December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: The Real Bell Issue / Re: Bell, etc
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Duncan Frissell wrote: > He could have been aggressive and fought instead of wimping out. Lots of > people have faced much more serious crimes and won. It's not like Jim had > anything better to do. The fact of the matter is, none of us know what Jim knows, and what he knows is likely only what his government appointed schill has told him. I recall Vin Suprynowicz mentioning a prominent attorney contacting Bell's attorney in an effort to help, and receiving no reply. Neither do we know if Bell has merely decided that he should concede the legal ground in order to be able to pursue the issue later, on turf that suits him better. > In such cases, an aggressive show of strength of character is best. Weakness > invites oppression. We have already seen the results of Tim McVeigh wanting his government schill replaced--a big FUCK YOU. McVeigh's problem is not weakness, but lack of knowledge about the legal system and the quality of his legal representation. Unfortunately, I have no doubt that the government already has lawyers in place whose job thus far has been to gain McVeigh's trust, so that they can screw up his appeals, as well. TruthMonger

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Re: Spam-killing PGP5/ecash postage plugin Was Re: Remailer chaining plugin for Eudora
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text X-Sender: rah(a)mail.shipwright.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 18:31:17 -0400 To: e$(a)thumper.vmeng.com, mac-crypto(a)thumper.vmeng.com From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: Re: Spam-killing PGP5/ecash postage plugin Was Re: Remailer chaining plugin for Eudora Sender: <e$(a)vmeng.com> Precedence: Bulk List-Software: LetterRip 2.0 by Fog City Software, Inc. List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:requests@vmeng.com?subject=unsubscribe%20e$> List-Subscribe: <mailto:requests@vmeng.com?subject=subscribe%20e$> At 4:29 pm -0400 on 8/21/97, Somebody wrote: > Sorry, but I think e-postage is among the worst ideas I've ever heard of. I > don't think it's clear that it would eliminate spam. It might even increase > it -- I'll bet the overall costs of email are lower than for paper mail -- But the relative present cost of spam (free) is, um, siginificantly, less than it would cost with e$postage. > and it would be the death of mailing lists. Not at all. At the very least, mail from lists I'm subcribed to could come postage due. And, since I'm the person who's charging postage, sender pays, remember, I could charge free postage to my friends, like the 1000 or so in cypherpunks, or the 300 on e$ and mac-crypto. :-). There are work arounds. Face it, the world is going to specific cash settled auction pricing on internet services, and not bulk, or even probabalistic, pricing. No problem. It'll mean cheaper services in the long run, not only because someone then owns the "commons", but because efficient autonomously run cash-settled auctions are always cheaper than transfer pricing and "planning". It's like comparing the Chicago Board of Trade wheat pit, the world's most efficient wheat market, to the committee which set Soviet wheat production quotas. Notice who was selling wheat to whom in *that* scenario. :-). Reality, economic or otherwise, is not optional... Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- 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/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Where people, networks and money come together: Consult Hyperion http://www.hyperion.co.uk info(a)hyperion.co.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------- Like e$? Help pay for it! See <http://www.shipwright.com/beg.html> Or, for e$/e$pam sponsorship, <mailto:rah@shipwright.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------- --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 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/

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Re: Mathematics > NSA + GCHQ
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May wrote: >Thus, as bright as Brian Snow or Don Coppersmith or John Conway may be, the >"edge" the NSA may have once had is largely gone. Which is not to say that >they are not still a formidable technical organization, with substantial >computer resources. > >But modern crypto systems are, as we all know, based on fundamental >mathematical results ... Along this line: A few days ago we received an 8-page excerpt from "Shift Register Sequences," by Solomon W. Golomb (at USC), Holden-Day, Inc., no date, with a handwritten note: NSA has tried to suppress knowledge of this stuff. Nearly all NSA 'good' algorithms are based on this technology. IANAM, so would any of the mathematicians here give any credibility to this claim? We'll scan and put the excerpt on our Web site if worthwhile. It's composed of the book's 3 page preface and 5 pages of text and diagrams of Chapter 2 on The Shift Register as a Finite State Machine, with principal focus on de Bruijn diagrams for shift registers.

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ROTFL / Re: Socio-Economic Cults (Re: CypherPunk Cults)
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ray Arachelian wrote: > > On Thu, 21 Aug 1997, Tim G. May wrote: > > > "When all you have is a gun, everything looks like a target." > > > > Tim G. May > > When all you have are arrest warrants, everyone looks like a drug dealer. > :) "When all you have is spam, everyone looks like Tim C. May." - Dimitri Vulis, KOTM

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heart
by Zooko Journeyman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A million monkeys operating under the pseudonym "Ray Arachelian <sunder(a)sundernet.com>" typed: > > Meethinks (not speaking for Tim) that years under a fascist natzi-like > regime bent on ripping out all out freedoms one by one and confiscating > all things threatening to it would cause any awake person to lose any > compassion for the scum that run our Freeh country. BULL SHIT. This is a cop-out, used by emotionally stunted men to excuse themselves from their solemn responsibility to ethically justify their own actions and to deal fairly with their fellow humans. By reciting mantras to one another emphasizing their sense of having been mistreated and their sense of having _unquestionable_ moral superiority, people in this situation persuade each other to become more and more fanatical in their attitudes, less and less in touch with reality, and less and less compassionate towards the "others" who have been demonized in the process. Note that this process _always_ includes a group of other humans which are demonized in order to serve as a scapegoat and as a concrete focus for the participant's negative emotions. This process is objectively identical to the process experienced by _all_ hate groups, gangs and nationalists. You are standing in the auditorium, Louis Freeh's face is displayed on the screen, interposed with film of jackbooted thugs breaking down your door, and you are screaming wordlessly at him along with all of your brethren during the Two Minutes Hate. THAT should give you pause for thought, Ray. Listen to me: I might take up arms in the trenches next to you someday, if it comes to that. I might murder enemies or civilians in their sleep, if I were convinced that it was the only way to preserve the people and the ideals that I love. I might work to deploy ideas and technologies that threaten to induce social chaos, if I believed that those ideas and technologies were the only way to ensure the blessings of liberty and prosperity for my children. But I will _never_ take one of these actions while intoxicated by a cloud of hatred and self-righteousness. I will _never_ tell myself that I am part of a sacred jihad which absolves me of all guilt, and I will _never_ re-classify my enemies as sub-human in order to justify my treatment of them. So take a fucking BREAK man. Just get up from the computer and go for a fucking walk in the mountains and think about your fucking family and loved ones. Z

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Bad CypherPunk! No privacy! / Re: PGP5i supports RSA keys?
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bill Stewart wrote: > but there's also really no need for keys longer than 2048 bits unless > some radical algorithmic breakthrough > 1024 bits is probably enough Other than the above, a very informative post. Perhaps all encryption programs ought to be named Enigma-1, Enigma-2, etc. When the Allies gained the capability to break the Enigma code, there was no front-page announcement. I checked the news headlines today, and there was no front-page announcement of a "radical algorithmic breakthrough." I take this to be proof positive that the ever-present "they" have indeed made a breakthrough, and that I need to use the strongest tools currently available for secure communications. Like the ZipLock ads where they put the angry bees in the ZipLock and in the Generic Brand plastic bags, I am always tempted by the statement that "512/1024/etc." is "good enough," to ask the person making the statement to write a letter threatening the life of "You Know Who," encrypt it and send it to me for forwarding to the Whitewaterhouse. ("And don't forget to use the '-c' option.") Would you rather have the angry F-Bee-I agents in the 4096 bit encrypted CryptLock bag or the 1024 bit GenericLock bag? :: B o o t s

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Re: Forgery, bills, and the Four Horsemen (Articles and Comment)
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: shamrock(a)netcom.com (Lucky Green) > So it is harder to compile dosiers on people. Big deal. The recipient can > still determine who gets the goods paied for by the "anonymous" ecash by > conventional means (hint: shipping address), so the payee anonymity is of > little value as far as protecting the privacy of the payer (most likely > the recipient of the goods) is concerened. This would be true for physical goods in any payment system, no matter how anonymous, unless physical remailers are used (and they have their limitations). However software (including music, video, etc.) would be easier to deliver anonymously. It is generally agreed that more of our economy is moving towards information exchanges and so ecash-like systems can play an increasingly larger part in protecting privacy. To me, this is indeed a big deal. Even for physical goods, the use of ecash is better than credit cards because the information about purchases is distributed rather than centralized. Every time I look at my credit card bill I feel dismayed at what the company is finding out about my family. Ecash could also be used as a cash replacement in smartcards. Consider as an alternative a fully traceable payment system, where you use your debit card at the supermarket, the bus station, the snack bar, the drug store. I suspect that if we don't get something like ecash then this system will be the alternative. It opens up possibilities for dossiers that will fulfill Big Brother's dreams. Virtually every move of every citizen will be recorded in just a few centralized places. IMO the protection of payor privacy that even Chaum's limited ecash provides is very important. > Ecash of course is of *no* value for the various assasination markets, > drug dealing, money laundring, etc that routinely get mentioned in the > same paragraph as Ecash. The reason is the *full traceability* of the > payee that has been deliberately built into the current version of Ecash. > A "feature" that you may rest assured will be part of all future versions > backed by anyone with even marginal reputation in the financial markets. Well, I have never fully accepted the notion that crypto was going to usher in an age of anarchy. As long as we deal with physical goods in the physical world it seems to me that anonymity will be difficult. On the net it is easier but man does not live by bits alone. For me, protecting privacy is a difficult enough problem. Transforming the world into a libertarian/anarchist utopia is somebody else's job. Hal P.S. Without seeing the technical specs it is hard to describe in detail, but generally Chaumian ecash allows fully anonymous coerced transfers. The payee/coercer supplies the blinded coins and forces the payor to use them to make withdrawals from his account. The resulting signed tokens are passed to the coercer who unblinds them and now has fully anonymous, untraceable cash tokens which he can spend.

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Re: Forgery, bills, and the Four Horsemen (Articles and Comment)
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 19:32 9/5/95, Bryce Wilcox wrote: >I hope I'm not missing anything here. Only that Ecash has no benefits for transactions that are of an illegal nature. The meaning of "illegal" is of course increasing as new laws are passed every session of the legislature. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred.

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Re: lack of evolution (So What!)
by Feanor 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Aug 25, 21:41, Ray Arachelian wrote: } Subject: Re: lack of evolution (So What!) > > On Mon, 25 Aug 1997, Peter Trei wrote: > > > One factor which everyone seems to be overlooking in this > > thread is the future impact of biotechnology. > > <much stuff deleted> > > I see someone's been recently reading Beyond This Horizon by Heinlein. :) Sounded a lot more like Sterling/Crystal Express, the Shaper/Mechanist section, to me. -- #!/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj $/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1 lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)

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Re: Scientology and police visit XS4ALL Amsterdam
by an253398＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

announce(a)xs4all.nl writes: [ snip ] > Police and members of Scientology church enter offices of XS4ALL > ================================================================ > > Amsterdam - thuesday september 5, 1995. > > Today at about 14:00, XS4ALL was visited by Mr. S. Braan, > bailiff. He was acting on behalf of the Religious > Technology Centre, better known as the Scientology Church, or > Scientology for short. He was assisted by a local police officer and Mr. > Hermans from the 'Nauta-Dutilh' legal firm that represents Scientology > in The Netherlands. Also present were two computer experts (Mr. Ootjes > and Mr. Van Suchtelen) a locksmith (to enter had we not been present) and > two American employees of Scientology, Mr. Weightman and Ms. Jenssen. [ snip ] This is the second or third time I've seen descriptions of such raids where cult (no, I'm not trying to be diplomatic) representatives were present and participating. Is this legal in Amsterdam? How about in the U.S.? Britain? If a police officer has a warrant then I really don't have much choice about letting him in. Am I also under an obligation to allow the people who filed for the warrant into my home or business? Thanks, Mole Rat ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. If you reply to this message, your message WILL be *automatically* anonymized and you are allocated an anon id. Read the help file to prevent this. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

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