December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

PBS show
by Blake Wehlage 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hey did any of you guys(and ladies) see the PBS show called, Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires in Silicon Valley. I thought it was very interesting and informative. (That's coming from a 13 year with the teachers say have no future) If you saw it I was wondering your feeling on the show. Thank you. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Blake "Pokey" Wehlage Age-13 Gaa- 3.69 (for ice hockey goalie) <jwilk(a)iglou.com> My page- http://www.iglou.com/members/jwilk.html Quote- Does whiskey count as beer? -Homer Simpson

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Re: Kaos vs Control
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:34 PM 6/12/96 -0700, Martin Minow wrote: >A copy of the 11th needs to be on everyone's bookshelf. > >Martin. > > > The first volume (at least) of "The Encyclopedia Anglica" is available from The Gutenberg Project. It's the 11 ed. of the Brittanica but the name can't be used. DCF

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Re: Kaos vs Control
by minow＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May writes: > >See, all you doubters, "anarchy" is not so bad after all. > Check out the article on Anarchy in the 11th (or 13th) edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. It was written by Prince Kropotkin as a philosophical argument in favor of anarchy, and the editors saw fit to write a rebuttal footnote referring, as I recall, to the Haymarket (Pullman?) riots. A copy of the 11th needs to be on everyone's bookshelf. Martin.

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Re: PBS show
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:10 AM 6/13/96, Blake Wehlage wrote: >Hey did any of you guys(and ladies) see the PBS show called, Triumph of the >Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires in Silicon Valley. I thought it was >very interesting and informative. (That's coming from a 13 year with the >teachers say have no future) If you saw it I was wondering your feeling on >the show. I caught the show and thought it was pretty good, all in all. I personally despise the term "nerd," but I won't get into that here. (Except to say that "nerds," "geeks," and "dweebs" are terms of insult, and anyone who accepts this labelling by the media and by "jerks" (a comparable term, by the way) is proably just a dweeb anyone, so I guess the term is accurate.) Most of the portrayals of Silicon Valley history was pretty accurate, especially the 1975-78 "Homebrew Computer Club" days. (I used to go to about every other one of these, mainly in '77-78, where I sometimes passed out free samples of the 8080 and stuff like that. A friend of mine at the time was one of the Apple II motherboard designers, and another was the first employee hired by Jobs and Woz. Personally, my first personal computer was a Processor Technology SOL, as I thought the Apple II looked too much like a toy. Shows you what I knew.) The first "Byte Shop" opened in late '75 or early '76, a few miles from my apartment, so I used to go there to see the new machines. This is the store that bought the first batch of Apple Is (not IIs). Mainly I remember the Altair, the IMSAI 8080, the Cromemco Dazzler, and so on. Those were exciting times. But, having worked at Intel during those heady days, and being pretty active these days on the Net, I'd have to say the Web, Net, Java, etc. are *just as exciting* (if not more so) than those days. So, the best years are probably yet to come. (BTW, I also had an ARPANET account in 1973, when there were only several sites as nodes.) Back to the show... Cringely (actually, Stephens) is pretty good at doing sidebars explaining computers. So, a pretty fair history of the industry. Probably the best such show I've seen. --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: Insults (was: PBS show)
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:26 PM 6/12/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >I personally despise the term "nerd," but I won't get into that here. >(Except to say that "nerds," "geeks," and "dweebs" are terms of insult, and >anyone who accepts this labelling by the media and by "jerks" (a comparable >term, by the way) is proably just a dweeb anyone, so I guess the term is >accurate.) IMHO the best way to deal with an insult is to make it a badge of pride. This is how my ancestors in revolutionary New England dealt with being called Yankees. It beats hell out of trying to force the rest of the world to call your group something different every 10 years of so, like some groups have been doing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Frantz | The CDA means | Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 | lost jobs and | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | dead teenagers | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: Zimmerman/ViaCrypt?
by Edgar Swank 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bruce Baugh recently posted, *Has there been any news recently about what's going on with commercial versions of PGP? I've been toying with the idea of buying the Windows version from ViaCrypt just to have a PGP that doesn't need to shell out to DOS each time it runs, but I'm curious as to where, if anywhere, things seem to be going. First, unless there's been a new release, the so-called Windows version of ViaCrypt is just a Windows shell that still creates a DOS window to run PGP. It's a pretty good shell, and it's easy to install, but that's about it. There was a big discussion recently on alt.security.pgp about PRZ and ViaCrypt. Apparently Phil now wants to produce his own commercial version of PGP and has "requested" ViaCrypt to sell back the commercial rights under threat of a lawsuit if they don't. Phil disagrees with ViaCrypts new "business" version of PGP which apparently encrypts all messages with an employer-supplied public key in addition to any specified by the employee. ViaCrypt has their side of the argument on their web page. http://www.viacrypt.com/ The basis of the possible lawsuit would be that ViaCrypt violated their agreement not to put any "back door" into any product with the PGP name. Whether the "business version feature" could be defined as a "back door" would be the crux of the argument. -- edgar(a)Garg.Campbell.CA.US (Edgar Swank) The Land of Garg BBS -- +1 408 378-5108

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lambda bulletin 2.08 / French Telco Act puts the Internet in leash
by jt＠freenix.fr 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

netizen's --> Lambda Bulletin 2.08 <-- contents French Telco Act puts the Internet in leash + New rules regulating Internet content + First key-escrow encryption rules As the Communications Decency Act was declared unconstitutional yesterday, June 12, the French Parliament (Senate and Assembly) passed a kind of Telco Act a la francaise last week, June 7. This law, aimed at providing new regulations for the telecommunications market (including the end of telephone monopoly in 1998), stresses two interesting points for Internet users : 1) a kind of CDA amendement was introduced en force in the Senate on Wednesday, June 5, just two days before it was voted Friday, at 3 in the morning. 2) the law establishes the first ever key escrow encryption rules created in industrialised countries. It will create trusted third parties (TTPs), private companies taht would keep encryption keys in custody for law enforcement purposes. It turns out that before the vote of the law, French military circles had already choosen which firms would be well suited to be TTP : Alcatel, Sagem and Bertin. All of them are well connected to the French military complex, and ! are all big defense contractors. The amendment number 200 in the Loi sur la Reglementation des Telecommunications (LRT) was sponsored by French Senator Larcher and introduced by French telmecom minister Francois Fillon. At first glance, it depenalizes Internet Access Providers for the content of text, images and documents that they are transmitted. But there is an IF. The condition stresses on that they must conform to future recommendations that will be establish by a French government's council : the Comite Superieur de la Telematique. Created in February 1993, the CST has a mission of regulation of Minitel services (text and voice based services), through a professional code of ethics. The CST will no longer depends upon the French telecom ministry, but will be placed under the tutelage of another famous regulation watchdog : the CSA (A for audiovisuel - a kind of French FCC), aimed at regulating radio and TV broadcasts. The law makes clear that if IAPs don't respond to "black" lists of Internet sites or newsgroups (in case where these sites may be in opposition to French law), the IAP will be held responsible for what it is carrying. These lists will be set up by the CST. Internet organisations and professionnals are scheduled to be members of the new CST -- today, in its "Minitel" form, it has 20 members, magistrates, ministry officials, France Telecom reprsentatives, Minitel providers, family and consumer organisations... So, the French amendment smells like the CDA, with the introduction of a so-called reprentative body. In the U.S. the IAP or ISP must control its content. In France this is a centralised body that will do the job. It feels that the French succeeded in what some in the US dreamt : to give the FCC the power to rate sites or content on the Internet. The French State, once again, plays the Big Mother (mother = the Republic) game with a huge sense of precipitation. Furthermore, the law broke in great haste -- and mess. Because before the amendment 200, telecom minister Fillon established an interministerial commission to work on guidlines and recommendations to enforce French law on the Internet. It came after a Jewish organisation sued IAPs for transmitting neo-nazi propaganda; and early in May, when 2 IAP directors were arrested for one day, and convicted, for transmission of pedophile pictures. The mess comes about because that Fillon didn't wait for the Commission : it was scheduled to publish a report on its work around June 15. Another mess concerns French pro-users organizations. The newly created French Chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC-France) decided, apparently with the government commission's consent, to organize a mailing list consultation on the issue. Another group, the AUI (Association of Internet users), published a report this week about ethics, Internet content selection, and so on. Both organizations were openly ignored by Fillon. He did this even after saying during various interviews that the problem of IAP legal responsability on the Internet will be the result of a "broad consensus". It turns out, however, that a small pressure group of IAPs (the AFPI) were consulted Monday, June 2, and had the opportunity to read the amendment before its final review in the Senate. The IAPs are quite satisfied now, because they didn't want to be treated as "pedophiles" and "neo-nazi" anymore. But they will have to adopt the CST guidelines. During my personnal inquiry of the CST last year, I found some clues to understanding how the CST has been working at regulating Minitel services. The CST has a surveillance assignment on the Minitel market (to ensure that each provider follows deontology principles written in his contract with France Télécom). But surveillance operations are not organized by the CST, but by a small army of France Telecom spook agents in Bordeaux: they are 5 to 8 people regulating hundreds of thousands of services! It is no surprise to learn that France Telecom regularly intervenes in this choice, and that France Telecom itself is a big Minitel provider, through a lot of business affiliates. It turns out that theses spook agents are infiltrating private discussions in adult-oriented forums to check for indecent speech (which may be sanctionned by the CST). Here is what here in France we have inherited to regulate the Internet! The second important point of this Telco Act concerns encryption. France was already the first country in the OECD to forbid an individual to use any crypto system not approved by the French authorities (ie, the military). Thus, PGP-like software were, de facto, forbidden. The new law introduces the first key-escrow regulation. It frees cryptography use ONLY for digital signature; but to ensure privacy of email messages, however, the liberation of use is under condition : to give encryption keys to a so-called TTP. Some confidential reports in the press said that one or three private companies are already on the list to serve as TTPs for the French government. The first is Bertin & Co., an engineering company that has some competence in cryptography, and the others seem to be Alcatel-Alsthom (a big industrial conglomerate in telecommunications, defense and public-works engineering), and Sagem, another telecom conglomerate. It seems clear that all of these companies were choose! n according to their defense expertise and good relations with the French military. The mess is that these choices, if confirmed, have been made before the vote on the law, and even before "applications decrees" were published (they may be prepared this summer). France has no NSA. But some big ideas. (During the oil crisis in the 70's, a government commercial stated : "In France we have no oil. But we have good ideas".)

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No Subject
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

_The Atlanta Journal/The Atlanta Constitution_ 6/13/96 ...From a 1/2 page article: *In Georgia the movement appears to be percolating, too. Robert Costner, president of Electronic Freedom Georgia, says the biggest hurdle his group is trying to clear is the unfamiliarity of legislators with the Internet. Laws like the CDA are passed, Costner said, "because people are afraid of the Internet just as people were at one time afraid of the printing press.*

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New NRC Report Site
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thanks to Replay Web Development's generosity, the full 434-page NRC cryptography report of May 30, 1996 is available at: http://www.replay.com/mirror/nrc/ Our previous URL for the report also links to Replay's site: http://pwp.usa.pipeline.com/~jya/nrcindex.htm

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NYT on CDA Win
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

6-13-96. NYP, Page One lead: "Judges Turn Back Law To Regulate Internet Decency." In a unanimous decision that celebrated the Internet as "the most participatory marketplace of mass speech that this country -- and indeed the world -- has yet seen," a three-judge Federal panel in Philadelphia yesterday declared unconstitutional major parts of a new law intended to regulate indecent material on the global computer network and blocked the law's enforcement. The three judges called Government attempts to regulate content on the Internet a "profoundly repugnant" affront to the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech. "Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects," Judge Dalzell wrote. http://pwp.usa.pipeline.com/~jya/cdawin.txt (3 articles) ----- Or, if the http fails, send a CDA_win to <jya(a)pipeline.com>.

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