December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: Desubscribe
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > deserves to be shipped to sweden where they shall be > > made into cheese by nuns. At 04:40 PM 9/1/96 DST, Johnny Eriksson wrote:> > No thanks, we do not want them. You are Swedish? I heard on talk.politics.guns somebody say that in Sweden they had banned knives with a sharp point at the end, and were going to ban sharp knives altogether. I think he was just engaging in hyperbole, that he really meant that gun control in Sweden was unreasonably strict, but on reflection I am not sure. What is the story? --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Bob Dole on Drugs
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://allpolitics.com/news/9608/31/radio.addresses/ ... snip ... Dole, who returned to Washington for Labor Day weekend, also pledged to use the White House as a bully pulpit to promote the "moral message" against drugs and to criticize what he called the entertainment industry's glamorization of drug use. On Sunday, he is to address the convention of the National Guard Association of the United States during which he's expected to propose that the military be enlisted to assist in a renewed war on drugs.

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Hacker list information
by agt387465＠blackhel.fbi.gov 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Patrick: I am interested in a copy of your mailing list. Thank you. David Pfeiffer

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Re: Los Angeles Times article on Helsingius and anon.penet.fi
by edyson＠edventure.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Before going into the merits of this, let me make two points: One I specifically asked the reporter (Amy Harmon) to quote me as an individual, not as a spokesperson for the EFF. (It was Amy Harmon, and the only address I have for her bounces, but as you can imagine I would like to get in touch with her! Anyone know it?) These are my personal views; EFF has no formal policy on this yet -- precisely because it's a complex issue. Now, speaking personally: I believe there are trade-offs -- which is what I told the LA Times. I assume I was quoted accurately (although the word "enforce" is awkward), but out of context. Anonymity can be dangerous -- as can traceability, especially in/by repressive regimes. Therefore I would favor allowing anonymity -- with some form of traceability only under terms considerably stronger than what are generally required for a wiretap. Anyone who seriously needs anonymity because of a repressive government is likely to use a foreign (outside whatever jurisdiction he fears) server, so that this is not a matter of "local" laws. The tracer would have to pass through what I hope would be tighter hoops than we have now. Please note that this is not the same as the right to *private* conversations and the use of encryption; this is the issue of being accountable for what you publish in public. My assumption is that there will be a wide variety of Net communities with different rules/regulations/attitudes towards anonymity that would apply ex some kind of international sanctions; I think that's appropriate. Yes, I'm aware of the complexities, and of the possibilities for miscarriages of justice. The world isn't yet the way I want it to be. But I wanted to respond reasonably promptly. BTW, I would welcome a chance to read the whole article (or at least a *little* more of the context, under fair use). Speaking for myself, only (and publicly), Esther Dyson At 06:40 AM 9/1/96 -0400, Dave Farber wrote: >>Posted-Date: Sun, 1 Sep 1996 14:59:53 +1000 (EST) >>Date: Sun, 1 Sep 1996 14:59:53 +1000 (EST) >>From: Charles Senescall <apache(a)quux.apana.org.au> >>To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com >>Cc: declan(a)well.com >>Subject: Re: Los Angeles Times article on Helsingius and anon.penet.fi >>Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com >> >>On Sat, 31 Aug 1996, Declan McCullagh wrote: >> >>> The attached article was reposted to fight-censorship with the permission >>> of the Los Angeles Times, which ran it on the front page today. >>[snip] >>> Note Esther Dyson's comments: >>> >>> "The damage that can be done by anonymity is far bigger" than in >>> any other medium, said Esther Dyson, chairwoman of the Electronic >>> Frontier Foundation. "In the end, you need to be able to get at >>> somebody's identity to enforce accountability, and the question is how >>> do you also enforce freedom of speech and freedom from prosecution for >>> unpopular opinions." >> >>Is this _really_ the EFF policy on anonymopus remailers?? >> >>I will check with our local version of the EFF and see what they have to say. >> >>If the EFF is not for anonymity it needs to be publicised. Perhaps the >>EFF has been in bed with the political pigs too long. *OINK* >> >>-- >> .////. .// Charles Senescall apache(a)quux.apana.org.au >> o:::::::::/// Fuck TEL$TRA >>>::::::::::\\\ Finger me for PGP PUBKEY Brisbane AUSTRALIA >> '\\\\\' \\ <A HREF="http://quux.apana.org.au/~apache/"> >> >> >> >> > > Esther Dyson Always make new mistakes! EDventure Holdings <edyson(a)edventure.com> 1 (212) 924-8800 1 (212) 924-0240 fax 104 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10011 USA www.edventure.com High-Tech Forum in Lisbon, October 27-29, 1996 PC Forum in Tucson, Arizona, March 23-26, 1997

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It is good that anon.penet.fi has been closed!
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yes, subject says it all. anon.penet.fi was a whole lot worse than cypherpunks remailers. It provided clueless users with no real security, because it stored return addresses and did not use chaining and encryption. Maybe closing of anon.penet.fi will spur real interest from the unwashed alt.sex.* masses to the truly secure remailers. - Igor.

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Conservation Laws, Money, Engines, and Ontology
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Keywords: agoric systems, computational ecologies, resource auctioning, Mark Miller, K. Eric Drexler, Bernardo Huberman, contracts, distributed trust, metered usage, software objects, software ICs, superdistribution, Brad Cox, emergent order. In physics there are various conservation laws: conservation of energy, mass, charge, and whatnot. You all know about this... Conservation of mass says that mass is neither created nor destroyed. (For smart aleck quibblers, conservation of mass-energy.) How does this relate to our issues? "Abuse of Resources": Mail loops, infinite loops, spamming, overloads of networks, and congestion in general are cases where "unrealistic" models of costs are implemented in software. In the real physical world, infinite loops don't occur (at least not in the sense seen with mail loops, as a relevant example.) Conservation laws are related to the "cost model" of the universe. Real physical objects have costs, or ontological status, or presence.... (Please don't read too much into this point...I mean to be suggestive, not literal.) There are no "memory leaks" in the universe which suddenly fill it up with stuff, no perpetual motion machines, no creation and destruction of objects. Cyberspace Ontologies: There are several things which need to be done to make the cyberspatial world more like the spatial world: * payment for CPU cycles consumed (via contractual, permission-based access: "If you want access to this machine, here are the terms and conditions.") * metering mechanisms, such as e-stamps for e-mail (essentially a special case of the first point, where a machine says "I'll pass on your message if you pay me to.") * digital contracts, agreements on usage and payment (resource auctioning, or the "smart contracts" that Nick Szabo has written about) (you can all think of additional examples....) Cryptographic protocols have their uses here, but there are also some other measures which bear looking into. In the LISP community, for example, work has been done on "engines," which are building blocks that are "fueled up" with "CPU fuel" and allowed to run for some amount of CPU cycles. Thus, one could put an engine into a process and it would run for some number of ticks, then stop. (I'm sure there are Unix-level tools which do similar things, in terms of giving a spawned process so many ticks of the clock. The "engines" concept is somewhat more semantically clean, in that it's pushed down into the "ontology" of the thing being simulated or run, and is not at the "God level" (to use a non-technical term!).) Now, certainly I support the right of any person or machine to run programs freely and without charge, to pass on e-mail free of charge, to run remailers for no charge, to accept spam mail without complaint, and so on. What I'm suggesting is that many of the problems being seen with overuse of resources, spam, congestion, and denial of service are really due to a poor model of resource allocation. Unix and other modern operating systems offer various tools for helping to constrain such problems, but, I submit, better methods are needed. (Especially when multiple machines, networks, and even anonymous sites are part of the overall system....clearly the constraints must be managed locally, and via "contract," as part of a computational ecology, and not as a hierarchical, top down Unix-type operating system.) Economics is about the "allocation of scarce resources." Many of the existing models being used treat various scarce resources as _free_. Then, when the inevitable problems occur, calls for top-down regulation are heard (e.g., the frequent calls for illegalization of "unwanted mail"). In my view, building a consistent, distributed, "conservative" system is what Cypherpunks need to be thinking about. (I used the term "conservative" in the physics sense. A system in which various conservation laws are obeyed.) As I said before, this should not be compelled, but voluntary. However, those who give their resources away for free (choosing not to adopt a conservative ontology, in other words) should be in no position to complain or run to the government for top-down regulation because there freely-given resources are being overused or "abused" (in their thinking). And closely related to this whole issue--and something I've written about extensively--is the issue of "building walls in cyberspace." In the real world, persistent structures are build out of real materials, resulting in castles, forts, skyscrapers, bridges, houses, highways, etc. These objects have persistence, have controllable access (gates, doors, locks,...), and have "structural integrity." Cryptographic and distributed trust protocols are about the only means I can think of for constructing the equivalents in cyberspace. (And to a large extent, this is already happening: the Net and the Web have structure which cannot be demolished casually, or by top-down orders from any single national leader. Millions of machines, linked in various ways and implementing various protocols and "terms of service" with users and other machines....an early version of the "conservative" system I think we'll someday see.) Well, this gives the flavor of my points. I haven't rigorously argued all of the points, but the Cypherpunks forum is for presenting informal arguments. Thoughts? --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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Re: WARNING vIRuS!
by attila 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

kickboxer is full of shit --or trolling. since when can a jpeg or gif file viewer execute anything --nothing starts automatically, in any operating system. that is expecting a jump call of some sort. we haven't yet fallen into the impending insecure abyss of MS objects. to have a piece of code embedded execute, a "start-up" program would need to be previously passed to the target machine which literally scanned all memory for the startup sequence in the foreign material --and translate it. on unix, the code would need to be sophisticated enough to remove itself from the process table --even in sleep modes. and, in any system, the startup sequence must be readable, and therefore traceable by anti-virus routines. now that kickboxed has baited the hook for trolling, what new wet dream will we have for rebuttals?!? On Sat, 31 Aug 1996, kickboxer wrote: > There is a new and VERY dangerous virus called the HAZ-MAT virus! > it fucks up the sectors on your hd, and really messes up the partition > tables. It does this once a week, picking a random time to do it. 99.9% of > virus scanners and other antivirus programs will not recognize it, for it is > a totally new strain, using a never before seen code.... Be warned! The > HAZ-MAT virus usually resides in JPG, and GIF files... once the files are > viewed, the virus takes effect. > scan all images upon download! > > > -- you can fool all of the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all the time, but you can not fool all the people all the time. --Lincoln? cc: Paul Penrod <ppenrod(a)earthlink.net>

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Re: Sen. Leahy's "impeccable cyberspace credentials"
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:11 PM 8/31/96 EDT, patrick b cummings wrote: > I agree with what you are saying but not all polititions are that bad. > You make it sound as if their are no politisions are for freedom of the > net. So who is the exception? --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: hackers texts
by crichardson＠earthlink.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I working on a WWW page for people who want to recieve text articles on hacking/phreaking/etc. It's not very extensive now, but were working on it. Point your browswer to: http://home.earthlink.net/~crichardson/omega.html Also on this page are some files, as well as some other misc indexes. All feedback is apprechiated. -flux

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Re: Esther Dyson on Remailers
by Dave Farber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Just for record, Esther's position is NOT necessarily EFFs. At 01:39 PM 9/1/96 -0400, Duncan Frissell wrote: >At 06:52 AM 9/1/96 -0400, Dave Farber wrote: >>EFF does not, to my knowledge, (and I am a Board Member) have an >>organizational view on this issue. There are a lot of different views and >>each member of EFF has their own view that they can and will state as >>private people. The tendency of the Press to label people with organizations >>affiliation ship gives the impression of organizational views. For example I >>certainly don't speak for the University of Pennsylvania when I say thing to >>the newspapers. >> >>Dave >> > > >At CFP in '95 in SF, Esther expressed the view that there was a place on the >Net for an anonymous ghetto (my words not hers) where people could be >anonymous but that most of the net would involve traceability of >transactions so that people could be held accountable and that businesses >and individuals would want to know who they were dealing with for payment >and accountability reasons. > >I am not stating her position well I'm sure but it was clear that she >thought that non-anonymity would be the rule not because it was mandated but >just because Net actors would want it that way. A short quote would not >allow anyone to understand her full position. > >If she believes that anonymity would be rejected voluntarily for practical >reasons then that is just a prediction of a market not a conclusion. Most >on this list would have no objection to making a prediction though we might >disagree with it. > >Just as Esther predicted that the net would end copyright, we might predict >that the net combined with immediate settlement payment systems might reduce >if not eliminate the need for "positive ID." > >DCF > > >

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