December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Clinton Backs Internet 'Decency Act'
by Joseph M. Reagle Jr. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At odds with what gore said..... > WASHINGTON (Reuter) - President Clinton says the >Communications Decency Act is a legal way to protect children >from online obscenity, despite a three-judge panel's ruling that >blocks large parts of the act. > ``I remain convinced, as I was when I signed the bill, that >our Constitution allows us to help parents by enforcing this Act >to prevent children from being exposed to objectionable material >transmitted through computer networks,'' Clinton said in a >statement Wednesday. > He said he would continue to work to shield children from >such material and supports ``the development and widespread >availability of products that allow both parents and schools to >block objectionable materials from reaching computers that >children use.'' > Clinton also applauded the communications industry's efforts >to rate Internet sites so they are compatible with blocking >techniques. > The act, signed into law as part of the sweeping >Telecommunications Act of 1996, prohibits the distribution to >minors of indecent or ``patently offensive'' materials over >computer networks. > The three judges issued an injunction blocking portions of >the Communications Decency Act, but let stand prohibitions >against obscenity and child pornography and types of speech that >are not constitutionally protected. > > > _______________________ Regards, Laziness is no more than the habit of resting before you get tired. -Jules Renard Joseph Reagle http://farnsworth.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html reagle(a)mit.edu E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65 BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E

2 1

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

6 5

Re: Comments on MicroPayments and the Web
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: "Mark M." <markm(a)voicenet.com> > I think it would be interesting to see how copyright law will be applied to the > Web if micropayments ever become popular. Would memory or disk caching be > considered fair use? If so, then people could just set up a very large disk > cache and maybe delete it every month or so. It would also be a pretty neat > hack to use a proxy that only cached pages that charged micropayments. > Companies would not make a lot of money from things like this. If disk caching > was not considered to be fair use, people would still turn it on anyway. Where does the money come from to run this proxy? Consider two sites, one which acts as a proxy and cache but which charges something under a penny per page, and another which acts for free. Won't the for-pay site be able to afford a larger disk, more servers, and better net connections? It will be a superior service. Micropayments will allow new services and improved quality over what we have today where we have to rely on charity and advertising as motivations for much of what we find on the web. Hal

2 1

Re: PBS show
by wxfield＠shore.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I enjoyed the show as well...I was a bit young when the Altair was first published in Radio Elec., but that didn't stop me from trying to build one. I recall spending 100's of hours piecing it all together - it all made sense when I 'wrote' 3 hours of code to add a stack of numbers together. It was (and still is) and addictive feeling to think (back then) "Wow, I just did the same thing they were doing with Eniac in my bedroom!" Now then, if we can only get Hollywood to accurately portray computers in films...there's a hack. ;) BTW-If you are still 'caught up' in the innovative 'demo or die' theme the show portrays check out the following site (http://www.be.com/) - I'm sure many of you have already been there? Are there any "Be" developers here? What are your thoughts?

3 2

Re:
by Blake Wehlage 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:07 PM 6/13/96 -0400, Duncan Frissell wrote: >"We're sitting here watching the sun rise for the first time and we've never >even seen the sun" > >-- Rush Limbaugh about the Internet on today's show. Rush also opined that >it was impossible to regulate. > They will never be able to regulate the net, look at he first and main use for it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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

3 2

Class III InfoWar: TST Article
by norm＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There are two things that they may be speaking of: 1. Causing transient errors to crash the system and cause restarts that may take many minutes. 2. Actually damage the machines. I imagine that only a small fraction of the energy required to damage the hardware is necessary to introduce serious transient errors. IBM used to test the main frames as they installed them. They had to resist several inch sparks drawn between the machine and a one meter frame. Software diagnostics ran during the test. I think that few desk top machines would survive that. EMP (Electro Magnetic Impulse), a side effect of nuclear devices, is purportedly able to damage electronics over distances of many miles. Some weapons may be designed to enhance this. Ordinary high explosives can produce a scaled down result. EMP is strategic only because it damages electronics that are too far enough to be damaged by the blast. I suspect that high explosive EMPs are similar in this regard. The physics behind this is not abstruse. A significant part of the explosive energy can be turned into EMP whether the source is nuclear or chemical. How well it can be directed is probably highly classified. The "antenna" is vaporized in either case and dissipates much of the energy. The energy comes out in 10's of microseconds for high explosives and fractions of a microsecond for nuclear. I don't know how much it takes to fry an IC but judging from the wrist straps that are recommended for installing ICs I would guess that it is a fraction of a Joule. (I once discovered that a one Joule jolt really hurt.) Faraday cages attenuate EMP by the same factor that they attenuate secrets. I think that if a blast doesn't damage the cage then neither will the EMP. Of course the cage may survive but fail to protect the interior (insufficient attenuation). I don't know whether a cage sufficient for tempest is sufficient for EMP protection. Comm lines and power cables go thru the cage and cause problems here as well. Perhaps hefty surge protectors suffice here. Communications equipment outside the cage should at least be equipped to recover quickly upon transient error and not tear donw circuits. Normal error control can then hopefully compensate for the transient. (IP, ATM, Frame relay??) A large capacitor can discharge a lot of power in a short time without causing nearly so much commotion as an explosion. Discharging a one kg 25000 volt capacitor makes a lot of noise, however. I don't know how well it can be muffled.

3 2

RSA patents in Canada
by sameer＠c2.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anyone have a definitive source on the state of the RSA patent in Canada? Thanks. -- Sameer Parekh Voice: 510-601-9777x3 Community ConneXion, Inc. FAX: 510-601-9734 The Internet Privacy Provider Dialin: 510-658-6376 http://www.c2.net/ (or login as "guest") sameer(a)c2.net

3 2

Re: Sen. Specter and Kerry move to delay crypto legislation
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:03 PM 6/21/96 -0400, Black Unicorn wrote: >On Fri, 21 Jun 1996, jim bell wrote: >> Since "everybody" is supposed to agree that the Leahy encryption bill is >> dead, dead, dead, I don't see this as being any kind of problem. It was >> disliked by Clinton and the Denning-types, and with the exception of a short >> flurry of mistaken optimism around here, it was roundly excoriated here as >> well. > >To which which Leahy Bill are you referring? The one introduced on February 26, 1996. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

2 1

Re: NWLibs> Stop Cross-Copying (Re: Take the money, Harry, re.)
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:21 AM 6/21/96, jim bell wrote: >The subject was the use of digital cash for accepting Federal matching >funds. I cross-posted ONE message. It was appropriately on-topic in both >areas. > >Okay? No, not okay. The resulting torrent of messages from and to Tonie Nathan, and about Tonie Nathan, had no connection to anything related to the CP list. I didn't single you out as the instigator of the cross-copying, as I had no idea of who it was.... (but now that I know it was you, I can't really say I'm surprised). When messages are cross-copied, warning should be included saying that the message is going to more than one mailing list, and perhaps why this was deemed necessary. And most importantly, urging follow-up posts to carefull consider which groups are appropriate. (Many people don't even bother to edit the To: and Cc: fields, resulting in a pile-up of copied names. I try to excise out all recipients except "cypherpunks(a)toad.com," figuring anyone not reading the list is not worth sending a separate copy to.) --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."

1 0

Re: Sen. Specter and Kerry move to delay crypto legislation
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:19 PM 6/21/96 -0400, Black Unicorn wrote: >On Fri, 21 Jun 1996, jim bell wrote: >> >> Since "everybody" is supposed to agree that the Leahy encryption bill is >> >> dead, dead, dead, I don't see this as being any kind of problem. It was >> >> disliked by Clinton and the Denning-types, and with the exception of a short >> >> flurry of mistaken optimism around here, it was roundly excoriated here as >> >> well. >> > >> >To which which Leahy Bill are you referring? >> >> The one introduced on February 26, 1996. > >I think the above message was refering to "procode" however. Certainly not by name. It merely referred to legislation that Leahy "sponsored." Leahy _did_ seem to act like he was in favor of the Burns bill, as well, after ECPA got the bad press, and maybe he's a co-sponsor of the Procode bill as well. Even so, the letter did not appear to be CC:'d to Burns, so I conclude that it was intended to refer to at least the ECPA, if not both bills. United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence June 7, 1996 SSCI #96-2219B The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy United States Senator Senate Russell Building, Room 433 Washington, D.C. 20510-4502 Dear Pat: We write to express our concerns about legislation you have sponsored which would impact directly upon federal encryption policy, including export control policy. Recognizing that American innovation in encryption technology is unequaled, we appreciate the need to balance US economic competitiveness with the need to safeguard national security interests. As such, it is our belief that this legislation requires careful study and reflection and that the Senate and the Congress as a whole should proceed with caution until all of the implications of such an initiative are fully discerned. Along these lines, it is our understanding that industry representatives are currently meeting with the Administration to discuss new policy initiatives to address this issue. Also, both the Congress and the Administration have undertaken to conduct a thorough analysis of a two-year congressionally-mandated study on federal encryption policy that was facilitated by the National Research Council. We therefore feel that your legislation initiative at this time is premature. We appreciate your efforts to bring some needed clarity to United States policy in this area and wish to keep the lines open for discussion and debate on this important issue. The staff point of contact on this issue is our Committee Counsel, Mark Heilbrun, who can be reached at 224-1700. Sincerely, Arlen Specter J. Robert Kerrey Chairman Vice-Chairman cc: The Honorable Alfonse D'Amato Chairman, Senate Committee on Banking -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

2 1