December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: FCPUNX:The Sovereign Individual - ignorant authors
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:12 PM 10/9/97 -0500, Jim Choate wrote: > This chapter deals with various aspects of social issues (eg rise of > national languages) and how they led to the growth of nationalism in > general. Toward the end of the chapter (pp. 265 in the hardback) these > idiots (don't know a better term) actualy have the audactity to claim that > Stephen Jay Gould is a neo-creationist, This appears to me to be an accurate depiction of Stephen Jay Gould's views. He claims that humans are fundamentally different from other animals in this regard, and has frequently been ridiculed on this account. I have read some of his writings, for which he was ridiculed, and the ridicule and contempt appears justified to me. > The author of this section has apparently never read a word that Gould has > written. Gould is known as a leading supporter of Punctuated Equilibria and > its various spawn, I have read a fair bit of Gould. His work on the evolution of non humans is perfectly plausible though controversial. His work on humans is shear crap and is not regarded by the relevant experts in the relevant fields as legitimate science. In his field, he is a innovator. Outside his field, he is a crackpot, similar to the flat earthers and the people who claim that Socrates was black, demonstrating that even trained scientists can degenerate into nuttery when they go beyond their area of expertise. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Fuck You!
by Bianca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I found your address, despite your subterfuge, and I am going to fuck up both you and your computer system. I don't like fuckwads sending bullshit to my email. Fuck You (& the horse you rode in on)

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Re: CAK as a really bad form of corporate networking
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Tim May wrote: >My conclusion is that PGP for Business does very little for real >corporate access in "hit by a truck" situations, as most of these >critical files (fill in the blanks , but thinkof chip design files, >source code for programs , lab notebooks , etc .) are simplyNOT ever >e-mailed. And if they are e -mailed , this is completelya tertiary >issue. One should also ask who is managing the company and why. It is never a good policy to leave important components of the company in the hands of particular people for long periods of time. While people die relatively infrequently, they do often become frustrated or angry and leave the company. For instance, one really has to ask what is going on when a programmer doesn't check in his or her code for six months. And one really has to wonder how useful that code is going to be to anyone. My policy has been to discard half completed work when people leave. It's just cheaper to start anew than to clean up and debug undocumented code which nobody understands. In general, the case where "important documents" have to be retrieved from a departed employee's desk or computer are fairly uncommon. And the case where it is necessary to intercept a departed employee's e-mail is pretty much non-existent. >So who is the real customer for PGP for Business and its form of >plaintext recovery? I am looking forward to hearing the precise mechanisms behind PGP, Inc.'s change in tune. Were some of those investors shills? In terms of governmental expenditures, it would cost nothing to flood PGP with great investment deals. It would probably cost less than Clipper itself. And all of the former troublemakers can be quietly ridden down and finally trained to accept the saddle of good stock deals and contractual obligations. If that was the mechanism, it's pretty slick and to be admired by sportsmen everywhere. It is the sense of Monty Cantsin that a number of readers of the list are downplaying PGP Inc.'s actions because they hold the character of certain people involved with the company in high regard. This is probably an error. Character must be judged by actions. The actions are clear. Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.html -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBND6DcJaWtjSmRH/5AQEDGwf+Pl0xusD2oBzrqOFkBrV92NHswJJ6VbuQ akNVAaBz+gNnXy2Zt7Pfa09nqibW9qbzd3pbJh8v7djOwtqQSJXN7uZA0JVF2mii oLR5jwh9bpNRSvElaJLRmcGMY3RKighl1rcwfxAjbmJjEI6nSjcaELPNpPCMZEfT cEehlxC5R4f9oikQJc4VNg/MVo89P9ckT9wtbdd4S4ZOFArxHvGlw+bW/hwlpDNE fIZBy8BlJqir+BSZGLkSwOOvuAwozMCQSM/VFj6aDNiNTA3bQ8xHGyaapRci7dVX ZleOrYWsdAt25R9yt79T9Mcu8tKuvbfl245gxHSrOReODG89gOT/vw== =FLvb -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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GAK, CAP, "escrow", "recovery" -- Minitru has us so confused we fight amongst ourselves
by Zooko Journeyman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The whole goal of the hijacking of the phrase "key escrow" to camoflage GAK was to obscure the difference between voluntary and involuntary participation. Unfortunately, while Clipper and successors have been policy failures, that initial push to conquer important conceptual ground has been a devastating success. Now good guys from both sides of the PGP CAP debate appear to have forgotten this essential distinction. Jon, I started reading your list of ways that PGP CAP differs from USG GAK, and it was about "software versus hardware" or something. Screw that-- is it voluntary or is it not? Of course it is voluntary. PGP, Inc. has no deal with USG or any other agency to the effect that user's secrets will be involuntarily (by threat, force or secrecy) copied. So forget about all those details and make the point-- PGP helps people control their own data, including voluntarily sharing their data with others. This is almost entirely unrelated to GAK. One more time for the slow folks at home (journalists especially, listen up!): Escrow is when you voluntarily choose to share your property with someone else, especially as part of a business contract that you have with that person to the effect that she won't use your property for anything but will merely hold your property in order to give it back to you or to a third party in response to certain events transpiring. The word "escrow", coined sometime in the 16th or early 17th centuries, has held this meaning and only this meaning throughout the intervening centuries. Someone getting access to your secrets against your will, whether by trickery, threat of force, or burglary is not escrow. At least, not until the USG deliberately chose to abuse that word to throw a mask of legitimacy upon its rotten idea of mandatory wiretapping for all digital communication. Damn, but it is frustrating to see such a bare-faced newspeak gambit succeed so brilliantly against otherwise literate people. Everyone should read George Orwell's paper on (ab)use of language in politics. None of the examples he cites are nearly as worthy of Minitru as is this single conceptual hijacking. Regards, Zooko P.S. Of course there are subtleties that I omitted from this rant. It wouldn't be a good rant if I calmly enumerated the various legitimate perspectives now would it? Maybe PGP CAP is a bad idea. Maybe it will lead to GAK. Maybe corporations are a bad idea. Maybe they will lead to governments. But whether or no, use of PGP and PGP features (including escrow features) is voluntary. GAK is not voluntary. GAK is not escrow. Please help me put a stake through the heart of this vile meme.

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Attitude and Assumptions
by Jon Callas 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 In the course of all the discussion here, I have seen a number of implicit attitudes and assumptions that irritate me. This is a short rant to air my irritation. The first thing that bugs me is what I'm calling Crypto-Correctness. I don't know a single person on cypherpunks who is against privacy, or is against the notion that in the information society, keeping and bearing crypto is an inalienable human right. Politically, I'm a Lockeian, and put privacy up there with Locke's basic trio of life, liberty, and property. As part of this, I fight the stupid notion that because there are bad people out there, rights should be abridged. Crypto is a tool, and nigh any useful tool can be misused. If we let that fact stop us from making tools, we'd be using nerf axes and dressing in bubble wrap. If we let the fact that bad guys are using our stuff bother us too much, we'd be against privacy. Here at PGP, we like to make hay out of the fact Burmese freedom fighters use PGP. A while ago, Tim May sent out something in which he stated that Hamas uses PGP, making the very valid point that one person's freedom fighters are another person's terrorists. He implied that they're not using just to tell each other where the best hummous shops are, and I don't doubt it. I like to say (now that I'm no longer an arms maker) that we are like the Red Cross in that the Red Cross gives medical attention to everyone, regardless of their moral worth; we supply privacy software to everyone, regardless of their moral worth. In the days when crypto was a munition, I used Winchester as a metaphor, complete with Sarah's cute bungalow. In its milder forms, Crypto-Correctness thinks that if a bad guy is using crypto, then it's a mitigating factor on what they're doing. I can see that it might come from not liking tack-on laws like the clause in the present bill that makes using crypto to hide a crime illegal. This is deplorable. But using crypto doesn't make something good. In some of its other forms, it pushes into what I perceive as Crypto-Socialism. We just shrug if suicide bombers or paparazzi are using crypto, but if a property-owner wants to use it, you can just hear the sharp intake of breath. If that property-owner is Big Business, there are howls of indignation. I get the impression that some people think crypto should only be produced by non-profit organizations for the use of non-profit organizations, or those that had the common decency to get their profits illegally. The next thing that bugs me is that the government has us so scared of our shadows that we look askance at anything that might make crypto mass-market. Right now, crypto is rocket science. Many of the people who need it most are only going to understand it after years of acclimatization. The sorts who inhabit the nightmares of tech-support people are going to take at least one more turn of the wheel of Maya to get it. I think a lot of people here think that blade guards on crypto in any form is stark moral evil. You lost your data? Good. Shows you're not worthy. You shouldn't have data anyway. Information is property, and property is theft. In the crypto-anarchist future, after the withering away of the state, you won't need property anyway. I suppose we'll all just eat e-cash. I really believe that this panicked, bunker-mentality fear of anything that might complicate the system with blade guards is doing the cause of freedom a sever disservice. Business people are subjected to a lot of the asinine annoyances and minor evils that government brings, too. If we get them on our side, they will be a powerful ally. I believe that the central thesis of crypto-freedom is that it doesn't matter if a document is on paper or in a text file; it doesn't matter if a conversation is on the phone or in a restaurant. The medium doesn't matter. My papers and effects have the same protection on a disk as on paper itself. We all know that deployment is the key. But real deployment means deploying to people who don't know how their toaster works, too. If we don't solve this problem, we'll get hit with the backlash. Just you wait, once crypto becomes trendy, there will be a Time cover story with some headline like, "How Much Privacy is Enough? Who's Really After You, Anyway?" and in it will be sob stories about how people lost their passphrases, were blackmailed by employees (ask me, I have real-world tales of this), or can't decrypt their backups. Congress will have hearings, and they aren't going to be fun to watch. Is trying to head this eventuality off (yes, I believe it's inevitable) really the work of Satan? The last thing that really, really bugs me is the hostility that's directed towards PGP Inc. because now we're an Inc. The core group of people who are here are the same people they always were, they're just being paid now. I'd love to be independently wealthy and do this for the crypto-anarchist, non-profit joy of it, really I would. But you know, as the great crypto-socialist Balzac said, "behind every great fortune, there is a great crime" so I suppose we must be up to no good. This is a blues riff, so let me tell you how we've paid our dues before I get to the chorus: We published our source code. One of our potential partners said and I quote, "Are you mad?" We stand firm on the issue of No Weak Crypto. A noted GAK proponent asked me at a conference, "Aren't you folks going to do an export version?" I replied, "Sure we are." This person asked, "When?" I said, "The day after the law changes." We put out a freeware product, hoping people will upgrade to the for-pay version. If you're thinking of your own startup, let me give you some investment advice: the crowd who thinks the X-files is a documentary doesn't upgrade to the for-pay version. We started an IETF working group that will take our core technology and put it out for anyone to use. They will own change control. We won't be able to use any patents or intellectual property to enhance our business position. We won't be able upgrade the protocol without a vote. The only thing we offer as a selling point is our superb engineering and our good name. The business version is funding the rest of the ball of wax. Are you afraid we'll make a deal with the devil? I have two comments on that: (1) I work in Silicon Valley. I tell headhunters, "no thank you" every week. I took a pay cut to come here. I can get a 20% raise by going to WebFoo any time I want. My options aren't worth what I would have gotten as a layoff package had I stayed at Apple. If I send out an email message that provides "technical support" to furriners, I could land in jail. I'm here because I care. Ask the people here who left behind Cisco options at 40 if they care. (2) There's one surefire way to make sure we don't make any deals with the devil. Buy the product. Encourage your friends, your mother to buy the product. If you see someone who is using the freeware version, send them a polite message to buy the product. Buy one and send it to your congresscritter. If you don't, what you're saying is, "crypto-freedom is very important to me, as long as I don't have to spend $49 on it." Convince your employer that $119 isn't too much to pay for meta-introducers. Make the crypto market so hot that someone competes with us by being badder than us. Oh, yeah, baby, I got them crypto-startup blues. Jon - ----- Jon Callas jon(a)pgp.com Chief Scientist 555 Twin Dolphin Drive Pretty Good Privacy, Inc. Suite 570 (415) 596-1960 Redwood Shores, CA 94065 Fingerprints: D1EC 3C51 FCB1 67F8 4345 4A04 7DF9 C2E6 F129 27A9 (DSS) 665B 797F 37D1 C240 53AC 6D87 3A60 4628 (RSA) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Business Security 5.5 iQA/AwUBND7PCH35wubxKSepEQKD9QCgwPoRbXSHyueb9U4fLztaQkAKLlQAoNdC kX1gOsFsBZ6YDtC9AX5X/VU9 =IiAC -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: FCPUNX:The Sovereign Individual - ignorant authors (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 15:28:31 -0700 (PDT) > From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd(a)echeque.com> > Subject: Re: FCPUNX:The Sovereign Individual - ignorant authors > At 11:12 PM 10/9/97 -0500, Jim Choate wrote: > > This chapter deals with various aspects of social issues (eg rise of > > national languages) and how they led to the growth of nationalism in > > general. Toward the end of the chapter (pp. 265 in the hardback) these > > idiots (don't know a better term) actualy have the audactity to claim that > > Stephen Jay Gould is a neo-creationist, > > This appears to me to be an accurate depiction of Stephen Jay Gould's > views. He claims that humans are fundamentally different from other > animals in this regard, and has frequently been ridiculed on this account. > > I have read some of his writings, for which he was ridiculed, and the > ridicule and contempt appears justified to me. Well apparently you didn't comprehend what he was saying any better than the authors of the book or your experts. However, I have no intention of bringing this discussion onto the list past this responce. If you, or anybody else, would like to see Gould's refutation of this claim in his own words then refer to: Scientist Confront Creationism ed. L.R. Godfrey ISBN 0-393-30154-0 Chpt. 8. Darwin's Untimely Burial - Again! pp. 139 This volume is a collection of articles by 15 of the top evolutionary theorist (not all biologist) in the field. Worth the $7.95 this little book costs. You might also want to read "The Mismeasure of Man" (again). > I have read a fair bit of Gould. His work on the evolution of non humans is > perfectly plausible though controversial. > > His work on humans is shear crap and is not regarded by the relevant experts > in the relevant fields as legitimate science. [rhetorical questions, please don't send responces] So your premise is that the evolutionary processes which form non-humans are not the same forces acting on humans? You seriously mis-understand not only Gould but modern evolutionary theory in toto. Sounds like you and not Gould have embraced neo-creationism. What relevant experts? THE relevent expert in evolutionary biology is Ernst Meyr. Are you claiming that Meyr doesn't know what he is talking about? Gould's premise, supported by Meyr and most other evolutionary biologist, is that the human being is in fact a radicaly different animal than all others. Not because of some magical force of transcendance but rather a easily understand mechanism. The increase of cerebral capacity in concert with exo-cerebral capacity (ie memory outside the brain), abstract thinking, and language provide humans the tools to escape the purely evolutionary process. Gould's claim, and what pisses so many people off, is that man has reached a point where the major force in future development is NOT evolutionary processes. It is quite similar to what happens when you have 10 computers sitting in a room and what happens when those 10 computers are networked and given large hard-drives. You don't get evolution, you get revolution. [that's as close to relevancy to this list as I can manage] ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Attitude and Assumptions (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 18:00:24 -0700 > From: Jon Callas <jon(a)pgp.com> > Subject: Attitude and Assumptions > Crypto is a tool, and nigh any useful tool can be misused. If we let that > fact stop us from making tools, we'd be using nerf axes and dressing in > bubble wrap. If we let the fact that bad guys are using our stuff bother us > too much, we'd be against privacy. Tis better to let 10 guilty men go free than to imprison a single innocent man. > the Red Cross in that the Red Cross gives medical attention to everyone, The Red Cross is a non-profit organization that supplies support and aid to both sides. PGP Inc. does not - you don't make tools that crack crypto. Bad analogy. > The next thing that bugs me is that the government has us so scared of our > shadows that we look askance at anything that might make crypto > mass-market. Can't say that I am motivated by this particular meme. I am ecstatic that the company I work for in my day job (Tivoli Inc.) is coming out with a series of security and crypto related products to be implimented by our customers on a global enterprise level. None of which support GAK or backdoors. Now whether our parent company IBM will have the cajones to carry through on it is another question entirely. Exactly how we are going to sell these products over-seas does concern me, especialy since our product is used by many large corporations for enterprise managment in other countries besides Canada or the US and they regularly use our Courier product to distribute data across national borders (not to mention some pretty big ponds). > The sorts who inhabit the nightmares of tech-support > people are going to take at least one more turn of the wheel of Maya to get > it. There are at least 10-12 people at Tivoli tech-support who 'have got it'. > I think a lot of people here think that blade guards on crypto in any form > is stark moral evil. If those blade guards keep me from getting a close shave then they shouldn't be there. > I believe that the central thesis of crypto-freedom is that it doesn't > matter if a document is on paper or in a text file; it doesn't matter if a > conversation is on the phone or in a restaurant. The medium doesn't matter. > My papers and effects have the same protection on a disk as on paper itself. Exactly, it's the message that is protected NOT the media. > The last thing that really, really bugs me is the hostility that's directed > towards PGP Inc. because now we're an Inc. Congratulations and best wishes on your future. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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No Subject
by bureau42 Anonymous Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Play Misty for me.

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SSZ & T1 upgrade
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, Just a quick note to update you on the status of the T1 upgrade. It's going to take us a few weeks longer to get resources in place than we expected but there is some good news. It turns out that SWBT can provide us a 2-year contract on a full T1 for <$1500 setup and $350 a month. If we go for 5 years there is no install fee and the fee is $250 a month. We are currently discussing various issues with our current customers, examining our personal finances, and our market share potential in our area for which contract to go for. I currently have a 2-year contract on the present equipment location. The potential for purchasing the property will also be discussed. We can purchase a T1/T3 Linux compliant card that will mimic a NIC for less than $700. So, it looks like we can do a complete upgrade to a T1 for less than $3k. Provided we don't get in some sort of grid lock we hope to have something setup and going within the next few weeks. It is my personal desire to have something in place and fully functioning no later than Thanksgiving. But then again, I would have already signed the contract in order to get it going by Halloween. Alas, I am not the last word anymore - the down side to business partners. Even if both my current business partners decide they want out I can say that I will have resources in place by Christmas to have us to a T1. So, irrespective of what is decided the T1 will happen. We will be keeping the ISDN as a backup and transient dial-in for users. If you have any questions please direct them to 'consulting(a)ssz.com'. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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index.html
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

CNN logo Navigation Infoseek/Big Yellow Pathfinder/Warner Bros Main banner Reservation Desk rule FORMER FBI OFFICIAL SENTENCED IN RUBY RIDGE PROBE October 10, 1997 Web posted at: 3:07 p.m. EDT (1907 GMT) Kahoe WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A former FBI official was sentenced Friday to 18 months in prison and fined $4,000 after pleading guilty to the destruction of a report criticizing the FBI's role in the deadly 1992 shootout at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. E. Michael Kahoe, a former head of the FBI's violent crime and major offenders section, told the court he was sorry for his actions. "I must live every day with the realism of what I've done," he said tearfully. "I will always be known as the agent who plead guilty to obstruction of justice in the Ruby Ridge case." Kahoe was sentenced by Judge Ricardo Urbina, who could have given him two years. The judge also ordered him placed on probation for two years after his release from federal prison. Kahoe's lawyers said his 26 years of unblemished law enforcement experience should be taken into account. Federal prosecutors urged the maximum sentence. In 1992, the wife and son of white separatist Randy Weaver were killed during a standoff with the FBI. A deputy U.S. marshal was also killed in the siege. As head of the FBI's major crimes section, Kahoe was responsible for preparing a critique of the FBI's performance at Ruby Ridge. Federal prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to hand over documents and later destroyed the report, which they were able to recreate from computer files. rule Related stories: * Both sides decry new Ruby Ridge charges - August 21, 1997 * FBI senior officials won't be charged in Ruby Ridge siege - August 15, 1997 * Former FBI section chief pleads guilty, admits destroying Ruby Ridge report - October 30, 1996 * FBI official charged with obstruction after concealing Ruby Ridge report - October 22, 1996 Related sites: Note: Pages will open in a new browser window * United States Department of Justice Home Page * Federal Bureau of Investigation External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive. _________________________________________________________________ Infoseek search ____________________ ____ ____ _________________________________________________________________ rule Message Boards Sound off on our message boards You said it... [INLINE] Reservation Desk rule To the top © 1997 Cable News Network, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms under which this service is provided to you.

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