December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

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

17 Dec '03

snow wrote: > 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. Humans do OK with simple issues, example: 1 + 1 = 2. Especially true if the issue has no inherent moral/ethical tie-in. Once you get past the simple, however, you start seeing motivation, personal imperative, etc., which leads to hidden agendas and lies. When I speak of God, I'm not surrendering any personal power, or subscribing to your God concept necessarily (e.g. Plato), I'm just defining an object of pure reason that is free of human self-interest, for sake of argument. > > 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? My example shows that real freedom goes hand-in-hand with responsibility. A person could interpret my example in a way that "what you ought to do" is defined and controlled by external parties, but that was not my point or the point of the original author.

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[Noise] From The Onion
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

SATAN TO REVISE BAR CODE SYSTEM NEW YORK--Responding to retailers' calls to "streamline the Mark of the Beast," Satan announced plans Monday to make significant changes in the UPC symbol by the end of the millenium. "All men, small and great, rich and poor, slave and free, shall bear the mark of the beast," Satan said. The mark, "666," now hidden in every UPC symbol, may be more effective if taken off products and burned directly onto consumers' foreheads or hands, according to The Father of Lies. Said National Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan: "As foretold in the Book of Revelations, it shall come to pass that no man shall be able to buy or sell without the Mark of the Beast." The new bar code system will be introduced through a series of televised public-service announcements featuring Friends star Matthew Perry and Satan, who will appear as a beast with seven heads and ten horns. http://www.theonion.com/onion3102/index3102.html -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume

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[Noise] From The Onion
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

SATAN TO REVISE BAR CODE SYSTEM NEW YORK--Responding to retailers' calls to "streamline the Mark of the Beast," Satan announced plans Monday to make significant changes in the UPC symbol by the end of the millenium. "All men, small and great, rich and poor, slave and free, shall bear the mark of the beast," Satan said. The mark, "666," now hidden in every UPC symbol, may be more effective if taken off products and burned directly onto consumers' foreheads or hands, according to The Father of Lies. Said National Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan: "As foretold in the Book of Revelations, it shall come to pass that no man shall be able to buy or sell without the Mark of the Beast." The new bar code system will be introduced through a series of televised public-service announcements featuring Friends star Matthew Perry and Satan, who will appear as a beast with seven heads and ten horns. http://www.theonion.com/onion3102/index3102.html -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume

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RE: greed and the internet
by Internaut 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Will you send some references for Internet II and the government hubs? Thx, Internaut ---------- From: Attila T. Hun[SMTP:attila@primenet.com] Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 1997 08.32 PM To: cypherpunks Subject: greed and the internet -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- greed and the internet our network provider (MCI) has been gradually burying our T1 trunk and the effective feed has been reduced to 1200 baud from 1.56 Megabaud; that, and add 20 seconds to 5+ minutes of packet hold, and it is now worthless. they claim they will have increased capacity, but there are no pressing big money commercial interests on this feeder --so when? Problem is not just here --everywhere; the greedy commercial bastards have oversold their network space intentionally as they are bucking for per packet and timed usage charges which are currently prohibited by the FCC and the state PUCs. The FCC is the key since other than the local network, which is burdened with the costs of the trunk, everything is regulated by the FCC which is trying to totally eliminate the state PUCs in the 105th Congress, Newt's mouth not withstanding. The FCC agreed to review the matter, capitulating to big greed interests, which will make the Internet a rich man's toy. $19.95/month plus access charges will increase to thousands of dollars per month; slow networks make toast of the free hours and overtime kills. Without the creative input of the multitude, there will be no content, so why have a net other than for commercial purposes? suites the misinformation cabal just fine. Well, the FCC granted a reprieve --for the moment. but will come up again, and again, until it passes. The Internet will no no longer be the peoples net, and the commercial greedies are establishing a faster, more secure network with controlled access points; leaving the common man's access in the mud, still paying the exorbitant rates on a pay before play basis. That, and it gives control of information to the government --which, as we all know. is 'heavenly white' -above sin. Universities are being bought off with the 'Internet II' proposal which provides super trunks of over 600 Megabaud capacity, a 400 times improvement. All of this feeds into five stategically placed super-hubs where Uncle's shadow government can monitor everything. The Internet was supposed to be our freedom: freedom of information and government in the sunshine, but government is proving it is still bigger, faster, and badder by using draconian rules of illegal regulatory agencies. agencies which are usurping rights limited to the legislative branch. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: Encrypted with 2.6.3i. Requires 2.6 or later. iQCVAwUBMubOW704kQrCC2kFAQE0gQQAxrkUhyX5wl+dZ/i6ajMJXAD7f+gpvc6Z CBik+g62RqWrMbOblfLRubhEIWUfK2FQxIBRJ+0cQezCH4IfM1CxbytJ4Cx3BBBs GwHGuhTfLnGVnuCAugguRdNUrd/tXaN47pAVqmg330XvLlTJqha8ODPsi2b+7qst 2z8qbOW0cqo= =M9c5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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RE: greed and the internet
by Internaut 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Will you send some references for Internet II and the government hubs? Thx, Internaut ---------- From: Attila T. Hun[SMTP:attila@primenet.com] Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 1997 08.32 PM To: cypherpunks Subject: greed and the internet -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- greed and the internet our network provider (MCI) has been gradually burying our T1 trunk and the effective feed has been reduced to 1200 baud from 1.56 Megabaud; that, and add 20 seconds to 5+ minutes of packet hold, and it is now worthless. they claim they will have increased capacity, but there are no pressing big money commercial interests on this feeder --so when? Problem is not just here --everywhere; the greedy commercial bastards have oversold their network space intentionally as they are bucking for per packet and timed usage charges which are currently prohibited by the FCC and the state PUCs. The FCC is the key since other than the local network, which is burdened with the costs of the trunk, everything is regulated by the FCC which is trying to totally eliminate the state PUCs in the 105th Congress, Newt's mouth not withstanding. The FCC agreed to review the matter, capitulating to big greed interests, which will make the Internet a rich man's toy. $19.95/month plus access charges will increase to thousands of dollars per month; slow networks make toast of the free hours and overtime kills. Without the creative input of the multitude, there will be no content, so why have a net other than for commercial purposes? suites the misinformation cabal just fine. Well, the FCC granted a reprieve --for the moment. but will come up again, and again, until it passes. The Internet will no no longer be the peoples net, and the commercial greedies are establishing a faster, more secure network with controlled access points; leaving the common man's access in the mud, still paying the exorbitant rates on a pay before play basis. That, and it gives control of information to the government --which, as we all know. is 'heavenly white' -above sin. Universities are being bought off with the 'Internet II' proposal which provides super trunks of over 600 Megabaud capacity, a 400 times improvement. All of this feeds into five stategically placed super-hubs where Uncle's shadow government can monitor everything. The Internet was supposed to be our freedom: freedom of information and government in the sunshine, but government is proving it is still bigger, faster, and badder by using draconian rules of illegal regulatory agencies. agencies which are usurping rights limited to the legislative branch. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: Encrypted with 2.6.3i. Requires 2.6 or later. iQCVAwUBMubOW704kQrCC2kFAQE0gQQAxrkUhyX5wl+dZ/i6ajMJXAD7f+gpvc6Z CBik+g62RqWrMbOblfLRubhEIWUfK2FQxIBRJ+0cQezCH4IfM1CxbytJ4Cx3BBBs GwHGuhTfLnGVnuCAugguRdNUrd/tXaN47pAVqmg330XvLlTJqha8ODPsi2b+7qst 2z8qbOW0cqo= =M9c5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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17 Dec '03

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