December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Porn and commerce
by azur＠netcom.com 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

> Copyright (c) Virginia Law Review Association 1996. > Virginia Law Review > > April, 1996 > > 82 Va. L. Rev. 535 > >ESSAY: VIRTUAL REALITY AND "VIRTUAL WELTERS": A NOTE ON THE COMMERCE > CLAUSE IMPLICATIONS OF REGULATING CYBERPORN > > Glenn Harlan Reynolds > > In recent months, there has been a great deal of publicity regarding >the availability of pornography over the Internet and other computer >networks, along with proposals for regulation. n1 Recent months have >also seen the prosecution of one couple, located in California, by >authorities in Memphis, Tennessee, for the contents of a computer >bulletin board they operated. n2 According to media accounts, the Memphis >location was chosen for its conservative juries, who were expected to be >unsympathetic to Bay Area pornographers. n3 No doubt more such >prosecutions, by both federal and state and local authorities, are on the >horizon. > > As the first of its kind, this prosecution raises interesting >questions regarding the appropriateness and nature of "community >standards" n4 developed to deal with local entities like bookstores n5 >and movie theaters n6 as applied to almost locationless entities such as >computer bulletin board systems. Indeed, the American Civil Liberties >Union has argued in court that the appropriate community standard for >such cases is that of the online community, rather than of any particular >geographic area. n7 > > My point here, though, is a narrower one: that we need not even >reach the First Amendment to discover serious difficulties with >locality-based regulation of computer bulletin board systems. Instead, we >may look to the Supreme Court's Commerce Clause jurisprudence for some >useful guidance on the inappropriateness of such regulation. Only where >regulations pass the Commerce Clause test is it even necessary to address >First Amendment issues, and, as I will suggest, even there the test >provides significant guidance. > [snip] > > These cases, and the principles that lie behind them, raise two >important points. Most obviously, it would appear that state or local >regulation of communication over computer networks on obscenity grounds >is very likely a violation of the dormant Commerce Clause because of the >variations produced by the community standards doctrine. After all, if it >is too much of a burden for interstate merchandisers to keep track of >variations in state sales tax rates and classifications, it certainly >must be too great a burden for interstate publishers to keep track of >variations in the far less certain "community standards" of obscenity and >indecency. > > The second and perhaps more important point is that if we are willing to >grant interstate sellers of office equipment and porcelain "collector" >dolls such extensive protection from local interference in the name of >protecting commerce, surely we should be even more willing to provide such >protection in the name of free speech. For the protection provided by the >dormant Commerce Clause is merely a matter of judicial inference; the >value of a free press, on the other hand, is explicitly spelled out in >the First Amendment. > > Such an approach would, of course, limit the ability of communities to >develop unique standards of obscenity, and move us closer toward a >uniform national standard. n18 While that development is not without its >drawbacks,neither are the many other movements toward uniformity >mandated by the Constitution. But we have accepted them nonetheless. n19 > > Taking this approach seriously would mean barring prosecutions, >under state or local law, of out-of-state individuals and entities for >obscenity where the material in question came via computer connections. More >interestingly, it would also mean that courts should regard even federal >prosecutions that employ local community standards with a considerable >degree of suspicion. For while Congress is generally regarded as having >the power to override dormant Commerce Clause considerations through >appropriate legislation, we should be reluctant to assume that it has >done so by implication, simply because of the existence of federal >criminal laws. n20 The idea of a national market, after all, is one that >Congress may override through the passage of appropriate legislation, >n21 but that is a far cry from saying that federal prosecutors should be >able to do the same. > > Whether my suggestion will be taken seriously, on the other hand, >is an open question at best. For one thing, it must overcome the natural >tendency of academics, journalists, and judges to rush to the First >Amendment whenever an issue involving speech or publication appears. For >another, it must overcome the equally natural tendency to forget that >parts of the Constitution outside the Bill of Rights - even the Commerce >Clause - may serve as important guarantors of liberty. And aside from >these hurdles, it requires a recognition, that there is still a role for >the nationalist parts of the Constitution, despite today's resurgence of >interest in the powers of states and in dlimitations on the federal >government. n22 > > Despite all of these trends and tendencies, I think that there is >still room to ask whether it is appropriate, or even constitutional, to >allow states to govern expression under circumstances in which they would >not be permitted to collect sales taxes on sales of Elvis dolls or K-Tel >merchandise. Where it has been necessary, we have managed to update our >view of the Constitution to accommodate changes in technology. It is time >that we do so again. > It seems these arguments raise yet a third point. It seems that one could quite easily extend the 'Commerce Clause' to beyond our own borders and infer that countries have no right to regulate Net commerce from servers which originate outside their borders. It seems a key question hinges on the 'source' of authority for the laws of countries, which most would claim is their NATURAL and INALIENABLE SOVERIGNTY insofar as matters of commerce and diplomacy are concerned. But should one country have the legal right to regulate the commerce of parties with no physical presence within their borders? After all, if it is reasonable to assume too much of a burden for interstate merchandisers to keep track of variations in state sales tax rates and classifications for interstate publishers to keep track of variations in the far less certain "community standards" of obscenity and indecency, on what NATURAL basis should the U.S. (or for that matter any country) attempt to impose such national burdens on international merchandisers and publishers? PGP Fingerprint: FE 90 1A 95 9D EA 8D 61 81 2E CC A9 A4 4A FB A9 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Snoop Daty Data | Internet: azur(a)netcom.com Grinder | Sacred Cow Meat Co. | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Counter-cultural technology development our specialty. Vote Libertarian. Just say NO to prescription DRUGS. "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." -- C.S. Lewis "Surveillence is ultimately just another form of media, and thus, potential entertainment." -- G. Beato

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[BOOK][CYPHERPUNK] "Holy Fire"
by Brian D Williams 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

Bruce Sterling has a new cyber/cypherpunk novel, "Holy Fire" (ISBN 0-553-09958-2). Enclosed are a few exerpts, I'll lead with the "list appropriate" one. Brian "This was a very unhappy interface. And small wonder. No doubt this entire virtual environment was being encrypted, decrypted, reencrypted, anonymously routed through satelites and cables, emulated on alien machinery through ill-fitting, out-of-date protocols, then displayed through long-dead graphics standards. Dismembered, piped, compressed, packeted, unpacketed, decompressed, unpiped and re-membered. Worse yet, the place was old. Virtual buildings didn't age like physical ones, but they aged in subtle pathways of arcane decline, in much the way that their owners did. A little bijou table in the corner had a pronounced case of bit- rot: from a certain angle it lost all surface tint." "Attendants opened the hinged white lid of the emulsifier, took the thin shroud from Martin's wasted, puckered body, and slid him, with reverent care, feetfirst into the seething gel. The scanners set to work, Martin's final official medical imaging. Gentle ultrasonics shook the body apart, and when the high-speed rotors began to churn, the emulsifier's ornamental flowerbeds trembled a bit. Autopsy samplers caught up bits of the soup, analyzed genetic damage, surveyed the corpse's populations of resident bacteria, hunted down and cataloged every subsymptomatic viral infection and prion infestation, and publicly nailed down the cause of death (self-administered neural depressant) with utter cybernetic certainty. All the data was neatly and publicly filed on the net."

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Re: Voice Stress Analysis of Debates?
by jim bell 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

At 03:29 AM 10/9/96 -0400, Vin McLellan wrote: > Jim Bell queried the List about potential AP decision-support tools >like voice-stress detectors which could identify truth-tellers among >politicians and other possible candidates for Mr. Bell's much-debated >proposal to cleanse the body politic. Uh, well, while I don't doubt the potential use there, my bringing up the subject of the voice stress analyzers had nothing to do with AP. (Remember that once AP starts operating, ALL politicians, "honest" and "dishonest" will likely be considered fair game. The way I see it, for each politician there will be enough people who will want him out, REGARDLESS of whether he's honest. This makes a lie-detector only marginally useful.) Rather, I just wanted to point out that the traditional news media is likely to be intentionally ignoring the existence of a technology which could reveal much about a debate, precisely because such a practice would be embarrassing to the politicians. (On the other hand it's possible, I suppose, that the inherent stress of standing up in front of a crowd, knowing that a few tens of millions of citizens were watching, might induce stress having little to do with lying, so it wouldn't surprise me if I later heard that this stress-detector really doesn't work in such situations. Even so, I think it would at least have been tried before and the "flop" publicized if it had failed. I don't recall if any such attempt has been made, or at least the results weren't publicized. What should we conclude from this?) > Dektor's PSE came into some prominence after Col. Bell, then a >civilian, showed up with his black box to assist Italian police during >their huge investigation of the kidnapping of US Army General James Dozier >by the Red Brigades in '82. The fact that Dozier was located and rescued >by the Carabinieri commandos after five weeks in captivity -- while Prime >Minister Aldo Moro had been murdered by the Red Brigades, eight weeks after >his kidnapping in '78 -- led inevitably to stories, probably mythical, that >Bell's PSE was a significant factor in the investigation. As Clarke or >someone said, any technology sufficiently advanced will be considered magic >-- and it is doubtless true that, for many Italians interviewed during the >Drozier inquiry, the quiet presence of the diminutive American civilian, >with his utterly mysterious "truth-detector," inspired fear and awe. > > The Legend that came out of Italy was doubtless a factor in >Dektor's subsequent success selling the $5K PSE into the corporate and >security market. (There was a period where corporate negotiations were >sometimes held in a hotel chosen only just before the start of the talks, >for fear that one party or the other might have pre-installed a PSE.) In >the mid and late '80s, dozens, perhaps hundreds of PIs -- and maybe a few >journalists -- were actually running around using tape recorders to >interview people, then running back to their hotel rooms to spin the tape >for their PSE. Reminds me...Some states have laws against secretly recording conversations in person, even when a telephone line is not involved. (as I understand it, these laws tend to date from the late 1960's, when electronics had shrunk to sizes sufficiently small to make body wires/recorders really practical and inexpensive.) This appears highly inconsistent to the "bugging mentality" of the police. My theory is that this apparent contradiction is explained when you realize that politicians would be the first, best targets of widespread, legal bugging. After all, even honest lobbyists might want to keep records to show that they hadn't violated the law, and to ensure that their recollection of the conversation is correct, and to forward these talks to their employers. Either "honest" or "dishonest" lobbyists might want to record a politician's willingness to accept a bribe, even if one is not offered. Other politicians might want to record negotiations, possibly for later use on the campaign trail. This would be highly unlike most other, ordinary citizens, who are rarely going to be in any kind of conversation that is considered worth recording! Add it all up, and you'd probably discover that the average Senator or Representative would be recorded in dozens of conversations each day, any one of which could pop up at any time on the news or, now, the Internet. Remember the old saying, "One advantage of telling the truth is that you don't have to remember what you said." Well, for politicians the modern corollary is, "One advantage of being an honest politician is that you don't have to worry about what the other guy's recording." But I'll propose that by this standard, there are few if any "honest politicians" in Washington! Imagine how different a typical (read: typically crooked) politician's life would be if everybody had the legal right to record every conversation! Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Recent Web site cracks
by pjb＠ny.ubs.com 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

but even after you get through the firewall, you still need to crack the web host. i suppose that anyone that would leave their firewall open would not have very good security on their hosts either. -paul > From cypherpunks-errors(a)toad.com Wed Oct 9 07:02:07 1996 > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Subject: Re: Recent Web site cracks > From: dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM) > Comments: Dole/Kemp '96! > Date: Tue, 08 Oct 96 16:53:43 EDT > Organization: Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y. > Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Content-Length: 307 > > stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com writes: > > The DOJ and CIA sites were actually cracked; don't know the mechanisms. > > They used firewalls that are known to be easily crackable. > > --- > > Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM > Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps >

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NOC_ase
by John Young 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

10-8-96. FiTi: "Offshore financial centres agree to greater scrutiny." The Offshore Group comprises most of the biggest offshore financial centres including the Bahamas, Bermuda, the Caymans, Gibraltar, the Channel Islands, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Panama and Singapore. The agreement says home supervisors should be able to inspect the books of shell branches wherever they are kept. "In no case should access to these books be protected by secrecy requirements in the country that licenses the shell branch," it says. WaJo: "Cold War Spying: Mystery Gives Way to History." The release of the Venona documents tells us more about the state of intelligence agencies today in both Russia and the U.S. than it does about Stalin's spy rings. These and counterpart activities in Moscow dramatize the ongoing campaign American and Russian intelligence agencies are waging in the 1990s -- not against each other but at home, to preserve their budgets and public respect. And with "Venona: The Book" launched at last week's conference, can a CIA/NSA CDROM be far behind? ----- http://jya.com/nocase.txt (10 kb for 2) ftp://jya.com/pub/incoming/nocase.txt NOC_ase ---------- Anybody got a copy of the Offshore Group's agreement? Whither EUB? Or seen "Venona: The Book"? If so, does David Kahn have a part?

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Re: Voice Stress Analysis of Debates? [NOISE]
by Bill Stewart 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

As far as the technical issue, can you use digital signal processing to insert/delete the features that the VSE is looking for? Sure, if you know what the VSE product is looking for. (And you can crank up the bass while you're at it.) Doesn't matter if you call it microtremors, it's a characteristic well-defined enough that an $89.95 retail hardware device can detect, so it's a characteristic you've got a not-terribly-complex model for. If all the popular VSEs use the same algorithm, or if you know what brand the TV Networks were convinced to use, you're fine. (If you don't know, that makes it tougher, but you can experiment....) Or you can distribute a cheap software-based VSE program, with hooks that let you feed it "Truth" or "Lying" overrides :-) At 11:28 AM 10/7/96 -0800, jim bell <jimbell(a)pacifier.com> wrote: >I think it's particularly revealing that the TV networks don't try to use >it. They're supposed to be looking for an edge, something to make the news >seem more interesting. The political establishment would see the >publicizing of this as going beyond an unwritten limitation on the media. I've never seen the TV networks use handwriting analysis to spice up their news reporting either, and the only "news" shows I've only seen mention people's astrological signs were the Entertainment-Tonight types. (I'd rate VSE as slightly more scientific than graphology, and both of them somewhat above palm-reading and astrology, and a bit below polygraphs.*) They get more market asking what kind of underwear the candidates wear. Besides, what would they do with it - subtitles "He's Lying" or "He Seems To _Believe_ This Nonsense?" or "He Doesn't Really Care What The Teleprompter's Telling Him To Say"? You'd need to leave at least one of them on during the whole Bipartisan Establishment Debate**, and you don't need any piece of hokey machinery to If they actually _wanted_ to make the shows more interesting, the networks could have reporters ask the candidates real questions. But they wouldn't get invited back next election.... And if they ask questions like "How could you possibly expect us to believe _that_, Mr. President?"***, they'd get thrown out immediately. [*VSE and Graphology have some chance of a causal basis, though polygraphs have the extra advantage that the people administering them get to intimidate the victim while doing the test, which is more likely to get results than running VSE on a speech somebody's practiced and is reading off a teleprompter, even if interpretation of both weren't pretty much subjective anyway.] [**And they'd have to interlace the subtitles with the fnords.] [***Did you ever notice how much George Bush _sneered_ when he was lying? Clinton's polite enough to smile when he's talking.] # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk Imagine if three million people voted for somebody they _knew_, and the politicians had to count them all.

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Re: Microsoft CAPI
by Peter Trei 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

> Ravi Pandya wrote: > > ... You can't load an encryption engine into Windows 95 or > > Windows NT unless that engine has been specially signed by > > Microsoft's corporate key. > > And so what happens when the Microsoft key is compromised? It might > be hard to break by purely cryptographic means, but surely there are > some people at Microsoft who aren't millionaires. Much easier would be to patch the OS to disable the signature check by the CryptoAPI. A patching program, once written, would require no particular skill to run. Sort of like 'rechipping' a high-end sportscar. Peter Trei Senior Software Engineer Purveyor Development Team Process Software Corporation http://www.process.com trei(a)process.com

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Microsoft CAPI
by Ravi Pandya 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

>From today's HotWired Packet http://www.packet.com: "Today Microsoft is using similar technology as part of its Cryptography API: You can't load an encryption engine into Windows 95 or Windows NT unless that engine has been specially signed by Microsoft's corporate key. The reason for this restriction, says the company, is the Clinton administration: Microsoft couldn't have gotten export permission for its operating systems if users could easily plug in crypto engines that hadn't been approved. " This is disturbing, if true, though I suspect there is also a less ominous reason: you certainly want your cryptography provider to be trusted, and you want to be sure the code has not been altered. The implications really depend on Microsoft's policy on signing cryptography engines, and whether they allow a way to delegate signature authority. Ravi

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Re: pgp, edi, s/mime
by ratak 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: jubois(a)netcom.com, cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Wed Oct 09 10:19:39 1996 t: > > - S/MIME and PGP are the two leading candidates for encrypting EDI > messages, > S/MIME inside the US, and PGP outside the US where S/MIME is unavailable. > How far along has S/Mime come now, can they offer the same key sizes as PGP...? ___________________________________________________________________ GarGoyle Securities - -Intrusion Assessment Systems - -Security Consultation/Education/Curriculum Development - -Project Management/Research/Analysis World Wide... - -Member of CITDC (Canadian International Trade Development Council) - -Email: ratak(a)GargSec.mb.ca (Jason E.J. Manaigre) - -Web: www.GargSec.mb.ca - -Email for PGP key with phrase 'Get Public Key' as Subject - -2048 PGPKey iD E2 FA 30 E5 F5 AD EC F3 00 9A 9D 33 59 FC DF AD ___________________________________________________________________ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBMlvCj/qtmO8M92GRAQFNBAf8CVzTxtle7jvTQFq6UM9MpEGjvrnoSHoO NMidciwyht0AqyGNPqNxczU/arpCAQwluwkhtTRor8lYsUWLLLyZB8d2DGs1i/En 3dE4WIXnNSR/G4YjHf8ln/DwE+YbHHFwEve5zSJAf4Gnvt7+LRo+VJPq34MaJgyc 5888BrSMHKTo5pyISAz+LQhDJptWMZwPsldrZctWI0QW/xgFMCmZr8qt2VYWdlZw XO+Px+QadwvNJlL8pR2ZT3l458rzU5B7kS3CKVJDl0iUlVWK2/xHiuRUHfo1Yu1Z VB6jFEw6IsQI8ukrANu90qgDcab3YQpe99BQCd/imZfKWSzO3vsieQ== =Ew/I -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Jewell shows warrants are frauds
by jim bell 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

There was yet another item on Richard Jewell today on the national news. If our goal is to return this country to allowing the government to do only the "reasonable" searches that the Constitution allows, we shouldn't miss the opportunity to take the Jewell case and shove it up their...well...use it to our best advantage. The _theory_ is that the only way the government could have gotten a warrant against Richard Jewell ONLY by showing some likelihood that evidence of the crime would be found. The facts, the end result is quite the opposite; the FBI has had a full opportunity to do their investigation and they've found...nothing. Or, at least nothing they're now willing to leak. Nothing, certainly, which they feel justifies filing charges. So they're probably going to just drop the investigation of Jewell. But at this point, we should consider that practically an engraved invitation: The theory behind ALL warrants is that they are granted only upon a showing to a judge of a legally satisfactory reason to grant the warrant. Given the outcome, it is almost certain that no such showing ever occurred. What happened, on the other hand, was probably just another fraud. Some prosecutor or investigator did some magic dance in front of a judge, pretending to tell the truth, and the judge pretended to believe him. The difference with this case, however, is that a few hundred million people heard about it. That's why this case, unlike nearly all others, presents a marvelous opportunity. All of the various Clipper/GAK proposals are based, ultimately, on the same weakness: The idea that we, the people should be able to trust some overpaid government-thug-sympathizer in a black robe to decide whether or not a given set of evidence is sufficient to decide to grant a warrant. Perhaps the best challenge to this idea is to show a clear example of how the system fails, precisely when it's expected to WORK! The Jewell incident is a good test-case, if for no other reason that it was highly publicized and many if not most people know the basics. In addition, unlike a case which was thought insignificant before and only later became well-known, all of the officials who had anything to do with it were, presumably, fully aware how important it was and could be expected to be "on their toes" about ensuring that they do their jobs correctly. Quite simply, the authorities had every reason to get this one RIGHT, as opposed to getting it wrong. They got it wrong. We should insist that the details of this disaster be exposed to show them for the lying frauds they are. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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