December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

UK cypherpunks ready to meet at 2000 or 2200 on 12 March?
by russw＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To the UK participants on the cypherpunks list, and particularly those in the southeast (London, Kent, Essex, etc): Are any of you interested in holding a meeting synchronous with the physical/teleconference meeting of 12 March in Mountain View, CA and other US locations? Regardless of the technical arrangements, I can guarantee a venue that day in London for you. If you decide to go the way of a brief telephone call-in from London, I will pay for the call. If interested, let me know immediately, and I'll make calls to those nearby who are not on the list, but who are interested and sympathetic. Cheers, Russell Russell Earl Whitaker russw(a)netcom.com Director, Extropy Institute 408-366-5435 ================================================================

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CFP roomshare...
by W Lee Nussbaum 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I know this is not quite appropriate to this list, but here goes: Is anyone going to Computers, Freedom, & Privacy 4 in Chicago later this month, and interested in splitting a room to keep costs down? Please mail me at wln(a)tla.org if you are interested. Thanks. - Lee

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Re: Standard for Stenography?
by Jef Poskanzer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Firstly, congratulations for Sergey Goldgaber's stubborn pushing of >this topic, for Bill Stewart's observation: "simple stego-programs, >stealthy encryption programs" I disagree with pretty much everything in your message, and since I'm the one who opened the topic and who is writing the code, my opinion would seem to count for quite a bit more than yours. I'm not going to repeat the reasons why the kind of standard you propose is a bad idea, you can fetch the messages as easily as I can. Cc:ed to the list only so that no one thinks Gary's proposal was accepted. The permutation idea remains the best. By the way, this discussion is an example of something I have labelled the "silence is invisible" phenomenon. It goes like this: there's a discussion; some of the participants work out an answer, and as far as they're concerned the discussion is over. However, other participants don't understand the answer, and keep on talking. In a physical meeting, the talkers would notice the annoyed looks on the faces of everyone else; or if the meeting had a good facilitator, he or she would catch on to the misunderstanding and correct it; but in cyberspace, those feedback mechanisms don't happen. --- Jef

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spooks
by fhalper＠pilot.njin.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If there are any spooks on this list aren't they required by law to say that they are if somoeon asked if anyone on on th list was employed by CIA, DOD, FBI or NSA? Reuben Halper

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Delete from mailing list
by leonar716＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I would like my name deleted from your mailing list. Too much junk mail.

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Re: Voice encryption
by Black Unicorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The problem with secure voice systems isn't doing the encryption, which is relatively easy; it's designing a voice compression system that's cheap enough and fast enough to work with the class of modems you're willing to use. <- I dont want to use modems. -uni- (Dark) Who was the bay area speaker you were talking to?

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Color Copiers
by nobody＠soda.berkeley.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

rustman(a)netcom.com says... >nobody(a)soda.berkeley.edu says... >> >> On a slightly related topic, I know of an instance where the >> Secret Service located a stolen color copier with somewhat >> greater speed than one might have expected. >> >> Is it possible that these machines either: >> (1) contain transponders >> or >> (2) hide a "signature" in their output ??? >1. Why was the secret service looing for stolen property? >2. This is an urban legend. There is no "signature" on the output of Canon CLC copiers. >because these copiers are so maintenance-intensive, and since Canon >*owns* most of the CLC dealers, it would be very easy for them to check >their s/n records when they are servicing the equipment (which needs to >be done when the devices are moved)! >pretty exciting, huh? >-- >Rusty H. Hodge, Cyberneticist <rustman(a)netcom.com> The _event_ is not an urban legend. (The signature hypothesis could be). Check the Chattanooga papers (late '92 or early '93). A copier was ...uh... relocated to a residence. I doubt that the manufacturer was invited to make service calls. The secret service was involved because of what was being copied. It could just be that the SS (funny coincidence of initials) is very good at its job, but I wonder.

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Voice encryption
by peace＠BIX.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

You don't want to use modems?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Well.. that kind of eliminates most encryption schemes that I know of. Peace oint me to a reference, I have NEVER seen it (mis)spelled Cypher. Peace

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CIA and the drug trade
by Lyle_Seaman＠transarc.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Since Aldrich Ames has been in the news recently, I think this is apropos. (the suggestion has been made that the CIA failed to uncover his activities because they ascribed his fabulous wealth to the coke business -- not that they would ever admit _that_, of course) From: ww(a)blythe.org (Workers World Service) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit CIA IS UP TO ITS EYEBALLS IN COCAINE DEALS Which banks laundered the money? By Deirdre Griswold No element of the state apparatus is more shielded from public scrutiny than the Central Intelligence Agency--the U.S. secret police whose operations span the globe. What do they really do? How much of the public treasury is diverted into their coffers? How many of the vicious wars now tearing apart poor countries were hatched in their inner sanctums? It seems that one thing they do is ship millions of dollars' worth of cocaine into the United States. That's according to an official of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, Annabelle Grimm, who was interviewed by the program "60 Minutes." The New York Times of Nov. 20 first broke the story. "I really take great exception to the fact that 1,000 kilos came in, funded by U.S. taxpayer money," said Grimm. A thousand kilos is over a ton of pure cocaine. CIA, COCAINE AND DEATH SQUADS The 1990 shipment was arranged by Mark McFarlin of the CIA and Gen. Ram"n Guilln Davis of the Venezuelan National Guard, said the Times story. What possible reason could the CIA give for arranging to ship a ton of cocaine into the U.S., where it was then sold on the streets? It was done to "gain the confidence" of Colombian drug traffickers, explained the agency. McFarlin's history includes a stint in El Salvador, where he worked with "anti-guerrilla forces" in the early 1980s. This is a euphemism for the government death squads that, together with the Salvadoran army, were responsible for the deaths of 70,000 people in the dirty war there. The guerrilla movement represented the workers and peasants. The U.S.-funded killers did the bidding of the landed oligarchy and the multinational corporations that have sucked El Salvador dry. What is the connection between drug trafficking and a rightwing political police agency like the CIA? Plenty. Recently, the CIA was implicated in covert support for the right-wing military in Haiti, which has deposed the popularly elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. At the same time, the State Department was grabbing headlines with its loud but ineffectual negotiations supposedly meant to return Aristide to his country. The Haitian military are known to be deeply involved in the highly lucrative drug trade--a compelling reason why they refuse to relinquish direct control over the government. During the Vietnam war, the CIA used its fleet of secret planes to ferry opium and heroin out of Southeast Asia--at the same time that its agents were assassinating Vietnamese villagers in the notorious Phoenix program. Drugs became a major social problem in the U.S. at this time. (See "The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia," Alfred W. McCoy, Harper & Row, 1972) LINKS TO BANKS The biggest question, however, is the tie between covert government agencies like the CIA and the giant banks that launder hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money. It is public knowledge that the CIA deposits large amounts of money in the name of dummy companies. At the highest levels, bank officials obstruct public scrutiny of dubious transactions, including those involving large amounts of cash. When they are working with the CIA, all this can be passed off as necessary in the interests of "national security." In January 1985, Bank of America was fined $4.75 million in a civil penalty for failing to report more than 17,000 large cash transactions. Other huge banks paid lesser fines in this mild crackdown on widespread money laundering. No criminal charges were pursued. In 1989, after Treasury officials estimated that as much as $110 billion was being laundered by U.S. banks each year, the Bush administration announced it would regulate international money transfers by U.S. banks, and would set up a large computer center in Arlington, Va., to monitor information on money laundering. And there it has sat. No big indictments, or even civil fines, have been forthcoming against the big capitalist bankers. Repression and police corruption Instead, all the muscle has gone into sending U.S. paramilitary units into impoverished South American nations like Bolivia and Peru to interdict cocaine supplies--with no results--and beefed-up SWAT teams into oppressed communities in the U.S., where their racism and brutality are notorious. Repression against drug dealers on the street level is worse than futile. As the recent Mollen Commission hearings in New York showed, it is often linked to massive corruption among the police themselves. This latest revelation about the CIA and cocaine shows once again that drug trafficking can only be rooted out through a mass struggle aimed at the vital institutions of capitalist society. They are in it up to their eyeballs. -30- (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 West 17 St., New York, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww(a)blythe.org.)

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Re: Cypher?????
by Black Unicorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hmm.. Perhaps you could point me to a reference, I have NEVER seen it (mis)spelled Cypher. -< how about cypherpunks(a)toad.com ^^^^^^

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