December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Idea Futures - current application
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Of course, a form using anonymnity would be preferable. I find it very interesting that the Commodity Futures Trading Comission is allowing this; it increases my opinion of them. If someone would forward this to the extropy list, the idea futures folks on there would find it interesting. -Allen Reuters New Media _ Monday April 1 2:32 PM EST _ U.S. Traders Play Political Futures In Cyberspace CHICAGO - As primaries in the American Midwest confirmed Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole's clean sweep, a Wall Street trader logged into the Internet on his home computer and made one last trade before going to bed. [....] These political futures contracts are not available at the huge, traditional exchanges that trade billions of dollars per day. Instead, the contracts are on the 24-hour Iowa Electronic Markets (IEM), which trades several thousand dollars per day. The IEM, setup in 1988 by the University of Iowa, is a not-for-profit political futures market open to traders globally via the Internet, under the regulatory scope of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. An estimated 5,800 people have registered as IEM members by sending checks or money orders to open trading accounts of $5 up to $500 to trade various world political markets that also include Austria's Vienna City Parliament Election and Canada's British Columbia Provincial Elections. Collectively, accounts total about $150,000, said Joyce Berg, a professor of accounting and director of markets at the University of Iowa. [...] In that race, IEM payoffs are determined by the candidate who wins the majority of popular votes. Contracts in the candidate receiving the largest number of popular votes will pay $1 each while all other contracts will expire worthless. "For those of you with Web access, let me point you to an astounding place for us market geeks -- the Iowa Electronic Market," one trader wrote in the Option Fool newsletter, written and distributed via the Internet. "It's a fun market," said Gary Sparks a stock options trader at Group One Trading who participated in the market during the last presidential election four years ago. But some take the IEM seriously because each candidate's contract price in cents can be translated into his percentage chance of winning. And in the past two U.S. presidential races, the IEM has predicted the winner with an average 0.2-percent absolute margin for error. That compares to the next most accurate Harris poll with a 1.2 percent margin of error, according to the Iowa Political Market's data. That type of accuracy has caught the eyes of at least a few U.S. stock options traders and has earned a weekly spot in a New York Post newspaper roundup of presidential polls. Jeff Yass of Susquehanna Investment Group said he considers what IEM markets are showing when making trading decisions in stocks and options. "Clinton and Dole have been in a tighter race (on the IEM) than any of the Wall Street analysts have predicted," he noted. [...] Copyright 1996 Reuters Ltd.

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No Subject
by Batman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Please PUT me OUT of YOUR cypherpunks AND other MAIL-LISTS Thankx

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Re: Scientologists may subpoena anonymous remailer records
by Powers Glenn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

- > 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. Yes, there are several web interfaces to anonymous remailers out there (check altavista). No, they cannot get your username UNLESS you have logged into the site by entering a username and password into a www auth dialogue box -or- you are on a Unix box which is running identd -and- the remote site runs a check (unlikely and DOES NOT apply to dialups, unless you are running identd on your dialup). Even in the extremely unlikely event of a remailer running a check using identd, that would not show up in the standard web logs. It would be theorically possible to get a username/True Name from an IP address if you were on a dialup and the ISP kept track of who was on what dialup and when. glenn

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Re: No matter where you are, you can lie.
by rkmoore＠iol.ie 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

4/10/96, Peter Trei wrote: >Therefore any site that can see the same set of satellites as the site it is >trying to simulate can do so, buffering less than 50 ms of waveforms and >pretending to be on the end of a slow link. That's what I assumed in the first place. Thanks, Peter, for doing the math. Do you have a solution as satellites cross the horizon, or for very-distant spoofing? ...co-conspirator nodes tightly-coupled via laser or wire? -rkm (not on cypherpunks)

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Lotus notes 24 bit hack project?
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

reading notes on the recent RSA conference reminds me of something. Lotus announced their 64 bit encryption for foreign users some months ago, with 24 bits secretly "owned" by the NSA. there was some speculation here about how this was handled. could the system be so insecure as to have a unique 24 bits used across every foreign key? or are those 24 bits somehow algorithmically determined from the other 40 bits, with the algorithm a secret? in any case it seems that reverse engineering of Lotus Notes would provide the answer, and we'd be able to embarrass both NSA and Lotus (who imho deserves it, for caving in to the NSA) all in the same sweep by revealing it to the world!!! I would bet this would be worth some more NYT or WSJ almost-front-page ink for some lucky cpunks if someone can pull this off!! this would be a *major* new feather in the cpunk cap, and I'd enthusiastically support anyone attempting to work on this project (maybe writing HTML pages for information or something). cypherpunks, start your disassemblers!!

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Re: Know Your Net.Enemies Project
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:47 AM 4/11/96, Declan B. McCullagh wrote: >Would anyone be interested in collaborating on a "Know Your Net Enemies" >project? > >We'd start with a resource like Bob Chatelle's excellent web pages at ><http://world.std.com/~kip/bcfenatl.html> and with permission build on >it and list the deceptions and misrepresentations each Net-Enemy has >engaged in -- what each has done to restrict liberty online. We'd >include original documents and links as appropriate. .. Sort of like Nixon's Enemies List? Have we become the enemy? Flippancy aside, this strikes me as being a terribly negative, destructive, and counterproductive way of approaching things. It could easily backfire in the media, as they note the "Enemies List," or "The Page of Shame." Recall how the recent "List of Shame" was reacted to, as some people clamored to be added. And just how would "Net-Enemies" be decided upon? By vote? By acclamation? By whomever wants to create an entry? Would Denning (Dorothy) be on the list, but not Denning (Peter)? How about Barlow? Maybe the whole EFF power structure at the time of the Wiretap Act should be added to the Net-Enemies list...I'll start working on this right away. Well, count me out. I know who I think are the people receptive to my concerns and viewpoints, and the people not receptive...and I don't need an Enemies List to tell me. I'd prefer to evaluate people I haven't yet reached a decision on based on their own merits. --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: questions about bits and bytes [NOISE]
by JonWienke＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In a message dated 96-04-11 20:26:44 EDT, jeffb(a)sware.com writes: >[I told myself I was going to stay out of this, but Jim Bell's dogmatic >stance irks me... ] Here's a citation from "Portability of C Programs >and the Unix System" by S.C. Johnson and D.M. Ritchie (yes, that Richie) >in the Bell System Technical Journal volume 57, Number 6, July-August 1978. Citing sources from 1978 in the computing field is a little like using dictionaries from the 1800's to dictate modern English usage. My desktop machine has as much computing power as some colleges had during that era. We've come a long way, baby! Yes, in the past, the term "byte" applied to entities other than 8 bits, but "8 bits" IS the commonly accepted, standard meaning of "byte" now, in the present. The fact that the meaning and usage of words can change over time is not relevant to current meaning and usage. Anyone who wishes to dispute this should study the etymology of the word "gay." Jonathan Wienke

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Re: Digital Cash Escrow
by jf_avon＠citenet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To: Cypherpunks(a)toad.com from: jf_avon(a)citenet.net date: 11 Avril 96 ======================================= John Deters <jad(a)dsddhc.com> wrote: >ObOtherListComplaint (doesn't everyone?): Has anyone suffered ill-effects >by having their mail program filter Jim Bell's postings? Does anyone, especially in Canada, ever noticed that them or their local net friends had their snail mail opened? A friend of mine has his regularly opened; he complained to Canada Post three times, but it stills goes on AFAIK. He is pissed off at me, convinced that the forwarding of Jim Bell's AP related articles is what justified the mail opening. Actually, he does not even reply to my e-mails anymore. We used to be great friends... Neither of us ever engaged in any subversive activities or are involved in illegal actions. It seems that FUD got him. ...sigh... He even refused to *touch* PGP. He is a professionnal programmer, in C++, win, and OS-2. Can you believe it?!? Any comments? JFA -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i iQEVAwUBMW1pKsiycyXFit0NAQG3Rwf+PUFu0geKEXOEYktp5MP6ao4Yb0CfPSWA dbnZ4R4kJsLm7jQ8tNXdo8KsLRhL7+Qe3NNfAKvTQVmvrN45QImyKk+fZd77Cady TLKuNEYCx1FCrIpLewM13sLj4twCcNpvCIJNRsVV8Q3xcyWkfNJ6PSAakDa2POnD spPnEz0Ptepw58KXoM0G36lE6fJnfv83PEeaogjE+h8Gsxf1uzhK1ZAQxpB6QHLP 4cizjFyKNfEZIVKK4kXebWr7wlalE87XTC6wWpXLQ8XuNYtbzKWG+wB747IpbN2a ijKDBf9fXAZRB/qVQUdF/toEWJ/+Vg6LniFgmYq1EQqToUiPMRT48A== =NnBW -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Protocols at the Point of a Gun
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There are serious technical problems with the suggestion that labelling packets as "Adult" or "Child" using IP options and filtering at ISPs for censorship. IP works on a per-machine basis (technically, a per-network-interface basis, though for most client machines that's the same thing.) That means that a web or nntp server including some "Adult" material and some "Child" material either needs a way for an application process to communicate this to the network drivers, or needs to label all packets as "Adult" to avoid the politically incorrect risk of mislabelling a packet as "Child" when it's not. The standard TCP/IP API programming interface software on Windows, Mac, and Unix machines doesn't provide for applications to _tell_ the network drivers about IP options, so even if IPng had censorship features added, the applications couldn't use it. (There are a few military multi-level security versions of Unix that give you more flexibility for this sort of thing, but they tend to provide mandatory security so you _can't_ send a packet marked "UNCLASSIFIED" from a "TOP SECRET" session.) Another problem is that it only addresses single-user client machines, rather than multi-user operating systems such as Linux, which has a million or so users out there. The model works fine when you treat a PC as a fancy version of a dumb terminal, but a machine shared by multiple users (whether many at one time, or one at a time) uses a single connection to support all of them - that means you can't have censored material available to the child and uncensored material available to the parent unless the networking software can pass the censorship labels on to the application program - but again, the standard operating system interfaces (developed over many years by thousands of The Free World's finest developers :-) don't have a way to implement it, because it was never a design goal. Trying to implement censored sessions at a transport level instead has its own problems. First of all, TCP provides reliable sessions; censoring packets based on IP labels in the middle of a transaction means that TCP will retransmit until the packet gets through or it gives up and drops the connection, so any "Adult" packets would dump a Registered Child out of the browser, even if they were unintentional (e.g. from an Adult who labels all packets "Adult" to avoid being liable for mistakes, or packets from Europe that were default-labelled by a service provider to avoid having to read them all, or from the Library of Congress Online Edition if the Librarian labels each packet correctly.) On the other hand, UDP packet exchange, which doesn't use sessions, would require validating the user's ID and authorization on each packet. Furthermore, if the censorship information is carried at the transport level, or at a higher level (i.e. headers in the message itself), the only way the ISP's routers, which work at the IP level, can censor packets is to perform the equivalent of the Post Office steaming open envelopes before delivering them to your house, and refusing to deliver them if there's a child living in the house and the letter either contains a bad word or is written in a language the Post Office doesn't understand, such as Finnish or Japanese or PGP. At 04:03 PM 4/10/96 -0700, Lucky Green wrote: >At 9:48 4/10/96, Duncan Frissell wrote: >>We know that governments would like to impose things like the Simple >>Tax Transfer Protocol on the Net as well as Is A Person (and Is A Minor) >>Protocols. > >There is one thing about the proposed minor flag addition to IP that I >don't understand. [No, I am not surprised by this. Mandatory authorization >to establish a connection and an "Internet Driver License", probably in the >form or a smart card are coming]. >If my computer creates the IP packet, what is there to prevent me from >modifying the value of the "Minor/Adult" flag at my leisure? If you create outgoing packets that are labelled "Minor", and contain "Restricted to Government-Certified Adults Only, and No Felons or Foreigners Allowed" material, you can get busted for it. So you have to either restrict all your outgoing packets to be labelled "RtG-C Adults O,aNFoFA", or else make sure all the material you transmit passes the "Government-Approved-for-Minors, Foreigners, and Victorian ladies" filter. On the other hand, if you don't log in to your ISP with a "government-certified adult, non-felon, non-foreigner, politically stable, not-a-Commie-or-Jew" id, it'll block any packets not approved for you. Any news or web server will also have refuse to send any "Adult"-labelled material to you if the requests arrived on a "Kid"-labelled connection - this means that either the server machine will have to only carry Kid-approved traffic, or only talk to Adults, or add an "Adult" label to all outgoing packets whether marked "Kid" or not, or else it will have to break protocol boundaries by passing IP-layer information up to the application. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215

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Re: Tense visions of future imperfect
by jf_avon＠citenet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >What the bank does is keep a list of all spent serial numbers, not all >issued ones (since it doesn't know those). That way it can detect double >spending. Correct me if I'm wrong: It means that the weakest point of the digital cash chain is the server. If the server's database is tampered with, or lost, then, the double-spending can be done (in case of loss, if ever the server is put back online) Does that means that for all practical purposes, a server should be run from a vault with security comparable to a big money repository? JFA -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i iQEVAwUBMW1dnsiycyXFit0NAQFpPQf6A/IvZWumneiGU1IERxbs/udunwFWHWVG p+rbAK9h7bDYG+6NcFCIJp97n4MGfH8/+bbPLV4eIuv+5eyTKRkB+1IdOkVNUhEq LGcKGN1iAScQvLxj+cM/3nthAhDxdaMBXmyaylnphgqh9slKJg7FppWpBfLI56nt YYZJ69ThyYMVCN/g9o5G0zbzYefKFOzV/0lbxaGUn0G/KoKbURMut1NlMdfmhmqw BbTd50ae8LVWLjxlVs5Gi5Ui9Loa2DKlSR5PIp1vlFDSk1UBAjTbbK8fSKVhkEFn thI+YXLifA73LOJNdBWwvneTWyy+kdVxHBSDVFEXH2HMsR4LYeHF1g== =JxPP -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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