December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Porn gave me brain damage!!
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have been reading this list for some time now but have only posted a few messages, you might recall them, they were about the government using perceived threats to convince the public that they needed legislation to protect them from harmful elements on the Internet. I am not posting now about any sort of government conspiracy or mind control tactics used to convince people they need to give up rights in order to be safe, I am posting to tell you all how very wrong I was. I have just come from the neurologist where I was diagnosed with dementia pornographia, a syndrome caused by exposure to pornography. I have been afflicted with an obsession with pornography since I first realized I was attracted to women. I remember looking at them and imagining them with no clothes on. I know now that this is when the damage was begun, and there is nothing I can do now to reverse it. My first taste of pornography was in junior high school. We had a sex ed class and the textbook was full of crudely drawn genetalia. I looked at these pictures frequently while studying, little did I know what was being done to me, the pictures were causing chemical changes in my brain, stimulating synapses and causing neurons to fire. At first I was like any normal kid, very loving and close to my family. As I got drawn deeper and deeper into pornography I changed, first I started hanging around with other boys interested in female genetalia. Then I started searching through my parents belongings and stealing whatever I could to support my habits. Newspapers, catalogs, books, national geographic, anything with pictures of women in it would do. My parents didn't understand what I was going through they just assumed that I was going through a phase, they didn't know that my little "phase" caused new hormones to be released into my brain changing it for good. Through most of my high school and college years I was a dedicated porn user. I always surrounded myself with people that thought porn was "cool" or that it was "no big deal". I became increasingly estranged from my family and even went so far as to move away from home for my freshman year in college. I was 18 now and could legally buy dangerous pornographic material. Once I was living away from home I started experimenting with pre-marital sex. At first I knew it was wrong, but all my friends were doing it so I did it to fit in. Soon I became to desire it, even need it. If I went for a while without it I would do just about anything to "get laid". When A friend of mine introduced me to the Internet all my prayers had been answered, all the porn I could ever need and people werejust giving it away. I was chipping away at my brain bit by bit, every site, every newsgroup, every picture, every chatroom, was drawing me deeper into the world of porn. Then I read Jodi Hoffmam's post and I knew that I needed help. I hope that this can help people, I am to far gone to be helped now. I hope people can learn from the mistakes I made. I hope something can be done to stop the rampant proliferation of porn from hurting other innocent children, too young to know better, but having lost their innocence and having experienced more than any child should. It is the children that are losing in the war against pornography. --Bucky

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Re: Why porn must be stopped at all costs.....
by mark＠unicorn.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jodi Hoffman <jlhoffm(a)ibm.net> wrote: >Try as I might, I cannot forget standing on the steps of the Supreme >Court building with my husband and 10 year old daughter in the freezing >drizzle. I'm sure that your daughter can't forget such an obvious example of child abuse either. Perhaps someone should inform the BATF? >Don't >you realize that YOU are a major reason for the downward spiral of >society? Don't tell them or they'll all want one... >Studies have shown that >an event which lasts even so much as three-tenths of a second, within >five to ten minutes has produced a structural change in the brain. Studies have shown that anti-porn rhetoric kills babies and causes cancer in lab rats. Which studies? The ones I just made up... of course your comment isn't a total lie, it's just a blatant and, frankly, inept attempt to twist reality to support your cause. The human brain is a neural network; any data entering into it changes its structure. Which leads to the inevitable conclusion that: Exposure to anti-porn rhetoric causes actual brain damage, especially in a child. >So, keep protecting your porn-induced orgasms. That's exactly what >happened with the Hitler youth, etc... I think you'll find that the Hitler Youth were too busy burning 'pornography' to read it, though I guess burning books may have given them orgasms. Many people seem to have the hots for it, after all. >RULE FOR REVOLUTION #1: CORRUPT THE NATION'S YOUTH [Rest deleted; I'm glad to see that the revolution is proceeding as planned. I'll mention you at the next Illuminati Grand Council.] >RULE FOR REVOLUTION #2: CONTROL THE MASS MEDIA Ah, this is where I come in; I have, sadly, been neglecting my cypherpunk duties lately because I've been spending too much time on film-making. You see, I have this dream; I want to make a movie of the entire Bible, and not the old Charlton Heston version, but totally unexpurgated, keeping entirely to the text, including all those embarassing bits about Lot's daughters screwing their father while he slept in order to have his children ('No, no your honor, it wasn't me, they did it to me in my sleep'), men who are hung like stallions, and babies having their brains bashed out of their skulls. Why? Because I want to see the religious censors squirm... I do so enjoy their anti-porn and anti-violence rants when they're pushing one of the most violent and pornographic novels ever written. >Jodi Hoffman R.A.M.P. http://www.gocin.com/ramp >Victimization of Children/Research & Education Council of America Excuse me? You're part of the 'Victimization of Children Council'? You mean child victimizers have their own lobby group these days? Boy, ain't America wonderful? Mark

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PGP 5.0: Keyservers
by lcs Mixmaster Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Out of curiosity, what protection is there for PGP 5.x users submitting keys to the keyservers? Would it not be trivial for somebody to see what dialup SLIP link a key is coming from and tie that key to the person submitting it? That isn't a problem for personal keys, but it is a big problem for psuedonyms. Is there some kind of mechanism in place for submitting such keys via anonymous remailers? This might already have been covered by other Cypherpunks or the PGP folks. ParanoiaMonger

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PGP compatibility
by bureau42 Anonymous Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Lucky Green wrote: >Of course your copy of PGP 5.0 is compatible with prior versions. I know >this, you know this, and the anonymous author claiming otherwise knows >this. He simply hopes that there are some people that don't know this. The >idea behind the original post and others like it over the last few days is >to spread FUD about PGP 5.0 after other attacks failed for lack of merrit. >If you repeat a lie often enough, eventually some people will believe you. >PSYOPS 101. Let's not fall for it. >[Yes, I know that DSA keys can not be read by PGP 2.6. Neither will Word >1.0 read Word 7.0 files. So what?] Let me guess, Lucky, you're using Windows, right? If I was a Windows user exclusively I probably wouldn't give a damn either. Robert's version is compatable because he's gone to strides to *make* it compatable. Most users haven't done this. PGP Inc. has taken a *multi-platform* *network-wide* system and broken it. They released a Windows version months ago completely severing lines of communication between 5.0 and 2.x users. Finally, after months, they get around to releasing a UNIX version so that everybody else can use PGP 5.x. Of course the damned thing *still* isn't stable, *still* has a timebomb in it, and *still* has the command line broken. PGP Inc. recommends that people report bugs, get new versions, etc. at http://beta.pgp.com, but as was covered in detail in another posting that site is a pretty much disabled (or incomplete if you want to think of it that way). Microsoft Word is something completely different. We aren't distributing Word 7.0 documents all over the Internet as a standard communications practice. When I encrypt a message to you using PGP 2.6, I'm using a version of a program which is released for certain platforms. When I encrypt a message to you using PGP 5.0 I'm using a version which is released for certain platforms, but not all the platforms 2.x was available on. 5.x produces messages which are incompatable with 2.x. As a result 2.x users, which includes the UNIX community (which, last I checked, was rather large), are excluded from the message traffic the Windows users are sending around. Of course I'm talking about signatures and sometimes encryption, but, again, last I checked that was a major reason to use PGP in the first place. Then again, given the quality of the average Window user's message traffic on the network today maybe that isn't such a great loss. It should be worthy of note that I'd be using one of the betas for 5.x right now if the PGP folks hadn't purposefully broken every script known to man. I can comment out the timebomb for the expired (i.e. broken in yet another way) versions they're releasing, or at least were as of last week. Let's redefine SMTP, NNTP, FTP, and HTTP so that they looks nothing like what currently exists, install it on major providers, and write a set of UNIX clients. When Windows and Mac users complain about this we can all stand up proudly and proclaim that they'll just have to wait a few months for somebody to write the software which will allow them to again take part, and that their complaining about this completely idiotic tactic is "FUD". And, of course, since the SMTP2, NNTP2, HTTP2, and FTP2 protocols are so much better than their previous versions (that wouldn't be too hard) this is all very smart and nobody should mind. If PGP Inc. had released a sane UNIX version along with their Mac and Winblows versions there would be considerably less bitching happening right now. Hell, they could have released patches for 2.6. Instead they've waited months and still don't have one out which works.

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Interpol on Computer Crime / Cryptography
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text To: Digital Commerce Society of Boston <dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu> From: oldbear(a)arctos.com (The Old Bear) Subject: Interpol on Computer Crime / Cryptography Date: Sun, 2 Nov 1997 14:50:39 -0500 Sender: bounce-dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: oldbear(a)arctos.com (The Old Bear) Status: U --- Forwarded message follows --- Date: Fri, 31 Oct 1997 05:09:25 +-5-30 From: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh <rishab(a)dxm.org> Subject: Interpol on Computer Crime Telecom-Digest: Volume 17, Issue 299 Lines: 135 In the context of FBI Director Louis Freeh's statements on computer crime, here's the Interpol take. -rishab [from American Reporter, the Internet's only daily newspaper, www.american-reporter.com] EXCLUSIVE: INTERPOL'S TOP INTERNET CRIMEFIGHTER SPEAKS OUT Rishab Aiyer Ghosh American Reporter Correspondent New Delhi, India NEW DELHI -- The impact of the Internet on crime-fighting may not be as great as some hope, Interpol's top expert on networked computer crimes has told the American Reporter. Hiroaki Takizawa says old-fashioned methods of seeking evidence and gathering information may remain the staple of crimefighters for a long time to come. Takizawa talked to the American Reporter at the 66th annual General Assembly of the worldwide crime-fighting organization Interpol <http://www.interpol-pr.com> in New Delhi last week, where one of the key topics of the conference was the impact of the Internet on global crime and enforcement. In an interview, the top Interpol expert on Internet and computer crimes, Hiroaki Takizawa, said despite the serious problems being posed by the Internet to police everywhere, traditional, off-line evidence gathering and investigation will remain the primary tools of law enforcement. Takizawa admitted that strong cryptography and anonymous email make illicit transactions difficult to monitor or trace through the Internet. Interpol, he said, is concerned at the spread of cryptography, but does not advocate legislation banning it. "What we concentrate on is the implementation of legislation, rather than legislation itself," said Takizawa, when asked if he favored a crypto ban. "Police need human and financial resources" to investigate crime using the Internet, feels Takizawa, more than unenforceable legislative bans. Do police make use of intercepted messages much, on a global scale? "Yes, I think so, yeah," said Takizawa. However, "we don't, we haven't had many cases" that relied on undecipherable messages as evidence. "I don't think the Interpol plays an important role so far as [legislation on] cryptography is concerned," says Takizawa. The Interpol cannot make binding treaties affecting national law -- "it is not really a policy developing organization," he said. Instead, it makes resolutions "from the police point of view" -- and its members then go home to lobby with their governments. It does not intend to make any resolutions on cryptography, though. Instead "[Interpol] will focus on training and coordination" so that police forces around the world "can develop practical solutions." As for changing the law, "the OECD<http://www.oecd.org> has started discussion" on cryptography -- and has come to the conclusion <http://www.oecd.org/dsti/iccp/crypto_e.html> that crypto bans are not a good approach. Interpol finds that an increasing amount of its work involves the Net or computers in one way or another, and has set up a team to figure out where police -- and the Interpol -- can have an effective role. Interpol divides digital crime into three areas: computer crime, which includes piracy, data-theft and time-theft (computer break-ins); computer-related crime, which is mainly bank fraud -- "what was a crime earlier with paper, but is now done with a computer," as Takizawa says, and pornography. The third, most recent area that "everyone's talking about now," Takizawa said, is what Interpol calls "network crime": the use of the Internet for transactions that are already illegal -- child pornography -- or aid illegal activity -- often involving the drug trade, customs evasion and money laundering. Takizawa finds that of these network crimes, child pornography and the use of the Internet as an accessory to child sex abuse -- on-line advertisements for Asian "sex tours" targeted at Westerners, for example -- is the easiest to tackle. Stopping the distribution of pornography itself is harder, though, thanks to the Internet -- "normally [pornography] was checked at the airport and confiscated by customs, now you just download it by computer" -- so Interpol doesn't even try, he says. "Interception [is] impossible," said Takizawa bluntly. Instead, Interpol uses the easily searched structure of the Net to trace material back to its off-line origins. Police aided by Interpol's global network locate brochures for sex tourism on the Net much more easily than if they were in print, and follow up with off-line investigations and arrests, he said. The cross-jurisdictional nature of the Net -- and the fact that countries disagree on precisely what activities are criminal -- is less of a problem for child pornography than money-laundering. Takizawa describes a recent case involving Germany and Japan: "from Germany we received information [on child pornography found online] pointing to Japan. Through Interpol we [passed] it on to Japan," where authorities traced the originators and made arrests. And what about money laundering? Doesn't the prospect of untraceable, anonymous global electronic commerce on the Internet scare Interpol? "Well, my counter-question is, have there been so many cases of ... [monetary] transactions using [the] Internet?" asks Takizawa. Perhaps not -- yet. But once you have some form of the digital currency required for any large-scale electronic commerce, what will Interpol do about money laundering? "We don't know," he admits. When cyberpayments are common, Takizawa adds, "we cannot tell you what's going to happen. Everybody wants to know that. If you can predict it perhaps you [will] get the Nobel prize!" For an organization sometimes represented as a global police force -- which Interpol is not -- being a coordinating body for 178 national law enforcement agencies worldwide -- Takizawa's depiction of its Internet policy is surprisingly tame. His view well may stem from a basic understanding of the nature of crime, which doesn't occur on the Internet so much as pass through it. However much criminals use the Net, says Takizawa, police will always "need more evidence outside the network." ---------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh <rishab(a)dxm.org> is Editor of the New Delhi-based Indian Techonomist, a popular technology journal. For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request(a)ai.mit.edu" with one line of text: "help". --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>

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RE: S/MIME
by Ian Clysdale 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree on that one. S/MIME DOES use 40 bit RC2, by the standard, but the standard specifically states the weakness of those keys, and recommends using another implementation. The standard strongly recommends the use of triple-DES, and apparently the Communicator and Outlook S/MIME triple-DES now interoperates properly. Deming has also had a plugin which does triple-DES for quite a while. In addition, individual vendors are allowed to put in any other algorithms into an S/MIME implementation that they desire - for example, the default algorithm in Entrust's S/MIME implementation is CAST-128. The point that I'm trying to make here is that while PGP defines both algorithm and protocol, S/MIME just defines protocol. As long as you have two clients which share common algorithms, then you can use any algorithms that you like with S/MIME. ian ---------- From: Jonathan Wienke [SMTP:JonWienk@ix.netcom.com] Sent: Monday, November 03, 1997 9:34 PM To: Nobuki Nakatuji; cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Re: S/MIME At 08:49 PM 11/2/97 PST, Nobuki Nakatuji wrote: >Is S/MIME secure than PGP ? No. S/MIME uses 40 bit keys, which are trivially breakable by paralell brute-force key search attacks. Jonathan Wienke

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RE: S/MIME
by Ian Clysdale 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is not true. If you read the S/MIME specs it says one MUST implement the RC2/40 algorithm. A MUST in an RFC has a very definate purpose: If an aplication does not implement all MUST sections of the RFC then it is not compliant! To create an S/MIME compliant application one MUST implement RC2/40 and one MUST pay RSA to do so!! Umm.... If you read what I wrote, you will see that I said "S/MIME DOES implement 40 bit RC2, but it ALSO implements XXXXXXXX. Personally, I'd rather see even weak crypto getting world-wide deployment than seeing no crypto getting out because of stupid draconian export laws. However much you may dislike their "weak crypto", Netscape and Microsoft are getting more seats of crypto-compliant software out there than PGP ever has. And once the infrastructure is out there where everyone can use weak crypto, people will (hopefully) realize that it is insecure, and shift to stronger algorithms that ARE supported currently in domestic US/Canada versions, and which I'm sure someone outside of the States will have coming out in the near future, if they're not already there. Netscape, Microsoft, and RSA are letting thier greed get in the way of developing a message encryption protocol that provides strong crypto to ALL users. Either that, or Netscape, Microsoft, and RSA are being practical and doing something that will legally put SOME cryptography in the hands of everyone today. It's all in how you look at it. ian

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No Subject
by bureau42 Anonymous Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adam Back writes: > People copy commercial software all the time. I suspect only some > small fraction of personal use software is ever paid for. Companies > are less likely to do this Companies do it because the boss can instruct the underlings to do multi installs and then deny he did so. Doesn't work on pig-headed "Can I have that in writing" types (like me). > One idea which I did like was the open bidding for a product to be > developed, people interested in the feature or product pay how much it > is worth to them up front, developers bid to take the job on. After > it's done the software is freeware. Supporting ideas discussed before > on this topic are that first to complete gets paid, or lowest bidder > presents completion bond, and that there are independent aribitrators > checking quality. > There was someone who posted to the list that he was going to set this > up. He even purchased the domain name if I recall. What happened, > did anything come of it? Bounty Software Group (BOUNTY3-DOM) 818 West Sunnyside, Apt 3b. Chicago, IL 60640 US Domain Name: BOUNTY.ORG Administrative Contact: Petro, Christopher (CP588) petro(a)SUBA.COM 312.784.0099 Technical Contact, Zone Contact: Strasheim, Alex R. (AS55) alex(a)SUBA.COM (312) 929-8008 Billing Contact: Petro, Christopher (CP588) petro(a)SUBA.COM 312.784.0099 Record last updated on 23-Nov-96. Record created on 23-Nov-96. Database last updated on 4-Nov-97 05:29:24 EDT. Domain servers in listed order: SUBA01.SUBA.COM 198.87.202.2 BIRD.SUBA.COM 198.87.202.33

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mixmaster...
by lars.hornell＠ornskoldsvik.mail.telia.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is mixmaster not avalible to download or what??? If it IS avalible to download. Where can I download it then???

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Re: S/MIME
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

William H. Geiger III wrote: > >>There is an old saying in the Security Field: "Poor Security is worse > >>than no security at all". > at 11:24 AM, Ian Clysdale <iancly(a)entrust.com> said: > > > Sorry, I'm going to continue to take a viewpoint that I suspect is > >rather unpopular in this list, and argue for the advantages of weak > >crypto in certain circumstances > This is nothing but selfserving bullshit in a vain effort to justify YOUR > sellout for a paycheck. Nortel is nothing more than a Canadian schill for the SnoopSpooks. Just as the INSLAW Thieves & Murderers used Indian Reservations in an attempt to pretend that they weren't breaking US law because their actions were taking place on the soil of a Soverign Nation, the US criminals use the same bullshit logic to circumvent the laws that apply to their illegal actions. It is no coincidence that Nortel is the nesting place of a wide variety of censorship vermin such as Chris Lewis, and his ilk. An analysis of a number of employees of Nortel and their bum buddies shows that the time spent in their output of UseNet cancels and FUD posts and emails corresponds to the hours of a corporate work schedule. Nortel is nothing more than a front for the SnoopSpooks who want to capitalize on Canada's image as a Soverign Country to push their backdoor products in the global community. These are the same lame fuckers who pulled off this act in Switzerland, with governments and corporations buying security products from a country noted for its neutrality, and then finding out later that it was a front for a German company that had the CIA's nose up their butt. It amazes me that corporations and governments put their trust in any company with the word 'Security' in its name, without doing a check on their backgrounds and connections that is at least as intensive as they would do for a new employee.

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