December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

[noise] Re: Sliderules, Logs, and Prodigies
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Peter Trei wrote: > >When I was in high school, slide rules and log tables were standard >equipment - calculators started to come in towards the end. There >was a *lot* of controversy over their use in exams, and in homework >('show your working...'). At one point, you could use a calculator, but >only if you noted the fact (and model) on your exam paper. If I remember my history right, the order that math was done often depended on the model of calculator it was done on. I remember being warned as late as 1991 how some calculators may still still add before they multiply, and to use those parenthesis for good measure, just to be safe. >I still treasure one of the heirlooms from my grandfather - a 12 >inch bamboo rule, with his name carefully engraved in engineering >lettering ( which he used during his 50+ years at Ma Bell). I know where there used to be a basic model slide rule that spans about 10 feet, it was mounted on the wall of the math room where I spent junior high. My dad actually taught me basic arithemetic on it. (Ironically, on the opposite wall were the computers, an Apple IIe, a Commodore 64, two TI99/4a's and about 4 Tandy 1000/tx's, this did all take place before 1989) Sean Roach

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HAPPY GUY FAWKES DAY!
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C'punks, On this day in 1605 the Gunpowder Plot was foiled. Guy Fawkes and his compatriots had intended to blow up Parliment. The English celebrate it because Guy Fawkes failed. I celebrate it because he tried. :-) S a n d y ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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[NOISE] [philosophypunks] [Vulis] Mills & Hallam-Baker
by Bryce 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- hallam(a)ai.mit.edu writes: > > If we return to the original basis on which Mill opposed censorship > its not hard to find out why Dimitri is denied his support. The > argument is based on the need to keep alive debate. That was only one of several arguments. Another was that the potentially-censored speaker might be right! I don't remember the others. Regards, Bryce -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i Comment: Auto-signed under Unix with 'BAP' Easy-PGP v1.1b2 iQB1AwUBMoGkZUjbHy8sKZitAQFmRgMAu2U+zQTa+txp2wz9SG6mQwS4MXXkgeDi zjenNSN8KvwM92fxio5S+KfOzTjggU2dczeBuEAb7EPPJFUCtAh0ZEgYguzEnpAU Vx2Ct06VOQbr0mRUlfuGbwgvX0fYnh0D =Dqw6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Vulis profile Vulis profile
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I had some free time this morning, and just for fun, thought I'd create a brief Net profile of our friend Dr. Vulis. Here's what I found (sources included): Dimitri Vulis #4k Burns St, Forest Hills,NY 11375-3506 (718)261-6839 Source: http://www.yahoo.com (Four11 people search) Birthday: December 29 Source: http://www.boutell.com/birthday.cgi/december/29 D&M Consulting Services (DM-DOM) 67-67 Burns Street Forest Hills, NY 11375 Domain Name: DM.COM Administrative Contact: Administration, PSINet Domain (PDA4) psinet-domain-admin(a)PSI.COM (703) 904-4100 Technical Contact, Zone Contact: Network Information and Support Center (PSI-NISC) hostinfo(a)psi.com (518) 283-8860 Record last updated on 31-Oct-96. Record created on 19-Jun-91. Domain servers in listed order: NS.PSI.NET 192.33.4.10 NS2.PSI.NET 38.8.50.2 Source: InterNIC Q: Who is Dimitri Vulis? A: Dimitri is an XSoviet immigrant who is enrolled (or used to be enrolled) in CUNY, and who is a computer professional involved i.a. in unicode matters. The realspace Dimitri is a polite person and a devoted family head. It's cyberspace image is not nearly as nice, unfortunately. He harasses people all over the net with the most offensive sorts of messages, and uses dirty tricks to retaliate to the people who do get offended. Among his accomplished feats is a series of articles about cat-eating dogs posted to rec.pets.cats (which caused a wave of complaints and made him lost his CUNY account) ; a series of porno binaries with obscene comments about his opponents posted to math-related newsgroups (he lost another academic account, at fordham.edu, after this scandal); and a series of racist articles denigrating all aspects of romanian life and culture which used to haunt the romanian newsgroup for years. Of course most of his net.bile is spilled over his fellow XSoviets, particularly of Jewish origin (such as Michael Verbitsky, Boris Veytsman, Vlad Rutenberg or myself, as well as all Brighton Beach together); and a lot of stuff comes out from his alleged aliases in bwalk.dm.com, aol.com and fly.harvard.edu. Some of these aliases match the names of his opponents, as I already mentioned. Sometimes not only the names but also addresses match (although paths don't). Dimitri Vulis also advertises the capabilities of his site for forging and cancelling articles. Sometimes he shrewdly comments articles of his own saying : "This article is most certainly forged, after all I spent a lot of time teaching you how to forge... but I nevertheless like this article's content". Source: http://www.math.harvard.edu/~verbit/scs/cranks/from-Shlomo.html (much more there too) AUTHOR PROFILE: dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com (Dr. Dimitri Vulis) 510 articles posted between 1995/06/29 and 1996/11/02. 71 % followups. Number of articles posted to individual newsgroups (slightly skewed by cross-postings): 132 misc.jobs.misc 67 news.admin.net-abuse.misc 67 news.groups 40 mail.cypherpunks 32 nyc.food 18 soc.culture.russian 13 news.admin.misc 12 nyc.general 10 news.admin.censorship 9 news.admin.policy 8 alt.censorship 7 alt.usenet.kooks 7 soc.culture.pakistan 6 alt.revenge 5 comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy 5 soc.culture.soviet 4 alt.sex.plushies 4 sci.math 4 sci.physics 4 talk.politics.medicine 3 alt.folklore.computers 3 alt.security 3 comp.lang.ada 3 comp.security.misc 3 sci.crypt 2 alt.nocem.misc 2 alt.sci.physics.plutonium 2 aus.flame 2 comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy 2 comp.unix.advocacy 2 microsoft.public.netiquette 2 soc.culture.israel 1 alt.2600 1 alt.anonymous 1 alt.bible 1 alt.computer.consultants 1 alt.consumers.experiences 1 alt.fan.bill-gates 1 alt.fan.my-big-hairy-penis 1 alt.privacy 1 alt.shenanigans 1 alt.society.neutopia 1 aus.general 1 comp.ai 1 comp.mail.uucp 1 comp.os.ms-windows.nt.misc 1 comp.os.ms-windows.win95.setup 1 comp.sys.mac.advocacy 1 humanities.language.sanskrit 1 misc.entrepreneurs 1 misc.invest 1 news.newusers.questions 1 nj.misc 1 nyc.seminars 1 rec.humor 1 rec.motorcycles 1 sci.psychology.psychotherapy 1 soc.motss 1 tor.general Source: http://www.dejanews.com profile Dimitri Vulis: Contrib. post: whose obnoxious, derivative and not-very-funny Soviet emigre jokes from Brighton Beach were a weekly feature about a year ago on rec.humor . He ignored completely any requests to stop. Eventually he started getting flamed in demotic Russian-quite fun for those of us who could read it. - Dan "And to think he felt it important enough to waste his two hours of daily connect time on it" Case -- so what _is_ the deal with vulis? is "russian emigre" a codeword for "jew", or for "russian emigre", or for something else? (if i recall correctly, minor and now somewhat reformed net.loon mikhail zeleny claimed rather convincingly that vulis's posts contained certain tell-tale phrases which are highly un-idiomatic in english ("dandruff-covered" was one of them, i think) which were dead giveaways of classic pathological russian anti-semitism.) so is vulis russian? an emigre? a jew in some sense? self-hating? maybe a self-hating russian jewish emigre who hates only the jewish half of themself? or maybe they hate the russian half too? are they now or have they ever been, while residing in america, on the payroll of any branch of any soviet or russian government? did they stop posting russian emigre jokes when the paychecks stopped coming? are they a zhirinovsky supporter now? the most recent messages posted by vulis that i have seen seem designed mainly to convince people that both zhirinovsky and valery fabrikant are (russian?) jews. (it's very likely true in fabrikant's case, at least.) maybe vulis is a self-hating supporter of zhirinovsky and fabrikant? -- Posts on soc.culture.soviet, and is apparently something of an institution there; likes to stir things up, and to flame and/or troll people. I'm not up on which sides are good and/or bad on s.c.s, which among other things seems to have been ravaged by Serdar Argic for a long time as well, driving away many of the gentler posters. Is currently engaged in flamewar with Peter V. Vorobieff there. Posts from dlv(a)CUNYVMS1.GC.CUNY.EDU (Dimitri Vulis, CUNY GC Math). Source: http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~tskirvin/home/legends/legends3.html Dimitri Vulis's barcode font ftp: ctan: tex-archive/fonts/barcodes/barcodes.mf There is a mailing list, rustex-l, for discussion of typesetting Cyrilic-based languages. To subscribe, send mail to listserv(a)ubvm.bitnet containing the text SUBSCRIBE RUSTEX-L <your name here> or mail Dimitri Vulis, DLV%CUNYVMS1.BITNET(a)cunyvm.cuny.edu [or dlv(a)dm.com?] Source: http://wsspinfo.cern.ch/faq/fonts-faq/metafont-list Bar code fonts ymir.claremont.edu by Dimitri Vulis [anonymous.tex.mf] BibTeX eedsp.gatech.edu for MS-DOS v99 by J. Demel and Dimitri Vulis Source: http://www.clinet.fi/pd/doc/texts/TeX-FAQ-supplement_(part_2_of_3 ) (this FAQ is dated 10 May 93) Server The files of type para used in the index were: /u3/wais/mirror/cissites/cissites.txt A list of contacts for most known organizations in the former Soviet Union who either have or plan to have e-mail connections. Provided by the SUEARN-L list, SUEARN-L(a)UBVM.BITNET. Keywords: USSR, CIS, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Baltic, Moscow, Leningrad, Siberia. The original document is stored on impaqt.drexel.edu:/pub/suearn/misc/cissites.txt and is available for anonymous FTP. >From the front matter: * The Authoritative Soviet E-Mail Directory and Guide ** For more information, subscribe to the SUEARN-L mailing list, or send e-mail to Michael Meystel or Dimitri Vulis (c) 1992 All rights reserved This file contains contact information (correct name / address / phone / fax #... possibly e-mail address) for sites of interest in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). We occasionally get asked questions like 'What is the Russian name of IAS?' or 'What is the postal address of St. Petersburg State U's math faculty?' or 'What does IPPI stand for?'. Over the years I've collected a fairly complete electronic address book of addresses of Soviet sites where mathematical research is done, which I gladly share. Sergej Gelfand and Don Parsons have kindly contributed their address lists (respectively, more math and oncology). An even more complete version of such file, listing sites of possible interest to people in other fields, and freely available on the Internet, would be very useful to many. Please send additions, corrections, suggestions, etc to: CISMAP(a)DM.COM I can't acknowledge everything, but I will try to read every e-mail. Dimitri Vulis ) Source: http://www.elvis.ru/wais/c.html

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Re: URG_ent
by droelke＠rdxsunhost.aud.alcatel.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Not to beat up on Medcom - but doesn't this sound like a nice DES cracking target? > > "Medcom introduces a "Super Cafe" data encryption product" > > Medcom's latest data encryption product, the Secure Socket > Relay (SSR), features strong encryption with full key length > (56-bits DES). A demo version can be downloaded at > http://www.medcom.se/. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------ Dan Oelke Alcatel Network Systems droelke(a)aud.alcatel.com Richardson, TX

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Vulis profile Vulis profile
by nobody＠replay.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I had some free time this morning, and just for fun, thought I'd create a brief Net profile of our friend Dr. Vulis. Here's what I found (sources included): Dimitri Vulis #4k Burns St, Forest Hills,NY 11375-3506 (718)261-6839 Source: http://www.yahoo.com (Four11 people search) Birthday: December 29 Source: http://www.boutell.com/birthday.cgi/december/29 D&M Consulting Services (DM-DOM) 67-67 Burns Street Forest Hills, NY 11375 Domain Name: DM.COM Administrative Contact: Administration, PSINet Domain (PDA4) psinet-domain-admin(a)PSI.COM (703) 904-4100 Technical Contact, Zone Contact: Network Information and Support Center (PSI-NISC) hostinfo(a)psi.com (518) 283-8860 Record last updated on 31-Oct-96. Record created on 19-Jun-91. Domain servers in listed order: NS.PSI.NET 192.33.4.10 NS2.PSI.NET 38.8.50.2 Source: InterNIC Q: Who is Dimitri Vulis? A: Dimitri is an XSoviet immigrant who is enrolled (or used to be enrolled) in CUNY, and who is a computer professional involved i.a. in unicode matters. The realspace Dimitri is a polite person and a devoted family head. It's cyberspace image is not nearly as nice, unfortunately. He harasses people all over the net with the most offensive sorts of messages, and uses dirty tricks to retaliate to the people who do get offended. Among his accomplished feats is a series of articles about cat-eating dogs posted to rec.pets.cats (which caused a wave of complaints and made him lost his CUNY account) ; a series of porno binaries with obscene comments about his opponents posted to math-related newsgroups (he lost another academic account, at fordham.edu, after this scandal); and a series of racist articles denigrating all aspects of romanian life and culture which used to haunt the romanian newsgroup for years. Of course most of his net.bile is spilled over his fellow XSoviets, particularly of Jewish origin (such as Michael Verbitsky, Boris Veytsman, Vlad Rutenberg or myself, as well as all Brighton Beach together); and a lot of stuff comes out from his alleged aliases in bwalk.dm.com, aol.com and fly.harvard.edu. Some of these aliases match the names of his opponents, as I already mentioned. Sometimes not only the names but also addresses match (although paths don't). Dimitri Vulis also advertises the capabilities of his site for forging and cancelling articles. Sometimes he shrewdly comments articles of his own saying : "This article is most certainly forged, after all I spent a lot of time teaching you how to forge... but I nevertheless like this article's content". Source: http://www.math.harvard.edu/~verbit/scs/cranks/from-Shlomo.html (much more there too) AUTHOR PROFILE: dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com (Dr. Dimitri Vulis) 510 articles posted between 1995/06/29 and 1996/11/02. 71 % followups. Number of articles posted to individual newsgroups (slightly skewed by cross-postings): 132 misc.jobs.misc 67 news.admin.net-abuse.misc 67 news.groups 40 mail.cypherpunks 32 nyc.food 18 soc.culture.russian 13 news.admin.misc 12 nyc.general 10 news.admin.censorship 9 news.admin.policy 8 alt.censorship 7 alt.usenet.kooks 7 soc.culture.pakistan 6 alt.revenge 5 comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy 5 soc.culture.soviet 4 alt.sex.plushies 4 sci.math 4 sci.physics 4 talk.politics.medicine 3 alt.folklore.computers 3 alt.security 3 comp.lang.ada 3 comp.security.misc 3 sci.crypt 2 alt.nocem.misc 2 alt.sci.physics.plutonium 2 aus.flame 2 comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy 2 comp.unix.advocacy 2 microsoft.public.netiquette 2 soc.culture.israel 1 alt.2600 1 alt.anonymous 1 alt.bible 1 alt.computer.consultants 1 alt.consumers.experiences 1 alt.fan.bill-gates 1 alt.fan.my-big-hairy-penis 1 alt.privacy 1 alt.shenanigans 1 alt.society.neutopia 1 aus.general 1 comp.ai 1 comp.mail.uucp 1 comp.os.ms-windows.nt.misc 1 comp.os.ms-windows.win95.setup 1 comp.sys.mac.advocacy 1 humanities.language.sanskrit 1 misc.entrepreneurs 1 misc.invest 1 news.newusers.questions 1 nj.misc 1 nyc.seminars 1 rec.humor 1 rec.motorcycles 1 sci.psychology.psychotherapy 1 soc.motss 1 tor.general Source: http://www.dejanews.com profile Dimitri Vulis: Contrib. post: whose obnoxious, derivative and not-very-funny Soviet emigre jokes from Brighton Beach were a weekly feature about a year ago on rec.humor . He ignored completely any requests to stop. Eventually he started getting flamed in demotic Russian-quite fun for those of us who could read it. - Dan "And to think he felt it important enough to waste his two hours of daily connect time on it" Case -- so what _is_ the deal with vulis? is "russian emigre" a codeword for "jew", or for "russian emigre", or for something else? (if i recall correctly, minor and now somewhat reformed net.loon mikhail zeleny claimed rather convincingly that vulis's posts contained certain tell-tale phrases which are highly un-idiomatic in english ("dandruff-covered" was one of them, i think) which were dead giveaways of classic pathological russian anti-semitism.) so is vulis russian? an emigre? a jew in some sense? self-hating? maybe a self-hating russian jewish emigre who hates only the jewish half of themself? or maybe they hate the russian half too? are they now or have they ever been, while residing in america, on the payroll of any branch of any soviet or russian government? did they stop posting russian emigre jokes when the paychecks stopped coming? are they a zhirinovsky supporter now? the most recent messages posted by vulis that i have seen seem designed mainly to convince people that both zhirinovsky and valery fabrikant are (russian?) jews. (it's very likely true in fabrikant's case, at least.) maybe vulis is a self-hating supporter of zhirinovsky and fabrikant? -- Posts on soc.culture.soviet, and is apparently something of an institution there; likes to stir things up, and to flame and/or troll people. I'm not up on which sides are good and/or bad on s.c.s, which among other things seems to have been ravaged by Serdar Argic for a long time as well, driving away many of the gentler posters. Is currently engaged in flamewar with Peter V. Vorobieff there. Posts from dlv(a)CUNYVMS1.GC.CUNY.EDU (Dimitri Vulis, CUNY GC Math). Source: http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~tskirvin/home/legends/legends3.html Dimitri Vulis's barcode font ftp: ctan: tex-archive/fonts/barcodes/barcodes.mf There is a mailing list, rustex-l, for discussion of typesetting Cyrilic-based languages. To subscribe, send mail to listserv(a)ubvm.bitnet containing the text SUBSCRIBE RUSTEX-L <your name here> or mail Dimitri Vulis, DLV%CUNYVMS1.BITNET(a)cunyvm.cuny.edu [or dlv(a)dm.com?] Source: http://wsspinfo.cern.ch/faq/fonts-faq/metafont-list Bar code fonts ymir.claremont.edu by Dimitri Vulis [anonymous.tex.mf] BibTeX eedsp.gatech.edu for MS-DOS v99 by J. Demel and Dimitri Vulis Source: http://www.clinet.fi/pd/doc/texts/TeX-FAQ-supplement_(part_2_of_3 ) (this FAQ is dated 10 May 93) Server The files of type para used in the index were: /u3/wais/mirror/cissites/cissites.txt A list of contacts for most known organizations in the former Soviet Union who either have or plan to have e-mail connections. Provided by the SUEARN-L list, SUEARN-L(a)UBVM.BITNET. Keywords: USSR, CIS, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Baltic, Moscow, Leningrad, Siberia. The original document is stored on impaqt.drexel.edu:/pub/suearn/misc/cissites.txt and is available for anonymous FTP. >From the front matter: * The Authoritative Soviet E-Mail Directory and Guide ** For more information, subscribe to the SUEARN-L mailing list, or send e-mail to Michael Meystel or Dimitri Vulis (c) 1992 All rights reserved This file contains contact information (correct name / address / phone / fax #... possibly e-mail address) for sites of interest in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). We occasionally get asked questions like 'What is the Russian name of IAS?' or 'What is the postal address of St. Petersburg State U's math faculty?' or 'What does IPPI stand for?'. Over the years I've collected a fairly complete electronic address book of addresses of Soviet sites where mathematical research is done, which I gladly share. Sergej Gelfand and Don Parsons have kindly contributed their address lists (respectively, more math and oncology). An even more complete version of such file, listing sites of possible interest to people in other fields, and freely available on the Internet, would be very useful to many. Please send additions, corrections, suggestions, etc to: CISMAP(a)DM.COM I can't acknowledge everything, but I will try to read every e-mail. Dimitri Vulis ) Source: http://www.elvis.ru/wais/c.html

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Re: Is there a Win PGP?
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:58 PM 11/6/96 -0500, you wrote: >subject says it all.... Im just wondering is (and where) there is a windows >version of PGP.. thanks! There are two separate issues - PGP with a Windows GUI, and PGP that really runs as a Windows process, rather than needing to fire up a DOS window. There are a dozen or so Windows GUIs for PGP, many of which are on ftp.ox.ac.uk. I especially like Private Idaho; I think the path to it is www.eskimo.com/~joelm/ (also ftp.eskimo.com) Current version is about 2.8 ; I'm not running it because it dropped support for ViaCrypt (due to problems with ViaCrypt 4.0), and I like using ViaCrypt. I'm also having problems getting the older versions to work on Windows NT (sigh...) For a real Windows version, you can buy ViaCrypt (about $100-130?) At least inside the US, to use the interesting RSA methods except through the official external interfaces to RSAREF, you need permission from RSA. Basic PGP for DOS/Unix/Mac has this, but there isn't a blessed Windows version except ViaCrypt, a commercial product. For commercial applications, you probably also need ViaCrypt anyway. It was a nice product before they added Key Escrow support. Now that Phil has bought them, they'll presumably return to political correctness on that issue. # 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

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Kozinski's responses
by tien＠well.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Here is my on what Judge Kozinski wrote: > > a. You have anonymous snail-mail and telephone calls--why > not e-mail? The truth is, anonymous snail-mail and > telephone calls are also an invasion of privacy, but there > is not much we can do about them. 1. But do anonymous snail-mail or phone calls invade privacy? Is an anonymous phone call an invasion of privacy in a way that an ordinary phone call is not? Is anonymous snail-mail more invasive of privacy than ordinary junk snail-mail? Is it the anonymity that is objectionable? Many people object to spam even when they know who it's from. It's certainly reasonable to define privacy as including an interest in disattention or not being drawn into communication. But isn't that interest implicated every time someone calls you? And not just when the caller has ID blocking, or doesn't tell you who he or she is? Normally, when I make a phone call, I don't identify myself. If I'm asked, who is this, then we have a decision point. Until I do, isn't the call anonymous? Once I do, it's not - any more - but it was until then. Put slightly differently, in daily life we interact with those we know little about, and we learn more (usually) as the interaction unfolds. Interaction is sequential, involves turn-taking; trust is built, not warranted at the outset. So what is distinctly privacy-invasive in being anonymous? >Someone asked whether I > objected to getting anonymous snail mail if it was not > threatening. The answer is YES, just like getting an > anonymous phone call is objectionable. When the person who > communicates with you insists on retaining anonymity, there > is always an implicit threat--they know who you are, but you > don't--you feel vulnerable, you doubt their motives, you > have difficulty knowing whether to trust their > representations. Anonymous complaints against co-workers > and supervisors was a standard way to get people into big > trouble in Communist Romania when I was growing up. The thrust of his comment seems to be (a) that when the caller is anonymous, there is an imbalance: you know less than the caller. You interact on an unequal footing. This may well be, as he puts it, "objectionable"; but the appeal is to some norm of informational reciprocity, of fair disclosure. What I don't get is how that is a violation of *privacy.* Does "being named" dispel the objectionable quality of the interaction? Don't we often interact with people whom we hardly know? It seems neither necessary nor sufficient. I can feel vulnerable, doubt motives, etc., even when I know someone's name. Isn't he really talking about reputation? To what extent does nymity (I just coined this as the opposite of anonymity) matter? Name may permit you to assess reputation later, but may be of little use at the time.Is that a privacy issue? Does Kozinski assume (b) that the anonymous are more dangerous, that anonymity maps to unaccountability, and unaccountability maps to higher likelihood of threat. Even if that's true, is that a matter of privacy? 2. As for anonymous snail-mail, consider that an anonymous envelope isn't necessarily an anonymous letter. The anonymity is relative to what's exposed. Map that onto e-mail. Isn't that equivalent to anonymizing the header and encrypting the message itself? That the header doesn't reveal sender identity doesn't entail that the message is itself anonymous. The anonymity may merely be against third parties. Kozinski himself says: > 2. I also agree that it should be possible to have mutually > agreed-upon anonymity--i.e. I write to you and you write to > me and we both know who we are, but nobody else does. No > problema--it's nobody else's business. > So from that POV, wouldn't a ban on anonymous remailers, to the extent that they don't preclude nymity w/i the message body, reach too far? Blatant self-promotion: BTW, I recently published an article on anonymity and the McIntyre case in the Oregon Law Review. 75 Or.L.Rev. 117 (1996). Lee

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Re: Judge Patel Background
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:12 PM 11/7/96 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote: >Fred Korematsu was a Japanese-American shipyard worker in the >early 1940s. His fiancee was Caucasian. To stay with her, he evaded >the concentration camps for two months, but was caught and convicted >anyway. His conviction was not reversed until 1983 in the court of one >Judge Patel. > >Page 48, "After hearing lawyers on both sides, Judge Marilyn Patel >asked Fred Korematsu to address the court. `As long as my record >stands in federal court,' he quietly stated, `any American citizen >can be held in prison or concentration camps without a trial or >hearing.' Ruling from the bench, Judge Patel labeled the government's >position as `tantamount to a confession of error' and erased Fred's >conviction from the court's records." > >(Judge Patel is presiding over Dan Bernstein's challenge to the ITAR.) 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. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by Matthew Ghio 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Well, this is becoming a rather long thread, but I'll just make what I think are the key points: If, as is presumed in this discussion, society will become divided into two somewhat distinct groups of people, the crypto-anonymous group and the traceable-identifiable group, then the predictable outcome is that members of the traceable-identifiable group will become increasingly victimized by members of the crypto-anonymous group. People who are easily identifiable and tracked are easy prey. For example, if you can see when John Doe is logged in at home or logged in at his office, then you can burglarize his home while he is at the office and vice versa. If, as some government agencies would like, all motor vehicle records were online, a criminal could go 'shopping' on the internet, pick out the make and model he wants, look up the owner's address and go steal it. There are lots of other examples, such as seeing how much money is in various people's bank accounts, then target those who have money, etc... (Identifiable people are also likely to be targets of spam and other annoyances, and I suspect the proliferation of spam is encourgaing a great number of people to explore the possibilities for anonymous posting.) This situation is going to put an increasing amount of pressure on those in the traceable-identifiable group to change their ways. They will have two choices: either they start using crypto, remailers, etc to protect their privacy and protect themselves from criminals, or they can demand more identification and restrict their interactions with others such that they only associate with suitably identified persons. The net result of this is that it's easy (and economically desirable) for people in the 'traceable-identifiable' group to join the 'crypto-anonymous' group, but vary hard for anonymous personas to interact with the identified group. As such, the number of people demanding identification of their correspondents will decline. (Another way to look at it, is that crypto-anonymity is a high-entropy, and hence stable, situation, whereas tracable-identifiability is a low-entropy and metastable state, which spontaneously degrades into the former in the absense of a constraining force.) This is why cryptoanarchy is inevitable.

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