December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Dave Hayes takes over Cypherpunks
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Toto <toto(a)sk.sympatico.ca> writes: > aga wrote: > > How about that we require everybody to state their sex and sexual > > orientation in the future, so we have no future problems. > > I am a "Male Heterosexual" -- what about the rest of you? > > If you refuse to answer, you are presumed to be a gay boy who > > is hiding it. > > I am a "Male, Cross-Dressing Heterosexual." I'm a male heterosexual. Cocksucker John Gilmore is a faggot. So is his boss Bobby Inman from NSA. John Gilmore is a U.S.Government shill out to suck resources into fruitless flame war and to sabotage our efforts to deploy crypto. What about Timmy May and Eric Hughes? Are they faggots in U.S.G. employ or mere mindless dupes? --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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Re: Good Bye Cypherpunks!
by Vin McLellan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It's always interesting to see how another person, particularly a writer, filters and reshapes an experience you shared with them . Differences in the telling are inevitable -- but I perceived the recent experience of the C'punks List quite differently than what Declan described and implied in his column. My understanding of Sandy's effort, for instance, was that he was to filter out the sludge of spam and contentless name-calling with which some idiots were flooding the list. My impression was that he was passing along any posts with content (ideas, pro or con, on almost anything) but filtering out the empty obscene name-calling and slurs (many of which seemed anon or forged, with varied and misleading titles, to duck my kill-file filters.) I, for one, was appreciative. I don't mind flames (and I expected to still be able to recieve them, from whatever POV -- and it seemed that I did!) but I also want a little meat somewhere amid the smoke. Who did the filtering (at the minimal level I expected) was almost irrelevant. If the filtering was on content, I'd be unhappy -- but I was eager to see some effort to cut out the empty hate messages. I even suggested to Dale, off-list, that he take it on for awhile. To me, the issue was whether this community could develop some mechanism to defend itself against a willful and intentional effort to destroy it. I think we failed to do so, despite the creative search for alternative venues -- and I think the triumphant cackling I read on what's left of the List is quite out of place. It may be that ideological purists were able to develop dynamic local filters on their PCs which satisfied them, but my filters just could't do enough. It was clear that the fecal-buckshot attacks on the List were designed to evade them. I'm still here, but it was more than a minor annoyance. (A year ago, I knew maybe five friends and acquaintances who subscribed to C'punks, but they all ran out of patience with the unchecked flow of sludge and unsubscribed... months before John tried to introduce his moderation experiment.) If 700 dropped off right after the moderation experiment was announced -- which I somehow doubt -- I wonder how many were battered into unsubscribing in the six or eight months prior? And, of the fleeing 700, how many became bored with the obsession of some (exhaustively prolific) writers with the "Moderation & Me" -- and went off to find some discussion of cryptography, politics, and ideas elsewhere? (Gawd knows, on the then-Moderated List I never found any lack of overwrought attacks on Sandy or John. I even read them for a week or two;-) From this whole experience, I carry away something different than those who gleefully celebrate Gilmore's surrender. I think something unusual and valuable is being killed. I'm now convinced that virtually all mailing lists will soon be forced to either limit posts to authenticated subscribers or introduce some sort of moderation -- just to deal with the spam threat and the problem of concerned attacks by those who decide they hate or dislike or simply want to destroy that particular List community . By the logic of Tim and others, a clever and dedicated crusade against Cypherpunks by any minimally-organized group, bir or small -- your local coven, CoS, RC bishops, FBI, Romanian Govt, , whomever! -- could have destroyed the List at any time in the past. I'm glad they never realized how vulnerable we were; I've enjoyed this Community greatly in its current manifestation. I also hate to think of how gleeful the sociopaths who mail-bombed us into the choice of submission or suicide must be today. I think it is a particularly henious crime to destroy a virtual community; something akin to book-burning, but maybe more like arson -- like burning village schools. There was a willful attempt to destroy C'punks, an attack of depth and volume which led many of us (even those who had ignored at least three earlier efforts to offer filtered subsets to the List) to welcome the Moderation Experiment. Unfortunately, the attempt at moderation just twisted our own energies against ourselves. We were, perhaps predictably, quite easy to manipulate. If I have any criticism of John et al, it is that our List-Owner (a statement of function, rather than property) never gave the List Community an overt option to vote for minimal moderation. A tactical error. That that allowed the anarchists, nihlists, and others pure of heart to focus their ire on toad.com and Sandy -- rather than on those of us who (when John finally acted) might have gladly re-subscribed to another version of the List in order to obtain minimal spam and slur filtration. So now we ourselves burn the village in order to save it. <nostalgic sigh> How American! Suerte, _Vin At 11:23 PM 2/13/97 -0800, you wrote: >Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 21:24:37 -0800 (PST) >From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> >To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu > >The Netly News Network >http://netlynews.com/ > >A List Goes Down In Flames >by Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com) >February 12, 1997 >

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Re: crypto restrictions
by Vin McLellan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anand Abhyankar <anand(a)querisoft.com> asked: >1) is it illegal to develop an encryption tool (s/w) outside the US >which uses > 40 bit size session keys and then import that s/w inside of >the US. > >anand.... Hi Anand, Nope! Unless there are export controls in India, your wizards in Bombay or Dehli (pardon, I forget) can offer their US customers the full and unrestricted product of their creativity and genius in algorithms, crypto implementations, and/or crypto protocols. There are no restrictions on encryption software being _imported_ into the US, nor are there (at the moment <sigh>) any legal (as opposed to patent or copyright) restrictions on any encryption software of any strength being _used_ in the US. For that matter, there are no restrictions on encrypted data being transmitted across the US border. And (while it may require a license, apparently an exemption for the product, as opposed to a sales-by-sale license) there are seemingly no -- or at least less -- restrictions on the use of specialized encryption products (within the US) which can generate a "self-decrypting" secure packet which can be transmitted (cross-border, outside the US) and opened, anywhere, by a recipient who has been provided with a password/key out of band. That is how RSA's SecurPC has been able to offer full 128-bit RC4 encryption to secure US-to-Anywhere international file transfers. (As with DES, the US Govt is apparently trying to control the export of a full implementation package -- not the international distribution of a widely-known algorithm, per se. As I understand it, the self-decrypting PCSecure packet does not contain the user interface which allows automatic encryption, the interface can only decrypt. The RC4 algorithm, of course, has to be included in the transmission, and it is inherently reversible -- only the user interface is "crippled" to restrict its use to encrypt. Corrections welcome, if I don't have this exactly right.) The international traffic in self-decrypting "128-bit" products is separate and distinct from the issues involved in the recent modifications of the US export regs, which allow vendors to get approval to export a 56-bit secret-key encryption product (eg. RC4, RC5, or DES) only if the vendor submits a concrete plan, and schedule of implementation, to redesign their (export) product to require key-escrow or trusted-party key-recovery/storage. (In addition whatever recovery key is required by corporate backup policies, this is also, obviously, a mechanism for GAK, "government access to keys" --under US law, hopefully with a court warrant -- and/or whatever backup/key-recovery/GAK-access mechanism might be required various other nations in which those products will be imported, used, or transhipped from.) And with those GAK-adapted implementations, the US govt. will then approve, for the first time, general export of robust 128-bit secret-key products... as they reportedly have for Open Market's SSL, and TIS and Digital crypto products. I hope this is helpful, Suerte, _Vin

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Re: Good Bye Cypherpunks!
by Vin McLellan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May asked: >And was my article the kind of "sludge of spam" and "contentless >name-calling" you thought the Moderation experiment was all about? No. It definitely was not. >And what of the four or five of my posts a week ago which never made it to >either the Main list or the Flames list? The contained no "sludge of spam" >nor "contentless name-calling." What they dealt with was a claim (like this >one) that some posts were not being passed on to either of the two lists, >and that perhaps a conflict of interest was developing. > >Does this still match your "understanding of Sandy's effort"? Sadly, no. _Vin

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Re: USACM analysis of Commerce Dept crypto export proposals
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thanks for forwarding the USACM analysis. We've put it at: http://jya.com/usacm.htm We'd welcome those submitted by cypherpunks or others, for putting on jya.com. It will be some time before BXA publishes them along with the Final Rule, and, there's worldwide interest in the US's foot-shooting.

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Re: Dale disses gays.
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

aga <aga(a)dhp.com> writes: > Now just who is thisa guy? -- who keeps posting under > "nobody" at the cajones remailer? Anybody have him/her > tagged yet for the real person? Probably multiple people. It's just an anonymous remailer. > ... > I don't know. It has always been easy for me to spot a faggot. I > mean, I can even tell by their voice if they are queer. Well, those of us who happen to know Gilmore is straight are not very impressed with your accuracy.

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Re: Good Bye Cypherpunks!
by Mike Duvos 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Michael Froomkin writes: > Just for the record. I will not post to USENET given the spamming that > seems to go to IDs that appear there. Helpful hint: Mung your email address in a way which will confuse bots, but not humans. "From: froomkin(a)[NO-SPAM]law.miami.edu" should work nicely. This will also eliminate mail from very clueless people. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

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Re: Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer (fwd)
by Jonathan M. Bresler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Well, if you can't deliver mail because their mailbox is full, then >you should simply wait a few days before trying to deliver mail to that >address. If it's because the address isn't there any more, you should delete >it from the subscription lists. Otherwise, the instant people's mail quotas >overflow (e.g., they're on AOL and they haven't been able to get through the >clogged lines), they get bounced... or you're left with a lot of invalid >addresses. The address causing the bounce is not necessarily determinable >automatically from the bounce message; if it isn't, then you need to keep a >copy around for a human to look at. who should bear the burden of dealing with bounces? the list admin or the owner of the bouncing address? if you have the time and desire, you can accomodate people that bounce mail due to a temporarily full mailbox. if not, unsubscribe them after N bounces in a 24 hour period. it becomes their responsibility not to bounce more than N emails. when a list has 1000's of subscribers, i have not have been able to provide the type of personal service that the first option entails. i do make a digest version of every list available. if the digest bounces, the bouncer??? bouncee?? stays below the N bounces threshhold (for many values of N :). jmb

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Re: [Declan McCullagh: "A List Goes Down In Flames," from Netly]
by Martin Minow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My first reaction to the "Death of Cypherpunks" (Declan McCullagh's article in http://netlynews.com Feb 12, 1997) is that it is another example of "The Tragedy of the Commons." -- the (unsolvable) problem of unlimited access to a limited resource. Cypherpunks was also susceptable to the strange Internet phenomenon where people could be proud of their anti-social, bad behavior (flame wars, "grafitti" in the form of spam). For this reason, I suspect that the future of the Internet in general, and Cyphperpunks in particular, will require serious editorial control (as is done by the Risks and Privacy digests). The only other alternative I can see would be to limit membership -- but not limit what members might write. In the long term, I suppose we'll have sufficiently intelligent software agents that can recognize spam and flaming and invisibly delete them from our e-mail in-boxes. What bothers me more than anything else about the "solutions" I've seen proposed to the death of Cypherpunks is that they rely on technology -- and reject human judgement -- to solve what is, in reality, a social problem. (One can certainly make the same argument about the V-chip, browser porn filters, and similar hacks.) Having been "on" the net for over 15 years -- and with experience in both ends of the censorship/moderation problem (I'm probably the only Cypherpunks member to have had a book "banned in Boston"), I'm sorry that a handful of sociopaths managed to destroy this experiment in anarchy, but I suspect that this was inevitable. Martin Minow minow(a)apple.com ps: (From McCullagh): > But for the true believers in crypto-anarchy, only one solution is > adequate: Usenet. "There is no 'nexus' of control, no chokepoint, no > precedent... for halting distribution of Usenet newsgroups," Tim May > wrote. That, in the end, is what defines a cypherpunk. > Nope: alt.cypherpunks will not be distributed to many sites that would accept an e-mail list. Also, it's too easy for the disgruntled to forge cancel group messages. I'm afraid that human judgement is still required.

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Re: More on digital postage
by Timothy C. May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:31 AM -0800 2/14/97, John C. Randolph wrote: >Tim may says: > >>By the way, I think the "junk fax" and "junk phone call" laws are clearcut >>violations of the First Amendment. I understand why the herd _wants_ these >>laws, as it reduces the costs involved in replacing fax paper, running to >>the telephone only to find someone trying to sell something, etc., but it >>is quite clearly a prior restraint on speech, however well-intentioned. > >I have to disagree here. The junk fax law is a restraint on unauthorised >use of property, i.e. *my* fax machine, *my* phone, etc. > >That tort of unauthorised use of property applies, whether someone's sending >me a fax to sell me spamming software, or whether it's some kid ringing >my doorbell and running away. It's not the speech that I'm fighting, it's >the misuse of my property. > >Freedom of speech does not confer a right to use other people's property. Fair enough, John. I can agree that _tort law_ (civil) might be used. If Party A can convince a jury that Party B did it real damage and can quantify that damage, maybe Party A can collect. My main objection is to to blanket laws, known as "junk mail" laws. The rules for what constitutes "junk" are unclear and give the government regulatory power which I think it should not have. Imagine a bureaucrat deciding that solicitations to join the National Rifle Association are "junk" and ordering the U.S. Postal Service to scrap all such solicitations. Imagine further that alternate delivery systems, such as UPS and FedEx are also notified that delivery of NRA material constitute a crime. (This is not so far-fetched, especially the "alternate delivery" point. If the regulators declare a communication to be junk, it remains junk even if delivered via a different route. If CyberPromotions tries fiddling with the domain names, as they have, it remains junk to CompuServe and to the District Court which upholds their decision to censor mail to customers.) To paraphrase what the CompuServe customer said: "I'll decide what's junk and what's not." --Tim May Just say "No" to "Big Brother Inside" We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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