December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Vexatious Litigants (was: SurfWatch)
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:29 PM 3/7/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >My point was that "opinions" (such as movie reviews) are not "tortable" >(don't know the legal name), unless specific inaccuracies can be >demonstrated, and even then it is hard. Siskel and Ebert have undoubtedly >destroyed the box office prospects of many a movie with their "thumbs down" >diss of death, but I know of no successful (or even adjudicated) lawsuits >on this basis. I agree fully so far. However, when your TimWatch software takes action based on your opinions, you may have crossed the line between speech and action. Since you made the decision, rather than just provided an opinion, you might, in our current legal climate, have caused a tort. It would be interesting to see if a HIV positive teen could sue SurfWatch because it blocked him from getting information on safe sex. IMO our society has tilted too far away from caveat emptor toward "it's someone else's fault". People who let a machine censor their data deserve what they get. Parents who consistantly hide reality from their children, instead of helping them learn how to deal with it, are crippling their children. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Frantz | The CDA means | Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 | lost jobs and | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | dead teenagers | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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No Subject
by JonWienke＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

d 96-03-07 20:19:12 EST, you write: >Because the drive is portable. You can place an easily concealled two-pound >135 Mb drive in a briefcase or backpack and have a travelling MixMaster >site. Here today, there tomorrow, someplace else the next day. Makes the >whole system a real problem for the security types to track down. > Why not just put an IDE/SCSI EZ drive in a Pentium laptop with an ISDN or 28.8K modem? That would be the ultimate in portability; you could still hide the whole thing, or remove the cartridge and destroy it fairly quickly if necessary. That would give you the best of all worlds. However, no matter where you are physically located, you have to have an account with somebody somewhere to get Internet access. If the gov't wants you out of business, they can cancel your ISP account or revoke your domain name and shut you down that way. I suppose it would be harder for them to prosecute you if they didn't know where you were, though... Jonathan Wienke

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Re: Another Motivation for the CDA (Federal Sentencing Guid
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

tj_lists(a)prado.com wrote: > Couldn't help noticing this, presume you mean Federal Judges since the > waiver would be from aspects of GCA 1968, a Federal law. The fact is, at > least in sentencing, Federal Judges now have very little discretion. The > Federal Sentencing Guideline structure established in the 1980's provides > "guidelines" for a given defendant convicted of a given set of charges. Things That aside, in running trials and in many other little things both federal and non-federal judges have too much leeway in deciding what evidence can be admitted, in some of the sentencing details and in various forms of punishment and restitution, etc. But yes, you made a good reminder point about mandatory sentencing. Rob. --- Send a blank message with the subject "send pgp-key" (not in quotes) to <WlkngOwl(a)unix.asb.com> for a copy of my PGP key.

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U.S. State Dept criticizes Chinese net-censorship
by Declan B. McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The U.S. State Department's Human Rights Report for 1995 talks about restrictions on new media in China, pointing out that Internet access is now limited. How ironic that the U.S. Government would report that "government limits on Internet access" will harm the medium's growth -- while our _own_ government is imposing similarly suffocating regulations domestically. I draw small comfort from the fact that, as censors, we're not quite as accomplished as those in China or Zambia: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~declan/zambia/ http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/top/ -Declan ---- U.S. State Department Human Rights Report gopher://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/0F-1%3A23308%3AChina In many respects, Chinese society continued to open up: greater disposable income, looser ideological controls, and freer access to outside sources of information have led to greater room for individual choice, more diversity in cultural life, and increased media reporting. Although the sale and use of satellite dishes are tightly regulated, satellite television broadcasts are widely available, particularly in coastal areas. Telephone and facsimile communication is also extensively used. In many cities, the introduction of commercial Internet service promoted access to international sources of information. At year's end, however, new government limits on Internet access threatened to halt the growth of Internet use. In addition, new controls on reporting economic information introduced doubts about the Government's commitment to freedom of information. Government control of news media generally continues to depend on self-censorship to regulate political and social content, but the authorities also consistently penalize those who exceed the permissable. ###

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Re: Anonymous remailers and Leahy bill
by jrochkin＠cs.oberlin.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:22 PM 03/07/96, jim bell wrote: >Wouldn't help "Bob" in the least. And you didn't read what I wrote very >carefully, either: Notice that I said, "under a different name." In other >words, the source of the note does not identify the user name under which >the illegal activity is promised to occur. Cancelling this particular >fellow's account does NOTHING to prevent the illegal activity from >occurring by other, unidentified users, and "Bob" knows it. How is this differnet then me calling up AOL and saying "Using a friend's account whose password I have, I'm going to send child pornography out to many people sometime tommorow"? I don't know if it is or not, but hopefully it's the same. As long as anonymous remailers are legally identical to ISPs, I think we don't have to worry too much becuase ISPs are now serious money-making businesses with lots to spend on lobbying and legal fees, and will fight any laws that effect them such. Whether this Leahy bill is passed or not, clearly AOL is not going to quietly shut down their entire company after receiving such a phone call. And they can't really do anything to stop the theoretical next-day child porn mailing either. [If you like, have the phone caller threaten to send out encrypted child porn, just to make it more perfect an example.] So it would be beneficial to present anonymous remailers as just another sort of internet service provider. And we only really have to worry when there are laws that seem to apply to anon remailers but not AOL.

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Re: Fractals, Cellular Automata, and Encryption
by Mutant Rob 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Interesting point. I've dabbled with CA a little bit, though not in terms of crypto. I think at best CA can be used for stream ciphers... and a big problem is that people assume it's a totally new form of computing, when in fact it's only a different form, and anything that can be done with a conventional formula-based scheme can be done with CA and visa- versa... the pitfall is that one can get all caught up in how chaotic CA behaves and lose sight that the same thing can be done in a formula, and that possibly it can be easily broken. Fractals are interesting. I've thought about using the Julia-set iterations as a form of crypto (or for that matter, recursive methods in general)... maybe a kind of block cipher that works with complex numbers, but using the words as fractions rather than whole numbers. Perhaps using 64-bit binary fractions, and iterating X = X^2 + C, where the iteration count and C are keys... using the result as a kind of stream cipher. Problem is it would be slow on most machines. I've also thought about genetic algorithms. An interesting ideal would be a genetic algorithm that operated on plaintext, key, ciphertext but would be self-analyzing and evolve itself in ways to make cryptanalysis difficult. - --Rob - --- [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 iQBFAwUBMT+FpSoZzwIn1bdtAQHg9QF+OhSfJi0WIPB1Lqg5ne7f8mYYvow7yl5k 0gJh0KHaCEJZUcwhmRZ1uWlDlExcx+Q/ =sgLv -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Vexatious Litigants (was: SurfWatch)
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:29 PM 3/7/96 -0800, the TimWatch service posted: >Opinions are opinions, and a free society has no business suppressing >opinions by use of torts. (Another related area is the use of torts to halt >public comment on controversial development plans. These are called "SLAPP" >suits--"Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation." For example, >where AT&T sues "the Cypherpunks" to shut them up about their anti-Clipper >feelings. Some judges are awarding large damages to the groups hit with the >SLAPP suits.) Hey, give The Big Phone Company a break - they did just stop pushing Lotus Notes (I don't remember if they were providing the latest espionage-enabled verstion or just the one previous to it.) Of course, their decision wasn't based on Lotus's selection of GAK; it was more related to their success in selling this high-mainenance service, which may also be related to Lotus's decision to try to increase their foreign market...... #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281 #

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Re: Square pegs in round holes, matchmaking, corporate mailservers
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:12 AM 3/7/96 -0800, Hal Finney wrote: >I don't think this satisfies the requirements. Once Bob calculates H' >and sees that it matches H, he knows that Alice likes him, but Alice >doesn't know that he likes her. The whole point of the protocol was to >be fair. Bob must only learn that Alice likes him if Alice is guaranteed >to learn that he likes her. Hmmm, you're right - Bob still has the choice at the end to reveal or not reveal to Alice that he was the one who sent the note. Back to the drawing board. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281 #

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Re: Another Motivation for the CDA (Federal Sentencing Guidelines)
by tj_lists＠prado.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

** Reply to note from Deranged Mutant <WlkngOwl(a)UNiX.asb.com> 03/07/96 7:06pm +0000 > Yes and no. Depends on the judge. Some are hard-assed about granting > waivers, others aren't. Part of the problerm is that judges have too ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > much discretion. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Couldn't help noticing this, presume you mean Federal Judges since the waiver would be from aspects of GCA 1968, a Federal law. The fact is, at least in sentencing, Federal Judges now have very little discretion. The Federal Sentencing Guideline structure established in the 1980's provides "guidelines" for a given defendant convicted of a given set of charges. Things like prior offenses add "points", ratting on your friends takes away "points". In this case less is better than more. Anyway, a low level bureaucrat fills out a presentence investigation report on the basis of complicated, arcane rules it is easy to get wrong. This report goes to the judge who can pass sentence only within a narrow range, say 6 months 1 way or the other on a 5 year sentence (very few new Federal "crimes" carry less than this). Any departure from this range, either upward or downward, must be justified in a formal opinion, & can be appealed by either party. Very few judges bother. This system is cookie cutter in-justice at it's finest, & only a lack of bureaucratic imagination has prevented it from being computerized beyond the use of word processors to write the report. Since well over 90% of Federal Criminal cases end in guilty pleas, this method has the effect of transferring discretion that formerly belonged to the judge to the prosecutor, who gets to pick from a variety of charges covering the same offense, and the low level flunkey who gets to fill out the forms. This is exactly the big problem with the new "crime" of using encryption in a felony in the Leahy bill. Assuming for a moment this new law is tailored very narrowly & is only used on people who 1. Commit without governmental entrapment an underlying felony. 2. Exclusively use encrypted traffic in direct furtherance of the underlying felony, (example: murder for hire is negotiated via encrypted messages) there still remains the fact that this is simply another tool of prosecutorial discretion, of which there is way to much already. The problem with prosecutorial discretion is that it is always used to encourage snitching, turning this country into a nation of Pavel Mozorov's (12 year old Hero of the Soviet Union who ratted out his parents to the Cheka for concealing a pig from collectivization. His uncles did as should be done in such cases & cut him up with an axe). However, I do agree that in setting conditions other than fines & prison time, Federal Judges do have too much discretion. Chris Lambert (mthreat, Minor Threat) a 21 year old Austin cracker now doing time in Bastrop FCI, as part of his sentence is forbidden to own or work with any computer w/ modem or network card/connection. This of course is to apply after he gets out. Traditionally, counterfeiters, who come from the ranks of printers, merely have to report to their parole officer & get his ok in order to own or go to work for a print shop. cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com mthreat(a)paranoia.com

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Who is DCS? (was "Finding Married Women}
by infsuphw＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is in response to the many e-mails I have received on this subject: 1. I am a consultant that works with major banks in the fraud prevention and due diligence areas. 2. I have no connection whatsoever with DCS or any member of its management. 3. Last week (2/26) I made a personal visit to DCS' offices near Dallas for the purpose of learning more about their offerings. 4. VERY BRIEFLY, DCS has assembled a database with in excess of 200 million records. The database is searchable by any criteria or combination of criteria. As an example, if you wanted to know all Janes that were born on 03/01/42, you can simply ask the system for that information and you get it. If you wanted to know everyone with the last name Williams that lives in zip code 90210, same deal. 5. There is a wide variety of information available, including full DOB, physical description, SSN, address, phone number. 6. What I found particularly attractive about this service is the pricing scheme. There is a one-time charge of $195 to establish an account. Thereafter, you only pay for what you access. A nationwide search is $5.00 and returns up to 100 matches. If you want a full report on one of the "hits" that will return everything but credit header information, it costs an additional $4.00. Credit header information costs another $6.00. So, for $15.00, you get everything without paying any monthly fees or "time online" charges. However, if none of the "hits" look promising, you've only spent $5.00. 7. DCS can be reached at 800-299-3647 or 214-422-3600. Contact's name is Andy.

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