December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Assassination politics
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

So, how would I go about betting that a certain AIDS patient in Seattle area won't have his legs broken? :-) --- Dr. Dimitri Vulis Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns (fwd)
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Jim Choate <ravage(a)ssz.com> > > From: Hal <hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> > > "Whoever transmits in interstate commerce any communication containing > > any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of > > another, shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more > > than five years, or both." > > There should be a section in there dealing with 'knowingly'. If not then we > should immediately bring charges against any and all newspapers who have > ever printer a ransom letter, or perhaps even the Unibomber Manifesto since > there is clear evidence of 'threat to injure the person of another'. I think Jim is right about the knowledge requirement, which although not stated explicitly in the statute, has been held by the courts to be an essential element. My point in quoting is more to show an example of the kinds of clearly illegal postings which operators have to deal with. Hal

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Anonymous info
by admin＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

You have requested information about your account at anon.penet.fi. Your code name is: <an611909(a)anon.penet.fi> Your real e-mail address is: <cypherpunks(a)toad.com> Your nickname is: <> Your password is: <> Regards, admin(a)anon.penet.fi

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re: "Very Famous Reporter"
by minow＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From a message by Robert Hettinga: >> I was talking to someone who was talking to someone (have I said this is a >> rumor yet?) who was solicited for comment by a Very Famous Reporter ... At a lecture about his recent book, John Markoff, the New York Times' Silicon Valley reporter, said (and I quote from memory): "The most dangerous animal on earth is a reporter on deadline." Martin Minow minow(a)apple.com

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Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns (fwd)
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:33 AM 5/21/96, Hal wrote: >From: Jim Choate <ravage(a)ssz.com> >> There should be a section in there dealing with 'knowingly'. If not then we >> should immediately bring charges against any and all newspapers who have >> ever printer a ransom letter, or perhaps even the Unibomber Manifesto since >> there is clear evidence of 'threat to injure the person of another'. > >I think Jim is right about the knowledge requirement, which although not >stated explicitly in the statute, has been held by the courts to be an >essential element. My point in quoting is more to show an example of the >kinds of clearly illegal postings which operators have to deal with. "Scienter" is the legal term for having knowledge. This is one reason we often talk about the dangers of remailers looking at what flows through their systems. Not so much to establish "common carrier" status, especially as that kind of status is just not something one sets out to establish!, but because the protection of being ignorant gets tossed out as soon as one admits to screening, or editing. This is not perfectly accurate in all situations. A bookstore owner is generally not held liable for the contents of the books in his store, even though he makes certain choices about what to carry and what not to carry. A magazine editor is more often held liable for content of articles (e.g., infringing materials, libel, etc.). We discussed this many times when I was on the Cyberia list. As best I could figure things out, the bookstore owner is excused from liability because we can't expect he'll have actually read the books in his store, even if chooses which ones to carry, but we expect that the editor of "The New Republic" has personally looked at all of the articles, or had a staff of underlings do so. BTW, I think that remailer operators don't fit either the publishing or bookstore models. While it is tempting to compare them to telephones, I think a better comparison is to *package delivery services* like the U.S. Postal Service, UPS, Federal Express, Airborne, etc. As we have discussed *so many* times (:-}), these package delivery services cooperate in various ways with law enforcement investigations, e.g., shipping of drugs by FedEx, but they are not held liable for illegal materials delivered or for crimes committed with the aid of their services. (And these delivery services DO NOT always insist on valid return addresses, in case anyone brings this up. Letters can be dropped in mailboxes, obviously, and pre-paid mailers are available. When I've used FedEx, I don't recall any checks of my identity.) --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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Remailers & what they get out of it...
by loki＠infonex.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:17 PM 5/19/96, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote: >From: IN%"ravage(a)ssz.com" "Jim Choate" 18-MAY-1996 09:43:06.96 >>To me the biggest problem with the crypto work right now is that not enough >>professionals are involved. If more remailers and such were initiated as >>a business there would be legal avenues to explore. Also, in this vain is >>the apparent lack of support for commercial ventures by developers of such >>apps as MixMaster (whose license explicity prohibits commercial use). > > It prohibits commercial use? That's silly. Is it a >holdover from when the idea was to turn Mixmaster into a company? > Mixmaster is licensed under the GNU copyleft. -Lance ---------------------------------------------------------- Lance Cottrell loki(a)obscura.com PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server. Mixmaster, the next generation remailer, is now available! http://www.obscura.com/~loki/Welcome.html or FTP to obscura.com "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come." --Nietzsche ----------------------------------------------------------

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DOS/WINDOWS Mixmaster Client
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anyone know if there is a DOS or Windows version of the mixmaster client?

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Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns
by Rich Graves 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Tue, 21 May 1996, Declan B. McCullagh wrote: > An alternative I am considering would reduce the utility of the remailer > while still allowing these "consensual" uses to continue. Presently the > remailers deal with abuse via "block lists", sets of addresses that mail > can't be sent to. Generally these are created when someone complains > about some mail they have received. By setting up blocking, at least > they will not get harrassing anonymous mail once they have complained. > But in some cases, as in the case that is causing me headaches now, even > one message is too much. > > My thought is to turn the block list concept on its head, and make it a > "permit list". Simply, the remailer will only send mail to people who > have voluntarily indicated their willingness to receive it. How would you know that the message you received is actually from them? I don't see how this would really help. I like the "knock-knock" approach, though it would of necessity impose load. If someone has an anonymous message waiting, send them a simple note with instructions on how to retrieve it. From: Anonymous Remailer <hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> To: random person <somebody(a)there.com> An anonymous message is waiting for you. If you wish to receive this message, simply send an email message with [some unique string, maybe an MD5 hash of the actual message] in the body of a message to hfinney(a)shell.portal.com. The simplest way to do this is to reply to this message, quoting this text. I certainly think that limiting newsgroup posting would be prudent. It's inexcusable that it's possible to use anonymous remailers to post *forgeries* (see the smoking flames cross-posted to alt.syntax.tactical). -rich

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Hiding remailers behind nymservers...?
by Steve Reid 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- This 'middle-man' remailer... What does it really accomplish? Sure, the operator is hidden, but that's only because of his/her nym at c2.org... AFAICS, the 'middle-man' has just taken the liability off himself and put it on the unhidden remailers. Why not just use the existing unhidden remailers??? I think this is similar to the idea that came up about having some (but not all) remailers only deliver to other remailers, for use as any link in a chain except the last link. The operator doesn't have his email address attached to spam, and there's very little liability because Co$ and other pressure groups will always(?) go after the last remailer in the chain, since that's the only one they can know was involved. I think the pseudonymously hidden remailer is an interesting idea, but I don't think it offers anything over the unhidden remailers, since it's still depending on the unhidden ones.. If you want to aviod liability, what's wrong with running a remailer that only delivers to other remailers, as I mentioned above? Am I missing something here? ===================================================================== | Steve Reid - SysAdmin & Pres, EDM Web (http://www.edmweb.com/) | | Email: steve(a)edmweb.com Home Page: http://www.edmweb.com/steve/ | | PGP (2048/9F317269) Fingerprint: 11C89D1CD67287E68C09EC52443F8830 | | -- Disclaimer: JMHO, YMMV, TANSTAAFL, IANAL. -- | ===================================================================:) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3ia Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBMaEhlNtVWdufMXJpAQEUbwf9F1081yRIazOUcr/z+ifihD5PLTr70V9X zvp13QXvPVao5Jg1N83Tfrar7zQYnvHU2RYPVBLecxZAY0hhbRRhOF/GVhkfcm2g ehNuQdTxilVTRbCez49zLpXxQEKvnullLYOZY3qv1xe9MaqjuS5C73c3H5oNhQTz B79cdvLynsIrhXD5oLyZyUxX/fggsFIfQsAh6a1KAdC0OclF1/dm1WeJKADSMFq4 bBt5BZcd410tfwpy+VTD5TUt7tb2wAOv56tVKVcPIXPZ04hr4Nlww6pQ+dtR4/B0 j1lzfrdDxos6h33abB9TpKrfo8uBsGxlkGyefqre+qvfexZwv/Wpmg== =sJVW -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: An alternative to remailer shutdowns
by William Ono 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Mon, 20 May 1996, Don may have written: > Re: "permitted" list > > Addresses must be hashed. That makes sense. I don't think the processing time is very significant here. Even using somewhere where collisions can be created is not much of a problem, as email addresses tend to be picky for syntax. > Possibly auto-added to the list when mail comes > from that address. How would mail spoofing be prevented? Sending mail with a given From: address is laughably trivial, even making Recieved: look feasable is easy. Having people PGP-sign their 'add' requests might work, but then anybody can create any keys with any email address attached to it. Asking the remailer operator to verify each key would be unimaginable. Sending back acknowlegements suffers from storage problems, processing power problems, and also makes it significantly easier for traffic analysis. (One mail in, one mail out, one mail in, lots of mails out. Pairs of mails roughly corresponding.) On the whole, I think the idea of 'permit lists' is good, but not one that is very workable under the current "structure". IANACoNE (cryptologist or network expert) -- ** NOTE NEW KEY ** As of 08/28/95! Old key 0x2902B621 COMPROMISED! William Ono <wmono(a)direct.ca> PGP Key: F3F716BD fingerprint = A8 0D B9 0F 40 A7 D6 64 B3 00 04 74 FD A7 12 C9 = fingerprint PGP-encrypted mail welcome! "640k ought to be enough for everybody."

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