December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

CNET Dispatch: Comdex wrap-up; Web cops (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 18:14:58 -0800 > From: CNET Digital Dispatch <dispatch(a)CNET.com> > Subject: CNET Dispatch: Comdex wrap-up; Web cops > CNET Digital Dispatch: Comdex wrap-up; Web cops > November 20, 1997 > This week on CNET: [deleted] > 2. How cops fight online crime [deleted] > 10. "Your turn": revolution of the Net [deleted] ____________________________________________________________________ | | | 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 | |____________________________________________________________________|

1 0

Algebra down?
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, Been getting bounces from Algebra for the last few hours. Anyone know what's up on that end? ____________________________________________________________________ | | | 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 | |____________________________________________________________________|

1 0

What REALLY happened to Flight 800...
by Brian W. Buchanan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From comp.risks: | An article `Windows added to cockpit choices' in Flight International, 5-11 | November 1997, p 25, explains that the US company Avidyne has certificated | an avionics system based on Windows NT. The hardware supplier is Electronic | Designs, who has recently received approval from the FAA (approval for what | is not specified). Avidyne is apparently working on Level-C approval, which | will allow use of its moving-map display for IFR navigation. One of the | benefits is said to be the wide range of interfaces available to other | devices. "Good afternoon, Microsoft technical support." "This is TWA Flight 800. Our avionics system just shit itself! Something about a segmentation violation in the hydrolics interface driver!" "Hmm. Did you try rebooting it?" "Yes, several times! Losing attitude control!" "Hmm. This may require a reinstall of the operating system then. Please hold for a moment while I connect you to one of our reinstallation support technicians." "No! Wait! The center fuel tank's thermostat control dialog is full of random garbage now! *SCREAM* *BOOM*" ... And in today's news, despite a leaked report from the NTSB that it was not "digital sabotage," but a critical bug in Microsoft Windows NT for Avionics that was responsible for the crash of TWA Flight 800, President Clinton has asked Congress to introduce legislation that would enable the FBI to monitor so-called computer hackers more carefully through digital wiretaps and mandatory key escrow, to "save the children from the info-terrorists on the other side of the Bridge to the Twenty-First Century." Microsoft is not commenting at this time, but a source within the company has informed us that a fix for the "center fuel tank bug" will be included in NT for Avionics Service Pack 4, to be released in the first quarter of 1998. -- Brian Buchanan brian(a)smarter.than.nu "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you." No security through obscurity! Demand full source code! 4.4BSD for the masses - http://www.freebsd.org

1 0

No Subject
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This comes the same day as a Wired News story about detritus.net, an online gallery which plans to host works of "appropriated," copyright- infringing art. Better not take any digital handouts at the gallery, or you're opt to join them in the paddy wagons, too. The assertion of "Intellectual property" = the control of human Mind. Lock and load. Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 18:38:30 -0500 From: Carl Donath <ctdonath(a)RPA.NET> Reply-To: Netly <NETLY-L(a)LISTSERV.PATHFINDER.COM> To: NETLY-L(a)LISTSERV.PATHFINDER.COM Subject: Re: Today's netly Jonathan Peterson wrote: > > So assuming I have a copy of Director on a workstation at home and > choose to install it on a laptop so I can work on the road I'm up for > 5 years and $250,000? Yep. Welcome to the reality that an increasing number of reasonable citizens face: do something normal, reasonable, even constitutionally protected, and face years in prison and huge fines.

1 0

Violence and Depravity
by nobody＠neva.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Monty Cantsin wrote: >Violence is, in nearly every case, a poor investment of time, >money, and energy. I disagree. The US Goverment and the mainstream media were both guilty of either ignorance or deliberate subreption during McVeigh's trial. As a military trained explosive demolition instructor, I am compelled to concur with the absent testimony and published findings of a certain three star, to wit: It ain't necessarily so. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of explosives will tell you that two tons of ammonium nitrate, sixty feet from the base of a tall, reinforced concrete and steel building, will not do very much more than break lots of windows. You see, ammonium nitrate is a low velocity explosive compound useful for moving dirt. A brissance, or shattering effect, on steel and/or reinforced concrete requires an explosive compound with much greater explosive velocity.... C-4, several types of commercial blasting gelatin, even TNT. If you observed the news footage of the Murray Federal Building after the blast, you may have noticed that the damage was configured in a semi-cylindrical fashion, rather than the conic section which would have resulted from a ground placed charge of sufficient strength. You might also have wondered about the apparent lack of a crater at the site of the explosion... (The crater was mysteriously relocated to the basement of the structure, probably by A Terrorist-Provocateur To Be Named Later...) If you looked closely at the ruined building, you would have seen evidence of brissance on alternating bearing members on each floor. (I have photos of this) Had detailed chemical analysis of the site been permitted, evidence of a very large and elaborate line or ring main constructed of detonation cord, of the RDX or PETN based military variety, likely, would have been found. Consider that the placement of the array of charges necessary to simultaneously shatter several dozen large bearing members in the building would have required several hours for a well trained demolition team, not to mention unlimited access to the building after hours. Seismographs recorded TWO impacts that day, several minutes apart. Consider that if this action was meant to revenge or commemorate the Waco massacre, it achieved the opposite goal. However, if this was the work of agents-provocateur, it worked beautifully. Waco was downplayed in the face of 'the threat of domestic terrorism.' The body count was higher, and this time it came from the 'self-styled militia.' Also, if McVeigh really had followed the Turner Diaries recipe, he would have put his bomb somewhere useful. The book details the use of a similar device to destroy a large government database, and the truck bomb is parked underneath it in the basement parking structure, _not_ sixty feet away... The reader's digest version: 1) McVeigh's bomb, as it was and where it was, was a squirt of piss in a hurricane. 2) A well financed team of demolition professionals did the job. 3) The payoff from this "investment" was the impressive Anti-Terrorism bill, much political mileage for the agency "targeted" by the attack, and an option for more legislation in the crypto arena. 4) In a perfect world, McVeigh would have been prosecuted for incompetence, and given a suspended sentence because he was, after all, merely an infantry sergeant, not a demolition pro. In the same perfect world, Woodward and Bernstein types would follow up on stuff like this instead of gulping down regurgitated propaganda like so many infant birds. Then perhaps the true terrorists would be punished, and the political agenda of their employers exposed. 5) The convenient deaths of poor defenseless children(TM) contributed mostly to the policy goals of the jackbooted thugs, not to those of their detractors. 6) McVeigh pulled an Oswald. Quit crediting him with success. A Noncom To Be Named Later

3 2

For Blanc's Eye's Only (WAS: "I got there just in time...")
by Janet Reamhole 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[A very revealing series of articles at:] http://cnet.com/Content/Features/Dlife/Finest/ The next day the San Diego ISP was contacted by someone "who knew the hacker had been in their system," says George Vinson, assistant special agent in charge of the San Francisco office of the FBI. "He told the ISP the hacker's handle, and said Smak had a lot of credit card numbers for sale." That third party became the FBI's cooperating witness. Any bets that the 'cooperating witness' who showed up 'out of the blue' was already a government instigator/snitch? Sources close to the investigation say the hacker used PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy, a powerful encryption tool available as freeware on the Internet and in commercial retail versions, to encrypt his communications. Although encryption often makes the FBI's job even tougher, in this case, Smak's use of encryption created an opportunity for the FBI to gain greater control over the sting. Bullshit. Any government agency who is able to access a user's computer via search warrant/surrepticious entry/cooperating accomplice, can compromise the target's encryption 99.9% of the time. Has the government ever provided a *single*instance* where inability to access encrypted files impeded a prosecution? The ratfuckers just want to 'Go Fish' through our private lives at will, and then go get legal authorization to pretend to newly discover their illegally acquired information. Unlike hackers whose main goal is to brag about their technological prowess, Smak was selling a huge volume of credit card numbers to criminals. Right... It this was the Truth (TM) as opposed to horseshit, the public would be privy to all the details of the horrendous range of his crimes, in order to bolster the government's agenda. "The encryption-using hacker also murdered fifty world leaders, but we have no information available on the details at this time. and never will." >From May 2, 1997, until the dramatic meeting at the airport three weeks later, Smak and the confidential witness exchanged more than 50 email messages. Let's see. The government allowed Smak to sell "a huge volume of credit card numbers to criminals" for three weeks--for what purpose? To build a case for conviction? When they already had a "confidential witness" who had knowledge of Smak's crimes? Bullshit. The government agents needed three weeks to encourage and abet Smak in becoming a criminal and committing crimes as a result of government influence. Unbeknownst to Smak, his messages to the witness were received at a computer controlled by the FBI, and recorded and maintained as evidence. "Only the FBI could access the email encrypted by Smak," says Agent Dalrymple. The cooperating witness "didn't have the password or the ability to access the information." Barf City! Give a retarded kid access to someone's computer and they can bust it wide open in a matter of hours. Controlling the encryption key and the password gave the FBI confidence that it was building an airtight case. "That way we had clean messages," says Dalrymple. "They couldn't be adulterated in any way. By law we can prove they were his messages." If the law *required* the FBI to prove that the messages *could* have been adulterated, and that they *weren't* Smak's messages, in order to convict him, they would have called cypherpunks, hackers and phreaks to 'prove' it to be so. Visa USA's fraud control team, which worked with the FBI on the investigation, said Salgado had compromised 86,326 credit card accounts affecting 1,214 different financial institutions. The potential loss: as much as $1 billion. Right. Bigger than the S&L crisis. "In addition, he was in possession of a single joint of marihuana, which has a street-value of $2 billion on the planet Venus." The case also sends an important message to companies that get hacked: they can cooperate in an investigation without revealing their vulnerability. "These guys pulled off a major case without compromising the names of the victim companies," Vinson notes proudly. Uuhhhh. These ratfuckers allowed and encouraged Smak, for a period of at least three weeks, to "compromise" the credit cards of more and more people, so that they could build a major bust. Yet, since they protected the financial institutions from having the truth exposed about their inability to protect the privacy and security of their customers, the FBI ratfuckers are busting their buttons with pride. I once saw a news interview with the boyfriend of a woman who had been stabbed in the face with a screwdriver in an attempted rape: "When I arrived, he had already stabbed her in the face several times with the screwdriver, but he hadn't raped her, yet. I got there just in time..." NEWS FLASH!!! - You got there a little bit late, pal. You got there a little late... I could catch those guys flying planeloads containing tons of drugs into the country, if only I was allowed to invade the privacy of everyone in the world and hold lighted cigarettes against the skin of their newborn children. I strangled Vincent Foster, but he didn't exhale... TruthMonger

1 0

Despite the efforts of the CDT to work out a compromise...
by TruthMonger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

* On August 7, police in Delaware, Ohio, and Thibodaux, La., reported that alleged child molesters had received private justice. According to police in Ohio, the wife and mother-in-law of Rodney Hosler, 27, kidnapped him shortly after he was released from prison on child-molesting charges, tied him up, shaved his body, applied hot ointment to his genitals, inserted a cucumber into his body, scribbled "I am a child molester" on him, and dumped him naked in front of a pizza parlor in his home town, 70 miles away. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To read these News of the Weird newspaper columns from the past six months, go to http://www.nine.org/notw/notw.html (That site contains no graphics, no photos, no video clips, no audio. Just text. Deal with it.)

1 0

You're Fired!
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Igor, Just kidding. Say hi to Jim Bell and Tim May for me. (Tell the rest of the CypherPunks I'll be joining UHAUL after my extradition hearing.) {WARNING!!! -- If John Gilmore drops the soap...IT'S NO ACCIDENT!} Toto ~~~~ "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre" http://bureau42.base.org/public/xenix "WebWorld & the Mythical Circle of Eunuchs" http://bureau42.base.org/public/webworld "InfoWar" http://bureau42.base.org/public/infowar3 "The Final Frontier" http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/carljohn

1 0

Re: Br'er Tim and the Bug Hole
by bureau42 Anonymous Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Wed, 19 Nov 1997 at 11:27:12 -0500 Bob Hettinga had an epileptic fit induced by excessive pressure in his swollen head and vomited forth: > Tim can make it as "repeatedly clear" as he wants after > the fact. However, he has, on several occasions, made > threats against people with more guns than he has, and, > sooner or later, they're gonna Aw, bullshit, Bob! You were wrong when you started this fuckfest and you're digging yourself deeper and deeper with every post. There was a time when I thought you had a brain and a modicum of common sense, but you've thoroughly disabused me of that fantasy. I once visited your website and thought, "This guy is cool!" Geez, I'm embarrassed to admit that now. You've taken Tim's comments out of context and done yeoman work for the enemy. If (or when) they ever find an excuse to bother him, they won't be showing _his_ posts to the jury -- they'll be showing _yours_, you clueless fuckwit. This is the age of "social convictions," in case you haven't noticed because you've been living in an e-cave. They don't prove cases anymore; they show that you're a "bad actor." It's all done with PR, whether totally in the press or partly in a courtroom. The first piece of paper the feds send out when they attack someone is a press release. The victim often first learns he's in trouble when the reporters call. > ...lucidity, but who has gotten increasingly radicalized > and militant at exactly the same time the world is figuring > out that his earlier... Maybe you're too young, child. The world is not figuring things out fast enough or on a large enough scale to offset the accelerating advance of the state. Tim has been around long enough to have figured out that the statists have pissed away his entire lifetime making him wait for things to get "figured out." You have no respect for your elders, who have gotten bored over more things than you have yet learned. You should be spanked and made to sit in the corner until you can behave. > It's almost as if Tim keeps trying to top himself, with > some newer and more grandiose claim about the impending > collapse of the world as we know it. It just ain't so. > The world don't work that way. Tell that to the Athenians and hundreds if not thousands of groups since who have been surprised when their worlds collapsed. Tell that to the Austrians and Germans of the 1920's. Tell that to the piles of bones in Cambodia. You suffer from the subjectivity of youth. You think that the universe revolves around your time and space and that those are unique in human experience. You're wrong. The times into which we are headed have every promise of being the very most "interesting" in human history. I for one won't feel a bit compensated by your future whines that you "wuz wrong!" If you had two brain cells to rub together you would have taken your lumps in Tim's first brushoff and shut up. He's got a right to his position and you haven't got shit. What you will have is a place in someone's black book if it turns out that your characterizations of Tim's posts ever turn out to be fuel for the enemy's meatgrinder. Ignorance, even stupidity, are pardonable if not too tightly connected to the motor mouth. You should consider that the damage you may do could far exceed the value of whatever pride it is that impels you to continue to articulate the government's ideal (and fatuous) arguments in this matter. > And, Monty, here's another fact: the world isn't going to > end on Thanksgiving Day, much less at the beginning of the > millennium. Only a complete fool would be that sure. > Armed storm troopers are probably *not* going to decend > on the denizens of this list and haul them off to newly > built gulags in the Rockies somewhere, or whatever the > current fantasy of the moment is. Really, if you just stopped and thought about it a moment, there are only a very few regular posters to the list. All of them could be hauled off without making a ripple. We are meanwhile playing war footsie with Iraq after having spent the better part of five years doing Clinton's best to disable, demoralize, cripple, and mismanage the military. We're a few press conferences away from being in way over our heads with a left-wing android in charge. Is this your picture of stable times and a secure Constitution? Do you seriously doubt that there are people in the Administration, at least in the bureaucracy, who wouldn't like to be able to make a few gratuitous PR linkages in a national emergency and have an excuse to get rid of the C-P annoyance once and for all? Did you miss entirely the personal destruction wreaked on Jim Bell _without_ a national emergency? Would you be utterly shocked to learn some day soon that you, too, have ordered odd chemicals from someplace or other over the last few years? Hey! It could _happen_! > However, to say that they're coming to take us all away > on Thanksgiving, or anytime soon, is more than a little > paranoid, and, No, Grasshopper, it is just a _little_ paranoid to suggest that it might be a possibility. You're putting words in Tim's mouth again. You can probably assume that if Tim were really convinced that that were going to happen, they would find only an inflatable Tim sitting in front of a 'puter relaying email through an indirect dial link. Or something like that. He's just concerned. I'm concerned. Anyone with a brain above room temperature is concerned. Ugly things are in the wind. > to attempt to force a confrontation in hopes of > preciptating a revolution, or even gratuitous publicity Why, Grasshopper! He's done no such thing and you well know it. You are the one making such characterizations (as if any of us needed that). Had I the time and the interest, I would check what archives there are to see if you did the same favor for Jim Bell. Fuckwit! Well, there's more, but your time's up. See you in the camps. We Jurgar Din

4 3

Re: FCPUNX:Tim plans to kill a federal judge
by nobody＠neva.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- James Donald wrote: >At 06:10 PM 11/14/97 -0700, Tim May wrote: >> By the way, the same can be said about the work of Heidegger, a thinker who >> has had some influence on me. Whenever I cite anything Heidegger ever said, >> I can count on some numbskull to parrot the "Heidegger was a Nazi" shtick. > >Probably because Heidegger *was* a Nazi, who pranced around in full drag >Nazi uniform and sent certain of his colleagues to the concentration camps. > >To very crudely oversimplify the relationship between Heideggers >philosophy and Nazism, it goes like this. > >No objective, only the intersubjective, therefore the community >defines reality, therefore truth is merely relative to the community. > >Yeah, I know it is more complex than that, but it still boils down >to debates being resolved by hanging people from the ceiling with >piano wire rather than by appeal to the external world. You are doing something slightly different from people who respond to a point with "Heideggar? That Nazi!" The people who do this are short circuiting the discussion instead of showing how the point made is in error. In a sense, they are not discussing an idea, but the group affiliations of each speaker. I find that the ideas are more interesting. (Although, if one were interested in Heideggar, his biography would probably be interesting, too.) 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 iQEVAwUBNHNYfJaWtjSmRH/5AQHHQgf+P4JzdjyftjxLeMONc6BnT+++TO1CDJ9B 2KKQfPwC1nW5vM1eY+Yl1HPK577GYkCWaV1xPfiJ+zNBqgjr3p4vtWJU8RrBGs4Y xHy+4v/r2xSCBaPcBx5/0qqJkWMLr+zntusDfevJOviDcuozXj6uOJfWmg1bTrKz l/qoKTVVVfeNIHYYjWm+BfuNVsar0P5bOx2U6N/FkglK1XZEC+3q4/ibCjhjXCAm TFYuvO1tBlT0DAvjAcjv9m1drISNYVT2SsY4buOqb8CFkegBL9fUDcdPBt7x07rr 9Oe4AVFi17T9x6mP6evdz2ILffC2G8DhPK0Gqqhzlm8bxGcy8Dgq6Q== =ZwGc -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0