December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

DCSB: Money Laundering -- The Headless Horseman of the Infocalypse
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----BY SAFEMAIL----- The Digital Commerce Society of Boston Presents "Black Unicorn" "Money Laundering -- The Headless Horseman of the Infocalypse" Tuesday, December 3, 1996 12 - 2 PM The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston One Federal Street, Boston, MA S. L. vonBernhardt, <mailto:unicorn@schloss.li>, is an attorney, a member of the board of directors of two European financial institutions, author of "Practical and Legal Problems Confronting the Asset Concealer in Relation to Offshore Financial and Corporate Entities" and a former member of the intelligence community. He is currently working to develop and preserve institutions dedicated to traditional standards of financial privacy. One of the most disturbing products of the "war on drugs" has been the effective criminalization of many forms of formerly legal financial transactions. The resulting legislation places serious burdens on financial institutions in the form of "due diligence" requirements, as well as building what can be an inflexible barrier before those who would implement uncompromised digital commerce systems. Mr. vonBernhardt will address the legislative burdens imposed on financial institutions, the likely impact on future systems of digital commerce, potential solutions through regulatory arbitrage, and the practical problems facing jurisdictions seeking to enforce regulations in the face of advanced systems of digital commerce. No cameras, please. This meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston will be held on Tuesday, December 3, 1996 from 12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of the Harvard Club of Boston, One Federal Street. The price for lunch is $27.50. This price includes lunch, room rental, and the speaker's lunch. ;-). The Harvard Club *does* have dress code: jackets and ties for men, and "appropriate business attire" for women. We need to receive a company check, or money order, (or, if we *really* know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by Saturday, November 30, or you won't be on the list for lunch. Checks payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston will have to be sent back. Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston". If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements (We've had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for instance), please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work something out. Planned speakers for DCSB are: January Rodney Thayer Applying PGP To Digital Commerce February David Kaufman 1996 in Review / Predictions for 1997 We are actively searching for future speakers. If you are in Boston on the first Tuesday of the month, and you would like to make a presentation to the Society, please send e-mail to the DCSB Program Commmittee, care of Robert Hettinga, rah(a)shipwright.com . For more information about the Digital Commerce Society of Boston, send "info dcsb" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu . If you want to subscribe to the DCSB e-mail list, send "subscribe dcsb" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu . Looking forward to seeing you there! Cheers, Robert Hettinga Moderator, The Digital Commerce Society of Boston -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----BY SAFEMAIL----- Version: 1.0b4 e22 iQCVAwUBMoSp3PgyLN8bw6ZVAQFaqgP/XPH82Z2EcgEpIQ0V2YiySW7Zlh/mYcxz xxoYtwVg5YwYmdlT7ueqFwRyzf/KfI4/MbLSj1NB+pDh2yEpZlokIo+u0qJPfYgT aP/bQg7fKOJ3iwrQUTlJuuxhM2TlUcqSlZXymgvvq/VZnq6uygT2GSC/OxMBTGrg aUq8cXlnNaI= =U4Mr -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "The cost of anything is the foregone alternative" -- Walter Johnson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/

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Re: No More
by David E. Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Sat Nov 09 19:21:54 1996 > I want take off mail list Oooh. Gotta be a few good stego bits in that one. - ----- David E. Smith, P O Box 324, Cape Girardeau MO USA 63702 dsmith(a)prairienet.org http://www.prairienet.org/~dsmith send mail with subject of "send pgp-key" for my PGP public key "Better living through chemicals" - unattributed -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMoUuNTVTwUKWHSsJAQHdYgf+OKNAADSBz+qpjD+u+qqZWPUmAuyQhUGd jsn/TQG/1gXctoAin5S3VYha1uzt2Pd5xNqUZfpjzP99qDalbtElaROfSo1MoWqj lL1oencAMW9lIfNNQVzRj2B+eHfpBUo33/Fq25xRktPCAgwhrU6Q1Bc2q4p8nxbG d65iexqo8CYwMzwnGarl+D7OKXaLZtsZt1JIHcc70KyTB5OaRaVK7pGcu6YTdAS4 0jLfxHJZuDt6p0AcWm+ie2yqRkwEKryB8AFQ6r9wFoCFp0VNuh6dxmY2qn15A9BD D/BjreSvQcFCcctHOuTHZDTuMPAZZTWCaR/ImlLLy3iCMcICjCRMJQ== =wrw5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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exclusion/censorship and the law (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From: Greg Broiles <gbroiles(a)netbox.com> > Subject: exclusion/censorship and the law > > never faced any extended scrutiny because the parties settled. Also, > Prodigy, the defendant in Stratton Oakmont, exercised much greater > editorial control over postings on that service, and had the ability to > remove postings, which is something John Gilmore can't do. He certainly can, this list runs under Majordomo which allows exactly this kind of control if desired. I use it on my own lists and am quite familiar with its operation. It is completely feasible for the operator to look at EVERY submission prior to re-distribution and set the time stamp in such a manner that there would be no evidence it ever occured. > So my impression is that you've got the tail end of a useful concept > (ability to control is frequently a factor used to determine liability) but > are making far too much out of it. One really big difference I see here is > that editorial control of the Cpunks list has occurred once (in 4? 5? years > of the list's existence), is on a per-person not a per-message basis, and > *does not function to restrict who can send messages but only limits Vulis' > ability to _receive_ them on his usual system(s)*. How often it occurs is irrelevant, this is like saying one rape is not a crime but two is. Utter hogwash. Vulis was removed from the list, this means he can't SUBMIT posts. This is censorship. The act was based on the content or personality of Vulis' submissions. It was not based on a limitation of the software, the Internet feed to the list, or the ability of the hardware to handle more traffic. In short it was an emotionaly based action. > You might take a look at Mike Godwin's article on net defamation at > <http://www.eff.org/pub/Legal/net_libel_godwin.article>; by now it's a > little old, but I don't think anything's happened since which would change > its reasoning. I have read it. I live in Austin, TX. and am quite familiar with the whole Steve Jackson event (I was involved in it peripheraly) as well as how it started EFF. I am currently peripheraly involved with the Austin EFF chapter through the Austin Cypherpunks mailing list (which I host). My first exposure to PGP was v1.0 from Adelante BBS, and I had been using and playing vith various crypto related programs for quite few years prior to that. > The problem with absolute statements like this is that they ignore > important distinctions about scale - e.g., I think that it's very important > that people, generally, be free to discuss whatever they want in private > homes. But I also think it's very important that I be able to tell other > people that they're not willing to discuss whatever they want in *my* home. An action is right or wrong, irrespective of scale. If one person does it doesn't make it any more wrong than if hundreds or millions do it. Right and wrong are NOT scalable. But this is not a private list. It has no warning about policies at subscription time. It has been advertised for years as a open forum for the discussion of crypto and speech related issues in clearly public venues. I run a couple of 'private' lists. It is not possible for you or any other party to become involved without agreeing before the fact to certain editorial policies. This does not occur here. Where the 'press' is located is irrelevant to this discussion. The point which seems to be missed is that it takes in a single submission and then distributes multiple copies (without editing) to ANYONE who wishes to subscribe. In point of fact, the various articles in Mondo 2000 (back when the list first started) and those since can be clearly interpreted as an invitation to join the list via clearly publicly distributed medium. In effect it would be like declaring your home an 'Open House' via the local newspaper. > Not because I'm especially excited about censorship, but because I enjoy my > privacy and my peace & quiet. So on the level of national rights, yes, > unrestricted speech is an excellent thing. But on the level of my living > room, unrestricted speech is a very bad thing. Then don't invite people to your house via magazines, newspapers, or Intenet. Unrestricted speech is a good thing. Speech without personal responsibility for the consequences is a bad thing. There were no consequences to Vulis' speech other than the emotional impact it apparently had on the list operator. Personaly, I use the same standards of speech that I apply to the public at large as I do to that small sector I explicity invite into my home. I don't have a double standard in this regards. > I don't think anyone who is arguing that it's fine to throw Vulis off the > list would make the argument that it would be acceptable for the government > to throw Vulis off of the Internet. Who does the throwing is irrelevant. The point is that a policy of 'hands-off' was enacted over the years and it was changed with no warning or opportunity for other list members to become involved. This list is a community, it is not some individuals private property. In no way can you successfuly argue that my email address in the subscription list qualifies me in any way as 'property' of the list operator nor does it imply any agreement on my part to allow that party editorial control of my submission under the previous submission limitations (ie none). Another aspect is that the credibility of this list as an open forum for the discussion of crypto and speech related issues has been tarnished if not downright lost. As to the anarchy aspect, that has forever been lost. > The closest thing I can see to a First Amendment argument against Gilmore > is the "company town" argument, that the list is so much like a city or > town that it ought to be subject to the restrictions that the First > Amendment puts on municipalities and traditional public forums - but even > this (rather far-out) argument got shot down a few days ago when our > beloved Wallace of CyberPromo tried it in _Cyber Promotions v. America > Online_. The judge said "no way", and I think that argument's a lot more > plausible against American Online than against John Gilmore. It has nothing really to do with the First. It does have to do with the agreed upon contract between the operator of the list and its subscribers. By enacting this policy of censorship the original 'contract' (ie none) has been broken and a new contract put in place. Had everyone received a warning and then been unsubscribed and at the time of re-subscription a clearly worded explanation of new policy been made available I would have no problem. I do have a problem with arbitrary reprisals against individuals based upon their submission content. There but by the grace of God go I (or you). As a matter of fact, the issues raised in both the CompuServe and Prodigy cases did NOT revolve around the First but rather who held editorial control. This is EXACTLY the issue here. My previous referal to ;login is a pointer to a discussion of these two cases explicitly. > I don't think this makes any sense. "Public list" has no special meaning. public list = unmoderated and open to anyone > My impression is that you're trying to make an analogy to public places > which are privately owned like motels and lunch counters and amusement > parks, where the owners (despite being private actors) cannot discriminate > on the basis of race, gender, national origin, etc. (See, e.g., Civil > Rights Act of 1964, 42 USC 1981 et seq) Not at all. A 'public' list is a list which has no editorial policy and is open to any party for membership. It in effect has no qualification criteria. > But I don't think there's any especially credible allegation that Vulis was > discriminated against on the basis of protected class membership; nor is it > clear that the Civil Rights Act can be extended to the operation of mailing > lists. Can it be extended to my operation of a paper printing press in my garage through which I distribute pamphlets or flyers to any party which requests them by sending me their address? If so then it applies here. > If there's no prohibited discrimination (either because there's no > prohibition, or there was no "discrimination" within the terms of the > statute) then I don't see a cause of action. Wanting something you're not > getting isn't enough. Owners of "public places" like malls or stores or > restaurants are still free to exclude some people for non-prohibited > reasons (like not meeting the dress code, or having behaved poorly in the > past). But to do this they MUST post or publish those codes in a place where a patron can clearly see them. This was not done here. > I am pretty disappointed to see that none of the people who profess to be > shocked and wounded at Vulis' exclusion have bothered to set up your own > lists. In my mind, whatever moral outrage you claim to have looks awfully > small compared to the relatively small burden of doing something about what > you say is bothering you. I run several lists including two that are crypto related (Austin Cypherpunks and Advanced Computer Experimenters). > I think that "cypherpunks write code" can/should be understood as a > question, e.g., "what are you doing to change the things that bother you?" Among other things I am bitching about the arbitrary and unfair way this list is being run considering the environment it was supposed to foster. Jim Choate

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Pyramid schemes and cryptoanarchy
by Clay Olbon II 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It seems that pyramid scheme spamming has increased of late (if that is possible!). In my lifetime, I can only remember a single snail-mail instance of a pyramid scheme - over the net it is an entirely different story (although the number of instances is probably proportional to the number of lists I subsribe to). With fully anonymous digital cash will come the ability to develop untraceable pyramid schemes. As a staunch believer in the free market, I find laws against these schemes distasteful, quite hypocrytical (i.e. Social Security), and soon to be unenforceable. Pyramid schemes could be a growth market in a crypto-anarchic world. It is yet another market such as gambling, or the lottery, that could be conducted with anonymity. And it appears to be much more widespread on the internet currently, even without anonymity. And unlike gambling or the lottery, the payoffs could increase greatly should anonymity be available. Now, what is the point of this discussion of pyramid schemes? It is to bring to light yet another area that will be untouchable by governments. And I think that it will help continue the development and proliferation of some of our pet projects, specifically fully anonymous digital cash and remailers. Remailer operators could even fund their operations through pyramid schemes (directly, or indirectly through digital postage stamps). I am not, however, advocating spam. I simply see it as a natural extension of current practice, that may actually provide tangible benefits in the near future. Clay ******************************************************* Clay Olbon clay.olbon(a)dynetics.com engineer, programmer, statistitian, etc. Dynetics, Inc. **********************************************tanstaafl

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Pyramid Schemes
by Benjamin Grosman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear Sir, Aren't these Pyramid Schemes Illegal? Yours Sincerely, Benjamin Grosman

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Vulis on the remailers
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Please, remailers, source block Vulis for a week. Remailer Fan

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a retort + a comment + a question = [RANT]
by SUCRUM22_at_INDY-ADP＠smtp-gw.cv62.navy.mil 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------------------------------------------------------------------- tim may wrote: >"...and that discussions of other topics bother you should be a clear >indication you're probably on the wrong list." uh, that's _why_ i am on this list... >"Having a "navy.mil" domain probably is another reason, unless you >are only hear to monitor our discussions of using cryptography to >undermine the state, to liberate military secrets with BlackNet and >the Information Liberation Front, and to punish the millions of >those in the military-industrial complex who have so richly earned >their eventual punishments. military secrets, eh? tell me something mr may, what secrets have you uncovered in your undaunting quest to expose those corrupt little guys in uniform? mr may - i serve in the US Navy so you don't have to, and as much as i sometimes _don't_ like it, i will always, _always_ love the navy for what she gave me. one of the reasons you sit at your terminal drinking your coffe and ranting on and on, is because men and women like myself happen to think that what the military does for the US is a good thing. i skipped collage (don't ask why) after graduating early from HS to enlist in the navy. keeping you free to bitch is why i am here. never forget that the freedom you enjoy comes with a price, mr may. the schools that you send your kids to (forgive me if you're celibate or childless) are run by the govt. am i saying they do a good job? not necessarily, but what i _am_ saying is that your kids _still_ go. i am almost positive, despite attempts to the contrary, that you make use of the US postal system. the phone lines that you connect that computer to were installed by - guess who? - there are a hundred other things you and i and everyone use that wouldn't be there if it weren't for the USG (or state/county/municipal govt's). tell me mr may, how much of this are you willing to give up in your quest for what (i am supposing) you mean in your little blurb at the end of your mail - "collapse of governments"? the writer supposes that mr may would still be against, determined to oppose, and dedicated to the elimination of [pick something, pick anything] if govt's didn't exist. what's the quote? "i may not agree with what you say, but i defend to the death your right to say it." something like that. >Smash the State. aye, aye captain! --------------------------------------------------------------------- mark m wrote: >In order for anonymous remailers to be completely anonymous, only one >remailer in the chain has to be trustworthy. If a message is chained >through N remailers and N-1 of those remailers are run by spooks, the >anonymity of the message depends on the remaining remailer. well, actually, the first remailer has to be the trustworthy one. you send a msg to the first with your "real" address, and if the spook is there, voila! so... i understand your point, but still, it has to be the first one. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dale thorn(?) wrote: >I'm amused to think that, in a nation armed with 20,000 or so nukes, >the paranoid of paranoid nation-states as it were, some of the >erstwhile intelligent citizens think that the U.S. military are just >sitting around wringing their hands over the "fact" that the citizens >have "unbreakable" crypto. >Bear in mind the Scientific American articles on Public Key crypto >back in the 1970's. The military knew the score back then, and if >you think they just sat back and allowed all this to happen, well, >sorry, I don't believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. one question (sarcastic and rhetorical): how long did it take for the USG to actually acknowledge that the NSA.NRO.DIA.etc existed? hmmm.... has a segment of the populace gone stark raving paraniod? >Second, any truly secret messaging taking place represents a serious >threat to the military, and contrary to some naive popular opinion, >those guys are not going to lay down for this... what does the military have to do wiht private citizens conversing in secret? are _you_ one of the naive that think men actually in uniform controll the military? hello - the SecDef is a civillian. the president is a democrat. the military does what the white house/ congress tell it (the writer realizes this is a vastly over- simplified response to a vastly broad statement). ---------------------- SUCRUM22(a)cv62.navy.mil ----------------------- a calculated risk based on the possible consequence of an action is better than a haphazard one based on poor judgment or ignorance --------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't confuse my views with those of the DoD or the United States Navy

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ideal secure personal computer system
by tom bryce 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Here's a question: if one were designing for oneself a secure personal computer system, for use in, say, word processing, spreadsheet, communications, the usuals - what system would one purchase and how would one set it up? For example, on the Mac I would envision this as the ideal system: (1) Get a power mac (2) Partition the hard drive into two partitions: install the system folder on one and a copy of CryptDisk make this the startup partition and make it READ ONLY with aliases to folders you want to be modiyfable (such as Eudora Folder in the sys folder) place these folders on the encrypted partition (3) Completely fill the other partition with a CryptDisk file so there is no room for other stuff to be written. Adjust the partition size if needed. (4) Install a screen saver (such as shareware Eclipse) that will password lock the screen after a few minutes of inactivity, and set CryptDisk to dismount the external partition after a few minutes of inactivity (or longer) This would be a basic setup. If one had more complex ideas, such as setting it up so casual onlookers would not notice the system was protected, you could do things like have a decoy normal partition with system folder to boot from by default, to be bypassed with an external locked system folder disk, after which one could dismount the decoy partition and mount the encrypted partition. If locking the startup volume turns out to be too much of a pain, one could install trashguard from Highware software and set it to triple overwrite deleted files, and otherwise not lock the startup partition. How would things work on Windows 95? I imagine most of the old DOS-based encryption utilities may have compatibility problems with W95. What would a similar ideal system be for a PC? Tom

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Worrying...
by Benjamin Grosman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Isn't it worrying that so many people can happily devote their time to trying to annoy others?

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Re: PGP3.0 & ElGamal
by Gary Howland 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> At 10:43 pm -0500 11/13/96, Lucky Green wrote: > >I agree. Support for soon to be patent free algrithms is a good thing. I > >hope that in version 4.0, after the users had time to migrate to > >DSS/ElGamal, PGP will fully move away from RSA. > > Speaking of patent-free, :-), can you do blind signatures without RSA? I think it is possible using the both Diffie-Hellman and the RPK algorithm (developed by the New Zealand chap quite recently), although patents probably apply to the latter algorithm. Don't forget that for ecash style systems, only the *client* needs to do the blinding, not the bank. Gary -- "Of course the US Constitution isn't perfect; but it's a lot better than what we have now." -- Unknown. pub 1024/C001D00D 1996/01/22 Gary Howland <gary(a)systemics.com> Key fingerprint = 0C FB 60 61 4D 3B 24 7D 1C 89 1D BE 1F EE 09 06

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