December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Unix not the Only Place for "Vanguard" Applications
by Matt Blaze 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cypherpunks, as they say, write code. It doesn't really matter very much what platform cypherpunks write code for, as long as we actually write code. Progress comes from getting stuff done and making results available so that others can expand on it and use it, not from sitting around optimizing what should be done (by others, of course) in the future. (Ever notice how, every time this comes up, the question is always something like "why aren't people writing more software for platform X?" and never "I want to write some software - does anyone have any suggestions on which platform would have the most impact?") Every minute spent arguing about whether Unix, DOS, Macs or VIC-20s constitute the optimal platform for writing and deploying crypto software is a minute during which no crypto code is being written or deployed for Unix, DOS, Macs, or VIC-20s. Just write code. For whatever platform you like writing code for. -matt

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Re: Anti-Electronic Racketeering Act of 1995 (fwd)
by Andrew.Spring＠ping.be 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>ranked as a mobster subject to RICO. My guess is that the intent is that >from one placement on an FTP server or one posting to a newsgroup, the >perpetrator of that heinous act will have passed his RICO qualification and >therefore be subject to having all he owns taken from him. RICO question: i thought that the idea of RICO is to confiscate assets of racketeers that are derived from criminal activities. PGP and remailer software is distributed free. so would RICO seizures even apply (yes I know this doesnt' always stop the FBI)? -- Thank you VERY much! You'll be getting a Handsome Simulfax Copy of your OWN words in the mail soon (and My Reply). <Andrew.Spring(a)ping.be> PGP Print: 0529 C9AF 613E 9E49 378E 54CD E232 DF96 Thank you for question, exit left to Funway.

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FAM_15\"
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

7-16-95. NYPaper: "New Concerns Raised Over a Computer Smut Study. 'They wanted to be famous.' It worked." Growing controversy over a widely publicized study of on-line computer pornography, conducted by a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, has prompted the university to investigate whether the research violated ethical or academic guidelines. The investigation follows the disclosure by angry faculty members that an undergraduate student and his principal faculty adviser at Carnegie Mellon spied on the private computer habits of nearly 3,000 students, staff members and other faculty members last year as part of the research study into pornography viewing habits. KEY_hol "Documents Were Destroyed as F.B.I. Resisted Seige Investigation. Hints of a cover-up: more embarrassment over a fatal confrontation." A Justice Department report not yet made public on the F.B.I.'s standoff with a white separatist in Idaho shows that in late 1992 and early 1993 F.B.I. managers were frantically trying to block Federal prosecutors from obtaining the Bureau's records on the case. Justice Department investigators, who uncovered the document destruction, have found that a career F.B.I. official stripped the files of official records that would have clearly shown if top F.B.I. officials in Washington were in command of the operation. FOL_hah Siamese: FAM_15"

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G0D_dim
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

7-16-95. NYPaper: "The Spies' Code and How It Broke. The Russians had a problem: it's almost impossible to be perfectly random. The Russians suffered from a lapse in quality control. They inadvertently let some pattern find its way into their scrambled codes, a loose thread that allowed American code breakers to unravel the scheme. "Given a pure, perfect one-time system, you're not going to break it," said David Kahn, visiting historian at the N.S.A.'s Center for Cryptologic History. RAN_dum "Twilight of the Nukes. The post-war years were spent hoarding nuclear weapons. Now it's time to put them away." Since that first nuclear test the United States has built 70,000 nuclear weapons of almost every conceivable kind: warheads, artillery shells, land mines, depth charges and even backpack-style plutonium explosives weighing 58 pounds but equivalent to 10 tons of TNT. But now it is the twilight of the nukes. They are being taken apart by the United States and the Soviet Union at the rate of 10 or 12 a day, and the new problem is how to keep track them of all. TWI_god >1: G0D_dim

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DOJ Press Release, S. 974?
by monty.harder＠famend.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

JY> According to the Computer Emergency Response Team at JY> Carnegie Mellon University, during the past four years, the JY> number of reported intrusions on the Internet has increased In the wake of the Rimm Job, any study from CMU is suspect. * Bad Borg, Bad Borg: Whatcha gon' do? Whatcha gon' do when they 'simlate you? --- * Monster(a)FAmend.Com *

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Root Causes
by monty.harder＠famend.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

DK> It would seem that things such as the CDA, etc, are patent violations of the DK> Bill of Rights. As such, wouldn't the Congressrodent(s) proposing such DK> measures be violating our civil rights, and thus be criminally liable? Congressional Immunity. DK> IANAL, of course, so I'll leave it up to those on the list who are to IANAL, either. But I have a thought, myself: [Please do not start an abortion flamefest on the list. If you want to argue it via Imail, I can handle that, but let's not bother the rest of the class, OK?] The Supremes found the right to have an abortion in some kind of "penumbral" right to <BOLD> privacy </BOLD>, which in turn came from Griswold v. Connecticut, if organic RAM serves. Given this precedent, may we challenge anti-crypto crap such as the Grassley Bill as a violation of the right to privacy? * Recursion: See "recursion". --- * Monster(a)FAmend.Com *

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Ack! It's not my fault!
by Robert A. Hayden 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Before anybody flames me too bad, I want to poitn out that I only posted the PineSign script ONCE. I don't know why it showed up multiple times. Most weird. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: PGP Signed with PineSign 1.0 iQCVAwUBMAk9cDokqlyVGmCFAQFNaAQAvELOLo9wazD7Tfyl/fyg3Z4wLxdJCXSt +O61LYzqlzx45+Y7AG3KNiW3GgZFSnJkaUT+dfSpNs7p0M24ruTGYRxnPE0r0+Nk TrUkPCG4o3YR/azpxq/PzVp2TiOaRL3SyEaSHvNGrSj6nVGLYuosYckylzRpJp/S WkCcAUqlKg4= =zbEG -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ____ Robert A. Hayden <=> Cthulhu Matata \ /__ -=-=-=-=- <=> -=-=-=-=- \/ / Finger for Geek Code Info <=> hayden(a)krypton.mankato.msus.edu \/ Finger for PGP Public Key <=> http://att2.cs.mankato.msus.edu/~hayden

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ecm list
by lethin＠ai.mit.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It may be necessary to remove the ECM mailing list from the MIT computers (no big surprise here). The issue isn't the overwhelming traffic volume on the list; rather, the concern that it might violate some MIT regulation. If anyone wants to take it on, please contact me ASAP. Thanks, Rich

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Re: unix, vanguard
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>If you want to do something like Raph's remailer list, would you rather >implement it on a pc running windows or with a perl script on a unix >box? Not to prolong this argument, which hopefully won't turn into a lengthy OS debate, but this argument boils down to the "users vs. developers" situation. Sure, remailers and remailer lists are better implemented under unix, and there may be as many as what, 50 people (developers) in the world interested in doing this? On the other hand, several times that number of users will access the information and actually give it value; they (users) don't need unix at all. Maybe I'm a market share bigot, but to me, if you want to spread crypto to the masses, you have to do it with tools that run on the platforms the masses use. Who knows, perhaps in the future we'll see that the tools, programs, and front ends run on more popular operating systems, and the relatively fewer servers and scripts run on unix. -- Karl L. Barrus <klbarrus(a)infocom.net>

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Re: Deployment
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > So, anyone want to volunteer to port Privtool to Windows ? > Uh, pardon my ignorance, but what is privtool, and why is it > a good thing to port it to windows? > (As compared to the task of integrating PGP into microsofts > mail tool.) It's an open-system mail tool resembling Sun's mailtool with PGP support added. Open-system tools are one of those vanguard things :-) (So are convenient GUI-development tools.) I no longer have a nearby Sun machine to play on, so I haven't played with it, but if it's got a well-done interface it's worth porting or stealing concepts from to include in other systems. I've heard that Microsoft's new mail tools are far less brain-damaged than the Microsoft Mail I've grown to know and hate, which assumes any message that's more than a few lines will be an attached document with maybe some optional intro and leftover mail headers, and chokes on messages with more than 30K of text in the body (choking badly on more than 64K). (Apparently, part of the reason for this evil is the fault of Visual Basic and/or Visual C++, which are convenient GUI development tools...) On the other hand, integrating it into Free Eudora for Windows would be pleasant, if that's doable (I forget it source is available.) # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com

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