December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

New Project: Lets ALL create Multiple Digital Personalities
by remail＠tamsun.tamu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In Honor of LD I/We propose we execute Operation MEDUSA. Since PseudoNyms bother LD so much, I/We propose that all begin to use them. Sam

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Thanks for the exposure
by jamie＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Still posting my phone number, asshole? Are you really trying to pick a fight? Do you truly want to see how I can squash a bug like thee? Better start looking over your shoulder. Don't forget, gutless wonder, I CONTROL YOU. You will never forget me. You can't touch a keyboard without thinking of me. I control you. And always will. You no longer have any independent thought. I lead my life of wonder; filled with friends and play. You are insignificant, and don't cross my mind until someone tells me of your posts. But you have no choice but to sit and think of me. I control you. Everytime you see the word "cypherpunks" you'll know I control you. And I always will. Everytime you hear a modem or see an ethernet cable, you'll know I control you. Soon, you'll be able to think of nothing but me, and then the control will be complete. Get a life, asshole. ------- End of Forwarded Message

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A favor re Detweiler
by hfinney＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'd like to expend some "reputation capital" here and ask people for a favor. I am worried about Larry Detweiler's obvious mental anguish. We tend to forget that we are dealing with real people on the net, flesh and blood human beings. Larry is obviously going through genuine difficulties here. As a member of our virtual community, I ask that we show him some compassion and consideration. Larry believes that people have been communicating with him in private mail under multiple identities in order to confuse and mislead him. Specifically, he has suggested that Jamie Dinkelacker is a pseudonym employed by Tim May. I gather that he has received email from both names. He also suggests that others have employed these practices. Since I do not live in the Bay area, I have never met Jamie Dinkelacker, although I had the opportunity to meet Tim once when he visited southern California. So I am not in a position personally to assure Larry that Jamie is a real person separate from Tim. But I know many list members are in northern California and I assume several of you have met both Jamie and Tim. I ask those of you who can vouch for Jamie's separate identity to send me private email saying so, which I will forward to Larry. If enough people can do this, perhaps a PGP-style "web of trust" can be established which will reduce Larry's concerns about this particular case at least. (I have considered the possibility that Jamie actually is a pseudonym employed by Tim. This is certainly not inherently impossible, given the structure of the net. As I told Larry, I myself have occasionally posted under apparently-legitimate pseudonyms in other times and places, although never on this list. I certainly don't attach the moral significance to the practice that Larry does. Nevertheless, in this particular case, the situation is so obviously causing mental suffering that I assume that if Larry's charges were true that Tim would have confessed in order to spare Larry this pain.) I know that it's easy to just write people off on the net, the various marginal or fanatical personalities whom one runs into now and then. That is why I am asking this as a personal favor. If you have read and appreciated my essays on digital cash, or on the various legal issues involving crypto exports; if you have used the remailer code I worked on, or PGP for that matter on which I spent hundreds of hours of personal time, then I ask that you help me out with this request. Do it as a favor to me regardless of your feelings for Larry, and I will just hope that my efforts will bring him some peace of mind. Thank you. Hal Finney hfinney(a)shell.portal.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3 iQCVAgUBLMr+6KgTA69YIUw3AQHCawQApGA27Q+lmrzsN9qpG3Af9DfJLfdHTlWG Ic6FQKNqjfliLHR/z/iVSDTGKIiRRuZm4ZBqARQAvp4jaOBymcWcd5y1/jCPDQto PZjlq6ksvvdpgsQsV2DiwAlRxS9wdo7E+gvmDWJ8tXBApRloATWv4ZQ9AFUwF1Nx jp56uZsaTxs= =91Uh -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Subliminal Channels
by George A. Gleason 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

One last point on subliminal advertising... (yeah this is a digress but anyway)... Subliminal stimuli can be considered an induction procedure for an individual behavior change. Nondrug inductions of every kind (i.e. meditation, hypnosis, lucid dream techniques, concentration and memory techniques, progressive relaxation, biofeedback training, etc....) produce variable results on a population sample; typically the results fall along a normal curve wherein some people are strongly affected, some are moderately affected, and some are affected very little if at all. The relevance to advertising is, if a technique can reach perhaps 5% of your readership and then cause 5% of those to alter their behavior favorably toward your product, you've got a quarter of a percent of the market who at least try your product once. In the world of mass marketing, that small number adds up. If you were an ad executive, would you voluntarily give up a tool that can add market share...? Also, the heaviest users of certain categories of products, notably alcohol, are also people who are notoriously suggestible, in the sense that they are already over-reacting to their environment and are using large amounts of alcohol in part to self-medicate against that. Heavy users of any product are usually seeking to fulfill some psychological need, a secondary need which can be manipulated far more easily than can the simpler needs of the average consumers. This increases the effectiveness of any psychologically-loaded selling technique. I believe Key goes overboard in his own writings, but on the other hand I've discovered so many examples of this kind of thing that there's no denying it's going on. Some of these are so blatant I can show the picture to an untrained observer and say "what do you think of this?" and s/he immediately spots the embedded item. On the other hand, these days there are other techniques, some far less subtle; for instance, the ads (particularly billboards) for beverages which show them spurting ejaculatorily from very phallic bottles... advertisers use anything which works, and that leaves a whole lot to choose from. anyway, back to our regular channel... -gg

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Re: Subliminal Channels
by an41418＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is there any published work on hiding subliminal messages in pictures? It seems like that would be really easy. The warden, so to speak, sees an innocent illustration of a house and a garden, but the prisoners hide information in the arrangement of the bricks and the flowers. In video images, wouldn't it be very difficult to detect that there was some encrypted data in the image? This would be good for deniability. Big brother comes and tells you that you are not allowed to encrypt anything, and you say that you used a random number generator for this new form of art that appears to be total oblivion, but really represents a new way of looking at the meaning of life. Meanwhile, your pal on the other hand runs it through a processor and decrypts the message. Wonderer ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

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Re: Subliminal Channels
by George A. Gleason 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Okay, one last post from me on this subject.... An academic text was published in the late 70s or early 80s on this, the title was _Subliminal Stimulation_ if I remember correctly. Most decent university psych libraries should have a copy. I don't recall the author or editor's name, though I did read it while an undergrad. The gist of it was that there *is* an effect but it's *fairly small* in terms of the subject population. As I said before, any induction procedure will work for some segment of the population, so it's not surprising. I have to put myself in the middle on this arguement. On one hand I think Key went overboard; it would seem that what happened was he spent his professional life doing advertising and then someone pointed out something that was going on, and he over-reacted in the manner of anyone who suddenly finds he's unwittingly been violating his own morals. I would suggest that some of the stuff he's trying to point to is valid, but a lot of it is improbable to the point where I think a clinically trained observer might see signs of paranoia. Now on the other hand, I've found too many really blatant examples of psychologically devious advertising techniques to write this stuff off entirely. The point isn't whether Key is a great whistle-blower or a raving loonie; it isn't even whether there are forests of hidden genitals growing in ad illustrations... the point is whether the effect of saturation in psychologically-loaded high-production media aimed toward promoting passive consumerism is healthy for a culture or for the free will and dignity of its members. And I would say it certainly is not. -gg

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TRAITORS to the CAUSE
by dinkelacker＠cypherpunks.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The latest LD rant talks about the great cypherpunk cause, to which he has lent his time, and how it has been "contaminated", "tainted", and "poisoned" by EVIL TREACHEROUS individuals on this group. These individuals have misrepresented "basic cypherpunk goals" Finally, he demands reparation for his "mental anguish" from Tim May to be posted to talk.politics.crypto. I have a sudden urge to say "Get a Life" for some reason. I think Detweiler was operating under some kind of delusion when he joined this list which is responsible for his anguish. From my analysis, it seems LD was under the impression that he was joining some great social activist movement similar to all the other fringe groups out there, and that the cypherpunks had some noble cause of liberation/crypto-ethics. However, when I first subscribed to the list (roughly a few weeks after it was set up), I was told the purpose of this group was to simply discuss crypto, implications of it, and coordination of crypto-projects like remailers, digicash systems, pgp, etc. Could it be that Lance is looking for ethics on a mailing list whose motto is "cypherpunks write code" (with no limitations on what kind of code that will be, including even pseudospoofing software) [ All of LD's points are technically incorrect anyway because crypto can be used for both authenication and privacy. (e.g. digital signatures being "accoutable" legally to the authority which certified/signed them. Contrary to his rants, digi-sig nyms can be as tracable as real signatures, even more so depending on how strict you are on your trust model)] We've been accused of being conspirators, evil traitors, exploiters, abusers, and who knows what else, and I'm getting annoyed by it. So I'm making a proposal. Let's implement Detweiler's philosophy of having everyone accountable. Using the Extropian's list software, this list could prevent anyone who isn't voice validated from posting to the list. And as a first step to improving S/N ratio, I recommend we use the list software's filtering features to outright censor Detweiler, and any other idiot ranters (plus all anonymous posters) from the list. I also recommend a list justice code similar to the Extropian's list where anyone can be PUNISHED for not obeying the Great and Holy Cypherpunk's cause. As a requirement of the NEW ORDER (under the new software), all new subscribers will be required to take a pledge of denouncing pseudospoofing in talk.politics.crypto before their posting priveleges are turned on. Sam Will The Cypherpunks Pledge: "I hereby proclaim that pseudospoofers are the most vile and disgusting criminals on the face of the earth. As a cypherpunk, I pledge to fight for a world where children go to sleep at night secure in the knowledge that anyone they meet will be who they claim they are."

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The Anonymous service needs your help.
by Johan Helsingius 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry to interrupt the Detweiler thread, but... As of last week, my server has been sending the following message to active users of my anonymous service. I am turning to you, fellow cypherpunks, not for monetary support (albeit that is of course welcome, too) but to ask for ideas on how to arrange the payment mechanism - and to avoid taxes, currency export problems etc. Maybe I should seek the help of a non-profit organisation such as EFF to handle the transfers? Julf - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Subject: The Anonymous service needs your help. Hi! You have just used the anonymous server at anon.penet.fi. When I set it up, almost a year ago, I definitely could not foresee how popular it would become. It now has something like 45.000 registered users, wuth maybe 10.000 active users. Thousands of mesages are handled each day. Unfortunately, the popularity of the server might also be it's downfall. At the start, it was easy to handle all the problems and the queries, and to pay for the network connection. But now I spend 4-5 hours every day trying to answer questions, fix problems and deal with abusers - but I keep getting further and further behind on my mailbox. And the traffic is overloading the 64K international connection - I already had to cut out the binary postings. It now costs me something close to USD 1500/month just to keep the machine connected. I'm afraid I can't afford the time and the money much longer. And unless there suddenly turns up some benevolent big sponsor, the only hope for survival for the service is contributions from individual users. If all the 10.000 active users would each contribute $5, it would pay for the costs of running the service for a full year, as well as allowing me to employ one or two part-time students to reply to mail queries, improve the service, and report abuse - allowing me to concentrate on improving the software and dealing with the abuse cases. So I'm asking you - how much would you be willing to contribute? Use of the server will always be free, but continuing the service needs soem funds. At this stage, I only need to know how much you are willing to contribute - $1, $5, $25, $100? The replies will determine the need to set up some kind of money transfer system. Please send your replies to donations(a)penet.fi. Julf

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Re: A favor re Detweiler (ha ha ha)
by jamie＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hal Finney says: > >Since I do not live in the Bay area, I have never met Jamie Dinkelacker, >although I had the opportunity to meet Tim once when he visited southern >California. So I am not in a position personally to assure Larry that >Jamie is a real person separate from Tim. > Hello, world. Here's a novel thought: let's cut to the chase. My phone number is in my .sig block. Tim's in his. Call each of us back-to-back and have a 3 minute conversation with each. If the caller can't tell that we are different individuals, well ... . Do we sound the same? Are there accents? What about our speech speed and rhythm? Word choice? Sentence structure? If this is an issue to Detweiler, why hasn't he put his suppositions to the test by picking up the phone and, like a responsible adult, identifying himself for a conversation. Instead, we get net.waste.bandwidth. The only person to resolve this is Detweiler (unless Sniveling.Boxx takes me up on my lunch offer and could then vouch for the distinctions between me and Tim). If Detweiler really wanted to know the answer, he could find out for himself. Why should others support his "learned helplessness?" The only reason Detweiler has not executed this test is that he avoids truth. Is Detweiler aka Sternlight? Is that what's really being hidden? Is this all a deception distracting us from the NSA/Straumli perversion? I don't care about his anguish because I personally believe he's fabricated it to toy with us and distract us. But, I must admit, if I'm to be associated with anybody, Tim's not a bad choice: he's brilliant, articulate, wealthy, independent, good-looking and has great taste in music and friends. Not bad things to be nymed with. Hal, I invite your call. Call me mid-mornings PDT. As you know by private email I've sent you, I truly appreciate your posts and learn from them. Call me for a chat. Find out for yourself. C'mon Detweiler, cut to the chase and face the truth. Sheeesh, how can we miss you if you don't go away? ... (sigh). -- ................................ Jamie Dinkelacker Palo Alto CA Jamie(a)netcom.com 415.941.4782

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on the term `signature'
by L. Detweiler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Consider the term `signature' in the conventional connotation of a handwritten scrawl. What are the *critical* properties of a handwritten signature of a person [x]? 1) no person [y] can `forge' the signature of [x] 2) the signature of [x] is unique to [x] Look closely at (2). What value would `signatures' have in our society if they could not be traced to unique individuals? Virtually everyone here will probably say `no problem' but this aspect is a very critical aspect of the legal basis for signatures as a certificate of identity. If a person cannot be traced based on their digital signatures, where is the accountability? What if a person signs a document with a `digital signature' and *breaks* that contract? you have no recourse unless the identity is ultimately identifiable and you can take `that body' to court. This `two way street' is the crucial ingredient for the legal value of handwritten signatures. A person can indicate they consent to an agreement or certify something as genuine originating from themselves (one way). But on the other hand, if the agreement is broken or there is some question of authenticity *independent* of the signature (i.e., suppose someone has broken the signature security) there is recourse in retracing the path back to the original signer (the other way). Many here are championing that the loss of (2) with `digital signatures' and completely untracable identities is `liberating'. But there is a price to pay, perhaps very great. It is simply an unworkable system anywhere serious accountability is required (such as related to a job, etc.) Sure, if all people want to do is get into twisted debate contests, the absence of (2) certainly encourages it (speaking from experience). Because digital signatures alone are not really strictly analogous to written signatures because of the lack of property (2) above, perhaps a better term would be `identification tag'. Adding the guarantee that a given signature can be traced back to a human entity, with the use of a database or otherwise, makes them truly `digital signatures'. please cc: me in any replies.

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