December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

[news] TV station sets cybersex sting
by Vipul Ved Prakash 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

*** TV station sets cybersex sting With cyperporn and cybersex ranking as sensational news items on local TV stations, Fox's Los Angeles outlet has taken the trend a step further by ensnaring adult sexual predators. KTTV's Fox 11 News at 10 worked with a 21-year-old woman posing as a 14-year-old to conduct cybersting operations that led to the arrests of five men. KTTV used the unnamed woman as bait, having her enter online chat rooms where she was immediately targeted. The station filmed the online seductions as well as the arrests of the men, who included an attorney, a doctor, a retired Army officer and an investigator for the Dept. of Labor. See story at http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=5777644-464

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Re: Taxing Churches for their views? Bad idea. (fwd)
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Brandon Crosby wrote: > While I do not want a debate over tax exemptions in churches, 'Free Speech' > may very well involve supporting canidates for positions in a democracy. > This is the very basis for elections. However, one begins to question this > reasoning when a church leader attempts to get into the government, using > the church's tax exemptions, for either support of the church, support of > self, or some illegal (or, at least, unethical) mix. The problem, as I see it, is that the laws regarding political donations and resulting political activity are different from the laws regarding church donations, thus leading to the Christian Right using the differences to bypassing the restrictions that are placed on organizations registered as political groups. If 'Joe's Whorehouse and Illegal Drug Emporium' were to engage in the same types of political activities that the 'We Wear Halos Church' did, they would be subject to arrest and imprisonment for a wide variety of violations of electoral law. Vote-Reality is that most politicians would no sooner oppose a totally unconstitutional law that promises to 'save the life of a single child', than they would promote the prosecution of the 'good guys' for doing 'bad things'. Churches hold the same favored 'good guy' status as policemen who violate the civil rights of 'bad' citizens. > Should churches be tax exempt? Without their long history of helping people, > I doubt they would have any benifits. However, even if their privillige was > removed, they would simply be able to donate less money to community causes. Churches, like governments, corporations, or any other organized entity, have some wonderful people in them, doing wonderful things. The problem, as always, is what our founding fathers realized--these types of organizations/structures tend to grow and attain power which is then used for the purpose of self-sustained growth (survival). Humanity tends to evolve, while organized humanity tends to de-volve. Biped humans, walking upright, form organizations which move toward becoming quadrapeds dragging large clubs. Most of the issues/problems discussed on the Cypherpunks list are often dealt with in terms of a combination of 'the way things are' vs. 'the way things should be' vs. 'the way things are becoming'. My view is that things have become so askew that any one of the above, or any of them in combination, are not adequate for dealing with what is to come in the near future. The statement of one of the founding fathers, in regard to needing a revolution every twenty years, or so, should be considered in the light of the history of 'forest fires.' Forest fires know that there should be a 'revolution every twenty years' but humans do not. In our foolish wisdom, we decide to intervene in the natural course of things, to 'make things better'. We then proceed to put the natural balance so far out of askew that, once we have 'saved' the forests by not allowing forest kindling to burn for a hundred years, the Forest Stock Market undergoes a major 'correction'. The structure of American government, electoral laws, charitable tax deductions, etc., are not inherently evil in themselves. The problem is that they have all been subject to interference with the basic underlying concepts, in efforts to improve them with a 'more is better' mentality, that they are all ripe for burning. ["Welfare (charity) has resulted in many positive benefits. Hey! I have a good idea! Let's put _everyone_ on welfare!] The structure of government/laws/society is very similar to that of the Internet, with everything being linked in ways that become increasingly complex once individual entities decide that things need to be done a 'certain way' in their own self-interest, instead of in the needs of the underlying infrastructure. The problems multiply as the number of entities deciding which 'certain' way is the 'right' way becomes smaller. "Spam is bad. _I_ am going to _save_ everyone from spam. Flames aren't so good, either. I'd better save you from 'flames' as well. What constitutes a flame? Well, it all begins with disagreement and, since I decide what is and is not a flame, I guess that a flame could be defined as disagreement with _me_!" ("In order to save the list from spam, we had to destroy the list.") Now that we are all aware of the disruptive manipulations of the Evil Dr. Vulis, perhaps he has changed his online persona to that of 'Jodi Hoffman'. (:>} NukeReality! ~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Re: [news] TV station sets cybersex sting
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Vipul Ved Prakash wrote: > > *** TV station sets cybersex sting > > With cyperporn and cybersex ranking as sensational news items on > local TV stations, Fox's Los Angeles outlet has taken the trend a > step further by ensnaring adult sexual predators. KTTV's Fox 11 News > at 10 worked with a 21-year-old woman posing as a 14-year-old to > conduct cybersting operations that led to the arrests of five men. > http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=5777644-464 And Fox is going to do a similar entrapment sting on Catholic priests, right?

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Springer/Gates Merger
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

CANADIAN NUTLY NEWS: [CNN, Bienfait, Saskatchewan] BAR OWNERS at the Coaldust Saloon, in violation of Canadian bartender/customer confidentiality laws, revealed details of a planned merger between Micro$oft and the Jerry Springer Show. Computer magnate Bill Gates has signed a secret deal with Jerry Springer to host a variety of WebTV productions which will be InterActive variations on the 'Terminal Man' theme. Springer, upset over the news media outcry over his proposed move toward bringing his Barnum & Baily act into the mainstream news forum, plans to take his revenge by using Micro$oft's domination in the lowest-common-denominator market to parlay his lack of good taste and journalistic ethics into a full-scale assasult on the elitest mainstream news media which continues to ignore the real desires of the general public. Philip R. Zimmerman, former head of PGP, Inc., announced his new position as Publicity Representative for 'New Reality Productions' by saying, "Daddy always told me, 'If you're going to sell out a little, you might as well sell out a lot--and make the BIG bucks.'" PRZ told gathered reporters that the increasing interest shown by television viewers in shows such as 'The World's Scariest Police Chases' threatened the growing popularity of the InterNet as the medium of the future. Zimmerman said, "The virtual reality of TV and the movies has always been a harbringer of the virtual future. The success of Terminal Man showed that the future was in snuff-flicks, and Police Chases was the natural movement of that theme into the trend toward Real TV." PRZ added, "The InterActive capabilities of the InterNet will allow the Gates/Springer merger to give the viewers the ability to get personally involved in the decisions as to who lives and who dies." New technologies which enable law enforcement agencies to activate kill-switches in fleeing automobiles have been abandoned in favor of technologies which allow the home viewer to use joysticks to control the movement of the criminal's vehicle and those of their police pursuers. Zimmerman defended the use of the new technology by saying, "Sure, snuff-flicks used to be illegal, but so did gambling and drinking. 'New Reality Productions' is just following the money." The beta-testing of the new technology took place on the CypherPunks mailing list, where list subscribers were given the opportunity to actively participate in the second 'moderation experiment' on the list by using their accumulated Moral Majority Reputation Credits to kill undesirable posts to the list. Chief CypherPunks Spokesperson, Jodi Hoffman, said that putting control of the list in the hands of the lowest common denominator had stemmed the "downward spiral" of the mailing list and that the Christian CypherPunks mailing list was a definite improvement over the original non-Christian-Jew infested CDR list. "Once we got rid of the Christkillers and the Commies," Hoffman proclaimed, "the list postings trickled down to two or three a day, but if it saves the life of just one child..."

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[Fwd: Horsemen] Horsemen
by TruthMonger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: Taxing Churches for their views? Bad idea. (fwd)
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Burnes wrote: > On Wed, 5 Nov 1997, Anonymous wrote: > > Churches, like governments, corporations, or any other organized > > entity, have some wonderful people in them, doing wonderful things. > > The problem, as always, is what our founding fathers realized--these > > types of organizations/structures tend to grow and attain power which > > is then used for the purpose of self-sustained growth (survival). > > Humanity tends to evolve, while organized humanity tends to de-volve. > > Biped humans, walking upright, form organizations which move toward > > becoming quadrapeds dragging large clubs. > Ha! This is pretty interesting. Rather than the typical cypherpunk > approach of eliminating such inefficient and corrupting methods as > income taxation and tax exemption we are playing by their game. Taxation and exemptions are, conceptually, no different than a tribal agreement that those who bring home the deer will share with those who guard the campsite, and that the shaman who keeps the evil spirits at bay has to do neither. When one strips the semantics from various cypherpunks posts, there is usually an underlying agreement that there should be no 'free rides' and no 'oppressive burdens.' <-- generality> > The whole of HG Wells warning to society was that by systematically > altering the language, you alter the things that can be discussed. I believe that half of the disagreements on the cypherpunks list, and the vast majority of disagreements in the world in general, are the result of disputes over semantics, rather than beliefs. > rather than bitch and moan about how the Churches are exempt, why > not rejoice in the fact that at least the churches are free from > taxation. We are part of the way there. Revolutionary idea! Instead of calling for Churches to be subject to the same oppressive taxation as the rest of us, call for the rest of us to be given the same exemptions as Churches. I vote Jim Burnes the honorary title of 'CypherPunks Chief Taxation Spokesperson' (Norman Vincent Peale Chapter). > Or start your own church. ;-) I agree. TruthPastor "CypherPunks Church of One" (All donations declared by myself to be tax deductible--check with the authorities in *your* jail cell (*after* sending me money) as to their views in this regard.)

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Government goons force Goddard to recant
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Time to add a new horseman: "conspiracy theory-spreading libertarians" ... CNN logo [ISMAP]-Navigation Infoseek/Big Yellow Pathfinder/Warner Bros Barnes and Noble Main banner Weird guy. Cool phone. Click here. rule TWA missile theory co-author apologizes Salinger Says report was 'reckless' From Correspondent Christine Negroni November 5, 1997 Web posted at: 2:05 p.m. EST (1905 GMT) NEW YORK (CNN) -- Ian Goddard, co-author of a report that claimed the U.S. Navy shot down TWA Flight 800, has told CNN that those charges were "reckless and a mistake." In a written statement to CNN, Goddard apologized to "all those in the Navy I have wrongfully accused" and to "those who believed in my efforts and who are now upset with me for my change of mind." Goddard co-authored the report with former ABC news reporter Pierre Salinger and a third man, Mike Sommers. Ian Goddard's statement to CNN: "While many witness accounts remain a mystery to me, I believe that my effort to pin the crash of TWA 800 on the Navy was reckless and a mistake. I apologize to all those in the Navy I have wrongfully accused. I also apologize to those who believed in my efforts and who are now upset with me for my change of mind. "We all need to put our support behind the families of the victims of TWA 800. Many who died left children behind who now need your support... Please give." National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Peter Goelz, on learning of the Goddard apology, said that Goddard had done real damage, particularly to the victims' families, by promoting charges that the Navy's "friendly fire" caused the July 1996 crash. "He has caused innumerable people great agony," Goelz said, adding that both the FBI and the NTSB had to spend time responding to what were basically groundless accusations. Joe Lychner of Houston, who lost his wife and two daughters in the crash, told CNN that Goddard and Salinger owe an explanation to the American public. The so-called Salinger report laid out an elaborate conspiracy theory that alleged a huge government cover-up following the TWA crash. Goddard had kept the theory alive on a Web site he created, which now appears to have been discontinued. "I just wanted to give the government a black eye by any means that looked opportune. TWA 800 was just a vehicle for my larger agenda."  Ian Goddard Goddard has recently E-mailed associates about his report. In those messages, Goddard called his support of the conspiracy theory "a big mistake," and said he only pursued the charges because he "wanted to give the government a black eye by any means that looked opportune." Goddard says he wanted to promote libertarian ideology by encouraging distrust of the government. CNN's Christine Negroni reports on the admission: icon 2 min. 30 sec. VXtreme video When contacted by CNN about Goddard's statement, Salinger said that he is moving on from his investigation into the TWA crash, although he did not retract any of his charges that a Navy missile brought down the 747. Salinger called FBI Deputy Director James Kallstrom last week and told him that he was giving up his probe. In his statement to CNN, Goddard asked that the public support the families of the victims of TWA 800 and that donations be made to the Flight 800 Family Relief Fund. TWA Flight 800 crashed off Long Island, killing all 230 people on board. The FBI and NTSB have not yet named an official cause of the accident. ______________________________________________________________ © 1997 Cable News Network, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Re: Protocols for Insurance to Maintain Privacy
by John Kelsey 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- [ To: cypherpunks ## Date: 11/03/97 ## Subject: Re: Protocols for Insurance to Maintain Privacy ] >Date: Mon, 3 Nov 1997 10:26:03 -0700 >To: "John Kelsey" <kelsey(a)plnet.net>, > "cypherpunks" <cypherpunks(a)Algebra.COM> >From: Tim May <tcmay(a)got.net> >Subject: Re: Protocols for Insurance to Maintain Privacy >Such insurance is now common. A boat owner doesn't buy >insurance for iceberg collisions if he is never in arctic >waters, a small plane pilot doesn't buy cargo insurance if >he doesn't ferry cargo, and so on. Yes, I understand this. Nobody with a grain of sense insures himself for things he knows will never happen. >>the point of having insurance, which is to protect yourself >>from low probability high cost things happening. That is, >I have a different view of what insurance is than John does. >What insurance is, and how it is priced, is too long a topic >to get into here. Suffice it to say that the insurance >company makes its profits by charging more for coverage than >it pays out. And the customer, of course, tends to lose the >differential. An insurance broker and a bookie are in the same business. A bookie takes a bet from me, at 1000 to 1 odds, for some unlikely to occur event--which he thinks has a probability of less than 1/1000. An insurance broker does the same thing. The only important difference is my purpose in placing the bet. When I take out medical insurance, I am placing a bet that I will get sick enough to spend more than my deductable on doctors. The insurance broker estimates (based on whatever information is available) the probability that this will happen, and makes me a bet at odds that are in his favor, if his estimate is true. If I get sick, I get some money (or my doctors do). If I stay well, I lose the bet. This is just paying someone to take some risk off my hands. >Each side tries to get as much information as possible. If >Joe Client knows he never pilots a cargo plane, he doesn't >opt for cargo insurance. If Joe Client knows he never >engages in unprotected sex with diseasy prostitutes, etc., >he skips HIV insurance. The fact that some "low probability >events," like meteor strikes, are uncovered is part of the >price of keeping Joe's premiums tolerable. >>before I've taken the test for genetic disease X, my best >>estimate of the probability that I will test positive is >>very low. Once I have taken it, I know the result. If I >>sign up for a-la-carte insurance for this disease, the >>insurance company effectively knows I must have tested >>positive for a predisposition to it, and so either won't >>give me insurance, or will give me insurance only at an >>extremely high rate (corresponding to a 1/10 chance of >>getting the disease, rather than a 1/1,000,000 chance). >This is the idea. It causes those with the predilections to >the disease to pay the high coverage costs. Right. I don't think I expressed my point too clearly, because you seem to have responded to something different than what I was saying. Suppose there is some genetic disease that kills its victims on their 31st birthday, unless they get a $1,000,000 treatment first. Before I have taken the test for this disease, I have to accept a certain risk--if I find out I have the disease, I have to raise a million dollars in the next few months. After I have taken the test and gotten back the results, there's no more risk involved (assuming the test is perfect)--I either have the disease or I don't. After the test, insurance isn't useful (unless I defraud my insurer). Before the test, though, insurance might be useful--I could essentially place a bet with someone that I had the disease--I pay $1, and get a million dollars back if my test comes back positive--just enough to pay for my treatment. >The alternative is not pretty: banning private testing >(how?) and forcing insurance companies to cover all >applicants for all conditions at a fixed rate. I know. Let me make it clear that I am not at all interested in banning private testing, coercing insurance companies or anyone else into agreements they don't want to make, etc. I am saying it would be nice if I could buy insurance against the results of the tests before I took them. The problem is, I can't see a really workable way to do this, because there's no way to keep people from taking the test beforehand. >--Tim May --John Kelsey, Counterpane Systems, kelsey(a)counterpane.com PGP 2.6 fingerprint = 4FE2 F421 100F BB0A 03D1 FE06 A435 7E36 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBNGDdikHx57Ag8goBAQE6/AP/Yub9LA0b1rvivDeiHW9tHtV7b/n4jmUA aP50hPFTCn7EEMsoKdC2pUv0eq5F+s8AmKyaE+SmxTgBbalrvm+T+lPib4bbEXjH iI9nHbnfzTSxiVbkVHp0p0/0urIgokTcrFBWbfIEnmOnGvI7OHI+KcPjqr3JBQeo A53+dL0NBRQ= =kx2R -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --John Kelsey, Counterpane Systems, kelsey(a)counterpane.com PGP 2.6 fingerprint = 4FE2 F421 100F BB0A 03D1 FE06 A435 7E36

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Re: Copyright commerce and the street musician protocol
by John Kelsey 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- [ To: cypherpunks, Perry's Crypto List ## Date: 11/03/97 ## Subject: Re: Copyright commerce and the street musician protocol ] >Subject: Re: Copyright commerce and the street musician protocol >From: Marc Horowitz <marc(a)cygnus.com> >Date: 03 Nov 1997 16:03:34 -0500 >Someone recently told me that game manufacturers have >stopped worrying about piracy. Why? Because most new games >come on CD-ROM, and copying a CD-ROM is an expensive, >time-consuming operation. Bulk duplication of CD's is >substantially cheaper than one-off duplication, and since >games are cheap, people will usually buy them rather than >copy them. This is a nice situation for CD-ROM-based video games. However, it's probably a temporary situation. Currently, downloading a novel, even over modem lines, isn't all that time-consuming. If available bandwidth and storage capacity keeps getting cheaper, the same will soon be true for digital audio, and later, for digital video. The number of bits required to hold a twenty-minute piece of music at CD quality isn't going to increase over time. >While the cost of one-off CD duplication will certainly >drop, I see no reason that media will not change form in the >future. As long as it's cheaper or more convenient to buy >digital media from the publisher than to copy it yourself, >the piracy problem basically doesn't exist. Separate the medium from the information. For computer programs, it's possible to just keep bloating the data to keep piracy from paying. (To some extent, anyway.) For novels, music, and video, that's not going to work. The unit of music I'm interested in listening to will probably not change much. >This is exactly >what makes copyright work for books: I can duplicate a book, >but it will cost more than buying it legitimately. (There >is still the problem of systematic large-scale piracy, but >this is relatively easy to notice and prosecute under >existing law.) But once someone has scanned in the text from the book, it costs approximately nothing to make another copy. This works as well for digitized music, video, and images. Once the data is available somewhere in digital form, it's almost free to copy. In a world with jurisdiction-shopping, eternity servers, high-quality anonymous e-mail, anonymous payment mechanisms, and cheap, high-bandwidth connections, that digital data has to get onto the net *once*, and it is free forever to anyon who will take the trouble to find it. For books, one reason this doesn't happen more often now is that the display technology for most computers is not nearly as easy to read as even cheaply-printed paperbacks. This is sure to change with time. Widespread use of DVDs will get rid of the advantages of CDs and cassettes for listening to music. >Short works (newspapers, magazines, journals, etc.) will >need a different mechanism, such as advertising, but that >infrastructure is creating itself today. It's essentially the same problem for text works. A text work you can't fit on one CD with compression is unlikely to be something you can get many people to read all the way through. (The exception is reference material, where you want *everything* of interest to be there, even though you will surely read only a tiny fraction of the material.) The real distinction here is timeliness. If some information is only valuable when it's timely, then it's probably going to make sense to get the information from its source, even if it costs money or you have to look at some ads. If the information is valuable weeks later, then it may be hard to charge much money for access to it. > Marc --John Kelsey, Counterpane Systems, kelsey(a)counterpane.com PGP 2.6 fingerprint = 4FE2 F421 100F BB0A 03D1 FE06 A435 7E36 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBNGDdkUHx57Ag8goBAQH0TwP/ZKJMdO1klPSI0W/UWxzX3B+2sWGp2lUT JAkSrHC6ha3JAq+NECF2Cwmf8wuu+mmdyy6laFTljGJ9uuxnfrZZ4QfJAR0S0KbM 8swifaqDkryQtu3dpJOzDV8Kc7B7QYiF3HyiW0NYDHI+VwO9hgFAq/+XkQA5Yhb8 erGdU+e5cwQ= =uFfo -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --John Kelsey, Counterpane Systems, kelsey(a)counterpane.com PGP 2.6 fingerprint = 4FE2 F421 100F BB0A 03D1 FE06 A435 7E36

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Re: Protocols for Insurance to Maintain Privacy
by John Kelsey 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- [ To: cypherpunks ## Date: 11/05/97 ## Subject: Re: Protocols for Insurance to Maintain Privacy ] >Date: Fri, 31 Oct 1997 23:05:16 -0700 >From: Tim May <tcmay(a)got.net> >Subject: Re: Protocols for Insurance to Maintain Privacy >What an insurance card is really a *line of credit*. Or a >*proof of payment*. The admitting hospital knows they'll at >least be reimbursed for the initial visit and emergency >treatment. >Perhaps there's a business idea for some enterprising >Cypherpunk. A prepaid hospital card, good for a few days' >worth of treatment (e.g., $5000), but only at the better >rates. This could even be done with Chaumian >privacy-protecting methods. There's an idea. This seems straightforward enough in principle. It's just like a prepaid credit card, or even a normal credit card, right? I mean, what it says on the card is probably different, but the financial arrangements are pretty-much the same. I suspect it would be easier to implement this (at least in the US) as an extra function on a credit card, rather than as a new kind of insurance, since there are so many odd insurance regulations out there. Currently, lots of credit cards offer special benefits like automatic insurance on rental cars--this seems like a close variation on the same idea. >--Tim May -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBNGDdm0Hx57Ag8goBAQF32wQAt995HVMQafsP+vDB3YdixDghNvS0LABE Qy1a1Cy+Gzzlsox4c6NnoOXB2ETWANtTknw3gn/KiNVFxSmSDqihvhmeAiZ8BQ2N pKIY9me/NPHKTSsPzYAA4gi3jrAFF58qIky9BATcneJLos1qpw3P8TlTZF+MmXU/ 0TZl6llN+4U= =SDLk -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --John Kelsey, Counterpane Systems, kelsey(a)counterpane.com PGP 2.6 fingerprint = 4FE2 F421 100F BB0A 03D1 FE06 A435 7E36

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