December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Put Uncle Sam in your Calling Circle
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:15 AM 7/9/96 -0400, you wrote: >Hey guys, > >I just got a really cool poster from RSA. It's a big circle split off >into several sections showing people talking to each other, the upper >right hand corner shows two NSA dweebs looking like Bevis & Butthead in >suits, one smoking, the other seated infront of an old 60's reel to reel >audio tape recorder, a sign on the wall behind them says "Key Escrow" > >There are several logos for various government agencies including our >friends at No Such Agency and the FBI, a small quote next to the >Copyright (C) RSA notice says "One of a series of public relations >posters that never made it out of Fort Mede." Very very funny! > >Many many thanks to the cool person(s) at RSA who sent it my way. You got one too... I recieved one in the mail with no return address. There is another poster in that series which says "A good marketing organization listens to its customers... WE HEAR YOU!". The woman is being tapped by the same two government agents. The posters are done by Tom Tommorow, who also does a cartoon called "This Modern World" which appears far too infrequently in a number of papers and _Processed World_. Incredible political cynicysm... Thanks again to RSA for a couple of cool posters! --- |"Computers are Voodoo -- You just have to know where to stick the pins."| |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ | alano(a)teleport.com |

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Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

blanc writes: > > I suppose you don't understand what it might be like for someone to be > > unable to do their work no matter how heavy the threat against them if > > they don't, and no matter how easy it is. There are people out there > > who can't get themselves to pay a phone bill or throw out the > > newspapers for months on end -- they just can't get themselves to > > dance around into the task no matter how hard they try, no matter how > > great the threat (job loss, etc) to them is. [...] > There are times when people have been totally unmotivated to take care > of themselves or the mundane matters in life because they were not > involved in the pursuits which were of true value to them, and life > "lost its meaning". Blanc, you really aren't listening. There are people out there who are desperately unhappy. They can't concentrate at all. They love what they do for a living, if only they could actually manage to do it four days out of five. They are not in the least scared of cleaning their homes, except for the fact that they are frightened of the fact that they can't manage to do it no matter what they try. They'd like to pay the light bill -- really -- but every time they start they get distracted, or they get distracted before they start. Sometimes they get bursts of hyperconcentration and they can work for two days straight on some project, and they end it and realize that the phone's been cut off because they completely spaced dealing with it or anything else. Sometimes they feel very pissed off because people tell them to just "apply themselves" more or "manage their time" better or "get a more motivating job". Such people aren't upset that life has lost its meaning. They are often perfectly intelligent, capable of being happy in their pursuits, and not bad individuals. They suffer, however, from an inability to keep from twitching. They ritualistically play with common objects -- rubber bands, paperclips, etc, folding and unfolding them, winding and unwinding them, etc. You can spot them -- they're the people who even as adults can be placed in a nearly empty room and will find a small object to play with. Their workspaces are littered with small fidget toys they have purloined or created. These people aren't unhappy with their jobs except for the fact that they wish they could get their work done, they sit in front of their work for hours on end, and can't get anywhere. They don't need new pursuits. Even with newere and "better" jobs, most people on earth have to occassionally maintain their attention long enough to pay their landlord or what have you. > Putting one's priorities into perspective can do a lot towards feeling > motivated to attend to life's minor contingencies, while elevating the > lesser items to the top of the hierarchy can totally dissipitate one's > energies and interest. Look, quit trying to tell people who have ADD that they are in the wrong jobs, that they are unmotivated, that they are "lazy", or whatever. Calling them "nuts" is actually far better. It at least acknowledges that there is something wrong that isn't readily fixed by the nostrums of people who have no idea whatsoever what they are going through. Perhaps, of course, we can just get all the suicidal people on earth to quit wanting to kill themselves by intoning to them "don't be sad" over and over again. I doubt it, though. > Maybe Ritalin could make them forgot their true interest which was lying > dormant, pushed away by who-knows-what kind of arguments against it, and > help them to start paying attention again to those mundane, irrelevant > aspects of existence. Or maybe, when they take it, the noise in their heads stops, the world focuses and clears up, and suddenly it doesn't seem like its so hard to finish that two paragraph status summary after all. Maybe they take it and suddenly they can function long enough to finish their resume and get another job. Maybe you should quit telling other people how to get through life when you haven't lived inside their heads. > You're right, Perry, that no one should be making that decision for > others. I do think, though, that achieving self-command by a conscious > knowledge of what is right for one's nature is actually the most > beneficial (and less controversial). Its always better to not need to use chemicals to help yourself out. However, we acknowledge in our society that when someone has an infected leg we decide that they aren't being "bad" by taking drugs to stop the infection. Perry

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Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:39 AM 7/9/96 -0500, Rick Smith wrote: >erehwon(a)c2.org (William Knowles) writes: > >>Ritalin has been a godsend, I am able to dialin when I have to. >>Ritalin is not the only drug for treating ADD, Prozac works for >>some. Prozac works on a different set of brain chemestry. (Prozac messes with the seretonin level of the brain and how it is reabsorbed.) There is a whole series of chemicals similar to Prozac that are prescribed. It takes a bit to determine just which one is best for the person involved. (I have far too many friends on variations of those drugs.) The reactions when they come off them is quite "interesting". Prozac is not a stimulant however. (Not in the usual concept of a stimulant.) >I use coffee, or else I just managed to grow out of the worst effects. >In any case, I drink more coffee than just about anyone I know, and it >doesn't "wire" me at all. "It is by caffiene alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that the thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning. It is by caffiene alone I set my mind in motion." You can build a resistance to caffiene. (As well as one hell of an addiction.) So far I am up to a gram a day of the stuff. Mix that with the Seldane-Ds I take every morning (for hay fever) and you get more than a small amount of stimulants. (I have found that the Seldane-Ds have a positive psychoactive effect as well. They seem to allow me to focus better. Probibly because I am not sneezing.) The long term effects of any stimulant is problbiy not very good. What needs to be looked at is what the long term benifits and risks are, for the individual, not just for the society. What these sorts of chemicals do to small children 10-30 years down the road is pretty unknown at this point. (If any of the things i have seen so far are any indication, they are not good.) But then, I suspect the government of drugging our kids with school lunches laced with lead paint, not with mind control drugs. (Lead paint is cheaper.) ]:> Alan Olsen Minister of Forced Caffinization - DNRC --- |"Computers are Voodoo -- You just have to know where to stick the pins."| |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ | alano(a)teleport.com |

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Re: Word lists for passphrases
by camcc＠abraxis.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:20 PM 7/8/96 -0400, you wrote: :Human stupidity is never a surprise. : :Perry Perry is a significant factor I include when I decide every day whether or not to check my cypherpunk's mail. I'm glad I did today. What a hoot! Alec

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Re: Style gettting in the way of clear reporting
by Ecgwulf 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To: tcmay(a)got.net, cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Tue Jul 09 10:37:11 1996 In a reply to James A. Donald, Tim May wrote: > . . . You are probably right that journalism is becoming more florid as > "amateurs" flood the market. However, I don't quite buy the > concentration argument, as things were pretty concentrated in the > Hearst era, and the explosion of magazines in the past few decades has > not been as concentrated. I wonder what golden age of journalism these guys have in mind. Journalism is garbage and it always has been. After all, it is what connects you with your culture. It's a dirty job. > I still think of "The Wall Street Journal" and "The Economist," two of > my favorites, as being _careful_ in their reporting (careful is > different from unbiased). But my main focus in this thread was on the > _styles_, and this I think is more explained by faddishness. A couple of more fully fascist rags would be hard to find. Misinformation, disinformation and total lack of substance -- it's all style. The L.A. Times is a close runner-up with its one hundred year history of self interest, red-baiting of organized labor and political "enemies" broken only by a few periods of acting as a propaganda mill and inspiring a few race riots. Take a look at the masthead of, say, a 1943 edition. > Yes, and many of the newsletters we're seeing--as many are cc:ed or > forwarded to our list--are the kissing cousins of "zines." Same faux > style, same emphasis on "flash" over substance. Does 'faux style' mean 'fucked style'? If so, then kissing is appropriate. There are multiple issues of relevance: 1. The coding and decoding of messages in apparent plaintext. 2. Assumptions about the authenticity of sources and motives in message creation. 3. The separation of form and content in written language which I suggest cannot be separated. 4. The apparent political center of gravity of message subscribers. Let's say, this mailing list for instance. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 iQB1AwUBMeKYyj/g5HTtoLA5AQFBNQMA3F/njYiTvcRCkqrLqnD0Tqa3RIQoozYl LtNc82V+8Wkl1b2dgXFas4SjuNoSeB/hq1UwdgJz97GIOH3VvEMeYayFVHnD1IKi /W+7lVIJ+62bypryoTP+eQH7hVARztLB =Gnrt -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Offshore Information Services is Back after Bertha
by Vincent Cate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hurricane Bertha hit Anguilla just perfectly to do the most damage. Just north of the storm the counterclockwise spin and westward movements add for maximum destructive power, and we were just north of it. Don't know of any people or houses that were hurt, but a bunch of power and phone lines have been damaged. We lost power, ran for about 10 hours on battery, and then shut down. But about 24 hours later we are back online to stay. We are temporarily located in the Cable and Wireless building in town. Thanks Cable and Wireless! And thanks to everyone for your patience, Vince Cate Offshore Information Services Ltd Anguilla, Eastern Caribbean http://online.offshore.com.ai/

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Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:47 AM 7/9/96, JR(a)ns.cnb.uam.es wrote: >Hey Perry, > > I think you are taking this too far. I believe that almost nobody >(there are always some exceptions) will deny the existence of disease. And >while Tim may not be a great doctor and even totally wrong in the case he >stated, the original point was not to discuss a specific medical case. Indeed. In reading the comments here, it seems that some are setting up a straw man series of arguments, and then knocking them down: -- "Tim says Attention Deficit Disorder does not exist." -- "Tim says Ritalin does not work." -- "Tim claims to know better than doctors." -- "Tim is against using aspirin, penicillin, and other drugs." -- "Tim wishes to interfere with the choices of others." And so on. In actuality, I have made *none* of these points. Instead, what I recounted was a telling anecdote about the over-medication--in my opinion of course, based on direct observation--of the child of a friend of mine. And my larger point was the _hypocrisy_ issue, that we tell our children to "Just say No! to drugs" while popping pills in their mouths. We are teaching children to "self-medicate." Whether these children continue to self-medicate later in life is unknown. As to choice, I am not interfering in any way, despite a strange claim to the contrary. My friend simply refuses to be a pill dispenser to keep a kid "controllable," especially when he has seen the kid in an "unmedicated" state and finds him much more personable, happy, and eminently controllable. The mother, Vickie, simply cannot impose discipline on him and, in our opinion, uses his Ritalin dose to control him. Quibbling about whether Ritalin is or is not a depressant, or a stimulant, or whatever, misses the main points. I personally never got into the drug thing, and my only drugs of choice are caffeine (taken straight, in caffeine tablets) and alcohol (preferably in the form of bourbon or Kentucky sour mash). But if I were advising a child--my own, or others--I would never lie to them about how horrible all drugs are, and especially I would challenge "D.A.R.E." programs which use school time to brainwash them. I sometimes wear a t-shirt I bought over the Net: "D.A.R.E. I turned in my parents and all I got was this lousy t-shirt." (Explanation for non-U.S. persons: "D.A.R.E." stands for "Drug Abuse Resistance Education," a multi-week school program which brings in local law enforcement officers to explain the evils of all drugs and which teaches children how to contact school officials, local law enforcement, and Child Protective Services should they detect drugs in their homes. This part has been very controversial, as children turn in their parents for smoking pot. Even the schools and cops realized things had gotten out of hand when children were contacting the authorities for wine-drinking and other such legal drug consumptions. Not surprisingly, civil libertarians draw parallels with the case of Pavel Morozov, the "Young Hero" of the Soviet Union who turned in his parents to Stalin's secret police. Hence the message of the t-shirt.) Personally, I think these issues are related to Cypherpunk themes. Telling children to "Just say No! to drugs" without providing nuanced interpretations of which specific drugs are dangerous, and why, is esentially lying to them. Dosing them with uppers and downers contradicts the simplistic message. And teaching them to narc out their parents is despicable. Anyone for "C.A.R.E."? Crypto Abuse Resistance Education. "So, boys and girls, be sure to tell your teacher if you see your Dad or your Mom using any illegal computer codes. It's for their own good, and they'll thank you for helping them to be reeducated." > And from the very onset Tim explained his point in not building >a mental control society. And there's no point in denying that it is far >easier for most societies to have full mental control of their subjects >(to which technology aids) than to fix the big social problems. Indeed. My original points seem to be have gotten distorted by others. (And you ought to see a couple of foaming-at-the-mouth personal messages I have gotten, including one from a woman "on lithium" (no, not any of the few regular women posters here). Hey, if "lithium" works, fine. But I wouldn't pop lithium pills in a child's mouth without some real careful consideration.) My point about the mother I mentioned is that she _appears_ to be using Ritalin to make her child more sedate and more controllable, when my friend finds that old-fashioned methods work quite well. And my friend has no plans to be the dispenser of uppers and/or downers to his son's friends. Children on drugs will have to find their methods of delivery. And to all those on this list who assume I am "insulting" their ADD condition, go back and reread my post. I never claimed that ADD does or does not exist. Maybe it does. Maybe it is partly exaggerated. In any case, my point was that we cannot tell children that all drugs are evil and then give them mind-altering drugs. And believe me, most children are bright enough to eventually see the hypocrisy. (I should stop now, but I just have to mention the LSD scares of the mid-60s. As LSD hit the mainstream media, we were bombarded by stories of how people thought they could fly out of buildings while on LSD. One famous case, that of Art Linkletter (the Oprah Winfrey of his day). His daughter, he claimed, flew out of a building while on LSD. Many years later he admitted--as I recall--that she had long been suffering from major depression, and that it was most probably a standard suicide...tragic, but not really caused by LSD. In any case, people in the 60s heard these scare stories, saw the reality of how their friends behaved on acid, and realized they'd been fed a line of scare-mongering hype. The dangers of crying "Wolf!" falsely. This process was repeated a decade or so later with the media propagating tales of people on "angel dust" (PCP) putting babies in microwave ovens and committing suicide in horrific ways. True or not, for whatever twisted reasons, these cases were used to "manufacture consent" about the dangers of PCP. And then there were the "crack babies," which more recent analysis shows largely to be a myth. And so on. The Four Horsemen are riding high.) --Tim May 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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MIT harassed over publication of PGP book
by Hal Abelson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- The following message is written on my own behalf; it is not an official statement of MIT. Over the past few weeks, MIT has been negotiating a research framework agreement with Sandia Labs. A framework agreement does not fund any particular piece of research. Rather it establishes policies and procedures under which future research will be funded and carried out. This saves MIT and Sandia the trouble of working out a separate agreement for each new contract. We have several such agreements in place with various organizations. Sandia has also set up agreements with universities in the past, and is currently setting then up with several more universities, including MIT. In the current round of negotiations, Sandia is requesting to add language to the agreement, giving them right of prior review over any publications arising from their sponsored research at MIT, in order that Sandia can review these for possible violation of US export control regulations. When our contract people queried this, they were put in touch with Bruce Winchell, a Sandia lawyer. Winchell told them that the State Department had "made it clear" to DOE that the Department was very concerned that "MIT did not have procedures in place to monitor the dissemination of material that is subject to export controls." Winchell went on to say that a recent MIT publication by "a Philip Zimmermann" came very close to violating export control laws. As far as we know, Sandia has not been discussing such a clause with other universities with which it is negotiating contracts. I assume that Mr. Winchell's comment above refers to the publication of the PGP source code book by MIT Press. Before publishing the PGP book, the Press wrote the State Department, informing them of our intent to publish the PGP book and giving them the opportunity to let us know if they thought this would raise an export control problem. We never received a response. Since publication, MIT has never (to my knowledge) heard from State that they had any objection to the PGP publication. Now, we learn of a back channel communication from State to DOE to Sandia, which has prompted Sandia to want to act as a policeman for MIT vis a vis export controls. This is troubling for what it says about how the State Department is dealing with export issues surrounding information about cryptography, and about the extent to which policies are being administered in a clear and above-board manner. Hal Abelson Prof. of Comp. Sci. and Eng. MIT -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.4, an Emacs/PGP interface iQCVAwUBMeNIKviGKLV9Y6XFAQFeRwP6ArPEyMTY3IgfuAQGcCCfmbuc5D/505N/ +x/9hhVZOIv33sEummQ5UtJeSAyH9gLg0GMOxKCpQOqsBsed5YAO9xVRjIW3dXfQ Xgo975qFHHmlRA3cxa5EZFg7Q/39V3QVKlCrcZ8jyYW9ECgNJtbMSvcvaO3Qzgom lgo4OB6g7eo= =QABK -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by mike＠fionn.lbl.gov 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Jul 9, 9:21am, Rick Smith wrote: > >Seems like if your child needs drugs to go to school than perhaps school is > >the problem not that your child's body lacks Ritalin. One thing we need to remember is that life, not just school, is full of boring, repetitive tasks, even for the hi & mity. You have to figure out how to do them. This is one very difficult *lifetime* problem for those with add-like behaviors. Also, add people need credentials & good jobs like everyone else, so they have to be able to perform well enuf in school to get good recs & good marks in subjects that interest them. They didn't make this system, but they do have to adapt to it somewhat.

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Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by JR＠ns.cnb.uam.es 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>I bet you go up to people in near suicidal states and tell them "hey, >get a life", don't you. > Sorry, Perry, but that's a cultural matter. Here we consider one has right over his/her own life up to decide to suicide. And so it is not ilegal here. What that reflects is that I respect their right to dispose of their lifes. I do care though, and if I can help I'll do my best. That's why I studied Medicine in the first place. Just as I try to convince people to learn, increase their political awareness, overcome their limitations and get better. That's why I defend defensive use of crypto against technological mind-control. I still won't force anyone into using this or that algorithm or taking this or that drug. As long as they have a free will. Then comes disease, when one is not able to decide by him/herself. If I were to make a blood transfusion to someone refusing it on religious grounds I wouldn't be much different from the gov't imposing some crypto scheme on the basis of its own moral grounds. Is it that what you are proposing? It would be quiet another thing if I saved the life of someone who can't tell me at all his/her religious beliefs. Not to say I wouldn't 'cos I'd. But I don't think goverments can say we are not able to express our preferences, do they? In short, I may think otherwise and try to convince people not to suicide, even do my best. But in the end it's their choice. Just the same I believe the gov't can try to convince us, but it should be in the end our choice to chose how we live (or what crypto we use). So, are you saying that to avoide the society collapsing by terrorism and go to its suicide we should give the government total control? jr

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