December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Comdex Disks?
by merriman＠metronet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry to divert everyone from the other threads, but I happen to have some somewhat crypto-related question: Back some time ago, there was some discussion of giving away disks at Comdex in NY; by any chance, does anyone have a copy of the contents of what was on those disks? I'd like to be able to give away 'basic info' in easy-to-handle format :-) Thank for any help/pointers. We return you now to your regular mailing list..... Dave Merriman - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Finger merriman(a)fohnix.metronet.com for PGP public key and fingerprint. PGP encrypted Email welcome, encouraged, and preferred. "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." John F. Kennedy

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Re: Breaking into girlfriend's files
by blancw＠pylon.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by Black Unicorn, who is having a bad hair day (and so close to Christmas!): "Had I encrypted with Norton encrypt? I would have been deserving of whatever attack ensued." Are the cypherpunks all of one mind regarding ideals and morality? Had I inquired of the list how I could break into my dearest one's privacy, I would have been deserving of whatever commentary ensued regarding the disgusting implications of that act. "Disgusting. Get off this list, you belong on alt.codependency.recovery, or alt.bleeding.liberal." (Say - isn't this why Tim left for a bit? Oh, well.) "I may disagree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to express your [sanctimonious] opinion." (or something like that). .. Blanc

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Re: Thoughts on 15 day CJ crypto
by Phil Karn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In article <94Dec16.08.5320(a)qualcomm.com>, you write: |> So it's possible the RSA requirement is in there to provide an |> assurance that the right key was selected. Isn't it common practice to pad out a plaintext block with random garbage to the size of the modulus before you RSA-encrypt it? E.g., if you have an 8-byte DES key and you want to encrypt it with an RSA public key having a 512-bit modulus, you'd stick 56 bytes of random stuff in front of the DES key before you do the exponentiation. When you decrypt with the secret key, you simply throw away the random padding. At least RSAREF does this. Wouldn't this thwart the kind of attack you describe? Phil

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DDJ editorial
by bart＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I think this sentence was missing a NOT: If, as some claim and RSA disputes, the code was reverse-engineered from object files in off-the-shelf software, then the law was probably broken - unless RSA and other vendors decide to test the strength of highly questionable and likely unenforceable shrink-wrap licenses that try to prohibit disassembly/decompilation. (But I don't have the DDJ to verify this)

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FRAUD: Progress & Freedom on the Web-Frontier?
by ddt＠lsd.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Apologies for this not-so-crypto posting, but this is highly interesting for those who might've missed it. Note the references to our new $4M Newtonian Speaker of the House... dave ________________________________________________________________________ Speaking of "term limits," hasn't Rush Limbaugh gotten enough attention? =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= cut here =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From: Phil Agre <pagre(a)weber.ucsd.edu> T H E N E T W O R K O B S E R V E R VOLUME 1, NUMBER 12 DECEMBER 1994 ... The future of network politics. In the December 1994 issue of Wired (page 121) there appears an ad for something called The Progress and Freedom Foundation. Under the headline "Cyberspace: It's Nobody's Highway", this advertisement announces the availability of a "Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age". Small type at the bottom informs us that this document ... ... emerged from an August 23-24 conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Participants included Jerry Berman, Esther Dyson, John Gage, George Gilder, Jay Keyworth, Lewis Perelman, Michael Rothschild and Alvin Toffler. Major support for the conference was provided by BELLSouth and the Competitive Long Distance Coalition. Additional support was provided by Agorics Enterprises, Inc., AT&T, Cox Enterprises, J.L. Dearlove and Affiliates, Forbes, Scientific Atlanta, Video Tape Associates and Wired. Creative Consulting and Ad Production by J.L. Dearlove & Affiliates, Chicago, IL. Regarding the Magna Carta itself, it provides the e-mail address PFF(a)aol.com and some phone numbers, or, if you must, cross your fingers and send POM to 1250 H St. NW, Suite 550 Washington, DC 20005. Listen to the language. If you must? It's as though they're trying to talk jive to ingratiate themselves with the kids on the street. They don't even have a home page. So who are these folks? The ad says that: The Progress & Freedom Foundation believes cyberspace is a frontier, not a government project. We can learn a little more by turning to journalistic accounts. For example, in the 12/12/94 Wall Street Journal's article on Republican plans for the Food and Drug Administration (page A16), we read the following: In September, Rep. [Newt] Gingrich [incoming Speaker of the House] told a biotechnology trade group that he was launching a project to design a replacement for the FDA. Leading the effort is the Progress and Freedom Foundation, whose head, Jeffrey Eisenach, formerly ran Gopac, Mr. Gingrich's political action committee. Without apology, Mr. Eisenach acknowledges that drug companies are financial contributors to the foundation, and notes that drug companies will be involved in the project. And he dismisses suggestions that drug-company involvement could taint the results. "So I should go to Ralph Nader and do it?" he says. "That's silly". So the Progress and Freedom Foundation is active on more than just telecommunications issues. But it is not just an industry lobbying organization. In particular, the connection to Gopac is not at all coincidental. The purpose of Gopac has been to train conservative Republican candidates in the particularly aggressive style of politicking that Mr. Gingrich pioneered during his early days in Congress, and the Progress and Freedom Foundation may contribute to a generalization of this model. [By 1994] "Newt World" was now far-flung, from GOPAC to the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee; the Friends of Newt Gingrich campaign committee; a weekly TV show on the conservative cable TV network, National Empowerment Television, and a think tank called the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Its messages were coordinated with talk-show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and with Christian Coalition groups. [...] "The goal of this project is simple", Jeffrey A. Eisenach, director of the Progress and Freedom Foundation, wrote in a fund-raising letter. "To train, by April, 1996, 200,000-plus citizens into a model for replacing the welfare state and reforming our government." (LA Times 12/19/94, page A31) What can we expect from this rising army? The Gopac's record provides some evidence. Much has been written about the tactics that Gopac suggested to its candidates. An article about Gopac leader Joe Gaylord (Wall Street Journal, 8 December 1994, page A18), for example, says: Mr. Gaylord is one of the brains behind Gopac ... . [He] wrote its how-to textbook, which urges challengers to "go negative" early and "never back off". They must sometimes ignore voters' main concerns because "important issues can be of limited value". The book suggests looking for a "minor detail" to use against opponents, pointing to Willie Horton as a good example. Though it says a positive proposal also can be helpful, it counsels candidates to consider the consequences: "Does it help, or at least not harm, efforts to raise money?" Mr. Gingrich has called the book "absolutely brilliant". Even more has been written about the most famous Gopac document, ... a memo by Gingrich called "Language, a Key Mechanism of Control", in which the then-House minority whip gave candidates a glossary of words, tested in focus groups, to sprinkle in their rhetoric and literature. For example, it advised characterizing Democrats with such words as "decay, sick, pathetic, stagnation, corrupt, waste, traitors". (LA Times, 12/19/94, pages A31) In my view, though, the most significant feature of Newt World is not its language, which is certainly fascinating, or its association with industry, which is hardly surprising or novel, but rather its use of technology. Mr. Gingrich is a pioneer in the use of new technologies to build a political movement. I do have to hand it to him -- he has worked hard and he has a genius for political organizing. Having observed in the early 1980's that candidates spend a lot of dead time on the road traveling around during campaigns, he hit upon the idea of sending them videos and other materials about campaigning. This is what Gopac did. As time went on, they generalized this model to include scheduled conference calls and video broadcasts in which Mr. Gingrich and others would provide campaigners with advice about messages and methods. How does this model scale to 200,000-plus people? Well, at that point it starts to sound a lot like the information superhighway -- a technology for centralized broadcast of programs to a group that isn't the "mass audience" of conventional TV broadcasting but is distributed across the country. More tailored programming could be distributed as well -- to particular geographical regions, to activists on particular issues, and so forth. It's not a decentralized model like the Internet, but then it's not the political vision that normally goes with the Internet either. It's closer to the asymmetrical distribution model found in the plans of many cable and regional phone companies -- some of whom, you might recall, sponsored the Progress and Freedom Foundation's conference. This is not to say that Newt Gingrich and company are engaged in a conspiracy against the Internet. After all, Mr. Gingrich has made some encouraging statements about making Congressional materials available to citizens on the Internet, and this is certainly a good and laudable thing. The situation and the participants' views are often complicated. The point is that technologies are not neutral. Technologies certainly do not determine how they will be used, but neither are they simply tools that can be used for any old purpose at all. Rather, technologies and social forms evolve together, according to the affordances of the machinery and the forces of the social system. None of this coevolution goes simply or smoothly in practice, of course, nor is any of it inevitable. As the Internet illustrates extremely well, machines frequently have uses that nobody ever thought of, and these can often be resources for people wishing to engage in genuine, bottom-up democracy. The machines can't restore the health of our democracy, though -- we have to do that ourselves. And in doing so, we need to be aware of the complex and ambiguous interactions between the workings of our machinery and the forms of our political life. In particular, we should not assume that the Internet's open and decentralized architecture necessarily makes it a force for democracy, or that it necessarily levels the field for all players. The practice of politics on the Internet is increasingly complicated, with new kinds of players and new variations on the existing games. As a case study in these issues, let's consider an organization called the Wireless Opportunities Coalition. The WOC has circulated an alert on the net seeking support for a certain position in a fairly arcane regulatory fight within the FCC over the rules in certain frequency bands for digital wireless communications. The WOC's materials are also available on WWW: http://wireless.policy.net/wireless/wireless.html The basic idea of the WOC's arguments is that companies with very sensitive communications devices shouldn't be able to displace other users of certain frequencies, including low-power digital wireless communications used for educational purposes, for example in local community networking in areas that do not have high rates of telephone service. This certainly sounds like a good cause, and it probably even *is* a good cause. But note that the Wireless Opportunities Coalition, is a creation of a public relations firm called Issue Dynamics Inc, whose largest clients include Bell Atlantic and a lobbying alliance of the US regional phone companies. (To be fair, they also include the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.) I couldn't find this information by searching through the WOC web pages, but you can verify it easily enough by aiming your web client at the underlying index: http://wireless.policy.net/ As recently as December 9th this page was entitled "IDI Index"; it is now, as of December 20th, called "Policy.Net". Click on "Issue Dynamics", read down to the bottom, and click on the IDI logo, which will take you to: http://idi.net/clients.html Why is it "idi.net" and not "idi.com"? Never mind. My point is not that these folks are evil or that they have no right to speak. My point is that they are a public relations firm practicing their craft on the Internet. In the future, I expect that ordinary citizens using the Internet will want to inform themselves about who's behind all of those slick web pages. Public relations and its place in society is a fascinating and important topic, and I encourage everyone to learn more about it. If you're interested, here is a brief reading list: Edward L. Bernays, The Engineering of Consent, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955. Bill Cantor, ed, Experts in Action: Inside Public Relations, New York: Longman, 1984. Oscar H. Gandy, Jr., Beyond Agenda Setting: Information Subsidies and Public Policy, Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1982. Jack A. Gottschalk, Crisis Response: Inside Stories on Managing Image Under Siege, Detroit: Visible Ink, 1993. James E. Grunig and Todd Hunt, Managing Public Relations, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984. Elizabeth L. Toth and Robert L. Heath, eds, Rhetorical and Critical Approaches to Public Relations, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1992. Finally, let me close with a pertinent quote: "One practice which I believe should be eliminated is that of the so-called "paper front". A client is advised to finance an "organization" to promote or fight for its cause under the guise of an independent and spontaneous movement. This is a plain public deceit and fraud and of course is a technique developed with consummate skill and in great profusion by the Communists. In a free country any interest with a cause has a right to present its case to the public, to inform and, if possible, to persuade to its heart's content. But that right of free speech also carries the obligation that the source of it will be in the open for all to see. Attempts to fool the public by making it believe an "organization" existing only on paper is really a vociferous group favoring this or that cause have helped to cast a shadow upon the business of public relations counseling. No counsel who wants to preserve his own reputation will ever be a party to the issuance of any public statement by a client unless the source is clearly set forth. Obviously, when a client is involved in a public relations controversy, supporting statements are welcomed from every responsible source. But such statements should be issued by real-live people or organizations and not phoneys." This quote is from the autobiography of John W. Hill ("The Making of a Public Relations Man", recently republished by NTC Business Books, pages 139-140), who founded one of the largest public relations firms, Hill and Knowlton. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= end here =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

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FYI: (Meeks) Berman leaves EFF
by ddt＠lsd.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= cut here =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Date: Tue, 20 Dec 1994 17:04:23 -0800 From: "Brock N. Meeks" <brock(a)well.sf.ca.us> Subject: CWD Changes in the Wind At EFF CyberWire Dispatch // Copyright (c) 1994 // Jacking in from the "Back to the Future" Port: Washington, DC -- The Electronic Frontier Foundation has fired its Policy Director Jerry Berman and will soon release a sweeping new agenda for 1995 that promises to return the organization to its original grassroots beginning. Asked to comment on his firing, Berman bristles and says: "I think that's baloney." Then he quickly adds: "Did you ever think I might have wanted to leave?" Berman has, in fact, left EFF, to head a new, as yet unannounced, policy group called the Center for Democracy and Technology. His departure from EFF and the creation of CDT will be made public this week in a joint announcement with EFF, sources said. The official line that will be spun to the public is that the two came to a "mutual parting of the ways." That benign statement, however, doesn't reflect the long hours of the behind the scenes deliberations, in which the language of the press releases will be a cautiously worded as an official State Department briefing. Heroes and pioneers always take the arrows; EFF lately has looked more like a pin-cushion than its self-appointed role as protector of all things Cyberspace. The beleaguered organization has over the course of the past two years endured often withering criticism from the very frontier citizens it was sworn to uphold and protect. The reason: A perceived move away from its grassroots activism to the role of a consummate Washington Insider deal maker. Berman is the man largely responsible for cutting EFF's policy cloth. He wears the suit well. Maybe too well. Although he has the political acumen to arm-wrestle inside-the-beltway, it comes at the expense of his management style, EFF insiders said. Those shortcomings came at the expense of EFF's day-to-day operations and didn't go unnoticed by its board of directors. The EFF board in October fired Berman for mismanaging the group's organizational and fiscal responsibilities. No impropriety or malfeasance was alleged, the board was simply dissatisfied with Berman's day-to-day managing of the shop. In a precursor to the board's October decision, it split Berman's job, giving him charge of just the policy arm, which board members said played to his strength. They then hired Andrew Taubman as executive director to oversee the day to day tasks. Separate from the organizational and fiscal misgivings, the board also couldn't brook with priority on policy affairs that Berman had engineered. Although Berman expertly navigated EFF through the choppy political waters of Washington, that course increasingly steered the organization away from its original vision as a populist group. Never was the hardcore policy-driven slant of EFF more apparent than during the two-plus year political firestorm that surrounded the FBI's infamous Digital Wiretap. The political wrangling during that time, in which Berman brokered the influence of EFF with the backing of the telephone, computer and software industries, to reach a compromise with legislators and the FBI on the bill's language, increasingly drove a wedge between the organization and its grassroots membership. Nobody within EFF interviewed for this article disagreed with how Berman ran his policy tour de force. In fact, the board was generally in agreement that Berman did an excellent job in helping to broker a less nefarious version of the FBI's wiretap bill than would have otherwise passed without his involvement on EFF's behalf. As effective as Berman was in shuffling between the political and ideological interests of EFF and its members, the "inside baseball" political bullshit was largely lost on the community of the Net, who viewed it as a kind of betrayal. The fact that there would be a backlash from the Net came as no surprise to Berman and EFF, who recognized the fine line they had to walk in dealing with a politically charged issue rivaled only by the Administration's insipid Clipper Chip encryption policy. You see, the Net community is a binary braintrust, a world of ones and zeros -- either on or off -- in which shades of grey are rarely an option. Yet it is exactly these shades of grey in which Berman excels and thrives. It is a skill -- and damn near an art form -- to be able to move among the shadows and Washington's land of a thousand different agendas. And that's right where Berman had steered EFF. However, it's not where the EFF board thought the organization belonged. And so, in a few days the Net community will read a grand announcement in which EFF and Jerry Berman state they've had a "mutual parting of the ways." The announcement will be several fold, including: -- The formation of Berman's new Center for Democracy and Technology. -- That EFF has hired current board member David Johnson, currently a computer law attorney with the Washington law firm of Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering, to be its new policy director, although that exact title has yet to be finalized. -- A new policy agenda for EFF that includes creation of an annual "State of the Net" report. EFF Executive Director Taubman declined to comment on Berman's firing, saying only that the organization and its former director had, indeed, agreed to a "mutual parting of the ways." He said EFF and Berman's new group would continue to work closely with each other and that the efforts of each would be mutually beneficial. Johnson said he was excited about the new policy efforts he would be heading up for EFF, which, in addition to the "State of the Net" report, includes commissioning papers and studies to help build a more solid idea of what exactly constitutes the Net "community" on a global basis and helping to define the Net's community as recognizable legal entity. In addition to the new policy efforts, Johnson will have to restock EFF's policy department: All the EFF policy wonks have jumped ship, resigning their positions and joining with Berman's new venture. The upheaval at EFF -- which included moving the entire operation here to new digs in Washington -- apparently hasn't hurt moral which has "never been higher," Taubman said. Underscoring Taubman's remarks is EFF's on-line legal council Mike Godwin, who said the changes "create an opportunity for us to return to our more populist mission and vision that we started with." All Things Being Equal ================= Adversity for a political junkie is the warp and woof of Washington culture. Berman is no worse for the wear, having parachuted out of EFF and into his new organization. He said CDT will be differ from EFF "on what to emphasize." That emphasis will be to focus on "on the ground public policy," he said. And it won't only be Berman's staff that sets the scene for familiarity as he jump starts CDT. The former EFF policy staffers will supply him with horsepower and his political currency will open doors. But he needs cold hard cash to feed the troops and pay the rent. That means his new organization must have financial backing and here, too, there are no strangers. Berman's bringing along a fair chunk of EFF's corporate sponsors to his new home. Companies providing seed money to Berman's CDT include AT&T, Bell Atlantic, Nynex, Apple Computer and Microsoft. These same companies provided a combined $235,000 in donations to EFF in 1993, minus Nynex, which wasn't listed as a major donor (over $5,000) on EFF's tax returns. It's not known if these companies will continue to fund EFF in full or in part or what amount they have pledged to Berman's group. Just how well-heeled CDT is and exactly who makes up the full roster of its sponsorship remains to be seen. We'll know that after the organization files its first tax returns, which will be a matter of public record. Meeks out...

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Re: Breaking into girlfriend's files
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

<looks both ways. speaks behind hand to offstage> Psst! Is Tim here? What? He's on vacation? Cool. <removes body armor, nomex overalls, and titanium cup... Puts titanium cup back in. Adujsts underwear. Taps microphone...> Ahem. > := At 9:52 AM 12/27/94, dmandl(a)bear.com >> := Black Unicorn <unicorn%access.digex.net(a)bear-lock.bear.com> dmandl> No one was suppressing anything or in any way attempting to stop the flow dmandl> of information. They were just expressing their opinions. Just because dmandl> _you_ were unhappy with those opinions, that's no reason to hurl accusations dmandl> of censorship around. dmandl> dmandl> I can refuse to give help to anyone I don't feel like helping, and if I feel dmandl> like giving him a piece of my mind in the process, that's my business and his. unicorn>> Q: "How do you attack X?" unicorn>> A: "Realistically X should not be attacked, because to allow the unicorn>> widespead lack of confidence in X will destroy society as we know it, and unicorn>> anyhow it's nasty." dmandl> Great, I've always wanted to be a simple input-output machine. dmandl> dmandl> Pseudo-individualist Republican rubbish... As a pedigreed piece of Pseudo-individualist Republican rubbish (PIRR) myself, I take exception to that remark. Associating noble PIRR with pseudonyms named for inappropriately-colored fictional creatures really gets my, ahem, goat. It seems to me the proper answer to the original poster of this thread was to greet it with a deafening silence. First, because the answer is trivial given the technical level of this list (well, the average technical level, anyway) and can be obtained elsewhere. Second, because there is such a diversity of ethics, politics, and moral belief on this list, because the fundemental nature of the technology we discuss here and its potential impact on human society is so great, to address the question on its merits would unleash enough verbal flatulatence (including my own, I'm afraid) to rival even the best Mel Brooks epic. To employ an appropriately PIRR sports metaphor, the question was a pitch so *obviously* a slow lob over the plate, such an *easy* target for flamage, that it should have been very apparent to anybody here that it wouldn't have been fair at all to the pitcher to even swing at it. Short of letting it fall into the mitt with a dull thud, a pointer to the appropriate HAKK3r d00d list would have been the next best thing. This was done. Next on the list would be actually answering the question as quickly as possible. This was done. (Thank you, Perry.) The quierant will probably not be able to execute the proper solution anyway. He'll probably run out of steam before executing it, and if he does it anyway, he deserves all the shit he'll find himself in upon decrypting those files. We were all young and stupid once. Some of us still are, it appears. The posting was inadvertant flamebait, yes? Let the rubble bounce already. Can we take the rest of the discussion off-line now? Cheers, Bob Hettinga P.S. My apologies to M(s)r. 'Corn if I stepped on he/she/it's er, hooves. I meant to cast no asparagas upon he/she/it's choice of nym-name. ----------------- 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: FRAUD: Progress & Freedom on the Web-Frontier?
by pstemari＠erinet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:39 AM 12/24/94 -0800, Dave Del Torto forwarded someone else's writings: [...] > Even more has been written about the most famous Gopac document, > > ... a memo by Gingrich called "Language, a Key Mechanism of > Control", in which the then-House minority whip gave candidates > a glossary of words, tested in focus groups, to sprinkle > in their rhetoric and literature. For example, it advised > characterizing Democrats with such words as "decay, sick, > pathetic, stagnation, corrupt, waste, traitors". (LA Times, > 12/19/94, pages A31) Paging Prof. Chomsky, paging Prof. Chomsky... This is exactly the sort of information manipulation that can create a chain reaction on the net. The infamous modem tax is a good example of this sort of cascade effect. Use of "hot button" terms can product astonishing effects. > How does this model scale to 200,000-plus people? Well, at that > point it starts to sound a lot like the information superhighway > -- a technology for centralized broadcast of programs to a group > that isn't the "mass audience" of conventional TV broadcasting > but is distributed across the country. More tailored programming > could be distributed as well -- to particular geographical > regions, to activists on particular issues, and so forth. It's > not a decentralized model like the Internet, but then it's not > the political vision that normally goes with the Internet either. > It's closer to the asymmetrical distribution model found in the > plans of many cable and regional phone companies -- some of whom, > you might recall, sponsored the Progress and Freedom Foundation's > conference. Yawn--this is the same old crappy broadcast paradigm that every govt drone that has looked at the net insists on regurgitating out of their craw. The nature of the net is that everyone is a broadcaster, and the concept of a band of Newt-clones spamming the net is annoying. It's good that these people are this clueless--someone that selectively and judiciously inserted a few posts here and there on appropriate newsgroups could have quite an effect, given an understanding of the language manipulation techniques mentioned above. > As a case study in these issues, let's consider an organization > called the Wireless Opportunities Coalition. The WOC has [posted a web page with minimal credits for sponsorship] > Why is it "idi.net" and not "idi.com"? Never mind. My point > is not that these folks are evil or that they have no right > to speak. My point is that they are a public relations firm > practicing their craft on the Internet. In the future, I expect > that ordinary citizens using the Internet will want to inform > themselves about who's behind all of those slick web pages. This gets right down to one of the fundemental differences between Usenet news and the WWW. The Web is essentially a broadcast model for information exchange, even though everyone can publish their own Web page. News & mailing lists, OTOH, give everyone involved an opportunity to respond and point out stuff that is complete bullshit. Until you can hang responses off of Web pages, it will never give the value of the newsgroups and mailing lists, despite all the fancy fonts and glitzy graphics on the Web pages. --Paul J. Ste. Marie

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Re: Breaking into girlfriend's files
by arromdee＠blaze.cs.jhu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Black Unicorn: >1> All potentially damaging information, by virtue of it's potential >"wrongful use" shall be banned. >2> All information clearly going to be used for the "wrong purposes" >shall be restricted. >The result in 1>, I think is quite clear. >The result in 2>, requires some ONE, some GROUP to decide what is and is >not A> "clearly going to be used for," B> "the wrong purposes." ... >You end up with either a cut throat thought police regime, or slightly >less offensive paternalistic censorship. You choose, what is it you want >to have? Any individual has the right to decide what information to give out. If that means the individual has to judge someone else's purposes, then so be it. The individual may even try to persuade others not to give out the information. It only becomes a problem if he's trying to use force--to keep others who _do_ want to reveal the information, from revealing it. This is _the_ difference between the current situation, and real police state censorship; censorship prevents someone from speaking who wants to speak; it doesn't merely mean that the government itself won't speak to you. -- Ken Arromdee (email: arromdee(a)jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu) "No boom today. Boom tomorrow, there's always a boom tomorrow." --Ivanova

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Re: Breaking into girlfriends files.
by klp＠epx.cis.umn.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Oddly enough, I'm on the other end of this situation right now with someone I know. The basic facts are this person keeps a journal, until recently on paper. Her husband got ahold of it and based on some stuff she had written decided to cause a big fuss (not really willing to go into the whole details, it's a loooong story). So she burned the journal, and was bummed that she could no longer keep one for fear of a repeat of the situation. Knowing she has a macintosh at home, I mentioned PGP to her, and am in the process of getting her set up with a copy. Of course I'm informing her of the limitations, and such, so that she can take precautions so that what she wishes to keep private can remain private. Another crypto convert? I don't know. But I think she'll be ahead of 98% of the population in that she has a tool to keep her privacy, and she's fully aware of what it is, and the limitations. And that's not a bad days work for this kid :) -- Kevin Prigge internet: klp(a)epx.cis.umn.edu CIS Consultant MaBellNet: (612)626-0001 Computer & Information Services SneakerNet: 152 Lauderdale

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