December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

(no subject)
by daniel guerard 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

please, mail list of server. Tank you

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DIBS
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C'punks, Eric Hughes and I are calling dibs for the FEBRUARY Cypherpunks meeting. On February 10, we will host the meeting at our offices in downtown San Francisco (easily accessible by BART and Muni). More details later. After the meeting, I will be hosting a gala costume party in the large, elegant Oakland house owned by two of my co-hosts. I will soon be setting up an invitation on a web page provided another co-host, C'punk hero-of-the-revolution, Sameer. Stay tuned. S a n d y ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Re: Massey, CEO of Compuserve, on Internet
by Peter D. Junger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Michael Handler writes: : On Fri, 29 Dec 1995, Timothy C. May wrote: : : > Wow! I am watching the CEO of Compuserve being interviewed on CNBC, : > explaining how his company is "taking the high road by complying with the : > laws of Germany" in removing access to 200 Usenet groups. : : A blatant lie. [Material deleted] : CompuServe is starting to look worse and worse in this thing. I'm : still waiting for the real story. Here is an excerpt from a story on the : AP: : : <stuff deleted> : Munich prosecutor Manfred Wick confirmed Friday that Bavarian state : police investigators searched CompuServe's networks and computers last : month for child pornography, but he would not say what they found. : "We didn't threaten them with charges," Wick said. : Arno Edelmann, a CompuServe product manager in Unterhaching, : Germany, said Friday that the company blocked access to 200 : sex-oriented newsgroups in a portion of the Internet called Usenet. : "It is perhaps an overreaction but we want to cooperate with the : Bavarian prosecutor's office," Edelmann said. : <stuff deleted> : [ end ] : : And herein lie the pitfalls of trying to establish a global ISP : presence. : One should also notice that Bavaria is only one state in the German Federal Republic; this case is more like Texas investigating Compuserve than the United States federal government investigating Compuserve. Bavaria is the stronghold of what can properly be called the (Catholic) Religious Right in Germany. It should also be noticed that in general German publications and television seem to be less constrained in publishing materials that in the United States would be called ``indecent'' by some than are United States publications and broadcasters. -- Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH Internet: junger(a)pdj2-ra.f-remote.cwru.edu junger(a)samsara.law.cwru.edu

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Re: another anonymous poster helping to destroy our rights
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"vznuri(a)netcom.com" "Vladimir Z. Nuri" 28-DEC-1995 01:36:46.58 >= the list charter can ask for people to submit to various practices on the honor system, such as not using pseudonyms. cryptoanarchists who hate the idea of trust are of course going to object to the honor system, because "that which cannot be enforced should not be prohibited". ---------------- Does this last idea leave much doubt in anyone's mind that "Vladimir Z. Nuri" is a Detweiler tentacle? -Allen

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Re: Zensoren ueber Alles
by tallpaul＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Dec 30, 1995 00:04:01, '"Ed Carp [khijol SysAdmin]" <erc(a)dal1820.computek.net>' wrote: > >This "Tall Paul" fellow said: "Based on other news reports, I conclude that CompuServe lied in both areas." > >So? Companies lie all the time - the bigger the company, the bigger the >lie, in my experience. Companies are like governments - they will get >away with what they can until caught. Even then, they rarely stop - it >just goes undercover. > I was not presenting a political analysis behind CompuServe's actions, nor writing a simple personal opinion. I was presenting what I considered an factually correct objective observation of their actions. >> It did none of these things. It cut off all customers to an enormous number >> of groups. It inferrentially violated property rights (i.e. contracts) to >> customers promised internet access and now provided only a crippled version >> thereof. And it lied about the whole thing. > >Again, so? All that it will do is to drive people away from Compu$erve >into the arms of other service providers. Maybe some of them will even >figure out what a *real* ISP is... > How accurate is Carp's conclusion. Not very, in my opinion. The inaccuracy develops from the excessively narrow economic focus of Carp's thinking. It is an analysis that ignores the *social* implications of the CompuServe decision, treating the entire matter almost as something that would only interest CompuServe, Microsoft, AOL, and Prodigy stockholders. Among the other effects *already* visible, the decision has: 1) Led to an enormous amount of anti-net publicity by incompetent editors on the national news; 2) Furthered the development of hysteria and hysterical organizing; ("I don't care if it is censorship," said one mommy interviewed on the national news. "It is good for my children.") 3) Furthered the developmet of the right-wing "family rights" crowd; ("We need to follow Germany's lead," said one official from one of the "family rights" crowd interviewed on the national news.) 4) Promoted more dishonesty as a perfectly reasonable and perfectly acceptable means of engaging in social discourse; I predict it will also be used for additional attacks on issues of encryption, privacy, and anonymity. That is, I think we will see statements like "We need to be especially vigilant to make sure that the perverts are not smuggling banned material into the country via the internet. This means we have to block encryption, monitor user accounts even more carefully for potential perverts, etc. etc. Finally, I am not sure that Carp's economic analysis of the CompuServe decision is correct. The large internet service providers (LISP) form an oligopoly and, I think, the LISP all abandon hopes that they can become a monopoly. One form of oligopolistic co-operation is the creation of market niches within acceptable bounds of market share for each of the oligopolistic corporations. That is, CompuServe just launched a huge organizing effort to grab the "family" niche within the LISP market. I do not have the facts needed for a detailed quantfiable analysis of the LISP oligopoly (and frankly would not want to devote the time to such an analysis even if I did.) So I'll conclude here by stating that CompuServe's market share may increase because of their decision as parents move from the "family hostile" MSN/AOL/etc. to the "family friendly" CompuServe. If sexual hysteria is much stronger than views against censorship, for freedom of speech and inquiry, then we may see the other LISP groups emulate CompuServe to protect their oligopolistic market share. That is, if *significant* portions of AOL/MSN/etc. customers are motivated by sexual hysteria and start moving their accounts to CompuServe we will see AOL.MSN/etc. become equally "family friendly" to stop the customer shifts. --tallpaul

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Australian "calculatorcard"
by Cees de Groot 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi everybody, Yesterday, on UK Discovery, there was an item in the programme Beyond 2000 about an Australian card which implements a challenge-response protocol and can be used for banking, etcetera. Basically, you give your card number (over the phone), get a challenge number, enter your pin and the challenge, and then give the response. All in CC format... They plugged it as the ultimate identity-prover, so I'm kind of interested in what's behind. Now, I know that Discovery constantly repeats old stuff, so I'm not sure whether this is actually hot/new/... Can anybody provide me with pointers to more in-depth information about this device and the algorithm(s) behind it ? Thanks -- Cees de Groot, OpenLink Software <C.deGroot(a)inter.NL.net> 262ui/2048: ID=4F018825 FP=5653C0DDECE4359D FFDDB8F7A7970789 [Key on servers] -- Any opinions expressed above might be mine.

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None Murder, Inc. (was "Deterrence")
by nobody＠alpha.c2.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> In my essay, "Assassination Politics," I pointed out that it would be > relatively easy to deter such official-type actions if enough of us simply > said, "NO!" and denominated it in terms of dollars and cents. After all, > with four million Compuserve users, if they each were willing to donate a > penny to see this latter-day Fuhrer dead, that would be $40,000. (Pardon > me if I don't translate this into marks and other currencies.) > > In practice, of course, if such a system were in place, it is highly > unlikely that he would have even dared try to put pressure on Compuserve, > and Compuserve wouldn't have dared respond cooperatively to such > outrageous influence. In reality, four million compuserve users would not donate a penny each. It is likely that a few hundred people who felt strongly about the cause (and didn't mind a little bloodshed) might be willing to put up funds in amounts of around $20. Of course nobody would want to advertise under their real name that they have a contract out on some gummint agent. This would require the existance of a "Murder, Inc." as an escrow agent for the money. (There would likely be several such agents as it it unlikely people would trust just one.) Each person would give the escrow agent their contribution toward the elimination of the gummint troublemaker. Anyone who was willing to do the hit could post an encrypted claim, in advance, stating the time and date or method he plans to use, and where to send payment. Once the act was done, the hitman posts the decryption key so that everyone can see that he did it, and he collects the money. If after some reasonable amount of time, nobody takes out the gubmint asswipe, then the escrow agent returns all the money. It's quite feasable, and not especially difficult. The hardest thing is convincing people that the escrow agent is trustworthy, and to convince people that they really want to pay to have someone murdered. There is something a little chilling about that thought... On the other hand, the US government seems to feel that it's okay to kill people if they can get away with it (Ruby Ridge, Waco, that guy in California (forgot his name) who got shot on his ranch over bogus drug charges, etc.) So although murder is a Bad Thing(tm), the gubmint has set a very bad precedent in making it look "okay". Hence it becomes "okay" for people to do the same to them (for example the recent Oklahoma incident). It's okay for the government to randomly pick on innocent people to make a statement, hence it becomes okay to derail random trains to make a statement. (For the record, I am absolutely not defending what those people did to that Amtrak train in Arizona, just pointing out the psycology of it. If you're mad at the government then fucking kill some government people - What the hell did the amtrak passengers do to you?) Unfortunately it seems to be becoming okay to pick on random people to make an unrelated point (or just boost your ego) The government is using this tactic too, for example pick on a few porno collectors to demonstrate your "authority" in cyberspace. Same thing with picking on random gun owners to make a statement against RKBA. So maybe it will become popular to kill a random politician (or anyone) just to make a statement against the government. This is turning into a rant. I'll shut up now.

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Re: Compuserve is Not "Censoring": Look to Governments for the Cause
by Ulf_Moeller＠public.uni-hamburg.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Thus, it is the government of Germany in this case which is "censoring." This is today's page 1 article in the newspaper "die tageszeitung". The article "Zensur im Cyberspace" (censorship in cyberspace) and the comment "Die Moral der Biedermänner" are available http://www.prz.tu-berlin.de/~taz until tomorrow. From the article (my translation): "The Bavarian department of public prosecution 'has left it to their discretion' to take the 'necessary steps' on their own, to avoid 'possible punishability of the management in Germany'. An advice that CompuServe has followed although there is no kind of legal obligation for it. Legally, it is still perfectly unclear if enterprises that provide access to the Internet can be held responsible in any way for the contents distributed there." From the comment by Niklaus Haublützel: "Reality cannot be outlawed, only improved, and many still hope that complete freedom of information and opinion in computer networks can contribute to that. But the company of CompuServe does not seem to be interested in that. They only want their customers' money, but not their freedom. [...] Like any censorhip, this one comes with hipocrisy. Towards their paying customers, CompuServe claims to have been forced by German prosecutors. Thus one lie creates another. That they were forced it out of the question. It is only in dictatorships that the prosecutors judge the defendants - that is why dictatorships need censors."

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Positive Implications of the Compuserve Moves
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:54 PM 12/30/95, tallpaul wrote: >Among the other effects *already* visible, the decision has: > >1) Led to an enormous amount of anti-net publicity by incompetent editors >on the national news; On the positive side, I've heard some commentators (mainly on CNBC, and all-business news channel) ask pointed questions, and note that if every country imposes its own standards on the Internet/Usenet, then the implications are dire. The strong reaction developing against Compuserve could rebound to the benefit of killing off the Exon/Hyde language, in the best of all situations. (The Telecom Bill is still being thrashed out, and the CS controversy may remind folks of the implications of their actions.) >4) Promoted more dishonesty as a perfectly reasonable and perfectly >acceptable means of engaging in social discourse; I predict Compuserve will lose so much of what little respect they have eked out amongst Internet users that they will be eventually forced to provide the 200 dropped newsgroups, issue an apology, and probably retire or reassign a few executives as a show of public remorse. You heard it hear first. And many users are seeing the problems with monolithic, primitive ISPs like Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy, etc., and are moving to get "real" Net connections. This is a Good Thing. >Finally, I am not sure that Carp's economic analysis of the CompuServe >decision is correct. The large internet service providers (LISP) form an >oligopoly and, I think, the LISP all abandon hopes that they can become a LISP? (define CompuserveSucks (lambda () (display ".") (CompuserveSucks))) (CompuserveSucks) Recurses, foiled again! --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."

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January meeting
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi all, Just a reminder that the next general meeting will be held on January 7, 1996 from 6-8pm at the Central Market HEB on N. Lamar at 42nd. We will be discussing further issues related to the video and setting a schedule of meetings and deadlines for various production points. Hope to see you folks there! Jim Choate

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