December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Russian Invasion
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Toto <toto(a)sk.sympatico.ca> writes: > Casey Iverson wrote: > > > > At 07:22 PM 2/28/97 EST, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: > > >I recall that when I was becoming a naturalized amcit circa 1986, I was as > > >a single question: name the 2 senators of New York State. These were D'Ama > > >and Moynihan back then, and they still are. I've heard of cases when the > > >didn't want someone to pass the exam, and they asked much harder questions > > >which some people actually flunked. > > > > > > Biggest mistake the INS ever made was to allow a piece of Russian dung like > > *you* into the USA > > It's a trick. A post-Reaganite desk jockey in Washington figured out > that we could save millions of dollars in missle fuel by luring the > Russians to the U.S. and 'then' nuking them. > Now, if we could only get them to all visit Congress at the same > time... You have reached the Central Intelligence Agency Web site - running StrongHold. All of our agents are busy right now. Your session is important to us. Please remain on the socket for the next available operative. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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Electronic Cash
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Thu, 27 Feb 97 18:16:03 EST From: weffross(a)counsel.com (Walter A Effross -- American Univ. - Washington ) To: rah(a)shipwright.com Subject: Electronic Cash To: rah(a)shipwright.com Inet Robert, I thought that you and the members of your group would be interested in this Symposium. Please feel free to send the information around to whatever listservs you think appropriate. Thanks! Walter THE ELECTRONIC FUTURE OF CASH - A SYMPOSIUM The Washington College of Law and the American University Law Review are proud to announce a full-day Symposium on the Electronic Future of Cash, to be held at the law school in Washington, DC on Friday, April 18, 1997 in connection with the publication of a special Symposium issue of the Law Review on this topic. The first panel, "The Technology of Electronic Cash," will include: Newsweek columnist Steven Levy; Cybercash General Counsel Russ Stevenson; Peter Wayner, author of Digital Cash: Commerce on the Internet; Gary Lorenz, General Manager of the Diebold Campus Systems Division; and a representative (invited) of the National Security Agency. This panel will examine the operation of stored value cards and encryption techniques and will include a demonstration of a "cyberpayment" made online with digital cash. The second panel, "Commentary on the Regulation of Electronic Cash," brings together the authors of articles in the Symposium issue (provided, with additional materials, to all registrants) to review and recommend regulatory efforts from the viewpoints of academics, practitioners, bankers, and consumer advocates. Panelists include: Professor Mark Budnitz, Georgia State University College of Law; Richard Field, Chair of the Electronic Commerce Payment Committee of the American Bar Association; Professor Egon Guttman, Washington College of Law; Professor David Oedel, Mercer University Law School; Simon Lelieveldt, Senior Policy Advisor, Payment Systems Policy Department, De Nederlandsche Bank (the Dutch Central Bank); and Brian Smith of Mayer, Brown & Platt. Dr. David Chaum, the founder and president of DigiCash, has been invited to give a luncheon address. The third panel, "The Perspectives of the Regulators," includes: Thomas Baxter, Jr., General Counsel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; William Kroener, General Counsel of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; Michael Billsma, Acting Director, Community and Consumer Law, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; Stephen Kroll, Legal Counsel, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), United States Treasury Department; Scott Charney, Chief, Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, Criminal Justice Division, Department of Justice; John Lopez, Counsel, Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy; Paul Glenn, Special Counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision; and Lucy Morris, Assistant Director for Credit Practices, Federal Trade Commission. A reception will follow. Registration fees (including lunch) are: $150 for preregistrants; $175 for registration at the door; $100 for Washington College of Law alumni; $80 for judges, law clerks, and government employees; and $40 for full-time academics. Please register early, as space may be limited. For a registration form and more information, please contact Professor Walter Effross, the Symposium's organizer and panel moderator, at (202) 274-4017, see our Symposium website at http://www.wcl.american.edu/pub/journals/lawrev/electronic_cash/con f.htm, or email: futurecash(a)wcl.american.edu. --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity." -- Jerry Pournelle The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/rah/ FC97: Anguilla, anyone? http://www.ai/fc97/

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We Will Send Your Bulk Email
by Product Link 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

*If you want to be removed from our mailing list, please respond to this email and put "Remove" in the subject line. We will send out your bulk E Mail. Period. No qualifiers, no conditions, no nonsense...and we'll do it at the best prices. Call us as (805) 654-4042. We are Product Link. We are a business partner with a marketing company which develops buyers for its clients' products through electronic marketing; primarily broadcast fax. Together, we have over a hundred clients, almost 10% of which are Fortune 500 companies. We have numerous staff, and have just begun, at client request, to send high volumes of E Mail. If you're new to bulk E Mail marketing, as we were a short time ago, I can confirm that all the E Mails you've been getting from E Mail software companies about how great E Mail marketing is; well, they're true. However, as those of you who have already purchased software and have tried bulk E mail know, nothing good ever comes easy. Our staff has spent millions of advertising dollars on our clients' behalf; everything from commercials on the Superbowl to ads in the New York Times, to full page spreads in Scientific American.; not to mention the sending of over 1,000,000 marketing faxes a year for major corporations. Bulk E mail has been quite an eye opener. The Internet, the on line services and ISP providers are full of shrill, self appointed "net cops," whose mission in life seems to be dumping on those who have the audacity to sell product via E Mail. I don't wish nor intend to debate the issue here, except to say that if you've purchased bulk E Mail software (or intend to), you've already found out that when you attempt to use it, your ISP provider will shut you down, your E Mail account will be bombed, and electronic flames will become a way of life. Since we have a low tolerance for allowing small groups of vocal fanatics to dictate our business life, we set up our own system to send out Bulk E Mail. This system will be greatly expanded in 30 days or so (we're installing more T lines), but we currently have room on our system to send out Bulk E Mail for a limited number of companies or individuals other than ourselves. We'll send out your order, large or small. We'll do it quickly, and we'll do it at a really great price. You can supply the list, or we'll supply the list. Place an order with us, and we'll give you advice on how to set up your E Mail so your on line service won't shut you down, how to write your material, and much more. We will also write your marketing material, if you so desire. If you supply a list, we can run it through our computer program to sort out all duplicates and bad AOL or CompuServe addresses. If you buy a list from us, we will guarantee that the exact number of names you order will go out; if we send a list for you and a number of addresses are not delivered, we will send out more E Mails until you get delivered exactly what you ordered. We can even tell you how to confirm that your list was sent. We also have programs that can filter out E Mail "bombs" and other irritating toys played with at your expense by people who don't have a life. When we first began exploring bulk E mail, we contacted numerous firms advertising that they would send out bulk E mail. What we got was answering machines, disconnected numbers, and no call backs. The one firm that did contract us would only send limited numbers of E mails for us, and then only if we had already sent the list out once and taken off all the removes (go figure...if we could send out the list once, what did we need them for?). We finally got so exasperated, we set up our own system. And are we glad we did. Speaking as a marketing man with over 30 years experience in major advertising, E Mail marketing will change the face of advertising and cost of sale forever. I do not believe that has ever been a vehicle like it in history to allow anyone of any size and any budget to advertise and sell their products literally overnight. We employ 18 people, and I guarantee you that when you contact us as (805) 654-4042, you'll get a call back. Right away. And the office phone number we give you, will have a live person at the other end. Following is a price list to give you an idea of the quality of our company. Please bear in mind that Bulk E Mail is effective in large numbers; i.e., 25,000 and above. Price List To Send Bulk E Mail: Amount Cost Set Up (One Time Fee) 25,000 $150.00 $50.00 50,000 $275.00 $50.00 75,000 $400.00 $50.00 100,000 $550.00 $50.00 Bulk E Mail amounts above 100,000 per sending will be bid on a case by case basis. If you wish to modem us a list, there may be a small charge for down load depending on list size. We can provide a list for you at a nominal charge. If you wish us to "clean" your list (remove all duplicates and bad addresses), we will supply a bid on a case by case basis as with writing your marketing materials and other services. If we may be of service to you, please call us directly at (805) 654-4042. Thank you.

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Re: Depends / Re: Senate spams
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Greg Broiles wrote: > At 07:27 PM 2/28/97 -0800, Toto wrote: > > Only asinine, dip-shit numbskulls would be capable of making this > >idiotic extrapolation. > Please sketch out the details of this "extrapolation". Simple enough. Snow stated: "given that there are [many some a-few] messages being sent to this list that are sent by non-human entities (bots, auto-replies, bounces etc.) is there a way to avoid propigating them." Which Greg extrapolated to suggest: "Will you count Raph's remailer statistics as "machine generated" and exclude them, too?" Which I suppose could be taken to yet another level of extrapolation by asking the question, "Will you count cc:'d messages as 'machine generated' and exclude them, too?" After which it could be further extrapolated to ask, "Will you count posts composed on computers as being 'machine generated' and exclude them, too?" Greg, in his typical muddying of the waters, tries to twist the thoughts of others around to the extent that, if one followed Greg's logic to its conclusion, one might believe snow is of the opinion that the "Welcome to Cypherpunks" message should be deleted because it is auto-generated. If this is, indeed, the case, then I would expect snow would explain his reasons for thinking thusly. > You cannot talk about spam (using the "inappropriate or off-topic message" > definition, not the "posted too many times" definition) without talking > about content. Once again, you are self-servingly using the C2nsorship definition of spam, which is not common to any of the anti-spam forums that I follow. Of course content must be taken into consideration, even in the case of auto-generated messages. Auto-generated messages, such as remailer information, can be on-topic for the list. As far as I am concerned, posts by list subscribers cannot possibly be off-topic, since it is up to the subscribers to decide what they consider to be a suitable topic for the list. > You are also talking about censorship based on content, but you don't seem > to want to admit it. Another misrepresentation on your part. All moderation/censorship is based on content. I have always maintained, however, that a rational person is capable of looking at the content, source, and destinations of a post and determining if it is shotgun-spawned crapola and/or a mailbombing or denial of service attack. > > Anyone who read my post to Igor, suggesting that I would have no > >problem > >with him intercepting autobot-replies that result from mailbomb attacks, > >also knows that I suggested even the empty spam-messages being deleted > >should be stored where they are open to scrutiny, and that I, for one, > >would indeed be scrutinizing them. > > Boy, this sounds like a really familiar system .. can't quite remember > where I've seen it used before .. Well, you certainly didn't see it on the CypherPunks list. What was seen there was a fascist takeover of the list by a dictator who relegated posts he and his employer personally disliked to the flames list. > There was some guy named Toto who wrote > to me a few weeks ago, Try including specific quotes, Greg, even if they are out-of-context. > >> I don't see anything morally wrong with deliberately altering the flow of > >> messages to and through the list, but I think it's bad form to pretend not > >> to be doing that. > > > > Who is doing this, Greg? Name names. Give us an example of who is > >doing this and pretending not to do it. Why are your claims so vague? > > Because I'm interested in talking about ideas, not people. Not just because you were blowing smoke? > I realize this > may come as something of a surprise, but there are some circumstances where > simply calling someone an "idiot" or a "liar" or saying that they've got > their employers' sperm in their mouth is not a meaningful substitute for > explaining why you think they're wrong. Never let it be said that I am one to let bad taste (pardon the pun) stand in the way of a cheap shot. And I do explain why I think you are not only wrong, but purposely attempting to misrepresent the stances taken by others. I will reiterate that I am of the belief that there should always be a completely unmoderated, uncensored CypherPunks list, and that additional, filtered lists, should be merely a conjunction to that list, in the interests of spreading information regarding strong crypto in the widest possible manner. -- Toto ----------------------------- "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre" http://bureau42.base.org/public/xenix/xenbody.html

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Try It Before You Buy It!
by Andy Barber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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New Product in beta: SecurText
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Sat, 1 Mar 97 02:12:26 -0500 From: <softpub%toolz.UUCP(a)vec.net> To: Softlist(a)vec.net Subject: New Product in beta: SecurText [Software Entrepreneur's Mailing List] [p1198: Sat Mar 1 02:12:17 1997] >From: "Wormhole Technologies, Inc." <Erik(a)wormhole-net.com> We have been developing SecurText for over a year now and we finally have a beta. SecurText is an anti-hacker, anti-virus, e-mail enhanced network product. It is a versatile, elegant, easy-to-use alternative to PGP. It runs on Windows 3.1, 3.11, and Win 95. Our commercial release will be fully S/MIME compliant, have built-in e-mail functionality for totally seamless sending and receiving of secure messages and attachments, and protect against viruses. Check out our free beta at http://www.wormhole-net.com. Note that, due to export controls on encryption, this version does not give you military strength encryption so do not use for actual privacy or security. For the actual, military strength version you must send me your name, US mailing address, plus $3.50 for s/h, and I will send it to you. Send to: Wormhole Technologies, Inc. (softpub member) 6 Ash Avenue West Orange, NJ 07052 By the way, I would really like this beta circulated as much as possible and to get as much feedback as possible. Kindly provide me with an e-mail address when you download and I'll send you a short questionnaire (just 6 questions). Thanks. --------------------------- Very truly yours, ERIK P. WEINGOLD, President/CEO Erik(a)wormhole-net.com Wormhole Technologies, Inc.<tm> keeping the net free with cryptography<tm> http://www.wormhole-net.com -- Send Software Entrepreneur's Mailing List postings to: -- softpub(a)toolz.com -- Send mailing list add/change/delete/gripes to: -- softpub-request(a)toolz.com --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity." -- Jerry Pournelle The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/rah/ FC97: Anguilla, anyone? http://www.ai/fc97/

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Pro-CODE Bill
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We've put the new Senate Pro-CODE encryption bill announced by VTR here last week at: http://jya.com/s377.htm (23K)

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Re: Depends / Re: Senate spams
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dale Thorn wrote: [snip--left nut] > it would be nice > to try to draw more of a connection between the ideas and ideals and > the reality of the list, otherwise, we'll all wind up looking like > hypocrites. If I post missives misinterpreting your own words and intentions, then you may no doubt be seen as a hypocrite to the gullible, or to those who choose to limit their world view by reading my posts and killfiling yours. In either case, I don't think this is a reason for you to lose a lot of sleep. > I personally don't see anything wrong with limiting > postings to subscribers, as long as subscriptions are open to all. > I also don't see anything wrong with warning a poster about commercial > messages, or other technical problems such as attaching really huge > files to go to the list, since all uncensored forums do this and > everyone I know of agrees with it. To have this option seemed to me to be an area of common agreement among CypherPunks list subscribers at the time of the 'Laker's fans named Bubba' mailboming of the list via forged subscriptions to a sports forum. The attempts to label, as hypocrites, those who thereafter complained about the fascist measures taken by self-appointed list saviors, are nothing more than anal-retentive smoke blowing. I have an efficient ISP provider and can, for a reasonable price, not worry about excessive download time, etc. The real-world reality is that there are those for whom paying to download the results of mailbomb attacks constitutes a denial of service to them. There are undoubtedly also others whose financial and personal time constraints may make a filtered version of the list attractive to them, and thus lead to them retaining their interest in crypto issues, instead of losing interest. I have not seen any of the anti-censorship elements in the CypherPunks suggest that there should not be alternatives available for those whose personal needs and/or interests are better served by various methods of filtering. To attempt to force UCE/Spam on those ill-equipped to deal with it serves no purpose other than to lessen the number of people who will have information in regard to the issues surrounding strong crypto. > The "problem" here (if there is one) is determining SPAM and the like > on a case-by-case basis. Suggestions have been floated here, but as > far as I know, none have been implemented. Igor has implemented spam-attack measures, and has been straightforward in both revealing these measures and asking for opinions in regard to his actions and proposals. I do not anticipate Igor resorting to furtive methodologies in self- servingly manipulating posts but, at the same time, I monitor what is going on in the background of the various lists. I regard 'trust' as something that should be undertaken with one's eyes open, just the same. > The real test, of course, > is when deletions do occur, whether there are any complaints, and > how those complaints are handled. Thankfully, the CypherPunks list will likely never lack for paranoid subscribers to raise warning flags whenever nefarious activities take place in regard to the list (or when the computer 'burps', either). It is up to the individual subscriber to separate the realities from the delusions. (I myself count on the space aliens to provide me with advice and support from the messages I receive from them when the Scotch I drink shorts out the spaces between the mercury fillings in my teeth. You may have a different method.) -- Toto ----------------------------- "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre" http://bureau42.base.org/public/xenix/xenbody.html

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Re: Pro-CODE Crypto Bill
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Alan Olsen wrote: > At 12:47 PM 3/2/97 -0500, John Young wrote: > >We've put the new Senate Pro-CODE encryption bill at: > > http://jya.com/s377.htm (23K) > There is an interesting addition to the bill that I have not seen discussed > here yet. The pro-code bill has added an "Information Security Board". This > provision worries me. It sound like a nice little rubber hose committee. > ("The House Committee on Unamerican Encryption"?) > Any opinions on this new development? As long as Senator Charlie McCarthy is heading the committee, then I can't foresee any problems. (But, for the record, I do not know Alan Olsen, and have never been associated with him personally, or member of any group with which he is associated.) Excuse me, I hear a pounding on the door... -- Toto ----------------------------- "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre" http://bureau42.base.org/public/xenix/xenbody.html

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Re: Pro-CODE Bill
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Upon looking over the bill in question (helpfully provided in a more accessible location by jya), I do have some concerns over whether it allows for anonymous remailer export - it has a provision stating Nothing in this Act may be construed to affect any law intended to prevent the- (2) illegal or unauthorized distribution or release of classified, confidential, or proprietary information; or (3) enforcement of Federal or State criminal law. Which causes some question in my mind whether it would cover laws against or discouraging anonymous remailers. (While the Supreme Court would probably find outlawing anonymous remailers to be unconstitutional, laws discouraging their export or other lesser forms of harrassment might still pass muster, unfortunately.) -Allen

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