December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

ASHCROFT 2000 RIP?
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:04 PM -0500 on 11/6/98, National Review DC wrote: > ASHCROFT 2000 RIP? > Gov. Mel Carnahan (D., Mo.) has announced he will challenge Sen. John > Ashcroft's (R., Mo.) re-election. It's an ominous move for the freshman > senator's presidential bid. Sen. Phil Gramm had a tougher race than > usual following his disastrous 1996 run for the presidency, and he was > running against a political nobody. Gov. Carnahan is politically > formidable, and could give Ashcroft a run for his money even without the > distractions, missed votes, and potential embarrassments of a > presidential campaign. Ashcroft now must worry about the Dornan effect. > > On the other hand, Ashcroft would be able to convert any funds raised in > a presidential campaign to his Senate race if he lost the former. But > handicappers already question how much he can raise. ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 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'

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verisign digital id's for outlook <shudder>
by jkthomson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A quick question for all you security-savvy people. Our IT instructor has asked the class to sign up for verisigns' 60-day trial of a class 1 digital id. pfaugh. give me a copy of PGP anyday! at least I can (easily) take my keys with me! I also understand that a well (poorly?) written activeX applet can grab my key basically without my knowledge (to speak nothing of the other myriad holes in win98/95) My question is, where the hell is the private key kept on the users box? How is it protected against attack? I had to voice my displeasure with the instructor that I could not take the ID with me on a floppy so that the night class would not have potential access, but got the usual 'it is secure enough, let it be' attitude. Thanks in advance for any information! ----------------------------------------------------------------------- james 'keith' thomson <jkthomson(a)bigfoot.com> www.bigfoot.com/~ceildh jkthomson:C181 991A 405C EAFB 2C46 79B5 B1DC DB78 8196 122D [06.07.98] ceildh :1D79 59AF ED75 5945 6003 8240 DA34 ACCA 9DE4 6BC9 [05.14.98] ICQ:354111 <keys> at pgp.mit.edu ...and former sysop of tnbnog BBS ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "You shouldn't overestimate the IQ of crooks." - Stuart Baker, of NSA explaining why crooks and terrorists who are smart enough to use data encryption would be stupid enough to choose DES =======================================================================

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RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)
by Albert P. Franco, II 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: Jim Choate <ravage(a)einstein.ssz.com> >Subject: RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd) > >Forwarded message: > >> Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1998 12:34:34 -0500 >> From: Petro <petro(a)playboy.com> >> Subject: RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone >> (fwd) > >> In other words, a Black market is when you trade either illegal >> goods illegally, or legal goods illegally. > >Too strict and unrealistic a definition of black market. I would add the clause illegal goods (apparently) legally. This covers the case where stolen property is moved through legitimate channels. Even if the government doesn't restrict and legitimize the channels there must be restrictions on theft and inappropriate acquisition (fraud) of goods (and services) otherwise the result is not free-market, but rather barbarism and brute force rule. Under the "free-for-all" definition of free market, the final result would actually be slavery (since you wouldn't produce the items that I keep stealing from you unless I hold a gun to your head), and war (in order to get resources I can pay or I can steal, since I don't like to pay, I'll just get a bigger army and steal it from you). Sounds drastic? There are a few examples today in the parts of Africa controlled by warlords. > >> If there are no illegal goods, and there is no regulations limiting >> trading, then the black market cannot exist. > >Of course not since we've now legitimized theft and murder with your >definition. > Nothing is EVER black and white. And free-market can never be 100% free or it will cease to be a market. APF

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RE: Quick, Dear -- Beat Me
by Albert P. Franco, II 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: "Lynne L. Harrison" <lharrison(a)dueprocess.com> >Subject: RE: Quick, Dear -- Beat Me >At 10:47 AM 11/5/98 -0500, Petro wrote: >>At 12:08 AM -0500 11/5/98, Blanc wrote: >>>From Duncan Frissell: >>> >>>I just went to the bank I do business with this week to open a new account. >>>They wanted my social security number, (which they actually already have on >>>record), and during a search on her handy database, the Customer Assistance >>>clerk informed me that there was another person in Florida using the same >>>number. Long list of problems which could result from someone using your SSN snipped... >All in all, you should seriously reconsider your decision of not reporting >the problem. > > So much for the SSN "never" becoming a national ID number! Since your SS account and pension can be negatively impacted, this tends to reinforce the idea that your SSN should be a secret. But how can we keep it a secret if they keep putting it on public documents such as drivers licenses? Seems to me that when they are all done making the SSN the official National ID number they will need to give us a NEW SSN that is secret, kind of like a PIN to unlock and validate our National ID and SS accounts. ...and latter a PIN to protect the PIN... APF

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Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sat, 07 Nov 1998 01:33:18 -0500 > From: Michael Hohensee <mah248(a)nyu.edu> > Subject: Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd) > No government can protect individual rights. That isn't a reasonable statement. There is nothing in the definition or application of 'government' or 'individual rights' that preclude this. The issue becomes in a practical sense how the practitioners of a government system respect individual rights. If they are willing to do away with them to protect them (as we seem to be moving toward in this country) then of course there are no individual rights. Of course, this implies there are no collective rights either. > The only way one could do > so would be if it: (a) could predict the future, and act to prevent > certain futures from happening; or (b) it controls every aspect and > motion of each individual's life, thereby ensuring that nobody steps out > of line. What has that to do with protecting individual rights? Clarify please. > All any state can do is threaten to "retaliate" against (why not just > say "attack") people who disobey its edicts. In order for this threat > to be credible, the state must wield sufficient power to kill any > individual (or group of individuals) who would stand against it. If it > does not have this power, it cannot govern. This is a quaint and completely artificial distinction. > citizens. As often seems the case today, for example. We also see quite a few situations where the opposite occurs as well. > The system you suggest, which I assume consists of a state with a > "minimal" amount of power, run by enlightened people, is in a state of Anyone who assumes noble oblige is an idiot. There are no enlightened people, intelligence and wealth no more prepare an individual for a position in government than they prepare them for anything else. Rich/intelligent people don't make less mistakes than those who aren't. > extremely unstable equilibrium (if it is indeed in equilibrium). If it If you're talking of Hayek's equilibrium, it's nothing more than a bastardization of a thermodynamics term to represent the status quo. Equilabrium in the economic sense simply means that people do today what they did yesterday. In general they do about as often as they don't. > wields just enough power to enforce its will, that power can be used by > evil men to increase its power. Evil? Where did religion come into this at? > Just look at what happened after the Constitutional coup took place in > the fledgling USA. Remember the Whiskey Rebellion? When we lost the > Articles of Confederation, we were taking the first steps down the road > to the tyranny of today. The anti-federalists predicted this, although > they sorely underestimated how far it would go --assuming that it would > be stopped by another revolution. There have been several since then. The Civil War and the civil rights movement in the 60's are two good examples (on the opposite end of the 'use-of-violence' scales). > The minimalist state has been tried. No, that was a non-federalist state where the individual states acted as individuals in a collective. Because of the collective nature of the state governments it didn't work. A minimalist state would be anarchy. > The only truly free system is one in which there is no body of people > calling itself a government which can enforce its will over the > individual. The only way people can seem to be free living under such a > body is entirely dependent upon the good will of their masters, and this > is a shaky assumption to make. No it isn't the only way. The only way is to clearly define the duties of each level of government and build a system of checks and balances that prohibit them from moving outside their domains. A good first attempt at this was the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (in particular 9 & 10). The problem is that there are individuals who don't want to be limited in their authority. It's a person problem not a government problem. > How about: Any action that involves the initiation of force against the > property of another person (the person belongs to himself, of course) is > immoral. Morality? Why do you keep bringing religion and individual beliefs into it? A person is, they don't belong to anyone. It should be: Any act that harms a person or their property without their prior permission is a crime. There are no exceptions other than immediate personal self defence, which terminates upon the application of minimal force to guarantee the threat will not reoccur (in many cases this means kill the attacker). This should apply to all individuals participating in a governmental role as well. > This neatly tidies up the obvious question of exactly what "individual > rights" are. There's a partial list of them in the bill of rights, but > it is not complete, by its own admission. By it's own admission they are protected from denial by the 9th and 10th so they don't need to be listed (unlike the 10th lists the duties of the government system). The problem is conservatives and liberals alike don't respect those boundaries. They want more. > Furthermore, the above > definition excludes such dubious rights as the "right to an education", > the "right to welfare", etc. Now you're doing exactly what you are complaining about. Your defining others rights when you don't want them defining yours. People may very well have a right to welfare and an education (I believe people have a civil right to medical and legal advice gratis - stems from the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness). The issue isn't that. The issue is *what are the duties of the government as defined in its charter*. If those duties are not in there (and they're not) then it shouldn't be doing it without an amendment from the charter. > All of the above involve the initiation (or threat of initiation) of > force. Hence they are immoral, and the victims and any bystanders would > be morally justified in using force against the initiators. Of course, > this would not be true in a governed society, where the state must hold > a monopoly on the use of force, if only to maintain its own position. > Much less efficient. Go read the Constitution, it's true here in our governemnt though many people don't want it to be so. As a result they find all kinds of childish and inane reasons to deny the obvious. Like it or not the federal governments panapoly of current powers are as vacous as the king is naked. It's like executive orders, unless you happen to work for the executive branch they aren't worth the paper they're written on. Why? Because at no point is the office of President given this authority over anyone other than executive branch employees. He has no more authority to dictate general behaviour via that mechanism than you or I do - zero. Per the 10th there is not one sentence in the Constitution that delegates that authority to the office. > We've all got our pet peeves. Would you like to live under mine? Would > I like to live under yours? Can I trust you to be tolerant? Can I > trust your successors, 20 years from now? Can my descendants trust > subsequent successors, 200 years later? Experience tends to show the > contrary. There is more at stake than toleration or trust. You paint with too narrow a brush. If you're saying we should have anarchy then you're as kooky as the people who don't literaly interpret the Constitution. > The anarcho-capitalist free market is not one where "everything goes," > and there is indeed a strong concept of individual rights. What is > moral and not moral is defined by society on an individual basis. The > first and only rule is: First, it is one of everything-goes because there is no mechanism that will stop anybody from doing anything. There are NO concepts of *rights* in such a system, let alone individual rights. If anything the only rights are who has the capitalist backing to stave off the anarchic forces. That's not justice, equality, or respect for rights. > No one has the right to initiate force against another or another's > property. Attack me with your body and property and watch it happen junior. > This is the fundamental and only "social contract" we make. Anyone who > disagrees with this is obviously antisocial, and nobody's going to want > to live with him (or allow him to continue living, if he attacks > someone). Oh bullshit. There is much more involved like not stealing which isn't the use of force and allowed by your anarcho-capatilism as well as your definition of valid use of force above. It's gibberish. > >From this, morality follows. If X does Y to Z, and if Y is perceived as > immoral, then X is not going to be very popular with Z or anyone else, > unless he can make amends. No one will want to trade with him, be near > him, etc. This is a very strong motive to avoid doing immoral things. Will you get religion the hell out of here please. Y is obviously popular with X or else they wouldn't have used it. It further follows that there are more than one X-type out there. So your premise falls down on its face in the dirt. > If Y is really nasty, such as the initiation of force, then X is going > to be in *deep* trouble. With who? In an anarcho-capitalist society as you paint it the optimal strategy is to allow others to reduce your competition opening up the market for you. Let's take an example. Imagine we live on a street and we notice a person going from house to house down the other side of the street. What is our optimal strategy? It isn't to call the cops (there aren't any) and it isn't to immediately kill the intruder (it isn't our property after all) since there is an opportunity to make a considerable gain here improving our status in the society as a whole. The optimal strategy is to wait and let this bozo kill our neighbors up to our house and *then* kill the intruder. At that point we have just inhereted an entire street of houses and its included properties. You put up a fence across each end of the street and wallah, your own little fifedom. If you're really lucky something similar will happen on the next street over and they won't be as lucky at killing the intruder. Then after they are all dead and the intruder has consolidated their gains (probably by fencing their street in) you can begin to scheme ways of taking that property since its obvious yours is next. > Z may well shoot him out of self defense, and > even if he survives his action, he'll have to pay a *lot* of restitution > before people will trust him again, if ever. Law enforcement by > ostracism --read L. Neil Smith's "The Probability Broach", for a more > detailed description. Wait a second, there is no law to enforce here outside of make money, obtain property, keep somebody else from taking it. > In summary, a free market is far from being an immoral market. In fact, > it is the most moral market there is, since there is no state which > holds the "right" to initiate force. In summary a free-market is a anarchy of kill or be killed, take or get taken. He with the most goodies wins until somebody with a better strategy comes along. There is nothing to moderate the use of force, especialy when its the optimal strategy to increase ones holdings. Your spouting gibberish. ____________________________________________________________________ To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice. Confucius The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Stip club plays by rules and wins...for now [CNN]
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1998 11:34:45 -0600 > X-within-URL: http://customnews.cnn.com/cnews/pna.show_story?p_art_id=3130419&p_section_n…. > STRIP CLUB FINDS WAY AROUND CITY RESTRICTION: LET KIDS IN > > AP > 06-NOV-98 > > NEW YORK (AP) -- A New York City strip club has found a loophole that > allows it to wriggle past the mayor's crackdown on sex-oriented > businesses. > > The club says its policy is to admit kids -- if they're accompanied by > adults. > > Therefore, it argues, it's not an adult business. > > A judge agrees. > > Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is livid. [rest deleted] ____________________________________________________________________ To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice. Confucius The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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A question about the new ISP ruling and email...
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, I was pondering the draconian implications of the requirement to register ISP's. Would an email only site be an ISP under these regulations? What I had in mind was a box sitting here on a link to the Internet and several local dial-ins. When a user logged in they could start pine, elm, slip, or ppp. It would support inbound only telnet. The only commands that would execute besides the above would be exit, quit, bye. There would not need to be any directory access or related issues. The only storage avaiable would be quotas on email buffer size. Would such a commercial entity require registry to be protected? I have to talk with a lawyer and find out if TAG needs registered. If so then I'd be interested in participating in a civil liberties suit. ____________________________________________________________________ To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice. Confucius The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Identification and Privacy are not Antinomies
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Aaww horseplops[1]! In fact, great, festering, mid-path, sole-sticking horseplops! This argument is vacuous. As every small child knows, authentication != identification and, in most cases, only authentication is required and, the absence of identification implies privacy. Am I a UK citizen, a good credit risk, a club member in good standing, etc. An appropriate mechanism, a smartcard, can easily authenticate both itself (challenge-response) and the bearer via a biometric and/or PIN without revealing the identity of the holder. However, who holds out hope that such a sensible thing would ever be adopted by the powers-that-be. Nematode [1] The plop is a useful measure of human cogitation. As every small child knows, much good thinking is done whilst enthroned on the commode, since the evacuation of feces from the anus promotes the introduction of fresh material into the brain through the ears. After years of experimentation and careful measurement, we (the ISO labs) have observed a strong correlation between ideas and fecal bombardment of the receptive commodal pool and audible emissions therefrom. For example, it required only 0.3 plops to decide to vote for Clinton while a similar decision in favor of John Major required almost 5 plops. For the purposes of comparison, 10^6 homosapiens plop = 1 horseplop. While the relationship between megaplops, flops and MIPS is not yet clear, our ISO plop standard should be emitted soon. -----BEGIN PLOP SIGNATURE----- Version: PLOP for Personal Privacy Charset: nocommode NSACIAMOUSEaw6mkJhRWnHTzAQFMlgP/ZMM+14qUzy+w6AGSlOtAyrE2BBDSV3Hm Tlc0Ct7wyXV2CPEMzieCm4ZS0rzigkgTZTMCmEqYexEJkdSAU60WMHm3cr28UJIG ekx7N7aWKQ34u05dRrE+IVR329y0ia/2F8B7edZ7CqoydOJAnQxNIB1qohlCGlGT RYgOGVSpO04= =MF1K -----END PLOP SIGNATURE-----

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Identification and Privacy are not Antinomies (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1998 20:26:24 +0100 > From: Anonymous <nobody(a)replay.com> > Subject: Identification and Privacy are not Antinomies > Am I a UK citizen, a good credit risk, a club member in good > standing, etc. An appropriate mechanism, a smartcard, can easily > authenticate both itself (challenge-response) and the bearer via a biometric > and/or PIN without revealing the identity of the holder. > > However, who holds out hope that such a sensible > thing would ever be adopted by the powers-that-be. What the powers-that-be hold is realy irrelevant. The issue is what do we do to make sure that the powers-that-are-to-be don't have that option? ____________________________________________________________________ To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice. Confucius The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: A question about the new ISP ruling and email...
by Information Security 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: Jim Choate <ravage(a)EINSTEIN.ssz.com> > > Hi, > > I was pondering the draconian implications of the requirement to register > ISP's. Would an email only site be an ISP under these regulations? I dunno. But I've begun netcopping the Ignition-Point list on an ongoing basis (starting Friday), and they'll be an interesting test case of whether what they're doing is "fair use". Pobox.com/listbox.com is reluctantly assigning a person to receive (my) copyright complaints, and will register themselves with the FCO. I like to post whole articles myself. Anyway, for a test case, better them than me. ---guy ;-)

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