December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

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

17 Dec '03

At 02:15 PM 8/12/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >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! Yes, it would be rather impractical for _that_ particular application. >(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.)) The one place where this might be practical is on highways where these units can be placed fairly sparsely and still have a Even so, I think that non-police applications are more "interesting." >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. That's based on a certain source model. You know, a specific capacitor in series resistance to limit the current. However, if the current was induced from a low-impedance circuit, damaging currents might flow even if the EMF within a certain shielded loop in the car never exceeded a few tens of volts. > >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, Tim, remember that I'm postulating an _inductively_ coupled system. Loop on ground, loops in the car, etc. Magnetic coupling. Conduction through car tires would be irrelevant the the functioning of this system. Wouldn't hurt it; wouldn't help it. (Side note: BTW, car tires are not non-conductive. Check it out someday with a ohmmeter.) Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Fw: Re: Free Pronto Secure Offer
by geoff＠commtouch.co.il 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Tue Aug 13 18:39:12 1996 on Aug 13 Sean Sutherland wrote: > Whatever happened to that free offer for ProntoSecure for members of > the Cpunk list? Remembered hearing something about it awhile back, > but I don't know exactly what it is. Thanks. The offer is still on. A free copy of Pronto Secure in exchange for feedback. Open to anyone on the c'punk list. http://www.commtouch.com/p1.htm for download. http://www.commtouch.com/testers.htm for users' impressions. http://www.commtouch.com/s-mail.html for description. Announcement: Effective immediately. New list price for Pronto - ------------ Secure is $99. Contact secure(a)commtouch.com if group discounts required. - --------------------------------------------------------------- Geoff Klein, Pronto Secure Product Manager; www.commtouch.com My PGP public Key 1814AD45 can be obtained by sending a message to geoff(a)commtouch.co.il with "Get PGP Key" as the subject. - ---------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBMhChpkLv5OMYFK1FAQFE/gP+NVaU5a+fdU5YuGLPDrD02DuXgfc/skZP sKUuE2yJcBV1N7ITjWJEkf98hgWr688G71lJ2+1JGob1bLBF5bBDT3M2ag5eX5Dl dARvhjtcU4+bDxOrnOsJ4wlAyTZ1WmfmaDoe5IPKdgAu+6gTDS+3dq31vm2oFaud /2qazWTTUwA= =jFNk -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Econopunks FAQ, Ver. 0.98
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What is a Fair Price for a good or service? There is no such thing as a Fair Price. There are only the prices paid by willing buyers and sellers. These are generally called market prices. Many factors influence price including cost of production and product characteristics but the only determinants are the desire of market actors to complete transactions at given prices. You may think that you are smart enough to decide what a good or service should sell for, but if you're not putting cash on the barrel head, you're not even part of the process of arriving at the "price". ******* Just a suggestion to future Econopunks posters: Try not to post the economics equivalent of the "Can't you make an unbreakable code by running the plaintext through a Caesarian Cypher 7500 times?" question. DCF "No good or service should be sold for more than its cost of production -- therefore, all you folks who are ripping off your employers must report to the slave barracks where you will be provided with triple bunks (hot bunked), all the rice and beans needed to sustain life, a multivitamin tablet daily, and loads of clean water."

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Re: (Off Topic) Re: FCC_ups
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:01 8/13/96, David Wagner wrote: >The *real* challenge: how do you support sender- and recipient- anonymous >phone calls with strong security? Have fun. Sender anonymous phone calls are easy. You route them through PipeNet, assuming every PipeNet node has a telephony gateway. Recipient anonymous phone calls a harder to implement. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred. Defeat the Demopublican Unity Party. Vote no on Clinton/Dole in November. Vote Harry Browne for President.

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Re: Why should we trust the system? & a little off topic
by an681132＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Preiously, jim bell <jimbell(a)pacifier.com> > <snip> However, hours after it was publicly revealed that the Atlanta > 911 center screwed up, wasting 10 minutes looking up the address of > "Centennial park," <snip> After watching the news during the coverage of the 911 call, I couldn't help but notice the free computer advertisement. I don't suppose that --****ATTENTION****--****ATTENTION****--****ATTENTION****--***ATTENTION*** Your e-mail reply to this message WILL be *automatically* ANONYMIZED. Please, report inappropriate use to abuse(a)anon.penet.fi For information (incl. non-anon reply) write to help(a)anon.penet.fi If you have any problems, address them to admin(a)anon.penet.fi

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Re: [NOISE] "X-Ray Gun" for imperceptible searches
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:27 8/13/96, Peter Trei wrote: >I vaguely remember another possibly relevant precedent, where a >judge ruled that a warrant was required before a thermal imager >could be used to look at a house suspected by the police of >being a (pot) grow house. Wrong. No warrant was used and the bust was upheld in court. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred. Defeat the Demopublican Unity Party. Vote no on Clinton/Dole in November. Vote Harry Browne for President.

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Re: India, Productivity, and Tropical Climes
by Arun Mehta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 13:15 11/08/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >At 4:17 AM 8/11/96, Arun Mehta wrote: >>One of the >>reasons that IBM was thrown out of India in the mid seventies was >>their practice of shipping only outdated computers from the US to >>India. >This I tend to disagree with. I recall that India had some laws in the >1970s which required companies to dislose trade secrets to them. As a >result, IBM chose not to stay in India. I recall that Coca-Cola also >refused to turn over the formula for Coke, but this may've been urban >legend. The IBM case is pretty well-documented. IBM would've sold the >latest and greatest technology to India if: a) it was profitable to them, >b) if India could've paid for a 370/90 or whatever in 1975, c) if COCOM >regulations would have allowed such a sale (doubtful, given the Ghandi >dynasty's cozying up to the Sovs in the 70s. > >I don't think shipment of "old technology" to India was at all on IBM's >list of concerns, certainly not back then. Sorry, the response took a while: George Fernandes, who was the industries minister at the time, is an acquaintance, so I thought I'd get the story from the horse's mouth. In the aftermath of the oil crisis, India was short of foreign exchange, so it passed the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) under which foreign equity in an Indian company could only exceed 40% if the company was hi-tech or produced something of critical national importance. The government saw no reason why precious foreign exchange should go out as profits on the sale of toothpaste or cola. Coke claimed that its secret formula qualified it as a hi-tech company, and so it should be allowed 100% ownership of its Indian subsidiary. The government saw no reason why: that was easy. The Indian government wasn't asking Coke to reveal its formula, merely dilute its holding to 40%. That one was easy. As regards IBM, its agreement with the government of India, under which it was allowed to operate in the country, stipulated that it would produce here, and transfer some technology. Instead, as the government found, all it did was sell time on second-hand computers (1401's as I recall, and this was mid to late '70s). IBM was asked to either dilute, or live up to its original agreement, which it wasn't prepared to do, so it left. > >As attractive as this sounds, historically this has not happened. And as >many will tell you, the climate of the Bay Area in particular and >California in general is extremely benign and delightful. The average >winter temperature is only about 10C cooler than summer temperatures. Didn't Mark Twain say that the coldest winter he had ever experienced was a summer in San Francisco? I do agree, SF and environs are great: but US immigration laws being what they are, not everyone can move there -- some day, "routing around" might make those places more attractive which have the least restrictive immigration laws. Arun Mehta Phone +91-11-6841172, 6849103 amehta(a)cpsr.org http://www.cerfnet.com/~amehta/ finger amehta(a)cerfnet.com for public key

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Re: PGP...
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:39 PM 8/13/96 +0100, sasa.roskar(a)uni-lj.si wrote: > I'm confused.... if you don't want people to be able to read your > email, you code it with PGP or other encoders... but why give away > your key on your website to everyone? That makes your email readable > to everyone... doesn't it? Oh well... I hope someone can explain this > to me... Public keys and private keys: Private key only you know, Public key everybody knows. You use private key to sign, you use the other guys public key to encrypt, so that no one but him can read the message, not even you, unless you kept the original copy. Public key does not decrypt. Other guy uses his private key to decrypt the message you sent him. What one man knows, nobody knows, what two men know, everyone knows. If you had to share keys in order to communicate, the keys would not stay secret very long. Public key encrypts and verifies signature. Private key encrypts and signs. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | 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: Anguilla story...
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:24 PM 8/13/96, Vincent Cate wrote: >In a nut shell, taxbomber.com was on my system in Anguilla. He was >selling "camoflauge passports". One David Evans of Bloomberg Business >News wrote an article where he quoted taxbombers page saying something >like "it is illegal to use these passports to open up bank accounts, but >there is little chance of getting caught". I got a call from my lawyer who >had seen the article (along with just about everyone else in Anguilla) and >he told me that was illegal in Anguilla and I should cancle the account. >I did and taxbomber moved to another provider in another country. > >1) A number of cypherpunks are dissapointed that I did not fight to my >death to defend this guy. I think you're overstating the case made by some of us, or, at least, by me. What I said was that your policies need to be spelled out, and that I saw little evidence of "fraud" in what the guy was doing. And that if you cut off accounts (without warning, it sounds like) based on fairly flimsy (it seems to me, and to Duncan, and to others) advice, then certain reputational consequences are likely to follow. By the way, from what you quote this guy as saying ("it is illegal to use these passports to open up bank accounts, but there is little chance of getting caught"), I _still_ see no fraud. People can make all sorts of claims, often they throw in claims of illegality or "pirate" status just to add a frisson of the dangerous to their marketing campaign. Cancelling an account on such a basis is rarely wise. That "everyone else in Anguilla" read the account may be the real reason, of course. Not that this reason instills much confidence.... >2) If the guy did not mention where his site was, the reporter probably >would never have mentioned Anguilla and me in the article. Is this the real issue, that what he was doing brought bad publicity to you and to Anguilla? These issues need to be aired. Of course you have every right to run things as you wish, modulo contractual arrangements you may have entered into with your customers and your Internet providers. But we on this list have certain ideas about what an "offshore information provider" should provide. Contrast this case with the well-publicized cases recently where Neo-Nazi material is being hosted on U.S. web sites. After getting a lot of publicity, the web site providers stood firm and said they were not in the business of removing such sites, even if they brought a lot of bad publicity and even if they were in fact in violation of the laws of some countries whose citizens could access the sites. I don't claim camouflage passports = Neo-Nazi sites, but their are certainly some similarities. So, if I opened an account on "Offshore Information Services" and placed such materials there, and this got heavily publicized ("Anguilla a Center for Neo-Nazi Revival!"), would my account be cancelled? Again, I'm not saying you don't have the "right" to do so, only that you ought to carefully consider such issues, and carefully articulate a policy of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable, and how you will deal with customers who have some material (or even some marketing claims) which may conflict with your policies. --Tim May HOW TO MAKE A PIPE BOMB: "Buy a section of metal water pipe 1/2 by 6 inches long, threaded on both ends. Buy two metal caps to fit. These are standard items in hardware stores. Drill a 1/16th hole in the center of the pipe. This is easy with a good drill bit. Hanson is a good brand to use. Screw a metal cap tightly on one end. Fill the pipe to within 1/2 inch of the top with black powder. Do not pack the powder. Don't even tap the bottom of the pipe to make it settle. You want the powder loose. For maximum explosive effect, you need dry, fine powder sitting loose in a very rigid container." (more information at http://sdcc13.ucsd.edu/~m1lopez/pipe.html, or by using search engines)

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Re: National Socio-Economic Security Need for Encryption
by Paolo Da Ros 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07.54 11/08/96 -0400, you wrote: >Forwarded by Robert Hettinga > >----------------------------------------------------------------------- >X-Sender: amehta(a)giasdl01.vsnl.net.in > Mime-Version: 1.0 > Date: Sun, 11 Aug 1996 10:17:31 +0600 > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > From: Arun Mehta <amehta(a)giasdl01.vsnl.net.in> > Subject: Re: National Socio-Economic Security Need for Encryption > Technology > Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Precedence: bulk > > >At 02:05 10/08/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: > >At 12:15 PM 8/10/96, Scottauge(a)aol.com wrote: > >>I was watched CBS reports a couple nights ago about how all these blue collar > >>and now white collar jobs are going across seas. > > > >Where do I begin? First, what does "taking jobs away from us" mean? That we > >own these jobs? And who is "us"? > > Well said. Sure. jobs belong to people which are the more competitive to perform them (which ask less to do the some job or ask the same to do a better job). Since markets are going to be "global", as a consumer or a reseller I can buy wherever I want whatever I want -well, almost, and crypto, remailers etc can help-. The improvements in the competitive position of US economy have one of their roots in the loss of purchase power by the american workforce (less to do the same job, or the same to do a better job). This is something I guess Germans are going to experience. In Italy there is an old tradition of using devaluation as a competitive mean (ask the french government and french industrialists what they thought after the IT Lira lost 30% in a few months, back in 1992-3). > > >>So a possible way to protect jobs is to protect the knowledge on how to do > >>them. I don't think it's possible to "protect jobs". This translates into blocking the market mechanisms, which constantly, by mean of the competition, push toward better quality, lower prices and/or new products. Right or wrong, market wins. If ideas are worth money, they spread. To confirm the simmetry of politics on the two sides of the pond, I was told the US right (newt gingrich) has on this issue the same idea here in Italy is supported by the far left (the Rifondazione Comunista party). The idea is to make mandatory a label on every third world product which states the amount of child labor embedded in the product. I see in this "moral" approach to economy two possible outcomes: the first is that nobody buys such products, (the goal of the proposal) based on child exploitation (and so the child is not exploited anymore, and starves to death while smiling to his first world "friends"); the second is that lots of people buy the product not because of its features, price etc, but to help the poor child. In this way, the moral approach to economic issues has two immoral possible outcomes (I enjoy these paradoxes, it's one of the few things I still like of Marx). The problem is that there are millions of hungry people, and a simple solution is not available. Who says he has it is a liar. > > To some extent this happens automatically -- for instance, if you > live in the Silicon valley, your knowledge levels are higher on > account of higher frequency of user meets, conferences, etc. But, > to the extent you use the Internet as an information source, it > is available internationally. So you cannot have it both ways: > use an open forum like the Internet, and hope to keep knowledge bottled in. The only choice we first world citizens have is to run faster, try to invent new products or new ways to produce old products. I have been told that the quality of eastern europe programmers is very high, and we cannot compete with people which makes one tenth or less than we do (well, we CAN compete, if we accept to make the same...). BTW, from the very little I know about some members of this list, it looks like they are "creme de la creme": very bright people, wide vision of the issues, eclectic culture (at least two of the brightest of them share my love for LISP machines, so my ego gets comforted...), and constant research of the best market position for themselves. Unfortunately, individuals can easily switch and try to improve their position, national economies have a far bigger momentum to win to achieve the same result. Besides, if everybody could so easily switch, the improvement -a higher relative position- could not exist at all. > > In earlier generations of computing, monopolistic organizations [snip] > projects such as Iridium, Odyssey, Teledisc and Globalstar > threaten to change all this, little impact will be felt until the > end of the decade. In any case, telecom facilities in the > industrialized countries will most likely continue to be > considerably superior, providing workers there with an ongoing > competitive advantage. This is an extra-optimistic view. In one of my previous job at a very large European system integrator, three years ago, I was told that "SW projects used to be 7 years long, are 7 months long, and we shall prepare for the moment when they will be 7 days long". So workers there will have a competitive advantage (perhaps) at doing a shrinking amount of work. Given their age, many members of the list are accustomed to shrinking markets and new skills acquisitions (see Artificial Intelligence back in the 80s), as is possible to understand from the fact that they are positioned in one of the hottest spots in one of the fastest growing markets. So I assume many are familiar with the job-kiling role of technology. The competitive disadvantage of industrialized countries workers is provided by these workers themselves when they put competitive advantage of their know-how in new products or technologies. > > Further, as economists such as Paul Krugman point out, developing > countries lack the means for sustained growth ("Which Asian > Model?", Newsweek, November 20, 1995). Those economies that have I wouldn't trust a newsmagazine on such a critical topic. And (hope you don't take this as a chauvinistic european statement) expecially NOT an American newsmagazine. Nice photos, poor content. > shown dramatic growth, such as the East Asian, have relied > essentially on low-cost inputs, rather than on their efficient If you know how many are the chinese, you could come to the conclusion that as soon as they improve their agricolture, HUNDRED MILLIONS low-cost people (input?) are available to exploit new markets. So, low cost input shortage is not an issue. Yes, their economic model could reach a critical point when they reach, say, a 6K$ gdp pro capita, but by then their gdp should be 1.200.000.000 * 6.000 US$, i.e. 7.2 trillion US$. (today their GDP pro capita should be around 900US$, i.e 1.08 TrnUS$, growing at 10% per year) > utilization. Professor Alwyn Young of Boston has in fact come to > the surprising conclusion that Singapore's total factor very surprising indeed. If I'm not wrong, singapore has a GDP pro capita around 12K$. And productivity is what defines the GDP. Should productivity in Singapore really be so low, I can't understand how capital intensive industries (semiconductors, for instance) could have been established there by so well managed western companies like HP or TI etc > productivity (which measures such efficiency) is so poor as to be > comparable to that of the Soviet Union. He points out that "at > just the time that everybody was ranting about how magnificent > Japan was, it ceased to catch up." Well. yen was at 300. Now it is at 108. It means that to buy -say- fine Californian Wine -apart from customs, which is an issue, of course- a few years ago a japanese blue collar had to spend -say- 2 hours. Now 40 minutes (the example is not very good, but should explain my thinking). > > Cheap inputs is not a long-term phenomenon, as companies looking > for good programmers in India are increasingly discovering. > Programmer salaries in India are rapidly rising. While many > youngsters are keen to become programmers, India lacks adequate the real killer here is technology, not low-cost programmers from India. All the recent emphasis on Intranets is emphasis on a dramatic standardization of everyting; GUI, security, infrastructure, access to data etc. Standardization means better productivity, and productivity is "less people to do the same job". [snip] > >>Perhaps there is a larger picture in the world that the cyperpunks mailing > >>list is missing. That cryptography is not just for personal privacy, but > >>could involve job security also - as a matter of fact, the income base for Job security doesn't exist. There used to be in eastern europe, but it didn't work. Job security output were Trabants (funny east german cars) or poor quality state restaurants. > >>this whole country. I think the picture is far larger than that of the simple right to the privacy. You don't care of your privacy when your stomach is empty, and there is too much people with his stomach empty. So, many things will change as many poor people become richer and many middle(or low) -income people become poorer. I think one of the things which will have an impact on this change is going to be the net, and crypto is a net-enabler (uno of the most important, I would say). So, cypherpunks are going to be exposed to all the important things to happen. I don't think they alone will be in the position to change nothing, but they will bring an informed point of view in the discussion. I once dreamed to change the world, or at least to control the way things had to go. Now the situation is so complex that I could feel satisfied just being able to understand what's happening and how we will face change. My enrollment in this list is because lots if bright people submit ideas on the topic here, and this is of the greatest value. > [snip] > > My prediction is that with the blessings of the Internet, the > next generation of multiracial programmers, even those that were > born in the USA, will be more likely to be found on the beaches I'm not sure there will be something like "the next generation of programmers". Not in the sense world is going to end, but in the sense that possibly, in the new world which is coming to birth in these years, there will be no need of programmers (but a few hundreds of them...). > of tropical islands than in the fog of San Francisco. When you > can work in the shade of a palm tree, even if you should earn > less, it's worth it :-) > > Arun Mehta Phone +91-11-6841172, 6849103 amehta(a)cpsr.org > http://www.cerfnet.com/~amehta/ finger amehta(a)cerfnet.com for public key > > > >-------------------------------------------------- >The e$ lists are brought to you by: > >Take Your Business Online with Intertrader Ltd, Edinburgh, U.K. >Visit http://www.intertrader.com or email info(a)intertrader.com > >Making Commerce Convenient (tm) - Oki Advanced Products - Marlboro, MA >Value-Checker(tm) smart card reader= http://www.oki.com/products/vc.html > >Where people, networks and money come together: Consult Hyperion >http://www.hyperion.co.uk info(a)hyperion.co.uk > >See your name here. Be a charter sponsor for e$pam, e$, and Ne$ws! >See http://thumper.vmeng.com/pub/rah/ or e-mail rah(a)shipwright.com >for details... >------------------------------------------------- > >

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