December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Rejection policy of the Cypherpunks mailing list
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:05 PM 1/28/97 -0800, Dale Thorn wrote: >I dare say that the downside of this is much less pleasant than the >virtual anarchy (in the bad sense) we suffer now. If the police get >out of control, A.P. will arrive just in time to plug a few of those >holes, so to speak. Ideally, future robotics should be able to >provide something like Gort (sp?) to take the place of human officers, >given advances in the kind of pattern matching needed to deter >aggression and the like. Those who don't make it past the robots, >well, the rest of us can learn to behave, and we'll be much better >off when we do. Your comparison with the fictional Gort, in the movie "The day the earth stood still" is of course apt. It was only after I'd written most of the essay that I realized that an AP-type system would function much as Gort did. Occasionally we (CP) see a spoof where somebody claims to have developed a software program to "replace the judicial system" or something like that. Well, the problem with such a claim (aside from the obvious and enormous AI-type difficulties) is that the current system contains numerous biases. Writing a program to replace the legal system would presumably require that these biases be measured (and admitted-to!) and implemented into a well-defined system. What we'd discover is that the current system only barely resembles the guarantees in the US Constitution. At that point, there would be an argument between those who will insist that the Constitution be followed, and those who believe that the current de-facto system, however biased, be maintained as-is. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Libel & the 1st Amendment
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:22 AM 1/29/97 -0800, Greg Broiles wrote: >At 10:42 PM 1/28/97 -0600, Jim Choate wrote: > >>It has been asserted by at least one member that the 1st Amendment protects >>libelous or other defamatory speech. > >Defamation is not protected by the First Amendment; but the First Amendment >limits the application of defamation law in many circumstances. For >example, the First Amendment requires plaintiffs to prove "actual malice" >if they are a public official, public figure, or a private person seeking >punitive damages. What you ought to explain to us laymen is that the terminology "actual malice" dates from the case New York Times vs. Sullivan, and it used a definition of "malice" that was not in any dictionary at the time. My recollection: Sullivan was a local hero in a particular area in the south in the last 50's (?), gave a speech to a crowd of (?) people who were probably in sympathy with segregation. They proceeded to march. Later, the New York Times claimed (as I vaguely recall it, although it's been years since I read a description) that he had instigated a riot. Sullivan sued, claiming his reputation had been damaged. Arguably, it had, although it's probably equally arguable that Sullivan had done something that would have been looked upon somewhat unsympathetically by non-Southerners. The local (southern, of course) jury found NYT guilty of libel, and awarded Sullivan some huge judgment. (Had the jury been made up of northern people, presumably Sullivan would have lost.) The problem here is that two long-honored principles collided: One, the "free speech" issue, generally tries to guarantee organizations like NY Times the right to print the news and the leeway to do so. The second principle that people should be able to sue for libel in a local court, and be awarded whatever amount of money the jury declares. The problem with this was obvious, after the verdict: It, in effect, allowed essentially any burg in the country, no matter how backwards, potentially to bankrupt any targeted organ of the national news media. Something had to give. Unfortunately, the SC screwed up, as usual. The proper thing for them to do would have been to abandon libel law entirely, recognizing that it did more harm than good. But they blew it: They invented the "actual malice" standard out of whole cloth, raising the standard for libel suits by "public figures," which is really a rather arbitrary standard. Don't go to any ordinary English dictionary for this "malice" definition; it didn't exist before the Sullivan decision, not even in lawbooks. It was really just a rabbit pulled from a hat to try to avoid the collision I mentioned above. Side note: I think that the SC should be unable to re-define ordinary English words. But they try anyway. Basically, it became harder to sue well-known persons. However, what really happened is that they SC had merely put off the problem for another day, because the DEFINITION of a "public figure" was at least as malleable as Jell-O. And oddly, it was eventually revealed that you could be a "public figure" with respect to one subject, but NOT a "public figure" on another. Etc. Ironically, now that Richard Jewell (incorrectly identified as Atlanta bombing suspect) has sued some newspapers (and his former employer) for libel, it seems likely that at least some of those defendants will try to argue that merely being named by the government as a criminal suspect makes him "a public figure." BTW, I think that pressing the Richard Jewell incident would be an excellent way to derail any sort of claim that the government can obey the law. Apparently, they got a number of search warrants based on, essentially, nothing, and to rub this in the government's nose would show that the so-called "probable-cause" standard for warrants is not followed in practice. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Last nail for US crypto export policy?
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:41 AM 1/30/97 -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: >I think we do need to get some sort of push going for 3DES as a >replacement for DES - it's strong enough, even though DES is showing >its age, and it's an obvious transition from the current technology. >It's slower and clunkier than IDEA or RC4/128, but still not bad. The migration to 3DES is underway, at least in the banking sector. ANSI X.9, the group that deals with many of the protocols used in the banking industry, has made tremendous progress. 3DES, elliptic curve, and a host of other improvements all are out of committee and should be available as official (for bankers :-) specs soon, if they aren't already. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred "I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." Mahatma Gandhi

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RE: Cellular phone triangulation
by Internaut 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Snow wrote: I'd rather become an "arms dealer". You may already be one if the government keeps this ITAR shit up. --Internaut

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Authenticated mail command processor
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, I am wondering if anyone has written a package for remote command processing that has authentication and access control built in. I am looking for the following: 1) PGP Authentication of each incoming message 2) Access control where ability of users to execute commands is finely limited 3) Protection against replay and MITM attacks, encryption 4) Sending back of the results of execution 5) Some form of logging I need it for my cryptorobomoderator bot, to allow moderators to go to vacations and perform other admin tasks w/o logging in. Thank you. - Igor.

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Re: Cats Out of Bags
by sameer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > Remember, Aaron is employee of the government. He talks in doublespeak, Aaron is employee of the government. Therefore he must lie. -- Sameer Parekh Voice: 510-986-8770 President FAX: 510-986-8777 C2Net http://www.c2.net/ sameer(a)c2.net

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Re: Last nail for US crypto export policy?
by Jeremiah A Blatz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- "Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" <froomkin(a)law.miami.edu> writes: <snip> > The above may have been dictated via Dragon Dictate 2.51 voice > recognition. Please be alert for unintentional word substitutions. Stego? Maybe 3 bits per substituted word? Good bye, uhnsufride, hello, "speech recognition." Jer "standing on top of the world/ never knew how you never could/ never knew why you never could live/ innocent life that everyone did" -Wormhole -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQB1AwUBMvDlzMkz/YzIV3P5AQExTAL/d5/Bd7hrwi6zWAsHTm+W8j072sQVtVjx kkFbxf5oBYObYScT8h57PZlZcobumV3I8sjAguPVBeBC9uMIiKDd8H0xh5w0Ncr5 EcIsRwmpn/6rXutrUO1IUVTnepCJq6gn =iACw -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Last nail for US crypto export policy?
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:41 AM 1/30/97 -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: >I think we do need to get some sort of push going for 3DES as a >replacement for DES - it's strong enough, even though DES is showing >its age, and it's an obvious transition from the current technology. >It's slower and clunkier than IDEA or RC4/128, but still not bad. The migration to 3DES is underway, at least in the banking sector. ANSI X.9, the group that deals with many of the protocols used in the banking industry, has made tremendous progress. 3DES, elliptic curve, and a host of other improvements all are out of committee and should be available as official (for bankers :-) specs soon, if they aren't already. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred "I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." Mahatma Gandhi

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Re: Altavista
by Eric Murray 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Leonid S Knyshov writes: [about targeted webvertising using stats gathered by tracking browsers] > I think it is a good idea, no wonder doubleclick.net is one of the > leaders in advertising. You are shown only the ads that will potentially > interest you, search for shopping and you are gonna get one of those ISN > ads etc. > > I think it is a good idea FWIW. > > I wouldn't think that a company such as doubleclick.net will do you any > harm. Probably not. But the practice still bothers me. _I_ want to control what information about me others can have. I do not want the precedent set that on the Net, what you do is trackable by every organization who might care. Sooner or later someone _would_ use that information to hurt me. That's why I wrote cookie jar, a program that lets the user have better control over which 'cookies' if any they release to web servers, and what other information their browser gives out. See http://www.lne.com/ericm/cookie_jar/ for details and code. > >Interestingly, I've just noticed over the last couple of days that the > >in-line > >ads are directly relevant to the search words I enter. I did a search > >yesterday > >on "Quicken" and "security" and all the in-line ads I was shown > >referred to > >security or penetration detection products. This doesn't bother me as much (besides the fucking ads, which I hate... maybe I'll make cookie jar smart enough to nuke them). The reason is that the ads are selected based on what you typed in to the search engine right then- there's no tracking involved like with Doubleclick. -- Eric Murray ericm(a)lne.com ericm(a)motorcycle.com http://www.lne.com/ericm PGP keyid:E03F65E5 fingerprint:50 B0 A2 4C 7D 86 FC 03 92 E8 AC E6 7E 27 29 AF

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Re: Rejection policy of the Cypherpunks mailing list
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:05 PM 1/28/97 -0800, Dale Thorn wrote: >I dare say that the downside of this is much less pleasant than the >virtual anarchy (in the bad sense) we suffer now. If the police get >out of control, A.P. will arrive just in time to plug a few of those >holes, so to speak. Ideally, future robotics should be able to >provide something like Gort (sp?) to take the place of human officers, >given advances in the kind of pattern matching needed to deter >aggression and the like. Those who don't make it past the robots, >well, the rest of us can learn to behave, and we'll be much better >off when we do. Your comparison with the fictional Gort, in the movie "The day the earth stood still" is of course apt. It was only after I'd written most of the essay that I realized that an AP-type system would function much as Gort did. Occasionally we (CP) see a spoof where somebody claims to have developed a software program to "replace the judicial system" or something like that. Well, the problem with such a claim (aside from the obvious and enormous AI-type difficulties) is that the current system contains numerous biases. Writing a program to replace the legal system would presumably require that these biases be measured (and admitted-to!) and implemented into a well-defined system. What we'd discover is that the current system only barely resembles the guarantees in the US Constitution. At that point, there would be an argument between those who will insist that the Constitution be followed, and those who believe that the current de-facto system, however biased, be maintained as-is. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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