May 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

<nettime> The War on David Nelson
by R. A. Hettinga 17 May '03

17 May '03

--- begin forwarded text

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Pharmaceutical companies inventing disorders (was: Asperger)
by Thomas Shaddack 17 May '03

17 May '03

General anxiety disorder. Bah. People are stressed out, that's all - it's unlikely there is any organic cause that would have to be treated by drugs. So instead of trying to figure out how to make the society more human-friendly, just label the symptoms as a "disorder" and drug the affected humans back to the required level of happiness and productivity. And drug their unruly kids (for whom they don't have enough time because they have to make their current owners^H^H^H^H^H^Hemployers richer) back to the required level of obedience. Pharm-corps 2, humans 0, the game continues, the show must go on. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 17 May 2003 14:55:11 -0700 Subject: Censored Alerts From: Peter Phillips <peter.phillips(a)SONOMA.EDU> To: project-censored-L(a)SONOMA.EDU, prime(a)freespeech.org, dansc(a)yahoogroups.com Cc: censored2(a)SONOMA.EDU, censored(a)SONOMA.EDU Project Censored: An Inside Look at Independent News Edited by Katie Sims <SNIP> Inventing Disorders Pharmaceutical companies are on a quest to find a mental illness, sponsor public awareness campaigns for the disease, and to sell the drug to cure it, according to investigative journalist Brendan Koerner. Such a quest required precise strategies to seek FDA approval of a drug for new uses while increasing the profile of a hidden epidemic named general anxiety disorder. Though marketing disease rather than selling a drug is not a recent development, Koerner argues that "for pharmaceutical companies, marketing existing drugs for new uses makes perfect sense" and that GlaxoSmithKline, manufacturer of the antidepressant Paxil, had executed covert maneuvers in inventing illnesses to boost revenue sales of their drug. The article suggests that the chronology of events is no accident. Paxil was approved for use around the time the Cohn & Wolf GAD ad campaign hit the streets. The Cohn & Wolf campaign put the disease in the public spotlight. Famous doctors and academics in the mental illness field were bribed to acknowledge the wide spread hidden epidemic. Popular press assisted in promoting the effectiveness of the drug. The success of the Cohn & Wolfe campaign is traced to the creation of supporting alliances and coalitions. They connect disease experts and researches on mental illnesses to journalists, effectively to aid the flow of disease awareness and validity of the ad campaigns. Synopsis: Daryl Khoo Source: Mother Jones, July/August 2002, "Disorders Made to Order" by Brendan I. Koerner <SNIP>

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when the hash goes bad (aka Small Address Space Blues)
by An Metet 17 May '03

17 May '03

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Re: <nettime> The War on David Nelson
by Tyler Durden 17 May '03

17 May '03

Just what I was afraid of. Even worse than the "Big Brother" scenario (where a giant, hyper-evil and hyper-intelligent KGB runs the place) is a sea of minimum wage incompetants now hyper-empowered with secret lists and locally infinite authority. This isn't the fascist utopia I thought I was buying into. Time for the meathooks... -TD >From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> >To: Clippable <rah(a)shipwright.com> >CC: cypherpunks(a)lne.com, cryptography(a)metzdowd.com >Subject: <nettime> The War on David Nelson >Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 21:42:37 -0700 > >--- begin forwarded text > > >Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 12:40:30 -0500 >Subject: <nettime> The War on David Nelson >From: Bruce Sterling <bruces(a)well.com> >To: nettime-l(a)bbs.thing.net >Sender: nettime-l-request(a)bbs.thing.net > >*Imagine if these wretches had the even more >common name "Geert Lovink." Really, one shudders >to think -- bruces > > > >If your name is David Nelson you can expect to be hassled, delayed, >questioned and searched before being allowed to board aircraft anywhere in >the United States for the foreseeable future. > >Since the horrific attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the federal Transportation >Security Administration has, without any public announcement, created a >two-tiered list of names "to protect our aviation system," says Nico >Melendez, the agency spokesman for the West Coast, who is based in Los >Angeles. > >The name David Nelson apparently is on one of those lists. > >"There is a 'no-fly' list," he says. "That's people who cannot fly, period, >" >because they've been determined to be or are suspected of being "a threat >to >civil aviation or to national security." > >Details about the list are "considered sensitive security information and >cannot be released to the public," Nico says, but the Wall Street Journal >suggests there are about 300 names on the "no-fly" list. > >There's another list that Nico calls the "selectees list." Might as well >call them "suspectees." This is a much larger list of names, accumulated, >Nico says, from information obtained from intelligence agencies and the >airlines. These folks may be allowed to fly but only after they're >intensely >scrutinized by airline, law enforcement and security personnel. > >People whose names are on the two lists undergo what is not a routine >security screening, in which you're asked to remove your shoes or empty >your >pockets. This week 18 men named David Nelson, all residents of Oregon, >confirmed they have been repeatedly delayed at airport counters and >security >checkpoints in the last year or so. > >Take the February experience of Dave Nelson of Salem, a lobbyist whose >largest client is the Oregon Seed Council. Dave often travels for business, >sometimes accompanying the governor on trade missions. "We were on our way >to a trade show in Atlanta," Dave says, "trying to use the auto-check-in >for >baggage. We punched in our information, and the computer wouldn't accept >it." > >Dave and his wife, Leah, stood in line until an agent was available at the >Delta counter. "We gave him our info, and he kept punching on his computer >for about 10 or 15 minutes. . . . Then he says, 'I have to go in the back >room.' He took off, and we stood there another 10 minutes. I asked L1 >another clerk to find out where he'd gone." > >After more waiting, they were told a supervisor was being sought. "Nobody >would tell us what was going on," Dave says. "It's been 30 or 35 minutes by >now. Finally the guy came out and said, 'You'll have to talk to the cop >behind you.' We turned around, and there's a security guy." Dave says the >officer told him there was a list of suspicious people, "and you're on the >list." > >Dave was asked for I.D. and turned over his driver's license. "They called >downtown and ran a criminal check, and I was clean. Then the counter clerk >had to call national Delta and get permission for me to go on the airplane. >We were now pretty close to takeoff time." Dave and his wife were issued >tickets, but again at the gate Dave was thoroughly frisked, searched and >identified. > >At the airport in Atlanta on the way back, the same thing happened. "The >woman punched in my name and said, 'Oh, no, Mr. Nelson . . .' " > >One after another, local David Nelsons tell the same story: At airports >their bags are put through bomb detectors; they are delayed, searched, >questioned. > >David Nelson of Gresham says he was searched and screened three times at >the >Portland airport, then again at the gates of Dallas and Atlanta airports >before arriving in Savannah, Ga., last month. "It's as if they think you've >been transformed into a terrorist en route. You'd think one screening was >enough, when you haven't left a secure area the entire trip." > >"What really concerned me," says David Nelson of Northwest Portland, who >recently was delayed trying to fly to Juneau, Alaska, to take care of his >mother, "was even when they determined I wasn't the one on the list, it's >like I had a label on my forehead that says, 'One must frisk this person at >every opportunity and go through his luggage.' It's as if I were a pariah. >" >David had no idea why he was being singled out; no one mentioned a list. >"My >son is a pilot for Continental; I thought maybe that had something to do >with it." > >Oregon state Sen. David Nelson, from Pendleton, also had no idea why he was >being delayed at airports. "Then we flew into the Medford airport on >Horizon, and one of the agents said, 'Your name is on the list. You're >going >to be checked every place you go.' That was a shock." > >As David Nelsons all over the country have learned, once your name is on >the >list, there's no way you can get it removed. Every time you go to an >airport, you're assumed to be guilty until you can prove yourself innocent. > >Dave Nelson, the Salem lobbyist, spent a lot of time making phone calls >after his trip to Atlanta, trying to learn how he could avoid the security >hassles. "I thought I'd seen something on the news that you could get a >pre-clearance, a photo I.D. We called the Port, and they knew nothing. I >called the FBI and went up the ranks, and there's nothing like that. You're >just stuck. I said, 'What if I used my full name, or just an initial?' They >said, 'None of that would make a difference. You're on the list.' " > >Somewhere in the world there's an actual terrorist suspect named David >Nelson who started all this mess. Several David Nelsons have been told by >security or airline personnel that he's from Nashville. > >But they're looking for him everywhere. Portland radiologist David Nelson >"never could figure out why I was constantly getting flagged. Our bags >would >always come back with tape around them, saying they had been searched." His >son and namesake, David Wesley Nelson, who's 27, thought he was always >stopped "because of my age." When he flew to Los Angeles recently, "they >gave me a big hassle because I didn't have a passport. I said, 'I don't >normally carry a passport when traveling within the U.S.' " > >Every single David Nelson interviewed understood the need for greater >security in a post Sept. 11 world. They realize there are trade-offs >between >liberty and security. But in today's world of high-tech wizardry, it's hard >to believe the Transportation Security Administration can't come up with a >computer software program that would create a "free-to-fly" list of people >whose I.D. has been checked and whose innocence already has been verified. > >The problem is not the "no-fly" list or the "selectees" list. The problem >is, once you're on the lists, you can't get off. It's one thing to know you >have to get to the airport three or four hours before every flight; the >David Nelsons might accept that as a sign of the times. But how would you >feel, knowing your name was on a government terrorist watch list? > >Linda Nelson of Tigard says her husband, David Nelson, has been hassled in >airports. "You're treated as a second-class citizen in your own country," >she says. > >David Nelson is a common name. "My dentist has a couple of them in his >practice," says David Nelson of Aloha, "and my boss is actually named David >Nelson. He's had the same thing happen to him." > >Nico Melendez of the Transportation Security Administration will not >confirm >that the name David Nelson is on the "no-fly" or "selectees" list. But he >does say that people who want to see if their name is on either list or who >want to make a complaint, can call the agency's contact center at >866-289-9673 or send an e-mail to TellTSA(a)tsa.dot.gov. > >But if your name is David Nelson, chances are you won't breeze through any >airports in the near future. Even if you're a celebrity. > >Remember Ozzie and Harriet's son, David Nelson? "I got stopped at the John >Wayne Airport" in Orange County, Calif., he said by phone from Los Angeles >this week. "Two police officers knew who I was and tried to explain to the >guy behind the security desk. It didn't faze him at all." Even as another >officer was saying he had once met David's mother, Harriet, David was being >instructed to remove his shoes, he says. "I asked, 'Does the guy on the >list >have a middle name of Ozzie?' He said, 'It just says David Nelson.' " > >http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/margie_boule/index.ssf?/base/living >/1051877124142830.xml > ># distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission ># <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, ># collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets ># more info: majordomo(a)bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body ># archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime(a)bbs.thing.net > >--- end forwarded text > > >-- >----------------- >R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> >The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.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' _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus

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IEEE and DMCA
by Mike Rosing 17 May '03

17 May '03

I don't know if anyone here is a member of the IEEE, but here's a couple of interesting comments that came in my mail box this morning. Seems like the IEEE isn't interested in crypto research? Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 08:36:54 -0400 To: pkilabs-announce(a)internet2.edu Subject: [PKILAB] chilling effect: ieee and dmca From: Sean Smith <sws(a)cs.dartmouth.edu> This morning, i noticed that the IEEE copyright form (that authors must sign when they publish papers with the IEEE), the signer must warrant that "publication or dissemination of the work" will not violate the DMCA. --Sean -- Sean W. Smith, Ph.D. sws(a)cs.dartmouth.edu http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~sws/ (has ssl link to pgp key) Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH USA ========================================================================= ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 06:45:43 -0700 Message-ID: <200305161345.h4GDjhi14657(a)cayman-islands.isi.edu> From: Clifford Neuman <bcn(a)ISI.EDU> To: sws(a)cs.dartmouth.edu CC: pkilabs-announce(a)internet2.edu I suggest that we ask the IEEE to include with the form their definitive interpretation of the DMCA and spell out specifically what the signer is warranting. Without such a statement limiting the warranty to what the signer can reasonably interpret, I would certainly not feel confortable granting such a warranty. Cliff ------------------------------------------------------pkilabs-announce-+ For list utilities, archives, subscribe, unsubscribe, etc. please visit the ListProc web interface at http://archives.internet2.edu/ ------------------------------------------------------pkilabs-announce-- ==========================================================================

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RIAA Honeypotting (tarpitting)
by Major Variola (ret) 17 May '03

17 May '03

Shamelessly excerpted from politech list: >From "Paul \"Evil Genius\" Music" Fri Jul 6 02:45:31 2018 From: "Paul \"Evil Genius\" Music" To: "DeClan" Date: Sat, 17 May 2003 00:24:49 -0500 http://www.kuro5hin.org/print/2003/5/16/163447/493 RIAA Pit of Confusion (Culture) By salimfadhley Fri May 16th, 2003 at 10:13:06 PM EST After reading about the RIAA threatening to sue yet another innocent archive operator, I decided to take some direct action: It occurred to me that the RIAA keep falsely accusing others of piracy because they put their faith in an unintelligent spider - a fact which can be simply exploited to make my servers into an RIAA no-go-zone... Whilst spidering is nothing to worry about (and only to be expected on a public site), the way the association fires off legal threats based on this spider results alone seems wrong. Since this spider does not actually look at the whole title of the file, or even it's content, I figured I could have some fun at their expense: What if I could write a `tarpit' script that could create a large number of interlinked automatically generated web sites. If their spider tried to scan my server it would be fooled into thinking that it had found a treasure trove of MP3 sites. Anybody who took the time to look at the site could see that the site contains no pirate content at all. How might the RIAA react to such a thing? <snip>

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Re: what fields to hash with hashcash (Re: A Trial Balloon to Ban Email?)
by Eric S. Johansson 17 May '03

17 May '03

R. A. Hettinga propagated: > --- begin forwarded text > > > Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 16:34:23 +0100 > From: Adam Back <adam(a)cypherspace.org> > To: cypherpunks(a)einstein.ssz.com > Cc: Adam Back <adam(a)cypherspace.org> > Subject: Re: what fields to hash with hashcash (Re: A Trial Balloon to > Ban Email?) > Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)lne.com > >>Worse, even if there were a reliable mechanism, all it takes is one >>loose cannon with an open mass-mail list and as long as it doesn't >>delete whatever header (maybe delivered-to:, maybe something else) that >>indicates the list was an envelope to: address, one hashcash token works >>for one email to the entire list. actually, no it doesn't. The real, working code has a configuration file which contains a list of all known addresses associated with the account. That list of addresses is necessary because of people having virtual domain based addresses collecting all at 1 mailbox. The code uses that list of valid addresses in the stamp validation process. > I take it this comment is about mailing lists? Mailing lists have to > be treated separately. The sender probably can't afford to create a > token for each recipient. (Also he doesn't know the recipient's > addresses). Mailing lists deal with spam with filtered versions of > lists. mailing lists are your "friend". While I don't have the code in there yet, I expect I will need to pay attention to the -request form of addresses and white list both the -request form and the plain form for a while. Ideally, the mailing lists would sign each message with its own private key and use the white list by public key filtering method client side. while I know this is the cypherpunks list, but if you ever get tired of debating this to death and would like to write some real code, let me know. ;-) ---eric

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NYC Pigs, Judge needing killing
by Major Variola (ret) 17 May '03

17 May '03

NYC Woman Dies in Botched Police Raid NEW YORK -- A 57-year-old woman died of an apparent heart attack Friday after police detonated a flash grenade and handcuffed her during a raid on the wrong apartment. [ Note that a Judge issued a warrant based solely on an informer ] An informant said that Spruill's sixth-floor Harlem apartment was being used by an armed drug dealer to stash cocaine and heroin, police officials said. After obtaining a search warrant, officers forced open the woman's door and tossed in a flash grenade, which creates a distraction by producing a loud noise and a blinding flash of light. Kelly said the grenade was used because it was believed there may have been guns and a dog in the apartment. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-police-raid-death,1,336…

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How Soon We Forget Our Freedoms
by Eric Cordian 17 May '03

17 May '03

I was just looking at the official rules for Pepsi's latest sweepstakes and noticed the fine print about attending the prize drawing contains the following... Credit card required for hotel check in. Government issued photo-id required for air travel. It's amazing how rapidly the new way of doing things gets assimilated into the popular culture, as if these things are perfectly reasonable and it's always been that way. P.S. Whatever became of John Gilmore's lawsuit? -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

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Another rabid ex-trot attacks our Noam.
by Professor Rat. 17 May '03

17 May '03

Noam Chomsky was the most conspicuous American intellectual to rationalize the Al Qaeda terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The death toll, he argued, was minor compared to the list of Third World victims of the far more extreme terrorismof United States foreign policy. Despite its calculated affront to mainstream opinion, this sentiment went down very well with Chomskys own constituency. He has never been more popular among the academic and intellectual left than he is today. Two books of interviews with him published since September 11, 2001 both went straight onto the bestseller lists.[1] One of them has since been turned into a film entitled Power and Terror, now doing brisk business in the art-house movie market. In March 2002 the films director, John Junkerman, accompanied his subject to the University of California, Berkeley, where in a five-day visit Chomsky gave five political talks to a total audience of no fewer than five thousand people. Meanwhile, the liberal news media around the world has sought him out for countless interviews as the most promi- nent intellectual opposed to the American response to the terrorist attacks. Newspaper articles routinely open by reminding readers of his awesome intellectual status. A profile headlined Conscience of a Nationin the English daily The Guardian declared: Chomsky ranks with Marx, Shakespeare, and the Bible as one of the ten most quoted sources in the humanitiesand is the only writer among them still alive.The New York Times has called him arguably the most important intellectual alive. Chomsky has used his status, originally gained in the field of linguistics, to turn himself into the leading voice of the American left. He is not merely a spokesman. His own stance has done much to structure left-wing politics over the past forty years. Today, when actors, rock stars, and protesting students mouth anti-American slogans for the cameras, they are very often expressing sentiments they have gleaned from Chomskys voluminous output. Hence, to examine Chomskys views is to analyze the core mindset of contemporary radicalism, especially the variety that now holds so much sway in the academic and arts communities. Chomsky has been a celebrity radical since the mid-1960s when he made his name as an anti-Vietnam War activist. Although he lost some of his appeal in the late-1970s and 1980s by his defense of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, he has used September 11 to restore his reputation, indeed to surpass his former influence and stature. At seventy-four years of age, he is today the doyen of the American and much of the worlds intellectual left. He is, however, an unconventional academic radical. Over the past thirty years, the left in the humanities has been smitten by high theory, especially neo-Marxist, feminist, and postmodernist philosophy out of Germany and France. Much of this material was arcane enough in its own language but in translation it elevated obscurantism to a badge of prestige. It inundated the humanities with relativism both in epistemology and moral philosophy. In contrast, Chomsky has produced no substantial body of political theory of his own. Nor is he a relativist. He advocates the pursuit of truth and knowledge about human affairs and promotes a simple, universal set of moral principles. Moreover, his political writings are very clear, pitched to a general rather than specialist audience. He supports his claims not by appeals to some esoteric conceptual apparatus but by presenting plain, apparently factual evidence. The explanation for his current appeal, therefore, needs to be sought not in recent intellectual fashions but in something with a longer history. Chomsky is the most prominent intellectual remnant of the New Left of the 1960s. In many ways he epitomized the New Left and its hatred of Amerika,a country he believed, through its policies both at home and abroad, had descended into fascism. In his most famous book of the Sixties, American Power and the New Mandarins, Chomsky said what America needed was a kind of denazification. Of all the major powers in the Sixties, according to Chomsky, America was the most reprehensible. Its principles of liberal democracy were a sham. Its democracy was a four-year dictatorshipand its economic commitment to free markets was merely a disguise for corporate power. Its foreign policy was positively evil. By any objective standard,he wrote at the time, the United States has become the most aggressive power in the world, the greatest threat to peace, to national self-determination, and to international cooperation. As an anti-war activist, Chomsky participated in some of the most publicized demonstrations, including the attempt, famously celebrated in Norman Mailers Armies of the Night, to form a human chain around the Pentagon. Chomsky described the event as tens of thousands of young people surrounding what they believe to beI must add that I agreethe most hideous institution on this earth. This kind of anti-Americanism was common on the left at the time but there were two things that made Chomsky stand out from the crowd. He was a scholar with a remarkable reputation and he was in tune with the anti-authoritarianism of the student-based New Left. At the time, the traditional left was still dominated by an older generation of Marxists, who were either supporters of the Communist Party or else Trotskyists opposed to Joseph Stalin and his heirs but who still endorsed Lenin and Bolshevism. Either way, the emerging generation of radical students saw both groups as compromised by their support for the Russian Revolution and the repressive regimes it had bequeathed to eastern Europe. Chomsky was not himself a member of the student generationin 1968 he was a forty-year-old tenured professorbut his lack of party membership or any other formal political commitment absolved him of any connection to the Old Left. Instead, his adherence to anarchism, or what he called libertarian socialism,did much to shape the outlook of the New Left. American Power and the New Mandarins approvingly quotes the nineteenth-century anarchist Mikhail Bakunin predicting that the version of socialism supported by Karl Marx would end up transferring state power not to the workers but to the elitist cadres of the Communist Party itself. Despite his anti-Bolshevism, Chomsky remained a supporter of socialist revolution. He urged that a true social revolutionwould transform the masses so they could take power into their own hands and run institutions themselves. His favorite real-life political model was the short-lived anarchist enclave formed in Barcelona in 19361937 during the Spanish Civil War. etc... http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/may03/chomsky.htm Windsock windshuttle joins James A.Donald,David Horowitz,Stephen Schwartz,Chris Hitchens,Michael Costa and no doubt many more loony ex-trotskyists over to the lunar right.

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