December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: All of my fucking material is suitable for children of all ages
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May wrote: > my posts should be read by children of all ages, no matter what > fucking language I use. Children should be exposed to language and images > of all types, so all of my material would of course be "suitable for > children." I have to agree with the rat-bastard, cocksucking, motherfucking sack of shit, Tim May, on this one. Having Tourette Syndrome, I object to anal retentives who would criminalize my God-given verbal predelictions. Neither would my receiving an exception on the grounds of being disabled be remotely acceptable to me, since I sincerely believe that my TS is a "gift" that allows me to say anything that others say to a judge, *plus* being able to call him or her a Nazi ratfucker. (Anyone who thinks this is a "disability" is fucking crazy.) On the other hand, it would be kind of neat to launch a class action lawsuit demanding that ratings systems incorporate a label such as: "Suitable (FUCK!) for children (COCKSUCKER!) with Tourette Syndrome" FUCKMonger > -- > [This Bible excerpt awaiting review under the U.S. Communications Decency > Act of 1996] > And then Lot said, "I have some mighty fine young virgin daughters. Why > don't you boys just come on in and fuck them right here in my house - I'll > just watch!"....Later, up in the mountains, the younger daughter said: > "Dad's getting old. I say we should fuck him before he's too old to fuck." > So the two daughters got him drunk and screwed him all that night. Sure > enough, Dad got them pregnant, and had an incestuous bastard son....Onan > really hated the idea of doing his brother's wife and getting her pregnant > while his brother got all the credit, so he pulled out before he > came....Remember, it's not a good idea to have sex with your sister, your > brother, your parents, your pet dog, or the farm animals, unless of course > God tells you to. [excerpts from the Old Testament, Modern Vernacular > Translation, TCM, 1996]

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Re: The Real Plan: Making the Net Safe for Censorship
by Ross Wright 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Marc: What a bunch of crap! Keep out of the internet, you government flunky. Let business, commerce and freedom of speech remain in it's new home, Cyberspace. And save your regulations for someone who needs them. On or About 16 Jul 97 at 14:42, Marc Rotenberg <rotenberg(a)epic.org> wrote: > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 14:16:47 -0500 > From: Marc Rotenberg <rotenberg(a)epic.org> > To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu > Subject: The Real Plan: Making the Net Safe for Censorship > > > Here is an example of a proposal being presented > at the White House today. =-=-=-=-=-=- Ross Wright King Media: Bulk Sales of Software Media and Duplication Services http://www.slip.net/~cdr/kingmedia Voice: (408) 259-2795

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law as enemy: was Re: Jim Bell reference
by Antonomasia 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Paul, Ant> Makes me think the issue is the preservation of many Ant> thousands of _unathorised_ taps. What else could explain that viewpoint? PB> Don`t cloud the issue: The simple fact is strong encryption can and will PB> obstruct law enforcement agencies in their "fight" against terrorism, PB> child pornography, drugs etc... good. Strong widespread crypto will cut down on much crime in the form of electronic theft, blackmail etc. I expect some obstruction of law enforcement, but not enough to outweigh the benefits. Despite the occasionally glaring failures of a legal system it is still overall of use to the public. Ant> Incidentally, I'm against terrorism, child molestation etc etc. Ant> I'm confident most other cypherpunks are too, so no nonsense please Ant> about free crypto supporters being backers of [crime of the month]. PB> Once again, you fail to give adequate qualification to this statement, PB> what forms of terrorism are you against: one mans terrorist is another PB> mans freedom fighter. Were the French resistance during WWII terrorists? Not everything is relative. WW2 was a clearly recognised war, in which France had been invaded. PB> Would you then say their actions were wrong? As for child molestation, PB> this is a clear cut case, most libertarians follow the basic rule that a PB> crime has to be a direct act of agression, and infringe the rights of PB> another person, therefore child molestation clearly comes into this PB> category, distributing pictures of children being molested, raped, PB> buggered, tortured and killed is clearly not a crime. Please clarify your PB> position on this. Such photography would suggest at least cooperation with those you'd regard as criminals. My position is toward the Trei/Sameer end of the scale and away from the extreme anarchist views of you, TCM and Jim Bell. Not that you 3 are always wrong, but in the issue of 'law always enemy' I completely fail to see where you get your ideas. Sufficiently clarified ? PB> Above are two examples of why strong cryptography is a good thing, law PB> enforcement should be routinely obstructed as often as possible. Are you going to post your home address and holiday plans on the list so we give you the chance to gloat over failing law enforcement ? There's probably not much point in pursuing this discussion. -- ############################################################### # Antonomasia ant(a)notatla.demon.co.uk # # See http://www.notatla.demon.co.uk/ # ###############################################################

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The Censorware Summit: A Preview, from The Netly News
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

****************** http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1173,00.html The Netly News Network (http://netlynews.com) July 16, 1997 The Censorware Summit by Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com) SurfWatch's Jay Friedland still blushes when asked why his program once blocked part of the White House web site. Named "couples," the offending page triggered the hypersensitive software's dirty-word filter -- and amply illustrated the problems accompanying so-called "smut blocking" technology. Today, Friedland and more than a score of industry and nonprofit groups are visiting the White House to promote technical means of stopping Junior from visiting playboy.com. President Clinton is expected to endorse such measures over attempts to revive broad criminal laws like the ill-fated Communications Decency Act, which he supported. But this new approach suffers from all sorts of problems. For one, how do you winnow out material that's inappropriate for kids while avoiding embarassing missteps like the "couples" debacle? Certainly Friedland's firm can't hope to review the millions of web pages already online. Already spooked by a promised CDA II, the industry has offered an answer. High tech firms, taking a hint from the broadcasters, are seriously backing Internet rating systems for the first time. For instance, Netscape today will promise to join Microsoft and include the PICS ratings framework in the next version of its browser. Search engines such as Yahoo and Excite will announce they're supporting PICS to refine and limit searches, sources say. IBM will unveil a $100,000 grant to RSACi, a PICS-based rating standard originally designed for video games but adapted for the Web. The industry giant will also pledge to incorporate RSACi into future products. RSACi, which has been plagued by a number of serious flaws, works like this: You connect to its site and fill out a form self-rating your site for nudity, sex, violence and foul language. Then you take that tag, which might read something like "(n 0 s 0 v 0 l 0)" -- if your site is innocuous -- and slap it on your web page. But RSACi wasn't designed to classify news web sites. It's a video game rating system, and its coarse, clumsy categories -- from "creatures injured" to "wanton and gratuitous violence" -- are better suited to shrink-wrapped boxes of Doom than to the archives of msnbc.com. To comply with the system, MSNBC editors would need to review and rate each story -- which is why the site stopped using RSACi, The Netly News reported in March. Stephen Balkam, the head of RSACi, now says he has a solution. He calls it RSACnews and says that legitimate news sites can use it to rate just their home pages without having to review each article. Now, what's a legitimate news site? The Netly News might qualify, but what about the NAMBLA News Journal? "People who generate firsthand reports that have been in some ways verified or structured in a way that gives clear and objective information as possible about events," Balkam says. "We will be working with the news industry to help us develop a criteria." (This, presumably, means groups that have signed on as supporters, including MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, the Well, CNET and Ziff-Davis. I'm told that the White House wants to qualify as a "news site" -- even though the information there is rarely clear and certainly not objective.) Not surprisingly, civil libertarians are screaming bloody murder. They do have a point. After all, netizens are fresh from a stunning Supreme Court victory that firmly established that the Net should enjoy the same First Amendment protections as print publications. Since magazines aren't forced to sport warning labels, why should the White House pressure online publications to do the same? And, more importantly, why should the industry give in instead of standing on principle and resisting all attempts by the federal government to muzzle online speech? "Some businesses who make their money from people on the Net appear far too eager to ignore the massive First Amendment protection the CDA decision gave cyberspeech -- and even more eager to adopt and impose on all of us the potential sinews of censorship: PICS and RSACi," says Don Haines, legislative counsel at the ACLU. (This critical attitude may have been what spurred the White House to disinvite the ACLU from today's summit, then hurriedly re-invite them after the ACLU put out a press release.) Of course, today's White House summit plays against the backdrop of a threat from a CDA II. Some members of Congress, such as Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) have pledged to try again with more legislation. Yet others seem more willing to compromise. "The Supreme Court has shot down the option that I worked hard on," says Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), a staunch CDA supporter who will be at today's summit. "They said we can't go that route. I'm certainly interested in developing other options. I want to put the burden on pornographers. One of the ways to do that is to have Congress pass legislation that would make it difficult for people to misrate their web site." Rep. Goodlatte is one of a half-dozen congresspeople who will attend the noontime meeting, along with oppositional CDA forces such as the American Library Association and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Together they will witness the unveiling of netparents.org, a joint effort of the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Voters Telecommunications Watch. The site allows parents to "find some family-friendly" censorware-enabled service providers in their area. A handy tool that we suspect will be used not only to find ISPs that provide blocking tools, but to find the ones that don't. ###

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Re: Fuck You Rating Systems, Inc.
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anonymous wrote: > > ANNOUNCEMENT: Fuck You Ratings Software Escapes Beta-Test! ... > {Offer not valid in states where having sexual relations with animals > is against local ordinances.} Are there any cypherpunks in Montana who are willing to serve as a mail-drop for the rest of us?

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Re: FCPUNX:'The Failure to Do Your Job' amendment (was Re: White House
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:15 PM 7/16/97 -0500, John Deters wrote: > A Constitutional amendment that would call for the impeachment of the > President for failing to veto any three bills that are overturned by the > Supreme Court on Constitutional grounds. This however, presupposes that the supreme court is likely to veto unconstitutional bills, and refrain from vetoing constitutional bills. This does not appear to be the case. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | 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: write up AP for FC++
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May wrote: >>I'm now mildly amused that Bell is being seen as the inventor of anonymous >>and untraceable murder markets, with clueless journalists seeking >>information on his discovery. But, hey, better he rot in jail than me. At 04:27 PM 8/18/97 -0700, Blanc wrote: > A presentation from you at FC98 would remind everyone of your own initial > writings on the subject and provide you with due credit (better credit than > a jail/rotting sentence). I can't think of anyone else who would be more > qualified for this. Freedom of speech is protected by nothing stronger than the cluelessness of our masters. If you publish your idea in appropriate forums, you can get away with it. If you go from forum to forum singing your idea like a broken record, and flogging it like soap, you will probably go to jail. I see no point in explaining our ideas so thoroughly and repeatedly that even cops and politicians start to understand them. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | 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: write up AP for FC++
by Blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

More than a month later, James A. Donald responded: >I see no point in explaining our ideas so thoroughly and repeatedly >that even cops and politicians start to understand them. ......................................................... I dont' think where you publish your idea makes as much difference as in how you present it, based on what attitude and inclinations you reveal about your motives for the future. If you are having an abstract discussion which explores the ramifications of what a new technology makes possible - not only for the good, but for the bad - it is surely distinguishable from a discussion on who exactly you dislike and how precisely you are going to hurt them badly with your new, advanced weapon-tools. One type of discussion could reveal your perspective and the scope of your ability to follow ideas to their logical conclusions. A different discussion, conversely, could reveal your psychological problems and the malfunctioning of a disturbed imagination. Anyone who studies ideas seriously will want to explain their discoveries to colleagues; it's almost a given that this is so. I wasn't suggesting to Tim that he reiterate himself to clueless public authorities for the purpose of elevating their understanding (although it is a fact that Tim very often has explained, again and again, the same ideas which he has posted in the past, until lately he has arrived at the point of merely referencing himself and his previous contributions to the list.). I was making reference to the mistake certain people are making, as he mentioned, of attributing to Jim Bell the origin of the AP ideas, when Tim's own extensive exploration of this subject preceded Jim's epiphanies by years. I was encouraging Tim that presenting his ideas to a physical gathering of people who are of the mind to consider the impact of these possibilities upon their business enterprises, would contribute to clarifying the situation (to some degree - I can't say how or what kind of effect it would actually have, obviously). But anyway, James, don't you think it is better to live in an atmosphere of people who have a clue, rather than otherwise, regardless of their position in this contradictory world? .. Blanc

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17 Dec '03

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Re: Digital Postage (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sat, 27 Sep 1997 19:18:01 -0400 > From: Anonymous <anon(a)anon.efga.org> > Subject: Re: Digital Postage (fwd) > Jim Choate wrote: > >[Tim May wrote: ed.] > >> Some will remail for some form of digital postage. Some will charge too little, some too much. > >> Some will adjust their prices based on market/customer reactions. And so on. > > > >And there are a couple of problems with this: > > > > - it relies on a mechanism not currently in place to interface with > > other more traditional financial institutions. Which I might add > > don't look upon this as the most trustworthy mechanism. > > Ecash is in place right now. True, but there are only 3 systems and it is not clear at all which will dominate and be used by all parties. Also there is the issue of security in regards to maintaning anonymity when there is such a small pool of parties to use. Doesn't take a genius to figure out where to hang out and watch the action. > > - how do you charge for the postage, per submission? What happens when > > I want to send 10,000 parties the email. Do I still pay the digi-postage > > equivalent of $.35? Or do I pay $350.00? > > This is easily worked out between the remailer operator and the > customer. How? There is certainly no clear mechanism in place. Does the customer contact each remailer operator prior to sending the traffic, thus opening up N opportunities for anonymity cracking. If the operators agree to a system how do we get there? Is it time to have a anon-remailer conference to settle on distributed payment schemes? > Were I running a remailer, I would charge $350.00. As a > customer, I would not see this as unreasonable. Unless it is pertty serious nobody is going to pay such a fee just to send an email around. The problem I see is one of scale. The infrastructure for handling physical mail is very 'bulky' and requires a lot infrastructure. Email on the other hands effectively rides on the back of an existing Internet infrastructure for nearly free. Because of the historicaly low cost for email this would tend to in general indicate a low market value on anon remailers. This means the cost per msg. must be very low (the aforementioned micro payments) and hence leads to two realizations: - we need a lot of remailers - we need a lot of traffic to invoke economy of scales It is clear that neither of these can exist without the other, meaning this puts us at a chicken-or-the-egg type situation. > >I suspect that anon remailers will operate by something similar to > >ISP's where when the account is setup some fee is paid for use and > >not on a use by use based fee. The problem with that is it creates a > >'concrete' link between the party desiring anonymity and the remailer > >operator that may be exploited in some (most? all?) cases to break > >that anonymity. > > The way to break the concrete link is with blinded credentials. Of > course, ecash already provides this feature without the hassle of > opening an account with a remailer operator, writing and deploying new > software, etc. etc. True, but it doesn't have the rest of the infrastructure (some detailed above) in place. To get this to work will take more than a couple dozen operators swapping some digi-cash between themselves. There are entirely too many infrastructure and legal issues for remailers to be any sort of profitable long-term business that will attract non-techie investors. If you know of some investors please let them know of me as I am very interested in commercial remailers (anon & not). ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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