December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

No Subject
by Mix 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The only `culture' Timothy `C' Maypole possesses is that cultivated from his foreskin scrapings. ,/ \, ((__,-,,,-,__)), Timothy `C' Maypole `--)~ ~(--` .-'( )`-, `~~`d\ /b`~~` | | (6___6) `---`

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sat survailience
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 14:55:09 -0500 From: Somebody Subject: sat survailience To: rah <rah(a)shipwright.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Bob - something else to be paranoid about! <somebody's .sig> <snip> When Is a Satellite Photo An Unreasonable Search? By <some reporter> Staff Reporter of <A big newspaper> Over the years, satellite photos have plotted the course of Soviet warships and tracked the movements of Iraqi troops. Last year, they also nailed Floyd Dunn for growing cotton on his Arizona farm allegedly without an irrigation permit. Mr. Dunn contends that he did have the required permits but paid the $4,000 fine to maintain good relations with the Arizona Department of Water Resources. "You can't argue with a satellite," he says. "Being caught like I was caught is kind of unfair." As state and local agencies make more use of satellite imagery -- for everything from surveying illicit crops to detecting unauthorized building -- they're raising questions about the propriety of spying on American civilians from the sky. "It certainly has a 'Big Brother Is Watching You' flavor to it," says Larry Griggers, a director at the Georgia Department of Revenue. "But it prevents us from having to spend money for other types of enforcement." The state tax authority plans to use National Aeronautic and Space Administration satellites to check all 58,910 squares miles of the state for unreported timber cutting. It also plans to share the photos with any state agency that asks, which could lead to a wide variety of enforcement actions. Does taking satellite photos of private citizens and their property -- generally without their knowledge -- violate the Constitution's Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches? The American Bar Association has organized a task force to explore that question, as well as such issues as how long photos can be kept on file and how freely they can be shared with police. Because U.S. Justice Department officials are on the task force, the recommendations are expected to influence how law-enforcement authorities and civil agencies use the new images and at what point they require warrants. Use of satellite images has increased markedly since the early 1990s, when the Russian space agency, Sovinformsputnik, began selling spy-quality photos to raise cash. The U.S. lifted its own restrictions on sale of high-resolution satellite photos in 1994, which encouraged entrepreneurs to launch satellites of their own that could compete with the Russian imagery. Those efforts may soon pay off. This year a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp. and Raytheon Co. hopes to launch a satellite that will yield imagery detailed enough to distinguish sedans from minivans. Another firm, Earthwatch Inc. of Longmont, Colo., says it is proceeding with plans to launch a similar satellite in 1999 -- despite the recent loss of radio contact with a less-advanced model the firm launched in December. Both enterprises decline to discuss their public-sector clients. Some state and local agencies have been purchasing photos from French, Indian and U.S. government satellites since the 1980s, and increasingly powerful computer software is allowing them to make better use of the imagery. The Arizona Department of Water Resources spotted Mr. Dunn's cotton crop, for example, because it routinely obtains photographs from the French government's SPOT satellites of 750,000 acres of central Arizona farmland. State officials then compare the images with a database of water-use permits to determine which farmers might be exceeding water-use rules. "A week doesn't go by where somebody doesn't propose a new use," says John Hoffman, whose Raleigh, N.C., business, Aerial Images Inc., has become the main reseller of images taken by Russian intelligence satellites. Much of what Mr. Hoffman has available is old imagery of Western cities. But he says he can also take orders for new photos on upcoming missions. Price: $6,500 to photograph 10 square kilometers with resolution of about six feet, which he says is sharp enough to distinguish cars from pickup trucks. In North Carolina several counties are using Mr. Hoffman's photos to find unreported building activities, agricultural development and other property improvements that would raise property-tax assessments. Demand from state and local agencies in his region is so strong, he says, that Sovinformsputnik, the Russian space agency, has scheduled a Feb. 17 launch of a satellite that will concentrate mainly on photographing the Southeastern U.S. Pictures taken from airplanes at lower altitudes are often more revealing, but satellite imagery can be much more cost-effective. Photographing an area the size of a small town, for example, can cost tens of thousands of dollars by airplane, approximately twice the cost by satellite. Some satellite imagery is faster as well. Although the satellites Mr. Hoffman works with use conventional film that is developed after the satellite returns to earth, newer camera platforms can transmit images digitally just minutes after they are taken. To date, there have been few legal challenges to the use of satellite imagery. But the technology of overhead photography is evolving faster than the law. Courts have allowed government officials to take detailed pictures from airplanes flying as low as 1,200 feet. And in 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was permitted to photograph a Dow Chemical facility in Midland, Mich., because the EPA used relatively conventional airplane-camera equipment. But the high court raised a red flag in that case: "It may well be ... that surveillance of private property by using highly sophisticated surveillance equipment not generally available to the public, such as satellite technology, might be constitutionally proscribed absent a warrant." The ABA task force is exploring just these questions. Sheldon Krantz, chair of the task force and a partner at Piper & Marbury LLP in Washington, says that it will propose in April that law-enforcement agencies be required to obtain warrants to use "satellite cameras [that] can focus on images of a few feet across." That standard would probably include most advanced satellite images, although the task force has yet to agree on more specific definitions. "We need to make some big value judgments about these practices before they become so widespread," says Mr. Krantz. Some businesses say they welcome oversight from space. Georgia-Pacific Corp. and other big timber concerns support the Georgia Department of Revenue's forest survey, saying it will help to disprove accusations that they have secretly cut trees without paying taxes. Several small timber owners already have been fined a total of $2,000 in a test of the statewide program that took place in Wayne County, near Savannah. And as sharper-resolution photos become available, some Georgia officials suggest the program could be used to look for objects as small as backyard porches, to check if homeowners have their construction permits in order. <snip> --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>

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RE: Latest Clinton dodge?
by J-Dog 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:15 PM 1/27/98 EST, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: >David Honig <honig(a)otc.net> writes: > >> At 07:11 PM 1/26/98 EST, you wrote: >> >"Roger J Jones" <cyber(a)ibpinc.com> writes: >> > >> >> >> >> Thanks for the info - while I am at it - has anyone ever disclosed the >> >> "distinguishing characteristic" that Paula Jones claims will prove its >> Bubba >> >> Bill? >> >> >> >Can you spell "curvature"? >> >> So you *do* have intimate knowledge of the president.... >> but I won't tell :-) > >What is the difference between Bill Clinton and the Titanic? >Only 1700 people went down on the Titanic. > >--- > >Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM >Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps > most people get Aids from sex clinton gets sex from Aids lates J-Dog

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Privacy and presidential philandering, from the Netly News
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

******** http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1714,00.html The Netly News (http://netlynews.com/) January 27, 1998 Private Parts by Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com) Already you can hear the plaintive sound of President Clinton's partisans whining about privacy. The allegations about Will's wandering willy are too intimate, too sensitive and (if the truth be told) too embarrassing to be discussed publicly, they claim. Yesterday the wire services were busy recycling Hillary Clinton's plea for a "zone of privacy"; a Clinton defender wrote in USA Today that nobody should be "inflicting the details of his sex life on the public"; a piece in the New York Times complained about a "fishing expedition into the President's sexual history." On NBC's Today show, Hillary groused about living in "a time where people are malicious and evil-minded." On many electronic mailing lists, the talk nowadays seems to be of little else. "The current pursuit of Clinton -- whatever the facts turn out to be -- strikes me, itself, as an obscenity," griped Edward Kent on a First Amendment list. "We need more protections of privacy in this country." Michael Troy replied, "I don't think there is a constitutional right to privacy for an employer (who is also a public figure) having sex with an employee in the workplace." He's right. The call for greater "privacy protections" is a call for censorship in disguise. [...]

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unsolved billing problem
by CLAUD W WELCH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I cancelled my membership prior to the end of two days. i would like a refund.

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Trans World Specials Fare Sales
by Trans World Specials 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Welcome to Trans World Specials for January 13, 1998. All tickets must be purchased by January 16, 1998. Fares are valid for travel originating 1/17/98 and returning 1/19/98 or 1/20/98. We have some great fares to great cities for you again this week. Call right away and take advantage. Have you read about our new Trans World First service? Read about it at http://www.twa.com On to this week's Trans World Specials. Roundtrip Fare: To/From: $69 St. Louis (STL) / Nashville (BNA) $69 Washington, DC (National) / New York (JFK) * * TWA Flights only. 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Visit Hilton at http://www.hilton.com ***********************************TERMS & CONDITIONS******************* Airfare Terms and Conditions: GENERAL CONDITIONS: Fares shown are round trip, nonrefundable and are subject to change. Changes to itinerary are not permitted. Fares do not include Passenger Facility Charges of up to $12 depending on itinerary. Must use E-Ticketing and credit card is the only form of payment accepted. Offer is not available in conjunction with any other discount, coupon or promotional offer. Seats are limited and may not be available on all flights or days of the week. Tickets must be purchased at time of booking and no later than 1/16/98. Standby passengers not allowed. Valid for outbound travel on Saturday (1/17) and return Monday (1/19) or Tuesday (1/20). Travel is effective 1/17/98 with all travel to be completed by 1/20/98. Minimum stay is 2 days. Maximum stay is 3 days. Travel to/from Canada a $6 US departure tax is additional. 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Availability, rate, and terms of occupancy are not guaranteed and will be confirmed at time of reservation. Participating hotels, rates and terms are subject to change without notice. Single or double occupancy. Early check-in, late check-out subject to availability. No extra charge for children when they stay in parents' or grandparents' room; total room occupancy subject to local fire safety regulations and other applicable laws or regulations. Rates vary by season, do not include any other fees or charges, including without limitation state or local taxes or gratuities and are subject to change without notice. Advance booking required. Advance deposit may be required. Offer cannot be combined with any other special discounts, coupons, certificates, special rates, promotional offers, award stays, or meeting/group stays. Hilton reserves the right to cancel any Hilton Value Rate at any time without notice. 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(eternity) autonomous agents
by Ross Anderson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adam Back: > If the participant in the CPU resource market is not expected to be > able to vet all source code he runs, this gives the would be eternity > operator a chance to distribute his risk. It's even better than this - your PC becomes a common carrier and you are no longer liable :-) If this doesn't happen, then the advocates of Java need a whole new security infrastructure to assure users that the applets they download aren't defamatory, pornographic, seditious or in breach of copyright! Tim May: > Another science fiction writer, Bruce Sterling, popularized "data havens" At one time, Malta was thinking seriously about becoming just such a data haven, and I expect one will appear sooner or later. After all, what's left of the British Empire is funded by money laundering and tax evasion - pardon me, Sir Humphrey, `offshore financial services'. Once the online world becomes a significant part of the global economy, small countries that wish to achieve the high living standards of Bermuda, Gibraltar and Jersey will be able to get there by cashing in on `offshore data services'. Countries like Tonga already sell domain names, but a full offshore data service would need some way of resisting pressure from the EU and the US government. Most of the tax havens do this by being under a colonial umbrella. Is there an alternative? Can we create virtual colonies in cyberspace? Can we set up a gateway to Eternity in some country like Liberia or Somalia, which is too dangerous even for the US Marines? Or do we have to cut a deal with Sir Humphrey? Hiding stuff inside usenet is actually a bit like hiding behind the skirts of Empire, isn't it? The same goes for hiding stuff on open access web sites, or in spam. Given the rate at which spam is growing these days, maybe that's where to put it. If the only way for Authority to cut mortals off from Eternity was to pass effective laws against spam, and the only way to stop spam was to have a global non-escrowed public key infrastructure so that all mortals could be strongly authenticated, then ... Ross

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[ADMINISTRATIVIUM] Firewalls
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timmy C. Mayonnaise's reheated, refurbished, and regurgitated cud is completely inappropriate for the mailing lists into which it is cross-ruminated. ,,, -ooO(o o)Ooo- Timmy C. Mayonnaise (_)

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metrics of eternity service properties
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May <tcmay(a)got.net> writes: > >> This of course doesn't scale at all well. It is semi-OK for a tiny, > >> sparse set of reposted items, but fails utterly for larger database > >> sets. (If and when Adam's reposted volumes begin to get significant, > >> he will be viewed as > >> a spammer. :-) ) > > > >The best criticism of my eternity design to date! I agree. > > I assume you are serious, and do agree, as it is a very solid > criticism of the "Eternity as continuous posting to Usenet" model. Yes. I think my eternity service in USENET is actually fairly resistant to attackers determining readers and publishers. The limiting factor is the bandwidth consumed. We have to keep below some threshold otherwise news admins may attempt to filter out eternity articles; and there is some limit at which the system would break down altogether. One suspects posting more than around 10Mb-20Mb / day would be enough to motivate administrators to start filtering. Some people with questionable motivation also have made something of a sport of sending forged cancel messages, and these people will be more easily motivated, as as far as I can tell their motivation is a perverse enjoyment of censorship, and sense of self importance, and of malice in perpetrating DoS attacks. > I see several axes to the analysis of the various Eternity schemes. > > -- retrieval time for a customer or client to obtain some set of data, > ranging from (I assume) ~minutes or less in an Eternity DDS file system to > ~days or less in a Blacknet system to (I am guessing) ~weeks or months in > an Adam Back sort of system. Actually I was aiming for seconds access time with "Eternity USENET". (I am going to dub it "Eternity USENET" -- just any name -- because the lack of names to denote the services under discussion is becoming awkward.) However the reason I am able to claim seconds is because I aim to keep the data either in the newspool, or in a local copy of recent messages. The design is similar to TELETEXT, the text mode information services hosted as side bands on TV signals. The basic topology is the same: we have a broadcast medium, data is slowly re-broadcast. So my design is fairly analogous to a FAST-TEXT system, which keeps a copy of all the pages, and updates them as the TEXT signal sweeps past. So metrics we could use to describe the functionality of an eternity design should include "update time", and "access time". I'll try a quick table of this to illustrate my understanding of Eternity BlackNet (BlackNet used to host an Eternity like service), and Eternity DDS as compared to Eternity USENET. E-BlackNet E-USENET E-DDS update delay 2-3 days 2-3 days minutes access time 2-3 days seconds minutes b/width efficiency good/ poor intermediate intermediate nodes 10 10,000 10,000 capacity 100 Gb 100 Mb 10 Tb security good good intermediate security dependencies remailers, remailers, custom USENET USENET componenets ease of deployment easy easy hard Clearly these figures are order of magnitude only, if even that accurate. My reasoning is as follows: Eternity BlackNet: I am presuming we have third party BlackNet operators who offer to buy and sell information, acting as distribution agents. It takes around a day to send requests or submissions to the operator via a dead drop (encrypted material posted to USENET via remailer). If requested information is sent to clients via replyable nyms bandwidth efficiency is improved. If information is sent to clients via dead drops efficiency drops because the information is broadcast for each request. Clearly a user could, if he wished to improve his access time for browsing BlackNet eternity documents, replicate the entire BlackNet database locally. (Or perhaps subsets defined as all documents by a chosen set of authors, or all documents with given keywords, or with a given third party rating etc). E-USENET: This involves re-posting documents periodically to USENET, and relying on the small data set size to ensure that local eternity proxies can retain a current copy of the dataset. Variants on this approach can migrate towards E-DDS approach by using publically accessible E-USENET servers, and by E-USENET server caches sharing their then larger document store. Also by adding other submission mechanisms to the pool formed by the set of publically accessible E-USENET services. E-DDS: Economic incentives are used to encourage people to take risks in hosting controversial documents. Indirection is used to have a hidden set of data servers, which are only accessed via publically known gateways. (I would recommend looking at Ian Goldberg and David Wagner's TAZ server, the url for which I posted in an earlier post, for this indirection function). I am unsure how an attacker would be prevented from discovering the hidden set of data servers. How do we exclude the attacker from becoming a gateway server? I get the impression that the idea also is make the service a commercial success as a distributed web hosting system, and to get away with comparitively small amounts of controversial materials which migrate. This idea is a useful model I think. Comments? Clarifications, Ryan? Adam

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Micromoney CryptoMango?
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 08:52:16 -0500 From: rah-web <rah(a)shipwright.com> Reply-To: rah(a)shipwright.com MIME-Version: 1.0 To: rah-web <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: Micromoney CryptoMango? http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayNew.pl?/metcalfe/metcalfe.htm [Image] [StorageTek Click Here.] [| Navigational map -- for text only please go to the bottom of the page |] [|Opinions|] [From the Ether] January 12, 1998 Mango `pooling' is the biggest idea we've seen since network computers Mango, in Westborough, Mass., is not your average software start-up. In 30 months the company has raised $30 million. Its first product, Medley97, has shipped, transparently "pooling" workgroup storage. And someone at http://www.mango.com really knows the difference between features and benefits. But it's not the benefits of Medley97 pooling that interest me. What's interesting are the features and long-term potential of Mango's underlying distributed virtual memory (DVM). Mango's pooling DVM is the biggest software idea since network computers -- perhaps since client/server -- and Microsoft had better watch out. According to Mango, Medley97 offers transparent networking that's easy to use, fast, and reliable (not to mention secure and high fiber). Windows users working together on a LAN can share files in a pool of their combined disk storage. Every pooled PC is both a client and server. Go ahead and drop Medley97 into any PC you want to pool. Medley97 installs, checks configuration, and updates required Windows networking software. The product adds the PC's storage to the pool, giving you a shared, fast, and reliable network drive, M:/, which is available on all pooled PCs. For this you pay Mango less than $125 each for up to 25 PCs. Mango CEO Steve Frank was technology chief at Kendall Square Research (KSR), the ill-fated parallel processing company near MIT that was not Thinking Machines. Frank says KSR taught him how dishonesty doesn't work but parallelism does. Unlike KSR's, Mango's parallelism just has to be on volume platforms, such as Ethernet, TCP/IP, and Windows. Hence Mango. Underlying Medley97 are DVM processes cooperating through a TCP/IP Ethernet on pooled Windows PCs. The processes manage a 128-bit object space that copies virtual 4KB pages up, down, and around a distributed memory hierarchy. Medley97 offers ease of use by hiding continuously, automatically, and adaptively behind your familiar Windows user interface -- just below the file system APIs and above physical disk pages. Medley97 offers performance by moving files through the Ethernet from disk to disk and from disk to memory, closer to where the pages are used most. And Medley97 offers reliability by keeping synchronized backup copies of file pages on different pooled PCs. Mango's DVM generalizes backup and caching. Pages are copied for nonstop operation. Copies are moved closer to where they are used. Frank says it is often faster to access a page through Ethernet from a pooled PC's semiconductor memory than to access it from a local disk. Transaction logs are kept on all pooled PCs. The DVM detects when a PC drops out of a pool and copies any page that thereby lacks sufficient backups. When a PC rejoins a pool, transaction logs ensure it accesses updated pages. The garbage collection of deleted pages runs in the background. Noticing that Medley97 is available for up to 25 PCs, I asked the perennial parallelism question, "Does it scale?" Frank's answer: Yes. Medley97 is limited to 25 PCs only because that's all Mango has so far found time to test. With each PC adding resources, pool performance is "superlinear" as far as the eye can see. Well, this makes pooling the next in a long list of major computing paradigms: batch mainframes, interactive minicomputers, stand-alone PCs, PC LANs, client/server, peer-to-peer, thin-client, server clustering, and now peer clustering or pooling. According to Frank, Medley next needs to go from Ethernet to Internet. To support many pools. To add change control and archiving. Medley also needs to go beyond Windows. To pool processing as well as storage. So Medley, now written in C++, needs what else? Java. You can log into a Medley pool from anywhere and have your workgroup files available on the M:/ drive. With Java you could pool non-Wintel network computers. Well, if pooling scales, the whole World Wide Web should be one big pool. Mango's DVM generalizes the caching now done ad hoc all over the Web -- on server disks, in clusters, in caching farms, in proxy servers, in browsers, and in the file systems of PCs. Add Java network computers and before Frank knows it, Mango will be ripe for purchase if not integration by Microsoft. ------------------------------ [Image] Technology pundit Bob Metcalfe invented Ethernet in 1973 and founded 3Com in 1979, and today he specializes in the Internet. Send e-mail to Metcalfe(a)infoworld.com. Missed a column? Go back for more. [Image] ------------------------------ Copyright © 1998 InfoWorld Media Group Inc. | SiteMap |Search | PageOne | Conferences | Reader/Ad Services | | Enterprise Careers | Opinions | Test Center | Features | | Forums | Interviews | InfoWorld Print | InfoQuote | [Lion's Den] [InfoWorld Electric Features] [Intel Manageability] --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>

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