December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Responses to "Spam costs and questions" (long)
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yesterday I forwarded questions about spam from a friend who was speaking before the FTC next week. Here are most of the replies I received, which I've attached below. Some may have appeared here already. From: glee harrah cady <glee(a)netcom.com> From: Wei Dai <weidai(a)eskimo.com> From: Stanton McCandlish <mech(a)eff.org> From: Robert Moskowitz <rgm3(a)chrysler.com> From: "Halpert, James - DC" <jhalpert(a)pipermar.com> From: Azeem Azhar <aja(a)economist.com> From: Mark Grant <mark(a)unicorn.com> From: Charlie Stross <charlie(a)public.antipope.org> From: Bill Frantz <frantz(a)netcom.com> From: "Shabbir J. Safdar" <shabbir(a)vtw.org> From: djones(a)insight.dcss.McMaster.CA (David Jones) From: wyang(a)ktel.osc.edu From: clinton(a)annoy.com (Clinton at Annoy) From: Eric Murray <ericm(a)lne.com> From: Ray Everett-Church <ray(a)everett.org> From: Chris Poupart <jyhad(a)odyssee.net> From: "Marius Loots" <MLOOTS(a)medic.up.ac.za> From: Roger Bohn <Rbohn(a)UCSD.edu> -Declan *********** Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 15:26:33 -0700 (PDT) From: glee harrah cady <glee(a)netcom.com> To: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> A large amount of real costs are principally being borne not by the individual recipient but by the networks that are being abused in the process, which costs the users of the networks involved. Lots of spammers are not using "their own" networks to send out the spam, but using the open nature of the Internet to relay the messages off the mail servers of networks throughout the world. One really egregious instance of which I've been told is that someone used a mailserver in New Zealand as a relay for a large spam. I've heard that data charges in New Zealand are for info in AND out, the provider had to pay for the privilege. SInce this was a third-hand story, I can't cite you chapter and verse -- wish I could. When lots of spam hits a single network, email processing for all customers, whether or not they are recipients of that particular spam, is slowed. Lots of networks have this problem. Unlike email systems that stored one copy of an email, regardless of the number of recipients, the systems we're using on the Internet today send real physical bits for each message that take up space on mail queues. This, too, inhibits email of all involved. Then, folks have to deal with the fact that the spam is on their network: tech support folks are paid to answer queries about it, sysadmins are paid to toss it out (in cases where it hits large intranets -- one company local to here has two sysadmins that do nothing but get rid of spam coming into their local net) or to manage the disk space required to store the stuff. Smaller providers are getting killed with the stuff. The reason that many of us provider-types find more to like the Torricelli approach is that it goes after the deceptive practices that make it harder for us all to trace the sources of the spam: the hiding behind false or not accurate domain names; the hiding of the actual email address of the spammer; the harvesting of names and addresses from the open directories of whitepage services or of online providers, etc. This approach, we think will be more effective at getting to the root of the problem than labelling speech. After all, it's not only commercial speech that is being sent as spam and it's not responsible marketers who are doing it either. I'm not sure that legislation is actually needed to address the problem. I could make an argument that said that the deceptive practices that are making it difficult to go after the spammers actually fall into the purview of the FTC. I am concerned that we don't legislate something that we'll really be sorry about later. As usual, summarizing a complex and difficult policy and operational issue in one short email probably causes problems, too. I hope I've not left out anything, but probably I did. Ask if what I've said isn't clear. :-) ____________________________ glee harrah cady Manager, Public Policy, NETCOM +1.408.881.3227 1.800.NETCOM-1 glee(a)netcom.com co-author, _Mastering the Internet_, Sybex, 1995 & 1996 ********* Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 23:39:28 -0700 (PDT) From: Wei Dai <weidai(a)eskimo.com> To: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> Here's a cost that's seldomly counted: the occasionally useful spam that we delete without reading because most spam are simply garbage. I would argue that any spam protection system that does not allow useful spam to get through is flawed. ********* From: Stanton McCandlish <mech(a)eff.org> To: declan(a)well.com Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 16:22:12 -0700 (PDT) Cc: fight-censorship-announce(a)vorlon.mit.edu, mech(a)eff.org (Stanton McCandlish) Feel free to send this to FC, etc. This response does not constitute and official EFF position, but I believe it acurately reflects thinking here that will become EFF position shortly. Declan McCullagh typed: > > A friend who's going to be on one of the FTC panels next week sent me a > few questions about spam. Does anyone want to try their hand at answering > them? I'll forward along all responses I get. > > What are the costs to consumers of > unsolicited e-mail? I guess the time it > takes to delete it might be one, hard > drive space might be another. I would ALL/MULTIPLE USERS * cost of storage (ISP, user or both, depending on mail system) in disk space and memory (remember it takes RAM to load a mailbox into any modern email program). * severe degradation and sometimes destruction of forums as they are over-run by spammage. * reputational harm and loss of all usefulness of Internet account (after being subject to a spammer's header forgery listing the innocent victim as the sender, who then receives all the hatemail the spamming generates). INDIVIDUAL END USER ADDITIONAL COSTS * time to read/examine * time to delete * time to filter * time to unsubscribe, complain, or otherwise respond * increased ISP/online service subscription fees as provider costs are passed on to customers. * per byte, per minute or per message costs from ISP (not all users) * per minute costs from phone or other conduit provider (not all users) CORPORATE END USER ADDITIONAL COSTS * lost productivity due to time sinks mentioned above, frustration, etc. * missed opportunities, deadlines, etc., due to too much mail to sort thru resulting in important messages being missed. Major potential for corporate lossage here. CORPORATE ADMINISTRATOR ADDL. COSTS * time (often quite a lot) filtering dependent users' mail, blocking spamming sites, contending with filled up disks, and other wastes of stafftime due to spamming. ISP/ONLINE SERVICE ADDL. COSTS * Help desk and admins' time filtering/blocking by customer request (not all sites do this) * Help desk and admins' time filtering/blocking by necessity to prevent exceedingly abusive spammers sucking up all available disk space * admins' time in cleanup after one of their users engages is spamming or is perceived to have done so due to forged headers, and 1000s of angry victims send in complaints, threats, etc. * company's losses in market share and reputation after one of their users engages is spamming or is perceived to have done so due to forged headers * admins' time in cleanup after one of their users engages is spamming or is perceived to have done so due to forged headers, and 10s or more of angry victims become vigilantes, and hack the provider, SYN flood them, send them crippling emailbombs, etc. * company's losses in mkt. share and reputation after their service slows, crashes or otherwise is negatively affected by such attacks. * company's liability when other subscribers sue for breach of contract, for return of subscription fees, etc., due to such outtages or degradation of service * CEO & legal staff time researching if any recourse is available. * increased connectivity costs as 56K, T1, etc. high-speed connections are not fast enough to keep up with all the spam (e.g. it is currently physically impossible to carry a full "Big 8" and alt Usenet feed with only a T1 connection [verify with a major ISP if in doubt], largely due to the amount of spamming in the alt groups. * increased staffing costs as more people have to be hired or consulted to deal with the problems caused by spammers. Please feel free to send suggestions for addtions to this list, which I've made for other purposes than answering Declan's query. Remember that TIME = MONEY and RESOURCES = MONEY in all above formulations. > like to know how to quantify it, and > compare it with the cost of sending > e-mail. It costs roughly $20 for Net access[*], plus the cost of a spamming-targeted mailing list ($50?) to send multiple millions of messages. [Actually this is not really true - unless AOL has changed the capabilities of its trial accounts, it actaully costs NOTHING to set up a temporary account that is capable of massive spammage. Worse yet, the technology to MAKE massive email lists is trivially available and/or creatable, so one does not even have to buy such a list. ZERO cost at all.) > If you banned commercial e-mail, > wouldn't it just affect legitimate > commercial transactions? That is to say, > wouldn't fly-by-night pyramid-scheme > builders still be able to spam? I would > think that if they are so untraceable > that it's hard to block their spam that > it wouldn't really matter if it were > simply made illegal. Certainly. There are many other problems: 1) Any ban is going to be very difficult to write in a way that will survive constitutional scrutiny. 2) Banning all commercial email is obvioulys stupid and unconstitutional - I have a First Amendment right to receive commercial messages if I want to. 3) Banning all unsolicited email is obviously stupid and unconstitutional - I have a First Amendment right right to tell IBM that I like their web page, even if they didn't ask me for my comments. 4) Banning all commercial unsolicited email is obviously stupid and arguably unconstitutional. I probably have a right to send you a message offering my product if something in an email or a post or web page by you indicated you might be interested in what I'm offering. Additionally, such a ban does not speak to the issue - commerciality is not the problem. Religious and political rants are, to most people, an even more offensive form of spamming that advertisements are. 5) Despite the optimism of some, no local (i.e. national) law will ever stop spam, it will simply move spammers off-shore. That fewer respondents will buy, due to distrust of foreign merchants, is irrelevant - the spamming business model is successful if only 1 out of a million people makes a purchase, because there are essentially no costs. 6) All such bans attack content. This makes them presumptively unconstitutional right from the start. The issue of spamming cannot be solved with a ban. Spamming as a problem is divisible into TWO problems: a) Theft, abuse or usurpation of resources owned by specific parties (i.e. ISP connectivity, staff time, etc., and your productivity), or owned by everyone (tragedy of the commons). This is a matter of the right to not be forced to bear the costs of another's expression (a component of the right to freedom of speech and press), with shades of the right to use public resources (i.e. offline if some bully, every time you try to go a public park, blocks your entrance into the park, you can get an injunction against this person. Hard to map this kind of thing to the offline world though, on legal grounds even if the ethics of the situation are plain as day.) b) Violation of the recipient's right to be left alone (a component of the right to privacy) and right to not be forced to read another's expression (a component of the right to free speech and press). Spammers love to contort this last into another *almost* opposite right - the right to speak freekly in public even if it offends someone. They avoid the issue of not having a right to do this in private spaces, and not having a right to force others to bear their costs even for public expression. Anyway, the privacy and freedom to not read issues seem to apply principally if not only to private email, while the arguments in point a) seem to apply to private mail, and forums (mailing lists, newsgroups). These two problems require different solutions (and probably in fact both require combinations of several different solutions, ranging from class action suits to fraud prosecution to better filters to increased system security to prevent forgery to tighter users contract to "don't route spamming ISP's traffic" agreements between ISPs and NSPs, etc., etc.) EFF is forming a working group to try to size up the various options and possible solutions and see which ones are viable, which ones are best for rights and for the Internet, which are expedient but would harm the public interest, which are unconstitutional or otherwise bad, and so on. We also have to look at this beyond the here-and-now. What about ISPs that in the fine print say they sell their entire user base's contact info to e-marketers? What about the use of "push" technology for spam-like purposes? What about a MoU between all backbones and major NSPs to simply drop service to any "spammer haven" ISP? What about calls for direct regulation by the FTC or FCC? Or by a UN body? Many proposals are flying, many problems envisioned (and some being missed by most), and many people are getting increasingly hysterical about this so we need to find some solutions quickly. None of the legislation produced so far does anything but cause more damage. -- Stanton McCandlish mech(a)eff.org Electronic Frontier Foundation Program Director http://www.eff.org/~mech +1 415 436 9333 x105 (v), +1 415 436 9333 (f) Are YOU an EFF member? http://www.eff.org/join ********* Date: Thu, 05 Jun 1997 06:52:36 -0400 To: declan(a)relay.pathfinder.com, From: Robert Moskowitz <rgm3(a)chrysler.com> Morning Declan. In today's Internet charging scheme, there are two costs to the Internet consumer: Time to retrieve mail, and time to process scams. The first will fade as higher bandwidth solutions come into play. The later may never fade. Most users are not email savy, even if their email software is. People do dumb things like post to USENET groups and then get on the big spam lists, further increasing their mail filtering efforts. But let's put this into perspective. Today, I might send 5 - 10 minutes everyday, sorting through my USMail. Now I am a good recycler, and I open everyone and put all of the papers into the proper bins; some days this can take me 20 minutes. Despite my Eudora Pro filters that color flag suspected spams (I don't delete them, the filters might be in error) for easy delete, I have dozens of emails among my hunderds of messages to read before trashing. Maybe 5 - 10 minutes a day. I really do not think spam is all that bad unless.... What I have discovered is that recreational email, ie use of USENET and recreational LISTSERVs is the way that people get on spam lists. Us techies thus may have a very low spam to message ratio. But poor johnQpub, naively posts to alt.rec.sailboats and then gets 100 spams a day semi-related to sailing (Sherri would LOVE to go sailing with you...). Interestingly, the answer to spam is NOT filters to block it, but filters to move ligitamate mail into folders for processing and leave your IN box for quick scan/trashing. Thus the cost of spam to the user is education and GOOD (read not free) email software. Now the cost to mail handlers is different, but they can and should fight back. Look at the lawsuit by flowers.com. Tracy and her husband run a small time operation. The spam that used their domain name as the reply-to cost them time and business. They are going after the kid. This is costing them, but it will get them on a list of 'do not spam' sights, we hope. Robert Moskowitz Chrysler Corporation (810) 758-8212 ********* From: "Halpert, James - DC" <jhalpert(a)pipermar.com> Date: Wed, 04 Jun 97 17:00:00 DST Declan, Very high volume spam can and does burden service providers' systems. Remember the cost of sending a million or so e-mails is very low, but engineering a network to handle, say, 200,000 improperly addressed e-mails that collect on a service provider's mail server costs a good deal more. Herein lies an economic problem. This is not to say that the Constitution shouldn't be sacrificed on the altar of an economic problem, but the concern about high volume spam should not be dismissed as trivial. -- Jim Halpert ********* Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 00:10:54 +0100 To: declan(a)well.com From: Azeem Azhar <aja(a)economist.com> Declan, Here are a variety of costs: 1. phone costs (non-us) 2. traffic costs (if you are one of the customers on metered useage that e.g. UUnet and BBNplanet offer) 3. hard-drive costs (my mac crashed a few weeks ago losing data in another application because an incoming e-mail took up my last bit of drive space. technically myu fault, i know, but a cost nonetheless.) 4. my time (to write and check anti-spam filters. it took me over an hour to construct a good system in eudora. my charge out rate is GBP100 an hour, minimum 8 hours.) 5. CPU time on mail-relays on the way. e-mail *does* impose a measurable load on an SMTP host. Azeem Azeem Azhar vx: +44 171 830 7133 The Economist fx: +44 171 681 1358 25 St James Street e-mail: aja(a)economist.com London SW1A 1HG www: http://www.economist.com/ Disclaimer: The views expressed in this email do not necessarily represent those of my employer. ********* Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 02:43:02 -0700 (PDT) From: Mark Grant <mark(a)unicorn.com> To: declan(a)well.com > What are the costs to consumers of unsolicited e-mail? Up to 150k of disk space, up to about 50 seconds of connect time for those who download it by modem (assuming 28.8k), a few seconds of time to delete it or a few minutes to send complaint mail back to their ISP. Worse is the indirect cost to consumers through the hassle it causes to their ISPs. They need faster links and more powerful mail servers to process the extra unwanted data and take time to install filters and deal with spammers. I've already had one spammer send out mail with a false unicorn.com return address which took a day of my time to sort out. >If you banned commercial e-mail, wouldn't it just affect legitimate >commercial transactions? Of course. Banning it is dumb and will cause all sorts of unexpected problems. A few class-action suits should eliminate most of them. Mark (postmaster(a)unicorn.com) ********* Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 11:02:49 +0100 (BST) From: Charlie Stross <charlie(a)public.antipope.org> To: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> On Wed, 4 Jun 1997, Declan McCullagh wrote: > What are the costs to consumers of > unsolicited e-mail? I guess the time it > takes to delete it might be one, hard > drive space might be another. Those are minimal. Here in the UK, there are NO free local phone calls (unless you're lucky enough to live in Hull, or have a cableco who want to let you yack to your neighbours - it's a long and boring story). Furthermore, if you receive email via SMTP or UUCP (rather than via a mailbox reader protocol like POP3 or whatever) you can't filter the junk out before it reaches you. Thus, receiving spam costs money, in terms of dialup connect time. Moreover, some spammers use really poor, munged, address lists; I've seen 100Kb mails (a couple of minutes of download time on an old 14.4K modem, which is what many people still use) with maybe a 1K payload at the end of the headers. Given that I've got three or four users on my dialup site, and we get an average of 5 UCEs/person/day, it's probably costing us 5-15 pence/day extra on the phone bill. Not significant for _one_ site, but if you multiply by two million (est. number of UK internet users) you get a plague that's costing about 20 million UK pounds/year -- to the unwilling victims. This is before you factor in the online services like Compuserve or CIX that charge per unit connect time, or charge for mail received from the internet. The real victims, though, are the people whose addresses the spammers bung in the Reply-to: fields, so that they get mailbombed by indignant recipients. -- Charlie Stross ********* Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 23:17:10 -0700 To: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com>, cypherpunks(a)toad.com From: Bill Frantz <frantz(a)netcom.com> At 12:45 PM -0700 6/4/97, Declan McCullagh asked: > What are the costs to consumers of > unsolicited e-mail? I guess the time it > takes to delete it might be one, hard > drive space might be another. I would > like to know how to quantify it, and > compare it with the cost of sending > e-mail. I don't think the costs of the 1-3 spam messages I get each day is significant. (But I don't post to Usenet.) > If you banned commercial e-mail, > wouldn't it just affect legitimate > commercial transactions? That is to say, > wouldn't fly-by-night pyramid-scheme > builders still be able to spam? I would > think that if they are so untraceable > that it's hard to block their spam that > it wouldn't really matter if it were > simply made illegal. Can you say regulatory arbitrage? The current social controls on spam are good enough that no one with any positive reputation wants to have anything to do with it. This means that spammers have to use anonymous offshore answering services. The widespread hatred of spam and spammers should keep the total amount under control without the legal action and in spite of the very low cost of spamming. The recent problems Spamford has been having with denial of service attacks is just one example of the social control process. The flood of hostile email spammers who include real email addresses receive are another. Legitimate commercial email does not evoke these strong reactions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | The Internet was designed | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | to protect the free world | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | from hostile governments. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA ********* Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 16:15:27 -0400 To: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com>, fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu From: "Shabbir J. Safdar" <shabbir(a)vtw.org> The combined EF-Florida/EFF-Austin/VTW filings for the FTC workshop will contain an exhaustive examination of the costs associated with junk email and the technology paradigms for addressing it. It's a technology paper, and doesn't take any particular political agenda. -S ********* Date: Wed, 4 Jun 97 16:11:58 EDT From: djones(a)insight.dcss.McMaster.CA (David Jones) > What are the costs to consumers of > unsolicited e-mail? I guess the time it > takes to delete it might be one, hard > drive space might be another. I would > like to know how to quantify it, and > compare it with the cost of sending > e-mail. To many people, the cost of spam is simply the time and tedium wasted deleted unwanted messages. Pretty minimal. A burdensome set of regulatory restrictions would also be an annoyance as people waste time and effory making sure reasonable email correspondence "complies" with the new rules. To some users of certain online services, they must pay for email messages or disk space and must pay for connect time. In these cases, there is a real and measurable monetary cost of spam. I'm sorry, I can't quantify that for you. At the organizational level, some companies may pay for Internet traffic bandwidth. If a significant fraction of the traffic is wasted on spam (actually I *really* doubt this is the case) then it could be calculated. > If you banned commercial e-mail, > wouldn't it just affect legitimate > commercial transactions? That is to say, > wouldn't fly-by-night pyramid-scheme > builders still be able to spam? I would > think that if they are so untraceable > that it's hard to block their spam that > it wouldn't really matter if it were > simply made illegal. Hang on. A true "pyramid scheme" requires the victims to send money to the folks operating the scheme. Therefore, they can't be entirely anonymous ... or they'd never be able to cash in! Banning "commercial email" is just nuts. Should we also ban "business-related email" ? Or "advertising email" ? .... or what about "political advertising on the Net" ?? The Canadian government just made the front page of HotWired's online magazine for being foolish enough to ban certain political advertisements on the Net. Surely the U.S. won't make the same mistake. -- David Jones, PhD president, Electronic Frontier Canada -- djones(a)efc.ca ********* Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 18:15:59 -0400 (EDT) From: wyang(a)ktel.osc.edu To: declan(a)well.com Hi. I run a Free-Net -- a community outreach project of the Ohio State University and the Ohio Supercomputer Center, which gives free access to anyone who lives in our service area (we're serving about 20,000 people right now -- I understand that, in our service area, Compuserve only has about 12,000 customers). I don't read the censorship fighting list, but someone who does forwarded me your message. I don't know about user costs... but I do know about network-level (provider-level) costs. Disk space is only PART of the computational problem. There's also the swallowing of network bandwidth, and the drain on compute resources (CPU/RAM). My site normally carries about 25,000 unique message ID's per day. Our estimates (these are eyeball numbers, not based on hard-and-fast numbers) make it look as though 10% to 20% of those messages are spam. That's ten to twenty percent of our e-mail operation cost being immediately put toward spam. Beyond that, our users complain about spam. A lot. Right now, about an hour of my time every day is spent dealing with spam complaints (about other sites spamming us, mind). That's 1/8th of my work time, with a massive opportunity cost (as well as a real cost). The other staff members are *also* getting similar time drains. We currently estimate that between $500 and $2000 per month is completely lost to spammers -- funds redirected away from our community outreach/service mission, SUBSIDIZING COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS which generally do not enrich our community. That monthly cost is being drained out of a very small ($150k - $200k per year) project budget which is only getting smaller because people only donate to our donation-driven budget when they like what's going on, and they don't like spam. You might try to call it the cost of doing business... except for the fact that I'm not a normal network carrier. I'm a Free-Net, one of those community-minded sites that's trying to make sure that access to the informational wealth on the Internet is available at price that everyone can afford (free). Universal access is being threatened by this kind of activity, which has a massive user-level costs and implications. Most Free-Nets are incapable of handling the constant barrage of spam, and the complaints they generate. > If you banned commercial e-mail, > wouldn't it just affect legitimate > commercial transactions? That is to say, > wouldn't fly-by-night pyramid-scheme > builders still be able to spam? I would > think that if they are so untraceable > that it's hard to block their spam that > it wouldn't really matter if it were > simply made illegal. Everything can be traced on the 'net. The question is what the cost of tracing it is going to be. You need to remember that there's virtually NO cost associated with *sending* spam. ISP connectivity costs, maybe bandwidth metering for a couple of messages. Those messages, however, can be expanded (1:1,000,000 kinds of ratios are potentially possible; one message can theoretically generate a MILLION spam messages; in practice, I've seen 1:10,000 ratios). The networks that carry the traffic are taking that computational and network-bandwidth cost. And they get hit by complaints from their users. I recognize that no matter what the law is going to do, you're not going to *stop* spam. The issue is to reduce the volume of spam enough to make sure that the cost is reduced to acceptable and absorbable cost-levels. That may mean making spamming tools such as "e-mail blaster" criminal tools. Free speech is great... but it's only free when it's not invasive into the rights of others. Spam *is* invasive, and there are clear, acceptable, and frankly more effective alternative methods for communicating commercial messages. -Bill System Manager, Lead System Administrator The Greater Columbus Free-Net ******** From: clinton(a)annoy.com (Clinton at Annoy) To: "'declan(a)well.com'" <declan(a)well.com> It is vital to distinguish between "unsolicited email" and "spam". Spam is essentially considered mass e-mailing for commercial purposes, (usually such as the selling of a product or service). If "unsolicited e-mail" is rendered illegal, what will happen to someone who mistakenly sends an email to the wrong address? It's like prosecuting someone for dialing the wrong number. What about a deliberately targeted, but unsolicited email that is crafted to express displeasure to a politician, for instance? To be potentially prosecuted on such a basis could (and will) place a severe chill on the rights of people to communicate freely with elected officials - the cornerstone of democracy. A protocol to deal with spamming is by no means unwelcome, but to confuse it with unsolicited email is potentially very dangerous. Especially with a government so intent on censoring the free flow of information and thought. Perhaps the first place to start would be to clearly define spam. Clinton Fein Publisher and Editor annoy.com ************* From: Eric Murray <ericm(a)lne.com> Subject: Re: Spam costs and questions To: declan(a)well.com Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 14:09:42 -0700 (PDT) Declan McCullagh writes: > > A friend who's going to be speaking on one of the FTC panels next week > sent me a few questions about spam. Does anyone want to try their hand at > answering them? I'll forward along all responses I get. > > What are the costs to consumers of > unsolicited e-mail? I guess the time it > takes to delete it might be one, hard > drive space might be another. I would > like to know how to quantify it, and > compare it with the cost of sending > e-mail. Also there's the cost of network transport of spam, both from the spammer's host to the recipient's ISP, and from the ISP to the recipients PC. The last is often the worst, as it eats up time the victim could be using to do something productive. In addition, most spam is bounced through an innocent third party who has a good network connection, like a university. Sending out a lot of spam takes much bandwidth, so the spammer steals the bandwidth and processing power from the innocent third party. > If you banned commercial e-mail, > wouldn't it just affect legitimate > commercial transactions? That is to say, > wouldn't fly-by-night pyramid-scheme > builders still be able to spam? I would > think that if they are so untraceable > that it's hard to block their spam that > it wouldn't really matter if it were > simply made illegal. Spammers need to have a way that you can respond to them. Since spam is legal, and they don't want email in return, they include phone numbers, fax numbers, or snail-mail addresses for people to reply to. If spam were illegal, then spammers could be tracked via the phone numbers. It's only the email's return path that's difficult to trace- spam, because it is selling something, must have a way for potential customers to respond. Most of the purported 'anti-spam' legislation is thinly-disguised LEGITIMIZATION of spam!! Anything that puts the burden on ISPs or recipients to filter out 'tagged' messages legitimizes spam. As annoying as spam is, I would much prefer that nothing be done rather than a poorly-thought-out law. So far, all the proposed laws I have seen have had flaws in them that make me unable to support them. To be honest, I can not myself come up with a law that I would find acceptable. It's a hard problem. -- Eric Murray ericm(a)lne.com Privacy through technology! Network security and encryption consulting. PGP keyid:E03F65E5 *********** Date: Wed, 4 Jun 97 16:10:07 -0400 From: Ray Everett-Church <ray(a)everett.org> To: "Declan McCullagh" <declan(a)well.com>, <fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu> On 6/4/97 3:44 PM, Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com) wrote: >A friend who's going to be speaking on one of the FTC panels next week >sent me a few questions about spam. Does anyone want to try their hand at >answering them? I'll forward along all responses I get. > > What are the costs to consumers of > unsolicited e-mail? I guess the time it > takes to delete it might be one, hard > drive space might be another. I would > like to know how to quantify it, and > compare it with the cost of sending > e-mail. I also will be speaking at the FTC next week and address that question in my FTC filing which can be seen at <http://www.smart.net/~everett/comment.html> The short version of the answer is that UCE is difficult to assign a clear cost to in part because it is spread over such an ever widening base that the more people you spam, the harder it is to know where the costs are concentrated. However there are costs to the bandwidth provider for the site originating the spam in terms of consumed bandwidth, there's also costs of consumed bandwidth leading into every site that receives the mail. Once it arrives at an ISP, there are costs in terms of the CPU time and system efficiency issues, and disk space consumed, and costs for the consumers who may have to spend more time and money (if they pay on a metered basis) to download and sort through the stuff. It's hard to quantify in dollars and cents, but lets look at the quantities we're talking about. AOL has publically estimated that they process about 30 million pieces of email a day and further they've publically estimated that 40-45% of that is spam. I recently sampled 3 days of my regular spam load and the average piece was a hair over 5000 bytes. 5k * 13 million messages, you're talking roughly 65 million kilobytes a day. (somebody please correct my math... i'm a lawyer not an accountant). Since people don't read their email every day, some of that must be stored for several days. And if it is bouncing back to an invalid sender address, the rest ends up in the postmaster mailbox. Assuming that those same figures and costs are spread among other ISPs as well, that's a heck of a lot of data to transmit and store...which translates into costs for ISPs and their customers. > > If you banned commercial e-mail, > wouldn't it just affect legitimate > commercial transactions? That is to say, > wouldn't fly-by-night pyramid-scheme > builders still be able to spam? I would > think that if they are so untraceable > that it's hard to block their spam that > it wouldn't really matter if it were > simply made illegal. I don't think anybody wants to ban all commercial mail, just the unsolicited advertisements for which the advertisers don't bear the real costs. If you're truly trying to operate a moneymaking business, you've got to have someplace for people to send the money... So regardless of how you disguise the headers, you still have a means of tracking down the culprit... and in the case of the Smith legislation you'd have the chance to recover up to $1500 per message. There is at least one major national collection agency that I know of who is chomping at the bit to recover that for you. -Ray <everett(a)cauce.org> ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ray Everett-Church, Esq. <ray(a)everett.org> www.everett.org/~everett This mail isn't legal advice. Opinion(RE-C) != Opinion(clients(RE-C)) (C)1997 Ray Everett-Church ** Help outlaw "spam"=> http://www.cauce.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ******** Date: Wed, 04 Jun 1997 19:20:36 -0400 From: Chris Poupart <jyhad(a)odyssee.net> To: declan(a)well.com <quote> If you banned commercial e-mail, wouldn't it just affect legitimate commercial transactions? That is to say, wouldn't fly-by-night pyramid-scheme builders still be able to spam? I would think that if they are so untraceable that it's hard to block their spam that it wouldn't really matter if it were simply made illegal. </quote> making spam illegal would be a futile plan, unless the authorities were given the power to persue not just the sender, but the people for whome it advertises. Not only could the fly-by-night pyramid-schemes work, but there are programs out there that allow you to route your e-mail so that it is Anonymous, now these programs can also do bulk mailing... I think you get my picture. If you could also press charges against the advertised company (providing it was authorised by them), then that might work. If not, well then with all the free e-mail available (www.hotmail.com and www.netaddress.com or .net I can't remember), people might want to set up an e-mail account to use with Usenet and to give as pw, ect, and then they could keep one privit and "secret" amongst their friends. The internet has flourished w/out government help and I beleive that it will continiue to do so. Chris Poupart Montreal, Canada -- Chris Poupart mailto:chris@peacefire.org Support Freedom of Speech and visit: http://www.peacefire.org | http://www.eff.org http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Field/6078/censor-index.html ********** From: "Marius Loots" <MLOOTS(a)medic.up.ac.za> To: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 11:16:21 GMT+2 Hallo Declan I really enjoy your list. The mailings are very interesting and relevant. Thanks. My thoughts on the two questions: > What are the costs to consumers of > unsolicited e-mail? I guess the time it > takes to delete it might be one, hard > drive space might be another. I would > like to know how to quantify it, and > compare it with the cost of sending > e-mail. It would be extremely difficult to quantify in monetary terms. It has been long since I had one of those BIG things in my mailbox. Most of these has lately been smaller emails that compare well in size to some of the material I send around. Because harddrives are not that expensive anymore, storage space is IMO, not a factor at all. The irritation factor is my biggest concern. You have to sort it from the valuable mail, that takes time. You have to delete it, that takes time. And some people has to download it, that takes time. This eating up of my time, irritates me. And with the present information overload, time is one of the few things we definitely don't have. > If you banned commercial e-mail, > wouldn't it just affect legitimate > commercial transactions? That is to say, > wouldn't fly-by-night pyramid-scheme > builders still be able to spam? I would > think that if they are so untraceable > that it's hard to block their spam that > it wouldn't really matter if it were > simply made illegal. You are not going to be able to ban it. As long as email is email, there will be people using it to spam. Even if you make it illegal, it will still happen. A few quick thoughts or ideas to be kicked around: 1. What could be made illegal is the selling of email addresses. 2. Ban *unsolicited* commercial email 3. Make ISP who supply service for free or without proper checking liable for prosecution if spam comes from their system. 4. Black-list people that are caught spamming (use in tandem with 3). A number of these spammers are not once-only fly-by-nighters. They strike again and again. Because it is not illegal at the moment, no-one can do anything. I am not able to write the legalese but these are some rough thoughts on the matter. Unsolicited email is unsolicited email, and the sooner we get that out of the system, the better. Groetnis Marius Loots ------------------------------------------------------- Maestro mloots(a)medic.up.ac.za +27-12-319-2144 pgp2.6 TOP 50 on the SA WebChart - Have a look and vote NOW!!! http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6398 Add some Chaos to your Life and put the World in Order ------------------------------------------------------- ********* Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 13:28:38 -0700 To: declan(a)relay.pathfinder.com From: Roger Bohn <Rbohn(a)UCSD.edu> Subject: Re: Spam costs and questions At 3:47 PM -0400 6/4/97, Declan McCullagh wrote: >A friend who's going to be speaking on one of the FTC panels next week >sent me a few questions about spam. Does anyone want to try their hand at >answering them? I'll forward along all responses I get. > > What are the costs to consumers of > unsolicited e-mail? I guess the time it > takes to delete it might be one, hard > drive space might be another. I would > like to know how to quantify it, and > compare it with the cost of sending > e-mail. A big cost is that it reduces the S/N ratio of e-mail. As the amount of spam goes up, sooner or later you start missing legitimate messages that you should have read, because you do blanket erases, don't read carefully, close down entire accounts, etc. Personally I've not reached that point, but spam is growing exponentially so I give it 2 years. Cost of telephone connect time is also a consideration for most users. Even if you are on a flat phone rate, there is an opportunity cost from having your phone tied up longer. (Yes, even if you have 2 lines--the members of my household are always fighting over the second line.) > > If you banned commercial e-mail, > wouldn't it just affect legitimate > commercial transactions? That is to say, > wouldn't fly-by-night pyramid-scheme > builders still be able to spam? I would > think that if they are so untraceable > that it's hard to block their spam that > it wouldn't really matter if it were > simply made illegal. > Yes and no. Fly by nights would continue, certainly. But look how successful the mail fraud laws have been at limiting (not eradicating) mail based pyramid schemes, for example. Laws, if carefully drawn, would have an effect. I think mandatory labeling is much better than banning commercial e-mail, by the way. An outright ban has several problems, in the U.S. at least. A mandatory label deals with the S/N issue cited above (you can filter commercial messages), and as mail packages get smarter they can be set to not download messages selectively, thus dealing with the other problems. Something as draconian as an outright ban also encourages lawbreaking more than a labeling provision would. Roger Bohn ###

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Re: Will Bell get the rest of us in trouble?
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May wrote: > However, the focus, at least for why he has been denied bail, is strongly > on the "assassination politics" essays and communications, and on > "overthrowing the government" sorts of things. (This according to the > affidavit, and according to what Greg Broiles relayed from Bell's > court-appointed lawyer.) Actually, I haven't spoken with Bell's attorney, but John Young did. My comments about Jim and his situation, jail policies, etc., are based on reading the search warrant docs, the complaint, and on a general understanding of the practical/applied side of criminal law. I don't have any knowledge about the specific facts of this case that aren't on my site or John Young's. Several of us from C2Net did talk with Jim's mom on the telephone a day or two after the raid, but didn't learn anything that hasn't been covered in the various newspaper articles about the case. Has anyone read/heard anything about the nature of the grand jury proceedings which are scheduled? The articles I've seen have suggested that perhaps Jim will get good news from the grand jury - but I'm wondering if it's not the federal prosecutor's way to seek *more* charges, fish for more evidence (witnesses can be subpoena'd to testify before the grand jury, and aren't allowed to have their own counsel present with them in the hearing room during their testimony, although they are allowed to take the Fifth) and/or try out some of the weirder conspiracy/militia stuff in front of more or less ordinary citizens. A grand jury indictment (or refusal to indict) is a good way for a prosecutor to deflect scrutiny/publicity from their own decisions, and blame the outcome on a third party. If they indict, the prosecutor points to their decision as proof that s/he isn't just indulging a personal vendetta against the defendant. If they don't indict, the prosecutor can point out that s/he did their best but was thwarted by a third party. -- 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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Virtual picketing
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I think that analogies are useful to illustrate a point, but a poor basis for making new laws or new policies. I think it makes more sense to look at the reasoning behind the first policy, and/or the combination of conditions and policies that created it, and see if they're present (or not) in the situation which seems to require a new policy. In the particular case of the Internet, I don't think it's at all clear that a public highway is the best (or only) analogy which is appropriate - for example, one could also draw an analogy to a *freeway* .. which, at least in many places, are not open to picketers or pedestrians of any sort. Another easy analogy is to the postal service - it's more or less government-run (haven't kept track of the precise line that's drawn), but there's certainly no right to "picket" communications sent using this government-owned media .. I don't get to add extra pages to letters that my neighbors get, nor they to mine. And there's no First Amendment problem there - if I want to communicate with someone about an issue, I can send them mail. Third parties have no right to interfere, nor to learn our names so that they can bombard us with mail. And the same is true for communications sent by private carriers like FedEx and UPS, even where those private carriers use public facilities like roads and sidewalks and airports to carry on their private businesses, delivering private communications. Incidental use of a public facility does not nationalize a private person/organization. (I think the argument is stronger where a private party monopolizes a public resource - but I suspect that my gut reaction to that isn't compatible with what courts are doing these days.) This discussion is getting waylaid with a host of weakly-related and poorly-understood legal doctrines - e.g., a "right to picket", "public forums", and "right to privacy". Instead of getting bogged down in those tarpits (or distracted by their attractive pseudo-official flavor), let's focus on the real question(s) at hand. I understand to proposal to be that it'd be somehow beneficial if the government interferes with communications between consenting parties if the communication happens to touch or utilize a publically owned/funded resource ... or that such interference is allowed or required by the First Amendment. I think that presents a much clearer and more fundamental First Amendment question - e.g., can the government force me to say things I don't want to say? Can the government intercept speech from me to another person and preface or wrap it with some sort of counterargument provided by people who disagree with me? I think the answer is (and should be) a slam-dunk "no". No tricky analogies needed. -- 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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NetAction -- another big government "cyberliberty" group
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

*sigh* --Declan ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 23:34:45 -0700 (PDT) From: Audrie Krause <akrause(a)igc.apc.org> To: declan(a)well.com Cc: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Re: Micro$oft Monitor: Sidewalk Spam Sorry, Declan, I don't share your rather naive belief that industry is going to regulate itself. At 01:37 AM 6/1/97 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote: >Glad to see Net Action is pointing out potential privacy violations or >potential for spam (though there seems to be no evidence saying Microsoft >in fact has sent such spam). > >But what I find interesting is that NetAction is using the Net, the >press, the media to broadcast Microsoft's bad privacy policies. Then >people can choose to visit or not, or to read the notice more carefully. > >Thus I see no need for FTC rulemaking. I hope that is what NetAction will >be saying to the FTC. Etrust is another solution NetAction should support. >

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RE: McVeigh? Nimrods.....
by Paul Bradley 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> As to the Children of OKC, people who turn the care of their children > over to government employees or contractors do not place too high a > value on those children. I certainly don`t agree that a high value was not placed on the lives of the children by their parents, but the parents were guilty of naivety, stupidity and placing the children at risk. > think those children who died weren't cared for? You are a sick person who > should seriously consider therapy. Anyone who read this and said "Yeah!" I certainly feel the parents, though guilty of no crime, have only themselves to blame for the needless deaths of their children. > understand this? There is no reason to blow up kids. It's wrong. For any > reason. Of course, but the children shouldn`t have been there in the first place. McVeigh, if he did it, is guilty of murder, on those children alone. He commited an initiation of violence against innocent and defenceless human beings, this is why I believe the bomber, whoever he/she is, should die for their crimes, BUT, the childrens lives were placed at risk by their parents because they believed they would be safe in a federal government building, very bad move. I`m not absolving McVeigh from guilt, just pointing out basic facts. > who may be important to you have parents who "care" about them enough to > scour the planet to find a good,safe day care that isn't withing the blast > radius or > shooting range of : > > A government office. > A large corporations headquarters. > A law firm. > A post office. > A town square. > A restaurant. > A bank. > Anywhere some asshole might have a gun and go loopy. > Anywhere some asshole might have a car be drunk and go loopy. > Anywhere some asshole might have a gun and a car and be drunk and go loopy. The bottom 3 suggestions are clearly an excessive over-generalisation of the point, the parents could not really be reasonably expected to believe their children would be harmed by a crazed gunman. As for the drunk driver, do you let your kids run unattended on busy roads? Placing them in a federal building was a stupid act, not criminal, but most definitely not the act of a sensible person. > To all the dipshits who could possibly think otherwise. I should also > mention it is an EQUALLY fucked up thing to blow up adults. Depends who those adults are, as I said in a post yesterday, I do not subscribe to the "save the children!" mentality, and killing an innocent adult is as criminal as killing an innocent child, but those children could not possibly have initiated agression against McVeigh, because they were under the age of criminal responsibility (which is a hazy area, but I think this case is pretty clear cut). Blowing up guilty, evil, and government affiliated adults is to be highly commended. > Like my fellow Santa Clara County Resident Bill Frantz said : > > For cypherpunks this comes down to: Make code, not bombs. True, code will lead to further liberation in the virtual communities, but bombs are an effective device for ending the corrupt tyrannical government that rules us. Datacomms Technologies data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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Re: McVeigh? Nimrods.....
by Kent Crispin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Thu, Jun 05, 1997 at 12:14:20AM -0400, frissell(a)panix.com wrote: >>Yes, some pathetic strange little boys swaggering around in never-never >>land. Lonely individuals with shriveled hearts, stunted morals, and >>feverish imaginations, who brag contemptuously of their superiority >>over "sheeple", and boast of their heroic roles in the coming >>revolution. > >I hope you're not referring to Lucky, or Time May, or me. Lucky has a >successful career in a computer-related field. Tim was exceedingly well- >integrated into the work force at Intel and did a great deal of valuable and >lucrative work for them. I am married with four children (who I never sent to >a government school) and get along well with a host of friends and co-workers. > I have achieved a modicum of success as a writer and speaker. I happen to be >a neo-victorian myself. Clinton has a *very* successful career as a politician, and has done a great deal for Intel, in that role. And he is a great family man who also gets along well with a host of people. I was characterizing the people Lucky described: Some on this list will even say that the kids' deaths fortunately reduced the negative impact their parents can have on the gene pool. If you, Lucky, or Tim hold such sentiments in your heart, then I am referring to you. Lucky's statement that people putting their children in daycare in a federal building are "criminally stupid" is simply contemptible. >Why is it that when someone like Al Gore expresses strong and extremist views >as he did in "Earth in the Lurch" (or whatever that book was called) no one >ever claims that he is " a pathetic strange little boy swaggering around in >never-never land. A lonely individual with a shriveled heart, stunted morals, >and a feverish imagination." Of course, Gore has been called far worse things, many times over. Probably on this very list. You know that, I know that. > >How do you know our hearts are shriveled? Can it be because we can do the >math and figure out the Feds are *much* bigger killers than McVeigh? No Duncan. It's because your first thought is to do that math. It is one thing to be aware of the many, many failings of human beings and their governments. It is another thing to savor rightous anger, keeping score, and thinking of suitable revenge. Besides, who the heck are "the Feds"? What set of human beings are you thinking about? >Why >don't you bleed for *their* victims. I do. Though I wouldn't use that metaphor. >Remember, government's crimes are worse >than private crimes (even apart from the higher body count) because a serious >breach of duty and trust is involved. Keeping score again, eh? Government -5 billion, Duncan 10. >Look, people are bound to disagree over social policy and even right and >wrong. But since everyone is much more powerful than they used to be, >a force- >based monopoly on policy and morality ("others" government) just can't be >sustained anymore. Why on earth would you think that? >Your side just simply doesn't have the artillery. "My" side? You probably mean the "government". If so, you are deluded. If not, you are right -- I personally have only a small armory -- a few automatic weapons, two tactical nukes, some conventional explosives, and a big pocket knife -- just your average homeowner arsenal. >It >would be better for everyone if you would recognize reality, step back, and >allow self-government to replace others-government. I'm not standing in anyone's way, and it wouldn't make any difference at all if I did, because I am an insignificant zero who comforts himself with the thought that being a clown is an honorable profession. That's reality. You should take a hit, sometime -- it's heavy stuff. But you know who really needs a heavy dose -- it's that Bob Hettinga fellow -- his head is shaped strangely like a big brick, and he gets it wedged in the strangest places. > It will happen anyway. Yep. And the second coming is just around the corner, now that the comet has arrived with the mother ship. -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent(a)songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

3 2

Re: Who "invented" remailers?
by Mark Grant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Alan (alano(a)teleport.com) wrote: >Currently, use of the Mixmaster remailer system is out of reach of most >of the average users out there. The only serious project to address that >need has been Private Idaho and development has stopped on that project. Privtool (my PGP-aware mail program for Unix) has supported Mixmaster remailing for years (just click a box and off it goes) and would also support nym.alias.net if it hadn't gone down just as I started building in the capability (it currently supports decryption but not posting). Anyone who wants to use my remailing code is free to rip it off under the GPL. Currently there are at least two people developing Private Idaho and possibly more. However, even command-line Mixmaster remailing is much simpler than using the Type-I remailers. >Currently the nymserver network is in pretty bad shape as well. They are >difficult to use and are dependant on the whims of the remailer network. I've been playing with Premail and found it pretty easy to use. As I said above, reliability is the main problem; particularly when you lose the entire domain now and again. Mark

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Maneuvering the Instruments of Control Through Deception
by Michael Pierson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Watching the rapid fire succession of Administration rulings and gambits, and the developments of various contending legislative proposals and industry initiatives, along with all the debate over the differing implications and portents of this distracting plethora of moves and countermoves, has made for quite an intriguing spectacle. In particular, the recent controversies over threatening elements in the SAFE bill and the motives of the legislators involved, as well as the contentions concerning Netscape's aims or quality of judgment in its latest key recovery announcements reminded me of some lines from R.G.H. Siu's _The Craft of Power_: ...There is an increasing need as time goes on for a voluntary surrender of freedom on the part of the people at large or at least for a relative passivity toward encroachments on it. An essential instrument for bringing this predisposition into being is propaganda. The purpose of your propaganda, then, should not be sympathetic education but subtle manipulation. [...] Orthodoxy should not comprise your primary objective in propaganda, but what Jaques Ellul has called orthopraxy. This is "an action that in itself, and not because of the value judgments of the person who is acting, leads directly to a goal, which for the individual is not a conscious and intentional objective to be attained, but which is considered such by the propagandist." Knowing the real action to be taken in furtherance of the objective behind the informational barrage, the propagandist "maneuvers the instrument that will secure this action." I thought Lucky Green keenly observed what might be considered an example of this process in action when a while back on the Cryptography list he wrote: > This simply attests to the thoroughness with which the GAK forces > have managed to frame the debate. There is zero need for key recover > if the goal is to locally obtain plaintext. However, the vast > majority of large businesses out there have been convinced that they > need key recovery to achieve this goal. > Therefore they are now demanding to be given a specific method for > achieving this goal, the method most beneficial to outside forces. > A truly brilliant deception. It is certainly a sly move, but like other sleights of hand, it benefits when a certain naivete is present in its targets. For businesses, there is an additional economic calculus involved that can sometimes make the deceptions harder to discern, or easier to swallow, or both to varying degrees. But for the adamant opponents of GAK, these subterfuges should not seem so obscure. It's clear by now that the core pro-GAK forces have a good appreciation of Sun Tzu's dictum that "All warfare is based on deception." There are some other passages from Sun Tzu that seem somewhat topical to recent events. In all fighting, the direct method may be used for joining battle, but indirect methods will be needed in order to secure victory. Indirect tactics, efficiently applied, are inexhaustible as Heaven and Earth, unending as the flow of rivers and streams; like the sun and the moon, they end but to begin anew; like the four season's, they pass away to return once more. ...Thus one who is skillful at keeping the enemy on the move maintains deceitful appearances, according to which the enemy will act. He sacrifices something, that the enemy may snatch at it. By holding out baits, he keeps him on the march; then with a body of picked men he lies in wait for him. Of course, the nature of the battlefield and the makeup of the forces contending are more complicated, subtle, and considerably more abstracted than the matters that Sun Tzu was concerned with. Nevertheless, certain themes remain timeless in warfare both military and psycho-political. Documents that EPIC and others have managed to acquire through FOIA requests show that duplicity has been part of the game plan on this issue since prior to the Klinton Administration. The hardcore surveillance state forces have long subscribed to the principle that "In war, practice dissimulation, and you will succeed." My impression is that they have adhered pretty consistently to that principle so far. It seems that some of the internecine controversy of late amongst the various factions in general opposition to GAK and other forms of privacy escrow and intrusion, to varying degrees, comes from disagreements regarding the relative merit or malignancy of differing political approaches and the motivations of the political actors involved. In part, this can depend upon where on the Anarchist-Minarchist-Benevolent_social_welfare_state spectrum they come from, and the intensity of their mistrust, or outright hostility, toward the process and role of government, but numerous other factors are involved. Many of these disagreements are valid and will continue (hopefully, though, not to the point of serving the purposes of the main adversary). One could argue that some who might really believe they are trying to preserve privacy will end up undermining it instead. The road to hell can indeed be paved with good intensions, as well as bad, naive, opportunistic, calculating, or craven... But in a broader strategic sense, those paving the road to hell, or what they are paving it with, can be less important than understanding the mentality of those who sway its course there, and the means they use to achieve their ends. Chief among these means is their use of deceit. Deception and sophistry are time honored tactics of those who want to build a more intrusive authoritarian state. The people who have promoted the kind of "2 + 2 = 5" reasoning that's been used to rationalize things like "good faith" exceptions to the Fourth Amendment, or the contemptible mockery of due process represented by government's abuse of civil forfeiture, are of essentially the same ilk as those who now expect citizens to accept assurances about "lawful authorization" and due process when it comes to their promotion of CALEA and GAK. The fearmongering exaggerations and misrepresentations that are spread by GAK proponents are part of a larger pattern as well. David Burnam's excellent 1996 book on the Justice Department _Above The Law_ does a good job of documenting some of this with respect to the flagrantly misleading representations of national crime statistics by the FBI and others early in the Clinton administration and before, and provides some useful perspective on their more recent claims concerning the need for new electronic surveillance infrastructures and encryption controls. It isn't simply the talent for facile deceit that characterizes the effective surveillance state advocate, but also the ability to maintain a pious pretense (and rarely perhaps even the self-delusion) of support for privacy and civil liberties while pushing the policies that undermine these very things. Senator Kerry's remarks on his Orwellianly titled "The Secure Public Networks Act" come to mind. A particularly telling and ironic example of this appears in a transcript from the FBI website of a speech given by Director Freeh in Krakow Poland during June 1994: "The Nazi terror began not by breaking the law but by using the law. The morning after the Reichstag fire in February, 1933, President Von Hindenburg was persuaded by Hitler to invoke Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. This emergency provision of the national law was the key to its elimination. It enabled Hitler to suspend individual and civil liberties, freedom of speech, press and assembly; it allowed warrantless searches of homes and the seizure of property without due process of law. [...] SS and SA members then started a wave of political violence which culminated in a March, 1933, Enabling Act granting dictatorial powers to Hitler. Hitler's brutal usurpation and exercise of power was in part carried out by clever use of the police and the corruptly controlled enactment of new laws." One wonders how Mr. Freeh went about reconciling this knowledge of history with his role as point man for the Clinton Administration's attempts to stampede legislation for new "anti-terrorism" powers following Oklahoma and last summers TWA explosion/Olympic bombing episodes. As Freeh's remarks reveal, the role terrorism has played in promoting the agendas of authoritarian statists has been quite notable. Terrorism's major consequences in history appear largely to have been to serve the expansion of the domestic powers of the states targeted, not the furtherance of the agendas of the terrorists responsible (or allegedly responsible). In fact, some states have found terrorism so valuable in this regard that when terrorists did not exist, it was necessary to invent them (or facilitate them, or exaggerate their threat). The state's concerted cultivation and fanning of fear and hysteria in relation to acts of terrorism (with the aid of the major mass media) is a increasingly refined art form. It's role has become so significant that it deserves a name. I call it State Sponsored Hysterrorism. While acts or threats of terrorism are the the most valuable adjunct to the exploitation of hysterrorism; fear mongering concerning other major bogeymen, most notably the specter of drugs, pornography and pedophilia, can occasionally be used to achieve the requisite level of alarmed herd psychology, and the extra marginalization of reasoned deliberation necessary to serve the ends of the hysterrorists. I think the U.S. Government's campaign of hysterrorism following the TWA explosion/Olympic-Park bombing is a case study for what we can expect in the future. The political exploitation of this event was a contingency plan in waiting for the right bomb to go off somewhere. Next time, they will be even more prepared. There might be a few in the anti-GAK camp who are still inclined to entertain the notion that the Clinton administration's actions with regard to GAK and CALEA have been largely due to them being misguided, or benighted, or gullibly enthralled with apocalyptic scenarios drawn by secret intelligence reports, and crime threats painted by latter-day Hoovers. Perhaps they believe that if the Clintonites could only be made to understand the futility of attaining their "professed" objectives, they would be reasonable. But the fact (from my vantage) is that following the Oklahoma bombing, and even more egregiously, following the the TWA/Olympic events last summer, this administration dishonestly promoted and endeavored to exploit public fear and the political intimidation that could be derived from that fear in a cynical attempt to stampede the ill-considered passage of legislation granting sweeping new surveillance powers to the government. These attempts to subvert and hot-wire the legislative process in this regard, as well as the disingenuous shell games they have played with their succession of Clipper and key escrow/recovery proposals and initiatives, have cast serious doubt in my mind on the quality of their principles, misguided or otherwise. I view the government's exploitation of occurances of terrorism and hysterrorism to be the most potent potential threat to privacy and civil liberties we face. The stage is now being set by an increasing drumbeat of warnings, news specials, and so forth about the threat of more exotic forms of Nuclear, Chemical or Biological attack. I recall a melodramatic news piece a while back where a reporter sensationally demonstrated how easy it was to get a shoebox-sized container filled with test-tubes on a subway train, and a host of "experts" were interviewed about the potential pandora's box of nasty possibilities awaiting us in the years to come. A few weeks ago, a forum on terrorism in Atlanta, organized by Former Senator Nunn and attended by Defense Secretary Cohen and others, brought lurid speculation on things like the future development of custom engineered viral pathogens, and warnings about "the Internet transmitting knowledge to people all over the globe in how to make weapons of mass destruction." One gets the impression like they can't wait until their menacing forecasts are validated. The message is that uncontrolled Information is Threat, and that we're going to need protection from many new forms of Data Crime in our Fearful New World. Sadly, considering the public at-large's current suseptibility to the politics of fear, it probably wouldn't take much to sell this message. Major acts of terrorism aren't the worry of those who most want the institution of intrusive state powers, it's their secret wish. The Friend's of Big Brother are holding some strong cards, but many of them rely on appeals to fear and ignorance. Their ability to deceive, mislead, distract, ensnare, market fictions, manage perceptions, and structure the terms of debates to their advantage can be quite formidable at times. It was fortunate that they miscalculated early on concerning the political repercussions from the persecution of Phil Zimmermann and the ham-handed Clipper_I proposal. While they continue to make tactical errors which can be exploited, they are refining their approach as time goes on, and their more successful tactics can be considerably less obvious than their blunders. Perhaps having discovered the drawbacks of frontal assaults, one of their new guiding principles might be "when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away". Insidious machinations (stego-politics?) are more challenging to counter, but like other forms of legerdemain, knowing what to look for makes the artifice easier to discern and derail, however deftly done. - From the surveillance statist's perspective on the public, it is indeed true that "Ignorance is Strength". While the "Knowledge is Power" forces may be outgunned in certain respects, they do have the advantage of not being hampered by the need to conceal duplicity. The ultimate solutions to preserving privacy may turn out to be technical, but whether one is an avowed cryptoanarchist, or a libertarian (!'L') type with mixed minarchist inclinations (sort of like me), or whatever, in the near term, developments in the political arena are far from irrelevant. The state's most serious opponents to privacy well understand the value of swaying public perceptions and attitudes. Their best hope is to find a way to shape public and congressional opinion in a way that will allow them to get restrictions on unconditionally secure encryption passed into law, the sooner the better. The longer they can be delayed and stymied, the less likely they are to succeed. In any case, we should be careful not to play into their hands, or provide them with material to facilitate their efforts to foster fears. In the words of Sun Tzu, "the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans" -- not to serve them. In the struggle to defend our privacy, personal sovereignty, and liberty in general, there will be disagreements over where the enemy lies, and how to best take aim against it. Whatever the disagreements, I hope we can at least manage to avoid standing in a circle as we fire. -Michael -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBM5atg9GJlWF+GPx9AQGbDAP/eTXxm6GXvDRlEltMI7HYH95qO45NxME2 L8J/q0FKDwPlH9gIWHUoKQO/5SxzQfJf9kmnyY4qgo7dxpB7W8IAg9bHMWCiv8G7 kTI4rEFhfBQj+rnXS3hTSgR95CRL6vbjgz4k/ojvRTKMucAVehiymhj5TBaw1FRl F/OKkaPFjAM= =IKeA -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Dimitri McVeigh
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adam Back wrote: > Hallam-Baker <hallam(a)ai.mit.edu> writes: > > I'll accept that the ranting faction do some good work but I've > > not seen anything usefull out of either Bell or Vulis unless that > > is you are an FBI agent looking to get a promotion from Freeh. > Dimitri rights code sometimes. He wrote a cancel-bot. Very > constructive piece of work in an indirect way. See: having nice > freely available cancel-bots enables technically clueless, would > be-censors to censor more. They censor more, and cause a nuisance for > themselves sending out tons of cancel messages. This incentivizes > more and more people to ignore cancels (the trend in news > administration these days I understand is to ignore cancels entirely), > which means that you can't have your USENET posts censored nearly as > easily. Dimitri has long pushed the envelope of censorship and challenged those who don't like it to do something about it. The reason that Hallam-Baker is able to post thinly veiled "Dimitri is a cocksucker!" messages to the list is because Dimitri refused to lay down and quit when he was forcibly censored for his "Gilmore is a cocksucker!" messages. If the censorship coupe d'etat had succeded, then Hallam-Baker's post would have been trashed into the flames list. Dimitri and others, such as the Freedom-Knights, made it possible to "route around" the censorship of USENET posts to such an extent that any attempt I might make to censor Hallam-Baker's demeaning of Dimitri on USENET would have little effect. The bottom line is that Hallam-Baker's demeaning of Dimitri without facing censorship on this list and on USENET is partly the result of the efforts of Dimitri, himself, to fight censorship. This is not surprising, since, after all, Dimitri is a cypherpunk. (Despite all of his claims to the contrary.) TruthMonger

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To ID or Not to ID that is the question
by William H. Geiger III 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <3.0.2.32.19970605042555.00712ad0(a)mail.atl.bellsouth.net>, on 06/05/97 at 04:25 AM, "Robert A. Costner" <pooh(a)efga.org> said: >I'm curious where the people here stand on such a policy. Do you feel >that positive ID to fly on a plane should be permissable? How about a >law to put a stop to it? The answer to bad laws is not more laws. There are two separate issues here and it is important to separate the two: 1) Government mandated ID requirements for Airline Travel. This is truly evil. It violates several protected rights under the constitution and is just plain un-american. Who I am and where I go and how I get there is non of their dam business. 2) Individual Airlines requiring ID as part of there security protocols. This I have no problems with as it is there planes and they may adopt whatever security policies they wish. If Delta wishes to require full body cavity searches before boarding their planes more power to them. No one is forcing you to fly with them. There are many things that are forbiden for the Federal Governmnet to do that are acceptable for individual companies. This is a good example of just that. - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBM5bBG49Co1n+aLhhAQHPAQQAm9A0DUjzTyFWvXOeKO6+lDODQQ0lUoKI SjkQrvBwhfIU5SjLqO1bC6CVU9ad5Gn00PBuYj2JPxPJPT1PulaLKud3bA+1jy74 UTe/8gN+Iv534YheHFoabr3MlIvaeGFyiRJTnaKwX3UG/26v3RuoWA6k1Apzz8fC i78iHAvg7sc= =o0Qp -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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