December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: concerning Ben Franklin
by David Farber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My favorate Ben Franklin quote is "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin, ~1784

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Re: My Departure, Moderation, and "Ownership of the List"
by Scott V. McGuire 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I've been quiet about the moderation experiment (and I never posted frequently anyway) but something Sandy wrote requires comment. In responding to Tim, Sandy points to the number of people on the censored list as evidence of the acceptance of the filtering. I am included in that group and object to my silence being interpreted as support. As Tim has pointed out, the bulk of the 2000 or so people who have remained on the filtered list have never been active participants on the list. As we have never heard from them, we don't even know that they were bothered by the flames and noise of the pre-filtered list. And, even if we did know, I don't think that there opinions should count as much as those of the more active participants to the list. A subscription to the list does not make one a member of the Cypherpunks "community". It is the opinion of the members of the community and not the observers of it which should matter. (Even within the community, some people are more a part of it than others, and nobody is more a part of it then Tim.) As for the rest of us on the filtered list who are active (or occasionally active) participants, our remaining on the list still can not be taken as support for censorship. Moderation of the list was announced as a one month experiment. I didn't change my subscription from the filtered to the unfiltered list because I expected this to end in a month and I was willing to participate in the experiment. You can't ask someone to try something for a month to see if they like it and call there use of it in that month evidence that they like it. As long as I am writing, I may as well write the rest of my thoughts. While there was a period between the announcement of moderation and the start of it during which people could (and did) comment on the change, the announcement was clear that there would be moderation. It was indeed a fait accompli. The moderated list should have been offered but not imposed. Then the experiment would have determined how many people thought the list was so bad that they would seek moderation, rather than determining how many thought moderation was so bad that they would seek to avoid it. Sandy, you said that you thought the list had improved since you began moderating. How could you think otherwise? When you send an article to the flames list its because you think the list would have been worse otherwise. I don't think the moderators opinion should be considered in determining if moderation is a good thing. I think there is a conflict of interest there. - -------------------- Scott V. McGuire <svmcguir(a)syr.edu> PGP key available at http://web.syr.edu/~svmcguir Key fingerprint = 86 B1 10 3F 4E 48 75 0E 96 9B 1E 52 8B B1 26 05 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBMvZ3lN7xoXfnt4lpAQGjbgQAs9qqrOZCgHeT19yh6LOS8rsXVAglssVI 2VLCiKb/X0Ny1+p3kzTiit42uykv5IhoCn+GdJF0X08zW02ymRf6JIv2sLksW2ln E+SZuUoLFk18emLIJMEVGNPW7cJEl7/a75IdETrU14RcdBN8F86bm5VK36kyNMIY kPfB825uWxU= =N3va -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: My Departure, Moderation, and "Ownership of the List"
by tmcghan＠gill-simpson.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

on or about: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:51:47 -0800 in a message allegedly from: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay(a)got.net> {snip} > the really important issue is this: is the _physical hosting_ of the > Cypherpunks mailing list coterminous with the "Cypherpunks"? { much thoughtful and well-phrased commentary elided } > I would have had no problem had John announced that he was creating > a new list, the "Good Stuff" list, with Sandy has his Chooser of > Good Stuff. > But by making the _main list_ the censored one, this skewed things > considerably. > * Why, many reasonable people may ask, did I not simply unsubscribe > from the "Cypherpunks" list and subscribe to the"Cypherpunks-Unedited) >(or whatever it is called) list? Because of my overall anger > But the clear message by having Sandy censor the > main list (the default list, the list name with the main name, the > list we all know about, etc.) {snip} Now that the horse is out of the barn, ( or maybe not? ), I can't help but ask whether one specific 'change to the change' would have satisfied most of your objections: retaining 'cypherpunks' as the name of the unedited, all-the-crud-you-can-read-and-then-some, version, and adding an 'cp-worthwhile' list for those of us who prefer not to wade thru mountains of garbage to glean a few precious tidbits. What's in a name? Is perception more important ( to you ) than reality? If just swapping names between cp and cp-unedited would make such a large difference, I humbly suggest to you that you consider how much labels need to matter. Is the title of the group more important the the content? From where I sit, this looks a lot like a style-over-substance complaint. Of course, I don't have my trifocals on just at the moment. It may also be worth noting that the current 'status quo' is a transient experiment, with a fairly short time limit. When JG, Sandy, et al. evaluate the results with an eye to future direction(s), they may well consider an 'inverted default' for the two list names (i.e.: cp / cp-unedited) In any event, please accept my .02 in the spirit in which it is intended ( constructive criticism ). /* */

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RE: My Departure, Moderation, and "Ownership of the List"
by Timothy C. May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 1:15 PM -0800 2/3/97, Blanc Weber wrote: >Your thoughtful contributions to the list are missed, Tim. As soon as >I realized that you had left the list I suspected it had something to do >with its moderation. > >However, I must protest the inclusion of Toto's posts as one of the >"inane". His posts were intentionally formulated to cause to stand >out what was, indeed, inane - as he said, to "hold up a mirror". And >he continually decried the list experiment, pointing out the >philosophical contradiction of a moderated "anarchist" forum. Well, "Toto" wrote in a style I found hard to grasp, and his/her/its points were often lost to me. But I was only scanning the list via the hks.net archive site, and so may have missed the subtleties. One way thoughtful posts get "absorbed" is when others quote them (or the parts they like best, disagree with, etc.). This gives people a second or third look. (And, of course, when one _replies_ to a post this is how it gets read most carefully.) I saw few people I respect a lot replying substantively to the posts of some of these people who seemed to dominate the list in the last month, and of course I myself did not reply to any of them, so whatever points they were making were lost on me. >If the antidote to bad speech is more speech, then he certainly provided >some, although not on the level or style as yourself. And you may say >that some of these posts are not worth replying to, but didn't I see you >respond to one of Dale's, regarding a photo of Jessica-the-pilot which >he keeps above his desk? Sure, but that was months ago. In any case, I didn't say Dale nor Toto nor anyone else should be shunned; I posted when I felt like it. Nor of course have I ever argued for censoring Toto or Dale or anyone else. My point to Sandy was just that the new censorship policy was still clearly letting a lot of crap^H^H^H^H "piffle" (a Sandy-used and hence Sandy-approved synonym for "cr*p") through, and that certain folks were issuing lots and lots of rants and raves. Personally, I think "flames" are not the problem. Not flames from obviously thoughtful folks who are angered or peeved about something. The "flames" posted by bots--targetted at me, usually--were not especially helpful, but I see nothing wrong with, say, Hallam-Baker flaming Bell. Or vice versa. Flames and intense argument are often useful in explicating hard subjects...and who can deny that Bell's ideas are controversial and may generate intense opinions? To expunge the list of Vulis' ASCII art and "Timmy May was born on a toilet as the spawn of a dandruff-covered Armenian tchurka and his nekulturny peasant mother" bot-generated insults we have apparently now gotten a list where Lord Sandy apprises us that he almost rejected my long, carefully-constructed essay because I committed the NewCyphepunk (TM) sin of referring to Toto, Dale, Dimitri, and Nurgaine in unflattering ways. Like I said, "fuck that." Or, more politely, it's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Not to mention sending the strong message that "Even Cypherpunks gave up their experiment with anarchy and now have a moderator deciding what the main list is permitted to read." Far too high a price to pay for the "comity" Sandy craves. (And if Sandy wants comity and good cheer, let him either form his own list or establish a filtered list just the way Blossom and Arachelian did. Hijacking the list to reform it in his own image is dirty pool.) --Tim May Just say "No" to "Big Brother Inside" We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Moderation [Tim,Sandy]
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> writes: > I believe that Cypherpunks is beyond hope of recovery. In fact, each day > Cypherpunk (as in cypherpunks(a)toad.com) lives on, it does damage to the > cause. Let's kill the list. Once and for all. Let the hard core crypto go > to Coderpunks, the politics to Cryptography, and the garbage into the void. What about the leaks? (rc4.c, Mykotronics dumpster contents, etc) Where do they go? You expect Perry to stick his neck out and approve them? (Perry Metzger is the moderator of cryptography(a)c2.net, started recently as a moderated version of cypherpunks for those who don't know what the `cryptography' list is). The existance of cryptography argues against the need for `cypherpunks' to be moderated. Why two competing moderated lists? Secondly the status of garbage is in the eye of the beholder. There are a few posts which are probably considered garbage by near everyone, but lots of other stuff which really just depends on what the reader is interested in. 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. A lot of people seem to regard Jim Bell's assasination politics as suitable material for censoring. Yet it is pretty crypto relevant. Sandy's job is pretty hard to do. For instance I recently posted this, which ended up in cpunks-flames, due to being in a thread which contained a mild flame 2 messages back: : Diffie-Hellman key generation, there are two main ways of generating : the diffie-hellman prime modulus, method 1: : : p = 2q+1 : : where q is a prime also. : : And method 2: : : p = r.2q+1 : : where q is a prime and r is a randomly generated number. : : With method 1, the security parameter is the size of p in bits (or : size of q, as they are related). : : With method 2, there are two security parameters, size of q and size : of p in bits. : : Method 2 has the advantage that key generation is faster as it is : quicker to generate new random numbers r, than to repeatedly generate : trial prime q as you have to do in method 1. However is the security : weaker in method 2? What size of p and q do you have to use to get : the same security as for same size of p in bits as in method 1? What : should be the relationship between the size of p and q? (I freely admit to injecting additional crypto relevance just for the fun of seeing it be filtered cpunks-flames -- though I was interested in discussion also). > I am well aware of the name recognition and reputation capital associated > with CP, still I believe it best to *kill the list*. I'd prefer to see various filtering services offered, and the list retained. My main objection with the moderation experiment is that the main list was renamed. 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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New X-Ray Imager
by Steve Schear 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

New X-ray gun trades privacy for safety Reported by Andy C Seen in The Nando Times on 13 August 1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Passive Millimeter Wave Imager can X-ray through clothing to "see" a concealed weapon, plastic explosives or drugs. A police officer can surreptitiously aim it into a crowd from as far away as 90 feet. The new X-ray gun is becoming a symbol for an unlikely alliance of civil libertarians and gun owners who fear the fight against crime and terrorism may be waged at the expense of personal freedoms. "I'm incredibly concerned," said John Henry Hingson, a past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, meeting here this past week. "The entire nation could become a victim of illegal searches and seizures and the law is powerless to protect them from these police abuses." But in these nervous times following the the crash of TWA Fight 800 and bombings at the Olympics, Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center, many Americans are now willing to trade some of their privacy and civil liberties for greater security. 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. The Clinton administration has proposed increased wiretapping and other anti-terrorism steps, and is doling out research grants for cutting edge anti-crime technology that once may have been intended for only military use. Last year, the National Institute of Justice awarded $2.1 million to three companies to develop weapon detectors for airports, stores and public buildings. Two models are being developed of the Passive Millimeter Wave Imager, a creation of Hadley, Massachusetts-based Millimetrix Corp. The larger one, about the size of a shoebox, is mounted on a patrol car and pointed at the unsuspecting person. The gadget doesn't send out X-rays; instead, it picks up electromagnetic waves emitted by human flesh. Anything that stands in the way of those waves -- like a gun -- or anything that emits weaker waves -- like a bag of cocaine or a plastic explosive -- will show up on a little screen in the patrol car. Clothes emit no waves. Neither do walls, allowing the device to be used from even outside a room. A second model is a smaller, battery-operated version that an officer can operate by hand, like a radar gun. Millimetrix hopes to field test the larger model soon at a police agency. Hingson argues the device runs roughshod over bans against illegal searches and seizures. The law says police can stop and frisk a person only when an officer has a "reasonable suspicion" the person is armed or involved in a crime. Millimetrix points out that while the imager can see through clothing, it still leaves people some privacy. The device's display screen, the company says, "does not reveal intimate anatomical details of the person." Chip Walker, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, noted that devices like the imager threaten the legal rights of people in 31 states who are allowed to carry concealed weapons with proper licenses. "We certainly support efforts to disarm criminals, but we need to be careful that we're not painting with too broad a brush here," he said. Walker said that as troubling as terrorism is, people may be playing into terrorists' hands by giving up their privacy. "One of the broader issues is that if we start giving up certain civil liberties, that essentially means that the terrorists are starting to accomplish one of their goals," he said. Contact email address: acobley(a)mic.dundee.ac.uk --------------------- (From a TRW development program description) The Passive Millimeter Wave sensor detects thermal energy, which is radiated from objects and reflected from other objects such as the sky in the 94 Giga Hertz frequency band. The advantage of this frequency is that there is little attenuation of the energy by water particles in the air (fog). The camera operates very much like a television camera except that it operates at mm-wave frequencies (near 90 GHz) instead of in the visible spectrum. It has components analogous to a television camera: optics to focus the image, a readout device to convert the electromagnetic energy into electrical signals, signal processing electronics to prepare the signals for display, and display unit to view the scene. The optical system images the blackbody radiation emanating from the scene on the Focal Plane Array (FPA), which consists of an array of small antennas, each coupled to a very small MMIC W-band (90 GHz) direct-detection receiver. ---------------- >From a description of the National Law Enforcement & Corrections Technology Center/Northeast (NLECTC) at Rome Laboratory (more on that later). The Millimeter Wave Imaging Radar Consortium seeks development of a suitable technology and effective, affordable products for concealed weapon detection (CWD) and through-the-wall surveillance (TWS) application --- well-established objectives for both military operations other than war and civilian law enforcement agencies. Consortium members include Millimetrix Corp., South Deerfield, Mass.; Technology Service Corp., Trumbull, Conn.; and Riverside Research Institute of Lexington, Mass. They will contribute $2,035,087 to the research program, while the government's share will be $2,018,491. Military applications of the envisioned technology, in addition to operations other than war, would include use by military police and special forces personnel, all weather aircraft operation, shipboard and airborne missile warning, helicopter obstacle avoidance, battlefield surveillance, fire control, and missile seekers. Civilian law enforcement agencies would be able to use the technology in curtailing terrorist acts and juvenile handgun crimes that frequently involve the use of concealed weapons, bombs and other contraband that cannot be detected using currently available technology see <http://www.nlectc.org/E144T127/june.htm> --Steve

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Re: Govt & cyberspace
by Steve Schear 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[snip] >"tech envy"-- what impact is this going to have on our >government? it's becoming a huge issue. it may be a >really great opportunity for a populist movement to >truly reform the government in the process of upgrading >their computers. Even better, this is an opportunity to choke off all, or certainly increased, funding in order to hasten its collapse. >I suspect that the "groupware" technology >that is just getting started will have major influence >in these areas. as private companies find increasingly >sophisticated ways of managing themselves, the obvious >question will arise, "why can't we have an efficient govt >when our private industries are"? the answer is, we >can!! Don't improve it, remove it! > >I've written about "electronic democracy" repeatedly. many >people object to the idea. but when it is phrased in terms >of groupware, it becomes more palatable. imagine a small >company humming along with its groupware application that >allows it to make company-wide decisions using a democratic >process. moreover, the software is robust and scales well. >why can't the same principles be scaled up, up, up? I predict >that they will be in a rather extraordinary revolution. > >a new "velvet revolution"? comments anyone? Democracy is not without its significant shortcomings. If you doubt this read Tocquevelle. --Steve

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Re: Moderation [Tim,Sandy]
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:48 PM 2/3/97 GMT, Adam Back wrote: > >Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> writes: >> I believe that Cypherpunks is beyond hope of recovery. In fact, each day >> Cypherpunk (as in cypherpunks(a)toad.com) lives on, it does damage to the >> cause. Let's kill the list. Once and for all. Let the hard core crypto go >> to Coderpunks, the politics to Cryptography, and the garbage into the void. > >What about the leaks? (rc4.c, Mykotronics dumpster contents, etc) >Where do they go? I have been thinking about this question. I don't really have an answer other than that the more recent leaks posted to this list drew zero response. How many of you remember the anonymous message posted to this list revealing that Skipjack is an elliptic curve cipher? [One of the most respected names in cryptography confirmed this to me in private conversation. No, the person was not privy to the secret specs. The person didn't need to be. :-] If nobody cares about the leaks, why do we need to provide a forum for them? Besides, there are other fora that could be used. sci.crypt or Coderpunks are both good places to post "found" code. -- 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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what's in a name?
by Wei Dai 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've stayed out of the debate about list moderation so far, but a recent post from tmcghan(a)gill-simpson.com reminds me of something I've been thinking about. An interesting way to look at what happened is that John Gilmore owns the name "cypherpunks(a)toad.com" and has chosen to exercise that ownership. Even though those of us who disagree with the way he has done so are free to leave and set up our own mailing list, it is costly to do so, and the problem of central name ownership remains. List subscribers have made investments that are specific to the name "cypherpunks(a)toad.com", and most of the cost of switching to a new list is in the new investments they would have to (re)make. The fact is that a promise of no censorship is not enough incentive for us to do so. I suspect that the hierarchical nature of name ownership on the Internet today will be an important technological barrier for the establishment of truly anarchic virtual communities. Unless this problem is solved, the closest we'll come is pseudo-anarchies that exist with the tolerance of beneficent dictators. Wei Dai

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

17 Dec '03

<tmcghan(a)gill-simpson.com> writes: > in a message allegedly from: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay(a)got.net> > > > I would have had no problem had John announced that he was creating > > a new list, the "Good Stuff" list, with Sandy has his Chooser of > > Good Stuff. > > > But by making the _main list_ the censored one, this skewed things > > considerably. > > > But the clear message by having Sandy censor the > > main list (the default list, the list name with the main name, the > > list we all know about, etc.) > > Now that the horse is out of the barn, ( or maybe not? ), I can't help > but ask whether one specific 'change to the change' would have > satisfied most of your objections: retaining 'cypherpunks' as the > name of the unedited, all-the-crud-you-can-read-and-then-some, > version, and adding an 'cp-worthwhile' list for those of us who prefer > not to wade thru mountains of garbage to glean a few precious tidbits. That was the objectionable part of the moderation experiment to me. > What's in a name? Is perception more important ( to you ) than > reality? If just swapping names between cp and cp-unedited would make > such a large difference, I humbly suggest to you that you consider how > much labels need to matter. Is the title of the group more important > the the content? From where I sit, this looks a lot like a > style-over-substance complaint. There is a lot in a name. The name `Cypherpunks' has, or had a reputation. Tricks like censoring the list are not helping that reputation. This wording indicates that the other two lists are to satisfy purists: (relevant output from sending message with body `lists' to majordomo(a)toad.com) : cypherpunks (THE MAIN LIST) Fermenting ideas on crypto and society : cypherpunks-flames (FLAMES DELETED BY MODERATOR) Ideas on crypto and society : cypherpunks-unedited (THE UN-MODERATED LIST) Ideas on crypto and society The naming convention indicates that cypherpunks is the main list, as does the ordering (moderated first). The text in the sign up message: (extracts from output from sending message with body `info cypherpunks' to majordomo(a)toad.com) : cypherpunks moderated to suppress spam and flames : cypherpunks-unedited all submissions, just as they arrived : cypherpunks-flames the submissions that didn't pass moderation Also I note in passing that if I recall correctly this section used to give Hugh Daniel's email address. Seems John is managing majordomo himself now? Is Hugh's no longer being list manager related to the moderation decision? : For other questions, my list management address is not the best place, : since I don't read it every day. To reach me otherwise, send mail to : : gnu(a)toad.com > It may also be worth noting that the current 'status quo' is a > transient experiment, with a fairly short time limit. When JG, > Sandy, et al. evaluate the results with an eye to future > direction(s), they may well consider an 'inverted default' for the two > list names (i.e.: cp / cp-unedited) It would be nice also if JG, Sandy et al, took some notice of the list opinions next time. It really would have been better to create a _new_ moderated list, rather than take over the existing list address, and subscribers. Maybe those who initiated the moderation experiment thought they wouldn't get many people moving over to the moderated list if they had to go to that effort. Another alternative would have been to discontinue `cypherpunks' and start `cypherpunks-edited' and `cypherpunks-unedited' forcing people to choose. I wouldn't have liked that either, but it would have been a better experiment. (Likely that would have lost many altogether, who simply wouldn't have bothered to resubscribe at all). Several times in the past, a USENET newsgroup alt.cypherpunks was suggested. Some people were against it because they felt that it would attract more noisy posters. Perhaps it is time to reconsider the benefits of alt.cypherpunks. (As an aside, it is ironic that John Gilmore was the guy who started the alt.* USENET hierarchy, specifically to facilitate freedom of speech). 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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