December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: "X-Ray Gun for imperceptible searches
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:36 PM 8/12/96 -0400, Weld Pond wrote: >This thing sounds like it could be easily defeated by sewing some "space >blanket" material on the inside of coats, etc. You could probibly build little clip on active jammers. (With published specs to the "Evil Internet(tm)".) Such intrusive methods should be pretty easy to screw up with proper detail on their operation. (I expect the 2600 crowd will have jammer kits available soon. And working ones a few months after that...) >Maybe jackets that >show up false positives with gun shaped cutouts will become >fashionable with the already harrassed inner-city set. I want one that will make me show up as a multi-tentacled alien horror from beyond space and time. Why make them wig out and shoot you when you can really mess with their minds...? --- |"Computers are Voodoo -- You just have to know where to stick the pins."| |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ | alano(a)teleport.com |

1 0

Re: Police prepare stunning end for high-speed car chases
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:54 AM 8/12/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: > >(And I'm not ignorant of such technologies, having attended several of the >Nuclear and Space Radiation Effects Conferences. I also played around with >this as a minor plot element in a novel I was working on several years ago, >namely, a character killed in Los Alamos when the Electronic Engine Control >circuitry of his BMW was zapped while on a mountain road. This, by the way, >is a "side effect" of widely deploying such EM cannon technologies--people >using them on twisty mountain roads. I can think of some places near Big >Sur and around Devil's Slide where such a gizmo would produce real >interesting effects!) Why would you need an "EM Cannon" for this? Just string a 1-car-sized loop of wire on the surface of a road, and off in the bushes hide a battery, DC-to-Hi voltage DC converter and 20kv+ capacitor, and a vacuum switch or some other switch arrangement. When the car in question traverses the loop, short the switch and the car will be blasted with 20,000 volt-turns of induction. Sure, most of it will pass harmlessly through the car's steel, but even iron has a limited "mu" which means that every electrical device in the car will be subjected to a certain amount of induced EMF, probably enough to at least reset a few microprocessors and possibly even destroy them. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

1 0

Re: Hoax: A ban on cryptography?
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:37 AM 8/13/96, David Kennedy wrote: >My mailer thinks the e$pam list pulled this from cypherpunks: > And I'll bet you're still looking for "Oceania" in your atlas? This is one of the main reasons I hate it when my articles get "spammed" to other lists, lists where people have no idea of who I am and no idea of my sense of humor. For the clueless, I simply took the "Defense Authorization" bill which had been posted to Cypherpunks by geeman(a)best.com and replaced a few of the words involving "explosives" with "cryptography." Oh, and I twiddled the number of the bill to include "666." Finally, I even said "This may not be real, but it could be" at the end. Jeesh. The worst part of having my stuff spammed, e-spammed, gurgitated, and regurgitated is that I get letters from people saying "I saw this thing you wrote on the Kangaroo Hopping List. What is "crypto"? Thanks a bunch, dude." Wake up. And for those who forward my stuff, please include appropriate disclaimers to your "spammees" that a) one should read things with an appreciation that a post may be tongue in cheek, b) that back-spamming to another list is not cool, and c) that I don't want to be bothered. >>> S.1666 > > Department of Commerce Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997 (Passed by the > Senate) << > >And this is bogus, and as far as I can tell not a typo, it's complete hokum. > >S.1666 is an obscure bill about courts in Utah. > >A search of http://thomas.loc.gov on "encryption" reveals the expected bills, >PRO-CODE etc. > >A search for the DoC Authorization Act reveals nothing, as far as I can tell >this bill has not been drafted let alone passed. I don't know enough about how >the DoC is funded to know if they get their own Authorization Act or receive >authorizations piecemeal and by the reconciliation. > >Again, this is bogus. > >!^NavFont02F02350014QGHHG|MG~HG85QG87HI}2126 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."

2 1

Re: "X-Ray Gun" for imperceptible searches
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:42 PM 8/12/96 -0700, Time Keeper wrote: >I wonder how well the imager works through mylar or gold lame' clothing (or >other high-metal content clothing)? You will be required to escrow such clothing with the proper government authorities. Inspections will be done by the Bureau of cocktails, discos, and munitions according to strict rules set down by President Clinton, with advisement from Former Sen. Bob Packwood. Actually they will just use harder radiation in those cases. The higher cases of radiation burns and sickness will be offset by the gains in perceived public safety. "Eyes melt. Skin explodes. Everybody dead!" - An unnamed source at the FBI. --- |"Computers are Voodoo -- You just have to know where to stick the pins."| |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ | alano(a)teleport.com |

1 0

Re: Spam and Eggs. (fwd)
by Damien Lucifer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I put together a few pages regarding remailers and net spamming. Nathan Waddoups <nathan(a)metareality.com> hosts a well written site dealing with the larger issue of netspam, and has graciously agreed to host the remailer pages. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 17:06:25 -0700 (PDT) From: Nate Waddoups <nathan(a)metareality.com> Subject: Re: Spam and Eggs. I just finished adding your page. You're linked from the main spam page: http://www.metareality.com/~nathan/visit.cgi/html.Spam ...and your page is at this address: http://www.metareality.com/~nathan/visit.cgi/spam/html.Remail Groovy. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- <sig> see http://www.metareality.com/~nathan for more of the same </sig> Help stop junk email! http://www.metareality.com/~nathan/visit.cgi/html.Spam

1 0

Re: "X-Ray Gun" for imperceptible searches
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:43 PM 8/12/96 -0700, Mike Duvos wrote: >Color me skeptical. > >"E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH(a)ocelot.Rutgers.EDU> writes: > > > The gadget doesn't send out X-rays; instead, it picks up > > electromagnetic waves emitted by human flesh. > >Would these electromagnetic waves be something distinct from the >blackbody spectrum of a human-sized blob of "mostly water" at the >appropriate temperature? > >Or to put it another way, is this just a sophisticated IR imager >thickly coated in snake oil and marketing hype? That depends on what you mean by "IR." Near-IR is about 300 Terahertz; I've seen some items in electronic magazines recently concerning systems that emit and receive around 1 terahertz. Apparently, they can read writing in envelopes, etc. It isn't clear whether this particular system is more like a thermal IR system, or one of those newer ones. Chances are good that when such a system is produced, it will be produced WITHOUT any kind of recording system that must be installed. The problem is, this leaves it open to interpretation as to what a cop saw, and judges and juries tend to be too deferential to cops who "are trying to protect us." All a cop has to do is to claim he saw a gun, or drugs, or practically anthing else, and suddenly he has probable cause where he wouldn't have had it before. Yet more abuse with no obvious benefit. All the more reason to adopt an AP-type system: The so-called "justice system" rarely punishes its own; if we are to have a realistic deterrent, the only way to do it is to let outsiders deal with abuse. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

1 0

Re: Police prepare stunning end for high-speed car chases
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:43 AM 8/13/96, jim bell wrote: >At 09:54 AM 8/12/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: > >> >>(And I'm not ignorant of such technologies, having attended several of the >>Nuclear and Space Radiation Effects Conferences. I also played around with >Why would you need an "EM Cannon" for this? Just string a 1-car-sized loop >of wire on the surface of a road, and off in the bushes hide a battery, >DC-to-Hi voltage DC converter and 20kv+ capacitor, and a vacuum switch or >some other switch arrangement. When the car in question traverses the loop, >short the switch and the car will be blasted with 20,000 volt-turns of >induction. Sure, most of it will pass harmlessly through the car's steel, >but even iron has a limited "mu" which means that every electrical device in >the car will be subjected to a certain amount of induced EMF, probably >enough to at least reset a few microprocessors and possibly even destroy them. Well, we're all operating based on speculation, as to intended modes of operation, what the contracts may ask for, what may eventually get delivered, etc. Certainly the described mode, that of a police car _pursuing_ another car, suggests a car-launched signal. Rewiring the nation's roads to include buried cables in anticipation of a future use would be pretty expensive! (And if the cops can plan for a suspect/fleeing car to pass a specific location, low-tech solutions like laying a row of caltrops across the road will do much the same thing as "zapping" (which may not even work.)) As to high-voltage zapping, on this I am _extremely_ skeptical, at least as Jim's proposal above goes. Modern chips are equipped to deal with high-voltage, having electrostatic discharge (ESD) provisions. Voltages a lot higher than 20kv. And getting this hv signal in to the interior of the engine compartment, and past the various thermal and other shields would be a chore. Certainly the rubber tires will provide an _awful_ lot of insulation! No signal at the road level is going to get through the tires, at least not until the dielectric breakdown of several inches of rubber and air is achieved! (And even then, what is the current path? Where does the current coming up from the road surface go? Even lightning strikes, from above, where the place for the current to flow is clearly down into the ground, have virtually no effect on cars and especially not on the insides of cars.) If cars routinely survive lightning strikes, involving hundreds of thousands of of volts and fairly substantial currents, then I can't imagine anything humans can plausibly do along the same lines having any effect. I won't debate this further, though. I don't know just what the DARPA (or whomever) contract is asking for. Maybe something can be built, maybe not. --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."

1 0

NT Remailers
by steven ryan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, Would anyone be so kind as to point me to any information on running a remailer on Windows NT and the address for the remailer-owners mailing list? A search of the places I expected might have this information didn't Thanks, Steven ------------------------------------ Steven Ryan Reading Access PGP Fingerprint: E8 A2 C5 A2 7A C4 77 93 0A 1B 1D C6 B9 2F 36 9B Finger me for my PGP public key sryan(a)reading.com

1 0

Re: "X-Ray Gun" for imperceptible searches
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:12 AM 8/13/96, Alan Horowitz wrote: >CCW holders don't have a legal right to conceal their possession of >weapon, from the police. > I think the earlier remark was oriented toward "not scaring the horses" rather than making a serious attempt to hide the presence of a gun from a duly-authorized search. People who carry concealed are _strongly_ encouraged to keep the fact of their concealed carry hidden. No "careless" displays in bars, for example. And no announcement to casual bystanders, and even to store security guards. The reason for this is simple: to avoid panic and overreaction ("He's got a gun!!") and also to avoid having a concealed weapon used in a brandishing situation to intimidate others. Seen this way, the widespread deployment of metal detectors, millimeter wave detectors, and other such gadgets would force major changes in CCW laws. Aside from the Constitutional issues, which are major. I don't see how "remote scanning" of the population at large, without probable cause, is much different from the cops listening in from a distance with parabolic antennas. Both cases involve detection of signals emitted from the target. And yet such long-distance interception is not allowed without a warrant. --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."

1 0

Re: AW: National Socio-Economic Security Need for Encryption Technology
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:35 AM 8/13/96, Perry E. Metzger wrote: >Bart Croughs writes: >> I would be proud if I had discovered this axiom, but alas, I haven't. >> It's an axiom that is generally accepted among austrian economists >> (Rothbard, Hazlitt, etc). I don't know who actually discovered it. > >The truly hysterical part is that Tim and I are both (from what I can >tell) Austrians. Indeed. While Perry and I disagree on some things, the relevance of the Austrian School of Economics, and its University of Chicago satellite campus, is not one of them. If Croughs stays on this list long enough, he will surely see this. (And find plenty of references to Hayek, Menger, Friedman, etc., in the archives.) The problem with the "Croughs Axiom" is not that there is not a _general_ correlation between average national wages and average national capital investment--there is. A scatter plot of wages vs. capital investment for the 200 or so nations would almost certainly show that the Ivory Coast has low per capita wages and low per capita wages, Sweden has both higher wages and higher capital investment per capita, and so on. Correlation, of course, is not causation. No, the problem was that Croughs invoked this general _correlation_ (which can arise for various reasons) to support his mercantilist protectionist ideas. (He also didn't say he was talking of nations, which is why some of us found the examples we did, e.g., MacDonald's vs. law firms, which have the opposite correlation he described.) And the cloud of ideas connected with somehow forcing capital investment to remain in the U.S....well, the best way to do this is to alter the tax laws so that America (for example) becomes a magnet for investment. (If one is looking to help America, that is.) In any case, the original notion, of somehow using cryptography policy to support U.S. interests....well, I rather doubt that Menger, Von Mises, Hayek, Hazlitt, or any of the others connected with the Austrian School would buy Crough's protectionist arguments. And I certainly know that jingoistic appeals to "America First!" are inconsistent with the sentiments of many or even most on this list. --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."

1 0