December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Fwd: Results of Internet Protest
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Mon, 18 Dec 1995 11:16:31 -0500 Subject: Fwd: Results of Internet Protest From: Joel Bowers <jmba(a)bluefin.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Apparently-To: <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: Results of Internet Protest Sent: 12/18 2:06 AM Received: 12/18 8:18 AM From: mcnmembers(a)macn.com To: MCNMembers(a)macn.com From: mcnmembers(a)macn.com (MCN Members) Sender: jfried(a)desktopdesign.com (John Friedlander) To: MCNMembers(a)macn.com (MCN Members) ======================================================================== CAMPAIGN TO STOP THE NET CENSORSHIP LEGISLATION IN CONGRESS THE NET ROCKS AMERICA'S CAPITOL - NEARLY 20,000 PARTICIPANTS THURSDAY DECEMBER 14, 1995 SENATE CONFEREES COULD STILL VOTE THIS WEEK RALLIES HAPPENING IN AUSTIN, NEW YORK, SF, & SEATTLE PLEASE WIDELY REDISTRIBUTE THIS DOCUMENT WITH THIS BANNER INTACT REDISTRIBUTE ONLY UNTIL December 25, 1995 ________________________________________________________________________ RECAP: INTERNET DAY OF PROTEST: TUESDAY DECEMBER 12, 1995 The net came into its own as a political force on Tuesday. The press release has more details. If you haven't taken a moment to call, fax, or email, do so now. We're still keeping track and only need a few more to break 20,000. VTW had someone onhand in DC monitoring the response at the Congressional offices. The feedback was amazing; Congress got the message. We need to sustain that by continuing to tell them we're not happy with the options being offered to us at this time. Directions for calling Congress can still be found at http://www.vtw.org/ and the many other sites listed at the end of this message. Take a moment to call! Don't forget to mail us a note at protest(a)vtw.org to let us know you took part in the Day Of Protest (and Day 2, and Day 3, and Day 4). FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 13, 1995 Contact: Steven Cherry (718) 596-2851 stc(a)vtw.org Shabbir Safdar (718) 596-2851 shabbir(a)vtw.org New York, NY Are 20,000 phone calls a lot? 30,000? 50,000? They are if you're one of a handful of Congressional staffers trying to field them. Tuesday, December 12th was the Internet's Day of Protest. A variety of net-activists and telecommunications-related services exhorted the on-line community to call a selected group of Senators and Representatives to declare their opposition to the threat of Internet censorship. And call they did. As the Senate members of the Telecommunications Reform conference committee contemplated portions of legislation that would censor "indecent" material on-line, their staffers were being overwhelmed with phone calls. Senator Inouye's office said they were "getting lots and lots of calls and faxes." Senator Lott's said they were "flooded with calls." At Senator Stevens' office there were so many calls they couldn't keep a complete tally. At Senator Exon's office, the fax machine was "backed up." And at one point, activists couldn't even get through to Senator Gorton's office to ask. Exon is the Senator whose Communications Decency Act started the nearly year-long struggle between those who would create special regulations to restrict speech on-line (even, in certain instances, private email between two individuals) to a greater extent than even traditional broadcast media; regulations that, according to the ACLU and many other civil liberties groups, will certainly be proven to be unconstitutional if passed into law. "We've never seen anything like it," said Stanton McCandish of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The EFF is one member of the on-line coalition that has been fighting an array of censorship legislation since this spring, when Senator Exon introduced his Communications Decency Act. "We may have almost overwhelmed our provider," said Shabbir Safdar, head of Voter's Telecommunications Watch (VTW). VTW is the organization that organized the on-line coalition. Their on-line connectivity is provided by Panix.com, a New York-area Internet service provider. "Panix has been doing some maintenance work today, so it's hard to tell," Safdar continued. "But we think it's actually made a dent in their connection to the rest of the Net." How many calls were actually made? No one can tell. For Leslie Miller, a reporter for USA Today, it took much of the afternoon to get some counts from Congressional staffers, and she couldn't get any report from the Senate's Sergeant-At-Arms, the office nominally responsible for the Senate's telephone system. VTW may be the only organization that can really make an educated guess. "In our Alerts we ask that people drop us an email note after they call," explained VTW board member Steven Cherry. "The message count peaked in the late afternoon at over 70 per minute. Many of those were from people who called several offices. By 7:30 P.M. (EST) we had gotten 14,000 messages. By Wednesday morning the count was over 18,000. And of course there are the people who called but didn't send us email. So all told, our very rough guess is there were well over 50,000 phone calls and faxes made on the one day." "The Net is coming of age, politically," said Jerry Berman, Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), another member of the on-line coalition. Safdar, of VTW, concurred, saying, "I think Washington got the message today that there's a new grass-roots interest group around, and we're going to be a big part of the 1996 elections." (VTW's initial election activities can be found at http://www.vtw.org/pledge.) In addition to the Day of Protest, rallies are scheduled on Thursday, December 14th, in San Francisco and Seattle, and a protest will be held that day at 2:00 in New York City. The New York rally will be at the Cyber-Cafe, 273A Lafayette St from 2-3pm on Thursday, Dec 14th. Contact Steven Cherry or Shabbir J. Safdar for details. The Austin rally is planned for Tue. Dec 19th. No more information is available at this time. Information about the San Francisco rally can be obtained from http://www.hotwired.com/staff/digaman/. Information about the Seattle rally can be obtained from http://www.wnia.org/WNIA/hap/rally.html. Voters Telecommunications Watch is a volunteer organization, concentrating on legislation as it relates to telecommunications and civil liberties. VTW publishes a weekly BillWatch that tracks relevant legislation as it progresses through Congress. It publishes periodic Alerts to inform the about immediate action it can take to protect its on-line civil liberties and privacy. More information about VTW can be found on-line at gopher -p 1/vtw gopher.panix.com www: http://www.vtw.org or by writing to vtw(a)vtw.org. The press can call (718) 596-2851 or contact: Shabbir Safdar Steven Cherry shabbir(a)vtw.org stc(a)vtw.org ________________________________________________________________________ WHERE CAN I LEARN MORE? At this moment, there are several organizations with WWW sites that now have, or will have, information about the net censorship legislation and the National Day Of Protest: American Civil Liberties Union (ftp://ftp.aclu.org/aclu/) Center for Democracy and Technology (http://www.cdt.org/) Electronic Frontier Foundation (http://www.eff.org/) Electronic Privacy Information Center (http://www.epic.org/) Wired Magazine (http://www.hotwired.com/special/indecent/) Voters Telecommunications Watch (http://www.vtw.org/ or finger vtw(a)panix.com) ________________________________________________________________________ End Alert ======================================================================== ----------------------- Headers -------------------------------- _________________________ Joel M Bowers & Assoc [jmba(a)jmba.com] Multiuser Database Design [MCN,ASPN & Claris Solutions Alliance] _________________________ Voice 603-778-7494 Fax 603-778-7484 _________________________15 Curtis Road, Hampton Falls, NH 03844 --- end forwarded text ----------------- 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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redirect of newsgroups
by David Klur 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

For those of us sitting behind a firewall that blocks out all of the alt, rec, etc.. newsgroups...is there another way to access these groups? For example, redirecting the contents of alt.2600 to, say, comp.2600 (because this firewall allows the comp.xxx groups through). Or any other hacks around this inconvenience? -----BEGIN PBP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1.0.0, Copyright 1995, Pretty Bad Privacy David Klur dklur(a)dttus.com I am who I am because I say so. So there. -----END PBP SIGNATURE-------

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Re: my idea of the ideal encryption tool for the masses
by Bryce 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Jiri Baum <jirib(a)cs.monash.edu.au> wrote in private e-mail: > > Apart from that, this kind of thing has been proposed before, > and (for payment at least) I've read a paper somewhere that > uses something like this to get off-line anon. e-cash with > multi-party mistrust. (Ie nobody trusts anybody.) Yes, even such klooges such as Mondex might be considered a variation on my idea. Ultimately, though, I expect this device to become my *only* interface with the Net. I don't own any long-term storage device. Instead I just rent it over the Net and encrypt any long-term data that I consider private. I do any *sensitive* processing on the CPU in my handheld computer, but if it's a big job and I don't mind people watching then I rent a CPU over the Net to chew on it. This device is perfectly portable and can be plugged into any Net jack in an office or telephone booth, or perhaps it can do wireless. The important point is that no matter where I am physically, or what long-term storage device I am using via the Net, I have complete crypto security. (Mod Tempest- surveillance, physical subversion of my crypto box, etc.) If it were done right I could use this same box for my notepad, wallet, e-mail agent, Web browser, game-player, etc. etc. etc. > (But that requires the bank to trust tamper-proof h/w; if you > give up anon, as you have, you don't need that because it only > need resist until Joe can revoke his key - easily enough done > because the shop needs to have a list of valid ones anyway. > Alternatively you can keep anon but make clearing on-line, > which results in what is usually called a digital wallet.) Hm. As often happens in these kinds of discussions, we've missed each other because of different semantic conventions or something. My idea does not depend upon tamper-proof hardware in the sense that the owner must be prevented from cracking it open, but it *does* (as does every conceivable crypto system) depend on tamper-prevention in the sense that those antagonistic to the owner must be prevented from cracking open his box! Also I haven't given up anonymity at all. Oh! You mean in my example of Joe paying at the grocery store. Well he can have a pseudonymous account at that store if he wants. There is certainly no *necessity* to give up self-identity-control in any way. > > It only does this in response to some kind of > > authentication-action from Joe himself. Perhaps he > > inputs a 4-digit PIN. (It should be designed so that > ... > > Fingerprint scan? I thought about that but I personally wouldn't trust it. It might fail to recognize my fingerprint at an important moment. Besides, I hate the thought of a mugger taking my index finger also when he takes my wallet... Regards, Bryce signatures follow "To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield." -Tennyson <a href="http://www.c2.org/~bryce/Niche.html"> bryce(a)colorado.edu </a> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Auto-signed under Unix with 'BAP' Easy-PGP v1.01 iQCVAwUBMNXSW/WZSllhfG25AQEF4AP9GKHbSh5RgROKFclm/fgkpI+FcZjagTo9 SBa7Kdn9sFczdk23u6mHbKufDKFJO5oyri5MOPvU2QZwa9iP3zGjaBKcS6QbSOJ2 c4W71cFVJ+YZw8nnsMGwNmdISl2T0VYjQo/za4D2blZMRGDLdHgcl/E3FfTXxn5K vBEUglr59Gs= =ksB+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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ZD Net Update v.1 #4
by wwwziff＠internet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

______________________ZD Net Update_______________________ v. 1 #4 12-11-95 Welcome to ZD Net Update, the free E-mail newsletter created especially for registered users of Ziff-Davis Interactive's ZD Net/World Wide Web Edition. ZD Net Update is a bi-weekly bulletin that alerts you to new and exciting developments on ZD Net. In this issue: > YAHOO, ZIFF-DAVIS ANNOUNCE PLAN TO JOIN FORCES > PC MAGAZINE UNWRAPS ITS 1995 HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE > COMPUTING TRAILBLAZER HELPS YOU "BUY IT ONLINE" * * * * * * * * * * YAHOO, ZIFF-DAVIS ANNOUNCE PLAN TO JOIN FORCES On Tuesday, December 12, Yahoo Corp. and Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. announced a strategic relationship that establishes a new, Web- driven publishing model for delivering content via print, online, and CD ROM. The relationship leverages the expertise and brand names of Yahoo, operator of the leading directory on the Web, and Ziff- Davis, the leading publisher of computer magazines and computing content online, including ZD Net. The new alliance is initially focused on two media products: Yahoo Internet Life and ZD/Yahoo Computing. Yahoo Internet Life is an interactive magazine based on one of the most popular sites on the World Wide Web. ZD/Yahoo Computing seeks to become the ultimate value-added, online directory of computing resources on the Web. Yahoo Internet Life combines a Web site, a print publication, and a CD ROM. Each issue of the quarterly magazine will include a CD ROM that contains virtually everything in the magazine as well as the software that users need to connect to the Web. The print version of Yahoo Internet Life will debut on newsstands in February 1996. Bill Machrone, Editor-in-Chief of ZD Internet Life and Ziff-Davis's Vice President of Technology, was named Editor-in-Chief of Yahoo Internet Life. ZD/Yahoo Computing will be the definitive online guide to finding and using computing resources on the Web. It will incorporate an enhanced version of The Computing Trailblazer, a popular feature of the ZD Net Web site that reviews computing sites on the Internet, as well as new features to help people find computing products, companies, and services. ZD/Yahoo Computing will be available in early 1996. For more information about the announcement, including a Shockwave file and VDOLive video clips, check out the ZD Public Relations site at: http://www.zdnet.com/pr/ * * * * * * * * * * PC MAGAZINE UNWRAPS ITS 1995 HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE The holidays are fast approaching, you're faced with tons of folks who need gifts, and you have no idea what to buy them. How to get in the holiday spirit? Don't despair. Your shopping list may be long, but PC Magazine's list of gift ideas is bound to be longer. The editors at PC Magazine have gathered 101 of the best educational and entertainment products to hit the shelves since last holiday season. Nearly all of these products are Windows-based, except for the games, most of which run under DOS. For the youngest folks on your list, the Kids' Software section includes a selection of learning games covering all the basic subject areas, many of which star characters the kids will recognize. For those hard-to-please gamers, this holiday offers an abundance of riches in all categories: action and adventure games, arcade games and puzzles, strategy and simulation games, and sports games. Looking for something a bit less frivolous? Then check out the reference offerings and the selection of personal productivity software. For gadget lovers, there's a fun and funky array of PC peripherals that would look great on any desktop. And don't miss the list of 10 great gifts under $35. So forget about fretting over that holiday shopping list. PC Magazine gives you 101 reasons to celebrate this holiday season. Discover a little holiday cheer at: http://www.zdnet.com/~pcmag/issues/1422/pcm00154.htm * * * * * * * * * * COMPUTING TRAILBLAZER HELPS YOU "BUY IT ONLINE" Looking for an easier way to get your hands on the latest hardware and software? Why not go online? Introducing "Buy It Online," the newest category in The Computing Trailblazer, Ziff-Davis's guide to computing resources on the Web. Each of the nearly two dozen sites that are reviewed in Buy It Online offers a strong selection of computer products for sale, and many also enable online purchasing (which is likely to become a firm requirement for this category in the near future). Some of the sites provide links to manufacturers' sites and other Internet resources of value to their customers. Others are just plain fun to visit for their contests, downloads, and freebies. A few are works in progress that show great potential. What are the common characteristics that mark the better sites? For starters, secure credit-card transactions, up-to-date price lists, and catalog items that link to product information combining overview articles, feature lists, and tech specs. If you order computer products on the Web, please click the Feedback button tell the Trailblazer editors what your experience was like. Good or bad, Trailblazer wants to know about it. For the latest word on the best computing sites, including more than 300 (and growing) site-reviews under familiar computer headings, check out Trailblazer today at http://www.zdnet.com/~zdi/tblazer/ * * * * * * * * * * ZD Net Update is the official newsletter of ZD Net/World Wide Web Edition. It is compiled by Tom Schmidt (tom_schmidt(a)zd.com) Feel free to respond with news, notes, comments, or suggestions. To unsubscribe to ZD Net Update, point your browser to: http://www.zdnet.com/cgi-bin/ziffmail.pl/update and select "Unsubscribe to ZD Net Update."

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Re: redirect of newsgroups
by Mitton Ken 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Might be able to if you had admin-level access to the newsserver, but if there's a firewall between you and the nearest uncensored newsserver, I doubt that's the case... had the same problem on my school machine. Ended up just getting an account on another machine. --Ken Mitton mittonk(a)colorado.edu http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~mittonk/ PGP KeyID: BAB3CF0D -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQBVAwUBMNXZ7Wzuqz+6s88NAQHrwQIA0bHF+6yxLHPcFIdODJhTH7Mq4+vKxho+ Jq4xOBn+yB8KY0mhPFUKQx43xmULt44AB2Jeo1cEt9FTRAFSIvua3A== =mTvu -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: (Fwd) SECURITY ALERT: Password protection bug in Netsca
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jeff writes: > This report is mostly bogus. Netscape does not, and never > has stored http auth passwords in files on your disk. However > we do cache documents from servers that use http auth. > In this case the user had their preferences set to check the > host site for updated content "once per session". There is > a bug, which we are fixing before 2.0 ships, that if the > auth fails the document should be removed from the cache but > was not. If the user had set their cache checking to "never", > then if the document is in the cache, it will always be shown to > the user, since no connection is made to the server. > Content providers who don't want their web pages cached > should use the 'Pragma: no-cache' http header. This will > tell the navigator to not save the document in the disk cache. > > --Jeff Thanks for clearing that up - I see you've already been over to www-security. The fast response Netscape (and in particular, you yourself) make to reported problems is something I'm very pleased to see. Peter Trei trei(a)process.com

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Re: What ever happened to... Cray Comp/NSA co-development
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) >First, half a million chips is not that big a deal...the Connection Machine had up to 64,000. Very few cryptographic problems of interest to us will be affected by a mere factor of a million or so. -------------------- While the cryptographic stuff isn't much of a problem, how about text analysis of multiple sources, possibly via a neural net simulation (which IIRC a massively parallel machine is nice for)? -Allen

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Re: ADDRESS DATABASE?
by andr0id＠midwest.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>I'm not familiar with this aspect - how do cellular services store and >make use of billing information, as opposed to traditional phone services? > Most cellular systems still write billing tapes and send them to a clearing house for proccessing. It may take 2 or 3 days before a bill is updated. Thats not including that it takes sometimes up to a month before your roaming charges are recorded from all of the other cellular carriers. Some carriers have realtime billing but it still doesn't take into account roaming. >> If >> cellular customers start getting sales calls from a company that received a >> list from a cellular carrier, the cellular carrier is obligated to refund >> the customers bill for those calls if the customer complains becuase the >> customer pays for calls comming or going. > >Is this obligation incurred by the contract between the customer and the >cellular service, by statute, or otherwise? Contracts can always be >broken, and passing laws to guard the guardians generally amounts to >having the fox guard the henhouse... > This obligation is uncurred mostly by the fact that cellular carriers HATE to loose customers. If refunding a few min. of air-time helps keep a customer then they will. Unlike the phone company, a threat to discontinue service with a cellular carrier works well in getting your way. Dr0id

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Re: What ever happened to... Cray Comp/NSA co-development
by anon-remailer＠utopia.hacktic.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 09:15 PM 12/17/95 -0500, Thaddeus J. Beier wrote: > ---------- > ... about the fate and capabilities of the CCC PIM > (processor-in-memory) machine. A friend of mine was > working on it, and it would have been a screaming machine, > no doubt about it. He said that the Cray mostly acted like > a really fast network for the processor chips. I had thought that it may have been similar to an Active Memory design, but had no real clues to go by. Wasn't sure about the chip array path width either, but thought that 1 bit was probably the way to go given the array size. > ... the PIM chips were made by a dedicated NSA company, > Supercomputer Research Center, in Bowie MD. Hmm... is that the name? > But, it was nowhere near finished when the company finally went > down, and the team was completely disbanded. My friend was talking > about going to the auction when the parts of the various machines > were going to be sold, I don't know if he did so. He suspected that > the various pieces would end up going back east to the Fort > Meade area. Still, it is such an odd machine that you would > probably have to transfer the staff to finish it, and that didn't > happen. Sorry Thad... but NOTHING 'just disappears' at the NSA... > In any case, while it was fast (1/2 million 1-bit processors, > perhaps as low as 1 nanosecond (1 GHz) cycle time), it was not fast > enough to brute force reasonably strong ciphers. It's really no joke > that it would take a computer with picosecond clocks the size of the > earth more than the age of the universe to brute force IDEA, for > instance. Hahahahahahahah!!!!!!!!!! A cryptographer's most POWERFUL weapon, is A False Sense of Security... If you've read Kocher's abstract, you would NO DOUBT realize that there are ALWAYS options to be explored and exploited. I'm sorry, don't take it personal, but I think that this 'til the end o' time' argument leaks like a "sieve"... it's the classic linear thinking thing. > It would have made a great DES cracker, though; my > back-of-the-envelope calculation has it cracking one key every > .75 days on the average. This sounds pretty pessimistic too... > thad > -- Thaddeus Beier email: thad(a)hammerhead.com > Technology Development vox: 408) 286-3376 > Hammerhead Productions fax: 408) 292-2244 > > ---------- Well... maybe the timing wasn't right for the system's completion. After all, designing a computer with <1 nanosecond cycle time is not child's play. And in quantity it is even more difficult. A few more years of development with Transphaser logic and Holographic storage could work some wonders in computational capailities. Anitro - --- [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 iQBFAwUBMNXt+SoZzwIn1bdtAQEQAQF/YKCYcSiH4BRswP7+4Sv1VIYynpH738vF LFa/31pQBJiEkmkpiykmOcL3YySghGsf =3nUQ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: (fwd) Economics of Digital Money.
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> But electronic checking it is a substitute for > conventional checking, it would just increase the > speed of the transaction. From the economic standpoint, > there is no difference in the dynamics of the checking > process from normal checks And email is no different from mail, right? Wrong: When computer programs start spending money and receiving money on behalf of their masters, we will see vast economic changes. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | 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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