December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

THAT BRIT AGAIN
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C'punks, Phillll came up with an excellent weasel this time. He's offered to "bet" on the Foresight Exchange. The relevant part of their FAQ says: How is FX different from a bookie? Besides the obvious fact that FX isn't real money, it differs from placing bets with a bookie in that FX is a market. In other words, it really isn't a bet at all. Instead of putting his money where his mouth is, Phillll has decided to put his mouth where his mouth is once again. Nice try guy. S a n d y ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Internal Passports
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 1:01 AM 8/6/96, Duncan Frissell wrote: >The SS resists issuing new numbers in spite of widespread duplication and >theft. Soon people will find themselves denied the right to work in this >country unless the SS reverses this reluctance. If your SS# is stolen and >used "too many times" in a future worker verification program, you're >screwed. And there won't even be any welfare for you. > >Use Alta Vista to find the SS Number FAQ. There's more stuff. BTW, I attempted to comply with the law in a recent request posted to ba.jobs.offered and scruz.general: I solicited workers for some brush clearing on my place, but advised them to only apply if--appearing to be Hispanic, Latin, Mexican, or otherwise unOfficial--they provided proof of their legal ability to work for me. Personally, I don't care. In fact, when employing gardeners and yard works I prefer Mexicans. But the law says, these days, that I must verify the legality of workers *if* they appear to be dark-skinned, Mexican, Latin, or the like. I say "if" because there are no requirements in general for white-skinned, Anglo workers....no work permits, no proofs of citizenship (such a document is currently lacking in the American pantheon...I, a mixed descendant of Mayflower colonist and Scandinavian immigrants, lack such "proof"). Predictably, I got e-mail threatening me with legal action (ha!) and claiming me to be a racist. I promise not to ask my potential employees for legal proof of their right to work if the Feds and Sacramentans promise not to make it a law that I check such things, and if the laws are not written such that I am a felon for not asking for such documents from a dark, dusky Mexican but not from a blonde- or red-haired ubermensch. (Jews I haven't figured out...some seem to pass the "no documents required test" and some I want to demand Green Cards for...ironically, it may be "discrimination" for me to request that these "dusky" folks supply proof of their permission to work in these Beknighted States. A strange world we live in.) --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: Stop the presses -- Anti-terrorism bill not that bad
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:38 PM 8/6/96 -0400, hallam(a)Etna.ai.mit.edu wrote: >which such a claim was made. As for the UK laws, there is >practically no defense against a libel claim that one can >file in court. There is absolutely no basis on which to >justify them. This is why the Singapore government uses them >as a form of censorship. There was a recent US appeals court decision in which an attempt to enforce a UK libel judgment was rejected on First Amendment grounds. The court refused to allow the application of UK law here. DCF

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Anonymous Remailers at work
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

One of the big problems with remailers is getting them deployed widely. How can we create a demand for the service that will encourage people to both (a) deploy them and (b) think of them as good rather than bad? Aside from cypherpunks, spammers, and everyone using anon.penet.fi, there aren't really a lot of people familiar with them. I've recently run into a couple of business problems at work that could be solved by (slightly modified) remailers. 1) Manager performance review, suggestion boxes, and questions to visiting honchos - there are several departments that are using "email to the secretary who'll take your name off and forward it" to handle this problem. Remailers are an obvious solution. (More obvious if we weren't using (gack, phfft!) Microsoft Mail :-) It would probably be worth modifying the remailer to use a permit-list as well as a block-list for destinations and maybe sources, so that companies don't get surprised by outside spammers, and people can get used to using the things at work. Distribute the thing as an OmbudsKit or whatever. You'd obviously want the default to be non-logging. 2) Sending sensitive email across the real Internet - between customers, and for those days that the departmental dialup mail server or remote LAN access isn't working and you need to send something from home or on the road. A standard remailer would do the job, though you'd probably want to add a permit-list, and you might want to add logging and/or return receipts. Mail to pgprelay(a)foobar.com and it distributes it.... (Requires putting a key somewhere well-known, like in DNS or on the key servers.) (Hmmm - an alternative implementation is to use a CGI script to do the mailing and use SSL; some companies may find this easier to deploy, depending on their firewall configurations.) (Does it make sense to deploy something like this as a standard feature of an IPSP gateway system like John's?) Any other reasons to install anonymous remailers at work, and things you'd do to make them more attractive or less scary to corporate network administrative types? # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Defuse Authority!

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Re: Freeh slimes again: Digital Telephony costs $2 billion now ...
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:59 PM 8/6/96 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote: >I haven't been able to find the reference, but a month or two ago >there was an article on the net or in a newspaper about the targets >of wiretapping - how many wiretaps were for drugs, gambling, tax evasion, >and of course terrorism. The number of wiretaps for bombs and guns >was something low like 80 in the last 5-10 years - about 1/10%. > (Did anybody else see this article??) Gilmore has a chart on wiretap use in various crimes in his Brain Tennis match on Wired: http://www.hotwired.com/braintennis/96/32/index0a.html DCF

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Re[2]: SSNs (was Re: Internal Passports)
by Steve Coltrin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Simon Spero <ses(a)tipper.oit.unc.edu> wrote: >one silly thought: lots of people use cypherpunks as the username and >password for all those websites that want an id. What about a cypherpunks >3-2-4 number for those cases where an SSN isn't appropriate. Anyone know >what J. Edgar Hoover's SSN was? According to one of "George Hayduke"'s books, Richard Nixon's was 567-68-0515. -spc

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Re: Censorship through proxy
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:12 PM 8/6/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >Sing Sing (the country is now a prison, so...) is one of the states we >should think about targetting for "special attention." Not in the sense of >violence, but in the sense of offering help to freedom fighters, those who >want to use stego, web proxies, etc. I've been thinking of starting a "How to Defeat a Government page to pull together some of the anti-Sysadmin resources on the Net. "Your government -- just a rouge sysadmin." >I wonder what would happen if "Computers, Freedom, and Privacy '98" was >held in Sing Sing? It would be smaller going out than coming in. Singapore's retired president tried to get William Safire into town for a "debate" about whether he was still running the place via his son. Safire didn't take the bait. He joked about it in his column. DCF

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****Developer Recants Hostile Java Applet Story 08/06/96
by reagle＠rpcp.mit.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A., 1996 AUG 6 (NB) -- By Patrick McKenna. Finjan Software of Israel, which earlier said its Java security software detected what the company called a publicly available hostile Java applet at a game site on the World Wide Web, has issued a statement changing its earlier claims. In the first story on the Java applet labeled "hostile" by Finjan, Newsbytes reported early Tuesday that the Java applet in question is part of a game available on the Web and connected to America Online. Shmulik Suhami, spokesperson for Finjan, told Newsbytes at the time, "We were contacted by one of our users who detected a hostile Java applet and we have confirmed the user's experience." Newsbytes reported Sun Microsystems' JavaSoft division reply as saying, "This issue is totally and completely bogus. Security features built into Java do not allow an applet to read or write to another computer without issuing a warning message and this applet in question is not a hostile Java applet. An individual at AT&T, acting independently of the company, developed the applet. We suspect a file for the applet was placed on a second system and that is probably why Finjan's software incorrectly read it as a hostile application. Actually, this is a flaw in Finjan's software. There is no bug or hostile application at all." In its early story, Newsbytes also quoted a JavaSoft spokesperson as saying, "What is going on is that the person's applet called an audio file from a second machine and Java's security features are so strong and restrictive that an exception is raised whenever a second machine is called. Finjan's software appears to have read the call to the second machine as a hostile bug." In recanting its initial claims, Finjan released the following statement: "We want to issue a clarification on the media alert we sent out yesterday describing a potentially suspicious Java applet. We were perhaps mistaken to describe the applet discovered as a 'hostile applet,' since we did not know if it did anything damaging to a person's system. The activity of applet described was harmless. We misunderstood the extent of the security exception based on information we received. Though in principal the way the app was created could constitute a risk, in practice this was a relatively harmless breech of security, which the Java Security Manager dealt with appropriately." (19960805/Press Contact: Mary Jo Wagner, Successful Marketing Strategists, tel 510-644-3837; E-mail Address: maryjo(a)successful.com; or Paul Karr, KVO, 415-961-1550)

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RE: DoubleClick: Does is track browsing across multiple sites?
by Scott Marquardt 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yo, some bozo subsribed me to this thing. Who's the administrator? I want off (no offense; I'm sure it's an interesting forum, but I don't like being mail-bombed by way of forgery). Whoever administers this thing, I'd be glad of a copy of the headers on the message that subscribed me. Thanks -- Scott Marquardt

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Message
by Bovine Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://upside.master.com:8080/print/july96/ww9607.html w a s h i n g t o n w a t c h The Coming Internet Wars Michael C. Maibach There's a very real danger that for the first time both the PC and the Internet will be regulated and taxed. The PC industry policy landscape has never been so dynamic, as telecom deregulation and technology convergence take hold. Being on the cutting edge of technology places us at the leading edge of public policy. Here's what's coming. In Washington A group of U.S. long-distance resellers has petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to outlaw (yes, outlaw) Internet telephony software. Their view is that the unregulated Net should not compete with regulated carriers. The PC industry's position is that the FCC doesn't have the authority to outlaw this or any software. A much more significant threat is a possible RBOC petition asking the FCC to levy access charges on all "enhanced services," such as the Internet. They seem to object to ISPs moving data, e-mail, graphics and calls outside of the current "universal service" monopoly established by the 1934 Communications Act. The PC industry's number one telecom goal is competition in the local loop. Such competition should drive more bandwidth at a lower cost. Only the Net offers a modicum of competition to local service. If the FCC pulls the Net into the archaic telecom regulatory system, access charges could chill use of the most important telecom medium in the world. The FCC must also set advanced digital TV broadcast standards. As TVs move into the digital PC world, let's make sure that broadcast signals over public airwaves are both PC- and TV-compatible. And speaking of consumer electronics, digital videodiscs (DVDs), with 10 times the capacity of a CD-ROM and studio-quality output, are on the way. The motion picture and consumer electronics industries drafted legislation to protect content while enabling this new market. Unfortunately, their bill would inadvertently outlaw PCs as illegal copy devices! PC hardware and software makers have a vested interest in the success of DVD technology because it allows the copying of data and images. We, perhaps more than any other industry, want DVD technology to advance. But legal protections and private standards must make this a technology as open to PC users as it is to movie buffs. Finally, Washington is considering measures to strengthen copyright protection of material moved on the Internet, require closed captioning on PCs that pick up TV broadcast signals and forbid software exports that have strong encryption protections in the name of national security. An industry that has grown up with private standard-setting in an open, unregulated environment now faces the kind of intense regulatory pressures one is accustomed to seeing in the railroad or drug industries. This is spurred on by the convergence of FCC-regulated industries with PC markets, products and technologies. In State Capitals Action in many U.S. state capitals reflects themes developing in Washington. Long-distance resellers have asked state public utility commissions (PUCs) to outlaw Internet telephony software, for example. Florida and California are considering taxing "digital commerce" they fear may bypass state sales tax regimes. And a few RBOCs have actually petitioned state PUCs to allow increases in ISDN installation and usage fees. Members of the PC industry, working with consumer groups and Internet warriors, have successfully challenged such rate hikes. Lower ISDN prices and easier hookup should drive huge volume increases in this market, benefiting local phone companies and PC users. Around the World So far, activity abroad is less robust than in the U.S., but it's just a matter of time. The European Union recently reclassified PCs with CD-ROM drives as "consumer electronics devices," tripling their import tariffs. Moreover, Europe is considering a "TV without borders" policy that would impose domestic content requirements on TV programming. Since movies are a type of software, will proposals to limit the sale of "foreign" PC software follow? And governments in Europe, Canada and Australia are considering a "bit tax" on digital commerce. The old world of analog TV and telecom regulation must not spill over into the new world of competitive, open and digital markets. Governments must adopt the PC model of innovation and govern accordingly. In the U.S., the FCC must evolve into a Federal Competition Commission, and Congress should carefully guard digital commerce technologies that are changing the way we work, learn, consume and communicate. Michael C. Maibach is vice president for government affairs at Intel Corp. in Washington, D.C. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Home | Upside Magazine | Entrepreneur Forum | Upside Locator | About Upside Comments and suggestions for this site are welcome via e-mail to: feedback(a)upside.com Copyright ©1996 Upside Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Powered by Thunderstone.

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