December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

FC97: Post-strike airfares
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

One more datablip about FC97 and I'll shut up a bit. Having just promised gratuitously cheap airfares to Anguilla/St. Maarten, I went and called the local branch of American Express Travel and got some actual prices. Their number is 617-868-2600, but AEXP-T has branches everywhere, and, I think, an 800 number, so you might want to get ahold of them that way... Anyway, here's what I got, as of about 20 minutes ago: For departures 2/22/97 with return 3/1/97, Boston Anguilla $ 864 Boston St. Maarten 851 (+ Taxi and short ferry ride to Anguilla) San Francisco Anguilla 828 San Francisco St. Maarten 748 Heathrow Anguilla 1,315 (looks like the strike didn't affect you folks, sorry) All in all, that's as good as the prices we were getting for 14 day advance purchase earlier this month. Not bad, but not completely spectacular. Note that it's cheaper to get to Anguilla or St. Maarten from San Francisco than it is from Boston, so y'all don't have an excuse. Well, possibly seat fatigue, but Sunday on the beach will fix that. I'll check tomorrow to see if the airline yield management software war gives us something better after the weekend's over. Only if fares are significantly lower will I post something here about it, in the interest of nomex conservation. :-). If you *do* decide to fly while the seats are hot, don't forget to register for FC97 first, so we can plan for meals and stuff: <http://www.offshore.com.ai/fc97/> Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- 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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Re: Moderation experiment almost over; "put up or shut up"
by Dave Hayes 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Against Moderation writes: > I believe homophobia is a great way to bring out the censors in > people. However, inducing censorship is only part of fighting it. You assume that it is an enemy to be fought. While censorship is clearly undesireable, making it an enemy only strengthens it. > You also need respectable people to some in, argue cogently against > the dangers of censorship, perhaps even get some extremely reasonable > articles suppressed, and then spread the word about it. I find the > freedom-knights tactics' extremely lacking in this second, "clean up > and analyze the mess" phase. Part, if not all, of that lack is due to our knowledge of the subjective standard of "respectability" that human beings have. That's the same differentiation used in many censorship attempts, and if we made or supported such differentiations this would undermine any anti-censorship actions we could take. The meta-points are: - What is reasonable to you may or may not be reasonable to me. That is why we refrain from censoring others, since we have no absolute standard of reasonability. - You appear to be concerned with convincing others. We are not concerned with that, since we know that the default for most others is to be invincibly unconvincable. We are simply here to be living models for an arbitrary code of behavior...that behavior being outlined in the Freedom Knights FAQ. - Please remember that you have to judge who is and is not a Freedom Knight by their -actions- and not their claims. > censorship on cypherpunks. However, I think most peoples' opinions > didn't really turn, or at least people didn't realize how serious > things were and didn't really care, until Tim May [someone the many > freedom-knights hate] started criticizing this censorship in extremely > reasonable messages that were suppressed from both the -edited and > -flames mailing list. Assuming that is true, that people do not care about censorship until a person with an arbitrary reasonability says something, I would say that such a group cares not about free speech...even if they think they do. ------ Dave Hayes - Altadena CA, USA - dave(a)jetcafe.org Freedom Knight of Usenet - http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet Two men were fighting outside Nasrudin's window at dead of night. Nasrudin got up, wrapped his only blanket around himself, and ran outside. As he tried to reason with the drunks, one snatched his blanket and both ran away. "What were they arguing about?" asked his wife when he went in. "It must have been the blanket. When they got that, the fight broke up."

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Re: Questions about Naughty Robot (fwd)
by Jeremiah A Blatz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Genocide <gen2600(a)aracnet.com> writes: > I got this message (on a system that I am webmaster on) regarding > something that sounded so stupid it made me chuckle...Naughty Robot...I > have enclosed the message below. If any of you have any idea what this > user is talking about, any info would be appreciated. <snip> > >> I had a customer in Tennesee who got an E-Mail saying that Naughty Robot > >> has infected your host computer and consider all your credit cards > >> stolen. > >> > >> I think it's a hoax, but the Admins at VR-NET Cafe say that they have > >> been hit with it and say that it's a script that does hack into the > >> IPS's server and sits back and watches the users browse the web and take > >> the info they see on there screen and dump to some remote server?? > >> > >> I was wondering if you have heard about it...and if so can you direct to > >> the right locations on the web to get the "Official" Scoop on it? It could theoretically be a JavaScript that makes a teeny tiny window and reports back stuff that it really shouldn't be able to see, I think Netscape fixed that bug, though. FWIW, Jer "standing on top of the world/ never knew how you never could/ never knew why you never could live/ innocent life that everyone did" -Wormhole -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQB1AwUBMwd5rskz/YzIV3P5AQF+7wMAwPZp89E0JQkI9OOGbqMULKTfEfyE6Edf 2K+U0l3I86aM6AkS6SeFbj2Nc6AwD3yXbFHR+d3Opn3yJcwGaLrCDtqM3qfeg8vR V3D3KWXVNai4ptHwB5ldM2GT+IQP0VJg =veqx -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Proposed info file
by ISP_Ratings 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Igor Chudov @ home wrote: > > Hi, > > The text below is what I wrote for cypherpunks(a)algebra.com to be > sent to new subscribers. Feel free to criticize. > > - Igor. > > @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ > > About cypherpunks mailing lists > ------------------------------- It all sounds very interesting especially given what's been going on. About how many posts a day can a subscriber reasonbly expect in their mailbox if one were to subscribe? Steve

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Re: Proposed info file
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

ISP_Ratings wrote: > Igor Chudov @ home wrote: > > About cypherpunks mailing lists > > ------------------------------- > > > It all sounds very interesting especially given what's been going > on. About how many posts a day can a subscriber reasonbly expect > in their mailbox if one were to subscribe? > About a hundred, maybe. It is QUITE A LOT. If you are not interested in applications of cryptography, the list may not be as interesting. All the bickering that you heard is mostly rotating around crypto use. - Igor.

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Re: More on digital postage
by Cynthia H. Brown 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sat, 15 Feb 1997 at 23:30:17 Timothy C. May wrote: > At 1:09 AM -0500 2/16/97, Cynthia H. Brown wrote: > > >Here in Canada, the CRTC (Canadian Radio & Telecomms Commission) put > >out rules limiting the time of day, etc. for phone spam (voice or > >fax). Does anyone out there have the specifics of the CRTC regs? > > "Spam" has rapidly become one of those overused, overloaded, meaningless > words. Everything bad on the Net these days is labelled "spam." > > For the phone example in Canada, just what is "spam"? > > -- Is it the semi-traditional definition of "spam," i.e., a phone call made > to thousands of sites? (At the same time? Sequentially? How?) > > -- Is it a robo-dialer, with no human at the other end? > > -- Or is it merely an "unwanted phone call"? I used "spam" to mean scripted commercial solicitations, by a human or robot, based on a list of names and numbers. I'm not sure whether this is the same definition as in the legislation. > As I see it, the danger of criminalizing "unwanted phone calls" is obvious. > (Though obviously the courts and prisons are not about to be filled up with > people who committed the heinous crime of making an unrequested phone call.) > > The danger of all "junk mail" and "junk phone call" laws is that they give > power to the government to decide on what is junk and what is not. My understanding is that the legislation restricts commercial solicitations by phone to: - certain times of day (not after 9 PM? unsure) - one initial call, and no follow-ups if the person explicitly asks the caller to never phone this number again (again, unsure of legal details) I don't consider this scenario overly restrictive, since it gives _them_ a chance to sell their product, and _me_ a chance to have them delete my name from their database. Unfortunately, without some formal means of redress, very few telemarketers seem to remember that they are unlikely to find new customers if they call at 7 AM Saturday for the third time this month. What means of redress would you suggest, in the absence of legislation / fines, to someone who has been called repeatedly by a telemarketer? This person is not a current customer and so cannot withdraw his/her business. Cynthia =============================================================== Cynthia H. Brown, P.Eng. E-mail: cynthb(a)iosphere.net | PGP Key: See Home Page Home Page: http://www.iosphere.net/~cynthb/ Junk mail will be ignored in the order in which it is received. Klein bottle for rent; enquire within.

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Moderation experiment and moderator liability
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There appears to be a bit of a hush up surrounding the circumstances of the pause in the moderation experiment and subsequent change of moderation policy. To clear the air, I think it would be kind of nice if the full story were told, so I'll gather here a history as I understand it. Information from my archives (those I have), and from asking around in email. I realise that some of the actions that I am claiming of participants in this sequence of events seem hard to believe given their high reputation capital. I was myself initially dubious on the strength of the reputation capital of those being critisized. However the below is the sequence of events as close as I can determine. I welcome being proven wrong on any points. Events: 1. Dimitri Vulis posted a lot of off topic posts over a period of time 2. Dimitri reposted a couple of 50k Serdar Argic revisionist articles 3. Dimitri challenged John Gilmore to shut him up 4. John unsubscribed Dimitri, and modified majordomo(a)toad.com to siltently ignore Dimitri's attempts to resubscribe. Dimitri could still post, and presumably read cypherpunks with a different email address or via an archive. It was a token unsubscription only. 5. When Dimitri figured out what John had done, he made many posts denigrating John as a censor 6. Much discussion ensued critisizing John for blocking Dimitri 7. Over Christmas some joker subscribed cypherpunks(a)toad.com to a load of sports mailing lists, Hugh Daniels and John cleaned up the mess 8. Followed a long thread on hardening lists against spam attacks 9. John made a post to the list announcing that the list would be moderated for one month from Jan 11 as an experiment, and included Sandy Sandfort's proposed moderatation policy and offer to act as moderator. It appeared that the moderation experiment was Sandy's suggestion, and that John had agreed to go along with it. 10. Some discussion both pro and con of moderation, and the technical , free speech, and legal aspects followed 11. Moderation started Jan 19, the main list became the moderated list 12. Lots of people complained about the moderation, some defended it Tim May quietly unsubscribed 13. Some people complained about inconsistency in moderation -- some articles which went to flames were not flamish, but made by posters with low reputation capital, or were following up to posts which were flamish. 14. After a while some people commented on Tim's absence, and sent him mail asking what happened. Tim posted an article explaining that he had left because of the imposed moderation without discussion. 15. John followed up with a post defending the moderation experiment, and arguing for it's popularity (he claimed as evidence the number of posters who had not taken the trouble to move to the unedited list). 16. Dimitri posted an article where he claimed that there was a security flaw in Stronghold. Stronghold is C2Nets commercial version of the freeware Apache SSL web server. Sandy is employed by C2Net. 17. Sandy dropped the posting entirely -- it went to neither cypherpunks (edited), nor cypherpunks-flames. He considered that forwarding the posting would have made him legally liable. Sandy is a lawyer by profession. He did not explain this situation on the list. 18. Tim May had by now subscribed to cypherpunks-flames, and posted several follow-ups to Dimitri's posting, discussing the issue of Dimitri's post being dropped, and stated that Dimitri's posting was not flamish, and should not have been dropped in his opinion. Tim's postings were also silently dropped, going to neither of cypherpunks (edited), and cypherpunks-flames. 19. Sandy made an announcement that he was ending his participation in the moderation experiment. Still no explanation of why posts were dropped, or even admission that they were. 20. The two moderated cypherpunks lists (cypherpunks and cypherpunks-flames) went dead for some time. 21. Tim received a warning from C2Net's lawyers that if he did not desist from mentioning that Dimitri had posted an article criticising a C2Net product that he would be sued! 22. John posted a statement where he explained Sandy's sudden announcement of ending his particpation. John explained that Sandy had "hit a pothole in the moderation experiment when Mr. Nemesis submitted a posting containing nothing but libelous statements about Sandy's employer". Sandy did not drop Johns posting even though it covered the same topics that had resulted in Tim's posts being dropped, and resulted in Tim receiving legal threats from C2Net. In the same post John said that he had come to the conclusion that he was no longer willing to host the cypherpunks list. In this post John announced that Sandy had been persuaded to continue to moderate for the remainder of the moderation period, and gave the new policy. The changes were that anything other than crypto discussion and discussion of forming a new cypherpunks list would go to flames, and anything that Sandy thought was libelous would be dropped silently. 23. Sandy posted a statement affirming that he would continue to moderate, and that if any cypherpunks wished to discuss his prior moderation policy and performance as a moderator that they do it on new lists which they create themselves. (If Sandy's current moderation criteria mean that he feels obliged to forward this post to cypherpunks-flames as off-topic, or even to silently drop it from both moderated lists, so be it. I will simply repost it later, when the moderation experiment is over on one of the new lists. In the event of myself receiving legal threats, I shall simply post it via a remailer, or rely on someone else to do so. C2 does not appear to be running any remailers at the moment, otherwise I would use a remailer hosted at c2.net as the exit node in the remailer chain.) The positive outcome of all this has been to make the cypherpunks list more resilient to legal attack. The new distributed list seems to be progressing well, and will be less liable to attack. Filtering services continue, as they should. And alt.cypherpunks has been created as a forum ultimately resistant to legal attack. Also I should say that I would hope that no one holds any long term animosity towards any of the players in this episode, many of the people have been very prolific in their work to further online privacy and freedom, and I hope that we can all put this chapter behind us. Now more fun things... Anyone checked out the DES breaking project? Over on http://fh28.fa.umist.ac.uk/des/ are details of mailing lists where people are organising breaking RSADSIs DES challenge. For the RC5/32/12/6 (48 bit RC5) break which took 13 days, it seems there were a peak of 5000 machines involved. At this rate it will take 8 months to break DES. 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 experiment almost over; "put up or shut up"
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 01:13 PM 2/16/97 -0800, Dave Hayes wrote: >I can also offer my participation in the distributed mailing list, if >that is what it takes to get cypherpunks free of control interests again. I think it would be more accurate to say that this is what it takes to get cypherpunks into the hands of different control interests. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 4.5 iQEVAgUBMweY6P37pMWUJFlhAQGdewf/Rvli6pc1PId0xSK9hCII4exlWGetoU66 rGvQ7kJNh9O7zeWz8gVFIk7kXmDRKNBfkDDq4nuf64O4fWnhGP1xeuSoUQhqI5mw YupTErFN0uPlPRbOrTCPeVBdHbDiuKniMTlvHoZnB00sS+/q5rKCHILhRzDRjgxZ eglFvVZYttqk2s/YE/OCgWpYDAthLzmgK3GbKUh3ZuyJYWcLrsmHqwCZUgdIztWY rj1QuLcVcqyXsZjpC2nf75BU1l/WoAcq0MrEzSQeT6qXvJmvgMzrF8GtZ/mTheO6 U9E6kAmKd7xwfe4VE3KPKWrAppDi8vMTyUqSKTSi/Lz8ZYkYGUhUvw== =tT97 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Greg Broiles | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell: gbroiles(a)netbox.com | http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto. |

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Re: More on digital postage
by Cynthia H. Brown 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sat, 15 Feb 1997 at 23:30:17 Timothy C. May wrote: > At 1:09 AM -0500 2/16/97, Cynthia H. Brown wrote: > > >Here in Canada, the CRTC (Canadian Radio & Telecomms Commission) put > >out rules limiting the time of day, etc. for phone spam (voice or > >fax). Does anyone out there have the specifics of the CRTC regs? > > "Spam" has rapidly become one of those overused, overloaded, meaningless > words. Everything bad on the Net these days is labelled "spam." > > For the phone example in Canada, just what is "spam"? > > -- Is it the semi-traditional definition of "spam," i.e., a phone call made > to thousands of sites? (At the same time? Sequentially? How?) > > -- Is it a robo-dialer, with no human at the other end? > > -- Or is it merely an "unwanted phone call"? I used "spam" to mean scripted commercial solicitations, by a human or robot, based on a list of names and numbers. I'm not sure whether this is the same definition as in the legislation. > As I see it, the danger of criminalizing "unwanted phone calls" is obvious. > (Though obviously the courts and prisons are not about to be filled up with > people who committed the heinous crime of making an unrequested phone call.) > > The danger of all "junk mail" and "junk phone call" laws is that they give > power to the government to decide on what is junk and what is not. My understanding is that the legislation restricts commercial solicitations by phone to: - certain times of day (not after 9 PM? unsure) - one initial call, and no follow-ups if the person explicitly asks the caller to never phone this number again (again, unsure of legal details) I don't consider this scenario overly restrictive, since it gives _them_ a chance to sell their product, and _me_ a chance to have them delete my name from their database. Unfortunately, without some formal means of redress, very few telemarketers seem to remember that they are unlikely to find new customers if they call at 7 AM Saturday for the third time this month. What means of redress would you suggest, in the absence of legislation / fines, to someone who has been called repeatedly by a telemarketer? This person is not a current customer and so cannot withdraw his/her business. Cynthia =============================================================== Cynthia H. Brown, P.Eng. E-mail: cynthb(a)iosphere.net | PGP Key: See Home Page Home Page: http://www.iosphere.net/~cynthb/ Junk mail will be ignored in the order in which it is received. Klein bottle for rent; enquire within.

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Moderation experiment and moderator liability
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There appears to be a bit of a hush up surrounding the circumstances of the pause in the moderation experiment and subsequent change of moderation policy. To clear the air, I think it would be kind of nice if the full story were told, so I'll gather here a history as I understand it. Information from my archives (those I have), and from asking around in email. I realise that some of the actions that I am claiming of participants in this sequence of events seem hard to believe given their high reputation capital. I was myself initially dubious on the strength of the reputation capital of those being critisized. However the below is the sequence of events as close as I can determine. I welcome being proven wrong on any points. Events: 1. Dimitri Vulis posted a lot of off topic posts over a period of time 2. Dimitri reposted a couple of 50k Serdar Argic revisionist articles 3. Dimitri challenged John Gilmore to shut him up 4. John unsubscribed Dimitri, and modified majordomo(a)toad.com to siltently ignore Dimitri's attempts to resubscribe. Dimitri could still post, and presumably read cypherpunks with a different email address or via an archive. It was a token unsubscription only. 5. When Dimitri figured out what John had done, he made many posts denigrating John as a censor 6. Much discussion ensued critisizing John for blocking Dimitri 7. Over Christmas some joker subscribed cypherpunks(a)toad.com to a load of sports mailing lists, Hugh Daniels and John cleaned up the mess 8. Followed a long thread on hardening lists against spam attacks 9. John made a post to the list announcing that the list would be moderated for one month from Jan 11 as an experiment, and included Sandy Sandfort's proposed moderatation policy and offer to act as moderator. It appeared that the moderation experiment was Sandy's suggestion, and that John had agreed to go along with it. 10. Some discussion both pro and con of moderation, and the technical , free speech, and legal aspects followed 11. Moderation started Jan 19, the main list became the moderated list 12. Lots of people complained about the moderation, some defended it Tim May quietly unsubscribed 13. Some people complained about inconsistency in moderation -- some articles which went to flames were not flamish, but made by posters with low reputation capital, or were following up to posts which were flamish. 14. After a while some people commented on Tim's absence, and sent him mail asking what happened. Tim posted an article explaining that he had left because of the imposed moderation without discussion. 15. John followed up with a post defending the moderation experiment, and arguing for it's popularity (he claimed as evidence the number of posters who had not taken the trouble to move to the unedited list). 16. Dimitri posted an article where he claimed that there was a security flaw in Stronghold. Stronghold is C2Nets commercial version of the freeware Apache SSL web server. Sandy is employed by C2Net. 17. Sandy dropped the posting entirely -- it went to neither cypherpunks (edited), nor cypherpunks-flames. He considered that forwarding the posting would have made him legally liable. Sandy is a lawyer by profession. He did not explain this situation on the list. 18. Tim May had by now subscribed to cypherpunks-flames, and posted several follow-ups to Dimitri's posting, discussing the issue of Dimitri's post being dropped, and stated that Dimitri's posting was not flamish, and should not have been dropped in his opinion. Tim's postings were also silently dropped, going to neither of cypherpunks (edited), and cypherpunks-flames. 19. Sandy made an announcement that he was ending his participation in the moderation experiment. Still no explanation of why posts were dropped, or even admission that they were. 20. The two moderated cypherpunks lists (cypherpunks and cypherpunks-flames) went dead for some time. 21. Tim received a warning from C2Net's lawyers that if he did not desist from mentioning that Dimitri had posted an article criticising a C2Net product that he would be sued! 22. John posted a statement where he explained Sandy's sudden announcement of ending his particpation. John explained that Sandy had "hit a pothole in the moderation experiment when Mr. Nemesis submitted a posting containing nothing but libelous statements about Sandy's employer". Sandy did not drop Johns posting even though it covered the same topics that had resulted in Tim's posts being dropped, and resulted in Tim receiving legal threats from C2Net. In the same post John said that he had come to the conclusion that he was no longer willing to host the cypherpunks list. In this post John announced that Sandy had been persuaded to continue to moderate for the remainder of the moderation period, and gave the new policy. The changes were that anything other than crypto discussion and discussion of forming a new cypherpunks list would go to flames, and anything that Sandy thought was libelous would be dropped silently. 23. Sandy posted a statement affirming that he would continue to moderate, and that if any cypherpunks wished to discuss his prior moderation policy and performance as a moderator that they do it on new lists which they create themselves. (If Sandy's current moderation criteria mean that he feels obliged to forward this post to cypherpunks-flames as off-topic, or even to silently drop it from both moderated lists, so be it. I will simply repost it later, when the moderation experiment is over on one of the new lists. In the event of myself receiving legal threats, I shall simply post it via a remailer, or rely on someone else to do so. C2 does not appear to be running any remailers at the moment, otherwise I would use a remailer hosted at c2.net as the exit node in the remailer chain.) The positive outcome of all this has been to make the cypherpunks list more resilient to legal attack. The new distributed list seems to be progressing well, and will be less liable to attack. Filtering services continue, as they should. And alt.cypherpunks has been created as a forum ultimately resistant to legal attack. Also I should say that I would hope that no one holds any long term animosity towards any of the players in this episode, many of the people have been very prolific in their work to further online privacy and freedom, and I hope that we can all put this chapter behind us. Now more fun things... Anyone checked out the DES breaking project? Over on http://fh28.fa.umist.ac.uk/des/ are details of mailing lists where people are organising breaking RSADSIs DES challenge. For the RC5/32/12/6 (48 bit RC5) break which took 13 days, it seems there were a peak of 5000 machines involved. At this rate it will take 8 months to break DES. 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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