December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: on corporations and subpoenas
by Adam Pingitore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

GET ME OFF THE DAMN LIST

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Re[2]: GPS privacy/ECM
by Adam Pingitore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

STOP SENDING ME THIS SHIT

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Re: Protocols at the Point of a Gun
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:46 PM 4/17/96, Henry Huang wrote: >Well good. Better nonstandardized chaos than a single, arbitrarily >defined and applied system. (Ref: "Parental Advisory" stickers, which >were IMHO totally useless, and a doomed concept from the start.) These stickers on CDs were actually very useful. Kids could spot more quickly the juicy stuff. The taste of forbidden fruit is so much better. Likewise, the "age bit" that some are talking about will be similarly useful. Minors will be unambiguously identified--no more "is she or isn't she?"--and actions taken accordingly. (Several years from now, I see a great hue and cry over the fact that the "age bit" mandated by "The Children's Internet Protection Act of 1997" will be used to deny the protection of adult-seeming personnas to children. Pedophiles and the like will find their tasks easier, and the Act's supporters will say "But that's not what we intended!!") I saw a reference to this in the archives of the Cyberia list, though I am no longer subscribed to it. Not sure who first pointed it out, but it's a valid point. --Tim May THE X-ON CONGRESS: INDECENT COMMENT ON AN INDECENT SUBJECT, by Steve Russell, American Reporter Correspondent....You motherfuckers in Congress have dropped over the edge of the earth this time... "the sorriest bunch of cocksuckers ever to sell out the First Amendment" or suggesting that "the only reason to run for Congress these days is to suck the lobbyists' dicks and fuck the people who sent you there," ....any more than I care for the language you shitheads have forced me to use in this essay...Let's talk about this fucking indecent language bullshit.

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No Subject
by nyap＠mailhub.garban.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Duncan Frissell <frissell(a)panix.com> > The denizens of the DDR had to overcome the Stasi, barbed wire, mines, > walls, tank traps, etc to adopt an open systems architecture. Learning to > use a few TCP/IP tricks (or building them into applications and using those > applications) is much easier than breaching the Berlin Wall. Knowledge about TCP/IP is alot easier to control than knowledge about the Berlin Wall (ie, how many Chinese will even know of the existence of TCP/IP -- in the US, where this is freely available, how many citizens know of it's existence)?

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[NOISE] Is this getting through?
by Moltar Ramone 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I seem to have stopped getting CP mail... is there a problem with the list, or is it just my machine? (Right now, it's 4/16 at 7:00pm; reply accordingly) Jon ---------- Jon Lasser (410)494-3072 - Obscenity is a crutch for jlasser(a)rwd.goucher.edu inarticulate motherfuckers. http://www.goucher.edu/~jlasser/ Finger for PGP key (1024/EC001E4D) - Fuck the CDA.

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Re: [IRS] Elvis in Escrow
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:40 AM 4/16/96 -0700, Dave Del Torto wrote: >[from SF Examiner somewhere around 12-14 April 96] > >.............................................................................. > >"IRS Worker Took Peek at Celebrities' Records" >[Associated Press] > Memphis - A former IRS employee who said boredom had led him to peek at >the tax records of President Clinton, Elvis Presley and other famous people >has been acquitted of federal charges. > > > >Hmmm. _We_ do it, it's "malicious cracking/hacking" and they toss us in the >clink... _they_ do it, and it's "practice" (and they get acquitted). And >_these_ are the people who want to escrow _my_ keys? As IF! I wonder, how much is NSA's secret key worth? You know, the one they use to grab the extra key bits that Lotus Notes sends them. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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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What's the "Human Interaction Institute" at CMU For ???
by ssalgaller＠CCGATE.HAC.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear Concerned Citizens, Re: Subject, what is Dan Olsen going to be in charge of at CMU ? (ref: CDA debate; expert witness for the CDA) The title could refer to net censorship, or to bio-medical implantation of control computers inside human brains. So which is it ? Or is this not an exclusive or answer ? Stephen S. salgaller(a)ccgate.hac.com or try: salgaller(a)aol.com PS: If anyone can tell me the name of the 1965 movie starring Michael Renee that dealt with the above two issues, please tell me. If you were not aware, the movie dealt with a plan, initially, to link all humanity directly to each other. One could "download" data directly into your brain ! You could also have "mental telepathy" and communicate with others. Michael Renee's character escapes to the past to try to end research done by a scientist, that lead up to the inevitable a totalitarian world government takes control of everyone; even your thoughts are no longer private. You get the idea. This was also done as part of the movie "Terminator 2"; I wonder if the writer of the 1965 movie got any screen credit or royalties for T2 ??? I'm worrying too much, right ? It can't happen here ??? Tim Mc Veigh said he had a bio chip implant. Nah...

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Re: PICS required by laws
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:02 PM 4/16/96 -0500, Scott Brickner wrote: >"E. ALLEN SMITH" writes: >>From: IN%"frantz(a)netcom.com" 6-APR-1996 16:21:56.32 >> >>>I am less worried about this possibility than most. PICS scrubbers will be >>>as easy to produce as any other web intermediary. (e.g. The one which >>>replaces "bad" words with "censored".) >> >> Quite... as will ones that flip-flop the various packet bits that >>people are discussing. > >This is a bit naive. The "packet bits" I've discussed are added by the >content provider (since he doesn't want to open himself to charges of >"contributing to the delinquency of a minor", which exist regardless of >the CDA) and packets with the "bits" are never delivered to the >minors. To think that someone along that path would subvert the system >is ridiculous. You are asuming that the (underage) user wouldn't route his packets thru an offshore packet bit scrubber that some freedom-loving student set up to do the bit scrubbing. It is not even clear that any of the parties is violating the law: The content provider is correctly labeling his packets. The transport agents are correctly passing them along. The bit scribber is running where such activities aren't illegal The further you move the control from the home/school into the internet the easier it is to subvert because there are more places to subvert it, more people motivated to subvert it, and less control of the environment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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: why compression doesn't perfectly even out entropy
by rick hoselton 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:34 PM 4/16/96 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: >> ...it is possible ... for Hamlet to appear out of a random number generator, >> But even if it came from a completely random source, it would >> still make a bad one-time pad. >No it wouldn't. Are you sure you want to claim that the text of Hamlet would make a good key for a one-time pad? >There is a tiny but nonzero probability that xoring >your one time pad with your text will result in a cyphertext equal to, >say, the Bible. Big deal. Most unusual, and you're right, its inconsequential. But if you use the text of Hamlet or the text of the Bible for your KEY to a one-time-pad, you're very likely to get broken. I think any pad that is likely to get broken is a bad pad. >If the key is really random, the >cryptanalyst has no way to tell what the underlying text was. But that silly cryptanalyst might not know that you got Hamlet from your random number generator. He might think you copied it out of a book! Then, Hamlet stops being a random number. The context changes. >> In the context of "fair coin flips" the text of Hamlet is NOT compressible. >There is only one context in which things are compressable or not -- >is there a smaller representation for them. Suppose that somewhere on the web is an archive of "The Encyclopedia"(tm). I could add a preprocessor to zip that would compare the input file to "The Encyclopedia". If it finds a match, it outputs a zero-byte. If it doesn't find a match, it outputs a one-byte followed by an ordinary zip file. The decompressor compares the compressed file to a single zero, and if it is equal, accesses "The Encyclopedia" and sends it to the output file. Otherwise it just unzips the rest of the file normally. I now have a one-byte representation for "The Encyclopedia". (by the way, this will work with 6 and 7 and 8 and 9 and 12-bit bytes!) That's not really fair. I took advantage of a particular situation. But that's what ALL compressors do. They take advantage of particular patterns. And patterns are determined by context. This is where it gets interesting. The "randomness" of "The Encyclopedia" depends on whether some archive is online! If someone deletes "The Encyclopedia" archive, or disconnects my communications, my special compressor stops working, and the smallest (reversable) representation jumps many orders of magnitude. When the context changes, the smallest representation changes. As you point out, when the Hamlet comes out of a good random number generator, it is just as random as any other number. But I contend that when Hamlet can XOR with your ciphertext to reveal your plaintext, then Hamlet is NOT a random number. When did it stop being random? When then context changed. > >> Because no string is more likely than any other. Any algorithm that could >> compress that string, will, on the average INCREASE the length of >> "fair coin flip" strings it tries to compress. > >True enough, but the claim was that a random string has no >representation which is smaller than itself. > >.pm >

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[Noise] Amusing keyboard slip
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Discovered accidentally this morning: Type 'logout' on a QUERTY keyboard with the right hand too far right and get ';pgpit'. Words to live by...

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