December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

index.html
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

CNN logo US navbar Infoseek/Big Yellow Pathfinder/Warner Bros Main banner Samsung. Meeting the challenge. rule WOMAN TRIES TO SELL KIDNEY TO PAY BILL sparrow May 22, 1997 Web posted at: 10:59 a.m. EDT (1459 GMT) ST. PETERSBURG, Florida (CNN) -- Faced with a $25,000 bill for gall bladder surgery, a Florida woman placed an ad in a local newspaper to sell her kidney to cover the surgery. But there's a big problem with her plan: It's illegal. "KIDNEY Runs good, Taking offers. $30,000/obo," read the advertisement in this week's St. Petersburg Times. Ruth Sparrow isn't joking either. She has been drinking buckets of water for more than two months to clean out the organ, prepping it for donation. "I'm not doing it for a profit," she told CNN-affiliate WTVT in Tampa. "You're trading a damn kidney for a gall bladder." icon (85K/6 sec. AIFF or WAV sound) Sparrow, a 55-year-old nurse, said she told doctors before the surgery that she would be unable to pay the bill and offered to pay the bill by donating her kidney. The offer was refused, she said. movie icon (331K/28 sec. QuickTime movie) Federal and state laws prohibit anyone from offering buy or sell a human organ or tissue. In Florida, the offense is a second-degree felony. medical.center Jean Layne of Lifelink of Florida, a tissue recovery organization, explained that the reason for the law is "not to disadvantage families who do not have a lot of money, allowing everyone equal access to transplantation." Bayfront Medical Center, where the gall bladder surgery was performed, was stunned when notified of the ad. It said Sparrow owes about $17,000 on the bill and that the medical center is "trying to get her qualified for some type of assistance." Sparrow dropped her medical insurance four years ago because she could not afford the $4,000-a-year premium. She said it's unfair that taxpayers pick up the tab for criminals' medical expenses, while she could get punished for her tactic. icon (145K/12 sec. AIFF or WAV sound) She also emphasized that she did not know it was illegal to run the ad. "I just want to live in my own little hovel and pay my bills like everybody else," she said. "I don't want to owe anybody." From CNN-affiliate WTVT Reporter Stan Jayson rule CNN Plus * Consumer News - Fitness and Health Related story: * Florida man offers to 'lease' a kidney - April 2, 1997 Related sites: Note: Pages will open in a new browser window * The St. Petersburg Times * Bayfront Medical Center * United Network for Organ Sharing Transplantation Information Site * American Share Foundation - organ donation and transplantation information External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive. rule Message Boards Sound off on our message boards Tell us what you think! You said it... [INLINE] Samsung. Meeting the challenge. rule To the top © 1997 Cable News Network, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms under which this service is provided to you.

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More stories from the Bell jar...
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- This story is from the Oregonian May 22, 1997 Page D3: Arrest solves mystery of law office stink bomb A federal investigation that led to the arrest of James Dalton Bell of Vancouver appears to have solved a longtime mystery regarding a stink bomb attack in a downtown Portland law office. In late April 1984, someone broke into law offices at 1123 S. W. Yamhill St. and poured a liquid on a hallway run that was so odorous it made at least one of the lawyers who smelled it vomit twice. At the time, Nick Albrecht, who still practices law there, said the skunklike scent, called mercaptan, was so overpowering that he had to go home because he could not stop gagging. The target of the stink bomb attack was lawyer C. Douglas Oliver, who now lives in Southern California and won't discuss the incident. Bell was arrested Friday on a federal complaint charging him with obstructing and impeding the Internal Revenue Service and the use of false Social Security numbers. The complaint said that documents found on Bell's computer boasted of the mercaptan attack on the office of a Portland lawyer who had sued him. The lawyer was Oliver. Albrecht said Oliver had suspected that Bell might have been behind the mercaptan attack, but could never prove it. The federal complaint also charged Bell with the March 16 mercaptan attack on the IRS offices in the federal office building in Vancouver. On the following day, when employees returned to work after the weekend, several of them had to be placed on leave because the smell was so powerful, the complaint said. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 5.0 beta Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBM4USfeQCP3v30CeZAQGNJgf+O8L65Bc6ce1jhUtUpjQS1kas2WU3TlNm l/wxZt+kNhRV58VnCLYg1JWsUhoifM6JK+v2QU727SVHmAy+ktlovL43oKsgK7EE Vg4WAj9A0rMqKIzNU/0PjNyjPtdsUEbxaZisIbWPONdm/sx1x9hhbDbA5T7sayyW 6HLms5v8n4OQ9URQsnNNpPme6cKTiMFnOk0qw2+0mQUska4q6fLgoEn+vxOYsDAP WPQHaF7EEWHr/8eDRYZP+GgaOtI2pLJvuLGXeebf/0+BEAmTNS6AUuAwt2ogmxCx TPGni0IRhODol5swhZlKAklK7si548Unm90o2o+Lg3JvFqg0SQs/Vg== =7KT2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --- | "Bill Clinton - Bringing back the sixties one Nixon at a time." | |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.ctrl-alt-del.com/~alan/ |alan(a)ctrl-alt-del.com|

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Re: Spam Prevention System?
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I was wondering if perhaps a way to minimize the hassle with sitting on one's thumb while waiting for unwanted email to download could be eased by an email program which retreived only headers, allowed you to delete the unwanted ones, and then retrieve the wanted ones, deleting the rest. Is this feasible?

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Re: The Natives Are Getting Restless (was Wine Politics Again!)
by Blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Paul Bradley wrote: >I can see why you might say this, but I must ask why we need imaginative >ideas? - The old ones, involving guns and other weapons sound OK to me. >If you really want imaginative ideas go ask Jim Bell, his carbon fibres >idea was sure one I`d never heard of before. [and] >Your style of discourse in your post suggests you believe that the most >effective way to go about achieving a better society and a better form of >government is the reform the present system. ................................................................ We need imaginative ideas because of being the New, Improved, Techno-Elite. Why use crude, primitive, outdated methods, when you can use new, educated, modern ones. heh. Perhaps because of all the history I've read, coupled with (admittedly limited) economic studies, I'm not inclined towards simple violence as the best solution. But this is only because it is, indeed, quite difficult to deliver justice precisely; it is easy to make mistakes about who is the real enemy and instead extinguish the wrong target, thus complicating further the attempts at reestablishing normality (I have read of instances like this, where the wrong person or group was destroyed by mistake, creating havoc without solving the real problem). What I think would be an effective way to achieve a better society & government is to abandon both of them. As in the financial markets, one's attention should be removed from failing, troublesome political elements and placed instead on things/systems which *are* rewarding. The available energies and resources which are being wasted would provide better returns if applied/invested in real "growth" enterprises. Of course, most people aren't ready to do this just immediately, and do wish to promote the existence of both, as they fear the consequences of living without these comforting concepts. There are presently many cities in the U.S. and even, surprisingly, sectors of foreign governments which are privatizing many of their services. This is a teeny step for mankind, yet the end result is that it takes away the excuse of the main governing agencies for the "need" to extract more & more tax moneys for services which aren't working anyway. As soon as everyone has "seen" what has been accomplished by contracting services out & disbanding the entrenched government departments, everyone realizes that yes, there are alternatives to government-run services, and no, society won't die tomorrow from the distance created between the new arrangements and the central command structure. You couldn't have argued most people into this perception, however; they could not have imagined it. It is also a fact that many corporations are providing more and more "benefits" to their employees (some as 'required by law' of course), taking on such responsibilities in regard of the welfare of their employees as resembles a small government. This has the effect of shifting the attention of many people away from what governments can do for them, to what employment in certain companies can deliver. As more individuals begin to look to their employment/employers for these additional benefits, their expectations are shifted accordingly away from a large central body administering to their welfare. This is not a clean weaning away, and it is not without its own inherent errors in the reasons for its existence or in the ways in which these services are conducted/administered (at least,not by libertarian/anarchic standards). But the result is that it takes away from governments another area of responsibility, even while the government positions itself as the commander of what companies will be forced to do for their employees. As a matter of fact, what has been happening is that large companies are coming into competition with governments as "providers". Many people in general, as well as on this list, sometimes wonder who is the more powerful or evil: governments or corporations. Regardless, as corporations take responsibilities away from central bodies, these powers are distributed out to the smaller financial organizations. These little clones then begin to take on a life of their own and begin to challenge the large parent (this makes me think of Sun, which is now in effect challenging the export laws without asking for permission and the U.S.gov has to determine what the right thing is to do about it). These are tug&pull operations; there are many large barks and much gnashing of teeth. But the ones with the money have clout and bargaining power, as without them the U.S. cannot be a "world leader" (a term the meaning of which is slowly dissolving away as well). One day it will transpire that employees will look to their employers for benefits, rather than to a large central Bureau of Disorganization. Business organizations will be the means by which individuals arrange to get their life's provisions (strange that this should presently be the exception, rather than the norm). Individual contractors will continue to make their own short-term arrangements, negotiating for the kind of remuneration which they will accept in exchange for their work. One can extrapolate from that any further developments towards individual leverage in such arrangements. Some people fear that this will only change the face of the Master and not improve the situation at all. But they forget that as long as they can change employers, as long as they are not coerced into working for any particular company, they can not only go where they find it best for themselves, but they can of course create their own business organzation. (duh) This isn't really an idea for an alternative to violence; more of a presentation of an existing trend which could obviate the need for armed confrontation and explosive plans of action. It does not take away the need to always be prepared for self-defense (but there are many ways to defend oneself); it does not take away from the need to let PowerMongers know that individuals are willing & able to use destructive means to prevent totalitarians from assimilating everyone into an amorphous mass of subservient bodies. But it does require perspective into the future, of imagining practical developments from current trends, of researching the possibilities for positive outcomes. It requires that one think in terms of practicality more than in terms of "sticking it to them". But then some people are looking for a good fight, too (on both sides). I just personally wouldn't want to be there when they clash. .. Blanc

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Re: The Natives Are Getting Restless (was Wine Politics Again!)
by Blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Paul Bradley wrote: >I can see why you might say this, but I must ask why we need imaginative >ideas? - The old ones, involving guns and other weapons sound OK to me. >If you really want imaginative ideas go ask Jim Bell, his carbon fibres >idea was sure one I`d never heard of before. [and] >Your style of discourse in your post suggests you believe that the most >effective way to go about achieving a better society and a better form of >government is the reform the present system. ................................................................ We need imaginative ideas because of being the New, Improved, Techno-Elite. Why use crude, primitive, outdated methods, when you can use new, educated, modern ones. heh. Perhaps because of all the history I've read, coupled with (admittedly limited) economic studies, I'm not inclined towards simple violence as the best solution. But this is only because it is, indeed, quite difficult to deliver justice precisely; it is easy to make mistakes about who is the real enemy and instead extinguish the wrong target, thus complicating further the attempts at reestablishing normality (I have read of instances like this, where the wrong person or group was destroyed by mistake, creating havoc without solving the real problem). What I think would be an effective way to achieve a better society & government is to abandon both of them. As in the financial markets, one's attention should be removed from failing, troublesome political elements and placed instead on things/systems which *are* rewarding. The available energies and resources which are being wasted would provide better returns if applied/invested in real "growth" enterprises. Of course, most people aren't ready to do this just immediately, and do wish to promote the existence of both, as they fear the consequences of living without these comforting concepts. There are presently many cities in the U.S. and even, surprisingly, sectors of foreign governments which are privatizing many of their services. This is a teeny step for mankind, yet the end result is that it takes away the excuse of the main governing agencies for the "need" to extract more & more tax moneys for services which aren't working anyway. As soon as everyone has "seen" what has been accomplished by contracting services out & disbanding the entrenched government departments, everyone realizes that yes, there are alternatives to government-run services, and no, society won't die tomorrow from the distance created between the new arrangements and the central command structure. You couldn't have argued most people into this perception, however; they could not have imagined it. It is also a fact that many corporations are providing more and more "benefits" to their employees (some as 'required by law' of course), taking on such responsibilities in regard of the welfare of their employees as resembles a small government. This has the effect of shifting the attention of many people away from what governments can do for them, to what employment in certain companies can deliver. As more individuals begin to look to their employment/employers for these additional benefits, their expectations are shifted accordingly away from a large central body administering to their welfare. This is not a clean weaning away, and it is not without its own inherent errors in the reasons for its existence or in the ways in which these services are conducted/administered (at least,not by libertarian/anarchic standards). But the result is that it takes away from governments another area of responsibility, even while the government positions itself as the commander of what companies will be forced to do for their employees. As a matter of fact, what has been happening is that large companies are coming into competition with governments as "providers". Many people in general, as well as on this list, sometimes wonder who is the more powerful or evil: governments or corporations. Regardless, as corporations take responsibilities away from central bodies, these powers are distributed out to the smaller financial organizations. These little clones then begin to take on a life of their own and begin to challenge the large parent (this makes me think of Sun, which is now in effect challenging the export laws without asking for permission and the U.S.gov has to determine what the right thing is to do about it). These are tug&pull operations; there are many large barks and much gnashing of teeth. But the ones with the money have clout and bargaining power, as without them the U.S. cannot be a "world leader" (a term the meaning of which is slowly dissolving away as well). One day it will transpire that employees will look to their employers for benefits, rather than to a large central Bureau of Disorganization. Business organizations will be the means by which individuals arrange to get their life's provisions (strange that this should presently be the exception, rather than the norm). Individual contractors will continue to make their own short-term arrangements, negotiating for the kind of remuneration which they will accept in exchange for their work. One can extrapolate from that any further developments towards individual leverage in such arrangements. Some people fear that this will only change the face of the Master and not improve the situation at all. But they forget that as long as they can change employers, as long as they are not coerced into working for any particular company, they can not only go where they find it best for themselves, but they can of course create their own business organzation. (duh) This isn't really an idea for an alternative to violence; more of a presentation of an existing trend which could obviate the need for armed confrontation and explosive plans of action. It does not take away the need to always be prepared for self-defense (but there are many ways to defend oneself); it does not take away from the need to let PowerMongers know that individuals are willing & able to use destructive means to prevent totalitarians from assimilating everyone into an amorphous mass of subservient bodies. But it does require perspective into the future, of imagining practical developments from current trends, of researching the possibilities for positive outcomes. It requires that one think in terms of practicality more than in terms of "sticking it to them". But then some people are looking for a good fight, too (on both sides). I just personally wouldn't want to be there when they clash. .. Blanc

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Re: FCPUNX:The USA is the world's biggest terrorist state
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:56 PM 5/21/97 -0700, Steve Schear wrote: > The US is in very real danger of reaping the same sort of maelstrom that > vanquished the Romans. They were also very powerful, with tentacles > reaching almost to the limits of their known world, before a combination of > internal decay and dissention and reprisal from those vanquished put them > asunder. Regrettably, this depiction of the fall of the Roman Empire is incorrect. During the last period of the Roman empire in the west, the empire was both very weak, and extraordinarily brutal to its subjects, torturing to death huge numbers of people on a scale no seen again until the twentieth century. Despite this they never encountered any resistance from their terrorized subjects. Only free people , and people who recently were comparatively free, rebel. A world government would not fall until it had tortured to death such a large proportion of the population that there was enough wilderness to protect runaways, or until its technological level fell so low that its communications stopped working. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: Crypto use to foil law enforcement?
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:36 AM 5/19/97 -0700, Greg Broiles wrote: >I ran across this entry in the Congressional Record which discusses several >examples where encryption was discovered in the course of a law enforcement >investigation. > >[Congressional Record: September 18, 1996 (Senate)][Page S10882-S10886] > >[...] > >Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I'm pleased that the Senate has passed >the eonomic espionage bill. This is an important measure that I believe [...] > The third case, however, especially illustrates the seriousness of >decryption problems--determining the unique key or in this case, >password from a large number of possibilities. According to Agent >Davis, a mere 4 character password has 1.9 million possibilities due to >the number of keyboard characters. Can you imagine how difficult it >must be to figure a short, 4 character password. What if the password >were 10 characters or 20 or more? It's easy to see why criminals are >moving toward password protection for their records. With the congress so woefully uninformed that they confuse password protection with cryptography and naive enough to believe that 1.9E6 possibilities represents a serious roadblock to entry, it looks like we have a major education effort to perform. It is interesting that there were no examples in this summary of crypto used for communications -- but that's completely consistent with what we've been hearing all along. - Carl +------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Carl M. Ellison cme(a)cybercash.com http://www.clark.net/pub/cme | |CyberCash, Inc. http://www.cybercash.com/ | |207 Grindall Street PGP 2.6.2: 61E2DE7FCB9D7984E9C8048BA63221A2 | |Baltimore MD 21230-4103 T:(410) 727-4288 F:(410)727-4293 | +------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Re: LSE UK crypto politics conference
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:03 PM 5/20/97 +0100, Adam Back wrote: >Panel: Carl Ellison, legal advisor to GLIC (forget name), Nigel >Hickson DTI, someone from TIS (?) who spoke too quitely. Chair was >Caspar Bowden, Scientists for Labour. The person from TIS was Brian Gladman. BTW, he wrote an open letter response to the DTI proposal which is on the web from one of the standard Privacy sites. - Carl +------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Carl M. Ellison cme(a)cybercash.com http://www.clark.net/pub/cme | |CyberCash, Inc. http://www.cybercash.com/ | |207 Grindall Street PGP 2.6.2: 61E2DE7FCB9D7984E9C8048BA63221A2 | |Baltimore MD 21230-4103 T:(410) 727-4288 F:(410)727-4293 | +------------------------------------------------------------------+

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reporting standards and Jim Bell
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I noticed an example of the sort of reporting standards which the news media is sinking to in reporting on Jim Bell's case... observe these two quotes: The Oregonian, May 20, 1997, Metro Section P-1: : Daly described his friend of 15 years as a "bit of an odd unit" but never : dangerous and never serious about attacking the 9-1-1 systems or the : Bull Run watershed. : : "I'd rat him out in a heartbeat for that," Daly said. So... Daly considered Jim to be merely discussing technical feasibility of attacks, something we do every day on cpunks. Daly says if he had ever considered Jim was thinking of carrying out any of the hypothetical attacks, that he would have reported him instantly. OK... now this other quote from another news story (forwarded by Dimitri to the list from a post in or.politics quoting some newspaper). : And during the interview Daly appeared to crack and turn state's : evidence when Daly offered to "rat (Bell) out in a heartbeat." Sounds like a quote of the same comment by Daly. Sounds like the newspaper(s) in question are having fun, creatively misquoting, and fabricating to work up a story. Not knowing the truth behind any of this stuff, it makes one wonder how much truth there is in the other details of the story as reported by the gutter press. I noticed someone called "the Oregonian" the local fishwrap... presumably implying it is one of those sensationalist news-fiction newspapers, which are continually being sued for liable for printing fictitious garbage about media personalities. Perhaps similar to the UK "the Sun", etc. (a combination of titilating fictional "gossip" and nude pin ups, populist news for the masses). Adam -- Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

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Re: Not that I'm a troublemaker, but...
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I was watching the national news broadcast a picture of the key to the Ryder truck that was purportedly found near where McVeigh's car was allegedly parked. I thought it would be an interesting project for someone with the proper technological tools to take the picture and add a graphic of the "bloody glove" beside it. Key Asscrole

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