December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Dissolving Choke Points
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

E. Allen Smith wrote: > > Hmm... since both you and Bill Stewart are pointing out various > advantageous things about Usenet, I may need to retract my previous statement > that mail fitering is better. You were right initially, I agree that mail filtering has better tools than news filtering (if you use Unix). Procmail can do absolutely any filtering, unlike most news readers. - Igor.

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BA Crypto Machine Photos
by jproc＠bellglobal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear BA'ers, Recently, I acquired some BA crypto machine photos courtesy of the Canadian Security Establishment. If anyone wants full size, selected, JPEG copies of these photos, please let me know and I can send them as attached files to E-mail. As a reminder, there are two stories beginning with the same file name in the BA archives which accompany the photos. KL7.JPG Colour 108 kbytes KWR37.JPG B & W 51 kbytes BTW, does anyone know the meaning of 'order wire mode' in the context of a crypto broadcast? This mode is found in the KWR-37 online crypto receiver. Please send all photo requests or responses via private E-mail. Regards, ------------------------------------- Jerry Proc VE3FAB E-mail: jproc(a)bellglobal.com HMCS Haida Naval Museum Toronto, Ontario 'Looking for a 'AN/SRC-501' -------------------------------------

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Re: My Departure, Moderation, and "Ownership of the List"
by Dave Hayes 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Steve Boursey writes: > Well EFF itself is a lie--the were very well exposed by Wired Mag. a > while back as being nothing more than a corporate whore. They represent > the interests of owners not consumers--the ACLU has been very open > in their critisism of the EFF in this regard. A large corporation > waves some money in front of their noses and tells them to bend > over you can be sure they'll bend over. It's not clear from where I sit that the EFF is intrinsically evil. A case can be argued for their initial good intentions followed by the subsequent poisoning of this intent by people with lots of money. Of course, -any- organization is as susceptable to infiltration as their weakest member. > Respectable free speech advocates do not associate with EFF. If one is going to advocate free speech, I strongly suggest one learns to deal with one's own greed and one's own need for power first. ------ Dave Hayes - Altadena CA, USA - dave(a)jetcafe.org Freedom Knight of Usenet - http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet You possess only what will not be lost in a shipwreck.

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Re: Dissolving Choke Points
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"gbroiles(a)netbox.com" "Greg Broiles" 4-FEB-1997 14:55:18.91 >But my impression is that many moderation opponents would also be opponents >of a move to Usenet. Perhaps I'm wrong. But Usenet offers precisely what many >people claim we must have for the list to be viable, e.g., >uncontrolled/uncontrollable distribution and messaging. So I'm curious about >whether or not the proponents of an open, uncontrolled list really want it to >be *that* open and uncontrolled. In the past, there's been strong opposition >to that. But it's possible that most of the people who had strong feelings >about not wanting to be subjected to the downside of Usenet have already left >the list. >(And if the current opponents of moderation don't want to see the list be >quite that open, I think what we're arguing about here is not "censorship v. >no censorship" but "what degree of censorship do we want? one lump, or two?", >which pretty much eliminates anyone's claim to have a moral high ground from >which to argue.) Umm... there's a difference. Moderation is control by a _person_; not moving to Usenet is control by nobody except how things happen to be set up. >The good side I see to a move to Usenet is that it lets people use the >comparatively better tools for managing messages - e.g., NoCeM, threading, nn >(whose killfiles will kill by thread, author, regexp, and can be time limited >so you can easily give annoying people a 30-day 'timeout' and see if they're >still a kook later on), AltaVista and DejaNews archiving/searching, and >server architecture that's designed to cope with storing/indexing many >messages. Hmm... since both you and Bill Stewart are pointing out various advantageous things about Usenet, I may need to retract my previous statement that mail fitering is better. On the other hand, other people have mentioned the susceptibility of email to write-your-own filtering and other processing. (For instance, I've got a project that needs cypherpunks (and other controversial groups) to be on mailing lists instead of (or at least as well as) news servers to work right.) Is there a full-scale equivalent of procmail for Usenet, including functions like shunting messages to programs et al? >The down side is that Usenet is more or less a sewer these days, and some of >it's bound to spill over. Quite. -Allen

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Re: New X-Ray Imager
by William H. Geiger III 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <199702041941.LAA04346(a)toad.com>, on 02/04/97 at 01:19 PM, ichudov(a)algebra.com said: >Lucky Green wrote: >> At 10:38 AM 2/4/97 -0500, Adam Shostack wrote: >> >| A poll last week by the Los Angeles Times found that a majority of >> people -- >> >| 58 percent -- said they would curtail some civil liberties if it would help >> >| thwart terrorism. Thirteen percent said it would depend on what rights were >> >| at stake. The poll didn't ask people to single out any rights. >> > >> > Its worth noting the 'if it would help thwart terrorism.' >> >> It is irrelevant if terrorism is indeed be thwarted. The public does not >> require this to happen. All that matters is to generate the *perception* of >> increased security, not to increase security itself. >Let's remember though that perception of security applies not only to >passengers, but also to potential terrorists. If they *think* that they >would not be able to bring a bomb easily, they would be less inclined to >do so. Not really, The thin vail of "security" that the goverment provides may be good enough to give warm-fuzzies to the avarage sheep, ...er citizen, but the potential terrorists will see it for what it is. - -- - ----------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. Finger whgiii(a)amaranth.com for PGP Key and other info - ----------------------------------------------------------- Tag-O-Matic: OS/2...Opens up Windows, shuts up Gates. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Registered User E-Secure v1.1 0000000 iQCVAwUBMve/So9Co1n+aLhhAQFZqQQAkIt/8pUqBWagohj2GkbpnFBKOqAkziqk Y/KINK0yk2ylBVUM7OtL+nfSis6dQ09t+Y5WhgQcaYE8rUaYYS+qxmaJdsqg2X92 L/ISf363fPzD8KvvP+3+xQBv5r5VBnSFahAhhT4NmArOdeLEc5tGl4GCt09gDjdI y9iVNcrNxFk= =nu7P -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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concerning Ben Franklin
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I was reading one of the posts in the thread reguarding sone stolen object in Miami, the one reffering to the locks of the boxes, and it got me thinking. Ben Franklin was a revolutionary, scientist, inventor, publisher, statesman, and bookburner (according to F451). Perhaps he should be considered to be a cypherpunk, not that he necessarily knew anything about crypto, but because he was interested in many of the same ideals. It is my belief that were he alive today, he would be on this list. If the work of fiction referred to above, and in another recent post, is accurate in its reference to Franklin, then he would seem to have had the same solution to net pollution, burn it. Rather than considering Ben Franklin the first fireman, I would like to think of him as an early breed of cypherpunk. By this I consider cypherpunk to be interested in the subject, and its outcome, and a cryptographer to be just one faction of cypherpunk. Merely my opinion. Does anyone know whether or not Mr. Franklin may have played with code as well? All of my sources were assimilated into my understanding of the man several years ago, and at the time crypto was less in the public eye than it is now.

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"alt.cypherpunks" people?
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John Gilmore urges action, or piping down... well lets start with discussion of whether one possible action is appropriate, and useful (piping down is not an option:-): What do people think of starting an alt.cypherpunks USENET newsgroup? It has some advantages: 1. It distributes the cost of information dispersal, rather than largely placeing the load on a single machine. 2. Newsreading software typically includes threading, which is useful 3. It avoids the issue of ownership, it is more anarchic. There is no list or host owner to get prosecuted for copyright violations, export law violations, libel etc. 4. Automatically gets archived several places, and is searchable 5. It will be unmoderated And some disadvantages... 1. Cross-posting in USENET is a problem, especially in alt newsgroups 2. Commercial spam is a problem with newsgroups 3. USENET distribution is likely less efficient of overall bandwidth 4. News propogation times are often poor (Exeter univ. receives news about a week late) This is a real killer in my view. I have another news server I can access at the moment, but not everyone may have access to a reasonable news server. 5. News access is more complex for some people. Some alt newsgroups are not carried by some servers. Perhaps news-to-mail and mail-to-news gateway would solve these problems. 6. Some have argued in the past on this topic that the mailing list medium is better because it is more exclusive, as it requires more technical competence, and an active enough interest to subscribe. This is an elitist argument. Perhaps it is relevant though, if we are trying to maintain a mailing list where technical discussions on how to improve privacy are to take place. I wouldn't call this attitude censorship though. My overall feeling is that I prefer the faster turn around time of a mailing list. When interesting things were/are happening on the list (netscape break, late breaking crypto news, and cypherpunks spin on it), the fast turn around time was essential. Being able to react quickly to news items, and to organise technical projects rapidly is one of the cypherpunks main advantages and attractions from my point of view. My view of moderation is that it is a huge amount of work for the moderator, that it is hypocritical philosophically (we promote anarchy, but in order to effectively promote anarchy, we reject anarchy), that it breeds artificial social hierarchys, rather than allowing posts and posters reputations to stand on their own merit. I was happier with the strength of the philsophical standing of the list prior to moderation. Moderation hasn't improved the noise much anyway. Readers who have been reading for several years may understandably wish to recapture the stimulating discourses, and lively community feel to the list from the past. Lists change, cypherpunks is a victim of it's own success, media attention increased public awareness, increased number of subscribers, and at the same time increased the proportion of noisy off-topic posts. Unfortunately the success of the list, and the noise has resulted in some of those people who kept it interesting leaving the list. Coderpunks is a reasonable list, I'm not sure that it is moderated as such, but if you breach etiquette (discussion of politics, even when perpetrated by respected cryptographers, or by people discussing the implications of breaking DES, rather than the strict coding questions) they get Futplex-grams, which I find slightly annoying. Cryptography(a)c2.net is again reasonable, and gained back some of the original people who quit cypherpunks over the years due to noise. Cryptography is moderated. (Or is moderated when Perry thinks it would benefit from moderation, so that may change). Perhaps some of the lack of stimulating discussion is simply that the ideas are no longer hot new ideas. Most of the interesting technology and it's implications have been discussed. What's left is attempting to stop government restrictions and backdoors, and deploying the many complex peices of software for which there exists uses and demands. Adam -- print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

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Re: Govt & cyberspace
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Steve writes: >Democracy is not without its significant shortcomings. If you doubt this >read Tocquevelle. Or Hayek. Democracy, after all, is majoritarian rule. Living under a homogenous majority, with its whims and desires as law, would be more oppressive than living under a benign dictatorship. -Declan ------------------------- The Netly News Network Washington Correspondent http://netlynews.com/

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Re: Moderation [Tim,Sandy]
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adam writes: >The problem with censorship or moderation is that it waters down the >absolutism of free speech. Free speech in electronic media, with >cypherpunks type I, and type II remailers, is the closest thing to >truly free speech yet. I agree and disagree. Moderation often *increases* the value of speech. The Wall Street Journal, or Time Magazine, or the JAMA have strict policies regarding what information they print; these policies increase the publication's value. Moderation is not necessarily censorship. Would you criticize the National Coalition Against Censorship for not including in their newsletter (to which I subscribe) off-topic rants by Jesse Helms? What Vulis and the rest (whom I killfiled long ago) have done is polluted a common resource, making it unusable for the rest. It's the tragedy of the commons. When all can speak without limit in a public forum, the drunken boor can shout everyone else down. -Declan ------------------------- The Netly News Network Washington Correspondent http://netlynews.com/

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Re: Moderation, Tim, Sandy, me, etc. * Strong crypto == DES?!
by aaron＠herringn.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>I'm glad we're talking about some of the real issues here. > >Tim May said: >> I don't want Sandy Sandfort sitting in judgment on my >> posts, deciding what the Cypherpunks--a group I co-founded for God's >> sake!!!!--are to be allowed to read and what they may not. > >Tim, the Cypherpunks have chosen to follow Sandy's lead for this >month. I'll admit I made it easy for them, but the results are >conclusive. There are 1311 addresses in the cypherpunks list today; >42 in the unedited list; and 19 in the flames list. Forty people >cared enough to read every posting; the other thousand either wanted >to try the experiment -- or didn't care enough to send an email >message. Which, as we all know, is a very low threshold. [huge snip] If I might make a suggestion: Some people want moderation. That's fine, I've never been very big on letting other people choose what I read, but some people want it. For those who want it, let someone moderate the list for as long as they care to do it. Approved messages get a "X-sandy-approved" header. The responsibility for setting up a filter to toss everything that doesn't have the header is the responsibility of the end user. Toad will need to filter incoming posts to make sure they don't come "pre-approved", but that's the only hole I can think of. Everyone gets all of the Cypherpunks list. Those who want moderation filter the unapproved posts, those who want all of it get all of it. Hopefully, this will make (almost) everyone happy.

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