December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Laws Controlling Speech
by nobody＠neva.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Tim May wrote: >What I said was that the judge(s) in the Paladin case had committed a >capital crime. Saying, for example, that OJ committed a capital crime >is not uncommon, so why should judges be exempt from similar >opinions? Laws prohibiting speech are notoriously difficult to define and to enforce impartially. They quickly evolve into a blank check for the authorities. (Note that even if these laws didn't have this property, Monty Cantsin would oppose them.) OJ is fair game because the authorities would like to see him in prison. The judge is not fair game because he is a judge and this is a list with a bad attitude. The wonderful thing about language is that it is infinitely malleable. You could write a play in which a prominent character was a bear. Sounds harmless, right? In 1969 in Czechoslovakia, this is how people wrote unfriendly plays about the Russians. Child porn is notoriously difficult to define. A few years ago there was a case in which a convicted child pornographer or molester (my memory fails) was paroled.(1.) One of the conditions was that he was not to have any child pornography. Later, he was found with a videotape of children in bathing suits and his parole was revoked. The children were not involved with any sexual acts, however, the judge decided that the motion of the camera was overly suggestive. A few years ago I saw an ad for soap in which cute little girls were cast in the roles that lovely adult women usually play. To most people, this was an amusing and even charming advertisement. But, were similar footage found in the hands of a child molester there would be serious legal consequences. Pornography in general is not so hard to define. If the material in question is enjoyed by working class people and is inexpensive to purchase, then it is pornography. If the material is enjoyed by wealthy or "cultured" people, hangs in a museum, and would be expensive to purchase, then for the most part it is Art and not pornography. Let's take Michelangelo. Here is an artist who seldom portrays women. (I know of no instance, actually.) When the image of a woman was unavoidable to the work, he used male models anyway. (The Sibyls in the Sistine Chapel are a good example.) It is quite obvious that a large proportion of his work is, in fact, homoerotic in nature. Yet, it has been promoted for centuries because it was primarily enjoyed by ruling elites. For that matter, consider the centuries long fascination with images of Christ and the Saints undergoing various tortures. Clearly homoerotic in many cases and juxtaposing images of pain and death with sex. Remove the religious imagery, and anybody found painting or possessing such work will generally be relegated to the fringes of society. When speech is regulated, the meaning of the speech is defined by whether the speaker is in favor with the authorities. This is well understood by the people who propose and pass these laws. Their intention is not only to suppress bad ideas, but to liberate the government from the annoying inconvenience of obeying the law, most especially (but not exclusively) with regard to the government's political opponents. And, as we all know, this issue is particularly insidious when it comes to laws prohibiting free encrypted speech. The art of steganography has reached the point where anything can be "shown" to be a secret message of some kind. Should it be decided to truly enforce these laws, it will be done by letting the cops off the leash to do whatever they please to whomever they like. (1. Why we parole child molesters so we can imprison drug users is beyond me. It has every appearance of complete insanity on the part of the authorities. Or, I suppose, it could mean they don't really care about kids in spite of all their talk on the subject.) Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.htm -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNGqXXpaWtjSmRH/5AQFhMwf9FU/DU9+iMtflw+CZ0XW3enz+FdC14DzI GD+SIUPm3aBO+MJQHh1ScWNb2ShWVWxMCycHOcKyUhYpAvH2d/oqz6/2Feq2Aw8E 0Oxcg0djy5zri1nZtwTW7QQ2qGOfKyUq+2qJFX3aFFxAMjE2yT5uwvwBRNucPwYC zR40/b5oMJEndp47KUTjnCfbCFmwG2vHZe+3hM6vfm+07zcaRUOJsMgGjsAkTi4I /Rtg4Bxd7L+3AVs8k+ZpJoN7A9ipoOvWGUeXH+s+uwWhS62PtC9DY29sg5f4mG+j qxtCNg14TjfIEiaqjcW3/jm9rk/gFhBiT8f24Aseof2v+T+g0qI5Iw== =zihd -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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"Son of CDA" Ignores Supreme Court Ruling, ACLU Says
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 14:40:23 -0500 (EST) From: Emilyaclu(a)aol.com To: Emilyaclu(a)aol.com Subject: "Son of CDA" Ignores Supreme Court Ruling, ACLU Says ACLU Says New Internet Censorship Statute Ignores Landmark Supreme Court Ruling FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, November 13, 1997 Contact: Emily Whitfield, (212) 549-2566 WASHINGTON--New legislation aimed at banning online material deemed "harmful to minors" would run roughshod over the landmark Supreme Court decision affirming free speech on the Internet, the American Civil Liberties Union said today. The ACLU, which led the successful battle to defeat the unconstitutional Communications Decency Act (CDA), said S. 1482, like the CDA, would restrict adults from accessing constitutionally protected speech. The bill was introduced earlier this week by Sen. Dan Coats, R-IN, an original sponsor of the ill-fated CDA. Under the statute, commercial online distributors of material deemed "harmful to minors" could be punished with up to six months in jail and a $50,000 fine. The definition could include the virtual bookstore amazon.com or a promotional site for a Hollywood movie, as well as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Microsoft and America Online, the ACLU said. And unlike the CDA, the statute applies only to web sites, not to chat rooms, e-mail or news groups. "By claiming that the bill addresses only web sites involved in commercial distribution, Senator Coats says he is hunting with a rifle,' but in fact, he has lobbed another virtual grenade into the heart of the Internet" said Ann Beeson, an ACLU National Staff Attorney and member of the legal team that defeated the CDA. Any business merely displaying material without first requiring a credit card or other proof of age could be found liable under the statute, which criminalizes commercial distribution of words or images that could be deemed "harmful to minors," even if no actual sale is involved, Beeson said. "This is the equivalent of having to pay a fee every time you want to browse in the bookstore or watch a trailer for an R-rated movie," Beeson said. "As the Supreme Court noted in its landmark decision, requiring a credit card or other age verification would impose a severe financial and logistical burden, even on commercial websites." The ACLU said there were serious constitutional problems as well with the bill's definition of "harmful to minors." In addition to using a vague definition of what constitutes "harmful material," the bill does not make any distinction between material that may be harmful to a six-year-old but valuable for a 16-year-old, such as safer-sex information, said Chris Hansen, an ACLU Senior Staff Attorney and member of the Reno v. ACLU legal team. Further, Hansen pointed out, unlike other "harmful to minors" statutes that have been upheld in the courts, the bill does not define whose community standard will be used to determine what material is harmful. "Invariably, those who decide what is harmful to a minor are going to be the least tolerant members of a given community -- such as the group in Oklahoma who sought to remove the award-winning film The Tin Drum' from local libraries and video stores," Hansen said. The Supreme Court's landmark decision striking down the CDA was issued on June 26 of this year, 16 months after the law was enacted and the ACLU filed its challenge. In a ringing affirmation of online free speech, the Court said that the interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship.' "While we rejoiced in the Supreme Court's decision last June, we knew that the battle was not yet over," said Solange Bitol, legislative counsel on First Amendment issues for the ACLU's Washington National Office. "When Congress returns to session in the New Year, we will be ready for Round Two in the battle to protect our free speech rights." -endit-

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RE: Br'er Tim and the Bug Hole
by Fisher Mark 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bob Hettinga wrote: >Frankly, waving your Glock at the local sherriff and daring him to come >shoot you out of der MayBunker is not just free speech, it's, charitably, >grandstanding. Making a threat on the life of a judge, or even begging for >Washington to be nuked -- something you can't possibly do yourself -- is in >the same catagory of "will someone rid me of this priest", or "but that >would be wrong", or the Castro assination exhortations which inspired Oswald >to kill JFK. In this country, it's all free speech, but that doesn't keep >you from getting impaled, "accidentally" or otherwise, on the pointy end of >the state, or public opinion, when you piss it off. I think you are falling into the "map _is_ the territory" mistake here, Bob. Tim is just speaking his mind, lucidly and forcefully as usual. (The same way you do, which is why I enjoy reading both your posts so much, although your prose styles differ so greatly.) Tim isn't "waving your Glock at the local sherriff" -- he is talking about his actions if law enforcement decides to violate the Constitution personally upon him. Although it is certainly the case that all rights, at their boundaries, may be observed more in the breech, I don't think the situation is so bad _yet_ that Tim has to lay awake nights worrying about a no-knock. Tim, I guess I see you as someone who has spotted a bunch of thunderclouds on the horizon, so you have decided to stock up on raingear before the deluge. But, with a little luck and a lot of common sense on the part of the populace, neither Tim nor anyone else will have to go through that particular hell. As one additional datapoint, when our local "FAX Daily" (a daily FAXed paper) took a poll on GAK, 66% were against government access to keys (and "FAX Daily" is aimed at the general population). (I have this suspicion that California is more likely to develop "thunderclouds on the horizon" that don't turn into local storms, due to the greater concentration of Democratic Party members there -- Indiana, as a Republican state, certainly sees a lot of posturing about family values and such, but with Republican anti-government rhetoric, it is hard for Republicans to push too hard for the massive increases of government regulation that would be required to actually enforce family values by governmental fiat.) Tim, from what I understand of what he said, is just getting prepared if the worst comes. One of the functions of this list as I see it is just this sort of preparation, which can often stave off the actual worst. If those who would desire this sort of power over the population are made aware that the population won't stand for it, they are less likely to continue to seek that level of power. To close with a quote that I think (from my Midwest perception of the situation) describes best how the near-term will actually work out: "There's no way the federal government could oppress the citizens, because the populace is armed to the teeth, and the officials would just get their heads blown off." -- James Madison argues the pro-government position, Federalist Papers #46 ========================================================== Mark Leighton Fisher Thomson Consumer Electronics fisherm(a)indy.tce.com Indianapolis, IN "Their walls are built of cannon balls, their motto is 'Don't Tread on Me'"

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cypherpunks - passing mention [FYI] [sci-fi]
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Informational/Entertainment content only: Minimal crypto relevance but in Allen Steele's book Tranquillity Alternative (ISBN 0-441-00433-4) which concerns a alternate-history of the space program there is mention of 'cypherpunks' made in reference to cracking double-key encrypted passwords on Le Matrix. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Tim May's offensive racism (was: about RC4)
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> At 10:37 PM -0700 11/12/97, Nobuki Nakatuji wrote: > >There are RC4 sourcecode in ftp.replay.com. > >but, Is it same RC4 developed RSADSI ? > > > > It am developed. > > You go back where you came. You go back hotmail. We tired your stupid > questions on RC4 and your Misty posts. > > Sayonara! > > (And they wonder why we kicked Japan's butt.) > > --Tim May This illustrates what a liability the poster has become to the cypherpunks. The group is becoming just another militia front, identified with racism and white supremacy, applauding violent murder of government agents, one step from applauding the Oklahoma killings. Its original purpose all but forgotten, the list has died, poisoned by the hatred flowing from its leader.

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Re: Br'er Tim and the Bug Hole
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Robert Hettinga wrote: > > At any rate, the upshot of his argument was that there are often > > attempts to ensure freedom, but in reality it can only be assured > > through its exercise. > If you lived here you'd be home now? Please. Don't you feel more like you do now than you did earlier? Footfault

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Find the Mole in the Mirror
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Monty Cantsin wrote: >The right thing to do is to assume there are a certain number of moles >around and engineer your activities accordingly. If you really think >you can Find The Mole, then I would think your first step is to keep >quiet about what you are doing. Like, if you will, Monty Cantsin, the venerable generic pseudonym for sub rosa strategems. You fingering yourselves, Monty? If you haven't been IDed as a mole here yet, you will, probably by your own woefully engineered statements. All of us are moles for one ideology or another, maybe for several if the blowing wind tosses us that way. What's the point of being here if not for relishment of deceitful faux combat, to draw out the enemy (enemies) as Tim and Bob admirably display in their artful allure of ulterior motivated peacemakers and condescendors, me for one, as Declan love jousts CDT, as many us pisswind DC, NWO, ZOG, Armenians, Nipponese. A mole is a disguise of something more treacherously insidious than that, say, a rational human, a benevolent mediator, an advocate for peace, for justice, for the constitution, or another an unadmitted plot for no-work supremacy through criminal law (lawful crime). The mole(s) here are known, look in the mirror, and marked by the beast, look closely in the mirror, for XORing, their coming in all conceivable disguises welcomed, then tricked, attacked, ridiculed, and finally filtered, erased, deleted, plonked, censored, to resub pseudonymously, rebooted, zapped, ignored, still we-they come back for more S&M, it's an addictive calling to evangelism, anon-remailer generic pseudonym reputation-capital real and imagined Ritalin nirvana. Nothing better to do with wasted lives, the option of getting one is a dream long gone. Faking one is all that's left, the mole in the hole.

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Re: Hyperlinks case settles at door of court
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bill Stewart wrote: > >The Shetland Times case has been settled - links will be permitted with > >certain conditions > >See http://www.shetland-news.co.uk/headline/97nov/settled/settled.html > And it was even settled reasonably, and without setting new bad UK case law. People acting reasonably and settling their differences without resorting to promoting strict new laws enforced by armed agents of the government? The end of the world _really_is_ drawing close, isn't it? [That wasn't an earthquake...that was the people in Hell, beginning to shiver, from the cold.] BrrrrMonger > (For those who don't remember the case, the Shetland News and > Shetland Times are Scottish newspapers with web pages. > The News was linking from its page to some of the Times's stories > without pointing out that the stories were in their competitor's paper, > and the Times sued them. In the settlement they agree that the > News may link to the Times's pages, and that they'll only do so > with visible indications that they're doing so.) > Thanks! > Bill > Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com > Regular Key PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639

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Fwd: Set Phasers to Stun.
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Resent-Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 12:56:52 -0500 From: glen(a)substance.abuse.blackdown.org To: 0xdeadbeef(a)substance.abuse.blackdown.org Cc: bostic(a)bsdi.com Subject: Set Phasers to Stun. Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 12:56:48 -0500 Sender: glen(a)shell.ncm.com Resent-From: 0xdeadbeef(a)substance.abuse.blackdown.org X-Mailing-List: <0xdeadbeef(a)substance.abuse.blackdown.org> archive/latest/2463 X-Loop: 0xdeadbeef(a)substance.abuse.blackdown.org Precedence: list Resent-Sender: 0xdeadbeef-request(a)substance.abuse.blackdown.org Forwarded-by: Mark Stewart <mark(a)ps.cus.umist.ac.uk> Forwarded-by: DarkTrick <dan(a)coromir.demon.co.uk> 1 NS 01 Nov 97 SET PHASERS TO SHOCK . . . (358) By PAUL GUINNESSY Real life is catching up with Star Trek. Hans Eric Herr from San Diego,California, has been granted a patent for a 'phaser' that uses laser light to stun or kill. Crude stun weapons called tasers are already available in the US. The weapons fire two small darts attached to a wire. A pulsing electrical current passes down the wire and stuns the victim by 'tetanisation'. The pulses make the muscles of the victim contract in unison, rendering them helpless. The disadvantages of tasers are that they can only be fired once before they have to be reloaded. They are also classified as firearms because they fire projectiles. One attempt to overcome the limitations of tasers uses a stream of liquid that hits a victim with a 10 000-volt charge. This causes painful muscle spasms in the victim. But the liquid can split into droplets, breaking the electrical connection, and is hard to aim. Herr's invention uses lasers to generate intense beams of ultraviolet light. These create a path of ionised air down which precisely modulated electrical current is sent. The currents can be manipulated to cause painful contractions, stun a victim painlessly, or induce a heart attack. It has a far longer range than the taser-over 100 metres-and the beam can penetrate clothing. The phaser can also fire many shots before it needs reloading. Using ultraviolet light avoids legal restrictions on weapons that blind with laser light, since it would take several minutes to damage the retina with the wavelength of light used by the device. A hand-held version of the phaser is not yet available because the argon-fluoride discharge-pumped excimer laser it uses is as big as a kitchen table. Herr is hoping that others will find ways to make his device smaller and more powerful, as well as improve its range. He says that any technically competent person would be able to build a phaser. Steve Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, says: 'At first glance it seems incredible, and rather disturbing.' New Scientist Volume 156. Issue 2106. --- 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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Weapons on the Web, and mention of remailers
by Tim May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is from http://techweb.cmp.com/ng/online/current/specials/guns/guns2.htm Lots of misinformation and disinformation. Perfectly legal items are referred to as "banned." Scare tactics about silenced machine guns, sniper rifles, and even "speed loaders to load all of the cylinders of a revolver at once" (horrors! does the author know that every gun store I've ever been in sells these things for about $6 each?). One quote even refers to "our" technologies: "It might seem that the contents of rec.guns alone could be easily monitored for illegal transactions. However, my sources have shown me that with the availability of anonymous remailers and several sources of digital cash, it is increasingly possible for seller and buyer to never know who the other party is or where they are." (This of course is nonsense, about the digital cash, etc. If one exchanges an item in physical space, at least for now there is some mailing or shipping nexus. (Anonymous drops in storage lockers are a possibility, though ripe for stings.) Certainly I have never heard of a digital cash transaction for a gun...and not for a lot of other things, either.) In view of the Paladin case, the Feinstein "bomb-making instructions ban," and calls to shut down gun shows, this article may give some tips on coming actions. And the plans for the Federal Trade Commission and Food and Drug Administration to start cruising the Web looking for illegal speech also provides a clue. Personally, I'm beginning to think --Tim May --begin quote-- Threaded Chat The rec.guns group is a bit like a combination of Town Hall and Market Square in Firearms Land. People sound off about government regulations, at any level, in any locale. Disgruntled users warn others about substandard products. New members ask advice and old hands compare notes on match grade ammunition. Once I saw an advisory posted to all people who had bought surplus East German ammunition. This writer had acquired an old East German technical manual that showed the exact chemical composition of the propellant charges in their bullets. It included a warning that after 5 years, the charges could chemically degrade and become subject to misfires or dud rounds, a useful thing to know about if you happen to be holding some of said ammunition, certainly. There are also quite a lot of messages on rec.guns on the best legal way to buy a gun online (decidedly not the procedure followed by Z and many others). But rec.guns is also a marketplace: long banana clip magazines (usually 30-40 shot magazines for semiautomatic rifles that were banned under the Assault Rifle ban; of course, all these are advertised as being manufactured "pre-ban"), speed loaders to load all of the cylinders of a revolver at once, equipment for hand-loading one's own ammunition, and, of course, guns: revolvers, semiautomatic pistols, rifles, shotguns, and others. One night while writing this article I saw a Galil for sale. The Galil is an Israeli-made assault rifle, rated as one of the best in the world. On an earlier visit I saw an ad for quantities of Dragunovs. The Dragunov was the standard issue sniper rifle for the Red Army. In the hands of a sharpshooter, such a gun can be accurate to within inches at ranges out to 2/3 of a mile. And given the present state of the economy in Russia, we are likely to see more, not less, of any of the standard Russian weapons, Dragunovs and others. It might seem that the contents of rec.guns alone could be easily monitored for illegal transactions. However, my sources have shown me that with the availability of anonymous remailers and several sources of digital cash, it is increasingly possible for seller and buyer to never know who the other party is or where they are. That becomes even more of a concern on the World Wide Web, where, just as all other forms of advocacy and commerce are flourishing, so are firearms advocacy and sales. The NRA is online; everyone knows their position. At Sniper Country/Extreme Shooting Sports, the motto is "happiness is a confirmed kill," and you can learn all about famous and infamous snipers. At Shootin' Stuff you can read comparisons of handguns for home or self defense use, including the Makarov 9mm, the sidearm once issued only to officers in the Red Army. You can even download images of slugs being fired from a stationary rifle held in a vise. If this puts you in a buying mood, you can travel over to Stokes's Firearms Enthusiasts' Web Magazine, where a graphic of a silenced submachine gun greets you. When I first went to this site earlier this year, it was open and anyone could peruse the ads and offerings; now, however, a password is required. For those who lack patience or don't want yet another net password, there are sites that offer immediate access to their ads. The Champion Firearms Home Page, Guncraft Sports Web Pages, and the Electronic Gun Shop are all open for business now. They offer, variously, revolvers, semiautomatic pistols, rifles, and shotguns. It must be emphasized that there is nothing illegal about any online gun commerce; there are existing laws and regulations that do cover the situation. But when UPS, however unknowingly, delivers 9mm pistols, it is clear that ignoring the existing rules is accomplished rather easily online, a point that applies for any other sort of online commerce, whether presently regulated by law or not. ... --end excerpt---

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