December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

US Domestic GAK
by Steve 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Has Anyone heard about this????? sorrin privsoft(a)ix.netcom.com Clinton administration has new encryption proposal Network World via Individual Inc. : Washington, D.C. For months the Clinton administration has lobbied for its version of key escrow that largely focused on encryption export. Now in its first formal legislative document, the White House is asking that its policy also apply to data encrypted within U.S. borders and that law enforcement be given access to that data based on a simple request from a law enforcement or government security agency. The U.S. Attorney General will set up the specific rules for written authorization. Civil liberties groups highly critical of the White House plan pointed out that under the basic guidelines it will be easier for law enforcement to get encryption keys than to tap phones, which requires a warrant or court order. The administration does not just face domestic opposition to its proposed policy. The international community, represented by the 29-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), also has not rallied behind the Clinton cause. After a year of study and intense lobbying by the U.S. Justice Department, the OECD, based in Brussels, Belgium, last week released the ``Cryptography Policy Guidelines,'' an eight-point document that recognizes nations may want to have access to cryptographic keys or un-scrambled plaintext. But the OECD guidelines fall far short of recommending key recovery as the preferred international approach. Some participants in the OECD crypto-policy effort were pleased with its outcome, including Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center here. ``There's a strong emphasis here on privacy and voluntary market guidelines,'' Rotenberg said. The OECD guidelines state that users should have a choice in cryptography, that cryptography should be driven by business requirements, and that the privacy of personal data and the secrecy of communications should be respected. Congressional cold shoulder So far, no legislators on Capitol Hill have embraced the ideas in the administration-drafted legislation, the Electronic Data Security Act of 1997, which also calls for nationally certified key-recovery centers for storing copies of encryption keys. ``From our point of view, it's a breathtaking expansion of law enforcement's surveillance au-thority,'' said Alan Davidson, staff counsel at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) about the draft bill. The CDT has posted the bill on its Web site, www.cdt.org. Commerce Department Un-der Secretary William Reinsch, whose office took the lead in drafting the bill, last week had no comment. The draft bill emphasizes that the key-recovery regulation is voluntary in the U.S., but opponents argue otherwise. The White House draft defines as the federal standard only digital certificates that work with key-recovery encryption products. And under the drafted bill, employees working in a government-certified key-recovery center would be spared any civil or criminal liabilities for disclosing decrypted information to a government agency. Through the economic in-centives and regulatory impact of the Clinton administration bill, ``they plan to severely limit [the products] you can choose from,'' according to Jim Bidzos, president of RSA Data Security, Inc., whose public-key technology is widely deployed in encryption products. ``The intent is to discourage the use of strong, unescrowed encryption in the U. S.'' [Copyright 1997, Network World]

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Re: Feds reading this list, Jim Bell, and threats
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk pissed off Hallam-Baker to the extent that gave up all pretense hiding his support for a New World Order, and wrote: > I have degrees in Nuclear Physics, Electronic Engineering, I have > been offered a contract for my book on the philosophy of > communication. ...so the rest of us are just dirt under your feet? > I don't believe that people > are fit judges of their own cause as Bell and you do. So we should only fight for other people's causes, and not our own? Or not fight at all? It sounds to me like Jim Bell isn't the only one on the list with his own drug lab. Did you bring enough for everybody, Phill? <earlier> > Who decides what "innocent" was? <now> > Bells plan would lead to murder of innocent people. Well, I guess that now we know *who* decides. Send me a list of the "innocent" people, Phill, and I'll put them in the blocking list on my AP-Bot. -- Toto "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre" http://bureau42.base.org/public/xenix/xenbody.html

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News from the Front
by ForeFront 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

----------------------------------------------------------------------- F O R E F R O N T - Taking the Chaos out of the Internet http://www.ffg.com Mailing List 3/31/97 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: I. News from the 'Front II. Tip o' the Day III. To the Front of the Class ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I. News from the Front Newsflash! ForeFront Launches Dynamic Duo, WebWhacker 3.0 and WebSeeker 3.0! WebWhacker, voted best offline browser by Internet World, has just leapfrogged the competition yet again! WebWhacker 3.0's new features include: *More than 200% faster performance; *Now save your "whacked" Web sites virtually anywhere, including floppy disks, Zip disks, magneto optical disks, and other removable media; *InstantUpdate, ForeFronts proprietary push technology, which enables WebWhacker to update itself across the Internet, instantly delivering the latest version of the application to your desktop; *Integrated WebManager allows you to easily organize and categorize your "whacked" sites; *Filter any unwanted Web pages and files by size, MIME file type, file extension, and server directory location; *Search your "whacked" Web sites more thoroughly with the use of Boolean operators; *The AppBar, which allows you to control WebWhacker in the background while browsing, can now become a floating toolbar; *"Whacked" sites can be exported into a compressed format for easy transfer and import; and *Downloading of background sounds, dynamic images, Shockwave objects, JPEG and GIF images, and Java applets. WebSeeker, the only way to find exactly what you need on the 'Net, again proves itself as the only comprehensive Internet search tool that finds exactly what you want. WebSeeker's new features include: *Over 100 pre-configured search engines, categorized into customized folders, such as News, Shopping, and Legal search engines. This allows you to tailor the search by selecting search engine categories that specialize in the specific types of information you desire; *Now you can add your own search engines to the pre-configured list, whether they are internet- or intranet-based. *No more switching between WebSeeker and your browser! With Microsoft Internet Explorer installed you can browse Web pages inside WebSeeker! *You can now launch WebSeeker with a single click! Simply click Microsoft Internet Explorer's "search" button; *Faster Phrase searching; *Ability to drag and drop search results onto the desktop or to a printer. *Substring matching, so a search for CAT also retrieves CATS Check out the informative press releases at: http://www.ffg.com/press/ww3press.html http://www.ffg.com/press/ws3press.html Download evaluation copies of the these new versions of ForeFront's industry leading Internet applications at: http://www.ffg.com/seeker/ http://www.ffg.com/whacker/ If you can't wait to own these valuable Internet tools now, visit: http://www.ffg.com/storefront.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------- II. Tip o' the Day Faster 'Seeker If you have a fast connection, such as a fractional T1 or faster, you can dramatically decrease the amount of time a search takes by increasing the number of simultaneous connections. We suggest increasing the number of simultaneous connections to 25 or 35. Experiment with more... (You can always decrease the number of connections) Steps: 1. Click Tools/Preferences 2. Select the Network tab (or in Version 3.0, Search Limits) 3. Change the number of Simultaneous Connections 4. Click OK ----------------------------------------------------------------------- III. To the Front of the Class Bring Web excitement to the head of your class - even if you dont have an Internet connection! ForeFronts WebSeeker, WebWhacker, WebPrinter and ClickBook make utilizing the Internet a snap. Used by over 800 schools and universities world-wide, ForeFronts products are empowering teachers to find, collect and share the vast wealth of knowledge available on the Internet. Let ForeFront bring the Internet into your classroom by visiting: http://www.ffg.com/edu/edu.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------- If you wish to unsubscribe from the ForeFront mailing list, please send mail to nonews(a)sldc.ffg.com or go to http://www.ffg.com/press/

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Save Money...Own your own Cable Descrambler!
by Mid West Electronics 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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RE: Feds reading this list, Jim Bell, and threats
by Phillip M. Hallam-Baker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk pissed off Hallam-Baker to the >extent that gave up all pretense hiding his support for >a New World Order, and wrote: Yeah, like I wrote in "The Laird of the new world order". ... They said they worked for freedom but they had another plan. The only new world order is, obey your Uncle Sam. Must be in deep, deep cover. >> I have degrees in Nuclear Physics, Electronic Engineering, I have >> been offered a contract for my book on the philosophy of >> communication. > ...so the rest of us are just dirt under your feet? I was pointing out that the attempt to claim that the rest of us poor slobs didn't see Jim Bell as a shining Messiah was not because we were too stupid to understand him as claimed. >> I don't believe that people >> are fit judges of their own cause as Bell and you do. > So we should only fight for other people's causes, and not >our own? Or not fight at all? I think that before you murder someone because you think they are wrong you need to at the very least put the matter to an impartial arbitrator. Phill

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Re: Feds reading this list, Jim Bell, and threats
by Phillip M. Hallam-Baker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timothy C. May <tcmay(a)got.net> wrote in article <5i3tpu$86h(a)life.ai.mit.edu>... > At 1:51 PM -0600 4/4/97, null(a)myemail.net wrote: > > > Horseshit. Anybody here ever hear of the Boston Tea Party? How > >about the American Revolution? War of Independece? French Revolution? > > You know, people who said "Fuck this shit, I've had enough." People > >who acted in concert to fight injustice and oppression. If you care to read the history of the times from unbiased sources you will find that the Boston patriots main gripe with Britain was not the tax on tea but the insistence of the British authorities on negotiating with the Sioux nation amongst others. It was the fear that the British would sign a peace treaty with the Indians recognising them as a sovereign nation that was the spark to the flame. Try reading "Lies my teacher told me" sometime. Given that the American revolution institutionalised slavery and lead to the theft of Indian land, and the French revolution the murder of about quarter of a million people they cannot be said to be entirely laudatory events. The national myths of the countries concerned nothwithstanding. People are not fit judges of their own cause. The civil war was started by the South who believed that the North might infringe their "right" to own others as property. > Note that I've never called for a witch hunt, nor have I called for his > posts to be censored out of the list. I chose a long time ago to filter > Jim's stuff into my appropriate folder for such stuff, and occasionally > took him out of the filter when he seemed (from occasional checks on what I > was filtering), to be discussing things other than his "Klaatu Narada > Nictoo" (or whatever) Final Solution. Same for me. I objected to Bell's AP proposal but not to his _right_ to post it. It was the tedious length at which he bored the rest of us with it that I objected to. Last I heard the Feds were concerned that he might have been putting AP into effect. Collecting the names and addresses of IRS officials, setting up a kangeroo court to try them, sending them demands, those sound like actions Bell would have serious difficulty in doing without giving someone reasonable cause to believe they were being targetted for murder. Phill

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Re: Feds reading this list, Jim Bell, and threats
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk writes: > > > Jim is hardly the ideal poster boy for a free speech cause, but we should > > not distance ourselves from him when he runs into problems directly > > related to his advocacy of anonymous markets. That cuts too closely > > for comfort. We should defend Jim's right to discuss AP and any other > > institutions which may arise as a natural consequence of the capabilities > > engendered by cryptography. That is one of the main things this list is > > for. If they can silence Jim, it's going to be just a matter of time befor > > they go after someone else. > > I really cannot understand the posts I have been reading to the > effect that Jim Bell is a "loon" or a "terrorist" etc... > If we do not protect the freedom of expression of the loons, fuckups, > terrorists and Bells of this world it will be our freedom that is > threatened next. As far as I know, anyway, Jim`s AP essay (the > original plan overview) was perfectly sane and discussed the problems > of people using it to commit crime by killing an innocent person as > well as the advantagest of the plan. > I will allow that some of his subsequent posts have been a little > "loon" like but I have never considered him to be a foaming at the > mouth madman as some do. Someone said: "popular speech does not need protection". --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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Re: Hallam-Baker is willing to testify
by Phillip M. Hallam-Baker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

null(a)myemail.net wrote in article <5i3vrt$aad(a)life.ai.mit.edu>... > > Hallam-Baker, pissing all over his own train of logic, wrote: > > I will not only refuse to support Bell, I'll testify against him in > > court if asked. > > What are you going to testify to? He sent me a considerable amount of material in private email. Anonynous insults do not impress me. > To Bell's scheme not being a threat to anybody because it would > never work? That it is nothing more than a theoretical exercise > which does not present a danger to a single soul? I don't think it was a theoretical exercise. I think Jim scrambled his brain with a dodgy dose of amphetamines or similar. His posts sounded to me like the work of someone with a personality disorder who was working his way up to psychopath. >That it is > preposterous of the government to prosecute someone on the basis > of a pie-in-the-sky, preposterous idea? It may sound loony to you but I have no doubt that Jim believed what he wrote and intended others to act on it. I'm not sure that he acted on it himself but I would not be at all suprised. Phill

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Tim May badmouths anonymity.
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timothy C. May wrote: > > This kind of ad hominem is to be expected from someone hiding behind > anonymity. What a hypocrytical crock of shit. Are you concerned that your pal, Hallam-Baker, won't be able to "testify" against me when the Feds kick in my door as a supporter of Jim Bell? > This message is clear-signed as being > from "TruthMonger," but, in fact, it could be from anyone. TruthMonger is a multi-user Net persona, meant to be used for that very reason. It is handy for lessening the ability of others to refuse to deal with presented facts and logic, instead choosing to attempt refuting opinions through grand pronouncements as to the writer's position in an imaginary elitist reputation capital scheme. > If it is from > the entity TruthMonger, and he wishes to have a persistent net personna, he > ought to look into PGP-signing his remailed messages, or using a nym > account. I have a persistent net persona. It's in your killfile. > And as for my views causing the tanks to roll through Poland, etc., this is > "magical thinking" at its worst. * {* DisinfoTranslation Technique (c) Greg Broiles} Either get your head out of your butt and learn to accurately read and/or interpret the statements of others, or get a job at C2Net. > > So, Tim and Phill, which one of you wants to step up to the plate > >and be the first one to attempt to ostracize him so that his views > >about the need for anonymous communications will not be taken as > >representative of the cypherpunks views? > > Fatuous nonsense. I'm not sure what "TruthMonger" means by "ostracize." There seems to be a tendency by some on the list to dismiss the posts of others by labeling them a 'loon' or somesuch derogatory term, rather than addressing their logic and message, per se. The fact that Bell tends to beat the AP drum ceaselessly may make his repetiveness boring, but in no way makes his system less valid than more mainstream methodologies. There is hardly anyone on the list whose missives don't occassionally skip like a broken record, but they are not labeled lunatics as long as they stay in the middle of the road. (You might say that Bell has a "persistent net persona.") TruthMonger

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The Laird
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Phillip M. Hallam-Baker wrote: > > >paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk pissed off Hallam-Baker to the > >extent that gave up all pretense hiding his support for > >a New World Order, and wrote: > > Yeah, like I wrote in "The Laird of the new world order". > ... > They said they worked for freedom but they had another plan. > The only new world order is, obey your Uncle Sam. I would like to see the complete work, if you have it available online. > Must be in deep, deep cover. I'm a conspiracy theorist. Any particular Crayola colour you would like me to use to draw the links between yourself and the Cabal? > I was pointing out that the attempt to claim that the rest of > us poor slobs didn't see Jim Bell as a shining Messiah was > not because we were too stupid to understand him as claimed. I once recorded a tune called, "He used to take acid, and now he's found God, but he's still got that look in his eye." I can't deny that Jim Bell seems to have "that look" in his eye. > >> I don't believe that people > >> are fit judges of their own cause as Bell and you do. > > > So we should only fight for other people's causes, and not > >our own? Or not fight at all? > > I think that before you murder someone because you think they > are wrong you need to at the very least put the matter to an impartial > arbitrator. I believe that the AP system pretty much spreads out the "arbitration" in much the same manner that the electoral system does. To me, it is similar to the inter-family dynamics that take place in Dr. Kevorkian's work, only on a more pervasive scale. I have always seen Jim Bell's work as a theoretical exercise that deserved a more serious analysis than he, himself, gave it. It pushed the envelope of issues that need to be dealt with, and did so in a manner that went beyond seemingly mundane matters wherein one could easily dismiss the long-term consequences of the train of logic involved. An analogy might be made to those who dismiss a little ass- grabbing as inconsequential when compared to rape, as opposed to those who view it as a precursor to rape. Despite my sometimes caustic, irreverent demeanor, I enjoy your posts, as they show a thoughtfulness which goes beyond some of the "Oh yeah! Sez who! Yo' mamma!" threads that sometimes prevail on various lists. So, don't change on my account, I hate you just the way you are. (Please note my aversion to adding little 'happy faces' to my posts. Humor be humor.) -- Toto "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre" http://bureau42.base.org/public/xenix/xenbody.html

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