December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Net and Terrorism.
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:13 PM 7/2/96, snow wrote: >On Tue, 2 Jul 1996, snow wrote: >> Gain control of the power grid (I don't know how possible this is) >> and selectively brown out certain sections of the city during peak demand >> periods. Make it obvious, then do the preceeding idea. > Ummm... Just in case anyone is thinking it right now, NO, I >didn't. If this outage was deliberate, I had nothing to do with it. I was >just postulating possibilities. Hmmhhh....I post about the "Net and Terrorism" on Sunday, and the Viper Militia and their plans to blow up several courthouses in Phoenix are revealed a few hours later....Snow posts about using computers to knock out the power grid, and a few hours later power goes out over 15 western states.... Coincidence? I think not. But we can test this hypothesis: "Alien spaceship images will appear in thousands of darkened rooms and will trigger mass hysteria." We'll find out tomorrow if Cypherpunks really do have the Power. --Tim 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: Net and Terrorism.
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: tcmay(a)got.net > > >"Alien spaceship images will appear in thousands of darkened rooms and >will trigger mass hysteria." ............................................................... Scheduled for July 4th, "at a theater near you". > .. >Blanc

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F-C Dispatch #16: DoJ files appeal, Supreme Court ho!
by declan＠well.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fight-Censorship Dispatch #16 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Justice Department files appeal, Supreme Court ho! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Declan McCullagh / declan(a)well.com / Redistribute freely ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- In this dispatch: Justice Department's appeal means long, tortuous process A mysterious "Order on Motion for Clarification" Text of Justice Department's Notice of Appeal July 2, 1996 WASHINGTON, DC -- The Department of Justice yesterday appealed the Philadelphia court's decision striking down the Communications Decency Act, a move that sets the stage for a long, tortuous climb to the Supreme Court. The government's "Notice of Appeal" is a terse, two-page statement saying they "hereby appeal" the "Adjudication and Order entered June 12," the day the special three-judge panel unanimously declared the CDA to be unconstitutional and blocked the Justice Department from enforcing it. Next move is the DoJ's. They have until September 1 to file a "jurisdictional statement" arguing that the Supreme Court should hear their appeal. The Supreme Court doesn't automatically have to accept jurisdiction, notes Ann Beeson, an attorney with the ACLU. "The Supreme Court can still decline to exercise jurisdiction over the case," she says, adding: "They do not have the same kind of discretion they have in a cert petition." All the DoJ has to do is convince the Supremes that there's "still a substantial federal question," says Beeson. "If they're not convinced there is a question, they can decline the appeal." But by all accounts, there's precious little chance of that happening. After Justice files the jurisdictional statement, our attorneys have 30 days to file a response -- and then when the next term begins on October 7, the Supremes will meet to discuss the case. (If the procedure is anything like granting cert, the votes will be cast in a secret conference attended only by the justices and the actual vote won't be disclosed.) The climb to the nation's highest court will be only partly over by then, since the court's decision to consider our case marks the start of the briefing schedule. The government will have 45 more days to file their arguments saying why the Philadelphia decision was wrong; we have 30 more days to rebut. If the Department of Justice -- hardly the speediest bureaucracy in DC -- uses all of their alloted time, the paperwork won't be complete until Christmas. And then the Supremes need plenty of time to digest it. So everyone's best guess is that the Supreme Court will hear the combined ACLU and ALA coalition lawsuits early next year -- just in time for the rescheduled Electronic Freedom March on the nation's Capitol. As I wrote in a recent HotWired column: "The ACLU predicts the Supreme Court will issue a decision near the close of the next term, which ends in July 1997 -- just in time for Congress to try again." +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ THE MYSTERIOUS "ORDER ON MOTION FOR CLARIFICATION" +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ You might be surprised by a mysterious sentence in the text of the Justice Department's notice of appeal talking about a "Order on Motion for Clarification" the court issued on June 28. Not to worry. The judges ruled so vigorously in our favor that the DoJ wanted to be sure the government could prosecute anyone they think may violate other parts of the CDA. "Because of the wording of the court's actual order, they unwittingly called into question whether the DoJ could enforce the provisions of the CDA that we didn't challenge," says Ann Beeson from the ACLU. The Philadelphia court quickly issued the clarification. +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ TEXT OF JUSTICE DEPARTMENT'S "NOTICE OF APPEAL" +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA _____________________________________________________________ AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, : CIVIL ACTION et al., Plaintiffs; : No. 96-963 : v. : : JANET RENO, in her official : capacity as Attorney General of : the United States, Defendant. : _____________________________________________________________ AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, : CIVIL ACTION INC., et al., Plaintiffs; : No. 96-1458 : v. : : UNITED STATES DEP'T OF JUSTICE, : et al., Defendants. : _____________________________________________________________ DEFENDANTS' NOTICE OF APPEAL Notice is hereby given that defendant Janet Reno, in her official capacity as Attorney General of the United States, hereby appeals, pursuant to section 561(b) of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-104, Sec.561(b), 110 Stat. 143, to the Supreme Court of the United States from the Adjudication and Order entered June 12, 1996, as clarified by the Order on Motion for Clarification entered on June 28, 1996, in American Civil Liberties Union et al. v. Reno, Civ. A. No. 96-0963 (E.D. Pa.). Notice is also hereby given that defendants United States Department of Justice and Janet Reno, in her official capacity as Attorney General of the United States, hereby appeal, pursuant to section 561(b) of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-104, Sec.561(b), 110 Stat. 143, to the Supreme Court of the United States from the Adjudication and Order entered June 12, 1996, as clarified by the Order on Motion for Clarification entered on June 28, 1996, in American Library Ass'n, et al. v. Department of Justice, et al., Civ. A. No. 96-1458 (E.D. Pa.). Respectfully Submitted, MICHAEL R. STILES United States Attorney MARK R. KMETZ Assistant United States Attorney FRANK W. HUNGER Assistant Attorney General Civil Division DENNIS G. LINDER Director, Federal Programs Branch [signed] ANTHONY J. COPPOLINO Trial Attorney [signed] JASON R. BARON PATRICIA M. RUSSOTTO Trial Attorneys United States Department of Justice Civil Division Federal Programs Branch 901 E. Street N.W. Washington, Dc 20530 Tel: (202) 514-4782 Date: July 1, 1996 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- MEA CULPA. In F-C Dispatch #13, I wrote that the Washington Post ran an article "on the first page of the Outlook section bashing "self-indulgent dross" and "crap" on the Net. I neglected to mention that John Schwartz and Kara Swisher had an excellent rebuttal inside. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mentioned in this CDA update: HotWired column on what kind of net-censorship Congress will try next: http://www.hotwired.com/netizen/96/24/declan4a.html Fight-Censorship Dispatch #13: http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/dl?num=2741 Fight-Censorship list <http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/top/> Int'l Net-Censorship <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~declan/international/> Justice on Campus <http://joc.mit.edu/> This document and previous Fight-Censorship Dispatches are archived at: <http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/top/> To subscribe to future Fight-Censorship Dispatches and related announcements, send "subscribe fight-censorship-announce" in the body of a message addressed to: majordomo(a)vorlon.mit.edu Other relevant web sites: <http://www.aclu.org/> <http://www.cdt.org/> <http://www.vtw.org/> <http://www.cpsr.org/> <http://www.epic.org/> <http://www.ala.org/> <http://www.eff.org/> <http://joc.mit.edu/> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Lack of PGP signatures
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 7:43 PM 7/2/96 -0400, David F. Ogren wrote: >I've noticed recently that two PGP programmers (Mr. Zimmerman and Mr. >Atkins) do not seem to PGP clearsign their messages to this list. In fact, >a surprisingly small percentage of messages on the C-punk list are signed. >This despite the fact that the average subscriber is at least literate in >PGP. > >Does anybody have any speculation on why this is? I want implausible deniability for the mistakes I make. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | The Internet may fairly be | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | regarded as a never-ending | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | worldwide conversation. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: Message pools _are_ in use today!
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:13 PM 7/2/96 -0700, Eric Davis wrote: > >Hughes offers a downlink product called DirectPC. >The back channel is your regular modem. >Telco/Analog your requests to their servers >and the data is delivered via your DSS dish, >sent to your PC and decoded via an ISA card. >(Opt. DES downlink encryption) >http://www.direcpc.com/ > >The downlink is shared 500Kb/s ( I think ). >Though you can schedule a higher BW channel >for A/V applications (or so the lit reads). Anybody know what the total average bps rate for, say, USENET is? >Think it supports multicast/broadcast by default... It sounds like it might be a good addition to a network of remailers... Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: SAFE Forum--some comments
by minow＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John Pettitt recalls an question from the audience at the SAFE conference: > >One questioner from the audience made an interesting point that given >that most of american can't seta vcr clock crypto will be totally >beyond them unless it becomes pervasive ("you can buy it at radio shack"). > It's not quite that bad. Here are a few (more or less strong) crypto products you might not know you have: 1. Every Macintosh made since at least 1988 has a secure authentication client module in the AppleShare Chooser dialog. When you use it to connect to a remote server, it notes that the user information is "two-way scrambled." (The server sends a random number challenge that the client uses to encrypt the username and password. The encrypted information is sent to the server.) All Macintosh systems running System 7 or later have the corresponding server software. What is interesting about this is that the encryption is completely invisible to the user. 2. At least one garage door opener company offers an opener that resets itself -- an intruder can't record the signal and play it back as the "key code" is one-time only. However, I agree with the questioner regarding the "set VCR problem." I suspect that the major problems in deploying strong crypto will be in marketing and human engineering -- and that the current regulatory environment adds to the difficulty by removing marketing incentives to do high-quality human engineering. Note that the VCR companies have solved the vcr problem by receiving a timecode from a local television station -- making the problem invisible to the end user. We should be able to do the same with strong crypto. Martin Minow minow(a)apple.com

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Re: Lack of PGP signatures
by David F. Ogren 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Tue Jul 02 23:47:42 1996 <snip> > This is one reason. I think that there are several other reasons: > > -- Someone may be using a machine at work or on a multiuser UNIX system > which > is untrusted and insecure. In the case of a UNIX account, one > could > compose a message off-line and rz it using a term program, but that > is a > major hassle. > From the responses I received, this one may be a biggie. And it's one that we can't do much about remedying. <snip> > > Is it because most mail programs are not PGP aware? > > I don't know of any mail programs that can use PGP (I know there are > various > interfaces, sendmail wrappers, and other hacks, but I have yet to see a > mailer > with an "Encrypt" or "Sign" option. > I'm beta testing a PGP aware mailer right now called Pronto Secure. It will be a great program when its release. Requires almost no PGP knowledge. Everything is almost perfectly transparent to the user. There is also Private Idado, of course, but that's a little harder to use, and doesn't have the features of a full-fledged mailer. I figure that if strong encryption becomes legal to export from the US (making international standards easier to implement), we may see more programs like these. David F. Ogren | ogren(a)concentric.net | "A man without religion is like a fish PGP Key ID: 0x6458EB29 | without a bicycle" - ------------------------------|---------------------------------------- Don't know what PGP is? | Need my public key? It's available Send a message to me with the | by server or by sending me a message subject GETPGPINFO | with the subject GETPGPKEY -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMdntX+SLhCBkWOspAQGNgAf/VD/h7sVi/lhIJHSZMtJ262TIE7l++nRh igjbX3PQeIIWrkWuilqarpuYMPwmOXB1OTn38MGkiwGENpAjsX7dS7+kyv/uh5IH OY250DUMdiVW8YqYRknXo2lnOQDxtBWxO/aoDdJoFMRYHYaIBQGtAeg4WpbTjK19 OwdhtDSoXtY8EqdJJHctJcN1Ds7crJWI1v6vmR/I3AhvHMZZrmMuv1Dczsyn3aTj P+wqspkp1oXztRQwP4VCEDpd7X2RGI74fICuJcf0+lRFoIH1o/gI50zLca+b/nq4 I3gn8Vo+LdUzmVpWNkrbW3YhMPyaIIYxFQ36BBT1A/KqliUvZooUgA== =l17m -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: The Net and Terrorism
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Not knowing enough of the posting of John Deters, I can't tell where he is being facetious, where I agree with him, and where I really disagree with him. So, take my comments as responding directly to what I perceive his points to actually be: At 12:52 AM 7/3/96, John Deters wrote: >But here in the U.S., we ARE trying to take them away via the educational >system. About the only thing we can effectively do is to provide more >educational opportunities that denounce violence, racism, hate crimes, etc. >However, you cannot eliminate discontent without eliminating greed; which is >simply not possible. As I see it, the more "educated" a subgroup becomes, in terms of "education" about "the dominant political power structure," the more they see the world in dark terms, and resent it. The more "educated" an ethnic subgroup is about "racism" is, the more racist they themselves are. (I learned this in 1970 when I went away to college in California and found an entire racial/ethnic subgroup totally consumed by fears of persecution and racism, so much so that they could only study their own persecution and so screwed themselves out of any reasonable chance of succeeding in the American culture.) By the way, the accepted name for this is: "victimology." >Even so, there are a couple of problems with even attempting "to take away >the root causes", not the least of which is the Constitutionally protected >right to free speech. I am allowed to teach my kid to hate anyone for any >reason. I can blame this or that group for this set of troubles, and that >the best way to deal with this is not only to scare them away, but to kill >as many of them as possible. It may be morally repugnant, but it is >protected speech. I certainly agree with this. Many people and subgroups are losing sight of this basic point. (Of course, their confusion is partially explained by the fact that they have grown up believing that government schools are responsible for instilling proper ethical values.) >The countries that sponsor terrorists have not been noted for their >successful educational systems. And they certainly are not going to listen >to Western discussions on how best to solve their "problems". And those who think the government school system _is_ responsible for teaching moral and ethical values should ponder the issue of just what moral and ethical values were taught by the official schools of Alabama and Mississippi in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. Duh. When you dance with the Devil, you dance to his tune. >For the most part, I see kids today being educated with much less "hatred" >than even my age group was brought up with (I'm 34). We're moving in the I'm 44 and I see just the opposite. Today's kids spout platitudes about "Why can't we all just get along?" without any clues about what they mean. 99% of kids interviewed cite "racism" as the world's Number One problem, showing their education to be a complet failure. --Tim May P.S. I planned to stop here, in the interests of brevity, but: >The U.S. has a level of tolerance for diversity that I only recently came to >appreciate. We hosted a foreign exchange student from Scotland (hardly >culture shock to him), but he surprised me when he commented on how >surprised he was that different groups of people were mixed together -- >black kids hanging out with white kids, catholics and protestants being >friends, the sort of thing that I take for granted every day. > >He expected the subtle racism of home. And lets just say that Great >Britain's culture is probably closer to ours than any other country. Well, on these points I agree. Non-U.S. countries often cluck about America's well-publicized race problems, but we are far more integrated and mixed than are most countries (and I lived for a year in Europe and have visited a few times since). >I am more than willing to agree with you that elimination of hatred and >prejudice will go farther than any law enforcement measures to reduce >terrorist acts. However, my point, and I believe this is Tim's point, too, >is that it will *never* eliminate these acts, and that there must be other >ways of dealing with the problems that occur. One of my "meta-points" is to try to move the discussion beyond comments about "hatred and prejudice," which I find to be code words for meaningless chatter which misses the real issues. (No offense to John Deters is intended.) >You may think that you hold every answer to terrorism in your hand, that >hugs and kisses before bedtime will make the evil monsters under the bed go >away. The point of Tim's essay was that, yes, the net can be used by the >evil monsters, and yes, the evil monsters are here, and no, the evil >monsters are not going away any time soon. Why did you feel it necessary to >try to slam his fairly well-researched and quite obvious conclusion? Thanks for the comments, John. My main point was that we should not give up basic American (and "western") values for the sake of reducing terrorism. (Ironically, one of the basic notions of terrorism of certain sorts is that the very acts of terrorism will bring on some state which will further the causes of the terrorists...the Hegelian triatica and all that revolutionary stuff, etc.) The terrorists should not be given a victory of sorts by implementing martial law to reduce further attacks. --Tim, again 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: SAFE Forum--some comments
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:00 PM 7/2/96 -0700, Bill Frantz wrote: >At 2:47 PM 7/2/96 -0700, Lile Elam wrote: >>The comment I kept hearing over and over was that we have to >>educate the public about what cryptography is and why it's important >>to everyone using computers to communicate. This public includes >>people who are not on the net and those who don't even know what the >>Internet is. > >Absolutely! The image of postcards vs. letters may be the most effective >metaphor. However, that AT+T fellow who revealed the phone records to the militia group would also be an appropriate comparison to destroy the "key-escrow" idea. I assume AT+T had procedures in place which were SUPPOSED TO prevent this. Well, key-escrow agents "will" also have similar procedures. Why should we assume they will be more reliable? Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Sameer on C-SPAN
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:42 PM 7/2/96 -0700, you wrote: >bluebreeze(a)nym.jpunix.com (Blue Breeze) wrote: >> >> Not everything. No picture of Sameer!? That's what I'd like to see. > >There's one in the latest WebSmith magazine. As well as his article on writing modules for Apache servers... [BTW, the issue number is no 4.] A worthwhile magazine if you write code for web servers. Now all I have to do is come up with a few ideas for modules... --- Alan Olsen -- alano(a)teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction `finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ "We had to destroy the Internet in order to save it." - Sen. Exon "Microsoft -- Nothing but NT promises."

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