July 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

[eff-austin] War and Information Technology (fwd)
by Jim Choate 27 Jul '03

27 Jul '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 07:47:20 +0000 From: Carl Webb <webbcarl(a)hotmail.com> To: eff-austin(a)effaustin.org, tlc-discuss(a)lists.cwrl.utexas.edu Subject: [eff-austin] War and Information Technology Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility War and Information Technology by Chris Hables Gray Technology has always been an important part of war. Today, with information technology situated as the defining technology of our age it should be no surprise that IT (information technology) is a central part of war making. In fact, the US military has officially determined that information is the main "force multiplier" in battle, more important than numerical superiority or force of fire, the old standards. This is because, in the US military's view, we now have the information technologies that can not just make a crucial difference in battle, in terms of precision weapons, intelligence, and command and control, but that these technologies might actually allow the "fog" (uncertainly) of war to be dispelled so that total, almost painless victories, might be won against many opponents. Computer professionals, when evaluating these information technologies, must start with two basic rules that come both from within computer science (especially information theory, systems analysis and information management) and from the academic disciplines represented by groups such as the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S), the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) and Science, Technology, and Society studies in general (STS). They are: 1) Technologies cannot be evaluated out of their context of use. Very few technologies either "work" or "don't work". They all perform at certainly levels of efficiency, but whether or not they "work" depends on what they to do in terms of their institutional and societal contexts. In the case of military technologies, for example, they have to be evaluated not just in terms of failure rates but also how the technology performs, and influences, in the context of the relevant doctrines, tactics and strategies. 2) Technologies, especially information technologies, are parts of systems. They cannot be evaluated in isolation. The systems, which often include human operators and users, either work well or not in their context. For repairing and evaluating systems it is important to know how the various components or nodes perform, but a system that fails because of so-called human-error, has failed none-the-less and that includes it's computational elements. So, any weapon system has to be analyzed in terms of all its components (including the humans and their training), the doctrine that it serves, its tactical and strategic uses, and the political context of the war it is used in. To say B-52s are bad and so-called smart missiles are better does not make sense. The computer and other technical parts might work with a high level of reliability (or not) but that doesn't make any one weapon system better than another. The purely technical efficiencies cannot be separated out. As a computer science professor I teach my students that computing systems in particular must be evaluated as systems, not in isolation. A perfect case is the destruction of Iranian Air flight 655 by the USS Vincennes (deploying the most sophisticated computerized weapon system used in combat: the Aegis) that killed 290 civilians. There were technical problems (the jamming of an automatic 5-inch gun, the poor reliability of the automated Phalanx machine guns, the fact that Standard missiles need miles to accelerate, the poor interface design of the combat information center), training problems (all training was for fleet combat with the Soviets), command problems (other US ships correctly identified the flight but the Vincennes was in charge because it had the best computer system), human error (misreading the computer information because of scenario fulfillment), doctrine (the source of the command and training problems), the tactics (sending the Vincennes into Iranian territorial waters to engage small Iranian patrol boats), the strategy (the illegal stupid mission the Vincennes was on -- trying to provoke an Iranian counter-attack), and the politics (supporting Saddam's Iraq in an aggressive war against Iran). So what if the Aegis is a marvel of computer engineering? Tell that to the families of the dead Iranian civilians. (For full details and documentation see: Chris Hables Gray, "AI at War: The Aegis System in Combat" in Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing 1990, Vol. III, D. Shuler, ed., Ablex, 1996, pp. 62-79.) By the way, there is substantial evidence that the testing of the circuit cards for the Phalanx was faked, one reason their reliability was so low and so the Captain of the Vincennes could not trust them for close-in defense and so made the incorrect decision to take out the innocent airliner. An undergraduate in one of my computer classes who tried to evaluate a system that uses computers by only looking at certain technical parameters of the computers, and not at all the relevant factors, would not pass. A military that does the same, might win some battles, but it will lose all but the easiest wars, and even then, it will often lose the peace that follows. In Gulf War I a strong case can be made that the massive B-52 bombings shattered the main Iraq Army, the so-called "smart weapons" were not nearly as accurate as claimed (and we found out much later the Patriots hit nothing), and that the destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure (in part by so-called precision bombing with all kinds of bombs and missiles) led to the deaths of 300,000 Iraqi women and children (according to both the UN, independent aid NGO's, and a Harvard Health School study). War is complicated, weapon system performance is complicated, and accuracy (or even reliability) is hardly everything. When Force of Fire was the main doctrine for winning war in the US military, bigger explosions were almost always considered more important than smaller accurate ones. In some situations this was (and still is) true, in many others not. The US military in particular has had a tendency to want to ignore the strategic and political realities of war. This is why it lost Vietnam. US weapons were more accurate and more powerful than the Vietnamese weapons but that was not enough. It didn't help the Soviets win in Afghanistan either. This is why there is a whole debate about Asymmetric War in the military today, by the way. ------- Some of the main issues computer professionals should look at in Gulf War II-- * To what extent are such doctrines as "Shock and Awe" and of the general U.S. strategy based on misconceptions about what IT can and cannot do in a unpredictable and uncontrollable arena such as war. * To what extent the existence of "so-called" smart weapons leads to the doctrinal, tactical, or strategic misuse of such weapons. Americans have a particular love of technology. That some people can unequivocally say such weapons "really work" when they have hit three of the wrong countries is an important issue to explore. * The actual performance of such weapons as the Patriot. * The possibility and possible impact of future weapons or military information systems such as effective identification systems. * The absolute limits of computer technology to model complex systems. CPSR played a major role in articulating this crucial part of information theory during the first round of Star Wars debates and in the Spring 2001 newsletter (ed. by Carl Page and Chris Hables Gray) there is a full bibliography of the key articles in this area. ------- There are now a number of monographs and collections of articles that look critically at IT in the context of contemporary war. They include: David Bellin and Gary Chapman, eds., Computers in Battle, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1987. Paul Edwards, The Closed World, MIT Press, 1996. Chris Hables Gray, Postmodern War, Guilford, 1997. Gerfield Stocker and Christine Schopf, eds., Infowar, Springer Wien/New York, 1998. James Der Derian, Virtuous War, Westview, 2001. ----------- Sites circulated during CPSR discussions: Shock and Awe: http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0127-08.htm Context of the War on Terror: http://world-information.org/wio/readme/992003309/1004366266 War on the Web (UK Guardian): http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,898661,00.html War Peace and Complex Systems:http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol1no1_2002/Gray_complexity.htm Interesting article from the UK on the use of tomahawk missiles: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4630027,00.html Excellent article from a Business magazine, including discussion of interfaces: http://europe.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2003/tc2003017_2464.htm Here is a link to the book that describes the whole "shock and awe" concept: http://www.dodccrp.org/shockIndex.html. Here are two sites that discuss the media-zation of the current war in different ways. 1) Brown University's Watson Center (yes, the IBM Watson) has a whole project on infowar and infopeace and have some recent articles on embedded journalists: http://www.infopeace.org/. 2) And here's a site on media literacy and this war: http://www.tandl.vt.edu/Foundations/mediaproject/ Respectfully submitted, Chris Hables Gray ________________________________________________________________________________ Response by James Nugent I would like to address some points made by Chris Gray. Here he is specifically addressing the catastrophe associated with the shooting down of Iran Air 655 by the USS Vincennes. Specifically: "There were technical problems (the jamming of an automatic 5-inch gun, the poor reliability of the automated Phalanx machine guns, the fact that Standard missiles need miles to accelerate, the poor interface design of the combat information center)" Mr. Gray lists these problems as contributing to the accidental shooting of Iran Air 655. As Mr. Gray has appropriately noted about weapons and their employment, it's important to understand doctrine and tactics bear on their use. In this case the five inch gun and Phalanx systems were not a consideration in the engagement of the missile system as this would have been the primary, i.e. first use, system. The order of priority for weapon/defensive engagement for the Vincennes would have been: 1. Standard missile system. 2. Five inch guns. 3. Electronic deception. 4. Chaff. 5. Phalanx (4 & 5 would be near simultaneous employments). Systems 2 through 5 could have been completely out of service, or fully employable, and this would not have altered utilization of the standard missile system as the first system to be used against an air threat. This is in accordance with the U.S. and at the time Soviet Navy's doctrine of layered defense, a concept later adapted by the computer information assurance/security experts to detail how a computer network would be defended. In this case the doctrinal principle for a layered defense would be as follows: "Weapons [Used within a layered defense]. AAW weapons begin with Phoenix, Sparrow, Sidewinder, and AMRAAM missiles carried by the combat air patrol (CAP) [Note: this was not available to Vincennes]. Next are long-range "Standard" missiles such as extended- and medium-range SM-1s and SM-2s. These missiles are capable of intercepting targets at a range of nearly 100 miles. Shorter-range variants of these weapons are good out to 25 miles. Inside 10 miles, Sea Sparrow missiles are used to engage targets, and at extremely close, "do-or-die" ranges, CIWS guns are utilized. Additionally, MK45 5"/54, and the OTO Melara 76mm gun mount can engage air targets with limited effectiveness." Layered defense means essential the same thing here as it does in the computer world, i.e. you stop an attacker as far from what is being attacked as you possibly can. In this case that means you use the systems with the furthest reach to take out an air threat, and on the Vincennes that is clearly the Standard missile system. I would also point out that in Mr. Gray's paper on this subject he specifically states that the loss of the single five inch gun was not a contributing factor to the destruction of Iran Air 655. The need for the missiles to accelerate is not entirely clear. No ship's captain, again based on the applicable doctrine and tactics, would ever allow an air threat to get so close that the acceleration dynamics of the defensive missile system would be a detrimental factor for its employment. Mr. Gray's comments with regard to the human-machine interface are totally on target and this, vice any overriding technical failures or issues, along with the social dynamic surrounding events leading to the firing of missiles at the aircraft, was responsible for the tragedy. " training problems (all training was for fleet combat with the Soviets)" This is a legitimate point as well. The crew of the Vincennes was in a situation vis-`-vis the civilian airliner that it had never trained for. While the system itself was very capable of adequately tracking civilian airliners given its use for just that purpose in two different venues , this specific scenario had not been tested either via simulation or as a crew scenario. Had such training been conducted it's very likely problems with the human-machine interface would have been discovered and corrected, and either way the crew would have likely handled this specific situation differently and avoided the disaster which occurred. " command problems (other US ships correctly identified the flight but the Vincennes was in charge because it had the best computer system), human error (misreading the computer information because of scenario fulfillment) " These points are in keeping with ones I've made above concerning the environmental/sociological dynamic and the lack of training that led to the sorts of errors that cascaded to tragedy on board Vincennes. "doctrine (the source of the command and training problems), the tactics (sending the Vincennes into Iranian territorial waters to engage small Iranian patrol boats), the strategy (the illegal stupid mission the Vincennes was on -- trying to provoke an Iranian counter-attack)" There are many types of doctrine within the U.S. Navy and it's not clear which one exactly is being referred to here. Tactics were without fault as the crew of the Vincennes did exactly what it was expected to do given the situation it believed it was facing. It's questionable that a cruiser was the ideal system to send after shallow draft Iranian gunboats in what were depth restricted waters. That said, this incident started with a helicopter from the Vincennes coming under fire by the Iranian boats , so it was the call of the captain of the Vincennes how he was to defend his helicopter and he elected to engage the Iranians. Mr. Gray raises an interesting question vis-`-vis the legality of the U.S. Navy's action during this time. Our main reason for being in the Gulf was because of a request from the government of Kuwait to escort its tankers (which were subsequently re-flagged as U.S. vessels) through the Gulf. Escorts were necessary because both the Iraqis and the Iranians were engaging ships with anti-ship missiles, and the Iranians were also aggressively laying floating mines in the international waterways of the Gulf. It bears remembering that the Iranian minelayer Iran Ajr was captured and its mines confiscated as it was in the act of laying such mines near Bahrain . Actions taken in the Gulf were in response to the illegal mining of the sea lanes in this region, which puts the engagement of U.S. ships with Iranian vessels in a very different context. "and the politics (supporting Saddam's Iraq in an aggressive war against Iran)." The extent of U.S. support for Iraq at this time is not as clear as this would lead one to believe, but this issue is also clearly beyond the scope of this response. "So what if the Aegis is a marvel of computer engineering? Tell that to the families of the dead Iranian civilians." Mr. Gray's inference here is that Aegis is what caused this tragedy and he seems very much in the minority on this. Technically speaking Aegis did exactly what it was supposed to, but there was a string of human errors, failures and assumptions that ultimately caused the captain of the Vincennes to authorize the unleashing of two missiles at Iran Air 655; Aegis was never in automatic and it did not make the decision to fire. "By the way, there is substantial evidence that the testing of the circuit cards for the Phalanx was faked, one reason their reliability was so low and so the Captain of the Vincennes could not trust them for close-in defense and so made the incorrect decision to take out the innocent airliner." I would categorize this as another red herring concerning the specifics of this event. The order of battle for weapon employment is provided above, and Phalanx is the last system a ship's captain thinks to use. It's a last ditch effort, if the attacker is that close (Phalanx's range is 1 mile) engaging it with Phalanx may well destroy the threat but if it's destroyed within the range of Phalanx there's a good chance that there'd be debris resulting from the destruction that could still present a danger to the ship. Bottom line, you engage air threats as far away as possible. A reasoned critique of a weapons system should come from a full appreciation for how it is used. Mr. Gray does not provide this perspective in the least, and it's very clear that he never endeavored to obtain one, likely I would suspect due to his distaste for anything to do with the military. He does make points here that are germane to what did cause this tragedy and that demanded action by the U.S. Navy. He otherwise clutters this with poor historical perspective and what would seem to be a desire to make a point from his own political/philosophical perspective, which poorly serves himself and his readers. Submitted by James Nugent Return to Weapons & Peace Working Group Page Email cpsr(a)cpsr.org with questions or comments ________________________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 helps ELIMINATE E-MAIL VIRUSES. Get 2 months FREE*.

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'Wired': The Coolest Magazine on the Planet [Was]
by Freematt357＠aol.com 27 Jul '03

27 Jul '03

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/27/books/review/27CARRLT.html?th 'Wired': The Coolest Magazine on the Planet By DAVID CARR Wired magazine, that storied artifact of a digital age, was conceived by its editors as a ''a reverse time capsule. It would sail back through time and land at people's feet.'' And so it has, most recently in the form of ''Wired: A Romance,'' a book by one of the magazine's contributing editors, Gary Wolf. Our notions of the future have a tendency to age quickly, and Wired, a magazine that served as both Boswell and bomb thrower for the geekerati in the 1990's, seems to have aged more quickly than most. The seminal publication, Wolf writes, was created in the midst of a digital revolution that its high priest, Louis Rossetto, liked to refer to as a ''Bengali typhoon.'' By the time Rossetto and Wired's co-founder, Jane Metcalfe, were thrown clear, everything had changed, but not in the ways that they once thought it would. Wired was important not just because it was the first magazine to make the computer world seem hip; it also trained its eye on the implications of the onrushing new technology, not merely on appraising the newest machines and trendiest gadgets. (Though Wired featured plenty of articles about those things, too.) The magazine, Rossetto promised somewhat grandiosely early on, would foment ''a revolution without violence that embraces a new, nonpolitical way to improve the future based on economics beyond macro control, consensus beyond the ballot box, civics beyond government and communities beyond the confines of time and geography.'' Rossetto's manifesto seems quaint just 10 years later, but it found many disciples. Gary Wolf, an early Wired employee, was among them, and he has written a deceptively deadpan recollection that reads more like a libretto than a straightforward work of journalism. Wolf expertly traces the magazine's heavily hyped ascendancy, though, sadly, most readers will know all along that the magazine Rossetto saw as a Trojan horse for revolution was eventually sold in 1998 to a corporation (Conde Nast) like any common asset. (The magazine still exists, though it doesn't carry the swagger and prestige it once did.) Wolf writes with a former true believer's skepticism, a wan idealism rubbed out by subsequent events. As his book's title suggests, Wolf is still a bit wistful about Wired's careering journey through the 90's. It's hard to blame him. The corporate-dominated magazine industry tends to stay safely behind significant issues, while Wired was that odd indie publication that actually enabled a movement by appealing to its nobler instincts. But as Wolf demonstrates, Wired's purity of purpose -- Rossetto seemed to care about money only as oxygen for his dream -- did not inoculate the magazine from the ambient greed that reduced a hoped-for paradigm shift to a pile of failed I.P.O.'s. ''Wired: A Romance'' is less a love story than a theological autopsy of a religion that flourished and went away in less than a decade. Things happened quickly for Wired -- remember ''Internet time''? At its height in the mid-90's, Wired could be found in the lobbies of venture capitalists, on the light tables of designers, underneath the coffee cups of computer geeks and in the middle of the only conversation that seemed to matter. It was, briefly, the coolest magazine on the planet. This book is fundamentally a biography of Rossetto, a larger-than-life personality whom Wolf compares to ''a magnet whose grip increased dramatically at close range.'' In retrospect, it would be easy to mistake Rossetto for another would-be Internet guru and Wired as a curio of a bygone time, but as Wolf makes clear, the revolution that Rossetto championed was not about the Web. Rossetto saw desktop publishing as a profound reinvention of the printing press. ''He thought computer publishing would change the world,'' Wolf writes. And Rossetto knew a thing or two about revolution. As Wolf points out, Rossetto, a former anarchist who obtained a master's degree in business administration from Columbia, was a global itinerant, a gaunt, hippie-ish Zelig who just happened to be in the neighborhood when the Shining Path emerged in Peru, when the Tamil rebellion began in Sri Lanka, when the Red Brigades sowed chaos in Italy. Small wonder Rossetto ended up in San Francisco in the early 90's with Jane Metcalfe, then his girlfriend, on the cusp of another kind of insurgency, both of them working to finance a new kind of magazine. Rossetto wanted to call their journal DigIt -- as in either ''digit'' or ''dig it'' -- a bad idea that Metcalfe mercifully talked him out of. The new magazine would be named Wired. With the help of $20,000 from a sympathetic Dutch entrepreneur, the pair managed to get inexpensive access to a Canon color copier -- an exotic technology at the time -- to produce a prototype. Several of Wired's more durable angels, investors with real money who bought Rossetto's conceits, signed on later. And John Plunkett, the man responsible for Wired's neon-suffused, anarchic design, committed to joining the magazine in spite of himself. This glossy fever dream of a magazine made its debut at the Macworld conference on Jan. 2, 1993. The early adopters snatched it up and Wired was on its way. But Wolf demonstrates that Rossetto always seemed to keep his ambitions just ahead of his funding. Chunks of the enterprise were handed out to investors so that Wired could expand to the Web, to television, to Europe and beyond. The magazine's Web site, HotWired, turned out to be a particularly effective way of making money disappear. Wolf, who became HotWired's executive editor in 1995, appears in the narrative at this point, saying that after meetings with Rossetto he left his boss's office with ''the light step of a person who has been given permission to be bad.'' But Wolf's efforts to enrich his writer friends with lucrative freelance assignment for the Web site comes off as a misdemeanor in felonious times. The pressure to move Wired toward an initial public offering drove an ill-advised effort for bigness at all costs. No one cared about profits, and deals were made willy-nilly to build the hypothetical value of the company, including adding a search engine, the gewgaw of the moment. The pranksters at Suck, a sardonic (and now defunct) site built by Wired employees on the sly, captured the era's ethos with carnal clarity. In an essay written at the very beginning of the Web boom, Wolf writes, ''The Sucksters' advice was to fluff up a site, locate a rich, stupid buyer and then run away fast before the concoction deflated.'' To his credit, Rossetto never saw how giving away content free on the Web could make anyone rich. Wolf describes -- in too much detail, because he happened to be in the middle of it -- how Rossetto fought to make visitors to HotWired register, which some believed violated the Web's ethos. By this time, bankers and shareholders were looking over his shoulder, accusing him of being a profligate Luddite at a revolution he once led. While charting the Nasdaq's rise and eventual fall, Wolf shows Rossetto and Metcalfe readying Wired for a ''liquidity event,'' that supremely validating 90's moment. But when they hit the road in October 1996 to pitch investors, Rossetto's overweening ambitions and the market's gyrations left Wired's public offering dead on arrival. Rossetto become so preoccupied with saving the business that he eventually handed leadership of the magazine over to Katrina Heron, a former editor at Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. Heron, who is now a consultant for The New York Times, proved to be an able and popular steward of the magazine, but in stepping aside Rossetto had built his own gallows. The money men who had attached themselves to Wired set up a series of impossible financial targets for Rossetto, and in March 1998 he and Metcalfe were cast out of the future they had built. The magazine was eventually sold to Conde Nast, and its two founders ended up with $30 million and a profoundly bad taste in their mouths. Wolf allows Andrew Anker, the ferociously ambitious C.E.O. of the company, to serve up an epitaph for the ideals that once drove Wired. With the sale of the magazine on the table, Wolf recounts how Anker and other senior Wired employees went to a bar in San Francisco for an impromtu wake. Anker gleefully tallies up his substantial gains to the outrage of his less fortunate colleagues. ''What is this, 'Sesame Street'?'' Anker said. ''Every man for himself means every man for himself!'' The future, it turned out, would still be written by Charles Darwin in spite of Wired's best efforts. David Carr is a media reporter for The Times.

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Re: Dead Body Theatre
by Tyler Durden 27 Jul '03

27 Jul '03

Eric Cordian wrote... "Apply this algorithm to macroeconomic variables, during a loud propaganda campaign promoting "productivity," and you have essentially what was done to the US economy starting with the ascension of the Conservatives to power in 1980." Ah yes. Someone else remembers when all those scary Japanese and Germans were going to eat all our jobs. So we gave up everything because they had us so fucking terrorized. Now we have far fewer vacation hours than either one of those countries. Coincidentally, it's around the same time that it became fashionable to bitch about how evil the unions are. Question one of the 'sheeple' on why the unions are so bad and they'll give you little anecdotes and incomprehensible arguments ("the unions are bad because they force employers to pay overtime"). (And let's remember that I'm not attempting to make a pro-union point here. I'm pointing to media and other manipulation of the American psyche into accepting the ratwheel we're all on now.) "The US spent the Soviet Union into bankrupcy, and rebuilt a military force that can threaten any nation in the world, not because of Manifest Destiny, but by working its citizens harder than any other decent nation was willing to do. Citizens too dumb to understand that economic control of a population is not morally superior to control at the point of a gun." Damn straight. "Too dumb"...I might agree with that but I think there's a lot more to it. Too terrorized, too successfully propagandized, too willing to live vicariously through the ostenisbly functional relationships on TV, and don't forget just too damned tired to give a crap about anything but trying to get a decent night's sleep when possible, and make it safely to the grave without becomming homeless in the process... -TD >From: Eric Cordian <emc(a)artifact.psychedelic.net> >To: cypherpunks(a)minder.net >Subject: Re: Dead Body Theatre >Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 10:44:10 -0700 (PDT) > >Tim May wrote: > > > This is a silly, naive view of things. First, the concept of > > "privilege" is one of those lefty, cockeyed notions the liberals use to > > vaguely imply that success in life is due to "privilege." > >Much as conservatives refer to everyone who can see through their >propaganda better than Joe Sixpack as "The Elite." Variations include >"The Hollywood Elite", "The University Elite", etc. > >Conservatives fear anyone with a longer memory and better critical >thinking skills than your average dumbass American hayseed, programmed in >the Guv'ment School, with his 9th grade reading and his 4th grade math. > > > Second, though I strongly disagree with the Second Iraq War, nothing > > that happens there has anything substantive to do with economic success > > and "money, power" for anyone I know. Our "money, power" comes from > > work, investments, high tech, etc. > >It comes from work. Back when I was but a tiny Thaumaturge, home >ownership was within the reach of virtually everyone in AmeriKKKa. An >entire household full of people could be supported on the income of a >single adult working virtually any full time job. Leasure time and >recreation were abundant. The Sheeple were happy sheep. > >Fast forward to today, where a barely comfortable living requires every >adult member of a household to work somewhere over full time at some sort >of skilled occupation, one paycheck away from the street. > >It's the time-honored algorithm for optimizing the speed of an assembly >line. You speed up the line until the error rate becomes unacceptable, >and then back off by epsilon. If the workers are wheezing, with their >tongues hanging dangerously close to the gears, who cares. There are >hungry people standing in line to replace anyone who can't take it. > >Apply this algorithm to macroeconomic variables, during a loud propaganda >campaign promoting "productivity," and you have essentially what was done >to the US economy starting with the ascension of the Conservatives to >power in 1980. > >The US spent the Soviet Union into bankrupcy, and rebuilt a military force >that can threaten any nation in the world, not because of Manifest >Destiny, but by working its citizens harder than any other decent nation >was willing to do. Citizens too dumb to understand that economic control >of a population is not morally superior to control at the point of a gun. > >And through the miracle of Fractional Reserve Banking, while the Proles >toiled, a small privileged segment of the population became fabulously >wealthy during the same period, for doing, as Anne Robinson would say, >"Absolutely Nothing." > >-- >Eric Michael Cordian 0+ >O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division >"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law" _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

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Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
by Tim May 27 Jul '03

27 Jul '03

Some lurker unwilling to comment on the public list sent me this. I didn't notice it wasn't intended for the list until I had already written a reply and was preparing to send it. So I have altered the name. --Tim On Friday, July 25, 2003, at 01:07 PM, SOMEONE wrote: > Tim May wrote: > >> On Thursday, July 24, 2003, at 07:12 PM, Steve Furlong wrote: >> >>> On Thursday 24 July 2003 15:50, Tim May wrote: >>> >>>> In fact, "digicash" strongly suggests David Chaum's "Digicash," >>> >>> That assumes the reader or listener has heard of Digicash, or of >>> Chaum. >>> Not an assumption I'd be comfortable making. > > Readers on the cypherpunks list? They should be able to understand it, > or at > least they should have heard of it. They may have _heard_ of it, but to most of them (I t hink) it's just some magical incantations which they don't quite believe anyway. > >> I stopped any efforts to explain the true importance of >> electronic/digital money/cash a long time ago. A waste of time. Not >> too >> surprising, as getting even the basic idea requires some passing >> familiarity with things like how RSA works. When I read Chaum's 1985 >> CACM paper I already knew about RSA and "hard" directions for problems >> (trapdoor functions), and yet I still had to read and reread the paper >> and draw little pictures for myself. > > > That's a shame. The 1985 paper isn't on-line afaik, and I've only read > second-hand versions. First, my "stopped any efforts...a long time ago" was a comment directed at what the OP was talking about: explaining digital money to the masses. For example, at parties or other meatspace gatherings. Online explanations--here, for example--are another matter. Second, the many online explanations from the CP list, circa 1992-94, are readily findable. Let me go check....(20 seconds pass...)...yep, I just found hundreds of summary articles from various authors, including myself, Eric Hughes, Hal Finney, Doug Barnes, Ian Goldberg, and many others. There is no shortage of explanations of this stuff. In one of my articles, in fact, I make the same point about how the various boring versions of "electronic money" are not very important: "The focus here is on true, untraceable digital cash, offering both payer and payee untraceability (anonymity). Mundane digital money, exemplified by on-line banking, ATM cards, smartcards, etc., is not interesting or important for CFP purposes. Payer-untraceable (but payee-traceable) digital cash can also be interesting, but not nearly as interesting and important as fully untraceable digital cash. " There are many articles on why this is so. But, frankly, anyone who cannot see this from first principles probably is not ever going to get it. Third, regarding the CACM article, it's been "liberated" and made available online more than a few times. Try search engines. I know the Information Liberation Front (ILF) was actively liberating various of the key papers in the early months of the CP list...and these are mostly archived and searchable. And of course Chaum's original 1985 description has been redone many times, in later papers by him and others, etc. > > And I don't think it works at all, anyway... > As it's been demonstrated to work, technically, this is a weird statement. Existence proofs are powerful. If you mean that Bank of America and Mastercard are not offering Chaum-style instruments, and so on, then this is not the same thing as saying the ideas don't work. --Tim May

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Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
by Nomen Nescio 26 Jul '03

26 Jul '03

One point being overlooked here is digital versus physical anonymity. The "funky" ATM (what, does it smell or something?) will allow you to (among other things) stick in some cash and let someone else withdraw it using a password which you have sent him out of band (according to the patent - which I've actually read, more than anyone else here can say). This will allow for digital anonymity in the sense that there is no account information associated with the transaction. Now, it's true that ATMs take pictures of people, so you don't have full physical anonymity. But given the limited reliability of facial recognition systems, especially if you take simple precautions like wearing a hat and tilting your head down, you can have de facto very strong anonymity putting money into or taking it out of an ATM. The mere fact that it takes your picture doesn't mean that much. It's also true that the amount of cash that could be practically transfered in this way is limited to a few thousand dollars at most, given that the machines will probably only accept and dispense twenty dollar bills or equivalent. Nevertheless such payments would be a good start. The ability to pay or receive a few thousand dollars, untraceably, would enable a number of interesting applications involving freedom of speech and action. Writing custom software or providing sensitive information could be funded at these levels. The point which has been mostly overlooked is that this article was nothing but vapor, based on the issuance of a patent. There's a huge barrier between the idea and the implementation. A cash-transfer ATM would be a true boon to cypherpunk goals, but it is doubtful whether such a system will be allowed to exist in today's world.

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Justice Department Opposes 'Sneak and Peek' Ban
by R. A. Hettinga 25 Jul '03

25 Jul '03

Looks like they're dusting off their black bags again. Rubber hoses are next, I suppose. Cheers, RAH ------- <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47236-2003Jul25?language=printer> washingtonpost.com Justice Department Opposes 'Sneak and Peek' Ban Reuters Friday, July 25, 2003; 5:48 PM WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department on Friday opposed a bid to ban the government from conducting secret "sneak and peek" searches of private property. The legislation, overwhelmingly approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday, would roll back a key provision of the anti-terrorism law adopted after the Sept. 11 attacks. If it became law, the legislation, "would have a devastating effect on the United States' ongoing efforts to detect and prevent terrorism, as well as to combat other serious crimes," Assistant Attorney General William Moschella said. In a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, he said the legislation "could result in the intimidation of witnesses, destruction of evidence, flight from prosecution, physical injury and even death." On Tuesday, the House voted 309-118 to attach the amendment to a $37.9 billion bill funding the departments of Commerce, State and Justice. It would be the first change in the USA Patriot Act since its adoption in October, 2001. The amendment, sponsored by Idaho Republican Rep. C.L. "Butch" Otter, would block the Justice Department from using any funds to take advantage of the section of the law that allows it to secretly search the homes of suspects and only inform them later that a warrant had been issued to do so. The Patriot Act granted broad new powers to U.S. law enforcement officials to eavesdrop and detain immigrants. It was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Moschella said the law was needed to prevent terror attacks and added that the Justice Department shared the commitment of the House "to preserving American liberties while we seek to protect American lives." He urged the House to "reconsider its action." -- ----------------- 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'

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Cartoon in Times Prompts Inquiry by Secret Service
by Steve Schear 25 Jul '03

25 Jul '03

What fun, now they are eating their young.... Ramirez is a conservative Bush supporter. http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-me-ramirez22jul22.story steve "Il dulce far niente" The sweetness of doing nothing My unemployment motto

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Son of Napster
by Steve Schear 25 Jul '03

25 Jul '03

Tech pundit/gadfly Robert Cringely has come up with a pretty damn good idea for creating a RIAA-crushing music file-sharing system. Instead of concentrating on technical issues, he has tackled the problem using existing legal structures for corporations. There's probably more than a few problems with his idea, especially the legality of applying divided interests in a mutual fund-like vehicle without limits to the benefit tied to that divided interest, but it's an interesting read nonetheless. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030724.html steve "When you come to the fork in the road, take it" - L.P. Berra

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FYI: paper on privacy and price discrimination
by R. A. Hettinga 25 Jul '03

25 Jul '03

--- begin forwarded text

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RE: Fisk articles
by Cooper, Carlo 25 Jul '03

25 Jul '03

> -----Original Message----- > From: Harmon Seaver [mailto:hseaver@cybershamanix.com] > Sent: Tuesday, 22 July 2003 7:17 AM > To: cypherpunks(a)lne.com > Subject: Fisk articles > > > Does anyone have access to the fulltext articles by Robert > Fisk like this one > on alleged torture in US internment camps in Iraq: > http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=42652 0 that the Independant offers on a subscription basis? I think this is the same story @ counterpunch.org http://www.counterpunch.org/fisk07242003.html cya carlo.

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