December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Why Companies are Poor at Finding Bugs
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:53 PM 1/9/96 -0800, Tim May wrote: >And this has always been a major role of extra-corporate agents: safety >inspectors, insurance companies, independent testing laboratories, and so >on. The in-house testing departments are frequently inclined to overstate >concerns (known universally as "CYA," for "cover your ass"), so it is not >surprising that their concerns are often treated as a non-urgent matter. >Until a crisis happens, then they are lambasted for not having spoken up >more loudly and more forcefully. I have seen this before in a number of companies... I think it is becuase alot of management is trained to think of things in the positive. To try and put the best spin on any situation... On the other hand, people of a technical bent tend to think of things as problems to be solved. Such an outlook is seen as negative. The two outlooks seem to conflict on many levels. Such outlooks from management tend to delay resolution of problems until it is too late... >This was true in ancient Sumeria, in the early factories in Europe, on the >communes in China, and in the high-tech labs of today. An easily >understandable mixture of psychology, systems analysis, group dynamics, >economics, and evolutionary game theory. You forgot the works of Machivelli... 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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nazi's, jews, and why you don't get to hear about them
by pamphlet＠idiom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Internet providers asked to censor racist groups ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1996 Nando.net Copyright 1996 The Associated Press BOSTON (Jan 10, 1996 09:34 a.m. EST) -- White supremacist groups that once spread their racist messages at rallies and in leaflets are now going high-tech on the Internet -- a trend a leading Jewish human rights group wants to stop. The Simon Wiesenthal Center on Tuesday began sending hundreds of letters to Internet access providers asking them to refuse to carry messages that "promote racism, anti-Semitism, mayhem and violence." Good idea? No, say providers and civil libertarians. They argue that public debate is the way to defeat hate. The Internet allows users to "show the whole world what's wrong wrong about what the hate speakers are saying," said Mike Godwin, staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group dealing with computer communications. "The correct place to try and put pressure is on the people who create the content, not the person who provides access to it," said CompuServe spokesman William Giles. The roughly 250 hate groups in the United States, whose previous methods reached a limited audience, now "have a magnificent marketing technology dumped in their laps," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal center, based in Los Angeles. "They are able to dress up their message in a way that looks ... presentable." Slick web sites are springing up every day, with names such as Aryan Nations, Skinheads U.S.A. and The Aryan Crusader's Library. Ernst Zundel, a prominent Canadian Holocaust revisionist who has a homepage called Zundelsite, says he should have as much of a right to post a web page as anyone else. "The Internet is the first and last truly free marketplace of ideas, for the time being. It levels the playing field," Zundel said. "To curtail the freedom for some will curtail the freedom for all." The Wiesenthal Center's request is part of a growing debate over whether Internet service providers should be viewed as publishers responsible for what moves on their networks, or carriers who simply provide access to a service without monitoring what is communicated. The Wiesenthal Center argues that the services are publishers who have a civic responsibility not to promote bigotry. Godwin says Internet service providers should be treated like bookstores, which exercise some control when they decide to specialize in science fiction instead of mysteries, but are not expected to read every book and be held responsible for the books' contents. Prodigy spokesman Brian Ek said the service does employ systems operators who monitor content on its proprietary bulletin boards and can remove any messages with "blatant expressions of bigotry, racism or hate." But what exactly meets that definition is hard to pin down: "You make a decision when you see it." For example, when one subscriber pointed out a "repugnant" bulletin board message saying the Nazi extermination of 6 million Jews was a good thing, Prodigy removed it Joe Bunkley -- who operates the "1st WWW Banned Media Page," a web site that links to virtually every other white supremacist and neo-Nazi Internet site -- had a strong message for those who would want to stop him from posting his views. "You cowards who want my page shut down can't deal with either the diversity or the free interaction of ideas," he said. "You, the intellectually dead, are hereby formally notified that my intentions are not to offend anyone. It is to speak the truth as I know it and to ensure, to the best of my abilities, the survival of the White Race."

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Re: Microsoft continues to mislead public about Windows security
by kolivet＠alpha.c2.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Tue, 9 Jan 1996, Frank Willoughby wrote: > When a system is breached or a CERT Advisory is issued, this is a major > embarassment for the company. The breach (or publicized security flaw) > shakes the confidence of people in the vendor's products. People are > rather unwilling to risk putting their business-critical data on a system > which has just recently breached. This lack of confidence translates into > a loss in sales. If unchecked or the case if severe enough, this could > also translate into a loss of jobs. What are CERT's criteria for a bulletin to be issued? Would the previously mentioned Windows NT and Windows 95 security bugs qualify? - Kay Olivetti

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No Subject
by Douglas F. Elznic 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Has anyone bought the disks mentioned in applied cryptography? Are they anvailable anywhere online to citizens of the US? -- ==================Douglas Elznic=================== delznic(a)storm.net http://www.vcomm.net/~delznic/ (315)682-5489 (315)682-1647 4877 Firethorn Circle Manlius, NY 13104 "Challenge the system, question the rules." =================================================== PGP key available: http://www.vcomm.net/~delznic/pgpkey.asc PGP Fingerprint: 68 6F 89 F6 F0 58 AE 22 14 8A 31 2A E5 5C FD A5 ===================================================

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Re: Is this true...
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:28 PM 1/10/96 -0500, you wrote: >To that end, I should imagine that once I have a person's pgp key, they may >well never see another cleartext message from me again! Of course, now I'm >trying to figure out how to use the anonymous remailers and such. Boy, this >is fun! > >Of course, the fact that my government doesn't really care for the idea of >publicly available cryptography makes it even more enticing. >Ted Garrett >Live Systems Integration And that's the REALLY ironic part! PGP (as wonderful as it is, politically, that Zimmermann wrote it...) is so frigging frustrating and difficult to use (as programs go, anyway), and interface to, and I haven't even TRIED to use anonymous emailers yet (sheer laziness on my part, I admit). If the government came out neutral about them, or "God forbid" REQUIRED us to learn how to use them, I'd probably be proudly resisting their desires and ignoring the whole technology. Makes you stop and think, doesn't it?!?

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Re: E-cash and Interest
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:26 AM 1/10/96, Tim Philp wrote: >I had been doing some thinking about E-cash and some of the implications. >It seems to me that there is another element in the discussion that has >not gotten very much consideration. >When you have your money in the bank, you are earning interest on the >money (albeit not very much! <g>) and that money continues to earn What interest, if any, is a contractual arrangement a customer makes with a bank. Some banks pay no interest at all, some pay low rates, some pay more. A function of a lot of factors. Before saying that digital cash will not pay interest, one would have to know the type of digital cash and the ancillary contracts that may go with it. For example, the online clearing model could certainly still have interest-bearing accounts, in the underlying currency or commodity that represents the store of value to be paid out when the digital cash is redeemed. It might be cumbersome, but it would certainly be possible for an agent to buy what I'll call a "digital bond," worth one unit at time zero, 1.1 unit after one year, and so on. >interest until it is withdrawn. If you write a check to pay for >something, that ends your interest accumulation for that money. Actually, writing the check does not end your accumulation of interest. The payout of funds to the check casher is what ends the accumulation. Some parallels with online clearing digital cash. >With the E-cash systems that I have seen, you generate your own E-cash >and have it signed by a 'bank' At that moment, it becomes like cash in >your wallet and you loose interest that this money could be earning. >Has this issue been addressed, or am I missing something? Depends on the exact type. From your description, you're looking at the model in which one closes out a bank account (presumably interest-bearing), and says "Give it to me in unmarked bills" (loosely speaking). Well, if the digital cash is really just a call on funds still held (and perhaps used, hence they can give interest), then interest is still possible. If the bank has given out funds to some other bank, then they can no longer pay interest. (If this sounds confusing, it is because even in digital cash systems one must think about where the store of value really is, who has it, who must trade it for the numbers representing cash, etc. "There is no digital coin" means more than just that there is no unforgeable thing that is unforgeable the way a gold coin is; it also means that the numbers are not actual value, that the value exists in other places...it gets murky, though.) In any case, most initial uses of digital cash will more closely resemble currency exchanges (which it can be argued is a better model....), for which the customer usually pays a fee, or there are buy/sell rates that give the moneychangers in the temple their pound of flesh. --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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Re: PRIVACY: Private traces in public places
by Steve Gibbons 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

# > Governments or whoever, can do all they want to make their collection of # > dossiers bulge even bigger than they are. But, these dossiers are only # > data sets. Data isn't quite the same os information. Information isn't # > quite the same as knowledge. Knowledge isn't quite the same as # > understanding. And understanding the situation has not been, # > historically, enough to ensure that government (or whoever) decision # > makers make the "right" decision. # > # > Let the internal security apparatchiks spin the bottle all they want. # > They couldn't keep Rome from falling, nor the Byzantine Empire, nor the # > Ottoman Sultanate. They couldn't keep the Third Reich in place for a # > thousand years. They couldn't keep the Soviet Union glued together by # > force nor dirty persuasion nor extortionate non-economics. # The problem, as I see it, is that you can have too much information. # Information takes up room, takes up CPU cycles to process and store and # retrieve, and the worst part is, it takes a human to evaluate it. No # computer in the world is going to be able to evaluate incoming humint for # reliability. That takes a human, and I suspect that it will be that way # for quite some time. The more information you gather, the worse the # problem gets, until you have this massive database of information, all # indexed and stuff, at your fingertips, but it's useless, because you can't # tell whether it's real or BS or disinformation. It's how you classify things. Raw data is raw data, and raw data is not the same thing as information. Until the disinformation gets filtered out, it can't be classified as information, but falls into the raw-data category. -- Steve(a)AZTech.Net

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David Kahn on C-Span 2
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

David Kahn, NSA Scholar-in-Residence, is speaking on C-Span 2 now, 7:20 PM Est, reviewing "Secret Codes in WW2."

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SSH for Windows
by Ed Carp [khijol SysAdmin] 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

...can be found at URL http://public.srce.hr/~cigaly/ssh/. FYI. -- Ed Carp, N7EKG Ed.Carp(a)linux.org, ecarp(a)netcom.com 214/993-3935 voicemail/digital pager 800/558-3408 SkyPager Finger ecarp(a)netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key an88744(a)anon.penet.fi "Past the wounds of childhood, past the fallen dreams and the broken families, through the hurt and the loss and the agony only the night ever hears, is a waiting soul. Patient, permanent, abundant, it opens its infinite heart and asks only one thing of you ... 'Remember who it is you really are.'" -- "Losing Your Mind", Karen Alexander and Rick Boyes

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Re: PRIVACY: Private traces in public places
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(Sasha, good to have you on our list!) At 3:26 AM 1/10/96, Alexander 'Sasha' Chislenko wrote: > Sometimes, it comes as an unpleasant surprise to a person who >looks for web pages referencing his own name, and finds, among >other things, many of his explicit or controversial usenet or mailing >list messages, old resumes that may contradict the current one, >critical remarks of his high school girlfriend and former colleagues, etc. >Knowing that this information is easily accessible to his new girlfriend >and prospective employer may make him more than uncomfortable. Remember a couple of years ago on the Extropians list when I claimed to have compiled dossiers on people, from their admissions in posts about drug use, infidelities, and other such things? Several of them got quite irate. >All advice to such a person you may see on the Net mentions Net laws >that should have been passed and personal actions that should or >should not have been taken. Not all such advice, because my advice has been different from this. >How can people protect themselves from all this? > >Will people of the future all wear identical privacy suits, gloves and >helmets and burn >everything they have touched? > >Or they will just try not to do things they may later be ashamed of? >(How do you know what you may be ashamed of 30 years from now?) Or, the option I prefer: do what you gotta do, and screw those who claim you should be ashamed of yourself. Think of this as a screening process: anyone who is so offended or ashamed for you (what a concept: "I'm ashamed for you") probably is not someone you would want to deal with. Works for me. I'm not trivializing the issue of search engines and archiving systems turning up articles written, old posts, etc. Every couple of weeks, sometimes more often, someone sends me a copy of one of my postings and claims that someone else must be forging my name (recent posts on racial issues, for example--while I'm not a racist, I despise quotas, setasides, and preferential treatment for lazy people, of any race...this obviously makes some people "ashamed for me" :-}). These people, obsessed with political correctness, or having some notion that consistency must be enforced, are the populist form of Thought Police. Mostly I ignore these people pestering me to "explain" a post I made in a group, and, if they persist, I add them to my filter file. I prefer this liberated outlook to either of the two options you presented. --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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