December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Kaos vs Control
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:08 PM 6/12/96, Duncan Frissell wrote: >With apologies to Maxwell Smart... (And to SMERSCH, "Death to Censors") >Note the most important part of the decision. The embrace of chaos by the >Chief Judge of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals: > >"Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of >our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the >unfettered speech the First Amendment protects. > For these reasons, I without hesitation hold that the >CDA is unconstitutional on its face." > >Chaos wins again. See, all you doubters, "anarchy" is not so bad after all. (Politically aware people of various stripes fully understood the precise meaning of "anarchy," and anarchy of various types (anarcho-capitalism, anarcho-syndicalism, etc.) is well-known. The _popular_ impression of anarchy-- images of bomb-throwing Russians or Bloods and Crips street battles--is less charitable. I see little chance that people who don't understand anarchy derives from "an-archy," "no top/leader/highest level," will become educated.) Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control" makes the chaos/anarchy/self-organization points in a different way, as do the works of Hayek, D. Friedman, and many others. Good to see the courts reaffirming that "chaos" and lack of control by authorities is a core part of the U.S. system. Maybe the control freaks of Europe and Asia who have been charting their own authoritarian courses will give more thought to ensuring liberty even if it more "chaos." Today is a good day. --Tim 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."

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Republican Revolution?
by lroth＠ios.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Now that Internet Kaos!!! has been legalized, I guess it's OK to post this. To paraphrase Lazarus Long "Avoid strong drink. It might make you shoot at tax collectors outside of New York State." Love those soft and squishy judges. >From the NY Post, Wednesday, June 12, 1996. CONVICTION OF TAX MAN'S KILLER GETS TOSSED OUT By Gregg Birnbaum Post Correspondent ALBANY --- The state's top court yesterday threw out the murder conviction of a Republica Party activist who gunned down the first IRS agent to die in the line of duty. The court of Appeals overturned the 1983 conviction of James Bradley, who asked IRS collection agent Michael Dillon, "Mike are you prepared to meet your maker?" --- then fired an M-1 rifle at him twice. Bradley then knelt down to take Dillon's pulse and shot him a third time before driving to a friend's house to present him with the weapon as a "souvenir." Dillon 61, had gone to Bradley's house near Buffalo in September 1983 to collect the last $332 of a $2,000 lien imposed by the IRS. When Bradley wouldn't pay up right away, Dillon threatened to seize one of his cars. Bradley got his rifle, returned to the kitchen, where Dillon was sitting and started firing. In a unanimous unsigned ruling, the Court of Appeals said the trial judge undermined Bradley's insanity defense by improperly allowing the jury to also consider a first-degree manslaughter conviction. That's the charge on which Bradley was convicted. He was acquitted of second-degree murder. At his sentencing, Bradley predicted Dillon wouldn't be the last IRS agent to die at the hands of an irate taxpayer and said, "I was just helping President Bonzo get government off our backs," an apparent reference to then-President Reagan. The Erie County district attorney said he expected to resubmit the case to a grand jury. If Bradley is tried again, he will face a first-degree manslaughter charge or lesser, his lawyer said. Before the shooting, Bradley, 76, had long been known as a Republican campaign worker in the Buffalo area. He is now in the Mohawk Correctional Facility in Rome and is said to be ill. ###

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Re:Anonymous remailers mentioned in CDA decision
by mccoy＠communities.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Raph quotes a few bits of the CDA decision: [..] > 22. Arguably, a valid CDA would create an incentive for overseas > pornographers not to label their speech. If we upheld the CDA, > foreign pornographers could reap the benefit of unfettered access > to American audiences. A valid CDA might also encourage American > pornographers to relocate in foreign countries or at least use > anonymous remailers from foreign servers. It about jobs, that's it... Let's keep America a major power in the pornography industry (I can just imagine the commercial :) jim

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Born Classified
by samlb＠baynetworks.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

According to "The Codebreakers" (if memory serves me), in about 1943 the U.S. and the U.K. negotiated a BRITUS treaty, the details of which were very secret. I think that this was the original agreement to share the British Enigma cryptography results, and possibly the U.S. nuclear results. Further, I suspect that one of the provisions of the BRITUS treaty was that all of the crypto stuff be treated as if British Law (i.e. the Official Secrets Act) ruled -- everything was secret unless and until the Government said it wasn't any more. This was mildly unconstitutional at the time, but could be gotten past the courts on the excuse that the Constitution defines treaties as "The Highest Law of the Land". It has certainly led to a lot of abuses since, but the bureaucrats love it -- "born classified", indeed! Does anyone on the list have any info -- or references -- that would serve to confirm or deny my guesses? adTHANKSvance samlb(a)baynetworks.com

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Re: Britain to control crypto - official (fwd from Usenet)
by Hallam-Baker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Robert Hettinga wrote: > > > The British government quietly announced yesterday that it will > > legislate to restrict crypto. This could be a problem. The government is pretty burned out having run out of ideas a long time ago. Interferring with areas the people understand little of is a way to avoid making worse mistakes. Given that we have the worst Home Secretary this century there is little hope that civil liberties will play any part in any legislation. For those that don't follow UK politics the government has been methodically extinguishing civil rights such as the right to demonstrate in public and the right of a defendant to premptory challenge agains jurors (the prosecution retains the right). The key question is how urgently the govt intends to press the point. If they attach a provision to pre-election criminal justice bill then expect a really half baked clause. If they go for public comment gathering proceedures then the govt. is likely to be out of office before anything happens. With less than half the public support of the opposition Bob Dole stands more chance of election than the British Tories. > Does anyone here have any idea what this does to british-affiliated states > like Anguilla, or the Caymans? Nothing in the case of most dependent territories. Most territories are either entirely self governing or have some body which "assists" the govenor. Given that we have yet to unify English and Scottish law the process of making laws is quite complex. Presumably the govt intend to pass laws covering the whole of the UK, what mechanism they choose for this we will have to wait to find out. I would expect the Caymans to act to protect their tax-haven business. This could mean that they are pro crypto (increase effectiveness) or may mean that they go anti to avoid being seen as money laundering havens and invite Cuba style sanctions acts. Phill

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Quickremail update
by Mark M. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I have now released Quickremail v1.0. This fixes a lot of the bugs present in the beta version. Some of the bugs were serious, so I would suggest getting the newer version. It is available at http://www.voicenet.com/~markm/quickremail.1.0.tar.gz . - -- Mark =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= markm(a)voicenet.com | finger -l for PGP key 0xe3bf2169 http://www.voicenet.com/~markm/ | d61734f2800486ae6f79bfeb70f95348 "In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point." -- Friedrich Nietzsche -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3 Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBMb87I7Zc+sv5siulAQE8dQP/Rrzvd4T/4vF5/KUmPA1mrhxxl+7Mosud OqykU7Bcg5lMezYuW51eaHlQVqgeMhLaFopXth4su3S9DHB+wv1rYwo4rh8G4Gt9 h0EQ4ekhVi4tzzM1VChdkIE/ZrddvcqSoIvZqGOjv8UrvWxXoKoNQ65IKB+UHvvC MQAZGT5KvUM= =Gycx -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: CDA decision TOMORROW 9 am! (fwd)
by Blake Wehlage 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:47 AM 6/12/96 +0000, Omegaman wrote: >Guess I was logged in at the right time this morning. Judges ruled >3-0 that the CDA is unconstitutional. hooray. > >I thought a little rejoicing was warranted. :) > >me >------------------------------------------------------------ > Omegaman <omega(a)bigeasy.com> > PGP Key fingerprint = 6D 31 C3 00 77 8C D1 C2 > 59 0A 01 E3 AF 81 94 63 >------------------------------------------------------------ > > :-) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Blake "Pokey" Wehlage Age-13 Gaa- 3.69 (for ice hockey goalie) <jwilk(a)iglou.com> My page- http://www.iglou.com/members/jwilk.html Quote- Does whiskey count as beer? -Homer Simpson

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Re: whitehouse queries files on political enemies
by Hallam-Baker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bill Frantz wrote: > > OBCrypto: William Safire, in his 6/10/96 column on this subject, says, > "Under Freeh, the anti-encryption zealot hand-picked by the man whose name > was used on the phony requisitions, the Justice Department's most > confidential file room has become a walk-in closet for White House pols." Well Safire should know about Nixon type dirty tricks, after all he worked for Nixon as a speachwriter and wrote a book about it:- http://econ158.berkeley.edu/williamsafire.html http://econ158.berkeley.edu/haldeman.html >From a pro-crypto point of view it is more advantageous to accept the administration position that the requests were made in error. After all that demonstrates that the govt. is not capable of admininistering sensitive information properly even when it is what must surely count as the most sensitive information the govt. tracks. If the system is ineffective in protecting the files of the party workers of opposed factions then it is unlikely to protect the secrecy of less sensitive files. This aside the general problem is one of authorisation. The current USGovt security system is based on principles of security clearances and "need to know". But how does the guardian of various personal files know _who_ needs to know? This is a _very_ hard problem, one that I for one would like an answer to. Unfortunately the USGovt is not like a computer system where the authorisation policy for information is enforced via ACLs or the like. Perhaps it should be Phill

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121. Anonymity is important to Internet users who seek
by strick (henry strickland) 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From the CDA decision: ( http://www.vtw.org/speech/decision.html ) Anonymity 121. Anonymity is important to Internet users who seek to access sensitive information, such as users of the Critical Path AIDS Project's Web site, the users, particularly gay youth, of Queer Resources Directory, and users of Stop Prisoner Rape (SPR). Many members of SPR's mailing list have asked to remain anonymous due to the stigma of prisoner rape. Anonymous remailers are mentioned in this secction: Obstacles to Age Verification on the Internet 90. There is no effective way to determine the identity or the age of a user who is accessing material through e-mail, mail exploders, newsgroups or chat rooms. An e-mail address provides no authoritative information about the addressee, who may use an e-mail "alias" or an anonymous remailer. There is also no universal or reliable listing of e- mail addresses and corresponding names or telephone numbers, and any such listing would be or rapidly become incomplete. For these reasons, there is no reliable way in many instances for a sender to know if the e-mail recipient is an adult or a minor. The difficulty of e-mail age verification is compounded for mail exploders such as listservs, which automatically send information to all e-mail addresses on a sender's list. Government expert Dr. Olsen agreed that no current technology could give a speaker assurance that only adults were listed in a particular mail exploder's mailing list.

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Re: No Kidding
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> The absence > of governmental regulation of Internet content has unquestionably > produced a kind of chaos, but as one of plaintiffs' experts put > it with such resonance at the hearing: > What achieved success was the very > chaos that the Internet is. The > strength of the Internet is that > chaos.[23] > > Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of > our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the > unfettered speech the First Amendment protects. This is beautifully eloquent. I hope it will be persuasive with the Supreme Court. Does anyone know which witness came up with the quote above? Obviously it resonated with the judges. Hal

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