December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Remailer Ecash Bounty
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I, Monty Cantsin, will pay fifty dollars to the first operator of a remailer on Raph's list to get a machine up and running which accepts ecash as payment to forward a message. Offer expires October 27, 1997 C.E. Disputes are to be settled by Tim May. If Mr. May declines to participate, Monty Cantsin will decide. Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.html -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNC10kJaWtjSmRH/5AQEY5Af+PBBY0QU8ixNYgqIpWQkHEDf22lhVleaB JJ81Pe4TCllk3KJ0WU8+B7fVdt3oQEzaZLKobQqP6NJOfXai3dwxc5C4MPQe+YGw N6jQbcKetIwX7EUb2siKOq07W1hxVhYm6liYxeUHEBR8hWjCeUM1JiJ3IC3GALAi bJ0mDhkhEIugYkfBXl2mBm4VjQRPWSt8GxqhWDneyn4maJjmOs1lco1WvGuLC+GA fK1F9PnJIKZITzeAEjTB87H7LFxhy0eRuL+r9y8Fqw288bSkKC6aG//fTLOV7B8d MeIXu2UHa2HuB/L1MWmAVFGyKfoI0xJqeXeWCNmrLRlcp6GdCrQgig== =sNwa -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Digital Postage (fwd)
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Jim Choate wrote: >[Tim May wrote: ed.] >> Some will remail for some form of digital postage. Some will charge too little, some too much. >> Some will adjust their prices based on market/customer reactions. And so on. > >And there are a couple of problems with this: > > - it relies on a mechanism not currently in place to interface with > other more traditional financial institutions. Which I might add > don't look upon this as the most trustworthy mechanism. Ecash is in place right now. > - how do you charge for the postage, per submission? What happens when > I want to send 10,000 parties the email. Do I still pay the digi-postage > equivalent of $.35? Or do I pay $350.00? This is easily worked out between the remailer operator and the customer. Were I running a remailer, I would charge $350.00. As a customer, I would not see this as unreasonable. > What about intermediate remailers and their desire to get a cut > of the pie? Each hop should charge, of course. They are all providing the same service. >I suspect that anon remailers will operate by something similar to >ISP's where when the account is setup some fee is paid for use and >not on a use by use based fee. The problem with that is it creates a >'concrete' link between the party desiring anonymity and the remailer >operator that may be exploited in some (most? all?) cases to break >that anonymity. The way to break the concrete link is with blinded credentials. Of course, ecash already provides this feature without the hassle of opening an account with a remailer operator, writing and deploying new software, etc. etc. Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.html -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNC14U5aWtjSmRH/5AQHk1Qf+PTnZJmiFr3sFSvfoH51a/mpuhS4OhFJq HjVJhG1BIKcQjm2i4V/lZPqjKaUUD+UMpZcQb6KKy6OgHxYJwZlmCW+xnWslmTEH RMoBa6NUZS0xv8vhrOkpv+v/5CArowqaeTV/+P1q98E6SPhzgL1EpTLUZ8+M8LfC H1duBAL3xNNcVj9ZWnh6UyVKh7cCtCQOTZyDxtHXWovzrxuAKpsUVWcpF5IEoy1O k8Bv5vOUYKvxdEdVF9xSos7d8VvPgzWX+err1gtrZqVux4/nVg5EFfE/NghpGPVp 2pBY+Vq3iPdE6kUR6Qff7NJHtHClXUyHg+Ya9tyEDkGl+SuYz+JWMw== =28IQ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Remailer Attack
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Robert A. Costner wrote: >>Also, by my reading of the "uptime" statistic in Raph's remailer >>chart, a reply block is not going to be very reliable for receiving >>mail. > >The Redneck remailer, for instance, has a 99+% uptime rate. The >reason for this being high is that it is run under a business model. >The connectivity basically cannot go down. There has only been 23 >minutes of connectivity downtime in the last year. Redneck is run on >a business quality network with multiple backbone feeds. But things >break down after that. Redneck also runs on an underpowered 486 with >no "hotfix" backup machine. It is not considered to be a mission >critical piece of equipment. I might notice Redneck have a problem >at 1:00 am, but it can wait until in the morning to get fixed. >Situations like this, combined with software upgrades account for >downtime. Thank you for this detailed description. One more question: When redneck is down, do other remailers discard their mail if they cannot connect to it? If this is the case, it would seem to be a serious design flaw, probably prompted by the desire to save disk space. A quarter per message would probably cover the cost. Another general comment on remailer statistics: 99+% uptime sounds good, but really it isn't. For some reason, we are accustomed to the idea that remailers should lose messages. Well, they shouldn't. A remailer is just electronic mail with a few extra features and electronic mail is exceptionally reliable. According to Raph, redneck has an uptime of 99.83%. By my understanding, this means for every 1000 messages handled, redneck loses 17. That's actually pretty high, especially if it's your message that gets lost. I do not mean to pick on redneck in particular, or, really, any of the remailers. But where the remailer network stands right now, it cannot be used for everyday mail which cuts down its usage quite a bit and makes it a lot harder to build nifty things on top of it like reply block systems. >This is similar to the AOL effect. It is often hard to have respect >for an unknown poster from AOL. The remailer at EFGA is new. I've >come to realize that this natural hostility towards a remailer is a >good reason to put the remailer on a separate domain. We might do >this. Ideally the domain would be shared by other non-anonymous users, but hostility would probably be reduced even if the domain were something like "guest.efga.org", even if many people knew that really meant "anonymous". Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.html -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNC2EIJaWtjSmRH/5AQESzQf+NzGRBRjoYL7mQl9q50VsphcnkgQiq1wR XW+UKjrCokfW/Bwt6vMKKJco9cquZiuOkISoCX9+JZlhJkm2l5YxswUcrxaaVNpr T4w1aVQGzcNSDVq3oUwfFiG29S4DQaKV6HD+hz9ffS8fCMtyoA4wkFgLLALqxJpE MsHPQoI2vZtAU7Ht8HgFg2dQsJqoYDAWp8Un9CFnWNYECQ2yPZNVvbiQ7jlmplP6 IrOBQ9E5dk+gaAq4yPfoWD0GTAjBIIaaLMbh+rg+0oUe9LaK0Vl/kIbHx9DvuRN+ 0IbxUy5kwGDhBhWLznDo0B19Xl5QQdj65qBp3TmZqqtQC2MCpeynFA== =2Oiw -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Remailer Attack (fwd)
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

See also the CDA. Yes, parts are still in effect, including provisions giving immunity to interactive services if material was provided by someone else. Conceivably this could apply to remailers, if they could call themselves interactive services. Certainly the material they send was not provided by them.

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Re: Digital Postage (fwd)
by Syniker＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>If remailers are going to work as a business we can't turn our back on traditional payment mechanisms. The problem, as I see it, is that there is no clear mechanism for me to write a normal check and have that turn into a anon account easily without involving 3rd parties and their concommittent extra costs - further increasing the end-user cost to do business. There better be a reason or they won't pay for long.>> I'm probably not thinking right Jim -- but what if I bought a postal money order, or such, with cash... sent it too you... along with an encyrpted email that referred to the serial number of the money order... then, you uncyphered my email... to verify payment, and recyphered my account info to me... Would something like that work to establish a paid-up account? Best to you... LarryM pgp pubkey@ http://www.jetlink.net/~aargh/

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No Subject
by gmd＠earthling.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The empire never ended. The black iron prison is still with us. Aramchek.

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FBI Technical Assistance Draft
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thanks to Willis Ware we offer the full text of the FBI's August 28 "technical assistance draft" for encryption legislation, a few paragraphs of which Declan posted here: http://jya.com/fbi-tad-s909.htm (57K) Although prepared to revise McCain/Kerrey's S 909 to satisfy law enforcement, it's the source for the various amendments to SAFE which copied much of it unchanged, and some portions not yet lifted may foretell what's coming.

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Re: write up AP for FC++
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May wrote: >>I'm now mildly amused that Bell is being seen as the inventor of anonymous >>and untraceable murder markets, with clueless journalists seeking >>information on his discovery. But, hey, better he rot in jail than me. At 04:27 PM 8/18/97 -0700, Blanc wrote: > A presentation from you at FC98 would remind everyone of your own initial > writings on the subject and provide you with due credit (better credit than > a jail/rotting sentence). I can't think of anyone else who would be more > qualified for this. Freedom of speech is protected by nothing stronger than the cluelessness of our masters. If you publish your idea in appropriate forums, you can get away with it. If you go from forum to forum singing your idea like a broken record, and flogging it like soap, you will probably go to jail. I see no point in explaining our ideas so thoroughly and repeatedly that even cops and politicians start to understand them. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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RE: engineering infowar disasters (was Re: How the FBI/NSA forces can further twist SAFE)
by Phillip Hallam-Baker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Saturday, September 27, 1997 7:57 PM, Adam Back [SMTP:aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk] wrote: > Reckon cypherpunks can knock up a few of those. > > So lets here some ideas for good photogenic infowar attacks which show > that the lack of crypto is dangerous. I suggest unless people want to hand the FBI an excuse to harass everyone that they don't enter into this discussion. There are plenty of conspiracy laws on the book. Infrastructure attacks are illegal and exactly the kind of thing that gets long jail sentences. More to the point it is completely counterproductive. Even now there is probably some FBI junior waving Back's message in the air as if he has won the pools, probable cause for wiretaps I would say. I suspect I'm not the only person on the list who is responsible for a service that is a regular hacker target. If I catch someone I really don't care what the motive for the attack was. I'm going to look to make that person serve jail time. Phill

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Re: write up AP for FC++
by Blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

More than a month later, James A. Donald responded: >I see no point in explaining our ideas so thoroughly and repeatedly >that even cops and politicians start to understand them. ......................................................... I dont' think where you publish your idea makes as much difference as in how you present it, based on what attitude and inclinations you reveal about your motives for the future. If you are having an abstract discussion which explores the ramifications of what a new technology makes possible - not only for the good, but for the bad - it is surely distinguishable from a discussion on who exactly you dislike and how precisely you are going to hurt them badly with your new, advanced weapon-tools. One type of discussion could reveal your perspective and the scope of your ability to follow ideas to their logical conclusions. A different discussion, conversely, could reveal your psychological problems and the malfunctioning of a disturbed imagination. Anyone who studies ideas seriously will want to explain their discoveries to colleagues; it's almost a given that this is so. I wasn't suggesting to Tim that he reiterate himself to clueless public authorities for the purpose of elevating their understanding (although it is a fact that Tim very often has explained, again and again, the same ideas which he has posted in the past, until lately he has arrived at the point of merely referencing himself and his previous contributions to the list.). I was making reference to the mistake certain people are making, as he mentioned, of attributing to Jim Bell the origin of the AP ideas, when Tim's own extensive exploration of this subject preceded Jim's epiphanies by years. I was encouraging Tim that presenting his ideas to a physical gathering of people who are of the mind to consider the impact of these possibilities upon their business enterprises, would contribute to clarifying the situation (to some degree - I can't say how or what kind of effect it would actually have, obviously). But anyway, James, don't you think it is better to live in an atmosphere of people who have a clue, rather than otherwise, regardless of their position in this contradictory world? .. Blanc

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