December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Dr. Vulis' social engineering experiment
by snow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thorn: > Alec wrote: > The idea that "sin" and "evil" are abstract and somewhat arbitrary is > merely a human (and therefore faulty) perception. > If God can be perfect by definition (for sake of argument), then "sin" Somewhere in the above three lines, someone is making a hell of an asumption. See also "The Euthphro Question", plato. > A gentleman wrote to Southern Partisan magazine a few years ago and > said "Real freedom is not the license to do whatever you want, but > rather the liberty to do what you ought to do". No, real freedom is being able to decide for yourself what you ought to do--or--who the hell decides what I ought to do?

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Re: Keywords scanning/speech recognition
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Amanda Walker wrote: > John Kelsey <kelsey(a)email.plnet.net> wrote: > This may or may not be relevant, but I was a math major during an NSA college- > recruitment drive in the early 1980s. As part of the "come work for the NSA" > packet they were giving out, they had a sample issue of the NSA internal > linguistics journal. One of the articles concerned a system called DYPTRACK, > which tracked the pitch of a digitized voice signal to an impressive degree of > accuracy. This would imply that the NSA, at least, had invested considerable > resources into digital speech analysis as early as the late 1960s or early > 1970s (since by 1980 DYPTRACK was un-sensitive enough to be described in > college recruitment material). I have a CD today (used to be an LP in the late 1970's) of Enrico Caruso arias, digitally processed thru something called Stockham/ Soundstream digital process, circa mid-late 1970's. They took a number of samples of a modern (1970's) tenor's singing (someone whose voice had similar characteristics to Caruso's) and had the computer run it against the original Caruso recordings in an attempt to subtract out extraneous noise, resonances, and so on. The process helped somewhat, making the voice seem closer intead of somewhere a couple of rooms over, but the essential quality of the mechanically-recorded sound was still there, i.e., very dull and not at all life-like. They were supposed to release a lot more of this stuff, and they did some, but major interest was never there, and I haven't heard any more about further research in the intervening years, although I'll bet it's gone way beyond where it was.

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Re: Decision in Karn Case
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anonymous wrote: > > In light of the recent Executive Order transferring > > regulatory authority of non-military cryptographic computer > > source code to the Commerce Department, and the Commerce > > Department's promulgation of a new regulation under the authority > > of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, 50 U.S.C. secs. > > 1701 et seq., we remand this case to the district court to > > consider the reviewability of and, if appropriate, the merits of > > appellant's claim under the Administrative Procedure Act. > > And when that review finally reaches the appeals court, > the administration can move the regulations to the state department. Look on the bright side. Maybe they'll move them around so much that they'll lose them. > The uniqueness of the anti-crypto regulations is that it is a law > against intellectuals and academics. These people will not be willing to > break the law and then challenge its constitutionality in the courts, > or engage in any kind of civil disobedience demonstration. That is why the thugs and the brown-shirts always start by attacking scattered individuals and those they can easily brand 'troublemakers.' (Only in rare instances, do they start with Doctors). The intellectuals and academics might, at best, utter a few tut-tut's, and by the time that the rule of force has become the order of the day, there is no longer anyone 'below' them left free to object to the attacks on themselves. Toto

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Re: YEEHAW! Tobacco argument heats up in AZ
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Attila T. Hun wrote: > summary: AZ AG filed for an injunction in the public interest to stop > the sale of tobacco in AZ. tobacco company response claimed he was > infringing on legislative rights... full story is below. > :: PHOENIX, Arizona (Reuter) - The tobacco industry filed > :: motions on Tuesday in a bid to dismiss the Arizona Attorney > :: General's law suit which seeks to ban the sale of tobacco in the > :: state. Lawyers for two of the defendants, Brown & Williamson > :: Tobacco Corp. and Philip Morris Cos Inc. (MO.N), said in a > :: statement the proposed ban would eliminate tax revenue from the > :: sale of tobacco which is used to fund healthcare and education > :: programs statewide. The Indians in Arizona have some special tax breaks on cigs, as a "sovereign nation" treaty deal or something, yes? Would this ban create any interesting opportunities?

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at least we have some friends...
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- +New encryption bill on way +By Alex Lash +January 22, 1997, 8:45 p.m. PT +see http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C7236%2C00.html?nd +Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Montana) next week will reintroduce legislation +aimed at wiping out most Commerce Department restrictions on the +export of software encryption, his press secretary said today. +The new version of the so-called Pro-Code bill, which died in the +Senate Commerce Committee last year after a series of high-profile +hearings, will be unchanged and should have the same support it +gained in the 1996 session, Burns's press secretary Matt Raymond said. +"The language was not something that was arrived at lightly," Raymond +said. "We should have time for a more robust and considerate debate" +compared with last year's unsuccessful rush to get the bill passed, +he added. +Burns, a leading figure on the Senate Commerce Committee, is set to +appear via satellite Tuesday at the RSA Data Security Conference in +San Francisco to announce the bill's reintroduction. +Foes of the Clinton administration's current encryption regulations, +which became effective on January 1, are looking for Congress to +legislate more liberal export guildelines. Last year, the Pro-Code +bill won the support of many key members of Congress who remain in +office and want to modify Clinton's encryption plan. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: Encrypted with 2.6.3i. Requires 2.6 or later. iQCVAwUBMucJKr04kQrCC2kFAQGcjwP/cjxEQcxixtx1nEg5lC6cBXK85Ff8FIkn 4x176KJokc4RSD1fNWhJkeHUYi1HCrp6nD4VsNP9Ud3c9rC2XNcGtnTEDAwZ0ikS 03kz9fUqptU6GE+Mrjl/FLhcDfSYlTUsFrFKYcTuge2nVJUAz2+kbaFg4qT9njyO 1vro9FplgIw= =ktMy -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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encrypted WinTalk/e-mails
by harka＠nycmetro.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hi there, does anybody know about an encrypting snoop-proof version of WinTalk (or a similar ytalk-style program)? If so, please copy replies to my private e-mail, for I am currently not subscribed to the CP list... Thanks in advance for your help... Harka PS: Here is also a collection of free (anonymous?) e-mail account services for those, who are interested...(sorry about the html-tags). <li>NetForward <li>HoTMaiL <li>Trale <li>WWDG Free Email <li>MailMasher <li>StarMail Over 100 domains to choose from!! <li>iName Over 100 domains to choose from!! <li>Geocities <li>Juno <li>Net@ddress <li>Bigfoot <li>MailHost <li>POBox <li>POBoxes <li>PEmail <li>La Jolla Shores <li>From.Net /*************************************************************/ /* This user supports FREE SPEECH ONLINE * */ /* and PRIVATE ONLINE COMMUNICATIONS! * * */ /* * * */ /* E-mail: harka(a)nycmetro.com * * */ /* * */ /* Finger or E-Mail for PGP public key. * * */ /* Key Size: 2047 / KeyID: 04174301 * * */ /* Fingerprint: FD E4 F8 6D C1 6A 44 F5 http://www.eff.org */ /* 28 9C 40 6E B8 94 78 E8 */ /*<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>*/ /* May there be peace in this world, may all anger dissolve */ /* and may all living beings find the way to happiness... */ /*************************************************************/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAgUBMuRqMTltEBIEF0MBAQEKygf+KQEkQE/yH10cgly1aIJExAX+p2kPmcPb f/ro2ulaYrs4gklKff60HE0AD39SBmTGnCI4dUzOLy0UfgTyifQ/W8H+1b1GU0Bb UnFhvWCCc8KPOY6Kf4ZpdtdRsyJjqAKjyYthKAEIKmG/m/ZHI2uJ0+F1GYhtjyhO IE5RrCImncjLW3uaXxnktzy4+jDeoQEXCVRm6muIZj/TPgTvzabkMzK5Udy0Nm1n vjevvcAiA65PWnbAT+v+GNFPZq4bW//bEnzDYYXBD++QrC7bSGXe73iS2HbrVu3Y gQg7pseOdbS5bkudhw/pqcTl5zvcdvGoQfnXZpbp4VviSwWs045vjg== =jw27 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- If encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will have encryption...

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wired news: Germany Gets Radikal About Extremists on Web
by tank 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

T O P S T O R I E S Germany Gets Radikal About Extremists on Web Tuesday - Are the German government's tactics for barring extremist material on the Internet realistic? Germany Gets Radikal About Extremists on Web by Rebecca Vesely 5:03 pm PST 21 Jan 97 - The German government, never shy about expressing its disdain for left- and right-wing radicals inside its borders, has taken to combing the Internet for signs of extremist activity. But Germany's effort to stop the distribution of terrorist manuals and Nazi propaganda is like pointing a fire hose at a beehive - instead of quashing the bees, it only scatters them, and makes them more insistent. Last week, German authorities filed charges against a member of the communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), Angela Marquardt, for linking to the banned left-wing magazine Radikal from her homepage, causing Net activists to anticipate another incident like that last September, when several German ISPs temporarily blocked Radikal's server, XS4All. In response, the magazine was mirrored on more than 50 Web sites around the world. "The decision to prosecute for linking to Radikal will probably bring yet another escalation of events, where this censored magazine will become all the more popular on the Net," said Felipe Rodriquez, managing director of XS4All, which is based in the Netherlands. "Censoring the Internet is usually very counterproductive, and an insurance that many people will mirror the information and start distributing it." XS4All, which describes itself as "networking for the masses," hosts some 4,600 homepages, and was recently in the news for posting several homepages for media banned in Serbia, such as Radio B92, that continue to offer via the Web live RealAudio feeds and frequent updates on the continued nationwide protests against the Serbian government. Banned in Germany 12 years ago, and published underground for the past decade, Radikal advocates the overthrow of the German government. German officials say the magazine's publishers provide terrorist information in their pages, including how to sabotage train lines. But the publishers argue that they have the right to publish material contrary to the German government. "We fundamentally reject the notion that the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force," the publishers wrote in an article titled "Who We Are" in 1995. "The existing social conditions can only be changed if left-radical groups and associations build up their abilities and structures so as to be able to counter some of these effects even today. This, of course, includes militant and armed intervention, but these would be empty gestures if there wasn't also some sort of linkage or means of conveying their message." While publishers continue to produce the magazine in print form outside of Germany, sympathizers have been posting it to a homepage on XS4All. "As an act of solidarity with them and with Radikal we decided to put it on the Internet and, of course, to frustrate this censorship attempt of the German authorities," the sympathizers wrote in an email to Wired News. They added that while they had no contact with the publishers of Radikal, they are currently being investigated by Germany's public prosecutor general and have no plans to "go on holiday in Germany." Although Radikal is not banned in the Netherlands, the German government says that linking to the magazine from inside Germany is "aiding a felony," spokesman Ruediger Reiff told Reuters. In December, Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Cabinet approved a bill banning the electronic distribution of forms of hate speech, terrorism, and indecent material. The new German law places responsibility on the loosely defined "suppliers," and in response, CompuServe considered moving its administrative operations to a neighboring country. PDS member Marquardt says her prosecution has less to do with Radikal, than an attempt to quiet German citizens who, like herself, are outspoken critics of the government. "This is hardly about bomb-building instructions or highly detailed descriptions of train lines and their weaknesses," Marquardt, who could not be reached for comment, wrote in a statement posted on her Web site. "The all-too-stubborn guardians of the state will quickly learn: The Net interprets censorship as a malfunction and circumvents it." In the meantime, XS4All has not received any official communication from the German Justice Department, nor from the Dutch Justice Department. "Our policy is that as a provider we are not in the position to judge whether this magazine is illegal in the Netherlands, therefore we do not interfere with the liberty of speech of our user," XS4All's Rodriquez said. Copyright =A9 1993-97 Wired Ventures, Inc. and affiliated companies=

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Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd)
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Choate wrote: > > Subject: Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd) > > > 'We' shouldn't, it is their own country and it is up to their populace to > > > stop it. > > And Germany was Hitler and the Nazi Party's own country. > And your point is? Are you equating a specific individual or organization > with Hitler or the National Socialist? Sorry, I forgot that people who work well with numbers often aren't as good at working with concepts. I'll write slowly. I'm equating 'any' country where individuals take and keep power over it's citizen by illicit and/or dehumanizing means with Nazism and Fascism. > If the people in those counties want to give away their freedom that > is their business (and right), not mine, yours, or this countries unless > there is evidence they are trying to take their views and impose them here. Right. And if someone 'chooses' to give their money to a thief with a gun, then it is not the business of other people, or the police. I would hate to interfere with someones 'right' to get robbed, raped, or murdered. > In reference to Hitler, had he stayed in his own > country WWII and the ensuing half century of conflict would most likely not > have occured. But according to your viewpoint, countries he had not invaded had no right to 'help' those he conquered. Perhaps Hitler was merely the Dr. Vulis of isolationism. The isolationists' claims that the affairs of other countries were not our affairs changed rather rapidly when it became apparent that they had better either get their heads out of their butts, or learn to speak German. > I say, let them filter themselves into economic collapse, intellectual > nihilism, and political suicide. Suicide, assissted or otherwise, is a right > any and all individuals have whether acting as individuals or as groups. It seems that several million Jews got 'filtered' into 'nihilism' during the Second World War while the isolationists were busy not interfering with the rights of individuals in other nations to commit 'suicide' at the hands of the Nazis. > Never forget, a tree can exist without a forest but a forest can not exist > without trees. It is a one way street however much some people may want to > convince us otherwise. Never forget. A forest can apparently exist without Jewish trees. > If those people agree to support a system that limits or controls what > information they get to see that is their choice. It didn't work in Russia > and it won't work in Singapore or China any better. There are a lot of people lying in graves around the world who might suggest that perhaps they didn't support the system that limited, controlled, and murdered them. They might also argue that it 'did' work in many countries, for many years. > > No. The internet was conceived so that the DOD could monitor the > > communications > > of physicists and researchers who thought it was awfully nice of the > > government > > to provide this wonderful method of sharing data and information. > > The original goal > of the Internet was to allow computers to be connected in a nuclear conflict > and the period afterward when communications would be most critical. I believe you mean the 'stated' original goal of the InterNet. (Similar to the 'stated' goal of crypto regulations.) A series of manuscripts entitled "The True Story of the InterNet" expose the shadowy faces behind the facade of the InterNet, and the plans, during its very inception, for it to become part of the underlying fabric of everyday life, internationally. They were almost considered to be sci-fiction at the time they were written, because the InterNet, at the time was just a smallish, specialized, technical entity at the time. The claims they made for the InterNet being foreordained to become almost exactly what it is now becoming were written off as ludicrous. > One of the biggest problems this country has right now is the inability of > people like yourself to differentiate the difference between the ideals of > the country and the people who impliment it. You seem to have very strong feelings about people who think differently from yourself being a 'big problem'. > The problem is not the > government or the ideals it was founded on but rather the way we impliment > it. The battle cry of every apologist for every corrupt or jackboot regime that has ever existed on earth. Why do I never hear this view from anyone who is being censored, persecuted, or who can hear the jackboots thumping against their own door or their neighbor's door? It always seems to come from someone who is getting their piece of the pie and is worried that it might end. > Our government is people, who put their pants on the same way you or I > do (assuming you wear pants that is). They are not inherently some mineon of > Hell, they are people who in general either don't give a damn and it's just > a job or else they really believe what they are doing. You might try reading something other than 'Life' magazines from the 1950's if you want to get a little better picture of how our government really operates. > Accept and deal with your schizophrenic tendencies and help solve this > national problem we face. Let's try to solve it now so that our > grandchildren won't have to fight this fight again. I'm already working toward solving the problems that I see, in other countries as well as this one. The people behind the Iron Curtain have never seemed to have any problem with me risking my life and liberty making prohibited information available to them. "I can hear the rumbling of the trucks as they come up the street, and soon I will be hearing the thumping of the jackboots storming up the staircase, as I have heard them so many times before. But I suspect that, this time, the sound will be different, that it will have an ethereal quality about it, one which conveys greater personal meaning than it did when I heard it on previous occasions. "This time, they are coming for me." "My only hope, is that I can find the strength of character somewhere inside myself to ask the question which lies at the heart of why there is a 'they' to come for me at all...why, in the end, it has finally come to this for me, as for countless others. "The question is, in retrospect, as simple and basic as it is essential for any who still espouse the concepts of freedom and liberty to ask themselves upon finding themselves marveling at the outrageousness being perpetrated upon their neighbors by 'them'...by 'others'...by 'Friends of the Destroyer.' "The question is...'Why didn't "I" do something?'" A quote from the personal diary of Vice-Admiral B. D'Shauneaux, from the Prologue to Part II of 'The True Story of the InterNet' Toto

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Re: Thoughts re moderation, filtering, and name changes
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Igor Chudov @ home wrote: > Dale Thorn wrote: > > hjk wrote: > > > On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, Dale Thorn wrote: > > Most of the erstwhile elite types do the ordinary things in a quite > > ordinary way. Get dressed, eat, collect and send e-mail, and so on. > > The un-ordinary things (for example) are the thought processes which > > take place while typing out a post. Those thought processes don't > > generally intersect directly with the mundane things such as operating > > the computer, unless the operations themselves are unusual and demand > > the full attention of the person involved. > So what? The so what is that hjk believed that since cypherpunks were "elite", it followed that they would notice certain administrative messages more than non-elite people, and also remember those messages better. I had no contention with the remember-better part, assuming that was stated somewhere, but my argument is that greater intelligence does not necessarily lead to paying better attention to mundane everyday things like administrative messages and notices. The specific example was whether most cypherpunks subscribers would take more than momentary notice of the new list arrangements, and whether they would consciously think about whether they should change their status (subscription), and if so, why. My contention is that most would not give it any serious amount of attention. This is no different IMO than whether erstwhile "intelligent" people pay greater attention to road signs while driving than people of average mental power do.

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Re: P.S. David Kahn's editorial today
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Carl Ellison wrote: | I just sent the following P.S. to newsday.com | ---------------------- | | If I use an AT&T Clipper-style cellular phone, as David suggested, and I | call you on a normal wired phone, we can't encrypt the conversation and it | is vulnerable to interception. The protection works *only* if both parties | have encrypting phones while interoperate. Its worth thinking about multiple layers of protection for a datastream. The end to end encryption issue is seperate from the issue of mobile to base encryption (and mobile to base authentication, for that matter.) Compute power is getting cheap enough that doing both seems roughly feasable to me. Multiple protective layers is also nice in an environment where theres policy checking going on, ie, a firewall. SSL only gets plugged through a firewall because it can't be partially unwrapped. I can't proxy in any meaningful sense. Adam -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume

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