December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Surety (authentication)
by hkhenson＠cup.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thanks to all of you who replied to my request. I have what I needed. Keith

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A proposal....
by Homer Wilson Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Wed, 1 Feb 1995, Remailer Operator wrote: > I'll not block addresses based on information supplied here. You forget > that there is no -formal- system, just a loose collection of operators. > There is no single policy, that operators use. Certainly, each operator is responsible for his own site and must act or not act as he sees fit, accepting the full consequences of those decisions. That is as it should be. No one is DEMANDING that anyone block an address, except the complainer's of course. :) However there is no harm in global reporting of spams or abuse, as each operator can choose to act or not act on the data as he will. > > Perhaps there could be a blocking mailing list, and all remailers > > could advertise that list in their headers, and anyone who wants to > > be blocked can send mail to that list and we would all get it. > > Perhaps. But I think it is a matter between the operator of a specific > site and the to be blocked address, not something for the world to know. Well in general I would guess that complainers WANT all reops to know about the complaint, they only complain to the one they got the abuse from, but they figure the abuser will just go to the next remailer and start there. They would prefer a way to contact all reops immediately to stop this sort of thing from happening. Complainer's are often so mad at the abuse that they not only write the remailer operator but also his sysadmin. Rahul for example has gotten at least two things 'on his desk' in the last two days, because of stuff going through my remailer, and that's two two many for me. That doesn't include all the ones he's gotten that he didn't forward to me because it was already handled. Further various and sundry turkeys are going to be complaining both to ME and possibly to Rahul for the next month about the Valentine's spam, as late readers come up to it in their news. I am STILL getting complaints and the guy was hung out to dry 10 hours ago. The complainer almost always wants ALL remail to that address stopped, and he certainly doesn't want to have to send repeated messages to various remailers as the abuser keeps jumping around. That would infuriate me no end if I were a postmaster. I would suggest that those of us who are interested, provide such a common list for complainers, it would make them feel one hell of a lot better about remailers, and keep the borderline cases on the side of free speech. A lot of people would like to see remailers shut down, but for many of them its mainly because remailers make them feel hysterical when things go out of control. THEY DON'T KNOW WHERE TO GO TO BRING THINGS BACK INTO CONTROL, AND THEY ARE NOT SURE THEY WILL BE PAID ATTENTION TOO. This leads to cc's to sysadmins and things, which I for one find INTOLERABLE. If we can bring a sense of immediate (even if partial) response and control to the remailer network, then this hysteria may subside a bit. I would distinguish between two kinds of abuse. Individual abuse, and spams. On the individual abuse I would agree that personal data should probably be kept confidential. Certainly one does not give away the complainee to the complainer so of course one does not post the complainee's name here or elsewhere. I have taken to posting the letters that I write them however, to show newbies possible ways of dealing with these things. However I see nothing wrong with posting the complainer's name. Some complainer's might object, but I think they understand the need to widely distribute, at least to the reop's, their address so that we can all effectively block them IF WE CHOOSE. In any case, such individual abuse is usually from one person to another, and its easy to block the TO: line without revealing the From: line, so there is no need to post the complainee's name. In the case of spams, its different. Spammers usually spam from one address (forged or not), but post to many sites. Blocking the To: line is impossible, but the From: line is easy. In this case I am for posting the From: line, not only here but as far and wide as possible. If I am wrong, I am sure you will let me know. I propose a mailing list, public or not, which those of you who wish to can subscribe, and which we advertise in the headers of all outgoing mail, saying that complaints should be sent to the mailing list. That way we all get to see spammers and complainers at once, making for much more effective action. This reduces the wear and tear on the postmasters, who surely do not deserve the brunt of the abuse. Like the Credit Card reporting agencies, one call is all it takes to report all your cards gone, one mail is all it takes to inform all operators of a spam or abuse. I am not suggesting that all reops join this list, or act on the data posted to it if they do, or advertise the list in their headers. I propose that THOSE OF US WHO WANT TO DO THIS, do it. Sort of a loose coalition or alliance amongst reops to show solidarity and personal responsibility towards the net. I KNOW people would appreciate it. How say any of you? Homer P.S. groupname(a)bull.com went down after the Valentine spam. Not very nice. I have already gotten warm mail commending US on how fast we nuked the guy. I say have no mercy for spammers. Homer

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Re: CD-ROM [brief addition]
by Alex de Joode 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In article <199502010224.SAA24809(a)infinity.c2.org> sameer stated: : I forgot to mention that the CD-ROM in development will be : export restricted. It isn't going to be sold outside the united states : and canada. Why not produce it outside the US and import it ? Regards, -- Alex de Joode usura(a)replay.com Hate mail appreciated, http://www.xs4all.nl/~usura weekly contest for best death threat.

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PGP Question
by danisch＠ira.uka.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is there any simple way to glue a binary file and its detached pgp signature together into a single pgp file (as produced by non-detached signing) ? thanks Hadmut

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Re: CD-ROM [brief addition]
by danisch＠ira.uka.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Why not produce it outside the US and import it ? :-)

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your membership renewal letter
by ssteele＠eff.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

February 1, 1995 Dear David, We received your response to our membership renewal reminder and would like to thank you for taking the time to actually write a letter explaining why you have chosen not to renew. We are sorry that you are unhappy with the role EFF played in the Digital Telephony negotiations. We were not totally comfortable our role, but we do believe we did the right thing and that there would be a much more intrusive bill if EFF had done nothing. However, I'm sure that you've heard the arguments by now, and I'm not writing to change your mind about our role in Digital Telephony but, instead, to let you know about a lawsuit we're about to file against the State Department and others claiming the ITAR listing of encryption as a munition is unconstitutional. Our plaintiff wanted to post an encryption algorithm he developed to sci.crypt. The State Department informed him that he would need an export license before he could post the algorithm on the Net and then told him that he would be denied the license because the algorithm was too strong. We see this as a critical First Amendment challenge to a regulation that undermines secure communications on the networks. The suit should be filed before the end of the month. We don't expect to please all of the people all of the time, and it is clear that we didn't please you with Digital Telephony. But we really are trying to make Cyberspace a better place to be, and we hope you'll reconsider your decision regarding your renewal. You can earmark your contribution to be applied only to litigation or some other particular function, if that would make you feel more comfortable. Take care. Sincerely, Shari ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shari Steele, Director of Legal Services ssteele(a)eff.org Electronic Frontier Foundation 202/861-7700 (voice) 1667 K Street, N.W., Suite 801 202/861-1258 (fax) Washington, DC 20006-1605 202/861-1224 (BBS)

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Mystery files in the incoming/ directory
by Eric Hughes 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm doing some archive maintenance at long last. Be warned, you can't upload right now because of some mystery configuration error that I can't fix myself. What I'm asking about are some files that were not uploaded with descriptions. I'll delete them in a week or so if I haven't got mail indicating what they are. This list is at the bottom of this message. (Yes, some of them are quite old.) Note that the archive maintainers have their own address now (see header). Please use it for all archive maintenance mail. And please read README.UPLOAD if you're going to upload in the future. Eric ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -rw-rw-r-- 1 hughes remailer 119940 May 16 1994 contrib.zip -rw-rw-r-- 1 hughes remailer 16360 Jun 23 1994 cpremailer.tar.gz -rw-rw-r-- 1 hughes remailer 68968 Dec 16 09:07 dc-irc.alpha.tar.gz -rw-rw-r-- 1 hughes remailer 14946 Dec 1 15:29 mkpgp.txt.uu.gz -rw-rw-r-- 1 hughes remailer 75424 May 16 1994 pgp10.zip -rw-rw-r-- 1 hughes remailer 233854 Jul 16 1994 pgpw26.zip -rw-rw-r-- 1 hughes remailer 58033 May 7 1994 pwf11.zip -rw-rw-r-- 1 hughes remailer 2913 Dec 1 15:27 signtools.tgz

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Re: "bad" government
by alt＠iquest.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> If strong government resulted in liberty and freedom, then the >> most intrusive, all-encompassing governments would result in >> its citizens having the most liberty. Is this the case? I would >> look at the (former) Soviet Union, Iran, Cuba, East Germany, etc., >> for your answer. >Unrestricted individual freedom leads to unrestricted freedom of >`private' corporations. Private corporations uncurbed by society's law are >autarkies: internally totalitarian, externally predatory, as amoral as >amoebas. > >Is this the shape of the future you seek? 'Tis better to err on the side of liberty. To suggest otherwise would indicate that the origin and true meaning of "rights" or "liberty" is not understood. You can NOT restrict someone's rights simply because they MIGHT harm another (prior restraint). If they do cause actual harm to someone, they should be brought to justice. To place restrictions on someone based on the possibility that may may cause harm introduces restrictions based solely on the authorities' opinions (political philosophy, religion, race, etc). That that the shape of the future YOU seek? ************************************************************ * Just your basic signature block * * * * Al Thompson * * Fidonet 1:231/110 * * alt(a)iquest.net * ************************************************************

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What's with anon.penet.fi??
by Robert Rothenburg Walking-Owl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Subject says it. Every message I post to the list gets a reply saying that I am abusing the remailer by posting chain letters etc. All replies to admin(a)anon.penet.fi are also getting bounced back too.

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Fundamental Question?
by Anthony Ortenzi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Although I understand the need for remailers for anonymity, is it not true that the whole idea of encryption (good encryption, that is) is that no matter who gets the encrypted text, it really doesn't matter? Does this not mean that something like USENET is *perfect* for this? -Anthony

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