December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Crypto hate mail
by tallpaul＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Jan 16, 1996 14:38:52, 'Alan Olsen <alano(a)teleport.com>' wrote: >This is one of the strangest pieces of mail I have recieved in a while. I >know it is not nice to publish private mail, but this has got to be the most >clueless response i have gotten yet on the portland Cypherpunks meeting. > >Either this guy has lost total connection to his clue-server or he left his >terminal logged in... Either way it is pretty funny. (At least he did not >make any references to the "tentacles" of Tim May... ]:> ) > >>Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1996 07:39:55 -0500 (EST) >>From: paul <phoffman(a)oven.ccds.charlotte.nc.us> >>X-Sender: phoffman@oven >>To: alano(a)teleport.com >>Subject: cypherpunks meeting > >> >>I THINK THAT ALL CYPHER PUNKS ARE S BUNCH OF FAGGOTS HAVING MEETINGS TO >>SEE WHO THEY "WANT" ALL OF YOU CAN SEND YOUR GAY MESSAGES WITH KEYS >>SOMEWHER ELSE YOU DAMN FAGGOTS! >> >>paul >> A. Olsen is too optimistic by far in his characterization of the likely psychological state of the person who sent the above message. I just published my CyberAngel piece in _Computer underground Digest_ and, during my researches, I heard a lot of material as least as hostile as the mail Olsen posted. The hysteria over the Four Horseman, particularly the "kiddie pornographers" is *intense.* So is the ignorance. To repeat in a different form: the word is "hysteria" as in "Salem Witch Trials." the ignorance is intense, e.g. ".gif" is a "kiddie porn" code word for "girlie interchage files" etc.etc. -- tallpaul "To understand the probable outcome of the Libertarian vision, see any cyberpunk B movie wherein thousands of diseased, desparate and starving families sit around on ratty old couches on the streets watching television while rich megalomaniacs appropriate their body parts for their personal physical immortality." R. U. Sirius _The Real Cyberpunk Fakebook_

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Re: A Modest Proposal: Fattening up the Proles
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:24 AM 1/17/96 -0500, Timothy C. May wrote: >(Ironically, I brought up the new book, "The Winner Take All Society," at >the last Cypherpunks meeting. No time to discuss it here, but it confirms >my strong belief that we are heading for a economy in which a shrinking >fraction of workers have really valuable things to contribute, and a >growing fraction of the population does not. The book suggests that small differences in perceived quality (or even 'luck') result in a big difference in marketplace results (whether for product or labor). The title is a bit misleading. It should be "The Winner-Take-Lots Society" since it does not say that non-winners are left with nothing (that thesis is promoted in other recent works of fiction.) These GenX whining tomes and commie sociology texts are just the latest examples of the old automation-will-cause-mass-unemployment so-we-need-Socialism-to-feed the-unemployed arguments. So far, a higher percentage of Americans are in paid employment than ever before in history. Likewise once you factor out changes in the workforce mix, similarly situated workers continue to rake in more "total compensation" than ever before. Remember comparative advantage. Just because Tim can apply his knowledge of physics to the chip fab process better than anyone and make big bucks, doesn't mean that everyone else is not needed. Even Tim can't be everywhere at once. There is plenty for us lesser lights to do. Tim himself certainly purchases the goods and labor of many other people. It may be true that a disproportionate share of the gains accrue to "the elite" but if everyone else is vastly richer than their forebearers, what difference does it make? That is the likely effect of the nanotechnolgy revolution of which the computer revolution is just the first part. "The End of Work" is a real world example of the "Imminent Death of Usenet" threads that wander their way throughout the Net. DCF "If everyone is so poor these days, why have air travel, dining out, and retail floor space all tripled since the Carter administration?"

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Re: Number theory text
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> PS -- Going to consolidate posts here. Can someone recommend a good >> text for an intro to Number Theory? When I asked this a year or so ago, somebody recommended Levecque (sp?). Thin book published by Dover that I bought for about $4 new, very readable and clear, and the elementary stuff has probably not changed significantly since ~1960. You may want something fancier and more detailed after you finish it, but it was a good start. Now it's time to finish that book on Group Theory :-) #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 # # "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" used to mean us watching # the government, not the other way around....

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Orlando Key Signing
by jpb＠miamisci.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I recently moved to Orlando, FL and I would like to know if there are any cypherpunks in this area interested in getting together for a key signing. Joseph Block <jpb(a)miamisci.org> "We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans ..." -- Bill Clinton (USA TODAY, 11 March 1993, page 2A) No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session. 2048bit-Fingerprint: F8 A2 A5 15 56 42 9B 16 3F BD 57 0F 8A ED E3 21

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Re: Article on E-money
by jim＠bilbo.suite.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Hi- > > I'm a journalist writing an article for an on-line > magazine about emoney.Seeing your site on the web... > Hi, I have no Web site of my own. You probably saw my E-Money FAQ on someone else's site and thought I was the site manager. That's ok, you're not the first to make that mistake. > I was hoping I might ask you a few very general questions > about the future on emoney as you see it. My article is > called a "futureview" article, meaning it makes some > guesses at what changes people can expect because of new > technology. > I'll be happy to answer your questions as best I can. > -How will the adoption of e-money or e-cash change the > workplace? Will some kinds of businesses or practices > prosper while others fail? > > -How will emoney or ecash change people's daily lives at > home? (More home shopping?) > > -If you had to guess, what do you think the future of emoney > will be? > > -Are there any words of hope/caution you'd like people to > know? > > Thanks in adviance for any help you can give. If you have > more questions about myself or the artcle, feel free to > call or write me. > > Mary Leontovich xxx/xxx-xxxx email: maryl(a)efn.org > Rather than answer each question individually, I'll just ramble on about e-money for a bit and hopefully I'll convey some interesting opinions. The first thing to recognize is that there are two arenas to consider when discussing e-money; the on-line arena and the "about town" arena. I'll first discuss the "about town" arena. It will take a decade or more, but eventually e-money purchases will be as common as credit card purchases. People will carry e-money cards right along side their credit cards. Rather than handing over a few dollar bills, people will insert e-money cards into readers. ATM machines will provide an option to charge up e-money cards. Credit card systems and e-money system will co-exist, and in fact you will be able to easily transfer value between credit cards and e-money cards. It is quite likely that the major credit card companies will issue multi-purpose super-cards(tm) that can act as either credit or e-money cards, reducing the number of cards people carry. Paper money will never go away completely (unless government stops backing paper money), but there are a variety of reasons most people will switch from using paper money to using e-money cards: 1) The card can easily keep a record of all a person's e-money purchases. The record can be up-loaded into popular PC-based money management software. 2) The card can hold "change" and well as "large bills". No need to carry around a pocketful of coins. 3) The money in the card can't be spent unless the proper PIN number (or thumb print, etc) is provided. Paper money can be spent by any thief. Some e-money cards may allow you get reimbursed for lost or stolen e-money. Others may only be able to "void" the lost money. 4) Some e-money system may allow you to make back-up copies of your e-money, in case the card gets damaged. 5) Paper money wears out, gets torn, etc. 6) Paper money, even in moderate quantities, is bulky. 7) Paper money has to be counted, and people must wait around while change is tallied up. Mistakes could be made. E-money cards will be relatively fool-proof and will work as fast or faster than current credit cards. And now the online arena... People will be able to purchase inexpensive devices that can be connected to their PC to transfer e-money from card to computer, and vice versa. This device may become a pseudo-standard peripheral, much like a sound card is today. People will be able to purchase items securely over the Internet using either credit card numbers or e-money. A good question to ask might be "If people can make secure credit card purchases over the Internet, why would they use e-money over the Internet?" There are a variety of reasons people might use e-money rather that credit cards online: 1) The item may cost only a few pennies, or less. Not enough to warrant using a credit card. 2) The vender may not accept credit cards. 3) You may not wish to give the vender your credit card number until you have established that the vender is trustworthy. 4) You may wish to pay in "cash" rather than add to your credit card balance. 5) You may wish to avoid revealing your "about town" identity to the vendor. Why might a vender accept e-money, but not credit cards? Well, it costs money to accept credit cards. It will probably cost less money to accept e-money. Very small companies that exist only on-line may not want to pay the expense to hook up to the credit card infrastructure. Cheap e-money will lower the barriers to entry for online business. Huge numbers of very small players will come online. The meaning of the term online "business" will change as it becomes easy and economical for individuals to charge very small amounts for data or services. When something become cheap and easy (ala World Wide Web), it will become very popular. When it is also a way to make money, it will become common-place. Most everyone with a PC will find a way to make a little money on the side by selling something online. Maybe people will sell idle CPU time or unused disk space on their home PCs to people using future Java-like distributed applications. All this new economic activity will of course be taxed. That is, if government has any say in the matter. And you can be sure government will do its best to have a say. From reading my E-money FAQ you know there are two possible kinds of e-money systems: identified and anonymous. For both tax reasons and law enforcement reasons, governments will do their best to insure that anonymous e-money systems fail in the marketplace. Perhaps by outright banning them, or by subsidizing identified e-money systems, or by not insuring bank accounts that accept anonymous e-money, or by mandating accounting or identification systems that preclude the use of anonymous e-money. I'm sure there are other tactics government could use. Should people care? What's so bad about identified e-money? What's so good about anonymous e-money? Most people don't seem terribly upset about the personal information they reveal by using credit cards so it is reasonable to assume most people will not be upset about the personal information they reveal by using identified e-money. I predict that anonymous e-money systems will not fare well in the marketplace for the following reasons: 1) Government pressure against anonymous e-money. 2) Identified e-money systems are easier to build. 3) Certain technologies necessary for anonymous e-money are patented. E-money system builders will tend to roll their own identified e-money systems, rather than pay fees or royalties to the patent holders. 4) The financial risks associated with anonymous e-money are more complex and harder to evaluate than the financial risks associated with identified e-money. The conservative money will tend to back systems with the lower perceived risk, even if the risks associated with anonymous e-money are manageable. 5) Identified e-money systems can provide the same external features and conveniences as anonymous e-money systems and will most likely become widely deployed sooner than anonymous e-money systems. Once people become accustomed to identified e-money systems, it is unlikely they will push for a change to anonymous e-money systems. It is hard for me to explain the reasons why anonymous e-money is preferred over identified e-money. The reasons fall into the "Do you trust government, or not" category. "Do you want the government to know about every penny you spend?" These sort of concerns are easily dismissed as alarmist. After all, say many people, if the government gets out of hand we can just vote in different law makers. That's how democracy works. Well, I don't believe it would be that easy. Imagine how hard it would be to get rid of social security cards. The information conveyed via identified e-money is directly useful to tax agencies and law enforcement. The information has other governmental and commercial uses, too. As with social security numbers, the infrastructure that utilizes identified e-money information will become larger the longer the systems are in use. After a time, it will take a ideological revolution to convince government and business it must do without such detailed personal information. And revolutions, ideological or otherwise, are never painless. I hope I'm wrong and identified e-money is nothing to worry about. And maybe big government can be trusted. :-) Jim_Miller(a)suite.com P.S. I CC'ed this reply to the cypherpunks mailing list. You might get additional replies from people on that list. ____________________________________________________________________ The Internet is a land bridge for memes ____________________________________________________________________

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Re: A weakness in PGP signatures, and a suggested solution (long)
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: ckey2(a)eng.ua.edu (Christopher R. Key) >First of all, if the recipient is a newsgroup, why would that particular information need to be part of the signed information? If you post to a newsgroup a message that is only signed (as opposed to encrypted also), then you are obviously not worried about who reads it. The signature is only a method of proving that the important text (message) is unchanged and intact, and that the person who it is supposed to be from is the same who signed it. -------------- How about proving that you _weren't_ spamming? I.e., an enemy spots a message on a newsgroup from you with a signature, then duplicates it with header modifications on 500 newsgroups including news.admin.net-abuse.misc (to add insult to injury). Sorry if a bunch of other people have pointed this out by the time my message gets to toad.com, but... -Allen

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Ooops
by Johnathan Corgan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Some rather, uh... uncreative bash scripting resulted in my trashing beyond reasonable repair all my inbox mail for the last half a day or so. Looks like there were a few posts from some list members--please resend any important mail. Thanks. -- Johnathan M. Corgan jcorgan(a)aeinet.com http://www.aeinet.com/jcorgan.htm

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RE: FW: Net Control is Thought Control
by blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Vladimir Z. Nuri "how can you be so sure that the cypherpunks lists is really what you think it is?" 'Cause I'm real, real smart. "a bunch of people from around the country independently interested in crypto?" "An effete corp of impudent snobs who fancy themselves intellectuals." (Spiro Agnew) "an agent provacteur, or agent saboteur, could create a vastly different perception regardless of the input of other people." It's true there are juveniles who occasionally disturb the list, but I expect that most members have a real interest in the subjects discussed and wish to bring out pithy points of truth & wisdom for all to behold, taking full credit for their contribution to the general atmosphere of learned intelligence. People have to grow up from childhood, Nuri-logical, and even then it's possible to be mistaken & to be misled. But there is no substitute for work, for the work of thought, which is the only means any human being has to solve the problems of living as a conscious, sensitive being. The only way to deal with all of the problems you mentioned is to continue to work to solve them in the way which will be most satisfactory to moral creatures. .. Blanc

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RE: Spiderspace
by Kurt Buff (Volt Comp) 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I think Tim was referring to someone gleaning your private key, which would be a Disastrous Thing (tm). If that's not what he was referring to, I still think it's a possiblity. Kurt ---------- From: Martin Diehl[SMTP:mdiehl@dttus.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 1996 13:59 To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Re: Spiderspace On 1/16/96 12:35 PM, tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) at Internet-USA wrote: > I've been thinking a lot about the problems and opportunities that are > coming up as more and more "spiders" (Web searchers, crawlers) are > indexing directories and files on systems they can find. [snip] > Sure enough, a search of "Cyberia-l" in Alta Vista showed all sorts of > hits, including what appeared to be several _private archives_ of parts > of the traffic. (By "private" I mean in the sense that they were > someone's personal archives, and not necessarily complete or even > semi-officially sanctioned.) [snip] > I've started to look for things like PGP files laying around buried in > subdirectories. I can imagine attacks based on this. [snip] > Fourth...left to your imagination. > --Tim May > We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't > allowed. > ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- > Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, > tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero > W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, > Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. > "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway." I gather that it would be a Bad Thing (TM) to have someone get both the encrypted and clear text forms of your message (from either you or from the recipient) Maybe regularly changing your encryption keys is a Good Thing (TM) Martin G. Diehl

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Re: [NOISE] Re: Eggs at Customs (fwd)
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"llurch(a)networking.stanford.edu" "Rich Graves" 16-JAN-1996 00:12:29.92 >Morality has nothing to do with it. It's the speed of the evolution. If you walk across the straits, the system has the time to react and restore a dynamic equilibrium. If you immediately release a new species with no natural predators, the system is shattered, and it might not survive. This is not to say that ecosystems and societies are static -- they evolve constantly, displaying unpredictable punctuated equilibrium (Steven J. Gould was right, Edmund Burke and Karl Marx were wrong). ------------- A few things from the biological point of view (and I _will_ try to bring in a bit of cypherpunks relevance). First, if the ecosystem were as unstable as the Greens in the 1960's and later kept predicting (Silent Spring and all that), it would have collapsed already. Look at how many species we've taken out already. Second, almost all ecosystems that are that vulnerable (to extinction of a keystone species or to import of something that starts eating) are small ones that don't really matter in the long run. For one thing, the more biodiversity _within_ an ecosystem exists, the more likely it is that something from outside (or something removed from within) will have a control (or a replacement). In other words, there are fewer and fewer true keystone species as the internal biodiversity of an ecosystem goes up. ------------- [...] >Cute cuddly seals and frieldly dolphins and teddy bears get "sympathy" among mainstrean "environmentalists," and the Sierra Club and World Wildlife Federation calendars raise a lot of money, but it's the plants and bugs and bacteria that are really important. Elephants and blue whales look big and important to us, but they're really inconsequential in the larger scheme of biodiversity. They could go extinct and the planet doesn't really care. But kill the blue-green algae and the trees, and we're all dead. ------------- The algae? Sure, they're important... they're also thoroughly likely to not be affected significantly. One, they've got so many things acting on them in the first place. Two, there is quite a bit of diversity within the algal group. What takes out one strain (I have always had my doubts about "species" with mitotically reproducing organisms) is unlikely to take out the rest... and they mutate quickly enough to give rise to more strains pretty rapidly when one "niche" is freed up. The trees, on the other hand, are in the classification of "nice to look at but not really neccessary," like the elephants. They're a great carbon _sink_, but they don't really do that much CO2 recycling. And even if they were... we can replant trees very quickly. It's the rain forests and the old growth forests that are hard to replace as such. Cypherpunks relevance? Well, digital cash and encrypted messaging make it a lot easier to do the type of deals you're talking about... they also make it harder for people to place irrelevant prerequisites (like "not from rain forest land") on their purchases. So far, most of the anti-cypherpunks arguments have come from the conservative side. Be prepared for some from the liberal environmentalists (as well as the liberal socialists who want to keep lots of tax dollars flowing). -Allen

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