December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

AA + Anonymous ECash = Unhappy Fundies
by mpd＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

hkhenson(a)cup.portal.com writes: > AA BBS is still up, and may well stay up for the whole time > Robert is in prison. He has no other way to support his > family or pay for legal defense. Also, outside of western > TN, OK, Utah, and other backwards places, what he is selling > is legal--even protected under the First Amendment. (Though > some of it *is* kinda gross :-) ) But certainly no worse than the stuff which regularly flows through a.b.p.tasteless and a.b.p.bestiality. > AA BBS is up to about 25,000 files. There is a good chance > that they will be available through the internet at some > point. It strikes me that this would be the perfect way to generate consumer interest in anonymous digital cash protocols. The entire AA collection, hooked up to the net through a T-3, and available for a nominal fee per GIF, could easily make the AA Sysops millionaires by the time their sentences are over. Such a setup would make their pictures available to everyone, not just the limited number of people their BBS has the capacity to handle. Perhaps the server could be placed securely overseas in a neutral country which still respects privacy and free speech. Orders could be encrypted using the server's PGP key and the customer could specify the passphrase to be used to IDEA encrypt the "goods" prior to shipment, ala NetBank. > Trying to control information in the network age is about > as sucessful as pissing into the wind. When the government pisses into the wind, the citizens get wet. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

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

17 Dec '03

>> Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 15:18:48 +1300 >> From: davidm(a)iconz.co.nz (David Murray) >> The best way to underpin the value of ecash is for the issuer to (credibly) >> undertake to convert it into real money. > > And since I would only make the promise to the few people that I am >connected to in the debt-trust web, this is doable. I doubt I could >convince all of you that I was good for $10, but I bet there are a few >readers on this list that I *could* convince. They would be able to >convince a few others that _they_ are worth $10, etc. But this, I suggest, is thinking too small, as well as (or, as a consequence) compromising anonymity somewhat. Which is not to say a central ebank is necessary -- just that (legally enforceable, audited) IOUs from a corporation that I knew could pay (because it makes it's living from being able to pay) would be preferred by me, even if I (my computer) knew that Alice's IOU is backed by Bob's which is backed by ... Zane's, who I would trust with my life (since he saved me in a boating accident 7 years ago...). Of course, the two systems can/should coexist. In fact, they're probably the same thing at different granularities. An ordinary bank takes deposits (issues IOU's to depositors) and lends the money out (collects IOU's from debtors). [The flow of credit is just the flow of debt backwards -- like current and electrons :-)] People trust bank IOUs because of the portfolio of IOUs it has collected (a certain mandated number from the Government, a certain proportion backed by property etc), and, probably, because it has received more IOUs than it has issued (so that the IOUs from Donald Trump and Orange County don't bring the system down...). On this analysis, the web of debt-trust is just an ultimately distributed bank. Instead of the bank collecting the ten dollars everyone is good for (in return for IOUs) and then lending it back out to the system (in return for IOUs), everyone's individual IOU underpins the system. This seems to leave the portfolio problem to the distributedness and interlinkicity of the e-economy (everyone essentially holds the market portfolio), or up to the individual to balance. Personally, I would be unhappy to hold my e-wealth in such a way that it was ultimately underpinned by the IOUs of a group of people living in California... > This system might even dodge the laws governing banking in various >jurisdictions ... though I doubt it. It quacks, waddles, and water >runs off its back... I don't think the banking laws are such a big problem. [Feel free to enlighten me.] The ordinary business of banking involves borrowing money from people in a special way (deposits) and lending to people, again in a characteristic way. But it is not simply borrowing and lending -- every business does that (borrows from banks, and, increasingly, in markets; lends (extends credit to) customers). Imagine a corporation that issued bearer bonds, and invested the proceeds in t-bills (or term deposits, or call accounts). Imagine that the bonds (IOUs) were issued at face value, carried no interest, and could be cashed in by the holder at any time. Imagine further that the bonds were repres- ented by bytes, and transferable anonymously. That is, the bonds are ecash, and the corporation is an ebank. But it is not a bank-bank. It is not borrowing money in a characteris- tically bankish way, and it is not lending the money in a characteris- tically bankish way. It doesn't raise the regulatory/consumer protection/ handholding or multiplier effect/credit expansion problems that (supposedly) underlie banking supervision regulations. In short, ladies and gentlemen, it is my submission that it is not, in fact, in the final analysis, when looked at from all angles in the correct way, at all, a duck. Cheers. D [Although this doesn't entirely answer your point. I don't think the distributed/web of debt-trust system would be a bank, either, although it might be a credit union. And you would have to pay tax on all those IOUs you collected ;-) ]

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Supreme Court, free speech, anon remailers...
by davidm＠iconz.co.nz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May wrote: >Nathan Zook wrote: > >> I believe, therefore, that both the court and the dissent bode poorly for >> anonymous encrypted mail. > >But anonymous handbills are quite common, posted all over the place >here in my home town, and the Supreme Court ruled quite properly that >identities are not required for speech. I too was concerned by the strong dissent in the anonymous handbill case posted to the net, largely because I live in a country where we have inherited the odious British practice of requiring newspapers and other published material (such as handbills) to carry the name of the printer and the sponsoring organisation (or sumpin' like that...). Its contemporary significance is supposed to be as a control for defamation (yes, we still have strong defamation laws -- good thing too, IMHO, and something cryto/ anonymity may or may not render moot): which is to say turning every publisher and printer into a censor. [Even more bizarrely, the law requires newspaper proprietors and editors to swear certain documents and deliver them to the High Court every year...] Of course, I have never heard of this particular piece of legislation being invoked to prosecute someone who hasn't complied, and I've never heard of anyone complying. Nevertheless, it is on the books. It seems to me that it would only take a minor amendment to the US law on the identification of periodicals that are posted (notice the colophons [?] in all those newspapers and magazines) to apply to all publications... A couple of extra words in the definition section and away we go. (It's not a freedom of speech issue, it's an environmental issue -- all those handbills cluttering up the landfills... And it would only be fair to treat the denizens of the information superhypeway equally...). Things ain't half as safe as you might think. D.

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Re: An Attempt to Hobble SAFE Crypto Bill
by Peter D. Junger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The more I look at this draft, the more gaping holes I see. I do not think that it was ever intended to be enacted, but was rather drafted simply to give cover to those who voted for the first amendment, since they could then vote against this one. Notice that it says that you will find the definitions in the Export Administration Act, which I am sure, though I have not looked it up, does not contain a definition of ``real time'', which seems to be the key term in the draft. But now that the first amendment lost, I suppose this could have been leaked so that some other committee will vote for a compromise. As I reread the proceeding sentence, I realize that I should have said ``proposed first amendment to the SAFE bill''. We wouldn't want to get it mixed up with the First Amendment, now would we? -- Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH EMAIL: junger(a)samsara.law.cwru.edu URL: http://samsara.law.cwru.edu NOTE: junger(a)pdj2-ra.f-remote.cwru.edu no longer exists

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Re: AA + Anonymous ECash = Unhappy Fundies
by davidm＠iconz.co.nz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>The "cause" will do much better if the first major association is made >with something much less controversial. Girl Scout cookies, say. This may be what you are referring to, but there was a thread on alt.cp a while back on introducing cyberspace to the people, and one of the suggest- ions was a Web page to sell Girl Scout cookies. Now if we could use anon-remailers and ecash to 'enhance' that idea, just think of the mainstream publicity... D.

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Remailer exit points
by pstemari＠erinet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Y'know, after some thought, some of the concepts I made regarding data havens with anonymous locations might well apply to making exit-point remailers that are relatively immune from outside pressure. Given a network of entry-point remailers with well-known public keys, you could advertise an exit-point remailer by only giving out encrypted address blocks for use with various well-known entry-point remailers and a public key. The exit-point remailer could then substitute some random From: address and path entries to spoof the exit-point remailer's location. The remailer's actual location would only be known by the entry point remailers, and since their involvement is stripped by the exit-point remailers, no one would know who they are to complain to them. The spoofed exit-point remailer location could be handled by disposable MX entries, of the sort discussed here earlier, if it is deemed desireable to make the From: address valid. The remailer operator could get the actual complaints, to deal with as he would. --Paul J. Ste. Marie pstemari(a)well.sf.ca.us, pstemari(a)erinet.com

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Re: Locksmith's Guild wants limit on free speech
by pstemari＠erinet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:59 AM 1/21/95, Timothy C. May wrote: > ... Check out comp.org.eff.talk for discussion of how "professional >locksmiths" are angry that "amateur locksmiths" (unlicensed, not real >members of the Brotherhood) are using the Net to disseminate and >discuss the Secret and Most Arcane Knowledge of the Guild. > >And alt.locksmithing is carrying the stuff. ... I checked out alt.locksmithing, based on some commentary I saw over in alt.current-events.net-abuse, and to be perfectly honest, there isn't really all that much going on along these lines, certainly nothing on the order of magnitude of the alt.religion.scientology crap. One or two soreheads, but by net.standards they don't even really qualify as significant flamers, and a few (apparently) professional locksmiths who are talking about things in a rather friendly fashion. --Paul J. Ste. Marie pstemari(a)well.sf.ca.us, pstemari(a)erinet.com

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port 25 forgeries
by santa＠northpole 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Here's a port 25 forgery. One could probably do a better one, but this one shows you what still winds up in the headers and one can't do anything about when dealing with sendmail or an equally smart SMTP agent. Note than smail 3.1 is stupid.

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hmmm, port 25
by nutty_elf＠northpole.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

That's strange, that last port 25 forgery didn't behave as expected. Just checking it. --nutty elf

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TJOAUC 1-7
by bart＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Recently received by email: ======================================================================= THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN UNDERGROUND COMPUTING / Published Quarterly ====================================================================== ISSN 1074-3111 Volume One, Issue Seven January 17, 1994 ====================================================================== available for download as jauc1-7.zip of 180Kbytes from ** ftp site: etext.archive.umich.edu /pub/Zines/JAUC ** ftp site: ftp.fc.net /pub/tjoauc of cp interest I thought: Call Security / Voice Crypto FAQ Neil Johnson Telecommunications Security Howard Fuhs and seen here first: My Life As An International Arms Courier Matt Blaze lots more deleted for brevity, listed in the titles.txt file in the .zip

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