December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

remailer fyi...
by Evil Pete 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

------- Forwarded Message Return-Path: geek(a)imageek.york.cuny.edu Return-Path: <geek(a)imageek.york.cuny.edu> Received: from imageek.york.cuny.edu by merde.dis.org (8.6.8.1/MERDE-940323) id TAA26402; Tue, 5 Apr 1994 19:51:09 -0700 Received: by imageek.york.cuny.edu (931110.SGI/931108.SGI.evr1) for remailer(a)utter.dis.org id AA15418; Tue, 5 Apr 94 22:58:31 -0400 From: geek(a)imageek.york.cuny.edu (Erik VanRiper) Message-Id: <9404060258.AA15418(a)imageek.york.cuny.edu> Subject: entropy.linet.org To: root(a)dis.org, remailer(a)dis.org Date: Tue, 5 Apr 1994 22:58:21 -0500 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL22] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 579 I am the MX and the site admin for linet.org. You have a "user" remailer(a)utter.dis.org that is sending PGP messages to entropy.linet.org!remailer Can you please stop? entropy.linet.org has not polled for almost 2 months, and I have not been able to contact him. I assume that he is down for good. Thanks! - -- geek(a)imageek.york.cuny.edu Erik VanRiper (718) 262-2667 Systems Administrator Janitor Photon Counter Chemistry Department & MBRS York College, City University of New York ------- End of Forwarded Message

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Security Contingencies
by Jeff Davis 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: Tue, 5 Apr 1994 23:48:29 -0400 From: Black Unicorn <unicorn(a)access.digex.net> Subject: Al Haig and Secure Communictions >incident involving then Secretary of State Al Haig. >Specifically the point was in reply to Mr. Sternlight's >assertion that because a public relations official for the >NSA had made statements regarding the Data Encryption >Escrow plan's harmless nature and the equally harmless and >benign character of the NSA's paternal hand, they were >unquestionably authentic and complete. Sternlight is an idiot educated beyond his intellegence, unworthy of futher comment, exept to say you're beginning to make an exceptional point. >Secretary of State Al Haig was not next in line for either >succession stream, and his asserting so in the national >media was a gross error. >The relevant authorities are the Department of Defense >Directive 5100.30 (1971) and the Constitution of the United >States. [skipping the event of peacetime Presidential elimination] >The national command authority line kicks in when the >President and his/her successors are dead or cannot be >located and immediate U.S. military decisions must be made: >1. Secretary of Defense >2. Deputy Secretary of Defense >3. Secretary of the Army >4. Secretary of the Navy >5. Secretary of the Air Force >6. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy >7. Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering >A plethora of the Assistant Secretaries of Defense and >General Council to the Defense Department in order of their >lengths of service. Well let's hope that the President survives the unlikely event of a tactical nuclear detonation or we're all fucked. While we're on the subject: -- Article III, section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be conviced of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court. The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attained. -- So if encryption is outlawed, outlaws will get life. I talked to Federal Reserve President Thomas Hoenig (KC Branch) in an open public forum yesterday. I asked him if the Fed was going to let Clipper encryption cripple US competitiveness in the world monetary market. He looked down at his feet and said, "No." He was very suprised that I was already using public key encryption. He knew well the superiority of software encryption. However, he had never heard of Phil Zimmerman. When I elucidated a brief history of PGP, he agreed that embargoing encryption is tantamount to embargoing wind. This hand is an economic warfare expert. He agreed the 4 February policy decision is economic warfare. I don't think the Fed is going to let the NSA severely hobble its ability to wage economic warfare in the world monetary market. Digital cash is the Fed's dream. That's my analysis based on the facts presented and what I saw in the man. So I think now, more than ever, we really have to stick together. -- PGP PUBLIC KEY via finger! JAFEFFM Speaking & Thinking For Myself! * eagle(a)deeptht.armory.com email info(a)eff.org * *** O U T L A W S On The E L E C T R O N I C F R O N T I E R **** ***** Committed to Free Public Internet Access for World Peace *****

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Remailer Pinging
by Black Unicorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It occured to me, and I'm probably not the first, that it would be quite a resource to have a finger server that dumps the last ping responses for the active remailers. Would it be difficult to cook up a script that pings the remailers every 12 or 24 hours and then stores the "last ping received" data and dumps it on a remote finger command? I would myself but I dont have the hardware resources :( My programming leaves much to be desired as well. Problems? Comments? -uni- (Dark)

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Re: How Many Games of Chess: Exact answer given!
by tim werner 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: Eli Brandt <ebrandt(a)jarthur.cs.hmc.edu> >There are a finite number of legal positions in chess. If any >shows up a third time, the game is over. Thus we have a bound on >the length of a legal chess game. Hence the number of games is >finite, and we don't have to quibble about whether it's countably >or uncountably infinite. Since this is the second time this has shown up here, I must clarify it by saying that it is only a draw when the pieces are in the same position with the same person to move for the third time. It is possible to repeat the position but change the opposition, which constitutes a different situation. tw

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Reinventing the wheel, was Re: Proposal: some more standard remailer features
by Pat Farrell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In message Tue, 5 Apr 1994 22:50:46 -0700, hfinney(a)shell.portal.com writes: > This is reminiscent of MIME. Have you looked at that? They already deal > with encapsulation as well as message splitting, I think. You could copy > their message formats without committing to full MIME support. Plus it > might be possible to add encryption and remailing support to MIME mail > user agents by using the hooks they already provide. > One major reason that I pay attention to the IETF-EDI discussions on EDI over the Internet it to make sure that someone brings up encrypting EDI transactions. I'm convinced that EDI over the 'net will explode, and strong encryption (PGP, PEM, etc.) will be required. The IETF-EDI is basing their work on MIME. While it isn't perfect, it is an existing standard, has a published RFC, etc. I strongly second Hal's suggestion that developers of mailers and remailers look at MIME and use it as a starting point. Pat Pat Farrell Grad Student pfarrell(a)gmu.edu Department of Computer Science George Mason University, Fairfax, VA Public key availble via finger #include <standard.disclaimer>

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Remailer Standards (was Economic Assumptions)
by rjc＠gnu.ai.mit.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Eric: > Enough of this. I'd rather discuss lowering transaction costs. rjc > comments on my list: > >>-- Finding out that remailers exist and what they do. > > build a remailer "who" server into each remailer > I point out this doesn't help if you don't know where the first > remailer is. What I was specifically referring to was public > education. Were remailers ubiquitous, there would be a chapter on > them in each of the latest rage of 'how to use the internet' books. > They could be a well-used service, like archie. But this has nothing to do with writing code. There are plenty of people on this list who aren't writing code, who most likely have better writing skills than CS/Engineering majors, and who have the time to write remailer faqs and evangelize remailer use. This type of project can be done in parallel with remailer development. I don't see why any priority scheme is needed. Cypherpunks, as often repeated, are not a monolithic group governed from the top-down who obey directions to focus all their efforts on one priority. > In fact, they are not. There are numerous reasons for this, some of > which are self-referential (as in, there aren't a lot of remailers > yet) and some of which are not. For example, there's no FAQ for > comp.mail.remailer, because there's no such group. Why shouldn't > there be? Maybe because it would get voted down or maybe because no one has RFD'd it yet. Nothing is stopping anyone from going ahead and doing this. An alt group would be better. > >>-- Finding a remailer to use. > > ditto > I specifically made this a separate item because it has a different > solution. Let's assume the potential user has some beginner's > document about remailers. How do they go about finding out what > remailers exist? > Well, the document could have a list of them, but that doesn't exactly > work well in the face of rapid changes. Some centrality in the > initial query seems called for. That could be a stable machine, or > some stable name, even. What the query actually looks like is less > important. This is already included in my new remailer, but I proposed a "remailer server" for keeping an up to date automatically generated list of working remailers almost a year ago (I even hacked up some partially working code for it) when it became obvious that Karl's list of remailers weren't good enough (although it was a good effort) The biggest problem is getting a stable machine or a stable network of 'DNS'-like machines. There is already a similar mechanism for MUDs. Besides the static list of running muds there is a MUD "mudwhod" server which maintains a list of running muds and who is logged into them. > There is, also, the question of trustworthiness. That mythical beast > the reputation system might be applicable, but I know of none to judge > for suitability. More generally, there are questions of policy. > What, for example, is the policy of the remailer in case of > administrative request for mappings? Are there liquidated damages > available to someone whose privacy is breached? These legal issues > are not so easily made into syntax. This type of standardization is only likely to spontaneously evolve after a remailer network is already up and running and these policy issues come up. I don't think we can centrally draft some kind of Constitution/Bylaws for remailers which covers all possible future problems. Remailer politics and legal systems are an unexplored area. I think we should leave it up to the remailer operators for now since they will have to deal with these issues first hand. > >>-- Figuring out how to use a particular remailer. > > standardize remailer help system, standard remailer command format > > (but not neccessaily the commands themselves) Sorta like an SGML for > > remailers > I think the commands ought to be standardized, just like RFC-822 > standardized on the To: field. I realize this is going to create a > little havoc for the half-dozen or so remailer developers who have all > chosen not to talk to each other during their developments. All someone needs to do is write up an RFC and submit it. > >>-- Formatting a message for a remailer. > > see above > Personally, I don't think we need multiple algorithms for this. Is > there any compelling reason, other than to avoid wasting existing but > not yet deployed code? It could be that the best encapsulation method for remailer messages hasn't been developed yet. I certainly think the recursive-pasting token method needs a lot of work. A method should be general enough to work with any RSA/Pkey system and not rely on PGP's standard format. Cut lines definately needed to be standardized abstracted away from the underlying cryptosystem. > >>-- Receiving mail through a remailer. > > Get/Creating a nice client. > There's a transaction cost to switching clients which is huge. It's > completely unrealistic to expect everyone to use a particular client > for remailers. It just won't happen. Far better is to rework > existing clients to support remailers and to get those changes into > the main distributions. Either way works, and the actual method used will probably be a combination of both. However, getting cypherpunk software installed in existing distributions will require some politics and lobbying on behalf of cypherpunks. (e.g. getting remailer mods into something like Eudora might be really hard) > >Reducing complexity cost: > > All of this could be lowered by creating an easy-to-use > >remailer client which is compiled (or perl/tcl interpreted) and > >installed with every unix out there so it becomes ubiquitous. > The dream of universal software. When I can unpack some software and > type 'make', and do nothing else except read the man pages that 'make' > caused to be formatted, I'll call that universal software. And not > before. Already exists. Almost every Unix system I have encounted comes with atleast Perl4, and many come with TCL. Perl is a standard environment and any correctly installed Perl should run a correctly written Perl script. I'd say that one can create a remailer/client in Perl that can be installed by almost anyone. (as long as you don't rely on "absolute" paths which change, or non-standard environment variables) > I'm glad lowering these transaction costs garnered a response. But > what I really want to see is, what did I forget about transaction > costs to use remailers? The biggest thing you're missing is the fact that many users can't even understand how to use LISTSERVs or run mail(1) To many people, typing "::\n request-remailing-to: xxxx" and encrypting it, then adding "Encrypted: PGP" is a huge transaction cost. I don't use remailers for similar reasons. A simple mod to the elm script, "mailpgp" which detects a remailer in the To: address, prompts you for "mail anonymously to? " and then does all the underlying remailer commands and chaining stuff automatically would be a huge benefit. Even better would be a script which asks you "Mail anonymously?" and if answered yes, it would automatically pick a remailer and do the nasty stuff. Emacs and Elm are pretty standard, plug in elisp/perl scripts would work fairly well to encourage remailer use but some evangelization would be required also to encourage use and educate. I once suggested that someone set up a porno-server on the remailer network as the ultimate carrot-and-stick method for getting people to use remailers. I still think this is a good idea. (after all, the two biggest uses of Julf's system I see are in the sex newsgroups and in IRC phreak/warez trading) -Ray -- Ray Cromwell | Engineering is the implementation of science; -- -- rjc(a)gnu.ai.mit.edu | politics is the implementation of faith. --

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Re: PGP mail disabled ???
by danisch＠ira.uka.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Well, email can only transfer ASCII data, so my first guess would be that > you forgot the '-a' option to apply ASCII armour. No, of course they were using the -a option and the mail was normal ASCII armoured. Hadmut

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Remailer Help please?
by Thoth 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hiya. I'm hoping you all can help me. I want to set up a remailer here, and was wondering if you had any sugestions on where to get software (for a unix based machine) for both Anonymous remailing, and for Digital encrpytation. I'm VERY new to all this, and desperately need help getting started. Any and all help will be apreciated. Thanks.... *************************************************************** * Sean M. Gomez * "The Urge to Destroy is always a * * 97smg(a)wheatonma.edu* creative one":Freedom=Privacy:Digital * * seangomez(a)aol.com * Freedom:The outlaw always Knows the Law* * Neuromancer(a)tmok.uu* better than the cops.:Anonimity is a * * .ids.net.com * a virtue in this Day and age. Violence * * * is a tool of the weak. freedom=action * *****************Peace Y'all.....we out.*********************** ***************************************************************

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Re: This List--Public, Private, or Other? (fwd)
by plaz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I found Tim's post the other day on why he quit the extropians list a tad offensive. In a forum where no one is interested in the particulars, he brought up the old "Extropian Dogma" argument. It would be unreasonable of me to argue the point, as it would be far off topic in this forum to refute him. I would like to state, however, that I dislike the his stating his ignorance and then pronouncing his opinion as fact. (Or more annoyingly, in the reverse order.) Tim, you are well aware that I read the cypherpunks list, and that I would interpret the jibe 'certain folks were treating the "Extropian Principles 2.0" as a kind of catechism to be quoted to doubters' as aimed at myself, since you levelled that charge at me at the time. Is this a deliberate attempt to insult me? In a forum that would be difficult to reasonably defend myself? A tactic hardly worthy of you. Difficult to swallow portions of the message: >The Extropians are a fine bunch, and I enjoyed my 18 months on the >list. Ultimately, it was taking too much of my time for too little new >information in return, certain folks were treating the "Extropian >Principles 2.0" as a kind of catechism to be quoted to doubters, and >the personal invective was intensifying. I chose to leave and to use >the saved time to learn to play the electric guitar....seriously. [...] >It is true that Max More, the Extropian Maximalus, and I did exchange >some harsh words, mostly over Max's dislike of my pointing out some >disturbing parallels between Extropianism and certain religions. I >don't believe Max is a huckster, a la L. Ron Hubbard and >Dianetics/Scientology, but it is also the case that I found nothing >personally very interesting or satisfying in centering arguments >around ideas like "Dynamic Optimism" and "Unbounded Rationality" (I >never did learn the exact wording of the Five Principles, so bear with >me). > >I remain on good terms with the many Extropian folks who I see at Bay >Area events and parties, and I even talked to Max at a party several >weeks ago. I wish them well, as our interests often coincide (and many >are on the Cypherpunks list), but I have some doubts that membership >will grow significantly--the type of bright, independent, >anarcho-capitalist folks drawn to discussions of the sort Extropians >like to engage in are seldom interested in dogma, even if the dogma is >Rational and Dynamically Optimistic. In spite of the fact that I would like to "set the record straight" on some of your assertions, I refuse to debate this terribly one sided representation of these events. Events that entailed some of the worst behavior I've ever seen from all parties, particularily from you, Mr. May. IMO, levelling these assertions up out of nowhere, for no reason, is not a way to stay on good terms. - A somewhat pissed plaz, who still maintains he is not, nor has ever been, dogmatic about the damned Extropian Principles. _______________________________________________________________________ Geoff Dale -- Cypherpunk/Extropian -- Plastic Beethoven AnarchyPPL - Anarch (Adjudicator) ExI-Freegate Virtual Branch Head plaz(a)netcom.com 66 Pyramid Plaza plaz(a)io.com Freegate, Metaverse(a)io.com 7777

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Clipper Segment on TV
by Dave Banisar 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date 4/6/94 Subject Clipper Segment on TV From Dave Banisar To CPSR Crypto List Clipper Segment on TV Hello All, I just heard that barring any late breaking news that preempts it, McNeil-Lehrer will be showing a 10 minute segment on Clipper tonight. Here in DC, it shows on Channel 26 at 7 and 11pm. Dave Banisar CPSR Washington Office

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