December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

sorry about the mail bounces
by Jim Byrd 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It seems that my address may have caused lots of problems for the list, mailing lists were getting lots of bounces of things sent to me. I haven't heard for sure, but I'm guessing this is the reason the list was taken down yesterday. ACM Network Services tells me they have fixed the problem now. Sorry about that, but I had no idea the problem was happening.

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Sen. Leahy's "impeccable cyberspace credentials"
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 12:23:57 -0400 From: Jonah Seiger <jseiger(a)cdt.org> To: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)eff.org> Cc: shabbir(a)vtw.org, fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu, brock(a)well.com, telstar(a)wired.com Subject: Re: INFO: Democratic convention chats online! Be there! (8/25/96) Declan: What are you thinking?! In a world where we have very few real friends, I simply don't understand what you are trying to accomplish. It's fine (and healthy) to raise concerns about the particular positions a member of Congress takes (hell, I don't agree with everything Leahy does), but to simply dismiss Leahy as a 'no friend of the Net' is naive and counterproductive. Look at the record. Leahy is hands down the strongest supporter of the Net in Congress. Period. No other Member (including our small but growing handful of other friends like Burns, White, Wyden, Cox, Eshoo, etc) has been a more forceful or consistent advocate for your causes for as long as Leahy has. What exactly do you want? Perhaps we should elect you to Congress and see how well you can do. Of course we are not going to agree with our friends on every issue. If Leahy takes a position you don't like, I'd suggest you talk to his office. I have found in my experience that Leahy's staff (and him personally) will take the time to listen when presented with a well presented argument. I'm also confused about another thing: which hat were you wearing when you wrote this? If it is your "advocate" hat I think it must covering your eyes. If it's your "journalist" hat, you need to do a bit better job of checking your facts in the future. Go a head and reject the "Beltway politicians". It's fashionable, sure, but what does it really accomplish? Some of them are dangerous. Others are sympathetic. The fact is that short of armed rebellion they are going to be here for a while. I shudder to think of the wrath our opponents could wage if we all threw up our hands packed up our bags and left town. Face the facts. Members of Congress have a lot of constituencies to deal with, and we are a small and relatively powerless faction. We can do a lot to change the outcomes of policy debates (if I didn't believe that I wouldn't be doing what I do everyday), but we have to be realistic, recognize where we fit in to the process and who are friends are. One thing's for sure - we have A LOT more enemies than we have friends. Most members of Congress don't really understand us or our issues. Many are willing to learn, and some have been real champions for our causes. But none of them are gong to continue reaching out a hand to us if we bark and bite when we don't get 100% of our way. Zealots rarely win (though it sure is fun to throw bombs). Sorry for the public thrashing, but this kind of attitude REALLY gets under my skin. Flames welcome (though response is not guaranteed <g>), Jonah At 6:45 PM 8/25/96, Declan McCullagh wrote: >On Sun, 25 Aug 1996, Voters Telecommunications Watch wrote: >> [Notably missing from this schedule are Senators Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT) >> and Russell Feingold (D-WI) and House member Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). All >> three have impeccable cyberspace credentials and we look forward to seeing >> them online.] > >As Shabbir and Steve know, I'm a huge fan of VTW and congratulate them for >their successful efforts to keep netizens up-to-date on what's happening >in the meatspace body politic. > >But VTW's statement above is, unfortunately, untrue and misleading. > >Even though Sen. Leahy opposed the CDA, his stance on privacy illustrates >that his "cyberspace credentials" are anything but impeccable. His crypto >bill, introduced before Pro-CODE, would liberalize some export controls >but impose new and unprecedented criminal penalties for the use of crypto >associated with a crime. Worse yet, as recently as this month Leahy has >been clamoring to fund the invasive wiretapping legislation ("Digital >Telephony") he shepherded through Congress two years ago. > >Equally distressingly, Leahy demonstrated his "impeccable cyberspace >credentials" by cosponsoring the Senate online copyright bill -- aka the >Hollywood Media Mafia's wet dream. (Yes, these are the same rapacious >folks who are demanding that the Boy Scouts and summer camps pay cash to >sing "God Bless America" and "Puff the Magic Dragon.") Opposed by the >American Library Association, EFF, and teachers' organizations, Leahy's >bill would slam fair use rights online and could make it a crime to >browse the Net without a license. > >When VTW heralds Leahy as a friend of the Net with "impeccable cyberspace >credentials," they do the Net a disservice. Leahy is in no way a true >friend of the Net; I don't know of any Beltway politican who is. > >-Declan > > >// declan(a)eff.org // I do not represent the EFF // declan(a)well.com / ** THE FIGHT FOR FREE SPEECH ONLINE CONTINUES TO THE SUPREME COURT ** It's not too late to be a part of history -- Join the Lawsuit <http://www.cdt.org/ciec> -- <ciec-info(a)cdt.org> -- Jonah Seiger, Policy Analyst Center for Democracy and Technology <jseiger(a)cdt.org> 1634 Eye Street NW, Suite 1100 Washington, DC 20006 PGP Key via finger (v) +1.202.637.9800 http://www.cdt.org/ (f) +1.202.637.0968 http://www.cdt.org/homes/jseiger/

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Re: Cypherpunk voting - ITAR or CDA
by Jim Ray 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Mon Aug 26 14:32:37 1996 I sent this earlier, but evidently toad.com ate it, so I am sending again, despite Bill Stewart's excellent post on the subject. BTW, Bill is one of the nicest guys you would ever want to meet, and all cypherpunks should try to meet him if they get a chance. Apologies if you get this twice, and I would only add that in any election there are winners and losers, and the sets of losers on cypherpunks if Harry Browne wins or does does well are: 1. Lawyers. If laws are simpler and better-written in something approaching the English language and judges who respect the constitution are selected-for, lawyers and law-professors would feel the economic effects of less demand for their services. 2. Accountants. If the tax laws are simplified and the IRS is eliminated, there will be less need for accountants to figure out what people actually owe in taxes. 3. Offshore dataheaven providers. ;) If the above happens, running businesses from the US will be relatively more attractive than running them from Anguilla, all other things being equal. Vincent Cate wrote: > Dole says he would fix the ITAR problem, but try to keep something like > CDA. He would say anything to get elected. > Clinton is keeping ITAR and signed CDA. But not having the religious > right he might soften on CDA. Lame ducks don't have to soften, on anything. That's what's so fun about being a lame duck. > The courts seem to be throwing out CDA much faster than ITAR (some fast > track to the supreme court built into the law). It also seems like > ITAR > is the more important thing to fix (it is easier to move pornography > etc > out of the US than major software companies). > > So it seems Dole is the better vote. Is this important enough to many > cypherpunks to actually determine their vote? If the Republican candidate had been Forbes, there might have been a "don't let the great be the enemy of the good" argument against voting for a Libertarian. As it stands now, Dole is, at best, arguably the "lesser of 2 evils," which still comes out evil in my book. As the designated partisan Libertarian on the list, I urge all cypherpunks to vote their consciences and pick Harry Browne and Jo Jorgensen. The mere fact that the media is [grudgingly] covering us suggests we are finally doing something right, and Harry is winning many Internet polls despite much fawning, hopeful coverage for the big-eared billionaire hypocrite stealth-candidate, who has no position on much of anything, but certainly would enjoy having the TLAs investigate his enemies. I fully accept that it is likely Dole or Clinton will win, but I think it will fill an important cypherpunk goal if the Libertarian Party candidates get a vote large enough to be the margin of victory, and I will be very proud of my vote, no matter who wins this election. Vote your consciences for your own sake, and the sake of the children who, no matter what, will inherit the debt of the irresponsible statists in power now. JMR Regards, Jim Ray -- DNRC Minister of Encryption Advocacy "'Filegate' is starting to make _Ed_ _Meese_ look ethical." -- me Defeat the Duopoly! Vote "NOTA," not Slick/Dull in November. Harry Browne for President. Jo Jorgensen for Vice-president. http://www.HarryBrowne96.org/ ___________________________________________________________________ PGP id.E9BD6D35 51 5D A2 C3 92 2C 56 BE 53 2D 9C A1 B3 50 C9 C8 <mailto:liberty@gate.net> http://www.shopmiami.com/prs/jimray C Ross Perot is now on welfare.<sigh> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMiHtzG1lp8bpvW01AQFxxAP9GW/NizRkEqW0y4b0vGF5npoOGQj4jSVQ wBz8toN78LUY1xKyEj2y0WWqjfl3WQOMk2dCMlRskHZU8C8+nqLS3FgHaWCwrVF+ Th7LA3hvErvoVNKsrRTKAuGUkIm8XFQLfmPi8L6z94OXY5qXXRvVS9exRwlbH/DZ gpwGznNDjw0= =t8M2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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GIFs of Observer [UK] anti-Net, anti-Remailer fear-mongering
by Rich Graves 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 09:44:24 -0700 (PDT) From: Rich Graves <rich(a)c2.org> To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Observer anti-Net story on the web Blatant copyright violation at: http://scallywag.com/ It's a couple of 105K GIFs. US Copyright terrorists may wish to mirror this information lest the intrepid Scallywag melt down. -rich

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bot at anon.penet.fi
by Vipul Ved Prakash 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

C'punks, I posted the contents of a web site containing netspam stuff to cypherpunks. In the transaction a bot at anon.penet.fi caught my mail (thought it was a copy of the infamous Make Money Fast chain) and posted me a FAQ and bounced my message. (Though it seems to have reached cypherpunks already) -Vipul

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Cypherpunks at InfowarCon '96
by Mark O. Aldrich 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There've been a couple of posts mentioning that there will be a Cypherpunk presence at InfowarCon '96. Besides the more public figures (Eric Hughes and Phil Zimmermann, among them), I'm sure that the audience will have a fair number of list participants in attendance. If anyone wants to say "howdy" or swap key fingerprints, I'll be there both days and for the reception on the 4th. I'm the panel moderator for "B1 - Emergency/Disaster Planning for the Effects of Information Warfare" affair on the 5th (stop by if you want to see FEMA and the Red Cross go at it). If you're at the "schmooze and booze" reception on the evening of the fourth, please come up and introduce yourself. I'll be the guy who's 6'2", 200lbs, shoulder-length brown hair in a red bandanna headband, full beard, jeans, boots, and my leather biker vest. I should be fairly easy to spot :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |Just as the strength of the Internet is |Mark Aldrich | |chaos, so the strength of our liberty |GRCI INFOSEC Engineering | |depends upon the chaos and cacophony of |maldrich(a)grci.com | |the unfettered speech the First Amendment|MAldrich(a)dockmaster.ncsc.mil | |protects - District Judge Stewart Dalzell| | |_______________________________________________________________________| |The author is PGP Empowered. Public key at: finger maldrich(a)grci.com | | The opinions expressed herein are strictly those of the author | | and my employer gets no credit for them whatsoever. | -------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Message Body Suppressed...
by David E. Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Sat Aug 24 22:16:12 1996 > ----- Message body suppressed ----- > > --TAA17492.840768149/tera.mcom.com-- > > > > This is getting annoying. Could one of our resident Netscape employees take a look into this one and see what's happening? dave - ----- David E. Smith, P O Box 324, Cape Girardeau MO USA 63702 dsmith(a)prairienet.org http://www.prairienet.org/~dsmith send mail with subject of "send pgp-key" for my PGP public key "The only reason you're still alive is because someone has decided to let you live." - Nicole Blackman/KMFDM, "Apathy" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMh/FfzVTwUKWHSsJAQFLSwf/QVlIDuTj8Q3hC+hqyl0mLPbYkO82+1f5 FoVukNpdsc/2OQ0+jAD3MjcHJO/yEIVW45+4P6wAutWdsvU5t61gCz3HUblCLC2t tO84wNBNGVRI6d3HpEE7aKRAUAfmqOcv6YcUx5eXfjRJrXdXE0k5EzuUzyQgIBbI B4a4P6WHloq5WtCIlmbt/J3voMIE4b/y/8kbDl1l9RziwRGX6SkYRK3i9v9YTcgl eWHT8uMoI6/GDjxzuEvn1ZUcvkIofh7mLXvP+H5DrSzNpv3knkfKBa5ce9TOkX3o RFa2bHgWXWMtkiTVD2HLpEZ0SaxWahxABavllg1lzzuiE/+Sli/BKA== =TV20 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: USPS
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 1:54 PM 8/26/96, Bruce M. wrote: >On Fri, 23 Aug 1996, William H. Geiger III wrote: > >> Once in place all the goverment needs to do is ban all e-mail not sent >> through their system. Add this to the outlawing of all non-keyescrowed >> encryption, and the ability to archive all messages sent through their >> system. Now the goverment would have total access to everything you >> wright. > > Why not? I believe it is already illegal to place anything in a >person's physical mail box that the post office hasn't processed. For >the sake of preserving the 'integrity and security' of the Internet I >can see the govt. taking such future actions. I'm skeptical of this analogy (that it could be used to take control of e-mail). The postal mailboxes that the Postal Service claims to control are those that are either marked "U.S. Mail" or fit the form and function typically associated with a "mailbox." A box standing on a post by the side of the road near one's house, for example. Often saying something about "Approved by the U.S. Postal Service," blah blah. The Postal Service has nominal ownership of these boxes, even when installed by customers (as is the norm, of course). (This comes up in one major way: non-Postal Service deliveries are not supposed to be made into such boxes. Secondly, there are limits on what customers can do to "defend" these boxes against vandals...this has come up in discussions of placing a small box inside a large box and filling the space between with cement, to break the arms of hooligans who play "mailbox baseball.") Anyone is free to place boxes on their property marked "For Federal Express Deliveries," "For Packages from Neighbors," etc. Or to rent "Mailboxes, Etc."-type boxes. These latter examples are analogous to e-mail accounts folks have at various ISPs. Or to Mailboxes, Etc.-type rental boxes. The Postal Service has limited jurisdiction over rental mailboxes, and even less authority over my placing of a "UPS leave stuff here" box on my porch. Thus, I don't seen the analogy as giving the Postal Service more sweeping powers over e-mail than they already have over physical deliveries. And given the already-anarchic and already-distributed nature of e-mail, it's hopeless. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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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The Observer [UK] editorializes against online freedoms (fwd)
by Rich Graves 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Information longs to be free, even if some forums aren't... We've put scans of the full story onto www.scallywag.com. The source is a reporter for a competing newspaper. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 09:40:43 -0700 (PDT) From: Rich Graves <rich(a)c2.org> To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Re: The Observer [UK] editorializes against online freedoms Attribution for the forward deleted on request. Richardson's included PGP-signed letter, though, is public. I hope this reassures US activists that *even the British* know the story is wrong. -rich ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 12:24:05 +0100 Subject: Response to Observer A nice technical response to some of the factual innacuracies in The Observer piece. Not quite the way I would have done it . . . but good nonetheless. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I. T. Consultancy Limited Our reference L2217 The Editor The Observer 119 Farringdon Road London EC1R 3ER 26 August 1996 AN OPEN LETTER - FOR PUBLICATION Sir, I read with some interest the article by David Connett and Jon Henley in yesterday's edition regarding the Internet and child pornography. I was particularly interested as I am a computer consultant advising clients on Internet issues. In my professional opinion, the technical standard of the reporting was sufficiently poor as to be both inaccurate and misleading. The purpose of this letter is to clarify certain technical issues which might cause your readers to reach unfounded or incorrect conclusions. It is important to be aware of the various methods by which information generally (which can include pornography) is distributed around the Internet. Your article focuses on one particular route, namely Newsgroups. It is Newsgroups which are detailed in the Metropolitan Police's letter to Internet Providers and which are concentrated upon by your article. There are several other means of distributing information. I believe however that the Police letter lists fewer than the 150 groups referred to by the authors. Interestingly enough Newsgroups only offer the means of broadcasting information to anyone who wants to retrieve it. The authors do not appear to have a sufficient grasp of what a "remailer" does. For example they seem to draw a direct link between the use of such remailers and people being able to "log on and participate in 'live' and 'interactive' filmed sessions". A lay reader would perhaps draw the inference that the remailer is somehow involved in any such live participation. Unfortunately this could not be further from the truth. Remailers simply allow people to post messages, either as email to other people or to Newsgroups for general reading. Nothing more. Remailers are generally incapable of being "logged on" to. Your article also refers to "remailing companies", from which the lay reader might infer that remailers are operated for commercial profit. Such an inference would again be wholly incorrect. I know of no organisation operating a remailer for profit, indeed none of them even charge for their services. They are generally run by individuals on a voluntary basis who consider them as a service to the Internet community. Your article appears not to mention any of the purposes of such remailers other than in terms of the distribution of pornography. In my view it would be difficult to present a balanced article without doing so. Different remailers take different steps to prevent whatever their operators consider as "abuse". My understanding is that Mr. Helsingius' service restricts messages to 48k bytes (or characters) and prohibits postings to the "binaries" newsgroups designated for images. I also understand that it only allows 30 messages per user per day. At a technical level these restrictions would make it almost impossible to use his service for mass distribution of any binary data, not just pornography. It therefore appears surprising to me that your article should allege that Mr. Helsingius' remailer is responsible for handling "90 per cent of all child pornography" on the Internet. I wonder what substantiating evidence The Observer has to this effect other than the alleged claim by Toby Tyler. Indeed it appears from your article that the words "is supplied through this remailer" may not be a direct quote from Toby Tyler. Your article alleges that "the photographs made available to Demon's subscribers through the Internet are supplied anonymously by remailing companies". The lay reader might infer from this that all photographs therefore come via remailers. Again this would be far from the truth. Finally I hope this letter offers some assistance to your readers in clarifying a number of issues which were perhaps less than clear in your article. Given your newspaper's difficulties with technical issues, I would be grateful if you would kindly refer any editing of this letter to me prior to publication. Yours faithfully, Matthew Richardson -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQCVAgUBMiFvEAKwLwcHEv69AQGjIQP+IGR9rhvdYXe7CuCcwPl/tIrIBryikTM2 IVOpygTF2nCPf3WEJ8czRvs1emp9d9d++69XiG1f6QAeP9Jv/h9KzVtV7mjjuqCX LhlhXBYjLIiGCcxljKZ07zHFlCeZWCzuAmIFnZbz2fNNjqyicheIMlxI2tDrGgjp dlaGZuAI2XY= =dkXg -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Credit enforcement
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:43 PM 8/17/96 -0400, you wrote: >I thought that classical libertarians agree that the enforcement of >contracts is a proper function of the government. The minarchists generally do, the anarchists generally don't, at least if you're talking about last-resort contract enforcement. The primary mechanisms always have been to use the market, whether through reputations, insurance companies, bonding agencies, boycotts, or (often the most powerful) the sheer value of repeat business. Much of the development of commercial law from the Romans through the Middle Ages been to find peaceful and efficient ways to do business without the King helping. There are historical alternatives to having government do it; the Irish, Icelandic, Somali, and American Arbitration Association non-state-based justice systems had/have various sets of social pressure to do the job. (For instance, Somali dispute resolutions usually end up with some number of cows or other money getting paid to a winning plaintiff, and if you don't pay, your extended family has to. Rarely, the family also refuses and bringing in a higher-reputation judge fails, and a brief feud ensues...) On the "should the government or the free market do this" scale, most people put last-resort contract enforcement at the "we don't mind too much if the government does it" end rather than the "overthrow the government if they even think about touching it" end, which is for issues like sex, drugs, rock&roll, freedom to travel, etc. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Reassign Authority!

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