December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Censorship in Western Australia
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Headline: >> AUSTRALIA - CENSORS STRIKE AT INTERNET, LANS - Western Australia's State Government says it will seek to censor all computer transmissions of offensive material after its censorship act came into force last Friday. [Newsbytes, 67 words] Probably not as competent as Singapore at enforcement, but what do people know about it? # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk # Nov. 5 is Guy Fawkes Day - Vote Early and Often, and create Fireworks!

2 1

Judge Kozinski responds to our responses
by Jim Ray 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, jmr(a)shopmiami.com Date: Wed Nov 06 16:38:58 1996 Dear cypherpunks: Judge Alex Kozinski has mercifully (unless you consider _this_ noise, too) given me permission to post the following message. This will be my last posting signed by this key. I will now attempt to implement my new one, hopefully without denying myself access to Pronto at the same time. JMR ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To start with, we should probably thank the people who helped. Black Unicorn, Mike McNally, Declan McCullagh, Loren Rittle, Lynne L. Harrison, Tim May, Lucky Green, Greg Broiles, A. Michael Froomkin, and E. Allen Smith all had good thoughts to share, and I am probably leaving someone out. Oh well. Anyway, Judge Kozinski wrote: > Jim: Thanx for forwarding the various messages which I have > found eye-opening in many respects. It's take me a while to > review and digest it all and I find there are certainly many > aspects of the anonymity problem that I either was not > aware of or had not fully appreciated. Although I cannot > quite say I'm entirely persuaded on this issue, I think we > may be a lot closer. Rather than responding to individual > messages (several of which made related points) I will give > you my reaction to what I thought were the most important > points. > > 1. I agree entirely that you should be able to post > anonymously to a list-serv or discussion group. Anonymity > there may encourage people to express unpopular views, and > there is no offsetting fear that this will be viewed as an > invasion of privacy by anyone. We have a long tradition of > anonymous or pseudonymous political tracts (e.g. Federalist > Papers) and there is no reason not to continue this in the > electronic medium. Indeed, as suggested by one of the > messages you forwarded, there may be greater reason because > messages posted to discussion groups do get retained and > indexed for posterity. > > 2. I also agree that it should be possible to have mutually > agreed-upon anonymity--i.e. I write to you and you write to > me and we both know who we are, but nobody else does. No > problema--it's nobody else's business. > > 3. I still have some difficulty with direct mailing of > anonymous messages to individual mailboxes. Actually, having run a remailer and seen some abuse for a while, I do too. Respected cypherpunks are working hard on this right now. I think what we would all like to eventually see is a "default off" situation, with no mail (or at least the warning message I mentioned before as a first message to new recipients) rather than default-on. Unfortunately, e-mail is a default-on situation and so (for now) are anonymous remailer messages for first-time recipients, at this early stage in their evolution. I am confident that this situation will change in the future, as more sophisticated software is written. > The arguments > in favor if doing so are good but not airtight. Here are my > responses to the ones I thought were most compelling: > > a. You have anonymous snail-mail and telephone calls--why > not e-mail? The truth is, anonymous snail-mail and > telephone calls are also an invasion of privacy, but there > is not much we can do about them. Someone asked whether I > objected to getting anonymous snail mail if it was not > threatening. The answer is YES, just like getting an > anonymous phone call is objectionable. When the person who > communicates with you insists on retaining anonymity, there > is always an implicit threat--they know who you are, but you > don't--you feel vulnerable, you doubt their motives, you > have difficulty knowing whether to trust their > representations. Anonymous complaints against co-workers > and supervisors was a standard way to get people into big > trouble in Communist Romania when I was growing up. The thing is, I find many anonymous messages that I see on the list not too valuable initially, and the anonymous or pseudonymous poster, in order to build some "reputation-capital," has to stay around a while and post interesting stuff, like Black Unicorn or Lucky Green. This is, IMO, as it should be. There is an incredibly funny humorist lurking on the list, who posts the "cypherpunk enquirer" anonymously, and I can send you a few of those if you like. [The judge hasn't asked me to, yet. He doesn't know what he's missing. :) ] We certainly don't want the situation you were all-too familiar with growing up, but as a remailer-operator I find that I must take the bitter with the sweet, and I am fully ready to admit that about 1/3 of the messages that go through WinSock are abusive, judging by the stuff I see in the reject bin. That's one of the reasons Joey (the other operator, and the author of the WinSock Remailer software) and I went to PGP-encrypted messages only, we felt that abusers were less likely to learn and use PGP. > Now, the fact that we can't stop anonymous snail-mail and > telephone calls doesn't mean we shouldn't stop anonymous > e-mail if we think it's a bad thing. The fact that an evil > cannot be remedied in its entirety does not mean that we > should not remedy the part that we can. Perhaps the answer > is that the post office should not accept mail unless there > is a clear indication of who the sender is on the upper left > hand corner of the envelope. In any event, I find the > argument based on analogies to snail-mail and telephone not > entirely persuasive. I feel that the fact that an evil is this hard to remedy through traditional legal means suggests that a very hard look at technological means is in order. I hope that we can both agree that in many cases, technology can adapt to situations and problems faster and cheaper than law can. > b. You can't really ever prevent anonymity because people > can get e-mail accounts anonymously--paying for them in cash. > Arguments based on futility are always suspect. Sure, some > people will circumvent any laws or regulations, but that's > not a reason not to have laws. For one thing, most people > don't get anonymous accounts and don't know how to do so. True. > Even if you do get an anonymous account, you can be shut > down if you break the rules and then you'll have to go > somewhere else. This point, I believe, is actually in "my" side's favor. There are time costs to this kind of setup stuff that even the abusers may dislike, and abusers' names and methods tend to get put on lists that ISPs look at. I am sure that privacy providing ISPs look at these lists. > And maybe all this suggests is that we > ought to require e-mail providers to obtain id from their > patrons and require payment by check or credit card. I am > not suggesting these measures, mind you, but insofar as > futility is used as an argument against regulation, it can > equally well serve as an argument for MORE regulation. I agree that it's not our most powerful argument, but it is a consideration, because with futility comes high cost and disrespect for the law. Witness the failed drugwar and the lack of respect for the law it has engendered, even among government agencies. Often, this disrespect for the law comes with no legal or political cost to perpetrators (unless you count my ranting as a political cost). > c. People can use filters. Well, yes, maybe. But most > people don't know how to use filters. I consider myself > above-average in my e-mail sophistication, and I don't know > how to use filters. I could probably figure it out, but > most people who use aol or prodigy probably have no ability > to install a filter even if they knew how they worked. In > any event, I find it a little troublesome to put the burden > on the recipients to adopt a hi-tech solution. And who says > there aren't ways around most common filters--or such > ways won't be developed--which would put recipients in a > technology race with anonymous mailers? True, and the abusers already _are_ in a technology race with the remailer-operators, as I see just about every day on the remailer-operators list. I have serious doubts that yet-another law would either change or improve the situation. * * * > Anyway, thanx for a stimulating series of messages. I do > think we've made some progress. And we'll keep the channels > of communication open. The pleasure has been all mine, Judge Kozinski. JMR -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMoEFd21lp8bpvW01AQHR1AQAib06JhpWx06H6Pr25uuMUj6fQVXZIYfc KeUdP/QSSWQHfIwxs2SX1a++SCbnx6Ev//ninb7Q8F5kj56mk0yq0SE/ID91WgwJ iFEr+2V1oTf+JZISh68F/a/fPBrP8GL8rjUce+WYhiY704rlsNyr5L9UhtylkzNg GM5Ml/A7qjc= =tVan -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

No Subject
by Bovine Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The arrival of warm weather is heralded by the pig shit (or whatever kind of shit Intel swines have for brains) getting soft in Timothy C[rook] May's mini-cranium and the resulting green slime seeping through key cocaine- and syphilis- damaged nose and onto his keyboard.

1 0

FW: Now we have it all
by Butler, Scott 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Abaddon wrote: >>susbscribe Surely we have seen it all now. I find it hard to believe that a word like suscribe....subsribe....subcribes.. SUBSCRIBE..is so difficult to spell correctly. :-) ScOtT

2 1

Re: [rant] Re: Censorship on cypherpunks
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:44 PM 11/5/96 -0800, Sean Roach wrote: >May I remind you that if you want to leave this country, all you have to do >is board a plane. Many people have suggested similar things about various >groups for about two centuries. The major difference between this list and >this government is that it is easier to start a new list. However since governments attempt to maintain a geographical monopoly and there are a very limited number of them, it is not possible to find another country you can enter as a matter of right so you may not be able to escape. In contrast there are millions of private organizations of various sorts (corporations, etc) and it is trivial to find one to join if you like. DCF

3 2

Parents effectively lose their right
by kb4vwa＠juno.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Family Research Council Washington Watch News - October 25, 1996 - Vol. 8:1 "Parents effectively lose their right to direct the upbringing of their children when they drop them off at school, according to one federal court judge. Earlier this year, Judge Melinda Harmon, appointed by President Bush, ruled that Katy Independent School District in TX did not violate parents' rights by allowing Child Protective Services to interrogate a student without notifying his parents, nor by instructing him to lie to his parents about the incident."

2 1

UNSUBCRIBE CENSORSHIP
by Pos Indonesia 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

UNSUBCRIBE CENSORSHIP

1 0

SEC_ure
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

11-04-96. "Web security threat grows" With a variety of new technologies like stronger encryption, smart cards and digital signatures and envelopes emerging to tighten Web security, experts working on various aspects of the problem agree the goal of end-to-end security on the Web will remain elusive as long as insecure operating systems dominate the commercial market. "You can't build security on top of insecurity," said Netscape's Jim Roskind, who spent much of a session on Webware fending off criticism of Java security flaws. "We have to assume that the [security] problems will be pervasive forever," warned Peter Neumann. "This is a holistic problem, and we have to deal with it in a global way." "Protection sought for U.S. systems" The initiative will be led by the Pentagon's Computer Emergency Response Team at Carnegie Mellon University and the Energy Department's Computer Incident Advisory Capability. "Motorola unveils chip for contactless smart card" One chip designing a contactless card that meets all frequencies of a proposed standard while the other adds cryptography to a single-chip solution. The other card incorporates a 1,024-bit modular encryption processor that is reportedly one of the fastest in the industry. "U.S.Joint Venture to Market Acoustic Smart Card Technology" NeTegrity also announced it has invested $1 million in Encotone, Ltd., for a 10% equity interest in the Israeli company. Other Encotone, Ltd. investors include ECI Telecom, a $500 million Israeli telecommunications firm, and Professor Michal Ben Or, Head of the Department of Computer Science at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a worldwide authority on cryptology. "Microchip Technology launches highly secure smart card family with KEELOQ code hopping technology" The SCS152 provides a programmable 64-bit cryptographic key used to create a digital signature unique to each card, which reduces the possibility of unwanted access to card information and the "cloning" of these cards for unauthorized payments. Other features include programmable user memory and "anti-tearing," which prevents the information in the card from being corrupted if the supply voltage is interrupted. "EEMA Lobbies Over Limiting US Encryption Controls" EEMA recognizes that the principal reasons for this is the disparate European legislation that surrounds the use of encryption, and the fact that inter-working with dominant US-based computer software -- operating system and application software -- is subject to US legislation and restrictions. "Putting EDI to the test" Security continues to be the main sticking point for using the Net as a vehicle for EDI. Vendors that will demonstrate secure E-mail messages transporting EDI documents over the Web. The technology used is S/MIME, an encrypted version of the popular MIME protocol. "V-One Secures New Clients" NSA runs the nation's code-breaking operations, and DISA is supposed to keep the nation's networks secure, so there is not much chance of finding out what they do with the software they have bought from V-One. ----- http://jya.com/secure.txt (28 kb) SEC_ure

1 0

RE: Censorship in Western Australia
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 05 Nov 1996 21:59:33 +1100 From: Irene Graham <rene(a)pobox.com> To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Re: Australia drafts Net rating system On Mon, 4 Nov 1996 18:53:24 -0800 (PST), Declan McCullagh <declan(a)eff.org> wrote: >---------- Forwarded message ---------- [...] >http://www.smh.com.au/computers/news/961105-news03.html [...] >Under the code, which is being developed by the >Internet Industry Association of Australia (INTIAA), >content will be classified under the existing code used >by the Office of Film and Television Classification. >"R" or "X" rated material would have to be clearly >identified and provided only to registered subscribers. [...] The subject line of this thread is misleading, which is understandable given the content of the newspaper report. "Australia" is not drafting a Net rating system (yet anyway). I doubt INTIAA actually is either. INTIAA purports to be (i.e. wants to be) the "peak Internet industry body" in Australia. However their code *does not* have the support of much of the "industry". The present stage of the fight in Australia is, not against government censorship, but against "privatised" censorship. There is presently no Net content rating system based on the OFLC classifications, nor with any luck is there likely to be. The Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) in its July report on Net regulation was of the view that that system is unworkable for on-line content (which is correct) and proposed the development of a purpose-built classification system. Unfortunately it appears the director(s) of INTIAA have not read that report. The following extract from Electronic Frontiers Australia's response (of 22 Oct 96) to the ABA report tells the rest of the story about INTIAA and its code: "It appears that the ABA has been influenced by a particularly complicated proposed industry code of practice drafted by Patrick Fair of a Sydney corporation "The Internet Industry Association of Australia". That proposed code of conduct, released on the 10th September 1996, proposes a top-heavy industry body, drawing extensive levies from the Internet access providers in order to sustain a professional council as well-funded and well-staffed as a national professional body. INTIAA was established with board members representing hardware and software vendors, a national law firm and several large Internet access providers. Other members of the company include media and the Taxation Institute of Australia. It is fair comment that INTIAA represents a sector of the market with deep pockets and contacts in government, as indeed the Minister for the Communications and the Arts launched INTIAA on the 15th December 1995. The proposed code of practice makes use of the ABA's favoured PICS web page rating standard compulsory , creates an Administration Council with a government appointee as Chair and no direct voting by member service providers on changes to that Code. For those worried about censorship of the Net through the back door, the proposed Code places on service providers the obligation to block "X-rated" material as if it were child pornography. A further problem for service providers is the requirement that they report "illegal" sites to the authorities , report "RC" violations to other site administrators and delete users to enforce compliance with censorship. INTIAA's code of practice does not represent a consensus within the industry. There are State Internet Associations (WA Internet Association, South Australian Internet Association, ACT Internet Association) which do not subscribe to such a bureaucratic system and which instead are developing codes of practice which more fully fulfil industry aspirations and conform more fully to industry experience [...and...] make it quite clear that an Internet access provider cannot be held responsible for content not originating on his or her system under any circumstances. [...] The gloss and complexity of the INTIAA code by comparison has obviously promoted to the ABA the notion that the industry can self-fund a policing function as the government may direct." The INTIAA code is a threat to free speech on the Net (at least in Oz) equivalent to, and possibly worse than, government censorship. Regards Irene ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Irene Graham, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. PGP key on h/page. The Net Censorship Dilemma: <http://www.pobox.com/~rene/liberty/> "A year from now you may wish you had started today." Karen Lamb. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

3 2

Mixmaster Test
by The Black Knight 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry for the spam, folks ... just looking for a mixmaster that puts the Subject: line into cypherpunk messages. Name-Withheld-By-Request Editor in Chief, Cypherpunk Enquirer

1 0