December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: "Soft Targets" as Schelling Points
by eli+＠gs160.sp.cs.cmu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May writes: >Schelling points need not involve "coordination" between actors, though >Schelling points provide one means of coordination without communication >(e.g., where does each think a meeting will occur). > >Schelling points are like "The Match Game" (an old t.v. show largely >written by one of the main contributors to "Mad Magazine"). Namely, "Name >a place likely to be attacked by terrorists." This isn't EconPunks, so I'll just say I haven't seen the term used except in the context of tacit coordination (see <http://www.best.com/ ~ddfr/Academic/Property/Property.html> for some examples). There is some coordination here, I guess: terrorists and television crews both benefit from being in the same place when the bomb goes off. But this probably isn't a driving motivation for either. -- Eli Brandt eli+(a)cs.cmu.edu

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CPC_ode
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

AmBank, July 29, 1996: Technologists at banks with large overseas operations have drawn encouragement from a National Research Council report suggesting that businesses be allowed stronger forms of data encryption. Although financial transactions are generally exempt from encryption restrictions, bankers advocate more freedom in the market. They complain that government officials often refuse their requests for international use of applications with strong cryptography -- and give no reasons for their decisions. NiSaShi, July 23, 1996: Japan ID Tech, an Osaka-based information technology startup, has developed a system for encoding text as graphical images that can be sent via fax over normal communications transmission lines. The system consists of software that converts text to a two-dimensional bar code called a CP code, which is gaining popularity as a next-generation coding system. The company's encoding program also incorporates DES. MiPa, July 29, 1996: Patent: Method and system for key distribution and authentication in a data communication network (IBM). Inventors: Bjorklund, Ronald E.; Bauchot, Frederic; Wetterwald, Michele M.; Kutten, Shay; Herzberg, Amir. ----- http://jya.com/cpcode.txt (for 3, 11 kb) CPC_ode

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Re: TLAs on cypherpnks (was R
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A story I heard: During a privacy conference back when Clipper was first proposed (about 3 yrs ago) people were questioning an NSA rep about escrow. He started off his rebuttal by asking "Is Sternlight here?" and then contined his reasoning as to why Clipper was a good thing. Don't know if this actually happened, but I'm sure if it did some here would remember it. --Rob On 30 Jul 96 at 5:35, pjn(a)nworks.com wrote: > In> Is this the first confirmed report of TLA cypherpunk-monitoring? > > Might be the first reported, but many people probably thought it was... > I did... --- No-frills sig. Befriend my mail filter by sending a message with the subject "send help" Key-ID: 5D3F2E99 1996/04/22 wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com (root@magneto) AB1F4831 1993/05/10 Deranged Mutant <wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com> Send a message with the subject "send pgp-key" for a copy of my key.

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Re: ALL OF YOU ARE CRIMINAL HACKERS, I AM GOING TO CALL FBI
by Stephen Cobb 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:33 PM 7/26/96 -0700, you wrote: >I AM NOT GOING TO TOLERATE EXISTENCE OF A MEDIUM FOR CRIMINAL HACKERS >AND MUNITIONS SMUGGLERS. I WILL COMPLAIN TO THE FBI IMMEDIATELY SO THAT THEY >CAN TRACK YOU DOWN AND CLOSE THIS LIST. > As a Certified Information Systems Security Professional I am sworn to uphold a professional code of ethics. I have pledged to help my clients protect the privacy of their information. I do not consider the free exchange of ideas as inconsistent with that plegde or those ethics. Please feel free to email me directly with a statement of your specific fears and concerns and I am sure I can allay them. Otherwise I suggest you spend some time studying the US constitution and contemplating the personal sacrifices made those who are dedicated to defending it. Respectfully...Stephen

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Re: Returned mail.No such addressee
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:58 PM 7/30/96 +0200, somebody signing a message as Remo Pini <rp(a)rpini.com> wrote: > Actually the archives from ftp.dsi.unimi.it have moved to: > ftp://idea.sec.dsi.unimi.it/pub/ > It's a very large repository and to hell with ITAR, it's italian. And it's got a set of mirrors for many of the other popular sites as well. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> # Dispel Authority!

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RE: Let's Say "No!" to Single, World Versions of Software
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Someone asked a few days ago what US companies are doing to oppose ITAR. many of them are taking public positions on the ProCODE bill. Another of the things they are doing is deploying strong crypto domestically. (Arun Mehta and Tim May have detailed the mechanisms why this domestic deployment will have world-wide impact.) Here is a start at a list of such companies: Community ConneXion - Too much to mention, Thanks Sameer IBM - The Anarchistic Key Authorization system (from U of Texas), see 6th Usenix Security Symposium proceedings Netscape - SSL PGP Inc - 'nuff said Sun Microsystems - SKIP implementation, PGP v3 implementation Please add to the list. We should recognize and remember our friends. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | Cave ab homine unius lebri | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | [Beware the man of one | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | book] - Anonymous Latin | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: Denning vs. Gilmore
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:54 AM 7/30/96 -0700, Marshall Clow wrote: >>Today, Monday, July 29, Dorothy Denning begins her debate vs. John Gilmore >>over The Absolute Right to Privacy on Wired Online's Brain Tennis site. Do >>citizens of the world have an "unalienable right" to privacy - or are there >>reasons why governments ought to have access to our communications? This >>debate will run daily through August 7. Follow along at >>http://www.wired.com/braintennis/ > >I noticed that she said "allows", not "would allow". That contradicts ><<I'm not ready to accept "the cat is out of the bag.">>, doesn't it? Quite! I wish somebody would ask her why such a tiny fraction of the population (government functionaries, and a small fraction of them to boot!) should get their way and force (with varying degrees of the word, force) their idea of heaven on the rest of us. Despite their claims of an "emerging consensus", only an extraordinarily small group thought up GAK and has been promoting it. Whatever benefits are claimed for that system, I've always contended that we (as citizens; or, as individuals) should have the right to reject it. Are they unwilling to take NO for an answer? Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: fbi, crypto, and defcon
by Stephen Cobb 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:29 AM 7/30/96 -0700, Cerridwyn Llewyellyn <ceridwyn(a)wolfenet.com> wrote: > >At this year's DefCon (last weekend), there were two speakers from the >recently created FBI San Francisco Computer Crime division. they were there >as spokesmen for the FBI, but people could talk to them later and ask any >questions they liked, and "the answers may surprise you". Evidence that >maybe some goons really do have a clue, but are still too afraid to do >anything about it... //cerridwyn// I thought it was pretty cool that they even showed up, and the respect they showed for people with good technical skills was, IMHO, impressive. They were candid about the role they play and stood by the code of behaviour they are sworn to uphold. We simply don't have enough information to judge them. These guys may be campaigning for political change in their spare time. They are enforcing laws passed by a democratically elected government, which is not perfect, but a long way from tyranny. They made the point, several times, that if we don't like the laws we are free to try and get them changed, which some of us are trying to do. Okay, so their boss is part of the law making process, subject to the checks and balances that exist between the three branches of US government. They are in a position to supply their boss with data and I am personally impressed with their grasp of some of that data (it sounds to me like they are telling their boss that hackers like the ones at Defcon are not the problem). All of us who have some understanding of these issues need to do our best to educate the public and the politicians, even if we have to start from the "See Jane hack" level (pun intended). Otherwise dumb laws will be passed and then we will have to engage in mass civil disobedience (which I have personally done in the past). Stopping bad laws from becoming law is a lot easier than overturning them later. Respectfully...Stephen (hacker jeopardy scorekeeper)

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Re: Taxes in the digicash world
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

SUMMARY: A: Quotation. B,C,D: usual rehash E: Interesting conclusions A) At 06:17 AM 7/30/96 -0500, ichudov(a)algebra.com (Igor Chudov) wrote: >The question is, how can the government TECHNICALLY collect taxes? .... >Let's say, maybe this tax would work: every time someone verifies that >a piece of digital cash is valid, s/he has to pay the government a little >percentage of the amount. Since digital banks are easier to control than >other participants of the market, this kind of tax legislation is easier to enforce. .. >Another alternative that I see is property taxes and poll taxes, or >taxes on some commodities such as oil. But incomes seem to be hard to track. B) Basically, you can either tax income, consumption, transactions, ownership, and the right to do business. Ownership of land and easily traced tangibles, like houses and cars, still works, but isn't a big enough source of revenue for current government appetites, and taxing consumption (i.e. purchase) of these items is also revenue-limited. US-based corporations are regulated - by taxing profits, they're given an incentive to report all their consumption, generating a recording stream that fingers employees, contractors, and other corporations, making their incomes more visible. Similarly, business licensing raises the visibility of people who might otherwise engage in profitable services (typically in the name of protecting the consumer through quality control), and often creates transaction records such as building permits. C) Taxing bank _transactions_ isn't realistic - it encourages people to use offshore banks, and it's a major change in the way US taxes work. Even with payee-and-payer-anonymous digicash, when the digicash gets stored in an account for translation to treecash, the bank can tell which account, though they can't tell when and from whom you got the digicash, and if they pay interest they must report it, so that tells the IRS your average balance, letting them play the traditional game of "you received $X in your bank account, prove that it wasn't taxable income" (again, unless you're banking offshore.) D) As long as you're buying physical stuff, it's generally either small-volume (e.g. handicrafts and artwork) or made by corporations that are relatively traceable, because they're forced to report their incomes, or else it's material that's purely black-market anyway, like dope. But today's economy is moving away from manufacturing and mostly into services; the low-paid stuff like lawnmowing and babysitting helps support poor people, but isn't a big revenue impact. The interesting problems occur when both your source of income and most of your consumption are communication-based intangibles - consulting, electronic paperwork, writing software, writing entertainment, selling electronically-delivered wares, laundering money, laundering software, laundering entertainment, buying software, buying entertainment, buying consulting for your business. Since the services and payment can both be delivered invisibly, that _can_ let lots of people get under the radar. E) I think the battleground for taxation and control over the digital economy will be fought in two or three areas. One is wiretapping, of course, to protect us from narco-porno-taxevaso-terrorists; attempting to control the key management structure will be a big part of this, since it lets you trace the players as well as the money. (Even if they don't get your private keys, and can only force registering of, say, snail-address along with public keys, that gives them much of the game.) A related push is censorship, probably with mandatory authorship identification ostensibly to enforce content labelling. But the other big push will be for licensing of computer practitioners and software - there's been some attempt at this already, partly from the serious safety folks and partly from the state-level business-licensing meddlers, but I think we'll see far more of it as the government realizes that it's a big hook for retaining tax visibility. Because the software business is extremely portable and geography-independent, much of the tracking will be from the demand side. Software for some reasonably large fraction of use may need to be certified by either a licensed practitioner or a corporation that can be liable. After all, we _need_ to protect the integrity of the National Information Infrastructure to preserve American jobs and protect our kids! # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> # Dispel Authority!

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Re: VISA Travel Money
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:55 AM 7/30/96 -0700, Mike Duvos wrote: >Happened to browse the VISA Web site last evening to read about >the new microprocessor-based VISA Cash Cards that are being >accepted in lieu of small change at the Olympics in Atlanta. > >While there, I noticed a new product that VISA is about to >introduce. Called "VISA Travel Money", it is a pre-paid card >with a user-selected PIN which one can simply purchase at a >participating financial institution, just like Travelers Checks. >One can then use it at any of the 250,000 ATMs in 89 countries >until the amount one paid for it has been extracted, after which, >one presumedly tosses it. > >Since the card is pre-paid, and does not involve the extension of >credit, I would think that a "nym" would have no difficulty in >purchasing one. Seems like a convenient way to keep moderate >amounts of cash in a form which cannot be easily stolen, nor >perused by the Feds. > >I wonder if an SSN is required at the time of purchase? Even if not, chances are good that "all" of the transactions can be linked together, even if they can't be directly linked to an identifiable person. Doesn't sound too promising. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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