December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: "Got a subpoena?"
by jimbell＠pacifier.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>On Thu, 30 Nov 1995, sameer wrote: > >> > >> > What about a court order to (a) start comprehensive logging, and (b) not >> > tell anyone under penalty of ______ . > >I am unaware of any authority for such an order. >> >> Aren't court orders part of the public record? I don't quite > >Yes, but court orders can be sealed pending further order of the court. Okay, maybe with your qualifications you can answer this. It has always mystified me why "the authorities" think they can engage in wiretapping without informing the person wiretapped that this has occurred, despite the fact that there was apparently never any precedent for this practice before the "wiretap era." In addition, I would like to be able to figure out a method to allow the de-facto disclosure of such activities, and to in fact force the phone company to do so, if they are asked to tap my or anyone else's phone. It occurred to me that even if there was a prohibition on explicitly revealing that such a tap exists, it should be possible to require the telephone company to certify that no tap exists, and to require that this certification will be followed by an explicit and immediate de-certification message the moment the phone company is unable to maintain such certification. The receipt of such a letter/fax/email will indicate that a tap has been placed, despite the fact that it will not say so. >EBD > >Not a lawyer on the Net, although I play one in real life. >

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Cyberspace Inc & Robber Baron Age
by James M. Cobb 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Friend, 11 29 95 Computer underground Digest carries the complete text of Rick Moore's article, Cyberspace Inc and the Robber Baron Age, an analysis of PFF's "Magna Carta" scheduled to appear in the print journal, The Information Soci- ety. Here's a sample: Instead of an infrastructure for public communications -- like the current Internet, or the American highway system -- cyber- space would be developed as a corporate owned monopoly -- priced at whatever the traffic will bear. Instead of providing a "space" in which citizens are free to speak and associate (like Internet), cyberspace would become a profit-machine and propaganda channel for media conglomerates. PFF's manifesto is a formula for neo-feudalism in the "Know- ledge Age" -- it is a charter for what could aptly be dubbed "Cyberspace Inc". The most recent issues of CuD can be obtained from http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest Cordially, Jim

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A "Warning Banner" for Netscape Navigator? Good idea!
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:16 PM 12/1/95, Brian Davis wrote: >And thus we return to my original point, which is that it will depend on >what is said/disclosed. If every copy of GAKscape had a banner, bigger >than the Netscape "N" which said, "The government can read every message >you send using this software no matter what you do" then I think >consumers will be hard pressed to say they weren't warned. I agree with this. In fact, I think it's an excellent argument for providing this in Netscape. Seriously. A version of Netscape with such warning banners (exact wording to be determined, but probably mentioning limited key lengths, GAK, etc.) would be a Good Thing. And if Netscape Communications will not release their products in such a way, some alternatives may exist. Maybe: 1. A patch that adds this, analogous to the patches that alter the Netscape logo. 2. An entirely patched new version. Good idea, Brian! One patch I'd pay money to have is one which intercept the "commercials" Netscape blasts out at us and replace them with something else (maybe nothing, maybe a "quote for the day," maybe something from a user-selectable file of items). I understand that Netscape is collecting money for these "commercials," and that they control what is sent out. So, any such patch to intercept/remove these commercials would have to be done locally. Can this be done? --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Too much crossposting! Choose your community and stop crossposting.
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Note: I'm not subscribed to any of the lists here except the Cypherpunks list, which I've of course been on for several years, since the start in '92. I try to avoid cross-posting to multiple lists, and almost never to lists I am not a subscriber to. (Cypherpunks gets enough spams from well-meaning folks and groups who simply must have their announcements blasted out to all the lists they think are important.) In this case, I am leaving all of the cc: lists on this message, which is a meta-message. (Hopefully some of the lists block messages from non-subscribers, which will mean those readers won't see this.) At 9:30 PM 12/1/95, Robert Hettinga wrote: >At 12:45 PM 12/1/95, Rich Salz wrote: >>And my god, >>five lists this time, at least some of which have over a thousand readers? > >Ouch! Actually, semper.fi has many times that many readers... ;-). > >Rich, you must be the *only* person, (besides myself), who's subscribed to >*all* of those lists. I think if you check it out, that post was germaine >to every single one of the lists in question. > >However, I'm sorry to bury you in a snowstorm. Getting 6 copies of the same >thing must have pissed you off, and for that, I apologise. Bob Hettinga often has some good things to say (though his journalist-style prose can get a bit purple at times, but that's just his style). However, a lot of folks have good things to say at times, and clearly these good things cannot be bounced around to all the lists which might contain readers of these good things. Mailing lists simply cannot survive if these kinds of cross-posts to four, five, or even six different lists continue. Filters are nice, though I don't relish putting Bob H. into a kill-file. People pick the mailing lists, the communities, they wish to participate in. This means they are electing not to read the traffic of other lists. C'est la vie. Even worse, massive cross-posting often produces follow-ups--such as mine here--which are "out of synch" with the themes of the particular lists. Thus, on the Cypherpunks list we sometimes get cross-posts which argue why privacy is or is not a good thing. Perhaps a reasonable thing to argue, but not on Cypherpunks. I'm sure the other lists here have had similar experiences. I urge everyone to practice some restraint. --Tim May, who has a hard enough time reading the traffic on Cypherpunks and Cyberia-l (legal issues in cyberspace) without gettting traffic on CyberHound, WWW-BUYNOW, etc. Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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META: Lycos & Searchable archives
by Leslie Todd Masco 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Someone has expressed concern to me that the cypherpunks archives are searchable via Lycos. Said person doesn't mind having the archives searchable to the smaller audience of people who go to the we-site, but is unhappy about net-wide searches turning up cypherpunks articles. Can we try to find a consensus on this? My initial inclination was to shrug the concern off (properties of information, etc, as well as c'punks being a more-or-less anarchy and the express desire for some sort of searching mechanism for c'punks), but I thought I'd double check as I've been mostly out of touch for the better part of a year. - -- Todd Masco | "life without caution/ the only worth living / love for a man/ cactus(a)hks.net | love for a woman/ love for the facts/ protectless" - A Rich Cactus' Homepage - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBML1HiCoZzwIn1bdtAQEtjgF/d7GBzgELk41OE+/pZxnZkzn+qYLRHmTn 8mbScBdkko83n4sxGjwFRQJyN5IlPCJQ =nFDi -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: The future will be easy to use
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Mon, 27 Nov 1995, James A. Donald wrote: >> You are making the same erroneous assumption that Phil made when he >> designed the Web of trust: You assume that it is important and >> interesting to link key ID's to physical bodies. This is usually >> not the case: Linking key ID's to home web pages etc is not only >> easier -- it is also usually more interesting and important. At 02:46 PM 11/29/95 -0500, Jon Lasser wrote: >Not if you're encrypting a Credit Card transaction to ship physical >goods. In that case, I'm going to certainly want to link a key ID to a >physical body (or at least address) if I'm the seller, so as to limit >liability as best I can. Not at all: All you need to do is be able to prove you shipped to the address requested: You do not have to know what the relationship is between the address requested and identity paying you to ship. > However, if you have optional linking of ID and name, shippers will only > ship to keys with such attributes. Because just ID and address, it could > be a "hit and run" type attack shipped to a safe maildrop. This argument makes no sense at all: I am going to attack my enemies by paying people to send books, computers, and stuff to them? --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: Aware's radiation detector
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> This month's Scientific American has an ad by Aware for that serial port >> radiation detector we were discussing a while back. Upper right corner >> of page 109, I think. Sells for $149 US, 45 day money back guaranty. > >This wouldn't be the wavelet company in Cambridge, MA, would it? This reminds me at mobile world this week, some of the wearables guys at Steve Roberts' BEHEMOUTH booth showed me a $20 alpha and beta detector half the size of a matchbook. Said something about it being Russian surplus... Cheers, Bob ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA (617) 958-3971 "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell The NEW(!) e$ Home Page: http://thumper.vmeng.com/pub/rah/ >>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf(a)clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<

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Windows95 "Security"
by Laszlo Vecsey 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Where is the password data file kept?

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Re: A "Warning Banner" for Netscape Navigator? Good idea!
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 1:22 AM 12/2/95, Eric Murray wrote: >You can fix this from the browser. >Pull down the 'Options' menu, grab the 'Window and Link styles' >page, and change the default "home page location" from >netscape's to whatever you want. I usually use my own home page. >I never look at Netscape's pages unless I specifically want to >see something like SSL specs. If there wasn't a way to >turn off their home page I'd be pretty pissed off. Oh, I don't have their home page enabled. What I meant, but perhaps wasn't clear about in my post, is that the commercials pop up in Yahoo, Infoseek, Deja News, Excite, and so forth. (OK, so it is inaccurate to say "Netscape" puts them in.) Some of the ads are intertwined with the command boxes of the particular service, and thus may be hard to excise, but others seem to be separate. Any ideas? --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Cyberspace Inc & Robber Baron Age
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Instead of an infrastructure for public communications -- like > the current Internet, or the American highway system -- cyber- > space would be developed as a corporate owned monopoly -- > priced at whatever the traffic will bear. More technophobic hogwash from an industrial-centralist mind. Anyone who looks at the possibilty of semi-autonomous, hell, autonomous, software out there buying and selling things "out of control" of the people who use it, much less those who wrote it, in an emergent-structure chaotic microtransaction market, on a network where the price of semiconductor switching falls exponentially, making everything, code, hardware, link-lengh, everything, smaller and smaller and faster and faster, (inhale) can't possibly say stuff like that. These folks are looking backwards so far they're going to trip over the future. Feh. ;-) Cheers, Bob Hettinga <roasted tail-feathers and all...> ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA (617) 958-3971 "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell The NEW(!) e$ Home Page: http://thumper.vmeng.com/pub/rah/ >>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf(a)clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<

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