December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Voice Stress Analysis of Debates?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:11 PM 10/6/96 -0700, Steve Schear wrote: >BTW, did anyone notice that some of the evening news anchors are imaged via >a camera/DSP to render as more youthful (e.g., removing facial wrinkles)? Really? Where'd you hear this? I suppose it's not beyond the realm of possibility, but that would be rather sophisticated programming, particularly in real-time. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: legality of wiretapping: a "key" distinction
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:43 PM 10/5/96 -0700, Detweiler wrote: >>"Right to choose to be in contempt of court" ? If only I could attach a >>sound file with my howling laughter to this post. > >I find it as ludicrous as you do, but it's the clear insinuation >suggested by hard-core cypherpunks / anarchists in this forum. I wrote something which you might be confusing for this argument; in case this is what you mean, I've reproduced it below: [originally sent on 9/18/96] >There's a world of difference between the government subpoena-ing something >from me, where I can delay disclosure until I've exhausted my legal avenues >to challenge disclosure, and the government demanding data from an at best >disinterested third party who cares not at all if I get my day in court >before they disclose. With the second scenario, I'm forced to try to >"unring the bell", and somehow limit the spread of otherwise >private/confidential data in a community (law enforcement) which is >organized to collect and retain information. Ha, ha. Given today's Congress >and Supreme Court, there's probably precious little chance that keys >disclosed prematurely or erroneously won't be used to collect evidence >which will be admissible despite the lack of meaningful opportunity to >challenge the "recovery" of a key. Also, there is an important difference between making a policy argument or expressing a preference, e.g.: "I like having a choice between disclosing information which is requested and suffering the penalties for contempt of court" and an argument about the constitution: "The constitution says I must be given a choice between disclosing and contempt." I don't remember seeing any examples of the latter come across the list. As I remember things, the context of my statement above was a discussion of why third-party key escrow is not the same as self-escrow. >>Do not make the mistake of thinking there is no case law on wiretap simply >>because you have not/are too lazy to go to the library and look it up. > >I said, "at least it is rarely quoted here", lawyer-boy. It's rarely quoted here because it is unremarkable; just as the list is not a place for basic crypto education, it is not a place for basic legal education. It's difficult to come up with a good summary of legal issues or subjects which is readable by lay people and short and accurate (esp. given that it will be interpreted by lay people in potentially 51 domestic jurisdictions, plus foreign folks). Good, fast, cheap, pick any two. As Brian Davis and Uni have pointed out, people who keep current enough on legal topics to be able to give you a good answer will probably want to get paid for doing so. Saying "here's a legal argument that I made up in the shower. what do you guys think of it?" and expecting a detailed explanation of why it's good or bad is the same as saying "here's my new crypto algorithm that I thought of in the shower, what do you guys think of it?". >>You propose to refight a case soundly resolved ages ago and you propose to >>get the rest of the list to do your homework for you. > >nevertheless, you might not come off as so utterly condescending >and self-pretentious if you gave even the slightest smidgeon >of a reference yourself, instead of preferring to insult a poster. Merely asking the question "Is there case law on wiretaps?" suggests that an answer which includes references will be wasted on you. It will probably be wasted because your level of interest doesn't seem to have spurred you to darken the doorstep of a library or bookstore yet; so an answer which requires you to do so seems unhelpful. It will also probably be wasted because if you don't already know that there's caselaw about it you probably don't have enough legal background to place whatever new information you might get from those references in a useful conceptual framework. But perhaps my speculation is wrong and you are prepared to follow up meaningfully on references, so .. Go to a law library or larger general library and ask the librarian to show you where the annotated copy of 18 USC 2510 is. Read the statute. Read the legislative history. Read the annotations. Read the cases which were annotated. Repeat this process until you reach 18 USC 2709 or die of boredom. Ask the librarian to help you find LaFave's treatises on search & seizure. Read them. (The answer to most of the "how do I find out about 'X'?" questions is to make friends with a librarian who doesn't mind helping you out, just like with research questions in other fields you may not be familiar with. But surely it's not possible to get much beyond the age of 12 or so and not know that ..?) Try "Understanding Criminal Procedure" by Dressler (Matthew Bender, 1991), and "Criminal Law" by LaFave & Scott (West). (For extra credit, ask for the USCA/USCS annotated copy of the Fourth Amendment, and read those annotations and cases.) If there's a law school near you, you might go to the school's bookstore and look for books in the "Nutshell" series, or the "Emanuel's" series, or the hardbound hornbooks. These books are mostly used by law students to get an overview of a particular area of the law. They are not especially detailed nor up-to-the-minute current but usually aren't totally wrong. They also don't usually touch on a particular state's law, but discuss either federal law or an amalgam of state law, so they aren't good for solving a particular concrete problem. But they will help you figure out that, e.g., wiretaps have been legal for at least 60-70 years. Now that you've got some references to work with, please write back and tell us what you learned. (Dorothy Denning & others have written a summary of wiretap procedure which I don't have time/energy to check for correctness - but it's at <http://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/privacy/communications/wiretap/denning_wiretap_pro cedure_paper.txt>. EFF and CPSR both seem to have some wiretap/privacy materials available.) -- Greg Broiles | "We pretend to be their friends, gbroiles(a)netbox.com | but they fuck with our heads." http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | |

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No Subject
by mthompso＠qualcomm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Conon sequiter. Crack cocaine doesn't put holes in people either. -m Michelle Thompson, World Tour 1996!

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Re: WINDOWS NT ????
by snow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I agree totally, Security on computers in my opinion is like Locks on > doors, It only keeps honest people out Or uneducated/untrained/unintelligent/uncurious ones. Petro, Christopher C. petro(a)suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff> snow(a)smoke.suba.com

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Put up or shut up! was Re: legality of wiretapping: a "key" distinction
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I think those of you who continue to answer the unresearched rants of amateur lawyers waste your efforts on trying to change the learning habits of other, hopefully, mature adults. If it ain't good by now, forget it. Using, as you say, out-of-the-shower ideas to re-argue settled caselaw are almost always fruitless. Since the intents of the ranters are generally anarchistic, why even involve the law and justice. Even if their ideas have good philosophical basis there is little hope for the broad changes they seek in the political or legal landscape (given the powerful and selfish interests of those inside and outside the beltway) without a great trauma to the system. Look at the relatively pitifully accomplishments Jefferson was able to show for his many years of Republican efforts, and that after serving two terms as president. I believe that this is also the case for individuals. Almost all of us have great difficulty adopting new behaviors (e.g., dietary, excercise, change in unhealthy/illegal sexual behavior), even ones thought beneficial, unless there is great incentive or an experience which is so fundemental (e.g., near death) that we are forced confront it head on. My advice to these amateur anarchists is, if they really believe in their quest, become professionals and develop and use whatever means (civial disobedience, crypto, CBW, AP, etc.) they think they require to shock the system into confronting your demands and see how it plays out. Otherwise shut up! PGP Fingerprint: FE 90 1A 95 9D EA 8D 61 81 2E CC A9 A4 4A FB A9 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Snoop Daty Data | Internet: azur(a)netcom.com Grinder | Sacred Cow Meat Co. | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Just say NO to prescription DRUGS. "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." -- C.S. Lewis "Surveillence is ultimately just another form of media, and thus, potential entertainment." -- G. Beato

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Re: "Drift net fishing," GAK, FBI, and NSA
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>At 2:05 PM -0700 10/6/96, Steve Schear wrote: >(quoting me) > >>Are SSN and other ID required when opening a 'pre-paid' credit card >>account? That is, the ones for persons with poor credit who are required >>to maintain a balance sufficient to pay off the charges? Perhaps we could >>put our heads together and determine a way to become franchised by MC/VISA >>and offer 'affinity' type accounts with no address requirements (all >>statments are sent via remailer/nym email). > >A couple of people on this list talked about a similar thing, a "Privacy >Card," with the explicit policy of not reporting transactions in detail to >the Big Three (the government-friendly TRW Credit, Equifax, and Transunion). > >The idea being that if a "market for privacy" exists, someone ought to be >able to make a nice piece of change offering a card that protects privacy. > >One problem is that many people _want_ credit card transactions reported to >the Big Three, to build up their credit record. > >(But many don't care. I've been using a VISA card issued by my stock broker >for 12 years now. It's a "debit card," though it's handled by a merchant >exactly as a credit card, and they probably can't see any difference. What >I gathered when buying my current house, is that none of these transactions >were part of my "credit history," as I was actually using a debit card. All >of those now using, or planning to use, a debit card would be ideal >candidates for a "Privacy Card.") No doubt. > >Such a deal would have to be one of Visa, MasterCard, or Discover, with >American Express a distant fourth. (I don't even know if these >companies/tradenames would even allow such a thing, of course.) The cost of >rolling out a brand new type of card would of course be prohibitively high. > The banks offering these pre-paid 'credit', really debit, cards are already offering such an instrument. Although I've got my hands full at the moment, I've been asked by several money sources to investigate some unconventional, but legal, instrument services. Seems, as you say, you only have to guarantee the holder that they and establish and transact business with relatively good anonymity. >(I have no expectation than this will be done, and I think I said so at the >time. Ever the realist, in some ways, I knew no one would take on such a >complex project. Just as no one followed through with the "Cypherpunks >Credit Union" idea, discussed at several meetings in 1993.) > I'm not making any promises, but I have some banking experience (6 years at Citicorp) developing financial products, ATM, wireless and transaction crypto. The most difficult part, besides the marketing, would be getting a MC/VISA franchise under acceptable contractual terms. I've never done this sort of thing. Seems you wouldn't need to pitch this to MC/VISA any different than many of the other similar 'debit' cards. Unless their contracts specifically contain a 'know you payee' provision (required for checking and savings, which are Fed insured, and money transmitters), it shouldn't be a problem. -- Steve

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Londinium
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

So a few days in Londinium for the Internet Show at the Aggie (now the Business Design Centre) in the People's Republic of Islington. While I was in town, Tony Blair's voicemail was hacked (it wasn't me) and we discovered that he is a politician trying to fool the voters. Also, a public domain game called "Schoolyard Slaughter" written for an obsolete computer system and awarding points for head shots to children was attacked in the press. It was distributed on shareware disks and CDs and not on the dreaded Net but they talked about the net in any case. The interesting thing about "Schoolyard Slaughter" is that similar games involving adult males and aliens ("Doom" par example) have been around for a long time. The lesser controversy surrounding games like Doom suggests that the commentators (and perhaps the public) are guilty of speciesism, ageism, and gender bias. After all, the fictional slaughter of adult males and aliens should be just as bad as the fictional slaughter of children. None of the ISPs represented at the Internet Show would comment on whether or not they were going to ban customers who refused to rate their sites or news posts. But they were just sales types. I did teach a young lady working at the UUNET/Pipex booth how to telnet. She'd never done so before. DCF

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Re: Another view of anarchy...
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:58 PM 10/6/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >At 2:26 PM -0700 10/6/96, Greg Broiles wrote: > >As for "assassination politics," I think the theoretical idea of using >betting pools, untraceable payments, etc., are worthwhile _theoretical_ >ideas to discuss, occasionally (indeed, I would hope--seriously!--that the >FBI is aware of such possibilities and is thinking about them). > >For me, there is no one I can think of that I would want killed. Not my >taunters, not my elected officials (though I despise Senator Fineswine), >not court officials, not even the Devil Himself. Clinton, er, I mean >"Saddam Hussein." The Hitler example ("Wouldn't you go back in time and >kill Hitler if you could?") is so hackneyed as to be meaningless. Actually, >I suppose I would be happy if Pol Pot were to die, and maybe Idi Amin (and >I'm not sure both are still alive), but for the most part I don't think >fundamental problems are directly attributable to specific individuals. However, it won't really matter, will it? Unless a person is REALLY atypical, nearly all the people he'd want to see dead are similarly hated by thousands or millions of others, or they are in classes of people who are hated by millions for what they do. (criminals, cops, politicians, and despots both domestic and foreign etc.) That being the case, you personally would probably never have to donate anything; you're pretty well assured that other people will do this "work" for you. This is as it should be, I suppose. Furthermore, most of your potential targets (were you to want to name them) would probably be fully aware of their vulnerability, and would resign or run away or start behaving in hopes of surviving. All this is why I think that the status quo might collapse rather suddenly, as in Eastern Europe 1989, where in the span of a couple weeks the governments fell comparatively bloodlessly. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Did Jesus masturbate ?
by I~nigo Gonzalez 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yes, you guessed right: the Subject came from alt.2600 famous line noise thread.... About Utah, Mormons, Religion /etc... Is someone mailing ciphertext to the list in the form of Noise ???? Please use _plaintext_ or just learn Crypto.

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Dole web site cracked?
by Rick Campbell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- So, I just finished watching the debate and at the very end, Bob Dole suggested that people check out www.dole-kemp.org. I was already on playing decision96.digital.com so I went for it. The first page says ``Oops! You've tried to access the old way. Please choose the new way instead.'' Clicking on `new' gives a black background page with two yellow arrows, one left and one right. The left one gives you ``Nope, you can't go back now''. The Right one gives you www.cg96.org, the Clinton-Gore home page. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMlh5vhj0UvMeUesFAQGzgQP9GlcZb4rRSGcVjdsnvMxOrB2lDdz6KFSw UCjAR/UhQLOs8UW1cHS8vlRljCwf8nDemxOzZ7/JMdTQbiNcdblQbxMGoJusJDal mOOgYJiVSFEBtX07JOp07m1w34GjlFaSTtGKERNCEePxtSO3HDG7V7H3AIoV7xFQ oIBKQmdKQho= =C1w9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Rick Campbell <campbell(a)c2.net> ``One of the symptoms of an approaching http://www.c2.net/~campbell/ nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.'' - Bertrand Russel

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