sounded pretty similar. I have no way of knowing how much difference this made to the final turnout, but I do think we should have taken more conscious care to identify broad categories of people we wanted in attendance, and then making sure each one sees something on the brochure that they find appealing. When this problem came up, we made a single-page (front and back of a green sheet of paper) version of the electronic meeting announcement, including the full program and registration information. We ended up distributing hundreds of these, and I am sure that they gave lots of people a good idea of what the organization is about. I made some mistakes when booking the speakers for the meeting. I don't regret any of the people we chose, though I ended up disagreeing with a couple of them much more intensely than I had thought I would. The problem was with financial matters. We had a $500-per-speaker budget for people who were coming from outside California, so we had to minimize the number of such people. The problem is that some speakers simply cannot attend for $500, since their travel expenses simply cannot be covered for $500. My response to this problem was denial: I just got vague and hoped it would go away. But of course it didn't. Some speakers took losses despite my clear statement of the $500 limit, and I should have been even clearer with them that they should book flights etc right away to ensure that their losses are not greater than they're happy with. The reason I didn't do these things was that I was focused on getting the people to accept our invitations, especially in one case where our first choice declined after weeks of hemming and hawing. (If you're invited to speak at a conference, please decide whether to accept right away.) One thing we did right was to send out a press release. The UCSD PR person wrote it. I thought that the press release, like all of the press coverage, tended to trivialize things with buzzwords like "access to the information superhighway". But I was repeatedly assured that that's how it is: you have to use words that people understand. Anyway, we sent our press release out on PR Newswire, and I mailed it to all of the local computer press. I also mailed it to an eccentric local newspaper that's distributed free in coffee houses, and they reprinted it verbatim. I found that San Diego has all kinds of free publications that I hadn't even heard of, including something called Terminal Velocity that's aimed at the cyberculture and comics crowd -- 40,000 circulation. Not to be sneezed at. One issue was the phone number to use in the press release -- where should people call for more information about the meeting? At first I used the CPSR number in Palo Alto since nobody here wanted to field a million phone calls. But this was a mistake. Lots of people don't want to call long distance, and once I broke down and started listing my own office phone number, I only got a couple dozen calls, including several calls from very interesting people. The only category of calls that bothered me was from people wanting technical help with their computers. Most of these calls were easy enough, since I could send them to local user groups, but one of them was extremely obnoxious. On the whole, being the contact person listed in these publications was a far more positive experience than I thought it would be. Another thing we did right was outreach. This was a principle of the meeting from the beginning. Think of the meeting as primarily an occasion for organizing. Call people on the phone, tell them about the meeting, and ask them who you should be speaking with. At the very beginning of the process, write a small announcement of the meeting and invite people to become involved and sent it out on the net; we got some excellent contacts this way. The Internet may not reach the masses yet, but we found that San Diego now has a pretty reasonable density of Internet penetration among computer people. Announcements about CPSR events here have reached all sorts of interesting people by being passed hand-to-hand through the net. We made dozens of phone calls along the way: computer user groups, Latino organizations, city government, political activists, commercial Internet providers, BBS operators, industry people, and so forth. People have heard about the "info highway", so your job is to get your message boiled down to something that sounds like your interlocutor's next step on their way to the net. Don't try to "sell" your organization or issue to someone who's not interested; rather, if they're already interested in the issues then make the meeting process tangible for them. We visited a number of computer user group meetings; I also called up the organizers of several such meetings and asked if they would be willing to announce the Annual Meeting, and sent them copies of the aforementioned "green sheet" schedule. Early on in the process, I organized a speaker series that Dave Noelle did good publicity for, making posters and sending them to various people and publications. Since the first speaker's topic was privacy, the "Reader" (free weekly tabloid) decided to feature her talk, and their article drew a few dozen people. We also sent the announcements out on the Internet, and each talk had at least a couple dozen people. At the beginning of each talk, I introduced myself and told people about the conference. We sent around a sign-up sheet. We got a bit of a mailing list and some good contacts from that process, but I cannot swear that it was really worth all the effort. Maybe we would have reached those people through other channels. The speaker series was intellectually worthwhile though. The meeting weekend itself was so thoroughly organized, primarily by the local librarians, that it's hard for me to draw any particular lessons besides getting good people to do the work. Typing this now, I can't think of anything that went wrong that's worth telling you about. Oh yes. We got screwed by the student center, whose new management decided that she wasn't interested in honoring the agreement we had made with her predecessor. Of course we didn't have it in writing, because we had been assured that we didn't *need* to have it in writing. After I grouched at her a while, she told us that she would "honor your agreement" by charging us 2.5 times what that agreement had called for. I flipped out and decided that we would move the meeting to an engineering lecture hall that I could book for free because I'm a professor. But hey -- if I wasn't a professor then we could have been shafted. So remember, get it in writing. No matter what conversations you've had with them, they've always got more rules printed on sheets of paper that you've never heard about. You can't enforce your agreements until they're written down. And beware of those extra little charges. We were told that the banquet would cost $X per person, but when the paperwork finally arrived, that turned out to mean $X plus tax and gratuity plus a $400 "facility fee". (I then got this infuriatingly condescending little speech to the effect that this is a standard industry practice -- i.e., everyone does it -- and that I must therefore not know what I'm doing. But setting out to take revenge about such things will probably not serve your real goals.) Get it in writing. In doing the early outreach, I had to learn some lessons. I know that it's good to consult people: call them, visit them, tell them what you're doing, and say "what advice do you have for me?". This makes friends for you and the organization and makes people feel included. It also prevents you from being perceived as grabbing someone else's turf -- that is, claiming sovereignty over an issue that someone else has invested effort identifying themselves with already. Often the people you talk to will actually have good advice for you. (If they have an agenda or an axe then you can usually figure out what it is and steer around it.) Find out who knows people and approach them this way. They don't have to be obvious allies. Even people who specialize in elite networking in your city are perfectly good candidates for this, though you should pick the highest status individual in your organizing group to approach such people. A professor of any rank will do fine. Get rid of your political jargon. Be able to talk to people in language they can understand. Evolve a bunch of honest ways of explaining what the meeting is about. If you cannot come up with an honest way of explaining your meeting to someone then that person is not part of your audience. If they *ought* to be part of your audience then you need to go back and redesign the meeting. Anyway, this cycle of asking advice sometimes became clumsy when I was speaking with someone who wanted to be a speaker at the meeting. It's hard to invite someone to participate in a meeting and simultaneously tell them they can't speak at the meeting. So decide ahead of time which people might want to be speakers, and what you'll say when they explicitly ask you to put them on the program. The standard response is to hide behind your program committee, saying "that would be great, I'll take it up with the program committee". But a lot of people don't buy that. So you won't always end up on perfectly positive terms with people. One way you can be helpful to people is to explicitly invite them to make their organization's (or company's, or whatever) literature available on the conference literature tables. We had several books and journals being advertised, along with several nonprofit Internet providers and local computer organizations. I'm sure we could have had many more if I had gotten those literature invitations out earlier. Anybody who isn't attending your meeting on a corporate expense account will care a lot about how much it costs. Make it cheap. If you work with professional meeting organizers, or people who are accustomed to the world of expense accounts, you will have to resist their seemingly inexorable impulses to make everything "nice" by piling on exotic banquets, racks of A/V equipment, free notebooks for everyone, hotel rooms for speakers, nice little selections of juices and cookies at breaks, and so on. These people mean well, but you will need to bring them back to fiscal reality gently, step by step. Make conscious choices about who should run panels, give opening and closing remarks, introduce speakers, etc. We made good choices, but I wasn't thinking about the issue until very late. If you have any speakers in wheelchairs, plan way ahead for their housing and transportation. Carefully walk the whole path that they will need to travel from curbside to podium, and make extra sure that the necessary doors will be unlocked for handicapped access, including bathrooms. I didn't like the page I wrote about the Annual Meeting for the summer issue of the CPSR Newsletter. I *should* have written an advertisement aimed at turning out the maximum number of CPSR members, most of whom have had rather little personal contact with the organization and really do need to be "sold" on the Annual Meeting, which after all requires a real expenditure of time and money. Instead I wrote a fancy think piece about strategy and gave too much attention about our plans to connect to the local community. I'm glad that we connected to the local community, but that was not the major message to emphasize for people from outside the local community. We put up a WWW page for the Annual Meeting program and registration. It was fun, but I have no idea what difference it made. I *do* know that it's useless to put up a WWW page unless you advertise it by sending messages to various mailing lists. When you're about to choose a date for the meeting, make sure you ask all of the people who know lots of organizations. We had an unfortunate conflict with a AAAS/ABA workshop on cyberspace ethics and law in Washington. Get people together early and brainstorm about the meeting. People have lots of great ideas. Let their ideas influence you so that your thinking is broadened and you're making your decisions more consciously than you might be otherwise. I was glad that we clarified early what jobs the National Office does. They ended up doing some extra jobs, and we ended up doing pieces of some things that I had originally been happy to let them do, but clear assignments of tasks are good. Draw on the experience of the people who have organized the meeting in earlier years. And then when you're done, write down your own experiences to benefit others. - end -

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re: National Socio-Economic Security Need for Encryption Technology
by Bart Croughs 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My statement that the wages depend on the amount of capital invested, has received a bad press. I thought cypherpunks were economically literate, so I didn't explain the principle and I didn't give any sources for further reading. This proved to be a mistake. To avoid this kind of uninformed criticism in the future, I recommend my critics read the following books, which can all be ordered from Laissez-Faire Books: 1) The economics of liberty (ed. L. Rockwell); 2) The free market reader (ed. L. Rockwell) - both books were published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. 3) Economics in one lesson - Henry Hazlitt. These three books contain popular essays about economics, following the principles of the austrian school, the most radical free market school in economics. Some quotes: Henry Hazlitt in 'economics in one lesson' (p. 139): "The best way to raise wages, therefore, is to raise marginal labor productivity. This can be done by many methods: by an increase in capital accumulation - i.e. by an increase in the machines with which the workers are aided..." Murray Rothbard in 'the free market reader' (p. 31): "Wage rates are low in many foreign countries because capital equipment is small and technologically primitive. Unaided by much capital, worker productivity is far lower than in the United States." Lew Rockwell in 'the economics of liberty' (p. 26): "Wages are determined by the productivity of the individual laborer, which in turn is largely determined by the amount of capital invested per worker." I could go on, but I think this will suffice. Now I will explain why the austrian economists are right. Imagine Robinson Crusoe. In the beginning, he catches fish with his bare hands. He has no capital investment, and consequently he is not very productive. His wage will be low (he will not catch much fish). If there is more capital investment - if, for example, he has a fishing rod - he will catch more fish in less time. His productivity is higher. His wage is higher (more fish). If there is still more capital investment - if, for example, he has a boat and fishing nets - he will catch even more fish. His productivity is higher. His wage is higher. Etcetera. So, it's really not difficult to see that the Robin's standard of living depends on the amount of capital available on his island. The same goes for the rest of humanity. Bart Croughs

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Police on the Net
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

First, I'd be interested in knowing some of those online reporting addresses, and how much limits they place on what can be mailed to them... persuading these cops to deal with the improper use of another's computer (i.e., spam) would seem to be a distinct possibility in diverting them from other activities. Second, it would appear possible (unless they're encrypting it) to intercept some of these email lists of theirs - if necessary, by forging a subscribe to an _overseas_ nymserver that isn't too well known (unlike, say, anon.penet.fi). That's about on the same grounds as their mention of "know thine enemy." (It is, of course, pretty certain that various libertarian groups are among those monitored, such as cypherpunks.) Third, this gives additional reasons not to give out one's address to anyone. What people know about me is a post office box and my old address. -Allen > webslingerZ > LONG ARM OF THE LAW IS GOING ONLINE > Copyright &copy 1996 Nando.net > Copyright &copy 1996 Seattle Post-Intelligencer > (Aug 10, 1996 00:05 a.m. EDT) -- When police "net" a crook these days, > cops may be referring to the Internet. [...] > On the Internet, citizens anonymously report drug dealers to the > cyberpolice, check out crime in their neighborhoods, calculate their > risk of being murdered and communicate directly with the chief of > police. > Police say the Internet is a powerful and versatile law-enforcement > tool: Communication is immediate and crosses jurisdictional > boundaries, information is just a keystroke away and the cost is > commonly less than hiring a police officer. > "I think it's the most effective money you can spend to prevent > crime," said Bill Taylor, crime analyst for the Sacramento, Calif., > Police Department, which has developed one of the nation's most > sophisticated Internet police sites. > More than 2,000 law-enforcement agencies have gone online, extending > the long reach of the law to millions of Internet users, said Ken > Reeves, a Microsoft manager who recently established a Web site > promoting new technology in law enforcement. > "They're creating virtual police," he said. [...] > The Internet also has become a popular tool for police to communicate > among themselves. > Thousands of police officers subscribe to electronic mailing lists and > read electronic bulletin boards where they can discuss ethical issues > in private and exchange information about firearms, narcotics and > other sensitive topics. > "These are things you don't want to make public, but you need other > professionals to bounce off ideas," said Ira Wilsker, a former police > officer who is leading a series of U.S. Department of Justice seminars > on law enforcement and the Internet. > Run for and by police officers, the computer exchanges often offer > information that cannot be found elsewhere, Wilsker said. For example, > police raised the alarm on the Internet about illegal use of Rohypnol, > the notorious "date rape" sedative, more than a year before warnings > about the drug were issued through official channels, he said. > On the philosophy of know thy enemy, Wilsker said police also turn to > the Internet as an intelligence source, monitoring online chatter by > hate groups, drug users and others who discuss their views on computer > news groups. These news groups, though commonly thought of as private > communications, are open to public view. > The Internet also can be an effective people finder, he said. > For example, more than 90 million people and their telephone numbers > and addresses can be found at the Internet site www.switchboard.com, > making a nationwide search sometimes as simple as keying in a name, he > said. The service is free. > With an address in hand, Wilsker advises police to turn to > www.mapquest.com, which in seconds can pinpoint on a map the location > of a suspect's home. > "We use it for serving warrants where we don't know the area," he > said. [...] > Still, the response to serious attempts at online policing at times > has been disappointing. The vast majority of people prefer to deal > directly with police than go online to report a crime. Chicago's > effort to elicit information about drug dealing over the Internet has > drawn only a smattering of responses. Some departments have dropped > their most-wanted postings on the Internet because they brought in so > few tips. [...] > Copyright &copy 1996 Nando.net

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"X-Ray Gun" for imperceptible searches
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I would wonder if a jamming device (preferably area-effect with a slowly randomly varying swathe of area, to avoid figuring out who was carrying it) would be possible, or some variety of shielding (i.e., emitting waves looking similar to flesh). -Allen > Direct Media > NEW X-RAY GUN TRADES PRIVACY FOR SAFETY > Copyright &copy 1996 Nando.net > Copyright &copy 1996 The Associated Press > SANTA MONICA, Calif. (Aug 12, 1996 09:47 a.m. EDT) -- The latest > weapon against terrorism can see right through you. > The Passive Millimeter Wave Imager can X-ray through clothing to "see" > a concealed weapon, plastic explosives or drugs. A police officer can > surreptitiously aim it into a crowd from as far away as 90 feet. > The new X-ray gun is becoming a symbol for an unlikely alliance of > civil libertarians and gun owners who fear the fight against crime and > terrorism may be waged at the expense of personal freedoms. > "I'm incredibly concerned," said John Henry Hingson, a past president > of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, meeting here > this past week. "The entire nation could become a victim of illegal > searches and seizures and the law is powerless to protect them from > these police abuses." > But in these nervous times following the the crash of TWA Fight 800 > and bombings at the Olympics, Oklahoma City and the World Trade > Center, many Americans are now willing to trade some of their privacy > and civil liberties for greater security. > A poll last week by the Los Angeles Times found that a majority of > people -- 58 percent -- said they would curtail some civil liberties > if it would help thwart terrorism. Thirteen percent said it would > depend on what rights were at stake. The poll didn't ask people to > single out any rights. > The Clinton administration has proposed increased wiretapping and > other anti-terrorism steps, and is doling out research grants for > cutting edge anti-crime technology that once may have been intended > for only military use. [...] > Two models are being developed of the Passive Millimeter Wave Imager, > a creation of Massachusetts-based Millimetrix Corp. > The larger one, about the size of a shoebox, is mounted on a patrol > car and pointed at the unsuspecting person. The gadget doesn't send > out X-rays; instead, it picks up electromagnetic waves emitted by > human flesh. > Anything that stands in the way of those waves -- like a gun -- or > anything that emits weaker waves -- like a bag of cocaine or a plastic > explosive -- will show up on a little screen in the patrol car. > Clothes emit no waves. Neither do walls, allowing the device to be > used from even outside a room. > A second model is a smaller, battery-operated version that an officer > can operate by hand, like a radar gun. > Millimetrix hopes to field test the larger model soon at a police > agency. > Hingson argues the device runs roughshod over bans against illegal > searches and seizures. The law says police can stop and frisk a person > only when an officer has a "reasonable suspicion" the person is armed > or involved in a crime. > Millimetrix points out that while the imager can see through clothing, > it still leaves people some privacy. The device's display screen, the > company says, "does not reveal intimate anatomical details of the > person." > Chip Walker, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, noted that > devices like the imager threaten the legal rights of people in 31 > states who are allowed to carry concealed weapons with proper > licenses. > "We certainly support efforts to disarm criminals, but we need to be > careful that we're not painting with too broad a brush here," he said. > Walker said that as troubling as terrorism is, people may be playing > into terrorists' hands by giving up their privacy. > "One of the broader issues is that if we start giving up certain civil > liberties, that essentially means that the terrorists are starting to > accomplish one of their goals," he said.

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1024-bit keys
by David.K.Merriman＠toad.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To: support(a)luckman.com, cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Mon Aug 12 14:29:39 1996 In the documentation for Web Commander (page 7-50, item 19, top of page), under the process for getting a digital ID from VeriSign, you state: "Also, please note that you cannot send keys longer than 512 to servers outside the United States." I would like to ask for clarification on this point. Is this meant to say that a server inside the United States is not allowed to use a 512+ bit key with a client outside the U.S., or that a Web Commander server outside the U.S. may not employ a key of greater than 512 bits? In either case, what is the justification for such a statement/restriction? If a Federal regulation, could you please cite the Title and Section? Thank you. David Merriman - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- PGP Email welcome, encouraged, and PREFERRED. Visit my web site at http://www.shellback.com/p/merriman for my PGP key and fingerprint "What is the sound of one hand clapping in a forest with no one there to hear it?" I use Pronto Secure (tm) PGP-fluent Email software for Windows -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMg7PWsVrTvyYOzAZAQFo3QQAn2stH5ZtI2/SGt2qEwTWyhTnp6cMA3qC hsukc3tEcvkaF75G2fdPdPkt/oyMpwU+X6jKk6kttbNNPSShrs7QtKgOoZS4FSU1 Zj+5sKrjUmluonly3JRJeZdIzWOOWGz6wd1pDBn90X9M9LzY+CBJT+yuoCWGVmh4 LJkvCJBkLrc= =b+Ui -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Searches
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:17 PM 8/9/96 -0400, Thomas C. Allard wrote: > In a landmark decision a federal court in New York has ruled >that a CBS film crew and Secret Service agents are liable for filming and >broadcasting a search of a private citizen's home. It is the first reported >court decision to hold a television broadcaster liable for accompanying >police agents on a search and filming it for the broadcast. Just because someone at your door has a warrant or a contractual right to search your place does not require you to allow anyone else in. Par example: Landlord of (A Member of This List): The fire inspectors are here and would like to inspect your apartment. (A Member of This List): They got a warrant? Landlord of (A Member of This List): No. (A Member of This List): Then they can't come in. Landlord of (A Member of This List): But I can enter the apartment with reasonable notice under the rental agreement. (A Member of This List): You're welcome. The Fire Inspectors aren't. Landlord of (A Member of This List) who allowed a search of the rest of his building was cited by the Fire Inspectors for an illegal apartment in the basement. DCF "Why is it that when I'm faced with a reasonable request from a public servant my immediate response is 'Load triple cannister'?" -- Cannister. A cylindrical metal container filled with lead shot. Designed to turn a field artillery piece into a very large shotgun.

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Yet another blame-the-Internet-for-child-porn
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

They are, of course, failing to answer the question of why encouraging people to consume _computer-generated_ child pornography should be considered a justification for legal intervention, not to mention that such an effort would also make putting _Lolita_ on the Internet illegal (text could drive up demand for it as well, after all), or even political speech such as from NAMBLA. (It's political speech just as much as material from neo-Nazis... or from the Demopublicans.) There is also the lack of realization that someone can't be "exploited" except in the Marxist sense on the Internet... only when the material is originally made. Another point is that countries do differ on when is considered old enough for voluntary participation in making pornography - Tracy Lords material is legal in much of Europe, for instance. I'd also point to the media bias evident; they only quoted from people who were in favor of governmental regulation. Fortunately, as even one of the people at this "world congress" admitted, governmental regulation of free speech on the Internet will ultimately fail. Prevent actual harm - the _production_ of child pornography. -Allen > Centura > WORLD CONGRESS TO FIGHT INTERNET CHILD PORN > Copyright &copy 1996 Nando.net > Copyright &copy 1996 Reuter Information Service > STOCKHOLM (Aug 11, 1996 12:29 p.m. EDT) - Distribution of child > pornography on the Internet seems destined to top the issues at the > world's first conference against sexual exploitation of children > opening later this month in Stockholm. > Activists are trying devise ways of keeping pedophiles from peddling > such material on the global computer network, which is already used as > a billboard to advertise prostitution and sex tourism and to exchange > adult pornography. > "The Internet is like heaven for the pedophile," said Toby Tyler, a > United States police officer who lectures at the Federal Bureau of > Investigation (FBI) academy on child abuse. > "As far as our ability to restrict the distribution of child > pornography and stop the sexual exploitation of children on the > Internet...it's not something that can be done." > Campaigners are concerned that unless urgent action is taken to stamp > out the Internet's distribution of child porn, whether it features > real children or just computer generated images, it could spark > greater demand for child pornography. > Tyler said the Internet has ended the days when pedophiles had to make > costly cross-border runs to buy child pornography in countries where > laws were laxer and penalties lighter. > Now they can obtain and distribute films and photos from their own > homes on the Internet with little risk of capture. > But not everyone agrees that regulating the internet or its 20 million > users worldwide is the right move. > Some advocates say the Internet represents free speech. > Others argue that the distribution of child pornography on the > Internet is not that widespread. > Margaret Healy from Bangkok-based End Child Prostitution in Asian > Tourism (ECPAT) said in a report prepared for the five-day Stockholm > conference which opens Aug. 27 that the regulation of child > pornography on computers presents special challenges and called on > governments to fund better training. [...] > Copyright &copy 1996 Nando.net

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Snake Oil wanted
by Lewis Koch 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I am a journalist who has specialized in investigative reporting. I have been writing about and for the Net for about nine months, though I have about three decades as a reporter/columnist/author. There has been some discussion on this list of one story that I broke -- that of Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick's speech "National Security in the Information Age" delivered at the U.S. Air Force Academy 29 February 1996 in which she calls for the development of a "Manhattan Project" to counter computer hackers. The column and her complete speech can be found at http://upside.master.com/online/columns/cybersense/9607.html "U.S. Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick Speaks Out Against Freedom and Security on the Internet." The story was published in a monthly column Cybersense which I write for Upside Magazine's Website. I am currently interested in writing about snake oil, especially as it relates to claims about ensuring e-mail privacy, total computer security, plug-and-play effortless encryption or hype relating to computer crime -- its origins, its prevalence, its prevention. My Net audience is composed of people who perhaps pretend to more sophistication that they truly have but who I think are most interested in clarity. My areas of expertise are non-technical. Over three decades, however, I have proven record of investigative reporting. I have been fortunate to meet and rely on some very responsible people to guide me through the technical thickets -- some of whom are members of this List. Any form of response is acceptable and all confidences will be respected. Lewis Z. Koch lzkoch(a)mcs.net http://www.upside.com -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.2 mQCNAzHn8xwAAAEEANNKB31dvtigkO5ojKKBAjbrRhkTCrzg3vwhiQ0iS1Ubrxk8 HG/pMYjV4eCR3dZrekbI5/gvNPIG9yRdY8AA3THF761XWHiYZKyhQ8OHxNyjAgSA jze+joT9559kQY++xiayAGK/0sd3P9ByUT+5yy3g9bNBV+vX9vA+Q6AhQTctAAUR tA5semtvY2hAbWNzLm5ldA== =YZQ8 -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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re: National Socio-Economic Security Need for Encryption Technology
by Bart Croughs 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Perry Metzger wrote: > Bart Croughs writes: > > But there is another axiom of economics which the > > nationalist/socialist can use for his case against the free movement of > > capital. This axiom states that the wages of workers depend on the > > amount of capital invested. The more capital invested, the higher the > > wages are. >I failed to note obvious counterexamples. Well known authors get giant >advances for books written with manual typewriters. Minimum wage >workers routinely operate expensive equipment. Workers doing the same >job in different places using identical equipment that cost identical >sums earn different salaries. >Clearly, wages are defined by supply and demand -- not by "capital >investment". When economists say that wages are determined by the amount of capital invested, they mean on a regional/national level, not on the level of individuals. Bart Croughs

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