December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Junk Phone Calls, Metered Usage, and Cellphones
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:08 PM 9/6/96, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com wrote: >is done because of the Great Drug Hysteria, but I suspect part of it >is that pay phone companies don't make money receiving calls, >so they don't want to tie up their phones doing that; perhaps if >they charged money to receive calls as well as initiate them, >they'd be willing to receive calls? I am about to start worrying about "junk phone calls" more so than I have been. I just bit the bullet and bought a digital cellular phone, with a nifty rate plan called Digital Flex: I get unlimited free airtime from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. weekdays, and unlimited free airtime all weekend. From south of Salinas to north of Santa Rosa and as far east as the Central Valley. In other words, the entire Bay Area and outlying communities. I can send and receive calls over this entire region, from anywhere in the region (of course), without any charges. The downside is that calls _from_ or _to_ my phone during "business" hours are charged 42 cents a minute, airtime (tying up a channel and all), plus whatever other fees may be applicable at each end. Thus, every "junk call" I get trying to get me to buy aluminum siding, or to vote Democratic, or to switch my long-distance carrier (!), costs me a minimum of 42 cents, depending on how fast I can realize who they are and get rid of them ("Let me forward you to Jim Bell's AP hotline..."). Needless to say, my cellular number is only going out to a handful of folks, and with recommendations that they not call me during business hours unless its urgent. I believe this kind of pricing model is likely to be common. We can debate til the cows come home whether flat rate pricing makes sense, for ISPs, for cellphones, for other things. Relevance to Crypto? The "junk e-mai" issue, calls for regulations (which I'm against), technological solutions (Caller ID lets users decided to accept a call or not....same idea could be used with e-mail, a la Hal Finney's "You have a message of size X from size Y entitled Z" proposal for positve acceptance of remailed messages), and the value of True Names (and True Numbers). I'll be real pissed if my new cellphone number ends up in the hands of mass marketers, given that I don't plan to give it out to merchants, to organizations, etc. (I'm probably inviting malicious use by one of my enemies here on this list...there may be ways I don't yet grok to "look up" cellphone user numbers. I can then get hit with denial-of-service attack just by having this 42 cents a call situation. I hope no one is this malicious.) P.S. The phone is a Motorola Micro Digital Lite, a little bugger with a zillion features. It can vibrate silently instead of ringing (phone sex?), it can store 100 alphanumeric name/number combinations, it even has a data port for use with a modem (probably a special modem, and certainly a chore to set all the battery-powered stuff up properly...I'll report on it if it works). The cost was about $200 for the phone, after the rebates, kickbacks, etc., and after "sales tax on the pre-kickback price" was added back in (California has a tax collection scam where sales tax is assessed against the "real" price of some good or service....imagine the possibilities if this is extended to cover other such areas). The "Digital Flex" plan from Cellular One is $20/mo for the basic plan, and then $15/mo on top of that for the unlimited evenings and weekends use. (This could easily save me the amount I often spend in a month just yakking with friends and girlfriends who live over the hill in the Valley.) These rates have really come down a lot. The unlimited calls is what sold me. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Subject: Re: Race Bit: C
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:31 PM 9/5/96 -0600, Anonymous wrote: >> If I understand you correctly, it is OK for a government to >> institute violence against the residents of the land it claims >> dominion over, but it is not acceptable for the inhabitants of >> that piece of land to respond in self defence. > >I will say this: > >No, government initiation of violence (such as in Waco, Ruby Ridge, etc.) is not OK, >and AsPol initiation of violence is not either. This can lead into a long argument about >just _when_ violence is initiated, where opinion is more important than fact, but IMO: > >Randy Weaver was not initiating violence. >David Keresh was not initiating violence. >Pot growers and smokers are not initiating violence. No argument here... > But >Mr. Bell, if he follows through on his scheme, *will* be initiating violence. His scheme, >while it can sound tempting (especially every April 15th!) has no guarantee that it will >_only_ be used against the Lon Horiuchis of our government, Life generally doesn't come equipped with any guarantees. Some people object to private ownership of guns, on a similar theory that "there is no guarantee they won't be used against innocent people." Others (most of us?), particularly libertarians challenge this, pointing out that it is the abuse of a right which should be punished, rather than curtailing a right simply because a small minority abuse it. To the extent we believe the latter argument, we are accepting the idea that a "guarantee" is not necessary. AP, ultimately, is a tool that can be used well or used badly. I advocate using it well. >in fact, it may be said it >is not guaranteed to not be used against Mr. Bell himself, as many have joked. Check out what I wrote at the end of AP part 7: "Terror, too, because this system may just change almost EVERYTHING how we think about our current society, and even more for myself personally, the knowledge that there may some day be a large body of wealthy people who are thrown off their current positions of control of the world's governments, and the very-real possibility that they may look for a "villain" to blame for their downfall. They will find one, in me, and at that time they will have the money and (thanks to me, at least partially) the means to see their revenge. But I would not have published this essay if I had been unwilling to accept the risk." Long before I started publicizing AP, I had made my decision. > There are two roads to take in life, convincing and coercing others. > I think that the former is still possible, Mr. Bell and many others disagree. In a quote attributed to Al Capone, he said something like, "You can get more with a kind word and a gun, than you can with a kind word alone." Capone was probably talking about offense, but the principle is even more applicable to _defense_: If you have a gun, you can prevent somebody else from coercing you, and ensure that they have to CONVINCE you! AP is like a gun which can be aimed at the agents of the majority, to prevent them from violating the rights of the minority. > I worry that abuse of the very young >and weak (for now) anonymity system for the purpose of initiating, rather than exposing, >violence will lead to more government violence than we already have. First, AP only "initiates" if it is used against people who have not, themselves, initiated force or fraud. I contend that while this is not impossible, it is improbable. If you choose a target that "everyone" else agrees has initiated force, you'll only have to cough up a dollar, or a quarter, or even a dime and you'll all get your wish. Randomly select a guiltless individual and you'll be the only one paying, not to mention the fact that you might have trouble finding an AP organization that'll take your malicious donation. This translates into: "They'll exist, but due to lack of competition they'll be able to insist on taking a healthy cut of their own." In addition, if you attempt to use AP against somebody who already knows it's probably you (say, an ex business partner you just ripped off?), its anonymity won't be much use. > Perhaps I am >wrong and there is no hope; but if so, that means another revolution. Revolutions are >very romantic sounding, to those who have not been in a war. The whole point of crypto-anarchy is that revolutions are CHANGING. Think of a revolution like an earthquake: It's the sudden release of stress built up over years or decades. In an earthquake, if that release could be spread out from the seconds or minute it normally takes, to hours or even days (or better yet, continuously) the amplitude would be far smaller and you probably wouldn't even notice it. Likewise, politically, the only reason you get revolutions is because political leadership gets entrenched and resists change. Even in democracy, which is supposed to facilitate changes, eventually the politicians learn to play one group off another, leading to the same kind of social stratification problems that even dictatorships have. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Reputations
by Martin Janzen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

TCM> I strongly disagree. It's quite possible for Person A to quickly convert TCM> his reputation to Person B to a _negative_ value. Real quick, in fact. GB>I don't see how there can be such a thing as negative reputation GB>capital. Wouldn't that mean B believes the opposite of what A says? B wouldn't necessarily believe the _opposite_, but if R(A,B) is negative, then B would treat whatever A says with greater skepticism. ("Consider the source.") Alternatively, R(A,B) << 0 might mean that B has decided that A's posts tend not to be worth even the time it takes to read them, and has set his killfile accordingly. (Think of someone who makes unsupported assertions: this is not a reason to believe the _opposite_ of what he says, but to ignore him.) GA>If you anti-believed someone in a consistent manner, couldn't they exploit GA>that? Sure; see any number of Cold War spy novels for examples. One point that I think deserves mention, but that I haven't seen yet in this thread, is that R(A,B) is contextual; it should be R(A,B,subject). To accept the word of an authority outside his area of expertise is a common logical fallacy. (Think of political endorsements by famous actors.) Conversely, so is dismissing something just because its proponent has a negative reputation in another context. (At the risk of flirting with Godwin's law, an example might be that just because a certain well-known evil person liked Karl May novels and music by Wagner, this does not in itself make these things bad.) GB>For instance, when a certain infamously-low-reputation (deservedly so) GB>individual recently joined the cypherpunk lists, others who had endured GB>him in the past tried to relay their impressions of him. It proved very GB>difficult to convey, and they were somewhat attacked for their efforts GB>and not entirely believed. GB> GB>In other words, he *could not* spend down to 0, despite years of GB>unflagging effort. I'd interpret this situation a bit differently. In the eyes of many list members, this individual _did_ spend down to 0 -- and below, I'd argue, based on the number of people who announced changes to their killfiles. But this was because of his actions on the list; it was _not_ because of the impressions of others. Most of the regulars on this list are, IMHO, logical enough thinkers, and of sufficiently independent mind (to put it mildly), to wait and see for themselves. Results in other, more conformist or authoritarian groups may vary... In other words, it would appear that "reputation capital" is difficult to create or destroy based only on the word of others; it has to be earned. (Hmm, is it easier to destroy than to create -- are we more likely to adjust our R(A,me) score downward based on what others say about A?) TCM?> But TCM?> what if the American Heart Association publishes a detailed study on the TCM?> fat levels of MacDonald's products and declares it to "Dangerous." The TCM?> effect will probably be greater, as R (AHA, many people) = high, and by the TCM?> kind of Dempster-Shafer belief calculus I discussed a few months ago, the TCM?> rep of the AHA propagates semi-transitively to the rep of MacDonald's. TCM?> TCM?> (This all happened recently, with the famous studies of fat levels of movie TCM?> theater food...sales dropped almost overnight, and now the fat levels of TCM?> popcorn, etc., have been changed for the better.) I agree with the first paragraph; however, I'm not sure that the second paragraph gives an example of this. The high levels of saturated fats in movie popcorn were (as I recall) publicized by the previously little- known "Center for Science in the Public Interest", a group with nowhere near the reputation capital of the AHA. Their claims were taken seriously, not because the group itself was particularly reputable, but because the results were dramatic and easily verified. A better example might be that of Surgeon-General Koop vs. the tobacco companies. GB>I've already made the points I wanted to make, so I may not have further GB>comments. TCM>Nor me. Well, I've probably said enough, then, especially considering that no one is paying attention any longer. Wouldn't want excess verbiage to lower what little reputation capital I may have here... :-) -- Martin Janzen janzen(a)idacom.hp.com

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Global Alert -- Hysteria in the U.K. threatens Net
by declan＠well.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[For more details and background, check out http://www.eff.org/~declan/global/ and http://www.hotwired.com/netizen/96/36/index4a.html for my U.K. cyberporn fearstorm piece. --Declan] September 6, 1996 *** GLOBAL ACTION ALERT *** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Please redistribute this document widely with this banner intact - Redistribute only in appropriate places & only until 30 September 1996 Global Alert: Hysteria in the UK Threatens Free Speech on the Net The Sunday, August 25 issue of the London Observer splashed across its front page a sensationalized account of child pornography on the Internet, falsely accusing two Internet Service Providers, Clive Feather of Demon UK (a full service site) and Johan Helsingius of anon.penet.fi (an anonymous remailer) of involvement in the distribution of child pornography. Why were these accusations made? Demon UK had refused to remove a broad range of sexually-oriented newsgroups identified by UK authorities as possible sources of child pornography, and anon.penet.fi was identified without substantiation as a source for `90% of child pornography on the Internet.' In fact, Demon UK was simply acknowledging that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) cannot police the data that traverses their systems, or assume responsibility for it, any more than the post office can assume responsiblity for content that is sent through traditional mail. And Helsingius, contrary to allegations in the London Observer, had long before restricted the size of files that could be transferred through anon.penet.fi, effectively eliminating the possibility that binary files containing pictures could be exchanged. This story was extreme, but not without precedent: much has been written associating the Internet with those who make and distribute child porn, and there have been many attempts to hold ISPs responsible for objectionable or illegal content. ISPs are not content providers; they channel content provided by their users. It is outside the scope of the ISP to monitor, evaluate, and attempt to remove objectionable content. In fact, any attempt by an ISP to block particular kinds of content will ultimately be fruitless, as providers of that content will simply find alternate channels of distribution. Moreover, it is wrong to assume that the Internet has no rules, and is friendly to the exchange of objectionable materials. In fact the Internet is a `virtual community' of users with a distinct culture incorporating diverse views but finding consensus in opposition to censorship and access control. There is also strong opposition to the exploitation of children; in fact, many Internet users have cooperated in attempts to identify those who create and distribute child pornography. Summary: The physical abuse and exploitation of children is a very real problem demanding a proactive response, however we vigorously oppose attempts to stifle the free and open exchange of information over the Internet in the mistaken belief that overbroad restrictions on the flow of information will protect children from abuse. We support Demon UK and anon.penet.fi (which Helsingius has shut down), and deplore the Observer's lurid attempt to make respectable Internet providers the "cause" of a problem for which they have no responsibility. The Observer story is not the first of its kind: it represents an ongoing confusion about a complex new medium. Unfortunately this misunderstanding has become a global problem, represented in proposed or enacted restrictive legislation as well as negative press. Consider these possible analogies to the Internet: - The Internet is a vast mail system, like a post office. Would you favor a law that required postal authorities to open each piece of mail and evaluate its acceptability? - The Internet is a huge library system. Would you favor a law that would restrict information a library can provide? - The Internet is a collection of virtual communities. Would you favor a law that required routine searches of your community? Our position: These measures constrain everyone because of the misdeeds of a few. It is more sensible to find and deal with the sources of child pornography than to impede the flow of data over the Internet. The imposition of censorship and additional constraints applied to ISPs will not solve the existing problem, but will create a new problem, a barrier to the free and democratic exchange of ideas. For background on global privacy and liberty issues: http://www.eff.org/~declan/global/ For press contacts, and for more information about the Internet, see homepages for the signatories to this message: ALCEI - Electronic Frontiers Italy * http://www.nexus.it/alcei.html CITADEL - Electronic Frontier France * pforsans(a)in-net.inba.fr CommUnity (UK) * http://www.community.org.uk EFF (USA) * http://www.eff.org EFF-Austin (USA) * http://www.eff-austin.org Electronic Frontier Canada * http://www.efc.ca/ Electronic Frontiers Australia * http://www.efa.org.au/ Electronic Frontiers Houston (USA) * http://www.efh.org Elektronisk Forpost Norge (Electronic Frontier Norway) * http://www.sn.no/~efn Fronteras Electronicas Espan~a (Electronic Frontiers Spain) * http://www.lander.es/~jlmartin/ HotWired * http://www.hotwired.com/ ###

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TWA 800 - Friendly Fire?
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The latest rumor. The message came to me from a man who was Safety Chairman for the Airline Pilots Association for many years and he is considered an expert on safety. He would not ever spread idle rumor. In short, he is usually quite certain before saying anything! The following information about TWA Fight 800 was received this afternoon: (08-22-96 ) TWA flight 800 was shot down by a U.S. Navy guided missile ship which was in area W-105. W-105 is a Warning Area off the SouthEast coast of Long Island and is used by the military for missile firing and other military operations. Guided missile ships travel all over the world defending the US and they were conducting practice firings up over the top of a Navy P-3 radar plane who was on a Southwest heading about over the top of TWA 800. Evidently the missile is suppose to go over the top of the P-3 and the accuracy of the missile is being measured by instrumentation in the P-3. There was a USAir flight coming from the Southeast descending towards Providence, RI that had been cleared to 21,000 feet and the TWA 800 aircarft was restricted to 13,000 feet. The air traffic controller requested the USAir flight to turn on his landing lights with the idea that TWA might see his lights and identify him. At that point, he would clear the TWA flight to continue his climb. The P-3 was a non-beacon target (transponder OFF) flying southwest in the controlled airspace almost over TWA 800 and made NO calls to ATC. After the explosion, he continued his flight to the west and then called ATC and asked if they would like him to turn around and assist with the "accident!" You will remember that the first announcement about this accident came from the Pentagon. The spokesman mentioned that they were sending the Navy to the crash site. They immediately sent a Navy Captain who was replaced the next day by an Admiral. That Admiral is still on the scene. The FBI has conducted at least 3,000 eyewitness interviews and the NTSB has not been able to be a part of these interviews not have any access to the contents of them. Some of those eyewitnesses reported seeing lights. Those were probably the landing lights of the USAir plane. It has been a cover-up from the word go. The NTSB is there in name ONLY. All announcements made by Mr. Bob Francis say absolutely nothing and notice that the FBI is always standing beside or behind Mr. Francis and it would appear that his job is to make sure that nothing is said that would give away "THE BIG SECRET!" It is time to end this farce and tell the public the real truth as to what happened to TWA 800. My source shall remain my own but the above information is true and I believe it will all become known soon. Now that all of you know the real truth.

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Public briefing on the NRC cryptography policy report at...
by CRYPTO 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Subject: Public briefing on the NRC cryptography policy report at MIT on Sept 11 Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society A Public Briefing in Cambridge, Massachusetts Wednesday, September 11, 1996, 3:00-4:00 pm There will be a public briefing in Cambridge, Massachusetts by the National Research Council on this report. The briefing will be held at the Laboratory of Computer Science, MIT, Room NE43-518, 545 Technology Square, in Cambridge (off Main Street). Dr. Herbert Lin, study director for this report and senior staff officer of CSTB, will conduct the briefing. For further information, please contact Ron Rivest at (617) 253-6098 or rivest(a)theory.Ics.mit.edu. Pls post.

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Cellular phone tracing
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From comp.risks: Date: Mon, 2 Sep 1996 22:24:13 -0400 (EDT) From: glassman(a)sunsite.unc.edu Subject: FedEx monitoring of cellular phonecall locations [...] nowhere near either of those places, so I did not bother to mention my current location to the operator. The next day, Saturday, I called FedEx with the same cell phone from Blowing Rock to arrange the pickup. The operator immediately asked if I wanted them to come to the intersection that I had placed my call from the day before. Two days later, a FedEx operator confirmed that they are getting "new systems" at some locations that are able to record the locations from which cellular calls are placed. I have now asked Cellular One three times to explain to me why they do not tell subscribers that they pass this location information through the system, but to no avail. [...] ========== end fwd.

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No Subject
by nobody＠replay.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 5 Sep 96 at 14:31, Anonymous wrote: > This can lead into a long argument about just _when_ violence is > initiated, where opinion is more important than fact, but IMO: Agreed, if you live in a world of fantassy.... > Mr. Bell, if he follows through on his scheme, *will* be initiating > violence. You urge us not to get into the argument about "just_when_violence is initiated" and proceed to state the "Mr. Bell... ...*will* be initiating violence". What is that english word? Dogmatic? Nahhh, there must be a more precise one. Please help me here... > There are two roads to take in life, convincing and coercing > others. Looters of all persuasions have always counted on that and it worked for them for thousands of years. > I worry that abuse of the very young and weak (for > now) anonymity system for the purpose of initiating, rather than > exposing, violence will lead to more government violence than we > already have. You could worry all you want, but your only way to assess wether or not it will happens is not through your feelings but trhough the use of your rational mind. Stop "feeling" and start thinking. > Perhaps I am wrong and there is no hope; but if so, > that means another revolution. Revolutions are very romantic > sounding, to those who have not been in a war. I suppose that this refers to AP. If so, go RTFM because you conclusions and the workings of AP are not compatible. AP would not lead to a war, per se. Neither a civil war. > I urge everyone to > read "Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men" by Jeffrey Rogers > Hummel for a look at what our last revolution got us (hint: it was > *not* less government). I urge you to have a look at what is at the root of the growth of govt. It is not things but ideas, basic premises about life and the interaction between individuals. Ultimately, basic premises about the nature of Man is what brought us more govt. To understand govt excess, you've got to understand what is into the brain of the govt peoples. jfa "One of theses centuries, the brutes, private or public, who believe that they can rule their betters by force, will learn the lesson of what happens when brute force encounters mind and force." - Ragnar Danneskjold :) Jean-Francois Avon DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee Limoges porcelain, silverware and crystal JFA Technologies, R&D consultants physicists, technologists and engineers. PGP keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891

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DC lock and key, from HotWired
by declan＠well.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://www.hotwired.com/muckraker/ Muckraker By Brock Meeks More DC Lock and Key The Clinton administration will unveil new encryption legislation, dubbed the Key Recovery Initiative, as early as 9 September, Muckraker has learned. The bill's title is an exercise in Orwellian redirection - nothing more than an attempt to make the threadbare "key escrow" encryption concept, which was spawned via the infamous Clipper Chip, more vanilla-sounding. The Key Recovery Initiative is political hardball, calculated to split an industry currently reluctant to bow to pressure from the FBI and the National Security Agency to voluntarily adopt the key escrow encryption scheme. In making its pitch, the White House is "offering some sweetheart deals to a number of companies," says an industry source familiar with the administration proposal. Those "sweetheart deals" involve relaxing export controls on encryption software only for certain industries - finance, insurance, and health care, industry sources say. Such a move essentially leaves companies such as Netscape isolated. It's a classic divide-and-conquer strategy. In return for relaxing the export controls, the White House will ask companies in the targeted industries to provide concrete assurances that they will endorse a government-devised system of "key recovery encryption" in which the decoding keys to any scrambled data are turned over to a "trusted third party." Those third parties, of course, must first be verified and approved by the government via as yet undefined criteria. The decoding keys made available under this plan would be accessible to any law enforcement agency that could prove to a judge that it needed them to carry out an investigation. If that ambiguous level of "proof" can be provided, your keys are handed over without debate or recourse on your part. The administration's legislation will propose a "framework" based on "a global key management infrastructure," according to a little-publicized statement released by the White House on 12 July. A spokesperson from the vice president's office confirmed that the legislation will be drawn from this outline. The bill is an attempt to forge alliances with US trading partners so that data can be accessed and decoded across international borders. The legislation's blueprint includes: - Liberalizing export controls for encryption products dealing with financial, insurance, and health-care data. - A standards-setting procedure for "key recovery systems and products" that will be "eligible for general export licenses," and standards for products that the government will buy. - Transfer of export control oversight from the State Department, which currently maintains that encryption technology is a "munition," to the Commerce Department. [...]

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Re: Whistleblowing on the Internet
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com" "Bill Stewart" 3-SEP-1996 06:43:40.27 I would note that most unions are mostly run by populists of various varieties, who are generally against individual liberties - whether liberal or conservative populist doesn't make any real difference in the long run. To me, Pat Buchannan and Adolf Hitler look rather similar. >While some unions are clearly run by and for thugs, some employers have >also hired thugs to attack union organizers, and both unions and employers >have convinced government thugs to attack their opponents, though unions >generally have convinced governments to write laws with fines attached, >while employers have often had actual Federal troops shooting union strikers, >and have had police refrain from defending strikers from attack. I object to union members getting beaten up for union membership, striking, etcetera, just as much as I object to members of any other non-governmental organization being beaten activity. But there's a difference between the right not to get beaten up and someone claiming that union membership - still less not working - isn't a perfectly legitimate reason for firing someone. The state should not be interfering in this matter, in either direction. >In a free market, there wouldn't be laws requiring or forbidding union >membership, and some unions would prosper by providing good service to their >members and to the employers that hire them, while others wouldn't. Quite.... but unions that survive under a free market will look a _lot_ different from today's unions. -Allen

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