December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Do You Like What You See In The Mirror ?
by 18205549＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: Kid Gloves or Megaphones
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>It is true that the issuer is unable to discover that double blinding is >>being used. The real problem with the protocol is that it requires >>payor/payee collusion, which may make it difficult to execute. At 07:58 PM 5/4/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote: > Can the payee discover that the payor isn't colluding before the bank >can figure out who the payee is? If the payor is not colluding, then the payee will immediately discover he has not been paid, because the checksums are wrong, and his software says "bad payment" If the payor is colluding, then no matter what he reveals to the bank, the bank cannot discover the payee. Note that with payee anonymity, the payee does not have to promptly check in his money, so the bank has no hope of narrowing the search by coincidence in time. But if the payee is colluding, then the payor can be detected by coincidence in time. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | 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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Economics Quest
by Andrew＠mail.demon.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, My name is Andrew, I'm 15, I live in the UK and I'm studing economics at standard grade level. Can you please spare a few minutes of your valuable time to answer my questionaire @ http://www.alexanderhomes.demon.co.uk/economics/personal.html I have constructed it as part of my standard grade course work, so I'm relying on your co-operation! ;-) thanks in advance Andrew

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Re: CryptoAnarchy: What's wrong with this picture?
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:53 AM 5/4/96 -0700, Sandy Sandfort wrote: > What Black Unicorn writes is quite > correct IF ONE IS CONCERNED WITH LEGAL CORRECTNESS. And if the IRS is concerned with legal correctness. I note that a number of ingenious and popular tax minimization gimmicks have in the end failed to benefit anyone other than their promoters. When you need a pallet and a forklift truck to carry the tax code, it does not matter much what the books say. The more bits of paper you send the IRS, the more they know about you. The more they know about you, the more they can shake you down. Sending ingenious and unusual bits of paper crafted by a clever lawyer merely alerts them to the smell of money. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | 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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F-C CDA Dispatch #9: Battle of the Briefs
by Declan B. McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fight-Censorship Dispatch #9 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The CDA Challenge: Battle of the Briefs ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Declan McCullagh / declan(a)well.com / Redistribute freely ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- In this update: Anti-porn groups egg on the Justice Department Confusion in the ranks: What's indecent? Theocratic right cites Rimm study in pro-CDA journal article Broad coalition files pro-ACLU brief What's next? MAY 4, 1996 -- The CDA is a "work of art" that "is sensitive to the First Amendment," Bruce Taylor and Cathy Cleaver argue in an amicus brief supporting the DoJ filed in Philadelphia earlier this week. The two longtime anti-pornsters submitted this weighty 85-page legal document -- complete with over 100 pages of attachments including Jake Baker's notorious snuff story -- on Monday, the same day the ACLU, ALA, and the DoJ submitted their post-trial briefs, findings of fact, and proposed conclusions of law. I had asked Enough is Enough! to FedEx me the Taylor/Cleaver draft, but The Brucester himself showed up at my office with a copy the next afternoon, chipper and grinning and bouncing about. ("Hide your porn!" he yelled as he walked in.) Taylor was in town for smut-research and he clearly was proud of his completed legal object d'art. What else could it be, with such delectable oeuvres as this: Expecting children to locate hidden Easter eggs sounds reasonable and enjoyable, unless those who have hidden the eggs are aware that they are rotten. No reasonable person, who cares about the well-being of children, would leave it up to children to find and dispose of rotten eggs. In the world of online communications, parents will be left as children, hunting frantically for thousands upon thousands of rotten eggs in a cyberworld of indecency, scurrying to find all of them before children are contaminated. [p35] The arguments advanced in the brief -- a joint venture of Morality in Media, the National Law Center for Children and Families, the Family Research Council, Enough is Enough!, and the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families -- center around one concept: indecency means pornography. That idea stinks like, well, a rotten egg. Their argument, which mirrors the DoJ's, goes as follows: 1. The CDA merely "updates" and "amends" Federal obscenity statutes and dial-a-porn laws. 2. All the CDA does is require adults who use "patently offensive" sexual expression to "put electronic blinder racks" in front of their "pornography." 3. The test for "indecency" is not vague or overbroad and does not apply to "serious works of literature, art, science, and politics." 4. What is indecent "is well known to the public and the operators of mass communications media facilities." (If "indecency" is too vague, the CDA is unconstitutional.) 5. The court has an obligation "to interpret these sections narrowly." That is, the three-judge panel should *reinterpret* the CDA to affect only "prurient pornography." Taylor calls this "judicial narrowing," and when I spoke with him he insisted that it was what the court will do. Equating "indecency" with "pornography" is misleading, since courts have held that George Carlin's monologue and Allen Ginsberg's poetry can be regulated as indecent. As cyberlibertarian attorney Harvey Silverglate writes on the fight-censorship mailing list: My objection to the current debate is that they talk of "smut." My client, Allen Ginsberg, wants to broadcast some of the finest poetry written this century in this country. The "family values" brief concludes: Purely selfish motivations based on one's desire to rebel against the "government" and be free from society's code of conduct in "cyberspace" is NOT a legal justification that should be accepted by the courts... Criminal laws against distributing pornography to children have literally saved countless lives. These lives are needed not for any threat posed by men of good will, but rather by those who would exploit the vulnerable and impressionable for their personal gain... Senators Exon and Coats deserve thanks from every family in America and the CDA deserves to be upheld. Do I detect some pride of CDA authorship from Taylor and Cleaver? Though the Hon. Jim Exon *does* deserve our thanks -- for retiring. +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ CONFUSION IN THE RANKS: WHAT'S INDECENT? +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ The Justice Department and their anti-porn crusading allies can't even agree on who should be locked up under the CDA. On page 27 of his brief, Bruce Taylor cites the Amateur Action images and Jake Baker's explicit rape-and-murder story as examples of net.materials that are harmful to minors and that show "callous disregard for public decency." The EFF, a plaintiff in the ACLU coalition lawsuit, has Baker's story on its web site and has made it clear in an affidavit that they distribute such material online in the context of legal discussions. But the DoJ says in their post-trial brief filed on Monday: "It can be said that none of the plaintiffs' Web sites appear to engage in the type of speech which Congress has targeted in the CDA." So does Baker's story violate the CDA or not? Do you believe Taylor, a former Cleveland city prosecutor, a former senior trial attorney in the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the Criminal Division of the DoJ -- a guy who crows that he played "a central role in the development and passage" of the CDA? Or the DoJ attorneys, who are charged with enforcing it?? Even the DoJ's own witnesses can't come up with a good working definition, as the ACLU illustrates in their post-hearing brief: The responses offered by government witnesses Schmidt and Olsen to the Court's questions illustrated just how freewheeling the subjective, discretionary judgments of police and prosecutors would be... Dr. Olsen opined that any of "the seven dirty words" made famous by the Pacifica decision, or their synonyms, could be subject to [the CDA] and should therefore be "tagged," as should nudes even if displayed on a museum web site. +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ THEOCRATIC RIGHT CITES RIMM STUDY IN PRO-CDA JOURNAL ARTICLE +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ Thanks to the American Center for Law and Justice, Marty Rimm's bogus cyberporn study just won't die. The ACLJ is a legal advocacy group for the theocratic right -- Pat Robertson's response to the ACLU. Says Robertson: "Someone has got to stop the ACLU in court, and that's what we're going to do." They're trying -- the ACLJ submitted Yet Another amicus brief over a week ago supporting the Justice Department's defense of the CDA. In the latest issue of the Journal of Technology Law and Policy, the ACLJ defends the CDA and uncritically cites Rimm's discredited study. A clue to the quality, honesty, and integrity of the ACLJ's scholarship can be found in the way the group argues that Rimm's "research" and TIME magazine's cover story provide evidence of "smutty sex and scatologica" and justification for net-regulation: {17} On June 26, 1995, Senator Charles Grassley spoke in support of his legislation, the "Protection of Children from Computer Pornography Act of 1995. [20] Speaking to the motivation for his bill, which would have amended the federal criminal code, Senator Grassley warned the Senate of "the availability and the nature of cyberporn." He advised the Senate on a Carnegie Mellon University study of visual images available on the Internet... Note the ACLJ's convenient fiction of the "Carnegie Mellon Study." The group never reveals that Rimm was an undergraduate passing himself off as a faculty member, that his study has no credibility outside theocratic right lobby groups, that the study itself is fraudulent, and that CMU is investigating Rimm for ethical violations. Somehow I'm not surprised that the authors of the ACLJ article, Jay Alan Sekulow and James Matthew Henderson, overlooked those details. Sekulow did not respond to email inquiries. +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ BROAD COALITION FILES PRO-ACLU BRIEF +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ Last month a broad coalition of professional groups, academics, ISPs, and individuals opposed to the CDA submitted a Brief of Amici Curiae in support of the ACLU lawsuit and motion for a preliminary injunction. That brief is now online. Represented by the Philadelphia law firm of Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis, the coalition includes the Authors Guild, American Society of Journalists and Authors, Feminists for Free Expression, Palmer Museum of Art, Philadelphia Magazine, Psinet, Inc., and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Some of my favorite excerpts: It is not only speakers on the Internet who feel the chill posed by the CDA. The millions who access speech on the Internet feel it as well. [...] Recipients of speech are equally entitled to protection under the First Amendment. That protection is afforded "to the communication, to its source and to its recipients both." Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748, 756 (1976). Abuses involving "indecent" and "patently offensive" behavior also are perpetrated today, and the Internet is the quickest and most effective tool for exposing them. One wonders whether the disappearances or indeed the Holocaust would have occurred so brazenly if the Internet had been reporting on them twenty or sixty years ago. +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ WHAT'S NEXT? +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ The closing arguments for our case are scheduled for May 10, when the plaintiffs and the DoJ will present an expected four hours of closing arguments. The three-judge panel likely will issue a decision three or four weeks later, and appeals from either side go directly to the Supreme Court. What happens if we lose? The ACLU's Ann Beeson said on HotWired's Club Wired last week: Losing the facial challenge would not by any means end the matter -- that is, we could still argue that the CDA is unconstitutional "as applied" to particular defendants that DOJ decided to prosecute. Of course, in the meantime we'd still see a huge chill on protected speech... It is clear that we have the facts on our side -- the much harder question is the law itself, and unfortunately, it is a rare day that a federal court will overturn an Act of Congress. (But I remain cautiously optimistic.) If you're near Philly, stop by the Federal courthouse at 7th and Market Streets at 9:30 am on Friday. The courtroom will be packed. Stay tuned for more reports. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- We're back in court on May 10 for closing arguments. Mentioned in this CDA update: Excerpts from DoJ and anti-porn groups' CDA briefs: <http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/dl?num=2387> Transcript of Olsen's "-L18" description and other testimony: <http://www.cdt.org/ciec/transcripts/April_15_Olsen.html> More on ACLJ and Rimm study: <http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/dl?num=2328> Jake Baker story on EFF's web site: <http://www.eff.org/pub/Legal/Cases/Baker_UMich_case/baker.st

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Economics Quest
by Andrew＠mail.demon.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, My name is Andrew, I'm 15, I live in the UK and I'm studing economics at standard grade level. Can you please spare a few minutes of your valuable time to answer my questionaire @ http://www.alexanderhomes.demon.co.uk/economics/personal.html I have constructed it as part of my standard grade course work, so I'm relying on your co-operation! ;-) thanks in advance Andrew

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Re: Money Laundering Conference with Government Types
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:15 PM 5/5/96 -0400, Black Unicorn wrote: >On Sat, 4 May 1996, jim bell wrote: >> > Money Laundering and Asset Forfeiture are critical consequences for >> > the banks, attorneys, securities dealers and corporations, both >> > domestic and international, who may be inadvertently in >> > non-compliance. _Our program will give you:_ >> >> I wonder how long it's going to take before these "money-launderers" learn >> that by taking, say, 10% of the amount of money they launder in one year, >> they can eliminate the people trying to stop them. Forever. > >Been done. See e.g., Pablo Escobar. Nah, what happened to Escobar was a business falling-out. His business partners, the thugs in the US and Colombian governments, provided the illegality of drugs, a necessary element in keeping profits up. Escobar provided the drug trafficking, a necessary element in keeping thug...er...police employment high. It was a great system; worked for years and is still generally operational. Escobar must have done something to upset the arrangement, like refusing to pay off his handlers or maybe going out of business, etc. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Free Life #26 now available.
by Sean Gabb 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

22:09 05/05/1996 The article below, is taken from the latest issue of Free Life, the journal that I edit. Comments always welcome! Sean Gabb Editor Free Life A R T I C L E B E G I N S ===================================================================== A TIME TO BE DEPRESSED As I write, news is coming though on the wireless of a mad gunman in Tasmania. Twenty people are said to have been killed, and many more wounded. It will not have the same effect on opinion in this country as the Dunblane massacre, but it will add to the existing reaction. There will be more encouragement of people to hand in their guns at the local Police Station. There will be a toughening of the draft Firearms Bill promised for the early summer. Whether this really will ban the keeping of guns at home, it will certainly make them harder for ordinary people to obtain. To do so, of course, will not reduce the number of criminal shootings. There might be fewer Thomas Hamiltons - though I do not think there are many of these already. But there will be no fewer armed robbers and gangland "executioners". Indeed, so far as these might be deterred even by a public so little armed as ours currently is, there will be more of them. The real effect of a new Firearms Act will be to mark another stage in the collapse of English freedom. The more disarmed we are, the more armed criminals can move among us like a fox among chickens. The more this happens, the more we shall cry for protection to the authorities that disarmed us in the first place. In the short term, this will mean more powers of arrest and search, and more video cameras in the streets. In the medium term, it will mean identity cards. In the longer term, it will mean electronic tagging and surveillance, and efforts to isolate and remove whatever gene might be supposed to incline one to criminal behaviour. Now, given the elegance of this scheme, it is hard not to believe in conspiracies. It is even tempting to believe in them. They not only explain, but also give comfort. For all their cunning and malevolence, conspirators have the disadvantage of being a minority. They can be exposed, and thereby frustrated. Inside every conspiracy theorist is an optimist, never more than three steps from utopia. However, the truth is more depressing. There are surely people now calling for greater gun control who know that it cannot work as promised, and who do so for motives that range from the selfish to the sinister. But these people are not the source of the problem. The real source is a wilfully ignorant public. There are millions of people in this country who take it as common sense that limiting the availability of guns will also reduce the amount of armed crime; and who will not listen when told otherwise. And this does not stand alone. It is just another instance of the more general belief, that government action is the answer to every misfortune. The belief would be funny were its effects not so dangerous. A few children are bitten by dogs. As if this were a new and alarming thing, the public demands and the politicians supply the most imbecile law of the decade. A ferry sinks because someone left the door open. Half the passengers are too drunk to notice what is happening, and some of them drown. The result - actual controls that make crossing the Channel less of an adventure, and a demand for controls that would make it far more expensive. A Minister tells us that most eggs are bad. After the first wild panic, the Government has to make a food handling law that shuts down thousands of catering businesses, and makes food poisoning more rather than less common. Last month, the public got into a sweat about guns. Then it turned to mad cows. From today, it will be thinking about guns again. Of course, nations have flourished with far greater handicaps than the Dangerous Dogs Act and the prohibition of wooden chopping boards. I will even say that nearly eighty years of gun control have not yet turned this country into a police state; and another Firearms Act will not do so purely on its own. Bad laws are often tolerable while the structure of laws as a whole remains stable. But what we have here is a state of mind that throws up one bad law after another - a state of mind that will accept no restraints on its behaviour. It is no good to say that a particular freedom or rule of Common Law is worth preserving. It is no good saying that it has been established for hundreds of years. If it gets in the way of whatever "tough new law" is currently in fashion, it will be swept aside without regrets or second thoughts. Here is the true engine of collapse. Here is why the latest instalment of gun control will not terminate in itself, but lead on to worse. And here is what I find so depressing about it all. For I have no answers to give. I do not know why the British public has become so childish, nor what to do about it. I can only say that, unless some other cause can be made to intervene, things will end very badly. Sean Gabb ====================================================================== $$$$$$ $$$$$ $$$$$$ $$$$$$ $$ $$ $$$$$$ $$$$$$ $$ $$ $ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$ $$ $$$$ $$$$ $$ $$ $ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $ $$$$$$ $$$$$$ $$$$$$ $$ $$ $$$$$$ A Journal of Classical Liberal and Libertarian Thought Production: Editorial: c/o the Libertarian Alliance 123a Victoria Way 25 Chapter Chambers Charlton London SW1P 4NN London SE7 7NX Tel: **181 858 0841 Fax: **171 834 2031 E-mail: cea01sig(a)gold.ac.uk EDITOR OF FREE LIFE: SEAN GABB ====================================================================== FOR LIFE, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY ======================================================================

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Financial Relief
by que11331236＠compuserve.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: CryptoAnarchy: What's wrong with this picture?
by Jon Leonard 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jon Lasser wrote: > On Fri, 3 May 1996, Sandy Sandfort wrote: [snip] > > 6) DON'T talk to anyone else--especially in your home > > country--about what you have done, are doing or > > are planning to do. [snip] > > 8) Send me $1000. If you follow my steps 1-7, you will > > save many times that amount. > > There's the rub... step 8 violates step 6. If following your directions > indicates a moral obligation to pay, doing so would violate your > directives and make one _not_ obligated to pay... :-) Obviously we should send Sandy $1000 whether or not we follow the other steps, in order to defeat traffic analysis. Jon Leonard

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