December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

BAY AREA PARTY REMINDER
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C'punks, We are at one week and counting until my Second Occasional Anarcho-Dilettante costume party. If you would like to attend please RSVP as soon as possible. If you did not get or keep the original invitation, let me know and I'll send you another copy. In addition to Cypherpunks and Extropians, there will be gun nuts, a contingent of Burning Man survivors and some total strangers. It will be one hell of a party. S a n d y ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Anonymous phone calls (was: What is the EFF doing exactly?)
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There is another spin possible on the reasons for replacement of pay phones with credit card phones. In Canada all new credit card phones are also able to take phone cards (which are anonymous). Using a prepaid phone card permits full anonymity. But what it also permits is metered local calls. This infrastructure would be more familiar to someone from Europe where metered local calls are the norm. Paris make the change to phones that *only* take prepaid phone cards (thus fully anonymous) obstensibly because people were breaking into phones for the money. Prepaid phone cards avoid this. James Why should my long distance calling subsidize your local internet access? ;-) ---------- From: "<pstira(a)escape.com>" <pstira(a)escape.com> Sent: Friday, September 06, 1996 9:54 AM To: unicorn(a)schloss.li Cc: vznuri(a)netcom.com; cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Re: What is the EFF doing exactly? Not just DC and Chicago, I'm afraid. If anyone around NYC noticed, there are less and less payphones, and all new ones installed, just about, are those yellow credit card phones. Not all of them, but it's now one for one, at least.

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Re: Reputations
by Omegaman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I don't see how there can be such a thing as negative reputation > capital. Wouldn't that mean B believes the opposite of what A says? If > you anti-believed someone in a consistent manner, couldn't they exploit > that? Of course they could exploit that. But you're not "anti-believing" the information an untrusted party is passing. Rather, you are not acting on their information in *any* fashion. You're ignoring them. In the case of the common killfile, you may not even know that they're talking at you. > Also, you are speaking only of 1-to-1 reputation-relationships. But that > is inefficient. The mere fact of having to evaluate each person's > reputation yourself is significant work. It is significant work. How much work depends on how valuable the transactions you are considering are to you. It's not as if the notion of reputation capital doesn't have precedent. When I make a purchase for my business, I do quite a bit of checking on the background of individuals and businesses I am purchasing from. The amount of reference work I do depends on how much I intend to spend. Furthermore, I am much more apt to do business with individuals who have been referred by other trusted parties (a transfer of raputation capital). Also my initial investment with a relative unknown is usually small. The repuatation capital of both parties increases relative to one another as a relationship is continued. > On the other hand, you could talk about the transmission of reputations. [..snip..] > For instance, when a certain infamously-low-reputation (deservedly so) > individual recently joined the cypherpunk lists, others who had endured > him in the past tried to relay their impressions of him. It proved very > difficult to convey, and they were somewhat attacked for their efforts > and not entirely believed. You seem to view the notion repuatation capital as absolute. It is relative to each user of it. The unnamed you are referring to did indeed come in with quite a bit of negative repuatation capital attached to his name. While I might regard the opinions of others on the list as being valuable, I chose to see for myself if the unnamed person warranted his bad repuation. > In other words, he *could not* spend down to 0, despite years of > unflagging effort. In other words, I decide if an when he has "spent down to zero" with me -- even if we never directly communicate. > Now, suppose J. Anonymous Gourmand spams all of Usenet, and millions of > people who have never heard of J. Anonymous Gourmand before read a > plausible but false account of the disgustingness of McDonald's food. > Perhaps the same detailed study, just fake. (Not to intertangle this > with other issues, let's further suppose that Ms. Gourmand sneaks in > underneath spam-watcher's radar, and cleverly appears to be on topic in > every group.) > > Nothing about her reputation has changed, but surely when her claim is > read by millions it will hurt McDonalds a non-trivial amount. Why? That depends on the sophistication of millions of Usenet readers (heh). I think your extension of this example is not useful. It's impossible not to "intermingle it with other issues" such as the substance of the message itself, the ability to verify any factual information, etc. etc. ad nauseam. Reputation is but one factor in many and has a mostly negative effect if J. Anonymous Goumand is indeed anonymous. Change J. Anonymous Gourmand to say, C. Everett Koop, and you can envision a more tangible example of reputation capital in action. me -------------------------------------------------------------- Omegaman <mailto:omega@bigeasy.com> PGP Key fingerprint = 6D 31 C3 00 77 8C D1 C2 59 0A 01 E3 AF 81 94 63 Send a message with the text "get key" in the "Subject:" field to get a copy of my public key. --------------------------------------------------------------

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U.K. cyberporn fearstorm, Singapore attacks Julf, from HotWired
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sgt. Toby Tyler is actually a bit of a cypherpunk. He told me he "absolutely" supports anonymous remailers -- repressive governments in Asia and all that. He just doesn't think that many people will use 'em. -Declan ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 6 Sep 1996 05:55:26 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: U.K. cyberporn fearstorm, Singapore attacks Julf, from HotWired [Also in today's Netizen on HotWired is a report from India on their Net-regulations and Brock in Muckraker on the White House's new "Key Recovery Initiative" anti-crypto legislation. Check out http://www.hotwired.com/ --Declan] ********** http://www.hotwired.com/netizen/96/36/index4a.html HotWired, The Netizen 6-8 Sept 96 Finnish Line by Declan McCullagh Washington, DC, 5 September Call it a cyberporn fear-storm: Splashed across the front page of the 25 August issue of the London Observer was a hysterical report naming Finnish pseudonymous remailer operator Julf Helsingius as the "man US police-experts charge with being at the hub of 90 percent of the child pornography on the Internet." The report continued: "'Somewhere between 75 and 90 percent of all the child pornography I see is supplied through this remailer,' said Toby Tyler of the FBI." That was enough to make Helsingius - already reeling under threats from the Singapore government and repeated legal attacks from the always-litigious Church of Scientology - pull the plug on his anon.penet.fi site last Friday. But in trying to milk the story, the Observer went too far. The "FBI investigator" the paper cited as their only support for the accusations doesn't exist. In truth, Tyler is a sergeant in California's San Bernardino sheriff's office, and he says the Observer intentionally misrepresented his identity and his statements. Tyler says "there's very little of the story I agree with," and the Observer took a conversation he had with a reporter "and selectively chose words that would mean what they wanted." [...] Helsingius blames the Observer for scaremongering. "It was quite clear that they were trying to create a story where there was none ... I quite clearly outlined why my server wasn't transmitting child porn," Helsingius said. "I stated that the Finnish police had investigated and found that it wasn't. These comments were ignored. They wanted to make a story so they made things up." [...] Still, a malicious front-page splash in the Observer isn't the full extent of Helsingius's troubles. Now he's also up against the Singapore government, which has demanded the identity of one of the users in his half-million-person database... The unknown user, who has the email address an511172(a)anon.penet.fi, posted hundreds of messages to the soc.culture.singapore newsgroup under the name of "Lee Kwan Yew," the retired prime minister of Singapore. The messages are short and unimaginative, yet apparently are just enough to piss off the thin-skinned Singaporean officials. One post reads: "We are small and vulnerable. Without regulations, we will be like Hong Kong, oops, fuck, bad example, they are actually doing quite all right. - SM Lee Kwan Yew, Republic of Singapore." Now that a Finnish court recently ruled that the remailer's database could be breached in a Scientology case, Helsingius says he's not sure what might happen. In the meantime, he's stuck somewhere between a sensationalist British newspaper and a Singaporean government bent on silencing opposition. [...] Links from the article: Linkname: hysterical report in London Observer Filename: http://www.scallywag.com/obtext.htm Linkname: Singapore banning Web pages Filename: http://www.eff.org/~declan/global/sg/ Linkname: hundreds of messages pseudonymously posted Filename: http://www.eff.org/~declan/global/sg/anon.posts.090596.txt ###

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CFP 97: Burlingame, CA
by stevenw＠best.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwadred from RISKS: ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 3 Sep 1996 12:37:14 -0700 (PDT) From: Bruce R Koball <bkoball> Subject: 7th Computers, Freedom, and Privacy THE SEVENTH CONFERENCE ON COMPUTERS, FREEDOM, AND PRIVACY Call for Participation San Francisco Airport Hyatt Regency Hotel Burlingame, California 11-14 March 1997 CFP97: Commerce & Community will be sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery SIGCOM and SIGSAC. The host institutions will be Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley. Co-sponsors and cooperating organizations include the ACM SIGCAS, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the WELL. CFP97: Commerce & Community is the latest in a series of annual conferences assembling a diverse group of experts and advocates from the domains of technology, business, government, and academia to explore the evolution of information and communication technologies and public policy, and its effects on freedom and privacy in the United States and throughout the world. Past CFP sessions have discussed, debated -- and often anticipated -- issues of great social import. In this tradition, CFP97: Commerce & Community will examine the social and policy questions posed by: * the growth of electronic communities; * electronic commerce and the commercialization of cyberspace; * the problems of legal and regulatory control of the Net; * the interests of privacy and property in the electronic domain; * high-tech law enforcement and security concerns. The CFP97 Program Committee invites your suggestions for presentations on these or other important issues at the nexus of technology, business, public policy, freedom, and privacy. Proposals may be for individual talks, panel discussions, debates, moot courts, moderated, interactive sessions or other formats. Each proposal should be accompanied by a one-page statement describing the topic and format. Descriptions of multi-person presentations should include a list of proposed participants and session chair. Proposals should be sent by e-mail to cfp97(a)cfp.org. If necessary, typewritten proposals may be sent to: CFP'97, 2210 Sixth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710. Please submit your proposal as soon as possible. The deadline for submissions is 1 October 1996. (Please note that we have extended our deadline for submissions) For more information on the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conferences, as well as up-to-date announcements on CFP'97, please visit our Web page at: http://www.cfp.org ------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steven Weller | Technology (n): | | A substitute for adulthood. stevenw(a)best.com | Popular with middle-aged men.

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Neo-Nazis etc.
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Try to keep in mind that "Nazis" aren't skinheads and other troublemakers exactly, which is to say, those are the first people Hitler got rid of when he came to power. Real Nazis are/were bureaucrats; cold, calculating, bureaucratic. Do we know anyone like that?

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Sep 20th SF C'punks meeting: ITAR on trial
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We're having another "Cypherpunks Dress-Up Day" on Friday, September 20th. Meet at the Federal Building in San Francisco, 450 Golden Gate Avenue, at 11:45AM, in high-quality business drag. [There will also be a regular Saturday meeting this month, on Sep 14.] It's been eleven months to the day since our first hearings in Dan Bernstein's lawsuit against the NSA and State Department. At this hearing, starting at High Noon, we hope to convince Judge Marilyn Hall Patel to declare that the ITAR (export regulations) and AECA (export law) are unconstitutional. We are asking her to order the State Department to immediately stop enforcing them with respect to cryptographic software. Simultaneously, the government is asking her to declare that their actions have been completely legal and Constitutional, and to throw out our lawsuit. Judge Patel has asked both sides to fully explore all the legal issues in the case for this hearing, leaving aside any unresolved factual questions (like exactly how many people have had their exports denied). She plans to decide the questions: * Should the government's actions be examined under the "strict scrutiny" appropriate when they attempt to restrict speech, or under a looser "O'Brien" test that applies when the government seeks to restrict conduct and only incidentally restricts speech? * Is the ITAR Scheme a prior restraint on speech? * Does the ITAR Scheme impermissibly punish speech after the fact? * Is the ITAR Scheme too vague to constitutionally regulate speech? * Is the ITAR Scheme so broadly worded that it unconstitutionally limits speech protected by the First Amendment? * Were the government's actions as applied to Dan Bernstein unconstitutional restrictions on his First Amendment rights? It's possible, but unlikely, that the judge will decide some of this then-and-there. Instead, we will get some insights into how she is leaning, based on her questions and comments. Her written decision will come out some weeks or months later. She then plans to certify the case for immediate appeal to a higher court (the Ninth Circuit, also here in San Francisco), to confirm or deny her legal analysis. >From there it will probably go to the Supreme Court. Watch the wheels of justice grind! Meet the intrepid lawyers who are working hard to protect our rights! Shake hands with one or more NSA representatives specially flown in for the occasion! Meet some journalists and be quoted talking about crypto freedom! We will follow the hearing with a group lunch at Max's Opera Plaza, a block away at Van Ness Avenue and Golden Gate Avenue. As background, Dan Bernstein, ex-grad-student from UC Berkeley, is suing the State Department, NSA, and other agencies, with help from the EFF. These agencies restrained Dan's ability to publish a paper, as well as source code, for the crypto algorithm that he invented. We claim that their procedures, regulations, and laws are not only unconstitutional as applied to Dan, but in general. Full background and details on the case, including all of our legal papers (and most of the government's as well), are in the EFF Web archives at: http://www.eff.org/pub/Privacy/ITAR_export/Bernstein_case. Like Phil Karn's and Peter Junger's cases, this lawsuit really has the potential to outlaw the whole NSA crypto export scam. We intend to make your right to publish and export crypto software as well- protected by the courts as your right to publish and export books. It will probably take more years, and an eventual Supreme Court decision, to make it stick. But this is the hearing at which we plan to convince our judge that these laws really are unconstitutional. Her order restoring our legal right to publish crypto source code could come out by Christmas! Please make a positive impression on the judge. Show her -- by showing up -- that this case matters to more people than just the plaintiff and defendant. Demonstrate that her decision will make a difference to society. That the public and the press are watching, and really do care that she handles the issue well. We'll have to be quiet and orderly while we're in the courthouse. There will be no questions from the audience (that's us), and no photography, but the session will be tape-recorded and transcribed, and you can take notes if you like. The lobby guards will want to hold onto guns, "munitions", and even small pocketknives, before they'll let you go upstairs to the courtrooms. So, here's your excuse to put on a nice costume, take an early lunch, and pay a call on the inner sanctum of our civil rights. See you there! John Gilmore PS: If you can't come, you can still contribute. Join EFF's Legal Defense Fund; see http://www.eff.org/pub/Alerts/cyberlegal_fund_eff.announce.

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FW: Anonymous phone calls (was: What is the EFF doing exa...
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Subject: FW: Anonymous phone calls (was: What is the EFF doing exactly?) There is another spin possible on the reasons for replacement of pay phones with credit card phones. In Canada all new credit card phones are also able to take phone cards (which are anonymous). Using a prepaid phone card permits full anonymity. But what it also permits is metered local calls. This infrastructure would be more familiar to someone from Europe where metered local calls are the norm. Paris made the change to phones that *only* take prepaid phone cards (thus fully anonymous) obstensibly because people were breaking into phones for the money. Prepaid phone cards avoid this as well as collection costs. James Why should my long distance calling subsidize your local internet access? ;-) ---------- From: "<pstira(a)escape.com>" <pstira(a)escape.com> Sent: Friday, September 06, 1996 9:54 AM To: unicorn(a)schloss.li Cc: vznuri(a)netcom.com; cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Re: What is the EFF doing exactly? Not just DC and Chicago, I'm afraid. If anyone around NYC noticed, there are less and less payphones, and all new ones installed, just about, are those yellow credit card phones. Not all of them, but it's now one for one, at least.

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Co$ Buys EFF
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The New York Times, September 6, 1996, p. D2. Behind an Internet Message Service's Close Pressure From Church of Scientology Is Blamed for the Shutdown. A Finnish judge says different rules apply to E-mail. By Peter H. Lewis Pressure from the Church of Scientology International was at least partly responsible for the recent shutdown of a well-known Internet messaging service based in Helsinki, according to the Finnish operator of the service. The service, known by its Internet address, anon.penet.fi, was used by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide to send and receive electronic messages without divulging their true identities. It was the best known of a small, global network of special computers known as remailers, whose legitimate users include political dissidents, people with medical or drug ailments and others who want to communicate anonymously. Although previous news accounts had reported that the service was shut down because of accusations that it was a primary conduit for child pornography transmitted on the Internet, police investigators in Helsinki dismissed those accusations as groundless. The real reason for terminating the service, according to its founder and operator, Johan Helsingius, was a recent Helsinki court ruling that ordered him to reveal the true name of one of his system's users to the Church of Scientology. The judge held that under Finland's current telecommunications laws, Internet electronic mail does not carry the same privacy protections enjoyed by postal mail or telephone calls. The church, which in recent years has been trying to protect its copyrighted scriptures by trying to block their dissemination over computer networks, said an unknown person or persons had used the anon.penet.fi computer to illegally publish copyrighted church documents on Usenet, the global electronic bulletin board. Mr. Helsingius, a 35-year-old computer networking expert, has not yet revealed the name sought by the Scientologists, and said he planned to appeal the court ruling. But he said the court ruling opened the door for future subpoenas seeking the real names of anon.penet.fi users, and that he would rather close the system than spend all his time in court. Mr. Helsingius has operated anon.penet.fi for more than 3 years, handling over 7,000 messages a day. "In a sense I've done my pioneer work and it is now up to others to carry on," Mr. Helsingius said. Helena Kobrin, a Church of Scientology official, said the complaint against anon.penet.fi was just one of several actions the church had taken against the operators of remailer computers in Europe and the United States. She said the church has five lawsuits pending in the United States against remailer operators and users of remailers. "We have actively been in communication with various remailers about postings that have gone through their systems," said Ms. Kobrin, general counsel for the Religious Technology Center in Los Angeles, which is responsible for protecting the copyrights and trade secrets of unpublished Scientology scriptures. Earlier this year, another remailer, known as hacktic.nl, in the Netherlands, was shut down under pressure from the Scientologists. Unlike many other churches, the Church of Scientology, founded nearly 40 years ago by the science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, regards its gospel as copyrighted material and a trade secret. Several courts have upheld the validity of the copyrights. Foes and critics of the church have used the Internet to publish the church documents, as well as other documents the church contends were stolen from its computers. The Religious Technology Center has also unsuccessfully attempted to put a stop to the forum on Usenet, alt.religion.scientology, where many of the copyrighted documents are published. A series of recent news articles in The Observer of London among others had linked the anon.penet.fi computer to accusations it was a conduit for child pornography. Mr. Helsingius, who has denied that his system is a conduit for child pornography, declined to speculate on the motives of the accusers. The accusations of child pornography first appeared several days after Mr. Helsingius declined to turn over to the court the name sought by the Scientologists. The Observer quoted Toby Tyler, identified as an adviser to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as saying anon.penet.fi was the source for up to 90 percent of the child pornography on the Internet. But Richard P. (Toby) Tyler, a sergeant in the San Bernardino, Calif., County Sheriff's Department who said his involvement with the F.B.I. was minimal, said he was misquoted by the newspaper. Mr. Tyler, who has investigated pornography trafficking in cyberspace, said that most child pornography on the Internet did not pass through remailers. He did say, however, that of the small portion that does, 70 percent to 90 percent passes through anon.penet.fi. "I think that's a shame," Sergeant Tyler said upon learning that anon.penet.fi was closed. "I personally view its closing as a loss of freedom. I did not like the abuse of the remailer for child pornography, but I felt it served a necessary political purpose in this world." Ms. Kobrin of the Religious Technology Center said that despite its legal actions, the Church of Scientology does not oppose the operation of remailers, which are also known as anonymous servers. "We were not opposing the existence of his server," Ms. Kobrin said. "We have no opposition to there being anonymity for private, consensual communications. What we oppose is using anonymous servers for the purpose of permitting criminal or other unlawful acts. There has to be responsibility and accountability." [End]

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Test...sorry about this
by Z.B. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm just posting this to see if there's something wrong with my mail filter - it dumped a ton of messages from this list over the night, and I'm trying to figure out why the !@%$# it did that. Sorry for the interruption. --- Zach Babayco zachb(a)netcom.com <----- finger for PGP public key http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/4127

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