December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Guerilla Internet Service Providers
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:07 PM 1/1/96 -0500, David Mandl wrote: >I agree. It's not a good idea to assume that there's going to be some kind >of widespread opposition movement when the big Net Crackdown comes. Most >people will either obey the law, be unaffected by it, or violate it in very >insignificant ways ("net jaywalking"). When printing was introduced in the west, the big print crackdown was successful, but there was great resistance, and the crackdown on the printed word required great and continuing violence over a long period, and was never entirely effective. A net crackdown will be substantially less effective than the print crackdown was, and the level of violence is likely to be greater. There is of course a tradeoff: An highly ineffectual net crackdown will not provoke large scale resistance. They can probably force the stuff on alt.pictures.erotica.children to be published in a more discreet manner. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | 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:US calls for measures against Internet porn
by Mark Neely 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> WASHINGTON DC (Reuter) - The US called Sunday for improved >management of the Internet to prevent people seeing pornographic >material on the world computer network. Perhaps it is a result of many self-interested parties who have hyped the Internet to the hilt, but it never ceases to amaze me how people think that as soon as you connect a PC to the Internet, suddenly, all this information and computer wizardry _leaps_ down the phone line and _jumps_ out of your screen. It can be clearly demonstrated (even to US politicians) that the Internet is not a passive media - users must go out and find what they are looking for (especially pornography). You cannot "stumble" upon pornography, as you might by, say, channel surfing on cable. You can't tell me that someone who fires up their Web browser and points it to http://www.playboy.com, or clicks yes to a request that they acknowledge that they are over 18/21/majority and agree to access adult material doesn't know what they are getting themselves into... Mark ___ Mark Neely - accessnt(a)ozemail.com.au Lawyer, Professional Cynic Author: Australian Beginner's Guide to the Internet Work-in-Progress: Australian Business Guide to the Internet WWW: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~accessnt

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Re: Why Net Censorship Doesn't Work
by cman＠communities.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I think that there is still a substantial possibility that many kinds of expression will be marginalized and hard to access for a great many users. One of my co-workers has pointed out that the need for something as simple as a helper application for Netscape loses about 90% of his audience. By simply making it rather more difficult for people to chat about some things, governments can effectively push such things out of the way of all but the most determined readers. This is actually one of those odd Laffer-curve-like phenomena, where as long as the expression isn't too inherently desirable, government restrictions can be somewhat effective, but the more tightly they try to control things, the more likely the are to lose, as there will be more and more desirable content outside the sanctioned sphere of activity. Consequently, I was much happier to see the "indecency" standard get passed instead of the "harmful" standard, as the former will push far more content into the "gray" area of the net, which will encourage development and adoption of appropriate tools. A quote from Star Wars (which I'm just now incorporating into my .sig) was just echoed back to me in a letter from a chap I spoke with from the Australian Office of Strategic Crime Assessment, as encapsulating what he got out of a rather long chat we had when he was passing through the Bay Area last month. Here it is: ------ , ------ Douglas Barnes "The tighter you close your fist, Governor Tarkin, cman(a)communities.com the more systems will slip through your fingers." cman(a)best.com --Princess Leia

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FOI_led
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

For comparison to snooping on search site searchers. 1-3-96. WsJo: "Freedom of Information Act Gets Wider Use by Sleuths, Snoops and Senators." FOIA is a handy tool for companies, politicians and journalists to snoop on one another. Many people who file requests aren't aware that the requests themselves are made public. Those who really know the process make FOIA requests on other people's FOIA requests. "It's not like I tapped someone's phone or got them drunk. These are public documents." Journalists sometimes use FOIA to scoop their colleagues. A cottage industry provides information about other people seeking information. Lexis/Nexis carries synopses of FOIA requests. So rich is FOIA intelligence that some are learning to take countermeasures. For a $36 fee, FOI Services will file its own FOIA requests on behalf of people who wish to remain anonymous. FOI_led

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Re: Guerilla Internet Service Providers (fwd)
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:08 AM 1/3/96 -700, you wrote: >All of this is assuming that the bandwidth is available on the airwaves to >handle ~200 ~T1s. (If we're talking $200.00/mo. for T1, sign me up tomorrow, >and my neighbor, and his, and hers, and... *poof* no more bandwidth in a >"decently" populated metro area or even a downtown. (Back of the envelope >calculations show that ~200 T1 ~= 1 TV station [although I might be off by an >order of magnitude.]) > >I apologize if this is off topic, but the crypto part still applies (moreso, >even!) to broadcast over the airwaves. (Besides, I'm sure that this list has >enough subscribers that are shelling out $200-$500/mo. for 56K/Frac T1/ISDN >that they'd be interested in a less expensive alternative.) >Steve(a)AZTech.Net To a certain extent, I think this is (or should be!) VERY MUCH "on topic." If our goal is to allow/assist privacy, we need to start actually anticipating technological developments so that we can do "minor course corrections" that will end up guaranteeing unbreakable security. One of these is by routing data through organizations (NOT THE PHONE CO!) that won't tend to kow-tow to the wishes of the government. We know that if this telephone-company bypass is done, it can either be done "right" (from a cypherpunks standpoint; so that it's including encryption, etc) or "wrong." If we don't plan ahead, it will almost certainly be done "wrong." Witness the fact that the vast majority of modems contain no encryption standard, for example. If USR or somebody else had mandated it in 1982 with 2400 bps modems, we might all be talking on encrypted lines already. And as you pointed out, this is especially important if RF is the medium-of-choice for connections. We should definitely make a serious amount of contact with people working on the PCS standards to ensure that GOOD encryption is included.

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Re: Guerilla Internet Service Providers (fwd)
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:08 AM 1/3/96 -0600, you wrote: > >> As a ham, too (N7IJS) I recognize your implicit selection of 2m or 450 MHz. >> But I gently object to this, for reasons that I think will be obvious. > >I was thinking of the itenerant frequencies around 151 MHz, but the >bandwidth would be limited. I wasn't thinking of amateur frequencies, >but my fingers sometimes have a mind of their own ;) Interestingly enough, my primary objection was NOT really commercial encroachment on an existing amateur structure (though that is an important consideration!); rather, it was the fact that because we're talking really short-range communication (way less than a kilometer, in most cases) using frequencies below a gigahertz would be a counter-productive shame. Here, we WANT "line of sight"! And, of course, the bandwidth issue is inherently better: It would be FAR easier to get 100 MHz width at around 2.5 GHz than under 1 gig! >> First, technology has been marching on in the last 10-20 years, and >> communications frequencies of 2 GHz and more are technically do-able and >> comparatively empty. (and with modern IC technology, even easy) > >I'd love to see plans (or used commercial gear) able to do this - I've >got a point-to-point application that I'd love to set up ... I get a free (bingo-card) magazine industry magazine called "Microwaves and RF," which is sort of the EDN for the high-frequency communication crowd. You'd be amazed at the level of technical (chip) development there. Chip sets that do frequency synthesis/full RF/IF on surface mount chips. Jim Bell, N7IJS (BTW, I use Eudora, and I have PGP. Could somebody explain how to PGP-sign messages, ideally EASILY?)

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Re: Compuserve *hasn't* banned newsgroups
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:30 PM 1/3/96 +0100, Anonymous wrote: > If you do this, you'll find out very quickly just how empty (or at >least how slippery) slogans like "the Internet routes around censorship" >are: if your efforts pay off and you steer even a fraction of CIS's >traffic toward the remaining open newsservers, they'll close faster than >you can say "alt." So before you do it, think about how the net will route >around sysops closing their servers off from the net. > >Hieronymous You mean that the thirty-some odd open news servers listed on http://dana.ucc.nau.edu/~jwa/open-sites.html might get swamped. Then the CIS refugees will be forced to pay Sameer the massive $12.50 (?) a month for a net-access-only account and read off of c2.org's server. (Or any of the thousands of sites worldwide one can open a shell account on.) DCF

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Re: Guerilla Internet Service Providers (fwd)
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 23:33 1/2/96 -0800, Lucky Green wrote: Previous exchanges deleted... >Infrared and laser are not very reliable between buildings during fog. >Between your house and your neighbor, a low cost 900MHz bridge would be the >best way to go. On such short distances, an omni-directional antenna will >work just fine. Check out Solectek (cheaper) or Cylink (faster). Both offer >DES link encryption. With a tightly focused beam (light is easy, I don't know about lower frequencies), you can prevent interception except by very obvious physical devices. (e.g. Someone in a cherry picker truck.) You may be able to avoid the need to encrypt the link (and all the paranoia about key management, advances in factoring etc. that that implies.) Bill ----------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Windows Eudora and PGP
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:43 AM 1/3/96 -0800, Jim Bell wrote: >(BTW, I use Eudora, and I have PGP. Could somebody explain how to PGP-sign >messages, ideally EASILY?) I use Eudora as well. It is not as easy as I would like. You have a couple of options: 1) Use cut-and-paste into Private Idaho. Private Idaho will allow you to paste back into Eudora. (Or you can send out from Private Idaho directly.) This option is useful becuase it supports nyms and chaining of remailers. 2) Get one of the standard Windows PGP shells and paste into that. After signing, you will have to repaste into Eudora again. These seem to be the only options. I am not certain if there is a standard DDE or OLE interface that could be used to feed message information back and forth between Eudora and some other app. There have been a number of promises of Eudora/PGP integration, but nothing has materialized yet. There are no easy answers I know of... If you need a copy of Private Idaho, I can point you to a web site or bring a copy along to the meeting on the 20th. Alan Olsen -- alano(a)teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction `finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ "Governments are potholes on the Information Superhighway." - Not TCMay

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Risks of writing a remailer
by nobody＠flame.alias.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What are the legal risks of writing (and releasing) a remailer, and what steps can an author go to to minimise any unwanted (legal or civil) attention ? ob.

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