December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: appropriate laptop
by Michael Handler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 13 Aug 1994, Loren Fleckenstein wrote: > Advice, please: I plan on purchasing notebook PCs for myself and > colleagues to that are capable of running much-awaited Phil > Zimmermann's voice encryption program. I'll probably get something based > on the 486 DX2 chip. What type of sound card must these computers be > capable of accepting in order to run the encryptor? The specs I have say SoundBlaster, which I assume means just standard 8-bit SoundBlaster minimum, with 16-bit ASP or WaveBlaster not necessary or supported (at least at first...). All will become clear when Nautilus 0.2 is released, as VoicePGP will use that as its code base. The Mac version will just use the built-in sound hardware. The 486DX2 will be more than sufficient. Initially, the specs called for a 486 chip at least, but the Nautilus developer (forgot his name... Bill someone) said that a 386/33Mhz would be sufficient. ------------------------------------------------------------------ ------ Michael Brandt Handler -- Philadelphia, PA -- <grendel(a)netaxs.com> \bi/ PGP v2.6 public key available -- 1984: We're Behind Schedule \/

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Re: Anonymous posters & Misinformation
by anonymous＠extropia.wimsey.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-=> Quoting Jason Burrell to All <=- JB> mcdaniel(a)u.washington.edu (McDaniel) wrote: > Anonymity is possible with any e-mail address. I have noticed > however that a higher proportion of anonymous posters abuse > the trust of their fellow (and often gullible) netters with > clever deceptions and so on. I would love to see examples of this. "Macho" McDaniel seems to have a weed up his ass over the whole concept of anonymity on the net, and will flame any anonymous poster in any newsgroup. He simply doesn't get it. He presumably wants us all to wear red uniforms and advance in ranks in frontal assaults, "fight fair" and generally act like stationary targets in controversial netvenues. I was astonished to see the completely irrational flap the control addicts in rec.guns, talk.politics.guns and ca-firearms@ shell.portal.com put up when several people objected to the unilateral banning of anon posts. It was just incredible how these "freedom-loving Americans" couldn't handle the concept of anonymity or posts they couldn't _control_. I can't understand why they don't go get a job with Sarah Brady, the NSA or the BATF so they can make a paying career of oppressing others. Not once was a logical refutation of the anon argument posed but in spite of this the anti-anon hysteria prevailed. JB> Now, I could go into the process of forging mail using JB> the "magic 5*5", but I won't. I don't want to teach a bunch JB> of people to forge mail and give them a false sense of security. Yes, this is the whole point. If someone wants to hoax a newsgroup, he can _easily_ fabricate an "good" ID in the time it has taken me to write this message so far. If McDaniel is so phobic about remailered posts, _why doesn't he scroll past them and shut the fuck up?_ Anon posts _say_ they're anon and are posted on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Obviously McDaniel is too neurotic to do either and wishes us to share his personal problem. His argument about anon "net pollution" is also absurd, considering the staggering differential level of "pollution" generated by other perennial net-banes such as gross over-quoting and irrelevant cross-posting. This reminds me of the stingingly accurate net adage... "Sig files are annoying, juvenile, stupid and a waste of bandwidth. Of course, so are 90% of the posts on Usenet." McDaniel can save his tantrums and stick to moderated newsgroups populated by like minded netnazis. > My proposal would only make anonymos posters known to the list > owner. I believe it is a pretty much accepted belief that NSA > keeps track of atleast those users of anon.penet.fi.. so > who are they being anonymous from? Just the general readers. JB> Now here we go. The cypherpunks remailers don't have mapping tables. JB> They don't send back confirmations. The messages come out in JB> a form like: "From: nobody(a)shell.portal.com". Ignorance strikes again, as it did in the rec.guns exchange! Penet is a trivial, unencrypted remailer. It provides only the most simple anonymity. Other remailers are run from private, unlogged machines using PGP and sophisticated traffic-analysis countermeasures. If PGP has been made transparent by NSA cryptanalysts all bets are off, but otherwise the sophisticated use of chained, encrypted cypherpunks remailers makes anon-posting virtually bulletproof. JB> These remailers are designed to PREVENT the kind of thing you want to JB> do. Indeed! > Perhaps a crack-down on current anonymous abuses would encourage > responsible parties to develop services more responsive to > taking care of abusive usage and educating their users as to > their own responsibility. "Crack-downs"... I'm really getting tired of this mindset. No doubt McDaniel is salivating profusely waiting for Gore's Federally controlled "Information Superhighway" with all e-mail identified and tracable by use of Clinton's National ID "SmartCard" (don't laugh - this was a specific, stated purpose of the project). JB> This defeats the purpose of an anonymous remailer. If I'm going JB> to send anonymous E-MAIL/posts and then have someone else know about JB> it, it isn't very anonymous, is it? I should say not. > There are some groups where I would never want to see anonymous > posting restricted. Having seen McDaniel's flames of anon users in other forums, I _really_ doubt the sincerity of this statement.

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Tommy the Tourist's New Home
by nobody＠ds1.wu-wien.ac.at 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- werewolf(a)io.org (Mark Terka) asked: > > Tommy the Tourist <nobody(a)CSUA.Berkeley.EDU> (Anon User) wrote: > > > > Welcome back, Tommy, we missed you! <g> Hope you're enjoying your > > new (CSUA) "home"... (Time for everyone to update their > > "chain.ini" file, BTW.) > How come? Has soda gone down or something? Or has there been an address > change? Soda was down for a week while it was moved to a different location. The new address is "remailer(a)soda.csua.berkeley.edu". I'm told that the old address will continue to work for a limited time, but it's best to get in the habit of using the correct one. I also understand that the crypto archives have also moved, but I'm not really sure of the details. --- Diogenes -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAgUBLkWDGuRsd2rRFQ1JAQH9UQP/Y5IVnEPiOVtxYmaakHMxK9huPvdsOqsC qgaH9OUKEc6MDVz7NWI/ZtW9V8FqMGfEXEN0a4rMuvgyeq5P2VgqOuMWUcOOKwKP m8jEioG+AoJy6ZWRdufz8rkkc7rU73s9a2Xfktf62rG0PSjs7g9xJrjXPCKSk+PT 2iq18F2sBPo= =5LAw -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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pubring
by dwomack＠runner.utsa.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I just abused the school computer by downloading the public keyring for pgp at ftp.demon.co.uk. It's dated July 30, which is fine... but they have a caution about it no longer being updated automatically. Will anyone be starting a new public keyring after Sept 1? Regards, Dave

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Re: POST:Gaining ISDN Privacy with data encryption
by andreas.elbert＠gmd.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >Making the public ISDN network private is possible though data encryption to >maintain security, say a pair of ISDN researchers whose organization is soon >to become and ISDN user. > They probably are right :-) A daughter of the german PTT has been offering ISDN-DES-phones for some years now. Welcome to the Club !

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Zimmermann & Johnson at Sept. RMIUG
by adwestro＠ouray.Denver.Colorado.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have been told that noted Colorado crypto experts Phil Zimmermann and Mike Johnson, along with Phil's attorney, Phil Dubois, will be panelists at the September meeting of the Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group. The meeting will be on Tues. 9/13, 7-9 pm at NCAR in the Sovereign Republic of Boulder. Corrections/additional info gratefully accepted. Alan Westrope <awestrop(a)nyx.cs.du.edu> __________/|-, <adwestro(a)ouray.denver.colorado.edu> (_) \|-' PGP 2.6 public key: finger/servers PGP 0xB8359639: D6 89 74 03 77 C8 2D 43 7C CA 6D 57 29 25 69 23

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FYI
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Path: news.clark.net!news.sprintlink.net!neon.house.gov!hr.house.gov!JPX From: JPX(a)hr.house.gov Newsgroups: talk.politics.crypto Subject: Congressional Committee takes to the Net (long) Date: Fri, 12 Aug 1994 16:35:20 GMT Organization: Committee on Science, Space & Technology Lines: 130 Distribution: na Message-ID: <JPX.38.2E4BA4C8(a)hr.house.gov> NNTP-Posting-Host: 143.231.251.142 Summary: House Science Committee goes on-line Keywords: Congress House Science Committee This is the initial posting from the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology of the U.S. House of Representatives, chaired by the Honorable George Brown of California. We have agreed to serve as the "beta" testers for House Committees trying to learn how to use the Internet. We posted this message to some of the USENET newsgroups that discuss topics relevant to our jurisdiction over Federal civilian research and development activities to: (1) Increase the number of people who know we do have Internet access; (2) Indicate how we can be reached on the net; and (3) Start learning how to take advantage of this information system in our daily activities. Getting the Congress to use Internet has been discussed in a few threads on various USENET newsgroups of late. Some of you may be familiar with the E-Mail Pilot Project established by the Committee on House Administration, chaired by the Honorable Charlie Rose of North Carolina. Those Members of the House currently maintaining an electronic mailbox for constituent communications may be found by e-mailing "congress(a)hr.house.gov" with the text "HELP" or "INFO" in the message body. You will receive an automated response with the necessary instructions. Also, the text of legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives during the current Congress is now available on a W.A.I.S server located at the House Information Systems data center. The server may be accessed from the directory at quake.think.com or using the following information: Server: diamond Port: 210 Database Name: USHOUSE_house_bill_text_103rd It can also be found on gopher.house.gov in: Congressional Information/Legislative Resources The database contains the text of House bills beginning with October 1993 and is updated daily. What follows now is the message you will automatically receive in response to messages sent to housesst(a)hr.house.gov, the Committee's Internet address. It describes items like the Committee's gopher server, which you can also find at gopher.house.gov. ----------- begin ----------- Welcome to the electronic mailbox system for the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology of the U.S. House of Representatives. This Internet service is provided for ease of communication with the Members and staff of the Committee. If your message is addressed to a specific Member, it will be printed out in hard copy and forwarded to the Member's office for response by U.S. Mail. If your message is addressed to a staff member of the Committee, it will be forwarded electronically to that staff member for response. Depending on the nature of the response, it might reach you in either electronic or postal form. Messages for the Committee press office will be acknowledged electronically and then followed up on, if necessary, with material by post or fax. You can reach the press office directly via Internet at "sstpress(a)hr.house.gov". The Committee also maintains a bulletin board on the House of Representatives Internet gopher server at "gopher(a)hr.house.gov". Much of the public information material provided by the Committee is available on this gopher system. Much of this information also is available on the Committee's "Straight Talk" voice-response system. Dial 202/225-3018 and follow the menu instructions for a touch-tone telephone. Thank you for contacting the House Science Committee. Please be patient as we experiment with this new way of better serving your communications needs. If you wish to write to the Committee, please direct your correspondence to: Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 2320 Rayburn House Office Building U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515 ----------- end ----------- At this time, we suggest you supply both your e-mail and postal addresses in any communication to the Committee. Each office in Congress has its own policy for responding to public inquiries. So, if we forward your e-mail to a particular Member's office, they may choose to respond with a regular letter. Our Committee hopes to increase our use of e-mail in responding to public inquiries. We have chosen the following subset of USENET groups for our initial foray into the net.world: alt.california alt.cyberspace alt.dcom.telecom alt.politics.datahighway comp.dcom.telecom comp.org.cpsr.talk comp.org.eff.talk misc.education misc.education.science misc.legal sci.agriculture sci.astro sci.bio.ecology sci.chem sci.energy sci.engr sci.environment sci.geo.geology sci.math sci.med sci.misc sci.physics sci.research sci.space.policy talk.environment talk.politics.crypto Please feel free to repost this message to other groups that might find the information of value. Your comments on what should be carried by this channel of communications would also be welcomed. --------------- Committee on Science, Space, and Technology U.S. House of Representatives Washington, D.C. 20515 HOUSESST(a)HR.HOUSE.GOV DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in this posting are those of the sender and do not necessarily reflect those of the Committee, the Chairman or any Member of Congress.

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number of 2-way radios
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does anyone have rough figures on the number of cellular phones produced versus the number of military 2-way radios ever produced? I'd be willing to bet the former far exceeds the latter, but it would be nice to have real figures. - Carl

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e$: Economic Development of the Caribbean
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In article <CuIyqC.MHA(a)ecf.toronto.edu>, francis(a)ecf.toronto.edu (FRANCIS ALVIN CYRILLE) wrote: > What are the major factors hindering economic development in the Caribbean..? I've been interested in this for a long time. I've started to form some ideas about it, and here they are. 1. No effective public health system. (Not really socialized medicine, just sanitation, epidemiology, etc.) 2. No educational infrastructure. 3. Monopolistic control of political structures. 4. Monopolistic control of critical markets. The above are interrelated, thus the ranking is only superficial. As island states with few resources, the nations of the caribbean can't afford to have political and economic monoculture. Small islands with few resources (Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and the British Isles) must trade or die. Uniparty states, with sweetheart deals to extract resources and ship them away, tend to make their people poorer, unless there's an extreme premium on the resource (oil, guano, etc). Brunei, where the sultan owns everything and is the country's the richest in the world anyway (per capita) is a great example of being able to "afford" monopolistic political and market control. They have enormous oil reserves with which to pay for all the eggregious excesses of the government/theocracy, and still have lots left over for education, public health, and universal health access. It's interesting to think that that's pretty much what Fidel did in Cuba. His "premium resource" was a strategic position 90 miles off of Florida that was very very valuable to the USSR. Life gets better someplace only as the life expectancy goes up. This is called the Demographic Transition, and it is marked by a sharp decline in population growth as life expectancy crosses 50 years. People won't have children as a substitute for retirement pensions when they can see that they will be healthy enough to take care of themselves for most of their whole life. Children become a want rather than a need, and population growth tapers off. Most of the USA's population growth comes from immigration. Singapore has state-sponsored latin dance classes to get their citizens interested in having families earlier. (Go figure) The quickest way to drive up life expectancy is through public health. If people won't die from malaria or typhus or cholera or diptheria, or river blindness, or whatever, because their water's clean, and their wastes don't get back into their food chain, then their life expectancy doubles overnight. I stayed in the Galleon House in downtown Charlotte Amalie for a week a few years ago, and the open sewers are still right there out on the street. I remember seeing a "creek" running through an alluvial plain of shacks just outside St. John in Antigua, and the water was purple-green with raw sewage. The reason that this hasn't changed is because the population hasn't demanded it, and the reason for that is that they're not given enough education. The reason for that is that the governments are filled with people who want to line their own pockets, and can do so because they hold generational political dynasties. This is usually because of some sweetheart deal with an extractive monopoly/oligopoly, which can "contribute" large piles of cash to whoever does them a favor. If there was more of a trading tradition in the caribbean it would help drive growth. There are a few places where that has happened before and can happen again. St. Thomas, unencumbered by US government subsidy and regulation might be one, if those if monoparty cronyism didn't kill it. It had been a huge shipping and trading port for centuries. Now its primary function seems to be shaking down tourists. Trade of a sort, I suppose. Which leads me directly to another reason I'm interested in the small island nations of the caribbean. The idea of internet commerce. There are people in some circles in the net who think that the internet provides a perfect opportunity for people to buy and sell software and information securely and even anonymously. To do this properly one would need to reduce restrictions on cash transactions, the transfer of capital, and the use of strong cryptography. Cryptography is the enabling technology for the transfer of assets and money in a secure fashion over unsecure networks. The first result is that people can work anywhere they want. Personally, I think Boston is nice, but I'd rather hang in Cruz Bay for most of the year if I could get away with it. We just had a discussion in soc.culture.caribbean about the lack of full-blown USVI internet access which talked about that. You could have a whole class of "lifestyle refugees" coming from the developed world to the caribbean because they can work anywhere they want. This literally foriegn trade, only now a nation is re-exporting intellectual property. Sort of like a fair-weather maquilladora with imported gold-collar workers. Think about the development of america in the 19th century. The railroads brought immigrants from europe, who then homesteaded land and sold the agricultural products they grew to people who processed them into goods which generated foriegn exchange, which paid for interest on bonds that J.P. Morgan & Co. sold to the european money centers. Some of those bonds were then used to build more railroads, which brought in more settlers, etc. The other neat thing about this process is that it automatically brings in foriegn exchange and development capital which is independent of monopolistic controls. These "refugees" have to buy things, but they buy them from local, distributed sources: shops, builders, tradesmen, etc. Those people automatically have an independent entrepreneurial outlook, which is reflected eventually in the political and economic structure of the nation. You get a quasi-Jeffesonian nation of shopkeepers, tradesmen, and as their children are educated, technical/information professionals who work on the net for a living. This is how a nation can build a trading tradition from the ground up. Finally, the electronic money (e$ for short) which enables this commerce has to be denominated in something, probably dollars. The entities (call them banks, for the time being) have to live somewhere. These entities are responsible for moving assets and money on and off the internet and make their money by either taking a small fee (called a spread) when converting money from one form to another, or from collecting the interest (called the float) on the dollars that were converted into e$, but haven't been converted back to other dollars yet. The cool thing is that some caribbean nations have figured out offshore banking already. The reason this kind of banking is valuable is the concept of regulatory arbitrage. Regulations impede the flow of money. The Netherlands Antilles have made a reasonable living domiciling corporations whose sole purpose is to keep money out of the american banking system and thus its tax mechanism. Money made offshore which stays offshore doesn't get taxed as easily by the IRS. Regulatory Arbitrage is also exemplified by the banking and insurance industries of the Bahamas, the Caymans, Bermuda, and to a lesser extent, Antigua and the EC (Eastern Caribbean) nations. In those cases, those nations have modeled bank secrecy laws like those of the swiss. In order for a nation to become an e$-center, they would have to allow the creation of e$, particular dollar-denominated e-cash on their shores. There are enourmous regulatory hurdles in the US, but with a sufficiently arbitrary and capricious political infrastructure, it could happen pretty soon in the caribbean, if it was worth someone's while... Ah, the ironies of economics... Cheers, Bob Hettinga -- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between Shipwright Development Corporation someone who eats too little 44 Farquhar Street and sees Heaven and someone Boston, MA 02331 USA who drinks too much and sees (617) 323-7923 snakes." -- Bertrand Russell

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The Law and the Network
by cjl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

C-punx, The following was retyped from SCIENCE magazine (vol 265:p691). I haven't seen it in E-circulation, and thought it would be of revelance to the recent discussion of remailer liability. Anyone out there feel like standing up to express one of the many Cypherpunk points of view in front of the ABA and the AAAS? I'd be curious to know who is attending from any of our favorite TLA's? This looks like just the kind of forum they might use to drop ominous hints about their real intentions. It would be good for there to be C-punk observers there at the very least. Someone with a better usenet feed might want to repost this to the usual newsgroups. IMPORTANT NOTE: Application deadline, August 19th 5pm EST Computer Issues: Call for Applications Applications are invited for participation in the second conference on "Legal, Ethical, and Technological Aspects of Network Use and Abuse" cosponsored by the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists, a joint committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Bar Association. The workshop, scheduled for 7 to 9 October 1994 at a conference center not far from Washington DC, will weigh ideas about what is acceptable behavior in a shared computer environment. Discussions will center on three themes: 1) determining accountablilty and liabiltiy for network content; 2) defining what network content is "public" and what is "private"; and 3) what ethical, legal, and administrative frameworks should be employed for the global information infrastructure. Up to three successful applicants will receive expenses to attend the workshop, which will have 40 participants from a variety of perspectives and disciplines. Each applicant must submit a 1000-word paper addressing one of the three themes above (the papers will be circulated prior to the meeting), a short resume or biographical sketch, and a brief statement of how one's expertise or perspective might contribute to the meeting. The application deadline is 19 August at 5pm EST. E-mail responses are preferred. Those selected will be notified by 9 September. Send applications or requests for more information to: Deborah Runkle Directorate for Science and Policy Programs American Association for the Advancement of Science 1333 "H" Street, NW Washington, DC 20005 Phone: (202) 326-6600 Fax: (202) 289-4950 E-mail: drunkle(a)aaas.org C. J. Leonard ( / "DNA is groovy" \ / - Watson & Crick <cjl(a)welchlink.welch.jhu.edu> / \ <-- major groove ( \ Finger for public key \ ) Strong-arm for secret key / <-- minor groove Thumb-screws for pass-phrase / )

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