December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Children & Privacy
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:26 AM -0800 11/11/96, Hal Finney wrote: > >>I have two kids entering their teens, and I'm sure other list members are >>parents as well. What can we do for our children to help them enter their >>adult lives with better chances to retain privacy? Perfect privacy is very difficult to achieve but with practice, one can learn (and teach one's children) much improved privacy. The following suggestions are not the most radical ones. They represent things that you can do at little cost or risk. Things you can do to teach your children to protect their privacy. 1) Practice privacy yourself. Children learn by example. 2) Don't apply for an SS# for your child. 3) Do apply for a passport for your child (without an SS# of course). Use it as the foundation for an ID pack for your child because passport apps don't contain much useful information on a person and can even be obtained without a birth certificate when the child is an infant. 4) Make up some facially valid SS numbers for future use using a freeware program like ssn.exe. 5) Teach your child to give your accommodation address and voice mail number as his address and phone number whenever asked (just like you do -- you do do that, don't you). 6) In descending order of importance: keep him out of government schools, keep him out of private schools in your country of residence, home school him. (Government schools give the government a direct opening into information about your family. Handing a child over to the government effectively ends any parental rights you might have while he is in school. Additionally, he may never learn to read and write.) 7) Introduce privacy concerns into your ideolect: Whenever you are driving around and see a police car say "There's the Geheime Staatspolizei" and explain who the "Home State Police" were. 8) Play privacy games like: Let's think of things we can say to people who ask us why we're not in school." "Let's think up some neat names to give to people when we don't want them to give them our real name." "Let's practice giving random answers to the question 'What's your name, address, and phone number.'" 9) When driver's license time comes teach them how to get a license in another state or country than their state of residence (and why this is important). 10) Get them a secured credit card in their true name to add to their ID pack. If you like, you can get them one in a nom de guerre as well. Secured credit cards are the best ID money can buy. (Because people think they're ID but they're not). DCF

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Children and Privacy
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:31 AM 11/12/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >(Side note: Jim McCoy's suggestion that kids can be kept off the >parental-unit's tax returns and thus not get a SS number is fraught with >problems. Many schools--including public schools--use the SS number for >various internal and tracking reasons. Anyone who turns their children over to puiblic schools cannot be very interested in privacy since public schools are the major pathway that governments use to exert social controls on families. In addition to all the paperwork on and tracking of the children, public schools record and track the families. The various state child protective services agencies use information derived from schools to control children and parents. If you are not on welfare and do not have your children in a government school, you will almost never come to the attention of those authorities. >Even if the kid is free of SS >numbers until he's a teenager--at a cost of thousands of dollars a year in >IRS deductions not taken--he'll essentially have to have an SS number in The "fine" for not listing your kids SS# on returns is minor ($50) and is not usually assesed in any case. You can still deduct them. Also those millions of parents who don't file their returns don't face the problem either. >his high school years, for a variety of reasons. Maybe this can be avoided, >but I doubt the reward is worth the hassles.) It is very rare to have an SS# bounced back at you if you just make one up which is valid on its face. This applies to both schools and jobs. DCF

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Copyright violations
by alzheimer＠juno.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Financial Times: Friday, November 8, 1996 Credit Card Group Set for Control of Mondex By Tim Burt MasterCard International, the credit card consortium, has stepped up its bid to take a leading position in the embryonic cash card business by agreeing to acquire a majority stake in Mondex International of the UK. Mondex is a leading developer of "electronic purses" -- plastic cards with memory chips that can be "loaded" with cash and used for small purchases. The deal is expected to give MasterCard 51 per cent of Mondex, set up by National Westminster and Midland of the UK but now jointly owned by 17 banks. Under the agreement, MasterCard would promote the Mondex electronic cash card through banks which carry its franchise. The Mondex system has been piloted in Swindon, Wiltshire, and Hong Kong. It works by storing cash on a microchip card, which can be loaded using automatic telling machines or specially equipped telephones. Cards -- including credit, debit and store cards -- are used for payments worth an estimated #2,000bn a year. MasterCard believes Mondex could give it a greater share of that market, although some industry observers doubt the appetite for such electronic cash cards. The acquisition could exacerbate tensions between MasterCard and Visa, its main rival, in attempts to establish an industry-wide standard for chip cards. Visa has already done pilot tests of its electronic purse at the Atlanta Olympic Games last summer and in Spain, Australia and Argentina. It is understood Mondex would become a free-standing subsidiary of MasterCard, and its existing management is expected to remain. Banking analysts said the deal could signal an admission by MasterCard that trials of its own electronic purse had not proved an unqualified success. Yesterday, however, MasterCard said it would be conducting a full-scale trial of its own smart card in New York next March. Electronic purses are undergoing trials elsewhere in Europe and North America, and some of Mondex's rivals claim it does not conform to the international standards for chip cards developed by companies such as Visa and Europay. Mondex has had a mixed reception among UK customers and retailers but said this week that it had been received enthusiastically in the Far East. In Hong Kong -- where Mondex was launched last month in conjunction with HongkongBank and Hang Seng Bank -- more than 20,000 customers and 400 stores have signed up to join the scheme at the two malls where it is being tested. The card is also being tested in Canada and is expected to be launched in Australia next year. Financial Times: Friday, November 8, 1996 World Tries Out New Electronic Purse Systems By George Graham Ever since inventors figured out how to implant a miniature computer chip in the thickness of a standard payment card, banks have been toying with the possibilities opened up by this extra memory and processing power. Top of most lists is the electronic purse: a way of loading money on to the card so that it can be used as a direct substitute for cash in small transactions such as buying a newspaper or a bus ticket. Mondex is among a host of electronic purses now on trial around the world. Originally piloted in Swindon, England, it is also being tested in Canada and was launched this week in Hong Kong. The arrival of MasterCard, the international payment card consortium, as its prospective majority shareholder will give Mondex the opportunity to move beyond local and national trials to, potentially, worldwide use. MasterCard had run trials of its own electronic purse in Canberra, though reports that these proved unsatisfactory would appear to be borne out by its imminent new link with Mondex. But Mondex is not alone in the electronic purse contest. Visa, MasterCard's great rival, piloted its Visa Cash electronic purse at the Atlanta Olympics, and in such countries as Spain, Australia, and Argentina. It will be launching a trial in the UK next year. Europay, despite being MasterCard's partner in Europe, has already launched its own purse called the Clip. Other national electronic purses range from the disposable Danmont card in Denmark -- sold for face value and thrown away when used up, like a phone card -- to the reloadable Quick chip in Austria, which is integrated into the customer's regular cash card. The most heavily used electronic purse so far, and arguably the only one that can yet claim to be a commercial success beyond a closed circuit such as a university, is the PMB card in Portugal. It has 170,000 cards in active use, and an expected 50,000 point of sale terminals installed by the end of this year. But no winner has yet emerged. "The reason for all of these pilots is that no one has proven the business case. I'll be really interested to see if anyone makes money out of this," Mr Eugene Lockhart, president of MasterCard International, said earlier this year. Banks generally like the idea of an electronic purse, which cuts out the risk they run on a credit card payment of not getting paid. It is also cheaper to operate than a debit card: because the money is already loaded on the card, there is no need for each transaction to be authorised by a central computer. 'The reason for all these pilots is that no one has proven the business case' weighs particularly with late night shops and with bus and taxi drivers who do not want to have to carry change around with them. But they do not want to install new card terminals until they are sure what the standard will be. The gains are much less obvious for consumers. To compete with cash, an electronic purse has to be not only free but very widely accepted. That threshold has so far been crossed usually in very limited geographical areas, such as the Sydney suburb where an electronic purse accepted at petrol stations, shops and fast food outlets has been successfully married with a bus pass. Mondex's technological features make it a closer replica of cash than most competitors. Mondex money moves anonymously from one person to the next, and can even be transferred to another individual's Mondex card, instead of only to a shop with a special terminal. In most other systems each transaction ends up being processed through a central computer. That leaves more of an audit trail -- a plus point with police. But Mondex's biggest shortcoming has been that it stood alone, raising questions on whether it would gain acceptance beyond the confines of Swindon. Rivals say it does not conform technically to the international standards for chip cards developed by Visa, MasterCard and Europay, although Mondex officials have demonstrated its cards will work in standard terminals. Mondex took a big step towards wider acceptance this summer, when National Westminster Bank, its creator, sold control to a broad international consortium of banks. With MasterCard expected to take control, the Mondex card has will be crossing another threshold toward worldwide acceptance.

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Make.digital.money.fast
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Rabid Wombat <wombat(a)mcfeely.bsfs.org> writes: > On Sun, 10 Nov 1996, Clay Olbon II wrote: > > > 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 conducte > > with anonymity. And it appears to be much more widespread on the internet > > How is it like gambling? If I get a pyramid letter instructing me to send > money to five people on the list, add my name to the bottom, send to 5 > people, or whatever, there's nothing stopping me from removing all the > names, adding my name and those of four friends, and passing the letter > along. With an anonymous system, I could easily be all five people, > without even the bother of getting five different post office boxes. > > There's no gambling involved; only blantant stupidity. I agree - MMF is stupid. Gambling in Las Vegas is stupid. Buying lottery tickets is stupid (except in rare cases when the jackpot is very large.) The way most investors play the market is stupid. It's unbelieavble how many billions of dollars move around in non-productive activities which can only be described as stupid. Coming back to MMF, I recall the famous quote from Dave Rhoad's original post which said approximately: "The success of this project depends on the honest and integrity of each participant." (By the way, DR is a real person, living in California.) My small-scale survey indicates that almost all the people who post MMF try to "cheat" in a minor way by not sending the $5 to the 5 people upstream of them. I think this casn be prevented cryptograhicaly if the MMF post includes digitally signed assertions from the 5 upstream people certifying that they've received their $ from this particular poster. A slightly more sophisticated form of "cheating" is described by RW above: the poster generated 5 nyms, generated 5 receipts from these nyms, and effectively starts a new pyramid. A partial response to that would be to require each new nym to be certified by its immediate upstream neighbor: sort of like the web of trust, rooted in Dave Rhoades himself. But that too can be circumvented by a single person "spamming" the pyramid by multiple nyms all belonging to him. There's no good way to ascertain that mutliple nyms don't belong to the same person. > --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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anon remailer
by luc pac 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

hi -- i'm having a discussion with some people, trying to persuade them to set up an anonymous remailer on an italian server. i need a few technical data about how much computing resources does a remailer take, how much ram, cpu time, average traffic and so. since i can't deal with the huge (though interesting) traffic carried by this list, i'm not going to subscribe. so please if you can help, contact me privately at my address. i feel that if i succeed, a new remailer would be of some help for the entire cypherpunk community worldwide. thanks. --- Key fngrprnt (since 1993) = 52 DB 96 92 FA 1D CE 71 0D 63 96 E5 9A 9B 07 0A http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/3879

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Re: Kriegsman Furs Website hacked...
by Steve Edwards 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

These hacks can be amusing, regardless of your political orientation... But, to bring the thread onto topic, how are these hacks perpetrated and how can a responsible webmaster reduce the exposure? On Wed, 13 Nov 1996, Eraser wrote: > > Hey all.. > > Another commercial hack. > > http://www.kriegsman.com/ which is still live at this posting. not any more. > if it goes down, or is fixed, a mirror exists on > http://www.skeeve.net/kriegsman/ > > nicely done... > > one for the furry creatures. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------- > | Skeeve Stevens - MyInternet personal.url: http://www.skeeve.net/ | > | email://skeeve@skeeve.net/ work.url: http://www.myinternet.net/ | > | phone://612.9869.3334/ mobile://0414.SKEEVE/ [753-383] | > ------------------------------------------------------------------- > Steve Edwards sedwards(a)cts.com

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Taxation Thought Experiment
by Joseph M. Reagle Jr. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Another thought experiment, comments welcomed: o TAXES THOUGHT EXPERIMENT 1) I generate $100 of productivity for my company 2) Company is taxed %30, $70 left 3) Company pay shareholders and costs, $30 is left 4) Company pays me 5) I pay 40% in taxes, so $18 left 6) With $18 I can buy a $16.82 object (%07 sales tax). Results: 1) I see $16.82 realization from $100 productivity increase. * Govt. gets $49.26 of my productivity, or nearly 3 times the amount I get. _______________________ Regards, Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail. -Ralph Waldo Emerson Joseph Reagle http://rpcp.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html reagle(a)mit.edu E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65 BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E

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(fwd) NSA And Vince Foster?
by vznuri＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

gadzooks, has anyone seen this yet? atom bomb type stuff here. I guess we won't hear Perry and others rant about Vince Foster material on the list any more, eh? From: softwar(a)us.net (Charles R. Smith) Newsgroups: talk.politics.crypto Subject: NSA And Vince Foster? Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 00:36:45 GMT ======== ubject: NSA FOSTER DOCS: FOSTER INVOLVED IN NSA COMPUTER ESPIONAGE ISSUES From: "John Q. Public" <jqp(a)globaldialog.com> Date: Sun, 10 Nov 1996 13:13:29 -0600 not to be used for commercial purposes from the Nov. 11, 1996 issue of The Washington Weekly posted with permission NSA RELEASES DECLASSIFIED FOSTER DOCUMENTS The National Security Agency has now released the first batch of documents in response to a Washington Weekly FOIA request filed in August of 1995. The documents, pertaining to the late Vincent W. Foster and his work with the NSA and with Systematics Inc. have many passages and names blacked out and some documents bear "Confidential" or "Secret" classifications. The first batch of documents contain 77 pages. After conversations with NSA staff, we understand that an additional estimated 600 to 700 pages of documents will be released pending review by other intelligence agencies. The Washington Weekly eventually will make all documents available on its web site. VINCE FOSTER INVOLVED IN NSA COMPUTER ESPIONAGE ISSUES One morning in May of 1993, a mini bus left the National Security Agency at Ft. George G. Meade, Maryland. It drove directly to the White House to pick up Bernard Nussbaum and Vincent W. Foster. From there, the party proceeded to the Justice Department to pick up Webster Hubbell and John Rogovin. At the Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens joined the party. They all returned to the NSA for a secret roundtable discussion with top NSA officials on Codebreaking and Telecommunications. On the agenda were items such as: * What Has Happened to SIGINT * How We Handle Crypt[ology] Problems * Problems We Face In The Future * Rule of Law Only this broad outline of the meeting is revealed in a recently declassified NSA document. But it makes clear that one of Vince Foster's responsibilities at the White House was cryptology and intelligence gathering. As such, he was privy to top secrets. That would explain the presence of two NSA binders deposited by Vince Foster in a White House safe. So why did the White House deny that Foster was working on NSA documents? Last May, White House spokesman Mark Fabiani told the Washington Times that "There were no National Security Agency documents that he was working on that were in his possession." Why did the White House try to conceal Foster's NSA ties? Why did Fabiani find it necessary to contradict the sworn statement of Foster's secretary Deborah Gorham, who said that "There were two one-inch ring binders that were from the National Security Agency"? Published in the Nov. 11, 1996 Issue of The Washington Weekly Copyright (c) 1996 The Washington Weekly (http://www.federal.com) -- ~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^ \ / ~/ |\| | | |> | : : : : : : Vladimir Z. Nuri : : : : <vznuri(a)netcom.com> \/ ./_.| | \_/ |\ | : : : : : : ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/vz/vznuri/home.html

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UNSUBCRIBE CENSORSHIP
by Sheldon Andrews 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

UNSUBCRIBE CENSORSHIP

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Re: Child Protective Services and Political Views
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:26 AM 11/12/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >Who knows, it may even be a >technical crime ("contributing to the delinquency of a minor"?) to even >discuss basic libertarian ideas with a minor. And as I said, Child >Protective Services could quite possibly seize a child whose parents were >sufficiently vocal about their beliefs.) One shouldn't be vocal to public employees in any case. Avoid them. If you are going to be vocal use a non government forum. Separate your personal life from your political life. It's not too hard to break most of the pointers between your physical presence and your ideological presence. Even though an investigator could find where I sleep at night, they would have to actually expend the resources. My neighbors and the local cops are unlikely to make the connection because they and I move in very different circles and I minimize my database presence. In any case, those stupid enough to turn their children over to the government deserve whatever happens to them. Even if CPS never gets involved, the damage they do to their kids may be irreversible. My parents weren't that stupid in 1956 when I started school and that was at a much lower level of knowledge of the effects of government schools. There is no excuse today when we can see the damage all around us. As I said earlier today, you can reduce your risk of CPS oppression to nil by keeping your kids out of public schools and licensed day care. DCF

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