December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Declan pro-cencorship (sorta) (fwd)
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Unlike the rest of this discussion, Jim is mostly right here, and in a way that neither censors anyone nor discourages them from providing filtering services for people who want it. However, Wabe is reinventing NoCeMs - which support multiple NoCeM issuers, and you can pick any one or more that you like to kill off spam for you before you read it. I'm not sure how widely available implementations of NoCeM mailreaders are; probably they're mostly Emacs macros. On the other hand, while the Cypherpunks list gets lots of noise, it doesn't get much spam (except when somebody's targeting it), Filters that pick out the most interesting 10% are much more useful than filters that discard the bottom 10%. Attacking the list, while less suicidal than spamming alt.2600, is still not very bright, given the potential risks :-) >> Date: Sun, 15 Feb 1998 12:40:39 +0000 >> From: wabe <wabe(a)smart.net> >> Any reason Cyperpunks couldn't set up a distributed "spam innoculator?" >> >> If I get spam, I'd send it to "spam(a)cypherpunks.com" and then spam would >> send a fingerprint to all of our modified netscape messengers, which have been >> programmed to erase any messages which match that fingerprint. >> >> Then, if one person sees a spam message and declares it spam, no one >> else has to see it. (If they get the message from spam@cypherpunks in time.) At 12:02 PM 2/15/98 -0600, Jim Choate wrote: >What makes you think you are suitable to decide what others want to see? >How is this any different than any other form of censorship? This exact >issue is why the CDR was setup with multiple nodes. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart(a)pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639

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RE: financial incentives for hashcash?
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:13 PM 2/17/98 -0500, Fisher Mark wrote: >I am curious -- does anyone have any statistics on how much spam (what >percentage) is done via SMTP relay? To me, using the SMTP service of >someone/something you don't know to send 1000's/10,000's/more of email >messages seems pretty unfriendly at best. Yes, it's one of the major techniques used by spammers; the other big one is disposable accounts. maps.vix.com has information about the Realtime Blackhole List system, which lets you configure your sendmail system to reject incoming mail from any system that permits relays, and provides lots of information about setting your system not to do relays. They're a bit inflexible, but if you're up to rolling your own sendmail.cf code, you can fix that. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart(a)pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639

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Re: Declan pro-cencorship (sorta) (fwd)
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:03 PM 2/15/98 -0600, Jim Choate wrote: >Then you are saying that the only way to send email to yourself, for >example, is to contact you prior to the transmission and obtain your >permission to send the traffic? That's fine - people who take this approach may get less mail from interesting people as well as getting less mail from spammers. It's easy to find mail forwarding systems that don't cost much and will filter out well-known spam, either for free or for a small fee. Pobox.com offers this, and I think the iname.com systems do also; I don't know about hotmail and other web-based mailreaders. >Why should the fact that I have a mailbox on my front porch while you use a >mailbox (that you pay extra for) at the post office matter to my ability to >send you a letter in the mail? Should I call you on the phone and ask your >permission before sending it? Should I not get some mechanism to contact >you before contacting you using the phone? No ,I assume because local calls >are flat rate and therefore don't increase your out of pocket expense? Then >perhaps the problem is you're choice of payment for net connections? Why >does your choice of personal expense effect my ability to send traffic? Most of us have flat-rate email, and the important cost is our attention span, not the transmission cost. For other people, that's not true, and sending them junk mail _is_ ripping them off financially as well as ripping off their time and concentration. As far as "how do you know something is bulk mail"? The sender knows, and the sender is the one being rude to thousands of receivers if it is bulk mail. >If we accept the free-market view then we should expect all net connections >to be flat rate since this provides the consumer, the final arbiter in >free-market theory, the most bang for the buck. This does not apply in countries that still have Government-granted Monopoly Postal/Telephone/Telegraph companies. It also doesn't apply in places where the Telephone Company decides to charge for connect time by the minute rather than flat rate - even if your internet provider is flat rate, you may be paying 1-5 cents/minute - mildly annoying on a US salary, and much more so on a Polish salary. And in a free market, you'd expect a mix of options, since different people have different net connection needs, financial constraints, and communications costs. My main ISP offers an 800 number for about 10 cents/minute, and I sometimes use it when I'm on the road at hotels with stupider-than-usual telephone systems. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart(a)pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639

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Feb. 22 column - privacy, long version
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Resent-Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 21:28:11 -0700 X-Sender: vin(a)dali.lvrj.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 20:25:09 -0800 To: cathy(a)engr.colostate.edu From: Vin_Suprynowicz(a)lvrj.com (Vin Suprynowicz) Subject: Feb. 22 column - privacy, long version Resent-From: vinsends(a)ezlink.com X-Mailing-List: <vinsends(a)ezlink.com> archive/latest/440 X-Loop: vinsends(a)ezlink.com Precedence: list Resent-Sender: vinsends-request(a)ezlink.com FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA EDITORS NOTE: This is the longer version of "privacy," at 2,900 words. A shorter, 2,400-word version also moves. A VERSION of this essay originally appeared in "Las Vegas" magazine. FOR EMBARGOED RELEASE DATED FEB. 22, 1998 THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz Big Brother wants your number The New York Times is generally in editorial favor of any government intervention you can name. Most would agree it is the furthest thing from a marketplace of paranoid, feds-are-out-to-get-us conspiracy theories. Even Times columnist William Safire is hardly a true Libertarian -- Mr. Safire still believes "No sensible passenger minds the frisking for bombs at airports." (I guess I'm not very sensible; it seems to me anyone who has ever put any real effort into getting around such Fred-and-Ethel security screens has succeeded, while the REAL target of all the sniffing and scanning appears to be the now-prohibited transport of tax-free agricultural extracts and untaxed currency.) Anyway, more significant than what Mr. Safire actually wrote for publication on Jan. 8, 1998, is where it was published: America's pro-government paper of record, The New York Times. Mr. Safire warned, in part: "WASHINGTON -- Your right to privacy has been stripped away. You cannot walk into your bank, or apply for a job, or access your personal computer, without undergoing the scrutiny of strangers. You cannot use a credit card to buy clothes to cover your body without baring your soul. Big Brother is watching as never before. "Encouraged by an act of Congress, Texas and California now demand thumbprints of applicants for drivers' licenses -- treating all drivers as potential criminals. "Using a phony excuse about airplane security, airlines now demand identification like those licenses to make sure passengers don't exchange tickets to beat the company's rate-cutting promotions. "In the much-applauded pursuit of deadbeat dads, the Feds now demand that all employers inform the government of every new hire, thereby building a data base of who is working for whom that would be the envy of the KGB. ... "Hooked on easy borrowing, consumers turn to plastic for their purchases, making records and sending electronic signals to telemarketers who track them down at home. ... "Enough. "Fear of crime and terrorism has caused us to let down our guard against excessive intrusion into the lives of the law-abiding. ... But doesn't this creeping confluence of government snooping, commercial tracking and cultural tolerance of eavesdropping threaten each individual American's personal freedom? And isn't it time to reverse that terrible trend toward national nakedness before it replaces privacy as an American value? ..." Unfortunately, Mr. Safire stopped short, in that January column, of calling for an end to government "ID cards" of any sort, an end to mis-labeled "airport security" checkpoints, an end to the very "War on Drugs" under which most of these new interventions have been justified. He also ran the risk of diverting attention from the government as the major culprit here, by treating as equally culpable the kind of folks who collate data from warranty cards -- hardly the folks who have the right to raid your home and throw you in jail if they don't like what they find. (On my list of things that concern me, my supermarket knowing what brand of catfood I prefer still ranks somewhat below armed government agents tracking where I travel, and how much cash I carry.) Finally, Mr. Safire suggest that we "Pay cash," which is harder to track. That advice might be fine, if the very pattern of abuses Mr. Safire catalogs wasn't moving us rapidly toward the ballyhooed "cashless society." Already, the old $500 and $1,000 bills are nowhere to be found, and those trying to withdraw more than $5,000 from their own savings accounts to buy a used car or other large-ticket item find themselves being grilled by their own government-regulated bankers -- amateur surrogates for the DEA and IRS -- like so many money-laundering drug-dealers. A rogue candidate That so-called "cashless society" is frequently on the mind of Aaron Russo, former producer of such Hollywood films as "Trading Places" and "The Rose," now running an iconoclastic long-shot 1998 GOP primary campaign against Kenny Guinn -- former head warden of the Las Vegas government schools and hand-picked anointee of the casino bosses -- for the governorship of Nevada. Russo is campaigning on such populist issues as eliminating state privilege taxes (so that car registration costs in Nevada would be limited to "$35 and not one penny more" -- rather than surging upwards based on blue-book value) and his vow to sue the federal government to fight the taxation of Nevadans' "estimated" tips as income. But Russo has also includes in his platform opposition to such federal steps as the wiring of all telephones for tapping (already authorized under House Resolution 4922, which passed on Jan. 25, 1994), and the aforementioned national law requiring all states to issue drivers' licenses with thumbprints or other personalized "biometric" ID tags to serve as a "national ID cards." Those stances have gained Russo the sobriquet of a "federal paranoiac" from one well-established Nevada political columnist, who coincidentally does not appear to have ever met a new tax he didn't think those in power should have the "courage" to enact. "In my view, the wiretaps are authorized under a federal regulation, and they cannot impose any federal regulations on any of the states," said Russo, in between passing out cards to well-wishers during Sunday lunch at the Celebrity Deli, on Flamingo near Maryland, as we took a break from an afternoon watching the NFL playoff games ... liberally sprinkled with $150,000 in TV campaign ads which Russo had bought in the one-week New Year's period, just to put the opposition on notice that he's in the game. "The governor has the authority to go to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court has to hear the case. You have something to stand on. A senator or congressman needs other people to work with him. But in a dispute between the feds and a state, the Supreme Court has the only jurisdiction," says Russo, in the Brooklyn accent he has never shed. "So we wouldn't have to go through the 9th District (Court of Appeals), like anyone else. A governor can stop federal agents from coming into his state to enforce these things; they need the permission of the individual county sheriffs to try and enforce these laws within the state." I pointed out to Russo that skeptics will claim HR 4922 creates no actual new wiretaps; it merely puts phone companies and others on notice that they must wire their systems in such a way that federal agents can come in and tap lines, if necessary, "pursuant to a court order or other lawful authorization." "Then why, if it's only by court order the way it should be, does it say, 'or other lawful authorization'?" Russo asks, between bites of the corned beef and pastrami. "That means any cop can request it," the same way your bank account can now be frozen and levied with a mere letter from an IRS agent -- no court order required. "Uri Dowbenko wrote a piece on this for the National Review; call him up." Russo obligingly supplied a copy of the federal law, which requires the attorney general to tell congress how many "communication interceptions, pen registers, and trap and trace devices" federal agents expect to need in the next four years. A dutiful subordinate of Attorney General Janet Reno, FBI Director "Louis Freeh has told Congress he needs money to tap 1.5 million phones simultaneously," Russo says. "The worst part of the federal ID card is not the card itself but what's going to come out of it," candidate Russo adds, segueing without drawing a breath into the other federal intervention that gets his goat. "The ID card and the debit card merging; getting rid of cash. Everything will be on the card. Every time you go buy something, they'll know what books you read, what tapes you rent. "They'll debit your Social Security tax payments automatically. You'll have no more cash. Cash will be gone; it will be illegal; you won't be able to hide any more money in your mattress. And as Ross Perot pointed out, the current Clinton budget will eventually mean an 82 percent tax rate" to cover expanding welfare programs. "If they freeze your card, you can't buy food; you can't pay a lawyer. If they can assume how much money a waitress should make in tips, and tax that amount, then they can assume how much you make, and tax the amount they assume you should be making. And at that point you're a slave. You are a slave." Digital fingerprinting Central in organizing resistance to the national ID card to which Russo refers is the Coalition to Repeal the Fingerprint Law, at 5446 Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, Suite 133, Atlanta, GA 30341, telephone 404-250-8105. The group's web site is at http://www.atlantainfoguide/repeal/. Posted there is an article by Cyndee Parker - self-described Georgia "housewife turned activist, because no one else was doing anything about it" - which begins: "In September of 1996, President Clinton signed into law the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. Buried at approximately page 650 of the new National Defense Bill, also known as Public Law 104-208, Part B, Title IV, the American public was given a national ID card. With no fanfare, no publicity and no scrutiny, the bill easily avoided the watchful eyes of even its most aggressive opponents. ... "In Section 401-403, pilot programs have been initiated by the U.S. Attorney General, one of which is the 'Machine Readable Document Pilot Program.' In this particular program, employers would have to 'procure' a document reader linked to the federal government's Social Security Administration in order to have the potential employee swipe their new drive's license/national ID card through the reader. Then it would be up to the federal government to either approve or disapprove the applicant for employment. ... Additionally, Section 656 of the new law states that "after October 1, 2000, Federal agencies may only accept as proof of identity driver's licenses that conform to standards developed by the Secretary of the Treasury," after consultation with state motor vehicle officials and the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. "The AAMVA sees digital fingerprinting as the best way to go in driver's license identifiers," Ms. Parker reports. Parker quotes Dick Armey, R-Tex., calling the move "an abomination and wholly at odds with the American tradition of individual freedom." Jack Kemp told the New York Times this was "an anti-privacy, anti-business and anti-American approach." Of course, Parker adds, "all this was said before the bills were snuck through in the last defense bill. ... For the first time in American history and reminiscent of Communist countries, our government would have the ability to grant approval before a private company enters into private employment contracts with private citizens," all justified as necessary to ban illegal immigrants from the workplace, and to track down "deadbeat dads" delinquent on their child-support payments. Your number, please? A sister law is the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, now Public Law 104-193, approved by the "Conservative Republican Congress" on July 23, 1996, and signed into law by President Clinton on Aug. 22, 1996. Public Law 104-193 requires that, as a condition for receipt of federal "Child Support" and "Aid to Families With Dependent Children" funding, each state must implement federally-defined citizen locating and tracking measures, and specifically authorizes the use of Social Security numbers in a new biometric identity card ("biometric" referring to individualized digital fingerprints, retinal scans, and so forth) for NON-drivers. Of special note in that bill are Section 313, the "State directory of new hires," which Ms. Parker summarizes as "all new employees to be databased with nationwide multiple agency sharing of personal information. ... felony conspiracy charges for employers not reporting." Section 316, the "Expansion of the Federal Parent Locator Service" then gives us "Employee assets and debts to be databased. Secretary of the Treasury to have access to database." And that one's followed by Section 317, "Collection and use of Social Security numbers for use in child support enforcement," which Ms. Parker summarizes as "All applications for professional licenses, occupational, drivers and marriage licenses to include Social Security numbers. Formerly illegal as an invasion of privacy under the Privacy Act of 1974, USC Title 5, Section 552a." Uri Dowbenko did indeed look up all this stuff for his article in the Oct. 13, 1997 National Review, as candidate Russo reported. And Dowbenko confirms Cyndee Parker's reading of these laws, adding: "There is also a stipulation for the development of 'counterfeit-resistant Social Security cards,' implying the use of biometric data like fingerprints and/or retinal scans. This is not sci-fi, folks, it's the law." 'Resistance will spread' As Mr. Safire of the Times reports, several states have already moved to comply with the new federal requirements -- some picking up federal "pilot program" funding for their efforts. "The new driver's license requirement mandating fingerprints for Georgia drivers and those wanting ID cards passed the state Legislature with virtually no public or media attention in April of 1996," Cyndee Parker reports from Atlanta. "The first known announcement was on the local Atlanta news announcing an October 1996 date to begin fingerprinting." Since then, efforts to repeal the Georgia fingerprinting law have been blocked by inspired procedural maneuvering on the part of the leadership of the Georgia state Legislature. Bobby Franklin is a first-term member of the Georgia House of Representatives from District 39, in Marietta. Marietta is in Cobb County, home of Kennesaw, which recently and famously reacted to firearm bans elsewhere by passing a law which requires every head of household to own a gun. "And the crime rate immediately dropped, and stayed down, which you will not see covered in the national news, because that's something they do not want you to know," laughed Rep. Franklin when I reached him at his home on a Monday night in early January. But I was calling Franklin about the fingerprint law. "They did that here back in '96, on the last day of the session. I was not in the House then; I was elected in '96. So we tried last year to repeal the measure. We had several bills that were introduced, we were promised by the chairman of the committee that it would be let out so it could be voted on by the whole house. ..." Needless to say, that did not happen. "The (state) Senate amended to remove the fingerprints, and we missed upholding that by one vote. "I know in Alabama, their department of public safety said last year, they just up and said, 'Hey guys, we're fingerprinting.' And there was such a public outcry against it that the department backed down and they're not fingerprinting. And we're very close to repealing, here. Our two major Republican candidates for governor this year are both saying they will issue an executive order banning our Motor Vehicle Department from fingerprinting." At which point, won't they just substitute retinal scans, or something else to meet the federal requirement, I ask Franklin. After all, no state wants its residents cut off from all those fine, federal benefits as of the year 2000. "Our draft legislation says they're not allowed to use (start ital)any(end ital) biometric identifiers. We hope if we can block it in Georgia it will spread, that we can prevent them from instituting their program, that resistance will spread. No one wants to be chattel. If we're treated like a number, we're property." Alabama "was basically a pilot program, from what I understood. They threw out a trial balloon to see how it would go, and they got slammed, so they backed away from it." On June 19, 1997, Congressman Bob Schaffer rose to the floor of the House of Representatives in Washington, and read into the record Colorado Joint House Resolution 97-1027 (passed unanimously in the state Senate, and by a vote of 59-6 in the House): "Resolved ... that we, the members of the Sixty-first General Assembly urge the Congress of the United States to amend or repeal those specific provisions of the federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 set forth in this Resolution that place undue burden and expense upon the several states, that violate provisions of the Constitution of the United States, that impose insufficiently funded mandates upon the states in the establishment, modification, and enforcement of child support obligations, or that unjustifiably intrude into the personal lives of the law-abiding citizens of the United States of America." Resistance IS spreading. Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers," is due from Huntington Press in May, 1998. Readers may contact him via e-mail at vin(a)lvrj.com. The web site for the Suprynowicz column is at http://www.nguworld.com/vindex/. The column is syndicated in the United States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas Nev. 89127. *** Vin Suprynowicz, vin(a)lvrj.com "If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." -- Samuel Adams --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>

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NEW TRAVEL INFO -- Israel (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: >From owner-travel-advisories(a)stolaf.edu Fri Feb 20 04:04:45 1998 Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 11:07:49 -0500 From: owner-travel-advisories <owner-travel-advisories(a)stolaf.edu> Subject: NEW TRAVEL INFO -- Israel Sender: "U.S. Department of State" <76702.1202(a)compuserve.com> To: travel-advisories(a)stolaf.edu Message-ID: <199802171112_MC2-33A4-1596(a)compuserve.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Precedence: bulk STATE DEPARTMENT TRAVEL INFORMATION - Israel and the Occupied Territories ============================================================ Israel and the Occupied Territories - Public Announcement February 14, 1998 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE Office of the Spokesman The American Embassy in Tel Aviv and the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem are issuing the following Warden Message: "This message supplements the Public Announcement issued by the U.S. Department of State on February 10, 1998 for the Middle East and South Asia. The U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and Consulate General in Jerusalem continue to closely monitor the situation with Iraq. The U.S. Government believes there is a low probability of attack on Israel, the West Bank or Gaza, and that the possibility of Iraq using chemical and biological weapons (CBW) is remote, but cannot be excluded. American citizens are advised to avoid travel to the West Bank and Gaza and to exercise caution in Jerusalem, particularly in the area of the old city of Jerusalem. The U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem has suspended personal travel of its employees to the West Bank and has placed restrictions on official travel to the West Bank. These are precautionary measures only. However, given the current tensions in the region, the U.S. Government believes it is important for all citizens to maintain readiness in the unlikely event of an emergency. At this time, the Government of Israel is distributing protection kits to Israeli citizens and legal residents only. However, we understand that the government of Israel is putting in place arrangements to determine the most effective ways to distribute gas masks to foreign nationals and is in the process of acquiring adequate numbers of gas masks to provide for non-Israeli citizens in Israel, Jerusalem, and the areas of the West Bank under its control. The Palestinian authority has informed the U.S. Government that it does not have protection kits to supply its population or foreign residents living within its areas of control. For those American citizens who need to obtain a new passport or to update their registrations, passport hours at the Embassy (71 Hayarkon Street, Tel Aviv) are Monday through Friday mornings from 8:30 to 11:00 am and Wednesday afternoons from 1:30 to 3:30 pm; Consulate General in Jerusalem (27 Nablus Road, East Jerusalem) passport hours are Monday through Friday mornings from 8:30 to 12:00, except for the last Friday of the month. The Embassy and Consulate General urge all U.S. citizens to monitor local and international media for further developments. Should the U.S. government need to issue advice to U.S. citizens, the Embassy and Consulate will notify the local media and activate our citizens warden network immediately. U.S. citizens contemplating traveling to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza should take the above information into consideration and should, in addition, consult the latest Consular Information Sheet on Israel and the Occupied Territories dated December 23, 1997." This Public Announcement expires on May 14, 1998. Israel and the Occupied Territories - Consular Information Sheet December 23, 1997 (INCLUDING AREAS SUBJECT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE PALESTINIAN INTERIM SELF-GOVERNMENT AUTHORITY) Country Description: The state of Israel is a parliamentary democracy with a modern economy. Tourist facilities are widely available. Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem as a result of the 1967 War. Pursuant to negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, an elected Palestinian authority now exercises jurisdiction in most of Gaza and most of the major cities of the West Bank. Palestinian Authority police have responsibility for keeping order in those areas and the Palestinian Authority exercises a range of civil functions in other areas of the West Bank. Areas of Israeli and Palestinian Authority responsibilities and jurisdiction in the West Bank and Gaza are complex. Definitive information on entry, customs requirements, arrests and other matters in the West Bank and Gaza may not be available and is subject to change without prior notice. Embassy/Consulate Location and Sources of Assistance: The U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel, is located at 71 Hayarkon Street. The U.S. mailing address is PSC 98, Box 0013, APO AE 09830. The telephone number is (972) (3) 519-7575. After hours number: 519-7551. The fax number is 972-3-516-0315. The e-mail address is acs.amcit-telaviv(a)dos.us-state.gov. The Consular Section of the U.S. Embassy should be contacted for information and help in the following areas: Israel, the Gaza Strip, and ports of entry at Ben Gurion Airport, Haifa Port, and the northern (Jordan River) and southern (Arava) border crossings connecting Israel and Jordan. The Consular Section of the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem is located at 27 Nablus Road. The U.S. mailing address is Unit 7228 Box 0039, APO AE 09830. The telephone number is (972) (2) 625-3288 (via Israel) the after hours number is 625-3201. The fax number is 972-2-272-2233. The U.S. Consulate should be contacted for information and help in the following areas: west and east Jerusalem, the West Bank, and border crossings at the Allenby Bridge, connecting Jordan with the West Bank. There is a U.S. Consular Agent in Haifa, at telephone (972) (04) 853-1470, who reports to the Embassy in Tel Aviv. The Consular Agent can provide routine and emergency services in the north. Entry Requirements: Israel: Passports, an onward or return ticket, and proof of sufficient funds are required for entry. A three-month visa may be issued for no charge upon arrival, and may be renewed. Anyone who has been refused entry or experienced difficulties with his/her visa status during a previous visit, or who has overstayed a visa, can obtain information from the Israeli Embassy or nearest Israeli consulate regarding the advisability of attempting to return to Israel. Permission must be obtained from Israel for anyone attempting to claim the status of a returning resident. Palestinian Authority: Except during periods of closures, U.S. citizens, except those of Palestinian ancestry (see below) may enter and exit Gaza and the West Bank on a U.S. passport with an Israeli visa. It is not necessary to obtain a visitor's permit from the Palestinian Authority. Private vehicles frequently encounter long delays entering or leaving Gaza; and may also expect to be stopped at checkpoints entering or leaving the West Bank. U.S. citizens who have ever held or now hold resident status in the West Bank or Gaza should be aware that they may be subject to the same travel regulations governing entry to and exit from Israel that affect all other resident Palestinians. In general, such individuals are required to hold a Palestinian passport to enter or depart Gaza or the West Bank via Israel. U.S. citizen Palestinian residents arriving at Ben Gurion Airport without a Palestinian passport will be granted an entry visa to enable their transit to the West Bank or Gaza to obtain such documentation from the Palestinian Authority. A Palestinian passport and permit to depart are required to leave via Ben Gurion Airport. No permit is required for departure via the Rafah or Allenby border posts. Palestinians who last departed Israel before the May 1994 Cairo Accords (regarding Gaza and Jericho) or the September 1995 Interim Agreement (regarding other areas of the West Bank) should re-enter Israel through the same port of entry from which they last left (and where their travel documents were then deposited). Specific questions may be addressed to the nearest Israeli embassy or consulate. Israel-Jordan Crossings: International crossing points are now in operation between Israel and Jordan at Arava (Wadi al-'Arabah) crossing in the south and the Jordan River crossing (Sheikh Hussein Bridge) in the north. Prior visas are not necessary for American citizens using these two crossing points, but travelers will have to pay a fee. Visas should be obtained in advance for those wanting to cross the Allenby Bridge which links Jordan and the occupied West Bank. (Note: Palestinian Americans with residency in the West Bank must cross into Jordan using the Allenby Bridge.) Procedures for all crossings into Jordan are subject to frequent changes. For further entry information, travelers may contact the Israeli Embassy at 3514 International Dr., NW, Washington, DC. 20008, telephone (202) 364-5500, or the Israeli Consulate General in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or Houston. Customs Requirements: Video cameras, among other items, must be declared upon entry to Israel and travelers carrying these items must go through the red zone at customs. Definitive information on customs requirements for the Palestinian Authority is not available. Security Measures: Israel has strict security measures that may affect visitors. Prolonged questioning and detailed searches may take place at the time of entry and/or departure at all points of entry to Israel, including entry from any of the areas under Palestinian jurisdiction. American citizens with Arab surnames may expect close scrutiny at Ben Gurion Airport and the Allenby Bridge from Jordan. For security reasons, delays or obstacles in bringing in or departing with cameras or electronics equipment are not unusual. During searches and questioning, access may be denied to U.S. consular officers, lawyers, or family members. Definitive information on security measures in the Palestinian Authority is not available. Terrorism/Security: Although they have not been specifically targeted for attack, U.S. citizens have been killed in past terrorist actions in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. The most recent attacks have been in highly frequented shopping and pedestrian areas, and public buses. U.S. citizens should use caution in crowded pedestrian and shopping areas. In addition, the U.S. Embassy and the Consulate General have warned their employees and American citizens to avoid travel on public buses, as well as congregating at bus stops and other crowded areas. This restriction does not apply to tour buses. U.S. citizens should, at all times, avoid large crowds and political demonstrations, and not remain in an area where a demonstration or altercation appears to be developing. Such gatherings can occur spontaneously, and have the potential to become violent without warning. Areas of Instability - West Bank and Gaza: During periods of unrest, the West Bank and Gaza are sometimes closed off by the Israeli government. Travel restrictions may be imposed with little or no warning. Strict measures have frequently been imposed following terrorist actions. In such circumstances, movement of Palestinians (including Palestinian Americans) and foreign passport holders has been severely impaired. Demonstrations by Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank have led to confrontations and clashes with the police, with some turning deadly. Stone throwing and other forms of protest can occur without warning and can escalate quickly. In view of the continued potential for violence and unrest in the West Bank and Gaza, the State Department advises all American citizens to avoid travel to these areas, except for daylight visits to Bethlehem, Jericho, Highway 1 from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, Route 90 through the Jordan Valley, and tourist sites along these routes. Accessible sites for daylight visits include the Inn of the Samaritan, Nebi Musa, St. George's Monastery, Mount of Temptation Monastery, Qumran, and Qualiah Water Park. The Consular Section of the U.S. Consulate General, located at 27 Nablus Road in East Jerusalem, is safe and accessible to all visitors. The U.S. government maintains tight security procedures regarding travel of U.S. government employees, officials, and dependents to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Frequently, U.S. government employees are instructed not to travel at all to these areas. Travel guidelines for U.S. government employees may change at any time. The Palestinian police force has been established in Gaza and the major cities of the West Bank which are under Palestinian jurisdiction. Joint Israeli/Palestinian police patrols and checkpoints may be encountered. Many Israeli and Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank possess their own guns. General Precautions: Travel on strike days or after dark is not recommended. Tourists using public transportation or traveling by car in areas less frequented by tourists are at risk. Vehicles have been damaged, with rental cars in particular being targeted. Jerusalem: In Jerusalem, travelers can reduce their risk of being involved in violent incidents by traveling in groups, avoiding the old city at night, except for the Jewish quarter, and exercising caution at religious sites on holy days, Fridays, and Saturdays. Most roads into ultra-orthodox Jewish neighborhoods are blocked off on Saturdays. Assaults on secular visitors, either for being in cars or for being "immodestly dressed," have been known to occur in these neighborhoods. In the North: In the Golan Heights, there are live land mines in many areas, and some minefields have not been clearly marked or fenced. Visitors who walk only on established roads or trails will reduce the risk of injury from mines. Rocket attacks from Lebanese territory can occur without warning close to the northern border of Israel. Driving and Road Conditions: There is a high rate of fatalities relating to auto accidents, and drivers should use caution. While the roads in Israel are well built, the roads in Gaza and most of the West Bank are of poor quality. Arrests and Detention: U.S. citizens arrested by the Israeli National Police (INP) and charged with crimes are entitled to legal representation and consular notification and visitation. Typically the INP notifies the Embassy or Consulate General within two days of arrest, and consular access is normally granted within four days. This procedure may be expedited if the arrested American shows a U.S. passport to the police as proof of U.S. citizenship, or asks for access to the Embassy or Consulate General. U.S. citizens arrested in the West Bank for criminal offenses may be prevented from communicating with lawyers, family members, or consular officers. The U.S. Consulate General is often not notified of the arrest, or notified in a timely manner. Consular access to the arrestees can be initially denied and is frequently delayed. In contrast to persons arrested for criminal offenses, U.S. citizens arrested or detained in Israel and the West Bank on suspicion of security offenses often are not permitted to communicate with consular officials, lawyers, or family members in a timely manner during the interrogation period of their case. They may be detained for up to six months at a time without charges. Youths over the age of fourteen have been detained and tried as adults. Neither the Embassy nor the Consulate are normally notified of the arrests of Americans in the West Bank by Israeli authorities, and access to detainees is frequently delayed. Notification may be more rapid if the detained American shows a U.S. passport as proof of citizenship and asks the local authorities to contact the Embassy or Consulate General. Medical Facilities: Modern medical care and medicines are available in Israel. However, some hospitals in Israel and most hospitals in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank fall below U.S. standards. Travelers can find information in English about emergency medical facilities and after-hours pharmacies in the "Jerusalem Post" newspaper. Doctors and hospitals often expect immediate cash payment for health services. U.S. medical insurance is not always valid outside the united states. Supplemental medical insurance with specific overseas coverage has proven useful. The Internet site at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (http://www.cdc.gov) has additional health information. Travelers from regions where contagious diseases are prevalent may need to show shot records before entry into Israel. Information on Crime: The crime rate is moderate in Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank. The loss or theft of a U.S. passport abroad should be reported immediately to local police and the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate. Useful information on safeguarding valuables, protecting personal security, and other matters is provided in the Department of State pamphlets, "A Safe Trip Abroad" and "Tips for Travelers to the Middle East and North Africa," available from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. 20402. Drug Penalties: U.S. citizens are subject to the laws of the territory in which they are traveling. Penalties for possession, use or trafficking in illegal drugs are severe in Israel, and convicted offenders can expect jail sentences and fines. The Palestinian Authority also has strict penalties for drug use by persons under its jurisdiction. Court Jurisdiction: Under Israel's judicial system, the rabbinical courts exercise jurisdiction over all Jewish citizens and residents of Israel in cases of marriage and divorce and related issues, such as support and child custody. Rabbinical courts can also impose sanctions, including jail terms and restrictions against leaving the country, on individuals married in a Jewish religious ceremony who, in case of divorce, refuse to give their spouses a religious divorce ("get"). In some cases, Jewish Americans, who entered Israel as tourists, have become defendants in divorce cases filed against them in a rabbinical court in Israel by their American spouses who are seeking a religious divorce that the defendants have refused to give. These Americans have been detained in Israel for prolonged periods while the Israeli courts consider whether such individuals have sufficient ties to Israel to establish rabbinical court jurisdiction. In one case, the rabbinical courts detained in Israel a Jewish American tourist who had been sued for support by his spouse in the United States. Jewish American visitors should be aware that they may be subject to involuntary and prolonged stays in Israel if a case is filed against them in a rabbinical court. This may occur even when the marriage took place in the U.S., and/or the spouse seeking relief is not present in Israel. Dual Nationality: Israeli citizens naturalized in the United States retain their Israeli citizenship, and their children are considered Israeli citizens as well. In addition, children born in the United States to Israeli parents acquire both U.S. and Israeli nationality at birth. Israeli citizens, including dual nationals, are subject to Israeli laws requiring service in Israel's armed forces. U.S.-Israeli dual nationals of military age who do not wish to serve in the Israeli armed forces may contact the Israeli Embassy to obtain proof of exemption or deferment from Israeli military service before going to Israel. Otherwise, they may not be able to leave the country without doing military service. Israeli citizens, including dual nationals, must enter and depart Israel on their Israeli passports. (Note: U.S.-Israeli dual citizens must enter and depart the U.S. on their U.S. passports.) Palestinian-American citizens with residency rights in Gaza or the West Bank are subject to the same regulations as other resident Palestinians. This normally requires them to depart these areas with Palestinian travel documents or (for residents of Jerusalem) laissez-passers with re-entry permits approved by the Israeli Ministry of Interior. Registration: The State Department advises American citizens who plan to be in the region for a substantial period of time to register at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv or the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem. When registering, U.S. citizens can obtain updated information on travel and security in the area. No. 97-169 This replaces the Consular Information Sheet dated January 22, 1997, to provide new information about travel documentation for Palestinian Americans, and to update the sections on entry/exit requirements, terrorism and security, and arrest and detentions. ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- The "travel-advisories(a)stolaf.edu" mailing list is the official Internet and BITNET distribution point for the U.S. State Department Travel Warnings and Consular Information Sheets. To unsubscribe, send a message containing the word "unsubscribe" to: travel-advisories-request(a)stolaf.edu Archives of past "travel-advisories" postings are available at the URL: "http://www.stolaf.edu/network/travel-advisories.html" or via Gopher: gopher.stolaf.edu, Internet Resources/US-State-Department-Travel-Advisories

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A Geodesic Society?
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text X-Sender: rah(a)pop.sneaker.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Fri, 20 Feb 1998 08:36:21 -0500 To: e$(a)vmeng.com From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: A Geodesic Society? Sender: <e$(a)vmeng.com> Precedence: Bulk The following is something I wrote for a private online conference sponsored by Nikkei, the Japanese financial news organization. Since they're supposedly combing the list for quotable bon mots, I may end up in the Japanese papers. :-). Anyway, longtime residents of this list have seen me say this kind of stuff before, but for those who haven't, the following explains the kinds of effects I think the combination of ubiquitous public networks and financial cryptography can have. Cheers, Bob Hettinga --- begin forwarded text X-Sender: rah(a)pop.sneaker.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 00:24:07 -0500 To: gis-ec(a)nikkei.co.jp, gis-net(a)nikkei.co.jp From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [gis-asia 10] A Geodesic Society? Cc: gis-asia(a)nikkei.co.jp Reply-To: gis-asia(a)nikkei.co.jp X-MLserver: majordomo-1.94.1 k-patch-2.0-alpha p-patch-1.0 X-sequence: gis-asia 10 Sender: owner-gis-asia(a)tokyo.nikkei.co.jp Precedence: bulk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- As the token cryptoanarchist around here, I've been lurking way too long, mostly because I'm working on this financial cryptography conference we're doing in Anguilla next week. However, A lot of good stuff has gone by on all of these groups, and I think it's time I put my oar in and earned my keep a bit before I enter the maelstrom of next week's FC98 conference, and loose my chance to say anything here until it's all over. The first topic I'd like to talk about is something which is more general than my ostensible commercial focus in these discussions, and, after I've said my piece here, I'll go back to the commerce list and pay more attention to that end of things. I have a little more to say there on what you can do with the technology of money on public networks, though I'll drop a few hints here to get people thinking about them. My observation about networks in general is a rather obvious one when you think about it: our social structures map to our communication structures. As intuitive as it is to understand, this observation provides great insight into where the technology of computer assisted communication will take us in the years ahead. Because of Moore's Law and its effect of collapsing the price of semiconductors by half every 18 months, our telecommunication architectures have changed from hierarchical networks, where it's cheaper to add lines than it is to add expensive switching nodes, to geodesic networks, where it is ever-exponentially cheaper to add microprocessor switches instead of now relatively more expensive transmission lines. This isn't new. In fact, it's outlined in Peter Huber's landmark "The Geodesic Network", written in 1986 as a report for Judge Harold Greene as part of the Modified Final Judgement which broke up American Telephone and Telegraph, and with it the US telephone monopoly. I believe the original version is still available from the US Government Printing Office, and I know that you can order a revised edition from Peter Huber's law firm in Washington. Huber himself is now a famous technology analyst from the Manhattan Institute and a Forbes columnist, among other things. In "The Geodesic Network", Huber observed that because the network was becoming more and more geodesic, competition in telecommunications was becoming much easier. That's because switching, a scarce thing which had theretofore caused economies of scale and resultant "natural" monopoly, was becoming cheaper and cheaper to build, and thus causing *dis*economies of scale in the telephone markets. One can almost hear Huber doing a little heavy lifting from the Marines in report's conclusion, which was, essentially, "Deregulate 'em all, and let God sort 'em out." It's nice to see that we're finally getting to see deregulation of the "last mile" of the US telephone network 10 years after Huber's recommendation. As it is, it took *me* almost 10 years to realize something else about geodesic networks. It's something which required me getting back on the internet 4 years ago, after not being there since grad school, and discovering that financial cryptography -- that is, the cryptographic protocols for internet payment -- was much more important than the project management software I had wanted to sell on the net at the time. My realization was, if Moore's Law creates geodesic communications networks, and our social structures -- our institutions, our businesses, our governments -- all map to the way we communicate in large groups, then we are in the process of creating a geodesic society. A society in which communication between any two residents of that society, people, economic entities, pieces of software, whatever, is geodesic: literally, the straightest line across a sphere, rather than hierarchical, through a chain of command, for instance. This seems like a very simple truth these days. A "motherhood", as people in American business like to say. But, once you start thinking about the world in the terms of geodesic networks versus hierarchical ones, the world changes. A Buckminster Fuller version of satori, if you will, though I'm sure Bucky didn't think of human society in geodesic terms, at least from what I've read of his work. His "World Game", for instance, is primarily about the hierarchical centralization and redistribution of resources in an industrial fashion. But, as it was, Bucky Fuller had discovered a geometric archtype which was deeper than even his capacious understanding of its implications had gotten him before. So in light of this observation, for fun, let's look at human history in a few paragraphs. :-). Humans first lived in small groups on the African savanna. An artifact of this life is the fact that most people can't have serious emotional relationships with more than about 12 people, depending on how you define serious. :-). Think of it as the carrying capacity of the human "switch", and things get interesting. These small groups communicated geodesically. When you wanted to talk to someone, you went up and talked to them. Then we developed agriculture and its resulting food surpluses, people tended to congregate at the crossroads of trade routes, and that's where the first cities began. Civilization means, literally, "life in cities", remember? Once we had large groups of people in a single place, we had lots of information to pass around, but we also had expensive humans "switching" that information who were only able to trust about 12 people at any time. So, we had to develop hierarchical "networks", social organizations in other words, to move that information around. Notice we finesse the whole trust problem by using the entire hierarchy as one entity in everyone's trusted-person list. That's why people die for king and country, for instance, instead of just their family hunter-gatherer clan. So, we can now see the ancient city-state as a hierarchy of power, economics, whatever. We can also see ancient empires as a hierarchies of city states, and so on. Notice that the size of any given hierarchy in geographic terms is determined by the *speed* of communications it posesses. Athenian triremes were very secure ways to move goods and information in a relatively lawless Agean. Roman roads and galleys didn't just haul goods quickly, they moved information as well. Staged Mongol riders could carry messages across their own short-lived empire from a capital near China to the gates of Warsaw in as little as 14 days. Napoleon invented his 10-mile-an-hour stagecoach and highway system for exactly the same reason, and could almost legitimately call himself an emperor for the feat alone. That brings us to the modern nation state, which, I claim, is entirely the result of industrial communications technology. That is, you have increasingly faster communications, from sailing ships to trains to telegraphy and finally telephony, but you still have humans switching information. That gives you larger and larger communication, and thus social, hierarchies. Up until the automation of telephone switching -- paradoxically brought about a demand for universal service in exchange for that ultimate industrial hierarchy, the US telephone monopoly -- things just kept getting bigger and bigger. One could even see the increasing size of government in this century as an "antihierarchy" funded by the forcible confiscation or political extortion of economic rents from the large industrial hierarchies where industrial society's money was being made in the first place. For a tasty little digression, Marxism then can be seen as simple anti-industrialism, and an intriguing validation of Bertrand Russell's comments about the similarity of Marxism and the feudal aristocracy it hated so much. Hegel can't come to Marx's rescue here at all, because, for all it's anarchistic pretensions, Marxism can now be seen as merely industrialism's hierarchical antithesis, and not something "beyond capitalism". Besides, trading has been around since the savana itself. It's hard to imagine something antithetical to trade -- and have the result be human, anyway. :-). Okay. Now let's look at the future, shall we? Oddly enough, the "future" starts with the grant of telephone monopoly to AT&T in the 1920's in exchange for universal telephone service. When AT&T figured out that a majority of people would have to be telephone operators for that to happen, it started to automate switching, from electricomechanical, to electronic (the transistor was invented at Ball Labs, remember), to, finally, semiconducting microprocessors. Which, Huber noted, brought us Moore's Law, and, finally, that mother of all geodesic networks, the internet. So, seen this way, using the hierarchy-to-geodesy synthesis (speaking of Hegel :-)), a lot of things jump out right at us. Let's look at financial operations, for example. One can see, for instance, that the thing we call disintermediation in the capital markets is in fact a process leading to something I call *micro*intermediation, where large human decision hierarchies, like the New York Stock Exchange, or money center banks, are being outcompeted by large integrated proprietary computer networks, like the NASDAQ interbrokerage network, or Fidelity Investments here in Boston. Yet, these financial versions of big dumb bulletin boards, which still need humans to operate them on behalf of the customer, will themselves be replaced someday by smaller, more specialized and automated entities operating in increasingly smaller market niches, and, we aren't just talking about financial "shovelware", with database-driven web forms, either. Someday, for instance, a couple of portfolio managers from Fidelity could strike out on their own peculiar investment specialty, and set up a web server to handle their investor relations, but in a way that financial operations people thought was obsolete decades ago. Using financial cryptgraphy like David Chaum's blind signature protocol, our portfolio managers could just issue digital *bearer* certificates, right over the net to their customers, representing shares in the portfolio they manage, rather than keep track of all a given client's transactions in a database for posterity. Even more fun, using the digital bearer *cash* they get from the sale of those certificates, they could turn right around and instantly buy debt, equity, or any derivative thereof, in digital bearer form, of course, without waiting for any transactions to settle through a clearinghouse of any kind. Why? Because knowing that you've digitally signed a unique blop of bits and honoring the promises those various outstanding blops represent is a whole lot easier, faster, and, of course, cheaper than keeping track of every transaction you make for seven years, or whatever your friendly nation state says you have to do so they can send somebody to jail if that person lies to you. And, of course, digital bearer settlement is *much* faster than waiting for all those book-entries to percolate through various clearinghouses, banks, brokerages, and other financial intermediaries in order for a trade to clear and settle. Financial cryptography is a direct consequence of Moore's Law. You can't do it without computers, and, more important, lots of cheap computers on a network. But, you can do a lot of very neat things with it, as we've seen above. In fact, the protocols of financial cryptography will be the glue which holds a geodesic economy, if you will, together. And, of course, as Deke Slayton put it, "No bucks, no Buck Rogers." No geodesic economy, no geodesic society. I joke about VISA being replaced someday by an innumerable swarm of very small underwriting 'bots' whose job it is to form an ad hoc syndicate which buys the personal digital bearer bond issue you floated for today's lunch. In a geodesic market, the one-to-many relationships of hierarchical book-entry-settled industrial finance, like checks and credit cards, becomes to the many-to-one relationship of the geodesic digital-bearer-settled cash and the personal bond syndicate. But, what, you ask, do I do when someone defrauds me? The neat thing about using financial cryptography on public networks is that you can use the much cheaper early-industrial trust models that went away because you couldn't shove a paper bearer bond down a telegraph wire. In short, reputation becomes everything. Like J. Pierpont Morgan said 90 years ago, "...Character. I wouldn't buy anything from a man with no character if he offered me all the bonds in Christendom." In a geodesic market, if someone commits fraud, everyone knows it. Instantly. And, something much worse than incarceration happens to that person. That person's reputation "capital" disappears. They cease to exist financially. Financial cryptographers jokingly call it reputation capital punishment. :-). The miscreant has to start all over with a new digital signature, and have to pay through the nose until that signature's reputation's established. A very long and expensive process, as anyone who's gone bankrupt will testify to. So, you don't need biometric identity to stop non-repudiation. Translated, that means that since you're moving secure digital bearer certificates over an insecure private network like the internet, and not moving insecure debits and credits over a secure private network like the SWIFT system, you don't need audit trails to send someone to jail if they make the wrong book entry. Instead, you trust the issuer of a given piece of digital bearer cash, say, and not the person who gave it to you, just like you trust the issuer of a given currency today. Biometric identity is orthogonal to reputation in, um, "cypherspace". And, of course, a financial intermediary like the above issuer of digital bearer cash is not about to destroy its reputation for the sake of a very small transaction like the one you're doing, any more than the Fed would demand 6 one dollar bills in exchange for one five dollar bill just to make an extra buck. Well, not since they started listening to Friedman, anyway. :-) Microintermediation means what it says. Financial intermediaries never go away. You can't have markets, much less efficient ones, without financial intermediaries buying things low and selling them high. Renting their reputations to ensure transaction liquidity, in other words. This is at the essense of Von Mises' "Calculation Argument" against planned economies, and the defunct economy of the ex-Soviet Union is mute testament to that particular economic truth. Moore's Law, I like to say, operates like a surfactant of information, breaking great globs of concentrated information fractally into smaller and smaller bits, like so much grease in soapy dishwater. Capital, for the most part, can now be converted into information and instantantly bought or sold, or, more to the point, instantly settled and cleared in digital bearer form, in increasingly smaller and smaller bits, by smaller and smaller and increasingly more automated financial intermediaries. Microintermediated, in other words. What we get is a world where anything which can be digitized and sent down a wire will be auctioned off in real-time in cash-settled markets. Stuff like capital we've seen, but lots of other things, which are not immediately intuitive. Machine instructions -- teleoperated or not. Software of all kinds including entertainment and art. Bandwidth; I talk about a router saving enough micromoney out of switching income to buy a copy of itself. Maybe even adjudication and physical force, someday. After all, who says we have to buy violence from the local force monopolies we now call nation states, especially if we can get it cheaper and better -- and possibly in smaller amounts -- in a competitive auction market? Curioser and curioser, as Alice used to say... I mean, the nation-state's just another hierarchical artifact of industrial communication technology, right? Besides, If everyone's paying for things in cash and no book entry taxes can be collected because there aren't any book entries, then, as someone said on a Harvard Law School list a few years ago, "What happens when taxes become a tip"? Of course, there are various cypherpunks out there who say things like "Write softare, not laws.", which should make those folks on Mass Ave in Cambridge more than a little nervous themselves. So, welcome to the geodesic future. Not hoping to attract the wrath of the famous curse, isn't it an, um, interesting place? Cheers, Bob Hettinga -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.5.3 iQEVAwUBNOvB0cUCGwxmWcHhAQHVUAgAgYFUDcKLcsTNnevVmPaTp7lXxLo59oMI qChTR7TmeEi0W6SgSn4nUd5zlJiBkx1ut6n2tIasvfpXgd3OaLqkPo9ZNSrMQZE7 8C1d5dI42/VgN36fDPgB/zVxNrqxDNIFYdOf9aH1A7u4TYUJTe9PSSQdfKxzMyTf FQ+IfAzJjC3PFfxh566ghtHea7n235djGvAd8oHpr0SKBaSfu7jQjGUeecMDcTlg ZzQf7V51MFcgKd/UPi2dybzYZoK8bIb7aJ9cazGc5k1chUOeVOykpW4EIvXZrBs7 Z0oRQfxwU/u+oLpA8Vt7xdK0qCTRLdxnsTzEFLUjTH/70ep3YNcgRA== =9Xak -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/> --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Where people, networks and money come together: Consult Hyperion http://www.hyperion.co.uk/ info(a)hyperion.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Full-Strength Cryptographic Solutions for Worldwide Electronic Commerce http://www.c2.net/ stronghold(a)c2.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Like e$? Help pay for it! For e$/e$pam sponsorship or donations, <mailto:rah@shipwright.com> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>

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Fwd: Big Brother Sees through walls (from the spyking list)
by sunder 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

1)From: "George Martin" <gmartin(a)kic.or.jp> Subject: News Release: High-Tech Surveillance NEWS FROM THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY 2600 Virginia Avenue, NW, Suite 100 Washington DC 20037 Do you have any privacy left when Big Brother can spy on you from space -- or through your walls? WASHINGTON, DC -- Spy satellites. Gamma ray scanners. Thermal-imaging devices. It's not science fiction -- it's a list of the exotic, high-tech surveillance equipment the government now uses to monitor, track, and arrest American citizens, the Libertarian Party pointed out today. "Yesterday's science fiction has become today's political reality," said Steve Dasbach, the party's national chairman. "High-tech military equipment that was once used against foreign armies is now being used against American citizens on a routine basis." As a result, the Fourth Amendment's protection against "unreasonable search" is under technological siege, he warned -- and government agencies are rushing to take advantage of this new power. "Most people don't realize it, but law enforcement agencies are now spying on us through the walls of our houses, taking high-resolution photographs of us from space, and conducting drug tests based on trace elements of chemicals in the air," said Dasbach. Paranoid fantasy? Not at all: Such high-tech surveillance equipment is becoming an increasingly common tool for law enforcement, according to reports in USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. Here's a sampling of how state and federal agencies are using this terrifying technology to spy on Americans: * In North Carolina, county governments use high-resolution spy satellite photographs to search for property improvements that might increase property tax assessments. * On the Mexican border, police use a "gamma ray scanner" to check tanker trucks for contraband, scanning right through the vehicle's metal sides. * The Naval Surface Warfare Center has developed an "ion sniffer," a metal box that analyzes the chemical makeup of the air -- and can detect, for example, traces of cocaine through the skin days after drug use. * In Georgia, the state's Department of Revenue will start using NASA satellites to examine the state's 58,910 square miles for illegal timber cutting. * In New Jersey, California, and other states, police use thermal imaging devices to scan houses for unusual heat sources that could indicate indoor marijuana growing operations. Houses can be scanned while police sit in their cruisers on the street. * And in Arizona, the state's Department of Water Resources uses spy satellite photographs to monitor 750,000 acres of state farmland, and compares the images to a database to discover which farmers don't have irrigation permits. Even worse: The federal government will spend another $4.5 million this year to develop even more intrusive surveillance equipment. Currently under development by the Justice Department: A "super x-ray" -- combining traditional x-ray technology, ultra-sound imaging, and computer-aided metal detectors -- to reveal items hidden under clothes from up to 60 feet away. The courts are currently wrestling with the implications of the new technology, debating the limits of the government's power to "search" individuals from a distance with high-tech gadgets. Several contradictory court decisions have already emerged, for example, about whether thermal-imaging searches are Constitutional. Meanwhile, Republican and Democratic politicians continue to look for new uses of the technology -- with some government officials already talking about using satellite surveillance to track items as small as backyard porches to check for zoning violations and construction permits. "In the name of fighting crime, politicians seem eager to obliterate the protections against unreasonable search, with equipment that Americans used to only read about in Tom Clancy technothrillers," said Dasbach. "It's time for the American public to wake up and realize that Big Brother is here today -- and he's got a gamma ray scanner in his hand." -- =====================================Kaos=Keraunos=Kybernetos============== .+.^.+.| Ray Arachelian |Prying open my 3rd eye. So good to see |./|\. ..\|/..|sunder(a)sundernet.com|you once again. I thought you were |/\|/\ <--*-->| ------------------ |hiding, and you thought that I had run |\/|\/ ../|\..| "A toast to Odin, |away chasing the tail of dogma. I opened|.\|/. .+.v.+.|God of screwdrivers"|my eye and there we were.... |..... ======================= http://www.sundernet.com ==========================

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FWD: Confirmations of Echelon (from Spy King)
by sunder 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

4)From: mkw-detective(a)t-online.de (MK-Wirtschaftsdienst GmbH) Subject: NSA spying in Europe The german online-magaine "Com!" (author: ulrike.duhm(a)t-online.de) brought an article about the report of the european parliament. Here a summary: The european parliament reported, that the american secret service NSA is monitoring emails, phonecalls and faxes. The informations are forwarded from London and Menwith Hill via satellite to Fort Meade in Maryland. Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, England, is the biggest spy post of the world, that for the NSA collects political, economical, military and private informations from europe and the former Sowjetunion. The 48 year old Glyn Ford, member of the Labour-Party is behind this report. Author of the 100 page document is Steve Wright of the Manchester Omega foundation. The complete report can be found under: www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/te/1393/anchor1.html For the first time, the european parliament confirmed the existence of the spy network Echelon, the american part of the spysystem UKUSA. 1948, the USA, England, Canada, Australia and New Zeeland signed a secret contract, the so called "United Kingdom - United States Agreement" (UKUSA). Goal of it is the collective espionage. Via an international ring of agents, the partners are exchanging informations. The german hackers "Chaos Computer Club" (www.ccc.de) thinks, that the european eMail-user is trapped in a net of foreign forces. They are concerned, that the newest versions of the encryption software PGP are in part not compatible with older versions. The result: The exchange between different versions is not possible. For the computer club, that is no coincidence: the hackers from Hamburg, Germany, believe, that a contract between USA and Germany exists, that Germany is not allowed to use a software, that the NSA cannot look in." So far some excerpts out of the article. Here some homepages: Glyn Ford: www.zen.co.uk/home/page/glyn.ford/index.htm NSA: www.nsa.gov:8080 european parliament: www.europarl.eu.int Heise newsticker: www.telepolis.de/newsticker/data/ae-09.01.98-000 spy post Menwith Hill: www.fas.org/irp/facility/menwith.htm Electronic telegraph: www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=000602131144806&rtmo= OsKsx2bq&atmo=OsKsx2bq&pg=/et/97/12/16/ecspy16.html Greetings from Germany Rolf G. Wilmink MK-W Security and Investigations Member: BID, NAIS, WAD www.mknet.de/mkw mkw-detective(a)t-online.de -- =====================================Kaos=Keraunos=Kybernetos============== .+.^.+.| Ray Arachelian |Prying open my 3rd eye. So good to see |./|\. ..\|/..|sunder(a)sundernet.com|you once again. I thought you were |/\|/\ <--*-->| ------------------ |hiding, and you thought that I had run |\/|\/ ../|\..| "A toast to Odin, |away chasing the tail of dogma. I opened|.\|/. .+.v.+.|God of screwdrivers"|my eye and there we were.... |..... ======================= http://www.sundernet.com ==========================

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Last Chance ...less than 149 copies left! Plus FREE Bonus.
by J. Adam Hewison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear Fred, The folks who produce The 1998 ULTIMATE FUTURES TRADING GUIDE, just informed me that they have less than 149 copies available for sale Check it out at: http://www.marketdepot.com/products/utg/ See what the GUIDE has to say about El Nino ... and what effect it will have on the economy and the markets and ultimately your money. Featured New In The 1998 Guide : * Annual Price Projections on Every Major Commodity * Seasonal Chart Trends * El Nino Weather Impact * 15 Year Historical Chart Reference - New Contracts * Hundreds of Essential Fundamental & Technical Charts * 233 Commodity Trend Timing Windows * Key US & International Tables on Supply, Demand * Cycle Timing & Anniversary Dates * Government Report Dates, Futures & Options Expirations * Fundamental & Technical Forecasts * And much, much more! (over 17,500 sold this year alone). ORDER NOW and RECEIVE A SPECIAL FREE BONUS: "The 17 Most Important Candlestick Formations" It's our way of saying Thank You for your business. YOU HAVE NO RISK with our 30-DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE. Even if you return the Guide for a FULL REFUND, (excluding shipping and handling charges), the "The 17 Most Important Candlestick Formations" is yours to keep. With only one printing of the '98 guide SUPPLIES ARE (seriously, seriously) LIMITED. When the '98 Guide is sold out, that's it. There will be no other press runs. ORDER NOW as we have less than 149 copies GO TO: http://www.marketdepot.com/products/utg/ or order NOW by calling any of the numbers below. 888-MKT-DEPOT 888-658-3376 or 410-867-7490 (9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Monday - Friday Fax 410-867-4203 or order online 24-hours a day. A perfect companion to the '98 Guide is "The Traders Logbook" This simple, easy to use Logbook makes certain your orders and positions are accurate, and creates a history of your trades to show where you go right and wrong. And, what can be very important, it as also valuable evidence in a case of dispute with your broker. Check out the Logbook at: http://www.marketdepot.com/products/logbook Thank you for your time, and remember I personally endorse both these products and stand behind them with our 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE Policy. That's right. You must be 100% satisfied with the product or will will refund you the entire purchase price. No hassles, no questions. No risk to you. Thank you for your time, Adam Hewison President of INO Global Markets. P.S. Judging by the enormous response and success we had with our initial mailing, I expect we will sell out of the remaining 149 Guides quickly. To avoid disappointment, I recommend that you order as soon as possible. Orders will be processed on a first come first served basis. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ IMPORTANT NOTICE You received this e-mail because your name and e-mail address were entered at a website operated by INO Global Markets. We specialize in futures and options information. Our web sites are located at http://www.ino.com, http://www.quotewatch.com and http://www.globalcharts.com. Products and services connected with the futures and options trading are marketed on our sites and by e-mail. We have a strict practice to avoid, where possible, sending out unsolicited e-mails. If you wish to instruct us to discontinue sending e-mails to you. please reply to this message. Make sure you insert the word REMOVE in the subject line of the return e-mail, otherwise we may not see it. Thank you. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ****** Other recommended INO Global Markets sites ****** http://www.ino.com The Web Center for Futures and Options Traders. http://www.marketcenter.com FREE resources for the Trader. http://www.marketdepot.com #1 Superstore for Futures and Options Traders http://options.quotewatch.com FREE stock, futures and Index Options http://quotewatch.com FREE Intraday Charts, Quotes and News http://www.managedmoney.com FREE resource for picking a money manager http://www.ino.com/rovers Everythings FREE! http://www.globalcharts.com The Premier charting service on the Web http://www.ino.com/power Options Traders Heaven!

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On War, Legends, and Crypto (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Fri, 20 Feb 1998 14:06:36 -0500 > From: Anonymous <anon(a)anon.efga.org> > Subject: On War, Legends, and Crypto Are you proposing that Cypherpunks are the Sheriff and his posse or the outlaws? > There is an old story about a band of outlaws in the wild west. The local > sheriff and his men had decided to make an example of this group of > troublemakers, and chased them into their hideout in a cave outside of > town. > After a few weeks a man came riding by to tell the Sheriff that the outlaws > had just robbed a train in the next town, and everyone was wondering what > the law enforcement idiots were doing guarding an empty cave instead of > chasing the criminals. > > It seems that the cave had another way out. Whether or not this story is > true, it illustrates an important point - The battle which is won, is the > one not fought. >From the trainrobbers perspective this is certainly true. From the Sheriff's perspective it shows the futility of his job if his goal is to stop all crime. Are the Cypherpunks here to rob trains or to keep trains from being robbed? ____________________________________________________________________ | | | When a man assumes a public trust, he should | | consider himself public property. | | | | Thomas Jefferson | | | | | | _____ 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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