December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Would the anonymous person(s) please...
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

bennett_t1(a)popmail.firn.edu wrote: > > Would all those anonymous remailing people with a flame tendency, please > flame the person of your attacks, and don't send this bullshit to the > list? Thanks... No. (but thanks for asking so politely(

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unsafe SAFE:
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

according to http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,10604,00.html Kerrey's effort has one thing in common with the SAFE Act: It calls for the creation of an Information Security Board. The board proposal caused some privacy watchdogs to pull their endorsements of SAFE because it wouldn't have to comply with federal open-meeting act. Since a common hand has presumably been at work in both bills, this looks like good cop / bad cop to me. The good cop says, "I am your friend" He is not your friend. Create a federal board, and it will exercise power. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: [STEGO] Secure envelopes
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Someone too gutless to use their real name and full address in their email, disguising themself as "The Spectre" wrote: > I, personally, have been on this mailing list for a while now, > and have never seen *any* worthwhile posts from either of those remailers, > or any other for that matter. If you've got something to say, say it. > Anything less is cowardice, in one form or another. It seems that The Spectre finds much on this list to be worthless, including the value of anonymity. (Except in his or her own case, obviously.) All of The Spectre's comments seem to be reruns of old posts which were followed by calls for list censorship. Personally, I prefer the ASCII art. TruthMonger

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Worthless List
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Spectre wrote: > In response to this childish, no.cajones.com message, I have removed all > previous filters and added one, simpler filter on incoming mail. Delete > when recieved from nobody(a)huge.cajones.com or lucifer(a)dhp.com. > > I suggest you all to the same.. it may actually serve to make this list > worthwhile... Yet another dweeb who considers the list not to be worthwhile, but who wants to tell everyone else what to read and what not to read, nonetheless. Is there going to be another round of missives about how the list's ASCII art is the Big Enemy of cypherpunks everywhere? I'm have much more concern about a small pimple I just found on my butt. Perhaps I should start a thread to discuss the implications of this for privacy and freedom worldwide. PimpleMonger

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Re: The Inducement of Rapid Oxidation of Certain Materials in or Near Government Buildings
by jimbell＠pacifier.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 19:34 5/13/97 -0700, Kent Crispin wrote: >On Mon, May 12, 1997 at 05:15:24PM -0400, Duncan Frissell wrote: >>Governments have murdered 170 million people since 1900. My >>back-of-the-envelope estimate is that the civilians of the world have only >>murdered about 20 million people in the same period of time. Quite a >>disparity. > >Your estimate seems high to me. But it is meaningless, in any case. This isn't the first time you've called information that is detrimental to your position words equivalent to "meaningless." I suppose that's easier than disproving the other person's claim, or proving your own. >First of all, it neglects to consider that governments may have >prevented more murders than they caused. This is unknowable, since >we don't have any worthwhile control cases. Your position is laughable. Statistics on murder rates are knowable for many countries. Studying the murder rate for those countries will at least provide a range against which deaths due to government-caused wars can be compared. >Second, such cases of civil breakdown aside, all humans, for now and >for the conceivable future, live within the context of some kind of >government. The option of non-government simply doesn't exist. That's precisely what the governments and their agents want us to believe. Minarchism is certainly possible, and at the risk of appearing to blow my own AP-horn, it is indeed plausible that the public can take down all governments in a reasonably straightforward fashion. The fact that governments will strongly dislike this option is no reason to not consider the possibility. > The >issue is how can governments be improved. By eliminating them, of course. >Third, murders caused by governments can't really be separated from >murders caused by individuals. That is, in many cases deciding >whether a murder is a personal action or a government action is >impossible. "Aye vas joost vollowink orderz!" Sorry, we're still laughing at you. >Fourth, it's fashionable in these circles to paint all governments >with the same brush, but in fact, some are much better than others. >But it only takes one bad one to start a war. Furthermore, human >motivations are complex and irrational, so wars are started for >essentially insane reasons. This is a human problem, not a problem >of government. No, quite the contrary. Considered from the perspective of the cumulative interests of society, wars are not beneficial or "profitable." Only from the very limited viewpoint of the military-industrial complex and government employees does war appear to be a net benefit, and that's true only because the interests of most of the population (on whom the effect of war is a net negative) is ignored. The reason war occurs is that the decision to have a war is made not by society as a whole, but by that tiny fraction which profits. Put the decision to have the war back into the hands of the population as a whole, and war will decrease. Give the public the option to make war upon the government parasites infesting their own land, and war will end forever. >[Parenthetically, it is absolutely amazing to me that he and >practically everyone on this list just seems to assume McVeigh is >guilty...do they know something I don't?] For the purposes of most of the arguments we make, the identity of the actual bomber is irrelevant. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Disinformation in L.A.
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:19 PM 5/11/97 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote: >You might remember I wrote recently about the DoJ report released this >month that calls for new legislation to ban bomb-making info online. Now >Feinstein's office tells me she's going to introduce a bill. Feinswine never saw a gun/mind control bill she didn't like. She is an ultra fascist that rose to power thanks to the yellow dog Bay Area voters. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred "I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." Mahatma Gandhi

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Anonymous Remailers
by Roger J. Jones 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Why is it that some who are very concerned about their personal privacy utilize anonymous remailers that: 1) Log all of their mail messages? 2) Are in many cases reputed to be run by foreign intelligence services? Do they really trust the owner of the remailer? (Unless of course, it is their remailer?) I seem to be missing something.

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I Treat All My Enemies Equally
by Blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There have been so many posts on which I could make remarks, and I haven't enough time to prepare a really good treatment on the subject. The title of the subject line is from something LD once said to me as a joke to rile me, something like, "I'm all for Democracy - I treat all my enemies equally." (he probably stole that line from someone). Anyway, I was thinking about those who have expressed a lack of concern for the unfortunate mixture of the guilty & innocent in a close encounter with a destructive device. I was thinking that people who aren't careful about such differences make of themselves an enemy to all, because who can tell what they're supporting and whose lives they really value, since anyone at all could become their victim. In times of declared (or undeclared) wars, when it is governments which conduct the battles, one of the things which make wars hell is that anyone & everyone is potentially in harms way; everyone has to run for their lives, you never from who/where you might get hit, whether from enemy or from friendly fire. There is so much confusion, propaganda, and lies about who is in the right, who is in the wrong, whose fault it was/is and who are the real heroes, that all of those in the middle seem like ping-pong balls bouncing from side to side. Nevertheless, whichever side they think they are on or even if they don't give a flip, everyone has to to run, hide, take cover. Only when all supplies and manpower have been exhausted, does the war end; in the meantime both sides have made many smoldering enemies, which later some opportunists use as reason to attempt to sway the remaining survivors into further alliances against the latest "enemy of the people". In truth, it becomes a difficult task to determine who is the un-fairest of them all. The fact of the matter is that those in the middle must find a way to protect themselves from whatever weapon or vehicle of destruction comes around, whatever its source. Likewise, anyone who creates an atmosphere of uncertainty, where it makes no difference whether one is a friend or a foe of any particular values or ideals - one could end up dead regardless, just from being in the wrong place at the wrong time - is making of themselves an enemy to all. Like that stolen phrase, I myself would have to "treat all my enemies equally"; that is, anyone who would put me or anyone I valued, in danger. So, for instance, if Whitfield Diffie and PhilZ were walking into a Federal building in OK City, and I saw some cypherpunk not too far away getting ready to blow it up, well, I guess I'd have to kill him. (Dirty Harry saying: "feel lucky today, cpunk?"). .. Blanc

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Re: The War is Underway (fwd)
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:22 PM 5/11/97 -0400, Black Unicorn wrote: >As I recall, 3des ( DESk1 -> DESk2^-1 -> DESk3 ) has an effective >keylength of 112 bits. Less than IDEA. Schneier discusses this. Unfortunately, Schneier doesn't do a very good job at discussing the strength of 3DES. This probably is to be expected, since there is no fixed effective keylength of 3DES and a more detailed discussion would likely exceed the format of Applied Cryptography. The work factor of breaking 3DES depends on the number of known plaintexts. At best, the effective keylength is 112 bits. At worst (this is an unlikely, perhaps unrealistic worst) the effective keylength is ~90 bits. Contrast this with DESX, which has been proven to be twice as hard as DES, therefore having an effective keylength of 112 bits. >It costs little today to develop a cipher with larger keyspace. (DES with >independent subkeys already exists and has a basic keyspace of 768 bits. >A meet in the middle attack reduces keyspace to 2^384. Schneier discusses >the cipher briefly). If users are willing to deal with large keys (I >certainly am) then software designers are restraining a more secure >implementation. It costs lots to develop a cipher with a larger keyspace that has a known, or reasonably assumed, work factor of higher than 112 bits. Again, it takes years to cryptanalyze a new cipher. It isn't software designers that are restraining more secure implementations. The software designers don't have any better algorithms to work with because the theorists haven't agreed on anything better yet. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred "I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." Mahatma Gandhi

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FW: Anonymous Remailers
by Roger J. Jones 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----Original Message----- From: Tim May [SMTP:tcmay@got.net] Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 1997 11:52 AM To: Roger J. Jones; 'cypherpunks(a)toad.com' Subject: Re: Anonymous Remailers At 5:17 AM -0800 5/14/97, Roger J. Jones wrote: >Why is it that some who are very concerned about their personal privacy >utilize anonymous remailers that: > >1) Log all of their mail messages? With chained, multiply-encrypted messages, logs are ineffective unless all of the links in the chain collude to trace messages. While this is certainly possible, it seems unlikely. >2) Are in many cases reputed to be run by foreign intelligence services? This allegation was made by some clueless Washington think tank authors. They provided no evidence, only innuendo, and they were unwilling or unable to provide any further comments when queried by several Cypherpunks. I suggest that just because you chose to characterize the sources as "clueless Washington think tank authors" does not (as they say in Star Trek - The Next Generation) "make it so". The "allegation" that foreign governments actively participate in actions to violate personal privacy ("borrowing" laptops from traveling businesspeople, taping phones, etc.) are all documented in various places. Of course, they could all the result of a single psyop with excellent results. But I doubt it. And given that many or even most of the remailer operators are members of the various related Cypherpunks or Remailers Operators lists, and are known to various of us, the notion that most (or even many) remailers are run by intelligence agencies is absurd. >Do they really trust the owner of the remailer? (Unless of course, it is >their remailer?) I seem to be missing something. I don't recognize your name on this list. Fine, as we always like to see new subscribers. But I surmise you just haven't spent enough time yet reading and thinking about these issues. You may surmise what you choose. In fact, that is the essence of free discourse. Of course, knowing is far better than surmising. If you care to suggest a reading list please feel free to mail it to me direct. And yes, I am new to this most charming and entertaining list. Thank you for the welcome Welcome to the Cypherpunks list. * Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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