December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Online Zakat Payment: Religious tithe.
by Joe Zychik 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:59 PM 2/15/96 -0500, you wrote: >On Thu, 15 Feb 1996, Sean Gabb wrote: > >> where Islam is concerned, there >> are so many individuals behaving badly that we are justified in thinking >> the whole religion a force for bad. > >> But the fact is that most Moslems >> venerate old men in beards, who think that anyone who disagrees >> with them about God should be put to death, that a woman with a >> clitoris is a kind of devil, and that Western classical music is evil. > > > And your travels in the Islamic world consist of? And you >personally know how many Muslims? And you have read how much Islamic >sources? Below is an article from today's Zychik Chronicle, that is very, very relevant to this post: (New York Times) "I didn't know enough Arabic to lead the prayer and was still a student of the Koran," said Isak-El M. Pasha. A plumber at the time, he was appointed the inman of the Malcolm Shabazz Mosque in Harlem. The appointment was given to him by the dying inman, Ali Rashid. He cried that night and "submitted to the 'will of Allah.'" The orthodox Sunni Muslim sect he was to lead had broken with Louis Farakhaan in the 70's. By 1993, when Mr. Pasha took over, membership had dwindled down to 700. At one time this had been the temple where Malcolm X had preached his most fiery sermons! But the break with Farakhaan almost caused the Mosque to be foreclosed on. Today the Mosque has 8,000 members and Mr. Pasha is "being called Harlem's new spokesman." Mr. Pasha's rise in the Black community establishes that most Blacks don't like racism. Here's a few quotes of his: "We have as much racism practiced among us as black people as any racism that has been practiced upon us by other groups." When he invited the white Mayor of New York City to speak at the mosque he was criticized by radical black racists. His response: "Sometimes leadership in Harlem treats African-Americans like children. . Like if some white man talks to us we're going to be lead back into slavery. We have a constituency and I'm obligated to bring those they elect to them." Finally, a comment that is sure to drive Bill-Racist-Clinton and Janet-makes-you-feel-sorry-for-Parkinson's-disease-Reno up the wall: "Islam won't accept racism and won't allow Muslims to practice it." Let's call Mr. Pasha a True Muslim. ----------------------- To subscribe to the Zychik Chronicle please reply by e-mail. jz

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Berkeley ftp site moved again?
by s1018954＠aix2.uottawa.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've been unable to get through to ftp.csua.berkeley.edu and www.csua.berkeley.edu for the past two days. Does anyone know if the site (and the cpunk archives with it) has moved or if it's just down? (I'd mail root, but what's the point if the machine's down?) Sorry if I've missed this being mentioned before.

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Re:
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:44 PM 2/14/96 -0800, anonymous-remailer(a)shell.portal.com wrote: >>Meanwhile >> WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE >> JIM BELL >> REWARD 13 demo-cyberbucks > > Send your contributions to: > > James D. Bell > 7214 Corregidor Road > Vancouver, WA > (503) 696-3911 > (503) 737-0284 > (503) 737-0357 > >>An assassination-sponsoring society is _not_ a polite society. > >The first rule of not being seen is "Don't stand up". BTW, the last two telephone numbers are no longer active at my residence. I haven't tried them to see if they've already been assigned to other people. I would have hoped that anybody who went through the limited research (they well all listed telephone numbers, BTW; I've NEVER had an unlisted telephone number) to find them would have at least called to verify that they were no longer valid numbers.

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Re: Cypherpunks Decency Act
by lmccarth＠cs.umass.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I tried to make this a private reply to jdoe-agamemnon(a)alpha.c2.org, but it bounced: Forwarded message: > From: MAILER-DAEMON(a)alpha.c2.org > Subject: mail failed, returning to sender > > Unknown addressee: jdoe-agamemnon(a)alpha.c2.org > > ----- Unsent Message Follows ----- [...] > > Bill Frantz wrote: > > >Perry sent me a polite note asking why I had posted the original post, and > > >He suggested that in the future I make it clear why I think my posts are > > >relevent to the subject of the list. > > > > Is this what we call the chilling effect? > > Nope, not unless Perry has some position of authority w.r.t. Bill Frantz. > I'm not aware of any such consideration. -Lewis "You're always disappointed, nothing seems to keep you high -- drive your bargains, push your papers, win your medals, fuck your strangers; don't it leave you on the empty side ?" (Joni Mitchell, 1972)

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Re: Assassination Politics(tm) was V-chips, CC, and Motorcycle Helmets
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 02:18 PM 2/15/96 -0800, Bill Frantz wrote: >[I've changed the Subject: to more accurately reflect the contents] > >My purpose on this thread is to examine the limits of Jim Bell's idea of >Assassination Politics. My ground rules are to assume that it is a natural >outgrowth of the technologies of anonymous cash and anonymous remailers. >As such arguments that it is immoral are only valid to the extent that they >bare on individual's decisions to particpate in an assassination. Pardon me, but the proper word is "bear", not "bare." > >I believe that we have general agreement that high government figures are >not subject to sanction via assassination politics because they already >enjoy Secret Service levels of protection. You'd be surprised how few "high government officials" have Secret-service-type protection. President, obviously, vice president, Speaker of house, majority and minority leader of Senate, etc. "Ordinary" members of House and senate don't. A few department heads probably do, but that is the exception, rather than the rule. BTW, for the record, just a couple of days ago Clinton probably passed within a mile of my house, "Slant range", in a helicopter, with a day's warning. (The term, "slant range", is a "term of art," for those not in the know.) >I also believe that Jim and I disagree about the significance of Salmon >Rushdie. Jim thinks that the lack of anonymity in the Mullah's >assassination bounty is repelling possible assassins. I disagree. Well, then what _IS_ "repelling possible assassins"? Hint: If I or you killed Rushdie, do you really believe you would be able to collect the reward? I don't. Unless you get people to really BELIEVE they can collect, then it is irrelevant what the value of that reward is! Hint: If the mullahs really wanted to see Rushdie dead, they would have implemented some sort of "Assassination Politics"-type system to ensure than anyone who wanted to collect the reward could do so from the comfort and safety of his own home. >A >question worth asking is, How much does it cost the British government to >protect Mr. Rushdie by keeping his location secret and providing other >unspecified protection. If anyone knows the answer, it could help build an >economic model of Assassination Politics. Which is a valid goal. Actually, it is unclear why Britain is spending the money to protect Rushdie. Despite the fact that he's done nothing to deserve his targeting, governments are remarkably reticent about protecting individual citizens. >Jim Bell said: > >>Actually, I think the primary targets will be either the middle level >>manager types, or the ones who have attracted a substantial amount of bad >>publicity by "following orders." Lon Horiuchi (the sniper who shot Vicki >>Weaver) for example, would be a excellent example of a person who'd try to >>claim, "I was just following orders." Okay, maybe he was, but so was Adolph >>Eichmann. > >I agree that Jim's idea of targeting certain specific individuals, such as >the sniper above might work. Now, imagine you were a government employee in this line of work, and a fellow employee was bumped off due to a well-publicized incident. Next time you're asked to engage in a Waco-like operation, what do you think you'll say to your manager? "Is this trip necessary?" This is called, "deterrence." >>Once the tax collectors/enforcers were targeted, the rest of the government >>wouldn't be able to operate, and would collapse. > >However if you tackle the whole tax system, you get into problems of scale. > The IRS alone (according to their web page) has over 110,000 employees, >and we havn't even mentioned the state and local employees. I don't think >killing one or two will have a sigificant effect (that is occuring now). I >will assume that you have to successfully kill about 10% to have enough >effect to shut off the government's money supply. Needless to say, I disagree. In practice, if you discovered that each year there was a 1% chance of you dying as a consequence of your job, you'd probably strongly consider changing your place of employment. Now, I think statistics show that each year, about 800 billion dollars in individual income taxes are collected. If we assume that the equivalent of only 1% of that value was donated to solve the "IRS problem," that's 8 BILLION dollars, which at $10,000 per person would buy 800,000 deaths. THat's 7 times the current employment of the IRS. You tell me: What would the average person pay THIS YEAR to avoid paying, say, a $100,000 tax bill NEXT YEAR? (Hint: How much do rich people pay their accountants, TODAY, to avoid taxes?) Another Hint: Consider Bill Gates. His wealth is variously estimated at over 10 BILLION dollars, probably almost all of which is in long-term capital gains (Microsoft stock), for which he will have to pay somewhere around 30% in Federal income taxes if he should choose to cash out. He would be 1.5 Billion dollars ahead if he donated $1.5 billion dollars to an organization which would eliminate his requirement to pay the total 3 billion dollar tax bill to the IRS. That alone is the equivalent of about $14,000 for each IRS employee. >Attacks at this scale will be difficult because while people will have >perfect anonymity in cyberspace, they won't enjoy it in physical space. >Neighbors, survalence cameras, etc.; in fact all the technology that makes >privacy so hard to achieve today will be available to catch the assassins. >The police will also be more motivated to utilize the technology for this >class of people than they would for drug dealers, pimps and other low >lifes. These points will tend to raise the price of assassinations. That depends entirely on the identity of the target. Besides, suppose for a moment that all these people are turned into "targets." It's pretty easy to protect ONE INDIVIDUAL; it's far harder to protect thousands. >Let us assume that we can buy assassinations for $50,000 per person. Times >11,000 people is $550 million dollars. That is quite a sum. I need to see >an analysis which shows how to raise money on this scale. Your estimate is way too high. Remember, most of the cost of hiring a hitman is based on the risk (to him) of actually contacting and TRUSTING his contractor. (and vice versa: The contractor has to trust the hitman.) While I have no firm statistics, I would imagine that the vast majority of "contract killings" are solved (if they are solved at all, by the police) by something other than evidence collected at the site where the killing actually occurred. If you completely eliminate this risk, (by encryption and digital cash, etc.) by free-market principles the cost should drop drastically. More generally, most murders are solved either by researching the prior relationships (and motives) of acquaintances of the "victim," or witnesses to an incident that the killer didn't expect to occur, etc. "Assassination Politics" would result in a situation in which literally everybody in the world had an IDENTICAL motivation to kill the target. Imagine explaining this away to a jury, who themselves might have had an equivalent motivation to collect the reward! Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMSQpBfqHVDBboB2dAQH94QP8Dgza+4vkvt6LWYXSMCcmT6TivD/A5XRU /zwBUxm44I7670jsBDwTpaV/0o6TRC5E5behUctUJPIh4aietaUOVThsghmLBinE HUwc7nRxhKsyUJkYuSLx8JIn4iV1muGtKFe8KeYgPIHYWuTq380WRd64/RtxbYjy aXfYSsOfSZQ= =FwQ+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Cypherpunks Decency Act
by tbyfield＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:43 PM 2/15/96, jdoe-agamemnon(a)alpha.c2.org wrote: >>Perry sent me a polite note asking why I had posted the original post, and >>He suggested that in the future I make it clear why I think my posts are >>relevent to the subject of the list. > >Is this what we call the chilling effect? No. bell@pacifier--surely not a coincidence--has indulged himself excessively. Anyone checked out the LD angle on him? I'm not given over to conspiratorialism, but, really...there's hardly much satisfaction in exercising your D-key "right" when the result is emptiness.

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Re: Using lasers to communicate
by gw 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:38 AM 2/14/96 -0500, you wrote: > >Eavesdropping and channel-blocking and physical-location-discovery are >related threats to which most traditional data channels are susceptible. >Any link which depends on a physical conduit (phone line, fiber, coax) >is relatively easy to interrupt and to trace to its end points. >RF links, even with frequency hopping, are subject to triangulation and >jamming. All these kinds of links can be eavesdropped. > >Point-to-point conduitless laser signalling, as envisioned by "Bill" and >Tim in their quotes below, eliminates or reduces these threats. not as much, IMHO, as you would seem to suggest. 50% mirrors picking off those laser beams would do it, and you could not detect the resulting attenuation as distinct from naturally ocurring attenuation and variation. >Now consider an enhancement. In show business, we sometimes entertain >the folks with "laser light shows". The technology used is fairly >straightforward, mainly involving the use of mirrors (the effect also uses >smoke ususally, but please don't prematurely dismiss my remarks on this >basis). The laser source is attached to a "laser table" which holds a >number of small mirrors which may be individually inserted (via fast >solenoids) into the path of the laser beam. Each of these mirrors is then >calibrated to aim at a particular place in the theatre, usually another >larger mirror. Then (under computer control) the various small mirrors >on the laser table are rapidly inserted and withdrawn from the light beam, >causing the laser beam to follow first one path, then another, then another >through the (smoky) air -- all to the delight of the audience. > >This technology could easily be adapted to make a communication channel >safer from the various threats of eavesdropping, interruption, and tracing. >A single point-to-point channel could be made to follow various paths >having common elements only VERY close to the endpoints. Better still, >a network of more than two nodes could be constructed without needing to >provide multiple transceivers at each node (and with possibly multiple >beam paths between each pair). With known methods of routing and >collision avoidance, we could thus not only route around any known opposition >but also make it very expensive to eavesdrop or even to discover that >a signal exists. ("Honey, call the EPA again -- those gubmint boys are back, >driving their oil-burning old van around Mr. May's house."). > KNOWN opposition ... hmmm. you're back to obscurity=security. It's always expensive to eavesdrop (tapped any fiber cables in pressure jackets recently?) ... and (having been in the same business as yourself once) alignment and bandwidth problems of them pesky little scanners is a pretty hefty problem. The concept seems to have merit ... but I don't think I'd want to have to implement it! Easily adapted .... ????? >[previous attribution unknown...:] >} >>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 > >On Thu, 4 Jan 1996 12:45:15 -0800, tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) wrote: >} >} Just a couple of points on this optical idea. >} >} We were linking buildings a mile apart in the 70s, at Intel. We needed to >} ship CAD data back and forth, and PacBell rates for a dedicated line were >} outrageous, slow to be installed, etc. So, a commercially available laser >} and modulator/demodulator (modem, but it bears sometimes using the longer >} version, to remind people of what it is doing in general) were mounted on >} the roofs of our buildings. I'm sure various packages are commercially >} available to do this. >[snip] >} I'm actually more positive on low-level (below safety regs get interested >} in) light than on free space RF, for bypassing of the local cable/phone >} monopolies. There's just not enough "bandwidth of free space" available. Do >} the math. >[snip] > > >:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: >:: Lou Poppler <lwp(a)mail.msen.com> :: " The more you drive, >:: http://www.msen.com/~lwp/ :: the less intelligent you are." >:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: -- Repo man > >

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Re: anonymous age credentials, sharing of
by gw 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:24 PM 2/15/96 -0500, you wrote: >On Thu, 15 Feb 1996, gw wrote: > >> the People, want to support permanently binding a traceable, non-anonymous >> identity to all certificate attributes that are used in electronic exchange >> (age, etc...) then there is going to be the potential for someone to >> deliberately allow their credential to be misused. >> >> IMO, to prevent this totally would require implanting a non-forgable i.d. >> chip in everyone at birth ..... not very appealing. > >And even then, what about the people that undergo surgery to swap chips? > Seems less likely ... you would need qualified surgeon, etc. ... my suspicion is that biometric devices are actually more susceptible to bypass . >The only REAL way of authentication is biometrics. Anything else can be >swapped. For that matter, if you can replace an amputated finger, how about transplanting a hand? <shrug> I think the distinction between an implanted device and a naturally occuring biometric is 1. not that important, 2. not all that large, anyway. My point is -and I think this pretty obvious- without the "something someone IS" as opposed ot "HAS" there is no stopping the exchange of credentials. And then as you go to "HAS", it's just a matter of how far you want to raise the bar. I like that idea of surgically swapping tokens ... where do I find the Dr.? Assuming s/he's illicit, then where do I get the $? And the person to swap with? What's in it for him/her? >But if you amputate someone's hand or retinas then they won't >work(check for things like blood flow, etc.) > >Ben. >____ >Ben Samman..............................................samman(a)cs.yale.edu >"If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then >I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, >experience, and creation." -Anais Nin >PGP Encrypted Mail Welcomed Finger samman(a)powered.cs.yale.edu for key >Want to give a soon-to-be college grad a job? Mail me for a resume > >

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Religious Right and CDA
by Thomas Grant Edwards 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Please see http://www.cdt.org/policy/freespeech/cc_ltr.html for a letter from Ed Meese, Ralph Reed, Donald E. Wildmon, and others which actually suggests language in the CDA. "Attached is the specific language we support which includes the House passed language on obscenity and includes revisions on both the House passed language on indecency, which would amend Title 18 and the Senate-passed language on indecency, which would amend Title 47. The combination of these provisions, we believe, would provide effective laws to curb obscenity and indecency on the Internet by establishing that all who knowingly participate in the distribution or facilitation of obscenity to anyone or indecency to children would be subject to the law." -Thomas

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Re: NETSCAPE IS "IN MERGER TALKS WITH AMERICA ONLINE"
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bill Frantz wrote: >... He noted that new data showed that 40% of US >Internet traffic was flowing through America OnLine's network and that >together with Netscape the two companies would effectively control the >technology now shaping the global network - "And then Microsoft would be >left without an Internet standard,". Perry sent me a polite note asking why I had posted the original post, and I replied: >(1) I thought it was of interest to people on the list, and not yet generally >available information. ... >(3) It speaks to the issue of whether there is a danger of oligopolistic >control of the net. Cypherpunks will, of course, work on technical solutions >to that danger. He suggested that in the future I make it clear why I think my posts are relevent to the subject of the list. At 7:44 PM 2/13/96 -0500, Deranged Mutant wrote: >I dunno. The World Wide Web Consortium supposedly exists to prevent >corporations from controlling the technology and standards. I agree that keeping the cost of market entry low, by having the technical standards freely available at no cost is an excellent way of furthering this goal. (The IETF has a similar policy.) In addition, free software (in the sense of the Free Software Foundation) will help. BTW - I do not consider oligopolistic control of the net of the net to be a serious danger in the five year time frame. I am less sanguine about the 30 year time frame. Bill

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