December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: The Remailer Crisis
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim urges recently that we need to do something about the "remailer crisis." I remember Sameer once mentioning that he could set up remailer-in-a-box accounts for possibly anonymous 'sponsors' who'd be the legal owners therefore indemnifying Sameer (the tolerant sysadmin) of responsibility. I know he allows 'remail-to-yourself' blind-server accounts for $10 / meg or something. That's probably a bit expensive for a sponsor of a public remailer (any stats on average remailer traffic?). I never did here any more from sameer or anyone else about remailers-in-boxed-accounts. I for one would be willing to 'sponsor' a remailer account on any system with a small fee - I can't run my own as my private site looks at the world through PPP. I suggest that 'sponsored' remailers are a better way of making remailers economically viable for people like Sameer, who are the real, if not nominal, administrators. Though I hardly use remailers, those who do would probably make better (and more easily executed) use of their money if they sponsor remailer accounts on Cypherpunk ISPs like c2, rather than pay a (truenamed, legally vulnerable) operator for any single remailer. Sameer's blind-server code can come in use to make any link between the sponsor and her sponsored account very hard to detect. The advantages of sponsoring remailer-site operators to create remailing accounts, rather than pay an individual remailer operator, are many: 1. innocent until proven guilty - presumably sponsors do use remailers a lot; but not necessarily. So the payment transaction can be via truename, rather than via some complicated anonymous means, and still leave the sponsor unimplicated 2. legal - an operator of a single remailer is vulnerable - technically, if not root, and legally otherwise. an administrator of a Cypherpunk ISP is not, and does not have the legal right to monitor a customer's traffic, and with blind-servers even detailed logging don't lead back to the owner of an account, the sponsor, from any _specific_ remailer (though a pool of sponsors exist for a pool of remailer account) 3. technical - it's not possible to ban a single remailer, as they may be _many_ on a site. If the site is much more than just remailers, it's not really possible to ban the entire site. 4. traffic analysis - more remailers addresses will make traffic analysis harder, and chaining more fun - you could chain through multiple accounts on a single site with little loss in reliability (though you'll still want to go through more sites) 5. remailer explosion - more reliable remailers (due to the '-in-a-box', more users, wider distribution Comments? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "In between the breaths is rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in the space where we live" rishab(a)arbornet.org - Lawrence Durrell Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

2 1

Netherlands crypto ban?
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What's the update on the move to ban private crypto in Holland? Last I remember there were trial balloons, but nothing happened. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "In between the breaths is rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in the space where we live" rishab(a)arbornet.org - Lawrence Durrell Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

1 0

Re: IRS to keep unreviewable secret dossiers on US citizens
by pstemari＠erinet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:44 PM 1/20/95 CST, xpat(a)vm1.spcs.umn.edu wrote: >Excerpts from : St Paul Pioneer Press, Jan 29, 1995 > >"IRS plans to collect more data on individuals to nab tax cheats" [...] Here's the text from the recent EPIC annoucement on this--it covers the exemption the IRS is claiming from the FOIA in a bit more detail (sorry if people have already seen this): ======================================================================= [6] IRS Initiates Massive New Database ======================================================================= On December 20, the Internal Revenue Service announced in the Federal Register that it was planning a new database to monitor compliance of taxpayers in a project entitled Compliance 2000. The database would contain information on all individuals in the U.S. who conduct certain financial transactions and would be segmented by different criteria: Any individual who has business and/or financial activities. These may be grouped by industry, occupation, or financial transactions, included in commercial databases, or in information provided by state and local licensing agencies. The new database will combine private and public sector databases in a single searchable entity. A number of federal financial databases from the IRS will be enhanced with state, local and commercial sources. The Federal Register notice describes the non-tax databases: Examples of other information would include data from commercial databases, any state's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), credit bureaus, state and local real estate records, commercial publications, newspapers, airplane and pilot information, U.S. Coast Guard vessel registration information, any state's Department of Natural Resources information, as well as other state and local records. In addition, Federal government databases may also be accessed, such as, federal employment files, federal licensing data, etc. Finally, even though the proposed system would use frequently inaccurate "commercial databases" such as direct marketing records, taxpayers would not be able to review their records to ensure that they are accurate and up to date: "This system is exempt from the access and contest provisions of the Privacy Act." EPIC is filing comments asking the IRS to reconsider its use of commercial databases and to ensure that there are greater safeguards on the collection and use of personal information. A copy of the Federal Register notice is available at cpsr.org /cpsr/privacy/epic/IRS_compliance_2000_notice_txt Comments on the proposed system must be received by January 19, 1995, and sent to Office of Disclosure, Internal Revenue Service, 1111 Conn. Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20224. EPIC's Comments are available at cpsr.org /cpsr/privacy/epic/epic_irs_compliance_2000_comments.txt --Paul J. Ste. Marie pstemari(a)well.sf.ca.us, pstemari(a)erinet.com

2 1

Spam Busters!
by Nathan Zook 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Yeah, the numbers should be higher. This was just a hypothetical! nzook(a)bga.com said: > There is little, if anything, we can do to stop a chained, PGP'ed mail > bomb, "This is mail bomb number XXX. Boom!" It is therefore in our best > interest to not encourage children to send such messages in such a way. I > believe Homer's message was erroneous for this reason. People, please! Before critisizing a method, look at the threat model! I plainly stated that my method was not intended to deal with real trouble. tcmay: "The From: line is notoriously misleading". But it still gives enough that we need remailers in the first place, right? The "From:" was a token. It wasn't meant as a literal. For id'ing postmaster, all you need is the xx.xx.xx.xx, right? jalicqui "Unless your remailer was the terminal remailer for a significant number.." But in a serious spam/mailbomb attack, someone would _have_ to get a bunch, right? With the changing session keys, and a chain, the best we could hope for would be to stop it on its way out. (or use for padding ;-) Incidently, a per/customer volume limit would also control the binaries. Since we have little hope of id'ing the true originator, we might have to limit a site. (bad) OTOH, if someone tried to send binaries, only to find that they couldn't get more than 1M out an hour, they would probably give up & go somewhere else. We might also hit the chained pgp bomber this way, as the messages would likely be fairly large? XXX But this all misses a point that I would like to stress. We are in what the military refers to as "low-intensity combat". Right now, we don't have a continuous stream of spam-bombs floating through our systems. (Well, we did, but jp shut down :-(( ) Right now, we (other than PRZ) don't have serious legal troubles. Right now, our remailers are too weak to be a significant problem to the TLAs (any more than a forged From:). The way to win a low-intensity battle is to avoid escalating unless you are sure you can win. Eventually, we will have to standardize packets. Eventually, we will have to employ very sophisticated techniques to deal with spam-bomb. But maybe we don't do that today. Maybe we do just enough to catch a bunch of the most juvenile. Then the next bunch is smarter. Then we catch them. We keep going. You see, I doubt that we can take on a spammer that knows the net as well as anyone here. But I don't doubt that word can get out that the remailers nail spammers. Of course, we risk becoming the latest challenge to the juvenile, but I think that this is far less likely than it appears at first because we are, after all, "really cool". My suggestion is to avoid, for as long as possible, letting on to _anyone_ just how sophisticated our systems are, just how much can be done, until we are sure we can win the unavoidable battles. XXX This also strongly points to per-line blocking of remailers. Since the necessary steps to catch a sUPer bomber appear to be impossible/ impractical, we must offer annon-blocking for those poor souls that request it. Perhaps annon-block for a month at a time. This is part of that PR that we need to watch. To put it another way, if our services make it easy(er) for someone to engage in an activity that we oppose, and that can hurt (subjective) someone else, we are facing a moral responsiblity for our actions. We should attempt to fulfill that responsibility. I believe that the phone company even allows people to change numbers for free if they are receiving harassing calls. And we want to be better though of than the phone company, right? XXX BTW, do you have to be a remailer operator to be on the list? If not, I'ld like to know how to subscribe... Finger or request keyserver for PGP 2.6.2 (tm) key. PGP<->Mail/News installation incomplete. Factors for modulous are not proven primes. Key may be far weaker than expected. Encode at your own risk. Key ID: 14712B4D 1994/12/26 Nathan H. Zook <nzook(a)bga.com> Key fingerprint = 44 B3 D8 66 3D 55 1E 2E F8 92 22 A6 33 8C DE 24 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBLyBfUHmgMs8UcStNAQE7Ygf/Wg5+hKErgpqi+4J7jOAw97AitUnYn+z+ QJqAw4ar6hQEY/taC6ru5S8YjKYHwmXdR7n7YjSFjEy8aYwXSr4SaALICNhQsyrU jcSuaMY0oUN2obYV6TxYtdVWaQVF9XBqW/8AlIcs+ZF4Yi7gqUdgf4aApuapW14e drVi6PgV5ccg8a+wGBCdJhDy5AK0BJRtxUxtLDeb+MkaTOfk/ylLfBdbFV1iK7Ek qDmpAZdd+FpwKoqBTm+jbCa/kemwFN5touLeLijRWjEuoqFK0x/YYRYsAjJUNqu/ Qt6YWqvat8t7UYlTauVsQ/9XJNxADxmWlrKaaQTxmsHrobq0h4s+RA== =ykck -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

Why emoney? Why not a web of debt?
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[summary -- digital silk road along a web of debt-trust] Umm... money is not anything mystical -- it is just a convienient way to trade and settle debts. It was invented to solve the hassels of trading a pound of butter, for a box of eggs, that for a tightly woven basket, and finaly that for the gun you wanted in the first place. Yuch! accounting!! But electronic computers are good at checking out these kinds of chains automatically. Suppose there were a web of debt-trust. Each person would indicate the other people who's iou's they will accept (and the amount they would be willing to take). Thus I might take (up to $10 of) Jo's, who might take Carol's who might take Terry's, etc. To buy something from me online, you will need to produce an IOU from Jo, Carol or Terry. I would hand it to Jo for verification. Jo would accept it or reject it (perhaps after talking to some other folks online). If it were a CarolIOU, or a TerryIOU I would insist Jo trade it for a JoIOU. All the details could be hidden behind a nice little GUI. Jo and I would continuously balance the books between us by trading JoIOUs for NoybIOU's. After a while one of us might well end up with enough extra IOUs that we want to get paid. Perhaps the other would perform services directly, or pay FRN's or gold, or whatever. If one of my friends wasn't able run an online IOU server, I could probably trade things with my friend for IOU's. Not that I'm running a bank or any thing. With out every one being on line though I don't see an easy way to prevent double spending. Is there a offline multiple exchange token system invented yet? Noyb

2 1

Re: Why emoney? Why not a web of debt?
by jrochkin＠cs.oberlin.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:54 PM 01/20/95, anonymous-remailer(a)shell.portal.com wrote: > But electronic computers are good at checking out these kinds of >chains automatically. Suppose there were a web of debt-trust. Each >person would indicate the other people who's iou's they will accept >(and the amount they would be willing to take). Thus I might take (up >to $10 of) Jo's, who might take Carol's who might take Terry's, etc. > > To buy something from me online, you will need to produce an IOU >from Jo, Carol or Terry. I would hand it to Jo for verification. Jo >would accept it or reject it (perhaps after talking to some other >folks online). If it were a CarolIOU, or a TerryIOU I would insist Jo >trade it for a JoIOU. All the details could be hidden behind a nice >little GUI. Certainly, that's what money is after all. Pretty much. But how are you going to transfer these IOUs electronically in a way that is relatively fraud-proof? Digital money. Ecash. When we say "ecash", we're talking about what Chaum was writing about in whatever paper, what Schneier describes protocols for in AC. Maybe the ecash is redeemable in US dollars, or maybe it's redeemable for 10 units of service from Jon Smith, but an ecash protocol is what you are going to use to transfer and issue those digital certificates of value, whatever the value represents. And of course, if you want to use these certificates of value anonymously, which is what is required to pay for an anon remailer, there are some slightly more stringent requirements. The right kind of ecash protocol can still handle it. But Carol probably shouldn't be paying for a remailer in CarolBucks (or CarolIOUs, whatever), at least not unless Carol is such a big spender that CarolBucks are in wide circulation and used by lots of people other then Carol. Which I guess is possible in your system. A pseudo-anarchist non-state-supported debt system would work fine, but you still need a mechanism to transfer your certificates of value, whether they stand for ten U.S. dollars, or 10 hours that Jon Smith will work mowing your lawn. And another way to look at it is that you are just proposing an ecash system where every person issues their own ecash, instead of just a few central banks doing it. There are advantages and disadvantages to that sort of thing, and it might be something interesting to think about, but you ultimately aren't going to be able to do it over a computer network without ecash. Ecash is the way you represent value certificates in digital form, pretty much.

4 3

Purshottam
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>----- Forwarded message (Andrew Purshottam <andy(a)eon.netcom.com>) -----< Dear Mr. Purshottam, Mail to <andy(a)eon.netcom.com> boings.

1 0

Remailers-in-a-box
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Tim May wrote: > I am waiting for such services to be actually, formally, solidly > announced, not just casual remarks that it might be possible. And of > course the software should be "ready to wear," port-a-potty, so that > the remailer account owner does nothing more than pay for the account. In this model, who deals with mailbombs/spams/requests for address blocks? It is this sort of administrivia (plus the threat of liability) that makes running a remailer troublesome, not a lack of someone's $20/month. I think it's disingenuous to say that "X pays the bills for the network link; X purchased the hardware and keeps it running; the box is in X's house/office; X is the person who reads complaint mail and responds (or fails to); but because Y sends X $20/month, the remailer (and attendant liability for its mis/use) belongs to Y." I realize that there's a certain formal logic to it, but I don't think that anyone - not courts, and not the world-in-general - is going to pay attention to that formalism when it's clear that a machine essentially under the control of X is being used for 'antisocial' means. I'm seriously considering offering this sort of remailer-in-a-box thing, but there's a certain amount of hassle associated with running a remailer. It can be shifted to different parties, but it must be paid for one way or another. I guess it'd be possible to treat remailers as disposable - when one had pissed off enough people, it could be abandoned - but this lack of long-term reliability seems poor. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBLyBjVX3YhjZY3fMNAQEI3QP/YdqBbhn5k4Q+NtD3zoJCG7qIfGaQqogH AFFmItuU46rFQHHSxPl+p4fNmX+32yEva04ORq28NWPKggXiXhwN+LQDshWomSU8 gXkysIPdGeogSDxP6+JxXatE81TpuCjOtbGH3KlmCNaRbB0685zBVB7Oj1O/D5it zqM9JuV8yAE= =EQY5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

5 6

Re: Why emoney? Why not a web of debt?
by davidm＠iconz.co.nz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>At 6:54 PM 01/20/95, anonymous-remailer(a)shell.portal.com wrote: >> But electronic computers are good at checking out these kinds of >>chains automatically. Suppose there were a web of debt-trust. Each >>person would indicate the other people who's iou's they will accept >>(and the amount they would be willing to take). > >Certainly, that's what money is after all. Pretty much. But how are you >going to transfer these IOUs electronically in a way that is relatively >fraud-proof? Digital money. Ecash. [...] > And another way to look at it is that you are just proposing an >ecash system where every person issues their own ecash, instead of just a >few central banks doing it. The question of how to value ecash issued by different entities of varied credit-worthiness is an interesting one. I had been thinking along the lines of one or more centralised (but independent) credit rating agencies (a la Standard and Poors or Moodys) that one would subscribe to. Then you would value the various edollars in terms of their credit rating -- so you might sell something for $4 of CyberCash (NA) BV ecash, or $5 of FliBiNite NL ecash and so on. But of course, since ecash is worth only what you can get for it, the web of trust model, since it reflects what people will give for it, seems to reflect that underlying value much better. The best way to underpin the value of ecash is for the issuer to (credibly) undertake to convert it into real money. This gets around the problem of no one on the net making enough things you want: the old 'you can't eat cyberspace' saw. McDonalds may not accept ecash, but if a simple trip to the relevant ebank's Web page can put the price of a Big Mac in your real-money account, that is only a timing problem. [Of course, you have to come out from behind the anonymous ecash shield to do that, but that is a problem of being a real person. If you want to keep your wealth anonymous, don't buy a flash car and the latest Monet to go on sale -- invest it in an anonymous corporation.] An ebank along these lines could be set up reasonably cheaply (apart from the technical hurdles ;-), and could easily scale up as needed, and migrate to safer (taxhaven/banking secrecy) jurisdictions when turnover etc warranted it. David

2 1

Send Me The Stuff
by Master-X 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Please e-mail me with the stuff.

1 0