December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Clinton freezes imported assault weapons [CNN]
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > CLINTON FREEZES IMPORTS OF ASSAULT WEAPONS > > graphic November 15, 1997 > Web posted at: 1:19 p.m. EST (1819 GMT) > > LAS VEGAS (CNN) -- President Clinton has ordered a four-month freeze > on the import of assault weapons while the administration and > Treasury Department officials develop a plan to permanently ban the > weapons. > > Clinton announced his executive order, issued Friday, in his weekly > radio address. > > "I'm not going to let people overseas turn our streets into battle > zones, where gangs are armed like they were guerrilla warriors > halfway around the world, if I could stop it," he told supporters at > a Democratic fund-raising dinner in Las Vegas on Friday. > > The freeze will keep an estimated 1.6 million weapons from coming > into the United States while Treasury officials review a ban passed > in 1994 as part of a larger crime bill. Clinton says overseas > manufacturers are taking advantage of a loophole in the law by > making cosmetic changes that enable the weapons to be imported for > "sporting" purposes. > > Clinton seems to be angered by a recent surge in the number of > permit applications for the modified weapons. > > Officials say firearms importers have obtained permits for the > shipment of nearly 600,000 altered guns, and that an additional 1 > million permit applications are pending. Approximately 20,000 of the > weapons have already entered the country, officials said. > > No more will be imported until the Treasury Department's review is > completed. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms stopped > taking applications last month, the Washington Post reported on > Friday. > > The National Rifle Association says Clinton's order "shows more > hypocrisy and deception than ever before." > > "The guns Clinton wishes to ban from importation conform in every > way to the law Clinton wrote, signed, pledged would rid the streets > of violence in 1994, and trumpets to the press whenever his scandals > get out of hand," said NRA spokeswoman Tanya Metaksa. > > Correspondent John King, The Associated Press and Reuters > contributed to this report.

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Discrimination and Prejudice are Not Necessarily Bad Things
by Tim May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The recent list discsussion reminds me that not all of you have yet thrown off your knee-jerk reaction to "prejudice" and "discrimination." I'm not surprised to hear high school students, when asked what the world's Number One problem is, cite "prejudice." Or "bigotry." Or "racism." Their teachers have drilled this idea into their heads for most of their school years, and the media does its part with public service announcements, heart-warming after school specials about the wonderfulness of multiculturalism, and so on. But I am surprised that more members of this list have not managed to throw off the baggage of "discrimination is bad" simplemindedness. To be sure, certain forms of racism, bigotry, and discrimination are both irrational and counterproductive. The black man who thinks of all whites as devils is no different from the white man who thinks of all blacks as illiterate criminals. But let's not forget what "discrimination" means. It means choosing some actions or beliefs over others. It used to be a compliment to say someone had "discriminating tastes." (Of course, this sense is still used, and I understand that the sense in which people say "discrimination is bad" is the sense related to unreasonable or irrational beliefs about certain races. But the good meanings of discrimination are tending to get lost in the political correctness baggage surrounding the term.) I happen to believe many, even most, aspects of "black culture" in America today are highly destructive to those who practice this culture. Extremely high rates of illegitimacy (exceeding 70% overall, and exceeding 80% in inner cities, compared to less than 25% for whites overall, and less than 20% for suburban whites). An extreme aversion to professional careers (on average, obviously, not in any particular cases). And so on. My "discrimination" is to avoid these kinds of people, to not hire them, and to urge their culture to change, and fast. (Many black leaders, even Jesse Jackson, are urging the same thing. Even Louis Farrakhan is saying black culture in America is corrupt.) Does this mean I have a morbid fear of black people? Nope. Does it mean I would never hire a black? Nope. (I did in fact help hire a black scientist when I was at Intel.) And I also don't think certain words are off limits to white people. If blacks use the term "nigger" (or "nigga") and refer to black women as "hoes" (whores, in Ebonics), why are these terms then bowdlerized in mainstream texts as "the "N" word" (etc.)? Likewise, if homosexuals call themselves "queers" and "dykes," as in "Queer Nation," "Dykes on Bikes," and so on, how can they object when others use these words? (I know the post-Marxist, deconstructionist claptrap about their reclaiming of patriarchal words, blah blah. It still remains a case of "If we use it, it's OK, but if you use it, it's racist and homophobic.") I really don't care what people do with their bodies, so long as they don't interfere with me in any way. Or force me to subsidize them, or hire quotas of them, or otherwise require me to change what I would do of my own free will. If a store doesn't want to serve homosexuals, or doesn't want to hire men as servers (the Hooters case), this is their basic property right. (And this was recognized in the freedom of association interpretation of the Constitution, even after the 14th Amendment (and its "equal protection" language). It only became a "crime" for a restaurant to disallow certain groups, or for a church to "discriminate against" Satanists, or for a health food store to "discriminate against" 300-pound women seeking employment in the store, etc., after the 1964 Civil Rights Act. More specifically, the "Title 7" nonsense. >From a a liberty, freedom, and property rights viewpoint, anyone is free to do with their property as they wish, to set admissions policies, to invite those they wish to enter (and to exclude others), and so on. The 14th Amendment, more than a century ago, established certain voting and other rights AS RELATED TO GOVERNMENT AND TO THE STATES! Basically, ensuring freedom from slavery, repeal of Jim Crow laws, and other STATE INTRUSIONS into fundamental constitutional rights. Again, rights as they related to the government. The 14th did not say that government had some right to tell a shopkeeper that he had to serve all creeds, colors, and genders. It did not "ban discrimination." And the 1964 Civil Rights Act corrected a few wrongs that had remained after the 14th, mostly related to voting rights and such in the South. Still, many thoughtful persons believed it just wasn't needed, that the 14th was already sufficicent, were it to be enforced, to halt certain government-sanctioned cases of "discrimination." (What might be called "Discrimination," with a capital D, implying state sanction, and not "discrimination," with a small D.) But over the decades following the Civil Rights Act, the language of Title 7 was used to "ban discrimination" (little D), so that a private store or restaurant could not choose whom it wished to serve, for example. More importantly, a business could not choose whom it wished to hire. Hence the lawsuits charging "discrimination." Hence the EEOC and formal quotas. Hence the conflicting laws about employers being _barred_ from inquiring about race or ethnicity while at the same time being _required_ to meet certain EEOC guidelines and quotas. (As I have said here before, when I was out college recruiting for Intel in the late 70s, I was forbidden from noting an applicant's race or ethnicity on the forms I filled out, but I was _required_ to put a small letter on the top of the form, one of the letters in "C O I N S"--Caucasion Oriental Indian Negro Spanish. These letters were so that Intel could obey the law, Title 7 style, and report that it had indeed interviewed (and later hired) the appropriate quotas of Negro and Spanish engineers! One part of the law said it was illegal to hire based on race, another part of the law said it was mandatory. True Orwellian doublethink.) And so now we have the situation where a group of men can sue Hooters demanding to be made into jiggly servers. Never mind that Hooters doesn't want them. Never mind that such suits ought to be (and woudl have been, prior to the Civil Rights Act) dismissed on a matter of law: it isn't a crime for business owners to hire whom they wish. Period. And the language of Title 7 and its descendants has been used to harass businesses. As when the City of Los Angeles decided it did not want a strip club open. It inspected the strip club and found that the "shower dance" stage was not "wheelchair accessible." (!!!) Never mind that the strip joint was not about to hire any cripples as strippers. (Oh, and even though this is the most basic common sense point one can make, that strip joint had better not _say_ it doesn't want cripples, else it'd be hit with a multmillion dollar damage suit the next day.) So, this is what we've come to. The mantra of "discrimination is illegal" has now impinged on basic rights of free association and the basic liberty to say what one wishes. Say certain things today and face a lawsuit. Or a probe by the EEOC and its related agencies. Blacks can call each other niggas and hoes, but let a honkey use these words and he may be in real trouble. Homosexuals can call themselves fags, queers, queens, and dykes, but the rest of us had better use the PC term du jour. If Joe Whitey makes an "insensitive" or "discriminatory" remark, look out. He may even lose his teaching job, or his engineering job at Sun, or be denounced as a racist by Joichi Ito, Protector of Nipponese Unmongrelized Sensibilities. Some discrimination is good. In fact, a lot of it is. Think of it as evolution in action. --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: auto signing messages Re: perl from Amad3us
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Amad3us Anonymous (if that is his/her *real* name wrote: > Antonomasia says: > > Real paranoiacs don't put temporary files in world-writeable directories. > > If a hostile user symlinks your majordomo binary (or something) > > to /tmp/.sig999 you're going to overwrite it with garbage. > Sure. But have you looked at pgp2 source code? (smirks). > > (Hint, temporary files all over the place.) For you old farts who have not been out in the real world for a while, you should make note of the fact that the price of memory has dropped, and it is now feasible to implement RAM disks to store temporary files. You can also direct a program to use a RAM trash-disk for its temporary files, wiping it immediately after use without having to worry about fucking up your other temporary files.

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Racism: Wrong or incorrect?
by nobody＠neva.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Racism is one of those very interesting topics to discuss because large areas of the discussion are forbidden territory. Is racism wrong or is it incorrect? The most generally held belief in the United States is that it is wrong to express racist ideas publicly, but that many of these ideas are, in fact, correct. Most white Americans truly believe in their innermost hearts that black Americans are fundamentally more violent, less intelligent, and to be pitied. At the same time, many of these white Americans believe they are committing some sort of sin in having these beliefs. If the belief is true, how can it be sinful to believe it? If it is not true, then why believe it? A good friend was driving through the American South recently. He is not of the dominant racial group. He was involved in more than one scary incident on his drive. What was initially surprising to me was that he said he sort of preferred the South to the North because at least in the South people were more "up front." When you think about it for a minute that makes a lot of sense. Who would want to spend time with people who are patronizing? This can be seen in just about every aspect of the racial policies of the United States government. The fundamental assumption of an affirmative action program is that nobody would actually want to hire a member of the subordinate ethnic group. When somebody chooses to hire based on ethnicity it doesn't hurt their business in most cases. The advocates of affirmative action claim not be racists, yet we rarely find them promoting racial integration in the work place by advertising the fantastic deal which is available by hiring people who are irrationally discriminated against by other employers. We must conclude that many advocates of affirmative action believe that the subordinate group is actually inferior in many ways. It's good for people to discuss their ideas. That's how we arrive at truth and mutual understanding. It is terribly unfortunate that discussions of racism, which is allegedly an important topic, have been methodically discouraged for a number of decades in the United States. On one hand, I would prefer Tim had not made his "go now, chop chop" posts. I would like to see Nobuki Nakatuji stay around, write code, master English, American culture, and Cypherpunk Life. Tim's comments may not promote that. On the other hand, I'm not sure it's a good idea to discourage anyone's explorations into certain highly forbidden areas. Somehow the work of Robert Crumb comes to mind. Crumb has dallied with a number of forbidden racial and sexual ideas. I can't even say I like the feeling or the tone of his work, yet, somehow, there is something of value there which is hard to articulate. Of course, what is most interesting about Tim's comments is that he appears to be out on the end of three bell curves in the United States: 1. He does not believe (I think) that it is morally wrong to have a racist belief. 2. He does not believe racist beliefs are a correct description of reality. 3. He says what he thinks. Another curious aspect of the taboos on racial discussions is the weird racially defined double standard of conduct. Black power is more or less an acceptable topic of discussion. White power is absolutely not. Why? 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 iQEVAwUBNG5Jv5aWtjSmRH/5AQEHCgf+KL2HDx4yhn/pDPPuEs4cEW9R6FI4sIfn LJvbuKAEdl0GRs5HmMRvM9I8OtYHJVCNDsmetneHo7ME6Qhc5s5ilvA4mu7oCfcy YKfQmQSM+OvtkHtladI0CY5xUvFkoazzBuXNfnopdK5uY22xm80brT/8tOymdIT6 avSYGbHdNkL70TZ0rRNLmUVTYCO1HLVpuPnL3EbZye51f6vnBkV4R22lr+1NDKPi 6LLpO+WqjZAma7Pymqy6RCzztsnt9YbvxbCZOOWxCrGJAK36ZBFtKs//jp9oenRV Bq7h9Uyut81W9sw5kER1C+CgN+k1ZCM+6UDpGNI6n89uQSHX/x/wog== =hVb9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Clinton on Forces of Destruction and Illicit Arms
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Excerpt from the President's remarks to the Democratic National Committee in Sacramento this afternoon: ... But the most likely problems -- there are a couple little babies in this audience, or there were today, and some children -- the most likely problems these children will face when they come of age will be problems that cross national borders -- terrorism, organized crime and drug running, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological weapons and maybe small-scale nuclear weapons. This much nuclear cake put in a bomb would do ten times as much damage as the Oklahoma City bomb did. The spread of environmental problems or diseases across national lines -- we are going to have to, in other words, find ways to cooperate, to keep the organized forces of destruction that are taking advantage of the Internet, the technological revolution, the freedom of travel and the freedom of movement, access to computers and moving money around and all that -- there will always be organized forces of destruction. That is fundamentally what is at stake in the stand off we're having in Iraq today. I don't want you to look at this backward through the prism of the Gulf War and think it's a replay. I want you to look at it forward and think about it in terms of the innocent Japanese people that died in the subway when the saran gas was released; and how important it is for every responsible government in the world to do everything that can possibly be done not to let big stores of chemical or biological weapons fall into the wrong hands, not to let irresponsible people develop the capacity to put them in warheads on missiles or put them in briefcases that could be exploded in small rooms. And I say this not to frighten you. The world will always have challenges. I think the chances are quite good that we can organize ourselves for this challenge and deal with it very effectively. I personally believe that the next 50 years will be far more peaceful and less dangerous for our children and our grandchildren than the last 50 years were. I also believe they will be the most prosperous and interesting time in all of human history -- but only if we do the right things. ... From: http://library.whitehouse.gov/ThisWeek-plain.cgi ---------- For more on the US ban of assault weapons and the US and Mexico's convention to fight illicit arms trafficking, signed yesterday: http://jya.com/piat111597.htm

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Re: RTFM-709 / Email Inteception
by Man In The Middle 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is there anything else you would like to know about email interception? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ joseph gonzales wrote: > > ---------- > > From: Information Server <toto(a)sk.sympatico.ca> > > To: Jason <rennie(a)one.net.au> > > Cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > > Subject: Re: Mail interception > > Date: Saturday, November 15, 1997 6:46 PM > > > > For information on the interception of plaintext email, > > send a reply to this message, with an empty message body > > and with a subject line -- "RTFM-709".

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RTFM-709 / Email Interception
by Man In The Middle 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is there anything else you would like to know about email interception? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tom McCaskill wrote:

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[Fwd: RTFM-79 / Email Interception] RTFM-79 / Email Interception
by Louis J. Freeh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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RTFM-709 / Email Interception
by Louis J. Freeh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mr. Belton, Please stop by your local FBI headquarters first thing in the morning. We just need to ask you a few questions. (Bring your passport.) Sincerely, Louis J. Freeh ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ mike belton wrote:

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Re: This judge needs killing
by nobody＠neva.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Anonymous <nobody(a)replay.com> >Paul Bradley writes: >>Judge David Selwood today sentenced 3 writers for the magazine "Green >>Anarchist" to 3 years imprisonment each for their articles in the >>magazine which he concluded incited others to break the law. >>The magazine contained diaries for the previous months animal rights >>activism events and contained articles generally favourable to the cause >>of animal liberation. >> >>Another judge who has richly earned the death penalty. > >Another example of the violent rhetoric which goes without comment on >this list. This is simply untrue. In several instances I have argued against the use of violence as impractical. (It's also distasteful.) Incidentally, who is it that should be creating articles that express your beliefs? Since you haven't seen the quantity of articles opposing violence that you would like, perhaps you wouldn't mind telling us why you haven't been writing them? 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 iQEVAwUBNG47rJaWtjSmRH/5AQElxwf9GKTQLbaNwFiXmM+lxg9u8/cFnT5IV8A8 HdCKtRv2vto7nVMygFkbXa+ROcVl9CCI2sgSoNEbAv0sO9oULMYcBoBfnJJmAM+X TYVWhYKx9dFFsFAO160d9gbsU7wm7Z5wvwZGoKt+Bs9+oW7gFURLEThNXmG54J8t Id6+RvPRHduTJEmGB6Fm9upiuls0NVbxEk6B27EFK9GVqOSEJOBW4AVRb3CaIKlJ Js8nrcZLeCVrrUMViLkkl1BSmh8OfgLf9V2blfr0zVu+x2MRy2QU1N2jywdYKJ+2 3rf0yXgmuU46le0dD5WD/xDoQHcwFP347mdH7HmwdVMmw3zp3h82Gw== =Ys/r -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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