December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: WhoWhere.com v. that stanford.edu loon
by Rich Graves 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Monday night, I wrote: >I am confident that the Parsec folks are now acting in good faith, and >that they are now sensitive to the relevant privacy and ethical issues. [parsec.com = whowhere.com] I may have spoken too soon. I might be interested in talking, privately, with their venture capitalists and allies, which include Netscape and InfoSeek. I think if you want a service of this kind, those four11.com guys, who started out with the SLED PGP key certification service, are absolutely terrific. - -rich [not on cypherpunks -- no, not just because I'm throwing a tantrum; I'm honestly embarrassed at my own behavior, and need a break.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMYbSd43DXUbM57SdAQGLGQP/WL/IWBM2rjpChUtn20T+iylKgtvqE3GT nqs45S1M4YAV/0sQcbhjCr9ZDkyH60ei4VpORLaXy+J3EHkEFMO9j0KKGEU9nWAQ T2R7YIIziWkQXDO92M08ezfXlT6hwRKCqf9VhfLl+PGEdBgVfAE2oS8exmQtEkF1 Td89ZQD+VT0= =ddQ0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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[Fwd: Cylink can export 128-bit DH?]
by peng-chiew low 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: Calling other code in Java applications and applets
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"shamrock(a)netcom.com" 30-APR-1996 08:43:38.24 >Presumably, such packages would have to be signed by Sun. Needless to say, >these certificates would cost money. A potentially lucrative source of >revenue for Sun. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that, no... as long as Sun isn't (as TCMay speculated indirectly) pressured into not signing such packages if they were crypto-usable. Does Sun currently do much business with the US Government, particularly sections (e.g., the military, law enforcement and intelligence ones) susceptible to being influenced by the NSA? -Allen

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Re: Former CIA Director and *Strategic Investment* Editor
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:15 PM 4/30/96 -0400, Black Unicorn wrote: > > >I typoed. > >Virginia should read "Maryland" in my last post. That's okay; it was only a small slip. Small. Maybe the same magnitude as that secretary who said that Vincent Foster's body was first found in "the parking lot" rather than "the park." Right? (I don't really even care about Vincent Foster, BTW.) Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Former CIA Director and *Strategic Investment* Editor
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:49 PM 4/30/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: > >Looking for conspiracies in the almost certainly accidental drowning of >Colby is an even bigger waste of time than spending vast efforts trying to >show that Vince Foster was killed by the O.T.O. Why are you the second person to use the term "conspiracy" when I didn't mention such a thing? Got "conspiracies" on your brain, Tim? Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Freedom and security
by angels＠wavenet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>You will pardon my asking this, but, security from what? Who are the >evil Network Terrorists throwing Bit Bombs or whatever? The only >security you need on the internet is keeping your site from being >broken in to, which is mostly a matter of setting it up >properly. What, exactly, is the "Security" that you are offering us? > >Perry I am not offering "you" anything unless you have a problem and are looking for some assistance. Just because you feel safe / immune from becoming a victim of internet crime does not mean that there are no victims at all. Site security is not at all the only problem. Are you not aware of spams and scams going on all the time? Are you not aware that sexual predators operate in IRC? Or that child pornography is a world wide trading game? Have you never heard of email forgeries or impersonation? What about tthe victims of harassment and hatred who don't know how to deal with it? What about all the people who have never heard of killfiles? Who don't know how to report a problem nor who to report it to? Haven't you ever been mail bombed and wished you could find out who did it? Maybe you feel like a veterano and can afford to look condesendingly at all the thousands of fresh-faced netizens just arriving online and say "well if they can't take the heat they should stay out of the fire" - but if we are to call ourselves an emerging "community" then we must take responsibility for our city, and that means caring about other people's problems. The internet is not just a collection of bits and bytes - it's real people doing real things to each other. When your address is forged and you get flamed and bombed, or if you start receiving anonymous death threats, your freedom is under threat. It's not enough to say "Well I just turn off my monitor" The Internet is a city - it needs 911 services and it needs Neighborhood Watches. And neither professional law enforcement nor neighborhood watch are by definition a threat to anyone's freedom. Freedom within the context of Community does not and never has meant the freedom to kill your neighbor, or rob someone, or rape someone, or harm someone. In the context of the internet Community too, freedom is not the individual's right to do whatever he or she likes - because then the Community is no longer free. Freedom is under threat from two directions - from selfish individuals who care little for the Community, and from the over zealousness of governments who seek greater and greater control over individual thought and action. The first step is to acknowledge that we have a problem within the Internet Community - because if we don't address it responsibly then we have only ourselves to blame when the governments try to take it over. We can face our problems or we can deny that they exist. By asking me the question: "What crime?" you are indicating to me that you prefer denial. ********************************************************* Colin Gabriel Hatcher - CyberAngels Director angels(a)wavenet.com "Two people may disagree, but that does not mean that one of them is evil" *********************************************************

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Re: Freedom and security
by angels＠wavenet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Ray wrote > Freedom is already diminishing at an alarming pace. >That is why cypherpunks spread crypto, and why Libertarians like >me rant. Freedom does not increase through more laws. Nor does freedom increase through less laws or no laws. Freedom increases as respect and care for one another increases. Meanwhile, since we do not live in utopia, all societies at a certain level of economic development and of a certain size of population require law and law enforcement to protect citizens from predators. The Internet is beyond the stage of small communities exercising informal social controls (peer pressure). It's now a major industrial city and will develop law, law enforcement and government, whether anyone likes it or not, not least because the Community will always respond to crime by trying to protect itself. And the crime is already here. The idea that the Internet is not controlled is IMHO one of the biggest myths around. It's like a large group of people are still living in some far-off utopian rural paradise. Does anyone really doubt the extent of State control and power across the Net? My point is that this is inevitable. The Internet is a mirror of the rest of the world, not a new form of society, and I fail to understand why anyone should be surprised that that is the case. >.... laws only breed more laws, which always lead to >less freedom. I disagree with this statement. I do not believe that laws breed more laws nor that laws lead to less freedom. I believe bad laws compromise freedom (eg CDA) while good laws protect freedom. >>I don't believe that security is the enemy of >>freedom. I believe that freedom needs security in order to exist at all. > >Good. Join us in spreading cryptography around, and security will >bloom (along with freedom). Cryptography enhances and protects privacy, which does not inevitably lead to greater security. Security for the sender, yes, in that no one else can read the message, but security for the Community? Doesnt that depend what the message said? The technology itself is neutral. Child pornographers encrypt their hard drives so that law enforcement cannot gather crime evidence - that is certainly a state of greater security for the pornographer, but it does not improve our Community, and as child pornography increases, the law is by definition broken more and more, and so the Community becomes less free than before. And that's not the tyranny of government but the tryanny of criminals. I do in fact support cryptography for personal security, not least because I can ensure that my messages are authenticated. CyberAngels PGP public key will be up on our new website opening very soon. I've had enough of people forging my email. ********************************************************* Colin Gabriel Hatcher - CyberAngels Director angels(a)wavenet.com "Two people may disagree, but that does not mean that one of them is evil" *********************************************************

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Re: Freedom and security[noise]
by liberty＠gate.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Uni wrote: >On Wed, 1 May 1996, Steven Weller wrote: > >> >Jim Ray wrote >> [...] >Watch your attributation, Jim Ray did not write this. > Now three people, counting me, have corrected him. I feel flattered knowing folks are actually watching what I say so careully. If I'd only known, I would have kept my mouth shut. I had a typospasm earlier today during my pre-coffee jury-nullification rant this AM, so I guess I should also try harder to do my best to take care before hitting the ol' button. Regards, Jim Ray <liberty(a)gate.net> "The FAA, FBI, Customs, CIA, Justice, DEA and the IRS were all involved in Mena. They won't say how they were involved, but they will tell you there is nothing there." -- Bill Plante, CBS News Correspondent, & Michael Singer, Producer, CBS News, New York. in Tuesday, May 3, 1994's Wall Street Journal letters to the editor section. [OK, OK, I know, we aren't Menapunks!] :) JMR _______________________________________________________________________ PGP key Fingerprint 51 5D A2 C3 92 2C 56 BE 53 2D 9C A1 B3 50 C9 C8 Public Key id. # E9BD6D35 -- http://www.shopmiami.com/prs/jimray _______________________________________________________________________ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Freedom isn't Freeh. iQCVAwUBMYgACm1lp8bpvW01AQF/SQQAivRbyRfl6mMwq73voOfCX+BrQhGEQU6l ZHozejbwpYlWYxJsb/ncFSi5S5DZM7LjpVcY88QFRbGnGRZP1FmaWaktmBSGA/4d XJ8Cr9tnXxlWuvt6j0Gx840NwV5WIGoY88Z+UFyz2RTFYceLqVg4zuiouOri/WEs 17EwaQZcxKE= =RnJd -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Update II/113- Election Hoax (fwd)
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 30 Apr 96 13:38 CDT From: sns(a)borealis.com To: shomronnews(a)felix.dircon.co.uk Subject: Update II/113- Election Hoax SNS News Service "Election Hoax" April 30, 1996.. 11 Iyar 5756..Volume II, Number 113 ..Update from Israel [snip] Election Hoax According to a report released by the prestigious Jane's Defense Weekly, the new missile agreement between Israel and the United States is politically motivated and does not hold water. Mr. Christopher Fosi, an Editor of the Jane's Defense Weekly, and Mr. Douglas Barry, Aviation and Defense Editor of Flight International Weekly Magazine, stated the Nautilus Anti-Missile System is at least 4 years from being ready. The report states the system is "a poor fit or just does not meet Israel's needs". The report explains that since the Katusha rockets are launched from mobile sites, they can be moved around in a pick-up truck and this is just one reason the system is ineffective. Fosi discounts tests that were carried out in Mexico as not accurate and stated the reasons behind the ceremony surrounding the new missile deal appear to be political in nature, rather than a military-defensive move to protect Israel from Hizbullah rockets. The report also explains that Israel's Arrow Anti-Missile System is also not designed for Katusha rockets and is not an effective deterrent. Despite promises by President Clinton to supply Israel with an operational Nautilus system by late 1997, the two experts state it is not reality. (UPI..4/30, Ma'ariv Newspaper..4/30..Page 2). ****

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[RANT] Mr. Scruffy versus Mr. Neat
by mpd＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH(a)ocelot.Rutgers.EDU> writes: > One interesting phenomenon is the in-migration of neats > into formerly scruffy-only domains. For instance, take a > look at the third, fourth, and fifth international > conference proceedings on genetic algorithms. You've got > scruffies who are just doing what feels right and seeing if > it works (my viewpoint) and mathematicians/neats who are > trying to derive what _should_ work the best. The scruffy/neat competition has been around for a long time in the hard sciences as well. Good examples are the competing notions used by mathematicians and physicists for doing differential geometry, calculus of variations, and field theory, and the physicists who think physicists can do chemistry better than chemists can. Ultimately, there tends to be a merger of notations and approaches. The big Misner, Wheeler, Thorne book on Gravitation, for instance, presented everything both from the view of the physicists, who like to write everything as algebraic equations in terms of components of geometric objects with respect to a basis, and the view of mathematicians, who like abstract maps between abstract geometric objects, and terms like tangent spaces, exterior products, and germs. Usually the scruffies get great results using formal manipulation that horifies the neats, and then the neats come in and do the rigorous proofs that demonstrate that everything the scruffies did was valid. This was certainly the case in quantum mechanics as well, where questionable formal manipulation got the right answers for many years before a rigorous theory of unbounded linear transformations on Hilbert spaces was developed. Indeed, physicists happily computed commutators and anti-commutators of such operators blithely unaware of their domains and ranges long before the equivalent definitions in terms of one parameter Lie groups or projection valued measures were known. While Java is currently a scruffy invention and has yet to recieve the official blessing of the neats, there are a number of things that speak in its favor. First, object-oriented runtime structures such as those used by Java have pretty much been researched to death in various other venues, such as APL, APL2, Smalltalk, and the MIT Lisp Machine project. It is not likely that we will discover some previously unknown mode of corruption in such systems, and defensively coding interpreters for these kinds of languages and verifying them to prove that they contain no errors which could result in the violation of container boundaries is a well-developed art. This doesn't mean that such systems are free of bugs, of course, but it does mean that they are free of the type of really cute bugs that allow users to trick the machine into executing arbitrary machine instructions, or into making disingenuous requests to the kernel. Second, there is quite a bit of experience on the part of OS designers in meeting various levels of MIL Specs for security, and with the standard techniques, such as audit trails, authentication, and ACLs, which are commonly employed to implement the features required. So although the neats have not yet given Java their blessing, it is extremely unlikely we won't manage to create an environment which can safely run untrusted Java code, and filter the program's requests for system services in a way which will block and log any attempts to do nasty things, both for the Applet model, and for more general applications. A prior poster suggested that in the absence of formal proofs of correctness, flaws permitting the exploitation of covert channels and other such things in a language such as Java were "a certainty." I think the situation is more complicated than this suggests, and while I probably wouldn't want an artificial heart with Java software today, I think a lot of the worries will resolve themselves as time passes, and the things we are all discussing are implemented.

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