December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

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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Re: concerning Ben Franklin
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is one of the point that I address in my article in the February 1997 issue of "Internet Underground" magazine (to which I am a contributing editor). Here's an excerpt, since the magazine is just starting to hit the stands. --- The debate swirling through Capitol Hill conference rooms and the corridors of the White House revolves around one basic question: What role should the government play in regulating encryption? The founding fathers might be startled by the byzantine rules. After all, some revolutionaries were cryptographers themselves. Benjamin Franklin in 1781 crafted a substitution cipher based on a 682-character French phrase. James Madison created a code replacing words with two- and three-digit numbers that he used until 1793. But by far the most remarkable cryptologist of the Revolutionary War was the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, who between 1790 and 1800 invented a cipher system so far ahead of its time that it remained in use even into the late 20th century. --- The Codebreakers is also a good source. -Declan >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. ------------------------- The Netly News Network Washington Correspondent http://netlynews.com/

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Re: John's: In anarchy -everyone responsible
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- on or about 970204:0312 Greg Broiles <gbroiles(a)netbox.com> said: + Are mailing lists an example of "public goods" where private + ownership is impossible, or should be avoided? ... yes, there is a requirement, even in a libertarian society, let alone an anarchic society, for cooperation in the *commonweal[th]*. in otherwords, is there even such a social state as true anarchy? (given the residents of planet earth, I doubt it.) + Is the desire for an anarchic community at odds with a desire for + good use of resources? the individual desire for anarchy must exclude common human "pride" and greed. true anarchy is poorly defined and understood by most advocates. the absolute need for common resources negates anarchy in the popularly defined "description" of anarchy, solely because the issue of community "responsibility" is in opposition to the perceived: 'I can do anything I want.' In a "popular" anarchy, Jim Bell's assassination politics make perfectly good sense; but, a "popular" anarchy is not an _anarchy_. on or about 970204:0621 John Gilmore <gnu(a)toad.com> said: + In an anarchy, *everyone* is responsible; + nothing is "somebody else's job". Bingo! John's statement is the absolute bottom line! e.g.- if you are walking down the street with thousands of other people and you see a piece of trash (which obviously was tossed by an obviously imperfect anarchist), _you_ pick the trash up and place it in a waste container. _you_ -not someone else who is shirking _their_ common responsibility. anarchy is _not_ living on a desert island surrounded by piles of McDonald's wrappers and empty coke cans. that is an individual who elected to "escape" both society and {him,her}self. anarchy is only possible in an ideal world where _everyone_ assumes not only responsibility for themselves, but for the common good. no malice, no greed, no need for assassination politics.... John's quote from Booker T. is precisely the point: ...now that they were in actual possession of it, freedom was a more serious thing than they had expected to find it. or maybe Bobbie McGee: "freedom is just nothing else to lose..." (BTW, written by a Rhodes Scholar) -- attila out (for the moment) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be iQCVAwUBMvfD1b04kQrCC2kFAQGCRAP/TFNkLEtSKhEzksBCeT4r1pfZnIgwHkZz QtlfSo8dKcQMBXJcdfJ58dklisFrolyLApcEYFO5E+v6XPH+SFe+DOOoMgGNfj1v 3qnL49ol2s34ioaJG3BFqy6JOJmL7eom0PleQrGWzko8mGM99dRBVgCRCLZMmWk8 4Uaqs5Ztkbw= =112P -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Moderation, Tim, Sandy, me, etc. * Strong crypto == DES?!
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The gist of your post seems to be saying that: - yes, the result it is not purely anarchic - the moderation experiment intentionally moderated the main list by design - this is perhaps slightly at odds with cypherpunks philosphy on freedom but that this is necessary because: - cypherpunks larger goals are more important - cypherpunks goals are better served by having a lower noise environment to work in - create that environment by any means possible (ends justify the means) - people weren't being responsible with their freedom anyway - it's only an experiment - if you don't like this and complain you're part of the problem Now it may seem nit-picking to a pragmatist, which is the way you presented your arguments, but the idea that cypherpunks should stoop to moderation/censorship calls into question what cypherpunks larger goals are. Why? Because we promote electronic freedom, but in order to effectively organise the promotion of freedom, we reject full freedom of speech as unworkable, and impose restrictions. This lends ammunition to our opponents. "See even they realise there must be limits to free speech". Cypherpunks main goal is: "to promote privacy and freedom through technological means" and arising from this goal, are presumed philosphical stances: - privacy and freedom are a good thing (unconditional free speech is a good thing) - censorship is a bad thing - government retrictions and backdoors in crypto are a bad thing (crypto providing practical privacy, and practical free speech being provided by cryptographically enabled anonymity) - chaumian credentials are preferable to fully traceable credentials - etc. etc. So the question to me boils down to is unconditional free speech a good thing? Dorothy Denning says no. Louis Freeh says no. The Clinton administration says no. I thought you said yes. I thought most of your actions for the last 10 years screamed yes! Why cut corners for little gain? Another moderated list with official sanction (hosted by toad.com, with your commendation that people subscribe to it (to reduce noise and increase productivity), with instructions in the sign on message listing the moderated/filtered lists available, clearly stating the filtering policy, regularly posted instructions on available filtered lists to cypherpunks) would have been beautiful. Fine. Lovely. But you set up moderation of _the_ list, with no interaction required by the subscriber. That caused Tim to unsubscribe. It's causing me, and others to argue for this aspect of the moderation to be reversed ASAP. > PS: Can we talk about crypto too? It's clear from the last few days > of press releases that the pro-GAK forces are again working to confuse > novices into thinking that two very different things are the same > thing. Last time it was "public key infrastructure" and "key > recovery". This time it's "strong crypto" and "56-bit DES". What > should we do about this? Educate the public? Education, and countering government news-speak seems to be the key issues at the moment. Educate the journalist that perpetuated the pro-GAK lie. Write an article to the same publication pointing out the fallacy (unfortunately as these are private presses they are `moderated', so you may not get your say). Buy the advert space if they won't publish. I'll contribute. Distribute strong crypto (you are personally, the ipsec S/WAN initiative is important). I'm working on creating and distributing strong crypto, and influencing sectors of users to use strong crypto, rather than export crippled US stuff. The myth that 56 bits is strong is perpetuated by journalists outside the US too. The export situation is complex, many user groups (even IT managers) don't understand. They don't understand the meaning of key strengths either. Break DES to demonstrate it's weakness. May happen in the next 1/2 year. Gets free publicity. People aren't saying 40 bits are secure anymore. Cypherpunks acheived that. Hope that Matt Blaze goes ahead with his hardware DES breaker. He said some time ago that he had spare funding and was considering using it for this purpose. Anyone know the state of play? This would be more important as it would quantify the costs, and would be much more impressive, and realistic for an estimate of the strength of DES against industrial espionage or well funded criminal attack. 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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"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: Moderation, Tim, Sandy, me, etc * Reputation Capital
by nobody＠replay.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I found this post from Mr Gilmore deeply disturbing, and I thought I'd take this chance to, as someone recently said, "Fly with the Eagles." John Gilmore said: >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. Careful. The statistics you are throwing around here are misleading. So if 1350, say, subscribers were subscribed to an unmoderated cypherpunks list, what would that tell you? As has been pointed out, beaten to death, and generally repeated: there are already filtered c'punks lists. By filtering the main list, you are just making your own life difficult and corrupting the reputation capital of "cypherpunks", and the results are far from conclusive. >all I want is something that works. The cypherpunks list was unusable >for this kind of discussion, only a month ago. It's usable now. > >I'm definitely bugged by the community's attitude toward my >"censorship". Rather than being glad that someone, anyone, was doing >something about the major problem on the list, 99% of the reaction was >to create even more ill-considered, emotional flamage. *I* didn't >make the signal/noise get worse at that point -- *you-all* did. Again, maybe that 99% is trying to tell you something? Maybe there is some provocation for this outpouring of "emotional flamage." Also, here you claim that the s/n ratio is worse than before, but above you said that the "moderation" has made the list usable. These two statements seem contradictory. >Perhaps at that point I should have shut down the list, as Lucky is >now suggesting. "Asking the list what to do" was clearly not a useful >option. Sandy cared enough about the community to make some concrete Not a useful option? Why not? If there aren't any ideas left in this community, I'm with Lucky. Pull the plug. >gratifying. You-all remind me of a passage from Booker T. >Washington's book _Up From Slavery_, describing what happened on the >night that news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached the South: <quote snipped> >Most of the people on the list haven't bothered to face that freedom. >Your de-facto "leaders" have faced it for you. It is a more serious "You clearly don't take your freedom seriously. Now try a month without it." >Start a mailing list on another site! Move this list to somewhere! >Create and nurture an alt group! Make an independent moderated list My problem with this is that you are currently holding the reputation capital tied up in the name "cypherpunks" hostage. If hosting this discussion forum has grown so tiring, then you are free to pull the plug in a heartbeat. I've heard a few even go so far as to ask "what's in a name" when others get so upset about the list called "cypherpunks" being moderated. Well, I'll tell you. Reputation capital. Thats why so many lurkers have waded through the muck for so long. I've seen the crown jewels that have surfaced here in the past, and spread the word. "Cypherpunks" was where the action was. It was fast and loose and inhabited by a prolific core of sharp minds. Old memes die hard, as is evidenced every time we see a warning about the "Goodtimes Virus." >The experiment will be over in a few weeks. Who's going to take over >deciding how to run the list, and running it? As I said, if you don't want the list anymore, pull the plug. It will pop up again elsewhere and you need never worry about it again. This post from Mr Gilmore certainly is revealing. Perhaps inevitably, he has assumed the traditional paternal role of authority when its motives and/or power to regulate is questioned. Golem

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Re: "alt.cypherpunks" people?
by Anil Das 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adam Back wrote: > > What do people think of starting an alt.cypherpunks USENET newsgroup? > I have only one objection. I will never post to an Usenet group under my real email address for fear of ending up in spammer databases. -- Anil Das

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bye.bye
by Bjorn Asman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have to agree that Mr. Tim C May have a big point. Even if i didn't like all the things Mr. May wrote so could i read it, and that is the point i think Mr. Sandford missed. That is to have a list that is a "living" list. You have to have all the people giving their chanche to say what tehy like even if they dont are "mentaly healthy".I have one more thing to "say". Namely to say bye.bye. to this list. I have never posted to this list, i have only read it, because i like the freedom in it (free speech and so on), but if i have to change my subscription to unedit-cypherpunks just to "hear" the freedom of speech, i rather just say no and unsubscribe. bye.bye bjorn.asman(a)infodesign.se.org Roerstrandsgatan 7a 41703.Goeteborg Phone +46-(0)31-221056 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The subjects are cyborg, nature is coyote, and the geography is Elsewhere -Donna Haraway ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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