December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Anonymous Remailer threat: Scientologists may subpoena
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:23 AM 4/11/96, sameer wrote: > Frankly, I'm getting antsy. Is C2 going to get subpoena'd or >not? I would be very disappointed if we don't. > (Subpeonas envy!) Good one! Just stay calm and try to maintain your sangfreud. --Tim 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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Re: Protocols at the Point of a Gun
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 1:48 PM 4/10/96, Duncan Frissell wrote: >Well this is as good a time and place as any to ask the question that >none of the opposition seems to have asked (perhaps because they don't >know enough to ask): How do you force geographically dispersed nodes >on a distributed network to adopt a set of officially mandated protocols? > >But first a reading assignment: "How Anarchy Works--Inside the Internet >Engineering Task Force" from Wired. > >http://www.hotwired.com/wired/3.10/departments/electrosphere/ietf.html I'd also recommend Michael Froomkin's article "The Internet as a Source of Regulatory Arbitrage," available at http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/arbitr.htm It gets into the nature of IETF-type stuff, especially vis-a-vis the difficulty jurisdictions have in enforcing parochial rules. --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: No matter where you go, there they are.
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:36 PM 4/10/96 -0700, rick hoselton wrote: >At 10:04 AM 4/10/96 -0400, Peter Wayner wrote: >> >>Hmm. Here's an interesting question. Let's say that there are 3 >>satellites in view broadcasting signals f1(t), f2(t) and f3(t). >>...Okay, so why can't I just tape the signals I get from each of >>the three satellites. > >>Or course, I could be completely missing some neat feature of >>DGPS. ... Any thoughts? > >I have read that GPS uses encryption to place time-dependent, >location-dependent inaccuracies into the signals. Innacuracies >small enough so they are not a problem for civilian navigation, >(mostly) but large enough to prevent GPS from being a useful method >of military targeting for anyone who does not hold the keys. It's called "S/A" (Selective Availability) which is the NWO term for adding errors that "authorized" users can remove. (Not to be confused with A/S, or anti-spoofing) It was originally intended to be turned on in wartime to deny the enemy accurate fixes, but during the Gulf War military GPS receivers were so scarce that the soldiers had to use commercial products, so the S/A actually was turned OFF then! Since then, pressure has been building to turn off S/A, since its usefulness is nearly zero. Even so, the amplitude of S/A errors are only a little larger than natural errors caused by satellite timing errors, atmospheric propagation variations, etc. The result is that DGPS is useful, which is (more or less) a fixed antenna and GPS system which knows where it is, and subtracts where it "seems" to be by GPS every second, and broadcasts the resulting error data on some terrestrial system to receivers locally. The result is errors down to the 1-meter level and even lower. That system compensates for both natural errors and S/A, so the whole purpose of having S/A is negated. Eventually S/A will probably be turned off permanently, but even then we'll want to continue to use DGPS systems. > >Perhaps Ms. Denning is suggesting that the US feral government could >act as a "trusted server" (and she has repeatedly suggested such trust) >and tell us whether a GPS that "thinks" it's at some location, right now, >is REALLY at some known location. Denning's trust for the government is apparently boundless. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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NPR is talking about smart card purses...
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Chase, Citi, MC and others are offering a stored value card on the west side of Manhattan. They're saying that smart cards are faster than cash. Stick the card in, say yes to the amount. The terminals are wired directly to a bank account, so we're looking at a book entry system, it looks like... The announcer is breathless at the possibilities.... I wonder if this is CAFE, Mondex, or what? anyone know? Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell The e$ Home Page: http://thumper.vmeng.com/pub/rah/

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Re: [NOISE] Re: onyma
by Robert A. Rosenberg 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:04 4/10/96, Alan Bostick wrote: >As an experienced professional in this field, I have learned that where >rules of spelling, grammar, vocabulary come from is *usage*. Words >become accepted parts of the language because people start to use them. >The acceptance of words is recognized by their adoption in to lexicons >and dictionaries, but this is description, not prescription. > >If you want to be linguistically correct and ensure that 'onyma' >prevails over 'nym,' you've got a lot of catching up to do. 'Nym' is >is clearly established by usage on the Cypherpunks list, and I expect >it's only a matter of time before it starts showing up in print media, >if it hasn't already, and get listings in the Jargon File, then >dictionaries, etc. > >You can't fight usage; it is usage that makes the language as she is >spoke what it is. I agree with you and I'll go further and state that the use of "nym" is due to it being the suffix of all the terms that are lumped into it _AND_ is spoken in them as a separate (and last) syllable. Use of ONYM would not be as obvious since the "o" is _part_ of the prior syllable _not_ the prior syllable (also none of the words use ONYMA so that is also not a good term to the general public <g>). This is a case of using the last syllable of a number of terms/words as a generic term for all of them (or the use of that syllable as a generic suffix to other words to create a new term with the connotation of that suffix's meaning [as in using -ism at the end of other words]).

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Re: Anonymous Remailer threat: Scientologists may subpoena anonymous remailerrecords?
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 7:37 PM 4/10/96, Jim Byrd wrote: >The story is weirder than that. The first poster of church secrets (with >lots of commentary) was Dennis Erlich, an ex-scientologist. Dennis was >raided and sued, and is awaiting trial. His ISP, Tom Klemesrud, refused His ISP was Netcom. Klemesrud respresents Netcom. >to find the identity of -AB-. This turned out to be an alumni account at >Cal Tech. The poster has never been heard from again. This was without a doubt just a user of one of Hal Finney's remailers he runs out of an account at Caltech. (There's a tiny chance it was someone else, but it fits the description of Hal's "alumni" remailer exactly, and is almost certainly just that.) This is a Cypherpunk-style remailer, and Hal is one of the original Cypherpunks. The concept of "The poster has never been heard from again" is essentially meaningless, unless he or she or signed the message and established a persistent personna. Sorry to sound picky, but I've just seen several messages all of which copy a long dialog from some Finnish guy named Kaj. Some of the messages then confuse the issues by confusing the types of remailers. --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: why compression doesn't perfectly even out entropy
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:36 PM 4/9/96 -0400, JonWienke(a)aol.com wrote: > Would anyone like to propose a means of measuring entropy that we can all > agree on? I haven't seen anything yet that everyone likes. Nor will you: To measure entropy is a deep unsolved philosophical and physical problem. Only a known distribution has a well defined entropy. If you do not know what kinds of order might be present in your data, you cannot define the entropy. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: Scientologists may subpoena anonymous remailer records
by me＠muddcs.cs.hmc.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Steve Reid writes: > When a person recieves a message from someone using an anonymous > remailer, the return address will usually work, depending on the > remailer. The return address is for an address on the remailer, and > sending to that address, the remailer will forward the message back to > the person who owns that anonymous address. > > The problem with that, of course, is that the remailer has to keep a > record of who owns each anonymous account, so that it can direct the > replies to the anonymous person. These records could be siezed. This is a very good reason to use one of the "alpha" pseudonym servers. These remailers in turn use other remailers to return the reply to the owner of the alias (crypted, of course). In this way, the server is operating in double-blind mode. However, the scariest thing about this is that the CoS was able to coerce the gov't in a foreign nation to get access to anon remailers. US remailers have always been suspect for just this reason, and I wait with bated breath to see whether or not the subpoena is issued. But if chaning outside the US won't even work, then the remailers aren't going to do a whole lot of good. > BTW, has anyone out there created an anonymous web forwarder? I'm sure > there are a lot of people out there who don't like the idea of having > their email address in the log files of dozens of web servers... Creating > a simple web forwarder wouldn't be hard. I've heard several people make this statement... Can anyone confirm that it is really possible to log the uid (username) of the person making the http request? I know they can get your ip address, but I'm skeptical of getting the username. me -- Michael Elkins <me(a)cs.hmc.edu> http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~me PGP key fingerprint = EB B1 68 32 3F B5 54 F9 6C AF 4E 94 5A EB 90 EC

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Re: Scientologists may subpoena anonymous remailer records
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:12 PM 4/10/96, Steve Reid wrote: >> I thought that most or all of the cypherpunk anonymous remailers don't >> keep records. Not even on backup tapes. The whole idea is that there >> aren't logs. But maybe they have found some remailers that are > >When a person recieves a message from someone using an anonymous >remailer, the return address will usually work, depending on the >remailer. The return address is for an address on the remailer, and >sending to that address, the remailer will forward the message back to >the person who owns that anonymous address. Not the standard "Cypherpunks"-style remailers, except with some fairly cumbersome tricks with "reply blocks" and/or message pools. I think you are thinking of Julf's system, of which there is only one instance, his. >I don't really know much about remailers, but I don't think there's much >to know... If I'm mistaken about any of the above, I'm sure someone will >correct me. Glad to oblige. I note also that Jim Byrd and Jim Warren are unclear on some details. (To Jim Byrd, that "alumni account at Cal Tech" that you mentioned was one of the Cypherpunks remailers at Caltech that our own pioneering Hal Finney runs.) Cypherpunks remailers account for something like 29 out of 30 of all the world's remailers, by site count, though not volume. Sophisticated users know that the Cypherpunks model is the only robust one; Julf's approach has an ecological niche, but is highly vulnerable to the very subpoena approach used recently (not "several years ago" as Jim Warren says). --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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On computer face recognition:
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On computer face recognition: >> Shaving probably will not be a problem, but holding your head at a >> slightly different angle... will screw up the system totally, >> unless the system has radically improved since the last time I read >> up on it. At 11:45 AM 4/9/96 -0500, K00l Secrets wrote: > Well, the systems I have seen are quite good at finding people's eyes. > Scaling (for distance), and rotation (for the angle of your head) > therefore don't really confuse the system once it has your eyes. Finding the eyes can only control for rotations in the plane of the image, when you tilt your head to one side. They cannot handle the much more common case of 3D rotations, where you look slightly to the right or slightly to the left of camera. Facial expressions also throw them badly. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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