December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: [mis]FWD: On digital cash and geodesic economies
by Alexander 'Sasha' Chislenko 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry - sent previous post to cp instead of bionomics.

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Fwd: Anonymous code name allocated.
by JonWienke＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[The following has been censored to protect the guilty.] >Subj: Anonymous code name allocated. >Date: 96-04-02 23:37:10 EST >From: daemon(a)anon.penet.fi (System Daemon) >To: jonwienke(a)aol.com > >You have sent a message using the anon.penet.fi anonymous forwarding service. >You have been allocated the code name anXXXXXX. >You can be reached anonymously using the address >anXXXXXX(a)anon.penet.fi. > >If you want to use a nickname, please send a message to >nick(a)anon.penet.fi, with a Subject: field containing your nickname. > >For instructions, send a message to help(a)anon.penet.fi. I tried sending a test message to the address indicated, and received it back a day later, so sending email to this address does reach me. The funny part is that I have never (to my knowledge) had any communication with anon.penet.fi prior to receiving this email. Questions: 1. How do I use this to SEND messages anonymously? Having an email address with no obvious link to my identity is cool, but I would like to be able to send as well as receive. I sent email to help(a)anon.penet.fi, but have received no response yet. 2. Why was I chosen for this? How did anon.penet.fi find out my email address? Is the NSA trying to lull me into a false sense of security in the hope that I will use this account to violate ITAR? 3. Has anyone else on this list received unsolicited remailer accounts? Jonathan Wienke --------------------- Forwarded message: From: daemon(a)anon.penet.fi (System Daemon) To: jonwienke(a)aol.com Date: 96-04-02 23:37:10 EST You have sent a message using the anon.penet.fi anonymous forwarding service. You have been allocated the code name an573530. You can be reached anonymously using the address an573530(a)anon.penet.fi. If you want to use a nickname, please send a message to nick(a)anon.penet.fi, with a Subject: field containing your nickname. For instructions, send a message to help(a)anon.penet.fi.

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No Subject
by agil.home＠mail.telepac.pt 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

unsubscrive * agil.home(a)mail.telepac.pt unsubscrive * agil.home(a)mail.telepac.pt unsubscrive * agil.home(a)mail.telepac.pt

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pgp keys
by jpps＠voicenet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is there a reliable method for obtaining the pgp public key for an arbitrary email address? elm-2.4pl24pgp3 does a logical join on my local alias and keyring files; what I'm looking for is a way for my mua/mta to obtain keys I do not have. I've caught some of the discussion on key servers, and noted some people's use of their signature, plan, or home page to distribute their keys. Are some combination of these suitable today? Is there a parseable convention in use for extracting keys from mail/finger/html? Is there a "get_keyd" floating about? My goal is to make encryption the default behavior on outgoing mail. I am not concerned about local security. Thanks in advance. jps -- Jack P. Starrantino jpps(a)voicenet.com http://www.voicenet.com/~jpps

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Re: Bad news from Judge Richey
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:35 PM 4/4/96 EST, Dr. Dimitri Vulis wrote: >"E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH(a)ocelot.Rutgers.EDU> writes: >> Umm... one would guess that a federal judge would be against the >> whole Assasination Politics idea, whether or not he himself became a target. > >It's worth noting that one of the new newsgroups that Rich Graves mentioned is: >talk.politics.assassination Assassination Politics >My congratulations to Jim Bell on getting his own newsgroup! Hey, it's news to me! I'll have to check it out... BTW, are you sure it's not an old one? After all, there have been enough assassination conspiracy theory discussions (Lincoln, Huey Long, JFK, RFK, King, etc) over the decades that I'm sure they'd merit a discussion area. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: So, what crypto legislation (if any) is necessary?
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: jim bell <jimbell(a)pacifier.com> >Far more acceptable (and useful to us) would be a rule which would mandate >the government's allowing the export of any program that had, say, the key >security provided by IDEA or less, regardless of what it did with that >encryption. (Not that I want _any_ restrictions; it's just that such a >limit would make it impractically large to attempt to crack.) As I pointed out earlier, one way (that would cause the NSA types problems trying to stop) would be to make legal for export anything which was no harder for the NSA to break than what's already out of the country. -Allen

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Re: Note: Problems Confronting the Asset Concealer [Part 1 of 2 ofVolume I]
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A very interesting essay, although I haven't had time to read over it in full (3 papers and an oral presentation due). I do have one question, and it concerns the introduction. You state that you are leaving out material that is currently in use - i.e., some of the most useful material. Why? I know that you don't currently have a fully anonymous nym... but if that was the reason, why not just release it under a fully anonymous nym? Mistrust of the remailers, or what? -Allen

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Re: So, what crypto legislation (if any) is necessary?
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have been doing some thinking about the whole key escrow retrieval matter. There are a couple of situations in which I can see real reasons for doing voluntary key escrow of sensitive material: A. You're afraid of losing the key. B. Your organization is afraid that you'll lose the key or be unavailable. The second can be handled internally via key sharing; if all the people you share the key with have as much to lose by the information getting out as you do, then they should be trustworthy and as hard to subpoena as you are. Encrypting the shared section with another, appropriate key should take care of the cop-stealing problem (i.e., they break into the machine). The first is more of a problem. If where you've entrusted your keys is known, then the cops can come in and strong-arm/subpoena your keys away. Thus, the basic protection mechanism should be denying them that knowledge. (Another protection mechanism is key sharing between key escrow organizations.) In other words, anonymous remailers with stable nyms for the key escrow organizations, together with fully anonymous digital cash. One problem in this is how the organization's reputation originally is established so people will deal with them so they can get a reputation.... etcetera. The basic method of doing so appears to be to post a digital cash bond. (I don't know the mathematics well enough to tell whether one could post verifiable digital cash with it still not being usable without a decryption step. If one can't, that's a real problem... but I suspect that one can.) The encryption on such a bond should be put into the hands of a group of above-ground "judges" via secret sharing, who would be a group of people chosen by the key escrow organization in hopes of their being trusted to resolve any disputes. Of course, digital receipts would be a big help here... -Allen

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Re: What backs up digital money?
by FRank O. Trotter, III 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Date: Tue, 2 Apr 1996 08:11:21 -0800 > From: Hal <hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Subject: Re: What backs up digital money? > From: "Frank O. Trotter, III" <fotiii(a)crl.com> > > Ecash is a means of transferring value, currently USD at Mark Twain, > > betweeen parties. Ecash, however denominated, is not a currency in > > itself. > > I am curious to know why you say that ecash is not a currency. One of > the main points of my original posting was to challenge this view. > > Do you simply mean that this is a matter of definitions, that ecash isn't > a currency because it lacks some property X that, by definition, a > currency must have (such as, it must be issued by a national government)? ===== I think I tried to cover too many bases at once. Ecash _is_ currency, it is not _a_ currency. This means that outside of the formal definition acording to BSA which says that currency is the stuff we carry around and nothing else, that ecash generated coins function as a currency in that one can make purchases on a peer to peer basis, and appears to have the migration path necessary to exist in an offline world as well. To me this makes it currency. It is not a currency. One sees many articles and posts (not yours) that refer to ecash as though it were not USD or some other store of value. In this case I mean that ecash is the software that moves and stores money like a check, or more precisely like a money order, but is not in itself _a_ currency. > > Or are you saying that there is an important functional difference, that > ecash cannot be used as we normally use currency (that is, the dollar > bills and coins in our pockets) because of reason X? If so I would like > to hear what you think that reason is. The one I have seen mentioned > previously is transferrability, so I discussed this in my original > message. > > > The value unit or currency has value because people agree it has > > value. CyberBucks were (and still are) somewhat convertable to > > tangible goods - they are for sure convertable to intrinsic goods as > > demonstrated by the CyberBucks trial. USD and DEM have value only > > because we all accept them as payment - as fiat currencies there is no > > formal backing. Gold has value because ... > > The whole issue of why dollars have value is one which is poorly > understood, IMO. There are several reasons, which are inter-related. > One of the big ones is that they are legal tender. This term does not > mean what a lot of people think it does, but at least it means that > your dollars carry certain legal weight if you have a debt that you > need to pay off. Another reason dollars are accepted is because you > know you can pay your taxes with them. This is something that most > people have to do, and dollars are something they can do it with. > > Another factor is that there are long term contracts, such as > mortgages, which are denominated in dollars. You can use your dollars > to pay off your debt at the bank, and the bank is contractually bound > to accept them (even apart from legal tender considerations), and grant > you title to tangible property in return. Interestingly, the volume of > outstanding mortgages is of the same order of magnitude as the > circulating money supply. I know someone who claims that this is the > most important factor in giving dollars value. > > And finally, the reason that most people think of, the fact that > everyone around them accepts dollars, and presumably will do so in the > future. I don't actually think this is as strong as the others, since > there is no guarantee that people won't change their minds, and in fact > there have been historical situations where due to hyper inflation > merchants have come to view government money as almost worthless. So > since these people haven't committed to accept the money, this > grounding is not that strong. I think the earlier examples are more > important as an ultimate grounding, although they are not cited as > frequently. Exactly - I agree. Take a look at contracts like loans until Roosevelt closed the gold window in the early thirties. They said things like "you owe $100 or the equivalent of X.xx ounces of gold. With the revaluation of the US currency in terms of gold in the 30s there was a specific potion of the bill that disallowed these terms in contracts since the devaluation could not effectively take place otherwise (ref - Jim Grant). > > > Ecash puts banks back into the business of being banks - acting as a > > storehouse of value, and as a means to transfer this value, all for a > > fee. The early bank models were exclusively along these lines, with > > the various lending and investing functions added later. > > I would expect that an ecash issuing bank would make ecash loans just as > it makes other forms of loans. So I don't see ecash as making this > kind of difference in a bank. Just because a bank issues ecash it's > not going to roll back the clock to the 18th century. No quarrel here - but I think it is easier to build a competing lending institution where the business gives you money and you promise toi give it back, than it is to build confidence in a deposit institution where you give money and hope to get it back. I take my original commnet as a positive. > > One of the big advantages of multiple ecash currencies is that it turns > out that there is automatic control of inflation. A bank which issues > too much currency (relative to its reserves) will find it becoming worth > less because it is trusted less. There is an automatic balancing act. > Sure, this is like free banking in the 1800 - Fed KC traded at a discount to Fed NY or vice versa depending on attitude at the time. > We see the same thing in the international currency markets with > government currencies. In the olden days, when international trade was > less important, a government could inflate without feeling much pain. > But today its currency will lose value, which will hurt its balance of > trade and make it hard to acquire foreign goods. So this puts a brake on > the ability of governments to play games with the money supply. The same > factor would be expected to occur with private currencies. In the old days there was an automatic balance when a government inflated - the metal standard attached. If inflation got out of hand people would show up at the window with bills asking for the gold or silver equivalent - when the government gave out too much metal it had to behave. I would like to note that I am a big supported of private currencies. We have had many discussions on the topic and I have had the academic side covered by folks who wrote papers as far back as the 50s on how to do it. As ecash is accepted in the mainstream by multi-issuing interoperable banks I expect to spend more time on this topic - for now I need to get on with the conventional version. Great ideas! Frank > > Hal > > Frank O. Trotter, III - fotiii(a)crl.com www.marktwain.com - Fax: +1 314 569-4906 --------------------------------------------

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Re: unsubscrive * Peter.Posch@koeln.netsurf.de
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:59 AM 4/4/96, Peter N. Posch wrote: >unsubscrive * Peter.Posch(a)koeln.netsurf.de For the nth fucking time: How to subscribe to the Cypherpunks mailing list: send a message to "majordomo(a)toad.com" with the body message "subscribe cypherpunks". To unsubscribe, send the message "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to the same address. For help, send "help cypherpunks". Don't send these requests to the Cypherpunks list itself. And be aware that the list generates between 40 and 100 messages a day.

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