December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Katz on cypherpunks, in HotWired's Media Rant
by travel23＠juno.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Declan McCullagh wrote: > >[Background: the cypherpunk/pw:cypherpunk account used for HotWired's >Threads discussion section has been used for anonymous flaming and >attacks. --Declan] > >HotWired >The Netizen >30 Sep 96 > > Cypherpunks don't want real confrontations or discussions, or they > would reveal their identities and make it possible to respond, as most > flamers do. They are among media's rarest and at the same time most > easily recognized subspecies: nihilists. Well, this really advances the cause for anonymous emailing. It's even more upsetting that, because one knucklehead used cypherpunks as his name and pw, his empty-headed rants become associated with the list and the concept. <Of course, to be fair, I have to leave open the possiblility that the writer has read the likes of John Anon.'s and Dr.Dimitri Vulis' unique and ever-so-assine postings.> The primary point, however, is that right of privacy regarding anonymous email is being submerged by idiots who use it to stroke their miniscule egos. Look at how many remailers have gone under because of abuse - or, better yet, look at Georgia's new law regarding the use of nyms. Tied in with the right to privacy is the right of free speech. The problem is that the general public, with few exceptions, understand this. Most, I believe, would support the right to privacy; however, if they encounter anonymous flaming - especially if it is politically incorrect/profane/abusive, then we would hear the call for an immediate end to the right to privacy and a demand for the hanging of anonymity at high noon.

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FW: [INFO] Internet Privacy: Reflections on Europe in the Digital Age
by Lee Gibbon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>-----Original Message----- >---------- > >this is probably obvious to many of you, but it is still interesting and >sobering to see the issue spelled out all in one place.... > >>---------- >> >>Forwarded-by: Phil Agre <pagre(a)weber.ucsd.edu> >> >>Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 19:16:19 +0200 >>From: steve(a)isys.hu (Steven Carlson) >>To: hungary-online-announce(a)hungary.yak.net >>Subject: (HOL-A) It's a Brave Old World >> >> ------------------------------ >> Brave Old World: >> Reflections on Europe in the Digital Age >> by Steven Carlson; 20 Sep 1996 >> ------------------------------ >> >> ** So Much Fuss About A Bottle Of Ketchup >> >> Hungarian police recently sent a fax around to the local Internet >> service providers (ISPs) asking them to provide lists of their users >> in Esztergom, a small town outside of Budapest. It seems somebody >> had planted a bomb in a bottle of ketchup. Since everyone knows you >> can download bomb-making instructions from the Internet, the police >> figured they should investigate the local users. No, I'm not making >> this up. >> >> What's more, nearly every local ISP gave the police this information. >> Fortunately my company has no users in Esztergom and so that's what we >> told the police. We got off lucky. Believe me, as much as might want >> to make a stand for privacy of information my company is NOT eager to >> do battle with the Hungarian authorities. >> >> But that's what it might take. Because if the Hungarian police really >> understood the Internet they could have asked for even more. For >> example, it would only take a few keystrokes to forward a users' mail >> to the authorities. The police might also have asked for old email, >> since many ISPs back this up routinely. >> >> But that's not all. Some ISPs run caching servers, machines that store >> frequently-viewed webpages so that users access them locally rather >> than across the net. An ISP's caching server could give the police a >> profile of what web pages the users have been browsing. >> >> I'm not trying to scare anyone. My point is that sharing information >> on the Internet is a two-way street. Computers keep extensive records. >> Using the Internet often means you leave a trail behind you. This is >> part of life in the digital age. >> >> This "electronic trail" is not unique to the Internet. Every time you >> use a credit card you create a record in several computers. Other >> computers may be storing information about you such as your medical >> history, driving record, tax filings and so on. The more we rely on >> computers to manage our affairs, the more information that may be "out >> there." This means citizens in the digital age should know their >> rights. >> >> Many governments already have laws to protect private information. For >> example, the US has many laws restricting access to sensitive >> information such as medical and credit records. You might be surprised >> to know Hungary passed a law in 1991 to prevent misuse of information >> associated with the national identity card. >> >> Yet the growth of new technologies is outpacing legislation. For >> example, Holland and other countries are experimenting with "smart >> road" systems that can identify the licence number of a moving car for >> purposes of toll collection. Cellular phones and satellite navigation >> systems can report the locations of their users. It's not difficult to >> imagine how these and other technologies could be abused. >> >> Of course, now you know that even your local Internet provider has >> access to some rather sensitive information about you. This leads me >> to ask: what sort of service is your Internet provider actually >> offering? >> >> When it comes down to it, your ISP is like your doctor, your lawyer, >> your accountant or your psychiatrist. Each of these professionals >> deals with your data; each profession is governed by a code of ethics, >> written or implicit. Moreover these limits are codified in law. If >> your accountant allowed your competitors to read the company books, >> you could take him to court. >> >> Similarly, your Internet provider has an implicit duty to protect the >> privacy of your communication. Most professionals in my industry >> recognize this. I know most of the people working in Hungarian >> Internet and I doubt very much that they are reading your mail or >> mine. But they don't know where they stand in the eyes of the law. >> >> Internet professionals should certainly assist the police in a >> legitimate investigation. But should every Internet user in Esztergom >> be investigated just because they could (theoretically) find >> bomb-making information on the Internet? >> >> To hammer that point home a local Internet-based magazine has >> published, in Hungarian, complete bomb-making instructions: >> <http://www.idg.hu/internetto/cyber/special/dinamit.htm>. In other >> words, if you've read this far you may be the subject of a future >> investigation. Have a nice day! >> >> ** Further Links: >> >> The Electronic Frontier Foundation >> <http://www.eff.org> >> The International Electronic Rights Server >> <http://www.privacy.org> >> The Electronic Privacy Information Center >> <http://www.epic.org> >> >> ---------------------------------------------------- >> Copyright (c) 1996. Permission granted to redistribute this article in >> electronic form for non-profit purposes only. My byline and this message >> must remain intact. Contact me <steve(a)isys.hu> for reprint rights. >>----------------------------------------------------- >> >> >> >

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Re: ASAP letter on e-cash
by Jim Ray 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Mon Sep 30 22:35:53 1996 Dustbin Freedom Remailer wrote: > >It seems our own Jim Ray has gotten published again, this time in Forbes >ASAP's letters section ((Oct.7, page 18). A bit partisan-Libertarian, Well, that's to be expected from me...Besides, Reason editor Virginia Postrel is a columnist there. >but good job, Jim. Thanks. They only cut it a little bit, and I hear it may appear somewhere electronically soon. If not, I'll dig for anyone interested. ASAP makes Forbes worth subscribing to, IMO. JMR Regards, Jim Ray -- DNRC Minister of Encryption Advocacy Defeat the Duopoly! Vote Harry & Jo http://www.HarryBrowne96.org/ ___________________________________________________________________ PGP id.E9BD6D35 51 5D A2 C3 92 2C 56 BE 53 2D 9C A1 B3 50 C9 C8 I will generate a new (and bigger) PGP key-pair on election night. <mailto:jmr@shopmiami.com> http://www.shopmiami.com/prs/jimray ___________________________________________________________________ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMlCDjm1lp8bpvW01AQGNTQQAmQmKZZU8VQWRziV4LEyXxhCKThz2rilA k5gHDsEdkNNynvgd4luAUGEA1P3GGXnDVe3L7ByaCVjz8QksCDuPVM/MH1ZFMoVn pgMZZKkE+HjpDcUXJjRe88Duq8JJw4fZKfE4M+wxyyONQtsVF1+maut2HDzdrcU3 kbE1JQ10+qc= =n4Jb -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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DIMACS Abstracts
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We offer the ABSTRACTS of the presentations at: DIMACS Workshop on Trust Management in Networks September 30 - October 2, 1996 South Plainfield, NJ http://jya.com/dimacs.txt (80 kb) ftp://jya.com/pub/incoming/dimacs.txt Sorry, no E-mail. Here are the titles and authors: _________________________________________________________ Let A Thousand (Ten Thousand?) CAs Reign Stephen Kent, BBN Corporation _________________________________________________________ The PolicyMaker Approach to Trust Management Matt Blaze, Joan Feigenbaum, and Jack Lacy, AT&T Laboratories _________________________________________________________ SDSI -- A Simple Distributed Security Infrastructure Butler Lampson and Ron Rivest, Microsoft and MIT _________________________________________________________ SPKI Certificates Carl Ellison, Cybercash _________________________________________________________ Using PICS Labels for Trust Management Rohit Khare _________________________________________________________ Managing Trust in an Information-Labeling System M. Blaze (1), J. Feigenbaum (1), P. Resnick (1), M. Strauss (2), 1. AT&T Laboratories 2. AT&T Laboratories and Iowa State University _________________________________________________________ Trust Management In Web Browsers, Present and Future Drew Dean, Edward W. Felten, and Dan Wallach, Princeton University _________________________________________________________ IBM Cryptolopes, SuperDistribution and Digital Rights Management Marc A. Kaplan, IBM _________________________________________________________ Requirements and Approaches for Electronic Licenses David Maher, AT&T Laboratories _________________________________________________________ PathServer Michael Reiter and Stuart Stubblebine, AT&T Laboratories _________________________________________________________ Inferno Security David Presotto, Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies _________________________________________________________ Transparent Internet E-mail Security Raph Levien, Lewis McCarthy, and Matt Blaze, AT&T Laboratories _________________________________________________________ Cryptographically Secure Digital Time-Stamping to Support Trust Management Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta, Bellcore and Surety Technologies (respectively) _________________________________________________________ Untrusted Third Parties: Key Management for the Prudent Mark Lomas and Bruno Crispo, Cambridge University _________________________________________________________ Distributed Commerce Transactions: Structuring Multi-Party Exchanges into Pair-wise Exchanges Steven Ketchpel and Hector Garcia-Molina, Stanford University _________________________________________________________ Policy-Controlled Cryptographic Key Release Dennis K. Branstad and David A. McGrew, Trusted Information Systems, Inc. _________________________________________________________ An X.509v3 Based Public-key Infrastructure for the Federal Government William Burr, National Institute of Standards and Technology _________________________________________________________ The ICE-TEL Public-Key Infrastructure and Trust Model David W. Chadwick [1], University of Salford _________________________________________________________ A Distributed Trust Model Alfarez Abdul-Rahman and Stephen Hailes, University College, London _________________________________________________________ On Multiple Statements from Trusted Sources Raphael Yahalom, Hebrew University and MIT _________________________________________________________ Off-line Delegation in a Distributed File Repository Arne Helme and Tage Stabell-Kulo, University of Twente and University of Troms _________________________________________________________ Operational Tradeoffs of Aggregating Attributes in Digital Certificates Ian Simpson, Carnegie Mellon University _________________________________________________________ Trust Management for Mobile Agents William M. Farmer, Joshua D. Guttman, and Vipin Swarup, MITRE _________________________________________________________ Trust Management in ERLink Samuel I. Schaen, Mitre _________________________________________________________ Linking trust with network reliability Yvo Desmedt and Mike Burmester, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and Royal Holloway College _________________________________________________________ Trust Management Under Law-Governed Interaction Naftaly H. Minsky and Victoria Ungureanu, Rutgers University _________________________________________________________ Tools for Security Policy Definition and Implementation P. Humenn, BlackWatch Technology, Inc. _________________________________________________________ http://jya.com/dimacs.txt (80 kb) ftp://jya.com/pub/incoming/dimacs.txt Sorry, no E-mail of this one.

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Re: Internet plug pulled on Colombia's guerrillas
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:04 AM 9/30/96, Chris Adams wrote: >On Fri, 27 Sep 1996 14:33:42 -0800, jim bell wrote: >>>The Communist insurgents, who rose up in arms in 1964, >>>embraced new technology last year in their fight to overthrow the >>>government by launching a home page on the Internet. >> >>I couldn't resist smiling when I read this. Not that I want their access >>cut; quite the opposite. But it is REALLY reassuring to see the authorities >>behave in exactly the fashion you expect them to! Attempting to cut off >>dissenting political voices IRL is de rigeur; now, this shows that they >>believe "threat" to the government posed by allowing others to voice >>contrary opinions on the 'net is real. > >It's particularly funny when you consider that the main justification for >suppression is that insurgents (or rebels or freedom fighters or ...) kill >people. Something along the lines of "We don't suppress unpopular views; >we're just protecting our citizens". Now, it seems to me that that having a >web page is a decidely non-lethal thing. <g> For now, it is! >OTOH, it's probably more >effective at getting the outside world to find out what's happening. Draw >your own conclusions. Yes, if anything we should want these people to be able to communicate whenever they want. It would probably deter inappropriate violence, and further it would put pressure on the government to fix whatever problems legitimately need fixing. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: active practice in America
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:45 AM 9/30/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >(Legal purists will point out that the second trial was for "Federal civil >rights violations." Harummphh. What would the Founders think of this logic: >"First we try them on ordinary criminal charges. If they are found Not >Guilty, we charge them in the next higher court with more abstract charges. >If they are still found found Not Guilty, we hit them with "civil rights" >and "being disrespectful to women" charges. And if that doesn't work, we >charge them in the World Court. We've only had one guilty party get past >them, and for that guy we appealed to the Pope and he put a Papal Hex on >the guy and ordered him burned in oil.") > >Double jeapardy means the system gets one shot at proving charges, not two >or three. > >(And, yes, even though I am sure O.J. Simpson killed those two people, I am >not happy with what appears to be a _second_ trial. For sure, it's a >_civil_ trial, for damages, but to this layman it looks like a second trial >on the main charges. I suppose I always thought that being found "Not >Guilty" on the act itself made it essentially impossible for a civil trial >to redecide the same issue. Boy, was I wrong.) As usual, I have a solution to this problem! (AP, for the relatively unitiated out there.) If people really believe OJ is guilty, just pool your shekels and see him dead. Or, if you believe the cops planted evidence, buy THEIR deaths via donation. (No cop would have dared risk AP to jump the wall...particularly if by doing so he risked having the evidence thrown out due to illegality. Nor would they have risked trying to frame an innocent person, or at least one believed innocent by a few million citizens.) Or do both. And so on... Notice, however, that if AP were operational, a lot might have turned out differently. First, if you assume that OJ is guilty, he would have KNOWN that he would be the first person suspected if Nicole were murdered. This would have been an enormous deterrent, because he would have known that he'd be a potential target even if he managed to commit the "perfect crime" and leave no evidence. However, it's even a bit more complicated that this. Anyone considering an AP donation against OJ would have to realize that he KNEW all this, and might have been appropriately deterred, and if Nicole was killed anyway it's quite possible it WASN'T OJ. Sure, thinking about this can give anyone a headache. That's because AP can't answer the question, "Is OJ guilty," but it could dramatically change the circumstances in which such questions are answered. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: [NEWS] More internet-tax proposals
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:08 PM 9/30/96 EDT, E. Allen Smith wrote: >> INTERNET BEWARE: GOVERNMENTS ARE SMELLING A RICH NEW SOURCE OF TAXES >> Copyright &copy 1996 Nando.net >> Copyright &copy 1996 The Boston Globe >> So Netcom contacted state tax officials for clarification. Netcom's >> 500,000 customers are scattered throughout the United States, but the >> company is focusing on tax laws in Massachusetts and 14 other states >> where most of its customers dwell. Weatherford said he still had >> received no official word from Massachusetts, but Netcom attorneys had >> concluded the company is subject to the state's telecommunication >> sales tax. To play it safe, it will begin collecting the tax this >> month. > > Remind me not to sign up with Netcom. > >> It's probably a smart move. At the Massachusetts Department of >> Revenue, acting general counsel William Hazel told the Globe that >> Netcom and every other on-line service provider should be paying the >> sales tax. > >> "To the extent that folks are being charged for the ability to >> telecommunicate through the Internet... that's taxable," he said. Obligatory AP solution: If Netcom and every other telecommunications company doing business in Massachusetts were to pool their money, say a half a year of their normal payments, they could (in effect) buy an "AP Insurance Policy" which would guarantee that they wouldn't have to pay the tax...forever. Since Netcom is a known entity, all they'd have to do is to announce publicly that they are not going to pay the tax because they don't believe they owe it, but that they are going to allocate a certain proportion of its gross receipts into a fund to disable the tax collection...by "other means"...if it was ever tried. This would have to be a rather powerful deterrent to any state attorney considering opening up this can of worms. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Anonymous: Re: Phoenix News
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anyone else get one of these things in their mailbox? ------- Forwarded Message Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 01:04:21 +0200 (MET DST) Message-Id: <199609292304.BAA11993(a)basement.replay.com> Subject: Re: Phoenix News Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII To: perry(a)piermont.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> Perry Metzger, You will find in your inbox, maybe you already have, a posting made by me. I am the President and CEO of IPG. Included therein is my resume and various other explanatory materials. We are now in the position of being able to prove what we have only been able to contend up to now, I realize that probably do not believe that, but it is true nonetheless. I have personally dealt with thousands of OTPs during the last 40 years, and our product produces a legitimate true OTP, pure and simple. In those materials, you will also find an attack made on you and Bill Stewart. That attack is in retaliation to the snide remarks, and your highly stilted subjective opinions, and attacks that you and Bill have made on me and IPG in the past. I do not object to criticism, when I am wrong, but I do object to using just highly subjective opinions to attack me, or anyone for that matter. I do not know about you, but I have more important things to do with my time than to engage in a ''war of words,'' with you and Bill. However, if you wound me, as you have repeatedly in the past, by such tactics, I will fight back furiously to the best of my abilities. I think it a terrible waste of your talents to engage in such conduct, and mine too of course. I do not expect either of you to agree with me unless you know me to be in the right. Either, or both of you, can criticize me all you want as long as such criticism is objective and based on facts. I seek a truce - and am willing to apologize publicly, if we can agree that we will not engage in personal subjective attacks on each other. The ball is in your court, I seek peace and a more productive usage of my time and will only respond in you lash out and try to wound me further. Appreciatively, Donald, ''Ralph'', Wood. "Civility in all human matters is the best indicator of intelligence!" - Aristotle ------- End of Forwarded Message

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Re: Mailmasher
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:29 AM 9/30/96 -0400, Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> wrote: > http://www.mailmasher.com/ Interesting (potentially; the Anonymizer isn't currently listening to me, and I'm not going to set up an account non-anonymized there. The operator nicely provides an Anonymized URL for getting there.) SSL is down, ostensibly for performance reasons. The mail system says it's basically pseudonymous - there's a privacy policy which says he doesn't log what accounts belong to whom. If the government wants to use subpoenas or warrants to seize his logs, the operator won't stop them, but the log files will be disappointing... The IP address is in space that appears to be hotwired.com Class C space. Poking around whois was interesting..... # 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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No Subject
by barina man 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

unsubcribe cypherpunks(a)toad.com

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