December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

noise levels
by Anonymous User 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> wrote: > Noise levels have been rising fast again. I encourage people to think > about whether things are on topic before they post. > > Perry > > This message is generated as part of an ongoing effort to keep noise off of the Cypherpunks mailing list (cypherpunks(a)toad.com) Your message contains no cryptography content. Please do not post messages of this sort to the Cypherpunks mailiing list in the future. Thank you for your cooperation; it will ensure that further action will not be necessary. -- USENET POLICE DEPARTMENT "To serve and obey, and guard men from harm"

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Re: rhetorical trickery
by John C. Randolph 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

tomservo(a)access.digex.net (Scott Fabbri) Says: >An entity self-representing as "Vladimir Z. Nuri" writes: >>sure, a government agent could insist, "well, don't be a bonehead. >>it's obviously his diary, and surely contains all his crimes against >>children". >A standard attitude among LEOs is: "if you're not guilty of something, what >are you hiding?" Skilled ones use this lever to get suspects to allow >searches of their property on the flimsiest of pretenses. This is why we need to adopt the standard attitude of "Well, Officer, If you're not a jackbooted thug, why are you asking me to consent to an unreasonable search?" -jcr

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Re: Vexatious Litigants (was: SurfWatch)
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com" "Bill Stewart" 10-MAR-1996 04:29:37.67 >Presumably, almost nobody in Europe is going to add these silly Yankee >rating labels to their web pages, except a few commercial content providers >who want to sell advertising or services into markets that block >un-rated web pages. So schoolkids behind rating-mandatory sites >will have to ask their teachers why the "World-Wide-Web" is just American --- >"It's got All 50 States, Johnny!" <Exonive deleted>! The WWW consortium is approaching European governments about their rating system - the one found at SafeSurf. -Allen

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[NOISE] Re: Do you feel lucky, punk?
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>In fact, I would argue that a remailer operator will actually be considered >MORE responsible, legally, than Mrs. Bennis: On the contrary, the government would have far _less_ ability to forfeit the property of a remailer-operator for the activities of a non-owning abuser than they do to seize Mrs. Bennis's car, because the misuser, Mr. Bennis, was also its owner. On the other hand, I'd say that a remailer used for assassination politics is _far_ more likely to be seized, warranted, subpoenaed, and otherwise harassed that one merely used for unencrypted dirty pictures or encrypted dirty money.... #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281 # "At year's end, however, new government limits on Internet access threatened # to halt the growth of Internet use. [...] 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." - US government statement on China...

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Re: Bell, Detweiler, Ravings, and Whatnot
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:37 AM 3/11/96, jim bell wrote: >Well, until about 3/4 of a year ago, I spent no time on Internet except >through a FIDO gateway on Libernet and Libernet-d, so I missed all that. >I'm a >bit ashamed to admit that I haven't read the vast majority of Cybernomicon, >although somebody was nice enough to email me a section on the subject of >anonymous assassination markets. I wondered why you hadn't extended the >idea to a more general system, but then again that was a bit early if you >talked about it in 1988. Without the invention of digital cash, it's a bit >hard to reward the assassin. Oh, but you are missing the main point completely. It was reading Chaum's 1985 paper on digital cash that got me thinking about this. By 1988-90, digital cash was essentially in the same state it is in now. Central to my points was an anonymous two-way market, such as the BlackNet market I developed in '93. >>And your insulting comments about people whom you disagree with, or people >>whom you think are not taking your ideas seriously enough, are reminiscent >>of the ravings of the last victim here of late stage Detweiler's Syndrome. >>--Tim May > >Well, maybe at times I do get a bit testy, but most recently on this Leahy >bill I'm disgusted to see organizations that SHOULD be sounding the alarm >actually express only mildly guarded support for that bill, "wart and all." >I'd love to see _most_ of the bill pass, but the one bad section is a real >killer. There are many things I find terrible, disgusting, dangerous, wrong, etc. But I have never been persuaded by people ranting at me and insulting me, so I doubt that rants and insults from me will be effective. (I'm not claiming to always be calm and non-insulting, just claiming that the style of ranting is rarely effective, and I try to avoid it.) Screaming insults at people, resorting to ad hominem attacks on their personality (such as Jim did with Padgett Peterson), ranting about how people are fools and worse, and generally foaming at the mouth...these are behaviors which cause people to be dismissed as jerks, paranoids, and killfile occuppants. Read the archives covering the several months when Detweiler (aka V. Z. Nuri, aka S. Boxx, aka Pablo Escobar, aka about 20 other pseudonyms) was foaming at the mouth about how people were mutating his brain, how the crypto anarchists were ignoring him, how the snakes of Medusa were hiding in his keyboard, and so on. Then note the similarities to Jim Bell. I have nothing against you, Jim Bell, but you are coming across as a loon, as someone who clearly needs some kind of anti-psychotic medication. You rant, you quote excessively, you dissect short comments with pages-long diatribes, you ascribe motivations to your opponents that you cannot possibly be privy to, and you generally act like a fool. I urge you to moderate your debating style before you're just dismissed completely as a detweiling basket case. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! 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: Cryptographers against cryptography
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:35 AM 3/11/96 -0800, anonymous-remailer(a)shell.portal.com wrote: >BOYCOTT APPLIED CRYPTOGRAPHY, AT&T, VTW, and RSA!!!! And become a Know Nothing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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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Re: Leahy bill nightmare scenario?
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:12 AM 3/11/96, Gary Howland wrote: >Dan Weinstein writes: >> If I rent cars, someone might one day use a car rented from me in a >> robbery. Does that make my an accessary? NO. > >This is an unfair analogy. Now if you had said that you rented cars >without asking for proof of identification, thus making your car hire >centre very useful to robbers, that may more closely resemble the >anon-remailer situation. If a hotel rents a room to someone who commits a crime in that room, e.g., prostitution, drug use, plotting to blow up a building, can the hotel be seized under the asset forfeiture laws? Not that I have heard. Does it matter if the hotel fails to extensively check identification? (Hint: Rarely have I had my ID checked. Sometimes they ask for a driver's license and write down the number...and we all know how easy it is to get fake DLs. Mostly they don't.) If I lend my chain saw to my next-door neighbor without confirming his identity, and he carves up his wife, am I liable? Not in these parts. (If I lend my chain saw to a ranting, foaming maniac, am I liable? Perhaps.) If I let someone use my telephone without confirming his identity, am I liable for crimes committed with this phone? This last example is, I submit, a nearly perfect parallel to anonymous remailers. And not because the telephone system is a "common carrier," but because of scienter: I have no knowledge, and cannot be expected to have knowledge, of crimes committed with my phone. If I have visitors at my house, perhaps at a party, and I let a stranger go ahead and make a call from the phone in a bedroom, for example, and he plans a drug deal, can my house be automatically seized? Not that I have ever heard about. Maybe so, but if this ever happens, expect an outcry against the asset forfeiture laws that will make Linda Thompson's protest seem tame. Now if I operate a pay phone and encourage dealers and pimps to use it, then maybe the public nuisance, RICO, or "crack house" laws can be used to shut it down. (The public nuisance laws are what I would look to to see remailers shut down, which will just move them offshore, of course. Absent laws about sending encrypted packets outside the country, nothing can be done.) And, finally, packages and letters may be mailed anonymously. This is what pre-paid stamps are all about. And I've used non-U.S. Postal Service package delivery sytems without providing identification. Can Federal Express have their assets seized because of "anonymous remailing"? (Quibblers will no doubt cite laws requiring FedEx to "cooperate," demand ID, etc.) --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! 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: (Fwd) Gov't run anon servers
by Gary Howland 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Right. Couldn't you insert some kind of var into the kernel, rebuild and > upon each reboot have the remailer process (which would have to be root > owned) check for the value of this? I am of course assuming that the owner > of the remailer has admin control over the box, which is kind of unscalable. > If someone does gain entry to the machine, he'd need root to skim through > the kernel memory, and since he wouldn't have access to the remailer src > (you don't have it online, right?) he'd have a hard time looking for what he > needed... I was thinking of something much simpler, eg.: % remailer Enter passphrase: xxx Remailer started ... % This of course assumes that the remailer runs as a process - if it doesn't then there is no reason a 'remailer helper' cannot. The only disadvantage of this is that the remailer cannot be rebooted without a passphrase being entered, but then there are ways around this (entering the passphrase remotely over a secure link etc., or more sophisticated 'remote authorisation' systems). The advantage of this is that the password is never on the disk, only in memory (which will take serious (read "expensive") to extract). I am amazed at all of the talk of smart cards etc., when all that is really needed is a password entered at boot time. Gary -- pub 1024/C001D00D 1996/01/22 Gary Howland <gary(a)kampai.euronet.nl> Key fingerprint = 0C FB 60 61 4D 3B 24 7D 1C 89 1D BE 1F EE 09 06

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Please ignore testing Private Idaho
by Joseph Olson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Did I get through anonymously?

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Re: How would Leahy bill affect crypto over HAM radio?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:36 PM 3/10/96 +0000, Ed Carp wrote: >On Sun, 10 Mar 1996, David Lesher wrote: > >> > >> > Subject asks it. I'm not a HAM, but still curious. Wonder if anyone >> > has brought this to Leahy's attention... >> > >> > Comments from the packet folx on the list? >> >> Non-cleartext has been forbidden for last 60 years anyhow. > >Not quite. Anything intended to hide the meaning of the message is >banned. Compression isn't banned, because the intention is to make more >efficient use of the frequency, not to hide the meaning. >-- >Ed Carp, N7EKG Even so, it isn't clear that this new law WON'T change the rules under which hams operate. An affirmative statement of the right to use encryption would seem to pre-empt prior bans, except if there was some sort of explicit exception for over-the-air transmissions. After all, the law was written broadly, and presumably is to be interpreted broadly. It if doesn't list or single out any particular medium (text on paper; Internet; modem/telephone; etc) then it may reasonably be assumed to apply to all media. Not that such an interpretation will necessarily be welcomed by some hams: Part of the reason for maintaining the ban on encryption would be the fear by hams that ham bandwidth will be surreptiously used by commercial services masquerading as ham users. Encryption would make such usage difficult to detect. However, I happen to believe that hams should be entitled to use good encryption, for voice and data communication. Jim Bell, N7IJS jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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