December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Enigma
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timmy `C' May's reheated, refurbished, and regurgitated cud is completely inappropriate for the mailing lists into which it is cross-ruminated. __ /_/\__ \_\/\_\ Timmy `C' May /\_\/_/ \/_/

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WebWorld 3-4
by Bubba Rom Dos 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: Market Failures, Monocultures, and Dead Kids (Oh My!)
by camcc＠abraxis.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 12:42 AM 3/19/97 -0600, you wrote: *|>Parents most certainly are not the only ones to determine the welfare of *|>their children; society has assumed a significant role and typically moves *|>to protect the child from the parents or from the _beliefs_ of the *|>parents. *|Just because the government subverts the RIGHTS of the parents does not *|mean that the parents do not have those rights. *| *|A parent is the sole person who has a *RIGHT* to determine the welfair of *|their childern. You do not have that right, I do not have that right, the *|government does not have that right. To beleive that the government should *|"protect" a child from the beliefs of its parents is truly *|FASISTS/COMMUNIST/STATIST (pick you flavor they are all the same <G>). *| *|I as a parent have the sole right to determine what religon to teach my *|children, how to rase my children, how to teach my children, how to reward *|my children and how to punish my children PERIOD. *| *|Perhaps you should take your STATIST tendicies over to alt.hitler.fanclub *|as they are quite out of place here. *| *|"When the wants of society override the rights of the individule that *|society must die" -- whgiii Dear whgiii, Children are, also, possessors of certain inalienable rights. Parents have certain _privileges_ in regard to their children which others do not have; if the parents abuse the _rights_ which their children possess solely by virtue of being humans and citizens, the state is obligated to intervene on behalf of the child--a citizen. In just the same way that if I were to threaten or batter you (or visa versa) the state would interpose itself to protect me. _With reservations_ I grant you parents have _great_ leeway in the areas of religious training, education, medical care, general child rearing (punishment/reward). When parents overstep either by action or neglect, society intervenes. I _understand_ your point that in an ideal society the government would not intervene. At this point, though, we don't seem to be there. Alec What's the point of the following? Discourse is healthy in an open system. Why the exclusion? *|Perhaps you should take your STATIST tendicies over to alt.hitler.fanclub *|as they are quite out of place here. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 4.5 iQCVAgUBMy/w7SKJGkNBIH7lAQEwpwP/UlEJbHBt6ahryC7X8tKqWssFoluJhVDa IIUQVCq/NkJ3Qg3LY804JNDnfgYbVFea0LY5FUiybAEDHOc0AEBRUt0ZE2ccgrt4 sNSKPTQ27csTEljM9b6PRU4Isod6d9l10APsuUbXM/knsZeNDfbwTWsoYPl66/t1 jbQ56j0t+vE= =Ju3R -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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PGP seminar at New York University 3/27/97
by Subir Grewal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Computer Advocacy @ New York University and NYU's Academic Computing Facility (ACF) present a seminar on Pretty Good Privacy as a part of Computer Awareness Week on Thursday, March 27 at 12:00 pm (noon). Ilya Slavin of the Computer Advocacy and Tim O'Connor of the ACF will discuss the reasons for using encryption tools, give a brief background of the algorithms behind the face of PGP and analyze their strengths, and demonstrate ways to incorporate PGP into popular tools such as Pine and Tin. A key signing session will follow. If you are new to PGP or just want your key signed by a few more people and happen to be in New York City at the time, please come! All are invited. Refreshments will be served. For more information, see http://www.nyu.edu/pages/advocacy/awareness/

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(Fwd) lambda 3.01 - Your Customs Officer is Watching You
by Charles Anthony 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Wed, 19 Mar 1997 11:07:46 +0100 To: thorel(a)netpress.fr From: Jerome Thorel <jt(a)freenix.fr> Subject: lambda 3.01 - Your Customs Officer is Watching You lambda 3.01 contents: --> CDA countdown : The Supreme Court Has Some Clues on Knocking Down the CDA --> New in Cyberspace: The Frontiers Are Back! Your Customs Officer Is Watching You --> Crypto Update : France and the OECD * * * * * THE SUPREME COURT HAS SOME CLUES ON KNOCKING DOWN THE CDA Well before the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments on the constitutionality of the CDA, David Sobel, EPIC's legal counsel, reminded the electronic community that the Court handed down a decisive decision two years ago. Excerpts from the EPIC Alert 4.04 newsletter herewith: --- begin fwd message --- To avoid potential criminal liability under the CDA's "indecency" provision, information providers would, in effect, be required to verify the identities and ages of all recipients of material that might be deemed inappropriate for children. If upheld, the statutory regime would thus result in the creation of "registration records" for tens of thousands of Internet sites, containing detailed descriptions of information accessed by particular recipients. These records would be accessible to law enforcement agencies and prosecutors investigating alleged violations of the statute. Such a regime would constitute a gross violation of Americans' rights to access information privately and anonymously. Two years ago, the Supreme Court upheld the right to anonymous speech in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission. EPIC believes that the Court's rationale in that case applies with even greater force to the Internet "indecency" provisions now under review. The Court noted in McIntyre that: " The decision in favor of anonymity may be motivated by fear of economic or official retaliation, by concern about social ostracism, or merely by a desire to preserve as much of one's privacy as possible. ... "Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation -- and their ideas from suppression -- at the hand of an intolerant society." Whether the millions of individuals visiting sites on the Internet are seeking information on teenage pregnancy, AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, classic works of literature or avant-garde poetry, they enjoy a Constitutional right to do so privately and anonymously. The Communications Decency Act seeks to destroy that right. If upheld, the CDA would render the Internet not only the most censored communications medium, but also the most heavily monitored. "EPIC is confident that upon review of the legislation and its impact upon free speech and privacy rights in emerging electronic media, the Supreme Court will affirm the lower court decision invalidating the CDA as fundamentally at odds with the Constitution." --- end fwd message --- The EPIC said that following the oral argument, the Reno v. ACLU plaintiffs and lawyers will hold a news conference to offer in-depth analysis and commentary (approximately 11:30 a.m. ET). The event will be cybercast live via RealAudio on the World Wide Web. Links to the cybercast will be available at: http://www.epic.org/cda/ and http://www.aclu.org/issues/cyber/trial/appeal.html * * * * * YOUR CUSTOMS OFFICER IS WATCHING YOU New in Cyberspace: The Frontiers Are Back! On March 6, the French security agency SCSSI gave its approval for a secured payment protocol called C-SET, or Chip-Secured Electronic Transaction. After one look at this European version of the US standard of SET, which will be completed this year, one might ask: "Why bother?" Your customs officer might well reply: "For me!" C-SET re-draws the boarders of the real world in cyberspace -- where national boundaries were scheduled to have been given up forever. Moreover, the system could easily be used to escrow private communications, because encrypted messages will be transmitted to a third party in order for police to have a lawful access to its secret key. The Intelligence Newsletter (http://www.indigo-net.com/intel.html) first reported in its Feb. 26 edition that C-SET could be used as a national shield for controlling money transfers, and thus be used as an intermediary between the law enforcement agencies, the vendor and the buyer. French security officials agreed to accept C-SET because it is compatible with future trusted third-party systems, dedicated to assuring national governments that all encrypted communications will be key-escrowed. "The French Finance Ministry has not yet decided to apply taxes and duties for online transactions, but C-SET is the adequate system to do that", says Claude Meggle, director of security at the French Groupement des Cartes Bancaires (a consortium of 200 French banks), the main architect of C-SET. "It is a way for national states to keep their sovereignty, without hindering international commerce". In France and other European countries, credit cards are so-called "smart cards." Embedded with microchips, it is a more secure way to authenticate -- and identify -- the buyer than a hand-written signature. The GCB was not fully satisfied by the SET standard, which "provides only software security as it doesn't include a smart card," the Intelligence Review reported. "As a result, the 'certificate' which enables a customer to be identified when making an electronic purchase is stored on his hard disk. This exposes it to all types of attack, and makes the system less than 'portable' -- the certificate is linked to the computer and not the person. The C-SET is exactly the opposite," the newsletter added. Hardware is needed to use C-SET; a PIN-number pad manufactured by state-owned Bull's smart card division CP8 will be sold for less than 500 FF (US$100), Meggle told lambda bulletin. When the users are connected to a virtual mall, they'll have to type their 4-digits secret code (as it is today with bank cards), and the transaction will be transferred to a distant server owned by the bank. Thus this go-between server will be based in the country where a user has his or her bank account, and the same bank plays the role of a TTP. The user's privacy and anonymity will be protected, but only from the merchant's point of view. Banks-turned-TTPs will have to keep records of all transactional data for law-enforcement purposes. Recently, officials at the main money laundering agencies of industrialised countries met to discuss the problems caused by the Internet. C-SET could be one way to keep money transfers under the close eye of the law. The European Commission agreed to the system being tested as a possible future standard, and all major European countries have plans to test it in the near future (from Germany to Belgium, UK, Spain, etc.) It is no surprise that the SCSSI, one of the most conservative cryptography agencies in the world -- which considers the US technology lead on encryption as a national threat -- first refused to allow C-SET to encrypt a part of the transaction. The TTP compatibility was seen as a necessary condition for approval. Meggli said the encrypted material uses a DES-based 56-bit key, while a RSA public-key system (1024-bit length) is used for transmission. As Meggle acknowledged, this PIN-pad based identification system could be also used as a way to identify users that send encrypted messages in private communications. The TTPs will have to keep a record of connections -- as all banks are doing today to officially fight fraud -- and give a user's private key to police authorities if called upon to do so. * * * * * CRYPTO UPDATES * French officials at the SCSSI and the prime minister's office are worried that aspects of the government's crypto policy may be regarded by the European Commission in Brussels as an obstacle to common market principles. The government's law outlining a TTP key-recovery system, voted by the legislature last summer, has yet to be enacted by ministerial decree. An initial version of the decree (see lambda 2.13) stated that only French employees (of companies held with a majority of French capital) would be allowed to act as a TTP in the country. Whether the law would violate rules concerning the free flow of capital and workers in the European Union is uncertain. However the French government has something in its favor (for better or for worse) regarding possible anti-competitive practices in this area: The EC is prohibited from making decisions that may overlap with issues of national security. * Meanwhile, the Paris-based OECD is to publish its guidelines on international cryptography procedures (lawful access, condition of TTP systems, etc.) at the end of March. The report has been approved by both the OECD expert group and division committee with slight changes in the wording, and now needs only the endorsement of the OECD Council of Ministers. ---- A report by Jerome Thorel <jt(a)freenix.fr> English rewriting: Ken N. Cukier <100736.3602(a)CompuServe.COM> lambda archives --> www.freenix.fr/netizen ---- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Jerome Thorel Planete Internet Journalist, Paris Editor / Redac chef thorel(a)netpress.fr 191 av A. Briand, 94230 Cachan Tel: 33 1 49085833 - fax-31 www.planete-internet.com

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Re: Market Failures, Monocultures, and Dead Kids (Oh My!)
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

snow <snow(a)smoke.suba.com> writes: > > The parents are the ONLY ones who have a right to determin the welfare of > > their childern. If the parents determin that the risks of reaction to the > > innoculation outways the benifits that choice is their's and their's alone. > > So, parents should be allowed to: > > 1) Beat their children on a daily basis, because it is good for them. Indeed, in most cultures beating the shit out of one's children 9and women) every day is the norm. "Spare the rod, spoil the child." Western Civ is a rare exception. > > 2) Refuse to educate their children _at all_ because Knowlege is the > devils work. Indeed, in most cultures until recently most people were never taught to read unless they intended to become priests. > > 3) Not clothe their children at all beause God Will Provide. > > 4) Teach their children how to perform Oral, Anal, and "straight" sex > because they need to learn it someday? Still very common in midwestern U.S.; less accepted elsewhere. > > Extreme examples, true, but it is what you are saying. > 5) castrating one's male children if they show any propensity to sing - in hopes that they'll become one of the few famous and successful male sopranos - viewed favorably in 18 and 19 centiry Italy. 6) teaching children bullshit about "god". What market force or natural selection discourages "abuse"? --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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RE: Cell Phone Code Cracked
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: John Young [................]These technologists, who planned to release their findings in a news release on Thursday, argue that the best way to insure that the strongest security codes are developed is to conduct the work in a public forum. And so they are sharply critical of the current industry standard setting process which has made a trade secret of the underlying mathematical formulas used to create the security codes. ...................................... It becomes apparent that some people have the ideas of "private" and "public" backwards - they do in secret what should be done openly while supporting the license to access what should be private matters. .. Blanc

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Re: Market Failures, Monocultures, and Dead Kids (Oh My!)
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Toto There are philosophies and spiritualities which proffer the view of "man as a machine," in which our actions can be seen as much more "mechanical" than most of us would care to admit. Of course, the obvious fallacy of this view is shown by the fact that, were it true, our attitudes and actions would be controlled by advertising and ten-second sound-bytes yanking at our emotions, rather than by the reason and logic that so clearly dominates our society, as can be demonstrated with one's index finger and a TV remote-control unit. ................................ Technology is a display of the heights of human creativity and inventiveness. The end-users are often a display of the depths, and a presentation of the fact that even though endowed with intelligence and inalienable rights, an individual must participate in the process of their own existence, investing personal effort into determining its quality or else suffering the consequences of mental stagnation and & psychological degeneracy. .. Blanc

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Re: WebWorld 3-4
by William Ono 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Toto, you're being careless again. -- William Ono <wmono(a)soundwave.net> PGP Key: 0xF3F716BD fingerprint = A8 0D B9 0F 40 A7 D6 64 B3 00 04 74 FD A7 12 C9 = fingerprint PGP-encrypted mail welcome! "640k ought to be enough for everybody." ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Return-Path: <cypherpunks-errors(a)toad.com> Received: from toad.com (toad.com [140.174.2.1]) by orb.direct.ca (8.8.3/8.8.0) with ESMTP id FAA18320 for <wmono(a)direct.ca>; Wed, 19 Mar 1997 05:11:23 -0800 (PST) Received: (from majordom@localhost) by toad.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id FAA24094 for cypherpunks-unedited-outgoing; Wed, 19 Mar 1997 05:09:05 -0800 (PST) Received: from wombat.sk.sympatico.ca (wombat.sk.sympatico.ca [142.165.5.136]) by toad.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id FAA24076 for <cypherpunks(a)toad.com>; Wed, 19 Mar 1997 05:09:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from hdtzrgrk (badger47.sk.sympatico.ca [142.165.25.47]) by wombat.sk.sympatico.ca with SMTP (8.7.1/8.7.1) id HAA08223 for <cypherpunks(a)toad.com>; Wed, 19 Mar 1997 07:06:41 -0600 (CST) Message-ID: <332FE560.4C91(a)dev.null> Date: Wed, 19 Mar 1997 07:08:48 -0600 From: Bubba Rom Dos <bubba(a)dev.null> Reply-To: camcc(a)abraxis.com Organization: Circle of Eunuchs X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01C-SYMPA (Win95; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: WebWorld 3-4 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii; name="ww3.htm" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline; filename="ww3.htm" Content-Base: "file:///C|/AC/Writing/WebWorld/ww3.htm" Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com Precedence: bulk X-UIDL: 1300f39d8cafe42321938c16069fd2a6 <BASE HREF="file:///C|/AC/Writing/WebWorld/ww3.htm"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> <TITLE>The True Story of the InterNet</TITLE> <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Internet Assistant for Microsoft Word 2.04z"> </HEAD> <BODY> <HR> <CENTER>The True Story of the InterNet Part II </CENTER> <CENTER>WebWorld & the Mythical 'Circle of Eunuchs' </CENTER> <CENTER>by Arnold </CENTER> Copyright 1995, Pearl Publishing <HR> Channel Revolution I've been getting decent treatment around here since I sandbagged Schultz. It was hell when I was first sent here. Claiming to be a Net'er won't win you friends among the Channel Citizens at the best of times, since they have always resented our freedom from Channel Laws, but being perceived as a nut-case claiming to be a Net'er puts you at the bottom of the pile even among your fellow fruit-cakes. It could be worse. They could have transferred me to the "Home Shoppers Bargain Psychiatry Warehouse". That's the worst of the worst. The Shop'ers have the poorest government on WebWorld. When the citizens of the former world governments got to choose their citizenship at the end of the Channel Revolution every deadbeat compulsive spender on the face of the Earth signed up with the Home Shopper Channel Government. When the United States and the European Community Collective had conceded (they were the last of the holdouts), the Home Shoppers Revolutionary Movement had made a wise move by declaring Leona Helmsley their first President. The other fledgling Channel Governments laughed at the Shop'ers, but got a rude awakening when the computer polls started showing the overwhelming numbers of people electing to cast their lot with the Shop'ers. The Shop'ers ran ads showing Leona purchasing magnificent jewelry and other high-priced items from the Home Shopping Channel and the masses rushed to join the bandwagon. Some of the slightly more discriminating people became citizens of the Consumer Channel, but they were few and far between. When the dust cleared, over a half a billion people found themselves citizens of a Shop'ers government that consisted of compulsive spending deadbeats, former Third-World citizens without a dime in their pockets (but with big dreams of buying all the trinkets in the flashy political ads), and 'credit card fraud' gypsies aiming to grab the goodies and split. The Revisionist Channel Government did surprisingly well. They weren't given much of a chance in the original polls, being branded as basically just a 'Holocaust Denial' fringe group, but they, too, adapted quickly to the changing dynamics in the newly declared WebWorld. Henry Kissinger III was one of the few who foresaw the potential of the Revisionists to do well in the new scheme of things. He had grown up at the feet of his grandfather, one of the great world leaders in the BC (Before Channel) years, listening to the tales of how the Nazi regime came to power by preying on the vanity of the pseudo-intelligentsia and the disenchantment of the masses. The Revisionist Channel Government moved quickly to expand the narrow base of their appeal. In the former United States of America they appealed to whites by running political ads debunking the 'myth of slavery' as a plot to coerce whites into a 'guilt' complex that could be used against them. In the black areas they debunked the 'myth of slavery', convincing the uneducated into believing that blacks had originally ruled America and that when whites gained control of the government they rewrote history to keep black people from regaining their superior stature. In Japan, they revised 'history' to give the Japanese superiority over the Chinese-in China, the same story in reverse. England-Ireland, Iraq-Iran, everyone was played one against the other and the slow-of-wit all rushed absurdly to become citizens of a government who claimed each of the citizens was superior to the other. The original fears of the other Channel Governments quickly changed to relief when it became apparent that the Revisionist citizens would be too busy fighting internal battles to cause any problems for the other CG's. When the smoke finally cleared at the end of the Channel Revolution, the Money Channel Government ended up with the fewest citizens and the largest amount of goodies. They were one of the few Channels to actually restrict citizenship. While most of the Channel Revolutionary parties lobbied hard for big numbers, the Money Channel lobbied discretely for the movers and the shakers; people who had plenty of cash and assets, and who knew how to use them. The CC's (Ca$h Cows), as they were known back then, had the foresight to gain control of the InterNet, a seemingly insignificant entity at the time. It had, at one time in history, been the rage, but it faded into the background after its proverbial fifteen-minutes of fame and glory. Only the movers and the shakers realized the true history and importance of the InterNet. In the decades preceding the Channel Revolution, the First Great TV Era had come and gone, being replaced by the Computer Era. Computers were the wave of the future. Computers ruled! Computers eventually were linked world-wide by the newest world-darling, the InterNet, under the auspices of the World Wide Web, which was crowned King and then inexplicably disappeared into an ever-present but lightly regarded fog of everyday banality after the advent of WebTV. WebTV once again made Television King, exploding to 500 Channels and ushering in the Second Great WebTV Era and the Channel Revolution, which led, in turn, to the Great Channel War, later known as Channel War I. There were rumors everywhere, in those days, of Gomez and the Dark Allies, backed by the Ca$h Cows of the Money Channel, striving for control of the airwaves, for control of 'broadcast reality'and for control of the minds of mankind. Then, for no apparent reason, the rumors abruptly stopped 'cold'. This made the few remaining people who were still capable of independent, rational thought processes, even more nervous than the rumors had made them in the first place. At the close of Channel War I, the leaders among the winning factions directed the fear and hate of the masses towards the InterNet, thus gaining support for wide-ranging laws supported by all Channel Governments which placed serious restrictions on the InterNet, along with corresponding WebWorld Security checks and balances on the its management and the power of the Net'ers.. The Money Channel Government, which by that time held three channels under its control, railed as hard as anyone against the threat of the InterNet but their overly obtuse professions of indignation were viewed with suspicion by the other CG's. To lessen the threat of MCG control of the InterNet, the other Channel Governments, in return for begrudgingly conceding the Money Channel Government's right to control three channels, demanded that ownership and control of the InterNet be turned over to the CypherPunk Channel Government, a spin-off of the 'Wired' Channel which had become one of the early casualties in Channel War I. The basic premise behind their demand was that the InterNet, which still filled an essential need, would not be as threatening in the hands of a bunch of fun-loving, loosely organized misfits as it would be in the hands of the movers and shakers. No one seemed to notice how easily the CC's gave in to their demands. (And the 'Ca$h Cows' didn't seem to notice the overly obtuse professions of indifference with which the CypherPunks accepted the mantle of control over the InterNet.) The Money Channel Government, which now included the Money Market Channel and the Zero-Tax Channel, had secretly backed the CypherPunks in Channel War I during their internal battle with the 'Wired' Channel Government's established honchos. 'Wired', a leading-edge computer magazine during the height of the Computer Era, had parlayed their fifteen-minutes of fame into a major-league enterprise commanding their own TV Channel, and became one of the key players in the Channel Revolutionary War. The Ca$h Cows, having learned from history the formidable power of counter-revolutionary movements, had the incredibly astute intelligence to realize the value of empowering (and at the same time controlling by proxy) the seemingly disenchanted CyberMisfits at the core of the 'Wired' Channel Government's power base. After biding their time, the CC's manipulated the CypherPunks into taking the blame for launching the opening salvo of Channel War II. The CypherPunks, being well-grounded in the Tao and incredibly astute students of Tai-Chi and the Tarot, realized the incredible power of playing the Fool, and they allowed themselves to totally go-with-the-flow of the Money Channel Governments 'deceptive' manipulations. I can see you rolling your eyes again, smiling smugly. "Right," you're saying, "and now this looney-tune is going to tell us that he was one of the legendary CypherPunks." I know the CypherPunks started Channel War II. I instigated the Battle of Channel 49-and I made sure we lost. I wasn't just a CypherPunkI was the Fool. <HR> Alexis Alexis brushed the tiny, woolen balls of lint from the hair at base of the old man's neck. They fell slowly to the floor, doing a swirling-dervish type of dance as they were caught between gravity and the upward pull of the ceiling fan twirling lazily above their table at the back of the bar. The fan didn't help much. Her thin, cashmere blouse, soaking up the sweat from her nubile young body, clung to the gently flowing curves of her breasts, and she knew that every man in the bar was fully conscious of when she was taking shallow breaths, and when she was breathing deeply. They were following the rise and fall of her breasts like a shore-leave sailor, sitting on the beach and watching his ship, his beloved, rocking gently in the waves, as if beckoning him to come to her and share her gentle rhythms on a journey beyond this place, towards a fate that lies just beyond a horizon that they will never quite reach. They were equally conscious of Bubba, half-asleep, leaning his head ever so lightly on her shoulder, and slightly below her shoulder, on the lower part of her collar-bone, so very close to her tender young breasts, but never quite touching them. She knew it was driving them crazy. The young man, Jonathan, who was sitting at their table, was positively a wreck. He had said nothing in the fifteen minutes he had been sitting, waiting for Bubba, though he had 'almost' begun to speak several times, then stopped. Alexis knew that it was because, try as he might, he couldn't think of a sentence that didn't have the word 'breasts' in it. Finally, he managed to say, "It's certainly very hot, today. Is Bubba your grandfather? The humidity certainly makes one's clothes...", his own reference forced him, involuntarily, to look down to stare at her breasts, as he added, weakly, the word, "cling." "To my breasts, you mean?", Alexis replied casually with a slight air of interest, rather than offense, in her tone. "Oh, no!", the young man almost cried out, "I meanI mean, I'm sorry, I'mI'm" "Stuttering, I believe, is the word you're looking for.", Alexis said with a small, friendly laugh. "Yesstuttering.", Jonathan returned her cue rather honestly, she thought, for someone who appeared to be more inclined to bolt for the door than to engage in humorous conversation regarding his obviously extreme embarrassment over the situation in which he currently found himself . But he wouldn'tleave, that is. He was one of them, a Net'er, or a computer programmer of some sort, no matter which Channel he was a citizen of. And he needed to see Bubba-he needed to-no matter what he had to go through to do so, because the alternative, not seeing and talking to him, was unimaginable. "You know, you people only come here when you discover that there's nowhere else for you to turn.", Alexis said abruptly, with a hint of harshness in her voice. "Excuse me?", the youth replied. "You know perfectly well, what I'm talking about." she said with an air of consternation. "On the streets, your type make fun of him, you have for years, and years. You call him a crazy, drunken old fool. You think he's a joke." Her voice was rising steadily. "When it starts happening, when you see things-strange things, troubling things-then you come running to him and want him to explain things, to make it all right, or make it go away, because you don't want to see these things, you don't want to know what's going on around you, and you can't bear to live for only a few days, or a few weeks, with what he's had to live with for years." Alexis was standing, now, having lowered Bubba's head to rest on the table as he dozed on. She was right in front of the sitting Jonathan, her ample breasts hovering inches from his now-dismal face, though his body was more desirous than ever of having her. She sat quickly down on his lap and put her fingers through the opening between the first and second buttons of his shirt. She stroked his chest slightly, as she continued, "If you want to speak to Bubba, then you have to answer the questions I am about to ask you, and do so absolutely truthfully." Jonathan could only nod-yes. Speaking was beyond him, as he found his body becoming tense beyond belief. "You asked if Bubba was my grandfather, but you really want to know if I'm fucking the old geezer-if all those stories about him are true. Right?" "Yes." Jonathan was looking at the ceiling, and self-consciously trying not to move his body in the slightest. "And you're here because strange things have been happening, strange thoughts have been troubling you, making you afraid." "Yes." She reached her right hand around to his back, stroking it in what might be considered a 'motherly' way, except that her breasts were only fractions of an inch from his chest and directly in his line of sight, and her breath was hot upon his cheek as she began to whisper in his ear, "You've lived quietly, for years, in a nice, sterile world of numbers, and data, and pure mathematics where everything is programmed and controlled, stable and docile, and now you have fears and other feelings and they're putting you in a quandary, because numbers and programs don't care how you feel, and they don't feel 'back'." Jonathan just sat silently, with no reply possible to someone who talked as if she had been reading his mail-watching his life more carefully and clearly than he had been doing himself. "And now you're running to Bubba for help, to find out if the myth of the 'Circle' is true, if there is someone, somewhere, who can make it better, or make it go away, because during all the time that he spent putting himself on the line, trying to convince people like yourself that the danger was real, you merely wanted to take the easy way, to just be left alone to be swept along with the great tide of humanity around you." Jonathan was wishing, with all his might, that Alexis would stop, but she continued, "Your programs and your machines are doing things that you didn't design them to do, things that you didn't program them for-weird things, evil things, and there's nothing you can do to stop them, right?" Jonathan was starting to sweat quite a bit, himself, now. Some of it was from the heat, some from remembering the 'night terrors' of late, and some of it seemed to be rising up, steaming, from his loins. "Yes, all of that, and more." Alexis was now sitting on his lap, facing him directly, her two hands on his hips on either side of him. The few, scattered patrons of the bar were having problems with their own loins as they watched the display she was putting on for their benefit, leaning close to whisper in his ear, "I'm only thirteen years old", she could feel him almost audibly groan as she ran her hands lightly over his buttocks, "but when you get back home, and you're still hard, you're going to be thinking of me while you 'do' yourself, you sick pervert." "Actually, I don't think I'll make it that far," Jonathan replied in halted breaths, "but I'm hoping to make it as least as far as the next alley." Alexis leapt off of his lap, slapping him lightly on the shoulder, saying, "Shame on you, talking like that to a thirteen year-old." She laughed in amusement, and he laughed in relief at having been saved the embarrassment of 'messing' himself in the bar, a public place, and he was happy to sit and sip his beer for a time, dreading any further conversation. Finally, she spoke, once again. "You might as well go home, now. There's nothing for you here. "All the dangers that Bubba spoke about are true, I think you know that, now. But the Circle of Eunuchs is just a myth, there's nobody doing anything about it. Nobody can do anything about it. It's only a matter of time, now." Alexis's face took on a sad, forlorn look, and she returned once again to brushing off the small balls of wool from the nape of his hairy neck, leaning down to kiss Bubba lightly on the cheek, with genuine love, ignoring Jonathan, once again. After a few moments, he rose somberly and made his way to the door. He knew that he, too, would be sad and forlorn tonight. But he also knew that she was right-he would be thinking of her tonight while he was 'doing' himself. He smiled, in spite of himself. <HR> Chapter 3 - Channel Revolution / Chapter 4 - Alexis <HR> </BODY> </HTML>

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Report from Supreme Court on CDA arguments
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

************** http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/editorial/0,1012,744,00.html The Netly News Network @The Supreme Court March 19, 1997 By Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com) Noah Robischon (noah(a)pathfinder.com) U.S. Supreme Court justices pummeled government proponents of the Communications Decency Act this morning during a review of the law that will set new standards for free speech in the 21st century. The notorious CDA, reviled throughout cyberspace since the day it was signed by President Clinton in February 1996, would criminalize the ill-defined category of "indecent" communications on the Net. A Philadelphia federal court struck down the law a year ago. Justice Antonin Scalia called the lawsuit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against Attorney General Janet Reno, "a distinctive form of First Amendment argument unlike others" because it covers an uncharted and rapidly developing communications medium. "That's a new case for us," he said. Deputy Solicitor General Seth Waxman argued that the CDA merely established boundaries on the Net and made it harder for pornographic material to fall into the hands of minors. He likened the law to a cyber-zoning ordinance; without it, he said, the Internet "threatens to give every child a free pass to get into every adult movie theater or bookstore in the country." But less than a minute after Waxman started, the justices impatiently plowed into his presentation. Justice Stephen Breyer demanded: "Suppose a group of high school students decides to talk over the Internet and they want to talk about their sexual experiences. I mean, that's been known to happen in high school." Would they "be guilty of a federal crime?" Justice Antonin Scalia cut in, joking: "There's no high school student exemption?" "You might find it in the legislative history, but I do not," Waxman replied. For much of the 70-minute hearing, the discussion swirled around the question of how netizens could comply with the CDA. Waxman claimed that the act includes a battery of ways to protect a person from prosecution -- visitors to "indecent" web sites would be required to provide credit-card numbers, for instance. But Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was unmoved. "How does that fit in with the use of web sites by noncommercial users, libraries?" she asked. Justice David Souter wondered if the portions of the act banning the "display" of indecent materials would imprison parents. "I take it a parent who allows his computer to be used by a child viewing indecent material, that parent would go to prison," he said. When Waxman demurred, Scalia took up the chase. "No... One of those offenses is a display offense," he pointed out. Chastened, Waxman replied, "I see your point." Bruce Ennis, arguing on behalf of the ACLU and American Library Association coalitions, contended that the CDA bans speech, even for adults; is not as effective as blocking software; and is unconstitutionally vague. Justice Scalia, who noted that he uses a computer, pointed out that technology is rapidly changing. "So much of your argument is based on what's currently available," he said to Ennis. "This technology is changing so quickly. Is it possible that this statute is unconstitutional now but could be [constitutional] in four or five years?" Ennis replied: "Not as it's written." During a subsequent press conference, Ennis added that indeed, the technology is changing, and is giving parents more control over what their children do and see online. "Precisely because the technology is changing, the government should not be trying to enforce this law," he said. The ACLU attorneys who joined Ennis were grinning: the justices appeared to understand the nature of communications online, noted that teens have rights, and focused on free speech, not porn. After the hearing, the anti-CDA protestors who had braved a chill rain to chant "Hey-ho, the CDA has got to go!" were displaced by a larger, bullhorn-wielding group of anti-porn advocates. One sign demanded, "Don't sacrifice my child on the altar of the First Amendment." One of the most vocal protestors was 19-year-old Berkeley student Kenritsu Yamamoto, who happened to be dressed as a Net cupid, complete with angel wings and a circuit board breastplate. He was acting in the Pure Love Alliance's skit illustrating how pornography and "Net abduction" harms children. In the skit, Yamamoto accidentally kills a small child to demonstrate the dangers of a world without the CDA. "If a small child buys porn at a 7-11, then the store can be held accountable," said Yamamoto. "But on the Net, there is no accountability." A few steps away, Donna Rice Hughes, Enough Is Enough's communications director, was explaining why she thought the CDA should be upheld. "Without the CDA, Larry Flynt can make his teasers and centerfolds available to kids on the Internet," she said. Across from Hughes stood Bruce Taylor, the lawyer who argued against Flynt in the Supreme Court more than a decade ago. "The technology is advancing so well that the court is going to see that people can use this stuff without violating the law," he said. If the Supreme Court disagrees and strikes down the CDA, some members of Congress have pledged to try again. Netly cornered Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), a stauch supporter of the CDA, in the basement of the Capitol after the argument. What would he do? "How to do this I don't know, but our objective hasn't changed," he replied. "Some way, somehow, we will have to find a constitutional way of doing this for kids, protecting them from porn the way we did for printed material." Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Virginia) says he hopes the high court "will give the Congress some very clear guidance." But any Congressional tinkering will come after the Supreme Court decides. A ruling is expected in early July. [McCullagh is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit challenging the CDA.] ------------------------- Time Inc. The Netly News Network Washington Correspondent http://netlynews.com/

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