December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: My Departure, Moderation, and "Ownership of the List"
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timothy C. May wrote: > At 10:50 PM -0500 2/3/97, Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote: > >(1) I agree with Tim that as a matter of principle, it would be preferable > >to create a new moderated list, with a similar but distinguishable name, > >and leave the existing list as it was. I happen to think less turns on > This is a point of view many of the most thoughtful commenters seem to > agree on, isn't it? One would have thought that had Sandy and John really > been interested in hearing the views of list members, this approach would > have eventually won out. Once again, the reason John and Sandy weren't interested was because the main proponents of this point of view for a long time were me, Dr. Vulis, and Toto. Tim and others were either supportive of Sandy or were silent.

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Re: New X-Ray Imager
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Steve Schear wrote: > New X-ray gun trades privacy for safety > Reported by Andy C > Seen in The Nando Times on 13 August 1996 > "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 L.A. Times quotes this "poll" all the time, and in fact probably just made it up. Why do I know that? Because they ran a "letter" from a "teacher" in the valley somewhere about a year ago which said exactly this same thing. The "teacher" ran a poll of her students and they agreed to give up the rights without even knowing which rights they were giving up.

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Re: Dissolving Choke Points
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:59 PM 2/3/97 -0800, Greg Broiles wrote: >If the list is going to turn into Usenet (we've already got most of >Usenet's better kooks), we might as well just move the >damn thing over to alt.cypherpunks and be done with it. >(Anyone care to guess who founded alt.* as a way to route around >censorship?) The big argument against going to a newsgroup in the past was that signal-to-noise would degrade to the point of alt.2600ness due to newbies, flamers, overflow to/from political ranting newsgroups, etc., and there's already a sci.crypt for that. The main argument in favor of moderation has been that the list has become unreadable due to newbies, flamers, political ranting, and directed attacks and maybe moderation would fix it, at the cost of annoying people who don't like moderation (which is realistically most of us; two practical reasons not to have moderation are that the volume is too high for most people to be willing to moderate, and that the delays inherent in the moderation process reduce the interactivity that's been one of the valuable things about this list.) I'd prefer that we all just get along, but things really were getting uncivil. An advantage of Usenet is the ability to deploy whatever NoCeM is called these days as a way to let people avoid spammers. Personally, I'd switched to the fcpunx filtered list a couple months ago, mainly to cut down on volume but also because I was getting fed up with Vulis's attacks through remailers, which were getting to be too much trouble to filter out. I switched back to the main list after the moderation announcement, with Eudora filters to make some discussions and some people go away. Of course, there have been several different demonstrations of ways around the moderation since then. # 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/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)

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Re: If guilty of a lesser crime, you can be sentenced for a greater
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Igor Chudov @ home wrote: > Dale Thorn wrote: > > Igor Chudov @ home wrote: [some arguments deleted for lack of time to reply] > > > Another story: suppose that OKSAS hired me to work for her, but then > > > our relationships go south and she fires me. Again, her fate is very > > > unclear, although I would probably spare her life if it were she. > > If she does it right, with empathy, there is not likely to be a > > problem. On the other hand, if she bad-mouths you to prospective > > employers or customers you want to do business with, you might be > > inclined to hit her. This happens a lot when AP is not available. > ... But would happen more often if it was. Why, if AP was readily available, would she want to risk being hit by bad-mouthing you unnecessarily? > > people who have such money are not going to bump off very many more > > people than they already do, because: > > 1. They need the people to make money off of (Mafia rule #4, never > > kill someone who owes you money [or is a money source]). > This is a wrong Mafia rule, they do kill debtors who are in default. Really? Then how do they collect their money? BTW, I heard the rule from the mouth of a real mob hitman. > > 2. Rich people have a lot of eyes on them, and it would be easy to > > triangulate a series of murders to them, even without hard evidence. > > In an AP world, this triangulation/correlation would be enough to > > convince people to either shun this killer, or kill him outright. > When ten people make deals with each other, it becomes hard to > triangulate. And it is easy, if you know what deals are done, to change > the result of triangulation: suppose that I know that you borrowed 1 > million from Toto, that my _and_ yours business partner had been > murdered (by me, but no one knows), and I am afraid that someone will > triangulate me and implicate me in that murder. I secretly order > the AP bot to kill Toto, and you get implicated. Not good. We all know how people are framed, and we've seen the Hitchcockian murder scenarios on TV, in movies, etc. Certainly the CIA et al can create these scenarios, but what does that have to do with AP as used by ordinary persons?

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Re: Dissolving Choke Points
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 10:58 PM 2/3/97 -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: >An advantage of Usenet is the ability to deploy whatever NoCeM is >called these days as a way to let people avoid spammers. My mention of Usenet was somewhat tongue-in-cheek; I don't know if I'd bother with the list if it were moved to (or gated with) Usenet, as Usenet has become for the most part 100+ Mb/day of uselessness. But my impression is that many moderation opponents would also be opponents of a move to Usenet. Perhaps I'm wrong. But Usenet offers precisely what many people claim we must have for the list to be viable, e.g., uncontrolled/uncontrollable distribution and messaging. So I'm curious about whether or not the proponents of an open, uncontrolled list really want it to be *that* open and uncontrolled. In the past, there's been strong opposition to that. But it's possible that most of the people who had strong feelings about not wanting to be subjected to the downside of Usenet have already left the list. (And if the current opponents of moderation don't want to see the list be quite that open, I think what we're arguing about here is not "censorship v. no censorship" but "what degree of censorship do we want? one lump, or two?", which pretty much eliminates anyone's claim to have a moral high ground from which to argue.) There's really nothing stopping anyone from just setting up a gateway. The list is already gated one-way to Usenet; it shows up many places as mail.cypherpunks. What's missing is a gateway running the other direction; from looking at the headers as messages are received at my ISP (io.com) toad.com is already in the Path: line, so preventing backfeeding shouldn't be a problem. (Doh, it's been a few years since I fussed with mail-to-news and back again, but this isn't rocket science.) The good side I see to a move to Usenet is that it lets people use the comparatively better tools for managing messages - e.g., NoCeM, threading, nn (whose killfiles will kill by thread, author, regexp, and can be time limited so you can easily give annoying people a 30-day 'timeout' and see if they're still a kook later on), AltaVista and DejaNews archiving/searching, and server architecture that's designed to cope with storing/indexing many messages. The down side is that Usenet is more or less a sewer these days, and some of it's bound to spill over. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 4.5 iQEVAgUBMvcLpv37pMWUJFlhAQFTJgf/UAFESNbjEK2NRabq56We3PkF+sM7pwHU b7Gy/h6a+KusZECe3epIm9/ubvGiZJtVpkp1zTG/AqBJVkdRb9xyIwWpOXU9HUz+ gjzASY/x0Zwsy9AlCgAk0HSEL1bggFTgAjDPB8SSOaYuxP1czpmAAVHTZiNXioV5 AAsnCXLc0qLgXYZ6/3dQhtIznH41ciNhVgI4RhV9lfheCpIhxJJC0zlh7wX2QzMv VhPidpcCmKiCriULwvOJuIkt0SFLvIjxm18zBh6UIe/APgL6TDsr022DTB+S6G/b qgH1aO9xhZtu84I/+V/pOCyKGk+9qij94CwNumN+Hs/cZMybiaO4bQ== =YwhW -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Greg Broiles | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell: gbroiles(a)netbox.com | http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto. |

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Re: what's in a name?
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 04:58 PM 2/3/97 -0800, Wei Dai wrote: >An interesting way to look at what happened is that John >Gilmore owns the name "cypherpunks(a)toad.com" and has chosen to exercise >that ownership. [...] >I suspect that the hierarchical nature of name ownership on the Internet >today will be an important technological barrier for the establishment of >truly anarchic virtual communities. Unless this problem is solved, the >closest we'll come is pseudo-anarchies that exist with the tolerance of >beneficent dictators. Wei Dai's message raises an important question: what is the relationship between ownership and list content or quality? Much of the pathology of the list in the past few months can be characterized as a "tragedy of the commons" problem, where several private actors are seeking to maximize the gain they can extract from a finite and commonly owned (or unownable) resource. The resource in this case is the "reputation capital" which has built up in the terms "cypherpunks" and "cypherpunks(a)toad.com". Dmitri Vulis' behavior, where he seeks to punish the list for failing to punish or ostracize Tim May after Tim was disrespectful to Vulis, is an attempt to achieve private gain (public retribution) at the expense of public goods (the continuing quality and good name of the list). Several authors have characterized John Gilmore and Sandy Sandfort's actions with respect to moderation and the list as an attempt to monopolize or appropriate the good name of the list for their own private purposes. (I do not think that the latter characterization is accurate, but it is at least popular.) I suspect that many people will see at least one "tragedy of the commons" problem related to the list. Some free-market economists have suggested that the solution to "tragedy of the commons" problems is private ownership - that where economic actors are given ownership over what might have been owned in common, that they will seek to maximize their long-term gain through careful management and will not adopt wasteful or harmful short-term strategies which would have otherwise seemed attractive. That view (that private ownership is likely to eliminate or at least minimize wasteful or nonoptimal use of resources) has historically been a popular one on the list. Yet private ownership of the list (or of the list's most concrete identity, the label "cypherpunks") seems wrong to many people. Are mailing lists an example of a situation where "the tragedy of the commons" is not a useful metaphor? Are mailing lists an example of "public goods" where private ownership is impossible, or should be avoided? If not, shouldn't we work towards more private ownership, not less? Is the desire for an anarchic community at odds with a desire for good use of resources? -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 4.5 iQEVAgUBMvcZgv37pMWUJFlhAQEf6gf9FAPo+nF/h3ZAZTTzmZZLpj57xDvpcgKW oXCvalcY20s+ah26SFP5cInGSxgOy+UC5zxAeEz/Oo/M/5n1LVZTFVg7f3PORgJW VwY7uVhqvekaX/vNYutg7RpwvhdEz5dneipZMaFOWm0M+8ipZ5Ffb6vNLpRd6h2v Hf+zF6aTvleTxQX1e3C8nrL1hhXd8HX12nK/Kz4/lOyRYvKw//VxtVa3++2M158t YtBXQKLlYAW/NMUhMMSuqvkWbCW3PrDBhpsZRXXqWyruIeV3TKHlR4N3Rru74wHj DPNH8sek3Ql8sjA0BbziUqbC15mLH6QSZbxy4MPVwc2s8r4Ff6t1Ew== =QFGr -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Greg Broiles | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell: gbroiles(a)netbox.com | http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto. |

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Re: My Departure, Moderation, and "Ownership of the List"
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> This is Tim's first error of fact. I point it out not to insult > him, but because it seriously affects much of the rest of his > analysis. We are conducting an experiment. It will last one > month. After that, it's over if list members want it to be over. > If, on the other hand, moderation is seen by the list members as > beneficial to their use and enjoyment of the list, the current > form of moderation--or some variation will continue. How will you allow list members to decide? - Here presumably we have a self proclaimed anarchist in favour of direct democracy. And if the subscribers can call off this "experiment" it seems rather out of place that they did not institute it in the first place. > > With no false modesty I tried awfully hard to compose substantive > > essays on crypto-political topics, often more than one per day. > > I would hope that Tim will return to this practice irrespective > of whether the list remains moderated or returns to its previous > policies. More on this, below. You genuinely expect a thoughtful writer and intelligent author of posts to allow you to approve them or otherwise for general release? > > (Others did too, but they seem to be tapering off as well, leaving the list > > to be dominated by something called a "Toto," the "O.J. was framed!" > > ravings of Dale Thorn, the love letters between Vulis and someone name > > Nurdane Oksas,... > > Two points: Since Tim largely agrees with those in opposition to > moderation, and because of the extraordinary nature of Tim's post, > I did not send it to the "flames" list. It was a judgment call. Why? - I saw nothing whatsoever in Tim`s post that would make it a "judgement call" for any objective moderator^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcensor. The real reason it was a judegement call was because it was critical of Gilmore and yourself, in addition Tim`s points where too subtle and deep for you to respond to without resorting to sophistry. The reason on the other hand you did choose to post it to the censored list was because you realised this and could not get away with junking it to the flames list without incurring criticism. > The problems Tim describes, did not arise with moderation. > Indeed, they were the imputus for the moderation. Sophistry once again. I shall not even bother to explore in more detail this issue as any intelligent reader can, even at face value, see this to be a falacious argument. > > Second, the list was consumed with > > flames about this, many from Vulis, and many from others. > > It was consumed with flames before. Now, at least, the vast > majority of folks on the list don't have to read them, nor jump > through any hoops to implement some sort of dynamic filtering > half-measure. Three questions: 1. How do you see filtering to be a "half measure" 2. What hoops? - if you count implementing a simple filtering measure to be "jumping through hoops" how do you consider that readers of the list do not have to "jump through hoops" to subscribe to the uncensored list. 3. What makes you think that your subjective and evidently self serving method of moderation is any better than keyword filtering. > What didn't work was "local filtering" which has no feed-back > loop to engender comity. This might not work either, but I see > no evidence that it has made things worse. Remember, there are a > hand-full of subscribers to the Flames list, 20-30 on the > Unedited list and *2000* or so on the Moderated list. Sure some > of that may be due to laziness, but it would be cavalier in the > extreme to claim that such an overwhelming acceptance of > moderation is merely an artifact of inertia. Cavalier? - I`ll bet you anything you like if you had set up a new list for the censored articles and left cypherpunks(a)toad.com as an uncensored list you would have seen the same results, that 2000 or so would have remained where they were instead of trying to "unimbibe", and a hardcore of 20 to 30 subscribers would have consciously taken the decision to move to the censored list. As we seem to be in "experiment" mood on the cypherpunks list at the moment I challenge you now to re-configure the list as stated above. The we shall see whose viewpoint is "cavalier" > But to make things perfectly clear one more time, ANYONE WHO > WANTS TO READ THE ENTIRE CYPHERPUNKS FEED SHOULD SUBSCRIBE TO > "CYPHERPUNKS-UNEDITED" AND/OR "CYPHERPUNK-FLAMES." See above argument, the flock stay together. In addition other list members are lazy, stupid, ignorant etc. And cannot/will not subscribe to the uncensored list. > But let's apply Tim's above definition for the sake of argument. > Am I, thereby, a censor? Well I am examining "other material" > and I am making judgments with regard to whether or not it is > "objectionable," unfortunately for Tim's argument, I am neither > "removing" nor "supressing" anything. Anybody can read anything > that gets posted to Cypherpunks--in two places. I am sorting, > but even my sorting can be completely avoided. Waffle. There is a suprising profundity of waffle in this post considering it is supposed to be refuting some very subtle and eloquently stated arguments by Tim. The fact is you are a censor, you are deciding what is seen on the "main" cypherpunks list, you send any comments on your form of censorship, apart from compliments, to the "flames" list in order to protect yourself and John Gilmore. > Very possibly true. Moderation is like crypto, perfection isn't > and option. However, a 90% solution is a heck of a lot better > than no solution at all. Yes, I've made what I consider to be > errors, but I think on some, I've done a very good job overall. > > > * (Frankly, one of my considerations in leaving was the feeling that I > > would never know if an essay I'd spent hours composing would be rejected by > > Sandy for whatever reasons.... > > Tim, I think this is disingenuous. I have been quite clear on > my moderation criteria. You are too intelligent to feign such > a lack of understanding. Not at all, Even if you had been clear (and let me make it clear that I do not believe you have been) you still would not objectively follow those guidelines you had set for yourself. Your censorship is subjective and unethical. However, I am deviating from the point as I happen to be arguing from an anti-censorship point of view whoever were carrying out said censorship. > > * The decision to "moderate" (censor) the Cypherpunks list is powerful > > ammunition to give to our opponents, > > Piffle. Letting spoiled children destroy the list puts a far > more powerful weapon in the hands of our enemies. Piffle, showing that even an anarchic list "requires" censorship is the best ammunition we could have given them. We are better off without a cypherpunks list at all than we are playing into the hands of those who oppose us. > > and Vulis is certainly gleeful that > > his fondest wishes have been realized. > > I do not have a crystal ball. My Vulcan mind meld is in the > shop. No one--neither Tim, nor I, nor probably even Vulis--knows > whether he is gleeful about all this or not. And frankly, who cares? > The question is, are list members happy or not with moderation. > Tim was not. I am. By the end of the experiment, I dare say we > will have a good idea what most list members think. We already have a good idea what they think if we care to look at the flames list where all their relevant comments are junked to. Besides which you are not answering the question here, just picking a random point to put forward an argument you wanted to. > as far as moderating political rants go, I'm agnostic. You mis-spelled self-serving. Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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Re: About: My Departure, Moderation, and "Ownership of the List
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> For what it's worth, I think that this Tim May, not being a > user of the list, has no place to talk. His type, to me, > characterate those who quit something and complain later, > knowing that some people will listen to them. Tim May has been one of the most intelligent, eloquent and on-topic posters to this list in it`s entire history... Who the hell are you? I would respond to your post with reasoned and logical argument but I cannot find one substantive point in it that is worthy of comment. I will muddle through as best I can anyway: One easy jibe here is you don`t know how to spell characterise, maybe you would be better off unimbibing? > So what, if he decided to leave? It was his own choice > and he can't just come back and say everyone who stayed is > now impelled to listen to him, just because he used to > do a bunch of posts. I don't think that hardly any of > you would listened to me later if I left the list. No-one knows who you are nor do we care, you have not accumulated any reputation capital nor are you likely to with posts like this. Tim tried to cover in as much depth as possible without resorting to verbosity the points he felt were important and worthy of discussion regarding the censorship of the list and other associated issues. You were not impelled to read his post nor to reply to it with a content-free rant as you did. If you felt "impelled" to read a post simply because it was on a screen in front of you you clearly do not understand even the rudiments of anarchism. Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] Elliptic curves
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May's wee-wee is so tiny that only his mommy is allowed to touch it. /\ /..\ Tim May /_\/_\

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Full strength Email Clients.
by Steven Herod 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hello, I'm in search of an *EASY TO USE* Internet Email client software that uses full strength (outside US export restriction) RSA encryption. It would be used for end to end encryption of Patient Pathology results, hence the need for "full strength". Any pointers to sites of interest? Best Regards Steven Herod Computer Systems Officer Med-E-Serv Connect, a division of CITEC

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