December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: Truth is equivalent to law? (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi Blanc, Forwarded message: > From: blanc <blancw(a)accessone.com> > Subject: RE: Truth is equivalent to law? > Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 18:14:33 -0700 > > The quote I offered had to with our capacity to know the phenomena of = > the world (in any amount) and consequently our ability to exert control = > over these universal forces (or "laws") to whatever degree. Why is this so surprising? We are nothing more than a manifistation of those self same forces. It is not us manipulating nature, it is nature manipulating nature. This is why there are no Truths and what we do know of truth is more a tale about us than about what we 'know' of the universe.. The universe is sentient, and we are it (as far as we know). What you and others offer is a bipolar anthropocentic example of the schism our rapid technology has generated in our lives. > I guess your argument is that we can't even discuss the properties of = > truth, harmful or not, because we can't even be sure that there is any = > truth in existence. There is no absolute truth. As I have stated before when this issue has arisen, the truth we all see and know so well is nothing more than a representation of what good pattern recognition engines our brains are. One which makes mistakes in easily proven ways (e.g. optical illusions). > This makes all your robotics projects bogus exercises in futility, hmm? Actualy I have been building robots for nearly 20 years now. Jim Choate \\///// "Don't have a cow, man" | | / (.) (.) ===========================oOO==(_)==OOo========================== Tivoli an IBM company CyberTects: SSZ Customer Support Engineer SOHO Consulting/VR/Robotics 9442 Capitol of Texas Highway North 1647 Rutland Suite 500 #244 Austin, TX 78759 Austin, TX 78758 Email: jchoate(a)tivoli.com Email: ravage(a)ssz.com Phone: (512) 436-8893 Phone: (512) 259-2994 Fax: (512) 345-2784 Fax: n/a WWW: www.tivoli.com WWW: www.ssz.com Modem: n/a Modem: (512) 836-7374 Pager: n/a Pager: n/a Cellular: n/a Cellular: n/a ===================================================================

1 0

Alternative to remailer shutdowns...
by MAILER-DAEMON＠kermit.aatech.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There are hundreds of machines littered around the net that dont bother adding "received" headers to mail. I dont think that these provide anything near the security and anonymity that a single remailer (much less a remailing chain) provide, but it seems to me that routing outbound traffic from a remailer through one of these sites would provide at least /some/ measure of protection for the remailer-operator. It feels a bit underhanded, but it may be that involving some "innocent" bystanders in the remail process would be useful. Even if the sites being routed through /were/ keeping logs it would still require their participation in any investigation to discover where the mail had originated, and this would introduce the question of whether the (psuedo)anonymous sendmail host should bear any liability for not tracking where mail came from. The operator of the particular smtp host would seem to have a pretty good defense should a charge be raised, but in defending the smtp-host you could also be strengthening the defense of the r-ops. Another possibility is that rather than operating remailers at all, maybe we should be operating non-logging smtp hosts that dont add received headers. Building a client to take advantage of these servers would be trivial (i wrote one last night, and i am not proficient in C) and it could be argued that the situation was not created intentionally to allow anonymous messages, merely to preserve disk space and bandwidth. Flame Away...

1 0

Re: Layman's explanation for limits on escrowed encryption ...
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"unicorn(a)schloss.li" "Black Unicorn" 24-MAY-1996 15:07:57.78 >On Wed, 22 May 1996, Ernest Hua wrote: >> Could someone with some knowledge of NSA/DoS/FBI intentions please >> explain why key length limitations are necessary for escrowed >> encryption? >To deal with the possibility that someone might slip through the cracks of >the escrow process. >Insurance. Hmm.... what were the normal key-length recommendations again? This appears to imply that the NSA can break at least 64-bit, and probably 80-bit, encryption. How does this translate into public key lengths? E.g., how many normal bits is a 1024-bit PGP key equivalent to? -Allen

3 3

Re: [SCARE]: "If you only knew what we know..."
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:07 PM 5/24/96 -0600, David Rosoff wrote: >At 01.03 PM 5/24/96 -0800, jim bell wrote: > >>If the Libyans are so bad (and they probably are) then why shouldn't the >>public in other countries be entitled to pool their contributions and take >>their government down? > >I believe I understand the basic concepts of AP - perhaps not the far-reaching >implications, but the fundamentals. I've thought about it, and I am against this >system. What will happen when you've killed off all of the politicians/gov't employees >who haven't quit? Do you really think this will make things better? 1. There will be no politicans and government employees, except for those few who do not arouse the ire of more than a tiny fraction of the population, and are paid for by voluntary contributions. In other words, damn few. 2. There will be no taxes and no war. Any disputes will be of very small scale, a handful of people at most. 3. Individuals will be able to, and in fact will be responsible to defend themselves, although they may be able to do it by proxy. People will always have the option of defending others, and will do so if they believe that it deters future crimes that might be against them. >Anarchy simply >won't work with people. Have you ever read Lord of the Flies? I'm sure some >people haven't. Yes, I read it years ago. That book is fiction. Whether it represents any sort of potential reality is highly questionable. Even its premise is stilted: It hypothesizes a tiny, essentially homogenous society populated by immature boys, dropped into circumstances entirely foreign from anything they had ever known, with no adult guidance at all. Can you really expect good results from this, in fiction no less? Would it have made a good book if everything had happened hunky-dory? Anyway, anarchy is tradionally considered unstable because the strong are able to oppress the weak, and the weak can't effectively fight back, so governments are instituted. The system I've described, AP, allows a substantial number of anonymous weak people to (anonymously) pool their resources and defend themselves against a smaller number of strong oppressors. This is NEW. It may, in fact, allow anarchy to exist in a stable form, which may sound like an oxymoron but is not. If anarchy does indeed work, when suitably stabilized, then your premise is simply wrong. > Have any of you AP proponents >considered that perhaps our oh-so-corrupt government officials are simply >the best that our amoral, decaying populace has to offer? What would we >gain by rubbing them out? I see we have another Dr. Pangloss here. "the best of all possible worlds." We have plenty to gain by removing them from their positions of power. They are wasteful parasites. They engage in make-work. They manipulate the rest of us. They criminalize activities that should not be crimes. They make us waste our resources, for example by keeping ever-larger numbers of people in jail and prison. They are protected by militaries, which are wasteful uses of our resources. Ultimately, they end up killing huge numbers of people, ultimately just to protect the supremacy of these government employees and officeholders. > Maybe the current form of government isn't perfect, or even great, but it is still >much better than anything that could possibly result from anonymous terrorism, >which is really what AP is, isn't it? Who is to say that we even need a government? What, exactly, is the function of a government? Is that function truly necessary? Remember, AP changes the political landscape substantially. You can't any longer say things like "governmnet is necessary so that we can protect ourselves against foreign nations," because there will no longer be any foreign nations, or foreign armies, etc. >Peace can only be achieved by understanding, not through force or fear. Sounds like a truism that isn't necessarily true. Don't deny individuals the right to defend themselves. If you do, then you actually encourage force used against them, and magnify their fear. Don't selectively apply this rule to ordinary citizens, while forgetting to apply it to officials. And maybe we don't really even need to "achieve peace." I've come to the conclusion that the only reason war is "necessary" is to protect the leadership of a country, not to protect its citizens. Remove that leadership from power, and peace will be automatic. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

1 0

Re: (Fwd) Re: TCM: mafia as a paradigm for cyberspace
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:14 PM 5/24/96 EDT, Paul J. Bell wrote: >Right, someone tells your wife that you are sleeping with someone else. >The truth, does it hurt? (-: Let's ask John Bobbit, shall we? Ouch! Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

1 0

Re: Runtime info flow in Java
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"frantz(a)netcom.com" 24-MAY-1996 21:22:44.97 >A lot of the answer depends on what you mean by secure. For example, if >the Java run-time can successfully contain Java applets so they can't >access any of the unsecured portions of your OS, then it doesn't matter >that those OS holes exist as far as protection from the applets is >concerned. The proof that the Java run-time actually can do this >containment is left as an exercise for the student :-). This does, of course, depend on one's knowing where the holes in the OS are. The Java approach, at least by default, appears to be to shut all the places where they think a hole might be, while leaving open those which an applet practically has to use. (E.g., it shouldn't be possible under the current design for an untrusted applet to access the disk; since an applet does need to use the CPU, it can consume CPU time.) >We can use certificates (ref: SPKI) to implement network capabilities. >These certificates make statements of the form: The holder of the secret >key which corresponds to this public key is permitted these specific forms >of access to this specific resource on this location (e.g. a URL). These >certificates can act like capabilities. They can be passed by creating a >new certificate for the receiver which gives it the privileges implied by >the old certificate. They can be rescinded in any of a number of ways. I suppose that the new certificate is created through a message signed by the old certificate's private key? -Allen

1 0

Re: [SCARE]: "If you only knew what we know..."
by David Rosoff 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 01.03 PM 5/24/96 -0800, jim bell wrote: >If the Libyans are so bad (and they probably are) then why shouldn't the >public in other countries be entitled to pool their contributions and take >their government down? I believe I understand the basic concepts of AP - perhaps not the far-reaching implications, but the fundamentals. I've thought about it, and I am against this system. What will happen when you've killed off all of the politicians/gov't employees who haven't quit? Do you really think this will make things better? Anarchy simply won't work with people. Have you ever read Lord of the Flies? I'm sure some people haven't. I will explain my reasoning. In Lord of the Flies (a novel by William Golding) a group of British schoolboys are deposited on a desert island. They have been evacuated from England because of a nuclear war. There are no adults. A responsible few try to maintain the rules and order of society to which they all are accustomed, but they are symbolically "AP'ed" out of power when the anarchists of the group break away and form their own tribe. To make a long story short, they revert to animal sacrifice, and human sacrifice, before the story closes. Very unsettling, no? The defects of society can be traced back to the defects in the individual. A direct quote from the author, who is not infallible, or even a reputable authority on the flaws and merits of humanity, but still, who is to say that once our notably corrupt governments are gone, the corruption in ourselves won't surface? Who is to say that we are any better than the government? They had to come from somewhere - the public, obviously. Have any of you AP proponents considered that perhaps our oh-so-corrupt government officials are simply the best that our amoral, decaying populace has to offer? What would we gain by rubbing them out? The point I make is that in elected governments (and I realize, not all are so lucky) the elected people are, most likely, the best of what the public has to offer. Who can blame them for being corrupt? Doesn't all power corrupt? I believe so. Maybe the current form of government isn't perfect, or even great, but it is still much better than anything that could possibly result from anonymous terrorism, which is really what AP is, isn't it? Peace can only be achieved by understanding, not through force or fear. >(okay, this is a rhetorical question...) Oops. Well. It's too late now... :-) David -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMaZ4tRguzHDTdpL5AQEW3gP+OvHHoPxJnFQUahCsjYcQaRJ2FV6eJA7F s0BQ0jSvJCsGjMCEzT+bsNpErSNVxIafuq5AkMJQFhQHkhxUrPl/eqtBhomh5YV1 6CD5VGL0y030zmdzDBhLpJjLjKIkMzAC1DIdLmWCXZRyHDCD00KRdyRup72XZAqQ Ka3Klr8JOBQ= =LXi/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

2 1

Re: Children's Privacy Act
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"llurch(a)networking.stanford.edu" "Rich Graves" 24-MAY-1996 21:35:29.54 >I think forgiveness, within reason, tends to have a positive economic >effect. I'm not the same person I was seven years ago, or even seven >months. (Is it 7 years, btw? Or was it 12? It's arbitrary, in any case.) >I have no objection to allowing someone to become, and remain, a >productive member of society years after fucking up badly. Note there are >no statutes of limitations and no forgive-and-forget mandates for the more >heinous violent crimes. I have no objections to giving people a second chance. I just like to know _when_ I'm giving someone a second chance. What the laws in question say is that companies - and individuals, so far as I know - shouldn't be allowed to have that knowledge. >Someone once said something about giving up a little freedom in return for >security. Do try to keep in mind the freedom of the data-gatherer. This was also said in regards to government. I'd agree with keeping governments and similar coercive forces (e.g., monopolistic and ogliopolistic companies) from having this information, or from misusing it if they have to have it for some reason. >OK, that's a straw man. The last couple examples show why some laws aren't >necessary. The market simply wouldn't accept a too-totalitarian insurance >company; people would rather pay as they go, and accept the risk >themselves. But why is it fair to discriminate against detectable risks, >when undetectable risks may be more expensive? Discriminate? A rather loaded term. I generally define discrimination, and have confirmed this definition by a dictionary check, as bias against someone on a basis other than rational information. If someone refuses to hire me for a job necessitating calligraphy, they aren't discrimiating against me or other people with bad handwriting (including those, like me, who have that due to neurological problems). They're being rational. A health insurance company that judges who should be insured by that company on the basis of whether the person is likely to get sick is surely being rational. A credit company that judges who should get credit from that company on the basis of whether that person is likely to declare bankrupcy is surely being rational. Moreover, even when it isn't rational, it's still that company's business what it does with its dollars. It's analogous to the problem of not allowing people to freely contract not to sue, as in remailers. While it might be considered stupid for someone to do so - particularly in hindsight, when they're claiming that they should be able to do so - the person should still be allowed to do so. In regards to accepting the risk themselves, look at what happens when you have insurance companies that are required to accept everyone at an equal price. The ones who have information - denied to the insurance company - that they're going to get sick will sign up more than the ones who won't. Take Huntington's as an example. If genetic screening is prohibited to insurance companies, someone who has a test and finds out that they've got the allele for Huntington's, and thus will get sick and die from it, is going to go down and get themselves insurance. Then the insurance - e.g., everyone else who buys from that insurance company - will have to pay for them when they need several years of nursing care before dying. How is this fair to everyone else, including the insurance company? You spoke of fairness. Capitalism isn't fair; neither is life. Someone who is bigger physically will have to spend more on food to keep alive than someone who is small. Does that argue for socialization of food, so that those who are big (partially a genetic trait) won't have to pay any more? Some people are smarter than others. Does that mean that the ones who are smart should be handicapped artificially to make everything fair? Most arguments on fairness ultimately come down to either appeals to gut instincts - not a valid argument - or philosophical ones, generally Rawls' Theory of Justice. That one has a problem. Rawls thought that the most just social system was that which a group of people would come up with when they didn't know what position they'd be in. This would lead to equality, since nobody'd want to be in the low position, right? Wrong. People can rationally take a chance. If you give someone a choice between gambling for (on the flip of a 50/50 coin) 150 or 0 dollars, and getting 50 dollars guaranteed, the rational choice is the gamble. In other words, if it is more efficient - as I have argued - for things to be unequal, then this idea of what justice is would argue for inequality being just. -Allen

3 2

Re: Announcing CryptaPix 1.0
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:20 PM 5/24/96 CDT, Daniel R. Oelke wrote: >> NEW GRAPHICS VIEWER FOR WINDOWS RELEASED > >> What sets CryptaPix apart from ordinary viewers is its secure >> encryption feature utilizing the same technology found in Puffer >> 2.0. The encryption feature prevents unauthorized use of your >> personal image collection by requiring a password for access. >> Images are decrypted directly into memory for viewing. A secure >> wipe feature will permanently remove unwanted images from your >> disk drive. >> >[...more stuff deleted...] > >Expect to be hearing about this being a problem >with some child porn case real soon now... <sigh> > >However - I can see this becoming VERY popular with the >teenage crowd wanting to keep mom & dad out of their stash ;-) > >That being said - Thumbs up to Kent for another crypto program >that pushes the "genie" even farther out of the bottle. What they ought to do is to "stegofy" this system by binding a picture with a lower-quality, non-suspicious picture which can be brought up with a "duress code." Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

1 0

Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"unicorn(a)schloss.li" "Black Unicorn" 24-MAY-1996 22:52:03.64 >Remailers on the attack points (first in chain, last in chain) simply MUST >be disposable as tissue. They must be run as anonymously as possible, >with as little connection to the ISP's assets as possible and immediately >disposable. They must be easy to set up, runable without root and there >must be a much more efficent tracking mechanism. (Mr. Levin has done a >terrific job, but even more needs to be done). Why the first in chain? If the anti-traffic-analysis provisions are working properly, it should be impossible to prove that a given first remailer was the first remailer for any particular message. I had thought that even civil courts required that you be the person who committed some act, not the person who _might_ have committed some act. Otherwise, all the remailers are in danger. This is even if someone tries an entrapment by sending through some illegal material - if the courts accept that they should be allowed to do this, then all the remailers they chained are going to be hit. >This wanton suing, as I think we all know, is an abuse of the copyright >protections and their intent. The only way to really deal with it is make >remailers unassailable. Doing that with tricky dick type legal arguments >will, in my view, eventually fail. Ultimately, I have to agree. Protect the remailers as much as possible with the legal arguments... but don't depend on them. The government in general has no motivation to protect the remailers. They've got a motivation to protect ISPs, and thus may put in protections for them regarding liability. >It only takes ONE operator to get a tiny ($2500-$10,000) fine or judgement >and that will be the end of most of the mailers. Poof. What, pray tell, is the result of a judgement in which the person manifestedly doesn't have the money to pay? I couldn't pay a 10,000 dollar judgement; I don't have that much money. I would guess it'd be some form of attachment of income; this wouldn't get them much... >This we cannot allow. Quite. >I wouldn't go this far. It is an excellent argument for picking juries >that are experts with regard to the subject at hand. One step in this direction would be requiring some level of education from juries. If the defendant is someone with a college degree, require the jurors to have a college degree. If the defendant is someone with a Ph.D., require the jurors to have a Ph.D. or similarly high equivalent (J.D., M.D., etcetera). While this doesn't mean that the jury will necessarily know what's being talked about (I've given presentations to _graduate_ school seminars in which I went well over the heads of everyone in the class - including the professor - after spending maybe four weeks working on the project), it does increase the chance that they're at least teachable. >In my view trying to balance bias rather than eliminate it is much more >effective. Modification of jury selection? Removal of some of the preemptory challenges? Hmm... some challenges are for cause, as I recall. Unless it's a particulary egregious case of such, I'd suggest allowing the other side to override such with expenditure of a preemptory challenge. >If harassing mail is the issue, I can see how this might help in terms of >image. I don't think its a complete solution however. >Again, I think the attack points have to be protected. Agreed. -Allen

2 1