December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

ecash & remailers
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It occurs to me that there is a problem with remailers using Chaum's ecash as offered by MT bank and others. The attacker could coerce the sender of an anonymous message into revealing his blinding value, and use this to obtain the identity of each remailer hop by colluding with the bank. (The bank keeps a database of the blinded coins minted against who they were given to; unblinding reveals the coin which can then be compared against those deposited by remailers, tallying sender with remailer, all the way to the exit remailer.) To stop this, the sender should discard the blinding values, thereby removing his ability to be later coerced, or to later trace the recipient of his cash. Is there a way to purge blinding values from the ecash directory? Adam -- Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ 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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Western Union & IRS
by Ray Arachelian 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I donno if this is news or not, but having just visited one of these places, I noticed prominently place warning signs that transfers over $3K are reported to the IRS including your SSN, effective May 28 of this year or something... =====================================Kaos=Keraunos=Kybernetos============== .+.^.+.| Ray Arachelian | "Boy meets beer. Boy drinks Beer, |./|\. ..\|/..|sunder(a)sundernet.com| Boy gets another beer!" |/\|/\ <--*-->| ------------------ | |\/|\/ ../|\..| "A toast to Odin, | For with those which eternal lie, with |.\|/. .+.v.+.|God of screwdrivers"| strange aeons, even death may die. |..... ======================== http://www.sundernet.com =========================

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Re: SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS
by winsock＠rigel.cyberpass.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Paul Bradley <paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk> wrote: >(Tim wrote) >> Notable example: the Malibu doctor suspected--wrongly, it turns out--of >> growing pot on his ranch. He and his wife were startled by the ninjas >> bursting into their bedroom. The doctor reached for a handgun in his >> nightstand and was sprayed with 9mms from the Heckler and Kock MP-5s of the >> raiders. The estate of the doctor is currently suing the LA County >> Sheriff's Department and other agencies, but you know how those things go. >> I know I shock a lot of people by saying this, but I think those involved >> in the raid should be tried on murder charges and, if found guilty, >> executed promptly. And if the court system won't do this, which it >> obviously won't, then the alternative is <CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED >> CENSORED>. > >This is quite right, the police had no right to be in his house as he had >commited no ethical crime, therefore he merely attempted to defend >himself against people who had broken into his house. If they then shot >him they are guilty of murder, no question about it. The interesting thing is that the envirocrats wanted the land, and the sheriff (who is, BTW, not in jail) got an appraisal on it BEFORE the raid. This case, and not Ruby Ridge, Waco, or The Reichsta...um.. OK City, radicalized me. This man (Donald Scott) did NOTHING to deserve his murder, and the crooks who killed him deserve death. >If the government want a "war on drugs" they can expect a real war, where >the enemy fight back. > >All of those fortunate enough to be living someone where they are legally >entitled to obtain defensive weapons, Lock and load. Yes, and buy components. These will be outlawed before they go for guns as such, in the hope that wear and tear will do their grab for them. Mystrey man

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Re: "You have the right to remain silent"
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May wrote: > The latest example being the Ramsey case in Boulder ("Home of PGP"). Much > is made of the fact that the Ramseys, not being under arrest, are not > required to *say anything* to the police. (Left unanswered is why innocent > parents whose daughter has been brutally murdered would choose to say > nothing to the police...even I, a skeptic about much that modern cops are > involved in, am suspicious of the Ramseys for their noncooperativeness.) The noncooperation of the Ramseys does not reflect on their guilt or innocence, but on the fact that they have an excellent lawyer. People who have average lawyers, or even good ones, have a much greater chance of being convicted of a crime that they did not commit. When the police interview you, they have information or evidence that you and your lawyer aren't aware of. Their job is to get you to make statements that can be used against you in the future if you are charged with a crime. They attempt to lead you into making an innocent statement such as, "I eat eggs sometimes." and the next thing you know you are in court with a prosecutor repeating it and pointing at you accusingly. The fact of the matter is that guilt or innocence is no longer decided on real evidence, for the most part. *Circumstantial* evidence rules the roost, and it has been perverted to become a battle of which lawyer can spin the most convincing tale around indefinite evidence. So you go to jail because you drive a red truck, smoke camels and own a pair of brown socks (despite the fact that all of the witnesses described someone who was a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier). How is this crypto relevant? It is yet another symptom of why we are losing our privacy and our freedom. The Ramseys should live in a world where they can put trust in their government and tell them everything that might remotely help find their child's murderer, instead of unjustly ending up on the chopping block themselves. Cypherpunks should live in a world where they can share their logs with the government to help them catch a child murderer and know that their cooperation will not be used to abuse themself or others who use the remailers. What about the cooperation of Jim Bell's friends. The newspapers report that his friends say they talked about this or that in a joking manner (or somesuch innocuous way), but you can bet your bottom dollar that this is not mentioned on the application for an arrest warrant. When the police interview you and ask you if you plan to kill the president, answer, "Yes. When pigs fly." Which part of your statement will they neglect to mention when they file the charges against you? (Take a wild guess on this one.) If you have joined in the discussion of the AP Bot, then I hope that you saved *all* of your posts, because the government will be introducing the ones where you described a possible implementation but not the posts where you described the system as unfeasible and unrealistic. If Jim Bell and his friends had the Ramseys' lawyer they wouldn't have been so quick to supply information which can be twisted and perverted to support Bell's persecution. TruthMonger

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The Natives Are Getting Restless (was Wine Politics Again!)
by Blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Attila T. Hun wrote: > as for the great fairweather liberal bigot Blanc's passing it off > as tcm's drunken ramblings, I doubt it. war is hell, and > "innocents" get wasted --but, a society at war has no innocents. > blow 'em all away. scorched earth is inadequate; burnt earth is > more effective. if there are no prisoners, there are no > complainers. ............................................................... If we were out in the field, you'd get fragged for calling me that. <g> If this society is at war, it is a Civil War, fighting against itself. In fact, there are many groups fighting against each other, on many different levels: racial, gender-based, religious, economic, philosophical, not to leave out political. Companies are fighting each other "tooth & nail" for survival in marketing turfs, races are still exchanging vicious barbs, homosexuals are under verbal & physical attack by the socially "normed", the poor still envy & disparage the rich, women & children seem more than ever to be at risk to attacks from roving sex perverts, the liberals would love to put the libertarians under, religious groups lecture against the moral depravity of all those "other" people, and half the country is either stocking up for a National Disaster or forming into militia groups or other Think Tanks to fight some sort of government encroachment (even the health food stores where I shop are always posting sign-up sheets to vote against something or another the government wants to ban or some right-of-choice that is being threatened by proposed legislation). There are little battles raging on all around us, not only the fight for privacy-by-encryption which you all are aware of. Some cpunks have stated that "society doesn't know or care what is happening". Some of youall don't know the kinds of battles or other people/groups are having, either with government or with some opposing members of this same society. There is a lot of information out in the world competing for attention and resources - on the net, on the intranet, in the TV, in the newspapers, in magazines, in major newsletters, local newspapers, in posting on kiosks ("Get the US out of Nicaragua! " (sure, when I have a few free minutes and a couple of extra bucks")). How can one keep up with/contribute to all of these? So many times, I will happen to read accounts of people who have got into trouble of some kind, or down on their luck (they lost their job and don't have skills, they need a heart transplant, they got jailed by mistake, the car dealership gave them a bum deal), and they decide that society doesn't really know what is happening and complain that it is unsympathetic and lament "when will society wake up and realize that something needs to be done", etc.. Well, jeez, there's only so much time to spend on everybody else's problems. All these people with their problems would like everyone one else to be aware of their plight and sympathetic to their rights and to contribute to their cause, and get disturbed about being "marginalized". As far as I'm concerned, everyone is "marginalized". But people are behaving as expected: the Waco religious group acted as expected, the BATF acted as expected; government employees behave as expected. The cpunks, who know so much about government, in particular the NSA & certain luminaries related to privacy&encryption, should expect that things will go on as they do - even if they bomb D.C. out of existence. And this is because, apparently, people of this type & kind simply haven't evolved enough to expect anything different. Now, crypto was supposed to allow for the possibility of not having to deal with these people directly; it was supposed to usher in the new technological era whereby one could "route around" and generally avoid messing with Government Mongers, from negotiating for the right to breathe on one's own Maintenance Schedule. Well, so much for an anarchic life of Independent Means. I must say, from the posts I've been reading these past several days, I haven't seen very imaginative ideas for dealing with the problems which dull governments create. It is typical of dull governments that when pressed to the wall they resort to desperate, mediocre ways of dealing with problems - like obfuscation, exaggerated charges of evil intent, physical violence; all signs of a limited intellectual capacity for coming to terms with the facts of reality (the problems they face as Protectors of Goodness & Justice (tm) ). I would have expected newer, more creative ("evolved") ideas from scientists, mathematicians, physicists, computer-savvy members. .. Blanc .. Blanc

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Spam laws threaten remailers?
by nobody＠hidden.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

See http://www.senate.gov/~murkowski/commercialemail/ My bill merely provides a means for Internet users to filter out e-mails that they do not wish to receive by requiring that senders of unsolicited e-mails to include Advertisement as the first word of the subject line and that the real street address, e-mail address and a telephone number be contained within the body of the message. Routing information that accompanies the message must also be accurate. Could this be the end of remailers?

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Re: "You have the right to remain silent" (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 15:08:27 -0400 > To: "Willaim H. Geiger III" <whgiii(a)amaranth.com>, cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Subject: Re: "You have the right to remain silent" > they can't order you to talk to them. They can arrest you with probable > cause > and detain you briefly for purposes of investigation. They can arrest you at will w/ or w/o probable cause. If they can't produce probable cause at your hearing then a writ of habeas corpus comes into play. They can't CHARGE you without probable cause, minor but important distinction. As I understand it, the charges that are recorded when you first go to the police station are not 'official' until your hearing and a judge signs the paperwork. The police can even arrest you as a witness or for 'protective custody' and then even the habeas corpus gets murky because no charges are filed. If they can convince a judge to go along they can even hold you in communicado. > They can ask you for > your name and you may have to supply it, According to the 5th(?) Federal District you don't even have to do that unless you are driving a vehicle or otherwise operating under a public license. > Since cops are not judges, This particular point if kept in mind changes the interpretation of the Constitution considerably. It also puts such actions as making it illegal for citizens to own assault weapons but the police can questionable since the constitution does not draw a distinction between law enforcement and the citizenry, as it does with the judicial, legistlative and executive bodies. It therefore follows that if I as Joe Citizen can't do it then a police officer can't either since they have no constitutional rights that I don't and the 10th Amendment prohibits expansion of federal power (and by extension of the 14th, states) by anything other than that proscribed in the constitution. Jim Choate CyberTects ravage(a)ssz.com

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Use a cipher, go to jail
by Michael Wilson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Follow the link: http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/info/052297/info24_9595.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------- FBI says hacker sold 100,000 credit card numbers --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright ) 1997 Nando.net Copyright ) 1997 The Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO (May 22, 1997 9:13 p.m. EDT) -- A clever hacker slipped into a major Internet provider and gathered 100,000 credit card numbers along with enough information to use them, the FBI said Thursday. Carlos Felipe Salgado, Jr., 36, who used the online name "Smak," allegedly inserted a program that gathered the credit information from a dozen companies selling products over the Internet, said FBI spokesman George Grotz. ---- Said hacker used a sniffer to gather the numbers, and as part of the process, he encrypted the database he sold to an undercover agent. Anyone care to take any bets on whether he shows up as a case for the 'use a cipher to commit a crime' argument?

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Re: "You have the right to remain silent" (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, Forwarded message: > From: "Willaim H. Geiger III" <whgiii(a)amaranth.com> > Date: Thu, 22 May 97 08:46:56 -0500 > Subject: Re: "You have the right to remain silent" > 1) Under the 5th Amendment one is not required to give any assistance to > the police in a criminal investegation. Not exactly true. The police can take various body samples and other 'physical characteristics' (eg hand writing) for determination of issues involved in a case without you being able to refuse under the 5th. Also, if you are not being accussed of any crime then the 5th can't protect you, unless you want to admit tacit involvment in some criminal activity. Which I am sure to some mindsets is sufficient probable cause. In many states, such as Texas, citizenry are required by law to report any commission of a felony. Not doing so can itself be a felony. Most swords cut both ways... An interesting aspect of the 5th and physical sample taking is the way the line is drawn between what is permitted and what isn't. Historicaly it has been just fine for a cop to shove his finger down your throat to grab that black molly but verboten to pump your stomach. It is generaly felt that pumping your stomach is 'too' invasive. What I would like to know is what is the record since that ruling of the farthest down somebodies throat evidence has been legaly removed from and beyond which its legitimacy is consistently denied. Interesting issue regarding fingerprints for drivers license and the 5th that has to my research remained untested is that the fingerprints were taken while under no suggestion of wrongdoing and with no Miranda. Yet these can be used as evidence in criminal cases even at the federal level. Now it might be argued that if not explicitly stated there is an implicit contract with the state government and the individual regarding the use in criminal proceedings. But since the 14th does not work in reverse there can not be any implicit federal contract. Can the interstate commerce clause be extended to this? > 2) That the Ramsey's were prime suspects after 48hrs and no suspect was > found. They were prime suspects the moment the operator answered the 911 line. > 3) That this was SOP for the LEA's to go after family members/friends of a > murder victim even though, on average, 1/3 of murders in the US are > commited by strangers and this figure is incresing. Meaning that 66% of the time they will get the culprit. Sounds like a good strategy to me for clearing 66% of the cases quickly. Jim Choate CyberTects ravage(a)ssz.com

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"You have the right to remain silent" (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 19:03:11 -0800 > From: Tim May <tcmay(a)got.net> > Subject: "You have the right to remain silent" > >The 5th is meant to apply ONLY to persons being accussed of a crime, it is > >not nor was it ever meant to protect non-accussed persons from turning over > >evidence of criminal acts. > > So you are saying the police may compel any and all information from > someone just so long as that person has not been formally accused of a > crime? If they ask you questions regarding the commission of a crime the 5th will not protect you unless you were involved. The flip side to this that protects this 'hole' from being catastrophic is that you don't have to talk to the police at all unless accussed of a crime. They most certainly can take physical evidence from 3rd parties (ie hostile witnesses) which they believe are involved in some manner with the crime (ie entering your apartment to track the path of a bullet in the hopes of retrieving it). Refusing to answer the questions of the prosecutor while under oath has its own consequences. What really keeps it from getting out of hand is the cost of interviewing and calling all possible witnesses to some crime. Just imagine calling everyone on the floor of a murder as SOP. > The Miranda precedent ("you have the right to remain silent...") > establishes that someone under arrest may remain silent. And someone _not_ > under arrest is under no obligation to cooperate, unless subpoenaed, right? As I understand it that is correct. > The latest example being the Ramsey case in Boulder ("Home of PGP"). Much > is made of the fact that the Ramseys, not being under arrest, are not > required to *say anything* to the police. (Left unanswered is why innocent > parents whose daughter has been brutally murdered would choose to say > nothing to the police...even I, a skeptic about much that modern cops are > involved in, am suspicious of the Ramseys for their noncooperativeness.) If they are truly innocent, what could they possibly have to say other than "Please find the killer of our daughter" and "We didn't do it." Innocent people have little to say, the guilty need to convince us of their innocence. "Me thinks he protest too much." I have no idea Jim Choate CyberTects ravage(a)ssz.com

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