December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: A daily warning regarding Timothy C. May
by DMiskell＠envirolink.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Daniel Christopher Miskell wrote: >> Timothy C. May is a lying sack of shit. >> Right. And you had to insult him through use of anonymous mail. Boy, >> you're real brave, shedding the light to the rest of the cypherworld >> in such a manner. >> Apologies for the spam, but there was no address, obviously. >> If in fact we are the only intelligent life on this planet, why the >> fuck are we in this goddamn mess? > >A. There's probably no intelligent life in the (this) universe, and the > Uncertainty Principle is probably wrong, too (i.e., there is really > no Free Will, so there are no valid answers either), -and- > >B. If you were truly intelligent, would you want to come here? I find the lack of seperators between what anon wrote, what I wrote, and what my sig said amusing. Well, I get the feeling that I am intelligent. I tested for acceptance into Mensa, and after finding out my IQ was 156, I felt I had better things to do than include myself with the 'intelligence elite'. This list is a cool spot. I find out a lot of things I didn't know about, and hear a lot of things that the media isn't going to cover, things called 'rumor' because they don't want them to be true. Who knows, maybe we are all dumb. Either way, it does no good to lament wether or not we have sufficient intelligence to be referred to as 'itelligent life.' Personally, I find that it is far more fun to keep on trucking with life, rather than debate a moot point that we have no control over. -- If in fact we are the only intelligent life on this planet, why the fuck are we in this goddamn mess? -- Find my public key on the World Wide Web -- point your browser at: http://bs.mit.edu:8001/pks-toplev.html

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CIA hacked
by Mike van der Merwe 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi everybody Heh! This one's good for a laugh :-)) http://www.odci.gov/cia Seems the DOJ hack was a good inspiration. Heh! Life's good when you're willing to work at it. Later Mike ____________________________________________________________________ I'm sure we will find out in a few years that Microsoft invented the Net. Or brought it to the masses. Or saved it from a certain and early demise. Or all of the above. JAMES SEYMOUR

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Clickshare launches Internet's first multi-site micropaymentsservice
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 12:16:39 -0400 (EDT) Mime-Version: 1.0 To: "mpay list (MIT)" <micropay(a)ai.mit.edu> From: felixk(a)panix.com (Felix Kramer) Subject: Clickshare launches Internet's first multi-site micropayments service Sender: owner-micropay(a)ai.mit.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: micropay(a)ai.mit.edu Here are the first paragraphs of a press release, the rest of which can be found at: http://www.clickshare.com/pubpack/releases.html Clickshare launches Internet's first multi-site micropayments service "Internet Information Utility" delivers commerce a la carte WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Sept. 16 -- Clickshare Corporation's pioneering multi-site, single-ID, Internet micropayment system went live on Friday as users began clicking on -- and paying for -- information online. Purchases from Friday to Sunday by over a dozen first registrants totaled $62.60. "We're the web's first working multi-site distributed user-management and micropayment service," said Bill Densmore, Clickshare's chairman. "Now publishers can charge for valuable information on the Internet, rather than giving it away." "Now that 'The Internet's Information Utility' (sm) is up and running," said Felix Kramer, Clickshare marketing director, "we'll finally see whether people will buy information by the click." -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Felix Kramer, Marketing Director CLICKSHARE CORP. felix(a)clickshare.com Direct: 212/866-4864 www.clickshare.com Corporate: 413/458-8001 www.nlightning.com (personal) fax: 212/866-5527 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 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/

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Re: GLOBAL ALERT: GERMAN GOVERNMENT PUSHES BLOCKAGE OF NETHERLANDS WEB SITES
by Rolf Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

i absolutely agree with what you said, but let me correct this misunderstanding: > > GERMAN GOVERNMENT PUSHES BLOCKAGE OF NETHERLANDS WEB SITES. > it was *not* the german government, it was the public prosecutor general, who pushed this blockage. the german government recently said, that ISPs shouldn't (and aren't!) be responsible for what they're transmitting. but like other democratic states, in germany the public prosecutor is independant from government... rolf -- ----------------------------------------- Rolf Weber <weber(a)iez.com> | All I ask is a chance IEZ AG D-64625 Bensheim | to prove that money ++49-6251-1309-109 | can't make me happy.

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Re: DL in exchange for fingerprint
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> "We keep a memory bank that matches your fingerprints with your > license," [DoPS spokesman] said. "In other words, if you went to > get a new license with a false birth certificate and your > fingerprint didn't match the name, you wouldn't get a license. Totally bogus - _my_ birth certificate didn't have my fingerprints on it :-) Now, it may help stop people from getting duplicate licenses, assuming they use the same finger each time and don't have the sense to put rubber cement or ridge filler or something on their fingers first (and assuming, of course, that the system actually _checks_ the fingerprint in real time, rather than just recording it.) >Just what I would have called it: a great idea. Is it true that 31 >other states take your fingerprint as part of the license application? >I feel sick. Wouldn't be surprising; you didn't think you lived in America, did you? # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> # You can get PGP software outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto

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Re: Workers Paradise. /Political rant.
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"jbugden(a)smtplink.alis.ca" 17-SEP-1996 01:09:37.71 Mind trying to do 72-column or so formatting, BTW? >Canada has a single payer system and we spend about two thirds as much as t= >he >U.S. on health care as a percentage of G.N.P. We manage to insure all Canad= >ians >while about 35% of people in the U.S. have *no* health insurance. Canada also has less smoking, teenage pregnancy, and various other factors which are known to raise health insurance costs. I've seen some studies in which these _entirely_ account for the differences... and keep in mind the rate of health care inflation of the two countries (depending on the study, either the same or higher for Canada.) -Allen

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Re: Judge Kozinski Responds
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"liberty(a)gate.net" "Jim Ray" 17-SEP-1996 02:14:28.24 To: IN%"cypherpunks(a)toad.com" CC: Subj: Judge Kozinski Responds >The statement about anonymous remailers was largely >accurate. I'm not sure that the fact that you (or some of >your associates) are willing to block people from getting >anonymous mail is a sufficient safeguard. Some may not be, >and it only takes one or two who do not adhere to the code >to make life miserable for the rest of us. > >We agree about the need for privacy, but I'm not at all sure >why the right to send messages anonymously trumps the >recipient's right to know who's addressing him. Getting an >anonymous message--even one that is not harassing or >threatening--is an invasion of my privacy. As for The essential problem with this viewpoint is that the right the receiver has is to ignore the message. If he doesn't want to receive anonymous messages, he should set up a mail filtration program that will do a good enough job of filtering them out. Spammed messages can be countered with Internet charging (neccessary anyway for the long-term health of the Net), as can mailbombing. That leaves individual messages that may be offensive (including, apparantly in his case, offensive by virtue of being anonymous), but if offensiveness meant someone should have the right to stop the emission of speech, that would mean the Christian Coalition would have the right to stop speech on evolution, the PC types would have the right to stop speech on genetic differences in intelligence (see Stephen Jay Gould for them on this issue - even leaving aside racial questions which are separate from the individual ones), etcetera. -Allen

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GAK, GAP, GAY
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

GAK -- Government Access to Keys GAP -- Government Access to Patients GAY -- Government Access to You At 3:03 PM 9/18/96, Lucky Green wrote: >On Wed, 18 Sep 1996, Jim Ray wrote: >> I agree, and hope so. "Key Recovery," while not as Orwellian-sounding as >> "GAK," is a step on the path to honesty WRT the English language, though >> it's important to continually point out, as Tim did in his post, that >> *access* -- rather than just recovery -- is obviously what Mr. Freeh wants. >> >> I'd count this likely change in terminology as a "cypherpunk victory," >> albeit a very small and certainly a very hard-fought one. > >Nope. It is a Cypherpunk loss. The use of the term "key recovery" for GAK >now fully obfuscates the distinction between accessing a >backup copy by the legitimate owner (or his estate, employer, etc.) and >GAK. Many PKIs will support the former type of key recovery. And for good >reasons. Thanks to the brainwashers using the same term for GAK, it will >now become impossible to tell from a basic description of a PKI if it >supports GAK or not. Furthermore, those who oppose the latter type of key Further, merely _asking_ your Designated Key Recovery Authority what its release policies are will of course place your name on the SPL (Suspicious Persons List). The FAA is an agency which will have nearly unlimited access to communications, under the Safe Skies and Anti-Child-Hurting Act. (Think about it--Clinton already signed a couple of Presidential Decision Directives and Congress passed various anti-terrorism acts which already give the Feds authority to wiretap and surveil more widely than before, at least legally. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (or court) allows widespread surveillance of suspected foreign agents, without any notification of local courts or of the surveillance target. Won't these many provisions allowing wide surveillance already be used almost instantaneously to force PKIs to disclose keys of all those on the SPL? "If it saves just one child.") On a related note, I read an article yesterday about the proposed new Health Data Base, with all encounters with any medical institution or any health care provider of any sort being cross-linked and cross-referenced. The privacy concerns are supposedly handled by having "security tickets" for various hospital officials, researchers (!!), insurance companies, and law enforcement. (I put the "!!" next to the "researchers" because I don't recall releasing my medical and dietary history to any so-called "researchers." While I have no doubt that many "data miners" would like access to such national data bases, and that some potentially valuable information could be gleaned, I didn't release this information for Joe Gradstudent, Ph.D. candidate to sift through.) [Here are some more details: "Mission: one-stop medical records," Robert S. Boyd, San Jose Mercury News, 1996-09-17, p. 1. "Virtually unnoticed by the public, health-care experts are preparing to create an electronic "Master Patient Index," covering every American's medical records from cradle to grave...."We can't eliminate privacy concerns, but we can minimize them," said Richard Rubin, president of the Foundation for Health Care Quality in Seattle at a planning conference here last week....David Kilman, a computer expert at New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the idea for the master index was born....Only people with a 'security ticket'--such as doctors, insurers, scientific researchers or police with a proper warrant--are supposed to be able to see the clinical details....Kathy Ganz, director of the New Mexico Health Policy Commission, said, "Rights to privacy are genuine concerns, but they will need to be balanced against notions of common good.""] Pretty chilling, eh? As we all know, once such medical, dietary, and genetic data bases are established, the likelihood of privacy-invading use is near unity. If the NLETS data base can be routinely accessed (it's how I got Thomas Pynchon's home address, but that's another story), imagine who will hack this data base! The tabloids will love it, as they gain access to "medical records of the stars." Hackers will suck down as much as they can and then sell the records. And such data bases will be tied to True Names, of course, thus allowing the "freezing out" of anyone who is not a True Name, who has fallen behind in child support payments, who is late on his income taxes, and so on. It doesn't matter if cash is still allowed if one cannot interact with any health care person without a proper citizen-unit data base entry. They've got you tracked even if you pay in gold dust. (Putting on my Duncan cap--not to be confused with dunce cap--I wonder what will happen the first time someone dies because a hospital wouldn't treat someone without a proper citizen-unit health care card?) P.S. I fully understand that some doctors will treat patients for cash, without reporting to The Authorities, just as some doctors will treat gunshot wounds without the mandatory reporting of same to the police. This does not mean such doctors will be easy to find. The System, if allowed to win, will win. P.P.S. Many of the things we talk about on the list are being made possible--the good and the bad--by computerization. Obviously. Burnham's "Age of Privacy" (or maybe it was "The Age of Surveillance"--my copy is not handy) made this point many years ago. We are taking the mechanization and systematization procedures the Germans used so efficiently in the 1930s and modernizing them, with every movement and every transactions tracked and recorded in data bases. Now more than ever we need "credentials without identity" and digital cash. Chaum's article about "Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete" is now more urgent than ever. --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, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Stego inside encryption
by Mullen Patrick 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My apologies if this shows up twice. I got an error message from my first posting. *************** I know a lot of times the idea behind steganography is to hide the fact that a secret message is in a seemingly normal file/mail/whatever. This is good for avoiding unwanted interest in your file. The benefit of not having people attempt to crack you code, added to the strength of the cryptosystem is wonderful. However, I propose this-- Don't hide that anything's encrypted! Rather than hide this fact, throw it in their face! I propose hiding an encrypted message inside another encrypted message. Set bits in specific places to data in the real message. The benefit is Oscar not only doesn't know what the crypto is, he attacks the wrong message. Hiding statistically random bits from the true message in statistically random bits from the masking message shouldn't be too hard. Granted, this scheme doesn't get you past measures designed to keep out all encrypted messages, and it surely wouldn't keep you message from generating interest, but it would be very hard to decrypt the message, especially when some algorithm is used which (seemingly) randomly selects which bits to use for the stego. Just a thought... My apologies if someone has already proposed this method. Patrick

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RE: Bernstein hearing reminder: THIS Friday 11:45AM, SF Federal Building
by Batman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

For the 200th time, unsubscrive me of your fucked mail lists.

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