December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Zimmerman's use of PGP
by Bill O'Hanlon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

As anyone who has ever sent an encrypted "Really neat program, Phil!" message to Phillip Zimmerman knows, he doesn't run PGP where he reads his mail. He has to download messages to decrypt on a local machine. All of the cute elm/vi/emacs/mh/pine scripts you wanna post won't help him. -Bill (P.S. Back when he didn't get so much mail, if you'd done the above, you'd get a response in a couple weeks, telling you this. He mentioned that he saw the irony of the situation -- that the inventor of PGP couldn't make convenient use of it.)

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archives for cypherpunks?
by PatHuff＠world.std.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Do any archives exist for this group? I would be intereted in scaning them. Pat. PatHuff(a)world.std.com

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Re: Voluntary Governments?
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:14 PM 8/23/94 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: >Russell Nelson says: >> In our high school we had a student government. We had no prisons >> and no guns. >> >> Then you were a club. > >Indeed. [snip] >(I once was part of a >debate held by Columbia University's Philolexian Society on the topic >"Resolved: Student Government is Amazingly Lame", in which I noted >that the low probability of a student government coup d'etat complete >with tanks rolling about the campus, and of the following student >government dictatorship run by a student military junta, demonstrated >that the student "government" wasn't a government but a weak way to >keep students placated, devoid even of the mild entertainment the >occassional revolt could bring.) Alas. How true. One of my friends got elected student government president at the University of Missouri by standing outside polling places in a clown suit bribing people to vote for him with play money. Later that year, I authored a student senate declaration of war against the University of Wisconsin. They had originated the concept of snickerocracy, or rule by clowns, and as potential competition for scarce laughs had to be destroyed. The declaration passed unanimously. We passed the hat in the bars for our defense budget (to be spent by the sacred Council of War, COW for short), and sent four determined and somewhat inebriated agriculture majors to Wisconsin's dairy barns to collect one ton of bullshit and deposit it on their student union steps at 3 am. In their defense, I must say that the administration generously let us (the senate) vote on the allocation of about $1.3 million of the university's money (somewhat less than 1% of the total, I believe), which made for a lot of sand in the old sandbox. And, I got to meet both Timothy Leary and Ralph Nader out of the deal. I have trouble telling them apart to this day... Ah, Yout'! Adulthood is terminal, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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Re: Voluntary Governments?
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:37 PM 8/23/94 -0500, Jim choate wrote: >Can't speak for MIT but I can speak for UT Austin, they do have cells to hold >prisoners. The security forces at that school attend the Tx Dept. of Public >Safety training school and hold state law enforcement positions. The last >thing you want to do is really piss one of these guys, you would end up >in one of the state prisons for several years, Huntsville probably. The University of Chicago, where I went for awhile, has the third largest police force in Illinois, after the Chicago PD and the State troopers. They have guns and cells. During the Cambodian days of rage, the administration had an interesting tactic. The acquiesced to the students' demands and took their pictures as they left. Then they expelled them all. Not violent, really, but harmful, maybe. "Hyde Park, where Black and White stand shoulder to shoulder against the Poor." (Nichols and May[not Tim]), Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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Re: Voluntary Governments?
by elton＠sybase.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Right ... I had taken this offline, but it looks as though it ain't quite dead yet. Kindly stop reading now if you wish this subject would go away. Consolidating two messages from Jim Dixon: >Jason's use of the term 'tax' in a special sense is no more an abuse >of the language than the attempt to change the conventional meaning >of the word 'government'. and >You can't simply take over the ownership of words in the English >language. 'Government' is indeed the name used for an entity that >exercises authority or enforces laws. Of course we can -- it happens all the time. However, this time I haven't usurped the meaning of anything. Force -- the threat or actual use of violence -- is the essence of government. You just said so yourself: "enforces laws". Here's the closest applicable dictionary definition of "government", taken from the Random House Dictionary of the English Language: "1. the political direction and control exercised over the actions of the members, citizens, or inhabitants of communities, societies, and states; direction of the affairs of a state, community, etc.; political administration." This is amplified by looking at "govern" in the same dictionary: "1. to rule by right of authority, as a sovereign does." "Rule", or "political ... control" are only ever exercised through force. People keep using that word, "enforce", without looking carefully at it. >From the same dictionary: "to put or keep in force; compel obedience to." "Enforcement", regardless of the dry dictionary definition, is the essence of government. Without the power to enforce arbitrary rules, there can be no government. There are several methods of achieving compliance with a set of rules: social pressure (shunning, as some religious sects do); withholding of goods or services (the degree that Jason spoke about being denied); and topical application of violence ("enforcement"). Of these, the first two are related, and are commonly practiced by social units that don't recognize the right to use force on one another. The last named is the only one that results in physical damage to the person being "ruled", and is also the only one that can physically prevent that person from engaging in the proscribed behavior. The others can make life bloody unpleasant, but they won't terminate it. One other thing: >I grew up in a small town of 5,000. It had a city government. The >county government was in the same town. No one denies that California >has a government, I think. And then there was the US government. And >we had city police, the sheriff's office, the Highway Patrol, and the >FBI paid an occasional visit. Uh ... you _do_ understand that that's a specious argument, yes? What do you suppose the outcome would be if your home town were to legalize marijuana, and then attempted to prevent the DEA from enforcing the overriding federal law? Yes, we have a distributed government, with each layer operating under the authority of the next layer up; but each layer can only add restrictions, never remove them, and each enforces its restrictions by the same method as the layers above it: main force. Further, each attempts to prevent other agencies from enforcing sets of rules counter to the ones they themselves enforce. That's what makes them true "governments", rather than some other social institution. Here, someone will surely object that by this definition, the Mafia can be considered a government. Well, if they can successfully kick the existing thugs off of some plot of ground, and then defend it against all comers, then yes: that's exactly what they'll be. How else do you suppose that governments become established? -- Elton

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Zimmermann/NSA debate postponed
by Philip Zimmermann 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The debate between Philip Zimmermann and Clinton Brooks from NSA has been postponed. The debate organizers, the World Affairs Council decided today (Tuesday) that there were not enough attendees preregistered to proceed with the debate at this time. The debate had been scheduled for Thursday, 25 August, in Thousand Oaks, California. A major conference organized by the World Affairs Council, scheduled for 27 October, will have the debate included in the conference. When those plans firm up, there will be detailed announcements with more lead time. I'm sorry if this change in plans inconveniences anyone who planned to attend the debate, but I had nothing to do with their decision. --Philip Zimmermann

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Re: NSA Spy Machine and DES
by Ian Farquhar 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Aug 22, 9:48pm, Phil Karn wrote: > >do, which is something I really doubt. As Phil Zimmerman pointed out some > >time ago, there are lots of other interesting applications which SIGINT > Actually, I believe it was me who said that. At least I also did. I stand corrected. It was indeed Phil Karn, and not Phil Zimmerman. Ian.

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List of reliable remailers
by Raph Levien 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi all, I have written and installed a remailer pinging script which collects detailed information about remailer features and reliability. To use it, just finger remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu There is also a Web version of the same information, at http://http.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/remailer-list.html Please let me know about any other remailers which I missed. I've only included remailers which can mail to arbitrary addresses, so I already know chop and twwells are missing. If you've got a Web page, please feel free to include a link to this page. If you think your Web page is relevant to the subject of remailers, let me know and I'll link it in. Comments and suggestions welcome! Note to remailer operators: this script generates hourly ping messages. If you don't want that, let me know and I will take your mailer off the list, or increase the interval between pings. Raph Levien

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Re: Brands cash
by Rick H. Wesson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hal, I liked your description of Brans Cash. I'd like to turn your description into psudo-code or Perl whichever comes first and you are more comfortable with reviewing. Anyone lese interested in developing a bit of perl as an example of Brands cash in action? -Rick

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List of reliable remailers
by Raph Levien 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi all, I have written and installed a remailer pinging script which collects detailed information about remailer features and reliability. To use it, just finger remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu There is also a Web version of the same information, at http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/remailer-list.html Please let me know about any other remailers which I missed. I've only included remailers which can mail to arbitrary addresses, so I already know chop and twwells are missing. If you've got a Web page, please feel free to include a link to this page. If you think your Web page is relevant to the subject of remailers, let me know and I'll link it in. Comments and suggestions welcome! Note to remailer operators: this script generates hourly ping messages. If you don't want that, let me know and I will take your mailer off the list, or increase the interval between pings. Raph Levien

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