December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Vengeance Libertarianism
by Albert P. Franco, II 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim must be having a "bad hair" day. He actually mentioned sending people to Labor Camps. That sounds so UN-Libertarian, I have to chuckle. I'm chuckling because I wouldn't want to think you actually believe in this very Hitleresque rant. Or is some FED spoofing Tim and sending "threatening" material in his name? In which case...lock and load, Tim. They're coming to get you! APF >and, have drifted into the camp I will dub "the vengeance >libertarians." Summarized, roughly, as: > >"You've stolen my property, you've imprisoned my friends, you've passed >laws making us all criminals, you've started wars to enrich your >military-industrial complex friends, and you're corrupt bastards. You can >forget about some kind of "libertarian amnesty." It's going to be payback >time, with at least hundreds of thousands of statist judges, politicians, >cops, soldiers, and other such persons going to the gallows. Payback time. >Welfare recipients are going to have to pay back all that they have stolen, >with compounded interest. Out of their pockets, or while in labor camps. >Payback time." > > >--Tim May >

3 2

Commerce Hacked?
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Since some time after the Department of Commerce issued the recent press release on Wassenaar the site (www.doc.gov) has not been accessible, at least not from here. The press release section of the International Trade Administration (www.ita.doc.gov) David Aaron's org, for a while had a notice that updating was being done and the site would be fixed shortly. Then the ITA site disappeared, along with the main DoC site. We spoke with a public affairs rep at DoC before this happened and to inquire when the department would issue detailed information to flesh out the press release. I said there was a furor over Aaron's spin, and much skepticism of its validity. She said she would check and call back but hasn't. Wonder if the site was hacked, from the outside or inside.

1 0

e$: Cryptography -- The Steel Rails of Digital Commerce
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Lots of sensible people on cypherpunks have made an excellent point before, but Nelson Minar has said it quite succinctly in the message below, with an outstanding example from Sun, in the post that I'm including here from Perry Metzger's cryptography list. The point it this: There is only one, and completely acceptable, solution to this whole crypto-exportabilty mess: don't export anything. That is, make *only* strong crypto, make it inside your country, and let crypto folks in other countries take care of themselves. The permiability of national borders to the internet will get your actual cryptography overseas if it's novel and useful, and, if you use crypto plugged into your software, like Sun does with Java, then you'll sell more of that software because it *requires* strong cryptography, other people's or not. Geodesic, recursive software auctions with digital bearer-settled cash will eventually make all of this, including intellectual property issues, moot someday :-), but, in the meantime, simply obeying the laws on crypto export will work marvellously. Even in a post- "Adult Action" world, where all laws are enforceable everywhere, obeying them all, will, paradoxically, work just fine, as we'll see in a bit. Of course, all this makes the crypto *import*/arbitrage market, where C2NET made their first million, a mostly diminishing one, whether Wassenaar works or not. Certainly it's not a large enough market to renounce your citizenship for, as one member of their firm has done. This whole export-control tactic will eventually fail, and when crypto is unregulated, either by the market or by law itself, some crypto-fugitives will still be locked out of the largest economies in the world, especially if, however temporary the tactic and doomed to failure it is, nation-states actually criminalize crypto-arbitrage itself. Again, it's not laws, it's technology, which is the solution to this silly, and fairly theocratic, dispute about criminalizing the export of cryptography. Remember the e$yllogism: Strong cryptography is essential to digital commerce. In fact, strong financial cryptography is utterly necessary *and* sufficient for digital commerce. Thus, no strong cryptography, no digital commerce. Since all commerce will have a digital, and thus cryptographic, component soon enough, cryptographic regulation is, like Carl Ellison's analogy of church doctrine forbidding peasants from shooting nobility, fairly useless. Especially since nation-states can't help but allow the use of strong cryptography to facilitate commerce, in the same way that they can't help but allow the use of steel in their railroads. So, I say unto all ye crypto-peasants out there, obey the Doctrine of Crypto-Prohibition, on pain of the loss of your immortal soul. That is, make and use the strongest cryptography that your microprocessors can handle, and, like the peasant who, in confession, admits the shooting of a knight, obey dogma and don't export cryptography: it will "export" itself, like all good ideas do. Cryptography, like the technology of gunpowder -- or better, steel -- is not optional. Cheers, Robert Hettinga - --- begin forwarded text MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 18:47:25 -0500 (EST) From: nelson(a)media.mit.edu (Nelson Minar) To: Raph Levien <raph(a)acm.org> Cc: cryptography(a)c2.net Subject: Re: Wassenaar vs. CipherSaber Sender: owner-cryptography(a)c2.net >I'm spending more and more of my time these days in the free software >community (not all that big a leap for a cypherpunk). I'm seeing the >"crypto integration" problem all over the place. This is an issue of serious concern; it's really holding up the adoption of encryption, particularly at the TCP/IP level. An interesting model for how to get around the US regulations is what Sun is doing with Java. Java 1.2 ships with pretty much everything you need for strong, composable cryptography - big numbers, a key management framework, digital signatures. But they're following the letter of the US export regulations. Sun has defined the Java Cryptographic Extensions, a decent API for doing encryption. Bcause they are a US company they only ship a JCE implementation to people in the US. But they've made it about as easy as possible for folks outside the US to implement their own drop-in replacements. One interesting choice they've made is that, as near as I can tell, they aren't even bothering to ship a 40/56 bit crippled version. If you want crypto at all, you have to use Sun's JCE or get a non-US alternative. So you can only get real crypto, not some useless junk. I think that's probably the right idea - don't cave in to the US regulations, just follow them the minimum you have to and make sure it's easy for people outside the US to reimplement the parts you are not allowed to ship. I guess we have to wait and see how much Wassenaar complicates things. nelson(a)media.mit.edu . . . . . . . . http://www.media.mit.edu/~nelson/ - --- end forwarded text -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.5.5 iQEVAwUBNmqVrcUCGwxmWcHhAQE0zwgAqVUrB7Vu1NVqNHaGHeRTHUB9Z2li7x/m 5eMYUdKu8I3696LCC9CApwHi2vGW39jh0/dUR26+utNQ6MaJEyCrpjA7WpSvaqBQ XGrEPjEN58KQAlGydmjpxxL4ukX606dTKndiTPz5ujRGo1EtshRkB+2NmnUZOYZN +ECDrOylPFkDLDMqLGwqzY9zU79xZMvyIVQvpT2onUzfx3LgyjjC2/ZQbvJmOSsD vk14KbsyL6UEwyaH8FqUZWG/qGgQSALJsLpregApq0QHWl15+rEd+TvqWnyPvDKL cIIz3Cyo0QlwYFQWhg6JiPWRB+GQxaDaMS7QQqZeBqUSJclnVdJH+w== =gpAa -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 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'

1 0

info requested
by urbr4kan＠rto.dec.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

UNIVERSITY DEGREE PROGRAMS Increase your personal prestige and money earning power through an advanced university degree. Eminent, non-accredited universities will award you a degree for only $200. Degree granted based on your present knowledge and experience. No further effort necessary on your part. Just a short phone call is all that is required for a BA, MA, MBA, or PhD diploma in the field of your choice. For details, call 602-230-4252

1 0

China executes pager smugglers [CNN]
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > X-within-URL: http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9812/06/china.execution.ap/ > CHINA EXECUTES TWO FOR SMUGGLING COMPUTERS, PAGERS > > December 6, 1998 > Web posted at: 6:17 a.m. EDT (0617 GMT) > > BEIJING, China (AP) -- In the midst of a sweeping crackdown on illegal > imports, China said Sunday that it has executed a computer executive > and an office worker for smuggling computers, pagers and other > electronic goods into the country. > > The deaths come as China carries out a campaign to enforce trade > barriers that shield its industries from foreign competition in an > attempt to quash a multibillion-dollar market for illegally imported > products. [text deleted] ____________________________________________________________________ If I can put in one word what has always infuriated me in any person, any group, any movement, or any nation, it is: bullying Howard Zinn The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

1 0

Re: (eternity) democracy is a bad idea on the net too! (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sun, 06 Dec 1998 01:07:38 -0800 > From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart(a)pobox.com> > Subject: Re: (eternity) democracy is a bad idea on the net too! (fwd) > At 02:47 PM 12/5/98 -0600, Jim Choate wrote, not in this order: > > Two major negatives to a free-market approach that are never discussed. > > >There is also the question of data degredation, in the sense of worth, > >over time versus the archival/historical worth of the data. > > Huh? We talk about this all the time. How much does data storage cost, > and how long is the information useful to readers and writers, And you drop it at that point. No, you do not adequately discuss the ramification of the economic nor of the social and historic motives to drive the long-term archiving of all data in the network. The current Eternity model is brittle in several ways. The problem is the current economic model that all its supporters are wedded to. If that model changes and takes on the range of responsibilities (some of them outside a simple profit/cost approach) that such a service should carry it would work. I made reference to a couple of these in my responce to Adam so I won't reitterate them here. ____________________________________________________________________ If I can put in one word what has always infuriated me in any person, any group, any movement, or any nation, it is: bullying Howard Zinn The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

1 0

Re: (eternity) cost metrics (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 00:26:19 GMT > From: Adam Back <aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk> > Subject: Re: (eternity) cost metrics > Jim Choate writes: > > Adam Back <aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk> wrote: > > > I think a better deciding factor of which files remain and which don't > > > is hard, anonymous ecash. [...] > > > > There is some window for abuse in this method. It allows a well endowed > > entity to bias the information available. > > The alternatives, such as say one vote per person have problems too. I'll agree that any system that relies on charging the originator of the information, versus the user of the information, is flawed in this way. Does your local grocery store charge the truck that delivers its tomato's? Does a book publisher ask that the potential author pay for the book run and advertising? Does the newspaper charge their reporters to put their articles in the paper? > Cash allows you to measure the scale. No, it allows a mechanism in the short-term for the Eternity market to be manipulated by parties with a political interest and large buckets of cash. > So straight cash seems I think to be a good metric. The point of the cash is to provide a motivation to keep Eternity up, NOT a measure of the worth of any specfic piece of information from the perspective of the server operator, it's the users of that data that define it's worth. That worth can and probably will have many facets that can't be reflected in simple dollars and by definition outside the keen of the Eternity networks current worth estimation model. In the majority of cases the Eternity operator won't have a clue as to the actual market worth of some data. There is also the issue of information worth collapse once the data is available off the Eternity network that hasn't been touched. This works to the negative of the Eternity networks long-term goal. For example, let's say a whistle-blower comes in with some juicy info. The Eternity server network, through some mechanism that I've never seen sufficiently described, determine that the originator must pay some amount of money to post it. The data gets posted and users grab it over the next few days. Then once it's available in the alternate channels (eg printed on a webpage of a newspaper) the future market potential for the Eternity servers goes through the floor. This motivates the Eternity network to over-value the worth of data which further keeps folks out. > Note also my earlier comment that I view an important eternity > objective to be preventing negative votes on data availability. You > can only disseminate more, say contradictory, information not remove > information. Well, considering that Eternity doesn't do anything regarding archiving and long-term storage there really isn't a worry here. All that's required is to keep the price up until the window of relevance is gone. Then back out, the price drops back to it's original cost but now that it's relevance is gone it slowly (or not) fades away. Depending on the particular nature of the > You can attempt to disseminate more copies (make > available with higher redundancy, and fund faster download) perhaps, > but this does not drown out the other information. Actualy this is a complete change of track and irrelevant. The POINT is that if there is a piece of information that I want to keep out of the hands of others I simply go to server after server and ask for a copy. This activity raises the price. Since I've got lots of cash and I want that document to be expensive I continue to buy copies further inflating the price. > If you worry that mega-corp M will buy all available space at a > premium, there is an easy solution: Straw man, if the Eternity servers have a clue as M Corp. buys more space the server operators buy more drives to sell since their now in the data space business and not the information brokering business. Hence M Corp. has distracted the Eternity services from their primary operations. So a workable strategy for M Corp. would be to inflate the price on the data they want to hide as well as continue to dump monies into the Eternity network buying space. Then at some point they abruptly stop their support and the Eternity services collapse because they've now grown to such an extent they can't survive without this artificial market manipulation. So the Eternity servers go down, further obfuscating the original information that M Corp wanted to hide. The Eternity model also completely ignores the consequences of such a manipulation in regards the re-building of a new service after the collapse. The amount of trust that potential users have will be low further increasing the difficulty of keeping the servers operating long-term. Because the Eternity network relies only on the immediate short-term worth of data it is brittle. > > There is also the question of data degredation, in the sense of > > worth, over time versus the archival/historical worth of the > > data. > > As long as people are interested to keep the data around in low > priority low access speed storage they will pay for this to happen. > > If they don't care -- well they don't care. People who do care can > fund it, and evangelize to others on the merits of doing this. No one > has any special right to force others to pay for keeping junk around > for the sheer historical sake of completeness of it. So, a primary ideal of the Eternity service is that as long as the data has a worth below some level they'll drop it. This is one of the reasons that a long-term service like this won't work. It isn't reliable because I can't come back 50 or a 100 years from now to get a piece of data unless there is sufficient interest by other parties to access it as well. This is short-sighted and limits the use of Eternity. ____________________________________________________________________ If I can put in one word what has always infuriated me in any person, any group, any movement, or any nation, it is: bullying Howard Zinn The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

1 0

Business Web Hosting @ $12.95 + E-Commerce With Free Web Hosting Advertisement
by Diana 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Our research indicates that you might be interested in our offer. Please pardon us if we are in error and hit reply with "remove" in subject line. Thank you for your time. OFFER 1 You can now have your own 50MB web site (www.yourname,com) for just $12.95 per month ! Our limited time offer includes Free setup + 50MB space + Unlimited email accounts + Unlimted hits + 100% FrontPage98 compatibility + Unix/N T Server/Netscape + Many other features !! Free tranfer of your existing domain + Excellent Reseller plans Why pay more...we give you the fastest servers (1074MB/SEC) All the features that your business wants...for just $12.95 per month. OFFER 2 ACCEPT CREDIT CARDS & CHECKS ON LINE WITH FREE WEB HOSTING ! Free setup for a limited time. 98% approved and you can be in business for the busy Christmas season ! You can now have a complete E-Commerce solution and start accepting credit cards and checks on line. Research shows that accepting credit cards over the net increases business potential by over 300%. Our solution is complete with merchant accounts, shopping cart, gateway for transactions and includes FREE 50MB Premium Web Hosting ! For info email to sales(a)webhosting.dddcom.com Visit our site at www.webhosting.dddcom.com Web Hosting & Merchant Accts 240 Union Ave Campbell CA 95008 408-378-9996

1 0

Key changes at notatla
by Antonomasia 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 New mix keys at notatla already in use. Old ones expire 21Dec1998. mccain mccain(a)notatla.demon.co.uk 49894e1cc7629bbb54a3b5f98ba6f6d6 2.0.4b41 MC - -----Begin Mix Key----- 49894e1cc7629bbb54a3b5f98ba6f6d6 258 AASe8KR46cRA75Jk4YMcE32gpS1uqAveFpRxPVg7 qATY4aPIyVM40QHa/OrHdVc8twmKMNemcdZNCpdb EDCtaVXLalJ7njbiLs8NMAEVP7WxMQP+1swjvHpR qP1ikuvy89iNpTbDtl9uf11PNeXiWclrCyFkvS6m 4cXFPskXoa4xWQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQAB - -----End Mix Key----- teatwo teatwo(a)notatla.demon.co.uk 4568791f20d5e004225c78e04625bca4 2.0.4b41 MC - -----Begin Mix Key----- 4568791f20d5e004225c78e04625bca4 258 AATVHyCqv2SGgaEbY0HVnBONNsSQwElFCdvSyxhq cGL4FZ5A1LGBAGNN+aHnfw0X8hvNsFB7EcmBsZ1v fUt64xRG5gy2+A3rMlad36iZfqrNBKncGh+Y/uEx nb+hTyANZNlHsUdAfo+lozx0xoB070e6K3rkgxDG GytOW9VjDTVR3QAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQAB - -----End Mix Key----- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 5.0i Charset: noconv iQA/AwUBNmrcCTROc55Xv6voEQIs4ACeOat7f/0Kn5gLPazrp6rd+gGgsdEAn0nJ 4jhmxQQTvZWFg7d+BxM7WHHR =pz5z -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ############################################################## # Antonomasia ant(a)notatla.demon.co.uk # # See http://www.notatla.demon.co.uk/ # ##############################################################

1 0

The Open Source Initiative needs your help [FYI - Stu]
by Stu Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Subject: The Open Source Initiative needs your help From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr(a)thyrsus.com> Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 19:48:39 GMT Approved: linux-announce(a)news.ornl.gov (Mikko Rauhala) Followup-To: comp.os.linux.misc Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce Old-Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 23:19:37 -0500 Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs Xref: cyclone.swbell.net comp.os.linux.announce:3567 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- The Open Source Initiative needs your help. The Open Source certification mark is a valuable tool for turning on everybody interest in software on to our way of doing things. But for it to keep working, we have to make sure it doesn't get legally diluted. (This is a legal requirement; if we don't enforce the mark, we lose it.) We're a handful of unpaid volunteers. There are a lot of potential diluters out there. We need you to help us keep an eye on them. If you see the term `Open Source' (or even the lower-case `open-source') being used to describe software with distribution conditions that don't fit the Open Source Definition, please inform us at mark-misuse(a)opensource.org All the misuses we've seen so far are accidental. We gently set those people straight. In the process, we try to educate them and bring them fully into the open-source community. If there is ever deliberate or malicious abuse, we will be ready to do what is necessary on behalf of the community. Thanks in advance. - -- Eric S. Raymond The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money. -- Alexis de Tocqueville - -- This article has been digitally signed by the moderator, using PGP. http://www.iki.fi/mjr/cola-public-key.asc has PGP key for validating signature. Send submissions for comp.os.linux.announce to: linux-announce(a)news.ornl.gov PLEASE remember a short description of the software and the LOCATION. This group is archived at http://www.iki.fi/mjr/linux/cola.html -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3ia Charset: latin1 iQCVAgUBNmbrGFrUI/eHXJZ5AQGXPwQAszpIGeQE6YMeHvlgKCUm285yTsaR84kj K0ZHh6Eu50kpqIfNI3kuJt9ufqM+jPZhiYxNFdT+BtcbEqPGaGLdrD1xqAM6gVY+ 6Ht90AzHrdiwx2Tdlpg1oZo32obiWHLgb5eO4rOeQkmcmmuonKRKb1yNGagnhmbZ a6y3SgRqOoI= =pLE9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0