December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Race Bit: C
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:11 PM 9/5/96 +0000, jonathon wrote: >On Thu, 5 Sep 1996, Anonymous wrote: >> defunded 100%, IMO). Violence begats violence which begats even larger >> government, don't start us on that road -- leave me in peace. >If I understand you correctly, it is OK for a government to >institute violence against the residents of the land it claims >dominion over, but it is not acceptable for the inhabitants of >that piece of land to respond in self defence. I think Mr. Anonymous displays a mental crutch that you'll occasionally see: A person who, while he'll not quite admit defending the status quo, criticizes alternatives to it yet doesn't have a solution of his own. He says he wants to be left "in peace," forgetting that most people in the world today are NOT left in peace. The way I see it, the status quo doesn't come "pre-justified": It needs just as much a defense as any other proposal. Its main advantage is that it tends to be more understood that most hypotheticals, because it's been tested. Sadly, people tend to ignore its disadvantages, to to excess familiarity. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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No Subject
by Zaphoid _d00l 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

desubscribe

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Conservation Laws, Money, Engines, and Ontology (fwd)
by Donald E. Eastlake 3rd 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Suggest you look at draft-eastlake-internet-payment-*.txt in the IETF shadow directories. I don't think any one step will solve all our spam problems but I wouldn't mind spending, say, 5 cents for each real piece of mail I sent outside my company and if end machines charged 5 cents per piece of ouside mail received, I think spamming would be crippled. (Note that with bad guy lists, you could collect the money and then just throw away the mail.) Donald (not on cypherpunks) ===================================================================== Donald E. Eastlake 3rd +1 508-287-4877(tel) dee(a)cybercash.com 318 Acton Street +1 508-371-7148(fax) dee(a)world.std.com Carlisle, MA 01741 USA +1 703-620-4200(main office, Reston, VA) http://www.cybercash.com http://www.eff.org/blueribbon.html ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 1 Sep 1996 19:47:15 -0400 From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> To: dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu Subject: Conservation Laws, Money, Engines, and Ontology Date: Sun, 1 Sep 1996 11:35:28 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com From: tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) Subject: Conservation Laws, Money, Engines, and Ontology 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." --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "'Bart Bucks' are not legal tender." -- Punishment, 100 times on a chalkboard, for Bart Simpson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To unsubscribe from this list, send a letter to: Majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu In the body of the message, write: unsubscribe dcsb Or, to subscribe, write: subscribe dcsb If you have questions, write to me at Owner-DCSB(a)ai.mit.edu

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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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