December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

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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John Young, stegonym
by Zooko Journeyman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Most pseudonym users cope with the possibility that Mallet will hate what they say by ensuring that he can't figure out their True Name. JY is the next step-- Mallet can't figure out what he is saying, or if it is serious, so J remains safe. Z P.S. Sorry to blow your cover, there, John... P.P.S. Of course "True Name" is a confusing, abused concept. There are three possible ideas-- (A): given a name "N", people can map from N to your physical body, thus exposing you to the risk of extortion, assassination, etc., or (B): given an individual "I", people can find a name "M" such that they are sure I is the brain directly behind M. Alternately, (C): given a name "O" and a name "P", people can be sure that the brain directly behind O is not also the brain directly behind P. Both N and M and occasionally are sometimes thought of as "True Names". (B) and (C) can sometimes be desirable, but unfortunately most implementations of (B) and/or (C) imply (A). (A) is never desirable. P.P.P.S. TCM is the opposite (regressive?)-- he goes out of his way to give a clear impression, to Mallet as well as to friends and strangers, that he is dangerous, violent, racist, homophobic, bigoted, emotionally disturbed, and irrational. We know better, but unfortunately not everyone is so perceptive. P.P.P.P.S. I know TCM likes discussing the True Name concepts when he is in a good mood, but I hereby promise not to give him the satisfaction of conversation until he writes 100 times on the blackboard "I am not a threat to myself, my neighbors, or the authorities.".

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NSAscape
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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