December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Fraud Fraut Froth
by anonymous＠freezone.remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

NY Times, Sept 21, 1995. Fraud Can Flourish Without the Internet To the Editor: Your Sept. 19 front-page article on the discovery by two University of California graduate students of a flaw in Netscape, the software used for purchases over the Internet's World Wide Web, raises a number of obvious questions. First, who needs high tech to perpetrate fraud? Any unscrupulous commercial employee could use or sell your credit card number without employing technology. Every time you hand your card to a waiter in a restaurant, it disappears for several minutes. The department store clerks and gas station attendants you deal with also have access to your card number. How secure is that? Ever give your credit card number over the phone to make a purchase from a mail-order house? Or to secure a reservation at a hotel? Who's to say that the employees you're speaking with are honest? Or that your phone is not tapped? Or theirs? I shop on the Internet; I may get ripped off. What's my liability? Fifty bucks -- same as the other scenarios I've described. That's in my credit agreement with the card issuer. So why all the hoopla? Is credit card fraud significantly more prevalent on the Internet than in other modes of purchasing? Or is the banking industry whipping up hysteria among purchasers to curb fraud losses? Was the work of those graduate students funded by someone -- directly or indirectly? If so, by whom? A banking consortium? A high-tech company working on some patentable security scheme? Robert Herrig Peekskill, N.Y., Sept. 19,1995. The writer is a systems consultant.

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Re: GAK patents, anyone? Re: GAK patents, anyone?
by Antonomasia 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date Arrived: 10Sep_19:13:47 From: roach_s(a)alph.swosu.edu ----------- ... > Back up just a minute. > Aren't inventions protected if the patent is pending? If not, why do such > well known companies who undoubtly have savvy legal council produce products > stamped "patent pending"? I've always regarded it as "We applied for a patent and it hasn't actually been refused yet, so keep off." [The following is based on various magazine articles, net discussions etc.] Until the last year or so (when it harmonised with GATT) US law produced "submarine patents". These were patents applied for, subject to a period of waiting of course, and then (if granted) were valid _from the date of the application_ i.e. back-dated. This meant you could quite innocently find yourself being clobbered by a patent that had only just sprung into existence. There were other problems including the US granting patents to the 'inventor' - rather than the 'first to file'. 'First to file' is actually a good indication of who the inventor is. The other scheme just got inventor-identity disputed by the lawyers. For a vision of patents as they should be, I know nothing to beat Phil Karn's web pages. http://people.qualcomm.com/karn/patents.html -- ############################################################## # Antonomasia ant(a)notatla.demon.co.uk # # See http://www.notatla.demon.co.uk/ # ##############################################################

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Building in Big Brother, from The Netly News
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1385,00.html The Netly News Network (http://netlynews.com/) September 10, 1997 Building in Big Brother By Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com) The U.S. Congress, bowing to law enforcement demands for more wiretap powers, is preparing to approve a scheme that endangers the personal freedom of every American. Nobody doubts that wiretaps are useful tools for law enforcement agents. FBI Director Louis Freeh, who as a young agent built his career on them, knows this well. But Freeh's plan would expand the FBI's eavesdropping ability by building Big Brother into every word processor, every e-mail program and every web browser. All computer software distributed after 1998 would have a special, secret backdoor for government access to your most private files. Even your Internet provider would be deputized as a cyber-snoop. It's the technological equivalent of requiring that every homeowner turn over a spare copy of his front door key to the FBI. This is the same FBI that has a long and disturbing history of abusing Americans' privacy. As director, J. Edgar Hoover built a successful career out of illegal wiretaps, secret files and political blackmail. Hoover despised Martin Luther King, Jr. -- branding him an "obsessive degenerate" -- and once sent him an anonymous letter, using information gathered through illegal surveillance, to encourage the depressed civil rights leader to commit suicide. Hoover's legacy? Having the FBI headquarters bear his name today. [...]

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Re: Renaming TEA remailer
by Antonomasia 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Alex de Joode <adejoode(a)replay.com>: > Do they own the trademark in the UK ? If not you can still use > Anonymizer for whatever service you are providing in the UK. Don't know, don't care. There was a Nice Thing To Do. (Don't forget Lance Cottrell is connected with Infonex, and without him we wouldn't have mixmaster remailers to run.) -- ############################################################## # Antonomasia ant(a)notatla.demon.co.uk # # See http://www.notatla.demon.co.uk/ # ##############################################################

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Re: economic espionage (@#$%^&*)
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>> >It was said that Pres. Clinton had given a speech while >>> >visiting the CIA HQ in Langley/Virginia. He allegedly >>> >said in this speech that obtaining industrial >>> >informations has the highest priority and this were the >>> >new task for the spies. Dr. John Deutsch, speaking to the National Press Club, also mentioned economic espionage, with the State Department as a primary customer, but was concerned about definitions of goals, etc. He did reassure the NPC that the CIA would continue to work with drug dealers and corrupt South American military and other scum who have information to sell, as well as cooperating more closely with the FBI and DEA, but on the other hand he does apparently view domestic operations as clearly outside the CIA's job. One set of content in his speech was the planned combination of the various satellite data interpretation organizations into one group of CIA/Pentagon/NRO/NSA/etc. ObCrypto: One questioner asked him about the growing use of encoding and would the CIA be able to keep up eavesdropping on people. "We're very good at eavesdropping" was his main reply; he did acknowledge that there was an issue but didn't go into the party line about needing to have escrow to get GAK. Clinton, meanwhile, reassured guests at a $1000/plate fundraising lunch that the Republicans' economic plans would mainly affect the poor and wouldn't trouble the rich too much... :-) #--- # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #---

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Cypherpunks Bay Area Meeting, This Satuday September 13th
by Hugh Daniel 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What: Cypherpunks September 1997 Bay Area Meeting When: Saturday September 13, 12 noon till 5pm Where: PGP World Headquarters, 2nd floor meeting room Bayview Bank Building, just south of Hwy. 92 2121 S. El Camino Real, San Mateo California http://www.pgp.com/pgpcorp/contactpgp.cgi#head Agenda: Forbes Article background, everyone Cypherpunks at HIP'97, Lucky Green, David Del Torto Ecash announcement, Jeremey Barrett, BlueMoney Software Corp. Linux Onion Router, Jeremey Barrett Diffie-Helman Free of Patent, ??? New FBI Anti-Crypto Bill, how to react, everyone Domain name conference report, John Gilmore Attacks on US remailers etc., Bill Stewart ??? After: Eat dinner somewhere yet to be decided... PGP Building Access: This is an Open Meeting on US Soil and it is free for anyone to attend. There is a minor building security formality due to the facilities being in a bank building: anytime after 12 noon, approach the Bayview Building's Information window (in the plaza, see below for directions), and ask the Guard on Duty to let you up to the 2nd Floor for the Cypherpunks meeting (use the passphrase "cypherpunks release code"). If you have any difficulty (eg. if the guard is on a break), simply call DDT at +1 415 730 3583 he I'll let you in. You can arrive at any time during the scheduled meeting hours, though earlier is better if you want to hear the interesting stuff.

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Re: Another Netscape Bug (and possible security hole)
by Halvor Kise jr. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Fri, 22 Sep 1995, Ray Cromwell wrote: > I've found a Netscape bug which I suspect is a buffer overflow and > may have the potential for serious damage. If it is an overflow bug, > then it may be possible to infect every computer which accesses a web > page with Netscape. To see the bug, create an html file containing > the following: Yes! Nice! At last I can include a big Netrape icon on my homepage. Maybye with the text "Netscape users, click here.." All the link does is to crash netscape... At last! Thanks Ray! :-) - - Halvor. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: PGP Signed with PineSign 2.0 iQCVAwUBMGJlamzoaW8/SAL5AQGGigP/Q0K5tT8pAxNp7xigYP3r8WB6oxQXa7n1 G6L9umkfIBhPeZ9hFhCmSNvZLds31qoczl9QW2u+kSV10QYBuDsTlW56R9Hjh6PM /U5h6Ig9eD3jcf74388YEw4iUyKT+kNbcYSiCCvcK22MdA3T8W5ZXpg7f9ODaLSk uVZBl+pEA3Q= =HBzy -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- *** MEMENTO MORI *** PGP-key by fingering halvork(a)frodo.hiof.no http://www.hiof.no/~halvork/ * Support The Phil Zimmermann legal defense fund * http://www.netresponse.com/zldf

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Firefly Welcome
by Firefly 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

----------------- Welcome to Firefly: Thank you for becoming a Firefly Passport holder and a member of our community. Every month we'll be updating you on what Firefly is up to and the latest benefits of your Firefly Passport. We'll even point out the people you can meet and places you can experience in a way that is completely personalized for you. Here are September's highlights: - BARNESANDNOBLE.COM goes live with personalized book recommendations. Get a SNEAK PREVIEW and your own recommendations at <http://members.barnesandnoble.com/books>. - PERSONALIZATION WITH PRIVACY: Find out more about OPS, a standard for supporting web privacy proposed by Firefly, Netscape, and Microsoft, in the OPS resource center <http://www.firefly.net/OPS/index.html>. - TEST DRIVE new applications showcasing Firefly technology in the Studio <http://www.firefly.net/studio/index.html>. - CHECK OUT the latest news on our products at <http://www.firefly.net/Home.html>, currently being used by companies like Barnes & Noble, Yahoo!, and Ziff-Davis. Firefly firmly believes that you are in control. If at any time you want to remove yourself from this mailing list, simply send an email to unsubcribe(a)welcome.firefly.com with "unsubscribe" in the subject line. Looking forward to seeing you online. Sincerely, Pamela LaTulippe Director, Customer Support Firefly

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Income Tax Reform
by Jon D. Luman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A great way to reform the Federal Income Tax is to file and start enjoying your exempt status (you qualify if born in one of the 50 states). Then, these taxes will no longer apply to you. If enough people exercised their right to their exempt status, the government would have to live within it's means. Get details at: http://FutureGate.com/tax_buster ............................................... To be removed from future mailings, send to remove@futuregate,com with Remove in the subject line.

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[Fwd: Fwd: Engineers] Fwd: Engineers
by EFF 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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