December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

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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Re: Information [for new PGP user]
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Thu, 07 Nov 1996 07:08:52 -0800, Dale Thorn wrote: >> >> > I'm a new Cyberpunk! >> Probably wearing a set of Ono-Sendai eyeballs.... >> >> > Last, I would like to know once and for all, is PGP compromised, is >> >> > there a back door, and have we been fooled by NSA to believe it's secure? >> You can read and compile the source code yourself. >Really? All 60,000 or so lines, including all 'includes' or attachments? >I'll bet you can't find 10 out of 1,000 users who have read the total source, >let alone comprehended and validated it. That's not necessary - it's the fact that it's possible that matters; most of us are content to trust the various people who actually have. However, I'd probably be inclined to look into it seriously if I was going to use it on anything incriminating or potentially linked to my checkbook... # Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp # <cadams(a)acucobol.com> | send mail with subject "send PGPKEY" "That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them." --- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft (quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial)

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Thu, 7 Nov 1996 16:43:23 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >* "Legitimate needs." The whole notion Peter raises of banning cryptography >is fraught with problems. Are businesses to be told that all communications >are to be in the clear? Or is Peter's point that some form of GAK will be >used? I'd love to see the government try to tell big business that they can't protect, say, electronic transactions. That'd get a lot of rented senators in action... >(If the latter, then of course we are back to an even better form of >"stego" than stego itself: superencrypt before using GAK. Unless the >government samples packets randomly and does what they say they will do to >open a GAKked packet--e.g., get a court order, go to the escrow key >holders, etc.--then how will they know if a message is superencrypted? And >what if a GAKked message contains conventional _codes_? Are shorthand codes >such as business have long used--"The rain in Rome is warm this month"--to >be illegal?) Also: "Am I being investigated for any crime?" "Then how do you know it's been superencrypted - I thought you could only get access with a warrant?" # Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp # <cadams(a)acucobol.com> | send mail with subject "send PGPKEY" "That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them." --- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft (quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial)

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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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Re: Mailing list liability (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From markm@gak Sat Nov 9 21:03:24 1996 > > Note that none of these say anything about any commercial service being held > liable for defamatory statements because the service cancelled a user's > account or prevented a user from posting in certain areas. I really don't > see why you consider unsubscribing someone from a mailing list the equivalent > of monitoring posts and exercising editorial control. It is exactly editorial control because it prevents, a priori, submissions by Vulis under that account. He is FORCED to resort to other means. That is what the courts will see, it is what the jury will see, and it is what will eventualy sink the list, and place its operator under financial burden for years. I joined this list under my own volition, I agreed to no review by the list operator at any time. I did not agree to not hurt his feelings with my comments or views. I did not agree to agree with the operator of the list. I did not agree to make him feel warm and fuzzy inside. I agreed to NOTHING other than my permission for him to put your submissions in my email box. The only way I can be removed from this list and not open the operator up to legal consequences is by my own volition or the total cessation of this list. This applies to every member subscribed so long as their is no proviso posted at subscription time. They were held liable for the comments of their users BECAUSE they demonstrated editorial control. In removing Vulis from the list he has demonstrated editorial control. Prior to this act he was immune from rantings and ravings of the various idiots on this list. Now he is not. The fact that it was a commercial service was irrelevant and not an issue in the court cases. What was involved was the responsibility of the service operators, the agreement between service and users, and who had editorial control (users v service). And finaly, if your contention is that if you set up a press and start cranking out flyers (digital or otherwise), which defame or otherwise liable, you are immune from prosecution unless you are a business then you are in for a very rude surprise. Sooner or later somebody is going to submit a posting which will go through. That posting will be pointed at a particular personality. That personality will take exception and sue the list operator, and because of this action will have a very high chance of winning. Not only does the list operator loose but we all loose because it is going to set a precedence that will take many years more to recover from. I seldom get personal but there are a few of you folks that have your heads up your collective crypto-anarchy asses. Here is a simple process whereby you can protect yourself from legal reprisals and you don't take it. God help you because the courts shure as hell won't. In case you people don't get it, the whole point is to REDUCE the influence and control of the government (local, state, and federal). NOT to give even more fodder to shoot. For a list operator a primary if not the primary goal is to avoid any legal involvement at all costs. Throwing people off lists with no subscription limitations is not the way to do that. To be a succesful list operator your scruples and the way you treat your subscribers MUST be beyond any reproach. The bottem line is that the act was not professional and impacts the image of mailing lists, Cypherpunks, its operator, and its members in a negative light. I have operated BBS'es and mailing lists since '76 and find such actions on the part of a fellow service operator to be insulting to the profession that I have enjoyed for 20 years. Those of you who contend that because there is no explicit contract between operator and subscriber this is sufficient to allow the operator to enact any policies they wish with no warning or other consideration are in for a nasty surprise. You will find that this will in fact prevent a list operator from doing anything other than upgrading software, buying more disk space, and paying the bills because that is the ONLY way they will be able to retain commen carrier style protections. Without that protection a list operator is faced with reviewing every submission to a list prior to redistribution or face the legal and financial consequences. I do not wish to see the Cypherpunks mailing list to become that litmus test. Consider this, the Cypherpunks mailing list is a very public list in many ways it is the vanguard of what tomorrows net will be like. Is this the sort of environment that can survive? With this as the current list policy I think we are all taking part in a dinosaur. Jim Choate

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Apartment complex burnt down... (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sat, 9 Nov 1996 20:53:02 -0800 > From: nobody(a)cypherpunks.ca (John Anonymous MacDonald) > > Suppose Bob lives in an apartment complex. By accident the whole building > burns down. > > Bob manages to escape, but all his papers, including passport, IDs, > credit cards, acount numbers, etc etc gets destroyed. > > What can Bob do? Would the government help him? > > It seems like he'd be in a really unfavorable position... I was there 2 years ago. The Red Cross is about the only group you can count on other than family, friends and a church (if you happen to belong to one). Getting another drivers license was a easy operation. Head down to the local DPS office and request a replacement card for a lost license. The titles and such for property and auto were tedious but not impossible. I didn't need to show anything other than my drivers license and pay the requisite fees to obtain new copies of the deeds. In general the governmental types of documents and such were easy to replace. I personaly had all the necessary copies of the documents I needed within a month or so. The personal items were impossible to replace and caused the most emotional turmoil. In many parts of the country the Red Cross is delepeted both in operating funds and volunteers. If you can, please consider giving them your support. I personaly didn't use them but both my roomies did. Jim Choate

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Re: His and Her Anarchies
by drose＠AZStarNet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dale Thorn <dthorn(a)gte.net> wrote: [...] >While many, many >women have harrassed me on the road for my driving, they (unlike men, w/o exception) >have *never* tried to threaten me directly, as have hundreds of men. Might all these hundreds of threatening men and many, many harassing women be trying to tell you something? [...] >I would suggest to any man that if he lived >in a society where a whole class of humans (i.e., female) were more aggressive and >confrontational, more domineering, etc. than he and nearly every other man he knew, >he would probably learn how best to get along with that other class of persons without >constantly butting heads with them. Dale Thorn, meet Oprah, RuPaul, Hillary Rotten, Roseanne, Andrea Dworkin, Winnie Mandella, etc. Now back to S. Logan, Vulis, AP, whatever.

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Apartment complex burnt down...
by drose＠AZStarNet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sat, 9 Nov 1996, John Anonymous MacDonald wrote: >Suppose Bob lives in an apartment complex. By accident the whole building >burns down. > >Bob manages to escape, but all his papers, including passport, IDs, >credit cards, acount numbers, etc etc gets destroyed. > >What can Bob do? Would the government help him? Why? >It seems like he'd be in a really unfavorable position... Umm-hmmm. Calling Sunkyong Moon-Yip (sp?): List please off him getts.

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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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Black markets vs. cryptoanarchy
by Mike Ingle 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cryptoanarchy will have arrived when you can openly _advertise_ these services and still stay in business indefinitely. Most of the things we talk about - even Jim Bell's assassination market - already exist, but they cannot be advertised. You have to go looking for them, at some risk to both buyer and seller. If the seller is visible enough for you to find him, he is visible enough to get caught. For example, there is plenty of 'pirate' material on the net, but it tends to go away as soon as the addresses become well-known. Cryptoanarchy will be here when you can advertise yourself as a distributor of pirate software (or anything else you want to sell), do business with a publicly known contact address, and still not get caught. 'Black markets' exist due to the inability to do this. Currently the techniques of anonymity are limited to two: indirection for source anonymity and broadcast for recipient anonymity. We are more or less where crypto was before the invention of public key. You can gain security by spreading risk among multiple parties (key distributors for crypto, or remailers for anonymity) but you can't 'make your own anonymity' like you can make your own security with public key crypto. A theoretical discovery is needed particularly in the area of recipient anonymity. Good sender anonymity and weak recipient anonymity leads to 'hit and run' behavior such as spamming email and newsgroups, but not to anonymous markets. Mike > >Crypto-anarchy benefits the poor more than the rich. The underlings > >of society are going to love it. > > In fact, they basically already practice it. Not with computers, of course, > but in terms of not reporting cash income, not reporting tips, engaging in > barter work with others, and gambling in various non-sanctioned markets. > > (Numbers games and sports betting are huge markets. Interestingly, such > markets also validate much of what we say about "reputations." After all, > when was the last time you heard about a bookie being sued in court for not > paying up? And private justice is administered, as welshers are disposed of > directly, without a long, expensive trial. Nearly everything in "crypto > anarchy" has direct parallels in "underworld and black markets." Some say > they are really the same thing. Perhaps.) > > --Tim May

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