December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Los Angeles Times article on Helsingius and anon.penet.fi
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:06 PM 9/2/96 -0700, Stanton McCandlish wrote: >You have to have an anonymizing system that crosses a dozen or so >national boundaries to make such an attack infeasible for most large >organizations. You'd need a system that crossed 50 or more widely >disparate jurisdictions to make it infeasible to large intelligence or >law enforcement agencies, and even then you'd have to NOT have broad >international agreements, such as you'd called for or it would be trivial >to force all the remailers in the chain to cough up personally >identifiable information. > >> My assumption is that there will be a wide variety of Net communities with >> different rules/regulations/attitudes towards anonymity that would apply ex > >This is already true. > >> some kind of international sanctions; I think that's appropriate. > >That's what bugs me - if there are some kind of sanctions coming from a >governmental body (I may be misinterpreting you here), that's probably >enough to kill private and well as public anonymity on the Net. > >Incidentally, if something does happen from a governmental direction to >kill online anonymity, it will probably be readily broadenable to all >other media. At the risk of sounding like a broken record (a phrase that will get ever more obscure now that we're in the CD era...) that's why I pushing AP (Assassination Politics.) While anonymous remailers and chains are great for security, there ought to be some final bulwark against violations of our security and anonymity that doesn't depend on legal arguments, or even technical refinements of encryption. When organizations such as CoS can seek Penet data with impunity, and when courts in Finland can let them, we're not safe. Remember the saying, "The best defense is a good offense." Playing as we do now, it's like saying, "We'll try our best to maintain our security, but if it fails too bad." I propose changing it to, "We'll try our best to maintain our security, but if you manage to violate it anyway you're dead." As rude as it may sound, one of the best advantages is that this defense is free while it's not needed, and is pretty cheap when called upon. In case anybody has any residual doubts as to whether we should enforce our rights in this way, consider this: if we've decided that we have the right to anonymity and security (through remailers and encryption) EVEN IF some people might misuse those tools to cause crime and potentially even death (which, of course, would be an exceedingly rare outcome) then I suggest we've already accepted the principle that our rights to use these tools daily are more important than the possibility of a rare negative outcome. (in the same sense that occasional fatal car accidents don't justify taking away all cars.) And if that's the case, we should also be willing to DELIVER a rare negative outcome to anyone who acts to take these rights away, particularly if such a person is adequately forewarned of our intentions. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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POT_hot
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Foreign Affairs, Sep/Oct, Lead Essay: "Postmodern Terrorism. The terrorism of the future may be far more destructive than terrorism as we have known it." An informative survey and pot-heat by Walter Laqueur. Terrorism's prospects, often overrated by the media, the public, and some politicians, are improving as its destructive potential increases. Terrorism has replaced wars between nations of the 1800s and 1900s. In the future, terrorists will be individuals or like-minded people working in very small groups. An individual may possess the technical competence to steal, buy, or manufacture the weapons he or she needs for a terrorist purpose. The ideologies such individuals and minigroups espouse are likely to be even more aberrant than those of larger groups. And terrorists working alone or in very small groups will be more difficult to detect unless they make a major mistake or are discovered by accident. Society has also become vulnerable to a new kind of terrorism, in which the destructive power of both the individual terrorist and terrorism as a tactic are infinitely greater. The advanced societies of today are more dependent every day on electronic information. That exposes enormous vital areas of national life to mischief or sabotage by any computer hacker, and concerted sabotage could render a country unable to function. Why assassinate a politician or indiscriminately kill people when an attack on electronic switching will produce far more dramatic and lasting results? If the new terrorism directs its energies toward information warfare, its destructive power will be exponentially greater than any it wielded in the past -- greater even than it would be with biological and chemical weapons. The single successful one could claim many more victims, do more material damage, and unleash far greater panic than anything the world has yet experienced. ----- http://jya.com/pothot.txt (30 kb) POT_hot (in 2 parts)

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Re: DON'T Nuke Singapore Back into the Stone Age
by Hallam-Baker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

One of the things that you are probably not aware of is that your government tracks every phone call you make and has a complete list of everyone who you comunicate with. This information is then used to identify potential dissidents who can be "monitored" - just like in the old USSR. I know that this is a fact because I know people in the business. They also tell me that they prefer to dissuade people from entertaining guests at home. The assumption being that the more private conversations take place the more opportunities to criticise the government there are. >Now, what makes you think that citizen of Country A has the power or >rights to tell politicians of Country B what to do and what they cannot >do? What makes you think that the concept "country" has any legitimacy whatsoever? The Web is not politically neutral. I intended the Web to be an agent of social change. The corruption of the present social order should be apparent from the fact that we destroy food while people starve, the majority of the worlds population have no political rights and political participation is only available to a tiny minority. The Web will have an effect whenever there is an internal inconsistency within a social order. The interaction of opposed cultures via the Web will reveal these inconsistencies in a manner that requires them to be resolved. The people of Singapore are not going to change their government because the US people convince them of the superiority of US culture. While it is patriotic for a US citizen to believe a-priori in US superiority it is unpatriotic for anyone else. What will change the government of Singapore is revealing the internal inconsistencies of the governments claims. Phill

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Anonymity and free speech
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Instead of discussing whether or not Esther Dyson or other EFF board members are personally comfortable with anonymity, let's talk about whether or not the EFF and its board members believe that the First Amendment provides a right to speak and associate anonymously. (I believe that the First Amendment gives everyone the right to wear a t-shirt which says "I am an asshole." But I have no interest in wearing such a t-shirt. And so on.) I believe that it does, and that the Supreme Court has already made that clear. In cypherpunks(a)toad.comparticular, I'm thinking of _NAACP v. Alabama ex rel Patterson_, _Talley_, and _McIntrye v. Ohio Elections Commission_. (Sorry for the lack of cites; 95% of my stuff is still in boxes and I'm sending this via laptop and a Ricochet modem.) If the right to speak/associate in "real life" is protected by the First Amendment, I don't see why it wouldn't be on computers and networks which are located inside the United States. And if that right is based upon the Constitution, it will take a constitutional amendment or a big sea change in the Supreme Court to take it away. (I wonder if the decision in _McIntrye_ would have gone the other way if Ms. McIntrye were selling drugs via anonymous message pools instead of discussing school funding via windshield flyers.) Discussions about the utility of anonymity would be more useful if we were designing a communication system or a constituion from scratch; but that's not our current situation. Is there serious debate about whether or not the Constitution and the Internet allow anonymous communication? (I'm not asking a rhetorical question. If someone's familiar with an argument to the contrary, please tell me about it.) Both the Constitution and the Internet are difficult to modify quickly; we probably have anonymity (like it or not) for at least a few more years. (I'm not trying to imply that US law is the only law, or that the rest of the world doesn't existy. But I don't know poo about the right to anonymity in other nations; and to a certain extent anonymity anywhere on the Internet is the same as anonymity everywhere on the Internet. Are other readers aware of other jurisdictions where anonymous speech is considered a right?) ---- Greg Broiles gbroiles(a)netbox.com http://www.io.com/~gbroiles

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Re: SCO giving free licenses to UNIX OpenServer
by David E. Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: hallam(a)ai.mit.edu, cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Mon Sep 02 23:01:35 1996 > > > > I doubt it. People don't use Microsoft products because > > of their quality or functionality. > > Errmm.. hate to disappoint but SCO UNIX started life as Xenix which > was written by Microsoft in the dark ages. > Concur. Microsoft products are used not necessarily because of quality or functionality (which are often dubious, but very occasionally present), but because of user interface and/or market share. > Today Linux probably represents the future of the UNIX familly, it > allows people who want to hack at the OS level access to the sources > of a fully functioning OS. This allows people to add in new kernel > features, schedulers and other exotica without having to write a > whole new O/S. I still like FreeBSD. Similar functionality, similar availability- of-source, but very slightly easier to install/run/manage/play with. Similarly free. (FreeBSD was able to find my modem, something I couldn't get Linux to do after most of an hour. Of course I'm a *nix novice for the most part.) > Just don't confuse it with "home computing", this is geek computing > and you better have a lot of interest in computing to use it. Home > computing is the market for users who need a system thats simpler > than a VCR or they can't use it. At one time that meant Apple, today > it means Microsoft, it will never mean Linux - not unless someone > can make Linux much much simpler than it is at present and provide > decent WISIWIG tools such as editors etc. designed for use by aunt > Ethel. I'm not sure about that... X-Windows seems to have a decent interface, runs on Linux, hell, most any *nix you care to name, and has some decent editors available. (Or, there's always emacs, but aunt Ethel might not grok emacs too well. I don't :) - ----- David E. Smith, P O Box 324, Cape Girardeau MO USA 63702 dsmith(a)prairienet.org http://www.prairienet.org/~dsmith send mail with subject of "send pgp-key" for my PGP public key "Ask not what you can do for your country; ask what your country did to you" -- KMFDM, "Dogma" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMiutozVTwUKWHSsJAQEdCgf+OM8tpEbJh/FonjORnFwe9lo2t+my8eD7 +oM7Gv/WMPekDhvxxolzqGSvgUAJL1sgbwKdray5fHFCwOtK1ogQJrN4qrXKQH5e IXlC+G91i5BUq98MmzsEngZ3Akz2YciY/U4zyEJSXUNigAFgGcuXhZ1Bw+HT3hLt x27h45wWxHWfUJR8EUgOiUDG41rTW3eSLN0Pf/cSyvMTE3c+ub+59SMYJzCO+DnK MjNfhKvFLVNPUGJYNfLGt3OzwJFaCLnuDKLI78R0W+MsCqSA02o4Mq8GRul78Dfi jgBNJEsP8JdZnQTheRCwR4cgwIHc/Csmu+Ab5UN8h5L7VV1u2YFfkA== =PgX+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Kill all "libertarians"
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From nobody(a)REPLAY.COM Mon Sep 2 12:26:36 1996 Received: by bwalk.dm.com (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Mon, 02 Sep 96 15:42:57 EDT for dlv Received: from basement.replay.com by uu.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.061193-PSI/PSINet) via SMTP; id AA18013 for dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com; Mon, 2 Sep 96 12:26:36 -0400 Received: (from replay@localhost) by basement.replay.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id SAA11752 for dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com; Mon, 2 Sep 1996 18:26:28 +0200 (MET DST) Date: Mon, 2 Sep 1996 18:26:28 +0200 (MET DST) Message-Id: <199609021626.SAA11752(a)basement.replay.com> To: dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com From: nobody(a)REPLAY.COM (Anonymous) Organization: Replay and Company UnLimited Xcomm: Replay may or may not approve of the content of this posting Xcomm: Report misuse of this automated service to <abuse(a)REPLAY.COM> Subject: All russians are scum. No exceptions. Return-Path: <cypherpunks-errors(a)toad.com> To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Re: Sen. Leahy's "impeccable cyberspace credentials" From: dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM) Comments: Dole/Kemp '96! Date: Mon, 02 Sep 96 01:19:37 EDT Organization: Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y. Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com jonathon <grafolog(a)netcom.com> writes: > On Sun, 1 Sep 1996, James A. Donald wrote: > > > > I agree with what you are saying but not all polititions are that bad. > > > You make it sound as if their are no politisions are for freedom of the > > > net. > > So who is the exception? > > Harry Browne Libertarian Party Candidate. Harry Browne is a fucking statist. All politicians are scum. No exceptions. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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Re: Modem tax again?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yes, isn't it interesting how they managed to turn this issue into their desire to "end a subsidy," when you know they would be terrified of REALLY ending the various telephone subsidies that are operating. For years, businesses have paid more for telephone service than residences. While this might have made sense in the era before digital switches, it does no longer. Also, the claim that "Internet users are overtaxing phone networks and ought to pay more for monthly service" isn't believable. In my experience, the time between 9:30 pm and 11:00 pm is the only time which usually produces busy signals to my ISP, a time which is when, traditionally, telephone traffic is quite light as compared to peak hours. I'd be happy to compare the "usage-factor versus time" of ISP's versus regular voice calls if I had the numbers, but I suspect that calls to local ISP's complement voice traffic rather than add to its peaks. At 01:40 PM 9/2/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote: > As I recall, the alleged "subsidy" consists of lack of payments so >rural areas can have subsidized phone service - thus making their costs borne >by everyone else. > -Allen > >> _________________________________________________________________ >> Avis >> _________________________________________________________________ >> INTERNET IS HURTING PHONE NETWORKS, STUDY SAYS >> __________________________________________________________________________ >> Copyright &copy 1996 Nando.net >> Copyright &copy 1996 San Francisco Examiner > >> SAN FRANCISCO (Aug 27, 1996 3:11 p.m. EDT) -- Hoping to reduce or end >> a subsidy that has kept down the cost of on-line service, local phone >> companies here have presented the Federal Communications Commission >> with studies arguing that Internet users are overtaxing phone networks >> and ought to pay more for monthly service. > >> The studies, one of which was published on the Internet, argue that a >> 13-year-old subsidy lets Internet service providers (ISPs) pay a >> fraction of what a long distance company pays to get a phone line, >> even though Internet calls may use more phone system capacity than >> voice traffic. > >[...] > >> For their part, ISPs are alarmed at the remote possibility that the >> FCC might let phone companies raise their monthly costs from the >> current monthly average of $30 to anything approaching the $600 that >> some long distance carriers pay for a phone line. > >> "If we had to pay anything like long distance access charges, it would >> put all the ISPs out of business," said Ronald Plesser, the >> Washington, D.C., attorney who represents the Commercial Internet >> Exchange, an ISP trade group. > >> FCC staff attorney Kevin Werbach said the subsidy began in 1983, when >> the five-member federal commission created a special rate to encourage >> the growth of on-line services, voicemail companies and other emerging >> industries that offered enhanced electronic services over phone lines. > >> In 1987, the FCC considered ending the subsidy but backed down after >> public protest over what came to be characterized as the "modem tax." >> Given the growth in on-line usage, ISPs assume any talk of ending the >> subsidy would create a bigger backlash today. > >> "There are a minimum of 20 million and perhaps as many as 40 million >> on-line and Internet users and many of them are registered voters," >> said William Schrader, president of PSI Net, an ISP in Herndon, Va. > >> Schrader said when he visited several FCC members recently, he >> suggested that many of those users would be happy to send a letter of >> protest to FCC Chairman Reed Hundt. > >[...] > >> Copyright &copy 1996 Nando.net > > Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: What is the EFF doing exactly?
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Black Unicorn <unicorn(a)schloss.li> wrote: >> > > What is or is not your personal or EFF's official position is meaningless. >> > > It is clear that the personal beliefs of those involved in EFF are >> > > those of compromise, present day politics, and a general lack of moral >> > > fiber. While nobody's called Esther Dyson a Communist here yet, there are people on the board I disagree with - Mitch Kapor, in particular, has shown signs of being a (gasp!) Democrat! My initial reaction to the EFF's first year or two was that they were doing some very good things (the Steve Jackson defense), and also had people making speeches about the need to provide everybody with access to the Information SuperHighway. Getting the S.266 anti-crypto-pro-wiretapping bill killed a few years ago was what convinced me to join them, though their compromise positions on some of the other anti-freedom bills since then have not helped my mixed views of the organization. With all due respect to Jerry Berman, I'm more comfortable now that they're not Washington Insiders any more. >Why am I any more mistaken for pointing out that a single influential >member of EFF's staff or board is anti-anonymity and yet remains with the >organization than you are for pointing out that a single influential >member who happened to be anti-anonymity has left? .... >Maybe there should be an EFF position on the matter. Maybe. If it's a good position, it will recognize that anonymity is a mixed blessing; there are people who use it creatively and responsibly, like Black Unicorn and Lucky Green, and there are spammers who abuse it to the detriment of society, like the slimeball who used my remailer to post hatemail to the gay newsgroups with somebody else's name attached to the bottom. On the other hand, free speech is also a mixed blessing; there _are_ things I wish people had the good taste not to say, but I'm not going to get in Voltaire's way while he defends to the death their right to say them... # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> # You can get PGP software outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto

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Re: Whistleblowing on the Internet
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:02 PM 9/2/96 EDT, "E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH(a)ocelot.Rutgers.EDU> wrote: >There's also the point that some whistleblowing isn't exactly >what some political groups would want to occur. For instance, opponents >to unions such as myself aren't going to want a whistleblower to be able >conveniently to report their exclusion from a job due to union membership. While some unions are clearly run by and for thugs, some employers have also hired thugs to attack union organizers, and both unions and employers have convinced government thugs to attack their opponents, though unions generally have convinced governments to write laws with fines attached, while employers have often had actual Federal troops shooting union strikers, and have had police refrain from defending strikers from attack. In a free market, there wouldn't be laws requiring or forbidding union membership, and some unions would prosper by providing good service to their members and to the employers that hire them, while others wouldn't. I'd be happy to see union members able to anonymously blow the whistle on employers that blacklist union members, though it's harder to be credible with the public if you're anonymous, and particularly hard to get people to believe "Employer MegaFooBar refused to hire [name deleted for privacy], a member of the IBCPARO, because of his union membership" without revealing enough about the union member's identity that the employer knows, and therefore telling all other employers to know that the guy is not only a union member, but also a troublemaker. In this case, the technology is more strongly useful for maintaining blacklists than for detecting or outing blacklist users. Unfortunately, that's especially true because government taxation and anti-immigrant policies require that employees provide employers with a [mostly] unique ID number and papers to prove who they are, so you can't just show up at a construction-workers' hiring hall, call yourself Joe, and get your pay in cash at the end of the day. (Unless you're already an illegal immigrant, in which case it works fine, but then it's tough to be a union member.) # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> # You can get PGP software outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto

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Re: Whistleblowing on the Internet
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Geoffrey Gussis wrote: >| Overall, I am quite surprised that there isn't a whistleblowing >| clearinghouse on the Internet; a site sponsored by a non-profit that lists >| email addresses and secure forms for sending anonymized email to those >| areas of the public and private sector that deal with whistleblowing. Alt.whistleblowing was started a while ago, and was probably pretty quiet (not that I've read it in years.) Of the 5 articles there today, one is from Geoffrey Gussis, one is a reply, one has an EPA phone number, one is test, and one is spam. The reply said #> See www.taf.org on the net. #> See www.whistleblowers.com on the net #> In a few weeks, our site will be up, and we are also #> involved in bringing false claims act or whistleblower #> lawsuits. We have one under seal, and three more pending. > Such a clearinghouse is what we call a fat target; something >likely to attract attention since wiretapping it could be very useful >to an organization that worried about having a whistleblower. That kind of wiretapping we can deal with. Forging Usenet headers was easy enough even without anonymous remailers, and chaining encrypted messages through remailers should be adequate, even without the huge mix volume of anon.penet.fi. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> # You can get PGP software outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto

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