December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: Returned mail: User Unknown
by Juriaan Massenza 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Looking at the To: line looks to me like a smart ass more that a genuine "unknown user" reply... >---------- >From: Open Net Postmaster[SMTP:postmaster@opennet.net.au] >Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 1996 9:11 AM >To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com; owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com; >cypherpunks-errors(a)toad.com >Subject: Returned mail: User Unknown > > >The address you mailed to is no longer valid. >This is probably because the user in question was an >old Open Net subscriber. Open Net is NO LONGER an ISP, >and has not been since May 1996. > >We have no redirection address for that user. Please >remove them from any mailing lists you might have. > >This response was generated automatically. > >

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Re: Not. [Was Re: Federal Reserve Bank is ILLEGAL?]
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:57 PM 11/11/1996, "Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" <froomkin(a)law.miami. wrote: > On Tue, 12 Nov 1996, Doug Renner wrote: >> article nearly head-on. However is it true that what you are saying is >> that two fundamental premises in the article you refer to as "rabid" are >> incorrect? Namely: >> "ARTICLE 1, SECTION 8 OF THE CONSTITUTION STATES THAT CONGRESS SHALL HAVE >> THE POWER TO COIN (CREATE) MONEY AND REGULATE THE VALUE THEREOF. > The above is a true statement. Note however that "congress" cannot > operate the mint. It must -- **MUST** -- delegate this duty to the > executive branch (or someone outside the legislative branch, cf. Chadha > v. U.S.) if it wants it done. Congress is free to select the type > of agent it wants to do this. Indeed, if Congress chose to license > private mints, that would, IMHO be legal. The point here is that the > states don't have the power to coin money. During the Free Banking Era, banks and companies issued their own dollars. I believe that at that time the dollar was defined in terms of a certain weight of gold. The value of any dollar you might be holding was related to the level of confidence in the institution that issued it. Books were published which recorded the "exchange rate" between each kind of dollar. This is very similar to Congress licensing private mints. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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More snake oil: ENIGMA
by Steven Weller 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Seen on usenet. I'm not currently subscibing to the list, so I hope it's not old news. ----------------------------------->8-------------------------------- Can You KEEP a SECRET? Doctor? Lawyer? Accountant? Executive? Or even Politician? -- you know there is some information your clients don't want to fall into public hands. Can you keep a secret? They want you to. Let's face it, you want to keep some things a secret as much as they do! Now you can. Now there is an unbreakable version of ENIGMA which is so easy to use that a child can send messages the CIA can't break. Perhaps you remember the original version of ENIGMA used so successfully by the Germans during World War II. Hundreds of cryptologists worked for thousands of hours to unscramble the secret orders being flashed openly over the air waves by the Germans. In the end, allies cracked the code only by stealing one of the machines. With ULTRA ENIGMA 2.0 stealing the machine won't do your enemies any good at all. First, the New ENIGMA is a thousand times more complex. Yet it only takes a matter of minutes for you to lock up whole directories of your secret files securely. Then your secrets are safe. They are secure, Now and Forever. Your secrets are safe because there is no place for cryptologists to begin, no way they can tell which part of the code is part of the secret and which part is garbage, no way of telling if the file is long, or short, or a drawing, or a picture, and it might even be in a foreign language for all they know. Yes, the new ENIGMA really can encode drawings, pictures, X-Rays and absolutely anything else you can put into a computer. Can You keep a Secret? With ENIGMA you can... ENIGMA is so secure that not even the producers can crack your secrets open. ENIGMA is seamless. Nobody can crack the codes you set but you. Now that's a Secret you can tell everybody! Your clients will be glad to hear it, and you'll sleep better knowing it is true. Let us spill out the Secret Details of ENIGMA for you to examine. Take just a moment to glance through our pages. We'll show you how it works, and explain why it works. Then, especially for Governments and other high risk situations,, we reveal why even the weak link, (knowing the encoder) can be eliminated with a Fortune Cookie blindly selected from a randomly available jar with thousands of cookies shuffled back and forth at the company. Think about it;, if YOU don't pick the keys, how can ANYONE guess which keys You Pick? And we are sorry, but NO... the company won't have any idea which keys you pick either..! -- Think of it this way, some things are best kept a secret between you and you. As an added bonus, we'll also show you some other professional ways you can guard your secrets. http://www.enigma-co.com will bring you to our front page. ENIGMA 5525 McMurtrey Drive North Little Rock, AR 72218-5248 For Support use these numbers http://www.enigma-co.com Phone (501)758-8040 8am-10pm CST Fax (501) 758-8016 All our sales are maintained by WorldWide Sales Depot So,,, For Foreign Dealership information, Sales and Orders .... use these special numbers 104344.2000(a)compuserve.com Fone: (401) 945-4262 ** FAX: (501) 945-4203 Sales literature, web page design and layout © copyright 1996 by WorldWide Sales Depot -- "Arkansas Showcase" lists the major links, features, fotos, and fun you can have outside on the run in Arkansas. Drop by and sign my guestbook posted at http:www.cris.com/~Talewins ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steven Weller stevenw(a)best.com "There was really no reason why we did anything the way we did. But, of course, there was a reason why we did things for no reason at all". -- Michael Palin

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Censorship on cypherpunks?, from The Netly News
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Netly News http://www.netlynews.com/ November 11, 1996 Cypher-Censored By Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com) The cypherpunks mailing list, so legend goes, coalesced around two principles: the dissemination of strong encryption and an absolute commitment to free speech. It was a kind of crypto-anarchist utopia: Here was a place where anonymity was encouraged and PGP-signed postings were the norm -- and nobody seemed to be in control. That is, until recently, when Dimitri Vulis was given the boot. After he refused to stop posting flames, rants and uninspired personal attacks, Vulis was summarily removed from the mailing list. Now, normally, when someone gets evicted from a mailing list, it excites little attention. But here was an ironic -- some would say momentous -- event: The list is run, after all, by John Gilmore, the EFF cofounder, a cypherpunk god who is famous for having once said that the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. And it was none other than Gilmore who gave Vulis the boot. The shunning of Vulis was "an act of leadership," Gilmore said. Thus began a debate over what the concept of censorship means in a forum devoted to opposing it. Did Gilmore have the right to show Vulis the virtual door? Or should he have let the ad hominem attacks continue, encouraging people to set their filters accordingly? The incident raises deeper questions about how a virtual community can prevent one person from ruining the forum for all and whether only government controls on expression can be called "censorship." Vulis, a 31-year old Russian emigre who completed a PhD in mathematics last year at the City University of New York, is described as sociable, even friendly, by people who have met him. Online, though, he's almost notorious. His .sig file, for instance, proudly points out that he's a former Kook of the Month; Vulis was also a Net-legend and even has the alt.fan.dimitri-vulis newsgroup named after him. Vulis portrays himself as a victim, but as I posted to the list last week, I disagree. Anyone who's spent any time on the 100-plus-messages-a-day list can read for themselves the kind of nasty daily messages that came from Vulis's keyboard. The list is on Gilmore's machine and he can do what he wants with it; he can moderate the postings, he can censor material, he can shut the whole thing down. By kicking off an offending user, a list owner merely exercises his property right. There's no government involvement, so the First Amendment doesn't apply. And the deleted, disgruntled user is free to start his own mailing list with different rules. But then the question is whether Gilmore should have exercised that right, especially in such an open forum. Again, I think Gilmore's actions were justified. Consider inviting someone into your home or private club. If your guest is a boor, you might ask him to leave. If your guest is an slobbish drunk of a boor, you have a responsibility to require him to leave before he ruins the evening of others. Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA, runs a number of mailing lists and has kicked people off to maintain better editorial control. Volokh says that the most valuable publications are those that exercise the highest degree of editorial control. But what if your private club's express purpose is to cherish free speech? That's where the terrain gets mucky. One 'punk wrote: "For someone who espouses freedom of speech to arbitrarily censor someone is indeed hypocritical." Another called it a "big cypherpunkish move" that couldn't be condoned "even bearing in mind the inane and wearisome behaviour of Dr. Vulis." Still others said that this demonstrated that "libertarianism can't work without some measure of authoritarianism." (Libertarianism being the primordial flame war topic, the debate nearly consumed itself at this point.) Vulis told me yesterday: "I'm particularly disappointed by John Gilmore's actions. I've known him and communicated with him before. His treatment of me was rude and unprofessional and inappropriate." In posts to the mailing list, Vulis levels the additional criticism that it was "arbitrary and capricious" and that he was not notified that he would be forcibly unsubscribed. This week Vulis busied himself by saying that now Gilmore can be sued for what happens on cypherpunks, arguing that the list owner is exercising greater control and so is subject to greater liability. Of course, in this country anyone can sue for anything. But it's highly unlikely the suit would go anywhere. Solveig Bernstein, a lawyer with the Cato Institute, says: "Chances are in a defamation lawsuit he'd be treated like a publisher or bookstore owner.. They exercise some control over content and enjoy pretty broad immunity from lawsuits." For his part, Gilmore calls removing the Russian mathematician "an act of leadership." He says: "It said we've all been putting up with this guy and it's time to stop. You're not welcome here... It seemed to me that a lot of the posts on cypherpunks were missing the mark. They seemed to have an idea that their ability to speak through my machine was guaranteed by the Constitution." What does Vulis's ouster mean to the community that sprang up around this mailing list, of which he had been a member for nearly three years? Many of his peers think he did it for attention or notoriety; one longtime list-denizen declined to be interviewed for fear of encouraging him. (If that's his goal, he's already succeeded. Will Rodger from Inter@ctive Week and Lewis Koch from Upside Magazine are writing about this.) Other cypherpunks wonder why Vulis is abrasive online, yet mild-mannered in person; Gilmore likened him to "a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality." The flap comes at a time when other prominent cypherpunks are leaving, citing too many flames and too little content. Perry Metzger, another longtime member, announced last month he would start his own, moderated mailing list. The hard-core programmers have moved on. Yet the list membership has never been higher, at 1,949 direct subscribers. And the cyber-rights issues the group discusses have never been more important. Ironically, tools like anonymous remailers that the cypherpunks labored to create now make it impossible to get rid of Vulis completely. Blocking posts from remailers is unthinkable to the cypherpunks. So the embattled Russian émigré continues to read the list under a pseudonym and appears to be posting as frequently as ever. But perhaps Gilmore succeeded in part. If not more polite, Vulis's messages now are at least on-topic. ###

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Re: "Nightmare on Crypto Street--the Return of Sun Devil"
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Peter Hendrickson wrote: < snip > ... the more we can erode the barriers between code and language, >the stronger the case is that laws governing code are violations of >the First Amendment. What if you had a compiler that accepted English >language instructions for how to build a crypto system? "Take a >random number 64 bits long. Then find a prime which is a little >larger. Then...." The language itself should remain protected by the >First Amendment even if somebody else has a compiler which can turn it >into software. Agreed, and this is happening (slowly). Some have said that "cypherpunks spread crypto" is a better motto than just "cypherpunks write code," for this reason and because it covers broader ground, although coding will always be essential to any of the other cypherpunk efforts in the end. Theres a lot of talent on this list, despite a few nuts mixed in. >Another conclusion we can draw is that cryptoanarchy is more of a >political issue than many of us would like. That means we might put >more effort into public opinion than just straight coding. (Tim may >claim otherwise, but I think he agrees with this in practice.) Distasteful, but probably true. >It may also be that the "bad boy" image of the Cypherpunks is >counterproductive to our goals. I'm not sure it's so bad, among the better educated anyway.

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Re: ENT_ice
by John L. Tocher 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John L. Tocher THE CITY-a bounded infinity. A labyrinth where JLTocher(a)Earthlink.net you are never lost. Your private map where every PGP: CE 72 1A 11 07 47 35 block bears exactly the same number. Even if you 35 9A C1 DE EA 64 21 BC 94 lose your way, you cannot go wrong. --Abe Kobo

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RE: two bogus messages to this list
by Mark M. Lacey 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Um, not to disagree with you re Intel/Micro$loth, but most UNIX systems >can be brought up in single-user mode and the root password changed by >anyone with physical access to the system. You could end up with even >more trouble than if someone messed with your M$ box. Microsloth has, at the heart of it's system, a call which traps ALL KEYSTROKES and EVENTS. This call exists from Win32s on, and can be placed inside of a DLL which most users would have no idea was loaded. Even under NT, this DLL can be made to remain resident and trapping Keystrokes, events, and window contents. This is (or was?) no problem under X Windows the last time I tried it (not recently), too. In fact, you could monitor the keystrokes of any machine that you had access to remotely, as long as X was running. All it took was a short little C program. So what call is it on NT that you're talking about? Mark M. Lacey <mml(a)halcyon.com> "Speaking for nobody but myself." [Finger mml(a)halcyon.com for my PGP public key.] [If you don't have 'finger', e-mail me for it.]

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Re: Not. [Was Re: Federal Reserve Bank is ILLEGAL?]
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:57 PM 11/11/96 -0500, Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote: >On Tue, 12 Nov 1996, Doug Renner wrote: > >> article nearly head-on. However is it true that what you are saying is >> that two fundamental premises in the article you refer to as "rabid" are >> incorrect? Namely: >> >> "ARTICLE 1, SECTION 8 OF THE CONSTITUTION STATES THAT CONGRESS SHALL HAVE >> THE POWER TO COIN (CREATE) MONEY AND REGULATE THE VALUE THEREOF. > >The above is a true statement. Note however that "congress" cannot >operate the mint. It must -- **MUST** -- delegate this duty to the >executive branch (or someone outside the legislative branch, cf. Chadha >v. U.S.) if it wants it done. Congress is free to select the type >of agent it wants to do this. Indeed, if Congress chose to license >private mints, that would, IMHO be legal. The point here is that the >states don't have the power to coin money. But, apparently, during the 1800's states (?) and individual banks did indeed print their own currency. The way I see it, a positive statement in the Constitution that the Feds have the power to coin money does not necessarily exclude other people/banks/states/foreign countries from doing likewise. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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BizWeek speaks on Crypto
by John Fricker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://www.businessweek.com/1996/47/b350287.htm --j ----------------------------------- | John Fricker (jfricker(a)vertexgroup.com) | -random notes- | My PGP public key is available by sending mail with subject "send pgp key". | www.Program.com is a good programmer web site. -----------------------------------

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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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