December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Why I Pay Too Much in Taxes
by nobody＠replay.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timothy C. May wrote: >Indeed, I am extremely limited in how I can avoid complete traceability of >my major income sources. Not rich enough to shelter income in a really big >time way That's just lack of creativity. Try this: Get a friend of yours to setup a consulting company and hire you (and maybe a few more people who pay too much taxes,acting like a mixmaster). The company pays you salary to cover your cost of living. Anything above that, i.e. money that you would otherwise save, is paid to an offshore company as license fees (or something, this is the creative part). This is really legal as long as you don't receive any money from offshore without paying the taxes. If you borrow the money back it gets a little fuzzy. Thousands of people in upper middle class are doing exactly this, so the mixmaster is really in place already. The local mix is just an extra precaution for deniability (it was my friends company, I had no idea what he was up to!). For the friend to accept the (very minor) risk of jail, he/she should probably be much poorer than you, or have a *lot* of clients, to make his pay outweight the risk. By the way, are there any PGP encrypted mailing lists for discussing serious tax fraud? Mr.X

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No Subject
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

No one answered me. What's the best remailer-in-a-box. I'd like to run one. I would think people would be falling over eachother to tell me.

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Re: Attorney-Client / Nyms
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"unicorn(a)schloss.li" "Black Unicorn" 29-APR-1996 02:21:48.23 >On Sun, 28 Apr 1996, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote: >> Given discussions as to attorneys holding passphrases, et al, perhaps >> a tutorial from the lawyers on the list (yourself and others, since >> disagreements among J.D.'s have been known to happen) on what attorney-client >> confidentiality does cover? >Proposed FRE 503 probably has the best codification of the prevailing >common law on the subject. I reproduce it in part below. Typos are mine. Thank you. >Note the confidentiality requirement. A client is estopped from claiming >privilege if he discloses the content of the communication to a third >party not connected to the attorney-client relationship. Understandable. >The identity of the client and the existance of the attorney client >relationship are not confidential. There are some exceptions. What are the exceptions? >Communications regarding future crimes or frauds are not protected. I kind of knew that already... as should others. >Stolen property may be held by an attorney for a reasonable time for >inspection purposes, but must be returned to the rightful owner or the >attorney will be a receiver of stolen goods and participating in an >ongoing crime. Privilege will thus not apply. In re Ryder, 263 F.Supp. >360 (E.D.Va 1967). (Some courts will permit the attorney to refuse to >disclose the source from which he obtained the property, however). >Consider this in the context of trade secrets. A good point... although if it hasn't been proven whether something is stolen (e.g., an encrypted piece of data sent to the attorney), I would hope that privilege would still obtain. Of course, there would be the question (also important for First Amendment issues) of whether information that the recipient can't understand is communication. >All states have laws against destroying or concealing evidence. The >attorney who advises his client to destroy evidence is a co-consiprator. >Privilege does not apply. Clark v. State, 261 S.W.2d 339 (Crim. App Tex. >1953). (Interesting to wonder if advising a client to encrypt evidence is >'concealing' it). A good question. Of course, again there's the point of what if the attorney has investigated the matter and decided that no crime is being committed, but that the material should be destroyed because it could be embarrasing, lead to other problems (e.g., civil lawsuits), etcetera. If a court later decides that the attorney was wrong, would privilege still obtain, and would the attorney be a co-conspirator? I would hope the answers would be yes and no. >> Most of them aren't anonymous, either... although that does give me >> the thought of going to one outside the US and its reporting requirements. >> They'd know who I was (or at least the address it was going to), but at >> least nobody else would know. Any suggestions, since you've been writing of >> the joys of nymdom recently? >I suggest you use a forwarding service, sign up with your nym name, and >provide the address of a P.O. box for them to forward to, also in the name >of your nym. The P.O. box signed up in the name of the nym would be a problem, however, given the current laws on ID necessary for this. Of course, this assumes not using fake ID (including that of a fictitious employer). I've gotten a couple of P.O. boxes in my own name recently (not wanting to disclose my current address), and they did want a couple pieces of ID. I should check what ID they will accept. -Allen

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INF_rno
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

5-7-96. NYT and WSJ report on Inferno, Lucent's (Bell Labs) new all-platform network OS, and its Limbo programming language. Dennis Richie says, "Inferno is a unique network operating system that adapts to whatever you plug into it -- from a high-end work station to an inexpensive hand-held device. Imagine the ease and flexibility of a world in which you can get your E-mail virtually anywhere, from any machine -- on your PC at the office, from a screen phone in an airport, on your TV at home, or on a hotel-room TV." Dan Stanzione adds, "With Inferno, any device can communicate and share information with any device over any network." It is designed to coexist with Java and DOS. INF_rno

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Re: misunderstandings of PICS
by Joseph M. Reagle Jr. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:19 PM 5/7/96 -0700, you wrote: >well, in any case the idea that there should ever be any pressure >of page designers to include certain tags I find wholly inconsistent >with the original PICS proposal and rather abhorrent. unfortunately >it may be unavoidable. I understand at one level, but not the visceral response. >my fear is that the supposed "failure" of self-ratings could be twisted >by its opponents as evidence that it is inadequate to deal with the >real problem. I think your fears are a little too paranoid here, but maybe they aren't. The question is how much of this hoopola stems from fundamentalist thought police, or concerned but ignorant parents/congressmen. If self-labeling worked (which I see few cases in which it wouldn't) I can't see the concerned but ignorant being unhappy. Rather they'd be a bit better educated and feeling pretty secure their kids won't get their hands on naughty material. And then if self labeling had some failures, that's an incentive for others to provide third party services (as others have argued). PICS had to sell itself to the net as much as to the masses. Self-labeling appeals to the net, it may appeal to the masses, but there are other things in there to sweeten the deal for them if not. >I am not against self-ratings, I'm just saying that they seem to >be the area most ripe for being misunderstood by the public, or >lead to undesirable situations, and this is already happening. Then we should help educate the public. I dislike dumbing the net down for the masses. The real question here -- as far as the public having a fit -- is the use of digital signatures in the labels. I expect we will not see signatures used in the first generation of label services or ?compliant? browsers. Just like ecommerce, it takes a break or catastrophe to get people to move in a constructful manner on the security front. _______________________ Regards, Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words. -Spinoza 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

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Re: Why I Pay Too Much in Taxes
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:46 PM 5/7/96 -0400, Black Unicorn wrote: >On Tue, 7 May 1996, Timothy C. May wrote: > >> At 1:17 PM 5/7/96, Clay Olbon II wrote: >> >At 5:34 PM 5/6/96, Timothy C. May wrote: >> >>Also, the effect of inflation has been to inflate salaries and thus inflate >> >>people into higher tax brackets, even when their "real wages" have not gone >> >>up. >> > >> >This used to be true. A bill passed during the Reagan administration >> >indexed the brackets to inflation to remedy this situation. I don't know >> >how succesful the bill was in eliminating "bracket creep", but that was the >> >stated purpose. >> >> No, it _still_ is true. One bill during one administration does not a major >> change make. > >I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I sent the text of the law to >the list. The position that you take (that increse in inflation can send >you into the next tax bracket) is incorrect. You seem to be forgetting that one of the provisions of (I believe) the 1986 tax act was that capital gains would be indexed for inflation. However, the sleazy politicians only scheduled it (the indexing process) for about 1990 or so, and by 1990 they managed to get that idiot Bush to agree to drop it. I don't know the details, but this is yet another of the reasons I have no qualms about advocating a system for solving the "politician problem" by putting them 6 feet under. Lawyers who profit from an abusive system may disagree, of course. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Why I Pay Too Much in Taxes
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"tcmay(a)got.net" 7-MAY-1996 00:45:56.61 >By the way, as long as I've added another comment to this not-very-relevant >thread (but one which has generated a lot of comments, so it's hard to hard >folks aren't interested), I should mention that I left out the effects of >INFLATION in my "60%" figure. Actually, inflation is relevant in a different way. In a system under which a democratic (or otherwise popularly-influenced) government has some control over the money supply, some inflation can be used as an invisible tax going from those who save (primarily those of the middle class and above) to those whose jobs are affected first by economic downturns (primarily those of the middle class and below). This has relevance, in regards to privately produced currencies and digital cash. -Allen

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Re: alias servers (al la alias.c2.org)
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com" "Bill Stewart" 7-MAY-1996 01:18:29.63 >The big negative about using them as alias servers is that you have >to use _their_ software and dial up to them; you can't get your mail >by POP (though you can argue that it's harder to trace that way), >and you have to use their silly advertisement-displaying user interface >(shades of Prodigy!). I assume that behind their silly interface >is a standard network protocol, which somebody can decipher and >figure out how to use SLIP or PPP or X.3/X.28/X.29 or whatever instead. Quite. There was a proposal a bit ago for someone to figure out how the user interface worked and to put together a batch-filing remailer to use their system. I haven't heard anything further on this. -Allen

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MLM and Web of Trust
by Black Unicorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Tue, 7 May 1996, Hal wrote: > I have a few thoughts relating to the "web of trust" versus > hierarchical key certificate systems. This description is pretty > elementary and is intended more for people who have not been familiar > with the issues before. First some background. [Excellent background deleted] [Trust is not transitive.] > The [trust is not transitive] situation reminds me of a maxim of > multi-level marketing (MLM) companies like Amway. These businesses > typically sell a product, but they use a pyramid scheme for distribution > where people not only sell the product, but try to recruit others to > sell for them. [...] > To achieve success, though, the saying goes like this: You not only > have to sell; you not only have to teach your people to sell; but you > have to teach your people to teach people to sell. [...] > The analogy to transitivity of trust is this. If you want to have > transitive trust, you have to be sure the other person knows how to > securely sign keys. But you also have to make sure he knows how to > make sure that the next person knows how to securely sign keys. And > further you have to make sure he knows how to make sure the next guy > knows how to make sure, and so on. [PGP avoids transitive trust because of this problem and others] Ok, so if the problem is with transitive trust and not the technical issue of security of signatures, why not a hybrid of the vertical and web models? PGP's primary problem in my view is that signatures are not flexible enough, or they are too flexible. A signauture can mean anything. When I sign a document signed by Bob, does that mean that I am vouching for Bob as the author of this document, or that I agree with the document, or that I certify that the document (regardless of my belief in its points) merely passed by my desk on this date? Similarly, when I sign a key. Am I of the opinion that the "real name" associated with this person is the only person in possession of the key, of the opinion that this person is indeed (insert real name here) or am I siging off on the e-mail address? It seems to me that two things need to happen to improve the web of trust. First, signatures have to be application specific. Sure you can put the words "This signature means that I believe XYZPDQ etc." at the bottom of that which you are signing, but this method both lacks any kind of standardization and further requires some sophisticated logical thinking and a lot of planing by the average user. I'd much rather see signature applications integrated in the software in a simple way. PGP currently asks: READ CAREFULLY: Based on your own direct first-hand knowledge, are you absolutely certain that you are prepared to solemnly certify that the above public key actually belongs to the user specified by the above user ID (y/N)? Why should PGP not also ask: READ CAREFULLY: Based on your own direct first-hand knowledge, are you absolutely certain that you are prepared to solemnly certify that the above document is accurate in all respects (y/N)? or READ CAREFULLY: Based on your own direct first-hand knowledge, are you absolutely certain that you are prepared to solemnly certify that the above user is a careful and competent individual with the skill and means to secure his secret key (y/N)? or READ CAREFULLY: Based on your own direct first-hand knowledge, are you absolutely certain that you are prepared to solemnly certify documents signed by the above key are from the internet address associated with it (y/N)? or READ CAREFULLY: Based on your own direct first-hand knowledge, are you absolutely certain that you are prepared to solemnly certify that the above financial transaction corresponds to your exact wishes (y/N)? or READ CAREFULLY: Based on your own direct first-hand knowledge, are you absolutely certain that you are prepared to solemnly certify that the above user is not only a trusted introducer, but is fit in your estimation to gague the security and signing skills of other users and vouch for their fitness as trusted introducers (y/N)? It seems to me that integrating these issues, having a developer think them out ahead of time for the user would be a valuable thing. This solves, to some degree, Mr Finney's "AOL" problem. (Wherein he expresses concern over the differing skills of internet users and the ways these difference complicate the web of trust). Part of having an effective web of trust is defining exactly what a certification means. I don't think the web of trust fails because it is non-vertical, but because it fails to define what certificates mean. It _imposes_ (or at least suggests) horizontal decision or treatment of a certificate when it may be prudent for novice or moderately skilled users to treat them vertically. Yet to simply switch to a vertical scheme will frustrate expert users who wish to maintain the flexibility of a horizontal one for whatever reason. (They don't trust institutions, prefer to have more stringent or otherwise non-standard certification policies, etc.) Using certification that allows either (but perhaps defaults to vertical) can easily be envisaged. Software could be configued to trust only a institutional certifier to designate trusted introducers as a default, (Perhaps an online security mutiple test would be a good way for such an institution to make the determination?) and yet users who wanted other schemes could select the more expert options and designate their own introducers and introducer introducers. READ CAREFULLY: Do you trust the above user to (enter all that apply): A) Introduce other keys for the purposes of secure communications and document certification with those keys? B) Vouch for the security consciousness of other users? C) Vouch for the fitness of other users to certify introducers for your web of trust? D) Vouch for the financial fitness of other users? (etc.) Really it's no more than an extension of the "trust bit" that is already in PGP signatures to other areas. In addition I think it's important to extend this kind of flexibility to all manner of signing activites. I revoked a key some time ago because it was getting old and because 2048 bit keys were made available. That revocation certificate could mean anything. It could mean I KNOW it was compromised, it could mean I suspected it was, it could mean I found my secring.pgp file on a multiuser system where I did not myself put it, it could mean I left a disk with my secring.pgp on it in a library, or it could mean the key expired. How are you to know unless I write up a complicated statement and sign it and take pains to publish it all over creation? Why doesn't PGP simply ask: Are you: A) Certain this key is compromised? B) Of the view that it is probably compromised? C) Worried it might be compromised? D) Revoking this key because it is expired? E) Issuing a general/non-specific revocation? Again, standardized, easy for the user to understand, easy to distribute, and very clarifying. Someone could easily write a module which defined and updated these differing trust issues for PGP and users could pick the codes they prefered. (A trust model flash rom?) fincer - Certification with respect to financial integrity ident1 - Certification with respect to true name identity ident2 - Certification with respect to accuracy of e-mail account secrt2 - Certification with respect to the users ability to keep a secret. etc. Don't force clever and sophisticated users to bow to a vertical system when they don't have/want to. > Hal Finney - --- My preferred and soon to be permanent e-mail address:unicorn@schloss.li "In fact, had Bancroft not existed, potestas scientiae in usu est Franklin might have had to invent him." in nihilum nil posse reverti 00B9289C28DC0E55 E16D5378B81E1C96 - Finger for Current Key Information Opp. Counsel: For all your expert testimony needs: jimbell(a)pacifier.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMY/SZmqgui0rHO4JAQFkfwP/XqGH79Z0HX0fF8FvtrxAZB5JbnaMi3K4 gwt1zlQD8ni3n8+6fD887u6vyqxwty8AuQ4BwdxfPfFNecfgcZ8BHv8F1aMopV1x 4clVrHknaKo1BR83MEiEpN74yFebj0fsTlLxijLDbUA5z33Spmcn5Eek21nv4yXR W1ZWUd5uSIk= =vpLU -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Why I Pay Too Much in Taxes
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:30 PM 5/7/96 -0400, Black Unicorn wrote: >On Tue, 7 May 1996, jim bell wrote: > >> At 04:46 PM 5/7/96 -0400, Black Unicorn wrote: > >> >I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I sent the text of the law to >> >the list. The position that you take (that increse in inflation can send >> >you into the next tax bracket) is incorrect. >> >> You seem to be forgetting that one of the provisions of (I believe) the 1986 >> tax act was that capital gains would be indexed for inflation. However, >> the sleazy politicians only scheduled it (the indexing process) for about >> 1990 or so, and by 1990 they managed to get that idiot Bush to agree to drop >> it. > >Considering that there is one bracket for capital gains income (namely >28%) what does this have to do with bouncing you into the next income tax >bracket? Well, you can play all the word-games you want, but many people use the term "tax bracket" to mean the amount of tax they pay as a proportion of income. (Too bad the IRS hasn't yet defined the term "income"!) Since inflationary gains on assets shouldn't be counted as "income" at all, people end up paying a larger proportion of their income as taxes due to this. Go ahead, play games, but ultimately the amount they write on the check will be increased as a result of inflation. I doubt whether they would be in any mood to accept a picky technical definition. It is these people that will eventually decide that it's better to pay money to go to government employees' detriment, rather than benefit. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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