December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Microsoft will NOT ship browser with RSACi on by default
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 19:30:04 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Microsoft will NOT ship browser with RSACi on by default Microsoft called me a few hours ago and told me that -- despite reports to the contrary -- the company definitely will *not* ship the next version of Internet Explorer configured to block unlabeled sites out of the box. "The product is going to ship with Content Advisor off by default," said Mark Murray (mmurray(a)microsoft.com) My article at http://netlynews.com today had said: The next version of IE will default to displaying only properly labeled web pages, according to Ken Wasch, the president of the Software Publishers Association. This comes after previous reports that RSACi might be default-on: http://pathfinder.com/netly/editorial/0,1012,476,00.html http://pathfinder.com/netly/editorial/0,1012,740,00.html Kudos to Microsoft for doing the right thing. -Declan

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Cookie that help you lose wieght!!!
by 01093775＠03416.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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If You Build It, They Will Con (fwd)
by Ray Arachelian 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 11:09:05 -0400 From: "Anthony F. Navarro" <anavarro(a)inch.com> Subject: If You Build It, They Will Con >From the Netly News -Anthony July 15, 1997 If You Build It, They Will Con by Declan McCullagh Perhaps the thinking behind DefCon went something like this: Lure hundreds of hackers to Las Vegas in the middle of the summer, ply them with cheap beer, talk about packet sniffing, and observe. Last year the result was self-organizing chaos, capped by an event where the hired strippers were upstaged by a band of exhibitionist conferencegoers. "The pimp was like, 'Oh my God,'" says Dark Tangent, DefCon's organizer. Last weekend's fifth annual DefCon may have been a little less raucous, but it was no less important as a place where hackers from around the world gather to socialize, gamble -- and glance around furtively trying to spot the government agents who infiltrate the convention. (Bonus: If you guess correctly, you can take a prized "I Spotted the Fed" T-shirt home with you.) Naturally, DefCon has always been populated with a slew of specialized talks on "Hacking Novell Netware" and uses of "embedded microcontroller applications." But this year, speakers such as Richard Thieme spoke of finer points: For instance, how hackers should avoid merely imitating their predecessors' exploits. Instead, they should learn the intricacies of computer systems themselves. "This is really functioning as a call to excellence," Thieme says. Then there was Carolyn Meinel, who maintains the "Happy Hacker" mailing list. "You don't need to break the law to be a hacker," she told me. Maybe not, but the DefCon crowd -- mostly teenagers and twentysomethings -- wasn't listening. Some tried to pass counterfeit $20 bills when registering. ("We'll beat your ass," Dark Tangent warned afterward.) Others tried to snatch the DefCon banner from the convention hall. By the time the conference began, the hotel's antiquated phone system had been penetrated and instructions distributed on how to call long distance for free. The hotel's radio frequencies quickly appeared on the DefCon mailing list. On Friday evening, security guards booted two revelers after a hallway skirmish led to blows. And someone was carrying around a door to a GTE truck -- I never found out why. All of which might explain Las Vegas's growing reluctance to host the event. Dark Tangent says the convention has become virtually blackballed. "You're dicked. There's no place to go," he says. This year, Dark Tangent had to rename the convention "DC Communications" and take out $1 million in liability insurance. He also moved the conference to the Aladdin, a ramshackle hotel -- complete with faded purple carpets and cheesy lounge singers -- that seems the only venue now willing to risk hosting DefCon. Still, the Aladdin seemed a choice venue for Winn Schwartau, the "InfoWar" crooner whom many hackers love to hate. He showed up to host two rounds of Hacker Jeopardy. Teams of digerati took turns heckling Schwartau and competing in categories such as National Security for $300: "A: The two possible meanings of DOS. Q: What are Denial of Service or Disk Operating System?" Or, "A: The assistant director of the FBI who handled the TWA investigation and was behind the Clipper Chip. Q: Who is James Kallstrom?" Bruce Schneier, author of "Applied Cryptography" (and the star of his Hacker Jeopardy team), spoke on Saturday about "Why Cryptography Is Harder Than It Looks." He warned of overconfidence when designing a cryptosystem: "The math is perfect. The computers are bad. The networks hideous. The people worse." Says Schneier, "We need to recognize the limits of the possible." Sameer Parekh, president of C2Net, spoke the next day about offshore crypto-development: "We export jobs, not crypto." Jobs seemed to be what many in the crowd were looking for. As one generation of hackers gives way to another, a new batch of self-anointed "security consultants" appears on the scene. Of course, there are never enough scouts in attendance to hire them all. Dejected, and unable to hack more than the hotel PBX, some found solace in the seamier side of Las Vegas. I saw a note inviting everyone to a "StripperCon" that was being held down the street at the Tropicana Hotel on Saturday night. I went gambling instead. Short $75, I wondered whether next year's DefCon would be worth attending -- that is, if it happens at all. But surely there will be a DefCon 6, and since Internet Underground has gone to pasture, who else will there be to cover it? So I poured another shot, dialed 9# on the wall phone and placed a long distance call to the editor. On the house. | The Netly News | Afternoon Line | Bootcamp | This Old PC | Walter Miller | Alt.Culture | Digital Sandbox | Archive |

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Re: The Censorware Summit: A Preview, from The Netly News
by Antonomasia 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1173,00.html > >The Netly News Network (http://netlynews.com) >July 16, 1997 > >The Censorware Summit >by Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com) > Today, Friedland and more than a score of industry and nonprofit > groups are visiting the White House to promote technical means of > stopping Junior from visiting playboy.com. President Clinton is > expected to endorse such measures over attempts to revive broad > criminal laws like the ill-fated Communications Decency Act, which he > supported. But this new approach suffers from all sorts of problems. A UK computer vendor (I forget which) deals in its catalogue with the possible concerns of parents at internet content in this way. It suggests that the computer is in a family room where parents can readily see what Junior is up to. Common sense or what ? Bubba can keep his nose out. > Rep. Bob Goodlatte > (R-Va.), a staunch CDA supporter who will be at today's summit. "They > said we can't go that route. I'm certainly interested in developing > other options. I want to put the burden on pornographers. One of the > ways to do that is to have Congress pass legislation that would make > it difficult for people to misrate their web site." And I (poor ignorant thing) thought that pornmasters wanted their sites recognised for what they are to attract visitors. -- ############################################################### # Antonomasia ant(a)notatla.demon.co.uk # # See http://www.notatla.demon.co.uk/ # ###############################################################

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"The Failure to Do Your Job" amendment (was Re: White House ...)
by John Deters 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Please forgive me for following up to my own posting, but I just realized how close I was to a solution: A Constitutional amendment that would call for the impeachment of the President for failing to veto any three bills that are overturned by the Supreme Court on Constitutional grounds. Call it "The Failure to Do Your Job" amendment, or the "For Violating Your Oath" amendment. Maybe include a clause that stipulates the ex-President must also return any salary earned during his or her tenure. John -- J. Deters "Don't think of Windows programs as spaghetti code. Think of them as 'Long sticky pasta objects in OLE sauce'." +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | NET: mailto:jad@dsddhc.com (work) mailto:jad@pclink.com (home) | | PSTN: 1 612 375 3116 (work) 1 612 894 8507 (home) | | ICBM: 44^58'36"N by 93^16'27"W Elev. ~=290m (work) | | For my public key, send mail with the exact subject line of: | | Subject: get pgp key | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Time Online chat at 8 pm: Does the Net need a Nanny?
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'll be participating in a Time Online chat this evening at 8 pm EST. Our guests will be Chris Hansen from the ACLU and Bruce Taylor, a longtime CDA supporter and head of the National Law Center for Children and Families. We'll be talking about the White House censorware summit, self-rating of news sites, and free speech online in general. Join us at: http://pathfinder.com/time/community/newsforum.html You can participate in the chat as long as your browser supports frames, but the Ichat client software is more stable: http://www.ichat.com/download/ -Declan

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Attorneys: RSA patent invalid
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In a just published article in CyberLaw, patent attorneys Patrick Flinn and James Jordan rise serious questions about the validity of the RSA patent in the US. The authors conclude: > Due largely to luck, bluster, and the naiveti of potential competitors, the owner of United States Patent No. 4,405,829 has enjoyed a virtual monopoly on all uses of the RSA Algorithm. However, a careful scrutiny of the RSA Patent claims, and other details of its disclosure and prosecution, reveal both significant limits to the scope of the patent and material questions regarding its validity. The full article can be found at http://www.cyberlaw.com/rsa.html -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred

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Time Online chat at 8 pm: Does the Net need a Nanny?
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We're having a Time Online chat this evening at 8 pm EST to discuss Net-censorship. I'll be joining Chris Hansen from the ACLU and Bruce Taylor, a longtime CDA supporter and head of the National Law Center for Children and Families. We'll be talking about the White House censorware summit, self-rating of web sites, and free speech online in general. Join us at: http://pathfinder.com/time/community/newsforum.html You can participate in the chat as long as your browser supports frames, but the Ichat client software is more stable: http://www.ichat.com/download/ -Declan

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Re: The Real Plan: Making the Net Safe for Censorship
by Lizard 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:42 PM 7/16/97 -0700, Ross Wright wrote: >On or About 16 Jul 97 at 18:12, Lizard wrote: > >> At 04:47 PM 7/16/97 -0700, Ross Wright wrote: >> >Marc: >> > >> >What a bunch of crap! Keep out of the internet, you government >> >flunky. Let business, commerce and freedom of speech remain in >> >it's new home, Cyberspace. And save your regulations for someone >> >who needs them. >> >> You will get a lot more respect on the net once you learn how to >> read messages. I'll leave it you to figure out what you got wrong. > >Umm, I think I understood the message, and Mr. Rotenberg's >involvement in the politics of censorship, as it relates to the >Internet. > No, you do not. >> Sheesh. And I retreated to mailing lists to get away from this kind >> of stuff on USENET. > >What? I just feel that there should be no laws or resolutions or >promises made or kept by the United States Government about the >internet. > That's not the kind of stuff I'm referring to. >On or About 16 Jul 97 at 14:42, Declan McCullagh wrote, about >something that Marc Rotenberg <rotenberg(a)epic.org> wrote: > >>On the other hand, without a proper law, > >See, when they say "without" that means they think we need one. > >>parents can purchase and >>activate measures to protect their children from adult material and >>still not feel secure in their homes from unwanted material. > >Ohhhh, so scary. Not safe in the home! Imagine that. Sigh. While occasionally I am prone to fits of charity and altruism, today is not one of those days. I shall leave it to someone more merciful than I (such as, perhaps, the Marquis de Sade, or Attila the Hun) to explain your error to you. Perhaps Marc himself will enlighten you, though, frankly, I hope he doesn't, as this could provide much amusement over time.

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Censorware empowerment meeting (was satire)
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Since I seem to have been misunderstood on at least two lists now, let me forward this. --Declan ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 12:45:25 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: Lizard <lizard(a)dnai.com> Cc: Glenn Hauman <hauman(a)bb.com>, Seth Finkelstein <sethf(a)MIT.EDU>, jseiger(a)cdt.org, jberman(a)cdt.org, fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Re: White House "kinder, gentler"-CDA/censor empowerment meeting Lizard has it right. My post was meant to be satire. I should have been more clear. In fact, a good friend of mine sent me this message: > Declan, remember how I promised you I'd let you know as soon as I > thought you'd been in Washington too long, so that you wouldn't turn > into a beltway hack? > > This is the red flag. Get out. Apologies to all. In the future I will label all satiric posts as -L18, meaning those who are under 18 will probably not get the joke. By labeling my posts in this manner, I can ensure that they will be indexed up by search engines that will in the future only index properly-labeled pages. I can also ensure that users of Internet Explorer will remain able to read my scribbings, since the next version of IE is going to ship with RSACi turned on as a default. I will thus do my part to ensure a childsafe cyberspace, free from inappropriate material and bad jokes of all kinds. -Declan On Wed, 16 Jul 1997, Lizard wrote: > Um...I think Declan was being humorously sarcastic. (What was that thread a > few days ago about how irony doesn't work?) What's frightening is that his > sarcasm comes perilously close -- some might say overlaps -- posts made in > all apparent sincerity by others.

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