December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Advertise to 100 MILLION People for FREE!!
by nim＠nim.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cypherpunks, Would you be interested in sending out an advertisement for your business or web page to 100 MILLION PEOPLE on the Internet for FREE? TO FIND OUT HOW: Respond to this email! (nim(a)nim.com) You will receive Information on how to do this for FREE!

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Microsoft will NOT ship browser with RSACi on by default
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 19:30:04 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Microsoft will NOT ship browser with RSACi on by default Microsoft called me a few hours ago and told me that -- despite reports to the contrary -- the company definitely will *not* ship the next version of Internet Explorer configured to block unlabeled sites out of the box. "The product is going to ship with Content Advisor off by default," said Mark Murray (mmurray(a)microsoft.com) My article at http://netlynews.com today had said: The next version of IE will default to displaying only properly labeled web pages, according to Ken Wasch, the president of the Software Publishers Association. This comes after previous reports that RSACi might be default-on: http://pathfinder.com/netly/editorial/0,1012,476,00.html http://pathfinder.com/netly/editorial/0,1012,740,00.html Kudos to Microsoft for doing the right thing. -Declan

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Re: From Hatch's testimony
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Robert Hettinga wrote: > Thursday, July 10, 1997; Page A18 > The Washington Post > From testimony by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) > yesterday before the Senate Judiciary > Committee: > Today, Americans . . . enjoy the ability to > use, and industry is free to market, commercial > encryption of any strength domestically without > restriction. Try to think of laws as outlining what we are no longer free to do. Then go to a courthouse library and look at the mountains of books which contain a list of the freedoms that have been taken away from us. Who the fuck do the people who pass these laws think they are? I wish I had a nickle for every local city councilman who got a hard-on the first time he got to vote on a bylaw that empowered him and his pals and fucked everyone else. Then, once he's convinced himself that this -->| |<-- is 12", he decides that it is his duty to run for Congress and share his "greatness" with the whole country. I try to pay my parking tickets more than 500' from a schoolyard and sell my drugs before the date I'm due to appear in court, but I keep getting in trouble because I just can't keep up with all of the intricate details involved in being a law-abiding citizen. What happened to the "good old days" when all you had to do was stay out of stone-throwing range of the "righteous" in order to live according to your own dictates? Today, the "righteous" feel that they have the right to come in your home whenever they want, demand the wrong to read all of your correspondence, tell you what you can put on your website, limit what thoughts you can express and how you do so. And it never ends. If you want to build a dog-house you have to deal with an army of people who are upholding the "righteousness" of city permits, union rules, ecology regulations, tax laws, and a multitude of similar bullshit. And if you happen to forget to cross a 't' or dot an 'i', then you find you are in violation of a new law which is classified as an "inconsequential felony." Def. 'inconsequential felony' -- A legal term which refers to a harmless action which is nonetheless subject to the severest of punishments because someone in authority got a wild-hair up their ass for some silly reason and deemed it should be so. I met a man in Texas who spent twenty years in prison for the possession of a few stems and seeds. He thought it ironic that the state had imprisoned him for twenty years to try to prevent him from doing something that someone else thought would ruin his life. He told me that at his sentencing, his mother told him, "I told you smoking dope would ruin your life." She got upset when he was "unrepentant" enough to reply, "No. I think the judge did that." The problem is not that the citizens are "sinners" but that Hatch and his ilk are "righteous." When the "righteous" take it on themselves to speak for a "higher power," whether it be "God" or "National Security," then they begin justifying even the most horrendous of actions as "just following orders." Thus, it's not really going to matter whether you are using crypto to encrypt children's pictures or a new version of the Bible. Coming new laws will make you a criminal either way, because the "righteous" feel that it is up to them to decide if the children's pictures are pornographic or if the new version of the Bible is sacreligious. Government has merely usurped religion as the final authority on who is "righteous" and who is a "sinner," on what is "good" and what is "bad." They are priests with nuclear weapons to back them up in enforcement of their "commandments." The end result is that we have to fear getting nuked if we build the fence around our house more than 5' high, so that the ever- vigilant "righteous" don't hurt themselves when peeking over our fence to see if we've built an illegal doghouse. And we have to fear getting nuked if we want to electronically "whisper" when the "righteous" are trying to spy on the "sinners." Same shit, different religion. TruthMonger

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The Real Plan: Making the Net Safe for Censorship
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 14:16:47 -0500 From: Marc Rotenberg <rotenberg(a)epic.org> To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: The Real Plan: Making the Net Safe for Censorship Here is an example of a proposal being presented at the White House today. The minds boggles at the number of unconstitutional provisions contained in such a brief text. Never has a freedom won in a Supreme Court decision been given up so quickly. Marc Rotenberg EPIC. ---------- http://www.safesurf.com/online.htm The Online Cooperative Publishing Act (SafeSurf's Proposal for a Safe Internet Without Censorship) Any law that seeks to regulate the Internet must first recognize the uniqueness of the medium. The Internet is not the print media or the broadcast industry. It is also not another form of phone conversation or a 900 number calling system. Instead, the Internet is the manifestation of humankind's quest for limitless two-way interaction with thought. The hyper-text layout allows us to change topics on a whim, travel to distance places, or gather world opinion on a subject in a matter of minutes. This distinctive nature of the Internet must be protected and even promoted by any legislation that claims to be fair to this medium. The interaction between the one receiving data and the one publishing it are where the core of the law should focus. Both sides have rights, the publisher has the First Amendment and the receiver has the right to be secure from harm in his home. Proper Internet law should encourage a cooperative transfer of ideas in the form of data. (It should be noted that it was the universal acceptance of basic rules of cooperation, rather than anarchy, that built the Internet. ) Any law that attempts to give one side or the other is given an unreasonable burden in conducting the transfer of data is doomed to failure. The CDA was too burdensome on the publisher. Its goal was to stop the flow of data, rather than to regulate it for the benefit of all parties. On the other hand, without a proper law, parents can purchase and activate measures to protect their children from adult material and still not feel secure in their homes from unwanted material. This is because negligent publishing of data eventually allows material that can harm the child to enter the home. Once this material is experienced by the child, its damage is done. There is no "oops" factor, no way to undo the unwanted intrusion into a child's innocence. Most importantly, any Internet law must not censor thought. It may regulate the labeling on the packaging but never the content. With the goal of achieving a greater spirit of cooperation between the publisher and the receiver of online data, we propose the Online Cooperative Publishing Act. It shall contain the following provisions: 1. The right to be able to identify the adult rating of online content before it enters one's home shall be established. This shall be a civil right giving the violated person or family the presumption in a suit against negligent publishers. 2. Negligent publishing of data shall be defined as placing adult oriented material on the Internet in such a way or in such a location that it prevents its rating from being known. 3. A rating shall be defined as a PICS compatible label that identifies degrees of adult content in a way that can be understood by computer filtering systems and is issued by a ratings service that has a minimum of 5,000 documented individuals using its system to mark their data. 4. A publisher is defined as anyone who places computer data where it can be accessed by the general public without the use of a credit card or other secure verified ID or password given out only to adults. Content that can be only be accessed by the use credit cards or other secure verified IDs is not subject to this law. 5. The code used to surround content published on the Internet shall be defined as packaging. All government identification requirements shall be limited to the code of the packaging. Nothing in this law shall be construed to require any altering or censorship of the content. 6. Three types of online publishing shall be defined: a) Publishers who accurately identify their data with a recognized labeling system. These publishers shall be considered to have satisfied the labeling requirement of the law. The right to publish shall be completely protected for those who accurately label their material. They shall be protected from all civil suits that argue negligent posting of data. Only grossly mislabeled material can be prosecuted. (Note: This is not a protection for obscene material. This law will offer no protection for obscene material.) b) Publishers who mislabel their data to the degree that it enables a minor using a label filtering system to gain access to harmful material. Data shall be considered to be mislabeled if it is posted in a newsgroup, directory or other joint area that has been labeled as free from material harmful to minors. Tampering with another's label shall be crime. These publishers may be criminally prosecuted for subverting a rating system to entice children to harmful material. The mislabeling must be to the extent that it is completely unreasonable to accept it as accurate. Only ratings that are too lenient can be prosecuted. Posting unlabeled adult material to an area that has declared itself safe for children or tampering with another's label shall be a severe criminal assault on the rights of the receiver. Sending unsolicited email to a minor that contains pornographic material or an invitation to a pornographic Web Site, shall be considered negligent enticement and may be criminally prosecuted. A bulk email service sending pornographic email must show that it took reasonable measures to insure that every recipient was an adult. (Example: The addresses used were from the membership list of Adult Check or other such adult verification services.) c) Publishers who do not label their data at all. Negligence in the absence of damages shall not be a criminal offense (but it may be a civil violation of the rights of the receivers of that data) unless the data is deemed to be harmful to minors. Then the publisher will be prosecuted for negligence. These publishers may be sued in civil court by any parent who feels their children were harmed by the data negligently presented. The parents shall be given presumption in all cases and do not have to prove the data actually produced harm to their child only that the material reasonably could be considered to have needed a label warning to protect children. 7. Internet Service Providers are considered publishers of only that material of which they directly control or gain revenue via a percentage of sales. Web Site designers may be held liable if they fail to attach ratings to Web sites, containing material harmful to minors, they design for a fee. They may, by written agreement, assign the task of rating to another legally responsible party. 8. Not every document is required to be labeled, only the default or index document of each directory. In the case of an entire web domain being of one rating, only its default top level document needs to be labeled with instructions to apply it to the entire site.

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Solution to McKain's worries
by geeman＠best.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The alternative solution might go something like this (also known as the Mother of Clipper): 1. Outlaw use of any crypto not authorized and provided by an Official Source, which is to be provided in the form of hardware on the CPU/Motherboard (or equivalent, depending on the computing/communications device) 2. When you wish to send an encrypted communication or store encrypted data, the Official Crypto Device from the Official Source first must obtain a Secrecy Credential from a Central Repository, to which you have applied for some strength crypto. The Credential gives you certain secrecy privileges ... as long as you're being a good citizen. The Credential enables the crypto on your official device: the device will not function without communicating with the Central Repository and obtaining today's Credential. 3. When LEA wants to tap you, it sends a control message to the Central Repository which modifies your Secrecy Credential, dumbing you down to, say, 40bits. They could even provide the entire session key (or other secret as required by protocols.) As long as this state is in effect, your "encrypted" communications and storage are readable by the LEA. Now: consider the profits to be made by the Central Repository, which is responsible for maintaining your Credential. Each Credential use could be charged a transaction fee, as well as the annual licensing. The crypto device provider has a locked-in market for its silicon, as it must go on all the motherboards and into the CPU's. The big-system manufacturers responsible for the servers and communications required to manage the communications between the crypto and repository make out real well too. It sounds like a perfect fit for Microsoft, Intel, together with HP-s ICF!!

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"The Failure to Do Your Job" amendment (was Re: White House ...)
by John Deters 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Please forgive me for following up to my own posting, but I just realized how close I was to a solution: A Constitutional amendment that would call for the impeachment of the President for failing to veto any three bills that are overturned by the Supreme Court on Constitutional grounds. Call it "The Failure to Do Your Job" amendment, or the "For Violating Your Oath" amendment. Maybe include a clause that stipulates the ex-President must also return any salary earned during his or her tenure. John -- J. Deters "Don't think of Windows programs as spaghetti code. Think of them as 'Long sticky pasta objects in OLE sauce'." +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | NET: mailto:jad@dsddhc.com (work) mailto:jad@pclink.com (home) | | PSTN: 1 612 375 3116 (work) 1 612 894 8507 (home) | | ICBM: 44^58'36"N by 93^16'27"W Elev. ~=290m (work) | | For my public key, send mail with the exact subject line of: | | Subject: get pgp key | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+

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credit card
by a54＠ourlocation.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cash advance: Yes Approval number: 000-5467001 Credit limit: $3000.00 Approval Expires: 08/01/97 Credit provider: Morningstar Ent. Bank Affiliation: None Card Issued: Morningstar Card Member Status: Pending Annual Fee: None APR: 17.99% Dear Future Cardholder, Congratulations! You have been approved for a $3,000.00 Unsecured credit line from the financial card division of Morningstar Enterprise regardless of your past credit history. Your approval number is 000-5467001 and your approved credit amount of $3000.00 for credit purchases and cash advances will be available once you receive your Morningstar card! There is No security or money deposits Required! For more information on how to receive your Morningstar card Visit our web site at: http://www.ourlocation.com/morning

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Electronic commerce has long way to go
by Marc Briceno 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

After watching Ian Goldberg's demo of all the neat things one can do on an US Robotics Palm Pilot PDA, I decided to purchase such a device. I headed to USR's website. The Pilot Pro is listed for $399. Always looking for a bargain, I headed to Yahoo and quickly found several "best deal" search engines. Some were better, some were worse, but they all pointed me to a number of suppliers selling the Pilot Pro for as little as $339. A $60 savings over list or my local CompUSA store. Below is my experience with the sites. The sites are listed in increasing order of amount charged for the same item. 1. No online ordering. Call us during regular East Cost business hours. 2. No online ordering. No times are given. 3. Has online ordering. CC# is sent unencrypted. 4. Has online ordering and a link to a secure server. Link is stale. 5. Has online ordering and a link to a secure server. Link times out. Guess I'll just swing by the CompUSA in the morning. This is pathetic,

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Re: The Recent Trend in "Collective Contracts"
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Reputation Monger wrote: > An anonymous message dated: Sat, 12 Jul 1997 08:46:32 +0200 (MET DST), > and signed with the initials KC, wrote: > >In any case... > Damn. Kent's figured out anonymous remailers. I read this message > because it came from anonymous--Kent's in my killfile. > > Know what this means? > Anonymous remailers have more reputation capital than Kent. Excerpt From: Welcome to the Cypherpunks Mailing List (TcM) ------------------------ Your initial post to the list has been digitally classified by the Cypherpunks Automated Response system in order to determine the initial level of reputation capital you will be awarded as a new member of the Cypherpunks Mailing List (TcM). ... At Reputation Capital levels below -1, you may be subjected to shame, humiliation and filtering to the point where the only hope for your posts being read is for you to post to the list anonymously, as a "Monger" of one sort or another. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- *** "Cypherpunks Mailing List" is a (Trade{cocksucker}Mark) of the Electronic Forgery Foundation, and any abuse of this (TcM) will be considered normal behavior on this list. *** Kent has obviously read "The Tao of Remailers," which explains the concept of turning the CypherPunks tools against them as weapons. One has to wonder if Louis Freeh has read the book as well and is sitting at home sending threatening letters to the President via a variety of remailers. I wonder if it is feasible to design a remailer which sends out anonymous email which is rated (Anonymous +7 / Anonymous -4) on the basis of reputation capital? Slightly Anonymous

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Verisign gets export approval
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded from PGP-USERS list: > First PGPInc and now VeriSign? Hmmm. Is this telling us something? "VeriSign on Monday said it received permission from the U.S. Department of Commerce to export 128-bit strong encryption software and issue digital identifications to approved organizations based on that software. " "Under the 128-bit scheme approved by the U.S. government Monday, companies will not need to place their encryption keys in escrow, or submit to U.S. government key-recovery requirements in order to use VeriSign's software, company officials said." # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list or news, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)

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