December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Contracts, Responsibilities, and Drug-Dispensing
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There have been some statements here that "Tim is interfering in the choices of others." In particular, Perry has been saying I am a hypocrite, that I wish to interfere with the choices of others, and so and so forth. Let's make something clear: -- I have no "contract" to supply drugs to anyone, nor does the friend I have been discussing, who makes a choice _not_ to dose the friends of his son who are in his house. -- This "contractarian" analysis should be important to any libertarian or believer in civil rights. -- If someone makes a contract, formal or informal (with some caveats), to supply a dose of drugs, alcohol, whatever, at some specified time, then this is fine. But if no contract exists, not supplying the drugs is not interference in choice. (Is, for a example, a Mormon interfering in the rights of a friend by refusing to supply a drink to a visiting friend? Am I interfering in the choice of others by refusing to allow cigarette smoking in my home? Examples like this are easy to find.) -- If someone claims there is an _implied_ contract in this case, this falls apart after the first "refusal" to supply the dose. That is, Vickie, the mother, is well aware that my friend is returning the Ritalins to her unused, in the kid's backpack. That she continues to send the kid over, absent the drug dose she would have preferred her son to be given, means she has effectively made a choice that maybe the Ritalin dose is not so important after all (or at least that my friend is able to "control" and "handle" the kid without the drug...maybe this is giving her some second thoughts about dosing the kid into compliance even on the weekends?). [A cynic might suggest she is letting the alleged violations of her son's rights "pile up" so she can bring a lawsuit and get some of his money! :-}] So, I reject the straw man arguments that I am interfering with the "rights" of others. My house, my rules. My friend's house, his rules. And one of his rules is that he refuses to become a pill dispenser for mind-altering drugs. Vickie can accept these rules, or not. Her choice. (And part of this, as perhaps I did not make clear enough, is that he doesn't like the idea of his _own_ son seeing his Dad dispensing mind-control drugs to make a kid more compliant and passive. He is obviously well within his rights to refuse to be a drug supplier. His house, his rules. Would this apply if the visiting kid needed an injection of insulin? Maybe, maybe not. It would depend. Speaking for myself, I would refuse to supply injections of insulin to a child--I'd tell the mother or father to not expect me to administer medical treatments beyond simple things like aspirins or band-aids on cuts and scrapes. My house, my rules.) It's always useful in discussing "rights," as Perry is doing, in terms of contracts and agreements. To paraphrase Lysander Spooner, I can't find my name or the name of my friend on any contract about supplying drugs to visiting children. --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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Rep. Sonny Bono speaks at NPC on online copyright
by declan＠well.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: Tue, 9 Jul 1996 15:07:41 -0500 To: fight-censorship+(a)andrew.cmu.edu From: declan(a)well.com (Declan McCullagh) Subject: Rep. Sonny Bono speaks at NPC on online copyright I just got back from hearing Rep. Sonny Bono (R-Calif) speak at the National Press Club this afternoon. The topic was "Intellectual Property" -- timely enough since Bono sits on the House subcommittee considering the online copyright bill (HR2441) I've railed against in the past. As a former member of the entertainment industry, he's a stauch supporter of that ill-advised legislation, which is opposed by the Digital Future Coalition. Given the topic of his speech, I kinda expected him to talk about, well, maybe intellectual property. I was wrong. He spent most of an hour rambling incoherently about his life ("I had to lug beef to get started in the music business") and how he really wasn't a politican after all. Not to put too fine a point on it, he's a bit of a dimwit. (Someone sitting at my table told me that a recent Washingtonian mag dubbed him the dumbest member of Congress.) Bono is one of the few politians that could make Bob Dole sound intelligent and eloquent. I brought a friend along to the banquet. (Since I'm a member of the NPC -- actually the first cyber-journalist to be admitted to the club -- I can bring one guest.) She slipped me a note halfway through: "He is honest. If he were smarter, and honest, probably no one would listen to him." She's right. Bono did seem honest. He was truly convinced, in some kind of inchoate way, that intellectual property piracy online was really a problem. So he supports this wretched legislation without grokking what it would do to the Net. Unfortunately, the question I submitted ("What are the major concerns the entertainment industry has regarding copyright and the Net?") didn't get asked, so instead we were treated to hearing Bono talk about Cher. "I hope she doesn't put on any more tattoos." And if he'd sing a song for the audience: "I've got you babe!" *sigh* -Declan

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Re: Metered Phone
by eli+＠gs160.sp.cs.cmu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In article <+cmu.andrew.internet.cypherpunks+wlsUPSm00UfAA10MIt(a)andrew.cmu.edu>, Jerome once again writes: >Every dial will be counted, every seconds will be measured... Every gratuitous repost will be *penalized*...

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DS: The Net and Terrorism
by Bart Croughs 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On monday 8 july 1996, Mark Rogaski wrote: An entity claiming to be Timothy C. May wrote: : : (Note: For various cultural and image reasons, science and technology are : _not_ emphasized as careers for black children. Contrast the image of : science in predominantly black environments with the image of science in, : say, predominantly Jewish environments. The result is clear: blacks are : severely underrepresented in these areas, and Jews are overrepresented in : these same areas. Hey, I'm just citing a basic truth of our times, at least : in this country. Similar statistics apply to Asians, with more than half of : all U.C. Berkeley science and engineering undergrad students being Asian, : and something less than 3% of them being black. The figures for who : _graduates_ are even more skewed. There are various reasons for this. One : of my pet peeves is how the terms "dweeb," "nerd," and "geek" are used to : characterize science and engineering majors and professionals. Hardly terms : that are likely to make a brother in the hood consider studying science!) : I attended a school in the Pittsburgh area that had an active recruiting effort centered in Philadelphia. Thus, most of the black students were from inner-city Philly. What I noticed about their failure to show up in upper level math/science classes was that they had to spend too much time in remedial classes to undo the damage done by city schools. Considering the percentage of America's black population that lives in urban areas, that seems to explain the lack of black representation. Even more distressing on the whole was the lack of female students in the Comp. Sci. department ... but that's another story. As for the slang, I don't think it's going to attract white kids from the suburbs either. Screw the stereotypes, it's a little too close to the "They could but they don't have the drive/will/intelligence" arguments to say that Dilbert cartoons are going to turn off a "brother in the hood" to math/science. Also, most of the Asian students at my school were not US citizens. Most were from China or Japan. mark - -- I wonder why you don't mention the fact that blacks on average have a lower i.q. than whites, while jews and Asians have a higher i.q. than (non-jewish) whites. If we talk about achievement in science, these facts seem rather important. And why is the lack of female students in the Comp.Sci. department distressing? It's what you can expect: on average, women are less talented than men in dealing with abstractions. Bart bart.croughs(a)tip.nl

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Re: A case for 2560 bit keys
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:09 PM 7/8/96 -0400, David F. Ogren wrote: >And so we have to ask ourselves, why _not_ use a 2047+ bit key. It has >greater longevity and greater security. Why not be overcautious when >the cost is so small? I don't think it's going to make a great deal of difference. We've "all" shifted to 1024-bit keys, even though it's unlikely anybody will have the resources to crack them for decades if not centuries. And the moment any government prosecutes anyone with information obtained by a decrypt of a 1024-bit key, the (then) stragglers will join the rest of us at 1500 or 2000+. The government knows this and there's nothing it can do about it, except possibly for GAK and it isn't making much headway in that. The most negative part of a long key is the false sense of security it may engender in the weak-minded: All key sizes are equally insecure from a computer black-bag job or a specially-engineered virus. If you're really interested in your future security, probably the best thing you can do is to convince Congress to write legislation to ban negotiations and/or treaties with other countries which in any way ban or restrict encryption, preventing Klinton from doing an end-run around the Bill of Rights with regard to the 1st amendment. Maybe it's just too much of a wish-list item, but a I'd like to see a legal prohibition on the government attempting to decrypt any information that it didn't (legally; with authorization) have the key to when it collected that information. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Contracts, Responsibilities, and Drug-Dispensing
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I think the really interesting question underlying this whole discussion is how a minor child makes the legal transition to a competent adult. This issue comes up again and again. We see it in "parental consent" laws requiring parental consent for a minor girl to get an abortion. We also see it in issues like when a minor child may throw off the "protection" of products like SurfWatch. ObCrypto: When may a minor child say no to PAK (Parental Access to Keys)? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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PGP ICON
by Blake Wehlage 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does anyone no where I can get a PGP icon for my web page?? Tanks a mil! ---

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Re: Moviepunks
by Chris Adams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 4 Jul 96 20:44:14 -0800, frissell(a)panix.com wrote: >"Somehow, I doubt William Jefferson Blythe Clinton would fly an F-15 against >a monster alien craft." He'd wait to finish shredding those files before leaving... // Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> - Webpages for sale! Se habla JavaScript! // Automatically receive my resume or PGPKEY by sending email with a subject // of 'send PGPKEY' or 'send resume'. Capitalization counts so be careful!

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MSoft crypto API's
by George Kuzmowycz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The June 10, 1996 Network World carried a story on page 8 under the title "Microsoft breaks crypto barrier", which starts off as follows: " Microsoft Corp. last week said it will include cryptography-based security technology in its operating systems, messaging product and Web browser through a new set of APIs that will be available both in the U.S. and overseas. " The fact that the National Security Agency is allowing Microsoft to export the cryptographic APIs is somewhat of a coup for the software vendor, although the NSA did nothing to alter the current export ban on strong encryption." Later on, it says: " Microsoft's Crypto APIs will be available to third-party vendors writing applications with embedded security. But the hardware or software Crypto-engines for these applications will need to be digitally signed by Microsoft before they will work with the APIs. Under an unusual arrangement with the NSA, Microsoft will act as a front man for the powerful U.S. spy agency, checking on whether the vendors' products comply with U.S. export rules." I was a bit surprised not to see any discussion of this here. Is it just old news? Or maybe people here don't read Network World? I didn't paste in the whole article for copyright reasons. Since they seem to be on a one-month lag with posting back articles on their Web site, it just this week became available at www.nwfusion.com. An MS/NSA alliance? -gk-

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Eric Hughes at EF Forum
by jonl＠well.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cypherpunk/cryptographer Eric Hughes will join yours truly at this week's Electronic Frontiers Forum, Thursday, 6PM Pacific Daylight Time. javachat at http://talk.wired.com or telnet to talk.wired.com -- Jon Lebkowsky <jonl(a)hotwired.com> http://www.well.com/~jonl Electronic Frontiers Forum, 6PM PDT Thursdays <http://www.hotwired.com/eff>

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